Category Archives: religion and spirituality

In Praise of Jimmy Carter

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Jimmy Carter is still going strong as he approaches his 90th birthday!  He is incredible!  And, he appears more lucid and coherent and “together” than does “literarylew” on occasion!  Though I would not deign to “pile on” and diminish his presidency, the real work of his life has taken place in the 33 years since he lost the 1980 election to Reagan.  And, I know this loss must have been a devastating experience for him.  He must have suffered immensely.  And, to make it worse, his presidency is often described as “ineffective” or as a “failure.”  But, he is holding his head high and is doing very important work with the Carter Foundation and with Habitat for Humanity.  In a video clip I will post here, he discusses with Jon Stewart his work in Africa in almost completely eradicating the Guinea worm.

I have suffered disappointment and even failure in my life.  And, I never just completely caved in and wallowed in despair…too long.  I too have pulled myself up from the floor and persevered.  But, if I had been in a position like Carter’s and had suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of the American people, I don’t know if I could have gotten up off the floor.

But his life is a demonstration of faith, an embodiment of the New Testament observation that “Faith without works is dead.”  And though he has dissolved his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, I’m sure his faith is very “Baptisty” even today.  (And, I might add, so is mine!)  I conjecture that he has found that his traditional Southern evangelical faith can withstand the scrutiny of a critical, intelligent mind and has even flourished as a result.

God appeared to me after this interview and told me that in a short time Jimmy will cross the river Styx and will find a very handsome golden mansion awaiting him.  And those streets will be embellished with an additional layer of gold.  And the angels will fete him as will the other humans who have preceded him into that celestial domain.  And he is going to give Jimmy a real hearty “Atta-boy.”

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-9-2013/jimmy-carter-pt–1

An Astronaut’s Cosmic Vision

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In 1971 astronaut Edgar Mitchell was returning to Earth after having landed on the moon. As he approached that blue orb which he called home, he had a life-changing experience as he suddenly was captivated by what I would call a “cosmic” view of human existence. It is always life-changing when we deign to “think outside of the box” and viewing this fragile little planet from that distant perspective is an “outside of the box” perspective that most of us will never have. But when can listen to his report and gain awareness of our own boxed-in (ness) and perhaps look at life a little differently. We can look at our world differently, other people differently, and even ourselves differently. Someone has said, “We can’t change the world but we can change how we see the world.” And when we change how we see the world we can help to change the world in some infinitesimal but significant way. We tend to spend our lives trapped in our tribal identity, our pre conceptions that we acquired by the accident of birth and a particular neurological endowment. But, there is always another world outside of the narrow prism that we call “home.” I quote Conrad Aiken so often with his observation, “We know only the small bright world of our consciousness beyond which likes the darkness.”

I enclose a video clip of Edgar Mitchell, one that was shared with me by Neuro-notes on WordPress.com. In this clip Mitchell makes profound observations about human intelligence and the role that intuition plays in this intelligence. Let me also suggest that probably a lot of his friends and colleagues must have thought he had “thrown a rod” out there in space and was completely nuts. For, trained as an engineer and scientist, he began to teach about an entirely different dimension of life, a dimension that complements the world of ordinary consciousness.

http://noetic.org/directory/person/edgar-mitchell/

 

An Open Letter to the Clergy re the “Nones”

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Polls about religion have revealed a new category in religious affiliation in America. A recent poll said that 20 per cent of those polled now select the box “none”, up from 2% in the ‘50’s and 7% in the ‘70’s. (See http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-25/opinions/38008236_1_nones-protestants-agnostics)

Now, having “been there and done that”, I know how much of the religious establishment, especially the clergy, will respond. They have at their disposal a time-told, self-serving contrivance. It goes like this: They will shake their head… perhaps grimace…look very pious, and then lament, “See, the Bible said it would be like this in the last days, that mankind would forsake God and turn to their wicked ways. Satan’s enticements would prove too alluring and they would opt for mammon over God’s will.” Their constituents will respond in kind, taking great comfort in knowing that they are the ones who are true to the faith, that are holding on firmly to “the faith once delivered unto the saints.”

But, they should take the advice of Shakespeare and “lay not that flattering unction to your soul.” Why not consider the possibility that the “nones” are making a valid choice in voting with their feet that what mainline Christendom offers does not pass the smell test anymore. Here is my open letter to the clergy on this matter:

Dear clergy and religious establishment:

Perhaps it is merely that what you offer now is merely pap, some watered down version of spirituality which is designed mainly to make you and the rest of your club feel better about itself, to perpetuate your own individual and collective ego needs. Sure, you purvey a spiritual tradition which has a rich heritage and contains valuable truth, but you present it in an immature and selfish manner so that anyone looking on, having one eye and half-sense, can tell that it is all about you. For example, in some circles you passionately take pride in “preaching Christ and him crucified”, but to any astute onlooker you use those words and the rest of the gospel merely to work your crowd into frenzy, to reinforce their preconceptions about God, and allow them to walk away still stuck in their own moribund religiosity. You facilitate the fulfillment of the scripture about people “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

Some of your worship services appear to be a mere carnival and others like a funeral service. Some are so dull and boring I would just as soon go home and watch paint dry. This is because there is no life there though there is often a lot of frenzy and hysteria…or for those of another persuasion, refrigerator-cold tedium. But it is merely a show, described by The Bard in Julius Caesar, who noted that, “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.”

So, you hear about the “nones” and once again you get all worked up about how awful the world is and once again you can whip your crowd into a frenzy. It is so exciting for them to know that “the world” is going to hell in a hand basket but YOU are holding forth for the truth, that the world is lost in darkness and will not hear the truth YOU offer. But, my dear friend, consider the possibility that YOU are the one lost in the darkness of a sterile pseudo-gospel and instead of offering life to your flock you are offering more darkness. For, remember the wisdom of W.H. Auden, “The divine and the demonic speak the very same language.”

Now, I have been cruel but I “would be cruel only to be kind.” The gospel you offer in such an immature and self-serving manner speaks of a Savior that covers you regardless! God’s grace covers us all, regardless of the paltry nature of our faith. And, whose faith is not paltry? But it is the Object of our faith that matters. But the sterile message you preach, that turns people into “nones”, has no life in it and repels anyone seeking spiritual sustenance. The people in your flock hunger for “soul food” to alleviate the pain of the stresses and strains of modern-day life, not the sterile pap, the “gospel-eze”, that you trot out each week. Spiritual hunger will not be sated with your canned Christian version of “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) I fear many of you were described by a friend decades ago when he wrote, “You heroes of spiritual contraception who have long since despaired of rebirth.”

Children Belong to All of Us!

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Melissa Harris-Perry (weekend MSNBC news talk show host) provided fodder for the right-wing extremists last week when she emphasized our collective responsibility for our children. This immediately got their “panties in a wad” but this wad became even tighter when Sarah Palin came out from under her Alaskan rock, displaying her intellectual acumen (or lack thereof), and alleged that here again was a “liberal” effort to encroach on parental responsibility. To summarize conservative concerns, “Our children are ours! Keep your government hands off of our children.” This mind-set sees children as property, as extensions of the parents selves.

But my real concern here is the simplicity of thought that was demonstrated. Ms. Palin and her ilk demonstrated again their inability…and spiritual unwillingness…to hold contradictory notions in their mind at the same time. They failed to see that Ms. Perry was not proposing that children are not the primary responsibility of parents. She was merely emphasizing that children are a gift to us all, that we have a collective responsibility to provide an hospitable world to them, and that failure to do so is a grave error in judgment. It is possible to hold both notions in one’s mind at the same time but it will not happen with the hard-core extremists who are not capable of Pauline “spiritual discernment.”

And this problem is very much related to their anti-science stance.  Quantum physics portrays the world as full of contradictions and conflicts, a teeming morass out of which our God-given mind has given us the ability to impose order upon. But beneath this “order” there is still Mother Nature in all her conflicted glory and we ignore this conflicted glory with our neat little conceptual packaging at our own peril. One anecdote from quantum physics which is very relevant is the notion that molecules are “waves” and “particles” at the same time. That makes no “sense” at all but Mother Nature is not required to fit into our world of “sense.” Quantum physics also teaches us that we are basically empty space and that the world we see is ephemeral, including the world of our own body and psyche. Grasping this notion is very humbling but very invigorating and empowering. It has allowed me, for one, to see God at work in a marvelous though mysterious way that is tremendously exciting. But I am deprived of the specious “power” of having it all figured out any more or having any hope of doing so. Alas and alack, I’m left with nothing but faith!

Now, I am wont to emphasize that I see both sides of the picture and give some faint nod of respect to the other viewpoint. But, there are instances in which I am less apt to do so and this is one of them. Keep in mind I am not talking about conservatism as a whole, only those who are what Karl Rove called the “nutty fringe.” Their ignorance is not merely a lack of intelligence or education but is darkness personified. And, unfortunately, there are many conservatives who know better, who do not subscribe to the lunacy of the extremists, but who have allowed themselves to be controlled by them merely to get their vote. “The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” (W. B. Yeats)

Bonhoeffer’s Mystical Faith Experience

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In yesterday’s blog I expressed concern about the need for external reference with one’s life, especially with one’s belief system. Faith is, in a sense, a very narcissistic enterprise and always runs the risk of being merely a gross narcissistic indulgence. That has been the case with my faith so much of my life. And now my faith is taking a radically different direction and that gives me pause lest I too suddenly find myself all alone, believing in isolation, subscribing to some “unique” belief system for which there is no external validation. That is why it is important that I come across other people in my community, in my reading, and on the blog-o-sphere who have walked a similar path of faith or are doing so now. Yesterday, I discovered this marvelous quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who so beautifully describes my faith. (http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com/):

A Reading from a letter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his friend Eberhard Bethge, written from Tegel Prison, dated 21, July, 1944

During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a human being, as Jesus was human — in contrast, shall we say, to John the Baptist. I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.

I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. I suppose I wrote The Cost of Discipleship as the end of that path. Today I can see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by what I wrote.

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a human being and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

I am glad to have been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them. You may be surprised at such a personal letter; but for once I want to say this kind of thing, to whom should I say it?

 

Mental Illness is a Reference Problem

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Suppose you woke up in the morning and knew that the moon was made out of cheese! And, if that was not enough, suppose you knew that this was an important truth which you must passionately share with other people! Well, if that should happen, let me assure you that you would be correct, you would be one hundred per cent right…IN A UNIVERSE THAT IS HOPEFULLY VERY SMALL! And, hopefully that would be a universe of just one person!

Now, if that should happen, please hope that you have friends who will intervene and try to get you some help real soon, although you will be protesting that you need no help. The irony of a private world of reference is that the more private it is the less amenable is one to feedback from the outside. When your lunacy has run full circuit, you will arrived in Eden itself, completely free of any discomfort, stress, or strain. You will be free from that “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” that trouble Hamlet. Now, true your friends and acquaintances will be shocked and saddened at your situation but that will not be a concern of yours. You will be safe and secure.

My point here is an old bromide that I’ve found valuable, “Mental illness is a reference problem.” It is very dangerous to find yourself in a world where you have disdain for outside feedback and even try to arrange to not get this feedback. We must never lose our antennae and we must always listen to the feedback these antennae are picking up.

Re the collective version of this madness, W. H. Auden noted, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

 

The Pain of “Seeing Things Too Well”

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And one trembles to be so understood and, at last, To understand, as if to know became The fatality of seeing things too well. –Wallace Stevens

Matthew Warren, the son of widely-renown evangelical pastor Rick Warren, has taken his life. Only in his mid-twenties, the report from his father was that his son had struggled with depression and “mental illness” for most of his life, often pining for death to ease his pain. I was deeply troubled by this story, so sorry for the young man who was so overcome with the difficulty of life and for his family whose life has now been shaken to the core.

“You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man,” Warren wrote. “He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He’d then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them.”

This anecdote from Pastor Warren reveals that Matthew was a very sensitive soul, who could be described as “having boundary problems” and taking on the troubles and pain of other people. In my trade, I once heard a psychiatrist describe a similar soul as suffering from “porosity of boundaries.”

I don’t know anything about the Matthew and never will. But I certainly identify with him as I know what it is like to overly-identify with other people and, on occasion to cross a line and take on more of their pain than I should. That is why I was a “mental health professional” and often could have uttered the famous words of Bill Clinton, “I feel your pain.” But, mercifully my “porosity” never reached the extreme of this young man and I’ve never had to battle with suicidality.

Life is really painful. Most people are “blessed” with blinders but some are not so fortunate. If they are lucky, they will be able to channel this anguish into a productive outlet…art, music, “care-giving” professions, ministry, etc….; otherwise, they suffer terribly and sometimes opt for the “bare bodkin” that Hamlet pined for. Most cultures do not make room for young men and women of this cut, those who “see things too well.” This greatly exacerbates their pain, forcing them to suffer in isolation. I’m reminded again of the wisdom of Leonardo da Vinci:

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”. Just as Jaspers would note, da Vinci knew that we “have to take it where we find it.”

“Unpacking My Heart with Words” Review

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When I started this “literarylew” adventure about two years ago, I prefaced my efforts with a line from the book of Job, noting that “my heart is full of words, like a taut wine skin, about to burst.” I then borrowed a line from the other important body of Holy Writ in my life, Shakespeare, and proposing that I would “unpack my heart with words.”

As I have been “unpacking” in word, and in the “deed” of my day-to-day life, I’ve realized that when you “unpack” anything at some point you empty it out. You realize the obvious, the suitcase or box is empty and you can quit unpacking. But when you “unpack” the heart, you do discover and experience “emptiness” but you find that it is a never ending “emptiness” and that, paradoxically, in some very uncanny way you are full when you are empty.

Now part of me is still very vain and wants the above to conclude with some report of an epiphany of sorts, some glorious spiritual experience which puts me up with the luminaries of the past and present. And, I might add, this “unpacking” spiel kind of invites it! But, it ain’t there! And I’m so glad I don’t want it to be and in part this is because of cowardice. I have a hunch it would be too painful. “It is what it is” or “I am what I am” or the Popeye the Sailor Man version, “I yam what I yam.” I know emptiness more than before but mine is mercifully a very prosaic emptiness. Thus I’m not a poet, huh?

We so miss the point. And we do it persistently, brazenly, and deliberately. This is because we do not like to confront our emptiness for doing so exposes our frailty and foolishness, showing us to be veritably “strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage.” Now, don’t get me wrong. My life is now also daily “strutting and fretting” but I view it with a different perspective now. I don’t take it (i.e., myself) so seriously and, paradoxically, realize just how infinitely important “it” is. The Infinite becomes manifest through each of us as we go about our day-to-day lives humbling chopping wood and carrying water.

I want to share again Lao Tzu’s thoughts about this emptiness:

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.
(trans. By Witter Bynner)

 

A Poetic Paean to Burgeoning Spring

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“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork.”  And this is the time of the year when this glory is so manifest as the earth begins again to blossom, a magnificent delight I’ve been part of for sixty one years.  And it gets more delightful each year as I am more attentive to this unfolding and conscious that a parallel unfolding is present in my heart and life.

We can worship God, find attunement with Him, in so many ways.  We can worship him formally with other people in organized religion, we can worship Him in work and play, we can worship him in psalm and hymn, and we can worship him in careful attention to the beauty of his natural world.  And “attention” is a critical word for I think early in our life we learn to put blinders on and live with only cursory awareness of our world, including even our own body, by the way.  So, when the beauty of Spring graces us each year, we see it and note, “How pretty” but do so in that cursory fashion without any real attention.  The Buddhists would use the term “mindful” to describe this careful attention.  And this is not to stare at a flower or bird like some zombie and zone out into some alienated bliss.  It is simply to be “aware” from time to time each day.

I would like to share with you a couple of poems by a soon-to-be friend of mine who has this “mindful” awareness.  She is Sue Coppernoll who is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister living in Northwest Arkansas.  My wife has known her for a couple of years and I’ve become familiar with her poetry through her.  And later in this month I will get to meet her.  But she has allowed me to share these two beautiful poems with you, poems in which she echoes the observation of T. S. Eliot that “April is the Cruelist Month” in reference to natures vicissitudes.

The Very First Day, Again

Sunlight streams through slats
In blinds on the window
Birdsong blends with gentle breeze
No Fool she,
April has come to the mountain.

Wild pear, hyacinth, tulips and forsythia
Wreath hills and hollows in glorious array.

Mocking Bird atop the tallest tree
(a redbud about to burst)
Presents her eclectic performance as a gift
To all who would hear – and welcome –
The magic of her songs.

“Get up,” her command issues forth.
“Walk in the grass.
Inscribe your dreams
Upon the cathedral of the sky
With the fingertips of your heart.”

April, who has come to the mountain
Awaits you there
In the splendor of rebirth and renewal
Her hand outreached in welcome
She beckons you to join the dance of life.

Susan Starburst Coppernoll
1 April 2013

Dialogue with April Second

Where’d you go?

Has April left the mountain?

Cloud cover obliterates visions of spring,

Tulips and daffodils bend their heads to the ground,

Battered youngsters in a sea of mud.

How so perfidious, lovely one?

Have you no constancy, no shame?

Birdsong falls silent in the dark of noon,

Yearling rabbits do not parade across the garden,

Squirrel chatter disturbs not our ears.

Whither your promise, April?

Are you gone from us, or hiding?

Lungs eager for respite gasp in the cold air,

Arms prickly with chill reach for a comforting cape,

Feet return to shelter of rain boots.

Do you hear our lament, cruel month?

Shall we cling to anticipation of your return?

Warmed by a glorious glimpse of Earth’s ripening,

We bow in supplication, we nurture in the caverns of our hearts

Dreams of yesterday’s joy, tomorrow’s delight.

A Picture of Me Being Enlightened!

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I finally “saw the light” and it hit me like 240 volts, as you can see.

Yes, I was reading in the book of Deuteronomy, wholly consumed by the intricacies and hidden meaning of the “begots”, and suddenly I felt a rumbling in my bowels, my head felt faint, and suddenly it got me! Seriously, a good friend of mine and I were having coffee last year and were kidding each other about our respective quests for “enlightment” decades ago. We were chuckling at our immature and ego-ridden our quest was. And I certainly admire anyone who seeks spiritual maturity under any guise, and all such seekings have ego involvement, but mercifully if we are patient enough God will address that ego. Actually, he will begin to address that ego as His work will continue the rest of our life on that issue.