A Child of this Instant

It's been probably more than two weeks since I put up a post on this new blog of mine. I was hoping that starting this blog and giving it a sophisticated first post would inspire me to continually work on my "project" (we all need a "project" in grad school). But I've been setback by my own limitations. I always hope for myself that I become a smart, thoughtful, caring, gentle, and wise person. But my obsession with achieving such a status pulls my focus away from the things in life that really bring me joy, and instead I become envious. I compare myself with others. Oh dear, I compare myself with others so often, to such an obsessive extent.

Comparing usually leads to me feeling poorly about myself. It drags me away from others and from God (whoever God is). But I'm confused as to where else I could put my energies. It's so easy and natural to put energy into comparing myself with others. Where would I put that energy? It's such a natural place for me to focus, I don't know if I could name where my focus would be if it weren't on my internal standards of comparison.

I keep hoping that my practice of meditative prayer will be a new place where positive energy can take hold of me. I'm realizing, though, that I am a very poor meditator (and I hope I say that with honesty and not false modesty). My mantra of "shalom" rarely takes hold for more than a minute before I'm drifting off into fantasies, anxieties, or, predictably, comparing myself with others or some internal standard of my own.

There's really nothing profound entering my mind as how to deal with such personal struggle, though I should certainly name right now that I am not the only one to face these difficulties! But the act of meditative prayer will continue to be a practice of mine, and I trust that will reveal itself as a blessing, though I'm certainly not sure in which way. I'll close with a Rowan Williams quote, commenting on Thomas Merton, which draws close to the heart of both meditative prayer and a prayerful life.

"Being a child of this instant is encountering and entering into that elusive 'there before us' quality of God's action, that active reality- or, indeed, to use the scholastic language which was not at all alien to Merton's thinking, that 'pure act' which is beyond both memory and fantasy, the active 'being' of the world now, in this moment. Religious writing is an open door to what God is doing in making and loving the universe- which of course God does in every moment. Religious writing, writing that is religious work, is part of our attunement to the doing of God, made real and concrete here in how we see and how we attend: a loving and acting, a perceiving without egoistic will, but without passive resignation" (New Words for God).

Shameless (at least it's dark).

At ten after seven PM on an October Saturday
I listen to George Winston piano,
knowing that I am looking for
emotion
which wells up in my chest;
a bodily experience loaded with melancholy.
I regret,
long,
yearn,
mourn,
and I half-smile
(not outwardly).
I wish it was raining, windy, or snowing.
At least it's dark.

I could accuse myself of manipulation.
But justly?
I dare not (cannot) fight off feeling.
And, anyway,
Emotion is gift.

George Winston will be on all night.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Peace/GNFVZ?src=5

An Admission and a New(ish) Start

Since I posted my first entry on this blog last night, I’ve already received several comments from friends and family. These comments haven’t been critical or judgemental at all, but they have lead me to the following conclusion: I am easily sucked into the world of academia and philosophical lingo without much concern for accessibility or understanding. Most of my favorite philosophy, in fact, rejects philosophical shop-talk and jargon, instead encouraging a return to the real, concrete, and down-to-earth world in which we live, and move, and have our being. I even have to admit to being overly eager to prove, mostly to myself, that I can talk the language of philosophy alongside my professors and classmates. But what is the purpose of philosophy and of thinking if it does not attach itself to life?

Of course, I will certainly be investing myself over the next few years in the task of coming to some understanding of dense, complex, and jargon-filled philosophical texts. And my goal is not to ignore that jargon completely because, in this particular academic context, it serves and important role in achieving precision. However, at a recent philosophy conference I attended here in Toronto, I was struck that the most highly respected and smartest professors were also by far the most understandable. They used every day language to communicate complex ideas.

It has been easy for me, in this first month of grad school, to be caught up in and also intimidated by the whole academic pursuit. There’s often talk of submitting to conferences or journals. Professors and students often talk about their intellectual “project”, that is, the thing they are trying to say or accomplish in their writing. In many ways these are essential aspects of academia, so I don’t want to sound overly negative and make it sound as though the academic pursuit is necessarily pompous and pretentious. It simply suffers from a particular susceptibility in that direction.

So I think that I need to own up to my envy of those who I think are smarter than me, and also to my need to prove myself using philosophical lingo. I want to rephrase the purpose of this blog: it is specifically for my friends and family, and so I want to make is accessible, not only for the non-philosophical person, but also for myself, because, in reality, I only understand philosophical language in a very partial way.

My interest in the intersection of philosophy and spirituality is still accurately described in my first entry, but that very interest in spirituality (more so than philosophy) should lead away from shop-talk and instead into the realm of every-day language where our lives are really lived, and so where God really lives too. This of course doesn’t mean any anti-intellectualism, and from time to time a philosophically specific word may serve an important purpose. But ontology, epistemology, and ecclesiology are far from being necessary words to do philosophy and spirituality. What is really needed is the substance of real life, the bodily, emotionally, and psychologically charged spaces where we live out our lives. And it is this that I want to explore in this blog, where I hope my own musings, philosophical and otherwise, can find life in the minds of friends and family.

I should already admit, again, that even this blog entry has veered dangerously towards pretentiousness, and to some extent that is the risk I take when studying philosophy. I am writing to find my own voice, my own style, my own thoughts, and my own self, and, as a master’s student of philosophy, I admit that I am trying to achieve a certain eloquence and precision in my writing. It is my goal, though, for my academic pursuits not to lead to intellectual superiority or arrogance but instead deeper into the exciting world of thought. In this season of my life philosophy will be serving an important role on my spiritual journey. God, I trust, is at the beginning, middle, and end of such a season. 

A New Contemplative, Prayerful, Philosophical Practice

I am starting a new blog in order to provide a place for my thinking to focus itself. Beginning a master's degree in philosophy at The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto has blown wide open my excitement for thought. This excitement, though, easily leads to unfocused and sporadic bursts of intellectual energy which soon are cut adrift as my over-stimulated intellect flies from one half-considered thought to another. So as I progress through my degree here at ICS I hope that this blog can narrow my broad and unintelligible thoughts into something which is (hopefully) slightly understandable. This recent phenomena of blogging, which provides a place for countless people to express their thoughts on countless issues, will then also become a place for my own interests to find a foothold and perhaps blossom into something fruitful. I am not particularly concerned whether that potential fruitfulness serves only me or happens to also provoke something positive in others. So, to any friends and family reading this, I would be delighted if my publicly expressed thoughts were of some value to you, but I have no desire for your engagement with this blog to be a sign of the strength of our relationship! As I mentioned earlier, this will serve as a place for me to focus my otherwise scattered thoughts and so I am perfectly content with however much or little interest everyone else shows.

I shouldn't fool myself into thinking that I am blogging because I have something of extreme importance to say. I like to think that I will keep writing until I have said something. One of my undergraduate professors once told me that some people talk when they have something to say, other people talk until they have something to say. It might be that this blog serves both ways of saying something, though I would flatter myself if I didn't say that I tend towards the latter. In any case, talking or writing until one has something to say isn't necessarily a bad practice, particularly if it is not imposed upon others! 

Now that I've blathered on about this blog, I want to do what I hoped it would do for me: focus my thoughts. So, what have I been thinking about? What sort of questions has the beginning of my degree at ICS sparked for me? I suppose that the interests which are emerging while at grad school certainly have their roots in the years prior to setting out on this particular educational journey. I am thinking of the writings of Fr. Richard Rohr in particular, which have been a massive influence on me. Rohr is situated within the tradition of mystical spirituality and explores that tradition from a Roman Catholic perspective, though freely draws on the wisdom of other religious traditions as well, Christian or otherwise. I risk taking Rohr out of context here, but I think what he writes will be a sort of launching pad for much of my further philosophical and spiritual explorations. This is from one of his most recent books entitled "Immortal Diamond": 

"The spiritual wisdom of divine-human union is first beautifully expressed in writing in the Vedas (the oldest source of humanism, around three thousand years old). The phrase in Sanskrit is Tat Tvam Asi, which is a though so condensed that I am going to list all likely translations.

-          YOU are That!

-          You ARE what you seek!

-          THOU art that!

-          THAT you are!

-          YOU are IT!

The meaning of this saying is that the True Self, in its original, pure, primordial sate, is wholly or partially identifiable or even identical with God, the Ultimate Reality that is the ground and origin of all phenomena. That which you long for, you also are. In fact, that is where the longing comes from.

Longing for God and longing for our True Self are the same longing. And the mystics would say that it is God who is even doing the longing in us and through us through the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God implanted a natural affinity and allurement between God’s self and all of God’s creatures, all of God’s creation."

These are, of course, highly controversial claims within Christian theology. However, I consider it part of my work in the next few years to explore deeply what this notion of divine-human union really means and in what sense it can be seen as either orthodox or un-orthodox. There are so many levels that I want to explore with it. First of all, I need to spend time deciphering and describing what "it" really is, so exploring the writings of mystics will be essential. Secondly, I am interested in exploring the points of overlap between mysticism and postmodern philosophy. Within and beyond such an exploration of mysticism and postmodernism, the implications for such an understanding of God and humanity would be fascinating. What would such a philosophical anthropology/theology have to say on the topics of ethics, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, politics, aesthetics, and psychology? And how could it reshape specific topics in Christian theology such as Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology? 

If God is infinite, then these explorations would likely be infinite as well. Not infinite in a hopeless sense of never achieving answers, but joyfully infinite, as the ineffable silence of worship and prayer before God is infinite.