Chicken or the egg questions

In a discussion today in my commute to work the question came up about what should be a priority: the marriage or the children.

I feel strongly about both sides of this issue! No surprises here.

One tack is to say that marriage was instituted by God before the Fall and thus is the original blessing. Children, in this approach, come second. Actually third, since God comes first (though worshiping God was not the original mandate – procreation and stewardship was).

The whole “original blessings” thing, is so Mathew Foxy, and I do not really buy into it. But I was curious as to what the Bible actually says. In Genesis 1 there is nothing about marriage since man and woman are created together in the image of God. Genesis 2-3 brings out the idea of “helpmeet.”

These two chapters are not contradictory, of course. What they both are saying is that man-and-woman working together is the most complete reflection of the image of God. Not one alone. And working together to do what?  Well Gen 1 says to be fruitful and multiply. Which leads me to think that the Fall maybe came from Adam and Eve not “getting busy” and getting on with having some children? Too much time in their hands just doing what pleased them, and see what happens? (Complete speculation of course!)

At any rate, children do not get to enter the equation until after the Fall, though. And that is a significant point.

Post-Fall
My biggest complaint against the original blessings hypothesis (or exegesis) is that we clearly are not in Eden. Anything which happened there is useful simply to answer the question of whether God is malevolent or benevolent. This is, of course, not a trivial question, as the Gnostics and the Manichean heresy (as outlined by Augustine) shows what can happen when we posit a malevolent God. Philosophically this is actually a valid question, which needs answering. That is what the pre-Fall account gives us.

But we are post-Fall people. No matter what, this is where we are. So children are a fact of life, rather like having to work for a living!

So what are “children”? They are a “blessing from the LORD” (Psalm 127: 3-5). This equation of children and blessing is a constant in the Biblical account. A marriage with children is a blessed marriage. Even a marriage with adopted children is a blessed marriage, since we ourselves are adopted children of God (Eph. 1:5).

How are we, as creatures, to fulfill the original commandment of being fruitful (Genesis 1:28), which is demanded of all living creatures on Earth from plants to humankind, without, well, procreating?

So, it seems to me that marriage is the VEHICLE through which the blessing outlined in Psalm 127 (and many other places) can occur. Before we were fallen, blessings were not really that important. I mean Adam walked with God and chatted with him, and did some gardening. Pretty much a full life. And there was no curse to require an equal-and-opposite blessing.

Once we were kicked out (for our own good) God bends over backwards to keep finding ways to bless us, to bring us a little more of that goodly (and godly!) Edenic air. Finally giving us His Son, as the ultimate blessing.

To raise godly children has a profound and powerful significance in the economy of salvation. Being given a good helpmeet and then together raising godly (and helpful!) children is a lifetime practice of faithfulness to God.

I say lifetime because, even though we leave father and mother to be united to our spouses, we are never given an option to stop being their children. So the commandments to respect father and mother remain, and so do the parent’s responsibility to not drive their children NUTZ (Ephesians 6:4).

The mutual love which is evident in godly families is to be the cornerstone of a godly society: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21).

In fact Ephesians chapters 5 and 6 cover the family dynamic of a Christ-centered, voluntary mutual submission life. This will sometimes require that one member or another of a household be given more importance. And I guess that is my (long-winded) point: there is no set-in-stone formula, except that Christ is the center. Love demands that sometimes, for a minute, hour, day, or season, one person in the family be the principal recipient of everyone’s care. And then the tides change.

Where we go wrong, and where we always go wrong, is to try to take a snapshot of a moment in time, and hold it up, like an idol, as the one-and-only-way. We did this with apples, we did this with golden calves, Asherah poles, and Peter did it on Mt. Tabor. Over and over we take the “Kodak moment” and make it into the one and only reality.

Some husbands have gotten away with the “head of household” thing for a long time, without every really earning it (by loving their wives). Some wives have done the same.

Children, in this day and age especially, are told they are the centers of the universe. This needs to be corrected. They are a blessing, and a fundamental part of a godly family. But a part, not the center. They are also helpmeets, and the work never ends.

Is there anything pointless in the world?

I know this sounds a bit like a stupid question but I am not completely sure it is. You can take the idea of pointlessness to great heights as in this atheist argument by Rowe:

William Rowe has argued that God’s existence is inconsistent with pointless or gratuitous evil. By “pointless evil,” Rowe means evil that does not and cannot serve a greater good. And Rowe believes that there is such pointless evil in the world.

(1) If God exists, there would be no pointless evil.
(2) There is pointless evil.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.

The linked apologetic article is quite brainy, but feel free to indulge. If you want to go closer to the source go here – which is this:

(1) There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
(2) An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
(3) (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Rowe 1979: 336)
This argument, as Rowe points out, is clearly valid, and so if there are rational grounds for accepting its premises, to that extent there are rational grounds for accepting the conclusion, that is to say, atheism.

It seems to me the original argument and the apologetic summary are a bit different. I do not want to get tangled in these. I want to ask an even more fundamental question: is there anything pointless in the world? Does anything pointless even exist? Ask it another way – is there anything in the world which is purposeless?

My point here is to tease out this idea of pointlessness, of a truly useless act, or even existence. Something which serves absolutely no purpose at all. Either in the past, e.g. fossils, or in the future, e.g. my child’s “time machine box” which we buried on our backyard.

A digression into art. Somewhere in the turn of the past century artists became infatuated with chance. There is a reason for this, reasons which belong to art history and criticism. But movements like Dadaism and Surrealism all came to want to upset the apple cart of a Victorian era which had congealed, or stagnated, into its own “perfection.”

Jump forward a little and you have the abstract work of  – who dripped paint into the canvas to make sure there was little of the muscle memory of the years of teaching he received. obviously, if you are trying to do away with the concrete, it makes sense to do away with the very mechanisms which makes it happen, your very brushstrokes.

Go a different direction and look at the long tradition in Japanese Zen calligraphy of drawing a circle (called Enso). Visually a circle is about simple as they get, perhaps even simplistic. the spirit behind it is very complex and the theology even more involved. In Zen, the Enso symbolizes a mind which is no-mind. This state allows the body and spirit to create the circle in one movement. Unlike other forms of art work, there is no possibility of modification. If you get it wrong you have to make a new one. But a new one will be so unlike the old one that comparison is impossible, thus making each moment unique and perfect as-is.

The brush stroke is guided by the spirit, not the wrist, and so it is action without effort. If you develop your spiritual faculties you will begin to see that your enso reveals your personality and even your spiritual level. Some say they can tell the speed and pressure the circle was made, and so your state of mind at that precise moment. It becomes some sort of ink-based Kirlian photography.

I am reminded of a particularly nasty form of torture perpetrated by totalitarian governments where prisoners are forced to dig holes for no purpose, day after day. This exercise in futility drives many to suicide. Is it because pointlessness is so unnatural? My guess is yes.

But the deeper question of purpose remains. To me, the universe itself has a point. Or maybe many points. Certainly everything that exists in the natural world in our planet serves a purpose from the mineral kingdom all the way up. Humanity has been able to create new meanings out of things, as when Michelangelo sculpted David. But the marble had its own meaning even as an uncarved block.

General versus unique

General events are those which can be accounted for by laws of nature. They are contextually unspecific, e.g. an object will fall at the rate of 9.8 m/s2 no matter what object it is, and no matter how much that object might complain about it, or be confused about it.

Unique events on the other hand, are those events which fall outside general events. Clearly naturalism does not believe that there are any such things as unique events. All events are general, even if they are rare. Still they are just one of an indefinite number of other events of a similar nature. In fact, the similarity of events is critical for the naturalist understanding. In a sense naturalism is a metaphorical way of looking at reality, A is like B in ways C, D and E and unlike Q in ways X, Y, and Z.

The Buddhists talk about interdependent co-arising , which is a really neat term which says that there is nothing unique, everything is interconnected in a web of causation.

This insight is central to Buddhism, and its solution to the problems of suffering. It is also central to science in its goal to derive principles and laws to explain events. I think this is one reason that Buddhism and science work so well together.

And it also explains why Christianity is so at odds with science at a deep level. Christianity relies on a series of unique events as the basis of its understanding. There is the uniqueness of Creation, the Incarnation, the Resurrection.

In an interesting way these three are interdependent! But their interdependence points to the absolute uniqueness of Jesus. There is no other event which can serve as a metaphor for Jesus, and Jesus is not a metaphor for anything else.

The attempts by Frazer, Campbell, and the more histrionic Hillman not withstanding, Jesus is not a type of sun god myth, dying and being reborn. Jesus is not a type of Osiris, Zoroaster or any others.

Even if the general pattern of worship, and the trappings of commonplace belief would end up making them look similar. The religions of men will tend towards a common point, precisely because they are the responses of finite humans.

Also, the attempts by the Jesus Seminar and other agnostics (or downright atheists) who usually claim an enlightened liberal theology not withstanding, Jesus is also not a type of Hebrew prophet. Jesus is not a type of prophet, healer, or magician.

Even if some of his teachings dovetail or are in line with other wisdom teachers, and his healing powers on par with other shamans and healers, and his prophetic utterings echoing other prophets. The wisdom of humanity will tend towards a common point, precisely because they are inklings of truth.

The claim of Christianity is that He is absolutely unique. Everything about him is absolutely unique.

The miracle of his birth, the miracles he performed, and the miracle of his resurrection, are not magical. Magic would imply some sort of general principles, either as a form of proto-science or even as a form of meta-science which taps into a grander view of reality. Either of these do not explain the miracle which is Jesus. The birth, life and resurrection of Jesus are signs of his absolute uniqueness.

This should be clear, painfully clear. It is probably quite offensive, I know I was offended by it for a long time.

As Aslan said to Jill in The Silver Chair:

Remember, remember, remember the Signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the Signs.

And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly. I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the Signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances.

Remember the Signs and believe the Signs. Nothing else matters.

Pay no attention to appearances, look deeper into the Signs. That is the work: to remember and to believe in spite of, or better through, the appearances to the contrary.

Marathoning

Last Saturday (10th) I completed my first marathon. I would have liked to say I “ran” my first marathon, but that was not in the cards.

The first half of the marathon went like clockwork. In fact, better. Right in the first 200 meters the emotional impact that I was actually going to run this thing, this goal/dream/haunting of mine was actually being realized, was enough to make me cry. I pulled down my shades, sucked up the emotion – needed some reserve emotion for later, I thought. I did not realize at the time how right I was.

The first 13.1 miles went well. It is a distance I am very comfortable with, and can do without much stress. “Not much stress” is, of course, a relative term. But still, it is a do-able distance. Then things started going badly. On mile 16 I had a slight case of cramping on my calves. No biggie. A little stretching on the side of the road cured that. Nothing I had not felt before, and easily remedied with some more Gatorade.

But on mile 18 things badly. I heard, or thought I heard, a pop on my left leg. I looked it up and apparently the muscle there is called femoral bicep. Anyway, it popped, as I said, and it brought me to a complete halt. Pain shooting up the back of my legs, exploding in my head. Argh. I stopped for a while, holding on to a street light for a few minutes, waiting for the fluttering of the muscle to subside before I attempted to move again.

From then on, for the last 8 miles of the race, all I could do was speed walk, and jog gently for about 60 seconds before I felt the tremors in the muscle again. Even then, I still overtook some people. Clearly there were a lot of us battling all sorts of things – energy, fears, injuries. There is something very touching about taking part in this procession of pain called the marathon.

With about 200 meters to go I had a recurrence of the calf cramps. This time both of them at the same time. Hard to even stand up. At this point there were quite a few people cheering the runners on, and I could hear people shouting “You are almost there!” willing me their wills, their energy.But muscles, like a mother’s love, are blind to reason. I argued with my legs, begged, cajoled, looking for some way to get a spark to carry me to the end.

And the spark came. Not from the inside, but from the outside. I did move again, not sure if propelled by the well-wishers or out of sheer shame of failing so close to the end. Within a few steps of restarting my two sons came running out of the crowd. They “escorted” me to the finish line, followed by my wife. Within a few steps of the line I lost my emotional control again and wept openly and profusely. No tears, ’cause there wasn’t any water left. But the sobbing was loud!

The afternoon after the race I was too tired to notice much pain, but on Sunday the left leg really came into its own – shouting at me “Why?! Why?!” Very loudly. Hell hath no fury like a muscle scorned, I tell you.

Some highlights of the race: around the 12 mile mark I was overtaken by both a pregnant woman and a man doing that speedwalking thing you see in the Olympics. And I was going at a decent pace at that point. Quite funny, actually.

So, in short: the marathon is something completely crazy. My beloved wife was laughing hard this weekend saying “And you actually paid for the privilege!” Yes, yes I did. I worked as hard as I was able to over 260 days of training (since Feb!), clocked over 600 miles. And I crossed that line running, sort of. In 2011 only 0.5% of the US population had ever attempted a marathon (about half a million people, and now one more! Me!). It has been a desire of mine to attempt this distance, with one of the longest pedigrees in athletics. But not only myself, this love of running came from my mom, and in a sense it was her dream as well. I had a whole “team” of people, in many continents, following my race Tweets (no, I did not tweet, the race chip automatically sent them updates!)

So I completed it. This, like all other experiences, is something no one can take from me. Not even myself.

Was Calvin a monk?

Yes, I know, the one who was a monk was Luther. But I was wondering if part of what makes the Reformation so profound is the fact that both these luminaries were men gifted with a tremendous amount of courage to confront themselves before God, first, and then to turn around and inspire others to join them, despite the warnings of the institution which controlled just about every facet of people’s live at the time (yep looking at you Leo X) which kept warning them “Here be Dragons” and that it was safer to stay huddled in the arms of the Mother Church, and let Mother deal with all that scary stuff.

But the Reformers were gifted (cursed?) with at least one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit: fortitude. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church (yes, I am enjoying the irony) this gift allows us to “overcome our fear and are willing to take risks as a follower of Jesus Christ. A person with courage is willing to stand up for what is right in the sight of God, even if it means accepting rejection, verbal abuse, or physical harm. The gift of courage allows people the firmness of mind that is required both in doing good and in enduring evil.”

What has this to do with monasticism? To start here is a rather lengthy quote which connects Calvin’s enterprise with my monastic leanings:

“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes, and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. . . . We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him. . . . It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.” (John Calvin, The Institutes: Book 1)

In short: “Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.”

This kind of inner work, of course, meshes very well with monastic practices. If there is one thing that monastic life leads you to is to true self-knowledge. Well, it COULD lead you to self-knowledge. We are slippery creatures, and quite capable of rationalizing away just about any piece of truth or good news we come across, and most certainly avoiding any uncomfortable, sinful and downright embarrassing knowledge.

Going back a few centuries (ok almost a millenia), the first monastics turned their backs on the corrupt church – in their view the church sold out to the Roman Empire, the very Empire that just a few years before was persecuting and killing Christians, was now giving them power and prestige.

So they felt that the church had lost its way, and turned their backs on it and walked off into the desert. Literally. The Reformers did basically the same. They too walked off into the desert, though theirs was more metaphorical (not much desert in the Alps).

Obviously, Calvin was not a monk in the canonical sense, and his dissolution of the monasteries seems to point in the other direction, but as I have argued repeatedly, I am not so sure that the walls make a monk, no more than the habit! Taking a page from Paul who in Romans 2 talks of “true Israelites” being the ones who are so internally:

“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.” (v. 28-29).

So I would say that it is not the wearing of a habit, or the tonsure (which no one wears any longer), or living in a cloister (lovely as it is) that makes one a monk. Rather it is to be found in a fearlessness to listen to God’s word, and a desire to be as faithful to God as possible, sacrificing everything. In this sense, Calvin does meet some of the conditions for a true monastic calling….and even though he dissolved the monasteries, he went on to impose a (not very nice) theocracy in Geneva, trying to ensure that all its citizens lived under a holy rule…hmmm…Cavin the Abbot of Geneva?

I am sure he has just dropped his harp in Heaven at the suggestion! Where he failed (and he did so spectacularly with banishments and executions under his rule), would be nothing but another chapter in the long history of monasticism, even St. Benedict himself survived attempts at assassination…

Overlearning

The word “overlearning” has struck a chord with me this morning. Let me try to unpack it a little. First let’s begin with the opposite of overlearning, which in a spiritual sense, is not “ignorance” but rather “no mind”.

Our hearts, through the out-of-control conditions of our birth and upbringing, have learned a way of responding to life and its challenges in very efficient, nearly autonomic ways. As I have repeatedly blogged about, I am pretty certain that the vast majority, if not all, our actions are determined below the threshold of consciousness. Any experienced meditators out there will be able to vouch for the difficulty or being aware of thought formation at the source. It is slippery like a fish in water.

This is where our inner (and outer) training comes in. We train more than our bodies to perform certain actions (as in sports or yoga). We train our very neural pathways, and push down new processes and modes of behavior to be available to that subcutaneous consciousness which makes our decisions for us. We, in short, train our instincts.

Obviously, as successful organisms in this planet, we have many pre-programmed mechanisms for survival literally embedded in our bodies – what do you think the cerebellum is, if not the physical manifestation of the drives, desires, hopes and fears of billions of ancestors as they ran, played, prayed, fought, loved and died? The same, of course with all other bits and pieces of this modular lump of gel safely ensconced in our skulls.

So when threatened we have survival instincts which take over the body to ensure survival – releases of adrenaline, pain receptors numbed, higher power and endurance, and so on. We are all, when it comes to survival, incredible Hulks!

A long time ago, I think I might have been reading Jung, I came across a mantra (of sorts) of the alchemists, “opus contra naturam”, which means “Work against nature.” For me this encapsulates pretty much all of the history of Western Civilization. Progress is work against nature, to better our chances of survival. Of course, what is lacking in this saying is some way to break the loop, which can quickly become vicious. For example, our desire to work against nature, has had some (ahem) less than desirable consequences. Eventually our very desire to make gardens out of every wilderness, may lead us to not being able to cultivate any gardens at all.

But I digress. The point here is that the monastic training, the practices which form the core of all monastic experience in all religions, most especially the copious recitation of sacred texts, are there to both overwhelm and then override the natural impulses which are spinning out of control. That is, overlearning.

These methods are, in programming languages, a loop break. The purpose of a loop is to enable us to do something many times over. Most of our lives require an amazingly small set of elements (actions, emotions, thoughts, words!) which are just repeated over and over. But these same elements can congeal and become the only way to respond to every thing. A fear response might have been valid once, but to continue to apply it to every relationship and situation, is clearly an unskilled use of human nature. So there are many times when you not only want but need to stop running a loop. This is what monastic practices are, at their core. They break loops in our minds, enabling us to recover the fully possibility of expressing our human nature.

So there is a need to add a second level to the old alchemists desire to work against nature. We need a loop break! This would give us a more complete and workable monastic process. Something like: Work against nature but only until we find/become love. Then you work with nature, with your natural self, which is the image of God.

Any Latin scholars out there care to find a way to make this into a pithy motto?

Responsory

I have been spending time with the Northumbrian Community’s Daily Prayer book. It has very quickly become my favorite breviary. The “mood” of it matches mine lately – it is absolutely focused on the blessings of life, on the rhythms of nature, and on the value of small, deliberate, quiet, unobtrusive, unadorned service.

I have been particularly struck with their Rule of Life. It opens like this: “This is the Rule we embrace. This is the Rule we will keep: we say YES to AVAILABILITY; we say YES to VULNERABILITY.” Caps are theirs. This is a profound statement which seems to be an answer to the questions of how to be a contemplative in the midst of a busy life.

The Introduction to the Rule (written by Trevor Miller) mentions something which I have been mulling over. He says, “This is really important to understand: our Rule is our response to these questions . It is not an answer, only a response: an exploration of a way for living rooted in liberty rather than legalism or licence.”

No answers, and most certainly not The Answer. Just responses. Without a doubt, these come in many flavors, and not all of them are life-enhancing. But some of the sting is removed if we keep in mind that there are a range of possible responses, from the Dead End “No!”, to “Yes!” to my own cry of “Only Yes!”

This also leads me to all the great mysteries of our faith, and all the questions that life throws at us. We will not have answers to many of these, in fact we will not have answers to most. But all of them require a response. That response is our free-will gift to whatever it is. And our responses carry with them our most profound aspirations and our deeply ingrained ethics. Responses reveal our deepest selves. Most often a response is something that happens nearly automatically. We are then able to take that initial response and curb it, bend it, teach it and train it like a bonsai tree, even deny it. Responses sometimes become actions, and sometimes they become healing actions, but not always. yet we must respond. We are responsive beings. We hardly ever (if ever at all) have the initiative of action, acting completely free without any conditions. We are most of the time (all the time?) responding to events, we are reacting to circumstances. This is not a bad thing, because it is our lot. What we must work at is in how to respond.

There is a lifetime of work in this: joining the Kingdom Choir in a joyous responsory.