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“Trust me.”

We heard the phrase only once, but we saw the words–in deeds that risked lives–two dozen times in the space of forty-four minutes.  Tonight’s episode was one of the richest in the six years of this most compelling of television programmes, for tonight we were obliged to confront dangers of mind, soul, and spirit.  This night everyone on-Island and off risked everything–and gained rewards even more precious than a wedding ring kissed by tear-stained lips.  This was an episode to savour.

Birth and Rebirth

Aaron has identity even before his birth.  This is a disturbing and wonderful and deeply mysterious truth, made more profound by the chilling then comforting presence of Ethan Goodspeed at Claire’s bedside.   Apparently, whether Claire gives birth on-Island or off, Ethan must lead the prenatal preparations.  This revelation was one of several instances of relational inevitability dramatised over the last three hours.  The recurring theme of inevitability seems fresh with each occurrence, seems a necessary aspect of the narrative.

His name must be Aaron.  “I don’t know why I said it,” Claire says to Kate.  “It was like I knew it or something.”  He is Aaron because his own flesh-and-blood mother must raise him.  And somehow, we know, even before Claire knocks on the door of the adopting family’s house, there is no way they can adopt the baby.  Of course the woman’s husband left her–the world is course-correcting in such a way that Claire, whether she likes it or not, will have to raise the baby herself.  That is her destiny, but more importantly, this is Aaron’s destiny.

The most terrible and exciting aspect of this entire sequence of scenes is the fact that every facet of the strange inevitability around Aaron revolves around the truth that he must return to the Island.  Yet we know, in the spacetime inhabited by fugitive Kate and pregnant Claire and the pleasant Dr. Goodspeed, the Island is submerged under a thousand metres of water.  There is no Island to which Aaron can return, and in this spacetime, he was never even on the Island.  Yet the connection to the Island is undeniable.  Aaron is tethered to the Island by an umbilical stronger and more real than the one connecting him to his mother.

We believed at first Sayid to have been reborn.  In the physical sense, perhaps he is not.  If we trust our intuitions about the interaction last week between Hurley and Miles, it seems clear the seer from Encino knew Sayid was never dead, even if he didn’t say so in as many words to Hurley.  If he was never dead, he cannot be reborn.

Yet we find ourselves aware of new life in Sayid.  When Dogen and Jack have their private talk, the Temple Master tells Jack he must give Sayid the green pill.  Jack demands to know the contents of the pill, and when Dogen says Jack must give Sayid the medicine, for the sake of his life, Jack counters with “He already died.”  This seems a rare and strange place for a healer to place himself.  Jack seems to be hoisting a list of ingredients to a higher plane than Sayid’s life.  Dogen expresses concern about Sayid’s “infection”, while Jack insists on broadening his knowledge of herbal medicines, and all the while, a man who miraculously regained consciousness and complete healing of wounds is dismissed as one who “already died.”  The strange discussion seems askew, the priorities grossly misplaced.

But this is not the only instance of Sayid’s life being accorded less value than abstract concepts.  When Jack presents Sayid with the green pill, Sayid’s response is Biblical:  “I only care about who I trust.  So if you want me to take that pill, Jack, I will.”

This is breathtaking in its audacity.  Neither Sayid nor Jack knows the contents of the pill.  Sayid places unrestrained faith in Jack, and now a crushing burden falls on the healer.  This is no longer abstract.  Sayid may die if he takes the pill.  The only useful question at this point in the episode:  What is Jack Shephard made of?  What value does he place on life, on trust, on knowledge?

As I watch Jack throw the pill in his mouth and swallow, my jaw drops open and I cannot process the event through my shock.  The sequence of events remains askew.  The problem is not that Jack is placing higher value on Sayid’s life than his own.  The problem for me, as I struggle to make sense of this most intense scene, is that Jack is not placing greater value on Sayid’s life.  Something else, apparently something carrying an importance more profound even than life or death, is at play.

Jack couldn’t give Sayid the pill.  He was planning to do so.  He had every intention of doing so.  He resolved to tell Sayid the complete truth, and that was what he did.  But then Sayid said those words:  “I care only about who I trust.  So if you want me to take that pill, Jack, I will.”

The Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible relates a story about a pagan woman named Ruth who shows kindness to a Hebrew woman named Naomi.  When it is time for them to go their separate ways, Naomi encourages Ruth to return to her pagan village.

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

Ruth just gave up everything:  family, village, her former gods, everything she ever knew–turned her back on all of it, and gave herself over to Naomi and her God.  Ruth discovered something of greater value than even her own life.

Jack couldn’t give Sayid the pill.  Not because he valued Sayid’s life.  He certainly did value the man’s life, and his own.  But life did not carry greatest value in this scene.  Jack was able to risk his own life by swallowing that pill because he placed greater importance on something other than his own life.  Jack placed highest value on the trust Sayid had placed in him.

Sayid and Jack place greater value on their trust of each other than on their own lives.

This is audacious.  Rare.  This is story that burns deep into the soul, engages every faculty of spirit and sense and wonder.

With the intensity of this scene we begin to get a glimpse into the innermost core of LOST.  This is not a show about good versus evil.  It is not about free will versus determinism.  It is not about time travel or electromagnetic anomalies or spacetime displacement.  It is about our very humanity.  It is about who we are at the very centre of our conscious selves.

Ruth and Naomi

I was too thick-headed to pick up on the Ruth and Naomi references after the first viewing of  the Sayid/Jack scenes.  The writers must have known about lab rats like me who spend too much time with beakers and flasks and not nearly enough time with books and ideas, because they were thoughtful enough to give us Ruth and Naomi in the flesh, in the form of Claire and Kate.

Kate is getting back to her roots in both spacetime locations.  It is as if she is back among us after three or so years away.  Kate is decisive, bold, and maybe most importantly, she has a heart again.  It is her heart that drives the scenes with Claire.  Whether on the Island or off, Kate has always had a place in her heart for Claire, and this certainly must be taken as yet another instance of her connection to Aaron, and therefore, his connection to the Island.

When Kate opens Claire’s bag and finds the photograph, Kate seems to feel more than shame.  If there is only shame, she has no reason to track down the woman and help her.  She feels connection.  She is driven to connect with this woman.

The interaction between the two women is as rich in its own way as the higher-stakes scenes between Jack and Sayid.  Claire ought to be frightened by the reckless fugitive who thinks nothing of pointing loaded guns at anyone crossing her path.  Yet Claire feels endeared to the woman and her genuine desire to help.  When Claire asks Kate to accompany her to the door of the adoptive parents’ home, we know the connection is firm.  And when they dash to the hospital, Claire protects her new friend.

“Would you believe me if I said I was innocent?”

This marked the second time in a single episode that a major character said something that could not possibly have been uttered.  It implied too much, it went too deep.  Claire doesn’t hesitate.  “Of course I would.”

Kate’s silence hits me like a sledgehammer.  She cannot possibly claim innocence, because she is not innocent.  So she can say nothing.

When I realise what is happening between Kate and Claire I don’t think of Ruth and Naomi.  The parallel that hits me first is King David at the Cave of Adullam.  It is here that David expresses a keen desire for water from a well in Bethlehem.  Unfortunately, the city is occupied by his enemy, and he goes to bed ruing his misfortune.  But the next day, three of his lieutenants come to him, water skin in hand.  They risked their lives, somehow winding their way through the city and past hundreds of enemy soldiers, and brought up water from his favourite well.  David is stunned, left speechless.  Having no adequate response, he tells the men he cannot thank them.  No thanks from any human, not even from a king, can match the greatness of their deed.  He takes the only possible action:  he pours the water on the ground as an offering.

Thesis

Aaron has identity even before his birth.  Even before he is conscious of anything in life, he has purpose and drive, he has not one but two women watching over him, as well as a kindly doctor who is destined to prepare him for birth.  He is destined to return to the Island.

Somehow, Aaron has value even before he enjoys the full measure of life.

Claire and Kate share a bond that supersedes any previous concern.  They protect each other, even when in doing so they place their own lives in potential danger.  Like Ruth and Naomi, they will never leave each other now.  Their bond is stronger than life itself.

Jack and Sayid are willing to give up their own lives, but not their trust in each other.  They are bound by realities stronger than life itself.

LOST is about the elements of our humanity that precede and supersede life itself.  Our common humanity has a value greater than life.  LOST argues that there must be a fertile ground into which we place the fragile seeds of our human existence.  This ground is rich in trust, empathy, compassion, respect, and the desire to serve the needs of others.  This is our perfection.  This is what Jacob seeks for those he brings to the Island, even if he doesn’t know himself the full measure of this perfection.

LOST tells us if we do not form bonds like those of Jack and Sayid, if we do not respect, if we do not have compassion, we will likely end up in Widmore’s camp, wearing the black uniform of Stuart Radzinsky, ready at a moment’s notice to enforce our desires over the needs, even over the lives of others.  Or we may end up in the MIB’s camp, seeing in law, discipline, and judgment the pinnacle of human perfection.  Or we may end up in the dreamer’s camp–with Jacob, coming to believe that there are no laws, save the seeking after perfection.

LOST is about a world gone awry.  The Island is split between the ungrounded followers of Jacob, the harsh law imposed by the MIB, and the occasional self-serving visitors like Charles Widmore and the Dharma Initiative.

It has become a game.

Two sides:  One Jacob, one the Man in Black.  One says human beings are essentially good, that we seek perfection.  One says human beings are corrupt, that we can only be judged for our sins.

In the world of LOST–on the Island–they’re both wrong.  Human beings are good and bad.  But our humanity is only good.  It is our humanity–the fertile soil of our existence as complete human beings–that is worthy above all of our most reverent attention–even to the point of sacrificing health and life to secure for the common good.

PM.

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