Snail Guru

I met a wonderful couple this summer from Hong Kong. Jack and Alice are just amazing – big smiles, dancing like you wouldn’t believe, and an obsession with all things Disney! In between lots of stories they told me of this experiment scientists once did with monkeys, then drew me a picture (see below).

The experiment goes something like this: the scientists put some monkeys, let’s say four, in a locked room. The room has a staircase and on the staircase is a bunch of bananas. But if one of the monkeys climbs the stairs to get a banana, sprinklers turn on and all the monkeys get wet. The monkeys apparently don’t like this very much, so eventually stop climbing the stairs no matter how badly they want a banana. Poor hungry monkeys!

But next the scientists take one monkey out and replace it with a new one who knows nothing of the sprinklers. So when this new monkey spies the bananas he makes a bolt for the stairs. But before he gets there, the other monkeys, who have just dried off, quickly get together and pin him to the ground, stopping him from stepping on the stairs and getting them all soaked again. But what none of them know is that the scientists have already turned off the sprinklers so there’s no chance of them getting wet. Still, the new monkey figures he gets punished if he tries to get a banana so just looks longingly at them instead.

Then a second monkey is taken out and replaced with another new one. The same thing happens when he sees the bananas, but this time the afore-mentioned monkey who is still staring longingly at the bananas now joins in to stop this newcomer with as much gusto as the others, even though he has absolutely no idea why.

Eventually all of the original monkeys are replaced one by one until an interesting thing happens: none of them makes any effort to get the bananas. Apparently it’s just not the done thing around those parts. No one knows why; that’s just the way it was, is and always will be. You just don’t go for the bananas.

I thought this was fascinating and it got me thinking about all the stuff I’m not supposed to do and have no clue why. Like why’s it bad to sleep in church? Why do I have to dress up smart to go into some churches?  Why don’t we go naked? And why when I want to follow my desires do lots of voices in my head say “Oh, you shouldn’t do that!” “That’s just not the done thing here!” “Stop that now!”

By the way, I don’t propose going to church naked – just to make that clear. It would be pretty dangerous to just do what you wanted all the time. But it feels like much of my life I’ve been doing what other people have wanted me to do or not doing what they don’t want me to do. And sometimes I just don’t know why. 

Did you ever think why the Ten Commandments didn’t work? Why did God give us such a hard set of rules when he knew we would never be able to keep them? And Jesus just made it worse when he said being angry at someone was as bad a murdering them, or thinking about sex with that extremely hot girl was a bad as doing it with her. Seems to me he was proving a point. Rules are rules, but without a relationship they mean nothing. Rules are just burdens without love, burdens we were never meant to carry.  

Maybe God made us to like bananas. Maybe once upon a time we weren’t meant to eat any bananas. Maybe now it’s OK that we do. One thing I know is this – God goes bananas over us and longs for us to feel the same about him. I learnt this summer that it’s OK to desire God. And in so doing I’ve been getting rid of the “shoulds,” “musts,” “have tos” that go on in my head about life. He takes me as I am. 

So it’s no longer monkey see, monkey do. I’m God’s monkey and I take my lead from him. He tells me which stairs are good to climb and which ones aren’t, which bananas are good to eat and which ones to avoid. Same goes for apples…but then that was another experiment!!

OK, so I like melodrama. But it does really feel like my world has ended which, paradoxically it may seem, leads me to be quite happy – because since my world tumbled down, God and I have been looking inside some of those crumpled boxes. It’s been interesting to see what stories lie inside.

I met a doctor a few weeks ago and she commented that in her experience (she’s getting on a bit!) people are best to put their problems in a box and leave them on a shelf. It doesn’t do much good opening them up, she said.  ”Really,” I replied, “I think I disagree.”

These boxes don’t just go on a shelf and get forgotten – they become the building blocks of our lives, of our worlds. And they won’t just disappear, they can’t be ignored – problems scream at us to be solved. Problems desire a solution. 

I suspect Dr Holditin was a little scared to look inside such boxes in case they belonged to Pandora and all sorts of horrible things were released and she wouldn’t then be able to gather them all up again. I can see that being a problem. But what Dr Holditin doesn’t realise is that Pandora’s isn’t the only box that has something to teach us.

Erwin Schrodinger, a very clever physicist, also had a box in which he kept his cat. Now Erwin must not have liked his cat very much because he rather cruelly shot it whilst it was still in the box…or at least he tried to shoot it. You see, he never really knew if the cat was dead until he opened the box. Until then it was just a possibility, just as an alive cat was also a possibility. So, Erwin concluded, that until he opened the box the cat was both alive and dead. It wouldn’t be the gun that would kill the cat, but the fact that Erwin couldn’t resist having a peak (maybe he did care after all). Unfortunately though for kitty, Erwin’s curiosity got the better of him. You know the rest.

So what am I saying? Well, Schrodinger’s cat tells us that we are participants in the very thing that we are observing. By opening the box, we’re not just passively checking out what’s inside, we’re actually playing a part in whatever’s going on in there. Viz-a-viz, what we see very much depends on what we’re looking for. 

If I expect my problems to overwhelm me then they will. If I’m constantly looking for all sorts of nightmarish spectres from the past to haunt me, then that’s what I’ll see. Thankfully the flip side of that is that if I’m seeking the treasures contained in the darkness then I’ll be sure to find them. It all depends on what I’m looking for.

Eckhart Tolle tells the story of a beggar who’d been sitting on a box for years, when a stranger walked by. “Spare some change, mister?” mumbled the beggar. “I’ve nothing to give you,” said the stranger, “But why don’t you have a look inside the box?” “Oh, it’s just an old box – there’s nothing in there.” “Ever looked to find out?” asked the stranger. “What’s the point?” replied the beggar, “It’s empty.” “Why don’t you just have a look?” insisted the stranger. After some persuasion the beggar pried the lid open and there inside it was filled with gold. “See,” said the beggar, “I told you so.“

What the beggar and dear Dr Holditin obviously don’t know is that Pandora managed to close the lid to her box before one last thing could escape – Hope. There’s always hope in the midst of our problems. And as I look into the boxes scattered in front of me and see the stories I’ve been telling myself – stories of how I should look, who I should marry, what I should do, how I should behave – I see that these problems have only been pointing me to a better solution than the one I’ve been trying to build myself. 

Jesus said that if we build our lives on his stories then our lives will be unshakeable. Stories that say he loves me as I am, that I am more precious than all of creation, that he has everything I need, that he has been searching all day and night for me and is going to throw a great big party now he has found me. Now these are stories worth listening to.

So what is it that transforms our stories into his stories, that turns empty boxes into treasure chests, despair into hope?

OK, I admit it – I was wrong. The world didn’t end at noon on Tuesday.

It was more like 7.15pm.

Yes, my world has come tumbling down and I’m still trying to pick myself up from the wreckage. Little did I know as I was having dinner with friends on Sunday evening that such a throw-away comment like the world was going to end around noon on Tuesday would indeed come true, give or take 435 minutes or so.

It’s a funny thing your world tumbling down. Lots of boxes lying around. I had no idea my world was made up of so many. They’re everywhere. And you know what the really funny thing is – I really don’t like them. In fact, I hate them. All this time my world has been made up of these boxes and I hate them. I hate being boxed. And to think it was me who was stacking them up on top of each other, trying to build a life for myself, a life now collapsed around me.

But you know what? I’m glad. I am truly glad that my life has fallen to the ground. I now see it for what it is; I now no longer trust myself to build it back up again; and I think the alternative is now much more attractive, even though I don’t know much about it.

I have a sense though that I’m about to find out.

Musical interlude

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. But everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” Jesus