Advent: The Coming Of God

Despite popular belief and practice, despite shopping and parties before Christmas, the season of Advent is not primarily a time to prepare for Christmas, for the birth of Christ, the feast of the Incarnation of God. As Christmas approaches, this theme comes to the fore, and then in the several weeks following Christmas, we celebrate and reflect on the mystery of God with us. And we will surely give this focus its due, once Christmas arrives.

Advent is intended to encourage each of us to get quiet, to sit still, to pray, and to turn the gaze of our minds towards the God who comes. This “Coming of God” is the meaning and focus of Advent. What does “coming of God” mean? It means something other than Christ coming at Christmas, as just noted. It does not mean expecting some cataclysmic “end of the world” at the so-called “Second Coming of Christ.” That belief is an apocalyptic expectation, quite divorced from reality, and not a matter of faith as trust in God. How or what God will do in the future, no one knows, and all claims to know the future are arrogant and foolish. 

So what might mean the Coming of God? I can think of two main meanings, both of which are relevant for Advent. First, God comes to you, to me, if we open our minds and hearts to Him from moment to moment. God breaks in. Of course, God is ever-present, but we are not. This breaking in takes us back to Incarnation, and reminds us of the Eucharist, in which Christ comes to His people sacramentally, and really for those who open their minds up. God is ever available, ever breaking in, and so always “coming” to the poor in spirit—to those longing for God’s goodness, beauty, truth, salvation. Second, the expectation of the Coming of God should remind us of our ignorance, and that God may come any moment, as He wills. It is His creation, and we are His. In Advent, the Church moves us to long for God, to hope in God, to wait for God, even though we do not know when or how God will come. No one knows. This attitude of humble waiting is vastly different from fundamentalists babbling about “the Second Coming,” as if they know what they are talking about. They will quote Scripture, but on what basis does one maintain that the Apostles and evangelists were right in their understanding of future events? No one knows what God will do ultimately, and what form his “Coming” may take. That is why one must exercise trust, hope, love for God and neighbor.

LORD God Almighty, help us to wait for You with longing, love, humility. Help us to know that we do not know, that we surely do not have You figured out. Free us from our religious and secular illusions, that fill our minds with wild speculations, and not with empty stillness. You come to the little ones who know their need for God. Make us aware of how spiritually and humanly needy we really are, that we may turn off the TV, keep quiet, sit still, and gaze towards You in loving silence. Let this be our Advent, our season of longing for You.

Thoughts For Funeral Services

We are performing funeral services for Leonida “Lee” Bodner. They began last evening with the Vigil Service, and continue this morning and this afternoon with the Funeral Mass, a reception meal, and the burial.  I have been asked to be main celebrant at all of the services, as the priest who is a rather distant family member has some problems needing medical attention. 

The Scripture readings and prayers constituted the Vigil, with some time for “family sharing.”  When I speak, as I did last evening, I am mindful of being heard by all present. But sitting where I do in the sanctuary during the brief remarks by others, I hear little that is said, as most speakers are not used to using a microphone or addressing a large crowd.  One must speak up to be heard. At least I could hear several of the sharings last evening, and I could hear some audience responses.  

Yesterday morning (Sunday), between about 0300 and 0500, before walking Moses in the park, I spent considerable time choosing readings for the Vigil, and typing two of them up.At that time I also narrowed my choices of readings for the Funeral Mass to be celebrated at 1100 today. I put considerable time and effort into choosing, sometimes editing, sometimes typing up the readings. I welcome suggestions from family members, but none were made this time. Sometimes families want to select the readings, which I must find and type up for lectors; as I have learned, their selections are of varying suitability or quality.  After some thirty years of presiding at funerals, I can say that it is far more prudent and beneficial to have the one who is preaching select the readings, perhaps in some consultation with close loved ones. This has become all the more necessary as fewer Catholics have much knowledge of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Often I have had to deal with families who do not understand why one cannot read some letter or story at the Funeral Mass, rather than have readings from the bible.  Of course, the Bodner family has been too actively Catholic to have this expectation. Thankfully, they left the choice of readings up to me. 

Now I will finalize the readings for the Funeral Mass, and think out the homily. I put a considerable amount of time into preparing homilies for funerals.Why? Because dying is such a large and heavy part of life, and because of the magnitude of the loss of those present, especially close family members and dearest friends; because the one who died deserves the effort; and because not to try to do a good job would be irresponsible and dishonor the Creator. These purposes may or may not be understood by “practicing Christians.” Still, honoring the God who gives life, thanking Him for the life of the one who died, entrusting the deceased lovingly to God, and seeking to help console those present (especially closest family and friends) are ever the main goals I keep in mind in preparing and preaching a funeral homily. The four goals listed are not randomly chosen, or just words off the top of my head.  Often I have asked myself: “Why are we celebrating this funeral? What are we doing here?” I ever try to keep the goal(s) in mind. 

Yesterday a faithful Catholic man in our adult faith class in Centerville said that he does not attend funeral services “for the dead, because it doesn’t mean anything to them,” or similar words, and added, “I am there for the living.”  I tried to explain:  “Not so fast.  They are not dead, but deceased; and we do owe it to them to remember and to honor them, and especially to honor and thank God.”  It looked as though he squirmed in his chair, but said nothing in response; he may or may not have understood what I meant. There is a cliche commonly heard today about “celebrating life,” and “we are here for each other,” and calling those who died “dead” (as in the expression, “dead and gone”).  My thinking is very different.  

First and foremost, funeral services are a time publicly to honor and thank God for the gift of life to us, His creatures. Not to do thank God would be ungrateful, and to share in the mindlessness of our age: God is irrelevant for many people today, so thinking about honoring and thanking the Creator barely surfaces in many peoples’ minds. Even supposed “Christians” often are relatively mindless of God in their daily lives, and this attitude of course surfaces at funeral services. When I die, I hope that the one preaching thanks God for my life, and for any good achieved in me or through me. “Not to us, LORD, not to us, but to your Name be the glory.” Either one lives in openness to God, or one does not. What happens at a funeral manifests our faith or lack of faith, love of God or lack of love of God.  Christian funeral services have not become pagan, but at times border on the atheistic with the predominant attitude:  “It is all about us, the living.” How wrong we often are.

I, too, am mindful of the one who died, but within the effort of seeing them “in the light of eternity,” in God. Hence, a few remarks on the person’s life may be apt, especially if they display God’s presence in the person. Years ago in Maryland, when I and most priests still allowed family members to stand and talk at funerals, I heard much nonsense.  So often I would hear how “Johnny loved golf,” or “grandmother knew just what color lipstick to wear.” Not only were these comments inappropriate, but they dishonored God, insulted the deceased, and insulted the living—although many did not seem to know that they were being insulted by such inanities. What people share when they are gathered as families before or after the services, is their business, and then they can recall touching human stories, and should do so. But in the funeral services, all must be seen in God, in light of God.  Of course, such a task is not possible for those who lack genuine faith. And as noted, ours is an age in which most people live as though God is dead, or at best, irrelevant in their lives. I do not intend to share in this oblivion, not even for the sake of “comforting loved ones present.” Actually, the truth about God, about life and death, about love, will comfort human beings far better in the long run than blathering words about the way the woman cooked, or the man played golf.  

This much is evident, and must be kept in mind when preparing for funeral services: many present either do not trust God, or weakly trust God, or do not know how to activate genuine faith in God in the face of death.  Most of them have some human feelings for the deceased, but often these feelings and thoughts are not put in the context of acknowledging, loving, surrendering to God. I repeat: For many if not most living today, God is irrelevant.  Seeing the deceased in the light of God becomes all the more the task of the one preaching as the hearers cannot do this for themselves, or will not. “When the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith on earth?”That is one of many of the searching questions Jesus asked, as noted in the Gospels. Will we exercise faith or unbelief at our funeral services? Giving lip service to God is not enough. Murmuring fixed and mandated prayers is not enough, not nearly enough.In fact, formal prayers said as if by rote do not honor anyone, in my opinion. They become a neurotic and unfaithful exercise, even though the words sound as though the one praying is speaking about or to God.The prayers must be genuine, a task made difficult by our often stilted, wordy translations now in use. (The present Catholic Sacramentary needs much work; many of the prayers are not intelligible for hearers—even if they are trying to pay attention to the words). If the priest or minister simply prayed from the heart, and omitted some of the usual verbiage, no doubt some “pious and devout Christian” present would complain that “the exact words were not said.” Here is evidence of mental problems grounded in a lack of real faith, lack of openness to the unknown God. The Catholic practice of fixed prayers may aid or invite faith to some extent—especially in children or beginners, who need “training wheels”—but in time and use, praying fixed prayers can cover over a lack of living faith behind Spirit-empty words. Some priests and clergy pray as if they really do not believe in God beyond the verbal prayers.Some pray as if they must “get it right” for the Church authorities, and mutter (however sloppily) the “magic words,” the “right words.” Some clergy really do not believe in the reality of God beyond all of these words and rituals. Is it any wonder so many people are spiritually malnourished? (Of course, most “Christians” do not even bother attending religious services in our “enlightened age”—and sometimes for very good reasons). Clergy are themselves often malnourished spiritually, lacking the Spirit to share. As the Medieval theologians said, “You cannot give what you do not have.”  In various ways, funeral services manifest genuine faith, religious beliefs, and lack of faith more directly and intensely than almost anything else in life. With death, “the rubber meets the road,” to use a common cliche. Many people think that religious beliefs are faith, but they are not. They often mask a lack of real trust. 

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Faith as trust and as seeing in the light of God. The one preaching at a funeral must exercise real faith, not merely share religious beliefs, or sentimental stories. “Oh, but I tell these little stories to help comfort the family,” a preacher could say. In reality, he or she is displaying a lack of trust in God who comforts at a deeper level—by truth. Other ministers talk about religious beliefs, and think that in them they have genuine faith, but they well may not. The funeral homily must seek to build faith as trust in God, and as seeing reality, including death, in light of God. In truth, I wonder how many priests, deacons, or Protestant ministers have sufficient faith to make this effort, and to accomplish it. I repeat: it is often the case that religious beliefs, opinions, get in the way of reality and the need for unknowing faith. Now, do I have such faith? Can I, with God’s help, see Leonida, who died, in light of eternity, and help those present to do the same? Do I have the “faith working through love” to help Conrad, and their children and grand-children, and friends, lovingly surrender Leonida to God, to thank God for her, to love her in God, and begin to make the transition to a new or more God-centered relationship with Leonida? 

God will do the spiritual work if we but listen, trust, love. Leonida is God’s creature, and she has returned to God. “Returned,” but in reality, one is not far from the Creator—closer than a heart beat away, closer than breath. Leonida has entered the light that remains largely unseen to those of us who are not genuinely open to the reality of God.  “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; to God all are alive.” That summarizes the Gospel passage I selected for the homily (Luke 20), because it speaks the truth as truly and as clearly as possible. And that is ultimately all that matters: “to God all are alive.” Some people want beliefs, not living trust. Hence, they want stories about “the Resurrection at the last day,” as did Martha in the Gospel passage I read last night. To them Jesus proclaimed—if they heard—“I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” Others, perhaps on a more intellectual level, speak about “the immortality of the soul,” even as the body “returns to the earth from where it came.” The tale of the immortality of the soul is perhaps the best and most likely tale among those commonly held regarding what happens to the deceased.  Some of the prayers last evening entrusted the “soul of our sister, Leonida” to the God of mercy. In the context of prayers, that seems like a good way to put the matter. “Immortality of the soul” is a “likely myth,” using Plato’s phrase. 

But the mystery abides, and religious beliefs ought not hide the mystery. No one knows with certainty or clarity what happens beyond death. Some guesses are more likely, more profound, than others. Some guesses are childish and foolish. For my part, I admire the stark simplicity of Socrates after being condemned to death by the Athenian democracy: “Now it is time to go, I do die, you to live; whoever of us has the better fate, is unknown to anyone, except to God.” Death is mysterious. It can be painfully mysterious, even confusing. Or death can elicit faith: “Now we see as through a mirror, darkly, but then, face to face.” When the Apostle Paul wrote these words, they expressed his faith; they had not yet been hardened into the comforting words of mere religious belief.  How can I honor the Creator today, thank Him for Leonida’s life, entrust her to God eternally, and speak words of truth to help comfort Conrad and their children and grand-children? First and foremost, be clear about the goals, keep these four goals in mind throughout the service, and especially in the preaching. I have no need to find the exact words to utter now. They must proceed from a heart open to the presence of God. Still, I need an insight grounded in faith and love from which to proceed. What can serve that function? My own trust in Christ who says, “To God all are alive.” That suffices for me. “All are alive” means each and all, not some, not only “believers,” not only human beings. The creature lives ultimately only in the Creator, in the mind of the all-good Creator. The rest of existence passes quickly between life and death, between death and life eternal.  

The task of preaching at a funeral, as all preaching, is “to speak the truth in love.” Nothing else will suffice or grace the hearers.

“I AM the Resurrection and the Life.  Do you believe this?” 

A Note On "ISIS"

Desiring to know more about the radical group known as ISIS and their self-understanding, this morning I read this article in Wikipedia, available free online. It is clearly a scholarly piece, perhaps by a political scientist who knows Arabic. If you are interested to know more about ISIL/ISIS/ the Islamic State, I recommend the piece. The group has frequently changed its name. It had ties with Al Qaeda especially in its early days. Like Al Qaeda, IS’s ideological roots are in Saudi Wahhabism (Salafi-Wahhabi), a fundamentalist sect of Islam with roots in Saudi Arabia. As you may know, the Saudis have funded schools through the west, including in the United States, to teach Wahhabism. It may not necessarily promote violence, but it does teach a very narrow, fundamentalistic view of Islam which treats non-Muslims as “unbelievers” and “infidels.” It is a dangerous teaching. ISIS/the Islamic State has roots going back to the Muslim Brotherhood that began in Egypt in the 1920’s. Once this particular movement began c. 1999, IS has had ties with Al Qaeda, another Islamic terrorist group, familiar to us from their acts of terror in our country. For one interested in a scholarly work on Islamic terrorism, including Al Qaeda, I highly recommend this book, New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism, written by Dr. Barry Cooper, a Canadian scholar. A few facts that I found most interesting in the Wikipedia article:  The 12 judges who decide cases of Sharia law in territory conquered by ISIS / IS are all Saudis. The 3 highest officials of IS are Turkmen, as were a number of leaders around Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And according to this article, a large portion of the political leadership of ISIS had been officials in Saddam’s regime. A few points: It is misleading and unjust simply to call members of this group “Islamic jihadi,” or “Islamic terrorists,” without qualification, as the vast majority of Muslims would by no means accept ISIS / ISIL / Islamic State. On the other hand, these terrorists surely are, by their self-understanding, a Muslim movement. They see themselves as the true Muslims, and they claim rightful political and religious rule over the whole world. To the end of world domination, and in fulfillment of Islamic history and so-called prophecy, they have established “the caliphate” to rule the world. Third, it is good to keep in mind that Islam began as a spiritual-political-military movement, as one sees abundantly in the Quran and in early Islamic history. Islam did not begin as a “peaceful religion,” as the Prophet himself led troops in battle to spread “the faith.” On the other hand, there have been centuries in which Islam lived in relative peace with non-Islamic neighbors. Some Islam groups, such as the mystical Sufis in Iran, and the groups influenced in the Middle Ages by Greek culture and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, tolerated non-Muslims. Islam lived in relative peace for centuries with Jews and Christians in the West, and with Hindus and Buddhists in the East. More fundamentalistic Muslim groups in recent decades have surely yielded to the temptation to spread their “truth” by force, even by the kinds of terrorist methods we have been witnessing in recent years. If you are interested in knowing more about ISIL/ IS, I recommend the Wikipedia article. To learn more about Islam, there are good scholarly works available, as well as editions of the Quran which ought to be consulted.

Christ The King And The End Of The World

Christian religious practice—Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant—exposes the faithful to various beliefs that are difficult to understand, or to accept. Liturgical readings in late November and until Christmas expose us to some bizarre, apocalyptic literature that can be summarized as futuristic expectations, typically featuring some imagined “end of the world.” Apocalyptic literature breaks from a rational grip on reality, often written under extreme duress, by minds lacking in common sense. Of course we who have lived for decades have heard similar futuristic speculations time and time again:  the “end of the world” through over-population, or nuclear war, or an invasion from “outer space,” or a new ice age, or “global warming,” or “climate change,” or politicians “changing the world,” and so on. Irrational speculations on the future—apocalyptic—remain fashionable, and even more so, as grounding in reason diminishes. We also have two liturgical celebrations which do not communicate well to many contemporary Catholics: Christ the King and the Immaculate Conception. Over the years I have observed some confusion generated by these feasts, and considerable indifference. Complicating matters, to be considered later, is the tension between preparing for Christmas and celebrating Advent as a season of longing for God. (“Why should I long for God?”)  In short, we are inundated by symbolic language that may perplex more than enlighten, confuse more than lift our hearts and minds to God. I will try to help us draw some spiritual nourishment out of these celebrations as they arise. For the present, a general comment seems in order: Symbolic language meant to communicate some truth or (as with apocalyptic), someone’s strange imaginings must be interpreted in light of the experiences that engendered it. The experiences give meaning to the words. A madman’s ravings, for example, must be understood in light of his mental illness; a prophet’s warnings must be understood in light of the prophet’s experience of God and of human reality. Unless we share the experience, or imaginatively “put ourselves in the other person’s shoes,” we cannot rightfully understand the symbolic language. Christian religious language is highly symbolic, and requires that the hearers have a living faith in God in order to understand the words. For example, a person lacking in experience of God’s incarnating presence in his or her soul misunderstand talk about God’s “incarnation” in Christ. Without spiritual experience, religious language is taken literally, misunderstood, denied. In all such cases, it fails to nourish. The soul open to God receives; the closed mind or soul remains empty. Without an ongoing spiritual life, you will not understand, or appreciate, the reality of God being communicated to you in Christian worship. Each of us has the task to trust God, to seek the truth about God, and to be thankful for divine benefits constantly received. Otherwise, what is our Eucharistic celebration, but words, songs, and weird bread? How does one give thanks to God unless one trusts and loves God in one’s daily life? The more one is attuned to God, the more one receives; the less attuned to God, the more empty one remains.

A Brief Blog Based On An Email To My Brother-In-Law With Expansions And Editing

Dear Vic, Thank you for trying to explain to me something about the laws of thermodynamics. That matter and energy are essentially the same, and that neither matter nor energy “can be created or destroyed” would be important parts of the scientific understanding of physical reality. Despite his scientific mind, I do not think that Aristotle knew or experienced the world as modern science does; he did not live in the universe of modern physics. As I read Aristotle, the Kosmos about which he writes is “to Pan,” the All.  When I used the word “world” for Aristotle’s cosmos, I did not mean our planet, the Earth, but the mysterious Whole. Words have changed their meanings over time, and experiences of reality have changed. As I read Aristotle, he experiences the cosmos as both natural and divine. His conception of the divine includes both the God as Intellect that moves the cosmos, and orders it, as well as the gods who dwell within the Kosmos. And perhaps that is one of the reasons why he considers the Kosmos to be eternal—it is not a mere creation of gods, but in some sense, the work of God and gods. Plato, Aristotle’s long-time teacher, did not call the Kosmos eternal, to the best of my knowledge. In one of his late writings, the Timaeus, Plato introduces a Demiurge, a kind of creator-god, that does not bring forth all out of nothing, but rather by intellect imposes form on matter. The creation story or cosmogony that opens the Hebrew scriptures does not explicitly say that God created “the heavens and the earth” out of nothing, although that interpretation has been read into the creation story of Genesis for centuries. The priest or priests who wrote that magnificent creation story that editors placed at the opening of their sacred writings had not raised the question, “Did God create out of nothing, or did God impose form on matter?” Apparently it was a Jew living not long before Christ, the author of the books of Maccabees, who first described what came to be called “creatio ex nihilo,” creation out of nothing. It is this conception of creation that became standard teaching in Christianity over the centuries: the non-cosmic God brought forth the world as we experience it out of nothing by his own creative word; indeed, creation can be understood as an ongoing story of God, told by God. The ancients (Jews, Greeks, Babylonians, Chinese, and so on) were highly conscious of living in a Kosmos in which all beings share, a Kosmos itself which at times was experienced as a living being, not as a lifeless thing or collection of things. The cosmic Whole is surely more than the sum of its parts, the being-things that inhabit It. At times a fear arose, probably in response to major social-political upheavals, that not only everything, but that the All could cease to exist. Just as individual being-things come into being and cease to exist, so could everything and All, apparently. Still, the underlying experience of the Kosmos was of a beautiful home that is good, and divine, and full of gods and living beings. As I understand it, this experience contrasts with the “universe of physics,” the universe as described and studied through modern physical science. The ancients, whether Greeks with their gods, or philosophers with exploratory Nous, or Jews with the I AM WHO AM, or Christians (an amalgam of Jewish faith and Greek philosophy, with other ancient beliefs and rituals thrown in), did not experience the universe of physics, but the mysterious cosmic Whole. As noted, the ancients lived in a cosmos experienced as home, as good, as meaningful, even though one could at times experience the wrath of a god in a powerful storm, or earthquake, or a Zeus-thrown lightning bolt. Ancient Gnostics, arising mainly in the wake of the epiphany of Christ, experienced the cosmos as “alien,” even as evil, a prison for the divine spirit, the Pneuma, which they experienced intensely in themselves. The Gnostics were the main characters who experienced divinity solely within themselves, and not in and through the cosmos. For Aristotle, the divine Nous (Intellect) illuminating his mind (nous) could also be known through studying reality in all of its parts, for the work of the intellect is to order things, and Aristotle experienced divine intelligence as he studied parts of animals, for example, or the heavenly bodies. This awareness shows up in his writings. And he chastises those who recoil at a worm, or spider, for example, and fail to see the divine intellect through the ordered being-thing. How do you experience “the world,” the cosmos? Is it only the “universe of physics” you see, or something else at the same time? My experience of the cosmos has undoubtedly been influenced somewhat by teachings of modern science (about which I know very little), but for the most part, I am probably closer to ancient Greeks, Jews, or Christians, whose experience of the world was filled not only with wonder and “scientific questioning,” but with awe. What provokes awe is mysterious, and divine in more ways than one can know or grasp. Surely I sense divine presence not only in the soul, but in and through the cosmos.  I do not know what you see in the sky, but I do not see just “things” or “planets,” and so on; nor do I feel imprisoned in the cosmos, although when suffering a fever, I may feel trapped in the sick body or at least in the fever. When I look at the night-time sky, for example, I see heavenly bodies, and simply assume that they are not merely “matter in motion,” or forms of energy; I am conscious of the heavenly bodies as being in some ways divine beings, or at the very least, fellow creatures. Concrete question: Do you ever bow to what you see? Sometimes I spontaneously bow to the moon, or to the sun, or to a beautiful tree that caught my attention, and as I bow, I am aware of bowing to the divine presence in and through all things. (And yes, I have bowed to my dogs, carrying as they do, divine presence.) Sometimes I have found myself greeting the moon, or the sun, with a few words or a little song.  Such actions would seem strange, perhaps, to a man or woman living in “the universe of physics,” although I am not sure, because I do not inhabit the universe of physics (nor does anyone, in truth). Would a scientist bow to the sun, or kiss a rock, or lovingly touch a tree, or kiss a little animal? If not as scientist, would he do so as a human being? I do not know, because I am not a scientist, but a human being living in a mysterious and wonder-filled cosmos. I expect that my experiences are not well grounded within a “scientific world view.” They are, I think, more cosmic, perhaps, and closer to mythical understanding. My guess is that more people feel this way than we often imagine, even after centuries of Christianity, followed by the discoveries and theories of modern science. As I see it, showing some reverence for fellow beings (including “heavenly bodies”) in the cosmos is more “natural” and true to the primary experience of mutual interpenetration and connectedness, of consubstantiality between human beings, “the heavens and the earth,” and God or gods. For example, we say that the sun moves across the sky, and many take that commonsensical assumption to be true, not integrating into their experience the notional awareness that the earth is rotating on a hypothetical axis, and revolving around the sun in a hypothetical orbit. By appearance and hence common sense, it is the sun who moves across the sky, whether a god itself, or driven by a god, or a fiery ball moved by some mysterious and divine force.  Even the breakthrough of the non-cosmic I AM to Moses does not keep one from experiencing the cosmos as "full of gods" as the ancients believed (and the experience of gods and a living, divine cosmos shows up not infrequently in biblical writings, even with faith in Yahweh (“He who is”). The all-too-modern experience and treatment of the earth as a lifeless thing to exploit is closer to Gnostic antagonism to matter than to cosmic consciousness of every being and being-thing (such as Earth) sharing in divinity. The earth, Mother Earth, is to be respected and lovingly tended, for She brings forth life. Or as another example, I long to see and feel the ocean, to be submerged in it, because doing so returns me, if I allow it, to pre-scientific awareness, to an experience of immersion in cosmic divinity, and to being part of the Whole. Longing for this grounding in cosmic reality, I desire to experience the ocean again. There are other ways, of course, to experience the Whole in a cosmic way.  Taking a good walk, feeling the cold wind on my skin, perhaps with rain or snow, or sunlight, returns me to an awareness of the Whole that includes divine presence, being-things, physical forces, and human consciousness, all together. How common this pre-scientific awareness is, I do not know, but when I allude to these experiences, ranch and farm folks seem to understand what I mean. This experience is closer to the cosmos experienced by the ancients. If it is just a world of matter, one feels cold and wet; if it is more, and mysterious, then one may be wet, but one also feels alive, connected to the mysterious Whole, and in contact with what we call “God.” Now a few appended thoughts, or corollaries of what I have just written. First, the God of the church’s creeds is too fixed, too abstract, too remote from human experience to satisfy the heart or mind, because this God does not correspond well to the divine as experienced. The God of creeds and dogmas has been intellectually, even rationalistically, sanitized. The creedal God was drained of blood. Analytically separated from the truth of experience, this “God” becomes experientially; and if that is one’s sole conception of God, it may well wither and die, leaving one floundering in a world devoid of meaning. Second, fortunately for me, daily experiences of divine presence, both within consciousness and in the mysterious cosmos, outweigh in consciousness both the universe of physics and the God of the creeds. When I want to nourish my understanding of the divine, I may look with gratitude at the world around me, even feeling the icy cold; or study philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Voegelin; or read good poetry, with its mythical-imaginative awareness of the Whole shining in and through each momentary experience. A rose is not essentially a certain species of plant with a fancy scientific name. It is far more. And a rose may be the womb of the heart, waiting to open up. When I light a fire in the morning, I do so not only for warmth, but for companionship, because, as Herakleitos wrote, “Come near the fire, for there are gods in it.” I am still able to feel divine presence reaching me through the fire’s warmth. And for such an awareness, I am truly thankful. For flatter souls, fire is just physical processes at work. Third, a former student and friend told me that I do not like myth. I am not sure what he bases that claim on; it may have been a non-nuanced statement I made out of frustration with some contemporary myths, as in movies. Some of these myths are foolish, some destructive, some truer to reality. A good story, a good myth, is often far truer than “non-fiction.” I love myth when it communicates the truth of pre-scientific, pre-rational reality, the truth of the Whole breaking through. I love myth, or story, that makes me more aware of the goodness, beauty, and truth of reality, including the divine within. Myth that has stripped out divinity is neither wholesome nor true to reality. In the hands of anti-theistic positivists, science is used as an anti-divine myth, a “truth” that rinses a sense of divine presence out of human consciousness. In such a case, human beings become as bloodless as the God of the creeds, as the God of “Theism” which they reject. There is nothing wrong with physical sciences; they surely enhance one’s understanding of the world, and often bring beneficial results to daily living. (And more: science is well worth pursuing for its own sake, as a search for truth about various realms of being.) But science can be abused when the universe of physics is allowed to replace the primary experience of the mysterious cosmos, in which all being-things share, in which one thing can become another, a reality which is alive, fluid, and largely uncontrollable. Awareness of the Whole, and of being part of the Whole, precedes self-consciousness. I do not say, “I think; therefore, I am,” but I am aware that I think because I am being moved to think from the beyond of consciousness.  And that, I submit, is a more philosophical and wholesome experience than Descartes’ self-entombment. Once one begins with self, it is difficult to escape. The moon was veiled when I looked for her early this morning, an hour after midnight. An army of clouds had moved in while I slept, obscuring my beloved moon from wondering sight. And yet, she shines behind the veil that serves to remind me of her sacred beauty, which mortal eyes may not fully behold, nor fully understand.  And snow was falling, sent by a god, or by clouds, I do not know. I wonder if Father Zeus is being playful? In any case, the snow is a gift from the heavens above, refreshing, chilling, watering dry earth, reflecting the beauty of the barely seen moon.

A Letter On Reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics, And An Appreciation For Philosophy

(Note:  What I submit below is an edited text of an email I wrote to my sister.)

Dear Jeanie,

I am reading through Aristotle's book known since Thomas Aquinas as “Metaphysics,” a collection that Aristotle neither titled nor collected, but which is about what he terms "first philosophy," or “theologia.”  (This book, or collection of related texts, was placed in the ancient catalogue of Aristotle’s works after his Physics, and hence became known as “Meta ta Physica,” “after the Physics.”  The heuristic title was harmless, but it gave rise to a speculative science known as “metaphysics.”  As Aristotle conceives his “first philosophy,” t is a search for the cause of causes, or what is presently called the ground of being.  (Physics is a study of causes of motion, and this pursuit seeks to find the “first cause.”   Werner Jaeger wrote a study many years ago on this evidently composite text; clearly the extant book needs organizing and editing.    I need to read my copy of Jaeger to assist me in reading Aristotle’s “Metaphysics.”  For the most part, as far as I can tell, at least most of the the individual books within the “Metaphysics” are ordered within themselves, and make sense, although it is at times difficult to follow the argument, as it seems to be composed from sets of notes.  Presently I am working through the famous Book Lambda, the last book of the Metaphysics, leading up to insights into "the unmoved mover."  A previous book (or what we might call a chapter, if you will) on “being as being” made more sense to me than previously.  And I still like the short book, the second, as a kind of popular introduction to philosophy, on the nature of truth.  As for the first book of the Metaphysics, which I will be studying more closely, it is an amazing account of work by Aristotle’s predecessors, and includes his appreciation of the poets as “kinds of philosophers” because they, too, wonder and seek the ground of being, albeit in and through myth. 

The whole work begins with one of Aristotle’s blockbuster insights, ridiculed by little minds who seem to want to misunderstand the ancient philosopher:  “All human beings by nature desire to know.”  (I recall graduate students mocking the claim.)  But one can wonder, “Why does it seem that so many in our society have ceased wondering, ceased questioning and seeking truth?  Why is it that children seem so inquisitive until they must endure a year or two in mass (public) education?  Adults who do not seek to know would rather, apparently, take the easy way out and turn off their minds with drugs or mindless entertainment.  The human task is to question, and especially to seek to know the truth about reality, and about God.

I love Aristotle.  He comes across as a real human being (especially, for me, in his masterful Nicomachean Ethics), but ever as an astounding lover of truth about every realm of being, and and a great teacher.  In antiquity, Aristotle was known for writing brilliant and beautiful dialogues, following the example of his mentor, Plato, but most unfortunately, none of the dialogues has been known since antiquity.  What we have are his lecture notes, presented as treatises.  Admittedly, I usually enjoy studying Plato more, and have found him more to my liking (although I love the Ethics); unlike some commentators, I have long read these two philosophers as complementary for my intellectual growth, and not as contrasts.  Each illuminates the other. (And remember, Aristotle studied under Plato for 20 years.). Both minds help me to read Hegel and Voegelin, and provoke questioning.  These fertile and brilliant minds search, and do not come to rest in doctrines (although Hegel derailed himself with the construction of his pretentious “System of Science.”)  Leibniz, c 1712, summarizes the two philosophical questions that wonder me:  Why is there something, why not nothing?  And why are things as they are, not some other way?  For Leibniz, and for me, these questions point towards the mystery we call “God.”

A motivating experience for philosophizing is existence out of nothingness. This remains a common human problem:  each one exists on the edge of non-existence.  Awareness of this issue was much stronger in ancient societies than I realized until my recent studies in Voegelin’s Ecumenic Age.  Some rituals were meant to magically reverse time and time’s action of lethally moving being-things back to nothingness.  Eliade wrote a number of books on this and related problems in his studies of myth.  I had to read Eliade as an undergraduate in a "Philosophy of Religion" class taught by an excellent Danish philosopher, who of course introduced us to Kierkegaard.  And Kierkegaard surely understands existence on the edge of non-existence, and the burdens our precarious life places on each of us who faces reality courageously. 

Yesterday I unpacked my copy of Spinoza, and I want to study him on God.  Reportedly, Spinoza is a “pantheist” (whatever that truly means), and broke from the pattern of "faith and reason,” of “religion and philosophy,” established by Philo Judaeus at the time of Christ, and was highly influential in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  I want to see if Spinoza reads the Greek philosophers with fresh eyes, and appreciates noetic consciousness as itself revelatory.  Did he break from the religious nonsense about revelation in a book, and denying the revelatory awareness that the Greek philosophers discovered?  We shall see.  In any case, I ask:  If philosophy is not revelatory, what is?  (Yes, myths and prophetic utterances can also be revelatory, but in a different way.)  I think that it is better, or at least more prudent and safe, to begin one’s search from reason, and then explore. Of course a philosopher worth his salt would explore mythical and religious texts in his quest for the ground of being, that on which all of reality is founded.  But one ought not to approach a text as “truth revealed” in any final sense, lest he in effect box up the divine Mind in a book.

Whitehead’s claim that “Aristotle founded science but ruined philosophy” often comes to mind.  I think that his great thinker was wrong on both counts.  Science had beginnings before Aristotle, in the thinkers we know as the “pre-Socratics.”  But then again, Aristotle did give sciences a firm foundation, more than mere speculation.  As for “ruining philosophy,” the treatise form may have helped to turn philosophy into doctrine, but there is no doubt in reading Aristotle that one is encountering a searching intellect of the first order.  It was lesser minds who badly damaged philosophy by summarizing Platonic and Aristotelian insights into simplistic doctrines.  An example that comes readily to mind is the “definition” of man as “the rational animal.”  What I find in Aristotle are his explorations of the noetic or rational power in human being, and he does describe human as the being “having nous.”  The later definition was flat, cut and dried; in reading Aristotle, one discovers what it is to be human as one studies to understand the philosopher’s explorations of reality.  Reason is discovered by reasoning, and human being is known through reasoning and loving.  Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and the loving search for the truth about reality by using reason in a loving, creative way.  The reason that one uses is by its nature a sharing in the divine reason (nous) that shines in, illuminating consciousness; and in exploring the structure of reality by reason, one finds much that is reasonable in the world, that nature has a noetic structure.  In other words, the world, at least nature (physis) contains much reasonable order, known by reason in man, cooperating with divine reason shining in as one seeks to know the truth.  And it is Aristotle, not a later doctrinaire disciple, who explores the life of the mind, reasoning, as ultimately moved by God in provoking the questions that engender the search (zetesis). 

Aristotle did not ruin philosophy.  Science explores what exists, the nature of reality; philosophy keeps wondering, 'Why?'  “Why is there something?  Why does the Whole exist at all?  Why not nothing?  Aristotle  greatly advanced both sciences and the science of sciences, φιλοσοφία.  Of course there is now a legitimate and independent philosophy of science.  At this time, it is not the philosophy of science that has my interest.  Rather, following both Hegel and Voegelin, I am especially interested in the philosophy of consciousness and the philosophy of history, but also like the philosophers of old, ever wondering about the first cause, the Why? 

A few hours ago I read a passage in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, with an aside in which Aristotle notes that intellect alone survives death, not the rest of psyche.  I want to see if and how he explores this matter, but I am quite sure that he does not do so in the Metaphysics, nor in his De Anima, his study of the Soul.  In any case, here is a difficult but worthwhile adventure.  I think that Thomas Aquinas explores this problem, too, that the intellect alone outlasts death; but he must do so covertly (lest he taste some flames on the matter of his mortal form); I have long thought this Thomas’ detailed “treatise on the angels,” within his Summa Theologiae, is written as an exercise in exploring the nature of intellect abstracted from matter (body) and bodily passions, and hence as what in man endures into eternity.  Does Spinoza teach the survival of intellect beyond death, or dissolution into the All?  We shall see.  

Philosophy proceeds by wonder, and provokes wonder.  Is it any wonder that I keep turning to philosophy?