Christmas and its Discontents

I had been irritable recently because I worked so much around Christmas. Time with my family and friends have been in such short supply recently, and I had so little during the holidays.

My dissatisfaction made me more sensitive to the general unhappiness of this season. The quiet discontentedness of people I see in my office in December is overwhelming. One patient put it bluntly: “Christmas is depressing.”

This unhappiness is not due to the materialism that ads try to sell each holiday. Not one of my miserable patients was obsessed with presents or possessions. It is the wholesome things about Christmas that create the misery: the peace, joy, and family happiness. None of these things happen much in real people's lives.

Against this shinny myth of merriness real holidays seem so ugly. Modern Christmas is a microcosm of our American Dream: an expectation that harmony and happiness will always be our natural state. As a result we are miserable when we discover that our own lives and families fall short of our expectations. Materialism never destroyed the wholesome holidays. Ravenous buying is the degrading way we seek consolation once we realize the “perfect Christmas” we hoped for was a lie.

If we expected Christmas to be merry it is because we misunderstood the celebration. Christ was born because we are always so far away from hope and wholeness. Even the most jolly of families hides flaws, cruelty, and contradiction. These blemishes are most obvious when we try to manufacture a joyful occasion. Christ was born on Christmas day to save us from ourselves. We should rejoice because he came. We rejoice because He died for us, not because we imagine our lives or families to be anything worth celebrating in themselves.

Is Transcendence Bunk?

I am realizing that the importance I place on transcendence is not something many others share. This leads me to wonder if my perspective is hopelessly skewed?

Transcendence has been a unifying theme of things that have mattered in my life. Transcendence: breaking beyond mundane existence and experiencing that which is deepest, most beautiful, divine—even if only for a moment. My most worthwhile experiences (friendship, adventure, love, music, sex, art, literature, sacrifice, learning, suffering, worship, creating) I appreciated partially because of the transcendence I experienced in them. I was not discontented with normal life, instead I saw normal life as a necessary staging ground from which to break through to what is beyond it. I was not searching for some mystery or magic, but I lived daily life more ecstatically. Nor did I think all transcendent experience was inherently good. Transcendence could mislead as well as enlighten, but these moments seemed to me our best evidence that we are not mere animals or mechanisms —that we are fallen children of God.

The problem of my life now is that I feel myself becoming more of a mechanism each day. The responsibilities of being a doctor, home owner, husband, debtor, father have bound me to the daily grind of being a producer and consumer. Although responsibilities provide stability there is little or no transcendence to be found in them. Some days my spirit feels like an ox yolked to a heavy plow.


Ten years ago I was not a consumer but an ecstatic and idealistic mind. All of my friends were similar and we all lived on a diet of dreams. I assumed that the feelings of transcendence we basked in were universal to all of mankind. We scorned those who didn't "suck the marrow out of life." Now all of my old friends have become hopelessly practical people, and don't seem to miss the transcendence in which they once lived. I talk of seeking transcendence and hear it dismissed as the stuff of childhood—something you grow out of. If no longer transcending life is a natural feature of being an adult, why am I the only one uncomfortable with the maturation?


The other day my wife said, “You don't need too much time on your hands. Instead of centering yourself when you rest, you get your head in the clouds. You end up very dissatisfied.” Am I dissatisfied? I had never thought of myself as a discontented person before, but I saw she was right. The thing I strive for is becoming increasingly hard to reach.


Is transcendence bunk or is it the very stuff life is made of? If transcendence truly is life then I am slowly dying of starvation of the soul, but if it is just a childish emotion then I am worrying myself over nothing and should embrace my maturity. As much as transcendence is a sensation of deep meaning, I cannot say if I really understand anything better than others who have had no such experience or put no stock in such things. The feelings of understanding and meaning are almost too deep for words, but if I can't express what I gain from transcendence have I really gained anything at all? Am I enhanced as a person by transcendent experience or is it only a "mental high" full of sound and fury but signifying nothing?


I am in a bit of a quandary. As I grow older the powerful experiences that were once the natural state of my mind become increasingly rare. Should I chase after transcendence or let it go? Am I a pitiful addict trying to reproduce a high that I can never achieve again, or am I doggedly seeking truth, beauty, and meaning in a cynical world that squashes all that is really worthwhile?


I really don't know at this point. I am perplexed. Perhaps those with more wisdom can help me find the answer. Any advice?

I Planted A Child

I was thinking about my son today as I tried to save my dying plants. Right now the man he will become is developing beneath the surface of his infancy. I imagine him putting down the first delicate roots that will deepen to sustain him through the droughts and storms of life.

My recent fitful attempts at gardening brought a disconcerting thought to mind: small early damage can doom a plant. I planted hydrangeas that withered in a late frost. At first they seemed to recover and even grow, but one by one they all died.

Today I was trying to save my shriveling plants from the sweltering heat of a Georgia summer drought. I was out of town so they didn't get any watering. Their new root systems weren't strong enough to reach the deep water like the big white oaks in the front yard. My vegetable garden is lost and many of the trees I planted were withering. I attempted to revive the little maple by the driveway with water, but I wonder if from now on it may always be stunted. Even a redwood I planted last Fall was visibly damaged.

I want my son to grow into a man like a redwood: immovable, deep, self-contained. They grow to become the world's tallest trees, but the little redwood in my back yard is nearly dead after a few weeks of drought.

Of course the principles of gardening are simple and well known. Babies are more complex. Conflicting theories abound on how not to damage their developing souls.

When I hear my baby cry what should I do? One theory tells me I must immediately go to him and comfort him. He will learn love, kindness, and trust from this, otherwise he would grow up cold, distant, unable to connect to another. Another theory tells me as long as he has recently been fed, cleaned, and loved I should let him cry. Self-soothing will develop self-control and patience. Immediately comforting every cry creates self-absorption and a false expectation that the world should always serve him.

The problem with babies is that their rooting takes place beneath the surface. They cannot tell us about their formation, nor will they recall it afterwards. All our theories about their developing souls are speculation, and the vast differences among children make clear patterns difficult to ascertain. Perhaps we flatter ourself to think we are influencing their formation at all. Perhaps they arrive with roots already so deep within the soil of themselves that they are hardier than any fitful weather of infancy.

I wonder if my abilities as a father will be any better than my gardening? I am certain within my love I am already making mistakes. I am reminded of Paul's words “I planted... but God gave the increase.” I can water, fertilize, prune, provide sunlight and shelter, but the life within a growing tree will remain a hidden mystery. It is the same with my son. He is not my own. I pray that God is good to him, and guides him with a steadier hand than my own.

Good News and Bad Christians

Yesterday was Easter, the day that we celebrate the miracle of new life and resurrection. This year I couldn't help but reflect on how the actions of Christians are such pitiful reflections of this ultimate spiritual truth we claim to believe.

I have a next door neighbor whose only contact with us since we have moved in has been to come by and invite us to a church function. Last week I spoke to him again. It was a situation in which neighborly cooperation would have been expected (a falling tree right on the property line endangering his home). Rather than offering any help he rather rudely insisted I could expect no help from him and that it was my responsibility to fix the problem. He didn't even offer the basic neighborly respect that one might expect of any self-interested person sharing a property line. I would think that someone who tried to evangelize the neighborhood for Christ, might be a bit more interested in acting Christ-like towards his neighbor.

Of course, in my own life I find myself espousing Christian values with my actions leaving much to be desired.

This is the truly amazing thing about the Grace of God: it isn't only for the good but for the bad—for those of us that least deserve it. I can stand in church on Easter and praise Him despite all the foolishness of His children. In the end Christ's grace is so powerful that He is redeeming the us in spite of ourselves.

Death & Christmas

This is a poem I wrote in Haiti after watching a newborn baby (the one in the picture) die. I hope it doesn't lessen your joy of Christmas, but perhaps deepen joy with a perspective we all need: the understanding that our hope was bought with a price.

The Incarnation

Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame? -Jeremiah 20:18

Unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given.
Born of blood,
Born to bleed.
Born into the cold
Born into squalor
Among the filth of animal feces
On the coldest night of the year
Night air carries distant moaning,
The bitter moaning of death vigils.
Many die on such a night.

...and the bloody infant
Miserable yellow jaundice.
Wrap the infant tight,
Lay him shivering in the hay
To be bitten by lice and fleas
And bored through by parasites.
He whines and writhes,
Vomits, then shakes in quiet agony
But the child will not die tonight...

He will live to know more agony
The suffering life of a dirty peasant,
Building with broken hands.
Born of suffering,
Born to suffer.
And pitiful, muffled cries draw
Men of the fields,
ugly and reeking,
Bringing infection to the infant.
Unto us a sickly child is born,
Unto him the plague is given
And the infection of us all
Will be upon his shoulders.
But the wretched one will not die tonight...

He will live to know more agony
To die tormented and alone,
Rather than here in his mother’s arms.
Brought to life this night
Brought to life to die.
In the wretchedness
Of this yellow, shivering body:
Here is the only hope
Of peace and salvation.

Unto us a sickly infant is born.
Through suffering hope is born.
And the weight of the world
Will be upon his shoulders.
And Death will be upon his shoulders
Tremble before your newborn Savior.

…and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.


*

Covenant Confession

Seven years ago when I was graduating from Covenant College I was elected to give a “senior talk” at a student assembly. What I gave was a confession. I wish that I could say I have matured so much that none of this still applies to me, but most of it does:

Four years ago I decided to go to a little Presbyterian college on a mountain. I was convinced I had chosen the best Christian college in the country, and the school was even willing to give me a scholarship for being a "Christian Leader."

Now 4 years later I am graduating from this school. I am more intelligent and more thoughtful than when I arrived. I have a better conception of my faith and I am much more capable of giving reasons for that faith intellectually. My actual faith in Jesus Christ, however, is weaker after four years at Covenant College. My “first love” has dwindled into weak flicker, well-concealed by intellect and apathy. I have not been alone in this coldness. I have sat with some of you and laughed at the naive idealists within each incoming freshmen class. We assure ourselves that Christian zeal must be a sign of either stupidity or hypocrisy, embarrassed that once we were that naive as well.


Yes, I have contributed to this attitude here on campus. Covenant’s goal of producing intelligent, thoughtful Christians gives us the perfect opportunity to feel self-righteous. We look down on our zealous, conservative evangelical brethren and label them as unintelligent or intolerant. We look down on the rest of the world as heathens and sinners, although we envy their ability to sin so freely. Our tolerance and open-mindedness is not the Christ-like sort, but a justification for excusing our own sinfulness. When we are forced to acknowledge our own apathy toward truly loving and serving Christ, we turn Reformed theology into a scapegoat, and blame those who teach us for our own sinful attitudes.


I have fallen into the common mistake of forgetting that our project of making Christ preeminent in our thinking is only a small part of our calling to love and serve Christ with our entire being and live a life of total dedication to Him. Too often at Covenant we are intellectual Christians for the sake or our own pride rather than to truly glorify God. The intellectual mission of the college is not the problem. The problem is that we are usually either hypocritical or apathetic (pick your poison). It is no wonder that so many among us have lost their faith, when we try to stand up before each other by our own power rather acknowledging our total dependence on Jesus.


So did I choose the wrong college? No, I chose the right college. I still believe that Covenant is one of the best educations in the country. I cannot blame my sins, my apathy, my pride, or my lack of prayer on “the system” here at Covenant. My attitude is not the fault of the chapel program, or reformed theology, or contract, or the influence of you my fellow students, or of intellectualism, although I have blamed all of these things. It is my own fault. I have not loved Christ as I should. I have judged myself against my fellow Christians, and used their sins to excuse my own. It is easier to look at myself in the context of other fallen people. But if I see myself as judged against the righteousness of Christ, I am forced to admit my dependence and look only on Him for mercy. This should not only force me to “integrate my faith and learning.” It should pervade my entire being and move me in ways that right now it does not. Thankfully Jesus Christ is faithful even in my faithlessness. He has seen my heart both in the good and the bad.


So, I must come before you and apologize. In a couple weeks I will graduate and leave Covenant. Over these 4 years I have received a substantial scholarship for supposedly being a “leader for Christ” here, but my attitude has often been contrary to the cause of Christ. Yes, I have kept contract for the most part, and I was a leader in the Homeless Ministry, and I have integrated faith and learning, but these things are only filthy rags to carry away with me. In retrospect I wish I had been more open and honest about my sinful tendencies, and I wish I had been more zealous for Christ. I wish I had counted all things loss for the value of knowing Jesus Christ.


In my apathy I have often realized that many confessions from Christians have elements of self-congratulation and false-piety. I fear that this senior testimony is no exception. But I pray that Christ’s grace is what you see. Please do not fear being zealous for Christ, do not fear acknowledging your own sins and asking for forgiveness. It does not make a Christian anti-intellectual or hypocritical to love Christ that deeply. I beg you not to look back at graduation and realize that you have not loved Christ, even though He has loved and sustained you this whole time.


Dear Covenant, I must thank you. I should be grateful for this fine education I have received, and the professors who regularly put up with our apathy and self-righteousness. I must thank my brothers on Catacombs, I have learned more from these last 3 years with you than all my core classes. I am sorry that I have often not been Christ-like to you. I must also thank those of you who have been my dear friends here. You know who you are. You have shown Jesus to me in so many ways that you may not even know. I have admired you and been reminded of this faith to which I have too often been faithless. I have loved you all, or loved you as best I could through my pride and sin. I wish I would have been less interested in impressing you, and more in serving you. As I leave this place it is you who I will carry with me.

The Blind Mechanic

A few weeks back, I saw a very thin man being wheeled into the ER. I nodded toward him and smiled. He nodded back. He was not my patient so I went back to work on my own patients. About an hour later I noticed the monitors and said to a nurse, “You should check him, his pulse is dropping.”


The nurse looked up, “Oh, that's okay. He's dying. Terminal cancer, he just came in for pain control. He's comfortable now, so we're letting him die with his family.”


I noticed several young women around him who I assumed to be his daughters holding the man's hands. “Overall not a bad way to go, painless and being loved,” I thought and returned to my work.


Physicians see death so often that it becomes familiar. We are Mechanics of life and death, tinkering with the machinery of the body everyday. We intervene to keep the machine running, but eventually the mechanism always becomes unstable and breaks down.


Contrary to what you might imagine, doctors have no deepened understanding of death.


Doctors talk a lot about their own deaths, but not like you might talk about it. They don't discuss the meaning of death, or how it makes them appreciate the beauty of life. Seeing so much death, doctors mentally amass large collections of different ways people die. Doctors discuss the pros and cons of different ends to life, like other people might debate which car or computer is best: “Not a bad way to go.” “I hope I don't go like that.” “I want to go quickly.” “No, I want to go slow so I can set things in order.” “I want to feel nothing, just load me up with pain meds.” “No I don't mind hurting some so I can be aware of my family visiting me.” “I won't let them run a code on me if I'm old.” “I would prefer a sudden heart attack, dead before I hit the ground.” “No, I want to fade into dementia and never know what's happening.” “Renal failure isn't so bad a way, you just fall asleep and don't wake up.” We actually have such conversations, pulling various deaths from our collections and comparing them. Since we tinker with the mechanism of death we think we understand it.


Doctors mistake familiarity for understanding. We mistake the end of our job for the end of the matter.


Even we physicians of faith often think like nihilists. I struggle to remember that I know more than what I see. Every time I recite the Apostle's Creed I affirm that “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting.” Still I must tear these blinders from my eyes to see with the eyes of faith. My perspective is limited, and my blinders that help me in my work sometimes make me blind. There is so much more to life and beyond life than this these faulty machines and ways the are repaired or broken.


*Note: information about the patient mentioned above is intentionally inaccurate to protect identity and privacy.

Suspicion and Isolation

Last night I saw a homeless man bundled on a bench downtown, a rare sight here in Kingsport. It was already well below freezing and late. It was obvious the old man would spend the night outside. I remembered that as a younger man I would have gone to help a suffering person, but older and more suspicious I went to my car. I had plenty of space in my warm home, but strangers could be dangerous.

As I drove away I realized that with my wife out of town the standard excuse that “I can't endanger my family to help a stranger” couldn't be used. The fact that I might leave an old man to suffer to defend only my property made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. It was more shame than kindness that made me turn my car around.

“Hi, do you have a place to sleep?”

“No.”

“If you need a warm place to stay tonight, you can stay at my house.”

At first the old man seemed to smile then frowned again. “No thank you.” It was odd to realize that this man who I had so distrusted also viewed me as a potentially dangerous stranger.

“You sure? It's pretty cold.” He nodded. I waved good-bye, “Okay. God Bless.”

The grizzled old man pulled his coat tighter around him. “I have no god but myself. Thank you though.”

I drove home alone, and watched TV until I fell asleep. I used to hate TV, but these days it is my most frequent companion. I'm sure his night on the bench was miserably cold. It is tragic how isolated we have become in the modern world. For social creatures we are extraordinarily distrustful and detached from each other. We shun each other and even shun God. Our individualism doesn't result in much happiness, just coldness.

Christmas Gifts

I got what looked like a catalog in the mail the other day. I was about to throw it away with the rest of the junk mail, when I noticed it wasn't quite the "gift catalog" it seemed. Instead of smiling models it was full pictures of ragged children in the third world. The cover advertised it as "gifts for the person who has everything." The catalog was full of gifts to those in need that you can give as a gift to someone you love. The gifts included such much-needed things as goats, blankets, immunizations, pre-natal care for poor people.

It must have caught me at particularly awkward time, because I began to cry right there on my porch. I had come home from work tired and grumpy. Recently my life of isolation has mostly been alternating numbness and self-absorption. The looming chore of Christmas shopping was a only a joyless burden on our strained finances. Now my beloved niece and nephew who have plenty of toys will be getting wheelchairs for disabled kids in the third world for Christmas. Giving such gifts to those who have nothing is a wonderful way to break us out of the materialistic stupor into which we so easily fall.

Much thanks to World Vision for reminding me that the gift we are celebrating is Christ, the birth of redemption and unconditional love into our sad world. Why do I so easily forget Christ?

You can see the catalog here: www.worldvisiongifts.org

Weight of Glory

It is good to occassionally remind ourselves of what is truly important in life. Lewis stated it far better than I ever could:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now you would be strongly tempted to worship it, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations —these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit —immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the onset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is you Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

-C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Loss, 9/11, and David

David died of metastatic bone cancer just a few days after the September 11^th bombings. All the grief over the killings will always be bound in my mind to the loss of David. I wrote this the day he died:

Dear David,

You died today at 6 am. I was planning to write you. I have always been planning to write you –ever since you gave me your address when you left. I hope you didn’t mind. We were never very close, but I wish I had a chance to tell you that I admired you. I remember that afternoon when I asked how the doctor’s visit had been. You told me that it was cancer. “Oh,” I said, “but not a serious cancer is it?"

“Very serious,” you replied. I was amazed that a 17-year-old could make such conversation without hesitation. You didn’t put on a false bravery either; you admitted to us that you were afraid. I would have been more afraid than you. I would have been angry if my future had withered just as I was reaching manhood.

I remember the last night you were at Covenant. You and the guys from the dorm came over to my house. We read poems. Your poem was beautiful. You wrote it long before you knew there was a cancer in your bones. You wrote about being lonely. You wrote about sitting alone when everyone else sat with friends. You wrote about being afraid to talk to girls. You wrote about your faith in God. I was amazed at you. I was amazed at the peace you found in loneliness, and how grateful you were. You were grateful that the guys at Catacombs had made you feel welcome and loved. You were grateful for the three months you got to spend with us here. You were even grateful for the cancer that you couldn’t understand. We all just sat around the fire and laughed and read each others poetry. Before you left we all took a picture together. You didn’t smile. You didn’t frown. You just looked right at the camera while the rest of us clamored and grinned.

You faded suddenly. For the last two years all I heard was good news. You were feeling strong. Your chemotherapy was going well. And then suddenly one day all the news changed. You were dying. You had perhaps a month left. Fernando told me about seeing you. He said you looked weak, but as always you were kind and resilient. You said that you take it one day at a time. I wish I could have gone to see you. I wish I could have put my arm around you and said, “Courage. Take courage.” I wish that I had written you a letter. I planned to write someday just to let you know that you were in my thoughts and prayers, but you died too quickly.

I know you are at peace. You see the face of God. But I cannot help but feel angry for you. Angry that you went so early… angry that you will never fall in love, graduate from college, make love to a woman, have children. All the things I have in life anger me right now because you will never have them. Your death came at the time everyone was mourning for thousands of people who died in New York. They died in falling buildings, and the whole world cried for them and vowed revenge. You were dying too but no one noticed. You had no woman who loved you, no children, no close friends to mourn you. Due to the timing, your family’s mourning is likely lost in the national paranoia. I wonder if any of us at all will be thinking of you 10 years from now when we all have wives, children, and lives of our own? I am angry at myself that I never wrote you. You gave us all your address when you left. I was never a close friend, but did you have many close friends? I thought of you often, up north in some lonely oncology ward. You would have taken comfort in letters from one of your friends from college. And you might have shared your wisdom with me. I would have known how to mourn you better because I would have known you. But I was always too busy, always planning to write you later. Now you have died, and I am mourning that I did not know you. I realized long ago that you were wise and lonely. I should have been a friend to you. I think you needed friends. I hope that when I die, that I have friends. But you died too young, and we who are young forget too quickly… too quickly to hold on to a friend over 2 years of chemotherapy.

I wonder if you died alone. Was everyone who should have been focused on you too absorbed in the news of bombings and war? I hope no one told you about it. I hope you slipped away without the thought of the whole world—the world that needed the wisdom and kindness that you would not live to bestow—mourning thousands of dead New Yorkers, never knowing that you were dying alone or that you even ever lived. But you are no longer lonely, you know the presence of Jesus our Savior. I am the one who is lonely. I am here thinking of you and crying. Did I tell you that I cried when I heard you were dying? I had not cried in many years. I didn’t even cry when I heard about the thousands of innocents killed last week, but I cried for you. I cried that you died so young. I cried that I could never know you as I had wished I could two years ago when we spoke at my house.

I know that heaven is a better than here. I know that death does not have the final victory, but it is a chasm between us. You know longer have the possibilities of this life, the books you hoped to write, the women you longed for, the friends you needed, the wisdom you wanted to share. I must live my life better. You give me wisdom even in death. I will join you in death someday, and it will be better there, but for now I will live my life better. I will live and love better for all the life and loves you missed.

Spiritual but Not Religious

The other day I saw a classmate of mine carrying a book named “The Wisdom of the Buddha.” I doubt he is a Buddhist. I also doubt he is an Atheist. I barely know him, but it would be safe to guess that he is not a true believer of any religion, nor does he intend to be. I am also sure he would describe himself as "spiritual."

The rise of "Spirituality" in our culture is a very interesting phenomenon. The hospital here has a questionnaire that they gave to all the patients. There was a question that asked the patients to identify their religion. The question listed the 70 religions most prominent in the US. Even with so many to choose from over 60% identified themselves as "other." Since 90% of Americans say they believe in God, it would be quite an anomaly to have a hospital in the “Bible Belt” with that many Atheists. No, instead they want to communicate "Yes, I am spiritual, but it is something that is my very own. It is not like anyone else and not like a religious system."

My classmate was reading Buddha to seek “spirituality.” Spirituality encourages exploration. Everyone's spirituality is different. Spirituality is a freer way to reach that which is transcendent. It is a way to believe without having to disagree with anyone else's belief.

It seems that "Spirituality" is a backlash against the cold, empty universe of Existentialism. Once it was popular to be a proud Atheist, but that was just a passing fad. Human beings need myth and transcendence to bring meaning to their existence. So now everyone is very excited about their rediscovered status as spiritual beings.

But we still hold to so much of Existentialism. Existentialism embraced the emptiness of a world without God, because without the weight of divine purpose human beings were truly free. We were free to define ourselves as we pleased and live and die in an existence that was ours alone. And the Western world loved autonomy, even at the price of a dead God. Since then, the idea of a cold and purposeless universe has lost its appeal. Westerners are flocking back to what was lost. We are ready for spiritual meaning in our lives. But we Americans love our individual liberty. We love our autonomy. So we run headlong back into transcendence as if it were a shopping mall. We enter with a new attitude, an attitude unique to our free, unstructured, and post-Atheist culture.

We have a strange view of transcendent things! We see the spiritual as if it were some raw material of the invisible world. Like wood, stone, or steel, we imagine we can take transcendence and build it into any form that suits us. New Spirituality is ours to use. We do not belong to the spirit, the spirit belongs to us. We trust it to give our lives meaning, but only because we give it meaning first. We have taken the infinity of the spirit and reduced it to a piece of ourselves. “We are Americans, we are free, and we will not be dictated to by anyone or anything. We create our own reality, so the spiritual world had better be pliable enough to fit our needs.”

The New Spirituality theoretically embraces all religious traditions, and yet is opposed to the basic spiritual premise underlying almost every religious tradition. Religious traditions believe that we did not create the spiritual world; it created us. Religions acknowledge that the spiritual world is beyond our understanding and we must approach it on its own terms. Although the many religions differ greatly in their approaches, they all approach humbly, believing that that which is transcendent sets the rules we are to follow. As far as I know the New Spirituality is the only religion on earth that claims that we can all just step into the spiritual and tell it how it should configure itself to fit our needs. We Westerners are so arrogant! We are highly offended by the idea that the spiritual world or God might be so rude as to possess specific eternal qualities without asking our approval first. How ridiculous we must look, approaching that which is immense and eternal and telling it that it must conform to our tastes and desires!

"The Almighty sits in the heavens and laughs" -Psalm 2

Pascal on Happiness

"All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves…"

"All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions… What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."

"God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place… Since loosing his true good, man is capable of finding it in anything even his own destruction."

-Blaise Pascal (1623 -1662)