I’ve spent many years pondering Being. Not just during my years in the university system, either. I’ve always had a burning desire to understand – always lived a quest to comprehend. School simply provided me some tools, and trained me to gather, organize, and explicate those contemplations. The mundane cycle of the “American Dream” is a nightmare to me. It’s empty, meaningless, fruitless. I can’t be one of those people who lives to work, only to die a Life unlived.
We all live entrenched in intellectual absolutes. Religion or atheism. Humanism or pantheism. Philanthropism or egocentrism. I remember arguing against postmodernism on this basis: the denial of absolute truth is, in fact, an assertion of absolute truth. The lack of an absolute truth is in itself an absolute truth. Rephrased thrice, to assert that truth is false because there is no absolute truth is to assert an absolute truth, wherefore one’s subconscious lies because the lack of all truth makes the assertion false by virtue of the impossibility of truth’s existence.
Absolute truth exists, or it does not. Absolute truth cannot not exist absolutely. If absolutely does not absolutely not exist, then it may exist, which means that the denial of absolute truth is ignorance, thus requiring the denier to deny any and all existence of absolutes. The lack of absolute truth would thus be an absolute truth, thereby making the lack a falsehood. A definitive statement, “There is no absolute truth,” precludes all other plausibilities and relies upon the embracement of the absolute truth of the lack of absolute truth in order to be an accurate (“true”) statement.
But what does it mean to live?
I watch a lot of people express, through their actions, their philosophy of “living.” (I’d be scared to allow myself to explore the idea of what people equate as my philosophy based on my actions!) Most of what I observe depresses me because most of people’s lives are fairly meaningless from an eternal perspective. Now, let me say that I’m not using “eternal perspective” in the Judeo-Christian context. Let me use “eternal perspective” simply as a term referring to ‘the entirety of one’s life, whether comprised merely of human mortal years or encompassing the cosmogenic afterlife of a human’s immortal soul.’
A few rare specimen exemplify something exhilarating. Something selfless, humanitarian, and inspiring. I find these specimen among a gamut of socio-cultural-historical arenas. Lately I’ve challenged myself to attend a home group from my parents’ church. Among other things, I miss school, I enjoy the challenge of intellectual stimulation, and my father is an excellent source for such challenges. Thus, I attend home group.
Participation in the home group has meant reading the biblical book of Ruth, utilizing the “IBS” (Inductive Bible Study) method. I’m no Bible expert, and I’ve barely ascribed the time least necessary to honor the book, study, or group. However, something has already proven a great challenge to me.
Normally I’m a stickler for purity in literary criticism. In other words, don’t jumble characters, don’t rabidly assimilate the whole narrative into an egocentrically obtuse message, and don’t anachronistically pervert the intended message into a personalized meaning for one’s own context.
I’m going to break these rules tonight. I’ve read 2 chapters so far (discounting the previous times I’ve read the whole book), and here’s the deal: Naomi lost absolutely everything in life except her two daughters-in-law and her own life. She had no hope, saw no future. Ruth apparently had an unbelievably amazing relationship with her mother-in-law (which I imagine to be a product of what I estimate as 7-8 years of living with Naomi), or a horrific experience among/lack of respect for her own family’s/culture’s way of life, or a combination of the two, such that she preferred a dangerous journey to a foreign people with a destitute widow over returning to her own parents’ home and likely remarriage, motherhood, and a natural course through life. Both women stood on a crumbling platform, precariously hanging over the edge of destruction.
Ruth 2:8 ~ “Then Boaz said to Ruth, ‘You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women.’”
I notice two things here. First, Boaz proffers a choice to Ruth. She may listen, or she may not listen. I wonder how the question actually rolled off his lips in real life. Posed in the English translation above, it sounds like a rhetorical question. He already knows the answer – she’s going to listen. Yet he gives her the choice – because he’s not interested in forging a relationship through force. Then, the second observation, he instructs her to avoid certain boundaries; rather, she has been provided the safe environment of his fields, among his workers, who have been instructed to bless her without her knowledge.
Huh?
I have no clue.
Like Naomi, my external life is, in many ways, in reverse. Family and friends move, die, change. Their lives appear to circulate in a tornado, touching down in my heart for a fleeting moment before rampaging off to other territories while I sweep up the fragments of time. The aftermath gets buried in a metaphysical sarcophagus: piles of memories dissuading the heart from continued gleaning in an increasingly barren field. No hope, no future.
My life has become Ruth’s: each day I work to survive, knowing that I go home to the incessant drudge toward further separation and eventual death. Naomi was only going to live so long. And then what was Ruth going to do? Ruth left her homeland to spend her life with her mother-in-law. I doubt she regretted the decision even once, but surely she questioned herself a time or two.
Just enough
Gleaning must’ve been a struggle. Granted, Boaz had his workers drop extra grain from their sheaves so that Ruth could glean enough. She may have enjoyed the labor itself, and she probably found a measure of companionship among his young female workers. Yet “enough to survive” is far different from “plenty.” No abundance, no accumulation for the future. Today’s needs met; tomorrow’s untouched.
Herein I shift from the literal (“enough to survive”) to the metaphorical (“plenty”). Ruth would always have to work to survive – that’s life – but the spiritual, emotional, relational aspects of the young Moabite woman’s life equate the future, the hope, that neither she nor Naomi could’ve seen in chapter 1. I can easily imagine how dry and empty those women’s lives must have been when no deliverance was on the visible horizon.
I’m arguing with God right now. I’m tired of gleaning. I’m tired of being given my grain for today without a word for tomorrow. I’m tired of seeing no future, of feeling no hope, of experiencing no progression. I feel like I’m Naomi and Ruth all wrapped into one. I’ve been patient my whole life, waited on God, submitted to His leading, and, like the chapter 1 Naomi, I see evidence of turning my heart from the promises I once held dear. I don’t see the point of staying in Boaz’s fields if I can find fulfillment – rather than just survival – by extending my hands, my feet, myself, into neighboring lands. That doesn’t mean there is no point: the point however, eludes me.
Yet, somehow, a small voice inside me persists in whispering, “Ruth was never forgotten….”
The question is, on what will I hedge my bets? On what will I stake my life? I don’t think a person can ever stand long-term with one foot on each side of a fence. So do I run headlong into the visible fields of green? Or do I continue crawling over the rubble, gleaning the little sustenance I can find? And what if the waiting never gets fulfilled – will it still be well with my soul?
