They (the ultimate and supreme They) say that one's spiritual life is a perpetual journey. Well, sorry if this seems a bit counterproductive but who likes life on the road? Personally, I do not like the bathroom on the bus. Yes, it is a bus, considering we are all here together, trying to find out why we are on this bus, what is the world outside the bus, and why we are all together, in a bus, traveling, when it is Sunday morning and I have two papers due the next day. I am trying to see who is driving the bus, but I can not go beyond the little yellow line, no matter how much I try to feel, reason, or explain my way across it.
Frustrated with my inability to know where the bus is going or who is driving it, I started to make quite a scene. Some of the other passengers began to tell me about their time on the bus and gave me suggestions where to sit and how to act. The Pope suggested I sit behind him and he would help me cross the yellow line. A Jehovah Witness told me to worship and revere the bus driver and do not question his intentions, no matter how many times he swerved. Some just slept perpetually, and one woman was pecking the lint off her cashmere J. Crew sweater with an army of shopping bags between her legs. Others stared dreamily out of the windows, while Nietzsche declared that the bus driver was dead. Some people said that Nietzsche told them to worship the bathroom, but that did not seem right. So here I am, standing in the middle of this bus, desperately holding onto a pole as the bus swerves, and everyone and their mother tries to explain to me what is going on. Trying to listen to all of them at once, I am utterly bewildered and I feel about ready to pass out.
I do not remember getting on the bus. I wish I could because it makes sense that I probably had a glimpse of the driver when I first stepped onto the bus. I remember there were all these people around who kept smiling at me; I just wanted to sleep. There was a strange man wearing very funny clothing, saying all these grammatically awkward statements and moving in some rigid fashion. He also liked burnt incense. It was rainy and the water pouring down my head woke me up and made me cry.
After being dragged onto the bus, I sat next to someone who had been on the bus a long time. He was distant and a bit weird, but that is where everyone told me to sit. He told me when to sit and when to stand, when to look out the window, and when to look straightforward. He also showed me how to make little requests on paper airplanes and launch them at the bus driver. Paper airplanes cluttered the front window; there were so many of them that no one could see through the window. Every once in a while the bus would swerve and the papers would part slightly, revealing a bit of the road or a fragment of a sign. Everyone would be too busy trying to write down what they saw that by the time they looked back up, the hole was covered again.
I became an expert in the rules. So good, in fact, that the people around me began to treat me as an equal; I was no longer a newbie. I was hungry and even though they just gave me a wisp of a wafer, it sated me. However, I could no longer hide behind my ignorance of the rules; if I broke them, I had to go tell the man in the funny clothing. He made a little sign, told me I was forgiven, and the community welcomed me back with a warm embrace. I could even partake of their wafers again, and I sure was hungry.
I continued to remain only within my little group. We all followed whatever the Pope told us to do, following all the rules like good sheep. Everyone spoke about this man that lived a long time ago. They told me about how he loved me and that he saved me. That did not make any sense to me: how could he do that when he lived so long ago? No matter how many times they told me, I just never seemed to be able to grasp it. They had everything he said written down in a book that we were supposed to read but only understand in the way others of the community did. Late at night, when everyone was sleeping, I would turn on the little overhead light in my seat on the bus and read the actual text. I was not sure if what the man in the funny clothes preached the correct interpretation of the passages. Knowing the rules, I did not challenge him. I smiled and nodded, not sure what else to do. Time passed, I remained seated in the same seat, listening to the same A-B-C cycle.
Then came the day when I chose to remain in my seat. I was dressed in a long, white robe and a red sash decorated with doves. I had never seen anything other then my current seat. Although I did not particularly like everything in and around my seat (the lever that allowed me to lean back did not work), it was a choice between that and nothing. Naturally, I chose my seat. They game me a little pin that said "Plato has been here." I remember the ceremony well; I remember that I sang the echo to "Here Comes the Spirit" with five girls because I had a soprano voice then. A funny looking man talked about the bus driver and this floating spirit that was supposed to enter the bus and make the yellow line disappear. But I did not see any spirit, I just saw two bullies beating up a poor, lanky boy.
Finally, I began to move outside my seat during high school. I was tired of just sitting there and wanted to see more of the bus. As soon as I stepped out of my designated area, however, a group of Jesuits quickly assailed me. They proudly wore many names pinned to their clothing: Plato, Aristotle, Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, etc. Like parapets, books were piled high all around the Jesuits, and they had answers for every question I raised. They showed me another part of the bus, and their explanations about why I was on the bus made sense because it appealed to reason and intellect. To someone who always valued academic pursuits, reason and intellect were natural allies. It just made sense: I had questioned and someone easily provided an answer. I made myself comfortable in this new chair which I loved. The recliner worked and I had a better view out of the side window.
However, the longer I remained in the seat, the more I began to notice the lumps and holes that made this chair almost as uncomfortable as the first. Something was missing; my questions were answered but I still could not see the bus driver nor where I was going. I understood the intellectual concepts better now, but my faith was not reborn in the smithy of cold reason. Although I could reason terrible circumstances, the seat was not comfortable. Aquinas proved that a bus driver existed, but what kind of driver? An uncaused cause, a first mover, the guy who simply turned the bus on. Although that was comforting to a certain extent, it did not answer the question, why are we on the bus? I once more stepped into the aisle of the bus, and I went to find all those books the Jesuits had around them. I wanted to find my own answers.
I sat down in the middle of the aisle (no longer in any seat) and began to read. As I read, more books appeared on my reading list because friends and other passengers suggested this or that. I also began to explore the bus and talk to people outside my community. Finally, I met the good doctor (she was a teacher too). She was sitting in the aisle like me, reading and asking other people what they thought. It was obvious she had been doing it for a very long time. She saw my Plato pin and pointed to her own that was falling off. Then, she gave me a whirlwind tour of the bus.
First, she introduced me to Jencks, who defined postmodernity. He explained it as a pluralistic, grassroots movement that rejects traditional notions of understanding the universe and humanity. In other words, he explained the din of confusing voices that I could hear on the bus and told me that this is where I might find truth. I began to explain my Platonic positions but the good doctor interrupted me. I was confused; Plato had been on the bus before the front window was covered in paper airplanes, and he must have had an idea where we were going. Then the good doctor told me that Plato was nearly blind.
Next, I was introduced to Lyotard. He was staring out the window and muttering something about the delegitimization of knowledge and the loss of the metanarrative. After having others help me translate the babbling language of Lyotard (with little success), I quickly ran away from the scary man. As I was moving towards a much more comforting figure, Nietzsche, I accidentally hit my chest against the back of one of the chairs. My Plato pin became bent but it did not fall off. I pressed it to my chest briefly as I went before Nietzsche.
Nietzsche scared me and I did not like what he had to say. He explained that the bus driver was dead, the bus was not going anywhere and that the only purpose was to exercise one's power. That simply did not feel right. Maybe I am of the old school, but a true gentleman is humble and meek. He further claimed that there is no one objective system of morality because of differing opinions, concepts, and systems among people. I reflected and realized that a lack of consensus hardly constitutes a lack of truth.
Nietzsche then said that without morality we have only the premise of the exercise of power to operate under. For someone who wishes a return to the natural, he seemed hypocritical to me because he refused the natural human emotions of sympathy and pity. He also asserted that religion is a perversion of nature and that Christianity inverts the normal flows of power because those without power are admired and those with are not.
What Nietzsche failed to recognize (and the argument was made by a man named Charles Winquist, who I have yet to have a very long conversation with) is that most people search for meaning beyond the surface of things, despite the woman on the bus surrounded by her shopping bags. This doggedness that things cannot just be surfaces indicates that we are going someplace and there is a bus driver. Moreover, it is not wrong to look for an order within the bus when we recognize that we are all in the bus and everyone wants order on the bus. To a certain extent, Nietzsche is correct; we are limited by the view from our seat on the bus. On the other hand, every so often a man can step beyond his bounds and share a truth with many others. A person's truth will never be completely free of their context but that does not mean that their truth cannot be applied to many different situations or that their truth lacks value.
After meeting Nietzsche, I needed a catharsis and made my way to the bathroom. Standing outside the door was a community of people telling me that Nietzsche told them to worship the bathroom. I gently explained to them that Nietzsche did not say to negate everything. After all, even if one negates everything in the world, one is still left with existential questions that are unanswered. After a few minutes, I gave up trying to convince them of their staunch position and simply purged myself.
I met up with the good doctor again and she introduced me to Jacques Derrida. Sitting by a window, he held a lit cigarette in one hand and a nutcracker in the other. However, he was a nut that I could not crack at first. After a while, the aggregate nature of his words began to sink in. The trace offers us a glimpse of what is repressed, what we most desire. Thus, our circumstances control our theology; if we lack love as a child or desperately need it as an adult, we will conceive of a god that must be all-loving. Because of this, the bus driver is a whole lot larger and more complicated than any metanarrative. Each of the passengers on the bus sees him as something different: some need him to be concerned, others desire him to be powerful. Language, then, is the ash and the communication of desires and absences. I saw Derrida the next day and he was attempting to take the bus apart. He told me to meet his lackey, Gianni Vattimo.
Vattimo was a typical side-kick: unassuming, warm, and ultimately bright but not brighter then his admired friend. He examined the longing for a past wholeness that the postmodern world has developed. He attempted to reconcile a problem: how does one reconcile spates of oneness with religion's claim to truth? Some people make it through such a longing by retreating to the back of the bus and perpetually sleeping. Others revert back to a time before Greyhound and attempt to impose an order that simply no longer fits. Ultimately, he posited a kind of merging of science (expressed through positivism) and a religious spirit. The world of reality can merge with metaphysics to create an established order that fits a postmodern age.
I am now back at my original predicament: I am standing, holding onto a pole for dear life as everyone is attempting to offer me an explanation. It has been a long time since I have truly sat with my original community on the bus. I still follow all the rules and partake in their rituals, although I do not know what for.
If reason cannot provide the answers to our questions, then where can we turn? No matter how hard all of us try, we cannot reason ourselves across the little yellow line that keeps us from viewing the bus driver. Or at least, cold reason proves only a cold figure that has no concern for its passengers. If not reason, then experience? Experience, changing and inconsistent, reveals many awful and terrible situations of human suffering. Surely that does not comfort us. Someplace between these two, reason and experience, we may be able to experience the wholeness that the trace hints at.
One of the difficulties with this entire bus ride is that hippie-mobiles are no longer in style. In an increasingly secular world, the role of religion has become increasingly more insignificant. More and more people just perpetually sleep on the bus, instead of interacting and trying to understand.
Wait, is it possible that I could be the bus driver? Could I be the one leading my own spiritual journey and discovering truths hidden among the curves of the road? Perhaps in the final analysis, I am the ultimate determiner of the meaning of my own life. I fulfill my life by the wholeness I achieve by loving other human beings instead of trying to feel, think, or understand a force that could be beyond the pale of my reach.
As I attempt to understand the truth of people I know and have met, feel the swerves of the bus and hear the din of my fellow passengers, the advice given, the bus driver, the explanations offered, the questions, the answers, the curves, the swerves, the bumps, the veering, the pole….
And I faint.