Searching for God #17

Why is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra running television ads that sing this melody: The music sounds so much richer, and full and interesting and engaging when the orchestra plays to an audience. Those are not the words used in the ad; they are, however, the essence of the intent of the ad. And, for this scribe, the difference is not restricted to the physics, the amplification, the reverberations, the intonations and the literal bouncing of the sounds of the instruments, collectively and individually, off the acoustically designed auditorium ceiling, and the also acoutistically engineered buffers hanging from that ceiling, as well as off the highly receptive clothing of the audience.

The presence of others, for whatever purpose, can and will never be replicated, or even relatively fully imitated by any digital, or AI representation of reality. And that applies universally to face-to-face conversations, as well as public lectures, rock concerts and symphony orchestra performances. Just as face-to-face encounters can and often do slide inexorably into bitter and often viscious gossip, or loud-mouthed haranguing, so too can musical concerts blast eardums impairing hearing for life.

Orchestral music, for instance, resonates on so many levels—on volume, pitch, timbre, dynamics, phrasing and that indescribable ‘thing’ called musicality. Musicality has been defined variously as playing music with sensitivity and skill in order to be considered a musician….and one might deduce that playing (and the opportunity of listening) is different from what we ‘old foggies’ might call technicalities. Immediately, that evokes an instant charge of snobbery, in two directions: among seasoned and trained and accomplished musicians who appreciate the nuances and intimate subtleties of both the composition and the performance, as well as among those ‘less trained, less skilled, and appreciating the music at a very less ‘intense’ and intimate way….

And such a divide, displayed in the different demographics of audience ticket purchases, has application to many, if not all areas of our lives. If we have a medical diagnosis, usually we know cognitively far less than the practitioner making the diagnosis and proposing the treatment. We ‘own’ the pain and the discomfort, without necessarily having the biochemical knowledge or appreciation of the medications or even the procedures that we might be asked to follow. A similar experience awaits us in many of the art galleries and museums; we have some glimpses of an artistic ‘school’ or reputation of an artist, without being as fully immersed in the intimate details displayed on the canvas. Nevertheless, we can have an appreciation of ‘knowing and celebrating what we happen to like’….and such personal taste, without or without specialized training and experience lies at the heart of how we perceive, absorb, integrate, interpret and ‘appreciate’ the experience.

While it is not precisely analogous to orchestral concerts and visits to art galleries and museums, religion, faith in God, warrants a similar lens on its potential.

Relating to mystery, even the angle of our eye (literal and metaphoric) (up in awe or down in detachment or…?) can be envisioned as a pathway to perceive and to attempt to embrace, integrate, and relate to the ultimate mysteries. If God has to do with important matters like life and death, as many of us believe he/it does, we are all amateurs, neophytes, innocents and either willing and open to a reflective search and sustainable relationship or not. Our innocence, however, need not be an impediment, as many might consider it to be in secular matters.

It is, it seems to me, only when we forget our innocence, our naivety and our amateur-ness, and don the mantle of an expert, at any time in our lives, that we rung the risk of shutting down on both God’s potential love for our lives as well as our own perception and appreciation of who we are. Fixed, and frozen ‘knowledge’ irrespective of whether it is encased in morality, or prosletyzing conversion programs, or prosperity ‘gospel’ practice of ministry, or certainly the deluded belief that God supports ‘this’ (our, my, our nation’s) war, or even in rescuing those deeply dependent on alcohol, drugs or any other addiction.

It is the inevitable and perhaps inescapable intersection and infusion of the ‘fix-it’ model, envisioning all problems as either sickness or immorality/crime/abnormal behaviour, all of them needing pragmatic interventions to remediate, alleviate, repress or perhaps remove the ‘presenting problem’ and then placing God in the position of the ‘preferred fixing agent’ that runs each of us into a conundrum. Remember Hélene, the breast cancer patient’s pathetic cry, ‘Why is God doing this to me? I have lived a good life and do not deserve this terrible illness!’

Unfortunately, given our cultural, secular, literal, empirical perception and attitude to whatever we experience, including in that gestalt, the Original Fall and Sin, (rendering us all first and foremost evil sinners in need of redemption), it is all too common to hear cries like that patient. It came also from a 91-year-old male, in his hospital bed, fearing death… ‘I am and never will be good enough to meet God!’ Our own perception of our ‘goodness’ or lack thereof, is not merely an assessment, conscious and /or unconscious, of ‘how’ we think of ourselves, our worthiness, our virtue, our integrity, and our being appealing (or not) to a God who is, undoubtedly, both perfect and highly demanding.

Within that equation or perception model, we have already started, implicitly and perhaps unconsciously, negotiating with ourselves and with God, as to whether or not (and most likely not) we might be acceptable to inherit a place in heaven when we die. Living on the cusp of that razor’s edge, linking morality and mortality, for anyone, even of the highest ideals, standards and ethics and morals, can only be exhausting and both spiritually and psychologically judgemental and counterintuitive.

A foundational premise from John 10:10, ‘The Thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full,’ is not either coherent with or even compatible with the ‘razor’s edge, self-declared inferiority’ and unworthiness above. It is not the literal words, but also the metaphoric intent of those words, that carries such import. Linked to that self-perceived and self-declared ‘unworthiness’ too is a phenomenon of ‘false modesty,’ both on the individual level and on the institutional level.

Just as the symphony’s musicality cannot be reduced to the technical competence of even the professional musicians, so too, the human ‘musicality’ and ‘spirituality’ and range of both apperception and perception, apprehension and cognition, emotions and psychology cannot and will never be reduced to the literal technicality of a cancer diagnosis or a single serious error in judgement that somehow betrayed and deeply hurt significant others, é or misrepresented both self and others.

Every day we all see through a glass darkly. And that does not mean seeing only the dark side of everything; it could also mean that our perceptions are inevitably and invariably clouded by our ignorance, our innocence, our biases, our  need for control, our need to be right, or adulated or adored….or….or…??? Again, the literal vision equation of 20/20 is not only what is intended or meant here. Vision, perception, apprehension of any ‘thing’ or ‘person’ or ‘situation’ or ‘event’ is, we can all agree incomplete, partial, flawed, distorted, and often, thereby hurtful. Whether or not we acknowledge, accept and openly avow our imperfect perception, in the face of our ‘adamant’ and ‘final’ and ‘undoubted’ certainty and the adamantine, iron-clad, immobile emotional experience to which we attach the perception, being open, in our hearts, eyes brains, and psyches, leaving a space for new light, new information, new insights, new hopes, and new similar light, information, insight, hope in others, who, also, have been partially blind in the time of the initial shared and potentially hurtful experience, is entirely dependent on our choice.

It is our individual and universally shared blindness to so much, and our attitude to that blindness, that, in many ways defines much of our way of relating both to ourselves and to others, including God. Like Lincoln, none of us can be but overwhelmed and in awe when looking at the stars, the multiple universes, many of which we never had in inkling of their existence. Similarly, if each of us is a ‘universe’ of multiple constellations, many of which even we have not discovered about ourselves, and every other person in our world is or represents a different universe, much of which even they have not discovered, about themselves or about the universe itself, then how can we continue our fixation on our obsessive and compulsive reductionism of God, of the universe, of our capacity to perceive, apprehend, appreciate and relate to ourselves, others, and the universe and God, if we choose?

It is not in ‘knowing’ or in surrendering to a belief, or even a final perception and appreciation of the ultimate mysteries, about life, about death, about love, and about friendship, about music and art and dance and literature…all of them expressions of a fully-flowing imagination, that offers a full and fully appreciated life.

And, who can imagine a God, of any specific or less defined faith or religion, that would not dream of people who ‘worship’ in His/Her/It’s (?) name living fully disabused of their/our own blindness, innocence, ignorance, and the concomitant fall-out from those blindnesses. It may seem a cliché to repeat that ‘hurt people hurt other people’…..and yet, most, if not all of those original hurts came from a form of blindness on the part of the hurt-er. And that process continues to be replicated, even with the instruments of billion-dollar missiles, bombs and Ak-47’s.

Whether we call it worshipping God or not, retracing our steps out from the jungle of presumed, assumed and assimilated dominance, superiority or hubris, and letting go of that interior demon that infects many of us, is a consideration worthy of at least several moments of reflection each year. And perhaps that is why there are in several religious faiths, specific periods of quiet reflection on how we have and might consider adjusting our perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and apprehensions of how limited our glimpse of ‘reality’ that we claim so fervently to demand,

There is an emerging confluence of experience, perception, attitudes, beliefs and new insights into ourselves, others, the future to which we may have been blind, that embraces psychology, sociology, philosophy, science, and theology.

And, who would ever at the end of the day, really want to separate, divide and attempt to conquer the unconquerable….the sum total of it all….

It is to the mystery and the awe that the search for God is dedicated….hope you can consider it’s relevance in your life, irrespective of where you live, or what or whom your consider to be your God.