Kicking At The Darkness

Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn sings in his angst-touched love song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time, that "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight/Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." It is a powerful image, full of spectral glory. And kicking at darkness is, in a sense, my very ambition. I'll spare the reader the metaphysical details, but the idea of kicking at darkness until it bleeds daylight carries with it all the spiritual force of Jacob wrestling with the angel; or Neo conquering the Matrix as Agent Smith fractures in supernova splendor.

A close look at my blogger profile reveals that I list among life's blessings the nearly ineffable beauty of babies. There is in each baby's perfect fingernails (always clipped to perfection at birth), or in its fresh-from-the-bakery skin, all the mystery of life in perpetuity, inexplicable in its power – a seed planted in the dark earth yielding the entire universe. For each child is indeed all the force of the cosmos (there is no life without the infinitely broad cosmic womb); each baby the incarnation of swirling suns and tidal moons. What does it take to make a baby? All the power and eons of the universe. There are no shortcuts, no sleight-of-hand, to master such impenetrable magic.

But images of light and tiny, gripping hands are not enough to save me today. For I am sickened this afternoon, here in the full light of August's sun. I find myself haunted by an image I saw not long ago while working at a New England prep school. During a photo shoot, I entered the school's computer lab unannounced. There were shrieks of disgust and shock emitted by a dozen or so students gathered around glowing computer screens, each student apparently unaware of my "adult" presence. And quivering in digital vibrancy on every computer screen was the source of all the tumult: It was a color photograph of a man seated in a restaurant booth – a napkin tucked into his shirt collar and a knife and fork in each hand – looking hungrily at the meal before him. What was on the platter? A roasted human fetus.

Kick at the darkness ....

I am sorry to pass along this violence against all that is meant to be pure, lovely, peaceful. But I share this for one reason: Do not be quick to conceive incorrectly that which is conceived in the fertile womb. Do not for a moment think that the unborn are so much superfluous tissue, or accidental bits of bio-mass. We must be provoked, we must kick our way toward the light of honest, simple truth.

Have you ever wondered why, if human fetuses are not human, do we not eat them? Why cringe at the thought of a fetus served to a wealthy connoisseur; or in soup kitchens to the hungry poor? After all, if the human fetus (all 40 million of them since Roe v. Wade) is not a human, have we missed a golden opportunity to feed countless mouths eager for food? In fact, could we not harvest such fetuses as crops, perhaps using petri dishes and sperm- and ova-banks for the production of a new nutrient-rich food source, a sort of veal for the open-minded?

Enough. I've said too much. The unborn are human. Prep-schoolers shrieking at a mere image prove it.

My point is not really about abortion. It is about our slow descent into carelessness. Trust me when I say this: there are and will be pro-abortion activists who will respond to my observations not with revulsion, but with a quasi-academic air of acceptance. They will wonder aloud whether it might be a tenable idea to eat fetuses, all in the posture of open-minded consideration. They will ask about biases against the Fetuses-for-Food program; and they will speculate as to how certain social structures condition people to react squeamishly; and they shall offer arguments against taboo. But their motives will not be one whit academic: Their motives are solely energized to keep abortion legal.

Was it not George Orwell who said that “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men"? Let me then state the obvious.

Each of us once kicked at the darkness. We pressed at it with our hands, even after we sucked our thumbs, the thumbs we didn't know we had. And we kicked at the darkness until it did in fact bleed daylight: The daylight of the world, bolting toward us like lightning, as we kicked our helpless, trusting way through the birth canal, toward the light which bleeds all around us, right now, with the full force of the cosmos pulsing in our veins.

The world felt us kicking, it felt us fighting to overcome. Shame that the very cosmos, which should be considered one giant nursery, with "Welcome" banners unfurled from star to star, has, at least for some, become a hostile place, with the brutal light of the abortionist's hand forced into the warm and safe dark; giant hands ripping out little ones.

Which hands are the more wonderful; whose hands the more welcoming?

Contratimes

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©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

[Photo: Stained glass at All Saints' Church, Peterborough, NH. From the book, "The Stained Glass of All Saints'". Camera: Canon EOS3 Lens: Canon EF 28-105/3.5-4.5 IS. Film: Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS. Exposure: 1/60 @ f5.6. Click on photo for larger view. All rights reserved.]