Pelicans

I am sitting on the deck at the Inn at Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, looking out over the endless, cloud-covered Pacific. (It's the time of June Gloom in San Diego.) Far out to sea, I can see a long line of pelicans making their way South—1, 2, …, 15 of them. Another pair fishes lazily just off the coast. From time to time a trio flies South along the coast, passing right overhead.

The songwriter, Michael Smith, says, “We become birds when we die.” When I die, I shall become a pelican. I shall range up and down the rocky coasts, sometimes alone, sometimes with my buddies. I'll keep company with the fishing boats when they return to their harbors in the evening, and I'll do a little fishing myself if I have to.

 I first saw pelicans in flight some twenty years ago off Bodega Head in Northern California. Before then, I thought of pelicans as an ungainly and ugly bird with a beak that was far too large, laughably so. Seeing them in flight changed that view forever. In flight, pelicans are grace itself. (Baudelaire makes much the same point about another sea bird in his poem, L'Albatros.) It is that kind of transformation into a state of grace that makes me think that I shall become a pelican when I die.

I have felt the same kind of transformation in this life. I was once a runner. On the best of runs, I became something better, something more full of grace than my non-running self. Indeed, I have actually run with the pelicans along the California coast on several occasions and so have a sense of what life might be like for them. I suspect that some runners, but very few others, will know what I am talking about here. Due to a hip injury, I will never run again, but, fortunately, I have the life of a pelican to look forward to.

I suppose that some people will think that this notion of becoming a pelican when one dies is complete nonsense, and they are right. Some, like Dan Dennett, will argue that it is dangerous nonsense. I might, for example go to war against those who think that we become fish when we die.

Granted, my beliefs about reincarnation, religion and all that are not driven by reason. I suspect that I'm not alone in this regard. Indeed, I think that most of us look to religion to give our lives significance and purpose and to give or spirits peace and hope. I don't see how reason alone can provide what religion does. A friend of mine once said, “All religions need a little magic.” I agree with him. At least my religion needs a little magic. Even the most materialistic views must either deny that spirituality exists or grant it the freedom to range beyond and even counter to the dictates of reason.

There is a danger in all this, the danger of irreconcilable differences. Reason is, after all, what we use to reconcile differences. How, for example, could I possibly get along with someone who believes that we become fish when we die. We might be able to reason out our differences, but If we abandon reason, then we may find ourselves fighting to defend our personal prejudices.

Indeed, personal prejudices are, for the most part, what we do fight over. I, for example, happen to believe that God is after people's hearts and that government's only role is to provide the freedom, security, and opportunity for individuals to find their own way to righteousness. Others believe that God gave humankind a very precise operating manual for governments in the form of the Sharia and that notions such as democracy and freedom are deeply pernicious. Still others believe that it is the state's obligation to advance the work of a church, the Christian church in particular. None of  these three positions has one scintilla of reasonable support. Indeed, the most reasonable position is atheism. Unfortunately, atheism is mute with respect to the role of government in human affairs.

We should, I suppose, be in a state of total despair about our irreconcilable differences. My view is that irreconcilable differences and personal prejudices have always been with us and will always be with us. They are part of what makes us human, and I, for one, am glad of it. I don't think I'd know what to do with myself if all our differences were suddenly one day reconciled. I'll take the world as I find it, with all its tribulation and conflict because I know that I won't, in this lifetime, run out of things to do.

Besides, I have the prospect of becoming a pelican to look forward to when my life is over. I don't think that pelicans worry all that much about God, government, or anything else, for that matter. They don't even worry about whether they were once human or even whether what they eat was once human.