It seems to me that, just as it is in Christianity, where God submits himself to suffer and die as a human being so that humans may recognize the presence of God, an orb of light submits itself to suffer and die in the person of Laura Palmer so that grace may be found even in the most terrible circumstances.
The good, like Dale Cooper, are not deterred by suffering: Laura's troubles with drugs and prostitution are not sour revelations, but rather these details strengthen his impulse to aid and understand, also to shepherd the hearts of others who judge Laura's situation past those troubles to the light that gave her.
There are many versions of this story; many iterations of Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer; each is like a palimpsest, in that older versions sometimes shine through the newer ones. And like any story meant to describe a cosmology -- Gospel or otherwise -- there are type scenes and characterizations, situations and people that are not real in a historical sense but essential components for the moods and messages of the larger tale. I think Audrey Horne wakes up to discover her part in this: In a flash of white light she realizes she's an idea, not an identity -- a supporting idea in an elaborate myth about "the little girl who lived down the lane."
That little girl (Laura) is the figure of innocence in a normal-seeming place, who is on a collision course with horrible trouble. This impact reveals images and messages from a world that watches this world, which can be glimpsed by those who possess a hospitable imagination for such things: characters like Deputy Hawk and Log Lady. And one of those messages is this: there are only a few degrees of separation between a good person and a bad one. Fortunately, the myth has a hero we can measure ourselves by: Dale Cooper.
No matter how many Dale Cooper identities there are -- the perky one, the near catatonic one, the quietly determined one at the end of the series, an aspect they share is utter compassion for Laura in whatever identity she resides -- whether a murdered teenager or middle-aged woman named Carrie in Odessa (still very much present to trouble). The connecting theme in any Cooper is hospitality for the cosmic beauty Laura Palmer represents. These two, Cooper and Laura, are the twin peaks: permanent souls like those permanent features in the landscape. They outlast aberration after aberration -- all the tricks of evil Bob -- and reveal good in unlikely places, like the hearts of the gangster Mitchum brothers.
The one thing all these different stories about Cooper and Laura have in common is the image of the lost highway: the message that navigating a moral life is like navigating a dark highway in the wilderness; it is a long stretch of unseen circumstances where anything might happen -- stay alert!
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