The Transcendent Within
Podcast: Download (12.0MB)
Subscribe: More
In a small but intriguing book called Religious Integrity for Everyone, my colleague Fred Campbell noted how “transcendence” implies “larger than.” He explained that “Communities are larger than individuals [and] God is a word used to point to some inclusive reality much larger [still].” With such a helpful frame, one can understand the meaningful arc of a life path, using whatever language resonates within.
Perhaps you can recall early life moments when your world was enlarged. When I was a child, my parents arranged through the American Field Service program to have a series of foreign college students come live with us for semesters at a time in our home in suburban northern New Jersey. I vividly remember two young women, from Japan and Italy, living in our home, but I only recall the name of Sam Elad from Cameroon in Africa, perhaps because he came back for a second stay with us.
What I remember was that Sam was a cheerful, kind, round-faced fellow with a beautiful accent, who had lots of animated conversations with my mother. Every now and then he would dress up in his really colorful Cameroonian finery and go off to some event and my eyes would bug out of their skinny young sockets at the look of him. The Japanese exchange student also had stunningly different kinds of clothes that she would wear periodically. My eyes and my world widened at the very look of these good folks.
This was a formative era in my life, when I began to transcend the boundaries of my own family unit and, in Fred Campbell’s words, “participate in the larger process of creativity that permeates our universe.” My worldview grew because of living day-to-day with folks from other cultures who were willing to step out of their worlds into mine. I knew and was known by these guest residents and I learned a lot about their homelands. The expansive planet became much less of an abstraction for me.
In a very real way, these encounters helped me to learn to transcend first my self, then my family unit, and then even my country—to understand that there was a lot more of value out there beyond my own immediate world. I then internalized that broader perspective and took to heart a wider reality shown to me through my wider relationships.
I developed a sense of what I call the Transcendent Within, by which I mean an internalization, a psychic integration of the simple truth that life is larger than me alone. Transcendence encourages a sense of proportion that, when taken to heart, deepens both awareness and humility.
I discovered there was more of this larger creativity going on beyond my own personal view and that I could embrace this wider reality and grow with it without being unduly threatened. This was, I believe, the interpersonal grounding that enabled me to be open to global thinking and interfaith relations as I matured.
Later, in high school, I applied to and became vice-president of a small group called the Domestic Exchange, an annual program that connected with another high school in some different part of the United States, and traded weeklong visits in the spring. Each of a dozen of us paired with a “brother” or “sister” from the other school and lived with that family during an exchange week in each locale.
In early 1968 we traded visits with an all-Black high school in New Orleans and had a great time together on both ends. In March, I slept on the couch at my brother Frank’s house down there, and borrowed an umbrella as we went to his school together and all toured that marvelous city. In late April Frank and his group came up and stayed with us and we showed them New York City.
Between the two exchange weeks, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We relied on the relationships we established in March to help us all process that tragedy in April, although, truthfully, we probably did just the bare minimum of that, and kept busy with the sights. But my own sense of that moment in history deepened immensely because of this opportunity to stay connected with people from way outside my own local community.
Relationships with people who are different pull you beyond your own little circle, so that you can transcend your own ego and understand that there is indeed a much larger picture into which you fit. This sounds pretty straightforward, maybe even obvious. But, as Lloyd Stone’s lyrics in the hymn “A Song of Peace” remind us, it is all too easy to forget that, “other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”
In this increasingly crowded and complex world, we desperately need to find productive common ground, and our civilization shrinks when we ignore the human connectedness that transcends local affiliations. I can sense incredible opportunities for leaps in human consciousness that are already emerging in this 21st century, but our too-often self-absorbed, violent human nature is certainly an obstacle.
I suspect that if you examine almost any strife-ridden sector of our world, including in the US, you’ll likely find conflict driven, at least in part, by the inability of some people to transcend their individuality and immediate community. Individual egos take control. Threats and insults, perceived and/or real, rise up to obscure the bigger picture of our common humanity. Relationships either get severed or never existed in the first place, which exacerbates the tension and allows a sense of separation to dominate. The “other,” then, can be easily dismissed and demonized. This is the familiar storyline in almost every war, large and small.
And religion, of course, is frequently a large player in such a scenario. If your God is absolutely sectarian—promoting your religion’s interests over others—you can be led to do horribly destructive things in the name of that individual God. Rigid dogma seems to intentionally prevent its followers from acknowledging the validity of other theologies.
How much greater the odds for at least peaceful coexistence if there were a willingness everywhere to see that even if another culture understands the divine differently, it is a parallel construction of transcendent meaning—not necessarily better or worse, just another way to do the same, unifying thing, which humans have been doing since the beginning of consciousness.
But we often forget and neglect the broader levels of transcendence that can unite us across narrow, near-sighted boundaries. Sometimes our language gets in the way. The name God, for instance, is just not big enough to encompass the full, transcendent creativity of the Universe, and its exclusive use just does not allow “religious integrity for everyone.” Fred Campbell suggests that “God” could usefully be replaced by “transcend-dence.” I think the ancient Hebrews had the right idea when they refused to specify any name for what is essentially ineffable, indescribable.
“Religious integrity for everyone,” points, I think, accurately toward peace. But it is, of course, the standard liberal position, open-minded and willing to meet others halfway. How often do we get our outstretched hand slapped by those more interested in separation from and power over anyone who doesn’t believe the way they do?
I’ve done enough interfaith dancing to see that the partners most willing to share the dance floor with me are usually the least dogmatic of the pool of religious leaders out there. The diverse and often challenging music we can hear in common seems to drive away others who are only comfortable if their particular theme song is playing.
How, you might well ask, can we individual religious liberals participate in a grand scenario toward a greater peace? I have two suggestions:
First of all, we must hold our own elected leaders accountable to the ideal and heritage of compromise amid diversity. Unilateral belligerence, if it was ever appropriate, is certainly an untenable activity today, and some people need help realizing this. Those of us in the US can appeal to the example of our own American history. We liberals need not cede one iota of patriotic ground when we call for political proportion and peace-mongering. Our collective 21st century well-being just cannot afford the crippling costs of diplomacy that leads with a fist.
Even as we might endeavor to transcend individual egos, our individual voices matter, and can urge a broader perspective on leaders and neighbors alike. Find your voice and sing out a “song of peace for lands afar and mine.” Cross-cultural collaboration is demanding, but we can see all too clearly what the alternative brings.
And secondly, let me suggest that the “spiritual spaciousness” of our broader religious landscape is a reflection of the spiritual spaciousness inside each of us. Do you feel like you have enough room inside you to at least acknowledge other religious perspectives that do not come easily or naturally to you? Can you take to heart the diversity within your own local groups, let alone the growing diversity in your region and the country/planet?
This is a 21st century challenge before us: to internalize our vaunted principles so they are more than lip service, so that they are modeled by our consistent behavior, behavior that bespeaks peace. To the extent that we can move our culture forward in ways that honor the individual, but also transcend our very human egos and seek commonality, we will be ambassadors of peace, locally and globally.
Take a deep breath, and another, and imagine that with each such breath, you can intentionally expand your inner boundaries and create a growing capacity for spiritual spaciousness, an internal engine of loving spirit that contributes your life energy to the greater goal “of peace for their land and for mine.”
The circle of mutual creativity grows with our increasing centeredness, as we both locate ourselves in the larger transcendence of an interconnected world and take that experience to heart. Let us strive to be as aware of our transcendence as that notable Buddhist monk ordering a hot dog—“Make me one with everything.”
Let our next steps bring us closer to each other and to the goal of religious integrity for everyone.
- Resilience as a Spiritual Strength - September 1, 2017
- The Transcendent Within - June 1, 2012
