#135. Commercialism and Materialism in a Patriarchal Culture

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #135 includes several reviews dealing with contemporary culture in terms of the loss of a sense of significance: two books by James B. Twichell, an essay by James B. Nelson, and an overview by Jim Hollis.

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The two books by James B. Twitchell are For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture (St. Martin's Press, 1997) and Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (Columbia U Press, 1999).

Few quick ideas: TV exists to sell things. We sell things by making people feel good. Those with money and need for identity are the 18-30’s, to which most TV is therefore directed. The content is whatever the viewers want to see.

MTV and sitcoms are now the source of behavioral norms, values and mores for American culture; and this is the glue that holds our society together.

Whatever you want to say can only be heard if it is commercially supported.

People have always been “materialistic” in their need/desire for

“things.” What people hunger for nowadays is their meaning.

The iatogenic syndrome: professional experts who are supposed to help in fact making problems worse.

Carnival is no longer followed by Lent.

Feminism replaces males in every area except the traditional father’s role of disciplining of children, requiring appropriate behavior to earn approval. It simply isn’t done, now.

Fascinating stuff! Two ideas that especially stick with me....

“Product placement” works OK in movies and is even expected, but it will never be effective in novels because readers are too old; they are past their “branding time.” “Readers” are defined here as "people who read," and said to be "a small subgroup within American culture!" When it comes to selling things, so “readers” don’t count at all!

      

“Branding time” is the second big idea: that time when people fix on which of the more or less totally similar brands of products they will buy. It happens by age 30-35 and therefore there is no use in addressing advertising to those over 30-35. Ads only are effective to those who both have money and haven’t yet been branded: age 15-30/35.

What’s being advertised is not the product but the product’s meaning. A good easy example of the selling of meaning: “Be like Mike.” I.e., Buy Michael Jordan-advertised sneaks and you will be significant as he is.

Advertising has replaced religion; it, not religion, sells meaning nowadays. That meaning may be superficial, but it is real for most consumers.

Once you have food, clothes and shelter, most other “needs” are really culturally-determined “wants.”

Twitchell has a fascinating description of being at a mall all day on the day after Thanksgiving, what groups appear at what times, etc. Also, a delightful description of himself buying a red Mazda Miata.

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Essay: “Male Sexuality and the Fragile Planet: A Theological Reflection” by James B. Nelson. Like the other things of Nelson’s I’ve read, it makes some very good points.

The essay is found in Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities, by Stephen B. Boyd, W. Merle Longwood, Mark W. Muesse, editors (John Knox Press, 1996). The book is strictly academic in style and substance; I see little of value to any of it. One essay, for example, actually recommends goddess worship for men.

The next to last essay, however, by James B. Nelson, has some good things. Some quick examples:

Christianity (in the New Testament, especially the letter of Paul) connects body and creation as redeemed together.

Having lost its political influence at the time of the Industrial Revolution, religion became focused on the home, as the concern of women and children.

This focus, a Victorian perspective, still persists in church circles today: privatization of sex, spiritualization of women and depersonalization of males.

Contemporary social violence, racism and environmental abuse are all, at core, sexual issues coming from these Victorian perspectives.

NB: This is the first time I’ve seen any author link ecological devastation with gender and sex ideas. This essay dates from early 90s, so Nelson was doing really good thinking even then! He says, “Our hope for the earth depends on recognition of these body/sexuality issues.”

Thomas Berry says repeatedly that our hope for the future lies in reinventing the human via a new vision, the New Story given to us by modern science (of the world’s evolution and of humanity’s integral place in it and, now, as directing its further development).

I do not in any way disagree with any of this. But Berry never says-- and its my one criticism of him-- that the New Story can not ever be accepted by males unless they have a viable alternative to surrendering the privileges of their patriarchal manhood.

Of course, I see “sacred manhood” as the healthy and life-giving alternative.

      

Nelson is the only author I know who talks about an improved perspective on manhood resulting specifically from a letting go of the old dualistic perceptions.

That old model includes some familiar views:

• that males are dominate over females just as spirit is over body and as God is over matter;

• that the feminine-- Mother Earth and Mother Nature-- is to be “seized, penetrated, conquered and subdued,” as Sir Francis Bacon said;

• that real men reject all ties with the feminine-- nature, earth and universe-- just as they must do with their own mothers;

• that the earth is never to be related to in any emotional or relational sense, but is only a object to be known about (i.e., never “known” in the biblical sense nor included in some kind of “mutuality”).

I note that it is telling that we still have no decent words for all this!

      

Nelson says, “Our need is a sexual theology.” We need to move beyond patriarchal dualism by taking seriously body and sex in light of the Paschal mystery.

Examples of his "sexual theology"

      

Re Incarnation: “God became flesh.” We should not trivialize the men’s movement (with its drums, sweat lodges, etc.) for its efforts to come to new understanding of the nature of maleness.

We should be aware of the power of privileged manhood which oppresses black, native and gay males.

We should talk honestly from experience, not from what we think people want to hear. Be aware that we males objectify even our own bodies. Be aware that relatedness (mutuality) has no place in (traditional, dualistic) Christian spirituality, which is in fact anti-body and anti-relatedness.

      

Re Crucifixion: It is a sexual sickness to think that pain and self-sacrifice are redemptive. What is redemptive is standing in resistance with those who are oppressed, and all the vulnerability that involves.

      

Re Resurrection: Males have great anxiety about death. To be mortal is to be the ultimate loser. Porn and work-aholism are death defying. “Resurrection” means at least that “matter matters to God.”

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The "overview" is Tracking the Gods, the Place of Myth in Modern Life, James Hollis (Inner City, 1995).

The universe somehow needs our free acceptance of ourselves. Myths help us to understand our nature and purpose. But they are more than that.

Myths are energy-containing, activating, empowering, identifying symbols.

For each of us, and for a society as a whole, myths tend to hold their energies for a while, then the energies move on to other symbols.

We don’t need to cling to them; rather, be willing to let go and let the Mystery manifest as it will.

Myths offer responses to questions of cosmic meaning, humanity’s place in nature, the individual’s place, and personal vocation. The last time all of Western culture held such values in common was around 1320 AD.

Now, we’ve totally lost our significant myths.

Hollis offers five authors that help us to see our present situation:

• Goethe (whose Faust wants everything, is depressed, and abides no external authority);

• Dostoyevsky (whose Underground Man is an self-centered anti-hero who manifests narcissism, self-destruction, perversion, and self-assertion);

• Conrad (who portrays colonialism);

• Kafka (who marks the utter end of Dante’s time);

• Camus (where the external heaven is totally gone but the internal hell still exits).

Hollis see two main myths. One comes from the Neolithic lunar time of the Great Mother, the Great Round of Coming and Going, of giving up to get, life and death, over and over and over. (Change but no progress.)

The other is from the Patriarchal period of solar civilization, expanding the boundaries of the possible: the hero is called, aided by nature, overcomes obstacles and brings back boons to the community.

The essence of it all: out of uroboric chaos consciousness appears, which must differentiate itself from its matrix and yet remain in communion with it.

Four obstacles to differentiation: wanting to be taken care of; using food, alcohol, tobacco and drugs to dull the pain of separation; letting a charmed leader or institution do your thinking for you; and giving yourself over to the group-think of commercials.

Whatever fascinates us and grabs our attention and emotions gives entrance to the unconscious and cosmos as it related directly to us. ("Karl Rahner: "Are we willing to be sensitive and responsive to the Mystery which is always and everywhere giving itself to us.”)

Humanity is an intrinsic aspect of the universe: we are the cosmos becoming conscious of itself. Each individual contributes uniquely to it.

The basic pattern of development is give to get; apparent death yielding to transfiguration. Thus, the main thing necessary is to trust the inner energy/force “that moves the sun and stars” to direct us rightly. Trust that we will not be annihilated is the spirituality that we must offer our children.

Re Relationships: We can relate to another only to the degree of self-awareness that we have attained. We project on to others what we haven’t yet dealt with in ourselves. To the extent that we are undeveloped, power replaces love in relationships. The best thing we can do for others is to be/become who/what we are: to undergo “individuation.”

The main thing the Greek gods asked (and the forest spirits before them): that we should not forget them, remember them, be aware of them. The are the Mystery, manifest as psychical realities, giving itself to us. They want/need our awareness and acceptance.

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A few personal thoughts. No symbols hold their power forever. We need to be willing to let go, to let the spirit “blow where it will.”

The world that Dante expressed was still available to me when I was born, and although I was born into the modern myth-less world, I also had that consensus world which I valued and still do as means for entry into that deeper world where it is rooted.

I.e., I was already, even then, into a “shamanic” perspective or vocation of helping to bring missing/needed values to the community.

And it was in terms of recovery: I never bought into the Great Round nor the religion of patriarchy. I opted for the Double Round, a pre-patriarchal masculine way, for the recovery of the paleolithic perspective.

Teilhard and the doctrine of the Trinity, especially as presented by Panikkar and later Karl Rahner, provided me with powerful myths of uroboros, separation and communion-- individuation.

Part of the shamanic call is to individuation precisely “on behalf of all and for all,” and this is why I see the sacred pipe rite and my lifewalk as one thing.

We individuate by being attentive to the Mystery’s self-manifestations.

Nothing here is really new, but it is presented well and holds together well. It is a good preparation for a serious meditative study of Thomas Berry’s The Great Work.

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#43. Morning Wisdom: Sophia as Guide

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This blog entry is the second of four about biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia. The main purpose of these four related posts is to look at western culture's religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, and to do so with the help of the four-fold perspectives on the human mind I've described or mentioned in many previous posts.

As unlikely as it seems, and as unfamiliar as the Bible's wisdom literature is to most of us, these biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia can help us to move beyond the lopsidedness of the static, dualistic and patriarchal worldview of recent centuries and help us move toward a better understanding of ourselves as creative participants in the evolution of the universe.

I've called this post "Morning Wisdom" because it's about that group of wisdom images which relate especially to the East on the Medicine Wheel. "East" includes morning, springtime and the Thinking function of our conscious minds.

I've also included "Sophia as Guide" in the name because this group of wisdom images especially expresses one of the most central aspects of the anthropos-theos relationship: that Divine Wisdom not only fashions us to be who-and-what we are but also guides and directs us in our efforts to become all that we have been fashioned to be.

The primal element connected with the east is air. As wind and breath (pneuma, spiritus, ruah, vayu, chi), it is in us as much as we are in it. The animal associated with the east on the Medicine Wheel is the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, an image of our mind's Thinking function which focuses on the dynamic flow of time. In Native American tradition, the Morning Star, the Rising Sun, is also connected with knowledge and growing self-awareness.

All of these images-- the freshness of the breeze on a springtime morning, the eagle flying high in the sky at dawn, the sharp piercing rays of the rising sun-- evoke new beginnings.

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Old Russian icons show Sophia as the Guardian Angel of the Universe, the "wisdom from on high who orders all things mightily," as the old Advent hymn says. We have a familiar phase, "the wisdom of the body," expressing the idea that, while we don't understand much that goes on in our anatomy and physiology, the innate wisdom of the body knows what to do; it heals cuts and digests food, for example, without any conscious effort on our part. In the same way, there is a wisdom of the universe: Divine Sophia guiding and directing all things "mightily."

It's easy to forget that "all things" includes you and me. Just as modern science helps us to see that we are the "universe become conscious of itself," so the Bible's wisdom literature helps us to see that as participants in the cosmic process, our personal growth and development is no less "ordered" by the same Divine Wisdom that guides the sun and moon and stars. Our individuation process-- our "ontogenetic development" in the jargon of biogenetic structuralism-- is guided in the same way.

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All of this is what these "morning" images of Sophia express. The view of God which western culture inherited from the Enlightenment period sees a distant and alien divinity who created the world but then abandoned it, to let it flounder on its own. It's such a culturally pervasive viewpoint that it makes it difficult for us to appreciate the very different perspectives offered by the wisdom images.

In contrast, post-Enlightenment evolutionary science helps us appreciate these 25-century-old wisdom perspectives, to appreciate that Sophia/Wisdom is not a clockwork creator and that we have not been brought into existence out of nothingness and darkness only to be hung out to dry.

We are not alone, we're not on our own, Creative Wisdom does not abandon us. These wisdom images picture the master artisan of the universe as active here and now, not only in our bodies but also in our minds, hearts and psyche.

Another reason why it's so hard for us to appreciate these images of divine Sophia is that for many centuries religious authorities have presented us with a picture of a creator who treats humanity as children and who does not expect us to be able to be in charge of ourselves. (It's really those patriarchal authorities who want to be in charge of us, of course.) So we especially need these "morning" images of a Creative Wisdom which not only respects human initiative but calls us to be nothing less than what we are: the "world become conscious of itself"; to be, in Karl Rahner's words, free and conscious "persons in the world."

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In the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) I shared many thoughts from the work on Raimon Panikkar about the mood of evening. With modern technology and instant communication-- not just electric lights but especially TV and now iPhones!-- we have lost the earlier sense of what happens within us as the daylight hours draw to a close and darkness comes on. But I don't need to do that with regard to the mood of morning.

Each of us knows by experience that morning means a new start to our lives, just as we know by experience that each springtime marks a new start for the life of the earth. Many non-western cultures still have their new year in spring, and even western culture once did, until Julius Caesar transferred it to the time just after the winter solstice. The New Year used to begin on March 25, which in those days was the date of the spring equinox, when after many months of winter cold and darkness the hours of daylight begin to be greater than the hours of darkness.

We don't need science to explain to us the mood of springtime or morning. Think of that special morning in early spring when we first hear birdsong again and when we first can smell the life oozing up out of the earth. For many of us perhaps the strongest image of springtime newness is sunrise on Easter morning, but all of us still experience every morning's dawn and sunrise as a new start to our lives.

In the morning, we "rise and shine," as people of earlier generations used to say. We get up and go to work. Not just to a nine-to-five job, but to the larger task of making something of ourselves and of making something of our world.

Even though western culture doesn't have the idea-- yet-- that each of us is "the universe become conscious of itself" and that we have, therefore, a participatory, creative task in the cosmic process, the mood of morning and spring is clear enough: we are called to take responsibility for our selves and our lives, our loved-ones, our jobs and our interests. In making a new and better world, we have a lot of work to do.

And what these morning images of Sophia tell us is that, just as we can trust the wisdom of the body, so we can trust the wisdom of the universe to guide us in our work of creative participation in the cosmic evolutionary process.

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It's this same experience of newness and creativity that Karl Rahner is talking about when he says that one of our primary "existential" experiences of being a person is that we experience ourselves as free. Freedom has to do with "our place in the vast scheme of things."

As I said in post #36 (on Aspects of the Immense Transition), "the experience of freedom means that, although we know ourselves to be limited in so many ways, we also experience ourselves as being able to make choices. Probably the best word we have to describe this existential aspect of our personal experience is self-determination."

In terms of neurological functioning, the main idea is what biogenetic structuralist jargon refers to as the cognitive extension of prehension: because of the structure and function of the human brain, our actions are not controlled totally by our instincts. We can choose, in ways our animal relatives can not. And it's in making these free choices that we "actualize"-- make real and actual-- our individual uniqueness which is our personal contribution to the evolution of the universe. We have a place, indeed, "in the vast scheme of things."

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In Jungian terms, it is the conscious mind's Thinking function that allows us to see the world as dynamic rather than static. Thinking is a judgment function, based primarily on the activity of the brain's Temporal lobe and concerned with distinctions, differentiation and diversity. It is concerned especially with the flow of time and, just like the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, it flies high and sees vast distances.

Sequence-- the flow of time from past to future-- is the key. The Thinking function's orientation to sequence and flow is what keeps us moving forward. Its energy is always directed toward newness, growth and development. And not just to the evolution of the cosmos and of life on Earth, but especially to our personal evolutionary development -- via what Jung calls "the individuation process" and what biogenetic structuralism calls our "ontogenetic development."

It's important to keep in mind that the main activity of the Thinking function isn't logical reasoning but questioning. As I mentioned in post #30 (on Ways of Being Religious), the Thinking function's orientation to the dynamic flow of time (and thus to cosmic and personal evolutionary development) has been wonderfully described by the artist-psychologist Steven Gallegos. He calls it "the psyche's relentless search for wholeness and the 'not yet'."

It's this "relentless searching" which explains why being religious via the Thinking function has to do with effort ("asceticism" in the classical sense), the discipline we need to become all that we can be. The most fundamental ascetic practice is simply being attentive: paying attention, being aware-- being "mindful," as the Buddhist tradition emphasizes.

And at the heart of the Thinking function's way of being religious is courage: the willingness to courageously follow that inner generative drive for enterprise and exploration which we experience as personal freedom.

That impetus-- that "inner generative drive"-- is a way of describing the work of Divine Wisdom who guides and directs us-- by our genes, our cultural background, our personality and the circumstances of our lives-- to become all that we can be.

And "to become all that we can be" is precisely what Sophia wants of us. Back in post #19 (on Diversity: Our Service to God) I mentioned the work of the 17th-century Catholic saint Louis de Montfort who wrote of Divine Wisdom long before the modern re-discovery of the wisdom perspectives. Montfort was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest when he wrote The Love of Eternal Wisdom and, as I said in that post, the resulting text "is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience."

Montfort describes Sophia as almost like a stalker; she is always pursuing us. "Divine Wisdom inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That," says this young visionary saint, "is what the Wisdom of God wants from us!"

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Montfort also says that Eternal Wisdom "gives us the courage to be creative." He says that Wisdom's "greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world."

As I mentioned in the second of my two posts on the Immense Transition (#36), an emphasis on creative transformation, especially on having the courage to be an explorer or pioneer, is not something that was stressed in the religious writings of the past. But as we move beyond the limitations of the Thinking function's imprisonment in the patriarchal perspectives of former centuries, we are coming to recognize, as Matthew Fox notes in his book on Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, that it's precisely our creativity, via our free choices, that defines us.

"Human creativity," says Fox, "is not frosting on the cake" but "integral to our sustainability." Creative newness is our "survival mechanism... it is the essence of who we are."

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There's one more image of Sophia that goes along with "teacher," "guide" and "counselor." It, too, is unfamiliar, but it's especially important. It's the one that shows up when we are most in need of becoming more aware of ourselves. I mentioned it in one of my very earliest posts (#3, High School 50th Anniversary Report) and also more recently in post #36 (on the second of two posts on Aspects of the Immense Transition): the image of the trickster.

Native American peoples and all the earlier pre-industrial cultures which daily honor the first rays of the sun know about the trickster image. Even Louis de Montfort saw it in 17th-century Catholic France. Montfort says that "although Eternal Wisdom is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively." And "This means," he says, "that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties."

This divine guidance that we "often don't recognize" is described in many religious traditions with animal names such as Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit or Anansi the Spider. Although they are often presented in a negative way, these trickster figures don't put obstacles in our path just for the fun of it. They are ways that help us to become more aware of ourselves, to be more conscious of what's needed in our efforts to become all that we can be. And they always promote cooperation rather than competition as the way to our creative transformation.

Trickster images especially help us in one additional way: in recognizing our need to face evil, death and tragedy as aspects of the cosmic flow. In the words of Claude Tresmontant, the author of the book on Hebrew Thought who I quoted back in post #39, transformation "often comes to us via boredom or suffering."

As director of the way the world works and guide to our personal growth and development, Sophia tests us; in her role as trickster-guide in our path to creative newness she helps us to accept our woundedness and vulnerability and to make the right choices in our efforts to become all that we can be. The Book of Ecclesiasticus says explicitly that "She will lead us over rough, narrow and winding ways."

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Here are some thoughts from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, that I mentioned in the previous post which are especially interesting and relevant with regard to this morning/guide aspect of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig begins by noting that "because she is at the heart of all things coming into being, Sophia is Wisdom itself." It's not, he says, "an obvious connection for the twentieth century mind."

In chapter 4 of the book of Proverbs the author talks about Sophia this way: "Listen my children, to a father's instruction; pay attention, and learn what clear perception is. Acquire Sophia, acquire perception; never forget her. Do not desert her, she will keep you safe, love her, she will watch over you."

Wisdom will not only watch over us; Sophia is identical with "perception" itself, with being a conscious person. Taussig spells it out: "The relationship a person has to Sophia is virtually the same as their own relationship to the process of understanding."

Sophia is also imaged as the process of learning in chapter 6 of Wisdom: "Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them." Sophia means learning!

At the heart of the creative process, Sophia "pervades and permeates all things" (Wisdom 7). She is at the heart of all that one studies.

Wisdom 6 proclaims: "She is readily seen by those who love here and found by those who look for her. In every thought of theirs, she comes to meet them." As participants in the cosmic process, our conscious growth and development results, in Taussig's words, "in a personal encounter with the One at the heart of the creative process."

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Taussig also notes that most of the texts about Sophia have to do with her relationship to humanity. The first chapter of Proverbs, for example, says of her: "Sophia calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; she calls out at the street corners, she delivers her message at the city gates."

Wisdom wants to be our teacher! Proverbs 8 says: "Does Sophia not call meanwhile? On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand; beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates she cries aloud, 'O people I am calling you; my cry goes out to the children of humanity'."

"Listen, I have serious things to tell you," she adds. "From my lips come honest words. My mouth proclaims the truth. All the words I say are right, nothing twisted in them, nothing false, all straightforward to the one who understands, honest to those who know what knowledge means."

Taussig notes that Sophia gives the impression of being impatient with Earth's children: "Her main complaint is that they will not listen to her."

Taussig also points out that the most interesting thing here is that Sophia never teaches anything specific. What she teaches is herself. Sophia is something and someone to obtain and possess. And the reward is fullness of life. In Proverbs 8 she says, "With me are riches and honor, lasting wealth and justice." And the first chapter of Ecclesiasticus says: "She fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce. The crown of Sophia makes peace and health flourish... [for] those who hold her close."

Sophia and her rewards are identical. Proverbs 4 says, "Acquire Sophia, acquire perception. Hold her close, and she will make you great; embrace her, and she will be your pride." And Wisdom 8 says, "If in this life wealth be a desirable possession, what is more wealthy than Sophia whose work is everywhere?"

Taussig says that as the learning process itself, Sophia "calls us to a life of seeking understanding of the world in which we live. Since she is the One who participates in bringing everything into being, she is the natural teacher and the natural content." He spells it out explicitly: "The learning process is a way that humans share in the creative process." Our personal growth and development, and our growth in awareness of the world, are Divine Wisdom.

In the previous post, I remarked, "Can science and religion converge more explicitly?" Here I would put it in more personal terms: Can our personal growth and development be understood any more explicitly as being convergent with the activity of Divine Sophia "whose work is everywhere"?

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Chapters 10 and 11 of Wisdom offer not just an dynamic view of our personal transformation but also of human history itself as it is guided by Sophia. There, as Taussig says, "the writer retells the sacred history of the Hebrew people from Sophia's point of view." In the stories of "Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Lot, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses," Sophia is seen as the designer and guide/director of human history and cultural development.

Wisdom 11 even describes the Exodus event as the work of Sophia: "She herself was their shelter by day and their starlight through the night. She brought them across the Red Sea, led them through that immensity of water, while she swallowed their enemies in the waves, then spat them out from the depths of the abyss."

Taussig notes that the familiar images of the pillar of cloud and fire (which guided the slaves through the desert in their escape from Egypt) are described here as shelter and starlight. And Sophia not only leads the Hebrews through the sea, she is also described as a kind of sea monster swallowing the Egyptians and spitting them out.

Fascinating stuff!

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My main point in the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) is that Sophia fashions us to be who-and-what we are; as creative artist, architect, artificer and designer of our identity, the Mystery gives itself to us. My main point in this post on Morning Wisdom is that as counselor, teacher and trickster-guide, Divine Wisdom calls to each of us personally, asking for our free and full cooperation in the work of the creation of the world and of ourselves.

The question once again is, in Karl Rahner's words, "Are we willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com

#42. Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect

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This post is the first of four about the biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia. It is a continuation of the efforts I began with post #37 (What's Next) to look at western culture's religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution.

While western science uses the mind's thought processes and religion uses our intuition and imagery functions, both (western) science and (western) religion have the same roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We need both to move beyond the lopsidedness of the static, dualistic and patriarchal worldview of recent centuries; and we need both to move toward a better understanding of ourselves as participants in the on-going evolutionary process of the universe. Western religion's wisdom literature especially can help us to do this.

The biblical images of Sophia fall into four main groupings; they constitute a kind of wisdom mandala, with the four sections or quadrants of the mandala corresponding to the quaternary aspects of our four-fold mind which I've spelled out in several earlier posts.

I've called this post (#42) "Evening Wisdom" because it's about that group of images which relate especially to the West on the Medicine Wheel; "west" includes evening, autumn and the Intuition function of our four-fold minds, as well as our openness to the world and to creative ability.

I've added "Sophia as Architect" to the name because this group of Wisdom images especially expresses one of the central aspects of the anthropos-theos relationship: that the mystery of our personal uniqueness is shaped (crafted, forged, built, designed) by Divine Wisdom. I'm aware that "architect" sounds a bit mechanical as a description of Sophia; a better term might be "artificer," the term used by Saint Ignatius of Antioch, a first-century disciple of John the Evangelist. (That fact that we don't have exactly the right word is an indication of our static culture's lack of respect for the dynamic creative process.)

All of these "evening" images of Sophia are expressed with words which indicate the work of a creative artist. The point of them all is that Sophia is not just the creator, in the sense of being the source of our existence (of the fact that we are), but also that aspect of God which accounts for our nature or essence (for what we are). In the wisdom literature, the work of Divine Wisdom-- you and me and everything in the world-- is imaged as the work of a master artist.

And it's one of my main thoughts in these blog efforts that modern science-- especially the fields of evolutionary biology, neurophysiology and cultural anthropology -- can help us to appreciate the artistic masterpiece which the world is. And which, as the "world become conscious of itself," we ourselves are.

The biblical images of Sophia as a craftsperson and our modern scientific understanding of what it is that has been crafted go together.

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It may seem strange to start with evening, but on the Judeo-Christian calendar each day begins at sunset. You may remember the words from the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis: "And there was evening, and there was morning-- the first day." Probably the most familiar examples of the day beginning in the evening are Christmas Eve and the first night of Passover.

This same idea is found on the old agricultural calendars with regard to the cycle of the year: the agricultural new year is considered to begin with the end of the autumn harvest time. The Jewish New Year, for example, begins in autumn; Rosh Hoshanna is considered the world's birthday. In the Celtic world, winter and the new year begin together on that unique evening we still celebrate today as All Hallows Eve.

Whether it's a daily or an annual event, we're talking here about an in-between time; what anthropologists refer to as a limen (doorway or threshold): an end which is a beginning.

And with that awareness we are already well out of the rationalistic perspectives we've inherited from the Enlightenment period and 19th-century science. Our great need for a more-than-rational worldview is evidenced by the fact that Halloween has become an holiday for adults. In the United States more money is spent on the celebration of Halloween than at any other time except Christmas.

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The mood of the human mind and heart at the daily and annual "end which is the beginning" is described especially well by one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Raimon Panikkar; it's found in his section on Twilight in Part VII of his anthology of the early literature of India, Mantramanjari: The Vedic Experience.

Panikkar describes early evening as a "prayer time when the experience of our limitation is fresh and yet the desire for perfection and for the infinite has not yet subsided." His English text was written before gender-sensitive language became common, so in what follows it helps to substitute "person" for "Man" and "us" for "him."

Panikkar says that at twilight "Man represents the whole universe; the Gods are with him and the material world is gathered around him." "Gods" here means the good energies of the Earth and life-giving energies of the cosmos that are described in various cultures as animal powers, ancestral spirits, angels, archetypal energies; it's also the "chi" of tai chi.

Native American traditions understand the spirit-powers to be "out there waiting to help us." Jung says we should talk to them. Shamanic personalities have the ability to "call in" the spirit-powers and to make them available to others. Intuition is our human capacity to be in touch with these good energies of the earth, and in every culture except our own sacred rituals are understood to be the normal way people come in contact with them. All this is what Panikkar means when he says that at evening time "the Gods are with us."

He spells it out a bit more. At evening, he says, "Man is concentrating in himself the whole stuff of the world and condensing in himself all the desires and dynamisms of the entire universe. It is the time of stretching up to the very ends of the world, not by a mere effort of imagination but by the power of the Spirit permeating everywhere, even to the four corners of reality."

One more quote: "Were it not for these moments Man would not be Man, but only a moving machine, doing many things but not becoming anything, not condensing in himself the whole of reality, not discovering his unique place and thus the uniqueness of his own mysterious being."

Scotch, Welsh and Irish (Celtic) people still refer to Halloween as the year's "thin time," when the spirits of our ancestors are especially close to us and the divide between our everyday awareness and the depths of our connectedness with them and whole universe is especially "thin."

Science hasn't yet figured out just why this mood is so intense in autumn, but we know that it is. At evening each day and in the autumn of the year we more easily experience ourselves as precisely what the modern sciences of evolutionary biology and neurophysiology say we are: the universe become conscious of itself. It is an experience rooted in millions of years of our past primate and mammalian history.

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It's this same experience that Karl Rahner is talking about when he says that one of our primary "existential" experiences of being a person is that we experience ourselves as open to all things.

Rahner calls it "transcendence." One of our deepest personal experiences is that there's more to us than the awareness we have when we are carrying out the normal everyday aspects of living. As "a person in the world," to use Rahner's words, we experience ourselves at a deep level as being utterly open to everything that exists.

As I noted in post #33 (Talking about God), this experience is what Thomas Aquinas meant when he said that a person is "that which can become all things." We are potentially open to everything. We don't have any limits. We participate in infinity.

And this is just what Panikkar is saying. At the liminal time of evening twilight we experience ourselves as "representing the whole universe." The spirits are with us and the material world is gathered around us. We concentrate in ourselves "the whole stuff of the world" and condense in ourselves "all the desires and dynamisms of the entire universe." We "stretch up to the very ends of the world... even to the four corners of reality." And, as Panikkar points out, it is this which makes us human. It is by this experience that we discover our "unique place and thus the uniqueness of our own mysterious being."

As I said in post #34 (Talking About Us), "nothing exists outside the realm of our possible experience. We really are open-ended. We are in some way one with all things. We experience ourselves as infinite, unlimited, unbounded, present to all of reality, participants in infinity. We "stretch out" to the four corners of reality. We do not exist apart from the infinite unbounded reality underlying everything."

Science and Sophia, Rahner and Panikkar, our hearts at autumn and evening-- all tell us the same thing.

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Jung refers to our ability to be open to everything as the mind's intuitive function. He calls Intuition "a direct pipeline to the unconscious." Intuition looks to the future and opens us to healing, wholeness, possibilities, the future, creativity, our co-creative activity as "persons in the world." Intuition is our pipeline to all that has to do with our identity and purpose, the meaning of our lives, the significance of the existence of the cosmos. So it makes sense that autumn and evening are times when our sense of awe, wonder, reverence and mystery are especially strong.

As I described it in post #29 (Four-fold Mind), Intuition is one of the two perception functions of consciousness; it is the one by which we see the big picture and perceive the whole of things, the forest rather than the trees. On the Medicine Wheel this wholistic perception ability is imaged as the Black Bear, the medicine animal which with its sharp claws digs up healing roots and herbs from the earth.

One more link: the primal element associated with the West is water; west is the direction from which summer storms come. In North American they are sent by the Thunder Beings, in Africa by the Lightning Beings. Their heavy rains bring flowing waters, washing and healing.

Whether it's water from the skies or herbs from the earth, these images indicate a central focus of the west, healing, the healing of our vision of the world and of our place in it. How much our lopsided culture needs this kind of healing!

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Jung also calls Intuition the "religious function." Since western culture's rationalistic emphasis hardly allows it to even acknowledge the reality of Intuition, this also means that we have little understanding of the way of being religious associated with west and Intuition, Myth and Ritual. It is the most difficult way of being religious for contemporary secular people to understand.

As I noted in the post on Ways of Being Religious (#33), sacred story and symbol--"archetypal symbols, liturgical rites, art, poetry, philosophy and myth," as Merton says-- are the very means of the healing and wholeness which empower our participation in the cosmic process.

Ritual is the most fundamentally human way of being religious. It was known through most of human history as the very essence of what today we would call "religion. Ritual is so basic to human life that in still-surviving pre-patriarchal cultures they don't even have a separate name for it. But they know it by experience to be the very means by which we are empowered to participate in the life of the universe.

The very idea that life has meaning is still mocked by rationalists and cynics. One of our greatest needs is for some people with wisdom-- with the shamanic ability-- to share that inner experience of life's meaning with the rest of us. Our religious institutions have dropped the ball; to the extent that they have ignored Divine Wisdom they have become failed traditions. It's precisely this Black Bear function of ourselves that western culture most lacks.

Our amazingly expensive and energetic celebration of Halloween points out how much we need to recover this Intuition function of our conscious minds and hearts. How much we need to understand ourselves better! And this is what Sophia is all about.

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In Chapter 2 of Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration (which I recommended in the previous post), Taussig notes that for many "It is tempting to greet this discussion of Sophia as she is portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures with irony, or even scorn. Our first inclination is to protest. Surely, we say, Wisdom is a minor figure in the scriptures. How can such a minor figure have any real importance in this exploration?"

But, Taussig says, "A second glance brings us up short. There is more material on Sophia in the Hebrew scriptures than there is about almost any other figure. In all of these books only four persons have more written about them than Sophia. Only God (under various titles), Job, Moses, and David are treated in more depth... There are more pages in the Hebrew scriptures about Sophia than about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, Isaiah, Sarah, Miriam, Adam, or Noah."

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Here are some thoughts from Taussig's book about the wisdom literature which are especially interesting and relevant with regard to this evening, autumn and liminal aspect of Sophia.

The Book of Wisdom (chapter 7) describes Sophia as the creator: "She is a breath of the power of God... Although alone, she can do all. Herself unchanging, she makes all things new."

In the previous post I quote from Proverbs 8 where Sophia speaks of herself as present at the beginning, cooperating in the creation of the world and humanity: "When God established the foundations of the earth, I was by God's side, a master craftswoman."

Her presence at the beginning is also described in Ecclesiasticus 24: "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and I covered the earth like mist. I had my tent in the heights, and my throne in a pillar of cloud. Alone I encircled the vault of the sky, and I walked on the bottom of the seas."

Sophia is a part of the ongoing creative process; she is the source of all good things. The author of the Book of Wisdom says (again, in chapter 7): "Her radiance never sleeps. In her coming all good things came to me, and at her hands riches not to be numbered. All these I delighted in, since Sophia brings them, but as yet I did not know she was their mother."

And in the next chapter that same author describes how the ongoing creative process happens through her: "She deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things for good... Her closeness to God lends luster to her noble birth, since the Lord of all has loved her. Yes, she is an initiate in the mysteries of God's knowledge. She makes choice of the works God is to do."

The Book of Ecclesiasticus (chapter 1) says: "She was created with the faithful in their mother's womb."

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Taussig notes that the creative process as described here doesn't make a clear distinction between the creator and the created. This is similar to the text of Saint John's gospel which says not only that "The logos was with God and was God," but that it is through the logos that "all things came to be."

Taussig notes too that the Hebrew tradition which described Sophia at the heart of the creative process "was aware of the ongoing nature of creation." That's another way to express what I've quoted Claude Tresmontant as saying in several recent posts: "It is the nature of whatever exists to be continually evolving." As I mentioned in those posts (#39 & #41), Tresmontant says that in the static worldview of that time, this breakthrough on the part of Hebrew thought was "as significant as the discovery of fire."

The wisdom literature keeps pointing out Sophia's central role in the creative process. And it's from this dynamic worldview that we can better understand our own co-creative participation in the world's continuing evolution.

The writer of the Book of Proverbs says (chapter 4): "What I am commending to you is sound doctrine, do not discard my teaching. Acquire Sophia, acquire perception; never forget her, never deviate from my words. Do not desert her, she will keep you safe, love her, she will watch over you."

Taussig points out that in this text Sophia is described as being one with perception. "Wisdom means learning," he says; and, as he notes, "an important question is just how human learning is connected with that Wisdom which is at the heart of the creative process."

The Book of Wisdom (chapter 6) pictures Sophia as the very process itself of knowing and understanding. We gain wisdom in our efforts to understand anything: "Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them."

Sophia, then, is wisdom as both the content and the process of learning, so that our relationship with Sophia is the same as our relationship with the process of understanding. To be a conscious person-- to be "the universe become conscious of itself"-- is to be one with Divine Wisdom.

As the One who is at the heart of the process of things coming into being, Sophia "pervades and permeates all things" (Wisdom 7). Taussig points out that, according to these texts, the way to encounter her is "not through any kind of piety or communal resolve." "We do not encounter her by praying or by deciding," he says. "We meet Sophia by disciplined study."

And of course our name nowadays for "the disciplined study of all things" is "science."

Chapter 6 of the Book of Wisdom proclaims that at the heart of all that science studies is Divine Wisdom: "By those who love her she is readily seen, and found by those who look for her... in every thought of theirs, she comes to meet them."

Isn't that a delight! In every thought, in every scientific concept-- in astronomy, biology, quantum physics, anthropology, psychology-- even biogenetic structuralism!-- Sophia comes to meet us.

As Taussig says: To study what is-- to study all that comes into being-- results in a personal encounter with the wisdom of God at the heart of the creative process. And it is also a direct encounter with the mystery of ourselves. Karl Rahner helps us to understand ourselves in terms of our deepest existential experience; science helps us to understand ourselves in terms of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution.

In the view of the Bible's wisdom literature, it's not prayers or devotions but our study of scientific concepts that helps us to understand how we have been "fashioned" (shaped, built, forged, designed, crafted) by Wisdom/Sophia.

Can science and religion converge more explicitly?

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One more point. It's about the New Axial Period or Great Turning humanity is currently experiencing that I described in posts #35 & 36. A significant aspect of this Immense Transition which characterizes our contemporary moment in the history of western thought is the "turn to the subject." It includes not only an awareness of the importance of personal consciousness to a degree which our ancestors lacked but also a focus on our openness to and our relatedness with all else that exists.

The Immense Transition is indeed immense! And to very a great extent, it's the sciences-- not the religious institutions-- that lead the way. It's science that has allowed us to be open to the world and to love the world, and it's our love of the world that allows us to take our place in the cosmic process.

I mentioned in post #35 the quote from Rudolf Ritsema in Michael Conforti's book about the love of the world. Ritsema describes love of the world as "an overflowing fullness of heart which cannot but be shared with whomever comes in contact with it." He also says that it includes a sense of one-ness "with everything and with the origins of creativity."

A major aspect of the Immense Transition is that we are coming to realize that creativity is the realm not only of artists, musicians and poets now, but of all human beings. Being creative is how we participate in the cultural development of humanity on Earth. And it's this recognition-- by putting us in communion with "the origins of creativity"-- that our openness to and love of the world empowers us to take our place as co-creative participants in the evolutionary process. It makes clear that what happens on our planet-- in terms of peace, justice, equality and ecology-- is up to us.

At their best, this is what both science and religion are all about. Together, they help us to understand that, in the language of the Bible's wisdom literature, this is the way the Wisdom of God has "fashioned" us.

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In practical terms, probably the most significant aspect of the Immense Transition for western people is, as I mentioned in post #35, "the opening which the experience of self-transcendence affords us to the unitive worldview of the Asian religious traditions." They too, like the Bible's wisdom literature, see humanity and the world as one with its creative source. And fundamental to that Asian view is meditation practices such as Zen sitting, yoga and tai chi.

The word "meditation" comes from the term "middle." It simply means "centering" or "focusing," "paying attention." While we don't have a traditional meditation practice to go with the biblical understanding of divine wisdom, the Eastern "centering" practices serve well. Which one works best for each of us seems to depend on our personality and cultural background. For me, tai chi works especially well; I shared some thoughts about it in one of my earliest posts (#6).

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The point of all this is that Sophia fashions us to be who-and-what we are. As Creative Artist, Architect, Artificer, Designer of our identity, the Mystery gives itself to us.

The question is, as Karl Rahner says, "Are we willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com