An Octopus’ Garden
Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me. Psalm 42:7 NASB
Rolled over me – “All of our addictions and busyness keep us away from the rich life below the surface.”[1]
Do you think Gretchen Schmelzer’s comment is true? Is life really richer under the surface? Down there, in an octopus’ garden (a small hint at a particular British band), dry land protocols don’t work so well. Down there, life must be lived on different terms. Like, for example, no air to breathe. Pressures to combat. Changes in the light. Refraction. All kinds of “staying alive” issues? Down there, your particular brand of control no longer applies. And all those comfortable distractions that work so well in the upper realms just fail. No wonder we don’t like life beneath the waves.
Actually, David presents a picture of the rich life below the surface that is both transforming and terrifying. It’s terrifying because of all that lost control. We get kicked around by the waves the roll over us. The Hebrew verb is ʿābar. Its umbrella of meanings is instructive: “pass over, by, through, alienate, bring, carry, do away, take, take away, transgress.” You can see that the verb can be used to describe simple movement, like waves crashing over a swimmer, but it also is extended to the case of men moving away from God’s requirements. Think of Jonah. He not only passed over the sea, he also attempted to move away from God’s command by passing over the sea. And he ended up transgressing. All shades of the same verb. This is the terrifying aspect of the deep. It can, literally and spiritually, kill you. Ask Jonah.
The deep (tĕhôm) is calling—by name, according to the insight of Avivah Zornberg.[2] The deep opens a cosmic wound, a breach in the heart of God reflected in the creation. “Those deep places are the experience of the inhuman humanity he bears; paradoxically, they provide the ground from which prayer, asking, wishing, can emerge. To cry from deep wounds of grief and need, to allow hollow places to open up within him, would be to stand in God’s presence.”[3]
Terrifying—and transfixing. Did you think that your life with God was encapsulated in daily mitzvot-keeping religion? Didn’t the prophets warn you about drawing too close to His agony—and ecstasy? Isn’t there a place in you that cannot be satisfied with life on the surface, that cries for the Deep, even if the waves will roll over you? You know, don’t you, that God doesn’t live where Man can survive on his own.
Topical Index: deep, tĕhôm, roll over, ʿābar, Psalm 42:7
[1]Gretchen Schmelzer, Journey Through Trauma, p. 113.
[2]Avivah Zornberg, “The profound murmur of life invokes a companion alienness in the other.” The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, p. xxvii.
Myth teaches that our real self is to be found under water, too – the water of unconsciousness: of stepping out of the present.
In the myth of Iron John (which I believe represents how a ‘normal’ person becomes human), the wild man (Iron John) represents the power of a buried power source; the power of the essential self that has to rely upon the elevation of another voice of authority: of another power source – typified by the person of Iron John. We are not alone at the bottom of things, but I think most of us, initially at least, tend to attempt to bury that voice deep under the water of unconsciousness.
It is painful to bucket out the water from the pond and find that the real source of our essential self does not lie with us, but with what, in the myth, APPEARS to be a “wild man”; something out of our control. In learning to work with that other power source, however, the young man in the myth grows in power and maturity himself. In the end, Both Iron John and the young man emerge from that union as the kings of their respective realms.
I believe our conscience – sense of duty – was a gift to us to teach us to rely upon the voice of Someone Else, and not our own inclination. When we listen to our conscience as supreme, we elevate ourselves, too. What at first seems terrifyingly alien and intimately exposing of our deepest faults and weaknesses, in the end, is really the source of our greatest strength and crowning glory. When we learn to listen to our conscience as if it were the voice of God, we learn to put ourselves where we can truly hear His voice.
We were created to work with the Spirit of God, but we have to start by getting the water of unconsciousness (that I think we all employ to cover over His voice) out of the way. I think the deep is of our own making to cover over our terror at having to admit that it is not just ourselves in ourselves: there is Someone Else, too. In the end, we must face that terror and consciously work to remove what we tried to hide our terror with: unconsciousness caused by addictions and other ways to alter our state of consciousness. We must be awake for God’s surgery for it requires our cooperation. We must actively choose to let in our front door (consciousness) Who we invariably tried to kick out the back door, or, bury deep under the water of our paralyzing terror. We were “not made to be alone”.
I think we employ the unconsciousness (water) of addictions to try to fill the void where that other Voice should be. The surgery of God divorces us from our terror – our ‘water’ – our “deep” and reinstalls Himself again in that place. May we all resolve to make that trade through the surgery of the cross today, is my prayer.
My first impression is of a diver diving deep down, experiencing the depths and then shooting back up to the surface to gasp some air! That’s what the process of experiencing God can’t feel like, to me. Kingdom living is a very different type of living and will you adopt to gods way little by little, it seems. He becomes Central and everything else is peripheral to Him. How different this is in comparison to being self focused ! Reminds me of the story of the sower and the seed…..the cares and needs of this life can inhibit any growth and production!