“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Chef, builder, journalist, counselor. At one level, these words appear to have little in common. From a different perspective, however, each of these words represents a line of human endeavor that serves to support and sustain society. These four words also represent career paths I have walked in a bid to make a place for myself in this world. At the same time, from a closer vantage, we find common threads running through and between these vocations. Cooking and construction require good hand-eye coordination. Journalism and counseling involve the ability to organize and communicate ideas. Thus, both over-arching and intrinsic themes can bind activities that at first blush appear unconnected.
Such is the situation with the world’s religions. Buddhism and Taoism initially appear to have little in common with Christianity and Islam. Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and aboriginal mythologies seem to have landed from different planets. Yet all of the world’s religions attempt to organize and communicate methods for understanding truths that reside outside immediate perception and even comprehension. They distill rhythmic poetry and eloquent narrative from the chaotic free verse and stream of consciousness prose we see around us.
Equally important, religions serve as repositories of societal tradition. The underlying theology or philosophy, and even accompanying liturgy, almost inevitably are gilded and inculcated by such cultural realities as language, garb, architecture, cuisine, etiquette, etc. Even a society’s political and economic agendas can be transposed onto its religions. Interestingly, and whether intentional or not, many of life’s inherent ambiguities and contradictions often find expression in religious symbolism. I believe it is safe to say the world’s religions collectively and individually admire and promote moral and harmonious life, even if they, in my humble opinion, often get the details wrong.
I have experienced many spiritual traditions over the years, never feeling completely at home in any one theology or philosophy. Today I consider myself a Buddhist Unitarian Universalist but attend Science of Mind services every Sunday, and visit Catholic or Episcopal churches on Christmas. I celebrate Passover each year, even when I do not get invited to a family’s home.
I choose to embrace a kind of agnostic theology that frees me to recognize the metaphoric wisdom found in so many spiritual traditions. I believe the subjectivity of human experience, especially of our transcendent world, means Baal and Thor and Elohim and Chakramuni are equally real to those who believe, and should be respected as such.
The 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, so very fortunately held in stunning Melbourne, drew together a dazzling variety of spiritual traditions and the rich cultural decoration that inevitably attend. Brilliant robes and austere vestments, curious hair styles and headdress, cosmetics and accoutrement – the mosaic was truly pointillist, finding coherence from micro- and macro-perspectives but dizzying and nonsensical at mid-focus.
Although strategies differed, session after session emphasized common interest in poverty alleviation, social justice, compassion, and environmental protection. Cultivating mutual respect through familiarity, as opposed to xenophobia, also was high on the agenda.
Most traditions proudly displayed objects of reverence, sacred documents, and practices to promote introspection or express celebration. Whirling Sufis, chanting Buddhists, canting Jews, drumming aboriginals, singing Christians – spiritual expression took many lovely forms at the Parliament. And, although prayer and meditation came in diverse form and expression, a desire to set aside the immediate and profane to focus on the infinite and divine formed a golden thread running through the bedazzled tapestry. As an aside, I felt a strange sense of personal pride when the spiritual and philosophical traditions to which I subscribe went on display during the Parliament.
The value of honestly listening to one another on spiritual matters cannot be over emphasized. Gustav Niebuhr addresses this point in Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America. He noted that, for example, the Catholic church made huge strides into the modern world when it issued the Nostra Aetate declaration as part of the Second Vatican Council. Referring to the world’s diverse faiths, “The Catholic church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions,” Niebuhr quotes the declaration on relations with non-Christians as saying.
The declaration’s recognition of “truth and grace” in the faiths of non-Catholics opened the door to “deeper understanding of spirituality and God and God’s workings in the world,” Niebuhr quotes Paul J. Knitter, a Catholic theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as saying. And so it is: Listening begets understanding which begets insight which begets more questions.
Languages are complex symbol sets designed to organize and communicate understanding, usually in the context of a specific society’s experiences and values – its anthropological realities. From my experience, this is exactly the service religions provide.
Using a panoply of symbols, religions solidify theological and philosophical theories in the context of a people’s collective experience, then propagate those understandings over generations. Religions also provide centers of gravity around which populations organize. The rites of passage, the family structures, the ethics and morals, the political and social agendas – all are shaped and enforced through religious institutions. Thus, as living repositories, religions beautifully reflect the eloquent diversity of human experience, even at its most contradictory height.
I have traditionally distrusted religion, believing any attempt to codify the inherently unknowable mysteries of life threatens to homogenize and disempower individual spirituality. Worse, polities that lock cultural truths in dogmatic amber inhibit, not advance, the human condition. It may be valuable to note that as a relatively new word, coined in the 13th century, “religion” is etymologically linked to the Latin word “religare,” which means to tie back or restrain.
I am particularly agitated by the treatment of gender nonconforming populations and archaic indictments perpetrated over millennia despite social evolution and enlightenment. Only two sessions at the Parliament examined sexual orientation and spirituality, even though almost all religions have something, usually derisive, to say on the subject. These two sessions attracted audiences that overflowed available space. Despite obvious interest, and despite the over-representation of sexual minorities in religious communities, many spiritual leaders insist on almost unflinching adherence to ancient edicts regarding sexual expression. Ugh!
The unwillingness to look honestly and realistically at the role of sexuality in modern society, particularly healthy expressions of same-sex attraction, is discouraging. That said, some religious communities, including Hindus and Native American tribes, reserve places of reverence for gender nonconforming people. Considering how controversial same-sex attraction is among many of the world’s religions, and considering one of the Parliament’s goals is promote healing the earth and hearing each other, I hope the next convocation will devote more serious attention to the subject. “The practice of dialogue has produced results that are way ahead of the theology,” Niebuhr quotes Knitter as saying. “Our experience exceeds our understanding.” Yes, structured institutions and their support materials almost always lag behind, serving at once to stabilize the human condition and inhibit its evolution.
[Not to beat a dead horse, and almost completely unrelated to the current topic, I like to note the word “eunuch” is linked to the Hebrew word saris, which is translated into Greek as eunouchoi – an overarching term for gender nonconforming men, including homosexuals. In ancient times they often served as chamberlains. According to the Book of Isaiah, no less a source than God said, “To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” And wasn’t it Jesus of Nazareth who said, according to the Book of Matthew, some eunuchs have been emasculated from birth, some are made that way by man, and some make themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. My point here is that while Leviticus may condemn men sleeping with men as with a woman, other parts of the Bible embrace a more accepting perspective. Isn’t it lovely how scripture, religion and humans can be so contradictory yet manage to survive? This theme was brilliantly clear at the Parliament.]
Much of what it is to be human is common and universal – need for food, procreation, sleep, shelter, etc. As a result, I would think relating to one another, even on the most intimate levels, would be as easy as accepting the reality of our shared adventure on this “Pale Blue Dot.” In truth, however, finding connections can be a challenge for almost everyone. The irony is that, because we all enjoy unique lives, we share the experience of perceived uniqueness and difference rather than homogeneity and synergy.
What does the poem at the start of this entry say to you? To me it speaks volumes about the unknowable aspects of life and the subjectivity of spirituality – prayer and worship in particular. It tells me that the world’s religions are all attempting to do the same thing: bring adherents into harmonious and happy existence with the universe writ large.
Adopting dissimilar and even antithetical strategies, the theologies are not always logical, constructive or even peaceful. Yet the human condition is not always logical, constructive or peaceful. Roberta Bondi, a professor emeritus of Church History at Emory University and author of A Place to Pray, recently noted that if prayer is the human end of a connection with the divine, then it is perfectly reasonable that prayer will be imperfect, rife with distractions, pleadings, selfishness, and such. And so it is with religion. For proof, just read the Psalms. As human institutions, religions will be political, they will be myopic, they will be “wrong.” Thus, it behooves us to look for the best in religion just as we look for the best in our fellow human, all the while calmly working to bend ignorant agendas to the good.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions offered a great opportunity for thousands of spiritual leaders and students to expand their world views and learn from one-another. It would be cumbersome to list all the speakers to whom I listened or the individuals from whom I learned. Suffice it to say the Parliament offered a cornucopia of ideas regarding the faithful devotion to ultimate reality, finding expression in a wonderful diversity reflecting the breadth and depth of humankind itself.
The lessons for this pastoral counselor in training would require an encyclopedia to fully articulate. I can say the experience reinforced my faith in humankind’s ability to respect and learn from difference while allowing each community to stand proud in its own traditions.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Chef, builder, journalist, counselor. At one level, these words appear to have little in common. From a different perspective, however, each of these words represents a line of human endeavor that serves to support and sustain society. These four words also represent career paths I have walked in a bid to make a place for myself in this world. At the same time, from a closer vantage, we find common threads running through and between these vocations. Cooking and construction require good hand-eye coordination. Journalism and counseling involve the ability to organize and communicate ideas. Thus, both over-arching and intrinsic themes can bind activities that at first blush appear unconnected.
Such is the situation with the world’s religions. Buddhism and Taoism initially appear to have little in common with Christianity and Islam. Judaism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and aboriginal mythologies seem to have landed from different planets. Yet all of the world’s religions attempt to organize and communicate methods for understanding truths that reside outside immediate perception and even comprehension. They distill rhythmic poetry and eloquent narrative from the chaotic free verse and stream of consciousness prose we see around us.
Equally important, religions serve as repositories of societal tradition. The underlying theology or philosophy, and even accompanying liturgy, almost inevitably are gilded and inculcated by such cultural realities as language, garb, architecture, cuisine, etiquette, etc. Even a society’s political and economic agendas can be transposed onto its religions. Interestingly, and whether intentional or not, many of life’s inherent ambiguities and contradictions often find expression in religious symbolism. I believe it is safe to say the world’s religions collectively and individually admire and promote moral and harmonious life, even if they, in my humble opinion, often get the details wrong.
I have experienced many spiritual traditions over the years, never feeling completely at home in any one theology or philosophy. Today I consider myself a Buddhist Unitarian Universalist but attend Science of Mind services every Sunday, and visit Catholic or Episcopal churches on Christmas. I celebrate Passover each year, even when I do not get invited to a family’s home.
I choose to embrace a kind of agnostic theology that frees me to recognize the metaphoric wisdom found in so many spiritual traditions. I believe the subjectivity of human experience, especially of our transcendent world, means Baal and Thor and Elohim and Chakramuni are equally real to those who believe, and should be respected as such.
The 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, so very fortunately held in stunning Melbourne, drew together a dazzling variety of spiritual traditions and the rich cultural decoration that inevitably attend. Brilliant robes and austere vestments, curious hair styles and headdress, cosmetics and accoutrement – the mosaic was truly pointillist, finding coherence from micro- and macro-perspectives but dizzying and nonsensical at mid-focus.
Although strategies differed, session after session emphasized common interest in poverty alleviation, social justice, compassion, and environmental protection. Cultivating mutual respect through familiarity, as opposed to xenophobia, also was high on the agenda.
Most traditions proudly displayed objects of reverence, sacred documents, and practices to promote introspection or express celebration. Whirling Sufis, chanting Buddhists, canting Jews, drumming aboriginals, singing Christians – spiritual expression took many lovely forms at the Parliament. And, although prayer and meditation came in diverse form and expression, a desire to set aside the immediate and profane to focus on the infinite and divine formed a golden thread running through the bedazzled tapestry. As an aside, I felt a strange sense of personal pride when the spiritual and philosophical traditions to which I subscribe went on display during the Parliament.
The value of honestly listening to one another on spiritual matters cannot be over emphasized. Gustav Niebuhr addresses this point in Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America. He noted that, for example, the Catholic church made huge strides into the modern world when it issued the Nostra Aetate declaration as part of the Second Vatican Council. Referring to the world’s diverse faiths, “The Catholic church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions,” Niebuhr quotes the declaration on relations with non-Christians as saying.
The declaration’s recognition of “truth and grace” in the faiths of non-Catholics opened the door to “deeper understanding of spirituality and God and God’s workings in the world,” Niebuhr quotes Paul J. Knitter, a Catholic theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as saying. And so it is: Listening begets understanding which begets insight which begets more questions.
Languages are complex symbol sets designed to organize and communicate understanding, usually in the context of a specific society’s experiences and values – its anthropological realities. From my experience, this is exactly the service religions provide.
Using a panoply of symbols, religions solidify theological and philosophical theories in the context of a people’s collective experience, then propagate those understandings over generations. Religions also provide centers of gravity around which populations organize. The rites of passage, the family structures, the ethics and morals, the political and social agendas – all are shaped and enforced through religious institutions. Thus, as living repositories, religions beautifully reflect the eloquent diversity of human experience, even at its most contradictory height.
I have traditionally distrusted religion, believing any attempt to codify the inherently unknowable mysteries of life threatens to homogenize and disempower individual spirituality. Worse, polities that lock cultural truths in dogmatic amber inhibit, not advance, the human condition. It may be valuable to note that as a relatively new word, coined in the 13th century, “religion” is etymologically linked to the Latin word “religare,” which means to tie back or restrain.
I am particularly agitated by the treatment of gender nonconforming populations and archaic indictments perpetrated over millennia despite social evolution and enlightenment. Only two sessions at the Parliament examined sexual orientation and spirituality, even though almost all religions have something, usually derisive, to say on the subject. These two sessions attracted audiences that overflowed available space. Despite obvious interest, and despite the over-representation of sexual minorities in religious communities, many spiritual leaders insist on almost unflinching adherence to ancient edicts regarding sexual expression. Ugh!
The unwillingness to look honestly and realistically at the role of sexuality in modern society, particularly healthy expressions of same-sex attraction, is discouraging. That said, some religious communities, including Hindus and Native American tribes, reserve places of reverence for gender nonconforming people. Considering how controversial same-sex attraction is among many of the world’s religions, and considering one of the Parliament’s goals is promote healing the earth and hearing each other, I hope the next convocation will devote more serious attention to the subject. “The practice of dialogue has produced results that are way ahead of the theology,” Niebuhr quotes Knitter as saying. “Our experience exceeds our understanding.” Yes, structured institutions and their support materials almost always lag behind, serving at once to stabilize the human condition and inhibit its evolution.
[Not to beat a dead horse, and almost completely unrelated to the current topic, I like to note the word “eunuch” is linked to the Hebrew word saris, which is translated into Greek as eunouchoi – an overarching term for gender nonconforming men, including homosexuals. In ancient times they often served as chamberlains. According to the Book of Isaiah, no less a source than God said, “To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” And wasn’t it Jesus of Nazareth who said, according to the Book of Matthew, some eunuchs have been emasculated from birth, some are made that way by man, and some make themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. My point here is that while Leviticus may condemn men sleeping with men as with a woman, other parts of the Bible embrace a more accepting perspective. Isn’t it lovely how scripture, religion and humans can be so contradictory yet manage to survive? This theme was brilliantly clear at the Parliament.]
Much of what it is to be human is common and universal – need for food, procreation, sleep, shelter, etc. As a result, I would think relating to one another, even on the most intimate levels, would be as easy as accepting the reality of our shared adventure on this “Pale Blue Dot.” In truth, however, finding connections can be a challenge for almost everyone. The irony is that, because we all enjoy unique lives, we share the experience of perceived uniqueness and difference rather than homogeneity and synergy.
What does the poem at the start of this entry say to you? To me it speaks volumes about the unknowable aspects of life and the subjectivity of spirituality – prayer and worship in particular. It tells me that the world’s religions are all attempting to do the same thing: bring adherents into harmonious and happy existence with the universe writ large.
Adopting dissimilar and even antithetical strategies, the theologies are not always logical, constructive or even peaceful. Yet the human condition is not always logical, constructive or peaceful. Roberta Bondi, a professor emeritus of Church History at Emory University and author of A Place to Pray, recently noted that if prayer is the human end of a connection with the divine, then it is perfectly reasonable that prayer will be imperfect, rife with distractions, pleadings, selfishness, and such. And so it is with religion. For proof, just read the Psalms. As human institutions, religions will be political, they will be myopic, they will be “wrong.” Thus, it behooves us to look for the best in religion just as we look for the best in our fellow human, all the while calmly working to bend ignorant agendas to the good.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions offered a great opportunity for thousands of spiritual leaders and students to expand their world views and learn from one-another. It would be cumbersome to list all the speakers to whom I listened or the individuals from whom I learned. Suffice it to say the Parliament offered a cornucopia of ideas regarding the faithful devotion to ultimate reality, finding expression in a wonderful diversity reflecting the breadth and depth of humankind itself.
The lessons for this pastoral counselor in training would require an encyclopedia to fully articulate. I can say the experience reinforced my faith in humankind’s ability to respect and learn from difference while allowing each community to stand proud in its own traditions.
Warren Clements on the Didgeridoo
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