There is a very beautiful little series over on Kwakersaur dealing with non-violent communication.
I especially appreciate Kwake's take on the subject because he is someone who I feel deeply knows the struggle to find a way of living, loving and communicating in a world that is so hurtful and so easy to hurt.
How do you go beyond "If you don't have nothing nice to say, don't say nothing at all" when the frayed emotions of everyone involved can really can endure nothing at all? In his current post, Kwake points out that there is always a moment of choice before we react emotionally, even to stimuli we have been deeply trained to react to.
The hard part is catching that split second before you switch to auto-pilot. This interstice is especially tiny when dealing with especially ingrained reaction patterns. All of my friends relate the same story of how they regress when they visit home for more than a day or two. Suddenly they become the sullen 12 year old they left behind with their twinbed, and are vulnerable to having all of their most obvious buttons pushed. Then, after the inevitable doorslamming moment, they lean their head against the wall and think "Oh my god, I'm still falling for that, after all this time?"
I am trying to get home to visit my family for the first time since Christmas. Since Christmas, my relationship with my mom has grown and matured more than at any time in memory, and I am very hopeful that the visit can be peaceful and a blessing for all of us. I do know that no matter what inner peace I may have scraped together, and no matter what advances we have made in communication, there will be buttons pushed.
Over e-mail, it's been easier to engage the "close your eyes and count to ten" strategy before responding to the hotspot. I think, until enlightenment, we never really let anything go for good, and all the visceral little resentments and sore spots remain hidden, waiting to spring out at the worst possible moment. With skill, grace, good humour and good luck, you can forestall these things one instance at a time, about half of the time. I'm sorry to say that it sometimes seems like my power to do so if more affected by the circumstances than by my own virtue. Did I eat a good breakfast? Is the sun shining? Is it payday? Did I just jam my hand in the car door? Aside from somehow finding the magic combination of circumstances that will facilitate a loving response every time, what other factors can you control?
Sometimes someone will say or do or write something that brings the gall into my throat, and even if I manage to catch that split-second of choice, I realize that I am going to have to slay at least ten dragons before I can come out with a loving response. If I give myself the time to do that, I can usually manage it. If the situation is especially fraught, sometimes that dragon-slaying time seems like a luxury I can't afford. I think this is may be the crucial error I make when in conflict. There is always time for a few deep breaths. Until the loving response becomes as instinctual as the emotional one, it is important to be honest enough with yourself that you need this. The times I have gone home, pridefully imagining that the loving response will be automatic, I've been painfully taught otherwise.
I would love to hear other people's experience with this, as I gird up to go home. Especially, how do you foster an attitude of loving silence in the face of attack without appearing sullen or hostile?
(Really, though this is a concern, I am dying to go home and hug and kiss all my little brothers and sisters, who I miss so much, and I really just can't wait to see that blessed baby!)
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A little more Eliot.
This was supposed to be a comment to my own earlier Eliot post, but as usual, it grew. A lot of the things I have been thinking, praying, reading and quoting about seem to be drawing together a bit.
I had run away screaming from Eliot some years ago, and now, from this side of the divide, I'm finding so much to relate to and marvel over, especially on the subject of doubt/renunciation/surrender as a path to God - a faith that can look like despair; a certain kind of holy despair of our own self-created notions of God.
I just read The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong this weekend, which, being a theological memoir of sorts, is organized around the first poem from Eliot's Ash Wednesday. Eliot's hardness around these concepts is likely more than just a literary conceit, and that troubles me a little bit. Truth without love is cruelty, etc, and several years ago I read these lines as cruel and bitter. However, I've recently come to realize that love without truth is its own subtle cruelty, and in that light, being warned by Eliot that parts of the path are lined with bitter herbs seems like an austere but true love.
Lately, and continuously, I have been experiencing the death of my minor gods that I had named God. This poem speaks to me from the vantage point of a soul who has just finished mourning his lost Ego. The hopelessness and weariness bearing down on every line comes from a realization that, as Gertrude Stein said: "There is no answer. There never has been an answer. There never will be an answer. That's the answer."
Of course the Answer is Love, or God, or Christ, however you want to say it. But there is no answer on a rational level, which is what some of us humbugs have been slobbering for, to the point where we have sometimes obscured our way to the true Answer.
After thrashing around looking for my own answers, there came a very difficult and very painful stage. I began it quite a while ago...and it is still going on. Back in November in my old blog, I began to accept that maybe I needed to surrender to God, before I could know him. And that was really scary. That sounded like the "tie your mind behind your back" theology I had run from, the animatronic "ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die" that I saw as the damning first principle of organized religion and the atrocities it has sponsored throughout history. I desperately didn't want to be stiff-necked and miss out on God that way. But to "surrender to God" by bludgeoning myself into belief seemed wrong as well. I couldn't bear to lie and say that I believed in "God" as defined by this or that organization - that felt like a worse sacrilege. I worried that I had painted myself into a corner, and set myself in an unbearable position. Deny God and be damned...Lie about God and be damned. It was a very lonely time.
Karen Armstrong wrote something that grabbed my heart when I read it:
The Middle English word "beleven" originally meant "to love"; and the Latin "credo ("I believe") probably derived from the phrase "cor do": "I give my heart."
Saint Anslem of Canterbury had written, "Credo ut intellegam," usually translated "I believe in order that I may understand." I had always assumed that this meant that I had to discipline my rebellious mind and force it to bow to the official orthodoxy, and that as a result of this submission, I would learn to understand a higher truth...But no..."Credo ut intellegam" should be translated "I commit myself in order that I may understand."
All of this, added to what I am learning from Merton, and what I have been digesting from The Cloud of Unknowing, added to what has been shown to my soul in the few times I have achieved stillness, has brought forth a gentle but stark understanding of so many things that troubled me before: what did it mean to empty yourself, what did it mean to be broken before God, what is obedience, what it the responsible suspension of the rational faculty, what does it mean to "make yourself low before the mystery"?
I can't say I know these answers, but having finally reached a peak of spiritual exhaustion, like a child who is all cried out and limp and damp after a fearsome tantrum, I do feel strange and still and quiet and empty and docile...for now. And in this state, I feel as if maybe I understand a little what it is that we are asked to give up, and what we are allowed to keep. I know that I am not obliged by God to believe a single thing, though I know I will be obliged to do many, many things. There is no "article of faith" to pledge allegiance to. I am called solely to Love, in all of its hideousness and beauty. I am called to love for the sake of Love, to Love God, and to do God's will. Another Merton fragment:
"If you want to know what is meant by "God's will" in man's life, this is one way to get a good idea of it. "God's will" is certainly found in anything that is required of us in order that we may be united with one another in love."
This of course, is what has been being said for thousands and thousands of years in nearly every major religion. Compassion, and love, for their own sake. Any other theology is in service of this basic tenet. Every path, discipline, spiritual exercise, practice, yoga, law, virtue, or work has as its End this tenet. I am not even embarassed that I managed to know this for so long without being convinced of it. It makes me so happy that I no longer need to figure out a single thing about God, nor do I need to figure out if he even exists at all. I don't need to understand Him, or even believe in Him, to be able to love Him.
To give up, absolutely, all my hope for understanding, all my hope for an unshakable, empirically justifiable belief in God, all of my straining and suffering and longing, this is a very stark poverty. The scariest words of Jesus: "If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell." have begun to make sense. If I am not doing God's will because I am waiting until I find a God I can believe in without reservation, I am going to damn myself, in whatever sense of the word "damned" you'd like to use. My eye and my hand, or my hope and my faith, are good in and of themselves, but must not ever stand in the way of God's will.
This is what was meant by the saying I had long ago dismissed as nihilist: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
To be emptied of hope, faith, and understanding seems like such a horrifying prospect. And it is. But the joy in this realization is this: whenever I read of a saint's "Dark night of the Soul" or spiritual desert, my heart was crushed. They would say things like "I could no longer believe in anything and nothing made sense, but I still believed, and then I came through it, because I believed anyway, even when I could not see." I think now I have a better idea of what they meant. Through these moments of absolute intellectual and spiritual despair, the thread that held them and kept them from hurtling through space was not a witless rote affirmation of a truth they couldn't see. (The image that has always come to mind is a little Natalie Wood near the end of Miracle on 34th Street rolling her eyes, chewing her gum, and chanting in a listless monotone..."I believe, I believe, it's silly but I believe...")The thread that held them was their love and desire for God, even when it seemed He was an illusion. The Beatle was right...all you need is love. :)
None of this is flippant. This is not a loophole or an easy way out...on the contrary. I won't go into paragraphs and paragraphs about how very hard it is to love truly and purely, with a Divine and not a petty broken human love, because I know you know.
Anyhow, the Eliot. I want to give you the first and the last of Ash Wednesday.
I
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this mans gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there
is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy on us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
I had run away screaming from Eliot some years ago, and now, from this side of the divide, I'm finding so much to relate to and marvel over, especially on the subject of doubt/renunciation/surrender as a path to God - a faith that can look like despair; a certain kind of holy despair of our own self-created notions of God.
I just read The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong this weekend, which, being a theological memoir of sorts, is organized around the first poem from Eliot's Ash Wednesday. Eliot's hardness around these concepts is likely more than just a literary conceit, and that troubles me a little bit. Truth without love is cruelty, etc, and several years ago I read these lines as cruel and bitter. However, I've recently come to realize that love without truth is its own subtle cruelty, and in that light, being warned by Eliot that parts of the path are lined with bitter herbs seems like an austere but true love.
Lately, and continuously, I have been experiencing the death of my minor gods that I had named God. This poem speaks to me from the vantage point of a soul who has just finished mourning his lost Ego. The hopelessness and weariness bearing down on every line comes from a realization that, as Gertrude Stein said: "There is no answer. There never has been an answer. There never will be an answer. That's the answer."
Of course the Answer is Love, or God, or Christ, however you want to say it. But there is no answer on a rational level, which is what some of us humbugs have been slobbering for, to the point where we have sometimes obscured our way to the true Answer.
After thrashing around looking for my own answers, there came a very difficult and very painful stage. I began it quite a while ago...and it is still going on. Back in November in my old blog, I began to accept that maybe I needed to surrender to God, before I could know him. And that was really scary. That sounded like the "tie your mind behind your back" theology I had run from, the animatronic "ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die" that I saw as the damning first principle of organized religion and the atrocities it has sponsored throughout history. I desperately didn't want to be stiff-necked and miss out on God that way. But to "surrender to God" by bludgeoning myself into belief seemed wrong as well. I couldn't bear to lie and say that I believed in "God" as defined by this or that organization - that felt like a worse sacrilege. I worried that I had painted myself into a corner, and set myself in an unbearable position. Deny God and be damned...Lie about God and be damned. It was a very lonely time.
Karen Armstrong wrote something that grabbed my heart when I read it:
The Middle English word "beleven" originally meant "to love"; and the Latin "credo ("I believe") probably derived from the phrase "cor do": "I give my heart."
Saint Anslem of Canterbury had written, "Credo ut intellegam," usually translated "I believe in order that I may understand." I had always assumed that this meant that I had to discipline my rebellious mind and force it to bow to the official orthodoxy, and that as a result of this submission, I would learn to understand a higher truth...But no..."Credo ut intellegam" should be translated "I commit myself in order that I may understand."
All of this, added to what I am learning from Merton, and what I have been digesting from The Cloud of Unknowing, added to what has been shown to my soul in the few times I have achieved stillness, has brought forth a gentle but stark understanding of so many things that troubled me before: what did it mean to empty yourself, what did it mean to be broken before God, what is obedience, what it the responsible suspension of the rational faculty, what does it mean to "make yourself low before the mystery"?
I can't say I know these answers, but having finally reached a peak of spiritual exhaustion, like a child who is all cried out and limp and damp after a fearsome tantrum, I do feel strange and still and quiet and empty and docile...for now. And in this state, I feel as if maybe I understand a little what it is that we are asked to give up, and what we are allowed to keep. I know that I am not obliged by God to believe a single thing, though I know I will be obliged to do many, many things. There is no "article of faith" to pledge allegiance to. I am called solely to Love, in all of its hideousness and beauty. I am called to love for the sake of Love, to Love God, and to do God's will. Another Merton fragment:
"If you want to know what is meant by "God's will" in man's life, this is one way to get a good idea of it. "God's will" is certainly found in anything that is required of us in order that we may be united with one another in love."
This of course, is what has been being said for thousands and thousands of years in nearly every major religion. Compassion, and love, for their own sake. Any other theology is in service of this basic tenet. Every path, discipline, spiritual exercise, practice, yoga, law, virtue, or work has as its End this tenet. I am not even embarassed that I managed to know this for so long without being convinced of it. It makes me so happy that I no longer need to figure out a single thing about God, nor do I need to figure out if he even exists at all. I don't need to understand Him, or even believe in Him, to be able to love Him.
To give up, absolutely, all my hope for understanding, all my hope for an unshakable, empirically justifiable belief in God, all of my straining and suffering and longing, this is a very stark poverty. The scariest words of Jesus: "If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell." have begun to make sense. If I am not doing God's will because I am waiting until I find a God I can believe in without reservation, I am going to damn myself, in whatever sense of the word "damned" you'd like to use. My eye and my hand, or my hope and my faith, are good in and of themselves, but must not ever stand in the way of God's will.
This is what was meant by the saying I had long ago dismissed as nihilist: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
To be emptied of hope, faith, and understanding seems like such a horrifying prospect. And it is. But the joy in this realization is this: whenever I read of a saint's "Dark night of the Soul" or spiritual desert, my heart was crushed. They would say things like "I could no longer believe in anything and nothing made sense, but I still believed, and then I came through it, because I believed anyway, even when I could not see." I think now I have a better idea of what they meant. Through these moments of absolute intellectual and spiritual despair, the thread that held them and kept them from hurtling through space was not a witless rote affirmation of a truth they couldn't see. (The image that has always come to mind is a little Natalie Wood near the end of Miracle on 34th Street rolling her eyes, chewing her gum, and chanting in a listless monotone..."I believe, I believe, it's silly but I believe...")The thread that held them was their love and desire for God, even when it seemed He was an illusion. The Beatle was right...all you need is love. :)
None of this is flippant. This is not a loophole or an easy way out...on the contrary. I won't go into paragraphs and paragraphs about how very hard it is to love truly and purely, with a Divine and not a petty broken human love, because I know you know.
Anyhow, the Eliot. I want to give you the first and the last of Ash Wednesday.
I
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this mans gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there
is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy on us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Redecorating.
So, what do you guys think? I just like that the template is called "Blue Tic Tac". :) There are some little things I'd like to change...I want my Fry quote back up at the top, and not under that dumb "about" heading in the sidebar, but I'm having a hard time figuring out if I can do that amount of refiguring. Other than that I think I much prefer this template. It's easier to read on my computer...thoughts are welcome.
There are also some new links...a few new blogs, and some new plain dress resources.
There are also some new links...a few new blogs, and some new plain dress resources.
New Seeds of Contemplation Part II
I'm finding this passage very helpful as I work through my relationships to people, things, and especially my relationship to meeting and to the institution of Quakerism. There has been a lot of talk recently about the problems in the Society, and the disappointment and disaffectation a lot of people are going through. In many of my relationships that I find painful or troubling or difficult, I am quick to point out the problem with the other party or thing, thinking "if only ________ was not ________ then I wouldn't __________."
It is really, really, really difficult to break out of this pattern, especially when the other party or thing really is profoundly/obviously imperfect (institutional Quakerism, for example) or dysfunctional (friends, family members, etc.) It is also applicable in the light of our simplicity testimony and our explorations of the plain tradition.
I am struck, as I read the passage, with a deep caution, as well. Just because "when we are perfectly in grace" all things are lawful and pure, it doesn't mean that we are not obligated to take precautionary measures until we have enough grace. If, for example, I placed myself in the middle of close relationship with some of my dysfunctional family members, before I was ready, the consequences could be terrible.
There is great hope and also a great weariness in knowing that all the anguish I experience and every single twinge of pain and sadness and betrayal I suffer is due to my own perverted relationship to the thing, person, or insitution, and not in the percieved wrongness of them, no matter how unmistakable the wrongness may seem. (I believe this is also largely true of the spiritual anguish described in the previous message...my pain at my failure to properly love and understand God is due to (suprise!) failure to properly love and understand God.) I imagine this search for right relationship in all things may be a lifelong struggle.
-----------------------------
Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our "self," that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egoistic will. it is when we refer all things to this outward and false "self" that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self...
...The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. In His love we possess all things and enjoy fruition of them, finding Him in them all. And thus as we go about the world, everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, purifies us and plants in us something more of contemplation and of heaven.
Short of this perfection, created things do not bring us joy but pain. Until we love God perfectly, everything in the world will be able to hurt us. And the greatest misfortune is to be dead to the pain they inflict on us, and not to realize what it is.
For until we love God perfectly His world is full of contradiction. The things He created attract us to Him and yet keep us away from Him. They draw us on and they stop us dead. We find Him in them to some extent and then we don't find Him in them at all.
Just when we think we have discovered some joy in them, the joy turns into sorrow; and just when they are beginning to please us the pleasure turns into pain.
In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell. We find something of the joy of blessedness and something of the pain of loss, which is damnation.
The fulfillment we find in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reality that is from God and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is actually there: a greater fulfllment than any created thing is capable of giving. Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures. But to worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.
It is really, really, really difficult to break out of this pattern, especially when the other party or thing really is profoundly/obviously imperfect (institutional Quakerism, for example) or dysfunctional (friends, family members, etc.) It is also applicable in the light of our simplicity testimony and our explorations of the plain tradition.
I am struck, as I read the passage, with a deep caution, as well. Just because "when we are perfectly in grace" all things are lawful and pure, it doesn't mean that we are not obligated to take precautionary measures until we have enough grace. If, for example, I placed myself in the middle of close relationship with some of my dysfunctional family members, before I was ready, the consequences could be terrible.
There is great hope and also a great weariness in knowing that all the anguish I experience and every single twinge of pain and sadness and betrayal I suffer is due to my own perverted relationship to the thing, person, or insitution, and not in the percieved wrongness of them, no matter how unmistakable the wrongness may seem. (I believe this is also largely true of the spiritual anguish described in the previous message...my pain at my failure to properly love and understand God is due to (suprise!) failure to properly love and understand God.) I imagine this search for right relationship in all things may be a lifelong struggle.
-----------------------------
Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our "self," that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egoistic will. it is when we refer all things to this outward and false "self" that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self...
...The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. In His love we possess all things and enjoy fruition of them, finding Him in them all. And thus as we go about the world, everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, purifies us and plants in us something more of contemplation and of heaven.
Short of this perfection, created things do not bring us joy but pain. Until we love God perfectly, everything in the world will be able to hurt us. And the greatest misfortune is to be dead to the pain they inflict on us, and not to realize what it is.
For until we love God perfectly His world is full of contradiction. The things He created attract us to Him and yet keep us away from Him. They draw us on and they stop us dead. We find Him in them to some extent and then we don't find Him in them at all.
Just when we think we have discovered some joy in them, the joy turns into sorrow; and just when they are beginning to please us the pleasure turns into pain.
In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell. We find something of the joy of blessedness and something of the pain of loss, which is damnation.
The fulfillment we find in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reality that is from God and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is actually there: a greater fulfllment than any created thing is capable of giving. Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures. But to worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Excerpt from New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton
Over the next few days, I want to share some excerpts from this amazing book as I discover them. I am being greatly nourished by the wisdom I am finding, all of which has been very applicable to my current path.
--------------------------
Let no man hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish, or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep truth there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt, and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.
Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatable with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive aquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to belive - for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the space that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."
In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who." He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am."
--------------------------
Let no man hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish, or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep truth there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt, and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.
Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatable with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive aquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to belive - for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the space that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."
In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is. He may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who." He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am."
Monday, May 09, 2005
TS Eliot: The Rock Abridged
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
...
The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
...
You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.
In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
...
In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.
...
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
...
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.
The work of creation is never without trevail
Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
...
The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
...
You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.
In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
...
In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.
...
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
...
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.
The work of creation is never without trevail
Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Happy Mother's Day
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Elsa
So here's the baby sis, looking very adorable and babyish. 8.2 lbs and counting! I'm saving up to go back to North Carolina and visit her. My mom seems to be doing better, too. Continued prayers are very welcome!
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