From Palm Sunday to Memorial Day

I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a long time since I have posted here. But the good thing about being a small fish is, hardly anybody notices when I slither away for a while. (Have you noticed how a lot of bloggers behave as though there are millions of readers out there, hanging on their every word? At least I can’t be accused of that.)

But by way of self-justification, I have to say that I have been involved in a ton of thinking about transcendentalism over the past weeks and months. It all started when I was in Paris – my first trip there in more than 20 years.

On Palm Sunday morning, I went to Notre Dame with my family. We stood there and listened to a beautiful chanting of the Passion According to Saint Matthew. Then we flew back to the U.S. and only a few days later, I attended a wonderful performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in New York. Those two rather deep spiritual experiences set the backdrop for some less reassuring spiritual experiences that came my way in the weeks that followed.

First, a friend of mine sent me a link to a propaganda film that attacks Muslims, purporting to document the fact that Islam is a religion of hate. It was a classic piece of deceptive propaganda, juxtaposing pieces of a religion’s scriptural text against depictions of the bad things that members of that religion have done. The same kind of propaganda could, and has, been created to smear Jews, Catholics and members of just about any other group. Why is it that people who would be the first to cry foul if they were attacked by such propaganda are the first to embrace it when it is directed against people who are not like them?

Second came the visit of the Pope to America, during which time His Holiness met with hundreds of people who have been abused by Catholic priests.

Third came the raids by Texas police in which children – ostensibly victims of abuse – were taken away from a polygamist compound.

Fourth came a number of political scandals, large and small, in which ridiculous statements made by clergymen (and I use that term advisedly, since none of the perpetrators were women) caused a lot of harm to presidential candidates.

Now, if I were thinking like a typical blogger, I would just come out swinging with a lot of infuriating opinions about all these happenings. But I have found that the more I think about all of the above, the more puzzled I become. I only end up with more questions, not more answers.

The biggest of these questions is, how can a religion (including Christianity, which encompasses the astonishing story that I heard in the words of Saint Matthew), or any religion for that matter, lead to such flawed, crazy, aberrant and hateful behavior?

Could it really be that Emerson was right – that the truest faith is the one that results from direct communication with nature, unfiltered by organized religious and other self-declared authorities? A spirituality achieved in solitude, not in groups?

I don’t know. The questions are a lot bigger than I can answer. But maybe that is a good thing. Asking tough questions, I think, is probably wiser than arriving at easy answers.  

Comments

[Ina Matijevic]

Barry!

Emerson was right! That's the only way .
''I did it My Way'' religion.

You are a very Big Fish, very, very Big!

Ina