St. Joseph of 37212: A Christmas Epiphany

Today I went to the post office without my wallet. Stood in long line of Christmas mailers. Got it to the desk, checked my back pocket. No wallet.

Told postal clerk Joe, whom I know from frequent PO trips mailing books I sold online, “Damn, I left my wallet at home.”

Left and drove home. Came back. Line was twice as long. Joe waves me over – ” Mr. Bradford” – and I jump to the front of the line. “You shouldn’t have to wait in line twice,” he said.

This is office sainthood. And we’re in Advent and his name is Joseph… St Joseph of 37212. Anybody know a cardinal?

Soft Power In A Hard World

I am an student of English and philosophy who spends a large portion of his reading time with books on modern physics. One of my plans for retirement is to go back to school to learn the mathematics necessary to truly understand the physics books I am reading.

Have you ever visited an Apple store that wasn’t packed?

Our PR firm works with many technology firms, and we plan to work with more of them because the technology sector is driving our economy. They make the stuff people want. Have you ever visited an Apple store that wasn’t packed?

So, we live in a world shaped by the hard sciences, rewarding those who can shape matter to our bidding. It  is largely a positivist world, where all that exists is energy and matter and all that matters is how, not why.

What is an English major to do?

We are to make sense of it. Apple understands this. It doesn’t sell technology. It sells possibilities, novelty, wonder, discovery, mastery, joy. That’s why Apple stores are always packed, and why stores that emphasize only the technology die. (Remember CompUSA? Circuit City?)

And that’s what propagandists do. We breathe the myths of our culture into the machines of our age to give them meaning and vitality. Creating this emotional connection is as important as creating the technology because it creates desire for the technology.

At the other end of this poetical/practical spectrum lies my fascination with the physics behind our technology. The unseen and probably unseeable forces that make the iPhone work are as mystical as the myths used to sell the iPhone. Physic’s latest theory postulates that that there are actually 11 dimensions and that we can only experience four of them because the other seven are “curled up.” And string theory is basically the idea that all that exists are vibrating strings of energy. Just like Einstein said, energy equals matter. This is mystical.

I understand, or at least understand the language of, the mythical end of the spectrum. That’s what literature, art, religion are about, which I’ve spent a lifetime studying. I am by no means an expert, but I understand the code well enough to “get” it – unlike my situation on the mystical end, where my unfamiliarity with mathematics prevents me from truly understanding what the priests of physics are saying.

So I hope to learn their code and close the circle that begins in mystery, proceeds through matter and ends in mythology, only to begin again in mystery. The parts of this circle that you can’t see – mystery and mythology – create and make sense of the matter you can see. The invisible is essential. The visible is ephemeral.

From mystery to matter to myth and back again.

The New Science and That Old Time Religion

Galileo and The Church - Not A Good Start

The most important symbols of all are those that help us define reality. These symbols are primarily the purview of physics and religion. In physics, these symbols are, fundamentally, in the language of mathematics, which allows one to describe the indescribable with a degree of precision unattainable in ordinary language. (As Richard Feynman did.) Religion uses ordinary language in an extraordinary way do the same kind of thing. (Thomas Merton being the best at it in the 20th Century.)

For centuries, going back to at least Galileo, science and religion were unable to speak to each other. Science focused on the world of matter and religion on matters of the spirit. They did overlap somewhat in the soft science of psychology, as far as psychology is the study of consciousness. If this confluence were mapped as the conjoined area in a Venn Diagram, I’d put Freud in the scientific circle and Jung in the spiritual circle.

Today, there is considerable overlap between religion and the hardest of sciences, physics. It happened because of quantum mechanics, where things get weird pretty quickly: matter and energy are the same thing… time is relative… the existence of parallel universes is quite likely… there may be as many as 11 dimensions… and, as was demonstrated in the famous “double slit experiment,” light is both a particle and a wave, depending on how we observe it. Because of experiments on the dual nature of light, quantum physicists arrived at the inconvenient truth that there is an unavoidable connection between the observer and the observed, which implies that matter/energy has consciousness, that it is somehow aware of us and that we can change the state of matter or the level of energy by simply thinking about it. (Which by extension, also means praying about it. See transubstantiation.)

What all of this might mean – at least to a mathematical illiterate like me – is that religion and physics are pursuing the same path by different means. Both are attempting to tap into and, ultimately, to manipulate ultimate reality. And I am not alone. Pope Pius XII said much the same in his 1951 Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Respected physicists like Frank Tipler and Paul Davis are inching toward a similar belief. (Actually, Tipler has moved beyond inching. His latest book is The Physics of Christianity.)

Perhaps this is  good time to define my idea of ultimate reality, which is nothing more or less than Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. That is, reality is the light that casts the shadows that most of us mistake for reality. We can experience reality only by unshackling ourselves from conventions of perception and turning to see what is really there. Plato used the term “form” to describe what is really there. For example, there exists the form for a chair, which is what a chair really is. The thing we sit in at our dinner table is a shadow of this form, and it is as much as we can experience of a chair with our five senses. The source of reality in Plato’s allegory is the sun, which is the ultimate source of the light that illuminates the forms that cast the shadows we see. (And if someone managed to free himself from the world of shadows and turned to see the forms and the sun behind them, he would be truly “enlightened.” However, if he returns to the cave and attempts to free others from their addiction to shadows they would consider him crazy, probably dangerous, and would likely kill him. Sound familiar? Platonic ideas heavily influenced Christian theology.)

M-Theory: The visible universe is a three dimensional object (called a brane, or membrane, thus "M" Theory) embedded in a higher dimensional spacetime (called the bulk)

In the parlance of modern physics, “seeing the the sun” in Plato’s allegory would be finally discovering the Grand Unified Theory, or GUT, which is an explanation of how the four fundamental forces of the universe – gravitation, electromagnetism, strong interaction, weak interaction – work together. Current theories can account for everything but gravity. One idea from M-Theory, the latest and greatest, which calls for 11 dimensions, postulates that gravity can’t be mathematically incorporated in to a GUT because it actually exists in another dimension and only leaks into the dimensions we can perceive. (At least I think that’s what is says. Warped Passages by Lisa Randall is an excellent book on this topic, but at about the 300-page mark I hit a brick wall.)

In The Tao of Physics, physicist Fritjof Capra does a good job of highlighting the ways that physics and religion are taking similar paths in seeking to understand ultimate reality. Eastern religions have long taught that reality exists beyond the world of the senses, that distinctions (such as between matter and energy, or between particle and wave) are more apparent than real, that the knower and the thing known are closely related and that all phenomena are manifestations of a basic oneness. These ideas were also developed by Western Mystics, such as Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. (Contrary to the Gospel of Shirley MacLaine, all mystic truths do not come from the East or the Incas.) And the mystery of The Trinity, another Western idea, is a classic example of how reality can appear to be comprised of parts but is actually one.

A key point Capra makes is that in both modern physics and Eastern philosophies, energy is all that exists: What we perceive as matter is just an arrangement of energy. And reality is a network; not a network of things, just a network, and the more in tune we are with this network, the more real we are.

Western and Eastern Realities: Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama

Here’s how my favorite mystic, Thomas Merton, puts it in No Man Is An Island:

“Pride makes us artificial, and humility makes us real.” Focusing on yourself tends to disconnect you from the network of reality. Surrendering to the network, connecting to God, frees you to be an authentic person instead of an artificial and false construct.

“The reason why men are so anxious to see themselves {i.e., to be preoccupied with appearances}, instead of being content to be themselves, is that they do not really believe in their own existence.” Because we only exist to the extent we are connected to the reality of God.

“Sin… destroys the one reality on which our true character, identity, and happiness depend: our fundamental orientation to God.” That is, sin disconnects us from God, the source of reality; it causes us to believe the lie that we are real and God is not; it puts the creature before the creator and thereby cuts us off from creation.

Salvation (and modern physics) is full of contradictions: “We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others, yet at the same time before we can go out to others, we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are…. The only effective answer to the problem of salvation must therefore reach out to embrace both extremes of a contradiction at the same time. {Ex: light is both a particle and a wave, energy and matter are the same thing.} Hence that answer must be supernatural. That is why all the answers that are not supernatural are imperfect: for they only embrace one of the contradictory terms, and they can always be denied by the other.”

“The whole function of the life of prayer is to… live God’s law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His Will.” And through this communion with God, we come to understand the reality beyond the law (both the laws of morality and the laws of physics), and “become perfectly free… knowing the meaning of St. Paul’s statement that the ‘law is not made for the just man’.”

So, here are two things to ponder about science and religion:

1) Why is is that, thousands of years ago, mystics were able to intuit the same concepts of ultimate reality that modern physicists are now uncovering?

2) Is it possible to understand reality by experimenting with appearances and thinking about the results of these experiments? Or must you actually experience reality, immerse yourself in it so that you become one with it, and thereby transcend the laws that can only approximate reality?

The Rule of Three

Below is a list of things that come in threes. The three columns represent three different ways of being or experiencing. Thus all of the concepts in Column One share some common trait, and the same for the other two columns.

For me, it’s easiest to identify Column One as The Father, Column Two as The Son and Column Three as The Holy Ghost. Each of these persons corresponds with a particular way of being, a particular perspective and way of interacting with the world (or the other world). For you it might be Zeus, Apollo and Dionysus, or Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, or Liquid, Solid, Gas. Whatever works.

What I find interesting is that so many things in religion, mythology and psychology, as well as in philosophy, history, business and the physical sciences, come in threes. I’m not sure it means anything. But it might. If nothing else, this kind of listing, juxtaposing, comparing exercise can allow you to think outside the normal ruts.

So here’s the list. I’m hoping readers will add to it.

Father	Son	Holy Ghost
Water	Earth	Air
Blue	Red	Yellow
Zeus	Apollo	Dionysus
Brahma	Shiva	Vishnu
Osiris	Horus	Isis
Joseph	Jesus	Mary
Cold	Hot	Warm
Father	Child	Mother
Sun	Moon	Stars
Vertical	Horizontal	Diagonal
Bull	Lamb	Dove
Top	Middle	Bottom
Good	True	Beautiful
King	Prince	Queen
Faith	Charity	Hope
Newton	Einstein	Heisenberg
Leonardo	Michelangelo	Raphael
Haydn	Beethoven	Mozart
Motherwell	Rauschenberg	Rothko
Mo	Curly	Larry
Blue	Red	White
Washington	Jefferson	Hamilton
Sea	Land	Air
Graham Crackers	Chocolate	Marshmallows
3	4	7
Matriarch	Warrior	Prophetess
King	Warrior	Priest
Motionless	Fast	Slow
Saturn	Zeus	Apollo
Saturn	Janus	Vesta
Baptism	Eucharist	Confirmation
Huey	Louie	Dewey
Abraham	Jesus	Mohammed
Walk	Swim	Fly
Rome	Greece	Egypt
Mineral	Animal	Plant
Carnivore	Herbivore	Omnivore
Writing	Reading	Arithmetic
Jew	Christian	Moslem
Hinduism	Christianity	Buddhism
Emerson	Whitman	Thoreau
Burroughs	Kerouac	Ginsberg
Liquid	Solid	Gas
Architecture	Sculpture	Painting
Downtown	Suburb	Country
Atropos	Clotho	Lachesis
Maiden	Nymph	Crone
Wave	Radiation	Condensation
Asgard	Midgard	Niflheim
Root	Flower	Shaft
Kernel	Flesh	Husk
Past	Present	Future
Beginning	Middle	End
Becoming	Being	Disappearing
Anu	Enki	Enlil
Shamash	Ishtar	Sin
Queen	Mother	Virgin
Indra  Agni	Agni  Soma	Vayu  Ghandarva
Amida	Sheishi	Kwannon
Zeus	Apollo	Athena
Zurvan	Ahura Mazda	Angra Mainya
Odin	Lodur	Hoenir
Odin	Vili	Ve
Time	Space	Causality
Being	Recognizing	Willing
Knowledge	Understanding	Hearing
Sat	Chit	Ananda
Being	Thinking	Bliss
Abraham	Isaac	Jacob
Wisdom	Reason	Perception
Faith	Chastity	Humility
Thinking	Willing	Feeling
Acid	Base	Salt
Mass	Power	Velocity
Tamas	Rajas	Sattva
The Dark	The Moved	The Being
Laugh	Weep	Sleep
God	Muhammad	Ali
Absolute	Messenger	Friend
Vanilla	Chocolate	Strawberry
Islam	Iman	Ihsan
Surrender	Faith	Do Good
Prohibited	Permitted	Doubtful
Chinese	Japanese	Korean
Divine Law	Mystical Path	Reality
Purgativa	Contemplativa	Illuminativa
Dhakir	Madhkur	Dhikr
Remembering God	One Remembered	Act of Remembering
Lover	Beloved	Love
Buddha	Samgha	Dharma
Confucianism	Taoism	Buddhism
Jews	Catholics	Protestants
Jews	Christians	Pagans
Rabbi	Priest	Minister
Ram	Cow	Goat
Abel	Cain	Seth
Shem	Ham	Japheth
Gold	Myrrh	Frankincense
Apse	Transept	Nave
The Truth	The Way	The Life
Object	Subject	Predicate
Noun	Verb	Adjective
Thought	Word	Works
Repentance	Confession	Absolution
Prayer	Fasting	Almsgiving
Judaism	Christianity	Islam
Ante Legem	Sub Lege	Sub Gratia
Before the Law	Under the Law	Under Grace
The Law	The Prophets	The Gospels
Rome	Constantinople	Moscow
Priest	Warrior	Farmer
Wehrstand	Lehrstand	Nährstand
Heaven	Hell	Pugatory
Blood	Sweat	Tears
Women	Wine	Song
Marketing	Advertising	PR
Wallahi	Billahi	Tallahi
Caspar	Melchior	Balthazar
Christmas Eve	New Year’s Eve	Epiphany
Day	Week	Month
Sonata	Concerto	Symphony
Hemingway	Fitzgerald	Faulkner
Mongoloid	Caucasian	Negroid
Jung	Freud	Adler
Executive	Judicial	Legislative
New York	Chicago	Los Angeles
Mein Kampf	Das Kapital	Wealth of Nations
North America	South America	Central America
Classic  Creation Ranginui	Romantic  Destruction Tane	Baroque  Preservation Papatuanuku

Perception Is Reality: The Divine Viewpoint

I’m a big fan of light, both literally and metaphorically.

Recently, I came upon a literal description of light that is a great metaphor for propaganda’s oft-repeated truism that “perception is reality.” In the book, “Empire of Light,” by Sidney Perkowtiz, I learned that, because the speed of light is fixed and space and time are not, if you were traveling on a beam of light, you would seem to be standing still and time would be stopped. As Dr. Perkowitz puts it, “Photons are timeless, existing forever in the present moment of now.”

This made me thing about God’s point of view, which is much like light’s: He is the unmoved mover, as Aristotle famously put it. And his perception IS reality, literally. That is, it’s not just that God’s perception is real to Him – much like PR folks say that the public’s perception of your actions are the public’s reality  – but it IS reality, in the same way that the speed of light is fixed and our space and time are all relative. To put it another way, we are real only because God perceives us.

And that’s the ultimate case of perception being reality. But it’s kind of hard to write a press release about it.

Fun With Symbols

Propaganda is, of course, largely, probably wholly, concerned with the manipulation of symbols in order to cause a change in behavior. This distinguishes it from other ways of influencing behavior, such as physical coercion. Unlike physical coercion, however, whose effects usually fade when the source of coercion is taken away, propaganda can have lasting effects – because it manipulates the symbols our brains use to make sense of the world. It rewires synapses.

The other difference between propaganda and physical coercion is that the engine of propaganda – the vital force from which it derives its power – can be either love or fear. Coercion uses only fear.

 

A powerful symbol of Love

For this essay, I’ll define love as a force that reinforces reality and moves us toward living in harmony with reality. Fear, the source of neuroses and other maladaptations to reality, does the opposite. It causes us to believe in lies.

Which brings me to what I’d like to write about: the beneficent use of symbols, of which religion, particularly the Catholic Church, is the prime source. Indeed, the use of symbols to communicate ineffable truths seems to have been invented by religion. (Being merchants, the Phoenicians,  inventors of our most ubiquitous symbols, the phonetic alphabet, were largely concerned with keeping track of material goods. Of course, most modern propaganda is concerned with the same thing.)

 

The Phonecian Alphabet

The Catholic Church’s  loving use of symbols to communicate ineffable facts about reality came home to me this Easter season. We (I am a Catholic) celebrate Easter over three days, which is called the Easter Triduum. On Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday to Anglicans, the pastor washes the feet of people who are joining the Church, mimicking what Christ did for the Apostles at the Last Supper. This is an incredibly powerful symbol of the paradoxical source of Christ’s power, i.e., the power of abdicating physical power, the power of humility.

As others, such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King have proven, the paradoxical power of humility can  change nations – and in a lasting way, unlike physical coercion, i.e., war, which inevitably leads to more war. (Note: I am not a pacifist and believe in the concept of just war, and in the honorable and courageous conduct of my sons, who are just warriors.)

It’s interesting that Nietzsche, who called Christianity  a ‘slave religion’ because of its paradoxical celebration of humility vs. Greek mythology’s more rational celebration of physical power,  died young in an insane asylum. Though Nietzsche was certainly a brilliant man, perhaps the best writer ever to philosophize and a courageous warrior against conventional thought, my personal mythology about Nietzsche is that he lost touch with reality because he deliberately ran away from the ultimate reality communicated by Christian symbology. He embraced symbols of fear instead of love.

 

Crazy old Nietzsche

So, to get back to the point, some symbols are more powerful than others and the trick is to know when to use which symbol. Words are symbols, often quite powerful ones. But if our pastor has simply talked about the power of humility on Maundy Thursday, or even talked about how washing someone’s feet is a strong demonstration of humility, it would have been much less effective than simply washing someone’s feet.

There are parallels here with modern, secular propaganda techniques that use symbolic actions instead of words, such as lunch counter sit-ins.

Art, of course, is the ultimate source of effective non-verbal symbols. Christo comes to mind, with his Gates in Central Park being an excellent and recent example. And, as Christo’s name suggests, there are strong connections between art and religion. Indeed, I doubt art would exist without religion. The banality and deliberate ugliness of much modern art can probably be traced to its divorce from religion. (Note: I am a big fan of modern art, particularly abstract expressionism and field paintings, and not just from 50 years ago. Currently, Carrie McGee is doing incredible things here in Nashville. But have a look at art magazines these days to see what tripe is passing for art. Or attend the Whitney Biennial, but bring an air sickness bag. I blame it on Duchamp. If you are a genius, as he was, you can pull it off. Unfortunately, he has spawned two generations of copyists who are anything but geniuses.)

 

Chisto's Gates

 

Earth Elements by Carrie McGee

From the 2010 Whitney Biennial

Getting back to the Triduum, the next night, Good Friday is replete with strong, non-verbal symbols. The priests begin the Mass by lying prostrate in front of the altar, another sign of humility, and, to me, of great sadness, because the greatest murder in the world’s history was committed on this day. (Of course, the world’s salvation resulted from this death – because it was followed by a resurrection – which is what makes it a Good Friday.)

At the end of the Mass on Good Friday, a cross is brought forward and all are invited to venerate it, an example of how the Church has turned a symbol of death into a symbol of life – which is proof that symbols are not immutable, and that they have no meaning outside of the history attached to them, and the interpretation of that history.

 

Symbols can move from good to bad connotations...

The swastika – also a type of cross – is an example of a symbol whose meaning was changed in this way, though in the opposite direction. In India, where this symbol originated, it stood for “well-being” and was a good luck charm. (Perhaps it still does. My collection of Kipling, which was published after WWI, I think, is decorated with swastikas on the spine.) Indeed, the positive, life-affirming associations with the swastika is why Hitler chose it as the symbol of Nazism. The National Socialists’ actions, which were

... or from bad to good.

anything but life-affirming, turned it into a symbol of evil – probably the greatest symbol of evil in the world today, at least in the West. As the cross was probably the greatest symbol of evil in the Western World before Christ was crucified.)

 

 

All lights are extinguished in the church on Good Friday, light being a universal symbol of life and vitality. On the last day of the Triduum, the Easter Vigil or Holy Saturday, the light returns in one of the most moving uses of symbols I’ve ever witnessed – because the symbol’s effectiveness relies on the participation of everyone in the church and the way in which they participate communicates the reality behind symbol.

 

 

Here’s how it goes: The Paschal Fire (which symbolizes Christ’s resurrection) is lit outside in front of the church. All of the people have a candle. One person lights his candle form the Paschal Fire and turns to the person next to him and lights her candle. Soon, in exponential fashion, the entire congregation is holding a lit candle and as we walk into the darkened church, the darkness is driven out.

This is just scratching the surface of the many and multi-layered uses of symbols during the Easter Triduum. The cumulative effect is transforming, and it would be if not a word were spoken.

And that is fun with symbols.