Tag Archives: Quakers

Lao Tzu, Emptiness, and Protestantism

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Lao Tzu (6th century BCE) first introduced me to the paradoxical dimension of reality.  One stanza of his Tao Te Ching, #11, grabbed my attention before I really knew where it would lead me.  Here is my favorite translation of that wisdom by Witter Bynner:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,

By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;

The use of clay in moulding pitchers

 Comes from the hollow of its absence;

 Doors, windows, in a house,

Are used for their emptiness:

Thus we are helped by what is not

To use what is.

This ancient Chinese sage realized that there is a hidden dimension of life which is the essential dimension of life but is recognized only to those are attuned to the subterranean regions of the heart.  This hidden dimension is described in the Christian tradition as the spiritual realm.  But the Christian tradition, especially here in the West, has erred by not appreciating the true essence of spirituality as emptiness, and fashioned a spirituality which is merely a thing among other things, an object among other objects.  Western thought has objectified the world and its spirituality has, therefore, been reduced to a rational enterprise that has no room…in most circles…for the wisdom of Lao Tzu. What has happened, therefore, is that spirituality has become a “graven image” which the Old Testament rather sternly prohibited. This subtle “idolatry” is particularly so with Protestantism which does not emphasize mysticism and meditation which places value on the quietness of the mind.

 

I ran across a beautiful poem today on Facebook which brought these thoughts to mind, a poem which was shared on the page of Parker J. Palmer, a noted member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker):

WHAT ELSE by Carolyn Locke

The way the trees empty themselves of leaves,
let drop their ponderous fruit,
the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log,
the way even the late-blooming aster
succumbs to the power of frost—

this is not a new story.
Still, on this morning, the hollowness
of the season startles, filling
the rooms of your house, filling the world
with impossible light, improbable hope.

And so, what else can you do 
but let yourself be broken 
and emptied? What else is there
but waiting in the autumn sun?

 

The Peril of “Disembodied” Faith

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True godliness don’t turn men out of the world but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavours to mend it… Christians should keep the helm and guide the vessel to its port; not meanly steal out at the stern of the world and leave those that are in it without a pilot to be driven by the fury of evil times upon the rock or sand of ruin.

I just read this on FB and was stunned to see that its author was William Penn. But then, why was I stunned? The Quakers with their “Silence” really had, and have today, a valuable perspective on faith in general and specifically the Christian faith. The version of faith I imbibed as a child was that Christians were “separate” from the world and in fact were commanded to “Come out from among them and be ye separate” and to become a “peculiar people.” Now, I might add that on that latter note, my little sectarian faith succeeded far more than they intended on becoming “peculiar” and, even more so, I carried that matter even further!

I was presented with a “dis-embodied Word”, one in which transcendence was emphasized to the exclusion of immanence. And those who worship a “disembodied” word are always scary and potentially dangerous, i.e. the Taliban. They are ideologues, worshipping the idea instead of “that” to which the idea has reference to. (I place that in quotes because the Ineffable is not a “that”, it is a “No-Thing.” it is a Presence.) And never waste your time with a die-hard ideologue. Their mind is made up. As Emily Dickinson noted, their “mind is too near itself to see itself distinctly” and thus there is no room for meta-cognition.

And on this vein of thought I always recall the insight of William Butler Yeats, “Oh God, guard me from those thoughts men think in the mind alone. They who sing a lasting song must think in the marrow bone.”