A WALK WITH BILL SAMUEL
METAPHYSICS IS A WALKING STICK, NOT A CRUTCH
Many have written me about loneliness—aloneness—and I answer all of
you here. It is a subject I am
familiar with—we are all familiar with. From
the human standpoint I have been alone. I
have been lonely. I have suffered
the bereavement of abandonment, the dereliction of desolation, the forlornment
of friendlessness and forsakenness, the seclusion, the awful seclusion of
unsought solitude. I (as Bill) have been alone, unassisted, unaided, unattended
when it seemed I needed personal comfort—when I wanted something more than
metaphysical mollification, more than philosophical platitudes. We have all cried for a relief more tangible, more
holdable, more concrete than an injection of philosophical inspiration at
different times in our experience.
And you know, loneliness isn’t limited to being physically alone.
It can happen in a crowd. One
can be surrounded by family and loved ones and still feel desolate, deserted,
insular, isolated, reduced to ashes. I
know. I know. But dear friends, all of you whom I love so, no matter how
awful this loneliness, no matter how arduous the experience of it when it
appears is as it should be and serves a purpose!
“What? What?
My God, what?!” asks the lonely heart; asks the single flower blooming
in the corner of the garden; asks the last leaf on the limb; asks the solitary
sentry at his post; asks the bleeding soldier clawing at the mud; asks the
mother at the bier of a child; asks the evening whippoorwill as the sun goes
down. Who hasn’t asked the reasons
for suffering? Who hasn’t
wondered about loneliness? To the
human sense of things, loneliness is a suffering, and suffering is a loneliness
that screams.
Darkness is what Light knows Light is not—the means by which it knows infinitely.
The All One is never alone in any kind of anguish—and knows it.
Hopefully the long, preceding pages have helped make this clear. A further study of them surely will. But, for the moment, put the study aside and take a walk with
me. Listen softly.
There is a pathway leading to the river. It goes down a hill, crosses a
road, winds through a field soon to be green with Spring.
Then it enters the forest and makes its way along ridges, across gullies
and washes, over beds of leaves and pine-straw, fallen logs and rocks.
I usually walk with a stick. Oh,
there’s great comfort in carrying a stick with one.
There is more to it than meets the eye.
My habit of carrying a stick grew out of a soldier’s loneliness, if
nothing else—and out of the comfort of feeling the wood of company and
companionship in one’s hand.
A stick serves to steady one in steep places and to help one over the
hard climbs. It serves to brush
branches out of the way and to turn over strange stones for an examination. A stick lets me tilt a flower toward me for better seeing,
without having to bend down every time. It
lets me bat pinecones like a little boy—or send seed spattering over the
ground where it will be nested by the wind and rain to grow in another season.
A stick, a staff, can be such a friend.
And yet, I’ve seen it be a protector too.
Predators have been turned aside by the sight of it.
I’ve awakened sleeping rabbits with it, but it also reaches out and
brings the muscadines within touch. It can bring a wild apple tumbling down and
sometimes turn the leaves aside revealing a fig the birds haven’t found—or a
persimmon that clings to the branch. In
the summer it can tap the wild plums into my hand or turn away the briars of
blackberry to let me reach the fruit.
What has this to do with loneliness?
Really, I don’t know—except it allows me to tell you that I have
learned that even a simple walking stick—a piece of cut dogwood, willow or
laurel—can be company and comfort for me.
And if one can do that from such a simple piece of wood, don’t you see
that you can find comfort for yourself too, out of the much you
have—and out of the much that is available to you?
If comfort resides in such a small tangible thing, how much more is
available to us in the intangible and unseen?
Love to you from my hills of Alabama,
( Bill Samuel )
