Journal of a Soul 67

The Passage of Time

Interesting evergreen tree at Newbridge House, Donabate, Co. Dublin

The passage of time seems to be quicker the more one ages.  Indeed, as a friend of mine who is a mathematician stated: "This is quite logical because  to a 56 year old person like myself on the cusp of his 57th birthday another year is in comparative terms a mere one 56th or a one 57th of your life depending on how you calculate it.  One way or another ageing is inevitable.  Recently, I was quite intrigued when a past pupil who was about 19 declared that he would like to live forever.  Another young man in our company replied that such "would never happen and that his wishful thinking was in every sense delusional." St Augustine once defined time as "the measure of change." The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus averred that "one can never step into the same river twice," and further that everything was in "a state of flux." I was amused, as I say, by the wishful, if delusional, thinking of my young friend.  I thought to myself how great it was to be so innocent and full of enthusiasm for life. This was also quite ironic as we were in a local hostelry imbibing some alcoholic beverages in the wake of a commemorative service for one of his friends who had ended his life by suicide. Obviously this latter person had found living life totally unbearable.

The Importance of Philosophy

Philosophy is more an activity and a process than a learned body of reflections on life. While it may be the latter as is witnessed by all the countless books written on the subject, it is so much more.  It is the activity of questioning to the nth degree everything around us, the nature of the universe; what knowledge may be, if there is any such thing as Truth in an objective sense or is it always relative; what love, faith, hope and charity may be, indeed what emotions may mean; what the purpose and meaning of the life we humans experience is and so on and so forth.  There is also a philosophy of every subject under the sun.  We can surely ask what the nature of numbers is and what we are at when we do mathematics.  Are the tenets of mathematics universal and true everywhere in the universe.  We believe so and can adduce reasons to substantiate our contentions.  We can study the history of science and also its philosophy. What is the difference between practical knowledge and scientific knowledge? Is all scientific knowledge empirical?  In many cases, yes, but both at the subatomic and astronomical level, no - we need to use very abstract and much speculative thought there, but such thought is no less rigorous than the process of arriving at conclusions from empirical evidence. There are so many questions we humans can ask and none may be as important as the moral one as to what are right and wrong actions.  What is morality and why need we act in such and such way and so on. My young friend obviously had never encountered philosophy, that is, the radical questioning of one's own thoughts and opinions.  What would it mean to live forever?  Follow the thought experiment through, young man. Would you keep ageing and ageing and yet never die? Even simple tools eventually wear out? Humans are made of material stuff which breaks down.  Does not the simple physical law of entropy imply that everything eventually burns itself out? If we never died what would birth mean at all? There obviously would be no point in birth if there were no death! How would we deal with the population explosion? These are all philosophical questions, which at first glance may seem somewhat silly, but on reflection clarify superficial thought and silly shoddy thinking.  Essentially to live implies within its ambit the process of dying itself.  In fact, to live is to die.  Think of any simple plant or flower you might have at home or in the garden.  It grows, blooms and eventually dies.  I remember meeting a most interesting man who owned a pet shop.  One could see his total commitment to and love of animals of all varieties.  He opined that it was important for youngsters to keep pets, to nourish and see them grow and eventually die.  Keeping pets, he felt, taught children to accept that death and dying are parts of life.  As an animal, albeit human, I consume food, burn it and transform it into energy to keep my body going.  It is obvious that my body will wear out, break down and die - such is only natural.

Reflections on Death and Dying 

Having been brought up in a rural setting one could say that I am somewhat at home with the cycle of the seasons, with the sowing of seeds, the growth of plants, their cultivation and harvesting and so on in a never-ending cycle.  Within that scenario, death and dying are seen as a natural process. The peasant folk had and obviously still have their traditions like the waking of the dead - the celebration of the life of the departed one about the open coffin that is positioned centrally in the house of the departed.  Within this context not alone is grief made bearable but the sting is taken out of death at least for a short while.  These ancient rituals grew up within various communities as they attempted to help the grieving party cope with their sorrow and to make some social or communal sense of the experience of death.

And yet, existentially we all face our own extinction in a very private way - we each of us have to make some personal sense of our mortality, that is, if we are at least half thinking or even semi-reflective persons, as quite simply, no matter how many or how few are our family or friends, we die alone.  It is, alas, a journey only we ourselves can embark upon as we pass through the portals of death alone. Perhaps the greatest myth in our modern culture is the growth of sheer individualism with all that it entails. Modern individuals have built up around themselves their own private worlds of prestige, social achievement and material possessions - private worlds that give them a sense of identity - and all of that far too superficial or lacking in any depth.  Very soon we tire of superficiality, of building up  these rather tawdry worlds of vast egotistical proportions - rather like that portrayed in the novel, The Great Gatsby and most effectively indeed in the film of the same name.  All of these fantasies of individual power and prestige cannot keep the gnawing tooth of mortality at bay. Nor can any of these superficial attempts to build identity on the shifting sands of materialism keep the lonely soul protected from anxiety, angst and a host of concomitant emotional and psychosomatic complaints.

Some Personal Memories

The first death I can remember was that of my Grandmother Mary Phoebe Brophy in 1968 when I was ten years of age.  My young mind soaked in the experience as my mam and dad, as well all my uncles and aunts (all 11 of them) were very upset.  Perhaps the most consoling moment of the whole experience was being requested to kneel down and say a prayer at my grandmother's bedside and to touch her beaded hands.  I can still conjure up the vision of my grandmother's body in that bed all those years ago.  However, all in all, it was a positive experience, one that we were unconsciously taught to accept as a part of life, the final  mile stone along the journey of life if you like.  Then the second death I remember was that of my Uncle Paddy Quinlan at 58 of a rare cancer in 1970 - I remember so well the packed church and all the people who came to say goodbye on the day of his funeral.  I can still hear and feel the crunch of gravel under my shoes as I walked up to the graveside.  As I stood beside my father as they lowered the coffin, I saw a little white one and my father said gently, "that's your little angel brother Thomas who died many years ago." Since then, of course, there have been many other deaths, not the least of which were the deaths of my father and mother - experiences which I have recounted here and elsewhere in the blogosphere. Those particular deaths were wrenches to my being that I find quite difficult to describe.  One knows that when one has experienced their leaving of this world that your generation is next.

Existentialism

Sundown, Phoenix Park, October 2014

The theme of anxiety was at the very heart of existentialism from its very origins. This is a sense of anguish which can be defined as a sense of dread at the nothingness of human existence. This theme goes back as far as Kierkegaard in modern existentialism though it stretched way back further into ancient philosophy, too. In fact, anxiety as a theme pervades this philosopher’s work. Kierkegaard lived his relatively short life (1813-1855) in Denmark. The meaninglessness of his existence filled him with anxiety and despair and a sense of hopelessness and deep depression. At base his anxiety was a deep despair at the very nothingness of human existence. In the great universal scheme of things we are mere minuscule ants on a minuscule anthill called earth, lost in the infinity of space. How do we cope with the fact that we as thinking and feeling subjects will come to nothing in the end? Let’s hear Kierkegaard’s words: “I stick my finger into existence – it smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it that has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?”(Lavine, T.Z. (1984) From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest New York: Bantam Books)

Making Meaning

We are meaning-making creatures.  We are forever forming and moulding meaning from the very stuff of life.  If we do not do so we are an empty, hollow people whom T.S. Eliot describes so vividly in his poem The Hollow Men:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken grass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion ...

These people who are hollow are the superficial people we described in one of our opening paragraphs.  They are the ones who have built their identities on the shifting sands of their own private worlds of prestige, social achievement and material possessions - private worlds that give them a false sense of identity - and all of that, as I have said, far too superficial or lacking in any depth. Something in us is repulsed by lack of meaning and superficiality.  It's almost as if there is something in us - some divine spark - that wishes to ignite and set the fire of enthusiasm and joy alive in our our hearts.  We feel, indeed intuit or know at a deep level, that there is something somewhere drawing us on towards meaning, some amazing, if imaginary lodestone, drawing us ever onwards.  This spiritual spark in me demands that I call it God.  Perhaps, that is overstating my case.  And yet, those are the words that came out as I wrote these lines.  There is a fullness of life to be experienced if only we have the courage to reach out and embrace it.

And as a meaning-making species we have conjured religions up from our collective unconscious to guide us and lead us ever onward on our human journey to meaning and personal truth.  We have embraced spiritualities of various types to give us the courage and the sustenance to support us on our journey.  Whether such religions and spiritualities are actually the result of our own imagination matters not a whit.  Perhaps it comes from an outside power, namely God, and of this I am quite convinced some of the time, especially at moments when I experience all too transiently beauty, truth, love, wonder and mystery.  But yet, in another sense that matters not a whit either.  What matters is that we have a meaning, a reason to live and a reason to die.  In our faith, in our imagination or in our soul, our very meaning lives on, and that is what makes all the difference, a difference that no proselytizing atheist can ever take from us.  And death and dying in this scenario are surely as natural as birth and growth.  Yes, indeed. Amen to that!!

Journal of a Soul 30

Beyond Debate II

Religion as a Psychological Phenomenon

Daffodils, Ardgillen Park

Once again, the psychology of religion, like the sociological dimension, is a factor often totally ignored by the learned debaters whom I alluded to in my last post.  That these debaters are in any way wrong is not the point at all.  In fact, within the parameters of their debates they are justifiably right.  My argument here is that the parameters of their debate are just so narrow.  They seem to forget that religions with their ceremonies and rituals often provide psychological support for their followers.  Adherents gain sustenance from the scriptures read and pondered, from the words of inspiration and healing proclaimed by their ministers and from the meal shared if the Eucharist forms some part of their worship.  They feel closer to their God or Maker whom they believe supports them all the day long and they also believe they can have a personal relationship with their God.  Without a shadow of a doubt such believers gain much support and no little direction for their lives from their religious beliefs.  So, on a purely personal and psychological level they feel more "at home" and more at peace with themselves and others.  Religion gives a pattern and structure not alone to their lives  but also a deep psychological support.

Once again, whether God exists or not, or indeed whether one can advance reasons for or against His or even Her or further even Its existence is in many ways quite beside the point. What I am arguing for here is that we just look on life objectively with no presuppositions and watch how religions of all hues offer both sociological and psychological support to their followers.  My own mother was a woman of deep religious faith who was a daily Mass goer and Rosary sayer for most of her long life.  That the Catholic Church provided her with something to do, somewhere to go, many friends, emotional and personal support and indeed gave meaning to her life is beyond question.  That she was of a more traditional era is perhaps worth noting as also is the fact that she died in her 97th year.  That other clubs could provide such sustaining roles I will, of course, allow.  It stands to reason and indeed to critical and objective observation that other organisations could possibly offer such support. Church attendance here in Ireland has now plummeted to practically meet the figures observable on the Continent of Europe.  Indeed, I readily agree that this is a very good thing as those who now attend are doing so because they want to and not from social pressure. That such clubs could offer the depth of meaning that religions might offer is, of course, debatable, but this argument is not ad rem here. 

Ancient tree, Trinity College, famous seat of learning, Dublin

In this regard, I recall the remarks of an outstanding academic, Sir Kenneth Dover, one time Professor of classics at Oxford, later President of Corpus Christi College and finally Chancellor of St Andrew's University, Scotland who succinctly told his interviewer, the late great Irish Psychiatrist, Professor Anthony Clare, that at a certain stage in his life he had "quite outgrown religion." For more information on my review of Clare's discussion with Sir Anthony see the following posts in one of my old blogs HERE  The point I wish to make here is that while Religion can and does offer psychological support, people can actually grow through and beyond that support when they feel they simply no longer need it.  And again here, I wish to underscore the point, needing or not needing religion are both fundamentally acceptable ways of being in the world.  As we grow we have various needs at various stages of our lives and to say one stage is better than another is quite ridiculous unless one is suffering or something during one or other period.  In other words, what really sane person would condemn a three year old for needing the support of a toy, a toddler finding it hard to separate from his parents on the first day of school, an eight year old for sulking, a ten year old for not being able to be independent and so on.  One is not necessarily stronger for not needing religion.  That's where I feel our debaters alluded to at some length in my last post have gone wrong.  Because the parameters of their debate are so narrow they do not leave room for the complexity of the human phenomenon.  Dawkins is a member of The Brights Movement who literally believe they have transcended as it were the childishness of religion and have embraced the clarity of the well-founded, the logically proved and scientifically justified conclusions that there is no God and that religion is just a load of poppy cock anyway.  See the following link for information on this movement of intellectual clarity: The Brights Movement.  Without a doubt they are somewhat condescending in their attitudes to believers.

Complexity

In summary, then, my argument here in this journal of a soul is one which stresses that the human phenomenon is a very complex one which should never be reduced to any one dimension of its complexity.  In that regard it is quite like a diamond with hundreds of faces and each face, as it were, allowing a different avenue of exploration into the mystery of what the human phenomenon is.  This diary or journal, like my previous blog, Still Point, is essentially my way of exploring the mystery of who I am.  In that journey I have learnt to be suspicious of all who seek to offer simple answers to life's complex questions, no matter whether they are scholars of standing or not.  An old acquaintance of mine, long since dead, used quote an old Catholic saying attributed to St Thomas Aquinas: "Homo unius libri timeo" or "I fear the man of a single book." In other words, let us read widely, ponder deeply and consequently be enabled to argue well.  Another slant on what the Angelic Doctor (i.e., Aquinas) was getting at would be to avoid what we call "reductionism" today.  In other words, we reduce the mystery that the human being presents us with when we examine that reality from the narrow perspective of one viewpoint only.  There are many optics by which to view the human condition; there are many sciences to examine the reality of humanity; there are many voices of experience worth listening to; there are many insights we might dismiss to our detriment.  These pages, then; these considered thoughts and reflections; these insights of a one lonely soul offer a plea for expanding our vision of what the human being is and can be.  In that respect, religion and the spirituality it introduced this writer to, can never be summarily dismissed.

Journal of a Soul 29

Beyond Debate

Self writing in a notebook , Pisa Summer 2007

Debating is a skilled activity that allows the intellect to show its cutting edge, as it were.  It is, moreover, wonderful to witness when practised by those who know their subjects well.  It is even more thrilling, still, to behold one debater either totally demolishing the argument of another or, at least, painstakingly taking it apart and showing its inherent flaws.  As this is a blog with a spiritual/psychodynamic/psychotherapeutic thrust, I shall here confine my comments to matters of faith and reason with respect to the methodology of debate. Examples of debates that come to mind here are: (i) the famous debate on evolution at Oxford in 1860 between the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895; biologist and coiner of the term "agnosticism," his favored religious stance) and the great orator, Samuel Wilberforce (1805 - 1873), Bishop of Oxford and later of Winchester, and (ii) the wonderful debate between the late wonderful journalist, writer, atheist and polemicist, Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011) and the former British P.M. Tony Blair, Catholic and wonderful orator and politician. This latter debate may be accessed : HERE

However, debating is cerebral and cognitive and is mainly confined to linear argumentation, though debaters may, of course, present in a logical way the findings of their reflections on experiences - religious and spiritual - and on emotions in general.  They may even, and very often do, employ humour and respect for their opponents.  But, my argument here is that debate is a limited, albeit, at times, very sharp and precise, methodology of approaching knowledge and truth.  There is, so much more to what makes us human than arguing about our beliefs and stances in life.  Our beliefs, contrary to what Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett think, cannot be confined within the parameters of logical, cerebral or inferential debating.  In other words, I am here adumbrating what in fact the great nineteenth century theologian, John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) expressed succinctly in the following words: "Faith is not a deduction from premises" or as he also expressed it "faith is never inferential."  It is as much a matter of the heart as well as the head.  He was, in these remarks, of course, echoing the comments of the great French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623 -1662) who emphasised the following: "le coeur as ses raisons que la raison ne connait point." ("The heart has its reasons which reason can never know.")

More to Life than Logic  

St Peter's Square from the Cupola

As I write these lines here, I am listening to the wonderful debate and ensuing discussion to which I alluded above and to which I have given the link.  Yet I am still convinced that more is needed, and that the methodological structures of debate, argument and discussion, while effective, are nonetheless lacking is something.  It is to that lack that I wish to confine my musings here. These are my thoughts after some 55 years as a wee ant on this little minuscule anthill we call "earth"which is hurtling through infinite space.  So what I say is said in as humble a way as I possibly can.  I have no great reasons to give on either side of the debate like either Wilberforce or Huxley or Blair or Hitchens, though it is wonderful to listen to, to read and/or ponder the learned musings of these great erudite debaters.  No, rather, I wish to widen the debate in the following points.

(i) Debaters seem to forget that Religion is both a sociological and psychological phenomenon, not to mention an anthropological one, not essentially amenable to logical debate, though nonetheless may be expressed and eruditely explicated in reasonable terms.  Peoples have always been religious because it is a way, be it primitive or primal, but no less true or authentic for all that, of making sense of their lives as a community as they encounter the world in its entirety.  In coming up with how they make sense of the mystery they encounter in the world as a complete entity these peoples collectively came up in a natural manner over time with firstly the various primitive religions, animist and polytheistic, and then the major great monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic Faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and the more holistic, and perhaps more psychologically friendly religions of the East namely Hinduism and Buddhism.  

Religion as a sociological Phenomenon

(a) The contemporary Irish journalist John Waters, speaking of the few positive things one can attribute to the Roman Catholic Church, averred that it was exceptionally good at those ceremonial things associated with "hatching, matching and dispatching."  When I first read his words, I delighted not alone in his light rhyming humour but also in his sound appreciation for ritual.  The religious rituals he had in mind here, without doubt, are baptisms and christenings, marriage and funeral ceremonies respectively. Sociologically speaking, it is not a question of whether another life exists or not, or even whether it can be proved one way or another; it is rather a question of dealing with death as a human reality within a community context in as meaningful a way as possible.  Such ceremonies are ways of dealing with the phenomenon of death and they have naturally evolved over the years to help the bereaved family, friends and acquaintances deal with their emotions at a community and by implication at a personal level.  Rituals, no matter what religious faith they occur in offer a collectively and individually healing avenue to express and contain grief. Sociologically rituals have evolved to help us in that containment.  Even a humanist or atheist funeral service offers a similar emotional expression or containment.  Indeed, I have attended one humanist funeral recently and the ceremony, which studiously and purposely avoids any mention of God needless to say, was akin to a religious ceremony replete with readings and "minister."  It obviously had no overtly religious element like a mass or scripture readings, but it emphasised instead secular readings from books which the departed person loved and encouraged the bereaved by playing the dead man's favourite music.  There were also three tributes to the departed by his family and friends.  There was interestingly a period of quiet where people of all faiths, beliefs and no beliefs were asked to think of the departed man in silence.  Obviously, any believer could choose to pray to his God if he so wished at that time.

To Be Continued

Journal of a Soul 27

Facing Death

Ireland's Eye from Baldoyle

Those who live close to nature learn its mysteries with a certain ease that is always foreign to us city dwellers.  That is why I love travelling back to the county where my father was born and lived for more than half his life.  He truly shared in that country wisdom.   Likewise, do the simple country people of Calabria where I have been holidaying for some recent summers.  Tribes and more primitive peoples also share in such simple wisdom.  Modern sophisticated humankind, which works so much from the neo-cortex, has almost forgotten what it is like to live close to nature and its cycles. Often, alas, we moderns only meet nature when it interrupts our plans through the natural evils of tornadoes, snow blizzards, floods and so on.  Indeed, we have learned of late that much of the natural disasters are caused by man-made pollution to our atmosphere.  Alas, we moderns have done so much learned thinking about the world that we have quite forgotten that we are part of it, too.  We are creatures, albeit self-conscious, but creatures nonetheless of the world, in which we live, move and have our being.

Be that as it may, what I want to write about here is the last few hours of my mother’s life.  That frail life is slowly but surely leaking away now at the grand old age of 96. My brother Pat and I have been called home from holiday to await her passing from this world.  And yet, with all the knowledge we have gained about what it means to be human, we have never really bettered the ways of coping and dealing with dying and death than the many religious traditions of the world have put at our disposal.  The community comes around and ritualises the passing of this person from our presence.  As a philosopher, I would like to believe that I am open enough to allow all creeds the dignity of their individual beliefs.  Dying and death, and indeed how we deal with them, are not matters of pure science that can rule as to what is the true and right way to celebrate the meaning of a life that has passed or indeed rule upon the belief of a life to come.  Comforting ourselves in our lonely grief is quite fittingly the province of faith, religion and indeed of the imagination, and it is my considered conviction that both faith and religion belong firmly within the ambit of the intricate mystery of the imagination.  It is not, therefore, a question of whether the next life exists or not or of whether it can be proved one way or another. It is simply not a question that falls within the province of science at all.  It is one that falls within the ambit of the psychology and sociology of religion and within humanity’s many learnt ways of coping with its crises.  These are the factors that such trenchant atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins and Denneth leave out of the picture.  Their arguments are good and valid, but only good and valid within the narrow parameters of a delimiting and dehumanising science, in effect within the confines of a sheer scientism.

My mother and I about five years ago

The imagination is a wonderful faculty which leads us individually and collectively into mysteries which the rational or cognitive faculties of the mind cannot fathom – great works of music, wonderful pieces of art, marvellous buildings and bridges and so on.  Over 100 years ago the great John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out that even scientists had to use their imagination as well as their cognitive or rational faculties in bringing their discoveries and inventions into the world. The imagination of a culture is a rich world that cannot be reduced to the parameters of any science.  We meaning-making creatures need our beliefs, no matter what their standing in a purely cognitive or logical sense. The brain, and the mind which resides principally though perhaps not entirely there, and even the soul which some believe lives mysteriously there, too, are all more than just firings on and off of various neurons.  Yes, they may be that, but not just that.  We humans are more.  And it is in the quest to find out what the “more” in us is that all true inquiry lies.

And so, as my mother’s life leaks out, I am in many ways diminished.  The womb that begot me is no more.  That was the human animal womb.  Was there or is there, as the great psalmist David put it, a womb before the dawn that begot us all?  Our questions are legion, our feelings confused, perhaps numbed.  The existentialists are right.  Death makes dust of both our individual achievements and dreams.  However, it cannot reduce to ashes the memory of the collectivity, the shared emotions and feelings of the race, the drive to meaning within any culture. In times like this, all I can do is take refuge in the wisdom of the culture which begot me.  Rest in peace, Mary Quinlan.  I hope I will live the remainder of my life with the courage and determination to see no task left undone as you did! Your task is finished – a job well done!    Consummatus est! I will miss you sorely!