About a year ago my friend Cathy gave me a wonderful little book of daily wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh (Your True Home, Shambhala Publishing). I think this writer is a Buddhist monk and what he offers is so beautifully wise and precise and, it seems to me, wonderfully applicable to my life, today.
This morning I was especially struck by what I read because it is so true and so simple and yet so hard to live. He says:
If you put an aim in front of you, you'll be running all your life, and happiness will never be possible. Happiness is possible only when you stop running , and cherish the present moment and who you are. You don't need to be someone else; you are already a wonder of life.
Isn't that good? even beautiful? But how hard it often seems - to me at least - for much of my life, to live. There is so often each day something in the future I am going to be looking forward to - seeing someone, or planning a holiday, or feeling better - whatever. And then, I discover when I do that, that I miss what the here and now is putting before me. I miss really listening to others and to the world around me. I miss often what I am actually at that moment, feeling or thinking.
Thich Nhat Hanh often speaks of being aware of your breath and how that brings you back to the now, and keeps you there. I am not good at that yet but I want to be. Although I find that it is sometimes better for me, as a Christian, to be present to my God - but I think maybe that works out to the same thing.
I love it when he says, You don't need to be someone else'. How often do we really appreciate how beautiful each of us really is; how very precious just as we are. At the very least, we know in our deepest hearts that we can't be someone else, so why not explore what a beautiful creation I really am.
Well, I have now finished Karen Armstrong's book 'The Battle for God' (Random House, 2000)and am really grateful to have read it. It seems clear that there are no easy answers to the divisions that permeate our world but I do think that there can be hope.
At the conclusion of the book she says something that seems to me to be really worth pondering because we often think we live in a rational society. She says: Freud showed that far from being wholly rational creatures, human beings were at the mercy of the powerful, irrational forces of the unconscious...This , indeed, was demonstrated by the modern experience. Despite the cult of rationality, modern history has been punctuated by witch-hunts and world wars which have been explosions of unreason. Without the ability to approach the deeper regions of the psyche , which the old myths, liturgies and mystical practices of the best conservative faith once provided, it seemed that reason sometimes lost its mind in our brave new world.
All through her book Armstrong has spoken about the fear that is at the heart of fundamentalism. It is a fear that all that one understands to give life meaning is being assailed. But also, those of us on the 'other' side perhaps seek to deal with our fear with other kinds of control; control of disease, disruption, abandonment and the ultimate, death.
So, is there an answer? No simple one for sure but in later work Armstrong suggests what seems to her to be a worthwhile effort to change the self-destructive, untrusting direction our world seems to be taking. She suggests the living out of compassion. http://charterforcompassion.org/
I have mentioned this before and will no doubt mention it again because I find it so hopeful.
Compassion implies that we will learn to respect and listen to one another. That is a start. We don't have to agree, we may have to work in different directions. But surely we are less likely to fear the person or community or culture that we try to understand, to listen to, to respect. It starts with me, here with my own personal relationships but also with me trying not to be afraid of another colour or culture or language...things I do not understand. Then maybe, that frees the other to stop being defensive or hurt or angry and we begin to build bridges. Compassion of course, goes further but you will see that if you investigate the site.
Please do feel free to comment . Just click where it says no comments (or 1 or...).
This morning started out very, very wet and stormy. Thunder and lightning and torrential rain accompanied people to work so they were huddled under umbrellas as they waited at the streetcar stop.
A little later it stopped pouring and there was a hint that the sun might actually exist. I was down by the lakeshore shortly after, walking along the boardwalk. There were almost no people there except for the odd dog-walker or jogger.
As I started to walk I had to stop because what was before me was so beautiful as to be breathtaking. The sky was stormy and bright at the same time and the sun shimmered silver on the horizon. The wind was blowing so that huge waves were pounding the sandy shore and the rocky edges of the beach. It was for me, one of those moments that make you want to say 'Thank you!!! What an incredible gift'. And I did.
Then I found my self wanting to hold on to it; wanting it to last longer, even forever. I imagine most of us have felt that way sometimes too. But of course it disappeared - or at least it changed so that that special beauty disappeared. ( I was going to say that it became more ordinary but that is such an insult to the beauty of the ordinary.)
The reality of the fragile moment of beauty reminded me of how I always do want to hold on as the moment whizzes by before I may even know what I have seen or heard or experienced. Life itself whizzes by - not just the moments of beauty and so often you just want to say 'whoa!, hold it, I haven't had enough'.
I think all great religious thinkers have reminded us that the way to live is simply to live each moment; let it be, just be. Hard to do but I can see it is the best guide by which to live.
As I shared before, I have been reading Karen Armstrong's book about the growth of fundamentalism (The Battle for God) and listening to some tapes of Jean Vanier on the Gospel of St John. Yesterday something really struck me and I wanted to share it with you.
I know that Christianity is hardly the flavour of the month currently. Folks, sadly (from my point of view) are leaving in droves - at least as organized religion. I think I do understand better why, the longer I live and also, the more I read.
I found myself comparing how Jean goes about talking about Jesus, about the Gospels, about what it means to be a Christian and what Karen is saying that many Christian (I want to put that in quotation marks) fundamentalists think being Christian means. The difference between the two is so enormous that I wonder how it can be that people can read and study and pray around the same book (the bible) and come up with such wildly different understandings.
Jean (you will understand that I am totally in accord with what he says) speaks of Christianity and most specifically the Jesus he meets in the gospel as the essence of forgiveness, mercy, compassion, integrity, acceptance of the human condition in all its darks and lights. That is not to say that Jesus is wishy-washy because love is hard and often painful. But it is to say that he represents all that is best in human nature.
The fundamentalist seems mostly to be looking at (as fact) the creation story in the book of Genesis and the horrors and battles found in the book of Revelation (which I would like to suggest should not be in the bible since with the exception of a few beautiful passages it seems totally out of sync with the message of Jesus in the gospels). Anyway, the fundamentalist prefers to think of Jesus as a man of battle who in anger is going to wipe out everyone who does not please him. This Jesus is not, apparently, a man of peace. We are all going to be judged severely if we believe in: birth control, abortion, gay marriage, evolution, equality of women and so on. The message is exclusive (nobody but white, protestants [maybe a few RC's] need apply) and severe.
How can this be? Nowhere in the gospels is that part of Jesus' message. The most powerful of Jesus' images is in fact, not to obey 'the rules' but to love. He also makes clear time after time, that we - as we are, with all the dark places we want to hide - are beloved sons and daughters of God. That in good part was what Jesus exists to say to us.
I suppose that what happens here has to do with our personalities? our upbringing? our fears? so that what we believe will be to some extent governed by that. Perhaps mostly our fears.
I am just boggled and very, very sad that a message which is meant to be loving gets transformed into exclusive, angry, misogynist so-called Christianity.
For some reason or other both the book I have been reading: Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God: a history of fundamentalism and Jean Vanier's tapes that I wrote about last time, have spoken of the power of fear in us.
Fear feels like one of the most havoc-creating emotions we can experience and when we act out of fear we can do some quite dreadful things to each other. Karen's book is helping me to have some sense of why our world is so polarized. She speaks of the fear behind fundamentalism; the fear that all that I believe in, all that I hold dear, all that has given my life meaning is being destroyed by others.
If for instance, my life is built on believing that the bible or the Koran or the Torah is truly the absolute and literal word of God then when others start to challenge this I become full of fear. The values that I hold dear are being trampled under and I begin to feel that I must try to overcome or destroy those who are doing this. I may begin to see them as agents of satan. Gradually, the gap between us seems unbridgeable.
Is there a way out of this? Certainly not quickly or easily but if we succumb to hopelessness then we all lose.
In Jean Vanier's tapes on John's Gospel he talks about what seems to me like a small way through the barrier of fear. Jean speaks about the story that is usually called 'the woman at the well' in Chapter 4 . He reminds us that Jesus was speaking openly to a) a Samaritan, a people who were in fact, despised by the Jewish community and b) a woman. Women were of no great account and certainly a man alone would not have a conversation with one let alone such a deep theological one. Still that is what happened and it is typical of Jesus.
Jesus engages the woman in an increasing spiritual dialogue. In the process, he points out that he knows the woman has been married five times and is now alone. He is not using this as a rejection or a criticism but simply as a reality of who she is. Jesus accepts and loves her as she is: somewhat 'broken' but beautiful all the same.
Jean picks up this point and reminds us that for all of us there are aspects of ourselves that are broken and that we fear to be exposed. There are things, relationships, situations where we have not behaved well or from which we have been deeply hurt. We are often left with a feeling of worthlessness, rejection, anger. Jean speaks about the need for each of us to have someone who knows us as we are, deep down, in our brokenness and in our beauty. He is suggesting here that Jesus is doing that for this woman.
But what I think he is also saying is that when we can become aware in truth and acceptance of the fragility and brokenness in ourselves and then in each other, we begin to see each other not as enemies but as other human beings. We don't need to agree, we may have to act strongly but we will not act out of hatred or fear.
Jean asks the question: why do we fear the light of truth? and he answers: because the light reveals the dark places in us. So, when we can slowly allow the light in, then in our meetings with one another fear will slowly fade.
Please do comment if you wish - maybe there can be a bit of a dialogue. Just click on No(or...)Comments.
I have just started listening to some tapes of Jean Vanier the founder of the l'Arche communities. Jean has been giving talks to long-term l'Arche assitants on the Gospel of St John.
As I listen I am struck first by the fragility of Jean's voice since the last time I spoke with him - perhaps 15 years ago. At the same time, I am even more touched by the obvious strength and commitment from which he is speaking so that the fragility of his voice (he is 83) is quickly forgotten. I find myself deeply moved at his faith and his ability to articulate in language that speaks more to the spirit and the heart than to the head. That has, I think, always been the case with him.
One of the things Jean starts with in the first talk is the importance in that Gospel of signs and how there are people who see the signs and respond positively to them and others who see the signs and ignore them. As I was listening and after, as I was pondering what I had heard, it seemed to me that this applied very much even as we live now.
There are many signs in our world that all is not right: poverty, wars, the environment, the fear at the heart of many of our communal relationships and we know something needs to be done. However it seems so overwhelming and costly to change this state of things that we say things like: ' we will form a task force', 'we will send an envoy', 'we will give to charity'. And maybe those things can be useful. But if I hear Jean and John's Gospel rightly, there is a more immediate and personal response we each can make - or begin to make.
John the Gospel writer speaks of what people experienced in Jesus - most especially that combination of compassion, love, truth and integrity. These are surely all qualities we admire and, hopefully, wish we had. But when you think about it, if each of us could make some - even small - commitment to more deeply embrace compassion, embrace trying to love, embrace truth and integrity (which may be the sum of the other three) then surely things would start to turn around for the better in our world.
We so often say we can't trust our politicians, we can't believe them; in fact we are less and less sure who we can trust. Maybe if we start with ourselves in our own small piece of our world, the whole spirit of our world would be a better place for the generations to come. I by my actions am not going to reform the world but by trying, however feebly, to reform myself surely that will be like the ripple of the water which gradually moves outward. I hope so.
(If you wish to comment on this entry please click the link that says
No comments - or hopefully 1 or ...) o
I saw a sign on a bus this morning that said 'Knowledge defeats fear'. My immediate thought was 'yes okay, that makes some sense because if I know about something, if that knowledge helps me to understand better then I am less likely to be afraid of that thing or person or country or whatever'.
It is certainly true I think, that the more I am aware of why other people think the way they do or know something about the experiences that have formed them, the more I may be able to see them as unique and interesting human beings. If I see shadows in a dark room, I am much less afraid when I turn on the lights.
But I also know that the older I get the more aware I am that there are some things I cannot know or understand. Like death. Like evil. I experience these things but I do not have any kind of knowledge of them that makes it possible to control or escape them or not fear them . I imagine that you could think of other things like that.
It seems to me that there are also things that we may have knowledge about but still are afraid of. Like violence. Like injustice. Like why I get angry. Like why there is pain.
In all these things we surely face our vulnerability and that can be very, very hard. We can try so hard to control our lives so that we don't feel so vulnerable: so we won't get sick and die, so the people we love won't get sick or hurt or die, so we can keep our job, so our children will be okay and so on. And then we experience something like a gunman who shoots to death 12 innocent people and we learn something about the limits of our control.
Learning to live with vulnerability is a lifetime's task and possibly never entirely successful. But I think peace only comes when we do so. Living fully the present moment , because that is all there is, is maybe a good place to start.
(If you want to comment on this or any other entry I think you can do so where it says 0 Comments or whatever number there may be at the bottom of the entry)
