To the Shores of Sure

 

Within the isolation of their remote land,
from inside the work of their silent meditations,
each sage had apprehended a light the night sky,
a light indeed so singular and so great that 

the light of ordinary day seemed dim.

This light appeared
in the person of a star,
speaking and singing,
brightening and ringing,
inviting the seers on a journey
to a distant land
to see the birth
of a baby of light.

So, out of the land of Un-Sure,
the seers went forth,
guided, fed and nurtured
by this amazing star.

Having finally arrived, they found
a humble stable,
a humble couple,
and humble witnesses
to a humble birth
of new light.

The seers bestowed
what gifts they had to give
to mark the occasion,
to bless the child,
this newborn star,
burning brightly
at his mother’s breast.

This bright star
—the embodied ancient of days:
maker-father;
wisdom-mother;
innovator-child—
then proclaimed:

All that has been,
All that is now,
All that will be
has waited for this new light,
which a light that lights 

beyond the brightness and clarity
of even the visible light.

Know that this light is always present:
within every person
there is a cave of mysteries,
the fresh and fragrant wellspring
of this inimitable light.

You are the light of the world!
How so ever you see the star
shows you in a role
as light embodied,
and in a form appropriate
to this and every moment,

Your inner light is not about
worship self-served in apathy,
but about discernment to
action in service to others.

Every person with a love of learning,
take heed of this truth:
the divided house cannot stand;
what can divide light?
Only darkness.

Yet glorious light pools everywhere;
there is no place untouched by this light,
very light of very light,
begotten, not made,
meant to bring an end to all mysteries
with the simple truth that
we are, all and each,
light for each other,
to lighten the world.

Therefore, the time of waiting is past;
it is time to rise from your dreams.

 

Awaken and go forth
to fulfill your light in the world,
that you may overflow
with benevolence and peace,
blessing all along your way
for all your days.

Thus, having blessed the light
and having been blessed by the light,
having heard the homily of light,
the seers returned home,
—ever after known as the Shores of Sure—
to live out their calling in service.

© 2023 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen & songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

NOTES and COMMENTARY: This bit of writing (perhaps a work in progress) is my odd sort of commentary on a pseudepigraphical writing known as the Revelation of the Magi, extant in the form of an 8^th century manuscript in Syriac, preserved in the Vatican Library (Biblioteca apostolica, syr. 162) that may have a 5^th century antecedent in another language. This is an interesting hash of a tale that contains, among other things, the suggestion that the magi are twelve descendants of Seth in a distant land of Shir, who received stories or texts from Adam about “the fall;” a visitation from a polymorphous star being; a journey to see the birth of the baby; anointing of the sages and their return to the land of Shir from which they came; the arrival of Judas Thomas to the land of Shir to preach in summation to the sages.

A few lines stood out to me, when I read the translation of the text in Brent Landau’s dissertation on the work. “And you will see the completion of all the mysteries in Jerusalem, and everything that was spoken with you will become true for you,” is spoken by the star prior to the journey. “Therefore, rise and go in peace to your light-receiving land, because you have been deemed worthy to receive the perfect light of the heavenly majesty, and to come worship it with your gifts in joy. Behold, you have completed everything that you were commanded by your fathers, and you have also been deemed worthy to know and learn the ancient hidden mysteries, which were written for you from the first generations. Now, behold, you have seen the completion of your mysteries…” The star child sums things up, “And it was not in vain that you were created in the world, and heaven and earth and all the worlds came into being for your sake.”  

Meta-message to me: Clarifying light makes an end to all mysteries.

//

Religion, like politics and philosophy, is about governance. 

Ideally, the best kind of governance is self-governance.

Practically speaking, the only kind of governance is self-governance. 

Sages, seers and prophets suggest a self-governance that is inspired by awe in and duty toward a universal, parent-like deity. The christian writings that purport to record the teachings of Jesus have been eclipsed by redactions, sectarian battles over interpretation, apologias that strive to turn the hero into a god from before all time, and provide colliding sacred and secular visions of the best way to control the masses in conservative hierarchical fashion, so that an elite small group wields (hopefully benign) power and metes out a meager sort of justice (when it suits).

Millennia of competing religions behaving badly, in sectarian Technicolor, has had the effect of tossing out the holy child with the dirty bath-water of political corruption, most often reflected as authoritarianism that goes against all practical realities of self-governance. 

In the canonical gospels and within other texts that record what Jesus was apparently saying and teaching, the message is unequivocal that if you believe in the god of Mosaic law then you must self-govern in a way that serves others simultaneously with self. This is what is meant by righteousness and equity. This is what communion is all about. Jesus was talking about oppressed people turning the tables and rethinking their lot by understanding themselves as having a critical, on-the-ground and irreplaceable role in community. Religion stomps this message right out, countering with a top-down authoritarian model that states people can’t possibly be good, god should strike you down because of that, but Jesus took it for Team Sin, so that you don’t have to self-govern or be accountable. But then, because of that, you can’t have a say or a role beyond following a series of hollow leaders, doing what you are told, paying up your money and taking your chances.

If there is truth in all of this god-talk, it lies in the message that we are each a unique occurrence of light in the world; this means we have something to live up to and live for, through ethical self-governance that serves community and eschews the kind of personal power that is destructive and greedy. Self governance does not mean self-serving; it means an economy of duty to others, as well as self. Duty is best accomplished out of necessity, and more so by choice. We have not one, but many roles to fulfill for ourselves and for others; this is the significance of the polymorphic star-child. Living in a state of holiness and grace is living in the faith that your best efforts will be met by those of others, and that this is aided and blessed by the workings of the Divine Unseen. 

This is the Epiphany I have received from a lifetime of readings in and meditations on religion, philosophy and history, and I share it heartily with you. 

May you receive many blessings on your journey, and share your light with the world.

//

Revelations of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem, © 2010 by Brent Christopher Landau, Harper Collins NY

Image: Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423, tempera on panel, 283 x 300 cm (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 3): One to Rule Them All

 

Vast swaths of the general public (here, there and everywhere) take great stock in the notion of inevitability. 

This is a very interesting fault in human perspective. The “inevitable” whatever can manifest as concretely positive, negative or neutral, or take a positive, negative or neutral tone. The reason I suggest that this is a human fault is because most people will relate the word inevitable to the word fate, and take both words together as an indication that no action is needed, so why bother to take any?

This is a type of magical thinking. Here are examples of abstract notions people take to be inevitable (aside from the punch lines of an old joke from Daniel Defoe’s 1726 play The Political History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern, famously quoted by Benjamin Franklin: death and taxes): progress, world unity, the end of the world, equality, change makes us better, a simple solution to every question, and God’s will.  I’m sure you can think of a few abstract concepts that are linked to the notion of inevitability. Some of these could be categorized as “pipedreams,” others as apocalyptic fears.

When we think or believe that things or situations are inevitable, do we push back on the notion by trying some alternative or do we give up?

We are asked questions and the manner in which we are taught often implies that there are answers to every question and that we should know what those answers are or how to calculate them. We therefore dutifully attempt to find solutions to every question directed toward us. For example, here is an actual word problem that has been given to children in school:

There are 125 sheep and 5 dogs in a flock. 

How old is the shepherd?

Do you know what the answer is? When children are posed this questions, their first thought is likely: I’ve been given this as a math problem, there must be an answer, therefore, I’d better do something to come up with a solution. 

In reality, sometimes, it might be better to question the question. How old is the shepherd? is intended to be an exercise in logic; it is hoped that students will be able to discern that this question is illogically constructed and unanswerable. Hilarious results ensue, to be sure, when students try to compute answers to such a question. But, let’s be honest, this is a dirty trick to play on kids.

It’s a dirty trick to play on adults as well, who, sadly, also fall prey to the illogical question. The search for a fundamental theory of everything, in my humble opinion, is an adult variety entertaining the illogical question, a high-brow version of magical thinking. There is a lot of grant money being given to further abstract theories of everything, but I find questions along these lines a diversion from the kind of innovation we need—innovation that offers practical solutions to diverse daily problems. For example, it may be more practical to explore non-polluting ways of turning wastewater into biogas that can be safely used as fuel. We, as a species, certainly produce plenty of it! Why not recycle it!

The search for “one and done” solutions is another example of magical thinking. A gullible pubic is socially engineered down a pay-to-play rabbit hole that is papered with bright and misleading advertisements. However, as explored in a previous essay in this series, the world of intense diversity flies in the face of “one size fits all” thinking. We really do know better; one size cannot possibly fit all. Every place presents its own set of circumstances that need to be taken into account, and every individual in a place is liable to present a different set of skills and perspectives that may bear on those challenges. Baking bread is completely different at sea level than it is at high altitude.

Politically, we have in real-time reached that tipping point where utopian literature turns to its darker, fully dystopian side. Every single utopia ever conceived empowers a small elite counsel of elders to dictate what is best for the masses. Plato explored this in The Republic and The Laws, followed by a long line of writers, from Thomas More and Francis Bacon, to Margaret Cavendish and Jonathan Swift, on down to Edward Bellamy and William Morris, thence to appear ever darker in scope with Yevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, even unto Margaret Attwood. In the most positive examples of this form of literature, the minority band running the program is intelligent and benevolent; on the flip-side, the leadership is always less than well educated, punitive and totalitarian.

In the United States, circumstances beyond the control of the majority plebiscite has put the fate of our foundational liberalism, which for so long seemed to embody “inevitable progress,” into the hands of a conservative majority of the Supreme Court. This same court seems poised to undo all that has been traditionally (in my lifetime) regarded as “inevitable progress” toward equal recognition and rights for unique personhood, poised instead to enshrine “christian values,” retreat from founding Enlightenment principles to medieval standards of law, promote permissible armed violence, and put certain men in charge of institutions and bodies.

It is highly ironic that this small, ultra-conservative group (or members thereof) proclaims a literal orthodoxy exists within the text of our constitution, where two centuries of jurisprudence has seemingly seen the text through a lens more flexible and moving with the times. It seems that this portion of the Supreme Court group is throwing modern America back to the time Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. Note, however: Less well known than his discussion of devils inhabiting the invisible world, Cotton Mather was also a scientist; he was an advocate for inoculation against smallpox, and he wrote a book proclaiming harmony between Newtonian physics and religion. Fact!

Any claims of original this, orthodox that are illogical excuses to proclaim a modern paterfamilias--which is what? This could only mean a totalitarian autocracy the likes of Stalinism. But who would the pater be? Certainly not Jesus, who used parables to teach illiterate people how to navigate oppression while maintaining cultural ethos and personal integrity. The words of Jesus don’t seem to matter at all to “christians" who call for the death of liberal secularism, control of the womb and the right of armed, white hooligans to menace and kill—what resonates more are texts from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Meanwhile, the average person, having been rendered inert by false notions of inevitability that are accompanied by a blizzard of disinformation, is thrown down a socially engineered rabbit hole. When and where will we land? Shall the landing be hard or soft?

There are 330 million sheeple and 6 dogs in a flock.

Who is the shepherd?

Magic versus Magical Thinking, a Practical Guide (Part 2): Of Origins, Migrations, Memory and Nostalgia

 

Of all the various types of magical thinking, this particular variety is among the most frequent—and the most dangerous:

If only we could return to the way things were, everything would be all right.

If only that could possibly be true, in any way shape or form! This expression of longing, however, is most often the result of incomplete, in some cases manufactured, memory. 

Here is an example of what I mean. That collection of “books” that comes to many of us prepackaged in a single volume called The Bible, with all its errors of translation and transliteration, gaps, glosses and bridgework, contains in its first book not one but two creation stories. (As an aside, there are actually many other creation stories throughout the entire collection. Look to the Psalms, Hosea, Isaiah, Job, Proverbs,  Jeremiah, John and, of course, Revelation.) Most people who have read Genesis from start to end conflate the two stories, so that they become a single narrative. (The same thing happens with the Jesus birthday stories of the gospels.) What I mean to imply by mentioning this is that all such stories are afterward stories and not true accounts of any reality, particularly, as in similar stories from other cultural heritages, when anthropomorphism is applied to planets, stars or birds from the sky, ants and worms from below ground, or the fish in the sea. If you ever read any Greek mythology, even the most watered down versions, you understand what I mean. Said another way, we may have lived through our beginnings, but we were not there at our beginning.

As alluded to in the previous essay, people long for settled place and a sense of belonging in the midst of change and upheaval. This is not what the experience of living dishes out. 

The photo above was taken by me at the V Bar V Petroglyph Heritage site in Sedona, Arizona. Created over a long period by tribes identified today as Sinagua, this is a storyboard that could be applicable to many groupings of people, anywhere in the world, except that this particular storyboard is a product tied to a particular place and a particular time (roughly 1100 through 1400 CE). The storyboard is an almanac, depicting among other things seasonal changes and migration patterns that area dwellers followed. Not much, naturally, is known of the specific peoples who contributed to the storyboard; “mysteriously disappeared” is always the explanation given, but what we must read into that is a prolonged period of drought and/or invasion by unfriendly or warring tribes, as well as the ravages of colonization; anything might have triggered human migration from the area. What any person might be able to read (given a basic background in world mythology and South Western symbolism) on this magnificent stone cliff is the story of people in constant seasonal migration. During winter, groups would follow the herds of elk and other creatures, which would roughly end at the Spring thaw, at which time the People would shift their operations to rivers for fishing and collection of reeds for fashioning baskets, fishing traps and other useful items. In late Spring, the People would remove to flat or terraced fertile areas near water, in sheltered valleys or in the shadow of buttes, to plant, gather and build up stores for the winter. Throughout the area, there are fine examples of cliff dugout and masonry buildings, all of which were abandoned, for whatever reason.

At the site, we were given rough information by a white Forest Service docent, and then also an Indigenous Representative came (we were lucky; tribal representatives are not always available). People asked questions about the various symbols. The tribal Representative both knew and did not know. I remembered experiencing this shifting sort of vagueness on a decades previous trip to Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, where a question was asked about symbols in murals on the walls of the Mission Church. 

There are very specific reasons for this shifting between knowing and not knowing. First of all, there is a palpable, even visceral cultural memory of the violent ravages of colonization. Acoma was violently taken over by the Spanish, who then forced Christianity on the indigenous. There was a lot of resistance; one aspect of resistance to oppression is the presence of native symbols, discretely placed, under the radar. Telling strangers about that is like giving away personal identity. Secondly, because migration has always been a way seasonal way of life, and climate shifts play a huge role in that, many of the indigenous who live in a certain area now may have come from somewhere else; the tides of time and assimilation have sometimes washed away specific local cultural memory. 

The notion that the way we were is better than way things are now is a lie we tell ourselves when we feel unmoored from rootedness by the vicissitudes of an ever-changing world. The truth is, people want to feel rooted and complacent, but the reality is people cannot live that way for very long. The lands and cultures, the economies and governances are in constant fluctuation. There has never been the stasis our soul longs for. Snapshots of a carefree childhood are an incomplete knowledge of what it took for our parents to bring us to adulthood. Nietzsche called nostalgia a form of nihilism. In Will to Power, he wrote: 

A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning.

As I know from the practical experience of bringing up twins, nothing stays the same. Just at the very moment you come to understand one stage child development and how to manage within it, the next stage crashes like a wave that you are completely unprepared for and ill equipped to deal with, except that you must.  When I now see cute little kids walking to the park, it tugs at my heart, but I wouldn’t want to go through those first five years of childrearing again, at the age that I am now. 

As the sage named Jesus told a man called Nicodemus, everyone must be reborn again as from above. Nicodemus responds with a ridiculous question, offered on purpose, as in a Socratic/rabbinic dialogue, “You cannot mean that a person is to reenter his mother’s womb and be born again.” The sage responds metaphorically, “No one can enter the kingdom of the Divine unless they are born of water and the spirit.” By this metaphor, I take it to mean that, of course, there is no going backward, there is only forward movement and momentum toward a change in perspective, a maturation of understanding, enlightenment.

The desire to go backwards, aside from being impossible, is completely unnatural. As the survivors of the Surfside Condominium disaster could attest, as much as one might long to return to a place once known of as home, it might well no longer be there. The desire to go backwards is, to some extent, an expression of rage at being forced to adapt. 

But, we are intended to migrate, both physically and mentally, through the seasons, and through every stage of life. As T. S. Eliot relates in that famous poem of his, which echoes the sentiments of writers who came before him:

In my end is my beginning.

Commencement Day 2022

 

For Max and Hazel, and all the grads of 2022

You may not remember the first step you ever took,

but look, here you are, stepping off the dais,

as newly minted today, as you were then.

For years—too many, it seems—you’ve been told:

Line Up,

Move forward,

Look Up,

Look Down,

And STOP!

The world, now, is your oyster, as they say,

but they never tell you what this means:

The world is your classroom perpetual and teacher,

and every day brings a new challenge 

that writes a new lesson

for you to be tested on,

culminating in the greatest

of all questions:

“How do I make a difference

while I’ve got the day-to-day grind on my mind?”

This is the question for the ages;

All the great sages and philosophers have pondered the issue,

and here is what they said (abridged):

Line Up: Conform to goodness in everything.

Move Forward: Challenges are not intended to thwart your trajectory.

Look Up: Nothing in the vast universe is beneath your notice.

Look Down on nothing and no one; 

atoms—as people—differ in constituency, 

but coexist together in the same metaphenomenon;

honor that truth by learning to be together

in cooperation with all that is.

Stop at nothing achieve your goals, even as they shift.

Be yourself, accept yourself, even as you change and grow;

you hardly know it, but you’re already a techie,

  inventing and reinventing yourself,

inside and out, in every moment.

When you accept all others as equals,

this is where all dialogue begins,

and today is where the seeds are planted

for the gardens of tomorrow;

All that is left to do, then, is tend them, wisely,

today and tomorrow—always.

© 2022 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

Of Time Before Time After

A flutter of wings at my ear,
a pointed gaze of greeting
— all at once, a welling memory,
a time of knowing soul before words,
a completely other kind of knowing,
offering clarity to this experience
only from within sleep and dreams.

 

The amplitude of such interiority,
speaking as if from shadowed recesses,
is perhaps all that remains of that time,
all this time after time,
time filled with learned speech,
this a wholly different way
to perceive and filter experience.

 

The hummingbird,
having partaken of the offered nectar,
turns to me once more, as if to say,
“Yes, friend; we were there together,
remember?”

 

Such deep remembrance
renders planned trajectories irrelevant
to what is possible
when you look up,
reach out,
let loose and—
like the beautiful bird
—fly.

  

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

 

 

***

Memory is an astonishing attribute of mind and consciousness. 

 

This bit of writing is an attempt – in so many ways unsuccessful – to indicate an aspect of mind that I remember vaguely from my pre-verbal self in infancy. This memory is triggered every so often; last evening, what triggered it was reading this very brief passage from a lecture given in February of 1982 by Michel Foucault (published, with many other lectures delivered at Collège de France, under the title “The Hermeneutics of the Subject”): 

 

What is it to be free? asks Seneca. And he answers: To be free is effugere servitutem. 

I followed the footnote to see the more complete quote from Seneca’s Natural Questions: liber autem est qui servitutem sui (to be free is to no longer be slave to self).

And, somehow, that moment is when a recollection came of this moment I would experience before sleep, in the age of my infancy. What I remember is the sense that it seemed not so long a time before when understanding was easier because I was unencumbered, that is not enclosed, in the awkwardness of an untrained body. I can remember being put to bed, and being sleepy, and questions forming in my mind that were not tied, really, to language, as we who have words understand and experience language. My questions were about my daily experiences, about the things I did not understand. These would roll forward like an ebbing tide. Answers would flow back. The answers came in a form I cannot express; they were lengthy, precise, all at once simple and complex. Such answers would calm me and allow me to relax into sleep, but they were real answers that informed me; I recall that each night, the questions were always different, the answers were always new—like an onboard learning system, if you will.

 

Once I had attained language skills, this pre-language fell away—and I can viscerally recall feeling it recede, feeling it slip away, as it was no longer needed. Now that I had words, I could speak them to people, and get answers in that way. I can remember still reaching in my mind for that other kind of knowing, always on the way to sleep, and sometimes would still get responses. 

 

I cannot remember anything describable about this pre-verbal knowing, except that it was, and that I remember it because I experienced it, and the memory remains a part of my consciousness. In these moments when I remember it, I sometimes wonder if it remains a latent aspect within, and if perhaps I will encounter it again, in my latter days.

This Is It - Episode 3: Finding Purpose

He’d returned from being on the road. He’d been traveling, observing, learning, and teaching. From time to time, he’d return to see how things were at home. Each time, it seemed things had further deteriorated. 

The occupation was putting more and more strain on the people. The average person found it difficult to make ends meet, as more and more taxes were being levied—some to fund pleasure palaces and cities meant to honor men who had no honor. Building the city of Tiberius over the bones of the dead, not good—unclean. No pious person could live there.

Having made his way out into the world, he learned that there were more ways of worship than what Jerusalem offered; the farther you traveled away from the Temple, the greater chance of discovering a new sect of people who proclaimed to know better, more perfect ways of divine observance. And then there were the Greek gentiles and all their gods—and their philosophical thinking. Everyone was competing to be “right.” 

But more immediately, having returned home for a visit, the family spoke to him about their growing concern for cousin John, his ministry and mission. He had not seen John much over the years; as an adult, John had become a bit odd and estranged from immediate family. He’d found he couldn’t live indoors, and had left town to live in the countryside. And then he’d found a purpose—and now had a following. The family feared his purpose would make him a target. Perhaps an intervention was necessary.

And so he had been shadowing John, at the behest of family, to see what it was all about, to hear what John had to say. He found that with much of John’s talk, he was in full agreement. 

Daily, he had witnessed the same corruption John spoke of, impinging on the lives of the people. It wasn’t enough that the Roman occupation was burdening the people with new taxes and gentrification, but there were things going on in Jerusalem, even at the Temple, that were disquieting to him. Human nature, business as usual, quid pro quo—whatever you wanted to call it, the world seemed utterly at odds with what the scriptures taught was “the way it should be.”

What disturbed him personally was that people were complacent in their powerlessness, rote in their observances and treating their mundane daily tasks as a burden rather than a blessing—or worse, as an emptiness rather than a fulfillment. It was easier to point fingers of blame than it was to find solutions from within the foundations of faith. The politics of everyday secular life was dividing people, and the life of the sacred was begging for renewal.

He watched as John helped people to renew their covenant, to acknowledge their need for healing, to turn back to the holy one. Person after person walked away refreshed and with new purpose. For how long that might last, who knew—but in the moment, with the support of the crowd, this was a shining moment in the life of a soul.

And a feeling welled up in his own soul, a need not to intervene, but to be a part of this movement and in support his kinsman, John. 

This, he felt to his core, was the sign he himself had been waiting for, in order to make his own purpose manifest.

So, he stepped forward, out of the crowd, and said, Me. Take me. I’ll be next.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A brief note about my literary exploration of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth: I have undertaken this exercise having read, sung (in several languages), meditated and prayed on the contents of the Synoptic Gospels (as well as the Non-Synoptic Gospels) for at least 45 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a bit of a library (which comes as no surprise to those who know me), and I try to follow modern scholarship. Here is a partial list of the authors and books that come to mind as I write these episodes:

Ballentine, Debra Scoggins, The Conflict Myth & the Biblical Tradition; Oxford University Press 2015

Erdman, Bart, various titles

Gaus, Andy, The Unvarnished New Testament; Phanes Press, 1991

Herzog, William R., Parables as Subversive Speech; Westminster John Knox Press, 1991

Louden, Bruce, Greek Myth and the Bible; Routledge, 2019

Tatian, Diatesseron; www.earlychristianwritings.com/diatessaron.html

Wajdenbaum, Philippe, Argonauts of the Desert, Routledge, 2011

Ward, Keith, The Philosopher and the Gospels, Lion Hudson, 2011

Yosef ben Maityahu (Titus Flavius Josephus), various writings

Random Thoughts on the Path Through Advent...

...Where a seemingly random set of observations may not be so random, after all.

—

The moment I saw it, I gasped because I know what it was and somehow understood it.

—How often has that happened to you?—

What did I see? It was an open mouth, carved into a wall, next to the front entrance of a very old building in Europe. More specifically, it was a mail slot, intended for the delivery of messages and small parcels. These can be seen in many “old world” (western) cities throughout the world, even into the Americas; the image below was photographed in Havana, Cuba. That it is a mail slot is clear, but that is not exactly what it means—that is, the symbolism of the open mouth. Generally fashioned as a grotesque or scary image, this symbolizes one of the most ancient of proscriptions: Do Not Steal. The symbolism is backed up by cultural aphorisms that run along the lines of “The righteous hand will come away whole, but a thief may be left with a stump!” Similarly, the so-called Bocca della Verità,in Rome, Italy, is a thought to represent a proscription against lying.

 While my children were growing up, literature had a very important role in our home, cluttered as it is with books and papers and music. Among their first “literary” experiences in school, they explored Greek mythology—aided by the contemporary and popular “Percy Jackson” series. This made me nostalgic: A favorite great Uncle gave me a book of Greek myth stories for Christmas, one year. I read it over and over again. The relative in question had been a classics scholar at Stanford University, and was a bookseller. This similarity in experience—mine and my children’s, decades later—gave me the feeling that most western education, for better or worse, starts with the same materials, the same essential primary reading. This may or may not be accurate, but I felt good that my children were following the same literature ladder that I had been exposed to.

The pitfall of such an education is that it makes assumptions about current generations based on the expectations made on former generations—not to mention that it can serve to limit free thought. Think about it for a moment: Academic writing is not always about presenting new and independent thought, rather it is about building on the thought (and even insisting on the same pathways) of all past generations. Every thesis and dissertation must be supported from the literature that came before it, even if previous literature is erroneous, sometimes owing to a lack of breadth, or carries implicit biases. Or worse, excellent writing of past generations is used to support and lend authority to terrible ideas. Original thinkers can break out of the mold, but not without a fight that includes vigorous viva voce challenges.

I’ve often said to my children, as they worked with reading and writing, exploring universal themes that crop up, “All words are built on all words.” That is to say, our universal life experience themes crop up in every literature and are translated into or expressed through different languages from every region worldwide in every generation. 

We started by naming, and from naming, we moved on to practical cooperative communication, thence onward to storytelling. Naming might be a solitary event, but practical communication and storytelling is a communal experience, where context and meaning are conveyed in a group setting. Original meanings can become clouded or distorted as communities become larger or disconnected, owing to migrations, greater distance between localities, greater urban density, and other social and demographic change, evolving or merging language (e.g., Spanglish), or simply the inexorable march of time. The so-called “generation gap” is a descriptive phrase that clearly defines what I mean. When I ask my kids to call me, I always say, “Dial me up.” I actually enjoy the eye rolls this anachronistic expression elicits. Childhood for my kids fell on the cusp of the tilting point away from film cameras to digital and moved seamlessly along in a very rapid innovation leap from cellular flip phone to the smart phone, “a computer in your pocket.” I sometimes worry that my kids lack portions of the cultural reference lexicon I inherited from my parents and grandparents; to me it represents a depth and a history, but who knows if that even should matter to them in their changing world. 

This how the Tower of Babel was constructed: People became unmoored from past understandings as they became immersed in newer innovations and technologies. To this day, some ancient technologies continue to persist, farming and writing (albeit, less and less in longhand), among them, as well as cooking, which can be looked on as a rudimentary form of chemistry.

Given a list that includes, licorice root, ginger, peppermint and woodbine, depending on one’s worldview and place in life, one is liable to react to the collection of items differently. The list could be seen as just that, a list of spices and herbs. Two on the list are roots; the others are shrubs. Some might glance at this list and take it for a recipefor a pleasant tea; others might have used these items medicinally, while still others might think they are flavorings for use in cooking, or, at the extreme end of the spectrum, a formula for a potion, or even as tools for magic.

The literature of myth and scripture is made up phrases and formulations that occur and recur. The similarity of Judeo-Christian language formulations with those of contemporaneous Greek literature is not often acknowledged, although there are scholars who have pointed this out. Here is where the Academy can have it’s blind spots; what demarks Greek mythology and history from so-called sacred literature of other traditions, and why should they be siloed away from comparison or examined under different sets of assumptions and standards?

Ritual words, phrases, formulations, images, employed in solitary contemplation or corporate, communal celebration are intended as a multi-dimensional experience. And example of what I mean is encapsulated in a common phrase “thought, word and deed.” Interestingly, though this phrase occurs in Christian prayer books, the complete phrase does not seem to exist, the three terms together, in the biblical canon. The origin of the phrase is actually much older than Greek or Judeo-Christian literature, coming as it does from the earlier Zend Avesta, the primary scripture of the Parsi tradition.

Therefore, O Zarathushtra! …

Make thy own self pure, O righteous man! anyone in the world here below can win purity for his own self, namely, when he cleanses his own self with good thoughts, words,and deeds.

Having good thoughts internally, declaiming those thoughts outwardly in words and embodying, exemplifying the thoughts and words in action, this is what it means to be, to use another familiar ancient term, upright. This could also be thought of as therapy, self-healing, as well as therapeutic outreach to family and greater community. This is the spirit of ubuntu, a modern African humanist philosophy; every individual has a role to play in the health of the community.

I will posit that there is a parallel consideration from the Vedic traditions: yantra (a geometric visualization tool), mantra (a chanted scripture or prayer) and tantra (the embodied practice of what has visualized and vocalized). The yantra, mantra and tantra are one and the same expression, inextricable, though individuals may respond better to one or another of the expressions.

Another parallel can be observed in the more modern Lucumi tradition, formed during the colonial era throughout the Caribbean region, with its earlier roots in West African Yoruba and other African traditions. Where the consecrated batá drums call the orishas to join and guide the congregation, call and response songs are sung to the sacred rhythms of the drums, and the related dance forms constitute a single, simultaneous flow of spiritual communication. The drums, the song and the dance together are a single, communal sacred expression, the sacred work of the people.

I recently took notice of the sak yant tradition of Thailand. The sak yant are a species of highly complex yantras, arising from what I would call a syncretic relationship between ancient animism and Buddhism. Modern Thai people view these symbols as magic; most do not understand the meanings of these yantras. These yantras make popular tattoos, which are administered by monks trained in the specifics of the mantras that accompany the yantras. This is the image I saw:

When I first saw the image, I understood it to mean energy emanating from the mindful being, which may be partly correct. The image is one version of what is called unalom, and it’s actual meaning is path to/of enlightenment. This yant has it’s own tone and can be expressed in conjunction with many mantras, but your life is the actual tantra.

Unfortunately, esoteric images like these are all too frequently treated solely as “magic”, as good luck charms by those who wear them, rather than the intended use as a meditation tool or an aspect of, to quote philosopher Iris Murdoch, “a moral philosophy” that “should be inhabited” by the individual. We can accept blessings conferred on us, but do we harm ourselves when we (1) don’t understand the meaning of a blessing, (2) don’t follow up the blessing with appropriate action or (3) knowingly ask someone else to act on our behalf, thus avoiding engagement? To quote Murdoch again, “Prayer is properly not a petition,” but these days, it seems almost exclusively thought of in that way. 

The inclination to give an intercessor, priest, monk, magician, shaman or guru that much power has perhaps given rise to every single example of spiritual materialism and idol worship that has ever existed. That superstition exists in the modern world – and is sometimes actively taught to people by an authoritarian few – should give us all pause. We cannot consign to others the maintenance of our moral character. Charms and magic do not make such work go away. This is why the Buddha did not want people to worship him or indeed anyone else.

That said, it is true that everyone has a role to play in the life of others, and that is the “seen and unseen” aspect of living. There are so many of us in the world just for that reason, I believe – so that we can be for others, to help others and support others, as a chain of support network that has no beginning and no end. 

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During the Advent season, I enjoy revisiting the Isaiah writings in the Bible. The notion of “uprightness” stands out to me. The texts of Isaiah speak about making the crooked straight, and rough places plain. What does this mean? Does it indicate bulldozing mountains and rolling out a concrete highway for the Divine Majesty? I think not.

Rather, I look on this is a prescription for self- and communal-healing. Just as the unalom symbol illustrates the spiritual journey, each person’s conscious life is an exercise in alignment and/or realignment. How many of you remember being told by a parent, “You’d better straighten up your act”? I believe this is exactly what is intended; we are the crooked places that need to be straightened and smoothed and tidied as we move through all the stages of our life, and only we can do that work. When we “straighten up our act”, we become more mindful, and thereby become more open to the Divine, and hopefully more engaged and connected to what is happening in the world around us. 

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The season of Advent has now come to it’s conclusion. We are either ready for what comes next, or not. The shortest day is now concluded, and the Dedication has begun. 

Is your home ready to receive a Holy Guest? Are you upright in thought, word and deed? Is your pathway aligned so the Guest can reach you with fluency and ease, and celebrate fully with you?

In this changing season, may we all move from darkness to light. May we help one another along the narrow roads, tidying and straightening as we go. May our mindfulness and care for one another be the only gift required to make us whole, and may peace visit you and remain with you, now and always.

Amen.