Drawn by Beauty, Changed by God

I recently came across Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss. It's a beautiful meditation on modern faith and confronting mortality. While I'm not compelled by its unorthodoxy, I do appreciate much of the poetic prose that unfurls the interplay of one's struggle with absoluteness in the face of contingency.  

Here is a quote that captivates a central theme where I believe his disposition falls short. While on the surface it does resonate as true, on an another level it gave me pause...  

“The purpose of theology—the purpose of any thinking about God—is to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning—by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings—more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful. This is why art is so often better at theology than theology is.” (emphasis mine)

What Wiman eloquently says here is definitely necessary, but is it sufficient? I, like many others, acknowledge the transcendent aspect of art. It is beauty which often leads us to a sense of depth. 

For me, it tends to come through most often in music, in some cases a great film. As an example, I got to see Belle and Sebastian live recently. They are such a delightful band, and I really enjoy much of their stuff, including songs like this, this, and this (great homemade video). This song, for me, is particularly transcendent inducing:

But I've always sensed art was not enough. In today's secular world, art often replaces religion as a form of mass consumption and we can now see how that has worked out as a vehicle for transformation. While I understand Wiman is pointing to deeper sense of mysticism, and that literal theology is too arid, art can not itself be replacement for true theology.

Kierkegaard wrote on the aesthetic (the Beauty) as the door that opens things up for most. But if such enrichment just becomes a narcissistic consumption of experience, it will not necessitate that one become better for it. It also can an alienating existence, where it requires constant re-entry from the transcendent experience to a mundane life.

Kierkegaard acknowledged we eventually need to move to the ethical (the Good). What inclined us by beauty can eventually instill obligations and commitments for us. We begin to see we are embedded in a community with others and that bonds are formed through reciprocity, trust, and friendship. Beauty and goodness become two faces of the same reality; goodness being an internal beauty, and beauty being an external goodness. (On this note, I recall Dennis Prager saying when he was in summer camp, the women he found attractive at the beginning of the season were not the same as the women he found attractive at the end of the season. Once he got to know them more, he got a better sense of their inner/outer/whole beauty which included their goodness. The person can never be reduced to mere appearances.)

And yet, we can see how goodness may not go far enough also. With the ethical stage, we can get stuck projecting our unwanted thoughts on others or denying them within ourselves. This leads to righteous moralizing, politically-correctness, or the shallow goal of being a “nice” person. Without a metaphysical narrative and the power of grace, there is no real motivation and discernment to master ourselves within before considering how to appropriately respond with others.  

As Kierkegaard noted, it only as we move to the Religious mind (the True) where real spiritual progress can be made. This stage requires faith in God. While the aesthetic can bring in the transcendent, it tends to leave God out. It is only with God that the context of beauty and goodness makes coherent sense. While we may be initially drawn to God by beauty, it is on the journey with God where we are deeply moved in our souls to become beautiful (or saintly).

With that being said, I'm about to embark on a 10-day silent retreat. I hope to use that time to truly immerse myself in the deep Beauty that permeates all of Life. And for someone like myself who has an intellectual bent, it is necessary every so often to embody those “aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings.” The art of silence has its time (of no-time) and place (space).

In truth, experience means nothing if it does not mean beyond itself: we mean nothing unless and until our hard-won meanings are internalized and catalyzed within the lives of others. — Christian Wiman

The Most Important Thing

I’ve always appreciated Adyashanti’s clarity and accessibility as a writer. In his latest book, he explores a profound inquiry: what is the most important thing? What we may think the most important thing is for us as individuals, may not always actually be the case. I often like to believe for me it surrounds around the reoccurring theme I cover in this blog, but in truth I can see how I habitually bump up against competing interests that confirm my sinful nature. It's often a competition between sex and God, and guess what sometimes wins?! (As Augustine would often pray, “Lord, make me chaste—but not yet.”)

If we want to know the most important thing in our life, We just need to consider what things or experiences we spend most of our money, time, and attention on. This is exactly how we are living a life!

Some of the things we prioritize can be perfectly fruitful in their own time: family, vocation, and relationships. Others can be fine in moderation: recreation, health/fitness, hobbies, and our social life. 

And then there are the vices. 

Our natures are so tainted, we can even invert the vices with clever philosophical worldviews to make them appear palatable to us. Just take the seven deadly sins: greed and pride can be seen as a life of rugged individualism, sloth can used to attract the simplicity of a minimalist life, lust and gluttony becomes a life of “do what feels good” or the hedonic treadmill, anger can arouse an ironic cynicism, and envy can create a desire for strict egalitarianism. We can’t see through our narrow motivations to recover a vista of what is truly important, partly because we have a fragmented relationship to existence.

As Bob recently quipped: “man prefers to create and inhabit his own world over the one created for him.” We need to see the world as it is; but first, we need to see ourselves as we are.

The veils that define us are not definitive of who we truly are. When we define ourselves, it is only in relationship to what it is not. To be in relationship to what is, we have to be in direct relationship with the totality of who we are (warts and gems). This isn’t an abstract conception, but an intimate Truth. 

“We can talk about our work, we can talk about interests, we can talk about what we like and what we do not like, but with being or existing, there is not much to talk about — at least on the surface. As we go deeper, we see that being is the essential mystery of our existence. What does it mean when we say, “I am”? “I am” is itself incredible mystery” (Adyashanti).

The most important thing is the recognition of this Mystery, and that can only happen with a relationship with Reality – the totality of existence. We may see ourselves as limited finite beings, but we are also made in the image of an Infinite Being. The point is to see our image closer to a vast likeness of the Whole. And this requires a bold surrender of the fragmented parts that define us.

From there, all the other priorities can be supported from the greater Whole, and be made more whole in themselves. Then, while discernment is always there, the parts can be seen within a Whole and the Whole is seen in the parts. 

So what could be more important than this heroic acceptance?

We Are Such Manipulators (at least wherever we can be)

I'm in the midst of reading this terrific book that is sure to be a favorite of mine. Marvin C. Shaw wrote The Paradox of Intention in the late 1980's, and I just recently came across it after hearing it be discussed on a podcast. It surely would have made my journey less complicated had I read it earlier, but maybe that was all part of the plan.

In the book, Shaw elegantly contrasts the ethos of attainment with the ethos of consolation. We try to achieve as much as we can on our own, and surrender to something outside ourselves with the things we can't change. But over history that line keeps shifting.

Consolation or surrendering may seem like giving up, but “the ethic of consolation is an affirmation of life and not a negation... [and] the life which is affirmed is after all one that includes limit situations.” We can't do it all, even if we think there's an app for that. 

Still, technology has certainly helped. Where once we didn't know what the weather may bring (or how weather worked for that matter), we surrendered to the gods with a good old sacrifice. If we can please them gods, then maybe they will bring some rain to our farms but not so much that it floods us out. 

But as we became more sophisticated, our religions became more rational too. Now instead of sacrifices, we just prayed for good health. At least until better doctors came along with a pill for that. 

Shaw says, “So we have a picture of religion's function, which is to make possible a positive response to otherwise disorienting and anxiety producing non-manipulative threats to human interest, at first, through metatechnology and then through metapsychology.” We outsource as much as we can to God, at least until we've hired better contractors. God forbid we have to keep depending on God.

And while our control activities of metatechology continues to manipulate the world, there are some places it can't quite get at: like our anxiety-prone narcissism, or the lack of meaning in our lives, or even the fear of death (despite kicking the can down the road a few more years here and there).  

It's not like people don't keep trying to manipulate these harder to reach spaces in our head. You'll see it through attention addictions, mind-parasitical projections on others, and the use of magical thinking to manifest indulgences that go against reality. Most of these attempts at controlling our nature fail miserably.

But as they say, grace perfects nature and grace can only be a gift from God. And we can't control or manipulate a gift no matter how hard we try. All we can do is be receptive to gifts (whether or not we think they're good for us — and the divine ones usually are).  

God entered the life journey just to show us He can't control things in human form either. He accepted us, so we could accept Him. And it's only when we accept Him that we can accept ourselves. And this makes all the difference: real inner change, and not manipulative change of the strident self.

Shaw notes, “When we have experienced divine forgiveness, we are freed from sin, the essence of which is self-concern and self-reliance, and thus we are able to move toward concern for others.” This takes care of most of our narcissism, offers us meaning, and in essence even transcends our demise as finite beings.

Divine acceptance leads to self acceptance which leads to real non-manipulative change.

So manipulation will only get so far, especially if we are able to redefine the goal...