Musings

The Empty Self

 
“Hell and heaven are in the human mind.”
 
 Walking down a narrow, cobbled alley in Lisbon, holding Roberta’s hand, I spied a painted tile on a wall, with this quote from “F.P.”  I was intrigued.  A few days later, I saw a volume in a bookstore window in the Alfama district, with a picture of the author, Fernando Pessoa, on the front, and made the connection.  I did a bit of homework and my intrigue deepened. I ducked into another “livreria’ and bought a collection of his work in Portuguese and English. (“Forever Someone Else” – Assirio and Alvim, publishers.) 

Pessoa wrote voluminously, but was published sparsely in his lifetime.  Only years after his death did he become a celebrated figure in Portugal and beyond.  That would be more tragic except for the nature of his poetry.  He wrote this after hearing a woman sing while reaping grain in a field:  “Ah, to be you while being I! To have your glad unconsciousness and be conscious of it!...Make my soul your weightless shadow, and take me with you, away!”
 
“Pessoa” is Portuguese for “person”.  This late 19^th- early 20^th c  poet lived into the anonymous nature of his last name.  He attributed much of his work to multiple characters with distinct personas and perspectives, as a way of prying himself loose from any fixed identity. He claimed to have no self, to be no more than a locus of experience:  “I am merely the place where things are thought or felt.”  His aim was to be like a pane of glass:  “transparent to light, pattered by the rain trickling down, warmed only by the sun, and reflecting a little.”  Just to see things as they are, not as convention would name or define them.  “And who notices the moon except to admire not it but the beautiful light it radiates?”  He aimed to notice the moon: just to experience experience itself, without second or third or fourth derivatives, without metaphysically processing it into ideas. 
 
He was most assuredly not a religious person.  And it does not appear that he was familiar with the Christian contemplative tradition.  But his poems resonate deeply with the insights of the mystics of the world’s faiths. 
 
“And so there’s no advantage in giving false names to things, nor in giving them any names at all.”  In terms of current secular meditation practice, he was a practitioner of submorphic mindfulness: focusing on raw, direct experience itself, while letting go of any causes or stories or explanations for it.  Instead of feeling wind on your face, in submorphic mindfulness you let go of wind as the cause of the sensation on your skin, and just attend to the sensation itself.  “What matters is to know how to see,” he wrote: “To know how to see without thinking.  To know how to see when seeing.  And not think when seeing – Not see when thinking.”  “Things have no meaning.  Things are the only hidden meaning of things.”
 
In terms of Christian contemplative practice, his could be compared to the way of the Cloud of Unknowing, a 14^th century British text of apophatic mysticism.  You get to God by dropping words, categories, and definitions of experience into the cloud of unknowing, so that your soul can rise unburdened into communion with the divine.  “To think about God is to disobey God, since God wanted us not to know him…”  This line harmonizes with one from Simone Weil, the 20^th c French philosopher and theologian:  “Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) speaks too much about holy things.”  By not “knowing” God, by releasing all assumptions and theologies and speculations about God, we can enter into the direct experience of God.  
 
For Pessoa, God was absence of self.  As Pessoa strove to not-be, so God for him was not.  God was kenosis itself – the emptying of one’s self, so that one can directly and clearly experience the world, godfully.   I close with this poem of his, which he wrote in English:
 
Inversion
 
Here in this wilderness
            Each tree and stone fills me
            With the sadness of a great glee.
God in His altogetherness
            Is whole-part of each stone and tree.
 
An inner outward seeingness
            Makes my clear self unknown.
            (O Godfully alone!)
God in His overbeingness
            Survives His death each tree and every stone.
 
Ay, in the barkness and clodfulness
            Of tree and sand and stone
            God is only is His Own,
God in all his godfulness,
            Whose concrete soul’s each thing’s abstraction.
 

In Defense of Higher Education

for discussion in the ZOE progressive Christian campus ministry network

11-16-23

Jim Burklo

 

Dear campus ministry colleagues in the ZOE network:

 

Higher education is under attack.

And we are unusually gifted with the ability to defend it.

Right-wing “cancel culture” warriors are actively working to take over colleges and universities across the country.  Florida makes the news as its governor appoints ultra-conservatives with dubious academic credentials to manage state-supported schools.  But the phenomenon is spreading.  Reactionaries blame universities for producing so-called “woke” students who then go on to vote for progressive candidates.  Taking control of higher education is a holy grail of right-wingers who want to stanch the current flow of young people away from their regressive social and political agendas.  Their goal is to get “parity” in the classroom for their points of view – which inevitably will result in a degradation of education, because their positions are mostly rooted in falsehood.  They aim to end faculty tenure, weaken or eliminate shared governance of universities by faculty, and intimidate or fire professors perceived as liberals.

This accelerating movement intersects with current events to gather a perfect storm on campuses across the country.  The Israel/Palestine conflict has spread to universities and colleges in the form of confrontations between students and among faculty and staff.  In a conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, powerful voices demand the silencing of students who call for an end to the bombing of civilians in Gaza and for an end to the occupation of Palestine. 

Another version of cancel culture, on the left, erodes the right to free speech on campus for which students struggled so valiantly in the 1960’s.  A substantial number of students and faculty want to ban, suppress, or drown out speech that is perceived to be politically incorrect.  Forgotten by many is principle that the answer to bad speech is better speech, and that higher education must allow space for uncomfortable conversations.  

To stir the storm further, a pernicious fundamentalist Christian movement has higher education in its cross-hairs.  It is closely bound to the conservative political movement’s attacks on colleges.  It seeks “dominion” over the “seven mountains” of culture – one of which is education.  Increasingly, the rhetoric of this dominionist movement is openly anti-democratic and violent, advocating a takeover of the country’s institutions by any means necessary.  Fundamentalist campus ministries are the beachhead of this kind of Christianity at colleges and universities.  They are openly hostile to the mission of the schools where they operate, telling their students to ignore what they hear in the classroom and adhere to their version of “Bible truth” instead.  Evangelical Christianity is in steep decline in America, but that makes it more dangerous.  Instead of blaming its backward doctrines for its loss of adherents, its leaders blame “demonic forces” – including professors and progressive Christians – who must be crushed at any cost.

Higher education is in a lot more trouble than college and university presidents are willing to admit.  They have multiple constituencies and sub-groups to placate, each with divergent interests:  politicians, donors, parents, students, and faculty.  Administrators are taking flak from all sides, discouraging them from standing up for the best interests of their institutions.

But progressive Christians on campus can and should speak out in defense of secular higher education. 

Our voices matter because we created secular higher education in this country!  Very many prestigious colleges and universities, both private and public, began with the sponsorship of what are now known as progressive Christian churches.  As they developed, we liberated these institutions from identification with our denominations, because we believed in the mission of secular higher education.  To this day, we continue in this commitment, situating ourselves on these campuses as progressive Christian communities of students, celebrating the compatibility of our faith with the untrammeled inquiry of the secular academy.

Progressive Christianity and secular universities co-created each other.  As science began to flourish at European universities, scholars began to train that approach on the study of religion.  Our forebearers were the Christians who embraced the resulting new insights of critical, historical biblical scholarship.  In turn, we established many prestigious universities and colleges in this country.

While we challenge our colleges and universities to serve the common good rather than subordinate themselves to moneyed interests, we have always supported their commitment to academic freedom. 

So we are friends of secular higher education, which needs friends more than ever - especially friends who are able to articulate and promote a moral case for its well-being and flourishing.

Our voices matter because we follow the Christ, who leads us to the truth that sets us free.  Truth that isn’t bound by doctrine or dogma.  Truth that, as it is progressively revealed, casts more light on our tradition and affords it new interpretations.  Truth that calls us to deeper love for all people and beings, and for our planet, manifested in action for peace and justice.  Truth that emerges from critical examination, tested propositions, through emerging consensus.

The missions of progressive Christianity and of secular higher education are compatible and mutually supportive.  And in order to remain that way, the academy must be free from religious control and free from political manipulation.  Progressive ministries on campus speak out and act independently and prophetically, calling higher education to account for the common good – and defending it from those who would degrade it.

 

In Defense of Academic Freedom:

A Progressive Christian Manifesto  (draft)

(This is a conversation-starter --- for discussion at our ZOE Zoom on December 5.  How would you change/refine it?)

We are progressive Christian students and ministry leaders on campuses around the United States.  We are deeply concerned with the serious threats to academic freedom and freedom of expression aimed at our colleges and universities today.  As the current generation of the progressive Christians who founded so many prestigious institutions of secular higher education in years past, we feel a special obligation to protect our legacy today.

We are united in resistance to the current right-wing movement to take control of our schools. Its proponents seek to indoctrinate students and drive out professors who don’t support their agenda.

We oppose all attempts to inject right-wing dogma into curricula.  In the classroom, we support debate about what is debatable, and we stand up for the right to debate what’s not debatable in the quad outside the classroom. 

We are united in support of academic freedom, tenure protections for professors, and governance shared between faculty and administration.   We oppose politically-motivated attempts to harass or fire our professors.

We follow Jesus, who leads us to seek truth wherever it may be found – even if it contradicts our assumptions and beliefs, even if it might be revealed by people who do or say things that cause us discomfort. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, and that begins by listening to them.  We believe that the answer to offensive speech is kind speech, not the suppression of speech.

Academic freedom and freedom of expression are inseparable from our religious freedom on campus.  Our faith moves us to join our fellow students and our faculty in protecting the integrity of our colleges and universities from those who would turn them into right-wing echo chambers. 

 

 

 

Placehood

 

This past summer, I joined Bruce Urbschat – “Urb”, to me - my best friend from my childhood in Columbiana, Ohio - in a four-day stay at his family’s home.  It is essentially untouched and intact from the day in 1966 when my family moved to California.  The same family pictures, now faded, are on the walls.  If the interior has been painted, I could not tell.  The basement is moldier, but otherwise the same.  The kitchen is intact, seemingly smaller now compared to how it appeared when I was smaller myself.  A simulacrum of Urb’s father, Chet, moves through the rooms in the form of his son Bill.  Bruce comes regularly from his home in Philadelphia to help his brother maintain the place. 

There are new housing developments on Columbiana’s outskirts.  Firestone, the outsized, handsome park given to the town by the native-son founder of the tire company, has undergone major upgrades:  it remains the pride and joy of the community. But otherwise, like the Urbschat house, the town is nearly the same as I left it after spending most of my childhood there. 

Right behind the house, and not far from the house where I grew up, all of a quarter-mile away, the Youngstown and Southern Railway line passes through.  Bruce and I walked the tracks down to the woods where we used to look for fossils, build forts, catch minnows, and pick blackberries.  The tracks are in bad shape now, sagging into rotting ties.  Yet every so often, the train lumbers along slowly, carrying construction debris.  A railroad that time forgot.  And I was good with that, as Urb and I retraced our childhood exploits.

I finished seventh grade in Columbiana before our family left town.  The school combined junior and senior high school in one dingy brick building.  It has been replaced by a better facility at the edge of town.  The grim old edifice, close to the center of town, is now occupied by an evangelical Christian school.  Returning to the town after only a few short visits since my childhood, I realized that the geography of my subconscious mind is a mirror of the town’s layout and features. 

There weren't a lot of compelling distractions in Columbiana.  So regular visits to the town library were a big deal.  Bruce and I read books and talked about them together.  On the way home from school, before going our separate ways, we'd stop at a big rock sitting near a street corner, each of us putting a foot on it, continuing our speculative conversations about the nature of the universe.  The muggy Midwestern air hovered over the town like a lid on a pot, simmering its contents.  A great place to develop rich interior lives, which Urb and I have cultivated ever since.

Columbiana makes sense to me.

Columbiana makes sense of me. 

If you want to know me, take a walk along its streets, some of them still revealing the original bricks under the asphalt. 

I grew up there with kids who thought I was exotic because I was born in California.  Kids who had never even been to Pittsburgh or Cleveland, 75 miles away.  And had no apparent urge to do so.  Everything essential for them was there.  They were each other’s people, having been there for generations. Urb’s family tree of town denizens leans all the way back to shortly after its founding in 1803.  Urb is Columbiana: all the way in, all the way down.

Columbiana, small as it was, did not feel stifling to me.  Nobody I knew locked the doors of their houses.  We kids ran free in the woods, along the tracks, in the park, until Mom rang the dinner bell.  Columbiana did not exist behind a wall.  It had no clear boundary.  It blurred into the countryside around it. 

Columbiana is the navel of its own universe.  The center of the town is a circle around which traffic flows north, east, south, and west.  It has its own subtle gravity holding it together and drawing people back into it.  A gravity that attracted me to make my summer visit.  It was as if I had a trace of iron in my solar plexus that picked up the town’s magnetism.

It is hard to wrap one’s mind, much less one’s soul, around a big city.  I lived in Los Angeles for years and loved it, but LA was never myself the way Columbiana was myself.  Unlike Cleveland and Pittsburgh, you can carry Columbiana in your pocket and rub it between your thumb and forefinger.  Columbiana carries you in its pocket and rubs you between Highways 7 and 14. 

My self-conception included Columbiana.  Once a person learns how to drive a car, its wheel becomes an extension of the driver’s body.  Columbiana was the natural extension of my body.  I didn’t just live in Columbiana.  I lived Columbiana. 

I’ve been carrying the town with me, driving it around the country, around the world, for 57 years.  When I visited it this summer, a fractal dimension of the town was returning to itself.  Columbiana’s trees were already lining my neural pathways, so seeing them along the streets stimulated within me an uncanny sensation.  Every step I took was strangely self-referential. 

Through my childhood in Columbiana, I developed personhood, and gained placehood as well.  From the circle in its center, I have gone north, east, south, and west, far into the wide world.  By Columbiana I am oriented… wherever I may go.

You Are Incomparable!

You are incomparable.

I am incomparable.

So why do we persist in comparing ourselves to others?   And suffering the frustration that results?

You and I are, as the scripture says, crowns of creation.  Little lower than the angels.  We’re microcosmic mirrors of the grand and glorious cosmos, another way of saying that we’re made in the image of God.  This is who we really are, so why don’t we revel in it?

We may be the crown of creation, but we’re also subject to all manner of delusions. 

We wander the world with a device in our pockets or purses almost all the time.  Is it really a smartphone?  Or would it better be described as a perverse mirror into which we gaze, wishing we looked like the people whose images appear on its screen, wishing we had their idyllic, carefully-curated lives.  It’s a cruel trick mirror that shows us who and what we aren’t, but feel like we could or ought to be. 

Meanwhile, the words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount ring true, down through the ages.  He says, don’t compare yourselves to each other.  Compare yourselves to the birds.  They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.  They neither wear designer clothes nor drive fancy cars nor augment their body parts.  Nor do they spend their days gazing into so called smart phones!

Let’s be like the birds, but only up to a point.  Roberta and I get a laugh out of a little bird who hovers near our house and has the habit of incessantly pecking at the mirrors on our cars.  It will do that for hours!  We studied up on why it does this.  It looks in the mirror, up close, and is convinced it is another bird encroaching on its space!  So it attacks it, having no idea that it is attacking its own image! 

I suppose that’s what we’re doing on our smart phones a lot of the time – attacking our own images – attacking ourselves - for not living up to the images of perfect people living perfect lives!  I saw the devastating effects of this on campus…. students comparing themselves to other students they considered more beautiful or handsome or happy or successful, or I should say had presented themselves as such.  This habit of comparison is a major contributing factor in the mental health crisis on college campuses almost everywhere.

Meanwhile, the truth is that you are beyond compare!  You are seriously awesome just exactly the way you are right now!  It took 13 billion years for you to get here, and here you are, an incredible creature with self-reflective consciousness, with absolutely phenomenal capacity for creativity and reasoning and story-making and story-telling.  The universe has evolved to create you in order for you to reflect the grandeur of the universe back to itself.  A high and noble task to which we are all called.  We are probably not the only self-and-universe-reflective beings in the cosmos, but we do know that none exist within a radius of 5.88 trillion miles from Planet Earth.  So let’s not compare ourselves to other people.  If you are going to compare yourself at all, compare yourself to the lifeless swirls of gas on Jupiter, the red dust of Mars, the lonesome, stony asteroids spinning around the sun.  And it will be obvious that indeed, you – just as you are, right now – are the crown of creation!

We compare who we are now with who we used to be, and that is another form of the problem, eh?  Who we used to be no longer exists, and cannot exist again.  So it’s an absurd comparison, but it’s a trap in our minds that we fall into, and have trouble climbing out of.  Ever been to a high school reunion?  It’s a mind-bender, right?  You see people who are no longer who they were, no longer occupying the places on the social totem pole that they used to hold, yet they’ve got the same names and some semblance of a resemblance to how they used to look.  You revert to the ways you used to torture yourself by comparing yourself to these people in high school, but the now absurdity of it is up in your face.  At the last reunion of my high school that I attended, the 20^th, I walked around a corner and found a classmate with her back pasted to the wall and a look of panic and horror on her face.  Her eyes were bugged out and her mouth was hanging open.  In order to peel her off the wall I engaged her in compassionate conversation.  Yes, this is a really really weird scene, and yes, you’re gonna be okay….

We want to fit in, we want to be socially appropriate.  And so we compare ourselves to those around us, to sort out the norms for behavior.  Obviously nothing problematic with that.  But when we’ve done a reasonable job of being socially appropriate, without sacrificing our dignity, there’s no need to keep going with comparing ourselves to others.  It quickly loses its social utility and becomes a dead weight on our souls.  It keeps us from being and fully enjoying who we are, where we are, how we are. 

A few weeks ago, looking at his own body at bedtime, my three year old grandson Jake asked my daughter, “What’s inside my leg?”  You can imagine the kind of stuff going through his mind, as he pondered the possible answers.  Chewed-up chicken nuggets?  Mushy apples?  Cheese sandwiches?  Well of course there’s no cheddar inside his leg.  Its contents are much more marvelous than that.  Somehow the food he puts into his body gets completely transsubstantiated into a subcutaneous magic kingdom of complex tissues and vessels pulsing with life.  What’s inside Jake’s leg is a marvel and a wonderment worthy of our worshipful awe every day, all the time.  Why would I compare my leg with anybody else’s, when I can be boggled with admiration for my own leg?  At bedtime tonight, have a look at your leg.  Look at it long enough to be totally blown away by what’s inside of it.  Jake’s leg is incomparable.  My leg is incomparable.  Your leg is incomparable.  And so’s the rest of you!  Body and soul.  Hallelujia!  Amen.