Awake

It happens often enough lately that I think it fair to call it a new nighttime ritual. The younger boy child slides open a shoji door, enters and walks laps around the low table where I sit at my computer in the center of the tatami room. In his mouth is a toothbrush. He brushes as he walks. I speak and he utters true to amusing young adolescent boy replies. Some nights he’ll do two or three laps; tonight it was a good dozen or more before his stop at the door and toothbrush-in-mouth mumbled “good-night” was followed by the wood on wood snap of papered doors closing. 

Usually I go right back to what I was doing, but tonight I just sat for a moment, closed my eyes and focused on my breath to better take it all in. 

A contented smile ensued.

This Life!

It’s so easy to focus more on judging its meanness  than recognizing its miraculousness. The result is missing a myriad of wonders. 

I cringe to consider how many of its joys have passed without me even noticing? 

Oh well. What's done is done.

But not this time. 

For this one I was awake. 

I don't know

I walked out to get something out of the shed and WHOA! 

Blindsided by the full moon rising over the nearby hill. It gets me every time. What is it about the moon? After standing awestruck for a moment I ran in to get the camera. How about that eh! 

I saw it die and disappear last month yet here it is again. Resurrection! People used to think it was a god you know. The ever dying, ever resurrecting god. Tales of gods dying only to be reborn date back as far as we can see into the history of our species and likely much further. The earliest evidence we have of anything considered "religious" comes from graves. Both our species and Neanderthals buried the dead in the fetal position like a baby in the mother's womb. They gave the corpse things to take with him or her when put back into Mother Earth to be born again. Just about every religious motif you can think of--life after death, dead and resurrected god or gods, gods born of virgins, heaven(s) and hell(s), holy lands and chosen people, creation myths with the life giving tree in its center and four pillars or rivers, the goddess and serpent, catastrophic floods, heroes swallowed by monsters, these and scores more have been found the world over dating back to the earliest art or writing. The German ethnologist Adolf Bastian called them "elementary ideas". Later Carl Jung coined the term archetypes to describe them. Ideas and images as old as humankind itself, appearing everywhere across space and time. How can that be? 

The two theories are either diffusion or we evolved with them in our subconscious--any and every human is subject to having these images appear in their nightly dreams. Of course the gods, devils and various tales vary according to respective cultures and periods of history. From there they remain mythical tales or start being read as actual history and become articles of faith. In such cases the individual either believes it or she doesn't. If she doesn't she calls it a lie or pretends to believe in order to be accepted. Not all adherents of the world's religions insist their stories and/or symbols are to be taken literally, but scores still do.  So that's one way to look at them.

Another way is just to reject it all as bunk and be done with it. Many go that route too. Indeed, more seem to opt for that route as our species presses forward into the future.

However, there is a third way--the middle path one might say--which is to believe these symbols and tales have value and thus something to teach us since they're so uncannily common across so many religions since the dawn of our species. They all have their own cultural inflections of course, but strikingly similar just the same. What is it that made us this way? How could there be so many different stories of dead and resurrected gods or virgin births--stories that predate the time of Christ by many thousands of years? Could there be something in every single person that transcends culture and time, sex and religion? Indeed, that goes so far beyond anything our waking, conscious minds can imagine that... well, that we can't even imagine it? And if so, then what the heck is it? 

Getting jolted by the unexpected appearance of the full moon rising over the nearby hill rattles these and more questions loose in my mind to go over all again for the umpteenth thousandth millionth time.  I'll never arrive at a satisfactory answer. I'll never know. But that's okay. The fascination that comes with asking and pondering, contemplating, reading, reflecting and wondering...  That's only grown stronger over time and I don't mind it at all. Not knowing only makes the awe, wonder and desire to worship and praise the mystery stronger.

Valentines Day 2022. Let's talk about Love.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things….”

The Apostle Paul’s words are often included in wedding ceremonies, and yet there’s no mention of the kind of love in which the eyes tell a the heart “That’s the one!”—a person’s love for their beloved.  Ironically enough, that kind of love was dangerous business for well over a thousand years after 1 Corinthians 13 was written.

Love as its celebrated and praised in the West nowadays—the uniting of soulmates leading to happily ever after—would condemn lovebirds straight to hell. Take Tristian and Isolde for example. He went to fetch her in Ireland and bring her back to marry King Mark. Isolde had never met the king, but prearranged marriages were the only kind approved by the church back then. What we take as commonplace marry the person you love now was considered adulterous.

There should be love and attraction even in a prearranged marriage though, so Isolde’s mother made a love potion for them to drink on their wedding night. Alas while on the boat back to England Tristian and Isolde mistook the potion for wine and drank it. When Isolde’s nurse Brangene realized what they’d done she said to Tristian “You have drunk your death”.  To which Tristan replied: “If by my death you mean this agony of love, that is my life. If by my death you mean the punishment that we are to suffer if discovered (execution) I accept that. But if by my death you mean eternal punishment in the fires of hell, I accept that too.”

How’s that for love! This was real defiance now mind you. Back then if you refused a sanctioned by the church prearranged marriage partner your fate was sealed. Belief of “punishment in the fires of hell” was far more widespread then too. Yet fear of hell wouldn’t stop Tristian from loving her. That’s how strong real love is. 

 

In my lay study of myth and history I’ve noticed that certain “sins” or beliefs of earlier eras aren’t viewed the same now. Much like languages, beliefs and taboos have changed over the years right alongside societal and cultural changes. Today much of what’s accepted by the church, and thus God apparently, was mortal sin in the not so distant past. If you like the notion of marrying for love then thank a twelfth century Troubadour. 

Before the Troubadours arrived on the scene following your heart into marriage was taboo. Like with Tristian and Isolde it wasn’t allowed to the point of execution for going against the church.  Those days would pass by and by only to have the taboos and “thou shalts” change over time. Well into the past century people stood on the authority of the Bible to oppose unions between Caucasians and non-white races. The rules changed but hearts remained true to love-led form. Over time more people have accepted bi-racial unions only to draw new no go lines, such as same sex unions or those of people of two different religious traditions.

I think back to my wife and I announcing our engagement. The happy news was accepted with cheer and well wishes, but some voices had a tone of reservation in them—a whispered reservation… “Is she Christian?” Now in our 19th year of marriage the union has been an ordeal at times, yet love has only grown stronger. Today we celebrated another Valentine’s Day—the girl from a Buddhist tradition and boy from a Christian one, with three kids who’ve been wrapped in a fabric woven together with threads of each. 

Three kids conceived in and raised with love. As for their religious upbringing, experience has me believing Thich Nhat Hanh correct in stating that children raised by parents of two religious traditions merely have two spiritual roots instead of one. That can be a good thing even, and besides, no single religious tradition has the sole rights to kindness and honesty, charity, love, compassion and just doing good.

I’m still crazy about that quirky Japanese girl I met at the kids English Christmas party that cold December day so long ago. Lately I’ve been talking with an English accent like she did the day we met. We tell the story to our kids now and they laugh and laugh, especially girl child, whose laugh brings heaven into the moment every time. 

There are times my heart grows heavy with the thought that others may wish us to believe or do differently. When talking about it one day I mentioned not going to the heaven of their understanding, to which my wife smiled and said it’s okay, we can look out the window of ours and wave.

God I love her. I read heaven and hell like all other religious metaphor, as just that. Metaphor. But if this life I’ve chosen, this defying of the “thou shalt”, leads to eternal punishment in the fires of some medieval hell then so be it. I’m right there with Tristian. I accept that too. I’ll take this love there with me and be fine. 

Love endures all things.