Ways of Sincerity, More Than One

   UPSTREAM COLOR --2013

Author and theologian Thomas Merton wrote about a facet of human nature which he calls fears of the truth. And there are several. In particular, he addresses the meaning of sincerity in every day life.
While much in our lives is motivated by our fears, Merton notes that "sincerity is a simplicity of spirit which is preserved by the will to be true. It implies an obligation to manifest the truth and to defend it... Sincerity in the fullest sense is a divine gift."
He notes that it takes more "courage than we imagine to be perfectly simple with other men... False sincerity has much to say because it is afraid. Yet true candor cannot be silent. It does not need to face an impending attack. Anything... may be defended with perfect simplicity."

In the end, by Merton's reckoning, sincerity is really an issue of love. The sincere one is one who seeks the truth and embodies it. Truth then is not just an abstraction. It is real, living flesh, like yours and mine.
Many in today's world fear that they are not really lovable, not lovable to the extent they think they deserve. And others fear that a lack of real, meaningful love in our lives indicates that "since we are not lovable as we are, we must be lovable under false pretenses, making ourself appear to be different that we are."

In the conclusion to his essay, No Man Is An Island, Merton writes that so few believe in God because they do not believe that even a god can love them. The man who will admit that what he sees may be wrong with him, and recognizes that he may be, still, the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings can make a start to become sincere. His love is based then upon confidence rather than the falseness of illusion.

The film Upstream Color examines the lives of two deeply imperfect, and in some ways, flawed individuals. While much is remarked upon the film's abstraction, the central characters meet, develop and share an intense love for one another that becomes based in sincerity.
She suffers from a serious mental illness and he, from a professional shortcoming that results in the loss of the licensing required to carry out his profession. Initially she offers up certain details of her illness, while he initially withholds facts about his own situation.

The resulting social stigma he bears from past indiscretions and the stigma of her illness, combine to create a powerful portrait of two people picking their way through the world, salvaging and in a measure, redeeming themselves, and each other through sincere love.
The simplicity of the film is provided by the many scenes of nature and the interactions with that nature. The film maker leaves us with a certain ambiguity in those scenes, to believe or not. The effect is both spiritually powerful and insightful.

Love and the Fall

Those who love me, I also love, and those who seek me, find me. --Proverbs 8:17

I'm In You

by Peter Frampton

LISTEN HERE

I don't care where I go
 When I'm with you
 When I cry, you don't laugh
 'Cause you know me

 I'm in you, you're in me
 I'm in you, you're in me
 'Cause you gave me the love
 Love that I never had
 Yes, you gave me the love
 Love that I never had...

In today's English language, the pronouns he and she have been nearly stripped away. They are avoided, dis-used. Left in their place is a socio-political idea that rejects this very principle of universal oneness. There are labels and divisions, parsing the world into diverse units.
To the ancient mind, this is akin to tragedy. What could take the place of the Chinese idea of the yin and yang? Or the Hindu wedding ceremony in which bride and groom pronounce one to the other, "I am heaven, you are earth;" to which the bride responds, "I am earth, you are heaven."

Many modern minds, especially in the West, will find these ideas unintelligible, in part, thanks to science. Our rational mind does not allow us to go there. It is all myth, we say. Science, in its aims to reduce things to quantifiable matter fails, it cannot see cosmic love.

Rather, science ignores the "final cause" of creation. It cannot rationalize what something or someone was made for, its purpose, its goal, its end. This reason is the most important to creation. The Tenakh tells us that in both the historical and in the ultimate dimension, G-d is the final cause, creation the ultimate end; it is the alpha and the omega, both the beginning and end.

In this ultimate dimension, we are freed "of the dirty little dungeon of a universe that the Enlightenment thinkers" of past centuries have placed us into wholesale. Enlightenment thought, thought in which rationality and science are the reigning sovereigns, gives to modern minds "a universe in which love and beauty, praise and value are mere subjective fictions," invented by the self spinning aloneness of a human mind.

And yet science through all its triumphs has not been able to extinguish an ancient, almost primordial instinct from the deepest places in our soul, to realize love as the highest wisdom and meaning in a life. So then the Judeo-Christian Bible, or Tanakh, in its entirety is to be read with imagination, with myth and analogy as a divine love story, says Peter Kreeft.

In both the Jewish and Christian telling of the story, the Word contained in the book is a covenant, an agreement between G-d, the Lover and his beloved; the persons he created, the Jews and all who come to him in the Spirit of the Oneness (adonai echad).

The word of G-d here is the Christ, the unity of G-d, the Creator. And to the Christian mind, among other names we may call this oneness, the Christ, love incarnate. Christ has proved G-d's love for his creation by the example of the Cross. He has come because of, and for love, alone. He comes out of love.

Other manifestations of love are found in the connection between the "fall" from the garden of Eden. The connection here is found between the fall and freedom. Love does not enslave; love makes free. Because you are the Beloved, you are free. We are not the Creator's pets; we are meant to be G-d's lover.

In the redemption, love manifests. G-d's love is powerful and in full display as soon as Adam falls. He makes a mistake, he falls away from the covenant that he made in free will with G-d to obey.

As covenantal people, Jews traditionally see the "law" of the Torah as an expression of G-d's will. It is their joy to learn, to know this will. Thus they see their holy book as a love making manual, if you will.
In the ten commandments, the Decalog,  the principal covenants presented to creation by G-d, the Creator, are laid out. In essence, they form the whole of the "covenant-contract." G-d is to have this agreement with his people, who in free will grow to abide by this contract, or rule. In following the way of G-d in divine law, more love is made. Human-kind is "fruitful and multiplies."

Caring for the garden, the world of Creation, is so that human persons may learn to be more like Creators. G-d wishes to teach love through loving the world and the soil it comprises, to raise a crop to the benefit of all of creation. This is stewardship in its most wholistic sense.
The Creator starts small and then moves through the world until his love reaches the ears of his perhaps, most complex creation, mankind. As a lover, G-d is not jealous. Sharing in oneness is the essence of all.

"And the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve is to teach the Beloved the reality of pure, 'blind,' love."
If they had been told that the reason (a rational idea) was that the fruit was poison, would not Adam and Eve have obeyed; not from a trusting, free love, but from a selfish fear?
Yet G-d did command them, and asked for their love in return for no other reason than love itself. This is covenant. When we "fall," we lick our wounds, we gain a sense of the real, we dust ourselves off and remain in the moment, rather than a self-serving, spinning mind.
Thus we again realize the fall as a direction back to the source, back to the Creator and we, are his Beloved. 
This love is not sentimental, it is not cheap, easy or compromising. This is love in totality. You are the deepest secret of G-d's heart. --Peter Kreeft

Over the Sill, Close the Door

"Love sails around me; I walk two steps on the ground and four steps in the air." --Thomas Merton

Many without any other influence might come to think the world of a contemplative serious or even dry, but this and other thoughts by the late Thomas Merton shows another side to living a simple life-a life that is simply full. Read more of his thoughts:

"It's love; it's consolation. I don't care if it's consolation. I'm not attached to consolation. I love God. Love carries me around. I don't want to do anything but love. That love, secret, hidden, obscure love, down inside of me and outside me where I don't care to talk about it... I have only time for eternity, which is to say for love, love, love... Love is the only thing that makes it possible for me to tick... I am all dried up with desire and I can only think of one thing--staying in the fire that burns me...Sooner or later the world must burn...sooner or later it will be consumed by fire and nobody will be left--for by that time the last man in the universe will have discovered the bomb capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw the thing and get it over with... But love laughs at the end of the world because love is the door to eternity, and before anything can happen, love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door, and he won't bother about the world burning because he will know nothing but love." 
--Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk, priest and mystic
A Thomas Merton Reader

Really an Everyday Thing, Isn't It?

Silly Love Songs

by Paul McCartney and Wings

Listen Here

You'd think

that people would have had enough
of silly love songs

I look around me and see it isn't so

some people want to fill the world
with silly love songs

so what's wrong with that?

I need to know b'cause

here I go again

I love you

I love you...

Many of us hear the word religion and all kinds of thoughts and reactions arise. We tend to make it complicated, intellectual, even. We like to think it isn't about politics, it's about god; it isn't about society, it's about spirituality, and so on. Well, it is about all these things and some more.

It's simple, really. Religion in another view is about lives, human lives living day to day. We all have thoughts, feelings and relationships. What and how we think about ourselves and the world which we are part of, vastly influences the style and quality of that human existence. So religion need not be icky or avoidable, because it's just about life. And all of us have some experience with that.

So a little help from others may just be what makes a community; for some, it sure makes an opening for a spiritual experience, like this song. Do we need to have an organ playing a dirge song to have a religious experience, do bells need to ring or incense waft upward? In my experience, I have discovered that most often I get out of something more or less what I put into it. If a church, temple or community doesn't move me, then maybe I haven't given much of myself. Maybe my pre-existing notions circumvent me from connecting. Sure, I didn't get anything out of it. But what else did I expect? Nothing gets nothing.

Can our everyday coming and goings be a small part of the whole of life? If so, then this and many other songs may too. They touch us in some meaningful way. A simple song can create an awareness, an appreciation that we had not the sense of before. It's all religion, and like an artist, it's a part of my day. Everyday.