In this Prayer beyond Prayer - I know not - Beloved, mind restless but in Quiet Love is becoming Love we could say Love is awakening to Love this is the Wine tasting Itself how could we say God is becoming God? we can say, in some way, Only such Lovers know This
*Arem Nahariim-Samadhi
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As I read and listen to persons criticizing all religion as a childish, ignorant escapism, I see them actually much like those they would most refuse to see themselves like - religious fundamentalists. They interpret religion as most fundamentalists would and, so, judge religion as persons who show they know little about religion more broadly speaking. Religion really, at its best - and I do not deny there is an at its worst - is a suggestive system, that is, nothing is as it seems, and those practicing it know this. The songs, the worshipers, the creeds and confessions, the scriptures, the rituals, the rites, the houses of worship, ... nothing, and I mean nothing, is as it seems. This does not mean hypocrisy, this means nothing is meant to be as it seems, and so this not being as it seems is essential to the nature and integrity of religiousness. That many religious persons do not see this essential trait does not alter the fact that religion must encompass that which is not and never is what it appears. And this ignorance among religious persons weakens the power and witness of religion for postmodern persons needing a living faith, not a dead tradition.
In this sense, healthy religion is poetic. If we approach faith like this, such a posture allows us to keep faith fresh. We are practicing what some Buddhists call "beginners mind," and we, then, see no need to exclude any knowledge from our faith, including that of the sciences and faiths other than the one we adhere to. Even science, as many seem unaware of, is a suggestive system. Scientists are always talking about things they cannot really tell you directly of, only by metaphor tell you about. Science uses language and numbers, for example, to represent what they theorize or come to know after thorough testing.
We live the questions, then, in recognizing the suggestive of faith, not to get answers, but to get responses, or resonations, of Truth. This Truth being the fount of truths, is not a truth. Healthy religion is not substantial, but imagistic, fluid, and suggestive. Healthy religion is like this for life is the same.
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*Lotus of the Heart is a Work of Arem Nahariim-Samadhi ~ a Hospice Chaplain, interspiritual author, writer, poet, and bicyclist. He is someone in love with Life and inviting others to that same ecstasy of Love ~ and, by the way, herein is nothing he claims as his own.
