We Must Puch Beyond Forces Of Evil

As I write this, I am surrounded by books and drawings and images about evil. My Bible is open to Genesis where the serpent tempts Eve. My book of Renaissance and 17th century paintings is open to the art of Satan represented in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

At my right hand is a book about World War II and the Holocaust called “Black Cross.” Sections about evil from the Koran, the BhagavadGita, “When Bad Things Happen To Good People,” the Tao Te Ching are all highlighted.

Beside me, ready to return to the video store, is a movie called “Hideaway,” based on a Dean R. Koontz novel, in which evil returns from the dead in the form of a serial killer. Books by Koontz, Stephen King, Anne Rice sit beside my Thomas Aquinas, Krishnamurti, Hildegaard of Bingen.

Yet, no matter how many sources I set around me, I still can’t answer, for certain, basic questions about evil:

What is evil?

How is it different from sickness, like psychosis?

Where is God while evil occurs?

Why does evil exist?

What can we do about it?

I recall the times I’ve been called evil by zealots who did not like what I wrote.

I recall my parents talking to me as a kid about Jewish relatives slaughtered by “evil Nazis.”

I recall my nanny in India showing me the “evil people” on the streets and telling me to avoid them.

I recall my own confusion in helping my children understand “good” and “evil.”

I recall newspaper headlines about raped girls and napalmed villages and slaughtered men and serial killers and drive-by shootings so near to home that Gail, my wife, sighed one morning, “Evil gets closer and closer every day.”

In the midst of all these books, memories and reflections, I stand up, shake myself. I feel heavy, leaden, scared. My body, after these hours, even days, of contemplating evil, preparing this column, reading and writing about it, has become heavy. I feel distant from the world, from my kids in the next room. Looking at the paintings of Satan, I feel heavy with sadness.

The night is quiet and I walk into it with my dog. The sparrows that live in my neighbor’s hedge have gone to sleep. My dog searches for them, arouses them, frightens them. I reign him to me, but a tumult of terrified chirps fills the night. I stop a second. I listen. The chirping dies out, finally. Quiet returns.

My dog a black Newfoundland-German Shepard mix, is quite big, about a hundred pounds. His sniffing, lunging, growling and snapping at the hedge must surely, to the tiny sparrows, represent a satanic force. To these birds, evil is that which reminds them, in terrific terms, of their own potential powerlessness.

They chirp, they communicate, they fly, they regroup, they hide in a tree - could they, they would surely fight.

They do what must be done to return themselves to power. They see how huge is the black force before them and become victims only for a moment - as soon as possible, they recognize their responsibility to be responsible, to act, to free themselves not only from the tyranny of my dog, but also from the tyranny of their own fear.

As Tucker and I walk away, I hear a few of the more dominant birds in the tree voicing their lingering adrenaline, renewed power and redemption from the dark force.

I return to my study. I put all the books away, thankful both for them and for the life experiences they mirror.

Tonight, evil is a black dog.

Tonight, it is not sickness.

Tonight, God is: the wisdom of watching and learning.

Tonight, I do not know why evil exists, and that’s OK.

Tonight, I have learned that I must, in the face of evil, push beyond fear, regain my responsible power, then my freedom.

My teachers tonight were a dog and some birds. The books still await my deeper exploration, for they explain how out of every act of evil must come a time of forgiveness and renewed love.

I could not see the birds come to this stage. Rarely, in fact, do I see humans get there.

, DataTimes MEMO: Michael Gurian, a teacher and therapist, is the author of several books on spiritual themes, including “Emptying” and “Love’s Journey.” Letters can be sent to him in care of The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Michael Gurian The Spokesman-Review