The founder of my faith, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, passed away on September 3, 2012 in Korea. The following is my reflection and is dedicated to his living legacy.
Nothing had changed. I was at the foot of a mountain in New Hampshire, and the faithful trees still answered the wind; the clouds against the blue sky held their place in the world. After I heard the news, I went into the woods in search of a metaphor for my feelings, a grand narrative to tie everything together. Once on the hiking path, I ran up the mountain to avoid human contact and soon got to a place where I was alone by a brook in the woods. The sunlight shone through the crease in the trees over the brook, but did not trespass the other side of the water. No metaphor here; I moved on.
Soon, I passed one hiker who said, “isn’t it beautiful?” I answered, “it’s just perfect,” which was either something to say or a gut reaction reflecting my unconscious state of mind. Who knew; if my unconscious thoughts were more obvious then they wouldn’t be un-conscious.
I arrived at a deeper point in the woods, twenty minutes after my last human sighting. Trees in every direction blocked the sunlight and the sun might as well have been going down at that point. I started to run; I hoped I wouldn’t step on a beehive, or sprain an ankle on a slippery rock, or become lost in the woods when night falls. For a moment I felt the urge to veer off the path and make my fears come true, but the moment quickly passed and the forest stayed the same.
There was a slight incline upwards to my left and I followed the yellow rectangles on the trees, marking the path, which started to veer right (towards my intended destination or away from it, I couldn’t tell) down the mountain. The trees and bushes seemed to respect each others’ space on this mountain, but still colluded to keep the sunlight off of the mountain’s back, trapping in moisture on the hiking trail littered with rocks. I thought, today is no different; if a wild animal, wired to maul humans, appeared on the trail I would still get mauled, even today.
These images and symbols were like a dream in my in-between state; like many of my dreams, I was uncertain of the meaning of these images and feelings. Sometimes, I wonder whether explaining my dreams would rob them of their significance. So, even as I went searching for a metaphor, I resisted the urge to reduce this dream, the reality of these woods, to meaning. I hoped more for a revelation of sorts, like the one that inspired Rev. Moon on a mountaintop to carry on an ancient dream; a dream that was an unbending will, not just a dream that was a pastiche of images arranged without a conscious framework. These two types of dreams were different, it seemed, but perhaps his dream and my dream come from the same stork in the night, or a conjugal miracle of the past and the future; being born of my parents, meeting my wife, participating in a faith community, and committing to a life lived for love and the greater good; this seemingly random series of events were tied together by an unconscious stream flowing from an inexplicable center, an unbending will: the dream and heart of one man that I will never fully comprehend.
I thought of death. The consciousness of death changes everything about me being in this world; the death of this one man changes everything about the world I know. Maybe I would get lost in these dark woods; maybe I will discover that my life was built around lies, that there was no god, no extra-reality to this one; worse, maybe I will never live up to the ideals and principles that are indeed, true. I’ve been through these woods before, but the surroundings seemed even darker; yet, the darkness and mystery seemed more beautiful and sacred. Before I could fully rationalize my thoughts, I started to run down the mountain, knowing full well that I am destined to return to these parts and venture deeper into the mountain someday soon.
I arrived at a paved road, the end of my hiking path. I looked back and saw that the mountain had not moved an inch. This mountain has more faith than me, I thought, with its unbending will to carry on in this corner of New Hampshire. I didn’t find a metaphor to box my emotions: fear, sadness, death. The seasons will still change, the days will grow shorter, and night still falls; and everything is as it should be in that place where dreams begin, on the mountain buried deep within the woods.
