Category Archives: religion

Waging the War we Are

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“We wage the war we are.”

I probably use this quote from W. H. Auden more than any other, in this venue and also in my day to day life.  And, yes, it is very telling for my life is, and always has been a war zone most of these sixty-three years.  Of course, I carefully contained this warfare inside my canned-Christian veneer.  Yeah, I kinda identify with Ben Carson!!!

Auden was an astute observer of the human heart as are all great poets.  He made this poetic observation in recognition of his own conflicted heart and his poetry revealed recognition of the turmoil that rages inside the heart of all human beings.  Yes, “most men live lives of quiet desperation” but Auden knew that beneath the surface of this “quiet desperation” warfare was simmering, mercifully kept under control beneath the social veneer.  Well, most of the time anyway!

Why?  Where does this conflict come from?  Simply stated, we are spiritual beings temporarily confined within a mortal body.  And, a spiritual being is infinite by definition and does not really fit inside what the philosophers call the world of “form.  To illustrate, I am now so very aware of just how I want everything! I don’t want to deal with privation and on some level it even angers me!  Why should I have to want anything? Who dares to get in my path at Wal Mart, or cut me off in traffic, or fail to laugh at my jokes, or scoff at my literary acumen?  How dare them?  On some level I have the narcissitic illusion that the world is my oyster and though I cover it up with this carefully contrived social veneer, I often catch gut-level, reptilian brain, unmitigated hunger surging in my heart.  I want it all!

Though this is a literary exaggeration, it is an honest reflection of “waging the war” that I am.   For, I do have these frustrations and fears and now realize I’ve had them all my life but have kept them carefully pent up, knowing that to do otherwise would not be prudent.  And this “prudence” is what makes us human as without social sensitivities we would all be at war with each other literally. But at some point in our life, it is imperative that we find private venues where we can air these “grievances” about life and hopefully discover that an individual, or group of individuals, can assure us that they are fighting the same battle.  I have been blessed with these venues.

The current terrorist crisis in France is an illustration of what happens when we cannot recognize our own internal warfare.  Until we can own this internal conflagration, we will always see it “out there” and seek to obliterate it.  “We wage the war we are” often by battling that vast category we call “them,” a convenient category comprised of those qualities of our own that we do not wish to own up to.  Yes, this is true for Daesh but also for “us.”

 

 

 

 

Writing from the Heart is Costly

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“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

This quotation from Franz Kafka speaks to deeply to my heart and explains why I have such a passion for literature that “rattles my cage” like he did.  Good writing does not merely amuse, confirm one’s premises, or serve as “comfort food.”  Good writing comes from the depths of the heart and speaks only to those whose heart has similar depths, hearts which simmer with the breath of Spirit and have complete disinterest with  those “smooth words” which the prophet Isaiah warned against.

A social media friend of mine this morning shared a quotation of Helene Cixous which addressed this dimension of good writing.  I will share a few quotes from this excerpt and then provide a link to the rest of it:

The only book worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write.  The book that hurts us (“we who are writing)” makes us tremble, redden, bleed.

Writing is the difficult, delicate, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable”

We go toward the most unknown and the best unknown, that is what we are looking for when we write.  We go toward the best known unknown thing, when knowing and not knowing touch, where we hope we will know what is unknown.  Where we hope we will not be afraid of understanding the incomprehensible, facing invisible, hearing the inaudible, thinking the unthinkable, which is of course thinking.  Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort.

And I conclude with a relevant observation from W. H. Auden, who in this excerpt has the Christmas star speaking:

ll those who follow me are led

Onto that glassy mountain where are no

Footholds for logic, to that Bridge of Dread

Where knowledge but increases vertigo:

Those who pursue me take a twisting lane

To find themselves immediately alone

With savage water or unfeeling stone,

In labyrinths where they must entertain

Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.

 

 

 

 

 

“What is truth?” asked Pilate.

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“What is truth?” asked Pilate.  This question posed by the Roman officiate who held in his hands the fate of Jesus still haunts us today.  A Showtime series put this question on the table again in the context of marital infidelity, as reported in this WaPo story:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/step-1-to-start-loving-the-affair-admit-theres-no-such-thing-as-truth/2015/10/01/71b98422-65fa-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html

Truth, in my youth, was pretty cut and dried.  And what made it so certain was living in a very narrow, conservative world of Arkansas fundamentalist Christianity. But I remember it with a certain degree of fondness, that qualification “certain degree” explaining why I don’t live there anymore.  If I’d have been a “True Believer” (See Eric Hoffer) I would still be there today but thanks to the infinite grace of God…and I mean that sincerely…I am not there and thus am left with the insecurity and doubt which I see as an essential dimension of faith.

But, nevertheless, Pilate’s historical and archetypal query, resonates with me profoundly.  I do so firmly believe in Truth even as I have so little doubt in my ability to quantify, define, and own it.  But I do firmly believe that Truth is present, even in my obscure little life, and in the absurdity of our collective endeavor.  Or, as my brother in Spirit, Billy Shakespeare, noted with his observations, “There is a method to our madness” and, “A Divinity doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.”

But Pilate’s question is still on the table, in this instance with reference to marital faithfulness, but also to very relevant questions of my culture—abortion, gun control, evolution, and more fundamentally the notion of the old Superman tv series bromide, “Truth, justice, and the American Way.”  Is there anything “firm” and therefore “real”…or “Real”…out there? My vote is a firm “yes.” Truth is there, and “here,” but “woe is me” if I ever venture into the arrogance of thinking that I own it.

I Have Still Another Girlfriend!

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Yes, I’m always running into “gal pals” in real-time but also in social media.  Those of you here in the realm of “Social Media” know who you are and I won’t embarrass you by naming you.  But I want to introduce you to a recent “acquisition” recently cited by my “guru” Richard Rohr—Etty Hillesum.  Etty was a Jewish woman who died at the age of 29 in Auschwitz concentration camp but left behind a journal she kept the last two years of her life, “An Interrupted Life: the Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43.”Etty’s journal is a compelling disclosure this young woman’s “faith journey” in very difficult times, though it is important to note that her “faith” is not clearly identified with any particular spiritual tradition.  But she speaks openly about her struggles in the conflict between body and soul, even addressing sexuality struggles.  And openly sharing re sexuality clearly means she could not have been a Christian for that kind of honesty and human-ness is verboten in that kingdom of “purity.”!!

And Etty’s testimony in this book reveals the unimportance of labels in spirituality.  In my background, the label “Christian” has been so important to me that I missed out on any legitimate spiritual/human experience.  And wearing any label so tightly, like I did, does provide a comfort of some sort, the “comfort” of denying our mortality and the vulnerability that comes with the experience.

Another Self-parody of Christianity

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A Georgia high school football coach is under fire for orchestrating a mass baptismal service on his team’s football field before a practice session, a video of which has gone viral.  If you watch the video, the scene is comical as the Baptist pastor is seen trying to dunk huge boys, and a coach, in a small galvanized tin tub.  It reminds me of quarterback Tim Tebow’s ostentatious praying on the football field after a touchdown which one wit noted should have merited a penalty flag for “unnecessary and irrelevant display of piety.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mass-baptism-filmed-at-football-practice-prompts-investigation_55e738fbe4b0aec9f3558fc5)

To sum it up, I say, “What’s the point?”  The issue on that football field was a practice session but the coach, being “full of the spirit” wanted to display his spirituality.  In so doing he is making a mockery of a really meaningful symbol in the Christian tradition and giving late-night comedians like Bill Maher more material with which to ridicule Christianity.  And this type of non-sense deserves mockery.  Jesus would be turning over in his grave…if he was in one!

This is another example of the “embedded thinking” that I am focused on right now.  When we are embedded in our own thinking, we  lose perspective and  will often speak and behave in a manner that makes even noble ideas and traditions look silly.  This coach has demonstrated that spiritual fervor can easily be merely a means of displaying our “piety” and the need of making the display simply reveals the presence of the ego in the performance.  The Apostle Paul would call this whole scene “a work of the flesh.”

Spirituality, like every dimension of life, is a perilous adventure for it does provide such an opportunity for us to “strut our stuff” under the guise of piety.  I know.  “Been there, done that” and to some degree I’m sure I’m still doing it for I am still guilty of being “human.”  And if I ever become “Holy” and have “got it right,” please, please…somebody just shoot me!  You will be doing me and the world a favor!

Shakespeare noted, “With devotions visage and pious action we sugar o’er the devil himself.”

Ideologues: Persecuted for “His” Sake

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Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky has lost her battle with the U. S. Supreme Court in her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.  But Ms. Davis claims that she bows only to a higher authority, God, and will not obey this ruling.  She declared, “To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision,” she said through her lawyers.

Ms. Davis will ultimately lose this battle before the Supreme Court but she will have the consolation of basking in the biblical trope, “Persecuted for His sake.”  For an essential part of fundamentalist Christian culture is the notion that the world is “alien” to them and their task is to convert the world to their “right way” of seeing the world.  When their efforts encounter resistance, they can immediately bask in the delight of knowing that they are being misunderstood and mistreated because of their fervent commitment to their Christian faith; they are being “persecuted for His sake.”   And, speaking from experience in my younger days, I can report of the great pleasure that can be found in knowing that one is being mistreated because of his faith.  What I now realize is that my faith took me in directions that could only lead to this “mistreatment” and feeling of being misunderstood and that the anguish of alienation was meeting some unconscious need.

Fundamentalist Christianity thrives on feelings of “dispossession” and alienation, feelings which were institutionalized in the 19th century when the fury of Revivalism that swept the South and the West, giving rise to what religious historians call our “denominational society.”  Bible verses which emphasized separation were emphasized to the exclusion of those which emphasis on unity.  For example, “Come ye out from them and be ye separate” was a favorite selection from the Apostle Paul.  The Old Testament admonishment to “stand in the gap” was used to teach fundamentalist Christians that it was their job to stand in the breach and stop in the onslaught of “modernism.”  This gave the socio-economically dispossessed the comfort of knowing they were performing an heroic biblically mandated action.  And, once again from personal experience, how wonderful it is to know that one has personally and collectively been divinely chosen for this task!  And, of course, awareness of the narcissism of this mind-set was not allowed to breach this hermetically sealed view of the world of “embedded thinking.”

Ms. Davis provides another example of a person embedded in her own thinking.  And being ensconced therein, she cannot budge for she cannot acknowledge that, though her spiritual convictions are valid for herself, they are not valid for the rest of the world.  But she thinks these convictions are valid for the rest of the world and is willing to jeopardize her job and even fines and imprisonment, knowing that in a worst case scenario she will have the comfort of being a martyr in her crowd of like-minded souls.

I have no doubt this is a good woman.  But good women…and men…can have ideas in which they are entrapped which lead to very bad decisions.  I have wasted decades of my life because of my choice to remain imprisoned in ideas of this sort.  It is wonderful, even exhilarating, to know that one is “right” even though the root cause is a deep-seated, unconscious “knowledge” that one is intrinsically “wrong.”  But this “knowledge” is specious, totally overlooking the Christian message that one is “ok”, an awareness of which would empower one to recognize the same of other people.  But when one is trapped in one’s own binary thinking one must have somebody “out there” who is wrong to avoid his/her anguish over the illusion of being intrinsically wrong.”  When my self-percept is one of being intrinsically wrong, I must fashion a world in which I am “right.”

Poet Gene Derwood once noted, “Big thoughts have got us.”  Kim has been “gotten” by a really big thought, the story of Jesus, and I personally think it is a marvelous and beautiful story of redemption.  But when one is enslaved by any vein of thought, regardless of how meaningful and rich it might be, one has sold his soul and has become a mere ideologue whose life is merely “the toy of some great pain.”

(HERE ARE TWO STORIES ABOUT THIS MATTER: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis_b_8071594.html; http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/politics/kentucky-gay-marriage-licenses-supreme-court/index.html)

Fundamentalist Christians and Sexuality

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Fundamentalist Christians offer us a frequent display of their hypocrisy regarding sexuality.  Now to be fair, this “hypocrisy” on this matter is not exclusive to this group as all of us have sexual whims and fancies which we don’t want to have exposed to public scrutiny.  But the issue for these fundamentalist Christians is that they have this need to hold forth regarding their purity and nobility only to have their dishonesty exposed too frequently often by leadership and its elite.

I grew up in that culture and remember the repressive atmosphere about sexuality and recall so well how dishonest it was.  I now realize that the root issue is the fear of the body and its impulses most of this fear being focused on the greatest temptation—SEX!!!  But this disavowal of the body overlooks a central teaching of the Christian tradition, the Incarnation, which was the idea of “the Word” being made flesh.  Yes, lip service is given to this teaching but there is not recognition of the layers of meaning in the teaching that would have us apply the teaching to the warp-and-woof of our life as we understand and experience the teachings of Jesus as not merely doctrine…cognitive precepts that we have accepted…but “cognitive precepts” that have become meaningful down in the guts of our life, in that “foul rag-and-bone shop of our heart.”

But deigning to see “layers of meaning” in spiritual teachings is a scary enterprise.  For, it will entail a simultaneous acknowledgement of experience of the “layers of meaning” in one’s own life and heart.  This brings into question the very nature of reality and the fear of coming ungrounded.  This brings one to realize that he is more than who he “thinks” he is, that he is not something he can cognitively grasp, but he is a mystery very much like the mystery that God is.  This brings one to the adventure of faith and when this adventure even tempts us it is so easy to immediately turn back to what has given us comfort to this point, cling to it more desperately, and even shout it out more loudly.  As W. H. Auden noted, “And Truth met him, and held out her hand.  But he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

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Embedded in our Own Thoughts, Part 2

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Embedded thinking, part 2

We are naturally embedded in our own thinking because thinking…at least in the West…is inherently linear.  But it is possible for those steeped in this “linear-thinking” to find the courage to “step back” a bit from that comfortable cognitive grasp of his world and in so doing find that his world view is finite but nevertheless valid.  This “stepping back” is the exercise of a meta-cognitive muscle that we have the capacity for but is frightening to use for one who has made an inordinate emotional/spiritual investment in the world view that circumstances has given him.  This is precisely what Jesus had in mind when he chided those who have “Ears to hear but hear not, eyes to see but see not.”  Jesus recognized that being conscious, that is being spiritually alive, involves more than simple regurgitation of a mind-set and view of the world that one acquired by accident of birth.  And, if I might speak for Him now, he is telling people like me who were “Christianized” by accident of birth that mindless regurgitation of Christian dogma and teachings…and doing so with like-minded souls…can easily find us amusing ourselves in an echo chamber, which, borrowing a line from Goethe, is  “like kittens given their own tails to tease.”

Thinking is linear because of our “fall” into the time-space continuum, or that which is known as “reality.”  In fact, in the Genesis Creation story, eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is an illustration of falling into “thought” which always bifurcates our world even as it “bifurcates” our selves.   At that point we have been “categorized” and begin to exercise a “categorical imperative” to carve-up into dualities what had been a unified field, creating “good and evil,” male and female, right and wrong, and…yes…even Democrats and Republicans!  Linear thinking has created this world we live in and perpetuates it….and may it ever be!  For without linear thinking, our world would crash and burn immediately.  But when linear thinking runs amok without the God-given gift of “the pauser Reason” the world will still face calamity; for, any phenomena carried to an extreme becomes problematic and even dangerous.  Ideological extremism illustrates for us daily what can happen when someone or some groups gets too carried away with their “noble” and “enlightened” ideas.

Meditation has helped me immensely on this issue.  And though my “monkey mind,” incessantly running to and fro and chattering without cease, it has been given pause and this “pause” has been pregnant, allowing me to open my heart to hidden dimensions of life.  With even my lame success at meditation I have learned more intimately that “embeddedness” in my own thought has been a cognitive prison and this insight…cognitive and emotional…has been redemptive.  And that “redemption” has allowed me to experience being “out of control” which has come to me as simple anxiety.  Of course, this “simple” anxiety is not “simple” at all as it brings me face to face with my own human-ness which is always experienced as vulnerability; Norman Brown noted, “To be, is to be vulnerable.”  And it has been fear of this vulnerability that has kept me locked in this cerebral prison, the escape from which is still in progress and will be in process for the rest of my life until at last I cast off this “mortal coil” and return to my Source.

I’m planning on this “transition” not taking place for decades!  For, “fallen” though this world may be, it is a beautiful world and I am increasingly delighted with the simple but profound beauty which surrounds me every day.  The only issue is, and always has been, “Will I pay attention?”  And, paying attention is relative to the meditative lesson of looking beyond the end of my nose, peering outside of that “small bright circle of my consciousness beyond which lies the dark.”  It is in that “darkness” that I see glimmers of light and these “glimmers” are the best that we can hope for. For these “glimmers” are the brilliant flash of light that we are blessed with when we find the humility to simply “see through a glass darkly.”

Donald Trump’s “Dysfunctional Family”

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When our unconsciousness begins to speak to us, the messages are sometimes subtle over a period of time until we finally “get it” and start paying attention.  But then other times the unconsciousness strikes us abruptly, like a thunderbolt from the blue and then we are sometimes stunned or even devastated.  But in either case the human tendency is to deny this irruption into our safe little world of delusion…and “delusional” describes all of us…and to shore up our defenses and shout more loudly the soothing self-talk that comforts us daily.  As W. H. Auden put it, “And Truth met him, and held out her hand; and he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

Donald Trump represents a voice from the Republican Party’s unconsciousness.  He is behaving and speaking with reckless abandonment, fulfilling the role of the identified patient in a dysfunctional family who “acts out” and announces the conflicted dynamics of the family that is trapped in its Ozzie and Harriet world.  In my clinical practice, my task was twofold: a) stop the “acting out” of the identified patient and b)get the family to own its own role in a dynamic that was often overtly pathological.  Needless to say, often one or both of the parents did not appreciate this approach to their child’s treatment.  For the unacknowledged anguish of the family had forced the identified patient to articulate its pain with word and deed and the parents  were not willing to admit that.

Donald Trump offers the Grand Old Party an opportunity to get real, to get honest with itself.  For example, one of the things that Trump is currently admired for by the base of the party is that, “He tells the truth!”  Well, yes he often does but without the decorum and respect which would make him more palatable to the upper hierarchy of the party.  But if this hierarchy would learn from this unconscious gift they have before them, they could start being such “politicians” and be less blatantly dishonest.

My favorite example…and there are many…is the climate science/global warming issue.  The base of this party is proudly skeptical of science and therefore of the overwhelming evidence that global warming is a critical issue.  But realizing that their base would disapprove if they acknowledged this, the Republican leadership and current candidates for their Presidential nomination glibly shrug their shoulders and report when questioned on the issue, “Well, I’m not a scientist.”  They could easily just simply answer the question but it would be politically inexpedient so they humiliate themselves and their party with this lame response.  And the same dishonesty has often been demonstrated on the issue of whether or not President Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya.

Paying attention to the unconscious is often just gut-wrenchingly painful.  But listening to this dimension of our experience, to a gut-level intuition, parallels with closely with  what Christians like to call heeding, “the Spirit of God.”  But  heeding the “Spirit of God” is not just listening to the whims of our heart that we are comfortable with, those  that confirm our pet theories and belief systems. It requires us to pay attention to those that rattle our cage.

The “Donald Trump Show” Wreaking Havoc!!!

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My immersion in the work of Carl Jung has led to an increased sensitivity to the murmurs from my unconscious depths.  I catch myself often seeing…and feeling…responses to stimuli in my world that I once would have not noticed.  For example, last week I was watching the daily “Donald Trump Show” that has exploded on my country’s political and cultural scene and caught myself wanting to say “atta boy” as he trotted out his usual falderal that is always delightful “red meat” for the rabid base of his Republican Party. For example, he offers a steady diet of juicy themes like “I’m the only one who has the courage to stand up to ‘them’” or “I’ll build a wall to keep out them there Mexicans…and make’em pay for themselves” or “I’ll make American great again” or denigrating Washington politicians as “stupid.”

His message speaks to the unconscious of voters who feel they are losing control, that their country is losing control and losing the prominence that it deserves, and that “we need a leader who will tell the truth and will ‘get something done.’”  And all of these desires are noble human desires but only when taken in context and fulfillment is sought while respecting others who might suffer as a result of their accomplishment.  But I noted my heart’s response to say “amen” in response to the primary thing his message offers—certainty!  My country…like the rest of the world…is still trying to come to terms with the flow of history and accept that the “certainties” of yesteryear need to be modified.  But some part of my heart, still listening to the reptilian brain’s insistence that my ego can be in control….can be “God”…and wants that certainty.

And this Trump message strikes right at the heart of fundamentalist Christianity which drives the base of the Republican party without which they would not be able to win anything.  But, speaking for myself…and in spite of those unconscious murmurs…there is a rudimental dimension of my fundamentalist faith of yesteryear that is not only surviving the lack of certainty but is discovering that it is thriving.  For, now in place of certainty, I find faith and hope welling up.  But I will admit it would be simpler and easier if I could just go back to the past and have confidence that my mindless…and heartless…regurgitation of dogma was sufficient.

Trump has the Republican establishment shaking in its booties.  For Trump is behaving like an enfant terrible and putting on the table what the GOP establishment wants to be kept beneath the surface because it is ‘unsavoury” to most of the American electorate.  For example, the racism and misogyny that is glaring in the Republican agenda is openly voiced by Trump while the GOP establishment stands helplessly by and cringes.  It is almost like Trump is embodying Tourette’s Syndrome for the Grand Old Party and saying the things that everyone is thinking but civility and decorum does not permit to be said.