2. The Land of Wonder

Transcription

1 2. The Land of Wonder In her book, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Openness of Awe, Mary Jane Rubenstein notes that the Greek god Thaumas (wonder) has two types of daughters: Iris (rainbow) and the harpies (ugly birdlike monsters with large claws). All these daughters link heaven and earth. Rainbow fascinates us: we run outdoors to see the spectrum of colors that may arch from north to south as the setting sunlight is split by water droplets into this striking spectacle. As we contemplate such beauty, we may not care about the scientific explanation; we simply stand before this connecting beauty between sky and ground and say pleasant things to each other. But the harpies are also the offspring of wonder: connecting sky and ground, the Mystery and the ordinary, with connections that prompt us to close our eyes or duck our heads or, like the proverbial ostrich, put our heads into some sort of sand. Wonder is a strange beauty, but also a strange horror. It was Rudolf Otto who first made clear to me that wonder begins its assault upon us as a trembling, as an upsetting, as a shaking of our foundations (Tillich), as a dread or anxiety that will not, and need not, ever go away. The full experience of fascination, though rainbows, is also accompanied by a sisterhood of upsetting dynamics. It takes courage to be in Awe. Most of the time we are cowards who duck from our potential experiences of wonder. Rubenstein makes this colorful, but damning, commentary on Western philosophy: As far as Western philosophy is concerned, however, every aspect of wonder becomes susceptible to erasure, because, whether it responds to that which is fascinating or repugnant, thaumazein (wonder-ness) keeps problems unresolved. It renders the thinker incapable of doing the kind of simple calculating, sure representing, or remainder-less opining that might secure himself and his knowledge against the storm of indeterminacy. For this reason, wonder becomes an increasingly problematic ancestor for the increasingly scientific Western philosophical heritage. As the tradition progresses, wonder is progressively relegated to something like a temporary irritant: a discomfort not to be endured, but rather cured or at least tranquilized. 1 This then is our first block to seriously understanding or practicing a religion. We must open to wonder or awe, however horrible or beautiful or both the awe may be. We must intend a courageous openness in order to be in wonder. Only when we understand and embrace this, can we further understand that religion is part of every society because religion is a practice aimed at making more likely the gift of awe. In any religion that is fully realistic, awe is accepted as good. And good religion also holds that realistic living is good the best-case scenario for living our lives. The biblical word God is empty of meaning until we open to awe, to the wonder that is happening to us in our actual, historical, everyday eventfulness. In the biblical tradition, God is the Awesome Mysterious THERENESS that is Awing us. To courageously stand in the Wonder that wonders us is to stand in the presence of God, the God of Abraham-Isaac-&-Jacob, of Jesus-&-Paul, of Deborah-Theoklia-Hildegard-&- Julian, etc. To be the awed ones, the wonder-filled ones is, in biblical language, to be the People of God, the Body of Christ, the communion of saints, the true church, the vanguard of human realism, the leadership of the human species a leadership that leads the way from illusion to realism, from despair to trustful openness, true bliss, and full freedom. Here is some of my poetry on wonder: 1 Rubenstein, Mary Jane, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Openness of Awe (Columbia University Press: 2008) page

2 Wonder lights up thought with new vigor. Wonder cleans feelings of their exaggerated sentiment. Wonder interrupts compulsive behaviors and restores us to the paths of freedom, effectiveness, and persistence. Wonder is a hard experience to talk about, but that has not prevented every era of humans from trying. Though Wonder is unknowable to the human mind, Wonder can be directly experienced by human consciousness. In that sense we can know Wonder. If this sort of knowing were not possible, then the word Wonder would be meaningless. Some have concluded that the word Wonder is meaningless, so they no longer use the word or any word like it Divine, Sacred, or Holy. But this attitude undercuts our appreciation of the role of religion in human life namely, the role of binding or connecting humans to that Landscape of Mystery, that River of Enigmatic Consciousness, that Mountain of Compassion, and that Wild Sea or Ocean of Courageous Tranquility. 2 It is important to paint this positive view of wonder, but we lose our hold on wonder if we do not, at the same time, notice that we are opening to the full horror, dread, trembling, upsetting, confusing, mysterious aspects of Reality with a capital R. God or Reality, fully experienced, does not come to us as only rainbows: it is also harpies, angels of a grimmer aspect, messengers to our deep awareness from an Otherness that we are prone to avoid, flee, or perhaps to fight endlessly, even unto a despairing death. Here is a series of angelic messengers (messages of Awe from the Awesome) that accompany our more glorious experiences of Awe that we have named Trust, Love, Freedom, and so on. Experiences of The Void Ever-present Nothingness Inescapable Limitation Unrecoverable Past Experiences of The Total Demand Inclusive Obligation Unavoidable Response Futuric Radicality Experiences of The Fullness Connecting Wholeness Enduring Sustainment Unimaginable Possibility All nine of these states of wonder are at first experienced as horror. Later, they may take their place among the flying flock of glorious, rainbow birds of wonder. In the end, trust in God includes making friends with each of these hoary harpies. Spirit Love means affirming each of these states of personal negation as parts of the overall goodness of the all-powerful Reality that does all things well (A phrase used by the fourteenth century anchorite Julian as well as the sixteenth century reformer Martin Luther). Spirit Freedom means the release of not being tyrannized by these unavoidable horrific verities, but finding a boundless creativity residing in the obedience of living the whole of life rather than only its pleasant aspects. So let us explore the horror/glory in each of these three major encounters with the Land of Wonder, with Reality with a capital R, with God. God the Void When I was in high school, my best friend and I went squirrel hunting with 22 rifles. I stumbled over a root and discharged a round that swished a foot or two past my companion s head. Neither of us laughed about this matter. I have never forgotten 2 Marshall, Gene; The Enigma of Consciousness (unpublished) - 2 -

3 it. Later in my first year as a local church pastor, a similar event happened to two high school boys in my community. Only this time the second boy was killed. As the pastor of the family whose son was killed, I found myself sitting in a living room with the grieving parents as well as with the young lad who had just killed his friend. Though I had become a rather talkative person, I found myself nearly speechless, unable to say anything wise or helpful. Now in my 83rd year, I experience old acquaintances and celebrities whom I admire falling into the Void every year. I see the next decade containing for me my entry into that unrelenting Void, whose arrival may happen at any time. I have never been more clear that God the Void walks with us every step of the way. As Kazantzakis put it, We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. Or as Rumi said, Life and death are two wings on the same bird. God the Fullness Though we may be vividly clear that death walks with us, we nevertheless ARE. And we find ourselves curious about what this ARE is. One of my first serious curiosities about the whole of things took place in the field of physics. I was an admirer of Sir Isaac Newton and his mathematical pull-together of how everything works. Then I was introduced to the work of Albert Einstein who envisioned a whole new universe through the cracks in the Newtonian system. I was sharing my astonishment and excitement about this new discovery with a fellow mathematician with whom I was working at Chance Vought Aircraft. He would not buy it. He was clinging fast to his Newtonian world and would not hear about such a vast change. This situation in physics has only gotten more surprising in the years since. And in biology, anthropology, and sociology we meet similar revolutions. In spite of all we know in the human sciences and humanities, life and human consciousness remain enigmas. So, at the edges of wisdom in our culture, here is where we are: we can see that our sense of reality is always infinitely less than Reality with a capital R. The Everythingness in which all things exist is bigger and more horrific and more wondrous than we could ever have guessed. We walk our lives, hand in hand, with a Mysteriousness that perpetually consigns us to a boundless ignorance. With regard to this quality of Reality, the good news is that our Mysteryexperiencing being is just as gloriously mysterious as the fullness of things. Any self we thought we were has basically evaporated, but here we ARE hand-in-hand with a Fullness of which we are ourselves Full. God the Total Demand In his poetic book, The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, Nikos Kazantzakis expressed for me in a memorable fashion the experience of Total Demand: Learn to obey. Only he who obeys a rhythm superior to his own is free. Learn to command: Only he who can give commands may represent me here on earth. Love responsibility. Say, It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame. What could be more ruthless than actually living before such a demand! Yet, this is the Infinite Demand that rests upon every human life. We cannot dismiss it by saying this obvious truth, I am only one life, I cannot do everything. The Infinite Demand is not lessened by what you or I can do or what you or I will do. The Infinite Demand is just the meaning of those very ancient teachings: Love Reality, and like unto loving - 3 -

4 Reality, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Perhaps we do not always notice that these twin commandments are impossible demands that are, nevertheless, possible as our core calling in life. The Total Demand is horrific to our self-righteous and righteousness-seeking egoic self. But if we are open to not having a self-created self, but seeing our True Self as a totally mysterious being, created anew by each choice we make, then the Total Demand is simply Freedom, the creativity to do whatever we can do among the options facing our particular life in its encounters with the Totality of Reality. I will conclude this meander into the Land of Wonder with a reflection upon the Christian Trinity with aid from Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth century English anchoress, who is surely one of the most clarifying Christian theologians of all time, a woman living in a completely patriarchal time and pursuing a discipline of understanding that is still to this day overrun by men. I am employing a book by Grace Jantzen, another woman theologian who to me ranks as one of the finest recent theologians we have seen, man or woman. 3 Reading Julian requires translation from her now ancient time, and Jantzen provides us clues for doing so. Julian s intense and persistent brooding on human existence, brought into view three sources of truth: (1) the reasoning of our human kind of knowing, (2) the core message carried within the Christian heritage, and (3) our own everyday experience. She appears to conclude that nothing is theologically true that does not meet these three criteria. All three approaches to truth are creations of one Reality and are therefore not in contradiction unless they are misused. So we are challenged to keep open to all three until a consensus among them appears. Julian s consensus concerning the Christian Trinity is that the first face is Power, face two is Wisdom, and face three is Goodness. All these qualities apply to all three faces, but apply in different ways. Face one, the Father face, is the Power that wills whatever is happening in history, in daily life. It is the Awesome overwhelming demanding Mysteriousness that I have attempted to describe above. Face one, however horrific, is seen by Julian as Love for us. Face two, the Mother face as Julian terms it, is a Wisdom that is centered in the cross of Christ. This Wisdom gift is not a sentimental mother : This second Face of God is a womb or birth canal of cruciform transformation, a consciousness that calls forth our true aliveness and nurtures it at an Eternal breast. This mothering Christ is also Love for us. Face Three, the Lord-our-Holy-Spirit face, is the Goodness of the life that is within us when the work of transformation has restored us to that Holy or Whole life. The gift of Holy Spirit is also Love for us. I can quite easily relate these images to images I have been empowered by and have been attempting to empower through my own writings. Julian s Holy Spirit is this serious Wonder or Awe that I have pointed to above. And her God the Father is this Infinite All powerful Mysterious Land of Wonder that incites within us this Awe, this Wonder. Understanding what Julian is pointing to with the second face is more difficult. Julian identifies it with the orthodox church as a vast chest of received teachings. She is clear that the actual Christian institutions of her time are flawed, and far worse than flawed in the many harsh actions being done. Without being harsh about it, she is aware that she herself, as a woman, is being mistreated by her Christian culture. She is grateful for having been given the opportunity to live alone in a cell and spend all her time in contemplation of these deep matters and be sustained and honored for it. She knows that such a life was not needed by men in order to be honored and be renowned as theologians. Nevertheless, she loves the church as a key source of wisdom for her life. She sees the church in its profound function as a redemptive force, as the body of Christ, as a communion of saints, as a living treasury of teachings that tell us what we need to learn to be members of this glorious potentiality. So for Julian, Christ and Church are overlapping concepts

5 Both Christ and Church are a mothering ministry that births us and nurtures us in the wisdom of redemption from our estrangements to a life of authentic living in the Land of Wonder. If we speak of Jesus Christ as the Awed One who is Awed by the Awesome, then the Body of Christ (or true Church) is simply the Awed Ones. True Christ and true Church are both manifestations of the second aspect of the Triune experience. I find that Julian in her years of brooding has come to see that the Second Face of God is none other than that part of humanity that is confronting the Almighty Land of Wonder and is thereby becoming a Wonder-filled historical body with redemptive power. We are redeemed as we confront these Awed Ones who initiate us into the Body of those who are Awed. Having found the courage to be Awed, you or I function as one of the Awed Ones who bring Awe possibilities to others. I see, and I see that Julian sees, that the Trinity is three inseparable aspects of one experience: The Awesome, The Awed Ones, and the Awe itself. Further, I see from my mountaintop in time something that Julian did not see so clearly namely, that the Awed Ones are a wide historical actuality that includes not only awakening Christians, but other awakening people who do not practice a Christian religion. The Trinity is an insight and teaching of the Christian religion, but the Reality to which this teaching points is true for all people of whatever culture or religious practice. The Triune dynamic is operative among Buddhists, Muslims, etc. It is even a summation of truthfulness by which the quality of every culture and every religion is evaluated as good or bad, healing or sickening, glorious or despair-producing. This awareness, I believe, has become more vivid in our century. Nevertheless, Julian sees from her solitary cell, nurtured in the richness of an intensely Christian culture, the way life is, has been, and always will be for all human beings