Looking Down the Road (AKA: Living Ethically...

September 10 daybreak

Last night’s dream involved attempting to transport a significant volume of fruit juice into a truck with a pick-up style flatbed but with sides too tall to get easily over. The workers carelessly risked sloshing out the precious essence because they had not secured the containers. Possibly the dream relates to the book I’m reading (Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself ) that extends previous material on theodicy.  How do we individually work out the translation of divine inheritance into daily life? How is our true essence expressed into ethical living?   

Looking down the road

The main text of Lenn Goodman’s Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself concludes:

“Allow me to sum up. As to the relations between God and morals, what I see in the Jewish sources is less an appeal to God’s authority than a dialogue between our moral knowledge and the idea of God. The dynamic of that idea urges our moral thinking toward unwavering rather than compromised values—toward absolute rights most notably, but also toward unstinting generosity and unselfish love…

No one capable of hearing what purports to be a divine command is without moral sense—a product, in part, of upbringing and experience, in part of our human endowment, as sensitive reasoning beings. So we adjust the imperatives to fit our circumstances, ably or ineptly, honestly or invidiously, thoughtfully or mechanically. We scrutinize and criticize what we hear, adjusting our ideas about God as we learn, the better to express our moral, aesthetic, and other values—just as we refine those values in the light of what we learn about God from scripture, tradition, and history…

For the hallmark of monotheism in ethics, and of ethics in monotheism, is the equation of being with value that is salient in our human affirmation of life and beauty, growth, thought, and creativity. What is right, as seen with the aid of this religious speculum, is not something arbitrary, changeable, or contingent but something bone-deep, as we have said—as deeply embedded in being as the fact of change and the reach of growth. . .

… we recognize some imperatives as divine, others as human, and still others as impostures, desecrations of all that deserves to be held holy. We test prophecy by its content, using our God-given reason, which is capable not just of noticing contradictions but also of recognizing truth and falsity, worth and beauty, striving and desert. Revelation, then, becomes an ongoing conversation; and our idea of God and of God’s will grows pari passu [with an equal step] with our recognition of value in all beings and of sacred worth and dignity in the human person. (p. 69)

Infinite Mystery

Several threads seem weaving into some indefinable mesh that yet might collectively be contemplated within the theme of “infinite mystery.” Almost any deep reflection in the overlapping worlds of social history, personal experience, religion/theology/spirituality, and contemporary political activity butts into the inescapable quagmire of theodicy: How can suffering fit in a design made by an all-powerful and all-loving God?  Perhaps, among other possibilities, this problematic condition paradoxically pushes a kind of vitality, a relentless impulse toward further development, toward trying to know more even when admitting the hard awareness that the ultimate foundation must be the Unknowable. Just perhaps it’s this complex that generates the energy needed for living in perplexity which includes an essential grace of protection, a slight safety from presumption, a safety that draws from continuous confession of surrender and into forgiveness. 

     This perspective on the mesh, possibly on a tapestry not primarily made by human hands, seems more viewable in the field of emptiness (discussed in the preceding post).  Reading on from Waddell’s Zen Words, (quoted in that post), let's consider D.T. Suzuki’s Manual of Zen Buddhism as it further elaborates on One Mind:

“It has been in existence since the beginningless past; it knows neither birth nor death; it is neither blue nor yellow; it has neither shape nor form; it is beyond the category of being and non-being; it is not to be measured by age, old or new; it is neither long nor short; it is neither large nor small’ for it transcends all limits, words, traces, and opposites. It must be taken just as it is in itself; when an attempt is made on our part to grasp it in our thoughts, it eludes. It is like space whose boundaries are altogether beyond measurement no concepts are applicable here.” (p. 112)

     Additional threads coming in today include items shared by Jim Palmer’s Center for Non‑Religious Spirituality and from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.  From the Center for Non‑Religious Spirituality:

"The great spiritual discovery is not merely that you are loved. It is that love is more original than the self you spend so much energy defending. It precedes your achievements, your failures, your beliefs, and your fears. The journey is not toward earning love, finding love, or securing love. It is toward recognizing what has been true from the beginning.

The journey is not toward earning love, finding love, or securing love. It is toward recognizing what has been true from the beginning: that you have always existed within it. The ground you have been searching for is the ground on which you already stand. And at your deepest level, beneath every identity, every wound, every role, and every belief, love is not only what holds you. It is what you are." [citing Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge]

     Also in today’s meditation from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation: 

“a radically different understanding of spirituality. The central question is no longer whether we can convince God to love us. It becomes whether we can awaken to the love that is already present before belief, before doctrine, before identity, before any attempt to prove our worthiness. Love is not something added to existence. We emerge from it, live within it, and participate in it whether we recognize it or not."

     These meditations reinforce a convergence that continues to build in my post-midnight wonderments that strangely reassuringly probe and assert that the bounds and textures of Love permeate with the Infinite Mystery. Surely, the final answer (as one is allowed to approach it) is Love; of course, the “love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:19). And, again, while the overthrowing of the rational mind feels disconcerting, some comfort also comes from the resonance of having survived this apparent calamity before. For example, in the puzzling combo of know/not-know. 

So the big realities recur in such a unity: God, Self, Mind… The midnight whisper says “Walk on. Go slowly…or not…" 

For as The Center for Action and Contemplation notes:

"I’m not in control or in charge of this Holy Mystery. I don’t presume to understand it; all I know is that I’m forever being drawn through everything. Each manifestation or epiphany of God calls for surrender, communion, and intimacy.”

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.

 

Cornflaked

 

Cornfield, July 25, 2025

Why did the cornflakes cross the road? It’s not a joke…well, maybe it is hinting toward one, inviting the kind of humor that copes with such mind&heart-numbing craziness that’s swirling off the world: political lies and flagrant abuse of law/morality/justice, religious hypocrisy, the obscenity of wealth concentration coupled with neglect of the poor, the threatened, the environment … 

Anyway, closer to home and concerning the usually-more-manageable woodlands and gardens here, the west wind’s been delivering mail: “cornflakes.” The no-longer green field across the road, now littered with debris from the harvested field corn, 

Cornfield, Nov 22, 2025

sends over each day (or minute) the thrashed remains. Here’s our front garden featuring the west wind’s recent unwelcome delivery contrasted with its appearance before getting cornflaked:

Nov 17, 2025

May 8, 2025

Perhaps the cornflakes could just be left to rot, but internet info says their decomposition takes over a year. Assuming that only in a few months, spring will come again, what’s the chance that the poppies and iris will break through layers of heavy leaf stubble in order to bloom and bring their blessed end of winter?

Iris Garden, May 19, 2025

The “joke” is that sometimes it takes an overwhelm to enable a breakthrough. Perhaps such a mess is necessary to push past normal sense-making in order to make way for a crucial insight or inner development, particularly vital for the spiritual pathway. St. John of the Cross says certain transformations cannot come by any human effort. No prayer, no contemplation, not even the ascetic acts of the hyper-religious mystic can do it. Only the power and gift from God.

Yet God always acts in this way—as the soul is able to see—moving, governing, bestowing being, power, graces, and gifts on all creatures, bearing them all in Himself by His power, presence, and substance. And the soul sees what God is in Himself and what He is in his creatures in only one view, just as one who in opening the door of a palace beholds in one act the eminence of the person who dwells inside together with what that sovereign is doing. Therefore what I understand about how God effects this awakening and view given to the soul (which is in Him substantially as is every creature) is that He removes some of the many veils and curtains hanging in front of it so that it might get a glimmer of Him as He is. And then that countenance of His, full of graces, becomes partially and vaguely discernible, for not all the veils are removed. Because all things are moving by His power, what He is doing is evident as well, so He seems to move in them and they in Him with continual movement. Hence it seems to the soul that, in being itself moved and awakened, it was God who moved and awakened. [“The Living Flame of Love” kindle version, p. 117; print version: Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, p. 645  Trans/Ed Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez]

“Cornflakes” that can never be managed by human effort are obviously not just about the physical debris left after the harvest of field corn. And acknowledging the inadequacy of human effort is not to deny the necessity of it. In other words, to “let go—let God” does not mean a dismissal of the need for prayer-without-ceasing and other acts of devotion.

In addition to being overwhelmed by the literal cornflakes brought by the west wind, an inner message that has been struggling to get through for over twenty years may have gained extra current. It seems the body’s complaint (stooping, raking, hand picking, hauling, grrr…) was needed to conduct the message. This aching body was almost to the point of generating curses that might spark out at the causes of this undeserved heavy burden. 

And perhaps the charge came in that presumption of judgment and vengeance (cf Matt 7:1, “Judge not” and Deut 32:35, “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” also Matt 5:38, Rom 12:19, Heb 10:30…) that the better angel was roused and prompted to whisper “now, now” or an admonition more harsh, along the lines of “do you think you’ve got it so bad…what about all the hungry children…” Thanks, Mom, I needed that. Seriously though, if suffering is required, cornflakes are a piece of cake. And I found myself substituting gratitude for this light burden, easy yoke, which could have justifiably been more severe.

But, let not escape the elephant: Is suffering required? For there’s the real deal within the cornflake kerfuffle. How does a person deal with the Job issue? Why does an All-Powerful, All-Loving Creator make and allow so much pain and suffering as witnessed in each morning’s news? 

A pretty good sized library is needed to contain the writing on this issue, 

sometimes called “theodicy.”

Studies of the book of Job and other volumes on this topic might approve the summary expression given by David Burrell’s Deconstructing Theodicy in his subtitle: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. Perhaps the best and/or only reaction to this unsolveable problem is found in Silence (with awe). 

Tired enough by raking out and hauling off cornflakes, it became easier to yield to this: “You have to suffer and you aren’t able to know why!” And that surrender may have allowed a next step. Previous attempts to “get” St. John of the Cross hadn’t been very successful, but now the guidance from his works began coming through. St. John says:

It cost God a great deal to bring these souls to this stage [of solitude and tranquility], and He highly values His work of having introduced them into this solitude and emptiness regarding their faculties and activity so that He might speak to their hearts, which is what He always desires. Since it is He who now reigns in the soul with an abundance of peace and calm, He takes the initiative himself by making the natural acts of the faculties fail, by which the soul laboring the whole night accomplished nothing [Lk. 5:5]; and He feeds the spirit without the activity of the senses because neither the sense nor its function is capable of spirit. 

The extent to which God values this tranquility and sleep, or annihilation of sense, is clear in the entreaty, so notable and efficacious, that He made in the Song of Songs: I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up nor awaken my beloved until she please [Sg. 3:5]. He hereby indicates how much He loves solitary sleep and forgetfulness, for He compares it to these animals that are so retiring and withdrawn. p. 95 kindle; p. 631, para 54 in Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Amen. Yes, there is a blessing for humility and a season for stillness, for a maturing, a seasoning, a special kind of purification particularly to take out toxicity of arrogance, entitlement, egotism, and suchlike.

And then, perhaps another season follows. Having gained through humble surrender a sensitivity in accepting that the human mind is not sufficient, a purpose takes form in relation to moving further into an increased sense and/or feeling of the divine presence. How is God being revealed each moment? In this particular case, when tending gardens where the Beauty of Nature usually comes, why might our labor be frustrated, even destroyed, by cornflakes? Could this relate to a preparation to receive a special gift, that involving a God-given transformation in the capacity to hold the overwhelming problem of suffering: 

Stanza 2 of The Living Flame of Love

O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!

O gentle hand! O delicate touch

That tastes of eternal life

And pays every debt!

In killing You changed death to life.

St. John seems to be saying that pain is the price of the path. That’s an overly simplistic reduction of his teaching, but it suggests the inarticulate grasping that hours and days of dealing with cornflake extraction might approximate a gentle and loving application of the cautery requirement. St. John comments on these lines: 

The reason these trials are necessary in order to reach this state is that this highest union cannot be wrought in a soul that is not fortified by trials and temptations, and purified by tribulations, darknesses, and distress, just as a superior quality liqueur is poured only into a sturdy flask that is prepared and purified. By these trials the sensory part of the soul is purified and strengthened, and the spiritual part is refined, purged, and disposed. Since unpurified souls must undergo the sufferings of fire in the next life to attain union with God in glory, so in this life they must undergo the fire of these sufferings to reach the union of perfection. This fire acts on some more vigorously than on others, and on some for a longer time than on others, according to the degree of union to which God wishes to raise them, and according to what they must be purged in them.

 Through these trials in which God places the spirit and the senses, the soul in bitterness acquires virtues, strength, and perfection, for virtue is made perfect in weakness [2 Cor. 12:9] and refined through the endurance of suffering. Iron cannot serve for the artificer's plan, or be adapted to it without fire and the hammer; as Jeremiah says of the fire that gave him knowledge: You have sent fire into my bones and have instructed me [Lam. 1:13]. And Jeremiah also says of the hammer: You have chastised me, Lord, and I was instructed [Jer. 31:18]. Hence Ecclesiasticus says: What can anyone know who is not tried? And the one that has no experience knows little [Ecclus. 34:9-10]. 

And here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It should be known that the reason is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work.

p.51 kindle; p. 604 in Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Shifting a worldview may be like moving a sand dune, grain by grain. Like decomposing “entitlement” or “power-over” or “THE truth” so that the God-given may take form. 

This experience with cornflakes should obviously be taken as highly individual and not preached as literally or metaphorically applied to anyone else. St. John has strong words to say for anyone who presumes to impose prescriptions:

Thus the whole concern of directors should not be to accommodate souls to their own method and condition, but they should observe the road along which God is leading one; if they do not recognize it, they should leave the soul alone and not bother it. And in harmony with the path and spirit along which God leads a soul, the spiritual director should strive to conduct it into greater solitude, tranquility, and freedom of spirit. He should give it latitude so that when God introduces it into this solitude it does not bind its corporeal or spiritual faculties to some particular object, interior or exterior, and does not become anxious or afflicted with the thought that nothing is being done. Even though the soul is not then doing anything, God is doing something in it. Kindle p. 88 ; p 627; para 46 Kavanaugh & Rodriguez

Homeward, Nov 19, 2025

Revelation

Sunrise today

    Have you ever felt the infidelity of “I know exactly how you feel”? The attempted comfort uttered by yourself to a dear friend or by someone to you, almost always spoken with good intention, nevertheless betrays the unique essence of profound, inarticulable experience. The holy inhabits silence. “No two sufferings are the same” emphasizes Stanley Hauerwas, in Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering (p. 3). Truth approximates instead in “the concrete particular”, 

and “knowledge, in the case of God, requires a lifelong transformation of the self” (p.10 & p.113 in Hauerwas' Theologian’s Memoir, Hannah’s Child).

Often the dawn revelation attempts to unveil the truth: Never the same place. The second hand ticks: a new creation alongside dying. Even side by side in the same instant, no two people share complete identity. Any photo taken, any image of reality cannot replicate another. In the silence, inarticulate, a person may approach the Divine. 

And yet, endowed with speech, especially in story, the transforming self may be shared. And through image/imagination.

Sunrise one week ago

Rumi, Radical Love, & I/You (part A)

Garrison Institute grounds and building, March 15

     Last weekend, my beloved wife Belqis and I, along with twenty others, participated in an event at the Garrison Institute, north of NYC, on the topic of Rumi and Radical Love, led by Seemi Ghazi and Omid Safi. Omid recently published a book titled Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. Of the 219 passages translated by Safi, 55 (about a fourth) are from Rumi. Attar has the second most with 26 poems, and then another 41 authors/sources contribute also to this wonderful collection on the mysterious theme of radical love. The volume and diversity suggest we may be in pursuit of something elusive, not surprising in the spiritual journey. I believe that while this path is perplexing, humbling, even overwhelming at times, this apparent multiplicity is One and is designed to guide each to integrity with his or her fit (fitra, see p. 29, Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul). Remember: “my beloved…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). 

     The multitude of texts appears even more puzzling when almost all of these writers tell that love can never be contained in words. And yet our reach toward, our tremendous thirst for the elixir of life yearns into the beyond, looking for any help we can get. We need the teachings and models to guide us, to break the spell cast by all the fake stuff masquerading under the label love. We long to be thrust forward into the transformational living of passionate engagement with beloveds, with our world, and even, especially, with the Divine. In Omid’s introduction to Radical Love, he tells us:

“In a metaphor that changes how we think about love and spirit, [Ahmad] Ghazali talks about the Spirit crossing over from the realm of nonexistence toward the realm of existence. When it gets to the very threshold of existence, love is already there awaiting the Spirit. In other words, love is preexisting, pre-eternal. This is consistent with the teachings of many mystics who see love not as merely another divine quality, but the divine quality par excellence, even perhaps equal to the being of God.” (p. xxx)

That’s radical. Love. I went to the weekend workshop hoping to move past the printed word, wanting to move closer to the embodied word, longing to track with greater certainty into the mystic.

     The most powerful feature emerging for me from the weekend comes in what Coleman Barks calls “glance” (The Glance: Songs of Soul-Meeting, 1999). Fittingly, my mind muddles here and I can’t remember whether Seemi and Omid used that word or another—maybe “glimpse” or “gaze.” My mental blur is apropos because when we wander after love, especially in search of radical love, we’re moved into fields of wonder where bewilderment clues proximity. 

     Since we’re moving out beyond words, getting the right one doesn’t matter much; what we want is experience of the phenomena, the phenomenal. While I don’t recall which word Seemi used that Friday night, my being knows the feeling that came with her voice, even when she spoke or sang in an unfamiliar language. The body joins these vibrations honing in on relationship felt in our ritual ceremony. With Seemi’s voice and being, we were held in sacred space where we may connect horizontally and vertically. 

     When we’re in the eye-to-eye connection of the glance/gaze, we’re also in a unity of vibration; of course, unfortunately, most daily eye contact fails to attain this level. And then, strangely or not, if we really want more of the glance, of the access to radical love, guess what we need! Words—but ones like Rumi’s. Rich in poetry, story, and revelation. Not ones turned plastic and manipulative as even can be done to the word love. To build our capacity to engage significantly with radical love we’ll almost certainly have to construct “realized knowledge” on top of “transmitted knowledge.” (For elaboration on this, see William Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul.) The transmitted knowledge that we need comes from revelation and authentic models; the realized kind is earned through experience and polishing of the heart to discern and know the True.

     While all this may sound daunting, and it should and it is, we are given loving opportunities, like the glance. Omid talked of three exemplary moments in life: 1) the birth of a firstborn (repeatable with some variation in subsequent childbirth, each extraordinary as is the unique gift of the one born), 2) the (first) falling-in-love, and 3) the eye to eye electric connection with one’s guide. I know each of those three+ with the differential coloring as fits with each individual’s journey.

     My personal experience of the first model named by Omid flooded with mercy. I was mostly unprepared, as first-time expectant fathers often are, having missed out on the nine-month inner mystery given to mothers-to-be. The miracle of birth of our child transformed the integrity of love. The previous meaning of this un-name-able center of life was stripped and replaced by the awesome. The second child brought in darker shades of love, qualities I’d likely been unable to bear without the grace of the first.

     Experiences with the falling-in-love model (repeatable with considerable variation) have offered another kind of mystery. The phenomena now seems to me suspect, mysteriously luring a person into deep waters, perhaps a set-up for heart-break and thereby an opportunity to surrender selfish illusion (“luv”) for self-giving-up care-for-another, “love.” Perhaps it’s a hint of the annihilation that goes with divine-love. The term “radical love” might be the care-taker that moves us along this pathway. Omid says in his introduction to Radical Love (“fiery, fierce, and alchemical”): “… it is by merging with the cosmic current of love that we are led back Home” (p. xxi, xxiii).

Dome of our meeting room for Radical Love