If I were superstitious, and I am, I'd really be trying to figure out why ladders were such a striking motif last week, and I am.
Tuesday: Ladder 147, Da Pride of Flatbush, extended to reach the roof of a house a block away.
Friday: Steel River came to clean the chimney and insisted on accessing the roof via the ladder they brought instead of the staircase. Go figure, as they say. Turns out the chimney's lined with stainless steel, no cleaning necessary, and the helpful chimney sweepers leave without charging me a dime. They advise me to get some brickwork done on the roof as soon as possible. Yikes!
Again, Friday: Then at the newly opened and delightful 12th Street Deli on 8th Avenue, I wonder why it's taking so long for the man behind the deli counter to give me the olives. I wait and wait. Finally I peer behind the high counter and see him descending a tall orange ladder because he'd been searching for the container lids in some hard to reach storage space.
Ok, what does it mean? Nothing? Something? A bridge between heaven and earth? Let's hope so. In my heart, it means this: each rung climbed represents a diminishment of contempt and alienation, so that when you get to the top your perspective is so wide that there is nothing and no one that you don't identify with and see yourself in, nothing at all you're afraid of, nothing that you don't merge with, nothing that can't bring you peace. Each consecutive rung represents an even more truthful relationship with the world.
This was interesting, from Western Philosphy suite 101.com, The freemason's explanation of the ascent into the mysteries:
The idea of Jacob’s Ladder was also popular in alchemical theory. Alchemists compared the ascension of the ladder to the transformation of raw stone to cubic stone (called lapis). Lapis was believed to contain "everything within itself."
In Jacob's story from Genesis, he states, "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." I think it comes back to what Jacob Boehme has written: there is no separation from God. Nowhere you can go to be separate from the Great Spirit. It is the opposite of everything we were ever taught to believe.
The pains and frustrations of this world? Refiner's fire, steps up the ladder, the discomfort of accepting painful truths that crush the ego and ripen the soul. Really. I do believe it. But who cares? I'm not Norman Mailer, I don't think anyone is interested in my theology, that's cool. As my friend John says, its all good.
One thing I know for sure, until you are ready to see the world as a mirror, you ain't goin' nowhere. You'll just stay a victim forever.
If you are thinking, Oh, she just figured that out, then, what can I say? Better late than never.
2 comments:
According to the most natural reading of the Hebrew, God comes down Jacob's ladder, and stands next to Jacob.
As I understand it, the "ladder" was the staircase kind of thing that goes up to the tops of ziggurats and pyramids. The little temple house on the top of a ziggurat is called a "house of god" and a "gate of heaven."
When God came down, instead of demanding Jacob to come up, Jacob said, "Oh, this spot on the ordinary ground is the gate of heaven."
As St. John of the Cross said, pointing at the ground, "It's heaven all the way up."
Thank you so much for your comments, I was hoping to understand that story better, and the additional anecdote from St. John of the Cross is something I won't forget.
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