Thomas Merton somewhere said that the only reason that the world continues to exist is because of the monks in their cells praying, which keeps the world’s roof from caving in. I know, it sounds a bit grandiose, but this is a gloss on the "righteous man" tradition that goes back at least as far as Abraham’s bargaining with God in Genesis 18 to save Sodom and Gomorrah from divine destruction. Bottom line: if ten righteous men can be found in the cities God spares everyone. God relents, and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah go about their business blissfully ignorant that their lives had hung in the balance depending on the advocacy of good Father Abraham.
Valentin Tomberg frequently describes prayer as vertical breathing. It’s not something everybody does, but because enough people do those prayers function like columns of grace that prevent the sky from falling, which in turn allows room for everyone to continue with their horizontal breathing, which is the metaphor for our biological existence. Evolution is the combined effect of the horizontal breathing of everyone (the Darwinian dimension), and the vertical breathing of the few (the salvation history dimension).
So these are the first thoughts that gelled for me after watching last night’s "Lost". It was in its own way a gloss on the righteous-man tradition. It was the story of Desmond, Locke and Eko, and their role as righteous men charged with keeping the sky from falling It was the story off Locke’s original belief and his loss of it, and of how that almost caused the end of the world. It was the story of Eko and Desmond, who had enough faith to counter him.
At first I thought that Locke was crazy to keep pushing the buttons, and I didn’t understand his original fervor to do so. And certainly his first encounter with Desmond in which he tells Locke that the reason he’s pushing the buttons is to save the world sounded nuts and grandiose. And as convinced as I was that Eko is the key personality in the whole drama of this island, I was wondering why he was so convinced more than ever after watching the video in the second hatch that pushing the button was an essential task. But as I suggested in my post about the episode two weeks ago, punching in those number might be like a mantra or the repetitive tedious prayers of the rosary. It might be that it’s what’s holding the sky up.
That being said, this episode raises more questions than it answers. Is life on the island life lived within a glass ball as Desmond is convinced it is. Is there no physical escape except through death? That’s what I thought, and it was the basis of my "Sixth Sense" hypothesis–that the survivors were really already dead, the island was Purgatory, and that the Others were ‘angelic’ testers. The back story narratives of each of the principal survivors was information for us to better understand the nature of the tests they had to pass before it was time for them to "go home."
Then in my post two weeks ago, it occurred to me the writers were playing with the alien abduction theme out of Whitley Strieber. And last night suggests the same thing when he says he thinks the Others are aliens. Maybe, but I think that’s a red herring. But the one new piece of evidence from last night that undermines the Sixth Sense hypothesis is the quick scene at the end in which the electromagnetic anomaly is detected by the Portuguese (why Portuguese?) speaking guys in the observation station which looks to be in Antarctica. And then their call to Desmond’s love Penny who is still looking for him. It’s the first bit of evidence that there some physical connection to the world the survivors left behind exists. But is electromagnetism in its essence really physical? Or is it the physical manifestation of something not physical? Whatever? It seems to have had a physical, chartable location that the Portuguese-speaking guys found.
Random questions: What does "home" mean when Henry says that he’s going to take Kate, Sawyer, and Jack there? What about the number 922 which Eko carves into his prayer stick and which was the date of the plane crash and Desmond’s system failure (echoes of 9/11?) The promos for the show suggested that we would finally learn who the Others were. And Michael asks Henry point blank, "Who are you people? And Henry’s answer is "We’re the good guys, Michael." That supports what I’ve been saying about them, but who really knows? Do you believe him? Did it surprise you that he let Michael and Walt go? That he will keep his promise not to hurt the three? Do you think that Michael and Walt will really get back to the "real" world following compass bearing 325? Or does "find rescue" mean something else? Why do the others bother at all with the charade requiring the beards and disguises and hiding their real names? Did you notice that Kelvin, Desmond’s predecessor at punching in the numbers, was the American intelligence officer that paid Sayyid off to become a traitor during the first Iraq war?
Whatever the answers to these questions, "Lost" continues to be must-see TV. If you haven’t seen it, get the DVDs and start from the beginning. There is nothing like it that even remotely attempts to do what it is doing. At least not that I’m aware of.
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