Internal differences where the meanings are

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“The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering.”  Henri Nouwen recognized that the Spirit of God is a Presence that makes one aware of his/her inner life which, of course, parallels an awakening awareness to the outer world.  Some see this “Presence” as “coming down from on high” and intruding or violating.  They see it in terms of time and space.  I see it as interior process beginning to unfold and making one aware of his/her heart’s machinations and subtleties.  There is a verse from the New Testament (Hebrews 4:12) which recognizes this discriminating work of the Spirit, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

 To be “mindful” of “the thoughts and intents of the heart” is simple awareness.  It is to pay attention.  It is to turn off the “automatic pilot” that we’re accustomed to operating by.

Emily Dickinson put it this way:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the heft
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pithy truth

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“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”    (Da Vinci)

“There is no truth that cannot be turned into a lie if you just take it seriously enough.”(Anitra L. Freeman)

“And Truth met him, and held out her hand.  And he clung in panic to his tall beliefs and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”     W. H. Auden

 

The Power of Now

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I refer often to Eckhart Tolle, especially his best-selling book, The Power of Now.  The central emphasis of this book is that our culture is captivated by our orientation to past and future.  (T.S. Eliot in The Four Quartets notes, “Time past and time future” and then claims that we “cling to that dimension.”)  And Tolle is only one of numerous gifted souls, men and women, who are aware of the shallowness of our particular culture and the unwillingness of organized religion to address the ensuing spiritual malaise.

Tolle emphasizes “the Now”.  Though he recognizes the importance of past and future and the imperative that we pay proper respect to “that dimension”, he encourages us to look below the surface, beyond the pale of the normal hum-drum of day to day life, and recognize the present moment.

But this is a very subversive notion.  It flies in the face of our most basic assumptions about life and suggests that there is more to life than meets the eye.  This “subversive function” is paid lip-service to in theological and ecclesiastical circles as the “prophetic function” of the gospel.  But most churches and spiritual teachings are unwilling to take on this “subversive function”, preferring to amuse themselves with the gospel-eze version of those “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.”  (Conrad Aiken)

It is astounding that a book of this sort has been so well-received.  It speaks of the hunger of the modern human heart, a hunger that is rarely addressed with traditional religion.   However, I do believe that this heart-hunger could be addressed with many world religions…and certainly the Christian tradition…but it would require a clergy that was willing to follow Jesus (and other Holy men and women throughout the ages) into a desert experience.

W. H. Auden summarized it so beautifully:

ll 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.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

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Chicken Little’s apocolyptic warning never ceases to be relevant.  For, anytime a natural disaster such as earthquakes or tornadoes threaten, the doomsayers crawl out from under their rocks and announce, “The end is nigh!  The end is night!  It is a sign of the end times!  Jesus is coming back soon!”  Glen Beck was one of the best at this, as apocalyptic doom was a stable of his chart-laden dog-and-pony show.

Now sooner or later one of them is going to be right.  For example, a mutant gene could run amok and wipe us all out.  Or some right-wing crazy with a nuclear weapon could annihilate us all.  The heavenly bodies, all so routinely dancing with intricate precision, could suddenly hiccup and this simple little planet could be smashed into the cosmic gruel it used to be.  And, the scientists say that one of these days this universe will stop spinning, will grind to a halt, and sink back into oblivion anyway.  See, we are doomed!  We are all going to die, individually and collectively!  And, when it does happen, someone will be shrieking, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  At that time I hope they all feel good about themselves and get appropriate tv news and talk-show coverage!

But these apocalyptic nut jobs just need to get a life and stop terrorizing people with their cosmic insecurity.  You see, this is all about death and death is something we have a life time to prepare for.  Someone in mental health has noted, “Those that are afraid of death are afraid of life.”  The issue in death, the “sting of death” spoken of in the Bible, is just our fragile ego sensing its finitude and realizing that it could be snuffed out like a candle at any moment and will, at some point, meet that fate.

And I’m not ready for my own little “flickering candle” to be snuffed out.  I want it to continue to burn brightly for years.  But, I’ve accepted that this is not going to happen and have determined that the best thing to do is to accept this fact, to trust my Source which gave rise to me in the first place, and to busy myself taking care of hearth-and-home and trying to offer something to the world.  It would be self-indulgent and spiritually immature to constantly bemoan my death or the death of the species.

Thousands of years ago Aeschylus noted this insanity, simply noting, “The gods created disaster so that the people will have something to talk about.”

“humility is endless”

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Richard Rohr, a Catholic monk, is one of the most discerning spiritual teachers in today’s public forum.  His book, The Naked Now, is a powerful explanation of the need of “non-dual thinking” in today’s world.  “Non-dual thinking” eschews the tendency to bifurcate the world into categories, especially the oft spoken of “us-them” paradigm.  He also has a daily blog and will also send you a daily meditation which is always right to the point and powerfully worded.

In today’s meditation he declared, “When you truly know, the giveaway is that you do not know.  And by “do not know” he means that you “do not know.”  There is a pseudo-humility available in which you announce that “you do not know” but in the depths of your heart you are very sure of yourself and willing to pound people with the fact that “you do not know.”  This is just another version of Tolle’s “egoic consciousness” masquerading in liberal sophistry.

The “not knowing” he is advocating is a simple awareness that you do not know anything ultimately and that you are only offering one perspective.  Many others will have a different perspective and they too are blessed by God’s Grace.

It is our task to merely be willing to share our perspective here and there but not to get carried away with it and begin to wield it as a weapon.  When we do that we are merely another example of pig-headed fundamentalists attempting to bludgeon others into our world view.

T.S. Eliot, in The Four Quartets, declared, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility.”  And then he noted, “And humility is endless.”

Let the dead bury the dead

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In Matthew 8 Jesus is calling for disciples.  One scribe responds, “Yes, but let me first go bury my father.”  Jesus responds, “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.”

Now taken simply, without any use of hermeneutical discipline, this statement can be interpreted to mean that Jesus saw the whole of humanity as “dead” and doomed to eventual eternal damnation.  And this interpretation is very ego rewarding to readers who relish being part of a very select crowd of believers who are going to bask in eternal glory for eternity while the rest of those “damn heathen” roast in hell.  It is so rewarding to know that one has “seen the light”, that one is “saved” and that most of “those wretches out there” don’t see the truth.  But that is not what Jesus was saying.  I believe he was pointing out that most people do live their life in “darkness”, they have never escaped the blinders they were born with, and they go their merry way without addressing the fact that there is another dimension to life.  It does not mean they are inferior to those who have been “enlightened”….or whatever you wish to term it…it just means they are ensconced in commonplace reality and are apt to stay there.

Ronald D. Laing once noted that he believed most people live their lives in a “post hypnotic state of early childhood.”  They go through life on automatic pilot, having imbibed the cultural mandates of the little corner of the world into which they were born, and having dug their heels in with no intention of ever leaving that safe haven.  This is what Jesus meant when he called them “dead.”  But it does not mean they are stupid and certainly it does not mean they are going to roast for eternity in hell.

But some Christians thrive on being “right.”  It is so intoxicating to know that you are “special.”  But, if spiritual discernment were practiced, if “mindfulness” were present, one would see just how egotistical this comforting elixir is.  Believing one to have been “enlightened” or “saved” or whatever, one has actually taken on a bigger blinder than the one he/she was born with.

Now I do believe that “being saved” and “being enlightened” is possible.  But it just does not mean you are special or cool or destined for eternal bliss that others will be deprived of.  For ultimately God’s Grace covers us all.

Please government, please intrude!

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Michael Pearl and his wife Debi were in the news last week for their controversial publications which encourage corporal punishment and do so with an emphasis that the punishment inflicts pain. One couple took their teachings seriously and actually beat one of their children to death for which they are now looking at decades in prison. Their web site is entitled No Greater Joy and if you check it out it is apparent that there is not a whole lot of joy around that domocile.

Pearl and his ilk represent one of the extremes that our culture permits to the great detriment and abuse…and even death…of our children. One essential theme in that mentality is that children belong to them, especially the father as the “head of the home” and that it is his responsibility as head of the home to “train up a child in the way he should go.” And, an important dimension of this is that to “spare the rod is to spoil the child.”

Now it won’t be in my lifetime and probably not for a long time thereafter but we are going to have to realize that children, in an important sense, belong to all of us and that we cannot allow them to be abused or even born into abusive, stupid, hell-holes like that of Pearl and his ilk. Yes, yes, yes, this will involve “government intrusion” but there are circumstances where government does need to intrude. We did it with domestic rape! I remember when the notion of “domestic rape” was just being toyed with and was, in my youth, given pause with the reasoning, “Well, doesn’t a man have the right to have sex with his wife?” Well, now it is a no-brainer to myself and to most people that “No” he doesn’t if she says no. Why was it ever otherwise? Well, the answer is that women were property and being a sex object was a huge part of their role in life. But our government has intruded and in doing so has changed reality on the issue, by and large. And what about race? When I was a child, blacks were inferior and were looked upon with scorn in the deep South where I was raised. The government intruded and changed reality and had they not done so blacks would not have the equality that they have today.

Yes, government intrusion can go too far. But there are instances in which it does not go far enough. And when it comes to child abuse and maltreatment, I really think we should get heavy-handed about it.



 

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				the way things are
			

										

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We wake up each morning to "the way things are."  This is the
ideological/emotional template that we daily impose on the world which I blogged
about in recent weeks.  This template, this "way things are" is a powerful
force and we bring it to bear on our whole world---physical world and social
world---with each breath we take.  We impose it on the world and get by with it
because millions of others subscribe to a similar fantasy. 

And we must have a "way things are" to get by and to live together with some
degree of harmony.  If we had to start afresh each morning that we awaken, we
would not be able to function, individually or collectively.  We need this
"egoic consciousness" (Eckhart Tolle) to keep this dog-and-pony show afloat. 

BUT, we need awareness of its presence and its tyranny. We need the
"mindfulness" taught by the Buddhists.  Or, the "illuminating spirit of God"
taught by the Christians.  For, otherwise we totally disallow and disregard
those who do not fit into this culturally-derived template. 

I grew up in the ‘60’s and I so vividly remember the tyranny of "the way things
are" in a conservative, central Arkansas community.  For example, it was a given
that girls do not become lawyers or doctors.  This was actually noted by the
guidance counselor.  And, she was not a bad person or stupid.  She was merely
purveying "the way things are" in her day and time and locale.  And I vividly
remember the talk of the early part of that decade...and the late fifties...that
"blacks should know their place."  Racism was just part of the social fabric of
that time and place, it was an essential part of the "template" that had become
my reality.  And there was a rigid moral code, part of which was "nice girls
don’t do it. They save themselves for marriage."  And I vividly recall the
tyranny of the collective shame that was cast upon a couple of young
girls who became pregnant.

I wander what part of today’s "way things are" will be subject to scrutiny in coming decades?

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				Lives of a Cell
			

										

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In 1974, Lewis Thomas wrote a little book entitled, Lives of a Cell:  Notes of a Biology Watcher.  In this book Thomas discoursed about the intricacies of cell development and reproduction and noted how this process had its parallel on the human social level.  He explained how that cells had not evolved membranes they would not have been able to “communicate” with each other and organs and tissues would not have evolved.


He then explained social interaction in terms of boundary-setting and communication.  Without boundaries, there would be no communication and the social body would lack the dynamic quality necessary to thrive.  But just as with the cellular level, these boundaries must be permeable as, again, no communication could take place.


The dance of boundaries is an essential part of the human drama.  When we are born, we quickly discover the basic boundaries that our social body has constructed and which are being proffered us.  In our day, our “social body” is under a lot of flux and so young people…and old people…have more freedom to play with boundaries without drawing the scorn of “The Boundary Setters”, i.e. the local patriarchy.  But there are certainly many, especially die-hard conservatives,  who do not approve of this “flux” and seek to repress it.  They are sure of “the way things are.”


 


 


 


Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3, 1993) was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.


Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative years as an independent medical researcher were at Tulane University School of Medicine.

					

		
		
	

							
	

				

			
						

				Loss and spiritual experience
			

										

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Recently in a blog I borrowed a line from one of Donovan’s songs from the ‘sixties (First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.) and translated it into, “First there is a God, then there is no God, then there is.”    I was addressing the need to recognize that we learn a conceptual god early in our life, and must lose that god if we are to know God.  Someone has actually written a book about this subject, Anatheism:  Returning to God after God.


Richard Kearney delved into religion, philosophy, and literature to address the need of undergoing loss at some point in one’s spiritual development.  This loss, known in theology as kenosis (or self emptying) is articulated elegantly by Etty Hillesum, and quoted by Kearney:


One has to free oneself inwardly of everything, of all existing representations, of all slogans, of all comforts.  One has to have the courage to let go of everything of all standards and all conventional certainties.  One has to dare taking the giant leap…then life will be endlessly overflowing, even amidst the deepest suffering.


And Hillesum knew what she was talking about.  This was not an armchair hermeneutics exercise for her—she suffered persecution in Germany for being Jewish and eventually died in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 29.


T.S. Eliot wrote in The Four Quartets that we must be willing to “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.”  The thing most certain for some—god—often needs to be discarded so that—God—might surface.


It is only in loss that we come to know our Source intimately.