Friday, June 30, 2017

My Apologies Mr. Holmes

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

It's interesting that I named this blog as such as I did. I took it from a terrific William James's biography I read several years ago. In it, it mentioned how Mr. James and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. would gather on the weekends to deliberate about their latest philosophical musings. Mr. Holmes would call their discussions twisting the tail of the cosmos (or twistlig the tail as they would say in old speak).

I fell in love with the phrase. It sort of encompassed what I wanted this blog to be about. Exploring truth (and beauty) and looking at it from a vast vantage point. 

But Mr. Holmes would not be a fan.

Mr. Holmes, one of our country's finest lawyers, Supreme Court justices and statesman, was also a polymath: well read in philosophy, economics, sociology, and literature. Having such breadth of knowledge allowed him to argue positions from many sides, without the need or desire to land anywhere.

In an article in the New York Times (from 1964), Alpheus Mason reviews some of Holmes's correspondence. Mason says, “Holmes's skepticism, ex­pressed in words that sometimes shock, belies deeply religious feeling. Awed by man's pro­found ignorance, he was hum­bled before the great mystery posed by the unknown and un­knowable. The assumption of absolute truth revealed arro­gance—the one sin he could never forgive. He hated the man who knows that he knows.

And yet, there were some key principles Mr. Holmes knew that he knew.

In regards to natural rights, Mr. Holmes said, “I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.” And that “truth is simply the majority vote of the nation that could lick all the others.” Such statements reflects a man hell bent on denying any absolutes to the point of radical relativism.

So much for intellectual (or ontological) humility.

Truth is a tricky thing. We want to be open, but not so open that are minds fall apart. And we don't want to dismiss the paths of wisdom open to us, nor the source of that wisdom. In the process, we can make explicit our principles of Reality, because they are there whether we are aware of them or not.

Mr. Holmes was open to inquiry, but somewhere within the bounds of scientism and populism. As many in our era, it is part of our (post)modern disease.

He would consider this blog to be full of ontological arrogance (or at least arrogance he would not agree with), since my inquiry always hangs off God. As such, we never exclude anything in that inquiry, but put them in their proper order.

For that sir, I am sorry. But I do thank you for the phrase anyhow.


*          *          *

Postscript: I was recently contemplating Holmes's quote, “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.” I would guess that even he was groping for some deeper faith beyond materialism to settle into.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Pride Addicts

Robert Barron mentioned in a recent podcast how the root etymology of the word 'addiction' in Latin is 'to lose one's voice'. We are all addicts in some way. The question is whether or not our vice is inherently evil. Some vices are only dangerous in excess, but can be fine in moderation. But when it comes to vices that deny goodness (and our voice) all together, then there should be no compromise. 

The good news is if you invert these vices, you have opposing virtues that can render these demonic impulses harmless to the soul. 

But let's hone in on pride, because it seems to be the one vice that even takes down the most spiritually committed aspirant. It also seems to be the most challenging to see. It's sometimes difficult to discern if I'm searching for God, or if I'm an ego searching for God. On most days, I probably will admit it falls somewhere in the middle.

The real clincher for me is how Kreeft points out that the introvert can often be more prideful than the extrovert. The extrovert may be more vain, because he/she is concerned with their standing with others and is therefore less focused on the self. But an introvert may be less inclined toward their social status in the world, and have alienated themselves from others. Sadly, “the truly proud person couldn't care less what others think of him.” 

As an introvert, it does seem hopeless sometimes. And yet, there is hope.

Humility is the only cure for pride, and “The only way to become humble is to admit you are proud. (Kreeft)”

Kreeft elaborates: “C. S. Lewis encapsulates Augustine's essential point in The Great Divorce: "There are only two kinds of people, in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'thy will be done.' " This is what theologian Karl Rahner calls everyone's "fundamental option", being for or against God, however imperfectly known. God is a gentleman and respects our fundamental choice-eternally. Pride is the greatest sin because it is the living heart of all sins. Every sin says to God, "my will be done".”

So it's a 12-step program compressed into three: admit your pride and that you're helpless in dealing with it on your own, surrender yourself to a higher power, and then realize your life is not about you. 

Sounds like a plan that was never my plan.

The Buddhist and the Stoic and the "peace of mind addict" teach detachment for the sake of tranquility or nirvana, but the Christian wants to be unclothed with the world and the goods of the body and the body itself only to be reclothed with Heaven and the resurrection body. — Peter Kreeft

Friday, June 16, 2017

The Experiencer Experiencing Experience!

Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience. — David Bentley Hart

Some books fade over time, but others seem to grow in their significance. It's not that I can remember the details, it's more like this pull to keep going back to them and appreciating the way they convey Truth to me with a deeper richness. I'm sure there's reciprocal relationship going on here; between myself, the author, and the space in between.

I've been watching some videos on David Bentley Hart, and that's what made me revisit his Experience of God. (I also plan to read another book by him very soon.) When I see him on video, I can pick up on the cantankerousness and cynicism at times, but along with the lucid and exalting articulation. So he may not have the transmission of a saint, but I'm okay with that. Moreover, his writing style is so beautifully impactful, that I am willing to give him a pass on his humanity.

Let's look at some highlights. On the idea of alternative facts (before the phrase became fashionable), he makes this interesting quip:

“In the end, pure induction is a fantasy. The human mind could never arrive at an understanding of reality simply by sorting through its collections of bare sense impressions of particulars, trying to arrange them into intelligible and reiterative patterns. It must begin the work of interpretation at even the most elementary of levels, by attempting to impose some kind of purposive meaning upon each datum.”

We can't live on facts alone! Especially when we all have those narratives living our lives. And on those who believe the only things that can be known to be True must be verified: 

“Most of the things we know to be true, often quite indubitably, do not fall within the realm of what can be tested by empirical methods; they are by their nature episodic, experiential, local, personal, intuitive, or purely logical.”

If you really think about it, the things we value the most can't be quantified. And for those that want to believe life is one big random contingency: 

“As a brilliant physicist friend of mine often and somewhat tiresomely likes to insist, “chaos” could not produce laws unless it were already governed by laws.”

Doh! Who created the order in the chaos? And don't tell me it's turtles all the way down! And how about the process/evolutionary types who believe God evolves along with us:

“God cannot change over time, moreover, as he would then be dependent upon the relation between some unrealized potentiality within himself and some fuller actuality somehow “beyond” himself into which he may yet evolve; again, he would then be a conditional being... it means only that his knowledge or bliss or love does not involve any metaphysical change in him, because it is not based on a privation; it is not a reactive but a wholly creative power, not limited by that difference between active and passive states to which finite beings are subject. God’s knowledge of something created is not something separate from his eternal act of creating that thing; so he is not modified by that knowledge in the way that we are necessarily modified when we encounter things outside ourselves.”

I couldn't say it better myself. And on the concept of progress itself:

“But there really is no such thing as general human progress; there is no uniform history of enlightenment, no great comprehensive epic of human emergence from intellectual darkness into the light of reason. There are, rather, only local advances and local retreats, shifts of cultural emphasis and alterations of shared values, gains in one area of human endeavor counterpoised by losses in another.”

I sort of believe this be true at times, and other times not so much. I do appreciate some exterior advancements, but at times I feel we are still the same, old fallible human. And on those who think AI will become conscious: 

“We have imposed the metaphor of an artificial mind on computers and then reimported the image of a thinking machine and imposed it upon our minds.”

And...

“All computation is ontologically dependent on consciousness, simply said, and so computation cannot provide the foundation upon which consciousness rests. One might just as well attempt to explain the existence of the sun as the result of the warmth and brightness of summer days.”

Ha! Also...

“When Kasparov lost his game in 1997, he was defeated not by a machine but by a large alliance of human opponents, himself among them.”

And when he gets to the topic of consciousness...

“Consciousness does not merely passively reflect the reality of the world; it is necessarily a dynamic movement of reason and will toward reality.”

And...

“Individual psychology is complicated, but subjective consciousness is simple.... [It] perfectly possesses the end it desires.”

Beautifully said. And then on God: 

“Whatever image of God one abjures, it can never be more than an idol: a god, but not God... God is the source and ground of being and the wellspring of all consciousness, but also therefore the final cause of all creation, the end toward which all beings are moved, the power of infinite being that summons all things into existence from nothingness and into union with itself; and God manifests himself as such in the ecstasies of rational nature toward the absolute.”

Also... 

“God is known in all experience because it is the knowledge of God that makes all other experience possible.”

I believe that earns a mike drop. Boom!

Monday, June 12, 2017

(Don't Always) Mind the Gap

The gap between the Divine and man / Father and son / the Supernatural and the natural can not be crossed easily. Only simply. We tend to over intellectualize it, search for its ontological underpinnings, and construct a moral order that attempts to close it. While these are fruitful efforts to cultivate as above, so below, it will always be limited by the mind that contains it.

The bottom line is we want to know how to live, and we hope bridging the chasm is the way to cure our spiritual disease.

Let's take a look at some of the major diagnoses that have been made over eons. It seems like if I got a problem in-here, the solution is going to be out-there (not ideal) or go-deeper-in-here (better). Kreeft summarizes how many of the sages and saints have gone about unpacking their version of problem-to-solution approach.

And if we were going to nitpick here, I would say Christ and Buddha got closest to cutting the problem at its root. And why would that be? It would seem to me that the chasm has caused a split in our soul, and the only only thing that could heal it is a transcendent bridge. 

This bridge goes by many names, but it can't be conceptualized or willfully enacted. It can only be invited and experienced. Richard Rohr recently gave it many invocations during a homily to celebrate the recent Pentacost. Here is a partial summary...

pure gift of God
indwelling presence
promise of the Father
Eternal praise
inner defense attorney
inner anointing
reminder of the mystery
homing device guiding you home
implanted peace maker
overcomer of the gap
magnetic center
God compass
inner breath
Divine DNA
given glory
hidden love of God
implanted hope
seething desire
fire of life and love
sacred pacemaker
the nonviolence of God
seal of the incarnation
first fruits of everything
Father and Mother of orphans
truth speeker
God's secret plan
great bridge builder
warmer of hearts
space of love between everything
flowing water
wind of change
descending dove
uncreated grace
cloud of unknowing
cloud of knowing
deepest level of our longing
attentive heart
sacred wounding
holy healing
softener of our spirit
great compassion
generosity of God
universal sadness
universal joy
God's tears of joy
welcoming within
internal covenant
covenant written in our hearts
dynamic flow of life and love through the body
the great connector
Holy Spirit

And while the Holy Spirit may not always tell us how to live, it can reveal where we should live from.