Tag Archives: Jesus

A Paranoid Political Rant with a Serious Point!

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Hurricane Isaac’s approach to Tampa and points west have piqued the deep recesses of my brain, stirring an interpretation angle that I don’t like to acknowledge. I’m gonna have some fun with it here. Let me start with David Letterman’s quip last week: Hurricane Isaac’s attack on Tampa proves to be, beyond doubt, that God is a woman!
Here is paranoid rant # 1 (from about a week ago):
The wrath of God is bearing down on Tampa and the Republican Nominating Convention. Clearly God is answering my prayers…and those of other Truth-believing, Truth-telling Democrats…and is gonna wreak havoc on those God-forsaken Republicans. God will not truck with those that believe differently than I do, He does not tolerate compromise with the Truth, and he is tired of these lousy people who never have read “Being and Nothingness”, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, the “Kama Sutra,” and “The Huffington Post.” Oh, I should add, “He is tired of those who can’t read in the first place and who, only one generation back, were not walking upright.”
But, alas and alack, the path of Isaac was diverted and New Orleans is facing its fury. So, here is paranoid, insane rant #2:
So, God clearly had a change of heart and decided to spare Tampa and the GOP the brunt of his wrath, meting out to them merely a slap on the wrist. For, you see, god chose to answer another one of my prayers and take care of unfinished business from six years ago. You see, back then he gave New Orleans a scourging because of its sin and iniquity when he sent Katrina. But, he spared Bourbon Street, that bastion of perversity and degradation. Now, he has turned Isaac in the direction of New Orleans and this time he is gonna beat the hell out of Bourbon Street.
Now the scary part of this nonsense is that it does reflect the residue of the way I was taught. Anyone who can even think this way…even sarcastically as I have done here…has at his/her disposal a very skewed view of the world. And yes I was taught such a view and it is still present in some whimsical, capricious fashion though I give it no energy in the least.
Our view of God does not say so much about God as it does about ourselves, ourselves in the very depths of our hearts; not the selves that we present to the world but the ones that lie buried in our unconscious depths. I’m going to illustrate with only one of the right-wing crazies who have crawled out from under the rocks the past four years—Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman. In addition her recent paranoid fears about Muslim infiltration of our government, remember how she attributed natural disasters about a year ago to God’s judgment on our country, saying, “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’”
I quote Jesus here, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” And anyone whose heart is full of this paranoid filth does not need to have the prominence in our government that she has. I gravely fear what direction our country will take if it is led by people of that ilk. (AND, by the way, I do NOT think all Republicans are like her.)
Bachman lives in a very rigid cause-effect, right-wrong, black-white world. Reality is much more subtle than that. Now we must have “cause-effect, right-wrong, black-white” world but we do not need to be consumed by it. We need to realize that there is another world “out there” which is paradoxically “in here” and the Presence of that world gives us pause and keeps us from getting too arrogant. That Presence gently reminds us that we always “see through a glass darkly.” Though wrongs in the world, i.e. “evil”, need to be addressed, the primary focus of our energy needs to be the “evil” that lurks within. And, contrary to people like Ms. Bachman, there is a lot of evil in good people. In fact…and this is getting far out I admit…but I posit the notion that the “gooder” you get the more evil you have to deal with!

Wisdom from Rumi

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I have discoursed before about the sin of “misplaced concreteness.” I think it was C.S. Lewis who offered the term to me. This sin is the error of taking to be real that which is only ephemeral; and, it is a sin which is intrinsic to human nature. It seems to be so pronounced in our modern world with its insane consumerism but it has always been around in some shape, form, or fashion.

Shakespeare often harped on this issue. I strongly recommend you check out his sonnet 146, one of my favorite. And just recently I came across a quote from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who noted, “Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.”

Our task is to always be aware of the “oyster shell” and its tyranny, realizing that inside there is a “pearl of great price” which cries out for attention and respect. I think this is what Jesus had in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

 

Paean to Ignorance

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I really believe in ignorance!  I guess I watched too much of Hogan’s Heroes and remember the wisdom of Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothing, nothing, nothing.”  I remember a wonderful pastor from my youth who would quip, “If ignorance was bliss, we would all be blistered.”

Yes, I’m intelligent, well educated, erudite as heck!  I can throw 35 cent words around for nickle ideas like anyone.  But, to quote the observation of Paul, the “wisdom of this world is come to nought.”  We don’t know jack!  For, words are but means to an end, they lead us to the truth, they lead us to the precipice of Truth,  but we can never cross over and apprehend the truth in a definitive fashion.  The Truth only glimmers our way and then only on occasion.  For example, one such “glimmering” was the life of Jesus.  And in the course of my life I have seen a “glimmer” or two but admittedly nothing that matches the Light that Jesus brought into the world.  And the “glimmerings” that I have been privy too have never been cognitive;  they have been the Light of Christ manifested in the life of other persons, some of them not card-carrying, born-again, USDA certified “Christians.”

So, let’s get ignorant today and hear a primordial word.

For example, Gerard Manley Hopkins noted in The Habit of Perfection:

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe to me pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From where all surrenders come
Which alone makes you eloquent.

And then there is William Butler Yeats who wrote:

Throughout all the lying days of my youth
I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.
Now may I wither into the Truth.

“Heavenly hurt it sends us”

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Richard Rohr argues that there is “an incurable wound at the heart everything” and that in the second half of one’s life maturity comes when we recognize and accept this. He states in a recent blog that “your holding and ‘suffering’ of this tragic wound, your persistent but failed attempts to heal it, your final surrender to it, will ironically make you into a wise and holy person.”

Now, I would qualify this and note that this “incurable wound” comes to us in varying degrees. For many, those who are merely the “walking wounded” it presents itself as plain vanilla depression and anxiety. But even that “plain vanilla” version of pain must be confronted, just as others must confront their “incurable wound.” It makes me wonder if this is what Paul meant by his “thorn in the flesh.”

And note here what a “difference” Emily Dickinson’s “heavenly hurt” brought her:

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.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

The peril of attachment

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There is a well-known story of Jesus encountering a rich man who wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. (See Mark ch. 10). Now I don’t think Jesus was telling us that we need to sell all of our “stuff” and give to the poor. He merely recognized the attachment of that man to his riches and knew that it was an impediment to his spiritual welfare. I have known of people who have taken a vow of poverty and given everything away. I’m not inclined myself! I like my stuff. However, I am more conscientious about non-attachment to my “stuff” and have made an effort to be more generous in my day to day life.

I heard someone point out one time that anyone who is miserly with his money (and stuff) is also going to be miserly with his heart.

Forgiveness

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Julia Kristeva’s book, Hatred and Forgiveness, is an excellent exploration of the experience of forgiveness.  Kristeva explores the issue from a variety of perspectives and concludes that psychoanalysis is best suited for the accomplishment of forgiveness.  I would broaden this observation to include “talk therapy” in general.

Kristeva, in this book and others, develops the notion that forgiveness is more than a conceptual process.  If we are trapped in the conceptual world, then we are not likely to allow the experience of forgiveness to be constellated in the depths of our heart.  For, forgiveness does not begin with a concretely existing deity dwelling “out there.”  It is an essential element in the depths of our psyche and can be resurrected if we are willing to “unpack our heart with words.”   (Shakespeare)

“Getting saved” in terms of culture

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I was born and raised in a religious world where “getting saved” was a mandate.  And, I might add that I still see it as a valid cultural initiation to spirituality but I fear it is often misused.  Too many times the concept is introduced and promulgated in a culture of manipulation and fear…terror even…and young children are “saved” before they have any idea of what they are doing.  And when they are introduced to religion in that atmosphere and if they continue to live there, they often to do not allow their spirituality to deepen and mature.

We must not fail to recognize the socio-cultural dimension of spirituality/religion.  That is one fundamental dimension that is often overlooked.  When spirituality/religion is not allowed to mature, when it continues to be only a socio-cultural phenomena, the deeper meaning is not allowed to develop.

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.

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.”

Meditative prayer

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I think it is important to pay attention to how we pray.  Often when we pray we are merely chattering, tossing words around, praying to some kindly old gentleman “up there”, possibly one who sits on a golden throne with a baby sheep under one arm and a thunderbolt under the other.  Our prayer is often of the “gimme, gimme, gimme” genre, reflecting a vision of God as sitting “up there” with a huge duffel bag full of goodies to toss our way.  But an essential dimension of prayer is to clear our minds, to rein them in, to focus—that is, to meditate.  Meditative prayer can help us find our center and from that center we can make better decisions about our day to day life.   We could even, then, say “The Spirit of God leads us in making better decisions.”

Our words speak volumes about us, including the words we use in prayer.   Our word selection and the nuances of our speech reveals where we are existentially and spiritually.   For example, our word selection in prayer can reveal the perception that He is “afar off”, that He is “out there” and that we are fundamentally estranged from Him.  It is this perception of estrangement that leads to the belief that our tone of voice, our volume, and our ardor will help influence Him in his responses.  We forget that though God is transcendent He is also immanent.  In the words of Jesus, “The kingdom is within.”