Last Thursday was spent in the glory of an unexpected late summer, the bright, dry heat lighting the land below the hill on which I was dissecting a massive oak tree for firewood. Beautiful, I would take the earplugs out for a break and listen to the sounds of early autumn, in these parts often resounding with the startling, dinosaur-like cackle of the Sand Hill cranes, who know more than any other bird the way the winds blow. A day like this is seemingly eternal, but in late September, you know it is a mirage, a chimera to be absorbed with everything you have, because you know it won't last.

It was in posting Thursday's blog that a frequent contributor to the Quiet Voice, "Cal", found that I would soon have a lot of dry oak wood, and he wrote to ask if he could pick up a trunk-full of the smaller stuff for his outside burner after work.  Sure, I said, and at a little past 5 PM, he found me sitting in the old jeep, trailer attached, ready for action. 

"You want some wood, let's go get it.  You wouldn't mind helping me fill the rest of the trailer while your at it, would you?"  With my son gone to school, this aging guy never lets an opportunity for helping hands go by.  Of course Cal had to say "yes."
 
And so we loaded on the hill overlooking miles of fields and distant woods as the sun began to cool towards the horizon, the perfect day melding into the perfect evening.  Cal not only helped load, but unload back at the wood splitter, even though the trunk to his car was then full.  And why not?  On such a day, work outside is nothing, and we could also talk.  Both of us are a little too good at this, but I got in a conversation about  the startling book I've been profiling in the blog, Kathleen Singh's "Grace in Dying."

I spoke of how it was really having an impact. In it she describes perfectly the development of the ego, the "false self", its use to build a platform of focused attention (its purpose spiritually) and how it was impossible to get around for most people until death. It is so difficult because its (the ego's) very survival depends on a separation of itself from everything else, particularly the Ground Force which is the source of it and everything else.  For this reason it fears to its limit the death of the body that it understands as its only house for its existence - the only existence it can envision.

I explained how I feared death, too, very much, and how my spiritual practice as I grow older has been to get a better handle on the death that I knew was coming closer.  

"But Fred, why do you fear death?" It was a puzzled question, in the nature of "why should you fear something that is so natural and happens to everyone?"  I told him I do have a small fear about going into non-existence, a black hole, but didn't really believe in that.  Rather, my biggest fear was the something that might await me.  We were not taught about hell for nothing.  Still, I think he remained unconvinced.  What was there really to fear?

It was my fault, really, for not explaining it well, but that passed as most conversations do.  The next day was another beautiful one, and after writing a quick blog (which was erased by the website. Take a deep breath) I went back to the wood chore while the ground was hard enough to not leave tracks.  Coming back mid- afternoon, I checked the blinking light on the phone that said a message had been left.  It was from Cal: "Hey, went to the hospital to check on some chest pains and they're sending me in an ambulance to the (big city) hospital.  Said I had artery blockage and might need a stint."  Originally, he was going to come over that night and we were to have a fire and sit around and drink beer and smoke cigars under a perfect sky and talk about the meaning of life and so on.  That would have to wait, he added with a laugh.

As it turned out, he would need a triple or quadruple bypass, and is nervously waiting for it in a hospital bed as I write.  We visited him Sunday, and as I was leaving he said, "that was quite a coincidence that we were talking about death just the day before. I think I acted too casually about dying.  Now I know what you mean."  

Yes - it is not just that death comes like "a thief in the night," as Jesus said in one of his parables, but that it always, always brings fear.  Most people do not understand this because they cannot believe they will truly die.  That would upset the fantasy of the primacy of the ego, or false self.  When we are truly confronted with it and there is no place else to hide, we must fear. We must fear because our reality is crumbling and we are being left with nothing.  For myself, I say, "picture yourself in a small boat on the ocean in the middle a wild storm, confronting the certainty that you are about to be swallowed by the cold, gray depths.  Tell me then (my own ego) that you will kick back and sigh, saying "Oh, well, I've lived a good life.  This is as good a time to go as any."  Oh, no.  I would scream and wail and pray until the boat tipped and I was breathing in water.  I could not help but do so.  

We might think that we will be comfortable going into that dark night, but Kathleen Singh tells us in no uncertain terms that we will not be, not until we pass through the crucible and learn that we are not who we think we are.  It is not until then, when we see the plots our "self" has made to maintain its fantasy of being, not until we see that there is a deeper, authentic self that is tied to the All, that will we be able to lie comfortably.  For most of us, this does not come until no doubt is left that we are going to die.  It is a bad time for all, the time of heroes.  Only the assurance that we will all pass the test makes it tolerable in contemplation; only the assurance that, although we cannot truly understand the word in our present selves, life is Love and it is a grander universe than any of us can now think, once the crucible - the ordeal, the time on the cross - is passed.  FK     
  

I had thought to mention a critic of Richard Rohr's work today, one that I had found on the internet, but there is no time for that now.  A giant, dead old oak awaits my chainsaw and the work must begin soon.  There is less and less light now, and what was once in abundance must be husbanded and used to best effect. Winter will come, it always comes, and many things not done now will have to wait, forcing us into an indoor dormancy like the living roots of sleeping trees.  But it is just as well.  Last night I bought a book on death.

I do not like chainsaws but cannot get myself to work for hours with a saw and ax when chainsaws can work so well - when they work.  But they can cut off fingers and hands and even legs in less time than seems possible.  They get stuck in trees, and the growling roar blocks the sound of the wood as it is about to fall. With a large tree, one has to note carefully its every twitch, its pressure on the saw or lack thereof, to determine when the sinews that hold it upright are finally broken, and in which direction it will fall.  Still, it can twist or kick back, thousands of pounds, tons that can take off your head in an instant.  It is madness, really, but that's what we do to save money or to make it.  I am nervous about it as I speak.  It is a monster that has lived for over one hundred years, and it will obey the laws of physics no matter my good humor or moral standing.  

It is a monster like death.  It will do what it will do and there is nothing to stop it.  Touch it with that maddening saw and it is like being born - our lives are put into danger the instant we start on the journey.  Hopefully, I will live past this tree.  I will not live past life.  Death will come like the cold winds in November, no matter what.

Kathleen Singh, in her book "The Grace in Dying," writes from her experience as a hospice worker, one of the hardest jobs the world might have.  She said that at the beginning of her work, a single word would form in her mind as she went from house to house, from hospital to convalescent home: tragedy.  The terror and hopelessness of the relatives, the depression of the dying all brought up that one word.  But we know she could not write a book about that, and soon she lets us in on what time and experience has taught her: that, somewhere in the dying process,an epiphany is reached, not just by a few, but by everyone.  Some in the dying process - she calls it the near-dying experience - reach it sooner, weeks before actual death and have told her such things as "I am being filled with light" or "I can understand now..." Others reach it only at the moment of death, where she can see the radiance of eyes and skin and feel the relief, as if a great simmering energy were let go.  In all cases, she says a "hush," a sacred silence fills the area - often followed by the grief of the relatives, to be sure, but always, always bringing that sense of the ineffable, of the ultimate in understanding.

Our death, then, is our Nirvana, our Risen moment, our glory. Early in the book she has intimated that perhaps this does not last past death for some, but that all have it, at least at that moment.  Death, she said, is not to be feared. Death, she says, shows that we are loved.

We will see what else she brings to us in the following blogs, but I know the feeling from my own experiences.  I have written about deaths before, a few recently, of the girl in the car and my father. With the girl, there was the element of tragedy because of her health and her age.  With my father, it was simply the hush, the silence in the depth of unspoken knowledge, of the logos as the Greeks called it, the Word that is beyond words, straight to meaning.  It was there for the girl, too, palpable behind the human tragedy.  Singh is right - death is our call to grace, our reward for simply living, whether as heathens, Christians or as pick-pockets.  Everything else is small in comparison, and no one can take away the freedom that is in our personal death - no dictator or concentration camp commander can control us then.  

But still I fear it, probably to the end.  But it is a strange fear, for it compels, not repels.  That is why I read these books, why I write this blog and website, and why you read it (among others, I know).  It is the secret, the key to the mystery, the one thing that drives the characters in the best of plots.  This, though, is no work of fiction.  We are the main characters in the greatest plot ever made, and sooner or later we come to the cliff-hanger - and drop off.  The resolution, unlike in novels, is what happens after we drop off the cliff. 

More to come from Kathleen Singh.  We will see what the living metaphor of lives on the edge can bring to our own understanding, to our own key to our own mystery.  FK                               

Old photos and movies came to mind while reading last night. One I recalled is of my grandparents with his family in front of his grandmother's house in New Haven @ 1910.  He is standing there with a cousin (I think), he in knickers, she in a pinafore (I think that's what those little girl dresses are called), their hair done too neatly, a look of mild annoyance on their faces.  Of course we first look to the people in such photos, this of my long-dead grandfather when he was years younger than my own son.  But what grabbed me after inspecting the oddness and sameness of my relatives in a time long gone was the size of the trees in the yard.  Probably maple, or so I see in my mind, with girths almost as broad as the children are tall.  It first struck me that "those were the days" when trees were grand, but on second thought, understood that 1910 New Haven was no outpost of a recently claimed wilderness.  Its trees should be no greater than ours today.  And it is true.  Look at any older house with a yard and you will see those same great trees.  But why did they look so special in the picture?

In fact, I have several pictures of myself and family in the woods and the trees often strike me in the same way - huge, towering presences that make us look small and insignificant.  I have found that this is the same with those "small" movies, the artsy ones that are done for the art rather than the big-box, and how the cameras capture the scenery.  There is one that was something of a hit, "The Last of the Mohegans", the modern one with Daniel Day Lewis that brings us into the forest primeval.  Nature towers above man in all but the most action-packed scenes.  We see this more so in the quiet lesser movies - "Nebraska" for instance, where it is not the trees but the space, the expanse of land and the sky.  There is one point at which the main character visits his old farm house, now in ruins.  About runs the corn to the horizon, and the sky, limitless of floating clouds, give a sense of the infinite in its remote quietness.  

These pictures seem special, but they are not.  Beyond the city, nature is always overwhelming, far greater than any of us, but we seldom notice it.  Those big trees are in my back yard.  That big sky is just beyond my driveway.  I do not usually notice them because they are normal, and they do not draw attention to themselves.  Unlike the dog or the family or friends, they simply are.  It is because they require no response from us that they are seldom noticed.  But when they are we are amazed, as if something new has come into our lives.

They are always there, however, all around us - sky, sea, trees, hills.  They are not special, so much so that we do not notice them, but they ARE special exactly because we do not normally notice them.  They are our backdrop, our reality, which is so seldom seen from our busy social minds - from the False Mind, as Richard Rohr calls it.  But this presence is there, not only within us, but without.  It is within stillness that we see them and ourselves more for what they and we are - these great, impossible, portentous creations that sit in the silence of the vastness - of truth.  

It is this that we find in the stillness of deep ritual - the treating of even the small as a great miracle, a gift.  And it is from seeing from silence, from the stilled mind, that we understand our impossible sacredness, not only in ritual but everywhere.  

It is this that the film director sees - at one point, the tombstones against the great, silent, beautiful sky of Nebraska.  They, these reminders of our mortality, are nothing compared to the vastness of life.  And it is in this that we see what is our true self, for in understanding the presence of the vastness, we intuit to ourselves that we know the truth and have always known the truth.  The tomb stones are our false selves that die, and the sky, our true selves that live in limitless and timeless freedom.  

So my grandfather is long dead, his picture a mere curiosity, but the trees behind him tell the story.  He is beyond the fashion and customs of his time and among the greatness that was once only a whisper in the unnoticed witness of the trees.  FK           

Decades ago I read the book "Shogun," which was made into a TV miniseries around 1980.  Its main plot revolved around the manipulation of warlords and a 17th century Englishman shipwrecked and caught in the endless and futile whirlwind of violent people vying for power - much like Medieval Europe.  In it we find unbelievable cruelty (again, much like Medieval Europe) and odd customs and beliefs.  One in particular stood out for me: the Tea Ceremony.  In the novel, a young married woman is having an affair with the Englishman.  She has to abort her pregnancies for fear that the racial mix will be discovered, but she and her shogun husband are clearly, in the Japanese way, not meshing.  The shogun wishes, against hope, to bring back the marriage and thus proposes the Tea Ceremony for he and his wife.

The detail was well described in the book, and I can recall being both fascinated with it and perplexed - what was it all about?  It took place in near silence, the two playing their roles as husband and wife, candles lit, the proper dress warn and so on.  But it was the near silence, every slight noise calibrated, that made the difference.  I believe I now understand it, as a moment - a moment in time sacrilized, so that all time might be sacrilized.

It is the purpose of ritual to make the ordinary sacred, to draw together more than one to share the experience of meditation.  All religions have it, as far as I know.  Among the Hoti Indians of Venezuela with whom I lived, they had the Awato Fest, an all-night ritual that brought humans and animals and stars and gods together in the sacred space of increase, of fertility.  At a revivalist meeting, I saw people cry and fall down as the Holy Spirit took hold of them in dramatic fashion.  But still, it is in quiet contemplation where I believe ritual has the greatest affect.

In the Catholic Church, I take all but the readings from the Bible (especially the Gospels) with great boredom.  It is not until the blessing of the Eucharist - the sacramental  turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood - that things settle down into a sacramental stillness that has lasting affects.  My son is simply bored throughout, but I believe most sincere adults would get the sense of spirituality in that space even if they were not Christian - just as I now understand the Tea Ceremony.  Both are the realization that we, within us, can experience the Holy.  This can also be done in the silence of the woods or the ocean, but most know what I mean.  

This is the sacred-filling thought and action that Richard Rohr encourages us to seek in "Immortal Diamond," to find the holy that is within us and that is all about us.  Using Biblical quotations throughout, he shows how this was exhorted again and again, without common understanding.  It is this, this pointing too, that was not only lost to readers of the Bible in literalism, but to our society at large.  Until the 8th century, he claims, the world was a magical place, but literalism, combined with the quest for power, took control - much as practices such as the Tea Ceremony became an afterthought to the Buddhist warlords of Japan.  


Rorh is of the Tielhard de Chardin school, which claims that the Resurrection of Christ was our turning point, or at least symbolic of our times; that what we seek is a transformation, not continuity, like the resurrection, making us an evolving world.  And so we are met with the division of the Perennial Tradition again: we see that the world lost its wonder, by and large, over a thousand years ago; for the optimistic, Christ signals a positive turning  point amid a falling appreciation of the sacred; for those who simply follow history, the trajectory seems downward.  


I will push that aside for now, for the spirit, as Rohr says, is always within us.  It can come into our lives when we open ourselves to it, in ritual or in magical places in nature or man-made structures.  The point is, that even in the religions that teach us original sin, either through Adam or through Karma, we can reclaim the sacred any time we want.  It is always within us.  FK           
  

In Christianity, much is made of the suffering of Jesus.  This is particularly true in Latin countries, where it became something of a morbid joke among us, for in every Mexican church, there is the "bleeding Christ," a depiction of Jesus in agony as he bleeds on the cross.  On the other hand, In "Immortal Diamond," Fr. Rohr generally emphasizes the potential joy that awaits us when we transcend the "False Self" and find our point of union with God. God, says Rorh, is about freedom, even if it means the freedom to create horrors (which are worked on to create the the final tapestry that is Love), while humans are about "stability and control, even if it means boredom and death."  God, and the creation He made, is about love, beauty and truth, all wedded together in a union, a relationship, that is the meaning of heaven. It is coming to us all, sooner or later - depending on when we find our "inner diamond," our eternal link with God.

I have poured out several great points of Rohr here and will get into some of them in later blogs.  However, two things struck me about the tact he has taken: one, that Fr. Rohr's ideas coincide almost exactly with my own, albeit on a more knowledgeable level; and two, that he incorporates the "bleeding Christ" into our own lives, although not as deeply as I would often demand.  

On our mutual agreeability, I would like to say that great minds think alike, but know better.  Rather, I have always found that when others have my ideas, it is because we are a part of a movement of thought, however hidden that may be.  Rohr himself admits to gleaning from the Perennial Tradition, of which I have long been a part, that sees life itself as a metaphor of God - and the literary metaphors of religion as metaphors for God in life. The latter are not to be read as literal, but as pointing a way to the greater truth that is beyond our limited rational verbiage - just as our lives are not to be seen in the deadness of the restraints our society has placed on it.  Christ was about freedom, yes - freedom from our false self, which then allows us access to the limitless creativity of the Source.  All true, all wonderful...but...

In contemplating the bloody Christ, I have often thought that we humans usually die in misery as well, and suffer insupportable sorrows.  They are inevitable.  Someday we will all be told, "you have cancer" or "we will have to take off your leg because of diabetes," or, eventually, "you are going to die - soon" and often these deaths are painful indeed, lasting far longer than the day of suffering that Jesus had.  We might also see our children die, or become addicted, or themselves develop horrible diseases.  We are, in effect, most probably going to suffer at least as much as Jesus did on the cross.  And this is why my essays often have a dark side - for we must face this inevitability first before we can have true conviction in the greater light.  Untold numbers of people have lost faith in God because of their suffering, or the suffering of others.  "Why would a good God allow this to happen?," and it is a good question.  It is one that has to be answered.

"Immortal Diamond" does not linger in the dark side, but it is explaining it (as I continue to read) well in the metaphor that is life.  The Christ, as Rohr explains, is an "icon of our destiny," no more or less than the path each person must take to return to wholeness.  The Christ is the metaphor, while Jesus is us, the person.  His life is the life of all humans, of all truth - for no matter what, we must all "die to life to gain it." In another blog I have quoted Rohr quoting a hospice worker who said that life and death are exquisitely timed for release into the true and eternal self - that is, that the dying process helps us lose our false self and regain our true self.  And this is 'Jesus the Icon' - that we must die, often horribly, to gain Heaven, or union - die to ourselves as well as to our bodies. Thus is Christianity (as with other religions in other ways) a metaphor for life, and life a metaphor for the process, the relationship of the god within us to the God apart from us.  Thus are the change of seasons, of all death and regeneration a metaphor.  And so are the holy myths that make up religion - in myth, less than the superficial facts of science, but much much more in truth.  FK                 

"Hospice workers who have accompanied many deaths can tell you about this much better than I.  They often start as de facto therapists and cannot help but end up as spiritual directors by simply observing the process of transformations from the False Self to True Self in the dying process. Kathleen Dowling Singh goes so far as to that that 'the life and death of a human being is exquisitely calibrated to automatically produce union with Spirit' at the end." Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, pg. 32.

I wrote a few essays on witnessing death or dying, one "Dark Angel" and the other more recently about my father's death, and in both there was a remarkable sense of - being - about everything, as if it filled the air.  In "Dark Angel," a friend and I were almost to the cabin the in UP, driving the winding road through miles and miles of forest, when we came upon a small group of cars huddled in one area by an old gravel quarry.  We could feel it before we saw it, and then saw it - a car had gone off into the quarry square into a tree.  Supplies for camping were scattered about the road.  We stopped to see if we could help, and found that the driver, a very young man, was lying outside the car, leg twisted nearly to his ear.  Inside, though, was a very quiet girl, only 17 we were to find later.  We knew she was dead.  A few who felt for a pulse in her foot said so, but they didn't have to - a silence hung in the air that was palpable.  There was grim tragedy here because of her age, but the pall of death was neither grim or tragic - it "was," simply, and it was not "us."  We felt the presence of reality, and it was a shock.  Had it not been for the tragedy, we might have been uplifted by it.

With my father, I had come to visit him in his last months.  He slept nearly all the time, but woke up briefly to greet me when I entered.  I then began to talk about politics, which he had once loved, and to make gestures and sarcastic comments when suddenly I felt like a complete idiot.  He was not listening, but that is not what made me feel stupid - rather, the presence of nearing death made all my comments and concerns seem as nothing.  I was in the presence of the Real, the holy, and the rest was foolishness.

And such it is that Richard Rohr presence the False Self.  It is, he said, necessary to use to find our way back to our True Self, that self in God or eternity or the absolute (as the reader prefers), but it is only a tool - like religion.  Sin, claims Rohr, is not so much adultery and theft and all the rest, but the clinging to the False Self, which is and only can be ego.  It is selfishness itself, no matter how it cloaks itself.  In fact, he quotes Thomas Merton as saying, more or less, "be a fornicator, a cheat, a real bastard, be anything but a sanctimonious religious observer, " for it is the latter who feel too righteous to ever grow.  It is they who are stuck in their false self, which is the bottom line of sin.  No wonder Christ came for the sinners and berated the sanctimonious Pharisees. 

The True Self- more or less synonymous with "soul" - is beyond death.  Says Rohr, "we fear death for the imagined loss of an imagined individual."  The False Self dies, the Soul is eternal, our color, our particular flavor in the infinitude of God.  The True Self, can do no wrong - it is full and complete and as it should be, its foibles - for only pure God is perfect -  quickly corrected.  It cannot go to hell - only to the eternal.

Richard Rohr's take on the True Self resonates with everything I have experienced.  It does, when thought about, answer most concerns about evil and suffering in the world - certainly those on a grand scale, although that still needs some deeper explanation. I believe he will have more to say on this in the pages to come.  But we are left to wonder - if our False Self, our Social Self dies, is what is left recognizable?  Rohr claims that once it falls off, it is as if it never were, so obvious a mask that we do not think about it again.  We fear our loss of this, only to find that it was no loss at all.  And so the presence of death confirms: in its shadow, things become real.  This reality might shake our False Self, but when we peer behind it, we find a genuine being who is opening up to the mystery and truth of life.  And death, for the two Selves at this level, is no more than night that shifts into day that shifts into night, all one.  FK                    

A few nights ago we got a once-in-a-lifetime visit from the local priest, ostensibly for fund raising, but as it turned out, mostly for socializing. My wife is a convert from Southern Protestantism - not the Baptists, but the South has a general view on relations with pastors. For one thing, they vote them in or out, and so they have to perform.  For another, they (the pastors) have to show their humanity, but on a higher level.  They are, in other words, just like us but dedicated to being better and more learned in the sacred.

In a long weekend at the cabin, I read a slew of interesting articles on the perennial tradition - on the classic view that we are descending from a higher age into moral entropy, but also on the definition and the state of soul.  I cannot remember who wrote what, as these were read after full days of building a wood shed alone, without electrical equipment, reminding me both of my age and of several dozen muscle groups that rarely see use.  Tired to say the least, but  what stuck most with me was that idea - that we have a soul, and in that, an inner companion that we are so constantly aware of that we don't think of it as a companion, but as a hidden part of our more complex personality.  

In a way it is, but in the soul there is also a difference.  I have not read Sartre in full because I do not take stock in existentialism, which does not have the same meaning as the word used for the moment in politics, which only means "to exist."  What I am told, though, by those who have studied him is that Sartre's existentialism consists mainly with the modern (leading to post-modern) idea that all that stuff of soul, of the "other," of God, is at very best an unknowable, and more likely non-existent. In the end, if we are honest about it, we only have ourselves, naked and raw in a random universe.  What we are to do about it is have courage - to push the crutch of spiritual belief and / or religion away and stand against the wind, with courage for the sake of this naked truth, which is the only end we can aspire to. That is, truth in the face of naked, un-abstracted reality, with that "other" or companion within us being only a psychological twist that we ultimately use as a tattered, juvenile security blanket. 

And thus the meaning of the phrase, "existential angst," because we do not have the courage to face a universe alone.  This I know, because I have often felt such loneliness in the middle of the night, when the darkest fears come to wake and there is no one else, no other presence, there to comfort or console.  At such times there is no God or spirit, only naked fear.  This, the existentialists would say, is the beginning of truth.  The hero in such a world remains undaunted, being, in a twist of Greek philosophy, true to his own self, a self that is alone and will parish as all other life on earth parishes.  

This I also know because every now and then, such as happened at the beginning of this weekend, such alone-ness affects my waking self as well.  This is much worse.  In the night, our problems are magnified, as a child magnifies his own small fears and problems into monsters and horrors.  In the day, however, we are our adult selves.  What we experience then is not the direct fear of the boogey man, or even our immanent destruction by, say, a tornado or hurricane, but rather the pointlessness of it all.  With this, the beauty of nature and the good will of others lose their luster and all becomes a flat gray, the epitome of depression. In this we can also see the progression of oppressive government.  In the past tyrants used fear to keep people in line - but in the era of existentialism, the totalitarian state was born. Thus we get the public buildings with only functional design; thus we get the cold pragmatism of an "enlightened" society that functions only to function.  We may then have less starving people, but no joy,only existence.  Thus is the legacy,as I see it, of existentialism and the modern proto-type that excludes primitive notions of spirit and soul.  

But, once the darkness is past, we can see the real faults in this line of thinking, which come to look like more and more like thoughts from a deep inner sickness.  Going back to the Greeks, we have that mind-bender phrase, "Truth is Beauty, Beauty is Truth..." and now, looking at the existentialist grayness, we begin to see what that means.  Untainted by a depressed spirit, depressed either from disease or a certain social milieu,we have beauty.  Think of the sparkling wonder that you saw as a child in even the simplest things; now think of the wonders you have seen as an adult and the feelings of awe - of supernatural awe - that they  brought to you.  We can deny that this sense of beauty came from any spiritual source, but where, then, did it come from? How  can such a subtle and non-utilitarian thing be so pervasive and powerful, so powerful that it gives us reason to live?  

It is not born of the existential self.  There is no room for spirit there, only frank, hard  reality which has no illusions.  And yet beauty is not an illusion.  And this is where spirit lies, and as such, where truth is born, for in beauty we find the essence of things beyond culture.  And because we have a frank, practical side that pushes beauty away, we have a second self, a constant  companion in beauty and truth.  This is our soul, our  ground; without it we are not "free to truth," but devoid of truth, set adrift in a world for which we lack basic understanding.  It leads to fear and depression.  It is the totalitarian state.  And it is the opposite of truth - a lie.

Different theologies express this  basic notion from different angles, some perhaps better than others.  We have pantheism and pantheism in monotheism, and for us Christians, a three-in-one God.  I can not wrap up all the meanings in this one phrase of 'beauty in truth and truth in beauty,' but we do get the beginning of the understanding of our separation, our distinctiveness, our partial selves existing, or so it seems, along side other more complete selves within us.  Through it all, we are pulled to truth and the One.  Reality is not a black dearth of meaning; to the scholar this may seem so, but in beauty we can see that greater meaning is expressed outside and well beyond what we verbally understand as meaning.  Because it exists beyond this tack of verbal logic does not mean it does not exist at all - but rather that it is understood in another part of us, in our "soul."  In the end, all that existentialist bravery is, is standing guard over ignorance, clinging to a fallacy of perception no matter the cost.  FK                

In the last blog, I came to the only conclusion possible for me about universal morality - that it must adhere to the golden rule, to treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.  We might say, then, that morality is all about relationships, and that is what the startling movie, "Could Atlas," was about - that relationships carry forth through all time and make our reality at any given moment.  It is more complicated than that, however.

It was difficult to follow at first, as we had missed the first 45 minutes, but since the movie was three hours long, that didn't keep us from grasping it over the long run.  In a nutshell, the script follows the lives of several people through various scenarios throughout time, recognizing multiple replays of personalities under very different historical conditions - from the South of the Slave era, to the 1970's, to the present, and to two different futures, one of a highly technical but failing civilization, and another of a world in shambles after a monumental collapse. In some instances, people meant to get together are thwarted by exterior obstacles or there own timidity.  In other times, the relationships work out.  There is in the progression of time a progression of personalities, as if our heroes are learning from past lives to finally get it right.  And even though the sequences take place in different times and different cultures, we see the same morality played out - the development of heroism, of sacrificing one's place in society or even one's life for others.  It is, in this respect, an enactment of the Golden Rule.

But in many ways it isn't.  In each scenario there are the bad guys, truly evil people who we wish to be killed, and who often are, but who often also remain victorious - at "present." To rattle them off, the slaver loses his contract and his wealth through the spiritual revelation of another; the gay composer commits suicide after killing a usurious man of wealth in 19th century England who was blackmailing him; a reporter in the 1970's kills evil agents of an evil corporation, and then brings the company down through news exposure of their villainy; an old man in our time escapes an old folks home he was tricked into going, having Big Nurse and company beaten by wild-eyed Scotsmen - and then taking up with the woman he had loved in his youth; rebels fight against a super-tech totalitarian society that is manufacturing clones for food; and a post-apocalyptic man is helped by a woman from the stars (a human, descendant of an earlier high-tech society) to kill his barbarian oppressors and leave for a beatific home on another planet. 

As far as I could tell through the make-up (Tom Hanks was often nearly unrecognizable), all the good guys remained good, and the bad, bad.  We come to the nut of the movie's  philosophy when a renegade clone speaks as the rebellion against the high-tech oppressors roars from explosions and gunshots and death: there is no "right order" that must be maintained because those in power claim it should be; rather, humans exist only insofar as their relationship with others. There is no other existence; we make our reality based on these relationships alone, and they are absolutely plastic.  

Given the other scenarios, we understand, however, that there is an ultimate good: non-usurious relationships - that is, relationships based on love and mutual respect, from the family unit up through government. To reach this utopia, it is often necessary to kill the oppressor.  This is not,then, a movie about passivism, but about overcoming social impediments to achieve this utopia, this world of individual freedom couched in an atmosphere of universal equality.  It is then not a movie about absolute social relativism, or one that is anti-capitalistic or anti-West.  It carries a message that most Americans would agree with - fight for the right, for freedom and human dignity.

We cannot take this work as a work of realism, but as a parable. I will not criticize, then, the particulars.  But it does open up the discussion about universal morality.  The great prophets and sages gave us the Golden Rule, while the writers of this movie give us another: have the courage to fight against the social norms or powers that be for freedom and dignity.  

By comparison, both might be seen to have flaws in the modern context. It is 9/11, the anniversary of that act of evil by Muslim extremists; but by the law of the movie, were they evil?  Didn't they sacrifice their lives to free their own "good guys" from hegemonic Western sacrilege and oppression?  There are, indeed, those on the political left who voiced this position from the beginning.  We might say that their Islamic state would oppress, but they would counter that the secular forces of monetary advancement not only oppresses physically, but spiritually.  Certainly, we have hit a glitch in the movie's armor. 

And yet, if we turn to the Golden Rule, we see that it cannot fight oppression.  It would make for a beautiful world if everyone were to abide by it.  But take one handful of power-seekers among a world of kindness, and the power-seekers would have their slaves, their unequal wealth, then jealousy and war.  We would be where we are now.  And the society would make the rules to perpetuate itself, at least at first.  Morality would be ruled by the self-interest of the oppressor, as it was in the movie. But isn't the morality of the movie, too, ruled by self-interest?  Doesn't it advocate for violence to suit one's idea of justice?  Could not this justice be restorative - in the end, vengeance-based? Without another moral platform, that of forgiveness, it certainly would be.

Where does this leave us? As we lurch into another war in the Mideast, it is more than abstract thinking.  Our enemies are absolutists; to successfully fight them, we, too, must have a strong sense of the right.  But we see oppression in our own system and often believe that this, our Western system, is less than good.  Many advocate revolution, just as the movie tells us to fight oppression, even unto death wherever we see it.  But if we turned to the Golden Rule, it is very clear what would happen - ISIS would indeed be flying their revolutionary black flag from the roof of the White House.


Perhaps the suicide of my acquaintance, spoken of in the last blog, gives us a lesson: first of all, forgive yourself; treat yourself as you would like to be treated by others, as if you were good and worthy.  Then, move from a firm center out to the world.  Our nation's rules are built on a foundation of individual respect, and we can change those that came after based on this consideration, not with vengeance, but with an idea towards reconciliation.  From this base, we could firmly reject those forces that would work to weaken this foundation. 

However, I am not wise enough, nor do I have the space to articulate a greater code for a better society.  It is, rather, something for us to ponder.  Morality may be a system of behavior that is necessary to clear our thinking enough to begin to reach for God, yes, and that is ultimately the most important aspect; but it also creates winners and losers in this world.  One that is too passive in tone leads to annihilation, just as one that is too aggressive and repressive.  There is a right way, I believe, and it is of paramount importance that we of the free nations come to agree on this and stand together.  Frustratingly, the great religions give us a number of sound basis, but some, like Christianity, lack the worldliness that is a necessary ingredient for survival - unless, that is, we are more than our relationships; unless we are something eternal and real by itself.  Perhaps it is in finding this center, this soul, where we might find the solution.  FK                    
                            

When I was in my late teens, a certain gang of people would sometimes meet by coincidence on a backwoods dirt road a few miles from my parent's house to drink and cavort.  Here I came to know kids that I had never had classes with, but who I knew by sight.  One was John B, whose father was an assistant at a small local grocery store that had higher prices because of its size, but the best and only real butcher shop in town.  His father was a short, very blond man who always seemed in good humor, even though he was doing much of the grunt work in a small store into middle age.  Some time later the owner would retire and sell the store to him, which was fitting.  He deserved it.  

There was one thing about this man that stood out - really stood out - though; although not particularly fat, he had an enormous butt, conspicuous enough to make small children comment and deeply embarrass their mothers.  Still, a nice guy, no one could dislike him, and his butt, it seemed, made no one jealous of him.

His son John was a carbon copy - short, very blond hair and an enormous butt, but also friendly to all.  He would show up at these impromptu drinking fests and fit in well with the rest, even those blue-collar toughs who would often taunt such people. Apparently, his deviance was too easy a mark, and he was a very, very nice guy.  

It was there that I got to know him, but only there.  I went off to college and such ties quickly fell by the way side.  It was during these college years that I got into nature and alone-ness, so much so that I camped out for several nights on a nearby mountain called "Tri Mountain" for its tripple hills.  On the middle one, there were three smaller humps called the "Three Sisters" where no official path went, and to where we in the know would always go, pushing our way up steep rock slides and through poison ivy, because the Three Sister were hard-rock cliffs which offered a spectacular view.  On a very clear day, one could see Long Island to the south, and Mt. Tom to the north, at least ten miles north of Springfield, Mass.  And, as said, it was off the beaten path, and so became the chosen spot for my lone camp outing.

Problem was, there was no flat land there to pitch a tent.  Finally I settled on the flattest land near the cliff, just beyond an oak that leaned far out over the lower part of the cliff, which would have made for a great and very dangerous swing.  As usual, there were screeches and rustlings throughout the night, bringing a sort of terror that seemed ridiculous in the light of day.  I would go back in the day to grab something to eat at my parents, would head back in the late afternoon, and repeat.  Hardly a fantastic adventure, but I did learn something about fear and imagination.

Some few years after that, I heard the terrible news: John B had killed himself.  He had been married with a small child when his wife left him for another man.  Apparently, beneath his friendliness there had been a chronic depression, and when the bad days came, he couldn't take it.  His chosen method of death, like many suicides, was crude and cruel and old fashioned, as if he and others in the same boat wished to punish themselves.  It had taken three days to find him after his disappearance.  When they did, he was dangling from a rope from a tree, the same tree I had camped by a few years before. 

Of course I felt spooked, but it made sense.  Hanging goes back for a thousand years or more as a method of punishment in the Old World.  Also, on the cliffs people from a hundred years or more had chiseled in their names with dates: "Aaron Hill, 1878; Horace Hall, 1903" and so on.  It was a place, almost a graveyard of the past that only some of the locals, and some others like John who knew the locals, knew how to reach.  He had found it, found the right tree and footing, and had swung himself out on a limb in indescribable despair.

His memory came to me recently for an unknown reason - maybe the Robin Williams suicide, maybe not - and this time it struck me as an incredible, almost impossible thing, this suicide.  Imagine, as much as you dare, approaching your neighbor with a shot gun and pointing it at him.  He has done nothing more wrong to you than let his dog bark at night, and he now has time to plead with you: don't do it!  My wife, my kids, everything and everyone I have, don't do it!  And you look calmly at him and pull the trigger. In a second, you have taken everything from him and turned him into a slab of meat.  You have also crossed a line into a country with an entirely different culture, topography, everything.  You have with one shot catapulted yourself and everyone around you and the dead neighbor into a frighteningly unfamiliar lands.

Now imagine yourself, who has probably done no more wrong than the neighbor.  You have a big butt, but everyone likes you; your wife has found another guy, but your daughter loves and needs you.  You look into the mirror of your mind and it pleads, don't do it!, but you cinch the knot and swing out over the precipice into the unknown.  How?  I can understand this with the raving maniac, with the man who has become possessed by some psychological or spiritual devil, but for the otherwise thinking person?   

This is not an exercise to condemn anyone - in such a strange land, I feel powerless to debate.  It is like murder, but it also is not; in suicide, you know yourself better than anyone, and it is left to your judgement or your pain.  Still, it is so beyond the boundaries that I am drawn in by the debate now going on about euthanasia.  Those for it are for it for mercy reasons - it is usually suicide by those in great physical pain with no hope of a cure. Those against it argue the slippery slope - that it might be used by those in temporary crises, not just those in terminal illness. Others approach it from the God perspective: the Bible, they say, says we do not own our bodies - God does, and so we should leave its death to God alone.  

For me at the moment, the question goes back to yesterday's blog: while God, or great outside force, often intercedes to direct our lives, at what point does our personal freedom contradict such direction to the point that it is nullified?  That is, at what point have we crossed from natural law to something that carries us beyond this law irrevocably, like the murderer?  Beyond, that is, the guidance of Providence, into a new and dangerous country.  Into Hell, perhaps.

There are many possible answers, but one that first comes to mind is this: could morality be not a system of rewards and punishments as we understand it from our childhood, but a careful set of instructions to keep us in line with the "natural," with the guidance of the Great Directive?  And yet, these differ from nation to nation, from tribe to tribe.  Are there any absolute values, then?  Or is it rather a system of relationships, each culture and/or era offering a different take on reality? That is, each system developing values which keep one in touch with divine direction through the proper exercise of relationships.  Is it that fluid?  Is the native priest who is lawfully ripping out beating hearts on an Aztec temple just as compliant with divine will as the Catholic priest who is bathing the lepers in spite of the risk to himself?

As a social scientist I would say "yes," minus any mention of divine will.  As my honest self I would say, "you've got to be kidding!"  John B's actions were not the best, and he ended for the moment any guidance he and those with whom he had a relationship could get.  The murderer, priest or no, also ends by his own direction the fate of another.  This has to be wrong.  But what then of moral relativism?  Where is the line to be drawn? Do we adhere to the full extent of the Bible, including not eating pork, or do we pick and choose at our own discretion?  I will continue to eat bacon, but will we as a society abandon so much of basic morality that we cross a boundary that places us beyond a cosmic law and cosmic guidance?  

Or is it all about relationships, but with one caveat: the golden rule - do unto others as you would wish done unto yourself.  Yes, but what of John B's suicide?  Might it also be, do unto yourself as you know you should do unto others?  And this final question: was Judas condemned for his betrayal of Jesus, or his suicide,.or both?    

Next blog, a further look into relationships, reviewing the movie "Cloud Atlas." FK