A Divine Lent #6: Hold tight, there is no other way

A daily reflection during Lent on Dante's The Divine Comedy.

I'm jumping ahead 30 cantos, sparing the details of most of Hell.  The main purpose of this series of Lenten blogs is to experience the redemptive process in Dante's journey through Purgatory.  Hell can wait.

In Canto 34, the last of Inferno, Virgil has led Dante through all nine levels of Hell, now in the deepest part of the last circle, a vast sea of ice trapping the souls of traitors.  They travel to the center of frozen lake to see Lucifer, trapped in the ice, chewing on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius in each of his three mouths.  Satan is a huge, hideous beast, with six bat-like wings and three faces.

What follows has such high production value that I'm surprised Hollywood has not used it.  Up until this point, Virgil seems to be a Gandalf-like figure with Dante as the naive and timid Bilbo Baggins.  In this canto, though, Virgil seems more like Dwayne Johnson in a new action movie.  He has Dante climb onto his back, hold onto his neck, and just at the right moment jumps onto Satan's body.

I held on to his neck, as he told me to,

while he watched and waited for the time and place,

and when the wings were stretched out just enough,

he grabbed on to the shaggy sides of Satan;

then downward, tuft by tuft, he made his way

between the tangled hair and frozen crust.

Dante returns to the theme from the first canto, the need to go through the dark valley rather than up out of it, but takes it to the extreme.  It's time to come face-to-face(s) with the source of misery, in a great leap embrace it, cling to it, and move even further down.  The action continues:

When we had reached the point exactly where

the thigh begins, right at the haunch's curve,

my guide, with strain and force of every muscle,

turned his head toward the shaggy shanks of Dis

and grabbed the hair as if about to climb--

I thought we were heading back to Hell.

As Virgil explained later to Dante, the had reached the turning point, the center of the earth, so Virgil (a.k.a. The Rock) used every ounce of strength to re-orient them 180 degrees so they could climb out in the other direction.  By going to the very center of misery, the climb out of Hell can begin.

"Hold tight, there is no other way," he said,

panting, exhausted, "only by these stairs

can we leave behind the evil we have seen."

Dante is totally disoriented and confused by the whole process.  He has lost his sense of direction and of time.  He was unable to realize that his escape from Hell had finally begun.

During Lent, I examine my shortcomings, what I have done and what I have left undone, to affect change in my own life.  While it is easy to gloss over faults as minor or to blame shortcomings on extenuating circumstances, I need to come face-to-face with myself, with what is on the inside, at its deepest level.

I am currently experiencing this process within my professional life.  I could easily rationalize my current state of unemployment by quoting the woes of the industry, identify as a victim of restructuring, claiming expectations were unreasonable, or smugly saying that no one else could have done better.  Before I can truly move on, though, I need to grab onto my own personal role in the matter, my contribution (or lack thereof) to the situation, my personal responsibility.  Only then can I clearly process what type of job would be ideal for me and what changes I need to make in myself whether skills, capabilities, or motivations.  It is a disorienting process, but it is needed to successful climb out of this situation.

I think the same applies even more to issues of faith.  What keeps me from being more bold?  What keeps me from caring more?  A dive into the heart of those issues is needed to work through them.

May we all this Lent go through this tough process of self-examination.  I like Dante's attitude once he realizes he's on his way up:

We never thought of resting while we climbed.

With this last line of Inferno, we know the climb is successful:

and we came out to see once more the stars.