AS 2023 LEAVES US...

...we look for a path.

Le Penseur, Musée Rodin, Paris, image by innoxiuss, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

As a year comes to an end, many people have developed a useful habit of reviewing what has been accomplished or not; gained or lost; built or destroyed; attempted or avoided. A few days ago I received a Daily Meditation  from Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation. I found this Daily Meditation to be impactful and share here the reflections that it provoked in me. The following content is not an attempt to reproduce the thoughts so ably presented by Richard Rohr, but to share my reaction to the Daily Meditation.

Richard Rohr presents four basic worldviews: the material, the spiritual, the priestly and the incarnational.

The first worldview is the material worldview.  We largely conduct our existence within that view, which holds that the real world is the world that we perceive. My observation is that as an organism on this planet we navigate life dealing with environmental cues and inputs and react accordingly to prolong our existence by taking advantage of opportunities and avoiding dangers. The question that arises in my mind concerns the extent to which our 6 senses are sufficient to describe whatever can ultimately be called reality. Our senses have developed following the economics of Mother Nature: we see through the Visual System; hear through the Auditory System; feel through the Somatosensory System; taste through the Gustatory System; smell through the Olfactory System. And then we have the Vestibular System that allows us to determine our location and orientation. Yet, in each of those senses there are far more ranges within other species. The eagle sees farther than us; the deer is keen to hear the approach of a predator; the shark can smell blood in the water; our pets pick up things with their mouths and promptly eject them when noxious; beings that are blind, such as moles and earthworms, feel their way through their environment. All beings use the Vestibular System to either obtain prey or avoid becoming one, as we can witness in a cheetah chasing a gazelle. All these beings have developed these senses to much higher degrees than humans. When I think about bats and whales, for example, their ability to use echolocation is outstanding— traits that humans do not enjoy. And I am only talking about the Animal Kingdom— plants, fungi, bacteria and so on, have their own way of perceiving and interacting with the physical world. So, while the physical world, as we know it, has been revealed through our senses, what else is there that we are missing by perceiving through only 6 senses?

According to Richard Rohr, there are other people with a spiritual worldview and an inclination towards religion and some philosophies that seek to discover “true reality”. My question is how to navigate that worldview? What are the signposts, the hazards, the rewards? How do we explain our intuitions? As I have learned, a given religion, in the institutional sense, has sometimes turned dogmatic and intolerant of other religions, and world history sadly documents the pain and suffering inflicted. If all religions are equally righteous in their view of the world, how do we choose a path to navigate that worldview? Do we need a path or is the path revealed as we walk it, and discernible only upon looking back, as Spanish poet Antonio Machado proposes?

Richard offers that a third group of people could be referred to as holding a priestly worldview, that tries to unite the spiritual and the material worldviews. Yet I have found that science is discovering that there is no such thing as empty space, that all objects and beings in their essence, are part of a continuum. Where there is no “matter” we are discovering that energy exists. The conversion of energy to matter, and vice versa, has now been accepted for decades. So, when holders of the priestly worldview observe the death of a being, does that event not reveal a contradictory schism between the spiritual and the material?

The meditation from Richard Rohr also brings up the incarnational worldview. As I understand it, this worldview holds the unity of all that exists, whether perceivable in a material worldview or deigned to exist in a spiritual worldview. This incarnational worldview seems to be bringing the dichotomies and divisions in the world together. I am inclined to adopt that worldview, and that realization led me to set down these thoughts.

As we part from 2023, pondering these perspectives on existence may be useful as we attempt to craft a vision for our role in this world and a more inclusive 2024.

Happy New Year!

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