Saying The Word
It’s easy not to believe,
To scoff at the personification of God,
The majestic bearded man
Who decides everything,
The prayer specific saints,
The miraculous interceding angels,
The signs and symbols.
But alone in the dark,
Surrounded by the suffering of this world
I find myself praying,
Saying the word.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
God Who?
How many debates about God, about whether there is a God or not, about whether you should believe in God or not, how many of these arguments skip right over the definition of God?
Reasonable people like to point out the anthropomorphic tendency to create God in our own image. Yet for many in this world, belief in anything – God, Santa Claus, Darwin, Heliocentricity – requires an image in our minds, an image we’ve constructed in order to grasp the concept. So is it not hard to understand why some of us need to start with images that come from our own lives in order to grasp higher concepts? Rather than disparage such practices, can we not simply understand our anthropomorphism as part of the evolution of human understanding?
We can’t all be smarty-pants geniuses, can we?
Those who attack the notion of God and organized religion have plenty of ammunition. History is full of abominations committed in the name of God and religion. Take away religion, some posit, and all those religious persecutions and wars, all those acts of fundamentalist terrorism would disappear. The Twin Towers would still be standing, some argue, as if the innate cruelty, greed and egotism of our species is fed by religion alone.
Have there never been acts of violence and cruelty between atheists? Does atheism impart a model of ethical behavior that has somehow escaped all the earnest prayers of the faithful?
As long as there are people who compete on this planet, there will be conflict, whether or not it is cloaked in religion. “Cloak” is the key word here.
It is not belief in God or any one particular religion that causes violence, it is the people themselves who use religion and belief in God to justify the violence they would commit with or without religion. History is full of them.
It is wise that educated, enlightened people reject the medieval mysticism of religious ideas that oppress the human mind and spirit. But to say religion must be abandoned because it is flawed is to deny the power of evolution. There is an evolution of human understanding along with our biological evolution. Our evolution is made possible, in part, by a bigger brain, and especially by the preservation and accumulation of knowledge which is constantly analyzed, tested and corrected as the years go by. It is the scientific method.
Which brings me back to the word, God. We often argue about the existence of God without any discussion about how the concept of God has evolved throughout history, without any shared definition of the word, God. Just look up the word God in several dictionaries and you will find definitions that are subject to widely different interpretations. One of my favorite definitions is in Merriam-Webster’s “Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.”
“The supreme or ultimate reality.”
This is a definition that sheds the specific image of a great bearded man in the sky who makes wishes come true. It even relieves one of the obligation of faith in that which cannot be scientifically proven. It is a definition that simply states: God is what is. It would be hard to argue, though certainly some esoteric philosophers have, that there is no such thing as “reality.”
So you may be a modern intellectual person who absolutely rejects the constraints of organized religion and the belief in the hierarchy of saints serving an all-powerful deity who punishes evil and rewards righteousness. But if I define God as reality, if I define God as existence, then you may very well say, “I do believe in God, but only in God as you define it.”
How many definitions of God do we have in this world? Is there truly someone who does not believe in all of them? Perhaps so. Perhaps there are many who believe the word God is a useless word we must abandon to free ourselves from religious mysticism and oppression. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that these people are no longer contributing to the evolution of spiritual beliefs. They are abandoning the field to those who may not want religion to change, to grow, to evolve. And this would not be especially troubling, except for the fact that those who claim to believe in God number in the billions.
As of 2005, approximately 88 percent of the world's population were said to "believe in God,” according to Cambridge University. In the United States, 95 percent of the population "believe in God." Are we who know better such superior beings that we can simply dismiss the beliefs of most of the people here on planet Earth?
Yes, just because certain beliefs are popular doesn’t mean they are true. Reality is not subject to popular opinion, and no matter how hard the Catholic church tried to impose a geocentric model of the solar system on science, reality eventually prevailed.
So do we live in a dark age where the majority of Earth’s inhabitants are still governed by mysticism and ignorance? I suppose the darkness of our particular age is a relative term. Here in the United States we certainly live in an enlightened age, educationally and technologically, compared to just a few hundred years ago. But perhaps in a thousand years, we will be seen as brutishly ignorant, despite how many tunes we can put on an iPod.
We live in an age like any other. It is an age where we struggle with one another and against one another for what we believe is right. We evolve and move forward when we compromise and join together as imperfect beings who respect one another’s right to explore the meaning of this existence. We fall backward when we become convinced that we alone possess the truth and that those we disagree with must be changed, defeated or destroyed. It is the difference between war and peace.
But how much certainty can any of us have about such an all-embracing word as God? And if we lack absolute certainty, we must absolutely embrace tolerance.
I’ve always admired this observation: “A God I can understand is no God at all.” If you simply accept the word God as a place holder for existence, then of course it is beyond the mental capabilities of anyone to have a complete understanding of existence.
In his book, “The God Delusion,” author Richard Dawkins opens with a quote from Albert Einstein:
I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
Yet life is personal, and one way or another, we forge a personal relationship with life, with existence as the years go by. And because it is far too complex for us to grasp the whole of existence, we employ a certain amount of faith, in things like photosynthesis, gravity, reproduction, magnetism – things that most of us have only tested in the laboratory of everyday experience.
It is good that scientists and others rid our culture of harmful delusions, that they perpetuate the evolution of human discovery and knowledge. But if belief in God is simply a belief in “the supreme or ultimate reality,” would it not be better to contribute to the evolution of religious belief, rather than merely attack it and create a warring camp of atheists? Isn’t that just more of the same old idea that one must defeat one’s opponents, rather than enlighten one’s opponents? And perhaps confusion comes from seeing one another as opponents, rather than realizing there are well-intentioned beings on all sides who are seeking “the supreme or ultimate reality.”
Before either side of the debate over God engages, would it not be more productive to join together in searching for an understanding of just what it is the argument is about? For surely, not all of those who belong to organized religions believe God is a bearded man in the sky who directs the course of our lives.
We do evolve, physically, culturally and spiritually. Some religions are cruel and dogmatic and stuck in the dark ages, while others are open to change. Some religions are dedicated to destroying any perceived threat to their beliefs, while others embrace a commonality that exists among all people.
To me, when one declares one is an atheist, it is simply the other side of the coin, just another declaration of allegiance to a special interest group perceived by its members as superior to others. It’s just like politics, where Republicans and Democrats generally adhere to a rigid set of beliefs while seeking to defeat one another.
Our political system bogs down when Republicans and Democrats become intractable opponents, determined to see the other side fail. I favor pragmatic compromise in which both sides realize their purpose is to solve problems, to find solutions that move us forward in the evolution of our society. When one believes that only his or her philosophy – or religion – is true and all others are false and without merit, then one has become a fanatic.
The enemy of cultural evolution is not religion, it is fanaticism. There are all sorts of fanatics who insist their view of the world is the only true view, and that all other views must not be tolerated. Yes, if there had never been any religions in this world, there would never have been religious wars and persecutions. But there will always be fanatics who will find plenty of reasons to engage the darker sides of human nature which result in war and persecution.
It is not the stone that kills, it is the one who throws the stone. Take the stone away and the killer is still there. Take the stone away and the killer will find another weapon.
The idea of loving one’s enemy is more than a religious tenet. It is a way to discourage the impulse to harm those you disagree with. It is a way to try and understand those you disagree with. None of us are so different than one another that we do not share at least some common aspirations. To love one’s enemy is to stop seeing each other as enemies. To treat one’s neighbor as you would have your neighbor treat you is the beginning of understanding that we are all beings who care about our lives. We may be confused, we may be wrong, we may even be criminally insane, but the evolution of society depends on our ability to replace killing one another with healing one another.
That idea comes from religious thought. It is a profound idea, among many profound ideas that religion has proposed. Are these thoughts inspired by God? Since I define God as existence, as the reality of being, then I would say yes, life itself inspires ideas. Life is the inspiration.
Existence is a miraculous thing to me, that we live on this beautiful planet with all these exquisite life forms, that we have the ability to understand the science behind the creation of our universe, that we love. For me, to say God does not exist, is to say existence does not exist.
Oh yes the world is full of simplistic, ignorant and oppressive ideas of God fashioned into religions that have caused great harm in this world. And yes, perhaps the great bearded man in the sky who brings wrath and destruction to one’s enemies does not actually exist. But considering the billions of people on planet Earth who believe there is some kind of spiritual component to our existence, perhaps it would be better to lay down our arms and explore what we have in common, and continue to evolve.
So what is God? Each of us must find our own answer. Or perhaps there is no single answer. A Zen master once said searching for God is like a fish in the ocean trying to find water. We can learn from the wisdom of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders, but it is the experience of our own individual lives that will show us how near or far we are from the truth.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Idolatry
They crowd around the dirty window
Where the faintest image of Jesus has appeared,
Standing for hours,
Praying,
Hoping to be blessed,
To be sanctified.
All around the world
The faithful are making pilgrimages,
Pressing their lips to sacred artifacts,
Expecting miraculous transformation,
As if God is in one place
And not another.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Guardian
She walks among us,
Taking physical form for a moment,
Watching.
But when I am particularly low,
When my light is flickering,
She comes closer,
Smiles into my eyes,
Deep,
And I am renewed.
Only later do I realize,
I have seen her again.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
I See Them
There was a rabbit
Loose in the grove.
She taught me how to enter
The silence of its fear
So it would know
My innocence.
There was an old clock
Whose tic and toc
Was heard by those
Who could only imagine me.
She taught me how to travel
Through the sound
Into their hearts.
In spring her orchard was full
Of birds and butterflies.
She pressed her warm fingers
Over my eyes and said:
See from where
All pretty things come.
Her old Siamese
Loved his pie-pan milk
Steaming on the back porch.
One winter he was gone.
I remembered how still he sat
With folded paws
And cloud-blue eyes.
Looking into heaven
He finally found his way,
She whispered,
Close your eyes
And see him.
I see them.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Reverence
We are taught to revere the old ways
Of our beloved ancestors,
Their ancient wisdom,
Honed over generations
Into this perfect jewel,
Hard,
Prismatic,
Eternal,
An ornament
Worn so proudly by those who know,
Our teachers,
The guardians of all knowledge,
The caretakers of the past.
Impediments.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
If You Fall
If you fall,
Truly fall,
God will catch you,
But first,
You must fall.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Saints
The saints so often say
We must give up wanting,
Surrender desire,
Disregard comfort,
Give everything to the poor
And live a life of service
To others.
They are like so many in this world
Who choose a path,
Who fulfill a destiny,
Then declare it is the only path,
The only destiny.
Even saints suffer from certainty.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Reminder
The day will come
When Earth is done
With all of us
And everything.
Everything.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Language
The mind says,
Listen to me, I will explain everything.
The heart says,
I understand, but my feelings are unchanged.
The mind says,
This is God and this is life,
All is explained.
The heart says,
I speak a language you do not understand,
A language without words.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Question
I know there are some
Who ask if there is a soul.
Yet is it not a surpising question?
As if someone turned to you,
Stopped you on a crowded city sidewalk
And asked: Do you believe in the body?
Belief comes after the fact.
Yes, I know,
We cannot photograph the soul
Or slip a fragment of it under a microscope.
Yet the very idea of spiritless being
Causes something in me to recoil,
Something that cannot deny its own existence,
Something I call,
If I must,
The soul.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Cacophony
. . . of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weakness of the flesh.
~ Ecclesiastes, Chapter XII, Verse 12
How fervent,
How intricately detailed,
Our entreaties,
How reason-filled our requests,
How impassioned our pleas.
How many books have we made,
Filled with tiny words,
Preaching,
How many?
All these tiny words
Speaking on our behalf,
Speaking to instruct us,
Explaining,
Imploring.
From the beginning of the printed word,
The beginning of the spoken word,
How many?
Now, imagine you are God,
Imagine the cacophony,
Imagine your delight
In one single, solitary, silent prayer.
Life After Death
You want to believe
But faith is not enough
For your rational, scholarly mind,
And so you spend your evenings
Searching through ancient texts
For the meaning of life,
Surrounded and infused
With the souls of the dead.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Praying
Praying,
All this praying,
Filling empty time,
Becoming a substitute,
Becoming the center of your life.
When at last the promise appears
You turn away,
Too comfortable now
In the familiar sameness of prayer.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Life Is Too Beautiful
Life is too beautiful
To be written down on paper,
Printed in books,
Read in small darkened rooms
By merciless scholars
Too eager to impose their will
On those who still believe
There is an answer.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Do Not Grieve
Do not grieve for me,
For I am standing at the edge of the sea,
With one foot still in this world,
The other in eternity.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Child
There is a child in me,
Surprised at what he sees,
This eternal child,
Always surprised,
Especially now,
Seeing the passage of time
Marked upon my face.
O time,
I still don’t understand,
Though I’ve changed from boy to man,
Though I will change from what I am,
The child,
Remains.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Questions
Why?
Why am I alive?
When with every breath I take a child dies.
Am I just another ant in the ant farm?
Or am I a traveler on the road to divinity?
Am I a blade of grass reaching for the sun?
Or am I a ray of sunlight cast indiscriminately upon the world?
Perhaps I am just a man with time on his hands,
Time to think beyond bodily needs,
Time to ask questions,
Time to create questions out of madness,
Madness that comes when living itself is not enough.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Mysterious Ways
Thinking about the mysterious ways of the Lord
And all,
I came upon a squashed bug,
Some kind of beetle,
Swarmed by ants,
And realized
I was standing on the line of ants
That led from the dirt
To the hot cement sidewalk
Where I stood,
Doing the Lord’s bidding.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Little Space
A little space
Is all I need
To sit and rest
And plant a seed,
To someday root,
To someday grow,
So when I’m old
I’ll someday know.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Your Most Recent Revelation
When the moment comes,
Light fills the sky
And birds are everywhere in voice,
And you say:
At last,
I have found it.
It passes.
On another day,
You carefully reconstruct
The circumstances
Of your most recent revelation,
And wait.
The sky is brown,
Everywhere dogs are in voice,
A garbage truck fills the air with noise,
Laboring street by street,
House by house.
It’s gone.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
To Rise
I stood up fast and rushed to the window
To see a small blue and rust colored bird
When the dizziness came and clouded my sight
And a soft voice inside said:
Old man you are not too long for this world,
And I thought, what a pleasant way to die,
To rise swiftly,
Then rise again.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
This Place
The fear comes from knowing how the brain works
And how it can be injured,
How the personality can so dramatically change
Or disappear.
O eternal life!
O embodied spirit!
Is not the brain a repository for our souls?
Is the soul so ethereal,
Sewn so tightly into the fabric of God
That we are not in essence what we appear?
Is this life,
This brain,
A suit of clothing for the soul?
Will the time ever come when we say:
“Oh yes, human beings,
I was one for a while.”
Or perhaps this life is the only place,
The only place of
I,
One,
And place.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Playground
We are the little children of God
Who decided we want to do things on our own.
So God said, “OK,”
And put us here in this playground.
We’re still learning how to play together nicely.
We’re a bit slow.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
This Place
The fear comes from knowing how the brain works
And how it can be injured,
How the personality can so dramatically change
Or disappear.
O eternal life!
O embodied spirit!
Is not the brain a repository for our souls?
Is the soul so ethereal,
Sewn so tightly into the fabric of God
That we are not in essence what we appear?
Is this life,
This brain,
A suit of clothing for the soul?
Will the time ever come when we say:
“Oh yes, human beings,
I was one for a while.”
Or perhaps this life is the only place,
The only place of
I,
One,
And place.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Not One
In this large world,
Everything,
All at once,
All possible eventualities,
Over and over again,
Yet,
None of us can walk on water,
Not one.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Word
For some writers,
Immortality comes with one great novel,
A few immutable poems,
An eternally anthologized story,
Or you might be Shakespeare.
I am old,
Started late,
No great novel fluttering within,
Eager to take wing and soar.
My most productive days
All squandered.
My poetry is stale,
My stories all the same story
Told over and over again
In flimsy disguise:
Life is,
Disappointment,
Ad nauseam.
I never wrote a play,
Too lost to suggest any course of behavior,
Even to an actor.
All my ambitions have come to this,
The search for a word,
A word that cries out the anguish of existence,
The bliss of realization,
The inner peace of infinity,
A fiery crucifix blinding the eyes of evil,
Raising the dead,
Ceasing confusion and argument,
A word that will place a single seed of knowing
Within the mind of all who hear,
A seed that will grow into a mighty oak of being,
An impenetrable fortress of being,
A universe of being,
Being without boundaries.
Scholars, close your books.
Suburbanites, turn off your televisions.
Cast off all entertainments and listen.
Quiet now.
Can you hear it?
Listen.
O word that is no word,
No idea,
No sound,
O word that is no word,
I summon you forth.
Quiet.
Listen.
The word is here.
It has always been here.
Listen.
The word is here.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Seeing
Take everything you know,
Write it down on a blank sheet of paper,
Then fold the paper and put it in an envelope.
Say out loud:
Here is all I know, all I have learned,
As you light the envelope on fire,
Watching it burn to ashes.
Now walk freely into the world and see everything,
No longer masked by certainty.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
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