Throwing the Last Stone

Jam sol recedit igneus

2007-11-15T21:51:00.000-05:00

The text of an anthem by Horatio Parker (1863-1919); the words, from a sixth century hymn, translated into English by Isabella G. Parker:

Jam sol recedit igneus,
Tu lux perennis Unitas,
Nostris, beata Trinitas,
Infunde lumen cordibus.
Jam sol recedit igneus
Te mane laudum carmine,
Te deprecamur vespere;
Digneris, ut te supplices,
Laudaumus inter coelites.
Patri simulque Filio,
Tibique Sancte Spiritus,
Sicut fuit, sit jugiter,
Saeclum per omne gloria. Amen.

Now sinks the sun,
Thou, thou light of endless Unity,
For ever blessed Trinity,
Our souls illume with radiance blest!
Now sinks the golden sun to rest,
Thy praise we sing at early morn,
At eventide our prayers ascend,
Deign Thou our worship to attend,
With songs of angel choir up borne.
Father, and well beloved Son,
And Holy Spirit, Three in One, To Thee,
Whom all men must adore,
All glory be for evermore. Amen.

"It is I"

2007-11-15T21:48:00.000-05:00

The text from a motet by William Matthias, taken from various writings of Julian of Norwich (b. 1342):

As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother.
In our Father, God Almighty, we have our being;
In our merciful Mother we are remade and restored.
Our fragmented lives are knit together.
And by giving and yielding ourselves, through grace,
To the Holy Spirit we are made whole.
It is I, the strength and goodness of Fatherhood.
It is I, the wisdom of Motherhood.
It is I, the light and grace of holy love.
It is I, the Trinity.
I am the sovereign goodness in all things.
It is I who teach you to love.
It is I who teach you to desire.
It is I who am the reward of all true desiring.
All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Amen.

The Pearl of Great Price

2007-08-16T16:05:00.002-04:00

From What the Religious Life Is and Is Not, by Sr. Heléna Marie of The Community of the Holy Spirit:

It is the ultimate form of surrender. One brings all that one is and all that one has to God in a gesture of complete giving.

It is a way of “coming to the desert”. Like the desert mothers and fathers of the early Christian era, joining a convent is a countercultural move away from mainstream culture and mores, to a radical lifestyle that flies in the face of societal values.

It is a way of saying that your life is now devoted to the One Thing (however you would define this; Jesus called it “the pearl of great price”).

It is a life centered in prayer; this basic orientation is one of the ways in which we are countercultural.

It is community, with all that that means: difficult people, the nitty-gritty of daily relationships, having to change when the impulse is not to change, and also the joys of relationships and corporate life.

It is a way of life designed to help one transcend the ego. Since the ego does not willingly go, it involved intense struggle. The religious life is itself a vehicle of radical transformation.

It is a form of service to God and the world. Through worship and our different forms of ministry, we seek to serve.

It is a combination of the ancient and the modern.

It is an evolving organism. In the fifty-plus years of our history, we have been constantly evolving. The Community of the Holy Spirit will always be changing, and one is best served knowing this before entering.

It is a place wherein one grows in the ability to love, and this is really the heart of the religious life.

It is a prophetic voice within the Church, calling the Church out of complacency and adherence to conventional wisdom and practice, and into a more challenging and radical living out of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

"The ego does not willingly go." I like that part.

Trinity

2007-07-22T21:16:00.000-04:00

“When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and the love is the Holy Spirit.”

- Meister Eckhardt

John the Dwarf and Moses the Black

2007-05-24T15:04:00.000-04:00

Who are two of the more colorful desert monastics quoted by Rowan Williams in his book, Where God Happens, which begins this way, in a chapter titled "Life, Death, and Neighbors":

One thing that comes out very clearly from any reading of the great desert monastic writers of the fourth and fifth centuries is the impossibility of thinking about contemplation or meditation or "spiritual life" in abstraction from the actual business of living in the body of Christ, living in concrete community. The life of intimacy with God in comtemplation is both the fruit and course of a renewed style of living together.

Archbishop Williams next cites Anthony the Great, "earliest and most influential of the desert monastics," who said:

Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.

Further:

Moses [the Black] is credited with a series of summary proverb-like sayings about the monastic life written for another great teacher, Abba Poemen, one of which seems to pick up the language of Anthony yet give it a twist that is at first sight very puzzling. "The monk, says Moses, "must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all in any way whatsoever." If our life and our death are with the neighbor, this spells out something of what our "death" wtih the neighbor might mean: it is to renounce the power of judgment over someone else - a task hard enough indeed to merit being described as death. And the basis of this is elaborated in another of the Moses sayings: in reply to a brother who wants to know what it means to "think in your heart that you are a sinner," which is defined as another of the essentials of the monastic life, Moses says, "If you are occupied with your own faults, you have no time to see those of your neighbor."

....

Everything begins with this vision and hope: to put the neighbor in touch with God in Christ. One this the rest of our Christian life depends, and it entails facing the death of a particular kind of picture of myself.

The philosophy is "summed up in the formula of a great monastic reformer of the nineteenth century, R. M. Benson, who believed he should have 'a heart of stone towards myself, a heart of flesh toward others, and a heart of flame toward God.'"

And what is the theological end result? Just this, in a fairly extreme illustrative example:

A brother asked Abba Poemen, "What does it mean to be angry with your brother without a cause? [The reference is obviously to Matt. 5:21ff.] He said, "If your brother hurts you by his arrogance and you are angry with him because of this, that is getting angry without a cause. If he pulls out your right eye and cuts off your right hand and you get angry with him, that is getting angry without a cause. But if he cuts you off from God - then you have every right to be angry with him.

Archbishop Williams talks, too, about our own society, "at once deeply individualist and deeply conformist"; he quotes Henri de Lubac as having observed that "psychology alone is not suited, at least in the most subtle cases, to discern the difference between the authentic and the sham"; he quotes "a saying attributed to Isidore the Priest warning that 'of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart.'"

And to me, the most interesting and remarkable statement of all, again from John the Dwarf:

We have put aside the easy burden, which is self-accusation, and weighed ourselves down with the heavy one, self-justification.

All of this is about "transformation": it's about Repentence and Grace. And it's completely about what Archbishop Williams sees (if I'm reading him correctly) as the primary duty of each Christian: to put his neighbor in touch with God, to the best of his ability and power.

It is, of course, ultimately about the Cross. And I think again that religion is the one and the only place where human beings can become acquainted with - and become versed in - the understanding and the practice of these things. Which further really does mean that religion/spirituality is central to our lives, and that Christianity will not die out after all, as some continue to believe. The foolishness of God is wiser than men.

Cántico espiritual

2006-10-05T11:37:00.001-04:00

St. John of the Cross. Here, in Spanish.

SONG OF THE SOUL AND THE BRIDEGROOM

I
THE BRIDE

Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.

II

O shepherds, you who go
Through the sheepcots up the hill,
If you shall see Him
Whom I love the most,
Tell Him I languish, suffer, and die.

III

In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

IV

O groves and thickets
Planted by the hand of the Beloved;
O verdant meads
Enameled with flowers,
Tell me, has He passed by you?

V
ANSWER OF THE CREATURES

A thousand graces diffusing
He passed through the groves in haste,
And merely regarding them
As He passed
Clothed them with His beauty.

VI
THE BRIDE

Oh! who can heal me?
Give me at once Yourself,
Send me no more
A messenger
Who cannot tell me what I wish.

VII

All they who serve are telling me
Of Your unnumbered graces;
And all wound me more and more,
And something leaves me dying,
I know not what, of which they are darkly speaking.

VIII

But how you persevere, O life,
Not living where you live;
The arrows bring death
Which you receive
From your conceptions of the Beloved.

IX

Why, after wounding
This heart, have You not healed it?
And why, after stealing it,
Have You thus abandoned it,
And not carried away the stolen prey?

X

Quench my troubles,
For no one else can soothe them;
And let my eyes behold You,
For You are their light,
And I will keep them for You alone.

XI

Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.

XII

O crystal well!
Oh that on Your silvered surface
You would mirror forth at once
Those eyes desired
Which are outlined in my heart!

XIII

Turn them away, O my Beloved!
I am on the wing:

THE BRIDEGROOM

Return, My Dove!
The wounded hart
Looms on the hill
In the air of your flight and is refreshed.

XIV

My Beloved is the mountains,
The solitary wooded valleys,
The strange islands,
The roaring torrents,
The whisper of the amorous gales;

XV

The tranquil night
At the approaches of the dawn,
The silent music,
The murmuring solitude,
The supper which revives, and enkindles love.

XVI

Catch us the foxes,
For our vineyard has flourished;
While of roses
We make a nosegay,
And let no one appear on the hill.

XVII

O killing north wind, cease!
Come, south wind, that awakens love!
Blow through my garden,
And let its odors flow,
And the Beloved shall feed among the flowers.

XVIII

O nymphs of Judea!
While amid the flowers and the rose-trees
The amber sends forth its perfume,
Tarry in the suburbs,
And touch not our thresholds.

XIX

Hide yourself, O my Beloved!
Turn Your face to the mountains,
Do not speak,
But regard the companions
Of her who is traveling amidst strange islands.

XX
THE BRIDEGROOM

Light-winged birds,
Lions, fawns, bounding does,
Mountains, valleys, strands,
Waters, winds, heat,
And the terrors that keep watch by night;

XXI

By the soft lyres
And the siren strains, I adjure you,
Let your fury cease,
And touch not the wall,
That the bride may sleep in greater security.

XXII

The bride has entered
The pleasant and desirable garden,
And there reposes to her heart’s content;
Her neck reclining
On the sweet arms of the Beloved.

XXIII

Beneath the apple-tree
There were you betrothed;
There I gave you My hand,
And you were redeemed
Where your mother was corrupted.

XXIV
THE BRIDE

Our bed is of flowers
By dens of lions encompassed,
Hung with purple,
Made in peace,
And crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

XXV

In Your footsteps
The young ones run Your way;
At the touch of the fire
And by the spiced wine,
The divine balsam flows.

XXVI

In the inner cellar
Of my Beloved have I drunk; and when I went forth
Over all the plain
I knew nothing,
And lost the flock I followed before.

XXVII

There He gave me His breasts,
There He taught me the science full of sweetness.
And there I gave to Him
Myself without reserve;
There I promised to be His bride.

XXVIII

My soul is occupied,
And all my substance in His service;
Now I guard no flock,
Nor have I any other employment:
My sole occupation is love.

XXIX

If, then, on the common land
I am no longer seen or found,
You will say that I am lost;
That, being enamored,
I lost myself; and yet was found.

XXX

Of emeralds, and of flowers
In the early morning gathered,
We will make the garlands,
Flowering in Your love,
And bound together with one hair of my head.

XXXI

By that one hair
You have observed fluttering on my neck,
And on my neck regarded,
You were captivated;
And wounded by one of my eyes.

XXXII

When You regarded me,
Your eyes imprinted in me Your grace:
For this You loved me again,
And thereby my eyes merited
To adore what in You they saw

XXXIII

Despise me not,
For if I was swarthy once
You can regard me now;
Since You have regarded me,
Grace and beauty have You given me.

XXXIV
THE BRIDEGROOM

The little white dove
Has returned to the ark with the bough;
And now the turtle-dove
Its desired mate
On the green banks has found.

XXXV

In solitude she lived,
And in solitude built her nest;
And in solitude, alone
Has the Beloved guided her,
In solitude also wounded with love.

XXXVI
THE BRIDE

Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!
Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,
To the mountain and the hill,
Where the pure water flows:
Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

XXXVII

We shall go at once
To the deep caverns of the rock
Which are all secret,
There we shall enter in
And taste of the new wine of the pomegranate.

XXXVIII

There you will show me
That which my soul desired;
And there You will give at once,
O You, my life!
That which You gave me the other day.

XXXIX

The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,
With the flame that consumes, and gives no pains.

XL

None saw it;
Neither did Aminadab appear
The siege was intermitted,
And the cavalry dismounted
At the sight of the waters.

Tried by fever, taught by cold

2006-09-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

From Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk:

Are monks wasting their time in seeking to convert themselves, and the world, from evil? Many have said so. For myself, I appreciate their realism about human beings confronted by evil, and the good sense that does not allow them to be easily fooled when evil attempts to disguise itself by adopting innocuous dress. Both the monks of the ancient tradition and contemporary monastics, it seems to me, have a refreshing sense of what really matters in human behavior. They know that the roots of sin are not to be found in the acts of gambling, drinking, dancing, smoking, playing dominos (an activity that got my grandfather Norris fired by a Methodist church in 1919), or even in adultery or fornication. Looking deeper, they recognize, as one monk said to me, a man who’d sown plenty of wild oats before entering a monastery, that “even though I gave up fornicating years ago, pride and anger are still with me.” Pride and anger were recognized by the desert monks as the most dangerous of their bad thoughts, and the most difficult to overcome. Abba Ammonas said, “I have spent fourteen years [in the desert] asking God night and day to grant me the victory over anger.” In the words of Benedicta Ward, “For all sins, there is forgiveness. What really lies outside the ascetic life is despair, the proud attitude which denies the possibility of forgiveness.” All committed life is ascetic, in some sense; the word originally meant an exercise, practice, or training adopted for a certain way of life. Athletes, monks, artists, musicians, married people, and celibates all learn to recognize the practices that will hinder or foster the growth of their commitment.

As for designating despair as an aspect of the sin, or “bad thought,” of pride, I find it enormously helpful. Among other things, it defeats my perfectionism, my tendency to give up when I can’t do things “just right.” But if I accept the burden of my despair, in the monastic sense, then I also receive the tools to defeat it. I have a hope that no modern therapeutic approach can give me. “The desert fathers were convinced that the words of scripture possessed the power to deliver them from evil,” writes Douglas Burton-Christie, another scholar of the early monks. “They believed that the Word of God has the power to effect what it says.” Or, as Amma Syncletica wrote early in the fifth century, in a catalogue of Bible quotations to be used in times of temptation, “Are you being tried by fever? Are you being taught by cold? Indeed, scripture says, ‘We went through fire and water, yet you have brought us forth to a spacious place.’” (Ps. 66:12). She adds, “For he said, ‘The Lord hears me when I call’ (Ps. 4:3). It is with these exercises that we train the soul.”

Prayer

2006-09-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

"Lord God, I am nothing, but all of it is yours."

- St. Francis

"It's like being in love"

2006-09-07T14:55:00.000-04:00

From Women of God, by Mary Gordon, in the January 2002 Atlantic Monthly:

Since the days when my father and I had told the world at large that I wanted to be a contemplative, I had been intensely curious about the details of the contemplative life. But I had never before spoken to a real contemplative—the point of the life being seclusion from the world. I was avid to know the details of the schedule, at least in part to see whether it conformed to my imaginings of it. Indeed, the sisters' day is structured around times of prayer. They meet six times a day for communal prayer, and have three daily periods of private devotion and meditation.

"You see, we lead an intensive life of prayer, a pure life of faith," Mother Marie told me. "Prayer is really the center of our day; it's what we devote ourselves to. Originally I entered an active community, but then I understood that I wanted a contemplative life. I was drawn to an intense life of prayer."

There seems to be no time in the day that is meaningless—no slack hours, no residue of triviality or folly or plain waste. Of course, it is also possible to say there is no spontaneity and little individual choice. It is a schedule that seems outside history: it is not much different from religious life before Vatican II—and not much different from monastic life in the Middle Ages.

I asked her if it was difficult to pull herself away from her prayer life to do practical tasks. "You see, it's like being in love," she said. "When you're in love, you really don't want to be anywhere except alone with the person you love. If I have to go out to Eighty-sixth Street, to buy a pair of shoes or something, I'm always eager to get back. It's the spiritual atmosphere I love, and so I miss it. Since I'm the superior, I suffer a bit from not having as much solitude as I would like. But part of our vocation is living in community. For example, if during my free time I wanted to take a walk and say my rosary, and one of the sisters said she needed to talk to me, needed my help or my support, I would feel that my first duty was to her. Community life is a great challenge to virtue. I believe it's in community that you grow. In patience, in generosity."

I looked at her face, which had the sweetness, the calm, the quiet assurance, of a woman happily married to her high school sweetheart and still amazed at her own good luck. Her ease of manner made the life she lives seem un-extraordinary; but, of course, it is extraordinary, because it is a hidden life, quite foreign to most modern imaginations. So I asked her what misconceptions about contemplative nuns she would like to clear up. "First," she said, "we're women, we're humans, and we experience everything a woman does, but we experience a very deep call from God—and the call is captivating—to a life of intimate prayer. We're not stoic, we're not afraid of life, we're not afraid of responsibility, we're not cold fish, and we're not afraid of marriage. We're not that different from other women. Being a contemplative doesn't make you less of a human being. Saint Iraneaus says, 'The glory of God is man fully alive.'"

Light and darkness and water

2006-08-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

Somewhere on a well-shaft in a monastic cloister I remember the words, O sobria ebrietas, O ebria sobrietas: O sober drunkenness, O drunken sobriety. Even the water and the light and darkness are mystical symbols, and real ones. They are part of one long, inexorable drama. All this seems more marvellous and more strange to us than it would have done in the past, because much of human life was once determined by the rhythms of days and seasons. In the late nineteenth century in certain English villages, people were still summoned to the fields by the church bell, or on estates by a stable bell. In France the angelus punctuates the day. In the Middle Ages words like prime and matins and vespers came to indicate the time of day by reference to the sun, without referring to the precise time of clocks, so that it is sometimes hard to know at what time by our clocks the offices were actually sung.

Both the basic symbolism I have mentioned and the sense of a vast swing of stellar and solar time of which each season's passage and each day's passage were small images, and which was marked by festivals of the year like the small landmarks of every day's liturgy and routine, are much older than Christianity. Virgil is conscious of this sense of nature, of the heavens, the earth, and human nature on the earth. The discovery was not classical, it is rooted in the nature of the year, of animal life, and of agriculture. "Lenten is come with love to town" is the statement of two very ancient aspects of the hungriest season of the year.

Monasteries make the whole of life an extended musical drama. This drama is one in which the monks take part with their entire lives: it is built around their deepest religious mysteries, and it mysteriously releases the soul. Every monastery in the world of whatever religion has its own ritual monotonies, and its own monotonous music, its own ceremonies of light and darkness and water.

- From The Frontiers of Paradise: A Study of Monks and Monasteries, by Peter Levi

Hands

2006-07-25T11:14:00.000-04:00

If it happed me to meet any saint coming from heaven, and also a poor priest, I would first go kiss the priest's hands, and would say to the saint: Holy saint, abide a while, for the hands of this priest have handled the son of life, and hath performed a thing above humanity.

- St. Francis of Assisi

The Quarrel

2006-04-02T14:13:00.000-04:00

From Rowan Williams' book on the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Where God Happens:

Two hermits lived together for many years without a quarrel. One said to the other, "Let's have a quarrel with each other, as other men do. The other answered, "I don't know how a quarrel happens." The first said, "Look here, I put a brick between us, and I say, 'That's mine.' Then you say, 'No, it's mine.' That is how you begin a quarrel. So they put a brick between them and one of them said, "That's mine." The other said, "No, it's mine." He answered, "Yes, it's yours. Take it away." They were unable to argue with each other.

O All Ye Works of the Lord

2006-03-18T13:32:00.000-05:00

From Morning Prayer, Rite I:

Benedicite, omnia opera Domini (Song of the Three Young Men, 35-65)

I Invocation

O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

II The Cosmic Order

O ye heavens, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord;

O all ye powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye sun and moon, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord;

O ye showers and dew, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord;

O ye winter and summer, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye dews and frosts, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye frost and cold, bless ye the Lord;

O ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye nights and days, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye light and darkness, bless ye the Lord;

O ye lightnings and clouds, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

III The Earth and its Creatures

O let the earth bless the Lord; *
O ye mountains and hills, bless ye the Lord;

O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O all ye fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord; *
O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord;

O ye children of men, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

IV The People of God

O ye people of God, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord;

O ye servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord; *
O ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord.

Let us bless the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; *
praise him and magnify him for ever.

According to Br. Thomas, an Episcopal friar in Southern California:

This canticle is of particularly splendid history. It is the song said to have been sung by three young men as they were tossed into the burning fiery furnace by king Nebuchadnezzar when they refused to worship an idol. They sang this song in the fire as they were miraculously preserved from its effects, and then released by Nebuchadnezzar, who exclaimed, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him.

This canticle is found in the bible either as an addition to the book of Daniel, in chapter 3, or as a separate book in the apocrypha. The version here is that used by the episcopal church. This canticle is used on saturday mornings by the episcopal church.

The Beloved

2005-12-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

Rumi:

One went to the door of the Beloved and
knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?'
He answered, 'It is I.'
The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee.'
The door was opened.

Red, and etc.

2005-04-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

As the perfect finishing touch of the disguise, the soul puts on the precious red cloak of charity. The third virtue lends elegance to the other two and lifts the soul near to God. The red cloak of charity makes the bride so alluring to her Beloved that she dares to say: “Although I am black, O daughters of Jerusalem, I am beautiful and so the king has loved me and brought me to his chamber.”

The cloak of charity is a mantle of love. It heightens love for the Beloved. It protects and conceals the soul from her third adversary: the animal nature. Where there is true love of God, the urge for self-gratification and the attachment to one’s own things cannot enter. Charity strengthens and revitalizes the other virtues. It renders them more genuine. It graces them with loveliness and deeply pleases God. The Song of Songs calls charity the seat draped in purple on which God rests.

The three-colored virtues prepare the three faculties of mind, memory, and will for union with God. Faith darkens and empties the mind of all natural understanding and so prepares it for union with divine wisdom. Hope pulls the memory away from all creature attachments. St. Paul says that hope is for that which one does not have. And so it withdraws the memory from the ordinary things that can be possessed and focuses it on the glory the soul hopes for. Charity annihilates the appetites of the will, ruining the soul’s taste for anything that is not God. Charity centers the desires on God alone. Charity cultivates the will and merges it with God through love.

The virtues separate the soul from all that is less than God; their purpose is to join her with God. Unless the soul walks sincerely in these three virtues, it is impossible for her to reach perfect union with God through love. It is vital for the soul to wear this disguise if she is to reach her goal, which is sweet and loving union with the Beloved. It was a blessed chance the soul took when she put on this disguise and stayed with it until the end of her journey. That is why she cries out in the next verse, “O exquisite risk!”

Green

2005-04-11T10:33:00.000-04:00

Over the white robe of faith, the soul spread a green shawl of hope. Draped in hope, she is liberated from her second adversary: the world. This is the green of living hope in God; it fills her heart with courage. Hope lifts the soul to the sphere of eternal life. In comparison with these divine aspirations, all earthly things seem withered and worthless. The soul cannot take back her worldly wardrobe. She can no longer focus her desire on anything that was, is, or will be in the world. She lives wrapped in hope for nothing less than the infinite. Her heart is so transported that she cannot touch earthly things. She can’t even see them.

St. Paul calls this green disguise the “helmet of salvation.” A helmet protects the whole head. It covers it entirely, except for a visor to peek out of. Hope shrouds the mind’s senses so that they will not become absorbed in worldly things. Shielded by hope, no arrow from the world can wound the soul. Hope opens a visor in the soul through which she can look only toward the divine. David says: “Just as the eyes of the handmaid are fixed on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes fixed on our God until he has mercy on us who hope in him.”

Wearing the luminous green shawl, gazing perpetually upon God and nothing else, content only with him, the soul brings delight to her Beloved, and he gives her all that she hopes for. Without this green shawl of hope in God alone, the soul might as well not even start out on her journey of love. It is unrelenting hope that moves and overcomes all obstacles.

White

2005-04-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

The inner robe of faith is pure white: radiant, blinding to the eye of the discursive mind. It is the foundation of all the other virtues. Clothed in faith, the soul is protected from the Fallen One. Dressed in white, the soul captures the heart of her Beloved and attains union with him. Without faith, says, the Apostle, it is impossible to please God; with faith, he says, it is impossible not to. It is as if God were saying to the soul: If you desire union with me, come clad in faith beneath everything.

The soul was wearing the white robe of faith when she went out into the dark night and traveled the dangerous depths of inner emptiness. There was no comfort for her senses, no light for her intellect. No relief from above: God’s house seemed to be locked and the Master hidden away. No relief from below: her spiritual guides had nothing left to offer. And yet the soul suffered with humility and perseverance. She passed through these troubles without growing discouraged and blaming the Beloved. The Beloved proves his lover’s faith. “Because of the words of your lips, I have kept hard ways,” says David.

The End of the Dark Night

2005-04-11T10:19:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure anyone who reads this blog will be gratified to know, I have finished Mirabai Starr's wonderful translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul and will at last move on to something else. I just wanted to post Chapter 21 of the book, which is titled: “An explanation of why the soul says that she is in disguise, and a description of the colors of the disguise the soul wears in the night.” "Disguise" refers to verses in St. John's original poem, "Songs of the Soul."* John analogizes by way of wardrobe - the soul's garments, of three colors, representing three virtues - something I find charming and beautiful. I'll reprint here the whole chapter, separating posts by color, because....well....because it's so Krzysztof Kieslowski:

We disguise ourselves by hiding under a garment that makes us look different from who we really are. We use our disguise to please and charm our Beloved or to elude our enemy and accomplish our mission undetected. We choose the clothing that most clearly reflects our heart’s desire and also most carefully conceals us from discovery by those who would do us harm.

The soul, filled with love of God and longing for his friendship, leaves her house dressed in the vivid hues of her affection. She goes out covered in love and she is safe, invisible to her three adversaries: the world, the animal nature, and the Spirit of Evil. She wears garments of three different colors: white, green, and red, which symbolize the three virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

Don't forget to read these in reverse-blog order!

I have to add that I adore St. John of the Cross. What sweetness, and what lovely gentleness in this man! He wrote the poem first, and added Dark Night of the Soul as an explication; some think the poem far surpasses the explanatory prose, but I love much of what he has to say in the book. When he speaks in the poem of "my house," he is referring to physical human existence, which encompasses all of our sensual and spiritual passions: "The exquisite risk begins once the soul finds all the members of her household asleep. It is God who has put all the passions and appetites - both sensual and spiritual - to bed." Perhaps I would have understood this eventually, but I was glad for lengthy discussions of sleeping household members, the climbing of secret ladders, and the wearing of various colorful robes, shawls, and cloaks. Incarnation, indeed!

* "Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still."

"Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night."

2005-04-04T12:16:00.000-04:00

From John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul (Mirabai Starr's translation), Book 2, "The Night of the Spirit," Chapter 6: "Other kinds of pain the soul suffers in this night":

In dark contemplation, the soul suffers the suspension of all her natural supports and perceptions, which is terribly painful, like hanging in midair unable to breathe. God is purging the soul, devouring all the imperfect habits and inclinations she has contracted throughout her entire life, as fire consumes the tarnish of metal. Besides this natural and spiritual poverty, she is likely to suffer interior torment from the radical undoing of all the remaining imperfections rooted firmly in the substance of the soul. "I shall gather up the bones and light them on fire. The flesh shall be consumed and the whole composition burned, and the bones shall be destroyed," says Ezechiel. "Place it also empty upon the embers that its metals may heat up and melt, its uncleanness taken away from it, its rust consumed."

Purified in this forge like gold in a crucible, as the Wise Man says, the soul feels as if she herself were coming to an end. David calls out to God: "Save me Lord, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. I am trapped in the mire of the deep. I have nowhere to stand. I have come unto the depth of the sea and the tempest has overwhelmed me. I have labored in my cry, my throat has become raw and my eyes have failed while I hope in my God."

God greatly humbles the soul now so that he might greatly exalt her later. And he makes it so that when these feelings are quickened in the soul they are soon stilled; otherwise she would die within a few days. The soul is only aware of their vibrancy at intervals. These souls descend into the underworld alive.

I will say more about this later.

Right now, I have two thoughts. First, that this sort of thing, the reading of Scripture as a description of the mystical journey of the soul as it moves towards (and away from) God - something that John of the Cross does quite often - is the beginning of a new theology. It is a way to make the Bible intelligible in the modern world; a way to connect with people outside the tradition.

This kind of reading diametrically opposes "fundamentalism" - and it is a historical method as well. "Fundamentalism" is essentially, and ironically, a very modern way of looking at the Bible. It is a scientific reading of literature that was often meant to be read and understood in a completely different way. This, I think, is the means to the end we seek: a "new Pentecost," as I read elsewhere (someplace!). A new language for a new era, and a way for the Holy Spirit to reach the modern ear.

Second: Well, maybe I'll wait on that as well; so much to say about it. But here's the topic: what our connections through this medium mean for religion going forward. I get a lot out of talking things over with people online, and together we already make up an informal "community" of sorts - people who identify with, and feel related to, one another in matters of the heart and of the spirit. Some of us are self-described solitaries (in the religious sense, I mean) already, but we have found a way of talking to one another in way in which most of us can't, with people in our actual lives. I find this to be similar to what happens in the monastic communities, actually. I'm very interested in how the phenomenon might play out; I wonder if there will be formal "virtual communities" of this sort in the future, made up of people who have otherwise normal lives but internet-based spiritual lives. Can we pray the Daily Office together, apart? Can we follow one of the various "Rules of Life" this way, or create new ones? Can we work out new theology in these kinds of discussions? (The web is changing the world in every other area of life, through the lightening-fast spread of ideas; why wouldn't this also happen in the spiritual life?)

IOW, can we have ordinary, but religious, lives, together in this way in the modern world?

But this is a big topic, so maybe for later.

"God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself; -- only in Thee I have all"

2005-03-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Julian of Norwich, REVELATION: Chapter V

In this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving.

I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.

Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God.

In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, — I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my God and me.

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa

2005-03-14T20:37:00.000-05:00

In her words:

It pleased our Lord that I should see the following vision a number of times. I saw an angel near me, on the left side, in bodily form. This I am not wont to see, save very rarely.... In this vision it pleased the Lord that I should see it thus. He was not tall, but short, marvellously beautiful, with a face which shone as though he were one of the highest of the angels, who seem to be all of fire: they must be those whom we call Seraphim.... I saw in his hands a long golden spear, and at the point of the iron there seemed to be a little fire. This I thought that he thrust several times into my heart, and that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew out the spear he seemed to be drawing them with it, leaving me all on fire with a wondrous love for God. The pain was so great that it caused me to utter several moans; and yet so exceeding sweet is this greatest of pains that it is impossible to desire to be rid of it, or for the soul to be content with less than God.

Here's Bernini's rendition of the event:

And some interesting anecdotes:

While the visions are today the most famous part of her spiritual experience, she considered them inferior to the quiet sense of union with God that she was to achieve later in life. The visions were disorienting and an embarrassment, although she did her best to hide them from her sisters. They were also dangerous. It was not unusual for visionaries to wind up at the stake. Teresa's autobiography was already being examined by the Inquisition for signs of heresy; and as a woman and the descendant of Jews, she was especially suspect. Increasingly, those around Teresa tried to disassociate themselves from her. At the same time, Teresa felt drawn to a more strict life of poverty and self-denial.

In 1562 she began a reform of the Carmelite order (later known as the "Discalced" or barefoot, Carmelites) with a small convent, St. Joseph's, in Avila. Here she lived for four years; "the most restful years of my life". The convent had no endowment and subsisted on alms. One day Teresa went into a trance while holding a frying pan with a little oil in it, which worried her sisters. They weren't concerned about the trance, which they were used to, but were afraid that she might spill the oil. It was all they had. Here she wrote a treatise, The Way of Perfection, as a guide to the monastic life. Her cell did not have a table or chair so she wrote kneeling on the floor at a ledge under a window, with no re-reading or editing.

She was a great friend of St. John of the Cross, and they together attempted to reform the Carmelite Order, of which they both were members.

Songs of the Soul II

2005-03-13T18:13:00.000-05:00

A much better translation of John of the Cross' Songs of the Soul - again by Mirabai Starr:

On a dark night,
Inflamed by love-longing -
O exquisite risk! -
Undetected I slipped away.
My house, at last, grown still.

Secure in the darkness,
I climbed the secret ladder in disguise -
O exquisite risk! -
Concealed by the darkness.
My house, at last, grown still.

That sweet night: a secret.
Nobody saw me;
I did not see a thing.
No other light, no other guide
Than the one burning in my heart.

This light led the way
More clearly than the risen sun
To where he was waiting for me
- The one I knew so intimately -
In a place where no one could find us.

O night, that guided me!
O night, sweeter than sunrise!
O night, that joined lover with Beloved!
Lover transformed in Beloved!

Upon my blossoming breast,
Which I cultivated just for him,
He drifted into sleep,
And while I caressed him,
A cedar breeze touched the air.

Wind blew down from the tower,
Parting the locks of his hair.
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And all my senses were suspended.

I lost myself. Forgot myself.
I lay my face against the Beloved's face.
Everything fell away and I left myself behind.
Abandoning my cares
Among the lilies, forgotten.

It's amazing how different each translation is, and what a huge difference it can make in the reading of the poem....

A ray of darkness

2005-03-12T19:06:00.000-05:00

From Mirabai Starr's most excellent, poetic, and sensual translation of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul. This is from Chapter 2, "Night of the Spirit." Chapter 1 is called "Night of Sense"; the seeking soul must pass through each to attain union with God - the purification first of the senses and then of the spirit.

The dark night of the spirit is an inflowing of God into the soul. It purges her of imperfections: natural and spiritual. Contemplatives call it "infused contemplation" or "mystical theology." This is where God transmits his secret teachings to the soul and instructs her in the perfection of love. She does not have to do a thing, nor will she understand a thing. Infused contemplation is the wisdom of the loving God. It both purges and illumines the soul, making her ready for the union of love. The same loving wisdom that purifies and enlightens the blessed spirits on other planes of existence, purges and illumines the earthly soul, now.

But here is the doubt: Why is this divine light, which illumines and purges the soul of ignorance, called here the "dark night"?

Divine wisdom is not only night and darkness to the soul but also terror and suffering. Its height transcends the natural reach of the soul and so it looks like darkness to her. Her own insignificance and impurity also cause her to experience the light of God as painful and oppressive. The Philosopher suggests that the clearer and more manifest are divine things in themselves, the darker and more hidden they are to the natural eyes of the soul. The brighter the light, the more blinding it is to the owl. The more directly we gaze at the sun, the more it darkens our visual faculty, depriving it and overwhelming it, because of its inherent weakness.

And so, when divine light strikes the soul that is not yet fully illumined, it causes spiritual darkness to drop over her, transcending her limitations, impoverishing and darkening her natural intelligence. St. Dionysus and other mystics call infused contemplation a "ray of darkness." The power of the discursive mind is conquered by this great supernatural light.

David says that "near to God and surrounding him are darkness and clouds." It's not that this is actually so but that it seems that way to the feeble intellect which is blinded by such radiance and cannot rise to meet it. "Through the great splendor of his presence," says David, "clouds passed," that is, between God and our own understanding. When God sends forth from himself the illuminating ray of secret wisdom to the soul not yet fully transformed, her mind is enveloped by darkness.

Fasting

2005-03-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

The Lenten fast has been a very good and I hope important experience for me. (I have to admit that right after the Primates' meeting, I abandoned it for a few days, when I went into a period of "who cares?" hopelessness; but I've come back to it again. I'm glad about that, because the most solemn period of Lent is approaching.)

I haven't had any other problems keeping the fast, though; I've eaten one smallish meal each day, and other food that in total added up to less than that meal. No meat, and no sweets - except on Sundays, when I can eat a little more also. Today, like all Fridays in Lent, I kept a strict fast: only one meal - no food at all for 24 hours, from last evening after dinner to this. I just ate a small piece of soda bread, and it tasted so sweet and delicious. You gain a definite appreciation for these things you almost never think about here in the wealthy West.

I hadn't realized that I'm normally almost never hungry; that I'm almost always satisfied in a physical sense. It really does make you think much more about people who don't have enough to eat on a daily basis. It's concretely changed my outlook in that way - and it's made me remember at all times that it's Lent, too. It does, as I read earlier this year, "disrupt and disturb the secular order." I really do think fasting (and other disciplines, but this is an obvious one, and something everybody can do) is important for this reason; I'm supposed to be living a religious life, and that should involve disruption and discomfort.

"The Call of the Cross" is a Lenten devotional publication from Episcopal Relief and Development. Today's reading is this:

Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. - Mark 9:41

When we turn on a faucet, we expect to get clean water. In the developing world, only 50 percent of children have access to clean drinking water. Dirty, unsafe water is responsible for killing millions of children in our world every year. When Jesus said, "Anyone who gives a cup of water...." he was affirming a central truth in scripture. Anyone who does even the smallest act of kindness will find that God honors and values that act of kindness.

I don't know really what an ordinary person can do about this problem, except to give money to try to fix it, and to talk about it like this. I have to remember, always, that people are suffering - especially when I'm lucky enough not to be.

Today's Epistle Reading

2005-03-11T17:26:00.000-05:00

Or part of it, at least. It's Romans 8: 37-39 (NRSV), with the verse numbers removed. James Alison notes rightly that often it's better to read Scripture straight, so to speak, to get the original sense of it. It's Paul at his mystical and poetic best, again:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Luminous, wonderful

2005-03-09T19:05:00.000-05:00

Holy Spirit,
Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful,
Awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.

~ Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

(I am so grateful for these people - Hildegard and St. John of the Cross, and others. I find it incredibly difficult to deal with the intense anger and resentment that I feel right now towards the Church, and towards other Christians - while at the same time feeling unable to sever my relationship with the Christian faith. I am so completely conflicted and so confounded. And hurt, also, it has to be said.

But when I read these things I am peaceful again. There are and always have been very spiritual people in the Church, all the while it goes through these spasms and paroxysms of power and money and status. Right now, I need rest and the solace of the mystical; I need to feel close to God again - something I've been finding more and more difficult over the past year, as I've made myself crazy with fighting over "the issue."

Thanks be to God for the deep sanity of contemplation. And for a way to talk about it, via weblogs and the internet - which is also, ironically, the main source of all the pain. Well, that's life on earth, isn't it?)

Oh, night more lovely than the dawn

2005-03-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

From Urban Dharma: The Los Angeles Buddhist Catholic Dialogue, a review of an edition of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul:

As the last rites were read to him on his deathbed at the age of 49, John of the Cross, the 16th century poet, mystic, priest and monk, interrupted. Please, he begged, read me "The Song of Solomon."

That such a sensual, luscious poem to love would be the last words John wished to hear is a bittersweet commentary on his life. He was a member of Teresa of Avila's Discalced Carmelite Order--the Barefoot Carmelites--and Teresa's beloved, passionate friend. His finest and most famous poem, "Songs of the Soul," combines the best of each of his vocations. He and Teresa were committed to the reform of the Carmelites, and both of them were caught in the chaos of the Inquisition in Spain.

At 25, John was captured and imprisoned in a closet in a monastery by a community of monks who upheld a Vatican faction's dim view of Teresa's reforms. He was starved and flogged. After nine months of captivity, he escaped by lowering himself out of his cell with a rope made of strips of cloth. He got himself to a Discalced convent and wept as he heard the nuns reciting the Angelus. He wrote "Songs of the Soul" in a state of gratitude and ecstasy.

Reformation is not an easy thing, it appears; something for me to keep in mind. "The Angelus" bell at the convent is rung three times during the day, three times three times each, at 6 a.m., at noon, and at 6 p.m. All recite it privately rather than in chapel together; the bells are beautiful, like the faint sweet voice of the angel Gabriel calling from some other realm, an echo of God's presence both here and in the world to come.

The poem, "Songs of the Soul", which "describes a night in which a soul escapes from her house to join her lover, her creator, in a night of risk, ecstasy and passion" - a dark night in which the soul meets her Beloved:

1.
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings — oh, happy chance! —
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

2.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised — oh, happy chance! —
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

3.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

4.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me —
A place where none appeared.

5.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6.
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7.
The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8.
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

I went to mass today; I wanted to taste that sweetness again. I heard more during the sermon about "unity," and gritted my teeth, and promised I would do what the Beloved requires. I do not know what that is.

"What do you believe that you cannot prove?"

2005-01-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

A very intriguing question from my favorite online magazine, Edge.

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Among the thinkers asked this question are Freeman Dyson, Esther Dyson, Marc Hauser, Margaret Wertheim, Steven Pinker, Martin Seligman, Ray Kurzweil, and Michael Shermer.

Edge asks a different question at the beginning of every year. Some examples: "What Questions Are You Asking Yourself?"; "What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?"; "What Questions Have Disappeared?".

Check 'em out, and the regular articles, too, which run the gamut from Physics to Biology to Psychology to Culture. It's a great resource.

Unio Mystica in Montreal

2004-12-27T16:28:00.000-05:00

Nuns Brains Probed for God

The Carmelite nuns live a life of silent prayer, separated from the modern world by the high stone wall that surrounds their monastery in an industrial part of Montreal. Except for medical care, they rarely leave their sanctuary. But that changed late last month, when they began to make periodic visits to, of all places, a science lab.

The sisters arrive at the neuro-science laboratory in the University of Montreal's psychology department two at a time, wearing habits sewn from thick, dark cloth, high white collars and veils that frame their faces and flow down their backs. On their feet are sensible brown laceups that appear to have never seen the outdoors before.

They come to take part in an experiment that will probe a mystical and very private part of their lives. Sister Diane, the monastery's prioress, and Sister Teresa admit to being nervous as they peer curiously into a dark chamber about the size of a walk-in closet and equipped with an old barber's chair.

It is here that they have agreed to try to relive unio mystica, a religious experience so intense that Christians profess to sense their Lord as a physical presence. The nuns hope to help Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard uncover just what happens in their brains when they feel the hand of God.

My favorite part of this article is the following section:

When the analysis of all three experiments is done, he hopes to have a clear biological picture of an experience that mystifies even those who have lived it. Ultimately, he would like to know enough about how it works to be able to offer the same experience to anybody seeking spiritual growth.

Sister Diane says she is certain that Dr. Beauregard will discover a biological basis for the Carmelites' spiritual experience, one she says is shared by all human beings. God equipped people with the brains they need for a spiritual life, she insists. "Our body has a spiritual component. To be a human being is to be a spiritual being. I'm convinced this will show in the results."

Sister Diane is possessed of a deep and lovely faith! Some people find the idea of a "biological basis for the Carmelites' spiritual experience" threatening, with the implication that "it's all in our heads." Sister Diane, on the other hand, believes that this is a gift from God Himself. Beautiful.

And I like the part about "offering the same experience to anybody seeking spiritual growth." I wonder what that will actually mean, though; an electrical zap to the brain when somebody's got a jones for God? That would seem to take the journey away, and everything one might learn from it. The effort counts for something, after all. If I hadn't gone through the pain of getting sober - if they had just zapped me when I needed to get my mind in order - I wouldn't have learned how to pray. I wouldn't have learned how to meditate and order my own mind. I wouldn't have learned all the things I learned (often the very hardest way), and God wouldn't have been able to "instruct my heart, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions."

It would have been a flat experience, in other words, one without depth. Pain is the price of admission to a new life, it says in the 7th Step. In every case, it adds.

Meditation May Bolster Brain Activity

2004-12-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

Buddhist Meditation May Produce Lasting Changes in the Brain

Nov. 10, 2004 -- Meditation may not only produce a calming effect, but new research suggests that the practice of Buddhist meditation may produce lasting changes in the brain.

Researchers found that monks who spent many years in Buddhist meditation training show significantly greater brain activity in areas associated with learning and happiness than those who have never practiced meditation.

The results suggest that long-term mental training, such as Buddhist meditation, may prompt both short and long-term changes in brain activity and function.

In the study, which appears in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers compared the brain activity of eight long-time Buddhist monks and 10 healthy students.

The average age of the monks was 49, and each had undergone mental training in meditation for 10,000 to 50,000 hours over the course of 15 to 40 years.

The students' average age was 21. They had no prior experience in meditation and received one week of meditative training before the start of the study.

Both groups were asked to practice compassionate meditation, which does not require concentration on specific things. Instead, the participants are instructed to generate a feeling of love and compassion without drawing attention to a particular object.

Researchers measured brain activity before, during, and after meditation using electroencephalograms.

They found striking differences between the two groups in a type of brain activity called gamma wave activity, which is involved in mental processes including attention, working memory, learning, and conscious perception.

The Buddhist monks had a higher level of this sort of gamma wave activity before they began meditation, and this difference increased dramatically during meditation. In fact, researchers say the extremely high levels of gamma wave activity are the highest ever reported.

The monks also had more activity in areas associated with positive emotions, such as happiness.

Researchers say the fact that the monks had higher levels of this type of brain activity before meditation began suggests that long-term practice of Buddhist or other forms of meditation may alter the brain.

"A Masterly Instrument"

2004-12-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

From Evelyn Underhill's 1936 book, Worship, in the chapter titled "Liturgy a Work of Art":

A certain restraint, a sense of style, is characteristic of all good liturgical action; for it exists to express the common worship of the family, not the fervour of the individual soul. Therefore the individual who prays from within the liturgy has to sacrifice something of his own will and feeling to the corporate movement; must submit to the ritual discipline, and lose his own prayer in that of the fellowship, if he is to "understand by dancing that which is being done." But on the other hand, there are great compensations. If his religious preferences and enthusiasms are checked, and subordinated to "liturgical good manners," his reserves are respected too. The Christian liturgy, as Guardini has said, is "a masterly instrument which has made it possible for us to express our inner life in all its fullness and depth, without divulging our secrets . . . we can pour out our hearts, and still feel that nothing has been dragged to light which should remain hidden."

I'm very interested in the idea that the Liturgy is "a masterly instrument which has made it possible for us to express our inner life in all its fullness and depth, without divulging our secrets . . . we can pour out our hearts, and still feel that nothing has been dragged to light which should remain hidden." I think this is why the liturgical churches have produced such great art, and the non-liturgical sects haven't, for the most part; the shepherding of secrets and the "reserve" of emotion (and the discipline involved) make it possible to "pour out our hearts" into art.

Reminiscent of Flaubert's admonition to "Be regular and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you can be violent and original in your work."

Another interesting thread in the "emotion/religion" linkage. This is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to research, myself; another was de Caussade's "God instructs the heart; not by ideas but through pains and contradictions." These are such fascinating topics for research projects, I think! We've come to a place where science has become so powerful that it is forgetting the importance of simple human wisdom. Wisdom requires a "big picture" view, though; this is what is disappearing. Science is particularizing everything, even itself. There are no generalists anymore, because scientific disciplines have become too deep and too technical for one person to understand a great deal in a broad way.

The "big picture" isn't possible in science anymore, and the vast amount of information around now is making it difficult to see the large view in any area. But we need to connect with wisdom from the past, and then write our own, in continuation. This is why the Bible is important, still. And so is The Illiad and The Odyssey, and Oedipus Rex and Antigone.

Meantime, I'll try to find if there's any existing research on either of these topics and will publish it. Religion and its connection to art via emotion and psychology is one of the very most interesting topics to me in the world.

Worship

2004-12-08T21:44:00.000-05:00

From Evelyn Underhill's Worship, 1936:

The painted cave of those prehistoric worshippers of an unknown God who were "simple-minded enough to give of their best to the supra-sensible powers," the Pagan temple, the Christian cathedral, are all expressions of the same fundamental human need to incoporate, make visible, the spirit of worship; to lavish skill, labour, and wealth on this most apparently "useless" of all the activities of man. So, too, the ritual chant, with its accompaniment of ceremonial movement and manual acts, is found to exert a stablizing influence at every level of his religious life. And when this costly and explicit embodiment is lacking, or is rejected where once possessed, and the Godward life of the community is not given some sensible and institutional expression within the social complex, worship seldom develops its full richness and power. It remains thin, abstract, and notional: a tendency, an attitude, a general aspiration, moving alongside human life, rather than in it.

It is true that worship, when thus embodied, loses - or seems to lose - something of its purity; but only then can it take up and use man's various powers and capacities, turning the whole creature towards the Eternal, and thus entering the texture of his natural as well as his supernatural life. Certainly, it is here that we encounter the greatest of the dangers that accompany its long history; the danger that form will smother spriit, ritual action take the place of spontaneous prayer, the outward and visible sign obscure the inward grace. But the risk is one which man is bound to take. He is not "pure" spirit, and is not capable of "pure" spiritual acts. Even though in his worship he moves out towards absolutes, and in and through that worship absolutes are revealed to his soul, it is at his own peril that leaves the world of sense behind, in his approach to the God Who created and informs it. This humbling truth must govern all his responses to Reality.

Here's some ritual chant: "the Service of Compline as chanted by the choir of St. Joseph of Arimathea Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California."

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

2004-12-07T09:55:00.000-05:00

A review of Harold Bloom's new book of the same title.

Where shall wisdom be found? Harold Bloom finds it in the same place as the question -- the Book of Job -- as well as in Ecclesiastes and the writings of Plato, Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Bacon, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Emerson, Nietzsche, Freud, Proust, St. Augustine and in the Gospel of Thomas. Bloom's new book, which compares and contrasts what he calls the "wisdom writing" in these varied works, "rises out of personal need, reflecting a quest for sagacity that might solace and clarify the traumas of aging, of recovery from grave illness, and of grief for the loss of beloved friends." He tells us, "Since childhood, I have been comforted by Talmudic wisdom," and he cites wisdom writing that helped him rally when he "was ill, depressed, or weary." He also says, "We most of us know that wisdom immediately goes out the door when we are in crisis" and that he has "not found that wisdom literature is a comfort."

These claims may seem inconsistent, but inconsistency does not trouble him. His section on Emerson approvingly quotes that writer's "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and alludes to Whitman's "I am large, I contain multitudes." Such familiar sayings contrast with a central delight of Bloom's book -- its inclusion of wonderful aphorisms likely to be new to many readers. One of my favorites is the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus's "Psychoanalysis is itself that disease of which it purports to be the cure," although my delight had dimmed by the time I encountered Bloom's third repetition of this remark.

As the foregoing suggests, Bloom's book is inconsistent (or multitudinous) in quality as well as in attitude. Often his fervent discussion yields shimmering insights. Consider his treatment of what he calls the "Nietzschean" position that what makes one poem more memorable than another "must be that the memorable poem, the poem that has more meaning, or starts more meaning going, is the poem that gives (or commemorates) more pain." Bloom comments, "Strong poetry is difficult, and its memorability is the consequence of a difficult pleasure, and a difficult enough pleasure is a kind of pain."

I've just finished writing elsewhere that the Church - and by this I refer to all of the ancient religious traditions - is the only place (aside from university history and classics departments) still deeply in touch with the distant human past. I believe these enduring writings are an important repository of human experience - of the life of the human being qua human being on earth - and will become more and more important as the world goes more and more techno. It will be necessary to have a baseline of experience from which to draw conclusions about the essence of human nature - or at least about the manner in which human nature evolves, if it does (and I believe it does, in fact).

Also, the Church is one of the few places still thinking (hopefully, but definitely not in every case) about "the spiritual life," and about "meaning" in those particular terms. It's always been my opinion that writers and artists also deal primiarly in the spiritual, but you don't seem to see, in art, these days, a drawing together of the various threads of experience and meaning into a large coherent whole; instead, the focus seems to be on shining light on the particular, and almost for its own sake, now that the "universal" is out of favor. Religion still insists, in its seeking of God, that human experience is universal - for if not, how could religious principles be applied?

Deus ex machina

2004-11-23T19:45:00.000-05:00

The urban world may look quite different in the not-too-distant future:

Nanotechnology alone offers exciting and disquieting possibilities. Originally proposed by Nobel physicist Richard Feynman forty years ago, nanotech manipulates individual atoms and molecules to build things—anything, in fact. Experts anticipate that within the next few decades, large-scale objects, including buildings, could be fabricated using microscopic robots called assemblers, which would join to make a cybernetic glue, able to assume any shape and size. Such an instrument would eliminate traditional constraints of design and construction. Standard, irreducible components, such as the 2 X 4, the brick, steel shapes, nails and screws, will be replaced by microscopic parts. Form, texture, color, and strength would be defined at the cellular level. Orthogonal geometry, demanded for efficiency by standard frame construction, could disappear altogether.

This is not science fiction; nanoscience is quickly becoming reality. In the last year or two, IBM researchers have fashioned a computer circuit from a single carbon molecule, and Cornell scientists have built a microbe-sized motor, the first nanoscale machine. Eric Drexler, who coined the word "nanotechnology" in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation, expects dramatic benefits for design, manufacturing, electronics, medicine, and every other human endeavor. Everything we make will become better, faster, stronger, smaller, and cheaper. For architects, nanoconstruction could finally accommodate the restless search for new forms, allowing varieties never before achieved or even imagined. We will be able to construct anything we envision through a virtual wave of the wand. Buildings may be conceived and executed through computer programming by entering only a few parameters and requirements. How big is it? What does it feel like? BANG! Instant architecture.

But this assumes that designers will control the process. Nanotech’s opponents see it as an untamable force, because its potential for self-replication could get out of hand. Picture trillions upon trillions of invisible mechanical pests filling the environment and utterly consuming the earth. Assuming we can avoid catastrophe, an important question is whether architecture will require architects. Will expertise become unnecessary when anyone could punch her desires into a keyboard and produce her dream home? Moreover, a building may not necessitate anyone at all to summon it into existence. Spontaneous assembly could allow nanobots to go on auto-pilot. While Feynman saw nanoscience as arranging atoms "the way we want them," in actuality they could develop unpredictably, in ways we may or may not want.

Here's Bill Joy's original piece about nanotechnology, "Why the future doesn’t need us," referred to in the above article.

The Tunnel

2004-11-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

This is a duplicate, one that also appears on my other blog. There is more to say about Zen stories, and what they are and what they do, but I'll do that another time.

Zenkai, the son of a samurai, journeyed to Edo and there became the retainer of a high official. He fell in love with the official's wife and was discovered. In self-defence, he slew the official. Then he ran away with the wife.

Both of them later became thieves. But the woman was so greedy that Zenkai grew disgusted. Finally, leaving her, he journeyed far away to the province of Buzen, where he became a wandering mendicant.

To atone for his past, Zenkai resolved to accomplish some good deed in his lifetime. Knowing of a dangerous road over a cliff that had caused death and injury to many persons, he resolved to cut a tunnel through the mountain there.

Begging food in the daytime, Zenkai worked at night digging his tunnel. When thirty years had gone by, the tunnel was 2,280 feet long, 20 feet high, and 30 feet wide.

Two years before the work was completed, the son of the official he had slain, who was a skillful swordsman, found Zenkai out and came to kill him in revenge.

"I will gived you my life willingly," said Zenkai. "Only let me finish this work. On the day it is completed, then you may kill me."

So the son awaited the day. Several months passed and Zenkai kept digging. The son grew tired of doing nothing and began to help with the digging. After he had helped for more than a year, he came to admire Zenkai's strong will and character.

At last the tunnel was completed and the people could use it and travel safely.

"Now cut off my head," said Zenkai. "My work is done."

"How can I cut off my own teacher's head?" asked the younger man with tears in his eyes.

And there are 100 other Zen stories, here.

My ambition, though, is to write some Zen stories with women as the protagonists, and in which their male partners are described as "so greedy that she grew disgusted." Women are always used as devices in these stories, to get the men into a dramatic mess. I saw this same dynamic in the recent film "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter....and Spring." The young monk is tempted away from the monastery by a woman, and ends up killing another man out of jealousy. He returns embittered and goes through this kind of years-long redemption.

And actually, I've only ever run into one or two Zen stories at all in which women figure as main characters. What about "Reiko, the daughter of a Samurai"? This is why I loved Die Walküre so much; surely there must be some archetypical adventurous woman! Is it that a woman would never make so terrible a mistake that she'd spend a lifetime atoning for it? Is it that a woman cannot leave home to travel and adventure, because she cannot be alone?

Or is it that such a woman is by definition completely evil and unredeemable? The latter, I suspect. Well, time to dig out some different archetypes. A-mazon, after all.

Ise Shrine and the Long Now

2004-10-23T17:35:00.000-04:00

"This Shinto shrine at Ise named Jingu Shrine is rebuilt every twenty years. Its first incarnation was in 04 C.E. This type of design, which utilises ephemeral materials while capitalizing on the human element, is a great inspiration for The Long Now Foundation. This object has done something which Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids have not; it aided the survival of its institution."

From the Long Now Foundation website:

The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to todays "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

I originally found this organization through its other fascinating endeavor, The Rosetta Project:

The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible online archive of ALL documented human languages. Our goal is to create the most broad and complete reference work on the languages of the world to date- a reference work of relevance for academic researchers and educators as well as native communities looking for materials in support of language revitalization work.

We are creating this unprecedented digital library of human language through an open contribution, peer review process and we invite you to participate. All documents and data sets are freely available through this growing online database as well as archived on an extreme longevity micro-etched nickel disk- a contemporary "Rosetta Stone" for the languages of the world.

So, then, what is this website for?

2004-10-15T10:38:00.000-04:00

This blog was supposed to be about religion. I'd wanted to argue for it in the context of the modern world and from a rationalist - maybe, rather, pragmatist - point of view.

I'd wanted to say: you can be modern and religious, too. You can be a scientist and go to church. Religion has things that are good for us, and we should not dismiss them out of hand. I'd wanted to make William James' point that religion is a good, a benefit to human life, because it concerns itself with "the more eternal things," and that we should take this to heart and explore it from a modernist point of view.

This is what I still believe. But religion is also a weapon, and it's being used against me right now. So how can I argue any of this any longer?

I can, I suppose, even though I can't subject myself to the abuses any longer. I've learned an important lesson over the years, and that is that a person has always to be open to new thought, new ideas, and the best (the only?) way to keep oneself open is through contradiction. (Imagine that I'm saying that now! From De Caussade, and something I wanted to actually do psychology research in: "God instructs the heart not by means of ideas, but by pains and contradictions.")

Through placing oneself at the edge, at the borders where all the wars are, and going through the pain of the conflict. You do learn this way. And I have learned. Maybe that's what I actually feel now, in fact: that the current endless round-and-round about homosexuality is old news and no longer profitable to me. It is simply a dead end, and it's time for something new. Maybe this pain is the birthing of that, whatever it is.

So I suppose I can still still use this blog, instead of shutting it down. I want to talk, anyway, about science, and mathematics, and research in biology and psychology. Perhaps I'll go back to school and really do that research I mentioned above. I want to still talk about religion as a force, even if I'm not personally involved. (Of course, I have to be involved in spiritual things in some way, even if only in A.A.) I want to talk about "The Theory of Everything," maybe, and I guess I still can. Maybe things will get interesting, in fact. I've been trying to write about my own religious conversion and have found the results stilted and very uneven; maybe there's a reason, and maybe Christianity as it exists right now is simply not right for me, not enough....

Leaving the Church....

2004-10-14T19:12:00.000-04:00

I feel so much more relaxed when I consider it. So much more at ease, and much less tense and worried.

The thought of just getting out for good is becoming more and more appealing by the day. I won't have to keep up this silly argument about homosexuality any longer - secularists mostly don't care. I live in one of the most tolerant states in the nation (but of course a person still has to be careful), one that early passed anti-discrimination laws and lately a domestic partnership bill. (I think that the tolerance here is due to the huge immigrant population, and because we have the highest per capita percentage of scientists in the nation. Religion is a diverse affair here, so no one group has the upper hand. And people seem to be reasonable and veyr "live-and-let-live," across the board.) It's easy to be gay here, even in the Church.

But I don't think I want to support the Christian Church any longer. If I convert to Catholicism, I'll just be waiting for the day when I'm eventually denied Communion - which is the main reason I'd convert in the first place. The hierarchy is cracking down, and I'd likely get caught in the crackdown.

The only hope is if the American Church splits. Then, I'd be happy to stay. But I can't tolerate the fighting any longer, and the deafness of the opposition. They are tasting new power now, aligned with the "Global South," and they are in the mood for punishment. We should deny them the opportunity by simply breaking away. They can have the Communion; I don't care at all anymore.

The best move, though, would be to leave entirely. I had God before I came to the Church, and I'll have God when I leave. I will have to go through withdrawal (see "Anglo-Catholic," below, for why), but it will be better in the end.

Anglo-Catholic

2004-10-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

I went to The Church of the Resurrection yesterday for solemn high mass. It's a beautiful, beautiful church, and the liturgy is indeed very high there, complete with a reading of "The Last Gospel" (John 1:1-17) after the Benediction and Dismissal, and "The Angelus" at the end of the mass - something I've never seen before. This service was called "Harvest Thanksgiving," and I gather it has something to do with English custom. (Again! The Anglophilia in this church!)

The Mystery Worshipper who reviewed Resurrection described "the delighful, prayer-filled haze of incense" - and so it was. I can still see the layers of smoke drifting through the air by the half-open windows facing the street. I do love incense, at least occasionally; it evokes hugely potent sense memories - and "occasionally" is more wonderful, to me, in fact, than experiencing it every week. (A few weeks ago I went to a dim sum place with a friend for lunch and spent part of our time together sniffing the tea leaves, which had the same strong, dense smell as church incense. I even asked the waiter what kind of tea it was; "flower tea" was the answer, whatever that is. I'll find it sometime, though, of this I am certain; I know I shall not rest until I do.)

In any case, it was the most fussy, nosebleed-high mass I've ever been to - even beating out St. Mary's, and that's really saying something. So much going on! The precise movement and ritual; the wildly colorful vestments, including birettas - over the top, there, IMO, but I can live with it; the many, many genuflexions; the incense. Ah, the incense. The fragrant haze surrounding us all, like the impressionistic fog of a film dream sequence, throughout the whole hour-and-a-half of the service and afterwards. The whole service like a dream, actually - the sweet music, and the murmur of prayers and chants, and the bells: all part of the slow, slow, methodical buildup to the climax of the communion itself. A kind of calm serenity about it all. Then an easy descent back to the world, to rest and pray, to give thanks. And then the last gospel reminded us what the whole thing was all about: that the Word has existed from the very Beginning - that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That, unbelievably, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Don't forget.

Then getting slowly up to leave at the end, almost regretfully, to go outside into a beautiful cold sunny morning. All a dream.

(Man! I am really hooked now, and what in the world am I going to do about that? Cold turkey at some point, I guess....)

Superman dead

2004-10-11T12:50:00.000-04:00

The story of Christopher Reeve has always unnerved me. Here was a man whose onscreen role was that of the world's strongest human, an invulnerable creature from another planet with "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." (I just pulled that phrase out of some musty recess in my mind that contains everythings from 1950s and 60s TV. In those days, George Reeves - that name again! - was The Man of Steel. He eventually committed suicide because he was typecast in the role, or so went the story.)

Then Chris Reeve fell off a horse and never walked again. He couldn't breathe without help; he couldn't turn his head or move a muscle; he couldn't eat or even pee by himself. I'm sure he thought about suicide every day of his life since 1995. Yet instead he suffered, publicly and achingly, for the sake of his child and his wife and for future unnamed others he could possibly help on account of his fame. The Passion of Christopher Reeve took 10 years to complete.

Handsome, wealthy, decent, kind, and totally destroyed, in an absurd accident. I felt nothing but relief for him this morning when I heard the news.

Requiem aeternum dona eis Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

(And how unfair life on your earth is, BTW, Domine. If you don't mind my saying so.)

The God of the Infinitesimal

2004-10-11T12:09:00.000-04:00

An inchoate thought is forming in my head now, after having read Psalms 1, 2, and 3 today as part of Morning Prayer. I will have to think it out further, but the basic idea is that the Scriptural point of view - and I mean "point of view" literally in this case - is all wrong for our lives in the 21st Century. It's too much in the large visible world.

Today we know that not sin but bacteria and viruses cause disease. We know about T-cells - lymphocytes which recognize and destroy foreign cells. We know about neurons and synapses; we know about the possible connection between the corpus callosum and autism; we know that the brain scans of schizophrenics look different than those of others. We know what dust mites look like magnified 400X; they look like dragons, in fact, like prehistoric monsters. We even know something about top quarks and spin, and possible curled-up physical dimensions too tiny to ever be seen.

But the Psalmist knows none of this. He (she?) knows about armies and vengeance and cattle and wheat and chaff and sea-monsters and all deeps and multitudes. Scripture is silent about so much of what we know and take for granted. It is gross and crude and, as a result, simplistic. It is a history lesson, instead of being a point of departure into the realm of the mystical.

This is why the voices of Hildegard of Bingen and the other mystics are today growing louder; they speak of this inner world of the unseen:

O Holy Fire which soothes the spirit
life force of all creation
holiness you are in living form
You are a holy ointment
for perilous injuries
You are holy in cleansing
the fetid wound.

O breath of holiness
o fire of loving
o sweet taste in the breast
you fill the heart
with the good aroma of virtues.

The solution is to write more stuff like the above for use in approaching the Mysterium Tremendum of God - which, while still Tremendum, belongs also to the realm of the invisibly tiny.

And let's not forget, while we're at it, that the Psalmist thought heaven was about 100 feet up, and that there were "waters above the heavens" - that is, above God's throne where angels circled Him and sang praises. And that the fact of the still-expanding universe was discovered less than 100 years ago. The Psalmist's world was much, much smaller - and also much larger - than the wolrd we know.

Is approaching immortality immoral?

2004-10-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

An article in Reason asks this question.

What if a biomedical researcher discovered that lives were being cut short because every human being was infected in the womb by a disease organism that eventually wears down the human immune system's ability to protect us? Until that discovery, the "natural" average lifespan was the proverbial three score and ten years.

Once the discovery is made, another brilliant researcher devises a "vaccine" that kills off the disease organism. Suddenly the average lifespan doubles to seven score (140 years). In a sense, this is exactly where we find ourselves today. There are no "vaccines" yet to cure the disease of aging. But biomedical researchers understand more with each passing year about the processes that cause the increasing physical and mental debilities that we define as aging. Aging is no more or less "natural" than cholera, smallpox, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, or any disease that cuts short human lives.

Nevertheless, a number of prominent bioethicists and other policy intellectuals are arguing that we should oppose any such life-doubling "vaccine" on the grounds that it would interfere with the "natural" course of human life.

Here are the arguments put forward "against":

Callahan makes three arguments. First, he points out that the "problems of war, poverty, environment, job creation, and social and familial violence" would not "be solved by everyone living a much longer life." Second, he asserts that longer lives will lead mostly to more golf games, not new social energy. "I don't believe that if you give most people longer lives, even in better health, they are going to find new opportunities and new initiatives," Callahan writes.

And thirdly, Callahan is worried about what longer lives would do to child bearing and rearing, Social Security and Medicare. He demands that "each one of the problems I mentioned has to be solved in advance. The dumbest thing for us to do would be to wander into this new world and say, 'We'll deal with the problems as they come along.'"

Am I crazy, or are they leaving out one of the main concerns: that there won't be enough room and/or resources to deal with these expanding lifespans? Human beings are already decimating the world's fisheries, for instance, and a catastrophe looms if something isn't done about this soon. Farming methods are getting better every year, of course, and that may take some of the pressure off. But what happens when lifespans continue to increase? Where do we put all the people? And how do we feed them? What about housing? What if there are tensions between the young and old on this account - as indeed there already are, in terms of Social Security, for instance. As machines take over more and more of the work, where will the jobs come from? And won't people just continue to try to hang on, in whatever way they can, long after their usefulness has come to an end? Will euthanasia become a booming business at that point? Will death become a ritual? Or perhaps the old can fight the wars instead of the young, and we can solve the problem that way. Will childbearing be extended into women's later years - into their 60s, 70s, or 80s?

Isn't this sort of a big ethical issue? Am I missing something here?

How is religion like Madison Avenue?

2004-10-11T00:08:00.000-04:00

Simple: it creates a need that didn't exist before, and then offers to fill it.

And it doesn't deliver.

In order to save time

2004-10-09T19:40:00.000-04:00

I link here Andrew Sullivan's ancient (10 years old already!) article about homosexuality and the Church. I'm tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again, so when I get into it with somebody on a blogsite or other internet forum, I will simply send them here to read this article.

And, I intend to link other articles to this post in the future, plus a summary of my own argument, so that I will eventually have everything in one place and will no longer have to repeat myself. Ahhhhhh.

Neurosociology

2004-10-09T19:09:00.000-04:00

Per Steven R. Quartz, Associate Professor, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the Computational and Neural Systems program; also Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory:

Studies of our biological constitution make it increasingly clear that we are social creatures of meaning, who crave a sense of coherence and purpose. Yet, our modern way of life seems to provide fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in the group life that satisfies these human needs—indeed, many of its structures and institutions stunts these very needs. In addition to these obstacles within the design of modern life, it's my hunch that modernist culture is based on a profoundly mistaken view of human needs. The upshot is a deeply flawed view of human happiness as the private pursuit of self actualization. The implications are profound, and range from an enormous cost in public health terms to more and more social conflicts, terrorism being just one manifestation of these.

As science advisor, I would initiate a program at the intersection of science and culture to investigate what modern brain science reveals about human needs and how such an understanding can be applied to create both ways of living and a culture that better satisfies them—for lack of a better word, I'd call this "neurosociology."

I think we will find that the staggering advances in brain science reveal human needs to be vastly different from the modern view—for example, that we aren't the asocial, consumptive selves Freud thought we were, but instead are deeply social and need not only to belong but to identify with groups and purposes larger than ourselves.

This initiative would attempt to use this new knowledge to design ways of living that provide more opportunity for real meaning and social engagement that the human brain requires—from how we ought to think about the design of communities, the workplace, learning institutions, and entertainment and leisure. This initiative would also have to focus on a deeply troubling problem: although science is the engine of our society, its core values and insights have had only a weak influence on our culture. This is a troubling gap: for science, and therefore, our civilization, to sustain itself, we require a culture that is built on the core values and insights of science itself, one that endows human life with the meaning we all crave. Aligning the design of life and a sustaining culture with the human needs that brain science is beginning to reveal would, I think, have a profound impact on many of the most troubling social dilemmas we face.

To sum it up, I would recommend the creation of a new science of human flourishing and significance, a nascent neurosociology, whose goal would be a happiness worth having.

Fermat, or Perfection is Eternal

2004-10-08T14:17:00.000-04:00

From the Fermat's Last Theorem Poetry Challenge page.

(Author: Everett Howe, Hendrik Lenstra, and David Moulton.)

"My butter, garcon, is writ large in!"
a diner was heard to be chargin'.
"I HAD to write there,"
exclaimed waiter Pierre,
"I couldn't find room in the margarine."

What will become of us?

2004-10-07T19:59:00.000-04:00

I don't know whether or not I can continue belonging to the Christian church. What's happening in the Anglican Communion is hitting too close to home these days; it's too difficult to invest your heart so deeply in something, and then to watch it all torn to pieces before your eyes.

I've been thinking seriously lately about converting to Catholicism. I want to be able to go to mass every day, and it's difficult to do this in the Episcopal Church. And the never-ending chaos in ECUSA is wearing on a person. I've been thinking, too, for awhile now, that Episcopalians are just too smart for their own good. They don't know how to do the simple thing - to enjoy life, to enjoy God and religious belief, to simply have faith. This is one source of the chaos, and it's why I sometimes feel alienated from the church as well. My experiences in A.A. have made things stark and plain to me: I've put my faith in a Power Greater Than Myself, and that's the end of it. If I want to stay alive, and to stay sane, I simply do this, without question.

But I can't be a Catholic, for reasons that Andrew Sullivan laid out so clearly. And for other reasons as well. I may at some point reconsider this, but for now I just can't go there. I just want to go to church to worship God, to receive the Sacrament, and to find some peace and comfort in this harsh world. I'm a religious person now, and I'm finding that ECUSA is not a strong anchor for me.

So, what, then? What will religion become? I've been writing some stories lately - near-future SF - trying to work out this question. I believe that religion still has a place; that it might, in fact, be more necessary than ever as human life goes more and more techno. But right now, I wonder if Christianity will be able to survive; I mean, if it can't deal with homosexuality - an utterly harmless thing, after all! - how will it cope with Futureworld?

I'm depressed, today, I know. Maybe I will feel differently tomorrow. I will go to St. Thomas this Sunday, or to Resurrection, and enjoy the music and the ritual and the incense and the colors and the prayers. Maybe I shouldn't think any further ahead than this. If I can continue this blog, and my religious life, I will. If not, not. That's how things go.

Right now, I think I'll just post the words to "The Holly and the Ivy," which we are singing later this year. They struck me as perfectly gorgeous, and a wonderful illustration of what Christianity can be, when it's showing its good face. It can make blessed the world, and the ordinary human life; it can shine pure light on them, making them sweet and holy and beautiful. It can show precisely why life is eminently worth living:

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our sweet Saviour

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.

O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

Michaelmas

2004-09-29T16:00:00.000-04:00

Today is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels: Michael ("Who is like God?"); Gabriel ("God is my champion"); Raphael ("God heals"); Uriel ("God is my light").

"El," pretty obviously, is a Hebrew suffix (or prefix) that means "God." So: Michael, Gabriel, Ariel, etc. More about this:

The word El appears in other northwest Semitic languages such as Phoenician and Aramaic and in Akkadian ilu as an ordinary word for god. It is aso found also in the South-Arabian dialects and in Ethiopic, and as in Hebrew it is often used as an element in proper names. In northwest Semitic texts it appears to be often but not always used of one single god, of "the God", the head of the pantheon, sometimes specifically said to be the creator.

El is used in both the singular and plural, both for other gods and for the God of Israel. As a name of God, however, it is used chiefly in poetry and prophetic discourse, rarely in prose, and then usually with some epithet attached, as "a jealous God." Other examples of its use with some attribute or epithet are: El ‘Elyon ("most high God"), El Shaddai ("God Almighty"), El ‘Olam ("everlasting God"), El Hai ("living God"), El Ro’i ("God of seeing"), El Elohe Israel ("God, the God of Israel"), El Gibbor ("Hero God"). In addition, names such as Gabriel ("Hero of God"), Michael ("Who is Like God"), and Daniel ("God is My Judge") use God's name in a similar fashion.

This must be where they got the names, too, for people on the planet Krypton, in the Superman stories: Jor-el, Kal-el. It all comes together at last.

Some more angels:

Ye watchers and ye holy ones,
bright seraphs, cherubim, and thrones,
raise the glad strain,
Alleluia!

Cry out, dominions, princedoms, powers,
virtues, archangels, angels' choirs,
Alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!
Alleluia! alleluia!

The reading at the mass was from Revelation 12:

7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

War in heaven! Between the dragons and the angels!

I've got to read this book someday.

Is this science, commerce, or religion?

2004-09-29T09:43:00.000-04:00

Private rocket ship aims for space prize

MOJAVE, California (Reuters) -- A three-seat rocket plane with stubby wings and a nose studded with round windows will try to blast out of Earth's atmosphere above the Mojave desert on Wednesday to qualify for a $10-million prize designed to spur commercial space travel.

The Ansari X Prize will go to the first team to build a spacecraft without government help, launch three people or their weight equivalent at least 62 miles straight up, then repeat the feat with the same craft within two weeks.

SpaceShipOne, the first to try for the prize, was built by aircraft designer Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, and financed by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen.

Watching a piece on this, this morning, on the news, I realized that the old world is falling away beneath us all now, and the old religions will not be able to compete - at least, not in their present form. What could the story possibly consist of? Jesus as Rocket Man? God=mc²? Ayn Rand may win, after all: the engineer as diety.

V_e=sqrt(2G*M/R), alleluia, alleluia!

Next: Leviathan Tours, Inc. Accompany the whales in the Sea-pod Swimmer Angelfish, as they migrate to their southern breeding range! I'll get right on this.....

Religion and art?

2004-09-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

I've been searching the web for months now, trying to find something substantive on the topic of Christianity as Muse. Eighteen centuries of religious art, music, and literature, and at least two centuries of continued exploration of religious themes in secular art - and I've found one or two mildly interesting leads.

Bizarre. Maybe I can get a grant and do some research myself.

China, Christianity, and totalitarianism

2004-09-24T13:49:00.000-04:00

Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power

That's Eve Tushnet's review of a book by David Aikman, from which here are some excerpts:

It seems gauche to address the political effects of Christian conversion. Nonetheless, Aikman offers many predictions. On his account, Chinese Protestants tend to be reformist rather than radical, emphasizing a slow transition to liberal democracy. They do not engage in much political agitation. In short, don’t picture a Protestant Solidarnosc.

Even if Protestant leaders decline to play an explicit role in bringing China to liberal democracy, the spread of Christianity will almost certainly aid in that transition. Russia emerged from the furnace of Communism devastated both economically and spiritually. Slowly, Chinese entrepreneurs are beginning to build the habits of the market. But liberty—economic or otherwise—relies on an underlying network of trust. Societies where people believe nothing, where they have had belief kicked out of them, lack this necessary foundation.

Moreover, embracing Christianity brings Chinese seekers into a mindset that replaces traditional Chinese nationalism and xenophobia with the community of believers. Under Communism the central relationship is between the individual and his master, the state. Replacing this threatened, isolated understanding of the self is one of the crucial tasks in renewing a society that has suffered through totalitarianism. Even non-Christians should welcome the spread of Christianity in China as an extraordinarily good sign for that country’s renewal. (Aikman also argues that Christianization has the potential to transform China from an antagonist of the United States into an ally.)

Eudaemonia, the Good Life

2004-09-23T11:05:00.000-04:00

Why I think religion (or something quite like it) has a future:

Flow, however, doesn't have shortcuts. When I was an undergraduate one of my teachers, Julian Jaynes, a peculiar but wonderful man, was a research associate at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. Some people said he was a genius; I didn't know him well enough to know. He was given a South American lizard as a laboratory pet, and the problem about the lizard was that no one could figure out what it ate, so the lizard was dying. Julian killed flies, and the lizard wouldn't eat them; blended mangos and papayas, the lizard wouldn't eat them; Chinese take-out, the lizard had no interest. One day Julian came in and the lizard was in torpor, lying in the corner. He offered the lizard his lunch, but the lizard had no interest in ham on rye. He read the New York Times and he put the first section down on top of the ham on rye. The lizard took one look at this configuration, got up on its hind legs, stalked across the room, leapt up on the table, shredded the New York Times, and ate the ham sandwich. The moral is that lizards don't copulate and don't eat unless they go through the lizardly strengths and virtues first. They have to hunt, kill, shred, and stalk. And while we're a lot more complex than lizards, we have to as well. There are no shortcuts for us to reach flow. We have to indulge in our highest strengths in order to get eudaemonia. So can there be a shortcut? Can there be a pharmacology of it? I doubt it.

The third form of happiness, which is meaning, is again knowing what your highest strengths are and deploying those in the service of something you believe is larger than you are. There's no shortcut to that. That's what life is about. There will likely be a pharmacology of pleasure, and there may be a pharmacology of positive emotion generally, but it's unlikely there'll be an interesting pharmacology of flow. And it's impossible that there'll be a pharmacology of meaning.

Homer Sweet Homer

2004-09-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

Epic poetry, religion, and research. I've hit the trifecta this morning.

In a new study, European researchers suggest that the rhythms of ancient poetry can synchronize the body's heart and respiration rates. Similar positive effects have been linked to the Catholic rosary prayer and the yoga mantra.

It's far from clear if doctors will ever consider prescribing required reading lists to their patients. But the results are definitely intriguing, said Francois Haas, director of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation research at New York University School of Medicine.

"If there's a message, it's that our internal rhythms can be modified by external stimuli," Haas said.

In the new study, researchers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland studied 20 healthy men and women, average age 43, who repeated parts of a German translation of Homer's The Odyssey after they were read to them. Machines monitored their hearts and lungs as they read.

Their findings appeared recently in the current online edition of the American Journal of Physiology — Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

I'm not in the least surprised by this. And of course - O Rejoice in the Web! - I was able to find a German Odyssey online! (That is a great site, BTW. Another great site.) Apparently the German translation retains the hexameter, but the English doesn't. Anyway, here's a section:

Sage mir, Muse, die Taten des vielgewanderten Mannes,
Welcher so weit geirrt, nach der heiligen Troja Zerstörung,
Vieler Menschen Städte gesehn, und Sitte gelernt hat,
Und auf dem Meere so viel' unnennbare Leiden erduldet,
Seine Seele zu retten, und seiner Freunde Zurückkunft.
Aber die Freunde rettet' er nicht, wie eifrig er strebte,
Denn sie bereiteten selbst durch Missetat ihr Verderben:
Toren! welche die Rinder des hohen Sonnenbeherrschers
Schlachteten; siehe, der Gott nahm ihnen den Tag der Zurückkunft,
Sage hievon auch uns ein weniges, Tochter Kronions.
Alle die andern, so viel dem verderbenden Schicksal entflohen,
Waren jetzo daheim, dem Krieg' entflohn und dem Meere:
Ihn allein, der so herzlich zur Heimat und Gattin sich sehnte,
Hielt die unsterbliche Nymphe, die hehre Göttin Kalypso,
In der gewölbeten Grotte, und wünschte sich ihn zum Gemahle.
Selbst da das Jahr nun kam im kreisenden Laufe der Zeiten,
Da ihm die Götter bestimmt, gen Ithaka wiederzukehren;
Hatte der Held noch nicht vollendet die müdende Laufbahn,
Auch bei den Seinigen nicht. Es jammerte seiner die Götter;
Nur Poseidon zürnte dem göttergleichen Odysseus
Unablässig, bevor er sein Vaterland wieder erreichte.

What's the relevance to this blog? Another quote from the article:

Even in its German translation, The Odyssey is written in a complicated rhythmic formula called dactylic hexameter, in which each of the six sections of a line of poetry include a long syllable followed by a long syllable, a short syllable or two short syllables.

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com, here's an example of a dactylic hexameter: "Down in a/deep dark/hole sat an/old pig/munching a/bean stalk."

As they read the verses, the breathing rates of the subjects slowed down, and their heart and breathing rates became more synchronized. The rates fell almost entirely out of tune when the subjects breathed normally while not reading, suggesting the same thing happens in everyday life.

Previous research, which examined the effects of reciting the Rosary devotion — also known as Ave Maria or Hail Mary — and the "OM" yoga mantra, found that both reduced respiration levels to six breaths a minute, helping the heart work more effectively. The authors suggested the rosary may have become popular because the physiological effects of saying it made people feel better and perhaps more amenable to the devotion's religious message.

Zero-grav

2004-09-16T11:13:00.000-04:00

U.S. company offers public chance to experience weightlessness

After years of effort, the first commercial tour service to offer zero-gravity airplane flights in the United States is finally open for business. For just under $3,000, regular folks can get a tamed-down taste of what astronauts feel on NASA's "Vomit Comet."

Passengers aboard the modified Boeing 727-200 jet will experience weightlessness for about 25 seconds at a time, courtesy of the plane's special parabolic flight path. The physics behind the experience is analogous to what happens during a roller-coaster ride or a fast elevator descent. But inside the jet's padded passenger cabin, fliers are able to tumble in the air or do a "Superman" fly-through, similar to the acrobatics performed on the international space station.

This is the way Hollywood has always created the weightlessness sequences in films like Apollo 13.

I've read about this before, and it really does look like fun. One guy I saw interviewed on TV after a flight had a completely rapturous look on his face; he could barely speak, his eyes sort of bright and unfocussed. That was ten times better than sex, is what he was thinking; of this I have abolutely no doubt.

So, naturally, I think: why not take folks on a tour of the Mysterium Tremendum of God? Why not some sort of venture, probably altruistic rather than capitalistic, to work at getting the same sort of effect through mysticism? I'm sure it would be "parabolic" also. And I have to believe it would be at least twice as good as Zero-G - which makes the M.T. of G. twenty times better than sex, minimum! And it's free, and available anytime.

Well, something to think about, anyway, as I finish The Cloud of Unknowing. If I ever do, that is. (That is one seriously boring book, I must say, considering the topic.)

Religious zero-grav....

Freud vs. Lewis

2004-09-16T11:02:00.000-04:00

The Question of God, on PBS last night.

Watched this last night with one eye while I was doing some work on the computer. I hate that PBS playacting thing - actors playing Lewis and Freud and pontificating at the audience, in phony accents, from behind phony desks. It's truly annoying. Definitely not "Ken Burns' Civil War."

But some good points raised during the panel discussion. One of the women said something I've been saying for years: we can't shunt emotion off to the side, as if it were some sort of impediment to rational thought, some damper on the intellect. Emotional reactions are part of our perceptual faculty, and it's necessary to understand them in order to get the Truth. The example I've seen used at times is the "hair standing up on the back of the neck" thing when we're walking alone on a dark street and we hear or see something worrying. (Actually, as I write this I realize that this is certainly the same physical response that my dog has - the raising of the hackles - when he's frightened. It makes us look bigger, like cat fur puffing out in the presence of an enemy?) We have these reactions for a reason, and we'd better pay attentiong. This wasn't fleshed out in relation to religious experience, though, I suspect because nobody knows how to express it yet. (I found it interesting, and telling, that the women were the ones who raised this point.)

What's amazing, though, is that we're still having the same "believer/skeptic" argument, and in the same terms, after all these years. There's some sort of disconnect (in language, I think) between religious people and non-believers. Maybe it's because religious people are careful not openly debunk what they may believe to be Biblical "myths," in deference to literalists; skeptics don't care at all about that. Perhaps we need to develop some language to talk about this, or at least to set out some basic axioms that everyone can agree to?

It's also hilarious when religious people try to describe religious experience to those who haven't had it! They always end up hemming and hawing and eventually saying: "Well, there are no words to describe it!" I think this tends to make the nonbelievers even more skeptical than they already are; you could see this in Michael Shermer's eyes, which would have been rolling if he weren't on camera, I suspect. I know exactly what is going on, from both sides, though.

Throwing the last stone

2004-09-16T09:42:00.000-04:00

From this page.

In his essay "The Will to Believe" James speaks of religion as presenting a "momentous option." One must choose either to believe or not to believe. In James' view, given the nature of religion, remaining indifferent is, in effect, to choose not to believe. He goes on to say the following:

...Science says things are; morality says some things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things.

First, she says that the best things are more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. "Perfection is eternal" - this phrase of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot be verified scientifically at all.

The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.

...To preach skepticism to us as a duty until "sufficient evidence" for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in the presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser than and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then, it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law.

I can't remember, anymore, what it was like to doubt. "Faith," according to Webster's 1913, is this:

\Faith\, n. [OE. feith, fayth, fay, OF. feid, feit, fei,
F. foi, fr. L. fides; akin to fidere to trust, Gr. ??????? to
persuade. The ending th is perhaps due to the influence of
such words as truth, health, wealth. See {Bid}, {Bide}, and
cf. {Confide}, {Defy}, {Fealty}.]
1. Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is
declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his
authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.

2. The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of
another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he
utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of
any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.

Faith, that is, fidelity, -- the fealty of the
finite will and understanding to the reason.
--Coleridge.

3. (Theol.)
(a) The belief in the historic truthfulness of the
Scripture narrative, and the supernatural origin of
its teachings, sometimes called historical and
speculative faith.
(b) The belief in the facts and truth of the Scriptures,
with a practical love of them; especially, that
confiding and affectionate belief in the person and
work of Christ, which affects the character and life,
and makes a man a true Christian, -- called a
practical, evangelical, or saving faith.

Without faith it is impossible to please him
[God]. --Heb. xi. 6.

The faith of the gospel is that emotion of the
mind which is called ``trust'' or ``confidence''
exercised toward the moral character of God, and
particularly of the Savior. --Dr. T.
Dwight.

Faith is an affectionate, practical confidence
in the testimony of God. --J. Hawes.

4. That which is believed on any subject, whether in science,
politics, or religion; especially (Theol.), a system of
religious belief of any kind; as, the Jewish or Mohammedan
faith; and especially, the system of truth taught by
Christ; as, the Christian faith; also, the creed or belief
of a Christian society or church.

Which to believe of her, Must be a faith that reason
without miracle Could never plant in me. --Shak.

Now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.
--Gal. i. 23.

5. Fidelity to one's promises, or allegiance to duty, or to a
person honored and beloved; loyalty.

Children in whom is no faith. --Deut. xxvii.
20.

Whose failing, while her faith to me remains, I
should conceal. --Milton.

6. Word or honor pledged; promise given; fidelity; as, he
violated his faith.

For you alone I broke me faith with injured Palamon.

--Dryden.

Assent. Confidence. Fidelity. Fealty. See?