Faith and the Ground of Being

Phoenix Philosophy

Some years ago, 1987 to be exact, I began writing a short series of articles for a paper (remember paper?) newsletter I published, (called The Phoenix Flyer) and sent to clients. I called the series The Phoenix Philosophy, and, for me, it was the beginning (ahead of my books) of articulating a view of how life might be seen to work. I was cleaning out some old files the other day, and stumbled upon copies of the newsletters. I've decided to run some of the "old" stuff, just as I wrote it in 1987, and will comment after.

Once I've run with the old stuff, I'm planning on expanding the concept.

This fist article was written just after I had left the Ministry for the first time. Dar and I had moved to an old Hotel, and were renovating it - creating apartments  All told, we spent 10 months at it. I was counselling out of an office in the Hotel, and still supply preaching. The first article is "about" faith. And how faith informs life.

In my present, Zen-Christian state of being, some of the language seems "odd." I think, though, that what I was saying way back then still rings true.

This month we begin articles concerning the big question - "What is the meaning of life?" I think I remember proposing a rather rude answer to this question in a Sermon one day last year, but I can’t remember what I suggested. Part of me likes to kid around about meaning questions, but I also know that many of us take this topic seriously, so well see where this leads.

It is said that having a religion is pretty simple. You walk in the door of a religious institution, figure out the rules - (Do I kneel? When do I stand up?) and are somewhat easily considered a "member." Unfortunately, being religious (i.e. following the rules and acting holy) has very little to do with being a person of faith. Faith is primarily non-rational. The "leap of faith," as Tillich spoke of it, is the non-rational part. There is no logical explanation that will allow us to understand the why of faith. Faith has faith as its basis.

That being said, we begin to come to some understanding of why it is that most people wrestle with the big question. From time immemorial people have felt the pull of what is variously described as the soul... the spirit…whatever. This seems to be a universal pull or urge to relate to the divine. This urge transcends culture, age and sophistication. All that changes from time to time and place-to-place are the details.

Which, as an aside, is no small thing. People at low levels of understanding have an almost overwhelming need to have the "right" religion. This means that anyone who holds contrary views has to be "wrong." It then becomes the mission of the "right" person to correct the "wrong" person. Which is much like other aspects of life. It doesn't prove much, other than the person with the most stones to throw is likely to be the winner. That leads to thinking that the winner's God has also won - thus, by circular logic, demonstrating the "rightness" of the person's beliefs.

Back to our topic. Given the universal urge to relate to the Ground of our Being, this necessarily causes us to question the meaning of life. Since it is assumed that God created a structure that "makes sense," it must follow that there is more to life than eating, exercising various needs, and dying.  Life, we think "should be" meaningful.

So, when the opposite happens - when life seems to be plodding along without meaning, when each day is framed with sleep and is walked through in a haze, when relationships seem to be unsatisfying in the extreme, it is not unusual for some kind of depression to result. Almost all difficulties in life relate back to expecting that life should be different than it is. This relates to a skewed view of how God operates.

That skewed view assumes that if you profess the right things, if you show up at church, if you act like a squeaky clean good little boy or girl, all should be well. And then, when we bump our noses against life, we rail against the unfairness of it all. After all, we followed the rules. Why isn't God cooperating?

Well, the best answer I can come up with is that when you're stuck, you're playing the wrong game. Discomfort comes when we assume that our imagined views of how things should be are the correct views. Discomfort comes from our focus on the past. Discomfort comes when we dream of a future we really have no control of.

The real game is lived as we "Be Here Now," as the title of one of Ram Dass' books suggests. The more we can pull ourselves into focusing on the moment, the more we can become fully attuned to the present, the more we can simply accept and flow with the situation at hand, the closer we come to being at peace. And then… only then…in the quiet and peace of the moment, do we come close to the Ground of our Being.

In this space, nothing but peace and calmness have significance. Events that would have previously been disastrous are seen for what they really are. In that clarity, solutions appear as if by magic. People appear to resolve problems. Others appear as teachers to provide the next step in the path, but only if you are focused in the moment and ready for the teaching.

So, I notice that my writing style has improved in the last 14 years… ;-) I will admit to moving a couple of clauses around in the above text, just to try to make the muddy parts clearer. I am struck with how obvious the seeds of my present thought were back then. Let me try to clarify and put the above into a 2001 context.

I recognize the appeal of existentialism's meaningless universe. I remember clearly (and wrote about, click here) being struck by Efran, Lukens and Lukens line, in Language, Structure and Change, "Life is a purposeless drift." My Soul, however, or that place in me that makes meaning (as opposed to my head, which makes lists and categories,) does not find comfort in meaninglessness.

The intricacies of the universe, for me, lead me to the idea of a cause, a design and a purpose. I clearly and easily accept the objection that I may be deluding myself. My examination of my self concludes - I am not harming myself with this belief.

Having said that, this becomes a foundational or Rock belief for me. Notice that I said, "becomes." This is not a blind faith, handed down to me by my tribes. This is an examined faith, tested through time and trial. In other words, to go back to the idea of deconstruction and reconstruction, my understanding of "God" has been explore, modified and transformed.

The transformation involves another word we use a lot around here - vocation. My understanding of that word is this: to be of service to myself and to others, through the active development and use of my skill set.

Having faith, for me, is an inner knowing that there is something at work in my life (and in the world) that is simply beyond what I can understand. This is emphatically not the same as saying "God" approved of this or that, or that tragedies are "God's plan." Such thinking is specious and stupid. It is to say that, faith or not, life goes on. As such, we are confronted, daily, with mystery. As Hamlet said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 
--From Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)

What is required is a maturity of faith that allows one, as Ken Wilber suggests, to "transcend and include." This is the opposite of the fundamentalist concept of "right and wrong." When you get caught in ideology, there is no room for including that which emerges and finding a way to relate to it. To transcend and include requires one major ability that I would judge 95% of the population lacks - the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in one's head at the same time, and to be OK with the contradiction.

This position, from a Zen perspective, is captured in the line, "The way it is, is the way it is." (cf. Stuart Wilde.) Ram Dass sloganized this same concept as, "Be Here Now." At The Phoenix Centre, we say "the goal is to stay present." From this place, I can be aware of the environment, of my methods of interpreting the environment and, most importantly, what I am actually doing with my interpretations. Many people can manage the first two. The failure, for most, is in the living out of the things they think they understand.

Once the correlation between faith, knowledge, interpretation and action becomes clear, life becomes much more "liveable." Clarity comes, and the path is much more obvious.

I suppose you could try slogging along, doing the meaningless universe bit. I suppose you could read a lot of books and get clever at piecing different theories together. I suppose you could assume that you have bad luck and that's why life and relationships don't work out. Or, you could begin to examine, seriously, the way of faith. It is a way that promises no pat answers, no prizes, no accolades. It promises a certain simplicity that attention seekers hate. But at the end of the day, in the quiet of the evening, there seems to be a "peace that passes understanding" about it all. Within our Philosophy, that seems to be enough.