When Worlds Come Together
At a place called "Interbeing"
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Faith as experience [not belief] ... is an inner gesture by which we entrust ourselves totally and unconditionally to life - life perceived as our own, yet as a power greater than ourselves.
*David Steindl-Rast. Deeper Than Words.
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A waitress handed the menu to the man. He looked at it, delighted by the sight of the delicious-looking food. Before the waitress returned to take his order, he ate the menu. Upon the waitress' return, the man complained about the bad-tasting food and a stomachache. Fuming, he declared he would never return. He stormed out, yelling his refusal to pay for the meal. That was fine with the waitress; he had not ordered anything, anyway.
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Corrine Ware, in Saint Benedict on the Freeway, writes from her Christian contemplative orientation that God is our primary text. And, "… God is simply not found in the Cliff Notes."
Ware posits there are "secondary texts." She remarks regarding reliance on the secondary texts:
We bootleg our spiritual experience from sources other than from our direct experience of God. We seek a religion exported to us by writers, magical objects and places, compelling speakers, heightened group experiences, televangelists, or celestial beings. … they are not the "primary text."
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Three religions, born in the vicinity of the Mediterranian - Christianity, Islam, Judaism - are called Religions of the Book: the Tanak (Hebrew Bible), the Koran (Quran), the Holy Bible.
My early life as an evangelical Christian was centered as much, it seems now, on the Bible - only King James Version - as on God. Both were indispensable to the faith community. We could no more envision our life together without a firm faith in the Bible as not breathing and, yet, remaining alive. From first to last, the Bible was seen as a flawless transmission from the Creator to us. This faith is reflected in the identity spoken by conservative Christians - "Bible Believing Christian."
Some would say such thinking is, in terms of development, "magical," and it was and is to some extent. Yet, it is more than just magical for some, as most of what we do is more complex than we assume.
While I am grateful for the early devotion to the Bible, I now see it often verged, if not transgressed into, an idolatry of the text - in Ware's terms, supplanting the primary with the secondary. By this, it taught an exaggerated allegiance to a book, including claims about it the text itself could not support. The humanness of the Scripture was ignored; fallibility, which comes with humans, was seen as a threat to its integrity.
Still, I wholeheartedly see the value of sacred books and daily reading from them. I read from the Christian Scriptures, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist Sutras, and others. Often I meditate or silently pray scripture. Yet, no holy book is the primary text for us.
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The Holy Bible became more inspiring to me after realizing it was not inerrant in the way I had been trained to see. I came to appreciate it as a divine-human work, porous to divine revelation as the past and present experience of the Sacred put into words based on the times and cultures of those who penned the words or spoke them - That something is not inerrant does not mean it is less adequate to communicate wisdom than if it were.
At best, past and present sacred writings are skillful means of opening the heart in receptivity to the inner Voice. We profit from sacred writings with wise use, admitting their role and limitations. The map may not be the territory, but maps orient us to the primary landscape. Maps serve a purpose.
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Words mirror the Word, as our words can mirror our inexpressible selves. Our words are truthful to the extent they accurately reflect our essence - likewise with sacred writings. Words can take us to their dropping point, where we commune with the Word in Silence.
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Sacred writing counters the cheapening of words in modern cultures. Politics, popular religion, media, and advertising have promoted the cheapening of words. Soaking in the words of wise works and teachers is advantageous to soaking in the words strewn about mindlessly in the virtual world. To live mindfully, one chooses means that support that way of life. This may entail not merely what we read or listen to but how much we give attention to it.
The monastic Michael Casey writes, in Strangers to the City, of the cumulative effect of too much attention to mass media: "What happens is like the spam that bedevils e-mail; it ... clogs up the channels of communication." That is, we will find genuine communication with others lessened, if we indiscriminately imbibe of cheap and cheapening communication. Such exposure lessens our own sensitivity to edifying speech, says Casey. He continues ...
I have no doubt of the degenerative effect on the mind that results from sustained exposure to the mass media, where images sometimes swamp critical thought, where opinion is proposed as knowledge, where sincerity is more highly regarded than truth,26 and where anything can be “spun” to mean whatever the commentator chooses.
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Sacred reading - which includes digital; for example, listening to a book - is reading that is a means of the Sacred. While other reading or listening is part of our lives, to be a spiritual being, we are selective in what we give attention to. Likewise, in sacred reading, we are reading first for inspiration, or a sense of connection to the Holy, not for information. Reading becomes more than informational; such reading is transformational. Through sacred reading, we become more porous to the Spirit.
Has any particular sacred Scripture or writing been inspirational in your faith development? What would you call the "primary text" in your spiritual path? What are "secondary texts" you have relied on in the past? How might "secondary texts" hinder us in our spiritual life? Aid us?
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox, and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
