"here is the stream?' cried he, with tears.
"`Seest thou not its blue waves above us?'
"He looked up, and lo! the blue stream was flowing gently above their heads." -- Novalis
". . . That they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us." -- Paul the Apostle
Men are blind. Naturally blind. They feel the pull of true North, but wander in circles. They smell the ripe fruit in the groves, but stuff their mouths with the gravel at their feet. The sweet salt breezes from off the sea stir their hair, and the thunder of the surf stirs their hearts, but they plunge into verminous dungheaps instead of clean waves.
But men are more than blind, for many become satisfied with dung, gravel, and stagnation. They feel the pull, smell the groves, and hear the surf less and less; as this happens, they tell themselves that circles, gravel, and dung are all that exist, that this is the only reality, and that the ideas of North, Fruit, and Sea are fantasies fed them by power-hungry priests.
Some ignore this, however, and continue to feel, smell, and hear; they weep when they discover that for the millionth time they have arrived where they started, that the food in their hands is again dust and rock, that they are again wallowing in their own filth. They weep because the desire never passes away, no matter how many times they reach, close on something, and find it to be nothing. They weep because they know that there is something beyond and that the failure to reach it lies not in its unreality but in their own hearts, in their own nature. They weep because, loving the fruit and the waves, they find that they love the gravel and filth more. So they hate the filth they love and cannot leave it behind.
The Greeks knew desire. The gifts of the gods, being irrevocable, were to them the smell of the groves of delight; Mount Parnassus was the magnetic pole and Olympus the true North, and the Garden of the Hesperides was the endless sunlit coasts.
The Medievals knew it -- the Table of Arthur, his final Sadness, the isle of Avalon, and the promise of Rex Futurus blew winds from places they could never reach or touch, but would always love.
The Romantics knew desire too; the Hesperides and the Table, yes, but also thunderheads at sunset, winds in lonely woods, stories of Long Ago and Far Away, and a loved one's face in a receding train window -- all tugged and pulled but they never discovered the source.
The South has known it for a hundred years. The tattered Stars and Bars of St. Andrew's Cross and the death of Stonewall speak to them, they think, of the past courageous glory, but in truth of a glory that had already been abandoned long before that final desperate stand.
And as western culture was nearing the end of its tether, even the hippies were still groping blindly for it. The alternative societies, Huxley's Island, the Summer of Love, and all of the internal, ineffable trips to a place where they could never stay, but which beckoned with a rush of unspeakable understanding and near-satisfaction made some of them long for the infinite and the infinitely satisfying.
All men are blind. But they were made for the light, and they still feel the heat of the light. And though they rebelliously turn in the wrong direction seeking what the Source demands of them, looking for what they say is the "source," they continue to need Him regardless. And we see that need speaking urgently, and sometimes frantically, in the various and assorted blind allies called the Hesperides, Avalon, Xanadu, Dixie, and LSD.
And yet all the time the Infinite and the Transcendent was just above their benighted heads and within their grasp -- "He is not far from each one of us." None of the pagan dreams were complete lies, for though they were indeed lies when they were believed, they became teachers when they were rejected. "This is not He, but it speaks of One who is to come after." Many Greeks were saved by Jesus Christ when they discovered that the Olympians resembled only large-scale sinful Greeks. Many hippies were saved when they discovered that every time the chemicals wore off, they left behind only sinful aging hippies.
But finally, though they must not be taken for the destination, the myths can still give a certain limited pleasure. For when a man who has been seeking finally comes upon that which he sought (and sought to avoid), he sometimes discovers, on looking behind him, that some of the steps along his old path have been redeemed as well.
