The
significance of Nicolas Copernicus isn’t just that he revealed a sun-centered,
rather than earth-centered, universe. It’s the process by which he did it.
Copernicus,
like many before him, observed that heavenly bodies – sun, moon and most stars
– appeared to move across the sky in a straight line or arc. They do indeed
seem to rotate around the earth.
But
some stars have an odd orbit; in their transit across the sky they appear to
stop, back up a bit, then continue on in a sidereal arc.
These
few exceptions to the rule were simply too inelegant to go unaccounted for.
So
Copernicus, inspired by a new painting technique that incorporated the artist’s
unique point of view, decided to change his perspective. What if, he asked,
instead of viewing these orbits from the surface of the earth, I try to picture
them as they would appear from the sun? Eureka! The exceptions disappeared and
the odd orbits were explained: the sun was the body around which all others,
including earth, orbited.
Sometimes
a change in latitude produces a big change of attitude. It happened to me over
the space of three years in my mid-twenties in the mid-sixties.
Like
many young people, I endured a rite of passage, an event that breaks us away
from the child we were. Mine was to suffer a bout of clinical depression in my
late teens (not uncommon in young adults). But being a devout Catholic, I
didn’t understand this as a psychological issue needing a therapist, but rather
a theological matter of despair which required a confessor. (Besides, in the
early 1960s no guy would go to a ‘shrink’ unless there was a court order
involved.)
The
hope and consolation I received from my church then was to be reminded that
despair is a ‘sin against the Holy Ghost’ – a class of sin for which there is
no forgiveness. To despair is to doubt God’s infinite mercy; therefore God
abandons you. (Go to here
and scroll down to VIII – if you dare.)
It’s
horrific at age 20 to be told by your church, which claims an infallible
insight into the mind of God, that you are going to hell because of the very
condition you wish to hell you could get out of. But such is the logic in the
labyrinth of Latin legality; damned for feeling doomed.
And there it might have ended, except that soon after that I left the Midwest,
came to the West Coast and joined the Merchant Marine.
The
night I first went to sea my perspective began to change. We’d steamed out of
Seattle, up Puget Sound to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then out past Port
Angeles and Cape Flattery to the open sea.
As
the Olympic Mountains faded behind the fantail on a Friday night, I realized
everything in my life to that point was back there. As a child growing up in
the Midwest, the United States extended infinitely in all directions (or at
least up to the Canadian border). Now the US of A was reduced to a few lights
disappearing in the coastal evening haze.
Being
west of the western hills does change perspective. Behind the Coast Range were
all my memories – of learning to walk, to drive, to cuss and drink beer; of
first loves and final exams; of desperation and damnation – and out ahead was
seventy million square miles of open sea on which we were embarking at 14 miles
per.
At
23, when many settle into a comfortable faith, or leave it all behind, I soon
found myself living for months at a time in the opening lines of the alternate
story in Genesis: where the water above was separated from the water
below, and the spirit hovered in the middle.
I saw I could never return to the faith of the fathers,
of Saturday nights shaking in the murky orange light of suffocating
confessionals, obsessing over breadcrumb sins. But neither could I give up the
idea of a deeper reality, especially floating on a sea that is three miles
deep.
The
fresh air blew away the cobwebs; like a sharp sword it sundered the Gordian
Knot of a body-hating, nature-hating, woman-hating death-fixated belief system
of my childhood that blasphemes the living imagination that holds this
shimmering universe in thrall. But where to from here?
Months
later - after trips to waterfront dives and watching whales mate; the absurdity
of wartime Vietnam; the serenity of south sea sunsets – I returned to
US. With fresh eyes one morning, I saw the Coast Range rise from the sea with
the rising sun behind it. Being out of my own culture for a while let me
appreciate that I was I looking at: the westernmost terminus of a 5,000-year
long Westward Walk, stretching from the Fertile Crescent to these Golden Shores.
In
a sweep of the eye and the imagination, I sensed the enormous energy and effort
that led from Ur to these Santa Lucia Mountains: all the momentum of our ancestors’
epic journey; all of what they learned along the way; all they discovered,
explored and recorded of the external and internal landscapes they encountered;
all the collective memories of Western civilization dead ends at these hills.
What
a collection of written records the Westward Walk left us: the Enuma Elish,
Exodus, The Odyssey, Aenead, The Republic, Oedipus, the Way of the Cross, Acts
of the Apostles, The Koran, The Canterbury Tales, Gawain and the Greek Knight,
Divine Comedy, El Cid, Don Quixote; and across the Atlantic in The
Leatherstocking Tales, Huck Finn, Grapes of Wrath, On the Road and Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
To
stand just west of the western edge of the western world, is to stand on the
verge of what? Whither will we wander?
I eventually settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the time the bucolic
Santa Clara Valley – the valley of the heart’s delight - was transformed into
the industrial Silicon Valley.
These
200 or so square mile area would produce the atom smasher, the microprocessor,
the gene machine, mood altering drugs, SETI, the A-bomb and H-bomb, artificial
intelligence software, and both versions of Star Wars. (See Charged Bodies:
People, Power and Paradox in Silicon Valley, Thomas Mahon, New American
Library, New York, 1985.)
(Ironically, Silicon Valley is a place whose first inhabitants, the Ohlone,
never develop anything beyond the mortars and pestles they brought with them
from Asia 15,000 years before. Highly recommended: Ohlone Way, Malcolm
Margolin, Heyday Books, 1981)
So this was to be JFK’s ‘new frontier’: down deep, far out, way in. With no new
lands to explore, development henceforth would mean exploring the new frontiers
at the quantum, genetic, electronic, synaptic and cosmic levels.
And here too the westward teachings of The
Christ, come halfway around the world from Jerusalem, met the eastward
teachings of The Buddha, coming the other direction from India, and enter into
dialog.
And here, on the 50th Anniversary of
the founding of the United Nations, the Episcopal Bishop of San Francisco,
William Swing, began to organize the
United Religions Initiative in 1995, “to
promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated
violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and
all living beings.” The URI honors existing religions, and even saves a place for religions-yet-to-be,
reminiscent of Paul’s encounter with the empty alcove in the Greek temple
dedicated “to a God unknown.”
With
our brains and hands we’ve come so far in harnessing the elements:
- With
fire we made food tender and digestible; could work clay, glass and
metal; power steamships, steam engines, steam shovels and Saturn rockets;
let us form words
to speak, instruct, pray, meditate; filled our sails and submarines, and
supported manned fight to and beyond the stratosphere;
- we
learned to work earth, to shape, sharpen, hone, chisel, plane and
extrude stone, tooth, bone, horn, wood, reed, copper, bronze, brass, lead,
iron and plastic so as to make scraper, axe, spear, arrow, knife, plow,
harpoon, scythe and scalpel. And we found we could go up and down with the
inclined plane, block and tackle and screw; go round and round on the
potter’s wheel, spinning wheel, water wheel, wheelbarrow, windmill, hand
crank, grindstone, crop rotation; and all about with the little things
that made such a big difference: lever and fulcrum; stirrups and oars,
pumps and paddles;
- we
mastered water to irrigate, navigate and build civilizations; and
been humbled by its size and power;
- and
we explored the ether, the fifth element, the quintessence, that
exists in our soul, spirit, atman, leveraging the teachings of Lord
Krishna, Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus and all other holy men and women who have
urged us to look deeply into phenomenal reality to find ‘real reality’ -
the connection between, in, among all realty.
- Modified from an unknown source
Among
these holy men and women who taught us over time, I am most familiar with Rabbi
Yeheshua bar Josef, whom the Greeks and Romans would rename Jesus the Christ. I
know the same teachings are found in many other traditions; I happen to be most
familiar with his.
- Rabbi
Jesus: The Jewish Life and Teachings that Inspired Christianity, Bruce Chilton, Doubleday, 2000, New York);
- The
Gospel According to Jesus: A new translation and guide to his essential
teaching for believers and unbelievers. Stephen Mitchell, HarperCollins, New York, 1991;
- Who
Wrote the New Testament: The making of the Christian myth, Burton
Mack, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995;
- Following
Christ in a Consumer Society; The spirituality of cultural resistance; John F. Kavanaugh,
Orbis, 1997;
- The
God We Never Knew: Beyond dogmatic religion to a more authentic
contemporary faith; Marcus J. Borg, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997;
- The Gospel of Thomas, from The Nag Hammadi Library; The Definitive new
translation of the Gnostic Gospels, James Robinson, Editor, HarperSanFrancisco,
1998.
Josh
Josephson was himself a craftsman, a carpenter or stonemason. And for all the
dogma that would later build up around his name, and for which so many would
suffer, his teaching was very straightforward.
We
are captives in our own land. The Kingdom of Caesar is ruthless, rapacious,
bloodsucking. They come here and crucify our men, rape our women and enslave
our children. And to add insult to injury they tax us mercilessly, then cheat
on top of that. What are we to do?
Do
we cooperate with the occupiers to save our estates like the Sadducees; run off
to the wilderness like the Essenes; or use our crude weapons against Imperial
steel like the Zealots? No. Set against the Kingdom of Caesar is the Kingdom of God. Against ruthlessness is kindness; against arrogance is simplicity; against
vanity is humility. You are the drop of water that will wear down the
mountain.
“No,
this is foolishness. You cannot overcome evil with good. It defies all logic,
all human experience.”
“This
is not about logic, reason or experience. It is faith that things work to a
good end. There is no alternative, but annihilation.”
The
Ten Commandments still hold, but it’s no longer enough to avoid evil. We must
do good. Beyond not killing; love, even the enemy. Beyond not stealing; get
rid of the possessions that possess us. Beyond not adulterating the bond of
trust in a family; don’t even look at someone with violence.
In
the Beatitudes (see the Sermon on Mount, Matthew Chapter 5, and/or the Sermon
on the Plain, Luke Chapter 6) he asks questions that speak to our concerns
today:
- what
does it mean to be pure of heart in a consumer society?
- what
does it mean to be a peacemaker in a county bankrupting itself making
weapons of mass destruction, then goes to war with those who do the same?
- what
does it mean to hunger for justice when the government has a stated policy
of taxing the poor to support the rich?
- and
why all these crimes against social justice are done in the name of that
same rabbi?
It
may be the greatest tragedy of the Westward walk that these profound, evergreen
questions got buried under barnacles of such mind-numbing inconsequentiality as
counting angels on pinheads. How did a sweet, simple teaching based on the law
of love become an otherworldly, fear-filled love of the law?
His
teachings had little to do with belief, and everything to do with faith and
good works: understanding that faith means doing good even when conventional
wisdom says ‘make it and take it any way you can.’
Though
much of what he said is cryptic and open to interpretation, his description of
the final exam, by which we measure a life well-lived, could not be more
plainspoken:
“And
I will say to you, ‘Come, blessed ones, into the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world.
- For I was hungry and you farmers fed me;
- thirsty, and you well diggers provided for me;
- naked, and you weavers and tailors clothed me;
- homeless, and you carpenters and bricklayers sheltered me.
- I was unlettered, and you teachers instructed me;
- sick, and you physicians healed me;
- a victim of injustice, and you attorneys defended me;
- alone, and you telecommunications engineers connected me;
- depressed, and psychopharmacologists formulated antidepressants for me;
- in despair, and you poets and novelists gave me a reason to believe again.
“And
you will say, ‘Lord, when we every see you in such a wretched state?’ I most
solemnly assure you, it was precisely when you used your tools and talents to
attend to the lowliest that you most truly gave glory to God in the highest.”
With apologies to St. Matthew, Chapter 25
Handwork,
brainwork and heartwork reconnect at the point of good works, as do the pious
and profane; the sacred and the secular; grace and nature.
It’s
for us, the living, to attend to the needs of the living and the living-to-be.
The act of using a tool is a prayer of compassion, just as prayer is a tool for
achieving composure.
If we are disturbed or angered or frustrated when we see
the institutions originally set up to help in these efforts now existing
largely to perpetually their own diminished existence we can change them. We
have the new tools and resulting leverage; do we have the will? Nobody ever
said it would be easy, but the new portfolio of tools at our disposal, and the
ability of the Internet to link people of common interest anywhere in the
world, really does make this the first day of school.
It’s
not our tools or even our institutions that are the problem; it’s the ways in
which we use, or fail to use, them that mark our success or failure. When we
fail to act, we are part of the problem.
Neo-Luddites
would destroy our toolkit, but that solves nothing. The technology revolution
gives everyone vastly more leverage than was imagined even a century ago, yet
there is no curricula to educate young or old about grace-ful tool use. We
need that, urgently. And ‘that’ needs us
We
each have more power, knowledge and ability than we may realize. That is what
the technology revolution is giving us. Our ancestors pulled stumps and
drained swamps – often under the whip, the chain and the yoke – that we could
have this capability. In their memory, and on behalf of our descendants, we
must use this ability wisely and well.
Ninety
percent of our wars are religiously motivated, and 90 percent of war casualties
today are civilians. Our self-inflicted agony is unconscionable and
unsustainable, and it’s time to move on.
We
are still beholden to archaic cosmologies that no longer work, then fight over
whose doesn’t work best. Rather, we should recognize that we are universally
subject to the same laws of physics, chemistry, biology. Not at a mechanistic
level, but down deeper where balance, harmony and complementarity are revealed.
The stuff of the stuff of our bodies - seawater, sunshine, stardust – has been
around for 14 billion years in one form or another, waiting for this moment to
come alive and become aware.
We
do not live in a two-truth universe, one of nature and one of grace; on of The
Chosen and one of The Other; one of technology and one of spirituality; one of
information and one of wisdom. Beyond their dogmatic differences, the core
statements of all wisdom traditions repeat the mantra: the one is one.
The
shemah affirms this: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.
The
credo affirms this: I believe in One God.
The
shahadah affirms this: There is no One but the One.
One Brahma is in all.
Nirvana is the One left when all is gone.
Tao is One (and its absence).
And
the shemah, the creed, the shahadah, Brahma, nirvana and Tao are One. And the
same. We may not see that fully yet, but these statements would not have
endured from age to age if they didn’t speak to something universal in the
human experience.
The
One is not so far away that we have to go to the dome of the sky to find it, or
swim to the ends of the sea to retrieve it. This-which-is is before us and
behind us and within us and without us always: here now present, eminently
manifest to all who would look, listen, feel.
Increasingly
the universe appears to be a hologram (holy gram?) - one cloud of energy, one
wave function. Nothing’s not connected; you can’t not be here. The
fragmentations that tear us apart are an illusion. A very strong illusion to
be sure, but illusion nevertheless.
That’s
why we have hands and imaginations; why we live and move and have our beings;
why we build and why we pray – to manifest this-which-is
When
information is acted upon in a composed frame of mind, it becomes knowledge.
When knowledge is acted upon with a compassionate heart, it becomes wisdom.
Celebrate
diversity all you want, but then build community. Deconstruct everything in
sight, but then reconstruct, reconnect.
Appreciating the universal balance and harmony revealed
by the new sciences may yet move us from wedge-thinking to web-thinking; from
the old notion that nature and grace are in contention, to recognizing they are
the same thing measured different ways. We can no more divide them than we can
separate the water from the wave.
Stop.
And think about it. And do something about it.
Pause.
Appreciate. Pray. And participate.
With
out minds and our hearts, let us pray for peace. And with our tools and our
new technologies, let us work for justice. And so it shall be…
