Here is a graphic description of where our countries values lie. This corresponds with the banality apparent in the highest value of our congress—getting re-elected. Paul Tillich said that religion is our “highest value”. Hmm.
http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-employee-a-co-489635228
Steven Pinker is a psychologist and linguist who I feel is one of the best thinkers present in American culture today. In a recent edition of The New Republic, he argues that science has given us an opportunity to totally change the world for the better and that in spite of how it often appears, great strides are being taken toward that end.
But, in this article (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities), he commits the sin of irreligion, that being the sin of approaching reality with a perspective other than that of “literarylew.”! He argues that science is creating opportunities for us, opportunities that are often gravely hampered by childish, self-serving obscurantism often voiced most vehemently by the religious. He argues that this “dishonesty” is often present even in science itself when scientists are unwilling to be self-critical about their own pet theories. Here is one paragraph in which he makes this point:
The second ideal is that the acquisition of knowledge is hard. The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings, and even if it did, our minds are prone to illusions, fallacies, and super- stitions. Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, the invigorating glow of subjective certainty—are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge. To understand the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity. Any movement that calls itself “scientific” but fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs (most obviously when it murders or imprisons the people who disagree with it) is not a scientific movement.
The acquisition of knowledge is “hard.” I would attribute this to the phenomena of resistance, that tendency to not want to see things other than we see them already. And he clearly sees the relevance of this to science, the tendency for scientists to succumb to “subjective certainty” and fail to look critically at their own perspective.
And though he does not spell this out as pointedly as he could, the same could be said of religion and faith. Yes, spirituality also usually falls victim to this human need for “subjective certainty” and we end up believing only what we want to believe, not daring to consider what is obvious to everyone else—our faith is only a form of self-indulgence. And when faith devolves into that narcissistic morass, it fails to offer a redemptive influence in the culture. One writer, George Marsden, described this as the “cultural captivity” of religion. And, if one reads the gospels critically, one can see that Jesus saw this clearly about the religion of the day, calling them “hypocrites” which actually means “actors.” Those whose faith is wholly in the grip of contemporary culture can only be “actors”, having a “form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” Thus I close again with the pithy observation of Shakespeare on this note, “When love (or religion) begins to sicken and decay/It useth an enforced ceremony/There are no tricks in plain and simple faith/But hollow men, like horses hot at hand/Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”
Here is a prayer by Maya Angelou which I recently came across, demonstrating the “non-duality” approach to spirituality that I have come to appreciate.
When I awoke this morning, lightening, thunder, and blowing wind greeted me. I peeked outside and found that this time the weather forecast had been accurate and a generous rainfall was coming our way. I then got to do one of my favorite things—take my laptop and cup of coffee to the open garage and watch “Showers of Blessings” visit me again.“ Showers of Blessings” is an old hymn that I loved in my youth and in the past couple of years as drought as beset my part of the country I have employed the image as I feel and express my gratitude for refreshing rainfall that breaks the drought occasionally. This is part of a new emphasis of my life these past few years, experiencing and voicing gratitude for the many blessings that come my way, so many of them usually taken for granted. And this experience and expression of gratitude is no longer perfunctory but now has an authenticity it used to lack as I truly “feel” grateful.
Another dimension of this experience…of this “awakening”…is that I pay better attention to the whole of the world around me, the social world but also the natural world. The entirety of the world “speaks” to me in a way to which I was once deaf; for I am less guilty of “having ears to hear but hearing not, having eyes to see but seeing not.” This parallels another important discovery of mine—the “Word” of the Judeo-Christian tradition is more than these “squeaks of ours” that we usually think of as the only means of communicating. This “Word” is found in the whole of Creation such as was suggested in the Old Testament when the writer declared, “The heavens and the earth declare the glory of God.”
I used to take this “Word” business literally and how could I do otherwise when at that time I took “words” literally, taking the word to be the thing-in-itself, mistaking the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. But now I see words as being inherently ephemeral just as are we humans that use them. But grasping this ephemeral nature of human experience and of the world, I now see and feel how powerful these words are as they can do more than merely denote, but can connote…or better yet, evoke. Words can reach into the heart and evoke a response but only if they come from the heart and only if there is a heart to receive them. If they are merely those “well worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness,” they will only denote and will never evoke. It all depends on having a heart and having one that is alive. Shakespeare, in Hamlet, described a heart that was dynamically alive as “full of penetrable stuff,” not “bronzed o’er” with the “dull speech of habit,” those aforementioned “well worn words and ready phrases.” A heart full of “penetrable stuff” can be “penetrated.”
A key issue is merely paying attention, being “mindful” of what is going on around us and in our own heart. We have to have awareness of the capricious “monkey mind” which so often holds us captive, imposing a template on the whole of our experience and keeping us from paying any attention to anything but the template itself, which is to say, to anything but our self. This insight allows me to glory in the trivial things I used to ignore—a summer morning rainfall, a beautiful flower, lovely birds cavorting in my yard, or two lovely dachshunds arguing with each other over who loves me the most!
King Lear gave up his kingdom, became estranged from his family, became very disconsolate, lost his eyesight and even his mind, and suddenly found himself out on the heath, pelted by a pitiless storm and retreating to a hovel where he lamented, “Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare forked animal…” Shakespeare saw clearly that man was other than he takes himself to be, that the trappings of his life merely cover up his internal nakedness. He realized and repeatedly emphasized the absence that we are.
And, when we get to the point in life where we entertain this spiritual impoverishment and experience the loss of our “kingdom”, the trappings of our ego-bound life that we have always taken to be of such great importance suddenly appear to amount to nothing. And when we get “naked”…as King Lear did literally after the above quote…we can discover meaning in our life and meaning for all of these trappings which until now have been merely “accomodations.” At this point many, if not all, of these “accomodations” can still be ours but they will not be the core of our identity any longer. We will have them. They will no longer have us.
Listen to what Thomas Merton said about this subject in his book, Seeds of Contemplation:
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person, a false self. I wind my experiences around myself and cover myself in glory to make myself perceptible…as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface….But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structures of pleasures and ambitions have no foundation. I am my own mistake…..The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.
Shakespeare, Merton and other great spiritual luminaries recognized that entertaining this “absence that we are” is an essential task in life and is a spiritual enterprise. They recognized that only when we embrace our emptiness, not just cognitively but emotionally, can we find the fullness of our Source. This is what Jesus had in mind when he said that to find our life we must lose it, we must lose the ego investments in ephemeral things in order to embrace the Essential. And, this also often means “losing” our religion as we have to forgo the ego-ridden, “letter of the law”, approach to spirituality and this often feels like we are losing our faith. Sometimes we have to lose our faith to find it.
The lunacy of reason unchecked is one of my concerns, owing in part to the fact that mine has gone decades trying to remain “unchecked.” But reality always wins out in the end and reason, like all human contrivance, has to meet its limits. Stanley Kunitz addresses this issue in the following poem, “Organic Bloom,” in which he declares the life always escapes “closed reason” and notes in conclusion that those who fail to learn this are making a perilous mistake. This is true for individuals and for groups. Remember my oft-quoted note from Goethe, “They call it reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”
ORGANIC BLOOM
By Stanley Kunitz
The brain constructs its systems to enclose
The steady paradox of thought and sense;
Momentously its tissued meaning grows
To solve and integrate experience.
But life escapes closed reason. We explain
Our chaos into cosmos, cell by cell,
Only to learn of some insidious pain
Beyond the limits of our charted hell,
A guilt not mentioned in our prayers, a sin
Conceived against the self. So, vast and vaster
The plasmic circles of gray discipline
Spread outward to include each new disaster.
Enormous floats the brain’s organic bloom
Till, bursting like a fruit, it scatters doom.
Last year I substitute taught in public schools with young children ages 5-8. I have noted here before how deeply moved I was by the experience, learning anew how precious and beautiful they are. These children were so very alive, not yet having been deadened by the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir too”…most of them anyway. (There were some who, sadly, had been deadened and it was horrible to see. Their “life” had been taken from them already, their spiritual vitality missing or depleted.)
The “life” present in these children, though, really galvanized the spiritual reawakening I have experienced the past few years. My “inner child” was stirred deeply by the innocence, vulnerability, neediness, and love of these children. And, I might add, these children loved me too which should be the highlight of my resume henceforth for there is no accomplishment of which I am more proud.
This experience made me often think of these words of Jesus regarding children, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:16-17)” Jesus recognized in the children of his day the same qualities I noted in my classes last year, seeing that they trusted openly from the depths of their heart, not having learned to do otherwise. He was telling us that he wanted us to trust Him, our Source, just like these children were trusting. The trust that he had in mind was not a rational experience as much as one of the heart, not something that was carefully thought out, the conclusion of a research project of sorts. This trust was just a spontaneous flow from the depths of the heart.
And most of us have a hard time getting this “flow” underway as the “research project” method of faith that we were inculcated with is hard to shake. It sure has been for me and still is at it is an ongoing process. Getting the flow to going is a matter of being willing to peel off the layers of our social self, that contrivance of the ego, and get down to the core of who we are, to our “be-ing” itself. And, when we “be” we are going to have to entertain at some point the “Be-ing One” (as in Yahweh’s ‘I am that I am’) in some fashion, though our conception of the experience might be different; for, conceptions are culturally determined where as Being (the “Being One)” lies beyond the realm of conceptions and is, by the way, That which ultimately unites us all.
These thoughts were inspired by Richard Rohr again who continues to almost daily steal my ideas and never gives me credit for them! Damn him!
PEACE OF MIND IS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS
“Beginner’s mind” is actually someone who’s not in their mind at all! They are people who can immediately experience the naked moment apart from filtering it through any mental categories. Such women and men are capable of simple presence to what is right in front of them without “thinking” about it too much. This must be what Jesus means by little children already being in the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3-4). They don’t think much, they just experience the moment—good and bad. That teaching alone should have told us that Christianity was not supposed to be about believing doctrines and moralities. Children do not believe theologies or strive for moral certitudes. They respond vulnerably and openly to what is offered them moment by moment. This is pure presence, and is frankly much more demanding than securing ourselves with our judgments.
Presence cannot be easily defined. Presence can only be experienced. But I know this: True presence to someone or something allows them or it to change me and influence me—before I try to change them or it!
Beginner’s mind is pure presence to each moment before I label it, critique it, categorize it, exclude it, or judge it up or down. That is a whole new way of thinking and living. It is the only mind that has the power to actually reform religion.
Adapted from Beginner’s Mind (CD, DVD, MP3)
The Daily Meditations for 2013 are now available
in Fr. Richard’s new book Yes, And . . . .
This beautiful poem by Rumi illustrates what I see as a central message of Jesus. In my own words, Jesus’ ministry can be summed up with, “Hey, you guys and gals, you got it all wrong! You are taking for real that which is only temporary.” This was most clearly emphasized when he said in Matthew 6, “ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Earlier Plato had noted the same phenomena with his myth a man being chained in a cave in which he could only see the shadows of the world that was going on behind him outside the cave’s opening. He naturally took the shadows to be the real thing. I think it was C. S. Lewis who described this as “the sin of misplaced concreteness,” taking the ephemeral to be the real. Here, Rumi presents the notion with customary eloquence:
Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter
with bread.The cave wants nothing to do
with the sun. This is dumb, the self-
defeating way we’ve been. A gold mine
is calling us into its temple. Instead,
we bend and keep picking up rocks
from the ground. Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source!
The origin is what we truly are. I add a little
vinegar to the honey I give. The bite of scolding
makes ecstasy more familiar. But
look, fish, you’re already in the ocean:
just swimming there makes you friends
with glory. What are these grudges about?
You are Benjamin. Joseph has put a gold cup
in your grain sack and accused you of being
a thief. Now he draws you aside and says,
“You are my brother. I am a prayer. You’re
the amen.” We move in eternal regions, yet
worry about property here. This is the prayer
of each: You are the source of my life.
You separate essence from mud. You honor
my soul. You bring rivers from the
mountain springs. You brighten my eyes.
The wine you offer takes me out of myself
into the self we share. Doing that is religion.
Huffington Post offers a very insightful article about dealing with guilt and escaping its clutches. (Huff Po =— http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/dealing-with-guilt-iyanla-vanzant_n_3472594.html)
How do we let go of any emotion that has tyrannized us such as guilt has. Sure, I accept the notion of the forgiveness of God offered in the story of Jesus, for example. But that comes to us first as a rational, conceptual “idea” and does not necessarily burrow into the depths of the heart where the “real” guilt abides; for the “real” guilt is in the affective domain which controls how we use our rational mind. Thus, our guilt can make us “guilty” believers of any stripe which will always make us so fanatical and legalistic that people who come across us will want to put up the “sign of the cross” when we approach and run away. For, guilt-ridden faith offers no “human” quality and therefore has no “godly” quality to it. It is just an “idea” devoid of any experience; or, better yet, it is an “idea” devoid of any Spirit, as in the “letter of the law killeth but the Spirit maketh alive.”
Guilt so often is so intrinsic to our being that we can’t fathom living without it. Letting it go would make us feel like a duck out of water or a fish on dry land. It would be scary and even fatal in a sense in that our ego would definitely be threatened by the loss of this core element which allows it to cohere. My dear friend, brother, spiritual mentor, and soul mate, Bill Shakespeare said it so eloquently, noting in Hamlet that we would prefer to “cling to those ills that we have, than fly to others that we know not of.” Our guilt is so comforting because it is the only thing that we have ever known. And, we are validated daily for living in this guilt as it is guilt (and shame) that binds our world together in the dog-and-pony show that the Hindus’ call Maya and fundamentalist American Christians call, “Well, it’s just the way things are.” And many faiths depend on guilt as without guilt attendance of their churches, synagogues, and mosques might decline, worship palaces fall into disrepair, clergy go underpaid or unemployed, and its constituents left with the challenge of dealing with Reality…which always requires faith in a Beyond which I often label our Source. And, I am of course referring to a transcendent deity who is, paradoxically, immanent; and the appreciation of this powerful truth requires ability and a willingness to hold contradictory notions in the mind at the same time. In other words, this notion “ain’t makin’ no sense” to many people and it never will!
But, there is always “method to our madness,” individually and collectively. The best we can ever do is muddle through and believe fervently that there is a “wisdom that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.” (Last two quotes from “Bill”)
It was a lovely, cool spring morning in 1990 and I had just been married about 9 months. I was in our front yard and was greeted by a bounty of lovely tulip blossoms. I bent down to pluck one and as I did so, the notion fluttered through my mind, “Am I plucking or being plucked?” That was such a random, silly thought that just “happened” but it immediately caught my eye even before I knew about “mindfulness.” And it is no coincidence that this event happened shortly after my first and only marriage, each of us being in our mid thirties.
This was the beginning of the end for my rigid, “lost in the head”, concrete thinking though it would take another two decades and more for the process to get to the point where the “flow” of life would begin to take place in my heart. The boundary ambiguity noted in that observation flourished over those decades and I increasingly have become more adept at drawing less of a distinction between “me and thee.” Now I do draw distinctions; and failure to do so would be a serious problem for we do live in the “real” world where distinctions and ego-functioning is required. But I’m not trapped in the paradigm of “I’m over here” and “you are out there”; I’m more able to see my world, human and natural, in more inclusive terms.
Now, I must point out that “I” was plucking the damn tulip! But in so doing the beauty of the moment was toying with my heart, bringing to my mind and heart the notion of “being plucked.” There is such magnificent beauty in the world but we can’t see, and feel, this beauty unless we are able to let go of the rigid ego-identification which our culture always mandates. But the ego identification is so insidious that we can’t even see it without having already somehow escaped its clutches. This is relevant to an old philosophical bromide that I came across decades ago, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it” ; or, “Asking someone to see his ‘self’ is like asking a fish to see water.” Or, even better yet, one of my Indian blog-o-sphere friends offered, “Someone who has fallen into a vat of marmalade can’t see anything but marmalade.” I liked his observation because it was new to me and registered dissonant at first, thus communicating to me effectively as I quickly mulled it over.
This drawing of distinction between “me and thee” is intrinsically a spiritual process. And I’m not even address “Spiritual” here though it is very relevant. I’m referring to “spiritual” as a human enterprise in the depths of the heart, a willingness to look inside which is an enterprise that our culture discourages. And if we deign to venture “there”, we will eventually end up wrestling with “God” in the realm of the “Spiritual.”
literary lew 