Category Archives: Spiritual

living words from brokenness

music moving through, stillness, a radiant intensity

feeling and seeing and knowing, words failing for their feeble smallness, words longing for living wholeness, for beginning again at the very beginning, before the ancient, fractured brokenness

feeling and seeing and knowing, broken words failing, only stillness remains

feeling and seeing and knowing, light shines through the brokenness

words fail, brokenness opens, a Word shines through

a word encompasses, is mind, body, and soul, integrates the universe

quietness overflows

brokenness transmuted into light

healing words, born again through brokenness, light shining through brokenness, brokenness singing radiant, living, infinite stillness into being

light shinning through brokenness, Life speaking new words released by brokenness

feeling and seeing and knowing

you become the words, singing again, whole again, speaking life again

you become that perfect language

for in our healing, He redeems the universe

Dirt, Gems and the Web of Everything

Transcending the impulse to run away from heresy, eccentricity, and other forms of the rejection of tribalism, yet resisting the opposing, unwise impatience ready to disrupt everything all the time, we can begin to explore and see with a clarity open only to those willing to choose the narrow way.

The mistakes of assuming that what is tells us what could be, that what we can see is what there is, and that truth is something that can be comprehended or encompassed by finite ideas and visions, block us from seeing the infinity open to us in and out of time.

These mistakes block us from seeing humanity from the perspective of what could be.

Believing the self-fulfilling prophecies of scarcity and elitism, which in turn support and promote the foundational ecosystem of fear and greed, we cannot see the misconceptions woven into phrases (and the use of phrases) such as “as common as dirt” and “rare genius”.

The only sound approach to seeing through established illusions, is spiritual in nature and therefore incomprehensible to those that reject the fundamentally spiritual nature of the universe. Yet there are clues visible to everyone, independent of their position on these deeper things, clues in the form of people who exhibit transcendent love and a capacity for healing.

Ultimately, it is the life and death of Jesus, God in human form, that settles every question, that heals all problems, that swallows up all death. Unfortunately, the Christian forms in which “the cross” is adored and worshiped are an empty and impoverished shadow of the living reality that defies containment in anything finite in time or space. And it must defy containment,  for this resolution, this transcendent singularity, this ending and beginning centermost to the “things the angels desire to look into”, is the key to all the deepest mysteries.

To believe that every human being truly contains a brilliant gem, a talent capable of an intense, unique,  inexhaustible contribution is a truly radical belief. It too flows from that singularity, from that life that opened infinity to man.

But to those that actually embrace this, who are “all in” to the vision making sense of this position, it is also part of a resolution of mysteries besetting anyone who observes honestly.

For the world is too full of extreme evil for anything less that a transcendent singularity to resolve. And only in that resolution can the vision for what could be (what is, in the potential sense), be harmonized with what is (in the immediate sense).

Returning to the phrases “as common as dirt” (and the associated phrase “rare gem”), and “rare genius”, closer examination shows that these actually, already nudge us towards a much more fantastic, rather radical vision of what could be.

For example, it is well known that the rarity of (and prices of) diamonds on earth is artificially inflated by the greed of those that have explored and mined them. Off the earth, it is known, for example, that there is a burned out star (a white dwarf) in Centaurus that has crystalized into a diamond 2500 miles in diameter!

Fertile, living dirt is anything but simple and common, in the sense of unremarkable and comprehensible. Instead the complexity and wonder present in a handful of dirt defies complete description, as it is truly the mother of all living things and complex in the extreme. “Rare genius” is of course just a codification of the illusion that extreme talent is rare due to the fact that the greed and fear overwhelming the world also succeeds in squashing all but a tiny fraction of human potential.

Yet, in the present reality, as experienced by the vast majority of people, the chance to follow their intrinsic muse, to develop the potential they hold, seems far-fetched. It might be considered cruel to suggest that things could be different. Yet I am convinced that the simple truth of what is possible is a great gift, having in itself the power to unleash intense power and light. It is an idea that once grasped could change everything.

I believe it was and is at the core of what Jesus taught.

As a result, I no longer find it very interesting to see talent that has been deeply developed as something to admire … at its best, such development is a call to “go and do likewise”. It tells us what can be, in everyone’s lives, in each path of those that find and follow their muse and use it to bless the world.

The world I want to live in is a world where magnificent things are abundant, living components of an infinite garden, constantly spilling over with life and inspiration, not a sculpture garden of static objects aimed at inciting devotion or disengaged admiration.

This world is accessible to everyone, here and now — as Jesus said “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” — but to enter it, we have to be willing to diverge from the “blind leading the blind”, to move through death to life. This paradox of life through death, opening an infinity in every sense, is something that cannot be effectively described, only experienced.

“Come and see”, the phrase ancients used to share transcendent illumination, is still the only authentic invitation consistent with freedom and love.

Deciding you are ready to see, willing to venture into that unknown, the way will open. Life will flow, you will find the Infinity that was always there, surrounding, waiting, eager to illuminate and inspire.

One consequence of the viewpoint above is the decision to pursue discovery for the pure joy of discovery and the even deeper privilege of sharing what is discovered, inspiring an overflowing abundance in the experience of others. Through the companion choices of simplicity and “enough is a feast”, we open the door to the infinite, inexhaustible riches that where there all along. In this kingdom of creativity and living exploration, awards and competition make no sense, if for no other reason than the energy they divert from exploration and the task of sharing.

The scope of this vision has no limits — the good news overflows with the rich, fauvistic music of life, defying all constraining description. The opening expanse inspires stillness and wonder.

The broken ones, in that stillness where the healing began, find quietness, inspiration and wonder in abundance.

And the light shines through the broken places.

Quietness and Confidence

In a world obsessed with data, and at a constantly accelerating pace, the idea that to know, we might need to surrender the idea of arriving there through rational means, seems just silly.

Yet this is precisely what I now believe.

The struggle to express the state of being implicit in the opening statement seems similar to me to the struggle I wrote about in Speaking the Language that cannot be Spoken. Yet the fraction of my energy expended at various times in the pursuit of certainty leads me to persist. For I believe imperfect explanations are better than none at all, at least in the case of this subject.

The search has led me to the wisdom literature and so I begin with two quotes:

“In him we live and move and have our being”

St. Paul

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Jesus

The last quote has admittedly led to huge excesses and is undoubtedly deeply misunderstood because of the stubborness of the human desire to not surrender control. Yet when surrender to the only Power that will not exploit you is finally embraced, you begin to see this last quote as something entirely different, entirely positive — we begin to see it as the beginning of an abundant, thriving life not built on illuision, one not having to hide from pain in order to be characterized by joy, one that reveals the influence of a living water spoken of so long ago to the Samaritan woman at the well.

Yet, in spite of the almost irresistible impulse to identify the above quotes and associated traditions with Christianity (as a religion or whole family of religions), I believe there is very good reason to consider the (subtly different) alternative of seeing them as invitations to a transformed life from those with insights into how the universe actually works.

This will be a distinction lost on those who are certain “spirituality” is some product of natural evolution, an illusion that will pass from the collection of useful things in the future.

But to those who believe there is more than the material world, that the physical is indeed an epiphenomenon of the spiritual, perhaps this slight shift in perspective will enable them to consider the depth and power of the wisdom in those two quotes and the possibility that the ideas, the paths suggested, should be reexamined, separately from the masochistic fetishes which have attached themselves to ideas like those.

Admitting that knowing is never divorced from faith (small f) is the first step to an acknowledgment of the necessity of the “things not seen”, and a step in the direction of acceptance of certainty as something that must be transcendent, beyond the reach of the finite rational process of thinking, yet somehow intimately connected to the mind.

And yet, certainty — confidence, without qualification — is central to the whole fabric of wisdom and the transformed life we are invited to:

“They that wait on the Lord shall renew their quietness and confidence …”

Isaiah

Letting go of the attempts to save ourselves from inner storms that rage when we resist surrender, we find peace and quietness. Certainty finds us, for we rest in Him and His constant stream of life and quietness no longer finds resistance in us. The same virtue that went out from him to heal when He walked among us so long ago, works its miracle in our hearts, bringing stillness and confidence.

Quietness and stillness, then music — the music emerging from a new stillness marks the dawning of a confidence, a certainty we will never mistake for anything but a gift from Him in whom we live and move and have our being.

A Sort of Synesthesia

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Experiences of seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing, often compel me to try to communicate those experiences in some way.  A sort of obsession with the beauty, with the experience of being in the moment, undulating, flowing, singing, vibarting, simultaneously opens all the senses and quiets the mind in a way that, at least for me, makes translation into words extremely hard. Sometimes I find the words to transmit something of value, but very often I find what I have written is unconvincing or even completely mute.

I need a sort of synesthesia, making translations from what I sense to words more natural or perhaps even involuntary.

Talking or writing about the experience directly, as though it were a story or a play is something I cannot do.  The full experience is so rich, so overflowing, so infinite in possibilities that direct representation is clearly unattainable. But, like visual subtleties  easier to see with your peripheral vision, something of the experience can be captured indirectly, by way of analogies, of shadows and impressionistic portraits, in reflection, after the experience.

This is why some of the most effective, powerful art is abstract or impressionistic. To transmit infinity, direct representational art, creating an expectation of finiteness, must be abandoned. Minimalism in music, moving us into rhythms and flows that slowly shift us to different states, is again, a sort of indirect encompassing, carrying us somewhere, but not directly. Experiences in nature align with this method of illumination, gently soaking in, moving us, so that we gradually become aware of the fact that we have been transformed, our attention has been shifted, profoundly altering what we see and hear and know.

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Quietness — rich, vibrating, living, infinite — finds its way from our experiences to the experience of others as they immerse themselves in our art.

We have, together, attained a sort synesthesia.

 

 

 

 

Silence and Beauty

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Silence and Beauty – Makoto Fujimura (Jundt Museum)

Immersing myself in the light and color and feeling of Mako Fujimura’s paintings, I listened over and over to Bach’s “Erbarme dich, mein Gott”, as though somehow this experience could open my eyes to the words communicating what I was feeling and seeing.

 

immersing, drawn into deep stillness, the quietness sings.
time stops to listen, to know color and feeling

light shines through the brokenness

 

Words feel clumsy, infinitely poor in comparison to the visual experience. But words can tell my own story of brokenness opening me to light, to color and feeling, to quietness that sings.

It becomes clear. The deep drive to express, to illuminate the experience, can only be satisfied by taking others by the hand and leading them to their own experience of listening, of seeing, of feeling. I can invite others to “come and see”, to know why their brokenness is the beginning and not the end.

For there was One broken for them and that One is ready to shine His light through their brokenness, to pour Himself into their darkness and trauma, to heal them with his Quietness and Beauty.

 

come and see 
   the quietness and beauty

in brokenness

 

 

 

 

The Colors of Memory and Wisdom

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Reading Zeyn Joukhadar’s novel, The Map of Salt and Stars, has taught me once again that fiction can be more truthful than non-fiction. And even though the vast majority of fiction is to reading what junk food is to eating, there are novels that inspire even the pickiest of readers, with the highest (or most peculiar) standards for what is inspiring or illuminating.

What we know is a such a minuscule particle in a vast infinite universe of what could be known, that the skeptical inquirer is doomed to a rather poorly illuminated reflection of tiny bits of what is known. But skepticism is not the only option. Those willing to use all the tools at the disposal of an aware, enlightened human being, can embark on a voyage filled with light and a rich, ever-unfolding life.

In the living experience and fable woven together in Zeyn’s novel, the human spirit and the Infinite meet in an explosion of life and color and light and dark, moving us to a place where we can see and feel far beyond the narrow confines of overly rigorous, reductionistic thinking and experience. The deeper truths in the stories, sometimes stated very plainly, other times only seen in the wholistic experience of the story, are profound, demanding a stillness and quietness before they open to our view.

The overwhelming energy moving through the story, illuminating my response, was one of light and color and memory and feeling, reinforced by the synesthesia of Nour, the little girl through which we see the story. While a few might consider Nour’s synesthesia to be an unnecessary device, I found it completely natural, even essential. For me it was a door anyone can enter if they will but take the time to listen to the music and feel the color in the stillness and quietness, to see the light shining through the broken places, to experience the infinity between the ticks and tocs of a clock.

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When I taught 7th and 8th grade science during graduate school, I used to take my students out into nature with notebooks in hand and ask them to see and feel and hear, and then write. Most had a very difficult time finding the stillness necessary to do this. I know they had a hard time connecting with my descriptions of what happened on my walkabouts, when I moved into that living path mode of seeing and hearing. It was also my first time trying to describe this mode and inspire others to try it for themselves. After those experiences I often simply shared the insights I found in that state, realizing that it is a very hard thing to actually move somebody into that mode of being.

Nevertheless, over the years, I remained as hopeful as I was when I tried guiding the students, that this mode of seeing and hearing and feeling is open to anyone willing to listen to stillness.

Lately, though, I had started losing hope in the power of words to actually enlighten or inspire or even prompt others to begin a journey. I could find lots of examples that supported my growing doubt. But when I finished this book I was struck by the strong sense that I was wrong. Some written words are still very powerful, inspiring and healing, opening readers to that infinity I began to experience so many years ago in my walkabouts in the desert and later in the forests. Immersing myself in this story, I find again, in yet another form, that stillness containing infinity.

I was also reminded that when you have passed through extreme crisis, you learn what is important and what is not, you learn to choose the simple life and connections with those that love you and those that can benefit from your simple help. You remember that so many things in our surroundings, considered so important, cannot compare with the song of an insect, or connection with a friend, or peace of encompassing sunshine. You realize there is nothing to prove, that simple things contain everything you need because they are doors to infinity. You see helping those who struggle, easing the path of those who have very little and seek simply to live in peace, is an integral part of finding and sharing the depth and beauty we are wired to seek, to explore. One cannot truly have depth and beauty without the healing and compassion.

What remains for me, as I write these words in the afterglow of the story, is a sense of living stillness and remembering and color, and the deep peace when we remember the intense richness of knowing what is important.

 

 

 

A Silence, Rich with Inspiration

Glynne Robinson Betts’ 1981 Writers in Residence is for me a lyrical invitation to quietness. The photo illuminated essays on places, in time and space, where writers lived and wrote,  invoke a strong sense of life lived with wide spaces for thought and creativity. The sections on Carl Sandburg, Anne Dillard, Robinson Jeffers and several others, recall daily rhythms friendly to depth.

These passages somehow bring back my life in the late 60’s and 70’s, when computers were rare and time to think was not hard to find. In college in the early 80’s, there was still time to think, time to read through a book on a weekend or master complex ideas in quietness, with a devotion to deep comprehension. I wonder, how many now feel that call to stillness, to a silence that is rich in inspiration?

Where do we find the wide spaces today? And who lives there? Those that tasted the thrill of illumination through immersion in quietness remember those spaces, but what of those addicted to their mobile devices, what of those who believe social media connects, wikipedia illuminates and TED talks are the pinnacle of inspiration? While wikipedia is useful, TED talks are sometimes narrowly inspiring, the intense illumination of bare-handed, personal discovery leaves you changed, forever.

Seeking the simplicity of those wide spaces, listening till we hear the quietness sing, we find the same places the writers found, the same illumination that is never forgotten … we walk through an open door to the infinity that lives between the ticks of the clock, between the words on a page, between the breaths we breath.

 

 

 

Dual Tyrannies of Data and Democracy (and what to do about it)

In this new age of extremes, celebrity and elitism without bounds, those that pride themselves on their enlightenment often make a big deal about being democratic in their ambitions and data driven in their thinking and reasoning.

This is also a new age of openness and deception. The increase in both is of course coupled. As openness is supported or exhibited, some of what is exposed resists and retaliates with deeper forms of deception.

And in ths new age, the old illusions also persist — like the illusions of rationality or unbiased examination or study without preconceived ideas — illusions that have a great impact on inference and our abilities to draw conclusions from observations. Democracy enters when we attempt to create a cooperative or civil society based in some semblance of truth or grasp of reality.

The problems I am focused on in this perhaps too provocatively titled article, are those caused by the use of data and democracy as tools of forceful persuasion or even hammers of coercion. While the idea that democracy is a system predisposed to tyranny is far from a new idea, the dangers in the new bandwagon of data-driven thinking seem to be less well known or thought about (even though Cathy O’Neil’s, Weapons of Math Destruction is a good start). So we will begin there.

It might be seem strange for someone who is a mathematician, with a great deal of experience in data science, who even founded the Data Driven Modeling and Analysis team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to be concerned with or ambivalent about data driven anything.

Yet I am.

In fact I am very concerned. And the source of the concern is the inescapable fact that every inference, every conclusion and policy that is derived from data, is extracted from the data through the use of prior assumptions, many of which are unacknowledged or even very difficult to see. We can begin with the fact that we believe that rationality is the way in which truth is determined. But this is just not the case. Everything we do is framed in the deeper emotional/spiritual context in which “we live and move and have our being”.

As a result, even the decision of what data to collect is determined by our prior assumptions and preconceptions, and as a result, we can, often unconsciously, predetermine our conclusions before we even begin looking at the data.

The other problem I have with data driven scholarship is that, in its current forms, it only tells about what is, about the systems that have gained ascendancy and majority control of whatever it is that we are studying. It can say very little about what is possible. As a result, I believe that the industry of data driven scholarship and decision making will tend to reinforce what is, and limit diversity and real progress and innovation. (And by innovation, I am not talking technological innovation, but something much deeper and far reaching.)

This type of data science determines truth by, in essence, going with the majority vote in which the data doing the voting, has not only been selected by unseen and unacknowledged assumptions and biases, but is also, by its very nature, without an imagination.

What kind of data and data driven inference do I believe in? To begin with, I should say that I am very much for careful observation of the natural world, of human activity and behavior, and of the larger “inner” spiritual world on which everything is based. I think that the art of observation is a deeply neglected art, the rewards of which are little known and sorely needed. The problem lies in the fact that observation — data collection — is too often colored by stiff systems of preconception and unseen prior models of reality, influencing both choice of what to look at and what to do with the observations that are made.

Quietness and stillness as disciplines are not cultivated as ways to begin to really see beyond our current positions and perspectives. The fundamentally spiritual decision to let go and open to stillness is blocked by a complex of fear and fear inspired prejudice which are in turn based on previous experience with violation and force. Those experiences causing so many to relinquish child-like openness to reality, block them from full entry into the “kingdom of heaven”. As a result, those former children grow into adults that create systems that prevent them from entry into that illuminated kingdom and which they then use to block others from entering.

There are of course many flashes of insight that make it through the web of self-defense based preconceptions. But far too many of these quickly become part of that system that then blocks other illumination, blocking even the ability to understand the original insights correctly. The illumination falls prey to the temptations of greed for impact or fame or prestige or even simple fear, and the vision that could have been, fades.

There is of course the question of what to do about preconceptions and biases that are often predetermining results, especially in the case of data driven analyses. I believe the answer begins with opening your eyes, with taking the time to think:

  1. Take the time to think. The drive for bigger, better, faster has moved many people to abandon the discipline of taking time to think, to see, to feel. As a result, this basic first step to moving beyond our operating assumptions to something bigger and richer, to inspiration and growth, is severely limited.
  2. Time to think allows us to cultivate quietness and stillness as ways to let go and hear and see.
  3. We are only willing to see and hear and feel  what that quietness and stillness tells us in a state of emotional safety. This implies emotional wholeness underlies this whole project. Anyone who tells you differently is misguided at best. (This place of emotional safety is not external — this is a thing of the heart, not of “safe places” or elimination of harsh environments. The world is crazy and unsafe in which the emotionally whole still find a way to thrive, without expecting the world to be kept at bay.)
  4. Emotional wholeness requires cultivation of connection with others opened by the understanding that differences, instead of threatening us, enrich us.
  5. Connecting with others, observing their bits and pieces of illumination in a state of quietness, we are enabled to take the useful bits and let the rest go. (Because of emotional wholeness, we filter and thrive. No need for trigger warnings or cocoons that wall us away from reality.)
  6. Data is always filtered — quietness allows you to be aware of exactly what those filters are and to replace those filters if you find better ones.

While this approach to data (observation) and the inferences from that data is not new — it has always been the path of those taking the time to think and seek illuminated inferences, this path is becoming rarer. The noisy, overconfident bubble of thought leaders, influencers and celebrities are drowning out the careful thinkers and doers.

Democracy, even in its most beneficial forms, is only as good as the data driving it. Because of the difficulty in determining what is biased and what is not, the safest route is always to promote maximal freedom, opting for mild regulation only in the cases in which to not do so would harm the principles on which the democracy is founded. When freedom and compassion and safety and a healthy economic/social ecosystem are the principles, then this job is far from easy. But as soon as the regulation is influenced by entities that do not share those values, the whole enterprise is in peril. And if, in addition to this, the data that is used is twisted by the values that do not align with the goals above, it becomes hard to see what is and is not happening.

Of course, there are macro-measurements that reveal problems. When the divide between the rich and poor threatens to engulf us, we know something is wrong. When prisons are overflowing, when the rich are rarely held accountable, while the poor have difficulty for even small offenses or even simply because they are poor or nonwhite or both — when those things become impossible to ignore, we know the system is deeply broken.  And when the data is screaming and subtlety and nuance is no longer needed, when the data overwhelms preconception and prior assumptions, we know we are near a precipice.

But all is not lost.

As we learn quietness and openness to change, the data we gather and use will inform and illuminate, and the collective projects we embark on will reflect a synergy between freedom and cooperation. Time to think, quietness,  and the observations made in that frame of mind will supply the light and progress that keeps the biggest collective project — the democracy we live in — alive and headed in the direction of sustainable progress.

Other Planets 

when
you set
my 
heart 
free

---

free from this 
and 
anti-this

escaping 
binary
compressions
and
bondage 
to narrow orbits

choosing 
the third
way 
that opens 
infinity

the living 
path
inviting 
me to flights
without limit

---

life

rich
illuminated
overflowing
unbounded

bright with 
the light
of 
countless
suns

constrained
by love
yet
unlimited

infinite
freedom
yet
running
in 
the
paths
of
Your
command

---

other planets
on which 
we 
were 
meant 
to live
to create
to unfold

no longer
traded
for a few shekels
for mere crusts of bread

for enough
is a feast
that 
opens infinity

in the light 
of other 
suns

on other planets 
without
number

 

Animals and Empathy

Many years ago, I ran a lab that used hamsters to study micro-circulation.  It is something that I eventually could no longer let myself do.

In recent years, I have come to be completely against the use of animals in experiments of any kind. I believe the cruelty that humans inflict on animals reduces, even removes their own humanity.

The lack of empathy shown in experimenting on animals should be frightening to us.

I propose that if we were fully conscious, fully mindful, that lack of empathy would horrify us. We would see the direct link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans. We would understand the lack of humanity, lack of conscience, lack of connection that enables us to kill other humans.

If we were to let ourselves feel with the whole heart, to understand that “the end justifies the means” is the most evil principle of all, to understand that mans inhumanity to animal and man alike is his greatest sin,  we would seek to heal instead of wound, to love instead of fear, to create instead of destroy.

Beneath all this cruelty is fear that drives us to deny our humanity, deny our empathy for other living things, deny other living things their right to life and peace. Believing that we must preserve our lives at the cost of anybody and anything that gets in the way, we attempt to save ourselves and in so doing, we condemn humanity to endless war and suffering. Only when we accept that “whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” will we ever bring the cruelty to an end.

Empathy will guide us through darkness to light, if only we open our hearts to it. And when their suffering ends, so will ours.

Faith Is Connection

Some use faith to connect with finite, comfortable places, perhaps in response to fears of one kind or another. Little boldness is required. Others courageously connect to the ragged edge, but without the calm quietness that warns of errors, omissions or even danger. Yet others refuse to acknowledge the fundamental, critical role of faith, making the mistake of identifying this primitive human faculty with something that implies a belief in God.

Faith is fundamentally neutral, having nothing to do with belief in dogma or God. “true faith” (or “false faith”) is therefore nonsensical: the words cannot sensibly be used together. Faith is simply the human faculty to connect and it is by that connection that we know, we experience, we see beyond. The great other, the great wholeness that dwarfs the tiny sliver of the universe that we believe we understand, can be opened by that connection we call faith.

In their abdication to a narrow vision of science and philosophy, many have surrendered an openness to paradox and a truly rich spiritual-mental-physical universe. Respectability tempts and seduces, but enslavement follows.

There is a radical faith not shying away from paradox, connecting us with a rich, bold and yet brilliantly simple vision. This faith draws us into a vibrant, living environment, for it is an explicit connection with Infinite Life.

In the patient, illuminated stillness flowing from connection, mystery and paradox, rather than being indicators of fuzzy or wishful thinking, become marks of clear vision. Quietly insisting on both horns of a dilemma, we are driven deeper until we find the transforming resolution opening us to new wavelengths of light, new worlds of thought and action.

Moving on from second hand knowledge of God to the vision through the torn veil, we find the connection that heals and illuminates.

Obi

Dogs are simple angels, disguised by their dogness, but ministering spirits all the same.

Filled with unconditional love and devotion, they are also sprinkled with flaws so as not to give away the fact they are working, under-cover, single-mindedly, to save as many humans as they can.

Their living fills us with joy, if we will but open to their joy. Their dying gives us such intense grief, it saves us from arrogance, if we permit ourselves to feel honestly their passing. And their simple, complete devotion and love while they are living disarms us so reliably, that we almost always permit ourselves to feel honestly, their passing.

Remembering them, we finally understand their mission in our lives.

We understand that love and humility are the channels through which all life and healing flow. We know that these simple, faithful friends never wavered, never faltered. We see the power of a pure heart.

Dogs are simple angels, disguised by their dogness, but ministering spirits all the same.

 

 

Metrics and Inequality

Metrics — measures of performance or value — drive what we do at every scale, from the small, individual scale to the massive global scales. When those metrics are founded on misconceptions of reality, they contort behavior in such a way as to appear to support those misconceptions. To get back to the natural order of things, away from the artificial reality created by those false beliefs, we must start by reseting our metrics.

I was reminded of this as I perused the Harvard Business Review (HBR) I had purchased for the purpose of inspiring thoughts and reactions. I do not peruse the Review very often, but when I do, I am usually turned off by a large amount of what I find. The price  of 16.95$ reeks of self-importance. And the articles overflow with much that I find distasteful in academia and in the broader, elitist culture — the same culture that is currently driving the world to the brink of destruction. But the metrics and implied metrics in the articles got me thinking about the influence of bad metrics, about the models of reality that implicitly encode inequality. Those models are everywhere.

Take the current focus in the news and social media on racism.

The real problem is that racism is an epiphenomena. Looking more deeply, we find the pervasive illusion of organic superiority/inferiority and the (negatively) powerful habits of ranking in all areas of life. These survive only because people can’t tell the difference between (1) powerful (negative) beliefs that become self-fulfilling prophecies and (2) fundamental truths. (While behavior does follow those unhealthy ideas, I am talking about potential here, not the reality created by those self-fulfilling prophecies.)

But to confront the fact that our brains are all pretty much equal, and what really matters is environment and opportunity, we have to face man’s inhumanity to man and our own moral degradation and greed.

And facing that fact is painful and difficult.

Once we begin to understand the effects of trauma of all sorts, of the massive power of emotions — actually, of our entire environment, we begin to understand the observed behavioral data differently. We begin to see that our beliefs in inequality combined with our inhuman treatment of others actually generate inequality. We begin to see that any solution to inequality that does not begin with the understanding that people are, actually, truly born equal is bound to fail.

Because we cannot fix inequality and believe in inequality at the same time.

Though it is a fact that there are organic differences, that there are a relatively small number of (very) basic groups of talents people are born into, any solution to inequality cannot succeed if it does not start with the understanding that these talents are not rankable, but are equally amenable to (even extreme) development.

When this position is taken, we see that inequality is pervasive, that the roots to racism are found in how we treat each other in every environment, including very white environments. In fact, if you were to restrict yourself to purely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant environments (though finding such environments is getting harder), one would find the fundamental disease that becomes racism in other environments.

When we begin building metrics based on the facts of equality, we begin to stand a chance of making a difference.

This brings me back to the HBR articles and their usual conformity to a traditional interpretation of behavioral data.

Of course the mistake the intelligent people who populate academia and the elitist cultures make, is the mistake that scientists often make, of not taking into account the effects of multiple time/context scales in their studies. It is sort of like the Chinese story of the man who lost his horse ( 塞翁失馬 — Sāi Wēng Shī Mǎ) in which what appears to be a good thing or bad thing depends on context that keeps expanding. Not taking all the different temporal/spatial/contextual scales into account, often leads to incorrect conclusions.

To many such observers, the data appears to confirm that (1) unfettered competition and greed are natural and probably  good and (2) inequality is organically based. (Note: I am not saying that all competition is bad, only that the current vision for competition is deeply unbalanced and actually unfair to many smaller entities that want to compete.) Of course, the more sophisticated the person, the more polished and palatable their presentation of these ideas.  But, as I observed above, the process by which we can see differently is uncomfortable for everyone and painful for most.

So instead, we pretend that the results of greed and inequality are some sort of natural law that we have no power over. And we end up missing the principle that enables us to find richness almost anywhere.

We do not realize that enough is a feast.

I am far from the first to observe that enough is a feast, that aiming for more than enough is wasteful, and that piling up great piles of wealth of all kinds (not just financial) and locking it away literally or figuratively is an obscene crime against humanity. It is just that even though it has been said before, by many others, it seems to be one of those things we need very frequent reminders of.

What I am interested in is a world in which taking time to think has priority over the rush of the over-achiever, where what my family and my dog thinks of me is more important than what my department or academia in general or the National Academy of Sciences thinks of me, where being a fundamentally independent thinker is more valued than status as a “thought leader”, where quiet generosity takes precedence over noisy philanthropy, and success is measured by whether or not I and those around me have enough, not if I have enough money or prestige to supply a small country.

In such a world, where “enough” becomes integral to our metrics, there is enough for everyone. And when this happens the enormous human potential that we have been obscenely wasting is unleashed.

When, as Bryan Stevenson makes a case for in Just Mercy, we understand that healing begins in seeing our own brokenness, we begin to understand why we strayed from “enough” in the first place. We then understand that everything good begins with healing, that, from the humility we gain in that process of healing,  every other good thing flows. Then we understand that humility is not so much the opposite of arrogance and the drive for status, as it is the opposite of spiritual blindness.

For blindness was the problem all along. What we needed, what we really wanted, was always at our fingertips. Only our inability to see the true order of things stood in our way.

Accepting this, we are set free to find healing and a rich abundance that has nothing to do with impoverishing others in any way.

Finding Quietness

Rereading parts of Glynne Robinson Betts’ 1981 book, Writers in Residence, recalled simpler, deeper times, when finding places of quietness and taking time to think was part of the routine many people used in order to hear themselves and others. In fact, reading this again prompted me to expand the time I spend without Internet interruptions. Steps as simple as ignoring email for extended periods or as comprehensive as turning the computer off for the entire weekend, are emerging as a necessary part of reclaiming quietness and time to think.

There is nothing profound in these decisions to disconnect — whatever is profound happens as a result of taking that time to see and listen and think.

When I do slow down, every pause, every quietness, every moment taken to see, to listen, to think, rewards with a rich, living connectedness and depth that cannot be exhausted. The fabrics of the past and future join with the present, without seams, without a sense that I am working to recall, to see, to feel. Time opens up, I enter, to travel my own path, to sit or stand or walk … stopping time, finding passage to places beyond space and time.

To the strictly modern intellect, what I have just said probably seems like non-sense. Reason, based on easily observable facts, will find little irrefutable evidence that a skeptic would find compelling.

I therefore offer no argument to convince the skeptic. Instead I say, “Come and see”.

When we begin to let go of dogma, the regard of peers, and the comfort of the in-group, room for discovery is created. Launching into quiet spaces, where fear is replaced by stillness, a boundless infinity surprises. We find flow.  In this personal place without limits, I find an overflowing garden, teeming with life. On the living path, everything is illuminated.

Yet this is something I cannot really transmit. It is only something I can hint at in what I write, faintly, incompletely. The experience of discovery, of knowing, of traveling to those places that are here and beyond at the same time, cannot be captured in words.

To see, you must see though your own eyes. To see, you must choose to slow down, find quietness, and dwell there.

I believe that most – possibly all – human beings have, at one time or another, experienced immersion in flow and a connection to the place without limits. There is a resonance emerging from any such experience, no matter how brief, that enables those with that experience to hear each other.  But life often seems to conspire to crush those memories, to remove our ability to hear and see. In the quiet, we can be moved to remember, to see, to hear. In the quiet we remember the place without limits.

In writing something of what I see and hear, there is a chance that faint recollections will be stirred in those that read, in the way Writers in Residence stirred my memories, my recollections of a time when quietness and time to think was plentiful.

The thought of this possibility brings a subtle sense of connection, of silent conversation, with those as yet undiscovered friends. Lingering in rediscovered quietness, we move against the flow of noise and commotion and modern distraction, encouraging all those in our circle of influence to rediscover for themselves their own place without limits.

Heresy and Freedom

Reading the words of Albert Schweitzer and bits of the life of Roger Williams is both inspiring and motivating: inspiring because they were both independent thinkers and motivating because their writing and lives ask for reflection and response.

I especially like the Epilogue in Out of My Life and Thoughts, Schweitzer’s autobiography; It seems more important today that it could have seemed in 1931 —

I am in complete disagreement with the spirit of our age, because it is filled with contempt for thought … The organized political, social and religious associations of our time are at work convincing the individual not to develop his convictions through his own thinking but to assimilate the ideas they present to him. Any man who thinks for himself is to them inconvenient and even ominous. He does not offer sufficient guarantee that he will merge into the organization. Corporate bodies do not look for their strength in ideas and in the values of the people for whom they are responsible. They try to achieve the greatest possible uniformity. They believe that in this way they hold the greatest power, offensive as well as defensive.

Yet I disagree with Schweitzer’s theology on significant points: I believe in Jesus the Messiah, that he was in fact God and Man, the His death did provide a way through annihilation for all of creation and a path to eternal life, that he was raised on the third day, that he is coming again. Further, I believe in the literal creation of the earth by the actual word of God and I believe in a struggle between God and Satan/evil centered on the existence of free will and God’s claim that free will is harmonious with good and life. And I believe that only in that context — of a cosmic struggle, that history begins to make sense. But I do not retreat into magic for explanation (the first part of this paragraph not-withstanding), neither do I believe that Jesus came to establish a religion, nor do I condemn in any way those that fail to believe as I do.

All this clearly begs for a much longer discussion, though more immediately it most likely triggers strong responses in many readers.

The facts that I have so many differences with what has become traditional Christianity — to the point that I find most of the dogma of Christianity to be unhelpful,  and that I am clearly at deep odds with the religion of science (and that is precisely what science has become — a religion) , often lead to me feeling isolated and politely ignored.

Which brings me to Roger Williams (1603-1683), one of the early proponents of true freedom in the new world. His life was one of innovation with concrete results that continue to this day. In addition to insisting on true freedom of conscience, and as a result being exiled to Rhode Island that he later obtained a charter for from the King of England, he was a friend to all those that did not fit in with the dogma and narrow way of life prescribed by the Puritans. Yet his defense of freedom to choose what we believe was not founded upon an idea that truth was somehow elusive. Neither was that freedom relegated to only those areas in which he had no strong opinion. Rather, it was his position that liberty of conscience was fundamental and God given. As a result, it was something that men could not withhold without grave consequence. And it is this that made his ideas so powerful.

Moving forward to the present, I find it disconcerting that the liberals and progressives with whom I agree on many fundamental principles, have such trouble applying what they believe when it comes to acceptance and tolerance as a practice rather than a theory. It reminds me of the same sort of dissonance between the theory and practice of Christianity.  There are of course many kind and respectful (and therefore tolerant) Christians and many similar liberals (some of whom are Christian) — in fact they might even be the majorities. But the minorities in these cases are loud and, sadly, often unchecked by their more reasonable brethren. And in both cases, underneath, separate from the individuals, there is that institutional desire to bend the wayward ones towards the “truth”. To me, this is the hallmark of a formal religion — the desire to bend the will of others to my way of thinking, the fear that somehow if others do not believe as I do, very bad things will happen to my tribe, my organization, or even me personally.

Ridicule that those who feel superior heap upon the “unenlightened” follows quickly. The stupid creationists and the unsaved, deceived evolutionists, the godless atheists and the ignorant bible-thumpers. And so on and so forth. Resorting to labels instead of real conversations based on a deep respect for life, freedom and a shared humanity, we retreat into our own smaller tribes. We view others through a montage of the worst of the loud proponents of the “others”. And because of the fear we gather and cultivate, we do not seek to find grounds for conversation.

Of course, there are terrible ideas and histories that beckon us to the side of fear: the atheist Stalin generating extreme suffering, the (unbiblical) doctrine of hell and the horrendous implications of what that would mean about God, the deep loss of freedom that results for various people on the fringes when socialists get the upper hand, the equally deep loss of freedom for the poor and the economic heretics when unfettered capitalism holds sway, the demonic inhumanity of the inquisition and the horrors of the Nazi experiment. These are indeed strong inducements to side with fear.

Yet there are also examples of real freedom and the alternative power of discourse based upon deep respect, not the least of which includes the life of Roger Williams. The path to  connections which illuminate and defeat fear all involve listening and talking and writing and reading and thinking and more listening and talking and listening … conversations of the right type are at the center of this model of positive change.

While I do believe that some conversations only work in very small settings due to the complexity of the subject matter and the fact that these conversations trigger deep fears that can shut down thinking and spiritual insight, there is still room for writing things down, for conversations that are slow and deliberate and open. Even though it is unwise to “cast your pearls before swine” — meaning that communication without the preparation of a history of respect and real connection can be worse than pointless — one can and should opt for the hope that there are those out there that do in fact seek real conversations, that are seeking to explore and will appreciate co-travelers, co-explorers. As long as we do not try to speak to each other from on high, from the perspective of one who is enlightened, but rather from a position alongside others, ready to listen and see, especially when in disagreement — so long as this is true, we will find ample opportunity for connection and progress.

To disagree is the extent to which my freedom, when combined with respect and love, permits me to fall out with others. And in this version of falling out, there is no reason that the conversation has to stop. While some ideas and ideologies must be restrained from crossing the line and actually hurting others, that line is not something that we are usually dealing with when focused on the present, local circumstances, whatever they are.

But to disagree and ridicule and belittle, to disagree and use force of any kind — spiritual, intellectual, physical — to try to bend others to my will, is a serious abuse of freedom. In fact, I believe that this abuse is the root of many problems in the present and the past, but that is another discussion.

So while I disagree with the theological conclusions of Albert Schweitzer, I also find deep inspiration in his writings. I find that in this falling out, nothing is lost and much is gained.

I think that Roger Williams would approve.

 

Beginning Again 

I am beginning to see tiny, yet brilliant slivers
of something that happened at the Cross that was so
enormous, so full of wonder, so full of illumination,
so powerful that it brings a deep stillness to everything
it touches.

A defeat of death and sin and all that is evil, a defeat
so complete that time held its breath, so awesome that
everything changed in that instant.

The tearing of the veil was the beginning of a tearing,
of a cracking, a disintegration of all the separates us
from God.

We were at that moment in a completely new era.

Time had begun its transformation, back to where it
began.

Face to face, in the silence that sings and heals, with
words that speak without words, nothing is withheld.

Nothing is withheld.

---

KRV