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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 #143
is my 2003 notes on the dialogue between Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake in
their book 1997 book Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the
soul in spirituality and science (Image Books, Doubleday).
A
write-up of the book notes that Sheldrake "has changed the face of modern
science with his revolutionary theory of morphic resonance," and
"Fox's work in creation spirituality has had a significant impact on
people's sense of spirit." The book is dedicated to Bede Griffith, OSB.
I found
the first two chapters especially stimulating; this post contains notes and
thoughts about those two chapters.
===
Chapter
One: Living Nature and Creation Spirituality
1. The
mechanistic worldview is a projection of human fascination with machines onto
the universe. It is an extremely anthropocentric model, although that’s not at
all obvious at first.
2. The
intelligent design ideas of fundamentalists fit in with an external,
machine-making God.
3. The
mechanistic worldview is still (1996) science’s basic ideology. (Slow to
change! Rupert says the new views should kick in around 2030. “Maybe too
late.”) Physics has changed more than academic biology and medicine, which is
still under the sway of the old mechanistic views. Boringly SLOW!!!
4.
Morphic fields are invisible organizing principles. It means much like what the
old idea of ‘soul’ meant to Aristotle. “Attractors” are principles which orient
processes to their end/telos. The Gaia hypothesis recovers a sense of the
living world. I see better now the connection between chaos-complexity theory
and Sheldrake’s morphogeneic fields. I don’t know if the “attractors” and the
“fields” are really two different things. Need to think about that more.
5.
Determinism is untenable now, due to understanding of Complexity-Chaos theory.
The natural world is more free and spontaneous now than it was understood to be
for the last 3 centuries. Most of the matter of the cosmos (98%!) is known to
be there but utterly unknown otherwise, and so called “dark matter.” We don’t know
NOTHING! And to think we did, for 300 years, was preliminary adolescent
stupidity!
6.
Science is coming to be understood as participatory, not disembodied knowledge.
We now see the universe as a creative evolutionary system. Creativity is an
ongoing feature of the developing cosmos. The participatory nature of things
has very long been important to me personally: that my being who/what I am
called to be IS my unique and personal contribution to the evolution of the
universe.
That
creativity is part of it is something relatively new to me. That’s why the
wisdom tradition is so exciting, at least one reason why. It puts creativity up
there with the most basic realities of our existence, and as one who is
essentially non-conventional, that’s critically important.
I'm
thinking that these two things (personal contribution to the cosmos and
creativity) really aren’t distinct; it’s just that from the dynamic
perspective, the fact of creativity as the essence of being who/what I am
stands out much, much more. Even as I wrote those words I see the need for much
more effort at making them my own. “Being who/what I am called to be” still has
a kind of static sense to it; creativity is dynamic. I need to work on this
more.
For many
years, decades even, I understood that being who/what I am called to be is my
unique personal contribution to the evolution of the universe. But here, the
emphasis is even stronger: not simply being who/what I’m called to be, but
precisely making something, creating something NEW, too. (Does this mean “other
than myself”?) I think the answer is both yes and no. No other than myself, in
that that’s really all I can do. But yes, more than just myself in terms of
what’s not-I and yet is greatly related to me. (Not easy to say well. Not easy
to say at all!)
7.
Instead of eternal fixed laws, Sheldrake sees the world as governed by habits,
in the process he calls morphic resonance. Nature has an inherent memory. Once
something happens, it happens more easily after that.
I
certainly had a very strong sense/experience of this, many years ago now, when
B.F., P.M. and I did a men’s group thing at P’s and I had a very strong sense
of having “broken through” and thus made the opening available to others. It
was so long ago now that I’m not clear about to what we broke through. I THINK
it was in some way access to male ancestors, but I’m not really sure. I’ve no
doubt I have a record somewhere, and maybe can find it if/when I look. My point
just now is simply that I have some real internal experience of what Sheldrake
is talking about.
8. The
post-mechanistic animistic worldview sees living nature as “full of
creativity.” Life and creativity are synonyms!
9. The
Romantic poets preserved this understanding of nature as alive. DG! And what a
pity that they are so neglected, indeed considered disreputable!
10.
Mysticism is pleasurable playful ‘yes’ to life. (OK. Good enough. What a shame
it’s been relegated to fringe people, lunatics, Nazis, etc.) It is also a
prophetic ‘no’ to whatever suppresses, opposes equality, justice, peace. They
go together as one thing. ‘Yes’ to life; ‘no’ to whatever inhibits it. This is
an excellent sum of mysticism and of everything that’s important! HO.
11. Most
contemporary worship is on the dead side: mechanistic and uncreative. “A
mistake about creation is a mistake about God. We’re killing the planet, we’ve
killed worship.” Certainly an important point! It’s critically important to
see how worship fits into all this. Sigh. I did my best, while I had the chance. What else
can I say?
This
concern will not go away easily. And since it won’t, it probably shouldn’t. I
really don’t know what to make of its persistence, except that I seem to be in
some sense being asked to do something about it. I don’t know.
12. Fox quotes
Aquinas: “Every creature shares in the dignity of causality.” And says, “this
is precisely our divinity: our capacity to use our creativity for compassion,
which is justice-making and celebration.”
13. Early
Christian hymns were not about personal salvation but about cosmic sophia
“ordering all things mightily.” St. Paul’s early letters’ (written pre-gospels,
even) first name for Jesus was Sophia. And John’s Prologue comes from the Book
of Wisdom. The info about the Prologue is clear enough. I don’t know enough
about the NT hymns, alas. Here is shaping up a project: To collect all the
really wonder OT wisdom texts I can. To collect the NT cosmic hymns.
14.
“Cathedral” originally meant the seat or throne, from which the ruler of the
universe reigns, in compassion and justice: the “seat of wisdom,” Cosmic
Wisdom. Cosmic Christ, cosmic wisdom, Lady Wisdom, Sophia-- are all one thing!
Synonyms! Mary is the goddess. The Green Man accompanies the goddess. Wisdom
especially comes from underground creatures.
All this
is imagery for our individual and communal creativity. And all this fits in
with Rupert’s ideas about habits and evolving cosmic laws. A lot of good stuff
here! What stands out in this whole section (in terms of its personal
importance to me) is creativity. (So what’s new?) I’ve a lot to learn.
15.
Materialism is a shadow side of the Great Mother. Makes good sense.
16.
Christianity’s very great contribution to cosmic wisdom is that God is the most
moved, most vulnerable of all; that the wounds in all things are the sufferings
of the Ultimate. Certainly a major part of the wisdom perspective.
17. What Sheldrake calls “diabolic” (in the literal sense)-- the separation of things and the fact that everything eats and is eaten by other things-- Fox instead calls “eucharistic.” This seems to me to need lots of thought and reflection by these two, first, and by anybody else, too. Sheldrake seems to want too quickly, as Fox says, to divide good from evil; Fox on the other hand isn’t as clear as I’d like him to be about everything being incorporated, transformed... Bruno B. said all that, far better, I think. But it needs MUCH thinking through, reflecting on, etc.
Really
the topic here is the problem of evil, looked at from VERY different from the traditional
perspectives. Lots of room for thought and reflection. I don’t know enough to
make any intelligent comments about this. Obviously it’s something I need to
try to think about. I’m not so sure Fox’s use of “eucharist” is like Bruno’s.
===
Chapter
Two: Grace and Praise
1.
Augustine’s dualism between nature and grace is a 1600 year old wound in
western religion. I like the idea of thinking of it as a wound; not at all an
essential aspect of the tradition. Except that it’s more than Augustine’s thing;
belongs to the whole Platonic-Neoplatonism tradition of Western-Christian
thought. But that it’s a wound, not of the essence of that worldview, is a
really important insight. Patriarchy is a wound of humanity.
2.
Splitting nature from grace sets up ecological disaster; it makes nature into
something which is simply there, an ‘it’ to be exploited. It also sets up a
“grace crisis” which makes it scarce and obtainable only by cooperation with
authority, who greatly exaggerate their self-importance.
A third
crisis is of “praise.” Wonder and joy are lost. The natural world gets
exploited; persons get oppressed and abused; wonder is lost. And EVERYTHING
begins with wonder! When
we lose wonder, we set up the earth and ourselves to be exploited! The exploitation
is done by those in authority and/or power.
I’m
seeing, however, that maybe “loss of wonder” isn’t the best way to get to the
heart of this. Or maybe it could be said better by stressing why loss of wonder
causes authoritarian abuse of power. I.e., it really does all go back to loss
of grounded manhood.
Why do
those with access to power take it, unless they feel they need it? And why do
they feel they need it? They lack it, obviously. I really do see everything
going back to the loss of hunting culture’s ‘magic.’ And the contemporary need
to be, more than anything, recovery of shamanic trickster manhood.
It’s so
unlikely to be understood conceptually; efforts such as Joseph Jastrab’s and
Gene Monick’s SEEM to be lost. But thanks to Sheldrake’s mophogenetic fields
ideas, I am aware that they are not. And that seems to be where I fit in at
this point, to influence those fields for the better, to help open them to
larger numbers of individuals.
With
Islamic fundamentalist hatred so strong and its Western-Christian counterpart
no less so, we are in very bad shape. A sad time for humanity. Or, a very
hopeful time in that we are beginning to see the issues. Fox’s comments are
valid, but within such a small sphere they don’t seem to have any widespread influence
either. But this book was put together 10 years ago. A different world then
than now. [And even more so now in 2012.]
3.
Eckhart heals the Augustinian split. “Grace” is gift, blessing, goodness--
which IS nature, creation. Julian of Norwich says, “We have been loved from the
beginning.” So how come we didn’t hear about it for six centuries??? Sigh.
Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, and those German nuns.... All that was centuries
ago!
Several
times recently I have come across comments about Teilhard being the most
break-through thinker since Thomas Aquinas, and that he is one of the big four
of Western religious history (Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and Teilhard). It amazes
me to think that I plugged in to Teilhard's thought as early as was possible.
It wasn't even two years after his death in April, 1955, and was even before
his first writings appeared in English (Divine Milieu and Phenomenon of Man).
4. “If we
said no other prayer than thank you, that would suffice.” (-Eckhart) I think Br
David Steindl-Rast was the first person I ever heard say this. I’ve never heard
it in a church.
5. If we
feel graced, we sing and chant. Our civilization is anal-retentive, and nothing
in it is more anal-retentive than formal worship. No body, no breath, no
spirit. Indeed. (I did my best, as I’ve said many times.) That we don’t sing
makes clear how bad off we are. It’s a symptom-- of lack of wonder.
6. To
feel graced is to have high self-esteem. Lacking that, our wounds make us give
up the struggle. “Walk your walk of lament on the path of praise.” (-Rilke)
Wounds are intrinsic to real life. Unavoidable. They can either cripple you and
not. How to prevent them from crippling you? “Walk your walk of lament on a
path of praise.” Personally, I have a problem with the word “praise” because it
conveys too much of charismatic movement’s lack of consciousness. Simply as a
term, I much prefer wonder and awe.
Is “Wow!”
praise? Definitely. Interesting how wonder produces self-esteem. But of course,
in terms of sacred manhood. They go together. It’s the LACK of self-esteem that
results in environmental exploitation and abuse of authority. Either we feel graced, blessed, gifted with
life, action, being-- or we don’t. If we don’t, we feel sucked in, smothered,
fear-full and in rage.
7. The
point here is a bit different, however. Our need for the self-esteem of sacred
manhood isn’t really the issue Fox is dealing with. He’s saying, wounds are
part of life. We have to walk the wounded path still with wonder. OK. Having
self-esteem doesn’t prevent wounding. BUT.. what about the wound of lack of
self-esteem?
I think
that’s where Gene Monick and Joseph Jastrab and Allan Chinen come in. Without
sacred manhood we are crippled, and thus lacking power, we seize it and abuse
it if and when we can. That’s our situation today. Not just the captains of
industry, as I put it a while back, and not just the big four establishments,
as Thomas Berry puts it in his The Great Work, but especially now in
politicians, specially those who highjacked the American government and the
oval office. Alas.
We have
fallen on very dark times. People have been interpreting the second part of Lord
of the Rings as
expressing the need to wage war against Iraq. I think if Tolkien was here to
interpret things he would say the war is against the Christian fundamentalists
who have highjacked American government.
8. Merton
says every non-two legged creature is a saint. I.e., full of grace. I remember
the passage well, in his very early Seeds of Contemplation which I read in high school. My
freshmen year, I think. The book cost $ 0.25. I still have it.
Reminds
me of the little banner “Everything is holy” from my very earliest liturgical
work. A woman said she wanted to spit on it.
I wonder
if this one idea, more than anything, accounts for Merton’s widespread
popularity. It’s such a basic, fundamental idea.
9. “What
good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and I’m not?” (- Eckhart) Right. How can we encourage kids to say
that? Obviously, only by OURSELVES saying it. This is the only real answer to
clerical sexual abuse, that self-esteem that would not ever permit a person,
even a young teenager, to think of himself as unworthy and to think of the
priest as “God.”
I have to
be honest and say I don’t really understand (in terms of my own experience)
that placing of authority in another which would allow for the person to be
abused. I know women do it all the time, in terms of authoritarian and abusive
men. And apparently RC kids do it to a tremendous extent. And, apparently, kids
raised by Protestant fundamentalist parents, too. It isn’t clear to me where
this comes from, how it comes about. Obviously it begins from a very early age,
in terms of how the child as a person was treated.
10. All
other species are full of grace; we are the species who is to honor it. Right. What else can we say? DO it! But
then how can anyone honor other species if they do not honor themselves? Once
again, yet again, it all comes down to the one same thing, sacred manhood!
Our job,
our cosmic task, is to honor all. I think that may not be an adequate
expression of the Great Work we are called to. It’s MORE than just honoring.
That’s important; essential. But NOT the main thing. The main thing is
promotion of culture. I.e., creativity.
I’m seeing
the need to spell out more clearly than Fox is doing here the essential task of
anthropos at
the heart of cosmos: the creative experience and tasting of everything, the uniting of
opposites, and the in-gathering of all, especially the least and lost.
11. Being
too busy, too much of a hurry, doesn’t allow time for grace. A primary problem
of American culture, and therefore of Western society (and nowadays therefore
of global culture)! The other is SO incredibily boring.
I went to
see Lord of the Rings, Part Two on Monday. From the moment I walked into the theater
lobby I was assaulted by smells, flashing lights, rap “music,” and loud
commercials urging me to do something or other. I went into the men’s room to
escape it and the sounds were even louder in there. Sigh.
No one
says, “This isn’t healthy.” Why don’t we see it? We are, as Thomas Berry says,
in a trance. Bewitched, although he doesn’t use the word. Our consciousness is
held captive. By...? I think the answer is fear. We fear the world, fear the
feminine, we fear real life.
Hurry is
simply a way of trying to avoid the fear. Berry uses the term “enchanted” and
that’s not good enough. It sounds, in fact, like a good thing. I wish he were
willing to use “bewitched.” It makes the point much more clearly. And it really
does not, I think, add more damage to the image of Wicca [maybe].
12.
Aquinas: One human can do more evil than all other species together. Quite a
statement. I don’t know what to do with it except shudder. The power in the
hands of individuals just now if beyond our emotional capacity to handle. But
the opposite must also be true. One human person is capable of more good than
all the other species together. “So great is our dignity.” Maybe we’re just not
ready to say this, yet. On the other hand, maybe it’s already time, even past
time, to say it. But... maybe not.
13. We
can choose our personal ego agenda over that of the cosmos. Awareness is
everything. Indeed. “Buddhism 101.” But in our case, just now, awareness is
under a spell. What is it that has bewitched us?
The
diminishment of the non-human by humans is the central issue of the
twenty-first century; and, says Berry, it comes down to a struggle between
corporations and ecologists. The corporations have all the power. They possess
the earth’s natural resources and they control the national governments; the
earth is already severely damaged.
Healing,
Berry says, can only happen by an effort and action as intense and vigorous as
that which caused the damage in the first place. Nature is perceived as having
no rights, while, since the late 1800’s, corporations have had the same legal
rights as individual persons.
The
situation is like a cultural addiction, Berry says, and points out that the
pathology is especially evident in everyday language where words like
"progress" and "profit" are validated and promoted as
positive terms, while in reality "progress" here is synonymous with
the earth’s degradation and "profit" means a deficit for the earth.
"Development" is other example; it in fact almost always means
destruction of the natural environment.
As Berry
points out, the important question is, Why this damage? If we do not enhance
ourselves by diminishing others, why this mentally disturbed attitude, this
mental illness, which makes ours the most pathological of all cultures? The
answer, he says, lies in that inner rage against the limitations of the real
world which is found at the heart of Western culture. This inner rage seeks to
dominate and control the natural world which it perceives as threat. We remain
unaware of it, for the most part, precisely because we are caught in the power
of its addictive trance. We are bewitched, under a spell, in an addictive
trance.
We don’t
see the world as it is; we don’t see ourselves and our place in it, as blessed,
graced. We need to see our cosmic task: as anthropos at the heart of cosmos we are to taste everything, to bring together
opposites, and to in-gather all, especially the least and lost.
How can
we do this if we are afraid? Why are we afraid? What can we do to NOT be
afraid? How can we break the spell? Get out of our trance? Berry repeatedly
says, “attend our psychic images.” And I want to add to his list (of Great
Mother and Hero) shaman and trickster: the one not afraid of nature, the one
not afraid of conventionality.
The best
understanding I have of this inner rage which seeks, as Berry says, to dominate
and control the natural world, comes from an unlikely source. It’s one I
stumbled on accidentally: a psychoanalytic study of fascism based on the
literature of pre-Nazi fascist groups known as the Freikorpsmen. The book is Male
Fantasies, Volume II,
by Klaus Theweleit (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). It is especially
helpful because the fascist Freikorps provides us with an example of Western
culture’s inner rage at its most blatant extreme.
Fascism,
according to Klaus Theweleit, is a repudiation of everyday life and the natural
world; it is against everything that constitutes enjoyment and pleasure. It has
its origin in the fascist male ego’s fear and hatred of the feminine.
Similarly, the inner rage and destructive violence against women and nature
found at the heart of Western culture has its origin in the patriarchal ego’s
terror at the threat of its destruction. The threat comes from a fear of fusion
with the mother, says Theweleit, and is based on lack of pre-oedipal separation
from her. "Such men were never fully born," he says; they never
differentiated enough from their maternal source to relate, as a separate ego,
to an other, and they can only feel the integrity of the ego-self and sustain a
sense of bodily boundaries, by inflicting violence on others......
I ask,
What can we do to NOT be afraid? How can we break the spell? Get out of our
trance? Berry repeatedly says, “attend our psychic images.” And I add,
Especially those of shaman and trickster. And HERE is where ritual really
comes in. Not so
much in honoring animals, and all that, but in becoming aware of our calling to
be one who is not afraid of nature and one who is not afraid of
conventionality. And... to OWN those empowering images so that they do in fact
empower us. THAT makes good sense to me.
.....Similarly,
disdain for the world and the contemporary exploitation and destruction of the
natural environment by Western civilization is a desire to destroy the mother.
It is the result of the patriarchal ego’s alienation from nature. It comes from
the sense of not being cared for by Mother Earth, of not being wanted by the
universe. At bottom, is the feeling that reality itself is not to be trusted.
[A review of this book can be found in post #123. The Psychological Origins of
Patriarchy.]
I
acknowledge that these words still cause me to shudder: The desire to destroy
the mother, the patriarchal ego’s alienation from nature, comes from the sense
of not being cared for by Mother Earth, of not being wanted by the universe,
the feeling that at bottom reality itself is not to be trusted.
! Listen
to those words: not being cared for, not being wanted, feeling that reality is
not to be trusted. They are surely the most crippled words in human speech.
Crippled. And crippling.
As I said
previously, how different this attitude of alienation, fear and hatred is from
the ancient view that ours is essentially a world of wonder and awe, given to
us for our delight. How different, indeed, from patriarchal culture’s rage and
destructive violence against nature is the ancient perspective that we are part
of the universe and to align ourselves with it is what life is all about!
How may
this alienation be overcome? According to Berry, the path to reorientation is
to be found in a return to the depths of our own psychological roots. We can
overcome our alienation from nature, he says, by "our attention to
fundamental archetypal images found in the human psyche." He mentions
specifically those of the Great Mother, the Eternal Round of Death and Rebirth,
the Cosmic Tree of Life and the Hero-Journey. These empowering archetypes, he
notes, need to be valued and promoted especially by the guiding professions,
education and religion, because as symbolic images they provide us with the
basic story of how the world works and how humans fit into it.
OK with
all that. But as I've said, we also need to attend several other archetypes as
well: the Shaman and the Trickster. Any implementation of the New Story seems
to me to be especially dependent on a recovery of these two archetypes. The
Hero is part of the patriarchal stage of development, and we need to go beyond
the hero. If, as Berry has said, the root of our problems lies especially in
the inner hatred and rage against nature and the feminine on the part of the
patriarchal ego, then it seems especially important that we recognize that
there is an alternative to this patriarchal model of manhood, one which is not
based on fear of the natural world.
Deep
within the male psyche is a much earlier masculine archetype, that of the
shamanic trickster. It prevailed through most of human history and is an image
of manhood in communion with, rather than alienated from, the earth. It still
remains to be discovered by our culture. The fact that we are only just
beginning to recognize the existence of an alternative to patriarchal
masculinity demonstrates the strength of our continued enmeshment in the
patriarchal trance state. The shamanic trickster is an image of manhood in
communion with, rather than alienated from, the earth.
If our
culture thinks of the shaman at all, it thinks of him as a primitive witch
doctor; perhaps, even, as one practicing satanic rites. The reality is
different. As Berry says, during the Paleolithic age, which constitutes
approximately ninety-eight percent of human history, we humans found the
meaning of life in responding to the ocean of physical and psychical energies
in which we live. Our ancestors experienced the energies and forces of the
earth as spirit-powers and personal presences. Being sensitive and responsive
to those earth energies is precisely what shamanism is all about.
In his
autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung says that whether or
not they appear to be personal, when these archetypal powers present themselves
to us, we should consciously relate to them. "Talk to them," says
Jung. That such an experience of the powers of the earth and the human psyche
remains so little understood in our culture is yet another indication of the
patriarchal ego’s alienation from the currents of life on earth.
It seems
to me that if we are ever to move beyond the patriarchal male ego’s alienation
from the world, it is absolutely essential that we recover the empowering image
of the shamanic male, one who is not afraid to be in communion with the powers
of the earth and the
Mystery of the universe. Sacred manhood and sacred earth go together; we can’t
have one without the other.
We also
need to recover the related image of the Trickster. We know this archetype from
the cartoon character of Wily Coyote and perhaps Brer Rabbit, but it is much
more significant than simply that of an individual who plays tricks and causes
unnecessary troubles. The Trickster image is also part of sacred manhood. Just
as the Shaman is one who is unafraid in the face of the powers of the earth and
the unconscious, so the Trickster is one who is unafraid in the face of the
conventional views of society. Our empowerment by the Trickster archetype is
what allows us to go beyond the conventions of the patriarchal perspective.
Patriarchal authority demands of us that we do what we’re told, that we do not
question authority, that we don’t rock the boat. The Trickster has the courage
to laugh at the
pomposity and rigidity of the patriarchal mind and to move on to deal with the
life-giving issues that need to be dealt with.
I've said
all this as well as I could, when I wrote the essay on Berry's The Great
Work, Our Way into the Future. Do I have to re-say it again? For my own sake? I think I
do. I have to re-say it in this new context of the Fox-Sheldrake dialogues. A
good sum of my main points: “Just as the Shaman is one who is unafraid in the
face of the powers of the earth and the unconscious, so the Trickster is one
who is unafraid in the face of the conventional views of society.” The key in
both cases is “unafraid.” Lack of fear.
And where
does lack of fear come from? From awe, wonder, self-esteem. From specifically
the self-esteem of recognizing our a-dva-ity. And precisely that that a-dva-ity
is mediated via matter. Matter is the sacrament of our a-dva-ity.
I get
here some beginnings of insights into the vastness of these ideas. Rage at the
limitations of matter, projected on to the feminine.... Fear of mother, never
having been fully born... all that on one side; on the other, a-dva-ity, the
sacramentality of world and nature and body.... BIG STUFF, indeed. More than I
can handle.
I see
that this ideas really are key to everything else. Not a new insight, but a new
sense of the depth of the insight. As I said elsewhere here in these
reflections, may I eventually be able to integrate some of these things I have
long been aware of with the newer things I’m coming to learn about. HO.
14. Grace
results in joy and joy results in praise. “Beauty yearns to be conspicuous,”
says Aquinas. Here, “praise” means more than wonder. It means gratitude and
thanks-giving. The blessings that is the world and our lives in it provokes
first wonder and joy and gratitude and then at a more conscious level, thanks.
“Delight” may be a good overall summary.
15. The
opposite of praise is curse or cynicism. Lots of that around! Much of it promoted
by the media for their own purposes. Q: Why so much negativity in our social
world? Why so many curses? A: Anger, rage, fear....
The great
need is for recovery of positive stance re our existence in the world.
Blessing, grace, beauty-- such terms may simply not be enough. Not wrong but
not adequate.
What
WOULD be adequate to allow us to move out of the realm of patriarchy? I.e., out
of the realm of fear and rage, etc? I think the answer, once again, is sacred
manhood, grounded manhood. I hope I will, eventually, be able to integrate what
I know of all that with all I’ve been learning from Panikkar and Bruno and even
Barbara Moore about wisdom.
16. The
standard of morality is a good person. What IS a good person? One who is
looking for goodness. I.e., morality is based on wonder and praise. Bede
Griffith made time for people. He would ask what their hopes and aspiration are, listen and
encourage them. (Wonderful stuff!)
Here is
an alternative to the life-long dis-ease I’ve felt with ‘ethics.’ What’s “good”
is what promotes good. And that, very simply, is listening to and encouraging
people’s hopes and aspirations. A whole different worldview than what we were
given from the last thousand years.
This is a
good idea. Can I integrate IT with the shamanic trickster ideas above? I think
so, easily. Someone trying faithfully to follow the trickster path is in fact
“a good person.” I think now of that wonderful quote I once wrote out for B.F.
from Allan Chinen’s description of what grounded manhood looks like, what those
trickster energies look like when they are manifest in our lives:
Such
men are generative, relate as brothers, wander as pioneers, healers, and
explorers; they offer a masculine shamanic healing alternative to both
patriarch and goddess; they are links, communicators, story-tellers,
messengers, negotiators; they use jokes, teasing and tall tales, and unite
opposites; they are tough, confident, flexible, creative, intelligent and
psychologically healthy; they accept woundedness as an opportunity for
transformation and insight and they use their powers for the good of the whole
community, “on behalf of all and for all.”
17.
Building up what’s good in people presumes awareness of the bad; the shadow is
in the background. Otherwise, it’s all bland neutrality, taking things for
granted. Lack of curiosity and wonder. That’s what I found the worst thing of
all about my last years of high school teaching-- and the worst thing about
American culture. But “I may not mourn the mystery’s loss nor hate those who
damage it.”
The
neutrality and blandness of conventional views is really depressing, because
what’s missing is precisely any sense of awe and wonder, any sense of blessing,
of grace, of beauty.
And it’s
easy for me to feel depressed about all that. And so I am very grateful to
Coyote’s injunction about not mourning the mystery’s loss nor hating those who
damage it. That’s another issue from what can be done to promote awe and
wonder, etc. And Br. David is right on target with his “Christian version of
Buddhist mindfulness.”
18. Q:
How do we get out of bitching, self-pity, cutting each other up, opting OUT of
wonder? A: Science, the new story, Gaia’s story. It is [was a dozen years ago]
unlikely to happen in a science classroom. What a pity.
Mindfulness
(gratitude) is about as basic as it can get. Information-- “science
knowledge”-- is key, too. That has to build on childhood and childlike awe and
wonder. What can be done to help the culture as a whole.... to get out of its
negativity?
One thing
might be, for thinking people, to help them see the negative is precisely an
unconscious affirmation of beauty, blessing, etc. This is something I can do
more reflection on.
To get
the culture out of its negativity, Fox says “science story.” David says
“gratefulness.” Berry says "attend images." I add: empowerment to
“sacred manhood” via ritual.
19. 19th
c British naturalists were country-vicars. Today we praise scientists not for
wonder but for being so smart to figure out nature; we also praise military
heroes. Their statues are in British cathedrals. What can be said about all
that??? It is appalling. Nothing else I know to say. Everything in the culture
promotes dissatisfaction. And so the military people are honored as those who
do something about it: i.e., reek violence on others.
We praise
high intelligence, rationality, at the expense of everything else. We praise
the military mentality because we are in rage and fear. How do we move out of
all that? Thomas Berry says attend our archetypal images; he’s right, but he
seems to leave out the most needed ones: the shaman and trickster. A whole
different worldview: those who are not afraid of nature or of the conventional
mind.
Ultimately,
it seems to come down to either we are afraid or are not afraid. How affect the
conventional consciousness (or, really, the lack in the conventional
perspective of consciousness)? Yet again, I fall back on Sheldrake’s
morphogenetic fields.
May we
not be afraid not
to use violence against the people of Iraq or any place else! Is that
simplistic?? No. It is only the beginnings of the Quaker and pacifist
traditions we came to know (and tried to practice) in the 60s.
20. John
Seed and Joanna Marcy created a the Council of All Beings, a ritual of grief
for lost species. It's also relatively easy to create eucharist around praise
for all creatures. Brings up question of making liturgical language “real.” Fox
sees it in terms of plays and play; also education (i.e., AS education). Also
sees blessing of animals as backward: we should get blessings FROM the animals,
not vv. Good example: an elephant as living presence of Genesh.
These
thoughts don’t even scratch the surface of what’s involved. They hardly do more
than hint at directions to look in. Again, lots to think about. I wonder,
though, if these thoughts are ones I should give myself to. We certainly could
use some grief rituals. I’ve felt the need strongly at times. Eucharist focused
on praise of creatures, on the other hand, while seemingly good, in fact may
not be.
Certainly
ritual is needed, but ritual such as is being proposed here doesn’t seem to be
as correct as it needs to be. Ritual ultimately is for the sake of empowerment
to be/live/act as we are called to be/live/act. It is fundamentally an owning
of what is being given, and needs preliminarily a proclamation of what is in
fact being given.
To
“praise creatures” isn’t what ritual’s all about. Fox’s idea of getting
blessings from
creatures is far more correct.
For many
years I thought I had something to contribute along these lines, and in fact I
do. But there is not yet a receptive pool for what I have to offer. Ritual will
come later. After my time.
21. Nice
words about communion with plant world, gardens, etc., are found on p 71. And
that a church role ought to be providing such ‘sanctuaries.’ Also some good
words about relationships with pets. Religion in your home and backyard. Dogs,
cats and plants as contemporary focus of the sacred.
I think
this is precisely “where it’s at” and “where I’m at” in all this. It may, in
fact, be where all of us are “at.” In our needs, at least. Thinking that the
church should provide such sanctuaries is far beyond anything the church can
come up with. It still hasn’t been able to incorporate anti-war sentiment
and/or pro-justice sentiments yet.
A whole new church is needed. Will it be forthcoming? Indeed, CAN it be forthcoming? Perhaps. Not anytime soon, however. Someone like Bruno is helping tremendously. But then some of what Bruno sees now was seen by the early Sophiologist Monk Feodor-- 150 years ago.
22. Page
73 mentions shaman-animal relationships; also the Islamic killing of lambs at
the feast commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Both in terms of
sacrifice. And that we have lost the meaning of sacrifice as self-giving. The
divine presence in the universe of space and time is the divinity being
sacrifice; “we’ve cut ourselves off from that.” Indeed, but we are beginning to
recover it! DG.
23. I
need to add here, with regard to alternatives to patriarchy, a few quotes from
a sum of my reflections on the Barbara Moore text.
One is
that every kind of work, in terms of its good results, is “a concrete
realization in a particular historical context of an aspect of the Divine
Wisdom.”
The other
is that Divine Wisdom utterly wants, needs and delights in us-- our company,
friendship, intimacy-- for its own happiness. It is always there, on our
doorstep, waiting for us.
What a
difference from patriarchal bewitchment! And the obvious question is how can we
get out from under this addiction, this spell, bewitchment?
The
essence of it all (moving beyond patriarchy) is, as Fox says, that we have lost
the meaning of sacrifice as self-giving. I.e., That the divine presence in the
universe of space and time is the divinity being sacrifice. “We’ve cut
ourselves off from that.”
24. And
here, again, is where ritual comes in. We need ritual not only to own those
empowering images of shamanic trickster manhood but also, and I think even more
so, we need daily rites which express our willingness to (and thus which
empower us to) our participation in the evolution of the universe.
25. I
don’t yet know how to word this well. Our greatest need is the recovery of
wisdom, of a kenotic understanding of creation. As I said at the beginning of
these notes: If we feel blessed, graced, we have some sense of our
participatory role in the cosmic scheme of things, and of our three-fold task,
as anthropos at the heart of cosmos: the creative experience/ tasting of everything,
the uniting of opposites, and the in-gathering of all, especially the least and
lost.
26. The
recovery of this wisdom is what will lead to a new-old ‘ecclesiology.’ And this
ecclesiology is what will allow the church to take its place as the conscious
growing edge of humanity’s cultural development. It will come to see itself as
the realization of Sophia, as the transfigured cosmos, as the sacramental
realization of the eucharistic nature of the material universe, et al. It will
see itself as the Bride of the Lamb, “the Lamb sacrificed before the
foundations of the world.”
27. This
may be as good as I’m going to be able to do with all this just now. I can
state the problem pretty well: We feel either blessed or not-wanted. Blessed,
we work for good. Not-wanted, we destroy whatever we can.
28. The
culture is at a critical point, in that we recognize the problems we have
caused, but do not know how to get out of them. The spell we are under causes
us not even to recognize that we are in fact under a spell.
Yet some
of us see that we are. What can we do about it? How are we to break the spell?
Each time I think about such things I seem to return again and again to
Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields. Each of us who does in fact see things
differently has to intensely work at placing him/her self in the alternative
field, with the understanding that the field will indeed grow and proliferate
as we do so. Is there anything else? I don’t know.
29. What
it comes down to is aligning ourselves with wisdom, and specifically, at least
for males, of doing so via owning of the shamanic trickster alternative to
patriarchal manhood.
We need
to know about wisdom, we need to know about shamanic trickster manhood, and we
need to know about ritual as the means by which we both own our shamanic
trickster manhood and enter fully with the entirety of our lives into the
cosmic evolutionary process whereby we taste everything, unite opposites, and
in-gather All.
30. It
comes down to the transfiguration of the cosmos or trying to destroy one
another. Either we are not wanted (by the universe) and have come here into
existence in some accidental way, or we are delighted in by the ultimate which
gives itself to us as ourselves and calls us to participate in the transfiguration
of the cosmos.
31. We
live in very difficult times. Alas. I do not know what else I can say now about
these reflections which have been stimulated by the second chapter of the
Fox-Sheldrake dialogues.
===
A Grand Sum of these thoughts. My best results so far.
1. Either
we feel graced, blessed, gifted with life, action, being-- or we don’t.
2. If we
don’t, we feel sucked in, smothered, fear-full and in rage, THAT’s patriarchy.
3. If we
DO feel blessed and grace, if we have a sense of our participatory role in the
cosmic scheme of things, THAT’s wisdom.
4. Wisdom
sees the essential task of anthropos at the heart of cosmos as three-fold: the creative
experience and tasting of everything, the uniting of opposites, and the
in-gathering of all, especially the least and lost.
5. Wisdom
comes from self-esteem, from the feeling of being graced and blessed, which is
based on the experience of awe/wonder.
6.
Patriarchy-- fear and rage toward matter, body, feminine-- comes from a fear of
fusion with the mother, and is based on lack of pre-oedipal separation from
her. "Such men were never fully born," they never differentiated
enough from their maternal source to relate, as a separate ego, to an other,
and they can only feel the integrity of the ego-self and sustain a sense of
bodily boundaries by inflicting violence on others.
7. Thus,
disdain for the world and the contemporary exploitation and destruction of the
natural environment by western civilization is a desire to destroy the mother;
the patriarchal ego’s alienation from nature comes ultimately from the sense of
not being cared for by Mother Earth, of not being wanted by the universe. It is
the feeling that reality itself is not to be trusted.
8. The
wisdom tradition provides us with a viable alternative. It sees every kind of
work, in terms of its good results, is “a concrete realization in a particular
historical context of an aspect of the Divine Wisdom.” And in the starkest
contrast with patriarchal fear and rage and the sense of not being wanted, see
that the Divine Wisdom utterly wants, needs and delights in us-- our company,
friendship, intimacy-- for its own happiness. It is always there, on our
doorstep, waiting for us. What a difference! Indeed.
9. But
wisdom is an alternative to patriarchy, and the only way we can access wisdom
is to access an alternative expression of the sacred masculine. We need to
“attend our psychic images,” as Thomas Berry says.
10. The
shamanic trickster is an image of manhood in communion with, rather than
alienated from, the earth. Sacred manhood and sacred earth go together; we
can’t have one without the other. The shamanic person is not afraid of nature,
and the trickster is not afraid of conventionality. Here in these alternative
images is wisdom. Let us attend!
11. We
need the “science story” and “gratefulness” surely, but it seems to me above
all we need “ritual.” And have given much of my life to promoting its
understanding and praxis.
12. But
none of these ‘answers’ seems to be the right one. Sigh. The problem stares us
in the face from the front page of the morning newspapers and every time we
turn to the current news on TV or the web. The ‘way out’ is not, alas, even a
little bit clear just now.
13. The
essence of it all is, as Fox says, that we have lost the meaning of sacrifice
as self-giving. I.e., That the divine presence in the universe of space and
time is the divinity being sacrifice. And, “We’ve cut ourselves off from that.”
14. And
HERE, again, is where ritual comes in. We need ritual not only to OWN those
empowering images of shamanic trickster manhood but also, and I think even more
so, we need daily rites which express our willingness to (and thus which
empower us to) our participation in the evolution of the universe.
15. Our
greatest need is the recovery of wisdom, of a kenotic understanding of
creation. As I said at the beginning of these notes: If we feel blessed,
graced, we have some sense of our participatory role in the cosmic scheme of
things, and of our three-fold task, as anthropos at the heart of cosmos: the
creative experience/ tasting of everything, the uniting of opposites, and the
in-gathering of all, especially the least and lost.
16. The
recovery of this wisdom is what will lead to a new-old ‘ecclesiology.’ And this
ecclesiology is what will allow the church to take its place as the conscious
growing edge of humanity’s cultural development. It will come to see itself as
the realization of Sophia, as the transfigured cosmos, as the sacramental
realization of the eucharistic nature of the material universe. It will see
itself as the Bride of the Lamb, “the Lamb sacrificed before the foundations of
the world.”
17. It
comes down to the transfiguration of the cosmos or trying to destroy one
another.
Either we
are not wanted (by the universe) and have come here into existence in some
accidental way, or we are delighted in by the Ultimate Mystery which gives
itself to us as ourselves and calls us to participate in the transfiguration of
the cosmos.
The
alternatives are patriarchal fear and sapiential delight.
+++
