prayer

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I like to revel in the ethereal.  That is quite obvious.  But, I like to come down from the ether and dwell here on the earth again, anchoring my heart and soul with the tribal gods (or god) and their wisdom.

Thus, when I pray, I bring to the moment my perspective as God
as a Process, an Infinite Unfolding in a vast void.  I bring to the moment a mind steeped, not just in Christianity, but in the wisdom of world religion and philosophy.  But, in prayer I rein in my imagination and mind and humbly pray, “Our father which art in heaven….”

And today, the first thought in my mind was, “This is the day that the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”    For, once again I am alive and will have a beautiful world to enjoy.  I will enjoy good coffee, good food, good wife, good doggies, good friends.  And for this plenty, I offer my gratitude, not to an ever-expanding universe part of which I am, but to “god.”

Political version of “us vs. them”

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The same tendency to bifurcate reality discussed yesterday can be seen in our political process.  We are currently watching our government stew in its own juices basically because each party is locked into a battle of wills, each locked tightly into “Democrat” or “Republican” loyalties.  AND, I am a Democrat and I will continue to be.  The Democrats best articulate my perspective on the world, not just politically but also culturally.  But, Democrats are not “right”.   They merely offer one perspective in the world and I happen to subscribe to it.  That does not make the Republicans “wrong.”  We must have, to use different terms for a moment, liberals and conservatives.  Without these two philosophies working in tandem, we will get into a lot of trouble.

The core issue here is identity.  Our task is to put our “reality” on hold for a moment here and there, to pause briefly, and to recognize that that there are people who look at things differently.  We must not be trapped in our various categories—-spiritually, politically, or even sexually.  Our task is to recognize once again, that we see “only the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the darkness.” (Conrad Aiken).  For, those that lie in “darkness” have a reality of their own and that reality deserves a modicum of respect.  What is “darkness” to us, is “light” to them.

And, I could easily trash Republicans here.  But I’m saving that for another day.  Yes, they have their issue with nut-jobs on the far right.  I’m sure Republicans would respond with, “Well, yes, but what about your own party’s nut jobs?”  Well, I’m sure there are extremists on my side of the political aisle but naturally I have a more difficult problem in identifying who they are.

Ultimately, I must remember, to borrow a refrain from an earlier post, and recognize that each day I awaken and announce to the world, “Wind me up and watch me be Democrat today.”  BUT, having this belief does give me pause and in that pause I can try to give other perspectives that “modicum of respect” mentioned earlier.   I do believe that Democrats are more likely to be willing to enter that “pause”.  It is not unrelated to what Deepak Chopra describes as “the gap”

 

Saved vs. unsaved

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Martin Buber, in his monumental work, I and Thou, eloquently describes human tendency to bifurcate reality into an “us-them” paradigm.  On our side are those who “believe right”, “act right”, and “vote right”.  In Christian circles it often appears in the form of a “saved-unsaved” paradigm.  We are so quick to define “saved” and do so in such a fashion that we are carefully ensconced in the “saved” category.  It is so rewarding to belong to the club.  But, we fail to understand that “the club” would not exist without the meaning provided by those who are excluded.  One could even say that the “unsaved” category is created and perpetuated by our insistence on maintaining the “saved” category.

Our need is that our faith be more inclusive, that the boundaries between “us” and “them” be more permeable.  And this will only occur when the individuals ensconced comfortably in the domain of  “us” be more open to the Spirit of God, to “mindfulness”,  and can relax those boundaries.  I believe there is a relationship between our ability to relax those boundaries and our ability to relax the boundary that exists between ourselves and God.

Review of novel, Middlesex

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Jeffrey Euginides book, Middlesex, is about the integration of an extended family of immigrants into American culture in the 20th century, from the perspective of an hermaphrodite.  The fictional narrative of the social and political upheavals of the 20th century is fascinating in itself.  But the most powerful punch of the book is about the narrator’s sexuality and his/her struggles in adjusting to the cultural mandates re gender and sexuality.

Euginedes makes the reader vividly aware of how tenuous our sexual identities are and how intense the social pressure is to conform to the prevailing mandates on this issue.  He delves into the biology of sexuality and gender and its powerful influence on what it means to become male, female, or some combination thereof.

By tackling sexual/gender identity, he assails one of the lynch-pins of what I like to describe as “the way things are.”  This palpable entity is a template through which we see the world in our day to day life.  It consists of myriads of basic assumptions that we subscribe to, and to which we must subscribe, if we are to become human.  And sexuality and gender identity are two of the most basic of these “basic assumptions.”  Common sense tell us what it is to me a man or a woman.  But, Euginedes makes us very aware of just how specious and culturally determined “common sense” is.

One reason that hyper-conservatives are so virulently opposed to the gay-rights issue is because in the depths of their heart it addresses the issue of what is real and what is un-real.  To let go of this lynch-pin (sexuality and gender identity) is to accept that real and unreal are very nebulous terms  It would entail accepting what the sociologists describe as The Social Construction of Reality.  ( book by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman)

Note:  Forgive me for not delving into the difference between gender identity and sexuality!


the enemy within

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He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls. Prov. 25:28

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. Prov. 16:32.

Boundaries are an essential issue in human experience. If we don’t learn to set boundaries, and respect those set by others, we are going to be in trouble real soon. These two Proverbs describe it as “ruling your spirit.” We are ultimately merely bundles of impulses, energy if you please, and learning how to handle these impulses is essential to life.

“Taking a city”, in Proverbs 16:32, was perhaps the greatest example of power that one could exercise. The writer was noting that can one who can harness that internal energy is “better than the mighty” that can take a city. It was an image of masculine prowess.

Proverbs 25:28 emphasizes that this ruling of one’s spirit is essential in “keeping the enemy out.” He was saying that if you don’t rule your spirit, it is like the walls of a city breaking down, allowing “the enemy” to enter. Now in one spiritual tradition, Christianity, “the enemy” has been labeled Satan. To them, this verse means, “You don’t set boundaries, Satan is going to get in.”

I like to think of it in terms of energy. We are all the aforementioned “bundles of energy”, some of which is adaptive and some of which is maladaptive. I think “the enemy” is the maladaptive energy that we all have in the depths of our heart. Jung termed it the shadow.

Difficulties

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Everyday wisdom carries a lot of truth. For example, “a stitch in time saves nine” or “too little too late” or “a rolling stone gathers no moss”. These pithy little quips are rich, even though they become so banalized by common usage that they lose some of their meaning. One of the most banal, most hackneyed is, “If life gives you lemons, you gotta make lemonade.” Here is conveyed the truth that life’s difficulties give us an opportunity to grow. The human spirit seems to thrive…often…with adversity. John Masefield in one of his sonnets describes this adversity as “the spirit’s straitened possibility.” A “strait” is a tight place, as in the “Straits of Gibralter”. These “tight places”, though painful, can produce spiritual strength. Here is the whole of that Masefield sonnet in which he beautifully elaborates on this wisdom:

Man has his unseen friend, his unseen twin,
His straitened spirit’s possibility,
The palace unexplored he thinks an inn,
The glorious garden which he wanders by.
It is beside us while we clutch at clay
To daub ourselves that we may never see.
Like the lame donkey lured by moving hay
We chase the shade but let the real be.
Yet, when confusion in our heaven brings stress,
We thrust on that unseen, get stature from it,
Cast to the devil’s challenge the man’s yes,
And stream our fiery hour like a comet,
And know for that fierce hour a friend behind

Truth and the NAR

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Truth is a dangerous commodity. I think it visits us on occasion as a momentary experience of Grace. But the experience is so profound, so intoxicating, so compelling that we have to own it and so we reduce it to the conceptual. And at that moment, it has become a true commodity and is immediately on the market.

Then there comes the human tendency to feel that he/she owns this “truth” and must convince others to see it and experience it the very same way. Thus comes the advent of conversion-oriented religions and non-sense like the New Apostolic Reformation movement of present-day. Movements like this consist of leaders who feel they have really seen the truth, not in the limited way that others have, and that they must bludgeon the world with it. And there are always millions of mindless lemmings who are willing to subscribe to ideology of this sort

I feel that truth is a process. It is something that we intuitive experience on occasion but it is never anything we own. At best, “we see through a glass darkly.”

And here is an interesting thought I just ran across on the net.  This is so important:

There is no truth that cannot be turned into a lie if you just take it seriously enough.  Anitra l. freeman

personal demons

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W. H. Auden noted, “We wage the war we are.” He recognized and fought his own personal demons and recognized that fighting these subjective battles is an essential part of the human experience.

In days of yesteryear, our only weapons in these battles were the passing of time and perhaps an occasional “casting out of demons.” Today we have various forms of therapy and, of course, psychotropic medications. But ultimately we are left alone to battle our haunts.

Shakespeare, the greatest therapist and spiritual teacher in the history of mankind, put it this way:

Macbeth:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

spiritual technocrats

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A college history professor, teaching a class on American religion, once noted that in the frontier days the men who often got the “call to preach” were those who couldn’t do anything else.  They were the wastrels, the ne’er-do-wells, those who were floundering with their life when they suddenly realized, “Hey, I could start preaching and immediately I will have a job, and respect, and a place in the community.”  (I suspect that a neurological conflagration also played a part in many of those “calls”, especially those that appeared to be of the “got a wild hair up their backside” variety)

I think that so many of our clergy today are assembly-line, mass produced, machine-produced men and women.  They are spiritual technocrats, adept at trotting out a good sermon, propping up the congregation’s pretenses, flashing that Christian (or otherwise) ivory here and there, and going their merry way.  They are, as a friend of mine once wrote, “heroes of spiritual contraception who have long since despaired of rebirth.” (Charles “Chuck” Dewitt)

They have been enculturated into Christianity and thus are professional ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, mullahs, or what have you.  But they have nothing to offer from beyond the pale for they’ve never been there themselves.   These “spiritual technocrats” reflect our culture which also has long-since “despaired of rebirth.”  Our culture’s only frame of reference is itself and that, as noted earlier last week, is mental illness.  These “technocrats” have never experienced the “Dark Night of the Soul” (St. John of the Cross) or “The Cloud of Unknowing” which would then empower them to offer a prophetic word.  They have never done their “time in the desert” like Jesus did.

Conrad Aiken once noted, “We see only the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the darkness.”  The clergy that I’m upbraiding here have never been outside of that “small bright circle”.  To do so would entail an encounter with intense anxiety and despair.  It is easier for them to stay within the cozy confines of this “circle,” thus mirroring the culture at large which has done the same, which has “made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”  (W. H. Auden)   This phenomena has been addressed in history and sociology as the church in “cultural captivity.”

“Wind me up and watch me be…”

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Last week I posted re this Shakespearean note:  With devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.  I then paraphrased this wisdom into, “Wind me up and watch me be pious.”  I’m going to elaborate a bit.

This “wind me up…” concept can be applied to the whole of our life.  We are all “wound up” with a core identity and the verbal/ideological template that goes with it.  For example, I am again today saying with my thought and behavior, “Wind me up and watch me be…for want of a better term…a liberal.”  Many will be similarly wound-up today.  Then there are the conservatives.  “Wind me up and watch me be conservative”.  There are many of them too.

For, we are all “wound up” with some core identity, some template that we impose on the world and this template is usually not given any attention because asking someone to pay attention to his/her “template” is like asking fish to see water.  And then we have the human tendency to affiliate ourselves with other groups who subscribe to some similar template, thus shoring up our otherwise tenuous identity.

This problem is so apparent in our government.  Our leaders seem to be very smug, very rigid, very sure that the other side is wrong.  There is limited, if any, capacity to realize that the perspective of the other side deserves respect.  And corresponding with this arrogance is the all-too-human tendency to demonize those that view the world differently than ourself.  So, today go watch the news and watch the dog-and-pony show continue—-people saying, “Wind me up and watch me be Democrat” or “wind me up and watch me be Republican” or “wind me up and watch me be a Tea Partier.”

This is a deadly trap and this is a spiritual problem psychologically/emotionally.  And ultimately this is a Spiritual problem.  This reflects a fundamental problem with our culture.  We are all “wound up” and cannot, or will not, consider the possibility that all we have to trot out each day of our life is a mere perspective, it is not the ultimate grasp of reality.  Those people that we heap into the category “them” deserve a modicum of respect at least.

I conclude with the relevant wisdom of two of my favorite poets.    Conrad Aiken noted, “We see only the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which likes the darkness.”  Our challenge, individually and collectively, is to venture “into the darkness” and offer respect to someone else today.  And W. H. Auden accused us of dwelling safely “on the heath of the agreeable, where we bask, agreed upon what we will not ask, bland, sunny, and adjusted by the light of the collective lie.”