People With Strong Faith Doubt Everything
Well, maybe not everything. (Although I remember a period when I questioned my own existence and wondered if all of “reality” was in fact some giant’s dream that would go “poof” when he awakened.) Let’s not go down that trail.
People of great faith almost always have deep doubts. St. Theresa of Calcutta and St. John of the Cross are good examples. Does God exist? Is God good? Who am I? Does my life have meaning? How do I know if all that stuff I was taught is true?
Doubt is not the opposite of faith.
You can’t really have faith if you have no doubts.
When we doubt, we do not doubt what is essential, fundamental, eternally true. We doubt our perceptions, our ideas, and our opinions of what is essential, fundamental and true. You do not really doubt God. You doubt your view of God.
A client told me she did not believe in God. I asked her to describe the god she did not believe in. I don’t believe in that god either. She described a mean, demanding, oppressive super-being.
Deconstruction is the process of doubting, questioning our perceptions, the ideas and opinions handed down to us by our parents, faith communities, and cultures. It’s healthy to ask why we believe what we believe. What are our essential values? Why?
But if all we do is deconstruct, we wind up sitting in a heap of rubble.
We also need to build and construct a fresh worldview, a fresh set of internalized values. We need a worldview that is more closely connected with Ultimate Reality.
Spheres
Spheres in an Ocean of Love
Like all of us, they live in a
Bubble called “Me,” which is
One of a handful of bubbles inside a larger bubble
We call “Family,” which is one of many bubbles
Inside the still larger bubble of “Our Tribe,” nested
In “Nation,” which is nested in “World,” inside
“Galaxies,” inside “Universe,” which could be one
Of many inside “Ultimate Reality.”
The narcissist lives only in “Me,”
As if that contained all.
The parochial live in “Family;”
The fundamentalist in “Tribe;”
And the Christian Nationalist in “Nation.”
It is all idolatry.
The Spiritual Person lives in “Ultimate Reality.”
The Spiritual Person lives in the
Heart of Source,
The Secret Place of the Most High,
Under the shadow of the Divine Wings,
Without the loss of any lesser bubble.
The Spiritual Person lives in Freedom.
The bubbles, in defiance of all efforts to
Fortify them and incarcerate their captives,
Are all permeable cell-pods.
Pods within pods like nesting dolls
Self, me, myself, I, within
Clan, tribe, nation, within
Worlds unknown where
Fluorescent notes harmonize
Into as yet unimagined
Orchestration, all revolving around
Love.
It is, after all, a strange planet called
Sphaera, a vast and beautiful
Landscape mostly covered with bubbles –
Round pods like so many soft marbles
Scattered unevenly in a garden –
Each one a translucent universe
Unto itself.
He lived in one of them, where,
For the most part, things were
Comfortable and felt reasonably
Safe, and yet, he didn’t really
Like it, in fact, at times, he
Hated the place but didn’t know
Why.
It was semitransparent like all the
Other pods – through blurry dreams
He could see others in their marbles,
Some of whom looked happy,
Others sad, some angry or even
Violent, thrashing about shadow boxing
Nothing visible.
Sad people never left their pods.
How old was he when he discovered the
Door, its hinges disguised to blend with the
Rounded walls of melted glass? With trepidation he
Ventured out into the garden-world where
Others like himself danced and debated and
Learned and fought and
Made up.
Here, nearly all humankind lives.
It was many years later when he
Realized that the garden filled with
Pod Bubbles was itself a pod – pods within
A pod; marbles inside a large
Marble; and years after that – years
Filled with meditation – that the shocking
Truth emerged:
The soft marble that contained his pod,
Along with many others, inside a giant
Bubble, collectively was one of innumerable
Bubbles floating in a beautiful darkness,
Ever vibrating, rotating,
Dancing slowly, waltz-like to
Ethereal symphonic strains.
A force held it all together in
Harmonious Orbit – an unnamable
Force, a strange, mysterious
Foreign force that reminded him of
Something he had
Forgotten many
Centuries ago.
Spheres within spheres, all
Within the ultimate eternal
Sphere. Most lived their lives
Unaware of anything outside
Their own tribal garden –
Oblivious of all the other
Gardens;
Or, if they were aware of the
Others, that awareness elicited
Fear that too often erupted in
Hatred, power, coercion,
Oppression, enslavement,
And jingoistic
War after war after war.
How old was he when he
Happened upon the door
Out of the tribal pod and
Into the vast garden where
All the clannish marbles
Orbited in fear of
One another?
He discovered the key to
That door within his own
Heart and gingerly with
Trembling dared to
Open it decades before he
Had the courage to
Step out
Into the music.
