Sunday, September 13, 2020

 

Tonight after a particularly spirited meeting I am reminded of some of the functions of a meeting. We are definitely a community and most of us know each other at least a little. We enjoy the silence though it is not generally filled with heartfelt messages; often, at the end, I give a kind of quaker message.

One function of a meeting is as a peaceful place in a world that is definitely not peaceful. A lot of us are suffering from active hardship. One whose daughter almost ran away; one who had a suicide among her circle of friends; one whose cat suffered from inexplicable bleeding. One who lives in Eugene, Oregon, right near the fires, and was only on for a few minutes. Some whose districts are full of covid; some who work with the distressed. We have a wide variety.

One brought a young daughter. That reminds me of a second function of a meeting. The daughter is in costume but friendly, and everyone says hello. It's my stand that the children need the meeting, and the meeting needs the children. Disrupting the silence is a different problem. Having children in the meeting is important though because we need to see the whole picture. Some children are being raised in this crazy world.

Another simply has to do with resources. It's more than what books are good to read (see earlier posts) or where else one can find fellowship. It's more like how do you deal with a suicide? Or what can we do with the tools around us?

There was the question of what God could expect of us in times like these. That's a good question and I'm not sure I'm prepared to answer it entirely at this moment. God, it seems, is turning up the pressure. Fires, pandemic, economic harship, various deck-clearing storms. We the strong will get through it. God wants us to speak out about what's right and wrong, what is the right way. If we need violence to get out of this horrible mess, then what?

I'm not sure I can answer.
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resources

 from Daniel:

Worship As An Act of Love by Jorge Arauz
https://universalistfriends.org/weblog/act-of-love

Jorge Arauz es un Amigo ecuatoriano, miembro del Grupo de Adoración de Quito y la Junta de Amigos de Chestnut Hill.

Jorge Arauz is an Ecuadorian Friend, member of the Quito Worship Group and Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting.
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books recommended

from Steven:
I would recommend a fairly old book by Fritjof Kapra, The Tao of Physics (originally from the 70s.)

The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism

by Fritjof Capra  | Sep 14, 2010
My father had recommended to him Gary Zukav "The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics" which mostly is a good general account of subatomic phsycis which only in the last chapter explains how particles are really dancing relationships of fields and relates that to the Buddhist concept of Emptiness.
My father bought it me when it was first published in about 1979

The only book I managed to read during the  six years I was given clozapine, 2000-2006 which spiritually crippled me so much I could not inspire my wife not to neglect herself to death was 
The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann

The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex

by Murray Gell-Mann  | Apr 1, 1994
It is a very thorough book written by the man who first postulated the Quark.
He is a memebr of a group in New Mexico who explore the boundaries between a mystical awareness and a Western approach to science, politics and economics.

For a more modern approach written by a quantum astro-physicist who decries the atheism of much of Western scientists Bernard Haisch  The God Theory
His theory is that God cerated many universes, each with only a fraction of the possibilities from which to produce good.  As each univrse develops it creates a richness which goes beyiond anything that God could have conceived.  It is like seeing a movie made only of three colours filtered.  In mystical states one sees the white light that contains all possibilities, but to produce a film that tells a story you need the indvidual colours.  He pointed me to The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley 1945

The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West by Huxley, Aldous(July 28, 2009) 

It is an excellent work which quotes from many authors and scriptures and quotes extensively from 18th century English Quaker, William Law, who’s view on eternity and the fact that Quakers think the resurrection of Christ is more an eternal truth than an event in history that saved man from sin he says is more like Buddhism than he rest of Christianity.
This has some really good funny parables about some of the logic denying principles of quantum theory such as the Schroedingr’s cat paradox and the entanglement of pairs of electrons that seem to know which spin is measured in the oopposite half of a pair, even though they are moving away from each other at near the speed of light.  He really lays into the vengeful God of the Old Testament.

The best book on the theology of quantum theory and how primitive people don’t separate the spiritual from the physical as I didn’t since infancy is

Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

by Diarmuid O'Murchu | AJan 1, 2000
It also tells how liberation theology and post colonial and new feminist theology is returning to a quantum based approach where relationships are more important than the objects which the relationships are between.
Part of a quantum awareness is the holographic nature of reality that the whole is contained in every part, but the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
There is an extensive bibliography in it.

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resources from Steven

This is from Steven:

Reorder: The Promised Land
Sunday,  August 23, 2020

Our recent Daily Meditations have been focusing on what seems to me a universal pattern of spiritual transformation that takes us from Order, through Disorder, to Reorder. Order, by itself, normally wants to eliminate any disorder or diversity, creating a narrow and cognitive rigidity in both people and systems. Disorder, by itself, closes us off from any primal union, meaning, and eventually even sanity in both people and systems. Our focus of this week is Reorder, or transformation of people and systems, which happens when both are seen to work together.

Like most other kinds of growth, this spiral probably happens over and over throughout our lives, and reveals itself in the Bible:

Garden of Eden —> Fall —> Paradise.

Walter Brueggemann teaches three kinds of Psalms: Psalms of Orientation —> Psalms of Disorientation —> Psalms of New Orientation. [1]

Christians call the pattern Life —> Crucifixion —> Resurrection.

Many now speak generally of Construction —> Deconstruction —> Reconstruction.

We are indeed “saved” by knowing and surrendering to this universal pattern of reality. Knowing the full pattern allows us to let go of the first order, accept the disorder, and, sometimes hardest of all—to trust the new reorder.

Every religion in its own way is talking about getting us to the reorder stage. Various systems would call it “enlightenment,” “paradise,” “nirvana,” “heaven,” “salvation,” “springtime,” or even “resurrection.” It is the life on the other side of death, the victory on the other side of failure, the joy on the other side of birthing pains. It is an insistence on going through—not under, over, or around. There is no nonstop flight to reorder. To arrive there, we must endure, learn from, and include the Disorder stage, transcending the first naïve Order—but also still including it! It amounts to the best of the conservative and the best of the liberal positions. People who have reached this stage, like the Jewish prophets, might be called “radical traditionalists.” They love their truth and their group enough to critique it; and they critique it enough to maintain their own integrity and intelligence. These wise ones have stopped overreacting but also over defending. They are usually a minority of humans.

Based on years of spiritual direction, I have observed that conservatives must let go of their illusion that they can order and control the world through religion, money, war, or politics. True release of control to God will show itself as compassion and generosity, and less boundary keeping. Liberals, however, must surrender their skepticism of leadership, eldering, or authority, and find what is good, healthy, and deeply true about a foundational order. This will normally be experienced as a move toward humility and real community.

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