The Spiritual Practice of Agnosticism
Wolf!
The Aesop fable about the boy who cried wolf has long been viewed as a cautionary tale about lying. The boy knowingly cried “wolf!” merely to disturb the villagers. The boy eventually pays the price in dead sheep when the villagers stop responding.
There is another and more dangerous way of crying wolf, however: continually calling “wolf!” because there might be one but there might not.
In this way of crying wolf, the boy is expressing his fears—his own psychodrama. He may even be utterly convinced that a wolf is threatening and nearby. He may even be imagining what a wolf attack might look like. Still, despite the boy’s true alarm, there is no wolf, and the villagers are wasting their time running to help the boy. Wasting time that would be better taken with other ventures.
It’s Not About Not Deciding
As an agnostic, I’m very aware that we agnostics are often seen as fence-sitters—the tepid ones choosing neither hot nor cold. Why can’t we just buck up and admit that we’re atheists? Or why can’t we admit that we have a soft spot for one god or another? Why can’t we just cry wolf or shut up?
Contrary to the cliche, agnosticism isn’t about not deciding. It’s about honestly facing what we know about knowing itself. It is, as the Victorian biologist, T.H. Huxley, who coined the term, said, “not a creed but a method.” (Athiesm is a creed because it is a belief, like theism.)
Agnosticism is a method that is, I believe, a spiritual practice like Christian Centering Prayer or Buddhist meditation.
When Huxley first used the word in print in 1889, he contrasted his confidence in human knowledge with that of the convinced believers. He said,
They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis”—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of “agnostic.” It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic” of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.
Knowing and Thinking We Know
Gnostic in Greek means “knowledge.” In the Western world we know the term best from the early Christian movement called Gnosticism, which claimed esoteric knowledge of the workings of the universe. Such knowledge, Huxley pointed out, can be neither proven nor disproven. The Gnostics claimed to have “solved the problem of existence.” Huxley, however, wasn’t so sure of their untestable opinions. (Neither, it might be mentioned, was the Church so sure of their solution.)
In other words, Gnosticism wasn’t about knowing, it was about belief. Agnosticism is about how and what we know.
Boiled down to its simplest formulation, the way of agnosticism according to Huxley is: “do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”
No matter how convinced you are that the wolf is near, don’t cry wolf until you see one.
This is not fence-sitting or vacillation. It is, rather, a commitment to the active search for what we can know. In this way it is much like the spiritual practice of via negativa, a method of removing those things that are not “god” in order to discover god.
Huxley, however, saw his method as a positive rather than negative path. He wrote:
. . . Agnosticism is not properly described as a “negative” creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. That is what agnosticism asserts and, in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism. (“Agnosticism and Christianity”)
It’s About the Questions
Huxley made it very clear that scientific materialists don’t have the answers either. No one does. All of us find ourselves improvising with as much information as we can scramble together—as have all people for all of human history. Agnostics are committed, however, to the common human project of learning more and more. Of knowing what is actually here, not what we only imagine. This commitment requires us to have active minds engaged in continual searching.
As psychologist Ellen J. Langer puts it in her book Mindfulness, “Just as mindlessness is the rigid reliance on old categories, mindfulness means the continual creation of new ones.”
The method of agnosticism is a way of being mindful. A way of being in the present moment and making that moment an open and creative matrix.
Agnosticism is a commitment to only crying “wolf!” when such a cry will do real good.
The Rise of the Totally Awesome ‘Whatever’ God
“Moralistic therapeutic deism.” That’s the term sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton coined to describe the religious beliefs of the average North American. Rev. Robert Vinciguerra calls it “egonovism,” a neologism constructed of “ego” and “novo,” new. Rev. Rob claims that most Americans are Egonovists, even though most don’t know it.
http://revrob.com/society-topmenu-49/223-continued-observations-on-the-egonovism-of-american-society-and-dialogs-with-egonovists
Why are they saying such things? Here’s one reason: Something on the order of 80% of Americans claim to be Christian, but 25% of Americans believe in reincarnation and 20% believe in karma, decidedly UN-Christian concepts. Such statistics tell us that Americans have gone way beyond “cafeteria Christianity” in our “spiritual but not religious” zeitgeist.
A Wikipedia article summarizes the beliefs of moralistic therapeutic deism:
1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human
life on earth.
(NB: This point alone disqualifies the system as “deist.” Deists believe there
was a god who was the prime mover at the beginning of the universe,
but that god is now hands-off.)
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the
Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
(Rather a far cry from that old Christian hymn that intoned “such a worm as I.”)
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when
God is needed to resolve a problem.
(Apparently Jesus was confused about that numbering the hairs on the head thing.)
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism
Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Which is the first tip-off that something may be wrong here. How likely is it that the same god who smote the Egyptians is cool with whatever . . . and shoveling out favors?
Doesn’t this list sound like wish-fulfillment at its best—an ATM god who awaits our every whim and clearly loves the wealthy more than the poor, underwriting an unjust economic and social system that happens to be handing out bennies to lucky me.
And, while this god is reloading the ATM, I’m free to do as I like . . . as long as I’m nice.
As Rev. Bob’s “ego” in Egonovist points out, this theology has an “I” problem, doesn’t it? Whoever “I” am and whatever I’m doing is just fine with this god.
Past the Smiting
If you have read this far, it’s not likely you are a Moralistic Therapeutic Deist or even a Deistic Moral Relativist. After all, an Egonovist won’t be convinced by logic or reference to theology at all, because an important aspect of Egonovism is that it requires no pondering. No daily devotion. No sacrifice. The Egonovist god merely sits . . . or waits . . . somewhere, ready to dish out bennies to me.
None of that “straight is the gate and narrow is the way” stuff.
Sorry to sound like a Calvinist or something but am I the only one who’d like to see Jesus make himself a “whip made of cords” and do clearing of the temple here?
No, the moneychangers aren’t going to be getting their tables kicked by the Egonovists.
The admission price to Egonovism is self-satisfaction and good ol’ fashion hypocrisy.
How Likely Is That?
Don’t get me wrong: I think the moral theistic deist deity is as likely as any of the other gods human beings have thought up over time. Yet, I’m convinced that the point of religions is—and has always been—to stretch us, to call us to higher purposes than our basic lazy, selfish primate selves. Sure, religions also give teeth to social norms and underwrite whatever taboos a particular society has. Still, I can’t help thinking the various gods who have asked for a little effort have played some positive role in human affairs.
The Egonovist god, no so much.
Makes me glad I’m a humanist!
http://ferrelljenkins.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/balage_jesus_and_the_money_changers-t1.jpg
http://ferrelljenkins.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/balage_jesus_and_the_money_changers-t1.jpg
Spiritual but not Superstitious (Mystical Without the Mumbling)
“Spirituality” is emotion. Sometimes the spiritual emotion springs from a consciously adopted attitude toward the world we see around us. Sometimes it hits us unexpectedly. A “spiritual experience” can be anything from the warm-fuzzy feeling we get singing a song we love to the inexpressible “mystical” experience of feeling one with all that is.
Both great feelings. But not mysterious. Psychologist Daniel Khaneman in his groundbreaking book Thinking, Fast and Slow outlines how the head/heart and body/soul distinction actually functions. Fast thinking, which Khaneman calls System One, is our fight or flight selves. The visceral reaction. Slow thinking, System Two, is our reason and problem-solving abilities. We don’t think about System One. System Two takes discipline.
As we learn more about these systems, we see more clearly what techniques and technologies best trigger responses. For example, when the rhythm of the music reaches about 120 beats per minute—the average heart rate for mild exertion—we feel like dancin’.
For my money the most insightful writer on the subject of spirituality and mysticism is Jiddu Krishnamurti. Born into British-occupied India, a young Krishnamurti was taken under the wing of the Theosophists and trained in that mystical tradition. The Theosophists thought Krishnamurti would be the great “World Teacher” that they predicted would come to earth.
Krishnamurti eventually renounced Theosophy but did indeed become a great teacher, a synthesizer of spiritual and religious thinking from all over the world.
One of Krishnamurti’s gifts was a keen BS detector. Therefore, when Krishnamurti talks about spirituality and mysticism, I listen.
His key insight goes like this: “It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact.”
Listening without preconception; without judgment; without the interference of ego; listening in order to hear, to experience—right now, with as little of the usual interference as possible. Unmediated experience. This listening pushes System Two down into System One.
This sort of listening requires presence in the moment. It requires us to be in the place of the breath and that mental space that is at once maximum concentration and maximum surrender. This experience may be achieved by various techniques, from mediation to fasting to merely looking up at the stars.
From the Centering Prayer of Christianity to Buddhist zazen to the various yogas, human beings have developed techniques for getting to this space. Since these techniques are designed to dampen System Two and trigger System One, they feel visceral, spiritual.
Woo Without the Woo Woo
“Mysticism” is a technique aimed at achieving a “mystical experience.” Again, this experience is a feature of brain function and has little to do with specific religious or philosophical practices, except insofar as all religions aim for the experience and have techniques for achieving it.
Some traditions are overt about it—Sufism, for example. Shamanistic practice. Transcendentalism.
Take, for instance this passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden:
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
The transcendental experience is being awake in the here and now.
It’s All About the Flow
Since spiritual and mystical experiences are a feature of brain chemistry, not specific religions, atheists and agnostics have no particular reason to poo-poo the idea. As a matter of fact, mystical experience doesn’t need a religious component at all, as demonstrated by the work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who introduced the notion of “flow” experience. Csikszentmihalyi found “flow” in experiences as diverse as sports and video gaming. He lists the elements likely to bring on flow experiences:
1. intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. merging of action and awareness
3. a loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. a distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time
is altered
6. experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as
autotelic experience
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
A flow experience sounds like a “mystical” experience, doesn’t it? Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Sounds “spiritual.”
There’s nothing mysterious about mystical experience. You can put yourself in the way of the flow experience by following very simple (and secular!) procedures.
The Extraordinary Is All About the Ordinary
I’m a writer. I’ve been writing for years. I learned early-on that if I was going to get writing done, I had to do it every day. As part of my daily routine. So, I get up early every morning, make coffee, and sit down to write. And write. And write. Writing is my spiritual practice.
Sometimes, everything clicks and I go into the flow experience. The mystical experience. Sometimes not.
Since I was trained in writing by Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, I took up Buddhist meditation as a daily practice too. This was part of the “mindfulness” that the writers who became Buddhists in the 1950s thought contributed to honest and deep writing. They passed that on to me.
Over the years, I have discovered that meditation and writing have the same effect: They bring my mind into the present moment. Remember Thoreau’s words:
I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment.
When we are not living in the present moment, we are living in memory or fantasy. We are out of touch with what is. We are kicked back and using System Two. And we are a long way from a spiritual experience!
There’s nothing mysterious about the mystical. Spirituality is a feeling. We don’t have to buy what particular religions are selling to access these feelings. It’s all in our heads.
House on Fire: Church Attendance in the US
There it is, yet another study indicating that the number of American Christians who attend churches regularly has dropped yet again. (see link below) Currently the number of those who attend church once a month or more has dropped to something on the order of eighteen percent, less than half of the number who claim to have attended church within the past month.
Pastors themselves report that roughly half of the members on their congregational rolls show up only on holidays, if then.
If current trends continue, by 2050 the number of Americans attending church at least once a month will be something on the order of ten percent.
The new studies, by separating the facts from the fiction of attendance, show that attendance numbers in the US track closely with the downward trend in church attendance in Europe.
The difference lies in the percentage of the population who claim to be Christian. In Europe, more of those who don’t attend church also drop the identification as Christian (Europeans also tell the truth about their church attendance). In the US, this is not as of yet the case.
Why don’t most Christians go to church? There are many and sundry reasons, but I suspect most of them boil down to one essential: most American Christians no longer find church compelling. Churches are not providing what people need.
Yes, the building is on fire.
Bread and Circuses and Beyond
What do the people want and need? The usual answer—bread and circuses—is partially true. The greatest loss in attendance has occurred in congregations of between 100-299 members. Since the median size of a US congregation is 125, this is bad news for those average or below.
Larger congregations provide more in the way of bread and circuses.
Younger people, however, are asking for more than a good show. Many say they hanker for a “deeper relationship with Jesus.” If I’m reading between the lines correctly, this is, at least in part, a dismissal of the liturgical styles that have been practiced—more or less unchanged—for years.
Indeed, nearly twenty-five percent of the people who attend church anywhere near regularly meet in some permutation of a small group. Let’s read that as “I need connection.”
Beyond this, many congregations are reaching out into the communities where they find themselves. Apparently many people today find that a “deeper relationship with Jesus” has to do with healing their local communities. This “walking the walk” is a sea change in American religious practice.
Christianity and Beyond
All this said, I am the minister of an overtly and predominantly humanist congregation. Some of the people who gather in my congregation seek a deeper relationship with Jesus, but most think that’s about as likely as a deeper relationship with Albert Einstein. The people who come to my congregation are largely post-Christian.
They are, however, part of this change in thinking in the larger society. Humanists are looking for exactly the same thing as those seeking out cutting edge Christian congregations: more connection and more service.
We humanists are able, however, to go a step further, jettisoning the tired language of liturgy altogether. “Benediction” is a very odd word, isn’t it? It’s barely English and it has meaning mostly from its churchy trappings. Many Unitarian Universalist congregations hold to these words, sometimes called the “language of reverence,” tenaciously. The numbers tell us that’s a bad idea.
Why do congregations that are purportedly open the ideas outside Christendom using old Christian language? I suspect it’s because the people who care enough about their congregations to become leaders have a warm and fuzzy connection to such language. They are, in other words, inherently conservative.
But the numbers don’t lie: most Americans, even the Christian ones, don’t find liturgical language compelling enough to put down the newspaper or the joystick long enough to attend church.
People today are looking for connection and service. They want to gather together and heal our broken world. The don’t want the same ‘ol same ‘ol.
The building is burning. Even those who remain Christian are fleeing. And those who wish to explore other paths?
Well, I can send you the address of my church . . .
Martian Sleeper Cells and A-Model Tism
Since I’m both a minister and a humanist, I’m asked—often in rather shocked terms—if I am an atheist. Many humanists use that label as a way to use a description that is positive rather than negative. After all, being labeled an a-theist implies that theism is somehow normative and that being outside that norm is an important qualifier. I don’t identify as an atheist. I’m a post-theist.
Here’s an analogy to clarify what I’m thinking: I recently bought a new Ford truck. I bought a Ford because it’s good, solid, relatively efficient transportation. I also bought it because I have fond memories of Ford trucks—both my grandfathers had Ford trucks when I was a kid. Both had started buying Fords with the Model T.
I bought a new Ford truck, not a Model T. Why? Because a Model T, even though it revolutionized the automobile industry, is no longer an efficient mode of transportation in the contemporary world.
Does that mean that I don’t “believe” in the Model T? Am I an a-Model-T-ist? Not at all. I’m a post-Model T-ist. I have no doubt that my new Ford truck is built upon knowledge gained in the manufacture of Model Ts. The Ford I drive today could not exist as it does without the Model T.
This is how I view “god.” It’s not that I don’t believe in the god concept. It’s that I don’t think the concept is good transportation in our contemporary context.
Yet, my analogy also “proves” just the opposite of my point, doesn’t it? Because we could also say that my Ford truck is merely the latest version of the Model T, isn’t it?
I’m not an a-theist. Nor am I an a-Model-T-ist.
Then there are always Subarus . . .
Philosophers Know What They Need
The story goes that a rich man asked the Greek philosopher Diogenes why it was that rich men do not follow philosophers but philosophers follow rich men. Diogenes replied, “Because philosophers know what they need; the rich do not.”
What I know for sure is that we human beings need meaning and purpose in our lives. The question is where and how to find meaning and purpose. For me, a poet, meaning is generated in the creative act of noticing the moment and using the human creation of language in an attempt to communicate that.
There are other methods.
Let’s consider: what if I decide that life has meaning and purpose because I believe Martians invaded in 1865 and formed a sleeper cell that has now come awake in the guise of a popular reality television show. By watching this TV show, I believe, I receive messages from our Martian overlords, instructions as to what I should do.
Such a belief could without question give my life meaning and purpose. Each commercial break, for example, might indicate by the number of individual commercials how many bridges the Martians wish me to blow up. I have my marching orders; I have meaning and purpose.
That such a belief system gives me meaning and purpose is not debatable. Even that this belief system gives me MORE meaning and purpose than others I might have might be the case.
What IS debatable is whether or not this particular form of meaning and purpose has value to the larger human community. This is the interface between my subjectivity and the objective world of others. Where the rubber meets the road, if you will.
Sure, if every human being on the planet agreed with my belief in a Martian sleeper cell, all of humanity would have meaning and purpose. So. Is mass delusion a positive good? Is it preferable to finding meaning and purpose in a more thoughtful way?
Is delusion “better” than relying upon more reliable methods that perhaps will fail at delivering a common meaning and purpose to large groups of people?
Here’s another thing I think is true: meaning and purpose are human constructs and therefore can be constructed only by human beings. Why ever might we want a god or gods to construct meaning and purpose for us?
It’s also pretty clear from a cursory peek at human history that meaning and purpose take different forms at different times.
Henry Ford didn’t stick with his blockbuster Model T. He didn’t arrogantly insist that what he had already found was successful enough. Instead, Ford shut down his factory and retooled to manufacture the Model A.
It is true that religion and philosophy and art do not “progress” in the same way that automotive design does. Religion and philosophy and art are in in some way timeless, with a good anecdote from some thinker or other proving to be just the ticket for grappling with a contemporary issue. The human need for meaning and purpose remains. Nevertheless, it changes as we adjust to new realities.
The Model T demonstrated the need for paved roads. The multiplicity of human cultures in our shrinking world demands that we build religions and philosophies that will be positive, be roads and bridges, not muddy ditches.
Eleanor Rigby’s Selfie
We learned from the Beatles that Eleanor Rigby “keeps her face in a jar by the door.” Clearly the Fab Four thought that was not a good thing to do. But what were they critiquing? Was it where Eleanor kept her face? Or that she had a “face to meet the faces that we meet” at all? Should we wear the same face all the time? Is one of our faces the “true” one?
Whether or not there’s noise when a tree falls in the forest, a more pertinent question for us is whether or not we have a face, a personality, when no one is around to experience it. This is why Eleanor Rigby’s plight haunts us still. We know she’s out there. We don’t want to become her. We fear that she is faceless. We fear that for ourselves.
Most of us wish perhaps that we were like the stone imagined by Emily Dickinson,
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Perhaps we wish to be,
. . . independent as the Sun
In our hearts, however, we know very well that we are creatures dependent upon others of our kind. And that’s scary.
Interactions Are Us
In the Nineteenth Century, US prisons adopted the practice of solitary confinement, depriving a prisoner of visual stimulation and human contact. At the time, the idea was that a prisoner with some “alone time” would reflect on his or her misdeeds and come out a better person. It was quickly noticed, however, that instead of becoming a moral paragon, prisoners in solitary confinement began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness.
After this discovery, the practice was for the most part discontinued until the late-Twentieth Century, when US prisons began to transition from a rehabilitation model to one of retribution. Now we know that being alone hurts . . . a lot. And that’s why prisons do it. (There are in the US today something on the order of 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement at any given time.)
We people don’t like being alone for extended periods. It drives us crazy. Therefore, when we are alone, those of us not under arrest find ways to simulate human interaction—TV, social media, perhaps even writing a letter. We are social creatures. We need human interaction. We need an excuse to put our faces on.
Skip the Sermon
My father died recently, and my mother found herself alone after sixty-five years of companionship. She wonders aloud: should she give up and leave her face in the jar by the door? Is it disloyal of her not to do so? She no longer feels like Emily Dickinson’s independent little stone. She feels the full weight of dependency.
My prescription for my mother (and Eleanor Rigby) is . . . Go to church! Or bowling. Or a book club. Something. Father McKenzie’s message (or disconnected ramblings about a book) may not be much to text home about, but the coffee, wine, or potluck involved might just be the ticket.
A member of my congregation recently brought me one of those graphics called a bubble cloud, generated by a questionnaire concerning what was important to a Christian congregation near my humanist congregation. The most-used word? “Community.” And the congregation I serve would would have the same big bubble, “community.” In their case “Christ” and in our case “reason” would be tiny little bubbles compared with the true reason we gather as congregations, community.
Human interaction reminds us to pull our faces out of that jar.
Bowling with Father McKenzie
As the Beatles knew, denizens of post-industrial countries may exist in utter isolation. We often shop in anonymous supermarkets rather than bustling markets. We buy clothing off a hanger, not from the source of the craft. As Robert D. Putnam pointed out, many of us bowl alone.
I don’t think any of us has an “authentic” or “true” face. We adjust the faces we pull from the jar according to the circumstances of our interactions. We have a “going to a funeral” face. We have a “going to the theatre” face, and so on. These are constructed in the bustle of human relationships. Without the bustle, we don’t bother. And that’s not good for us.
Perhaps Eleanor—and all the lonely people—should share a selfie. Not a bad first step in getting that face out of the jar by the door and spiffed up a bit. Then? Go to church. Or temple or mosque or . . . a bowling team. Perhaps even chat with Father McKenzie. Who knows what he knows when he’s not pontificating . . .
Keep the Faith
This morning I tended to my garden and that of an elder neighbor. Walking back into my home for a second cup of coffee, I realized that I felt more like a grounded, alive human being than I have in a while. In the past few weeks, the phone has rung repeatedly, bearing news of grief and sorrow or rage at yet another systemic injustice personally harming a beloved. So many people and so many places suffering all at once… And so I have remembered to return to the garden, to keep faith with the source of life, as I continue to live and minister in this beautiful, wounded world.
I hold this sustaing wisdom from Rebecca Parker (Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now) in my heart and I share it with you today.
To keep faith with the source of life, knowing that we are not our own and that Earth made us; to keep faith with the community of resistance, never forgetting that life can be saved from that which threatens it by even small bands of people choosing to put into practice an alternative way of life; and to seek and even deeper awareness of that which springs up inwardly in us. Even when are our hearts are broken by our own failure or the failure of others, even when we have done all we can and life is still broken, there is a universal love that has never broken faith with us and never will.
You are not alone, beloved. Keep the faith. And keep in touch…
Roadmaps for the Soul (or: Hunting, Gathering, Singing)
In “Tombstone Blues,” a song released in 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “The National Bank at a profit sells roadmaps for the soul / To the old folks home and the college.” In the context of the song, Bob clearly doesn’t think this is a good thing. Commodifying the meaning of life?
Yes, well . . .
Suppose for a moment that all the religious and philosophical speculation through time, and all the art and architecture to boot, have been about the same thing as the hunting and the fishing, the gathering and farming. Suppose that all human actions—from the sacred to the profane—have been and are still . . . ways to survive. Ways for us to adapt to our environment and, perhaps, thrive.
Sounds Reasonable, Doesn’t It?
Does such a supposition denigrate—or cheapen—all the blood and tears shed in service to the gods? Or in service to art? I don’t think so.
Is a symphony less because it’s an adaptive trait rather than a window onto absolute truth? What if the search for truth and meaning is itself an adaptive trait—a way of surviving.
Put this way, it’s hard not to say, “well, duh!” Yet we often don’t go quite far enough. Yes, human activities of all sorts are attempts at survival. But if our search for truth and meaning in all its manifestations, from fine art to fine dining to religion, is an adaptive trait, doesn’t it follow that the search for truth and meaning is an entirely human construct? It’s filling a need but has no larger purpose.
It’s Easy If You Try
Like most people, I searched for a “really true truth” for a long time. Hey, I’m a Baby Boomer, it’s what we did. It was a brilliant marketing ploy. Forget the gurus; the tax dollars you lose giving churches tax-exempt status is seventy-one billion dollars a year.
That’s a lot of moolah for Moloch. (And full disclosure: as a minister, I ride that particular gravy train.)
The search for truth and meaning puts a lot of food on the table and a lot of money into retirement accounts for various sorts of people. No, this isn’t about tax exemptions. It’s about the price we are willing to pay purveyors of truth and meaning. After all, yoga alone is a twenty-seven billion dollar a year industry.
The Fine Print
We pay a lot for truth and meaning, in bookstores, museums, churches, and storefront meditation centers. To repeat, I think that’s great. It’s an adaptive trait. Yet, it’s good remember that there is no one truth to find.
This particular survival trait only becomes problematic when we fall into the trap of thinking there’s a truth out there to find. It’s problematic when we begin paying a high price for one particular roadmap for the soul, or when those around us begin paying too high a price.
Until someone gets hurt.
Yes, it’s the search itself that is the answer. Not the answers. Or the roadmaps.
Making Sense of Life (or: Three Decorating Ideas for the Mind)
Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.” At first glance, this perhaps sounds like a Disneyesque reflection on the uses of a hearty imaginal life. Or—since Stevens was a poet—a reflection on the power of metaphor to set solid things flying.
At second glance—since Stevens was both a poet and an atheist—perhaps it is a reflection on what he saw as the most fruitful power in the universe—the human mind’s power to construct meaning as we go along in an otherwise material and un-human universe.
Most likely, Stevens meant all these things and more. After all, his poems sport beautiful and improbable and impermanent “furniture” such as peacocks, round jars in Tennessee, and Emperors of Ice-Cream. Stevens also wrote of “the palm at the end of the mind.” Yes, the palm is a tropical tree. It is also the human hand, our hands. We ourselves are the end of meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called meaning, at least something called “human meaning.”
Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? “It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room,” Stevens wrote, “with something more than furniture.” And it is only one’s thoughts that fill a universe full of furniture with meaning.
Religions (and the lack thereof) reflect the values of the cultures in which they develop. Religions (and their lack) serve as both a reflection of the aspirations of particular groups and also as guides for individuals within a group when we may be in doubt concerning what our culture and our religious belief or non-belief requires of us. They also fill the room with more than furniture. They help us make sense of our lives.
Pragmatist philosophers claim that labeling one “truth” as “false” and another as “true” doesn’t reveal much. It is more useful to see all views—religious and otherwise—as devices to get results. After all, if beliefs did not get results, they would not survive the test of time. The question—at least for those who are free enough of theocracy to have a choice—is which of the many ways of seeing produce the most desirable results,which make the most sense our of life.
Is it somehow useful for making sense of life, for instance, to believe that Fridays which fall on the 13th of the month have special properties?
Over time human beings have posited two very different views of how the world works. One view is that the order we see is the order that is: sure, we will keep discovering more and more about that order, but it’s all out there to observe, albeit some of it observable only with a large hadron collider.
The opposite view (the opposite “truth”) is that there is a higher order not discoverable by observation. This is usually accompanied by speculation concerning a god or gods, though it doesn’t have to. (For example, the Renaissance-era belief in alchemy did not require gods in order to function, even though that belief system existed in parallel to Christianity. )
These polar opposites are not always opposite in practice. Many otherwise “materialist” people leave room for “powers unseen,” as the Book of Common Prayer would have it. Be that as it may, there is a great gulf fixed between those who trust observation to reveal “truth” and those who depend up the revelation of sacred texts and seers of various sorts, be they prophets or gurus.
Wallace Stevens was on the side of observation. He found the most reliable way to get results was to posit a lack of meaning (at least human meaning) beyond the human mind.
Is there a difference between the words of Moses and the words of Wallace Stevens? Stevens thought not. Sure, some poets and some poems are better at filling rooms with more than furniture, and large hadron colliders can rewrite all we know about the room and the furniture. Yet, in essence, it’s all about the human imagination. It’s up to us to animate the room with sense and meaning.
We ourselves are the end of (human) meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called (human) meaning. Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? For some of us “truth” is our way of animating the furniture, and we assume our sense is not the sense of another. It is an entertaining place to live.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palm_tree_symbol.svg
As Stevens put it,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
Love is the Boss of Me
Recently an organizer asked for a meeting and I went to pull out my phone to check my calendar. “My calendar is the boss of me,” I joked. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. And in that nothing I heard the strangeness, the madness of what I had just said.
I am not sure what she was thinking, but here is what I have been thinking since that awkward moment. A calendar serves as the representation of and reminder about the commitments I have made for and with my life energy, with my love. Just as a glance at your checkbook or credit card statement can give you insight into where you commit your financial energy, a calendar can be a window of insight into life values.
What a calendar probably should not be, and should not be thought of as, is the boss. Just as my checkbook and my credit card – while requiring true mindfulness – should not be the boss of me. I do not serve as a minister in the name of a calendar or a bank account. Those are important tools for sustaining my ministry, no doubt. They cannot be the source of my call.
I serve in the name of love. Love for the world that is and the world that can be. Love for the wonder of creation and respect of destruction. Love for a faith community that meets us where we are and doesn’t leave us there. Love for you. Love for me.
It is easy in the days of overloaded calendars and underloaded bank accounts to forget. And it absolutely matters that we remember.
In 1951, Universalist mister Albert Ziegler wrote: “It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.”
Clearly, it is time for me to remember that love, not a calendar, is the boss of me.
Our Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations will be gathering in Providence, Rhode Island beginning June 25th for General Assembly, the annual meeting of UUs from around the world, with the theme “Love Reaches Out,” inviting congregations to reach out beyond their walls and to engage in new ways of sharing faith.
In the free church tradition of Unitarian Universalism, “we do not just go to church, we are the church.” Beloved, this faith is called to live in the name of love. Let us commit ourselves anew to this call. In the immortal words of poet Maya Angelou, “I know for sure that love saves me and that it is here to save us all.”
