Unforgiven is the title of a very great Western.  Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, it is easily one of the 10 best Westerns of all time and one of the top 100 movies of all time.  It has the feel of one of the great Greek tragedies, both in the depth of its themes and in the complex unfolding of character and story.  Now one may rightly wonder what is a Western doing in a blog focused on the spiritual journey, especially the monastic path.  Actually the Western, as a work of art whether it be in the form of poetry, song, painting, literature or movie, is like any genuine art an opening into the deeper realities of life.  There is a lot more “religion,” in Unforgiven than in most movies which try real hard to tackle religious subjects.  Furthermore, understanding the Western is a key to understanding the United States.  This is our mythic language, what Homer and Hesiod were for the Greeks, and in coming to grip with our myths we gain in understanding both our deep problems and our real strengths.   It is also important to remember that the myths can come in simple, childlike stories which one leaves behind in childhood and which are actually superficial—like the “Grade B” western movies of years ago, or the cheap “dime novels” which still grace the racks of pop booksellers but now cost a lot more than a dime.   But this was true even centuries ago, and someone like Homer or Sophocles or Shakespeare turned these “pop” stories into material to reveal much deeper human realities.  Unforgiven is like that—Eastwood has taken this genre with its “bad guys vs. good guys” view of the world and turned it into a deep reflection on the ambiguity of our seeking of justice.

So what is the theme of Unforgiven?  Justice, the nature of justice, our seeking, our thirst for justice, the ambiguity of justice, a hint that there is “something here greater than justice,” what constitutes “badness” and “goodness,” and who are the “bad guys” and who are the “good guys” and can we continue to look at the world that way and not cause great harm?  Etc, etc.

The story begins with an initiating incident, a “tipping of the scale,” a tear in the fabric of a seemingly just world, etc.  This is also the way things begin in the great Greek tragedies which are mostly on the theme of justice and the human social order vs. an individual’s response to that breaking.  In this case in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming there is a brothel, and one rainy night a drunk cowboy badly scars one of the girls in the brothel in a fit of rage and anger over something she said about him.  He cuts her face in several places.  This is bad enough in itself, but of course she is in danger of not being able to make a livelihood as a whore because now she is not as attractive.  The women of the brothel band together into a unity and demand justice.   This is perfectly understandable and perfectly ok.  The seeking of justice, the need for justice, is built into us–it is part of God’s life in us.  Even a little child will reveal that in his/her own situations:  “That ain’t fair.”

Now enters the sheriff, Little Bill.  He is a former gunslinger himself, now reformed, and now a representative of “law and order,” a symbol of the state, society, civilization, etc.  He is determined that his town be a civilized, orderly place and things need to be “set right” when some disturbance occurs.   Here develops the first crisis in the story.  It is not apparent what the ladies of the brothel would consider justice, what they expect from Little Bill, but it is very obvious that what he gives them is woefully inadequate, and this really begins a remarkable tragedy.  Little Bill’s notion of justice seems to be circumscribed by economics, dollars and cents, and he makes the cowboy bring a couple of horses in payment for what he has done.  However, and this is very revealing, the horses will go to the owner of the brothel, not to the wronged girl.  Little Bill sees the monetary value of the loss for the owner in that this girl will no longer “produce” what she used to.  There is nothing personal or deeply human about his seeking of justice, and certainly nothing transcendent in that notion of justice–it is purely economic.  The ladies of the brothel spit on this, and then secretly they put their money together and seek to hire a gunfighter to kill the cowboy.  Now we see their seeking of justice has evolved into anger of enormous proportions.  They themselves see themselves as still seeking only justice, but this has evolved into something quite different even though the language may be similar.  It might be called “revenge,” but for some people this is simply another form of justice.  Justice as revenge, or revenge as a form of justice is actually a very popular notion, but this story illustrates its radical destructiveness to all concerned.  Then, there is the first important observation to make–there is such a remarkable interconnectedness between these kind of bad moments: one act of injustice leads to another bad thing and then there is a third and now we are helplessly caught up in a kind of “stimulus/response” mode that simply escalates into a greater evil than the original wrong.  This is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

Now enters the main character of the story:  William Munny, also a former gunslinger like Little Bill but a lot worse.  Years ago Munny was a murderous outlaw, known as a cold-blooded killer even of women and children, a man who showed no regard or mercy to anyone.  But when we see him now he is a pig farmer in Kansas, having been one for something like 10 years.  Apparently somewhere he met a woman who loved him deeply, who saw something good in him (and this is so understated that we can easily miss the pathos of that), and this transformed him in a remarkable way.  Sadly she died from a disease, but he had several children with her, and he remained extraordinarily loyal to her—later on in the story when one of the whores offers him a “freebie” he declines because he “is a married man”—she is astonished that any man would be so loyal.  The movie truly helps us get at least a glimpse of the goodness that this woman saw in this murderous outlaw.  Anyway, he is not doing so well as a pig farmer but trying hard.  A young would-be gunslinger shows up at Munny’s farm and invites him to take up the invite from the ladies of Big Whiskey—they are offering a $1000 reward for the killing of that cowboy.  Munny’s pigs are dying from a disease, and he is desperate to survive and if he goes with the young gunslinger it is only in “pursuit of justice” for this wronged woman.  He persuades one of his old cohorts to join him and the party of 3 set out for Big Whiskey.

Meanwhile in Big Whiskey Little Bill has become aware that these women have put out this “invite” all over the Western States and that a lot of gunslingers will be tempted to come and get that reward by killing the cowboy.  He is determined to not let that happen.  It is not clear what his motivations are, but he is simply one of those “law and order” people who doesn’t tolerate any disruption in his sense of “law and order.”  In this case, Little Bill engages in radical gun control—no guns would be tolerated in town.  Any gunslinger that comes into town has to turn his guns in immediately.  Seems like a very reasonable and even wise posture, but Little Bill shows another side, a darker side underlying his seeming attempt to be an agent of civilization and society.  When English Bob, the first gunslinger, shows up, Little Bill brutally beats him senseless in order to send a message to any others that might be coming to avenge the woman.  At this point another observation is needed—the question is who are the “bad guys” and who are the “good guys” and what constitutes “goodness” and “badness” if we simply go by what is lawful or unlawful.  Some uneasy questions.

We will skip a number of important scenes and subthemes in the story and move toward the conclusion.  Munny’s party ends up killing the cowboy and collecting the reward, but his cohort, Ned, ends up being caught by Little Bill’s men, tortured and then killed.  When Munny finds out about this, he reverts to his old murderous persona.  All through the story he says several times, “I ain’t like that no more.”  But now even his dead wife’s love and hold on him breaks and he reverts.  He returns to the town of Big Whiskey on another rainy night, just like when the story started.  He finds Little Bill and his posse in the tavern below the brothel, planning their chase for Munny.  He guns them all down in a murderous gunfight.  At a certain point when Munny has Little Bill at the end of a gun barrel and is about to kill him, Little Bill says, “I don’t deserve this.”  Possible meaning: “This ain’t justice.”  But Munny with great clarity says, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with this.”  Indeed.  Munny has the appearance of a man pursuing justice, but actually it is only revenge, and the unstated question remains: is revenge really justice?  Just think, Munny starts out on a mission to seemingly seek justice for the maiming of a woman.  Granted he is doing it for money, and granted that what is called for seems very much out of proportion for the initial act of injustice.  But at the very end the story depicts only a bloody murderous act of revenge.  Is this an unmasking of what we call “justice” and society has a bloodlust for revenge, or has a legitimate need for justice been perverted into revenge?

Among other things, Unforgiven illustrates what a dangerous and problematic mix it is when justice in the social order mixes with the dark things of the heart.  For a society, a state, a social order, a civilization, to have a notion of justice is necessary and good.  At this level, justice functions like an umpire in a game, etc.  To minimize disturbances in the social order so that people can pursue human happiness and the human good as they conceive it, some notion of justice has to be part of the social fabric so that personal distortions of any kind do not escalate into more destructive modes and can lead to a total deterioration of social well-being.  But this is exactly what happens in Unforgiven.  And this leaves us wondering about the nature of what we call “justice”…  There are very dark things in the heart that sometimes become manifest as we seemingly go in pursuit of justice.  Furthermore, Unforgiven illustrates the interconnectedness of events—one act of injustice, leads to another, leads to another, and before we know it we are far from the authentic reality of justice.  Is there a way of breaking this chain?  Yes, but the answer lies elsewhere than in the realm of justice or law or order.

And here we find a hint of this in Unforgiven in the person of a character that never shows up visibly on the screen but she is mentioned several key times in the story, including the very end.  She is a mysterious, calming presence even in her absence throughout the story.  She is the dead wife of William Munny.  But she is very much alive as a redemptive, fragile presence in the midst of this mad frantic seeking of justice. Even in her death, she is very much alive to Munny.  He talks to her, refers to her regularly. She was able to see something in Munny that no one else saw, and so was able to love him, and this love transformed him in a remarkable way.  Even when he falls and reverts again to his murderous ways, he is able to come out of that fog and at the very end of the movie it simply says that he moved to San Francisco with his children and did well as a merchant—in other words he is able to pick himself up and move on because of her love for him.  She is a hidden Christ-figure in this story because she sees him in a way that the eyes of justice cannot see him—with that you see only a murderous cold-blooded killer.  Or perhaps she is the symbolic presence of Sophia, that feminine presence of God’s Wisdom of whom Merton wrote so eloquently.  Actually she is both. She sees him the way God sees him, and this gaze and this knowledge that God has of us transcends justice.

We are at the end of this reflection.  Now you may be wondering what happened to Bin Laden.  Didn’t the title above mention him?  What are you going to say about him?  In one sense, nothing.  In another sense I have been talking about him all along.  But let us add just one postscript.  Michael Moore is right: Bin Laden is dead but he has also won.  In the first place we, the U.S., helped create him in the 1980s as a killer of Russians.  Then he turned on us and committed monstrous acts of violence against us.  He lured us into 2 needless wars, costing trillions of dollars, distorting our economy and more importantly costing the lives of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We have been at war for something like 10 years—it took us only 5 years to defeat BOTH Germany and Japan.  Bin Laden is dead, but the people who actually got us into these wars are flourishing in our country.  If human justice were the only reality, we might despair.  But there is “something greater here,” something much greater in our hearts than human justice.

A. Death.  A few days ago the President of the University of Nevada died suddenly—he was having dinner with his wife and he suffered a massive stroke and that was that.  Dying is such an amazing thing–so simple, so universal, so undeniable, yet so mysterious, so opaque, so final.  Modern life doesn’t want to reflect on or even to see this reality, but exactly some such exercise of awareness and reflection is at the heart of all spiritual traditions.  There we tell ourselves various stories about the meaning of death and what if anything lies “on the other side.”  There are also people of no religious views or even of anti-religious views, and these have their own accounts of the meaning of death.  But what if we just drop all these stories for a while and just look at the naked reality of death.  Its opaqueness is disturbing.  We see nothing, we know nothing beyond this facticity of death.  Exactly what, if anything lies beyond the reality of death?  Both believer and non-believer are in a sense on the same footing here in that death itself yields no answer.  Both the so-called believing community and the non-believing community bring forth various stories to give an account of the meaning of death.  Granted that the non-believer seems to have an easier time of it in a sense, maybe claiming that THAT is that and there is nothing else, lights out, end, etc.  However, the non-believer does not know that with absolute certainty…..what if THAT is not the end….  There is no remedy for the opaqueness of death.

Now those of us who are in the Christian community present a story, through the lens of faith, that death is not the final word.   In fact, in celebrating Easter, as we are doing now, we make quite an emphatic point that the Mystery of Christ’s Resurrection is the real answer to the Mystery of Death.  However, and this is a BIG however, how we so often trivialize this.  It becomes very “messagey” to enable us to live as “kinder, gentler consumers.”   The Mystery of the Resurrection as arising out of the Mystery of Death loses its revolutionary force, its ability to turn upside down all  social values that are connected to keeping us asleep about our real nature.  We have a tendency to “picture” the Mystery of the Resurrection as a kind of “undoing” or reversal of death.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We never really confront the fact that no matter the Mystery of the Resurrection, death is THE end of the “maintenance of the self,” into which  so much energy is piled and around which so much of our culture is built.  Another problem is that we tend to project our own distortions and hang-ups into the Mystery of the Resurrection.  What  Reality are you going to encounter as the last light fades from your eyes?  Do you really think it will be some “finger-wagging God” who will scold you for being “bad” and then “punish” you.  There are plenty of stories to that effect.  Do you know how to read these stories?  Or will they serve as a vehicle for instilling fear, manipulations, projections, etc.  The old inquisitors used to threaten their so-called heretics with hell if they didn’t confess and recant  something that nobody had any real understanding of anyway.  Just an extreme example of what is probably more common among church-goers than anyone cares to admit.

Light an old candle and watch it burn out.  Where does the flame go to after it goes out?  The opaqueness of death permeates our whole frail reality.  Now to find the Mystery of the Resurrection there!

B. The nation is going through all these paroxysms concerning the national budget and the so-called deficit and the national debt.  Seems odd a bit to discuss this in a blog focused on spiritual realities, but this is actually quite a moral issue and it reveals who we are, our values and priorities, and if things continue to unfold the way they are heading there are going to be a lot of people suffering quite a bit.  The Republicans, or at least those who call themselves Republicans today(Eisenhower, for example, would not belong in this group), want to slash government spending that most affects the poor and the middle class.  Their real goal is dismantling all the achievements of the New Deal.  The President is not inclined in attacking this problem in this way, but he does yield to Republican demands and threats way too much.  The unfortunate thing is that both parties have done their share of hurting this economy over the last few decades.  The Dems gave you NAFTA, which helped outsource jobs out of the country(and they continue making these trade agreements which are not in the headlines but which are not to the benefit of the American worker); and Dems also signed on to various tax breaks for the wealthy. The Dems also signed on(during the Clinton era) to deregulating the banks and financial institutions which led to the economic meltdown. Of course the Republicans decided to have two wars that they did not pay for—and that’s just a starter.

Consider this:  we have over a 100 military bases all around the world, and our defense budget is larger than Russia’s, China’s, France’s, Germany’s and England’s all put together!  And yet in the President’s deficit reduction plan all he suggests is 30 billion or so a year for the next 12 years(of course the Republicans have not even that)—we spent more than that in one year just in Iraq, so the military-industrial complex is only seemingly touched.

Consider this:  Of the top 34 richest countries in the world today, we, the U.S.A., are dead last in spending for social welfare in terms of percentage of Gross Domestic Product, GDP—7.2%   Canada, for example, is around 24%.  Yet somehow this is portrayed as the problem area of spending.  The media is dishing this stuff out, and people are being brainwashed into a distorted view of reality.

Consider this:  Bank of America and GE, two of our largest corporations, paid no income taxes last year. Huge oil companies like Exxon even got a tax refund in hundreds of millions. Carnival Cruise Lines made billions last year but paid a tax rate of 1%.   Hedge fund managers, who are basically gamblers, some are making a billion a year.  The top 1% in this country are having a panic attack that they might be asked to pay a little more in taxes.  Suggestions from the Left are being made that we simply go back to the Clinton-era tax rates, when we actually were running a surplus.  During the Eisenhower–Kennedy eras the tax rates were much higher and we were actually much more prosperous economically speaking at the middle-class level.   But the wealthy and their minions are calling for a TAX CUT for the rich and corporations.  Take a look at this short article by Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.html

Consider this:  The President worries me.  Not only does he yield way too much to this present bunch of Republicans, but then he appoints a commission to study ways of debt reduction and they suggest attacking social security and medicare.  He knew when he appointed these people that this was the view of some of these folk.  By the way, that is why this commission is now popularly known as the “Cat-food Commisssion”—old people will only be able to afford cat food for food after these people get their way!  He also appoints some very dubious people to be his advisers, like the former CEO of GE as his chief business adviser.

Consider this:  the current popularity of the philosophy of Ayn Rand among top Republicans and top businessmen today is very troubling.  It shows a complete loss of a sense of the common good, of the fact that we are not an individualized, atomized reality but interconnected.  It is a glorification of the values of egotism, self-centeredness, selfishness, etc.  With this kind of philosophy, capitalism becomes viral and toxic and destructive.  For an antidote see the film, “I Am.”

Consider this:  Even a dog knows when he is being kicked.  But the poor and the middle class in this country seem to be so unaware that they are being kicked in a big way.  Time for a revolution, but they keep electing the kickers back into office!  So food stamp programs are going to get cut; school lunch programs are going to get cut; job training programs are going to get cut; unemployment benefits are going to get cut; etc, etc, etc.

Consider this:  Mother Jones had an article recently with all kinds of charts showing the nature of our economic problem, which leads to a picture of a huge injustice, which is afterall a huge moral and religious problem:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

One last note on this topic:  Marie Antoinette is famous for her put down of the French underclass when told they could not buy bread:  “Let them eat cake.”  A few years ago the wealthy New Yorker, Leona Helmsly, said that “only the little people pay taxes.”  Seems like the Republicans are listening to these women.  Come to think of it, with Sara Palin and Michelle Bachmann, women are very prominent in this movement, and it just goes to show you, radical feminists did not get it right when they said that things would be different if women were present in “high places”.  There’s something called the human heart that has to change for real change to take place.

C. Our environment keeps getting trashed, and this insane economy feeds off this.  It is the one year anniversary of the big BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico–and there are still all kinds of signs of how trashed that body of water is.  Yet due to the insanity of our tax code, BP is actually making money because of this incident.  Is the government putting a halt to this risky kind of drilling?  No.  Are we in desperate need of oil?  No.  Obama himself said that the supply of oil is fine; the reason prices are going up and hurting the little guy is because of speculators.

D.  This is the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and some people are reflecting on what led up to that war and what each side was thinking at that time.  One thing that stands out for me is that BOTH sides used the Bible to justify their positions and in their views of slavery.  The Abolitionists in the North used the Bible to attack the reality of slavery even to the extent that violence was necessary to dismantle it.  The South had many distinguished leaders that used the Bible to defend their adherence to slavery.  People who just quote the Bible to make their point forget that the same book can be used by another person to go in quite a different direction.  To use the Bible, even in a moral issue, is a tricky business and requires the additional use of reason and common sense.

1.  This is the best piece of social criticism that I have read in a long, long time.  It is spiritually/religiously grounded without explicitly(unnecessary) “churchy” language that could turn off non-believers.  This is the voice of a prophet like Jeremiah.  It is Chris Hedges speaking in front of a demonstration in front of a Bank of America in New York City:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blocking_the_gates_to_the_temples_of_finance_20110418/

Not enough has been written about the hermit life and solitude.  Way too much has been written.  Both are true.  Paradox is the name of the game in the hermit life–through and through, in every way.  In solitude you do not escape paradox; you go right into its heart.  Discomfort with solitude and discomfort with paradox are simply two sides of the same coin.  So the hermit certainly looks like an isolated individual, so all alone indeed.  Ah, but perhaps he/she is the one most in communion with all!  The hermit certainly seems to be running away from life, but, alas, maybe he/she is the one who is most intensely running “toward” life.  To borrow a bit from T. S. Eliot:  To the crowd that is running away from the center, the one headed in the opposite direction will surely seem like he is the one running away.

The hermit life is truly one of the most beautiful ways of living there is. (And of course there have been “crazy” hermits in the past who have given that life a dubious name at times!) But also truly it is not everyone’s “cup of tea.”  Why?  Many different answers, reasons, various and diverse formulations of what may be one simple answer, etc.  Those within the Christian setting will speak of a “calling.”  Thus, one “is called” to be a hermit.  Perhaps, but this can be very superficial and used to rationalize all kinds of things.  There is really only One Call–God calls you into being, from total nothingness God calls you by a name that only God knows and it is your true name and it is this Call which constitutes your little life and an intrinsic part of that Call is your freedom which then shapes your history.  To be attentive to THAT Call, to respond to it with our whole self, to say a deep “Yes, Here I am” (the point of the 1^st Commandment) is the whole point of it all.  Then comes the flip side of this, as it were—we call to God in the depths of our frail being, we call God by a name that only we have and know, each one of us, and allowing THAT call to resonate through our whole being and life and history is what we seek.  Somewhere in all these words you will find the hermit life.

But why are there not more hermits?  Even among Buddhists and other religions this is not an age of hermits.  Modern Western culture now permeates the whole globe, and it needs to said that this culture is the most antithetical to the values of the hermit life; that it is the most deaf to what the hermit life says about human existence; and that the hermit has never before been more misunderstood and the meaning of the hermit life more distorted.

The fact that there are some people living as hermits is almost a miracle.

Think about the average person in our society.  He or she pursues the “American Dream”–meaning a certain level of prosperity, of affluence, etc.  Even going to school now for most no longer is a pursuit of knowledge or wisdom but rather a preparation for a career in order to make a good living.  The idea of happiness that this culture proposes would not be recognized by almost any wisdom tradition.  But the hermit does not pursue the “American Dream” or anyone’s dream–he/she simply meets life in its utter simplicity.  This is one of the things that makes the hermit life “hard”—its radical simplicity, it encounters life with its simple needs—like our Zen friends would say:  When hungry, eat; when thirsty, drink.  Just “chopping wood and carrying water.”  The hermit does his chores; makes his meal; listens to the wind in the trees; perhaps meditates; watches the moon in the evening; listens to the owl at night, etc.  From the standpoint of our culture this is a deprivation of experience, but the hermit knows better.  It is ALL here.  Yes, there is a real poverty in that life, but this poverty is like the Burning Bush all alive with the Presence of the Divine.

But lets get one thing clear:  the hermit is not some “spiritual insider,” some “special spiritual person” who has all these spiritual experiences.  He will experience all the tribulations of the human condition.  Prayer and meditation may at times prove to be difficult and distasteful.  No special experiences here; nothing to feed the ego.  When he begins to feel the weight of his solitude at times, just the simplicity of making a cup of tea in the quiet will console him.  The gentle simplicity and beauty of ordinary life–this is the life of the hermit.

But now we must get to the real core of the hermit’s activity—an activity that will seem like no-activity, as if he were doing nothing, yet it is a great and noble and extremely important task: the gentle welcoming of our own frail humanity.

First of all, let it be noted that our kind of society and social life is so (deliberately) constructed that it always will seem that what we need most is somehow, somewhere “out there”–that what will make us happy is “out there”; and then there is of course someone “out there” who will sell us that which is lacking in our life, or we will go out and “achieve” that one thing still to be pursued.  But the secret of the hermit life is that “the one thing necessary” is “right there” wherever we are.  Because the hermit is not driven by these manufactured compulsions and manipulations of the media and pop culture, he has a special gift and role to play in such a society.  But of course this also explains why he will look so odd, so “out of step,” certainly “marching to a very different drummer” than the rest of society, etc.  So the hermit simply welcomes his poor, frail humanity, and sees it with the eyes of the Book of Genesis at the dawn of Creation:  “and God saw that it was good….”  And indeed the hermit’s solitude then becomes a kind of “Paradise” as the old Christian hermits used to say.  A Paradise disguised by the utter simplicity of simple needs and basic life.  Many others understood this also in their own terms.

But secondly, the hermit, in welcoming his own frail, poor humanity, also bears the burden of all his inadequacies, limitations, frailties, mistakes(yes, even those), etc.  And again, our cultural, social lives are organized such as to keep us distracted from such things–provide entertainment, distractions galore, instilling a need to “feel better” than someone else, judging others endlessly, etc.  The hermit begins to be liberated from such things–thus he begins to give up the “heavy burden” of judging others (note Jesus’ words) and takes up  the “light burden” of his own humanity as it comes from the hand of God moment by moment.  Again, paradoxically enough, this makes the hermit such a good exemplar of compassion and forgiveness and peace.

And one last thing:  the hermit lives in his/her historical situation with its wars and rumors of wars, with its seemingly endless conflicts, where the nature of things seems to be to seek the victory of one party or group over another.  And the hermit may face several serious temptations in this regard.  One is to see himself as being “above”  or “beyond” all that.  He lives in a kind of etherial realm where the ambiguous pulls and calls of social life do not reach him.  This is really an illusion.  The other temptation is to become swept up by some historical movement that pulls him into a superficial solidarity with certain people and “against” others.  The hermit cannot be a “true believer” of any party or any movement.  Yet he is “on the side” of all those who are poor, exploited, tortured, abused, the downtrodden, the tired and weary of life, the hungry, the lonely, those who are killed for grand military objectives, those who have been objects of hatred and prejudice, those who are filled with self-hatred, etc, etc.  Yes, the hermit is on their side, everywhere and always.  In the hermit’s quiet peace, in his lack of self-assertion, in his relinquishing possession, greed, rapaciousness, in his own simple humanity without any labels he will be a witness of another kind of world.

So here we are in Lent.  Consider the following quotes:

“I did not know then how much was ended.  When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped  and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.  And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.  A people’s dream died there.  It was a beautiful dream….the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.  There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

Black Elk

Black Elk was a Lakota shaman and holy man, and here he sounds very much like an Old Testament prophet.  Sounds like Jeremiah or the voice of the Book of Lamentations.  Black Elk uttered this “prophecy” concerning the infamous Wounded Knee massacre in the 1890s.  So in a sense there is a great difference between the Old Testament prophets and Black Elk–he laments what WE have done to his people–in effect destroying them.  Today’s Indian casinos are not a contradiction of what Black Elk prophesied but the very confirmation of its truth–but more about that in a later blog.  In any case, the Old Testament prophets cry out about the destruction of their own people due to their own evil choices, infidelities to God, treachery, mistreatment of their own poor, etc.  It is a destruction they have brought down on themselves.

Nevertheless Black Elk’s vision also does apply to us.  Because what we(our ancestors, our government) have done to them, we have actually done to ourselves. And our superficial, fragile prosperity conceals the “sin” at the core of our collective identity.  The Sacred Hoop is indeed broken for us too.  And Lent is a time of remembering that also.  We carry a burden of what our ancestors have done, and its ramifications and manifestations are with us every day.

It is very difficult for us modern Westerners to deal with our so-called “group identity”—we see only our individual identity and even that in a very superficial way.  In all of modern literature, I think only Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov gives even a hint of what that is all about.  It is certainly much, much more than simply “belonging” to a group–it has to do with our essential oneness and interrelatedness.

We may have a strong (or I should say an “exaggerated”) sense of our national or church identity–these do give us a sense of security and belongingness, but rarely do you find also with that a recognition of that group’s sinfulness and a recognition of a deep need of  what the monks call “conversion.”  Those of us who are Catholics and citizens of the U.S. are especially prone to this.  For a long time being a member of the Catholic Church automatically established you in this all-holy club that could do no wrong.  Things don’t look quite that way anymore.  Just consider this whole problem of sexual abuse going on in the church.  For many, many Catholics this “problem” is seen as “unfortunate,” as something the Church has a handle on, as “being behind us,” as just a matter of a few “rotten apples” in the bunch, etc.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The problem has not been dealt with in any effective way, and in fact it seems that the Church is also guilty of concealing the full extent of the problem.  Note the recent exposures by the Grand Jury in Philadelphia a few weeks ago.  The Church is deeply sinful as an institution, and it is a bit too much for most Catholics to  admit this to themselves.  The Church is in deep need of its own Lent, its own “conversion.”  If you still have doubts about  this, consider this link from Richard Sipe, who is a former Benedictine  monk and a sociologist who has studied sexual problems among Catholic religious and priests:

http://www.richardsipe.com/reports/2011-02-22-us-bishops.htm

And let it be remembered that this particular problem is only one of a number of problems with the institutional church;e.g., the alliance with so many right-wing dictators in Latin America, the squashing of Liberation Theology, the  systemic relegating of women to secondary roles, the total silence on what corporate America is doing to the middle class here, etc., etc., etc.

And what about us as a society, as a nation, as a people?  There is a deep crisis concerning our very identity and the very nature of our prosperity.  Lent is a time of coming to terms with who we are, what we have become, and a “conversion” to our true identity.  And believe me our national problem is not trivial, nor “fixable” by some adjustment in  economics or politics.  Please consider this quote from a recent issue of Adbusters:

“Imagine the problem is not physical.  Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not  the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned.   Imagine the problem is not some  syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth.  Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our government are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead–that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness.”

Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid

This also sounds like the voice of the Old Testament prophets, and it has a connection to Black Elk.  From this perspective we can see how badly we are in need of Lent, and how Lent is a lot more than just “giving something up.”  Another Native American shaman points us in the right direction:

“Crying for a vision, that’s the beginning of all religion.  The thirst for a dream from above, without this you are nothing.  This I believe.  It is like the prophets in your bible, like Jesus fasting in the desert, getting his visions.  It’s like our Sioux vision quest, the hanblecheya.  White men have forgotten this.  God no longer speaks to them from a burning bush.  If he did, they wouldn’t believe it, and call it science fiction.

Your old prophets went into the desert crying for a dream and the desert gave it to them.  But the whte men of today have made a desert of ther religion and a desert within themselves.  The White Man’s desert is a place without dreams or life.  There nothing grows.  But the spirit water is always way down there to make the desert green again.”

Lame Deer, 1970

Lent is right around the corner.  Let me offer a few scattered seeds for beginning a reflection on the importance of Lent.

1. Lent is a specifically Christian reality, a certain period of the year that is connected to Baptism.  It was originally a period of preparation for Baptism.  Later it became a paradigm of the Christian monastic journey.  But how is this so?  Is it in that popular Lenten exhortation to “give something up for Lent?”–monastic life seems in the popular imagination, even of monks, to be characterized by “giving things up.”  But what’s the point of “giving things up?”  And what does that have to do with our Baptism?

1. In a comparative religions context, Lent might seem  something like a Zen sesshin–a period of intensification of practice.  This is a superficial resemblance.  A certain kind of intensification may be a part of the dynamic of Lent, but it is hardly the heart of it.

1. More than any intensification, more than any “giving up,” Lent is all about remembrance. Everything else is built on this foundation.  It has enormous implications.  According to the Bible we are creatures who journey from forgetfulness to remembrance.  The whole Old Testament resounds and echoes with the call: “Remember…..”   Remember what?  Remember who you are; remember where you came from.  Remember who it is whom you call “God.”  Etc.

1. In Plato’s writings there is a very important word, anamnesis, which roughly translates as “remembering.”  For Plato, the essence of knowledge, the most fundamental kind of knowledge was more a kind of remembering than a bringing in “from the outside” something new.  In other words we have everything within us that we need to know–it is just that we have forgotten this, and so there is needed some kind of process to be healed of this forgetfullness and live in remembrance and so fully.

1. There are two kinds of remembering.  One is what is popularly considered as remembering.  You recall things from the past.  The reality is a past reality–you merely have a kind of mental image of it and a psychologicl/emotional evocation of that past event/person,etc.  This is not quite the “anamnesis” of Lent, although that element should not be counted out either.  But there is another, less well-known aspect to remembering, “anamnesis.”  When we do this remembering we actually make present, make alive to our awareness that so-called past reality.  The celebration of Passover has a sense of both kinds of remembering.  But what is most important is that when the Jewish family celebrates Passover, it actually makes present to its awareness the actuality of that Freedom which Yahweh led them into and which is their gift then and there in that very celebration.    Needless to say those of us who are Catholics immediately think of the Eucharist.  This is almost totally the second kind of “remembering.”  Jesus does say in the Gospel: “Do this in memory of me.”  In a sense the difference in theological interpretation given to the Eucharist  by different Christian bodies has a lot  to do with what kind of “remembering” they think the Jesus intended.

1. Another moment of remembering:  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23: 42).  These are the words of the thief nailed next to Jesus on the Cross.  And Jesus makes present the reality this poor man is seeking:  “This day you will be with me in Paradise.”  We are all that thief.

1. Another moment of remembering:  On Ash Wednesday we are told:  “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  The smudge on our forehead is a wonderful symbol of all that we call reality in our forgetful lives.  So we are summoned to remembrance.

1. Remembrance is a critical part of repentance.  But here we must be careful about what we mean.  This remembrance is not a morbid and continual dwelling on whatever wrong we may have done.  Rather, like with the Jesus Prayer, we simply dwell within the mercy of the All-Merciful One, and we make no  distinctions between our personal wrongs and the wrongs of our neighbor.  As Father Zosima tells us in the Brothers Karamazov, we are one in this mysterious reality of sin.

1. Idolatry is a form of forgetfulness of who God is.  Paradoxically it is religious people who are most prone to idolatry without even realizing it.  This is a problem of worshipping an image of God that we have constructed for ourselves.  The Church  is very prone to idolatry–thus it is summoned to repentance, to remembrance.  “Gather all the people before Me….”  It is an awesome thing to stand in the  Presence of the Mystery of the Living God.

1. The work of Lent:  Remember who you are; remember who God is.  And thus you will remember mercy, compassion, freedom and peace.  This is the essential work of Lent.  Happy Lent to all.

1. Abortion

This week has been another anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. about 1972.  It is also a time when many anti-abortion forces get together to march, to demonstrate and to proclaim the wrongness of that decision.  These people are mostly very conservative, both church-wise and politically.  If you look for any liberals/progressives on that side of the issue, you will not find many, if any at all, and that is really sad.  The issue has polarized the body politic and the faith community in such a strange way that it is difficult to talk about.

Since 1972 something like 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S.  This includes everything–from the disposal of zygotes, the fertilized ovum-sperm cell, to an almost fully formed baby who is killed by having its head crushed or its spinal cord cut.  Not many could actually stomach seeing the actual medical procedures if they had to, and you wonder if their advocacy of abortion would be so strong.  However, even abortion-rights defenders often say that they are not so much “pro abortion” as they are defenders of a woman’s freedom of choice, to decide for herself if she wants an abortion.  Thus their banner reads: “Pro Choice.”  These are very often very well-meaning and well-intentioned people—they are not really “killers” as some anti-abortion people would have it.  However, once the situation is analyzed in terms of “rights” it becomes a lost cause—meaning we can never resolve it in those terms.  Once we put it in these terms: the rights of the mother to choose what to do with her own body vs the rights of the unborn one to life—well, that is an impossible dilemma to resolve.  But “rights language” is practically all that our ethical and political ethos knows.

Just to scratch the surface of the multi-faceted complexity in this issue, consider this.  The so-called “right” to an abortion is built on a so-called right to privacy for the mother–legally and constitutionally speaking. Choice is the fundamental value. What is here avoided is the status of the fetus.  Do we have personhood or human-beingness here, or do we not?  And who decides that and on what basis?  And what gives the right to anyone to choose to take the life of another person?  At one point in our history the Supreme Court had ruled against the personhood of Black People, thus justifying slavery and later segregation.  In 16^th Century Spain there was a vigorous debate whether Native Americans were really human beings.  This seems outrageous today, yet we as a society seem to have no trouble in denying personhood and human-beingness to the fetus.  On what basis?  Even if we take an “agnostic position”–we are not sure when the fetus “becomes” a human person–we should be much more circumspect about supporting abortion or choice.  Naomi Wolf, a vocal feminist, has said that abortion is an evil, but at times a necessary evil.  Perhaps a problematic way of putting it, but at least an honest way.

Now on the other side of this issue are all the conservative church people and political people who have championed the “pro-life” cause.  What is tragically sad is that to the extent they are on the good side of this issue, they are terribly wrong when they latch this issue to a whole mindset that allows for an authoritarian church life and a political and economic order that leads to the destruction of  truly human well-beingness.  Very often these people seem not to be bothered by the death penalty, by our proclivity for wars, by a selfish, self-centered, greed-driven economy.  Very often these people ally themselves with the Republican Party, but as one commentator put it, each election cycle the Republicans speak out against abortion; what they deliver is tax cuts for the wealthy.  But these people keep coming back to that.  One begins to suspect that a lot of conservative Catholics and evangelicals have their anti-abortion views mixed up with a whole bunch of reactionary, anti-liberal views.  It is part of a culture war that is taking place in our country.  What is truly ironic is that statistically the number of abortions went down in this country during the Clinton years, while it went up during the Reagan and Bush years.

1. Holiness and Sanctity

What a complex subject—just a few thoughts and questions.  Recently there was the announcement that Pope John Paul II will be beatified—a step on the way to being declared a saint in the Catholic Church.  I am sympathetic to anyone who has problems with all this.

First of all a clarification: holiness and sanctity are not exactly the same thing.  Holiness is a state of heart and mind which are more and more attuned to the reality of God; it is not a static thing, but a dynamic growth in the life of God.  In another tradition one might want to call it “an enlightened life,” etc.  Sanctity is the public display of that life, a public acknowledgment that one gives witness to that life.  The community begins to see someone as being a “bearer of the Spirit” and so begins to call that person a “saint.”   Now none of this means that the person is perfect in any sense, even a spiritual or religious sense.  They may in fact have a lot of real flaws in their personality.  However, there are flaws and then there are FLAWS!   Mother Teresa took money from and associated with some very nasty people–kind of giving them a “cover” for their nasty deeds.  And her spiritual director for many years turns out to have been a major child molester.  Strange stuff indeed!  But then go back in time and what about someone like St. Bernard calling for the killing of Moslems and being recognized as a saint.  And there are so many others that you have to wonder about this church mechanism of “proclaiming  saints,” and claiming to be “infallible” in doing so.

Now about this JPII stuff.  I am sure he was a decent person and a sincere follower of Christ.  However, there are many indications that he was preminently concerned with the institution of the Church–to an unhealthy degree.  There has been evidence, some of it just came out recently, that during his pontificate there was a definite policy of keeping child-molesting priests hidden from civil authorities.  This was done to protect the image of the Church.  It’s not that he didn’t know–that is not possible given the evidence that has come out–he just chose the reputation of the Church over the well-being of the victims of all these priests—and all over the world.  Proclaiming such a person a “saint” is a bit of a problem.

I think we should just ignore all this “saint” stuff and leave holiness in the Mystery of God.  There definitely are many holy people around, some hidden, some not so hidden, but what’s most important is our own seeking and thirsting for holiness.  Be wary of adulation and a kind of religious “fandom.”  Recall the Gospel, Luke 18: 18:  “And a ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”

1. State of the Union

This country is in deep, deep trouble–politically, economically, socially, and, yes, even religiously.  Just a few comments.  Listening  to the President’s State of the Union message and the commentators afterwards made me think how bad off we really are.  This President sounds good, especially in contrast with the absolute craziness, the absolute irresponsibility, the absolute awfulness of the “other side”–the present-day Republicans.  He seems like the “most reasonable” man in Washington wanting to work with everyone.  He has positioned himself in a kind of political center in order to win the 2012 election.  However, “left,” “center,” and “right” are not static, fixed positions.  The fact is that this country is moving toward the right whether it realizes it or not.  What is considered the “center” now would have been considered “right” some years ago.  The center itself is now fairly far right in terms of the political map of some years ago. This started with the “Reagan Revolution” –the beginnings of the dismantling of the New Deal and a tremendous redistribution of wealth toward the top 5% or so of the population.  President Obama is more like Eisenhower or Nixon(except for Nixon’s paranoia and lack of ethics) than he is a traditional Democrat–yet in the national media and in the popular image he seems like a “liberal” or a little to the left of center.  What you have to do is look beyond his rhetoric and at what he actually does and look closely at his language.  Let us take some examples:

1. Language:

1. President Obama had adopted the Republican narrative about the Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is no questioning of the war.  The Bush justification of the war has been accepted.  The fact that we were “lied” into Iraq seems to have no consequences, opening up the possibility of this happening again and again.  The two wars have cost us trillions of dollars—there would be no budget deficit otherwise and we could provide health care for all the American people.
2. The Republican narrative about the economy has also been very quietly imbibed.    Please note this comment from George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at UC Berkeley:

“Conservatives are trained not to use the language of liberals. Liberals are not so trained. Liberals have to learn  to stick to their own language, and not move rightward in language use. Never use the word “entitlement” – social security and medicare are earned. Taking money from them is stealing. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. They are part of contracted pay for work. Not paying pensions is taking wages from those who have earned them. Nature isn’t free for the taking. Nature is what nurtures us, and is of ultimate value – human value as well as economic value. Pollution and deforestation are destroying nature. Privatization is not eliminating government – it is introducing government of our lives by corporations, for their profit, not ours. The mission of government is to protect and empower all citizens, because no one makes it on their own. And the more you get from government, the more you owe morally. Government is about “necessities” – health, education, housing, protection, jobs with living wages, and so on – not about “programs.” Economic success lies in human well-being, not in stock prices, or corporate and bank profits.”

Note what President Obama said about social security.  He said he does not want to “endanger” the benefits of current retirees.  But that leaves open the question– what about future retirees?  He said he will not allow the “slashing” of benefits.  But that leaves open the possibility of a compromise with the Republicans and “reducing” benefits.  “Reducing” is not “slashing.”  See how tricky that language is.  A true, old-fashioned Democrat would have said that social security is completely “off the table”, end of story.  It is NOT the problem with the budget or the deficit.  It does need some help because both sides have raided the social security fund to pay for other things.  And if people who make over $100,000 a year had to pay into social security–now they don’t!!!–there would not be ANY problem with social security.  But Obama did not say that.  And his “sliding” language is just one little indication of a problem.

2. Actions:  Note President Obama’s most recent appointments:  Immelt has become one of his chief economic advisors–he comes from GE and was one of the chief architects of their outsourcing of jobs from the US to China and elsewhere.  This man is not the friend of American workers or the middle class.  Then for his chief of staff  he chose a former lobbyist for financial companies like Goldman Sachs.  Very troubling.  The corporate oligarchy is slowly getting a stranglehold on the American economy, and we are in big trouble.  Another example: Obama proposes the availability of high-speed internet for all Americans.  Good, but his Justice Dept and his Administration allow the merger of Comcast and NBC, which many media experts say allow for an increased monopoly control over what we will have access to in all media.  So we will get it “fast” but that “it” will be under the control of a few “corporate interests.”

1. Finally….

An amazing science story.   We have a tiny fuzzy image of a galaxy that may be something like 14 billion light years away.  Amazing.  Just think….light travels at 186,000 miles a SECOND, and the light from that galaxy that reaches us now, started out something like 14 BILLION years ago.  Mind boggling!  How awesome, how amazing, how large the universe is!  And who is this God who has made such an amazing reality!!   No need to sweat the small stuff!!!!

There is something odd about commenting on silence, but it is also something that is needed at times.  Understandably not much has been written on this subject.  Yes, there is the traditional monastic literature which contains various commendations and urgings of the reality of silence, but there is very little there to illumine the deeper meaning and role of silence in our spiritual journey.  If you are in a formal monastic setting in a contemplative community, you will find silence is almost natural, a good that is taken for granted, but again its deeper significance not much understood.  Among modern writings there is the old classic by Max Picard, The World of Silence.  It opens the door to a much deeper reflection on silence, but in some aspects it is a bit dated in its references to modern life.  There are, of course, the beautiful writings of Thomas Merton in which he often points us in a direction of a more profound appreciation of silence, but all in all he does not give silence the intense scrutiny that he gives to solitude.  There are also various other modern authors who have written with some appreciation of silence in the spiritual life.  Let us throw out some scattered thoughts about silence in order to encourage a deeper reflection on this reality.

What is silence?  An absence of noise?  Yes, but even “noise” that is meaningful, like speech and words is often held as not being silence.  Sometimes, in contemplative literature, even thoughts in one’s own mind that are not articulated are considered as somehow not real silence.  But what if silence is not a negative thing, an absence of something…..    What if silence is rather a Presence of something…..

Consider the following Taoist poem from Lao Tzu:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

Communion comes from communication AND silence.  Communication is the Taoist’s “profit”—silence is what makes it all “useful.”  Needless to say these words are not being used in the usual way.

Silence is the foundation of all communication.  Without it communication is just gibberish and propaganda and noise.  We have an awful lot of that today.  Technology makes silence a lot harder to find and appreciate and understand.  Yet we are starving for the reality that silence brings.

Silence does not begin with the end of speech; silence does not end with the first word.  Silence is always THERE, wherever “there” is.  We only need to turn towards it and “tap” into it.  But that might not be so easy.  From the Desert Fathers:  “It was said of Abba Agatho that for 3 years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.”

There is a silence which we find when we turn off all our gadgets and stop talking.  Then there is a silence within that silence or rather beyond that silence.  It is this toward which we need to turn and in which we need to live if we want a deeper life.

In the Gospels, in the Passion account, Jesus is portrayed as mostly silent.  He speaks only a handful of words throughout the whole ordeal.  “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me, ” is one such utterance.  Nobody really wants to discover THAT silence—the Silence of No-God, or the silence of the place where God is NOT.  But Jesus is the Word of God, and so he enters into that silence in a way we cannot comprehend, and so there is no longer any such place that is without God, and it is this which we celebrate at the Easter Vigil.

The Gospel of John begins: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God….   “Logos” is usually translated as “word”–quite correctly but inevitably drained of so much meaning.  For the  ancient Greeks “logos” had a very rich sense: word, discourse, story, account, meaning, language, explanation, logic, reason, rationality, etc.  In the modern West, this “logos” got bifurcated and lost its content of “reason” and “rationality” which got isolated within the sciences and mathematics and logic  So an explanation for something was either “scientific” or else for all practical purposes a “story.”  Well, never mind that problem, but for our purposes here we should note that Jesus is thus much more than the “word” of God in our narrow sense.  He is the discourse of God, the meaning of God, the language of God, etc.  And furthermore what is most astonishing from the perspective of world spiritualities, there is discourse within God—this is where we get the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and it is here where many people get lost simply because they do not appreciate the Mystery they are dealing with and oversimplify it and drag it down to something they can understand and/or imagine.  Suffice it to say that from the standpoint of Christian faith the Ultimate Reality is not one of Absolute Silence but rather one that is an unimagineable communion of eternal, infinte and absolute love in which both word and silence participate in.

In the Hebrew Bible there are a couple of classic places where the reality of silence is pointed to in a significant way.  One place has to do with the prophet Elijah (1Kings 19 11-13).  Elijah is “invited” to an encounter with the Mystery of God and not just his own imagination of God.  Note the text

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in theearthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”

The implication is that Elijah(and we) expect God’s Presence (Power) to be manifest in such and such a way–pick whatever you want, and the Bible itself suggests a whole host of them–but this text then undermines all of them with that most remarkable phrase, “a sound of sheer silence.”  (In some translations, this is called a “whisper,” but that is not a good translation for the meaning there.)  This is a silence much, much more than just a lack of noise or speech.

Another classic text can be found in Psalm 46.  Note the text:

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear,

he burns the chariots with fire!

‘Be still, and know that I am God.

I am exalted among the nations.

I am exalted in the earth’

The Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

That central line, “Be still……..” , is often quoted in spiritual, monastic literature–but out of context.  Note that this “stillness” is also not merely just another quiet period, an end of noise or speech.   It has to do with an end to war, an end to institutionalized violence—the bow, the spear, the chariot are signs of the military-industrial complex of that day.  But of course just as our Desert Fathers knew quite well, this violence needs to be tracked down to our innermost heart and our innermost thoughts and rooted out from there.  Why?  Because note that knowledge of God depends on that.  Again, that call to “stillness” is not in the abstract–it is somehow connected with the knowledge of God.  That little word “and” is very rich and very important.  It may mean that knowledge of God follows upon that “stillness.”  It may mean that knowledge of God is “caused” through that “stillness.”  Or it may mean that that “stillness” IS what the knowledge of God is.  Indeed there are probably even more implications in that one little line.  But whatever be the case, we are invited to a knowledge of God through a silence that begins (and ONLY begins) when we turn off the “noise” of our self-centered existence.

It is time to become a Refusenik–if you are not one already.

It is spiritually necessary for a healthy mysticism in our own time.

Let me be clear about what I am going to say.  In the grand scheme of things it is not something to get worked up over.  In the grand scheme of things it is a small matter, a very small matter.  I have wandered out in the desert, among canyons and boulders that are hundreds of millions of years in age.  I have gazed at the night sky toward the center of just our own galaxy, and there I have seen clouds of stars each star at least as large as our sun, millions of stars.  And then when I have gazed away from the Milky Way, I was staring into deep space where there are millions of such galaxies, some billions of light years away.  Imagine the size of all this.  Unimagineable.  So let us not get too overwrought either about our own aches and pains, successes or failures, good choices or bad choices, good luck or bad luck, etc.  Nor should we exaggerate the “badness” of our social, historical situation.  It is in a very real sense “trivial” in the grand scheme of things.  There is a much, much larger picture that we need to be aware of and place ourselves within in order to have a true and real perspective on things–both good and bad.  This is part of the message of God’s speech to Job in the Book of Job and also in some of the Wisdom literature in the Bible.

And yet….and yet, we do live in a given social, historical moment here in the U.S. where we are called to make choices and decisions and proclaim where we stand one way or another.  To say we stand “apart” or “outside” such things is to already have made a choice  of whose consequences and full meaning perhaps we are not fully cognizant.   We are living with the Beast, whether we realize it or not.  And if we aquiesce to the Beast, we will carry the Mark of the Beast and become It’s child, rather than a child of God.  So we are called to be Refuseniks, to refuse the Mark of the Beast, to claim our true identity as free, loving children of God.

Rest assured the Beast has not just recently arrived on the scene.  It was there among the ancients with their bloodlust sacrifices.  It was there with the Church at the Crusades and the Inquisition and with the bishops hiding the priest child-predators. The Beast has actually found the church quite useful in order to hide itself and its activities.  The Beast was there encouraging the Industrial Revolution as we became enamoured by technology and the machine and lost our sense of a common human destiny.  The Beast wants everyone to be for him/herself alone.  The Beast was also there on the scaffold with the guilloitine and with the KGB as they executed any supposed threats to the State as an incarnation of the Beast.  And there are so many other manifestations of the Beast, but in each one of these historical moments there were human beings who refused the Mark of the Beast and who said “No”–they became Refuseniks and paid for it dearly.

Today the Beast has become much more clever–speaks a very different language, comes in very different clothes.  (Don’t worry so much about the drugged, dazed, smelly street person; worry rather about the financial expert in a nice suit.)  Today the Beast speaks of prosperity and profits, of creating wealth, of networking, of entertainment and games, etc.  The Beast is “into” self-promotion, self-realization, self-expression, self-manipulation, etc.  The Beast wants you glutted with information, entertained into a daze, captive to a host of alien desires swimming in your brain.  The Beast will show us “all the kingdoms of the world” and invite us to “take possession” because they really belong to the Beast and now It offers them to us.  Jesus said No.  Jesus may have been the first real Refusenik.  Jesus knew who he was; that was the basis, the foundation of his No to the Beast.  That tells us almost all you need to know.  Because the ultimate thing the Beast wants is for you to forget who you are and take on It’s identity.  The Mark of the Beast will then be on us.  But we too must become Refuseniks.  And we do this, first of all, by acts of silence, acts of truth(recall Gandhi), acts of wisdom, acts of compassion, acts of selflessness.  Nothing will unmask better or counterattack more effectively the activity of the Beast than this.  This must be the mindset with which we begin and end our own choices and our own activity.

But there is also the larger stage of social, political, economic activity where we are also actors regardless of our other roles.  Here especially the notion of being a Refusenik may become very clear–because we will have to say No very visibly to the State, to corporate America, to our consumer culture,  to that mindset that rationalizes greed and power and lies in the name of some supposed higher good, like a higher standard of living, etc.  The writer and social critic Chris Hedges has written much and well on this subject.   Recently he did an essay on the people of Eastern Europe who resisted their totalitarian governments–this is where the term “refusenik” really comes from–and their resistance took the form of numerous little acts of courage in resisting the Beast.  The essay title: “No Act of Rebellion Is Wasted” and the online link is:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_act_of_rebellion_is_wasted_20101213/

What Hedges does not get quite right is that all these societies, once they were free of their totalitarian regimes, merely succumbed to the Beast that now comes in new clothes.  This shows that the “rebellion” has to go deeper than any social or political or economic action.  It must go all the way to the heart level.  And a marvellous example of such a life can be found in Gandhi.

Since it is Christmastime, let us end by considering that first and greatest Refusenik, Jesus.  Recall Merton’s essay on the Christmas Gospel, “There Was No Room In the Inn.”  When Jesus is born in a cave because there was no room in the inn for him, this shows that God does not participate in the machinations of the Beast in marshalling and numbering all the people(it was a time of census taking by the Romans), giving them an identity that was from the State, from their society, and not their real identity.  Like everyone else, like all other human beings, the Holy Family is forced to move with all the other masses of people, but in taking refuge in that cave and among the lowly shepherds(also some other Refuseniks), they say a quiet No to the dynamism of the Beast and show what it means to belong to another Reality.

It is time to become a Refusenik.

Happy New Year to all.

Let us consider Van Gogh’s painting, “The Potato Eaters.”  It is one of his very early works, perhaps not as famous as some of the later work, but a truly remarkable and religious work of art.  Usually people refer to a work of art as being “religious” if what is being depicted is somehow a theme from the Bible or a religious source.  However, every true work of art points us in the direction of a transcendent reality, connects us with what is truly religious, and opens our hearts to a truth that is beyond our surface lives.  (Incidentally, that is why postmodern art like with Andy Warhol is so deeply and seriously a distortion—it proclaims “the surface” as the total reality and celebrates that fact.)

To make this reflection a bit easier for anyone who has not seen this painting, here is a link to view it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van-willem-vincent-gogh-die-kartoffelesser-03850.jpg

What a remarkable scene!  So many would find this sad, even depressing.  There is a sense of darkness–it is night.  Five people are seated around a square table.  Perhaps they are a family; perhaps not. But it is a community of sorts.  Four women and one man.  Potatoes are visible, and perhaps tea is being poured.  The faces and hands reveal life’s toll on these people–it has been hard, very hard.  You will see such faces and such hands in any large city if you take the bus at 6am in the morning with people going to work, or at 6 in the evening with people coming home.  They are all there.

It is a meal of sorts.  It hints of a ritual–as any meal does.  One of course begins to discern a kind of “Eucharistic gathering” here.  A community has gathered around a shared meal, meager as it is.  However, there is no bread and wine here.  That kind of fare would seem to elevate the gathering to a higher social/economic class.  These people cannot afford even bread and wine.

The four faces we see are all different in their expressions.  Two of them look sad or very tired and seem to have given up on life.  Two others show a kind of reaching out in hope.  They are reaching out to the two others.

Note again the darkness.  You can see the windows in the background, and it is night outside.  And the darkness has penetrated and filled the little cottage.  However,….however, there is something else here also….and very prominent, in the center of things.  There is an oil lamp right in the center of the painting, a source of light,  but above the heads of the gathered group.  Note its centrality in the painting–a position of great importance and emphasis.  This light does not overwhelm the darkness; it does not drive it out.  It is simply there, silent, simply present, and although the eaters participate within its glow, they seem to be unaware of the light—it is not something they focus on, but in its glow their life unfolds.  It is always there, above them, almost unnoticed, yet essential for all they do within this darkness of their human condition.  It is also by this light that we are able to see them, their condition, their need.

What is this light?  It is the light of the Resurrection.  It is the light of the Transfiguration.  It is the light seen on the face of St. Seraphim.  It is the light within the darkness of our own situation–it is always there, gentle, soft, not overwhelming in our history, but absolutely essential for our “going on.”    We walk in this light so unaware of its presence.  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.  The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (John 1: 5-9).

But there is more.  So far we have ignored the one figure whose face we cannot see but who sits right in the center of the gathering.    She is facing away from us and toward the group; we can only see her back.  The reason we cannot see her face is that this is our face—it is you and me there, whoever we are.  No matter who we are socially, we are “among these poor ones.”The observer of this scene is also at this gathering and also practically unaware of this light, though living in it and by it.  And what is our response?  What is the expression on our face?

Have I missed anything in this title?  Oh yes, taxes and the proverbial kitchen sink!  Only kidding.  But seriously, this chapter (Chapter III) of The Art of Prayer is very long, very difficult for proper interpretation, and very important.  So let us begin with a few preliminary remarks.

One cannot overstate the importance of the Mystery of God in our apprehension of what this work says about prayer.  This blog has previously made a big point about the role of a notion of God in our spiritual life in general.  The deeper the sense of the Mystery of God the deeper will be our spiritual life. In fact, without a truly mature sense of the Mystery of God our piety will tend toward a shallowness that is just plain sad–I mean we are called to so much more.  That is just one reason why I am a bit sceptical about people who promote a “personal relationship with the Lord” as the center of their piety.  There is a profound truth in that kind of language but it also can lead to a kind of spiritual Facebook where you “friend” Jesus and share things with him and he helps you, etc.   Even if this is a starting point in the spiritual journey, there is so, so much more than that.  Sadly too many stay right there.

Now not many spiritual writers or theologians have written well on the subject of the Mystery of God–needless to say.  From the early Church with Pseudo-Dionysius to a modern western theologian like Karl Rahner, there are very few who have taught with some depth on God as Ultimate Mystery.  The great problem with general piety and popular piety is to fix on outward images, like paintings and statues of Jesus and holy figures, and then even more importantly to fix on inner images we have of Christ and God.  If you walk into a Catholic or Orthodox church you will find it filled with such images.  Now all this is very good and proper theologically.  It all forms a fitting ambience for worship with all our senses being focused on a transcendent reality.  However, for too many, and this includes monks, they get fixed on the images and make them into a kind of inner reality that becomes the focus of their prayer.  This is not meant to demean any simple person’s prayer, but they are invited to “go up higher, friend.”  In the Orthodox church and in Eastern Christian monasticism the role of icons is enormous and very important, but St. Nil Sorski, the great hesychast, tells us:  “…while practicing inner prayer, do not permit yourself any concepts, images, or visions.”  And St. Theophan the Recluse:  “You ask about prayer.  I find in the writings of the Holy Fathers, that when you pray you must dispel all images from your mind….”  Many other spiritual guides, both East and West, tell us the same thing.  The icons serve as a kind of focusing lens for our heart, the center of our being.  But it is the Mystery of God into which we plunge as we enter true prayer–and with that there are no images, only a profound and unfathomable Presence.

Now something about death.  Why?  Most modern westerners consider this a morbid topic.  That in itself is telling–most spiritual traditions in one way or another consider it as a fact of life needing our attention if we are to make progress on the spiritual journey.  The stereotype of the monk meditating on a human skull is exactly that–a stereotype.  Nevertheless that picture points to a deep truth.  Some Christians will cry foul at this and say that we are to focus on the Resurrection, not death.  They miss the point entirely–first of all, the Resurrection is part of the Mystery of God, so you better be careful in appealing to the Resurrection as if it were something you understood or knew; secondly, it is only when we really know the reality of death that we can begin to grasp the significance and meaning of the Resurrection.  To put it another way–the Resurrection is not a “lifeboat” for our ego self as it starts going down in death.

Well, we will not truly know what death means until we actually experience it, and then it won’t really matter!  But we can at least begin to get some sense of it, and this will make a big difference in our spiritual journey.  It will help if we engage in a kind of imaginative acting out of our own death in our own mind–a kind of mental exercise of our imagination.  So what happens?  Let us imagine a slow death, not through some traumatic sudden event, but one that slowly unfolds within us.  We will certainly feel those last moments as life ebbs from our bodies and our organs begin to shut down and just before we pass into an unconscious state.  All that we have done, all our accomplishments, all our victories and all our gains, all this will seem like nothing at that moment.  The consumer self, the person with all these credentials, the one who lived for recognition, the one who had so many friends, that self will be melting away as a snowman on a warm winter day.   If we are a believer and regret our “sinfulness”,  it may be that we might cry out-silently-to God—like a drowning man’s last cry for help.  It also may be that we have built up a very strong religious ego that seems to rest secure in its confidence in its relationship to God until the very last moment when a great darkness meets it, and there is a moment when that religious ego is shattered and a great doubt arises.  In any case, as our external world vanishes, there is precisely this ego self, this self-constructed world of meaning and various identities and self-constructed narratives about who and what one is that suddenly begins to dissolve.  There is nothing to hold on to.  And who is this who wants to hold on?  Just let go of trying to hold on and let the Darkness and the Nothingness come.    Does this sound scary, morbid, etc.?   Perhaps.   Not really.  First of all, our very ego identity is a kind of nothingness.  It’s “substantiality” is one of the fictions of our life–like Plato’s “noble lie”–something that seems necessary for the moment but the wise person knows otherwise.  But even more importantly, the most initimate encounter with God is at first as if it were an encounter with Nothingness.  Jesus’s words, “Fear not,” are applicable here.  But returning to that fixed identity we have, there is something terrifying in us about being reduced to a common humanity with no credentials.  Various spiritual traditions teach this in various and different ways.  Consider this word from a modern Sufi master:

“When people die, they lose all identities.  They are no

longer Black or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, since they

go back to their origin carrying in them the whole

adamic inheritance.  One day while the Prophet, peace

be with him, was sitting with a group of companions, a

funeral procession passed by, and the Prophet, peace

be with him, stood up.  One of the comrades said,

‘Those are the remains of a Jew!’  The Prophet, peace

be with him, answered, ‘Stand up to honor the son of

Adam when you see a funeral procession.'”

There is nothing the modern world fears most than the thought of death; there is nothing the modern world works at most to conceal and distract us from than this.  Because it puts into question our whole present social matrix.  But more importantly, for our purposes, this kind of realization opens up the door for a deep and fundamentally different sense of inner prayer than popularly understood.  To truly understand what Chapter III in The Art of Prayer is saying, what it’s getting at,  one needs at least all of the above as a kind of primer for benefitting from what is said there.  As we said once before, we are all beginners in the reality of inner prayer, and this is merely a “kindergarten” for a great learning process.

To fully comment on Chapter III alone would require writing a whole book.  So here we will give scattered comments about certain statements.  The chapter itself is divided into 4 parts, and part 1 is called “Secret Meditation.”

What is this “secret meditation”?  Not much is directly said about it, but it’s merits and benefits are listed lavishly by all included authors.  In a sense both words in the term are unfortunate because they can lead to great misunderstandings.

The segment from the Life of Abba Philemon is helpful.  It comes in the form of an archetypal story of disciple and teacher.  The new monk is struggling with his attention being all over the place.  Philemon gives him the Jesus Prayer as a practice, but more importantly he points the monk to be aware of what might be called the “intentionality of the heart”—-what is the heart turned towards.  He is iniating the monk into an inner practice of keeping his intentionality always turned towards the reality of God.  This “secret meditation,” whatever form it takes is merely a tool towards that end.

The next section from the works of St. Theophan the Recluse is interesting in a new way.  Theophan makes the emphatic point that the new monk (or the person beginning the spiritual journey) should begin this inner focus, this inner turning immediately—not after some time doing some preparatory stuff.  The title of the section: “Inner work must begin as soon as possible.  This is extremely important.”  Then: “We may leave all else and turn only to this work, and all will be well.”  The whole point of being a monk or being on the spiritual journey is this, but many forget that and substitute other elements for their concern.  Theophan will return to this point again and again—as you go through the day, doing whatever you need to do, what is your heart turned towards, what is it attentive to, and how do you discern the mystery of God in all this?

Now we come to Part 2, entitled “Unceasing Prayer.”  Indeed, a big topic–but once our attention is fixed within the mystery of God in all we do, this “unceasing prayer” unfolds by itself.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, unceasing prayer does not mean a kind of continual work or striving or “producing” prayer.  Rather:  “You regret that the Jesus Prayer is not unceasing, that you do not recite it constantly.  But constant repetition is not required.  What is required is a constant aliveness to God–an aliveness present when you talk, read, watch, or examine something….”  Furthermore, Theophan makes the point that this unceasing prayer is not some “extra” thing about being a Christian but rather it is the “essential characteristic” of being precisely that.  Wonder what would happen if you started talking about unceasing prayer from the modern pulpit in a modern suburban parish!

Throughout this section Theophan gives all kinds of practical advice about “setting the stage” for this unceasing prayer.  Here you have to remember that the writings are taken from concrete advice given to concrete people who approached him with their own difficulties.  In other words, do not follow his words like in a cookbook.  Get the gist, the spirit, the essence—you may have to leave other things behind that don’t apply to your own particular circumstances.  But always he comes back to the essential points:  “Standing always before God with reverence is unceasing prayer.”  This is quite a loaded sentence even in its brevity.  Some considerations:  standing before the Living God and not just some idea of God means standing in the presence of Mystery, means losing your life in that Mystery, means your own identity is in question–forget who you think you are–drop the credentials—who are you anyway?  Or as a zen master might put it:  Who is it that is standing before God?  (In a Rinzai monastery then you would get whacked with a stick for giving some “smart” answer!!)  Anyway, get the idea…..?

Now we arrive at Part 3, which is all about the Jesus Prayer per se.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, the Jesus Prayer is “the easiest way to acquire unceasing prayer.”  Of course when they use the word “easy” it is not quite in our sense! Certainly it is not some mechanical procedure that “gets one there.” Nor is it really a technique for them though to someone on the outside it may look like that, and to take it that way may mislead one very seriously.  It is certainly not any kind of shortcut in the spiritual life.

One very important point made in this section is the injunction to avoid all visualizations, images, conceptualizations.  So again to stand in the Presence is not to stand in our idea of the Presence.  In the beginning there is the temptation  on the part of some to imagine the reality of God or Jesus as standing there.  Forget it.  Allow yourself to get lost in the Mystery of God that surrounds you and dwells within you.  Yes, you can have your body turned toward an icon or a crucifix, just as a Moslem turns toward Mecca in prayer, but your heart must dwell in the mystery which is then manifest in every real thing around you, like the boiling water, like the smile on someone’s face, like the hawk circling above, etc.  Let your heart abide in the Mystery.

Theophan also tells us: “No progress without suffering.”  A difficult topic.  This is not meant as a call to masochism; rather it is a sober appraisal of the spiritual journey–that it will be marked by suffering.  There are several levels to this suffering.  It ranges from physical pain to the depths of the heart.  At the deepest level it is said in this tradition (and in the Sufi tradition and perhaps in the Hasidic) that real prayer only begins with a breaking of the heart.  A sobering thought, but it is also an anticipation of the death of an ego identity.

Finally we get to Part 4, the last part, “The Remembrance of God.”  Perhaps not the best choice of words for our purposes because “remembering” is an act that implies a kind of distance.  You remember a dead parent, an absent friend, a past relationship, a forgotten occurrence, etc.  Keep in mind Theophan’s earlier term:  “aliveness to God.”  That is what he is really talking about.  Just another way of talking about unceasing prayer.