Back in the Sixties, I first came across some mysterious expressions from the other side of the Atlantic. I was working for a British company whose main rival was IBM. Both companies had built up a customer base selling punched-card equipment based on the nineteenth-century inventions of Herman Hollerith and his one-time colleague James Powers. The trick now was to persuade our customers that punched-card tabulating was out of date, and they should upgrade to computers. These still depended on punched cards for input and output (visual display units being not yet available), but stored their data on giant tape decks. Computers were hugely expensive and needed air-conditioned dust-proof rooms. There were no silicon-chip memories: what we had was magnetic cores hand-threaded by ladies with good eyesight and hairnets in clean-rooms. The municipal authority of Birmingham (England) could only afford 192kb of internal memory when it moved to digital computing in 1964. We thought this was a big machine, and so it was, in physical size.
Anyhow, I learned some mysterious expressions, for example one day I was asked to give a ballpark estimate. I knew how to do rough estimates, but nothing about ballparks. This put me on rather a sticky wicket, an expression I understood instinctively because it was derived from cricket.
Sticky, adj.
c. Racing and Cricket. Of a course, a wicket: Having a yielding surface owing to wet. Also fig., esp. in phr. to bat (or be) on a sticky wicket: to contend with great difficulties (colloq.) [OED]
But it was a different expression which aroused me with a start from an ale-induced stupor during one afternoon meeting of the sales team. Someone mentioned “motherhood and apple pie”. Had I missed something? It was no use asking for explanations. It was years later that I understood it was a reference to an American proverb: “No one ever speaks against motherhood and apple pie” — symbols of intrinsic goodness. If you could attach these symbols to your sales activities, then you could successfully deal in landmines, napalm, or a data processing upgrade that left the user worse than before. (There was another American proverb: “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”, but it was never uttered in our office, since we were IBM’s biggest rival in the UK.)
It’s less proverbial but generally true that no one speaks against spirituality, for it too seems to exude intrinsic goodness, even to those who deal in landmines and napalm. At any rate such persons hastened to donate to the saintly Mother Theresa, or so I gather from Christopher Hitchens’ book on Mother Theresa, The Missionary Position which commences thus:
Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shrivelled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and destitute?
The answer is Hitchens himself, a brave speaker-out against spirituality, who labelled the late Mother Theresa a menace to Calcutta and the entire world. And he’s written a book called God Is Not Great.
There are those who make a distinction between religion and spirituality: the one being more problematic than the other. Spirituality is the pure essence, they seem to imply, while religion is the uncut diamond, or the unrefined ore.
I may have been one of those who make the distinction, whether or not I can claim to have thought clearly on the subject, which seems to have vast ramifications. I have never been happy with the word “Spirituality”, handling it only with quotation marks as if it were hot and the inverted commas were tongs. Though not fond of the word, I remained in favour of the thing it signified; or at least had more in common with spiritual persons than with simple egotists and materialists. So we must be birds of a feather! In any case, one of my recent blog posts was selected for Network: a journal for all women interested in spirituality, theology, ministry and liturgy, a Catholic periodical. Admittedly, it was put in the “Other Perspectives” section of an issue devoted to Spirituality. Perhaps that was their quarantine section for dubious heresies.
I’d been a spiritual seeker since the age of fifteen: at least that is what my maths teacher called me one day in the street. I had just emerged from the public library. He demanded to see my books and it was deeply embarrassing, for I was carrying the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Analects of Confucius, and a commentary on St John’s Gospel. It’s only the memory of blushing shame that preserves this vignette in such detail. Perhaps I was a seeker already without being conscious of it: just went to the library and picked three books that looked interesting, without any sense that they might have a common classification “Spirituality”.
Later I took up sitting-meditation and actually did it for thirty years, an hour a day. Did it do any good? I must have thought so at the time, or at any rate feared the consequences if I stopped. Ah, but did it do any good? How do I know? I Would not recommend it to anyone. All I know is that it felt wonderful when I finally stopped. But that’s what the madman said, when he stopped banging his head against the wall.
But here is the funny thing. In the last few days, just as it felt good to stop meditation several years ago, now it feels good to drop spirituality altogether. I suddenly feel the air fresher and purer, the colours brighter, my own self more in tune with the All. I could break into poetry, not my own, but Browning’s, as in Pippa’s Song:
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his Heaven –
All’s right with the world!
Yes, I can still say “God’s in his Heaven”. That’s not preaching, that’s an expression of joy. I renounce preaching: to others and especially to myself. I might read someone’s sermons. I will probably continue my habitual fantasy-reverence for cloistered nuns who spend their days praying for the world and their nights in spiritual embrace with the Son of God.
I’m not spiritual. I dwell in my body. My joy is inspired by nothing more holy than ordinary life. To hang washing on the line is my worship. I compare the blues of the damp garments with the blue of the sky; the clear dewdrops hanging from the line with the translucence of the line’s plastic coating; the row of brick chimney-pots with the glowing sky; the freshness of the outside air with the bland atmosphere indoors; the feeling of my own body—and here I don’t know what words can convey the exquisiteness of being alive.
It seems to me you don’t need spirituality to appreciate the simple things in life. No theory, no practice is required, just living. Perhaps spirituality is a desired ladder to reach a height, higher than things of the world. Perhaps it is a sense of impatience to get closer to what we already know.
What if I were well-born, well-bred, endowed with land and horses, young and handsome in features and physique; admired by all; skilled in hawking, archery, poesy; magnanimous and devout? Would that have been enough to stop me setting out on a spiritual adventure? Or would I, like Prince Gautama, feel something missing, and become a spiritual seeker at the age of fifteen anyway?
“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters.” (Ch’ing-yüan Wei-hsin)
a wayfarer’s notes 
I'm with you Brother.
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Glad to hear it Charles, my brother. Have you seen A Clockwork Orange? I think the actor Malcolm McDowell is my favourite male star. His character in this film is always addressing “my brothers”. And is a homicidal mendacious rapist & teenage hoodlum of great personal charm. No reference to present company of course.
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Malcolm McDowell played a similar role in a film called If… which was actually made before A Clockwork Orange.
The film was about a group of Boarding School Students oppressed by the school staff. In the end they stage a violent rebellion.
Ironically, it also preceded student uprisings in France.
He is one of my favorite actors as well.
[IF]
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And–which is more–you'll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
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Yes, it was his role in If…. which led me to see Clockwork Orange and also his other early films. I recommend “O Lucky Man” too.
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You have a beautiful blog Vincent and you write very well.
That can only be if you are a very spiritual person.
May I invite you to consider becoming a member of a new forum for spiritual topics at
http://loveandgod.proboards.blogspot.com/index.cgi
and post some of your thoughts there. guess you would haveto copy and paste that link as i dont know how to post active links
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Thanks for your kind words, Ashok. The URL you supplied didn't work but I believe the intended link was http://loveandgod.proboards.com/index.cgi. I'll be checking it out!
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I can agree with this, like Charles B. says, I can second that!
But you know me, Vincent, I want to say more, forgive me, even delete it, just please let me say it once!
Spirituality is nothing more than communication. Communication exist in some form of a language in every, absolutely every layer or level of reality. And there is Communication even in some ways, translations of some of those languages, from layer to layer or level to level. Nothing more than that, but man, that is everything!
Core to core, as people relate one to another, closer or more distant, still it is what it is, I am what I am.
Nothing more.
It is called the light of nothing, and it is the more and the all and is nature entirely.
No matter how you view it.
Everything is in it, without it was nothing made.
so on and so forth.
So rest in your communicative place, do it your way, love it heartily, and don't ever stop.
Just some thoughts.
At 16 I worked in a SBC place and carried punch cards between it (which looked very like your picture) and businesses that used the Service Bureau Corp. for computations and record keeping. That would have been the late 50s early 60s here in usa.
Yes, watch out for motherhood and apple pie.
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BTW, Vincent, a most excellent post!
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Vincent, I got the dates wrong on the SBC activity, and of course, my age, it was early to mid 60s that these businesses popped up in the southern usa. I knew them and worked with them in the military in the late 60s. Punchcards and tape and yards and yards of printouts to verify for input accuracy, (human error, lol).
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Yes Jim, the computers started popping up in the early Sixties, but the punched cards had been going for most of the twentieth century till then as Hollerith's US census was about 1881. (when Edison was also busy inventing things, I believe.)
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I really like what you say about spirituality. It is of course about communication as much as anything else. And doubtless that is what winds me up about it so much because I am very concerned with the tools of communication.
Just as religions have had reform movements throughout the ages – e.g. Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the cathedral door in the fifteen century (I'm not checking my facts here, don't want to be further distracted) so I have wanted to clean up our use of language lately, just as Luther wanted to clean up the Catholic Church (or burn it down, I am not sure which).
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NO Vincent the urls are still mixed up but that does not matter since you got to my blog. The correct urls are for the blog
http://someitemshave.blogspot.com
and the forum
http://loveandgod.proboards59.com
and i still dont know how to post active links.
Spirituality is just a word and every person has his own interpretation. If the course you follow now leads to greater happiness it is in fact more spiritual. I think living every moment of life in the best possible way , without thoughts of past and future interfering is a living meditation better than an hour or so of it
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vincent, I think ashok says it well: “Spirituality is just a word and every person has his own interpretation.”
Obviously, to you the word itself carries a negative connotation… though, to my mind, your experience of the simple enjoyment of experience is very much like what I might call the “S” word – self-aware experience and a realization of one's place in and amongst the vast grandeur of ALL.
To prove a point, I might say to you, “bakane.” Until you go find a definition for the word, it means nothing. Once you do find the definition, then you may or may not be offended.
In the same way, the word itself carries a world of meaning, and likely the reason it is so much like motherhood or apple pie. It's “untouchable” because it's a very personal thing for people. As any self-respecting mother would bristle for being criticized for her parenting, or a baker of a disdain for his apple pie recipe, the concepts propping up the word “spirituality” are indeed very personal and quite dependent on our individual experiences. Good post, though.
You mentioned clever branding back on one of my blog posts, and I think this author you mentioned, Hitchens, is just another of that sort – stirring the pot for the sake of sales.
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I cannot tell a lie, it was I who drew your blogpost to the attention of 'Network', as I have a long association with that periodical. However, your designation of it as a 'Catholic periodical' made me chortle! Don't you know that 'Network', and all associated with it, are the spawn of Satan? 'Dubious heresies'? We invented them. Apparently. A periodical with Catholic roots, yes. But disowned.
I don't really like the word 'spirituality' either. I find it superfluous, like the old notion of the 'ether'. it adds nothing to our understanding. I think we could really do without it. I think it came into currency because we sought ways to indicate how much some things 'mattered' – and I am conscious of the resonance of the word 'matter' here. But I don't think we need to invent a new level of mattering. A mountain is a mountain. Some of us care about the beauty and wonder of mountains, and to others they are nothing more than a boring pile of rock.
Kathleen
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Kathleen, I'm delighted to acknowledge you as the representative of that apparently heretical journal. If my piece helped make the reading of it an excommunicable offence, I shall remain uncontrite.
I recently borrowed from the library Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua not realizing that including voluminous authorial notes it is 600 pages, of which few are spiritual or edifying, and most are covering his saintly arse. Why did he jump ship from Church of England to Rome? Why didn't he advise others to do same before during and after his own defection so that they too could have saved themselves from Hell. And so on.
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Just curious, did you adjust the colors in your desk-window picture or are those how the camera read them, I am referring to the soft violets, and the shadows.
Super atmospheric with the windowlighting and surfaces.
As for the Spiritual and Communication, I was not saying Spirit is about communication, I was saying Spirit IS Communication, that and nothing else, but in many ways.
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Jim, I didn't adjust any colours on the photo. Just suppressed the automatic flash. The walls are that colour!
As for spirit actually being communication, I really don't understand it, sorry.
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Tim, it's only recently that my view of spirituality has stopped teetering on the neutral edge of a cliff, and has finally lost its balance and fallen into the negative abyss.
I owe an explanation for that. It will be forthcoming.
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Actually, my choice to make a distinction in that entry between the far right rather than just the regular right, was something deliberate that i would not have bothered with just a little bit ago.
The reason is that recently a huge survey about religious attitude in America was conducted which found that even Christian Americans tended to be far less exclusivist than I had realized, with most believing that many alternative paths to god existed, and that it was mostly just the far right which stuck to their guns on jesus being the only way.
here is a link to a good article about the study: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/24religion.html?src=tp
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Chris, why do you respond to my comment on your blog post here?
The comments on my blog are meant to be of interest to all readers of the post to which they relate. Readers coming across your comments won't know what you are talking about.
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Vincent,
Thanks for visiting my Trashland blog on July 7! I just discovered your comments left there this very moment, Aug 17, as I went in to cut the crap and just post a few YouTube videos of beautiful music — well, I'm an internet ignoramus and had no idea people could leave comments. What a surprise. You dropped so suddenly out of Authonomy. Will we see you back there soon?
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Beautiful blog, Vincent. The clouds. The dewdrops on the laundry line. The translucence of the laundry line. The getting past the word “spirituality”.
At 14 I discovered Lobsang Rampa, Tibetan Buddhist, in a second-hand bookshop, and thanks only to the wonderfully illustrated Corgi covers. At 16, having read all 14 of his books, I learned he was actually an Englishman. That never mattered. What mattered was the Third Eye.
Clouds say so much to us. Yet only the old Russian writers actually seem to notice them. Tolstoy died in a railway station. Always restless, on the move.
As an Internetiot, I do find it hard to navigate your old posts. I wonder if there isn't an idiot-friendly way of scrolling through then without clicking on dates. I would like to start with the oldest and read continuously.
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Anton, I'm so glad you found your way here, and managed to get my comments on Trashland. You can set your blogspot settings to receive an email every time there is a comment there. And I hope you ticked the box when you commented here, so that you receive this comment – which is a public email addressed to you!
Ah, Authonomy! I did actually have the plan to post my blog entries there as the first 10,000 words of an intended book. But it was tedious labour. Where to start? I never thought to go back to the beginning, with my first halting entries. Amongst the variety of posts was a tentative book of memoirs, not consecutive or chronological.
One reason I seldom visit authonomy was the feeling it gives me, that the authors are after something different – that I don't fit in there. This is an occasion when I think I must be “spiritual” even though I hate that idea. Writing is such hard work and my motivation is neither fame nor money, but a special kind of impulse.
I never thought of dying in a railway station. Perfect!
Umm. It's funny, I got up at 5am with a post in mind in which I would (in passing) once again address the question as to why I blog instead of writing “a proper book” as a literary friend suggests.
And then your comments, which of course distract me from that intention; but also illuminate it.
It's not laziness, just as it's not laziness that prevents me attempting Everest. It's the sense of the sacredness of life, which is the immediate end that moment by moment trashes the thought of using it merely as a means to the future.
NOW is such a delicious blank page on which once again to practise a calligraphic signature; and not just at 5am on a monday morning.
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Hi Vincent, it was your intro quoting Basho that made me recall Tolstoy dying in the railway station… Something similar moves us too…
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