Ask the Horse

Dainin Katagiri, a Zen Roshi in Minneapolis, MN, once said that contemporary civilization is like a rider who storms through a village on a runaway horse. People shout, "Where are you going?" he yells back, "Ask the horse! Ask the horse!"

He is right. Wherever we look we see violence and destruction. The past and the future are becoming mirrors of our present turmoil. Looking backward, we argue over the meaning of Civil War memorials. Looking forward we anticipate lethal autonomous weapons systems engaging each other without human intervention. 

Once we were confident of our purposes and destiny. We trusted the advances won by education, the inventions spawned by technology and the idealism generated by democratic faith, but this confidence has been shaken. The vast gains of knowledge, our technological strides, the rich accumulations of centuries of cultural development — these render more tragic our present disarray. Science itself leads to conundrums. Faith is ossified into hardened categories. 

We find ourselves surrounded by problems we can neither fully understand, nor reject as unintelligible, observed J. T. Fraser (Of Time, Passion and Knowledge). We are driven by aspirations whose goals we cannot hope to reach, yet cannot accept as unreachable. We teeter between belief and unbelief, between an almost limitless faith in our own abilities and a disgust at the pettiness, stupidity, and cruelty of a race enamored with destruction. 

Undeserved suffering has become so widespread in our world that it is commonplace. Violence surrounds us — the overt violence of terrorism, warfare and crime, and the covert violence of hunger and poverty, of unjust social and economic systems that perpetuate human degradation. Is human life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" as Thomas Hobbes famously proclaimed? Shall we reconcile ourselves to what Sigmund Freud called the "normal unhappiness" of human existence? 

 Dr. Hans Küng once addressed a large gathering of clergy at Riverside Church in New York City. We were in the midst of the Vietnam War, but first he spoke to us about the Shoah and the widespread spiritual desolation it engendered. How could anyone believe in anything after the Holocaust, he pondered? How could we embrace a higher vision, a nobler calling or a greater purpose after that? "I can understand those who turn away from God after this," Küng said. "But as for me, I can only go on after this because I believe in God. Belief in God helps me to overcome such catastrophic events." 

What difference can belief in God make? To Küng it means that striving for absolute justice is absolutely justified, that truth will be known, that divisions will be overcome, and that warfare - someday - will be ended. 

It means, he added, that the poor in spirit will receive the kingdom of God, the gentle will have the earth for their heritage, those who mourn will be comforted, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. It means that the merciful will have mercy shown to them, peacemakers will be called children of God, and the pure of heart will see divinity. It means that we do not die into nothingness, but into God. It means, he concluded, "the fulfillment of the oldest, strongest and most urgently felt wish of humankind: that we can hope again."

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(Water color of horse by Chen Zheng-Long, 2000)

Our pugilistic president does not speak for us

When I was six, I broke with the Republicanism of my parents and sided with Adlai Stevenson. But I never became such a party loyalist that I failed to appreciate upright, reasonable and progressive Republicans, nor did I fail to see occasional racists, chauvinists and babblers within the Democratic party. Fringe elements persist in both parties. Generally speaking, I believe we are strongest when we work from the Center, when we seek common ground, when we cooperate, collaborate, compromise and converse together, when civility underlies our political discourse. As a nation, we move forward in fits and starts. We careen from one side to the other. Yet there seems to be a self-correcting mechanism within our political discourse, and a moral gyroscope deep within our collective psyche. It keeps us on course, more or less, as we follow the polestar: "E Pluribus Unum" - From Many, One. Even when power changes hands and priorities shift, there has been a common effort to reach for a larger moral balance. 

But the gyroscope is broken, or nearly so, and the dangers to our country are large. We cannot count on our President to lead us or speak for us; we must work around him with care and vigilance to maintain a degree of decency in public life. He does not see this polestar, or embrace this journey. He and so many within his "base", his party, and the so-called "donor class" have introduced an astonishing level of cynicism, selfishness and vulgarity into the public square. Indeed, for him it is not a public square at all, but a WWE wrestling ring where there are only winners and losers, trash talking and intimidation, hucksterism and media attention. Where he used to throw sucker punches and body slams, now he tweets - with similar intent and effect. 

I, for one, believe that America is better - greater - than this. Though we have many flaws, and have committed egregious sins, and still have much to overcome, we are on a journey toward wholeness and inclusion. As long as he behaves the way he is behaving, our pugilistic president is not us. He does not represent us. He does not speak for us. and so every day we the people must recommit ourselves to the true dream of America, "E Pluribus Unum". From many, one. One nation, under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All. 

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(I found the graphic on a blog, "Deeper Writing - and Reading - of the World" by Robin Holland, who co-directs the Columbus Area Writing Project [CAWP], affiliated with the National Writing Project.)