Ideas of the Ultimate In his book, The Masks of God, volume 1, Joseph Campbell quotes an Eskimo shaman, Igjugarjuk, who said, “The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and it can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone can open the mind of a man to all that is hidden to others.” [1] Igjugarjuk spoke those words in the context of a discussion about Sila. The different groups of Inuit have different notions who Sila is. Perhaps she is breath, soul, form. On the island of Nunivak, the people understand Sila to be a great spirit who speaks to them in…
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Life Stages and Spiritual Growth
Learning Right from Wrong Living with my two- and four-year-old grandchildren reminds me that, not only is childhood about discovering the shapes and movements and idiosyncrasies of the world, but also about learning to manage one’s inner experience and behavior. In the best of all possible worlds, we receive help labeling those strange sensations in our chest, the rumblings in our belly. Maybe they’re fear, sadness, rage, embarrassment, frustration. Once we give them a name, we can figure out what to do with them, how to express them in word or picture, in play and movement. Then there’s morality. We have to learn what our culture deems proper, what our…
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Gratitude Amidst Oneness
Our Instinct to Survive We humans are born with an instinct to survive. When our lives are threatened, we get anxious and fight back or seek assistance. That’s because we perceive ourselves to be separate individuals. Many of us understand ourselves to be unique and valuable, as well. Even if we believe in a life after death, we tend to want to preserve our individual, unique, and valuable self. A number of religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Pantheism, teach that this belief in an individual self is an illusion. If so, it is an illusion that has a purpose. It keeps us going in the face of hardship and…
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Jesus and the Holy Fool
God Chose Foolish Things In his first letter to the Christian community of Corinth, Paul writes, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” What does this mean? To understand biblical texts, it helps to know something about the context. For instance, during the middle of the first century CE when Paul wrote, the community of Corinth was a relatively new town, a growing commercial center, with a few wealthy business owners and a lot of impoverished citizens. The society was patriarchal, the men vying for prestige and status. Most Corinthians worshiped the…
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Wisdom to Know the Difference
Wisdom and Peace We were at the prison, leading the Recovery Church circle, when the question came up, “What do you want in life?” The young man to my right had shown himself to be inquisitive, seeking information and knowledge, asking questions, eager for education, appreciating debate. I wondered aloud if he wanted wisdom. “No,” he said, with a laugh. “I’m wise enough.” But of course. Wisdom is too often hard won. He had been through a violent childhood, betrayals and loneliness, a chronic illness, and years of incarceration. Through it all, he had come to understand much about himself, the world, and that which sustains us and tears us apart.…