Category Archives: religion

Seeing Things for What They Are

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I’ve been relying on the news feeds on my phone to keep track of current events, but lately it’s become apparent to me these sorts of news conveyance are duplicitous, intended to convey a message beyond the simple facts of the news. It would appear the need to reach the largest audience possible has developed a media culture that produces a narrative in sound bites intended to ignite strong reaction, feed oppositional inclinations, with algorithms feeding you information you’ll find most alarming in order to instigate an emotional response, in order, essentially, to keep one hooked. Even sports news feeds look to create controversy hinting at block-buster trade deals and disgruntled players likely to cost teams games.

The answer to this is, of course, to find a source of in-depth news coverage that provides multiple points of view and then take the time to read them.

Favorite Things

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I’ve been thinking about John Coltraine’s riff on ‘Favorite Things’: sixteen minutes of musical invention that captures the complexity of human emotion.

That’s what struck me the first time I heard it, but it occurs to me now that the way I am moved, the way the complexity of sound communicates a depth of meaning beyond words that I find so astounding, must in some way define the human condition.

No doubt, my life experience is nowhere near what JC lived, his alcoholism and growing up as he did in the 40’s and 50’s as a black man is so far removed from my white small-town existence, yet he communicates my sense of human experience so effectively I must bow to his genius.

Experiencing the Other

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How can we be limited to what we grasp through our senses?

I have a desire to reach beyond simple reality. The laws of nature can’t be enough to explain the beauty and complexity of the sensual world. Yet, as I think this, I know my intellect demands rationality. What must I do to accept the existence of both the sensual and super-sensual?

Many thinkers much brighter than me have, as Kierkegaard put it ‘leapt into the absurd’, grasped religious faith. Did the weight of physical existence lead them to sense a supreme deity, the underlying truth of existence? Whatever drew them to a belief in the super-sensible mustn’t have been a simple matter, an out may have been demanded. Blaise Pascal’s rational:’ I believe in the existence of God; if I am right in this belief I will be rewarded in the end. If I’m wrong it will be of no consequence’, reveals the uncertainty all believers (and most sensible non-believers) will always face.

The richness of possibility suggests the best answer.

The Sacred and The Profane

Streaming through Soundbites

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I’ve been thinking lately about my daily consumption of the news. Anticipating, as I do, the discomfiting nature of what I’m likely to hear I rely on the feeds I get through my phone each morning. I’m realizing my perspective on things is being tainted by the sensational nature of these media soundbites.

As troubling as I find this realization, I will continue my sound bite consumption because I know I will find a more intensive investigation of current events to be more painful than worthwhile.

Dystopia

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I’ve been thinking about the idea of a post-apocalyptic dark age: the economy has collapsed, goods of any sort are scarce, hostile elements, equally desperate, seek to exploit the Other, survival depends on courage and wits.

It’s the time of year, I guess, that seems to elicit premonitions of immanent disaster. What else can explain Halloween and the Day of the Dead? Add to these events the anxieties of the upcoming election and one can’t help but anticipate ominous times ahead.

Psychically numbing as the times maybe we rationalize it will end, equilibrium will reappear. The anxieties, though, will not go quietly.

Truth

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The richness of recognized beauty defies simplistic explanation. No ‘eye of the beholder’ or theory of color and form is sufficient to address beauty’s underlying truth.

What other subjective truths are there? Are our intuitive beliefs a reaction to fear of the Other? What can harm us if we stay in touch with the Truth the natural world provides?

The Hum of the Universe

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With the enhanced auditory abilities I’ve recently acquired (as a result of the acquisition of hearing aids) I notice what I can only describe as an otherworldly hum (not to be confused with tinnitus, which I also experience) which, if I might be metaphorical, I must interpret as the universe breathing, a wondrous sound Pythagoras might have been referring to (if he hadn’t been being metaphorical) as the music of the spheres.

I can imagine this auditory phenomenon as being primordial, originating with the Big Bang. How wonderful that modern technology has put me in touch, allowed me to realize, my connection to the universe.

Living and Dying in Anonymity

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I’ve been thinking lately about legacy, how one might expect to be remembered by those who knew him. It would seem most of us would like to be remembered, preferably positively, as a contributing member of his community even as he may have recoiled from participation, leadership rolls, maybe, in civic and religious organizations, being content maintaining a small coterie of friends as social norms require.

Having lived, as I have, in near obscurity, social anonymity for a long time I might expect little remembrance when I pass on, I suppose. But there’s still time. I do have a class reunion coming up. I wonder if my mates will remember me. To paraphrase Woody Allen: all one needs to do to be remembered is to show up.

Change

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I find myself experiencing a fresh perspective, an awareness lately brought on by changes to my senses. As my capacity to hear and see decrease in function my general awareness is heightened. It’s as if the world of my existence is significantly changing one day to the next, as if I can sense the location of the earth changing as it moves through the rarified space it has never before occupied.

A new world one day to the next. How refreshing to realize the insignificance of the issues that had previously occupied so much of my attention. This new awareness has my looking forward to tomorrow morning with wonder. What will happen next?

Reunion

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I just attended my high school class reunion. I must say I was a bit uneasy about going thinking as I did about certain uncomfortable relationships that I experienced during those high school days.

But I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming everyone was, genuinely happy to see each other, no sense of the teenage cliques I remembered. And, the bullies had mellowed, were really quite pleasant to visit with.

How many years of maturing should it take, I wondered, for a group of diverse individuals to reach common empathy? In this case it was sixty.