The other night I sat in a humvee, smoke lifting from my lips. My heart rate surged, drowning out a certain emptiness. The night hung luminous while shadows walked about me. Moses sat next to me saying, “Joshua, go thee hence, wage war against the Amalekites. My raised hands shall lighten your path victorious.” Then a lieutenant would walk from around my vehicle, put his head into the window. “Twice in the chest, once in the forehead. You shine that light from nine to three, then squeeze.” The lieutenant passed back out of the light, his hands at his side. I shined my light from nine to three down every breezeway, and around every corner. No one. I exhaled and began to hear the empty again. The next morning I awoke to a constant rhythm of gunfire. The sun was mostly up, no need for shining lights. I spent the next moments seated in my room - armor, weapon, one magazine of thirty rounds. No one.

The wordless activity. Questions of meaning I am always asking of myself, and it really has nothing to do with war or Iraq. Does this activity have any meaning? Phrases from books will walk along side me as I go. Moses and Tolkein sit next to me, and when I cannot put words to deeds, some story to narrate my motions, I fight the temptation to shut off my mind so as not to hear the silence. Between action and thought I am usually left at the place of memory, wondering about the where’s and why’s of my past, and how this now of mine relates to the where’s and why’s of my future. What seems infinite I have to digest through the finite bits I can comprehend, and the ever changing now-turned-future is revealed unto me, always so it seems, by means of the past. I know who I am and where I am going by the act of remembering.

Last week I awoke with a memory. I remembered a certain desire I had to travel to Paris, to study at the Sorbonne under a man whom I had come to admire greatly, a philosopher named Jacques Derrida. I am not at all certain why, but for some reason it occurred to me that, in his aging, he might soon die. It troubled me for a moment, thinking of a potentially unfulfilled wish, but then the grief, along with the moment, passed. About an hour later, I learned from my sister in an email that Derrida had in fact died three days prior. I was not sure how to respond. It was as if my body had already told me, preparing me, warning me. Something in me had just “known” somehow.

You have to understand, I never read Derrida as one typically reads a philosopher. I never read as if to parse apart or extract some systematic understanding. I read because in some ineffable way, I felt I spoke in the same meter in which he wrote, though we did not share a language. I simply felt connected to Derrida’s writings, not necessarily by agreement, but by how I felt I could somehow understand the man behind the words. His words took a certain life inside of me, which I felt connected the two of us. And this could never be written or explained, I thought - think. I read like one who believes. I believed something occurred at our intersection, some sort of communion between him and me in my moments of reading his texts.

It is perhaps truthful, however, to state that Derrida is much more important to me not in what he said, but in what he did. His school of thought came to be known as the “Deconstructionist” school, which persisted (perhaps even to its discredit) in destroying structures of thought, in ringing from church bells all the vested interests and violence people employ in attempts to state the “meaning” of things. In reading Derrida, however, I never felt destroyed, deconstructed. But, I could not help but feel the need to be changed. I could not help but note the tactics in my own life to erect edifices intended to define for me, externally, who I am. In reading him, I could not help but notice my own distance from myself when looking into a mirror, in building images of myself that were detached or separate from me. I could not help but notice my continual pondering over a knowledge of good and evil phrased in the third person. What is good for one to do? What ought one love? This alterity and separation from myself I could sense in my kneeling before the many systems of thought I used to describe myself and others, or by seeing how the images of “the others” who inhabit my life would transform into a type of covetousness when I gazed into the mirror. A certain self-violence seemed a part of my vision, my speech, and in the way I heard and felt the world around me.

I saw separation also in the way I attempted to interpret the world - my world. If my mind wanted to understand something, I could never get so close as to fully grasp this thing as it is in itself, as it is apart from my mind. I remained always distant from the things I wished to know. I was as Newton below the tree, grasping after the governing dynamics which landed the apple upon my head. And in this elusive distance, I would create theories and ideas to bridge my separation, my otherness. But, I could never know something except through that detached third person which inquires but cannot fully engage, remaining instead always separate and other. I became content then with “results”, whether my ideas “gained” things for me. If my theories produced profitable results, I trusted them. When they failed, I sought replacements. But, throughout this, I could not help but notice a certain violence I conducted, for my entire search revolved around me. My understanding of things and people seemed necessarily to depend upon me and my wishes and preconceptions. My search for understanding seemed in a sense self-serving, egoistic, narcissistic. In order to know about something, I had to know about what my goals were in the search, what I wanted. Knowledge of others then led back to knowledge of self. So there I was again standing in front of the mirror, looking at myself as if at a distance.

The nihilism of the night struck with force as I sat and breathed beneath a gaze of stars that covered still the wordless movements of those about me. A kind of ignorance seemed to permeate our rehearsals for battle - not ignorance of action, but ignorance of something else. Smoke rose from the earth, the Muezzin called men to piety. Chemicals and blind action allowed my eyes to remain vigilant. And I walked in the duties of survival, practicing with my body to separate friend from foe, me from them. There must be somewhere a memory, I thought, to place me beyond this and beyond me.

To Paris, then, to the Sorbonne - I had desired to engage with this man who had shaken me so viciously – was shaking me in his passing. His ideas were altogether foreign, altogether “other” than what I had previously believed. And yet this is how I came to believe that the gift Derrida gave me was not so much in what he said, but in what he did. Derrida awakened me to a real deadness I suffered within. He was never so great in himself as to solve my dilemma, but he showed me a certain gift of death that could possibly lead to something of greater life. Derrida showed me how destroying, dying to my self-made structures is a necessary part of clearing away the deceptions I mistakenly call “meaning”. He showed me that I cannot see myself in the mirror, because this is the way that I see others - from a distance, as separate from me. I cannot see myself in the third person, as set against what others say and do. In a sense, I have to tell not my left hand what it is my right hand does. There is a peace which is possible when all my violent categories of self and understanding are completely destroyed and I am left speechless with nothing but my being, itself a gift revealed unto me. Derrida is known for the phrase, “There is nothing outside of the text”. Destruction, deconstruction of all my structures and strategies, all my concepts and ideas, is perhaps a momentary proclamation that there is nothing outside of me - a proclamation eclipsed in the act of utterance.

To what sanctuary then might the self retreat? To what removed location might I flee to escape my-self and the others who construct and narrate this me I call “self”? Can I ever find that place, that perspective that does not see from a distance, separate? Or, am I myself placed, located, seen by what is other than self? For even in front of the mirror, Narcissus gazes back at me. Yet am I not located, found within a self and amongst others? Perhaps echoing Derrida, I am quite suaded to state that the truth of me, the truth of things, of both self and of other is something about which we simply must state, “there is nothing outside of it”. Isaac Asimov then came pretty close to something truthful when he said, “The Cosmos is all there ever was, is, or ever will be”. The problem is not necessarily what he said, but rather the force he thought his statement was to have - what he thought it demanded. The truth of me and the truth of an other I wish to know is something I cannot come to on my own terms, with my own language and my own concepts. And so, Asimov’s understanding of “Cosmos” is inherently violent as it is limited to his particularity, thinking in his hubris as if to extend a term of his own creation beyond himself - as if to pick himself up by his own bootstraps! I cannot craft things after my own image, but instead they must be revealed unto me, at which point I can then reveal myself as shaped by what occurred in this mutual self-revelation. I cannot know a person unless that person is revealed unto me. I cannot be known unless I myself am revealed. I cannot know the Cosmos except by her self-revelation, while yet I shall remain veiled if I do not confess myself as the giver of her name.

There must be an intersection between the knower and the known in which no demands of power are made, no rationale is pre-structured, no violence is conducted. If I am to know something, I must engage and commune, form a relationship. No other rules exist except what resides between the knower and the known - as perhaps in the union of persons in marriage. No contract, no license, no promise or obligation can make a marriage other than what it is: the fruit of a vulnerable communion of two persons. If I am to know something, I must engage with and relate to it. I cannot ponder from a distance, I have to be immersed within so that something may be revealed unto me - that I myself may also be revealed. Science has this power by means of experiment. The power of science is not in “knowledge” (which can then be possessed by means of theory and abstraction) but rather in the fruit of the intersection between the scientist and nature. We see this most dramatically in technology. It is easy, however, to become too interested in the theory which led to the fruit, or in the fruit itself, in technology. Yet, science is an inherently mystical enterprise because something beyond language and beyond quantification ever allures us on to greater and greater elegance and complexity of theory. The practice of science, the relationship between the scientist and nature, is beautiful, worshipful, like the practice of an open relationship between persons. The greater the subtlety of understanding, the greater the depth of fidelity and kinship. The scientist is much like the farmer or the lover, where stewardship and love of the other brings forth life. But, neither the self-concerned notions of any one individual (i.e., motives, desires), nor the “products” of our relationships (i.e., fun, children, business) can replace our deep seated yearning for the relationship itself, what is between individuals . It is the in between which is powerful, mystical, spiritual.

The gift I see in what Derrida destroyed for me concerns the paranoia I felt in confusing or equating the many meanings I draw upon from without as to what constitutes my own being. He destroyed my self-made idols of “meaning” scattered about me. He destroyed my compulsion demanding that the meaning and importance of any given thing is greater or somehow in addition to the thing itself. The importance of my mother is not her care, her nurturing, or even her love for me, but rather my mother herself. SHE is what matters. The truth and meaning of my mother is incarnate in her. It is not abstract, it is not theoretical, but rather the plain and simple being of my mother whom I get to enjoy - the woman, Kristi. I cannot fully encapsulate this truth, this meaning, with words or concepts, which I might call “traits” or “characteristics”, for my mother simply “is” with or without such words or concepts. An infinite possibility reveals itself silently through finite means - my mother. I use these words, concepts and notions as ways to express the ineffability I marvel at and feel in her presence. I tell my mother, “I love you”, because I cannot fail but to express, in whatever way I am able, this profound feeling within me. Though everything I may state of my mother falls infinitely short of the truth, I can hardly remain silent, for to do so would be untruthful, unfaithful to my own being and the self-revelation of my mother unto me. The mere deed, self-revelation, of my saying “I love you” is truthful because it obeys the need for utterance. The truth is not in what is said, but rather in the saying - in the act of conforming to my being, being truthful, faithful. My faith is my act, I am truthful in my doing. My being is shaped by the self-revelation of my mother, which I receive as a gift from without. If I were to tell my mother I love her because of some external principle which demanded of me I do so, or worse because of a response I wanted from my her, I would be false (dishonest) because this principle or desire had done violence to my own being and my mother’s, creating words to express a feeling which did not itself exist. If I remained silent, or persisted devoid of expression, being would be left veiled, unrevealed. Most of my sins I barter in this way, trading within myself laws, needs, and desires. I make stories for myself as to what is “true” or “lawful” or “dutiful”, believing more frequently in the stories I construe, rather than submitting to and becoming changed by what is freely revealed unto me as gift, inviting me unto self-revelation.

I have walked around somberly for days now thinking about the death of Jacques Derrida. How it is that a so-called atheist Jew proclaimed to me a “gospel” of incarnational truth is a wonder to me. Perhaps he never said what I heard. In what I have gleaned from this “de-constructionist of meaning”, however, truth requires transubstantiation, incarnation. Between the world of ideas and the world of things, between the infinite and the finite, between the schematic blue-print and the machine, between the scientist’s theory and nature, there must be that intersection, the in-between. Truth, beauty, goodness, and justice must not be abstract theories or postulations, they must not be systematic theologies or religions, they must not be inventions or technology, or constitutions or legal systems, but rather a mystical incarnation of what simply cannot be said rightly. If truth, beauty, goodness and justice remain as such, either as abstract principles or as fixed “products” which we create, they will mercilessly bend our wills to them in servitude and worship, and we shall in fact be ruled from without by what we ourselves created with our own minds and hands. And though everything I may say falls infinitely short of the truth, I can hardly remain silent, for something urges me onward, demands that I speak. There is something greater than the work of my hand, something more perfect than the conjuring of my mind. There is the in between, the intersection of heaven and earth, that presses me toward what could possibly, possibly, be Incarnate Wisdom.

And so the world of others has led me back once again to my-self, back in front of the looking glass. Am I changed by the incarnation I have found, by what has been revealed unto me? Or am I expounding on in my own words, with systems and theories, and propositions and laws? Do I look more to what I can claim and demand than what I can give? Am I more concerned with “rights” than with “gifts”? Am I more concerned with what I can get and receive than what I can offer? Do I look more to haughty theories and technology than to the subtlety of a relationship with nature? Do I define myself with descriptions in the third person, I am one who…or do I incarnate this Wisdom to tell not my left hand what it is my right is doing? For even my knowledge of self is revealed from without. The fact that I say “I” is itself a gift. Whether I look from a distance into the mirror, or hear from others what is said about me, nothing greater may I utter than that which the truth itself does in transforming this self I call “I”. I cannot be other than what has itself been made manifest by means of incarnation - I can only be and ever become new in this gift.

The gift Derrida gave me was the conundrum of silence. At the end of the day, perhaps truth simply “is”, and thus it is “true” (honest) to state that this “truth” simply cannot be said rightly - but yet it must be said! I can hardly remain silent because I must state aloud what it is I have “found”. I have no other choice, but to let it change me, to receive what has been revealed, and to give this gift of revelation to others. If a revelation has found me, it can and must find others. I can reveal what has revealed itself unto me…by in turn revealing myself unto the other. But, I cannot state anything more than who I am, for if what I state does not emerge from who I am, I commit violence not only to those who would hear, but also to myself and to the very gift of revelation, which is not a possession, but is rather a gift from the other. So then, be ready at all times to tell of the hope which is within you! Perhaps even beneath shadow, and amidst wordless action. Perhaps even here in the desert there is rest, Sabbath, and the moment to give. Perhaps memory can lead to transformation through narrating what is yet to be, becoming thereby new.

Derrida coined a phrase in the title of a piece of writing: “The End of Books and the Beginning of Writing”. In a way I have seen this as similar to another phrase coined by St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary, use words”. Derrida talked of bringing to an end the idea of always looking to previously spoken ideas eternally enscripted within “books” as ends in themselves – self contained parcels of truth. St. Francis, in his own Christian way, said the same – the idea is less important than how it is made manifest in the transformation of your life. Or, perhaps, put down the book and write good news through the life you live! I must leave behind the gaze that sees always the workings of my hands, which grasps always to the knowledge of good and evil, placing outside of me the meaning of labor and motion and self. I must turn so that I might offer such hands in the service of The Other, from whom I receive my own gift of being. So I stand in front of the mirror and look for a glance that is not separate, is not from a distance…which means I must turn around, leave behind the mirror, and enter into the world of others. I am not free until I need not the law. I am not righteous until I need not rights. I am not secure until I need not defense. I am not myself until I give my-self away.

_______

I am 24 years old, a United States [military linguist] currently stationed [in Iraq]. I am a graduate of the University of Iowa and have been in the US Army for nearly eight years, in varying capacities. The visceral and intimate nature of my contact with "enemies" here at [the place where I am working], and the practical force of warfighting, both on such enemies and upon ourselves, has been one of the most illuminating and tragic experience perhaps of my life. Indifference is an attitude I certainly will not depart here with. The following essay, inspired by the passing of Jacques Derrida, is an indirect reflection on this topic, and the conflicts of meaning we see in violence, action, words and our many-made forms of idolatry. Thank you.