Resenting "Reality"
Forgiving Reality for Being What It Is
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
The story of Noah and the flood is filled with insight. (Although I do not really believe God killed all the people on the earth and saved only one family!) God tells Noah to bring into the ark all the opposites: the wild and the domestic, the crawling and the flying, the clean and the unclean, the male and the female of each animal (Genesis 7:2-15).
Then God does a most amazing thing. God locks them together inside the ark (Genesis 7:16). Check it out.
Most people never note that God actually closed them in! God puts all the natural animosities, all the opposites together, and holds them in one place. I used to think it was about balancing all the opposites within me, but slowly I have learned that it is actually “holding” things in their seemingly unreconciled state that widens and deepens the soul. We must allow things to be only partly resolved, without perfect closure or explanation. Christians have not been taught how to live in hope. The ego always wants to settle the dust quickly and have answers right now. But Paul rightly says, “In hope we are saved, yet hope is not hope if its object is seen” (Romans 8:24). The virtue of hope widens and deepens our foundation.
Noah’s ark is not meant to be a cute children’s story; it is a mature metaphor for the People of God on the waves of time, carrying the contradictions, the opposites, the tensions, and the paradoxes of humanity-preserving and protecting diversity inside of a safe unity created by God. (Thinking of it merely as punishing “bad” people only appeals to our lowest instincts and puts us back into meritocracy.) It is no accident that animals are deemed worth saving and that the covenant YHWH proclaims after the flood is “with every living creature,” not just humans as we presume. (Read Genesis 9:10, 13, 15, where it is said three times!) This is no small point, although it has been largely ignored.
God’s gathering of contraries is, in fact, the very school of salvation, the school of love. That’s where
growth happens: in honest community and committed relationships. Love is learned in the encounter with “otherness” as both Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas taught. Not coincidentally, they both were
Jewish philosophers whose worldview was formed by the Hebrew scriptures.
Forgiveness becomes central to Jesus’ teaching, because to receive reality is always to “bear it,” to bear with reality for not meeting all of our needs. To accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is, almost day by day and sometimes even hour by hour. Such a practice creates patient and humble people.
Forgiveness reveals three goodnesses simultaneously. When we forgive, we choose the goodness of
the other over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own capacity for goodness in a way that almost surprises us. We are finally in touch with a much Higher Power, and we slowly learn how to draw upon this Infinite Source.
Gateway to Silence:
Create in me a clean heart. -Psalm 51:10
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 36-37; and with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony Messenger Press: 2001), 141.
In doing my 4th step, i have been asked to list my resentments. So far. it is a very short list. I do not consider myself a resentful person. To the extent that i was resentful, i was relieved of that "poison" about thirty years ago.
But i resent the United States of America for being the United States of America. Most people would consider the United States to be a piece of reality.
People who try to percieve things spiritually do not always see things the way most sane people do. Taoists insist that things are creations of desire, while Hindus take manifest reality to be maya, i.e. illusion or delusion.
I am trying to believe this, and the consequences of such beliefe should be mind altering and earth shaking, but they aren't. When Krsna shows Arjuna the true nature of reality it does blow his mind; but Krsna's advice to him was pretty much "Do what you've been doing -- you are a warrior get out there and fight, and by the way, be sure to maintain the caste system!"
When i conclude that what i thought was real is illusion and delusion, i can no longer continue business as usual. I know i should become a contemplative and place a "fog of forgetting" between my "True Self" and this delusion we call reality. But the delusion includes my small self which continues to pretend it is me.
I do not believe i need to forgive reality for reality is beautiful and perfuct. But i need to forgive myself for not seeing that; and to forgive the delusion for being a delusion.
Peace, compassion, and mercy to any who finished reading this. and to everybody else as well.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
The story of Noah and the flood is filled with insight. (Although I do not really believe God killed all the people on the earth and saved only one family!) God tells Noah to bring into the ark all the opposites: the wild and the domestic, the crawling and the flying, the clean and the unclean, the male and the female of each animal (Genesis 7:2-15).
Then God does a most amazing thing. God locks them together inside the ark (Genesis 7:16). Check it out.
Most people never note that God actually closed them in! God puts all the natural animosities, all the opposites together, and holds them in one place. I used to think it was about balancing all the opposites within me, but slowly I have learned that it is actually “holding” things in their seemingly unreconciled state that widens and deepens the soul. We must allow things to be only partly resolved, without perfect closure or explanation. Christians have not been taught how to live in hope. The ego always wants to settle the dust quickly and have answers right now. But Paul rightly says, “In hope we are saved, yet hope is not hope if its object is seen” (Romans 8:24). The virtue of hope widens and deepens our foundation.
Noah’s ark is not meant to be a cute children’s story; it is a mature metaphor for the People of God on the waves of time, carrying the contradictions, the opposites, the tensions, and the paradoxes of humanity-preserving and protecting diversity inside of a safe unity created by God. (Thinking of it merely as punishing “bad” people only appeals to our lowest instincts and puts us back into meritocracy.) It is no accident that animals are deemed worth saving and that the covenant YHWH proclaims after the flood is “with every living creature,” not just humans as we presume. (Read Genesis 9:10, 13, 15, where it is said three times!) This is no small point, although it has been largely ignored.
God’s gathering of contraries is, in fact, the very school of salvation, the school of love. That’s where
growth happens: in honest community and committed relationships. Love is learned in the encounter with “otherness” as both Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas taught. Not coincidentally, they both were
Jewish philosophers whose worldview was formed by the Hebrew scriptures.
Forgiveness becomes central to Jesus’ teaching, because to receive reality is always to “bear it,” to bear with reality for not meeting all of our needs. To accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is, almost day by day and sometimes even hour by hour. Such a practice creates patient and humble people.
Forgiveness reveals three goodnesses simultaneously. When we forgive, we choose the goodness of
the other over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own capacity for goodness in a way that almost surprises us. We are finally in touch with a much Higher Power, and we slowly learn how to draw upon this Infinite Source.
Gateway to Silence:
Create in me a clean heart. -Psalm 51:10
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 36-37; and with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony Messenger Press: 2001), 141.
In doing my 4th step, i have been asked to list my resentments. So far. it is a very short list. I do not consider myself a resentful person. To the extent that i was resentful, i was relieved of that "poison" about thirty years ago.
But i resent the United States of America for being the United States of America. Most people would consider the United States to be a piece of reality.
People who try to percieve things spiritually do not always see things the way most sane people do. Taoists insist that things are creations of desire, while Hindus take manifest reality to be maya, i.e. illusion or delusion.
I am trying to believe this, and the consequences of such beliefe should be mind altering and earth shaking, but they aren't. When Krsna shows Arjuna the true nature of reality it does blow his mind; but Krsna's advice to him was pretty much "Do what you've been doing -- you are a warrior get out there and fight, and by the way, be sure to maintain the caste system!"
When i conclude that what i thought was real is illusion and delusion, i can no longer continue business as usual. I know i should become a contemplative and place a "fog of forgetting" between my "True Self" and this delusion we call reality. But the delusion includes my small self which continues to pretend it is me.
I do not believe i need to forgive reality for reality is beautiful and perfuct. But i need to forgive myself for not seeing that; and to forgive the delusion for being a delusion.
Peace, compassion, and mercy to any who finished reading this. and to everybody else as well.