The Pittsburgh Press (February 28, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
Excursion beyond the stars
By Florence Fisher Parry
Every time that I fall deep, deep into the well of anesthesia, I dream a dream always the same. The veil is ripped away, the veil that separates the finite from the infinite, and I find myself but a lonely mortal speck in the spaces, looking, appalled, yet with an odd unearthly comprehension, upon the awful spectacle of the infinite.
Suddenly it is mine to know the most horrible extremity of pain, the deepest well of loneliness and heartbreak; the agony, the human agony that War brings; the terrific force of hypocrisy, and most vivid of all, the horrible face of injustice, the cruel mien of ignorance and insensibility.
And standing there alone and vulnerable to all the pain and pretense of the world, I am suffering with such abhorrence for the world’s injustices and pity for its pain that I cannot endure the agony.
Then I awake and the veil descends between me and What Is, and I retire again to the cocoon of finite consciousness.
Now I thought this dream was peculiar to me and was bashful about telling it lest I be thought odd. But the other day I heard, from one who had just emerged from anesthesia that this, too, had been her dream, or rather her experience, and was strangely comforted.
Each time, I told her, that you go down into the dark depths of anesthesia, the same dream will recur until (for so I believe) the final complete anesthesia comes, which, as we know, is death; and then the veil will not just lift, but will be torn away, entire, and we will at last be indeed infinite, and understand, and have the depth and stature at least to absorb and accept the eternal knowledge that will be ours.
No longer mortal, we can then look upon the world and all its suffering and joy; and even our families so dear, so very dear; and understand how small, how trivial, how unimportant is all their mortal joy and sorrow – compared with THIS.
Lost paradise
Now I look at the pages of the newspapers today, and it is as though I could not give credence to what is printed there. The news carries such a burden of disaster wherever I look. Our city still is threatened with not partial this time, but complete paralysis.
This would be no strike. This would be a visitation like an earthquake, flood or fire. That collective bargaining, the greatest boon free man has ever had, could come to this staggers the mind. Yet here it is. The blow CAN strike us.
I read that 800 companies, steel fabricating companies, and nearly a half of a million of their employees, cannot continue their existence cannot re-employ their workers because of the chaos brought about by the steel strike.
I read of riot’s swell in size and fury, in India.
I read that our own demobilization of Army, Navy and Air Force has so reduced our national defense that it would be impossible for us to fight successfully one major naval battle or pit our Army successfully against a militant foe.
This is February 1946. A year ago, this same Navy, this Army, were the astonishment of the world, invincible and glorious; the hope of the world; the defenders of the faith, God’s royal Army, the Cross of Jesus before!
Are we indeed going mad? Are we indeed losing, have we already lost, that bloody, bloody victory your son fought for at Iwo and Bataan and my son fought in the ferocious skies over Europe?
There is talk now of bringing our thousands upon thousands of World War II dead home. There are those who say that they should lie undisturbed where they died, or where their disintegrating dust was scattered.
I remember how it was after the last War. There was no question then. We felt America to be so safe, so Ours, so eternal, belonging, that we scarcely could wait for our poor dead to be brought back and buried in our own family graveyards!
False landscape
But now? We are asking ourselves: Is there a spot even here where we can safely bring our dead and say, “Lie thou there. You will be safe now. You will be undisturbed!”
No. There has come to be no sanctuary anywhere. We live in terror and dread. Suspicion dogs us and […] a terrible question mark against slate-colored […].
Where shall we find peace? Where shall we find sanctuary? We had a dream once: if worst came to worst, and terror and destruction should fall upon the earth, yes, even here we could retreat to some far cove or valley and live the simple life again far from the madding crowd, far from the shrill of death and violence.
But even this dream has been taken away, and we know ourselves to be fugitives, with nowhere to hide when cataclysm comes.
Where shall we turn pray, but to the stars and that far off eternal surety found only in the Infinite found only in God?