Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Nature.org
Stumbled across Nature.org, where I went to calculate Sabrina's and my joint ecological footprint. It is a fantastic site with lots of wonderful charitable giving opportunities, stories, gift possibilities, and suggestions for new and better ways of living. Check it out; take the time to explore it; it's really quite good.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
....
"Those who know don't speak. Those who speak, don't know." Tao Te Ching
Sometimes I realize that every time I open my mouth I am merely revealing my idiocy. Not so much in what I am saying, but in that I need to say anything at all. Sometimes speaking is more a way at straining toward meaning - toward connecting with others/myself/life/etc. in the midst of such alienation - than a means by which I think I might actually come to any meaningful conclusions. I think sometimes the questions make me isolate - or feel that way. Talking breaks the isolation - or at least pretends to.
My whole life seems a little unreal right now. There is this tugging at me in so many different directions, and I am sitting there wondering if it matters what my dreams are - what I long for. Then I wonder if I'd have any idea anyway. And I don't think it's so much about my dreams as it is about my authentic understanding of what it means to be in the world for me - Jonathan - not dictated by my schizophrenic super-ego that now can't even agree on one single way to guilt and shame me into being not good enough, but traps me so that even if i listen to one directive I end up violating another (American-dream super ego vs. Claremont School of Theology Progressive Christian super ego, etc.). Sometimes I step back and wonder who the fuck I am!!!
Because if I don't know, what good is it going to do to go forward when I basically feel like the numbed out videos you see of people prodded along lines onto the trains that will take them to Dachau? Yeah. Morose image.
One thing I've realized is that none of us knows how to stop. We know how to do, to act, to learn, to grow, to strive, to produce, to rest (for the sake of recharging, ie. to produce better), but I don't think rest is for the sake of working better. I think Heschel agrees with me. Work preceeded God's rest. There's something sacred about stopping - about stillness - that is an end in and of itself. I wonder what will happen if the progressive liberals end up having amazing victories in the political spheres - new legislation to protect the environment, new laws governing treatment of immigrants, etc - but no one learns how to stop - how to slow down - how to do nothing.
There's a line in the Tao Te Ching - "can you be still until your mud settles and you can see clearly? can you do nothing until the right action arises by itself?" I think we can fight all the battles for environmental justice that we want, but until we learn to stop the incessant need to produce - be it production of nuclear arms or production of new green legislation - then we will never be settled. And if humans are never settled, we will always need something to destroy, something to dominate, something to use or utilize, some addiction, some entertainment, something. We don't know how to be with ourselves. We don't know how to be with ourselves. Our culture is built upon noise - and persons who seek silence amidst their daily lives are estranged and seen as weird.
Our culture moves us from one tv show to the next, gives us entertainment after entertainment, and i do NOT think we will know how to be at peace again until we start to live in harmony with nature and with ourselves. When we stop the habit energy of production - the proving of ourselves to others - we will be able to start returning to a place where we can be more at peace. But until we are at peace with ourselves - we will always need more distractions to run to. more distractions means a need for more toys, more recreational devices, places, vacations, etc. What if our vacation were a sabbath? Or a tea ceremony? A meditation? Yoga or tai chi? How are we at simply not moving, letting the murky water we are constantly stirring settle so that we can finally see what our faces look like?
Perhaps we can take a day and simply do nothing. Perhaps we can simply take 3 hours and do nothing. Sadly LA is broken in a lot of ways - it is hard to find a lake, or a quiet field or forest where we can just be. Don't journal. Don't process through things. Don't take a bible and read it. Don't learn anything. Just sit and don't do anything and see how damn hard it is. Watch all the conditioning pull at you - scream at you about how you are wasting time and life.... See if it shocks you how much your body and mind scream and rail against simply being still. See if it shocks you to realize that deep down there is this sense that simply being you is not enough - you have to do, to prove, to struggle, to strive, to prepare, to plan, to create, to store away in expectation, you have to study or pray or teach or help or journal or process or any number of things.
No wonder we are so easily convinced to need new toys. New tools. New vacations. My deepest prayer is that I can learn how to rest, with each of you - to be a sabbath, to experience a sabbath's sacred rest. To have a simply tea ceremony that lasts 2 or 3 hours. There are so many things. May I - May you - May we - live in such a way that we are enough without all of our doing - may we find a world where each step, each breath, is enough. Where we can be right where we are.
Peace and Grace. Namaste.
Sometimes I realize that every time I open my mouth I am merely revealing my idiocy. Not so much in what I am saying, but in that I need to say anything at all. Sometimes speaking is more a way at straining toward meaning - toward connecting with others/myself/life/etc. in the midst of such alienation - than a means by which I think I might actually come to any meaningful conclusions. I think sometimes the questions make me isolate - or feel that way. Talking breaks the isolation - or at least pretends to.
My whole life seems a little unreal right now. There is this tugging at me in so many different directions, and I am sitting there wondering if it matters what my dreams are - what I long for. Then I wonder if I'd have any idea anyway. And I don't think it's so much about my dreams as it is about my authentic understanding of what it means to be in the world for me - Jonathan - not dictated by my schizophrenic super-ego that now can't even agree on one single way to guilt and shame me into being not good enough, but traps me so that even if i listen to one directive I end up violating another (American-dream super ego vs. Claremont School of Theology Progressive Christian super ego, etc.). Sometimes I step back and wonder who the fuck I am!!!
Because if I don't know, what good is it going to do to go forward when I basically feel like the numbed out videos you see of people prodded along lines onto the trains that will take them to Dachau? Yeah. Morose image.
One thing I've realized is that none of us knows how to stop. We know how to do, to act, to learn, to grow, to strive, to produce, to rest (for the sake of recharging, ie. to produce better), but I don't think rest is for the sake of working better. I think Heschel agrees with me. Work preceeded God's rest. There's something sacred about stopping - about stillness - that is an end in and of itself. I wonder what will happen if the progressive liberals end up having amazing victories in the political spheres - new legislation to protect the environment, new laws governing treatment of immigrants, etc - but no one learns how to stop - how to slow down - how to do nothing.
There's a line in the Tao Te Ching - "can you be still until your mud settles and you can see clearly? can you do nothing until the right action arises by itself?" I think we can fight all the battles for environmental justice that we want, but until we learn to stop the incessant need to produce - be it production of nuclear arms or production of new green legislation - then we will never be settled. And if humans are never settled, we will always need something to destroy, something to dominate, something to use or utilize, some addiction, some entertainment, something. We don't know how to be with ourselves. We don't know how to be with ourselves. Our culture is built upon noise - and persons who seek silence amidst their daily lives are estranged and seen as weird.
Our culture moves us from one tv show to the next, gives us entertainment after entertainment, and i do NOT think we will know how to be at peace again until we start to live in harmony with nature and with ourselves. When we stop the habit energy of production - the proving of ourselves to others - we will be able to start returning to a place where we can be more at peace. But until we are at peace with ourselves - we will always need more distractions to run to. more distractions means a need for more toys, more recreational devices, places, vacations, etc. What if our vacation were a sabbath? Or a tea ceremony? A meditation? Yoga or tai chi? How are we at simply not moving, letting the murky water we are constantly stirring settle so that we can finally see what our faces look like?
Perhaps we can take a day and simply do nothing. Perhaps we can simply take 3 hours and do nothing. Sadly LA is broken in a lot of ways - it is hard to find a lake, or a quiet field or forest where we can just be. Don't journal. Don't process through things. Don't take a bible and read it. Don't learn anything. Just sit and don't do anything and see how damn hard it is. Watch all the conditioning pull at you - scream at you about how you are wasting time and life.... See if it shocks you how much your body and mind scream and rail against simply being still. See if it shocks you to realize that deep down there is this sense that simply being you is not enough - you have to do, to prove, to struggle, to strive, to prepare, to plan, to create, to store away in expectation, you have to study or pray or teach or help or journal or process or any number of things.
No wonder we are so easily convinced to need new toys. New tools. New vacations. My deepest prayer is that I can learn how to rest, with each of you - to be a sabbath, to experience a sabbath's sacred rest. To have a simply tea ceremony that lasts 2 or 3 hours. There are so many things. May I - May you - May we - live in such a way that we are enough without all of our doing - may we find a world where each step, each breath, is enough. Where we can be right where we are.
Peace and Grace. Namaste.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Hey everyone (anyone)...
Let me know if you read this. I need to know it's worth doing and more than just a little different kind of journaling. Thanks.
Jonathan
Jonathan
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Anna Karenina
This is where I find myself:
"Levin knew that when he got home he must first of all go to his wife, who was not well, and that the peasants who had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he felt in hiving a swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and leave the old man to tend to the bees alone, while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to the apiary.
Whether he was acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and not only would he not try to prove anything nowadays, but he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Deliberation had brought him to doubt, and prevented him fro seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for..."
from Anna Karenina, p. 824-5.
This has been with me since the moment I first read it, and it is with me still.
"Levin knew that when he got home he must first of all go to his wife, who was not well, and that the peasants who had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he felt in hiving a swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and leave the old man to tend to the bees alone, while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to the apiary.
Whether he was acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and not only would he not try to prove anything nowadays, but he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Deliberation had brought him to doubt, and prevented him fro seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for..."
from Anna Karenina, p. 824-5.
This has been with me since the moment I first read it, and it is with me still.
Friday, April 3, 2009
I should add that amidst all this I still have hope. I don't know why. Maybe it is so overwhelming that I am aware I can't carry it - am not supposed to carry it. I'm not as depressed as I was before I confronted how much hurt there is inside of me. Now that I am honest with my struggles and my doubts about God - my utter frustration and anger at the way things are, and my complete admission of how powerlessness to do anything about it I am(anything that feels worth a damn) - I am able to move forward honestly, and don't have to let my soul be destroyed by this hurt and confusion.
A Little More..
Below is a lot of venting. But I'm putting this down for now. It's too much. I am sure you got that from reading what I wrote. But I'm suffering-ed out right now. Time to give myself a break - find ways to renew and find some sense of who i am amidst all of this. I can't save the world - the questions I face are many - but I can't answer them right now, and trying to isn't going to help. For now I am simply silent.
Lyrics
"You'll find the answer if you let it go. Just give yourself some time to falter, and don't forgo knowing that you're loved no matter what. And everything will come around in time."
That is from the song "Perfect Girl" by Sarah McLachlan. Listening to this cd, which I forgot I had, over the past two days has been healing for my soul, which is wrenched apart by a life that seems overly focused on suffering, pain, loss, and human evil. I've always had a blessing and a curse in my difficulty leaving things in the classroom. I wrap my heart and mind around new issues and uncertain issues continually. Searching for answers, if answers be had. As I compile final edits on my book that I look to publish come fall or sooner I feel so distant from the place I was when I wrote that. The part of the quote with which I now wrestle is the end. Will things come around in time? Will they "be okay?" I want to look at all the good this world has to offer, but frankly I am a little overwhelmed by the fact that after all this time humans still torture each other, go to war, enslave, rape, oppress, and so blatantly exploit other human beings.
That old concept of original sin looks so much more appealing to me than it has in a long time. I have faith in the individual good of humans, but am losing faith in the good or progress of humanity. I want to say we have progressed - and in areas, we have, but in other areas it seems as though we are simply spinning our wheels. I am so sick of spinning our wheels. As I look at what is really going on in the world I think of Fahrenheit 451 - I think of Wall-E, and how close we seem sometimes to those people who are so engrossed in what they are doing that they don't even know there's another world out there.
And most troubling is that I don't even know how to approach the situation on my own. I want to say there's a type of top down spiritual causation of which I long to be a part, but, to be honest, my faith is shaken. I've moved away from a sorrowful and heartbroken God of pathos because for a long time it was really unhealthy for me to experience the guilt brought about by thinking God wept for my sin and failure. Now as I weep because of the fact that worldwide women are still marginalized, dehumanized, objectified, raped, abused, and generally scapegoated, I wonder if God does not also weep in some way. Weep for the loss of "His" children. The story of the fall perplexes me deeply. What would it mean to return to the tree of life. Where is it? Because either there is some sort of DEEP rift between humans and divine presence, or there is no God, or there is not "sentient" God - some kind of divine God-force that we can open ourselves to and be transformed, but nothing acting consciously on the behalf of humanity and the rest of nature/creation. Even the Process understanding that God is NOT all powerful, but acts through a kind of creative lure, a persuasive and relational power rather than coercive unilateral power, is beginning to seem a bit hollow. It's sad to think that there are saleswomen out there who are more persuasive than God.
Moltmann talks about how in Christ God experiences God-forsakenness. "My God My God Why have you forsaken me?" is the cry. On the cross Christ experiences the utter terror and aloneness of being forsaken by God. Through his resurrection and ascension that is not the end, but the experience of God forsakenness is there, and has been taken up into God and integrated into God's being. Now God is present in the midst of God-forsakenness. When we are forsaken by God, God is present. In the negation of God, God comes to us in the crucified one, crying out from his own God-forsakenness. In our forsakenness we are not forsaken.
If God became enfleshed in Jesus in a unique and nearly impossible to understand way, then the terror of that moment must have been so absolute as to be unimaginable. I've heard that when people are in the midst of suffering they do not ask why God allows it to happen, but rather "where is God?" And as women and children are raped and abused around the world, and as we try to fix the economic system that we invented by pumping more and more money into it, hoping that productivity will once again save the day, all the while people are starving, species are going extinct, and hatred, greed, and resignation abound. And I have to ask myself what is my place in all of this? And as I leave Claremont with sixty thousand dollars in student loans to repay from all of my schooling up until now, I have no sense of freedom. I do not feel free. The opposite. I feel imprisoned by the economic order, I feel imprisoned by my own lack of experience. My desire to experience transformational travel abroad is refuted by the fact that we struggle right now to ensure we have enough money to pay all of our bills, while maintaining enough for the things that keep us sane.
And the fact of the matter is, action is just not enough. Letter writing isn't enough. Protesting isn't enough. But who says I have to do "enough"? What is it about humans - about me - that produces a sense of obligation to those we cannot even see? Where is God in all of this, and how will it change my own understanding of the world if I begin to consider a much more drastic cosmological rift between Divinity and "creation." Those people in Darfur who are ravaged and dying - humans doing this to other humans that they do not see as human. We say we have learned from the holocaust, but who is "we"?
Now we are caught up in this ridiculous capitalist system we have created for ourselves in which everyone must continue to produce and spend or it all falls to pieces. It hurts. And if your first response is to give me answers, or theology, then you haven't heard me. If that is your need, to explain it to me and make it make sense, don't. It doesn't make sense and it does hurt. This world makes no sense. A God who created it makes no sense. I hope the mystics are right. I hope this really is a very bad dream from which we will all one day awaken, sweat dripping down our spiritual faces and bodies, and breathe a grateful cry of relief that it was not as we had imagined it after all. That there is something else. That there is another realm, another place, another reality that we are not seeing here that makes it all make sense, that makes it worth the pain and the suffering. If there is a God I hope we can come home to that God soon, whatever that looks like, however it manifests.
That is from the song "Perfect Girl" by Sarah McLachlan. Listening to this cd, which I forgot I had, over the past two days has been healing for my soul, which is wrenched apart by a life that seems overly focused on suffering, pain, loss, and human evil. I've always had a blessing and a curse in my difficulty leaving things in the classroom. I wrap my heart and mind around new issues and uncertain issues continually. Searching for answers, if answers be had. As I compile final edits on my book that I look to publish come fall or sooner I feel so distant from the place I was when I wrote that. The part of the quote with which I now wrestle is the end. Will things come around in time? Will they "be okay?" I want to look at all the good this world has to offer, but frankly I am a little overwhelmed by the fact that after all this time humans still torture each other, go to war, enslave, rape, oppress, and so blatantly exploit other human beings.
That old concept of original sin looks so much more appealing to me than it has in a long time. I have faith in the individual good of humans, but am losing faith in the good or progress of humanity. I want to say we have progressed - and in areas, we have, but in other areas it seems as though we are simply spinning our wheels. I am so sick of spinning our wheels. As I look at what is really going on in the world I think of Fahrenheit 451 - I think of Wall-E, and how close we seem sometimes to those people who are so engrossed in what they are doing that they don't even know there's another world out there.
And most troubling is that I don't even know how to approach the situation on my own. I want to say there's a type of top down spiritual causation of which I long to be a part, but, to be honest, my faith is shaken. I've moved away from a sorrowful and heartbroken God of pathos because for a long time it was really unhealthy for me to experience the guilt brought about by thinking God wept for my sin and failure. Now as I weep because of the fact that worldwide women are still marginalized, dehumanized, objectified, raped, abused, and generally scapegoated, I wonder if God does not also weep in some way. Weep for the loss of "His" children. The story of the fall perplexes me deeply. What would it mean to return to the tree of life. Where is it? Because either there is some sort of DEEP rift between humans and divine presence, or there is no God, or there is not "sentient" God - some kind of divine God-force that we can open ourselves to and be transformed, but nothing acting consciously on the behalf of humanity and the rest of nature/creation. Even the Process understanding that God is NOT all powerful, but acts through a kind of creative lure, a persuasive and relational power rather than coercive unilateral power, is beginning to seem a bit hollow. It's sad to think that there are saleswomen out there who are more persuasive than God.
Moltmann talks about how in Christ God experiences God-forsakenness. "My God My God Why have you forsaken me?" is the cry. On the cross Christ experiences the utter terror and aloneness of being forsaken by God. Through his resurrection and ascension that is not the end, but the experience of God forsakenness is there, and has been taken up into God and integrated into God's being. Now God is present in the midst of God-forsakenness. When we are forsaken by God, God is present. In the negation of God, God comes to us in the crucified one, crying out from his own God-forsakenness. In our forsakenness we are not forsaken.
If God became enfleshed in Jesus in a unique and nearly impossible to understand way, then the terror of that moment must have been so absolute as to be unimaginable. I've heard that when people are in the midst of suffering they do not ask why God allows it to happen, but rather "where is God?" And as women and children are raped and abused around the world, and as we try to fix the economic system that we invented by pumping more and more money into it, hoping that productivity will once again save the day, all the while people are starving, species are going extinct, and hatred, greed, and resignation abound. And I have to ask myself what is my place in all of this? And as I leave Claremont with sixty thousand dollars in student loans to repay from all of my schooling up until now, I have no sense of freedom. I do not feel free. The opposite. I feel imprisoned by the economic order, I feel imprisoned by my own lack of experience. My desire to experience transformational travel abroad is refuted by the fact that we struggle right now to ensure we have enough money to pay all of our bills, while maintaining enough for the things that keep us sane.
And the fact of the matter is, action is just not enough. Letter writing isn't enough. Protesting isn't enough. But who says I have to do "enough"? What is it about humans - about me - that produces a sense of obligation to those we cannot even see? Where is God in all of this, and how will it change my own understanding of the world if I begin to consider a much more drastic cosmological rift between Divinity and "creation." Those people in Darfur who are ravaged and dying - humans doing this to other humans that they do not see as human. We say we have learned from the holocaust, but who is "we"?
Now we are caught up in this ridiculous capitalist system we have created for ourselves in which everyone must continue to produce and spend or it all falls to pieces. It hurts. And if your first response is to give me answers, or theology, then you haven't heard me. If that is your need, to explain it to me and make it make sense, don't. It doesn't make sense and it does hurt. This world makes no sense. A God who created it makes no sense. I hope the mystics are right. I hope this really is a very bad dream from which we will all one day awaken, sweat dripping down our spiritual faces and bodies, and breathe a grateful cry of relief that it was not as we had imagined it after all. That there is something else. That there is another realm, another place, another reality that we are not seeing here that makes it all make sense, that makes it worth the pain and the suffering. If there is a God I hope we can come home to that God soon, whatever that looks like, however it manifests.
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