Armistice Day

100 years ago today, the countries fighting the “Great War,” the “war to end all wars,” signed an Armistice, and fighting ceased.  That was 1918.  It did not begin again in Europe openly until 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both invaded Poland.  But already by 1935, as I recall the year, German troops re-occupied the Rhineland unchallenged by the French and British; annexation of Austria, then the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, then the annexation of all of Czechoslovakia followed rapidly.  If the Great War ended (and is not seen continuing in the “Cold War” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for decades), it was not until 1945.  What we call “World War I” and “World War II” were clearly two phases in the same horrific conflict between Britain-France and Germany-Austria.  Obviously the U.S. entered both wars, quite late, on the side of the Atlantic powers, and Russia first fought with Britain-France until the Revolution of 1917, then fought against Germany until June 1941.  As Churchill foresaw, “ally” Soviet Union gradually became the main antagonist to the Atlantic powers as Germany’s fate was sealed.  And this is just the European theater.  

The world wars, or global wars, that began at least as early as 1914 continue in some forms today, but by no means on the same scale as what happened between 1914-1945.  As many realize, if there is another outbreak of global war on a vast scale, the devastation will likely make the horrors of WWI and WWII seem relatively minor.  Looking back over the last hundred years, one sees more mass killing and mass destruction than would ever have seemed possible two hundred years ago.  When the French Revolution—Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, after so much blood flowed in those European wars, who would have imagined that such a spectacle of murder and destruction was a mere prelude to what would come shortly thereafter.  

Armistice day, now our “Veterans’ Day.”  The mind sees row upon row of graves in Arlington, or in Normandy, or in Flander’s fields, or mass graves in China, or in Japan…  I recall one of the most moving sites I have visited, on the southern end of Okinawa, where tens of thousands of Japanese leapt from cliffs into the sea below rather than be taken captive by American soldiers.  Each Japanese prefecture has erected a monument for peace, huge rocks with nothing on them but simple Konji, or Japanese script, with such words as “Peace,” and utter silence.  Not a voice is heard as we walked among those memorial rocks.  Peace is desired, and yet, probably to the end of human history, there will be hatred, violence, killing.  Armistice Day is a sober reminder that most sadly, there is nor can there be “a war to end all wars,” but only an effort by each and by all to root out the causes of war from one’s own heart.  That is the way, the only sure way, as taught by the Buddha about 2500 years ago.  A genuine armistice—cessation of arms, of fighting—begins with renouncing all ill-will, hatred, illusion in one’s mind.  There is no other way to peace, no other way to a genuine armistice.  Anything less is a mere abatement of outward violence as passions seethe.  

Shanti, shanti, shanti

Peace to all,

Bill

Retirement of a Benedictine Monk

Several people have said to me recently, “Priests do not retire.”  I cannot speak justly for diocesan priests, because I am not one, but for my part, I think that parish priests can and do retire, and in many cases, deservedly so.  I am happy for a retiring diocesan priest who served his parishioners for years, who proclaimed Christ faithfully in word and deed, who truly dedicated himself to “the care of souls,” that is, to the spiritual well-being of his parishioners.  Such priests—and bishops—deserve to retire, and to continue to serve in a pastoral role if and when they wish to do so.  Such service is optional after retirement, and how much one does, and the kinds of work, would depend on the individual priest’s willingness, interests, and health.  That they continue assisting with some pastoral duties is not required, but their own personal choice—with the permission of the local bishop, of course. 

 But I am not a diocesan priest, but a Benedictine monk, who was selected for ordination to the priesthood by my Abbot to serve our monastic community and, at times, to assist others who are linked to our monastery.  A Benedictine monastic, male or female, has one primary goal:  to seek God with all of one’s resources, with the grace of God, until death.  The work of seeking God does not end, and from this task, one does not retire.  For those monks who are also ordained as priests, there is always a tension, if not a contradiction, between the life of a monk and active priestly ministry.  Normally, the monk seeks God within the walls of the monastery.  With my Abbot’s permission, I temporarily served as a Navy Chaplain with Marines and Sailors during the Gulf War because of emergency need.  Later he asked me to assist in a parish a few miles from our monastery.  Then with his permission, I served as a parish priest in the Midwest, and in 2009 I returned to serve temporarily in parishes in my home state of Montana.  I serve here only with the permission of my Abbot, to whom I belong as a monk, and with the permission of Bishop Michael.  Whether or not a bishop permits me to function as a priest in his diocese after retirement is his decision.

As of early this year my Abbot granted me permission to remain living outside of the monastic walls, at least “for the duration.”   He has the authority to call me back to St. Anselm’s Abbey at any time, and for any reason.  As I retire from active pastoral duty, my monastic calling and vows must return to the fore:  to give my energies to seeking the presence of the living God.  This search requires many hours of solitude, profound peace, contemplative prayer, and nourishing study.  Having been formed as a Benedictine monk of St. Anselm’s Abbey (Washington, DC), and having lived the life for years in our monastery, I have a good sense of what is required of me.  It will necessitate making considerable changes as I retire from active ministry on 1 July:  it will take time and prayer for me to know how best to live as a faithful Benedictine monk.

 To help me adjust to returning to the life of a Benedictine, I will in effect be taking a sabbatical, and not be available for pastoral substitute work at least for some time.  I must also limit social invitations, as befits a more contemplative lifestyle.  The best way to contact me, should you wish to do so, is by email.  My iPhone will be turned off much of the time, as required for silence.  Furthermore, I have planned day trips to areas in Montana in the summer months to exercise my dogs and me, and to see more of beautiful Montana then active life has permitted.  I will also spend time with my brother in Utah, make a quiet retreat on the Oregon coast in the fall, and then visit my sister and her husband in San Diego over the Christmas holidays.  I have not seen my family for several years. 

As several of you have truly said, I will need to be retired for a while to learn how to handle the changes well.  Having worked full time since my student days, and having been busy serving in active priestly ministry since 1991, retirement will require major adjustments, as it does for everyone.  Some folks have asked if I will be “bored.”  My response is:  “Are you serious?  I have many interests and hobbies.”  More fundamentally, retirement permits one to strive for peace in solitude and silence, as befits a Benedictine.  In truth, retirement is a graced time for anyone to seek God; that is our human calling.  Furthermore, writing would be a more suitable way to continue ministering to the faithful, as it requires solitude.  The LORD will guide me to assist in pastoral duties, such as funerals, at the right time, if it is appropriate to do so.  In all things, peace:   “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  Know that you will be with me in my heart and prayer.  I will treasure the years we have spent together in this passing light. 

—Fr. Wm. Paul McKane, OSB  (Benedictine monk of St. Anselm’s Abbey)

On Vocation: A Teacher, a Benedictine Monk, and a Catholic Priest

In writing these brief meditation-memos, I have usually avoided including much personal material, although I use some of my life-experiences to illustrate more general points in homilies.  On this occasion I reverse the process:  discussion of my vocations may be too difficult for some to hear in homilies, so I sketch it out here, rather than in a homily.  My purpose is to explain to parishioners something few apparently understand, because of lack of experience with Benedictines monks (men and women):  the nature of the monastic vocation is strongly different from the call to be a priest in the Church.  If this memo fails to clarify my vocational situation for you, let me know and I shall write a longer version and post it on our website. 

We all have multiple vocations from God, not just one.  To focus on a single vocation is naive and misleading.  Our foremost and common vocation is to become what we have been created to be:  happy, virtuous, fulfilled, engaged human beings, who find our ultimate completion in God alone.  Furthermore, some have a calling as men, some as women.  Most human beings find considerable personal fulfillment in being married and raising loving children.  Furthermore, our natural abilities and interests point to having other vocations.  In my case, I have long been interested in learning and in teaching; in music, photography, literature; in philosophy and in spiritual life.  We also share the vocation to be men and women in Christ Jesus, and to live out this calling as faithful Catholics. 

I have two additional vocations which have been highly significant in my life:  I have been called by Christ and by a Benedictine community to live as a monk until death; and my abbot chose me to serve, at least at times, as a priest for the community, and in the larger church.  Repeatedly I have learned that even life-time Catholics do not understand the monastic vocation; many consider it invalid, escapist, or inhuman.  The essence of the Benedictine monastic calling is to seek God in community.  We take three vows:  obedience to the Rule of St. Benedict and to our abbot; stability of life as a monk until death; and a life of ongoing conversion to Christ.  To seek God means that one truly trusts and acts as though “my happiness is in You alone.”  Monks forsake marriage, family life, property.  The vocation of priests is to serve parish families, helping to lead people to God.  Priests keep their earthly families, are attached to place, may inherit and own property.  In brief, whereas monks are called to seek God in prayer and study, Catholic priests are called to active ministry.  They are very different and even conflicting vocations.  Every monk who is a priest knows well the conflict, and seeks to find the right balance in his life.

Let me be practical.  I entered St. Anselm’s Abbey in 1982 to seek God.  With chaplains needed for the Gulf War, I entered the Navy in 1991, and since then, have been a fully-engaged parish priest.  My life as a Benedictine monk was not negated, but was at least partially suspended.  Active ministry has left much less time for study and contemplation. As I approach retirement from active ministry, my monastic vocation returns to the fore.  My abbot has chosen to restore my status as an active member of our monastery.  As such, I am obligated to spend generous hours in prayer, study, and meditation every day, as well as do some manual work.  Most of the monks of our monastery share in some pastoral ministry, including writing, teaching, preaching, care of the sick, and so on.

When I retire on 1 July, I will no longer be a parish priest, nor am I a diocesan priest. I return to full-time status as a Benedictine monk.  I may on occasion preach in public, or offer a Mass, but my main form of teaching and preaching will take the form of writing.  To write, I must meditate and study.  To these ends, I will considerably reduce my social life, as Benedictine monks live a life of relative seclusion from the world, from business, from socializing.  I am not leaving the planet, but please understand if I decline opportunities to socialize or to minister in public.  Please understand:  I am not a diocesan priest, but a man who vowed himself to seek God in prayer, study, and contemplation.  This vocation requires large amounts of time in solitude.  With the help of God, I will live out my Benedictine vocation until death.

A Practical Note On Prayer And Action

Dear Parishioners,

 Our Bishop has asked that we take up a second collection this week-end to raise some money to be sent to the Archbishop of Houston, Bishop DiNardo, who is faced with assisting thousands of needy Catholics in his diocese.  My hope is that each of us will make some contribution in check or in cash.  We will bundle the offerings and send them to the chancery next week.  Please be generous. 

Several of you have voiced your concern that we raise money to assist those whose lives, homes, farms, ranches, livestock have suffered from fires in Montana.  I fully understand your concern, and encourage us to respond.  If any of you wants to assist me with that collection, and advise me on to whom to send it, we will gladly take up this collection in coming weeks.  I will email our Pastoral Center (chancery) in Great Falls, as they may well know how to use such funds to assist the needy right here in fire-and-drought-ravaged Montana.

Furthermore, as of last evening, there was a devastating earthquake in Mexico, and some of you may be inclined to assist in some way.  And now, very pressing indeed, will be the devastation about to overtake much of the state of Florida, and perhaps Georgia and the Carolinas.  We may be asked to give an offering to assist in these states as well.  Our finance council will discuss ways to help.

We also offer our prayers, asking that lives be spared, and that all the people involved heed the requests or demands of state and local authorities to evacuate threatened areas.  As we pray, we must act to the best of our ability.  So if possible, we will be ready to assist in some practical / financial ways.

God bless and keep us all safe and in His peace.

An Alarm Bell In The Night

Dear Family and Friends,

I keep hearing what Jefferson called in 1820 “an alarm bell in the night.”  The bell he heard was over the growing potential for civil war because of the unresolved slavery issue.  The bell I hear is for destructive civil strife and the potential for a complete breakdown in our body politic.  As I imaged the matter several months ago:  America is encamped on the slopes of a giant volcano.  We feel and hear the rumbles; in reality, the mountain may blow up.  

Hence, what I am hearing is far more than an alarm bell.  Our civilization is on the verge of an enormous eruption.  How long can a people endure in history when they betray themselves and their own founding?  How long can western civilization endure when it disowns the two spiritual forces which engendered our civilization:  the Greek discovery of divine reason as the constituent of our common humanity, and the Judaeo-Christian response to the living God?  The Enlightenment perverted reason from divine-human mutual participation into a natural possession, a world-immanent power for “changing the world;” and the same self-styled “enlightened intellectuals” threw out the God of Christianity. We are reaping the consequences.  Nietzsche’s terrifying vision of a civilization which has murdered God hurling into an empty abyss is coming to pass in our midst.

I may have to dedicate more of my time and energy to diagnosing and writing on the political upheavals in the midst of which we are living.  Such is the work of political philosophy:  to diagnose the spiritual-political problems, and to serve in some small way in their therapy.  As my brother Andy has said repeatedly, “Pearl Harbor is my calling.”  My calling is and seems to be the different kind of Pearl Harbor in which we are now living. I cannot ignore it.  

That I must use whatever skills I have to analyze, diagnose, and perhaps in some very small way help heal these divisions, is evident to me.  Although I do not know this to be the case, it is possible that it is now too late to preserve the United States of America.  Political communities come into being and perish. They die either from internal forces ripping them apart, or because they are overcome by a greater power from abroad. The greatest danger threatening us is not terrorism, Russia, or China, but ourselves: we are dissolving from within as a sizable part of our body politic has lost its grounding in divine reality and in common sense (reason).  In a word, millions of us are out of control.  Without internal order, either we must be controlled by force, or we perish.  Control by force is, in effect, political slavery, and nothing that we should allow to come to pass.  But if we will not control ourselves, what or who else will control us?  This is one of the central themes of millennial political philosophy:  control from within (rational self-control), or dominance from without (power, force, or drugs).  It was a major concern of our Founding Fathers, who left spiritual-rational formation to families, churches, local communities, not to the government (nor to the newly established Federal government).  

A brief note in response to a question one of you raised:  It is conceivable that a human being may be self-consciously agnostic, and still be grounded in reality; and one can “believe in God,” and be swirling in illusions. Truth lies at the level of experience, not verbal formulations.  Those who do good are grounded in the Good, however it is symbolized or expressed; those who do evil do not have that grounding.  Jesus’ words are the measure:  “A tree is known by its fruits.”  The human responsibility is to engage in the search for truth and to seek to do what is right, and not to think that one has arrived at truth, or is doing right without checking one’s own destructive or lower tendencies.  Where there is hatred, violence, ill-will, drug abuse, illusions, and so on, they are not from God, and they are forces tearing us apart.  Any adult can see and understand that our American political society has become rife with hatred, violence, drug abuse, mindless entertainment, disordering music, intellectual-mental drugs (ideologies), and godlessness.  

In short: What shall we do?  What must each of us do to serve God (as we understand Him) and country?  How is one to live in the midst of a society that is breaking apart, and seems to be intent upon killing itself? What is your responsibility? What is mine? Asking the right questions is ever a good beginning.

The best, brief commentary on the Presidential Election of 2016 that I (Fr. Paul) have seen:

Why Trump Won

by Victor Davis Hanson

Friday, November 11, 2016

Throughout the course of the 2016 election, the conventional groupthink was that the renegade Donald Trump had irrevocably torn apart the Republican Party. His base populism supposedly sandbagged more experienced and electable Republican candidates, who were bewildered that a “conservative” would dare to pander to hoi polloi [the many] by promising deportations of illegal aliens, renegotiation of trade agreements that “ripped off” working people, and a messy attack on the reigning political correctness.

It was also a common complaint that Trump had neither political nor military experience. He trash-talked his way into the nomination, critics said, which led to defections among the outraged Republican elite. By August, a #NeverTrump movement had taken root among many conservatives, including some at National Review, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal. Many neoconservatives who formerly supported President George W. Bush flipped parties, openly supporting the Clinton candidacy. 

Trump’s Republican critics variously disparaged him as, at best, a Huey Long or Ross Perot, whose populist message was antithetical to conservative principles of unrestricted trade, open-border immigration, and proper personal comportment. At worse, a few Republican elites wrote Trump off as a dangerous fascist akin to Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler.

For his part, Trump often sounded bombastic and vulgar. By October, after the Access Hollywood video went viral, many in the party were openly calling for him to step down. Former primary rivals like Jeb Bush and John Kasich reneged on their past oaths to support the eventual Republican nominee and turned on Trump with a vengeance. 

By the end of the third debate, it seemed as if Trump had carjacked the Republican limousine and driven it off a cliff. His campaign seemed indifferent to the usual stuff of an election run—high-paid handlers, a ground game, polling, oppositional research, fundraising, social media, establishment endorsements, and celebrity guest appearances at campaign rallies. Pundits ridiculed his supposedly “shallow bench” of advisors, a liability that would necessitate him crawling back to the Republican elite for guidance at some point.

What was forgotten in all this hysteria was that Trump had brought to the race unique advantages, some of his own making, some from finessing naturally occurring phenomena. His advocacy for fair rather than free trade, his insistence on enforcement of federal immigration law, and promises to bring back jobs to the United States brought back formerly disaffected Reagan Democrats, white working-class union members, and blue-dog Democrats—the “missing Romney voters”—into the party. Because of that, the formidable wall of rich electoral blue states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina crumbled.

Beyond that, even Trump’s admitted crudity was seen by many as evidence of a street-fighting spirit sorely lacking in Republican candidates that had lost too magnanimously in 1992, 2008, and 2016 to vicious Democratic hit machines. Whatever Trump was, he would not lose nobly, but perhaps pull down the rotten walls of the Philistines with him. That Hillary Clinton never got beyond her email scandals, the pay-for-play Clinton Foundation wrongdoing, and the Wikileaks and Guccifer hackings reminded the electorate that whatever Trump was or had done, he at least had not brazenly broken federal law as a public servant, or colluded with the media and the Republican National Committee to undermine the integrity of the primaries and sabotage his Republican rivals.

Finally, the more Clinton Inc. talked about the Latino vote, the black vote, the gay vote, the woman vote, the more Americans tired of the same old identity politics pandering. What if minority bloc voters who had turned out for Obama might not be as sympathetic to a middle-aged, multimillionaire white woman? And what if the working white classes might flock to the politically incorrect populist Trump in a way that they would not to a leftist elitist like Hillary Clinton? In other words, the more Clinton played the identity politics card, the more she earned fewer returns for herself and more voters for Trump.

In the end, the #NeverTrump movement fizzled, and most of the party rightly saw, after putting aside the matter of his character, that Trump’s agenda was conservative in almost every area—immigration, energy, gun rights, taxes and regulation, abortion, health care, and military spending. In areas of doubt—foreign policy and entitlements—voters reasoned that sober and judicious Republican advisors would surround and enlighten Trump.

As a result, Republican voters, along with working class Democrats and Independents voted into power a Republican President, Republican Congress, and, in essence, a Republican judiciary. Trump’s cunning and energy, and his unique appeal to the disaffected white working class, did not destroy the Republican down ballot, but more likely saved it. Senators and Representatives followed in Trump’s wake, as did state legislatures and executive officers. Any Republican senatorial candidate who voted for him won election; any who did not, lost. Trump got a greater percentage of Latinos, blacks, and non-minority women than did Romney, and proved to be medicine rather than poison for Republican candidates. With hindsight, it is hard to fathom how any other Republican candidate might have defeated Clinton Inc.—or how, again with hindsight, the Party could be in a stronger, more unified position.

In contrast, the Democratic Party is torn and rent. Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with both houses of Congress, two likely Supreme Court picks, and the good will of the nation. By 2010 he had lost the House; by 2012, the Senate. And by 2016, Obama had ensured that his would-be successor could not win by running on his platform.

A failed health care law, non-existent economic growth, serial zero interest rates, near record labor non-participation rates, $20 trillion in national debt, a Middle East in ruins, failed reset and redlines, and the Iran deal were albatrosses around Democratic Party’s neck. Obama divided the country with the apology tour, the Cairo Speech, the beer summit, the rhetoric of disparagement (“you didn’t build that,” “punish our enemies,” etc.), the encouragement of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a series of anti-Constitutional executive orders.

In other words, even as Obama left the Democrats with ideological and political detritus, he also had established an electoral calculus built on his own transformative identity that neither had coattails nor was transferrable to other candidates. Indeed, his hard-left positions on redistribution, social issues, sanctuary cities, amnesty, foreign policy, and spending would likely doom candidates other than himself who embraced them.

The Bernie Sanders candidacy was the natural response, on the left, to Obama’s ideological presidency. But the cranky socialist septuagenarian mesmerized primary voters on platitudes that would have proven disastrous in a general election—before meekly whining about Clinton sabotage and then endorsing the ticket. What then has the Democratic Party become other than a hard left and elite progressive force, which without Obama’s personal appeal to bloc-voting minorities, resonates with only about 40 percent of the country?

The Democratic Party is now neither a centrist nor a coalition party. Instead, it finds itself at a dead-end: had Hillary Clinton emulated her husband’s pragmatic politics of the 1990s, she would have never won the nomination—even though she would have had a far better chance of winning the general election.

Wikileaks reminded us that the party is run by rich, snobbish, and often ethically bankrupt grandees. In John Podesta’s world, it’s normal and acceptable for Democratic apparatchiks to talk about their stock portfolios and name-drop the Hamptons, while making cruel asides about “needy” Latinos, medieval Catholics, and African-Americans with silly names—who are nonetheless expected to keep them in power. Such paradoxes are not sustainable. Nor is the liberal nexus of colluding journalists, compromised lobbyists, narcissistic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, family dynasties, and Clintonian get-rich ethics.

The old blue-collar middle class was bewildered by the leftwing social agenda in which gay marriage, women in combat units, and transgendered restrooms went from possible to mandatory party positions in an eye blink. In a party in which “white privilege” was pro forma disparagement, those who were both white and without it grew furious that the elites with such privilege massaged the allegation to provide cover for their own entitlement.

In the aftermath of defeat, where goes the Democratic Party?

It is now a municipal party. It has no real power over the federal government or state houses. Its once feared cudgel of race/class/gender invective has become a false wolf call heard one too many times. The Sanders-Warren branch of the party, along with the now discredited Clinton strays, will hover over the party’s carcass. Meanwhile, President Obama will likely ride off into the sunset to a lucrative globe-trotting ex-presidency. His executive orders will systematically be dismantled by Donald Trump, leaving as his legacy a polarizing electoral formula that had a shelf life of just two terms.

A Note To My Family...

A note to my family, supposing that my brother Andy is Donald Trump, and my sister Jeanie is Hillary Clinton.

My dear sister and brother:

I feel very bad for both of you, after such a humiliating and mud-slinging campaign. It has been brutal and ugly for all of us, really. I also feel bad for you because one will win the Presidency, and one will not. And I know that each one of you, my brother and sister, has flaws and weaknesses. And you have personal motives for wanting the highest office in the land, some perhaps not even clear to you in the depth of your heart.  You also each have your conscious wishes and plans for the country, for improving our common life here according to your lights. And you both have large swarms of people around you, including some very sharp advisors on both sides—and some who just like to be near the center of power, and could even betray you if they thought it served their own interests.

For the one of you who loses the election, I feel genuine pity.  But I will feel even more pity, if less immediate and intense, but sustained over your years in office, for the one of you who wins this bloody election.  What you gain, you may live to regret, as other powerful leaders have regretted their terms in office—often ending in shame, humiliation, violent or natural death.

Whichever one of you wins, our country remains deeply divided.  We have divided for years, but the intensity and severity of division keeps growing.  Whoever wins, more than half of the electorate will be highly critical of you (remember that perhaps 30% of eligible citizens will not bother voting—just a rough guess). Whoever wins, you will be hated by many.

The one of you who becomes President will face a highly turbulent international scene, with grave crises awaiting:  Islamic-fundamentalist terrorism; resurgent Iran; Russia and China pressing to expand their spheres of influence / power; wicked regimes as in N Korea; violent unrest blowing up in one country after another (such as in Venezuela recently).  So you will face extremely grave crises and challenges—most of which we cannot even now guess. You and your inner circle of advisors—and our whole country whom you will represent—will be utterly tested.  Surely you know and expect such tests.

But furthermore, whoever wins, you will face our country struggling with numerous serious problems: breakdown of families and community bonds; spiritual-intellectual-moral decay in many citizens; a poor educational system for many Americans; profound racial tensions; breakdown of order in inner cities; rampant drug abuse; influx of millions of “undocumented” migrants; increasing concentration of wealth in large cities, with third-world poverty in small towns and rural areas; sluggish economic growth and perhaps a recession; an enormous and growing national debt; and so on.  You will face an empire that is, in my opinion, dying from within. You may disagree, but surely you will have to deal with many symptoms of internal disease and disorder.

You may win the election, dear brother or sister, but I think that you will often feel enormous burdens on your shoulders, and be deprived of quiet rest.  You will have sleepless nights as you must struggle through many difficult decisions—all the while as you are mocked and even vilified by the mass media and entertainment industries. Few will be concerned for you as a person.  Even friends and associates will see you as a means to their own gain. You will wonder, “Who are my real friends?”  You will often be alone in the quiet or turmoil of your own heart.

So whichever one of you wins, my brother and sister, my heart goes out to you. I owe you and promise you my love and support, and well-intentioned advice should you ever ask me for it. No matter what happens to you, you are my brother and my sister.

Thoughts On American-Global Totalitariamism

To fellow Americans who may read this:

I call to mind words of Thomas Jefferson written to his friend John Holmes in 1820, on the occasion of the Missouri Compromise and what he saw coming in American politics:

...But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
 and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the
Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only,
not a final sentence…

“The fire bell in the night,” the death-knell of our American political order is what one can hear if one is listening, and thinks about what we see unfolding in American political and social life. What we experienced in years past as a democratic republic has ceased being a republic and a democracy, but has increasingly become a totalitarian empire ruled by Progressive Gnostics seeking to “transform America” into part of a globalist society of fellow-traveling rulers, intellectuals, bureaucrats, bankers, multinational corporate head, educationists, and media-propagandists.Their domination over American political and social life is nearly complete. 

That our American political regime and way of life are in truth becoming totalitarian I submit, for the present, a few facts: 

1. It is increasingly evident that our country is dominated by a closed ruling elite, made up of members of both major political parties, who know that they have much more in common with each other than they do with the masses whom they dominate and seek to continue to control. This ruling class seeks total domination over the citizens, and endless perpetuation of their ever-increasing power. 

2. The ruling elite is dominated by forms of Gnosticism, especially of a Progressivist-Socialist variety, amalgamated from Comte’s Progressivism, Marxian Socialism, elements of classical Liberalism, with other planks pulled from various ideologies. They are close-minded in thought, certain that they possess “the truth,” and seek to impose this “truth” not only on the USA, but on the entire world. To an alarming degree, they have been successful. 

3. The killing of the unborn, increasingly with public funds and statesponsorship, is not incidental or just one promoted policy, but a revealing model of the "brave new world" they seek to create: a realm of total domination of powerful rulers over the ruled. The most helpless, defenseless members of our human community-infants in the womb-are subject to a reign of terror in the form of "abortion on demand." It is one step towards power to put to death any individuals or classes of citizens deemed "unwanted," or deplorable," or "unproductive." In addition to the unborn, most vulnerable victims include newly born infants (some of whom are left to die), unwanted children, various "irredeemables," elderly persons declared to be "socially useless," and the terminally ill who may be "euthanized." American death camps include abortion mills, hospitals, "care facilities," and even inner cities where often drug-crazed gangs terrorize citizens with real and threatened violence. Abortion mills and inner cities together show the accepted and promoted reign of terror in America. 

 4. The ruling elite has proven itself willing to use totalitarian techniques to keep their monopoly of political power. One primary means of control are the mass media which enter nearly every home and every citizen’s consciousness, especially through television and movies, but also through the internet, and which seek to dominate thinking, prevent independence of thought and judgment, and remake all citizens in the image of the ruling elite. 

5. Another primary means of ongoing control of the citizens is through Progressivist domination in mass “education” (propaganda) from pre-school through secondary education, into college and graduate schools. The lack of freedom of thought in American academia is astonishing, but well known to anyone who has spent years in this system and dared to “think outside of the box,” that is, outside the realm of Progressivist Gnostic ideology. The grip on teachers and students is ironclad and nearly complete. The cost for refusal to accept the dominant ideology is poor performance, failure, or unemployment in the area of one’s expertise. 

6. As we have seen in the recent Presidential election, a challenge to elite domination has been met with rejection of virtually the entire ruling class, media manipulation, screening out of diverse views, character assassination, and even covert, fomented violence at political rallies to make it appear that the interloper is “a dictator,” when in fact the monopoly of power belongs to the ruling clique. Citizens have been mugged, property has been stolen or damaged (as in “keying cars,” and defacing campaign signs), persons have been threatened. What shows up to discerning eyes is the severe loss of freedom of expression and action in American politics. 

In short, the United States of America is neither a republican form of government, nor a mass democracy. These terms are used and promoted as part of a democratic mythology intended to keep the masses uninformed and living in a dreamlike state of illusion, as the rulers continue their quest for domination over all aspects of American life. The American regime has increasingly become a form of Gnostic totalitarianism, similar in form to the Soviet Union, Communist China, National Socialist Germany, Communist Cuba, Socialist Europe, and such regimes. What is called “American democracy” is in reality a virulent cancer destroying our body politic. 

What are we to do?

First, we must open our eyes and try to see clearly what has been happening to us as a people in history. Living in illusions—such as the myth of being “democratic”—prevents clear sightedness and coming to grips with reality. 

Second, the use of violence to overthrow the regime, as our Founders rebelled against the British Crown, is neither possible nor beneficial. The monopoly of power in the hands of rulers in government is extreme. And too many innocent lives would be destroyed in any attempted coup d’état. 

Third, the Gnostic-Progressive ideology must be examined and dissected for the diseased non-thought that it is. And it must be rejected as spiritually and intellectually diseased. For example, when candidate Obama proclaimed, “We will transform the world,” American citizens foolishly accepted such nonsense, rather than rejecting the verbiage and its goal as destructive. It was accepted because we have been instilled with such nonsense for over a hundred years. The origin of such thought in the young Karl Marx was neither analyzed nor understood. As President Obama has shown himself to be living in a Gnostic dream world, with dire consequences for American domestic and foreign policies. The man is not stupid, but he is a blind fool on account of his ironclad Progressivist ideology. 

Fourth, we must not be deceived: Mrs. Clinton would continue the same would-be totalitarian domination of American life evident in our leaders for decades: from the reign of Progressives such as T Roosevelt and W Wilson, through recent rulers—Clinton, Bush, Obama. Those who can observe and think should now understand that both major political parties are, at the top levels, part of the same dominating clique bent on changing American society into part of the globalist utopia of their dreams. One result of this utopian dream is perpetual warfare, as our rulers seek to impose their diseased vision on an often recalcitrant world. Here we find not “one empire, one people, one leader” of National Socialism, but “one world under our total domination” by the globalist, Gnostic elites. What the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were on a national or imperial scale, we are now becoming on a global scale.

A Few Thoughts On Thinking

To be conscious is to be awake, alert, purposeful, aware of one’s “place” in the whole of reality. 

Some persons appear to be awake, but when questioned, it turns out that their mind was unfocused, or barely awake, or almost in a semi-dreaming state: You speak to them, and they say, “Whaaaat? Where am I? What’s happening’, man?” It seems to me that many persons, much of the time, are in this semi-dreaming state between genuine alert wakefulness and full sleep. They are unconsciously conscious, or unwakefully awake. To be truly awake and alert, open to reality and responsive, takes much work, practice, dedication, love. It is all too easy for a human being to sit or lie down, and enter into a kind of twilight zone of mindlessness. Television watching encourages this kind of unconscious consciousness. By the effects on consciousness, every television show is, to some extent, a variety of “The Twilight Zone.” 

To be mindfully conscious, alert and responsive, is no easy task, and seems to be especially difficult and all-too-uncommon in our present culture. Bodies move around, or sit on a sofa, or mouths move, but not much thought or awareness of reality is exhibited. For example, much of what passes for political discourse is nearly a mindless mouthing of words, slogans, or lawyerly smokescreening, detached from practical reality. For a man of common sense, such verbal meanderings are quickly recognized as “b s.” The politician I have heard the most words from in my life is Barack Obama, as he has so often appeared in the news, talking—more Twilight Zone. Much of what he says exemplifies what I call lawyerly smokescreening. He says many words to avoid saying something of pithy and of consequence. Politicians of both parties engage in the same verbal games. They are not thinking or dialoging with us, or engaging our minds, but seeking to dominate minds by mere verbiage. The right purpose of speaking is to engage other minds, to open us up more fully to reality, and not to dominate, confuse, baffle, or entomb our minds. 

                                                        Dialectics and eristics 

What is thinking? Thinking in the proper sense is a movement of thought from one point to another, if in the practical sphere, leading to a decision and taking action. Intellectual thinking, in which one explores some problem or question, is far better done in writing, because writing channels and disciplines the mind. “Wool gathering” or anxiously going over any matter is not really thinking, but a form of neurotic worrying. Much of what people call “thinking” is anxious worrying, not a genuine search for truth leading to insight or to concrete action in the world. 

To think in the intellectual sense is to pose questions and to explore answers. For example: What are the differences between constructive thinking and anxious, worrisome “thoughts”? Much of what is called “thinking” in our society is not thinking in the proper sense, but spinning of words or images in the mind, not leading to action or definite insight. Genuine thinking requires a discipline of the will, hard work, and an ongoing search for truth. If one is not seeking, how can one find? If one does not question, what could “answers” possibly mean? 

Following Plato, I wish to distinguish two kinds of “thinking” that may appear as intellectual, or constructive, or as searches for truth. One kind he terms “dialectics,” the other he calls “eristics.” Dialectical thinking is a search for truth within the in-between of existence, as the human inquirer questions reality as it presents itself to him in consciousness. This genuine thinking is in truth a movement between the divine and human partners in being. One who thinks in this mode is not alone, isolated, or self-enclosed, or “introspecting.” Nor is he or she speculating on what might be, or on some imagined deity dwelling “out there” somewhere—in the Twilight Zone. Dialectical thinking is a response to the divine mind moving one to question and to seek the truth. And this kind of thinking is limited to the exploration of concrete experiences, to reality as it presents itself to consciousness. It is a movement within reality; or in other words, reality is becoming conscious in the thinking of the one seeking truth that emerges between the divine and human partners. Dialectically, one questions because one is moved to question; and the one who seeks, finds. “What are you seeking?” are the first words of the Christ in the Gospel of John. One seeks by questioning reality as it presents itself to consciousness. 

Eristics is argumentative, speculative, intellectualistic, and not grounded in experienced reality. The best examples of eristic thinking in our western culture came from hardened religious positions taken over centuries: one accepts or “believes” certain dogmas or opinions, and then argues about them, trying to instill the same opinions in others. At least since the Enlightenment of the late 18th century, religious “thinking” or “beliefs” became far less tolerated by the intellectual elites, who turned instead to ideological, secular, political, inner-worldly eristics. Whether liberal, conservative, progressive, Hegelian, Marxist, feminist, or so on, these “thinkers” engage in the semi-conscious and more or less irrational practice of eristics: speculating or “reasoning” about matters outside of the human-divine in-between, and seeking to replace reality with a second reality, an imagined world. The genuine exploration of reality engaged in by scientists exploring real problems is a wholly different matter; but speculating on science and its place in culture is often a matter of either “science fiction” or scientism, the latter being an ideological elevation of “science” to the position of a monopoly of truth about reality. A physicist may know much about the causes and effects of gravity, for example, but that knowledge tells him virtually nothing about the nature of consciousness and the human condition. Philosophy dialectically explores the in-between reality of consciousness; eristics speculates on reality or realities more or less divorced from concrete experiences of consciousness. 

In this regard, a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist, a progressive intellectual, and a Marxist are essentially doing the same thing: speculating on reality without due recourse to concrete experiences of consciousness. If one were to examine actual states of consciousness rather than mere doctrinal or scriptural beliefs, one may well discover that there is no essential difference between a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist or “believer.” Differences among concrete human beings may emerge if one asks real questions: “Does this person truly love God and neighbor? Is this person seeking to do good, to enhance life, or destroy it? Is this person seeking truth, or does he presume that he has already discovered truth? What actions is this person actually taking to do the will of the that which he calls “God” or “Allah”? Similarly, one can ask of the true believing Marxist: “How does he or she really live? Are they open to the truth of reality as it presents itself to consciousness, or do they seek to impose on reality pre-conceived intellectualistic categories? What is the end state of human society according to the Marxist conception? Can violent action now truly produce a state of peace and justice? Can human beings truly “change the world” as Marx said; or are there fundamental structures in reality which all beings, including human beings, must observe and respect? What are these fundamental structures that transcend human volition and action? What is the nature of reality in which we exist? Or should one follow Marx’s dictum: “Do not think. Do not ask questions,” because the “socialist man” does not ask such questions, but “knows” that he “creates himself by his own labor.” 

To think properly requires that one work within the given structures of reality, and seeks to explore these structures, “the nature of things” as they were called by the ancients. The sphere of human action, and what may be changed for the better, requires discovery, and working within the limits set on human activity. It is the old lesson taught by the story of Daedalus and Icarus: one must not seek to fly either too high, or too low, but stay within the limits set by reality. Dialectical thinking, or philosophy, seeks to understand human being’s place within the mysterious whole of reality, and to help us adjust to that reality, and make the best of our apportioned time of living on earth—or rather, our existence between time and eternity. For present human existence is mysterious indeed, as we participate by our bodies and minds in the whole range of reality, from inert matter up to the mind of God. Our lot is to explore the realms of reality, seeking truth and doing good within the relatively brief compasses of our lives; and to do so even as we stretch ourselves out towards “that which is immortal and everlasting,” sharing even now, by “faith working through love,” in what is by long tradition called “God.” 

To be conscious is to explore the truth of existing within the whole of reality, and to move, by “the voice of this calling and the drawing of this love” into eternity present here and now.

On Listening to Beethoven's Late Quartets

Sitting quietly at Felix House, I have been listening once again to the slow movements from Beethoven’s late quartets.

A few observations:  In Beethoven’s major compositions, he is ever concerned with God, in some form. In such works as the Eroica and 5th Symphonies, Beethoven is in a state of open rebellion against God, against his fate, against going death, against mortality itself.  He may have conflicts with particular human beings, but they largely reflect his inner conflict with God.

In the late quartets, for reasons of which I am not sure, one can hear that Beethoven is communing with the divine partner of his soul.  Some struggle remains, but it is within the partnership, not against it. Beethoven’s late quartets are composed within the Metaxy, within the Platonic in-between, the realm of the spiritual, between God and human being.  In listening to these quartets, one is listening to an inner dance, a conversation between two lovers in four voices.  It is not that some instruments represent the one, and some the other partner; rather, the two are ever together, moving in harmonies with one another, playing together in various senses of the word.  

If one wants to know what Plato-Voegelin means by the in-between, and the mature Jung by the psyche, listen to Beethoven’s late quartets.  They arise from within the in-between, and this reality gives the music not only its unearthly-earthly beauty, but a kind of inevitability or ineluctability about it:  from the first few notes of a given (slow) movement, one can hear the seemingly effortless, “natural,” inevitable unfolding of sound.  It is what it must be, and its being is a sheer gift, not only to the composer, but through Beethoven to anyone who enters into his songs of divine-human communion through the art of listening between.

Ah, the Cavatina: adagio molto espressivo from the Quartet #13 in B-Flat.  Listen.  How thankful to be alive, to be able to sing together, to listen to one another.  Beethoven is delighting in his immortal Beloved, who may be embodied in a human being, but who is first and foremost the divine presence within his soul, and is now embodied in exquisite, metaleptic music.  And not only in one movement, but in the whole set.  Listen to the Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile from the Quartet #12 in E-Flat. To listen well is to enter into that which is heard, so that it is coming, as it were, from the depths within one’s psyche. The music truly heard is also one’s own communal song with God.

Goethe wrote words to the effect that listening to a good string quartet is like listening to four adults in conversation. Perhaps, as when hearing Mozart or Haydn, or early or middle quartets by Beethoven. But in listening to the late quartets of Beethoven, one is hearing two in conversation:  the divine and human partners of the in-between, the psyche open to the fullness of reality, and especially to the ground from which all blessings flow. 

A Note On Forms Of Knowing: Philosophy-Science-Mystical Experience

Voegelin demonstrates that and how the complex consciousness-reality-language must be held together in tension, and studied together.  I think that there is another complex, one of knowing, that must be explored together:  philosophy-science-mystical experience.  None of these three forms of knowing reality is sufficient in itself, but all three must be used together to understand reality.  

Without philosophy, mystical experience can degenerate into incoherence, or gnosis, or dogmatic fundamentalism.  In common usage, the word “mystical” often means a kind of incoherent truth—“begins in mist and ends is schism.”  Without philosophy, science can degenerate into scientism, grounded on mistaking intentionality (knowing of things in the external world) as the only form of knowing; and science blossoms into philosophy when the scientist asks the questions beyond the range of intentionality, questions of ultimate reality.  To borrow Leibniz’ two fundamental questions:  “Why is there something, why not nothing?”  and “Why is the world as it is, and not some other way?”  These are questions for a philosopher, and I would think that at least some scientists allow them to bubble up into consciousness from time to time as they pursue their knowledge of structures in the world, of “de rerum naturae.”

Philosophy without mystical experience degenerates rapidly into logic chopping, into word games, into sterile definitions, or sophistry, or “metaphysics,” or even atheism or nihilism.  Anyone who seeks to speak about the divine, for example, must ever keep in mind the tension between knowing and unknowing, between revelation and unrevealed reality, so well summarized by Voegelin:  “Even when the divine Beyond reveals itself in its formative presence, it remains the unrevealed divine reality beyond its revelation”  (In Search of Order, p. 97).  Without such awareness, any claim to “revelation” degenerates into dogmatic beliefs, fundamentalism, biblicism, or at its worst, gnostic claims to certainty.  I know of no “religion” that does not embody the problem of degenerating mystical experience, and more generally, of the loss of contact with reality as experienced.  

Philosophy and science both begin in wonder, and proceed by questioning and seeking the truth about reality—seeking insights into the mysterious Whole in which we find ourselves. Science studies particular parts of the whole; philosophy seeks to understand something about the whole in which everything participates.  Philosophy has flourished without science, as in Plato; but Plato had a sharp knowledge of mathematics, language, political reality, and the like.  In Aristotle, philosophy and science blossomed together, although Whitehead’s claim that “Aristotle founded science, but ruined philosophy,” deserves at least some consideration.  (I have not seen a destruction of philosophy in Aristotle, but I am aware that some of Aristotle’s summary insights became taken as definitions or axioms for thinking in generations after him.  Example:  “man is the rational animal,” or “God is the First Mover,” and so on; and even compared to Plato, one often senses in drier passages of Aristotle some weakening of the grounding in mystical experience.)  The history of philosophy amply demonstrates that philosophers need to know what other philosophers have thought, as they enter into the historical dialogue that is an essential part of philosophy; and the study of history, as in the history of philosophy, requires historical science.  

In every direction in which my mind searches, I am quickly faced by the reality of my ignorance.  The Whole, the divine ground, the particular structures of reality, exploring consciousness itself—all arouse in me an undying, often disturbing sense of not-knowing.  This sense can be, and often has been, so intense that I have been tempted to give up the search for knowledge.  But then I ask myself:  What is the alternative to some search for truth about reality?  To indulge in a life of pleasure-seeking, or of money-making, or of various diversions?  It seems to me that the human task is to respond to beauty, to do good, and to seek the truth.  Beauty awakens wonder and gratitude.  Doing good brings happiness and pleasure.  Seeking truth enlightens the mind and delights the heart.  What else is life for, but these fundamental human activities?  

Addendum:  Three wonders.

Often I experience three wonders, or have three wonder-filled experiences, at the beginning of each day:  the move from sleep / dreaming into waking; seeing that Moses is alive, although usually soundly asleep at that time; and seeing the stars above when I first step out of the house.  In a sense, these three experiences all affirm life:  that I am alive; that one I love is alive; and that the whole cosmos is alive with astounding beauty.

On Having Multiple Vocations Or Callings

One of the reasons given to me for not retiring next summer came from a parishioner who said to me:  “You cannot retire.  You are a priest.  That is your vocation.  You keep doing it until the end, until you drop.”  

 

Well, in fact, I have a number of vocations, and in retiring from active duty as a parish priest, I will have more time to dedicate to other vocations, and especially to the search for God.

Some of my vocations or callings:

—As a being-thing (Parmenides)

—As a living being (Genesis 2)

—As a creature of the Creator (Genesis 1)

—As a human being, or being in a human way (Socrates-Plato-Aristotle)

—As a male of the species (Nature)

—As a Christian (Christ Jesus and the Apostle Paul)

—As a Catholic (Christ in the community of the faithful)

—As a student of political philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, … Voegelin)

—As one drawn to seek God (Prophets of Israel, Jesus, St. Augustine, St. Anselm…)

—As a Benedictine monk of St. Anselm’s (St. Benedict and his Rule)

—As a Catholic priest in and for the Church (ordained to serve the faithful)

—As an American citizen (from birth in the U.S.A)

—As a citizen of the State of Montana (since 1966)

—As a member of the human community (from birth on planet earth)

I intend to retire in the near future from full-time service as a Catholic priest, and if permitted, will do some part-time priestly duties; if not permitted, then that vocation is shelved.  At the same time I let go of one demanding vocation, I plan to give myself to my callings in several others, coming together as one:  as a human being drawn to seek God through the study of philosophy.  By no means am I “abandoning my vocation.”  On the contrary, I am submitting myself to my calling anew:  “Seek the LORD while He may be found.”…”Seek and you will find.”…”Whom do you seek?”…”Say to my heart: It is your face, O LORD, that I seek.”… “Who are you, LORD?”

 

I need more time to dedicate myself to my more compelling vocation, the one truest to my heart:  seeking God, and especially through the philosophical life articulated by St. Anselm as fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding.”  It is my life’s work.

 

Socrates:  “Now it is time to go—I to die, you to live.  Whoever of us has the better fate is unknown to anyone, except to God.”

Modification On My Meditation Of IT

This little meditation is a work in progress, and is likely to be modified again. Such is life, dear friend.

What is It? It has always fascinated me, or has fascinated me for as long as I have been conscious. I never knew its name, and still do not. Divine names speak to certain aspects of It, but It is more than the gods or God; It includes trees, sky, wind, fire, water, many kinds of animal-beings. It lives, moves, and is always here—or there. It is All, and, if it were possible to say so, It is still more than all. As far as I know, It is unbounded in time and space, without an experienced Beginning or End. No one I know of has ever experienced Its Beginning or End. Every being simply and directly experiences that it is, for it is ever-present and all-encompassing. 

To be conscious and being fascinated by It are nearly synonymous. I have no recollection of being conscious without some awareness of It. Can one be conscious and not be conscious of It? How would that be possible? How could one see a rock and not be aware that there is more to what exists than that rock, and that the rock manifests It in the rock’s unique way of being in time and space? One see and names a part, and in doing so, has an abiding awareness that whatever is named does not exhaust It, but participates in It and presents It here and now. For It is ever present, all-encompassing, yet also felt or known to be beyond anything and all that one can experience in any way. It is more than the sum of all the parts. It seems to be alive, at least speaking analogously to what we experience in living beings, and It may give life to each and to all—I do not know. All life is in It. 

Sometimes I name it “You,” and do so when I focus on the divine mind or wisdom at work in It, perhaps ordering or structuring It. To every thing It bestows a nature or a particular way of being, and an inexhaustible, unsurpassable uniqueness. Perhaps what we call “God” is the Mind of It, or It under certain aspects, such as the eternal—that question will need to be explored. In speaking about It or even to It (when in a playful or poetic mood), I am ever aware that It far transcends my understanding, or any name, or any conception. It is, and everything is within It. To think of there being multiple Its, and that It is just one of them, is a childish game. It is all-encompassing. There is no experienced basis for multiple Its, for It is present in everything that one experiences, even in one’s fanciful imaginings. Nothing can escape from It.

Again, to be conscious is virtually synonymous with being conscious of It, the ever-present background to every act of knowing. One can know or feel nothing in which It is not present. When I first awake in the morning, and open my eyes, I may realize that I am beholding It in everything I see, and that It is simultaneously present in my gazing. It is present in the knower, the known, and in knowing. It is present in everything, presenting Itself in everything, including one’s feelings, sensings, knowings. There is nothing that exists or is in any way that is not sufficed with It. Not as far as I know, based on direct experience. I find no reason to think that even God as I AM is excluded from It. Perhaps I AM is It under the aspect of the eternal, the uncaused, the everlasting. That will be explored. Does It change? I do not know, but experienced parts of It are changing constantly. Perhaps to be in It is to change. This too must be explored. 

Some seeings more fully stir the awareness of It. When I behold the starry sky on a winter night, so light and wondrous, I am intensely aware of seeing within It, of gazing with wonder and joy at Its cosmic presence. Seeing the stars reminds me afresh of Its sheer vastness in time and space, and this is achieved by becoming conscious not only of beauty and magnitude, but simultaneously, of my own ignorance of It, and before It. And I, too, am a part of It, just as the stars and ice-cold air, and Moses, walking along beside me in the dark illuminated by stars. The entire cosmos presents It to one who looks. It is presenting Itself through the whole mysterious Cosmos and through every part of It. From moment to moment, It is manifesting Itself, revealing Itself. Trying to grasp Its nature, or comprehend It, is like trying to pick a piece of eggshell out of egg. As you touch It, It withdraws. Ever mysterious, It transcends and informs all understanding. 

While gazing in wonder of It, then praying in words to God or to a god, or to a saint or remembered loved one, is a kind of downward movement, a kind of unnecessary addition or even distraction, although words may spontaneously erupt from the mouth. In anything named or imagined, there remains in the mind an awareness that the words and names do not exhaust It, or even do It justice. And yet sometimes, words seem to just jump out, as in a spontaneous cry of the heart. That cannot be helped. One word I find myself spontaneously uttering is “Wow!” But on such occasions, consciously to compose words and to speak them seems less appreciative, less receptive, less alive than simply looking, gazing, delighting in the wonder of Its cosmic display. There is a time for words, and a time for silence. It presents Itself most intensely in silent wonder. To gaze at It lovingly is a silent prayer, the heart of being alive. 

In words I read in youth, “I do not know Its name.” Indeed, and the “Tao that can be expressed is not the Tao.” And the It that is named is less than It. And yet, if It were not here, now, I would not be writing, nor thinking about It, and my heart would not be beating, breath not moving in and out.