Faith's Journey ... Post #7

Truth … Absolutes … What’s with the upper-case letters?  It’s that language thing again – that power- hunger.  Uppercase is more powerful than lowercase.  It’s more Real and Real is Powerful.  Oh dear …

I have a whole patch of nothing but Queen Anne’s Lace in the yard this summer.  I mean, there are lots of QAL around the place, but in this one spot, only them.  Before them, it was only daisies.  It’s the sandy circle where the swimming pool used to stand, and one day I was out there and saw that white-faced hornets have taken to constructing their homes under that sand, down tunnels, through entry-holes. 

When the sun shines on that sandy circle, the hornets are out, en force.  I asked my son not to mow there because of the fear he might be stung.  So that’s how the QAL came to take over after the daisies died back - the lack of mowing.  Anyhow, I see them in 3D now, in a way I couldn’t see before my 50^th summer.  It’s pretty cool.  I’ve always loved QAL.  I love them more now – interspersed with shadow, surrounded by bug-song, wren-call. 

Woods are like that now, as well – I see them in layers I never noticed all those years long, although I’ve long loved trees, always, in fact.  The world is layer on layer, depth over depth – there is so much more, always … you may not see it one day and then one day, you do.  It was always there, yet unrevealed.  Vision changes with growth, with time. 

Culture is content with focusing much on what we lose as we grow, but what about all the wonders we gain?  The world is more completely terrifying to me than ever, but so much more infinitely beautiful.  All at once, utter terror and deep beauty. 

 I sense I am straddling this abyss.  I stretch as the abyss grows wider.  Stretch into life - an amazing grace.  In no religious sense … in a universal sense.  Stretching into life, from here to …there …

Something there matters.  It called to me for the briefest of moments …. about culture’s focus on what is lost.  That’s the end of this story … I’ve told myself what must come next.  While faith finds its way to me, if it does; while I keep my soul open to truth where I find it, it is most important to focus on what is gained.  I see more than before, which holds no power but that of beauty and wonder, if such can be labeled “power.”  I think the true struggle is – can I accept this phase of my life?  Will I accept it, embrace it? 

This loss – damn, it hurts.  I don’t like it.  Perhaps if I bother to articulate the gains … will that help me in this process?  It boils down, then, to … grief?  And healing.   Grief and healing.  The unending cycle of life ...  

Death ... rebirth ... when will rebirth come?  Today I sang a song of joy, and in doing so, I had hope ...

Faith's Journey ... Post #6

Wordlessness.  Powerlessness.  Powerlessness infers a comparison with power; otherwise, where would feelings of lacking power come from?  One wants what she does not have, or … she has, but not enough.  The connection between losing faith and losing the power of language – these are two different animals, as it were.  Apples to oranges, so to speak.  Perhaps I can set aside the powerlessness for a bit, the lack of language and context for a time, and focus on the other issue – the faith question.  Sort of like … lemme think … say I lost my shoes.  A side effect would be that I’m continually wearing out my socks now, as I never did before, and I find myself … sockless! 

Well, I can work hard to replace my socks, but they’re just going to continue to wear out.  Better to find more sturdy footwear – it’s the missing shoes that are the true issue here, the Cause, if you will.  In my case, it’s the missing faith that is the Cause.

 

Someone well known – Aristotle or Socrates, perhaps – talked about Causes.  I’ll have to look that up, maybe in my History of Philosophy …. Or is that the power/language quest popping up again – hoping to break through to some grand philosophy, to find I have a whole bunch in common with an ancient philosopher, tell myself I am truly a genius, after all … Being a genius is certainly internal power, anyhow – well, knowing one as a genius is inner power, I would think.  To be ordinary ( ie – not a genius, not “special”, not powerful) and to lose faith, when faith has equaled identity, is difficult.

Last week, I asked for faith.  I decided not to wait for a “who” or “Whom.”  I just asked the Universe. 

I thought about that for awhile, and came to this – if I’m going to believe anything, I want it to be True.  Not a fairy story or a fantasy, though I have no problem believing in the Power of such, if that’s what it is.  But whatever I pin my soul on, my life, my identity … for that, I require truth.  I have a young friend  willing to say whatever someone believes is true IS.  Creating your own truth or Reality, I guess.  So if you think you’ve got bad karma and I think God is judging me … we’re both right, but only for ourselves, as far as that goes … I guess you could call that tolerance.  Never saying someone else is wrong, per se.  I just don’t agree with you, Mr. Jones, but if it’s true for you, then I respect your reality, as it were ….

I find this unsatisfying – perhaps because I once had a Truth, seemingly rock-solid, that was Absolute.  So to pick up a belief here or there and label it with that T seems less.  I can’t do that.  I asked for faith.  And then, for Truth.  If the Universe doesn’t know Truth, then there isn’t any to know, and if that’s the case, then I think it’s okay to live, and not trouble myself further ….

Faith's Journey .... Post #5

It's a loss of language, a loss of context ... an inability to articulate what I must essentially articulate ... frustrated attempts at communing and communicating with the Divine, with ... something, with ... some One. 






It's a freefall that doesn't end and a primeval scream that rips at the soul, but silently.  It's a fabric unraveling and a fibre disintegrating.  A hunger, a deep need for a faith that eludes, that's unnamable, that's beyond reach, that cannot be found. 

The question persists - how did this happen?  How did I come to this place?  And even, what has happened?  I don't know.  I can't tell.  And if I knew, I don't think I have language to speak it ... like that old text about there being a cry of the spirit that words cannot express. 



I've come to wonder if it's possible to recapture the ability to live beyond language - I mean, once I knew a whole world without language, like, when I was born and for awhile afterwards ...

Is it possible, could I be content, could I even live if my languageless-ness isn't remedied somehow?  I don't like it.  I want words to tell what's what and who's who and ... everything.  But ... are words always necessary?  Wordlessness equals powerlessness, helplessness, lack of ability.

 

 I want so badly to understand and I can't make heads or tails of it and then I tell myself it shouldn't matter, and I should stop trying to figure it out and label things with ultimate answers and stuff ... but I never believe myself when I say that. 

 I keep seeking, and I know another old text tells me that those who seek will, inevitably, find ... but I don't think I believe it, not yet, anyhow.  How I long for finding ...

  

Faith's Journey ... Post #4

  In a religion with a Holy Book, it’s a given that adherents to the religion should study the book, in order to know what they claim to believe.  Sort of like clicking “I accept,” or signing off on a medical form … you (hopefully) want to know what you’re accepting, signing, taking a stand for.  But even with that- a handy book or set of instructions - there’s room for interpretation and personal identification and understanding. 

When you read, you bring all of yourself, your experiences, your wonderings and needs along with you, as I do, and this causes us to read it, in a sense differently from the person next to us on the train or our mother or best friend.  I’ve always thought it amazingly risky – and incredibly open-minded – to trust (both on the Deity's part and the seeker or believer) to an ancient book full of tales which first were passed along orally before they could be written down.  Nonetheless, study I did, and hard and for hours on end, in an effort to understand. 

Years later, I met a whole crop of folks who had no interest in studying at all, or even reading … so what was it they adhered to?  Possibly their own oral traditions – things their grandfather said or their mother or that old wise woman down the road … But the thing I started out to talk about with you, Faith’s Journey, which I now rather wish I’d called A Journey of Faith, instead, is suddenly less a narrow road than a wide confluence of intersecting pathways, lanes and copses that may share quite little in common. 

The troubles of faith only grew for me when I found myself in the company of a very loud little man in a sandwich board sporting a megaphone and shouting, “Here is THE way!  Pay your dues and join our club and follow our rules … and we’ll get you on the Right Path!  No other way will take you there – no matter how tried and true – we assure you, ours is THE ONE AND ONLY WAY, no question.  What?  How do I know?  Because God told me, that’s why!” – or something along those lines - and I watched lots of people shake their heads and walk away, but many others ran to get on the path he shouted over.  As I watched in fascinated horror, I saw more and more people jump up by pathways and begin to shout and soon the cacophony of calling caused me to back away for a bit of quiet, in order to hear myself think for awhile.  Looking back, I saw some open fire on other path-guarders and walkers, while others hoisted national flags and some chanted threats of attacking and bombing and I? … I ran for my life. 

Grief, such grief, all of life seemed grief in that place.  Where was the organic oasis now?  How desperately I sought my friend’s cool peace, but she’d gone far away …

Faith's Journey ... Post #3

Enter the period affectionately nicknamed the “Jesus Freak Out”; if you’ve ever met anyone in this season, you know what it means.  Here’s how it happened.  Turned out Billy Graham was off holding meetings, but Jesus turned up at the local coffee shop, down in the park, when we stumbled in one night after a time at the bar around the corner.  People with bibles and guitars showing seekers the path of Life and … well, sign me up!  Joy in joining a community to share all things in common, "in the Name of Jesus." 

Church and church and more church, "in the Name of Jesus."  Music in the park, knocking on the doors of strangers to ask very personal questions, dwelling a lot on heaven and hell, convincing her family, and more, all "in the Name of Jesus."

In addition to all the activity, there was a real move to tidy up her life and cast off the depression and sadness ever-lurking in the shadows.  During the day, she inhabited a cubicle and took phone calls, but you failed to notice the cubicle and saw, instead, a woman sitting in a cool, green garden full of hanging, draping plants. 

That is my first true memory of her – an organic oasis in a harsh world.  Which pretty much sums her up all around, come to think of it....

 

There’s a fork in the road just ahead.  Our paths came from worlds apart to converge and now, they diverge again.  Which road shall I follow – hers, as I interpret it?  Or mine, now touched and influenced by her?  I choose my own, in order to ponder the questions, "What (has happened)?" and "How (did it happen)?"  My friend continued to enter the conversation here and there, but once she moved away, her impact was less direct, more diffused ....

Moment of clarity: Walking in the woods, I understand many things, even if only for moments at a time.  The understanding remains, somewhere deep within, and this affects some inner rootedness, particularly when surroundings make little sense .... There is a world that lies beneath language, beyond language.  I once knew that world, was well-acquainted with it, must've been, before I was born and even well into my infancy, but I fought against it, my language-less-ness - we nearly all do - and was pleased at the responsiveness of others as I learned first to squawk and coo, and then to mimic their sounds, eventually forming some semblance of understandable language, and then, some level of eloquence as I articulated with language anything I wished to convey.  For many, many years, this system served me well - even to a level of proficiency in writing and public speaking, which earned me kudos and commendations.  The Rhetoric stage of education, is, after all, the highest, is it not?  To articulate well, to argue concisely, to convince - highly prized skills indeed.  Language, words, logos - pause and consider for moments the importance of these in your life, our lives.  What is there, just there, beyond language?? ...  

Memories of Brooklyn video project

Please view this video and let me know what you think!

 http://animoto.com/play/1Skgb97Y1Y1iSQWu7818SA#

Faith's Journey ... Post #2

Childhood joys and trials … Adolescent angst … All enveloped in incense and stained glass, tree-climbing juxtaposed with learning to be a “young lady,” paper dolls and make-believe opposite coming-of-age and the bloom of inner secrets.

 

Not confiders in friends or family, my traveling friend and I now spoke of the loneliness and the fears, the high highs and low lows of a sensitive child, the isolation from self and others, and all seemingly endless and insurmountable.  Jumping rope, riding bikes, night-time sweats over racial conflicts in school and at home … where were all the answers we felt desperately in need of?  There was church, of course, but was it myth, as some claimed?  What is a myth?  Is it a fairy tale or something more …. Arguments within and without.  How was one to know?

And then one day, the Billy Graham Association came to town!  They showed a movie at the local movie theatre – The Hiding Place.  The story of a family who stood up to the Nazis during WW II Holland, hiding Jews, and ending up in a concentration camp.  So many died, so much suffering … but they said, "The Love of Jesus overcomes all odds."  After the film, communion, and people inviting Jesus into their hearts.  Joining the line of seekers – hoping for the answers to life’s questions – and they signed her up, but it didn’t seem to do much good.  And the years kept piling up, and life’s confusion with them …

There was a song, a John Denver song – Rocky Mountain High – and it seemed True, so when the opportunity came she packed her belongings and hopped on the train.  Have you ever seen the Rocky Mountains?  From a plane, you see the smog and brown cloud over Denver, but from the rails … Those mountains became life’s backdrop and its underpinning.  Their presence was as of a Being who watched over everything from a raised-up vantage point.  I’ve been there and I think I understand.  But … it seems the Rocky Mountain high became the biggest bummer ever.  There under the watchful eye of beautiful majesty lurked her old friends, loneliness and isolation.  Where was Billy Graham now?  For that matter, what had become of Jesus?

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