An Existential Christian

I began this blog by referring to Thomas Merton, who plays a prominent role in the six articles I have published in the past two years, just as he continues to influence my spiritual life.

In reading a recent passage (from The Wisdom of the Desert), I was struck again by his approach, which I call existential. That is, he approaches matters of belief and the inner life through his own experience, in many cases by having encountered what he has read and reflected on it, producing memorable passages like this:

He is referring to his reading of the early desert fathers: "What good will it do us to know merely that such things were once said? The important thing is that they were lived. That they flow from an experience of the deeper levels of life. That they represent a discovery of man, at the term of an inner and spiritual journey that is far more crucial and infinitely more important than any journey to the moon." [He was writing just after JFK's call to land on the moon.]

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous."

The idea that we are often strangers to our true selves is a major theme in Merton's extensive writing. As James Finley shows in detail in Merton's Palace of Nowhere, the true self is our essential core or center, the unchanging self known by God, in contrast to the false social masks we tend to wear. Ultimately, the search for the true self is also a search for the presence of God within us.

As Merton wrote elsewhere, "We could not seek God unless He were seeking us....But the mere fact that we seek Him proves that we have already found Him."

This koan-like paradox reflects, I think, the Gospel: "Seek and you shall find..." The one who seeks has already in a sense found what he needs. The asking is itself a discovery. "Knock and it shall be opened to you."

In Merton I find not only an intellectual who read widely but one who also felt deeply and had the gift--almost the obsession--to write as a way of clarifying his ever-growing awareness of the mystery of God and prayer.

All the writing he did may seem narcissistic to some, but I hope my comments have shown that his appeal as a spiritual master is as an existential writer, whose own experience is the ground of his belief and thus a source of continuing inspiration.

Fear and Loathing

Generally, I am reluctant to delve into the horrors of the present political scene, but there are times when my restraint gives way, especially since I went to bed yesterday convinced that my last post was too general and vague, meaning I didn't spend enough time thinking it through.

In The Economist today I read about the GOP governor of Maine, an ideologue named LePage, who has put an end to the Maine tradition of polite politics. Like the governors of Florida and Wisconsin and others beholden to the Tea Party doctrine, he has an arrogant approach to most issues and people, calling his opponents "idiots."

Especially idiotic in his benighted view is an innocent mural in the state's Dept. of Labor depicting child laborers and Rosie the Riveter. The governor finds the mural anti-business, thereby summing up whatever political philosophy he has.

Like many others recently elected to Congress and state houses, LePage is indebted to that one percent, the new ruling class described by Joseph Stiglitz, the wealthy corporate types that have bankrolled GOP campaigns. These are people who do not properly understand self-interest: they take it to mean: what's good for me and my group now! To hell with the needy, much less the common good. It's all about people like me.

The current crop of Republicans seems to be a party of resentment, a party of fear and loathing of everything liberal, everyone who's foreign or a minority, every idea that has depth and complexity.

Truth (e.g., the birther absurdity) is irrelevant to these right-wingers who thrive on hate and who see facts and research as part of the liberal elite. This ideology becomes almost comic in the mouth of Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, and Michelle Bachmann. But its implications are serious and frightening.

Left unchecked, what will emerge is a new dark age of ignorance and bigotry, based on attitudes that are hateful. When budgets are slashed without concern for human needs, when facts and truth don't count, when all government is seen as the enemy, and when self-interest NOT properly understood rules, we are in peril as a country.

That, I think, is why the Stiglitz article in Vanity Fair was important.

Self-interest properly understood

In the current Vanity Fair, of all places, a significant, thoughtful essay by a distinguished economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who says America has become a country where inequality has been allowed to grow.  A country where the majority are doing worse year after year "is not likely to do well over the long haul."

We have allowed a powerful elite, the top 1% of the population, to emerge. 

Much of the inequality has been caused by the manipulation of our financial system made possible by changes in rules paid for by the big bankers themselves.

The most damning and alarming passage:  Virtually all the Senators and most members of the House are "members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well, they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office."
Stiglitz points out most tellingly the consequences of this recent policy on our sense of identity, opportunity, and community; in short, on social justice issues.  He quotes Tocqueville's identification of something uniquely American: self-interest properly understood.

If we don't think of ourselves, who will?  But if we think only of ourselves, who are we? 

This statement, paraphrased from Hillel, is basic to the notion of the common good, that essential element in any governmment worthy of the name, while recognizing the rights of the individual. 

If we have "properly understood" self-interest, we recognize that paying attention to the needs and self-interest of others is not only a spiritually correct notion but "a precondition for one's own ultimate well-being," in Stiglitz's words. In other words, looking out for others is not only good for the soul; it's good for business.

So our ruling elite, if they fail to see that they are obligated to the 99 percent of the citizenry, are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, as they did in the recent financial debacle.

All this reminds me of the important point made by Robert Bellah twenty or more years ago in Habits of the Heart: that extreme individualism may seem as American as apple pie, but it must be balanced with a concern for the common good. We exist as individuals within the context of a community; we cannot go it alone. We depend for our very identity on those who have created the society to which we contribute.

Perhaps this is why I can tolerate only so much news about what happens in Washington, where unbridled self-interest rules in spite of lofty rhetoric that promises something more noble, where Tea Party members do all they can to advance self-interest--not properly understood.

The Importance of Mystery

Asked to define jazz, Louis Armstrong once remarked, "Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know." It's probably the same thing with the soul. (And I don't mean "soul" in jazz.)

As a parochial school student, I formed a vague but somehow visible idea of the soul from all that the nuns told us about its being darkened by sin and whitened by grace. It appeared in my youthful imagination as a large mostly white blob.

After years of reading theology and philosophy, my idea of the soul remains vague. Yet this is as it should be. Like so many invisible realities I believe in, it is a mystery, and no efforts to define it or imagine it are worth much.

The very fact that it gets mentioned in contemporary intellectual discourse is remarkable; maybe like the mind, which psychologists have generally called the brain, the soul is having a comeback. In reading a blog by Caspar Melville recently about the book Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey, I was intrigued to learn that the old questions, including how immaterial consciousness can arise from a material thing like the brain, are not settled.

Humphrey says that consciousness and the soul are the same thing. He says that spirituality is essential for consciousness, spirituality being the source of awe, beauty and meaning. And I would add: mystery. But in this materialist philosophy, consciousness is hardly immortal, yet it is said to give us feelings that we are special and transcendent.

Only feelings? I would say we are special and transcendent, that the soul or inner life, which Ron Rolheiser says, is something we build up as the result of learning about suffering, among other things, is the immortal part of ourselves. Nothing uniquely Christian here, if you read the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers. Or look into other religious traditions.

Thomas Moore in his popular Care of the Soul avoids any definition of soul; he skirts the issues of immortality but would probably agree that it is a divine spark within us that connects us to the divine. It has to do with love as well as immortality.

If the soul isn't immortal, I would say, echoing Flannery O'Connor, to hell with it. So for Mr. Humphrey, what is spiritual is apparently some invisible energy that dies when the brain does. He tries to write a natural history of the soul without, apparently, recognizing the reality of the supernatural.

I should be grateful that the godless (I found out about the book on a website "ideas for godless people") are concerned with souls at all. But I'd be happier if such investigators would be open to mystery, which includes (for me) the reality of the supernatural.

The goal of science, B. F. Skinner once said, is the destruction of mystery. But enlightened scientists today include mystery as a basic part of our ongoing discovery of the complexity of what is real. I believe in keeping mystery alive.

The Death of Privacy

Were it not for all the legal statements issued by medical suppliers about my right to privacy, I would almost think privacy is becoming non-existent.

Yesterday, I looked up an obituary online and was invited to write a note of condolence. I could see at once that four other friends of the family had been there before me. And their messages were displayed for me to read. Notes of bereavement, intended to offer comfort and prayers, are available for the world to view. Why? Do I need a sample of what (or not) to say? Do I want my words disseminated?

In this Facebook age where apparently every detail of our lives is to be shared, I guess the answer is Yes. Like the retirement party I recently attended: The guest of honor received cards from each of the twelve guests, read each one, then passed the cards around the table so we could all see what (private) messages others had written. I almost wished I was emboldened to say, "Our card was just intended for you on your happy day..." but decided I am too sensitive and said nothing.

We live in an time when people think nothing of sharing their phone calls with others in Starbucks or the supermarket, when they enjoy listening to people discuss the intimacies of their bodily functions on TV or routinely share medical information with near strangers. I want to shout: TMI (too much information!)

I am grateful that we live in a more open age, when once-taboo topics can be publicly aired. I think of the bullying of kids, the issue of homosexuality and gender in general, and certain types of family abuse that can't be kept under wraps since doing so causes more problems. I am glad we can talk about hyperactivity and depression and other emotional problems without guilt and shame. I welcome programs that deal with hatred and racism.

But such talk must be done in a safe context wherein people are sensitive about revealing too much personal information. It requires tact, discretion, and good taste. The popular culture is never designed to accommodate such virtues.

On Awkwardness

Thanks to a recent (March 28) blog by Matthew Wollin (theawl.com), I have been thinking about awkwardness, both the word and the experience.

There is nothing awkward about Wollin's writing; in fact, his reflection is gracefully done. He looks at the forced intimacy of strangers in offices and on subways and finds urban life generally filled with little experiences of awkwardness.

He mentions, of course, puberty, a time of high anxiety on every front, and the awkwardness of sex (unless it is turned into a game called flirtation). And adulthood as a time when we pretend to understand why we feel awkward.

Feeling awkward, if it is a feeling, is so unbearable an experience, he says, that it must be talked or written about; he wisely says that "friends are made through awkwardness shared."

Wollin, who notes the awkward sound of the word 'awkward,' believes that we who use English are better able to express our reactions to social awkwardness than users of other languages. I wonder.

I wonder why he doesn't mention the obvious source of social phobias: fear. Too obvious, I guess. Shyness is commonplace. As a friend has shown me, it is often genetic and not a learned behavior--this fear of being easily embarrassed. Or is it both?

How difficult it is to get my students to talk in class: as first graders, they were probably eager to raise their hands, but, sadly, as young adults they have learned to be self-conscious and follow Mark Twain's advice ("Better to be say nothing and be thought stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt.")

They don't believe me when I say, there's no such thing as a stupid question. Of course, this is strictly speaking untrue, but in a learning environment it makes sense. How can I instill confidence in them--especially when my own level of confidence is often low, when stage fright can overcome me and when I must play the role of "man in control"?

I invariably face awkwardness in using the phone and walking in to a crowd of people. I would like to think being sensitive is an asset to be proud of. Yet the struggle with social awkwardness is a daily experience, so routine that I hardly think of it.

All of this is very tricky, and I am grateful to Matthew Wollin for analyzing the issue of awkwardness. It affects everyone.

Death on Spring Day

This day in April was radiant, the essence of spring, with a cloudless blue sky and cool breezes, birdsong, and flowering trees. I felt unusually alive, especially after last night's performance--an evening of historical humor co-presented to 100 people whose laughter was itself enlivening.

Then came death, as it ineviably does: sudden news of Melinda's passing, a victim of MS. I had been meaning to visit or call and now it's too late. The familiar guilt. We were not close, yet after 40 years of intermittent association, some bonds are established.

It could have been me, but it wasn't. Death happens to other people, doesn't it? Anyone who has read Tolstoi's masterpiece, "The Death of Ivan Ilych," remembers that idea from the opening, then the long and painful process of sharing in the death of an ordinary man, who only at the end of his life sees the meaning of it all. He begins to say to himself, "I want to live!"

It's almost laughable, yet his insight--and ours as we share in the awakening of his soul--is redemptive. It's all about seeing that loving and being loved are all that matter, not property and polite manners and success.

The catharsis here is powerful, more than is possible with the deaths of those around us, who pass away in hospitals or hospices, their condition not known except to those around them, if at all. We turn to fiction to learn the truth about dying. Tolstoi is the master.

To confront death on a spring day is to say, as another woman in the community--also of my age--said in a message to me today: "Grief is real. But so is laughter. And shining moments of clarity and brilliance." She referred to the poem she had written following the death of her husband a few months ago, and I admired her hopeful courage so well expressed.

We must live fully. Who knows when death will come or what awaits me on the other side? As St. John of the Cross wrote 500 years ago, "I only know that a great love awaits me."

I hope I have his strong faith--as well as the courage of my poet-friend. I hope that Melinda was appreciated during her life for all her shining moments of clarity and brilliance. And that she is now totally free.