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ISHMAEL
by Daniel Quinn
by John Crestwell
Oct. 13, 2002
It is always a wonderful
experience for me to preach and share with you as a Unitarian Universalist.
In my not so distant past, it was not recommended that I extrapolate from
too many sources when I speak without bringing parishioners back to Bible,
as the final word. This was considered sound theological homiletics.
Well, I don’t know about that… Today, I am very pleased to be
sharing with you, NOT from the book of Amos or Isaiah or Job, or Matthew,
Mark, Luke or John, rather from the book of Daniel Quinn, titled “Ishmael
an Adventure of the Mind and Spirit.” (link
to Daniel Quinn's official Ishmael web site)
So this morning, allow me to be creative, allow for some hyperbole, allow
me to connect with you theologically and philosophically, as I share with
you a fictional story that has an interesting message… One last note:
this is the abridged version of the story so, for those of you who’ve
read the book, I will not be able to utilize and show many of the intricacies
you’ve read, that Quinn uses in telling this story, but I hope to
keep in the spirit of what he conveys. Okay…
The setting for our adventure is just like any other day on our planet.
Our main character, that is not named, is perusing his local paper when
he comes across a very interesting ad that read:
“TEACHER SEEKS PUPIL. MUST HAVE AN EARNEST DESIRE TO SAVE THE WORLD.
APPLY IN PERSON.”
Only an idealist, I guess, would have the audacity and sheer boldness
to answer an ad like this, I couldn’t do it. I would think that the
first thing that I’d do when I got there was to be offered a glass
of kool aid (grape flavor) if you know what I mean. Anyway… I know
our character’s demographic and psychographic profile is not Protestant
because Christians are waiting on the next world and not interested in
saving this one (I’m being a bit sarcastic). I know he’s not
Buddhist because Buddhism focuses on the self more than society. He’s
not Catholic because he would have to ask the Pope’s permission to
save the world (smile). So, I am guessing that our character could quite
possibly be a Unitarian Universalist.
We can infer that this character is like many of us. He was a product
of the sixties, one who hoped that his social action as a youngster would
somehow manifest into a real and lasting peace in the 70’s, 80’s
and beyond. But he had, like some of us, lost his zeal and optimism. He
had become a pessimist when thinking about world peace and in his ability
to create positive change. So he is curious to find out what sort of quack
would place such an idealistic, hopeful ad in the newspaper. More than
anything, he was curious to find out who this, what he might call, a con
artist, was up to. For sure this person was robbing people out of their
hard earned dollars by selling false hope. Or maybe, just maybe (his heart
talking now) this person really has something to share?
So he goes on a quest and goes to an office building, somewhere in town,
where the ad told him to go. He finds a very plain building with nothing
extraordinary except a very musky smell. He looks around the room and
is not impressed at all by the décor. He sees many things that
show that teaching is occurring there, particularly a chair with small
mats around, of course, this is the place the guru would teach his disciples,
like the Buddha or Jesus. He finds his way to a mirror and looks in it,
for no known reason, only to discover that he’s looking through a
mirror at some powerful eyes. These eyes are piercing eyes. The smell
of the room and these engaging eyes reveal to him that he is looking at
a gorilla behind the glass wall. This ‘aint no ordinary gorilla.
This is a gorilla’s gorilla. If any of you have seen a silverback
in the zoo, you see an animal that is massive, powerful and just below
the human cognitive realm; a beautiful thing to see, indeed. And yet it
is sad to see them caged and not free.
Our character’s eyes then gaze upon a poster above the glass wall
that reads: WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?
He thinks to himself, “this is a sick joke and someone is trying
to make some sort of weird philosophical or political statement. I should
call someone and have this beast freed right now!” He pauses to think
when he catches the gorilla’s eyes again. He hears a voice, “relax”.
He responds, “Did I just hear something that I don’t think was
me?” He hears a voice again. “You’re not crazy”. He
thinks to himself “My God, the gorilla is communicating with me?”
“Yes I am” he hears in his head. Suddenly, he thought sarcastically,
“Well I guess the next thing I’m going to hear is you’re
my teacher. I gotta stop eating late.” The answer came back to him
in the affirmative as the gorilla nodded in agreement confirming to our
character that he was really the teacher, the guru who placed the ad in
the paper!
Thus begins a very interesting several days where our character is taught
many lessons by a gorilla whose name, we learn later, is Ishmael.
Okay, I’m taking a commercial break… I don’t want to totally
spoil a good read for you so I want to get to the meat of the story. But
first I’ve got to establish a few connections, hang with me as I
digress.
First digression, the title of the book is “Ishmael”. This as
many of you may know, comes to us by way of biblical mythology. The story
where Abraham is convinced, by his wife Sarah, to send away his “illegitimate”
son, Ishmael, whom Abraham conceived with Sarah’s hand-maiden Hagar,
at Sarah’s request. Sarah, all her life, could not produce
children, but one day, miraculously, she gave birth to Isaac. Now, because
he was their “legitimate” son, Isaac usurped Ishmael’s
place, his position as heir. Isaac, as the story goes, was now the inheritor
of God’s covenant with Abraham, an eternal covenant that would produce
David and Jesus. But the point is, Ishmael was sent away. He was rejected.
He was taken out, taken over, and never recognized as a major player in
the Bible again. The story changed. The story changed!
Now, second digression, there’s this talking gorilla sage who represents,
as I see it, primitive evolving humanity. Not the humanity that builds
tall buildings, computers and trucks—not that humanity, but hunting
and gathering humans who ate what they killed. They lived of the land;
picked and ate berries; grabbed figs from the tree. So the gorilla represents
the primitive, hunter-gatherers. Remember that…
Back to the story…
So, our character looks at Ishmael and asks, “What is it that you
want to teach me gorilla? I would love to save the world. But if you’re
going to tell me to love everybody and just be happy, or give everybody
a ‘Coke and a smile’, I’m going home to see a shrink.”
Ishmael looks at him, almost testing him, and says, “What I want
to teach you, you don’t want to hear.” Our character says, “Oh
yes… I want to hear it!” Ishmael responds, “You want the
truth?” Our character says, “Yes I want the truth. I wouldn’t
be here otherwise!” Ishmael fires back, “You and your culture
can’t handle the truth! I’m about to tell you what no ear wants
to hear, what no eye wants to see, what no hand wants to touch, what you
do not want to understand in your human mind.” Almost without a pause
Ishmael continues, “YOU AND YOUR CULTURE ARE DEAFENED BY THE NOISE
OF WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR EVERYDAY & IT’S ON TELEVISION, RADIO,
IN PRINT, ON THE INTERNET, IT’S PERVASIVE WITH YOU PEOPLE!”
Ishmael said the “you people” thing. He was not politically
correct (smile).
So, our character says, “What is pervasive?” Ishmael says, “MOTHER
CULTURE.” Our character says, “What’s is Mother Culture?”
Ishmael responds, “MOTHER CULTURE IS A QUIET VOICE THAT MOVES
YOUR WHOLE SOCIETY. MOTHER CULTURE INCLUDES EVERYTHING IN YOUR EXISTENCE
THAT PERPETUATES A MENTALITY OF DOMINATION AND DOMINION. LIKE WHEN YOU
HUMANS ATTEMPT TO NARCISISTICALLY CONTROL LIFE IN SUCH A WAY THAT YOU
ATTEMPT TO PUT NATURE AT YOUR FEET. YOU LIVE AND BREATHE AND EAT AN ATTITUDE
THAT THE EARTH IS YOURS AND THE FULLNESS THEREOF. YET YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE
PEOPLE. YOU KILL HUNDREDS OF SPECIES EVERYDAY. YOU SACRIFICE TOO MANY
LIVING ORGANISMS AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR LIFE! YOU LIVE TO MASTER THE EARTH,
AND DO NOT SEE THAT THE EARTH IS YOUR MASTER. WHAT BEFALLS THE EARTH BEFALLS
YOU. AND YOU DO NOT SEE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE BLINDED BY MOTHER CULTURE’S
STILL SMALL VOICE. BUT IT IS A POWERFUL VOICE INDEED, THAT SAYS, ‘I
CREATED YOU IN MY IMAGE. YOU ARE MY CHOSEN. SUBDUE THE EARTH. CULTIVATE
THE LAND. CONTROL IT—CONQUER, CONQUER, CONQUER. YOUR PEOPLE ARE CAPTIVES
OF A STORY!’”
That was all our character could handle that day so Ishmael continued
on another day…
“… MOTHER CULTURE IS/ARE YOUR MYTHS. THESE ARE THE MYTHS THAT
SLAUGHTERED THE NATIVE AMERICANS; THE MYTHS THAT KILLED MANY AFRICANS,
JAPANESE, AND JEWS. YOUR MYTHS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR WIPING OUT THE INDIGENOUS
PEOPLES FROM NEARLY ALL THE EARTH. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO EXIST IN
YOUR WORLD WHO ARE THE FORGOTTEN. LIKE HAGAR’S SON, THEY ARE NOT
A PART OF THE STORY ANY LONGER! THEY EXIST IN REMOTE PLACES, EXOTIC LOCATIONS
ND THEY STILL HUNT AND GATHER.”
Ishmael continued on still another day…
“Your myth of existence is based on a biblical construct, like the
story of Cain and Abel. You know it… Cain usurps Abel’s power
as God’s favorite, by killing him. Your theology teaches you that
this is humankind’s first murder. The myth is much bigger than that!
Cain, which in Hebrew means, “to acquire or create” was a farmer,
an agriculturalist, called the ‘tiller of the ground.’ His job
is to control land.
Abel was keeper of sheep, the Sheppard, who represents hunter-gatherer
peoples. Cain killed Abel. Thus, what you have is a dichotomy between
agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers. But most hunter-gatherers, most
Abel’s are gone, save a few places, due to the aggression of you
and your ancestors. Yours is a society of Cain’s, a society of agriculturalists.
Yours is a society of ‘Isaac’s’ who, maybe not purposely,
changed the world from one way of living to another.
Then Ishmael pauses—takes a deep breath and says, TAKERS &
LEAVERS. TAKERS & LEAVERS! One sees nature and
land as something that must be named, tagged, classified and controlled.
Their advanced consciousness is killing them and they don’t know
it. The other group sees that there’s mutuality between human, plant
and animal. There is a major difference in each group’s earth-view.
Well, Ishmael sounds like he doesn’t like the takers too much, but
he makes it clear that he sees takers & leavers as neither good nor
bad but just what IS. He feels that somewhere there was a split in human
consciousness where some chose to cultivate while others did not. And
by virtue of what cultivating does, we have a society that seeks to expand
at any cost, and Ishmael feels this will eventually end when our culture
has expanded as far as we can. So the truth we cannot handle, Ishmael
believes, is our culture, as it exists today, is doomed; not the earth
or even all humanity (those who are not takers (leavers) he contends will
live on long after we’re gone) but our culture, will somehow annihilate
itself through its aggressiveness. That’s a hard word from Daniel
Quinn. And although it is fiction, he is passionate in all of his books,
in revealing this as his myth of what will happen to our society.
This is where I break with the author. As I’ve said before, I do
not eat the entire pie of anyone’s ideology. Just a few slices here
and there. Perhaps Mother Culture blinds me too, but I still maintain
a positive outlook on life for our culture. I am ever hopeful that humanity
can find away to embrace life with more respect and reverence.
Ishmael says to us in substance: FIND A BETTER WAY TO LIVE. That’s
it!! We’ve must find a more efficient way to feed the hungry without
creating explosive populations that will doom our culture. We’ve
gotta find a way to redefine capitalism, not a system of “survival
of the slickest” that preaches “Grow, grow, grow,” but
as a system that embraces a philosophy of sharing, mutuality and reciprocity.
Ishmael reveals to us that we cannot have another generation that grows
up believing that conquering and domination and tyranny is good. So
we’ve got a great task of redefining the myths of our existence.
The myths that say God gave humankind power to organize the earth;
that there are chosen people or races; that there is one country that
is greater than another; that strength is in military might and not in
love and charity and community; that killing is right and TAKING is good.
These are some of the things mother culture whispers to us everyday and
if we are not intuitive, we can lose our chance to save the world.
Oh yes, I am ever optimistic that we can save the world. I still believe
human beings can find a way, in spite of ourselves, to raise our collective
consciousness and be more responsible, individually and collectively.
We must begin to take on a new attitude that understands that we are not
separate from nature but a part of the great circle of life. Therefore,
life calls us to respect the circle. We are not the master’s of the
earth, the earth is our master! We have to see that the plant, tree, insect,
animal help us to live, and they must be respected, their habitat must
be honored, as we honor each other. It seems too late for us to fix this
worldly mess in such a postmodern society. But I submit, we have no choice
but to slow down a very abusive process. Now, we don’t know the long-term
effects of what we do, but all I know is I want my children to have a
great world to live in. I don’t want them to see the hate that is
so prevalent in so many places. I want their fantasy of life to be real.
I don’t want them to grow up believing that lying and cheating is
the only way to succeed. For me, this compels me to “keep on keepin’
on.” I hope you feel the same. So, as Martin King said, “we
can make of this old world a new world.”
Mr. Daniel Quinn is attempting, I think, to give us a wake-up call this
morning. Our story concludes when our character goes back to visit the
gorilla and cannot find him. He discovers that Ishmael may be gone or
dead. He takes some keepsakes with him. One of them is a poster. Another
day, sometime later, he decides to get it framed and discovers writing
on the back of the poster. You are familiar with what the front says:
WITH MAN GONE WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?” But on the back there
is a different message: “WITH GORILLA GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR
MAN?”
Thank you for your time. And thank you Daniel Quinn for your message.
Let it be so!
See John Crestwell's
review of the book "BLACK PIONEERS
IN A WHITE DENOMINATION"
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