Tag Archives: Religion and Spirituality

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.

Resting in His Grace

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A friend of mine in the blog-o-sphere has entitled his blog, “Resting in his Grace.”  I was reading his post this morning and the title itself spoke to me as a friend of mine is currently experiencing first-hand a powerful manifestation of this grace.  My dear friend, “KW” is dying, and he is doing so with the “grace of God” so clearly present in his life.

I should explain that KW and I grew up in a similar conservative religious environment in Arkansas.  Both of us did the obligatory “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” when we grew up and went to college and discovered there was a world outside of Arkansas.  But as we aged, we continued to have a spiritual dimension to our life and in recent years we frequently mused about holy writ from all religions, certainly including Christianity.  And in these final days and weeks of KW’s life, certain little tidbits of biblical lore have found meaning for both of us.

One of these tidbits was “grace” and I had the pleasure of sharing with him one of my favorite poems (The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry) which so beautifully conveys the grace found in the world of nature.  One line from this poem notes how animals do not “tax their lives with forethought of grief” and I think this is a fundamental dimension of grace.  We humans live day to day well aware that our life is very fragile and will come to and end sooner or later and only grace will allow us to not “tax our life with forethought of” that particular grief.

KW has battled this monster cancer for over a year now and he has wrestled with the full gamut of human emotions.  He has been very angry.  He has told me of throwing one huge fit in the backyard of his place, enraged at God. He has had “pity parties” from time to time.  He has been depressed on occasion.  But he has come to peace with his mortality and now he is comfortably ensconced in the grace of God.  It has been deeply moving to be part of this experience and this will help me immensely as I approach that point in my own life.

Get over yourself!

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There is a great story in 2 King 5 which I’ve always been intrigued with.  Naaman the leper wanted to be healed so he went to the spiritual guru of the day, Elisha, and asked for healing.  He was told to go down to the river Jordan, deep seven times, and he would be healed.  Naaman was indignant, feeling that a man of his prominence should be received more formally and a more elegant healing ceremony should be offered.  He walked away in fury.  Sometime later, he became more humble, followed through with Naaman’s advice and was healed.

This story is so relevant to the human predicament.  A man with an ailment wanted relief but he wanted this relief on his own terms. Elisha intuitively knew that a critical dimension of Naaman’s problem was ego and he knew that an appropriate step for him to take was to humble himself in some way.  And, he also knew that this relief needed to entail action. Elisha knew that going down to Barnes and Nobles and buying the latest self-help title was not enough.  Naaman needed behavioral intervention.  So, he simply sent word to Naaman to go and dip into the river Jordan seven times.  (By the way, he didn’t even meet personally with Naaman to send this message, a further “indignation” to this man’s ego. He merely sent word through a messenger.)

This is relevant to a recent posting re getting un-stuck.  Sometimes a person who is hurting might have to humble himself as part of his treatment and this “humiliation” can be as simple as reaching out and seeking help. It is very painful for some to deign to make an appointment with a counselor.  I’ve known some who will schedule an appointment hundreds of miles away merely to keep anyone from happening to see him entering a counselor’s officer.  This “humiliation” can be daring to surrender and seek help with a 12-step group or going to one’s pastor or priest or rabbi and sharing openly about one’s haunts.  It can involve accepting a diagnostic label. It can involve opening up honestly with one’s mate for the first time in the marriage.  In my clinical work I have even proposed what I call “tree therapy” to some clients, instructing them to go into the forest and talk openly to a tree just to verbalize openly about what is going on in their heart.  (When I assigned “tree therapy”, I always advised them to then seek another human being to whom they could “unpack their heart with words.” (Shakespeare)

One last note about behavioral interventions.  An often used maneuver for therapists is to assign a client the simple task of going home and planting a garden or merely getting a houseplant.  This is because a key element in any neurosis or any psychological/spiritual problem is a narcissistic streak.  The pain is so intense that it becomes all consuming. It can help to simply find the energy to take care of plants and nurture them and love them.

More about Getting Un-stuck

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So, precisely how do we get “unstuck”?  How do we extricate ourselves from that morass of unconsciousness, that residue of poor decisions that has left our life unmanageable?

There are easy maneuvers such as psychotropic medications.  Sometimes simply being tweaked biochemically can create enough personal space for us to get out of ourselves and get beyond our impasse.  And simple psychotherapy can be very effective.  On that note, it is very important that the therapist must avoid the temptation to “fix” the client, allowing  that client to stew in his/her own juices for a while, to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.”  Karl Jung contended that the therapeutic frame was a crucible and if the process worked correctly, the client would “heat-up” to a boiling point and a break through could be achieved.

But, as noted yesterday with the Shakespeare quotation, ultimately we are all alone with our spiritual battles and must wrestle in solitude with our demons.  However, I feel very strongly that therapists, counselors, pastors, and certainly friends must be present to facilitate the catharsis.  I think the most important step in alleviating the “stuck-ness” is for the individual to have the humility to admit that he/she is “stuck”;  and, I don’t mean some glib conciliation to the concept of being stuck.  I mean, for example, the old-fashioned fundamentalist paradigm, “I am a lost sinner” or the 12-step “I am powerless before my addiction” or “out of control” schemata.  It is necessary to realize and feel that one is out of control and that all of the rational, ego-based perambulations one can muster up will not suffice.  It is not a matter of “figuring out” anything.  It is a matter of trusting someone…and ultimately trusting a Source, or a Higher Power, or God or, in the words of Nikos Kazantzakis, “Surrendering to a rhythm not our own.”  It is a matter of humility.  And humility comes hard to the ego.   I think “stuck-ness” like all other human spiritual maladies is an issue of the ego.

A caveat is necessary.  I don’t think getting un-stuck is a simple one-time and your done phenomena.  I think we get through one episode of “stuck-ness” and later run into another one, and another one, and another one.  That has certainly been the case with me. I think there is a sense in which we always find ourselves “stuck”…in reality, with all its limitations.  The issue is discerning which of these limitations we can live with and which ones we must wrestle with and get beyond to some degree.

I have one very readable book to recommend on the subject, How People Change by Allen Wheelis.

Getting Un-stuck

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This morning I was “conversating” with a friend I have met in Sunday School.  This friend also grew up in a conservative Christian church but now subscribes to a different faith orientation as I do.  Meditation is a key emphasis in our Sunday School class and we commiserated this morning about the pronounced resistance we often face in disciplining our “monkey minds” to meditate.

Personally speaking, meditation meets fierce resistance in my heart as if something deep inside views it with fear and disdain, as if every fiber of being finds it anathema.  I think this is because of deep-seated old recordings from my youth in which anything like “meditation” had the ring of “Eastern” and “non-Christian” and was therefore “of the devil.”

But now I see meditation as a primary direction in my spiritual life, as a key element in the development of my spirituality. I see it as the next step for me to take in the experiencing of my Source, in achieving a very paltry, limited experience of the Incarnation, of the “word being made flesh.”  And this resistance I see in Pauline terms as spiritual warfare.  To borrow the words of Paul, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me, or, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.”  For the Pauline term the “old man” is merely a term for resistance, that stubborn energy constellation that seeks to perpetuate itself, to resist change and maturity.  It is the “letter of the law” resisting the “spirit of the law”

Now still another term I like to use, from modern-day clinical colloquial jargon, is “stuck” or “stuck-ness.”  We tend to live our life in a “stuck” mode and it is very hard to get dislodged.  This is because we tend to live life on automatic pilot and our “automatic pilot” does not was to lose its autonomy.  You could think of this automatic pilot as a constellation of energy which wants to continue to discharge in the pattern to which it is accustomed.  Other relevant terms are “neurosis” or “maladaptive behavior patterns.”

And though relationships with other people, especially close and intimate relationships are essential in addressing these “stuckness”, we are ultimately alone as we battle these demons.  As Shakespeare noted in Macbeth:

MACBETH
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorry,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of the perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

Jacque Ellul and the Prophetic Function

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Thanks for the response to my posting re Jacques Ellul. I owe this to one of my
new friends in the blog-o-sphere who re-posted the matter.

Let me tell you a little more about Ellul. I’ve seen him described as a
“Christian anarchist” and I can understand that though I disagree. I feel he
merely served a prophetic function in our Christian culture and any prophet who
follows his calling it is always “anarchic” to the existing religious/spiritual
status quo.  If he was an anarchist of any kind then so am I but I firmly
renounce any such accusation—I believe too strongly in purpose in life and
feel that mature faith will always cling to hope and will always offer
purposeful behavior even when things appear the most dire.  I passionately
believe that there is “method to our madness” that divinity doeth shape
our ends, rough-hew them how we may.”  (Shakespeare)

I think Ellul was one of the most powerful voices in the 20th century in
religion though he does not get a lot of attention. Though I think The Judgment of Jonah was the most powerful of his books but I also highly recommend The Ethics of Freedom.

I would like to close with another quotation from Judgment, “From the moment faith develops in us, we must be permeated by the conviction that  that if grace is conferred on us it is primarily for others.  It is never for our own personal satisfaction.”

Faith and adversity

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Faith is easy when we are in our glory days.  But it is often more of a challenge when adversity sets in.  Please read the following article about a former evangelical pastor who is battling a losing battle against ALS.  (You will have to “cut and paste” as I have even yet to figure out how to import a link to this blog.)

Facing death, a top pastor rethinks what it means to be Christian

Faith is so easy when we can bask in the “sizz, boom, bah” of carefully orchestrated, entertainment-oriented religion.  It used to be so comforting to know that I belonged to a “happenin'” mega-church.  We were sooo cool.  God, what a false reality!.  I do not think that God had in mind creating a false reality when he sent Jesus into the world.  I think he had in mind a meaningful faith in which life’s difficulties were embraced, not covered up with sham, canned religion.

Prayer and humility

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I have discoursed several times re prayer and its meditative function. I don’t believe that God sits “up there” waiting to bestow “stuff” on us when we want or to bail us out of a mess we have created with our life. I think prayer, like all dimensions of spirituality, is ultimately a mystery. I don’t know definitively how it works but I do believe that it is important that we pray.  So I think you should pray as you are inclined to pray. You know as much about this mystery as I do. But I hope that you will consider the perspective that I offer from time to time.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs made an interesting point in the Huffington Post that I would like to share. He noted that in the Hebrew language the word “to pray” is a reflexive verb, something you do to yourself. And the root of the word means “to judge”, “rendering the actual translation of prayer as something more akin to self-evaluation. Therefore, when a person stands before God to communicate, she is taking stock of her capabilities, current level of spiritual consciousness and willingness to accept reality for what it truly is. The deeper notion is that we are willfully trying to integrate the inescapable fact that we are utterly dependent on the Creator.”
The upshot of this observation is that humility is an essential element in prayer. And humility always comes hard to those of us who have been educated into “humility.”  And I close with my favorite Shakespearean observation re prayer, King Claudius on his knees in prayer, offering the following observation, “My words fly up.  My thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

Faith and the transitoriness of life

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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.

Reza Aslan on fundamentalism

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I am now reading for the second time Reza Aslan’s book, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization. Aslan, an Iranian born American citizen, explores fundamentalism of all stripes though his main focus is on Islamic fundamentalism. He thoroughly explores some of the basic concepts of fundamentalism and how that when core beliefs are taken to an extreme, the consequences can be severe.
For example, he notes that the word “jihad” in Arabic means simply, “a struggle” and comes from the verb “jihada” which means, “to strive for something.” Aslan argues that the word in its context implies “a struggle against the self, against one’s passions and instincts and the temptations that oppress the soul.” But that is a far cry from the popular meaning of the term in today’s world. This demonstrates how easy it is for anyone or any group to take a simple word or concept and interpret it to fit their own ends.
Ideologues of any stripe are dangerous people. If you run into one, give them wide birth! Unless, of course, it happens to me moi!
Aslan’s exegesis of the term jihad reminds me of Proverbs 25:28: He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls. And of course we know what happened back then if the walls of a city were broken down. The enemy could get in.