Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.
—Archimedes
Richard Rohr uses images of a lever and a place to stand to explain why social transformation needs both action and contemplation:
Archimedes, a third-century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.
The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. Otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapism.
True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality—as it is—without ideology, denial, or fantasy.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them [1], by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.
Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.
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John Chaffe; 5 On Friday
1.
“Nobody’s smart enough to be wrong all the time.”
- Ken Wilber, Philosopher and Founder of Integral Theory
Integral Theory is built upon the idea of seeing the entire universe as a massive interrelated epiphenomenon, not full of hierarchies but fully of holarchies.
Along with that is also the idea that everyone is, in fact, correct in their observation of the world.
Yes, each person was coming from a particular vantage point and describing it with their own, particular and limited vocabulary but everyone is at least partially correct.
This means that you and I can always learn something true about ultimate reality from those we interact with. Everyone has some part of the truth of everything correct, so we better listen carefully in case they say it to us.
2.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
- Rumi, 13th Century Sufi Poet
I think that this may also resonate with Carl Jung’s idea of the two halves of life. The first half of life is all about wanting to change the world. The second half of life is all about changing ourselves. Some of us get to the tasks of the second half of life early.
Every darn day, I am realizing the need to change myself more and more. I can sadly admit that I did not always think that way. It is certainly a part of youthful hubris to think that we can or even should change the world without first changing ourselves.
3.
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
- William Faulkner, American Novelist
Gotta love a good quote about leaving the familiar to journey into the unfamiliar Reminds me of The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell.
4.
“All mature spirituality is about letting go.”
- Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest
The 13th-century Christian preacher and mystic, Meister Eckhart von Hochheim, was the first person to teach “letting go” from a Christian perspective (I think).
Despite being trained in Latin and required by superiors to preach in Latin, he rebelled against his superiors and preached in the common, pre-Germanic hillside language. To communicate many of his ideas to the farmers in his care he would invent new words, words such as “gelassenheit.”
“Gelassenheit” was just Eckhart’s word to describe “letting-go-ness.” For him, spirituality was all about “gelassenheit, gelassenheit, gellasenheit.”
Surely, Rohr was influenced by Eckhart when he said this week’s 4th quote.
5.
וְקִרְע֤וּ לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַל־בִּגְדֵיכֶ֔ם וְשׁ֖וּבוּ אֶל־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם
(“Rend your hearts rather than your garments and return to the Lord your God.”)
- Joel 2:13
I do not know why, but this passage has passed through my mind numerous times this past week. There is something to it that haunts me in a good way.
Even the prophet Joel recognized our ability to change our appearances but not change our hearts. We certainly do the same thing today. We curate our appearances without remembering that God sees through our charades.
May we rend our hearts, not our garments.
