Naming the Ultimate, Part Two
A quick peek at www.godchecker.com gives some indication of the sheer number of times humanity has attempted to name The Ultimate.
At this point philosophers–and even most theologians–have given up on a proof of god and left the battlefield. For some, a god or gods is there, for others, not so much. We can debate the existence of a god or gods, but finally all we are debating is a subjective feeling, and the argument boils down to pretty much the same thing as arguing over whether a particular dish is too salty or too sweet. It’s subjective.
So, for much of humanity, belief in a deity or deities is like a taste for boiled shrimp: some are born loving them, some are born hating them, and some acquire a taste or lose the taste along the way.
What indubitably is here, there, and everywhere, is the universe that surrounds us—the whole enchilada—“everything that is, seen and unseen,” as the Book of Common Prayer would have it.
Of this thing we can say that everywhere is the center; nowhere is the center. Of this thing we can say that it is expanding, ever faster. We can call it the universe. The multi-verse. The Whole Enchilada. Yet, ultimately, we can be assured that this everything is one big something. And it’s a huge and marvelous mystery.
This everything is One, as the Hindus and the Buddhists would have it. This everything is The Way, as the Taoists would term it. Remember those words from the Ashtavakra Gita:
One believes in existence;
Another says, “There is nothing!”
Rare is the one who believes in neither.
That one is free from confusion.
This wholeness, in all its mystery and contradiction, has been a tough thing to grasp for the Western brain. Though the idea of the oneness and wholeness of all existence is at least six thousand years old in Hindu thought, we Westerners have built our cosmology and our language around polarities such as black and white, up and down, in and out, I and other, existence and non-existence, secular and religious.
In the West, the earth sat on pillars; had corners; and heaven was up there, hell down there. Our spirits went to those places. Our gods and demons lived in those places.
It’s not easy to get outside those understandings. Often we can’t, except by logic, with some anti-logic thrown in, and hard work. Or in those rare, amazing mystical moments when all feels like one and everything is A-OK. In our everyday lives, the earth sits, rock solid, and the sun and moon go up and down.
Yet none of this is “true.” We Westerners often think that thought is the only way to truth. And it is, for some forms of truth. Yet that sort of truth leads us to being “lost in our forehead,” as Hindus put it. “All up in our head.”
We can enter the space of oneness only by thought, then the letting go of thought. Why do something so foreign? Hang on. I hope to show you why . . .
Naming the Ultimate, Part One
I suspect that we think about the ultimate because we can’t manage to see ourselves as ultimate. Or infinite. Or eternal. Or all-knowing. And that hurts! It hurts to be a too, too solid, limited, fragile creature.
So, we think about the Spirit of Life. God. The gods. The Ultimate Concern.
Search the internet for the names of God. Besides the ninety-nine that Sufis chant, just start with “A” and work through time and geography. Or read Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods. I’ll bet you don’t know them all! Furthermore, you probably only believe in one or two or five at the most.
Always, human beings have pinned names on the absolute.
We call those who do not believe in the gods not a word of their own choosing but “a-theist.” Everyone is defined by the naming of the ultimate. We human beings take this quite seriously.
Alan Watts called this ultimate thing, “the which of which there is no whicher.” That about sums up the idea, doesn’t it?
Inevitably, with the naming comes the assignment of attributes: “Omnipotent.” “Omnipresent.” “Omniscient.” I learned to chant these long, hard words as a child in Sunday school. It’s what God was— Everything. Everywhere. All the time . . .
Walking to school? Yes! In the bathroom? Yes! Watching dad working at the factory? Yes!
The thought was reassuring. And frightening. And threatening. This was the Big Guy in the Sky, who had walloped the world in a flood and made Noah a sailor. The Big Guy who waxed the Egyptian kids and drowned—again with the drowning!—hard-hearted Pharaoh’s army.
This was the Big Guy who would wipe out the world with fire next time. And He really, really didn’t like human nature.
“But wait!” I said. “What about . . .” And so it went, ‘round and ‘round in my little primate brain. I was wrestling with the which of which . . .
Naming the ultimate. Assigning attributes to the absolute.
“The which of which there is no whicher.”
Always this ultimate was about what we—poor farmers in the Midwestern United States—weren’t. And this exhausts at least one avenue of inquiry: we limited creatures want some “whicher” out there that keeps an eye on the (clearly dangerous) machinery of the universe.
But then my little primate brain realized just how blatant a case of wish-fulfillment this was. And so off I went, searching for another “which.” About that . . . next week.
Apophatic Project
How to say she would
run the horse beneath
the low branches of
the Thorny Locust
until she fell off?
How to explain she
planned to build fires
until the most concrete
of bridges fell to embers?
How to say she would
wander across whatever
border until every shape
wore a foreign costume?
How to explain
breaking every tool
she so expertly
wielded, until syllables
stuttered unintelligible
screeds and jokes?
How to say it’s about
burning. About riding
through low branches
until ends become
completions; going
on until she hears
the trees laughing.
For So the Children Come
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
On November 12th of this year, three congregations co-ordained me, giving me a new name – Reverend Deanna Vandiver. On the morning of December 21st, Katherine Grace was born and I received another name – Aunt De!
Beloveds, that every child born could arrive so loved, so cared for as my beautiful niece, baby Kate… For so the children come into this world, into our lives, and we – we are called to love them enough to begin what Howard Thurman called the work of Christmas: “finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, releasing prisoners, rebuilding nations, making peace among brothers [and sisters], making music in the heart.”
There is no such thing as “somebody else’s baby.” They are all our children, our beloved miracles of life to care for, to care about, and to commit to healing a broken world so that they may not suffer unnecessarily. As our nation grieves the death of the slain children in Newtown, CT, we are deeply aware of our accountability for their lives and the lives of all children who are harmed by violence and the devaluation of life.
Unitarian Universalist theology tells us that we are a part of an interconnected web of creation, related to and in relationship with each thread of creation. Our society tells us that we are isolated individuals, worth only what we can produce or inherit, and that violence is a credible response to violence. We tenders of the web of life know that violence increases alienation & fear, hides the connections we have to each other, allows us to become numb to the miracle of life, to the wonders of this universe.
My mother has a calendar of days in her bathroom. On the day my niece was born, the wisdom of the calendar instructed “Give people a piece of your heart, instead of a piece of your mind.” Navigating the dynamics of multiple families, hospital policies, and fear for my baby sister’s health with very little sleep, that nugget of wisdom was salvific for me. Life lived from a place of gratitude and wonder is very different from a life lived from a place of ingratitude, anger, and fear.
We who grieve the beloveds of Sandy Hook Elementary are also called to grieve the 800 “civilian casualties” of our country’s drone strikes in Pakistan in the last four years, for the children who are caught in cross-fire in our urban centers, for every child who has lost a parent in the endless US military actions. We understand that we are not called to stand on the side of love for some children. We are called to stand on the side of love for all children. No matter what we think about their choices, their policies, or their cultures, our hearts are called to honor the inherent worth and dignity of all creation.
Beloveds, each child that’s born is a holy child. You are a miracle. So is your neighbor. As we swim through the ocean of the universe, may we remember this wisdom born of a child called Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself – and beloveds, love yourself – because if you cannot have compassion for the spark of creation that is your being, you will be able to deny compassion to other sparks of creation.
Give yourself and your neighbor a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind. See how quickly this begins the work of Christmas…
For so the children come, and so they have been coming for thousands of years…may each child born find peace and love in our hearts and good will toward all of creation as we commit to doing the work of Christmas.
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
Being Good for Nothing
I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything. But letting these things slide is, shall we say, not my strong suit. So when a Facebook friend posted a picture of a gun mounted under a car’s steering 
wheel with a caption about it being an “an anti-carjacking device,” accompanied by her wish that this were legal, I just had to put in my $.02 worth. I suggested that, given the prevalence of road rage, maybe more guns in cars might not be such a good thing. Only maybe there was the tiniest bit of sarcastic edge to the way I phrased it.
And, as these Facebook conversations go, someone else responded: “Wouldn’t you be more polite if you knew everyone else had a gun?” I don’t know whether the conversation got more serious for the other folks viewing the exchange at that point, but it certainly did for me. We had just entered the realm of religion. Here’s the thing. No, I’m not polite because I’m afraid of people around me with guns. I’m polite (at least I’m generally polite) because I just think people should be nice to one another. I’m happier, they’re happier, the world in general is happier if people are nice to one another. It’s a basic religious principle. Like, you know, the Golden Rule.
But there are plenty of folks in the world who believe that we need the guns in order to make people behave. Deterrence is at the heart of their theology. They figure that the sure knowledge of hellfire and damnation is the only thing that can keep people on the straight and narrow. Without the threat of hell, surely utter licentiousness would prevail and we would be sucked down into a whirlpool of degradation.
It’s a point of view to which they are entitled, but a) there’s no particular evidence that the threat of guns or the threat of hell actually makes people behave better on the average and b) really, how depressing can you get? Would you rather live in a world in which people are polite out of terror for their lives or souls, or would you rather be part of a community of people who cared for one another because love is the great sustaining principle? Isn’t it better, really, to be “good for nothing,” to be good without hope of reward or punishment other than the pleasure of doing what is right, kind, honoring of our connections?
Sure, there are people who do terrible things, who break the bonds of community in devastating ways. Carjackings do happen. But is the world a better place when we assume that any person on the corner is a potential threat, or if we assume that the folks we see outside our windows are neighbors, human beings with worth and dignity equal to our own? Which perspective is likely to make you feel safe? Which perspective is likely to bring you joy? Which perspective is one worthy of sitting at the heart of your religion? Me, I’ll go with the love every time.