March 6: "Varanasi," Mystery and the Unknown, Uncertainty

Mary Oliver learns something about holiness at the Ganges . . . 

Varanasi

by:  Mary Oliver

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

where fires were still smoldering,

and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

over her body, slowly and many times,

as if until there came some moment

of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river's.

Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

of the the world, and this is his river.

I can't say much more, except that it all happened

in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt

like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived

in accordance with that certainty.

I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back

to America.

Pray God I remember this.

The phrase that sticks with me in this poem is "the bliss of a certainty and a life lived / in accordance with that certainty."  

I wish I had that kind of certainty in life.  I just returned from Midwest Weirdfest today; I was surrounded all weekend by people who spend a lot of their time focused on the uncertainties of the world.  The paranormal.  Aliens and cryptids, pyramids and numerology.  Art.  These individuals embrace mystery and the unknown.

As a poet, I pretty much do the same thing.  Human experience is not something about which you can ever be certain, in my opinion.  I put my faith in language as a way to grapple with the complexities of the reality, from faith in God to belief in Bigfoot.  Certainty is rarely a factor in this struggle.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  life without mystery would be pretty damn boring.  Certainty isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

In my experience, people who live in a "bliss of certainty" are pretty overbearing.  I have been on this planet for over five decades now, and I can say, with absolute certainty, that I am not certain about anything, from spirituality to the best kind of Oreo.  I know people who are very sure of themselves, with confidence oozing from the pores like pheromones.  "Look at me," those pheromones proclaim, "and know my greatness."

Now, a certain level of self-worth is good.  People shouldn't go through life thinking they don't deserve happiness and joy.  That their lives are lessons in abject failure.  However, in my experience, absolute certainty about the superiority of anything--especially when it comes to talent, holiness, race, physical appearance, or children--only leads to trouble.  (Think Nazi Germany, institutional racism, Republicans, and Donald Trump.)

Nothing is certain, whether we're talking about bliss or faith or Bigfoot.  The universe is too vast and unknowable.  Sort of like the mind of God.  It's better to embrace the bliss of uncertainty, because that leaves room for the miraculous.

And Saint Marty is a big fan of miracles.