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It's All...

 

The word Idiot comes from the Greek ἰδιώτης which means a private person or an individual. An idiot is someone who has no term of reference apart from themselves. It is someone for  whom their own good is the paramount good; someone for whom their own worldview is the only valid one. Neo-liberalism, with all its emphasis on individual rights and trust in the market (ie in individual self interest) is the idiot's creed. And it seems that at the moment the world is full of idiots, some of them very vocal and some of them very powerful. 

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Most days I walk with the beloved companion of my youth. We look about us and talk. I hold her hand because she is fitter than me and walks faster, and holding her hand to slow her down a bit is a lot easier than galloping to keep up. And I am so grateful, despite all that this year has been. My brother Alistair died on my birthday. My mother fell and broke her hip. The doctors gave me bad news then good news then so-so news then excellent news. My children and grandchildren filled the house and left again and my brother in law came to stay during the lockdown. We drove to Nelson and Mt Cook and Nelson again. And it's still only September. I walk and think about what I was and what I am, and know that it all kind of fits, although I can't say, exactly, what it fits, or how. I'm grateful - and relieved - to find that I have a context.

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Years ago Wes Sandle explained Einstein to me. And Schroedinger  and Heisenberg and David Bohm and John Bell. He took a long time over his explanations, as Wes was wont to do, and he did an excellent job because after my conversations with him the world made a lot more sense. Of course "makes sense" is a relative term because all those old guys with the foreign sounding names said some crazy stuff and left a lot of puzzles behind them. This year I began to read the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin and some of the craziness began to resolve itself, if ever so slightly. Some of the puzzles seem a lot simpler to me than they did a year ago.

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 About the same time that Wes was sitting in our drawing room in the vicarage at Highgate explaining the thing about the cat in the box, and why, exactly, I would get very heavy and slow if I was to travel at nearly the speed of light, I was reading a couple of very old books. The Dark Night of the Soul, by John of the Cross, and The Cloud of Unknowing, by goodness knows who, had both been sitting, unread, on my shelves since I got them at some church fair or other ages ago. Then, when the time was right,  I opened them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they opened me. These books both describe the same dynamic: that of the growth of the soul by way of all manner of helpful mechanisms for growth, until the soul has reached a point where those mechanisms are no longer needed and must be abandoned. These ancient works have been formative, down the centuries,  for many scholars and mystics, particularly Thomas Keating and his friend and successor, Cynthia Bourgeault, who codified and developed the practice of Centering Prayer, a means by which the centuries old tradition of Christian Contemplative prayer can be made accessible to contemporary men and women. I have been a practitioner of Centering Prayer for all the time since I read The Cloud of Unknowing and had it interpreted for me by Thomas Keating. This last couple of weeks I have been reading Father Thomas' last published work, a tiny book of poems called The Secret Embrace. It is the final statement of a man who made it to the end of the road. I mean, really made it. I have been engaged in an e-course with Cynthia Bourgeault as she reflects on and discusses the poems.

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  • The quantum and relative universe which is not arbitrary or imagined; reality is conversational, and the universe is the other party to the conversation.
  • The pattern of growth in my psyche which has been noticed before, in other people, many thousands of times, and written about since the time of Christ. 
  • The reality described by the mystics which is the same as that described by the physicists. Both describe the same universe: it must be so, as this is the only one we humans are capable of knowing. 
  • The certainty that my passage through this universe has been guided and the guidance has been compassionate and knowing and loving. 
This is my context, and it has taken me almost 70 years to begin to understand it. It has taken me almost 70 years to leave my idiocy behind.     

Comments

Elaine Dent said…
I love this. You make us think about what idiocy is and, when it is much easier to point fingers, how it might be still harboring in us. (Surely not I, Lord!) Then, assuming the harboring to be a true reality within us, your post invites us to consider what learnings and practices might be setting us free from the idiocy that clings to us.
10 September 2020 at 21:42
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