Monthly Archives: April 2014

My Claim to “Fame”

2 Replies

I really like anonymity, preferring to keep a low profile.  From early grade school I recall the fear of standing out, recalling how in the first grade I “threw” a spelling bee deliberately when I was one of the last two standing lest I should win.  Abraham Maslow wrote of the fear of standing out from the herd, the fear that the head standing taller than the rest is the one most likely to be chopped off.  Of course, I know realize that this motif in my life is not as humble as I used to think it was, but merely a muted expression of an inordinate desire to be “king of the mountain.”  Once again I acknowledge one of the many, many conflicts that rage within my heart and constitute the person I am, the persona of which you see here as “literarylew.”

But, I really like being “small-fry” and I increasingly realize just how important we “small-fry” are in the world.  Not long before I left Arkansas in February, one of the men I in my church that I was very close to, casually commended me for the good job I did as part of the “infrastructure” of the church.  Now this was a large church, full of successful and prominent people in the community, and you can’t imagine just how “small” I was in that infrastructure.  But I recognized that he had described my role there and I was very pleased with it and am currently looking for some place in the infrastructure of my new community, be it in a church or elsewhere.

On this note, I wish to share a beautiful poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about the importance of what I am calling “small fry” people like myself:

 

FAMOUS
The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

 

Waging the War I Am

5 Replies

I quote W. H. Auden’s observation “We wage the war we are” so often that I think it should be the name of my blog. And, it is so readily available for my “usage” because it is so relevant to me personally, revealing to you and the millions who read this blather each day that my heart is a war zone. (Oh, well…hell…let me be truthful, the number is far less than “millions”.!)

My heart has always been a war zone, a battle field where conflicting impulses sought for primacy and dominance in my life. But I could not handle that duress, the “duress” of being an “alive” human being, and solved it very early in my life when I adopted the stance that I now refer to as “literal lew.” “Literal lew” allowed me to live above the fray, ensconced in my analytical cocoon, obsessively “standing in the rear of my affection, out of the shot and danger of desire.” (Hamlet) But even then, looking back on my life, the underlying tension and duress was trying to seep through, just as it did with Macbeth who lamented, “my dull brain is (was) racked by things forgotten.”

But in my mid-thirties, “literal lew” began his “Damascus road” conversion, a process which is still underway and will always be underway; for spirituality is not an accomplished fact but a process, the “process” of being human. So now I am very conscious of this duress that I earlier could not handle and it comes to me in the form of…for want of a better term…anxiety. Rollo May called this “existential anxiety” and said it is the experience that we “feel” when the battle between a basic drive in the heart comes to the surface—“to be” or “not to be.” This is the conflict between the Spirit of God leading us to authenticity, i.e. “be-ing” and the antithetical drive to remain inauthentic, desperately clutching our fig leaf and trying to cover our nakedness.

I just recently realized that what is happening is that my ego, that part of our heart which I so often castigate, is gaining maturity. With this maturity, my ego is not so “full of itself” and can be a bit more humble, allowing the experience of reality to seep in. (I like to think of this as “the Spirit of God” seeping in.) My ego can now handle this duress which used to scare the hell out of me though as I make this assertion, I’ve given pause and want to add, “Knock on wood!” Another dimension of this ego maturity is that my mind can now more or less comfortably live with contradictions, realizing that in my heart diametrically opposite things are present; such as, I am “good” and “bad” at the same time, ultimately meaning that I simply “am.”

The most important dimension of this ego maturity which I purport to be finding is that I can now handle the tension and at the same time realize that what is most important is not my internal tension, not the “war” inside, but what I do in the outside “real” world which always leads me to the wisdom of the Buddhist notion of “chopping wood, carrying water.” Though the internal machinations of the heart are powerful and important, I find that I can remember to focus most of the time on the mundane responsibilities of day to day life, tending hearth and home– loving my wife, doggies, friends, and family–and hoping that my feeble efforts each day will make the world a bit more hospitable for others.

 

“Eyes Wide Shut” opened!

1 Reply

One of my favorite blogging friends is a beautiful young woman who has an equally beautiful little girl to whom she is obviously devoted.  (See http://hastywords.wordpress.com) She wrote this morning of the importance of “seeing” with feeling rather than merely with cold, brutal “cognition.”  And I’m still learning to “see” this way myself and, let me say, it is disconcerting to say the least.

 

Here are her thoughts:

 

You are missing the bigger picture if you are using only your eyes to see.

All of us, every single one of us, are more than what we appear to be. We are all beautiful and ugly in a million different ways in every second we breathe. When we are simply an image branded with likes and dislikes we make enemies of our friends. When we learn to see with our hearts we learn to make friends of our enemies. We are love and hate, we are perfectly imperfect, we are all strong and weak. We are all a story behind the picture that eyes alone can’t perceive.
I don’t like stereo typing but it happens, before you start slinging careless words remember stereotypes are meant for groups of people not to castrate individuals one at a time. None of us can be stereotyped…not one!

 

 

GOD IS IN THE WATER

2 Replies

Taos, New Mexico  continues to teach me. I have long since learned to “pay attention” to what we think and do in our life, especially when it is a significant change. When I arrived here in early February, one of the first things that serendipitously offered itself to me was a weekly get-together with those who would enjoy reading and discussing Karl Jung. Shortly thereafter I “knee deep” in dream work again and paying attention to how the unconscious was guiding me and my wife. And I began to understand what this whimsical move to a new state at age 62, leaving friends and family behind. It was a “cutting of the cord” of sorts and an opportunity to explore worlds unknown.

One of the first things I noted was, “Where are the white people? Where are the white people?” Brown-skinned people appeared to predominate i the population, Hispanic and Native American. And for the first time in my life I experienced “being different” in terms of skin color though this “difference” is not as significant as I felt. Statistically, there are many “honkies” just like me. But it was interesting and emotionally provocative to feel in a minority. It was also provocative to see and feel the whole of a different culture and to take up residence in a house far different than that to which I was accustomed to.

There are many, many differences present which are teaching me. But I want to focus on one of them, the Native American presence here which is reflected in architecture, art, and….skin color, all of which is beautiful. Present just north of Taos is the Taos Pueblo which dates back over a thousand years. This Pueblo is officially not part of the United States and has its own legal and educational system. For more information, see (http://www.taospueblo.com)
And there are many other Native American tribes represented here which contributes significantly to the cultural atmosphere of the region and the state.

Just two weeks ago I attended a poetry reading at our local literary society, SOMOS, Society of the Muse of the Southwest. I was privileged to hear a lovely young Cheyenne woman read several poems and was just stunned at the wisdom she offered. Here is one poem that she recently published on Face Book.”

GOD IS IN THE WATER
by Lyla June Johnson

When I close my eyes at night
I can feel the rock being cut open
by water.

I hear a grandfather song
and it sounds like sand
walking down the river bottom.

In this song they talk about how even
the mighty canyon rivers began as
a meandering stream.

Beneath the gentle waters there are people.
Not people like you and me.
Stone people.

When I close my eyes at night
I am one of them
and God is the water.

Over lifetimes She eats at me
until I am polished and smooth.

She teaches me
about being gentle and persistent,
about patience and commitment.

Her voice
hums in my blood
quiet as a stream in the night
and it is a song about how
we are all
just
so loved.

When I close my eyes she says to me
in trickles and bubbles:

“Journeys.
Take them.
Try to remember who you are along the way.
I have nothing for you but these words.
Take them with you
and I will see you again when you arrive
at the ocean’s throne
as one million kernels of sand”

The eagles dip their talons into Her soft body
and pull a fleshmeal
from the water.

They sing this grandfather song with her
and it sounds like feathers
cutting into the sky.

It is a song about how even
hatred surrenders
to wonder.

Breaking my heart apart like
a stubborn puzzle of granite.

Even the hardest doubts and sorrows crumble
into bits and give way to
Her infinite grace.

And who knew that
growth can sometimes mean
standing in the wind until
everything we think we own
is torn away from us
and replaced with a weightlessness
so profound that we can’t not cry
tears of absolute praise
and run all around the river banks shouting to the
the minnows and the cattails and the crawdads
about the truth of beauty?

The truth of a God that
breathes through the trees
weaves winter from water and night
weaves bodies from dust and light
and carries us down the river of life over
and over until we finally understand
the meaning of forever.

In the language of the stones there is
no word for mistake.

Only the complete understanding of what it
means to be a beloved son or daughter.

I am the rock
and God is the water.

 

I would suggest you look her up on FB. She and many other young men and women have much to offer this world and are now establishing their roots and getting ready to shake up this dog-and-pony show that we are “strutting and fretting” in.

Belated Easter Thoughts

2 Replies

Easter Sunday always brings back pleasant memories though always tinged with sadness for so often my dear momma had to work. And then, in retrospect, there was the “hell fire and damnation” emphasis of the sermon and the obsessive, self-indulgent emphasis of the passion of Christ….recently vividly illustrated in the Mel Gibson movie. Oh, I believe in the “death, burial, and resurrection of Christ” but I’m now mature enough to venture into the work of hermeneutics and interpret it for myself. I now see the obsessive emphasis of Jesus’ suffering on the cross….because of our complicit presence in the “eating of the apple”…does not have to be taken literally and in fact, should not be. I would never minimize the suffering of Jesus as he was certainly, like “moi”, a human being (at least) and torture hurt. I do not like pain and would not have the courage to endure what he did when, according to American hymnology, “He could have called ten thousand angels, to destroy the world, and set him free.” Jesus knew that life involved pain and offered to us “the way of Cross” in which, per W. H. Auden, we must climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.”

But, while Jesus was being tortured and humiliated on the cross, he uttered the incredible words, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” My “guru”, Richard Rohr, in recent months explained that Jesus was saying, “Hey, they are not conscious. They do not know what they are doing. Forgive them.” Now I have been mistreated, misunderstood, and have “suffered” to some degree in my life. But my “sufferings” were always of the neurotic variety but I have yet to find the courage to offer the words to oblivion, “Father forgive them. For they know not what they did.” Why not? I certainly realize and understand that “they” were conscious and didn’t know what they were doing and their “mistreatment” of “moi” was so minimal, weighing so heavily on me only because I was a “highly sensitive person”, meaning
I was “thin-skinned” and vulnerable. So, why don’t I let the memories of “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” just fade into oblivion? Well, I think that Shakespeare had the answer to his own question, suggesting that we would “prefer to cling to our present ills than fly to others that we know not of.” In other words, our present misery…or “discomfort”…is preferable than letting it go and deigning to encounter the mystery of life part of which will be “pain” of some sorts.

Twenty years ago a psychiatrist, Scott Peck, offered incredible wisdom in his book, “The Road Less Traveled.” In the opening chapter of that book he noted, “Neureosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Neurosis is a maladaptive response to the difficulties of life, some of which are very intense.. Likewise, psychosis…or worse…is an even less adaptive to these same circumstances or perhaps even trauma. Now psychotics are not really capable of forgiving their malefactors. But neurotics are very capable. So, why not? Why do they cling to their pain? Why do “I” cling to my pain? Well, I have to follow my own reasoning and admit that I just don’t have the courage to abandon the neurotic structure that has comforted me all these years and in the primordial Absence that follows, dare to make a choice that can be
“Redemptive”,  not just for “moi” but for those that are nearest and dearest to me. In other words, do I dare to be “real” or, better yet, “Real.”  As T.S. Eliot asked “Do I dare disturb the universe?” It comes down to “getting over ourselves” which for some of us is industrial strength neurosis. Do we dare to escape the safe cacoon of our anguish and engage the rest of the world?

Nah, nah! Personally, I prefer my lofty thoughts and the smug satisfaction that I am in control. But then I, again today, avoid the redemptive power of the Resurrection which is always available in any spiritual tradition though expressed in different imagery.

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

6 Replies

“Scare the world. be exactly what you say you are and tell the truth.” Someone posted this simple little admonishment on Facebook last week and it grabbed me, making me think of T. S. Eliot’s famous question, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” For, if I ever gain the courage to become authentic and act and speak out of that authenticity, I will “scare the world” and “disturb the universe.”

Now, the “world” and “universe” that I will startle will be very small for I am not a person of note; or, as I like to facetiously put it, I am merely a “small clod of cholesterol in the mainstream of life.” The first universe that I must disturb is the private one that I live in, that narrow prism through which I view the world which, if unexamined, is but a prison. And, if I can find the courage to experience the disturbance of “awareness” this cannot but have an impact on my thought, speech, behavior and consequently my little corner of the world.  (W. H. Auden noted, “O blessed be bleak Exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”)

The key is awareness. The key is realizing that we “have eyes to see but see not” and “ears to hear but hear not” and if we ever understand that…in the depths of our heart, and do so with feeling, it will give us pause. For then we will understand that we will never be able to do anything but “see through a glass darkly.” And to see, and feel, this “darkly” dimension of our perspective field is very humbling and even frightening. It has been, and is, for me for I was taught that I could see things objectively.

Authenticity is a dangerous phenomena for the world as it mechanically, relentlessly grinds on day to day under the collective dictate of “the way things are.” The unexamined life is always driven by unquestioned assumptions which are merely those which we have imbibed from the little corner of the world in which we were born and have not dared to question. And as Adrienne Rich once noted, “We cannot begin to know who we are until we question the assumptions in which we are drenched.”

A Dalliance with Meaninglessness

2 Replies

My “church” yesterday was a discussion-group with some other retired people who are associated with the local Unitarian church. The announced topic for this occasion was, “How to find meaning in your life.”

Well, let me explain. This group was comprised of highly educated and successful men and women who were “imports” to Taos, New Mexico from various parts of the country. So it didn’t take but a few minutes for “literallew” to stir and want to announce with resolution and ardor, “Back to the bible! God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” Of course I didn’t as I too do not look at life through the narrow prism of conservative thought and see…and feel…the ambiguity inherent in life. For an hour and a half we sincerely and honestly shared re our struggles for meaning through the course of our lives, struggles which continue today. Initially “literallew” did feel the leering glare of meaningless and want to revert to “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” But as the discussion deepened, my spirits actually lifted as we wrestled in the morass of meaning/meaninglessness.

On the way home I mused with my wife about why this discussion had lifted my spirits. And it was readily apparent—I felt connection! I realized…and felt…that I was in the midst of other human beings who had, and still do, wrestle with the same doubts and fears that I do. And there is a “nakedness” that is apparent in moments like this but a very appropriate “nakedness,” simple acknowledgement of human doubts and fears. And it is this “nakedness” that ultimately unites us all. Beneath the surface of our “strutting and fretting,” beneath the veneer of civilization, we are vulnerable, fragile little boys and girls who hunger to know that we are not alone.

This discussion demonstrated “faith” as I now see and feel faith to be. Now certainly many of these people would not describe themselves as persons of faith and even more so, certainly not “Christian.” Faith is the word I wish to use to describe their courage to live their life purposefully when life often appears to her without purpose.

Here is a perspective on the matter from T. S. Eliot in his Four Quartets:

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.

More Blasphemy!

1 Reply

As I increasingly find comfort using my literary license to approach Holy Writ, I find that I’m leaving behind almost daily the carcass of sacred cows. And it dawned on me recently, as “literal lew” whispered to me again, that my view of faith appears to invalidate that of the people I grew up with. In the childish mind of “literal lew,” those people are “going to hell” while “I am saved because I believe the ‘right’ way.” For in that mind set, there is only one way to believe, one way to think, one way to feel and if you don’t comply you will immediately find yourself banished to the prison of “them,” not allowed to bask in the comfort of being one of “us.” In other words, you won’t have the comfort of belonging to the tribe.

But I don’t think that Jesus had in mind rigidly carving the world up into categories like “good”, “bad”, “us”, “them”, “saved” and “unsaved.” Jesus came to tell us that we were free and always had been as He was “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.” He was the embodiment, the “en-fleshment”, or incarnation, of a freedom that had been written into the depths of the human heart from the very beginning, a freedom that at that moment was finding an expression in terms of time and space. So, Jesus said, “You are free but freedom is very risky and takes a lot of courage. In fact, you will have to die. You will have die to your pre-conceptions about everything including your faith. But you don’t have to and I won’t make you. You are free to do as you choose. In fact, you are free to take my teachings and turn them into another version of the same bondage you are under now if you wish…possibly even under my name…but that is your choice.”

The conservative believers that gave rise to “literarylew” were and are just as saved as he is. The story of Jesus is that we are all forgiven, we are all free, but that freedom finds expression in our life only if we are willing to die, only if we are willing to allow His Spirit to loosen the grip of our ego a bit even in the area of our faith. But when the ego is threatened, it is very skilled at calling in reinforcements and fending off the assault as disillusionment is too painful. As W. H. Auden noted, “When Truth met him, and held out her hand, he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

NOTE — See I have blasphemed again! “Universalism” is verboten in the faith I was presented with as a child.

“Closed canon” equals a “closed mind/heart”

2 Replies

n the “closed canon” reflects a refusal to venture beyond the confines of one rational consciousness, or even to consider the possibility that such an enterprise is possible. Emily Dickinson beautifully described this encapsulated, endungeoned mind/heart in the mid-nineteenth century with the following poem:

The Soul selects her own society,

Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

Her choice of words describing selective attention– “closing the valves of attention like stone”— is intensely vivid and cold. This is the quintessential person that Eric Hoffer had in mind when he wrote, “The True Believer.” These people live in a hermetically-sealed prison and will probably gravitate toward a social/denominational group in which people of a similar persuasion are similarly ensconced on “the heath of the agreeable, where we bask, agreed upon what we will not ask, bland, sunny, and adjusted by the light of the collected lie.”  (W.H. Auden) This is the “group lie” or “group think” which sometimes is described as “epistemic closure.”

This rigid certainty has infiltrated to conservative right of the American political spectrum which is replete with hyper-conservative religiosity. This close mindedness gave rise to the ludicrous phenomena in 2012 of running a presidential campaign whose slogan, upon close scrutiny, was simply, “We hate Obama.” In in the budget battle of last fall, more than one of them were quoted saying, “We are right” on the issue and in a key Republican committee meeting on the issue they concluded with prayer and a spontaneous singing of the hymn, “Amazing Grace.” And it is no accident that this wing of the party is vehemently against scientists’ warning of global warming and are anti-science in general. They might well be saying, “God said,I believe it, that settles it.”

Life is uncertain. No matter how much we try to deny it, we are extremely vulnerable little critters whose biblically assured “threescore and ten” might prove considerably shorter at any moment. But it is this vulnerability that makes us alive, that reflects a “quickened” spirit, which is what Jesus had in mind with his observation that to find our life we must lose it.  As Norman Brown put it, “To be is to be vulnerable.”

 

 

 

 

Opening up the “Closed Canon”

2 Replies

One of the bedrocks of the conservative faith of my youth was the “closed canon.” This meant that the Bible was the “final” word of God and must be taken completely and used as a rule book. This gave rise to a popular bromide, “God said it, believe it, that settles it.”  This mind set left no room for heart felt, intuitive interpretation of the scripture as the Bible was not seen as literature but as “fact.” This approach to “the Word” was static, allowing no dynamic flow of spirit to take place and preventing the Pauline “Word” which is “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

This belief presents a Word which is only a word, a mere “object” and not a dynamic process. Furthermore, it reflects the belief in a static, objectified god who is not really a “God” but a mere “thing” among other “things.” This belief also reflects the materialistic drift of our culture for the past few hundred years in which mankind sees himself as separate and distinct from the world, not realizing that in this uncritical approach to his faith he is seeing and experiencing himself as separate and distinct from God. “God” is not a “thing”. I am not a “thing.” I am a process and even here, at this moment, I am merely discoursing about another “process” which I prefer to describe as a “Process.” As W. H. Auden noted, individually and collectively, we are but a “process in a process in a field that never closes.”

But, alas and alack, I suddenly find myself up to my halo in still another blasphemy—relativism! When you begin to see the Word of God as a dynamic process that can never be “closed”, you have opened Pandora’s box and various dimensions of “uncertainty” make their escape. The doubt, anxiety, and vulnerability that begins to seep into the heart explains why the certainty was so rigid. It kept the “demons” at bay. But, until these “demons” are released, they live in the hidden recesses of our heart and inevitably lead to projections onto the outside world. Our beliefs reveal as much about our own heart as anything else. When you see a “true believer”, you are face to face with a scared little child who is terrorized by the fragility of his little life. He has glommed onto dogma and can never let it go without experiencing some of that terror which predicates his existence in the world.