Afflictions, not just the personal, but especially including the social: is there any greater social affliction today than that of an illiteracy of the heart? Obviously I am not thinking about the ability, or lack thereof, to read the written word in one's language. Instead, I am deep in contemplation of the heart -- and specifically, the heart's ability to read...
Is this a strange thought to you? What is the first book that a human reads? Isn't it a mother's eyes, breast, smile and hands? Reading one's mother opens the entire book of the world to us! Isn't this so? Don't we go from mother to room to family to floor to whirly things to a dog's kiss to green grass to sandy beach? Aren't our eyes fixated on fire on leaves waving to us from trees on birds on the movements of water? Steadily, day-by-day, we learn to read the book of the world in which we live...
Nature is the First Book of Religion...
What is the the first, and most important, lesson we discover in the Holy Book of Nature? Isn't it that we all live in a web of relationships and in the steady state of inter-being? In remembering this most basic lesson of all, we are left stunned to realize that, collectively, we are merely "existing" in a condition of forgetfulness: we have become accustomed to the social affliction of a general illiteracy of the heart... As we inevitably forget having ever fed at our mother's breast, so too, we have forgotten that we are merely privileged to exist! We have forgotten that we still feed at our Mother's breast: the "breast" of Mother Earth...
And so "we" have created systems of exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence.
Because we live in the truly radical ("to the root"), steady-state, of conditioned forgetfulness, our hearts have shriveled into caricatures of "heart" in illiteracy... No longer able (wanting) to read the Holy Book of Nature, we write platforms (or dispense with them altogether) in praise of "our" version of "acceptable" exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence... We listen to entertainers extoll the virtues of their "brand" of exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence... and so it goes...
As it goes for the Holy Book of Nature, so it follows for the Holy Books of Religion...
Every fundamentalism is a caricature of religion. Every dogma that sets one person apart from another is just another angle on exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence. There are simply too many examples to waste words and space in a blog. Suffice to say, an illiteracy of the heart is not a requirement for life (at least not yet!). Read Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Angela Davis, Bernie Sanders, Matthew Fox, Raimon Panikkar, Cynthia Bourgeault, Andrew Harvey, Amit Goswami, Riane Eisler, and David Hinton for starters... Hell, read my book, Resplendent In Rags...
Inform your heart with intelligent designs!
Do you want an example? Okay. How about the actual example of the person most commonly called Jesus? Read the Song of Songs from the Hebrew Scriptures as a beginning point. Then go on to the Beatitudes and the 25th Chapter of Matthew's Gospel. After ruminating, go next to John's Gospel... Read the life of St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, and Mahatma Gandhi... Now, with a forming literacy, read Ram Dass and Matthew Fox: you are now ready to look into a mirror with the shocking realization that it is you presenting the Face of Jesus to the world! Like Rumi said, you have let yourself become living poetry!
Is this a strange thought to you? What is the first book that a human reads? Isn't it a mother's eyes, breast, smile and hands? Reading one's mother opens the entire book of the world to us! Isn't this so? Don't we go from mother to room to family to floor to whirly things to a dog's kiss to green grass to sandy beach? Aren't our eyes fixated on fire on leaves waving to us from trees on birds on the movements of water? Steadily, day-by-day, we learn to read the book of the world in which we live...
Nature is the First Book of Religion...
What is the the first, and most important, lesson we discover in the Holy Book of Nature? Isn't it that we all live in a web of relationships and in the steady state of inter-being? In remembering this most basic lesson of all, we are left stunned to realize that, collectively, we are merely "existing" in a condition of forgetfulness: we have become accustomed to the social affliction of a general illiteracy of the heart... As we inevitably forget having ever fed at our mother's breast, so too, we have forgotten that we are merely privileged to exist! We have forgotten that we still feed at our Mother's breast: the "breast" of Mother Earth...
And so "we" have created systems of exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence.
Because we live in the truly radical ("to the root"), steady-state, of conditioned forgetfulness, our hearts have shriveled into caricatures of "heart" in illiteracy... No longer able (wanting) to read the Holy Book of Nature, we write platforms (or dispense with them altogether) in praise of "our" version of "acceptable" exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence... We listen to entertainers extoll the virtues of their "brand" of exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence... and so it goes...
As it goes for the Holy Book of Nature, so it follows for the Holy Books of Religion...
Every fundamentalism is a caricature of religion. Every dogma that sets one person apart from another is just another angle on exploitation, oppression, profit, and violence. There are simply too many examples to waste words and space in a blog. Suffice to say, an illiteracy of the heart is not a requirement for life (at least not yet!). Read Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Angela Davis, Bernie Sanders, Matthew Fox, Raimon Panikkar, Cynthia Bourgeault, Andrew Harvey, Amit Goswami, Riane Eisler, and David Hinton for starters... Hell, read my book, Resplendent In Rags...
Inform your heart with intelligent designs!
Do you want an example? Okay. How about the actual example of the person most commonly called Jesus? Read the Song of Songs from the Hebrew Scriptures as a beginning point. Then go on to the Beatitudes and the 25th Chapter of Matthew's Gospel. After ruminating, go next to John's Gospel... Read the life of St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, and Mahatma Gandhi... Now, with a forming literacy, read Ram Dass and Matthew Fox: you are now ready to look into a mirror with the shocking realization that it is you presenting the Face of Jesus to the world! Like Rumi said, you have let yourself become living poetry!
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