Security

 

                                                                    

Ade Santora



 "Security?" I marvel to myself "what is that?" Something negative, undead, suspicious and suspecting; an avarice and an avoidance; a self surrendering meanness of withdrawal; a numerable complacency and an innumerable cowardice. Who would be "secure"? Every and any slave. No free spirit ever dreamed of 'security' - or, if he did, he laughed; and lived to shame his dream. No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for; 'security'. How monstrous and how feeble seems some unworld which would rather have its too than eat its cake!"

 

E.E. Cummings 

from "six nonlectures"

 





 

"Who would be 'secure'? Every and any slave."

 

I've been chewing on this thought for months now. I hear people signing off or saying goodbye to each other with that strange phrase, "Be safe." Like a benediction or blessing or a word-hex against some evil spirit? What is it? It sticks in my mind, a strange object I can't identify, can't place, even though it has familiar attributes.


"Safe." "Secure." Of course, but truly there are no such things on this earth. Why does it freeze my blood to hear people repeating them? 


And then I stumbled across Cumming's "Nonlecture" quotes in my Commonplace Book, and my thoughts suddenly came into focus. 


I have lost two children to disease, I know there is no such thing as "safe". I lost that illusion with my daughter, and it was ground into dust with the life and death of my son. I do not like the word "safe" the way we are using it now. It's repellent. 

 

You will see it how you will, but I'm with Cummings. "No free spirit ever dreamed of 'security'..." If we live with the aim to be "safe", we are only dancing with death. If we live with the aim to be free, to be wide open, to recieve good things, to share, to fully love and be loved - we must be risk-takers, cliff-jumpers, deep-divers, tree-climbers - and dance with danger. Life is dangerous. 

 

Life is dangerous! Security does not exist. Even for someone like myself who trusts that God has provided an eternal home for those who are willing to risk everything on the strength of His promises, there is no guarantee of safety here, there is no exemption from pain or the vagaries of life.The threat of death and disease and disaster is real, as real as it gets.  


So I love the realism of Cumming's words. They're a balm to my nettled nerves. I want to hear them again, to savor their taste. "No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for; 'security'."


So help me, I want to live wholly in this dangerous world. Look at the children! Pushing against their limits, daring to go a little further each day, balancing on the fence-tops, falling and failing themselves into skinned knees and broken arms and victory. That's called growing. It's laughing in the face of all the things that stand against us, against all the odds that threaten to cut us down at the knees. "It's only a flesh wound!" as the Monty Python character insists. I'm with him, too. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the gifts of deprivation

Image
Steven Callahan, lost at sea in The Rubber Ducky 3 "In these moments of peace, deprivation seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple of hours of fishing each day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past life seems. For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed - food, shelter, clothing, and companionship - yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn't get everything I wanted, when people didn't meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn't aquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind.I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness. Even here, there is richness all around me. As I look out of the raft, I see God's face in the smooth waves. His grace in the dorado's swim, feel His breath against
Read more

Clouds

Image
Adriano Farinella "More often I looked upwards at the great cathedral piles of clouds that passed along the winter sky, extravagant and erring shapes radiantly rimmed or quite ensilvered by the sun. Once, a broad shaft of light, let out from the clouds, beamed down upon the distant land. It lit up the ground on which it fell and slowly moved from field to field, from hedge to hedge, as if looking for something - like a great searchlight reversed. Then it went out suddenly, as if switched off. The clouds above increased in splendour. ...Clouds are water, and they have weight - we know that much. Then why do they not sink to the ground? They should be continually falling at our feet. Yet they stay up there, though they are not supported from below nor held from above...Another question. How is it that clouds are so complete, so sharp in their outline? We look up into the sky and see these chiselled leviathans swimming through the ocean of air at the bottom of which we
Read more

As Thy Days...

Image
  Theodor Kittelson "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Deuteronomy 33:25     "The same God who guides the stars in their courses, who directs the earth in its orbit, who feeds the burning furnace of the sun, and keeps the stars perpetually burning with their fires—the same God has promised to supply thy strength... And shall he, that created the world, grow weary? Shall he fail? Shall he break his promises for want of strength? He hangeth the world upon nothing; he fixed the pillars of heaven in silver sockets of light and thereon he hung the golden lamps, the sun and the moon, and shall he that did all this be unable to support his children? Shall he be unfaithful to his word for want of power in his arm or strength in his will? Remember again, thy God, who has promised to be thy strength, is the God who upholdeth all things by the power of his hand. Who feedeth the ravens? Who supplies the lions? Doth not he do it? And how? He openeth his hand and sup
Read more