I write now at 6 AM, having been awake for some time with the excitement of a solution to a big problem. It appeared from out of a disturbed dream, which was spurred not only from the problem, but from Thomas Keating's book "Reflections on the Unknowable," which I have been discussing this last week. What comes to mind as the mist clears are two points he made in the latter part of the book:
One: God is Chaos. By this it is not meant mindlessness, but infinite creativity, present at every moment. It is precisely what we don't like, this chaos, for our world is built on order. As many authors have pointed out, this order not only gives us comfort, but also monotony, depression, and anxiety; monotony from the predictability, depression from living in this rut, and anxiety because we know this order is built on sand, the sand of mortality. This order we all know will crumble, and this is terrifying. In the chaos of creativity,we solve the problems of monotony and depression, but increase the anxiety because we find no firm footing. We are left dangling over the void. This last can only be ameliorated by faith, by trust in a greater order beyond our comprehension. But this leads to the second point:
God in the Ground of Being - that is, God before realization, or what the Buddhists call the Void - is beyond passion or concern. It just IS. For Christians, Christ is the investment of this void in the human condition, an investment that is understood by Love - but what form does this divine love take? It will not give you what you want when you want it; it will not keep you from suffering and death. As we know from the personage of Christ in Jesus, it is precisely to this suffering that we are destined. So what do we get from this, this infinite creativity made human? Keating points out the suffering of the saints, quoting one woman who wrote: "if I did not have my faith, I would commit suicide." Her suffering was, as she saw it, divinely inspired, a work of God; a suffering so great that she could not touch the Love of God that she so deeply desired. For Keating, this was the greatest depths of the Dark Night of the Soul, one that only the greatest saints are asked to endure. And one that many, many of us are forced to endure in our final days.
And so we see this great game played out - the chaos of creativity against a backdrop of a god, or an Absolute, that most certainly is not a Santa Claus for our desires. It reminds me of a very cynical book written about a passive, well-meaning man who is killed in a random robbery and is sent to hell. He objects - why me to hell? How did I deserve this? God's reply? "That's art!" That is, hey, whatever strikes my mood, ya know?
As with all things spiritual, though, there is more to it than that. We are, as Keating points out, part of this infinite creativity, and there is, if we have eyes to see, great joy in this and - most importantly - freedom as well. To cast aside the narrow order of humans, one joins ranks with God in this wide open and infinite splendor. Unfortunately, from our perspective, the ticket to freedom is bought with the demise of our order, of our small world, and in that, we must suffer the horror of the abyss, of a chaos that is beyond our comprehension.
In the glib depiction of life as a believer in Christ, all is supposed to go well once His will is accepted. It does not, although the "wages of sin" - of vice - are avoided. Divorce happens, businesses fail, sickness comes. But there is something left between the cracks, between Chaos and suffering; there is indeed a guiding voice, even for those trapped in the limited world. Just as there are gradations of love (and of hate), so it seems there are gradations of spiritual interplay. Apparently, it is not an all or nothing thing; it is rather something that does not require the passage to Hell to get to heaven. It is a clearing of the air, a solution to the problem. It has always been there for all people in all times; it is the "eureka!" of the scientist, the coincidence of a ride at the right time, a fluke that rearranges our lives for the better. Why this is so is lost in the talk of the greater things, of ultimate surrender and enlightenment. It is, after all, a world of infinite creativity and anything can happen. From the perspective of the enlightened, all is perfect, but from our lowly level, all is not. Sometimes solutions don't come; sometimes we are forced to dangle over the abyss. But in infinite creativity, there are also those flukes, those acknowledgments that there is a force at work greater than ourselves that cares, at least sometimes, about our nearsighted frivolities.
And the insight from this is this: never give up until it is truly time to give up. The future is never written, as hard as we try to make it so. It can change on a dime in the most unusual ways. There is more to life than death, more to life than ashen supplication. There is, in a word, life, and if not anything else it is an adventure towards which we must have openness and great courage to appreciate. Never give up until it is time to give up - and that time, if we are open, will be given to us to know. FK
One: God is Chaos. By this it is not meant mindlessness, but infinite creativity, present at every moment. It is precisely what we don't like, this chaos, for our world is built on order. As many authors have pointed out, this order not only gives us comfort, but also monotony, depression, and anxiety; monotony from the predictability, depression from living in this rut, and anxiety because we know this order is built on sand, the sand of mortality. This order we all know will crumble, and this is terrifying. In the chaos of creativity,we solve the problems of monotony and depression, but increase the anxiety because we find no firm footing. We are left dangling over the void. This last can only be ameliorated by faith, by trust in a greater order beyond our comprehension. But this leads to the second point:
God in the Ground of Being - that is, God before realization, or what the Buddhists call the Void - is beyond passion or concern. It just IS. For Christians, Christ is the investment of this void in the human condition, an investment that is understood by Love - but what form does this divine love take? It will not give you what you want when you want it; it will not keep you from suffering and death. As we know from the personage of Christ in Jesus, it is precisely to this suffering that we are destined. So what do we get from this, this infinite creativity made human? Keating points out the suffering of the saints, quoting one woman who wrote: "if I did not have my faith, I would commit suicide." Her suffering was, as she saw it, divinely inspired, a work of God; a suffering so great that she could not touch the Love of God that she so deeply desired. For Keating, this was the greatest depths of the Dark Night of the Soul, one that only the greatest saints are asked to endure. And one that many, many of us are forced to endure in our final days.
And so we see this great game played out - the chaos of creativity against a backdrop of a god, or an Absolute, that most certainly is not a Santa Claus for our desires. It reminds me of a very cynical book written about a passive, well-meaning man who is killed in a random robbery and is sent to hell. He objects - why me to hell? How did I deserve this? God's reply? "That's art!" That is, hey, whatever strikes my mood, ya know?
As with all things spiritual, though, there is more to it than that. We are, as Keating points out, part of this infinite creativity, and there is, if we have eyes to see, great joy in this and - most importantly - freedom as well. To cast aside the narrow order of humans, one joins ranks with God in this wide open and infinite splendor. Unfortunately, from our perspective, the ticket to freedom is bought with the demise of our order, of our small world, and in that, we must suffer the horror of the abyss, of a chaos that is beyond our comprehension.
In the glib depiction of life as a believer in Christ, all is supposed to go well once His will is accepted. It does not, although the "wages of sin" - of vice - are avoided. Divorce happens, businesses fail, sickness comes. But there is something left between the cracks, between Chaos and suffering; there is indeed a guiding voice, even for those trapped in the limited world. Just as there are gradations of love (and of hate), so it seems there are gradations of spiritual interplay. Apparently, it is not an all or nothing thing; it is rather something that does not require the passage to Hell to get to heaven. It is a clearing of the air, a solution to the problem. It has always been there for all people in all times; it is the "eureka!" of the scientist, the coincidence of a ride at the right time, a fluke that rearranges our lives for the better. Why this is so is lost in the talk of the greater things, of ultimate surrender and enlightenment. It is, after all, a world of infinite creativity and anything can happen. From the perspective of the enlightened, all is perfect, but from our lowly level, all is not. Sometimes solutions don't come; sometimes we are forced to dangle over the abyss. But in infinite creativity, there are also those flukes, those acknowledgments that there is a force at work greater than ourselves that cares, at least sometimes, about our nearsighted frivolities.
And the insight from this is this: never give up until it is truly time to give up. The future is never written, as hard as we try to make it so. It can change on a dime in the most unusual ways. There is more to life than death, more to life than ashen supplication. There is, in a word, life, and if not anything else it is an adventure towards which we must have openness and great courage to appreciate. Never give up until it is time to give up - and that time, if we are open, will be given to us to know. FK
RSS Feed