St. Francis of Assisi Embraces A Leper
Dear Larry,
My reply to your last email "got stuck in the pipeline."
Concerning your question about "confusion"...
Although my answer will become intelligible after you read my text below, I will say this now: "When theory is simple, it tends to be platitudinous. And when theory is complex, it tends to lack enough real-world substance to restrain convuluted verbosity.
As I write, Melissa McCarthy is being interviewed on NPR. What she says at the end about "human connection" is to the point: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/18/658376570/melissa-mccarthy-plays-a-literary-forger-in-can-you-ever-forgive-me
I believe “mystical realization” and “peak moments” are real.
But they are also seductive.
Clearly, everyone wants to stop their pain and lots of snake oil salesmen - consciously or unconsciously - are eager to sell their cure-alls.
But grasping after anything, including peak moments and mystical realization, is, I think, an essential component of “the problem,” not “the way out.”
I think the Buddha's First Noble Truth that “life is suffering” -- and the “Bodhisattva Vow” which promises to embrace the pain of “samsara” while forswearing ultimate enlightenment until ALL sentient beings are prepared to enter Nirvana together -- are keys to our conundrum.
It is commonplace for humans to want neat solutions that are “theoretically satisfactory.”
Consequently, our “perception of solutions” tends to be abstract.
In light of Christian theology — which is based on The Incarnation (or “enfleshment”) of divine Reality "within" (or "as") material reality — it seems to me that the real starting point is not theory but practice.
Nitty-gritty practice.
Down-to-earth practice.
Removing the maggots from the stumblebum’s rotting wounds practice.
Of course no one’s service needs to rely on extreme behavior, although Saint Francis of Assisi’s turnaround moment “from warrior to lover” began when he chose to embrace a leper - at a time when leprosy was considered highly-contagious, dread disease.
Each of us in our own way is, I think, "called" to “get down and dirty” — the opposite of “bubbling up” into the pure theoretical ether.
Someone once said that “love is availability,” a definition I have always liked.
C.S. Lewis (some of whose traditionalism I dislike) is nevertheless a learned and insightful man. Somewhere Lewis says (and I paraphrase): ‘We need to stop treating interruptions as bothersome nuisances (to be held in contempt), but instead value them as the reality-raw-material that God “sends us” moment-by-moment."
I also have serious misgivings about Meher Baba.
Even so, his motto — still emblazoned on many of his followers publications and works — is “Mastery in Service.”
The Epistle of James says: “Without works, faith is dead.”
Interestingly, apocryphal tradition holds that Luther —who believed in the centrality of “salvation through faith alone” (so-called “sola fide”) -- ripped the Epistle of James from his Bible because it so clearly contradicted his linchpin belief in “the sufficiency of faith for salvation.”
Finally, I will paraphrase Saint Paul (who was, in my estimation, an unusually “cracked” genius): “ What remains are faith, hope, and charity. But the greatest of these is charity.” (“Caritas” is alternately translated as “charity” and “love.”)
A fin de cuentas, I put my money on the proposition that deep engagement of “the incarnation” through loving service is the most dependable form of “salvation.” (Salvation ultimately derives from the word “salus” meaning “health.”)
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