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Reflections from Book of Job, one of the wisdom texts we’re studying together

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Adult, Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
We must cultivate our garden. — Voltaire, Candide
The most famous line in Voltaire’s ”Candide” is the final one: ”We must cultivate our garden.” That is Candide’s response to the philosopher Pangloss, who tries again and again to prove that we live in the best of all possible worlds, no matter what disasters befall us. — Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times

SONGS about SUFFERING & HURTING:

SONGS about HEALING & HOPE:

 

WAGE PEACE — Judyth Hill
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and
flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music; memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the out breath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Interrelationship – Thich Nhat Hanh
You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.

GOD’S PART in SUFFERING (from Book of Job):

Excerpt from commentary by BibleProject (full article: https://bibleproject.com/articles/gods-gives-job-tour-wise-world/)
… Job claimed that God has fallen asleep at the wheel in running the universe, and because of this divine neglect he’s had to endure unjust suffering. God’s response is indirect, and it shows how his attention is actually on every single detail of the operations of the universe. In fact, God is privy to all kinds of perspectives and details that Job has never even imagined and never will…
As it turns out, Job doesn’t know as much as he thought, even about the world he lives in and should be familiar with. … God has made his first point. Job’s many accusations of divine neglect or incompetence have failed. As it turns out, God is intimately familiar with every molecule and creature in his world and knows more about them than Job can comprehend. This is an important moment in the story so far. Whatever reasons God has for having allowed Job’s suffering, neglect is not a viable option.
    Job never does find out why he suffered and neither does the reader. The goal of the book was never to offer us that information
 … This means all of our claims to evaluate God’s rule over human history are always limited, and will therefore fall short. I don’t have a wide enough vantage point to accuse God of incompetence, and I never will.
God responds again, this time inviting Job to take up the divine throne and run the universe for a day. Let Job enforce the strict “retribution principle” he thinks God ought to use in directing the cosmos: “Clothe yourself with honor and majesty. Pour out your anger to overflowing, And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low. Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him, and tread down the wicked where they stand.”
Job will find the task impossible. It would require a second-by-second micromanagement approach that would essentially result in no more human beings on the planet. Job doesn’t know what he’s asking for when he demands that God uses the strict principle of retribution to reward every good deed and punish every bad one. In theory it sounds right, but in execution, it would create a universe where no human would ever have a chance for trial and error or, more importantly, for growth and change.
… Apparently, God’s world is ordered enough for the human project to flourish, but chaos has not been eradicated entirely from God’s world. The tohu-va-vohu (Hebrew for “formless and void” in Gen 1:2

Genesis 1:2) wilderness wasteland of Genesis 1 wasn’t eliminated when God made the world. Rather, a space for garden-order was carved out and given over to humans who were commissioned to spread that divine order further out. Leviathan is out there, raw and dangerous, and you just might encounter it. It has the power to wreak havoc on your life, but what you cannot conclude from a run-in with Leviathan is that God is punishing you, or that this creature is evil. Neither is the case. You just bumped into Leviathan, and it unleashed chaos, tooth, and claw into your life, and your body…
Hebrew Bible scholar John Walton puts it this way in his commentary on Job: God’s answer to Job does not explain why righteous people suffer, because the cosmos is not designed to prevent righteous people from suffering. Job questioned God’s design, and God responded that Job had insufficient knowledge to do so. Job questioned God’s justice, and God responded that Job needs to trust him, and that he should not arrogantly think that God can be domesticated to conform to Job’s feeble perceptions of how the cosmos should run. God asks for trust, not understanding, and states the cosmos is founded on his wisdom, not his justice. [adapted quote]
Human pain and suffering does not always happen as a clear consequence of anyone’s sin. There may be a reason, but there may not be. God himself said that Job’s suffering was not warranted for “any reason” (Job 2:3. The conversation with the satan certainly did not provide a reason. That dialogue simply set the stage for the real question of the book: Does God operate the universe according to the principle of retribution?
The answer to this story is no. Sometimes terrible things happen for no reason discernible to any human. The point is that God’s world is very good, but it’s not perfect, or always safe. It has order and beauty, but it’s also wild and sometimes dangerous, like the two fantastic creatures he avows. So back to the big question of Job’s or anyone’s suffering: why is there suffering in the world? Whether from earthquakes, or wild animals, or from one another? God doesn’t explain why. He says we live in an incredibly complex, amazing world that at this stage at least, is not designed to prevent suffering.
…. So, the book doesn’t unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Rather, it does invite us to trust God’s wisdom when we encounter suffering rather than trying to figure out the “reasons” for it.
When we search for reasons, we tend to either simplify God like the friends or, like Job, accuse God based on limited evidence. The book invites us to honestly bring our pain and grief to God and to trust that he cares, realizing that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS about HUMAN SUFFERING and GOD’s ROLE

Excerpts from chapter 13 of Biblical Wisdom Literature by Joseph Koterski (the Great Courses):

“We don’t know how it’s going to turn out, Job doesn’t know how its going to turn out. One of the problems that is presented by life as wellas text of Job, how God in his goodness could allow innocent suffering at all. Or hos God can permit those situations in which there is massive sufferings. We might think of famines. We might think of various forms of genocide, whether it be the Holocaust in Germany, whether it be the Armenian genocide, or some of the ones that seem to be happening now. Or even just the massive wars. The Book of Job poses this sort of problem in that opening scene … not trying to give historical perspective but to ask this philosophical problem. These Biblical wisdom books, Job in versy special way, as that part of the Bible that is most philosophical, that it’s a kind of philosophical debate within Israel in which various opositions will be explored and examined, including the divine position, in so far as this is divine revelation…
[Liebniz] has established for us some of the important terms. These three claims that God is all powerful, that God is all knowing, and that God is all good are crucial to the problem… And then of course the problem is more than just the triangle, you have to work in the way in which human freedom is related to these three parts of the internal attributes of God.
If there is nothing cannot God cannot do, because he is all powerful, if there is God does not know because he is omniscient, and if there is no limit to God’s mercy, because he is all good, why are there instances of suffering that are outrageous in their extent and disproportionate to anything we might reasonably expect?
[Koterski’s opinion] … this is a world that God made for a certain precise purpose, I think the purpose was to have creatures like ourselves capable of freedom, but that freedom with which we’re made will make it so that there will be destructions, there will be sometimes the opportunities to operate badly as well as to operate well, that this is the risk of freedom.
Hartshorne and other process thinkers [philosophers] have argued that apparently we simply need to change our picture of God. In regard to one of those three attributes, something has got to give. Should it be God’s knowledge? Should it be God’s power? Should it be God’s justice? … For myself, I think It does grave notion to the idea of God… [Koterski opinion]I would try to make the argument is incoherent philosophically … it is fundamentally at odds with the view of God that is presented by the Bible and by the mainstream traditions of Judaism and Christianity…
Rabbi Harold Kushner [author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People] … repudiates the notion that suffering is a punishment by God for anyone’s misdeeds. He also … rejects … the view that God sometimes uses suffering to teach people some important lessons. … Instead Rabbi Kushner holds that suffering is simply an intrinsic part of the world that God created, but that it is by random chance that one person suffers and another does not … there was no particular design to it. … Furthermore, Kushner holds that human beings are unique in this world by virtue of having the power to make free choices, and that God refuses to intervene in these choices … [Koterski opinion] Kushner is probably quite right in saying that our freedom is protected by the fact that God allows us to do what we do… Kushner does agree that God can grant us sufficient strength to deal with the troubles in our life, and yes, it does make sense to pray.
C.S.Lewis … second chapter The Problem of Pain … general outline of his views can be sketched in the following way:

  1. First point. The free choices that we make on all soprts of issues large and small wouldn’t be free unless our actions have consequences…
  2. Secondly, for actions to have their consequneces, there needs to be a world with stable natural laws, that govern how one thing interacts with another…
  3. Third thing, the action on one being on the other may well cause injury, may well cause suffering.
  4. Fourth, it will not do to have divine agency interfering with the consequences all the time … to prevent the suffering that occurs when some beinghs interact with other beings, for instance when a volcano buries a town, when a lion kills its prey, or when a microbe infects  aperson with some disease, or when an armed robber kills an innocent bystander …
  5. Fifth point, in short, for God to have created a world in which he chose there to be beings endowed with the power of freedom of choice, God has also chosen to allow any numbers of innocent suffering.
  6. Sixth, it is not that God does not know any of this … nor is it that God couldn’t do something about any one of them … God can do, and frequently has done, miracles … in this respect … the highest level of goodness is free choice. So what this system does is that God in his goodness has made a creature that is in, this respect, like himself, this creature possesses free choice, and that’s a greater good, even though there are going to be some defects and clashes at other levels.

What an argument like this does is put the problem of evil and of suffering into a certain pserpective that can give us a sense of why God, in general, allows suffering. … It does not try to answer the question why this person or that person or some other has as much suffering as any one of these individuals might. To try to answer the particular problems and personal problems, religion is needed. Real prayer. Good friends. Solid spiritual counsel. We need to have that assistance to get through it. … CS Lewis gives us the bigger picture, why there is suffering in the world, not why I am suffering….

NTERCONNECTED Reflections

Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world. ― Nadeem Aslam

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world … do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child? ― Salman Rushdie

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. — Yasutani Roshi

When we help another, we are helped. If we harm another, we harm ourselves. Perhaps harder to grasp—if we harm ourselves, we harm the whole universe. ― Rachel Wooten

… nature is interconnections.― Lisa Kemmerer

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. — Rev. Dr. Martin Liuther King, Jr.

Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet. ― Bertrand Russell

Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person. Happiness and safety are not individual matters. If you suffer, I suffer. If you are not safe, I am not safe. There is no way for me to be truly happy if you are suffering. If you can smile, I can smile too. The understanding of interbeing is very important. It helps us to remove the illusion of loneliness, and transform the anger that comes from the feeling of separation. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it is now commonplace for people of dissimilar world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect. — Dalai Lama

DIRECT, STRUCTURAL, and CULTURAL FORMS of VIOLENCE & PEACE

Often referred to as the “Father of Peace Studies,” Norwegian theorist Johan Galtung has developed a three pronged typology of violence that represents how a confluence of malleable factors merge in particular cultural/historical moments to shape the conditions for the promotion of violence (and, by inference, peace) to function as normative.

  • Direct Violence represents behaviors that serve to threaten life itself and/or to diminish one’s capacity to meet basic human needs. Examples include killing, maiming, bullying, sexual assault, and emotional manipulation.
  • Structural Violence represents the systematic ways in which some groups are hindered from equal access to opportunities, goods, and services that enable the fulfillment of basic human needs. These can be formal as in legal structures that enforce marginalization (such as apartheid in South Africa) or they could be culturally functional but without legal mandate (such as limited access to education or health care for marginalized groups).
  • Cultural Violence represents the existence of prevailing or prominent social norms that make direct and structural violence seem “natural” or “right” or at least acceptable. For example, the belief that Africans are primitive and intellectually inferior to Caucasians gave sanction to the African slave trade.  Galtung’s understanding of cultural violence helps explain how prominent beliefs can become so embedded in a given culture that they function as absolute and inevitable and are reproduced uncritically across generations.

From Rev Gail Doktor’s notes:

Galtung’s definition of lasting peace is built on individual, structural, and cultural aspects of peace.

  • Individual peace seeks to preserve life itself and promote human and planetary flourishing.
  • Structural peace represents the systematic ways that all groups have equal access to opportunities, goods, and services that enable the fulfillment of basic human needs.
  • Cultural peace signifies the existence of prevailing, persistent social norms that make the hallmarks of individual and structural peace seem ‘natural’, ‘right’, or ‘good’.

I and THOU: Relational

… I and Thou, is a book by Martin Buber,….— Wikipedia,com

… Buber’s main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

  1. The attitude of the “I” towards an “It”, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.
  2. The attitude of the “I” towards “Thou”, in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.

One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber’s view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou. Martin Buber said that every time someone says Thou, they are indirectly addressing God. People can address God as Thou or as God, Buber emphasized how, “You need God in order to be, and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life.”
One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. In Buber’s view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou. Martin Buber said that every time someone says Thou, they are indirectly addressing God. People can address God as Thou or as God, Buber emphasized how, “You need God in order to be, and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life.”
Buber explains that humans are defined by two word pairs: I–It and I–Thou.
The “It” of I–It refers to the world of experience and sensation. I–It describes entities as discrete objects drawn from a defined set (e.g., he, she or any other objective entity defined by what makes it measurably different from other entities). It can be said that “I” have as many distinct and different relationships with each “It” as there are “Its” in one’s life. Fundamentally, “It” refers to the world as we experience it.
By contrast, the word pair I–Thou describes the world of relations. This is the “I” that does not objectify any “It” but rather acknowledges a living relationship. I–Thou relationships are sustained in the spirit and mind of an “I” for however long the feeling or idea of relationship is the dominant mode of perception. A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an “I–Thou” relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general. The stranger is a person as well, and gets instantaneously drawn into a mental or spiritual relationship with the person whose positive thoughts necessarily include the stranger as a member of the set of persons about whom positive thoughts are directed. It is not necessary for the stranger to have any idea that he is being drawn into an “I–Thou” relationship for such a relationship to arise. But what is crucial to understand is the word pair “I–Thou” can refer to a relationship with a tree, the sky, or the park bench itself as much as it can refer to the relationship between two individuals. The essential character of “I–Thou” is the abandonment of the world of sensation, the melting of the between, so that the relationship with another “I” is foremost.

INTERBEING: Inter-connection as a Buddhist concept articultaed by Thich Nhat Hanh

… Rather than signifying a lack or a void, [Thich Nhat Hanh] took emptiness to be a state of inextricable and fundamental interconnectedness in which it is impossible to identify a single, separate entity. — thedewdrop.cpm

Below is an excerpt from the chapter on INTERBEING from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Art of Living.

Imagine, for a moment, a beautiful flower. That flower might be an orchid or a rose, or even a simple little daisy growing beside a path. Looking into a flower, we can see that it is full of life. It contains soil, rain, and sunshine. It is also full of clouds, oceans, and minerals. It is even full of space and time. In fact, the whole cosmos is present in this one little flower. If we took out just one of these “non-flower” elements, the flower would not be there. Without the soil’s nutrients, the flower could not grow. Without rain and sunshine, the flower would die. And if we removed all the non-flower elements, there would be nothing substantive left that we could call a “flower.” So our observation tells us that the flower is full of the whole cosmos, while at the same time it is empty of a separate self-existence. The flower cannot exist by itself alone.

We too are full of so many things and yet empty of a separate self. Like the flower, we contain earth, water, air, sunlight, and warmth. We contain space and consciousness. We contain our ancestors, our parents and grandparents, education, food, and culture. The whole cosmos has come together to create the wonderful manifestation that we are. If we remove any of these “non-us” elements, we will find there is no “us” left.

Emptiness does not mean nothingness. Saying that we are empty does not mean that we do not exist. No matter if something is full or empty, that thing clearly needs to be there in the first place. When we say a cup is empty, the cup must be there in order to be empty. When we say that we are empty, it means that we must be there in order to be empty of a permanent, separate self.

About thirty years ago I was looking for an English word to describe our deep interconnection with everything else. I liked the word “togetherness,” but I finally came up with the word “interbeing.” The verb “to be” can be misleading, because we cannot be by ourselves, alone. “To be” is always to “inter-be.” If we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” To inter-be reflects reality more accurately. We inter-are with one another and with all life.

There is a biologist named Lewis Thomas, whose work I appreciate very much. He describes how our human bodies are “shared, rented, and occupied” by countless other tiny organisms, without whom we couldn’t “move a muscle, drum a finger, or think a thought.” Our body is a community, and the trillions of non-human cells in our body are even more numerous than the human cells. Without them, we could not be here in this moment. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to think, to feel, or to speak. There are, he says, no solitary beings. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis.

We can observe emptiness and interbeing everywhere in our daily life. If we look at a child, it’s easy to see the child’s mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, in her. The way she looks, the way she acts, the things she says. Even her skills and talents are the same as her parents’. If at times we cannot understand why the child is acting a certain way, it is helpful to remember that she is not a separate selfentity. She is a continuation. Her parents and ancestors are inside her. When she walks and talks, they walk and talk as well. Looking into the child, we can be in touch with her parents and ancestors, but equally, looking into the parent, we can see the child. We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.

I remember one time when I was in London, doing walking meditation along the street, and I saw a book displayed in a bookshop window with the title My Mother, Myself. I didn’t buy the book because I felt I already knew what was inside. It’s true that each one of us is a continuation of our mother; we are our mother. And so whenever we are angry at our mother or father, we are also being angry at ourselves. Whatever we do, our parents are doing it with us. This may be hard to accept, but it’s the truth. We can’t say we don’t want to have anything to do with our parents. They are in us, and we are in them. We are the continuation of all our ancestors. Thanks to impermanence, we have a chance to transform our inheritance in a beautiful direction.

Every time I offer incense or prostrate before the altar in my hermitage, I do not do this as an individual self but as a whole lineage. Whenever I walk, sit, eat, or practice calligraphy, I do so with the awareness that all my ancestors are within me in that moment. I am their continuation. Whatever I am doing, the energy of mindfulness enables me to do it as “us,” not as “me.” When I hold a calligraphy brush, I know I cannot remove my father from my hand. I know I cannot remove my mother or my ancestors from me. They are present in all my cells, in my gestures, in my capacity to draw a beautiful circle. Nor can I remove my spiritual teachers from my hand. They are there in the peace, concentration, and mindfulness I enjoy as I make the circle. We are all drawing the circle together. There is no separate self doing it. While practicing calligraphy, I touch the profound insight of no self. It becomes a deep practice of meditation.

Whether we’re at work or at home, we can practice to see all our ancestors and teachers present in our actions. We can see their presence when we express a talent or skill they have transmitted to us. We can see their hands in ours as we prepare a meal or wash the dishes. We can experience profound connection and free ourselves from the idea that we are a separate self.

  1. Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.
  2. Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.
  3. Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images, and sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.
  4. Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.
  5. Do not maintain anger or hatred. Learn to penetrate and transform them when they are still seeds in your consciousness. As soon as they arise, turn your attention to your breath in order to see and understand the nature of your anger and hatred and the nature of the persons who have caused your anger and hatred.
  6. Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you. Plant seeds of joy, peace, and understanding in yourself in order to facilitate the work of transformation in the depths of your consciousness.
  7. Do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.
  8. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.
  9. Do not use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit, or transform your community into a political party. A religious community, however, should take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.
  10. Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Select a vocation that helps realize your ideal of compassion.
  11. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war.
  12. Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others, but prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.
  13. Do not mistreat your body. Learn to handle it with respect. Do not look on your body only as an instrument. Preserve vital energies (sexual, breath, spirit) for the realization of the Way. (For brothers and sisters who are not monks and nuns:) Sexual expression should not take place without love and a long-term commitment. In sexual relationships, be aware of future suffering that may be caused. To preserve the happiness of others, respect the rights and commitments of others. Be fully aware of the responsibility of bringing new lives into the world. Meditate on the world into which you are bringing new beings.

Continue reading “Reflections from Book of Job, one of the wisdom texts we’re studying together”

Reflections on journeys at the shore: fishing, trusting, and trying something new

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The two, fish and God, go together like fish and water. —Brian McLaren

We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. — Henry David Thoreau

One thing becomes clearer as one gets older and one’s fishing experience increases, and that is the paramount importance of one’s fishing companions. — John Ashley Cooper

Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it. —Harry Middleton

Learn to trust the journey, even when you do not understand it. — Lolly Daskal

SONGS about BEING CALLED by LOVE:

SONGS about FISHING:

PRAYER — Garrison Keillor

Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won’t feel so thankful then. 

THE REAL WORK
— Wendell Berry

It may be that when
we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when
we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled
is not employed.
The impeded stream
is the one that sings.

The FISH— Mary Oliver
The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.

Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

– Walt Whitman

Of FISHING & FISHERFOLK

Great fish do not swim in shallow waters. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The stream at the end of your street can be a place where you make contact with this whole other amazing world hidden right there beneath the surface. Fishing can be the passport to that world. — Jeremy Wade

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman’s silence receiving the river’s grace, the gardener’s musing on rows… — Wendell Berry 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. — Vincent Van Gogh

Fishermen own the fish they catch, but they do not own the ocean. — Etienne Schneider 

The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her. ― Annie Proulx 

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas. It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down – sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward. ― Terence McKenna

The most shameful occupations are those which cater to our sensual pleasures: fish-sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry-raisers and fishermen. — Cicero 

Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God. — Tony Blake

I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. — Carl Safina.

A fish only begins to realize its potential the moment you throw it in deep waters. — Matshona Dhliwayo.

A river is honored for its fish, not its size — Matshona Dhliwayo

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain. — Mark Twain

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.— Maimonides

I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.”- Sylvia Earle.I still don’t know why I fish or why others fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel. — Roderick Haig- Brown

The act of fishing – for fish, dreams, or whatever magic is available – is enough. It transports us to a special world, and a state of mind, where we are free. — Fennel Hudson

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles. — Doug Larson

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. — Herbert Hoover

I’ve gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water. — William Tapply

One thing becomes clearer as one gets older and one’s fishing experience increases, and that is the paramount importance of one’s fishing companions. — John Ashley Cooper

Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it. — Harry Middleton.I

f I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago. — Zane Grey.

I go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself. — Joseph Monniger

I only hope the fish will take half as much trouble for me as I’ve taken for them. — Rudyard Kipling

The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad. — A.K. Best

Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman’s job is simple: Pick out the best parts. — Charles Waterman

Be patient and calm – for no one can catch fish in anger. —  Herbert Hoover

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you. Particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish. — Mark Twain

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of something that is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hop. — John Bucha

Fishing is a discipline in the equality of men – for all men are equal before fish. — Herbert HooverIf I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self. — Ted Hughes

People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity. — Sylvia Earle

Food production is ripping the living world apart. Fishing and farming are, by a long way, the greatest cause of extinction and loss of the diversity and abundance of wildlife. Farming is a major cause of climate breakdown, the biggest cause of river pollution and a hefty source of air pollution. — George Monbiot

Fishing is a hard job. Fishing at night. Rain. Day, night. You have to be wise and smart. And quick. — Mariano Rivera

The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. — Ted Danson

Environmentalists aren’t nearly sensitive enough to the fact that they are messing around with struggling people and their livelihoods. They forget that the fishermen are the people with the most immediate vested interest in having a healthy sea. — Mark Kurlansky 

Chefs are at the end of a long chain of individuals who work hard to feed people. Farmers, beekeepers, bakers, scientists, fishermen, grocers, we are all part of that chain, all food people, all dedicated to feeding the world. — Jose Andres

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions of hope. — John Buchan

One of the ways I practice contemplation in my life is through fishing. It’s the place and the space where I find a real connection through the ocean, the waves, the sound of the water, the birds diving, and the struggle with the adversary, which is the fish. — Barbara Holmes

You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water…If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.— Constantin Brancusi

FALLING in LOVE
— Attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

Commentary on BEING CALLED

Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service. ― Diana Butler Bass

The Sacred Call is transformative. It is an invitation to our souls, a mysterious voice reverberating within, a tug on our hearts that can neither be ignored nor denied. It contains, by definition, the purest message and promise of essential freedom. It touches us at the center of our awareness. When such a call occurs and we hear it – really hear it – our shift to higher consciousness is assured. — David A. Cooper

The followers of Christ have been called to peace. … And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. … His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they over-come evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Peace of God — William Alexander Percy
The Cost of Discipleship
The peace of God, it is no peace,
but strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing-
the marvelous peace of God.

On TRUST

He who does not trust enough will not be trusted. — Lao Tzu

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust, but verify. — Ronald Reagan

Have enough courage o trust love one more time and always one more time. — Maya Angelou

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible. — Anton Chekhov

Men trust their ears less than their eyes. — Herodotus

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust.— Albert Einstein

We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.— Harper Lee

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Only those you trust can betray you.— Terry Goodkind

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it. — Richard Rohr

It is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. — H.L. Mencken

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Take no one’s word for anything, including mine – but trust your experience. — James Baldwin

You must train your intuition — you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide. — Ingrid Bergman

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. — Kahlil Gibran

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. — Corie ten Boom

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. — Alfred Adler

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.— Stephen Covey

COMMENTARY on the STORY of CALLING FISHERFOLK

We may need to remind ourselves of this obvious fact: not everyone is called to leave the boats and nets, to leave family and place. The vast majority of us are called to stay where we are as we serve God. — Melissa Bane Sevier

He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest,  rather unimpressive characters to follow him.  Fishermen, Tax collectors, sex workers, homeless women with no teeth, people from bad neighborhoods …  If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves.  These people were questionable at best. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, casting out demons, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us.  He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor. And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”.  What if God is not who we thought?  What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a reward and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?  — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Everybody who knew anything about fishing in Jesus’ day knew you didn’t go fishing with [Simon] Peter’s kind of nets in daylight. Fish could see and avoid them. Also, everybody who knew anything about fishing in the Sea of Galilee knew you didn’t catch fish with these kinds of nets in deep water. They were most effective for fish near the surface. On top of that, everybody who knew anything about fishing in those days knew you needed to be fishing at night or in the dusk of dawn and sunset. You weren’t going to catch anything at the time of day Jesus was speaking to the crowds! … What makes Jesus’ command all the more interesting, Simon Peter knew fishing … Fishing was Peter’s life. Fishing was Peter’s livelihood. He fished every day. He knew how to catch fish. He earned his living catching fish. He took care of his wife and family catching fish. He had partners with whom he fished regularly. So Peter knew what Jesus was asking was crazy, yet… When Peter obeyed, look what happened!  They caught fish! They caught a lot of fish. They caught a boat-sinking amount of fish. Bottom line, it was the wrong time, wrong place, and wrong nets to catch fish. But… Peter obeyed, and nets started breaking. Buddies begin helping. Boats begin sinking. Every fisherman’s dream catch is happening! — Phil Ware

This metaphor, despite the grand old tradition of missionary interpretation, does not refer to the “saving of souls,” as if Jesus were conferring upon these men instant evangelist status. Rather, the image is carefully chosen from Jeremiah 16:16, where it is used as a symbol of Yahweh’s censure of Israel. Elsewhere the “hooking of fish” is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Am 4:2) and powerful (Ez 29:4). Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus is inviting common folk to join him in his struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege …The point here is that following Jesus requires not just assent of the heart, but a fundamental reordering of socio-economic relationships. The first step in dismantling the dominant social order is to overturn the “world” of the disciple: in the kingdom, the personal and the political are one… This is not a call “out” of the world, but into an alternative social practice. — Ched Myers

In a democratic world, we do not talk about reigns any more than we talk about kingdoms. But we do talk a whole lot about “culture”! So I suggest: “The time is fulfilled, and the culture of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” What does it mean to distinguish God’s culture from human cultures? What does it mean to be “called out” (Gr: ekklesia, “church”) of conventional human culture and to begin to be disciples of the one who brings God’s culture near to us? Why is this such good news? — Paul Nuechterlein

We know that at this time the fishing industry was being steadily restructured for export, so that the majority of fish were salt preserved or made into a fish sauce and shipped to distant markets throughout the empire. All fishing had become state-regulated for the benefit of the urban elite—either Greeks or Romans who had settled in Palestine following military conquest or Jews connected with the Herodian family.  They profited from the fishing industry in two ways. First, they controlled the sale of fishing leases, without which locals could not fish.  These rights, and often capitalization as well, were normally awarded not to individuals, but to local kinship-based “cooperatives” (Gk koinōnoi)—such as the brothers Simon and Andrew or the Zebedee family we meet in Mk 1:16-20.  Second, they taxed the fish product and its processing, and levied tolls on product transport.  Local administrators handled royal leases, contracts and taxes—such as “Levi son of Alphaeus,” whom we meet in Mk 2:14.
            This transformation of the local economy, made possible by the infrastructural improvements (roads, harbors and processing factories) carried out by the Herodians, functioned to marginalize and impoverish formerly self-sufficient native fishing families. Leases, taxes and tolls were exorbitant, while the fish upon which local people depended as a dietary staple was extracted for export.  Thus fishermen were falling to the bottom of an increasingly elaborate economic hierarchy. Elites looked down on them, even as they depended upon their labor. — Ched Myers

Kingdom is a verb to which I submit, an ever-changing call to conversion, a constant learning of a new language of trust, a stumbling into a new ‘language and doing’ in a new place. Then, sometimes, of words of the church resonate with a clarity which silences all babel.  For a moment there is a resting place. But it is not home. The journey begins again. Kingdom, repentance, and belief, are all journey. — Andrew Prior

… we must avoid imagining individuals who ‘go to work… Fishing was an important part of the Galilean economy in the first century. But it was not the “free enterprise” which modern readers of the New Testament may imagine. Even fishers who may have owned their own boats were part of a state regulated, elite-profiting enterprise, and a complex web of economic relationships. These are symptoms of an “embedded economy.” That is to say, economies in the ancient Mediterranean were not independent systems with “free markets,” free trade, stock exchanges, monetization, and the like, as one finds in modern capitalist systems. Rather, only political and kinship systems were explicit social domains; economics and religion were conceptualized, controlled, and sustained either by the political hierarchy or kin-groups … fishermen received capitalization along with fishing rights, and were therefore indebted to local brokers responsible for the harbors and for fishing leases. The location of Levi’s toll office in Capernaum—an important fishing locale—probably identifies him as just such a contractor of royal fishing rights… — KC Hanson

Meditations: Locked rooms, open doors

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Adult, Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.
― Robley Wilson

Be an opener of doors. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. — Virginia Woolf

A very little key will open a very heavy door. ― Charles Dickens, Hunted Down

If you feel you have to open a particular door, open it, otherwise all your life that door will haunt your mind! … All the doors you ignored or refused to enter represents your uncreated fates!  ― Mehmet Murat ildan

That door had a lot to say, people entered and people left but never the same! ― Jasleen Kaur Gumber

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meaness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi

The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family story. Each one of us has our past locked inside. — Laura Esquivel

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend …  ― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

For the Yupik, all life was continuous, animal with human with ‘spirit’ and recognizing that continuum allowed them to undergo transformations that we, locked into our disappointingly Cartesian skins, find impossible even to imagine. — John Burnside

… a face is studied like a key
for the mystery of what it once opened …
— C.D. Wright (excerpt) from Floating Trees

It’s human nature that we come in our own flavours, and it doesn’t make sense to write a monochromatic or monocultural story unless you’re doing something extremely small—a locked room-style story. — N.K. Jemisin

I have to live within my memories, within my private universe, and continually return to China, the land where my thoughts are locked. This is a very painful kind of existence, this feeling of nowhereness. — Ma Jian

We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jails over and over again. And then you holler, ‘Be patient.’ How long can we be patient? — John Lewis

Abrir una puerta nueva sin cerrar la anterior no lleva a ninguna parte. ― Flavia Company, Haru: Un día es una vida

There’s a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody’s family. We all pretend to outsiders that it’s not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running. — Salman Rushdie

People —running from unhappiness, hiding in power — are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs. — Richard Avedon

I was in a form of prison; not necessarily with bars, but I was locked to that machine three days a week, and I couldn’t plan work, I couldn’t plan vacations, I couldn’t plan dinner, I couldn’t plan homework, I couldn’t plan nothing because at the end of the day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I had to be at dialysis. — Grizz Chapman

Custom is a prison, locked and a barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Pass It On, III — Rachel Hades
… Death makes life shine:
a tiredness, a flickering between
ages, which is each age;
a piling up to tottering
and falling back to sand.
So much for cycle. The front door lock
sticks each fall when we’re first back.
We are advised to oil it.
Olive oil in the keyhole:
again the old key turns.
Once again to meander
… Ideas of the eternal,
once molten, harden; cool.
Oil, oil in the lock.
The old key turns.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason. — Hal Borland

The living cell almost always contains, locked in its interior, the visible or invisible products of its physiological activity or its nourishment. — Albrecht Kossel

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe. — Peter De Vries

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