The Philosopher's Table by Marietta McCarty

Author:Marietta McCarty [McCarty, Marietta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101616000
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Spiritual Hunger

JULY IN IRAQ

Diners forget napkins. Sitting on their heels, silent child philosophers slap their thighs impatiently. College students grin on the first day of class when they see the assignment on the board. Is the philosophy teacher really this fascinating? No, but the world is. The assignment: “If you could have the answer to one, just one, question, what would your question be?” Respecting the requirement of secrecy and the limitation of using just one sentence, left in solitary wonder because they must wait until the next meeting, and when the time finally arrives—fireworks in every setting! Dinner partners pat the pocket safeguarding their sentence, trying to guess who might have written the same one. College students eye classmates suspiciously. Many child philosophers, keeping perhaps their first secrets, retrieve questions stashed in hiding places. Serious philosophers clear their throats before delivering their prized questions to a hushed group, quite often repeating the questions for emphasis. The next speaker, though ready, waits and allows time for pondering. “Since everything seems to change, is anything permanent? Who decides the makings of a good life? How can I know what really matters? Can I discover perfection? Does Truth exist regardless of time and place? Why was I born? When will I die, what is death, and is that two questions oops or three?!”

Probing for this one question upends philosophers of all ages because the world itself amazes. What on earth (and beyond, under, and above) is going on? Really going on…was going on…will go on, and on…. Awe comes easily. Feel it: Zapped into a cosmos that stretches with every question I ask and with every new thing I learn, I am blown away by, and thrust into, the world’s grandeur. I wonder. What about consciousness? What is it? What has it, what doesn’t, or does consciousness saturate everything? Are time and infinity both real? How accurately do my senses relay the world to me? What else is out there that I’m missing? What lies within me, untapped? (Me?) If certain knowledge is possible, how would we know when we knew? Do other beings exist whose capacity for experiencing the world takes them closer to reality? Contemplating the breadth of the Arabian Desert, the one-day flight of the mayfly, the whale’s song, the hardening of the baby porcupine’s quills, and the mourning of the dead shared by members of an elephant herd….

Zeroing in on the resemblances and repetition in the natural world, I’m struck by a sense of order. Look! Likeness appears in the human hand and the sand crab, the uncoiling layers of a fern, the whiskers on catfish and cat and Carl. Staring at a wintry pond, all the “different” ice cracks splinter in an identical pattern. A dive underwater reveals self-similarity in the mustard sea fan and the branching fire coral attached to it. Leaning on a fence, my eye catches the lichen’s intricate design and the moss on a nearby statue that gives the rider on horseback a neatly trimmed beard.

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