Here is a graphic description of where our countries values lie. This corresponds with the banality apparent in the highest value of our congress—getting re-elected. Paul Tillich said that religion is our “highest value”. Hmm.
http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-employee-a-co-489635228
Terry Mattingly reported re a recent discussion with leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention re decline in baptisms, reflecting a decline in “conversions.” I here provide a link to this article so you can see how the SBC is attempting to explain this decline. (http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jun/14/terry-mattingly-baptists-with-fewer-baptisms/)
But, having been a Baptist myself, I have an opinion which I shared weeks ago after a newspaper article reported about a new demographic category, the “nones”, people who now selected “none” when asked about which religion they are affiliated with. (https://literarylew.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/an-open-letter-to-the-clergy-re-the-nones/)
I feel that Baptists err in that they adhere rigidly to the “letter of the law” even while preaching against this very thing. But by taking the Bible literally, they fail to see the nuances of the Scripture and fail to appreciate the layers of meaning that it offers. They fail in exercise of hermeneutic discipline.
I here would like to share a paragraph by a professor of religion in San Antonio, Glenn Hughes:
…there are those who try to hold on their sense of the divine by tenaciously attaching themselves to religion in a quite uncritical manner—in a closed-minded manner that renders the world of everyday responsibilities, and the awareness of historical complexities, more bearable though massive psychological reliance on intense, unexamined feelings evoked by religious symbols, rituals, and texts. Thus is forged an attitude of intransigent certainty that one is in possession of the sole and absolute truth about divinity. And thus the full complexity of the challenges of existential self-making and of responsibility for history is sidestepped, to some degree, by ignoring the problematic fact of the transcendence of divine transcendence—that is, its profound mysteriousness and its unavailability to direct or substantive human understanding—that the former child’s sense of the nearness of the divine absolute becomes transformed into an inflexible, dogmatic, and (as we all know) sometimes murderous conviction that the intense feelings evoked by one’s own religious tradition are infallible guides to absolute, exclusive religious truth. (A More Beautiful Question: The Spiritual in Poetry and Art)
If the Gospel is to be meaningful, it must be refracted through a heart in which meaning is present. By that, I mean a heart that is “petal open” and full of “penetrable stuff” (Shakespeare’s term) not one that’s keeping human frailty at bay with rigid, compensatory certainty. In other words, a heart that is humble. And, as T. S. Eliot noted, “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. And humility is endless.”
Again, I must let Richard Rohr speak for me today, sharing his observations about the importance of getting beneath the surface of things. He argues that everything is profane…even religion…if you keep on the surface of it. And the profanity is particularly pronounced if it happens in the domain of religion for the sacred is blasphemed even as it is purportedly worshipped. As Shakespeare put it, “With devotion’s visage and pious action we sugar o’er the devil himself” and “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.”
If we just stay on the fearful or superficial side of the religious spectrum, religion is invariably defined by exclusionary purity codes that always separate things into sacred and profane. God is still distant, punitive, and scary. Then our religious job becomes putting ourselves only on the side of “sacred” things (as if you could) and to stay apart from worldly or material things, even though Jesus shows no such preference himself.
After the beginnings of mystical experience (which is just prayer experiences), one finds that what makes something secular or profane is precisely whether one lives on the surface of it. It’s not that the sacred is here and the profane is over there. Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it, and everything is sacred if you go into the depths of it—even your sin. To go inside your own mistakenness is to find God. To stay on the surface of very good things, like Bible, sacrament, priesthood, or church, is to often do very unkind and evil things, while calling them good. This important distinction is perfectly illustrated by Jesus’ parable of the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14).
So the division for the Christian is not between secular and sacred things, but between superficial things and things at their depth. The depths always reveal grace, while staying on the surface allows one to largely miss the point (the major danger of fundamentalism, by the way). Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, and one of my heroes of Vatican II, loved to call this “the mysticism of ordinary life.
The goal of all spiritual practice is to help us see that we are more than temporary and meaningless collections of automatic emotional and physical responses. All spiritual practices are designed to lead us to see a higher reality — that we are, in truth, eternal consciousness, occupying physical form for a purpose, animated and connected to the creative and sustaining source of everything. (Rabbi Alan Lurie)
It is challenging to pay attention to “the automatic emotional and physical responses” that we are; for, to borrow a line used in the past, asking one to do this is like asking a fish to see water. We are very ephemeral creatures, existing for but a moment in this mysterious, ever-expanding universe, and it is human nature to take ourselves way to seriously and assume that we objectively grasp “reality”. As Rabbi Lurie noted, our task is to grasp our finitude and affirm, by faith, a “higher reality” which I like to describe as our Source. It is much easier to cling to what Kierkegaard described as the “flotsam and jetsam”, i.e. the prevailing dogma of the day…that we fleetingly see in this vortex of life. The goal is to let go of the “flotsam and jetsam” for a moment and, by faith, cling to the Ultimate.
I don’t know how everything started. It must have been an incredible experience to realize, just shortly after we had washed off the primordial ooze, to recognize that we were here on this really strange, dangerous, and beautiful world, that we were all alone…and that our life would end long before we were ready for it to happen.
I imagine that we first had the notion of god as we sat around the campfire, gnawing the last vestige of flesh from the bone of the day’s prey, grunting a song or two, crudely “discussing” the latest raid on the neighboring tribe. Someone wandered aloud…crudely again, “How did this all happen? How did we get here? Where will this all lead?”
To make a long story short, someone looked up into the heavens and was stirred by what we call today “the glory of God’s handiwork”. He then noted…and it would be a “he” as women were disposable property at the time…”Well, there must be a god up there.” Someone answered with enthusiasm, “Yes, Yes, Yes.” (Later that would become a resounding “amen” in some circles.”)
Someone else then posed the question, “Well, what must we do to appease him? He is really powerful and we have done some really shitty things in our lifetime. What must we do to appease him and earn his forgiveness?”
Someone else then suggested, “Well, we should jump over the fire three times.” So in a matter of weeks there was a lot of jumping over the fire each night as the validity of this experience was proven in that the success of hunting forays increased dramatically, no savage beast killed any of the children, and none of the neighboring tribes raided the campfire and carted off the women and children.
But before too long the first theological dispute arose. Some suggested that spiritual valor was proven by jumping the highest over the camp fire. Others said, “Oh no. The greatest spiritual valor lies with those of us who can jump over the fire so low that we drag our feet through the flames.” So pretty soon the tribe was divided and eventually split, each side of the debate seeing no reason to debate something that was so clearly apparent to all reasonable human beings.
Well, this could go on and on but I must cut to the chase. I am so pleased that we have come so far that in our culture we have a Christian tradition and at this time of the year we can all offer praise and gratitude to Him, each in our own way. And none of us have to get our feet burned!
I refer often to Eckhart Tolle, especially his best-selling book, The Power of Now. The central emphasis of this book is that our culture is captivated by our orientation to past and future. (T.S. Eliot in The Four Quartets notes, “Time past and time future” and then claims that we “cling to that dimension.”) And Tolle is only one of numerous gifted souls, men and women, who are aware of the shallowness of our particular culture and the unwillingness of organized religion to address the ensuing spiritual malaise.
Tolle emphasizes “the Now”. Though he recognizes the importance of past and future and the imperative that we pay proper respect to “that dimension”, he encourages us to look below the surface, beyond the pale of the normal hum-drum of day to day life, and recognize the present moment.
But this is a very subversive notion. It flies in the face of our most basic assumptions about life and suggests that there is more to life than meets the eye. This “subversive function” is paid lip-service to in theological and ecclesiastical circles as the “prophetic function” of the gospel. But most churches and spiritual teachings are unwilling to take on this “subversive function”, preferring to amuse themselves with the gospel-eze version of those “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken)
It is astounding that a book of this sort has been so well-received. It speaks of the hunger of the modern human heart, a hunger that is rarely addressed with traditional religion. However, I do believe that this heart-hunger could be addressed with many world religions…and certainly the Christian tradition…but it would require a clergy that was willing to follow Jesus (and other Holy men and women throughout the ages) into a desert experience.
W. H. Auden summarized it so beautifully:
ll 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 lane
To find themselves immediately alone
With savage water or unfeeling stone,
In labyrinths where they must entertain
Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.
literary lew 