Colloquy

I was moved by Ellie’s recent comment:

We engage in a colloquy reflecting one another’s light through the jewel of our own perception.

In my last I spoke of the sound of waves breaking on the shore, and in subsequent comments the ebb and flow of tides. May this blog share the connectivity and outreach of an ocean, but remain intimate in its whisperings to a single reader somewhere! Here something is said, and then there is silence. Oblivion, maybe, or pause for reflection. And then there may come a response: a comment, a new post. Thus an on-line colloquy may go deeper than face-to-face conversations, which may have no time for silence, and are halted by interruptions. Here, a continuity is possible, a bridge across space and time, a thread joining intervals of reflection. In this post I start from recent comments, and see where they may take us.

All I want from eternity is the reality I imagined it to be when I was a child. That all of those beautiful clouds over my head really and truly are angels flying on their bellies keeping an eye on things.

Yes, perhaps the adult’s perception of spirit develops from childhood imagining, just as a tree develops from a seed. Perhaps religions arise from throngs of souls, as forests arise from arrays of trees, ordered and managed for public benefit. A tree may grow in a forest or by itself; but religions arise naturally, from human necessity.

Isn’t the secret in saying yes to the tide as it comes in and as it goes out; to the rising sun and to the setting sun? Through knowing that all is gift, and that the ability to receive is among the greatest gifts, we gather in the scattered pieces however worthless they may have originally seemed.

I was haunted by this recent comment. What is the secret? A destination, or a path to it? Is it everyone’s goal, or only for the few? I used to take it as axiomatic that there was such a destination, and that the path was open to everyone. Now I see it as no axiom, merely an unsupported belief. But if there is a secret, I want to know it. Within every kind of knowledge lies an enigma. To get it you must aspire, you must strive. But till you have it you cannot know what it is. With some kinds of knowledge, you can’t know if you’d want it if you got it, or even whether it exists. And if it does, can there be the same path for everyone? Even though, manifestly, we don’t all start from the same place. And if there is a secret, can it be available to everyone who seeks? A “yes” answer can depend on nothing but faith.

A very spiritual like-minded Canadian friend (sadly he is no more) recommended Master Eckhart and I too intend to read him whenever the time comes.

I was prompted by this comment to read Eckhart again, and not just cheat by pulling out a quote that suited my purpose, as I did to introduce a recent post. So I started to read his sermons. They were challenging in multiple ways but then, fortuitously, I encountered a book which at first seemed quite different. It was easier to read, but at its core was something very close to Meister Eckhart, as if he had been reborn into a different body, centuries later.

In the evening, when her [] work was done, [their mother] would sit down under the sparkling vault of heaven, and calling her children to her, would talk to them of the only Being that could effectually aid or protect them. Her teachings were delivered in Low Dutch, her only language, and, translated into English, ran nearly as follows:—

‘My children, there is a God, who hears and sees you.’ ‘A God, Mau-mau! Where does he live?’ asked the children. ‘He lives in the sky,’ she replied; ‘and when you are beaten, or cruelly treated, or fall into any trouble, you must ask help of him, and he will always hear and help you.’ She taught them to kneel and say the Lord’s Prayer. She entreated them to refrain from lying and stealing, and to strive to obey their masters.

One of that mother’s children was Isabella Baumfree, born like her siblings into slavery. In later life, long after she obtained her freedom, she became an itinerant preacher and gave herself the name Sojourner Truth. She became famous in America as an activist for Abolition and women’s suffrage. Unable to read or write, she told her story to a friend who published it as a memoir in 1850. This was before she emerged into public life, gaining fame with speeches such as the one known as “Ain’t I a woman?”, and other forms of activism.

Narrative of Sojourner Truth is the memoir of that child born in the north-east US into domestic slavery, with all its devastating effects, even under relatively kind masters. This circumstance is terrible and fascinating enough. But more than this, the book chronicles the developing character and consciousness of an intelligent child who had the benefit of living with two parents till the age of nine. This must have powerfully mitigated the effect of being a chattel liable to be beaten or sold at any moment. More than this it interests me for portraying Isabella’s spiritual development. Lacking any systematic education, she picked up nothing but the most rudimentary concept of Christian belief.

Through her life, and all its chequered changes, she has ever clung fast to her first permanent impressions on religious subjects.

She persisted in addressing God out loud whilst gazing up at the sky (just like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof), with the utmost sincerity, well into adulthood and after obtaining her free papers:

Whilst yet a child, she listened to a story of a wounded soldier, left alone in the trail of a flying army, helpless and starving, who hardened the very ground about him with kneeling in his supplications to God for relief, until it arrived. From this narrative, she was deeply impressed with the idea, that if she also were to present her petitions under the open canopy of heaven, speaking very loud, she should the more readily be heard; consequently, she sought a fitting spot for this, her rural sanctuary. The place she selected, in which to offer up her daily orisons, was a small island in a small stream, covered with large willow shrubbery, beneath which the sheep had made their pleasant winding paths; and sheltering themselves from the scorching rays of a noon-tide sun, luxuriated in the cool shadows of the graceful willows, as they listened to the tiny falls of the silver waters. It was a lonely spot, and chosen by her for its beauty, its retirement, and because she thought that there, in the noise of those waters, she could speak louder to God, without being overheard by any who might pass that way. When she had made choice of her sanctum, at a point of the island where the stream met, after having been separated, she improved it by pulling away the branches of the shrubs from the centre, and weaving them together for a wall on the outside, forming a circular arched alcove, made entirely of the graceful willow. To this place she resorted daily, and in pressing times much more frequently. At this time, her prayers, or, more appropriately, ‘talks with God,’ were perfectly original and unique, and would be well worth preserving, were it possible to give the tones and manner with the words; but no adequate idea of them can be written while the tones and manner remain inexpressible.

The turning point in her life is narrated in the chapter headed “Isabella’s Religious Experience”. With no earthly ally to turn to, she had leaned more and more on the one reliable resource in her life. She had total trust in her God. With his help, she got her son back, for despite slavery having been abolished in the North, he had been abducted to another state, sold, cruelly beaten and intimidated into disowning his own mother when the two of them met in a court appearance to hear her petition. Emboldened by certainty of God being on her side, she won him back. Furthermore, as a free woman she found refuge as servant to a family which treated her properly as a human being. So in very human fashion, now that her every prayer had been answered, she ceased her supplications to God.

She was so happy and satisfied, that God was entirely forgotten. Why should her thoughts turn to him, who was only known to her as a help in trouble?

But one day—the circumstances having been set forth in detail—

—God revealed himself to her, with all the suddenness of a flash of lightning, showing her, ‘in the twinkling of an eye, that he was all over’—that he pervaded the universe—‘and that there was no place that God was not.’

Her life was changed with this experience, which owed little to religion, other than the words she had no option but to use in describing it.

As Gentleeye commented on my recent post:

I particularly like: ‘it’s pointless to argue about how people choose to describe their own experience’. It is pointless – but amazingly popular!

Yes, because public discourse about religion has descended into irrelevancy, obsessed with surface and blind to substance. Spirituality properly lives in one place only, the singular heart, where it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

I had forgotten to mention, in its proper place, a very important fact, that when she was examining the Scriptures, she wished to hear them without comment; but if she employed adult persons to read them to her, and she asked them to read a passage over again, they invariably commenced to explain, by giving her their version of it; and in this way, they tried her feelings exceedingly. In consequence of this, she ceased to ask adult persons to read the Bible to her, and substituted children in their stead. Children, as soon as they could read distinctly, would re-read the same sentence to her, as often as she wished, and without comment; and in that way she was enabled to see what her own mind could make out of the record, and that, she said, was what she wanted, and not what others thought it to mean. She wished to compare the teachings of the Bible with the witness within her; and she came to the conclusion, that the spirit of truth spoke in those records, but that the recorders of those truths had intermingled with them ideas and suppositions of their own. This is one among the many proofs of her energy and independence of character.

I commend to you the memoir of a slave whose strength was to remain forever her own person. A voice within gave her that strength. She called it God.