Saints and sinners live side by side everywhere—in every home, town, city, nation, country, church—and in every soul. When you know and embrace this wisdom your house will not be divided.
What happens, though, when ignorance and evil conspire to become institutionalized?
Recently, on the nightly news commentary show, Greater Boston, we heard an interview with French artist and filmmaker François Ozon. He talked about his creative process in making a movie about the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests. The film is based on true stories and real people and is entitled, “By the Grace of God.”
Ozon spoke about his well-curated decision to make a movie, rather than a documentary or even a docudrama, about the pedophilia crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in France. He got actors to play the parts of the priest, those who exercised ecclesiastical authority, the adult men who'd suffered abuse as children, and their families in Lyon, France.
THE STORY
All the victims had remembered in silence. One man began to search for the others. They found each other, shared their shame and their stories, and were able together to effect some change in a centuries-old rigidified, hierarchical, religious institution. How did they accomplish this?—through the power of truth, collective action, mutual support, media, and the secular legal system.
All of the men had been part of a scout troupe led by one parish priest who was sexually attracted to children. The narrowing of the focus plus the dramatization of the issue made it flesh, made it real, and therefore palpably credible—much more so than a docudrama would have.
Although this film is in French and has subtitles, the dialogue isn’t complex, and the subtitles are not bothersome.
MEANINGS
Besides a sinking heart, I felt a rising rage AND an expansive hope after I saw it. There is much more to this trauma than meets the eye.
-This is NOT as simple as an indictment of the institutional Roman Catholic Church. It is about centuries of patriarchal power abuses and coverups, involving complicit men and women at all levels—saints and sinners all.
-It is about the politics of money.
-It is about confusing the Church with God, commonly called idolatry.
-It is frighteningly connected to what is going on in our nation and the world right now.
-It is about ancient wisdom: words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke way back in the first century CE: A house divided against itself cannot stand. (Mk. 3:25, Mt. 12:25, Lk. 11:17) You don’t need a personified figure called Satan to know this truth.
-It is about the ultimate value of breaking the silence and the shame that engulf addiction and related compulsions, diseases that keep full healing out of reach for too many.
-It is about tragic, treacherous exploitation of the best of religious values: forgiveness and divine compassion, and the Mystery of the Holy within and among us.
-It is about a terrifying exploitation of the Gospel: Jesus himself loved and touched little children, did he not?
-It is NOT about priests who are evil, but about priests, such as the one in this film, who repeatedly ask for help for their mental illness and get refused. It is about priests, such as the one in this film who, when confronted, confess over and over. THEY TELL THE TRUTH. (This is not about all priests of course, but I had one such priest as a client some years back. He had been stripped of everything, including his pension. I saw him for free and felt about as powerless as he did, except to proffer forgiveness divine. I did not know how to psychoanalyze his disease or help him, but I knew moralizing wasn’t helpful at all. He knew that too.) We need more research.
-It is NOT about pedophilia, because that means love of children NOT sexual love with children. A better word might be pedo-predation.
-It is about calling Holy that which is Evil.
-It is about the inability to see saint and sinner at once.
OUTCOMES
The amazing work of this small group in Lyon realized one big legal change: the statute of limitations for seeking reparation or accountability for such predation has been extended in France from 15 years to 30 years. That is restorative justice and hopeful. When we work together, give up our unholy divisions and collaborate for the good of all, we can change our system. Their work continues, and despite complexities, there’s hope for the pope.
Without question, this film dramatizes one of the most painful death throes of patriarchy. If you have ever tended to someone who is dying you know what death throes look like—jerky, often lasting for days and weeks, painful to watch. The only thing to do is to be patient, present, take lots of breaks, have people who will listen to you, and pray without ceasing. You are hurting more than the one in the throes. If you are faithful you will trust the outcome and the divine hope within it.
TITLE
See the film to catch the fullness of the power this phrase evokes: By the Grace of God.
BIBLE Remember the story of Zaccheus, the money manager/tax collector/business man who intuited something sacred going on with this Jesus and his teaching? The crowds pressed, so Zaccheus went up into a tree to see Jesus as he passed by. Jesus spotted him, glanced up. Their gaze locked. Ever wonder what Jesus saw in Zaccheus's eye, and what Zaccheus saw in Jesus's eye?
WISDOM
Remember always to ask: the grace of God according to whom?
A divided house cannot stand, but it can be rebuilt.
Showing posts with label idolatry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idolatry. Show all posts
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Sunday, June 17, 2018
2018.06.17 Fathers, Rise Up!
Right now in Syria there is no law and order— and children are its victims.
Right now in the United States there is an excess of law and order—and children are its victims.
How can such a grotesque irony be? I’m not suggesting that children are the only victims but a child’s vulnerability plucks the heart strings of the world. Such music is mournfully plaintive.
In Syria the ruling powers of government are battling for control and the country is in the midst of a devastating civil war. We all have seen the soul-wrenching picture of the small child face down on a beach. His name was Aylan Kurdi, age 3, and he drowned along with his mother as the family tried to escape from their war-torn country in September, 2015. They hoped to find sanctuary through family in Canada. Below is Aylan before and after. It’s a good idea to look back and remember, so we can, in this case, see and know how far we have not come.
Aylan’s father remained alive and spoke of his grieving heart. Many times he repeated how “tired” he was of war. Tired. Tired. Tired. It’s Fathers’ Day here. Mothers have united against drunk driving and marched to protest any number of violent things that hurt children. Is it time for fathers to unite to protest and to march? The Bible calls God "Father" and Christians pray: “Our Father. . .”
Fathers! Rise up—not to fight but to make non-violent protest against violence against children.
Jesus of Nazareth told parables. They were puzzling stories designed to challenge his listeners to see things from new perspectives, and then figure out what if anything to do about their new understanding. Parables consistently challenged the platitude: “We’ve always done it this way.”
Today’s gospel was the familiar mustard seed parable. Jesus compared this mustard shrub to the kingdom of God: from a tiny seed of a nondescript bush grows a kingdom of glory, grace and space for every living thing in all Creation. Pretty laughable, right? Suddenly, as often happens with scripture, I thought of a mustard seed being like a small child. From the smallest children—even the dead ones, yes,—will grow and flourish the life of Godde on earth as it is in heaven.
How many children have to die because our government won’t legislate gun control? I believe that the well-being of the whole is the responsibility of every individual. Children have an edge—little children face down on beaches, teens hugging and wailing because their classmates are dead and they are alive, children wrenched from their parents to make a point about law and order, one more parent explaining to a child that school is safe, then praying to God it is.
We need to change—radically—how we see things. In this country I think we have made an idol of our Chief Executive. Seriously, we all, friend and foe, are mesmerized (including avoidance in this paralytic strategy) by his every tweet and executive order, mostly designed, let’s be honest, to undo the executive policies of his predecessor. It’s more like dueling executive orders, one black, one white, than honest partisan politics with compromise and conversation. I smell the sin of racism, not to mention idolatry.
Idols hold all the power; idols demand and receive worshipful attention, yes, even if some worship by approach and some by avoidance. The attachment holds. Idolatry leaves no room for the one holy and living God of grace. Religious people know better—or should.
And for Christians, Christ insisted—insisted—to the point of death that hope defeats despair and life defeats death. What a tall tale! Whether you believe Jesus rose from the dead or not, or in a God who continues to creates life no matter what, this wild message, this story, has persisted, and persisted and persisted. And persisted.
Fathers, rise up and proclaim!
Right now in the United States there is an excess of law and order—and children are its victims.
How can such a grotesque irony be? I’m not suggesting that children are the only victims but a child’s vulnerability plucks the heart strings of the world. Such music is mournfully plaintive.
In Syria the ruling powers of government are battling for control and the country is in the midst of a devastating civil war. We all have seen the soul-wrenching picture of the small child face down on a beach. His name was Aylan Kurdi, age 3, and he drowned along with his mother as the family tried to escape from their war-torn country in September, 2015. They hoped to find sanctuary through family in Canada. Below is Aylan before and after. It’s a good idea to look back and remember, so we can, in this case, see and know how far we have not come.
Aylan’s father remained alive and spoke of his grieving heart. Many times he repeated how “tired” he was of war. Tired. Tired. Tired. It’s Fathers’ Day here. Mothers have united against drunk driving and marched to protest any number of violent things that hurt children. Is it time for fathers to unite to protest and to march? The Bible calls God "Father" and Christians pray: “Our Father. . .”
Fathers! Rise up—not to fight but to make non-violent protest against violence against children.
Jesus of Nazareth told parables. They were puzzling stories designed to challenge his listeners to see things from new perspectives, and then figure out what if anything to do about their new understanding. Parables consistently challenged the platitude: “We’ve always done it this way.”
Today’s gospel was the familiar mustard seed parable. Jesus compared this mustard shrub to the kingdom of God: from a tiny seed of a nondescript bush grows a kingdom of glory, grace and space for every living thing in all Creation. Pretty laughable, right? Suddenly, as often happens with scripture, I thought of a mustard seed being like a small child. From the smallest children—even the dead ones, yes,—will grow and flourish the life of Godde on earth as it is in heaven.
How many children have to die because our government won’t legislate gun control? I believe that the well-being of the whole is the responsibility of every individual. Children have an edge—little children face down on beaches, teens hugging and wailing because their classmates are dead and they are alive, children wrenched from their parents to make a point about law and order, one more parent explaining to a child that school is safe, then praying to God it is.
We need to change—radically—how we see things. In this country I think we have made an idol of our Chief Executive. Seriously, we all, friend and foe, are mesmerized (including avoidance in this paralytic strategy) by his every tweet and executive order, mostly designed, let’s be honest, to undo the executive policies of his predecessor. It’s more like dueling executive orders, one black, one white, than honest partisan politics with compromise and conversation. I smell the sin of racism, not to mention idolatry.
Idols hold all the power; idols demand and receive worshipful attention, yes, even if some worship by approach and some by avoidance. The attachment holds. Idolatry leaves no room for the one holy and living God of grace. Religious people know better—or should.
And for Christians, Christ insisted—insisted—to the point of death that hope defeats despair and life defeats death. What a tall tale! Whether you believe Jesus rose from the dead or not, or in a God who continues to creates life no matter what, this wild message, this story, has persisted, and persisted and persisted. And persisted.
Fathers, rise up and proclaim!
Sunday, January 22, 2017
2017.01.22 Breakdown/Breakthrough?
Often a breakdown is a necessary precursor to a breakthrough.
We know this in personal experience, and we see it in the Biblical stories, in which there is a regular pattern of breakdown and breakthrough. Remember Peter, the putative “pope”? He denied knowing Jesus, let alone following him. Jesus predicted this, signaled by the old cock crow, cock-a-doodle-do times three. At the cock crowed Peter broke down. Peter was a disciple who thought he had solid faith and did not.
Judas Iscariot, on the other hand, thought he had no faith, abandoned the Jesus movement, and left. After Jesus died and stories arose of his resurrection, Judas discovered faith. He was a disciple who thought he had no faith at all and did. In one account he took his own life in remorse.
Both men had a breakdown to have a breakthrough. Both of their stories live on; both characters live in each one of us; both are integral parts of a whole gospel proclamation of divine love ever-evolving toward cosmic wholeness.
I am assured that the story of Jesus lives on, and that its message is still heard today by people who think they have faith and don’t AND by those who think they don’t have faith and do.
Peter’s breakthrough took time. He experienced visions, wept himself back to life, and joined with Paul to use his gifts to make sure that what Jesus had envisioned did not die. One could argue that the institutionalization of the gospel was not such a good thing. OR . . . one could grin and realize that that’s the way things are preserved—until the next breakdown and breakthrough.
Are we now living in breakdown/breakthrough times? The irony is that what looks like breakdown to many feels to others like breakthrough into light. In the time of discerning directions, I look to my Christian faith. I also look for small lights.
Our new president in his inaugural address called America a wasteland of carnage —a harsh assessment. Is there anything good here? The speech was a set-up for Trump to step in and offer himself as the savior. What upset me the most however was that he guaranteed that God would protect America (that means North America, note…) ALWAYS—helped by the people and the military, just in case. America first and only as a sign of divine will is idolatrous, painfully exclusive, and a sign of patriotism run wild. Where is humility? Where is grace?
Still, this culture was on the way to such self-idolatry anyway with its consumerism and its win/win/me/win attitudes.
I did see some bright spots in the inaugural events.
-I noticed that Melania Trump quietly went over to Hillary Clinton and gave her a small box nicely gift wrapped. I could not help but see this as a woman-to-woman gesture.
-And then good old W. Bush got Hillary laughing with a hug and a chuckle—a very compassionate in-house gesture.
-At the luncheon Trump did invite the Clintons to stand, and they got a standing ovation. I just wished he could have said something in his campaign-ish speech.
-The Rabbi who offered a closing benediction used a phrase that stood out: “Any nation is blessed by its values not its vaults.” Amen. I pray that our “vaults” of corporate wealth will be opened and shared.
-The January 22 Women’s March was enacted all over the world in cities. It was a massive demonstration of solidarity in favor of equality for ALL. To me it felt like a return of second wave feminism —this time as a tidal wave with potential to sweep away patriarchal assumptions and rank-ordering systems of social organization that defy our constitutional principles. A breakthrough.
Do you remember the movie Awakening? It was based on a book by Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), a physician who had a deeply traumatic childhood, predictive of many painful physical and emotional effects. The miracle is that there are always sound medical and psychological predictions and some come true, but there are no prescriptions for what the human soul will do. None.
Sacks made schmutz of his medical career as a lab researcher. They told him to get out. “Go see patients. They matter less.” A breakdown! He also bumbled at his writing, until the poet W.H Auden suggested to him that he be “metaphorical, mythical, whatever you need.” ( Not such a bad approach to holy scriptures.) Sacks began to see illness as metaphor and myth. It lead to his taking risks with catatonia and a new medication for Parkinson’s disease. The medication gave some life to the all-but-dead. A breakthrough.
Watching the movie, I was entranced at what happened when these zombie-like people awoke. It was resurrection. One scene sticks in my memory. Sacks was tossing a ball to catatonic patients, hoping that someone would wake up to its movement, when suddenly a woman lifted her arm and caught the ball. Sacks tried it over and over and each time the woman caught the ball in her right hand. “Mrs. XX you caught the ball!” Sacks began to dance about with joy. Eventually, so did Mrs. XX. An apparent near-complete breakdown became the breakthrough for at least partial return to health—new life. For Sacks as well. Resurrection.
What was required was close and careful observation, listening to all the patients first, the ones deemed by the research labs to “matter less.” It took intense empathy, devotion and creative imagination. It took a passionate awareness of what it was like to feel destitute, terrorized, alone. It took enormous faith, hope and love. And then, as Sacks wrote in 1973: “To use a biblical term, I would ‘bear witness’ to their condition.” Is that not holy scripture?
All it took was daring to follow a new idea.
What are your own new ideas? Do you voice them or keep silent? Do you deceive yourself about your own worth? About God’s love? Do you give up as Sacks might easily and expectedly have?
In times of breakdown where are your breakthroughs? How do you bear witness?
I confess to a kind of catatonia in the face of the crisis of culture we are in and the denial about its depth. The death throes of patriarchy are painful and necessary. It hurts me to listen to a leader who styles himself as THE savior, the agent of breakthrough. Yet that too is necessary.
At a recent meeting of our deanery clergy I said something about needing a breakdown to breakthrough, and a colleague replied a bit cynically, “Yes, but sometimes there is a collapse.” Isn’t that what a true breakdown is?
Blaming and shaming keep me paralyzed and negative—catatonic. Holocaust memoirist Etty Hillesum wrote to God: “Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.” (Essential Writings Maryknoll: Orbis Books 2009 p. 59)
Theology calls this perspective, this practice, deep incarnation—deep reaching into the soul.
The only way this works for me is to get brutally honest with myself and with God. Like Etty did about God’s nature and her own. Sacks, too, didn’t kid himself about the state of his patients. Abraham didn’t kid himself about his advanced age, his sexual impotence, and Sarah’s. He said: Well, let’s get food for these angels and listen to what they have to say. Sarah, bless her, laughed at the idea of a pregnancy. And Jesus didn’t play games with the conditions of his time. He knew the risks of bearing witness to limitless love without condition versus limitless power without condition.
We may have to maladjust, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., to Trump’s ME # 1/AMERICA FIRST/GOD-BLESSED ALWAYS vision. Exceptional in some areas we may be. Superior in all areas we are not. This vision goes beyond jobs, education, healthcare immigration reform. It wraps our souls up in a hubris that is disastrous—a spiritual breakdown.
Our new president could be kidding himself, and us too, but he can’t kid God, whose Love within us breaks through—no matter what.
We know this in personal experience, and we see it in the Biblical stories, in which there is a regular pattern of breakdown and breakthrough. Remember Peter, the putative “pope”? He denied knowing Jesus, let alone following him. Jesus predicted this, signaled by the old cock crow, cock-a-doodle-do times three. At the cock crowed Peter broke down. Peter was a disciple who thought he had solid faith and did not.
Judas Iscariot, on the other hand, thought he had no faith, abandoned the Jesus movement, and left. After Jesus died and stories arose of his resurrection, Judas discovered faith. He was a disciple who thought he had no faith at all and did. In one account he took his own life in remorse.
Both men had a breakdown to have a breakthrough. Both of their stories live on; both characters live in each one of us; both are integral parts of a whole gospel proclamation of divine love ever-evolving toward cosmic wholeness.
I am assured that the story of Jesus lives on, and that its message is still heard today by people who think they have faith and don’t AND by those who think they don’t have faith and do.
Peter’s breakthrough took time. He experienced visions, wept himself back to life, and joined with Paul to use his gifts to make sure that what Jesus had envisioned did not die. One could argue that the institutionalization of the gospel was not such a good thing. OR . . . one could grin and realize that that’s the way things are preserved—until the next breakdown and breakthrough.
Are we now living in breakdown/breakthrough times? The irony is that what looks like breakdown to many feels to others like breakthrough into light. In the time of discerning directions, I look to my Christian faith. I also look for small lights.
Our new president in his inaugural address called America a wasteland of carnage —a harsh assessment. Is there anything good here? The speech was a set-up for Trump to step in and offer himself as the savior. What upset me the most however was that he guaranteed that God would protect America (that means North America, note…) ALWAYS—helped by the people and the military, just in case. America first and only as a sign of divine will is idolatrous, painfully exclusive, and a sign of patriotism run wild. Where is humility? Where is grace?
Still, this culture was on the way to such self-idolatry anyway with its consumerism and its win/win/me/win attitudes.
I did see some bright spots in the inaugural events.
-I noticed that Melania Trump quietly went over to Hillary Clinton and gave her a small box nicely gift wrapped. I could not help but see this as a woman-to-woman gesture.
-And then good old W. Bush got Hillary laughing with a hug and a chuckle—a very compassionate in-house gesture.
-At the luncheon Trump did invite the Clintons to stand, and they got a standing ovation. I just wished he could have said something in his campaign-ish speech.
-The Rabbi who offered a closing benediction used a phrase that stood out: “Any nation is blessed by its values not its vaults.” Amen. I pray that our “vaults” of corporate wealth will be opened and shared.
-The January 22 Women’s March was enacted all over the world in cities. It was a massive demonstration of solidarity in favor of equality for ALL. To me it felt like a return of second wave feminism —this time as a tidal wave with potential to sweep away patriarchal assumptions and rank-ordering systems of social organization that defy our constitutional principles. A breakthrough.
Do you remember the movie Awakening? It was based on a book by Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), a physician who had a deeply traumatic childhood, predictive of many painful physical and emotional effects. The miracle is that there are always sound medical and psychological predictions and some come true, but there are no prescriptions for what the human soul will do. None.
Sacks made schmutz of his medical career as a lab researcher. They told him to get out. “Go see patients. They matter less.” A breakdown! He also bumbled at his writing, until the poet W.H Auden suggested to him that he be “metaphorical, mythical, whatever you need.” ( Not such a bad approach to holy scriptures.) Sacks began to see illness as metaphor and myth. It lead to his taking risks with catatonia and a new medication for Parkinson’s disease. The medication gave some life to the all-but-dead. A breakthrough.
Watching the movie, I was entranced at what happened when these zombie-like people awoke. It was resurrection. One scene sticks in my memory. Sacks was tossing a ball to catatonic patients, hoping that someone would wake up to its movement, when suddenly a woman lifted her arm and caught the ball. Sacks tried it over and over and each time the woman caught the ball in her right hand. “Mrs. XX you caught the ball!” Sacks began to dance about with joy. Eventually, so did Mrs. XX. An apparent near-complete breakdown became the breakthrough for at least partial return to health—new life. For Sacks as well. Resurrection.
What was required was close and careful observation, listening to all the patients first, the ones deemed by the research labs to “matter less.” It took intense empathy, devotion and creative imagination. It took a passionate awareness of what it was like to feel destitute, terrorized, alone. It took enormous faith, hope and love. And then, as Sacks wrote in 1973: “To use a biblical term, I would ‘bear witness’ to their condition.” Is that not holy scripture?
All it took was daring to follow a new idea.
What are your own new ideas? Do you voice them or keep silent? Do you deceive yourself about your own worth? About God’s love? Do you give up as Sacks might easily and expectedly have?
In times of breakdown where are your breakthroughs? How do you bear witness?
I confess to a kind of catatonia in the face of the crisis of culture we are in and the denial about its depth. The death throes of patriarchy are painful and necessary. It hurts me to listen to a leader who styles himself as THE savior, the agent of breakthrough. Yet that too is necessary.
At a recent meeting of our deanery clergy I said something about needing a breakdown to breakthrough, and a colleague replied a bit cynically, “Yes, but sometimes there is a collapse.” Isn’t that what a true breakdown is?
Blaming and shaming keep me paralyzed and negative—catatonic. Holocaust memoirist Etty Hillesum wrote to God: “Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.” (Essential Writings Maryknoll: Orbis Books 2009 p. 59)
Theology calls this perspective, this practice, deep incarnation—deep reaching into the soul.
The only way this works for me is to get brutally honest with myself and with God. Like Etty did about God’s nature and her own. Sacks, too, didn’t kid himself about the state of his patients. Abraham didn’t kid himself about his advanced age, his sexual impotence, and Sarah’s. He said: Well, let’s get food for these angels and listen to what they have to say. Sarah, bless her, laughed at the idea of a pregnancy. And Jesus didn’t play games with the conditions of his time. He knew the risks of bearing witness to limitless love without condition versus limitless power without condition.
We may have to maladjust, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., to Trump’s ME # 1/AMERICA FIRST/GOD-BLESSED ALWAYS vision. Exceptional in some areas we may be. Superior in all areas we are not. This vision goes beyond jobs, education, healthcare immigration reform. It wraps our souls up in a hubris that is disastrous—a spiritual breakdown.
Our new president could be kidding himself, and us too, but he can’t kid God, whose Love within us breaks through—no matter what.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
2015.03.01 Astrolatry
We managed to sneak a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert in between blizzards in this snow-blasted New England winter of 2015. To go or not to go was a discernment: our age, fear of falling, snowy, icy, uncleared walkways, transportation iffy, and very cold weather for lungs and limbs. We had sane and sensible priorities which showed that risks clearly outweighed graces. Grace won out. We braved the weather, walked to the T, and went to the concert.
The payoff was magnificent.!
We heard a new piece, not a premier, by a composer we’d not heard of named Avner Dorman. A young man of 40, Dorman is Israeli born and now on the music faculty at Gettysburg College.
Astrolatry means worship of the stars, a practice that served the ancient world well, not only to orientate but to inspire devotion. Deities were associated with celestial bodies. Think Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc. No star or planet named God so far. Good thing.
At first I wondered whether astrolatry was a form of idolatry, making false gods. But I decided it wasn’t. Idolatry leaves the soul and body empty; its fruit is the agony of craving, a hyper-anxious condition of constant unslakable hunger and thirst—the most stifling feelings imaginable. Astrolatry, on the contrary, leaves souls full of the brightest awe, alive and completely content to be part of a cosmic whole in which your own place is both proper —and guaranteed forever.
I find myself seeking out the stars and moon on clear nights, and love our summer vacations in Nantucket when we can actually see the heavenly array. It’s harder in cities, though not impossible.
Dorman writes: “While writing Astrolatry, I spent more time outside of large cities than ever before in my life. More than anything else, I found myself in awe of nature in a way I never felt before. Lightning, rain, winds, and the night sky were so much larger and more impressive than they are in the city; and for the first time in my life, I could truly understand why ancient people worshipped the stars.”
The music expresses the fall of night: from total darkness moving into the arrival of stars from the first shy individual twinklings, to groups, adding rhythm, to more and more activity and conflict, building to a cosmic panoply of such diversity and beauty you have to gasp. I’ve watched this display with my eyes, and now I have heard it with my ears. I hear the stars. And how many pieces of music give such play to the dainty introverted piccolo? The risk we took was worth it.
These days the world is bloated with an oversupply of people, too often acting in vile ways toward one another. Terrorism and violence frighten us all, and military solutions are clearly impotent. Star gazing provides divine reassurance in ways that all our poor words, liturgies and prayers do not. And music is the handmaid of astrolatry.
I understand the attraction to the stars when they reveal their fullness. I do worship. I do thank Creator. I do adore. I do not, however, bow down. Looking up/opening up is prayer as reverent as any I can imagine.
Wonderstruck!
* * * *
Four weeks and two storms later, we made a similar discernment, and again grace won out. We went to the symphony. Walkways were still icy and uncleared, but Boston was mobile again and the snow had left, leaving only a polar vortex strong enough to freeze an ocean wave in mid-course!
This time the house was packed; all the pieces celebrated spring; the audience went nuts. So ready are we for spring!
My favorite was Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra. I know I was supposed to go nuts over the Brahms and the virtuoso violinist, but........The hall was jumping with energy thanks to Stravinsky’s amazing rhythms and beats, at once diverse and consistent. Stravinsky, it seems to me, didn’t do melody, but used rhythm and sound structures to make a picture and a dynamism. Love it! His music reminds me of my favorite Spanish painter Joan Miró—whimsy in motion.
Stravinsky, I read, had been “deracinated,” forced to live and work in a culture not his own, three times: from his homeland Russia by war and revolution, to France, to America. I figured this word meant somehow yanked away from the very roots. It is a tribute to his adaptability that his Russian soul adapted and his music reflects that flexibility. Bravo!
Debussy also created pictures with music. We heard his “Images,” for Orchestra. Never saw so many players on the stage at once, and all had a part—even Tubby the Tuba.
In 1908 Debussy wrote to his publisher. He commented, with French snark, on a new piece on which he was working, called réalities—”what imbeciles call ‘impressionism,’ a term employed with the utmost inaccuracy, especially by art critics who use it as a label to stick on Turner, the finest creator of mystery in the whole of art.”
Yes, but................in fairness to art critics: consider that mystery is elusive, almost illusory, enough that one is able only to get and give a visual or auditory impression, or intuition, of it before it vanishes. True artists capture the fleeting power of mystery—only an impression. I suppose this is one way to describe spirituality.
The payoff was magnificent.!
We heard a new piece, not a premier, by a composer we’d not heard of named Avner Dorman. A young man of 40, Dorman is Israeli born and now on the music faculty at Gettysburg College.
Astrolatry means worship of the stars, a practice that served the ancient world well, not only to orientate but to inspire devotion. Deities were associated with celestial bodies. Think Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc. No star or planet named God so far. Good thing.
At first I wondered whether astrolatry was a form of idolatry, making false gods. But I decided it wasn’t. Idolatry leaves the soul and body empty; its fruit is the agony of craving, a hyper-anxious condition of constant unslakable hunger and thirst—the most stifling feelings imaginable. Astrolatry, on the contrary, leaves souls full of the brightest awe, alive and completely content to be part of a cosmic whole in which your own place is both proper —and guaranteed forever.
I find myself seeking out the stars and moon on clear nights, and love our summer vacations in Nantucket when we can actually see the heavenly array. It’s harder in cities, though not impossible.
Dorman writes: “While writing Astrolatry, I spent more time outside of large cities than ever before in my life. More than anything else, I found myself in awe of nature in a way I never felt before. Lightning, rain, winds, and the night sky were so much larger and more impressive than they are in the city; and for the first time in my life, I could truly understand why ancient people worshipped the stars.”
The music expresses the fall of night: from total darkness moving into the arrival of stars from the first shy individual twinklings, to groups, adding rhythm, to more and more activity and conflict, building to a cosmic panoply of such diversity and beauty you have to gasp. I’ve watched this display with my eyes, and now I have heard it with my ears. I hear the stars. And how many pieces of music give such play to the dainty introverted piccolo? The risk we took was worth it.
These days the world is bloated with an oversupply of people, too often acting in vile ways toward one another. Terrorism and violence frighten us all, and military solutions are clearly impotent. Star gazing provides divine reassurance in ways that all our poor words, liturgies and prayers do not. And music is the handmaid of astrolatry.
I understand the attraction to the stars when they reveal their fullness. I do worship. I do thank Creator. I do adore. I do not, however, bow down. Looking up/opening up is prayer as reverent as any I can imagine.
Wonderstruck!
* * * *
Four weeks and two storms later, we made a similar discernment, and again grace won out. We went to the symphony. Walkways were still icy and uncleared, but Boston was mobile again and the snow had left, leaving only a polar vortex strong enough to freeze an ocean wave in mid-course!
This time the house was packed; all the pieces celebrated spring; the audience went nuts. So ready are we for spring!
My favorite was Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra. I know I was supposed to go nuts over the Brahms and the virtuoso violinist, but........The hall was jumping with energy thanks to Stravinsky’s amazing rhythms and beats, at once diverse and consistent. Stravinsky, it seems to me, didn’t do melody, but used rhythm and sound structures to make a picture and a dynamism. Love it! His music reminds me of my favorite Spanish painter Joan Miró—whimsy in motion.
Stravinsky, I read, had been “deracinated,” forced to live and work in a culture not his own, three times: from his homeland Russia by war and revolution, to France, to America. I figured this word meant somehow yanked away from the very roots. It is a tribute to his adaptability that his Russian soul adapted and his music reflects that flexibility. Bravo!
Debussy also created pictures with music. We heard his “Images,” for Orchestra. Never saw so many players on the stage at once, and all had a part—even Tubby the Tuba.
Yes, but................in fairness to art critics: consider that mystery is elusive, almost illusory, enough that one is able only to get and give a visual or auditory impression, or intuition, of it before it vanishes. True artists capture the fleeting power of mystery—only an impression. I suppose this is one way to describe spirituality.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
2013.02.17 Why Heaven Now? A Modest Proposal
Reading Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven, and finding it
as engaging as his talk, but with much more detail, both personal and
scientific, including some fascinating backstory, I sort of wish I’d
nearly died and had such a glorious taste of the spiritual realm.
I wondered, why now? Why has this book come out just now? I predict it will be a bestseller, and Eben Alexander will promote it with all he’s got, because he is earnest about the message of ultimate eternal love he calls God.
When I was very young I had a similar experience, though not as grand. I called it God because I’d seen God in a book and figured God was the right name for feeling so utterly affirmed and accepted without question. I have spent most of my life trying to preserve, protect, even simply remember and retrieve, this experience of pure being-loved. I have wanted to shield it from my own doubts. I also it hasn't magically made me a perfect person!
My sister remembers me under the table a lot, but I have no proof of my own small but ultimate experience. All I can do is trust it, and write about it, and try not to get preachy-insistent about it.
To me, the most resonant thing Alexander wrote about God was: “One of the biggest mistakes people make when they think about God is to imagine god as impersonal. Yes, God is behind numbers, the perfection of the universe that science measures and struggles to understand. But—again, paradoxically—Om (means One and is another name he uses for Divinity) is “human” as well—even more human than you and I are. Om understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly than we can imagine because Om knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the Divine for even a moment.”
That’s like what I felt as a child and I can’t go abstract with it, no matter how much I think I should, and no matter how much I know God remains Mystery to be grasped occasionally by sheer grace. Believe me, however, I’m in no hurry to die.
Alexander doesn’t refer to God as He. Okay with me. Might the Holy Eucharist be, for Christians, a ritual of anamnesis, a state of no amnesia about Divinity? Could the “human” God have many identities, like Jesus, Buddha, Moses, and how about Betty Friedan, or Anita Hill, or Gloria Steinem, Julian of Norwich, Pope John XXIII, or you, or me—and so many more.
So, why now? I think it is because most of the world has made science an idol. There is lots of evidence, biblical and beyond, that God finds a way to insert a “punctuation mark” into this universe to remind people that science, as necessary and wondrous as it is, is not God.
I wondered, why now? Why has this book come out just now? I predict it will be a bestseller, and Eben Alexander will promote it with all he’s got, because he is earnest about the message of ultimate eternal love he calls God.
When I was very young I had a similar experience, though not as grand. I called it God because I’d seen God in a book and figured God was the right name for feeling so utterly affirmed and accepted without question. I have spent most of my life trying to preserve, protect, even simply remember and retrieve, this experience of pure being-loved. I have wanted to shield it from my own doubts. I also it hasn't magically made me a perfect person!
My sister remembers me under the table a lot, but I have no proof of my own small but ultimate experience. All I can do is trust it, and write about it, and try not to get preachy-insistent about it.
To me, the most resonant thing Alexander wrote about God was: “One of the biggest mistakes people make when they think about God is to imagine god as impersonal. Yes, God is behind numbers, the perfection of the universe that science measures and struggles to understand. But—again, paradoxically—Om (means One and is another name he uses for Divinity) is “human” as well—even more human than you and I are. Om understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly than we can imagine because Om knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the Divine for even a moment.”
That’s like what I felt as a child and I can’t go abstract with it, no matter how much I think I should, and no matter how much I know God remains Mystery to be grasped occasionally by sheer grace. Believe me, however, I’m in no hurry to die.
Alexander doesn’t refer to God as He. Okay with me. Might the Holy Eucharist be, for Christians, a ritual of anamnesis, a state of no amnesia about Divinity? Could the “human” God have many identities, like Jesus, Buddha, Moses, and how about Betty Friedan, or Anita Hill, or Gloria Steinem, Julian of Norwich, Pope John XXIII, or you, or me—and so many more.
So, why now? I think it is because most of the world has made science an idol. There is lots of evidence, biblical and beyond, that God finds a way to insert a “punctuation mark” into this universe to remind people that science, as necessary and wondrous as it is, is not God.
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