Spiritual Skinny-dipping

Rarely am I given an opportunity to skinny-dip these days, but I used to love it. The sensuality of slipping into the waves on the shore or into a pond or pool awakened my body not only to my physical senses, but to my full-bodied communion with earth.

The photo above, taken in Hawai’i in 1985 by my friend George Lynch, was modestly posed and, for this purpose, even more modestly edited!  But I use it to illustrate a story of mysterium tremendum, what happened just before I swam back to stand on the rocks surrounding this natural pool at the base of the towering waterfall in the background.

For me, stripping and stepping into an unknown body of water such as this was an act of both courage and vulnerability. I didn’t know what else might be in the water and to what I might be exposing my most personal parts; yet it was thrilling and enlivening to do so. The depth of the pool and whatever currents hid beneath the gently rippling surface were also unknown to this less-than-expert swimmer.

Three times I swam toward the base of the waterfall that spewed from rocks some fifty feet above, each time a little closer, and three times I returned to the shore without daring to swim beneath the roaring, hard-falling water. This was reasonable, given that the water might have knocked me out.

But approaching the danger, I was filled with an exquisite, fearful awe; my mysterium tremendum. It had parallels to leaving behind religious fundamentalism and biblical literalism, or taking on public speaking and activism as an introvert, or coming out of the closet, or making love for the first time. There was something sacred and awesome beyond each seeming terror.

For those of us who are stripping ourselves of unnecessary religious constraints, baptizing ourselves in progressive Christianity, we approach in awe and terror a different God. Does God really love us unconditionally? Does God really live “in our neighborhood,” in our house? Can God forgive without demanding such a price as the sacrifice of Jesus or the damnation of unbelievers? What currents or creatures lurk beneath the surface that may threaten our most personal selves?

“Wonder calls us to disorientation, unsettling pathos that it is, and to new orientation,” William Brown writes in the concluding paragraph of Sacred Sense: Discovering the Wonder of God’s Word and World, borrowing Walter Brueggemann’s categories.

C’mon in! The water’s fine!

This was my post on September 16, 2015, and I thought current blog readers might like to read it.

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Photo copyright © 1985 by George F. Lynch. Used by permission. Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Help Me Understand

"I am the mountain. The mountain is me." --A homemade Zen saying.

Look closely for me at the bottom of this photo of the Matterhorn, taken in 1973. 

I did not have the faith to move this mountain, but I did have the faith to be in awe.

Zen almost silenced me. Or it did, and still I’m blogging!

I’ve written several posts about a book on Zen Buddhism I’ve just completed reading. I found myself becoming quieter and quieter as I read a brief section each day during morning prayer. Part of it was that Zen was telling me to shut up, just be. And part of it was that the whole enterprise had the effect of a Zen koan like “the sound of one hand clapping” to still the mind.

I especially loved this example of Zen mondo (questions and answers): “What is it ultimately?” “Willows are green and flowers are pink.”

“Willows are green and flowers are pink.” I wish I had thought of that when asked some outlandish question during Q&A’s in the church or equally, in the LGBT community, on whether one can be gay and Christian. Or another, “Only those who know it know.”

“Willows are green and flowers are pink.” Also a good answer for thorny theological questions like, how can a good God allow suffering in the world?

“The ‘beauty’ of Zen is the inner power that unites nature and life from within,” Abbot Zenkei Shibayama writes.

I have only an inkling of what that means—some intuitive, receptive neuron in my brain that may or may not get it.

And that’s why I became quieter and quieter as I read. I often get quiet when I don’t understand something, which has saved me from embarrassing moments of pretense.

But I liked it. Like witnessing a magnificent waterfall cascading from verdant cliffs down the face of a grey stone canyon wall to a valley below. Like hearing a musical composition caringly played that lifts the soul to cosmic, heavenly realms. Like the final gasp of an instance of prolonged lovemaking so profound as to put the most elevated sacred texts to shame.

I don’t need to understand something to see its beauty.

Years ago, I occasionally worked with another activist who sometimes questioned my thinking with the words, “Help me understand…” Given the context of our connection and other put-downs of me, I always thought the words were patronizing, as in “Help me understand how you can come to such a crazy conclusion.”

Only recently have I thought perhaps the phrase came from PBS and NPR, whose news interviewers often use the phrase, “Help us understand…” to aid interviewees to better explain their thinking to viewers and listeners.

A seminary professor with whom I served on a school committee told me privately that I sometimes seem to speak aloud mid-thought, mid-thinking process, so that what led to my conclusions were unclear. Perhaps that’s what was happening with my fellow activist. Perhaps that’s what happens on this blog!

Long ago I learned that my own need to understand something could be a means of control. In college, French existentialist author and philosopher Albert Camus spoke to me when he described “true understanding as ‘standing under,’ receiving without being in control (as understanding or ‘superior’ knowledge often implies).” I wrote this in Henri’s Mantle (p 94).

So I have been standing under Zen Buddhism, hoping a little of its wisdom and beauty will gently fall on me.

A final thought from Abbot Shibayama (A Flower Does Not Talk, p 122):

Zen asks us to open our eyes to the realm where subject and object are not yet separated, and I and you are one; and then to live and work in this new dimension.

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.