[Note: my new book of selected essays, Beyond the Turning Stars, is now out on Amazon and Kindle.]
It was just another Sunday morning, with only the dog and I out for a hike along the same trail that I had taken with her for these past seven years, and yet there was something particularly beautiful about it. Certainly it had to do with the time of year; just looking at the post date above, I am reminded of just how beautiful a day it was as well when I turned on the radio after dropping my son off at school on that day to hear of the perplexing tragedy that had just happened at the New York Trade Towers. It would not be until the second jet came in that the source of the tragedy became known, but still it was such a beautiful day, just as yesterday. But there was something more than just light and crisp blue sky to this Sunday. I could hear the dropping of the acorns on the forest floor, abundant this year and good news for the squirrels and deer, as well as the rain-like patter they made in the nearby lake and it felt like the Holy Spirit was present, an undefinable thing that still could make its presence known, like a thin mist that cannot be seen but somehow can, nonetheless.
In the realm of The Real, one might even call this unseen mist a miracle, although the sight – the feelings like this - happen a million times a day around the world. How they come is unknown, too. Just the night before, I had started the book Integral Christianity by Paul Smith, and I hadn’t been particularly inspired. In those opening chapters, Smith blandly charted the course of spiritual evolution as seen by his mentor, Ken Wilbur, who is anything but a romantic. I digress to say that I have a particular fondness for Ken Wilbur, for it was he who I was reading nearly 25 years ago as I waited to be interviewed by a committee for my PhD oral defense. It was he who helped take away my nerves as he plotted, matter-of-factly, the various circles of awareness that culminated in God Consciousness, a plateau so far removed from the academic mind that it made both my tormenting professors and myself seem as insignificant as wall paper. Still again, he in no way gave form to what he discussed, as dry it was - no better than Smith’s. Both also reduced the kind of religion in which I now participate to the spiritual level of a child, to superstitions that were OK for kids, but not for the more advanced – that is, for those who could grasp Integral Christianity.
Here’s the thing: normally I would agree with the two of them. That morning as I hiked, I had just come from attending morning mass at the local Catholic parish. The priest in charge is a good man, but his dedication, his duty as he sees it, is in saving us from hell fire because we do not obey the moral commandments of the Church. He is not hateful in this, but pleading: listen, he said from the pulpit: “I do not say these things to condemn you, but because I want you to be right with God. I do not hate you for acting on your homosexuality, or living together without marriage, but am only telling you that these things are wrong because they are against the commandments of God as understood through the Church. You must obey these laws so that you will go to Heaven and live with God.” The theology is a little thicker than this, if one wants to go into it, but one gets the idea – the good Father is an active representative of the church that Smith and Wilbur claim is for spiritual adolescents. Intellectually, I would generally agree with Smith and Wilbur.
And yet, it was not to Wilbur or Smith’s philosophical musings that I give partial credit for having that beautiful sense of spirt that morning, but rather to that same immature church. It was not what was said there by any means, but rather what was performed there – the act of the communion of Man with God. As a preacher, Smith has acknowledged this value, but I do not think that he acknowledges it enough. The rituals of the Catholic Church, as well as those of American Indian tribals or Tibetan Buddhists and so on, are what raises the spirit, as the spirit would tell you itself if it wished to – which it doesn’t. It doesn’t, because spirit reaches far beyond our words and logic. The words, the Creed - all that is necessary to hold a set of rituals together for a people over generations, but it, they, are not of the core. The core goes beyond the daily images, and even beyond our wildest fantasies; the core goes beyond quantum physics and different dimensions and all manner of magic mushroom experiences; the core goes to the very end, to that end that is also a beginning, and it defies every explanation.
Rather, it is poised within, waiting for its time with us. Sometimes it comes without notice or any preparation at all, but sometimes it comes from the mystery of ritual that we have somehow obtained, coming as that which goes beyond the stages of life, beyond evolution, and certainly beyond our cleverness and our philosophies and phrases. All is foolishness from the height of the mist that is not mist. What is important is that it comes. I may wince at the words and the silliness of doctrine, but must remain grateful for the magic, the ritual, whatever one calls it that brings even the faintest hints of the beauty that lies so subtly but so pervasively both without and within. FK
It was just another Sunday morning, with only the dog and I out for a hike along the same trail that I had taken with her for these past seven years, and yet there was something particularly beautiful about it. Certainly it had to do with the time of year; just looking at the post date above, I am reminded of just how beautiful a day it was as well when I turned on the radio after dropping my son off at school on that day to hear of the perplexing tragedy that had just happened at the New York Trade Towers. It would not be until the second jet came in that the source of the tragedy became known, but still it was such a beautiful day, just as yesterday. But there was something more than just light and crisp blue sky to this Sunday. I could hear the dropping of the acorns on the forest floor, abundant this year and good news for the squirrels and deer, as well as the rain-like patter they made in the nearby lake and it felt like the Holy Spirit was present, an undefinable thing that still could make its presence known, like a thin mist that cannot be seen but somehow can, nonetheless.
In the realm of The Real, one might even call this unseen mist a miracle, although the sight – the feelings like this - happen a million times a day around the world. How they come is unknown, too. Just the night before, I had started the book Integral Christianity by Paul Smith, and I hadn’t been particularly inspired. In those opening chapters, Smith blandly charted the course of spiritual evolution as seen by his mentor, Ken Wilbur, who is anything but a romantic. I digress to say that I have a particular fondness for Ken Wilbur, for it was he who I was reading nearly 25 years ago as I waited to be interviewed by a committee for my PhD oral defense. It was he who helped take away my nerves as he plotted, matter-of-factly, the various circles of awareness that culminated in God Consciousness, a plateau so far removed from the academic mind that it made both my tormenting professors and myself seem as insignificant as wall paper. Still again, he in no way gave form to what he discussed, as dry it was - no better than Smith’s. Both also reduced the kind of religion in which I now participate to the spiritual level of a child, to superstitions that were OK for kids, but not for the more advanced – that is, for those who could grasp Integral Christianity.
Here’s the thing: normally I would agree with the two of them. That morning as I hiked, I had just come from attending morning mass at the local Catholic parish. The priest in charge is a good man, but his dedication, his duty as he sees it, is in saving us from hell fire because we do not obey the moral commandments of the Church. He is not hateful in this, but pleading: listen, he said from the pulpit: “I do not say these things to condemn you, but because I want you to be right with God. I do not hate you for acting on your homosexuality, or living together without marriage, but am only telling you that these things are wrong because they are against the commandments of God as understood through the Church. You must obey these laws so that you will go to Heaven and live with God.” The theology is a little thicker than this, if one wants to go into it, but one gets the idea – the good Father is an active representative of the church that Smith and Wilbur claim is for spiritual adolescents. Intellectually, I would generally agree with Smith and Wilbur.
And yet, it was not to Wilbur or Smith’s philosophical musings that I give partial credit for having that beautiful sense of spirt that morning, but rather to that same immature church. It was not what was said there by any means, but rather what was performed there – the act of the communion of Man with God. As a preacher, Smith has acknowledged this value, but I do not think that he acknowledges it enough. The rituals of the Catholic Church, as well as those of American Indian tribals or Tibetan Buddhists and so on, are what raises the spirit, as the spirit would tell you itself if it wished to – which it doesn’t. It doesn’t, because spirit reaches far beyond our words and logic. The words, the Creed - all that is necessary to hold a set of rituals together for a people over generations, but it, they, are not of the core. The core goes beyond the daily images, and even beyond our wildest fantasies; the core goes beyond quantum physics and different dimensions and all manner of magic mushroom experiences; the core goes to the very end, to that end that is also a beginning, and it defies every explanation.
Rather, it is poised within, waiting for its time with us. Sometimes it comes without notice or any preparation at all, but sometimes it comes from the mystery of ritual that we have somehow obtained, coming as that which goes beyond the stages of life, beyond evolution, and certainly beyond our cleverness and our philosophies and phrases. All is foolishness from the height of the mist that is not mist. What is important is that it comes. I may wince at the words and the silliness of doctrine, but must remain grateful for the magic, the ritual, whatever one calls it that brings even the faintest hints of the beauty that lies so subtly but so pervasively both without and within. FK
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