Ratzinger has been elected the Bishop of Rome. This is the one person I dreaded becoming Pope.
I feel like putting on a black armband.
I see the cars go by,
and they’re all painted black.
I see a door ahead,
I want to paint it black
Category: Spirituality
Writing the Unwritable
Susie Miller at Sojourn Ministries has an interesting post which brought back memories for me: why i write G-d…. Coincidentally perhaps, my friend Trev sent me something he’d written, also using “G-d” throughout. During most of my undergraduate years, I was part of a Messianic Jewish congregation in El Paso, which observed the Jewish reverence for the divine name by writing it with a hyphen, G-d.
That reverence is why the Old Testament is filled with the phrase (usually in small caps) “the Lord” instead of the ancient divine name, Yahweh. Most translations follow that tradition, which causes many verses to lose their original meaning. Compare “the Lord is God,” with “Yahweh is God,” which implies that Yahweh is God, and Baal, Moloch, Ashtoreth, et. al. are not.
Susan writes:
Thus i write G-d, like the Hebrews do: to allow there to be Mystery within the very name i use for The Incomprehensible Eternal One….to acknowledge the limits of our rudimentary language and its awkward inability to really name anything, beyond the accepted semiotic usage of the day and time…
On the mystical path, all words and pronouns seem woefully inadequate, and writing “G-d” calls attention to the fact. I might do that myself, except that I hate hyphens as no other mark of punctuation! Jacques Derrida would probably write “God” to show that we’re just borrowing a word for Something beyond all concepts.
A strictly impersonal metaphor, such as the Tao, could be “It”. . . but even capitalized, “It” seems too impersonal. The Sanskrit word Tat (That) seems much better, since “that” can be personal or impersonal. Early Buddhists spoke of Suchness, and called the Buddha “the one who has come from Suchness.” Some Christian mystics used similar words. Meister Eckhart called God “Isness”–emphasizing “him” as the Ground of Being, and Hildegard of Bingen called God hæcceitas, This-ness.
Eastern Orthodox icons of Christ have the Greek words Hō On (The Being) written on the halo’s cross (left), which is the Greek translation of “I am that I am,” the divine name in Exodus 3. Eckhart Tolle also uses the word Being as a substitute for God.
Pronouns are a special problem. The default divine pronoun is masculine and personal, in view of the very common (and often misleading) personal, masculine metaphor of God. Using “divine” sometimes gets around the need for possessive pronouns, but it seems rather weak. I like the definite quality of This, That, and Such, although they’re probably too strange for prime-time, and should be used sparingly.
For God so loved the world, that Such gave This only-begotten Son…
I usually fall back to the “defaults” for convenience. Any thoughts out there?
This This-ing
pen scratching paper, making pretty marks
marks stand for sounds,
sounds stand for thoughts,
thoughts stand for the jokes,
the jokes we call our selves.
pen scratching pager, making pretty marks
why?
the question shows corruption;
the innocent can’t ask why,
there is only wow.
don’t ask why i write.
don’t ask what it means.
i needed meaning when i was lost.
now that i know that i don’t know
what meaning can i need?
no one writes–there is only writing.
no one questions–there is only asking.
there are no nouns, only verbs
no i, no we, no you, no other.
only this,
doing this, now, thusly.
be god, be this, be natural.
god, you, i
appearing and fading
here and there
as needed, as needed.
when a universe is needed
let there be light
and light there is.
nothing is done,
no one does.
there is only this thising.
© jon zuck, april 12, 2005, norfolk
Doubting and Faith
Today, I received an email from a reader in the Netherlands troubled by doubts. For me, I only began to believe after a time of doubting. I got the doubting out of the way in my youth, but I had to be an agnostic for long months before I became a believer.
Yet faith changes continue. My conception of God has changed from being “personal” (God has the attributes of a person) to being mostly impersonal (God is something far beyond personhood). I keep going back to the phrase “the Ground of Being,” used by Christian mystics for centuries, from The Book of Privy Counseling, to Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. *The Ground of Being* means that Beingness, Existence itself–with all that it contains–space, time, the Universe–springs from something that is so incredible it’s beyond the concepts of being or existence. Yet existence comes from it like the grass from the ground.
A friend of mine was shaken by a spiritual experience he had, because God didn’t seem to be there. Of course not. In these glimpses where the Matrix is dissolved, God can’t be seen because there is no separation. In One, there is no “you” and “God;” there is just One.
Yet, in the manifested world, It is personal, because It manifests persons, and all that is. Everything we use to describe this Ground of Being falls short. It is mystery. Nothing stops us from trying to explain and describe It, but we can only describe Its energies and actions, as we can only see the wind by the movement of the clouds and dust.
Children sense this intuitively:
What created the Universe?
The Big Bang.
What made the Big Bang bang?
Who made the world, Mommy?
God did, Honey.
Who made God?
So we use words: God, Tao, Brahman, the Unconditioned, Emptiness, and on and on, though all words and names are insufficient. The Mystery pervades everything. Explanations are only invitations to engage the Mystery at a deeper level. Why do living things grow? Because their cells divide. Why do cells divide? Because of DNA. How does DNA make cells divide? Silence.
I ended my email response to him with this:
My teacher once said “the Universe is a mystery. If you could explain it, there wouldn’t be a mystery anymore.” . . .
Move the consideration from being a question in your head to a wonder in your heart. Love the mystery, devote yourself to IT, not as a question or problem, but as your life. Because, well, it is your life, and all life. Everything comes from the mystery, and there is nothing which isn’t full of the mystery. The mystery will sustain you as nothing else can. It’s the only thing there is!
Come as a Child
Akilesh has a wonderful post at Graceful Presence about how awakening is a restoration of the original mind of the child. I hightly recommend it.
Jesus said so many years to go to just come as a child. We can’t accept it. We think it means have childlike faith in the Biblical narratives or the Nicene Creed. It just means to see the divine magic of reality.
Trev Diesel recently posted his thought, “How strange that we should be here at all.” The wonder doesn’t lie in explanations, even the explanation that God loves us so much that he made the Universe. The wonder is just this. And the other wonder is that we don’t see it.
The Pope is Passing
Throughout the day, I’ve gone to Yahoo! and refreshed the page to see if there’s been any more news concerning the Pope.
I’m 44 years old, and I was raised Baptist. After a born-again experience that radically changed my life when I was 13, I devoted myself to apprehending as much as I could of what God had for me. The adventure took through every major expression of Protestantism, and 10 years ago, into the peace and turmoil of the Catholic Church (and beyond). I’ve never really known a Catholic Church that wasn’t headed by Karol Wojtyla, the pope known to the world as His Holiness, John Paul II.
By the time you read this, chances are that John Paul will be “dead,” a word that I have to put in quotes, because any mystic knows that there is no such thing as death. But his smile, wave, and sometimes-infuriating tenacity will be gone.
Most popes have been chiefly administrators of the Church. John Paul II was a maverick. He traveled to every continent and nearly every country of the world, praying for peace and preaching peace. Behind the scenes, he would meet with dictators and urge them to practice tolerance. He was instrumental in preventing the democratic movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from going the way of Tiananmen Square.
He lobbied consistently on behalf of the poor, against the exploitation of poor people by rich people, and poor countries by rich countries. He argued for dignity, fairness, and kindness to all, since all are created in the image of God. He fought against war and the death penalty; he had seen up close the horrors of war and killing, when the most terrible seizure of brutality that humanity has manifested enveloped his country.
He never wavered in proclaiming Christ as the Savior of the world. Yet he reached out with kindness and love to leaders of other religions, and invited the world to dialogue. He publicly asked God’s forgiveness for the Church’s past sins.
To many Catholics like myself, his weaknesses seemed to be in his official role of governing the Church. He resisted the reforms of Vatican II, and interpreted them as narrowly as possible. He scaled back the ministres of laity within the Church, as the priesthood continued to wither away. He often seemed unable to give the grace to more progessively-minded Catholics that he would give to the world in general. Proponents of change often found themselves silenced or censured, such as Matthew Fox OP, Anthony deMello SJ, Leonardo Boff OFM, Tissa Balasuriya OMI, not to mention dozens of lay teachers. The Church remains a largely pre-modern institution in a post-modern world, locked in Thomistic views about sex, birth control, and the capability of women to minister.
But whatever else can be said of him, he gave his all. He gave his heart, his hope, his health, and his life for his convictions and the world. He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and he loved his neighbor as himself. He will be missed, and he will be remembered.
Requiescat in pace, Papa Johannes Paulus.
Frontline has an excellent biography of John Paul II.
The ego is why
My friend Bob Griffith (Hypersync ?), a soon-to-be-ordained Episcopal priest, put up an excellent post, asking “Why? ?” He deplores pre-emptive war, and the support of so many Christians behind it:
>Why are our innocent civilians any more important or valuable than are innocent civilians in any other country . . . especially if we consider how God views us all? . . . I cannot say they don’t understand, because these are intelligent people. Yet, it seems they simply cannot see; they do not seem to understand. The crime, in my opinion, is that many of these same people claim Christ as their example–their attitudes, ideas, and actions are so contrary to the example and call of Christ that it is mind-boggling.
I couldn’t possibly agree with Bob more. Millions of Christians have little awareness of the actual teachings of Christ regarding universal, unconditional love and generosity. The question remains, why? I believe it’s largely that we do not understand what the Gospel is. The original Gospel (Good News) wasn’t about “believing in” Jesus, but the News Jesus dedicated his life to proclaiming and demonstrating–that the Kingdom of God is here. At hand. Within. Spread out upon the earth. To be in the Kingdom of God means that God’s presence is felt everywhere, that God is in control, not the self. The Kingdom is present when the ego is absent.
I believe it isn’t seen because it’s unacceptable to the ego. And so the Good News shifted from being the teaching of Christ, to the gospel about Christ. This is not nearly as threatening to the ego, which can choose to “accept” it or not, but still retains control.
The ego objectifies whatever it can. Realities such as regions of the earth are abstracted into concepts like “country.” We’re further indoctrinated into believing that there is “my” country and others are “foreign” countries, and their citizens’ needs are of a much lower priority. A lot more becomes “mine” to disguise simple reality. There’s *my* heritage, *my* race, *my* religion, *my* property, *my* desires, *my* rights, which are important. What’s yours is up for consideration. Or dismissal. Or labeling. Iraqi/American, saint/sinner, man/woman, gay/straight, black/white/Oriental, and most of all, good/bad.
The ego is like the surface tension bounding a drop of water. To fall into the sea seems like death to it, but the surface is not the water. When the drop falls into the ocean, the water is not damaged, but it is now without boundaries, connected to all the water in the ocean.
Jesus often used the metaphors of birth and children. Be born again, born of the Spirit, he said. Receive as a little child, or you cannot enter the Kingdom. Little children know nothing of the thicket of illusions that form the ego. Another child isn’t an Iraqi or an American, but a friend.
We need to know that concepts and distinctions are games of the mind. While they’re essential to
playing in the Matrix—working, living, thinking, building — they remain games. Reality is still unchanged. It’s the Kingdom of God.
The Greatest Lesson (pt. 3)
After nearly two full days had elaspsed since his death, it looked like the end. There would be no kingdom of God. There were nice ideas, there had been healings, but the religion had killed the Teacher, and the Empire had squashed the Kingdom. His friends huddled in fear behind closed doors, wondering if they too, were going to be nailed to crosses.
It was the first day of the Jewish week, and early in the morning before the workday began, some of the women who followed him went to his tomb to pay respects by anointing his body.
What they found was that the Teacher had been **vindicated** in an extraordinary miracle. He was alive again. The final lesson would not be forgotten:
>Love is stronger than death. Love is stronger than hate. Love is courageous, and will even sacrifice itself for the benefit of others. Love is the power of God.
Forty days later, the Teacher would be **greatly exalted.** He would be enabled to share his spirit with all who asked. This “second coming” would be greater than the first, for it allows an intimacy that was impossible when Jesus was in the body.
>He [Jesus] has given us all the things that we need for life and for true devotion, bringing us to know God himself… through them you will be able to share the divine nature (II Peter 1:3-4a).
Christ is risen. Hallelujah! May we live out his Good News.
The Greatest Lesson (pt. 2)
And then he died.
The Greatest Lesson (pt. 1)
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Teacher taught in a crowded, downtrodden section of the Roman empire at the juncture of three continents. He taught a message that was gripping, revolutionary, liberating, and . . . unacceptable. It was that the Kingdom of Heaven, where God is in control of everything, was a matter of living selflessly, of considering others before oneself, of loving selflessly, and knowing God as the Father and Source of everyone. He called it “the Good News,” and urged everyone to turn from their present ways and trust the Good News, which he saw it as the purpose of his life (Lk 4:43).
His message was never well-received. According to one source, his first public lesson was such a hit that his hearers tried to throw him off a cliff when he implied that all peoples are equal (Lk 4:29). After that, he began teaching more carefully, performing miracles of healing to show the love of God to all, and using parables to teach the truths of the Kingdom to “those with ears to hear.” Parables put off most of his hearers (Mt 13:13), but he hoped some would listen with their hearts, and let the lessons penetrate their souls.
He openly disputed the religious teachers of his time for hiding God behind the screens of legalism, prejudice, and indifference. He concentrated his direct teaching only to a handful of friends he chose, but after more than two years of living with him, they were still not “getting it,” and were still embroiled in the prejudices of the time.
People constantly tested him. What about the Romans? The Samaritans? Adulterers? Possessed maniacs? You can’t mean to love them! But he did, and he showed it by doing it.
He spent hours alone in prayer in the hills. He taught that constant connection to the Father was essential, and that he himself could do nothing without Him (Jn 5:19.) But his friends still didn’t get it. At some point, he determined to go to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51), knowing that his greatest lesson would cost him his life. It was not an easy choice to make. “There is a baptism I still must receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!” (Lk 12:58)
That distress was not fear of death, but the frustration of trying to teach people who were unable to hear what he had to say, and time was running out. He emphasized the point “The Kingdom of God does not come visibly, and there is no one to say, ‘look here! Look there!’ For the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk 17:20-21) In spite of this, even his disciples still hoped that he would become the divinely-anointed king of Israel, and drive the hated occupiers out of the country.
In Jerusalem, he was hailed as a hero, and then immediately went on to attack religion directly. He continued preaching and warned that the destruction of Jerusalem would take place within a generation, but that his followers should “look up,” and see him, even in the clouds. (Lk 21:20-33)
He shared a final, sacred meal with his friends, and used the Passover Seder to urge them to remember him. The final lesson was coming, and he knew it must not fail. Then the Lesson began. He was betrayed, arrested, “tried,” sentenced, mocked, beaten, scourged, And while being tortured to death, he forgave. . .