The starry, starry nights are spectacular in Landers. It is impossible to stare at these stars for
any length of time without becoming an amateur philosopher. What does all that spectacle up there mean to
me? With a sense of wonder, we humans
have been staring at the stars for 200 million years but it was only 600 years
ago that we began to understand the workings of the stars when Nicholas Copernicus
and Issac Newton ushered us into what has been called the scientific
revolution. The sun centered universe
made the changing heavens predictable but the new culture resulting from this revolution
wrongly assumes that science and the philosophers have all the answers. These thinkers, at least most of them, would
not make such an arrogant claim but they have inadvertently exerted undue influence
upon us, influence that has driven us further from valuing our spiritual center.
As we look heavenward, outer space just keeps getting bigger
and bigger while we feel smaller and more insignificant. Outer space is composed mostly of nothingness
but with an untold number of evolving rock systems sprinkled throughout the
immeasurable blackness. A frontier for
man to explore, maybe, but despite our growing knowledge of the heavens our
meaning among the stars has failed to be illuminated. In fact, our looking up into the stars has
made our place among the galaxies seem more and more tenuous with each new
discovery. Our ever-expanding insignificance
has filtered down to our individual lives where we struggle with the enormity
of our situation beneath the stars. Could
it be that inner space, the inner space of each individual human being, is the
frontier that we most need to explore? Could
it be that staring into the stars is but one of those many earthly distractions
we use to avoid exploring our inner space?
2500 years ago, Socrates was a stone mason and a courageous
warrior for Greece who dared to enter inner space at around fifty years of
age. This experience propelled him to
give the remainder of his years telling about inner space by questioning the
accepted wisdom of outer space. The
Greek community of his birth was his mission field and daily he entered the
markets and town square to engage the people in the wisdom of the ages, all the
while denying that he was any smarter than anyone else. He wrote no books, intellectual papers and
sought no credentials or personal authority.
Avoiding the distractions of power, position and to a degree family,
Socrates became a messenger for the wisdom of inner space.
At first the people flocked to his message and
conversational methods but well into his eighties, the people turned on
him. What we hear most about Socrates today
is that he committed suicide by drinking hemlock and therefore he died a
failure. The truth be told, he was put on trial for upsetting the outer space status
quo and given a death sentence by his own community. Rather than run, which he could have done, Socrates
drank the poison because that was the decision of his people. Plato, the best student of Socrates, shared
the wisdom of Socrates in his writings but scholarship is divided on how much
of his book, the “Republic”, was his own.
In any event, together these two thinkers are credited with founding
western philosophy. Plato, however, cared
little for the Socratic mission of communicating the inner space trek. He did succeed, inadvertently, in burying the
memory of Socrates in an ocean of philosophical group think. The inner space mission
of the man, Socrates, was no more.
As did Socrates, just a few of us in every era have been roaming
the deserts and crawling into caves to block out the distractions of our daily
lives in order to find the wisdom of inner space. They have been called hermits, prophets, monks,
recluses and the like, their craziness was and is an attempt to get a glimpse
at the inner stars. These folks have
emerged time and again to communicate to us the reality of inner space with
marginal success for we, you and I, are prone to disrespect the inner space trek
because it can only be entered with great personal discomfort. Sadly, those courageous voices telling of
inner space have been quickly drowned out and replaced by a group think that
dilutes their message. Modern philosophy,
science and our many religions are the predominate group thinks that have spoiled
the adventure of the few who advocate for the inner trek. We, the people, have tried our best to bury
the truth of inner space by burying the few.
Two thousand years ago Jesus, a mongrel human being like the
rest of us, walked out of the desert and told the people about the kingdom of
God. The Jesus message was not for the
religious folk who prized power and position above the wisdom of inner space. The message was and is for those desperate human
beings like you and I who seek spiritual survival amid conflict, failure, social
disorder and daily drama. After all, are
not all these things our life realities, what else is there? Jesus communicated to the people the “else”
of life, the inner stars of life that can be had in the kingdom of God. The people flocked to hear about the kingdom and
the invitation to enter extended to all we interested unlovely human
beings. But as the people became aware that
the kingdom message was not intended by God to relieve their immediate
suffering and circumstance, they turned on Jesus just as they did with
Socrates.
Jesus said our immediate circumstances are intended to drive
us toward the inner stars and there, in inner space, we will find relief, reward,
safety, nourishment and eternal peace.
Nowhere does Jesus promise everything we want in this world, he promises
only that the inner trek will bring the reality we were born to experience and
most need. Plato gives us an
illustration or parable of the meaning of reality, an illustration he probably
got from Socrates. In the parable of the
cave, we humans are chained to the floor of the cave with our backs to the only
light source, from our immobile position facing a blank cave wall, all that we
can understand of the light is our own shadows against the cave wall. The shadows are real but are they less than
full reality? Could this world be duping
us into believing that we are only shadows?
Could this world be duping us into believing we are to be satisfied with
the shadows of life, the survival priorities, friends, entertainment, family,
race, religion, science or philosophy? The
few would say no way.
Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’
or ‘What shall we drink’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things,
and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mathew 6: 31-33, TNIV). Some of us prefer translating the Greek word
for righteousness in this context "God centered reality".
Jesus was not talking about a religious rightness dictated by top down dogma but the God centered reality of inner space, admittedly more difficult to define clearly. The reality of inner space is the place we are all called to travel as humans but the place we avoid at all costs. And then, upon entering inner space, you and I will be increasingly less bound by the shadows of life and find for ourselves what it means to be wholly human.
Jesus was not talking about a religious rightness dictated by top down dogma but the God centered reality of inner space, admittedly more difficult to define clearly. The reality of inner space is the place we are all called to travel as humans but the place we avoid at all costs. And then, upon entering inner space, you and I will be increasingly less bound by the shadows of life and find for ourselves what it means to be wholly human.
G. Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
