In another life, I would have become a nun. Years back I gave God an ultimatum: unless You point the right man in my way, I have every intention of becoming a nun.
My life didn’t go that way. But if it had, the good ladies in the following clip are what I would like to have become:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/oct/30/stanbrook-abbey-eco-friendly-nuns?CMP=AFCYAH
I had a somewhat odd thing happen today. I was chatting online with some I know only very slightly through the world of the internet and we had been talking at length of being works in progress, of being in the midst of personal transformation and metamorphosis.
I heard something in the room that made me leave the computer and go and look. Tiny wings were beating against the window pane; a small tortoiseshell butterfly had appeared as if from nowhere and was seeking to get out. Now the window in this room has not been opened for a while; it’s seldom used as a bedroom and to be quite honest, whenever any winged thing enters the house, be it moth, butterfly or otherwise, my cats tend to pursue it and kill it. I have no clue as to how the butterfly came to be there.
I do however count it as a sign, a message from above(or beyond) that the transformation process is nearing completion and I(and maybe my online friend) can soon find our true wings.
I let the butterfly out of the window and it flew away into the autumn sunshine. It made me think of an episode I have read about where Freud and Jung had been discussing the various things and Jung had been describing a dream about a scarab beetle when a scratching was heard and a scarab type beetle appeared in the room. Neither could explain this, and Freud was silenced for once. Not long after this episode, they ceased to be friends.
The world is a truly magical and astounding place.
My husband read some of my posts last night and after the usual sort of comments he said, “Oh by the way, you didn’t write about faith when the title said about faith”.
Errr, umm, yes, well.
Faith is probably the hardest to write about, really. Faith is very hard to define outside of a dictionary and I guess that’s why I “forgot”.
Faith is about absolute trust and certainty and knowing that something is real. I have faith in gravity, for example. Under normal conditions, if I jump up, I come down again with an earthshattering thump; I jump without even having to think if I will come down. Gravity is a theory proved by experience and evidence. It works, simple as that. Even in low gravity conditions like the surface of the Moon, it works according to the conditions present.
But Gravity is simple by comparison with God. God is tricksy in so many ways. We don’t know the mind of God terribly well; that I guess is what most theology is about, trying to suss out God and understand how He works. Some swear by the Bible, but I find that only confirms to me the tricksy nature of God, because of the contradictions. Personal experience and discovery are for me the way to understand God and even then just when you think you know where you are, wham, things change.
I don’t think it’s faith that allows the snake handlers to play with venomous snakes without (allegedly) being bitten. I’m not sure what it is. To me, that’s testing God. And sooner or later, He’ll have a lesson for you. There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and you cross it at your peril.
I’ve never had an unshakeable unmoveable faith; I spend much of my time doubting. Questioning everything. Trying to test and prove things for myself. That’s just me. I envy people with true faith, rather than the tattered rags that are mine. But every time I discover something new, and wonderful for myself, I realise that my rags are not rags at all.
I did the above mandala a few years back and looking at it now it seems a very hopeful image of what was presumably inside me at the time. I’ve been intending to post it for ages but spurred on by Robert’s posts at http://retiredeagle.wordpress.com I thought I’d finally do it.
OED definitions:
of BELIEVE: accept as true; as speaking truth; think; suppose.
of BELIEVE IN: have faith in the existence of; feel sure of the worth of
of FAITH: reliance, trust: belief in religious doctrine; loyalty, sincerity
of KNOW: have in one’s mind or memory; feel certain; recognise; be familair with; understand
I am not sure how the dictionary definitions are going to be of much use here but then I did use the OED popular version. I was talking with my husband about issues of faith and what the difference was between faith and belief and we came to an interesting conclusion that dictionary definitions notwithstanding, they are not the same thing at all. Someone can believe in God(or the Universe) but not have faith in him. And as for know, well it all came unravelling even further.
To me(and in the end, that’s what a blog is about, being able you share one’s own thoughts and opinions) I don’t have to believe in something I know. For example, I know that the speed limit in my street is 30 mph. I don’t believe it: I know it. It’s a matter of fact, not opinion. I know that the elephant is the world’s largest land mammal alive on earth at the moment; this is not up for dispute, it’s a simple fact. The fact that larger mammals live in the sea is not part of the statement, or that larger creatures used to live. I don’t BELIEVE that the elephant is the largest land mammal: I KNOW it. This is what makes me such a curmudgeon about matters of belief, because so many matters attached to belief are actually matters of facts, of information: of dates and times and names and so on. When the Christian church was founded, what languages the Bible had been translated from and to, the problems with damaged and missing texts, the issue of ancient agendas (example: until Constantine(I think, but do correct me if I am wrong) reincarnation was an accepted sideshoot of doctrine, but this didn’t suit politics at the time, because peasants who thought they’d go to Hell for ever after ONE life alone were more malleable) and of cultural issues of the times (example: St. Pauls insistance on keeping women submissive was purely a product of his culture. The whole issue of women covering their heads was down to the fact that at the time only prostitutes went bareheaded in public: ergo a matter of decency and not of doctrine) These are some things that I KNOW about the early church and while they’re up for interpretation to some degree, they’re not up for denial. There are whole churches that base their treatment of women on St Paul’s letters; in all honesty, I feel the poor man would be horrified at this. I think also thisis why Jesus never wrote anything down; and the fact that the four gospels have differing accounts of the events of Jesus’ life is simply an illustration of differing witness accounts, that phenomenon that bamboozles cops everywhere. There are other gospels that are not canonical that tell marvellous(and probably totally fictional) accounts of Jesus’s boyhood. I have a copy of a translation of the Gnostic gospels that makes entertaining reading if nothing else!
The thing is for me that we are beings of mind, body, spirit and soul and I hate to see people abandon or neglect one at the expense of the others. Healing is about wholeness and balance and when we neglect one aspect of our being we invite not only imbalance but illness.
What if I am wrong about everything? About every thing that makes my own life meaningful and productive? About every single “given” I’ve always believed in, that my parents love me, that I’m an intelligent woman, that God(whatever you name him) exists and cares about us as a species and me as an individual? That all the events of my life have combined to shape me as the person I am today and that no experience however unhappy is actually wasted?
What if I am wrong about everything?
I’ve been here before, poised on this brink of the vast cravass of unknowing, peering into the darkness and finding the darkness has eyes that look back at me, that the darkness is the Smoking Mirror that reflects first what exists and then shows what may.
I’ve been here before, aghast at the prospect of a life spent without meaning.
So have others, many others.
“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees and grass and sun and Moon and stars and Aslan himself, Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours IS the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there inst any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and settting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”
Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, from The Silver Chair by CS Lewis.
Wherever you are today on your journey, rest assured, some one else has probably been here before you.
I first discovered the words of Anthony de Mello when we first went to theological college but it was far from approved reading. The books were hidden away in the colleage Quiet Room, which was my favourite place in the whole campus(that’s not saying a lot; I hated the place as a whole). But de Mello’s books awakened a capacity in me for imaginative contemplation that I’d hitherto repressed.
Some short quotes from “One Minute Wisdom”
Aloneness
To a disciple who was always seeking answers from him the Master said, “You have within yourself the answer to every question you propose- if you only knew how to look for it”
And another day he said, “In the land of the spirit, you cannot walk by the light of someone else’s lamp. You want to borrow mine. I’d rather teach you to make your own.”
Blinkers
“If you make me your authority,” said the Master to the starry-eyed disciple,”you harm yourself because you refuse to see things for yourself.”
And after a pause he added gently,”You harm me too because you refuse to see me as I am.”
I’ve had a variation on this dream off and on for a very long time but it hardly ever pops up these days. I actually thought until last night I’d not have it again. The basic premise is this: I have somehow killed someone and concealed the body. I never have the faintest idea who and I don’t see this body, but I know it’s there, all wrapped up or rolled up in a carpet or buried or otherwise hidden. Usually the hiding places are woefully inadequate and my panic through the dream is that it will be discovered and I’ll be in trouble beyond imagining. I also often consider re-hiding the corpse somewhere more effective.
This morning, somewhere after about 4.30am, I dreamed I was about to be found out. I was going to where I knew I’d hidden this body(again unknown identity) with some others. In this case, it was at a garage-type lock-up storage unit and in the dream I knew I had simply left it wrapped up in black plastic and gaffer tape, lying in the open in the middle of the floor. The others( I’m not entirely sure who they were or why they were there) unlocked the door and went inside while I waited outside, waiting for the screams and shouts of alarm and horror. I knew it had been quite a while and the stench would be appalling and after afew seconds, people came out again, complaining of the terrible smell. There was nothing there that was otherwise horrifying; the body had vanished.
I had a sense of disappointment in the dream as I had felt a sense of relief at the whole thing being finally being discovered and the waiting for disaster to be over at last. I also had no idea where the body had gone or who had moved it; I had no sense that I had done it.
The dream then shifted to a butcher’s shop we used to know in the midlands. It was a proper old fashioned butcher’s that made their own sausages and mince and pies and so on and I’m trying to work the mincing machine. I am feeding a series of bones through the mincer but they’re coming out in chunks and not mincing at all. I’ve got rib bones at hand and suddenly one of the assistants comes in and is surprised to find me there out of hours. She adjusts the machine for me and I am able to mince very small all the bones I have waiting. I have no sense of what animal(or indeed person) the bones belong to but I do have a sense of guilt and deceit at being there.
I woke feeling somewhat distressed by both dreams(or the two segments of dream) and am still at a loss to understand them. For the record, I am certain I have never(intentionally or otherwise) killed anyone and hidden the body. Within this latest dream (and with the others too) I have always had a sense of having done it accidentally and then felt obliged to hide what I’d done, where in real life, I am pretty sure I’d own up instantly.
I’ve often felt hopelessly inadequate for most things my life has thrown at me, feeling as if I am performing a longterm con act and am surviving on pure luck not to have been found out and unmasked as a fraud or a show off who can’t really come up with the goods. Even my teaching is subject to this feeling, that I’m busking the whole time and can’t really do it at all.
So who or what is this body I have spent so many years trying in my dreams to hide and why do I do it?
Since I live by the sea, it goes without saying that I live alongside a variety of seabirds. We get most of them: common gulls, herrings gulls, black backed gulls(lesser and probably greater at times of storm) plus the usual sweep of terns and so on. Die hard seaside residents dislike the gulls because of their chaotic behaviour.
This handsome chappie was rooting through the chip wrappers at the clifftop car park, looking for a stray chip or fragment of sausage, and chucking the paper left, right and centre. It’s quite a “nice” area, and I can say without fear of contradiction that most locals will object to such a mess being made.
Me, I took his photo. He’s only doing what he needs to do. It reminded me of the archetype found in many cultures of the trickster. Coyote in certain NA myths, Loki in Norse legend; just a few examples of the beings that play tricks on us to get us to wake up. NA spirituality has a sort of “order” of sacred clowns, the Heyokah, who are regarded with equal measures of frustration and approval.
I’ve never been able to resist stirring things up, of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, just to see what might happen. I do it even when I know I oughtn’t and for that, in all seriousness, I am sorry for the disruption I sometimes cause. Trying to teach a friend’s Furby to say, “F*** off!” was not a good thing to do but she did forgive me(maybe because the Furby didn’t catch on very quickly) . I’ve done some stupid things in my time, just because I couldn’t help myself. I won’t make a list of them here, but on reflection I don’t think they were all BAD things to do.
We do need people who do not act according to society’s norms all the time, because norms need challenging some times and we need to reestablish where the boundaries need to be.
And somebody needs to remember to shut the damn bins before the gulls get in!
I’m feeling slightly silly today. It’s down to a combination of all the dramatic events in my street last night and a resumption of the pain meds and the remainder of my cold.
The above picture was taken at the British Museum in the summer; the non-marble person got it the way of my snap and I have no idea who she is. But the expression on both her face and that of the statue rather lend themselves to humorous interpretation.
First prize goes to the caption that makes me cry laughing…
Over to you!
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 