The spirit is willing

I've thought about posting this; as with other quotes from previous letters and so on, I went back and forth on it. What originally raised it was all the talk about presidential candidates "getting religion" and how Howard Dean in particular was raked over the coals for saying he was going to talk more about his religious beliefs as he campaigned in the South.

Along with this there has been a run of comment along the lines that leftists tend to be secular and so "don't connect" or "fail to resonate" as the current cliche has it, with "ordinary Americans." Now of course it's not true that leftists can be defined as secular (Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King, Jr., anyone?) and frankly, I think I'm pretty damned ordinary.

On the other hand, I am also pretty damn secular. So, I'm to believe, I have nothing to say to people of faith.

Well, faith has been defined as "the evidence of things not seen." Those things that can't be logically explained, scientifically demonstrated, yet are held to be true, held even with passionate conviction, are clearly things of faith. Beliefs like the value of justice, the preciousness of life, the responsibility to and for community, the joy of knowledge, the marvel of awareness - these are by that definition matters of "faith" every bit as much as belief in a god or goddess or gods. So consider the excerpts from old letters that follow an unorganized declaration of faith by a nonbeliever.

First, a friend with who I corresponded for several years was telling me about his emerging Christian faith and said something to the effect of "Sorry if this gets on your nerves." My reply (the date is January 2, 1988):

Neither religious references nor religious belief nor religion itself get on my nerves. I've spent many happy hours with different people - ranging from atheists to evangelicals, from Orthodox Jews to Buddhists - discussing different philosophical (and theological) views. In fact, if you'd care to hear about my spiritual journey (and I do think of it as such - being an atheist does not mean denying spirituality) from Catholicism through agnosticism and deism to atheism, I'll tell you. And, as I noted last time, I've known people for who religion provides a solid foundation, both ethical and emotional, for their lives. But I've also known others for who religion provided not a way to live in the world but rather a place to hide from the world, a way to abdicate responsibility for their lives, people who, as I said last time, instead of being liberated by their religion were trapped by it. And I don't mean monks or anything like that, I mean rather people such one "Jesus freak" evangelical who was very dear to me and who for two or three years stayed with a husband who beat, abused, humiliated, and raped her because her minister insisted that it was her God-ordained, Biblically-declared duty to "submit to her husband." The result of her "need to believe" wasn't contentment but cruelty, not betterment but brutality.

My concern, then, isn't with religious belief (or, for that matter, any other kind of belief) per se, but with any belief founded on the need to believe in something - because such a need can and often does lead us terribly astray. "Need" is the operative word, and it's the word you used, which is what raised my concern. (Have you ever read The True Believer by Eric Hoffer? I don't care for much of what the so-called "longshoreman philosopher" had to say in his books, but in this one he raises many interesting points about people for who the fact of believing matters more than the content of belief.)

I maintain that our ethical/moral/religious/spiritual/whatever beliefs should grow naturally from within ourselves, not be imposed by our minds, i.e., by logical argument as if demonstrating a theorem. The strongest, surest beliefs are those we don't even know we have until we find them already there within us. Jesus said "Be still and know that I am God." When you're truly quiet, when you near the still point within yourself and sit on the boundary where your heart touches the world, is that what you find? If it is, then (you'll pardon the expression) by God, go for it! And please don't imagine for even an instant that I want to talk you out of believing or that religious references annoy/bother/irk/irritate/rile/disturb me. In fact I'd like to know as much about your, if you will, journey of spiritual discovery as you'd care to tell me. The only thing I ask is that you never, ever substitute faith in a "higher power" for faith in yourself.

This, by the way, was the same person to who I wrote the letter I quoted on Friday. In fact, this next quote immediately followed that which I quoted there. February 20, 1989.

There's another part of your question [about whether the left was just offering "government largesse" as a means to obtain power] that deserves comment: You footnoted it with a little sketch of an angel saying "Remember thou art human!" Why does that suggestion only arise when the idea of human venality is broached? It's not just you, of course, it's society at large. It's so common a thought that it undoubtedly seemed entirely natural to include it. And of course it's true that we humans are capable of great evil and destructiveness and that it's possible that in some of the things we do we can be impelled by greed to a degree of which we are unaware. But we are also capable of soaring achievement, of glorious creativity, of astonishing self-sacrifice. We can hate - but we also can love. We can be ignorant and narrow-minded and bigoted - but we also can learn. We can tie ourselves to the muck and mud - be we also can stretch out for the sunlight.

So why do we feel the need to remind ourselves of our down side but not our up side? If an artist says in a moment of pride "my work is great" we're prone to say "remember thou art human (and therefore capable of egotism and arrogance)." But if someone struggling to find their own creativity says in a moment of despair "my work is lousy" it would seem to most of us bizarre to say "remember thou art human" (and therefore capable of heights of discovery)." Indeed, in the first instance it'd seem more natural to say "prone to" or even "guilty of" instead of "capable of."

And that's the key: While we'll agree (when asked) that we're capable of learning, discovery, love, self-sacrifice, and all the rest, we believe we are self-centered, nasty, violent, greedy, and otherwise thoroughly unpleasant. We believe in what Ashley Montagu calls the "litany of innate depravity" and envision life as a constant, unending, and usually losing struggle against our dark natures. In fact, most Western religions preach in one form or another that it's only through the intercession of a supernatural, all-powerful outside force that we have any chance at all; indeed, they're based on the idea.

Now, I don't know that I want to get into a debate about religion, but the fact is I think that particular idea is crap. To be human is to have potential, to have capabilities, not to have a preprogrammed tendency to venality. We are a question, not an answer; a choice, not a conclusion.

The problem for many is that with the freedom of choice comes the weight of responsibility. And the notion of innate depravity relieves us of much of that burden. We're selfish? Destructive? We go to war? Well, that's just the way we are. We can try to control it, but don't think we can do anything to change it. It's impossible. So don't expect us to "rethink ourselves, possibly from scratch," because we'd rather continue risking our very survival as a species than face "the terrifying 'threat' of change" and responsibility.

And finally, in 2002 I had an exchange with a friend in Australia that ranged over a number of topics. Again, it's something I've already quoted from, in fact just yesterday. She had asked

When was the last time you were aware that there was a power greater than man?

[May 2, 2002] "Spiritual experience" is a tough phrase, fraught with meaning. I regard myself as a spiritual person in that I embrace an awareness of life and of an underlying unity of life, indeed of existence. I used to wonder how, if my body, my skin, the hair on my arms, could actually be seen at a molecular level, the viewer could tell where I stopped and the air around me began. I've pondered the almost unfathomable meaning of the fact that by our best current understanding spacetime itself, the very fabric of existence, is on the most basic level a sort of seething foam with bits constantly popping into and out of existence. (And indeed, what then does it mean to "exist?") I've thought about language, about the creation of a thought at a particular moment in a particular person's mind, about the miracle - if I can use that term to describe something that would remain wondrous to behold even if it were to be explained - of consciousness. I have been aware of how irrelevant we are to the universe, which got along quite well before we appeared and will continue on its merry way for unimaginable eons after we vanish.

However - I don't believe in "a power greater than man" as the term is usually understood. I was raised Roman Catholic, but as I approached adulthood I moved first to a sort of undifferentiated Christianity, then to deism, agnosticism, and finally to atheism. There is much I do not understand about the universe, about existence, about life and thought and consciousness; a tiny fraction of what I don't understand, no one understands; a tiny fraction of what no one understands may perhaps never be understood. But to be honest, I'm not moved to explain what is currently (even what may remain) inexplicable by postulating the existence of something beyond what we can know, a something which is then defined as inexplicable. The universe is wonder enough for me.

We wandered off into the value of knowledge and it's relation to the ability to take pleasure in the world around us.

The controversy of genetic research to me seems silly, people devote their lives to sorting out what already is, I don't get that they are heroes or exalted in any way, just curious.

[May 4, 2002] I believe that curiosity itself is something to be exalted. The drive to know, to discover, to understand, is part of what makes us who and what we are - and understanding what is can be the surest way to discern what can be.

I tingle all over that there is a ball [the Moon] in the sky shining down, I don't need to know how far away it is, seeing it is my reminder that there is a "power" that "just is."

I, too, have sought the awareness of what "just is." It comes from a perhaps different root and via a different course, surely takes a different form, but it's still there. The thing is, one does not preclude the other; understanding does not deny wonder.

A couple of weeks ago was a prime time in the northern hemisphere for seeing "Earthshine," the phenomena where part of the shadowed disk of a crescent Moon is dimly visible. It's being lit by sunlight reflected from the Earth to the Moon. I know what it is, I know how and why it happens, I know how far away the Moon is and what it's made of, I can explain the Moon's effect on the tides and how and why phases of the Moon occur, I can talk about solar and lunar eclipses, about how the Moon is "gravitationally locked" and about how and why it's slowly moving further and further away from the Earth. I know all that, I understand all that. But do you think I wasn't out there looking at Earthshine, smiling with enjoyment at how, yes, I could see some of the shadowed areas? If anything, thinking about the journey that light made from the depths of the Sun, across millions of miles of space, to the Earth, to the Moon, and back to the Earth to my eyes, made the experience even more amazing.

Understanding does not deny wonder - and the universe is wonder enough for me. That pretty much sums it up in two clauses. The spiritual power - the power to move, to sustain, to heal, to grow - of faith in the glory of knowledge.

And there I stand.

Footnote: When I was looking for a good link for MLK, I came across a site that promised "a true historical examination" of him and his work. It was, unsurprisingly, simply a collection of every negative fact and fantasy said about him over the years. The site is maintained by a white supremacist organization. Does it ever strike you that whenever someone claims "a true examination" of anyone on the left, it never is?