This time of year tends to be challenging for me. I would guess the same is true for many others out there. And what’s interesting to me is that although the level of activity with others is often ramped up, so, too, can the feelings of loneliness. Seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Maybe, and maybe not.

The frantic pace of the holidays, coupled with the darkness and unheeded calls to turn inward and reflect on our lives, make one ripe for loneliness.

Pema Chodron writes: “Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company.”

How often I have felt that, and then done that, in so many ways. I bet you, too, have a fairly long list if you take a little time to reflect on it.

Yet there have been times where I have simply sat with it, breathed into that ghost inside me and watched as it inevitably changed. Not that it always went away completely, but there nearly always has been a softening of the energy when I have given it some space through breathing and meditation.

Given the increased focus on slowing down and paying attention while I’ve been with people in the past few weeks, I’m finding that there’s been less loneliness floating around these parts. Furthermore, when it comes, I’m letting go of identifying myself with it. Just like any other experience, loneliness doesn’t define who I am.

How about you? Do you experience loneliness this time of year?

Photo Credits

Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

Loneliness During the Dark Days of Winter is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

When I’m in the yoga world, it’s not uncommon for someone to say, upon hearing about my Zen practice, “Oh, I’m terrible at meditation” or “It’s too hard for me.” Sometimes, I hear the same thing as well from newcomers on Sunday mornings down at the zen center.

However, as fellow Buddhist blogger Algernon says in a recent post, there isn’t really such a thing as a “bad meditator.”

We are difficult because even when we are drawn to meditation, when we feel some tug to sit down and wash off our minds by doing some very simple awareness practice, holding hands with our pulse, ahhh the difficulty arises: “I’m a terrible meditator. My attention goes everywhere. My thinking is out of control.”

Translation: I don’t waaaaaannnnaaaaa!!

Sometimes it feels like going to the dentist, and sometimes it feels like soaking in a hot tub. But that isn’t really the meditation – that’s coming from you and me.

I think there are a lot of stories about what meditation “should” look like that cause people trouble. Such as the view that your mind should always be quiet, or that you are supposed to force all thoughts into silence. In addition, a lot of folks have conjured up an image of the perfect location and environment to do meditation in and then, when such a place isn’t available, they decide they can’t do it. Furthermore, perhaps they believe the nonsense folks like Zen teacher Brad Warner espouse, suggesting that zazen only happens in certain postures, and can’t be “done in a chair.” (I agree with Brad, by the way, that meditation is an embodied practice, and that thinking you can do it in any old posture doesn’t fly. I just don’t get his anti-chair position, and in general, am an advocate for more flexibility around form.)

Beyond all of that, though, there’s the strong sense of compartmentalization that many of us do with our spiritual lives. Meditation practice is often viewed as something done in such-and-such-a-place, time, and manner.

Whereas I have meditated on buses, park benches, in the middle of the Occupy protests, in public restrooms, among other places. I also often chant while bicycling, and for two winters in a row did lovingkindness meditations walking in the skyway system in downtown St. Paul. Of course, I also practice in the places many consider “normal” – like on my meditation cushion at home, or in my zen center. But overall, I remain focused on breaking down walls and barriers – infusing practice into my everyday life, and everyday life into my practice.

I encourage you all to do the same.

Photo Credit

Meditation @ Flickr

The “Bad” Meditator is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Over the past year, I have been collecting the blogs of people living “alternative” forms of career. Or, you might say, doing lives in a form different from the wage-an-hour, 9-5 setting. One thing I’ve noticed among nearly everyone writing these blogs is a passion for life that bleeds through their words. Even when they’re writing about something miserable, about some form of suffering, there’s still an energy present that I find myself attracted to. An underlying joy or ease, perhaps? I haven’t quite pinned it down, and don’t think “it” ever will be.

One of the blogs I follow is called “Zen Habits.” It’s author, Leo Babauta, is clearly influenced by Buddhism, although I don’t know whether he actually practices or not. This is what he says his writing is about:

Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives. It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, find happiness.

Now, much can be said about what might be called the “simplicity movement.” I know Katie over at Kloncke once made some astute criticisms about how simplicity advocates tend to speak to middle and upper class folks, and often fail to comment on forms of systemic injustice that often stand in the way of poor and working class people benefiting. Another way to look at it is that it’s often an individualist or nuclear family centric approach.

So, with that said, I like Leo’s blog because while it does appeal to that middle class, consumerist crowd in need of “downsizing” their attachments to stuff and other clutter, it’s not limited to that. Some of the articles could easily be used by someone who is totally broke and trying to figure out how to financially support themselves in a more beneficial way. And some of the posts are simply redirecting our attention towards more wholesome aspects of life and living.

Anyway, I don’t want to just plug Leo’s blog here, but to bring up what he wrote in a recent post.

Gratitude solves all problems. I am grateful for having this friend, or stranger, in my life, and I’m grateful for the chance to even be here, and for the incredible life I have.

Sounds really simple, doesn’t it? Also might sound like nonsense to the practical mind. And it’s true, “problems” in the relative sense don’t get “solved” by simply being grateful. I’ve spent large chunks of time down at our Occupy Wall Street offshoot in Minneapolis this past week precisely because there are complicated social issues that need to be approached in a radically different way.

However, go back to that first sentence. “Gratitude solves all problems.” I think this is a perfect way to describe the tapping into the universal energy flowing through everything all the time. That “place” where it is all ok right now.

Gratitude breaks through suffering. I’ve felt that over and over in my life. Maybe you have as well. And for all of our ability to produce endlessly “profound” spiritual teachings as a species, it so often does come back to something simple that we can rely on. Trust in. While working to address all the complications standing before us.

Gratitude Solves All Problems is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Some years after the experiences which created the story See The Light, NakSanSa Temple was destroyed by fire.

An inferno in 2005, which began in the pine forest surrounding the temple, was so intense that the bronze temple bell, which I had been privileged to sound, a national treasure which dated back to the 15th Century, was melted.

It wasn’t the first time NakSanSa had been destroyed.

The temple had previously been razed by fire in the 13th Century by the Mongolian hordes. From 1392, during the Joseon Dynasty, the temple was reconstructed. It was expanded by royal order in 1467, 1469, 1631 and 1643.

It was again burnt down in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Since the fire of 2005, NakSanSa Temple has again been rebuilt.

The consecutive painstaking rebuilding of the temple is a testament to the dedication of the Korean people and successive national and provincial governments.

No nails are used in the traditional wooden construction of Buddhist temples in South Korea.

The present-day temple museum displays a wooden violin and cello built from structural wood that survived the fire.

NakSanSa Temple is as perennial as Buddhism itself.

Photo Credits

All Images Courtesy Of Wikipedia

Built On Faith is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Gonging a giant bronze bell at 3 o’clock in the morning isn’t everybody’s idea of a must-do holiday experience, but if you are staying in a South Korean temple, it’s part of the job description.

Patience is also a required skill when taking tea with a Buddhist monk. There is far more involved than a spoon for each person and one for the pot.

It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for those who seek to be enlightened on the daily rituals of Buddhist monks and nuns, who strive for the harmony of Yin and Yang, a temple is the place to “Yang” out.

Temple stays in South Korea are experienced by thousands of tourists and students annually, eager to learn more about the history of Korean Buddhism, which spans more than 1600 years.

It is a fascinating window on religious life.

From early morning chanting to the dignified tea ceremony, the reverential approach to eating and the humble evening meal, a monk’s life is far more than robes and meditation.

In South Korea, religion is a living history.

There are around 800 monasteries, with histories dating back centuries, which combined represent a treasure trove of sweeping, tile-roofed temples, halls, shrines, classic oriental gardens, paintings, literature, music, myth, food and tea, all celebrating the life of Buddha.

The monk SeolUng wrote: “The voice of the waves and the wind bell . . . and then the smell of pine needle, joins together. There is a generous spirit of the Saint Buddha in NakSanSa.”

Standing at the clifftop UiSangDae Pavilion, looking out to sea as the first rays of light bled over the rocky coastline to illuminate the layered roofs of NakSanSa Temple on South Korea’s northeast coast, it was impossible to disagree.

On a nearby hill, the benevolent eyes of a 16m-high stone Buddha, the largest of its kind in the orient, stare pensively out to sea. The air was warm and resin-scented, the still pines and gardens the epitome of peace on the 5am sunrise walk down the mountainside from the temple to the pavilion.

A flock of ducks, black against the rising light, flew across the red bruise of the sunrise as the grey wisps of cloud on the horizon glowed golden, then blood red, as the sun rose over the Sea of Japan.

The sunrise was a fitting reward for the strict 9pm curfew of the night before, following a welcome to temple life by our host, the Buddhist nun BupGwang. Before bed there was a visit to the bell pavilion, set amid carefully tended temple gardens alive with the buzz of cicadas.

The pavilion houses the four instruments used to pay homage and regulate temple life. The Dharma drum, covered on opposite sides with the hide of a bull and a cow to symbolise the harmony of Yin and Yang, represents earth-bound beings.

The brightly coloured wooden fish represents water creatures and the cloud-shaped gong, airborne creatures. The massive bronze bell, rung 28 times every morning and 33 times in the evening, is said to sound like the voice of Buddha, with its deep-throated boom giving relief to tormented beings in hell.

A monk beat the drum and then visitors took turns at gonging the bell, its heavy reverberations setting eardrums humming as it vibrated the air around us.

Visitors could also ring the bell at 3am. Some took up the offer, while others slept until 5am, then woke for the sunrise walk. A stroll through the grounds before bed revealed a shrine where monks prayed before a golden Buddha.

Clouds of incense and candle smoke wafted in the humid air, blending with the monks’ monotonous chanting as they made their 108 prostrations to the divine one.

The next morning, while being instructed by the nun BupGwang in the basics of Zen meditation, it became even more painfully obvious that Buddhism is physically demanding.

After fifteen minutes of focused meditation sitting in an attempted lotus position that looked something like a snapped pretzel, the leg joints were creaking and the muscles aching. BupGwang smiled inscrutably as she admitted to meditating for 10 hours at a sitting.

NakSanSa was first built in 677, during the Silla Dynasty (57BC-AD935).

Buddhist clergy live a life of humble devotion, following a demanding and sometimes lonely discipline epitomized by the formalities of the meal ceremony. Greed is abhorrent – food is looked upon as merely the fuel to drive the body to support the discipline of faith.

The food ritual, Balwoo Gongyang, means eating only that which is required, wasting nothing, not even the water used to clean the bowls, or Balwoo.

A simple meal of rice, kimchi (pickled vegetable), a thin soup and seaweed, becomes a study in the appreciation of the fundamentals of life as each is served into three bowls, with a fourth bowl filled with a measure of water.

Sitting cross-legged and straight-backed, there is no talking, a piece of kimchi or radish is kept at the side of the rice bowl to use to wipe out the bowls at the end of the meal.

The water, which should remain clean throughout the meal, is used to clean the bowls, and then drunk. While the meal ceremony honours simple food, the Korean Da-do, or tea ceremony, is about enjoying life’s subtleties.

The aim is to taste the tea not with the mouth but with the mind. Tea is one of the six offerings to Buddha, along with incense, flowers, lanterns, fruit and rice. It is brewed and drunk three times, with the ritual designed to bring out five distinct flavours – the tongue first tastes bitterness, followed by astringence, sourness, saltiness and sweetness.

During the tea ceremony, the nun BupGwang relaxed from her duties to smile and laugh as the foreigners juggled cups, lids and teapot in an attempt to serve the brew just right. Dressed in grey robes and with shaven head, it was hard to ascertain her age.

On an assurance from the interpreter that “she is not a normal person, so it doesn’t matter”, I asked the question every woman dreads: Excuse me, but how old are you?

She said she would answer later, but never did.

A Gallery Of Beautiful Image By Vincent Ross

  Photo Credits

All photos © Vincent Ross. All Rights Reserved.

See The Light is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

What I believe isn’t important.

The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive. In fact, such thinking is unavoidable. It’s what our highly evolved human brains do. They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us. Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.

There was a time when I considered my beliefs to be something more than just an assemblage of thoughts. I mistook them for something much more important. I thought they were me.

At various times in my life I believed I was a Catholic, a Unitarian, an agnostic and a secular humanist. I was a liberal, a feminist, an environmentalist and a pacifist. I took on new identities in search of a higher self and, down deep, I think, to distance myself from certain vulgarities that characterize the human condition — qualities like greed and aggression. By connecting certain thoughts, by cobbling together new identities, I convinced myself and others that those unwholesome human traits couldn’t possibly define me. They defined thieves and rapists and murderers. I was above all that, and had a portfolio of beliefs to prove it.

I was not alone in my quest adopt a new identity. Everyone in the world was doing it right along with me. Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. Socialists, Communists and Greens. Progressive Unionists, Christian Democrats – some crafting identities the way college freshmen craft double majors. We were all attempting to rise above our inherited animal nature, but rising above it didn’t make it go away. We were still greedy and aggressive despite our deeply held beliefs. We were walking contradictions, projecting our inner conflicts onto the world; in fact, we were the world, and that’s why it was such a bloody mess.

Having wandered from one belief system to another, I thought I had explored life’s biggest questions, but I was only asking questions for which my beliefs had provided me pat answers. I had yet to ask myself the most radical questions, the ones that would eventually smash my beliefs to bits. They were questions no one seemed to be asking, questions like:

If a clash of beliefs can be found at the root of all the violence in the world, then shouldn’t we question their validity – not the validity of any particular belief, but belief itself?

Separated from our beliefs, would we lose our moral bearing? Would we fall prey to our baser instincts and rock the world with depraved acts of violence? Or is this precisely the behavior we exhibit under the hypnotic spell our beliefs?

Imagine a city whose buildings have been leveled by an earthquake. That’s the image I had of my mind after my beliefs had been toppled. I felt like I could see forever in every direction. The towering thought structures that stood as my beliefs no longer blocked my view of the world. I felt a disorienting sense of freedom. Liberated from the beliefs that had conferred my identity, I felt blissfully anonymous. I was a person without a suffix, without an –ist to affirm my existence. I had unwittingly joined the only club that matters. It numbers in the billions, doesn’t charge dues and welcomes career criminals. It’s called the human race.

It’s been years since I disposed of my beliefs, and I have yet to turn into a sociopathic killer. On the contrary, I’ve developed a deep affection for my planet mates now that I’m not measuring them by the yardstick of my beliefs. Gone are the walls of thought that prevented me from seeing who they really are. Gone are the lectures I’d give in an attempt to raise their consciousness. And gone, mercifully, is my compulsion to cast them as evil so that I can appear virtuous.

However sacred or profound, a belief is nothing more than a thought, and thought is never the thing it describes. It can only hint at the wonders it attempts to touch. Sermons about love garble love’s ineffable beauty. Speeches about unity clank after the first syllable. Courting belief is a prescription for a virtual, not a virtuous life.

Guest Author Bio

John Ptacek
My essays explore the unquestioned assumptions that limit our capacity for happiness. They appear on my website, On Second Thought, www.johnptacek.com. I live in Wisconsin with my wife, Kitty.

Blog / Website: www.johnptacek.com

Photo Credit

Photo provided by John Ptacek

The Futility of Belief is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

What has being busy done for you lately?

I have had an extended period of not working a regular job, not having multiple volunteer gigs to juggle, and generally not having a lot of “fixed” things I “need” to do. One thing that has become crystal clear during this time is how much I have, in the past, pinned my identity to what I do, what I accomplish, and what I haven’t accomplished. There have been a number of times during the past several months where someone has asked me “What do you do?” and I have fumbled about, trying to list off the things I’m working on, instead of just saying something like “I’m in transition.” I realized at some point that there was an underlying anxiety in these situations, a voice saying something like “Throw them a bone so you don’t look lazy. Or confused. Or whatever it is you’re afraid of looking like.”

The reality, though, is that the question itself, one people seem so given to tossing around, demonstrates that sense that a person is only worth something if they do something. Lurking behind the question is often another one: “What have you done in the world lately?,” which can easily turn into “Are you worth my attention or not?” in our fragile little minds.

So, when I think about why it is so many of us seem to be busy much of the time, it quickly becomes tied to a desire to demonstrate worthiness. Worthiness to yourself and to other people.

This is probably one of the main reasons why a lot of folks struggle to do practices like meditation on a regular basis. It can seem like doing nothing in the grand scheme of things, and isn’t terribly impressive to offer in response to the question “What do you do?” or similar such questions. So much of the world seems to have succumbed to the view that life is solely, or mostly, about a series of social and economic exchanges — and that living a “good life” is built around “doing” as much as possible. Think of how much, for example, people with chronic illnesses or diminished capacities — even people who have given so much of their lives to others — think of how much they often struggle to accept a mostly being existence.

The first lines of the Zen poem “Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage” by Shitou go like this:

I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.
Now it’s been lived in — covered by weeds.

There’s a demonstration here, I believe, of the balance between action and non-action. Between doing and being done through. One of the problems with always being busy is that it sets forth a momentum of always being busy. Trying to get off that kind of karma train is pretty difficult. In fact, because of it’s fierce momentum, it often takes something dramatic, something traumatic, to get derailed. And even then, many of us think that this derailing is something horrible, something that is going to destroy our very worthiness as humans, and so we put all our effort into catching back up to the very train that brought us down.

What do you think is behind your “busy”? What has helped you not do so much?

Photo Credit

“Hamster on wheel” sualk61 @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

The Trouble With Living Overly Busy Lives is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Ross Lonergan reflects on the tension between faith and reason in the modern age.

I am a child of the modern world. On the one hand, I have been educated to think critically and thus do not suffer gladly what I consider to be foolish ideas or foolish beliefs. On the other hand, I keenly desire to be a fool for God in the sense that I seek to submit fully to “that which is greater than we are”— in the Christian tradition, this would be God. Moreover, I long to be fully engaged in a faith community that accepts me unreservedly and unconditionally for the person that I am while seeking to be uplifted by the beautiful liturgical traditions of the Church in which I grew up and with which I have a powerful emotional connection.

The tension becomes even more acute when I reflect on my belief in God. Who is God? Is he the bearded (and somewhat fearsome) figure sitting on a cloud and touching the finger of his creation Adam? Few of us can relate to this Old Testament image. But if the personification of God does not work for us as it did when we were children, who, or what, do we pray to? How do we experience God?

I am certain that there are others who feel, or have felt, this tension. The lucky ones find an individual church or faith community within their religious tradition that supports their personal quest and fulfills their spiritual needs. Others may deal with the tension by becoming secular humanists or “spiritual but not religious” people, by adopting a faith or subscribing to a philosophy outside of their cultural experience, or by simply setting the whole business of God to the side and going on with their lives.

Shortly following my return to Catholicism after many years of “lapse,” I had lunch with a young priest. In our conversation, the subject of faith came up and the priest told me that when he was a teenager, he, like many other young people, was bored with church and did not share the strong faith of his parents. I asked him what had restored his faith so radically that he decided, before he reached the age of twenty, that he wanted to become a priest. He gave me a few reasons, but the first thing he said in answer to my question was, “Well, we all have to believe in something.”

As I had already begun to experience the great tension between faith and reason, I was stunned by this statement. Was all that stood between agnosticism and faith a conscious decision to “believe in something”? Do we just sit down one day and say, “Let’s see now: I have to believe in something, so I guess, since I was raised Catholic and I pretty much know all the doctrines and stuff, it might as well be Catholicism”? And once that belief decision is made we are magically able to accept holus-bolus the body of Catholic teaching. No doubts, no going back, no questioning this belief or that doctrine. True peace of mind.

Despite his years of seminary indoctrination, his conservative cultural background, and the predominance of orthodox Catholicism among clergy and laypeople in the archdiocese in which I live, it is difficult to imagine that doubt does not at some point swamp this young man’s confident and comfortable belief. Can there be no conflict when you refuse Holy Communion to a couple you know is living together without the sacrament of matrimony yet offer it to a “legally” married couple you are 99 percent certain are using contraceptives? In your homily, when you tell us what God wants us to do, do you really believe you know what God wants? I am curious as to what happens to the orthodox believer when new information or problems of everyday life intrude upon the comfort zone of belief.

If we acknowledge God as our creator, surely we must also acknowledge that part of that creation is a brain and that the little creature is simply not content to accept whatever it is told. As modern, educated individuals, we also have to acknowledge the significant body of religious-historical research, biblical scholarship, and theological insight that has formed over the past one hundred years.

Let’s start with the concept of faith. If you asked any Christian the definition of faith, the reply would likely be that faith is belief; the more intellectually sophisticated Christian might say that faith was belief in something for which there is no evidence. When I was thinking of becoming a priest, I had a talk with a spiritual director (arranged by the young priest I mentioned above). The spiritual director, who writes a weekly article on scripture in the archdiocesan newspaper, told me that he had no difficulty believing in God. After all, he said—with a straight face—he had never seen Australia but it is obvious to everyone that Australia exists. (Well, Father, that’s because we all have to believe in something; it might as well be Oz.)

How did we come to adopt this narrowly defined concept of faith as belief?

It turns out that the idea of faith as belief is relatively new. New Testament scholar Marcus Borg tells us that “two developments account for its dominance in modern Western Christianity.” The first is the Protestant Reformation, which created a number of different Christian denominations, all of which distinguished themselves from other groups by emphasizing what they believed, “that is, by their distinctive doctrines or confessions.” In the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, Catholics firmly reasserted their version of Christian truth.

Borg says that the second development was the Enlightenment, which “identified truth with factuality” and which “called into question the factuality of parts of the Bible and of many traditional Christian teachings.” So Christians, and especially Catholics, had to defend their territory by declaring the literal-factual “truth” of the virgin birth, the miracles performed by Jesus, the Resurrection, and all the other biblical events; and if you didn’t believe these truths, you had no business calling yourself a Christian.

The post-Enlightenment Church, then, has defined faith for us as belief in the literal-factual interpretation of the Bible and agreement with/adherence to a set of doctrines stipulated by the institution. The Catholic Church has taken a particularly hard line on the issue of faith in the modern era. In so doing it has created an unending cycle of conflict with those who don’t accept the whole package but wish to remain in the church, and it has cast many others out to wander alone in the desert.

So what are the “faithful doubters” among us supposed to do?Marcus Borg expresses his understanding of the tension between reason and faith-as-belief by saying that “we cannot easily give our heart to something that the mind rejects.” In his book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, Borg offers alternate definitions of faith that have more to do with the heart than with the head. One of these is faith as fiducia, which amounts to “radical trust in God.” Borg says, “Significantly it does not mean trusting in the truth of a set of statements about God….Rather, it means trusting in God.” He also defines faith as fidelitas, which is fidelity or faithfulness to our relationship with God; and as visio, “faith as a way of seeing the whole, seeing ‘what is.’”

These are liberating definitions if we accept them; they free us from the constraints imposed by “faith in a box,” the requirement of believing in a predetermined and fixed set of dogmas and doctrines and following a code of man-made laws in order to maintain our status as members of an institutionalized faith community. Naturally, if we are to adopt this new paradigm of faith, we must also free ourselves of the guilt of imagined disloyalty to the faith of our childhood, the faith of our parents. To make such a change requires emotional, psychological, and spiritual adjustment. For some of us it may also mean moving to a new faith community.

Borg’s faith paradigm assumes that we are comfortable with how we perceive God. But many of us are not. We have not made the transition from our childhood belief in a personal, even anthropomorphic God to a more mature understanding and acceptance of a being or entity that embraces and infuses all creation and that dwells within us and is a part of us. We are stuck in our logical thinking mind and are afraid to make the imaginative leap necessary to experience the divine in all of creation.

In his book Jewish with Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the “spiritual leader of the Jewish Renewal movement,” acknowledges the contradiction between our logical minds and our heart’s desire to experience God in our lives. But, he says:

“Contradictions we can live with. Nothing we can say about God will survive the rigors of logical analysis. But that shouldn’t get in the way of our search for the presence we have felt in our most spiritually open—or spiritually hungry—moments. If there is a tension between what we know in our minds and what we feel in our hearts, let’s stay with that tension. If there is a contradiction let us take it upon ourselves. Only let us press on with our desire to experience the numinous and serve the patterns of the universe in a deeper, more meaningful way.”

At the same time Reb Zalman recognizes our very human need for “spiritual intimacy” with an Other, a God we can relate to in our moments of great joy and great pain. After all, we cannot talk to—or pray to—an abstraction or a concept. But Reb Zalman recommends that in order to deal with “the limitations language imposes on our grasp of the infinite,” we create our own names for God and our own ways of speaking to God that reflect our unique understanding and experience of the divine.

What I get from all of this is that for faith to work for us in the modern age we must be able to joyfully manage the tension between the head and the heart. On the one hand, I cannot believe that God would give me an active brain and then ask me to check it at the church door. I am very happy to be a “cafeteria Catholic,” freely choosing what to believe and eschewing what does not resonate. On the other hand, I must accept that an imaginative, childlike approach to God is not a bad thing if it allows me to experience the divine. Perhaps our need for God is as much emotional as it is spiritual.

A friend who read this article shared the following observation: “I sense that your journey is very much head stuff and you need a real blast of heart stuff. Not the emotional stuff that comes from good music, well performed liturgies, moving and meaningful sermons. You need a blast of the infinite.” She knows me well.

Photo Credits

“Thinking then having a doubt” fabio @ Flickr.com Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
“Blind faith” xurde @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
“Blind Faith Cafe” Swanksalot @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Wrestling With Faith: Embracing the Tension Between Head and Heart is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

When the End of the World did not come on May 21st, Harold Camping came up with a NEW and IMPROVED date for the world to end. While we’re all waiting for this to happen, Camping still has his followers’ money. Should this profiteering doomsayer be shut down?

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Harold Camping, aka The Doomsayer, has finally spoken out about his misguided Rapture Day prophecy and added that the actual end of the world is this Fall — not May 21st as he originally said.

So far this lunatic has destroyed the lives of a legion of weak-minded followers who didn’t get squished out of their clothes like watermelon seeds to soar through the universe with God. They’re still here with the rest of us, though they are somewhat less secure financially after giving their money to the Family Radio show to invest in the prophecy. Harold is soldiering on. He will undoubtedly be raising more money as they prepare for yet another End of the World on October 21.

My predictions of his actions following the May 21st day of NO RAPTURE have proven to be much more accurate than any of his. Huffington Post reporter Jaweed Kaleem’s report on Camping’s radio question-and-answer period proves my points. Here is what I predicted and what Camping said:

I predicted: Camping would say he got the date of the end of the world wrong (again) because he miscalculated the numbers (again)…

Camping said: “If people want me to apologize, I will apologize…I did not have all that worked out as accurately as I should have had it. That doesn’t bother me at all.”

I predicted: Camping would say the Rapture actually did happen despite evidence to the contrary, and only the true believers can see it because it’s extrasensory and we’re all just living temporarily now.

Camping said: “On May 21 this last weekend…God again brought Judgment on the world…We didn’t feel any difference,” he says, “but we know that God brought Judgment” on the world. “The whole world is under Judgment.”

I predicted: Camping would point to  some minor flood, solar flare, or crack in the cosmic sidewalk and say that’s he they predicted (and I suppose this could suffice as a crack in his cosmic egg).

Camping said: “I have never said I’m infallible,” adding that God is never wrong, and pointing to “the signs he has given such as gay pride that we are on the threshold of judgment or a fantastic increase in wickedness.”

I predicted: That when the Rapture failed and the end of the world didn’t come, Camping would be hunkering in his bunker.

I guess he’ll do that after the “real” end of the world on October 21.

The bit that really pisses me off is his knuckle-dragging response that he  feels no remorse for the disaster he’s caused so many people who donated all their money to his radio station.

Camping declines to offer them help. He says the country experienced a recession. “Lots of people lost their homes” and jobs. But he says “they survived.”

“People cope. People cope,” says Camping. He says job, housing and investment loses during the recent economic decline are far worse than what “the average Family Radio listener” has experienced.

Most of the commentaries on my two doomsayer posts have said that the people who gave up their life savings have acted on their on accord and deserve their fate. Camping should not be sued. I still think he should be sued.

The next question I have is: should he be shut down? Censored. Run out of town. Should his license be suspended as he continues on his mission to deceive and raise yet more money?

One last quote:

“How much money has Family Radio raised as a result of this campaign and do you intend to return it?” asks a reporter. “I do not know,” says Camping. Camping says listeners have given because of “their desire to propagate the gospel” and have given to Family Radio “because we can do this more efficiently.” Will he give it back? “No, that money is still going out…We are not out of business, we’ve learned that we still have to go another five months,” he says.

I do not advocate censorship, but I’m just asking the question.

And here’s a picture for you, Harold.

You’re the one on the left…

Should The Doomsayer (a.k.a. Harold Camping) Be Shut Down? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Today was not the predicted End of the World for most people, but it was for some, including those who lost their faith, lost their world savings, and lost face. Where is Harold Camping, the doomsayer, in all of this, and should he be held accountable?

Yesterday I wrote a story about the End of the World, which was the “event” predicted by Harold Camping of the Christian FamilyRadio network in California.

Today it didn’t happen as predicted — and so far my predication that the doomsayers would hunker in their bunker has been more prescient than Mr. Camping’s prediction.

Harold Camping and his business associates and/or followers should be deeply shamed by this inane religious fervour which has once again proven that fundamentalism is a disease we need to treat. So the world did not end today as Mr. Camping had so promoted? His God yet again deserted him and his ilk.

While this fiasco can certainly be looked upon as a sad farce, it is more than that. What Mr. Camping has done was wrong. In his religious fervour, he’s destroyed the lives of many people who believed him (obviously weak minds, but still human beings after all). Over the last few weeks we’ve all seen the stories of those people who have sold their houses and spent their life savings paying on billboards and posters to promote Mr. Camping’s stupidity. We can, of course, consider these people intellectually challenged, but like many people who don’t think for themselves they’ve fallen victim to fundamentalism and today their worlds truly have been destroyed.

So I think, given that Mr. Camping is a multi-millionaire, that he should be held financially responsible for the disaster he’s perpetuated on these people.

What do you think?

Should he pay recompense to the people who spent their all believing in him?

This should be a lesson to us all about the sickness of unbridled belief.

Should Doomsayer Be Sued for End of World Prediction? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN