Searching for God # 130

 How each of us views, considers, imagines, and relates to TIME, is not only a matter for psychologists and philosophers. It is also a significant issue in our relationship to God. Why? 

The unknown, unknowable ephemeral, ineffable, musterion whose ‘reality’ has been inserted into the image, the metaphor, the myth and the magnet of our search for meaning, purpose, identity as God takes on a variety of forms, faces, images, authority, comfort, mentoring, and of course, the proverbial parent (historically the father).  

A few words from Rainer Maria Rilke, in a poem entitled, ‘I live my life’ translated by Robert Bly, in a poetry text entitled, ‘The Rag and Bones Shop of the Heart, Poems for Men,’ might help to open an attitude, a perception, and a sense of one’s relationship to the forever known, yet forever ‘sought’: 

I live my life in growing orbits 

Which move out over the things of the world. 

Perhaps I can never achieve the last, 

but that will be my attempt. 

 

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower 

And I have been circling for a thousand years, 

And I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm 

or a great song. 

In his introductory essay to the section of the poetry text (mentioned above) James Hillman writes: 

Unless his spirit ventures toward the invisible, a man will be unable to perform the daily round with purpose. He will have little joy, only duty—and rebelliousness. The deepest cause of our discontent and of our confused yearnings is the loss of Paradise. The human soul needs anchoring in something beyond itself, in that vision which is the ground of all initiations, a vision which hints that life on earth reflects ideals of perfection.....Religions describe these realities as ‘above’ and ‘beyond,’ and locate them in heaven....And urge to perfection calls every one of us. And although utopias may never fully be realized, the urge toward ideal love and beauty never lets go of human nature. The mind wants to break out of the skull and think its way to the stars just as the heart’s beat cannot be held in a rib cage. Desire years for ‘more’ and calls this more, Paradise. The gaze above and beyond seems an archetypal requisite of the soul to live a life on earth with passionate purpose....At some point, however, we furl the sails and let the questing come to rest. It becomes a matter less a matter of seeking Paradise than of receiving its gifts. Perhaps that too is surrender. Instead of your knocking on the door, it swings on its own hinges. Or maybe you and the door, both unhinged. No longer on a journey, you are simply at home waiting for guests......(agreeing with Rumi...) open your heart, your gaze, to the visitations of angels, even if the gifts they bring may not be centeredness and balance but eccentricity and a wholly unfamiliar sense of pleasure called joy. (p.417-419) 

With such a gaze, one can hardly be fixated on or even tied to a clock, a calendar, a schedule or a timetable for achieving ‘success’ especially in the contemporary world. Spontaneous, unpredictable, even often unrecognized will be those angels. We are neither trained to look for them or especially to expect them and routines, duties obligations, expectations, goals, objectives and achievements become their surrogates. 

“Compelling” these ‘surrogates are, because many, if not most, of such ‘moments’ are sensate, measurable often by a series of imposed and assigned variables (also of our own design) for the purpose of assuring us of our ‘victories.’ They are, nevertheless, the sharp points of a highly seductive ‘sword’ which frequently morphs into a petard (explosive device used in seige warfare to blow up doors, gates, or breach walls (from AI) Indeed the very concept and notion of reality is considered to be based entirely, exclusively and tragically on a literal, empirical, sensate, nominal perspective. 

It is the tension between those ‘angels’ and those duties/responsibilties that inescapably and irremediably flows in and through our days, our imaginations, our self-images, and whatever ‘emerges’ as our pursuit of perfection. Ironically, and paradoxically, both yin and yang can and do accompany both forces; yin, the darkside, cold, still, dark, soft, and feminine matching moon and night while yang the lightside, warm, moving, bright and masculine matching the sun and day (from AI). However, in our binary, reductionistic rational dichotomizing of both our world and our world view, we often become entrapped in an either/or kind of polarity. 

And the polarities are not restricted to ‘thought’ versus ‘feeling’ or ambition verses laziness, or creativity versus block structures....they are, as yin and yang would remind us, flowing into and out of each other. God, too, is not and will never be ‘captured’ in one or the other ‘compartments’.....and one of the more significant challenges of any ‘search for God’ is that, after hours, days, weeks and even lifetimes of spent energy in prayer, reflection, reading, study, building community, solitary retreats, never can or will the ‘paradise’ referred to by both Hillman and Rumi above will be ‘attained’. 

That is, however, as often regretted, not a scarcity or a ‘reduction’ of humans’ aspiration or imagination or even of our spirits and souls search for Paradise. Indeed, again paradoxically, especially in a deterministic, empirically defined world, the unattainable is part of the musterion. Whether it is called a ‘sacred secret’ or a ‘divine design’ (derived from the Greek muo, ‘to shut the mouth’ or ‘to close the eyes’ from AI), one of the dangerous attributions of musterion is that it is, has been, or will be disclosed to a special group. And therein lies a serious ‘theological,’ psychological, as well as ethical and moral conundrum. 

And in one sense, the notion/concept of time is relevant here. If some consider the uncovering of artifacts, documents historic sights, and even ‘holy words’ to be sacrosanct, engraved in granite and worthy of a single, literal, factual interpretation based on the absolute certainty of the intent of the originator of the artifact, as the sine qua non of their Christian (or other mainline faith) theology and belief, that is their choice. 

If, on the other hand, the world, including, embracing, and welcoming the most rigorous examination of all the artifacts, documents, sites, holy script, from an ‘open’ receptive, even emptying perspective and mind-set, as if each of us is in a metaphoric ‘kindergarten’ eager and willing to learn and open to and welcoming of a variety of considered interpretations, the world, one’s faith, one’s perspective and mind-set is very different. It has seemed to be relatively undisputed that our individual growth, in all aspects of that potential including psychological, spiritual, religious, ethical and moral, as well as intellectual, social and creative, is at least as nourished, if not enhanced, by a second of the above perspectives.  

The risk, at least for this scribe, is of leaning or adopting the former approach is that it can and most often leads to a level of both certainty and its concomitant, superiority, which is incompatible with the Paradise that is never attainable. 

Although it was Voltaire who originally coined the phrase, ‘if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him’ his alleged point was the God was essential for God to punish bad acts and help keep and preserve moral and civil order, I have a different ‘take’ on the phrase. 

It seems that without God, after centuries plus of science, rationality, industrial and experimental attempts to bring the world under human control, both literally and metaphorically, we have succeeded, ironically, in what Emily Dickinson eloquently depicted in her short poem,  Safe in their alabaster chambers: 

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers 

Untouched by Morning-- 

And untouched by Noon-- 

Lie the meek members of the Resurrection-- 

Rafter of Satin—and Roof of Stone! 

Grand go the Years---in the Crescent---above them-- 

Worlds scoop their Arcs-- 

And Firmaments—row-- 

Diadems—drop—and Doges*—surrender-- 

Soundless as dots—on a Disc of Snow-- (From Rag and Bones Shop of the Heart, p.441)

*Venetian doges, chief magistrate and elected head of state (from Latin dux, leader) in Italian maritime republics like Venice and Genoa during medieval and Renaissance eras, elected for life (from AI)