It is often surprising that the worst of enemies often share (some) nearly identical traits. Hitler and Stalin come immediately to mind, but it was Juan Diego and St Paul who got me on this particular tract.
Juan Diego was an Aztec peasant who in 1531 was one of eight million Aztecs practicing the old religion even as they had been under their new masters, the Spanish, and their new religion since the remarkable conquest by Cortez some eleven years earlier. But it was in the later year on one chill winter morning (it is chilly in the highlands of Mexico in winter) when he encountered what would become known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, who sent him to persuade the Spanish Bishop to build a cathedral in her honor. To prove to the Bishop that the illiterate Aztec was telling the truth, Our Lady gave Diego a bouquet of roses, which did not grow at that time of year, and a “tilde” or Aztec cape made of cactus fiber with her image clearly stamped into the fabric. To this day, the tilde is in perfect shape. Scientists cannot understand how this is, or how the image was made. More remarkably, this miracle converted almost every one of the eight million Aztecs to Catholicism nearly on the spot.
But that is not the point. The point is that the Aztec religion and the Catholic religion were seen as antithetical, and in many ways they most certainly were, at least in theory. And yet they shared something that was brought to my mind by Juan Diego, concerning a latter-day practitioner of the old religion, one Don Juan Matus, as told (or created) by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda in his Tales of Don Juan series.
In one of the books – I forget which one – anthropologist Carlos and sorcerer Don Juan are sitting in a café in northern Mexico, where Don Juan is trying to teach Carlos about a greater reality. Says Don Juan, “You see this table? This is your perspective of reality as compared to the greater outside world. Everything you believe can fit on this one tiny table.”
Carlos is surprised, then challenged. “Ok, then. What about all we know from our arts and literature?” Don Juan points to a salt shaker and puts it in the middle of the table, saying, “here.” “OK, how about everything we know from science?” Don Juan grabs a bottle of hot sauce and places it next to the salt shaker. “That goes here.” “OK, then, how about God?” Don Juan grabs the sugar jar and places it next to the other items. “And that goes there.” “But Don Juan, God is everything.” Replies Don Juan, “This is everything you know about God.” (my paraphrase)
Nearly two thousand years earlier, St Paul was faced with a similar problem trying to describe to both Jews and Greeks just who God was: “The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin…Scripture says ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and thwart the cleverness of the clever.’ Where is the wise man to be found? Where the scribe? Where is the master of the worldly argument? Has not God turned the wisdom of the world into folly? … Jews demand signs, and Greeks look for “wisdom,” but we preach Christ crucified – a stumbling block to Jews, and an absurdity to Gentiles;…” (1 Corinthians, 1:18-23).
The point being, that even as the two religions collided over some very basic features – the necessity of regular human blood sacrifice being one (although this is shared, too – except in Christianity, God as Jesus is the one and only blood sacrifice for the many) – the wise men, or those who understood the foundations of both religions, could agree: we don’t know Reality, the gods, or God. It is not found in miracles or philosophy. But, once we agree on that, where exactly, or how, is it found?
This brings me back to my own limited, but evolving understanding of “Spirit”, or deeper truth. At one time, I thought to find it in the wonders emphasized by mind-altering drugs; at another, through philosophy or theoretical science; and at another, in simple religious worship. In plain experience, none have it – that is, none can produce this truth simply through ingestion or study or faith (although, I must note, plain faith has been the best of the three). Rather, it is as Don Juan tried to get at in his own way, or as Paul insisted from his position as a Christian believer – that one finds spirit only through spirit and through nothing else. That is, that one finds spirit through the grace, or will, of the spirit, but which can be stimulated by a practice in faith. Don Juan’s “spirits” were of the more elemental variety, used for seeking supernatural power, and it was to those that he directed Carlos; that of Paul was the spirit of eternal truth, the One Spirit. This latter, too, could and can only be experienced through the grace, or will, of Spirit. This can find anyone at any time and place, as it did the pagan Juan Diego, but it is more likely to be found by those who use a religious path that requires faith in this spirit. But it is not the religion that is spirit, just as it is not the signs of the Jews or the logic of the Greeks.
Music. There is logic in music and studies of the logic of music, and there are certainly many signs in music – the G cleft, the mezzo forte and so on - but real music is a product of something we cannot understand, affecting us in ways we do not understand. We become better at music from its study, but we do not become more gifted – the gift is given or not; and we can appreciate some forms of music better with study, but our appreciation of music, too, is a gift to our species, apparently a useless thing that brings nearly all of us joy and emotions and insight. And, sometimes, spirit.
So music is like spirit, and can help us find spirit, but still, even music as we usually know it is on that café table. The One Spirit, the big kahuna, is like nothing else. It is not irrational, but not rational, either. It is simply something of another kind, of a kind, that is, that overshadows all understanding. It is the “meta” of understanding, but really, it is even beyond the very mechanism of human understanding. It is the one thing that is off the table. And in that is the magic, the spell, and the wizardry with which the apostles were so enthralled. It was not the miracles of Jesus or even his resurrection that finally compelled the apostles, for these were still signs, however great; rather, it was the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that grabbed them, so firmly that all but one died willingly for it as a martyr. It was here that they became truly a part of it, a part of something so unexpected and so amazing and so total that it was worth more than anything, so much so that life itself could seem petty.
It comes like the wind, as the Bible says, but it is not the wind. It might come as a vision or as a storm, but most often it comes softly, and almost tickles with its possibilities. It is often so subtle that one almost ignores it until one sees that, oh, it is like nothing else. And then one sees, almost as a mirage, that within it is everything and much more than anything we can imagine. And with that it leaves us, because we are human and cannot remain human otherwise. But it draws us, and wants us. The apostles, who understood this as no others, called this wanting “Love,” although this Love is related to our love as our thoughts to the thoughts of puppies.
As Thomas Aquinas said of his many brilliant writings near his death, “all is straw.” So are all our works. All we know is a salt shaker or a bottle of hot sauce on a cheap Mexican café table. It might seem that Spirit is simply not worth the hassle, but the apostles would disagree. And besides, sometimes we are not given the choice.
Juan Diego was an Aztec peasant who in 1531 was one of eight million Aztecs practicing the old religion even as they had been under their new masters, the Spanish, and their new religion since the remarkable conquest by Cortez some eleven years earlier. But it was in the later year on one chill winter morning (it is chilly in the highlands of Mexico in winter) when he encountered what would become known as Our Lady of Guadalupe, who sent him to persuade the Spanish Bishop to build a cathedral in her honor. To prove to the Bishop that the illiterate Aztec was telling the truth, Our Lady gave Diego a bouquet of roses, which did not grow at that time of year, and a “tilde” or Aztec cape made of cactus fiber with her image clearly stamped into the fabric. To this day, the tilde is in perfect shape. Scientists cannot understand how this is, or how the image was made. More remarkably, this miracle converted almost every one of the eight million Aztecs to Catholicism nearly on the spot.
But that is not the point. The point is that the Aztec religion and the Catholic religion were seen as antithetical, and in many ways they most certainly were, at least in theory. And yet they shared something that was brought to my mind by Juan Diego, concerning a latter-day practitioner of the old religion, one Don Juan Matus, as told (or created) by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda in his Tales of Don Juan series.
In one of the books – I forget which one – anthropologist Carlos and sorcerer Don Juan are sitting in a café in northern Mexico, where Don Juan is trying to teach Carlos about a greater reality. Says Don Juan, “You see this table? This is your perspective of reality as compared to the greater outside world. Everything you believe can fit on this one tiny table.”
Carlos is surprised, then challenged. “Ok, then. What about all we know from our arts and literature?” Don Juan points to a salt shaker and puts it in the middle of the table, saying, “here.” “OK, how about everything we know from science?” Don Juan grabs a bottle of hot sauce and places it next to the salt shaker. “That goes here.” “OK, then, how about God?” Don Juan grabs the sugar jar and places it next to the other items. “And that goes there.” “But Don Juan, God is everything.” Replies Don Juan, “This is everything you know about God.” (my paraphrase)
Nearly two thousand years earlier, St Paul was faced with a similar problem trying to describe to both Jews and Greeks just who God was: “The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin…Scripture says ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and thwart the cleverness of the clever.’ Where is the wise man to be found? Where the scribe? Where is the master of the worldly argument? Has not God turned the wisdom of the world into folly? … Jews demand signs, and Greeks look for “wisdom,” but we preach Christ crucified – a stumbling block to Jews, and an absurdity to Gentiles;…” (1 Corinthians, 1:18-23).
The point being, that even as the two religions collided over some very basic features – the necessity of regular human blood sacrifice being one (although this is shared, too – except in Christianity, God as Jesus is the one and only blood sacrifice for the many) – the wise men, or those who understood the foundations of both religions, could agree: we don’t know Reality, the gods, or God. It is not found in miracles or philosophy. But, once we agree on that, where exactly, or how, is it found?
This brings me back to my own limited, but evolving understanding of “Spirit”, or deeper truth. At one time, I thought to find it in the wonders emphasized by mind-altering drugs; at another, through philosophy or theoretical science; and at another, in simple religious worship. In plain experience, none have it – that is, none can produce this truth simply through ingestion or study or faith (although, I must note, plain faith has been the best of the three). Rather, it is as Don Juan tried to get at in his own way, or as Paul insisted from his position as a Christian believer – that one finds spirit only through spirit and through nothing else. That is, that one finds spirit through the grace, or will, of the spirit, but which can be stimulated by a practice in faith. Don Juan’s “spirits” were of the more elemental variety, used for seeking supernatural power, and it was to those that he directed Carlos; that of Paul was the spirit of eternal truth, the One Spirit. This latter, too, could and can only be experienced through the grace, or will, of Spirit. This can find anyone at any time and place, as it did the pagan Juan Diego, but it is more likely to be found by those who use a religious path that requires faith in this spirit. But it is not the religion that is spirit, just as it is not the signs of the Jews or the logic of the Greeks.
Music. There is logic in music and studies of the logic of music, and there are certainly many signs in music – the G cleft, the mezzo forte and so on - but real music is a product of something we cannot understand, affecting us in ways we do not understand. We become better at music from its study, but we do not become more gifted – the gift is given or not; and we can appreciate some forms of music better with study, but our appreciation of music, too, is a gift to our species, apparently a useless thing that brings nearly all of us joy and emotions and insight. And, sometimes, spirit.
So music is like spirit, and can help us find spirit, but still, even music as we usually know it is on that café table. The One Spirit, the big kahuna, is like nothing else. It is not irrational, but not rational, either. It is simply something of another kind, of a kind, that is, that overshadows all understanding. It is the “meta” of understanding, but really, it is even beyond the very mechanism of human understanding. It is the one thing that is off the table. And in that is the magic, the spell, and the wizardry with which the apostles were so enthralled. It was not the miracles of Jesus or even his resurrection that finally compelled the apostles, for these were still signs, however great; rather, it was the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that grabbed them, so firmly that all but one died willingly for it as a martyr. It was here that they became truly a part of it, a part of something so unexpected and so amazing and so total that it was worth more than anything, so much so that life itself could seem petty.
It comes like the wind, as the Bible says, but it is not the wind. It might come as a vision or as a storm, but most often it comes softly, and almost tickles with its possibilities. It is often so subtle that one almost ignores it until one sees that, oh, it is like nothing else. And then one sees, almost as a mirage, that within it is everything and much more than anything we can imagine. And with that it leaves us, because we are human and cannot remain human otherwise. But it draws us, and wants us. The apostles, who understood this as no others, called this wanting “Love,” although this Love is related to our love as our thoughts to the thoughts of puppies.
As Thomas Aquinas said of his many brilliant writings near his death, “all is straw.” So are all our works. All we know is a salt shaker or a bottle of hot sauce on a cheap Mexican café table. It might seem that Spirit is simply not worth the hassle, but the apostles would disagree. And besides, sometimes we are not given the choice.
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