The Dignity of Difference

Arches National Park - Utah

The Most Noble Sanctuary

"O Mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into separate nations and tribes, that you may know one another."

~ Qur'an 49:13

During the process of my philosophical reawakening, I made a surprising discovery; my love for Islam.  I know many westerners cringe at the thought.  Most only know Islam from what they see on television today.  The traditional homeland of the faith suffers from unremitting hostility fueled by extremist fundamentalism and totalitarianism.  The result has been some of the most heinous human rights violations imaginable.  Unfortunately, the very same was said of Christianity during Europe’s Dark Ages.  I tell you now, Islam is in its dark age.  If they are to be judged solely on today, it stands to reason Christianity should never have been allowed to survive to the modern day.  But we knew Christianity to have a solid foundation in Jesus and his chosen apostles.  Likewise, Islam has a foundation every bit as impressive.

It is a familiar and unfortunate human failing to discredit and malign our enemies.  Centuries of unremitting hostilities during the various Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista, the trade wars of the renaissance, and the Western colonial expansion period have left us with a confusing legacy mixed with lies and half truths intended to substantiate and strengthen the Western cause.  Western theologians and historians have only recently begun reexamining Islam in an attempt to separate fact from fiction.  Some of their “discoveries” are astounding and bare testimony to the continuity of the human spirit as our similarities far outnumber our differences.

Muhammad lived in a violent, desperately brutal society and he managed to bring peace to that world. Now this may come as a surprise to some, but he did it through peaceable means not by force.  Suffering persecution in his native Mecca, he was invited by the neighboring waring clans of the large agricultural oasis of Yathrib to mitigate an end to more than a century of devastating tribal blood-feuds.  Drafting the Ṣaḥīfat al-Madīna, Muhammad established a peaceable and diverse democratic federation encompassing the eight Medinan tribes and the Muslim immigrants from Mecca.  This alliance included Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Christians, and pagans... each vested citizens of this new society.

This was an absolutely astounding achievement for its day and did not go unnoticed by Muhammad’s rivals.  For six years, he fought a war of survival against Mecca.  The Meccans, who correctly perceived a threat to their long established power as droves converted to Islamic monotheism and trade began to shift to Medina, were intent on exterminating the Muslim community.  Once the tides of war clearly and irrevocably shifted to the advantage of Medina, Muhammad did the unthinkable.  Instead of bringing Mecca to her knees by an inevitable victory through violence,  Medina switched to a campaign of nonviolence that was not too dissimilar from that practiced by Gandhi and other inspiring leaders. For two long years, they persevered.  Finally, Muhammad rode into Mecca with a thousand unarmed followers and sued for peace... a peace favoring Mecca.  So shocking and contrary to millennia of tribal custom, word spread throughout the region, igniting a social revolution.  Within a few years, Muhammad and his followers were welcomed back into Mecca, not as enemies but as allies.

This isn't to say atrocities were not committed by all sides during the conflict.  They were.  But Muhammad had a lesson to teach.  Compassion was the only avenue open for lasting peace.  This set the tone for Islamic expansion for centuries to come.

Because he comes so much later and there is so much more documentation, we know more about the founder of Islam than we do of almost any other major tradition.  His first biographers really tried to document history, maybe not quite history as we know it today, but they certainly presented the prophet in the most realistic light possible.  The al-sīra and hadith collections are biographies and accounts of the verbal and physical traditions of the prophet... providing a very humanizing glimpse of the man who's name means "praiseworthy." 

They reveal Muhammad sometimes having very real and familiar trouble with his wives. People often assume that he had a harem selected for their beauty and subservience designed to cater to his every indulgence.  Far from it!  The wives were often a headache and undertaken for political reasons.  Many were vibrant, intelligent, and, dare we say, insistent.  Surprisingly, his views of family and marriage more closely match our 21st century ideal than what was common in the 6th and 7th centuries.  He attempted to bring more equality and security to women and tried to overturn millennia of tribal custom.  He viewed his wives as both a challenge and a blessing.  He felt it his duty to learn to love, cherish, honor, and respect them as he knew Allah did.

They show Muhammad playing often with his adored grandchildren, even putting little Hassan and Hussein on his shoulders and running around with them.  They recount him weeping over the deaths of family and friends and speak of the comfort and advice given his beloved daughters.  In short, they detail his struggles, vulnerabilities along with the careful striving and literal sweating to craft and utter the astonishing words of the Qur'an. The poetry of the Qur'an is mostly lost in translation, but the Arabic, I'm told, is an exercise in absolute unsurpassed beauty.  Listening to it, I have no doubt.

Muhammad taught that not only Abraham, but Moses, Jesus, Adam are all revered great prophets.  You cannot be a Muslim and deny the truth they taught.  Your Islamic spirit must include an appreciation of these other traditions.  The People of the Book; Jews, Sabians, Christians, and Muslims are indelibly linked.

It is common for the mystics of Islam, the sufi, to exclaim in jubilation that they are no longer a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian; that they are equally home in a mosque, synagogue, temple or church.  They reason once we touch the divine such man-made distinctions become meaningless and we can leave them behind.  This is both extraordinary and inspiring.

Instead of seeing other traditions as, at best, a mistake, sufism inspires us to see them as positive and enriching.  True Islam can give us a blueprint to explore other spiritual traditions and to draw what inspiration we can from them.

"If God had willed he would have made you one nation. But He did not do so, that he may try you in what has come to you. So, compete with one another in good works; Unto God shall you return; altogether; and he will tell you the Truth about what you have been disputing."

~ Qur'an 5:48

Meting Vengeance

From State Hwy. 128 near the Colorado River - Utah

But Seeking Justice

Justice isn’t always a joyful occasion.  Sometimes, it is painful and solemn... or it should be.

I hold to the belief that all men are inherently good... or at least they start out that way.  We are the divine offspring.  Long before coming here, we were nurtured with unconditional love and perfect wisdom, reared in infinite mercy and empathy.  We communed with the gods and rejoiced in blessings of everlasting life.

Our earthy probation is one of necessary hardship and trial.  It is the refining fire that allows for true and meaningful change in our quest for exalted perfection.  We are challenged physically and spiritually.  Failure is not just common but required... but sometimes, however, that failure can be so catastrophic, even the heavens weep from a broken heart.

This is how I would sum up the life of Osama Bin Laden.  A life that started with such promise, filled with love and anticipation, only to end a tortured soul twisted by fear and hatred into profound wickedness.

I know there are some who would argue points of ideology to find purpose behind his madness but so polluted his thinking in extremes, he would have murdered the world to save it.  There is no rationale, no reason, no purpose large enough, profound enough to justify the path he took.  While still greater evils have been wrought by the hand of man for the sake of lifeless ideology, his was still a work of evil in the end.

All that said, the Lord’s is a perfect love, an unconditional love.  I have little doubt that Osama was met at the vail with loving arms and tears of joy by the Savior.  For His is a perfect understanding of limitless mercy and love.

Justice required Bin Laden be hunted down and executed for his crimes.  But ours is an imperfect justice.  Civilized society could not do to him what he inflicted on us without losing itself in such wickedness.  His was a merciful death by comparison; a pale and meager form of justice.  True justice, it would seem, is only for the gods.

The celebratory gatherings marking his execution speak not of justice but of vengeance.  There is no reverence for the sanctity of life.  No honoring the victims of his heinous crimes.  No acknowledgment of all those still suffering under the evil he cultivated.  No respect for God’s unconditional love for ALL his children.

I find celebrations commemorating the violent death of anyone, no matter how deserving, distasteful and damaging.  They’re sickly misguided and savage.  To say they are understandable really only acknowledges our ability to identify with the most base of human emotions.  It just goes to show how little we have evolved as a people and as a species. “They” who were so different from us on September 11th, 2001 don’t seem all that much different anymore.

My heart is saddened by todays events but relieved that this particular is no longer left undone.  May it bring comfort to the rational who contemplate and mourn.  May it silence the civilly insane who revel and delight.

“He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself”

~Chinese Proverb

Two Easter Crowns

Front Garden - South Jordan Utah

In the Spiritual Spring

"Several summers ago my children found two turtles and put them in the vegetable garden. During a thaw the next February, as I was digging up the soggy soil where the peas go, I lifted a heavy mound with my shovel, and then another. The two turtles had burrowed down for winter sleep, and I had rudely awakened them too soon. So I carried them to a corner of the garden where I would not disturb them and dug them in again. When my wife said that she feared the turtles might be dead, I said I did not think so... though I wasn't as sure as I sounded. I insisted that in spring they would come up. And they did in Easter week.”

~ Vigen Guroian

His essay struck me this time of year.  It is easy to imagine those solemn animals planting themselves each fall to rise again each spring...  like hyacinths and lilies; symbols of the resurrection.  In the fertile bed warmed by the sun, turtles germinate like great seeds.  It is difficult not to wonder at the eternity of life... no doubt, just like the women at the tomb did.  We truly are the perennials of God's creation.

“A bright new flower has appeared 

this day out of the tomb. 

Souls have blossomed 

and are adorned with divers hues,

and have become green with life.

The florescence of divine light has bloomed 

in the spiritual spring.”

~Armenian Ode for Eastertide

God as Mathematician

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory - Coquimbo Region Chile 

E = MC2

Albert Einstein once wondered: “How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?”  Sir Isaac Newton formulated a mathematical law of universal gravitation that has proved to be better than 99.99999% precise yet, due to technological limitations of his time, Newton himself could only verify to an accuracy of less than 4%.

It was once thought that the universe was comprised solely of a substance called ether.  Matter, it was postulated, was the result of "knots" in this ether.  Knot theory evolved as an obscure branch of pure mathematics in an attempt to explain this phenomenon.  Amazingly, this abstract endeavor now finds extensive modern applications in topics ranging from molecular chemistry, particle physics and even statistical mechanics.  The same exact "knot" equation, for example, can be used to explain stock option pricing and the agitated motion of pollen suspended in a liquid.

So how can we explain these incredible powers of mathematics?  And fundamentally, what does this all mean?  Are we merely discovering mathematics, like an astronomer discovers a previously unknown comet or asteroid? Or, is mathematics a purely human invention?

These really aren’t questions I can answer... but I can certainly contemplate their profound significance.  It is a significance written in symmetry and logic.  The evocative poetry of mathematics transcends experience and attempts to lay bare creation itself.  Whether we want to call that God or some sublime inspiration, it doesn't matter because it's a tangible place where all rational minds can meet.

"Mathematics and logic, historically speaking, have been entirely distinct studies. Mathematics has been connected with science, logic with Greek. But both have developed in modern times: logic has become more mathematical and mathematics has become more logical. The consequence is that it has now become wholly impossible to draw a line between the two; in fact, the two are one. They differ as boy and man: logic is the youth of mathematics and mathematics is the manhood of logic."

~ Bertrand Russell

Faith as Ethical Alchemy

The Bronx Zoo - New York City

Learning to Live Compassionately

The vase where this verbena’s dying

Was cracked by a lady’s fan’s soft blow.

It must have been the merest grazing:

We heard no sound.  The fissure grew.

The little wound spread while we slept,

Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.

A long, slow marching line, it crept

From spreading base to curving lip.

The water oozed out drop by drop,

Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.

The flowers drained out all their sap.

The vase is broken: do not touch.

The quick, sleek hand of one we love

Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,

And we will break, as surely riven

As that cracked vase. And no one knows.

The world sees just the hard, curved surface

Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,

That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.

Do not touch the broken vase.

~ The Broken Vase, By Sully Prudomme 

Translated by Robert Archambeau

The epistles of Paul, those actually attributed to him anyways, are filled with love for people.  He taught we can endure all manner of trial including being crucified as martyrs, have faith capable of moving mountains but if we lack charity, none of that matters.

Surprisingly, true religion is not about believing things.  It is said the Jewish rabbi, Hillel, an older contemporary of Jesus, was once approached by a group of pagans.  They said they would convert to Judaism if he could recite the entire Tora while balancing on one leg.  He responded with, “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.  That is the Tora.  The rest is commentary.  Go and learn it.”  (Babylonian Talmud - Shabbat 31a)

Beyond the dogma, endless meetings, planning and herding the faithful, there is an underlying element in Mormonism, and many other religions for that matter, that often goes under appreciated; service.  I’m beginning to understand what religion tries to convey at its best.  It really doesn’t matter what you believe.  Religion is about doing things.  It’s about living in a compassionate way that changes you.  Instead of creeds and beliefs, Judaism and Islam place the emphasis on a collection of practices... like giving alms, prayer, fasting, worship.  These observances are designed to change our inner world.  Each is an opportunity to encounter God.

You also see this in the Gospels.  There is very little doctrine as we now know it.  Jesus isn’t going about giving dissertations on the Godhead, original sin, divinity, or other finer points of doctrine.  He’s going out visiting sinners, traitors, the nonbelieving and unclean... people beneath contempt.  He seemingly valued practice over ideas... much like Buddhism does today.

Religion is a form of ethical alchemy.  As we strive to behave in compassionate ways, it changes us.  Egotism and greed keep us from a knowledge of the divine.  It's not the believing of creeds or the undertaking various sacraments but compassion that allows us the perspective to apprehend the sacred.

The Buddha said that the practice of compassion can introduce us to Nirvana. Jesus said that on the last day, it's those who have visited people who are sick and naked, hungry and in prison, looked after them, who will enter the kingdom of God.  They are the ones who enter God's presence, not those who necessarily have the "correct" theology or the "right" sexual ethics.

So many different faith traditions have come to the conclusion that compassion is the test... it’s the key to exaltation.  I do not believe they all came to this same conclusion out of happenstance.  They came to it because it really does work.

We are at our most creative and wonderful when we are ready to give ourselves away... when we are in the service of others.  Equally, we are the most dangerous, the most unimaginative when we only seek ourselves and our own benefit.  It is in the service of others that we ultimately find ourselves.  When we find ourselves, we find God... not the other way around.

Freelance Religion

Wall Print - Salt Lake City Utah

Being an Amateur Theologian

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice.

~ “Ash-Wednesday” T.S. Elliot

The Latin root of the word “amateur” means “the love of one’s subject.”   I didn’t always have a love of faith.  In fact, many years struggling to conform and confusing the concepts of obedience, self-worth, love, and happiness, nearly left me unable to think about faith at all.

In all honesty, this was my own failure.  Like many “Mormons,” my limiting factor was how I embraced the theology and eagerly allowed it to be twisted into an all encompassing lifestyle of control.  I wasn’t encouraged to think or explore and obedience was all important.  I was expected to be subservient to my religious collective... seeing my leaders in the place of God as His defined ecclesiastical line of authority here on Earth; as prophets, high priests, and elders, bishops, presidents and counselors, those with the final word to protect sanctioned orthodoxy.  I didn’t feel free to explore my own thoughts and ideas, or express any doubt or confusion.  My undefined spiritual longing went unfulfilled as the structures of that religious life took precedence.

I learned not to think creatively and reason out my own responses but rather to seek out the "approved" or sanction belief if I didn't know and to react "appropriately."  I felt prisoner to my doubts.  I couldn't share them so I ignored them.  Over time, this damaged not only my thinking but my self confidence.  To habitually deflect one's intellect from a healthy bias prevents one from seeing things as they are.  It places the importance on the continuity of the faith at the cost of rational thought and true spiritual growth.

Here lies the crux of my trouble... my over sensitivity to what mainstream Mormons thrive on; the reverence for obedience and the worship of stalwartness.  Looking in on their peculiarity from a perspective more outside, it’s quite shocking and heartbreaking to see how disconnected so many of them have become.  And to have one of them attempt to elevate their malformed, unreasoned, myopic opinion to the status above my equally flawed perspective, well, it offends all logic and reason.  Faith is faith.  Belief requires a certain humility and reverence when compared to actual knowledge.  Those who can’t tell the difference are foolish.

I know my place as an inferior intellect among the gods.  They do not.  And it offends my pride and ego.  Their circular logic and placating tones are like a battle cry in my mind to stand firm against the cultist mindset of Orthodoxy.   And this just can’t be.

I become the hypocrite and the cheat by denying them those things they deny me; mutual respect and the free-agency to find our own way and our own voice.  Instead, I seek two things they can not and will not ever give; their approval and acceptance.

This is my greatest obstacle in life.  I believe it is the principle lesson I have been sent here to learn and it is the fundamental reason for this blog.  This is a forum of self-discovery where I may uncover within myself the key to conquering this failing and allow me to truly be my own amateur theologian... of a freelance religion... where I permit myself to be guided along those paths most needed.

There are many things in religion that I haven’t yet absorbed.  Things that are difficult to see without acknowledging the profound similarities divergent faiths share.  Too often religion attempts to work in isolation... jostling uneasily with one another... downplaying the similarities the bind us all together.

We are asking similar questions and coming up with remarkably similar solutions.  This says something about who and what we are as human beings and what brings us to enlightenment.

I have got to find that common thread for this conversation.  I am dumbfounded by the sectarian doctrine embraced by Orthodoxy.  I need to see what pain and fear lies at the root of it.  They are trying to express an anxiety and answer a question I truly do not understand.  It is too easy to use God horribly to endorse our own fears, loathings, and hatreds.  Most people are not disciplined enough to realize God is NOT just a bigger and better version of ourselves with our likes and dislikes but is a reality quite apart from our own.

This is a mid-voyage course correction of sorts.  I will be reorganizing and redacting some of my previous posts to eliminate the “broken-record” effect currently surfacing here and to better reflect the new voice I wish to develop.

Of Angels and Demons

Plaza Across from The Capitol Theatre - Salt Lake City Utah

Where Faith is Required

Why does faith play such an important role in God’s plan for us?  I’ve often speculated how differently I might conduct myself had I the memories of my previous probation still intact.  It certainly would be easier to operate in a state of knowing but that’s not God’s end goal.

He isn’t looking for well trained creations; beings properly schooled in the correct assumptions and behaviors.  We are the inheritors of a multiverse more fantastic and wonderful than our hopes, dreams, and aspirations could ever dare aspire to.   As such heirs, God needs to provide us an environment where we can exercise the profound and lasting changes that true learning and understanding bring... free from the complications of expectation and desire such knowledge would impart.

In such a faith based existence, how do spiritual manifestations play a part?  The moment we see God, an angel, a loved one since departed, wouldn’t that negate faith?  How about feeling or sensing their presence?  Might that be ok?  Well, if faith is a required part of God’s plan, I would have to say, “no.”  That would be knowledge.  Knowing something to be true is not the same as believing.  It’s either faith or knowledge but never both.

In addition to faith, I truly believe in a cyclical process of life and learning.  Just as my presence hasn’t been requested or required in the pre-existence while I’ve been alive, I struggle to comprehend a need for those who have died to return here either to provide comfort or bare witness.  Such things would deny me my free agency by robing me of faith and replacing it with knowledge.  In this context, angels, demons and all manner of spiritual specters, ghosts or what have you, have no place in my paradigm.

The universe is a pretty complicated place.  The more we learn about it, the more ridiculously complex it becomes.  We passed the point where our limited senses could experience all we know a very long time ago.  Additional dimensions, particles of matter, periods of time all outside our perceivable universe are now known to exist.  Our intellect has evolved beyond a “seeing is believing” universe.

I believe some of those who claim to have been witness to the supernatural.  That is to say, I believe they believe it to be true.  However, due to the faith requirement and semblance of cyclical order evident in our existence, I do not believe such things actual happen...  at least not the way those experiencing them think.

We live and operate in a physical world where much of what happens transpires beyond our threshold of perception.  The dimensions of time and space, everything we can experience, are just the mountaintops of what’s really going on.  Every so often the mists clear just enough that we almost become aware of the plains and valleys far below.  In attempting to make sense of the inconceivable, our minds develop constructs influenced by our passions and experience that are more understandable to us by creatively filling in the perception gaps.  As strange as this might seem, we’re all very adept at doing it.  In fact, the brain does it all the time.  

My maternal grandmother suffered from macular degeneration.  Over time she developed blind spots in her vision.  Instead of seeing black blotches everywhere, she reported that she would often see the background of a scene just fine.  It was only when something was moving across it in the foreground did she notice something odd... as an object moved into her blind spot, it would wink out as if invisible and then suddenly appear again when it exited.

And it’s not only vision.  We are capable of this with all our other senses.  Touch, smell, and hearing are equally manipulated.  Even logic is aided in this manner.  Instead of crunching through mountains of data each and every time we are presented with a particular situation, we use past personal experience, our current emotional state, and our immediate desires and expectations to devise short cuts in assessing a circumstance.  It’s a natural and beneficial result of intellectual evolution.

It is my firm belief spiritual manifestations are a result of what I might call assumptive sensory stereotyping where our emotional state and the uneasy near realization of things just beyond our comprehension collide.  In a life where faith is required, angels and demons cannot be allowed access and there is strict separations between realms.

This is not to say there is no value or meaning in such experiences because they are fueled by deep seated needs and desires.  As personal scripture, revelation, dreams, or visions, they are of allegorical importance whose meaning must be explored and understood.

“The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation

is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.” 

~Julie B. Beck