Hidden in the Cold

David would’ve been age 40 today…suppose is, in memory at least… gone just before 19, just over 21 years ago. Reading in the middle of the night from Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross, adds perspective on loss. In her chapter on “Spirit and Faith” (reflecting particularly on the work of St. John of the Cross, both Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul):

Therefore faith is a totally dark night for the soul. But it is precisely by these means that it brings her light: a knowledge of perfect certainty that exceeds all other knowledge and science so that one can arrive in perfect contemplation at a correct conception of faith. That is why it is said: Si non credideritis, non intelligentis (“If you do not believe, you will not understand,” Is 7:9). [fn 3: See Ascent of Mount Carmel 2.3.2-4 ]

From what was last said, it has not only been made clear that faith is a dark night, but also that it is a way: the way to the goal toward which the soul strives, to union with God. For it alone gives knowledge of God. And how is one to arrive at union with God without knowing him? However, in order to be led by faith to the goal, the soul must conduct itself in the right manner.  She must enter into the night of faith by her own choice and by her own power. After having renounced all desire for creatures in the night of the senses, in order to reach God, she must now die to her natural faculties, her senses, and to her intellect also. For in order to reach the supernatural transformation, she must leave behind everything natural. Yes, she must divest herself, as well, of all supernatural goods when God grants her any of these. She must let go of everything that falls into the realm of her power of comprehension. ‘And she must remain in the dark like a blind man, leaning upon dark faith and choosing it as light and guide and not supporting herself by anything she understands or enjoys or feels or imagines. For all this is darkness that will lead her into error or delay. Faith, on the other hand, is above all such understanding, enjoyment, feeling, or imagining.’ [fn 4: Ascent of Mount Carmel 2.4.2-4] 

   from pp. 58-59 Stein, The Science of the Cross

 Looking back at written reflections, this item seems good for reflection:

When You Come to the Land

Halfway to his third-grade class, I lurch at the wheel
spotting bare ankles between jeans and sneakers,
and feeling the cold rubber brake as on our soles.
It’s mid-December. Ice crusts the left-over rain.
How can he not know his socks are missing?
We can’t blame sleepiness as he’s jabbering away
about meteor showers, fishing for a word
to catch the ground between exciting and afraid.
Some line’s down between head and foot.
Did a big storm pass through, snow and wind?
Has the ground around him been too harsh?
The stares cold inside the house, an icy silence?
Oh, perhaps he’s in search of winter’s power,
that makes hidden, in the cold, the hope of spring.

 

On Chill Rain, Cutting, and Moving Inside

We celebrate, of course, the spring rains, especially when softly falling, slight breeze. We share into a deepened sort of joy, the kind taken down to sense life force even alike the newly opened daffodils bowing, bent into the crossed, lifeless stalks. Also, while reluctant to cut, some cheer comes through the movement inside. 

We might note some parallel here with Samuel Terrien’s Job: Poet of Existence. His introduction cleanly asserts the direction of the book. 

“The poet of Job did not attempt to solve the problem of evil nor did he propose a vindication of God’s justice. . . he not only takes his place among all those who suffer, fighting with the incomprehensible forces of evil in the noce oscura, but he also can speak to all sufferers an authentic word of comfort, begetting in them the virtue of serenity over woe. . .

And we who read Job may likewise find a gain in the loss of self-sufficiency. ‘As pain that cannot forget,’ wrote Aeschylus, ‘falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’” (p. 21-2). 

Terrien proceeds to take us through the entire text of Job, just enough commentary along with amplifications from scripture as well as contemporary literature, so that the Deus Absconditus, the ineffable, the mystery surpassing human grasp, eases somewhat through the mist, unsurprisingly by the grace of love. Thus, the touch of comfort, the enlightening of peace. The gift of this text can be sampled in a passage taken near the conclusion as Job, after so much talk and rebuttal, finally goes almost mute in response to the Voice proceeding from the whirlwind.

In the presence of the holy, Job could not speak. ‘To make the relation to God into a feeling is to relativize and psychologize it. True relation is a coincidentia oppositorum, an absolute which gathers up the poles of feeling into itself’ [Terrien, p. 242; quoting Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber, The Life of Dialogue].

 

Softer Love, Subtle Tone

Graying skies with yellow-browned leaves, many down, allow the softer love of shadows, subtle tonalities, layers above common horizons, slowing, looking long, erasing space and time. 

“There is an unbearable and unstoppable energy at the heart of the cosmos that is relentless, despite billions of years of cosmic life. This yearning for wholeness is integral to the unfinished process of evolution because it is an ultimate wholeness that exceeds the human grasp. God is the unbearable wholeness of being, the unrelenting dynamism of love, pushing through the limits of matter to become God at the heart of this evolutionary universe. Divine love evolves the universe as it leans into an unknown future.” Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, p. 202. 

Midwinter Knows

It might be just the time to trod over the sodden leaf bed, attending to the fallen giants—to this stillness when so much seems asleep as if lifeless, still to sense the eternal presence that holds together, knowing only by heart the year-round spring blush, the summer lost-in-love, and always autumn’s passion, winter-truth.

Like the deep secret to human wholeness, holiness, plumbs center-wise, passing space/time to pre-eternity, remembering that profession of Trust. The poet's Tavern, drunken on unimaginable majesty, calls even for the subject looking foolish, risking too much, like these wood-kings apparently bared of their royal robes.

Yet protected in the deepest roots, a spark, never-to-be extinguished, the heart of Love flows from the Source, always returning.

Eyes of Nature

Nov 19. frosty view just pre-dawn

Well, Duh! There’s a connection between the vision coming through the camera lens (edited with openness for revelations of Beauty) and with the selection of text moving past the eyes, particularly with submissiveness to the heart, and with all bowing to the spirit. 

Why be surprised when reading from sacred writings, from reflections of mystics, that the eyes are directed to light emanating from nature, to the lines that dance, shimmering between still forms.

Sam’ani says it: 

“O dervish, you will not see Him tomorrow until He sees Himself through you. By God the tremendous, if tomorrow you want to see, you must have pure vision. Pure vision is that He sees Himself through you.”...

     “Those who step into the road do not do so for any cause, only for love. . . Expecting compensation for obedient acts is a fatal poison. . . If you were to walk on this road for a thousand years and your obedience was not accepted and then it occurred to your mind that it should have been accepted, you will have been a status-seeker, not a road-seeker. You will not be a realizer in this road until you abandon your status with both the Real and the creatures.” 

(pp. 18, 29, emphasis in original; Ahmad Sam’ani, trans by William Chittick. The Repose of the Spirits: A Sufi Commentary on the Divine Names.)

fallen log fashioned into a viewing station

          Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for today includes a quotation from Lisa Sharon Harper:

 “Evidence of the presence of the Kingdom of God is thick wherever and whenever people stand on the promise of God that there is more to this world—more to this life—than what we see. There is more than the getting over, getting by, or getting mine. There is more than the brokenness, the destruction, and the despair that threaten to wash over us like the waters of the deep. There is a vision of a world where God cuts through the chaos, where God speaks and there is light. There is a vision where there is protection and where love is binding every relationship together. (p. 205; Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right. Cited by Rohr, “Jesus and the Reign of God," Nov 19, 2020. 

November 11, 2020

Com-posing Comm-Union

 

8:05:52AM, October 14, 2020

     Imagine being drawn by the invitation of Truth into the composing of beauty in nature. It’s an open doorway any moment to play with and into recognition from the inner eye that joys as the form comes into focus, into being, the liminal reality that evinces invisible lines of universal connection, that lifts off the physical plane into the radiance of pure light. This participation in the Divine nurtures the soul; without this devotion, without dedicating creative belief and love, the inner spirit languishes.This ever-present Eternity awaits even when veiled by impurities ashen over the heart.

     About the time of my conception, three-quarters of a century ago, Aldous Huxley called it

“… the one divine Reality substantial to the material world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit” (The Perennial Philosophy, p. viii).

God, First and Last

The pileated woodpecker backlit in morning sun blazes with remembrance of the majesty of God. All manifestations, even unto Paradise, surrender before the Transcendent. In the chapter on “The Fall of Adam” (Sufism, pp. 141-177), William Chittick translates portions of The Refreshment of the Spirits by Ahmad Sam’ani (d. 1140). Adam is revealed as the paradigm for choosing God above all else:

“‘Adam’s unharnessed aspiration placed him like a sultan on the horse of love. He took the arrow of solitude from the quiver of detachment and stretched the bow to its limit. He shot the beautiful peacock of paradise, which was strutting in the garden of the Abode. He knew that this was the path of the detached, the work of those with high aspiration, the court of those brought near to God. Time, space, entities, traces, vestiges, shapes, existent things, and objects of knowledge must be erased completely from in front of you. If any of these clings to your skirt, the name of freedom will not stick to you. As long as the name free does not sit on you, you can never be a true servant of God.’” (Sufism, p. 155; Chittick translating Sam’ani’s Refreshment of the Spirits, p. 120)

In this chapter, Chittick articulates the gift of Adam, especially in leading us toward the secret of Love and into grasping the essential value of free choice.

“If human beings are to aspire to God, they need to be able to differentiate between God and all else. The key to human love and perfection is a discerning heart, one that sees God in the midst of the confusing multiplicity of creation. Adam provides the model for lovers.” (Sufism, p. 156)

Adam disobeyed God at God’s instigation, because God knew that without disobedience Adam would not realize the attributes of distance that allow him to become a lover. The essence of love is yearning and heartache. ” (Sufism, p. 152-3)

The Still Point

 

Very interesting illuminations burst across from the fusion coming out of initial readings in two texts. Titus Burckhardt, in Sacred Art in East and West, details how the essential form of a holy structure composes the symbolic themes connected with line, square, circle, and center point. Each of us in our daily work and play, especially in our craft and art, engage with and are mediated by these inevitable structures.

        Burckhardt explains how these elements lead to two- and three-dimensional crosses, mandalas, icons, and on into altars, temples, and other spaces that support contemplation of the divine. Themes include the centrality of sacrifice, transformation, even the containment and resolution of “all cosmic antinomies” (p. 25). Temples extend from altars, the significance evident in this footnote 

“Union with the Divine Essence always comprises, as phases or aspects of a single spiritual act, the reintegration of all the positive aspects of the world—or of their interior equivalents—in a symbolized ‘hearth,’ the sacrifice of the soul in its limited aspect and its transformation by the fire of the Spirit.” (p. 28)

   The physical structures express the fully human along with the cosmos: 

“the temple has a spirit, a soul and a body, like the man and like the universe…the architect of the temple identifies himself with the building and with that which it represents; thus each phase of the architectural task is equally a phase of spiritual realization. The artist confers upon his work something of his own vital force; in exchange he participates in the transformation which that force undergoes by virtue of the sacramental and implicitly universal nature of the work” (p. 47).

   Huston Smith in Forgotten Truth elaborates the multiple dimensions of the cross, including: “a horizontal cross is a mandala, a sacred enclosure, round or square, with typically four approaches to a ‘hidden treasure’ that lies at its center” (p. 23)

“For the point at the center of the three-dimensional cross that gives rise to the order of nature concomitantly creates the souls that inhabit that order, not just in the moment of their conception but continuously, instant by instant as they pursue their trajectories. . . If it strikes the reader as presumptuous to equate his personal center with the center of the cosmos, he must be reminded that physics requires him to do just that because space is relative and curved, the center of the physical universe is for each observer the point from which his observations proceed…The Hermetic formulation is exact: ‘God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.’” (pp. 29-30)

   Smith elaborates in a footnote at the bottom of the page with a quotation from Meister Eckhart:

 “‘The soul that enters into God owns neither time nor space…But it stands to reason, if you consider it, that the space occupied by any soul that enters is vastly greater than heaven and earth and God’s entire creation. I say more: God might make heavens and earths galore yet these…would be of less extent than a single needle-tip compared with the standpoint of a soul atoned in God’” (p. 30).

   Reflections on these texts along with “meditation of everyday life” (referenced on p. 31 by Smith) lead to a sense of being directed to release all reactions, such as those spinning off the political miasma that tumults about us, to let these go into the "black hole.” 

“Passage through the ‘gateless gate’ (Mu Mon Kan) that guards the holy center can be disorienting. If it takes the form of a powerful satori it can feel as if one has been sucked into a ‘black hole’ where physical laws are destroyed. When eyes have accustomed themselves to the new, ethereal light, however, one sees that no movement has occurred. Length and breadth had already withdrawn into the cross’s horizontal center; now the vertical axis too collapses. Renouncing the space it had embodied to make an important but provisional point, that axis now withdraws the ontic, value distinctions that once it metered. . . Superfluous and ego-aggrandizing activity must be stilled, but the stilling of such activity clears the way for pure effectiveness—action that is powered by force that is concentrated and energy assembled” (p. 31; Smith follows with quotations from the Tao Te Ching, the Chuang Tzu, Pascal, and Eliot’s “still point” “where there is only the dance”).

        Let’s release all the worries for dear ones, let every trouble of the world be taken into this still point. This the only way to love. The way to the Only Love.

The Law of Love

I suppose we know (don’t we?) that following the law with resentment isn’t right or good. It’s really not keeping the Law at all. Because in the final rule, the Law is Love. And, at some point, it seems good and right to realize that we’re most unlikely to find our love for God through clenched teeth, pouting like a two-year-old as if we’re having to follow laws that keep us from having fun. Even trying to believe (like adults do) that we know the constraints are for our own good won’t work. This, too, separates us from Love. And it won’t work to play hermeneutical word-games so that a law gets to be whatever we want it to be. It’s not the Law that has to change—it’s the world we live in that spins. “Imaginal,” not imaginary, is a possible name for this, transmuting “idols into icons.”

     Sometimes a bit of fog brings appreciation for light, the subtle beauty of it; it’s more than perfect clarity. The opening pages of Tom Cheetham’s Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman point into this phoenix, this shifting spectrum that moves us through construction/deconstruction/(re-)creation of reality, cosmos, earth, and heaven.

“It is perhaps the chief merit of Corbin that he can help us, in his own words, to ‘transmute idols into icons’ and so defuse the destructive power of literalism and fundamentalism at the heart, in the imagination. To anticipate: Corbin was a master of the visionary recital, the dramatic narrative, and if we understand what this truly means then we will come to see that Fiction in this great sense is the repository of all knowledge, and all truth. Literal truth is always false…In reality, fiction is the only possible means of expressing the truth…” (pp. 14-15).

     As I’m reading into this work of Cheetham, I feel my grounding become a bit tenuous; and while excited in perceiving from his writing a better bridge between Jung and Sufism, I sense more certain positioning as I reach back toward Chittick’s explication and translation of Ibn al-’Arabi (Sufi Path of Knowledge). It seems I’m venturing into remaking my “lived experience” and re-mapping the “real world” with textures of soul and spirit so that the imaginal world revolutionizes the feeling of certainty. Strangely (or not, as I see a similar reporting in Cheetham’s narrative of his journey from secular rationalism to spiritual pragmatism), while reading Chittick (as the current engine in a long train including Corbin’s Creative Imagination and many other challenging texts as well as life experiences and simply getting older) slowly in order to allow it to absorb into dreams and reflections, something redemptive is happening with the Law. 

     Instead of succumbing to and indulging in the typical defensiveness that accompanies being confronted with religious laws, I’m taking a few deep breaths, relaxing shoulders, neck, and stomach. With guidance from the masters, let’s imagine the Law not as a burden but instead as a ladder for the spiritual pathway. 

“Again we are brought back to the fundamental human imperative: Man is bound by the reality of his own essence to strive after God, who is Good, Light, Knowledge, Being—everything to which he must conform in order to reach his own happiness and felicity. But God is unknown and unknowable, so the only way to reach Him is to follow the Law as He makes it known to us” (p. 291, Chittick).

     Instead of fearing the loss of each person’s individual fingerprint identity and destiny, let’s hold in remembrance it’s all given by God, of course. The same Source provides this gift of uniqueness as well as the Law capable of providing unique guidance to the Unity. To us, it may often feel paradoxical: the many and the One. Thus the need for the truth of an imaginal world.

From the time man begins to climb the ladder of ascent (mi’raj), he receives divine self-disclosure in accordance with the ladder of his ascent. Each individual among the Folk of Allah has a ladder specific to him which no one else climbs…However, all the steps of the meanings for the prophets, the friends, the faithful, and the messengers are the same… (pp. 218-219, Ibn al-’Arabi translated by Chittick)

Let’s not expect cheap grace. Stepping on this ladder demands all:

“When man renounces his own individual desire, shrinks from his own ego, and prefers his Lord over all else, then God sets up before him in place of the form of his own soul the form of a divine guidance, a real form from the Real, so that he may walk proudly in diaphanous capes of light. This form is the Law of his prophet and the messengerhood of his messenger. It casts to him from his Lord that within which lies his felicity. (p. 252, Ibn al-’Arabi translated by Chittick)

     The call of the spiritual pathway is freedom from imprisonment in idol-worship, both lawlessness as well as false conceptions of the Law. God’s Law is not a one-size-fits-all straitjacket. Failure to grow beyond the literalism of limited conceptions may enforce dogmas that fit the ego-mind but feel cold and harsh. To grow isn’t to become free from the Law but to become free from the ego, to move from a fear-based narrowness, from violent exclusiveness, from joyless rigidity as well as reckless indulgence and addiction, and instead to flow into the imaginal world, the Love.

Bewildered by God

Morning, Aug 24, 2019

“…we come to know that God has bewildered the faithful, which is His testing of them . . . There only remains which of the two correct views is better for the servant, though both are good. And this is a place of bewilderment (hayra).” Chittick translating Ibn al’Arabi, p. 211, Sufi Path of Knowledge.

     While this explanation and attribution of bewilderment is not entirely comforting, it does offer a possible alternative to feeling bothered about being wishy-washy. Chittick places this quotation from Ibn al’Arabi in the context of dealing with the paradox of human freedom/responsibility alongside predestination. Two particular considerations support our ability to find peace in this perplexity.

     First, the attitude we take toward God is of utmost importance. Even when bewildered, it’s important we address the Divine with courtesy. My previous blog concluded with a brief explanation on courtesy: “The revealed religions (al-shara i) are God’s rules of courtesy (adab Allah) which He set up for His servants. He who gives God’s Law its full due (haqq) has gained the courtesy of the Real (al-haqq) and come to know the friends of the Real,” (Chittick translating Ibn al-‘Arabi, p. 175). One of the tests of faith seems to be in dealing with good and bad acts. While realizing that everything belongs to and comes from God, we are best to enter the Presence with courtesy.  

“. . . only good and beautiful acts be ascribed to God, while evil and ugly acts must be ascribed to the servants. Man must see all good as belonging to God and all evil as belonging to himself, thereby putting everything in its proper place and becoming qualified by justice, wisdom, and courtesy” (pp. 209-210).

     The second crucial matter concerns the nature of knowing and involves a contrast set up between the mind and the heart. While we are gifted with our ability to think and to construct rational understanding, the pathway is distinguished by surrendering our presumption of such knowing, at least at certain moments, in favor of the heart. 

“God has a faculty in some of his servants which bestows a judgment different from what the rational faculty bestows in certain affairs, while it agrees with reason in others. This is a station which is outside the stage of reason, so reason cannot perceive it on its own. No one has faith in [what reason holds to be impossible] except him who has this faculty in his person. He knows reason’s incapacity and the truth of what it denies.” Chittick translating Ibn al’Arabi, p. 203.

     As we know within our bodies, the healthy heart is continually beating and thus offers embodied knowing to believe in persistent change, for continual creation, for holding a rhythm of contrast, even opposition. 

“Knowledge can be acquired through reflection, unveiling, or scripture. The human subtle reality (al-latifat al-insaniyya), also called the ‘soul’ (nafs), knows in a variety of modes. When it knows through reflection, the mode of its knowing is called ‘reason’ (‘aql). When it knows directly from God, the mode of knowing is called the ‘heart’ (qalb), which is contrasted with reason. Whatever the means whereby the soul acquires knowledge, the knowing subject is one. There are not two different entities known as ‘reason’ and ‘heart,’ though there is a real difference between the modalities of knowing. As we have already seen, reason knows through delimitation and binding, while the heart knows through letting go of all restrictions. ‘Aql, as shown by its root meaning, is that which limits the free and ties down the unconstricted. Qalb means fluctuation, for the heart undergoes constant change and transmutation in keeping with the never-repeating self-disclosures of God.” Chittick translating Ibn al’Arabi, p. 159.

     And, of course, perhaps most importantly, the heart stands for love, and in that power it offers the highway to God. Chittick summarizes:

“. . . we love God in everything that we love. The love of God that is made possible through revelation and the divine reports has a salvific function, leading to felicity. But even without revelation, love of God is a fact of existence, though it cannot lead to our felicity unless we are aware of Him whom we love. God reveals Himself in every form, thus making it necessary that we love Him in any form which we love.” (Chittick, pp. 180-181)

Then Chittick translates Ibn al’Arabi:

“Though no one loves any but his own Creator, he is veiled from Him by the love for Zaynab, Su’ad, Hind, Layla, this world, money, position, and everything loved in the world. Poets exhaust their words writing about all these existent things without knowing, but the gnostics never hear a verse, a riddle, a panegyric, or a love poem that is not about Him, hidden beyond the veil of forms.”

The Marvelous Mirror of Love

April 18, redbud in woods

Sometimes dreams guide the meaning of text. In the dream, I’m observing a child who holds a book. He gives every sign of non-reading: making puzzled facial expressions, turning the book upside down, maybe even attempting to look through the cover or the edges. The academic expert in the room passionately insisted that this is NOT reading. The other person in the room, a woman of color, equally insisted, "Yes! This IS reading." After interacting with the text, the child smiles broadly, fills with affection, and goes around hugging the other children and kissing their cheeks . 

One of the texts I’ve been reading is Ahmad Ghazali’s Sawanih: Inspirations from the World of Pure Spirits. The oldest Persian Sufi treatise on love. It's translated from the Persian with a commentary and notes by Nasrollah Pourjavady. The reading I’ve previously made of love seems to be trying to turn upside down and demands looking through the cover. From section 74, p. 79:

“What a marvelous mirror love is, for both the lover and the beloved—it can be seen in oneself, in the beloved, and in others. [Note: i.e. the creatures.] If love’s jealousy succeeds so that he [the lover] does not behold anything [or anyone] other (than love), then he will not be able to see the perfect beauty of the beloved perfectly except in the mirror of love. This is also true with respect to the perfect needfulness of the lover, and all (other) imperfections and perfections on either side. [i.e. all the imperfections of the lover and the perfections of the beloved.]”

Perhaps there’s a looking in through the cover of the heart that's necessary in order to see the beauty in the manifestations of the outer world.