A Momentary Taste of Being

You judge the oyster ugly and so do not discover the pearl within.

So long as I insist upon my own way everything is broken But then evening comes

We should start by understanding that this is impossible. We cannot create a sacred space because all spaces are already sacred. In their being they reflect their making and their maker. So now we understand our goal is different, what should we say? Living our sacred space. We choose to see that everything around us is a gift. Every person we meet is a gift, is a hammer to knock off the harsh corners, the uneven contours, to shape us to our mission. There is no such thing as an intrusion, as an obstruction. Every person is a lesson, is a challenge, is present to strengthen our ability to love, to transform us from potential to kinetic. Until we see this, we miss some of the sacred brought to us each day. In our hurry to accomplish we push aside possibility to pursue our own ephemeral agenda. Did cutting that person off in traffic really save that much time? Did letting the door slam behind us in the face of another really get us to where we were going fast...

If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there is one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living, and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, 'Then don't give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired. Richard Gregg, 1936

Ms. Armstrong is likely to offend those who abide by a strict literal interpretation of scripture, but her words support those of us who have to answer the question--"Why the difference between the God of the Old Testament and the one in the New?" from Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life Karen Armstrong There is a great deal of tribalism in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Hence we fince tests such as the book of oshua, which describes Israel's brutal slaughter of the ingigenous people of Canaan, and the book of Revelation, which imagines Christ slaughtering his enemies in the Last Days. Not surprisingly, some have been puzzle by the Charter for Compassion's call "to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate." But we have to remember that people have not always read scripture in the way it is read today. Rabbinic midrash was not interested in the original mean...

I loved these passages from Armstrong's book: from Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life Karen Armstrong Building on the insights of the Pharisees, the rabbis of the Talmudic age were able to transform Judaism from a temple faith into a religion of the book. Hitherto to the study of the Torah (the teachings and laws attributed to Moses) had been a minority pursuit; now it would replace temple worship. In the course of a massively creative intellectual effort, the rabbis composed new scriptures: the Mishnah, completed in about 200 CE, and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, completed in the fifth and sixth centuries respectively. Compassion was central to their vision, as we see in a famous story attributed to the great sage Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus's. It is said that a pagan approach Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if he could recite the entire Torah while he stood on one leg.  Hillel replied: "What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fello...

It is hard to continue on the point of yesterday's post without sounding as though I am on a tirade against the solid intellectual foundations of faith.  My first task is to dispose of that notion.  I do not stand opposed to careful and clear articulation of fundamental doctrinal and dogmatic understandings.  What I do stand opposed to is that Jesus, or for that matter any other spiritual leader, ever intended that to the be legacy that they left us with.  The true legacy of a profound spiritual teacher is the changed lives of his or her followers--not the knowledge that they have of hidden things. Too often that sort of knowledge is put to poor use as a bludgeon to batter those less intellectually inclined--or, by demagogues for purposes even less charitable.  But misuse of knowledge is not a credible argument against its acquisition.  And the purposes of such thought should be ultimately to help the follower in faith to live his or her faith. Yesterda...

from "The Biblical View of Reality" in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity Abraham Joshua Heschel Philosophy of religion is primarily not the philosophy of a philosophy, the philosophy of a doctrine, the interpretations of a dogma, but the philosophy of concrete events, acts, insights, of that which is immediately given with the pious man.  The dogmas are merely a catalogue, an indispensable index. For religion is more than a creed or an ideology and cannot be understood when detached from actual living. It comes to light in moments in which one's soul is shaken with unmitigated concern about the meaning of all meaning, about one's ultimate commitment, which is integrated with one's very existence; in moments in which all foregone conclusions, all life-stifling trivialities are suspended, in which the soul is starved for a inkling of eternal reality; in moments of discerning the indestructibly sudden with the perishably constant. Religion is never meaningfu...

from Rilke's Book of Hours   from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy  Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood. II, 7 The mystical strain of this poetry follows the common ground of a mysticism.  There is a mysterious and serious violence that seems to follow "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."  This seems to be the strain we are entertaining here. The violence of this poem suggests the violence of the love that will transport the individual. This love is transformative--"stop ...

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy So God, you are the one who comes after. It is sons who inherit, while fathers die. Sons stand and bloom. You are the heir. II, 9 I don't even know where to start with this.  The logic is so alien and yet so right that reading this opens many doors.  In what way, precisely is God the heir?  What is it that he inherits?  How is it that He comes after.  And yet-- "I am the alpha and omega,  the beginning and the end, the first and the last."  So not only is He father, but He is also the last, the one to whom all things must come. As I said, there is a logic here that makes the poem like a little puzzle box, fascinating, mysterious, and worth the time to think about carefully.

Part of a poem that really struck me: from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy . . .  This is what the things can teach us: to fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. II, 16

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of a Monastic Life" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy I come from the soaring in which I lost myself. I wa song, and the refrain which is God is still roaring in my ears. Now I am still and plain: no more words. To the others I was like a wind: I made them shake. I'd gone very far, as far as the angels, and high, where light things into nothing. But deep in the darkness is God. I, 50 Whether it is Rilke himself, or Rilke through translators, he exactly captures some sense of what St. John of the Cross describes in the via negativa .  In the darkness, one finds God.  It is only by not seeking and not possessing that we find and we have.  It makes no sense.  Unless you've been there.

A kind friend gave me the gift of an Kindle copy of Fr. Stinissen's magnificent book Into Your Hands Father.   Being a Kindle edition, my highlights and notes are made available online (another fact that I owe a great debt to my friend for making clear to me.) Having my highlights available online makes it so much easier to write and comment about the book.  One of the point that Stinissen makes is that God speaks to us in the ordinary events of life, even those events with which we are not so pleased. from Into Your Hands Father Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen If God is the creator of heaven and earth and the great director guiding the drama of the world and mankind, then I can encounter him everywhere. He pours out his love upon me in and through all that happens. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Ps 81:10). I do not need to consider when it is wise to open my mouth and when it is better to close it. I will always have my mouth wide open. I live in a land where...

Martin Luther on Christmas For all of his profoundly unlikeable traits, most particularly his anti-semitism, there are times when Martin Luther gets it exactly write and says it in inimitable fashion.

Considering St. John of the Cross

One last post for my favorite saint.  If you'd like to read a very short, complete work (although complete is perhaps not the right word for it), you could do worse than The Sayings of Light and Love which I found online at many places, but thought I would give two quite different sources: The magnificently named "Drink from the Wadi Cherith"   The wadi cherith has special significance for the Carmelite Order, for it was at the Wadi Cherith that Elijah (kind of a patron, founder-figure, and inspiration for the Order) was fed by the ravens on his arduous trek at God's command.   See here for my own take on the Wadi Cherith And the Baha'i Forum I guess I just want to make a point of his universal appeal--like all the great spiritual writers--Lao-tzu, Kung-fu tzu, Rumi, St. John of the Cross, the authors of the Sutras, etc. what he has to say gets at the core of what matters in the spiritual life and transcends mere denominational and religious "bounda...

St. John of the Cross is considered one of Spain's finest poets, although his opus is very, very small.  All four of his major works are constructed as a poetic prologue accompanied by lengthy explications of the poem.  Below is an excerpt of one of the most important works-- Dark Night of the Soul . "The Dark Night St. John of the Cross Stanzas Of The Soul 1. One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings - ah, the sheer grace! - I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled. 2. In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, - ah, the sheer grace! - in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled. 3. On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart. 4. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me - him I knew so well - there in a place where no one appeared. 5. O guiding night! ...

From the magnificent book by the late, and profoundly missed, Fr. Thomas Dubay Fire Within : one of the classic studies of the mystical theology of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

Two notes I hope I will make somewhere once they are more completely thought out: Why Heaven and Hell Do Not Matter Pain Is the Source of All Ritual Neither should be taken to be quite so bleak nor so definitive as it might seem I am implying by mere title.  But thinking about matters leads one to conclusions--now, if only I can articulate those conclusion in something more than the bare lines that introduce them.

Our Lady of Guadalupe And the accompanying feast of St. Juan Diego. Lest we forget St. Lucy   One of those memorable saints, carrying her eyes about on a plate.  Here is one discussion.   And here is another. And lest we forget, the days that give Santa Claus some relief--St. Nicholas day. And tomorrow, the Saint who means the very most to me--St. John of the Cross--Spanish Mystic and poet. Not to mention the Immaculate Conception (for those still confused--the celebration of the conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary, NOT Jesus).