Hope in the Darkness

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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.”

Our Debt to the Poets

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The poet, to whose mighty heart Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,

Subdues that energy to scan Not his own course, but that of man.

Matthew Arnold here describes what I love about poets. They have such tremendous insight, not only about their own heart, but about the human condition. For if you understand one human heart, you pretty well have a grasp over the rest of them. Yes, a poet’s heart bears the burden of a “quicker pulse” and he/she uses words to subdue that energy and translate it into meaningful, verbal form. Most of us lost that “quicker pulse” early in our life as our heart became organized into the “right” way of perceiving and understanding the world. We must depend on the poets…and other artists…to teach us about other ways of looking at the world.

Prayer

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“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

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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

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“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

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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

O’Bama Care Decision

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The conservative extremists’ reaction to the John Roberts role in the recent Supreme Court decision re O’Bama Care illustrates my obsessive concern with ideologues. When you are dealing with an ideologue, you are dealing with someone who is out of touch with reality, someone who would prefer “winning” over anything else, someone who must be “right” over anything else. And when someone who is “on their side” suddenly gets an independent streak and thinks contrary to the party-line, their welfare is in jeopardy. (By “welfare”, I mean their approval by their in-group; but in rarest extremes, even their physical welfare will be in jeopardy.)

And as noted so frequently, this extremism is not the exclusive domain of conservatives! I encourage you again to watch the video posted last week of Jonathan Haidt regarding moral absolutism. Google his name and there are several other videos of him available, including one with Stephen Colbert.   AND, though he is an avowed “liberal”, his conclusions are not always in favor of “liberals.” Imagine that!

Here is the Haidt link from last week:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

Handling Intense Emotion

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I recently posted about intense feelings and quoted the following poem by Marianne Moore.  Today I want to emphasize one line from this poem, “He who feels strongly behaves.”  Intense emotion is often an excuse to not behave and indeed tense emotion at times makes “behaving” impossible.

Shakespeare said of one of his characters, “He cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule.’  “Distempered cause” refers to a basic life force which I construe to mean energy or feeling.  Shakespeare was saying that regardless of how we feel we must keep it within “the belt of rule”  I think art and music are two means whereby this intense emotion is kept within the “belt of rule”

What Are Years?
By Marianne Moore
What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

Jonathan Haidt on Morality & Politics

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Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who studies morality and emotion and how they vary from culture to culture.  He has an excellent TED talk which I will post below and several other on-line interviews, including one by Stephen Colbert.

Haidt’s studies attempt to address the issue of the human tendency to isolate into groups which become very smug and very dismissive of others.  I am particularly pleased to see him apply his theory to our particular political culture at present moment. He reports that, “Morality, by its very nature, makes it had to study morality.  It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth.  It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups…To live virtuously as individuals and as societies, we must understand how our minds are built.  We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness.  We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.”

Now in his TED talk in particular, it is quite apparent that he is a liberal.  But he reports that as a result of his research he was given pause and had to note at one point that the conservative view point has a whole lot to offer. What his research teaches is that we must be given pause, take a look at the other view point, and stop demonizing each other.

This election is not about winning!  If we are so immature that we merely mindlessly want our pony to win the race, then we really need to do some growing up.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html