This evening Mom and I attended the
Progressive Forum again.
Tonight the speaker was
Karen Armstrong, and she was amazing. Brilliant. Incredibly well-spoken, fun to listen to, grounded in her knowledge, and beautifully eloquent. Plus bonus British accent.
But seriously, I was so moved at times during her lecture, and her answer to one of the questions during the Q&A portion had me choked up.
It reminded me with deep, loving nostalgia of the best of my class in
Seminary.
Her talk was about god, in a very early sense of the word. She spoke of traditions having a special language and breathing to discuss god, the concept beyond realization. About finding the moment when one's word become too much and one is reduced to silence and awe. (Like the moment, the beat at the end of a symphony, the breath before the applause begins.) The goal of the practice is to breathe in the silence, in the presence of that awe.
She spoke of creation stories or cosmologies as therapeutic exercises, guides for personal creativity with an emphasis on personal sacrifice. Never does something come from nothing; something always from something.
She spoke of revelation as an ongoing process. Scripture, in the Rabbinic tradition, as something to be re-interpreted for and by each generation.
She spoke of the complementary relationship in pre-16th century society between
logos and
mythos. Logos as knowledge, science, the physical reality. Myth as a way to deal with inner issues, emotion, pain, despair, psyche. Myth as a program for action. Religion, she said, is like dancing - a skill requiring practice. A belief is not enough. And
belief as a word did not mean then what it did now, but represented a commitment, love, dedication, a doing.
She spoke of dialogue as a spiritual exercise in the Socratic tradition, its goal to realize the profundity of human ignorance, and from there begin to seek wisdom. She said that one difficulty we have now is that instead of proceeding in the dialogue with gentleness, as Socrates said, these days we feel the need not only to win, to prove our knowledge, but also to humiliate our opponents.
And of course, she spoke of compassion. She is developing a
Charter for Compassion online. (See
the page at the TED prize about her wish.)
One of the most intriguing and resonant things she said, to me, was about the need for silence. Specifically inner silence as a place of spiritual revelation and knowing. This reminded me so much of one of the books that was formative to my young spirituality, Sati by Christopher Pike. We are all god, and this can be discovered in silence.
When asked to describe her idea of god:
"I try not to have any ideas of god at all." She does not wish to 'domesticate the transcendence', but to keep it in the realm of music, poetry, etc. She feels intimations of awe and wonder during the day: "I do feel touched within, but what that is I don't know - and it's better not to ask."
At the very end she spoke about hope for the future in the face of so much misunderstanding and upheaval.
In short, it was an awesome evening.
Also, happy happy birthday to my awesome Dad. :)
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