Vertical Caves

It is hard to know with any precision the exact nature of Plato's cave...we think of it as a domain of troglodytes totally unlike ourselves.  But by so thinking, do we not make ourselves one of their degraded race, rather like the Morlocks?

It occurred to me just now that we not only inhabit such figurative caves, we dig them ourselves. And the simplest cave, or "mine" (pun intensive) is a pit or a dug well, rather like the wishing wells of yore--which are still with us today, though extensively disguised in a tech-veil.

Jeremiah was thrown down such a well which had mainly dried up and was a mere mud mine. It had been exhausted by thirsty men who had no concept of what living water (i.e. the meaning of Blood) would be.  Thus they drained the well over time so that it no longer served its life-giving teleos, but rather became an instrument of torture and death. No sane person would volunteer to spend the rest of a greatly foreshortened life in such pits--or would they?--If it is dug by the person, it is a hole that at least they can call, "mine."  One can buy a cave, as the one at Machpelah (for Abe and Sarah) to bury our dead--but all such natural caves are not of our devising. On the other hand, we have more abandoned mines than active ones because we got what we wanted, and sealed them up. 

One hardly dares to do so with some of the deep but dry wells that we spend a lifetime digging ourselves into. I'm not sure how far I can take this analogy before it is "mined out," but it brings to mind C.S. Lewis' and Tolkien's mining folk, the stunted gnomes and the selfish gold-digging dwarves who will not come out even when the last battle has come and gone, and they choose to remain 90% buried with only their unity in misery, strife, and darkness occasionally issuing from a tree stump--"Who said that? Did you say something?" but the riders and striders move quickly on, not tempted to bury themselves in bondage.

All are free indeed, as MLK once said--but do we re-invest it in its Source, so that we can go on?  Or do we bury ourselves much more firmly and thoroughly than Kruschev ever believed possible; do we continue to accomplish for ourselves what was truly an empty threat from an im-potentate ?

If we must go underground, as directed (Pole, Eustace, and Puddleglum) not as a Hobbit-Venture but as a rescue attempt, let's not forget their miraculous escape--with the goods (Princely) but not a shred of gold. ("The Silver Chair")

And I have the image that God can "flip us out" of our pits at a moment's notice, just as he ran to the prodigal son in Jesus' central parable of the Father of the King/dom.  The world can only notice that we have "flipped out" indeed; but they cannot know that it wasn't us, it was Him. We cannot, of ourselves, get ourselves even out of a ditch (think Pozzo--the ingrate; and the blind leading the blind) much less a deep yet only man-sized hole.

In the Lincoln movie the only mention of Jesus Christ was, par for the course, as a swear word--this is typical of "men in black" (the Jones') whose hostility to Christ has spread literally to every corner of the world. To bring Lincoln down to our level--the unspoken but obvious reason for the attempt--does neither the man who was Lincoln any justice, nor does it give the denizens of the world any hope outside of American-made materialism, and sensate illogic. But hey,

"That's Entertainment "(with Hal Holbrook too) Tonite. Naytheless,  some are called to work "while it is still day" rather than to engender more "Endarkenment."  (Go Mark Schuler and his brothers)

By the way, I suppose I should apologize for references not clear unto all--it is my hope that the reader will be inclined to search further--as Dennis does, because he is an old hand at it, finding stuff, that is. But if it is important--as it may or may not be--please ask.  Descartes delighted in requiring people to connect his dots, and in pointing the inferiority and unworthiness of those who failed to do so--whom he considered to be lazy, or incompetent, or ignorant, most likely all three.

Just as I do not subscribe to his "cogito ergo sum" theory of life, I do not want to leave off that philosophy only to assume and display Descartes' arrogance. (yet are not arrogance and ignorance closely related? One is active, the other passive, but the outcome will be the same.)

I suppose I flatter myself by hoping that the Holy Spirit is the glue that holds these thoughts together.  But if God does not fill in the outlines of history, who can?  I have only his "great and precious promises" on that--I can't engender it myself, but can fail to oppose it, I suppose--yet I love a Perfectly Reasonable God, whose ways are at the same time far beyond our understanding. He stoops to conquer, as it were. And I am so very Thankful for that, above all "mere things."