Deep Mystery of God

While probing the Gospel of John and investigating links between the Logos of that scripture and the Tao, I ran across this interesting article from Michael McCauley. I offer it to you:


"THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE RECENTLY peered as deep into space as humans have ever looked. Officials of the Space Telescope Science Institute traced light that has been speeding toward the space we now occupy for 13 billion years, to "within a stone's throw of the beginning of the universe." In order to penetrate to this distance Hubble had to narrow its view to a field that astronomers likened to our looking at the sky through an eight-foot soda straw. The opening on the eye-side is small enough, but projected eight feet out, it narrows to little more than a pinhole. In this minute field of view, a speck of the whole dome of the sky, Hubble saw 10,000 galaxies like our own vast Milky Way.
From a human point of view the enormity of these dimensions of time and space is bewildering, almost absurd. Five hundred years ago we postured ourselves at the center of the universe; now we cling precariously to a remote speck of cosmic dust. Our life-dominant sun is one mediocre star among the myriad that, by the late Carl Sagan's estimate, outnumber the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.
Dooley's Insight
I read to students in an introduction to philosophy course a newspaper article describing this achievement by the Hubble telescope, thinking that it might provide insight into the mysticism of the Tao. One of our readings, by Lao-Tzu, traditionally identified as the founder of the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, had the students befuddled. Describing the mysterious Tao through a series of paradoxes, Lao-Tzu calls it the Nameless: the Name that can be named is not the eternal Name. It is the mystery of mysteries, but also the door of all spiritual awareness and the mother of the universe. It appears empty, but its fullness is inexhaustible, like a bottomless bowl. It is soundless, invisible, intangible. How wondrous it is, exclaims Lao-Tzu; it existed before heaven and earth and even before God!
This is too much for some students. They roll their eyes in exasperation. The Tao doesn't fit easily into Western categories. But one student suddenly has an insight-Dooley, a shadowy figure with one name who slides in and out of class to his own clock and oblivious of all assignments: "When we give God a name, when we call Him 'God,' we shrink him." With that, Dooley disappears for good; but he has left me with the word I have been looking for. We cannot think about the Ultimate Source of the cosmos without the shrinking effect of human thought and language.
The unfathomable times and distances of the cosmos can be answered in the end only with paradox and silence. Standing in front of it, you will not discover its beginning; standing behind it, you will not discover its end. Only standing within its ongoing creative action, says the Tao, will you feel its obliterating embrace.
Master Chang comes to class to give a scholar-practitioner's perspective on the Tao. He arrives with a retinue of wife, translator, books, articles he has written and a Power Point presentation full of Chinese characters. He looks out over a field of curious but skeptical eyes shaded by baseball caps and framed by cut-off tops, low-rise jeans and T- shirts. He tells us that the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. "Language is human," he explains, "and we are trying to get at something that is beyond the human. How could words be adequate?"
The Second Commandment
The Tao fits well with the Second Commandment. The Jewish people, who gave us the Second Commandment, were in such awe of "I Am Who Am" (God's self-revelation to Moses in Ex. 3:14) that, as John L. McKenzie, S.J., points out in his Dictionary of the Bible, "At some early date the Jews began to abstain from the pronunciation of the name Yahweh in the belief that it was too sacred for utterance." The Catholic Encyclopedia is even more emphatic: "Out of profound reverence to God, the name YHWH (pronounced 'Yahweh'), which occurs in the Hebrew text of the OT, was never said."
Modern Jewish theologians are also wary of squeezing die Ultimate Source into human clothes. For Martin Buber, to conceive of God is to abolish his divinity. We can say only that the Godhead is "that undefinable X," "the essential mystery," "the unknowable," "the paradox of paradoxes." Buber would look benevolently on the self-proclaimed atheists in our class. For they are not rejecting the living God, only the concepts of God that have been foisted on them.
Following the Jewish tradition, James Hatley of Salisbury State University uses only the designation "G-d" in his commentary on the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, as in "the search for a transcendent G-d." The recurring hyphen is a reminder of the inadequacy of philosophizing, even as we are compelled to carry on with it.
The Divine Immensity
In his recent book, Deeper Than Darwin, the Georgetown University theologian John Haught reflects in depth on the effect of modern scientific discoveries, like that of the Hubble, on our understanding of the Ultimate Reality. He finds in them not a threat to faith but a new source of revelation about the religious meaning of the Inexhaustible, the Infinite, the Immense, the Enormous, the Extravagant. Before the shock of cosmic discoveries, the "size" of God had become "too middling to command the response of genuine worship.... The newly discovered immensity of time and space appears now to swallow up our narrowly human images of God." He quotes a not-quite-believing scientific writer for whom contemplating the vastness of the cosmos is a sensual experience, like Gregorian chant, luring him deeper into the deep mystery.
Haught distinguishes between the apophatic, or silent, approach and the kataphatic, or symbolic, approach to reaching out for the Absolute Reality. The creation story in the Book of Genesis, one of the most controversial readings we treat in class, is an example of the symbolic approach, I tell students. With great effort I try to convey this interpretation, to the discomfort of the fundamentalists and the skepticism of the materialists. When I have finished, a student in the front row looks up sympathetically and says: "Boy, I bet you're glad that's over with."
Silence the Truest Statement
Joseph Pieper, in The Silence of St. Thomas, reveals how Aquinas, reasoning profoundly to the point where reason fails, ultimately embraces the apophatic approach. "Because we are not capable of knowing what God is but only what God is not," he says in the Summa, "we cannot contemplate how God is but only how God is not. This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know him." After a mystical experience at the end of his life, Thomas laid down his fruitful pen in the middle of a treatise: "Reginald, I can write no more," he said to his friend. "All that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw."
This ultimate response of muteness leads to the insight of centering prayer. Sitting quietly in the early morning pause before the grinding noises of the day begin, one withdraws, Buddha-like, into a cocoon of nothingness. "We close our eyes to what is going on around us and within us," says the Trappist monk Thomas Keating. "When you become aware of thoughts, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. 'Thoughts' is an umbrella term for every perception, including sense perceptions, feelings, images, memories, reflections and commentaries.... He leads us by means of sacred experiences to the experience of emptiness. Anything that we perceive of God can only be a radiance of His presence and not God as He is Himself."
On the last day of class the students are attentive, even reflective, when I tell them what I learned this semester: Silence is the truest statement we can make about the Ultimate Source. To conceive is to shrink; to speak is to falsify."

Another Year

2007 and Pat Robertson tells us the end is near. Best get in some trail miles before she goes up in mushrooms. That's just what I did last Saturday. 2:45 at McNaughton on a late December day that was touching 50 degrees at 8:30 a.m. Overcast, but who cares. Creek crossings down just a tad from two weeks ago, still got wet. Felt strong most of the way, some foot pain after 2 hours, ah hell. Ran into Mike Siltman as I was finishing, he was going out for another loop. One was enough for me. The woods were still and calming. Just happy to be "out there."

Notes

-All the snow from the storm is melted. We don't have winters like we used to.

-Went out and did a McNaughton loop in 2:15 last weekend. Feet held up, things are steadily getting back to normal. Trails out there were in great shape, some mud in low spots, but not bad overall, creek was up, so wet feet. Much fun on the hills. This is a good sign.

-Yesterday I saw a large eagle sitting about 20 yards into a tilled corn field on Lancaster Road west of Bartonville. This is the first large eagle I have ever seen sitting in a tilled corn field in winter.

-I started reading "Mishima's Sword" by Christopher Ross. Ross travels to Japan in search of the samurai sword with which Yukio Mishima's head was severed with while becoming the last person in Japan to commit Sepukko. So far a fascinating read, particularly for those interested in Japanese Samurai culture (I am) or Mishima's life and writing. (Snyd, you out there?)

-Finished reading "Working Retrievers" by Tom Quinn, a most beautiful book on field training Retriever breeds. Everything you need to know elegantly laid out. I have this fantasy of turning Zoe into a working birddog, but realistically, there isn't time, nor probably bloodline, but what a fun thought. I'll have to settle for running with her.

Soundtrack: Court and Spark, "Witch Season"

Da Deer Run Run 2006 Edition

A monk asked Tung-shan: "When cold and heat come along, how can I avoid them?"

Tung-shan said: "Why not go where there is neither cold nor heat?"

"Where is there cold nor heat?"

Tung shan said: "When it is cold, let the cold kill you. When it is hot, let the heat kill you."

Not fatal, but brisk. Da Deer Run Run is one of my favorite events. Again we had snow on the course, a nice 5 or 6 inch base that was packed down spit slick in some spots, mushy and churned up in others for those of us toward the middle of the pack. Bitter cold of the past few days had let up some, but it was still mid-20s with strong winds, certainly pushing wind chills down toward zero, especially in the level areas near the lake. I happily finished in 51:10 and hit the hot soup. Fun run.

Snow

We got our first seasonal taste of snow with a relatively early winter storm. By yesterday afternoon I was out in the woods postholing through 8"-20" (drifts) of virgin snow. Sun had arrived making the ice glint diamond-like on branches creating a prism effect. Running was tough with some areas drifted to a couple of feet, but it's always magical hitting the trails with first snow, the effort only serving to amplify the senses. Saw rabbit, deer, coon, coyote tracks, a few small does and a good sized antlered buck, eight point or so, that jumped off trail into thick underbrush, somehow managing to evade the shotgun so far. Good training for Deer Run, Run next weekend. Last year I remember there being a good snowpack on the trails, and I'm hoping so again.

Soundtrack: Jayhawks, "Hollywood Town Hall" Good mood music for a winter day.