53. [More Kempis]

54. [More Kempis, Again]

55. [More Kempis, a Fourth Time]

56. [Picking Bones with Jacob Bronowski]

57. [Something from St. Paul]

58. [1 John 4:7-18]

59. [Philippians 2:5-8]

              52. [Thomas à Kempis on How Tough It Is]

In the constant reiteration & drumming in of how hard being a Good Person really is, I don’t know of another book quite like Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. The impression I get from a lot of religion around nowadays, from Christianity to New Age, is a kind of watered-down bizarre conception where God’s only purpose is to make you feel really good about yourself and the world, to give great comfort, and to keep all bad things from you and your life forever & ever (amen). But then Kempis says this wonderful thing:

So it is, My son. I do not want you to look for a peace that is free of temptation or one that never meets with opposition, but I want you to have peace even while experiencing affliction and while being tried by tribulation. (3.12.1)

I remember reading an author (who happened to be an atheist) say something about how easy it was for religious people to find peace, since they had a God to fall back on who would forgive them, while atheists had to go it alone to figure things out. I don’t understand how believing in God, or having faith in God, ever became easy at all. I don’t understand how God became some Super Parent who should protect you from all things, rather than (as in Kempis) one who is with you through never-ending temptation and opposition. & walking down the street in Manhattan every morning, it isn’t hard for me to realize that most of the temptation and opposition isn’t even coming from other people, but from myself.

53. [More Kempis]

Kempis also says:

Where will we find a man willing to serve God without receiving something in return? (2.11.3)

In “receiving something in return” I imagine he also means from God, as well as the attention of other people, of being well-known or appreciated. Because if you’re looking to get anything from God, you’ve obviously not realized that you’ve already got God—so what else do you need? I hesitate to say it, but at that level of closeness and intimacy, of not even wanting anything in return from God, you are God, & there isn’t anything you can do that doesn’t come from God first.

            This is why the whole idea of “being good so we’ll go to heaven” has always bothered me--because it makes God into some kind of accountant, or some heavenly Santa with his list of people & his Excel spreadsheet of good & bad deeds. It’s also why I wonder why people assume that by being good, good things will happen to them. I wish I could believe in divine justice, or even karma, but even that’s too easy, & just a math problem. Things are so much messier than that, & I don’t think it’s the role of religion or of God to resolve anything, but to make the mess bearable, livable, meaningful.

54. [More Kempis, Again]

Because then Kempis really does it, & says this:

Rarely do you encounter someone who is so spiritual that he has completely divested himself of all things. Where will you find someone who is truly poor in spirit and totally detached from all creatures? He is far more precious than jewels brought from distant shores. If a man were to give up all his possessions it would be as nothing, and if he were to fulfill very heavy penances it would still not be enough. If he possessed universal knowledge he would still be far from his goal, and if he possessed outstanding virtue and burned with extraordinary fervor, he would still lack the one thing most necessary to him. And what is that? Having left all things behind he should renounce himself, abandon himself completely, keeping nothing of his self-love, and when he has done all that he knows must be done, then let him realize that he has done nothing. (2.11.3-4.)

Does this sound easy? It’s sounds terribly difficult to me, & completely contrary to nearly everything I see, every hour of every day. Because it’s one thing to accomplish everything Kempis says, which is hard enough—but it's another to say, after accomplishing it, “that he has done nothing.” All of that difficulty, if done completely & utterly & totally, is finally to have done nothing at all. It’s to have taken out the trash, taken off your clothes, opened a window, to have just opened the door & walked out.

This is what I meant above about being so close to God that there’s no separation between you & God at all, & so no conception of two separate things, & so no need for one thing to want a reward from another thing. It’s to realize that all the things that were so hard to give up—attachment to possessions, to other people, to ideas about a career or money or appearance, attachment to oneself, attachment to the idea that you even have a “self” at all that is worth puffing up & promoting, protecting & gratifying—it’s to realize all of these things are actually “nothing.” Absolutely nothing.

It’s like the line from T. S. Eliot, “A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything)”—an “everything” that turns out, once it’s been spent & abandoned, that turns out to have been nothing at all.

55. [More Kempis, a Fourth Time]

& then Kempis says:

Plan as you will and arrange everything as seems best to you, still you will find some suffering in your life. Whether you wish it or not, you will always find the cross, for you will either experience some pain in your body or perhaps have to endure some affliction of spirit in your soul. (2.12.3)

I don’t know. It seems sometimes religion in general is either dismissed as being too easy, a kind of cheap way out of actually living, or it’s seen oppressive & dour. I suppose this quote could be considered pretty depressing. Even the Buddha says there’s a way out of suffering. But I don’t know. Assuming that all suffering will never be entirely eradicated—while this might be depressing, it seems more worthwhile to wonder how to deal with it than to just remark that it’s awful & depressing. (To see someone being attacked would no doubt be alarming & depressing—but hopefully we wouldn’t just stand there.)

        (& St. Antony says it even better, “Our great work is to lay the blame for our sins upon ourselves before God, and to expect to be tempted to our last breath.” There’s no end of this.)

Recently I’ve been feeling quite out of sorts—unable to concentrate or focus, constantly tired, easily irritated, easily distracted by every sound or something new to see, etc., & too easily filled with the dread that I’m either doing too many things at once, or barely doing anything at all. & while there’ll be an end to this phase of how I’m feeling, in a wider sense there’ll never be an end to it. Living day-to-day in the world, living on a schedule, living with a clock always at hand, living in a world that demands immediate results & immediate satisfaction—I know that on some level these things will always get to me, infect me with small or large worries, that I’ll allow myself to be smothered by smaller or larger worries or doubts about what I’m doing, or whether I’m good for my wife, etc.

But it’s God, & this kind of reading, or this kind of stumbling & writing, or the actual day-to-day living with my wife, that gives great hope; it’s believing that there won’t be a complete end to all worry & doubt (since if I believed there would be, I would just fall into hopeless despair every time it refused to go completely away); it’s realizing nothing will ever be perfect or fair, or “at peace” in the sense of no longer worrying or feeling terrible about something—it’s realizing the imperfectability of things that makes the sudden bursts of real happiness & joy that much greater, & more real. It’s make me thankful for any of it at all.

56. [Picking Bones with Jacob Bronowski]

For those interested, the book & DVD versions of Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man is a nice series on the history of science and development of civilization. But there’re two parts that’ve always irked me.

         The first comes when he’s describing the change humanity made from a nomadic way of life to that of settled agriculture & animal husbandry, & at this part (even more painful to watch on the DVD!) we have to hear Bronowski judge into worthlessness a modern group of nomads, the Bakhitiari, his voice-over condemning them as the camera follows them around. (He’s right to say the nomadic life isn’t “romantic”—but then again I don’t know any profession or way of life that could be called “romantic.”) Bronowski goes on, in part, to say this:

It is not possible in the nomad life to make things that will not be needed for several weeks. They could not be carried, And in fact the Bakhtiari do not know how to make them. If they need metal pots, they barter them from settled peoples or from a caste of gipsy workers who specialize in metals. A nail, a stirrup, a toy, or a child’s bell is something that is traded from outside the tribe. The Bakhtiari life is too narrow to have time or skill for specialisation. There is no room for innovation, because there is not time, on the move, between evening and morning, coming and going all their lives, to develop a new device or a new thought—not even a new tune. The only habits that survive are the old habits. The only ambition of the son is to be life the father.... Nothing in their lives is new. And nothing is memorable.

            This all seems a bit much, & the usual arrogant assumption that all the gadgets & even the intelligence of modernity are surely the greatest things in the world. When he says, “It is not possible in the nomad life to make things that will not be needed for several weeks”—couldn’t these nomads say of settled city people that we’re inundated with tons of things, many of which we won’t use for years, if ever? But the point isn’t to inaugurate a cultural pissing-contest, but to simply wonder (as I do so often) why people don’t just leave each other alone. It’s worth making the point that so many of the things that became “civilization” (settled dwellings, specialized occupations, etc.) only came about when people stopped roaming around—but to imply that that’s inherently & obviously better than roaming around isn’t convincing.

            Which leads to the other thing  he says: “We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.” This isn’t surprising, since he also says later that “intellectual leadership of the twentieth century rests with scientists.” As with #51, I don’t want to counter him by saying No, Jake, the intellectual leadership of the world rests with poets, or people interested in religion—I only want to say it’s common & dangerous to assume the community or group you’re a part of is really that much more important than others. It’s a strange assumption that only outward things & achievements, & these things alone—civilization—can mark how “advanced” someone or a group of people is. Are people living in 2008 really that much happier than anyone else in history just because we have MP3 players or the internet, ease of access to food & easy modes of travel? Are the Bakhitiari—or anybody that isn’t like us—really so hopeless, & are their lives really so meaningless?

If I wanted to be cynical I’d say there isn’t much difference between the endless round of my wife & I waking in the morning at 5:30, catching the train by 7:30, working for eight hours & getting home by 8pm—if I were cynical I would wonder if there’s really a difference between that life, that same rote & predictable life, & the Bakhitiari wandering without end everyday too?

On the other hand, if I didn’t want to be cynical I’d say that within the weekly round a million things have a way of happening—the same time but a different day, the same train but a different day, the same city & the same streets just a different day—& that if tangible memories & real meaning can exist for my wife & I out of this repeating round, the same is easily possible for some nomads. Or anybody.

& not to put Bronowski in the same league with this next quote, but it was bizarre, in a book on the history of slavery,  to come across David Hume saying this in 1748:

I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white…. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences…. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.

Again it’s assumed that what makes humans “civilized” & “superior” to everything else are their “manufactures,” their “arts,” & their “sciences.” Nothing about how they treat each other, but rather whether they have arts, sciences, & buildings that are occupied in the making of things. This is just simple arrogance, & in the case of Hume, the usual desperate attempt to justify something like slavery. Why can’t we just leave other people alone?  & anyway, is the best use of our arts & sciences & industry really just to justify us in holding our nose a little higher?

57. [Something from St. Paul]

I once heard someone remarking on how awful the idea of unconditional love was, & how it was ridiculous to imagine God had unconditional love for anybody. The fellow was also a great fan of the death penalty, & I recently began to wonder what would have happened to St. Paul if God were also a fan of the death penalty for murderers, & if God was only capable of forgiveness & love on the scale of humans, rather than on the scale of God. Because it’s great to come across St. Paul saying this in one of his letters:

For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. (1 Corinthians 15:9-10, KJV)

            I can pretend no great knowledge for the overall theology Paul espoused. It’s just interesting to think of what forgiveness & love Christians must really believe God is capable of. & I don’t know if this is the correct definition of grace, but it seems to me that God is precisely God because he is able to give people things they don’t deserve. By his own admission, Paul was happy to persecute the early Christians, & even says he stood by approvingly when the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was being stoned to death. Yet he saw a vision of Jesus & completely turned around.

            Now imagine that person I overheard, loving the death penalty & completely baffled by a God who could unconditionally love anybody. If this guy were God, Paul would’ve been sentenced to death & completely abandoned by God. Instead—& this seems one of the great things about Christianity, & one I’ve rarely heard espoused—God apparently forgave this murderer, forgave him for his role in killing however many early Christians, & then made him Christianity’s most influential figure after Jesus.

Can you imagine how impossible it would be for something like that to happen today, whether among Christians themselves or in the media, for a murderer (& a murderer of Christians) to become a respected religious figure at all? (This is, perhaps, why we’re better off praying to God rather than to other people.) God’s not worried about being humiliated or laughed at by offering his love & forgiveness & hope, nor is he so worried that people will just squander it that he refuses to offer it. He gives & give. It’s really a remarkable thing.

There’re so many homeless people in New York, & I’ve heard more than few people refuse to give because it’s assumed at least a handful of them aren’t homeless at all, & are just taking people’s money—& suddenly the act of giving is dependent upon this secret fear of being duped. Thankfully the God who appeared to Paul wasn’t like this. The Tao Te Ching says this as well: “She trusts people who are trustworthy./She also trusts people who are untrustworthy./This is true trust.” (#49) This is also extremely difficult; unconditional love is extremely difficult; freely offering to others what they don't deserve & may not even do any good with—this too is difficult. It’s much easier to condemn & be done with, to judge & banish from the mind—it much easier to simply bring about “justice.”

Isn’t that something? Of course both the Old & New Testament Gods have a reputation for being both brutally “just” & incomprehensible at the same time (& the incomprehensibility is usually in the sense of Job, baffled at apparently unwarranted suffering)—so it’s nice to imagine a third version, someone being baffled & grateful not at a God who is just (since justice would demand Paul should be dead) or incomprehensibly callous, but rather incomprehensibly giving, loving, forgiving—a God freely giving grace.

58. [1 John 4:7-18]

Because then there’s this, 1 John 4:7-18:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (NIV)

Isn’t that remarkable? Because how many times have we heard how harsh God is, how he’s everybody’s judge, how we should fear God? & further how we should fear authority in general, fear your parents or fear your boss or fear anybody who has power over you—or how, because of all this, we ourselves should want power in order to make people fear us?

         & how remarkable is it to learn that love comes from God, because God is love; & how, if we love other people, God lives in us; & how there’s no fear at all in love—none—& how love drives away all fear?

Where does this message exist in the world today, either in the mouths of believers or nonbelievers? Where is there anything but the false love that is only filled with fear, the fear that only “has to do with punishment”? Where is God anywhere celebrated today not as a lawyer or a judge, but as a love so great it eradicates fear?

59. [Philippians 2:5-8]

Here’s more humility, in Philippians 2:5-8:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (NIV)

This seems genuine precisely because of how inhuman it is. Many religious people prove this by being so human themselves, not as divine as this, since it’s always about how right they are (& how right you are too, or how right you can be, once you’re saved)—it’s always how sure they are of where everybody’s going after they die, it’s always a kind of snobbery, & confidence, & never anything as beautiful as this.

Surely there’s more than enough in the Bible to justify the snobbery & the pride, but I’d prefer to emphasize passages like this rather than others. It’s God who can forgive, it’s God who can be so humble as this, it’s God who can decide to make himself “nothing.” For humans to forgive seems a kind of weakness, for humans to be humble is to be stepped on, & for humans to be “nothing” is to lose our humanity, to have no “identity” that anybody can envy or argue with, that anyone can see on the street & notice (or argue about religion with!).

It’s strange, & I don’t know if it makes sense, but I wonder if the better term for being like God isn’t “transcending” our humanity, but rather “falling away” from it somehow. Not rising up but falling back, to a kind of innocence perhaps, to where there’s not even a sense of “losing” anything (our humanity or identity) but only of being, & being very simply. Like when Jesus says we should all just be as children.

60. [2 Timothy 3:12]

& here’s something again, 2 Timothy 3:12:

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (NIV)

What does this say about fairness or justice? What is fair or just about this at all? How is it fair that those who want to “live a godly life”—apparently what God wants us to do!—should be persecuted as a result? That isn’t fair, & it isn’t just either.

            But then, why is fairness or justice a concern at all? Why should we ever expect the terror & hardships of life to go away just because we’ve found God? Why should we ever assume that “peace” is the eradication of temptation or difficulty, when it’s really only the ability to deal decently with every hard thing that happens? It was nice to find Thomas Merton saying this:

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. (New Seeds of Contemplation, 186-87)

In a strange way we’ve got it backwards—we assume that God is tough & hard, & because of this the world will be great & easy, will be roses, that he’ll straighten everything out (including us); when in reality, perhaps, the world is a mess & will always be one, will always be unfair & unjust & never make much sense, & it’s God that’s clearly & purely & simply a source of love.

So perhaps God is easy after all, although it’s terribly difficult to integrate that simplicity into the mess we see everyday, since we assume there shouldn’t be a mess at all, & that if anything, God is what should clean it up & make it right. But the world isn’t right, & I don’t think it’s God’s job to go around with a broom & sweep it up. But he can make the mess bearable, & make the meaning we find in the mess truly profound.

To drop God, or to stop being a good person, simply because you get stepped on, makes no sense—this isn’t God’s fault, & it isn’t his job to step on those people back. His job is to make the heavy feet of those stepping on you feel like nothing at all.