I ran across this in my reading and found it relevant to some of my current views. It is from the article "Cosmology and Consciousness" by John T. Brinkman, published in Buddhist-Christian Studies, vol 18. I hope it triggers some good thinking!
"(C)ommunion is the ultimate condition for (persons) to experience the mystery of things...to be present to things as they truly are...We do not deal with the human community over against the world. Indeed true wisdom is found in the effort to engage life, for example rain sound and moonlight, with a sustained sense of spontaneity. What is to be decided is the question of how to live in such a way as to not distance oneself from the immediacy of the experience."
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
To those praying for vision or faith
Today I was driving down Michigan Road looking at the different signs for churches…you know, the ones that usually have some banal saying like “This church is prayer-conditioned,” or “Ch—ch. What’s missing? U-R.” I think the one I detest the most is “Know Jesus, know peace. No Jesus, no peace.” We’ve reduced Christ to the equivalency of a Tylenol capsule.
Anyway, I was looking at this signs as they passed, thinking about the faith of my late father. My wife and I saw visited him in the hospital about a week before he died. The whole time we were there he would slip into a thousand-yard stare during pauses in the conversation. I asked him what he was thinking about. He said he was trying not to think. The next time I saw him he was unconscious and remained so until he passed away.
I wish I had possessed the courage at the time to ask him the difficult question of what he was trying not to think about. I guess I know the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it. Perhaps I am reading into the experience what I need from it, but in his eyes I saw the same panic, the same existential terror that I have felt and still feel from time to time. I wanted to hear him say what he was feeling so I could commiserate with him, so that I could connect with him. My father was hard to get close to and here was this moment when I think we may have been closer than ever and yet it passed away because it failed to materialize. It failed to become truly shared.
I was thinking about this and about how so often we long for some sort of connection to God or the divine. Perhaps it is in the end a longing for relationship. If you consider it, no one can truly ever know the inner you. No one, no matter how close, can ever be present to that stream of consciousness that is yours alone. That is one of the limits of our humanity. A spouse, a friend, a lover…they may know how you think and they may be able to read your face very easily or be able to predict what or how you will feel at some instance or in some situation. But even in that closeness, we still remain separated by the vast gulf of different embodiments, different minds, by space. In some ways I think that the longing for God, for a “personal savior,” or for a simple faith is just that wish to have that inner being penetrated and broken into so that we are not alone. It is the wish, just for once, to hear a voice that is not one’s own speaking on the inside. Perhaps the insane are lucky?
I am reminded by a theologian that God, in a sense, is created. That we create God when we share, when we love one another. Communion is the closest we will come, at least on this side of mystery, to escaping subjectivity. To those longing for simple faith, I want to say that faith is anything but simple. Simple faith is a false promise and an illusion. Faith requires a series of assents, one of those being the acceptance of one’s limitation as a subjective being. Stop longing for voice or vision and begin to look around you and listen because it is in this dirty, brown, green, lush, blue, gritty, creature-filled earth that God will be found. Stop waiting for something outside of you to enter in to save you because you wait in vain.
Your faith will be composed of what you are. Your faith will be made up of your failures, your doubts, your weaknesses, your strengths. Your faith is not made strong by your commitment to beliefs. Your faith is made strong by commitment to your humanity, to your “you-ness.” It is a commitment to creatureliness.
Anyway, I was looking at this signs as they passed, thinking about the faith of my late father. My wife and I saw visited him in the hospital about a week before he died. The whole time we were there he would slip into a thousand-yard stare during pauses in the conversation. I asked him what he was thinking about. He said he was trying not to think. The next time I saw him he was unconscious and remained so until he passed away.
I wish I had possessed the courage at the time to ask him the difficult question of what he was trying not to think about. I guess I know the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it. Perhaps I am reading into the experience what I need from it, but in his eyes I saw the same panic, the same existential terror that I have felt and still feel from time to time. I wanted to hear him say what he was feeling so I could commiserate with him, so that I could connect with him. My father was hard to get close to and here was this moment when I think we may have been closer than ever and yet it passed away because it failed to materialize. It failed to become truly shared.
I was thinking about this and about how so often we long for some sort of connection to God or the divine. Perhaps it is in the end a longing for relationship. If you consider it, no one can truly ever know the inner you. No one, no matter how close, can ever be present to that stream of consciousness that is yours alone. That is one of the limits of our humanity. A spouse, a friend, a lover…they may know how you think and they may be able to read your face very easily or be able to predict what or how you will feel at some instance or in some situation. But even in that closeness, we still remain separated by the vast gulf of different embodiments, different minds, by space. In some ways I think that the longing for God, for a “personal savior,” or for a simple faith is just that wish to have that inner being penetrated and broken into so that we are not alone. It is the wish, just for once, to hear a voice that is not one’s own speaking on the inside. Perhaps the insane are lucky?
I am reminded by a theologian that God, in a sense, is created. That we create God when we share, when we love one another. Communion is the closest we will come, at least on this side of mystery, to escaping subjectivity. To those longing for simple faith, I want to say that faith is anything but simple. Simple faith is a false promise and an illusion. Faith requires a series of assents, one of those being the acceptance of one’s limitation as a subjective being. Stop longing for voice or vision and begin to look around you and listen because it is in this dirty, brown, green, lush, blue, gritty, creature-filled earth that God will be found. Stop waiting for something outside of you to enter in to save you because you wait in vain.
Your faith will be composed of what you are. Your faith will be made up of your failures, your doubts, your weaknesses, your strengths. Your faith is not made strong by your commitment to beliefs. Your faith is made strong by commitment to your humanity, to your “you-ness.” It is a commitment to creatureliness.
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