Category Archives: religion

Rumi’s Oyster Shell and Politics

4 Replies

 

Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl. (Rumi)

Rumi’s concern is the distinction between what is real and what is unreal; or, as noted yesterday, between the ephemeral and the essential. The inability…or unwillingness…to recognize this distinction permeates our culture and is apparent where ever we choose to focus. For example, let’s take our current political morass. The prevailing focus of our politicians appears to be one thing—electability and then getting re-elected. To accomplish these purposes, they are willing to prostitute themselves to their base, to focus groups, and ultimately to the electorate. It is as if nothing else matters. Our country suffers. Our world suffers. And yet these politicians continue to focus on one thing—How do I get elected or re-elected and how does my political party get in power or maintain power?

Of course, these politicians merely reflect the values of our culture. Our culture produced them. If someone happened along who actually believed in something, someone who represented value, he/she would not be “electable” in our current environment.

So, what is the answer? Hmmm. Well, the answer lies in the realm of the Spirit but I hesitate to tender that notion as it opens a can of worms. I could discourse at length on the subject…and have…but let me cut to the chase and say this involves looking beneath the surface of things. But we don’t believe there is anything underneath the surface. We believe only in the oyster shell.

No less a luminary than Einstein deigned to look beneath the surface and he found there what he called a “mystery” and said that this evoked a “religious sentiment” in his heart. But we are so afraid of the “mystery” as it would threaten our illusion of being in control.

 

Wisdom from Rumi

Leave a reply

 

I have discoursed before about the sin of “misplaced concreteness.” I think it was C.S. Lewis who offered the term to me. This sin is the error of taking to be real that which is only ephemeral; and, it is a sin which is intrinsic to human nature. It seems to be so pronounced in our modern world with its insane consumerism but it has always been around in some shape, form, or fashion.

Shakespeare often harped on this issue. I strongly recommend you check out his sonnet 146, one of my favorite. And just recently I came across a quote from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who noted, “Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.”

Our task is to always be aware of the “oyster shell” and its tyranny, realizing that inside there is a “pearl of great price” which cries out for attention and respect. I think this is what Jesus had in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

 

Trashing Richard Rohr!

1 Reply

 

I can’t stand Richard Rohr. He is a thief! Yes, I have all of these wonderful, deeply-spiritual, sublime thoughts and he puts them into print (or blog) before I do! And there he is rich and famous and I’m a mere Southern ne’er-do-well mired in the bowels of the blog-o-sphere!

Seriously, I love that man. He says everything I could ever say and says it much more eloquently and humbly than I could ever manage. I should do as I have threatened and merely let me blog consist each day of a link to Richard Rohr’s blog. (And, btw, Franciscan monks do not get rich!)

On a related note, I feel validated when I run across someone like Rohr. Conrad Aiken once noted, “This is peace to know our thoughts known.” And that is very important if life has you on an “unbeaten path” trajectory which has always been my lot. I also find this validation often here on the blog-o-sphere, crossing the path of other kindred spirits, some of which I have already shared the following Archibald MacLeish quote: Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.

Here is Rohr’s blog posting of today:

HEALING OUR VIOLENCE

If the self doesn’t find some way to connect radically with Being, it will live in anxiety and insecurity. The false self is inherently insecure. It’s intrinsically fragile, grasping for significance. That’s precisely because it is insignificant! So it grabs atthings like badges and uniforms and titles and hats and flags to give itself importance and power. People talk about dying for the flag of their country. They don’t realize that the Bible would definitely call that idolatry. What were you before you were an American? Will you be an American in heaven? Most of us don’t know how to answer those questions without a spiritual journey and an inner prayer life.
In prayer you will discover who you were before you were male, before you were female, before you were black, before you were white, before you were straight, before you were gay, before you were Lutheran, Mormon, or Amish. Have you ever lived there? At that naked place, you will have very little to defend, fight about, compete with, overcome, hate, or fear. You are then living in the Reign of God, or what Buddha calls the Great Compassion. Violence is unneeded and undesired.
Adapted from Healing Our Violence
Through the Journey of Centering Prayer (CD)
Prayer:
We are love, and we are made for love,
and our natural abiding place is love.

 

Nuanced Prayer of St. Anselm

2 Replies

 

I came across a beautiful prayer by St. Anselm that I wish to share. This prayer is so foreign to how I was taught to pray decades ago. It is so convoluted, complex, and paradoxical. I guess one could call it poetical. Prayer requires nuance and St. Anselm had a nuanced faith.

O Lord my God,
Teach my heart this day where and how to see you,
Where and how to find you.
You have made me and remade me,
And you have bestowed on me
All the good things I possess,
And still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that
For which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
For I cannot seek you
Unless you teach me,
Or find you
Unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire,
Let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you,
Let me love you when I find you.

 

Living in the Light of a Dead Star

Leave a reply

 

Le Monde recently ran an interview by Greek playwright, Dimitris Dimitriadis, in which he provided a critique of the current Greek/EU crisis which is relevant to our own country. He described recent Greek history as like “living in the light of a dead star” and described his country as refusing to accept its “own transience, and is hostile to other identities—a country which…cannot accept what it calls the enemy, and is unable to see that the ‘enemy’ is the prospect of its own future. Greece is characterized by a sort of stagnation, and an unchanging mentality: we stick with our old psychological and social habits, our lives are sustained by a dead tradition, which we never think of renewing.” He noted the marvelous history of his culture then noted that it is “stuck in the mechanism of history…and has been petrified in the form of clichés and stereotypes.”

Dimitriadis also made reference to the spiritual nature of this problem, declaring that the only resolution is the acceptance of a death of an old way of life out of which can come the new. In other words, he was saying that we have to accept change. And, change does not have to destroy tradition but, if brought about with mature leadership, can actually revivify sterile and moribund tradition

(AFTERTHOUGHT: I read this Le Monde interview in Presseurop on the internet. Presseurop is a composite of various European newspapers available in English. It provides an interesting perspective on the European circumstances which we hear so much about daily, all of which is very relevant our own country.)

 

Hope in the Darkness

Leave a reply

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame. (from “September 1, 1939”)

This is one of my favorite snippets of W. H. Auden‘s poetry.  I interpret “the Just” to be those who feel just, one might even say “justified”, those who are at peace with themselves and their Source and can communicate openly with other likeminded souls.  The same “negation and despair” besets these people that besets the rest of the human race, but these persons have found the grace to communicate openly.  And when they do so, they “cast an affirming flame.”

Prayer

Leave a reply

“My words fly up. My thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” King Claudius uttered this lament as he knelt in prayer with young Hamlet hovering nearby with murderous intent.

I think this is one of the pithiest notes about prayer that I’ve ever come across. Shakespeare was saying that for prayer to take place, words and thoughts must be conjoined and offered up wholeheartedly. In other words, there must be a singleness of purpose, a sublime focus. There must be meditation.

Emptiness is All

Leave a reply

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

Thus did Lao Tzu encourage us to look to what is not to find meaning for that which is. Now I’m aware of how crazy that sounds. I think it is highly relevant to our current flirtation with the Hoggs Boson particle, that particle which might explain why there is something and not nothing. Ok, ok. I’m aware that that sounds crazy.

But let me put it into plain English. Lao Tzu, Jesus, et al were merely saying, “Hey guys (and gals), things are not as they seem. Look beneath the surface. There lies Reality. Just deign to look at things differently.”   This is relevant to what the philosopher Ricoeur said, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.”

To Be or Not to Be

2 Replies

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” That famous observation of Hamlet cuts to the heart of everything, “Do I ‘be’ or do I opt out and choose to no longer ‘be’” Actually, I think this decision is made very early in our embryonic development as our identity, i.e. our be-ing, begins to formulate. Sometimes in that early stage of our life we choose to “not be” and step back into the void that begat us. And even after our birth, as our tenuous ego begins to constellate, I think there are occasions when some people decide, “Hmm. No, don’t think I want to do this” and SIDS takes place.

But most of us opt to decide to “be” and join the human race. But that “be-ing” is very fragile so we must put on a suit of clothes, an ego, and that ego will help us bear those “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” So each day we wake up, quickly don our ego once again, and go out into the world and hope and pray, “Please world. Mirror me. Validate me.”

An Humble Prayer

Leave a reply

Here is a simple poem by Louis Untermeyer on the subject of prayer that I really like. Oh, if I could only write poetry!

Prayer
God, though this life is but a wraith,
Although we know not what we use,
Although we grope with little faith,
Give me the heart to fight – and lose.
Ever insurgent let me be,
Make me more daring than devout;
From sleek contentment keep me free,
And fill me with a buoyant doubt.
Open my eyes to vision girt
With beauty, and with with wonder lit –
But let me always see the dirt,
And all that spawn and die in it.
Open my ears to music; let
Me thrill with Spring’s first flutes and drums –
But never let me dare forget
The bitter ballads of the slums.
From compromise and things half-done,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride;
And when, at last, the fight is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.
– Louis Untermeyer