What is Worship?

I always wondered what worship really was. Is it just singing songs of praise, burning sacrifices, and giving lip service to your god? No one ever seemed to have a good definition of this, and I never understood what it meant. How do you do it? What am I supposed to be feeling? Finally I heard a good definition of worship: listening.

Worship as listening... yes, this seems more worshipful than anything. To silence the self and all its commotion, to settle into the underlying Silence of... what? Divinity? Reality? Whatever. I remember Kazantzakis wrote something like, of all the angels flying around God, the one named Silence flies the closest, a lovely image.

Every tradition has it's meditative parts. Yet western religion, like western life, focuses almost exclusively on activity: reading the texts, singing, chanting, praying, endless talking about God, and of course, social improvement. All have their place; social improvement through charity and such are good, and we must talk to one another about our shared faiths if we are to sustain a church (one could question the need for organized religion, but as a social species, I'm willing to let that go for now).

A moment of silence at church doesn't get it, either, because no real understanding is ever taught of what that really means. We may pause in the hymns and prayers, but no one ever said it meant internal silence too. The point was never made; for myself I always thought I was supposed to pray silently, that is, "think" to God instead of talking to him. The upshot is we talk to God so much in prayer that no one takes a moment to listen for a response, which is never going to come like a booming voice from the sky.

I really like the story of Elijah on the mountain. He hears a whirlwind, but God isn't in the whirlwind. He hears an earthquake, but God isn't in the earthquake. He beholds a roaring fire, but God is not in the fire. Finally, he hears God as a still, small voice.

Now, the difference between a loud sound and a quiet sound is far less than the difference between any sound and silence. And the passage is pointing to a profound qualitative difference from the tremendous events that he just witnessed and the still small voice. So I think that line would be better understood as referring to Silence than a whisper.

Elijah was listening, he was worshipping.

Lastly, every time I write worship I seem to type whorship, which I think is sort of funny.

Night and Darkness

As a poet, I've long been an advocate for night, darkness, silence, etc. Darkness in our culture is associated with evil; an unfortunate development, and untrue. Night represents ignorance, confusion, corruption, the time of terrors, demons, death. But it is also a very spiritual time. You may lie awake in bed thinking about the things that matter most; there is time and space, few distractions, you are able to center yourself. It is the place of intuition, reflection, thought. Lovers meet, philosophers dream, and all things can rest.

Darkness, silence, emptiness, and stasis all seem negative. They ARE negative, in that, to use a phrase out of art, they are a sort of negative space to the positive space of light, sound, form, and movement. But clearly both are necessary.

Even where there is light, darkness remains. Light is a wave, and contains within it the "off" part of the pulse, the trough of the wave. Sound is the same way. I like to think of all existence as being a vibration. Matter is basically energy, in packets called quanta. Such is one theory at least. Another is, "we work with being, but non-being is what we use." (TTC 11)

Lao Tzu is always talking about the feminine (or yin) as the base, saying "know the male, but keep to the female" (TTC 28). And yin was, I read, originally associated with the north side of a hill (the darker, shaded side). It is the dark side of the Tai Chi symbol. (Yang of course being the male, and the south, sunny side of the hill.)

The fact that light contains darkness in its very form, as a necessary condition of existence reminds me of something that Jesus said in Matthew 6, as he spoke about the lilies of the field. After talking about having to serve either God or money, he goes on to say, do not worry about what you will eat, what you will wear. If you serve God above all, the rest will follow naturally.

In Taoist terms, return to the Tao, and the worldly things take care of themselves. Nothing is done, but nothing is left undone. Be at peace with the emptiness, the darkness. Because money, material things, even spiritual things, like aping the morality of a saint or sage, are all part of the busy-ness of life. They come and go, on and off. But the emptiness, the space, the Tao, exist everywhere, foundationally. The infinite surrounds and infuses the finite; darkness dwells within the light, poverty within the wealth.

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.
(TTC 12)

So you see I'm not just trying to be iconoclastic in talking about darkness. Or maybe I'm being iconoclastic, but in a much different and bigger way. In the stillness is born the true moral stance. As I said, poverty within the wealth: one in that mode will not use wealth as a weapon, but as a blessing. If you go for the money, the light, first, and only afterwards go for God and darkness, you're too late. Light sees only light, never darkness, which sees both.

If you start from ego, everything you do is going to have failure in it. If you start from God, from Tao, from darkness and stillness, what you do and what you are will be pure. Which is why I loved the line in Kazantzakis' book The Last Temptation of Christ:

When what is clean touches what is unclean, the unclean becomes clean!

Give 'Em an Inch

So, I finally finished Gordon Hempton's One Square Inch of Silence. It's a great book, and only took me so long to read because... well, I've been reading less of late, and have generally been very distractable and scattered these past few months. Too much time online as well, I think.

Anyways. He has an uphill fight ahead of him, but it's a noble cause and I support him. It's interesting to think about quiet places I have known. Having never really been as attuned to these things in the conscious way I have been since picking this book up, it's not likely to be quiet as what he would consider quiet. But I can name a few experiences, at least.

Porcupine Mountains

Top of the list is the Porcupine Mountains State Park of northwest Michigan. I remember it as being full of leaves-in-wind, and the gentle lapping of Lake Superior's unusually gentle waters on the stony shore, the almost silent night-thrum of the Big Carp River valley spread below me where I sat on the open ridge in the early morning hours, bathed in an astonishingly bright half-moon, feeling like the only man in the world save for my father, behind me sleeping in the trees.

And there are the alpine slopes of New Hampshire's Presidential Mountains, especially Jefferson after the chaotic crowds of Washington; I think it was the contrast that did it, though in actual fact just then on the side of Jefferson only an occasional fly could be heard. Also places in the southern Appalachians, and in Utah-- a few rare parts of the Wasatch Plateau, and especially Zion N.P., which despite what Mr. Hempton writes, struck me as a very quiet place, very mellow in spirit compared to Canyonlands and Arches, which felt much more hectic in spirit. I think it was because there were not private cars allowed in Zion, just the shuttle busses. Or maybe that valley really is special, and named appropriately...





Zion NP

Sadly many of these silences and quietudes are mere moments. Air planes and cars and chainsaws and all manner of other intrusions occur continually. But I'm thinking positively just now. I like Hempton's idea. Imagine if everyone picked a square inch to defend, some place they felt a connection to and meant to preserve. Not limited only to preserving quiet, but for whatever. It could be a trout fisherman protecting his favorite pool in the stream. We all have special places that we love-- maybe a place only we know, maybe a place loved in common.

It's a fascinating thought experiment. Imagine a website where people could mark an interactive map with their spot and find others nearby with whom to form coalitions. It'd be a real democratic, grassroots environmental ethic. After all, I firmly believe that for the environmental ethic, the land ethic, the green ethic, call it what you will... for it to matter, it has to be personal.

This is why organizations like the Utah Conservation Corps build trails. It doesn't seem like conservation (though keeping people on a designated path reduces impacts elsewhere), but it is, and vitally so. It helps get people out there to experience those places, to make them real. It's why there's many programs to get urban kids out in the woods for a weekend. I fully support, for example, not drilling in ANWR, but it's abstract to me. I most likely will never get there. So there's no connection. And environmentalism, ecology, is ALL about connection; building a relationship with Nature, from which we've become disconnected thanks to civilization.

Waste and Madness
in Appalachia

Example: who cares more about mountaintop removal mining? Some Sierra Clubber in Seattle, or some hillbillie back in the hollers of West Virginia? I argue the latter: it is their home being shaken by the blasting day and night and being covered in the settling stone dust, it is there land values that are plummeting, their streams and drinking water poisoned, their daily landscape being marred forever. Props to the Sierra Club and its work and empathy, but a vested interest is the prime driver for passion and action. But the people need to connect, to find one another.

I wonder if this would be feasable. I know nothing about website design, or whether this is needed or a useful idea. There's already clubs and coalitions out there, locally and nationally. I'm sure there's networks already that connect them to each other, and connect people to local clubs. Still, it's a cool thought...

Acceptance

View from my sister's balcony

We are our experience, not the things in our experience. As I gaze upon the sunset, it occurs to me that as the sun dips low and bathes the clouds in a golden light from below, that I am that golden light, I am that cloudscape. It exists in my mind, making me integral to the scene. The scene does not exist anywhere for me but within my mind. I have never known anything outside of my own consciousness-- what would that even mean? The sunset is simply what the inside of my head looks like when I look at a sunset "out there." But no one has ever seen "out there" because whatever they saw, it was "in here," in their mind.

I said that acceptance is important. There are two ways in which acceptance seems to be understood. The first, and most common, is about saying "well, I guess that's just the way it is, nothing you can do about it." It is a form of giving up, the road of despair. We rightly disparage this form; to accept that evil exists, or that a bad thing has happened, seems like quitting.

But that is not all that acceptance can be. The second acceptance is about understanding the truth that we are our experience. The entire world that we know exists within us. We talk about how society is out of harmony with the world, but when looked at from this acceptance, we see that this is false. I look at the sunset, and perhaps mourn all the telephone lines and buildings and the roar of airplanes and traffic that get in the way. But then if I accept, I suddenly see that it all exists as a giant whole. There is no harmony or disharmony, there is only IS. It's all there.

So, okay, now I've accepted (we'll suppose). Now I understand that all is one, including me. It is one experience. This is purely logical. Now I look at the sunset not only feeling part of the happening, but knowing that the telephone lines and traffic are integral too. For now, at least. Change happens when we, still accepting what is, change what is.

Perhaps the whole solution comes down to simple asthetics. We choose sunsets without telephone lines, and find ourselves on a pristine mountainside. Or, maybe in a cleaner, less chaotic city, as she work for change that way. There are many ways to have change, but it is acceptance that first opens the doors, that first illuminates the many paths.

I continually find myself coming back to Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching; it has so much for me. Perhaps one day I'll be able to move on to other chapters, but for now it seems to hold the main lessons for me. I keep reading it more deeply. It ends:

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Lately I've been focusing so much on looking for a job, thinking about money, getting my truck fixed (that's at least done), bills, friends, goals, ideas. I've been busy on the computer, reading, writing like a maniac (and loving it), but haven't sat back and watched sunsets enough, have hardly looked at the trees, have taken no time to simply breathe. I have been forgetting to pause. I keep feeling so low, being surrounded by this urban shit-scape, but that just means I've become too caught up in the "being," not remembering the "non-being;" that is, I've been wrapped up in the things in my experience, and fighting that reality, rather than being one with the experience itself, accepting it.

The roar of traffic as I try to enjoy the sunset seems a bother, but then I realize sound is only existing because of the silence it vibrates within. So I sit back and accept the traffic, hearing the quiet below it. The telephone poles and buildings block my view, but I can accept them, and for the moment let them help form the beautiful moment by framing it. Things like poverty and evil cannot be changed if we continually deny with even part of our minds that it is there. Accept the reality of it, that's step one, but it needn't end there.

We can work the universe like a master craftsman, who constantly checks in with the reality of his art. If he doesn't look at what is before him, he ruins the sculpture. So he looks at his carving, at one and present with its current reality, shaves a little more wood off just here, then checks in again. A dialogue with the world begins this way, and we move towards the beautiful, the good, as a wise man must if he is wise.

Delicate Arch at dawn

As I read and reflect on One Square Inch of Silence, I keep having this nagging thought, a counterpoint to the whole issue, and it has to do with all I'm saying now. If Gordon Hempton is working towards silence and quiet in the national parks, great! It's a better asthetic choice than listening to air traffic while we ponder the age and beauty of Delicate Arch or the stoic strength of an old growth forest. But let us not forget that as the long road toward his goal is walked, we can be enjoying the peace that is already out there all the while. We need not wait. The stars in the city are few, but it's still good to look at the ones that remain.

So. We work with what is, making it more beautiful (one hopes). But it is always important to be rooted in the non-being, which is where the totality of experience, and all of its peace, is realized.

(EDIT: I revisited this post, to readdress some issues. Find that post here)

River Music

Staying on the same topic, silence, I'll continue. I must, for this book has in a way opened for me a whole world, that cries out for examination. The author's quest to preserve natural silence, and to spread awareness of the need for it, really resonates with me, even though I may not be as good at hearing the subtleties like he is, given that he's been focusing on sound, on listening, for so long. I hardly give any thought to sound, beyond listening to music; but, not being a musician, it's pretty casual listening. My sister, who was in the school choir in high school, says of a country group she like, "I love the way they use a lot of sharps and flats." I don't know what that really means. I know the definition of what sharps and flats are, but don't know how to hear them. I don't have the understanding behind it.

So, reading this passage sort of blew my mind:

From the sound of the water alone I've learned to distinguish the age of a tumbling stream. Older flows, such as those in Appalachia that escaped the last glaciation, have been tuning themselves for many thousands of years. Their watercourses and stony beds, smoothed to paths of least resistance by the ageless cycles of torrents and floods, sing differently. To my ears, they're quieter, more musical, more eloquent. Youthful streams, with their newly exposed and angular, unsmoothed rocks, push the water aside brashly, with a resulting clatter. (p 23; One Square Inch Of Silence)

A stream as music, literally! Oh sure, we've all heard that said poetically, but who among us have ever listened to a stream close enough to understand the water as tuning itself to the hillside, singing a duet of mountain and water? The passage continues:

In all cases, the rocks are the notes. I sometimes attempt to tune a stream by repositioning a few prominent rocks, listening for the subtle changes in sound. (p 23)

I've done this before, as a child making little dams and rockwalls in streams, and have myself noticed the way the sound changes. How could it not? Of course, our additions and subtractions to the stream are more intrusive than anything, and are probably quickly erased as the river finds it's own harmony. But it's fun, at any rate, to read that the music of running water is also reality, that the poetry applies directly. It makes me want to go sit down by a stream and hear the world sing.

The Poverty of Wealth

I hear that most of the wealth of our nation lives in the cities. But when I look around at what we've built, all I can do is wonder why a wealthy people puts up with such an impoverished landscape. All the new buildings are bland and identical; you drive through whole developments, subdivisions, condo complexes, and everything looks the same. It's almost as bland and uniform as the old Soviet apartment highrises, except instead of gray, we might have some color splashed around. But it's a uniform color scheme, repeated on every condo, every house. Businesses like big box stores abound with blank walls facing every direction, and all the lawns sitting there as mere squares of flat green. What a waste.

Beyond that is what I call the tyranny of noise. It's appropriate that I'm reading One Square Inch Of Silence right now, because when you really stop and notice, here is no such thing as quiet space in a city. And most of the noise is just senseless. I've long had a major hatred against car alarms. I've never, ever in my life heard anyone say, upon hearing an alarm go off, "oh, someone must be breaking into that car!" Ever. I wonder if they're even effective for their intended purpose.

Yet, yesterday, with the windows open, I could hear them blaring all day. At one point, taking the trash out, one car just started going off on it's own. Nothing had touched it, nobody was around; the wind wasn't even blowing! But it honked for several minutes, filling the evening with noise and frustration. And earlier, one was going off for about a half hour before its hapless owner heard it, or the battery died. I really hope it was the latter.

I just don't know why we've all agreed to so much less than what's possible. A well-built cabin in the woods is more human than miles and miles of uniform condos. A meadow is more beautiful than a lawn. And a place where silence is at least an option is far more valuable than all the transportation systems in the world.

Shhh!

I'm reading this book called One Square Inch of Silence, by Gordon Hempton. It's about his project, his quest, to preserve the experience of silence in the backcountry (namely, Olympic National Park in northwest Washington) by designating one square inch that is meant to have only purely natural sound. With his sound equipment, he checks on the place often. Now, this square inch of silence impacts much of the surrounding area, because it means in theory, no jets anywhere near there, no sigh-seeing flights, no chain sawn, no off-road vehicles, etc. I'm only 50 pages into the book, but already find it very eloquent and fascinating. I'll be writing more about this book in days to come, I'm sure.

It strikes me, though, the irony of reading this book here in the Dallas area. Today I was sitting out on the balcony with the book, and would from time to time come into awareness of the soundscape around me. Almost 100% unnatural. I'd say it was all man-made, but in truth, it was all machine made. Sometimes it seems to me that we've created this system of engines and mechanics and electronic beeping, and are no longer really in control of it; it has a life of it's own. Human noise isn't as bad, it's voices, coughing, clapping, farting, belching, laughing, singing. It's the growl of internal combustion engines, the car horns and alarms, the scanners beeping in the store that are out of place and stressful.

Point is, save for the occasional gust of wind rattling the leaves of the few trees that poke up through the grassy islands of the parking lot, there wasn't much natural sound. But, I still have my memories. I've been to a lot of places, way out in the backcountry, more or less. One instance where I especially remember the presence of silence really hitting me was on a camping trip at Horseshoe Lake, MI. It was a tiny rustic campground on a small kettle lake, a left-over from the glaciers and hardly more than a pond, surrounded by second or third growth pine forests. A beautiful place. Of the nine campsites, only three were occupied, including mine, and when I arrived no one else seemed to actually be in the campground.

After I'd set up camp and had begun to unwind from the city and the drive, I walked down the slope to the edge of the lake, just below my site. Presently, it struck me how quiet it was. Not true silence, no. That's not the point, neither of my story or of the book. But the stillness of the world, even as it hums its own slight chorus of light wind in the white pines, the occasional burst of a chickadee's song, the tiny sound of the little waves caressing the sandy shore... Suddenly it seemed even a sin to speak aloud, only a whisper was permitted. But, it was also all that was needed.

It occured to me that back in our city world, we're usually almost shouting at one another, just to be heard. I think Mr. Hempton said it well, right at the start of his book, when he mentioned that in order to hear the silence, one must first silence one's mind. In our city world, this is impossible; there's always so much going on, so much to think about, and no down time. Down time means the TV is on, with the commercials screaming at you, the laugh-track playing, the talking-heads pontificating. It's all so loud, making up with volume what it lacks in substance.

Even if unconsciously, I know the persuit of quietness is a big part of why I'm always heading for the hills. A Forest Service employee I knew in Utah once mentioned, with a grin, that he belongs to the Church of G.O.D., that is, the Great OutDoors. I agree. Like walking into a church, the wilderness demands quietude, not the roar of engines.