Quaker Moment revisited

Fred Allebach

9/5

The question of the origin, true nature and destiny of humankind keeps coming up. In the context of the modern, monotheistic religions, it has mostly become a question of formula. You follow the formula: you are good with God. As if you are not good enough already, as if one’s own choices are somehow flawed. This is the same difference between literal and metaphorical understandings, formula and improvisation, rigid and flexible.

Given that we have the capacity to choose, we have free will, then perhaps comes the necessity of having to proclaim our stand.  Since we are self-conscious we have to somehow articulate our understandings. Our understandings are not self-evident on the exterior of our bodies. Things are only evident to others if we SAY what we are thinking, as compared to animal behavior, which is more ritualistic and confined. Being self-conscious to the high degree people are demands that we explain ourselves, in a multitude of areas. Where we stand spiritually is one of those explanations.

Hence my thought (obviously suffering from too many Quaker moments) yesterday, “morality is nothing more than animal grace/ natural grace, brought to a conscious level.”

I wonder, in the context of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, why am I not already in God’s grace? If God gives grace following a proclamation of faith, (a self-conscious utterance) then really excellent people whose lives are nothing but compassion and good works, if they proclaim no faith, they get no grace. I would not be in God’s grace if I accepted a literal, formulaic approach, those folks say no, but since I accept a metaphorical, free-will stance, then whatever grace is, is I see that I have it already. To me it is not a matter of formula and oaths but of works and behavior, the quality of my thoughts and feelings. As Karen said, and seems to me to be intuitively correct, “God knows your heart.” Given that, you are already there, there is no reason to repent your humanity, as you are human; God has to know you are human and that all of life is a tribulation. No one can be perfect and wishing to be perfect and then acting as if that is enough to be holy, that is pretty illusory.

I also maintain that it doesn’t matter if I believe this or that about God, that it is the quality of my behavior and actions, which is the significant measure. I don’t need to be religious to have the impulse to serve and I don’t need to believe anything otherworldly in order to act like and be a decent human being. And if there is a God and God knows my heart, I don’t have anything to worry about as I am not an evil person, period.

This works/ grace thing is an old, dead horse. Let’s look at it fresh. If there is a mountaintop, why would there be only way to get there? Everybody knows people love to climb mountains different ways. To me this is intuitively correct, self-evident. The quality of the mountain does not change because people name it, see it and understand it differently. Obviously I am a free will kind of guy. But these things seem to make sense, just as it doesn’t make sense that of all world religions, only one is true.

To me the whole grace and works thing has been twisted around, as all of creation is as much of God as any other part. Nobody has to say anything to prove this; it already is. All have as much God-given grace as anything else. Free grace with no preconditions makes sense. Parents give it to children, why not God to all of life and humanity? When did this become a game of formula and strict rules where if you don’t ante up, you are out? When did it become postulated that life is a dress rehearsal and the real play is later?

It must be a question of the meaning of words and intentions here. We are talking about how and why people believe and behave. The point I make is that the proof is in the pudding and there is more than one flavor of good pudding. If you have good pudding, who cares what your order of operations is to get to it? If the end result is the same, what is the real difference?

My thrust here is that if all is connected, if all is a part of God, there can be no outside, everything is immanent within the system. And as I started out saying, these sorts of questions keep popping up. What’s going on here?

People cook up all these hierarchies and punishments based on judgments of degrees of goodness, degrees of asceticism. Does the couch potato reach as high in heaven as Mother Teresa? But these are all human judgments and projections, elaborate illusions that have no basis in any reality we can see or that has ever been shown to exist. As Kim said about Christianity, “I’m not in it for the gravy train.” I guess implied in the big three monotheistic religions is that there will be some reward for good behavior and obedience in an afterlife, and some punishment for the reverse. 

Could it really get down to some cruel game where you say “Uncle” (repeat the formula) and then you receive grace? I just don’t see that it could be this way; it is too childish, primitive and vindictive. It is monkeys jumping through hoops. This doesn’t do justice to our intelligence and capacity. If it is all about compassion and love, why would the creator play controlling games with that?

Seems to me that we are on the threshold of being god-like ourselves. We have the fate of the world in our hands. Our stage is now. The time to act and be true is now, not smugly stuffing inconvenient issues for an afterlife, avoiding and denying right action and good works in the now. And it doesn’t effect actual behavior if people arrive at the same things in different ways.

I like Kahlil Gibran, on good and evil, “you are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. Even those who limp go not backward. But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness. You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good. You are only loitering and sluggard. Pity that stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles. In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you. But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest. And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore. But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “wherefore are you slow and halting?” For the truly good ask not the naked, “where is your garment?” nor the houseless, “what has befallen your house?”

9/6

If you think your actions here and now don’t count and it is all cool because you made an oath and now you have grace; that is a cop out.  That can justify all sort of savagery, like killing people who have made slightly different oaths than you.

I am free to decide, choose and consider. I’m getting comfortable here in my humanity. That makes me a heretic, as the root of that meaning is to choose. I’m the happy heretic of Quaker moments!