Tag Archives: humility

Must We Be “Some”-Body?

2 Replies

I’M NOBODY by Emily Dickinson

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

********************

It is very challenging to be the “Nobody” that Emily Dickinson presents to us in this poem.  Becoming a “nobody” is one of life’s greatest challenges, hardwired from birth on-ward to find our place in the world we are driven to finding our place in this mysterious world in which we find ourselves, and the desire to be “some”-body.

ves, an urge which always includes a grandioseour ego to driving us toward signficance, often more significance than any human can merit! desire to be “Somebody,” even if only vicariously through a cultural or political leader who vicariously satisfies that need of ours.

Dickinson knew that pursuit of prominence means prostituting ourselves to that “admiring bog,” those people “out there” who we early-on learned we must compare ourselves to. Rene Girard and James Alison have powerfully offered us the notion of “mimetic engulfment” in which humans are taught to be a slave to “sameness” and therefore the need to fit in, and eventually succeedf i the effort…… And “fitting-in” is part of being human but not when it is pursued so much that we completely forgo any impulse to find a vestige of autonomy as we participate in a social body.  It is the absence of personal autonomy that can turn a social body into a tyranny, an organized madness which will always find itself a voice to articulate its rage.

Notice that Dickinson described those masses whose attention we often seek to an “admiring bog,” before we often spend our life croaking like a frog. I’ve listened to movie stars and other famous people lament their realization that their loving and admiring fans often see them only as puppets of some sort, on the stage only to sing, dance, and perform for their mindless amusement.

Human existence demands only for us “to be” which T. S. Eliot described, “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.” This always entails what Christian tradition terms “a self-emptying” (kenosis, in the Greek. But this “self-emptying” is very challenging to ego which is horrified at this death. The Christian story of the Cross, an image of an excruciating pain, a death experience which alone can offer Resurrection. Until this “resurrection” takes place we will only be a shell of a human being, an “humanoid” often demonstrated in “card-board christian performance art.” This “performance art” of “christian” is one stage of becoming a follower of the teachings of Jesus, but at some point “the flesh” must be crucified and only then can we meekly, humbly follow in the steps of Jesus.

Having been born and raised in Christian culture, most of my life has been an expression of this “performance art.” If I’d have continued on that path, I well could have become “somebody” in Christian culture and even climbed to upper echelons of Christian ministry. But that have cost me my very soul even as I presented myself to my little world as a “SOUL winner for Jesus.”

J

Forgiveness Is Not a Perfunctory Performance

Leave a reply

One of my blogging friends, Anne, has honored me by requesting that I write about forgiveness.  It just so happens that the subject is much on my mind, having been a recurrent theme in my exploration each morning of A Course in Miracles with my wife. For months my she and I have explored the infinite intricacy of forgiveness, learning that it is more than a perfunctory function because one is “supposed to” offer it.  Forgiveness is recognition in some sense that, “there but by the grace of God go I.”  Furthermore, if one finds himself perfunctorily forgiving people while harboring continued indignation and anger, there is no meaningful forgiveness.  ACIM even points out that forgiveness can be a way of asserting power over the other person, as in, “Hey, I forgave you for this heinous offense….so you better not forget it!”

I can offer forgiveness only to the degree that I have received it.  And “receiving” it is often avoided as it might require opening up, even to someone else, about very unsavoury things that one has done and said, so unsavoury that often they are barely remembered if at all.  It brings to mind a relevant mantra that I use often, “There is nothing wrong about being wrong other than admitting that one has been, and is, wrong.”  Each of us cannot escape our “human-ness” and to be human is to have an ingrained tendency to be wrong, often even in the pursuit of doing things that are “right.”  It is very liberating to find the grace to be able to put into words with another person, or even in a journal, moments of shame that he has recoiled from for years.

Anne made an observation when she emailed me about this subject that is highly relevant, She noted, “I do not think we can actually ‘decide’ to forgive. Maybe it happens to us where we are swept into a current.”  This “current” is so important.  Until we have begun to experience the fluidity of life, its “flow,” our linear-thinking will often confine us to habitual ways of thinking and feeling which often make forgiveness little more than a perfunctory, rote performance. This flow of life is very related to discovering the practice of meditation about twelve years ago, a practice which I happen to know Anne is much more familiar with than I am.  Until I discovered meditation I did not realize the wisdom of the teaching, “You are not your thoughts.  You are the one having them.”  This wisdom helped me to understand that the cacophony of thoughts that had free-rein in my mind and heart, left little or no space to say to myself on occasion, “Oh, I didn’t even mean that nice thing I said!  I was just reading a cue card and ‘being nice’ again.” That was the beginning of the “internal dialogue” of Hannah Arendt that I speak of often.

Embracing Ignorance Really Takes The Pressure Off!

2 Replies

“Get in touch with your ignorance!”  That is the advice of Dave Gray in his book, “Liminal Thinking.”  I’ve been doing this for decades now and I’m discovering there is no end to it!  The more I can delve into this congenital “simple mindedness” the more I see how ephemeral my “wisdom” is and that actually…on the surface…it is just a bunch of words!  This is allowing me to find the value of these words, delving into them and exploring their depths as I revel in the field of meaning.

This “field of meaning” is simply the heart, that inexhaustible resource we are blessed with, where the Divine can be encountered.  In that interior world, that “Wholly Ground,” we learn to “pull on words” which is how one person described the making of poetry.  And as we “pull” on these words we find we are “pulling” on ourselves in a sense, our very identity is stretched taut as we do the bidding of T. S. Eliot and “wrestle with words and meaning.”  The discovery of this profound ignorance is the result.  Lest I mislead, by this “ignorance” I am still speaking of the Apostle Paul’s wisdom, “We see through a glass darkly.” ‘Tis such an humbling blow to the ego!

“To Gloat, Or Not To Gloat; That Is The Question.”

Leave a reply

In the glory days of my beloved Arkansas Razorback Basketball team in the early ’90’s, the rabid fans in the home crowd would break out into this little ditty when “we” had vanquished another foe–“Oh, its hard to be humble, when you perfect in every way” In a memorable moment, the Texas A & M coach Shelby Metcalf was so angry, he walked to center court after the gloating tune and ground his shoes into an image of the Razorback mascot on the floor as he looked up into the crowd defiantly That was delightful gloating and I will never forget it. And, yes, I have a gloating dimension with Joe Biden having been inaugurated and Trump and his insurrection having been thwarted…so far! But my gloater is modulated this time, even more than it was back in 1989 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Gloating is a human impulse, and I’m not groveling in contrition for feeling this impulse, but it is immediately modulated with the realization that, “This is no time for gloating.” This is no time for the childish ego-delight of having vanquished a foe in an athletic competition; this is a moment about our country’s welfare and even that of the world.

My study of history is brought to the table with this moment, In 1899, in the Spanish-American War the U.S.S. Texas had just sunk the Spanish cruiser, Viscaya. When the victorious “Texas” was cruising past the burning and sinking ship, its crew was loudly cheering when its Captain, John Woodward “Jack” Phillip, chided them, “Don’t cheer boys. Those poor devils are dying.” Though it is human nature to gloat here, there are so many “poor devils” who are dying and I’m not even speaking of the Republican Party upper echelon but of the rioters who so foolishly stormed the Capitol on “01/06/21.” Many of them are sorely regretting having given into their childish, old-brain impulses, having been stirred up by a sociopath president. And even Qanon members are regretting their actions, one of them, the Buffalo-horned “shaman,” crying out, “We were duped by Trump.” Others have reported feeling foolish. Gloating is not in order and even blaming should not be first priority. This is a “mess” we have been in for more than four years and gloating and blaming is short-sighted. It is so very Trump. We have an historic challenge before us and maturity, grace, and prayer is called for. I’m trying to “whup up” those qualities inside myself.

Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

Leave a reply

We “see through a glass darkly”.  That is the best we can ever do but we have a deep-seated and potentially evil dimension of our heart that wants to see with clarity and assuredness.  This is simply “being human” and to become the best human possible is to recognize this truth and humbly accept that it applies to “me” also.  Here I write from this position of great limitation and am always beset with self-doubt–”Is this necessary?” or “Why bother?” or “What’s the point?” or, “Ain’t you got something better to do?”  It would be much easier if I had simply guzzled that kool-aid of my youth and thus have the comfort of knowing….so to speak…”Thus saiith the Lord” in all my blathering.  I think this is called “existential insecurity” but if one actually “exists” here in this world, that is, actually “dwells” here as the finite creature that we are there must be some degree of insecurity. 

But thinking gets in the way of any such humility.  By virtue of this Divine gift we have been subjected to the temptation to take our cognitive apparatus and its product–thinking, too seriously.  We have then glommed onto a body of thought with which we are intoxicated to the point that we are incapable of any humility, believing in our belief rather than the Ground upon which we and within which we are rooted.  This takes faith and faith is risky, entailing much more than clinging to the product of that “cognitive apparatus.” The cognitive trap that I am addressing is a prison from which one can escape if he is willing to pay the price, and the price was summarized by T.S. Eliot as, “…a condition of simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  This price tag for myself has been the simple understanding and experience of recognizing this “trap,” a recognition which begins to loosen the bars of our imprisonment.

My country is currently demonstrating this entrapment with Trumpism.  Hordes of Republicans “believe in their belief” of Trump; the resulting  enthrallment by a cognitive apparatus gone awry cannot end without tragedy.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. Was a Victim…of Sorts!

2 Replies

Jerry Falwell Jr. fell victim to “christianizing.”  Being raised in conservative Christianity, with his father being a prominent preacher and eventual founder of the Moral Majority movement, he had no “choice.”  Spiritually-minded people of all persuasions often fail to realize that the wisdom given them by their tradition came through culture, one important dimension being language itself.  Furthermore, regardless of how noble the teachings of any tradition, these teachings come to us through this culture with its tremendous pressure. There is an hard-wired socio-cultural pressure to “sign-on” and fit into the group that one is born into and accept its central tenets without question.

Falwell, Jr. like myself got enculturated into his faith but has yet to find the courage and grace to wrench free of its grip to the point of finding “wiggle-room” so that the teachings could become less cultural and more personal; one could even say, “less institutional” and more personal.  Any spiritual teaching has to be “institutionalized” if it is to be passed on to future generations and there comes the rub; for, as this “institutional framework” evolves it creates positions for power to evolve and hungry young egos always realize that and see it as an opportunity.  As noted before, “c’est moi” as that was the direction early in my life though I only fancied myself as a “small fish” in a “small pond” compared with the larger pond that Falwell Jr. had available.

This is not a hit job on this hapless man who has been broadsided by reality.  If this “broad-siding” had not begun in my early 20’s and relentlessly gnawed away at my constitutional hypocrisy, I too would today be a fervent defender of my ego and passionate defender of Trump.  And the “gnawing away” continues as the Pauline “the flesh” never leaves us, for which I am grateful; for, it is lovely to be human and no longer to have to be “christian.”

Will a Fish Ever Learn To See Water?

Leave a reply

David Foster Wallace was a noted novelist of the late 20th,  early 21st  century who delivered a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005 entitled, “This is Water.”  The title was a reference to the famous quip, “To ask someone to see reality is like asking a fish to see water.”  Wallace used this address to explore the way in which education is usually designed only to reinforce the prevailing reality, i.e. “world order,” and not so much about teaching a young person to think. Wallace encouraged his audience to consider the value of “thinking about one’s thinking” and that failure to do so would be risking spending one’s life as a cog in the machine-like grid-work of a pre-existing socio-cultural matrix.

Wallace knew that meta-cognition was a necessary dimension of human consciousness without which one would be subject to manipulation by the whims and fancies of everyday human discourse, in modern times certainly including the media.  Without maturity in thought one is inclined to be readily influenced by manipulation, susceptible to a demagogue who knows that many people will believe anything if they hear it frequently enough. The demagogue does not to need intrinsic value to what he is purveying in his speeches, he only needs to have some lesser-value…maybe only a self-serving one…as he realizes it will find currency in many minds if they hear it repeatedly and with great fervor.

To state an obvious truth, thinking is a good thing.  To be “human” we must be capable of at least a rudimentary capacity to think and therefore engage in the world.  Without critical thinking to some minimal degree, we will be in the position that Emily Dickinson described as, “a mind to near itself to see distinctly.”  In that event, we will not be actually thinking but will be passively “thought” by a prevailing vein of thought we have found comfortable, living out the prediction of W. H. Auden, “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”

Here is an excerpt from the Wallace address:

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

The Prophets W. B. Yeats and Shakespeare Offered us a Word

Leave a reply

I had to leave the living room just now as news clips from the weekend of Trump droning-on in his voice dripping with fake sincerity and fake solemnity. I was sickened with the tape of the spectacle. I increasingly think the term “anti-Christ” applies to him though not in the traditional meaning of the term…maybe.

I no longer use the term “Christian” to describe my faith, though I do value the affirmation of one of my Arkansas friends, “I believe in the teachings of Jesus.” It is pretty easy and convenient to call one’s self “Christian” but it is challenging to let His wisdom cut into one’s heart, especially one’s “Christian heart,” and let it furrow into the depths of that “heart of darkness” that we all have. The Apostle Paul recognized this, avowing, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”

As Trump began his “slouching toward Bethlehem” about the same time I moved to Taos, New Mexico I became part of a coterie of friends who had found the maturity to let this darkness that all humans have get attention. We commonly refer to this as “the shadow” which is how Carl Jung put it. With these friends I have found the courage to see that “beast” within and not run from him/it any longer, realizing that as we subject him/it to the light of the day his/its power begins to diminish.

Shakespeare recognized this, telling us about a friend’s hypocrisy, “Thou has described a friend hot cooling. Ever note, Lucillus, when love begins to sicken and decay it useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; But hollow men, like horses hot at hand make gallant show and promise of their mettle.” That “plain and simple faith” is sorely needed at this moment in my life and certainly in my country. It is the only antidote to the to that “beast” within which is always “stalking” as the poet W. B. Yeats told us. “Enforced ceremony” aka “canned ” religion and life will never suffice.

“Whew, Trump Got By Once Again.” Or Did He?

Leave a reply

Yes, he screwed up with bleach and heat nonsense the other day. But his crisis-management team immediately convened and one of them quickly dug into his always-ready folder, just beside the one marked, “binders full of women,” and pulled out, “Well he can say it was sarcasm, that or ‘irony’ and both have worked before.”  Another countered with, “Just deny that it happened or was ‘being taken out of context’ and that will likely fly.”  A crusty old veteran then stood up, stroked his beard, appearing to be wise, pondering studiously for a moment,  then noted, “Hey, we could use the old tried-and-true maneuver, blaming it on Obama…or Hillary…or Biden or China. Hey, the “deep state” always works.!” So, an hour later, this group of advisors opted with the “sarcasm” defense, after sucking down tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars” to employ this “CYA contrivance”.  They quickly adjourned, pleased with themselves for again arming the president with “BS” that would satisfy Fox News and the rest of his devotees.

Speaking from experience, when you have so much to hide in the depths of your heart, any bit of lame-ass denial will suffice to satisfy your need to cover up your heart’s insecurity, fear, and anxiety.  I should know, having done that for most of my life.! And  that will keep you from admitting, “I  made a mistake. I goofed,” or even Rick Perry’s famous, awkward, admission of faltering in a debate in 2016 when he could not recall the third of “three points,” shame-facedly uttering, ‘Oops!’”

Yep, life is often tough as we plod along in the “tale told by an idiot” that we have contrived to save face, disregarding that this “tale” is always “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But even then Shakespeare wisdom must be taken with the body of his profound work, that beneath the surface of our collective falderal there is “Something” undergirding the apparent “nothing-ness.”  But when we are so deeply ensconced in falderal, this “nothingness” we inevitably will take it to be “the real.”

And with this organized, systematized denial system, we go merrily along our way, as in Goethe’s observation, “When folks made all the week a holiday/With scanty wit, yet wholly at their ease/like kittens given their own tail to tease.” W. H. Auden put it even more bitingly, describing humankind as, “bland, sunny, and adjusted by the light of the collected lie.”

” Oh my,” I am often wont to say, realizing that honest, human admission of fault must never be utilized.! We must keep from appearing “human” even though our “human-ness,” with all its frailty and shame, is our most valuable God-given treasure.

Perspectival Entrapment vs Reality

Leave a reply

The perspectival entrapment that I explored a couple of days ago is egregiously being played out currently in the impasse of our government.  This impeachment issue is proving very divisive as the Republicans and Democrats have pledged their troth rigidly to their “pony in the horse race.”  Yes, I certainly see the Republicans being more intransigent…blatantly so, but either side of a disputation like this must remember that on some level they too have a “pony in the race.”  Otherwise they are as ridiculous as the bizarre and inane Republcan Congressman Louie Gohmert, who last year pointed at a Democrat being interviewed, and passionately declared, “Just look at him!  Just look how biased he is!”  This brings to my mind the New Testament admonishment, “We see through a glass darkly.” How tragic if we see darkness in others and not our own.  That is called “projection.”

Having a perspective, and feeling passionate about it, is very human and even desirable.  But when one is “dug in at the heels” on an issue to the point that he is willing to totally disregard another view on the issue, his “dug-in (ness)” will reflect merely a self-serving ego investment; and ego, when pushed to an extreme, cannot back down.  That would be admitting he was “wrong” and acknowledging wrong is a something a very insecure, fragile, egomaniac cannot do  They are inclined to double-down, round up the troops on their side of the disputation, and argue with great passion and intensity.  In an extreme they will use violence rather than endure the sting of humiliation at being wrong, a sting which could be merely the dawning of a very noble human quality–humility.  It takes humility to admit, “Oh, I was not as right as I thought I was.  I wish I’d have listened to the admonishment of the bumper-sticker, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’”

My concern with this political morass is more than mere politics.  This conflict is about the very definition of reality in our culture, what is real and unreal, what is true and what is untrue, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Oh, of course, distinctions in these matters are always more nebulous that we like to think; but, there are some basic standards of human decency that are usually more or less maintained.  Beneath the surface of the “reality” that we take for granted, there is a substrate which I like to describe as Reality.  Yes, with the capitalized “R” I’m teasing with the notion of “god”, but words like god and the rest of “god-talk” which is usually mere rhetoric I can’t help today but grimace and groan about.  To illustrate my concern, I offer a quote from Shakespeare that describes just about the whole of my spiritual life and what passes for a lot of spiritual life today, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.”  Oh for those days when my perspectival enslavement kept me in the solace of that darkness!!!