Let’s not pin name-tags to the ineffable.
Something of a wordsmith most of my life, I’ve published and preached millions – all drops and trickles long gone downstream in the great river of life. Writing is how I stumblingly seek to grasp a little of what’s lurking in the back of my mind. Increasingly, in my geriatric detachment from obligation to write, I’m now more interested in reflecting unanswerable questions than in suggesting solutions.
As a child in a comfortably Christian family I dutifully recited the Ten Commandments, Lord’s Prayer, Apostles Creed and so on as the only acceptable answers to Catechism questions. Responding to questions with questions seemed not an option. To wonder was to be classed among mere dreamers.
Today I guess some may class me among modestly groping contemplatives, more deeply centred in what I understand to be key truths of “life, the universe and everything” yet open to fresh questions and insights, with fewer objective certainties while subjectively standing under more dimensions of truth via listening in humility, vulnerability. I find ample wonder in the natural world of things, people, relationships, with no pressing need to turn to dualistic supernatural propositions. Others are free to approach the same truths from quite different perspectives. I respect them.
I listened a day or two ago to a fine performance of the Shaker Hymn, Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free. Those three words - gift, simple, free - stand for me as portals to truth. All is gift. The truth is where “true simplicity is found.” Freedom is essential to the natural grace to be sought in everything, everyone, every relationship.
It’s easy to conclude that science in my lifetime has fuelled more spiritual depth and breadth than religious traditions; quantum, cosmology, ecology and much more opening portals to awe. Each is natural, relational, opening mystery. Of course, science, spirituality in and out of religious traditions, and the arts should not be seen in compartments. They belong together in a harmony of mutually respectful, responsive listening. But that seems too seldom the popular understanding in a culture of brands consumption. .
Then there’s consciousness. Just what is that? Individual consciousness is a natural preoccupation in a “me” centred culture but what about collective consciousness? Might the network extend so far as to embrace not only human culture as a whole but also the web of all life? And then, of course, there’s the proposed unnameable unity believed by many to be beyond categories, to be sought, encountered in everything, everyone; universally both infinite and intimate, hugely more disturbing than the semi-remote architect and interventionist playing favourites in the witness of some popular religion; the lighter (as imagined in one of my attempts at poetry) of the Big Bang fuse, dancing sometimes in joy, sometimes in grief as the universe evolves in the freedom of grace.
Yes, while avoiding the traps in use of the G word in a fragmented culture, I am declaring myself a theist, but one tempered by the imperative that it’s not our words but what we do that matters. I remain Christian despite my grumpy muttering about blinkered religiosity, excited by such notions as Trinity and Incarnation, neither offering neatly objective answers; both relational, universal, leading to questioning, earthed wonder.
One of the loveliest songbirds of Aotearoa New Zealand is the korimako (bellbird). Each pair is mutually committed to mating for life. We recall when one of a pair entered our home through a window, became disoriented and panicky while its mate flapped in empathetic distress outside until we gently helped the trapped bird to fly free.
Lesley and I are in the sixtieth year of marriage. What is in the inner content of our relationship making it truly marriage, distinct from mere sentimentality, co-dependency, cultural habit and so on? Does the answer mean our partnership within humankind is somehow holier than that of the pair of korimako, indeed the inner content of every relationship constituting life’s web and the material universe? The answer, I reckon, must always have an element of mystery. Enough for us to say yes to the mystery as each new day dawns.
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"When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children's life may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
In his beauty on the water, and the heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water,
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
- Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems
“Do you really want this moral sense of yours projected onto the universe? Do you want a god who is only a larger version of a righteous judge, rewarding those who don’t realise that virtue is its own reward and throwing the wicked into a physical hell? If that’s the kind of justice you’re looking for you’ll have to create it yourself. Because that is not my justice.” – Stephen Mitchell, giving succinct interpretation of the “Voice from the Whirlwind” in his commentary and translation from Hebrew of The Book of Job.
“There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.” - Thomas Merton.
Boyd Wilson writes in Aotearoa New Zealand. He was a prominent agricultural journalist, then turned to rural church ministry until his “somewhat contemplative” retirement.