Poetry, the Sleeping King, and Creative Doubt Jeff Gundy “Great doubt: great awakening. Little doubt: little awakening. No doubt: no awakening.” ‐Zen Buddhist saying “Doubt… gets a lot done.” ‐Jennifer Hecht, Doubt: A History The (Possibly) Sleeping King As the old tales have it, a mighty king sleeps somewhere beneath the Untersberg, the massive mountain whose northern peak looms over Salzburg and whose long ridge runs south into Germany. The Grimm brothers report that Emperor Karl der Grosse—Charlemagne, in the history books I read in school—sits in a trance somewhere within that massive mountain, whose northern peak looms over Salzburg and whose long ridge trails many miles south into Germany. The great king bears a “keen and profound look,” “friendly and sociable toward all of his subjects who walk back and forth with him across a beautiful meadow. No one knows why he is there and what he intends to do. These remain mysteries of God” (Aschliman). But perhaps, they say, it is not Karl der Grosse at all, but the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, who drowned crossing a river in his armor in 1190 during his third crusade. His ravens circle the mountain and his beard has grown into the table, or until his ravens wake him, and when he awakens he will not wander peaceably in the meadow but bring the apocalypse. He did have an appetite for shedding blood in the name of God, after all. Who is under the mountain? Is he dwelling easily there, with no need to return, or gathering strength for a savage awakening? Could he really bring a kingdom of justice and equality, or would his emergence just lead to more misery and destruction? Should we go looking for him? Would the pleasure of knowing be worth the chance that we might find only horror under the mountain? What things are best not known? And what happens if we add “about God” to that question? Like most good stories, this one seizes us with drama, teases us with hope, and ends in mystery. Doubt is built into it, inseparable—if we knew it were true, our lives would have to change. But while it is possible, however unlikely, we can allow ourselves the pleasure and promise that lie in its being merely potential. Freed by our doubts about its “reality,” we can read it as metaphor, as allegory, as pageant, as whatever we will. Think about the origin of the story. How did it come about? Someone, or ones, thinking about how dim and awful their days were, no doubt, dreaming of how they might be otherwise. Someone asking for a story—a child perhaps, or one of those gathered at the hearth, or in the tavern. Doubting the official story that all is well and will be well, if only we trust and obey. What if the great king were still alive? What if he waits under the mountain? What does he do there? Will he return? Once the first question is asked, that great meadow under the mountain opens out, filled with possibility. Of course that potential remains only as long as it remains imagined rather than actual. I propose to examine and even to celebrate doubt—not as a failing or a weakness but as a creative, positive, and hopeful practice, one born out of the obvious gaps and lapses of our knowledge and wisdom, the everyday imperfections of our lives, and a necessary belief that revelation is not yet complete. Yet I hasten to add that all doubt is not created equal. Enervating cynicism, mere disbelief, easy scorn, mindless relativism; all these are of no use. No, the doubt I have in mind is more closely allied to a flexible skepticism (sometimes cheerful, sometimes desperate), to brisk refusal of horned dilemmas and totalitarian claims, and to a humility both modest and bold. To question, often if not always, is the first step toward making something new. This seems strange, wrong, incomplete… what if, instead or also… ? The lesser sorts of doubt are big, these days, with conservatives doubting science and (it seems) any information that threatens their dogmas, with reports of declining church attendance in...
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Sep 30, 2015
O-Heon Gwon 
Open Access