The world, this earth, in primordial, existential, everlasting fact, is one. One way or another, the waters run together as a single undivided cycle and system. The air circulates freely, and though we have given it names and divisions, the land is all land and simply land, earth-place—the slowly changing face this single solitary planet wears from beginning to end, before and after our time here.
One tiny mote in space and time, the earth is still an entirety: one whole, one circumference, finite and yet rounding endlessly in upon itself, entirely global. Most of the separations we recognize are inventions of our egos, and every difference that really does exist relates to all the others if we look at them with love’s patience and dedication, or maybe even just a little intelligence and honesty. The world is one place, one integrity that we will help make—or break—during our time here.
The heart of this tiny planet is vast and free, rounds in upon itself, because it is in fact a single ecology, a true integrity. This has given Immensity to the bright being of nature’s impassioned life here. Though the earth is a dust mote in the universe, it glows freedom and radiates rapture. The air and space on any blue-skied day is a finite light that glows infinitely before eyes lost in the amazement of it. The thunder here resonates with the thunder in our chests, and the blue steel back of the corrugated ocean turns and rolls with the weight of a moon-pull, sending soft coils of water lapping to our little feet, like the touch of God, gently.
Who knows? This glowing earth may even be the one candle in a dark universe. When we come to think the world of the world, when our own hearts own the wholeness of the Whole that holds us, then we will glow with that same glow. And this planet will shine with the great joy to all people that has been foretold.
New medical development and it's possible that this will be my last post for a while.
There's possible good news on the book front but it's likely to be at least several months before anything happens. If it turns out that at any point I can't get back to the computer my sister will end up keeping you "posted."
Hopefully we'll be able to arrange things so that I still have significant time at the computer going forward. This is new territory for us.
I haven't had a chance to look at your most recent comments to the previous post but will get to them if I have enough time at the computer soon enough. As always, I appreciate your thoughts.
Spiritual and Religious Knowledge: Some Considerations
Verifiability: Knowledge, at least outside the area of religion and spirituality, requires verification. This even occurs at the level of direct sense perception. If we’re not sure whether we really see an object, we try to touch it; if we’re not sure whether we really feel something on our leg, we look down to check visually; if we’re uncertain about whether we heard something at the door, we go over and look. Our combined, mutually verifying senses continually let us know that the things around us are really there. Are there forms of verification that work in the area of religion and spirituality?
The Question of Self-Verification: Is self-verifying knowledge in the spiritual/religious area possible? What would tell us for sure that we’ve experienced a divine entity, order or energy and not something subjective?
The Feeling of Knowing: A feeling of knowledge that accompanies an experience wouldn’t necessarily constitute self verification. Consider, for example, how in dreams, feelings of knowing can attach to unknowns. You may dream of a room that’s supposed to be your bedroom, a house that’s supposed to be your house, an office or workplace that’s supposed to be yours. In the dream, it feels entirely familiar and known. When you awaken, you realize that you never lived or worked in such a place.
Interpretation vs. Experience: In considering reports of special spiritual/religious knowledge, we need to bear in mind the distinction between experience itself and the interpretations people place on their experiences. We can accept that another person has had an experience that they find powerful and significant without necessarily accepting that individual’s interpretation of the experience.
If there is indeed such thing as spiritual/religious knowledge (and I think there is), it may not consist of certitude on anyone’s part that divine entities, orders or energies exist. Personally, I tend to think that faith really is faith, not knowledge - for every one of us.
People sometimes go beyond belief to claim or imply that they have spiritual or religious knowledge. The range of knowledge claims is wide, covering much of the same ground as religious and spiritual beliefs.
People claim to have had direct personal experience of such matters as Jesus as Lord and Savior, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, Satan, past lives, immortality, God, angels, saints, visitations by deceased loved ones, and various energies and vibrations and their effectiveness.
How do you view claims of spiritual or religious knowledge or distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic?
“…the deconstruction is spot on, but the reconstruction falls kind of flat. 'God is life?' Meh.”
Through the alchemy of blogging, I've turned this remark by Matt at Liberal Jesus into the following imaginary experiment:
1. Imagine being in heaven.
2. Imagine meeting God face to face – perhaps “being with God.”
3. Imagine ultimate knowledge of being or reality itself.
Would there be differences in your experience of each that would let you tell them apart? If so, what would be the distinctions?
To keep this experiment from fizzling out or boiling over on your kitchen counter:
1. No fluffy clouds or white beards in your answer.
2. Don’t ask me to define my terms. They go back a long way and they’ve never been conceptualized in any precise manner that’s gained widespread acceptance. You’re as familiar with ideas about their meanings as I am.
God’s in his Heaven – all’s right with the world.
-- Robert Browning (Wikipedia) -- Alfred Lord Tennyson (best off my recollection…)
Thought I’d post this as a way of conveying a third sense in which I have trouble finding meaning in the concept of “miracle” in the way that the word’s usually used.
One morning I half-awakened to the morning light filtering through the drawn shade and curtains of my room. As I lay there with half-focused eyes viewing the yellow light on the blue carpet, I slowly became aware of myself seeing these colors.
I found myself looking blankly and inexplicably out of myself at equally inexplicable surroundings. The whole bubble or drop in space/time that was me happening in the happening world took on a radical unfamiliarity. It was as if a gathering thereness to the whole picture had zoomed into focus, surprising me by not making any particular sense. The lamp and alarm clock falling in my line of sight – what were they all about and how did they get there -- really? They seemed appearances from out of nowhere, or maybe Allwhere. Certainly they were from out of no place and for no reason that I could account for . . .
I could not have been more amazed by these objects if they’d started to sing and dance than I was by their sheer presence in front of my eyes that could see them.
In discussing reason and belief, the subject of miracles came up a couple of times. I can think of a few reasons not so much for doubting that miracles take place but for wondering if the concept is meaningful.
Problem One: You Could Have a Natural Miracle...
Let’s say, for example, that right now I went to the fridge, took out an ice cube, tossed it in the air, and it came down as a golf ball. How would I know that this really violates the laws of nature? Maybe once every 500,000-gajillion years, you throw up an ice cube and it comes down a golf ball.
How do you differentiate a true “violation of the laws of nature” from an extremely rare natural event? God – or, if she were more verbal, Mother Nature – might well say, just as God does to Job from out of the whirlwind: “Where were you (italics mine) when I laid the foundations of the world?”
Problem Two: It's Sort of a Good Trick, but...
A second problem has to do with meaning. Okay, somebody turns an ice cube into a golf ball. Apart from its entrepreneurial possibilities if the performance can be repeated, what would it mean? There are so many things that call for our interest and attention more than ice cube golf balls...
I plan to continue with further posts on spirituality and reason, but thought that this was worth noting…
"Secularists and adherents of a generic-faith spirituality have their own views… but they… should not be the only ones who are permitted to counsel within their worldview understanding of psychological wellbeing.”
--Dr. Eric Johnson, Society for Christian Psychology, January 19, 2009 post
My comment to the post was as follows:
I’ve never encountered anyone propounding a psychotherapeutic agenda to sell clients on “secularist generic-faith spirituality." I have a master's from the U of Chicago Divinity School and one in counseling from the U of New Hampshire.
As you rightly point out, therapists, like everyone else, have particular faith perspectives. So the reason that no one’s promoting secularist generic-faith spirituality is because it doesn’t exist.
When spiritual and religious concerns are relevant to the issues that a client is dealing with, the clinician's focus should, as always, remain on the client. If sessions were to degenerate into time used to fulfill the therapist's need to proselytize, this would no longer be the case.
The fact that within psychotherapeutic settings spirituality is best approached in an exploratory manner and not a proselytizing mode no more represents the promotion of a vague and generic - and imaginary - faith perspective than the therapist's abstention from political advocacy in counseling sessions represents the promotion of some vague, generic and equally imaginary political perspective.
In everyday life, people generally believe things when they consider the evidence to be sufficient – in other words, they reason on the basis of experience. For example, if you’re an overnight guest in someone's house and start to head for the bathroom in the morning but notice that the door is partially open and the light is on, you’ll infer that somebody’s probably in there - but you’re likely to pause and listen in order to gain additional information. Then, if you hear water go on, you'll decide not to enter - the evidence that someone is in there has become overwhelming.
Evidence can include not only things that you see and experience personally, but the observations and statements of people you regard as trustworthy or authoritative. And people sometimes use “gut feelings” and intuition as a kind of evidence – usually when other forms of evidence are inconclusive or lacking and they have to make a decision.
People also sometimes believe based on their desires – that is, they believe what they want to believe. This could happen, for example, when they see the evidence as evenly balanced.
It may be that in the area of religion and spirituality, people can believe things knowing that the evidence is against them, but I'm not so sure. It’s certainly the case that believers very often use reason and cite evidence to support and defend their religious views. I’m not aware of anyone I’ve known personally who would have been comfortable with seeing their religious beliefs as irrational. So I’ll conclude this post with the same question as last:
What standards of rationality apply to religious and spiritual beliefs? If none apply, then what leads people to embrace such beliefs as true?
With regard to most matters, people consider a belief to be rational when it’s supported by experience and reason – that is, evidence and logic. If a belief is logically contradictory or evidence disproves it/makes it highly improbable, then people generally regard it as irrational.
I’m not talking anything heady or philosophical here – just how people think when they’re effective. If, say, someone who had a project due for work or school were to take no action except to imagine it was done, or if they were to start work on it half a minute before the deadline, people would view their thought processes as irrational. There’s overwhelming evidence against the belief that either of these approaches would suffice to get the job done.
It would appear that ever since the human race began, people have had strong tendencies to make use of rational thought regarding matters important to their survival - or it’s hard to see how we’d be here today. To get by as hunter-gatherers would have required reality-based behaviors based on close observation and making correct inferences and deductions. There’s a connection between truth-value and survival-value.
To acknowledge the importance of rational thought in human life isn’t to downplay the role of feeling. Indeed, it’s been the human passion for survival that’s led us to take on the arduous task of figuring out how to survive.
What standards of rationality apply to religious and spiritual beliefs? If none apply, then what leads people to embrace such beliefs as true?
Sometimes inspiration isn't where you'd expect to find it.
Kevin was a kid who graduated high school with me. I remember him first in elementary school. Tall but gangly, there was something about Kevin that was different and appeared vulnerable. I think he got picked on quite a bit. I lost track of Kevin until at some point, I think the beginning of senior year, he showed up to play bass drum in the school band. As something of a “star” in the band myself, my reaction to anyone wanting to play bass was basically, “Go figure…”
There are three things you need in a high school bass drum player: a steady beat; the ability to read the simple bass drum music-line well enough to play concerts; and the volume/stamina to be heard in parades and at football half-times. Steadiness, rudimentary music reading, and volume. Pretty basic.
Yet there was something remarkable about Kevin. If there was a drum-section practice after school or on a weekend, Kevin always showed up. He was never late. His start-up beat was flawless, and from there it never faltered. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM – and then the scattered rat-a-tats and thump-a-thumps of the snare and tenor drums would start in on our street-beat.
Kevin’s BOOM was major. He hammered that big, loose bass drum head to make it produce a sound that wasn’t just loud, but punchy. You got the feeling that this was a drum that couldn’t have produced much more sound than it was delivering. As gangly as ever in his late teens, Kevin had definitely learned something about how to put his long arms to use. A motion that began whip-like as a pitcher’s would stiffen at the meeting of mallet and drumhead like a boxer delivering a right cross.
And Kevin never tired – or if he did, you sure couldn’t hear it. In the 90-degree heat of Memorial Day or the 20-degree Christmas parade, it was the same sound proceeding down the full length of the parade route, from start to finish. He churned out a beat like MacDonald’s churns out Big Macs.
I don’t remember anybody ever complementing or criticizing Kevin. Mr. Moore, our band director, would bring us to a stop from time to time to correct a trumpet here, a sax there… maybe there was something problematic with what the rest of the drum section was doing. But I don’t recall him ever having to address Kevin. Kevin was all there and really there all of the time.
He didn’t look for attention. He never asked to play, say, the timpani, or brought up the idea of the band purchasing tri-toms for him to try out. He just did that one simple act of playing the bass drum in our final year of high school to the best of his ability, and with a passion for it that in no way depended on being noticed. It finally made me notice. And when I did, I found myself looking up to Kevin.
I wrote a whole post and lost it. It was better than this post. Here I am just adding a bunch of meaningless words to make them run to the end of the line because Blogger keeps doing weird things when I click "Publish" such as printing this post and the last one side by side. So if you're reading these words and everything looks fine, I'm glad. But if this post still looks messed up, I give up - maybe I'll try to republish later or do another post called Dark Day of the Blogger.
Dark Night of the Post
I wrote a post then tossed it I don’t know where I lost it; It was the best compared to this – A thought fit for a Post-It.
That is, it’s this short verse That on a Post-It fits And not those other thoughts It seems were somehow lost.
Those thoughts were long And yet not too, Were bold yet circumspect; They found a solid middle ground
Though I forget the subject.
But worst of all, a Post-It’s now A notion that’s been toasted; This verse has overstepped such bounds And that is why I post it.
By “faith,” people usually refer to belief that’s not based on reason. All the same, people are seldom if ever comfortable with seeing their religious beliefs as irrational. A belief seen in this light is a belief that most of us would be unable to continue believing even if we wanted to. To see something as irrational is to see it as false.
Cargo cults come to mind. During WWII, there were people in remote corners of the world who came into contact with manufactured goods for the first time. Cults sprung up that centered on performing rituals to obtain these items. But cargo cults can’t survive the knowledge of factories.
Santa Clause is an example that’s familiar to most Americans. The reasons for disbelief are overwhelming despite how attractive and really God-like, in the most traditional western sense, the Santa Clause figure is: he knows who’s been bad or good, rewards the good, and is a benevolent white-bearded paternalistic figure.
A degree of doubt is acknowledged by many if not most believers as an aspect of their faith. Indeed, when we are certain of something, we don’t require faith at all because we know for sure.
How does reason relate to your religious or spiritual beliefs? If you’d say that it doesn’t, then how do you distinguish your spiritual or religious outlook from matters that make no sense?
Some musical responses to comments on the previous thread…
“Feelings” (Barbara Streisand): People often view religion and spirituality as going beyond reason; however, they rarely if ever embrace religious or spiritual beliefs that they perceive as contradicted by their own reasoning or experiences. It’s just too “misty/water-colored,” even if emotionally satisfying.
“Let It Be” (The Beatles): I think the basic idea of “many paths to one truth” is that we're all in the process of moving toward the one truth in our own ways, which is a very inclusive outlook. The risk here isn’t arrogance, but vagueness: it's not so clear what the one truth is. But maybe it's meant to be left vague – as an expression of faith that ultimately "there will be an answer" (“let it be…”), even though the fullness of the answer is presently beyond our grasp.
“Staying Alive” (The Bee Gees): Some versions of religion/spirituality enhance human life while others are destructive – looks that way to me too.
“What Is Truth?” (Johnny Cash) For the mystical-minded: Is every type of human experience equally illusory, or are some kinds of experience more illusory than others?
Presumably there is some particular and special type of experience that is non-illusory in comparison to which we’re able to recognize other forms of experience as illusory. How do we know that the non-illusory type of experience is non-illusory?
“Do You Believe in Miracles – You Sexy Thing?” (Hot Chocolate): How do we distinguish miracles from unusual natural phenomena? If, say, people usually die from a certain disease but a particular individual pulls through, how can we tell if it’s a miracle or if it’s just pushing the envelope of the bell curve, with the recovery occurring due to natural causes that we don’t understand yet?
Believe whatever gives you a sense of peace and meaningfulness, because whatever does that puts you on a path that leads to the One Truth.
On the other hand…
Spiritual and religious beliefs aren’t fully satisfactory unless we view them as more than privately enjoyed states of mind. We also want to think they’re true about the world beyond ourselves.
I'm thinking...
Can paths that run in opposing directions, as religious beliefs often do, lead to the same place? For example, Jesus can’t both be and not be the Messiah.
Unless further specified, the One Truth concept is murky.
Like some of you, being able to point to or describe a universal or ultimate truth about life is not something that I try or want to do; I picked up on this topic from comments in a previous discussion thread.
It’s worth noting that doctrinal approaches have been conspicuously absent from this discussion. But many people, of course, do believe that truth with a capital T is readily put into words – for example, “Jesus is Lord and Savior.”
Conspicuously present has been people’s overall sense or feeling that some sort of universal truth exists, but it’s beyond our capacity to put into words. Maybe this is because most of us come from a monotheistic tradition? Also, science can be viewed as a method that brings us to see how the parts fit together into interrelated systems that finally comprise a uni-verse…
It seems to me that the impulse to affirm some ultimate, universal truth about life stems from a desire to view and experience our own lives as having purpose and meaning. We want it to turn out that the larger context in which we exist is, in some sense, consistent with those feelings, hopes and aspirations that we value most. In contrast (for example), nobody holds as a religious conviction the idea that the ultimate universal truth may be an unchanging universe of evenly dispersed hydrogen atoms.
Is it necessary to know or believe that ultimate reality, God, Nature, or the Big Picture accords with our strongest desires and values in order to be at peace and experience life as meaningful in the present?
To take just the first topic from last post, the “many paths to one truth” idea is something that a few of you had brought up. Personally, I like the idea of universals. Yet trying to universalize does carry risks of overgeneralization and vagueness.
Matthew points to this by suggesting that if we did manage to cite any one truth where all paths lead, it might turn out to be pretty “squishy.” (Matt, as an aside, regarding one of the other topics – the one about the possibility that religious belief could be inherently divisive: I wasn’t thinking “violence-producing...”)
The squishy problem is why I’d asked for more solid footing regarding just what that single truth to which all paths lead might look like.
The Problem of Breakfast
Lee’s response to the many paths/one truth idea is that “obviously there must be a single answer.” He asserts, however, that this is a lot to tackle before breakfast. Hmm….
Although it lacks the charisma of “that one far-off divine event to which creation moves,” the limits imposed on the brain by an empty stomach itself strikes me as a reasonable candidate for a universal truth. Maybe it's the John McCain of universal truths. Bad Alice feels that all notions of universal truth are McCain-like anyway (not her exact words…) - a sentiment which, paradoxically, is not universally shared.
“More Than a Feeling” (I count two…)
Vincent says that the one truth to which all paths lead would be beyond words and something felt. Is the thought here that given enough time we’d all come to feel similarly about… life? With what sort of feeling?
Timjamz’s response appears consistent with Vincent’s. He suggests that loving and being loved are the one truth. (Although that seems to make two truths…)
But while loving and being loved are desirable, what would make this a universal truth? There are people who don’t seem to give or get much of either of these experiences...
N2 indicates that there may have to be many paths because of individual differences. Sounds right to me. But the many paths are easy to spot and articulate as compared to our post-breakfast unifying… feelings?
Some questions raised by your comments to the previous post:
1. If there are many paths to one truth, what truth or kind of truth might that be?
2. Why can’t creation or the universe itself simply be, or be self-creating? What empirical or logical reason requires the idea of a Creator? Eternal God or eternal nature/being-itself... either way you end up with a self-creating entity or an entity that always existed. If the idea of a self creating or always-existing entity is logically or empirically flawed, it’s flawed, whatever entity you ascribe it to. And if it’s not, it’s not.
3. If there are in fact compelling logical or empirical grounds for the existence of a Creator-God or other religious beliefs, then why are atheists unable to follow the logic or evidence to its conclusion?
4. If there are not compelling logical or empirical grounds for religious beliefs, then are they inherently divisive?
A critical event in transforming Christianity from a minor Jewish sect into a world religion was St. Paul’s decision to set aside Jewish laws concerning diet and circumcision, and invite non-Jews as well as Jews into the faith. Paul recognized that despite their value for Jewish tradition, these customs were secondary to the heart of a Word that he believed was universal.
What if Christians of every denomination, and Christianity as a whole, were to set aside its view of itself as absolutely right in its belief system? What if Christians rose up to declare to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews: our beliefs are in no sense better than yours? We are in no way more righteous or justified than you? What if Christians were to fully acknowledge members of other religions as brothers, sisters - full equals?
It will never happen in my lifetime. But until then, I think that the great heart of the Word that Jesus strove to bring into this world will be little understood, much less fully revealed.
