10/10/21

I had the urge to visit Central Lutheran Church today. Left to my own devices, I find that I tend to become cynical, impatient, and mean of spirit. Over time, the difficulties of life work to harden my heart towards the world and to other people. I start to separate myself from everyone and sink into a state of indifference. Everything begins to feel pointless, and when that happens, it becomes that much easier to give myself over to the greed and anger and hatred and selfishness that every human heart is capable of experiencing. And one of the reasons I find myself so drawn towards religion and spirituality is that I often need to have my faith and hope in other people nurtured. I occasionally need inspiration to seek beauty in a world we much too often fill with ugliness, and encouragement not to let the hardness of my heart become something permanent.

Today's service and gospel reading reflected that in a lot of ways, both on an individual level and a societal one, because just as I often need spiritual encouragement to help me not give into the darker impulses buried within my heart, society needs material encouragement to do the same and not mirror the worst within us.

The gospel read was from Mark, chapter 10, verses 17-31:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

On an individual level, this passage (as suggested in today's homily) is encouraging us to let go of the things that bind us and prevent us from repairing our broken relationships, with ourselves, with our neighbours, and with nature itself. Salvation isn't about following the right rules, but about the quality of our hearts and our relationships. On one side of the needle is us and all of the things that we carry with us and are unable to put down. And on the other side is our neighbour. The more we have, the more we tend to cling to what's "ours," the tighter our grasp to our possessions and privilege and sense of self. And we cannot pass through the eye of the needle unless we have the ability to put those things down and walk through unencumbered, to share our wealth and our love with others. I think that's why Jesus, when asked which of the commandments was the greatest, replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Mark 22:34-40).

And while many Christians tend to view this as only applying to ourselves and a decidedly otherworldly goal, I think it has implications for the here and now as well. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is among us (Luke 17:20-21). He also said that one cannot serve both God and Mammon, i.e., Love and Money (Mt 6:24). And if that's the case, then the quality and shape of our material social relations and the various ways they condition our actions and morals and culture are just as important as the quality and shape of our hearts and minds. Unequal social relations will logically give rise to inequality; and a system that operates on the logic of things like property rights, maximization of profit, and growth for the sake of growth will logically give rise to an unequal system that prioritizes owners over labourers, profit over people, accumulation over equal distribution, etc. You can serve God or Mammon; and capitalism conditions allegiance to the latter. Equalizing social relations, on the other hand, would go a long way towards helping us get back to the spirit of Acts 4:32-35—hence in order to help repair our broken relationships, we must not only repair our hearts but the material foundation that our society is built upon.

Maybe it's a moral failing on my part that I need such inspiration and encouragement every now and then, but I don't think so. We all have our own coping mechanisms and support systems, some less skillful than others. And Marx wasn't being entirely derisive when he wrote, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" (A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). The material world we have created, along with the social relations dominating it, often feel heartless, soulless. And in the teachings and example of spiritual teachers like Jesus, the Buddha, etc., I see so much heart and soul and expressions of hope for making ourselves and our world better. They saw many truths about the human condition that we tend to forget or are coerced to ignore, and it's good to be reminded of them from time to time. I don't want to be like the man who grieves because of his craving and clinging and broken relationships; I want to be like the person who rejoices in love, compassion, and generosity.

9/26/21

I've found it difficult to put my spiritual/religious beliefs into words, often relying on the words of others to articulate them. Recently, for example, I've been delving into Spinoza's Ethics (especially through the Seekers of Unity series), and I find myself very drawn towards this work, as many others before me have been.

I'd definitely say that I'm a believer in panentheism, i.e., the idea that what we call God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. and the world are interrelated and ultimately of the same substance, yet not entirely identical as God transcends/is greater than the world. What we perceive to be distinctions between things like mind and body, for instance, are merely distinctions between modes, attributes, or appearances of phenomena that arise and cease through the complex causality that our individual minds conceptually perceive. We see the movement of the parts but not the stillness of the whole. But just as the individual waves of the ocean — due to things like the movements of winds and currents and the gravitational pull of the moon — appear to be unique and isolated phenomena distinct from each other and the world of the ocean they inhabit, they are in reality all of the same substance, i.e., they are in essence water, out of which they arise from, return to, and are but modes of being of. In much the same way, our individual selves appear to be unique and isolated phenomena distinct from each other and the world we inhabit. And while the water itself can be said to have inherent existence, needing nothing else to exist or be conceived from, the modes or properties of the waves cannot and need the substance of water to exist and be perceived.

From the perspective of the human mind, the world appears as one thing and we as another, and so too does 'God' or that which transcends it all. We are in the world, and ultimate reality lies outside even that. This ultimate reality or what we call God is something that seems alien to us and beyond our grasp. However, in truth, we are more like the waves of the ocean, passively unaware of our essence and the substance that makes our modes of being possible, an essence which is empty of inherent existence yet the same essence as the world as well as that which both lies beyond it and underlies it, or maybe better, contains it all. From the Buddhist POV, I think this idea is mirrored in Nagarjuna's line, "Samsara does not have the slightest distinction from Nirvana. Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from Samsara" (Verses from the Center, 25:19). Samsara represents the world and nirvana represents that which transcends the world and lies outside of ordinary human experience. And while from our human POV there are noticeable distinctions between samsara and nirvana, conditioned and unconditioned, world and God, mind and body, us and others, or anything else we can differentiate, from the ultimate POV there's not the slightest distinction between them; the distinctions are illusory.

Interestingly enough, Buddhism also defines 'the world' or 'the all' in terms of our individual, sensory experience of it, i.e., "the eye and forms, ear and sounds, nose and aromas, tongue and flavors, body and tactile sensations, intellect and ideas" (SN 35.23). What we know is constrained in many ways by the nature of the human mind and where/how consciousness 'lands and grows' due to where "there is passion, delight, and craving for the nutriment of consciousness" (SN 12.64). But these sensory experiences locked into the apprehension of the modes of expression, being, or appearance of phenomena are illusory and comparable to a glob of foam floating down the Ganges, a bubble, a mirage, a hollow banana tree, a magic trick—i.e., empty and void (SN 22.95). It's as if our minds are conditioned to grasp the attributes of the waves, whose individual existence are inconstant, imperfect, unsatisfactory, empty and void because they do not exist from their own side, and not the substance they are an attribute or mode of. Nevertheless, understanding the causality of the conditioned world can act as a cause for the human mind's understanding of the reality of things as they are, abusing us of our notions of separateness and inherent selfness, thereby touching the deathless element through ceasing the mental processes of craving and clinging and 'I-making and my-making.' Clinging to our identity as an independent wave is ultimately unsatisfactory and stressful because it traps us within the causal modality of arising and ceasing, birth and death; letting go of that clinging 'unbinds' one and opens them up to experiencing the boundless waterness of the waves.

The true reality, on the other hand, is one that can be said to be unborn, unmade, unconditioned, existing from its own side, stable, eternal. Spinoza reasons that this reality is analogous to God or substance, "that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception" (Ethics, I, Def. III). In Buddhism, this is somewhat comparable to nirvana, the "unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated" (Ud 8:3). This reality or substance or whatever you want to call it is akin to the primordial water that's modified into all the various waves the we conceive of and that form the basis for our subject-object dualism and the illusion that we are one wave distinct from all the others and the ocean we all inhabit, when in fact everything that we see, hear, taste, touch, feel, and cognize is of the same substance or reality that comprises what sees, hears, tastes, touches, feels, and cognizes. Its true essence is eternal oneness, while its attributes or expressions are infinite.

The Buddha demonstrates that through the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment, the human mind can cognize nirvana, the unconditioned, the deathless element, etc. making the mind into the mind of enlightenment characterized by 'consciousness without feature.' Spinoza, on the other hand, argues that "the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God; thus when we say, that the human mind perceives this or that, we make the assertion, that God has this or that idea, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is displayed through the nature of the human mind, or in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind; and when we say that God has this or that idea, not only in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, but also in so far as he, simultaneously with the human mind, has the further idea of another thing, we assert that the human mind perceives a thing in part or inadequately" (Ethics, II, Prop XI, Corollary) and that "the clear and distinct ideas of the mind are as necessarily true as the ideas of God" (Ethics, II, Prop. XLIII), suggesting a rational means of achieving the same type of knowledge: "The knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God which every idea involves is adequate and perfect. The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God" (Ethics, II, Prop. XLVI&XLVII).

I realize that the analogy of waves and water breaks down in the sense that the wind and gravity which represent the causal conditions that shape the waves aren't themselves water, as well as the fact that the element of water is comprised of atoms that in turn are further divided, while these laws of nature and all the particles within it are but part of nature itself, whose reality is said to be singular, self-contained, one infinite substance. But I think it conveys the general idea clearly enough, especially if we compare the wind in the analogy to the passions of the mind fuelled by ignorance and greed, hatred, and delusion churning the water of the ocean into waves, and which when stilled give rise to an experience of peace and an ending to the wave's rounds of rebirth.

That leads me to also say that I'm a perennialist in the sense that I strongly believe this reality — whether we call it God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. — is a unity that paradoxically contains or is capable of infinite modes of expression, being, or appearance. And I see in each spiritual tradition a sincere search for and genuine understanding of this unity through a combination of imagination, reason, and intuition, with the first two arising from our dualistic awareness, and the latter achieved through nondual consciousness. The human mind, as a dependently arisen product of causes and conditions, is the experience of samsara; the mind of God is the experience of nirvana (the deathless element often alluded to in Buddhism = Spinoza's one eternal substance). And they are one. We are ultimately one with all of the things we seek to know, understand, and love. The human mind, in so far as it is characterized by its particular mode of being, much like the temporal wave in the ocean, is finite and limited; and our ignorance of things as they are blocks the light of this understanding from illuminating our mind. But the human mind, in so far as it shares its substance with God, strives to understand itself and seek truth in its existence.

Our salvation or enlightenment is achieved through the process of overcoming our ignorance of reality by releasing our mind's grasping of the appearances and letting go of our self-identity view, thereby opening ourselves up to an intellectual understanding and/or love of God, the One, Truth, Nature, Substance, Universe, Dhamma, Brahman, etc. and realizing our own nature, or as Ruksana put it in The Circle, "real recognizing real." In Buddhism, one is encouraged to develop selflessness in regards to the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and sensory consciousness in order to achieve this realization. Judaism has a similar concept in Kabbalah called bittul, 'selflessness' or 'self-negation.' In Christianity and Islam, one is encouraged to die to yourself or 'die before you die.' Another method involves love, effectively doing the same thing. In Buddhism, for instance, metta or loving-kindness can also be salvific. And this method seems even more predominant in Christianity. Jesus says to love God and love others as ourselves (Mt 22:37-39). And we are all interconnected, so loving others as ourselves is also loving ourselves. And John goes even further, saying God is love (1 John 4:16), and it's that act of unconditional love which becomes the positive form of selflessness that equally removes the mental passions and clinging that cloud our vision and prevent us from truly seeing things as they are. So ultimately we're left with God loving God, which in reality is just the act of loving itself—a singular, loving or unbound state of consciousness free from misperceptions and passions and sense of self.

While I've spent a lot more time with Buddhism, I've also found myself drawn strongly towards Christianity in recent years. In Christianity, I see the inheritor of the Greek Mystery cults and Platonic philosophy that, in the ancient world, used both ecstatic and rational means to point practitioners towards God, the One, the Form of the Good, Logos. And in Jesus, I see a person who had such mystical experiences and intuitive realizations, seeing himself in God and God in himself, unifying his individual mode of being with the substance underlying it, reflecting and pointing towards this constant and eternal state of consciousness. And just as John states that God is love and whoever is without love doesn't know God (1 John 4:7-8), Spinoza states that, "The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity; in other words, the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself" (Ethics, V, Prop XXXVI).

What I find eminently important in all of this, however, is how each of these traditions and ways of talking about experience and reality agree on the reality and power of interconnectedness. Whether in terms of causality (such as in the focus of actions and dependent co-arising in Buddhism) or the oneness of reality (such as in the relational nature of the trinity), each of these approaches make interconnectedness a centerpiece. As Clare Carlisle puts it in an article for the Guardian: "Spinoza's world view brings to the fore two features of life: dependence and connectedness. Each wave is dependent on the sea, and because it is part of the sea it is connected to every other wave. The movements of one wave will influence all the rest. Likewise, each being is dependent on God, and as a part of God it is connected to every other being. As we move about and act in the world, we affect others, and we are in turn affected by everything we come into contact with." And this understanding not only gives us insight into the nature of our world, but in how to live a life characterized by virtue, freedom, and happiness through our knowledge of causality and, ultimately, love of God. Because the more still we, as waves, can make ourselves, the closer we are able to come to experiencing our own waterness.

8/15/21

I take wisdom and inspiration from wherever I find it. I'm a Catholic Buddhist whose current spiritual home is an ELCA Lutheran church with a pastor who's just as comfortable using her love of DnD in her reflections as she is her passion for social justice and equality.

Today was the first in-person service they've had since the pandemic began, and it was nice to be back. Everyone who came was masked and socially distanced, and the theme perfectly fit the moment, both lamenting the suffering and hardships we've had to endure and celebrating the sense of hope and community that has helped keep us going.

One of the aspects of Christianity I find the most meaningful is the communalism underlying it. It's all about being united as one and caring for one another. And despite being an introverted person who enjoys being alone, we're still a social species and there's something powerful about the bonds we share. It just felt really good to be there today.

3/20/21

A rambling rebuttal of Martin Hagglund's intro to This Life.

To start, I don't think that the dichotomy Hagglund makes between the finite and the infinite is necessarily as solid as he affirms. God or Nature or the Infinite can be seen as a ground of being out of which a finite world arises and in which both existence and experience are possible (think of the Kabalistic conception of tsimtsum). In addition, that existence and experience is arguably all about relationships (this idea is embedded within the theology of social trinitarianism), and as such, our fragile life together in this place where the infinite is paradoxically transcendent and immanent is the stage on which these relationships are acted out and performed. The connection often made between art and the divine is made, I think, in relation to this creative activity, of striving to create and to connect with others or something greater. And it can be further argued that our ultimate purpose is fulfilled in and by these relationships.

Take Christianity, for instance. This idea of fulfillment through relationships is made explicitly in places like the New Testament, where Jesus compares what we do to one another to what we do to God, connecting not only the finite (secular) and infinite (religious) together, but making what we do within the context of our finite, shared lives together the centerpiece of religious life. To dismiss this is to dismiss the true heart of many, if not most, religions. In Christianity, once again, we have lines such as: "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you." "What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me." Etc.

In essence, instead of seeing the secular and religious, or finite and infinite, as two separate, antagonistic, and ultimately incapable categories, they should be seen as complementary, as two sides of the same coin. Buddhists might say things like samsara and nirvana are the same. Christians might say things like all are one under Christ. It's a nondual POV in which we find a synthesis between these two seemingly contradictory ideas or realities.

Another criticism Hagglund has with eternity or the infinite is the lack of motivation one would have once it was realized or immanent. But in a sense, the quest for eternity is never-ending, always unfolding, giving us an endless motivation, much like with the idea of progress. We are always striving towards this idealistic goal that may never be fully realized by us finite beings, nevertheless we strive on. And this motivation translates to the finite world precisely because that is the world in which we live and breathe and are stewards of. Because of the intimate connection between the finite (secular) and the infinite (religious), to disrespect the finite world and harm it or anything in it is to disrespect the divine and harm our connection to it. If God is love, and God is immanent in the world, then our love must extend to that world and each reflection of God contained therein, finite or otherwise. If the earth and all life on it is sacred, then even religious life (as opposed to secular life) can care about and be committed to the flourishing of finite life as we conventionally experience it as an end in itself. I'd even go so far as to say that, to live a truly religious life, you must learn to truly love others regardless of their finitude or eternal nature (assuming that's even a thing). Not out of fear or obedience or for some reward, but as an end in itself. "Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love." That is where I think both secular faith and religious faith meet. An immature understanding of religious faith is individualistic, transactional, and/or focused mainly on the infinite. A mature understanding of the religious, on the other hand, is communal, relational, and focused on interconnectedness.

Hagglund states that freedom requires finitude, and eternity equals unfreedom. But I think that's a false dichotomy in many ways. For one, as human beings, in terms of our bodies and personalities, we are finite, conditioned beings, and it's our surroundings and our own actions that condition and shape us. And I think religious faith is ultimately the same as Hagglund's secular faith in that the primary question of religious faith is the freedom and ability to ask what ought to be done with our time. The difference to me is that religious faith specifically asks a more pointed question, in my opinion, best articulated by the Buddha as exemplifying the beginnings of wisdom: What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness? In addition, eternity is better understood as lying outside of time. And while we are subject to time in these finite forms we call minds and bodies, regardless of whatever our innate nature may be, it is certainly not unintelligible to ask either question, particularly the latter. In fact, it is eminently intelligible to ask what will lead to long-term welfare and happiness and seek to do those things as religiously (i.e., consistently) as possible. Moreover, there's no guarantee of reaching the other shore of nirvana or union with God from our POV, only the possibility of achievement or realization of this independently existing reality or dimension, assuming such an experience itself is possible.

In the end, I look at this secular vs. religious dispute dialectically. The religious or philosophical 'musts' that Hagglund rails against are for the spiritually immature (children/synthesis), the 'oughts' that he champions are for the spiritually mature (adults/antithesis), and the experience of nondual consciousness is the domain of the awakened (wise elder/synthesis). And freedom also has its levels or dialectical relationships. The freedom of the undisciplined person, of a conditioned agent that lacks an ethical framework, is an immature kind of freedom. The freedom of a disciplined person, of a conditioned agent informed by an ethical framework, is a more mature kind of freedom. And the unconditioned transcends even the very idea of freedom or agency or time and space itself.

From the religious POV, it's not so much that eternity is absent; it's more so that our vision of it is obscured and we strive to no longer have to strive to glimpse it. And a large part of that striving is precisely what Hagglund argues we should do: use our freedom to ask what we ought to do, acknowledge our interconnectedness with those around us and embrace our shared vulnerability, and to act with love. Ultimately, however, either approach can be used skillfully or unskillfully. A secular approach can lead to nihilism and indifference as easily as a sense of responsibility. And a religious approach can lead to worldly indifference as easily as it can that same sense of responsibility born out of love.

1/31/21

I started reading a copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Civil Disobedience today, and there was a line in the introduction that stood out to me:

Emerson's essay on "The Transcendentalist" provides a revealing profile of Thoreau's personality. The essay was written in 1841 while he lived in Emerson's house, and though Thoreau is not mentioned in it, his presence is evident in Emerson's description of the "exacting and extortionate critics" whose "insatiable expectations" demand they withdraw from societal values and public rituals. These youthful Transcendentalists have "found that, from the liberal professions to the coarsest manual labor, and from the courtesies of the academy and the college to the conventions of the cotillion-room and the morning call, there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which intimates a frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an activity without an aim." Their temperaments and principles cause them to reject the world's work for their own, and with Thoreau that meant writing. Like the exemplary heroic individual that Margaret Fuller searched for on July 4, 1845, Thoreau was not to be detoured from his calling by money, by disapproval, or by fear, because he worked in faith. The pond was to teach him that the art of writing and the art of living were inseparable.

I especially found myself agreeing with the sentiments of Transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson regarding the materialistic mundanity of society as we know it, that "there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which intimates a frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an activity without an aim." Or as the modern saying goes, we live to work rather than work to live. This reality may not have begun with capitalism, but the logic of such certainly seems to require and actively nurture this spirit. And it is this spirit which I find I must constantly fight against, but more often than not lose to; it is this spirit that is the cause of so much of the turmoil and suffering I experience within my heart.

As a society, we seem to have sacrificed the development and discipline of our souls for the comforts of daily drudgery and escapes into fantasy, for we have been led to believe that things like productivity, the experience of pleasure, and lack of want are the greatest goods in life. But when we are confronted with the quiet and solitude of our own minds, free from distractions, we begin to realize what lies underneath it all—an untrained soul not unlike a frightened child who is fragile and defenseless and needs to be entertained or else they will burst into tears. We discover in this state that we lack true peace and freedom, but not having the proper tools to fix it, we tend to retreat back into the familiarity of our daily routines and daydreams rather than investigate these feelings in more depth. We turn once again towards the pleasures and fancies and intoxications that shield us from having to face the darkness that lies beneath, a darkness that brings with it the fear of self-reflection and truth, but which is also the only gate through which we can pass into the kingdom of God and find true peace and happiness and freedom.

When Paul writes, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16), I think he is saying something similar. God cannot be found in simply following the “societal values and public rituals” that we are taught and cling to and make room for on Sunday, but must be found within. Yet we are afraid to take that plunge into the darkness of our hearts and open ourselves up to that spirit and the luminosity that is our true self and which is also God. We are afraid of the unknown, of being unworthy perhaps, or of losing ourselves, or discovering that our existence has no meaning. That darkness is the veil between ourselves and the Garden, from which we have effectively exiled ourselves from and to which we long to return. But our hearts as they are, skeptical, aimless, asleep, and lacking true love, cannot bear to confront that darkness, so we pursue the comfort given to us by indulgence in sensual pleasures and the daily routines of life in our things-oriented society, where we have been taught to value the wrong things and are detoured from our calling by money, disapproval, or fear instead of working in faith, instead of waking up to truth. "What will it take for us to finally wake up?," I often wonder.

And then there is this interesting and complimentary paragraph from the beginning of Walden:

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his honor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

I find much to sympathize with here, too. We spend so much time and energy working to make a living that we have little of either to pursue our own self-development and are thus unable to enjoy the 'finer fruits' of life. We become slaves to our own whips of frugality and productivity, shackled by the morals of a society that values all the wrong things, trading the freedom of our souls for the bondage of material comforts. As he says earlier, "By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, [we] are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as [we] will find when [we] get to the end of it, if not before." It is at this point that we look back and find ourselves full of regrets about the life we did not live and a fear of death because we have wasted the time we were given to search for something deeper within, something more profound, something deathless.

In essence, I see it as a potent warning about eschewing a principled life for a life of mudanity and hedging our bets. Yet as much as I agree with the warning, I still find myself among those laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal, always thinking of 'tomorrow.' And I wonder as I read these words if I will ever have the strength or courage or wisdom to live a more meaningful life and search for a deeper truth, or if, instead, I will more likely than not be counted among the foolish and regretful souls who have squandered their time letting the opinions and expectations of others direct their lives for them.

11/17/20

I haven't written anything in a long time. Partially because I just didn't have much on my mind, but mostly because I've been so busy. The last year has been mostly taken up with work, school, and being shut in for most of the year due to the pandemic. I was so unhappy at work that I was looking to leave, and just happened to get an email about a scholarship to Providence's medical assistant program and thought what the hell. After jumping into that, I ended up in the ER with a spontaneously collapsed lung. And then after that, a global pandemic hit. But somehow, I managed to pass all my classes, graduate, and pass the national accreditation exam and am officially a medical assistant! In all of that time, though, I've felt spiritually dead. Most churches and other places are closed. My time has mostly been full of school work and studying. And with a few exceptions, the way people have acted has made me doubt the goodness of human beings. There just doesn't seem to be room for truly spiritual people.

About a week ago, for example, a caregiver at work killed themselves by jumping off of the top of the parking garage. Providence didn't really address the incident beyond a short email that was never even sent to my department. But everyone knew about it, and it's been on my mind a lot. Who knows why they did it (part of it was apparently work related according to a note that was rumoured to have been left behind), but it makes me think about how many people out there are suffering. How many are labouring under the weight of depression or some other form of mental illness? How many people are unable to cope with the omnipresent stresses that they experience on a daily basis, whether from abuse or privation or some limitation on their life that makes life difficult to bear?

And it makes me think how sick our society is and the inhumane ways we treat others, whether through conditioning or because it gives us some advantage in our lives. The poor and houseless. BIPOC. Women. The mentally and physically ill. The elderly. LGBTQ+ people. People with disabilities. Those who fall outside of our homogeneous social groups. Etc. It's diseased all the way through and I'm honestly not sure it's even curable anymore. The world that we've created isolates us. It pits us against one another, whether out of bigotry or competition. It turns our relationships into transactions and feeds off our vitality like a vampire, leaving us tired and drained and empty inside, and making any sadness or despair we may feel that much deeper.

It's also built upon the exploitation and oppression of various segments of society and physically destroying our planet in the process. And it doesn't take people's health seriously, treating access to care of any sort as a commodity. Is it any wonder that people are increasingly unable to connect with one another and find no meaning in their own existence or hope for the future? I know that there's not much we can do as individuals to save the world or prevent someone who is determined to end their life from doing so, but besides working with others to try to make the world a place worth living, we can strive to connect with, respect, and love those close to us. And I hope I can do a better job of that, too. But if I'm being honest with myself, I feel like I'm just as self-absorbed and cynical as the rest of the world. While I glimpse the goodness and desire to strive towards it, I'm caught up in the same rat race, working all day at a job I don't love so I have enough money to keep a roof over my head and spending the rest of it trying to keep myself sane and get a modicum of enjoyment out of being alive.

It's a depressing thought, but I don't treat people much better. I'm always stressed and feeling stretched thin. I'm short with people because they're short with me, trapped in the same cycle of acting and reacting negatively, making the mental ruts deeper and deeper and harder to get out of. And like many others, I self-medicate with things like alcohol and Netflix, doing whatever I can to escape my own life through distraction and imagination. Truly spiritual people seem like an endangered species that's confined to a few secluded habitats, monasteries and hermitages that house the last of those who have the courage and strength to truly renounce this world to strive for a better one. And as much as I wish I were one of them, I can't seem to work up the courage or the strength.

10/4/20

Pope Francis just released a new encyclical that, among other things, highlights the contradictions inherent in the modern institution of private property and the suffering and inequality it engenders. While in practice, the institutional church has long been geared towards the support of power and oppression and covering up abuse and has lost much of its moral authority, the theological and historical basis of Christianity itself has always been a universal call to the common good and solidarity with the poor and oppressed.

Maybe it's just because I agree with it and find it close to my own political point of view, but I think the encyclical itself is surprisingly good and filled with much of that universal call to fraternity and the common good. It calls for justice; for a radical change both in thought and the material ways we create and distribute wealth; for us to envision a new, more socialized humanity; and for us to "aspire a world that provides land, housing and work for all," harkening back to the early community of believers mentioned in Acts 2 and 4. I think this part in particular demonstrates that:

ENVISAGING THE SOCIAL ROLE OF PROPERTY

118. The world exists for everyone, because all of us were born with the same dignity. Differences of colour, religion, talent, place of birth or residence, and so many others, cannot be used to justify the privileges of some over the rights of all. As a community, we have an obligation to ensure that every person lives with dignity and has sufficient opportunities for his or her integral development.

119. In the first Christian centuries, a number of thinkers developed a universal vision in their reflections on the common destination of created goods.[91] This led them to realize that if one person lacks what is necessary to live with dignity, it is because another person is detaining it. Saint John Chrysostom summarizes it in this way: “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood. The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well”.[92] In the words of Saint Gregory the Great, “When we provide the needy with their basic needs, we are giving them what belongs to them, not to us”.[93]

120. Once more, I would like to echo a statement of Saint John Paul II whose forcefulness has perhaps been insufficiently recognized: “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone”.[94] For my part, I would observe that “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property”.[95] The principle of the common use of created goods is the “first principle of the whole ethical and social order”;[96] it is a natural and inherent right that takes priority over others.[97] All other rights having to do with the goods necessary for the integral fulfilment of persons, including that of private property or any other type of property, should – in the words of Saint Paul VI – “in no way hinder [this right], but should actively facilitate its implementation”.[98] The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant.

Rights without borders

121. No one, then, can remain excluded because of his or her place of birth, much less because of privileges enjoyed by others who were born in lands of greater opportunity. The limits and borders of individual states cannot stand in the way of this. As it is unacceptable that some have fewer rights by virtue of being women, it is likewise unacceptable that the mere place of one’s birth or residence should result in his or her possessing fewer opportunities for a developed and dignified life.

122. Development must not aim at the amassing of wealth by a few, but must ensure “human rights – personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples”.[99] The right of some to free enterprise or market freedom cannot supersede the rights of peoples and the dignity of the poor, or, for that matter, respect for the natural environment, for “if we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all”.[100]

123. Business activity is essentially “a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world”.[101] God encourages us to develop the talents he gave us, and he has made our universe one of immense potential. In God’s plan, each individual is called to promote his or her own development,[102] and this includes finding the best economic and technological means of multiplying goods and increasing wealth. Business abilities, which are a gift from God, should always be clearly directed to the development of others and to eliminating poverty, especially through the creation of diversified work opportunities. The right to private property is always accompanied by the primary and prior principle of the subordination of all private property to the universal destination of the earth’s goods, and thus the right of all to their use.[103]

The rights of peoples

124. Nowadays, a firm belief in the common destination of the earth’s goods requires that this principle also be applied to nations, their territories and their resources. Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere. As the Bishops of the United States have taught, there are fundamental rights that “precede any society because they flow from the dignity granted to each person as created by God”.[104]

125. This presupposes a different way of understanding relations and exchanges between countries. If every human being possesses an inalienable dignity, if all people are my brothers and sisters, and if the world truly belongs to everyone, then it matters little whether my neighbour was born in my country or elsewhere. My own country also shares responsibility for his or her development, although it can fulfil that responsibility in a variety of ways. It can offer a generous welcome to those in urgent need, or work to improve living conditions in their native lands by refusing to exploit those countries or to drain them of natural resources, backing corrupt systems that hinder the dignified development of their peoples. What applies to nations is true also for different regions within each country, since there too great inequalities often exist. At times, the inability to recognize equal human dignity leads the more developed regions in some countries to think that they can jettison the “dead weight” of poorer regions and so increase their level of consumption.

126. We are really speaking about a new network of international relations, since there is no way to resolve the serious problems of our world if we continue to think only in terms of mutual assistance between individuals or small groups. Nor should we forget that “inequity affects not only individuals but entire countries; it compels us to consider an ethics of international relations”.[105] Indeed, justice requires recognizing and respecting not only the rights of individuals, but also social rights and the rights of peoples.[106] This means finding a way to ensure “the fundamental right of peoples to subsistence and progress”,[107] a right which is at times severely restricted by the pressure created by foreign debt. In many instances, debt repayment not only fails to promote development but gravely limits and conditions it. While respecting the principle that all legitimately acquired debt must be repaid, the way in which many poor countries fulfil this obligation should not end up compromising their very existence and growth.

127. Certainly, all this calls for an alternative way of thinking. Without an attempt to enter into that way of thinking, what I am saying here will sound wildly unrealistic. On the other hand, if we accept the great principle that there are rights born of our inalienable human dignity, we can rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity. We can aspire to a world that provides land, housing and work for all. This is the true path of peace, not the senseless and myopic strategy of sowing fear and mistrust in the face of outside threats. For a real and lasting peace will only be possible “on the basis of a global ethic of solidarity and cooperation in the service of a future shaped by interdependence and shared responsibility in the whole human family”.[108]

While I think it has some weak areas, such as its lack of inspiration from women and little in the way of addressing the way they and others are often marginalized by the church and world in general, it goes a long way towards summoning the heart of the gospel into our present consciousness. It points to ways that others are being harmed by the world we have created, letting greed and impersonal market forces dictate how people are treated more so than love and compassion.

It also highlights the material forces that facilitate this and condition our own hearts and ways that we think and act, making us care more about ourselves than our neighbours and turning a blind eye to their suffering. It holds a mirror up to us that, if we're honest, reflects back to us our own failings and shows us that more often than not, we are the priest passing the wounded man by. That we, collectively, are complicit in the existence of this world dominated by things like exclusion, greed, and markets and the compulsion to accumulate and consume rather than produce and share.

I think it's a fitting tribute to Saint Francis on his feast day.