A few days ago I watched War Games, a sci-fi thriller from 1983 where Matthew Broderick plays a teen-age computer-whiz who has lost interest in school and amuses himself, instead, by playing a strategic computer game that he has found on the internet called Global Thermonuclear War.  Unbeknownst to him, he has innocently tapped into a top secret military computer system which uses this game to help the US Air Force decide what to do in the event of a Soviet attack. In a funny and quirky story-line he is arrested for espionage and then proceeds hilariously to battle his wits against military personnel who continually misjudge his abilities. Of course, in the end he wins and— lucky for all of us, WWIII is averted. The movie has a lot to say about staying calm and upbeat in trying situations, the feasibility of any nation winning a nuclear war and the role of computers to be relied upon to make common sense decisions. No wonder this movie was nominated for many awards in 1984.

The Broderick character meets Stephen Falken, the originator of the computer game and tries to enlist his help. The latter has become disillusioned with the game and the military, his country and the world. He, believing that humanity is planning its own destruction, has given up and retired to an island waiting for the super-powers to bring nuclear devastation upon mankind.

I was particularly interested in the Falken character who is suffering from a spiritual torpor which the ancients called acedia.  Interesting…as a book I am reading is called “Acedia and Me” by the best-selling author, Katheen Norris. In this book Norris explores the history of acedia starting from the writings of a fourth century monastic, Evagrius Ponticus, and charts evidence of it in her own life as a writer and wife of a man with a grave illness. The On-line Medical Dictionary (2000) defines acedia as a mental syndrome, the chief features of which are listlessness, carelessness, apathy and melancholia. Its clinical cousin is depression. Who of us has not suffered with these afflictions at one time or another?

The Broderick character is not taken in by Stephen Falken’s arguments calling him “already dead” and can’t get away from his company soon enough. I paused and rewound the movie several times to catch the moment when it’s clear that Falken has changed his mind and decides to help this young man convince the military to try his ideas. Falken sees himself through the latter’s eyes, not on the cutting edge of reality, but a “has-been” who is now irrelevant. Falken makes a split second decision to change his paradigm and what was acedia has been transformed to inner fire and zeal to connect with the world again and be of use.

The writer Saul Bellow says that in the modern world you either “burn or you rot.” Interesting as Evagrius Ponticus believed that to fall prey to acedia is to see life through a disordered lens, causing a coolness and loss of connection. He says that one thing that can warm the soul is physical labour. I have experienced this myself when I wake up with the blahs. If I start to clean up my place or sort through and give away old clothes, I can regain a sense of purpose which flows back into my soul and spirit for doing bigger things.

It seems that what the ancients thought about in early times still has meaning today for us and people express these ideas in popular movies and books.

There have been several articles in the Globe and Mail over the last week following the recent publication of Michael Moss’s book, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. The latter tells the story of how Big Food continues to spend millions of dollars on processed foods that we can’t resist.

I am sure that I am not the only who immediately salivates at the prospect of eating a potato chip, which I have just learned is the most addictive of all the junk foods.  Apparently this food is responsible for the weight gain of our most obese citizens as manufacturers have long the since realized that it is the perfect food for the addict. It has just the right combination of salt and fat and this, along with the sugar in the potato, gives everyone an almost instant feeling of contentment. When you are depleted on all levels—physical, emotional and spiritual, the quickest fix is a hefty number of chips (because you can’t stop, right?)  But the telling fact is that the fix does not last very long. Soon the guilt seeps in giving way to disappointment because once again you have fed yourself stones instead of bread. The body gives its signals too – a queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach and the lethargy that seems to last the rest of the day, no matter what else you eat, or don’t eat.

All this reminds me of a biography of Paul McCartney that I read years ago. I was interested that he allowed himself to take the usual drugs that were available to all of us in the sixties. Like everyone else, he enjoyed the highs but he didn’t travel the downward slope to addiction because he couldn’t stomach the lows which invariably came after the highs. He had grown up in a happy and healthy household with a father who liked to sing with him (they harmonized together).  Why should he take drugs and then put up with episodes of being strung out? He was not used to living this way and didn’t want to start.

I think that people who are addicted to junk food have probably had few times in their lives where they may have felt healthy in their bodies. If people are used to feeling well then they don’t put up with the short term high (and long term low) that comes from making meals out of potato chips.

The model, Kate Moss says, “Nothing tastes as good and being thin.” I would paraphrase: “Nothing tastes as good and feeling fit.”

Last summer a few friends and I were diddling with heaps of magazines and cutting out pictures and words so that each could make a poster of “wishes and dreams”. We sat on the carpet beside a long coffee table and snipped away while we shared personal news. I can remember feeling much more interested in the conversation than I was in putting attention to what I choosing to cut out but after about an hour the task of cutting and pasting was finished.

Then we fastened the posters to the wall and really looked at them. Quite revealing! I was amazed at how different each was. One friend had moved house several times and her poster had various pictures of interior decoration illustrating her wishes for an ideal home environment. The other friend had pictures of couples together. I know she is hoping for a new relationship in the future.

For my poster I had cut out a pair of big lips. Why? Likely the lips referred to my taking singing lessons and being in various choirs symbolizing a wish to free up my throat and that part of my face. I had also cut out the words “cha cha” probably because I had started ballroom dance lessons and had noticed I was having a lot of fun doing this dance. Had I cut out the words as a reminder to myself to keep dance in my future plans?

There were the words “changing face.”  What was I thinking here? Probably my meandering thoughts were referring to St. Paul and the great transformative change at Damascus where he, a Jew persecuting Christians had a revelation of the Cosmic Christ and began to live his life in a totally different way. I have had a one or two experiences in my own life where I have had a sudden realization and became wiser in a second and then changed my behaviour accordingly. There was a lot of power in that kind of decision.

Are desires good or bad? St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, believed that God dwells in the desires of a good person. In fact God inflames the heart with holy desires with attraction to a bigger life of divine praise and service. Of course, we cannot follow every desire. In fact, he says that desires can become disordered and work at cross purposes with each other. My goodness, you can spend a whole life trying to come to terms with what is ordered and disordered in the soul realm.

But, in my case, I have stuck with the singing in choirs and the ballroom dancing. I have had my poster of wishes and dreams on my refrigerator for the last nine months and every month or so I attempt to take it down but I don’t do it because it is still relevant. Singing and dancing both connect me to others in a way in which my life is feels larger and more harmonious. Both activities make me feel healthy in my body. And if I feel healthy in my body then I am more present to those with whom I come in contact.

Perhaps this is my deepest desire.

A few nights ago I went to a talk given by Miko Peled who has just written a book called “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli living in Palestine.” Born in to a Zionist family in Jerusalem, his grandfather was one of the signers of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. After having undergone a series of events which transformed his own thinking, Peled now believes that the Israeli government has operated from a position of untruth and that it is now time to uncover the myths and speak the truth. The truth, according to Peled, is that the Israeli militia has and continues to carry out a “systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Arab population.”

Someone once said to me that if you want to understand any situation come to terms with how it began.

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Israel I started to read “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World” by Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University. This book has been listed as a “milestone” in modern scholarship of the Middle East. It goes into great detail about the early Zionists. Not all of them were in agreement that a state could be found for the Jewish people in Palestine. In fact two rabbis were sent on a fact-find mission to Palestine and they sent back a communication which read, “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” In other words, an Arab population already lived on the land on which the Jews had set their hearts.

Shlaim says that the early hard-core Zionists pressed on nonetheless and their efforts became what as the  “Iron Wall” strategy. Many were not particularly informed about the cultural, social and economic conditions of Palestine and did not want to know. They viewed the natives as primitive and backwards who would eventually reconcile themselves to the economic benefits of being part of a future Jewish state. Well, we can see that this was wishful thinking and completely overlooked the possibility of a growing Arab retaliation to the Zionist efforts. This certainly came to pass.

We see evidence of this Iron Wall strategy today. After the Peled lecture a Palestinian man shared his experience with travelling to Israel via the Ben-Gurion airport. Always, he is held up and made to wait for hours and hours while the Israeli authorities check and re-check his passport. Miko Peled added that he has seen instances at this airport where Palestinians are humiliated out in the open with other passengers silently watching. The message that the authorities want to give to the Palestinians is that they will never be welcome in Israel and that they should expect delays and recriminations and hopefully find other places to visit and live.

Peled calls this out-and-out racism. There are so many other instances where the Palestinians are treated appallingly. But he does express hope! Peled  ended his lecture by telling us that many Jews that he has met in the United States and elsewhere (including groups in Israel) do not support the hard-line Israeli position and are willing to stand up against it.

Peled sees that the solution must be that Israelis give up their misguided dream of dominating the land  between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean and that they see themselves in a secular democracy with the Palestinians together in one state .

This makes a lot of sense to me.

I came away from this lecture thinking that Peled’s solution is the only solution. Israel has always been aware that it has needed international support for its policies and for decades it has courted the approval and support of the US. What if those of us in the western world began more and more to speak up against Israel’s policies as was done against South Africa so many years ago with its position of apartheid?

Perhaps the only solution is for the world to shame Israeli into better behaviour.

“Golgotha” by Peter Adams

This spring I am going to Israel, a place I have wanted to visit since I started studying theology a few years back. In preparation for this trip I thought I would take a meandering route with this blog of mine. I would read the daily lectionary of the Anglican faith and see if a study of the words from the passages of the Bible would lead me towards an understanding of the background of the places I wanted to visit.

Yesterday Psalm 22 was indicated for the morning prayer. This is a psalm of lament – a prayer of a person who feels himself abandoned by God. In verse 1 we read:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Verses 16 and 17 say:

For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me.

My hands and feet have shriveled;

I can count all my bones.

They glare and gloat over me….

These words to me sound like the scene at the crucifixion with Jesus on the cross and the words in verse 1 are part of Jesus’ last words as reported by the writers of the Gospel of Mark (27:46ff) and Matthew (15:34ff). My next step in this journey was to find out what is written in Luke and John.  In Luke 23:34 we read, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” John 19:30 says three simple words, “It is finished.”

Scientist and esoteric teacher, Rudolf Steiner, says that the writer of Mark fixed his attention on the being of Christ’s spirit separating from the physical body of Jesus – hence the use of the word “forsaken.” Much of Matthew comes from Mark, so the writer of Matthew uses the same word. The writer of Luke is, through-out his Gospel, more attuned to the emotions of compassion and love — so he would report Christ’s words of forgiveness. John’s Gospel is focused on the fact that Christ’s task is “finished” and that the whole of the earth has been transformed.

Four different writers showing different perspectives: all of them true.

I plan to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem which houses the rock of Golgotha where Christ uttered his last words. Apparently in the 4^th century the hillside was dug away to allow a church to built around this site.

When I first started studying theology in a classroom setting, I sat on the edge of my chair with my mind working overtime trying to make sense of what I was hearing. How did it all correspond to the “truth” of what I thought I already knew from studies from various esoteric teachers over the years?  I realized that my head was becoming seriously muddled and this was not a good thing.

 I needed to see things from another vantage point. At the break time I stood up and walked to a window and looked out at the variety of trees, the many buildings and the distant pale blue radiance of English Bay at the foot of the north shore mountains. I entertained a new thought and that was that it was not my job now to figure out the ultimate truth of theological ideas for myself. It might be far more interesting to focus on how others thought about important issues from the perspective of Christian faith. Who are we and where did we come from and where are we going? I could learn to sit with theologians and their thoughts, just as I sit in a concert hall listening to a composer’s piece, feeling myself vibrate in resonance to the notes. I could read and reflect on a theological point of view and see if there was anything that I could carry with me back into my own life and my own understanding. There are many ways to see something and to continue to inquire seemed to me to be the best way to proceed rather than formulate some kind of doctrine for myself about ultimate truth.

Many theologians, from Augustine to Anselm to Karl Barth and others, have a phrase for this kind of inquiry which they call “faith seeking understanding.” This means a continual pursuit of the truth not yet possessed. As Nicolas of Cusa said: “What one thinks one knows can be known ever more truly.”

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff , they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you annoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

“Blue Ear Listening” Howard Hodgkin

Many years ago I had an experience where a stranger listened deeply to me for a few minutes.

I was at an education workshop given by a man whose name I forget.  I asked him a question about how to proceed with some aspect of teaching a concept to children. I do not remember my question.

I started to explain my question and I was suddenly aware that he had created a space– a very large inner space behind his eyes. I sensed that my words were important to him. How do I know this? Perhaps it was because I noticed that he became very still. He was not looking at me directly but looking past my face.

He appeared to have no prior thoughts in his mind. How did I know this? I could not see any light of understanding (or not understanding), sympathy or antipathy, approval or disapproval in his eyes or facial features.  While I asked my question he did not seem to be using his mind to connect my thoughts with something he already knew. He was purely attending to my words and I suddenly felt a deep responsibility. I had to slow down. I had to make myself perfectly clear and somehow I knew that if I carefully formed everything that I wanted to say then he would understand. He had undertaken the task to listen and I had to do my part which was to be clear so that he could follow my train of thought.

I did slow down. I knew that he was waiting until I had completely finished before he would gather his own thoughts and offer suggestions. How did I know all of this? There was no hint of impatience coming from him. I believed that I had all the time in the world to make myself clear.

He had called this emptiness to be there behind his eyes.  I was clear in my mind that he had more strength to do this than I did at my stage of life. I had the impression that here was a man who had probably meditated for years.

Yet the emptiness was filled with Presence.  I have a capital P on that word because the Presence was holy. It was the same kind of holiness that I experience when I go into a church of any denomination. The walls hold a space that is filled with a higher presence. It seems empty in a physical sense but full in another deeper sense.

I was very attentive while the man listened to me. I was aware that I was being given a gift that I would remember and could draw on forever. Since I have started to make contemplative listening my own practice, I bring this man’s activity continually to mind and try to emulate it.

I cannot remember his name, nor my question, nor his answer. None of this seems important to me now. It was his commitment to deep listening to me, a stranger, that was his great gift to me.

There is a baby,
he lives in my building.
His mother wheels him
wide-eyed into the elevator.
The door closes.
He turns his head,
looks up.
In the dim light his cheeks
are two moons shining.
Small dark eyes already
know the truth of sadness.
Lips that curve up
want to speak of possibilities
but there are no words yet.

This baby knows me
from another time.
He has seen all that was
and forever is,
but never again
in the same way.
This what we call sadness.

I turn and talk
to his mother who
tells me about his mornings.
He wakes early, eats,
wants down,
tries to stand but
falls over,  little fists
beating the air
and stretching toward the door.

He is telling her
he wants to go out.
The world inside is too static.
He wants the wind
to blow over his face
and wheels to carry him
through his days.
He is traveller in a place
he has seen before
in his dreams.
He wants to match faces
and learn the language.
There is no going back.

A few years ago I read Affliction by Russell Banks. It is about a Wade Whitehouse, a small-time New Hampshire cop whose demons unleashed from a dark past of abuse and addiction threaten to pull him under. The reader is witness to his descent; it is a bit like watching the slow swirl of a life going down the drain.

I nearly put the book down half way through because I didn’t want to fill my mind anymore with depraved images from Wade’s life. But then I realized that this man was trying in his own way to redeem himself and in some very small ways he was succeeding.  I then became interested in his attempts and finished the book.

Banks’ latest book, Lost Memory of Skin, takes another look at the dark side of life. We are introduced to the Kid, who had grown up without a father and with a mother who doesn’t care about him or for him. To amuse himself he watched porn sites and inhabited internet chat rooms. He innocently arranges a liaison with an underage girl and then is busted by her father and the police. He does his time and then is shackled with a GPS device and forbidden to live with 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere to go he takes us residence under a south Florida causeway with other convicted sex offenders.

We then read about a whole cast of characters who parade through the Kid’s life. He has to consider each one of them, try to assess their motives and then act accordingly. He sure had my sympathy as he learned to distinguish the liars from the truth tellers. Like Wade, the Kid is the product of a horrible upbringing but he is also a human being, made in the image of God, trying to bring himself back to wholeness.

The Kid gets his hands on a bible and starts to read about Adam and Eve being found out by God that they have eaten from the tree of knowledge and lying about it, with the woman saying the Snake made her do it:

The Kid knows how they feel. He’s felt that way since he was about eight or nine. Maybe even younger. First you deny that you did it and then when it’s obvious you’re lying you blame somebody else. It’s what people do when they’re ashamed. It’s always about sex too. First it was from watching his mother make it with some guy and then it was from jerking off all the time since he was ten and then skin magazines and Internet porn and when he got older it was porn DVDs [etc. and etc.]……the Kid wonders if it’s possible that this whole tree of knowledge of good and evil was set up by God as a kind of prehistoric sex-sting with the Snake as the decoy.

Throughout the book the Kid ruminates on passages from the bible. One of the conclusions that he comes to is that, in today’s terms, the Snake is the internet and the forbidden fruit is porn. Wow! I’ve had a few days to think about this and I think he’s right.

What a pleasure to read another book by Russell Banks whose truth-telling has such power and clarity.