I couldn't resist the reference to pop culture. And by the way, this post has no relation to the previous one.

I just made my usual late-night run to X-Mart to buy "stuff," and thought I'd make a quick post now that I'm back home.

I doubt my acquaintance Vinnie will ever read this blog. But if you do, then hi Vinnie. I'm glad you stopped in.

Vinnie is a young man doing the best he can. Sometimes I see him gathering carts at X-Mart, wearing one those fluorescent vests and getting a little help from that cart-pushing robot-thing he calls "Buddy." Sometimes he's cleaning the tables at the little dining area inside X-Club. He works hard; he's always sweating and doing his job with gusto. He's glad to have a job. He knows the value of feeling like you're doing your part.

It takes Vinnie a long time to count change when he does his own shopping, and he doesn't have enough money to buy anything you'd call "stuff." He buys food and once in a while some clothes. He knows the value of a dollar.

Vinnie can't drive a car. He isn't qualified. So he rides a bicycle. He knows the value of transportation. He wears his helmet. He knows the simple beauty of being alive.

Vinnie speaks pretty well and gets his point across, sometimes he's really funny without trying to be, and he always speaks sincerely. He knows the value of communication and of being transparent.

Vinnie's big dream, last time we talked, was to someday have his own trailer house with air conditioning and a refrigerator. He knows the value of a comfortable place to call home.

Vinnie knows the value of many things much better than I do. Lots of times he comes to church at the same place I go. Vinnie was formed by the same Loving God as me. That's why he's my brother. I'm going to watch him more closely this year. I think he's here to be a teacher—for people like me.

May God richly bless the special people of the world. They, like children, are the precious ones.

School is getting into full swing, so I doubt I'll be very good at posting for the next few months, and for that matter my posts have been pretty thrown together lately anyway, but I wanted to start out with the topic of reality and belief that came up because of my posts on mystical experience. This is actually an outgrowth of a story that has been bothering me for quite some time now, and ultimately it's a very dangerous thing to talk about, so I'm going to go at this from kind of a casual angle, and force myself to go ahead and talk about it. So to start with, I'll tell a different story, and leave the posts at this point for a while.

I know a guy who, bless his heart, suffers from schizophrenia. I can't imagine how difficult his life has been. In particular, this guy is convinced that he has antennas implanted in his body, people are listening to everything he says, watching everything he does, and they're out to find him and kill him. What's more, in his mind, anyone who tries to help him is likewise targeted for assassination. And, I mean, this guy is serious about all this stuff. It's right out of a Hollywood movie. In his mind, these things are real. So, he believes them. And of course the question is, how could he not?

This question seems innocent enough, but I don't think it is one to be taken lightly. If something is real to you, then you intellectually believe it, don't you? And, if something doesn't seem real to you, then how could you ever intellectually believe it? If intellectual belief is in the (your) mind, then don't you have to intellectually believe what the (your) mind considers real? And if you refuse to intellectually believe what your mind says is real, then what does this make you? One who denies reality, right? As far as this guy is concerned, he'd be crazy to not look over his shoulder and keep his curtains drawn.

So, skipping a few steps here, what happens if (1) you are presented with a system of thought—i.e., religion—that proposes a set of things which must be accepted in faith and, (2) your mind cannot accept those things as real and, (3) you are told that faith is synonymous with intellectual belief? I'll try to pick up here in the next post whenever it may be, but just as a reminder to myself since I don't know when I'll get to it, the kicker is this: Furthermore, what if (a) the system of thought claims and demands logical consistency, and (b) logically speaking, to believe a proposition p is to act as though p is true?

It will take a few posts, but I'll try to connect the dots. And, uh, the resulting picture isn't always a pretty one.

A couple of weeks ago I said that mystics should ask themselves what faith is, and to keep in mind the principle manifested in Jesus' words to Thomas, "You believe because you have seen. Blessed is he who believes but has not seen." There is also a bit stronger point in the Bible, where the writer of Hebrews declares that "without faith it is impossible to please God." So, you know, these things stick in my mind and I'm always tossing them about in a huge bowl of cake batter in my mind. So once in a while, I wonder where undeniable, experiential knowledge of God comes into play in the life of faith.

Well, not to worry. I have little doubt that Jesus was a mystic (other than that, I'll avoid getting into my view of his nature), so experiential knowledge is a good thing. But, where does it leave faith? I ask the question to point out that one of the major problems much of Modern Christianity has faced and still faces is the idea that faith is only about intellectual belief. In my opinion, faith is more than believing yes or no, as if it's all a matter of 2+2=4. Faith involves much more, such as trust, devotion, loyalty, hope and the like. Marcus Borg lines these things out well in his book The Heart of Christianity, by the way. So although experiential knowledge of God does indeed take care of some of the intellectual belief issues (e.g., as to God's existence and goodness), it still leaves open the hope, trust, loyalty and other aspects of faith. So, as a mystic, I know God exists and I know that it's all good, but since God is known to me as something unknown (i.e., beyond all my human understanding), I still have to hope, trust, and remain loyal in the midst of having no clue how/when/where/why/etc. God will deal with my life and the lives of those I love. So faith remains essential.

Another thing, a bit troubling I suppose, is the research being done in neurotheology. In a nutshell, Science has discovered that certain areas of the brain behave differently during mystical experience. So the question is of course, why? Is the Divine just a word we give to the experience of our spatial and temporal processing being shut down (by meditation or, if you prefer, a dose of the right kind of mushrooms)? Or, is the activity in the brain the result of experiencing the Divine? What (or which) is reality? And so, the interesting thing is that if mystical experience is indeed just another form of empiricism, it seems we are back to the problem I have with regular old Scientific Empiricism: in terms of what we label to be our experience of the Divine, what are we measuring, with what instruments, validated how, with what unit of measure, with what set of preconceptions and expectations of outcome? What does it mean, how much weight is there epistemologically, really, to my saying that because of mystical experience "I know God exists?"

It all goes round and round, and faith remains essential in the end. But you know, Eckhart was 100% right on the money when he said, "If I had a God I could understand, then I wouldn't consider him God." The conception of God must always leave us at a loss, for if it didn't, Man would claim mastery of it, and of course then it could not be God.

There's another important element in all of this, concerning belief, perception of reality, and action, but I'll save it for some other time. Right now, I think I should just end with what I believe my experience has taught me about God, humans, and religion: All of life is about loving God and being loved by God, and about loving one another and being loved by one another—deeply, passionately, freely. The force and energy of life, the ground of life, is a Love beyond our comprehension. We are here to become swallowed up in this Love, and in fact such a thing would be fully inevitable—if only we would not fight it tooth and nail.

 

A few old notes, made during a lazy weekend morning:

Like the light of the sun through a diamond, God's holiness shines through human life appearing to our eyes in a myriad of colors. The ability of diamonds to shine brilliantly with a spectrum of colors is what makes them beautiful, and likewise humanity in all of its diversity blazes with the holiness of God in all of its countless forms. We must only remember that it is the light that powers a diamond and is the source of its radiance. The diamond, after all, is only a rock of sorts—the work of much time and great care manifested in the most simple, most elemental of things. Likewise it is God who patiently makes our flesh and bones beautiful through the power and energy of God's own holy love.

As my young daughter goes through her horse riding lesson this morning, my eyes are filled with the sights of holiness. The little bird which jumps quickly from branch to branch in the pine tree before me, looking for its morning meal, is a holy thing created by God and this morning is carrying out its intended purpose in perfection and beauty. The old yellow dog with the bright and happy eyes, wagging his tail and looking as though there is no other place he should be than sitting in the back of a pickup next to me, is a holy creature. The care with which my daughter was dressed this morning, and her hair done just so to fit inside her riding helmet, are signs of the love we have for her. As she instructs my daughter, the young woman I have never met before today is manifesting holiness. In her concern for my daughter's safety, in her concern that my daughter learn to care for a horse, in her concern for the horse, and in her overall patience and gentleness with a child and a horse, she is manifesting holiness. For all I know this instructor may never set foot inside a church. She may cuss like a sailor on Saturday nights and her personal life may be an utter nightmare, but in this moment, she is engaging in holiness—whether she knows it or not. The ability for me to see all this holiness and to see beauty in my life is a work, too, of holiness. It is the most simple of things, really, to see and understand that a holy God is immanent—at once everywhere and every when—and therefore holiness is touching the whole world at every moment, always striving to make itself known in all of creation. Everything in some way demonstrates the holy nature of God. Oh, for eyes to see more clearly. Oh, for a heart to live it more fully.

It is God and God alone who is holy, but God strives to make all things holy. The eventual complete success of this will of God's is the future age to which the teaching of the Bible points. But it is also a past and present age; the age of God that has always been and will always be. You and I are intended to be made holy beginning in the here and now. What remains for us to decide is whether we will allow ourselves to be participants in this holiness. Will we allow ourselves to be formed, to be mined, to be gathered and cut as diamonds, or will we refuse—remaining only lumps of carbon, buried in the darkness of the earth?

To my mind, one of the ways mystical religion differs from other forms of religion (i.e., more dogmatic, doctrinally-based systems) is that mysticism concerns itself primarily with experiencing what is (or, to be fair to those who are skeptical, what it perceives to be what is), and then applying reason, where possible, to rationally integrate that experience with the rest of one's religious ideas, modifying those ideas as needed according to experience—whereas non-mystical religion typically begins with dogma and doctrine and attempts to filter experience through the framework of that dogma and doctrine, accessing the experience accordingly. So, very roughly speaking, if a mystic has a transcendent encounter with the Divine which leaves the mystic with the impression that everything about a given life situation is fine, then the mystic will reconsider his or her present intellectual opinions about the situation and (re)order them according to the experience (e.g., "I always believed that this was a horrible thing, but in light of this experience obviously it is not, so my intellectual beliefs will now change"). The non-mystic, on the other hand, will first hold to his or her intellectual belief, and this attachment will by and large determine his or her ability to process any such experience (e.g., "I realize that in this moment the situation appears to be fine, but I know that doctrine clearly teaches it is not, so this is my own fallible human opinion/feeling that is trying to usurp the truth I already know.")

Everything is a bit more involved than this, and there is no concrete demarcation between mystic and non-mystic, but it serves well enough to make the point: The two approaches are radically different. Oftentimes and unfortunately, it is practically impossible for either side to comprehend the other. As a mystic, I have continually been dumbfounded by the ability of some people to assign priority to words on a page of a holy book over what I consider the clarity of mystical experience. On the other hand, I have been in groups of such people who did not know I am a mystic, and listened to them laugh, giggle and joke about the totally misguided concept of mysticism. Granted, given the vast differences between these two approaches to the Divine and that there are many poor human examples of each approach, It's understandable that each side views the other as dubious.

In this post, I'd like to point out something basic which Christian mystics and Biblical literalists have in common, and the fact that in each case there is an often overlooked irony. Generally speaking, both of these groups can and often do harbor a bit of contempt for Man's science. An easy example to cite in the case of the literalists is the idea of creation and evolution. I don't know many people anymore who believe that the world was created in six literal days. There are people who believe this, and indeed I would say that a strict literalist must indeed believe it. But even those who (admittedly or not) have departed from a strict literalism and are willing to view those six days as metaphorical still cling closely to literal interpretations. They might, for example, tell children not to pay any attention to their science teachers in class when they speak of the big bang. "There's no big bang in the Bible, so there was no big bang," they might say. Trust me. I've heard it said. Recently. Working very hard here to avoid going off on a tirade of why (in my opinion) Biblical literalism not only fails but in fact does not exist, I'm going to stick to my point. Biblical literalists are no fans of science whenever it places itself over against whatever the Bible "says." Literalists place little if any stock in the validity of the scientific method and, indeed, many of them would be happier if science were to go away and the Bible was the last word on everything. Some mystics would agree with this in a sense, in that mystics have little use for the scientific method. Intuition, gut-level feelings, and experience of the Divine trump everything. To the mystic, the idea of trusting only in what can be seen, touched, heard or tasted is not a good way to find the truth. Not only is truth beyond the senses, but how in the world are you supposed to verify that any sensory data is valid? You can't do so. Empiricism is a crock, and in so far as any science is based in empiricism, it too is a crock.

But here's the irony. The first irony, faced by the literalists, is immediately obvious to the mystics. While the literalists rail against the science of Man, the science born of Modernity, they never seem to figure out that their literal interpretation (and, yes, it's an interpretation) is one deeply, fully and probably inescapably buried in the Modern mindset. The literal view of scripture is, today, a view born of the scientific mindset. It is often impossible for the literalist to ever think that many of the Bible's stories would have originally been heard and understood as metaphors. It is the legacy of the Modern mind and its science that has resulted in a view of scripture which says, "Given that scripture is true, then it must also always be historically factual and impervious to logical error." The literalists claim Man's science is inferior, battling against it with that same inferior science. Irony is the kindest word I use for this.

On the other hand, mystics face a similar irony and are loathe to admit it, if they are even able to recognize it. The mystic who scoffs at science's empirical base, who oftentimes holds in contempt the Biblical literalist, considers him or herself to be beyond both. Why? Because of direct experience (albeit admittedly an experience held in a "cloud of unknowing") of the Divine, of course. Only the mystic knows of God. Everybody else denies God, or merely talks about God via the language of religion. Admittedly, I have said this myself. So here's the irony: what is such experiential knowledge of the Divine but simply empirical knowledge? The irony is that the mystics, for all of our talking, are the people who place the most stock in empiricism. It is not an empiricism based in bodily senses or scientific instruments, but it is empiricism none the less.

The lesson here should bring to us something that all good lessons do: humility. Literalists should ask themselves if they are really interested in God, or only in their own ideas and opinions about God. The question is warranted. On the other hand, we mystics always need to ask ourselves what faith may or may not be, and remember a biblical principle—if not its precise words: Quia vidisti me, credidisti. Beati, qui non viderunt et crediderunt!

The bottom line? We're all in this together, and none of us has the corner on the market of truth. Let's be humble in the face of God, accept one another, and trust in the Gracious Divine to make up for all of our shortcomings.

I've read enough Thomas Merton over the years that I can't always remember where I read certain words of his. Somewhere, while speaking about the insatiable nature of human desire, he talks about "[a man stuffing his belly with fried chicken]" in gluttonous pleasure. If you were a new reader of Merton and you knew he was a monk, you would probably tend to think that he plucked this example out of thin air, that he could have picked steak or lobster or hamburgers just as easily and still made his point. And, I suppose, he could have. But those foods would have been much less real choices for Merton.

I guess you'd say I'm a Merton fan. I've been to the monastery where he spent the second half of his life. I've talked to an aged monk who knew him (which would make a great post in its own right). I've stood at his grave and thanked him for his life. I've even been to the "vault" where his original writings were stored in the monastery. (Although his writings are no longer stored there, a kindly nun snuck me through the monastery to see the room. One of my fond memories will always be an old nun winking at me, and telling me to keep quiet and stick close by her while we sneaked where a non-Catholic should fear to tread.) And once, years ago, I sat and visited with an old priest who was a friend of Merton. To make a long story short, imagine the light that dawned on me when, having already read Merton's fried chicken example, I listened to the priest mention in passing that he would sneak fried chicken into the monastery because Merton disliked the monastic diet but "loved fried chicken" and "could eat a whole bucket of it" all by himself. To this day, the thought of it makes me smile.

Merton was an exceptional human being, one of history's most brightly shining examples of a blend of intellect and spirit. But, as I've written before, the greatest thing about him was that he was, indeed, a human being. I've learned that his writings on greed, lust, gluttony, anger, addictions, passions, arrogance and pride were not the observations of a supra-human soul who sat in a monastic tower and looked down upon us mortals. He was a human being who understood what it meant, in the best and worst of ways, to be human. Merton once said that when a person finds their true self, they find God, and/or vice versa. And so I tend to think that perhaps Merton would not mind my saying that the mystery of him which persists in my own mind is: did he know God so much more intimately than the rest of us, or did he know Man more intimately than the rest of us, or in the end, in the very deepest core of the matter, where almost nobody ever dares to go, does the difference matter?

I got sidetracked for a few sentences. Back up a moment. Today I mention Merton in these ways because I want to make it very, very clear that the things I write in this blog, if any of them be considered wise, are born of my own humanity—in all of my own weaknesses. I was thinking today about needing to write this post, because after I published last night's post I got to thinking, "Well, that sort of makes me seem quite a bit more mature than I am." My default tendency, throughout the normal hustle and bustle of the day, is to selfishly want to be loved on my own terms, as often as possible, as much as possible. The fact of the matter is, I only remind myself of higher roads once in a while; in the still and quiet moments of life. I hope 2008 brings more of them.