What do rocks represent? What do trees represent? What do mountains represent? Do they symbolize something? Do they have some purpose in that they are intentionally working to produce a future result? Do the waves washing on the shore and making strange patterns of foam on the sand have some intention? Are they symbolizing anything? No. But then, why does the artist so often copy the forms of nature? Surely he does it because he is paying a tribute to a certain kind of meaninglessness, a certain kind of joyous purposelessness in nature. And this fact of our being constantly fascinated by the freedom of natural forms from having to mean something, from having to make sense—that is a kind of relief to us.
There’s a kind of prejudice against wandering in our world. What happens if you go out in a big city nowadays, and you’re just wandering, you’re going nowhere, and a cop stops you? “Where are you going?” “I wasn’t going anywhere.” “Ah, don’t tell me that!” People who aren’t going anywhere, people who are not certain where they’re going, people who are just wandering are regarded by our civilization as rather dangerous.
When our constant attitude to the world is that we want to make something of it, we want to force it to make sense, we want to force it to make order, then, to that extent, the world hides its meaning from us.
Isn’t it the historic ancient doctrine of Christianity that the true purpose (or the true end) of man is to behold the vision of God? And then you might ask: what is the purpose of that? If people find themselves in heaven face to face with God, do they look at God and say, “So what?” No! According to our ancient Christian symbolism, they join with the saints and the angels in singing Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Well, the word “Alleluia” once meant something, but what it means now is celestial whoopie: it’s an expression of sheer joy. It’s a babble. It’s like the sound of a brook. And we love to listen to the babble of a brook because it’s a joyous sound that just doesn’t mean anything at all. You see, God in that sense does not need to mean anything, because he is complete. He has no future purpose to fulfill, he’s not a symbol signifying something.