My Pagan Heart

Continuing my winter brooding as the snow piles up, turning sidewalks and streets into canyons, and warm weather into a distant memory.

I'm attracted to art, literature or film that in some way or other shows the hugeness of nature where people strive and find meaning against that backdrop. Recent examples have been the novel, *Trask, by Don Perry set in 1840s Oregon where a former trapper wants to settle land near the coast but has to find a way to come to terms with the Indians living in the vicinity; or the movie, *Meek's Cutoff, (also set in the 1840s) where the camera dwells for long moments on the stark but beautiful features of the Oregon High Desert. The characters' struggles are compelling but seem fleeting compared to the terrain they're trying to cross.

Near Vail, Oregon (Douglas Ross)

Most recently I read *The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone, a book that deserves more acclaim than it's received. The writing is beautiful. It's about an elderly Norse woman recounting her experiences (late 10th Century) with Leif Erikson and others striving to explore and settle the harsh lands of the northern Atlantic. The woman, Gudrid, is telling her tale in Rome to a monk who was born in Iceland and knows her language. Here's a sample:

What you say is true, but Eden was a garden with walls built around it. Adam never laid eyes on the vastness of the worlds. He never named what has not been seen and known. That's what your theologians in Rome don't see. They can't look out of the world from here; they don't know how small we are.

How small we are. Those theologians in Rome, propped up by the magnificence of their authority and architecture, could veil their smallness and pretend to be important in the grand scheme. But the veil likely would drop away if they sailed in a Viking ship along the coasts of Greenland and Newfoundland and viewed the endless vistas of ice and rock, or felt the stormy power of the polar ocean.

Whalers Trapped by Arctic Ice (William Bradford)

The Sea Road, among other things, is also about the spread of Christianity to the Norse people and the decline of their pagan practices. Gudrid is a believer in magic and miracles, considered a witch by some, and straddles both sets of beliefs, showing how both can be compelling and how both can fall short. Christianity wins out, of course, no doubt, in part, because it had become the religion of the kingly powers, but also because of its promise of eternal life and, maybe more importantly, because of its promise that people are made in God's image and are His special children -- small in size, perhaps, compared to the rest of the world, but not small in God's eyes. He sent His Son to save us.

We are indeed important, says the Christian message. This is something Nordic paganism didn't offer. There was little sense of attaining salvation. The gods were remote and volatile. Death in battle was among the highest glories. Suffering was the human lot in life. One couldn't count on anything in paganism. Not like Christianity where you could follow a set of strictures that would necessarily lead to heaven. This world may be miserable but the next one will be bliss (as long as you're faithful and do the right things).

So what is attractive about paganism? I think ultimately it's the sense of nobility that the heroes attain in their struggles in the wide world against fickle fate. They are able to lead exemplary lives in the face of misery and death, which, I think, means coming to terms with your own mortality, your own limitations, your own smallness. The mice that roared, so to speak. In that vein, pagans also had a sense of seizing the moment: Let's get what we can out of this life while we have the chance. The Norse pagans lived in the world knowing their existence was temporary and their actions weren't aimed at the abstract and uncertain promise of heaven.

In The Sea Road, Gudrid describes ghosts and spells, demons and omens which serve to show how these ancient people thought. But there's no sense that she's credulous, more that the supernatural terms are what she has at her disposal to describe her experience of the world. It makes for a rich metaphorical brew and I enjoy that kind of use of the supernatural in a novel or film.

I admit I yearn a little for sorcery -- with its ritual, mystery and power (I'll always have a soft spot for Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons) -- but I crossed the spiritual Rubicon a long time ago and there's no going back. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to swallow the pill of belief, whether pagan, Christian or otherwise. Yet those old pagans still have the power to excite my imagination.

A Little Nietzsche on a Cold Day

             Edvard Munch Portrait

Grim winter has taken hold of the Twin Cities. After temperatures dipped to an unearthly -30F, we got a brief, freaky warm spell followed by freezing rain, then back to the deep freeze, then snow to hide the treacherous coating of ice. It's during such cold and gloomy times, when I'm feeling down or overwhelmed by the world, that I reach for the comforting words of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, I read the inspiring opening paragraphs of his essay, *On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense:

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.

Ah, goes down like a warm cup of tea. 

Okay, so, maybe Nietzschean nihilism is an acquired taste. 

Yet the passage is a good antidote to intellectual hubris which on me tends to accumulate like barnacles on a ship. It offers appropriate perspective whenever I might be tempted to believe I'm in possession of The Truth. The Truth is that reality is far vaster than any ideas I have about it, far vaster then any ideas anybody has about it. Keeping this in mind grounds me, helps keep my relations with others on an equitable plane, helps me be compassionate even though I'm not an overly compassionate guy by nature.

Of course Nietzche intended to jolt folks with his bleak humor, tweak something people suspect in their bones but don't want to think about. Many might be horrified by the suggestion of ultimate pointlessness, but I do think there's some optimism to be salvaged: The great thing about being small compared to the rest of reality is that there's always something to discover, always an opportunity to improve one's understanding. If I actually possessed The Truth, no further growth would be possible.

And the truth contained in the passage, I think, invites us to be creative about how we go about finding value and meaning in life. There are some interesting possibilities to ponder. One approach I'll likely touch on in future posts: *Finite and Infinite Games.

Meanwhile I'll wrap another blanket around my shoulders, furrow my brow, and sip more hot tea.