Friday, September 16, 2022
5 a.m. A new acronym to help me remember how to be: the Puerto Rican Communications Commission, the PRCC. That is, presence, receptivity, clarity, consideration – or, let’s say, considering. Not a very big change from focus, receptivity, clarity, presence, but, better. If I can actually learn to do things that way.
I was thinking, just now, of friends who know that I do this, but do not know of the material itself. If I were to try to explain to them the world-view the guys have given us, gradually, over the years, where would I begin? That’s the oral version of the problem of writing the summary book. Guys, what say you?
Are you in the persuasion game now?
Not persuasion, exactly. More like exposition. I can’t find a place to begin for those who have not invested time and energy over the years.
Now, start practicing that considering. You have the little plaster statue of Horus, just as a mind-focusing item. Let your mind take a stroll, while at the same time sitting there, remembering your own question. Don’t think we can’t help, but you can get to places we can’t bring you, if you provide your own sparks and let them lead you on.
Well, I think, how does anybody present a new view of anything? If I were trying to explain to somebody how the old Egyptians saw the world, how would I begin? I’m tempted to say, start with a catechism, a book of questions and succinct answers.
Perhaps you can see that religious instruction has always required such tools, and every religion could provide examples of how they instruct potential converts.
Including the children who are born into their belief-system. In fact, you could think of children as the major source of converts, in that they come into the world not having the belief-system. (Or at least, I don’t think they do. I suppose they may be fitted into a religion, no less than into ethnicity and nationality, by a combination of what the times allow in, and what their innate nature matches.)
But even those whose strands include other lives that were lived within a given belief-system require instruction too. They get it or they do not, and get it by observing their surrounding, at least as much as by anything they read or are taught. Think of your own lives. You observe what people do, at least as much as what they say.
Many a young child learns to reject the faith they were born into, by observing the discrepancies between dogma and behavior.
Or between dogma and heir own sense of the world. Or even between dogma and their resistance to any dogma. And yet what one child rejects, another child, or an adult, may come to live their life in. That is, people convert, as people say, from one religion (or even non-religion) to another. Something tells them, “This is truer than that.” For the purposes of the argument, we ignore those who convert for social or political reasons.
Naturally I think of Hemingway. Born into a devout Protestant family, he found his spiritual home in the Catholic church, against all familial precedent. Yet he seems to have
Yes, now this is what we’re encouraging you to do. Take a stroll with the thought, and see where it leads.
Well, Hemingway accepted the Catholic church on one level, and apparently quite sincerely. When he lived with Pauline, he was apparently pretty careful to follow the forms.
Now, go as slowly as you can. Creep along, if you can. Try not to elide anything as it wells up. We recognize that it will seem endless and pointless and impossible. But how do you know if you don’t try?
He followed the forms – confession included, presumably, though of course he never mentions it directly. The Sun Also Rises has Jake trying to explain to Brett that she doesn’t understand about confession, and it seems clear to me that Hemingway does, even then, though it may be merely authorial illusion.
When the Spanish Civil War came, he felt unable to keep praying, in that he somehow felt the church to have appropriated his access to God, and
No. Slower, if you can.
That’s true, he no longer felt he could pray for himself, but did pray for others. I’m not getting my point stated.
You may, if you can go slow enough. Plod. Annoy yourself, if need be. This is important. There are truths that cannot be said, but can be intuited. Some things can only be received in a flash, only the mind must be clear. For you specifically, and for some others, a clear mind results from freedom from chains of logical connections, combined with an attitude of receptivity to unstructured input. That freedom, that receptivity, in the untrained mind produces freewheeling associations. So, you had to learn to not give in to following all the side-trails that open up; now you need to practice following some of them. One way to choose is to move so slowly as to stand almost still, tasting the moment, sniffing your way toward the proper scent. To see takes time, as Georgia O’Keefe said. Give yourself the time.
Hemingway called himself “a very dumb Catholic.” He meant, I think, that he didn’t much know or care about dogma, but did consider the church as a sheltering tent.
As slowly as you can bear to proceed.
How can there be a religion without dogma? Dogma is codification of what that religion believes. It has to have dogma, even if that dogma were to be, “Don’t be impressed by dogma.” If you are part of a religion but you don’t accept (or perhaps even know about) its dogma, how can you be said to be part of it?
Yet, there is a sense that this is so.
You should know.
Yes, I am feeling that. (You’re right, going slowly allows associations to present themselves.) In the sense we’re considering it to be, this being of it and not quite in it is true of me as well. Intellectually I am closer to being a Sufi than anything else. But I bridle at unwarranted attacks on Catholicism made by people who don’t know it from inside, and therefore attack what is not real, not knowing what really is open to attack.
Is this going slowly enough?
Intellectually you are a Sufi, say. That is not yet true.
No, I see it. If we look at it carefully, intellectually I assent to the core of many religions, each of which has a different splinter of the whole truth, each of which is an attitude, call it. But then I cannot assent to the structures built upon those splinters.
Yes, but slowly. Sink into it. Forget the clock.
Emotionally I fit into certain ways of experiencing the world, and not others. If social considerations did not intervene, maybe everybody would automatically find the way of seeing the world that they resonated to.
Meaning, people wouldn’t be sorted by having been born into a given way of seeing things.
I suppose. There would be fewer converts, or more; hard to say.
But the point is:
I don’t know, it’s hard to see the point of this whole discussion, except maybe as practice for me in working more slowly.
So, sink into the moment, holding an intent for things to clarify.
Something within me spontaneously said, sometime, “I still serve Ra.” I didn’t then and I don’t now know what that meant in any way except as emotional allegiance. But if I were to become educated in the detail of Egyptian religion, is there any reason to think it would fit with my life today? In the same way, I have a sort of tribal allegiance to Catholicism that has nothing to do with its command structure, or its rules and regulations, or even, I suppose, with its habitual way of seeing things. That is, the Catholic way would be a constricting collar for me; nevertheless there is a truth there that I can’t deny and have no interest in denying. And this is surely true of every religion, including the modern religions of materialism and scientism.
Now, the clarifying flash, for Hemingway’s situation and yours, and that of others.
A flash? Don’t know about that. What this comes to seems to be, We can sense (or can find) belief-systems that are particularly attuned to our structure, so that they express our truth more closely than anything else does. But that is not the same as requiring us to be soldiers in their army, or even necessarily sojourners in their camp, nor even family. It’s just, that’s where we live emotionally. Not in that church, but in the same ground that church camps on.
And therefore –?
Our allegiance is to something deeper than that church; it is to what the church holds allegiance to, or did, or sometimes does.
Can you see why this was clear to Hemingway and not clear?
Yes I can. It wasn’t clear to me, an hour ago, and I have wondered.
A church that takes sides politically, orphans those who have to choose between following their conscience or obeying the church’s commands. But what those orphans are hasn’t changed. What they instinctively adhere to hasn’t changed. All they have lost is a comfortable tent to shelter in.
I am surprised to see that we have gone 70 minutes and – let’s see – eleven pages. It did feel like very slow movement, going nowhere in particular, but I see that was misperception. What shall we call this morning’s conversation?
“An exercise in slowness,” perhaps.
“Belief-systems and dogmas”?
That would serve, as well.
I’ll decide when I transcribe. My thanks for this. It is curious how the counter-intuitive serves, sometimes. Till next time.