Early in his ground breaking Civilization and its Discontents, famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud observes that, "If the believer finally sees himself obliged to speak of God's 'inscrutable decrees,' he is admitting that all that is left to him as a last possible consolation and source of pleasure in his suffering is an unconditional submission."

     Whatever else we may think about Freud, we must acknowledge that in this sentence he has captured the heart of faith.  He is observing that, in the end, the believer in God must balance what she understands to be the ultimate inscrutability of God's actions with what she also understands to be his steadfast love for all human beings.  Then to trust, in the absence of complete understanding, the fact of this love.

      Even in the face of suffering.  Even in the face of not always knowing.

      And even when we cannot see.

      Faith isn't easy.

      If we trust someone, however, we place our hopes unreservedly in that someone.  We unconditionally submit to the good of that person's role in our life.

      In the end, that's all that God is really asking us to do.

      Thanks, Dr. Freud, for reminding us of what faith most is.

      By the way, I'll be traveling for the next week or two.  Talk to you when I return.  Thanks for reading!  

     Absolute knowing?  At one point in my atheist discussion group this month, a couple of people raised the issue of whether there is absolute knowledge.  They both understood that because knowledge is based ultimately on perception, what we think we know is heavily dependent on how our senses take in the world.  

No argument there.

     Where these people differed was that despite this caution, we can, one insisted, nonetheless acquire "absolute" knowledge.  That is, we can know things, maybe even reality, exactly as they are

     Perhaps.  While we could debate the point at length, it seems to me that something is missing.  The materialistic viewpoint only allows for discussion based on what is before it.  It will not admit to the possibility of anything of which it cannot, in some way, sense empirically.  Fair enough.  But this overlooks that, even if we agree that the world is all that is, we still do not have a ready answer as to why we are even here to debate such things.  We're just collections of molecules arguing over whether we can know about other collections of molecules.  There is no framework for debate.

     And we're still spinning our wheels.  Yes, in the end, perception determines reality.  But this can only be true if it is a reality that we made and not merely perceived.

     And the former we will never be able to do.

     One criticism of religion is that it tends to create a set of polarities that often mask the real issues at hand.  While perhaps necessary to preserve belief's boundaries, dogma often buries the larger point of that belief in a pile of contradiction.

     In his "Saint Joan," Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, well known for his "Man and Superman" and numerous other political and social parodies, takes aim at the frailties of religion.  After presenting Joan's trial, conviction, and death, Shaw follows with an imaginary "post-death" convening of Joan and the various principals involved in the entire affair.  This includes, among others, the clergy, onlookers, and executioner.  Those who condemned and killed Joan express their regret; Joan reminds them of the tenuous path they followed to make their choice.

     It is a path, she says, that demanded an allegiance to values supported, in many ways, by nothing more than groupthink and tradition, values that had no support other than themselves.  Whether Joan was right and her accusers wrong is not the point.  The point is rather that when both sides are convinced that theirs is the insight of God, conflict is inevitable.  And the strongest--not necessarily the most correct--always wins.

     I love the way that religion enriches the human experience.  Nonetheless, I remain enormously uncomfortable with religious dogma.  Belief is important, yes, critically important, but it's nothing without gratitude and humility.

     And genuine experience.

      Have you read The Epic of Gilgamesh?  One of humanity's oldest written stories, Gilgamesh first appeared in the writings of ancient Sumer, shortly before the close of the third millennium B.C.  While whether it deserves to be called history's first narrative tale remains a matter of scholarly debate, Gilgamesh certainly presents one of humanity's earliest attempts to come to grips with the fact of death.

     Briefly, Gilgamesh tells the story of Gilgamesh, the mighty king of Uruk who knew no rival.  Along the way, Gilgamesh encounters Enkidu, a wild man, unruly and untamed who, the king quickly realizes, is his equal.  Subsequently, for a season Gilgamesh and Enkidu roam the deserts and mountains of Mesopotamia, conquering all who dare stand up to them.

     One day, however, Enkidu develops a fever and, after some days of agony, dies. As Gilgamesh mourns his fallen friend, he says,“When I die, shall I not be like Enkidu [gone forever]?  Woe has entered my belly.  Fearing death, I roam over the steppe.” 

     Gilgamesh has encountered the limits of his mortality, and finds he can do nothing about it.  So it is that later in the story, the "ale-wife" says to him, “Gilgamesh, where do you roam?  The life you pursue you shall not find.  When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they set aside, life in their own hands retaining."

     However powerful you are, Gilgamesh, you will never undo or overcome death.

     Nor can we.  Well, some might respond, that's just how life is.  True enough.  Yet this still doesn't explain why, if we are nothing more than a collection of molecules, we tremble before the prospect of the imminent and total loss of existence.

     Maybe we really are more than a cosmic afterthought.  And maybe there really is, as the "ale-wife" suggested, a life, a uniquely uncaused life, out of which our life comes.

     Even as our Jewish brethren remember Tisha B'Av, our Muslim brothers and sisters are remembering the feast of Eid Al-Adha ("Festival of the Sacrifice").  While Tisha B'Av recalls and mourns destruction, Eid Al-Adha recalls and celebrates sacrifice.  It tells us that at the heart of persuaded belief lies the notion of trust.

     For when we trust in an unseen presence, we are willing to sacrifice, to commit ourselves unreservedly to it.  Many of us are familiar with the story of Abraham and Issac ("one who laughs').  Although Eid Al-Adha renders it as the story of Abraham and Ishmael ("God hears"), the plot is the same.  God asks Abraham to trust him with the life of his son, to be willing to sacrifice his son to God.

     (While we moderns may rightly recoil at this thought and Abraham's apparent willingness to accede to it, we should remind ourselves that, in the world that Abraham occupied, child sacrifice was not uncommon.  Not that this makes such things right, just that, given his cultural sensibilities, Abraham had no ready reason to doubt that this was what God was telling him to do.  For those interested in learning more about Abraham and God's intentions, I recommend reading the reflections of Soren Kierkegaard, and David Gelenter on them.  Also, read the thoughts of Joseph Soloveitchik.)

     This aside, what Eid Al-Adha can tell us is that at the heart of spirituality must be a willingness to trust.  To trust the one to whom we direct our heart.  To believe that this one is always good.  To be convinced that, always and always, this one will be with us and on our side.

     Tisha B'Av.  One of the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar, Tisha B'Av ("Ninth [day] of Av") (Av is the fifth month in the Jewish calendar) remembers the destruction of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem:  the first one, built by Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C., and the second, built after the Exile and destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.  Commemorated a few days ago, Tisha B'Av is a day (and night) of intense summer mourning; in fact, many Jews see the entire summer as a time to remember and mourn the loss of the temples.

    In the "modern" age that most of us occupy, we may not readily identify with the destruction of temples built so many centuries ago.  Yet like most buildings of note, temples are repositories of memory.  People look to temples to remind themselves of what has been, what is, what could be, and what one day will be.  They find in temples conduits and expressions of the collective consciousness that sustains them, the corporate beliefs on which their spiritual sensibilities and inclinations are grounded:  the traditions that endure.

     People also look to temples to remind themselves of the fact and presence of hope.  Although the temples of Jerusalem were destroyed, the hope, the perduring hope in the love of a good God, continues:  remembering the destruction of a temple tells people that their hope does not lie solely in the structures of this present reality.  Their hope rather rests in something, in someone whose longevity and purview exceed that of all the world's empires combined.  It is a hope, indeed, an active conviction and belief, that regardless of the turns of earthly history, there is someone who will always be greater and more, a lasting foundation of point and meaning.

     And that life is therefore ever more than what we now see.

      Perhaps you've read it; after all, it's been on the best seller lists for nearly two years:  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  The plaudits this novel has received are numerous and include a Pulitzer Prize.  Critic upon critic has praised it, and many a reader has found it to be one of the best books she has read in years.

     With good reason.  Set in World II Europe, All the Light tells a marvelously constructed story, rich with history, literary allusion, creative word choices, and a clever plot.  All the Light relates the story of two young people, one an inquisitive blind girl living in France, the other a bright and socially ostracized boy in Germany.  Over the passage of some years and several intricate twists of story, the two young people meet each other.  There is no romance, but there is an incredible bond.  It's a mutual understanding that in the midst of a horrific military conflict two people from opposite sides realize that, ironically, they really do need each other to survive.

     One survives; the other does not.  Though I won't say which one lives, I will say that, bigger picture, the novel demonstrates, at once, the incredible compassion as well as the frightening futility of humanness.  The need to care and look out for one's fellow human being is matched, perhaps overrode, by the realization that, in the end, life continues on, anyway.

     Quite.  In a world without larger definition, meaning still remains elusive.

 

      Many years have passed since America novelist Ernst Hemingway took his life in Ketchum, Idaho (where, a few years ago, I was privileged to visit his grave).  But his literary legacy remains, potent and enticing, asking us, in the most straightforward way, to consider why life must have meaning.  It also asks us to consider truth.

     
     In the final pages of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, the protagonist has seen his wife die giving birth to his child, then saw the child die, too.  He doesn't seem to be sad, much less weep.  Instead, he "put on his hat and walked into the rain."

     In other words, unless life has meaning, we will be ever walking into the rain, too.  Surely, reality, what we see directly and what we intuit and feel, is more than our life and death.

     If not, we have missed the point.

      A musician, an artist:  colorists consummate, each paints images of the world.  The one does so with his music, the other with his brushes.  Last month, in looking at the music of Robert Schumann, we noted its sense of fantasy and wonder, its blend of magic and reality, the way that its melodies transport us to new lands.  When we turn to the work of the Dutch artist Rembrandt Harenszoon van Rijin, otherwise known as Rembrandt, we stumble into an equally remarkable vista, one of profound  and telling detail infused with extraordinarily rich and vibrant color.  We often wonder whether our world is really this amazing.

      Perhaps it is.  Perhaps what Rembrandt most does for us to open our eyes so as to allow us to shed our preconceptions about existence, the often utilitarian way that we view being alive, to encourage us to let our imaginations roam to what could be and, perhaps most important, what ought to be.  Maybe Rembrandt is showing us how to look for more than we expect to see.

     To see what is really there.  What is, in the "Return of the Prodigal Son" (based on the timeless story presented in the gospel of Luke) pictured to the left, most working in the lives of those so portrayed?  It is a deep yearning for transcendent presence on the part of those whom it made.

     It's the ultimate vision of our humanness.

      Do you know the story of Siddhartha, now remembered as the Buddha?Although it is told in various iterations, it basically tells of how the young prince Siddhartha becomes the Buddha.  As the tale goes, a child of immense wealth and privilege, Siddhartha grew increasingly dissatisfied with his life.  Is there anything else, he wondered, to existence besides material abundance?

    So one day Siddhartha left the palace for the open road.  As he did, he encountered, in succession, an elderly man, a sick man, and a dead man.  He had never seen aging; he had never experienced sickness; he had never known of death.  These sights shattered all of the categories he had established for understanding the world.

     In his Siddhartha, author Hermann Hesse, a German novelist whose works were highly popular in the soul-searching years of the Sixties and Seventies, recounts the prince's journey.  As he tells the journey, after many months of wandering, the prince arrives at a river, a peaceful, flowing river.  He is struck by the river's steadiness, its rhythms and quiescence, the way it seemed to flow unhindered, unbidden, ever and always free.  And always remaining the same.

     So should be, Siddhartha concluded, life.  Life is a river, a single and continuous present, never beginning, and never really ending, either.  We live into existence as a river.  It's all we need.  In the river, we see truth:  everything is one.

     As I reflect on Hesse's account some fifty years after I first read it, I realize that, yes, truth encapsulates and defines existence, and that, yes, truth is the genesis of life and meaning.  Yet I also realize that we little human beings seriously err if we suppose ourselves capable of creating it.  How could we?  We only know what we see.

     And that's not always true, much less truth. 

     Maybe we really do need a God.

 

     It's Bastille Day!  As I write this, French people the world over are celebrating the day in July 1789 when cries for freedom from the tyranny of the French monarchy (and its minions) finally erupted for the latter to see.  Long the symbol of the monarchy's iron grip on power, the Bastille was an fitting place for the Revolution to begin.  And begin it did.

     Yes, the French Revolution was rather bloody, and yes, it killed many innocent people.  No argument there.  Inspired as it was by the American Revolution, however, the French Revolution signaled to the "powers that be" (as the late David Halberstram put it) that from this day forward the lower classes would no longer simply accept their lot and move through life accordingly.  From this day forward, they would seek a greater destiny.  After all, they asserted, they, too, are beings of immense marvel and potential.

     The French Revolution also served notice to the oligarchies of the world (which continue to rule the world today), that their responsibility was not only to themselves.  Of what value is an oligarch's wealth if it is not directed toward the common good?

     We are not here for ourselves.  We are here for each other.

     Although the French Revolution was decidedly secular, it nonetheless demonstrated, whether it intended to or not, that in the biggest possible picture, in a world that God made there is room for everyone to be whom he or she is destined to be.  Everyone.

      As I have been regrouping after my trip, I have spent time thinking about the nation of Haiti.  What more can go wrong in that little country?  It's heartbreaking.  In the wake of the assassination of its president, its society is on the verge of falling completely apart.  Food shortages are rampant, and lawlessness reigns.  How unbearably tragic that several hundred miles to the north, most of us in the U.S. are living comfortably and in relative safety, reasonably secure in the government we have elected.  We are so insulated, so very insulated from the pain and terror sweeping through our neighbor to the south.

     I would say that we should pray, and I do.  But we should also consider how we can help.  There are any number of NGOs on the ground that are trying desperately to alleviate at least some of the hardships rippling across the nation. Even as you think about giving them money to continue their work, pray for them.  God did not make humanity to abandon its own.

     Did the Good Samaritan ask the traveler why he was traveling on such a lonely and unsafe road?