Barabbas and the Fear of Life*

Barabbas is a 1961 film that moves beyond the biblical canon of the Gospels to tell an epic religious story of the minor biblical character Barabbas after he has been given another chance at life. The film picks up at the point in the Gospels where Pontius Pilate, in keeping with a Passover custom, offers to free either Jesus of Nazareth or Barabbas from being crucified. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the name Barabbas in Aramaic means “son” (bar) of the “Father” (abba). According to the Bible, Barabbas committed murder during an insurrection, which led to this conviction. The crowd is now given a choice between to free one of the two sons of the Father: one the forgiving non-violent messiah, and the other a more rebellious messianic revolutionary. The crowd goes with the latter, thus sending Barabbas on an unexpected journey that will eventually shape his view on life and freedom.

Barabbas witnesses the crucifixion of Jesus and is shaken when a solar eclipse turns the sky black at the moment of Christ’s death. Death becomes a reoccurring theme for Barabbas. He can’t accept that Jesus could rise from the dead, or that his lover would allow herself to be stoned to death for preaching about Christ. Feeling guilt-ridden and disillusioned, he returns to his criminal ways. He is captured by Roman soldiers after trying to commit a botched robbery. In an unexpected twist, Barabbas realizes he cannot be executed, since he was previously pardoned by Pilate, and is instead sent to lifelong slavery in the sulfur mines of Sicily. There he is chained to a Christian named Sahak, who is revolted by Barabbas when he hears he was freed instead of Christ. Eventually the two become friends, and Barabbas escapes death again and saves Sahak when the mine is destroyed in an earthquake. In Rome, they are both trained by Torvald, considered the most esteemed gladiator in the empire, to become gladiators themselves. Torvald eventually kills Sahak, who is condemned as a Christian, while Barabbas once again avoids death in an arena battle, taking down Torvald in defeat.

Set free once again and continuing to feel guilt over his ability to evade death, Barabbas takes Sahak’s corpse to the catacombs where Christians are praying. Becoming despondent and confused by the worship and setting, he finds his way back to the ground where Rome is burning. Barabbas gets caught up in the frenzy and sets fire to more buildings. When captured, he claims he is a follower of Christ and is then imprisoned with several other Christians. There he is confronted by the apostle Peter, who admonishes him for the arson and false claim. During the mass crucifixion of the convicted Christians, Barabbas finally confronts death–both egoic and bodily–and ultimately true inner freedom.

While throughout the film we find Barabbas escapes bodily death and is often set free in several risky encounters, it becomes apparent that this does not fulfill him. He remains tormented and defiant in his being, and often feels resistance toward those who seem to have a deeper conviction of faith. It is not coincidental that the gift of life given in these situations feels unearned and lacking for Barabbas. His freedom is directionless-an accumulation of experience and actions for himself that does not add up to anything. There is no subordination and humility to something transcendent beyond himself, unlike the experiences of the Christians he encounters.

The folklore of Barabbas as the man who could not die becomes a metaphor for his inability to move beyond his self-centered impulses. Barabbas is trapped by his own ego which he refuses to let go for the sake of his prideful character. He allows his guilt to become a second skin preventing him from giving in to the message of salvation he hears from the Christians. He fears not for his bodily death, which he evades in many ordeals, but instead fears a life that can only be fully embraced once we die to our inner defenses. We are reminded of Matthew 16:25, in which Christ says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

Barabbas’ journey toward a more fulfilled life takes a great deal of searching, struggle, and patience, and his path of redemption is marked by a series of signposts and guides along the way. It is only toward the end of the film, after losing his friend Sahak and encountering Christians with enduring faith, that he has exhausted all options to evade the grace of Christ. As Barabbas hangs upon a cross, which to many would seem the darkest moment, he finally understands what it truly means to not fear life in God’s care and can now let go. He is set free to rest his soul in Christ and become whom he was truly meant to be before he exhales his last breath. The debt that Jesus of Nazareth paid for his time on the cross is finally accepted by Barabbas, guilt-free. This brief lived moment of redemption sets the ground for him in eternal salvation.

Barabbas is a film that took me by surprise. Perhaps I was expecting the sort of hokey slow-paced epic that we typically encounter in Christian-based films from the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, I found a well-performed story with a spiritually rich narrative that did not shy away from dark or challenging themes. For a modern contemporary audience, this film can still entice with well-produced action scenes-the arena gladiator scene is one of film making mastery alone-and dialogue that flows less stiffly than many films from that era. All in all, this 1961 film provides something rare in today’s cinema: an epic well-crafted action story combined with thought provoking enrichment for the soul.

*Published for Veritas Review.

Unfinished Business Finishing

I don't know Nate, but recently came across his tweet on a board I read. It's pointing to a feeling I have been contemplating in recent days: things seem off. Does it mean the end of times? I am not necessarily apocalyptic in a Revelations sort of way; however, I do sense we a heading to some sort of climax. It seems history is intensifying: all ideologies are exhausting into pointless fragmented fetishes; long term approaches to keep the system healthy are cynically avoided; and all the ways we can disconnect ourselves to God are hubristically justified. I don't know exactly where things are in this process, but I see more and more the undercurrent of disconnection and discontent rise to the surface. As one person put it: the sensibility of quarantine goes on even as the masks come off. 

I have some friends who lean more new age believing it will come all crashing down soon, but this will be good because something amazing is going to arise on the other side. As if some new higher collective consciousness will miraculously appear from this tragedy. This raises so many red flags for me. Whoever will remain after the “crash” will be ill prepared for much of anything new and beautiful. Beyond just surviving, they would need to unlearn all the foolishness they have been fed for years and re-learn the pearls of the wisdom traditions that have been recently rejected. 

Conspiracists love to believe there are puppet masters behind this, but I can't point to one thing like that. I think we are all complicit to some extent enacting in our self interest, in our desire to not rock the boat or take on too much responsibility, in our complacency that we muddle through it. While some things are avoidable, human nature being what it is must exhaust its constructs as it moves further and further away from Reality. In that, we can't be contemptable toward our fellow man. I often feel agitation toward how leftist ideology has become so intellectually dishonest and internally destructive; however, I try not to look down on those who have been indoctrinated. I understand how this can overtake a sensitive soul with the hopes on making past transgressions right or giving voice to the oppressed and marginalized. But I stop there; as I know even with the best intentions, cosmic justices can never truly be served materially.

Civilization must have some structure to support those on the fringe, but not be overtaken by those edges. It should also be rooted in a Truth that can appeal to our transcendent sensibilities, whether they be course or more subtly refined. And it's not just godless tribal politics that lacks this rootedness, but also exponential technology, overspending governments, and untethered global capitalism. All these things together are breaking our systems down gradually, and eventually suddenly. 

Like all things that end, they end unfinished. We don't die perfect, but we die at some perfect time. Systems are just a collection of individuated actions that become larger than the sum of those actions. Hence, they behave in ways where any influence we can have will always be after the fact. Most of us are powerless to move the rudder, but it doesn't mean we can't learn how to swim or even wear a life jacket.

All said and done, I could also be wrong. Some historians and philosophers are fond of believing that the drama of history is always getting better and worse at the same time. Maybe the better part pulls us through. 

In any case, we can't escape the world. There is also probably nobody coming to rescue us. So all we can do is stay right where we are. Practice the Dharma. Pray for perseverance. Love God and your fellow man. Contemplate and study. Hold your center. Allow God to do His Will. In the end, we shouldn't see it as a “I told you so” moment. There will be mostly sorrow. But joy will also be reaped on another dimension. We will (hopefully) be saved. Our life will be replaced by Life. We were only here to learn to be our-whole-selves and we can't choose the time we were given to do that. The time was perfect for us, but we can't be perfected in time. As it's never about the outcome anyways—only the offering.

Something from Nothing: What Do We Mean by Nothing?

Many years ago I took a filmmaking class where to goal was to make a short 5-minute film. One of the caveats of this film project was there was to be no dialogue and it must have only 2 actors. That sure put a crimp initially on my creative juices at the time, but then when I eventually did come up with an idea and look back at the process I realized the constraints really honed me in. It actually gave me a structure to proceed, or otherwise I'd be floundering with all sorts of ideas and approaches to execute it.

It seems like the constraints matter within our creative freedom. We are always more productive when we can focus in on something than when we are scattered about with endless choice. Of course, the idea of endless choice is a misnomer as we are born with constraints just by the fact we have a body with particular gifts and inclinations for a limited period of time. We can't be anything, and if we could be, we would be nothing at all. Diffused energy doesn't create anything, it just drains the process and eventually leads to chaos. Instead, we are bursts of congealing energy with a particular idiom and telos.

The cosmos works with constraints also. We have this notion that the universe could have had many other sorts of outcomes than it did, or there was the potential for many possible worlds and universes. And many believe that already with the speculative theories around multiverses. But when you consider all the practical and well considered constraints that went into the laws of nature that were required to create a universe that could create sentient life on this planet in 13.7 billion years, you soon realize that this is probably the best of all possible universes and there was something behind it. 

Notice I said something, not nothing, and yet it's not a thing in the way we consider things but a sense of being before things. Still, many of the materialist side of the equation still argue that our something came from nothing. It's a silly thought, that does not explain the thought that knows this. Even if you bring it down to the quantum realm, you are dealing with something that set that in motion. There is no escape from first cause! 

I recently read a book by Hugh Ross, where he considers all the possible options we may mean by nothing...

He says, 

It [nothing] can mean a complete lack of: 

(1) matter; 

(2) matter and energy; 

(3) matter, energy, and the three big cosmic space dimensions (length, width, and height); 

(4) matter, energy, and all the cosmic space dimensions (including the six tiny space dimensions implied by string theories); 

(5) matter, energy, and all the cosmic space and time dimensions; 

(6) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, and created nonphysical entities; 

(7) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, created nonphysical entities, and other dimensions of space and time;

(8) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, created nonphysical entities, and other dimensions or realms—spatial, temporal, or otherwise; 

(9) or anything and everything real, created or otherwise.

Oddly, he doesn't mention a lack of turtles. If we consider that every effect must have a cause, it seems (9) is out. If we consider that time and space came into existence at the cosmic creation event, it also must have a cause. Could it be that something beyond space and time be as Source? 

With creation, we can also assume that the outer cosmos mirrors the inner soul of man. We can see both without and from within clues to God's existence. (As W. Norris Clarke astutely says, “to understand is ultimately to unify: it means first to discern the parts of anything clearly, but finally to unify them into a meaningful whole in itself and then with all else that we know.”) When we extrapolate and look within, we can also potentially see something arising from something if we go deep enough. Sure, there are some Buddhist schools that claim it is all ultimately empty (defined as not nothing, but having no inherent nature); yet does everything arise as empty from nothing ultimately real with a nature? 

With inner phenomena, by nothing do we mean a lack in solidity of the:

(1) five senses;

(2) five senses and thoughts;

(3) five senses, thoughts, and self-consciousness;

(4) five senses, thoughts, self-consciousness, and the basis of cognition;

(5) or anything and everything real, experienced or otherwise.

Again, it depends what we mean by nothing. In the beyond-self experience of groundless ground, there is something very vivid and alive that we are part of. We may not be its nature, but we sense a deep participation with it. To claim this is nothing as a lack of anything and everything real, is once again to dismiss the Source of all experience and creation which can not be ultimately empty but remains as the underlying substrate that is in intimate relationship with ALL of EXISTENCE. 

I prefer to not call this nothing.

Everything Breathes Together

I've become more acquainted (in a recent ceremony) with Shakespeare's quote: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Not that there are deeper Truths we can point to and that are certainly already expressed in the great religions and philosophies. However, we are always best when we proceed with epistemic humility, and stay open to the possiblilty Reality is so much more than we can ever comprehend. 

For example, is Ultimate Reality just an unchanging transcendent intelligence or vast living dynamic forces and entities operating on a different order of time? I would say both and more. I am more incline to say that Reality is not just a Oneness of Boundless Consciousness and Energy, but fundamentally more grounded in Relationships between localized consciousnesses and energies that cohere on many degrees or dimensions of Reality. Again, words are just pointers and I'm doing my best to not throw darts in the dark. Perhaps Dante was on to something, and I am just going to get as far as Virgil did with him.

It does seem we are interconnected on a level far greater than we realize. And I don't mean this in some sort of western Buddhist/ecological/web of life notion. It seems to me the Creator is essential in this Relationship first, and then from there it all integrates together with other beings operating with their own intentions and powers that we are encountering on many levels of Reality in different orders of time through an enchanted Whole. These patterns and processes of connectivity seem to weave our minds and bodies toward the Truth of the Beloved in ways we are not even conscious of most of the time. (Note to reader: I'm really sober right now). 

I am not sure where I begin and where I end in this Reality; however, there is something individuated and this matters. We are not just subsumed into a pure collective in a Borg like fashion. This individuation allows for the Creator to express itself in a greater beauty of diversity while still keeping intact the agency that is unique to our being. The tincture of our being has its own imprint, and greater forces are always at play for this essence to become Realized and Whole if we are willing to remain open to it.

At it's core, I found it both dramatic and funny—yes, sort of like Dante's tragic comedy! I went through a reverse paranoia where it seemed all the people in my life were plotting to awaken me. I found this so humorous and sweet. At the same time it was as if a veil had been lifted and I could see things as they are: holy, energetically radiant, significant, and yet there was this quiet reverence with everything at complete ease. It seemed so simple and profound, where there was this natural home we were all working together peacefully with each other toward each person's ends.

I'm aware there is still much to unlearn about my notions around God. And yet, we are given a gift to interact with Him in ways we could never imagine. These experiences can not be converted to a stabilized awakened state upon return. At best can inform us about some aspect of Reality, where we may have some insight that can integrated in time. I do still believe liberation to the Absolute is a worthy pursuit in this life, and there is also merit to cosmological explorations in other dimensions of Reality. They can be quite humbling, and leave us with a mystery that the human mind will never fully grasp. And while there is much phenomena that is difficult to understand, there also remains something that wants to be known that is fundamental to our existence. 

In the end, I have taken to heart the deep intimacy we all share in God's Divine Presence. There would be no reason to harm anyone intentionally in this dynamic, although people being broken timber will get hurt and intentions, at times, will pave the road to hell. 

* Blog title taken from Plotinus.

Life is Never Neutral

Life often appears as two steps up, one step back—or—one step up, two steps back, but never standing still ad infinitum. It's like an open wound which can never remain as is. It will either begin to heal and improve or get infected and worsen depending on how it is treated.  

Systems also can never be in perfect neutral equilibrium, or they would die. The person is its own system, either open or closed to the Real; and in that posture, his or her directionality becomes apparent. Life can never be a strict duality where one polarity cancels the other polarity out, it more like a triune dynamism where polarities are reconciled at a higher order or debased at the extremes. 

We can't always quantify this, but we can know this if we are radically honest about our intentions. 

Ultimately there is a telos in our being. Marcus Aurelius declares in his magnum opus, “So you were born to feel "nice"? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?”

Even during a time when safety and security was scarce, Marcus understood that creaturely comforts were not the ends to us. We are here to realize and be our nature. And to ultimately honor that in ourselves and others. Otherwise what we don't honor, will eventually get dishonored. There is no neutral vacuum. We either are moving forwards or backwards in ourselves and our surrounding culture.

Nikolai Berdyaev noted himself many years ago that “the world seems to moving not toward an organic, vital unity, but to an organized and technical unity.” For him, unity was the person and not the state or society. While we created liberal democratic orders in many nations, such “emancipation did not set free the whole man, it simply liberated thought itself, as a sphere quite apart from human existence: it was the declaration of autonomy for thought, not for man himself.” One could argue today we are even losing this freedom in thought with the advent of soft totalitarianism.

Berdyaev believed that liberalism was quite indifferent to Truth or to what it means to be a person. Within the confines of godless modernity, liberalism had reduced person to a functional individual as either animal and/or machine without a transcendent nature. And the fullness of the person can only be recaptured in our faith as the very essence of Truth where the qualitative nature of personhood and the content of all human life is made whole with God, nature, and fellowship with others. This goes beyond mere humanitarianism but becomes true humanity with persons-in-relation.

Personhood is the realization in man or woman of the image and likeness of God. It is not a socialized and objectivized individual subject to the state, economic life, or society. He is free to do what his nature demands! And this can only happen in the dynamism of the vertical and the horizontal to which he is made Whole to do his part and in the part be truly Whole. 

Anything else is a step back. 

Happiness is Not Enough

I still appreciate a good Buddhist or Advaita pointing out instruction as long as it's pointing to Reality (one of my favorite instructors these days is this guy, who gets kudos for his visual backgrounds alone). Many come into these teachings (and as I did to some extent) to find some relief from their suffering, and come to a place of happiness. Over the years, I've come to see happiness is not the raison d'être for any spiritual practitioner. In regards to meditation as a practice, Frithjof Schuon notes the goal is not to have access to “limitless energy, heightened efficiency of thought and action, and release from tensions and anxiety, peace of mind and happiness. All such advantages have no spiritual value, because it is not happiness that matters, it is the motive of happiness and the nature of happiness.”

Let's ponder this notion around the motive or nature of happiness. I would gather Schuon is expressing something that is beyond therapeutic or conditional outcome that may accompany any insights through practice. We are not chasing happiness just for the sake of happiness, but perhaps to have a relationship with the Source of it. This is a much bigger deal, and probably beyond what most ask for when they get on a spiritual path. For to encounter the Source is to let go of the self that seeks something for itself, including happiness.  

Pedagogical tools to free oneself from the conditional mind has its place, but it can't replace ontology and cosmology. This is why Advaita and some schools of Buddhism are good at pointing the us toward liberation from existence, but not necessarily expressing the full extent of the cosmological drama as to why liberation is part of the story and to what ends it may be for existence. Some may posit that liberation is as Eckhart once stated is to live beyond asking why. And yet we still live with wonder of Truth and the telos it has gifted to us. Does it not still matter to inquire where have we come from?, what are we doing here?, and where are we going? 

In his terrific book about Schuon, Patrick Laude says Schuon “criticizes the frequent tendency to reduce Zen to a mere psychology, thereby depriving it of its anchorage in transcendence and its rigorous cultivation of a sense of form. What Schuon criticizes in all these cases is the flattening down of theological dogmas and metaphysical principles but also, and above all, all modes of unconscious profanation of religion resulting from a disconnection from the imperatives of transcendence and the sacred.” In other words, if we remove the transcendent nature of Reality and reduce it to a humanitarian ethos of “feel good” and “be kind”, it can easily get diminished to pseudo-spirituality of sentimentality, therapeutic relief, and bland social justice exercises.

Laude adds,

Truth is associated with discernment. It is distinguished from error that it rejects and extinguishes, as it were. It has to do with adequation to reality. In the absence of such an adequation, nothing is truly possible in the spiritual domain. While many modern spiritual seekers would deem intellectual principles to be foreign to spiritual endeavors, and largely inoperative or useless when it comes to realization, Schuon, like most gnostics from the past, sees the intellectual discernment of Reality as a prerequisite for any grounded and sustainable spiritual life.

Discernment is not done to create more dogmatic principles and negate realization, but to create a “virtual realization of its content.” Laude says, “However, far from any alleged intellectualism or abstraction, Schuon asserts time and time again that a consistent understanding of the Absolute gives rise to imperative spiritual and moral consequences” (emphasis mine). Or as they say: as above, so below.

One of the focal points of Schuon's work is “the oneness of the object demands the totality of the subject.” The exclusive reality of the Absolute requires from us all that we are, including our happiness or even our need to be happy. 

We Are Mimetic Fools

We need good models; not the hot, sexy kind, although I can appreciate the beauty of the human form, but models to imitate in good character and essence. Without good models, we don't stop modelling. We are always modelling something to be desired.

I recently read Luke Burgis' book Wanting, where he gets into Rene Girard's mimetic theory: 

Girard believed that all true desire—the post-instinctual kind—is metaphysical. People are always in search of something that goes beyond the material world. If someone falls under the influence of a model who mediates the desire for a handbag, it’s not the handbag they are after. It’s the imagined newness of being they think it will bring. “Desire is not of this world,” Girard has said, “… it is in order to penetrate into another world that one desires, it is in order to be initiated into a radically foreign existence.”

So once again we are condemned to be religious. We are always groping for something to compensate for the unsatisfactoriness of life. But how do we do that in a culture that makes man the standard of himself? We see the results thus far. In the age of the internet, authority is everywhere—which means its nowhere! With all the fragmentation and atomization, we lack a center to rely on and are therefore compelled to outsource our humanity to the influencers and “experts”; to various shifting authority figures; to mimetic models that come and go and have little grounding in reality. 

Burgis states, “it seems that the primary and underexplored reason for our stagnation and decadence is mimesis. We lack a transcendent reference point outside the system. Meanwhile, everyone is more or less imitating everyone else. Our culture is stuck because we’re fighting over space in a pool, next to the ocean. Yet nobody dares to talk openly about it, this mimesis. It’s the hidden force driving our cultural development, and yet it’s taboo to speak about, like envy.”

Mimesis requires a light lift, and therefore it's easily exported from person to person. It's stripped of complexity, richness, and depth; providing a safe haven of conformity without the risk of social alienation from one's tribe or any intellectual challenge that would make one uncomfortable or humble.

What is more fascinating (and often tragic) is that our choices in life are always prioritized for us by the object sought than the inclination in our soul. In D.C. Schindler's The Politics of the Real, he makes this astute point:

The motion of desire does not begin in the soul, but instead begins in the object sought, which, as Aristotle has said, stands to the soul as an unmoved mover. Properly understood, this means that the good that I pursue makes a claim on me before I make a claim on it in my choice. In other words, in pursuing a good, the compelling power of which I recognize rather than arbitrarily posit, I am implicitly and analogously representing its authority, as we will elaborate below. My choice is always and inevitably responsive and thus “obedient” at its base; whenever choice occurs, it occurs as a consent to a claim on my appetite that precedes its own deliberate act.

This makes a good case that our models are more important than whatever agency we assume we inhabit. Or in other words, free will is never in a vacuum. This also makes the case for how liberalism without a transcendent model can eat itself alive—which we can easily affirm when we look around. 

Even having a transcendent model can be corrupted, if not Revealed as Truth and grounded in Beauty and Goodness. In other words, we make God a silent partner who makes no demands on us.

What happens, then, when the highest principle of all gets reinterpreted, no longer as pure act, but now more basically as potency—first as potentia absoluta , then as a generic truth expressed incompletely in a variety of traditions, and finally as an “option,” the possible object of “religious preference”? The absolute no longer functions as the ultimate reference point that makes sense of everything else, or rather, because God remains in some sense highest, this revolution in the meaning of God introduces into the cosmic order a fundamental contradiction, which generates an endless, and constantly self-sustaining and indeed self-reinventing, series of dialectics, divisions, and dissemblings (Schindler).

Is there any hope from all this foolishness? Schindler says, “as Plato argued relentlessly in his dialogues, the pursuit of one’s own good is inescapably a pursuit of one’s own good.” To escape our mimetic traps, we need to become good models and have good models. The Saints have always held this role in the Church, and in turn they imitated Christ. Recall Saint Augustine's plea: “Why art thou proud, O man? God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God.” There was a reason God became man, so that we can become more than merely man trapped in a fruitless search of empty desires. He imitated us, so we could model Him. 

Next

I came to this conclusion recently: what we do with our life doesn’t matter all that much if it's just about our life. We overvalue our existence to accomplish things, and undervalue what we're already doing. As such, the key is not as to what we're doing, but how we can do it rightly: perhaps with more love; also with an understanding of our role in a grander narrative; maybe having more gratitude for our gifts and appreciating our constraints; and in the end, realizing our life wasn't about us but how we related to God and our fellow man & woman. 

I've come to this posture, as I am more concerned about having a holy death than a long life full of various activities. I hope to have some more years to repent, purify, and commune. But I have no grand ambitions, or even things I need to do on some checklist. I may decide to write a book, or not. I may decide to become a contemplative hermit for a period of time. Or I may fall and grow in love with someone. In any case, I am quite fine being a tad idle; however, not in a passive/bored/checked-out sort of way, but in an enchanted way. Therefore, it doesn't seem to matter as to what—but as to how. 

Recall the parting words in Middlemarch,

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

I've grown accustom to the hidden life. In fact, I wouldn't want it any other way. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be Jordan Peterson or some other thought leader and have all those eyeballs on you. I don't want any of it. If what I write influences someone along the way then I am pleased to not even know it. What I do now is prioritized as to whether or not it brings me closer to God. The grain of culture, while always offering opportunities for growth and freedom, does not become my benchmark for progress. Nor does anything else that can be measured or quantified.

If we can allow for greater Truth to infuse our being and make it our life's practice, we will be prepared for eternity. In the meantime, we must endure the spiritual battle the ego insists upon. We must counter the moment to moment ego contraction with a moment to moment intentional undoing to be closer with God. That is the meaning to life that is not ours to make. Ratzinger makes the astute point, 

“Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”

It Starts with One (Primary) and Ends with All (Secondary)

There is tendency to look at the world these days and feel a tad pessimistic. Perhaps hopeful beyond this world, but still despondent about this world. It may have something to do with anti-intellectual relativism, lost virtues, corrupt institutions, new-age gnosticism, technocratic secularism, woke hysteria, hyper-capitalism, godless materialism and transhumanism. That's just for starters. In a more nuance fashion, D. C. Schindler hits on all the issues at the heart of the matter in his recent book, The Politics of the Real:

“There is a basic restlessness, a radical “mobility,” because there is no “anchor” in reality that would present a place of contemplative rest; Instead of real flourishing as the perfection of one’s actual nature, we find a more negative preoccupation above all with safety; Participation, or membership in a reality larger than oneself, is regularly trumped, not so much by the reality of the individual as by the activity of self-assertion; An essentially abstract sense of equality is taken to be a— perhaps the —governing ideal of social existence; Intrinsic meanings and values, which have their roots in actual realities and demand for their recognition the categories of goodness, truth, and beauty, are relentlessly functionalized, identified with what they achieve or produce, and measured by consequences; There is an all-encompassing drag toward materialism, both in the moral/existential sense of the reduction of goodness to economic value and in the properly metaphysical sense of a tendency to interpret “spiritual” realities exhaustively in terms of their material components; A sense of transcendence, in all of its manifestations, is either lost altogether, moralized, or sentimentalized; Cultural forms, and the taste and manners that accompany them, are minimized, held in contempt, or enacted only ironically; The capacity to understand and recognize genuine authority, and the capacity to hold and exercise it (these capacities cannot be separated from each other) disappear, and so authority is generally reduced to power; Political discourse, cut off from reference to the reality of intrinsic meaning that would give it substance and enable genuine deliberation, tends in a formalistic and functional way to the opposition of simple polarities; The profound principle of unity that allows the cultivation of beauty is excluded, and so art tends to fragment into the sentimental (art as kitsch or mere ornament) and the “edgy” (art as political statement)—or both at once; Technology increasingly saturates the culture, penetrating into the most intimate (social relations) and the most significant (work, both manual and intellectual) dimensions of human existence, so that, even when the excitement and curiosity fades and concern begins to set in, the culture can find no substantial resources for resistance; Absent the intrinsic organizing principle of form, there is a tendency toward sprawl in public building and social organization; Architectural style tends to fragment into either pure utility (whether that be measured by economic efficiency or ecological sensitivity) or the purely aesthetic, that is, the intrusion of features that are not only useless but inconvenient and intended only to produce a psychological effect; One witnesses a relentless, collusive effort to deny the essential meanings of things, rooted in the actual givenness of nature; an effort that is forced to go to extremes of absurdity and self-parody; Detached from its roots in the real, language tends to inflate, or to settle into the formulations of (technologically mediated) hip expressions or phrases and words “of the day,” accompanied by a tendency toward hyper-rhetoricization in speech, both public and private; The actuality of human judgment cedes its place increasingly to process, technique, and automation; The “peace” of order is generally imposed, enforced, and repaired through the essentially coercive means of political action, police and military force, and lawyers; Education ceases to be a formation of the person, through his introduction into the tradition, which he is meant to display and pass on in turn, and becomes instead training, the provision of the information and skills needed for individual success; The organization of human affairs, institutions, and collective endeavors tends to take the form of bureaucracy and formalized “management,” whenever it cannot simply be replaced by computer or machine; Philosophy is dethroned by science (and engineering) as the paradigm of human reason; There is a reduction of wisdom traditions to a culture of “scientifically-trained and certified experts”; Natural bonds, or those rooted in nature, are reinterpreted as far as possible from the ground up in terms of contracts (deliberately) entered into by (abstractly) “free” agents; Political authority is reduced to “the state,” which is either relied on in a disordered way (the “nanny state”), insofar as the bureaucratic structures replace the role of “natural” human institutions, or it is rejected as an artificial intrusion into one’s affairs (libertarianism); And finally tradition , rather than unifying a people, becomes a principle of diversity (“cultures and traditions”), and is thereby reduced to a superficial overlay—the seasoning one uses in cooking, the style of dress, taste in music, and so forth.”

There is always a part of us that may decide not to inquire where do we start?!, but to check out entirely! Obviously, this is always the cop-out. The temporal may be an image of the Real, but it's still God's image. The issue is always what is the relationship between the Real and its image. It's not like we can easily integrate them (in the Catholic integral sense or even the Ken Wilber integral sense). 

I like to think of the integralists like this sometimes: Take a clear glass of pure water (here is the Real). You can mix in a few drops of lemon. Fine (a proper image). A few drops of lime. Also fine (another proper image). And then there's a few drops of fecal matter. Not so fine (yucky image). Now I would never drink that water! For some, that's what integration can be. 

This may be a bit grim on a superficial level, so we always need clear, explicit discernment—and that sometimes means putting things in their proper order. I'll drink from the lemon/lime water, but use the poop to fertilize the lemon/lime tree. 

The bottom line is we need to begin with aligning ourselves to the Real beyond whatever cultural or political order we belong to. It starts with us individually before anything can happen. And nothing may happen collectively. We may not even make a dent to our immediate circles, never mind the culture at large, in any measurable way. Yet, there is an immeasurable change of heart in us which will always matter in God's eyes. 

Beyond this, it is still essential that we maintain the Christian virtue of hope, and not mistake this hope as belonging exclusively to our own individual salvation or liberation. God's creation will always matter and there will always be the deepest longing for the redemption of the whole world. It is important to keep this in mind, because otherwise the virtue of hope might seem to be in some ways selfish, with us not wanting to take part in history. 

The purpose of the earthly city is to provide the conditions which will allow human beings to develop themselves to the fullness of their gifts and in right relationship to the Real. And in this two things are necessary: that we live in fellowship with each other, and that we live in communion with God. However, I would not put this on equal footing: one is always primary; and that is our relationship to the Real is first!

Bruce Charlton recently wrote on his blog:

“There is an alternative way of being Christian - one which offers the possibility of a hopeful attitude to this moral world, and a sense of positive purpose for this mortal life; but it involves regarding tradition, orthodoxy, church, human-groups as being of secondary, not primary, importance. Indeed, I believe that the alternative is a deeper and more validly Christ-derived truth.”

I tend to agree.

Perennial Prescriptions

I don't really do New Year's resolutions anymore, since I now believe anything worth doing is worth doing always. Sure, there are minor practical considerations that often need tweaking, but best to get first things first right and all those other secondary matters will eventually line up in their proper order. 

In regards to those important primary matters, it's not like we can negotiate our way into them through some annual ritual. We have to want it ALWAYS—even if partially concealed with competing desires and commitments. 

And if you're not tending to those important things, eventually you will get signals you're going the wrong way. COVID has done that to many in my circles: not the virus itself, but the environment it created that forced many to look at themselves. So if I was to give advise for those looking to put what matters first, I would probably echo an excerpt I read from E.F. Schumacher's excellent book A Guide for the Perplexed.

I don't think these 'tasks' have to been done in a strict linear fashion as Schumacher details below, but could actually all be approached simultaneously while emphasizing some aspects over others depending on one's stage of life. I do agree with him that you have to at least start with the first and second to some extent. 

He says that,

“His first task is to learn from society and 'tradition' and to find his temporary happiness in receiving directions from outside.”

[Why re-create the wheel (or at least recognize you have been indoctrinated into one spoke of the wheel without being aware of the whole of it)? There is so much to learn from culture and tradition. And not a sclerotic tradition, but one that comes alive today. Human nature does not change much, and the real insights to Truth are eternal. The shoulders we stand on often have more originality and freshness than many of the contemporary thinkers of today. Learn from the past and present, with breadth, height, width, and depth.]

“His second task is to interiorise the knowledge he has gained, sift it, sort it out, keep the good and jettison the bad; this process may be called 'individuation', becoming self-directed.” 

[We are still individuals with particular inclinations. Not everything will resonate with everyone. The point is to integrate what does make you come alive and make it your own to embody; with your gifts; and to be lived with autonomy and mastery.]

“His third task is one that he cannot tackle until he has accomplished the first two, and for which he needs the very best help he can possibly find: it is 'dying' to oneself, to one's likes and dislikes, to all one's ego-centric preoccupations. To the extent that he succeeds in this, he ceases to be directed from outside, and he also ceases to be self-directed. He has gained freedom, or, one might say, he is then God-directed.”

[This is an endless task of praying, meditating, and contemplating that is really not a task. It is more an undoing. We undo our cravings around who we think we are to become as we really are. As t.k. says: “I” is a superstition masquerading as unquestionability. So better to always inquire what is Real beyond our ego-centered “I”.]

What I particularly like about Schumacher's prescription is it includes both the inner and outer path to God. I'm also reading W. Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God, where he states “It is one of the powerful perennial attractions of the Neoplatonic style of philosophy that the inner spiritual ascent of the soul to the One and the outer metaphysical ascent through the cosmos reveal themselves as two sides of the same coin. The spiritual and the metaphysical are not closed off from each other, but mirror each other in different orders.”

We are here to understand, and “to understand is ultimately to unify: it means first to discern the parts of anything clearly, but finally to unify them into a meaningful whole in itself and then with all else that we know” (Clarke).