A Response to "Obsessed With Knowing" by The Artist's Voice

A friend of mine and fellow seminarian recently wrote in his blog about the need for knowing and how it can turn into an unhealthy obsession. (Check it out here. He states it much more succinctly than I do!) He compared it too walking into a library, being surrounded by all the possible avenues for knowledge, but having to voluntarily limit oneself to focusing on one particular choice in the face of being overwhelmed. Like the old saying goes, a jack of all trades is master of none. In his entry he also referenced a recent article by Gordon Atkinson entitled “Letting Go of the Need to Know” published in The Christian Century. Atkinson writes:

(T)he search for knowledge cannot bear the full weight of human desire, which
includes the search for wisdom, serenity and meaning in life. These
spiritual pursuits call us to slow down and let go, to accept the limits of our
humanity with grace and dignity.

In my last meeting with my spiritual advisor we talked about the search for certainty with God and that certainty is the opposite of faith. Not that faith is blind trust. I think that faith has to encompass both the acceptance of uncertainty and at the same time push one towards trying to find certainty. As such, it seems I am walking a razor’s edge, performing a high wire act at times. My advisor and I agreed, though, that at times one must simply let go of trying to discover ultimate truths. Sometimes, one has to put down the book and go do the dishes, or whatever other tasks are pressing. That insatiable fire will still be there, always burning, always drawing me towards it even as it pulls farther away.

A few days ago, my wife and I went to a used bookstore to find some children’s books. (We are able to feel the baby kick and move now. She – we found out it is a girl at our last ultrasound – is responding to our voices and we thought it would be neat to try and read to her to see how many kicks and pushes we can elicit from her.) One of the books was The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein. It provides a nice allegory for this driving search for answers and truth. While I won’t bore you with a summary – go out and read it if you haven’t – I can say that what I gleaned from it was this: We may be pulled into searching because we feel an inner need to do so. Something may feel “missing” within us. The beauty, however, lays in the search itself and where it can take us. Even should we happen to stumble upon what we feel is the answer, we may find that it doesn’t fit with us. We are the searching, not the solution – the solution may never be found, and that is o.k.

So, much to my wife’s chagrin, I will still continue to purchase and read books that seem like they might point in the right direction, even though I am unhappy with their answers and they only spawn more difficult questions. I am happy leading this life of the sojourner; I wouldn’t wish for anything else. Atkinson writes: “Regardless of how much knowledge you amass in your lifetime, most of it will die with you in the end.” This is true. What I hope is that, at the least, my searching may provide a good foundation for those I love and hope to help somehow. I may never find any solid answers, but perhaps I can help point in the right direction. And when I am gone, leaving nothing material behind but a mass of books, notes, journals, papers, and random writings, maybe they will appear like the giant exoskeleton of some insect, giving enough clues about me so that others will be able to say, “Here was a person who was not satisfied with dogmatic answers. Here was a man within whom burned insatiable desire and longing to know, to understand, and to act upon it.”

A Prayer for Myanmar

May we remember the ongoing situation in Myanmar as we go about our daily affairs. May our hopes and longings be with the Buddhist monks who manifest before our eyes the imaginative and creative power of life that is, even if we ignore it, within us all. May our minds and thoughts be continuously joined to their struggle against those who have become worshippers of death. May they be able to bring about salvation for all the people of Myanmar, including those who most resist it. With this intertwining of our spirits, may we go about, vigilant in examining our own lives, culture, cities, and nation for injustice, hatred, and evil, and be as willing to combat what is closest to us.

Peace be with us all,

Amen

Reverie in Being

Last evening I felt for the first time our child move. My wife had called me to her as she had felt something different. With my hand on my wife's belly I began talking and almost immediately I felt a kick. This went on for several minutes. The feeling associated with it is one that can only be known by those who have experienced it for themselves (so go out right now, find a pregnant woman and put your hand on her belly!). This morning as I reflected on the experience I thought to myself how so many other expectant parents and relatives had undergone the same sensation. I wondered, strangely, if that cheapened it any. That is, did the fact that this same experience has been shared by so many diminish its significance?

The quick answer I arrived at was no, of course not. I have never existed before. My child has never existed before. Thus this event has never occurred in the same way, place, time, etc., as have all other similar occurrences. I think though for many people this argument doesn't work. At times it seems that much of what we hear and see through various media encourage the need for us to feel different. It is the bloody flag of individualism - that unless we are somehow extremely unique then our worth is severely diminished. I suppose that the advertising community has a great stake in creating and sustaining this feeling within us as consumers. Yet I think we are capable of providing this same sense of diminished value in the experience of the common. We dismiss feelings and their understandings as “cliché.” What a terribly horrible argument. How weak, and yet so possibly devastating. I believe that many times the insult is more a sign of the timidity of the one who hurls it. Does it remind us of our own loss of the ability to find treasure and beauty in the common and ordinary?

There exists what I like to jokingly call the Hamlet Effect. It can often be observed for example among high school students who have read Hamlet for the first time. For them, a deep dive into, say, the "To be or not to be" soliloquy can be intensely moving, a moment of creative discovery. And for those of us who are older, who have already experienced that same moment, the reminder of those feelings couple with a jealous despair over the seeming lack of those moments now.

William C. Dowling, a professor of English at Rutgers, has commented that these battles to find meaning in and marvel at the common and ordinary is a struggle for "creative consciousness." This is "a power to see the world anew amidst the clutter of habit and the mindlessness of purely ordinary existence" (see "Ripple": A Minor Excursus at http://arts.ucsc.edu/Gdead/AGDL/dowling.html). In my own words this is to find reverie in being. And this morning as I pondered over these thoughts, I returned to the simple joy of feeling my child kick for the first time and let that joy spread and move as it would.

The Modern Adventure - Adbusters

Mr. Deity Episode 4: Mr. Deity and the Messages

Mr. Deity Episode 9: Mr. Deity and the Book

Mr. Deity Episode 2: Mr. Deity and the Really Big Favor

Untitled

Our next door neighbors have a cat which they adopted after it strayed into our neighborhood. Fittingly they named it “Pop-Up” after its habit of just popping up here and there on random occasions. I think it has been a good match – the cat didn’t appear to be leaving our neck of the woods any time soon. Pop-Up is an indoor/outdoor cat and sometimes she will be outside when I take our dog for a walk. Usually the two run up to each other, each trying to initiate play or communicate in their distinctive ways. I am amazed a little at this because, as much as is possible in the brief time they spend with each other they do manage to overcome the language barrier that exists between dogs and cats.

I mention all of this because several days ago when I took our dog out for a walk, Pop-up was preoccupied with toying with something in our neighbors' front lawn. After our dog was finished with her business, I took her inside and then went back out alone to see what the cat had caught. As I walked over to her I hoped that it was only a cicada or a moth. When I got up to her, though, my worst fear was confirmed. In the grass next to her was a juvenile chipmunk, still alive, but not moving much. I didn’t see any blood on its fur or on the grass next to where it lay. I picked it up, trying to avoid its teeth, and held it in my hand for a while, stroking the brown fur on the top of its head, trying to judge whether it was just petrified or if it had been bitten. Cats’ saliva contains a neurotoxin that often eventually kills small animals even if they happen to escape from a feline predator.

I carried the chipmunk over to the wooded riverbank in front of our home and set it down on the opposite side of the retaining/flood wall that separates our housing addition from the flood plain. As I left it there my thoughts kept returning to the violence that is part and parcel of the universe, whether it be chipmunks being killed, buildings collapsing, or stars being sucked into black holes. These issues have been weighing heavily on my mind lately in large part because I am trying in my personal life to come to a better understanding and implementation of prayer. The mental roadblock has been what, exactly is prayer? To whom or what do I pray? How does one go about prayer? Is it even possible?

I recently finished reading theologian Sallie McFague’s book, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology and so her thoughts on natural evil were swimming around as all of the was occurring. In addressing the issue of natural selection and Christianity, she writes:

“Solidarity with the oppressed, then, becomes the Christian form of both consonance with and defiance of the evolutionary principle. It is consonant with it because it claims that there is a next stage of evolution on our planet, one that is not primarily genetic but cultural…It is defiant of it because it suggests that the principle needed for this to occur is not natural selection of the survival of the fittest, but the solidarity of each with all…At this point, I believe we have no choice but to admit that th radical inclusiveness that is at the heart of Christian faith, especially inclusion of the oppressed, is not compatible with evolution, even cultural evolution…(T)he suffering of God- and ourselves-with those who, nonetheless, suffer, recognizes that irremediable, unconscionable, unremitting, horrific suffering does occur both to individuals and to whole species, suffering that is beyond our best efforts to address and seemingly beyond God’s as well…To say that salvation is the direction of creation…is a statement of faith, not of fact” (pp 172-173,180-181, emphasis mine).

As I struggle with these thoughts it seems clear to me, at least at this point, that there is in all of this a heavy mixture of disappointment and hope, faith and doubt. I found myself returning to the thoughts of Paul Tillich:

“There is no faith without separation. Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt…Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith…In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is overcome not by repression but by courage” (Dynamics of Faith, pp 116-117).

New Testament scholars, in commenting on St. Mark’s description of the death of Jesus, note the difference between it and the other Gospels’ versions. Mark’s description is the simplest and because of that the most devastating. It is not glorious; there are no words of wisdom coming from Jesus’ lips as he dies. Instead it gives us the last gasp of sorrow and confusion from a dying man: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It says that “Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last” (15.34-37 NSRV). I understand the carpenter’s cries as he feels the utter despair and hopelessness as he undergoes the extreme agony of death and feels in those moments – perhaps hurting more than the pain and the agony – the feeling of futility. It is the feeling that this is all in vain…that there is in the end no purpose.

Does hope remain in this? Do I continue on in hope – longing for a God that does not hear? That does not respond? That is immune to all of this? Etsi deus non daretur? Is this the moment then? Is this the central issue? Is this the eternally returning decision: persistence in the face and presence of mockery? The disciples fled after Jesus’ death and with good reason. They fled in hatred, terror, and sorrow. But they say that this was not the end. Oh irreconcilable Force, you may do or be nothing. And if this is true, then so be it. But what do I do? Who am I for others?