Our Bounded Understanding -Part 3

Focusing on the third major phrase of the Creed, we have:

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

A reflection –

From the very beginning, a perfect union of the love of creative force and Man was to be fulfilled,

and the Spirit that hovered over the deep unknowable set in motion a series of improbable events 

leading inevitably to the God-Man, the exemplar destined to express the Divine energy and creative love 

inside the world of human affairs. 

Incarnation is the second momentous event after the moment of Creation of our universe: the moment of full expression of the divine birthing spark setting in motion the next epoch in the life of Creation on its journey home to the beginning.

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Our Bounded Understanding – Part 2

Perhaps no statement sits more uneasily in our hearts and minds than the second phrase of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.

In our age, an ecumenical spirit continues to rise alongside of defensive orthodoxies. While many of our brothers and sisters embrace the stated belief completely, still others see the sacred light shining through many other manifestations in other traditions as well, as in the life and teaching of the Buddha, while still others cling to belief that they worship the “One True” God.

The Council arrived at a formula that members felt would establish the divinity of Christ in such a way as to set aside the many divergent views of who Jesus was at the time. This served the theo-political goal of cohesiveness under Constantine and the promulgation of a coherent guiding creed by which to define identity as a Christian.

How do we bring these words to life in our times while being respectful of the inspiration ( witting and unwitting) contained in what the Council fashioned?

I offer the following personal meditation:

I believe in Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher of righteousness, the Son of Man, from  whose life and words springs the truth of God’s Love and Presence.

In His example, I see God’s Presence lived fully and in walking with Him I open myself to die to who I think I am to be born as the one I really am.

I believe in the Cosmic Christ, inspired and expressed by the Source, Father-Mother of all, that was there before the beginning, at the beginning and is still the central archetype of the evolving Universe.

I believe that God is the light that pierces all the darkness and the love shown by Christ is the way to that Light.

There is an eternal unity that binds the children of the Light to the beating Heart that set all in motion and that draws all back home.

© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Our Bounded Understanding – Part 1

How do we interpret and reintegrate the concepts of the ancient Church in the 21st century? We can accept them as they are given I suppose but that strikes me as intellectually lazy leading only to formulaic thinking and all the attendant prejudice and superficially ritualistic exchanges. Or, we can toss it out altogether and find a new system of thought – drop the Nicene Creed, for example, from our Liturgies.

Yet, that amounts to throwing the baby out with the wash water. Just because something was written in pre-scientific times does not relegate it to the junk heap of history. Consider the genius of Plato and Aristotle, the pre-Socratics and the texts of the Wisdom traditions of the East. While post-modern hubris may direct many to discard what is old simply because of its age, this would be adolescent and the height of folly. As Hans Gadamer has said: ” Read nothing that isn’t at least 2000 years old.” Add to this, Alfred North Whiteheads comment: ” Everything is a footnote to Plato.”

I agree with Gadamer that all understanding is bounded by the perspectives shaped by language and  culture. Yet, wisdom transcends culture. When the early Fathers of the Church gathered in 352 AD for the First Council of Nicea they struggled with so-called heresy and, through dialogue, arrived at a consensus about what to belief about Jesus. While framed by pre-scientific thought, sincere communities in dialogue discover things that each person would not have. Often, communities of prayerful debate stumble upon rich metaphor that emerges from the intersection of different agenda and experiences that tap a deep well of Knowing.

Nonetheless, we cannot interpret through their eyes, though scholarship certainly places us in a better place to appreciate where they were coming from. We read mindful of history but of course within the context of our age, our experiences, our language and new forms of thought.  We must allow the words to soak in and find in them the wisdom that speaks to us. “What if it simply goes nowhere for me?” asks a sincere person struggling with the statements of the Creed for example. In this instance, one can do no better than focusing elsewhere on aspects of tradition that do speak to you and, failing that, to find a group that approaches the mysteries from a different vantage point altogether. I, for one, have chosen to stay put having spent two decades sampling many different approaches only to find something missing. So, with feet squarely planted on the ground in the Episcopal tradition, I struggle with the beauty and the sometimes incomprehensibility of antiquity. I choose to allow the words to rise out of history and live in whatever way they may in me as they forge new meaning especially through dialogue with others.

On this the Eve of Thanksgiving, I share a meditation in this vein on the first phrase of the Nicene Creed to be followed in subsequent posts with reflections on the remaining phrases:

” We believe in God the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.”

Beyond all imagining, I embrace the timeless Beginning, the  matrix on which  the whole of Creation is shaped and is moving;  a Heart, a force of Love, that is ever present in this moment as in the first moments of the Big Bang, drawing all things forward toward their completion and fulfillment in a larger pattern unknown.

I believe in the “father” of time as the universe expands, the “mother” of life who inspires all becoming, the “spirit” driving patterns that ebb and flow according to unseen fields of force.

I believe that more is unseen than seen. I believe that all knowing has its roots in the Cosmic Knower who yearns for unity in diversity, and that all knowing is always personal. 

© The Harried Mystic, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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The Lighted Face of Darkness

This week I had the privilege of joining with members of our parish bible study group on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady by the Sea at Manorville NY.

Besides time in dialogue on the origins of the rosary and its many forms, the highlight for me was strolling on the sites’s “Rosary Walk”. This circular path begins at a statue of Our Lady and circles back around to the statue thus mirroring the structure of the traditional 5-decade configuration. Beads are physically simulated with bushes: larger ones for the cruciform beads at which we announce the mysteries, and smaller ones denoting the 10 Ave Marias between each.

The way the mysteries were laid out at the mystery stops that separate the sets of 10 was striking. Bronze markers presented each of 4 mysteries: one joyful, one sorrowful, one glorious and one luminous. This accommodates whichever set of mysteries any given pilgrim is reciting on a particular day. The traditional expectation is that one set of mysteries is in mind per round.

With 4 possible mysteries confronting me at each station, however, I found myself reflecting across all of those presented without regard for staying within any given set.

This had an interesting effect on me. I felt moved to see the intersections and interdependencies among them in a fresh way.

Much of our spiritual lives is paradox. In fact, Christianity is full of irony and paradox: a crucified god, a messiah born to poor circumstances, a soter focused on the laity and forgotten of society, and teachings that collide constantly with usual thinking. My walk became a meditation on living at the intersection of the mysteries and not appreciating them singularly.

In great art, the play of light and dark is what renders images striking. In like fashion, the sorrowful moments deepen our receptivity to light, the rare luminous epiphanies when we see so very clearly. The joyful mysteries ( Mary’s “yes” to God) foreshadows the deep sorrows to come in accepting what is unthinkable for any mother: the death of a son. Likewise, the glorious mysteries point to the way of seeing into and beyond the time of sorrows:

” Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” ( Jn 16:20)

Carl Jung spoke of”shadow work” as crucial: examining our inner darkness, facing it, and working through it. Making conscious what is unconscious is spiritually essential or our spirituality remains at the surface and we miss the deeper dive.

In future, I will once again allow the full spectrum of mysteries to parade across my mind as I enter into the paradox filled mystical heart of the Rosary.

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Spiritus Sanctus

life’s breath, the wind of heaven, cleanses the dusty surface of my soul,

timeless Presence making everything new.

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my loving tether to now and then, to here and infinite,

I reach so wide that time and distance have no measure.

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I hear the pulse of the longing Heart of space,

and tune to the beat that fills my lungs with silence.

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no fear, no self, no desperate need to prove or get,

all is well in the deep, and music to my joyful ears.

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Being a Scientist-Theologian

What is the relationship between science and religion?

Throughout history, and even now, the tension between them has been too much the characterization. The argument goes that science proffers testable hypotheses and the scientific method uncovers either support for that hypothesis or fails to do so. Religion, on the other hand, is discussed as wholly subjective, defined by untestable beliefs.

In establishing this dichotomy, a false one in my estimation, they are endemically at odds with each other. In today’s scientific and pseudo- scientific ethos, science is often deemed superior and more appropriate for our times. Religion, on the other hand, is portrayed by empiricists as a quaint remnant of pre-scientific explanation. Theists, on the other hand, see science with suspect eyes, arguing that it misses the deeper import of events and what it means to be. Both polar viewpoints are ill informed.

Fundamentalist science and religion are, indeed, at odds with one another. Both suffer the same problem: they proceed from a dogmatic position of what is true, right and knowable. I set aside fundamentalisms of all kinds as too narrowly constructed and thereby intrinsically fragile and lacking in merit. Those who subscribe to them are welcome certainly to their beliefs but it strikes me that such extreme positions render dialogue impossible, and creates a climate of mistrust, sterile bickering, and mutual claims about the inadequacies of the other. For me, such banter is a waste of energy and are, simply, uninteresting.

Instead, I live at the nexus between these two methods of knowing and both have much in common along with complementary differences. They need each other if the goal is agreed upon as a seeking after truth and a deep desire to get inside the ontological mysteries. Science speaks in the language of mathematics. Math is wholly based on certain assumptions and, while an invention of humankind, it is unusually powerful in unraveling the mysteries of the Cosmos. The scientific method then is brought to bear on predictions to apply critical tests. Yet, while we have seen convergent evidence of their existence, no one has ever seen, for example, a quark. In other words, we study the cumulative record. Having done so, new evidence may overturn, and often does, our most established interpretations.

Religion is also a cumulative record. Yes, it is a phenomenological one but this too is data. Seen through the lens of well reasoned theological discourse, it too makes predictions and offers interpretations. For example, in a universe that became conscious of itself, one can rightly posit that intelligence must be fundamental in its essence ( I.e., that it had a first cause). One need not resort to a simplistic Creationism that mangles good science to get there either. With the integrity of both science and theology left fully intact, one can catch inspiring glimpses of the heart of mystery.

To devolve to angry and oppositionally defiant atheism is to ignore experience and the universal sensibility of something greater than we that beckons. Such a retreat to mere science reduces matter, energy and space-time to mere objects of study rather than deep subjects with which to have a relationship. The result is spiritual reductionism and solipsism.

I am a scientist- theologian because as I study the one it informs the other. The reflections of science for me give rise to the meditations of spiritual practice. I delight in the online lectures such as those offered by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in the UK Faraday Institute for Science and Religion that serve to elevate and poke our understanding.

When both scientific and religious discourse act with genuine humility, we can proceed boldly and with the spirit of the child into realms of deep wonder. May our eyes be opened to see the wider landscape that awaits us if only we get beyond the tyranny of methodological chauvinism.

Life is way too short to narrow one’s field of view.

© The Harried Mystic, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Marvel-ous

My wife and I took in the new Marvel Comics Avengers movie last night. We both found it well written and very entertaining. Beyond the usual action packed and high tech cgi extravaganza that defines Hollywood these days, I was impressed with the subplot beyond heroes saving, as they always do, the Earth and humanity, either from itself or, in this case, from other alien invasions. That theme running throughout was the power of a shift from thinking about oneself to a consciousness revolving around the greater good.

The 21st Century already tells a story of human greed and it’s consequences:

* Wall Street profits while main street carries on in stress and anguish.
* Wealthy individuals and corporations unleash their resources in hopes of buying election results to shure up future fortunes while the middle class is bombarded by propaganda in hopes of having them vote against their own best interests.
* Healthcare for all is still debated as a privilege instead of a right.

Enter the Avengers, a group of larger than life super folk who are called upon to save the day but now as a team. They spend much of the movie infighting about who is really heroic. In the end, they act together and, in so doing, they evolve. They are transformed and their greatness comes from having each other’s back and shared sacrifice for the good of all. In order to take on evil they first need to get beyond their own ego, pride, and sense of singular purpose.

The message is a New Testament message cloaked in secular dress: We are each other’s keepers and we find our purpose more in serving others than in pursuit of our own sense of what we need do to feel special. Finding our ordinariness is the surer path to unleashing our inherent greatness. The other way around simply begets pomposity, arrogance, and self- inflation.

That Hollywood has produced this is less a testament to its wisdom and more a reflection of the Spirit moving within us. The archetype of the servant leader is resurfacing. It emerges in propitious and momentous times when the darkness is sold as if it is the Light and the true light is discussed as if anachronistic, a throw back to simpler and uninformed times. We hear a mantra from some that government is a business and needs to be run with attention, first and foremost, to the balance sheet.

I get all that but what about the soul of the Nation and it’s values. If we lose that we lose the Nation. Should we not instead slow down and ask ourselves: What point is there to government if it isn’t first and foremost about all the people. Why is caring portrayed as weakness and slashing budgets for schools and social services touted as wise and responsible conduct. Are we not sacrificing the long term for a short term and simplistic “fix”?

May we govern with a sense of the real gift of liberty: to empower the Nation by serving all and, by doing so, enable our true greatness.

Indeed, we need such a cadre of leaders who have the same spirit discovered, in the end, by the Avengers.

© Brother Anthony Thomas and The Harried Mystic, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Effulgence

cold clouds well past us, and now the Son’s Day breaks,

warming colors, sweet scents, the rejoicing Sun makes.

the buds seem close to popping, Forsythian yellows bloom,

I walk within emergence, bearing witness to the Loom.

no art can be more stunning, no genius can be clearer,

the artist of this Cosmos is stepping ever nearer.

I move and I rest, I rest and I move,

there is nothing whatsoever I ever need to prove.

April 4, Easter Sunday Buds

© Brother Anthony Thomas and The Harried Mystic, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Πάσχα Paskha

Easter Sunday Vigil & First Eucharist, April 3/4, 2010

This is the central feast of the Church, the day commemorating the Resurrection, the rebirth of the Light of the World. It is the conclusion of the 40 days of Lent. At the Vigil, the celebration begins with the lighting of a fire in a small urn outside the church after sundown. From that fire, the Paschal candle is lit, and then all individual candles held by congregants are ignited from that central one. All walk into a darkened church holding their candles, and it creates a marvelously otherworldly feeling. It is beautiful and one of my favorite liturgical celebrations.

What follows are readings that make clear the promises of G-d to Man and retell the stories of His mythic interventions in Human affairs beginning with the creation itself. The readings draw our attention to the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. We re-read the story of the seven days of creation and the formation of diversity out of an undifferentiated fabric. We revisit the legendary flood, Noah, and his rescue of all species on the Ark. We reconsider the Exodus of the Jews and their deliverance from Egypt, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, allowing the chosen people to pass, and how the water’s divided then collapse in upon the Egyptians as they attempt the crossing. We read, once again, the harrowing and deeply disturbing tale of Isaac and his son Jacob, whom Isaac was first asked to sacrifice at knife-point by G-d, but was then turned away from doing so by the Spirit of the Lord at the very last moment.

All of this context setting and pre-figurement exists as stage-setting for the telling of the central mystery of Christendom: G-d’s sacrifice of His “Only Begotten Son” ( doing, in effect, what he would not have Isaac do) in an act of incomprehensible Divine vulnerability that reveals the marriage of divine and creaturely aspects within humanity. As I wrote in my last post for Holy Saturday, the celebration revolves entirely around the return of the light that pierces all darkness, once and for all.

Tonight, I chose a local church to visit that I’ve never attended before. Consequently, I knew no one there. My intent was to have the experience of Easter Vigil not as a Priest but as a stranger to a congregation on the central night of the liturgical calendar. The good news is I arrived successfully. The bad news (maybe) is that I arrived about 10 minutes late. As I parked down the road, the congregation was gathered outside the church for the lighting of the first fire. As I approached ( as covertly and unobtrusively as I could), a gentleman reached out to me with a candle so that I could immediately join in the process. The prayers outside were just finishing up and then we began the precessional.

Once inside, while just a little sheepish and a bit distracted from the rushing to get to the church, I soon relaxed and entered into the rhythm of the proceedings. It was delightful, and people reacted as if I had attended for years. I spent time pondering each of the readings and then the Gospel, and listened attentively to the homily, simple and to the point: Live in the Light!

It was all a palpable demonstration of the need for the “sangha,” the community. Collective worship reconnects everyone together in a mystical union that cannot otherwise be duplicated. It is a necessary part of the journey (balanced, of course, with ample contemplative time in solitude). The Vigil itself clinched my meditations this week (as I’ve shared them in my earlier posts). One question kept going through my mind, though, as I followed along and joined in the singing of the hymns (a few of which I frankly didn’t much care for as they seemed less than pleasantly melodious).

What are they each experiencing? How will this experience shape them, affect them, and trigger the next steps in their own spiritual odyssey? What mystery is unfolding underneath our moments together?

It is these things that are so much more important than what anyone believes intellectually. All that imagery and “mind-stuff” is interesting, but it doesn’t usually rise to the level of existential drama when things get very real. In the church at such times, one sees G-d in the smiling faces and in the greetings of recognition. There is a warmth (almost familial) and a yearning to get above the personal troubles of the days and weeks before and after the event.

There is a need to be noticed and acknowledged. It is a time to be received, accepted unconditionally, without judgment, and with open arms. [At least, that is the aspiration, the fervent hope. Certainly, there is no lack of politics and game-playing in parishes. In fact, parish life and conflicts can get quite ugly, pedestrian, and trivial]. While that is part of the human experience in all communities, on this special night, the celebration turns to matters of deepest urgency: our identity beyond space and time, an identity that transcends issues and personalities.

One case in point was in the singing. The cantor, up above and behind me in the  balcony, had a sweet coloratura, yet faint, almost hesitant. I could not see her, but the voice communicated advanced age and a reserved manner. It was pleasant enough, though some of the notes were well off, but none of that really mattered. After a while, her antiphons and timbre became a part of the complex texture of the overall experience. There was an innocence to it. Altar servers, male and female, were attentive, especially when one of the deacons set the forsythia branches on fire in a moment of careless positioning of the candle he was holding. He dealt with it and seemed furious with himself and embarrassed. I could relate to how he must have felt having had many mishaps of one kind or another of my own at the altar over the years. But this too was only a minor blip (fortunately) in the proceedings, and not the main event that was bubbling up from beneath.

The service was long and I caught myself drifting. I gently brought myself back to the process. About mid-way through the readings, the content began to stir  memory and imagination. Everything up to that point was a preparation, a getting settled in, a tuning of the instrument as it were. I started to remember key events in my younger life:

• my first communion ( and choking on the host & feeling as if I’d be consigned to hell for that),
• the Confirmation slap ( which hurt, seeming a bit angry, I recall, from a Bishop who I thought was a bit peeved),
• my wedding service ( and the Priest’s comment that statistics on marriage success were appalling),
• my early endeavors toward Priesthood in the Episcopal Church ( dashed by conflicts with an autocratic and narcissistic pastor),
• my discovery much later of an Independent Rite and ordination, after Seminary, to the diaconate and priesthood ( whereupon that community fell apart owing to conflicts among the bishops),
• my invitation by a Bishop in a separate Rite in the northeast to serve once again, elevation to the Episcopacy and election as Coadjutor ( then followed within a year by my disillusionment with actions on the part of the archbishop that were politically motivated, irregular, and non-canonical.

What an interesting series of contrasts, adventures, and misadventures: openings and closings, great promises, and deep disappointments. I then thought about the far more important moments:

• praying with my mother when she laid dying,
• doing the same with my father,
• being present to bless a cousin suffering after major surgery and bolstering his confidence and faith in the outcome,
• visiting other sick and despondent people,
• working with young people and adults in the context of pastoral counseling, and
• offering my listening to the always fascinating stories of good people trying to wade through the drama and mysteries of their lives.

What a privilege!

Adding all these fleeting memories together, one golden thread ran through them: a call to shine light into places that needed it, sometimes entailing disappointment and distress for me, but nonetheless a mandate to be authentic and true to principle. It was about shining light first on my story, without dodging the difficult moments, the foolishness, the times of ego and ambition, and allowing the fabric of time to draw a picture of what it really means to live in good faith. Only then could I be of any real service to others. The Vigil tonight was, at least for me, a confirmation of a path and a renewed call to serve based on whatever emerges; a peripatetic ministry.

The alchemical task and the meaning of Easter is to be the Christ for others; to be a catalyst for their discovery of their own path, their own meaning, helping them to uncover their own genius so that they can be a brighter beacon in the firmament of time.

The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are continuous, conjoined, unfolding sacred happenings in our lives. The dance of night and day, darkness devoid of light and Light devoid of darkness, is perpetual. In the readings of the Vigil Liturgy, the compilers of Biblical lore told of many promises made to the chosen people. These were promises that meant the foretold the end of suffering and, in being among the elect, to experience a virtually charmed and divinely favored life. Never again, G-d is said too  have promised Noah, will Humanity suffer the likes of the Great Deluge.

But history instead is a story of one after another broken promise: the oceans are rising, the hurricanes more ferocious, the coastlines are dramatically eroding, earthquake generated tsunamis are much in the news, the ice caps are melting and many rivers have crested and we read of extensive flooding, damage and loss of life. We focus on the revelation and the fulfillment of the scriptures, but the “promises” attributed to    G-d represent humanity’s deepest hope. In reality, the objects of that hope are hard won and elusive.

Our task is to see a deeper truth in scripture; that the end of suffering is our’s to achieve. We were fashioned in His image ( the “Imago Dei”). We are accountable to be the solution, not to wait around for supernatural agency to do it for us. Frankly, He isn’t coming. That’s the key. He gave us everything we need to find the answers. His blessing is on us. The Light is eternal. It is real and it burns brightly within us. It is ours to shine or to extinguish.

This is the hard but true lesson of the Easter season, of the tension between Crucifixion and Resurrection. As consciousness truly leaps ahead, and we see more clearly, we can act with full and unfettered Spirit and transform the World. Christ is in us.

Let us embrace the Christic miracle and be the Christ for one another. This is the real transformational fruit of authentic liturgy vs what can otherwise become a routine formula of merely skin-deep public worship.

Happy Easter. He is Risen and the Rising is evolving every second within Us!

© Brother Anthony Thomas and The Harried Mystic, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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The Harrowing of Hell

Great (Holy) Saturday – April 3, 2010

This is the solemn day on which the Church recollects the time during which Jesus is entombed. It is the time before the bulb re-emerges after a dark winter’s incubation. It is the dark cloud obscuring the Sun that surely will burn brightly and warm the planet once again when its cover moves by. It is the potential within the kinetic, the pause before your next breath, the time of sleep just before re-awakening, and that ever so brief silent pause between two waves arriving at the beach.

The Orthodox reference to the “harrowing of hell” captures the theological import of Christ’s passing into the netherworld to redeem and carry into paradise the souls of the deceased, most significantly, the archetypal Adam and Eve. The presumed stain of Original Sin is cleansed at His incursion into Hell, bringing Light to the darkest of places. Altars world-wide remain stripped of linens and vestments shift to pure white. Mass is not performed until midnight ( or the symbolic start of Easter ( Resurrection Sunday) at another late Saturday night appointed time). The world waits.

The entire Triduum is about preparation and expectation. Waiting is a core theme across all spiritual teachings. On this day before the most Holy of days in Christendom, what is it that we await? How does the mythology of the church relate to our lives and the realities that we construct around us? Where is the relevancy of such mystical events for a post-modern scientific society?

Firstly, that I use the word “mythology” is not meant to suggest that the events we celebrate are any less real. Quite the contrary, it only attests to my intent to apply anagogical reasoning to these events as we must when it comes to mysteries that we know tacitly or in poetic and non-experimental ways. That I love my wife, daughter, and son requires no proof though, were you to ask me to do so, I would resort to the lexicon of the Heart. It is a thoughtful phenomenological detailing that presents the clearest and most robust path to understanding the “mysteries.”

The “Free Online Dictionary” ( thefreedictionary.com) defines anagogy as: “A mystical interpretation of a word, passage, or text, especially scriptural exegesis that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife.” It defines “mystical” as:

1. Of or having a spiritual reality or import not apparent to the intelligence or senses.

2. Of, relating to, or stemming from direct communion with ultimate reality or God: a mystical religion.

Heaven and the afterlife are metaphors for infinite consciousness, non-mortal being, the Platonic realm of forms ( or the inherent matrix of foundational archetypes that prefigures and predisposes the created to coalesce in its diverse forms), the well of souls ( or the unknowable place from which our individual consciousness came and to which one day it returns), and the ground that informs our deepest dreaming, our prayerful intentions, our moments of insight, epiphany and enlightenment. With this framework in mind, then, I ask: What is it that we await on this “Great Saturday”?

It is summed in three words: the inexhaustible Light! Light plays a major role in all of scripture, Western and Eastern. Light is a powerful and intrinsic need of all living things and it plays a very central role in the story of the life of every human being. We experience the light in very similar ways. After a long winter, few can resist the allure of a surprisingly bright day. People move out of their homes and take to the streets and the open markets and cafes. In the United States, college students from the North, Midwest and Northwest move in a great exodus toward the more direct sunlight on Spring break. In Europe, many head south. In the East, the same applies as people move toward the equator and further south of it to enjoy the beneficient sunlight, the warmth, and the penetrating rays that are so deeply restorative.

The light plays a key role in consciousness and experience from very early in life. We open our eyes after birth for the first time and light streams in. After a period of adjustment, so much of our learning and the development of language and thought is based on vision. As young children, who among hasn’t had a bad night with fears of things emerging from the darkness; those compelling fears that take archetypal monstrous forms. The cure for such moments is pretty much always the same: turn on the light.

Some years ago, while traveling on business, I was awakened around 2 AM experiencing a frightening shortness of breath. I was momentarily terrified. My first thought was to turn on the light after which I dressed and went to the lobby of the hotel where other people were present. On doing so, everything settled down. On long-distance car trips, there are stretches of road across farmland in the U.S or mountain roads where there is very little light. Such driving late at night is especially unnerving and I always find myself less tense when I see lights in the distance: the sign of civilization and the presence of other people.

As I write this, my daughter is on the road somewhere in Illinois on her way back to college after her Summer break. I spoke with her last night and she was stopping in a small town for the night. Her comment was simply: ” It is so dark here. I can’t see a thing. It’s time to stop, get something to eat and turn in. I’ll continue in the morning.” I’ve said before that we are made of the same stuff as stars. Indeed, all that exists ultimately came from the stars. We are light-centric creatures and this need is expressed in many ways in all the corners of our lives. Our language is replete with light references: enlightenment, to light on a flower, alight, delight, daylight, earthlight, light headed, light-hearted, limelight, highlight, etc. We are capable of contemplating the Infinite and so we routinely do in our visions, including the perfect and infinite Light: a light that knows no evening, the Christic Light. That is what we await on this Great Saturday.

How does the mythology of the Church ( and this phototrophic disposition) relate to our spiritual lives and the realities that we construct around us in this post-modern, scientific age? Maths are axiomatic, based on faith in certain logical propositions, and maths can and do arrive at conflicting conclusions. It appears that in this most regal of the logical endeavors of humanity there is more than one right answer. Non-euclidean geometries deviate in key ways from the axioms of Euclid and arrive at justifiable and verifiable conclusions that simply do not square with Euclidean propositions.

So, are there multiple realities and diverse possible worlds? Absolutely. And what about scientific certainties? There are few of them actually. In fact, the uncertainty principle and the two as yet irreconcilable forms of lawfulness (Newtonian and Quantum mechanical) cause us to continue to search for new unifying theories. New maths arise all the time, and have especially done so over the course of the last century. This raises the bar on what it means “to know.” There is a mystical character to number theory. Science applies rarified and esoteric methods and a language of its own ( filled with poetry, by the way) to study the mystery of being. So, in fact, science and mysticism intersect all the time. It is dogma that gets us hung up.

The big objection from many is that scientific truth is “verifiable” and the tenets of religious belief are not. That is so. However, the foundations of “religion” are rooted  in verifiable experiences. We experience the dearth of light and rejoice at its return and that motivation is observable and verifiable. Reductionism to the absurd is illogical and fruitless. One should always avoid the tyranny of one method to study the phenomena around us. Experimentation has its proper place, but historical and phenomenological methods do also.

In focusing less on belief and more on experience, such days as this Holy Saturday present us with archetypal mystery. In our services and prayers, we use poetry and anagogy to know from the inside out, to use intuition and to share something that arises from the collective unconscious. The divine flows through us and the mystery of the Crucified God is emblazoned in the consciousness of Christendom. In Buddhism, similarly, the tension between clear sight and real suffering is the pivot around which engaged Buddhism revolves.

Anagogical reason must and will never take a back seat to logical analysis and experimentation. To even attempt doing so is to do violence to what it means to be who we are. We must ever strive to tell the story of insight, intuition and experience remembering the difference between our models and the real thing. We dress up G-d in many ways, but that the human condition is always searching for the Supreme Ultimate is undeniable. The diverse manners in which we adorn the Mystery are beautiful, but we need to remind ourselves that it is an adornment.

Beneath all the dressings, the liturgies, and the scaffolding of beliefs erected along-side, what matters is at the heart. It is the raw experience of the Presence of the Light that splits the darkness of death. It is the Light of the resurrected Christ that we await. It is the annihilation of the dual nature of thought and the redemption of the world of creaturely selfishness and the sense of being alone. It is all about remembering who we really are and from whence we really come.

Let us await the Light giving ourselves the time today to also study our own inner darkness.

© Brother Anthony Thomas and The Harried Mystic, 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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