Experience and meaning

One of the great temptations of being in a beautiful foreign country is to join the legion of tourists hoping only to gather a collection of pictures and “experiences” so as to assemble a portfolio of novelties ready to be shared with those trapped back home. It’s a real temptation: not just in a foreign land, but in daily life. Ironically, filling life with doing things can reveal a great emptiness. 

Today I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It’s a moving story of a woman who discovers herself through love and the difficult path that such a discovery demands (though please don’t reduce the book to that insufficient epithet). Near the end of the novel the protagonist, Janie Crawford, relates this to her friend, Phoeby:

It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.

I find this to be a more useful description of experience: not assembling a montage of memories, but being in front of something with a desire to understand its value. I’m not advocating here the need to physically be in front of something to be certain of it, but the essence of what Janie says is true. Without risking ourselves in experience—subjecting ourselves to the fullness of reality to discover its true meaning, we are left disappointed and uncertain. It means I go out every day looking for beautiful things; AND it means I go out looking for the meaning of everything—for its infinite value. 

This step of what we could call judging something helps to move us beyond the appearance of things into a relationship with the One who makes all things. And as it was for Janie Crawford, it may not be an easy path for us. If I’m honest, it’s why these blog posts are probably more valuable for me than they are for you—I’m okay with that! I’m not in New Zealand to collect memories; I’m here to discover the same Christ who is present where you are...in reality. 

In the line from which the novel draws its name, Hurston writes, “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” It raises a valuable question for me: what do I stare at every day? Do my eyes settle on the appearance or are my eyes watching God?