Nov 20, 2023·edited Nov 20, 2023Liked by Justin Smith-Ruiu
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and process. Much of this resonates deeply. The sheer weirdness of reality is a truly unappreciated force; it's also what spurred my interest in spirituality, despite a strongly held secular scientific view. I also appreciate the maturity required to join a major religion at such a stage in life, especially for someone clear-headed enough to see its imperfection.
I remember reading some old writings by Arthur Osborne, who made the point that Christianity (with the partial exception of the Eastern Orthodox church) is perhaps the least mystically inclined of all the major religions. The Judeo-Christian God makes its apparition as a guide for a very earthly tribe - as far as I know, no-one there experiences being "one with God". Still, Judaism has Kabbalah; likewise Islam has Sufism. In the far East, the native traditions of Hinduism, Daoism and Buddhism all state their mysticism openly from the first page. You are that, and the "that" that can be expressed is not the real that, and so on. Of course Christianity has produced its share of mystics to, from Pseudo-Dyonisius to St. Francis to whoever wrote the Cloud of Unknowing, but there is often an undercurrent of "these were special people, what they wrote is not for you".
Maybe because I take the mystics as the main body of evidence why there is something worthwhile there, I find your assessment of religion as "truth trying to come out in history" challenging. From the Gospels to Al-Mansur to Longchenpa to Nisargadatta, what I sense is not truth slowly and painfully trying to come out, but rather shining brightly all of a sudden, with the full and always unexpected power of transcendent heartful light, incidentally bringing solace even to worms and parrots if any happen to be around. Transcendental truth seems to be lying there, ever patiently waiting to be discovered, felt, intuited (which apparently happens at least occasionally to a great many people in the form of peak experiences). Every formal religion prides itself in being able to trace its chains of transmission, and that's probably for good reason. In temples, churches and mosques, something true, powerful and subtle is being upheld.
And the paradox is, this in turn contains the seeds of their downfall. A group that knows that it holds a priceless jewel also knows that the original light is slowly receding in time, slowly buried under layers of discourse and myth. New lights may come, but they are not their light. The possibility of it being ever lost or diluted activates our trigger-happy mammalian amygdalas, bringing fear and defensiveness. Subtlety gives way to hubris, wanting to guide the world, to impose divine laws. And the all-encompassing timeless heart, little by little, gets covered, if not replaced wholesale, by the soothing myth of the "adult in charge". In its supernatural guise it becomes the caring God separate from its creation, the one who must surely be on our side, whatever our side may be. But even that is quite inaccessible for the rest of us, so in practice the "adult in charge" is often going to be another human being holding some delegate power from the designated earthly representative of the original source. And so on and so forth.
I don't have a way out to offer out of this conundrum. Like yin and yang, like Shiva and Shakti, maybe light and confusion are forever intertwined. Best of luck to anyone who cares to trace them.
What’s it like to be a Catholic as a university professor in France? I find professors in the US don’t look at you the same once they find out you go to church sometimes. I used to wonder if I could ever tell them ‘wow you would not believe the wild thing I heard’ because the best thing about religion is the absolutely WILD things people talk about. But this would upset them a lot so I don’t mention it. The only person in academia who really understands is this atheist friend I have who, through another friend, got engaged by this Black Baptist church service. I went with her and it is something I will never forget. A teensy tiny church in the woods but a rollicking ride through the human experience. I sometimes wonder how many other people secretly go to church in my profession but hide it, like an addiction to gambling or a second wife.
Agree. Understanding (reason) happens within the circle of one's own faith ( Anselm?) which is why reasoning or arguments from outside (one's) faith can seem childish or to miss the point entirely.
Also, the inordinate interest people seem to have in *other* people's faith apart from being irritating often, I think, says something about their own ricketty or self-righteous style of faith.
On the other hand, I have to say that blind acceptance can lead to a kind of thinking that the Qur'an admonishes ("I'm just following in the footsteps of my ancestors" sort of thing). Which is why there's often the refrain in it: Have you not considered, or have you not reflected, reasoned? Don't think that's the same as rationality in consumer choice theory.
I don't know what the appropriate balance is but to *take* everything (or at least one's central dogmas) as a mystery, as inexplicable (as opposed to actually living in mystery) *can* be a slippery slope to delusions, "fancy" (Gibbon?) or fundamentalism.
I used to say, when asked if I had a religion, that I had been "raised Catholic". That was an untrue oversimplification: I was raised going to church and I was educated in a Catholic school, but my mother was anticlerical and told me stories of her youth in the Daugthers of Mary that involved a gay priest who had relations with adolescent boys from her poor neghborhood (consensual? paid? she didn't ask) who taught her and her sisters to smoke at age 14); and my dad was so practical and transparent that he told me that we went to Mass because he believed that the Catholic moral framework was practical and good, not because we had to believe in the "religious" aspects of the, um, religion itself. I was hungry for the religious aspect, though, and was not pleased with what we read in the Bible in my religion class, so by age 12 I began reading other texts from or about other religions: the Upanishads, the Tao Teh Ching, a little book for children called The Cat Who Went to Heaven, stuff about the Logos... I developed my own belief in "the Oneness" and sacredness of life, all life, and was spiritually fulfilled. Then, at age 20, I lost my faith after venturing into Hinduism. Something about the crushing logic and deep time of Hindu notions regarding life and death left me incapable of belief in anything other than material reality. Although I still believed in the possibility of magic and ghosts (insert shoulder-shrugging emoji).
Fast forward 25 years: I am an avid, perhaps pathological, reader of literature, and I entered a period of English literature that taught me more and more about the archaic character of Catholicism in comparison to the much cleaner, more orderly branches of Protestant Christians, and after reading Catholic writers such as Graham Greene and a few others, I finally realized that although I had abandoned Catholicism, it had not abandoned me: the archaic, ghosts and magic, are beautiful and attractive. Add to this the fact that I moved to Spain and, although I have never been or participated in any of the religious festivities of Holy Week where they are So Real, or any other such celebrations, I am unable to watch the emotion people feel during these rituals without crying in sympathy. I crave ritual, rituals, the more archaic and emotional and irrational, the better!
Catholicism is amazing that way: it has magic and ritual and no pretense of ordering or cleaning or sanitizing the bloody, wax-ridden, incense-smelling, crazy-sounding... ness of itself. I am not a Catholic, I cannot bring myself to embrace the Catholic church in a city such as mine, where it is a horrible institution that represents the interests of the right wing so clearly, but if i lived in the US I would surely be one by now. Perhaps in my own country, (Puerto Rico), too.
The differences between amoral and immoral have become strangely important to me, and I agree with the general sentiment laid out. I was thinking something similar while reading the past pieces on rock and roll and the joys of being a bit naughty. I think this goes some way toward explaining why Disco, which was the first truly amoral cultural trend I can think of (outside of perhaps some inter-war experimentation), inspired such universal hatred from both saints an sinners alike.
Wow, my already low opinion of Peter Singer took another hit.
A thought experiment (philosophers love them) - you are out walking and see Peter Singer drowning in a pond. You could stop and save him but then you would get to the post office too late to send your shipment of mosquito netting to Africa where it will save hundreds of lives. What do you do?
I like your story Here is the information page the publisher Jo-Anne Rosen prepared to which I added the SoundCloud item Hiram Larew made and that you could pass on to others who have access to the internet and might want to know and receive it. And also because you can still online read all the poems that continue to be free online”
I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems by Edward Mycue & Cover Art by Richard Steger San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Texas from age eleven. He was a Lowell Fellow at Boston University Graduate School of Public Relations and Communications, a WGBH-TV Boston intern, a Macdowell Colony Fellow, a Peace Corps teacher in Ghana, editor at the Norton Coker Press, and he taught American Literature at the International Peoples College in Elsinore, Denmark. He has had 18 books or chapbooks published. His poems appear in multiple anthologies and journals. Am a Fact Not a Fiction is a selection of poems culled from three areas of interest: War and Peace, Life / Time Memory, and History
.--“The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one supplants the other in a rush to break the barrier between words and meaning, perception and feeling.” — Laura Kennelly, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider, Bach Institute
--“Ed Mycue’s poetry is a lifetime of surprises. He was born surprised, grew up on wonder, and now surely lives under the ever crashing waterfalls of amazement. His language is pure chirp, flip and rouse. It never ever sleeps. Savor his lines — like memory — for as long as you dare.” — Hiram Larew, author of More than Anything and Part Of
Now available from the publisher Wordrunner, and Kindle, and Amazon
Sound Cloud audio file -- Stream Edward Mycue Reads Three Poems --
ISBN: 978-1-941066-64-5
58 pages, perfect bound, 5 x 8 inches
$10.00, paperback; $2.99, Kindle
I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems by Edward Mycue & Cover Art by Richard Steger San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Texas from age eleven. He was a Lowell Fellow at Boston University Graduate School of Public Relations and Communications, a WGBH-TV Boston intern, a Macdowell Colony Fellow, a Peace Corps teacher in Ghana, editor at the Norton Coker Press, and he taught American Literature at the International Peoples College in Elsinore, Denmark. He has had 18 books or chapbooks published. His poems appear in multiple anthologies and journals. Am a Fact Not a Fiction is a selection of poems culled from three areas of interest: War and Peace, Life / Time Memory, and History.
--“The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one supplants the other in a rush to break the barrier between words and meaning, perception and feeling.” — Laura Kennelly, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider, Bach Institute
--“Ed Mycue’s poetry is a lifetime of surprises. He was born surprised, grew up on wonder, and now surely lives under the ever crashing waterfalls of amazement. His language is pure chirp, flip and rouse. It never ever sleeps. Savor his lines — like memory — for as long as you dare.” — Hiram Larew, author of More than Anything and Part Of
Now available from the publisher Wordrunner, and Kindle, and Amazon
Sound Cloud audio file -- Stream Edward Mycue Reads Thre Poems -- Audio by Hiram Larew | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
A question, though. What about the vast masses of the never-believers and not-even-atheists you reference, the ones who can’t properly blaspheme because they were raised without a God? What should a person do about the stirring of that irrepressible religious impulse if they have nothing to revert to? (Or alternatively, if the religion of their upbringing is intolerable to them, for whatever reason — and there are a lot of good ones.) Should they shop around? Or are they simply damned? Is there some similar model you can articulate here for the convert, rather than the revert?
*Now that I think about it...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and process. Much of this resonates deeply. The sheer weirdness of reality is a truly unappreciated force; it's also what spurred my interest in spirituality, despite a strongly held secular scientific view. I also appreciate the maturity required to join a major religion at such a stage in life, especially for someone clear-headed enough to see its imperfection.
I remember reading some old writings by Arthur Osborne, who made the point that Christianity (with the partial exception of the Eastern Orthodox church) is perhaps the least mystically inclined of all the major religions. The Judeo-Christian God makes its apparition as a guide for a very earthly tribe - as far as I know, no-one there experiences being "one with God". Still, Judaism has Kabbalah; likewise Islam has Sufism. In the far East, the native traditions of Hinduism, Daoism and Buddhism all state their mysticism openly from the first page. You are that, and the "that" that can be expressed is not the real that, and so on. Of course Christianity has produced its share of mystics to, from Pseudo-Dyonisius to St. Francis to whoever wrote the Cloud of Unknowing, but there is often an undercurrent of "these were special people, what they wrote is not for you".
Maybe because I take the mystics as the main body of evidence why there is something worthwhile there, I find your assessment of religion as "truth trying to come out in history" challenging. From the Gospels to Al-Mansur to Longchenpa to Nisargadatta, what I sense is not truth slowly and painfully trying to come out, but rather shining brightly all of a sudden, with the full and always unexpected power of transcendent heartful light, incidentally bringing solace even to worms and parrots if any happen to be around. Transcendental truth seems to be lying there, ever patiently waiting to be discovered, felt, intuited (which apparently happens at least occasionally to a great many people in the form of peak experiences). Every formal religion prides itself in being able to trace its chains of transmission, and that's probably for good reason. In temples, churches and mosques, something true, powerful and subtle is being upheld.
And the paradox is, this in turn contains the seeds of their downfall. A group that knows that it holds a priceless jewel also knows that the original light is slowly receding in time, slowly buried under layers of discourse and myth. New lights may come, but they are not their light. The possibility of it being ever lost or diluted activates our trigger-happy mammalian amygdalas, bringing fear and defensiveness. Subtlety gives way to hubris, wanting to guide the world, to impose divine laws. And the all-encompassing timeless heart, little by little, gets covered, if not replaced wholesale, by the soothing myth of the "adult in charge". In its supernatural guise it becomes the caring God separate from its creation, the one who must surely be on our side, whatever our side may be. But even that is quite inaccessible for the rest of us, so in practice the "adult in charge" is often going to be another human being holding some delegate power from the designated earthly representative of the original source. And so on and so forth.
I don't have a way out to offer out of this conundrum. Like yin and yang, like Shiva and Shakti, maybe light and confusion are forever intertwined. Best of luck to anyone who cares to trace them.
What’s it like to be a Catholic as a university professor in France? I find professors in the US don’t look at you the same once they find out you go to church sometimes. I used to wonder if I could ever tell them ‘wow you would not believe the wild thing I heard’ because the best thing about religion is the absolutely WILD things people talk about. But this would upset them a lot so I don’t mention it. The only person in academia who really understands is this atheist friend I have who, through another friend, got engaged by this Black Baptist church service. I went with her and it is something I will never forget. A teensy tiny church in the woods but a rollicking ride through the human experience. I sometimes wonder how many other people secretly go to church in my profession but hide it, like an addiction to gambling or a second wife.
Agree. Understanding (reason) happens within the circle of one's own faith ( Anselm?) which is why reasoning or arguments from outside (one's) faith can seem childish or to miss the point entirely.
Also, the inordinate interest people seem to have in *other* people's faith apart from being irritating often, I think, says something about their own ricketty or self-righteous style of faith.
On the other hand, I have to say that blind acceptance can lead to a kind of thinking that the Qur'an admonishes ("I'm just following in the footsteps of my ancestors" sort of thing). Which is why there's often the refrain in it: Have you not considered, or have you not reflected, reasoned? Don't think that's the same as rationality in consumer choice theory.
I don't know what the appropriate balance is but to *take* everything (or at least one's central dogmas) as a mystery, as inexplicable (as opposed to actually living in mystery) *can* be a slippery slope to delusions, "fancy" (Gibbon?) or fundamentalism.
I used to say, when asked if I had a religion, that I had been "raised Catholic". That was an untrue oversimplification: I was raised going to church and I was educated in a Catholic school, but my mother was anticlerical and told me stories of her youth in the Daugthers of Mary that involved a gay priest who had relations with adolescent boys from her poor neghborhood (consensual? paid? she didn't ask) who taught her and her sisters to smoke at age 14); and my dad was so practical and transparent that he told me that we went to Mass because he believed that the Catholic moral framework was practical and good, not because we had to believe in the "religious" aspects of the, um, religion itself. I was hungry for the religious aspect, though, and was not pleased with what we read in the Bible in my religion class, so by age 12 I began reading other texts from or about other religions: the Upanishads, the Tao Teh Ching, a little book for children called The Cat Who Went to Heaven, stuff about the Logos... I developed my own belief in "the Oneness" and sacredness of life, all life, and was spiritually fulfilled. Then, at age 20, I lost my faith after venturing into Hinduism. Something about the crushing logic and deep time of Hindu notions regarding life and death left me incapable of belief in anything other than material reality. Although I still believed in the possibility of magic and ghosts (insert shoulder-shrugging emoji).
Fast forward 25 years: I am an avid, perhaps pathological, reader of literature, and I entered a period of English literature that taught me more and more about the archaic character of Catholicism in comparison to the much cleaner, more orderly branches of Protestant Christians, and after reading Catholic writers such as Graham Greene and a few others, I finally realized that although I had abandoned Catholicism, it had not abandoned me: the archaic, ghosts and magic, are beautiful and attractive. Add to this the fact that I moved to Spain and, although I have never been or participated in any of the religious festivities of Holy Week where they are So Real, or any other such celebrations, I am unable to watch the emotion people feel during these rituals without crying in sympathy. I crave ritual, rituals, the more archaic and emotional and irrational, the better!
Catholicism is amazing that way: it has magic and ritual and no pretense of ordering or cleaning or sanitizing the bloody, wax-ridden, incense-smelling, crazy-sounding... ness of itself. I am not a Catholic, I cannot bring myself to embrace the Catholic church in a city such as mine, where it is a horrible institution that represents the interests of the right wing so clearly, but if i lived in the US I would surely be one by now. Perhaps in my own country, (Puerto Rico), too.
The differences between amoral and immoral have become strangely important to me, and I agree with the general sentiment laid out. I was thinking something similar while reading the past pieces on rock and roll and the joys of being a bit naughty. I think this goes some way toward explaining why Disco, which was the first truly amoral cultural trend I can think of (outside of perhaps some inter-war experimentation), inspired such universal hatred from both saints an sinners alike.
Thank you for sharing the story of your "reversion."
Wow, my already low opinion of Peter Singer took another hit.
A thought experiment (philosophers love them) - you are out walking and see Peter Singer drowning in a pond. You could stop and save him but then you would get to the post office too late to send your shipment of mosquito netting to Africa where it will save hundreds of lives. What do you do?
I like your story Here is the information page the publisher Jo-Anne Rosen prepared to which I added the SoundCloud item Hiram Larew made and that you could pass on to others who have access to the internet and might want to know and receive it. And also because you can still online read all the poems that continue to be free online”
I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems by Edward Mycue & Cover Art by Richard Steger San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Texas from age eleven. He was a Lowell Fellow at Boston University Graduate School of Public Relations and Communications, a WGBH-TV Boston intern, a Macdowell Colony Fellow, a Peace Corps teacher in Ghana, editor at the Norton Coker Press, and he taught American Literature at the International Peoples College in Elsinore, Denmark. He has had 18 books or chapbooks published. His poems appear in multiple anthologies and journals. Am a Fact Not a Fiction is a selection of poems culled from three areas of interest: War and Peace, Life / Time Memory, and History
.--“The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one supplants the other in a rush to break the barrier between words and meaning, perception and feeling.” — Laura Kennelly, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider, Bach Institute
--“Ed Mycue’s poetry is a lifetime of surprises. He was born surprised, grew up on wonder, and now surely lives under the ever crashing waterfalls of amazement. His language is pure chirp, flip and rouse. It never ever sleeps. Savor his lines — like memory — for as long as you dare.” — Hiram Larew, author of More than Anything and Part Of
Now available from the publisher Wordrunner, and Kindle, and Amazon
Sound Cloud audio file -- Stream Edward Mycue Reads Three Poems --
ISBN: 978-1-941066-64-5
58 pages, perfect bound, 5 x 8 inches
$10.00, paperback; $2.99, Kindle
I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems by Edward Mycue & Cover Art by Richard Steger San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Texas from age eleven. He was a Lowell Fellow at Boston University Graduate School of Public Relations and Communications, a WGBH-TV Boston intern, a Macdowell Colony Fellow, a Peace Corps teacher in Ghana, editor at the Norton Coker Press, and he taught American Literature at the International Peoples College in Elsinore, Denmark. He has had 18 books or chapbooks published. His poems appear in multiple anthologies and journals. Am a Fact Not a Fiction is a selection of poems culled from three areas of interest: War and Peace, Life / Time Memory, and History.
--“The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one supplants the other in a rush to break the barrier between words and meaning, perception and feeling.” — Laura Kennelly, Ph.D., Associate Editor, Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider, Bach Institute
--“Ed Mycue’s poetry is a lifetime of surprises. He was born surprised, grew up on wonder, and now surely lives under the ever crashing waterfalls of amazement. His language is pure chirp, flip and rouse. It never ever sleeps. Savor his lines — like memory — for as long as you dare.” — Hiram Larew, author of More than Anything and Part Of
Now available from the publisher Wordrunner, and Kindle, and Amazon
Sound Cloud audio file -- Stream Edward Mycue Reads Thre Poems -- Audio by Hiram Larew | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
ISBN: 978-1-941066-64-5
58 pages, perfect bound, 5 x 8 inches
$10.00, paperback; $2.99, Kindle
of yourself. Here is one of mine:
A question, though. What about the vast masses of the never-believers and not-even-atheists you reference, the ones who can’t properly blaspheme because they were raised without a God? What should a person do about the stirring of that irrepressible religious impulse if they have nothing to revert to? (Or alternatively, if the religion of their upbringing is intolerable to them, for whatever reason — and there are a lot of good ones.) Should they shop around? Or are they simply damned? Is there some similar model you can articulate here for the convert, rather than the revert?
https://stevenberger.substack.com/p/to-see-god?utm_medium=reader2