Dreaming the Future Closer

[Brief Preface: I do feel lately like my soul is moving up and down the axis of things, jumping from things humble and profane to things lofty and almost too abstract for sense to come of them.  My posting seems to reflect that well, though perhaps a touch schizophrenic from the outside.  I'm not sure what to make of it, just observing.]

Emerson’s essay “On Friendship” serves as an intellectual touchstone for me.  In saying that, I don’t mean to suggest that I accept its contents as given and unadulterated truth.  Rather, I mean the term ‘touchstone’ quite literally.  I return to it, read it, contemplate it, and find myself diverging from portions of it.  Yet I never feel like I’m moving beyond it.  Quite like a good conversation, it inspires and inspiration doesn’t settle well with straightforward right or wrong, settled or unsettled.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if someone already caught this, but it’s novel to me right now.  I was watching the season finale of Dexter on CBS and it dawned on me all of a sudden why, for all of the gore and sociopathy, Dexter seemed so familiar.  The plot, the character, are modeled on superhero comics.  In fact, not just any superhero, but an iconic and powerful one–Spiderman.  There are significant variations, of course, but the structural parallels are strong.

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Just something I ran across last night:  

The Dahomean believes, and will say with conviction, that each narrative “history” is fixed and unique, both in form and content.  We tried the experiment of reading to a cult head two different versions of the myth giving the quarrel of the two brothers, Sogbo, the Thunder, and Sagbata, the Earth….The unhesitating reply was that the gods do not reveal the same things to everyone, and that each narrator was telling “true history” according to the way the vodun have given it to him.—Melville J. & Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative (18)

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I’ve been dipping in and out of this book, The God Who May Be.  It’s a good book, though perhaps over-steeped in deconstruction for my personal tastes.  Still, I won’t be too critical of a book that tries to conceive of how religions can develop a sense of the future that is full of possibility rather than apocalypse.

Still, this post isn’t about that book, but reading it triggered that part of my mind where all my Biblical images live.  When another issue came up, I found myself thinking through it by way of the Burning Bush image.

Like much imagistic thinking, it has its limits and I probably go a little too far in pursuing it.  But it’s meaningful still in its excess.

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The conversation over on the previous entry (including  Oli pointing me toward this), combined with revisiting some of the stuff I wrote and read as young’un, has posed this very basic question for me: how do I understand what spirit is and how it operates? 

I have a sketch of an answer, one that would need a good deal more detail, but serves workably for sharing.

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The notion of magick in the Crowley-esque sense of the term tends to haunt modern polytheism.  Magick seems to run counter to the devotional elements we tend to see as properly religious.  Praising the divine seems to be one thing, plying the divine for favors quite another.  In general, both are seen as acceptable, but their relationship is a little obscure.

Crowley’s phrasing exacerbates the problem by making magick primarily a question of Will, of training the Will to exert itself over the world.  There are all sorts of qualifications here, since that isn’t the Will in the sense of ego, but Will in the sense of higher self.  And training the Will isn’t simply a matter of getting what you want but of moving in harmony with the higher Will so that you want what is proper to it. 

Still, this seems a bit different than the attitude that directs itself toward a divine presence outside of and beyond itself.  The importance of banishing, for example, points toward a defensive posture toward the world of spirit.  In more devotional frames, we tend to think that too much asking is a bit gauche. 

To paraphrase a friend, we have the sense that the gods have better things to do than just help us with some money.  What encounter we do have with the divine through devotional work tends to be received as an injunction rather than as a pact we must examine before accepting.

This pans out at the level of ritual, too, with there being two sorts of ritual, the sort meant to manipulate and the sort meant to praise.  The problem isn’t unique to paganism and we can see variations of it Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist, and other traditions.  The question of self-worth gets posed pointedly in these discussions.  How important am I in relation to the divine?

I don’t work well in that magickal mindset and I suspect I’m not alone in that.  It jars with my basic reason for pursuing spirituality.  Yet I feel like not praying for things is equally problematic, especially since so much of my practice has to do with the sacredness of the world, not just localized in divinities ‘out there’ but in the world ‘right here.’

The approach I take is that praying for something is more than asking for some thing in your life.  It’s asking for the divine to enter into your life through that thing you pray for and giving your promise that you will nurture that spark of the divine as it enters that place.  The prayer does not end with the request or the granting of the request, but continues as we put that blessing to use.

We ought, whenever possible, to use that blessing to deepen our connection with the divinity granting it.  In so doing, we bring that part of the world into closer harmony with that sacred divinity.

I don’t think that’s solely an intellectual distinction, either.  In making requests in this way, it shifts the way in which we relate to the divine and very possibly changes how the divine responds to us.  It makes the self a point in the circulation of blessings rather than the endpoint of them.

My joy, my happiness, becomes an opportunity for shared joy.  I may manage and care for them for myself, because my self is the point of entry for them, but my self is not the measure of them.

Unlike Protagoras, I do not think man is the measure of all things.  I define my religiosity in great part by the notion that there are standards by which man is judged that man does not create.  The effort to reduce religion to man, to the symbols we create, to the movements of our psyche alone, undoes the movement of devotion so central to it.

This isn’t to do away with reflecting about who we pray to and for what.  But it becomes less a manner of caution (don’t make a bad deal, get cheated) than of care (what blessings can you make the most of).

[Just to get the rough outline of this out of my head] 

In her essay on human rights, Weil makes this astounding statement about what defines a person.  She says in clear terms that she cannot imagine an account of ethics that would make a person’s body merely incidental to their person.  She speaks clearly about how gauging out someone’s eyes does not merely change their body, but assaults their very person.

Yet, how much ethical thought is charged with making our body incidental to our self?  Carried further, how much religious thought is charged with making the physical manifestations of an object incidental?  How often does someone reply that this holy object was *just* an object when they are confronted with its destruction?

When we look at ritual, at the work that goes into investing holy objects, I can’t help but think we wander far astray if we see those rituals, those objects, as merely symbolic.  While I do not want to underestimate the importance of meditation, of inward work, nor do I want to underestimate the inherent value in sacred objects, value that resides outside of our ideas of them. 

Through sacred things, the world of spirit and the world of things enter into communion.  The destruction of them, while it may never ‘kill’ the world of spirit, does real damage to the divine, to its mingling with the world.  We do not simply honor what is ever present, but through our actions secure a place for it in the world, secure a channel through which it may flow.

This is not a one-sided argument for never destroying sacred things ever.  In fact, the whole question of being sacred gets bound up with the question of sacrifice, with its potential destruction.  But what it does point toward is a mindfulness to the sacred that sees its real presence in particular things and takes actions in regard to that sacred thing with that real presence in mind.

The tibetan sand mandala may be one of the most well-known exemplars to draw upon.  The mandala is sacred, made sacred through the ritual process of its creation.  At the same time, its creation is bound up with the sacrifice of it at the conclusion of the process, but that destruction is itself part and parcel of its sacred character. 

In a similar way, we might consider a soldier who, mindful of the incredibly precious body that they are, still offers up that body to damage and destruction for the sake of another, hopefully more profound, sort of sacredness. 

It’s not always about preserving the sacred at all costs, but acknowledging its presence wherever we find it, and attending to it.  So that, to the best of our very limited abilities, we come to secure a greater place for the sacred throughout life, destroying according to deeper rhythms than purely selfish hungers.

So, this is something that has been brewing in the back of my mind.  It’s hardly a novel insight, but perhaps there may be some novelty in how I bring the insight to fruition.  The premise is simple enough: there is no one reason for someone to engage with a religion.  Quite the opposite, there are a great many different reasons, though one or more may play a greater role than others.

This suggests that we might be able to sketch, in outline, a sort of typology of the different sorts of religious devotee, based around their central concerns.  As a typology, this should come with all the appropriate qualifications, namely that they are not about labeling a person into perpetuity, but about addressing the given space they occupy presently.  So, while I will talk about kinds of people, what I am really talking about are kinds of motivations, which a given person may change.

This is a quick post, so it’s not meant to be anywhere near exhaustive, just suggestive.  Right now, there are three major types of engagement that leap to mind.

Problem solver: These sorts come to a religion seeking from it solutions to their problems.  I think this group catches most flack for having an insincere faith, though sometimes unjustly.  Just as the problems a person may face can vary, so will the exact reasons for a problem solver’s approach to religion. 

Perhaps they seek a material benefits.  They may have a sick mother they hope to make better through prayer, a crime they hope to elude punishment by promises of reform to a higher power, or just be pleading for a break that would change their life.  These folks are often the most maligned, though, in truth, there are few religions that do not hold out some hope of just these miracles.  There are also few within a religion who do not hold out hope to, at least, see evidence of just these sorts of explicit benefits. 

Perhaps they seek out moral justification.  More than a few people embrace religion for the clear road map it provides them in terms of moral behavior.  They turn to spiritual authorities for moral certitude.  We tend to demean these people less within our own religion, though we often mock them when we encounter them in another religion, ascribing to them (and sometimes their religion in general) a sort of zealotry.

Perhaps they seek out intellectual satisfaction.  Religions often have elaborately complex metaphysical and ontological systems, which appeal to those whose restless minds need to find some fundamental order in the world.  There is a tendency to lump these folks with the moral folks, but they may appear separately.

Traditionalist: They come to a religion either because it provides them with a feeling of community.  While it may revolve around the same axes as problem solving (material, moral, intellectual), it may just as well be about a more basic commonality of shared stories and history.  The oft-discussed ‘ethnically Jewish’ individual well exemplifies that latter type. 

They may not have an investment in the religion as a problem solving mechanism in any way, they may find the community it supports comfortable in a very deep sense.  The sorts of jokes and stories and behaviors are comforting almost in and of themselves, for the way they embody a being with others.

Grappler with god(s): These folks have had an experience that suggests to them a spiritual dimension of experience that is not satisfied by ‘mundane’ or ‘profane’ life.  The experience need not be mystical in the most high-falutin’ sense of the term, with being ravished by G-D or what have you.  It could just as well be a nagging sense that the world as lived isn’t quite all there is.

These folks come to the religion in order to find a way to access that ‘more.’  They often seek some way to sustain a fleeting experience of divine intimacy.  They may feel that their experience indicates that they must do something, that they owe a debt to the divine that they hope religion will help them fulfill.

Now, while I think the latter motivation is the most uniquely religious, I have some concern that an over-emphasis of it makes it too easy to think of those without it as falsely religious.  It seems a bit like the old discussion of learning styles–those who end up teaching tend to have a very particular learnign style that is statistically abnormal.  If they don’t realize this, they don’t actually do a good job of teaching, because they channel their realizations to others in ways that make it difficult for them to absorb.

Those with the latter motivation have a nasty tendency to think of themselves as properly religious whereas others are not, merely going through the motions.  This strong distinction is inimical to a religious community, through which the latter type may, in fact, fulfill their sense of calling.  They are, ironically, inimical to the community.

Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor may have had a point in this regard, but only to the extent that the sincerely ‘holy’ mistake their experience of religion as the only proper way of experiencing religion.  When they are doing their part to nurture the community, to ground themselves out within it, they may become the soul of their worlds. 

Okay, so I usually don’t do the commenting on the news thing, but I’m making a special exception in this case.  Maybe it’s that I have just seen this, too.  But I want to dissect this one for a moment.  This won’t make a lot of sense if you don’t follow that first link. 

Maybe it’s just my general despair at how politicians so easily mouth ideas of republican and democratic virtues without the hard choices that would back them up when it includes treating people different than you according to those values.

First, let’s bracket the most obvious question which has not been quite entirely settled, namely as to whether this is, in fact, actual santeria ritual or something else.

Now, let’s follow out the logic of the situation a little.  The Supreme Court has established that animal sacrifice is legal and protected like other forms of religious action.  Which means that Mr. Valdez has no real legal footing here.  So, what he’s doing suggests he’s making a political statement, relying on the fact that nothing will likely come of the investigation into who left the remains. 

He gets to take a stand about “how things are in Texas” (i.e. not like everywhere else), which is a favorite posture for Texan politicians.  Score.  He gets to satisfy the conservative-ish Christians (we don’t tolerate those heathens here).  Score.  He even, if he plays his cards right, gets to satisfy the meat squeamish and vegetarian.  Score.

Hmm.  Interesting.  Now, let’s place some bets.  Will he broaden his concern about animal cruelty to target the meat production industry?  Will he make moves to put an end to it entirely?  Because if the sacrifice of chickens constitutes animal cruelty, wow, he is going to be a busy, busy man dealing with the far more inhumane situations that arise in the meat industry. 

I wonder, does he support the Texas cattle ranchers?  They slaughter animals, too.* 

What all this talk obscures is that sacrifice in general occurs humanely, with an eye to the animal suffering as little distress as possible.  Sacrifice is an inherently small-scale production with the participants putting a lot more attention on the individual animal, so it’s far easier to be humane than it is in large-scale meat production. 

If it’s the waste of those particular chickens that constitutes cruelty, well, again, Mr. Valdez will be terribly busy dealing with the waste of the meat industry.

What’s frustrating, then, is it starts to look like Mr. Valdez isn’t really concerned about the animals, but about a political opportunity out of the event.  Politicians have to do that from time to time, sure, but he’s doing so at the expense of those santeria practitioners, who are also part of his constituency. 

He’s making implied threats to them, discouraging them from the practice of their religion.  He is also, thereby, implying that they are to certain extent outside his protection, suggesting they might be more free to ridicule than others, or worse.  He has an obligation to his constituency, not just to those he imagined voted for him or who will vote for him.  He has a civic duty in which he is failing. 

I’m not saying he’s not in a hard place, but that’s why politicians used to be admired, because they stood up and did their duty even when it was hard.  They took hold of their civic duty and bore it as nobly as they could, even when that meant taking some flack from those around them.

I really don’t want this to come across as sarcastic, because this story raises some very important issues about how we treat the animals that compose our food chain.  It raises questions about how we relate to them and the obligations that we owe them.  I don’t want that to disappear beneath my frustration for how this case is being handled.

At the same time, it just feels like a knee-jerk accusation of animal cruelty is just plain wrong-headed.  The treatment of these chickens was likely significantly better than the treatment of many other chickens before slaughter. 

The accusation conceals the real problems with our (non) relation to the animals that become our food by shifting the focus away from that toward these rituals.  It projects the real ethical challenges with our food consumption onto them, merely because we have had to see these animals while we can safely ignore the other animals we eat. 

*And, to be clear here, too, I don’t think Texas cattle ranchers deserve blanket criticism, either.  While there are problems with the meat industry as a whole, blanket criticisms won’t really get us that far in making it better.  It accuses the innocent with the guilty, allows us to forget that people who raise livestock can (and often do) actually care a good deal for those animals.

My wife and I were talking about the most recent episode of CSI, featuring a murder that occurs at a rodeo.  We both felt that this episode, moreso than a lot of last season or perhaps last few seasons, captured something that was inimitably about the CSI experience. 

She observed that one of the things people don’t seem to get about murder mystery driven shows like CSI is that they aren’t about a voyeuristic attitude to death, but about a voyeuristic attitude to life.  That’s just brilliant, really, and it exactly captures what I liked about CSI when it started.  The death provides an occasion to examine a life, sometimes a whole microworld of lives.  Like a bat’s sonar, it throws the world into sharp outline.

The detective is an essential part of the process and in this Grissom, at his best, provided an essential structuring role.  His quirkiness, his macabre objectivity, cast a gentle light over the ensuing investigations.  His perpetual out-of-place self provided a remarkably non-judgmental window into some very strange social circles.

At the same time, he wasn’t immoral.  He had a strong sense of right and wrong, they were just unhindered by squeamishness.  He could, at the opening, make an off-color joke about the situation in which a body was recovered and by the end look calmly across the table at the convicted killer and respond to their layers of self-justification with a simple, “but you didn’t deal with these problems, you killed them, you made their resolution impossible.”

Between those two moments, he spun out ideas, explored theories, letting nothing but the evidence he discovered guide his judgments.  Biases were present, but quickly abandoned when unsupported by later information.  Alternative lifestyles were not demeaned, but regarded with a certain affectionate bemusement.

What might have been viewed as gross or deviant, became mere variation, a delightful panoply of human life.  The deviants were not inhuman, just differently human, beautiful in the way a strange new insect could be beautiful, fulfilling a secret and wondrous purpose if we only had the eyes to see into it.  Grissom arrived at the crime by befriending the world in which it occurred.  “Here, let me remove the disease so that you may return to your health.”

Compare this especially to the current portrayal of the lead in CSI: Miami, Horatio.  He is nothing but judgment, and the drama exists only to affirm that.  The evidence inexorably bears out whatever moral qualms he has with a person.  His insight, his judgment, his actions, are all impeccable.  When someone gets in his way or misleads him, the writing makes clear the fault lies in them, not Horatio.

So unerring is his judgment that we are provided with a storyline in which he goes to Brazil to engage in vigilantism, to kill a man who has threatened and hurt those dear to him.  There is no suggestion of moral ambiguity here.  Because Horatio judges him guilty and in need of execution, so are we.  Blood and death serve to illustrate Horatio’s perfection, an inhuman ideal who justifies our prejudices.

Beneath Horatio’s piercing eyes, difference becomes sin, a sign of the corruption that led to murder.  The acquaintances are so many already-fallen suspects.  It’s not a question of who is guilty, but of who is more guilty, who is the most guilty.  All along the way, Horatio uncovers other crimes, as if the whole world might be put behind bars to leave Miami empty but for the well-lit innocents who would remain behind to haunt it.