CowPi
 Journal

Various lines from Don Henley’s song, “The Heart of the Matter”:

What are these voices outside love’s open door
Make us throw off our contentment
And beg for something more?

  — — —

These times are so uncertain
There’s a yearning undefined
And people filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age

And the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They’re the very things we kill, I guess
Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms
And the work they put between us,
You know it doesn’t keep us warm

  — — —

There are people in your life who’ve come and gone
They let you down, you know they hurt your pride
You better put it all behind you, cause life goes on
You keep carrin’ that anger, it’ll eat you up inside

  — — —

The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about
Forgiveness, forgiveness

True love in every moment praises God.
Longing love brings a sorrow sweet to the pure.
Seeking love belongs to itself.
Understanding love gives itself equally to all.
Enlightened love is mingled with the sadness of the world.
But selfless love bears an effortless fruit,
    working so quietly even the body cannot say
    how it comes and goes.

— Mechthild of Magdeburg

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names - and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles - you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head—
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.

— William Stafford

In further reflection on the song “Laughing With” (see this post), the word transcendence has popped into my head.

Paradox points to transcendence, to something more. To transcend means to rise above, to see more. It does not deny what is, it just gives a wider vision of what is, depth, a larger point of view.

Grace also perfects. It does not deny what is. It makes it perfect, makes real, transforms into reality. God’s point of view is reality, not ours. Our point view contains parts of what is real, but also contains much of our own projections, wants, and desires. (We see things how we want to see them, not always as they are.)

So, it makes me wonder. If God is love and a loving God lets people suffer, than maybe my definition of love and suffering are not completely right (real). After all, Jesus was/is God, and He loved/loves. He also suffered and died. He did not avoid what that song described. Do I expect better than what Jesus experienced in life?

There must be more to the meaning of love.

If I had a theme song for this summer, it would be Keith Urban’s upbeat and bouncy, “Somebody Like You”. (Listen) The first stanza, especially the third line, is what caught my attention when I heard this song on the radio this morning. It is full of energy and joy. Except for the third line of the extended play stanza, the whole song applies, especially with its subtle allusion to You. The best love songs naturally apply to God too.

There’s a new wind blowing like I’ve never known
I’m breathing deeper than I’ve ever done
And it sure feels good to finally feel the way I do
Now I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you

And I’m letting go of all my lonely yesterdays
I’ve forgiven myself for the mistakes I’ve made
Now there’s just one thing, the only thing I wanna do
I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you

Yeah, I wanna feel the sunshine shining down on me and you
When you put your arms around me
You let me know there’s nothing in this world I can’t do

I used to run in circles going no where fast
I’d take one step forward and look two steps back
I couldn’t walk a straight line even if I wanted to
I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you

Whoa here we go now
Hey I wanna love you baby

Yeah, I wanna feel the sunshine shining down on me and you
When you put your arms around me
Well baby there ain’t nothing in this world I can’t do

Sometimes it’s hard for me to understand
But you’re teaching me to be a better man
I don’t want to take this life for granted like I used to do
I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you
I’m ready to love somebody, love somebody like you
And I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you (yeah)

Hey I wanna love you baby

(Extended play)

(oh yeah, whoa, oh yeah)
Oh, I wanna be the man in the middle of the night
Shinin’ like it’s true
I wanna be the man that you run to whenever I call on you
When everything that loved someone finally found it’s way
And I wanna be a better man
I see it in your face, yeah, yeah (yeah, yeah)
Hey I wanna love you baby

Note: The line, “When everything that loved someone finally found it’s way”, reminds me of the hope and final joy expressed in the wedding banquet from the Book of Revelation.

I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

— Muriel Rukeyser

She is mostly correct, but her warning needs clarification. Sacrifice can mean two different things. On one hand, for some people, the option not taken is seen as a loss and labeled a sacrifice. This is a shallow sacrifice at best because there still exists the option chosen. On the other hand, there is the choice one makes in regards for another person. This choice can be labeled a sacrifice or a gift; it all depends on freedom and the will of the one who chooses. Love calls it a gift.

Instead of referring to Christ’s death on The Cross as a sacrifice, maybe we should refer to it more often as the Gift of The Cross.

Asking people to pray
is like telling the wind to blow
the ear to listen
the eye to see
We cannot not pray
anymore than not be
once given the gift of existence
We can only shut it out or deny it

Prayer is simply the conscious dimension of being
when it opens out to receive all that is
gift
marvelously
gratuitously there
word of communion with all things
who hears their silence of wonder
adoration before Him who is
the source and end of all

Prayer is also the birthing of the person
the creative revelation each is called to become
the etching of a mysterious face
reflected by the Mystery we contemplate
the knowing God
as we come to know ourselves
Spirit breathed
by the Thou who calls and loves

Silence then is the plenitude of the Word

Prayer ultimately is love

— Cyril, from Sounding the Silence

I want to record an email conversation that occurred between a friend and I back in late February. My spiritual director reminds me to listen—or rather take my own advice—to what I say to other people. This seems particularly germane to my current sense of lostness.

From David:

Epistemology is something I think about from time to time: How do we know what we know? The scientific method is pretty trusted in our world, as are the five senses. Of course, we know that neither of those avenues to knowledge are infallible; nonetheless, we have to rely on them for practical measures, and unless someone is in a philosophy class, he or she will likely never question either avenue.

My question is, do you think faith is another way to know things? I’m specifically thinking of verses like 2 Cor. 5:7, which says “live by faith, not by sight”.

My reply:

Yes!!

Give the following four objects to a kid and tell him to sort them into two groups: a baseball, a basketball, a bat, a hoop.

Some kids will group the baseball and basketball together and the bat and hoop together based on shape or external properties. Some kids will group the baseball with the bat and the basketball with the hoop based on functionality.

Take another group of words: religion, technology, science, magic.

[Note the two senses of the word magic. There is magic as in magic tricks, which is entertainment of illusion that attempts to deceive or misdirect the senses in believing something that is not real. And there is magic as in magic spells and potions (i.e. alchemy), which are attempts to manipulate things and people. It is this second sense of magic that is implied.]

Many people will group religion and magic together against science and technology. Maybe it is because of the culture and the media’s use of the terms. Maybe it is because of a presumption of science’s ability to solve problems and its use in developing technology. Maybe it is due to the demotion of magic to illusion or fantasy and the unprovableness of religion.

But from a functional point of view, religion and science should go together because both are forms of knowing. This makes more sense when you group technology and magic together because both are forms of control—controlling nature, controlling our environment, controlling the things (or people) we want. People easily see technology this way, but they forget that was the exact same reason people in the “old” days looked toward magic.

The big assumption made by both science and religion is that there exists patterns in the universe. The evidence is overwhelmingly obvious. Science might say that the human mind evolved and religion might say that the human mind was made, but both agree that the human mind can reason and can know (recognize) these patterns of the universe. (Technology and magic are means to manipulate that pattern for our control over it.)

Science and religion are two ways of knowing. They do not mutually exclude each other but rather compliment each other. Science is good at knowing the material world, but it is not good at answering questions of a philosophical/spiritual nature. C.S. Lewis’ devil Screwtape called us amphibians—half animal, half spirit. The material and spiritual do not exclude each other but compliment each other.

There is a short scene from the movie Red Planet that illustrates this:

Chantilas: [Suppose] we just finished poisoning the earth and everyone was dead in a hundred years. Then what was the point of anything? Art, beauty—all gone—the Greeks, the Constitution, people dying for freedom, ideas. None of it meant anything? What about religion? Do we give up on God too?

Gallagher: You didn’t just give up being a scientist one day, did you?

Chantilas: I realized science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions. So, I turned to philosophy. I’ve been searching for God ever since. Who knows, I may pick up a rock and it’ll say underneath, “Made by God.” The universe is full of surprises.

How can we “know” the answers to the really interesting questions, like why are we here, is there meaning to life, etc.? Are there patterns to be observed in the universe to help answer these questions? Can we know and reason about any of these questions? Well, does not posing the questions in themselves point to the fact that we can know and reason with them?

Science “sees” and explores the patterns. Religion must sense the patterns through other means. All of which might help explain the quote from Scripture, “live by faith, not by sight.” Faith is a little like a blind man seeing in the dark.

What do you think?

David again:

First of all, thank you so much for that response. It is pretty much exactly what I needed to hear.

I’ll go ahead and explain where my question came from. I was teaching the teenage bible class at my church this past Wednesday night, and we were talking about the verse I mentioned. As I was asking the kids what they thought it meant to “live by faith”, I remembered my philosophy teacher in college (brilliant man, btw: studied at Oxford, a fantastic Christian apologist) saying that the weakness of rationalism is its refusal to acknowledge that there are other ways to know things besides plain ol’ logic. The way I remember it is that the Divine has its own system of revelation and being understood.

So I told those kids that I thought the verse meant we could know things a third way. But even as I said it, I wondered if I still believed it as I had in college. …

I really like the grouping task you suggested, particularly because I like to say that magic is proof our senses are not infallible: seeing doesn’t mean believing. Lately, too, I’ve been thinking some about trying to explain why people love each other and do kind things for each other. Christianity, of course, has something to say about that, and of course some scientists do too, with their ideas on how natural selection encourages selflessness, as do anthropologists with their sociological explanations. Actually, I shouldn’t say I’ve “lately” been thinking about this—I’ve been thinking about it since I first heard the issue posed in college.

Finally, then, I must say I totally agree with you: Yes!!

And to finish, my reply:

“…weakness of rationalism is its refusal to acknowledge that there are other ways to know things besides plain ol’ logic.” — God is transcendent. If you take the idea of transcendence, then the nature of God is obviously above the nature of the material universe. Push the idea of transcendence further, then God is also above our images and words and concepts about Him. In other words, God is above our knowledge that uses images and words and concepts. But that does not mean we can not know God. You hit the nail on the head with the example of love—if one has an experience of true love, he or she “knows” the other person beyond words or images or even concepts. Poetry and literature and art are attempts to convey that knowing.

I have been listening to a series on the 12th century mystic St. John of the Cross. He calls it “dark knowledge” of God. Not that it is knowledge of darkness or evil, but rather that it lacks the light from our words and images and concepts. It is a knowing without knowing. Everything in the world says that you don’t know, but you do. St. John of the Cross is the one famous for the concept of the dark night of the soul, where as one approaches closer in union with God, your senses and your images and words become in affect blind or darkened because God is beyond your senses and images and words. It feels like a dark night.

Hmm…reminds me of what St. John of the Cross said, “God refuses to be known except by love.”

Has someone’s courage ever made you look at yourself and ask what you’re afraid of, what you know of love?

Your pain has changed me
Your dreams inspire
Your face a memory
Your hope a fire
Your courage asks me what I’m afraid of
And what I know of love
And what I know of God

— Sara Groves, from “I Saw What I Saw”

God is everywhere. That’s easy to say, but do we really believe it? Are we willing to admit that God is present even in what looks nothing like holiness or love, i.e. in our sin—before, during, and after?

Here’s a powerful poem from Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, September, 2008.

After the storm, clouds like blown
milkweed lie in the widening sky.
I still don’t know how we survive

our youth, how in a matchstick boat
we cross the wind-clawed sea. When I
look back, I see no boat. I must have

walked on water, holding fast to false
beliefs: that I was strong;
that the worst

had already happened; that to commit
suicide would disgrace
the memory of my grandparents,

who had survived Auschwitz,
so what excuse might I give
for not surviving America?

Maybe it’s not truth that save us,
but a half-remembered image:
dimly seeing in the dark

a luminous, familiar
figure walking on the sea.
And like Peter, you step

out of doubt as out of a boat,
and start walking across the storm—
not on water, not on air,

barely even on faith—
toward what you don’t dare
call love.

— Joanna Warwick