Go With It

My piano teacher used to talk over my playing, calling out for me to relax my shoulders. I bristled at the words, as if she were a backseat driver, but when I did relax my shoulders and took a deep breath I found that my fingers did not shake or skip so much.

Same with writing. I can't try too hard at it when I write a first draft, or else I freeze up before the blank screen, or come off sounding artificial and arrogant. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, incorporates Zen into her own writing practice. She seems to have something there. Writing should be a clearing of the mind, a suspension of self-criticism. That comes later, in editing.

Alan Watts, a Western rationalist who wrote about Eastern philosophy for Westerners in the 60s, talks about Zen as living in a universe full of water, and learning to swim in it rather than thrashing to keep your head above it. Don't fight so hard. Relax and your body will float.

I try to keep this in mind. I find that, in most areas, trying really hard makes things worse:

Trying to balance too much at once and not cutting myself a break makes me bitter on the subway and then vindictive with more restful folk. Then I get self-righteous about how productive I'm being-- but if my goal is to contribute to society and I'm being a snot to my housemates, it undermines my whole reason for working so hard.

Just like in college: cutting off the homework at 2 am and going to sleep always treated me infinitely better than staying up later.

Or, if I'm pursuing someone, the amount that I dress up for him actually decreases the more I like him. Not only do I not want to look like I'm trying hard, but I actually don't want it to be a trying project. Jeans and well arranged, clean hair is fine. It's the ones I don't really like, or want something ulterior out of, that I put on high heels and makeup for.

I'm not saying be lazy, or don't work. In fact, I find it to be very hard work to not try, to not force, to stay cool under pressure and stress. (For instance, I am terrible at mario kart because I'm too forceful with the controller. I jam the joystick, trying in earnest to win, and just end up falling off a lot of cliffs.)

I'm saying instead that letting go of some scruples seems to allow me to attain greater, less tangible successes.

I envision this discipline as being something like balancing something on your head while walking. Or eating something covered in powdered sugar without getting a speck on your shirt. Or cupping a small animal in your hand. Be delicate, don't make sudden movements, and don't carry on with your business- let your business carry on, and go with it.  

The Absurd

This whole void business of my previous post reminds me of Camus. I first read Camus in high school, under the tutelage of another force to be reckoned with, my favorite teacher, Mr L. I worked my butt off for his classes and therefore to worked my butt off to grapple with that deceptively simply book.

I thought then that I understood the book and Camus, until three years later, when I enrolled in a seminar on Camus at college. Now I suspect I know nothing.

The course professor was almost a monk but backed out just weeks before the final induction that would make his vows permanent. Now he's a Camus scholar and interested in international peacemaking, with a brilliant mind and a light, almost lispy voice that puts students to sleep. I learned his theories of Camus and committed the following to memory:

Camus had a master plan for his writing. He believed that men went through various stages of struggle in seeking meaning-- life cycles, if you will. He decided to write an essay, a fiction story, and a play about each cycle. He also named each cycle after a greek demigod, so we have the Sisyphus Cycle, the Prometheus Cycle, the Nemesis Cycle, and, arguably, a fourth cycle that we do not know the name of because Camus died in a freak car accident before he could reveal it.

First of all, you should know that Camus did not believe in God, but did believe that the Universe was inherently cruel to man. (Life is suffering. Shit happens. Etc.) This cruelty, which isn't a result of any consciousness or will, is almost worse because it is unconscious and purposeless. He calls this nasty fact of life the Absurd, and the cycles watch man struggle in the face of the Absurd.

1) The Sisyphean cycle: man pushes rock up hill, only to have it roll down again. Repeat until eternity.

This is our young Mersault (the leading man of the Stranger), pushing the rock of the universe somewhere, only to have the universe undo his labor every time. He's living within the Absurd, dealing with it, but without questioning, without trying to change course. There is innocence here, but not much complex emotion or drive. He has a sense of self-preservation-- after all, Sisyphus always avoids getting flattened by the rolling rock, and maybe he's even pissed off. But what else is there to live for besides yourself?

If this cycle could talk, it would say 'ugh,' or 'meh.'

2) The Promethean cycle: Prometheus defied the gods by stealing fire from them and bringing it to man. So the gods chain him to rock and makes a large eagle eat his liver. The liver grows back every day, and the eagle eats it again, feasting into eternity. This is when man realize how fucked up the Absurd is, and realizes that his true allegiance is with humanity.

Camus says there is one thing that all people can agree upon to some extent: that human life—yours, others, however you define it-- is worth protecting. It's what the Absurd damages, and that damage brings man pain. So you'll be damned if you place any sort of faith or trust in it. You decide to rebel against the Universe, defending the good of human life. This is where man gets a little more developed: he fights on the offense, he has a conscious purpose, a commitment to humanity. Problems like terrorism, hunger and disease work in agreement with the motion of the Absurd, so they need to be attacked on the ground. For all of the doom and gloom of the Absurd, Camus writes really, really beautifully about the Rebel with a human cause.

3) The Nemesis cycle: this one got a little murky to me as I read the Fall. Nemesis is the goddess of measure. Which sounds nice, except it means measure in the 'eye for an eye' sense-- for she's also the goddess of revenge, of retribution.

But basically, when I think of The Fall, the novel that accompanies this cycle, I think of reaching the point of being so hyperconscious of how terrible 'the system' is, that you become cynical, self-absorbed, cruel, and a little nuts. Maybe you even manipulate the system to your own benefit, since you're not going to beat it anyway.

4) And finally, the fourth cycle, or an unfinished half of the third cycle (Camus scholars disagree). There's definitely debate here about what this cycle entails. Where can a man develop from the Nemesis stage, how can he pull himself out of this darkest moment? Where can we find resolution when the Absurd plucked Camus away in an explosion of vehicular carnage right before he revealed his big finale?

I've heard two rumors-- one, that he was planning to call it something like the Cycle of Love, which sounds a little too much like Circle of Life to me, but I'm sure Camus would keep it sophisticated. Two, that he was slowly and secretly converting to Christianity and had he stayed alive long enough he would've openly accepted Christ into his heart and made it the topic of his fourth cycle. To this day, Camus is the subject of a turf war between Christians and Existentialists. I'm on the Existentialist's side-- I like Camus as an atheist-- but I'm clearly biased.

Either way, this little argument is perhaps the Absurd's final jab at Camus-- for I've heard that Camus used to get offended when he was called an Existentialist or a Christian.

Reason enough for me to love Camus.

Faith in gods and in God

An old religion professor of mine assigned us to read “Faith in gods and in God,” a chapter out of H. Richard Niebuhr's book “Radical Monotheism and Western Culture.” I tore it out of my course reader before recycling the rest. It lives in a folder in my room, folded in half, which I use to carry cards and friendship notes from apartment to apartment, city to city.

If anyone will convince me that it makes sense to believe in God, it is H. Richard Niebuhr. That man is an intellectual force. My professor called him and his brother Reinhold Neo-Catholics. I don't remember what that means; but if the brothers are representatives of the movement, it must be pretty hardcore.

Here's the gist:

It's difficult to tolerate the feeling that you lead a meaningless existence, right? Humans look for a sense of purpose, whether it's an ultimate purpose or a purpose for getting up in the morning (on low days, mine is coffee. Just coffee and a silent kitchen table).

So we bestow faith in these purposes. These are gods. At any given time, I might be living for my friends, for myself, for sex, for the thrill of exploration, for writing, for running, for money-- so on and so forth. A lot of people live for the church, for their spouses or children. In fact, we all devote ourselves to multiple purposes. In this way, we are polytheistic.

This can work for people. But eventually two of your purposes are going to be at cross purposes. Do you choose to stay home because you're exhausted and really need to take care of yourself (i.e., shower) or do you stick to your commitment and go to a show that your friend is dying to see but which you aren't interested in? Do you stay in a job you don't like because it supports your family and gives you money? Do you seek relationships, do you seek sex, or both, or do you ruin a relationship in a night of sex-worship without your partner?

Some gods easily trump other ones. But the problem is, no purpose is entirely un-trumpable, if not by another god, then by circumstance. Take the single father who lives for his children. But what if his children die in a freak car accident? Take the musician, who will carry the guitar to his grave. What if he goes deaf, or gets carpal tunnel, or suffers a massive breakup in which all of his beloved music reminds him of his beloved and he can't take solace in it anymore? So not only can one god be trumped by another god, but no god is permanent. It is transient. It can always die, fade away, go somewhere else, be otherwise.

What is that force that is powerful enough to take all of your pretties away from you? The nature of the universe. The void.

So if the void can trump every god, and every god eventually disappears into it, then in a way, the only thing you can really put faith in is the void itself. The void will keep trumping and the void will keep calling your gods away. In this way we are called to put faith in our greatest enemy, our god-killer, because there is nothing else as reliable or powerful.

This sounds dismal, but that's the great challenge of faith. Love the void. Make your enemy your friend, even though it can slay you. And then, H. promises, you might start to find the void familiar; your might see the void as God. God/void is where all of your gods come from and where they all return.

And this doesn't mean you should stop caring about your gods. It just affords a perspective that allows for benevolence for all the gods, in their measure, rather than pitting one against the other for primacy. H. calls it finding a new sacredness in the relative.

I feel like a polytheist all the time. Making hard judgement calls, choosing between commitments, asking myself, what do I really want? But sometimes, when I am writing, or deep in thought, or entranced by a massive desert canyon-scape-- a frame of mind that I would call meditative, out of body-- then I feel that the void is a full emptiness, maybe even God. 

Otherwise

Otherwise

by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed

on two strong legs.

It might have been

otherwise. I ate

cereal, sweet

milk, ripe, flawless

peach. It might

have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

to the birchwood.

All morning I did

the work I love.

At noon I lay down

with my mate. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with silver

candlesticks. It might

have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

This poem makes me extremely jealous. Jane Kenyon has taken the distant future that I hope to achieve in my forties, and she is living it now. This is a future I have been writing quietly in the book of my head. I stick a bookmark into the spine and save it for later, not bothering to write it down on paper or share it.

This future being: living somewhere quiet, with trees and mountains. Making a living by writing-- really making a living of it, getting to wake up in the morning and devote those cleanest, brightest hours to writing. The kids are in late high school or maybe in college (so, maybe this is my fifties). I have a husband. We are companions and partners, still spontaneous enough to lie down at midday. The fruit is fresh and I am at peace.

Whether this happens to me or not, and whether this scenario would actually make me happy or not (where's working for social justice, or with other people?) is unimportant. The point of Otherwise is that, well, sometimes things are otherwise from what you want, and eventually, every good thing will be otherwise. Things may not get worse, but they'll surely change somehow.

“Otherwise” speaks of transience. Of everything-shall-return-to-dust. The way in which to enjoy it now is to meditate on the beauty of the plain detail of it. And to remind oneself, every so often, that it could always be otherwise.

When I feel really shitty and I've whined to my journal about it too much for even my current self-pitying mood, I challenge myself to write only about positive aspects of my current situations. A good conversation I had with my housemate over breakfast, a good book I'm reading, how it is finally warm (or cold) outside. I make a list of “otherwises.” It's not about the power of positive thinking, exactly, because in listing an otherwise, I am always quite aware of how it won't last. It more the power of, 'Hey! Pay attention!' These good things demand I pay attention to them before they're otherwise.

Introduction

I am currently completing a year in a Christian service corps program, and my coordinator, S., is fascinated that I identify as “not religious.” I like to consider metaphysical questions and discuss the uncertainties of human existence, but I was not raised religiously, nor do I operate day to day with a firm  sense of God or even a commitment to atheism. If I were religious, I would probably not be Christian. Yet here I am, fresh out of college with a degree in religious studies-- with a focus on Christianity-- living in a historical New York City church and, for the third time in my life, receiving paychecks from a church.

I'm one of those people that Christians probably talk about behind her back. “She may not know it, but she'll be Christian one day,” they'd say. “She seems riper for conversion every day.”

During our biweekly, one on one meetings, S. holds her backpack to her chest as we sit in a cafe and leans over it like a cheerful kitten clutching her first mouse. She is a woman of wisdom, but sometimes her manner, and her massive and adorable eyes, remind me more of youth than middle age. Her brow furrows slightly as she leans forward, and asks,

“Do you feel... spiritual at all?”

It's a genuine, fascinated, uncritical question, but it puts me on the defensive. Around S., I find myself trying to be even less spiritual than I actually am, lest she snatch the word 'God' out of my mouth and start a mad, joyous jig in a circle, right there in the cafe, singing, “She is! She is! I knew it!”

So I say, "not really."

One night, the other volunteers and I sat in our apartment living room holding a book club meeting with S. and the church reverend. I had recommended Franny and Zooey, one of my favorite books, for that month. After the reverend and I batted back theories about the book back and forth for awhile, S. got her thinking face on.

“Would you say,” she said, holding the book out with one hand and bobbing it up and down with each word as she spoke. “Would you say that this book,” (dramatic pause) “defines your spirituality?” My housemates all exchanged glances with each other, half anticipatory, half amused, and I feel bouyed up by them-- for all of their spiritual goals, they have been wonderfully supportive of me and my religiousless-ness, and we've joked before about her questions to find me otherwise.

“No.” I said flatly.

But in truth, yes. Franny and Zooey does mean a lot to me spiritually, even as I hesitate to use the word. In that, it's been formative to my thinking and feels deeply right in many ways. I always finish rereading it and feel like bursting open some elaborate french doors and breathing in all the glory of life as birds sing and young girls luxuriously roll over in bed.

So I am left to wonder: why has this year, in which I am living in an intentionally Christian world, been all about my own defensiveness about and denial of my own beliefs? It's not genuine, and frankly I don't really like it. I'm tired of defining myself as the “apartment atheist,” an epithet I've fed to my roommates.

It's not that I'm not an atheist-- I just don't feel particularly atheist sometimes, nor do I feel theist, nor do I like the idea of being agnostic. But that's where my difficulty lies-- muddled in metaphysical currents on all sides, as a young woman who has studied religion from the outside for so long and been so fascinated by faith, I am unclear on what I believe. I do not know how to talk about it, which words to use.

Belief is notoriously hard to put into words for most people, but its a difficulty that the more Christian of my housemates encounter in the different way. I stand wistfully listening over the stove, waiting for my spaghetti water to boil as they sit on the couch beside me snacking and comparing church services, discussing their own struggles with the church, their changing conception of Christ in specific terms.

I can, though, point to stories, poems, ideas, experiences, and places that affect me in a deeper way than mere admiration or inspiration. And in writing, I feel like I transcend my worldly self in some way, and tap into a more boiled down essence of myself.

So these series of writings are meant to start at other people's words and arrive at my own. This writing intends to be a more trusting revelation to my dear housemates; a more complex answer than the atheism I conform to alongside my sister and some of my dearest friends; and it is a more genuine answer to S.