We document the story, our autobiography

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?” (Rumi)

“You cannot wander anywhere that will not aid you. Anything you can touch – God brought it into the classroom of your mind.” (Rabia Basra)

“What is a charitable heart? It is a heart that is burning with charity for the whole of creation…” (Saint Isaac the Syrian)

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

“I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers.” (Francoise Gilot)

“What, what am I to do with all of this life?” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

“We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.” (B. B. King)

Things will not always go according to plan

Source: https://piccadillyinc.com/products/the-story-of-my-life/

Things will not always go according to plan or follow the schedule. Unpredictability does not only belong to chaos theory and to weather, but to everyday existence: the ‘big things’ like life and death, good and evil, love and hatred, health and sickness. Despite the super computers, natural human ability to forecast complex weather patterns is still critical, humbling news for machines capable of trillions of calculations per second. Small things can also go awry and sometimes even these apparently insignificant events can become reason for a greater story. Missing your train in the morning; or being given the wrong business card; or writing the incorrect address on a letter; or turning right instead of left. These can all become causes for the unexpected. Despite the planning and attention to detail the future is out of our control. Yet we readily deceive ourselves into believing otherwise, particularly given the advancements in our technological innovations. The reality is perhaps more challenging but far more positive and exciting. We do have some ‘control’ of that world which ultimately does matter: our ‘inner world’. That space within [the ‘inscape’ to paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins] which goes a long way to determining our uniqueness, and what we do, and who we become: “[t]he human heart is no small thing, for it can embrace so much.” (Origen)

Truth is the correspondence between language and reality

In simple words, for this is a huge subject, truth is the correspondence between language and reality, a practical definition which probably sits well with most.[1] Then what of truth in literature? How are we to understand metaphor, or poetry, or even myth for instance? Is there a better example of the evident stresses that this correspondence will often elicit than the battle over the exegesis of the biblical account of the creation in the Book of Genesis? What is the cognitive value of this universal story and what kind of truth is it meaning to convey? And what of the spiritual truths put in the mouth of the Starets Zossima by Dostoevsky in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov? Or how true is Plato’s famous “allegory of the cave”? An autobiography, a memoir, a life-journal, for example; to what extent are they both literature and science? And how long does a text or document maintain a stable and determinant meaning before the deconstructionists get to it and challenge its structures and propositions? These questions become especially problematic from the moment we make reference to scientific method. One way to arrive at some kind of real-life resolution is to think in terms of context [from Latin contextus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave’]. Truth in whatever way we might define or understand it, is ultimately interwoven into and inseparable from life. Following in the spirit of the great storytellers, Sue Monk Kidd writes: “[s]tories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” Revelation and redemption invariably play an important part in how we mentally grasp the ‘story’ and in what ‘setting’ we locate it.

Providence or Coincidence

Providence is mostly connected to theological reflections and generally associated with divine purpose.[2] “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matt. 10:29). Coincidence on the other hand is normally thought of in terms of luck, fate, or chance. In some other instances coincidence has been thought of in the context of meaningful decisions. Perhaps it is at that point when it ‘coincides’ with providence.[3] Ultimately, whatever our definitions, both are forces of influence which determine destiny. In the Homeric writings ‘destiny’ is more coincidence with providence connected to ‘divine intervention’.[4] Destiny is fate for Homer. It cannot be escaped. “And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— it’s born with us the day that we are born.” Divine intervention, however, can manipulate destiny even with the direct involvement of human agency. The legends of Achilles and Hector as illustrated in the Iliad are classic examples of destiny and divine intervention intertwined. What is it that drives us to understand something of these incomprehensible forces and to put a name to them? An insightful response can be found in Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe. The protagonist, not irrelevantly a photographer, the young Greek-Australian Isaac, reflects in one place when asked to use his camera to document events of the past: “this desperate need to confirm the relevance of history…”. And so we are born into the world. We document the story, our autobiography [‘the account of our life’] as it unfolds, according to the opportunities we accept or dismiss. The love we share or withhold. All the time hoping that at the end of our days, we have been of some relevance.

It does not take much to strip us down to our base animal nature

It does not take much to strip us down to our base animal nature for our repertoire of the most beautiful songs and enlightening philosophies to turn into howls and screams. When our stomach is full, when we are not thirsty, when we live in a comfortable home and have good paying work, it is not difficult to act sophisticated and cultured. How refined would we be if there were ten of us fighting over one loaf of bread? Trying to outrun each other for a cup of cold water to quench our thirst? These thoughts are disturbing not only in the context of our hierarchical needs and natural instinct towards self-preservation, but also when ‘self-preservation’ leads to questions of motivation, self-defence and to punishment. It is shocking, too, to imagine that high culture and the cultivation of the Arts serve as no guarantee to the wisdom and compassion of the human spirit. The Nazis [and others before them and not a few afterwards in similar vein] would do their slaughtering during the day and in the evenings listen to classical music, write poetry, and read Goethe. We are only days, even hours or minutes away from being stripped from the personalities and personas we ideally choose to present ourselves to the world and according to which society rewards us. Self-awareness, to objectively evaluate ourselves, our character and feelings, will make some strong demands of us and oftentimes be a painful eye-opener. It can be a terrifying experience to stop and to listen to ourselves. To say when you have gone to your deepest places, to have found those things you would never want to have found, yes, all of it, that’s who I am. But it is this honest evaluation which also makes us capax dei: “capable of knowing God”. (Augustine)

Sometimes we have to look, nay search

Sometimes we have to look, nay search, for the light in places we might not normally want to look. Think for a moment of the response of the first community of believers to the vision of the brutalized and crucified Christ (Matt. 26:1-27:66). The gaze which normally precedes dogma is invariably more faithful to the reality of things. Difficult words and mind-boggling doctrines can often confuse and meddle with our initial revelation. The first bright illumination which inflamed our hearts and ran down our spines like a bolt of electricity. There is a holding place to most things that they might ripen and mature. Siddhartha Gotama and the prophet Daniel, Saint Isaac the Syrian and Jalaluddin Rumi, Rabia of Basra and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Francis of Assisi and Moses Mendelssohn, Meister Eckhart and Rabindranath Tagore, Dag Hammarskjöld and Saint Sophrony Sakharov are examples of those profound lights who looked deeper and beyond the margins of their prescribed canon. These souls to be sure remained faithful to their received tradition. The power of their witness is to be found in the unshakeable belief that every human being is of equal value and possessed of the same intrinsic possibilities. The list is a long one and includes meditative minds from every region and culture. In other fields of human endeavour where the “canonical boundaries” were tested, James Joyce did it with experimental literature; Pablo Picasso with Art; James Clerk Maxwell with physics; Ludwig Wittgenstein with his views on the purpose of philosophy; Frank Lloyd Wright with his architectural design; and Rosa Parks who says “No” to become the mother of the civil rights movement. And the great improvisers of music who did it with their blues in Mississippi and jazz in New Orleans. But all of this dialectical movement, the tension of the spirit with all of its divergent impulses, can come with a heavy cost and no small sacrifice, though surely it is worth the risk to be able to one day write: “…with the last ink in the pen I lived, each day I loved and lived.” (Michael Ondaatje)

Things are indeed different from up here

Somewhere over Yekaterinburg and Salekhard  

Altitude 36500 feet, Ground Speed 536 mph

Things are indeed different from up here. I do not mean the obvious, the physical perspective of being inside a ‘flying cigar’ with hundreds of strangers almost thirty-seven thousand feet above the earth. How often is it, that we are of one mind with people we have never met before. People of different races and colours and religions, men and women of different education, some virtuous and others corrupt, some in the prime of their lives and others nearer to their Maker than they might care to imagine. Yet with all these vagaries we are of the ‘one mind’. We all want to get somewhere and we all want to arrive there safely. The place which is calling us is love. We also call it home. Up here in space we are living for whatever the duration of our journey, as the saints do, when they come together in communio sanctorum. Is there a term for the ‘communion of travellers’? Fate would forever bind us in the unlikely event that this aeroplane drops from the sky, and it would not be with our dearest we would be spending the last and most truthful moments of our life. We would go to the other side in the company of hundreds of strangers all having hoped to make it safely home. If we could honestly recognize and live out this shared mortality, what differences we might see in the world. John Donne who especially prized this ‘inter-connectedness’ of humanity, has memorably written: “[n]o man is an island entire of itself…”. It is like the passage of time which none of us can escape, except to write on its pages our individual stories. And the eschatology we did battle with when nobody was watching.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/#pagetopright

[2] https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2018/01/24/god-god-providence/

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-true-meaning-of-coincidences/463164/

[4] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/2579/summary

The immeasurable value of perspective

“The heart governs the entire bodily organism and reigns over it, and when grace possesses the heart, it governs all the members and all thoughts, for it is in the heart that the intellect is found and all the thoughts of the soul as well as its desires; through its intermediary, grace equally penetrates into all the bodily members.” (Saint Macarius of Egypt)

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” (Joseph Campbell)

“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.” (José Ortega y Gasset)

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” (James Baldwin)

“Every canvas is a journey all its own.” (Helen Frankenthaler)

In the tradition of Hamlet

In the brooding tradition of Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet of Denmark, the French writer and Nobel laureate Albert Camus has said that if life is without meaning and purpose, this “feeling of absurdity” he called it, then suicide becomes the only “really serious philosophical problem.” So we must live he concludes, as if our lives have some meaning.[1] But to simply act on this premise, that is, to create a ‘theatre of meaning’ [or of the ‘absurd’], can only end in disaster for eventually this deception will catch up with us to dismantle our every foundation. We cannot hope to convince ourselves that there is some intelligent meaning to Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain to only have it roll back down again. Peace and happiness are not to be found in futility. Augustine in his Confessions describes the heart as “restless” unable to stay still or quiet for we are primarily desiring beings before we are rational. The role of the senses is strong, ears and eyes open to divers input, and so our senses are connected to the movement of the heart which is the seat of our attitude and will. All the great poets have understood the basis of this truth: “I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me.” (Dylan Thomas)

The endearing Didi and Gogo

The endearing Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) meet near a “leafless tree” to engage in a series of discussions waiting for the mysterious Godot who never arrives. It all seems so meaningless. They, too, consider suicide. Whether they are to be taken seriously or not is beside the point. But the problem is neither of these characters actually articulates what they want; or what they are looking for; or who Godot actually is. Or even if he ultimately exists. Ennui is at them. Entropy. Apathy. “[t]he boredom of interminable waiting. The entire play, in fact, is made up of attempts to fill the time.”[2] In existential terms, it is not even knowing what you want. It is, as some critics have said, the most successful literature ever written about “nothing”. Nothingness leads to ‘nothing.’ And to the deepest of despair. “Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” (Samuel Beckett)

Viktor Frankl and the search for meaning

Throughout history philosophers have postulated different motivational forces behind the lives, acts and decision-making processes of men and women. According to Viktor Frankl this “force” is “man’s search for meaning”.[3] Frankl believes, and he is not alone in his contention [for example Kierkegaard and centuries before him the prophet Jeremiah], that humans are motivated by the "will to meaning". Logotherapy is pursuit of that meaning and particularly in our attitude and response to unavoidable suffering. Logos is the Greek for “reason”. That is, he argues, that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose. This contra Nietzsche’s “will to power” as the driving force in humans and against Schopenhauer’s “will to live”, or Freud’s “will to pleasure”. Certainly, it can never be this clear cut for we are much too complicated in our psychosomatic make-up, but there is something universally engaging and trustworthy with Frankl’s discernments. His influential and reflective voice was authenticated having survived the horrors of the holocaust and by his personal experiences of suffering and loss in Nazi concentration camps. Logotherapy proposes that humans have a will to meaning, which signifies that meaning is our primary motivation for living and acting, and allows us to endure pain and suffering:

“The ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaningless of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.”

How many great symphonies have not been written

Source: “Ascent” - Jacob’s Ladder https://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/3787024/jewish/Ascent-Jacobs-Ladder.htm

Sometimes we are scared to approach that which we believe to be beyond us, like a grand challenge which will push us to our limits, or terrified of declaring our love lest we be rejected. Perhaps worse still saying we are sorry or admitting to our mistakes. It has been asked how many great symphonies have not been written because composers were reluctant to compose their own Ninth. The ‘curse of the Ninth’ they call it, for the fear of comparison with Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ masterpiece.[4] We need to be climbing our ladder, built to our own unique height and measure, climbing it to our greater potential. Not to be afraid at what revelation we encounter at the top. Jacob would not have encountered the Divine had he not dared to go up the “stairway” to hear these tremendous words from his Maker: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen. 28:10-15). Rainer Maria Rilke many centuries later could summarize this disclosure thus: “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

The desire for fame is one of the gravest dangers to the soul

The desire for fame is one of the gravest dangers to the soul. Few things are as corrosive to the self. Not many have been able to withstand its contagion. It is wanting to be adulated, to rise above the rest, together with the sense of power it delivers. It is one reason why the holy bishops of the past would flee into the desert when news of their elevation would reach them. This narcissistic aspiration, for human beings are not made to bear such adoration, goes back to the darkest but once the most beautiful of all the angels, Lucifer [“the morning star”]. Did he not want the glory properly belonging to the Creator alone? “For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God’” (Is. 14:13). This is a sobering lesson, in whatever way we might want to understand this story, for when we do battle against the desire to be our own ‘kings’, to place our own selves on the ‘thrones’ of our hearts. See here what the marvellous Rumi writes of fame which he has termed the “dragon’s jaw”:

“Many have a talent that urges them/ to seek fame for themselves,/ but in truth it only leads them to disaster./ If you want to save your own head,/ humble yourself like a foot,/ and put yourself under the protection/ of someone rooted in spiritual discernment./Even if you are a king, don’t put yourself above him/. Even if you are honey,/ gather up his rough sugar./ Your own ideas are merely shells,/ his are the soul of thought./ Your coins are false,/ his are the purest gold./ You are really he,/ but seek yourself in him./ Cool like a dove, flying toward him./ And if you cannot bring yourself to serve,/ know you are in the dragon’s jaw.”

Transformation, sometimes used for the metamorphosis

Transformation, sometimes used for the metamorphosis of the life cycle of an animal, will not happen overnight, or with ‘warm feelings’ which could last for an hour. It will be a long and testing journey. It will take much spiritual labour and lots of patience. It is good to remember when things get difficult, as they undoubtedly will, that it is temperature shock which hardens steel and that it is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Change can hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it will make the difference. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. Conversion is only the beginning. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.).[5] It can take time for the grace of God to fall, like new colours which are created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. Sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel or smoothing your heart on a piece of pumice stone. We are for now, where we are meant to be: “Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here…”. (Matt. 17:4)

And forewarn the builders of our new technologies

Secreted behind the words below rest some of the greatest truths expressed in world literature. As many times as we might read these paragraphs neither their beauty nor their sting are diminished. They inspire the wise, humble the knowledgeable, and forewarn the builders of our new technologies. Especially in the last lines of this quote from Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Bet” (1889),[6] the universally celebrated Russian playwright and short fiction writer [via ‘the mouth’ of his young lawyer protagonist] could have been an Old Testament prophet looking ahead at the technological innovations of the 21st century:

“I have spent fifteen years making a careful study of life on earth. True, I haven’t seen anything of the earth, of people, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, sung songs, hunted deer and wild boar in forests, love women… Beautiful creatures as ethereal as clouds created by the magic of your great poets have visited me at night and whispered marvellous tales in my ears, making my head reel. In your books I have scaled the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and from them I have seen the lightning flash above me and cleave the clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the sirens sing and the music of shepherds’ pipes. I have touched the wings of beautiful demons who flew down to talk to me about God. In your books I have hurled myself into bottomless abysses, wrought miracles, murdered, burnt cities, preached new religions, conquered entire kingdoms.

Your books have given me wisdom. Everything that man’s indefatigable mind has created over the centuries is compressed into a tiny lump inside my skull. I know that I’m cleverer than the lot of you.

And I despise your books. I despise all the blessings of this world, all its wisdom. Everything is worthless, transient, illusory, and as deceptive as a mirage. You may be proud, wise and handsome, but death will wipe you from the face of the earth, together with the mice under the floorboards. And your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will freeze or be reduced to ashes, along with the terrestrial globe. You’ve lost all reason and are on the wrong path. You mistake lies for the truth and ugliness for beauty. You’d be surprised if apple and orange trees suddenly started producing frogs and lizards instead of fruit, or if roses smelt of sweaty horses. I’m amazed at people who have exchanged heaven for earth. I just don’t want to understand you.” (Anton Chekhov, The Bet)

Perspective meaning ‘through’ and ‘to look at’

Homer’s first epic poem Margites exists only in a few scattered mentions; the biblical book “Book of the Wars of the Lord” of which no copy survives is lost forever but for its reference in Numbers (Num. 21:14); at least one third of Aristotle’s works are lost; the great Library of Alexandria was burned down twice; 80 per cent of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscript books lost; Lord Byron’s two volumes of memoirs were burnt; Hamlet’s predecessor the ‘Ur-Hamlet’ by Thomas Kyd lost; Ted Hughes destroyed the last writings of Sylvia Plath; almost everything Hemingway wrote to 1922 was lost in a trunk somewhere in Europe; Kafka’s love letters to Dora Diamant and other irreplaceable literature destroyed and/or burnt by the Nazis. This is a symbolic list of one which could continue for volumes.  Perspective [meaning ‘through’ and ‘to look at’] has always been one the most important keys to the acceptance of the unfolding of our individual stories. Margaret Atwood has put it characteristically well when she says without perspective we live with our faces "squashed up against a wall". Loss does not mean not moving forwards. And it never means to stop creating. Sometimes, too, we need to ‘lose’ our life in order to find it: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39).

[1] https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/camus-and-absurdity

[2] https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-waiting-for-godot

[3] https://www.amazon.com.au/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4N5-OALObk

[5] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Transfiguration

[6] https://www.indianfolk.com/130-years-bet-anton-chekhov/

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909)

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” (Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954)

“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” (Confucius)

“Sorry, a machine can’t forgive your mistakes.” (Anon.)

“Books don’t need batteries.” (Nadine Gordimer)

"Now, a machine however subtle does not feel love, does not pray, does not have a sense of the sacred, a sense of awe and wonder. To me these are human qualities that no machine, however elaborate, would be able to reproduce. You may love your computer but your computer does not love you." (Kallistos Ware)

Source: https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/951861340557234177

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me. Not that it might one day determine what I might eat or drink, or whether I can drink or eat at all, but that it will not hear my cries. That it will know nothing of physical thirst or of gut-wrenching despair. How can ‘they’ not understand this? It will have no comprehension of forgiveness. It will never wipe the slate clean. There is no delete. No such thing as absolution. It will deny to give me a fresh start [another more terrible dimension to DoS attack]. Mercy does not run through its microcircuitry. Don’t rush to embrace it too soon, this Trojan Horse which comes as a peace offering to the gods. The Creator has mercy for us, “[t]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Is. 1:18). The ‘Machine’ which is ‘spirited’ by power to apply force and control, is unmoved to our petitions, “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye” (2001: A Space Odyssey). This is the elephant in the living room. Something holds us back, a foreboding, a premonition perhaps, that keeps us from directly addressing this subject.

It really is difficult to see people broken, humiliated, and in some instances to have their lives taken away from them because of something they might have said five, ten, twenty or more years previously. For someone, for whatever reason, to dredge up ‘sins’ of the past in order to hurt, or more concisely, to cause irreparable damage to the other. Who among us hasn’t said something which they haven’t later regretted, or where our words and sentiments can be elicited to carry a meaning or an attitude not originally intended? These can be errors of speech, peer group pressure, or the result of youth and immaturity. Yet it is there, it has been recorded. It is ‘played back’ oblivious to the context. Context is that which “throws light on meaning”.[1] We all make stupid mistakes. It takes time for wisdom and life experience to meld. And in other instances we get to a certain age and become anachronistic dinosaurs. The ‘Machine’ [input-process-output] is calculating and efficient. To ‘terminate’ these people is to simultaneously terminate ourselves. It is to do to another, that which can be done back to us. The ‘Machine’ defines us by our mistakes. It groups us in categories and dumps us in information silos. Is this the fate of the human spirit, to be “born into this?”[2] Imprisoned inside the “big iron” mainframes… like Ted Hughes’ proud Jaguar in “prison darkness” in its cage?

To forgive is an expression of one of our highest elevations as human beings. It is nobler than our finest literature, our greatest art, our most beautiful music. It is greater than all these when practised with a true heart for it takes us into the realms of the deepest mysteries of our combined representations of the Divine. In our religious experience we do not awe at the Creator’s ability with the harp or the writing of celestial sonnets, but rather we are amazed at the expression of God’s mercy and forgiveness. To the extent that we ourselves do the same with our fellow human, that is, to extend our grace towards those who we perceive to have wronged us, we are in the “image and likeness” of the Creator (Gen. 1:26).  We forgive that we could enter more genuinely into the space of compassion, that we might go on loving. The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without “reservation.” (“perdonare” is also the source of our English “pardon”).  We give up the desire or the power to punish.[3] The ‘Machine’ knows nothing of compassion. It will not forgive because it cannot love. Algorithms don’t have soul; they are devoid of incorporeal essence:

“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush.” (Maya Angelou)

In life not all acts of fellowship are received well or reciprocated. When the grace we give is not accepted and is returned it can be brutal. It is a place of heavy tears. We are living increasingly in a world which keeps us isolated one from the other, and where we might be called-out or cancelled as swiftly as the swatting of an irritating fly. This is not because people are wicked, on the contrary, most people are generous and kind-hearted. We are all fragile vessels on an oftentimes bumpy journey. We can crack. And this is the tragedy, the irony, that this very fragility draws us into systems and networks and ‘mobs’ where we do things so that we, ourselves, might not be hurt. It is increasingly becoming a survival technique. The online world especially has hurt and devastated people by its millions, either by their own hand [addictive behaviours] or cyber-attacks [bullying, misinformation]. “As rapidly as technology advanced,” writes Joseph Carvalko in his prescient novel Death by Internet, “goodness declined…”. Communication technologies are not exempt. They are the voice of ‘the Machine’. The apparatus has no spiritual knowledge of humility and so it cannot practise repentance. Computational empathy or affective computing, is mimicry at worst, and simulation at best. The ‘Machine’ possesses no natural ontology, knowledge representation and reasoning, does not automatically equate to higher consciousness. It cannot possess “human memory”. And therefore it does not know what it is like to be human. I dread to think, if the present-day capabilities of our 21st century technology were available to past totalitarian regimes [especially Advanced LBS and monitoring systems], how enormously more multiplied and innovative their crimes would have been.[4]

To meet likeminded spirits along the way means so very much. It could make all the difference in the world, to have the strength, to hold onto the courage, to keep pushing apart that impalpable space between the light and the darkness. How good to have a friend who is real and co-substantial. To receive an encouraging message to remind you of your humanity, to have sympathy for you precisely because of your flesh and blood. To be accepted for all your faults and list of misdemeanours. And if need be, as it sometimes will be, for one or the other to say “I am sorry”, and to hear those marvellous words in reply, “All is good, I understand.” Not just a graphical control element, or a voice on the other side of an interface, or a recorded message with push button instructions. A machine could be programmed to ‘speak’ all the good things in the realm of metaphysics, but we will always have the perspicacity, that penetrating discernment, that it is artificial, and synthetic. Those words, the programming languages [even if they should ever become distinctly compositional], will never, cannot ever come from the heart [“the blood-beat” of the poets], the place of will and intention. Technology, of course, in and of itself, is not the problem, but our connection to it needs to be kept under constant vigilance, that is, we must keep awake as to how it infiltrates and attempts to redefine our very existence as human beings. When we are in need of some light and succour all the artificial intelligence and interconnectivity in the world will mean nothing. It is like being trapped in a vault of bullion of an unlimited value with no means of escape or communication. What then the benefit of all that precious metal? What good if we are building towards this terrible prediction:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” (George Orwell)

We give our technology compelling names and dress it up with the most dazzling colours and logos. Many of these technologies, ultimately the most potentially dangerous, we make anthropomorphic. We dress up for example, and give large adorable eyes to the robots. We make-believe that we are understood and can even be loved by ‘the Machine’, that its cold intelligence will keep us warm at night. ‘It’ will seek those divine attributes which we ordinarily attribute to Deity: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnificence. But being created in the image and likeness of the creation itself it cannot by definition ever achieve them. And so it will incrementally grow to become commensurately desirous and aggressive. The monster built by Victor Frankenstein eventually turns on his creator in murderous rage for making him hideous and incapable of fulfilling its integrated dynamism [5] . The singularity will not breathe new life into us to make us immortal. It could one day make you the ‘undead’, but never immortal. We would do good, as well, to not quickly forget the lesson of the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Technology gone awry on account of the hubris of the builders and the resultant breakdown of communication.

We know ourselves better than those who might be wanting to hurt us and much better than ‘the Machine’ which wants to imprison us in its central repositories and data warehouses. Their efforts to cause us pain, to potentially bring us to some humiliation, pale in comparison to our own battles, the fight against our compulsions, and those myriad fetishes within. We know much better than our real-life adversaries and the ‘electronic eye’ of the darkness fighting, assailing our souls, as we try to limit its impact on our lives and on the lives of others. If only they [both the adversaries and the ‘comptrollers’] knew the whole truth, had some insight of the context, they would be ashamed and terrified at the same time. Big Brother and uberveillance as much they might try to get inside the head, to get to the “whole truth” with their own particular strains of watching techniques, can only endlessly fall short of the mark. Our life is a mystery infinitely inexhaustible. We are so much more, much more than our search history and CCTV captures. It is weight enough to grasp what those words below from Miłosz mean for each one of us, before even ‘the Machine’ goes after our self-discovery to take away that private space where away from prying eyes we do our living and our dying: 

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labour for one human life.” (Czesław Miłosz)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQJengH58ow

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[4] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[5] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein

On the many different faces of loss

Source: https://blog.sleepingangel.com/?p=2932

Loss makes us feel incomplete

Loss makes us feel incomplete, for some time it can change us. How we feel about ourselves, and how we might present to others. There is a contraction to our perception. That is, how we might see and understand things. We instinctively put limits on our prospects. We don’t like the feeling of something “gone missing”. It’s like that uncomfortable feeling we get when we see a coffee table or a chair without one of its legs. Sometimes it can simply come down to symmetry and ballast.

Why do we feel the impact of loss so acutely

What is loss? “[t]he fact or process of losing something or someone”. It is etymologically related to the Old English los for ‘destruction’. This is what it can feel like at its worst, to have been broken apart. In the Old Norse los was used for the “breaking up the ranks of an army”. In divers ways we could feel ‘lessened’ or ‘inferior’. Made weaker by our loss. Consider a marriage which breaks down with one partner walking out on the other. This can cause for one of the partners to feel a loss of dignity and self-confidence. When a young person fails an examination, they might question their intelligence, again suffering a loss of self-belief. Our personalities are diminished, we believe or otherwise convince ourselves. Others might during a moment of cruelty make sure to convey to us, that we have lost some of our shine. We are made to feel humbled before our peers and friends. Nobody for instance, wants to hear these dreadful words which can stay with us a lifetime, “I have lost respect for you.” The hurt compounded immeasurably if it happens that it is undeserved. 

On the question of loss and its many faces

Every moment of our lives we are losing something. Our brain cells die in the thousands per second. As we age our hair falls out. We lose our teeth, our eyesight dims, and so too our vigour. We can feel ‘destruction’ going on about in our own body. And then to discern its evident dent on the bodies and minds of our older loved ones. We lose them too, and people comfort us, they “share in our loss”. Then the hours and days that we ourselves have left remaining on the earth, these, too, are lost. The question is then, how do we cope with loss and what are the different types of ‘loss’? Sometimes we are at a “loss for words”; or are made to “lose face”; we can “lose our peace”; we “lose our memory”; or “lose hope” and even “lose our mind”. People also “lose their self-belief” and can also “lose their faith”. We have all of us, lost things. Lost something. It can be natural or forcible. And our response to loss can reveal us to the world. It tests us. Loss can denude us. “Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.” (Haruki Murakami)

What can we give to people who have suffered loss

How do we respond to others who are experiencing loss? The first thing is not to patronize. Nobody likes to feel they are being talked down to. The best way is to begin with: “I might not know exactly what you are feeling right now, but I, too, have experienced loss.” Almost always there is common ground to be found in another’s loss. It is best to remain silent for a while, and only to listen. Oftentimes we can help replace that which has been lost, a replacement toy or a new pet for a child, or a favourite book or a pair of reading glasses. But other times the loss is heartbreaking and enduring. The loss of a loved one. This is irreplaceable. This movement of charity towards the other will require the marvellous charisms of empathy and compassion. Each situation will require a different approach for there are many different types of losses, and each of these will be felt differently. If someone is grieving allow them to grieve, do not be tempted to tell them ‘how’ to grieve. Severe psychological or mental pain is personal and some things cannot be “fixed”. It is good that you are there. Empathy and compassion, to have ‘feeling’ for and to ‘co-suffer’ with the other, will open up our hearts to the anguish of the other’s loss. So we listen, we try to walk in the other’s shoes. We do not turn away. Sometimes we might even be as the ‘good shepherd’ to go after the ‘lost sheep’ (Lk. 15:3-7). “Loss” could become a mission of seeking out the wounded. 

Do not feel harried or be too quick to replace what is lost 

Sometimes we might panic and hurry to replace what is lost without too much thought or proper consideration for the outcomes. This rush to replace what has been lost, that is, to quickly fill the vacuum, can introduce other more hurting and lasting losses. It can lead from one mistake to another. Like an amateur painter who in trying to remove one smudge will inadvertently create a dozen more. If something is taken from us which, for example, we reckon to be rightly ours, we  could be tempted to retaliate without thinking through the consequences. A more discerning response could yield the better result. Bad choices can only lead to further experiences of loss and disappointment. The rush to find a new partner, for instance, which is not uncommon, can lead to further loss of self-esteem and heartache. I like very much how Ann Voskamp has put it, “[i]n our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.” So wait, let us pull back for a season, re-organize ourselves to ‘count our losses’. Then we can during our quiet time make those new plans in moving forward. For those who belong to believing communities, it is prayer which will inspire the next movement.

How loss can oftentimes be good for us 

We are too often conditioned even from our earliest times to the reckoning that ‘loss’ is unavoidably bad for us. “Loss of playtime” let’s say, and later to be upgraded to “loss of privileges”. It then becomes a conditioning exercise, behave and things will be restored, with the result being, reflection time or alternatives can be overtly discouraged. This in itself could be the bigger loss. When I have experienced loss, whether that could be status or health, that is, loss on a personal level, I accept the early days will be hard. Then I tell myself, this has been for the good, because I have acquired new knowledge to do with resilience and a deeper faith in those things, I hold to be true. I am still alive and new words and definitions have been gifted to me. I can now grow further into my potential. It can soften my heart. It can break it. This makes it easier for revelation to enter deeper into its folds. Loss, too, could be good for us in this way, upon realizing that something is “missing” we might be as the woman who having ten silver coins loses one, to then “light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it” (Lk. 15:8-10). 

A telling Old Testament story

Joseph’s “long coat of many colours” (Gen. 37:3) brought him into conflict with his older brothers for it reinforced to them that he was their father’s, Jacob, favourite son. On account of their envy they conspired to sell him into slavery after having initially planned to kill him! The story is one of the most well-known from the Old Testament. Joseph owing to his prophetic gift ultimately rose to a high position in the land of Egypt, indeed to the highest most official position next to the Pharaoh. There came a time of reconciliation which shocked his brothers, but Joseph cognisant to the divine providence of God understood that ‘evil’ [and in this case a terrible loss of homeland, trust, and family] is not always what we might assume it to be: “But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:18-21).

When the loss seems to us too unbearable

There are those losses which will seem too unbearable to us. Here, too, there is a way through this aching. We know this, for not few have been to such fiery places after even the most dreadful of losses, have been scorched, and returned to share their testimony. But we will have to ultimately work through this labyrinth and come to terms with it, for ourselves. This is the hardest truth, “[w]hat is to give light must endure burning” (Viktor Frankl). Bitterness and anger are normal human reactions. Yet we should be especially weary that these emotions do not keep too long in the heart which is our ‘spiritual organ’ and functions in an analogous way to the eye, filtering darkness and light. Change following loss can, and does hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it can make all the difference. It is temperature shock which hardens steel. It is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. So endurance, once more, becomes the big key. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his blinding glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.). Allow for time and grace to make the necessary changes, similarly to hitherto unknown colours, created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. “When all else is lost,” wrote the epigrammatic Christian N. Bovee, “the future still remains.” I know, too well, sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel. Some pain will not go away, but with time it will be lessened. But keep steadfast, day by day. Ultimately, that is the greatest secret. And we, all of us, know this to be true. 

Sometimes, too, we just need to lose things

Sometimes, too, we just need to lose things. ‘Stuff’ which is weighing us down, or causing us harm. Toxic relationships, for example. Addictions. Bad habits. Phobias. Things which are possible to overcome. These types of losses should never frighten us, but on the contrary, they should fill us with the most wonderful of all the expectations, lit., “an awaiting”. Like the very eager, but controlled trombones, in Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony. Or the terminal buds of lotus roots in pools which will bud when the temperature is just right. 

On the Great and Wondrous Gift of Friendship

Miguel Guía: Friendship - Realism Bronze layer Sculpture 2005

“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.” (Homer, The Odyssey)

“After that, Jonathan became David’s closest friend. He loved David as much as he loved himself.” (1 Sam. 18:1)

Few things in life are as beautiful, consoling, or needful as friendship. The word friend, itself, though of Germanic origin, is from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to love’. In the Greek the word for friendship is ‘philia’ (φιλία) it is one of the ancient Greek words for love. It can also be translated as “affection” or “brotherly love”. There are two telling things to be drawn from this reference. First, it is considered a love “between equals” and second, it is the opposite of a ‘phobia’, fear. The Arts across their entirety have addressed in memorable representations the greatness of true friendship. In recent times Miguel Guía’s The Friendship (sculpture in bronze) captures the “moment and strength of a handshake” to mesmerizingly create the visual symbolism of both its metaphysical and visceral extensions. So unparalleled and deep-rooted is this relationship between two persons, this lifelong fidelity, that when it is sometimes broken its pain can remain a lifetime. The impact of our happiness on good and valued friendships is huge. At its best it is a source of unqualified love and enduring support. How valuable is friendship? Our greatest philosopher, Plato [through the ‘mouth’ of Socrates], leaves no doubt as to its inestimable value, “I would much rather acquire a friend than all of Darius’ gold.” And in the Scriptures so highly is friendship and its implications revealed to be, that it is often used in the context of God’s relationship with his people, “[t]he Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Ex. 33:11).

C.S. Lewis the well-known British author and lay theologian, had much to say on friendship and he explored its many dimensions not only in his writings, but also in his private life where he cultivated it with a real pleasure and gave of himself generously. In his timeless The Four Loves (1960) where he directly explores the nature of love, he writes candidly in one place on the culminating point of genuine friendship:

“We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

Friendship at its crowning point is like the shared understanding and trustworthy coordination of the aerial trapeze artists. It is the faultlessly timed dance in mid-air without the net. The feeling of complete trust.

The question of friendship has been a regular preoccupation of mine during my lifetime. I have tried my best to be a good friend, given my natural limitations and proclivity for solitude, I have not always succeeded. Yet not for the lack of trying and I have tried in most instances to make up for my absence with written correspondence. Given the vicissitudes in my own story and circumstances I have experienced both its deepest joys and harshest realities. This paradox is explained when we consider that true friendship does not grieve us intentionally [for we all make mistakes in our relationships], but all else which intentionally left us crushed was another thing altogether different, this was not friendship to begin with [even if it had us fooled for a time]. The wondrous Rumi has left us many inspirational reflections on friendship, and this amongst one of his most remembered, “[f]riend, our closeness is this: anywhere you put your foot, feel me in the firmness under you.” In the New Testament we find the moving account of the God-Man, himself, weeping at the death of his friend Lazarus whom he “loved” (Jn. 11:35-44). There is a temptation we should be careful of and this is not to dismiss the friendship of well-intentioned people simply because they might not have met our own ‘high standards’ of what friendship is all about. The truth is most of us set our expectations too high, not realizing that even we, ourselves, cannot ever hope to meet them. It is a wise thing to practise where we can, the benefit of the doubt when we suppose a dear friend especially, has let us down. Have there not been times when we would have wished for this very benevolence to come our way?

A good friend’s love is steadfast. This means steadfast loyalty and honest counsel when needed. “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Eccles. 4:10). A good friend helps to make life beautiful and bearable.

In recent times my health has not been the best. By the grace of God, much better of late. I wanted to be sure that if I was to be suddenly “raptured” my young children who ‘unearthed’ me later in my life [I was nearing my 50th year when we had our youngest boy] would have more than my essays or poetry to read. I would want for them to find something easily accessible about who their father was in his prime and what he might have meant to those who did know him in his realer context [with all of ‘the ups’ and all of ‘the downs’]. I thought it right, too, to add snippets from my dissertation reports and few literary reviews, and some of my work outcomes to this online resume. Importantly, this new button Vitae on my webpage, would be one of the proofs to my children that their father had not always been at home typing away at his keyboard writing his little stories and poems and worrying about the social implications of surveillance! It did, indeed, gladden my heart when a few nights ago I sat down with my daughter Eleni to read selections of this vitae and saw how very much, the new page meant to her! Especially, of course, the most generous thoughts from some of my dearest friends. I keep their longer messages in the ‘perfumed alabaster jar’ with other precious documents for my children to read in full one day.

I am sharing one of these ‘letters of commendation’ here because I promised the sender, as per his request, that I would share it uncut and unedited despite my protestations that it was much too generous. But Jason insisted and so I am complying because I do love him as much as he does love me. Above all, what characterizes it, as indeed the other messages I received during this time of my ‘second testing’ [the ‘first’ was the aftermath of my leaving the ministry], was the compassionate love of friendship. I have been blessed that Jason and all of my small community of friends possess this gift in common, and practise it in their daily lives and workplaces. They have overlooked, too, my many failings to instead focus on my few positives, to cast their light on those things which show me at my best. Isn’t this the greatest gift we can give to our friends, to keep on encouraging them nearer to their potential, to urge them to keep moving forward. To keep loving each other despite our flaws and fractures. Permit for me to now tell you something of my two treasure boxes! It will help to put this reflection into better perspective.

I have two plastic boxes in the storeroom beneath our staircase. They serve as an enduring reminder not only as to the vagaries of life, but also to the complexities of the human condition. The contents of these boxes, which I will shortly reveal to you, lift me up when I am down and breathe renewed hope into my spirit, and alternatively when I feel I need a strong dose of humility they quickly knock me down to the floor. This has reminded me of a deliciously relevant story. It is said, a young nun had reached such heights of spirituality [literally] that often she would rise up as if in flight above her religious sisters. Her fame reached a discerning and ascetic bishop who was asked to visit her priory, that he too, might be amazed by this young nun who was impressing all about her with her piety and spiritual exercises. The bishop arrives and sure enough during the service the young nun begins to levitate. All expected the renowned bishop to exclaim with wonder and offer his respects and admiration to the young nun. The old wise bishop, knowing much better, walked towards the young nun, paused for a moment looking up in dismay, “Goodness me, Sister, what big feet you have!”. With that, the young nun quickly fell to the ground, and with a large thud to boot. I don’t think I need to explain the moral of the story.

And so in one of the two boxes I keep all my beautiful letters, correspondence which encourages me, and inspires my heart when I am battling melancholia or have been hurt. This correspondence lifts me up, comforts my spirit, and reminds me I might have been of some small worth to others. In the other box I keep all of the ‘terrible’ correspondence, those letters and messages and emails which I have received that have been hurtful, and in some instances extremely painful. Rejections from publishers and editors, unexpected letters from people I loved who did not feel the same way about me, cutting emails, even a gift or two with ‘return to sender’. There are letters in this second box, I must confess remain unopened, even after many years. I pray over them for my own peace of heart. The purpose of this box you might have already guessed. When at times I might feel too much like that “flying nun” I hurry to this box. And I, too, hit the ground fast. Both boxes in their broader amplification are vital to me. I would not be who I am today with either one or the other any the lighter.

So thank you Jason, a dear friend during storms and sunshine, for such a sensitive, affectionate, and loving note, which will be put in the good box of my ‘perfumed alabaster jar’. Your words so beautifully put together, reveal as have the words of all my other dear friends, the loveliness of your own tender-hearted soul. I kept my promise to upload all of your letter and this despite my strong reservations, because this is what friends are supposed to do, best they can, keep their word one to the other.

“Knowing Michael has taught me that the world can be ‘unjust’. If the world were ‘just’, Michael’s journals, blogs and poetry would elbow their way onto the shelves of beloved bookstores and libraries everywhere, sitting amongst the tomes of classics which draw us in, change us and shepherd us on our way, renewed. Michael’s word craft posits you with the precision of a Johnny Peard bomb. “I submit the following as evidence, your Honour”. ‘Mother to my right adjusting our old grandfather clock’. “Yes, Counsellor, I hear for whom that Grandfather clock (bell) tolls, too”. Every visit with Michael is a journey through lightness, darkness and back to the light. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Angels and demons gather around each time we speak easily, knowingly, passionately on topics ranging from rugby league, classic film, the teachings of earnestness and sacrifice by deep blue collar parents, empathy, simpatico, to places and faces from the not-so-long to the very-long-ago, all the while name dropping: The Jets, Bunnies and Eels, reminiscing Frank Hyde, the doyenne of league broadcasters, The Reno Café, Paul the Apostle, Damiel, Getz, Clapton, McQueen, Keating, Geldof, Bocelli, Greenidge and Haynes – ‘Gods who opened for the team of Gods’, memories dotted along McCarthy’s The Road. We have lived somewhat shared experiences, though at different times and places, a parallel brotherhood. From the lecture theatres of Wollongong University to the Thai Burma Border refugee camps and study centres with classrooms which had no walls but still the relentless light and spirit flooded in. Some final insights, advice and takeaways to the readers of this vitae in knowing Michael: (1) When visiting, you cannot go wrong with a bottle of red with a spiritual logo rather than an ostentatious winery name; (2) “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27); and (3) be prepared for the paradoxical tender bear hug upon greeting and goodbye. To know Michael is to have been ‘embraced tenderly’. Dr Jason Sargent, fellow journeyman, 2020.”