2/10/15

I decided to start reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God the other day. I saw it sitting on a friend's bookshelf and asked if I could borrow it after reading a bit of the introduction. Although the book explores the history of God and how the ideas about God have evolved in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam throughout the centuries, which I find an interesting subject in and of itself, it begins with a short biography of her own experience with God and religion.

What caught my eye was her confession that, while feeling it possible to 'break through to God' and entering a religious order to do that, she became increasingly aware of, and unhappy with, her lack of religious experience, eventually leaving the religious life and having God fade into the background. That is, until her study of the history of religion gave her a new perspective, finding that instead of simply waiting for God to descend from on high, she should deliberately create a sense of God for herself—that in an important sense God is the product of the creative imagination, like poetry and music (xvii-xx).

I thought it was a rather curious introduction, but it also spoke to me, expressing a lot of what I'm thinking and feeling and trying to discover. As I walk farther into my own search for God, I realize that I, too, want to break through to God and have that experience transfigure the whole of my being. And like her, I'm disappointed at times with what often feels like failure. But what she wrote also reminded me of Fr. Michael's advice about using my imagination to make the Bible real and see how it relates to me.

I went back and read a few chapters of Matthew, trying to put myself there and contemplating what Jesus was pointing towards with things like the parable of the camel and the eye of a needle in Mt 19:16-30. It got me thinking about renunciation and what Jesus meant by 'the kingdom of heaven,' which seems to differ slightly depending on the context. Here, for instance, Jesus seems to be saying that possessions and worldly concerns can be an obstacle to following his example and entering into the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom that's often said to be within.

One explanation I've heard (from Fr. Charlie if memory serves me right) is that this parable is referring to a fully-packed camel trying to enter through a narrow gate that they could only pass through unencumbered. To 'be perfect,' one must be non-attached. And this, I think, is very similar to the Buddhist teachings regarding clinging, particularly to sensual pleasures and views. To realize nibbana, one must first learn to let go of what isn't theirs, to release their grasping to self-views and put down their burden of clinging.

TTo break through to God, to awaken to the absolute, then, requires a certain level of internal renunciation that's aided by external forms. But this reality is subtle, much like the 'light silent sound' of the presence of God (1 Kings 19:9-12) or the Dhamma realized by the Buddha (SN 6.1). And thinking about my perceived failures, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that even Jesus' close disciples often seemed in the dark despite being in the presence of such an awakened, divine being.