Tag Archives: faith

Grace, Hope, and “The Peace of Wild Things”

I have met several Indian friends in the blog-o-sphere the past two years and feel a real kinship with them. And, this kinship corresponds with an “Eastern” direction in my spiritual life as I see boundaries as less distinct than I was taught in my youth. I illustrated this several weeks ago with an anecdote I learned decades ago when someone pointed out that in one Eastern language, instead of saying, “I see the book over there” their language puts it like this, “The book is seen.” The separateness from the world is less pronounced. The world is less objectified…in some sense.

One of these Indian friends and I have had several very rewarding exchanges about the nature of reality, the nature of “spirituality”, and the role that culture plays in shaping our view of these things, and our view of all things. He, like me, sees the ugliness in the world…in my country, yes…but also in his own country. I get the impression that at times he finds it very troubling like I do. When I have these feelings, I will often deliberately miss-apply one of the scriptures, the shortest verse in the bible, and will tell myself, “This is why the Bible says, ‘Jesus wept.’” For, the writer of this “shortest verse in the bible” said Jesus was on a mountain, overlooking a city when he said these words. Using my “literary” license, I feel Jesus was weeping in realizing how unnecessary it was that mankind lives in the self-imposed spiritual squalor and I think that any of us who looks at the human situation with a heart, including his/her own situation, certainly wants to cry on occasion. I know I do.

But this friend this morning pointed out something which again caught my attention. Perhaps I fawn too much over his culture and it’s lesser emphasis of object separateness for he noted emphatically, “Forget culture shit. Culture is the same everywhere.” And I realized that yes, even in that culture of his with its different “object-relationship” paradigm, there is still the human tendency to absolutize to his/her worldview and to take it to be the only way of being in the world. And the minute people make this mistake poison is introduced and/or perpetuated in the world. This is the human predicament in a nut shell right there. We just can’t get around that obstinacy and it is that obstinacy that creates the profound problems that we are facing. I see it currently in my country’s recurring political pissing contests which I most recently illustrated with the internecine squabbling in the extremists of the Republican Party. But everywhere in the world, we just can’t “get over ourselves”.

Now, suddenly I realize I’m broaching too much despair! I try to not go there too often. When too much grim besets me, I am learning to counter this despair with focus on the beauty that always abounds in my life if I will deign to look for it and pay attention to it. And when I focus there for a moment, if I practice meditation, I will offer a prayer of thanks and find my Center again. This exercise helps me to appropriate and honor grace.

And the notion of grace brings to mind a powerful moment about a year ago when I was helping a dear friend exit this world after a long, ugly battle with that bitch cancer. KW and I had always talked about spiritual matters in the 25 years we had known each other so this was not merely a “death-bed” concern of his. On a particular day, he posed the question to me, “What is grace?” Well, I didn’t miss a beat and employed what I so often employ, a bit of poetry that I have gleaned over the years. And on that occasion I quoted an excerpt from a marvelous poem by Wendell Berry entitled, “The Peace of Wild Things.” KW was touched, and so was I, as I felt I had offered a “word fitly spoken” even if it was someone else’s words. Here is that profound wisdom from Berry:

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come unto the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come unto the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

“Come Out Ye From Among Them and Be Ye Separate”

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The biblical admonishment to “Come out from among them and be ye separate” and to be a “peculiar people” received strong emphasis in the church of my upbringing. And, looking back, God must have been proud of us for we certainly accomplished this, though with great (unconscious) irony. We just had no idea how different we appeared, how “peculiar” we were! And, well….now, with hang-dog face and shamed faced…I have to admit, “Yep, I probably accomplished that more than the rest!”

There are so many anecdotes I could share to illustrate things we did to do maintain the illusion of this separateness. A common bromide was to never, “drink, smoke, chew, or go with the girls that do.” On the drinking part of that bromide, the onset of canned soft drinks in the ‘Sixties posed a problem as if we drank a soft drink in a can, it might appear to others that we were drinking a beer! One young adult I knew pointed out with pride that at office parties, he would drink a coke…from a bottle and with a straw…to make it clear to all parties that he was not imbibing.

This obsessive need to be the “peculiar people” of the Old Testament reflected a core identity problem . For, people who have a secure identity do not have to make a show of who they are in any respect to any dimension of life, certainly faith. They can merely “be” and have confidence that their “be-ing” in the world will suffice. These people of faith who are secure in their identity do not have to be ostentatious with their faith as it will not be a suit of clothes they wear, but merely be part and parcel of their life, a completely natural part of that life. They do not have to announce with word or deed, “Hey, world! I am a Christian, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or whatever!” Their faith is very personal and is not for the purpose of show.

Now a person of faith will certainly stand out in an important sense as their life will reflect values different than most people have. Their focus will not be on the ephemeral, but on Value itself. In our culture, they will not be so obsessed with “stuff” though they well might have plenty of “stuff.” The roots of their heart and soul will not be in mass culture. they will not subscribe to the adage, “He who has the most stuff at the end of the game wins.”

Shakespeare described this ostentatious faith as that of “hollow men” who have to “show their mettle…like horses hot at hand.” When I watch a televangelist or some smug, oily Christian who is “strutting his ‘Christian’ stuff”, I often pictures a team of wild horses pawing the air, shrieking to anyone interested in looking on, “Hey, lookee here! Lookee here! See me! A’int I pious?”

And T. S. Eliot wrote a powerful poem entitled, “Hollow Men.” Speaking of mankind as a whole, not just with respect to spirituality, he described shallow, empty, “hollow men…stuffed men leaning together, headpiece filled with straw.” His poem beautifully captures the futile emptiness of alienated lives bereft of any spiritual connection to self, others, the world, or God.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Neurophysiology and The Question of Meaning

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Politico has an interesting article today about the role that neurophysiology plays in shaping our political viewpoint. (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/left-right-the-brain-science-of-politics-88653.html?hp=l11)

I have been curious about this research for the past year and recently ran across another blogger (Neuroresearchproject.com) with a similar curiosity. I also strongly recommend that you google the name “Jonathan Haidt” to listen to a psychologist discourse re a similar vein of thought.

This research would have given me pause at one point in my life, causing me to doubt myself, my faith, and basically everything. This research suggests that our life is largely determined by circumstances far beyond the grasp of our mind. But, now my response is, “So…..????” For, I have now feel that my grasp of reality is so very finite and is so shaped by circumstances that I can never wrap my brain around. And at times I ask, “How could I have ever thought otherwise?”

I used to be a lot more arrogant than I am now. (And, yes, I still have the taint of arrogance in my heart!) Life is just an incredible mystery and I’ve learned to find glory in that experience.

Sure, we need to study and study and study. We need to speculate as we have always been wont to do. And we will learn more and more as we go. But ultimately we will always come down to….nothing…or, as I like to put it, “No-Thing.” It is when we allow that primordial Emptiness to give us pause that we can be disrupted from the humdrum routine of the dog-and-pony show that we call our life and allow a Mystery to visit us and experience somewhat the Mystery that we are. It is there that we find our Source and then that we experience the temptation of turning that new Friend of ours into still another contrivance for our ego.

I’d like to share a poem by Edgar Simmons about detachment and its role in helping us to discover the Glory in this mystery of No-thingness.

THE MAGNETIC FIELD

Distance…which by definition
Indicates a separation from self
Is the healing poultice of metaphor,
Is the night-lighting of poetry.
As we allot to elements their weights
So to metaphor we need assign the
Weight of the ghost of distance.
Stars are stars to us
Because of distance: it is in the
Nothingness which clings us them
That we glory, tremble, and bow.
O what weight and glory lie abalance
In the stretch of vacant fields:
Metaphor: the hymn and hum of separation.

This is the Day that the Lord Hath Made

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And the conclusion to the refrain is, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It is Sunday morning and memories always flood my soul on Sunday mornings. Decades ago I was a six year old boy, getting all “gussied up” for Sunday school and church. “Gussied up” back then meant I’d taken my weekly bath the afternoon before, and was donning my pressed and starched “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” clothes, that I’d polished my shoes, and I’d read my Sunday school lesson. Back then we would all climb aboard an old rusted jalopy… all eight of us…and we’d slowly travel down the dusty Arkansas road, connect up with the highway, and eventually convene at “the Lord’s house” with people of a similar stripe. There we would imbibe standard Baptist fare, the “death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” presented with all the fire-and-brimstone fury our standard-edition Hazel Motes could muster up.

“Gussied up” today means a clean pair of Levi’s and a wrinkle-free shirt with a pair of tennis shoes. Though my church certainly accommodates more formal attire, casual is readily accepted. I have taken my daily shower. I will shortly get into my 2006 Toyota Scion and note that, though it is a simple automobile, it will promptly start, none of its windows are cracked, and the hood is not tied down with baling wire. I will leisurely drive into town on this beautiful morning, appreciating the barren, wintry terrain of this bright sunny morning. I will probably see two or three beautiful hawks perched on the power lines along the road, looking for their Sunday “dinner”. (“Lunch” back then was “dinner” and what is now “dinner” was always “supper”.)

As I park my car near the church, I will appreciate the lovely old buildings and as I walk down the street will admire the spring flowers that are budding. I will realize that they are budding prematurely due to our global-warming induced mild winter. At about that moment I will suddenly realize, “Oh, I’m going to church” and will recall the satisfaction that came from knowing I was doing the “right thing”, I was being a “good boy” and going to church, not “forsaking the assembling together as the manner of some is.” I will note that, yes, even today I have some of this same ego reward in “dutifully” going to church, recognizing that those feelings too are ok.

I will meet with people of a “similar stripe” and will enjoy the time together as we ponder over spiritual issues. I will take satisfaction in noting that no one will guilt me into “coming back tonight for BTC” or for Wednesday night Prayer Meeting. There will be no emotional high-pressure effort to get me to believe a certain way. The “saw dust trail” of conversion is not present as one is allowed to “work out his/her own salvation with (or without) fear trembling.”

I will feel the presence of God as I do even at this moment. And I will also note that the “presence of God” was present back then also but articulated in the experience of that particular cultural moment, refracted through the experiences of that little group of people who were approaching God as best they knew how. And can any of us ever do otherwise?

(Now here is a tune by Johnny Cash re the subject. But I promise I am not hung over as he was!)

Thandie Newton’s “Being and Nothingness” Experience

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I share a video clip below from a young actress, Thandie Newton, who speaks at a TED conference about an identity crisis she experienced when just a girl and continuing as she became a fledgling young actress. She had the courage to find wisdom in her early twenties that I am only now trying to discover at thrice the age.

She speaks of self and separateness and uses the term “self” as I would use “ego.” She describes this self as a “vehicle to navigate a social world comprised of the projections of other people,” and noted that it is designed only to cope with the fear of death. She presents it as a false reality which left her feeling empty and alone.

She spoke of her discovery that “awareness of the reality of oneness can heal us” and described this realization as the loss of the false self, the ego self. Newton experienced what I would call “grace” as she embraced the world as she realized that it embraced her. She stopped drawing the distinction between “me and thee” that Western culture is so intoxicated with.

I want to conclude with an observation by Pema Chodron about our “shared humanity” and how that we can experience this “oneness” when we are willing to come out of the darkness that Newton was born into just as we all are:

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity. (Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times)

(You might have to copy and paste the following clip.)

The Neurological Roots of Experience

Meaning and Meaninglessness in Spirituality

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Richard Rohr writes powerfully and eloquently about the need to live in the domain of “duality” and recognize the specific relevance of the notion in the realm of spirituality. We do “see through a glass darkly” as the Apostle Paul once noted because this world we live in, which we daily imbibe (usually without any conscious awareness) is made up of infinite complexity, teeming with paradox stemming from this “duality.” One simple example is merely a favorite notion of mine, “We are not what we know ourselves to be. We are much more than that.” But being mere mortals, clothed in flesh, we have had to carve for ourselves an identity fashioned from the ephemeral so that we can function in this beautiful world, a world which…ephemeral thought it might be…is God’s creation.

As we pursue this path which Rohr and others suggest, we must “wrestle with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot) and thus we dive headfirst into this maelstrom of ambiguity, confusion, doubt, and fear. This is because, here in this land banished from conscious awareness by our “common-sense” day-to-day world, we discover “meaning” and learn that “meaning” inevitably taunts us with “meaninglessness.”

Let me explain why with a simple philosophical maneuver. Imagine a world in which everything was colored blue. In that world, “blue” would therefore not exist for “blue” has no meaning without its complement, “not-blue.” Asking someone to pay attention to “blue” would be like asking a fish to see water.

And the whole of language lies in a similar matrix. However, I must insist that I don’t spent a lot of time wondering about the meaning of most words that I use! If I did, I would soon be swallowed up by an abyss and cease to be functional! I thank the good Lord for this neurological gift as some are not so fortunate. But some words I do deign to explore…to name just a few…god, love, truth, and “right”… and most importantly, in my case, deign to explore the word “Lewis”, the origin of Literary “Lew”. With each of these terms, which I have deemed significant, their complement (including opposite) has to be considered in order for the words to have meaning.

Let me close with an excerpt from W. H. Auden about this treacherous journey. The “Star of Nativity” is speaking his Auden’s Christmas Oratorio:

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 lone
To find themselves immediately alone
With savage water or unfeeling stone,
In labyrinths where they must entertain
Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.

Thoreau’s version of, “Ye Must be Born Again”

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The first time literature spoke to me was in college when I was introduced to Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau voted with his feet that “modern” life was not accommodating to his soul, and so he retreated to the woods and sought authenticity, declaring, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

The notion of “not having lived” as one comes to the end of his life stunned me and did so because I saw its relevance to my life at age 21. And, I did not fully understand then why, but it immediately brought to my mind the famous words of Jesus, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” The “not having lived” of Thoreau and the “loss of soul” that Jesus spoke of were one and the same, but I could not really explain it at that point. The insight was intuitive.

Thoreau recognized that modern life was increasingly alienated, that it increasingly cut man off from nature and from himself, turning him into a cog in an industrial apparatus. Thorough intuitively knew what we have come to witness more overtly, that Western civilization was producing a culture of consumers, people whose modus operandi was “consuming”, or “getting stuff.” (And, if he were alive today, he would marvel at how prescient he had been.!) Jesus too recognized that mankind in his day were overly invested in the “stuff” of the day, though rampant consumerism had not blighted human consciousness yet. But he recognized that mankind was missing the point, that they were guilty of the sin of “misplaced concreteness” even then taking for real that which was only ephemeral. When Jesus taught, “Ye must be born again” he was telling us, “Hey, there is another dimension of life that you need to tap into. What you see is not all that there is. You are not all that you know yourself to be. You are more than that mere concept.”

The Essence of Religion, Part Deux!

That “Time-and-Space” Bitch!

literary lew

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