"You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."
~ Joseph Campbell
This quote came this morning from an email from Friends of Silence. There are indeed times when unknowing is more powerful, more healing than knowing. Allowing ourselves time to find the balance between the two states is essential now. For the past few days I have been pondering the Greek word, metanoia. It is often translated as change. Yet, I recently heard a short presentation by Kathleen Flanagan, Director of Franciscan Ministries, and her talk expanded my understanding of what metanoia means. Her premise was that when both Jesus and St. Francis experienced metanoia, they were led deeper into their ministries of serving the poor, sick, and dying. Our metanoias can lead us to more fully understand our own calls to serve.
Too often, we try to harden ourselves against change. However, after reading Rupert Sheldrake's book The Physics of Angels, co-authored with Matthew Fox, I now envision our souls as fields of energy, and I do not believe these fields can be hardened, although our thinking and attitudes certainly can be. In her lovely book, The Yogi's Way, Reema Datta writes, "The Upanishads [ancient Sanskrit texts] describe our true Self as devoid of any fixed quality or characteristic." She goes on to explain that quantum physics has revealed that we are made up of cells that are made up of molecules that are in turn made up of atoms that are 99.9 percent empty space. Datta writes that again, according to her understanding of quantum physics, every object and person is a "field of pure potentiality" rather than fixed beings ( p. 106)."
It is, of course, perilous to quote someone about quantum physics, or really, any subject, when you yourself know absolutely nothing about it. However, I love the phrase "pure potentiality". I once read that Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) contended that a better human was possible, and I have always believed, and will continue to do so, that humanity is headed in that direction. In a period that could truly be an exciting time of exploration and learning, I am sorry that the US voted to cling to a backward and solidified notion of who we are as a people. That decision, while by no means unilateral, is costly and disappointing, and is impacting not only us but the world. Hardened hearts and minds are seldom catalysts for growth and new understanding, but I will continue to hold the idea that at least some of our potential for good can be explored in this time.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.
Rumi, translated from Persian by Coleman Barks and John Moyne
image: Half Moon Bay, a few years ago
