The Big Explanation

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Philosophers, historians, psychologists, theologians and other sages of the realm undoubtedly have a better and more intricately-laced depiction of it all, but this morning it made me smile -- The Big Explanation.

The Big Explanation is just the function of finding a larger and more expansive setting in which to place the bits and pieces of life that present themselves without any particular fanfare. The Big Explanation enfolds all the little explanations within range. Perhaps it's economics as a human motivator, or love as a soaring capacity, or (in spiritual interests), God or Mind or Enlightenment or Compassion or Emptiness or Heaven or Hell or ... well, you know the drill.

The Big Explanation is not simply intellectual. It aims to put the human heart at rest with some gigantic and much-needed hug of reassurance. And who could be snide or uppity about such a need, such a longing? The Big Explanation may provide some idiotic exemplars, but the human longing is simply too human (too much like me) to dismiss or disparage.

What made me smile was a growing assurance that The Big Explanation as laid out implicitly by spiritual persuasions is an inviting magnet to those who choose to be magnetized ... but its wide, wide arms are little more than fable. Not necessarily a bad fable or a destructive or ditzy fable, but just a fable that invites investigation by those who, at first, may be utterly consumed by the notion of The Big Explanation. If peace in the heart is the question, spiritual effort and determination offers The Big Explanation. And not just as an intellectual or credulous construct, but fershur.

And that's the nature of The Big Explanation ... its fershur promises. Peace in the heart ... fershur. Peace in this life ... fershur. The Big Explanation reaches wider and wider and wider and wider. It consumes the universe. It eats chiliocosms the way a kid eats Wheaties. The intellectual and emotional reach and range of The Big Explanation is wondrous.

But it is still an explanation. Even when actualized or realized ... an explanation remains an explanation and as such, cannot honestly provide the desired fershur. It remains fabulous. But the fable has its uses, the effort has its uses. Like the little bird that flies in ever diminishing circles until finally it flies up its own asshole and disappears, The Big Explanation returns to itself and dissolves into ... fershur. It's not exactly nothing and its not exactly something. Requiring explanations is OK, but it doesn't work very well. When the little bird disappears up your asshole, what's that like? Maybe it's just ....

Well, there is the comb on the edge of the bathroom sink or the jam-smeared knife on the kitchen counter or the smile of a passing stranger or the inability to do math very well or the need to go food shopping or some resounding fear or the blow-you-away softness of just one kiss.

Fershur needs no explanation any more than anything else does. The fable of The Big Explanation inspires and encourages but does not, of itself, assure. The Big Explanation gilds the lily and ...

When did lilies ever need any help?
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