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All I have to say about the Da Vinci Code
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
(At least for now...)With all this hoopla over the release of The Da Vinci Code movie, it might be good to remember how outraged the West got over how outraged the Muslim world got over those Danish cartoons, or, for those with longer memories, Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. "They don't value free speech like we do", some people said. Is turnabout fair play?
How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.- Luke 6:42
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Politics and Spirituality Conference, Day 1
Sunday, January 15, 2006
(Posted by Heather)Apologies for not posting last night, this site was down!
Anyway - I'm headed off to catch the Metro but here's a bit that I wrote last night after the first session:
I've been at this conference for two hours now and the trip here would have been worth it if this was all it was. Let me begin by explaining that there is a crowd of 1300 people, with 350 people watching in a Simulcast room next door and untold numbers turned away for lack of space (so many so that they have decided to hold ANOTHER Politics and Spirituality conference of exactly the same brand and variety this spring on the West Coast). When we sat down, they had us introduce ourselves to the people next to us, and express to them that we were happy they were here. She turned back to me and said "No, I'm really happy that you're here. And all of us - I feel so alone in this, like no one understand what I'm talking about, like no one can possibly be thinking the things that I am thinking" - and I don't think I helped her out - because all I could do was nod and nod and think "so true so true so true"
(Click title to read the full post...)I hope that with words I can transmit atleast something of this to you. We're sitting in a huge conference room. Up at the front is a stage, with a yellow banner - words that read "We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses - " There is a banner, up at the front, it looks like a quilt. On it are probably a dozen iconographic representations of - who - of those who have come before us - of - well let me tell you - of Moses of Jesus of Mary de los desparecidos of San Bartolome de las casas, of Gandhi of Black Elk of San Isidro and Santa Maria of Mother Jones of Oscar Romero of Etty Hillesem of Sojourner Truth of Martin Luther King Jr. and more. And the call together is a call talking of each of them - of how they have brought us to where we are, of bridge builders, and martyrs and people who live their faith.
Richard Rohr is the introductory keynote speaker. Fran, every word you say is true. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk, ordained in 1970 who runs a place called the Center for Action and Contemplation. He says that he will start his talk with a piece of poetry and a piece of Scripture. He says how can we read Scripture if we cannot understand poetry - that in both there is meaning on about 10 different levels, so fraught in meaning and possibility. He sets up what becomes the theme for the evening - in Mary Oliver's poetry he brings up that there are two types of fire: the lone, heroic, individual, and the fire of participation - of unitive consciousness, of being inherently, intrinsically connected.
Then he reads from Exodus 3: "Here I am" - that the litmus test to refrain from ideology is to ask your self - am I PRESENT with another person, that the most personal is really what becomes the most universal.
He defines for us: politics is what you do publicly. Spirituality is why you do it, personally. One without the other - both become corrupt. Exodus talks of God freeing enslaved people - that from the very beginning, the very establishing of the Judeo-Christian tradition politics and spirituality are only a verse apart. He defines enslaved - saying that it when you cannot imagine an alternative - when you are captive to the status quo. He then asks us - isn't this city [DC] enslaved? And aren't many of us enslaved in conceiving of the church?
And this next part is what moved me - He remarks on the fact that a friend of his says that any intimation in religion that this is about the individual is an economic concept with a moralistic façade - that having "my soul saved" is ill-disguised narcissism. Western modern Christianity, he says, has become largely about self-validation - about being good enough and worthy enough to be saved individually. He remarks "don't even go down that worthiness road". Its only collectively, he writes, that we are the glory of god. This is not about "making ourselves better" - and he remarks on law at this point as well. That law as established by politics AND by religion do the same thing - try to make you better - the private self trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps. And religion operates, as much as we might hate to admit it - on the Santa Claus model - totally bowled over by reward and punishment, naughty and nice. Its not possible, through law to transform yourself.
This, he says, is where this goes wrong. For integrity has been substituted ideology - prefabricated conclusions without the journey - the transformative journey - transformative does not mean changing the individual - transformative means realizing that the ego, the individual, has so little to do with it. Transformation has to do with becoming a part of something greater.
He talks about steps on this journey - the first step, by which most do not pass is recognition and awe of outer authority - the second is something that (and I laughed when he said this) many people go through in college, and their 20s - a recognition of inner authority - an assurance and a trust in oneself and one's own logic and intellect. And the third step, he writes, is both an end to the inner ego and the outer authority on their own - a balance of the inner and outer authority such that we do well to stand on the shoulders of ancestors who have come before us but also to understand that the only experience we can trust and the only understanding that we really have is our own inner.
Of course, he says, you have to know the rules before you can break them. He says he thinks this conference is well-timed - that we are on the beginnings of the death of civil religion. That is, he says, the "best disguise for a real spirituality is religion" - keeping the individual safe, and in control - morally on high ground - saved, if you will without transformation or real solidarity.
But, he says, he cannot give up on Jesus - because his starting point is not sin, the way we are so often told. His starting point is suffering. He cracks a joke about modern religion, and modern religious leaders as being "sin managers".
[The question I have here is what we do when religion has caused this suffering - previous to the first session I went into the American Indian museum of the Smithsonian with friends - Christianity was instrumental in the breaking down of a functional indigenous tradition - and at the same time "swooped in to save".]
Authentic religious experience, he remarks is falling into a communion, a togetherness, that you did not create, when you don't know what there is to prove or rationalize any more.
Then he begins to talk about prayer, and this is as well touched me very deeply. Prayer so often is something functional and practical (Jim Wallis remarks on this later, in a voice saying "God, Aunty Bessie is very sick" and God booming back "Oh, really? I didn't know - " Richard Rohr remarks - "We don't need to inform God - God already knows - "
Instead, he engages in what he calls "contemplation" - participating - letting it happen to you - flow through - getting to a place when your ‘egotistical' mind can let go and be out of control for awhile.
This is the misconception he feels with Christianity - that we can still be in control of ourselves as individuals (but no one else will know it). He reminds us that in the mature forms of all religions it is about letting go.
He says that prayer is whatever it is that you are doing when all of you is there - that through that is possible to overcome the distinction between secular and sacred spaces.
Finally he talks about truth as being that which we already know is true on the deepest level. And I hear him on that - its not prescribed for us - and we already know it is there.
Jim Wallis spoke briefly in response to Richard Rohr. He speaks later tonight so I'll have much more to say I'm sure - but he said one thing that struck me:
You can't be a contemplative without eventually having to bring your prayer in to the world - and you can't be an activist without eventually having to become a contemplative.
We will not think ourselves into a new way of living, we will live ourselves into a new way of thinking. And prayer is about transformation -
Jim Wallis was a stutterer. Who knew - he has a booming voice, and is hilariously funny.
More on Jim Wallis' talk later - but he speaks in a manner in which I think it must have been to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak.
Signing off now so that I can make it to the next session!
Heather
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