..... nothing but the truth? The catch is in the last phrase of that oath in court: ‘nothing but the truth’. The witness may not give an opinion. ‘I saw the accused strike the victim’ – statement of fact. ‘I think he intended to kill him’ – opinion! opinion! Not allowed in court. I notice how BBC correspondents often say, ‘I haven’t been able to verify this’, when reporting something they haven’t actually seen with their own eyes. By contrast I notice how often newspaper headlines confuse fact and opinion. They want to sell their newspaper. They know we’ll go for opinion rather than simple unadorned fact.
Mentally, we spend most of our waking lives in the opinion field. Coming quickly to moment by moment decisions based on opinions is what we’re good at. Our minds are stocked with a huge database of past experience. Faster than most computers we can access our mental hard drives and compare what we find there with the situation we are currently facing. We do it more or less instantly a million times a day.
The trouble is that, like most computer hard drives, our minds are cluttered with bits and pieces of old data, some of it corrupted by years of storage and over-writing. And the human brain stores not only facts, nor even only opinions. We store the feelings, the emotions that we experienced when we were first forming the opinions. “Young people nowadays .....” (opinion coming up!). “Men/women are .... “(opinion coming!) “I always ....” (opinion coming!). “You never ....” (Wait for it! Opinon coming!). And it’s not just what we say, it’s part of so-called ‘normal’ mental functioning. A million times a day we whip up a commentary on what’s going on, not only out there in the world but here in the hidden labyrinth of the mind. Without even realising it we will have walked a hundred yards mentally going over a conversation we’ve just had which didn’t go the way we wanted it to. We can experience a sudden pain in the chest and in ten seconds we’ve got ourselves mentally into hospital with a major heart attack to be followed by a restricted life and an early death. The fact that we are continuing to walk in a healthy manner entirely eludes us!
Maybe that’s why Jesus said we should become like little children if we want to enter the Kingdom. (And, yes, that’s my opinion because no one knows for sure exactly what was in Jesus’ mind when he said it). Children certainly don’t have so much experience to go on and that is both an advantage and a disadvantage for them. The advantage is that they can approach each new situation with a fresh mind.
Suppose what Jesus meant by the Kingdom is a state in which it is possible to be much more a witness rather than a commentator? Suppose there’s a place, deep within us from which it is possible to witness all this mental chatter without any commentary? Actually from this still centre within us we can witness the commentary itself and just let it be. The miracle is that it doesn’t seem to harm our capacity for living effectively in this complex world. On the contrary, finding our witnessing centre actually enhances us: makes us more fully alive, our judgements and actions surer and much more compassionate. The database is still there. We have learnt how to access it more helpfully. We learn to do it through meditation.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
The economy of the Kingdom
The Primates of the Anglican Communion recently met in Dublin under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of Canterbury. To be more accurate, some of them met there. Fifteen stayed away. Twenty two attended. What divides this Communion (sic) is the question of the place of women and gay people in the church. The Archbishop has employed all his skill, holiness and learning to try and hold together a worldwide fellowship of Anglican churches. He has, according to his own words, placed unity above truth. It is now clear to most people that the unity he has laboured so faithfully to uphold will not survive.
The time has come to recognise that the economy of the Kingdom trumps the unity of the church as an institution. The word economy comes from a Greek word, oikumene which in the New Testament can mean the whole world or human race. Its root is the Greek for house: oikos. English borrows the Greek word as ‘ecumenical’. The ecumenical movement which came to prominence in church circles back in the 1920s has been largely concerned with the reunion of separated churches.
It is clear that Christians must now abandon this narrowly ecclesiastical view of what it means to be ecumenical in favour of an urgent search for a deep sense of what it might mean to recognise the unity of the one human race within which we might have a creative role to play using our understanding of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. We have never before been so aware that we live in one ‘oikos’ and that it’s getting crowded (not to mention polluted). This demand makes Anglican Christian squabbles over the place of women and gay people fade into trivial inconsequence. The Archbishop has become trapped in a churchy view of unity. He could put his wonderful personal qualities at the service of a wider, deeper and older understanding of the 'oikumene' where unity and truth have an equal footing. What a wonderful contribution he could make!
The time has come to recognise that the economy of the Kingdom trumps the unity of the church as an institution. The word economy comes from a Greek word, oikumene which in the New Testament can mean the whole world or human race. Its root is the Greek for house: oikos. English borrows the Greek word as ‘ecumenical’. The ecumenical movement which came to prominence in church circles back in the 1920s has been largely concerned with the reunion of separated churches.
It is clear that Christians must now abandon this narrowly ecclesiastical view of what it means to be ecumenical in favour of an urgent search for a deep sense of what it might mean to recognise the unity of the one human race within which we might have a creative role to play using our understanding of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. We have never before been so aware that we live in one ‘oikos’ and that it’s getting crowded (not to mention polluted). This demand makes Anglican Christian squabbles over the place of women and gay people fade into trivial inconsequence. The Archbishop has become trapped in a churchy view of unity. He could put his wonderful personal qualities at the service of a wider, deeper and older understanding of the 'oikumene' where unity and truth have an equal footing. What a wonderful contribution he could make!
Friday, 28 January 2011
Knowing me, knowing you.
To judge from media articles, interest in meditation appears to be exploding. This week the Guardian has a series of podcasts about it. Earlier this month New Scientist published an article on research into its measurable benefits. If all this translates into individuals’ established regular practice of meditation we should have a totally transformed planet in a few years time. The snag is that, in my experience, the interest is largely confined to white, middle class people. That’s not a bad place to start, of course, but let’s not get too excited just yet.
Meanwhile the meditation group that I run at St. John's Waterloo in London has just started a new series of meetings. Again, to judge from media interest, you might suppose that only Buddhists know how to practice meditation. Somehow the 2,000 year Christian tradition of it has got lost. Strip away the mythology in which both the Buddhist and the Christian approach is encoded and you have basically the same techniques and practices. Perhaps Christian mythology is too close to many of us western Europeans and we can’t see the wood for the trees.
At this week’s meeting I used a phrase from a Psalm as a sort of mantra (known as a prayer word in the Christian tradition): “Be still and know that I am God.” In Hebrew scriptures the word ‘know’ has some unexpected uses. For example, when Adam ‘knows’ Eve it means he had sexual intercourse with her. The Psalm is not advocating sex with God (Bernini's statue of Teresa's ecstacy notwithstanding): just that there are different ways of knowing.
The Jewish philosopher/poet, Martin Buber, was exploring the rich implications of the Biblical word ‘know’ when he wrote (In I And Thou) that there are two ways of expressing it. One he called I-It. Without this sense of knowing we cannot live. We must, observe, analyse, distinguish one thing from another, categorise, list, calculate and so on. The second way of knowing Buber called I-Thou. It is possible to have sex in the I-It sense but it is tawdry and manipulative and any sensible man or woman will not have much to do with that kind of relationship. In an I-Thou relationship each gives themselves to the other in unconditional vulnerability, without calculation. We can enter into that kind of relationship in any situation, not just sexual ones and not just with other human beings but with any aspect of our life on this planet. Buber sums it all up (in the non-inclusive language of the 1920s): “Without I-It a man cannot live; without I-Thou he is not a man.”
Then yesterday a friend showed me her i-Phone. With suitable ‘apps’ she can find almost any piece of information she likes – instantly. Her capacity for I-It is vastly increased. The internet is a wondrous thing. Here you are using it to read this and perhaps to click on the links provided in this blog. Our capacity for I-It increases exponentially every year. We know a hell of a lot.
Thank goodness more and more people are also discovering that other way of knowing through meditation.
Meanwhile the meditation group that I run at St. John's Waterloo in London has just started a new series of meetings. Again, to judge from media interest, you might suppose that only Buddhists know how to practice meditation. Somehow the 2,000 year Christian tradition of it has got lost. Strip away the mythology in which both the Buddhist and the Christian approach is encoded and you have basically the same techniques and practices. Perhaps Christian mythology is too close to many of us western Europeans and we can’t see the wood for the trees.
At this week’s meeting I used a phrase from a Psalm as a sort of mantra (known as a prayer word in the Christian tradition): “Be still and know that I am God.” In Hebrew scriptures the word ‘know’ has some unexpected uses. For example, when Adam ‘knows’ Eve it means he had sexual intercourse with her. The Psalm is not advocating sex with God (Bernini's statue of Teresa's ecstacy notwithstanding): just that there are different ways of knowing.
The Jewish philosopher/poet, Martin Buber, was exploring the rich implications of the Biblical word ‘know’ when he wrote (In I And Thou) that there are two ways of expressing it. One he called I-It. Without this sense of knowing we cannot live. We must, observe, analyse, distinguish one thing from another, categorise, list, calculate and so on. The second way of knowing Buber called I-Thou. It is possible to have sex in the I-It sense but it is tawdry and manipulative and any sensible man or woman will not have much to do with that kind of relationship. In an I-Thou relationship each gives themselves to the other in unconditional vulnerability, without calculation. We can enter into that kind of relationship in any situation, not just sexual ones and not just with other human beings but with any aspect of our life on this planet. Buber sums it all up (in the non-inclusive language of the 1920s): “Without I-It a man cannot live; without I-Thou he is not a man.”
Then yesterday a friend showed me her i-Phone. With suitable ‘apps’ she can find almost any piece of information she likes – instantly. Her capacity for I-It is vastly increased. The internet is a wondrous thing. Here you are using it to read this and perhaps to click on the links provided in this blog. Our capacity for I-It increases exponentially every year. We know a hell of a lot.
Thank goodness more and more people are also discovering that other way of knowing through meditation.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Crucifixion
The new term begins at Morley College and I resume rehearsing Stainer’s The Crucifixion with our choir. I am profoundly disturbed by it.
Most classical composers of Christian religious music have managed to produce something which manages to transcend the specifics of Christianity. Byrd, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven have all written ‘Masses’ which a Japanese, and even a Muslim, choir could sing without too much offense. But Stainer’s is a piece of nineteenth century evangelicalism that proclaims a substitutionary version of the atonement, glorying in a Scorcese-like focus on the physical details of the process aimed at producing guilt and repentance in the listener. I will continue with the rehearsals because of the friendships I have developed with choir members but I cannot participate in a public performance.
“O come unto me, this awful price, Redemption’s tremendous sacrifice, is paid for you...”
“Yet in the midst of the torture and shame, Jesus the crucified, breathes my name.”Both of these quotations are from hymns which Stainer stipulates should be sung by the choir and (significantly) the ‘congregation’.
Most classical composers of Christian religious music have managed to produce something which manages to transcend the specifics of Christianity. Byrd, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven have all written ‘Masses’ which a Japanese, and even a Muslim, choir could sing without too much offense. But Stainer’s is a piece of nineteenth century evangelicalism that proclaims a substitutionary version of the atonement, glorying in a Scorcese-like focus on the physical details of the process aimed at producing guilt and repentance in the listener. I will continue with the rehearsals because of the friendships I have developed with choir members but I cannot participate in a public performance.
Friday, 24 December 2010
Christmas Eve
What a story! What superb story telling! No wonder it has lasted nearly 2000 years and still haunts and inspires the imagination of millions. I am thinking of course of the opening chapters of St. Matthews and St. Luke’s gospels: the story of the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth. How does a story like that come to be written? I think many of us have clues to the answer in our own experience. Something profound happens to us, some flash of inspiration, triggered by a chance meeting, a conversation, or a book, or just out of the blue as we see a familiar sight with fresh eyes. Suddenly something clicks into place for us. “So that’s what he meant!” we think, “now I see, now I understand what she meant!” It happened to me five years ago when, in early December, I read Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ and it was as if a string had been tugged to which were attached memories of books I had read, poems I remembered, unresolved problems I had laid aside as too difficult to solve, all came to the surface so that I thought, “So that’s what it was all about! Why didn’t I see it before?”
Now imagine the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Their minds are stocked with memories of the only literature anyone knew in the Israel of those days: the books of what we now call the Old Testament; nothing else except the scriptures heard every Sabbath. Suddenly, in the light of the encounter with Jesus, life is transformed. “Aha! That’s what it’s all about! All those prophecies and other writings that I have heard and pondered all these years. Now I understand!” Later, perhaps 30 or 40 years later, two people sit down to write gospels and out of that original ‘aha!” experience comes the exquisite narrative that we now know as the Christmas story. Of course we would not, could not, write such a story today. We no longer believe in stars that hover over one place, or magi, or the possibility of virgin birth; nor are our minds saturated with the imagery of one piece of literature to provide us with a rich source of inspiration. What is possible for us a fresh ‘aha!” encounter which opens up a ‘now I understand’ insight.
The writer and spiritual guide Simon Parke says, "It is sad that we have forgotten the true meaninglessness of Christmas. Meaning is about control; Christmas about indefinable delight.' I prefer the secret sort; the secret Christmas which comes to find me quietly and in a manner quite unexpected. I think it might and I wish this experience for you."
Now imagine the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Their minds are stocked with memories of the only literature anyone knew in the Israel of those days: the books of what we now call the Old Testament; nothing else except the scriptures heard every Sabbath. Suddenly, in the light of the encounter with Jesus, life is transformed. “Aha! That’s what it’s all about! All those prophecies and other writings that I have heard and pondered all these years. Now I understand!” Later, perhaps 30 or 40 years later, two people sit down to write gospels and out of that original ‘aha!” experience comes the exquisite narrative that we now know as the Christmas story. Of course we would not, could not, write such a story today. We no longer believe in stars that hover over one place, or magi, or the possibility of virgin birth; nor are our minds saturated with the imagery of one piece of literature to provide us with a rich source of inspiration. What is possible for us a fresh ‘aha!” encounter which opens up a ‘now I understand’ insight.
The writer and spiritual guide Simon Parke says, "It is sad that we have forgotten the true meaninglessness of Christmas. Meaning is about control; Christmas about indefinable delight.' I prefer the secret sort; the secret Christmas which comes to find me quietly and in a manner quite unexpected. I think it might and I wish this experience for you."
Thursday, 4 November 2010
When I was a student at Lincoln Theological College in 1959, Trevor Huddleston, then a parish priest in Soweto, came to speak to us. He presented the Afrikaaner point of view so sympathetically that when he reverted back to a criticism of apartheid it was like coming out of a dream. Today I have before me the Times report of Anglican Bishop Wallace Benn's address to Reform in which he compared supporters of the ordination of women Bishops to Nazis (or at least to our situation in 1939 when we were threatened with invasion by the Nazis). Has he not known? Has he not heard? There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God. The transformation of human consciousness that Richard Rohr (and many others) is pointing to will overcome the division which Reform wants to perpetuate. Perhaps the South African miracle of Truth and Reconciliation will heal these divisions too.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Healing versus wholeness
Here's what I said at this week's 'Beyond Words' session.
Anything I say should perhaps come with a health warning: “this may damage your spiritual wellbeing!” Why? Because I am not Jesus of Nazareth. I am a fellow traveller with you and we are all pioneers on this path. I bring some reading/specialist knowledge and some practice/experience which you may not have but I also bring my own past with its failings and its pain and its false assumptions. I tell you this because last week’s session (on the parable of the prodigal son) reminded me that there’s a good deal of the elder son in me and trying too hard is one of my default positions.
I quoted Martin Buber: ‘will and grace are two sides of the same coin’ and that is crucial to the whole human (not to say religious) enterprise. What has stuck with me from last week's parable are the father's words to his sulking elder son: “all that I have is yours”. How to realise that profound truth in ways which set me free to work on ‘home farm’. What happens in our regular practice of meditation (backed up by our sharing with others and our study – perhaps as members of a group) is a process of healing and re-ordering of our deepest selves. I now know where my tendency to try too hard comes from – childhood potty training!! My mother’s frequent injunction was ‘try hard’ and my childish word for any product of this effort was ‘try hards’!!
Now meditation is not therapy. It almost certainly has therapeutic effects but if we aim for them, if we make them our reason for meditating, we get into trouble. Our only aim is simply to ‘be there in the Presence’ – to put ourselves in the way of grace and to live it out in our lives.The Presence (of God if we find that word helpful) is unconditional and our aim is simply to be there unconditionally – to keep on coming home like the prodigal.
As we journey on in this life of ‘being there’ in the Presence, it is helpful to learn what our default positions are so that we can be aware when they are holding us back, tripping us up. For some people their default position can be a serious impediment – an addiction, for example, to alcohol, sex, violence, shopping etc. etc. Or there are hidden default positions which lie dormant until suddenly here they are, operating at full volume and devastating us, making us feel a failure or worse. There is what I have called a ‘kick-back’ experience: times when we get out into the world after meditation and everything goes wrong; our default positions seem to dominate the horizon.
In all this, just as in the more mundane distractions of our meditating, the advice is – be gentle with yourself; forgive yourself. How often shall I forgive someone who sins against me – seven times? No, replies Jesus, seventy times seven. And that applies to my forgiveness of myself. Let go and let be. Welcome the bad as well as the good; trust that underneath are the everlasting arms and that healing is going on.
So the quality of our meditation is a matter of our intention not the quality of our attention. It’s never primarily a question of our ability to concentrate (though that may well improve as we persevere in our practice). It is simply a matter of our intention to be there in the Presence.
Anything I say should perhaps come with a health warning: “this may damage your spiritual wellbeing!” Why? Because I am not Jesus of Nazareth. I am a fellow traveller with you and we are all pioneers on this path. I bring some reading/specialist knowledge and some practice/experience which you may not have but I also bring my own past with its failings and its pain and its false assumptions. I tell you this because last week’s session (on the parable of the prodigal son) reminded me that there’s a good deal of the elder son in me and trying too hard is one of my default positions.
I quoted Martin Buber: ‘will and grace are two sides of the same coin’ and that is crucial to the whole human (not to say religious) enterprise. What has stuck with me from last week's parable are the father's words to his sulking elder son: “all that I have is yours”. How to realise that profound truth in ways which set me free to work on ‘home farm’. What happens in our regular practice of meditation (backed up by our sharing with others and our study – perhaps as members of a group) is a process of healing and re-ordering of our deepest selves. I now know where my tendency to try too hard comes from – childhood potty training!! My mother’s frequent injunction was ‘try hard’ and my childish word for any product of this effort was ‘try hards’!!
Now meditation is not therapy. It almost certainly has therapeutic effects but if we aim for them, if we make them our reason for meditating, we get into trouble. Our only aim is simply to ‘be there in the Presence’ – to put ourselves in the way of grace and to live it out in our lives.The Presence (of God if we find that word helpful) is unconditional and our aim is simply to be there unconditionally – to keep on coming home like the prodigal.
As we journey on in this life of ‘being there’ in the Presence, it is helpful to learn what our default positions are so that we can be aware when they are holding us back, tripping us up. For some people their default position can be a serious impediment – an addiction, for example, to alcohol, sex, violence, shopping etc. etc. Or there are hidden default positions which lie dormant until suddenly here they are, operating at full volume and devastating us, making us feel a failure or worse. There is what I have called a ‘kick-back’ experience: times when we get out into the world after meditation and everything goes wrong; our default positions seem to dominate the horizon.
In all this, just as in the more mundane distractions of our meditating, the advice is – be gentle with yourself; forgive yourself. How often shall I forgive someone who sins against me – seven times? No, replies Jesus, seventy times seven. And that applies to my forgiveness of myself. Let go and let be. Welcome the bad as well as the good; trust that underneath are the everlasting arms and that healing is going on.
So the quality of our meditation is a matter of our intention not the quality of our attention. It’s never primarily a question of our ability to concentrate (though that may well improve as we persevere in our practice). It is simply a matter of our intention to be there in the Presence.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)