Well.
News item # 1: I have a new baby sister. She and my mom appear to be well. The only one around to give me this news when I called home was my younger brother. Younger brothers generally being the worst when it comes to details, I don't know much beyond the fact that she does exist. Transcript of our conversation:
Amanda: Woah, I just went outside to check my messages since my stupid phone doesn't work inside and you said that mom was in the hospital?
Younger Brother: Yeah, Elsa got born.
Amanda: When?
YB: Uh, last night.
Amanda: ........!!!!
YB: ...
Amanda: How much did she weigh?
YB: Uh, I dunno.
Amanda: How are they?
YB: Uh, okay, I guess.
Amanda: What does she look like?
YB: Uh, I dunno.
Grr. Apparently my dad will call me later tonight and hopefully be more helpful.
News item #2: I do not have Flesh Eating Disease. Last night, at around 3 am, after too many hours of thrashing around in a forest of used tissues and ginger ale cups, and feeling awful. I became convinced that I did indeed have it, would never make it through the night, and wondered if I had the energy and time to get up and pin a penciled will to the fridge. Then the Nyquil's second wind kicked in and knocked me out.
It's not actually funny...a little girl in the Bronx just died of it. I remember the panic when there was a small outbreak of it in Ontario in the '90s.
My sinuses and lungs do appear to have liquefied and are making a rapid and constant exit. However, once the fever broke, and my throat stopped hurting, I figured it was instead just one of these guys.
Anyway, hooray for new babies, boo on disease.
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Friday, April 22, 2005
Discuss:
Liz Opp quoted Carl Jung in a recent comment on Kwakersaur;
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
I am not sure why but I felt led to bring it more to the forefront.
What canst thou say?
Oh, and by the way, completely unrelated, just to plunge the level of profundity way, way, way down: (heh.)
Click here for something that made me laugh. Sorry in advance. Forgive me and Click here to see the true nature of God.
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
I am not sure why but I felt led to bring it more to the forefront.
What canst thou say?
Oh, and by the way, completely unrelated, just to plunge the level of profundity way, way, way down: (heh.)
Click here for something that made me laugh. Sorry in advance. Forgive me and Click here to see the true nature of God.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Muddles of Pud.
So, Rich posted a thought-provoking comment in my last post with the big long Cloud of Unknowing quote. For convenience, I'm now going to quote his whole comment, because it was economical and plain. Unlike the posts of someone we all know pretty well.
I have always been a bit ambivalent about The Cloud of Unknowing. On the one hand it somehow sounds right. And I'm sure it's a useful counterbalance to all of our facile and possibly impious certainties about what God is and what God means. But...I also sometimes think this writer was unnecessarily muddying the waters. According to the gospel of John, when the disciples at that last passover feast asked Jesus to show them the father he did not answer them with a rebuke about the baffling mysteriousness and ineffability of God. Instead, he basically told them (freely paraphrased): "Look at me. You've been with me all this time. You know what I'm like. That's what God is like. Because I'm in him and he's in me."
I was very stirred by his comments - they actually worked to unite some frazzled ends the book had left me with, and brought into sharp relief just what it was that I had brought away with me at the end. When I read Jesus' loving command "Look at me!" I was instantly and forcibly struck with a vivid image of myself trying to get the attention of a child with that same phrase, because I needed to tell it something very important, only to find it staring raptly at a torn bandaid on its grimy index finger instead.
I tried to post the following as a comment, but apparently blogger's gotten wise to my long-winded ways (yes. yes they have. it's all about me.) and seems to be limiting comment lengths. Then when I realized it was going to end up being a post, I let it grow. Derr! So, another post from Amanda "Maybe-I-Should-Stop-Blogging" Gareis.
When you take into account the historical context of the The Cloud it makes more sense. My recall of medieval history is..err..cloudy...but in a few oversimplified strokes...the text was presumably addressed to a monastic audience. At that time, the monasteries were the default repositories of books and learning. Theology and philosophy were burgeoning...Aquinas et al. Then, as always, but especially then, there was deep concern that a scholarly approach to God would overtake the simple reality of His Presence, and the danger was deemed especially grave to the inhabitants of the monastery themselves. The very people regarded as specially called by God to bear witness to His Glory were now neck-deep in possible intellectual temptation and distraction, in the one place originally built to seclude them for His work. The Cloud is sometimes thought of as one of the best surviving recordings of the "backlash" against these developments.
I kind of think of it as a preparatory work to be able to truly understand what Jesus is saying in John. To repeat Rich's actually elegant paraphrase, Jesus says: "Look at me. You've been with me all this time. You know what I'm like. That's what God is like. Because I'm in him and he's in me."
...and the soul (if they are obnoxious and stuck in their heads, like me or the naughty monks the author was thinking of) responds..."But...I don't know Jesus. Do I? Through scripture? Really? Let's analyse scripture! Wait! Is he in the sacrament? Let's talk about transubstantiation! But....auuugh!"
(Now, at this moment...not before!)Enter the anonymous Cloud author (rudely paraphrased): "Hey! Egghead! Look at God. You don't know what God is? Aw, boo hoo. Actually, that's okay. Doesn't matter. Forget about it. Stop thinking. Love God. If you can't look at God, if you can't see him, it is because you are not really looking at God Himself, but at your thoughts of him. Oh, and by the way, you're looking at him with the wrong bit."
If I may take a Christological liberty, what is Christ but God Himself, unmediated, as experienceable directly to us? Without the Rabbi Jesus breaking bread with us, how are we to "be with him all this time" and "know what he is like" so that we may know God?
The author suggests, only through love, unobscured by feeble creaturely flailings of the brain/mind/ego. As I understand the message, the only reason the writer goes on and on and on about the baffling mysteriousness and ineffability of God is to flush our souls out of the underbrush of our conceptions and notions, so that they may be captured by Love. In fact, he makes it clear that God is actually fully accessible to us. In a beautiful passage I had to omit the first time 'round, (the thing was already huge) he says, "All rational beings...possess two faculties, the power of knowing, and the power of loving. To the first..God...is forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable, and that by every separate individual." (emphasis mine.)
Is God baffling, mysterious, ineffable? Yes, says the author, the same way a symphony is baffling, mysterious, and ineffable - when you try to hear it with your elbow.
Rather than muddying the waters, I feel that the author is telling us that when we try to find God in our limited human imaginings and ponderings, we are playing in a puddle of our own creation which goes nowhere. He is telling us that the puddle is muddy and stagnant, calling us sternly out of it. It is a crime, he warns us, to dabble there when the roaring crystal Ocean of God is at hand. Once the soul recognizes this and does the necessary inner work to climb out of the puddle and plunge into the Ocean, it is finally ready to go back to the message of Jesus at beginning of this "conversation", and receive its meaning, whole.
I do think I part ways with him on his model that the only way for this love to operate is directly my-one-soul-to-God's-one-Being. I think that all of the "creatures" on this earth (including all people, and yes, maybe even my pesky intellect) are here as potential springs and vessels of that Love, running off the main Source. Rather than being, as the author infers, roadblocks by default, I think they become obstacles only when they call our attention away from Christ's "Look at me!" instead of pointing to it. To take my disagreement even further, I believe that I can both receive and give this Love from and to God through His creatures, and that I will find Him there, as well as in the intellectual Darkness of my soul, where He comes to me directly, Himself, as Light or Love, or whatever one-syllable word you want to call Him. There was a time I would have denied this way of communing with God, and said it was all only possible through the physical world. I was corrected. However, depending on one's working definition of God (heh. A little joke, there, Lord.) one can actually squish around the metaphors enough to make even the author's totalitarian scheme comfortable enough for one's tender Universalist bits. But there, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm supposed to be shunning these days. Anyway, there is also a fair amount of antiquated church-baggage filler that I don't find personally helpful, and rather distracting. Still, I felt like I got the point.
I think my main point here is that the book was and remains a corrective measure,(as Rich said all along, a counterbalance) aiming us back at the message of Jesus in John about how to know God, rather than competing with it. For one like myself, whose most tangible stumbles along the path have all had to do with over-thinking, its message is a powerful antidote. It manages to both kick me in the pants and lift me up all in one blow.
"Him I covet, him I seek, and nothing but him."
I have always been a bit ambivalent about The Cloud of Unknowing. On the one hand it somehow sounds right. And I'm sure it's a useful counterbalance to all of our facile and possibly impious certainties about what God is and what God means. But...I also sometimes think this writer was unnecessarily muddying the waters. According to the gospel of John, when the disciples at that last passover feast asked Jesus to show them the father he did not answer them with a rebuke about the baffling mysteriousness and ineffability of God. Instead, he basically told them (freely paraphrased): "Look at me. You've been with me all this time. You know what I'm like. That's what God is like. Because I'm in him and he's in me."
I was very stirred by his comments - they actually worked to unite some frazzled ends the book had left me with, and brought into sharp relief just what it was that I had brought away with me at the end. When I read Jesus' loving command "Look at me!" I was instantly and forcibly struck with a vivid image of myself trying to get the attention of a child with that same phrase, because I needed to tell it something very important, only to find it staring raptly at a torn bandaid on its grimy index finger instead.
I tried to post the following as a comment, but apparently blogger's gotten wise to my long-winded ways (yes. yes they have. it's all about me.) and seems to be limiting comment lengths. Then when I realized it was going to end up being a post, I let it grow. Derr! So, another post from Amanda "Maybe-I-Should-Stop-Blogging" Gareis.
When you take into account the historical context of the The Cloud it makes more sense. My recall of medieval history is..err..cloudy...but in a few oversimplified strokes...the text was presumably addressed to a monastic audience. At that time, the monasteries were the default repositories of books and learning. Theology and philosophy were burgeoning...Aquinas et al. Then, as always, but especially then, there was deep concern that a scholarly approach to God would overtake the simple reality of His Presence, and the danger was deemed especially grave to the inhabitants of the monastery themselves. The very people regarded as specially called by God to bear witness to His Glory were now neck-deep in possible intellectual temptation and distraction, in the one place originally built to seclude them for His work. The Cloud is sometimes thought of as one of the best surviving recordings of the "backlash" against these developments.
I kind of think of it as a preparatory work to be able to truly understand what Jesus is saying in John. To repeat Rich's actually elegant paraphrase, Jesus says: "Look at me. You've been with me all this time. You know what I'm like. That's what God is like. Because I'm in him and he's in me."
...and the soul (if they are obnoxious and stuck in their heads, like me or the naughty monks the author was thinking of) responds..."But...I don't know Jesus. Do I? Through scripture? Really? Let's analyse scripture! Wait! Is he in the sacrament? Let's talk about transubstantiation! But....auuugh!"
(Now, at this moment...not before!)Enter the anonymous Cloud author (rudely paraphrased): "Hey! Egghead! Look at God. You don't know what God is? Aw, boo hoo. Actually, that's okay. Doesn't matter. Forget about it. Stop thinking. Love God. If you can't look at God, if you can't see him, it is because you are not really looking at God Himself, but at your thoughts of him. Oh, and by the way, you're looking at him with the wrong bit."
If I may take a Christological liberty, what is Christ but God Himself, unmediated, as experienceable directly to us? Without the Rabbi Jesus breaking bread with us, how are we to "be with him all this time" and "know what he is like" so that we may know God?
The author suggests, only through love, unobscured by feeble creaturely flailings of the brain/mind/ego. As I understand the message, the only reason the writer goes on and on and on about the baffling mysteriousness and ineffability of God is to flush our souls out of the underbrush of our conceptions and notions, so that they may be captured by Love. In fact, he makes it clear that God is actually fully accessible to us. In a beautiful passage I had to omit the first time 'round, (the thing was already huge) he says, "All rational beings...possess two faculties, the power of knowing, and the power of loving. To the first..God...is forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable, and that by every separate individual." (emphasis mine.)
Is God baffling, mysterious, ineffable? Yes, says the author, the same way a symphony is baffling, mysterious, and ineffable - when you try to hear it with your elbow.
Rather than muddying the waters, I feel that the author is telling us that when we try to find God in our limited human imaginings and ponderings, we are playing in a puddle of our own creation which goes nowhere. He is telling us that the puddle is muddy and stagnant, calling us sternly out of it. It is a crime, he warns us, to dabble there when the roaring crystal Ocean of God is at hand. Once the soul recognizes this and does the necessary inner work to climb out of the puddle and plunge into the Ocean, it is finally ready to go back to the message of Jesus at beginning of this "conversation", and receive its meaning, whole.
I do think I part ways with him on his model that the only way for this love to operate is directly my-one-soul-to-God's-one-Being. I think that all of the "creatures" on this earth (including all people, and yes, maybe even my pesky intellect) are here as potential springs and vessels of that Love, running off the main Source. Rather than being, as the author infers, roadblocks by default, I think they become obstacles only when they call our attention away from Christ's "Look at me!" instead of pointing to it. To take my disagreement even further, I believe that I can both receive and give this Love from and to God through His creatures, and that I will find Him there, as well as in the intellectual Darkness of my soul, where He comes to me directly, Himself, as Light or Love, or whatever one-syllable word you want to call Him. There was a time I would have denied this way of communing with God, and said it was all only possible through the physical world. I was corrected. However, depending on one's working definition of God (heh. A little joke, there, Lord.) one can actually squish around the metaphors enough to make even the author's totalitarian scheme comfortable enough for one's tender Universalist bits. But there, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm supposed to be shunning these days. Anyway, there is also a fair amount of antiquated church-baggage filler that I don't find personally helpful, and rather distracting. Still, I felt like I got the point.
I think my main point here is that the book was and remains a corrective measure,(as Rich said all along, a counterbalance) aiming us back at the message of Jesus in John about how to know God, rather than competing with it. For one like myself, whose most tangible stumbles along the path have all had to do with over-thinking, its message is a powerful antidote. It manages to both kick me in the pants and lift me up all in one blow.
"Him I covet, him I seek, and nothing but him."
Monday, April 18, 2005
Excerpts from The Cloud of Unknowing
"Look forward, not backward. See what you still lack, not what you have already; for that is the quickest way of getting and keeping humility. Your whole life now must be one of longing, if you are to acheive perfection. And this longing must be in the depths of your will, put there by God, with your consent. But a word of warning: he is a jealous lover, and will brook no rival; he will not work in your will if he has not sole charge; he does not ask for help, he asks for you...
...When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don't know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out to God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as it is necessary, but still go on longing after him whom you love. For if you are to feel him or to see him in this life, it must always be in this cloud, in this darkness. And if you will work hard at what I tell you, I believe that through God's mercy you will achieve this very thing...
...whoever hears or reads about all this, and thinks that it is fundamentally an activity of the mind, and proceeds then to work it all out along these lines, is on quite the wrong track. He manufactures an experience that is neither spiritual nor physical. He is dangerously misled and in real peril..so for the love of God be careful, and do not attempt to achieve this experience intellectually. I tell you truly it cannot come this way. So leave it alone...
...you will ask me, 'How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?' and I cannot answer you except to say 'I do not know!'...For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them - yes, even the very works of God himself - yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? because he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness about you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.
Should any thought arise and obtrude itself between you and the darkness, asking what you are seeking, and what you are wanting, answer that it is God you want: 'Him I covet, him I seek, and nothing but him." Should he (the thought) ask, "What is this God? ' answer that it is the God who made you and redeemed you and who has, through his grace, called you to his love. 'And', tell him, "you do not even know the first thing about him.' And then go on to say 'Get down', and proceed to trample on him out of love for God; yes, even when such thoughts seem to be holy, and calculated to help you find God...
...When you feel by the grace of God that he is calling you to this work, and you intend to respond, lift up your heart to God with humble love. And really mean God himself...And think no other thought of him. It all depends on your desire. A naked intention directed to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient.
If you want this intention summed up in a word, to retain it more easily, take a short word, preferably of one syllable, to do so. The shorter the word the better, being more like the working of the Spirit. A word like 'GOD' or 'LOVE'. Choose which you like, or perhaps some other, so long as it is of one syllable. And fix this word fast to your heart, so that it may always be there come what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike. With this word you will hammer the cloud and the darkness above you, With this word you will supress all thought under the cloud of forgetting. So much so that if ever you are tempted to ask what it is that you are seeking, this one word will be sufficient answer. And if you would go on to think learnedly about the significance and analysis of that same word, tell yourself that you will have it whole, and not in bits and pieces."
...When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don't know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out to God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as it is necessary, but still go on longing after him whom you love. For if you are to feel him or to see him in this life, it must always be in this cloud, in this darkness. And if you will work hard at what I tell you, I believe that through God's mercy you will achieve this very thing...
...whoever hears or reads about all this, and thinks that it is fundamentally an activity of the mind, and proceeds then to work it all out along these lines, is on quite the wrong track. He manufactures an experience that is neither spiritual nor physical. He is dangerously misled and in real peril..so for the love of God be careful, and do not attempt to achieve this experience intellectually. I tell you truly it cannot come this way. So leave it alone...
...you will ask me, 'How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?' and I cannot answer you except to say 'I do not know!'...For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them - yes, even the very works of God himself - yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? because he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness about you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.
Should any thought arise and obtrude itself between you and the darkness, asking what you are seeking, and what you are wanting, answer that it is God you want: 'Him I covet, him I seek, and nothing but him." Should he (the thought) ask, "What is this God? ' answer that it is the God who made you and redeemed you and who has, through his grace, called you to his love. 'And', tell him, "you do not even know the first thing about him.' And then go on to say 'Get down', and proceed to trample on him out of love for God; yes, even when such thoughts seem to be holy, and calculated to help you find God...
...When you feel by the grace of God that he is calling you to this work, and you intend to respond, lift up your heart to God with humble love. And really mean God himself...And think no other thought of him. It all depends on your desire. A naked intention directed to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient.
If you want this intention summed up in a word, to retain it more easily, take a short word, preferably of one syllable, to do so. The shorter the word the better, being more like the working of the Spirit. A word like 'GOD' or 'LOVE'. Choose which you like, or perhaps some other, so long as it is of one syllable. And fix this word fast to your heart, so that it may always be there come what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike. With this word you will hammer the cloud and the darkness above you, With this word you will supress all thought under the cloud of forgetting. So much so that if ever you are tempted to ask what it is that you are seeking, this one word will be sufficient answer. And if you would go on to think learnedly about the significance and analysis of that same word, tell yourself that you will have it whole, and not in bits and pieces."
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Ironically, another (very long) post on not posting.
And to add a final daub to an already heaping pile of irony, I had written a long post yesterday when the computer shut down suddenly and I lost the whole thing. In the immortal words of Bruce Almighty, "Smite me, O Mighty Smiter!" But then, when I wrote yesterday, I hadn't gotten Liz's valuable comment yet, which has added so much to my reflections on this subject, and prompted me to go deeper. It has grown and grown, and I can't seem to find a way to shorten it, though I'm trying. Bear with me.
So, ab initio.
I have been very moved by everyone's comments and queries. I spent time yesterday reading through the blog. As I reread old entries, I was struck with gratitude to be able look back even a little way and see the path I've taken, and the issues I've been struggling with along the road. A lot of the themes remain constant, developing slowly. I receive with thankfulness the upholding and eldership I've been given along the way, much of which is still feeding me as I go (I hope) forward. This is something I'd be hesitant to give up without very careful discernment. The fruits of the blog, on the outside, have been wholly positive. It strikes me that the central question I'm dealing with is:
What is the blog meant to do, and am I accomplishing it?
I think there are three main purposes I could see the blog having.
1.) As a self-publishing tool for my essays and writing in general.
2.) As a threshing tool, where I work out and test my leadings, thoughts, doubts, ideas, emotions, discoveries, setbacks and questions.
3.) As ministry. I don't think I've ever actually intended the blog as ministry, though I have been open to the idea, and have seen it maybe work that way.
My issue is that these purposes all currently seem to be in conflict with each other.
The main reason I started the blog was #2: I wanted a place to explore my new faith and the huge packet of questions and uncertainties that came along with it, and to match this faith and theology against the old questions and uncertainties I've always wrestled. Graham Wallas, or W.H. Auden, or E.M. Forster, said: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?". I've seen it attributed to all of these guys and more, but whoever said it was very right.
The main trouble I'm running into is this: along with being a seeker, I am also a writer. I am suspicious that in my effort to frame "what I say" for a public audience, I may be molding it artificially, clouding the truth of "what I think", almost unconsciously, to make a better essay or "piece" out of it.
Knowing this, I have to question the integrity of the threshing or ministry which may or may not occur in my writing. The absolute honesty and emotional poverty necessary for true seeking may fall by the wayside in favour of "craft", whether I'm really aware of it or not. If this is the case, I am obscuring my way to the Truth I was originally sent to find and share. My editorial hand could cloud the spiritual process, and it may be capable of shading over anything which could be considered a message from God. The very nature and structure of an essay begs an arc of thought and some sort of conclusion, neither of which may actually be present at any given point in my search. I'm forced to ask, do I discover these things through the exercise of writing the post, or do I paste them artificially over what may have been a God-induced muddle, thereby avoiding the real work, and enabling myself to look like a smarty-pants? The answers to this question is never really clear.
For better or for worse, I'm starting to have some grudging respect for the old Quaker suspicions about art being, at the root, dishonest.
Of course I'm speaking subjectively. I do feel that real art reveals something of the Truth, even if at times it seems on the surface to deviate from "reality".
I think that we're often limited to viewing and transmitting Truth through a prism, which distorts the natural form of the Light and diverges it, though in doing so it reveals a truth about Light's nature. Newton proved that white light is a mixture of lights of different colours, which are basic and cannot be decomposed. When light is refracted, all of these colours are separated and visible. The textbooks say "The prism is simply a convenient shape for amplifying the effect into something that is easily visible."
Maybe this is what I am doing in my writing: encountering and dispersing Light in a refracted form. But what if I am disatisfied with refracted Light? What if I feel a need to meet the Light in its pure unfiltered form and pass it on just as I have recieved it? Is this real desire for the Truth about God, or is this pride? Is this the perfection to which we are called in Matthew 5:48?
Refraction is defined as "the bending of a light beam as it passes from one material into another." For the word "bend", the dictionary gives both "to cause to swerve from a straight line; deflect" and "to misrepresent; distort: bend the truth".
Is there a way to avoid this bending of Light?
Quakerism says it is possible to receive the beam of God's Light directly from the Source itself, unbent by the filters of others. But to do so, you also must make sure you are not bending it yourself. And since we all have the responsibility of sharing "our" beam of Light with others, before we open our mouths we need to be even more sure.
Refraction is not the only way to encounter or share Light. What about reflection?
There is a poem by G.K. Chesterton about the Annunciation, addressed to Mary, called "A Little Litany". It is full of beautiful images, one of which has recently struck me as important.
When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven — and saw the earth...
...Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face...
The idea is that God found in Mary "the ... glass/That would not break with that unbearable light". Her obedience and faithfulness and openess were so complete that she could reflect the Light of God without disortion or blemish, in absolute Truth and wholeness. Of course, this Light, perfectly reflected, was Christ. In the mirror of Mary, "God looked on God", and what is more, man could look upon God on Earth. God was made manifest (incarnate?) in our fleshy material world. Can't this metaphor of Mary apply to our lives, too?
Back to the science of reflection. All objects reflect rays, but objects without a flat surface give off diffuse reflection and become indirect-lighting devices. For example, your body reflects much of the light it receives. But because the body's surface is rough, varied, angled, bumpy, when light is aimed at it the rays have all different angles of incidence and different angles of reflection and so are diffused. This phenomenon allows objects which are not the sources of light to be seen. (Here I must insert an emphatic editorial "Huh.")
A surface which reflects almost all of the light which falls on it is called "specular". For a specular surface to act as an effective mirror, to reflect that light without diffusion, it must be smooth, flat, and regular. Any object with a flat, smooth, specular surface is called...
wait for it...
...a plain mirror.
Yes it is a coincidence, and yes, in this context it is a bit of a pun, but it's true, and the idea holds.
How does all of this come back to my blog? Well, it seems obvious that the purpose of a blog (just like everything else we do) should be to reflect the Light of God, with as little distortion or bending as we can manage.
But what should you do when you're very far from being a plain mirror? When you're still functioning as a lumpy corporeal object with reflective powers so diffuse that they serve only to draw attention to yourself? Or if you're a prism, taking the Light into yourself and then sending it forth, bent, dispersed, and split by its travels through all your different facets?
It seems important to continue reflecting what Light you can while working out the long process of becoming a plain mirror. But what if these imperfect reflections and refractions are in danger of impeding your progress towards perfection?
Thank you Liz, for the reminder to hold my worries gently. I sometimes feel so frustrated. Every time I think I am stripping away a layer of artifice there's another layer to be discovered, more subtle, sly and sneaky than the last. It's enough to make me paranoid, or at least suspicious about what nasty trick my ego might play on me next. I don't trust even my best impulses as far as I can throw them, nor my ability to truly discern the Whisper of God from the hissings of some tempter hidden in the depths of my self-love. The only place I feel safe from myself is in stillness and silence. I remember the quote I posted here in January...
"I know of no other way, in these deeper depths, of trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon God, than sinking in to silence and nothingness before Him... So long as the enemy can keep us reasoning he can buffet us to and fro; but into the true solemn silence of the soul before God he cannot follow us."
- Quaker Faith & Practice (Britain Yearly Meeting) from John Bellows in 1895
and I think of the hope of the Psalmist for the faithful:
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
Psalms, 31:20
His enemies were outer, mine are inner. But even this desire for silence is a leading I'm trying to test carefully. Even this could be a new temptation. Do I really seek to be faithful in the quiet, or could it be a cloak for my deficiencies? What am I truly seeking in silence? A refuge from the din of life, so that I can pry away the incidental and learn to be True? Or a place where I can hide with my current concepts of God, avoiding the need to correct my faults, away from the Light of my Friends? Am I more likely to fall into error if I seek in silence and solitude, getting wrapped up in the tangles of my thoughts without others to help temper them?
The answer, I would think, is implicit in the John Bellows quote. If I withdraw to a place where there's a chance I'll get tangled up in my thinking, that place is not really silence. The perennial trouble for me is that I cannot stop thinking. (ny more than I can stop writing this, it seems) This "true solemn silence of the soul" is constantly eluding me, and sometimes I wonder if it is a state that I can actually achieve, or if even this is a gift which I must wait patiently to receive.
I'm not spiritually hyperventilating as much as it might seem. I know there's nothing to be done but be still. I just get confused and troubled when I am foiled in my best efforts to achieve even stillness. I know that I must simply do what is before me, and be faithful in the small things, and learn to be steady and constant in my daily life. But as I go through this process of learning, the fact remains that decisions must be made. For example, what will "my daily life" consist of? How can I decide which of the little things I do every day are faithful and which are blocking the still small voice I need so much, even just to make these little decisions?
How can I be still and know, until I know how to be still?
The very existence of this post, in the face of everything I've just said within it, seems mildly comical. Even in this post I see at least hints of everything that I am troubled by; a determined (perhaps willful) quest for understanding, a certain amount of pride in my reasoning and little epiphanies, a quiet craving for distinction, a carefully shaped structure imposed by my mind on the raw material. I did command these words. This post was composed, a word which the dictionary defines variously as:
To to make or create by putting together parts or elements.
To create or produce (a literary or musical piece).
To make calm or tranquil.
To settle or adjust; reconcile.
To arrange aesthetically or artistically.
I think some of those are more desirable that others. But even given all this, when I read everything my Friends had to say to me on the subject, I really did feel led to write more, to be more clear about the precise nature of my concerns and aims. I actually gained some insight on the subject myself. So I wrote more. A lot more, apparently. Yeesh.
PS:I refuse to footnote my blog, but I'm indebted to the library of thinkquest.org for helping me refresh my memory about the workings of prisms and mirrors.
So, ab initio.
I have been very moved by everyone's comments and queries. I spent time yesterday reading through the blog. As I reread old entries, I was struck with gratitude to be able look back even a little way and see the path I've taken, and the issues I've been struggling with along the road. A lot of the themes remain constant, developing slowly. I receive with thankfulness the upholding and eldership I've been given along the way, much of which is still feeding me as I go (I hope) forward. This is something I'd be hesitant to give up without very careful discernment. The fruits of the blog, on the outside, have been wholly positive. It strikes me that the central question I'm dealing with is:
What is the blog meant to do, and am I accomplishing it?
I think there are three main purposes I could see the blog having.
1.) As a self-publishing tool for my essays and writing in general.
2.) As a threshing tool, where I work out and test my leadings, thoughts, doubts, ideas, emotions, discoveries, setbacks and questions.
3.) As ministry. I don't think I've ever actually intended the blog as ministry, though I have been open to the idea, and have seen it maybe work that way.
My issue is that these purposes all currently seem to be in conflict with each other.
The main reason I started the blog was #2: I wanted a place to explore my new faith and the huge packet of questions and uncertainties that came along with it, and to match this faith and theology against the old questions and uncertainties I've always wrestled. Graham Wallas, or W.H. Auden, or E.M. Forster, said: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?". I've seen it attributed to all of these guys and more, but whoever said it was very right.
The main trouble I'm running into is this: along with being a seeker, I am also a writer. I am suspicious that in my effort to frame "what I say" for a public audience, I may be molding it artificially, clouding the truth of "what I think", almost unconsciously, to make a better essay or "piece" out of it.
Knowing this, I have to question the integrity of the threshing or ministry which may or may not occur in my writing. The absolute honesty and emotional poverty necessary for true seeking may fall by the wayside in favour of "craft", whether I'm really aware of it or not. If this is the case, I am obscuring my way to the Truth I was originally sent to find and share. My editorial hand could cloud the spiritual process, and it may be capable of shading over anything which could be considered a message from God. The very nature and structure of an essay begs an arc of thought and some sort of conclusion, neither of which may actually be present at any given point in my search. I'm forced to ask, do I discover these things through the exercise of writing the post, or do I paste them artificially over what may have been a God-induced muddle, thereby avoiding the real work, and enabling myself to look like a smarty-pants? The answers to this question is never really clear.
For better or for worse, I'm starting to have some grudging respect for the old Quaker suspicions about art being, at the root, dishonest.
Of course I'm speaking subjectively. I do feel that real art reveals something of the Truth, even if at times it seems on the surface to deviate from "reality".
I think that we're often limited to viewing and transmitting Truth through a prism, which distorts the natural form of the Light and diverges it, though in doing so it reveals a truth about Light's nature. Newton proved that white light is a mixture of lights of different colours, which are basic and cannot be decomposed. When light is refracted, all of these colours are separated and visible. The textbooks say "The prism is simply a convenient shape for amplifying the effect into something that is easily visible."
Maybe this is what I am doing in my writing: encountering and dispersing Light in a refracted form. But what if I am disatisfied with refracted Light? What if I feel a need to meet the Light in its pure unfiltered form and pass it on just as I have recieved it? Is this real desire for the Truth about God, or is this pride? Is this the perfection to which we are called in Matthew 5:48?
Refraction is defined as "the bending of a light beam as it passes from one material into another." For the word "bend", the dictionary gives both "to cause to swerve from a straight line; deflect" and "to misrepresent; distort: bend the truth".
Is there a way to avoid this bending of Light?
Quakerism says it is possible to receive the beam of God's Light directly from the Source itself, unbent by the filters of others. But to do so, you also must make sure you are not bending it yourself. And since we all have the responsibility of sharing "our" beam of Light with others, before we open our mouths we need to be even more sure.
Refraction is not the only way to encounter or share Light. What about reflection?
There is a poem by G.K. Chesterton about the Annunciation, addressed to Mary, called "A Little Litany". It is full of beautiful images, one of which has recently struck me as important.
When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven — and saw the earth...
...Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face...
The idea is that God found in Mary "the ... glass/That would not break with that unbearable light". Her obedience and faithfulness and openess were so complete that she could reflect the Light of God without disortion or blemish, in absolute Truth and wholeness. Of course, this Light, perfectly reflected, was Christ. In the mirror of Mary, "God looked on God", and what is more, man could look upon God on Earth. God was made manifest (incarnate?) in our fleshy material world. Can't this metaphor of Mary apply to our lives, too?
Back to the science of reflection. All objects reflect rays, but objects without a flat surface give off diffuse reflection and become indirect-lighting devices. For example, your body reflects much of the light it receives. But because the body's surface is rough, varied, angled, bumpy, when light is aimed at it the rays have all different angles of incidence and different angles of reflection and so are diffused. This phenomenon allows objects which are not the sources of light to be seen. (Here I must insert an emphatic editorial "Huh.")
A surface which reflects almost all of the light which falls on it is called "specular". For a specular surface to act as an effective mirror, to reflect that light without diffusion, it must be smooth, flat, and regular. Any object with a flat, smooth, specular surface is called...
wait for it...
...a plain mirror.
Yes it is a coincidence, and yes, in this context it is a bit of a pun, but it's true, and the idea holds.
How does all of this come back to my blog? Well, it seems obvious that the purpose of a blog (just like everything else we do) should be to reflect the Light of God, with as little distortion or bending as we can manage.
But what should you do when you're very far from being a plain mirror? When you're still functioning as a lumpy corporeal object with reflective powers so diffuse that they serve only to draw attention to yourself? Or if you're a prism, taking the Light into yourself and then sending it forth, bent, dispersed, and split by its travels through all your different facets?
It seems important to continue reflecting what Light you can while working out the long process of becoming a plain mirror. But what if these imperfect reflections and refractions are in danger of impeding your progress towards perfection?
Thank you Liz, for the reminder to hold my worries gently. I sometimes feel so frustrated. Every time I think I am stripping away a layer of artifice there's another layer to be discovered, more subtle, sly and sneaky than the last. It's enough to make me paranoid, or at least suspicious about what nasty trick my ego might play on me next. I don't trust even my best impulses as far as I can throw them, nor my ability to truly discern the Whisper of God from the hissings of some tempter hidden in the depths of my self-love. The only place I feel safe from myself is in stillness and silence. I remember the quote I posted here in January...
"I know of no other way, in these deeper depths, of trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon God, than sinking in to silence and nothingness before Him... So long as the enemy can keep us reasoning he can buffet us to and fro; but into the true solemn silence of the soul before God he cannot follow us."
- Quaker Faith & Practice (Britain Yearly Meeting) from John Bellows in 1895
and I think of the hope of the Psalmist for the faithful:
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
Psalms, 31:20
His enemies were outer, mine are inner. But even this desire for silence is a leading I'm trying to test carefully. Even this could be a new temptation. Do I really seek to be faithful in the quiet, or could it be a cloak for my deficiencies? What am I truly seeking in silence? A refuge from the din of life, so that I can pry away the incidental and learn to be True? Or a place where I can hide with my current concepts of God, avoiding the need to correct my faults, away from the Light of my Friends? Am I more likely to fall into error if I seek in silence and solitude, getting wrapped up in the tangles of my thoughts without others to help temper them?
The answer, I would think, is implicit in the John Bellows quote. If I withdraw to a place where there's a chance I'll get tangled up in my thinking, that place is not really silence. The perennial trouble for me is that I cannot stop thinking. (ny more than I can stop writing this, it seems) This "true solemn silence of the soul" is constantly eluding me, and sometimes I wonder if it is a state that I can actually achieve, or if even this is a gift which I must wait patiently to receive.
I'm not spiritually hyperventilating as much as it might seem. I know there's nothing to be done but be still. I just get confused and troubled when I am foiled in my best efforts to achieve even stillness. I know that I must simply do what is before me, and be faithful in the small things, and learn to be steady and constant in my daily life. But as I go through this process of learning, the fact remains that decisions must be made. For example, what will "my daily life" consist of? How can I decide which of the little things I do every day are faithful and which are blocking the still small voice I need so much, even just to make these little decisions?
How can I be still and know, until I know how to be still?
The very existence of this post, in the face of everything I've just said within it, seems mildly comical. Even in this post I see at least hints of everything that I am troubled by; a determined (perhaps willful) quest for understanding, a certain amount of pride in my reasoning and little epiphanies, a quiet craving for distinction, a carefully shaped structure imposed by my mind on the raw material. I did command these words. This post was composed, a word which the dictionary defines variously as:
To to make or create by putting together parts or elements.
To create or produce (a literary or musical piece).
To make calm or tranquil.
To settle or adjust; reconcile.
To arrange aesthetically or artistically.
I think some of those are more desirable that others. But even given all this, when I read everything my Friends had to say to me on the subject, I really did feel led to write more, to be more clear about the precise nature of my concerns and aims. I actually gained some insight on the subject myself. So I wrote more. A lot more, apparently. Yeesh.
PS:I refuse to footnote my blog, but I'm indebted to the library of thinkquest.org for helping me refresh my memory about the workings of prisms and mirrors.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Midblog crisis
When I was in Cambridge visiting the unlinkable and inestimable Jeff, I was lucky enough to have dinner with the adorable Consider the Lilies author, Rob. Among many topics we briefly discussed blogging and/or the lack thereof. I have had a similar conversation with Jeff, and an ongoing debate with myself on the subject. I am having severe blogger's block these days. Not writer's block. I can't really stop writing, especially in my journal. And it's not that my thoughts are so private and precious that I don't want to share them. What is it?
I am beginning to think blogging is bad for me. Not that blogging is bad - I love blogs. I scavenge a lot of spiritual nourishment from blogs. I see blogs doing great work, as well as being funny, exciting, moving, and having the power to knit together far-flung Friends and seekers, and giving them a small window (and sometimes a door) into each other's daily lives. Since "community" often hardly exists in our "real lives", this growing gathering of online Friends is becoming important and vital, and it warms my heart to see the relationships it is creating not only widening by deepening. In short, I love blogs.
To the pure all things are pure, and to the simple, I expect, all things are simple. The truth dawns on me more and more each day just how far from plain I really am, however grey my wardrobe gets. I do not think plainly, I do not speak plainly, I do not write plainly...I don't even pray plainly, most of the time. I have a hugely vested interest in convincing the world at large that I am not only brilliant and funny and insightful, but spiritually precocious and voracious in my search for the truth, and my blog, whether in this incarnation or its previous existence as "Salivating Circuits" has been consistently used for these purposes. Not these purposes exclusively - I've meant it all very sincerely. But the query that keeps stopping me before I post is this...am I really, in this post, seeking to explore an issue of faith or practice or thought with the support and public "eldership" of this blogging community, or am I writing an Op-ed piece? The answer is generally always both, and these days I am very concious of the second half of that equation. I want people to know what I'm thinking at the moment, and I want them to think it's good.
Again, is this really so bad? Isn't it kind of natural? Well, yeah, but with me it is really a touch too natural. I write this blog for the Glory of Amanda, and not for the Glory of God. I've really got to find a way to harness my gifts and talents to that they don't run away with me in situations and applications that encourage me to seek praise for myself, and so far I have not been sucessful in that. Pruning far back and waiting humbly in silence may help, and I don't think that it is hiding my lamp under a bushel. The Light that we are commanded to let shine before all men is not our own little strands of twinkle-lights that we have draped all over us. I'm so busy with my tinsel fire that I will miss the spark that has been placed in me.
I really want to get rid of all of the stage props in my life - cardboard cutouts, tinfoil, spotlights aimed on the wrong mark. I do want to put away childish things and stop playing, and I want silence so deep, and light so inescapable, that I absolutely cannot fool myself anymore.
As well as being an outlet tailor-made for my most pernicious faults, I am also finding that this blog is ineffective as a threshing place. I am seeking as hard as ever, but I am coming close to the perilous and disheartening thought that God may sometimes give me knowledge without understanding or immediately discernable reason. I don't like this much - I am intensely addicted to understanding, and to sharing (showing off) my understanding. I am finding constantly that there are some things I know, but almost nothing I understand, when it comes to spirituality, and I think I'm supposed to try and come to some peace with that right now. Blogging encourages the opposite in me. Also, when I begin to blog about a thought I've had, I am likely to spend a lot of time researching and building it up, lending it a weight it may not have arrived with. Again, not necessarily bad, but not necessarily necessary, either.
I have been sad and frustrated when bloggers I am fond of lay down their blogs, even if they cite the most unimpeachable reasons for doing so. I don't intend to fully lay down this blog, but only to do my threshing in more solitude and silence, where I can concentrate more purely. If I have any grain left afterwards, I fully intend to come back here and share it. When I come across a bit of teaching, poetry, reflection, or other lovely thing in my reading, I'll certainly bring it here, as well.
Thank you all for your support and prayers.
I am beginning to think blogging is bad for me. Not that blogging is bad - I love blogs. I scavenge a lot of spiritual nourishment from blogs. I see blogs doing great work, as well as being funny, exciting, moving, and having the power to knit together far-flung Friends and seekers, and giving them a small window (and sometimes a door) into each other's daily lives. Since "community" often hardly exists in our "real lives", this growing gathering of online Friends is becoming important and vital, and it warms my heart to see the relationships it is creating not only widening by deepening. In short, I love blogs.
To the pure all things are pure, and to the simple, I expect, all things are simple. The truth dawns on me more and more each day just how far from plain I really am, however grey my wardrobe gets. I do not think plainly, I do not speak plainly, I do not write plainly...I don't even pray plainly, most of the time. I have a hugely vested interest in convincing the world at large that I am not only brilliant and funny and insightful, but spiritually precocious and voracious in my search for the truth, and my blog, whether in this incarnation or its previous existence as "Salivating Circuits" has been consistently used for these purposes. Not these purposes exclusively - I've meant it all very sincerely. But the query that keeps stopping me before I post is this...am I really, in this post, seeking to explore an issue of faith or practice or thought with the support and public "eldership" of this blogging community, or am I writing an Op-ed piece? The answer is generally always both, and these days I am very concious of the second half of that equation. I want people to know what I'm thinking at the moment, and I want them to think it's good.
Again, is this really so bad? Isn't it kind of natural? Well, yeah, but with me it is really a touch too natural. I write this blog for the Glory of Amanda, and not for the Glory of God. I've really got to find a way to harness my gifts and talents to that they don't run away with me in situations and applications that encourage me to seek praise for myself, and so far I have not been sucessful in that. Pruning far back and waiting humbly in silence may help, and I don't think that it is hiding my lamp under a bushel. The Light that we are commanded to let shine before all men is not our own little strands of twinkle-lights that we have draped all over us. I'm so busy with my tinsel fire that I will miss the spark that has been placed in me.
I really want to get rid of all of the stage props in my life - cardboard cutouts, tinfoil, spotlights aimed on the wrong mark. I do want to put away childish things and stop playing, and I want silence so deep, and light so inescapable, that I absolutely cannot fool myself anymore.
As well as being an outlet tailor-made for my most pernicious faults, I am also finding that this blog is ineffective as a threshing place. I am seeking as hard as ever, but I am coming close to the perilous and disheartening thought that God may sometimes give me knowledge without understanding or immediately discernable reason. I don't like this much - I am intensely addicted to understanding, and to sharing (showing off) my understanding. I am finding constantly that there are some things I know, but almost nothing I understand, when it comes to spirituality, and I think I'm supposed to try and come to some peace with that right now. Blogging encourages the opposite in me. Also, when I begin to blog about a thought I've had, I am likely to spend a lot of time researching and building it up, lending it a weight it may not have arrived with. Again, not necessarily bad, but not necessarily necessary, either.
I have been sad and frustrated when bloggers I am fond of lay down their blogs, even if they cite the most unimpeachable reasons for doing so. I don't intend to fully lay down this blog, but only to do my threshing in more solitude and silence, where I can concentrate more purely. If I have any grain left afterwards, I fully intend to come back here and share it. When I come across a bit of teaching, poetry, reflection, or other lovely thing in my reading, I'll certainly bring it here, as well.
Thank you all for your support and prayers.
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