Triadic Mindfulness

Faith, reason, and experience have played major parts in the construct of human thought, ideas, and solutions. They have been at the heart of the tension between the freedom of self and the fate of circumstances. Even so, dominating the human landscape are copious examples of confining individualist thinking towering over families, organizations, governments, societies, and cultures at the expense of other rich and varied world views. Inflated egos, lust, anxiety are strong motivators which block individuals and cultures from being thoughtful. Thankfully, the choice can be made to be thoughtful individuals and groups who seek to infuse richness into the mix, so as to churn slow, dull minds into more active, imaginative, environments.

A current example: Today, we Americans (especially, led by the present US Administration) failed by not listening to the Islamic culture before and after the event of 09-11-01; and instead, reacted in anxiety to our “own” interest of economy. We were challenged to resume our lives rather than reflect, and to shop instead of grieve. Our nation continues to live in a multi-leveled quandary stemming from a deficiency of thoughtfulness in the days after 9-11.

We would do well as Westerners to listen to the thought streams of the East and not to forget the epochs of learning from our own West. First came . . .

credo ut intelligum,

I believe in order to understand.

“Faith seeking understanding”

Then followed . . .

cogito ergo sum,

I think, therefore I am.

And now, for our generations, coined by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy . . .

respondeo etsi mutabor.

I respond, although I shall be changed

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy commented about the three in their order: truth is divine and has been divinely revealed; truth is pure and can be scientifically stated; but now, "truth is vital and must be socially represented." God spoke first and continues to speak. Life listens, reasons, and responds. One alone is insufficient; all three form a triadic completion.

Holy

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Self / World

When there is a rupture or void in the “reality” of the self/world, the Holy is present to heal, redeem, save. The natural process is seeking, scanning in a most primal form—faith. Thinking—reason makes its way in the deliberations, while the hidden Holy continues to seek a way of entering the space. Unless one (individual, group, society, culture) gets stuck (losses the ability to pursue thoughtfully and hear what the Holy is speaking), the rupture or void is gradually filled with something which gives meaning and energy for which to respond appropriately. The whole process may well be painful and risky, however vital and necessary change is always difficult. Moreover, in the course of time, it becomes verifiably interpreted.

The Human Condition

The Apostle Paul, who was a highly seasoned scholar in the Hebraic tradition, seriously acquainted with the Hellenistic culture, and utterly committed to the kingdom of God, wrote the following to the ancient church of Philippi: "And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God."

Just blindly submitting to the dominate culture with little to no questioning of what it might mean in terms of one's true human self or journey to wholeness, is foolishness. As a gentle cynic steeped in the Christian tradition, I reflect on a full-bodied expression of sin and the Fully Human Jesus. This entails taking into account the reality of sin.

A full-bodied expression of sin, according to James McClendon (Doctrine*), calls for dimensions of divine proportions. Sin is measured against the “full faithfulness” of Jesus Christ. Our humanness falls short of “true humanity” as measured against “authentic, undiminished humanity,” embodied in Jesus, who is “the Truly Human One.” And if Jesus is the “Truly Human One, our selfhood, as afar as it is sinful, falls short of true humanity.” Borrowing from McClendon’s clever image, we are “Swiss cheese folk poked with holes from head to heel.” Possessing gaping holes, we are to be filled with human wholeness in every aspect of life through the embodiment of Jesus Christ. Taking the image further into the larger society, sin is a “puzzling vacancy or disorder in a God-created world” that is too complex for the concept like “original sin.”

This vantage point knocks the wind out of confusing sin with being human; for Jesus was human, yet without sin. Instead, we see ourselves as lacking in the vital wholeness that God through Jesus Christ fills with grace and truth. Thus the prayer of Paul, i.e., the answer to it, comes into play. What part does human initiative play alongside the monumental Divine Initiative of salvation in the Fully Human Son of God?

*James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Doctrine: Systematic Theology, Vol. II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 124.

Artwork: White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall, 1938, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago

Time and Chance

My gentle cynicism on one level is a response to an overly enthusiastic cultural philosophy that does not take into serious consideration the reality of time and chance, which smacks the face of most people, even those with the best intentions. “Under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and to the wise.” Koheleth of Ecclesiastes does not disavow the idea of value; he simply recognizes that one cannot assume it is that simple. To be sure, the relationship between merit and recompense is chaotic. One is better served by exercising a healthy measure of doubt rather than just simply “having faith” in something like medicine. Medicine indeed may be the thing to do in this sphere of temporality; yet one may be better (or best) served through other unrevealed (hidden) alternatives. Furthermore, what will become of us in the end is the kind of inquiry that begs our attention.

Doubt is the human impulse to question what is given in order to invest one’s day with meaning. ~Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt, a History

Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That’s what the Quester says.]
There’s nothing to anything - it’s all smoke.
What’s there to show for a lifetime of work,
a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?
One generation goes its way, the next one arrives,
but nothing changes - it’s business as usual for old planet earth.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down,
then does it again, and again - the same old round.
The wind blows south, the wind blows north.
Around and around and around it blows,
blowing this way, then that - the whirling erratic wind.
All the rivers flow into the sea,
but the sea never fills up.
The rivers keep flowing to the same old place, and then start all over and do it again.
Everything’s boring, utterly boring -
no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye,
boring to the ear.
What was will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There’s nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it’s the same old thing.
Does someone call out, “Hey this is new”?
Don’t get excited - it’s the same old story.
Nobody remembers what happened yesterday.
And the things that will happen tomorrow?
Nobody’ll remember them either.
Don’t count on being remembered.

(Ecclesiastes 1:2-11)

Artwork, Harmen Steenwijck, Vanitas

Practicing a form of the ancient practice of cynicism

Practicing cynicism today (not the modern concept, but a philosophical way of living with ancient classical and medieval roots) takes the form of a dynamic filter between one’s soul and the world that sifts chaff from wheat; i.e., what is accepted from what is best and what misses the mark from what is actually participating with or working toward God’s Shalom (~Alv', Shalom wholeness, peace, grace, wellness, wisdom).

This kind of cynicism is a way of training the mind and soul to discover and experience more fully the sweetness of God's creative energy, and less the draining emptiness and forthcoming bitterness of the things and ways of this world that (without this training) will ensnare and pull us into its subtle downward spiral without our knowing it.

It is a way of moving through (not stepping away from) tensions where there is a complex array of easy-to-get-to thin practices (answers) and ideals on one side; while on the other, profound, thick sources of questions and insights that invite persistent souls toward the way of becoming more fully human.