On Supposedly Seeing Signs

Three times in the last two weeks friends have asked me whether I am going to return to stand up comedy. (For the record, I would like to. Just a matter, as always, of finding the time.)

When the second friend asked me, and I told her that she was the second person, she replied somewhat playfully, "See, it could be a sign."

I found myself surprised by my response, which was truthful, but so long as it remained publicly unspoken, more tentative: "I don't believe in signs anymore."

I have been pondering the implications of this, my belief, for some time now. (Note, this too, is a "belief.") A belief born of what I would call a personal backlash against my own pious self deceptions for many years.

Among these pious self deceptions: seeing signs about whom to date, what career to pursue, or even that my mother was not going to die of cancer at 48, as she did. (I saw signs for that on bumper stickers that happened to show up on cars at just the "right time." Her church friends saw other signs and gladly interpreted them for me both before and after her death.)

Does such a skeptical belief, born of dissatisfaction and sometimes even disgust with a particular culture's understanding of how God works in a particular time, and the wasted time it caused me, make me irreligious?

I would like to think not. I would like to think that I am looking for a more pure form of connection with the ultimate reality. And yet, I wonder, can one expect a pure intuition of the ultimate reality while living any kind of normal life? Is it really possible not to look for signs?

Maybe there are more pure "signs" than ambiguous bumper stickers seen at just the right time? For example, the beautiful face of a child. Is it a sign of God's love? Or, my persevering wife?

I have frequently wondered whether my new found semiotic deconstruction has a stopping point. Or, does it obliterate everything that is significant in my life -- everything that would mediate between me and the First Cause.

I have often wondered whether I can make decisions anymore, given this skepticism. Is any direction in life "important?" I have become deeply skeptical of having any "enthusiasms" about anything. This is very unlike what I used to be.

And yet, the strongest enthusiasm that I have is love. I shudder to think that I could part with the enthusiasm for my child. Yet, I shudder a little less to think that buying into the child as sign means I have to buy into the bumper sticker too.

Perhaps all signs that come forward to mediate must themselves be mediated and tested? But where does that stop (thank you, Charles Peirce), and what is to stop the self deception one would impose on any sign? Grace? (Which we often "discover" in signs.)

I don't know.