The Way, Truth, and the Light

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."   - George Santanya

 My seventy-one years are but a tiny speck in the ocean of time.  Throughout it all, the Bible has been a steady presence. It is perhaps four thousand years old. What fascinates me is how so many still find it helpful in their life journey (or not). The number of Bible "scholars," armchair and professional, who pontificate on it is legion. So I'm not going to undertake that for this post.  But I do want to point out the Bible's overall view of humans in the very rough period from 2500 BCE to 200 CE. It portrays Homo sapiens as a warring bunch of two-legged people who couldn't follow a set of rules, whether with carrot or stick. We are a stubbornly independent and unruly bunch. The span of history with all of its conquests, prophets, and monarchs - moral and immoral ones - has taught us nothing.  We still have all the good, bad, and ugly of them playing out today -- especially among those who preach the Bible the loudest. We even have the Christian Nationalists who have taken the scriptures and twisted them so perversely that their use of the word "Christian" is nigh on to blasphemy. 

Christians are so named because they supposedly follow the one called "Christ," referring to Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, we are given the Beatitudes that sit beside the Ten Commandments.  We can think of the Beatitudes as the positive spin, as opposed to the "Thou shalt nots..." In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of himself as the "Way, the Truth, and the Light. Christians could not have a more positive role model.  Yet, like we did all through the Old Testament, humans balk at loving their neighbor as themselves or aiding the widow or refugee.  So, what's up with that? What's wrong with decency or kindness?  Moreover, why, when we possess so much, do we still fight, slaughter, and steal others' livelihoods?  It's like nobody wants to grow out of the mean years of middle and high school. Watching the spectacle of the election campaigns, we have to wonder: Where are the adults?

I don't have any slick answers, only questions.  Like, where and when does it all end? What does the "Way, Truth, and Light" mean in your personal world?  Rather than getting into heated debates over candidates or foreign policy, perhaps we should begin by understanding this more fundamental level.  Like, what principles stand as the cornerstones of your life? What truths do you hold "as self-evident"?   What lessons from history stay with you? Who fills the shoes of a "role model in your life?"  

Things to ponder!

Closing Thoughts Heading Into The Election

In closing his speech in Georgia tonight, Former President Obama pointed us in the direction that I, too, have been feeling. He implored the crowd to reclaim our once-held decency and honor, and to restore the greatness we once shared, the values that made us a beacon of freedom and a light of hope to the world. Values and decency in the United States lie in broken shards scattered across the land.  It is like the Grinch knocked over our Christmas tree, scattering broken ornaments across the room. The irony is that something like this happened years ago at the beginning of our demise. Made-up claims arose about "liberals making Merry Christmas illegal." Starbucks got tremendous backlash for selling Christmas coffees in cups that said, "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas.  It expanded like hot air does, stoked by invisible hands manipulating grievance, blaming immigrants & "welfare queens" for everyone's problems. And that same invisible hand, now more obviously held by multi-millionaires, is still working to inflame social media landscapes with recriminations that keep us divided and blind to The Greatest Heist ever pulled. Everyone can point blame, and while we're bickering, the Organ Grinder and his monkeys are robbing us all blind and selling us out to old enemies, stock brokers, and the highest bidder. 

We Americans are far worse off than we have been in many decades. Noble values like generosity, compassion, kindness, neighborliness, compromise, and "leaving nobody behind" have fallen off a cliff. In their place have come avarice, racism, cruelty, untruthful suspicions, violence, and the full-on robbery of our federal treasury. We can't go on like this -- at least, it's not where I want to live, and it's not a country I think is right to leave to future generations to "clean up."  

The first question may be: does anyone still cherish the concept of virtues? Assuming the answer is "yes."  What makes them so difficult to achieve in this social climate? Is it the unscrupulous people who have weaseled their way into political office?  (They didn't get there without a whole lot of our help.)  Is money really the root of all the evil that is gobbling up our souls? Just how is it with your soul?

What does your soul need?  For whom/what would your soul vote? The Republican Party for most of the past 10 years has almost universally represented itself as uncaring and focused only on its power and money.  To be fair, some Democrats also might be working that angle.  The very clear reality staring us down is that the slide away from all virtue and honor has been dramatic in the past 2 years, and if we voters don't vote for change, we will certainly all experience the worst that can happen.  Getting our honor back is already going to be a major undertaking that may take years.  The Lord only knows how long or how bad it gets if we don't change direction now.  

In my mind, the direction toward change is clear.  Virtues are the best building blocks possible for a society. Lack of them is bad for everyone. My advice to all reading this is to elbow your conscience and ask yourself what your faith tells you is right. Because right and wrong are the two choices we all have in front of us. .  

Finding God

I was listening last week to some professionals talking about trauma and how to treat/deal with it.  Gabor Maté, one of the experts, spoke about the power our emotions have on our physical health. According to Maté, a major factor in physical maladies is the presence of all kinds of emotional trauma at play under the surface.  Often that trauma may not be clearly remembered.  To deny or gloss over the emotional aspects of trauma will miss a healing pathway available for the physical breakdown in the organ systems of the body. Like a leaking pipe in one's house that is ignored for a long time, it results in greater damage.

Christianity evolved from a Middle Eastern man, Jesus, who met people on an emotional plane.  Everyday people came to him with physical problems - leprosy, blindness, lameness, even death that were fraught with emotional pain in their lives.  But on the religious side, he faced defensive thinking heads. Jesus healed the emotional & physical hurts in people, but the religious systems diverted the power and influence of that healing into centuries-long cognitive exercises in proper head knowledge. The Church adopted sanctified prescriptions for the "right" way to view God. This led to faith being dominated by "right doctrine" and far less on relevant experience.  Our spiritual lives were pressed into rational explanations rather than who we experienced God to be. 

This reality, alongside Maté's association of physical suffering tied to buried emotional trauma, sent me reassessing how I know who God is.  Who is God?  God is not in creeds or proclaimed doctrine: "I believe in God the Father..." way. But maybe in the "I met God today on the street in the tears of a child" way. One is head knowledge assent.  The other is a living emotional presence. I have known God much more intimately through feelings -- compassion, empathy, sensitivity, and concern.  That's the emotional level that has real connection to the heart - the central organ necessary for life. I posit the heart is central not only to living our physical lives, but to our ability to feel the real touch of God. Feeling our way into God brings us a much stronger "near presence" experience and possibly a regenerative healing spiritual balance to our physicality. If God is, in fact, love, then experiencing love would be the best way to live in God and find union.