The Fox's Secret

How do you answer a question like that? Well it’s like…it’s like having the ground taken out from under you. So like floating? No, not really. Like…rushing toward something, knowing it will hurt. Hurt. What is hurt? What is rushing? What is toward?

What is it like to fall?

But the question came to me in a dream. From a baby. Not a real baby . A dream baby. A spirit baby. As the others (who had been watching the baby) drifted away to let the baby sleep, I remained behind, wondering if this baby was having a dream within my dream. Then it opened its eyes and asked, “What is it like to fall?” Read more »

As you might already know, I’m a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at UCSB.  In many ways, I ended up here as a result of two dreams–the first one I described here.  The second dream is one I’m sure to blog about in the near future.  It seemed appropriate, therefore, to utilize those dreams in my academic work.  After all, it is my belief that our dreams can help us understand and illustrate in a narrative way the religious and philosophical truths that we are wrestling with while awake.

With that in mind, I have decided to post here on the site, in its entirety, an academic paper I wrote in which I used my dream about rebelling against God at the end of the world to explore the idea of “conscience” as it can be found in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, as well as in the theology of Augustine.

What follows is not light reading.  But I think you’ll enjoy it, especially if any of those figures are of interest to you.  You’ll also learn a few more biographical details about The Fox Foot, including why he still fears putting cottage cheese and peaches into the same bowl.

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