Thoughts on Humility

My attention today is on the impending arrival of family at the cottage.  We have two grandchildren ages (almost) four and seven and their parents arriving later today.  There has been a flurry of activity primarily by Lorna but with my help getting the cottage and bunkie (my usual domain) ready for what will be a major shift in our routine.  Lots of high energy which has been pretty much absent from life here in recent years.  I await the arrival with baited breath and everything else that can be baited. 

My other thought this morning has been on humility.  My favourite definition of being humble is a simple one I came across many years ago.  It is, “to be truly humble is to see clearly.”  Quite simple and not simplistic but when I read it initially I did not quite see what the author was getting at.  How was being truly humble or humility seeing clearly?  What was It that was that the truly humble person was seeing clearly?

Well on reflection I began to see more clearly that what a truly humble person sees clearly is themselves; or more clearly what they see is themselves in relation to all of creation.  If anyone does that, no matter what they have been blessed with in life; talent or wealth or good looks or good fortune or ambition or energy, or what they have accomplished because of those gifts, they will be humble in the vastness and wonder of all that God has created.  They may give another name to the creator but they will realize that we are all a small part of an unimaginably great and finitely varied creation.

I came across another definition recently that expands on that original definition,” radical self awareness from a position of other-centeredness.  I believe this clarifies the idea in a way that is succinct and helpful.  The position of other-centeredness makes it clear that to be humble is to see where we belong in is relation to the world and all that is in it, people and nature in all is wonder and beauty. 

I believe that those who have made a true difference in the world are those that have had true humility.  They have been truly self-aware and were able to see their place in creation and have realized they are not the centre of the universe.  The ego naturally believes that it is the centre of the universe and strives to maintain that illusion.  The ego needs to develop a perspective from a position of other-centeredness i.e. its correct position is to serve God and not to try and have God serve the ego.  

   

I guess the connection between these two topics, grandchildren and humility, will be fully revealed as the visit unfolds.  I imagine that my ego will get the very clear example of begin other-centeredness for the next few days.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Pride and Pain

Last week I reflected on humility and noted that my favourite definition was that to be truly humble is to see clearly.  I had an interesting follow-up to that theme which began with listening to a fascinating podcast on the internet which I had heard about some time previously.  It is entitled S-Town.  The podcast itself is very engaging and I have gone on to listen to quite a few episodes (it is nice to have time to do this type of activity being at the cottage).  I began to listen to it a few weeks ago.  It is a fascinating exploration of the life of a most engaging talented individual whose life unfortunately spiraled down and ended in suicide.  If you are interested in checking it out it can be found at https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/this-american-life/stown/e/49575276

The theme song for the podcast is a haunting piece by the Zombies entitled A Rose for Emily.  I was and am fascinated by it an on exploration discovered it was based on a short story by William Faulkner.  Again, I was unfamiliar with this story.  Here are the lyrics to the song and a link to a performance of it by the Zombies:

The summer is here at last

The sky is overcast

And no one brings a rose for Emily

She watches her flowers grow

While lovers come and go

To give each other roses from her tree.

But not a rose for Emily...

Emily, can't you see (how the sun is shining again)

There's nothing you can do?

There's loving everywhere

But none for you.

Her roses are fading now

She keeps her pride somehow

That's all she has protecting her from pain

And as the years go by

She will grow old and die

The roses in her garden fade away

Not one left for her grave

Not a rose for Emily...

Emily, can't you see (how the sun is shining again)

There's nothing you can do?

There's loving everywhere

But none for you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF55LNrHBSw

In turn I investigated the story A Rose for Emily and found it to be a sad tale of a Southern Belle in the post-civil war Reconstruction Southern United States who is unable to engage in life and, as the song say, she fades away and lives frozen in the past.  It is a true Gothic Tale with a rather gruesome ending which is not reflected in the lyrics.  The song does a wonderful job in capturing the essence of the story in a very few lines.

Now you may be asking yourself what this has to do with humility.  Well, as the song states, “She keeps her pride somehow. That's all she has protecting her from pain.”  Pride, of course is the opposite of humility.  In Emily’s case her pride kept her frozen in the past and prevented her from living life.  It is natural to feel pride in our accomplishments but as the old aphorism states pride goeth before a fall.  This is actually an adaption of the saying in Proverbs ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall’ (Proverbs 16:18). 

Pride can lead us into places which prevent us from living life as fully as possible and becoming the people that God created us to be.  One source defines it as, “excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God.”   It is one of the seven deadly sins and the extreme aspect of it is hubris, which the source notes, is the gateway through all other sin enters the mortal soul. 

Pride, as with other human characteristics can be tricky to deal with.  There is nothing wrong with taking pride in an accomplishment which you have striven for done well in.  It would be false humility to say, ‘oh it was nothing’ and dismiss it.  Just as it is would false pride to take credit for some accomplishment and maintain that it was done completely on own and not acknowledge all that enabled you to succeed.

One commentary on the Divine Comedy by Dante notes, “While the love that flows from God is pure, it can become sinful as it flows through humanity. Humans can sin by using love towards improper or malicious ends (Wrath, Envy, Pride), or using it to proper ends but with love that is either not strong enough (Sloth) or love that is too strong (lust, gluttony, greed).”  

As the song and the story tells us that pride can be a defense against pain.  That is the rub, Horatio.  It takes true humility to look at ourselves clearly see those parts of ourselves that we truly don’t want to acknowledge.  When we do that our pride will be injured.  However, take heart, it is only our false pride.

Blessings on your journey with all its twists and turns and dead ends and new beginnings.

Four Ways of Knowing

Last week I wrote about paradox and the truth that lies beneath opposites.  This week I want to explore different ways of understanding or knowing what lies at the heart of things.

How we understand the bible is a current critical issue among Christians and is behind many of the arguments and disagreements and worse that have arisen between different groups ̶ even within the same denomination such as Anglican.  The ongoing disagreement within the Anglican Communion around Same-sex marriage/blessing is at it foundation about how we understand the bible.  People on all sides of the issue can support their position by proof text i.e. taking biblical quotes that support their positions.  There are without doubt passages that give what appears to be direct support for opposing same-sex marriage. 

Those who support it can point to the idea that scripture is inspired by God but is not infallible.  They also point to context in which the scripture was written using in part the Historical Critical method which is s taught in many theological schools.  The also suggest the direction of the bible is pointing to a broader understanding of the relationships between people which is based on a different understanding of marriage which is in part based on new understanding and development of psychology.

It seems at times that the divisions which have developed are too deep to bridge and I do not want to argue either side of this argument.  Rather, I want to take a step back and look at an old way of understanding which has to a great extent been forgotten in this modern era.  Currently I have been reading, or I should day attempting, to make my way through The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams.  This is a wonderful exploration of the character of Beatrice in the works of Dante, especially the Divine Comedy.  It is by no means an easy read.  However, I alternate my reading with emersion in Detective Stories.  I am a late convert to this genre and have become an inveterate consumer of these stories while I am at the cottage. 

But I digress; Charles Williams writes about the four ways of in understanding employed by Dante which can be used to understand his work and especially the Comedy.  These were not unique to Dante but were in use in the late middle ages.  To quote Williams:

At the beginning of the second treatise, just before the theme of the Lady of the Window, Dante explains the four senses in which books may be understood.  They are the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical.  The first goes no further than the letter as it stands.  The second is the literal sense translated into and applied to things of the intellect, and as it were, abstract life; the third is the literal sense applied to the moral life; the fourth, the literal sense applied to what may be called the spiritual life. 

These concepts can be difficult to grasp for those of us who are not used to these different ways of understanding a concept or work.  Fortunately, Dante give an example as quoted by Williams:

He (Dante) takes the sentence: ‘When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a strange people; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.’  He says of this: ‘If we consider the literal sense alone, the thing signified is the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses; If the allegorical, our redemption through Christ; of the moral, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to a state of the grace; if the anagogical, the passage of the sanctified soul from the bondage of corruption of this world to the liberty of everlasting glory,’

This may or may not help clarify the meaning of the example used but it shows how an example may be read in many different ways.  This does not clarify any issue to allow us to say, ‘ah, yes now I can use this to beat the other side into submission.’  Indeed, the example, could be used by either side of the same-sex marriage debate to support their position.  My purpose is not to support or oppose.  My hope is that it will show that more than one understanding can reside in the books of life and perhaps even reveal a deeper truth. 

Indeed, one of the guidelines for understanding dreams is that if you immediately think you know the meaning of a dream you are likely mistaken.  There are deeper meanings to be revealed for you when you explore it.  Indeed, there can be truth on many different levels.   In these times when divisions seem to be becoming deeper and wider, we all should take a step back and see if there is a message and a meaning which will reveal the truth beneath the surface that we perceive.  God does work in mysterious ways which are not always or often revealed to us without exploration. 

I invite you to explore the different ways in which your journey is revealing the truth to you. 

The Beauty of Paradox

Recently I listened to an episode of On Being on NPR radio.  The program was an interview with physicist Frank Wilczek and was entitled, Why Is the World So Beautiful?  The conversation began with an exploration of truth but turned to beauty which lies beneath the surface of things.  This is not surprizing given the traditional connection between beauty and truth. 

The interviewer Krista Tippett quotes Wilczek back to him, “you say is that “In ordinary reality and ordinary time and space, the opposite of a truth is a falsehood.” But, you say, “Deep propositions have a meaning that goes beyond their surface.” This is so interesting. “You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.”  

Here we are dealing with paradox which is, for me, is a hallmark of truth.  THE technical definition of paradox is, “a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but, in reality, expresses a possible truth.” Wilczek uses the classic example in quantum physics of light being both a particle and a wave.  Both ways of looking at it are correct.  Sometimes under observation it behaves as a particle and sometimes is behaves as a wave. 

Paradox is central to the Christian story.  We worship a God who humbled himself and became human.  That fact for us is the strength of what on the surface is a really crazy act.  We worship and are followers not a God of power but one who gave up his power to become a creature; one who gave up immortality to become mortal; a God who was powerless on the cross.  And yet the God was born again to immortality and is returning to rule this world.Wilczek notes, “Deep propositions have a meaning that goes beyond their surface. You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.”

I believe that much of the problems that develop in religious doctrine come about by the belief that there is only one way of looking at things.  I have the truth and you don’t or my way of understanding this event of passage is the correct and only way.  It may very well be correct but there may be a different way which is also correct even though it seems contradictory.  There is beneath both a deeper truth which is reflected in part in the truth of both or many ways of looking at it.

The idea of paradox is an insult to our rational minds.  We want to believe desperately that our understanding of the world can only be either/or.  It must be either black or white.  We do accept that their may be shades in between but basically, they are one way or the other.  Things cannot be both.  That is why the Newtonian Universe is still the way that we understand the universe.  Quantum Physics turned that on it head but has not sunk into the foundation of our existence.  We look at the light and see only the object illuminated but not the shadow that is behind the object. 

We Christian do not truly believe that God could have chosen to become human and be born as a helpless baby in a lowly stable.  It fits into the romantic ideal of Christmas but we do not truly believe in the consequences of that action.  We do not truly believe that Jesus did not go to the cross without an internal struggle.  We do not truly accept the truly radical nature of a God willingly dying on the cross.  We cannot truly accept the implication of the paradox of the cross.  We do not believe that there is true power in the weakness of Jesus surrender to the will of Father and the submission to the cruelty of the cross.  That perhaps is the ultimate paradox of where true power lies.  If we Christians truly believed that the Christian Church would be very different.

Blessings on the journey and try and embrace the paradox.

Social Justice and the Religion

Today I am tackling the last of a series of questions that were posed to me by one of my readers.  First, I want to express my appreciation for those questions.  They certainly have provided me with some very interesting material for me to write about.  More importantly they have made me engage with some rather difficult and challenging issues such as the Trinity.  Here are the questions which have been exploring in the past weeks:

Can you explain to me your grounding belief in the Trinity? I can’t explain internally the need for formal religion and rules and commitment. 

I agree that when you drill down to the bottom of all... be good treat people as you want to be treated...  try to correct wrongs when you can etc. 

Does it come down to blind faith? What drives you to continue?  Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?

As I noted, today I am engaging with the last question, “Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?”  My initial response to this was that these are not mutually exclusive positions.  There have been great traditions of people who engage in social justice from both religious and non-religious perspectives. You can bring a religious perspective and base your social action in religious  principles and practices.  You can also come to social action from a secular perspective.   Currently we have people such as Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party of Canada and ecologist and journalist Dr. David Suzuki who do not bring an openly religious component to their work.  I am not aware if their perspectives have perhaps been influenced by religious beliefs or practices but they are not the basis of their public positions.

In the modern era you have the great tradition of the Social Gospel in Canada which informed and motivated many of the leaders of the early modern movement for social justice.  It is the tradition I was raised in as my father was a United Church minister who was grounded in the Social Gospel and process theology.  This certainly informed both my political understanding and my theology.  However, I have, of course, gone a somewhat different but not entirely incompatible path since my beginnings.     

The Social Gospel Movement in Canada had leaders such as J.S. Woodsworth the founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) political party which was the precursor of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP).  Woodsworth was a Methodist minister who preached the social gospel.  This was followed by such notables as T.C. Douglas the father of universal health care in Canada.  Douglas was a Baptist minister and deeply influenced by the Social Gospel tradition.  Douglas was the first leader of the NDP which was formed out of the socialist CCF.  Also of note was Stanley Knowles, a leader in the NDP, who was a United Church of Canada minister was who was also greatly influenced by the Social Gospel movement. 

This is just a few of the examples that could be cited. They were prime examples of people who attempted and in some cases were successful in bringing social programs to Canada based on their understanding of the Christian Gospel, which is the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Going a bit further back in history you have people such as William Wilberforce, who was instrumental in the elimination of slavery in England.  Although not an ordained minister Wilberforce was greatly influenced by his Christian beliefs, “his political views were informed by his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in private and public life.” 

Given this, I believe that the question arises, is their any difference in coming to social action from a religious versus a non-religious perspective or influence? I have given this a great deal of thought over the years due to my early influences and I believe that the challenge of social justice is to base your action on being for something rather than against it.  If you are against what you see as the evils of the world you may be successful in defeating the enemy but the question that arises is, what do you replace it with.  The alternative is guiding you needs to be what you are for?  The foundation of the Christian is (or should be) Jesus Christ who commanded us to love our enemies.  We need therefore to base our actions on love and not hate.  There is no guarantee that Christians will do this.  There are perhaps endless examples of Christians doing very unchristian things.  However, at least we have the example and the hope of Jesus Christ to be our guide and our guard against the hatred which seems to easy for people to embrace. 

I recently came across a quote by Thomas Merton which addresses this:

What is the relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He [or she] who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action. . . . —Thomas Merton [1]

As difficult and seemingly impossible it is to follow the commandment to love our enemies it is what we need to guide us on our journey.

What Drives Me To Continue

The last few additions have been dedicated to responding to questions which were posed to me by a reader.  Here are the questions for your reference and consideration:

Can you explain to me your grounding belief in the Trinity? I can’t explain internally the need for formal religion and rules and commitment. 

I agree that when you drill down to the bottom of all... be good treat people as you want to be treated..  try to correct wrongs when you can etc. 

Does it come down to blind faith? What drives you to continue?  Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?

Today I will respond to the question: “What drives you to continue?”   That is a very personal question which I am not sure I have a complete answer for as it is a work in process.   The first thing that I ask myself is, what is it that I continue?   Is it my life long involvement with the church?  Following on with that thought, is it my decision to seek ordination as a priest which I continue to be and continue to serve, albeit in a different and less active role in retirement.  Is it someone who believes that dreams are one of the many ways, indeed one of the important ways, a way that God speaks to us and who works with others in discerning their meaning?   It is as a Spiritual Director which I have come to more recently?  Is it my attempts to be a husband and father to my spouse and children as flawed as they are?

Or is it more basic than all that.  Is it to continue to explore and discover how I can be the person I believe I should be and by extension become the person that I believe God created me to be? All of those things are connected and the idea of discovering and making incomplete and flawed and halting efforts in all those ways are what drives.  It is what I come back to no matter how I try to avoid it or rationalize not following that path which apparently God has laid out for me.

Let me give one example which I am most clear about.  I first felt the call to ordained ministry in my thirties.  I had been and continue to be actively involved in the church all my life.  At that point it was in the United Church of Canada.  I entered into the discernment process and followed that for some time until circumstances convinced me it wasn’t the time to pursue that path, I told myself that it really wasn’t for me ̶ perhaps a case of sour grapes.  In any case, my journey continued in fits and starts and sometimes what seemed to involve many disastrous wrong turns and dead ends.  

After some searching I ended up in the Anglican Church as my church home.  I continued on with life and was approaching retirement from my first career as a civil servant.  I began to be drawn to take courses in theology at Huron College, out of interest of course and never with the intention that it might lead to where it eventually did.  I continued on taking courses part time categorized as a ‘Special Student” which always tickled me as I secretly thought I was special.  I retired and after a short, brilliant (just kidding) career as a “consultant” still taking courses as a Special Student, I began to fell the pull to explore the possibility of ordination on the Anglican Church.  As I have said at other times I was hoping for a “Road to Damascus Experience” to get a clear massage that this was a call I should answer.  That never came, at least not that clearly as St. Paul received his (thank God).  It was more a case of God continuing to nag me which, I have concluded is often the way God works.

In any case I decided the only way to discern if God was actually calling me to this path was begin to follow it.   This is what I did and continue to this day.  One of the signposts along the way which I like to recount (as am therefore going to here) was a case of synchronicity (a Jungian term for significant coincidence).   I applied to be a full-time student in the MDiv program (apparently no longer ‘special’) and had an interview with the Dean of Theology.  After what was a very positive interview I was driving home and had my radio tuned to CBC as usual (radio 1 for those who listen to CBC).  There was a program in which three clergy were being interviewed about their experience of being called to ministry as mature adults (at least chronologically).  I took this as a sign I as on the right path. 

A big part of what drives me to continue is to keep trying to discern where God is calling me in my life.  I try do this in as many ways as possible.  I believe that God speaks to us in many different ways.  We are all more open to some ways than other but it is for us to try and discern the voice of God however we can.

Blessings on you journey and keep your eyes and ears and all your senses attuned to the voice of God.  

Is Faith Blind

The last three entries of this blog I have been attempting to answer, as best I can, questions that were posed to me:

Can you explain to me your grounding belief in the Trinity? I can’t explain internally the need for formal religion and rules and commitment. 

I agree that when you drill down to the bottom of all... be good treat people as you want to be treated..  try to correct wrongs when you can etc. 

Does it come down to blind faith? What drives you to continue?  Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?

Initially, I ventured into the landmine of the Trinity.  This was followed by a discussion of why I participate in formal religion, and thirdly, the question behind the statement that at bottom the issue is be good, treat people as you want to be treated; in effect, the Golden Rule. 

This week I will respond to the question, “does it come down to blind faith?”  The term ‘blind faith’ can have a rather pejorative connotation.  I sure that it was not meant that way knowing the person who posed the question.  However, often it is used by many people judgmentally implying, how can anyone be so stupid to live their life based on blind faith when it flies in the face of the evidence facing them in that face.  What comes to mind for me when I consider the type of blind faith that will illicit this type of question is people who belong to the flat earth society or that believe that the ̶̶moon landing was staged or that dinosaurs (at least baby ones) were present on the Ark.  I do believe that blind faith in that sense can lead us to places that God doesn’t intent us to be. 

Faith can be more positive if it is not used it in that way.  I recently listened to an episode of Tapestry on CBC radio in which the wonderful host Mary Hynes interviewed physicist David Deutsch.  He revealed in the interview that he has no doubt that science will come up with the answer to the mystery of human consciousness and be able to replicate it in Artificial General Intelligence i.e. robots.  That is absolutely a faith which is based on a belief in the science rather than belief in a divine being.  However, it is positive in that it has led Mr. Deutsch to strive to explore the mysteries of life through the scientific method. 

Human beings are endowed with reason and intellect and I cannot believe that God did not intend us to inquire about God’s creation and, as a result, to develop an understanding of God’s intention for us and all of creation.  That is one of the aspects of Anglicanism that attracts me.  The three pillars of Anglicanism are scripture, tradition and reason.  Following this, I believe that scripture in inspired, but not dictated, by God.  Tradition allows us to follow the time-tested practice of the church but also allows us to consider and develop new traditions.  Finally, reason allows us to use our intelligence, and hopefully our wisdom, to question and perhaps even find answers, to some of the questions which arise regarding how we can live lives that are faithful to God in a world which is changing and often challenges our religious beliefs and practices.

That is the what and the where of it for me and faith.   I know (have faith) that all there is, the earth, the stars and the moons and other dimensions we don’t know about are created by God.  I am a creature of God’s creating and I owe all that I am to God.  I have a duty to try and live my life in an effort to become who I continue to discover God created me to be.  I try and know that I will never fully succeed but I know that is okay with God. 

While I was writing this, I was listening to music on my computer as I have a wont to do.  The song that came up was “You’ve Got me Singing” by Leonard Cohen ̶ St. Lennie as he is in my mind as he is the Lord of song.  The song captures the meaning of faith in my life far better than I can: 

You got me singing

Even tho’ the news is bad

You got me singing

The only song I ever had

You got me singing

Ever since the river died

You got me thinking

Of the places we could hide

You got me singing

Even though the world is gone

You got me thinking

I’d like to carry on

You got me singing

Even tho’ it all looks grim

You got me singing

The Hallelujah hymn

You got me singing

Like a prisoner in a jail

You got me singing

Like my pardon’s in the mail

You got me wishing

Our little love would last

You got me thinking

Like those people of the past

You got me singing

Even though the world is gone

You got me thinking

I’d like to carry on

You got me singing

Even tho’ it all went wrong

You got me singing

The Hallelujah song

I hope that you will keep on singing on your journey,