MY RELIGION

for Oscar, who asked

What is my religion?

What is a religion?

A religion is—etymologically—that which ties one fast; or—metaphorically—it is one’s binding principles, the premises of value one holds most dear, most exalted, most noble, most sacred.

By that reckoning, my religion is kindness, rooted in the idea of kinship.  To the extent that all living creatures are kin, they deserve to be treated kindly, as we would wish them to treat us in kind.

Hence the Golden Rule, declared sacred by religious teachings around the world, enunciates the prime principle of reciprocal respect and care, of mutual loving-kindness.

That is my religious ideal, when I remember it.  Trouble always follows my forgetting or ignoring it.  When sometimes I force my way on others, disrespecting their needs or their good, preferring what suits me over what serves them, then I fail to practice what I’m preaching here.

To respect and tend to others’ vital needs as well as to my own, to care for others’ well-being as I do for my own—that would be my binding ideal, that which I commit and continually recommit myself to act upon, always imperfectly.

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A HAPPY ASSUMPTION

Assume this: that the assumptions you make about human nature make all the difference in how you will experience your life, negatively or positively.

You might assume, in Thomas Hobbes’ words, that human life is nasty, brutish and cruel, if not always short.  Given that glum predisposition, you will readily find evidence and instances to substantiate your negative case, perhaps even citing the Old Testament tale of Eve and Adam’s fall from grace as divine testimony to our innately wayward nature.

More sunnily, however, you might, like Jean Jacques Rousseau and his fellow Romantics, assume the opposite: that we are born good, blessed with a disposition toward love and kindness, if only it is nurtured and encouraged from the start.

Unfortunately, the assumptions you have made may have been conditioned early on by the ways you and those near you were treated, either kindly or harshly; and therefore your early assumptions may be difficult to uproot and alter.  Such is the power of behavioral conditioning, particularly on the impressionable young.

Consider this, though (as the most revered and honored of the world’s wisdom teachings urge): that a life dedicated to loving-kindness, to the assumption of our natural goodness of will, is happiest, and that humanity’s professed “pursuit of happiness” can be satisfied only by exhibitions and demonstrations of humane, not harmful, behaviors.

While evidence abounds of manunkind’s atrociousness at our worst and the prevalence of mortal sins; the evident counter instances of charity, reconciliation, forgiveness and self-sacrifice attest to a nobility and godliness potential in our natures that, given opportunity and nurture, can redefine our nature fundamentally in ways that sanity prefers.

We are happy when we’re good.

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THE LIVING UNIVERSE

     for Duane Elgin

The universe is living, some now say,
Not only mystics but those scientists
Who study quantum physics’ disarray,
Where certainty recedes in cosmic mists,

Where only probability suggests
Where particles may be, and surety
Eludes the calculus of Newton’s tests,
Though space is made of thoughtful energy.

Just as each body’s microcosm lives
Informed by subtle energies throughout,
So something—call it pulse or spirit—gives
Aliveness to the cosmos round about.

Not only does our universe expand;
We see that it evolves, and feel it’s planned.

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THE OTHER SIDE OF “HUMAN FRONTIERS”

I am coming to realize that my fascination with the topic of “human frontiers” has led me to overlook important implications and limitations of the frontier metaphor I am using.

What I have meant to suggest by studying “human frontiers” has been the idea of progress figured as a journey into unexplored and promising territories—on the model of America’s history of westward expansion and settlement, a movement symbolizing the increase of property and power for human exploits and exploitation, an exercise of human dominion and domination—literally the making of new homes (domi) for us to inhabit.

While Americans are most famous (or notorious) for our frontier spirit of adventure and advancement, of forward movement and progress—and our national history is imagined as an ongoing journey, even extending to the Moon and to planets beyond our solar system—that is a skewed view of reality.  That is only half the human truth.

Besides the human motive to journey onward like our pioneer predecessors, we also feel a motive to journey inward.  Human beings seek not only advancement but fulfillment, not only going but being, not just conquest but concord—being centered, stable, home.

T. S. Eliot’s famous sentence,

          You shall not cease from exploration,
          And the end of all our journeying,
          Will be to arrive where we started,
          And know the place for the first time.

is a sentence I now see as pointing us beyond the youthful, Western urge to make progress, toward the ancient Eastern sagacity of sitting still, peering inward, and meditating—passing beyond the immediate to the Ultimate and finding communion in Eternity.

This dual perspective of Yang and Yin is one that we human beings have long known and often forgotten until, over and again, we re-cognize what is wise.

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WIT DISARMED

One budding poet had a knack
That boded more than just a hack:
His metrics were impeccable,
His music sonorous and full,
His sense of rhyming was spot on,
As if led by a deft baton.

Predictably, he did aspire
To penning memorable satire,
To skewering dullness, folly, vice
In hopes his verses might entice
At least a few down Wisdom’s road
Where Reason, Care and Kindness strode.

But at the last he sadly found
That satire was itself unsound,
For all its savvy, wit and charm,
That making fun itself caused harm.

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EVOLUTION’S END

Call it the Fall, but somehow we are bent
To play the role of Earth’s chief malcontent;
We seem to be Earth’s cutting edge of change
While ruthlessly we rape and rearrange,
Shaping the planet to our fond desires
As envy, lust or greediness aspires.

Of all the changes we might hope to see
Affecting suffering Earth’s posterity,
The greatest effort and the one most kind
Would be an alteration in our mind,
For evolution on this planet means
More than the alteration of our genes:

Although to err is human, what’s more sane
Would be for us at last to grow humane.

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ALEXANDER POPE’S COUPLETS

To write heroic couplets just like Pope’s
Lies far beyond the scope of mortal hopes;
Should anyone’s fond dreams today incline
That way, he must invoke some power divine,
Some sylph-like Muse to whisper in his ear
The rhythms and the rhymes blest poets hear,
For nothing less than supernatural aid
Can make sounds march like Pope’s august parade.
Each two-line unit strides with easy force
Or prances with the cadence of a horse:
The first line sets you up for the surprise
Of how the second rhymes, which then complies,
And his whole frame is crafted sound and tight
For both the ear’s and eye’s amazed delight.

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