Sunday 27 November 2016

Look Up to the Future

          The time of Advent is with us again. I am finding that it brings with it a sense of relief, an end to what at times has been something of a growing psycho-spiritual slog since that last major event of the Christian year, Pentecost. This current period is, I think a period of renewal, a period of great magic, but one to which one needs to open oneself.
          Although my experience tells me that life experience is cyclic, that I am continually heading into a new beginning which necessarily contains within itself an ending, I often sense this feeling of, "been there; done that!" To submit to that feeling can result in great loss of fresh experience, and it is in that experience that a new truth, or a new way of seeing truth, can emerge. As a young man I was perhaps more prone to see the beginnings of things. As a man well past his prime, I suppose I am more prone to see the endings of things. And perhaps that is all right and proper. But I must never forget that both endings and beginnings are always here, that the one cannot be divorced from the other, that in a future final ending is necessarily a final beginning. What a truly wonderful paradox: two diametrically opposed and coexisting phenomena.
          There are a number of places in the Bible where one is warned to "...stay awake!..." "...the time is at hand!..." It is to be noted that the admonition is not to wake up, but to stay awake, to keep one's lamp fuelled and ready. As a child being raised in a Christian family, none of this caused me any concern. After all, my spiritual future was assured...wasn't it? What did cause me more than a little concern was such messages as,
          "For in those days before the Flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands, right up to the day Noah went into the ark, and they suspected nothing till the Flood came and swept them all away. It will be like this when the Son of Man comes. [And here's the crunch line] Then of two men in the fields one is taken, one left; of two women at the millstone grinding, one is taken, one left."
          Yet as is so often the case when one reads scripture sensibly and non-literally, that is, by refusing to sink into fundamentalism, there is tremendous hope and reassurance in these lines. These lines tell far more about being taken into a place of fresh understanding, of enlightenment if you will, than being removed [literally] from the face of the Earth whilst all those naughty sinners and backsliders get their come-uppance. That in turn leads one to look up to the future, to enjoy fresh beginnings with all the joy one has, and the exercise of the imagination one can muster. For no cycle repeats itself exactly as before, and in that truth there is always hope.

10 comments:

  1. The way I figure it is I'll just keep my engine running until I run out of track!

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    1. Not a bad philosophy at all. May your track be long, and your gas in plentiful supply.

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  2. Hi Tom, While I can't imagine that I never mentioned Karen Armstrong's book 'The Spiral Staircase' to you before this post made me take out my copy of her book to remind myself of some of the passages. You likely know already she spent seven years as a nun in a Catholic covent, then tried to put God behind her and enter the secular world of London. Yet, God would never quite go away. God hung around in a love-hate relationship until Karen finally faced her demons, and found religion again ... this time in writing about God. Faith, Karen learned, is not an intellectual assent but an act of will, a deliberate choice to believe. Believers (among whom Karen confesses multiple times she doesn't belong) cannot prove or disprove their doctrines, but must consciously decide to take them on trust.

    One of her shortcomings as a nun was that she could never connect with God through prayer. There was simply nobody on the other end. Many years later, she realized she was looking for God where he could not be found. Faith, she came to understand, is not about belief, but about practice. Religion, says Karen, is a "moral aesthetic," an "ethical alchemy." If you behave a certain way, you will be transformed.

    "The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

    As you say "no cycle repeats itself exactly as before, and in that truth there is always hope". It appears Karen Armstrong would agree with you and me as well.

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    1. Susan: I arrived at my conclusion that life's experience came in the form of an upward curving spiral, not via Karen Armstrong but from a mathematical treatise that I read by Roger Penrose. Each turn on the spiral brings one exactly above, but not in the same place as, ant particular starting point.

      I have a number of Karen Armstrong's books, but not the one you mention. It has this night been put on my Christmas wish list. You have mentioned points that I dearly wish to explore. As always, my deepest thanks.

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  3. tom, that was very helpful to me just now, not that you planned it that way, i'm sure. thank you for making me remember something basic and simple and important.

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    1. Hullo Agnieszka; I'm so glad I listened to the urge to write a post.

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  4. Hi Tom,
    As you’re also probably aware the season of Advent was also the last addition to the liturgical calendar formulated in the 5th century. It seems to me from your post you are positing it is a good time for renewal and no doubt joyous expectations. In modernity it also seems to me (and what might be inferred in your post) there are the 2 inextricably strains of thought. One encapsulate the celebration of the present and the other what is yet to come in an unrealized eschatology.
    Turning to celebrating a king of sorts – some may say the King of hearts- we have this idea of a kingdom where the heart reigns supreme and Advents message of seeking peace in one’s heart. That continues to grow.
    Best wishes

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    1. Hi Lindsay; I feel that at this time of renewal there is change in the air, but change within a familiar [although not entirely known] framework. Both one's intuition and heart are involved in this expansion of one's experience, as if the inner landscape is about to be broadened.

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  5. "...But I must never forget that both endings and beginnings are always here, that the one cannot be divorced from the other.."
    Absolutely true, Tom, it's exactly how I feel. The Biblical injuction to "stay awake", with its connotations that disaster will overtake you if you are "asleep" is loaded with many levels of meaning. The'disaster', as I interpret it, is that we can gradually sink into a kind of spiritual paralysis, so comfortable that we're not even aware of its creeping up on us, a bit like carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning boiler. Especially as we age, 'staying awake' demands more effort and attention. Thank you for this reminder, always needed.

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    1. Yes indeed, Natalie!......."that we can gradually sink into a kind of spiritual paralysis" is a state to be avoided at all costs.

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