Existential Threat

HS #57 2020.4.9

Existential Threat

“Existential threat.” No one has defined that term, but we have been hearing it lately.  Bernie Sanders uses it to describe global warming. Democratic leaders apply it to Trump. The current pandemic brings it front and center.  I take it to mean a threat that causes everyone to take stock of their own vulnerability and mortality. It is also a threat that alters our understanding of reality.

Existential threats are as old as human civilization.  What is the Old Testament if not a history of existential threats: The Flood, the bondage in Egypt, Goliath and the Philistines.   

 One of the most powerful, if less known, Old Testament accounts is when the King of Syria sends an army to capture the prophet Elisha. Elisha’s servant wakes and finds the city surrounded by enemy chariots. Seeing no hope for rescue, he cries to Elisha in terror.  The untroubled prophet asks God to “open his eyes.” Instantly the young man sees that between them and the enemy is an entire hillside of chariots of fire.  What a story! Interesting that it often takes an existential threat to help us see a different side of reality – to see something that has been there all along but hitherto invisible or unnoticed. 

In 1988 the Knickerbocker Theatre showed a four-star Norwegian movie, Pathfinder, based on a thousand-year-old Norse legend. Bands of marauders, Tchudes ravaged the frozen Scandinavian north country preying on settlers and plundering villages. 

In the opening scene a teenage boy escapes as his family is killed and eventually finds refuge in a distant hamlet. He laments to the venerable spiritual leader of the village, the Pathfinder, that he is now alone; he has no one. The Pathfinder counters: No, you are not alone – we are all bound together with invisible bonds. 

The young loner is captured by the Tchudes, but is saved by the Pathfinder who trades his own life to save the boy’s. With all hope lost, the young man tricks the Tchudes to their death in an avalanche, ostensibly sacrificing himself in the process. Witnesses claim in awe, “He gave his own life that we might live.”  As the community honors the death of their young savior, we then see the young man’s hand, as he, exhausted, pull himself out of the rubble as if rising from an Easter tomb.  Returning to the village, he announces, “The Tchudes will never harm us again.”  

An inspiring movie well worth watching – I have shown it to scores of friends.  The climax occurs with that two-letter word, “us”.  The young man, having thought he was alone in the world, has found a new community – a community that chooses him as their new Pathfinder. But more importantly, he fully realizes the truth of his mentor: We are all bound together. 

And this is the reality of which I have become more aware during the world’s current existential threat. Indeed, for better or worse, we ARE all bound together. 

Can we find stronger evidence? Perhaps last December as we were busy preparing Christmas dinners, someone in Wuhun China (had you ever heard of Wuhun?) bought an animal at a wet market (ever heard of a wet market?) for dinner. Unfortunately, the animal had likely been bitten by a bat which carried the coronavirus. (Ever heard of that virus?) Someone getting dinner on the other side of the globe has changed our world.  We, the human race, yea, all life on earth - we are connected. 

Last November I sent an email to a couple of friends: “Just back from my favorite walk to Kollen Park along 12th Street. As I was walking, I was thinking, "What a cool place to live - the earth, that is." Wanted to send a text to all other planets, "Hey, we're having a party of life here on planet earth!" Then as I passed your homes, I realized a big reason for the good times - it's folks like you. Glad to have you as friends.” 

I’m taking that same walk these days, but with an even deeper realization of our connectedness. We first learned it fifty years ago with the Apollo 8 mission: We all live together on a tiny  beautiful blue and white globe floating in the immensity of space.  We, all living things on earth, share the same DNA, the same ancestors, the same destiny. Let’s continue taking care of each other. We’re among friends. Let’s keep the party going.