The Soil of Human Flourishing

In an 1814 collection of sermons, Rev. James Freeman, former minister of King's Chapel, contends that the best form of prosperity is being rich in good works. He considers human life “a soil, where every kind of seed will vegetate” if you water and nurture it. You plant your own garden. You plant your own life. But just as your plot of land draws its nutrients from sources beyond itself, so too the fertility of your soil directly impacts the plants around you. You affect, and are affected by, the ecosystem of which you are a part.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Freeman observed how “the air [was] filled with the seeds of vice.” He therefore exhorted his parishioners to “Pluck up…the weeds of evil, as soon as they appear.” Two hundred years later, Freeman’s advice remains frightfully relevant. We, too, must pluck up the weeds of excess and irresponsibility. Instead of living way beyond our means, we should adopt the practice of self-emptying. We should release ourselves from gratuitous desire. We should lose a life of surfeit in order to gain a life of sustainability.

Our garden depends on it. The soil of the world, literally, depends on it.

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Freedom and Grace

Actions should reflect sincere intention, ethical behavior should issue forth from interior conviction, our hands should do the work of the soul. In his 1831 tract Formation of the Christian Character, Henry Ware Jr. articulates this mantra in the following way: "It is not the external conduct, not the observance of the moral law alone, which constitutes a religious man: but the principles from which he acts, the motives by which he is governed, the state of his heart.”

Today's shabad appears to share this orientation:

ਅੰਤਰੁ ਮੈਲਾ ਬਾਹਰੁ ਨਿਤ ਧੋਵੈ ॥ ਸਾਚੀ ਦਰਗਹਿ ਅਪਨੀ ਪਤਿ ਖੋਵੈ ॥
If a person is polluted within, he may wash himself everyday on the outside, but in the Court of the True Lord, he forfeits his honor.
[SGGS 1151]

For Ware, the human subject possesses the agency to enact this transformation: "Remember always, that you are capable of being more devout, more charitable, more humble, more devoted and earnest in doing good, better acquainted with religious truth." The burden falls on the individual to ascend to higher moral ground. Similarly, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji exhorts disciples to position their "feet on the right path."

Importantly, however, neither text falls prey to a belligerent super-human idealism. We always need God. Ware insists: "these two things, then, may be regarded as axioms of the religious life; first, that a man's own labors are essential to his salvation; second, that his utmost virtue does nothing toward purchasing or meriting salvation." This poignant dialectic of deterministic freedom echoes in Guru Nanak's assertion: "Without the Name of the Lord, everything is false." We always need grace. We always need one another.

We are caught, it seems, in a web of freedom and constraint.

In Jean Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée, protagonist Antoine Roquentin suddenly comes to realize the existential inertia of life: "This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder…in a frightful, obscene nakedness." And yet, while casually listening to the syncopating sounds of Sophie Tucker's jazz, Antoine comes to realize that we stake our humanity on small acts of creative transcendence - I would add: small acts of love, faith and, above all, grace.

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Clemens Taesler: Between the Gates of Eternity

Translation of Clemens Taesler's poem Zwischen den Toren der Ewigkeit, as found in his 1925 collection 'Free Spirit and Belief':

Between the Gates of Eternity

Through a dark-puzzle gate
we once entered earthly life,
Through a dark-puzzle gate,
we must all eventually depart;

We wander under the light of the sun
Through floods of pain and halls of bliss:

Only a brief span of time -
Between the gates of eternity.

Only a brief span of time
Are we granted for creating and developing
the nascent human-project,
the freedom of one's soul.

In untiring ascension
is the meaning of life unlocked:

Are we also fixed in time-
In us flows eternity.

Eternal darkness prior to birth
cannot awake anguish in us,
Eternal darkness after death
will not frighten us with terror.

From that path on which we once came,
There the journey will continue:

Out of eternity into time-
Out of time into eternity.


Translation mine.

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Texts and Interpretation

For French theorist Paul Ricoeur, sacred texts do real work on their interlocutors. Whereas in Heidegger, works of art disclose, Ricoeur takes a further step. Revelation performs, enacting new meaning in the very encounter between text and interpreter. The world of the text figures any reader who risks the seeming coherence and stability of her self-understanding in the process.

In the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, we read of a further hermeneutical approach:

ਭਾਂਡਾ ਭਾਉ ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤੁ ਤਿਤੁ ਢਾਲਿ ॥
ਘੜੀਐ ਸਬਦੁ ਸਚੀ ਟਕਸਾਲ ॥
In the crucible of love, melt the Nectar of the Name,
and mint the True Coin of the Shabad, the Word of God.
[SGGS 8.8-9]

As with Ricoeur, revelation does not derive from mere proposition, but from active production. Readers are responsible for minting meaning for themselves. And yet, this process of interpretative creation necessitates a distinct disposition: it bursts forth from love. In softening the self, readers unleash a torrid force that melts the abstract (i.e. God's formless Name) into the concrete, the incarnational, the intimately now.

God becomes accessible in the present and, in the spirit of Rilke's archaic torso, introduces novel ontologies that reorient readers by way of an expanded view of the world and a deeper sense of selfhood: 'Du mußt dein Leben ändern' [You must change your life].

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Hindu Gods and Humans

How do the Hindu traditions of India depict the nature of God and of humanity? The question belies any simple, one-size-fits-all response. I will, however, offer my inchoate precis:

On Gods:

An initial glance at Hindu scripture unveils a paradoxical and discontinuous image of God. The worshipper is told: “With respect to the bodily sphere (atman), one should venerate: ‘Brahman is the mind’, and, with respect to the divine sphere: ‘Brahman is space’.” The two declarative sentences introduce a perspectival dualism that produces a bifurcation of the sacred into “mind” and “space.” Whereas the former speaks to the interior subjective, the latter suggests an exterior objectivity. The Upanisads and Ramayana epic offer further insight into the nature of this ambivalence.

The Upanisadic texts primarily disclose the God-within-the-self branch of this polarity. Philosophically, they reinterpret, reinvent and, at times, even reject Vedic sacrifical ritual (yajna) in favor of a singular and unitary non-linguistic knowledge (jnana) trapped within the human body. This existential and eternal force on which the world rests, termed Brahman, lies “in that space within the heart” as the “controller of all, the lord of all, the ruler of all!”

Ramayanan conceptions of the holy depict a God-beyond-the-self. More often than not, sacred figures serve as necessary aids to human actions and pre-ordained events. For example, once in exile and crossing the river, Sita speaks softly to the goddess in the waters, imploring her to “protect Rama during their coming ordeal.” In the Ramayana, divine incarnation marks certain human selves, specifically Rama and his eternal consort, Sita, “with signs of divinity” reminiscent of the Upanisads. Ontologically, the “Cosmic Person, the source of all and the support of the entire creation,” takes human form to challenge Ravana and exterminate his entire race. Yet, in contrast with the Upanisadic account, such corporeal manifestation represents the unique product of divine petition.

Instinctively, then, these competing visions of ultimate reality, as both an interior human potentiality underlying the divine and an external manifestation of the divine occasionally infused in the human, appear mutually exclusive. How can God simultaneously reside deep within and far beyond the self? Must not such a formulation imply the existence of two distinct deities, if not more?

The scriptures themselves gesture towards a response. As the ultimate real, the divine stands “at the summit of the hierarchical scheme, or at the bottom as the ultimate foundation of all things.” The former maps onto the Ramayanan articulation, while the latter corresponds to the Upanisadic conception. God directs and pervades existence. Further, the holy texts suggest that “there are, indeed, two visible appearances (rupa) of Brahman – the one has a fixed shape, and the other is without a fixed shape.” Again, the divine incarnates itself in the fixed form of Rama and, concurrently, fluidly inhabits the “lifebreath.” Importantly, these dualities do not stand alone, but inter-connect and inter-penetrate. For example, Brahma, Shiva and Indra appear as Rama reawakens to his latent divine nature. In this way, when Vidagdha Sakalya inquires how many gods there are, Yajnavalkya can, with good conscience, answer: “three and three hundred, and three and three thousand,” as well as “one.”

On Humans:

In the contemporary Hindu traditions of India, personhood is bound up with the notion of dharma. Analogous to Western conceptions of moral justice and social ethics, dharmic obligation performs significant cosmic work, upholding the order of the universe. As such, it plays the role of a timeless, all-encompassing law. The appropriate content of dharma remains elusive and context-dependent, however. After all, as the Apastamba Dharma Sutra explains, “dharma and adharma do not wander about saying ‘Here we are!’” Rather, dharmic practice proves “flexible and adaptable to different circumstances and a variety of situations.” The tension, thus, between stability and volatility, universality and particularity, defines the Hindu vision of personhood.

In the Hindu traditions, desire, and by extension personhood, defy categorical definition, resting instead within the tension between reality and the ideal, which itself is always in flux. Life proves too complex, too multivalent, for absolutes. Perhaps the Ramayana epic illustrates this best. Indulging his desire for Sita, Ravana enlists the help of his magician friend, Maricha, who takes the shape of a golden deer “unlike any seen before.” Despite Lakshmana’s intuitive suspicion and repeated warning, Sita succumbs to her desire, imploring Rama to “catch it for me, my Lord.” In turn, Ravana successfully abducts the unprotected Sita, dragging her to his golden chariot. As the gods watch from above, they grimly pronounce: “Our purpose is accomplished…Ravana’s destruction is now guaranteed. Nothing can save him from the wrath of Rama.” In the end, then, Ravana’s desire proves self-destructive, whereas Sita’s desire allows the providential plan to unfold. Passions kill and passions save. The human condition rests on a dharmic obligation that is sensitive to the tangled interplay of revealed truths, remembered advice and embodied instinct.

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Life as a Stage

Critics of religion often point to passivity as one of the detrimental side-effects of faith. Such passivity may manifest itself either in an other-worldly soteriology ('just wait until I get to heaven') or in a this-worldly hesitation to act ('just let God do it'). The traces of a 'leave-it-to-God' theology haunt contemporary conversations on subjects ranging from climate change to poverty, as well as, most notably, historical debates over slavery. A New Church pamphlet, for example, put it simply: "the Abolition spirit...is attempting to thwart the plans of Providence."

Undoubtedly, this line of critique deserves serious attention. The wisdom of Proverbs states it bluntly: "The hand of the diligent will rule, while the lazy will be put to forced labour" (Proverbs 12:24). And yet, today's shabad complicates this account. It reads:

ਆਪਣਾ ਚੋਜੁ ਕਰਿ ਵੇਖੈ ਆਪੇ
Staging His own play, He Himself watches it.
[SGGS, 553]

While life undoubtedly involves the staging of a play, so too it requires those fleeting moments of spectatorship. An action devoid of reflection quickly degenerates into rash judgment and knee-jerk decision-making. Similarly, a life without rest, a week without Sabbath, a meal without prayerful thanksgiving, transforms existence into a monologue - a belligerent projecting of the self onto the world. Watching your play, embarking on a late-afternoon stroll, taking a deep breath, simply inhaling the world, help us to habituate the practice of refraining. As Pema Chodron suggests, sometimes we must refrain from immediately filling up space just because we notice a gap.

Let us heed the critics' call to action. But let us also watch ourselves act. Let us climb to the balcony of the dance floor. Let us find time to be - just be.

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On the Seventh Principle

(Reverence) for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part…

In his first letter to the Corinthian churches, Paul draws an analogy between the inter-dependence of an individual’s bodily organs and the inter-connectedness of the church of God. “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it,” he insists. “If one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

When Unitarian Universalists weave a web of intimate relationality, they do so against both a Manichaen dualism of cosmic cleavage and a Neo-Platonic division of the human subject. To enter into a world of interconnection is to move beyond indifference, tolerance, even community, into a metaphysical morass of radical mutuality. Far from the abstract notions of being or existence, with which Heidegger and Satre theorize, the interconnected web necessitates Becket’s rhetoric of “the mess.” In a very real sense, the fortune and fate of togetherness shape every innovation, every act of rebellion, every fleeting feeling, every independent decision, every manifestation of Dasein that is staged on the with-world. As Paul intuits, the same life-force that pulsates through throbbing arteries lifts geese into flight, falls tenderly in tears and booms with daggers of flashing light.

In solidarity, however, nothing is solide. Unity belies uniformity, permanence surfaces as but a “word of degrees” (Emerson). The ever-expanding, ever-consolidating, ever-undulating web of interdependence exhibits Schlegel’s “chaotic universality.” Each fragment holds an imprint of the whole, yet the totality never stabilizes. To covenant is to name this fractured harmony, to make explicit this tenuous cohesion, allowing the promises we share to pull the elastic cord tighter – to introduce the blessing of responsibility: “At home, and outside, I place my trust in You” (Sri Guru Granth Sahib).

Does this stormy pattern warrant reverence? The other day, while co-instructing an unruly mass of eight-graders, I witnessed chaos blossom into affinitive community. Amidst the noise of pubescent pranks, squeals and grunts arose a symphony of shared aspirations, anxieties and avidities. I couldn’t help but think to Venturi’s truism: less is a bore. In that moment of messy vitality, as boys complained and girls giggled, the “difficult unity of exclusion” eclipsed an “easy unity of exclusion.” Everyone was needed, everyone was implicated, everyone was present – even God.

For Frankfurt pastor Clemens Taesler, life occasions reverence (Ehrfurcht), “in us, beside, under and above us.” To experience God, humanity and the natural world is to celebrate glory, honesty and privilege (Ehre), while acknowledging the tenderness of awe and fear (Furcht).


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