Follow Me

  Sometime in my twenties, I read an article in Newsweek by someone my age entitled 'Searching for Sages." I loved it , cut it out and have it still. The author, Joyce Maynard,  wrote about her generation and how they all seemed to be looking for a wise man, someone with the "answers" to life's many mysteries. How every guy she had coffee with seemed to have story about a truck driver they met who was a philosopher of sorts who imparted some nugget of wisdom that her friend hangs onto. God had been declared dead by Time magazine and so this generation, mine,  was adrift with nothing to hang onto.

 Her writing was so good she went on to publish books but her article is the one that struck me deeply. In my view, we are born with a need to know. To understand how things work, and most importantly. why we are here at all.

That generation also had travelers going to find a guru in India, famously, a Beatle, and trying Open Marriage, a way to cheat and still keep a marriage together. We became lovers of the Earth and spent our time chained to fences around nuclear sites.

In the article, Maynard describes a kid who came to show and tell in the fourth grade with rosary beads, a crucifix and spoke lovingly of God, the blood of Christ and nails. The laughter in the class was barely contained. To her and others, to speak of these things seemed almost dirty.

And so here we are,  with every abomination under the sun being exposed, things that always seem to harm women and children the most. Rudderless, we do as we please. There is nothing new under the sun; we are always trying to do it our way. I think of that brilliant poem that I only now appreciate, "The Hound of Heaven ". We know there is Someone to follow but we flee...

                               "......I fled Him down the nights and down the days,
                                 I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind
                                       and in the midst of tears, I fled from Him...

The Maynard article ends with this: "After so many unprofound facts and so much loose, undisciplined freedom,  it's comforting to have a creed to follow and a cross to bear".When the Voice says : "Follow Me." The only answer is Yes.