Entering Mystery

Why? For example, why am I writing? Why read? Reading for escape and pleasure, sure—why but theology! I’m just completing a collection of essays that … and as I draft this line, my screensaver answers:

Excuse the interruption (although it is the answer in cryptic form, appropriately).

     To resume, I just finished reading Thinking Through the Death of God, edited by Lissa McCullough and Brian Schroeder. The excellent volume is subtitled A Critical Companion to Thomas J.J. Altizer, and it consists of essays by 12 leading theologians, followed by a response from Altizer. My engagement with Altizer has been noted in the three previous blogs; and his provocative soul-searching continues to nourish the journey and to tease the way providing critical bits of understanding along with lots of intriguing not-yet-getting-it. Most, if not all, of the contributors acknowledge that reading Altizer can be difficult, and yet each proves the ultimate value of the effort. Altizer himself, three pages from the end, confirms

“… this is not a challenge to an elite few; it is rather a challenge to us all, and just as each of us has been hurled into a condition of ultimate emptiness, each of us must find a way through that emptiness…” (p. 227)

A helpful comment on this challenge comes in David Jasper’s chapter, “In the Wasteland: Apocalypse, Theology, and the Poets.”

The Self-Embodiment of God has been described by Altizer as a gratuitous gift, the result of a long and deep struggle, and it is perhaps for this reason that its reader—though this is also true of most of his writing—must transcend the author himself, enacting a genuine communion that is nothing short of a liturgical experience. This may well explain why a critical reading of Altizer’s work is so difficult, perhaps ultimately impossible: certainly it evokes a religious reading that, at best, is participatory or even celebratory, rather like his own readings of poets such as Blake or Dante. To read is to speak, which becomes a self-embodiment realized in a silence that is the heart of prayer and celebration. . . in the form of a meditation…

Altizer’s writing…as a poetics that yearns in its very language for a ‘total presence,’ which is, in fact, nothing other than true prayer—a voice of silence experienced as such an intensity that it is everything and nothing. Such total presence in Altizer’s theology is a suspension that explains his profound acknowledgement of Dante’s vision of Purgatory, the place (which is no place) where opposites meet and the possibility is held out for redemption and purification. (p. 185, 187)

     As Jasper articulates, I read (and write) as a means to reach toward the sacred, that is, to pray. Let’s return to his lines: “To read is to speak, which becomes a self-embodiment realized in a silence that is the heart of prayer and celebration. . . in the form of a meditation…” We might substitute “to write is to listen” in place of the first phrase: To write is to listen, which becomes a self-embodiment realized in a silence that is the heart of prayer and celebration. . . in the form of a meditation. When I write, usually as a meditation with material from reading, and when this infuses with the gift of images, the photos provided by “total presence” (as much as I am capable) of beauty in nature, when these “gratuitous gifts” flow in, around and through—well, it’s prayer. And in the silence, grace brings peace, reconciliation of opposites, insight into mysteries, manna for the journey.

A recent, if not ever-present, question/concern for a “solitary dreamer” (a phrase used in Alphonso Lingis’ chapter on “Kenosis” that I accept as apt for me) relates to whether the [solitary] journey must engage community and, if so (as often asserted by writers I admire), how and how much? This band of searchers that crowd my study and demand my time, these theologians, poets, story tellers, and a few walking/talking/loving close friends—Isn’t that the church of today? Consider Lingis on the visionary:

The visionary language makes us see what the visionary has seen. But for us to see what the visionary has seen is for a visionary to awaken in us. It is indeed a visionary in us that alone makes contact with the visions in visionary literature and receives from the visions the writers have received. Thomas Altizer affirms that it is through knowing a primal vision of one’s own time and world that one can open one’s own vision to the infinitely deeper vision of our great visionaries. (p. 205)

     The final word belongs to Altizer. In his concluding page, he returns to a frequent and central theme: the crucified/resurrected body of Christ. As I’m reading this conclusion, my mind echoes, “the body of Christ” as “the church,” the gathering of two or more who compose the profane/sacred mystery incarnate.

If we do not yet know a resurrected body, or do not do so either fully or decisively, we can know a crucified body, and can know the full actuality of that body, and most clearly know it in the ultimate suffering of the body of humanity, a suffering that can be known as a renewal of the Crucifixion. But if it is a renewal of the Crucifixion it is a renewal of the passion of God, a passion inseparable from an apocalyptic transfiguration, a transfiguration only possible through the death of God, or only possible through an absolute self-emptying or self-sacrifice of the Godhead, a sacrifice that is the sacrifice of the Crucifixion, and a crucifixion that is itself the consequence of an absolute genesis or an absolute beginning. But if the Crucifixion is the most ultimate realization of the body itself, it is so only as an absolute breaking of the body, a breaking that is renewed in the Eucharist, and comprehensively embodied in the most ultimate suffering of the body of humanity, then body as body is absolutely real, and finally real only as the body of Christ. This is certainly not the ‘spiritual body’ of Christ, not a mystical body that is an other-worldly body, it is the very reversal of every possible other-worldly body, indeed, a reversal ending every other-worldly body, a reversal that is the totality of incarnation, and only thereby the totality of resurrection itself.

     And as I complete Thinking Through the Death of God, re-reading Altizer’s final lines, this image appears on the screen: 

Human Choice

If we accept the wisdom of “there’s nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), we might be liberated from the shut-down of saying/doing what’s already been said/done. Freedom and change, renewed and evolving, are also truths alongside the nothing-new. And words, although in print they appear unchangeable, they, too, are ever moving, even if at glacial speed. 

     Then, if I don’t have to wait for the perfect, or even the right, beginning and if I escape from the fear of being redundant and looking ignorant of a previous tome, then what guides the choice of word and act? Yes, I am familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy, and I’m often drawn to the fitting of the niche, the resolution by the hidden treasure, the parable of talents (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28). More compelling as a model for living in freedom glimmers the “path of attraction.” 

     But “attraction” invites the amusement park or, more darkly, Dante’s circles of Hell littered with tortured bodies laid waste by lust, hate, greed, and other evil turns of power. As evident across history and certainly flagrant on the pages of today, human choice runs to waste and to harm. That the holy books overflow with commands and with hell-fire consequences makes sense as a force to hold against the dark side of our nature, waiting for maturation, for developed capacity to know better and to choose more wisely, more generously, more compassionately. 

     Sufis tell of the “animal soul.” My favorite storybook, Rumi’s Mathnawi, like the recurrent seaside waves, each still unique, sends the current that offers insight and inspiration for living on the path of attraction. There’s no attempt to hide from satanic allure, even if it looks like small pleasures, like “no-harm” fouls. To be hooked by the animal soul is so easy. The true path demands recognition and dealing with human tendency to choose wrongly, even to stay stupid, to doze or drug.

     But, by grace, we taste the divine. By discipline, by obedience, by following a guide, by seeking after knowledge and by surrender of selfish power, a person recognizes the true, the eternal, joy, peace, love. . . 

The Reality of Transformations

What is real? 

To muddle about in the question of “what is real?” here are some considerations:

A. How is Photo 1 real when the image is adjusted in iPhoto (as shown in the adjust window)?

B. How is Photo 2, taken a minute later from a few strides south, more or less real when the image is left unadjusted?

C. How, if at all, can both Photo 1 and Photo 2 be real?

D. How is or is not Van Gogh’s haystack real? Moses’ burning bush?

Perhaps the real comes in transformations. Rumi says that “there never was in the world a treasure without a snake” (Mathnawi, II, 1862, Nicholson’s trans.). And, a few lines later, perhaps in relation to the above photographs, “Do thou the same thing that the sun of the east does with our hypocrisy and craft and thieving and dissimulation.”

For seven weeks, I’ve been practicing an approach to hermeneutical phenomenology (see also my next paragraph) by bringing my sense of Good Stories to the arena. (A recent blog elaborated this, including: “I intentionally carry the development of Good Stories in my body, my heart, and my imagination…to the riding experience.”)  During and following the ride, I’m attending for an essence that I bring into more articulate form by writing the blog and then take the textualized lived-experience/s forward with a continued sense and presence to the next class session and then back to the arena and so on. I wonder if doing this with my craft makes a similar thing to what the sun of the east does?

Van Manen says: “in its most basic form lived experience involves our immediate, pre-reflective consciousness of life: a reflexive or self-given awareness which is, as awareness, unaware of itself” (p. 35, Researching Lived Experience). On the next page, he adds: “The aim of phenomenology is to transform lived experience into a textual expression of its essence—in such a way that the effect of the text is at once a reflexive re-living and a reflective appropriation of something meaningful: a notion by which a reader is powerfully animated in his or her own lived experience.”

When being observed, as teachers are, and even more so when feeling judged, we may become even further distracted and distanced from lived experience.  One reason I ride relates to the consequences around losing and gaining presence; I lean into the vibrancy felt in increasing it. Stunning is the extent to which what is accessible to consciousness goes unseen, inarticulate, like angels unasked.

Concerning the significance of the transformation of consciousness, Jung writes in his foreword to Aion: “My reader should never forget, however, that I am not making a confession of faith or writing a tendentious tract, but am simply considering how certain things could be understood from the standpoint of our modern consciousness—things which I deem it valuable to understand, and which are obviously in danger of being swallowed up in the abyss of incomprehension and oblivion; things, finally, whose understanding would do much to remedy our philosophic disorientation by shedding light on the psychic background and the secret chambers of the soul. The essence of this book was built up gradually, in the course of many years, in countless conversations with people of all ages and all walks of life; with people who in the confusion and uprootedness of our society were likely to lose all contact with the meaning of European culture and to fall into that state of suggestibility which is the occasion and cause of the Utopian mass-psychoses of our time.”

Rumi says, “Don’t be the rider who gallops all night/And never sees the horse that is beneath him” (p. 236, Translated by Robert Bly in The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy. Ecco, 1995.).

Continuous Re-creation of Our Course: the Way of Destiny

         For this week’s consultation about Good Stories, Leg’cy and the other two horses in their paddock were out of sight, over the hill. They were at the far end with Legacy grazing farthest away, and my heart warmed to see her walk right past the herd all the way to where I waited, freely allowing me to put on the halter. I even gave her one of the quarter-size healthy treats that I usually reserve for a reward at the end of our ride. I wonder if we as teachers appreciate our students when they “leave the herd” and take the risk of following our lead.

         After stretching out in the arena, we worked almost the entire time at the trot with many bends and changing directions. This felt good because not that long ago we were just trotting straight lines because turns took us off-balance. While I’d wanted to keep working on the canter as we had in recent rides, I decided to stay with the trot because it was going so nicely. Just about that moment when I was feeling good with “being” rather than doing more, Leg’cy seemed to want to shift to the canter. So I went along with it. Isn’t it interesting that her initiative showed up when I’d accepted the goodness of what she was already doing?

         She had probably picked up the wrong lead for the canter. After a few strides, we dropped back to trot, down to walk, and then picked up the canter again, more smoothly, but perhaps still in wrong lead. Because we best close on a good note, we returned to the trot, treasuring the light touch and the lift of power. In reviewing the ride, I felt satisfied overall with our increased balance, taking the curves; in a word, I attributed the improvements, including her initiative, to better collection.

         So what’s the take-away, if any, for Good Stories? Perhaps I should first say something about why I’m looking for a connection between my riding and my teaching. I’ve come to experience engagement with horses, particularly this one with whom I have a special relationship, as a magnificent response chamber. This capacity has been widely recognized in horse-human activity, for example in therapeutic riding and personal development clinics. We know that it’s easier to see a person’s hidden conditions (physical, cognitive, and emotional) through the display offered when the person is with a horse. A horse mirrors and magnifies, although the information often goes unnoted.

         So when I intentionally carry the development of Good Stories in my body, my heart, and my imagination, I do expect to receive insight and direction from quality time spent with Legacy. The display still requires dedicated decoding. To articulate the riding experience, I spend time reflecting and writing it out; talking about the experience also helps.

         Although I won’t elaborate in this post, I’ll acknowledge that my understanding of the riding-teaching connection is getting support from a variety of readings. Of particular value currently, Max van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology has helped with his explanations on the dynamic between experience and reflection, including the vital role of writing. Also, I just re-read Robert Johnson’s Ecstasy for his elaboration of Jung’s four functions, especially related to the source of vitality and enthusiasm. Effective teaching owes more to the teacher who appropriately carries passion into the classroom than anything else.

         How might this week’s ride transfer to our class? What would “collection” mean in Good Stories?  For our course, I re-create the curriculum continuously, looking for the best fit for where we are and what comes next. Riding helps me trust in moving by feel rather than by rigid adherence to the plan.

         In wondering about our next story and in listening to the experience of our ride, “One Without a Story” comes to mind: Is this story the best fit for developing our sense of our destinies? “One Without a Story” begins with the protagonist already enjoying mastery in the profession of basket making, but destiny careens ahead into a land full of scares and surprises.

         The basket offers one of those prime images for containment. It’s similar to collection in that it signifies an ability to hold. When we’re shaping our destinies in a quantum age, of crucial importance is the capacity to hold uncertainty and paradox until a resolution presents.

         It might seem strange for a story to begin at the end, for the main character to have already a finished career. We usually start off with the youth just setting out. “One Without a Story” shifts so that we wonder about feeling “finished.” You mean that’s not really the end? In our class, we’ve been focusing on the unfinished.  The Nonsense Tales spotlight the underdeveloped character, such as the one labeled Lazy.

         These two dimensions, the finished and the undeveloped, allow our narratives to open discussion of development needed to progress in our destiny. Persons and cultures can easily get stuck with a presumption of being done at times when the work of destiny needs a different perspective to move ahead. C.G. Jung gives a model of four functions with special attention on the dominant and the inferior, and wholeness requires developing all four aspects of the personality.

         So, thanks to Leg’cy, I sense a good next story and a rich space of exploration for our rides in and out of the classroom this week.

Taking Literacies Back to Experience

   Each week in our Good Stories course we engage a favorite tale of mine with the selection determined by my sense of which one promises to advance our effort to compose destinies that promote peace and justice.  An early theme develops the “water of life” as the source of vitality and renewal needed for this quest.  The search for the renewal of life takes us to the dangerous ground suggested by our primary text, Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories.   His subtitle points to three troublesome critters along this journey: Evolution, Cognition, & Fiction.  The question directing our path asks: How can the stories we tell and produce advance consciousness so that our inner and outer worlds increase peace & justice?

   Persons who dare approach the edge of consciousness best go prepared.  This week’s Good Story tells of Arthur, the King, entering the deep woods at that edge and being confronted by the ugliest creature even seen.  That’s what ebbs out of the unconscious, the primeval swamp where new meaning evolves shape-shifting, grotesque yet potentially gorgeous. 

   Surprise, surprise—Guess what?  This isn’t pretty to the hegemonic powers that be.  Today I travel to Tucson for my professional development and the university questions my choice.  Having considered the options of going to the traditional annual meetings of professional organizations, I decided instead that Zen Mind, Zen Horse has more to offer toward my teaching and research.  Knowing Arthur’s tale, why should I be surprised that the workplace questions my choice?  The Good Stories have warned me over and over: expect to be challenged when you venture to the edge.

   After an initial exasperation, I realized the challenge is good because it invites pulling the elephant out of the closet for persons who can’t yet smell it.  Think of the elephant as concrete experience and the room as symbolic representation.  School rooms too often act as if representations (e.g., literacy or letter-making) exist apart from the real world.  For example, classes study dystopian literature without first and repeatedly claiming the primacy of authentic real-world constructions that are growing within the individuals and their communities.  Another example that bothers me: teachers model and students are allowed to grab Google images for their digital media productions instead of constructing their own representations. To strangle literacies from experiences is an act of violence, harshly disrespectful of each person’s right to author and voice.

           

      

I choose Zen Mind, Zen Horse because it returns literacy to authenticity through hands-on engagement with horses, coached by persons (including a neurosurgeon horseman and a doctor in psychology) who recognize that “our left hemisphere, armed with its overwhelming power of speech, remains wary of its reticent, emotive, and mute counterpart on the right [hemisphere of the brain]” and that “the horse also shows us the joy that comes from living with the bare truth of our selves” (pp. 6, 287 in Allan Hamilton’s Zen Mind, Zen Horse).

    
  Good Stories is part of the University’s I-Series program where tending to Big Questions are prominent.  Our course connects literacy with meaningful personal and social change.  To do this, students learn to work with stories across four levels of explanation.  Brian Boyd develops these as universal, local, personal, and particular.  We elaborate the universal level by finding resonance with archetypes in traditional tales (cf. Marie Louise von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales).  As indicated in the subtitle of our course, Teaching Narratives for Peace & Justice, the construct of power takes center stage.  Across time and literature, the horse best provides the source for understanding the archetype of power, as evident in the term, horsepower. 

   My research informs the fundamental connection of literacy with meaningful pro-social personal and significant organization change (that is, peace & justice), and it comes in expanding my experience with horses and in the subsequent articulation of those experiences into courses like the Good Stories class and programs like Reins of Power that I have provided for teachers on several occasions. 

   That’s a brief on how the Zen Mind, Zen Horse program informs my work in literacy education, and it suggests the direction I think professional development needs to head.  While I don’t expect many educators will find their way to a living horse, I’m encouraged with the emphasis given to the Maker Movement and how it’s infused into prototype opportunities such as the Connected Learning MOOC featured by the National Writing Project this past summer.

Happy trails, y’all.

Morning Fire

October 23, 2013.  
Overnight low temperature upper 30s.  
Definitely cool enough for building a 5AM fire in the wood stove. 

   My fire-starting skills are pretty good: dry twigs over a crumpled half sheet of newspaper, loosely arranged in a sort of lean-to against split maple or oak, plenty of circulation space.  A single match almost always suffices to initiate a cheerful, warming blaze; but this morning, after the third attempt with lots of smoke, only smoldering sticks filled the firepit with more smoke.  It’s like the chimney’s blocked, I considered; and then a thought flickered by: check the control for airflow.  I always leave it wide open but just maybe it wasn’t.  Somehow it had been moved all the way down!  When I ran it full throttle, the fire leapt like a pent-up horse loosed on the range. 

   An Emily Dickinson poem flickered to mind: “the horse that scents the living grass/will be restrained with a shot/if at all.”  Not sure about “restrained” but it goes something like that.

   My thoughts also still simmered with the meeting yesterday afternoon with teachers at Hickory Elementary about blogging, about making our heart maps that stir up the fire for teaching, about connected learning that brings in the airflow of public spaces, making relationships with like-minded pros, with tuning into the joy of expression.

   What is it in this metaphor of fire starting that wants to ignite our sometimes-darkened classrooms?  In my college class yesterday, we looked at the tendency of any culture or any individual to seek out confirmatory information and to suppress stuff that might make wildfires.  How has the airflow of exhilarating inspiration been shut down, probably without us even knowing the gate onto living grass waits right at our fingertips, perhaps where we see only walls.  Like the high-stakes exams.  Like the way things have been.  Like the curriculum that has to be covered.  More smoke.  Dulled out eyes.  Crumpled drafts of worksheets, asbestos prompts, irrelevant readings, mandated assessments. 

   We can keep striking matches but the fire of inspired learning cannot blaze up until we open the shutters onto the free range and let the airflow from authentic passion rush through.

P.S. I’m realizing that one way I almost unconsciously leave the airflow shut down happens when my morning begins with checking email, tweetdeck, facebook, latest scores, or morning news.  Rumi’s breeze at dawn and predawn musing off the breath of dreams get stifled by such externals.  I promise myself to love inspiration above the ease of mediated stuff.  I promise to start my day respecting Life.

PPS. Emily’s poem:        

The Life that tied too tight escapes

Will ever after run

With a prudential look behind

And specters of the Rein—

The Horse that scents the living Grass

And sees the Pastures smile,

Will be retaken with a shot

If he is caught at all—

                                    

http://www.litera.co.uk/emily_dickinson_love_is_immortality/34/

Light Gets In

  

Louise Penny titles her most recent Gamache mystery 

How the Light Gets In and credits lines from Leonard Cohen’s poem/song—“Anthem”: 

                      “There’s a crack in everything

                       That’s how the light gets in.”  

The lyrics, comments by Cohen, and performances are easily traced through Google.  

Penny also expresses great appreciation to Cohen for freely allowing her to borrow the lines.  Perhaps these lines, like the light breaking through, 

             by grace as well as perspiration, 

                                                   call for freedom.

David Wilcox’s song “Break in the Cup” carries a similar theme. *Spoiler Alert*

            "We cannot trade empty for empty

                             We must go to the waterfall

                                           For there’s a break in the cup that holds love . . ."

Foggy this morning but that photobug started buzzing by my eyes, maybe my inner eyes, anyway.  A little walk around our woods and light and love came breaking in on some silent tide.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation!

from the ICA website

I used to hate that topic. Or was it not the topic but being forced, almost cruelly, even if unconsciously, required to remember, with gritted teeth into the (non)freedom to write instead of being led by respectful guidance into the joy of discovery, in the advance of consciousness.  "What I Did" was probably a graded prompt, in a constrained classroom, with a subtext: “hah-hah, don’t you wanna-be-free?” 

In any case, I’m about to attempt a transformation on that once-tired topic because I’m wanting to whirl some images around a not-yet-articulated experience--it longs for expression.  

And I’m imagining this in a thank-you letter, including the appreciation told by my horse, to the Institute for Conscious Awareness

. . . Espartaco & me, August, a few days ago. . . 

where I spent five days learning, mostly in the “hands” of the McCormicks’ stallions, about developing the horse’s mind. 

 That includes, perhaps primarily, imprinting a stallion’s mind within my own body.

Dear friends at the ICA,  

[My salutation includes, of course, Espartaco, 

Malik, Relevo, Morocco, Cariño, Marco Polo, in addition to Dr. Deborah and Dr. Adele McCormick.]

the letter continues:     Leg’cy, the mare who’s been allowing me to ride regularly for a few years here at home, has a few questions for you but they can be reduced to one: What in blazes did you do to Joseph!

Leg'cy, summer 2013

Leg'cy elaborates:

1. He didn’t lose a hundred pounds—looks like he enjoyed the Tex-Mex a bit much—but somehow (magically?) we’re riding so much lighter. 

2. Being lighter, we made a nice maneuver this week, and while I was bewildered about what just happened, he stopped to let it sink in!   He used to persist giving mixed messages until I just quit.  

3. Then before starting again, he helped me shift back onto my powerdrive and off we’d go even better than before.

4. Having integrated this shift into better collection, after a few delicious strides, he jumped off; we’re both grinning and chomping on the bit for next time.

Joseph wants to add something:

Working with the mind of the horse also inspires us to see engagement with humans in refreshed ways.  Imagine classrooms distinguished by this delicate balance between external/internal.  It needs a light touch, minute increments, time for absorption to trace tonalities into feel in order to track and recognize them for the treasure of deep satisfaction and personal empowerment.  The texture of collaboration that honors the unique gift (we could call it the divine) in each other awaits us at the edge of our development, of our species’ evolution/s, of the unity—Some of our ancestors called it all-my-relations.

With sincere thanks, 

Joseph (AKA DocHorseTales) & Leg'cy