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| August 24, 2020 |
The year 2020 must go down as a great humbler. Perhaps this period of time, if viewed in the long landscape, reveals possibilities, particularly opportunities to inspire radical remakings. Reflecting off the craziness of the current political arena, we might channel this turbulence to transform meanings of crucial standpoints. Could the time be ripe for radical change in the prime movers among the complex of Power to Love? How might we engage creative chaos? What if we’ve been tangled in the old, old but failed, mythos of the hero? And what if this heroic sense of self (which necessarily generates blame as well as hubris) is incommensurate with our divine guidance? Can we risk surrender to the divine? How can a person let go of the struggle without falling into darkness?
Perhaps the sense of what to do and what not to do requires a revolution in the feeling of certainty. The Good Books tell us that Knowing belongs to the Omniscient and thus reaches beyond our cognitive grasp (cf. Philippians 4:7, Peace surpasses understanding; Ephesians 3:19, Love surpasses knowledge). So why be surprised when the best we can reach of certainty comes in a sacred texture of bewilderment, being awed, surrendered.*
The mark that someone knows that the Real’s knowledge encompasses his acts, states, and words is that quaking and dread becomes his watchword, and awe holds up the banner of rulership from his head to his toes. . . Adam was biting the fingers of wonder with the teeth of bewilderment: ‘What’s this? What happened?’” (William Chittick translating Sam’ani, The Repose of the Spirits, pp. 90,103 on al-‘Alim: the Knower)
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| October 8, 2020 |
Teachings of Sufism often return into the theme of mystical annihilation (fana) as one approaches the One (see, for example, Stoddard, Sufism, p. 64; Lings, What is Sufism? p. 78; Ernst, Shambhala Guide to Sufism, pp. 61, 115). An outgrown, dysfunctional sense of knowing needs release in order to birth wonder. Why bother about a feeling of ineptitude if we are swept into the ocean?
Richard Rohr’s meditation this week comforts me in the reminder that being heroic (my term, not his) is not the only way of acting responsibly in the presence of suffering. He uses the metaphor of a swollen river, sweeping folks off into its flow. The responsible action to today’s crisis comes not just in heroic activism that works toward systemic reform, but also and equally valuable are works of education/healing and those of hands-on help for persons in distress. In Mark Wallace’s writings, the caring attention extends to all of creation, trees to butterflies.
“As the breath of God who animates all life, the Spirit becomes present in the spaces opened up between persons who risk themselves for the other. . . The Spirit is not a static entity but a potential modality of divine presence that becomes actual in the co-partnerships of persons with one another and other life forms” (pp. 10-11, Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Creation).
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| August 1, 2020 |
Even so and always, the work zone flows from the interior and, of course, the Source. Blame and anger transform into constructive fire for healing and loving. The only effective agent, God.
*Previous blogs elaborating the theme of Bewilderment include:
August 18, 2019 When Bewilderment Tracks the Mystery
May 13, 2020 Recognition on the Pathway
September 7, 2018 Living with Bewilderment
August 24, 2019 Bewildered by God
November 16, 2019 Longing into Certainty
March 23, 2019 Rumi, Radical Love, & I/You (part A)
August 18, 2018 Transcendent Power
February 10, 2018 Tracking on the Path of Attraction
December 16, 2017 “and He is with you”
November 14, 2017 Sure Good?
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