Category Archives: religion

Flat Earthers Live Today!

Leave a reply

Plato observed, “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses.” And I agree whole heartedly though I might qualify what he meant by “shadows and lies.” Most people take reality to be merely what it appears to be, they take it as it was and is presented to them, and never deign to look beneath the surface. And, yes, one well might call this “shadows and lies” for at times it is not innocent, especially to those who bear the weight of this collective deception.

Adrienne Rich said something relevant, “Until we see the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot begin to know our self.” These “assumptions” are powerful and they are palpable, but only to the discerning eye. Asking someone to see them is like asking a fish to see water. For example, can’t you imagine how difficult it was for those men and women centuries ago who dared to posit the notion that the earth was not flat? Everyone knew the world was flat!

We have our own version of Flat Earthers today.

And Leonardo da Vinci had a thought which is relevant:

O cities of the sea, I behold in you your citizens, women as well as men tightly bound with stout bonds around their arms and legs by folk who will not understand your language; and you will only be able to give vent to your griefs and sense of loss of liberty by making tearful complaints, and sighs, and lamentations one to another; for those who bind you will not understand your language nor will you understand them. Leonardo da Vinci, from “Of Children in Swaddling Clothes”.

 

“Our Long National Nightmare is Over”

Leave a reply

These were the words of President Gerald Ford in his speech after Richard Nixon stepped down from the Presidency in 1973  These same words come to my mind yesterday morning after the election tumult had ended, though I do not think the “nightmare” is completely over.

I am so very relieved with O’Bama’s win and with some other causes that I was in favor of around the country. And part of me wants to gloat, I guess, but I’m glad that I’m mature enough to not even really want to. The issues the we face as a culture just do not permit childish behavior such as gloating, even for “no-bodies” like myself. I think it is very important that we “no-bodies” realize that our behavior and attitude are very important just as it is with the “some-bodies” of our world. For even we “no-bodies” must realize that ultimately we too are a “Some-body” and that our behavior and attitude contribute to the karma of the world. Let me explain it one other way. I am a “small-fry” in that I’m not important so why would it matter what I think or feel? Well, I think it does. Each of us contributes to a collective consciousness in some infinitesimal way.

I see some evidence that the “Big fries”, the “Some” bodies are responding to this election with graciousness. It is so important that a spirit of consideration and respect begin to take place in our country, especially in its leadership. Romney certainly was gracious in his concession speech and O’Bama indicated a willingness to do the same. I can imagine how devastating this loss was for Romney and I hope he has the courage and humility to go through the grieving process, then get on his feet, and step to the plate and find his place in our country’s political leadership. He is now a national leader and we need him. I fear his party will savage him, blaming him for the loss, when the reason for the loss went far beyond their choice of candidate.

“Just get over yourself” is something I have to tell myself almost daily when often I find myself taking myself too seriously and making poor choices in behavior and attitude. If our political leadership could do this from time to time I think our current political morass could be worked through, that our leaders would be able to make decisions without prostrating themselves to the alter of “electability”.

 

Casting an “affirming flame” on election day!

Leave a reply

A Mennonite pastor has organized a nation-wide communion service on election day. I enclose the CNN on-line link to the article about this effort and its rationale: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/03/my-take-on-election-day-proclaiming-my-loyalty-to-jesus/?hpt=hp_c1

I’m very impressed. An event like this helps us to remember that “this is not about us”, at least not in an exclusive sense. There is an “otherness” present in the world that we often forget about in our day to day life and certainly in the intensity of political debate. The event is a simple, brief bowing of our heads (literally or figuratively) and recognizing this “otherness” (Otherness). It is a simple shift of focus for a moment and recognition that we are finite creatures in a complex world and that a Mystery that is beyond our comprehension is present in our life, individually and collectively. A refrain of mine is, “Mental illness is a reference problem.” In ceremonies such as this we offer a momentary deference to an external reference point that is sorely lacking in our world consciousness.

I want to share a poem by W. H. Auden that is relevant to gestures like this:

Defenseless under the night,
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
ironic points of light
Flash out whever the Just
Exchange their messages.
May I,composed like them
of Eros and Dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

May we each day, in word and deed, show an affirming flame.  It is so easy to do otherwise.

W. H. Auden “Sept 1, 1939”

“We Rattle the World for our Babies”

3 Replies

I love the image created by this poet…and I think it was Edgar Simmons. I recall in my youth in the early sixties shaking a piggy bank and hoping to come up with six cents to get a “soda pop” down at the local mom and pop store in central Arkansas. Those coins were precious.

And so are our babies. I have deep appreciation for the beauty of nature…for birds, flowers, butterflies, deer, and certainly for doggies, being the devoted father of two lovely dachshunds. I gaze upon them, or look into their eyes, and I see the glory of God holding forth. But none of these can offer the glory of God that I see when I encounter one of God’s little children. They are our hope, our future. They represent millions of men and women voting with their feet…or some other part of their anatomy!…that life is worth living. Children represent the will of the species expressing itself.

In my retirement years, I have returned to work as a substitute teacher and I am deliberately focusing on early grade school and special needs children. They are teaching me so much about myself and about human nature. They are so fragile, so needy, and I’m so aware that even in my temporary role in their life I am part of our collective effort to “care” for them. And I’m so proud to see that even in Arkansas…always near the bottom of the education spectrum in our country…we provide such quality education and care. Some of these children would not have a chance in some countries. They would not be considered of any value at all and at one point in some cultures would have been left in the forest for nature to dispose of. But we value human life. That is a powerful decision that our culture has made. And it costs immensely but it is money well spent.

Ultimately, spirituality is about our values. What do we value? And, yes, our country is very suspect in many respects; we are so immersed in consumerism, for example. There is so much tawdry in our culture. But we do have our strong points one of which is our value of human life.

(And this is not even addressing the abortion issue! I don’t have the temerity to get into that yet.)

 

Ranier Rilke and “Dying Daily”

Leave a reply

“Sometimes I don’t feel spiritual.” I’ve heard this many times and feel that way myself quiet often. But at this point I take comfort in the belief that “feelings” on the matter do not matter; for, I believe that regardless of how we feel we are a spirit. Spirit is not something extrinsic to who we are; it is intrinsic to the very nature of our being.

“Knowing God” does not mean merely accepting a bunch of concepts. That should be merely a stepping stone, a means to an end. “Knowing God” means merely means getting out of the way and discovering that our Source will fill the vacuum. It is the Christian doctrine of kenosis or “self emptying”—losing oneself to find oneself or as the Apostle Paul said, “dying daily”. And I like Ranier Rilke’s take on the matter in The Duino Elegies, “Daily he takes himself off and steps into the changing constellation of his own everlasting risk.”

The Ephemeral Nature of Words

3 Replies

The beauty of words stems largely from their ephemeral nature. Conrad Aiken described words as “these squeaks of ours”. Poets spend their life contriving meaning out of these “squeaks”, a process which T. S. Eliot described as, “wrestling with words and meanings.

The poet is very aware of this ephemerality of language. They know firsthand how flimsy the conjunction between a simple mere sound…a “word”…and subjective experience can be; and always is when any particular word is first formed. Carl Sandburg described this as “the moment of doom when the word is formed.” (See full poem in posting of 10/28/12 ) And listen to Eliot describe his experience:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.
(Four Quartets)

And I love Archibald MacLeish likening this poetic moment to “the flight of birds flung from the branches where they sleep”:

Bewildered with the broken tongue
of wakened angels in our sleep
then lost the music that was sung
and lost the light time cannot keep!
There is a moment when we lie
Bewildered, wakened out of sleep,
when light and sound and all reply:
that moment time must tame and keep.
That moment like a flight of birds
flung from the branches where they sleep,
the poet with a beat of words
flings into time for time to keep.

 

Words must be vibrant, alive, dynamic!

Leave a reply

A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules… Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities. ~ Wade Davies

This is why language is so rich and so worthy of exploring. Words can “open up” and reveal hidden meanings and can do so endlessly; and, as noted yesterday, this is the task of poets. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once wrote that words have meaning because they can “burgeon forth into regions beyond themselves.” But one has to be willing to let them open up, to “burgeon forth.”

Unfortunately, words can be (and often are) taken literally. No effort is taken to parse words and individuals who take this route are left with the “letter of the law.” And of course we remember what 2 Corinthians teaches: the letter killeth but the Spirit maketh alive.

Let me share from the profound wisdom of T. S. Eliot on the dynamic nature of language:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.
(The Four Quartets

 

The Power of the Word

Leave a reply

I love words! Words make us human. That ability to symbolize re our subjective experience and assign meaning to that domain is just incredibly fascinating to me. And as we assign meanings to our experience we find connection with others, we discover that they too use the same sounds to refer to the same experiences…more or less! And how did that ever happen and why does it continue? Yes, it is a neurological issue; but, ultimately it is a philosophical and spiritual issue.

(Let me share a relevant personal anecdote. Years ago in a casual conversation a friend of mine dropped an aside, “Well, our name is just a sound we learned to respond to.” This “word” of his spoke to me and continues to do so. It resonated and I realized what he meant, that my very name “Lewis” was merely a sound that “I” had learned to respond to at about the age of one and a half or two years. My “I” (a rudimentary ego) preceded that moment in some shape, form, or fashion but when I was able to associate that subjective experience with the sound “Lewis” I basically joined the human race.)

Poets are one of God’s gifts to us as they can play with words and teach us about meaning. They can use words and use them skillfully and artistically—with spiritual finesse—and usher us into realms of meaning which would otherwise be hidden. Here is a sample from one of them that I have discovered in the blog-o-sphere (enerihot.wordpress.com):

I Write Because
by Irene Toh

Here it comes: a manifesto.
I write because words are
necessary shadows, the way
they augment light that
shines on every thing.

I write because any object
may become a subject
by simple appreciation,
being talked about so
it becomes the light.

I write because after god,
we speak things into creation,
because day turns into night,
because after you there’s no
one who is truly you and
words are dying stars.

And then here is another example from one of my favorite poets, Carl Sandburg:

Precious Moments

Bright conversations are transient as rainbows.
Speech requires blood and air to make it.
Before the word comes off the end of the tongue,
While the diaphragms of flesh negotiate the word,
In the moment of doom when the word forms,
It is born, alive, registering an imprint—
Afterward it is a mummy, a dry fact, done and gone.
The warning holds yet: Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Ecce homo had meanings: Behold the man! Look at him! Dying he lives and speaks.

“I Feel Your Pain”

1 Reply

One of my blog-o-shere friends responded re a recent post of mine about the role of feeling in alleviating the “heaviness” of life’s burdens. (Twominutesofgrace@wordpress.com)  She has been a therapist at one point in her life and noted how that part of her healing was learning the art of “reciprocal vulnerability” in the therapeutic relationship.  One of the pitfalls of being professional care-givers is that so often we do carry our own load of guilt and shame and seek to assuage those feelings with our clients. If we go too far in that direction, if we trot out the Clintonian, “I feel your pain”  too often, we might discover we have made it too much about ourselves.  But if we refuse vulnerability in the first place—barricaded behind professional jargon, cliche, and the DSM IV—we don’t need to be in the position of therapist, pastor, or “care-giver” in the first place.

Someone once said, “To be is to be vulnerable.”  I think the Apostle Paul had this in mind when he wrote to one church, “I was with you in weakness, and fear, and much trembling.”  Shakespeare, in Hamlet, described vulnerability as having a heart “full of penetrable stuff” suggesting that without vulnerability we are “impenetrable.”  And impenetrability is the natural trajectory of the human ego.  It resists anything which causes it discomfort.

 

Heavy Hearts Need Loose Lips

4 Replies

The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

These words from King Lear are very important to me, taking significance in my life at a very critical juncture decades ago when I was just learning about feelings. Shakespeare here taught me that it was important to just “let go” and value what I was feeling and deign to verbalize re these feelings.. This was critical as I had spent the first half of my life carefully monitoring myself and “thinking” and “saying” only what I “ought to say.” Yes, there were times when, like a kid with a new toy, I over did it and expressed some feelings at times when I should not have. But not often; and when I did, I usually did so with friends who were understanding.

And then for a few years I had the opportunity to facilitate this skill when I worked as a counselor, teaching young teen-agers the importance of their feelings and the value of expressing them, not only with words, but with art, music, and dance. It was very powerful to witness a young person make this discovery and watch many of them flourish. And I’ve seen the same phenomena with friends and acquaintances over the decades as the course of one’s life can grant maturity and with it the temerity to value one’s own subjective experience.

But I often overlook the first phrase of this Shakespearean observation—the weight of this sad time we must obey. Our culture’s disdain for feelings accumulates over the eons and becomes very “heavy.” And with this “heaviness” comes a profound sadness. And this sadness will be alleviated only when we “unpack our heart with words” (Shakespeare, “Hamlet”) and entertain the realm of “feeling which loosens rather than ties the tongue. (W. H. Auden.)