Journal of a Soul 58

So Many Colours in the Rainbow

Who can forget the lyrics of  the chorus of the late great Harry Chapin's song "Flowers are Red"?  Let me remind you of them:

But the little boy said
"There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one."

Howth Harbour by night, three days ago 

The song is a good one as its message is perennial, namely, that it reminds us that "variety is the spice of life," that differences are not alone to be acknowledges but to be celebrated. It is a timely reminder not alone for politicians, law makers and legislators but also for academics, teachers, and indeed preachers.  Who wants to live in a monochrome world where everything is boringly staid, monolithic and grey? These reflections were occasioned by reading about how changes are occurring for the better in certain churches in the world: "US Presbyterian Church Votes to Allow Same-Sex Marriages," see Here.

Many Narratives

Bronze statue, UCD

Another phrase that stays in my mind is one I heard just last week used by our former President (Uachtarán na hÉireann), Mary McAleece, viz., "there is not just one narrative, you know," in response to a question on the centralized power structures of the Church. In other words, why is there just one monolithic approach to every moral and dogmatic question?  Surely, there are many approaches to and many perspectives on one or other truth.  Is there one monolithic Truth with a capital 'T'? Oh for a broad-Church mentality, not a narrow straitjacket approach where the take of a certain period in history is petrified or set in stone for millennia?  

Likewise, we tire from the same old rants by the tabloids that sell through sensationalist stories, many often blown totally out of proportion.  The narratives they proclaim and sell are all of a certain unseemly nature.  Many years ago my now deceased mother used always say: "good news never sells: bad news does!"  It is so easy to sell certain narratives only.  There are so many other stories, and many of them good, that could be given more public space and acknowledgement.  One further thing that does annoy me considerably is the almost deliberate avoidance of good journalistic practices of investigation before going to print with the publication of the latest  exposure of X, Y or Z.  

I Fear the Man of One Book

An old friend of mine used always quote the Latin phrase (he was a teacher of a certain era) from the pen of St. Thomas Aquinas, viz., "hominem unius libri timeo" which means "I fear the man who quotes one book (all the time)." As an academic of many years standing, I have never read or written a paper that did not make allusions to and citations from as many learned sources as possible.  In that way, academics attempt to bring out as many sides of the truth as possible.  After all, there are many ways of approaching every problem.  Let's take the field of geometry within the subject area of mathematics.  When I was at school, it was thought that Euclid was the final word on geometry, but when I got to college I learned about many other geometries: analytical geometry, algebraic geometry, descriptive geometry, differential geometry, projective geometry and so on.

Colloquialisms and Old Sayings

How often have we all heard that old chestnut: "There is more than one way to skin a cat"? This is a dreadful thought, and as to why one might want to skin a cat, I'll never know. I could understand it better if instead of the word "cat" one substituted that of "rabbit" as the latter provided much needed food to many of our forebears in less fortunate times.  The following is an interesting and learned conjecture as to its provenance: 

To a lexicographer, all phrases are interesting, it’s just that some of them are more interesting than others ... There are many versions of this proverb, which suggests there are always several ways to do something. Charles Kingsley used one old British form in Westward Ho! in 1855: “there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream”. Other versions include “there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with butter”, and “there are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with pudding”. The earliest version appears as far back as 1678, in the second edition of John Ray’s collection of English proverbs, in which he gives it as “there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”. (see Here )

Celebrating Difference

Marley Park, April, 2014

Surely the celebration of difference is one of our greatest possibilities as educated and progressive humans?  You don't need to be a zoologist or a botanist to celebrate the wonderful variety which the flora and fauna of the world present us with on a daily basis or a physicist or a chemist to celebrate the mystery of the microscopic world and even the submicroscopic world of atomic structure.  Neither do we need to be astronomers to appreciate the vastness and mystery of our universe.  Nor do we need to be college professors to marvel at the sheer exponential growth of knowledge.  All of this adds to the wonder of difference and the importance of celebrating this variety that seems to have one underlying thrust that biologists and physicists chase after in their desire for one overall comprehensive theory of the universe.  Perhaps, even if we are believers, we might see this as a quest for the Creator God?

The Wonder of Children

As a little primary school boy I was fascinated with the following quotation from the great English scientist Isaac Newton that our teacher Mr. Murray made us learn off by heart.  I remember it to this day: “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” This childlike wonder at mystery and truth celebrates life in its great diversity.  It was the same wonder and innocence that Jesus meant when he said to all the adults around him:And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." ' (Mat 18:13)

Journal of a Soul 57

Dealing with the Past

Irish flag at full mast in ALSAA recently

Dealing with the past is always a hard task both for an individual and for a nation.  In fact, in many cases dealing with events from the past will be most traumatic for both.  On the extreme level one might mention how Germany and its people have endeavoured to tackle their felt collective grief and shame after the horrors inflicted on many sectors of humankind by the Nazi murder machine.  The same must be a case for all other nations involved in genocidal activities, a list of which you may access here if you wish to depress yourself with the horrific statistics: Genocides. Scratch the surface on any nation's sense of identity and one may encounter anger, guilt, depression, grief, hysteria and so on.  Doubtless every nation needs to engage with its guilt over its sins of commission and omission from the past.  Now, this is no easy task, needless to say.  

These reflections here will deal with the problem of dealing with the past on (i) a personal level and (ii) a national level.

Healing one's Personal Past

Evening scene on the Ionian Sea, Calabria, December 2013

The word "healing" is very important in the above heading as it is hard to move on unless one acknowledges the hurt one has caused to others, hopefully having attempted to repair the situation in as far as possible by our admission of guilt, the asking for forgiveness from those hurt and the re-establishment of some kind of mutual respect.  Often many of us need to access help from our friends, from significant others, from trained counsellors and psychotherapists, and perhaps from our spiritual and religious guides in achieving this reconciliation.  Having travelled far through life, I readily acknowledge all the helps I have received in my own personal life story on many of those listed fronts.  Of course, it is also hard to move on when we are the ones who are hurt.  In that situation we may never receive any apology or act of sorrow on the part of those who have hurt us in whatever minor or even major way.  I'm thinking in this latter case, especially, of the poor victims of sex abuse as children and those who have had the most appalling crimes like rape and physical abuse committed against them.  There are, of course, other forms of abuse like mental or psychological abuse, bullying and so on. 

However, one thing's sure, each of us must engage in healing our past memories, especially the more serious ones.  Such will involve exercises in awareness in line with the good old Freudian/Jungian definition of all therapy, namely "making the unconscious conscious." * Unacknowledged hurts from the past will inevitably surface in our dreams as we age.  Indeed, they will often send a growing minority of us to take refuge in drink and drugs and, indeed, to often in engage in hurting others in the same way that we ourselves have been hurt.  

A partial answer (please note the adjective here "partial") to problems in these above mentioned areas may be summarised in one word, "awareness."  Dr Rollo May underscores this fact in many of his books where he insightfully states that awareness is a major part of the battle to conquering anxiety, anger, bitterness, regret, spite, jealousy, egocentricity, envy and so on.** Let us put this in more colloquial terms and state in a pithy fashion that "awareness is half of the battle."  It is only when the alcoholic, or drug addict, or whoever with whatever ill or problem, acknowledges that they have the problem, that is, when they authentically face the truth of their particular ill that they can begin to do anything to change their situation for the better and start out on the journey to healing and recovery.

(ii) Healing our Collective Past as a Nation 

At the excavations at Locri, south of Siderno, December 2014

These reflections were inspired, or more correctly provoked, by the recent highlighting of the mistreating of unmarried women and their babies here in Ireland since the foundation of the state. In the last twenty to thirty years, much concealed abuse has come to light in Ireland: child clerical abuse, the plight of unmarried mothers,  Magdalene Laundries, the abuse in Industrial schools, the burial of dead young children in grounds of Mother and Child homes since foundation of the State.  To add to the mixed repressed memories and emotions, some of those homes were badly renovated Poor Houses from Famine times.  In other words, excavations or archaeological digs on these graveyards in question would be quite intricate given the presence also of Famine graves on site.

I've heard historians, sociologists, psychologists and others suggest that as a nation we Irish suffer from repressed guilt as we are the survivors of the millions who starved in their hovels and on the roadsides and in the Poor Houses during the years 1845-1848.  Our high rates of alcoholism and mental breakdown may also be attributed to this repression.  How much festers in our personal and Collective Unconscious is undoubtedly there to be discovered in our cultural expression of our identity in history, plays, novels and art (from the past, the present and the future) of all types as well as in sessions on the couch.  Art in all its richness is surely one means of expiating our repressed demons.  This, therefore, is one area where the Arts outshine the contribution of the Sciences to our well-being.  As human beings we have to be helped to flourish as individuals in the mutuality of community.  Sciences help by improving our lifestyles and standards of living, but the Arts contribute to healing our souls.

There is much we can do in helping to heal ourselves in these issues.  I shall attempt a brainstorm of possibilities here, obviously in no specific order:

• Encourage radical questioning in all areas of life.
• Listen more to what people say.
• Defend the rights of minorities.
• Radically question all power structures.
• Ask ourselves what lies we sell to one another and why.
• Sharpen our moral and ethical questions.
• Learn to be suspicious of easy answers to difficult questions.
• Join in helping one cause or another.
• Read more widely and more critically.
• Question our public representatives and politicians.
• Stand up for our principles.
• Don't take the easy way out.
• Get involved in as much as possible.
• Join the debate.
• Make our voices heard.
• Don't blame others.
• Encourage debate and other opinions besides our own.
• Try to see things from another point of view.
• Why not? as a question is as good to ask as Why?   

Journal of a Soul 56

Body and Soul

A walk in Marley Park, Dublin, April 2014

"Body" and "Soul" are categories with which we are all too familiar.  Certainly, within the Roman Catholic dispensation. Building on Greek philosophy (most especially the work of Plato and Aristotle), the early Christians and the somewhat later Church Fathers promulgated a strong philosophy and theology, or if you like a philosophical theology*, that differentiated very strongly between the two categories. The soul, which is by nature good, inhabits the body, which according to St Paul, whom some scholars see as being as much the founder of the church as Jesus himself, is "the Temple of the Holy Spirit."  Building on the theology of St Paul, St. Augustine would adjudge the body as being simply the root of all evil.  And so over centuries there emerged a philosophy and theology that demonized the body and sanctified the soul.  

This rather radical disjunction of body and soul was accepted right down through the ages and is still central to both orthodox and unorthodox Christian belief, indeed to mainline theist belief.  The body dies and the soul lives on in another spiritual world, another realm. Now, needless to say, I am not arguing strongly on one side or another here.  I am merely stating the facts as they are, facts which hopefully I will build my reflections on somewhat later in this post, and perhaps in further posts.  My preferred method of reflection in things spiritual is always phenomenological, never reductionist or positivist, as anyone who has been a reader of my posts will know.  It's just that I like to get the basic facts straight first before proceeding. 

When René Descartes came along in the early seventeenth century, his "cogito ergo sum," a philosophical position worked out painstakingly through the crucible of intellectual doubt, argued that the mind (the mental) was radically different to the material (the body) and that they somehow interacted through the strange workings of the Pineal gland.**  Now, needless to say, this is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies that claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world.

That is a very brief outline of the historical background.  Whatever we human beings are in our full humanity we are certainly both mental (spiritual) and material (body).  Modern thinking would argue for a holistic approach where both mental and bodily aspects of who we are are inextricably linked.  While they can be differentiated to enable reflection on the mystery that is the human being in his/her totality, they simply cannot be radically separated as in either mainline Christian theology or in radical Cartesian dualism.

More Questions than Answers: Mind, Soul and Self

I like to describe myself as a spiritual person with a deep interest in Christ and the Buddha, who believes that there is a spiritual aspect to the life of the planet and to all sentient life, and most especially to human life. Indeed, phenomenologically I experience life as miraculous in the sense in which the transcendentalist/realist poet Walt Whitman put it in his eponymous long poem:

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass–the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

Marley Park, April, 2014

In other words, what I am arguing for here is the sheer mystery or wonder or magic with which the experience of living presents the conscious mind.  To offer simplistic, and especially reductive, answers to the meaning of life is to my mind the height or depth of arrogance and hubris. While no easy answers exist to the following questions in a clear rational sense, nonetheless these questions are valid for every thinking and feeling human being.  Let me pose the questions here - questions that are existential in tenor, questions which invite the listener to listen, reflect, ponder, wonder, expand his/her thought, stretch or flex their cognitive powers or simply invite the questioner to listen in silence and meditate on the experience.

• Is the Mind the same as the Soul?
• Is the Mind the same as the Self?
• Is the Self the Soul?
• What is the Mind?
• What is the Self?
• What is the Soul?
• Where does Personality fit into all of this?
• Is the Self the same as our Identity?
• Who or what defines Who we are?
• Is Identity a psychological phenomenon solely?
• Is Identity a sociological phenomenon solely?
• Is Identity a psychosocial phenomenon more correctly, then?
• Has Identity got a Spiritual dimension?
• Has Identity got a Religious dimension?
• What is the difference between Religion and Spirituality?
• Have the Natural Sciences anything to say about our Identity or about any of the above questions?
• What is the difference between the Natural Sciences and the Human Sciences?
• Where does the Truth lie? In the Natural Sciences or in the Human Sciences?
• Or more correctly, does it not lie in dialogue between both areas of exploration?
• Is Truth singular, i.e., "The One Truth" (Ultimate and Objective)?
• Is the Truth plural, i.e., "The many truths of knowledge" (Relative and often Subjective)?
• Can/does the Soul live on after Death?
• Can/does the Mind live on after Death?
• Can/does the Self live on after Death?
• Why are these questions so important for humankind?
• There are billions of people who believe that these questions are important.  Why?
• Does an animal have a Mind?
• If the Mind = the Soul, then could not an animal be said to have a Soul?
• Why couldn't an animal live on after death so?
• Do animals have a Personality or a Self or an Identity?
• Is a self-conscious Self a Soul?
• Is a non-self-conscious Self, i.e., an animal a Soul?

Obviously, if we wish to explore the above questions systematically we will have to do some pains-taking work of research into the origins of each term, their historical usages from culture to culture and then go on to offer a descriptive definition of each.  Once that's done we should then have to discuss and debate each question in a systematic way. Obviously, one could never tackle all such questions in one post, one chapter or even one book.  However, what I am about in this post is to give the reader a flavour of the breadth, depth and height of the questions posed by any worthwhile philosophical anthropology.

Analytical or positivist philosophers like A.J. Ayer would say that these questions are practically all invalid as they ask questions about things that are mere hypotheses and absolutely strange ones at that.  They are in no way verifiable or falsifiable and hence completely meaningless and therefore redundant questions. Those questions, he argues, simply make no sense at all as they refer to the mere idle speculation of of less rigorous philosophers.  Bertrand Russell says somewhere that to ask such metaphysical questions as I have done above is as ludicrous as asking is there a tea-pot orbiting the sun or any sun out there in space?***

Flowers, Marley Park, April, 2014

Of course, we are perfectly well within our rights to counter Russell, and indeed Ayer who was one of his early students and followers, by stating that in an existential and in a phenomenological sense human beings find that they actually do ask these questions. Indeed, I would argue that there is something within us driving us to ask these questions. In a sense, I believe that our two analytical philosophers are in fact being somewhat disingenuous because they are treating human beings as mere cognitive entities, or as entities that can only ask certain linguistically logical questions, that somehow human beings are not allowed to engage in a meta-linguistics or in a meta-meta-linguistics and further even in a metaphysics. Why not?  In this regard, I have always been inspired by that great metaphysical question asked by Heidegger, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" ****

The Scottish empiricist David Hume was an early atheist who not alone denied the existence of the soul but also of the very notion of a self, an entity that he defined as a mere "bundle of perceptions."  This is alright in theory or in logically worked out clinical thought, but humanity is more than logic or rationality.  Humanity also entails feelings, affectivity, moral and ethical impulses, and indeed much that is non-rational, even irrational.  One might counter Hume and his followers phenomenologically with a statement such as the following: "No client attends a psychotherapist, analyst or counsellor and says 'I am suffering from a bundle of perceptions crisis.'  S/he implicitly, if not  at times explicitly, believes that someone called the Self actually exists."  In other words both client and counsellor know that the self as a phenomenon exists because of their experience.  In all of this, I sometimes take heart that the great Victorian theologian and philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman***** wrote somewhere that the human being "knows more than he is aware of," and that while he never used the term "the unconscious," he certainly would have been most aware of intuition, feelings and so on, much of which was not accessible to clinical reasoning, though it could always be reflected upon and thought about "after the fact."  Newman saw spirituality and the world of religious experience as being very much part of our overall human experience, though once again only amenable to reason "a posteriori." 

Indeed, if we were to take the Analytical and Positivist philosophers literally we would simply have no literature at all, and indeed I believe there would be no place in such a literal world for Arts of any kind.

Marlay House, once owned by David La Touche, M.P. and first governor of Bank of Ireland

The human being is way more complex than some scholars might allow.  That's why we need a philosophy like that of Socrates, a philosophy that always asks the hard and searching questions, that always asks "why" of everything and keeps asking even at seemingly inappropriate times.

I have spoken before that what is important for our study of the nature of humanity is a philosophical anthropology that looks at that nature from as wide a perspective as possible, that seeks the truth from every possible area of knowledge and does not arrogantly arrogate all truth to its own narrow province like the logical positivists and analytical philosophers do.  Phenomenologically and sociologically, Religion even has something to say about human nature. Perennial philosophy as well as all the other approaches in philosophy, and all the various theologies have much to contribute, too.  The Natural Sciences must always be tempered and balanced by the Human Sciences so as to do justice to "the phenomenon of man," in all  his/her complexity, that is the complete and essential nature of the human person.

In this sense, dear reader, what our anthropology must explore is the "more" that is in humanity rather than the "less."  The easy way out of deep thinking and reflection is often the lazy way of seeking to reduce humankind to the least it can be.  

Endnotes 

*Now the very early Christians would have had very little learned theology.  After all, theology emerged as a reflection on their lived faith experience over the ensuing centuries after Jesus' death and resurrection.  The great Greek and Roman Fathers of the Church and the early Church Councils like Nicea and Chalcedon all co-operated to promulgate various learned theologies (note the plural here, in later centuries a rather solidified central core of orthodoxy emerged, and some even subscribed to one theology or way of looking at things spiritual and religious) built upon the foundations of Greek philosophy mainly.  I have mentioned "philosophical theology" in my text above as it is an area where the two overlap rather foundationally, and obviously I am using this twentieth century term rather anachronistically here.

** "Substance dualism is a type of dualism most famously defended by René Descartes, which states that there are two fundamental kinds of substance: mental and material. According to his philosophy, which is specifically called Cartesian dualism, the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think.  Substance dualism is important historically for having given rise to much thought regarding the famous mind–body problem. Substance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world." See article on Dualism in the WIKI here.

 ***The WIKI describes Bertrand Russell's argumentation on this matter thus: "Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion. Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God" See here.

**** I have discussed Heidegger's famous question in many posts in various blogs I have written over the years.  Here is a review I wrote of a book with this very title by Leslek Kołakowski: here.

*****The great Victorian scholar, theologian and philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1090) was perhaps one of the greatest prose stylist of his era.  Much of his prose writings appeared on various curricula in English literature around the world for decades because of its sheer precision and essential beauty.  He was an original thinker, steeped in ancient history, the classical languages of Greek and Latin, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, Church history and contemporary issues in science and philosophy and much else besides.  Indeed, he had one of the subtlest of minds of his time, well able to dialogue with, as well as argue with the Darwinians of his day.  He was also a founder of a University, named the Catholic University of Ireland, which preceded UCD and wrote a classic on the philosophy of education called The Idea of a University.  His most erudite book and the subtlest of his philosophical/theological works is undoubtedly his Grammar of Assent which shows a most amazing insight into not alone why it is reasonable for humans to believe in God, but also shows a profound understanding as to how a human believes at all.  In short, after Rev Professor Jan Walgrave, O.P., I have argued in a paper I wrote some twenty years ago that Newman's approach to belief was one of "phenomenological investigation."  In other words, Newman was very much ahead of his time in describing the complexity of the phenomenon of humanity.  However, Newman's majestic Oxford University Sermons, written in his late thirties to early forties before his conversion to Catholicism, remains my favourite book from the great Victorian scholar for its beauty and simplicity of language and most essentially for its sheer authenticity.

Journal of a Soul 55

Embracing the Magic of Hope

When I use the word "magic" here, I am in no way using it in its restricted, perhaps more correct, understanding of actions connected with manipulating normal things or forces by paranormal methods.  I am, of course, using it in its broadest sense to suggest everything that evokes wonder, beauty, mystery and love in the human soul.  In a world where destruction is more often than not the hallmark of human interaction, we need the magic of hope more than ever.  One would want to be a strong individual not to grow depressed when one even cursorily views the history of humankind where wars and crimes against humanity so obviously abound.  One would want to be equally courageous in viewing the international news which is virtually filled with accounts of the destruction of humans by other humans: from Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan where there are 1000+ deaths per country per year (See Here and Here)  to the destruction of our very own worldly home, namely Mother Earth, our lovely Blue Planet.

Ring-tailed lemur, Dublin Zoo, May 2014

The longer I live the more passionate I am becoming about the need to inspire hope in others.  There are too few great leaders who are doing so today in the political world.  The two most outstanding leaders to my mind, in a more spiritual context, who are attempting to cast the magical spell of hope over a very destructive, greedy and hateful world are such wonderful leaders as Pope Francis I and the Dalai Lama.  Other leaders who impress me from the political world are Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Kofi Annan.  For the life of me, I cannot think of very many more.  President Clinton still impresses me with his commitment to world peace and peace in Northern Ireland, as does the wonderful President Jimmy Carter who is constantly working for peace all around the globe. These are all leaders who inspire hope. Another group of committed "retired" leaders that much encourages the present writer are The Elders and you can read all about their wonderful work for peace here. 

As a teacher, I find that often many of our youngsters are lacking in hope.  In the wake of the downfall of the infamous Celtic Tiger, a growing number of people are mired in negativity that can all to often descend into the lower reaches of desolation and despair. Many pupils who attend our inner city working class school cannot see very much in the way of promise for their future lives. In Ireland as I write, there have been so many cutbacks, so much austerity that the presence of the Labour Party - who are partners in a Coalition Government with a centre-right party called Fine Gael - has been virtually wiped out on town councils all around Ireland.  The Labour Party has been adjudged by the electorate to have so much compromised, or indeed sold out on, their socialist principles that the voters virtually ignored voting for any of their candidates.  A very disillusioned and dejected voting public opted instead for independents and candidates from other parties, most especially Sinn Féin.

"Pp...pp. pick up a penguin," at Dublin Zoo, May 2014

One boy who comes to me for counselling suffers from a sort of low-grade depression for which he is taking sessions from a qualified psychologist in a local hospital.  I work with him once a week.  He is representative of a growing number of young people who seem to be somewhat bereft of hope.  In our sessions, we constantly talk about choosing life and hope, not despair and death.  Recently a young female contact (I never like the use of the word "friends" for "contacts" on this social network as it is a definite misnomer that can cause some young people an amount of anguish if they are deleted or blocked or even bullied by another so called "friend.") on Facebook put up a rather depressing status including the symbol of the skull: "It's mad knowing the only thing we actually are promised in life, is death I do have meself (sic) freaked to bits thinking about it!" Indeed, I notice that FB has become a sort of diary for many of our young people where they reveal their hearts to an oftentimes disinterested public.  As I say, I have my doubts about how helpful FB can be in mental health matters, but that is a debate for another post.

Attracted to the Light

It is indeed a truism to say that we are attracted to the light and repulsed by the dark. For the most part, we are all intuitively attracted by the light in good people.  Generally, it has been my experience that really good people are innately attractive, e.g., Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Pope John XXIII, Pope John-Paul II and in more recent times Pope Francis I.  I have named many others above in my opening paragraph.  I leave it to you, all you good loyal readers out there, to name your own attractive world political and spiritual leaders.  Essentially, such leaders share much with the historical Jesus and the equally historical Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), St Francis and all the present day great spiritual leaders (as distinct from Religious Leaders.  I will be contentious here by stating that I believe that Pope Benedict XVI was a Religious Leader while Pope Francis is a Spiritual Leader). I believe that the great contemporary religious writer and theologian Karen Armstrong is also an attractive spiritual leader.  Her books are widely read and she has been universally honoured for them.*

We must radiate the light of hope in our lives, especially if we are in any position of leadership.  Leadership requires those who exercise it to be real, authentic human beings, aware both of their strengths and weaknesses, to be open to encouraging those whom it is both their task and privilege of leading, being so self-assured in themselves that no one on the staff is ever a threat to their sense of authority.  They must be motivators who notice and affirm the innate talents in each and everyone of their colleagues and employees.  This may be a tall order, but after all that is why we put such people into leadership roles and pay them oftentimes extravagant salaries.

If we know that in the end, in a very real and actual way, every individual life is a physical

Chimp with orange, Dublin Zoo, May 2014

failure in the sense that we all end up in the grave, why then should we keep going on?  If, in the end, all the knowledge we have learnt in our individual brains decays into nothing with our bodies, why do we desire to learn?  A very intelligent student asked me that the other day when we attended the presentation of Green Flags for schools that had made serious efforts to cut down on waste of energy and water. We were discussing the dreadful ecological state we have got our lovely Blue Planet into in these more modern times when he asked the question.  If in the end we are all going to perish, given the horrific mess we have made of our planet, why not give up? I replied that one reason we bothered is that we did not ever wish to become victims, that we had a desire, in-built in us, for order and meaning, and that to give up hope was to admit defeat. As we continued our discussion we spoke of humankind being co-creators with the Creator of the Universe, of our being called to build up as many lovely things as we could for the sake of others, for the sake of all humankind and for the sake of all creaturely and inanimate life.

The lovely cuddly red panda at Dublin Zoo, May 2014

When we write a poem, sing a song, compose a new piece of music, protect animals, build a new building, nurse another sick human being or animal, discover a new piece of knowledge to add to the jigsaw of wonder which this life essentially is, we are lighting candles of hope. When we put out our hand to help another, when we join a cause for the betterment of someone or something or even smile in acceptance of another, we are engaged in spreading the light of hope.  When we shake hands, when we hug another, when we truly listen in acceptance, when we are truly compassionate towards all sentient things, as the Dalai Lama is wont to put it, then and only then are we a true and authentic people of hope.  All our most profound religious and spiritual traditions speak of the light of hope conquering the darkness of despair.  It is no wonder that we often turn to their wisdom traditions in times of disillusionment and despair for words of comfort like: "better to light one candle than to scorn the dark," or "every journey, no matter how long, begins with one little step."  Even if you only smiled at someone today, you are engaged in the apostleship of hope.  I have long loved the short saying of the late Medieval Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart that runs: “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”  If each and everyone of us said this prayer as often as we can on a daily basis we would be truly embracing the magic of hope. 


Footnote:

* In May 2008 Armstrong was awarded the Freedom of Worship Award by the Roosevelt Institute, one of four medals presented each year to men and women whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to the Four Freedoms proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 as essential to democracy: freedom of speech and of worship, freedom from want and from fear. The institute stated that Armstrong had become "a significant voice, seeking mutual understanding in times of turbulence, confrontation and violence among religious groups." It cited "her personal dedication to the ideal that peace can be found in religious understanding, for her teachings on compassion, and her appreciation for the positive sources of spirituality." 

Journal of a Soul 54

Keeping it Real

Ardgillan Park, April, 2014

"Keep it real," is a colloquial phrase that has become very popular in more recent times. The online Urban Dictionary explains it as "being true to oneself and representing oneself in an authentic manner," see here.  Strangely, this explanation all sounds very philosophical, if not existential in its import.  I like to define it as not allowing ourselves the comfort or luxury of escaping into either a dream world or a world of make-believe or quite simply into a world of pure denial.  After all, we all like to take the easy way out, but if we do so continually we become very unreal people, or in the words (actually one word) of the hero or antihero even of Catcher in the Rye, we become "phony."*  That's why I like teaching adolescents, especially Special Needs kids, as they surely do keep me in the real world.

Getting Lost in Abstractions 

Ardgillan Park, April, 2014

I have always found taking flight into abstractions to be one of my weaknesses, in the same league indeed as my love for chocolate.  In my last post I indulged in this a little.  Being of a philosophical and literary frame of mind my imagination can often take flight... and indeed, it is so easy to do so.  After all, which of us does not like indulging himself or herself in either chocolate or philosophy.  However, that's where the import of my opening paragraph comes in. Philosophy, Theology, Mathematics, or whatever subject you wish to mention here becomes quite irrelevant to the man and woman in the street unless it is seasoned well with the spices of reality.  All subjects have to be applied to the very living of life.  Now I am not decrying or vilifying Pure Philosophy, Pure Theology or Pure Maths or any of the pure sciences, I am merely saying that while they all impact upon their applied variety, for the man and woman in the street they are almost wholly irrelevant. (No wonder, all subjects have their applied branch!)

And yet, dear reader, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship between the pure and the applied in all the sciences, both human and natural/physical.  However, life has a way of keeping us all real, and there are no better ways at its disposal than illness, dying and death.  When any or all of these three events hit us we are taught in no uncertain terms "to keep it real!" Let me indulge in a little poetic allusion here by quoting one of my all time favourite poets, T.S. Eliot:

Unreal City,	60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.	65
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. (See here)

That's one thing you will find in all T.S. Eliot's poems, namely the reality of death.  For the modernists contemporary culture was moribund, lacking in depth and in meaning.  People were almost the "living dead," existing on a superficial level, especially in the cities where it is so hard to put down roots in the unfeeling and lifeless concrete.  Reading such poems always kept life real for me. 

Again reading autobiographies and biographies has always been another passionate hobby of mine, especially those that sought as far as possible to tell the truth in all its naked honesty.  Two recent memoirs come to mind here, that of Nuala O'Faolain and that of Michael Harding, the latter of which I reviewed here.  

In a now famous and moving interview that the writer Nuala O'Faolain did with one of our leading radio presenters Marion Finucane (12 April, 2008) on her then recent diagnosis of cancer in late 2012 she said:

Even if I gained time through the chemotherapy it isn't time I want.  Because as soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out of life.... 

For example, I lived somewhere beautiful, but it means nothing to me anymore -- the beauty. For example, twice in my life I have read the whole of Proust. I know it sounds pretentious, but it's not a bit. It's like a huge soap opera. But I tried again the week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from it.... 

You see, the cancer is a very ingenious enemy and when you ask somebody how will I actually die? How do you actually die of cancer ?... I don't get an answer because it could be anything. It can move from one organ to the other, it can do this, that or the other. It's already in my liver, for example. So I don't know how it's going to be. And that overshadows everything. And I don't want six months or a year. It's not worth it....  

I actually don't know how we all get away with our unthinkingness. Often, last thing at night I walk the dog down the lane and you look up at the sky illuminated by the moon and behind the moon the Milky Way and, you know, you are nothing on the edge of one planet compared to this universe unimaginably vast up there and unimaginably mysterious.  And I have done that for years, looked up at it and given it a wink and thought 'I don't know what's going on' and I still don't know what's going on, but I can't be consoled by mention of God. I can't.... 

I think look how comfortably I am dying, I have friends and family, I am in this wonderful country, I have money, there is nothing much wrong with me except dying... (See here.  In fact, this whole transcript is worth reading, as is listening to the podcast itself which is even more moving, see here. )

Now, if after reading the above, or perhaps having either read or listened to the interview with Nuala O'Faolain either in part or in full, you are not brought into the real world, then you are totally unfeeling and lacking in even a little empathy.  

The Spire, Dublin's O'Connell St., April, 2014

"Keeping it real" means always living with an awareness of our mortality in the background, even if it is only somewhere in the background.  In other words, I am in no way advocating an obsession with death or dying or even that we become somewhat morbid or pessimistic in our outlook on life.  Most religions see death as not the end of life, but rather as a gateway to another more spiritual realm.  Our above quoted author and journalist, Nuala O'Faolain was an unbeliever, and indeed all humans, believers and unbelievers alike, have a spirituality, a system of beliefs that give their lives meaning.  So, I am in no way decrying any one spirituality or any one belief system at the expense of another.  My thoughts here are about "keeping it real," maintaining a perspective on our mortality that sees illness, dying and death as an inextricable part of the very fabric of life and not an end of that life.  After all, we are creatures of nature ourselves and nature proceeds in a cyclical sense, to such an extent that life goes on despite us.  In a sense our individuality is just one little inconseqential and insignificant dot in an ever expanding universe.  Again such considerations lead me to marvel at the very wonder of existence, at its sheer plenitude and beauty, and at the very wonder of my own mind's drive and passion for knowledge and wisdom, that is a veritable infinite desire to know.  This sheer wonder at the mystery of living endows me with a deep spirituality which makes me fall down in humility before the wonders of the universe.  One of my favourite poets and philosophers, more properly I suppose a philosopher poet, one Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the quintessential philosopher of The English Romantic Movement, once paid a wonderful homage to his father by saying that ever since as a young boy his father had brought him walking out in the countryside to view the night sky his mind had "become habituated to the vast." In Coleridge's sense, he had become a believer in God the Creator of such a vast universe.   And yet Nuala O'Faolain could look at the same vista and remain an unbeliever.  It all depends on one's perspective and one's own feelings in a way. I am inclined to belong to the Coleridgean crew myself! One way or another, whether you are a believer or unbeliever, you have a native or innate spirituality which seeks to make meaning and sense of your own lived experience, of making your own life worthwhile.  

Conclusion

These soul outpourings were inspired by the death of the mother of a friend of mine.  I drove up to the funeral home in Drogheda, some 35 km. away, through the hubbub of speeding traffic and weaving motorways, travelling towards the stillness of death.  There is a lovely tradition in Ireland, which I very much like, and that is reflectively touching the joined hands of the departed.  I noticed several people doing it before me.  That sense of touch brought me back to all the other many times that I touched the hands of the dearly departed: my late grandmother Mary Phoebe Brophy (when I was only 10), those of my father (1993), my mother (2013) and some relatives, friends and even departed pupils over the years.  That feeling is like touching the stone or marble on the altars of my youth.

I would like now to conclude with some quotations on death and dying that are hopeful and inspiring rather than morose or dispiriting:

• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~ Mark Twain

• Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. ~ Henry Van Dyke

• While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

• Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.  ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Footnotes:

* The hero or antihero's name is Holden Caulfield and the novel is, of course, written by  J.D. Salinger as long ago as 1951.  However, that book remains all too contemporary in the very universality of its sentiments and indeed in its attempt to make meaning of our little lives.  Here is just one quotation from Holden on the phoniness of life. “I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.” 

Journal of a Soul 53

People and Systems

As I write these few words, The Irish Times reports the following:

Sgt Maurice McCabe, whose allegations about malpractice prompted the establishment of the inquiry by barrister Seán Guerin, welcomed its findings and said it had vindicated him. “It is a good day after six years of fighting the system. Now I hope my family and I can move on,” he said, expressing his thanks to Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin for taking on his case and passing on his concerns to the Taoiseach. (See here )

Thorny branch versus water: Marley Park April, 2014

For non-Irish readers of these posts, the gentleman in question, Sergeant Maurice McCabe is a whistle blower within the police service, namely An Garda Síochána, here in Ireland. He and another former Garda, one John Wilson, have been treated atrociously by "the powers that be" within that police force, being viewed as traitors and as "letting the side down," to such an extent that the latter former officer had a dead rat nailed to his front door.  Wilson had this to say about the revelations of the Guerin Report: “I find the contents of the Guerin report to be disgusting, truly disgusting.” (see here )

What interests this writer here is the blind loyalty to systems that dulls the conscience and moral sensibility of the majority of individual members of those systems.  It would seem that very few of us are courageous enough to stand up and be counted by "blowing the whistle" on policies, practices and actions that are downright immoral. One needs only to recall the banality of the excuses of many of the leaders of Nazi Germany at the time of the Nuremberg Trials, viz., "I was only following orders."  The great philosopher Hannah Arendt would call this very ordinary and utterly childish use of excuses the sheer "banality of evil."  Indeed, all of the top Nazis were such flawed, weak and all-too-ordinary individuals that truly one feels a certain sense of incredulity when one looks at their pictures in defeat that such weak individuals could have unleashed such evil on the world of the twentieth century.

The present writer works in a small school with some 300 pupils only in the inner city area of Dublin, Ireland.  Even within our small system, there is often an unwritten rule of conformity to the system and of "keeping things running smoothly", of "not rocking the boat" and of not "washing one's dirty linen in public."  It would seem to this writer that systems create their own sense of morality or moral behaviour which are essentially self-referential, and that a sense of a greater moral criterion outside the system is simply not recognized or acknowledged.  Further, such systems seem to override individual conscience.  

Now, dear reader, I am a neophyte in social theory and in the theories of systems and how they evolve and organize themselves.  While the French founder of sociology as a science, Émile Durkheim did not live long enough to propound a completely refined sociology of morality, it appears to me that his thoughts on the matter are quite interesting.  In his moral theory, Durkheim rejected theorists who relied on "a priori" moral concepts, that is, concepts that are independent of experience or that can be reasoned out, "without leaving your couch" (as the contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson says) and are apparently immediately and obviously true. On the contrary, Durkheim treated all moral phenomena  as conditioned both socially and historically.  Each society, he argued, creates over time its own set of moral rules, which can vary dramatically from one society to the next.  In other words, Durkheim is here ruling out the existence of any universal moral code. (This intrigues me, as all the prosecutors at Nuremberg, in my humble opinion, had to stretch their moral vocabulary to include such a universal moral code because of the sheer horrific nature of the Nazi crimes.  The criterion is surely somewhere on an horizon beyond the system or the group.  (Of course, Durkheim had died at a mere 59 years of age before the end of World War 1 in 1917 and before the atrocities that WW II would unleash on the human race, and some 30 years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).  Morality, he argued, is a social fact and should be studied as such. Further, he argued, it could be studied just like physics in a system he called a physique des moeurs (physics of morals). 

In summary, then, we can say that according to the father of sociology, morality is a wholly social phenomenon, that is, it cannot exist outside the limits of society. He argued strongly that morality begins only when an individual pertains to a group.  And yet, how does this account for those heroes who stood out against Nazi injustice like the German lawyer Hans Litten who protested against Hitler, even calling him as a witness in a famous court case where he cross-examined him for three hours (1931), a action Hitler never forgot?  In fact, when the latter dictator came to power, he sent Litten to a concentration camp where he was eventually hanged: see here.

Durkheim argued that there is a central moral authority at the heart of morality that commands the enactment of its moral precepts. (One could ask what is the nature of that central moral authority, is it an "it" or an "energy" or a "person" as in a being like a God?). The individual in any specific situation, he argues, feels constrained to act in a moral way by society, and therefore, we may conclude that obligation is a fundamental element of morality.  This higher authority is not so much authoritarian, but rather a desirable authority (Durkheim speaks of the "desirability of morality" in this context) that is worthy of respect and devotion.  In such situations, an individual feels that he or she is working towards some sort of higher goal that Durkheim equates with the good, what he calls "le bien" - a very Platonic concept, indeed.  One could also say that this is a very philosophical/theological concept, too.  

And so, we may infer that this dual obligatory-desirability element of morality interweaves nicely with the influence of religion.  Indeed, this founder of sociology as a science would argue that morality and religion are closely linked as social phenomena: indeed, the moral life of a society, he says, is intimately intertwined with religion.  Moral authority, then, is born out of religious life and draws its authority from the power of religion.  However, to my neophyte mind in this area, Durkheim does not see morality as a one way street where an edict is issued from "on high" by a central power or an image of that central power (i.e., God or a god.  Remember that morality and religion are two sociological phenomena in our argumentation here).  For Durkheim there are two poles at play here: on the one hand, there is the morality of the group, which exists objectively outside the individual. However, on the other hand, there is the individual's way of representing that morality. While society creates many of the moral rules, the individual can add some little personal interpretation and nuances in understanding to them.  Each individual expresses that morality in his/her own way.  Indeed, while conformity to society and to collective rules and mores is often the greater reality for all of us in practice, there is still room for our individual conscience. Durkheim suggests that we all can add elements of our own personality and moral beliefs to society's moral codes and thereby build it up and refine it.  In other words, he leaves room for the individual to create, albeit in such a small way, their own morality. 

There is an old English saying that runs "there's nowt so queer as folk," meaning that there is nothing to account for the strangeness in people's behaviour.  There is a lot of truth in that old colloquialism, and yet if we are to live together in civilized societies we have to have codified behaviours.  There have to be rules and regulations and laws to ensure the doing of justice and the maintenance of peace.  However, as we have seen from my opening paragraph, it is so very difficult to stand up and be counted, especially to stand out from the crowd in any organization and openly reveal its errors, indeed its sheer corrupt practices, to the public.  All such people of such great courage, who have done so, have experienced the contumely, derision, opprobrium if not vilification, defamation and character-assassination of many individuals within that organization or society.  Some, as we have recounted above, have even paid with their lives for their courage in speaking out.

And so I will ask some questions, addressed to myself primarily:

• Do I speak out against corrupt practices within my organization or work place?
• Do I ask the hard questions of my own practices and those of my colleagues?
• Do I sleep easily at night? Why? Why not?
• Do I have the courage to speak my truth openly in my work place?
• What is my truth? Who am I? Am I an authentic human being?
• If I don't speak out for justice and right practices, why is that?  Is that due to my laziness, my cowardice, my lack of interest or my lack of commitment?
• Do I have causes I care about?  Why?  Why not?
• Do I read about whistle blowers and heroes?  Do I admire then?  Why? Why not?

Martin Niemoller

I will conclude this post with one of my favourite short poems about people who failed to speak out. It was written by pastor Martin Niemoller (1892-1984): It basically is a severe criticism of the failure of German intellectuals to speak out against the rise of Nazism:

First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist.  

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.  

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.