tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79385291044513816842024-03-13T17:47:18.541-04:00Circumambulations"I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song." ~ Ranier Maria RilkeJason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-63678688001558967372010-10-06T09:04:00.002-04:002010-10-06T09:16:37.247-04:00Courage and Love<span style="font-style:italic;">The way of love is not<br />a subtle argument<br /><br />The door there<br />is devastation.<br /><br />Birds make great sky-circles<br />of their freedom.<br />How do they learn it?<br /><br />They fall, and falling<br />they're given wings.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>~ Rumi</span><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">My sister, Carla Zilbersmith, was this year's recipient of the Mary Lou Krauseneck Award for Courage and Love presented by ALS TDI. According to ALS TDI's website: </span></i></div><div><i><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">"T</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="display: inline !important; ">his award is presented to a member of the ALS community who has, despite all obstacles, created a foundation of hope by maintaining a passion for life. The recipient of this award inspires his/her community to fight alongside them in the battle against ALS. He/She understands the importance of keeping a positive attitude and remains committed to finding a cure. This person is a model of strength, courage, and love in his/her community."</p></span></i></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="display: inline !important; "></p></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><p class="MsoNormal">I was given the honor of accepting the award on Carla’s behalf. The following is the acceptance speech I gave on that occasion.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></span></i><p class="MsoNormal"><b>2010 Mary Lou Krauseneck Courage and Love Award Acceptance Speech</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">First, I would like to thank ALS TDI for honoring Carla with this award. Carla passed away May 17<sup>th</sup> of this year, two and a half years after receiving her diagnosis. And though her loss is devastating to those who knew her and loved her, the impact on the world of her life, and the humor and the honesty with which she lived her life, is very much alive. This past weekend the film, Leave Them Laughing, a documentary about Carla, was screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It is incredible to think that through this film, Carla’s life will continue to inspire countless other lives with just those qualities for which she is being honored here today—Courage, Love and a passion for life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My sister Carla was a performer. An extraordinarily talented jazz singer, an outrageous and outrageously funny comedian, a writer of uncommon depth and honesty, an actor, a director, a provocateur, a songwriter, and an occasional poet. But Carla’s greatest talent was her humanity. She was a devoted mother, a wonderful sister and daughter, and a loving friend. Carla loved people, and she had the ability not only to be able to see the real essence of a person, but to express what she saw, to communicate in word and deed to you what she saw and loved about you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When Carla was first diagnosed, she was clear that she did not want to become a poster girl for ALS.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In her blog she wrote, “I will not become a tireless crusader for a cure for ALS, I will not fight until the bitter end or be anyone’s poster-middle-aged-woman – rather I will do what we were all meant to do – be with people I love doing things that make me happy, trying to make the world a little brighter when I can and giving myself a break when I can’t.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Carla was not unaware of the irony, in fact she thought it was pretty funny, that not two years later, it was a photo of her that headed up the Calendar she had conceived as fundraiser for ALS TDI. She had become a tireless crusader and a poster girl for ALS and it happened because she did, as she said, what we were all meant to do—be with people she loved doing things that made her happy and trying to make the world a little brighter.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Carla never felt that she was capable of the kind of dedication she had encountered in people like Corey Reich and his family, Toni and Warren Schiffer, Mary Harrington and so many others. She was awed but their endless capacity for giving, even in the face of their own personal tragedies. Carla considered herself a joker and an entertainer and felt that whatever she could offer would be in the example of her spirit for living and her prodigious creativity.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was out of this spirit that she conceived of the Always Looking Sexy Calendar. For Carla, a person’s humanity was always more important than their medical status, and she envisioned a pin up calendar with people at different stages in their progression of the disease. She wanted it to be sexy, she wanted it to be real and honest, and she wanted it to make a lot of money for ALS research. I know that she was always grateful for the enthusiasm with which ALS TDI embraced what for some was a controversial project.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And this was truly an international project, with models from at least four different countries. In a matter of months Carla had coordinated models and photographers, printers and art directors, all while sitting as one of the models herself. It was a flurry of creative and administrative activity that would have taxed a healthy, able-bodied person, and she was tireless and dedicated.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Whether battling her illness, confronting her own mortality, raising awareness for ALS and the need for a cure, or writing bravely and honestly about it all, Carla used humor. She never missed the opportunity for a joke, especially if that joke was in any way bawdy or inappropriate. And yet, she was never gratuitous. When Carla formed a Facebook group called “<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">People with ALS for GIANT Gimpy Foam Hands”, it was not to make fun of the failing bodies of herself and those with ALS, but to bring awareness to those bodies and the souls of the people inhabiting those bodies. Her vision for the Giant Foam Hands was never realized, but I remember her telling me how beautiful she thought it would be to have an entire stadium of people holding up these giant, yet frail, bent hands. She wanted to shock people into awareness, yes, but she also wanted to remind us all of our fragility and our vulnerability, to remind us that we are all dying, whether we are ill or not. She wanted us to remember that we are all in this thing called life together and it is our job to make this world a little better and a little brighter if we can.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I think if Carla were here to receive the Courage and Love award she would say that the real courage is displayed by all of those who live their lives despite having ALS, who get up everyday to be with the people they love and do the things they love to do as long as they can. She would say that the real love is in the all the acts of caring—both great and small—given daily by families and caregivers of those with ALS. She would say that the people who have dedicated their professional lives to helping those suffering with ALS, or who devote their time and talent to finding a cure are the ones who display courage and love on a daily basis. She would look around her and say that everywhere you look you can see acts of courage and love and there just aren’t enough awards to recognize them all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Carla believed that despite the pain and the suffering, there were gifts and lessons to be gained from living with ALS. It was Carla’s mission in the last two years of her life to bring awareness to those gifts, the chief among them being that this life is precious and there is no time to waste in the living of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’ll close by giving the last words to Carla. This is an excerpt from her blog in which she describes the special knowledge that comes from living with ALS:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">“You know how life can knock the wind out of you so suddenly and you envy the innocence of the rest of the people around you who don’t realize that just like you they could die at any moment. You want people to know how hard it is, but you don’t want them to feel sorry for you or to think you’re brave or to give you the Olympic Gold Medal for Suffering. You want people to see how easy it would be for them to wake up one morning and decide to give up their self-inflicted pain and enjoy their wonderful life. How easy it is to have a great day when you can make and eat you own toast, throw on your own clothes, go out into the world and do whatever you damn well feel like. </p><p class="MsoNormal">You want people to live all the life you’re going to miss.” </p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"></p></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-45782737598797883732010-07-13T17:13:00.014-04:002010-07-13T21:35:05.837-04:00Missing Carla<div style="text-align: left; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">It's possible I am pushing through solid rock</span></span></i></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">In flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I am such a long way in I see no way through,</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">and no space: everything is close to my face,</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">and everything close to my face is stone.</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">so this massive darkness makes me small.</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">then your great transforming will happen to me,</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">and my great grief cry will happen to you.</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Rainer Maria Rilke</span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">My sister Carla died.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">No matter how many times I speak them, I can’t make that combination of words make sense. I know she is gone. It’s been over a month since she slipped into a coma, finally letting go three days later while surrounded by loved ones. I understand what the words mean. I said goodbye over Skype knowing that a few hours later she would be gone, I sat through the memorial when we all said and sang our goodbyes, I wandered through her house after most of the furniture had been moved out and only a few piles of things sat in the corners of the empty rooms. I know that it is true. My sister Carla died. Still, something in me just can’t comprehend…</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Grief comes like a punch in the gut. "I thought I was prepared for this," my father said, fighting through his tears to tell me the news, barely five minutes old. I sat on the other side of the phone line, on the other side of the country, feeling the wind being knocked out of me, even though I had known the reason for this call the moment the phone rang. Even though I, too, thought I'd prepared for this. For two and a half years and one of the longest weekends of my life I prepared. And then came my father's call...</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Rilke's image for grief is "pushing through solid rock," as though one were deep in the earth's core trying to push up into the light. It is a place where there is "no space" and "everything is close to my face." Claustrophobic. Immobile. Stuck. For me, grief is more like a fog or a cloud. I can't shake the feeling that I'm forgetting something or missing something. Like Rilke, "I am such a long way in I see no way through."</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">. . .</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I wrote the above paragraphs a month ago. They took weeks to write. I could only manage a few sentences at a time and then I'd have to stop. It's been almost two months now since Carla died. That's the equivalent of about five minutes in grief time. The feelings are not so raw as they were a few weeks ago, but the pain is still very new. My feelings have hardened somewhat, less like a fog now, more like Rilke's stone.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I understand Rilke's cry to God when he says, "You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in." I have always found comfort and pleasure in the practice of prayer and meditation. For me, religion has been a source of vitality. Like art, it is a way of making sense of the world, of being more alive to the world. And, like art, it is a discipline. It is hard work. In the face of grief, it is even harder. I still continue my regular practice of prayer, but it seems like I am simply going through the motions. I feel like a guy holding someone else's place in a long supermarket line that isn't moving. I'm just waiting and waiting, hoping to move forward soon. And so, like Rilke, I long for God to make his presence known. I need God to do all the heavy lifting right now. I need to know that there is meaning in the world, despite all the pain and sadness.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">After the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis wrote a book called A Grief Observed. In that book he says, "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand." The easy pieties of "She's in a better place" just won't do. I don't want to feel okay that Carla is gone. I don't want to "get back to normal" and "feel good." Religion as an easy consolation would only be another form of repression. If anything, I believe that the hard work of religion means to feel more, not less. It means to look directly at difficult and painful realities and be transformed by them. Even so, I wish it didn't have to hurt so goddamn much.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Somewhere inside me I can sense that I am being changed by this grief. It has to be so. After Carla's death, how could I ever be the same? I imagine that grief is God's way of working some mysterious alchemy in me. I can feel that that is true as I write it, and yet I'm not sure I believe it. Does that sound like a contradiction? Everything about grief is contradictory. This makes sense considering that the pain I feel at Carla's passing is in direct proportion to the love I had, and have, for her. And so I find I need God, but at the same time, I want nothing to do with him. I feel empty and desolate, and yet grief is the one place right now where I feel most fully alive. I want this pain to end, but it feels awful when I do feel better, like a kind of betrayal. I know that Carla is gone, but something in me will not believe it and acts and reacts as if she is still alive. "Like a phantom limb," my therapist said. "Like a phantom limb," I agreed.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">The question, of course, is, if I am being changed, what kind of change will it be? Will I shut down, repress my feelings, become colder, encased in the rock? Or will I find a new way into life, a new aliveness somehow birthed by this time of darkness? I honestly can't say right now how things will go -- I feel both of these possibilities within me everyday. But if I am going to get through this, even if I don't yet believe it, I have to have faith that new life can come out of this painful experience. I have always believed that we must be transformed by life, but you have to live through what is and not wish only for what you'd prefer life to be. And so all I can do right now is trust that by not resisting or denying this pain I can, by living through it, return to life renewed.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Shortly before her death, Carla received a package of homemade butterflies made by the children of the playgroup that Allison leads, and that my kids attend. Carla wrote this thank you note to the children, which they received the day after she died:</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i></i></span></span></p><i><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I was so excited to receive all of the butterflies you made me. I have a picture of them hanging in a fig tree in my backyard. I love butterflies because they are beautiful, but it takes a long time for them to change and a lot of hard work. It makes me feel like anybody can be beautiful if they work hard and are patient and kind, like butterflies. I have a bed in my backyard and I lie under an umbrella and look at your pretty presents. Thank you so much First Parish Playgroup.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Love, Carla (Annabel and Atticus' Auntie Carla)</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></blockquote></i></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nskSyhpJLiY/TD0N_Fr5QBI/AAAAAAAAACw/J3E20-ipiRU/s1600/Carla%27s+Butterflies.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nskSyhpJLiY/TD0N_Fr5QBI/AAAAAAAAACw/J3E20-ipiRU/s320/Carla%27s+Butterflies.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493562497971077138" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: left; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I hope that through all this I may become a butterfly. I know that is what Carla would want. But she is right, becoming a butterfly is hard work. Right now, I am in the chrysalis stage -- hardly moving, dissolving, all the old forms breaking down, not sure if I'll ever emerge. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">At the memorial, towards the end, Atticus said, "Why is this such a long funeral?" At the time, I didn't know what to say beyond, "It'll be over soon." Afterwards, I told Carla's good friend, Gina, about Atticus' remark. Her answer was brilliant and quick. Carla quick. "That's a great question," she said, "because the answer is: It was so long because Carla was loved so much!" </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">I know that because of the love I have for Carla, and because I miss her so damn much, working through the chrysalis of grief will be a long, hard process. My answer to Atticus was wrong -- it won't be over soon. I hope that I can honor this process, stay open even through the pain, the dislocation, and the uncertainty about where this all leads. I hope that I can return to the fullness of life, embracing it with the kind of joy and delight that Carla always did. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">And I hope that with hard work and patience, one day I, too, can be beautiful.</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Like Carla was beautiful. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Like she knew we all could be. </span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-47166386681005012612010-04-19T20:28:00.002-04:002010-04-19T20:32:31.198-04:00Stronger Than Death<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from </i><st1:city><st1:place><i>Jerusalem</i></st1:place></st1:city><i>, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. . . As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. (Luke 24:13-16; 28-31)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Relationships change us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>From the beginning of our lives, key aspects of our personality—the way we experience ourselves and the world around us—are shaped by our primary relationships. If, as infants, we experience secure and stable attachments with our caregivers, we will develop a sense that the world is trustworthy and safe. If, on the other hand, our first relationships are unstable or otherwise traumatic, our ability to navigate the vicissitudes of life will be greatly impaired. Recent studies have shown that early healthy attachments lead to such things as greater self-esteem, greater life satisfaction, and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2010/2834581.htm">a more robust immune system</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the most fundamental of ways, relationships change us.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, as our worlds expand beyond the circle of family, our connections with others invite us to discover and develop wider dimensions to our personality. But this process of development is not something that is strictly an internal and individual affair. C.G. Jung states, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” This is the <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-be-swayed/200808/what-really-makes-psychotherapy-work">basic premise of psychotherapy</a>, that change is effected by relationship.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Religion, too, teaches that relationships can be transformative, particularly one’s relationship with God. All religions place central importance on the development of<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>compassion, but it is Christianity, with its doctrine of the Trinity, that seems unique in asserting that relationship is not just something enjoined by God, it is the very nature of God. Referring to the idea of the Trinity, Huston Smith tells us, “If love is not just one of God’s attributes but his very essence—and it may be Christianity’s distinctive mission in history to claim just that—at no point could God have been truly God without being involved in relationship.” Looking closely at the story, quoted above, of Jesus talking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, there is a hint that relationship is also an important factor in the mystery of resurrection.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I can’t really speak to the theological understanding of resurrection as it is beyond the scope of my knowledge. And as for the spiritual reality of a life beyond this one, well, that is something that surpasses human knowing. It has always seemed likely to me that there is an existence that continues past this life, and I share Mary Oliver’s attitude in her poem, When Death Comes, when she says:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:<br />what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My personal belief is that death and resurrection are synonyms. Our death is an end on this plane of existence, but it is also an opening to a new and unknowable existence on some other level. A short while back, Carla woke and discovered that she had a sheet wrapped around her and could not move. ALS had left her too weak to free herself and too weak call for help. In order to avoid panic she imagined her body as a sandbag that she dropped off the side of a hot-air balloon. This allowed her to shift out of being identified with her trapped body and to find refuge in her free and soaring imagination. I believe our resurrection is like this, we let go of the body and become all soaring imagination. Or, maybe, it is like an actor walking off stage. We take off the costume and makeup of this character we’ve been playing and remember the wider, more complete personality that we’ve always been. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of the stories told in the Christian tradition during the Easter season is the appearance of Jesus to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The two disciples are walking in a state of grief, discussing Jesus’ execution, when they are joined by a stranger. They invite the stranger to join them for dinner and when he blesses and breaks the bread, they suddenly recognize that it is Jesus. As soon as they recognize him, Jesus disappears.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The word ‘companion’ is made from the words <i>com-</i> ‘with’ and <i>panis</i> ‘bread.’ To break bread with someone is to be in relationship with them. In this story, as I noted above, resurrection and relationship are joined together. In fact, in many of the post-resurrection stories, Jesus visits his disciples—his companions—and eats with them. This pairing of resurrection and relationship suggests one way to understand the mystery of life beyond this life. That is, we are most alive in this world and the next where we generate the most love, both given and received.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This, to me, speaks to the psychological dimension of resurrection. Relationships change us. More than this. Who we are is to a large part determined by our interactions with others, good and bad. We are shaped by the successes and failures of love. Relationships not only change us, they create us. It is not too much, I believe, to say that the primary place of relationships in our lives means that we are not confined to our personal, separate selves. We are not merely our egos. We are what happens in the space between two (or more) people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Certainly, we continue to live on in the memories of those we have loved and those who have loved us. But I am suggesting that we live on in more than just memories. If we are made up of our relationships, then in every person we have met and loved some part of our being has been planted . We live not only in the memories of another, but in his or her very being. Maybe those who are left behind are like pieces in a great puzzle of love. When two or more of the people who have loved us in this life meet again after we are gone, the pieces come together and, in that moment, we are resurrected, we are alive again. We are, in a sense, put back together in those meetings. We are re-membered.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And this to me is where the psychological dimension of resurrection opens out into the spiritual dimension. Maybe our spiritual existence is built up of the love we have generated in the world. The more love we have known, the more our spirit takes on a substantial existence able to become a living presence long after we have released the ballast that is our mortal body. Life ends. Things decay. Even memories fade. Love never dies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Love,” teaches Paul Tillich, — and I believe him with all my heart — “is stronger than death.”</p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-60024482904283112062010-04-08T10:49:00.000-04:002010-04-08T10:50:29.097-04:00The Pope of Crazytown<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”</i> – Mahatma Gandhi </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I really didn't want to talk about Glenn Beck again, but I'm feeling kinda prescient right about now. Recently, in <a href="http://moirsmith.blogspot.com/2010/03/glenn-becks-jesus.html">a post about Beck</a>, I included a Gandhi-themed video. Now <a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/3372409-glenn-beck-compares-himself-to-rosa-parks">Glenn Beck is comparing himself to Gandhi.</a> You may have thought I had been trying to be satirical. Well, you were wrong. What else can I say, but: Nailed it! </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have to admit, I was wrong about the guy. I thought that Beck was merely a foolish blowhard who engaged in a bizarre form of pseudo-political performance art in order to keep his audience deceived and, as <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo">David Frum writes</a>, angry, because "if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds." I thought Beck suffered from some kind of Wingnut Tourette’s syndrome that caused him to spout nonsensical schizophasia like “<a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/08/glenn-beck-urges-listeners-to-leave-churches-that-preach-social/">social justice is a code word for Nazism.</a>”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was wrong.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I now realize that Glenn Beck is the greatest spiritual leader of our time. He is a modern day Gandhi. More than this. He is also a crusader for civil rights. For as he lets us know in the very same sentence, he is not only like Gandhi, he is just like Rosa Parks. As I listened to the clip, I kept expecting him to break out with the chorus from the Ballad of John and Yoko: “Christ, you know it ain’t easy. You know how hard it can be. The way things are going, they’re going to crucify me.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I believe we have yet to discover the true greatness of this spiritual crusader. Think about it. What do you get when you put Gandhi and Rosa Parks together? Would it be too much to claim that Glenn Beck is the next Martin Luther King, Jr.? <a href="http://gawker.com/5215459/glenn-beck-admits-he-lives-in-crazytown">He’s already done it.</a></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-49929606265147005322010-03-28T19:59:00.007-04:002010-04-08T10:07:31.635-04:00Glenn Beck's Jesus<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” (Isaiah 1: 17)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s hard to imagine that it is possible to read the Bible and not come away with the impression that God is deeply concerned with the care and service of those most in need. Indeed, it is often explicit and unambiguous on this point:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">“Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice” (Deut. 24:17)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy” (Ps. 82: 3-4)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD.” (Jer. 22:16)</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Apparently, Glenn Beck has never read the Bible, or if he has, he hasn’t understood what he read. Beck has been <a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/08/glenn-beck-urges-listeners-to-leave-churches-that-preach-social/">advising his audience</a> to leave their churches if those churches dare to speak of social justice. The words ‘social justice,’ according to Beck, are code words for . . . wait for it . . . Communism! Or Nazism! One or the other or maybe both, perhaps: Communazism! So, real churches do not engage in the evil that is social justice.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Beck is a convert to Mormonism, but apparently no one in that church explained to him the Mormon faith. As the <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/christians-urged-to-boycott-glenn-beck/">New York Times</a> reports:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>“Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in interviews that Mr. Beck seemed ignorant of just how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism.”</blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hmm. “Mr. Beck seemed ignorant.” Sounds about right.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The website Bread For the World, a Christian organization dedicated to ending world hunger has begun a petition to urge Beck to stop making these kinds of inflammatory statements. Of course, Glenn Beck IS inflammatory statements, without them he would have nothing to offer and there would be no show. So the petition is unlikely to go very far to change his behavior, but if you are so inclined it can be found at the <a href="http://www.bread.org/get-involved/at-church/christianity-and-social-justice.html">Bread For the World website</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don’t think Glenn Beck would like Jesus if he ever decided to skim through the New Testament. I mean the guy counsels rich people to give away all their money to the poor. Talk about redistribution of wealth! What kind of Jesus is that? I wonder what Glenn Beck imagines when he thinks of justice? If social and economic justice are evil, what's left for an extremist libertarian? Street justice! Instead of compassion and care for the poor, I imagine Glenn Beck's Jesus is a kind of cosmic vigilante. <a href="http://www.brianmclaren.net/">Brian McClaren</a> posted this hilarious video of a Gandhi sequel on his blog recently. Just replace Gandhi with Jesus and you get the picture. "He's back and this time He's apocalyptic!": </p><p class="MsoNormal"><object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JpNB2SoNfyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JpNB2SoNfyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-60875889830533487442010-03-15T21:21:00.008-04:002010-03-15T22:03:40.912-04:00A Fool Such As I<div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:130%;color:#001320;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 21px;font-size:14px;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';font-size:130%;color:#001320;"><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 19, 32); line-height: 21px; font-family:'times new roman';"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Cor. 1:25)</span></i></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><p class="MsoNormal">I have not been able to publish a post for the past several weeks because I have been studying to take the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">Propaedeuticum</span>, otherwise known as the Stage 1 exams, at the Jung Institute. This set of exams is major rite of passage at the Institute, as it marks the transition from the theoretical and academic phase of the program to the practice-oriented phase. To be in this second stage of training is roughly equivalent to beginning a residency in medicine. With the guidance of experienced analysts, the Stage 2 diploma candidate now becomes immersed in learning to become a practicing Jungian Analyst. </p></span></span><p></p><p></p><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As my exam date drew nearer, I had this dream: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I am getting ready to be tested. I introduce myself and say, “I am a fool. I don’t care what you think.”</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, being a good Jungian, I tend to take my dreams very seriously. That this one refers to my exams seems quite clear. However, it’s that last phrase that I take to be the key to the dream. On the one hand, you could read the last part of the dream to mean, “I would be a fool to not care what others (the examiners) think.” After all, the point of an exam is to submit yourself to another’s judgment. It matters what others think because they have the power to pass you or fail you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Being concerned about what others think, though, is not my problem. Or, rather, it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> my problem, because I tend to worry too much about what others think about me. I spend far too much mental and emotional energy trying to accommodate myself to what I perceive to be the needs of others, trying to make myself into an “acceptable” version of myself. And though this can appear humble or self-effacing, it has a strong narcissistic quality to it. I want people to like me, so I present a likable self. In the end, I lose myself. In Jungian terms, I defend my persona, but am cut off from my Self—the wholeness of my being.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Given my tendency to care too much about what others think, perhaps the way to read the dream, then, is as an unambiguous statement regarding the attitude I needed as I approached my exams. That is, I needed to be able to say, “I am a fool. I don’t care what you think.” Jung’s attitude to dreams is very different from Freud’s. Where Freud sees the dream as a disguised fulfillment of an unconscious wish, Jung believes that the dream is a self-portrait of the individual’s psychic situation. In other words, the dream doesn’t disguise anything. It says what it means.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, what does it mean to be a fool?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The classic image of the Fool is found on the card numbered ‘0’ in a deck of Tarot cards. It is the prototype of our modern day Joker in a regular deck of cards. The Joker has taken on sinister implications, being associated at times with the devil and, more recently, in the identification of this figure with the ultimate arch-enemy of Batman. We think of the Joker as creepy, frightening, dangerous and cruel. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nskSyhpJLiY/S5fPRFTUBeI/AAAAAAAAACY/nzOlewCx25g/s1600-h/fool.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 142px; height: 239px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nskSyhpJLiY/S5fPRFTUBeI/AAAAAAAAACY/nzOlewCx25g/s320/fool.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447050166715811298" /></a><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal">The figure of the Fool, however, does not originally have those connotations. It is a symbol of freedom and wisdom. As Joseph Campbell describes this image, it signifies a condition of human consciousness in which the individual is “careless of the bites of the world … a wandering sage.” It represents a state of being where the individual has attained a certain detachment from the cares of the world, in particular, from those cares that keep us limited in our narrow ego perspectives—wealth, possessions, achievements, social pressures. It is, to be sure, a subversive figure, but not a malevolent one. This subversive quality of the Fool is most clearly seen in those characters that populate Shakespeare’s plays.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Fool, like the one in King Lear, satirizes the dominant attitudes of the court. He speaks truths to the King that no one else has license to speak. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, I am nowhere near being a realized sage, but in light of all these considerations, I took this image from my dream as pointing to the danger of taking myself too seriously. If I went into my exams trying to prove to my examiners how good I was, I would be in danger of going off track. On the other hand, if I could say, “I don’t care what you think,” then I would be freed to confidently express what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">I</i> thought and not try to present myself in some imagined “suitable” way. It was important that I owned and trusted my particular understanding of the material. (Just to be clear: This was not a kind of multiple choice test. The exams included both essay questions and an oral examination. It was not so much a test of discreet bits of knowledge, but of how that knowledge was integrated and presented.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I determined that instead of continuing to be anxious about learning the material, I needed to focus more on getting myself in the right frame of mind. To do this, I decided watched the greatest motivational speech ever committed to celluloid. Win one for the Gipper? Too obvious. Kenneth Branagh’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from HenryV? Wonderful, but too bloody. Besides, I needed some Fool energy, not Kingly power. No, this masterpiece was the cure for what was ailing me: </p><p class="MsoNormal"><object width="320" height="265"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/g3S_k1dRbXY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/g3S_k1dRbXY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object></p><p class="MsoNormal">The figure of the Fool is a surprisingly common one in the various religious traditions. <st1:city><st1:place>St. Paul</st1:place></st1:city> says, “If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise.” In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the figure of the “Fool in Christ” was a venerated figure who was understood to have given his life completely over to God. In the Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu says:</p> <i>I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.<br />Other men are clear and bright,<br />But I alone am dim and weak.<br />Other men are sharp and clever,<br />But I alone am dull and stupid.</i><o:p></o:p><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Sufis describe themselves as drunkards and madmen. The image of the Fool can be glimpsed in this quatrain by Rumi. Here he is called the lover:</p> <i>Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,<br />absent-minded. Someone sober<br />will worry about events going badly.<br />Let the lover be.</i><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What is the lesson of the Fool? I think it would be a mistake to understand the message of the Fool as “Don’t worry, be happy.” It’s not that if we stop worrying about life, only good things will happen, or we will finally get all that we want. Besides, as Bill Murray wisely reminds us, winning is no guarantee of happiness. The other team may still get all the girls.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is the Fool’s message that we should have trust in the universe, or, if we are religious, trust in God? Well, yes, up to a point. As long as that trust doesn’t cause us to abdicate any responsibility for our own lives. An illustration of this pitfall is a recent story about <st1:state><st1:place>Minnesota</st1:place></st1:state>’s Governor, Tim Pawlenty, who has been <a href="http://theolog.org/2010/03/no-governor-you-have-power-here.html">talking up the idea of “God’s in charge”</a> as a key principle of conservative politics. For this he has earned the rebuke of a group of Lutheran ministers, who issued this statement:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><blockquote>Governor please, stop talking to us about God. The governor is going around saying 'God is in control.' We elected you. We elected you to be making decisions for this state that will help everyone in this state. Things that will lift up the poorest in this state. Don't pass this on to God. That's no God we've ever heard of. And please stop lecturing us about God. It's offensive.</blockquote> <o:p></o:p></i><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Trust in God without personal engagement in life is sterile. The formula that makes the most sense to me in this regard comes again from Joseph Campbell who says, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">world</span> of <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">sorrows</span>, but we can choose to live in <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">joy</span>.” The point is essentially this: Bad things can and will happen. Some of those bad things will be the result of getting things you thought you wanted. And some of the best things in your life will look like failures or losses at first. Beyond this, expect to encounter great suffering in the world. Do what you can to alleviate it, but don’t get caught in the delusion that you can eliminate it. And to the best of your ability, have a good time while you’re here.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is one of the main teachings of the Bhagavad Gita: “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruits. Act for the actions sake. And do not be attached to inaction. Self-possessed, resolute, act without any thought of results, open to success or failure.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In our bottom-line, results-oriented, winning-is-everything world, this ancient wisdom sounds foolish. But every now and then it helps to remind ourselves: “It just doesn’t matter.”<o:p></o:p></p><p></p></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-30331273049495523952010-01-17T19:09:00.004-05:002010-01-17T20:35:04.432-05:00What's Wrong With Pat Robertson?<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.” </i>~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (God in Search of Man)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My father recently joined a Facebook group called:<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style=" ;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:8.5pt;color:#333333;"> </span></span>“<a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=259943732376&ref=nf">Dear God: If you really exist please tell Pat Robertson to SHUT THE F**K UP!</a>” Now, my father, like me, is a very mild mannered person who rarely swears. It usually takes something fairly extreme before either of us are moved to utter a curse word. So it was quite startling to see him associated with these particular words. Before this, the most unexpected thing I’d seen him do was actually joining Facebook. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, what was it that Pat Robertson said that had my Dad resorting to asterisks and expletives? Just this pearl of wisdom and compassion:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>"Something happened a long time ago in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another." </blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote the passage quoted above, I doubt he had Pat Robertson in mind. But to his list of religion’s failings—“irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid”—we might now add ‘heartless and cruel.’ Heschel’s critique of religion is not a condemnation, but a call to action. It is a powerful critique because it is made by a deeply religious man—a rabbi raised in a family of Hasidic Jews, a mystic, and a theologian. Heschel’s point is not that religion is wrong, but the uses to which it is put by human beings are too often wrong. God caused water to flow from a rock, but the vessels of religion that we have constructed to capture that stream harden into authoritarian doctrine and the living fountain of faith is stopped up. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have seen the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TE99sAbwM">video</a> where Robertson makes these reprehensible remarks, and I have to say, I think that he truly believes that he is being compassionate. He is not filled with righteousness or hatred. He is not preaching fire and brimstone. In fact, he expresses concern and hope for the people of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region>. This does not make his words any less troubling, however. He still said what he said. He believes <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region> is being punished by God for making a pact with the devil. But, if he is not intending to be cruel, that still leaves this question unanswered: “What’s wrong with Pat Robertson?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m sure several people reading this can answer that question easily, but I want to suggest something else, as well. I think that the problem with Pat Robertson, and those like him, is that they have constructed their religion in such a way that it becomes a defense against truly experiencing the full impact, the full horror and catastrophe of events like the earthquake in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region>. To declare such a disaster as God’s punishment is to make an escape from the reality of human suffering. It means you don’t really have to feel the pain, the grief, the fear and the horror, which are inescapable realities for the Haitian people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For Heschel, religion and love of God meant compassion and action. It meant being affected by the suffering of those around us and doing something about it. He was active in the Civil Rights movement and marched with Martin Luther King. Heschel believed that we should not defend ourselves from the human predicament:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”</blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the Christian tradition, the portrait of Jesus is one of a man who did not remain distant or aloof from human misery. We see a man who weeps in the face of death, who reaches out his healing touch to the sick and needy, who responds to those who seek him out honestly with love and compassion. He saves his condemnation for the scribes and Pharisees, those religious leaders who rigidly hold to the form of religion, but have lost its spirit. To others, the so-called sinners, as in the story of the adulterous woman, he speaks with tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">How different is this portrait than the one painted by Pat Robertson!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I suppose that if you conceive of an event like the earthquake in Haiti as God’s punishment, then you can’t feel too sorry the victims because that would be to question God, to doubt both his mercy and his justice. But to experience doubt about God in the face of such a tragedy is an honest response. And maybe it’s against that kind of doubt that Robertson’s version of religion is ultimately defended against. It is uncomfortable to consider where a loving God is in all of this and how he could let such devastation occur to a poor and defenseless people. It is hard not to feel that the Haitians have been abandoned by God. And if them, then all of us.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I believe a truly religious attitude must be willing to undergo the painful feelings of doubt and abandonment. To allow such a feeling is to share in an experience that has been sanctified, in the Christian tradition, by Jesus’ own encounter with suffering. In the unspeakable torment of his crucifixion, he confronts the terrifying possibility that he has been abandoned by God, and cries out the opening words of the 22<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;">nd</span></span> Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is by allowing thoughts like these, as Jesus did, that we prevent ourselves from offering facile and merciless explanations for occasions of suffering, such as that offered by Pat Robertson for <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The word compassion means ‘to suffer with.’ We cannot defend ourselves against the suffering of others if we are to be able to respond with caring and compassion. And when we consider the outpouring of concern, the expressions of compassion, the relief efforts, the generous contributions of time, money and assistance; when we consider the spontaneous generosity of ordinary human beings, isn’t this where we find the presence of the divine that we had thought to be so absent from the scene? I believe that if we can learn to sit with suffering, if we can allow ourselves to experience doubt and grief, then we truly stay open to the living fountain of divine reality, which reveals itself in the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The New Testament offers this assessment of religion: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:26-27).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today <st1:country-region><st1:place>Haiti</st1:place></st1:country-region> has more widows and orphans than it did a week ago. They need the care and generosity that is the true spirit of humanity; they need the compassion that is the hallmark of true religion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">If Pat Robertson cannot open himself to this vision of the human spirit, so beautifully exemplified in the life of Jesus and in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, then he should just shut the fuck up. </p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-19565203496082619942010-01-01T15:44:00.004-05:002010-01-01T16:10:44.373-05:00Pathways of Love<i>O my friends,<br />What can you tell me of Love,<br />Whose pathways are filled with strangeness?<br />When you offer the Great One your love,<br />At the first step your body is crushed.<br />Next be ready to offer your head as his seat.<br />Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth giving in to the light,<br />To live in the deer as she runs toward the hunter’s call,<br />In the partridge that swallows hot coals for love of the moon,<br />In the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies.<br />Like a bee trapped for life in the closing of the sweet flower,<br />Mira has offered herself to her Lord.<br />She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole.</i><br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>~ Mirabai (trans. by Jane Hirshfield)<div><br /></div><div><br /><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is my New Year’s resolution: To lose my mind, to dive into the heart, to turn every moment of my life into a song of praise. Like the Hindu poet-saint, Mirabai, I want to be crushed by God, enclosed in His sweet flower, and swallowed whole by the Divine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do I sound a little crazy? Does what I want sound impossible, unlikely, extravagant? Then I’m on the right track. You see, I am tired of asking too little of my life and being disappointed if that is all I get. This year I don’t care about losing weight, eating better, or exercising more. I want nothing less than the total transformation of my being. I don’t want to be healthy, I want to be fully alive. I don’t want to have more fun, I want to know the fullness of joy. I don’t want to have better relationships with family and friends, I want to become Love itself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is a legendary story about the great Sufi poet and mystic, Hafiz. It is said that when he was still a young man, Hafiz fell in love with a beautiful woman. Desperate to win her love, he went to the tomb of a great Sufi master where it was believed that anyone who could stay awake for forty consecutive nights would be granted his heart’s desire.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In his burning love for his beloved, Hafiz completed his forty day vigil, at which point he was visited by the angel Gabriel. He was so overcome by the beauty of the angel that he forgot all about the young woman. When he was asked to name his heart’s desire, he cried out: “I want God!” From this beginning, Hafiz became the God-drunk lover of the Divine who is still so wonderfully present in his ecstatic poetry.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are two things that I take away from this story. The first is that any path, if followed with devotion and discipline, can become a path to God. In this case, it is the very human realm of romantic and sexual love that draws Hafiz to the revelation of God. But I would suggest that this would also apply to all the great religions as well. I will confess that I am not very picky when it comes to the ways God chooses to reveal himself. I mean, who am I to demand of God that he choose a particular face or dress simply to please my sensibilities? </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Not that I think that it is a simple matter of my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">choosing</i> one path over another. It is not the ego that leads in this, picking the bits and pieces it prefers from some spiritual buffet. No, my experience has been that certain things—moments, ideas, images—are filled with a power that can only be called Divine. I believe that it is in this way that my path chooses me. The individual definitely has a role to play—Hafiz had to stay awake for forty days before God was revealed—but the initial choosing belongs to God. And though it is the Christian path that has chosen me, that in no way precludes me from experiencing the Divine in other traditions as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The second idea I take from the story of Hafiz is that the heart of any path to the Divine is Love. And its two faces, as mentioned above, are devotion and discipline. In other words, Love is both a feeling and an activity.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the Hafiz story shows, there is a parallel between the relationships we have with other human beings, and the one we have with God.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are caught by some power that draws us into a relationship with the other and, in response, we take action to strengthen and understand that relationship.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But, just in case we make the mistake of thinking that the Path of Love is something merely sentimental or sweet, Mirabai, in her poem, lets us know that the road is not an easy one. She warns us that “when we offer the Great One our love,” we will be crushed, killed, trapped, and swallowed. Love, she is teaching, is a radical dismantling and de-centering of the ego. Perhaps what she is saying is that through love we return to, and become one with, the source of Love —“The single Lotus will swallow you whole.” In the Christian tradition these ideas are expressed in the words of John: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,” as well as those of Paul when he says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And so it is that I set myself the impossible goal for the New Year of being so completely overpowered by the Divine that all that is unworthy, all that is petty, all that is greedy and grasping and selfish in me is dissolved and I become, in the words of the old song, a fool for Love. I am under no illusion that this is a goal I can reach in this year or even in this life, but that is no reason not to make the attempt. Who knows? Maybe if I am disciplined and devoted enough, I might be able to say with Hafiz (as imagined by Daniel Ladinsky):</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“It is all just a love contest. And I never lose.” </p></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-39204133402617294062009-11-10T17:37:00.004-05:002009-11-11T19:48:47.512-05:00Poverty and Abundance<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;">“Jesus<sup> </sup>looked up and saw the rich</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">putting their gifts into</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">the offering box,</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">and he saw a poor widow put in two</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">small copper coins. And he said,</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">‘Truly, I tell you,</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">poverty put in all</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">she had to live on.’” (Luke 21:1-4)<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">Recently, my sister, Carla, wrote a post on her <a href="http://carlamuses.blogspot.com/">blog</a> which was titled <a href="http://carlamuses.blogspot.com/2009/11/call-to-action.html">A Call to Action</a>. It’s a wonderful meditation on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">activity</i> of love. She writes:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“If your partner is ill, love is a call to action. Love wakes parents up in the middle of the night. It caused a man I know to risk tenure because his mom was sick half way across the country in </i><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Cleveland</i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">. It invited my friends to discover the bottomless depths of their generosity and compassion. Yes. Yes. Love is not so much a feeling as an alarm bell, a runner's gun, a reminder that we are only as good as the good we do for one another. </i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Love is not so much a feeling as a call to action.”</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Regular readers of this blog will know that my sister has ALS. Carla faces everyday with the knowledge that her time for action in this world is limited. She cannot use her legs or her hands. She has round-the-clock caretakers who wash her and feed her and get her dressed. And yet, through all this, she remains a woman of action.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Carla is endlessly creative. She has turned her confrontation with death into a work of art. She writes a beautiful blog. She doesn’t just use a wheelchair, she transforms it. She has <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>decorated it, and the van in which she now travels, with colorful, funny, completely irreverent, and appropriately inappropriate images of her experiences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In recent weeks she has been putting together her latest brainchild—a pinup calendar featuring regular people with ALS in provocative poses to raise money and awareness for ALS. It’s going to be called the <a href="https://alwayslookingsexy2010.alscommunity.org/GroupSite/tabid/54/view/Default/Default.aspx">Always Looking Sexy Calendar</a>, and even though she is confined to a wheelchair and tires easily, Carla has coordinated the activity of models and photographers, printers and publicists from different parts of the country to get this project completed for the holiday season. It would be a daunting project for someone with full capacity and energy. Like many creative people, she’s a little crazy, but this allows her to throw herself into such a project and make it happen.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Whenever I read the story of the widow’s gift from the Gospel of Luke quoted above, I think of my sister. Whatever she does, she gives it all she has and all she is. She lives what she writes – that love is a call to action. One of the things that she loves the most is life itself, and her creative activity is one of the ways that she cares for life.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Last winter, after my wife had come home from the hospital following emergency surgery, Carla offered to come out to help take care of our family. She was already in a wheelchair and had very limited mobility. “I can’t do much,” she said, “but I’ll do whatever I can.” She didn’t have much she could do, or much she could give, “<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">but she out of her</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color:black;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">poverty put in all</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color:black;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">she had.” She’s crazy like that.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And isn’t that the point of the gospel story? The widow’s poverty—like my sister’s—is, in reality, abundance because it is full of love. The abundance of the rich, really poverty if it is devoid of love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I remember when I was a little boy getting into situations which seemed to me at the time scary or panic-worthy, like having soap in my eye that stung me, or getting my pants leg caught in my bike chain that I couldn’t get out so I was unable to get back home to safety. I remember in those situations crying and calling for help. Inevitably, it was Carla who would appear out of nowhere to see if I was okay. Rarely, did she get angry at me, but with simple caring and compassion she would rescue me and bring me back home.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In stating that love is a call to action, Carla has touched on the thing that Karen Armstrong finds is the root of all the major religions, that is, compassion:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;">“</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;">The religions are forms of ethical alchemy, if you like. That you behave in a compassionate way and this changes you. Why? Because all the great masters of religion tell us that what keeps us from a knowledge of the divine, from — which has been called variously God, Nirvana, Brahman, the sacred — what keeps us from this ultimate reality is our own egotism, our greed, that often needs to destroy others in order to preserve its sense of self, or even just to denigrate others. What compassion does, it makes us dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there. And it's this that they all teach leads us into the presence of the divine.”</span></i></blockquote><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;"></span></i><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Carla’s version is immediate and imperative:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "></span></o:p></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">“If you knew you were going to die, who would you want to be with and how would you spend your time together? What are you waiting for? From my vantage point I can see that there is no time to delay -no time to deny the people we love of our time, our attention or our action.”</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p>Carla’s love is an active love. I have known it from the time I was a small boy. For this I am grateful. For this I am blessed.</o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I love you, Carla.</p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-90349914647018248962009-10-27T20:31:00.004-04:002009-10-27T20:58:40.689-04:00A Grace Deeper Than No<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“It’s whether you say yes or no to the serpent, to the adventure of being of alive.” ~ Joseph Campbell</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Last week I attended a beautiful Vespers service at my church. Dimmed lights, silent reflection, and quiet music set the mood for a meditation on the 23<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;">rd</span></span> psalm. The minister took the image of the cup that runneth over as the focus of his talk.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He read a quote from Martin Luther that I haven’t been able to track down, but it spoke of the grace that comes when we stop resisting the troubles and difficulties that are a part of life, when we stop saying ‘No’ to hardship. There is a Grace that is deeper than that No, says Luther, if only we are able to affirm all that happens to us, good or bad.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the quote, Luther describes his own experience of being “crushed in the spirit.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>By enduring his anguish, by surviving it, but, more than this even, by saying Yes to it and affirming his suffering, he discovered that Grace awaits on the other side of such pain, and he knew the experience of the overflowing cup talked about in the psalm.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Listening to this meditation, I was moved by the idea of a Grace deeper than No, which I take to mean that to resist a part of life is to resist the whole of life, and that pain and sorrow are not barriers to living, but are also bearers of life’s secret.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I was in theater school, we would take classes in improvisation. One of the cardinal rules of improvisation is that you can’t say No. That doesn’t mean that you can’t actually use the word no, but that you must avoid blocking the suggestions made to you by the other actors. So, if someone says, “Gee, your sex-change operation went really well,” you can’t say, “I didn’t get a sex-change operation!” You would have to go with the suggestion. In other words, you have to adapt. But it is about more than that. To say No is to cut off the creative possibilities of the moment. As Keith Johnstone, an improvisation teacher and the creator of Theatresports, once put it, “There are people who say Yes and there are people who say No. Those who say Yes are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say No are rewarded by the safety they attain.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Saying No, or blocking, is not just a problem in improv, it is a problem in life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In many ways, we have become people who are unwilling to suffer any kind of discomfort, let alone pain and suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our collective mantra has become “I can’t deal with this,” or sometimes, “I don’t need this right now.” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And yet we don’t always get the option to decide whether we will deal or not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There have been many times in the past two years when I have been confronted with the question of whether I could deal, whether I was willing to face pain and loss. After my wife, Allison’s, cancer treatment was done, and she began to look and feel healthy and whole again, I realized I was having trouble opening up to her and allowing myself the emotional intimacy that was always so easy and natural for us. I had come too close to losing her and I recognized that in opening up to her, I was recommitting myself to the possibility of experiencing that agony again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have experienced something similar with my sister, Carla, since she was diagnosed with ALS. Beside the instinct to be near her and get every moment I can with her, there is a counter instinct in me to stay away. Pain in this situation is not just a possibility. It is a certainty. And something in me wants to run far away from it. With both Allison and Carla, there is a strong No in me that does not want to have to feel my grief. But, the thing is, the alternative is unacceptable, because it would mean not having the experience of loving and being loved by these two incredible people in my life. It would mean saying No to happiness and joy. I believe that there is a Grace deeper than No. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In my work as a psychotherapist, and in my personal experience, it has become ever clearer to me that one of the most important qualities a human being can develop is the willingness to tolerate pain and suffering. I have found that a person who has a capacity for grief usually has an even greater capacity for joy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To deny pain and suffering is to deny life. It is to choose a less than human life. Because there is no life that will be free of difficulties, that will be spared the encounter with sorrow. To accept this is not to give in to despair. Quite the opposite. It is to develop an important strength, a strength born of an honest vulnerability. And this becomes a doorway to joy, because when we are faced with loss we remember that each moment is a gift. Life is a gift. Love is a gift.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is not just a nice idea. It is literally true. We do not and cannot will life and love into existence. They are given as part of the condition of existence and it is our task to learn to receive them. And this is the heart of the matter. To receive these gifts means that we agree one day to let them go, to give them back, to lose them. This is what it means to say Yes to the adventure of being alive. Yes is a small word, but its implications are immense. To accept love means to accept loss. To fully accept life means we must fully accept the fact of death. But the opposite is also true. If we accept loss, we will know love. If we allow death, we will truly be alive. It is only in saying Yes that we finally come into the fullness of our true being.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Saying Yes takes courage. It takes courage, says Paul Tillich, simply to be. It can be a trial and a sacrifice, but the reward is great. Deeper than No is Grace. Passing through pain we discover joy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">At Vespers, as the minister spoke, I knew that this was a service I needed to hear. I knew as I heard about the Grace beyond No, that I was blessed to know love that caused me pain, and to know pain that taught me also about joy. At the end of the service, the sanctuary was lit only by candlelight. Everyone lingered a while in that glow, in the still silence, before, one-by-one, we each got up to leave. I wandered out into the cold, dark <st1:place>New England</st1:place> night thinking about Allison, and Carla, God, my life. At that moment, I was the cup that runneth over. Everything seemed to be exactly in its place.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">If you had asked of me anything that night, I would have had only one answer: Yes, yes, yes. </p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-62104227806661491412009-10-25T15:48:00.005-04:002009-10-25T22:27:12.616-04:00Wrestling With Joy<i>"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us... We are far too easily pleased."</i> ~ C.S. Lewis<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>A friend posted this quote on Facebook and I felt it added such a great new dimension to the topic of rewards that I had to pass it along. </div><div><br /></div><div>Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, are often imagined as populated by figures such as the prudish moralist or curmudgeonly ascetic who are concerned that somebody somewhere might be having a good time and are out to put a stop to it. But this remark of C.S. Lewis turns the whole thing on its head.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not that we are creatures carried away by our desires. Rather, our desires are "weak." We are "half-hearted." We don't want enough! Is it possible that we talk about pursuing happiness, but are really seeking something less? We look for admiration. We want to be entertained. Many just want to be numb and not feel at all. For me it's comfort (which includes all of the above) for which I trade the possibility of joy.</div><div><br /></div><div>The poet, Rilke, knew that we asked for too little. He wrote:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You see, I want a lot. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Perhaps I want everything: </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the darkness that comes with every infinite fall </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and the shivering blaze of every step up. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So many live on and want nothing</span></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></span></div><div>In another poem he uses the image of fighting, but the message is the same. We set our goals too low:</div><div><br /><blockquote>What we choose to fight is so tiny!<br />What fights with us is so great!<br />If only we would let ourselves be dominated<br />as things do by some immense storm,<br />we would become strong too, and not need names.<br /><br />When we win it's with small things,<br />and the triumph itself makes us small.<br />What is extraordinary and eternal<br />does not want to be bent by us.</blockquote>I don't know why "we are too easily pleased." Rilke suggests that our perspective is too narrow. We want to reduce the "extraordinary and eternal" to a manageable, consumable size. But if the joy that is offered us is truly infinite, we need to take on some of the quality of that larger world. When we "let ourselves be dominated," we grow. Rilke goes on to say that being defeated by the eternal changes us at a fundamental level. We become ready to give up the ambitions of the ego and to accept the promises of the Spirit:</div><div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>Winning does not tempt that man.<br />This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,<br />by constantly greater beings.</blockquote>Letting go of our "half-hearted" wants can sometimes feel like a defeat. But perhaps it is our little self that is being overcome to make way for a much larger life. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I, for one, am ready to stop wrestling with infinite joy. It's time to cry "uncle!" </p></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-30999922886572851022009-10-17T22:06:00.007-04:002009-10-17T22:41:26.336-04:00Following After Rewards<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“to the humble and faithful, to those with compunction and devotion, to those anointed ‘with the oil of gladness,’ to the lovers of divine wisdom who are enflamed with its desire, to those wanting to be free to magnify the Lord, to be in awe of him, and even to taste him.” ~ Bonaventure (from The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism)<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">PsyBlog has <a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-and-reduce-motivation.php">an interesting article</a> on how rewards can have a negative impact on motivation. The article points to research that shows that when people are engaged in an activity they like, their interest in continuing that activity will diminish as soon as they start to expect a reward for doing it. At first this seems counterintuitive. Surely, if you like doing something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">and</i> you get a reward for it, that should increase motivation. Shouldn’t it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The problem is that when rewards are introduced, it doesn’t so much add motivation as shift it from one location to another. That is, an activity that used to be fueled by an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">intrinsic</i> motivation—you just liked doing it—is now driven my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">extrinsic</i> motivation—the external reward. In other words, pleasure becomes associated less with simply doing a particular activity, and becomes attached to the reward itself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The authors of the article suggest some other reasons to be wary of rewards:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><blockquote>“Not only this but rewards are dangerous for another reason: because they remind us of obligations, of being made to do things we don't want to do. Children are given rewards for eating all their food, doing their homework or tidying their bedrooms. So rewards become associated with painful activities that we don't want to do. The same goes for grown-ups: money becomes associated with work and work can be dull, tedious and painful. So when we get paid for something we automatically assume that the task is dull, tedious and painful—even when it isn't.”</blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">Back in July when I entered into the Beliefnet blogging contest, I did so because I loved writing, and I loved exploring the idea of God and of religion. It was a chance for me to engage in the “love of divine wisdom.” It was for me a form of prayer and devotion, a way to focus my thoughts and feelings about God, not to mention a chance to think about and share my enthusiasm for the works of people like Rilke, Rumi, Abraham Heschel, Carl Jung, Paul Tillich, and Alan Watts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A chance to dive into the scriptures of the Great Traditions and be enlivened and enriched.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">I was honored and excited to win the contest. It was truly a thrill.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is a great gift to be recognized for doing something that you love to do. It is a great need that we all have to be seen, to be given some kind of positive mirroring, to have the things we offer be received and welcomed. I will always be grateful that I had a moment of having those needs met through the writing of this blog.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">But rewards also have consequences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">Somewhere along the way, my enthusiasm for writing was overshadowed by my concern for the aftermath of the contest. Where was the blog being promoted? For how long? The fact that it was being promoted at all created such a pressure to come up with new material that my inspiration all but dried up. Then the blog stopped being promoted and my desire to write all but vanished.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A lot of this was exacerbated by some miscommunication with the Beliefnet staff, which, I’m embarrassed to admit, left me feeling hurt, abandoned, and a little resentful. (This has all been cleared up, by the way. The people that I have dealt with at Beliefnet have been very helpful, very professional, and very gracious. I’m aware that the feelings I experienced are in large part due to my own psychology, of which I’ll spare you the details.) In short, my thoughts and feelings about this blog became distorted and disconnected from the simple joy I experienced when I first started writing it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">And that brings me to the quote from the mystic, Bonaventure, with which I prefaced this post. When I read this quote it reminded me of the things that initially inspired me to write.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>These posts are my acts of devotion, and this quote highlights all the qualities that I want to be present in my writing – humility, joy, desire, freedom, and awe. I want this blog to “magnify the Lord,” and, yes, I hope through my writing “even to taste him.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">And so I rededicate myself to writing as an act of love, as an act of devotion, as an act of prayer, and as an act of play.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I want to remember the intrinsic pleasure that I get from engaging in these extended meditations and allow that to be my motivation to create.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> Of course, </span>I still like recognition and I still like rewards.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I believe the true “oil of gladness” with which we are anointed comes from within, and being connected to the world within, teaches Jung, gives a person dignity and certainty in this life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:.5in">That said, I still want you to like it.</p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-69215103129329573842009-09-19T12:38:00.007-04:002009-09-19T13:38:07.611-04:00The Thing You Fight The Most<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“The Holy One directed his steps to that blessed Bodhitree beneath whose shade he was to accomplish his search. As he walked, the earth shook and a brilliant light transfigured the world. When he sat down the heavens resounded with joy and all living beings were filled with good cheer. Mara alone, lord of the five desires, bringer of death and enemy of truth, was grieved and rejoiced not. … Mara uttered fear-inspiring threats and raised a whirlwind so that the skies were darkened and the ocean roared and trembled. …</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></i></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></i></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The three daughters of Mara tempted the Bodhisattva, but he paid no attention to them, and when Mara saw that he could kindle no desire in the heart of the victorious samana, he ordered all the evil spirits at his command to attack him and overawe the great muni. But the Blessed One watched them as one would watch the harmless games of children.”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></i></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">~ from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Buddha, The Gospel</span></span></i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">by Paul Carus</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jungians love parallels. We love myths and stories that seem to have strong parallels in the stories of a different, or several different, traditions. When there are clear similarities between different stories, we think, “Here is something true.” For Jungians, such a parallel is a validation of the psychological truth of a story. This way of thinking is similar (though, not identical) to the search for replication in the scientific method.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The results of a scientific experiment are considered valid if they can be replicated in further experiments. In the study of myths and stories, when distinct traditions show a strong correspondence of image and theme, it suggests that these stories describe an important universal truth about the human experience.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It’s not that individual differences between religious and mythological traditions and the stories they tell are not important. Far from it. It’s just that when there is a striking similarity between stories, it’s a signal to pay attention, a signal that says here is a truth about human experience that has such an intensity to it that very different peoples of very different backgrounds and beliefs have felt it necessary to make a record of it. As Jungians we think, “Wow. Human beings all seem to tell stories of a god or gods (for instance). God is clearly a central concern of human existence.”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The story quoted above is an account of the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment and his subsequent temptation by Mara, “lord of the five desires.” There is a parallel to this Buddhist story in the Christian tradition. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jesus, having just been baptized by John, having just seen the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descending upon him like a dove, and having just heard the voice of God declaring, “This is my beloved Son,” is driven by the spirit out into the wilderness where he is subjected to a series of temptations by Satan. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In both of these stories there is an event in which the transcendent or divine order breaks through into the ordinary realm. “A brilliant light transfigured the world” or “the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended.” Both stories tell that the divine realm responds approvingly. In the Buddhist tale we read, “the heavens resounded with joy.” In the Christian tale, God himself declares that he is “well pleased.” And in both of these stories, this transformative and transcendent event is followed by a kind of negative movement. The devil—Mara or Satan—tries to undo what has just happened.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These stories describe the defining, transcendent moments in the lives of Buddha and Jesus, but they also present an image, albeit on a cosmic scale, of both the gifts and the perils of the spiritual path. It is hard to imagine that these accounts with their heaven-rending imagery could have anything to do with the lives of ordinary human beings. Let’s face it, very few of us will ever attain the status of a World Redeemer. Ordinary, everyday enlightenment is tough enough and will probably elude most of us on this go around. Jesus and Buddha both seem to brush off the devil without much effort, but if even these transcendent figures must face temptation, how much more will this be the case for those of us struggling on The Way.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Years ago, I was the supervisor of an after-school daycare program. Anyone who has spent any time with large groups of children knows how hard it is to maintain order and, even more, to maintain one’s cool. I would often get disturbed at how often I would lose my temper and act in ways that continue to embarrass me almost twenty years later. Many times I would promise myself that today I would be “totally zen.” I was not going to let little things bother me and I would remain calm and collected. Without fail, it was on those days that the kids would be particularly bad—screaming, hitting, fighting. It was as if they knew I was trying to stay cool and decided to put me to the test. It was a test I rarely passed. Usually, before the day was out, I’d be shouting, too, yelling crazy things like, “If you don’t pick up that Lego you’ll never be allowed to play with any of the toys ever again!”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Today, I am very conscious that there is, too often, a discrepancy between who I imagine I am during times of prayer and meditation and who I am at other times. The phone rings, but I refuse to answer it because I don’t want anyone disturbing the “spiritual” state that I have just achieved in my meditation. Or, I am sitting in prayer, asking to be a force of love in the world and my daughter calls me, demanding a drink of milk, and I growl at her, “I’ll be there in a minute!” Hardly the voice of love. Or, I will be tempted away from meditation and prayer altogether by the TV, the internet, or some compelling new app on my so-called smartphone, eventually crawling into bed with a vague feeling of emptiness and disappointment. These things are relatively minor, it’s true, and there are other, more serious things I do that I am not proud of, but I’ll spare you a lengthy confession.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Alan Watts once said that a person must be very careful about making New Year’s resolutions because the devil would be sure to find out about it and put a stop to it. It seems that our best impulses are always in danger of being cancelled out by our worst impulses. The early Desert Fathers of Christianity used the image of a war with one's own heart. Some schools of Buddhism have pictured a whole universe of demons that must be overcome on the spiritual path.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In Jungian psychology, it has been observed that the first “layer” of the psyche that must be worked through is usually the personal unconscious, that aspect of the psyche that Jung termed “the shadow.” The shadow includes all those aspects of someone’s personality that are not compatible with the image that they have of themselves. For those whose interests tend toward the spiritual, this is often some form of aggression or anger that does not fit in with the conscious idea a person might have of being a peaceful or loving person. Jung once famously said that enlightenment is not achieved by imagining figures of light, but of making the darkness conscious.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And maybe this is the important point in the stories of the temptations of Buddha and Jesus. They tell us that temptation is a constant presence on the path to enlightenment and the greater the light we may attain, the greater the shadow will be. Even the great World Redeemers are not free from temptation. If we do not stay conscious of our darkness, we may never experience our light. How many times must we see a “family values” advocate, like Mark Sanford, admit to an extra-marital affair, or a corruption crusader, like Eliot Spitzer, become corrupted, before it becomes clear that the things we fight against in others might best be addressed in the privacy of our own hearts? </span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“You always become the thing you fight the most,” says Jung.</span></span></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It’s not that I believe that we should all feel ashamed about our human failings, but simply that we should admit and accept that we have them. I believe it is important to try to be good, but dangerous to believe too much in our own goodness. Acceptance of our own darkness makes us more compassionate to the darkness in others. And in my own life, I know that when I let go of my airy self-righteousness and get back down to the solid ground of compassion, I feel I am getting closer to the light.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I figure it was not for nothing that when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he made sure that they included the phrase, “lead us not into temptation.”</span></span></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-81844245779891386412009-09-07T15:48:00.004-04:002011-08-15T16:19:00.941-04:00The Place We Cannot Breathe<i>Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.</i><div><i>
<br />The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.</i></div><div>
<br /></div><div><i></i> (Ecclesiastes 7: 3-4)
<br />
<br /></div><div>
<br />Today marks the first anniversary of the day that my wife discovered a lump in her left breast. Since last year’s Labor Day, I have watched Allison undergo two surgeries, eighteen rounds of chemotherapy, and thirty radiation treatments. It was only last month that the whole year-long process finally came to an end.
<br />
<br />Because I was needed at home to take care of Allison and our two kids, it was almost impossible for me to take the time to visit my sister, Carla, who lives in California, and who was diagnosed with ALS almost two years ago. I have watched from a painful distance while my beautiful and irrepressible sister has all-too-rapidly lost more and more control over her own body.
<br />
<br />This has been the year that I became acquainted with sorrow.
<br />
<br />I have learned two things this past year. First, I have come to know first hand the sustaining power of faith. To watch the two women that I love most in the world suffer the way they have, and to be helpless to rescue them from what they’ve had to endure, has been unbearable. At times, I have been deeply depressed. Throughout this year I have had to find a way to keep going, despite the desire to pull the covers up over my head and disappear.
<br />
<br />I am a psychotherapist and my job is to care for people who are in emotional pain. I would take care of people all day, come home to take care of Allison, be the primary caretaker for our kids on those days when the nausea was so bad, my wife could barely lift her head off her pillow, and try to maintain for my kids an energy and a routine to make sure that their lives stayed stable and secure. When I could, I would try to be there for my parents and my brother as they worked to come to terms with their grief over Carla’s illness.
<br />
<br />I tell all this, not to complain or feel sorry for myself, but to give a sense of how completely overwhelming it all was, and how impossible it was to manage all this on my own meager emotional resources. What kept me going through all of this, as I said, was faith. More precisely, it was the <i>practice</i> of faith that I found sustaining and nourishing. Prayer, meditation, lectio divina, weekly attendance at church—these activities often left me refreshed, re-energized, and even, at times, happy. I have come to understand that faith is not so much a system of beliefs, as it is an engagement with life and its source; a relationship with God that you work on, as you would with any relationship. Through my practice of faith I have discovered a place where I am not alone, where I am enlivened, where I am restored.
<br />
<br />The other thing that I have learned is the truth of the verse quoted above from Ecclesiastes. Sorrow, or grief, as paradoxical as it may sound, is a more certain path to happiness than is mirth.
<br />
<br />This verse is not saying that it is wrong to be happy, or to laugh or have fun. It is saying that as a means toward a full and honest engagement with life, mirth is insufficient. Mirth as an approach to life tends to deny the struggle and the darkness that is a part of being alive. As a result, those who rely solely on mirth become more susceptible to that darkness. The reason this is so is because difficulty and sadness come into every life and mirth is simply unprepared to do that kind of emotional heavy lifting. The capacity for sorrow or grief, on the other hand, does not deny the possibility of happiness. On the contrary, grief can teach us the preciousness of life and, therefore, it creates the possibility for true joy. Here is how the poet, David Whyte, images this idea:
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Well of Grief</span>
<br />
<br />Those who will not slip beneath
<br />the still surface on the well of grief
<br />
<br />turning downward through its black water
<br />to the place we cannot breathe
<br />
<br />will never know the source from which we drink,
<br />the secret water, cold and clear,
<br />
<br />nor find in the darkness glimmering
<br />the small round coins
<br />thrown by those who wished for something else.
<br />
<br />
<br />One of the things that I admire about both my wife and my sister, is that they have the courage to confront their griefs and, as a consequence, they are two of the most vital and joyful people that I know. At her last doctor’s visit, Allison was told that her status was N.E.D., that is, no evidence of disease. She is trying, however, to learn how to live in her new reality as a cancer survivor, a reality that will require her to be ever vigilant about her health for the rest of her life. Grief and mortality are realities from which she will never be completely free, even at those times when they recede so far in the background as to almost disappear.
<br />
<br />ALS is a fatal disease from which my sister will not recover. She faces her reality with an honesty that is raw, heartbreaking, inspiring, and frequently funny, in her amazing blog, called Carlamuses, that chronicles her experiences. This is how Carla describes life with ALS:
<br />
<br /><i><blockquote>“You aren’t either in an untenable situation that you can’t imagine anyone else being able to bear, or in a situation where your circumstances allow you to see what a miracle life is and what a blessing it is just to be alive, sucking oxygen on this gorgeous planet. They both exist for me everyday, albeit the percentage of frustration has definitely increased as the disease has progressed.”</blockquote></i>
<br />If there were a way for me to take away the sufferings of either of these amazing women, I would do it in a second. But that is not possible. What is possible is to not hide from my sorrow and grief over them, because to do so would be to hide from them as well. By allowing my grief, I also allow love to be present. And I allow myself to be present to the two of them right here and right now. Yet, even though I believe that the capacity for sorrow gives one access to joy, it does not mitigate that sorrow. Suffering is still suffering. It does mean, however, being more completely and authentically alive. And though it may seem an obvious thing to state, I think it needs to be said that while we are living, it is so important to be alive.</div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-26538604384766216212009-09-02T20:43:00.007-04:002009-09-02T21:56:13.641-04:00To Sleep Perchance To . . .<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><div><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?<br />Who says words with my mouth?<br />Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?<br />I cannot stop asking.<br />If I could taste one sip of an answer,<br />I could break out of this prison for drunks.</i><br />~ Rumi</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Last night I was watching an episode of Nova ScienceNow about sleep. One of the studies that they reported on showed a strong link between learning and sleep. The study showed that the learning we do during the day is consolidated and strengthened during sleep. So, when people learn a simple action, like typing a particular sequence on a keyboard over and over again, and are asked to perform that sequence as quickly as possible, they eventually hit a natural plateau at which point they can’t type any faster. After a night’s sleep, when they are asked to perform the sequence again, they begin the task typing at a faster pace than the one at which they had stopped the night before. Somehow, during sleep, the ability to perform an action just learned is improved. Some kind of practice, some kind of learning, is taking place while we sleep.<br /><br />That, in itself, is pretty amazing, but I found myself wondering, “Who is doing the learning? Who is doing the practicing?” It’s not the person. At least, not the part that we would recognize as the person—the conscious, willing, striving, reflective, rational part of the person. In fact, the person doesn’t even know it’s happening. You could say it’s the brain, but that doesn’t really explain anything. How does the brain know to do that? Is the brain conscious of what it’s doing or is it just an automatic process? But if it’s just an automatic process, how could it have such a clear and meaningful effect on our conscious existence? Is there another consciousness beyond our daytime consciousness?<br /><br />As a Jungian, I shouldn’t find this idea very surprising. Jung was very clear that our consciousness was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The rest of the iceberg is the vast realm of the unconscious. Even though I am a Jungian by training and by temperament, sometimes these ideas reassert themselves with their original force and impact. The sleep study explored on Nova does not, necessarily, prove that there is an unconscious, but it gives pretty compelling evidence in its favor.<br /><br />So much of what happens in the mind and the body happens without the participation of consciousness, of the ego. “I” don’t heal my own cuts and scrapes. “I” don’t digest my food. “I” don’t make my dreams or consolidate my own memories during sleep. At times, it seems like the ego is, at best, capable of assisting natural processes that are occurring on their own, or, too often, interfering somehow with those processes. Much of the time the ego is simply an observer of what is happening in body, mind and soul. (The role of observer is probably an extremely important one, related to assisting the natural processes, but it is too humble and passive for us in this day and age of grandiosity).<br /><br />I don’t have any earth-shattering conclusions to make about all of this, except to say that if the brain, or the unconscious, or the soul, or whatever you want to call it, is so powerful, then maybe learning to get out of the way is the most important thing that we can do for our own physical, emotional, and spiritual health. This is hard to do, since the ego tends to prefer to harbor grandiose fantasies about itself. We like to believe that we are the masters of our own fates. But as the Tao Te Ching teaches:<br /></p><p></p></div>The reason you have trouble is that<br />you are self-conscious.<br />No trouble can befall a self-free person. </span>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-40282865735479127822009-08-29T20:55:00.003-04:002009-08-29T20:59:50.473-04:00I Believe In Music<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">All the Levites who were musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives—stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>filled the </i><st1:place><st1:placetype><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">temple</i></st1:placetype><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> of </i><st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">God</i></st1:placename></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">. </i>(<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">2 Chronicles 5:11-14)<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Many years ago, when I was a student in theater school, we had an instructor who taught us his theory of the “levels” of drama. The first level was that of ordinary, naturalistic activity. At this initial stage the action on the stage is indistinguishable from everyday life. Out of this level proceed the next two stages of increasingly heightened reality (I don’t remember all the specifics. Like I said, it was many years ago). Finally, in certain instances, the “fourth level” is reached. At this level, naturalistic action is not sufficient to convey the significance of what is being portrayed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a Shakespearean performance, for example, an actor may suddenly step out of the scene and address the audience with a powerful and poetic soliloquy. In a movie, it might be a montage sequence, the juxtaposition of various scenes and images usually held together by a pronounced soundtrack that communicates the unifying mood or theme. But, the medium <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">par excellence</i> of the fourth level is the musical. Whenever the action of a musical reaches a particularly heightened point, someone breaks into song.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Something like this happens in the passage from 2 Chronicles. Solomon and the Israelites have completed the building of the <st1:place><st1:placetype>temple</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>God</st1:placename></st1:place>. Overcome with joy and gratitude and reverence, they break into song. A good friend of mine, who identifies himself as an unobservant Jew who is into God, explained to me once that, “The ancient Israelites used to break into song when they experienced God; it is the perfect expression for the indescribable encounter with the Divine.” But in this scene, things do not stay at the fourth level. The song the Israelites sing is not just the expression of religious feeling. It is an action that causes the Divine to manifest. The fourth level here gives way to the fifth, sixth, seventh and beyond.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is not the appearance of God that causes the Israelites to burst forth in this great musical performance. It is the love of God, the giving of “praise and thanks to their Lord,” that causes God to manifest. Hundreds of trumpets, cymbals, harps, and lyres, along with countless voices, join in unison to sing thanks to God, at which point “the glory of the Lord filled the <st1:place><st1:placetype>temple</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>God</st1:placename></st1:place>.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Too often, our religious discourse takes place on the lower levels of our human drama. We are far too hung up on the activities and carryings on of our fellow humans, that it seems we forget that religion should be more about eternal matters than temporal ones. We fight about what to believe, how to believe, whether to believe. I wonder where God goes when we start yelling at each other? I doubt at such times that he appears in a cloud of glory. My guess is he vanishes like a wisp of smoke.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Notice the detail of the story describing how, when God’s glory is present, the priests can’t do their job. “Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the <st1:place><st1:placetype>temple</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>God</st1:placename></st1:place>.” God, it seems, is not as interested in our ritual observances as we are in performing them. It is not the forms of our worship and belief that are essential, but the quality of our singing, the fullness of our praise.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Music is one of the ways we sanctify the moments and events of our lives. Whether there be a wedding, or a funeral, or a birthday party, music is a signal that what is taking place is special, set apart from everyday life. Music and song can also be a way to elevate the everyday—it can transform a mundane moment into a joyous occasion. Think of the excitement that comes over a group of people when a favorite song comes on and a spontaneous dance party suddenly takes place.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Often, when I am stuck in a dark mood, the only thing that will shift it for me is to put on some music. What works for me is usually some bourbon-soaked torch song by Frank Sinatra. I’m not trying to make my feeling go away, but to raise it to a different level, to give it meaning, to find the holiness in heartbreak, so to speak, and the sacred in the sad. I believe that we are each building a “temple of the Lord” and that temple is our lives. And the more we can let each moment “sing”—whether it is a song of pain or a chorus of joy—the more we invite the Divine into our lives.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">To this end, the Sufi poet, Rumi, offers this advice:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><i>Today, like every other day, we wake up empty<br />and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study<br />and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.<br />Let the beauty we love be what we do.<br />There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.</i></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-23614645383357146522009-08-23T20:43:00.004-04:002009-08-23T21:01:43.305-04:00I Can't Get No Satisfaction<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“The aim of Jewish piety lies not in futile efforts toward the satisfaction of needs in which one chances to indulge and which cannot otherwise be fulfilled, but in the maintenance and fanning of the discontent with our aspirations and achievements, in the maintenance and fanning of a craving that knows no satisfaction.” </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">~Abraham Joshua Heschel (Man is Not Alone)</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Religion is a strange thing. It has a tendency to take our common and accepted values and subvert them. It challenges our collective assumptions and finds our usual aspirations and desires wanting. Often, because of this tendency, people judge religion to be repressive and restrictive, a means of exercising oppressive control over the hearts and minds of its adherents, and desiring to do so over non-adherents. And it is true that there are elements within the religious world whose mode of expression is repression and condemnation. There are those who interpret the subversion of social norms in terms of a war against the prevailing culture.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At first glance, the quote above from Abraham Joshua Heschel might seem to belong to this category. Is it really true that all our efforts toward the satisfaction of our needs are futile? Is Heschel right when he states that we are able indulge our needs, but that ultimately they cannot be fulfilled? Is there anything inherently wrong in seeking the satisfactions of such things as position, wealth, sex or fame? Where do these things fit in the economy of the spirit?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A closer reading, however, finds that there is no condemnation of the “satisfaction of needs,” no denouncing of our “aspirations and achievements.” Heschel is not issuing a moral injunction against the pursuit of desire, he is suggesting that there is a deeper and greater value in discontent, in dissatisfaction, and in longing. It is not that seeking satisfaction is wrong, it’s just that it’s fleeting. He is reminding us that satisfaction as a goal in itself, as an end, is ephemeral and “futile.” This knowledge still exists in our common speech in phrases like, “Money can’t buy happiness,” “Fame is a vapor,” “All good things must come to an end,” and “Success is journey not a destination.” The Rolling Stones apparently knew this truth when they sang “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Who knew that song contained such spiritual truth?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is no secret that our contemporary culture is geared toward the gratification of desire. Our whole economy is based on it. We are consumers who are constantly encouraged by advertisers and marketers to try new and different means to satisfy cravings we may not even know we have. There are so many things to do and to try and to buy that, to a large extent, we have lost the ability to just be. The ability to satisfy almost any need, almost instantaneously can seem like a great thing. However, there is evidence that one of the most important qualities we can develop as human beings is <a href="http://www.sybervision.com/Discipline/marshmallow.htm">the ability to delay gratification</a> and it seems likely that our prevailing situation has, to a large extent, eroded that ability for many of us.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The religious view, as articulated by Heschel, goes even further than this. He advocates, not just delayed gratification, but “the maintenance and<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>fanning of discontent…, of a craving that knows no satisfaction.” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t believe that what is being promoted here is any kind of unhappiness or misery, as if the way to God was through some kind of suffering asceticism or mortification of the human will.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think the relevant analogy here is the state of being in love. When we fall in love we are filled with a longing for the other. It can at times be painful, but it is a sweet pain and we would never wish it away. Even when we are with the one we love, we feel we can’t be close enough to our beloved or know enough about him or her. Joy and pain somehow intermingle, and our longing for the other can never quite be satisfied even when our beloved is near. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The religious masters of this experience are the Sufis. The Sufi shaykh Jami teaches that “The heart that is free of love-sickness isn’t a heart at all. The body deprived of the pangs of love is nothing but clay and water.” The poet, Rumi, puts it like this:</p> the longing you express<br />is the return message.<br />the grief you cry out from<br />draws you toward union.<br />your pure sadness that wants help<br />is the secret cup.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A slightly more sober version of this idea might be image of the empty vessel of Taoism. A bowl that is full, like a desire that is satisfied, has lost its dynamic power. Nothing else can happen. But it is in its emptiness that the vessel is useful. It has the power to receive. And maybe that is the secret of the unsatisfied yearning. Though we are filled with longing, we are emptied of self, ready to receive something of the Divine.</p><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I believe that we are changed by love. Our meeting is like that of the ocean and the shore. We come together for a time, sometimes with passionate intensity, sometimes soft and gentle. And just as the shore takes on a new shape when the tide recedes, some things washed away, some new object—a shell, or a lost treasure—left behind, so are we, in the ebb and flow of love, painfully and beautifully, made new. I believe that this is the kind of encounter that Heschel is inviting us to with God. To open ourselves by expanding our yearning and our need, to meet life with a transforming love, to be slowly changed into an image of the Divine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I believe God is a Stones fan and that he loves to sing these lines: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”</p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-83024577884639205812009-08-02T16:32:00.003-04:002009-08-02T16:52:08.572-04:00Why Do We Believe In God?<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">"Humans did not evolve to be religious; they evolved to be paranoid. And humans are religious because they are paranoid." ~ </span>Satoshi Kanazawa (Psychology Today)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Recently, I stumbled upon an article on the Psychology Today website, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Why Do We Believe In God</i>. It is a year-old entry in a blog entitled The Scientific Fundamentalist and can be read by following these links: <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-do-we-believe-in-god-i">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-do-we-believe-in-god-ii">Part 2</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The author, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Satoshi Kanazawa</span>’s argument rests on Error Management Theory, which basically states that the human mind has evolved to make decisions, even when faced with uncertainty and too little information. Simply put, the human mind will choose between two possible errors by deciding on the one with the fewest negative consequences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The example used is a man who strikes up a conversation with an attractive woman he has just met. Apparently, men are wired to interpret this kind of interaction in their favor. That is, even in the absence of any real evidence, men assume they are going to score. Why? Because, if they are right they get to have sex. If they are wrong, at worst they experience rejection. If, on the other hand, men assumed that they weren’t going to score, being right might mean they protect their egos, but being wrong means that they miss an opportunity for sex, and therefore for potentially passing on their genes. And we all know, of course, that the sole purpose of human life is to pass on our genes, as if the whole of existence were some kind of genetic thrift shop.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Error Management Theory says that given these two possible errors, human beings—in this case, men—will make the least costly error. In the example given, getting rejected is less costly than missing a chance for doing the horizontal gene swap.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city> then goes on to apply this theory to the belief in God. He states that religious people tend to commit the “error” of attributing intention to certain forces of nature and interprets his observation this way:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></p><blockquote><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The cost of a false-positive error is that you become paranoid. You are always looking around and behind your back for predators and enemies that don’t exist. The cost of a false-negative error is that you are dead, being killed by a predator or an enemy when you least expect them. Obviously, it’s better to be paranoid than dead, so evolution should have designed a mind that </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style:italic">overinfers</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> personal, animate, and intentional forces even when none exist.</i></blockquote><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"></i><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The author takes the example of a bush on fire and suggests that you could understand this to be the cause of an impersonal force—lightning—or you could interpret this (erroneously, of course) as the cause of a personal force, that is, God. It is as if <st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city> has never heard of the concept of metaphor, not to mention that he misreads the Old Testament story. The bush is not simply a bush on fire, the significant detail is that despite the fire, the bush did not burn up. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Finally, he offers his conclusion:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><blockquote>In this view, religiosity (the human capacity for belief in supernatural beings) is not an evolved tendency per se; after all, religion in itself is not adaptive. It is instead a <span style="mso-bidi-font-style:italic">byproduct</span> of animistic bias or the agency-detector mechanism, the tendency to be paranoid, which <span style="mso-bidi-font-style:italic">is</span> adaptive because it can save your life. Humans did not evolve to be religious; they evolved to be paranoid. And humans are religious because they are paranoid.</blockquote><o:p></o:p></i><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, belief in God (and, really, any kind of religious belief is implied in this article), serves no real purpose because it “is not adaptive.” Ultimately, it is a kind of outgrowth of paranoia, which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">is</i> adaptive because it protects us from potential natural “predators and enemies.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I really don’t know where to start with this stuff. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">First of all, apparently, “scientific fundamentalists” tend to read religious statements in as literal a fashion as do religious fundamentalists. Given their preference for the concrete, they fail to see that the image of a burning bush refers to something that cannot be formulated in words and concepts. That something is given metaphorical dress, allowing some aspect of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">experience</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">to which it points</i> to be communicated. And even if the story of Moses encountering an angel of the Lord in a fire in a bush were understood in a literal way, surely one has to consider all the details described in the encounter. You can’t just say it was a bush on fire and ignore the part of the report that explains that the unusual thing was that the bush was not consumed by the fire. Science would never (or should never) allow some facts to be admitted for consideration while other facts are willfully ignored. Unless of course, it is dealing with religious statements, it would seem.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then there is Error Management Theory itself. I don’t really know much about this theory, so all I can really comment on is the use to which it is put by <st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city>. He declares, “One of the great features of Error Management Theory is that it can explain a wide variety of phenomena. It is a truly general theory.” <st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city> starts with the assumption that religious belief is an error and then uses this general theory to show why humans make this error. The problem is that you can do this with anything. You could, for instance, say that humans are prone to making the error that science accurately describes the nature of reality and then go ahead and use Error Management Theory to describe how we continue to believe in the scientific error. All you’ve done is what <st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city> has done, which is find a way to explain your personal biases. This theory doesn’t prove that belief in God is an error, it has to start with that premise in order to have anything to say at all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Let me be clear, I do not in any way believe that the scientific method is erroneous.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Clearly, human beings have derived immeasurable benefit from the increase in knowledge about how the world works that science has given us. I think the use of science to explain things that are outside of its capacity to explain, such as religious belief<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>and experience, is definitely erroneous. And, I think <st1:city><st1:place>Kanazawa</st1:place></st1:city>’s argument is not only erroneous, but totally useless.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Science and religion point to different aspects of experience and they do not have to have an antagonistic relationship. Science wants to understand the causal relations between things in the physical world. Religion seeks an encounter with the mystery of life. Science adds to our collective knowledge and gives us concepts and language to communicate that knowledge to each other. “Religion,” says Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “begins with the sense of the ineffable, with the awareness of a reality that discredits our wisdom, that shatters our concepts.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I do not know why human beings, including myself, believe in God. All I can do here is to assent to another statement by Rabbi Heschel:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><blockquote>“To assert that the most sensitive minds of all ages were victims of an illusion; that religion, poetry, art, philosophy were the outcome of a self-deception is too sophisticated to be reasonable.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bringing discredit on the genius of man, such an assertion would, of course, disqualify our own minds for making any assertion.”</blockquote><o:p></o:p></i><p></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-37569561964174936652009-07-27T21:58:00.004-04:002009-07-27T22:08:05.227-04:00Receiving Heaven Like a Child<p class="MsoNormal">“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” ~ Heraclitus</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">Last night as I was putting my daughter to sleep, I read her the story of Cinderella. These days Annabel, who is 4 ½ , lives and breathes Cinderella, and so I read her the same story<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>every night. As any parent with young children knows, evenings after the kids are in bed are precious times to reconnect with one’s self and one’s spouse. And so I was looking forward to finishing the book, turning off the light, kissing my little girl goodnight, and heading downstairs to be with my wife, to think and say and do adult things. In other words, I had an agenda. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">My daughter, on the other hand, had no agenda. She was not thinking of or planning anything else beyond our reading the book together. Actually, reading is not the right word. Living the book might be more apt. At every page, and sometimes at each sentence on the page, Annabel would interrupt me to launch into an elaborate commentary, an extended imagining of the world of Cinderella and it’s many intersections with her own life: why mice make better friends than cats, what makes stepmother’s mean, how rags can become gowns, and which people in her life she would cast in which roles. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">As long as I was focused on my goal of finishing the story, this beautiful play of the imagination was lost on me. It was an obstacle to my fulfilling my agenda and I was growing more and more impatient. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">And then I noticed what was going on. I had a goal. She did not. Time was passing for me, my evening was speeding by. But time did not exist for her, her world of imagination was growing and expanding and she was caught up in a kind of eternity, an enchanted world of which we grown ups proverbially bemoan the loss. “Time is a game played beautifully by a child.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">Perhaps, I thought, if I could set aside my goal-oriented consciousness, I might be able to recover some of that expansiveness that she seemed to possess so effortlessly. I tried, with some limited success.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">This morning it was my son, who is 2 ½, taking on the role of spiritual guide. It was just the two of us awake and he wanted to do a puzzle together. We pulled out an alphabet puzzle with pictures drawn on each piece to indicate it’s letter. An octopus was curved into the letter O, piano keys shaped into a P, a quail standing awkwardly in the shape of a Q. Again, I fell into an agenda—finish the puzzle. Atticus had a different idea. He wanted to take all the pieces and put them into piles, then gather all those piles into one big pile. Then he found a container and put all the pieces in the container. And finally, one by one, he would pull them out and quiz me on each letter, explain how it was upper case and not lower case, describe the picture on the puzzle piece and inform me how a quail was a kind of bird, but not a chicken, which is also a kind of bird, and so on. I don’t remember if the puzzle ever was completed, but I remember not caring anymore as I let myself get lost in this beautiful boy’s exploration of letters and words and ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">Alan Watts, in one of his lectures, says that when we equate life with a journey that has a goal and an end point, we have distorted the act of living. He says that music or dance is a better analogy because there is no goal involved beyond the playing of the music or the dancing of the dance. Children know this instinctively. When my daughter repeats the story of Cinderella over and over again, it is not because she is in a rush to get to the “happily ever after,” but because it is a good story, a captivating piece of music, a merry dance. Telling the story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> the happily ever after.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">Jesus said to his disciples, </span></span>“<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">Truly, I say to you, whoever does not</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">receive the </span></span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">kingdom</span></span></st1:placetype><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;"> of </span></span><st1:placename><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">God</span></span></st1:placename></st1:place><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;"> like a child shall not enter it</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">.<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Charis SIL";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;color:black;">”</span></span> Maybe this is the quality that he was talking about, the ability to enter into a state of consciousness so completely, so joyously, and with full commitment. Maybe he is reminding us that the </span></span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">kingdom</span></span></st1:placetype><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;"> of </span></span><st1:placename><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;">God</span></span></st1:placename></st1:place><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL";font-family:";color:black;"> is less of a goal than it is a state of consciousness. Maybe he wants us to be as absorbed in that state as my daughter is when she twirls around just like Cinderella at the ball.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="Charis SIL"; font-family:";color:black;">Maybe what God wants is for us to join him in a dance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-68999261400385680642009-07-19T18:21:00.010-04:002009-07-21T09:04:33.975-04:00Finding HomeThis is an excerpt from my new favorite podcast, <i>Speaking of Faith</i>. Krista Tippet, the host of the show, interviews Diane Winston, who teaches media and religion at USC. In the interview they discuss TV, and the way that shows like <i>Lost</i> and <i>Battlestar Galactica</i> have become modern-day parables:<div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-variant:small-caps;font-weight: normal"><i><b>Winston</b>:</i></span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>I think those characters on</i><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Lost</span>, like the characters in</i><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>Battlestar Galactica<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>are addressing a fundamental question which is "How do I get home?"</i><i><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-variant:small-caps;font-weight: normal"><i><b>Tippett</b>:</i></span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>Right. Right. And what is the meaning of home?</i><i><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-variant:small-caps;font-weight: normal"><i><b>Winston</b>:</i></span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>And what is the meaning of home? And that's the question of </i>The Odyssey<i>, it's the question of the </i>Exodus<i> story, it's the question of </i>The<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Wizard of Oz</span>. I think it's a question that all of us have and that's why those characters are so appealing to us, because they mirror some of our questions about it.</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">When my first child -- my daughter Annabel -- was born, I discovered that I finally possessed something that I never realized I had been missing, but that I had been searching for most of my life. A feeling of home.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Not only had I not known it was missing. I hadn't known until I found it that I had been looking for it. It was as if, having received this incredibly precious gift, I suddenly became conscious of my prior lack, like receiving the answer for a question that I hadn't known I was asking. It was kind of like that feeling I sometimes get when leaving the house -- that I've forgotten something, but I don't know what it is, and I wait by the door until it hits me that I'm missing my keys, or my wallet, or something else, only I'd been having that feeling for almost thirty years and had learned how to completely ignore it. But, all at once, there I was, holding my beautiful girl in my arms, and I knew two things: 1) that because of my parents' divorce, I had felt homeless ever since I was 11 years old, and 2) with the birth of my new family, I was finally home.</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">It seems to me that the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of home?” has two components. The first part of the answer, I believe, is that home is other people. In my case, that means, primarily, my wife, Allison, and my two kids. When I am weary and wasted from my engagement with the world, it is Allison I need to get to in order to find rest and get oriented again. The night of her emergency surgery when I thought that I was going to lose her, everything I thought was stable and real flew apart. I remember, the next morning, leaving her still unconscious in the ICU with a breathing tube down her throat and driving home to see my kids. I could barely function and felt like I was losing my mind. I had no idea how I was going to keep going, until the moment I walked in my house and saw my kids. Being with them and knowing they needed me helped me get mentally and emotionally organized again. Being their Dad gave me purpose, focus, determination. Home is other people. My kids were my home and I was theirs.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And home is not just other people in the family. Our neighbors and friends responded to our family crisis with incredible generosity and support. Meals were dropped off, laundry was picked up, snow was shoveled, groceries were bought. Suddenly this little town to which we moved two years prior, and in which I’d always felt a bit of stranger; suddenly this town was our town. Our home.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The first part of the answer addresses being home in the world. The second part of the answer, being home in the universe.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It has always been obvious to me that God exists. I have never been certain about any religion’s particular claim to God, but of his existence I have felt sure. I know that is not the case for others, so I say that as a statement of personal experience, not with the presumption of a definitive truth. But I have never been able to conceive of a random and meaningless universe. For me the frontiers of human knowledge have always been suffused with mystery and not mere void.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I can’t really say why I feel so certain about the existence of God, except to say that I have always felt at home in this life. In my human relationships, I have, at times, felt homeless, lonely, abandoned. But, at a fundamental level, I have rarely felt I was alone. Not 100 percent of the time, of course, but even in my most desperate loneliness, I have carried an almost elemental feeling of belonging. Like the psalmist in the opening of Psalm 90, I can say, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The early Christians as exemplified by Paul, in his second letter to the Ephesians, experienced their budding religion as a home in God, as “God’s household” built on the foundation of Christ:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians <st1:time minute="19" hour="14">2: 19</st1:time>-21).</blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But finding a home in God is only the first step, as the next verse reveals: “And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. <st1:time minute="22" hour="14">2: 22</st1:time>). For Paul, a person finds a home in God, so that God can make his home in that person.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think this is an amazing idea. God wants to make a dwelling for himself in human beings. Maybe -- just as my kids and I needed each other to hold on to a sense of home -- maybe there is a mutual need between God and human beings. And why not? Maybe that’s what this whole experiment of humanity is about – a place for God himself to find home. Whatever the case, it seems that whether we are dealing with our relationships with other people or our relationship with God, home is a kind of mutual creation that grows out of the relationship itself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And maybe the way we find home is by becoming that home for one another.</p><p></p></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-37470782210285480702009-06-28T20:58:00.004-04:002009-06-29T07:21:21.417-04:00I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>From Songs of Kabir</i><br /><br />O SERVANT, where dost thou seek Me?<br />Lo! I am beside thee.<br />I am neither in temple nor in mosque:<br />I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:<br />Neither am I in rites and ceremonies,<br />nor in Yoga and renunciation.<br />If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me:<br />thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.<br />Kabir says, 'O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath.'</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i> (translated by Rabindranath Tagore & Evelyn Underhill)</i></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I am a restless person. In that, I am really just a man of my time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is, to be sure, a restless age. We live in a time when anything we want is available to us at a moment’s notice. We live in an “on demand” world. TV, iPods, the internet, smartphones—all these devices enable us to have any momentary whim satisfied in an instant. It is my belief, however, that this does not bring us any real comfort or satisfaction. I believe it causes agitation and anxiety.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At least, that’s the case for me. I like to think of myself as a patient person. I have practiced Tai Chi, meditation, and prayer. I study and practice Jungian psychology. And despite all of this, I remain a restless person. I have forgotten how to sit still, to wait, to be bored or impatient. Whenever I have a free moment, I jump on my computer and begin to surf the ‘net. Once I’ve made a pass through my usual bookmarks, I get stuck. I don’t know what to Google next. I think to myself: “What am I looking for?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If my computer is not at hand, I reach for my cell phone. I just bought a new Palm Pre and I love it. With one device, I can place a phone call, check my email, surf the internet, look at photos, watch videos, listen to music, and read a book. However, I come up against the same problem. Often after about five minutes of flicking and scrolling on my smartphone, I’m at a loss for what to do next. Again, I think, “What am I looking for?” Or, perhaps I find myself driving in my car with some free time to spare. Quite often I'll have the feeling that I want to buy something, but I won’t be able think of anything I want or need. “What do I want, what am I looking for?,” I wonder.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the poem above, Kabir teaches that “What am I looking for?” is the wrong question. It is not the what that is important, it’s the where. “O Servant, where dost thou seek Me?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I tend to interpret my restlessness as a feeling that some Thing is missing. And so, I begin seeking for that elusive Thing. But my seeking only increases my restlessness. And if, by chance, I find The Thing that interests, excites or entices me, well, I might like it, I might be happy with it, I might even have fun with it, but usually it doesn’t serve to make my restlessness go away.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Again, my mistake becomes clear in the light of Kabir’s poem. The Things I seek are something other, something external to me. I am looking outside myself when what is missing is actually much closer by. “Lo, I am beside thee.” My restlessness is a spiritual restlessness. And I suspect that at the heart of our current age there is an almost universal spiritual unrest. And just as I cannot satisfy my spiritual hunger with the daily bread of technology and consumerism, Kabir teaches us that this same hunger is not quelled by any particular belief, creed, or ritual. “I am neither in temple nor in mosque: I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don’t think Kabir is stating that there is anything inherently wrong in the temple or the mosque, or, we could add, the church. I think he is saying that God cannot be found in any of those places unless we have first become aware of the presence of God in our own lives, in our minds and hearts. “If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.” I think what Kabir is saying is that we must have an experience of the divine before we can “find” God. God is not to be found in the church, the temple, or the mosque, unless we take Him there with us, so to speak.</p> <p>From a slightly different angle, Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his book, Man is Not Alone, puts it this way: “<span style="color:black;">In formulating a creed, in asserting: God exists, we merely bring down overpowering reality to the level of thought. Our belief is but an afterthought.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Over time, I have become more and more convinced that the primary religious statement is “Be still and know that I am God.” I am far from being an enlightened being—as I said, I am a restless person—but I know that my most meaningful moments have always been moments of stillness. Whether in meditation, or work, or an afternoon spent playing with the kids in the backyard, the decisive factor is the extent to which my mind and my heart are quiet and stilled from their usual longing and clutching, fear and anxiety. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stillness and centering have always been understood as the essential means to finding God, or Ultimate Reality. Almost every tradition has some form of meditation. Rather than taking the attitude of the seeker, meditation puts the practitioner in a receptive position. Whether one practices Dhyana, Vispassana, Centering Prayer, or Taoist Standing Meditation, one of the main goals is to let go of the striving ego and simply experience the divine energy. It suggests that the path to experiencing the Ultimate is, in a sense, to stop seeking and be found. Perhaps this is what Kabir is talking about when he says, “God is the breath of all breath.” No need for seeking because God is right here, closer than you can even imagine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I guess this suggests that I need to learn that God isn’t waiting for me to find Him. Maybe He is waiting for me to stop moving around long enough to recognize that the divine presence is all around me and within me. And if this is the case, then maybe that original question not only is not about what I’m looking for, it’s not even about where I’m looking for it. Maybe the reason I can’t find what I’m looking for is that it can’t be found. There is nothing to look for and nowhere to look for it. It’s already here looking for me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is a wonderful poem by David Wagoner that expresses exactly this idea. It is a poem taken from a Native American teaching story about what to do when you are lost in the woods. As the poem so beautifully describes it, the goal is to stand still until you can be found. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">LOST</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">Stand still.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The trees ahead and bushes beside you<br />Are not lost.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Wherever you are is called Here,<br />And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,<br />Must ask permission to know it and be known.<br />The forest breathes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Listen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It answers,<br />I have made this place around you.<br />If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.<br />No two trees are the same to Raven.<br />No two branches are the same to Wren.<br />If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,<br />You are surely lost.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Stand still.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The forest knows<br />Where you are.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You must let it find you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-82076401242910392342009-05-04T20:59:00.008-04:002009-05-05T07:40:42.756-04:00Living is a Sacred Act“Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.”<div><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Bachya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">from Hovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart)</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>William Zinsser, the author of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">On Writing Well</span>, states, “If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.” My wife, Allison, who is a wonderful writer, describes the process of writing as “pure hell and torture…until it works.” For her it is a journey through doubt and insecurity to a place of flow, self-assurance, and a satisfaction rivaling orgasm. In my case, writing involves a long battle with myself. It is a battle in which my task-oriented ego resists being overpowered by the creative impulse. Before sitting down to write, I pace back and forth in front of my computer like a caged animal, sometimes for several days, until my ego finally concedes defeat. When that happens and words begin to appear on the page, I am filled with a feeling that can only be described as gratitude.<br /></div><div><p></p> The quote above from the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Hovot HaLevavot</span>, an 11th century text on the ethical teachings of Judaism, is not just an exhortation to “seize the day.” It is a reminder that life is holy and living is a sacred act. To say “days are scrolls” is to invoke the image of a Sefer Torah, a ritual scroll read during Jewish services. Each day is to be treated as a sacred thing, and our lives—the writing on the scroll—as a revelation of the Holy One.<br /><p></p> My own experience, however, is that, like writing, sacred living is “one of the hardest things people do.”<br /><p></p> Writing is a way of paying attention to the world. But more than this, it is method of discovering what is of value, of extracting some small bit of truth from the chaos of life’s events. A great deal of material has to be cut out, tossed away, and edited before what is truly of value is revealed. It is, as William Blake said, a corrosive method, “melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.” Not everything that happens to us is significant, not everything we do is meaningful. Not, that is, until the hidden infinite in what we do is revealed.<br /><p></p> “Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.” Is it possible that the art of writing offers some clues about the art of sacred living? The writer, Luis Alberto Urrea, believes it does. In <a href="http://www.thisibelieve.org/dsp_ShowEssay.php?uid=62966&topessays=2&start=0">his essay</a> for the NPR series, This I Believe, he describes the ground of being as an essentially literary energy. “I believe God is a poet,” he writes. For Urrea, what counts is the act of paying attention:<br /><p></p> <p></p><blockquote>“I learned that if I went into the world and paid attention (in Spanish, you “lend attention,” <i>presta atencion</i>), the world would notice and respond. I would have demonstrated my worthiness to receive the world's gifts. It’s a kind of library where you lend attention and receive a story. Or God will toss off a limerick for your pleasure.”</blockquote><p></p>I don’t believe that sacred living means only doing overtly spiritual or pious things and avoiding so-called ‘profane’ activities. I have spent many dry and unsatisfactory moments in prayer and meditation, and I’ve experienced grace sitting in a booth in McDonald’s. I do believe that what is essential is the quality of attention we give to our lives and to the world. The way we pay attention to our lives will determine the quality of what we find. I know that when I look for the worst, I find it. When I look for the good, I find that, too.<br /><p></p> Taking this further, I believe that the sacred in our lives is revealed by taking a sacred attitude, by treating our lives as a sacrament. In a sense, God is a lens through which we look in order to find God. Not that we invent God in our imaginations and “project” the divine into the world. I do not believe God is an invention of the human mind. I see the situation more as one of needing God in order to be able to find God. (Incidentally, I believe this to be true of love, as well—we need love in order to experience love.)<br /><p></p> What do I want to be remembered? What do I want to have written on the scrolls of my days? I don’t think the answer to this question is a list of events or experiences. I think the answer is whatever makes those events and experiences worthwhile. I’m not wise enough to be able to give a complete answer to this question, but this is the one I’ve come up with so far: Love and Gratitude.<br /><p></p> Love and gratitude are like the inhaling and exhaling of breath. Love goes out, gratitude comes in. Love gives. Gratitude receives. They are paths beyond the ego and means of remembering the Other (“write on them what you want to be remembered”).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I believe that if, in any given moment, I can connect to the possibility of love and gratitude, I can experience the holy. And until that happens, all I’m really doing is pacing back and forth in front of reality like a caged animal, waiting to be overpowered by the Divine.<br /><p></p></div><div><p></p></div></div>Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-334611025339646002009-04-07T09:07:00.007-04:002009-04-07T20:46:25.594-04:00Gethsemane“They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” <em>(Mark 14:32-42)<br /></em><br /><br />Easter Sunday is the day on the Christian calendar that celebrates the joy and mystery Christ’s resurrection. That is preceded, however, by a week-long remembrance of Jesus’ suffering and death, known as Holy Week. Before the promise of new life as pictured in the resurrection, and ritually commemorated by many—mostly unconsciously—with Easter egg hunts and bunnies and baby chicks, there is an extended meditation on the fact of suffering and death in human life. This juxtaposition is essential. One cannot fully experience the meaning of the resurrection until they have experienced the full impact of sorrow and loss.<br /><br />The story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is, for me, one of the most poignant and moving of the whole of the gospel. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” It tells the story of a man who not only suffered physically, but was in emotional agony as well. Jesus prays in words every human being has spoken or thought at some point: “Please, don’t make me have to go through this. Spare me from this.” If there is truth in the Christian message, it is here in this story that teaches that God gets it. God knows the suffering and the sorrows that are a part of every human existence because he has felt them deeply himself.<br /><br />My four year old daughter recently learned the Easter story and has begun to ask about dying. “But nobody in our family is ever going to die!,” she pleaded with me through tears. “Father, take this cup from me.” Every day as I watch my children grow up, my heart breaks a little. Every time they learn something new, some sweet, earlier version of them is gone forever. I glory in their growth, but I’m sad at the loss of little things, like the mispronunciation of a word—‘waboo’ becomes ‘water’ and all of sudden my little girl is no longer a baby. When my daughter asked about death, I felt I'd never be able to put my heart back together again.<br /><br />I cannot save my daughter from the reality of death, as much as I wish I could. All I can do is hold her close, tell her I love her, and pray that my love is a reality that will outlast my body, that will cling close to her and to all the people that I love, long after I am gone. And I cannot save myself from the reality of death. Too soon (it’s always too soon), people that I love will die. It is a thought that is, at times, more than I can bear. “Abba, Father, take this cup from me.”<br /><br />When things are more than I can bear, I turn to poems and stories. The stories that the Great Religions tell I have found to be helpful, like the one of Jesus in Gethsemane. Here is a poem by Mary Oliver that, I believe, gets it exactly right:<br /><br /><br /><strong>In Blackwater Woods</strong><br /><br />Look, the trees<br />are turning<br />their own bodies<br />into pillars<br /><br />of light,<br />are giving off the rich<br />fragrance of cinnamon<br />and fulfillment,<br /><br />the long tapers<br />of cattails<br />are bursting and floating away over<br />the blue shoulders<br /><br />of the ponds,<br />and every pond,<br />no matter what its<br />name is, is<br /><br />nameless now.<br />Every year<br />everything<br />I have ever learned<br /><br />in my lifetime<br />leads back to this: the fires<br />and the black river of loss<br />whose other side<br /><br />is salvation,<br />whose meaning<br />none of us will ever know.<br />To live in this world<br /><br />you must be able<br />to do three things:<br />to love what is mortal;<br />to hold it<br /><br />against your bones knowing<br />your own life depends on it;<br />and, when the time comes to let it go,<br />to let it go.Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-66736637771490003112009-03-31T10:25:00.004-04:002009-03-31T10:39:53.438-04:00What's On Your Mind?“We are what we think.<br />All that we are arises with our thoughts.<br />With our thoughts we make the world.”<br /><em>(from The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha)</em><br /><br /><br />I would be embarrassed to admit to a majority of the things that I am aware of passing through my mind. Little petty thoughts, jealousies and judgments, far too much trivia. The thoughts I like are fleeting and hard to hold and, by far, the greater portion of what goes on in my mind runs automatically, without any real awareness on my part at all. If, as the Buddha teaches, “we are what we think,” then a large percentage of the time I am a reflection of my baser nature.<br /><br />I think this saying of the Buddha reflects a fundamental principle of religious understanding--that our subjective reality within us matters as much as the objective reality around us. But more than that, I think it presents a challenge to the idea, championed by Freud, that religion is an infantile wish fulfillment of a longing for protection by a strong and benevolent father. Religion, this line of thinking goes, is a way of taking refuge in a comforting illusion, never growing up, staying a kind of dependent child.<br /><br />But, far from suggesting dependence, the Buddha’s words are an encouragement to independence and responsibility. “With our thoughts we make the world.” We are, in large part, responsible for the kind of world in which we find ourselves. The religious attitude is not one of resting in the comfort of an illusion. Rather, it is the difficult work of seeking truth by examining the way that we see and understand the world.<br /><br />I don’t believe that “with our thoughts we make the world,” means that we are responsible for things like disease or natural disasters. I think it means that we are responsible for how we respond to the events of our lives. Do we deepen and grow, becoming more compassionate with others and ourselves? Or do we shrink and atrophy through bitterness and resentment, refusing to give up the role of victim? Personally, I know that my own victimhood is never far from my consciousness.<br /><br />For me the saying, “we are what we think” is a call to vigilance. When I read this line I feel a heavy weight of responsibility. To me it is a saying that demands our attention to and participation with the world. The way that we see the world is a major factor in determining the quality of the world in which we live.<br /><br />A similar thought is expressed by Jesus when he says: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (Matt. 13:12) At first glance, this seems a harsh thing to say. Why should the person with more get more and the person with less get less? It seems more like a parody of present-day economic disparity than deep, spiritual wisdom.<br /><br />But the point is that what we bring to our encounter with life is important. The quality of our consciousness matters. It is the abundance or scarcity in our own hearts that is the essential thing. In my own experience, I remember things like the awe I’ve felt at the beauty of a simple sunset, or the amazement of feeling truly seen as I gazed silently into a loved one’s eyes. And I have known, in those moments, that I am rich beyond measure. This is the part of me in which abundance and gratitude are active. But there is another part of me in which a kind of narcissistic entitlement reigns. At these moments everything I do have counts as nothing because I am always hungry for more, usually for something like love and attention, admiration and praise.<br /><br />I know in which of these two worlds I’d rather live. If I could just hold on to that thought.Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938529104451381684.post-59061854066342655782009-03-21T15:47:00.006-04:002009-03-21T22:34:11.802-04:00What's Your Story?“Religious, or anti-religious, questions…cannot be settled by logical demonstration, for the essence of what is at issue is whether it makes better overall sense of experience to believe that there is a divine mind and will behind it all or not to believe that. We can give motivations for our answer, one way or the other, but we cannot simply settle it by argument alone. In the end we have to commit ourselves to a chosen point of view.” ~ John Polkinghorne<br /><br /><br />It has always seemed to me that the idea of choosing what one believes is problematic. My own experience tells me that I <em>find myself</em> in a particular belief, rather than make a conscious decision that I will believe one thing over another. I tend to assume that this is true for others as well, and, consequently, I have never been one to have much enthusiasm for trying to convince someone else of my beliefs. Nor do I assume that my belief could possibly be universally true. Occasionally, I have been so convinced by the power stemming from my way of experiencing the world that I have felt others would, of course, benefit from seeing things as I do, too. But any proselytizing on my part has been decidedly unsatisfying. In my more sober moments I try to hold a believe-and-let-believe attitude.<br /><br />Ever since I was a child, it seemed obvious to me that if God created everything that is, He must also have created <em>all</em> the religions as different avenues by which the divine mystery could be experienced. Different people need different stories. I still find this idea convincing. I believe that we are all born into a particular story. Our task is to recognize our story and grow within it.<br /><br />The story in which we live is the way we make sense of experience, as the quote above from John Polkinghorne would have it. Or, to say it another way, based on my individual experiences, I find that one story makes better sense than others. For me, the God story works. That is, I feel more alive and engaged in the world when I consider that “there is a divine mind and will behind it.”<br /><br />Polkinghorne is a theoretical physicist turned Anglican priest. For him there is no conflict between the story that science tells about the world and the story religion tells. For Polkinghorne, they are both avenues toward truth. His writing makes it clear (as do the writings of many scientific or religious writers) that there is no conflict between science and religion. Any conflict that exists is between fundamentalist science and fundamentalist religion. The fundamentalists in religion sticks rigidly to the literal reading of their story, while the fundamentalists in science abandon their story to assert a metaphysical belief for which there is no proof (i.e., there is no God).<br /><br />What if we were to let everyone live their own story? What if we got curious—rather than defensive—and chose to listen to each other’s stories instead of trying to shout each other down with our own beliefs. This world, this life, is so immeasurably rich and wonderful. We need all the different viewpoints to even begin to comprehend the whole in its physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, relational, spiritual, and mysterious complexity. We might find ourselves enriched by the differences and surprised by the similarities.<br /><br />Where the religious story might ask, “Do I serve God or do I serve sin?,” the humanist question might be, “Do I choose to love or to hate?” For the scientist it could take this form: “Do I serve understanding or ignorance?” The artist, “The beautiful or the ugly?” There are differences, to be sure, and important ones. But couldn’t it also be that there is enough similarity for each to be open to the other?<br /><br />Perhaps the idea of everyone getting along is naïve of me. After all, as Polkinghorne states, we have to “commit ourselves to a chosen point of view.” If we don’t necessarily choose our beliefs, as I asserted before, we do need, apparently, to choose <em>to commit to</em> our beliefs. Just as a marriage, for example, cannot hold together without commitment, neither will any path yield all of its available truth without commitment. It takes long, specialized training to get to the point where one might discover something new in science. It takes long, specialized training to be consistently open to the muse for an artist. It takes long, specialized training for the religious person to reach enlightenment. All paths require us to commit. And maybe it’s this need for commitment that makes us view each other suspiciously. I might have to believe my way is the only true way in order to realize that complete commitment.<br /><br />Maybe, then, we might never get to the point where we all get along, but I guess that’s interesting, too. Maybe the best any of us can do is say: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”Jason E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07416096977784317434noreply@blogger.com0