Waiting for God

The comedy of the play Waiting for Godot, as with all absurdist drama, is to be found in the fact that the culmination of the story, though forcefully anticipated, never comes. Samuel Beckett, its author, has the play move from scene to scene leaving the impression that the play's climax will eventually come when Vladimir and Estragon finally meet the person they are waiting for, a man by the name of Godot. The dialogue between the characters teeters on the fence of nonsense with the one thing preventing its fall into absurdity being the hope that when Godot finally comes he will live up to everyone's expectation and reel the whole thing in with a meaningful conclusion. But that hope is lost when Godot never comes. At the end of the play, the story definitively falls off the fence into utter nonsense when it is evident, as the curtains close for the last time, Beckett is not bringing Godot onto stage. Beckett's play is categorized as absurdist because he fails to bring the conclusion of his story into the harbor of meaning with the arrival of Godot. Instead, he leaves it to float upon the ocean of nonsense with Godot's absence from beginning to end.

For many people and, perhaps partly for Beckett himself, Waiting for Godot rings true enough to their experiences of the world, of man, and of God that they see the play more as a tragedy- not a comedy- because they too do not see reality as making any sort of meaningful sense. Instead, they view life as as complete and utter nonsense- put more succinctly they see it as absurd- and by seeing reality as absurd, does the recognition of it as such bring with it a chuckle or a tear? Can one genuinely laugh in a world where all comes to naught or is it not more fitting for him to sob?

It seems that only a person who believes in a God who will cross all t's and dot all i's at the end of time can view a play like Waiting for Godot as a comedy. It does not ring true enough to his ears to scare him into anxiety. The theist certainly does not think he knows the entire picture of the cosmos, but that does not mean he thinks there is no complete picture to be seen eventually. He may not always see why things are the way they are but, he recognizes that his is a low vantage point and has resigned himself to his position.

It is the Christian belief that at the end of time, or to borrow Teilhard de Chardin's phrase at the omega point, when everything that has been rising during the course of created time converges into one final thing, the knowledge of the entire picture formed in the mind of God before time began will become manifest. But this side of the grave- or more accurately this side of the omega point- our vision is like that of the absurdist: it is enshrouded by the finitude of our temporality. In truth, the Christian is often engulfed with the same confusion as the absurdist for he sails in the same boat as him. They both float upon the choppy waves of apparently meaningless experiences because both cannot see the entire course of time; they are distracted by the vast pointlessness apparent on the sea's horizon. Both, striving to find meaning in each individual experience one goes through in life is forced to wonder: What does it all mean? Is there even a point?

Mortal man is as a beginner painter. He is discouraged by the look of a wall with only one coat of paint applied to it. Not seeing what it will look like with a second, third, or even fourth coat, he fails to visualize what the wall will look like when it finally becomes a solid color after more layers added on. Instead, he focuses on the blaring primer that conspicuously sticks out from behind his skim layer of paint. Man lives with a sort of partially-painted panorama of the cosmos and, if he fails to acknowledge his imperfect vision of the world, he will always be doomed to live in absurdity.

But the Christian knows better than to ignore the limits of his vision. He may not see, but he does knows that the room is in the process of being painted and the particular wall upon which he looks is currently incomplete. The pleasures and joys of life alongside its pains and sorrows will only truly make sense in the end when the Painter reveals the entire wall, the entire room, indeed, the entire newly-painted house in its completion. If something does not make sense to the Christian now, it does not give him license to sulk and stare in confusion with the belief that what he beholds at present is meant as the final product. The Painter, he was once told, is currently preparing the place to be inhabited later on (c.f. Jn 14:3).

"For now I see dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully"(1 Cor 13:12). This is the lens by which the Christian mind views the world. This mortal life we now live in is pregnant with the dimness of signs and symbols that necessarily point beyond themselves to a more real picture of things. In the end, we shall see the Face of God and, in that Face, we will also see all our previously experienced joys, pains, and confusions in the splendor of His providence. Without the hope of seeing this Face, we are left confounded in our own limited, myopic view of the world that simply sees things as isolated from the rest of the story.

The Christian believes these isolating walls of vision- walls that make it impossible to see beyond the present moment- will be brought down at the end of time when the reality of the created oneness of the world is juxtaposed to the reality of the uncreated, self-subsisting otherness of God; and as the two are left to gaze at each other in a union like that of marriage, then and only then will our eyes see things not as absurd and meaningless, but complete and utterly fitting. The difference between an absurdism that simply scoffs at the situation of life and the Catholic faith, which judges it by a universal standard, is that the former is a fruitless search to find meaning, the latter is a hopeful enthusiasm that meaning will be found at the end of things; one is disappointed when the Word does not come when he wants Him to, the other patiently awaits with lit lamp that marriage feast where all will be made clear.

The reader of Waiting for Godot loses his spirit when he is confronted with the stark ending of the play; for the expectation of meeting the mysterious character of Godot is shattered when that character never comes. All its settings, all its dialogue, all its characters that come on and off stage, appear as pointless when the whole thing fails to ground itself in the arrival of Godot. All that is left for the reader to do is lose his spirit in such futility; but, perhaps losing one's spirit is not a wholly bad thing...

"And when the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings which he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her" (1 Kings 10:4-6). The queen's breath was taken from her when she finally encountered the splendor of Solomon and his kingdom and saw that it exceeded her expectations with its greatness. She no longer had spirit in her for she had lost it upon her encounter with the king.

Will we too not be similarly dumbfounded when in Heaven we hear: "Behold, something greater than Solomon is here"(Lk 11:31)? Will we also have no spirit in us as we are astonished at the grandeur of the divine King and His court? For the way we have categorized our experiences as meaningful or meaningless in our life will indeed be shattered when we encounter the reality of God. Indeed, our breath will be taken away when we encounter that one Reality that will break us and make us lose heart. But hearts will be broken and we will lose them so that we might receive new ones (c.f. Ez 36:26) with a vision that sees all things as being reconciled to Himself (c.f. Col 1:20). It is a vision that sees the arrival of the much-anticipated Visitor at the end of the story who at last brings to completion the good work He began at the beginning of time.

Perhaps we ought to reconfigure our original image of Beckett's absurdism as a boat failing to come into the harbor of meaning when he chose not to have Godot come. Maybe it would be better to imagine it as a boat that fails to leave the harbor of meaninglessness to sail the waves of God's purposes. For it would be comical to watch such a boat putt around that harbor lost in its course to make its way out to sea. But, as it is with a prudent reading of absurdist literature, if one lingers too long on the shore watching, it loses its comic touch and turns tragic. For one can only occupy himself with laughs for so long as he watches a vessel unsuccessfully navigate its way out to the ocean where it belongs. One's initial laugh will eventually turn into pity for one so lost in his small harbor of confusion.