Category Archives: religion and spirituality

Ideas, Logs, and “Ideologues”

Leave a reply

A new friend of mine who reads this blog shared a thought about my recent musings re ideologues. She used her lovely artistic imagination to juxtapose the word ideologue with the admonishment of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to the hypocrites to first remove, “the log in your eye” rather than focusing on the speck in the eye of others. Her observation points out the projection of ideologues who see in others their own faults. And, of course, they have no awareness of this and if “awareness” should venture too near to them they will “gird up their loins” and flee the threat.

But my focus here is not ideologues and their “sensible” non-sense but the beauty of the human imagination seen here with the observation of this artist/musician. (See Marthawebb.com) Artists are gifts to human kind as they can use this imagination to “play with reality” and suggest associations that others might not see. Martha’s observation has brought together a verse from the Bible and the word “ideologue” and given emphasis to the hypocrisy of “ideologue-ites.” Though the word “log” has nothing to do etymologically with the word “ideologue”, her observation will always stick in my mind when I hear the word “ideologue” or when I see one in action.

Playing with reality” is critical if we are to be human…or at least one who is “alive.”   If we don’t mature to the point where we can step back from our view of the world a bit, we will live our lives under the tyranny of a worldview that fell our way by happenstance. In some sense, “reality” will have “lived us” rather than us having “lived” in reality and by “living” participated meaningfully in it. This is what Thoreau had in mind when he declared that he feared coming to the end of his life and realizing what he had lived was not life. And Jesus had the same thing in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

“Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear”…Eventually!

Leave a reply

Hmm. Well, if it does I’ve got a lot of work to do for I have a lot of fears. But these fears are diminishing as I’m slowly beginning to accept God’s love, realizing that this love is a dimension of life that is not “out there” in some objectified projection from our collective and individual heart. God is immanent as well as transcendent.

But fear will never go away completely for it comes with being human. Those who are so proud of being totally fearless might take caution as this could be merely the brazen arrogance of psychopathy. To be is to be vulnerable. And to be fully human, or to be in the process of maturing as a human, is to be increasingly comfortable with the experience of vulnerability. And that is often scary!

I have tried most of my life to escape vulnerability…and human-ness…with ideologue-ism. It is a very dependable escape and when we opt for that “fig leaf” we will always have the affirmation from others who have subscribed to similar ideas. And, I can assure you that it is so comforting to know that one is in the comforting warmth of like-minded “believers” and to have that firm conviction that one’s view of the world is “right.” Coming to the point of maturity and seeing that this “escape from freedom” was a self-imposed prison has taken courage that I didn’t know that I had…and, I don’t really know that I have it even yet! But I see so clearly now the tyranny of ideas when not moderated by an open heart. I see now so clearly how the ideologue-ism of those days of my life included participation in a group effort to control others. And I see this same poison so vividly illustrated today in extremist groups such as ISIS and political factions in my country who seeks to deny rights to minorities, even the right to vote and the right to health care.

 

 

 

Breaking news! GOP Hates President Obama!

Leave a reply

“We wage the war we are.’ I use this W. H. Auden quote so often because it so vividly describes my life. But I think the quip is relevant to each of us, individually and collectively. American politics has been demonstrating this “warfare” in a vivid fashion since Barack Obama became president. Senator Mitch McConnell announced upon Obama’s election, that the “primary goal” of his party was to “make Barack Obama a one-term president.” And this Republican game plan has sought egregiously to undermine the President each step of the way, even to the of bring harm to the country and the threat of devastation to the world economy.

sThis single-focus is often good for any group as it provides coherence when otherwise there might be none. But this “single-focus” often goes beyond the pale at times and eventually lead even to internal conflict in the group itself. This is because this “single-focus” is so intense that “reality” is disregarded, the “reality” in this case being the welfare of the country but also the welfare and integrity of the group itself. This “single-focus” can galvanize such intense emotions that actions result that are so short-sighted that the long-term outcome of the actions leads to  catastrophy. The resulting autistic frame of reference is vividly illustrated today on the world stage with Islamic extremist group, Isis. And, sure enough, there are signs that the Isis organization now is experiencing internal conflict.   When your subconscious need is to project your violence on others, eventually “others” will not suffice and the group  begins to have conflict within; it begins to feed upon itself.

The Republicans have graphically demonstrated their antipathy to the President so many times, most recently when 47 Republican senators signed a letter by Senator Tom Cotton which sought to undermine complex negotiations between the White House (and other world leaders) with Iran on nuclear disarmament. A few weeks earlier, the Speaker of the House John Boehner intruded in Obama’s purview on the same issue by inviting Benjamin Netenyaho to speak to the Congress without the customary formality of going first through the White House.

But the seething hatred has even gone to comical at times. In Obama’s second inaugural address, one Congressman interrupted this very formal very event with a cry of, “You lie!” This Congressman had imbibed his party’s hostility toward the President to the to the point he could not control himself, and felt he had the liberty to behave so rudely. He lacked the self-awareness, or meta-cognition, which would have given him impulse control and the realization that such an outburst would be so egregious that both parties would later chide him for the offense.. Another event even more clearly illustrated the childish nature of the hostility when one Republican Senator during intense discussions with the President over the budget, told the President to his face, “I can’t stand to even look at you!” To make this even further comical, when the Senator was “outed” on this rudeness, his response was a fervent denial, followed by a threat, “If anyone was tape recording that meeting, they will be reprimanded for violation of the rules.” The lack of self-awareness kept him from realizing that he was then tacitly admitting guilt.

Obama’s response to the Republican intrusion into negotiations with Iran revealed a truth that is too painful for most members of the Republican party—the extremists who have so much power in their party is ideologically similar to Isis.   Obama noted, “I think it is kind of interesting that the GOP is aligning themselves with the hard right of Isis. I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with Isis. It’s an unusual coalition.”

I have wanted to liken these hardliners to the Isis myself. But it is important to note that this is an over statement as our system of government and our culture will not permit this radical extremism to lead to overt violence.   But the subtle violence in their collective heart just two years ago led them to jeopardize the world economy when they tried to shut down the government rather than compromise with the White House on a budget deal. As that political battle approached denouement, the extremists (i.e. Tea Party) began to realize that their childish intransigence was not going to succeed. At one of the conferences within the GOP, two of were quote as they came out of committee meetings exuberantly avowing, “We are rightI”

Hardliners who venture into extremism cannot be negotiated with. One cannot negotiate with any individual or group who is desperately convinced they are “right.” Furthermore, this being “right” is very much related to the conservative religion of that contingent of the GOP who are convinced that God is leading them. It is hard to negotiate with anyone who so desperately believe God is on their side. This issue is a demonstration of the danger of ideology I have blogged about recently. Anyone who is so invested with any idea…even those that might be “good and noble”…cannot approach any issue on the table with reason. Oh sure, they have reason but their reason is blinded by the hatred which is the underlying unifying force of their group. As Goethe so pithily described it, “They call it reason, using celestial light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

These people are so deeply embedded in their own thinking that they cannot see beyond “the small bright circle of their consciousness.” This is called narcissism.  Emily Dickinson described it as a “mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.”

 

 

 

Ideologues are Scary!

3 Replies

Another young man has been arrested for allowing Muslim extremism to enthrall his grasp on reality. conspiring to bomb the White House because of the government’s attacks on Islamist extremists. Christopher Lee Cornell looks like another typical American young man who for has stymied his personal angst and alienation by affiliating with Muslim extremism. News reports are often reporting similar stories of young men…and women even…who are trying to join Isis or other Muslim extremist groups. Alienation and anger appears to describe most of them.

But just because of anger and alienation, why would anyone have to glom onto any idea as “crazy” as violent extremism and bring upon themselves and others so much pain? It is as if they sell their soul to gain something they believe in fully, with all of their heart and life, even to the point they are willing to die and to kill others. Their desperation takes “belief” or “faith” to a level that is beyond the pale. This development in ours and other cultures illustrates the appeal and the danger of ideas. Investing inordinately in any idea, or set of ideas, often brings the temptation of taking these ideas too seriously, very much related to taking oneself too seriously.  When one does this, he/she has become an “ideologue” which Eric Hoffer described decades ago, “The True Believer.”

But this illustrates the specious nature of all ideas. Yes, we look at this young man and other extremists and shake our head and call them “nuts.” But even our middle-class, educated, and “christian” ideas merit scrutiny occasionally.  For an “idea” is not the “thing-in-itself” ,but is so often taken to be.   When this happens, we have failed to follow the Buddhist wisdom, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

Of course, I am not exempt from risking this peril. In this venue I trot our “ideas” myself, ideas reflecting a belief system and personal identity which I take very seriously. I myself am full of ideas and certainly have made an investment in them. But now I am old enough that I see very clearly these are only “ideas” and therefore merit caution lest I take them “too” seriously. And if I should do so, it will because my ego is influencing to overestimate by wisdom. You will know that I have done this when you discover that there is a Pay Pal button on this page with a request for donations! Or, when you discover that I have somehow found out your mailing address and are suddenly harassing you with this “stuff” in your mailbox. Or when you somehow hear that I’ve been arrested for “seet preaching” this stuff on my neighborhood streets, perhaps with the additional charge of “public indecency!”

One has become an ideologue when he/she takes “pet ideas” and puts so much energy in them that perspective is lost, failing to realize that these ideas are important to him/her but will not necessarily be important to other people. When that happens, these ideas….many of which might even contain “noble truths”…can become a hammer that is used to bludgeon other people and convert them to our way of viewing the world. The root issue of an ideologue is profound alienation, so profound that there is an inordinate need to proselytize and get others to believe the same way so to alleviate our existential loneliness  Ideas, though an intrinsic part of what makes us human, often become a weapon with which we brutalize other people, often under the guise of some “ultimate truth.” The classic ideologue has in mind making others join his “tribe,” with the ultimate goal of conquering the whole world. This mind-set in my youth was often expressed with the call to “win the world to Jesus” which I now realize was merely a heart-felt desire to make the world “just like me.” And that desperation cannot be blamed on Jesus, or even the Christian tradition. It must be laid at the foot of our “human-ness” as the human need for affiliation, if unchecked, can lead to extremism.

Loneliness is painful. And subscribing to the prevailing ideas of our culture is important in our youth and helps us achieve an identity and take comfort in belonging to our tribe. But at some point we have to grow up and be willing to look at our ideas…even the one’s we deem beyond question…and begin to seek affiliation with some “thing” which if followed can lead us in the direction of being more inclusive in our approach to life.

(An afterthought: Just moments ago, I came across this wisdom from Stephen Hawking in a post on Face Book: the greatest danger to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.)

 

 

 

Epistemic Closure–Willfully Biased

7 Replies

A story in today’s New York Times illustrates an issue which has always been endemic to human culture—an inability to recognize our bias, not only those who we have conveniently dumped into the category of “them.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/debate-on-a-jewish-student-at-ucla.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0)

A young Jewish student, being interviewed for placement on the judicial board of the student council at UCLA, suddenly found her self facing this question from a fellow student council member,   “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”  This is a stunning and vivid illustration of what lies at the roots our human drama—a complete failure to recognize that not only we seei the world through biases given them to us by background, just as it is with those who we see as biased.  Yes, this young woman would be at least subtly influence by dimensions of her faith and the rest of her life experiences.  But the interrogator revealed his naivety, failing to realize that the very question he posed revealed his bias toward Jews.

Each of us sees the world through a template formulated by our life experiences, all of which are also influenced by a neurophysiological substrate.  Poet Conrad Aiken offered my favorite p grasp of this truth when he wrote, “We only see the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the dark.”  But some of us are in positions of power in that our background teaches us that our way of seeing the world is the “proper” way while other’s will fail to see things “right.”  And the power I refer to here is the power that comes from being in the majority, being entrenched in the “consensually validated” view of the world.  Nietzsche understood this, noting, “All things are subject to interpretation.  Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Real power in any group lies in the agreed upon “truths,” the assumptions that are not questioned by anyone entrenched spiritually in this consensually validated prism (or “prison”!!!)  W. H. Auden noted the courage required to face one’s basic assumptions and be subject to the existential solitude that will follow, writing in  “New Year Letter”:

…only “despair

Can shape the hero who will dare

The desperate databases

Into the snarl of the abyss

That always lies just underneath

Our jolly picnic on the heath

Of the agreeable, where we bask,

Agreed on what we will not ask,

Bland, sunny, and adjusted by

The light of the accepted lie?

 Someone once noted that it is impossible to have a perspective on one’s perspective without somehow escaping it.”  But asking anyone to “escape” and enter the realm of meta-cognition is like asking a fish to see water. Auden recognized that this experience is disconcerting at least, and probably terrifying.  The following selection from his poem, “For the Time Being,” has the Star of the Nativity speaking to its followers:

Beware.  All 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 and unfeeling stone,

In labyrinths where they must entertain

Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.

Auden understood the need of getting out of one’s self to the point that the legitimacy of other view points could be appreciated or at least tolerated.  But his wisdom also reflects what Alan Watts described as “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”  Vulnerability always ensues when we get to the point where we own our existential plight, that we are but a finite creature with a finite grasp of our world, a world also being composed of other vulnerable creatures with the same tendency to absolutize his/her world view.

 

(NOTE:  Can any of you who are familiar with WP tell me why I could not get the poetry to copy to single-space????  Thanks.)

 

 

 

 

 

Words can Kill…or at Least Deaden!

2 Replies

Blogging the past three years has been such a wonderful experience for me. One of the nice things is that it has put me in touch with interesting people from around the world people who have books, movies, and experiences to share and thus broaden my life.  But yesterday, I received a comment via email from a “real-time” friend who I only recently met which further stimulated my thinking about words and their relationship to reality; or, the converse of that notion, “words and their lack of relationship to reality.” This person is a local artist/musician and is preoccupied with a similar concern of mine—words and their “meaning” they have in the depths of the heart, a “meaning” which is completely missed if we live only on the surface of life and take words…and the rest of our experience…only on a surface level. The following is an excerpt from Martha’s email:

A book I look at from time to time by Leonard Shlain would no doubt interest you, Lewis if you have not already read it! “The Alphabet vs. the Goddess” where this binariness is explored throughout history. He presents things in a left-brain right-brain paradigm and would probably agree that labeling was the end of beauty. I am fascinated by brain scans of children when taught that a color has a name. Can you imagine simply experiencing the color blue, all through your body and senses, before you were told that this experience was associated with the label “blue?” The scans show the brain tingling in all its parts and portions, lit up! When scanned later, once the label “blue” is assigned, the brain activity becomes very localized to the verbal areas, and I dare say, the experience is also tempered down. I just don’t want anyone’s light to be under a bushel and my mission in life is to wake up those experiential aspects that true artistry awakens, no matter the medium. (http://marthashepp.com)

 Martha’s thoughts brought to the table an additional dimension to my post of yesterday, illustrating how that there is a sense in which words can kill…or at least deaden…and keep us on the surface level which in the Christian tradition is known as “the letter of the law.” The brain scan research she referred to is just stunning.

Martha’s observation brought to my mind a marvelous poem on this subject by Carl Sandburg, a poem which captures poetically the “diaphragms of flesh negotiating the word”–attaching a subjective experience to a word which has currency “out there”. But this experience, there on the threshold of consciousness, introduces us to a “verbal order” (i.e.l patriarchy) which some of us spend the rest of our lives finding the courage to lay aside…in some sense…and allow the words to have meaning again.

 PRECIOUS MOMENTS by Carl Sandburg

Bright vocabularies are transient as rainbows.

Speech requires blood and air to make it.

Before the word comes off the end of the tongue,

While 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 home had meanings: Behold the Man! Look at

          Him! Dying he lives and speaks!

(NOTE: If you check out Martha’s web site—where you will find some of her art and clips from her music…make sure you read her “Artist’s Statement.”)

Shakespeare & Binary Thinking

Leave a reply

“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” This might be one of the richest bits of Shakespearean wisdom that I have gleaned from the treasure of his work. He is pointing out that it is our ability to assign labels that creates our world and in so doing carves this world up into categories. This notion is intriguing for on a superficial level it seems to mean that even something like murder is “murder” only because of thinking. And, well, in a sense that is so but that doesn’t mean our labeling it “bad” is a problem.

With this observation Shakespeare again takes us into the depths of our collective heart where distinctions were made even before we are rational human beings. He realized that somewhere in our ancient past we determined that labels (i.e. words) are necessary even before we were capable of formal thought. It is there, in our collective unconscious that we decided, “Hey, some of this stuff going on here is a problem” and from that subconscious realization we began to evolve a capacity to assign labels. But also, at that some point in development we started the preliminary process of assigning labels to the whole of God’s creation, illustrated so beautifully with Adam’s “naming the beasts of the field.”

Without this ability to assign labels and to categorize our world we would still be beasts of the field. But with this skill we were beginning to acquire the ability to create human culture, making it possible for life as we know it to unfold. But unfortunately, this spiritual phenomena of becoming verbal also had a price tag—it separated us from the splendor of the natural world and left us with a feeling of loss and an unconscious want to return to that Edenic bliss. It also created the capacity to take these labels too seriously and to forget they were only “pointers” and not the thing- in-itself. These made it possible for ideologues to climb out of the primordial slime with the rest of us and these ideologues take this verbal world to be the only world, not realizing that words have meaning only when their ancient, primordial, (i.e. pre-verbal) roots are engaged. When we reach this point of spiritual development, we understand that a simple word like “god,” for example, can cease to be a mere “idea” and the “experience” of God in the depths of our heart can begin to surface. When we reach this point of our life we then begin to “wrestle with the Lord” and can come to realize that in some sense we are also wrestling with the very core of our being, our very self. We are, as W. H. Auden puts it, “waging the war we are.”

It is such a challenge to recognize and to experience the limits of binary thinking. In a sense, “binary thinking” is the only thinking there is but only in a sense. With this marvelous neo-cortex, we have the God-given capacity to learn how deeply we are embedded in our own thought. When we reach this point of maturity and have the courage to enter the struggle that follows, we recognize that yes, there is “good” and “bad” in our world but we understand that the distinction between the two is more nebulous than we used to think. This understanding makes us less sure when assigning those particular labels though we can,, at the same time, have the courage to judiciously utilize them. Yes, there is “good” and a “bad” in this world and even more so, in the very depths of my own heart. This neo-cortical phenomena of meta-cognition allows us to hold in our mind and heart “contradictory” notions at one and the same time and we can begin to cavort about in the Unity of all Things.

Lunacy in Religion Surfaces Again!!!

Christiandom has given Bill Maher and other stand-up comedians more fodder for there routines as a 53 year old former fundamentalist pastor has been arrested in Brazil to face 53 charges of sexual abuse. I will offer a link to the story as it is really creepy, primarily many of the parents willingly “followed God’s leadership” and entrusted their teen daughters into the care of this man’s reclusive and isolated ministry with a promise that he would make these girls God’s women! (http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/01/us/victor-barnard-brazil-caught/index.h)

I see so much lunacy in contemporary religion. And, history has many other stories of additional religious lunacy enough to bring anyone to the point of consideration, “Is all of this just nuts?” And I look at contemporary Christianity and am amazed at how intelligent, educated people can believe some of the things they believe in the name of Christ; and, yes, on the fringe I see many “nut-jobs.”  However, the social context that produced me some six decades ago would label me “nuts” also, or some variation of that term And, in a sense, they would be right for it is the context that gets to define the terms and in reference to the context from which I hailed I certainly merit some disapproving label.

Spirituality deals with the issue of meaning or our quest for meaning. And meaning is always found in a search into the depths of the heart. Unfortunately, the “depths of the heart” are chaotic to say the least and contain good and bad, a veritable Pandora’s box of mischief and worse. Sometimes one’s spiritual quest will take one right into the “Heart of Darkness” and there are times that temptations leads to catastrophic decisions, often “in the name of God.” An equally sordid route is when someone is so fear-bound, so fearful of that dark realm in his heart, they will not allow the Spirit of God that he professes to believe in to lead him in the depths of the heart in the first place. This person will keep it all in the head and become an ideologue, one picture of which we have today is Isis but in Christianity in my country there is Westboro Baptist Church.

But, this issue is ultimately a human issue and not the fault of the religious/spiritual impulse though certainly that impulse goes awry and we see catastrophe. We are complicated little critters because in those hoary depths of our heart monsters do lurk and sometimes our adaptations to them are inadequate, even in our faith. And this realization keeps me a little less rigid than I used to be though often I will find myself relapsing into an arrogance even with my “liberal” and “open-minded” and “all-inclusive” notions of Christianity. And this realization always brings me back to the basic emphasis of spirituality—chopping wood, carrying water. For all of our lofty and noble thoughts, what are we doing to make this world a better place for our kiddies?

 

 

 

Modern-day Tent Revival Coming to Taos, NM!!!

1 Reply

In the “old days” of my youth in the American South there were tent revivals, even tales from my mother of “brush arbor revivals”, and other examples of evangelical fervor run amok. I received a mailer last week regarding the modern-day equivalent of this type of event which will be held in the comfort of a local motel on the north end of the main street in Taos, NM. The flyer (fortunately addressed impersonally to “boxholder) announces—THE BIBLE…AMERICA…WHAT’S NEXT? Inside the flyer, some of the topics to be addressed are: How near is His return?; The Signs of His Coming; Will the United Nations Rule the World? The Power Behind the Beast & the Anti-Christ. This is a glossy, full color, four-page flyer and it will bring the crowds in along with their hard-earned money. The evangelist will leave town 11 days later with his coffers fattened and the desperate souls will leave with the fears heightened and their desperate ideologically-based faith intensified.

In my youth, I loved it when these guys would come to town, though I was born late enough that brush arbors and tent revivals were almost a thing of the past and I never got to participate in one. But these evangelists would hold us in awe, driving up in their expensive cars, wearing their handsome suits, and trotting out all of those impressive diagrams and charts which offered positive proof that the end-times were near and that Jesus was coming back to bring his children home and wreak havoc on all those left behind.

Yes, part of me is snickering at this scene that will unfold in this lovely community and part of me would like to attend a night or two and gawk. But I’m pleased that I’m now mature enough that the snickering is overshadowed my a profound sadness, especially for the children who will be mortally wounded with the terror of the atmosphere and many will “come to Christ” out of a fear of hell and will spend the rest of their life under the tyranny of ideological Christianity.   And I don’t think the evangelist is necessarily a shyster. He probably is caught up himself in this institutionalized hysteria and is merely playing his role…as we all tend to do in life…in a collective mindset that has him at its beck-and-call, his life being merely the “toy of some great pain.” (Ranier Rilke)

God is love and perfect love casteth out fear.  And I wish I could tell you that I now embody “perfect love” and all fear has been “casteth out” of my heart and life. But it hasn’t. But God is working on it and I will continue to let Him. And now the fears are more readily exposed and I’m finding the Grace to acknowledge, embrace, and “go swimmin’” in them occasionally.

 

Our Spiritual Search for Meaning

Leave a reply

During the impeachment preliminaries of President Clinton, his response to one difficult question was the famous, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” A lot of fun was had with that verbal finesse, but he was very right. The use of “is” is contextual and the nuances are important.

Words are ephemeral like the rest of reality and from time to time we have to “wrestle with words and meanings” as T. S. Eliot put it. For words become stale over time and lose their value, face value being taken at some point for what was once a powerful emotional and/or spiritual experience. It is simpler to not worry about “meaning” and take everything superficially and that can get you far in life but it doesn’t answer the gut-level issues that led Henry David Thoreau to declare in the mid 19th century, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”

The quest for meaning is a spiritual enterprise and churches and spiritual traditions have offered guidance to men and women who have been on this quest. Recently Pope Francis described this as a “risky journey,” one that is not only a quest for God but also a search for one’s own personal identity. Francis understands that spirituality is not idle abstraction but something that involves our innermost being, something which will often challenge our most basic assumptions about ourselves and about life itself. Otherwise we often are pursuing what he called only a “caricature of God.” Here is a link to a report of his message:

http://americamagazine.org/issue/pope-santa-marta-courage-restless-heart

Relevant to this spiritual quest for meaning, here is one of my favorite excerpts of W. H. Auden’s poetry, taken from “A Christmas Oratorio.” Here the Star of the Nativity is speaking:

Beware. All 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.