The Existential Life and Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund dated August 31, 1835,

Creepshow (1982) is more than just another horror movie.  When director George Romero and writer Stephen King came together to produce this now classic movie, they made something more profound than most creature-features.   It is, of course, a horror movie, (more accurately, an anthology of five short films tied together with the comic book motif). How could it be otherwise with Romero and King at the wheel?  And fans of the horror genre will appreciate the blood and gore and zombies and other various horror tropes.  But the second of the collected stories, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, filmed with a blend of comedy and horror, is something more than the sum of its horror cliché parts.  The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill is almost philosophical.

Based on a previously published short story by Stephen King[i], The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill tells the tale of a dimwitted yokel living alone on his farm in rural Main. When he discovers a meteorite that has crashed on his property he sees this as his opportunity to become rich by selling the space rock to the “department of meteors” at the local community college.  He dreams of receiving the extravagant sum of Two Hundred Dollars for his extraordinary find.

But his dreams of wealth are dashed when the meteorite breaks in half and spills out a phosphorescent blue goo over the ground and over Jordy’s hands.  The “department of meteors” wouldn’t be interested in a broken space rock.  He chides himself for being a “lunk-head.” 

“Still,” he says in spite of his disappointment, “I got to try.” He struggles on with his limited abilities and his limited imagination, trying to find that one thing me must do - the one true thing which will give his life meaning and purpose. 

This is the existentialist’s quest: to find something that will give meaning to this life.  And Jordy Verrill is the quintessential existential man – disoriented and confused in the face of a meaningless and absurd world.   

And it is absurd.  The meteorite that Jordy Verrill discovered is contaminated with some sort of extraterrestrial life that begins immediately to grow everywhere.  Even on Jordy himself (“No!” he screams in an off-camera scene, “Not there!)  This green growth spreads across his body, his house, and his farm.  By morning everything is covered and Jordy has become a monstrous plant-man.  As he gropes for a shotgun to put an end to his misery he pleads “Please God, let my luck be in just this once, please God, just this once…” 

Jordy’s television and radio play in the background of several scenes. If you give careful attention you can see that even in these background sounds and images, the horror and absurdity existential life is described.

A wrestling match between Bob Backlund and Samoan No. 1 (is anything in life more absurd than professional wrestling?)

A Star is Born (1937)

…everyone in this world who has ever dreamed about better things has been laughed at, don't you know that? But there's a difference between dreaming and doing. The dreamers just sit around and moon about how wonderful it would be if only things were different.

Christian homily
Look up. Lift up your head. You will succeed.  Be confident of this one thing: that God who has begun a good thing in you will complete it   The hope in this inspirational message, delivered by a smiling priest, is cut by the ironic voice-over announcement that follows. “Pre-recorded.”  It wasn’t a message for Jordy.  It was just a senseless voice carried through the airwaves.

Farm and Weather Report

And in today’s weather…well not much for the outdoor types but you farmers are going to love this. The current 30 day forecast released by the U.S. Meteorological station in Portland calls for moderating temperatures and lots of rain.  Castle County is going to turn green so fast in the next month that it’s going to be almost miraculous.   

And that’s the lonesome death of Jordy Verrill, absurd and meaningless. He lived and died alone in a strange and incomprehensible universe. The world itself is meaningless and amoral (not immoral. They are different).  The universe doesn’t care one way or another about Jordy Verrill.  The meteorite that crashed on his farm was neither a gift nor a curse. It was just absurd. 

---

[i]  Weeds by Stephen King – which in turn is loosely based on the story The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft.  The title is based on the song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll by Bob Dylan.

Embracing the Difficulty

Some time ago a friend of mine who was in a bit of a quandary, came to me for advice.  We were in the chapel getting ready for the praise band’s rehearsal and there were a few other people in the chapel also getting ready for practice.  They were tuning guitars and tinkering around on the piano when she asked if I could help her.  She was dealing with a large and difficult issue but because of the others in the room she didn't want to divulge the all the details of her problem.  So instead of asking me what she should do, she asked how she could know what the right thing to do would be.

I liked that distinction.

She didn't want to be told what to do – she wasn't asking for me to be her mother or her father or her boss.  She wanted to know how to choose the right for herself.  She asked how we can compare competing claims for Right: Should she listen to her Friends, or her Parents, or the Bible, or…  She had all these voices, all these choices and she found it difficult to know how she should choose between them.  This was a good question.

I recommend the bible to her – even over parents and friends (that seems like an obvious recommendation from a pastor, eh?).  Her parents are good people, and her friends (at least the ones I know) seem to be fairly well grounded, but still I recommend the bible. As a general rule, I recommend the bible to everyone.

But there's problem there too- because again there are so many competing voices, each one claiming to know how to interpret the bible the right way. And within the bible itself there are different voices. And then bible doesn't even speak to every issue, the bible doesn't describe every possible moral quandary. 

The bible isn't always clear. 

But even still I recommend the bible.

And then a strident voice entered our conversation.  Another friend sitting nearby (though not so nearby that she hadn’t been eavesdropping…) didn't think that my advice was altogether satisfactory, and offered the opinion that best way to know the Right is to be "on your knees seeking God's will."  This friend continued by declaring that the bible "IS EXPLICITLY CLEAR."  I think she actually said it that way – with the capital letters.  The emphasis was clear to me.  I hadn't been firm enough.  I hadn't been fundamental enough.  I hadn't been black and white about the issue of moral certainty.  

Do I believe that the bible is the word of God?  Yes.  Though, I do not believe that he dictated it word for word into the various writers' ears, or that he moved their hands as they held their quills. Do I trust the bible?  Yes – I'd be in the wrong line of work if I didn't.  Do I believe that the bible is clear?  No.  I do not.

It is a collection of writings that span thousands of years, written by men (and quite possibly a few women) who came from differing cultures, in three different languages, in various countries.  And – to make it more difficult – it was written a long, long, long, long time ago.

All of that makes it difficult for us today to interpret it. 

Yet I recommend it anyway because despite all of those things that make it difficult to understand, it still describes a world that we know and understand.  People – despite differences in language and culture – are people.  (You can hum the Depeche Mode song, if you like.) We think and act and feel very much like the people of the Bible, even if our worlds and cultures are so very different.

It may be difficult. It may be hard, sometimes.  But studying the bible – searching it and wrestling it for answers – can only be a positive thing.  

Embrace the difficulty.  It's okay.

"The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted." – Soren Kierkegaard

Psalm 130 - Up from the Depths

Forget for the moment that Psalm 130 is one of the "psalms of ascent;" we are sinking today. Forget the dusty travelers making their pilgrimage to the holy city, climbing slowly up the rocky path towards Jerusalem. Think instead of Jonah, thrown from the storm tossed ship into the waters, he sank into the deep, into the heart of the seas and the floods closed round him. The waves and billows pushed him down deep into the underworld.

Nearly three quarters (71%) of the earth is "underworld" – covered by the sea the great world ocean that we have arbitrarily divided into the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Arctic Oceans. Around the world and all through history, people have looked to the sea for its bounty. Our ancestors braved storms and waves to learn the sea and its benefits. They drew fished from small vessels and transported cargo in great ships. But beneath the surface of the sea lurked danger and death and all things abhorrent.

British journalist H.M. Tomlinson (1873 – 1958) wrote: "I do not love the sea. The look of it is disquieting. There is something in the very sound of it that stirs the premonition felt while we are listening to noble music; we become inexplicably troubled." (The Face of Earth)

Beneath the waves was the Abyss - a Greek word that you probably recognize – which means "bottomless." Though, in our modern age of science we've been able to measure the seemingly bottomless seas. The oceans of the world have an average depth of about two miles (13,124 ft.), but the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean, dives down to a staggering seven miles (36,198 ft.) That's deeper than Mt. Everest – the highest peak (29,028 ft.) is high. Beyond that lies the molten core of the earth.

The sea is fearsome because the sea is dark. Though seawater is relatively transparent, sunlight only penetrates to a depth of about 260ft. As you dive down into the depths the colors disappear one by one; first to go are the reds, then orange and yellow then the greens and blues. Beyond that, all is dark. Dark and cold. Ninety percent of the total ocean volume lies beneath what is known as the "thermoncline." The water temperature there is 0 - 3˚ Celsius (32 – 37.5˚ Fahrenheit).

Mankind isn't meant to live at such depths. It's too dark, too cold, and further, the pressure in the great deeps would crush us. Hydrostatic pressure – the weight of all the water above you – at the bottom of the Marianas Trench is calculated to be 1,095 times greater than that at the surface: 16,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. You can already begin to feel this pressure building even at the shallow depth of 5 – 10 feet, and without specialized dive equipment divers can't go much beyond 180 ft. down. Any further and the pressures would crush you.

But here in the dark and cold crushing depths of the abyss we begin.

From the depths I call to you, Yahweh:
Lord, hear my cry.
Listen attentively
To the sound of my pleading!
(Psalm 130: 1 – 2)

The psalmist cries from the dark, from the cold, from the crushing depths – from the place of anxiety, death, and despair. Dreams of the sea or of the ocean are often interpreted as a symbol of the unconscious – our deep inner selves that we are afraid (deathly afraid, sometimes) to confront.

It's easier to paddle around the surface of our day to day lives: "Hi, how are you? Good, good. Are you workin' hard or hardly workin' ha, ha, ha…" But when events in our lives force us to consider our own inner depths, when we're forced to look deep inside and to ask the question: "Who am I?" or "Why do I do the things I do?" we resist and struggle back toward the surface.

It's easier to coast along the surface of life with its idle chatter and everyday tasks. It's easier to drift with the escapism of television and movies and drugs and casual sex. It's easier to not take a reflective look at our lives; to not examine who we are and who we want to become. Many people spend their entire lives drifting along the surface like this.

"That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" Ecclesiastes 7:24 KJV

The psalmist, however, crying out from the dark inner depths of his soul, looks at himself and, there in the dark depths, takes stock of who he is and why he does the things he does. What does he see when he looks at himself? The same thing that the apostle Paul said when he took stock of his own life:

I am a creature of flesh and blood sold as slave to sin. I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate. While I am acting as I do not want to, I still acknowledge the Law as good, so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me. And really, I know of nothing good living in me – in my natural self, that is – for though the will to do is what is good in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want – that is what I do. But every time I do what I do not what to, then it is not myself acting, but the sin that lives in me. So I find this rule: that form me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side. In my inmost self I dearly love God's law, but I see that acting on my body there is a different law which battles against the law in my mind. So I am brought to be a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?  (Romans 7: 14 – 24)

The Danish philosopher / theologian Soren Kierkegaard described this as a leap into the "seventy thousand fathoms" of faith, and a leap into the loving arms of God.

There at the bottom of the abyss, when we discover that we don't really like who we are and what we do; when we see ourselves, as the apostle Paul did, as one "doomed to death," because of the sin we do not want to do and the good that we want to do, but are powerless to do – do we despair? Do we give up and drown in the depths?

If you kept a record of our sins,
Lord, who could stand their ground?
But with you it is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
(Psalm 130: 3 – 4)

There in the cold, silent, darkness of our true selves we can begin to see the light of God. This light shines into our darkness (and the darkness has not overcome it…) and illuminates us. This was the Apostle Paul's experience as well: What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? God – thanks be to him – through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7: 24 -25a)

"To see one's darkness proves the presence of a great light" wrote the Catholic writer Raoul Plus in the book Living with God. We could not see our own moral shortcomings if it were not for the light that God's Holy Spirit shines into us. We could not know ourselves if God did not know us. And so we must rely completely on God. We must believe – even if we cannot see. We must hope – even if we despair. We must rely completely upon God.

I rely, my whole being relies,
Yahweh, on your promise.
My whole being hopes in the Lord,
more than watchmen for daybreak;
more than watchmen for daybreak.
(Psalm 130: 5 – 6)

But it's a hope in a God that we can't see we can't touch with our fingers, we can't empirically prove. It's a hope grounded in faith.

I return to the thoughts of Kierkegaard who wrote: "If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out in the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith."

His way of expressing things was rather complex, but what he says is that: IF I could see God with my eyes, or feel him with my fingers, or rationally prove his existence with physical and logical evidence then it would not be faith. But because I cannot see him, touch him, prove him – I must believe. I must hope. I must hold this "uncertainty" of God as certain. This is a leap into faith. A leap into seventy thousand fathoms of water. A dive down into the cold dark waters of the abyss, and there to find the loving arms of God.

For with Yahweh is faithful love,
with him is generous ransom;
and he will ransom Israel
from all its sins.
(Psalm 130: 7 -8)

With God is faithful everlasting unconditional love. With him is a generous grace – deliverance through the death and resurrection of his son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. And he will deliver his people from all their sins. It's a dive into the seventy thousand fathoms of that seemingly boundless ocean – not an ocean of despair we realize – but a deep ocean of love.

O boundless salvation! deep ocean of love,

O fullness of mercy, Christ brought from above.

The whole world redeeming, so rich and so free,

Now flowing for all men, come, roll over me!

My sins they are many, their stains are so deep.

And bitter the tears of remorse that I weep;

But useless is weeping; thou great crimson sea,

Thy waters can cleanse me, come, roll over me I

My tempers are fitful, my passions are strong,

They bind my poor soul and they force me to wrong;

Beneath thy blest billows deliverance I see,

O come, mighty ocean, and roll over me!

Now tossed with temptation, then haunted with fears,

My life has been joyless and useless for years;

I feel something better most surely would be

If once thy pure waters would roll over me.

O ocean of mercy, oft longing I’ve stood

On the brink of thy wonderful, life-giving flood!

Once more I have reached this soul-cleansing sea,

I will not go back till it rolls over me.

The tide is now flowing, I’m touching the wave,

I hear the loud call of the mighty to save;

My faith’s growing bolder, delivered I’ll be;

I plunge ’neath the waters, they roll over me.

And now, hallelujah! the rest of my days

Shall gladly be spent in promoting his praise

Who opened his bosom to pour out this sea

Of boundless salvation for you and for me.

 -General William Booth (1829-1912)

The Inscription on my Tombstone

Photo taken in Hanson, Kentucky. I have relatives in this cemetary, but I don't know them.