Previous
Posts:
2008:
#51-60
(7/13)
#41-50
(5/27)
#31-40 (2/15)
2007:
#21-30 (10/3)
#11-20 (6/28)
#1-10 (3/31)
On St. Augustine (2/3)
On St. John Climacus (1/26)
2006:
12/25
9/24
9/5
8/23
6/1
An Introduction (5/10)
|
#11-20 (6/28/07)
11. [A
Personal God]
12. [An Impersonal God, or No God At All]
13. [More on Prayer, & Faith]
14. [Painting & Writing]
15. [There Are No Wholes]
16. [A House]
17. [A Yankee Game]
18. [A Georgia Memory]
19. [Neither Fire Nor iPhones]
20. [The Real Complexity]
11. [A Personal God]
About ten years ago a friend told me it was useless (even
pompous) to say anything to God but Thank you, arrogant
to go into a litany of wants & hopes & doubts, since God knows
what you’re going to pray for already, knows what you’ll ask for
& (if anybody does) what you really need.
& technically he was right. A personal God does know all these
things. & this made sense to me because even then I couldn’t see
value in anything but accepting the good with the bad—which a
simple Thank You acknowledged. But this also destroyed
what seems the essence of a personal God—a actual relationship.
& also it’s humbling to say things—to thank or ask or doubt—to a
God that knows before you do what words will come next. It’s
humbling to know this as you say the words & pray the prayer, &
it’s a relief to be able to continue. It’s a relief & a freedom
to believe in a God so generous & giving that he lets us prattle
on about things he’s more than aware of than us, & even more
humbling & freeing that this God lets us go on & on simply
because he knows it will bring us comfort. That seems to be the
love of God, his patience & understanding.
12. [An Impersonal God, or No God At All]
But then, at the same time, something like Buddhism is just
wonderful. Saying before he died Be lamps unto yourselves,
& assuring us no scripture or person or ritual or God or saints
or anybody or anything can save you but yourself—this is
wonderful.
& the teachings of the
Buddha I react to immediately are the simple ones this,
teachings which render irrelevant many of the theological (or
other) distractions religious practices get themselves into. But
on occasion even the Buddha seems theological & arrogant &
distracted by his own beliefs, as in this passage when—speaking
to a Hindu devotee—he pretty much dismisses entirely any idea of
a personal God:
Then you assert, Vasettha, that not one of the
Brahmans, nor their teachers, nor their teacher’s pupils, nor
their ancestors back for seven generations, has ever seen Brahma
face to face. And that even the Rishis of old, the authors and
utterers of the ancient form of words which the Brahmans of
today so carefully intone and recite precisely as they have been
handed down, that even they did not pretend to know or to have
seen where or whence or whither Brahma is. And yet, Vasettha,
these Brahmans pretend that they can show the path to union with
that which they have not seen and which they know not, saying:
This is the straight path, this is the direct way, which leads
him, who acts according to it, into a state of union with
Brahma. Now what think you, Vasettha, does it not follow that
this being so, that the talk of these Brahmans versed though
they be in the Three Vedas, is foolish talk.
[…] Just, Vasettha, as if a man should say, How I long for, how
I love the most beautiful woman in this land! And people should
ask him, Well, good friend! this most beautiful woman in the
land whom you thus love and long for, do you know whether she is
a noble lady or a Brahman woman, or of the trader caste, or a
sudra? But when so asked he should answer, No, I do not know.
And when people should ask him, Well, good friend! this most
beautiful woman in all the land whom you so love and long for,
do you know her name, or her family name, whether she is tall or
short, dark or of medium complexion, black or fair, or in what
village or town or city she dwells? But when so asked, he should
answer, I do not know. And when people should say to him, So
then, good friend, whom you know not, neither have seen, how do
you love and long for her? And then when so asked, he should
answer, Nevertheless, I love her. Now what think you, Vasettha?
Would it not turn out, that being so, that the talk of that man
was foolish talk?
[…] Again, Vasettha. If this river Akiravati were full of water
even to the brim and overflowing, and a man should come up and
want to cross over because he had business on the other side,
and he standing on this bank should say, Come hither, O further
bank! come over to this side! Now what think you, Vasettha,
would the further bank of the river, because of the man’s
invoking and praying and hoping and praising, come over to this
side?
[…] Now, Vasettha, when you have been among Brahmans, listening
as they talked among themselves, learners and teachers and those
aged and well stricken in years, what have you learned from them
and of them? Is Brahma in possession of wives and wealth, or is
he not?
He is not, Gotama.
Is his mind full of anger, or is it free from anger?
Free from anger, Gotama.
Is his mind full of malice or free from malice?
Free from malice, Gotama.
Is his mind depraved, or pure?
It is pure, Gotama?
Has he self-mastery, or has he not?
He has, Gotama.
Now what think you, Vasettha? Are the Brahmans versed in the
Three Vedas, are they in possession of wives and wealth, or are
they not?
They are, Gotama.
Have they anger in their hearts?
They have, Gotama.
Do they bear malice, or do they not?
They do, Gotama.
Are they pure in heart or are they not?
They are not, Gotama.
[…] So, Vasettha, the Brahmans, versed though they be in the
Three Vedas, while they rest in confidence are really sinking.
They think they are crossing over into some happier land, but so
sinking they can only arrive at despair. Therefore, the
threefold knowledge of the Brahmans in the Vedas is a waterless
desert, their knowledge a pathless waste, their knowledge their
destruction.
This is great, & powerful, but like a Christian
proselytizing outside of a supermarket or on a streetcorner, it
leaves out faith & is too entirely certain of itself. But the
best of the Buddha’s teachings are the small anecdotes. One is
of a man poisoned by an arrow, on the verge of death, & the
Buddha says he doesn’t want to be told who shot the arrow at
him, or what the arrow is made of, or how the arrow was
manufactured—the man simply wants his life to be saved, & that
it’s this focus on what amount to irrelevant details (of
theology or philosophy, about the afterlife, etc.) that wastes
so much time, & is so far away from a simple & direct & pure
experience of a life being saved & lived. It’s simple stories
like this that get me; but it’s when the Buddha gets beyond his
experiences & into saying for sure that the Vedas are rubbish, &
that he’s got all the answers—now he’s moving into theology, now
he’s no longer next to Jesus but instead St. Paul.
The Hindu saint Ramakrishna (a guy I’ll be quoting about quite a
bit sometime soon!) says it much more simply & beautifully,
though, than either the accent on a personal God, or an accent
away from it. He compares the practices of jnana yoga & bhakti
yoga. The first is the impersonal way of realizing there is only
Brahman, & the world is an illusion, & nothing but realizing
this means anything. The second is the way of devotion, the way
of a personal God—worshipping, praying, singing, living in the
world. For Ramakrishna these are both right. He admits one can
start out with the personal & end with the impersonal, yet even
this isn’t necessary, & none of it should be thought of as a
“progression” or “growing”—it’s rather a way of realizing which
form of religious belief suits you best, & sticking to it. It is
very nearly all a ritual, all a metaphor, all a conscious acting
& play. & it supports lives.
13. [More on Prayer, & Faith]
Whenever I would try to pray anything beyond a Thank You to
God, what stopped me was the intruding voice behind my own that
said what I was doing was ridiculous & stupid—or it would simply
be a litany of swear words that broke me from concentrating &
had me say to myself I can’t pray while THIS is also running
in the back of my head!
But recently it hit me what faith really is. Faith isn’t perfect
concentration, where none of those other layers intrude; faith
is dirty & muddied up (if it were certain it wouldn’t be faith,
after all, it would be fact), & faith begs that I do the best I
can to pray deeply, & to continue doing so, no matter when or if
or for how long those other layers crop up. Faith is hoping
that, if there is a God listening, he’ll understand & only take
the first layer of what I’m saying, & have some sympathy with
the struggle.
Thomas Merton says wonderful things about faith, stuff that
should make most partakers in religious arguments be quiet. I
honestly wonder what kind of faith fundamentalist believers must
have, spending most of their time trying to convert people or
prove other people wrong. Even if (taking a majority of faiths
at hand here) the historical reality of Jesus Christ, or
the Buddha, or Moses, or Mohammad can be proven, & even if that
proof is a cornerstone in the structure of a certain
religion—what does that proof or historical reality have to do
with faith? It may have something to do in the actual grounding
of an institution, but what is a religion if it has no faith but
only some smug sense of certain factual history, if it is only
an “institution”? The beauty of religion, & that which can
separate it from nearly all other human endeavors, is that
certainty is not required—salesmen & politicians & talk-radio
hosts need certainty & judgment to polarize people & study their
reactions so that what they say & do can be as effective as
possible; religion only needs faith, quiet faith. Yet this is
always drowned out by the loudest faith that demands recognition
& respect, that cannot exist unless someone else knows about it,
disagrees with it, or is prepared to have his mind changed.
Christians always want to throw Christ’s words to Thomas at
unbelievers—”Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have
believed.” (John 20:29) Yet it’s even more powerfully thrown
back, many of them trying themselves to prove to the world that
Look what I’ve seen! So why don’t you believe? What they
have isn’t faith, but a kind of desperate certainty, or hope for
it, that will make them comfortable. I would much rather be
doubting like Thomas for the rest of my days, & ending up having
faith in what I’ve never seen, than wandering the earth with the
arrogance of those who are so sure just how saved they are.
Until now I’ve never understood the disciples’ apparent
cluelessness in the Bible, never really getting what Jesus was
doing even after witnessing a miracle. They’re constantly
confused, always bickering among themselves, always questioning
Christ about what’s going on. But it makes some more sense to me
now; in a way these guys have more faith simply by their
bewildered & wonderfully human ignorance. They’re desperate &
searching, not superior at all.
But Merton talks about these things much better than I do:
The unknown remains unknown. It is still a
mystery, for it cannot cease to be one. The function of faith is
not to reduce mystery to rational clarity, but to integrate the
unknown and the known together in a living whole, in which we
are more and more able to transcend the limitations of our
external self. […] This, to my mind, is the crucially important
aspect of faith which is too often ignored today. Faith is not
just conformity, it is life. […]
Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort.
You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in
the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able
to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel
good for three or four days—until you fold up and collapse into
despair. […]
But true faith must be able to go on even when everything else
is taken away from us. Only a humble man is able to accept faith
on these terms, so completely without reservation that he is
glad of it in its pure state, and welcomes it happily even when
nothing else comes with it, and when everything else is taken
away. […]
It should be the great pride and strength of every Catholic that
we have no ready, ten-minute, brisk, chatty answer to the
question of what we believe, except in the words of the
Apostle’s Creed which are not really comprehensible to
scientists anyway. It should be our greatest strength that we
don’t have, on the end of our tongues, a brief and pithy
rationalization for the structure and purpose of the whole
universe, only a statement that, to a scientist, is a scandal:
an article of faith. God created the world and everything in it
for Himself, and the heavens proclaim His glory. It should be
our greatest strength that we don’t have any rationalization to
explain the war “scientifically” and have no “scientific”
solution to all our economic problems.
14. [Painting]
I’ve been possessed lately by painting, & how (along the
lines of #7 earlier) they can help me tell stories. Out of a
bunch of stuff on prehistoric art from the caves of France &
Spain, to the Renaissance & modern art, two things suggested
themselves immediately for this point: Picasso’s Blind Man’s
Meal, & Van Gogh’s Weeping Man:
 
What can these two images tell me about conveying feeling &
humanity to the world through the only medium I can even attempt
(writing)? First, that most of what’s written—including this!—is
a lot of baggage & hot air & wasted space. A short story about
either of these guys couldn’t possibly convey as much as the
images themselves, & our own minds experiencing them & creating
a narrative on our own. There’s a fire behind the weeping man, &
we can wonder if he set that himself, if he’s cold, if this is
his own room; or if he’s in a public place where the fire
already was—& so is he sobbing like this in front of others who
don’t care for him? The same for the blind man—with all the blue
you immediately want to feel sorry for him, but it could just as
well be a common thing for him, since assuming he’s been blind
for years what seems strange & meant to evoke pity is pretty
normal for him. & I also wonder how many times he’s reached out
for that jug, & yet how wonderful it must feel, each time, to
finally grasp it, cold against his fingertips.
These two images make me almost ashamed of the shoddy words I
have to work with, & how easily & awfully they’re used in ways a
million times less direct & pure than this. Why should there be
an entire novel, or short story, written about either of these
guys? What can a full biography of their lives, or even this
particular day where we see them, mean to a few pages, or even a
paragraph, of this exact moment—a man on a chair weeping,
sobbing; a blind man at table, eating. Not one shred of the kind
of “story” or “narrative” we’re used to is needed. But instead
we’re given what a lot of modern writing is—something written to
entertain & be like a movie, providing atmosphere & setting
before getting to the weeping man or blind guy; or a kind of
writing so complicated & indirect all we’re sure of is that
words are meant more for games, that not even the emotions of
these men can be explained, & that the writer himself can only
tremble before a world so complex & baffling. Over the past few
years I’ve gladly discovered those writers & those stories &
poems that believe things can be communicated, even divine
vision, where only the utmost confidence & simplicity is
evident, where nothing is needed but something truly human.
At one point I was on the sidelines cheering when I read T. S.
Eliot saying, “We can only say that it appears likely that poets
in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be
difficult,” this because of the “complexities” of modern
life; as a result, Eliot said, poets “must become more and more
comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force,
to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.” Nothing
can shake my respect for Eliot, or the permanent place I’ve
always given his Four Quartets, but what I’ve quoted him
saying here is rubbish. I don’t think Eliot could have written
any other way than he did—I don’t think any writers have any
control, at last, over how or what they come to write, only over
whether it’s written—but to justify the way the muse spoke to
him by saying “society made me do it” is silly.
Two things pointed me to this—one, mentioned in #8, was
realizing that I was becoming needlessly distracted by a man’s
appearance—old, with a cane, yet with all the modern electronic
accessories as well—& trying to make that into a poem, &
ostensibly one about the “complexity” of life in the modern
world, & the coexistence of the young & old, & how technology
catches on with some & not others, etc.—all this rather than
seeing what was really poetically possible about this guy, which
was his simple humanity, & how nice he was, & how none of the
really poetic things about him had anything to do with those
easily noticed & easily distracting things, like his
appearance—& how, in reality, the world isn’t complex at all. A
flashing light isn’t interesting just because it flashes. & the
fact that many lights are flashing at once isn’t a sign of
complexity—only distraction.
The second thing was the titanic experience of the two dozen &
more short poems Robinson Jeffers’ wrote towards the end of his
life. Jeffers was born a year before Eliot, & died three years
before him, yet he was able to write poetry of such simplicity &
directness & beauty, in the midst of the modern world, that
easily overflow with the meaning Eliot mentions above. This
clued me in to see that what we take for complexity—the internet
& the rate information (not knowledge or wisdom, just
information) is passed, the ability to know & experience other
cultures instantaneously, & the rapidity of it all—is really
just distraction. Or, if it is complex—so what? The Egyptians &
Hebrews & ancient residents of Mesopotamia lived, I imagine, in
a much more frightening world than our own—yet the lasting
literature that has come down from them is, in their own way,
simple & direct. Even the Book of Ezekiel, for all its
obscurities, is put together & presented in a tremendously
straightforward way. There are visions, & an extremely pissed
off God, but there are no tricks; there’s a man possessed by God
with a torrent of worried & awful & inexplicable things to
say—but there is no worry that words might fail him, no worry
that he might have to crack some irony to get through to the
next verse. Read the very first verse of Ezekiel & you can
imagine what a modern novelist might do with it, setting the
stage & the scene & giving some background before finally
getting this, which appears with nothing but its own inherent
power & confidence:
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the
fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the
captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened,
and I saw visions of God.
15. [There are No Wholes]
Which again, isn’t to inaugurate a manifesto & a way for
everyone to write. Because if reading Hindu scripture has taught
me anything, it’s the primacy of duty, of realizing what your
duty is & being content with it. It’s my duty, I’ve realized
after all these years of “writing,” to write these simple
things. It doesn’t mean anyone else has to read them, like them,
or be influenced by them; it doesn’t mean I have to defend it,
that anyone has to denounce it, that a third party has to come
to my aid. It means that this happens to be my duty, & as long
as I’m able I’m going to talk to myself on this blog about how
these & other things come to happen. Agreement or disagreement
is irrelevant; understanding is enough.
Because there are no wholes. Until recently I’ve always searched
for wholes—I’ve always searched out complete poems that I like,
when only a line or a phrase will stick; or a complete movie or
piece of music I can hold up & say This is Perfect about
it, or a writer or an artist whose entire output of work I can
embrace wholeheartedly & use as real & complete model of how
things can be. This does not exist. Or a way of living, a way of
thinking, a set of beliefs—I thought I could stumble around
through world religions & eventually cobble together my own
perennial philosophy that would guide me the rest of my days.
This isn’t going to happen.
Even marriage—even before my wife & I got married, even the
priest himself said, “You’re doing this on faith. You don’t know
what’s going to happen tomorrow.” The very man who was going to
consecrate us & our love for the rest of our lives told us that
even that vow was to be taken on faith. Again it’s back to
faith, & the reality that life isn’t certainty or sureness or
perfect clarity, but subtly & strongly holding probably a
half-dozen or more grounding beliefs sacred, & having faith in
them, & learning just how to live in a world that wants very
little to do with the ambiguity of such a stance, a world that
is constantly saying that either one thing is the truth, or
another is, or that nothing means anything at all. I heard a
Christian preacher say that faith in God is concerned with
bringing about justice; I rather think faith in God, even before
that, is about still having faith in him amid injustice, & in
the face of assuming that justice won’t ever come at all.
Because there are no wholes. No law will fix everything. No mass
worldwide conversion will ever finally put Christians or Muslims
or anyone else at peace that finally no one disagrees with us
& we are finally in a good spot. No mass love of the arts
will ever sweep over society to please & finally justify &
finally recognize all the unknown geniuses & artists & musicians
& painters & poets & writers who begrudge the masses what
they’re sure are their cheap movies & dumb books & ignorant
ways. No mass realization will ever strike those couples I come
across who can only justify their wish not to have children by
constantly insulting the plight of those who do; & similarly
nothing will ever change every couple who does have children who
can only justify this choice by assuring the intentionally
childless couples that what they’re doing is wrong, & that
they’re surely missing out on something. The majority of our
lives is coming into contact with people not who agree with us,
but who are different in one way or another, & we are much
better off learning to be fine with whatever differences there
are rather than judging them, defending ourselves, retreating
away from it, or even feeling so threatened by it that an entire
religion, political party, nationality, personal opinion (on
marriage or college or diet), or even profession is demonized.
It’s the equivalent of getting on the subway & going to work in
Manhattan every morning—me, someone who has about as much
yearning to make my millions as a flea—& honestly trying to
convince myself that all of these guys & gals in their suits are
just dead wrong, awful, materialists, & ruining the world. Never
mind that it’s the people with the money who buy the things I
sell at work & keep me with a job so I can have some time at
night to come home & write, & no doubt the people with the
money—& the people who actively seek to make more & more money,
& the people who are cutthroat & cruel—it’s these people who
probably helped bring the wonderful thing called the subway into
existence, the very thing that allows me to read Hindu scripture
or Sumerian myths or Robinson Jeffers or the life of some
Catholic saint for an hour every morning before work.
Because my wife & I were (& remain) deliriously happy when we
sold our cars & realized we could get around fine now just
riding the subway. But imagine we came home every night & saw
the many cars lining the streets & assumed that everyone who
owned these hundreds of cars—all of them, all of these
people we know nothing about except that they drive cars—are
obviously idiots wasting their money & their time. & what would
you say if we told you we were having a really hard time walking
to the subway every morning, threatened by all the people who
still choose to have cars, & are truly angry at them for
personally attacking our choice not to have one? & what if we
wondered aloud if we should go door-to-door & ask people to give
up their cars? Or if we should we start blowing up their cars so
maybe they’ll get the message? What would you say to someone
like this?
16. [A House]
Ramakrishna compares the religions of the world to a handful
of people making their way to the roof of a house—one is using a
ladder, the other a rope, & somebody’s probably inside just
using the stairs, etc. Assuming each individual is getting to
the roof the way they want to, what right or reason is there to
tell the other his method is wrong? Especially when, at one
point or another, everyone’s going to get to the roof?
This is true of everything. What do I care that the way you want
to get to the roof of the house is to be helicoptered in? What
do I care that somebody doesn’t even want to get to the roof at
all, but is just sleeping in one of the rooms? What do I care
what you do for a living, or like to do on the weekends, or who
you are or aren’t married to, or the kinds of clothes you wear
or music you listen to? Yet “what do I care” is the wrong
phrase—not “what do I care” but “why should I care so much that
it bothers me”? Why are other people so threatening? Why can’t
we be happy & enjoy watching the varied ways people live their
lives? Why can’t we just leave one another alone, including
ourselves? Why can’t we be happy with ourselves, first of all, &
perhaps even happy for others?
17. [A Yankee Game]
My wife & I went to a Yankee game a few weeks ago, & the
intensity of that kind of blind & really baseless adulation &
loyalty is tremendous, & a lot of fun at a baseball game. To
simply want The Other Team to lose, no matter what, & for
fifty-thousand other people around you to feel the same way, &
for the game to be close the entire time, & even go into extra
innings—it was fantastic. But I can’t imagine seriously making
my mind feel that way about anything else, about anything real,
about anything that really matters aside from a great spectacle
on a Friday night.
That kind of vehemence & blind loyalty is really a mystery, & it
struck me at a particularly tense moment in the game, when the
Yankees were in a position to take the lead, & fifty-thousand
people (one of them being me) was actively cheering & yelling
for the nine guys on the other team to fail, to end up having a
miserable night, & specifically for the opposing team’s pitcher
to mess up, & lose the game. How awful! But that’s baseball. But
it’s not life!
18. [A Georgia Memory]
I mention this because I still struggle with it. Once when I
lived in Georgia I sat in a restaurant reading The Book of
Job, & a woman stopped on her way out to complement me, as
it was “nice to see someone reading the Bible in public.”
My immediate reaction wasn’t to say thank you & continue reading
(or even to talk to her), but smirk as she walked away & feel
tremendous amounts of self-important glee, as if I’d totally
fooled the woman. After all, I wasn’t a believing Christian (as
I assumed she thought I was), & I couldn’t believe how blind
she’d been to think I was “like her.” I’m sure mixed in there
were a bunch of other thoughts, too, about how much better I was
than her anyway, transforming her blind & silly faith into the
“art” I wanted to create. (About the only valid thought I think
I had was a kind of bewilderment that, in such a heavily
Christian area as Georgia, it was apparently rare to see someone
reading the Bible in public—I figured the courage to do that
would have been easy to find.) But why did I react this way?
While also reading Job, Thomas Merton said it was so easy
to always identify with Job, when in reality most people are
closer to resembling his friends, the stubborn fellows so sure
they know all the answers who have a great time condemning &
judging everyone else. & even though, if I had gotten into a
conversation with the woman, she may have condemned me too for
not being a Christian—why should I have assumed that? & in
assuming it, why should I have judged & condemned her based only
on that assumption?
Being raised Catholic, I suppose I’ve always felt a kind of
unconscious disdain for anything Protestant. It’s very strange,
& makes no sense. Even last year on this blog I had time to
mention how awful the kinds of churches born-again Christians
build for themselves—churches in some cases right in the middle
of a strip mall, or mall of businesses (between a real estate
agent & a distributor for Red Bull, say), while the area to
worship inside looks less like the Catholic churches I know &
more like somewhere one of those businesses might hold a
seminar. This much is true—if there’s a reason Catholicism has
always stuck with me, it’s definitely the heavy seriousness of
it, the obvious ritual, & the architecture of a Catholic space
that goes along with these. But is it impossible for someone to
have their religious experience in a place different from that?
& even the other day—the very day I started to write about &
remember the woman who complemented me reading the Bible!—I
found out a church nearby wasn’t Catholic at all, but Lutheran.
& despite myself, I cringed a tiny bit, as if to say, Well
now I can’t go there! At least this is an improvement over
the previous incident, as it took years for me to see how
ridiculous I’d been. Now at least I realize my ridiculousness
immediately. Because that same morning I was overjoyed to
realize that the Ramakrishna-Vivekenanda center is also nearby
in Manhattan, & I wouldn’t have one problem going there, or to
Tibet House, or to a mosque or synagogue, or to St. Patrick’s
(or any other Catholic) Cathedral, & while in Greece recently my
wife & I had a tremendous time at a museum of Orthodox &
Byzantine art, & if possible would have visited every Greek
Orthodox church in Athens.
It reminds me of a story Joseph Campbell told that’s perfect.
Raised a Catholic, by the time he got married he wasn’t one
anymore, so the ceremony was held in the Protestant church of
his wife’s family. He later learned that every now & then the
church had speakers from other faiths come by to give talks.
When a Buddhist came around, the congregation was confused as to
how a religious experience was possible when, technically, one
doesn’t even believe in God. When Campbell came to talk to them
soon after, he mentioned this, & then mentioned that when he
had come to that church the first time himself, he wondered
nearly the same thing—he was bewildered at all of the things he
was used to, as a Catholic, not being there anymore, & wondered
how a religious experience was possible in a place that looked
better-suited for a city council meeting. Yet for Joseph
Campbell as a Catholic growing up, for Joseph Campbell as
student of all religions later in life, for the Protestant
congregation, & for the Buddhist, God (or whatever they want to
call it) was present.
19. [Neither Fire or iPhones]
Technology is no demon. Neither is money or anything else in
the world. Only our habits & expectations & the things we get
used to are. It was wonderful to read in a book on prehistory
about when humans first discovered how to make & utilize
fire—since now, two things humans were previously not able to
generate themselves (heat and light) could be available anywhere
& whenever they wanted. Yet even here, the author said, there
were probably those who were used to the life when these new
things weren’t possible. Imagine a group fondly wishing for the
time when we didn’t have to deal with fire, & the same can be
said for every innovation straight down to the new iPhone.
Yet none of this is inherently awful. Out of all the things
Jesus says in the gospels, time & again the one that hits me the
most is Mark 7:18-20:
And he saith unto them, Are ye so without
understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing
from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;
Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and
goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That
which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.
Neither fire or iPhones can change one thing about us, unless we
let it. & neither fire or iPhones will ever make us less human,
or compassionate, or decent, or giving, unless we allow these
things to. The reason I think these verses have always spoken to
me is because there’s no dogma attached to them—no mention of
Christ’s divinity, or of God even, or of watching out for
apocalypse where someone will come down & judge you. Rather, it
all comes out of you. You judge yourself. You are responsible
for yourself. No amount of poison or ugliness or cruelty you
witness can make you the same way unless you let it. & no amount
of decency & forgiveness or love you witness can make you the
same way, either. You are your own lamp.
20. [The Real Complexity]
The real complexity I’ve avoided here, & probably always
will, are the only questions people can ask about issues like
this—well what about terrorists? What if this person hates gay
people? They’re against abortion! Those people hate/love
immigrants—what about that? They want a definite way, a
final rule, a solid pronouncement that will finally lead them
away from a shaky faith to a positive enjoyment of certainty.
All I can say is that this is impossible, & the debates over
these things are largely impossible too, & being so wrapped up
in the egos of those involved & all the motives of all the
different mediums of media, concentration & communication &
understanding aren’t really the goal anyhow. & among these are
people who will always choose to fight the fights they want, &
that won’t ever end.
When Picasso stepped out of the cave of Lascaux after seeing the
artwork there, he said we hadn’t learned much in 17,000 years.
We just children, impatient children, grown children who are so
eager to get out of the house we leave without putting our
clothes on, & then blame the snow for how cold we are. We rush
but do not concentrate, we think but not long enough, we love
but only by picking & choosing, & judging. I wonder if we really
thought more about the things we do & believe, & weren’t so
attached to notions of identity—what would this do to a world
that is largely fueled by everyone being offended by everybody
else?
Technically everything I say here—ever—might as well be prefaced
with “This is only what I think.” All I’m doing is wondering!
All I am is someone on a subway watching faces, listening to
voices. Dogmatic platforms for changing the world are for
others. Dogmatic platforms for “solving” things are for those
who have already locked their front doors & gone outside. I’m
still sitting in bed, trying to think simply & clearly about how
I will take my first step, & how I will look at the next person
I see. I want to care for these small things, since they are
rarely cared for. I want every step, when they come, to be
aware.
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