Category Archives: mindfulness

Oscar Wilde “Playing” with Reality

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I am currently reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. I have seen the movie years ago and loved it; but the novel itself has so much more to offer. Wilde has an as astute grasp of human culture in the 19th century and could eloquently convey which way the winds were blowing. He, and other astute individuals, certainly had some insight into what was going to unfold in the 20th century.

For example, modern science was toying with human culture at the time and leaving it in the throes of relativism, ambivalence, and uncertainty. Truth, and even reality itself, came to be seen as paradoxical, leading Wilde to declare in this novel, “The way of paradoxes is the way of Truth. To test reality, we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.” T. S. Eliot would later echo this perspective on truth, declaring that to know truth, or reality, we must “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.” (The Four Quartets)

So, today, a century plus from Wilde’s death, we live in the tumult of what he, “modern” science of his day, and literary license would produce. We wrestle with the question of, “What is real and what is unreal?” In my country (the United States) I feel that this is the essential issue that divides the country, that is wreaking havoc on our political system, and even spreading confusion within the erstwhile hermetically sealed “safe” confines of the Republican party.

And, ultimately I feel we must discover that “Real” is apprehended only by faith and once apprehended, we have to realize that we don’t actually “apprehend” it at all. We only intuit it, “faith” it, and hope for it. But, that does not diminish the power of its Presence. It merely humbles us, reminding us of the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.” But this Presence is with us, and in us, each day as we seek to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”

 

The Essence of Religion, Part Deux!

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In “The Essence of Religion” posted several days ago, I shared a lovely poem by Hafiz about what religion is always about.  To sum it up, in the Words of Jesus, “Love your neighbor as yourself” though Hafiz broadened this to include the whole of God’s creation.  And he noted that just about any religious passion, or ritual, or belief system is quite okay…IF…it facilitates the love of God’s creation.  It is so easy to “love god” and do so with “sound and fury” (often signifying nothing) but it does not mean jack if the whole of your life demonstrates a disinterest, contempt, or hatred for any part of God’s creation.  Someone has said, “It is not so important what you say as what you do.”  “Saying” is important, yes, but not without behavior to back it up.   Again I share one of my favorite bits from Shakespeare, “With devotions visage and pious action they do sugar o’er the devil himself.”  And here again I share the Hafiz poem:

 

Becoming Human

by Hafiz

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about
“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,
“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

He looked surprised and said,
“I am speaking of sublime visions
And you ask
About goats!”

And I spoke again saying,
“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,
“Four.”

“How many rose bushes in your garden,
How many children,
Are your parents still alive,
Do you feed the birds in winter?”

And to all he answered.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,
I would say that they were if they make you become
More human,

More kind to every creature and plant
That you know.”

 

 

The Merits of Silence

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Sometimes I think God wants us to remember his admonishment, “Be still and know that I am God.” Sometimes, I think he might want to be more emphatic and tell us simply to, “Be quiet” or even, “Shut up! I don’t need to hear all of your regurgitated verbal platitudes, your obsessive jargon. Just give it a rest for a while.” And then he would offer reassurance, “Now you will get it back in due time. But for a moment in your life, take a break! As it is, this is mere chatter.”

And I fear so much of our religious communication is mere chatter, “god talk” with value similar to that of “car talk” or “sports talk” or “talking politics”—providing social grease to reassure and confirm our social connections. We do need silence from time to time and some go for years before the Silence has done its work and “the letter of the law” has become “Spirit.”

St. John of the Cross said, “Silence is God’s first language.” Rumi pithily noted, “Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river” and, “Silence is the language of God, all else is a poor translation.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a marvelous poem about “The Habit of Perfection” part of which I will now share. Note that he emphasized that only in silence, “Where all surrenders come” will we find “eloquence.” It is Silence that gives meanings to our words and especially The Word.

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe to me pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From where all surrenders come
Which alone makes you eloquent

 

I Want to be (Un)Famous!

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I think all of us want to be famous meaning we want to be admired and love more than we can possibly be.  We want to be the BMOC or BWOC.  And some of us get to be but most of us are confined to obscurity and left with the vicarious satisfaction that comes from glomming onto (identifying with) popular heroes—sports stars, movie stars, musicians, political figures…and in my case, literary greats.

But I think we can still take great satisfaction in being insignificant  For, life is inherently paradoxical, nothing is as it seems, and if we look carefully at what we are doing we can take great satisfaction in our meagre, “insignificant” station in life.  If we have the humility to realize that our prime responsibility is to merely show up and fulfill our responsibilities…mundane though they may be…then we are doing our part in keeping this dog-and-pony show afloat.  And that IS significant and we can take the same satisfaction that we could have if we were famous!  There IS glory and power in mere Be-ing.  And ultimately, there is found the only Glory and Power in the universe even for those who are the movers-and-shakers in our world.

T. S. Eliot advised us to “offer our deeds to oblivion.”  That was not nihilistic…he was a man of great Christian faith.  He was merely noting that we should live our life as productively and meaningfully as we can and then realize that the outcome is beyond us, and we must trust that our actions will be helping to the unfolding of God’s purpose.  Eliot, in the same marvelous poem, The Four Quartets, said that this faith requires merely, “prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.”   Here is a marvelous poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about this type of “fame,” entitled, 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.

Mind Your Tongue!

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To His Son Benedict from the Tower of London
by John Hoskyns

Sweet Benedict, whilst thou art young,
And know’st not yet the use of tongue,
Keep it in thrall whilst thou art free:
Imprison it or it will thee.

“Imprisoning” the tongue makes me think of one of my favorite Proverbs: He who hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city without walls and broken down.

We must acquire the faculty of judgment so that we use our words wisely and judiciously. Words can create and words can destroy. And this is not only in reference to the words we speak to others but to the words that we speak to ourselves, that internal “self talk” that we all have, that “chattering” of what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. Due to the circumstances of life, we often acquire a lot of negative self talk and when we do this it is difficult to every let it go; and until we let it go, we are thereby imprisoned. This makes me think of something that Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you cani’t, either way you are right.” For example, if you are a young man and meet a fetching young lass and think you can catch her eye, there is a good chance you can. If you think you can’t, you probably won’t.

 

Spirituality and Paradox

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Spirituality is paradoxical. There is no other way to cut it. For example, I live when I die. I’m up when I’m down. I’m most when I’m least. I’m found when I’m lost.

Read how Kabir put it:

I won’t come

I won’t go

I won’t live

I won’t die

I’ll keep uttering

The name

And lose myself

In it

I’m bowl

And I’m platter

I’m man

And I’m woman

I’m grapefruit

And I’m sweet lime

I’m Hindu

And I’m Muslim

I’m fish

And I’m net

I’m fisherman

And I’m time

I’m nothing

Says Kabir

I’m not among the living

Or the dead

— Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

 

Showers of Blessings we Plead!!!

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I woke this morning to the unanticipated sound of thunder and the flash of lightening. We were going to get a respite from this oppressive drought (which God has sent merely because of my sin!!! wink, wink; I just can’t get over this narcissism!!!). I performed a ritual that I’ve utilized the last two years or so and gone to the garage, opened the door, grabbed me a chair and cup of coffee and reveled in the gracious beauty of a magnificent, generous rainfall. An old hymn always comes to my mind on these moments, “Showers of Blessings” even though the hymn was not talking about rainfall!

And, being random as I am, that brought to my mind the following verse from my beloved brother, William Shakespeare. This is so magnificent and it gets more so every time I read it:

 

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. . . .
. . .
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
(The Merchant of Venice)

 

Oh, yes. Showers of blessings. They are around us each day if we but look.

Things for which I am Grateful on this Thanksgiving Day

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Its Thanksgiving in my country, a holiday on which we historically give thanks for the bounty that we have been afforded. And in the past year I have learned the value of a daily “thanksgiving”, paying attention to the little things in my life which I have so often taken for granted—the very breath of life, my health, my education, my material comfort, my sweet wife, loving siblings and friends, two lovely puppies who daily teach me about  God’s love.

And I’m grateful for waking again this morning to a beautiful world, one which features “puppies and flowers all over the place” once again. I’m grateful for living in a country with a political process which, though ragged and rugged so often, appears to steadily make progress and even now is showing signs of being willing to work through the political gridlock. I’m grateful for people like Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner who can produce marvelous movies like “LINCOLN” when movies featuring car chases, explosions, and gratuitous violence would more readily make money. I’m grateful for the wonderful technological advances my life has seen, now including the internet and its blog-o-sphere on which I have met many wonderful kindred spirits from all corners of the world, people to whom I have been able to say so often, “Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.”

And most of all I’m grateful for the gift of Faith. I used to think my faith was something that made me special, something that God had basically wielded upon me through the means of time and space, and something which I could wear like a suit of clothes of which I was very proud. I no longer see it that way at all. My Faith is a mystery and how and why I have this “gift” I can’t really explain and make no effort to. I’m just grateful for it. Meaningless, despair, even nihilism always beckons to a mind that works like mine but I’ve never succumbed to those siren calls. For some reason I have faith and I am so grateful.

Let me close with a simple observation from my beloved, dear friend and kindred spirit W. H. Auden:

In the desert of my heart,
Let the healing fountain start.
In this prison of my days,
Teach this free man how to praise.

Action vs Reaction?

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Here is a marvelous poem by a contemporary theologian who understands “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” describing it as creating “a clearing in the dense forest of our life…” This is such a powerful image as most of our lives are often such a “dense forest” and creating any space in that wilderness is challenging.

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world so worthy of rescue.
(Martha Postlethwaite)

And the notion of “waiting for our song” brought to mind the wisdom of William Butler Yeats:

O God, guard me from those thoughts
Men think in the mind alone.
He who sings a lasting song
Must think in the marrow bone.

(note:  Postlethwaite poem was cited by Blue Eyed Ennis blog recently.)

Embracing Internal Contradictions

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We are such complicated creatures, replete with hypocrisies, contradictions, dishonesties…and virtues! Add them all up and we are reduced to mere be-ing. We simply are. We have the gift of life and have that gift for just a brief moment. Yes, it often appears to be merely a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing” but even the author of that pithy observation (Shakespeare) reflects in the whole of his writing that our paltry efforts reflect value, quality.

The clinical term for this myriad of contradictions is “ambivalence.” Learning to acknowledge and even experience the torment of this ambivalence is one of the most critical lessons in life. It is always so tempting to not take this spiritual adventure and cling to the dogmas of our youth. But we yield to this temptation at the peril of our own soul.

Someone said…and it might have been Karl Jung…that one step toward maturity is when we can learn to tolerate in our heart these ambivalences, to embrace the presence of impulses and presences that are mutually exclusive. Read the following poem by May Sarton:

The Angels And The Furies

1
Have you not wounded yourself
And battered those you love
By sudden motions of evil
Black rage in the blood
When the soul premier danseur
Springs towards a murderous fall ?
The furies possess you.

2
Have you not surprised yourself
Sometimes by sudden motions
Or intimations of goodness
When the soul premier danseur
Perfectly poised
Could shower blessings
With a graceful turn of the head ?
The angels are there.

3
The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance,
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.

4
It is the light that matters,
The light of understanding.
Who has ever reached it
Who has not met the furies again and again:
Who has reached it without
Those sudden acts of grace?

(This poem was shared weeks ago on the blog by Blue Eyed Ennis.)