SERMONS IN STONE: The Death Of God, Waking Up, & Hearing A Bird Sing
I feel compelled to put a disclaimer here: This is not a short read. This essay is more like a journey together. A journey we’ll take through the death of God, through the loss of meaning and purpose, through the Bible and a Disney movie and the Big Lebowski and a French play named Waiting for Godot. A journey to see if there is something on the other side of the despair, loneliness, and desperation of modern society. If that interests you, then keep reading…
“God is dead.” That’s what the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared in 1882. “God is dead. And we have killed him.”
It’s probably the most famous phrase in philosophy. Nietzsche wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. Although he did say, “We philosophers and free spirits feel illuminated by a new dawn,” he was afraid of something. He was afraid of nihilism. As he wrote:
“What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism… For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end.”
“Nihilism” comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing — that which does not exist. It also has a cameo in the verb “annihilate,” meaning to bring to nothing — to destroy completely.
Nihilism is the belief that life is without any meaning, purpose, or value. It goes beyond “killing” God and kills all that is sacred and meaningful.
You may remember the nihilists from The Big Lebowski (1998) who threaten to cut off The Dude’s “johnson.”
Nihilist: We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing! And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chanson!
The Dude: Excuse me??
Nihilist: I said… [shouting] I zaid VE CUT OFF YA JOHNSON!!
That’s exactly what Nietzsche was worried about.
I think Nietzsche was right about nihilism sweeping the world. In our busy, materialistic, noisy modern society we’ve lost sacredness — a sacred relationship with anything. The famous psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about this too. He called it “desacralization” — destruction of the sacred.
Sacredness has been destroyed by busyness, materialism, Instagram likes, fanny packs, duck lip selfies, avocado toast, the rat race, Angry Birds, viral cat videos, Kim Kardashian, Dan Blizerian, the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino, and Sharknado.
It’s funny to think of Henry David Thoreau escaping into the woods. He had to escape society to “confront the essential facts” and “suck out all the marrow of life.” This is in the 1850s —and to remind you what life was like back then — the telephone had not even been invented (!).
In reflecting on society at that time, he wrote:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation… A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”
Quiet desperation. Unconscious despair.
Imagine what he would make of modern society.
We are lost in a kind of no man’s land where nothing is truly sacred. My work? No, not sacred. That’s to make money, pay the bills, and besides, I hate my boss. My friends? I hardly get to see them, they’re too busy. Sex? No, porn and Tinder ruined that one. My family? I’ll see them next year during the holidays. My creative projects? I don’t have any. I’ll do those when I’m retired.
I agree with the mythologist Joseph Campbell who said, “The world without spirit is a wasteland.”
The world without the sacred — where nothing is holy, where nothing is divine — is a wasteland.
The only thing to do in a wasteland is to survive. And when physical survival is taken care of (like it is for a lot of us in the West), survival means social survival. Be the best dressed. Or the highest ranked. Or the most envied. The richest. The smartest. The funniest. The prettiest. Most talented. Most artistic. Most loyal. Most “holy.” Most sacrificial.
And while you’re doing that — while you are surviving — you’re waiting around for the wasteland to transform. Right? You don’t want it to stay a wasteland. And you have ideas when that transformation will happen — usually when you win the game of social survival.
The transformation will happen once I get into a good college, then life will be good. Once I get a job, then I can relax a bit. Once I buy a house, no, it’s once I’m married and have kids, then I’m respectable and mature. Once I get the promotion, then I’ll have the money for that nice vacation I’ve been dreaming about. Once the kids are out of the house, then I can have some peace and quiet again, no, it’s once I sell the house and retire then I can really take it easy and enjoy myself. Once I get this hip replacement so I can walk again…
I can’t think of better material that captures this situation than the French play Waiting for Godot (1953) by Samuel Beckett.
My high school English teacher Mr. Cohen made us read it. And the only reason I remember it is because we also created a video re-make of the play in my basement–which included my younger brother (who was not in the class with me) wearing a coat and top hat as “Pozzo.”
Stay with me here. I want to go deep with you on this play because it’ll shed light on the darkness, confusion, and despair of this nihilistic world.
The play is divided into two acts — each act is a day in the life of the characters. There are only two main characters: Estragon and Vladimir. They are visited at different points by Lucky, Pozzo, and an unnamed boy.
The set is bare. The stage directions say only: “A country road. A tree. Evening.”
The scene opens with Estragon sitting down, struggling to get his boot off. He pulls at it with both hands, gives up, rests, tries again. Fails.
Vladimir enters.
ESTRAGON: [giving up again] Nothing to be done.
VLADIMIR: I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, “Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything.” And I resumed the struggle. [He broods, musing on the struggle. turning to Estragon.] So there you are again.
ESTRAGON: Am I?
VLADIMIR: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
ESTRAGON: Me too.
VLADIMIR: Together again at last! We’ll have to celebrate this. But how? [He reflects.] Get up till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON: [irritably] Not now, not now.
It’s only the opening lines of the play but the mood is already set. Can you feel it? It’s a totally bare set, except for a tree. They talk past each other right in the first two lines of dialogue. Estragon irritably refuses to hug his friend, then reveals that he spent the night in a ditch where he was beaten by an unknown group, again.
Not long after, we find out why they’re even meeting under the tree.
ESTRAGON: Let’s go.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON: [despairingly] Ah! [Pause.] You’re sure it was here?
VLADIMIR: What?
They are waiting for Godot. Now, there are a lot of ways to interpret this play, but it seems clear to me that Godot is pointing to God and meaning and purpose and the sacred and holy.
Estragon and Vladimir are in the metaphorical wasteland — actually, not that metaphorical because it’s just them and a dead tree.
They are in the wasteland and they are waiting for Godot to show up and transform it.
After some waiting, they get bored and contemplate hanging themselves — but then argue over who should go first. Two new characters Pozzo and Lucky show up. Estragon mistakes Pozzo to be Godot and then admits that “I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him” (!). They chat some more and then Pozzo demands that Lucky, who hasn’t spoken yet, “think” as entertainment for them. His “thinking” consists of long rambling philosophical nonsense that begins with:
LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown…
By the way, this is the same play that was voted the “most significant English language play of the 20th century” in a poll conducted by The British Royal National Theatre. And that the famous critic Clive Barnes called, “one of the true masterpieces of the century.”
Anyways, after Lucky’s “thinking”, an unnamed boy shows up and says Godot “won’t come this evening, but surely tomorrow.”
The boy leaves and they agree to wait until tomorrow. Act 1 ends with Estragon saying, “Well, shall we go?” Vladimir nods, but then neither move.
Curtain closes.
A dead tree. Sleeping in a ditch. Contemplating suicide. “Thinking” as philosophical nonsense. It’s a window into a nihilistic world.
No Godot yet.
No. He’ll be here tomorrow. It’s always tomorrow isn’t it? That’s when the wasteland will transform. Tomorrow or “someday” is when the promotion will come or the house or retirement. Tomorrow is when the happiness and love and meaning and purpose and passion and beauty and awe and wonder and aliveness will come.
Tomorrow.
Some day.
Eventually.
Not today? No, of course not — look around! This is a wasteland!
But is this a fantasy? This waiting around for a transformation?
Doesn’t it sound like waiting for Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Superman?
Is Godot a fantasy?
Maybe there is nothing and no one coming and we’re all fooling ourselves. Maybe there is no escape from the wasteland. Maybe we’re trapped in it. Maybe nothing was ever sacred and nothing ever will be. Maybe there is no God, purpose, meaning, or sacredness. It was all invented to make us feel good. It was all invented to survive the wasteland that is human existence. Nietzsche didn’t really think we “killed” God. He never thought there was a God. It was all just made up, invented.
Shakespeare captured the spirit of this, when he has Macbeth say:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Maybe you don’t believe that as your philosophy or religion or life orientation, but have you ever felt that way? Felt like Macbeth? Like nothing and no one is coming — that there will be no transformation — that anything other than the wasteland was made up? I have.
(And with tens of millions of Americans on anti-depressants, I know others have felt that way too.)
I think Jacob felt that way. Jacob from Genesis — the first book of the Bible. If you read my last essay “HERE I AM” (here), you know I’m reading the Bible for the first time (!).
Jacob is kind of like Biblical royalty because his dad was Isaac and his grandfather was Abraham (the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).
We catch up with Jacob in Beersheba (modern day Israel) when his father is blind and near death. His father is about to bless Esau, Jacob’s older brother, but Jacob steals the blessing. He steals it by dressing up like Esau and lying to his dad. Now in the Bible, stealing a blessing is not like stealing some change out of your dad’s wallet. The blessing was handed down from God to Abraham to Isaac and now supposed to be Esau. But Jacob steals it. Esau is so upset by this that he vows to kill Jacob once he has mourned his father’s death. His mother hears of this and to avoid his being killed, she immediately sends Jacob off to get married.
So Jacob has just lied to his father (while on his deathbed) and his older brother wants to kill him. He’s left home, left his safety net, left his family, left his friends, and is traveling alone.
The Bible doesn’t say much about his emotional state, but you can imagine, right? I skipped ahead in the Bible and found this (Psalm 77) that probably describes his emotional state.
Hands lifted toward heaven,
but my soul was not comforted.
I think of God, and I moan,
overwhelmed with longing for his help.
You don’t let me sleep.
I am too distressed even to pray!
Is that Estragon or Vladimir speaking? Or Macbeth? Or Nietzsche?
At that moment of leaving home that may have been Jacob’s experience. He may have been in the wasteland.
See I don’t think nihilism is primarily a philosophical or theological issue. I know it’s talked about like that, but I don’t think that’s it. I think essentially nihilism is an experiential and emotional issue.
When we’re depressed and dejected and alone, we all become nihilists, if only for a moment. We’ve lost the experience of God. We’ve lost the feeling of the sacred. We’ve lost meaning and purpose and aliveness.
It’s not that we’ve lost the philosophy or theology of God. We’ve lost the feeling. We’ve lost the experience.
The wasteland is an experience.
(Something to ponder: Are ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ something to be figured out intellectually or argued about philosophically and theologically — or are meaning and purpose something to be discovered, something to be experienced and felt?)
So what happened to Jacob? Did he stay trapped in the wasteland?
There he is wandering through the desert. Alone. The sun is setting and it’s starting to get cold. He stops for the night at some seemingly random spot, sets up camp, and finds “a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep.” (How tough is your life when you’re using a stone as a pillow?)
He lays down. He drops in. He lets go. He surrenders.
And he falls asleep.
Then the magic starts.
He has this incredible dream of “a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.” And at the top of the stairway was God.
But it’s just a dream. No big deal, right? What happens to Jacob next? Let’s see what the Bible says:
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said,
“Surely God is in this place and I wasn’t even aware of it!
What an awesome place this is!
It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!”
Jacob woke up, like, really woke up. He broke through to the other side. He didn’t try to survive the wasteland. He didn’t try to win. He didn’t fight it. He let go, he surrendered, and woke up from his slumber. He woke up to the divine. He woke up to the sacred. He woke up to God.
I love what he says: “God is in this place and I wasn’t even aware of it.”
God was there and he wasn’t aware of it.
Let that sink in.
God
was
there
and
he
wasn’t
aware
of
it.
Maybe God is in this place and you’re not aware of it.
Maybe the sacred, the meaning, the deep love is right here, right now and you don’t see it.
Maybe the very gateway to heaven is right where you are.
Maybe.
Now for me this points at a certain kind of God. Most of us when we hear God we think about a very large, bearded white man who lives in the clouds, sits on a golden throne, and acts like a ruler and controller over what happens on Earth. I’m not talking about that God. I’m talking about the God that is the ground of Being or the capital S Sacred or the capital S Self. The Divine that is permeating everything. Mountains, trees, rocks, people, birds. (And you.)
Did God come down from his golden throne and enter Jacob’s dream?
Or…
Did Jacob wake up to that God was already there? Already there and he wasn’t aware of it. Already present, already permeating the space and everything and everyone in it.
Shakespeare could write hauntingly and cryptically like he did through Macbeth, but he could also write beautifully and poetically. In his play As You Like It, he speaks through the role of Duke Senior:
Sweet are the uses of adversity
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Have you ever had a tree speak to you? Or read a book in a river? Or heard a sermon from a stone?
(Hang onto that phrase “good in everything.” We’ll come back to that.)
Jacob didn’t hear a sermon in stone — but he did wake up transformed. Then he turned his pillow-stone into a memorial to God.
Pocahontas had a tree talk to her. In the Disney film, she wakes John Smith up to the world of the sacred — including a talking tree (“Grandmother Willow”). In the most famous song of the film, Pocahontas compares John’s experience with her own.
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
It’s the same thing in Avatar (2009). Neytiri helps Jake Sully discover the Spirit in everything.
The entire world is buzzing and singing and talking and flowing.
There is a cosmic dance happening around us making God the beautifully-sacred-poetic-magical-transcendent-extraordinary-divine process that is the whole thing.
So what happened in Act 2 — the second day — of Waiting for Godot? Does Godot appear!?
The stage directions read simply: “Next day. Same time. Same place.”
Estragon claims to have been beaten again last night, despite no apparent injury.
VLADIMIR: Who beat you? Tell me.
ESTRAGON: Another day done with.
VLADIMIR: Not yet.
ESTRAGON: For me it’s over and done with, no matter what happens.
There’s no Godot. They try desperately to pass the time and fill the silence. (Ever tried to do that? Fill the space with mindless chatter or by picking up your phone?)
VLADIMIR: Likes ashes.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves. [Long silence.]
VLADIMIR: Say something!
ESTRAGON: I’m trying. [Long silence.]
VLADIMIR: [in anguish.] Say anything at all!
ESTRAGON: What do we do now?
VLADIMIR: Wait for Godot.
ESTRAGON: Ah! [Silence.]
VLADIMIR: This is awful!
They try to leave.
ESTRAGON: Let’s go.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot.
The same exact lines as the previous day. They are seemingly trapped in a kind of Hell wasteland — a Groundhog’s Day loop without any escape. Pozzo and Lucky come and go. Vladimir is left wondering:
VLADIMIR: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?
The unnamed boy appears again. Can you guess what he says?
He says that Godot won’t be coming this evening. He’ll be coming tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Some day.
Eventually.
Then the boy leaves.
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
ESTRAGON: If we parted? That might be better for us.
VLADIMIR: We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow. [Pause.] Unless Godot comes.
ESTRAGON: And if he comes?
VLADIMIR: We’ll be saved.
They’ll be saved. Transformed. Out of the wasteland. But not until Godot comes. The scene ends with:
VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go.
[They do not move.]
Curtain closes. The play ends.
No Godot.
Waiting, wishing, hoping for a fantasy.
In this case, Nietzsche was right. Macbeth was right.
Or were they?
I think Vladimir and Estragon missed it.
Missed what?
Godot.
They missed Godot.
How?
Because Godot had already arrived.
Yes.
Godot was already there.
Yes.
Godot — God, the sacred, divine — was right there and they couldn’t see it. Just like Jacob before his dream. Just like John Smith before he met Pocahontas. Just like Jake Sully before he met Neytiri.
God was there and they weren’t aware of it.
Yes.
This is not a wasteland.
The Earth is not a dead thing.
Human existence is not meaningless and purposeless.
God is not dead.
The essential nature of existence is holy and sacred and divine — and good. So is the essential nature of life. So is the essential nature of you.
Remember that “good in everything” phrase from Shakespeare? Well, do you know how the Bible starts?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.
Then he created land and plants and animals and humans.
God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
It was very good!
What was? The whole thing! The land, the water, the animals, the trees, the human beings.
The whole thing is good and beautiful and poetic and sacred and holy.
The divine is in everything.
Vladimir and Estragon and Nietzsche and Macbeth missed it. They missed God. They missed the sacred and divine. It was hidden from them. It was there and they were unaware of it. They missed the final secret of Zen.
The final secret of what?
The final secret of Zen is exactly what we are talking about — God, the sacred, divine, holy — where deep meaning and purpose and aliveness is found.
Here is the famous, classic Zen story to bring it all home for you.
The disciple was always complaining to the Zen Master, “You are hiding the final secret of Zen from me!”
And he would not accept the Master’s denials.
One day they were walking in the hills when they heard a bird sing.
“Did you hear that bird sing?” asked the Master.
“Yes,” said the disciple.
“Now you know that I have hidden nothing from you.”
When you’ve really heard a bird sing, when you’ve really felt the beauty of nature, when you’ve really connected with another person, when you’ve really gotten in touch with reality, you wake up from your slumber, you transform the wasteland.
God, the sacred, the divine — is right here.
With you.
Around you.
In you.
That’s it.
So why did I spend several weeks putting this essay together? It wasn’t to convince you or persuade you of anything. I am not trying to be a philosopher or theologian or a spiritual teacher or even a social commentator. I don’t want you to become a Christian or a yogi or a Zen student or to read the Bible.
I just want to inspire you to hear a bird sing.
Then you will know that nothing is hidden from you.
