Emergent Zone
From Martin LeFevre in California
It's Ash Wednesday. The beginning of Lent used to mean
penance, fasting, and rituals galore. Compelled to go to Mass most days before
school and on Sunday as a child, the 40 days of Lent were when you really got
the full dose.
At an early age I realized that there is no correlation between religions and
religiosity. I quit the Church in my teens, once I reached the age of moral
consent, and became religious without a religion. At 30, a philosophy professor
told me with a straight face that I should start a religion. Bemused, because I
had felt he was wiser, I said, you mean be like the man who spends years
searching for the truth, and then, when he finds it, accepts the devil's offer
when it says, "here, let me help you organize it"?
Looking beyond Rome's hierarchy and the factions of Protestant reactions, what
does contemplative insight reveal about the life and mission of Jesus?
I submit that a genuine urge to understand the teachings of Jesus, when arising
from meditative stillness, reverence, and love, reveals more truth and meaning
about his life and mission than all the handed down interpretations of the
Catholic Church or the Bible.
Regarding the Bible, Thomas Jefferson, who made an extensive study of the text,
said it best: "The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective
and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt a minute inquiry into it …in the New
Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it proceeded from an
extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior
minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick diamonds from
dunghills."
Jesus' message of awareness, that "the Kingdom of God is within you," has been
perverted beyond recognition. His last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" are not the words of one who was sent to suffer the
physical agonies depicted in Mel Gibson's film of spiritual pornography. Jesus
was confident of his mission until the whole thing went terribly wrong. He was
not meant to die on the cross, but to revolutionize people's hearts. He failed,
though the failure was not his.
I stand at the edge of water frozen as far as the eye can see.
It is bitterly cold. Flurries are blowing hard off the bay, and it's painful to
exposed skin.
I don't linger, but walk inland a bit, to a covered observation platform on the
edge of an ice-covered marsh. Remnants of cattails protrude from the solid
expanse. The sign reads, "Emergent Zone."
The wind is driving the snow almost horizontally across the brown foliage of the
ice-caked marshland. It's not the banks of the Ganges or a creek side in
California, and there's no time to languidly watch nature. However, one can
awaken meditation in a minute if one learns how to observe thought/emotion
without the separative mechanism of the illusory observer. The mind quickly
quiets down.
Color is almost non-existent, so much so that even the subtle shade of maroon in
the branches of a line of bare bushes stands out. The desolate beauty and
silence are immense, and palpable beyond physical sensation.
I get up and walk a few hundred meters to another viewing shed in the woods.
There are brown squirrels on the ground, and a half dozen species of birds
feeding in four stands that the preserve managers have erected and keep stocked
through the winter.
The half dozen squirrels are fat and frisky, eating grain scattered on the
ground by nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers. I reverentially approach the
astonishing scene. The varied birds are feeding nearly an arm's length away.
Suddenly a cardinal appears, landing on a branch in front of me. The other small
animals are vibrant in their activity, but even the woodpeckers have a muted
coloration. The abrupt arrival of the dazzling red bird propels this microcosm
of life's exuberance on a desolate day to another level, yielding a transcendent
quality. Something beyond words is imprinted on my heart, and will remain there
until my dying day.
There is a sacredness beyond thought, which neither devotional religionists, nor
devoted secularists, can ever know. For it to infuse one, which is always an
unexpected occurrence of the moment, one has to let go of everything--every
idea, goal, and belief.
martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net
The author welcomes comments.
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