Nobodaddy Revisited

Lest anyone misunderstand...my intentions here are rather simple and straightforward,  if somewhat experimental... and far (very far) from wanting to come across as impious or derogatory. The following is simply an attempt to unpack an experience that many of us have had and continue to have, which is quite existential, but not always gleeful or inspiring. I refer to it simply as "that existential feeling" (with emphasis on the word "feeling" as opposed to a "logical conclusion" based on "empirical evidence")  of being "alone among the elements," of having been cut off from any consistent form of divine protection, of being "abandoned" and "forsaken" -  made vulnerable to the [autonomous] forces of Nature. Or as Simone Weil would say, made beholden to the "gravity" of blind necessity, prey to accidents and random disasters, fodder for "extremes of heat and cold" - as if we had expected some better deal...(yeah, I get it)...but yet we do expect a better deal. Like Job before us or the author of Ecclesiastes, or King Lear on the Heath, like William Blake (see prior post), Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, even Charles Darwin, along with many prior poets and countless slaves, we've experienced that weird, awkward, one-way dialogue, that "Nobodaddy moment," that strange "conversation" with the abyss.  We've undergone our angry interrogation/denunciation of the deus absconditus  -  the non-responsive agency, the absence-in-place-of-a-hoped-for presence, the void that we cling to like a person,  our ever-absent, silent interlocutor, who is not sitting above the clouds watching over us, is not apparently keeping tabs on us, has no dealings with us,  no correspondence with us, cannot hear us, does not heed our cries, cannot intervene on our behalf or send signs and omens, or make amends for past injustices, neither wishes us well or ill, cannot remember us or compile facts about us, provides no response or condolence, is not cognizant or awake or sentient, offers us only ambiguous silence and a blank (invisible) stare from the great beyond. Granted it's hard to feel safe with someone like that not watching over you...although many millions of people nowadays feel relatively nonplussed by it all (or so they claim, or so I hear), but the good news for the rest of us who do agonize over these matters, as I believe we should, as I believe we must, in order to become worthy of calling ourselves truly religious-minded creatures,  is that by sweeping aside this idolatrous expectation - of a deity poised to step in and tamper with the outcome of every waking moment,  ready to prevent us from misteps, errors, failures, confusions, miseries and regrets, there on call to chase away the ghouls or else bind up our hurts, and give us unambiguous moral guidance and support every step of the way as we believe He should (!), one can (perhaps, just maybe, and with some degree of probability) make room for some far-off preliminary to a correspondence with the one true G __ d with whom a relationship of genuine concern (both ways) may actually be envisioned.