THE VOICES OF THE MIND

Religion? "Don't listen to its mad voices," says former Bishop

Is there anybody there?  We recently discussed Richard Holloway who in the epilogue to his candid, soul-bearing Memoir of Faith and Doubt, says this: ‘I wanted to keep religion around … because it gave us space to wonder and listen within’ (see also another post on this site: The silent centre of our spirit).  In his equally honest Unapologetic, Francis Spufford described ‘turning to a space where there is quite possibly no one’, but where he eventually becomes aware of ‘something that had been going on unremarked, so steady and continuous that we had never picked it out of the general background roar of the world’.  Rowan Williams has described the Christian religion specifically as ‘the space that has been cleared in human imagination and self-understanding by the revealing events of Jesus’ life’. 

Advocates of religion would seem to be telling us that we are missing something if we do not make, or find, that space and open ourselves to … something.  Significantly, Holloway also urges us not to abandon religion, but not to listen ‘to its mad voices’.  In our April reading  for our Wychwood Circle discussion (for once a mere 16-page essay) we listen to the voice of a Princeton University psychologist whose lecture was presented to a 1983 Symposium on Consciousness.  Speaking of an era which he dates before ‘consciousness’ (as he defines it) dawned, Julian Jaynes  says:

Whenever a significant choice is to be made, a voice comes in telling people what to do. … These voices are called gods. 

The period he describes is based on the oldest parts of the Iliad (eventually written down in about 800 BC), times when ‘auditory hallucinations’ were really quite common and seen as a normal part of life. Indeed:

Verbal hallucinations are common today, but in early civilization I suggest they were universal.

The bicameral mind

The mentality in this time was what he calls ‘the bicameral mind’, which means, if I understand it correctly, that there was a decision-making part and a follower part, but neither was ‘conscious’.  The importance of this mentality was that it had to exist in the sort of society that then prevailed, ‘ one rigidly ordered in strict hierarchies with strict expectancies organised into the mind so that hallucinations preserved the social fabric’.  He cites a number of examples of such societies from 9000 BC to 3000 BC (when writing provides even clearer evidence). He also goes on to say that ‘every person had a personal god’, as suggested by evidence in Mesopotamia and Egypt.  And he links – perhaps provocatively – this personal god to evidence from modern research (including his own):

It is possible to suggest that a part of our innate bicameral heritage is the modern phenomenon of the ‘imaginary’ playmate. … In the rare cases where the imaginary playmate lasts beyond the juvenile period, it too grows up with the child and begins telling him or her what to do in times of stress.

Divination

The implication is that this is one way the idea of the personal god might have started in ‘bicameral times’ before being developed into shared gods and idols.  Eventually we get to the development of a variety of ways of ‘discerning messages’.  He notes that one of these methods is still around, astrology. Significantly for our broadly theological Wychwood Circle discussions, such divination must apply also to the early prophets in the Hebrew Testament (our Old Testament) and he refers specifically to one of the oldest books, The Book of Amos (around 800 BC): 

I suspect that such prophets as Amos were those left-over bicameral or semi-bicameral persons in the conscious era who heard and could relay the voice of Yahweh with convincing authority.

So from ancient texts about earlier civilisations to modern sufferers of schizophrenia, we have evidence of a bicameral mind, and we have a new angle on human nature. What is left of the voices of the gods are remnants which are all around us of ‘a mentality that we no longer have’.  The remnants of course include – in addition to ‘hallucinations heard particularly in psychosis’ and problems with identity – our modern-day religions and the observed need for religion, and ‘our search for certainty’.  All excellent themes for a Wychwood Circle discussion.

[Jaynes ‘ final idea must be kept for another day, viz his ‘neurological model for the bicameral mind’. This bears significantly on the concept of the ‘divided brain’, and in particular the neglected right hemisphere of the brain which has only attracted the interest of neuroscientists since the 1960s. We came across this idea when reading Jonathan Sacks last year (see under Instances of the number 2: THE DIVIDED BRAIN). We may well return to it.]

On April 6^th at Wychwood Library (7.00 – 9.00 pm) we will explore in discussion the significance and the implications of these ideas, led by Ian Cave who suggested the piece. The meeting is, as always, open to anyone to come along and join in.  If you cannot open the link, please email david.soward@gmail.com for the pdf of the 16-page Lecture. 

'Poetry, Place and Faith' at Christ Church, Oxford

Nicola Slee has cancelled

We are sorry to have to announce that NICOLA SLEE has cancelled her visit to us on March 9th, due to pressure of work. 

Instead we are suggesting a trip into Oxford to attend the After Eight series at Christ Church cathedral on the same evening at 8pm, where poet Jeremy Hooker will talk about the importance of place in his work. 

There will be two car-loads going from West Oxfordshire. For a place, please call Michael Waring (Charlbury 01608 810663) or Ian Henderson (Enstone 01608 678348). 

RELIGION'S POETRY

RELIGION'S POETRY COULD STILL TOUCH US

A page from the Epilogue of Richard Holloway's Leaving Alexandria - A Memoir of Faith and Doubt:

Like other human enterprises, religion grew out of the human predicament. We are thinking animals. We may even be the only thinking creature in the unimaginable vastness of the universe, which means that in us the universe is thinking about itself, maybe for the first time! And we can’t stop doing it. It comes with these big self-conscious brains of ours from which also come science and philosophy. And art! Art is what our imagination has conjured up to express the wonder and terror of life; the stories we have told ourselves, the dreams we have dreamt, the longings and fears we have woven together. And the great gallimaufry we call religion is one of art’s great imaginings.

Don't abandon it, ... but don't listen to its mad voices 

Religion is human, and like humanity it is both a glory and a scandal. It is full of pity and full of cruelty. Just like us. So is the Bible. If only we could stop using it as if it had any more authority than Shakespeare or Proust or Elgar or Gauguin or Tolstoy or Nietzsche! It belongs with them, with its yearnings and crucifying certainties. It was human, all-too human.  Don’t abandon it, any more than we ought to abandon the other flawed cruel epics of the human imagination: but don’t listen to its mad voices. 

 A space to listen and wonder in 

In my walks I discovered my real dilemma. I wanted to keep religion around, purged of cruelty, because it gave us a space to wonder and listen within.  Purged of the explanations that don’t explain, the science that does not prove, the morality that does not improve; purged in fact of its prose, religion’s poetry could still touch us, make us weep, make us tender, and take us out of ourselves into the possibility of a courageous pity.

March 9th [NOT at Wychwood Library]

.

Richard Holloway's book was the subject of our February discussion at Wychwood Circle, which left some intriguing questions still to be answered. 

On Sunday, March 9th, we were due to welcome Dr Nicola Slee to the library in Milton under Wychwood (OX7 6LD) to address the topic of POETRY AND FAITH, but she has had to cancel. A poet, theologian and author of such books as Faith and Feminism, Nicola Slee had promised us "a consideration of the contribution of poetry to Christian faith and life, illustrated by reference to the work of 20th and 21st century poets". 

Please see the next post for an alternative venue on the same date. 

HUMAN DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE

CONVERSION OF LIFE; HELL ON EARTH?

In our recent book by Francis Spufford, he made much of the human propensity to muck things up (code name HPtFtU) and the importance of being able to move on - as well as the very benign influence that a recognition of this propensity would have on our tolerance of others. 

A vow to believe in the possibility of change

In the context of the benefits of the vows taken by religious communities, Timothy Wright, former Abbot of Ampleforth, has written this: 

Neither stability nor obedience could make sense without the third promise, that of conversion of life. ... The call to conversion of life is in effect a vow to change, to never remain still either in self-satisfied fulfilment or in self-denying despair. There is no room for the person who thinks they have got it all sorted out, nor for the temptation in so many to believe that we will never even get started. It is a vow to believe in the possibility of change in ourselves, and also in others.[taken from The Rule of St Benedict and Business Management: A Conversation (2002)]

We have made enough Hell on earth

Our February author, Richard Holloway, writes candidly of his adolescent temptations and the very strong influence of the monastic community at Kelham which he had chosen to join at 14. It could make depressing reading if it wasn't for the adult and contemporary slant which he puts on all these matters as he recounts them in his very readable memoir. In the context of the HPtFtU and some of our discussions at Wychwood Circle of modern understandings of heaven and hell and the nature of God, it is interesting to come across this passage:

I never found it hard to reject the vulgarity of the idea of Hell and see it only as human darkness made visible. We have made enough Hell on earth to know how creative human cruelty can be, not excluding its grimmer theological metaphors. It was never fear of Hell that was to haunt me. It was the lacerating sadness of disappointing God that hurt. The idea of the heartbroken God reaching out to his children for their love and being rejected by them is emotionally powerful. [from Leaving Alexandria - A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (2012, 2013)]

Richard Holloway was later to leave that community and, much later, the church, having by then been Bishop of Edinburgh for a number of years.



We will be discussing Richard Holloway's memoir at our regular monthly discussion at Wychwood Library (OX7 6LD) on February 9th. Philip Pullman describes the book thus: "Endlessly vivid and fascinating ... A delight and inspiration to believers, non-believers and ex-believers alike."

The group is very mixed and newcomers and occasional visitors are always welcome. At time of writing the library still had a spare copy available to borrow - 01993 830281. 

THE SILENT CENTRE OF OUR SPIRIT

     For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice. 

Any analogy has a limited value and therefore needs to be balanced by another, or by several others. There is a long theological tradition, called 'apophatic', which says that we can only talk about God in terms of what he/she/it is not. So from the image of the mountain with multiple approaches this piece switches to an inner exploration, before going on to say more about obstacles. For some of us, Francis Spufford's prose about his contemplative experiences in a quiet unnamed church still resonates and inevitably connects with other discussions about the power of silence or the physical and psychological benefits of meditation. 

Long before mindfulness became mainstream in the UK, John Main (1926-1982), an English Benedictine monk, pioneered the practice of Christian meditation. His work inspired the foundation of the World Community for Christian Meditation. Writing of the 'contemplative life' in Letters from the Heart (1988), in an attempt to dispel the sense that monastic communities are full of 'lifeless people sitting around all day with little or nothing to do', he said this:

But real prayer, coming from the silent centre of our spirit, is the source of the selflessness of love, the source of energy. In that centre, the source of our Being, we encounter God ... To find God is to find love. To find love is to find oneself in harmony with the basic energy of all creation, which is love. When a community is directed to this as its essential priority, ordinary limitations imposed on human relations by egoism become, as it were, flipped around. Where there was self-seeking there becomes service. Where there was desire for self-protection there becomes an impulse to lead others to fulfillment through love.

It is probably a little-known fact that the great Mark Williams, co-author of the now-legendary Mindfulness - a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world, as well as being director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, is a priest and indeed a canon of Christ Church cathedral. The prospect of inviting him to Wychwood Circle and giving him the topic "Mindfulness, and then ...?" to address is a tempting one. 

In the meantime one could be forgiven for having further thoughts about obstacles - whether to climbing the mountain or making that inner journey, or even going to church - and what indeed it is, since Spufford and the former Bishop of Edinburgh are our current themes, to be a Christian. There is a widespread feeling that to be a Christian is to sign up to a set of propositions. It may be in practice, and for some that may even be crucial. But for others (both mountaineers and meditators) it is surely enough to say that a Christian is a follower of Christ ... whatever you conceive him to be. 

If Jesus is/was more than a first-century man in the Middle East, then he is certainly not to be delineated for all time by a Church Creed put together some time in the 4th century under political pressure, or a Book of Common Prayer put together under various English kings and queens from Henry VIII onward between 1549 and 1662, or even the New Revised Standard Version (Anglicised, Catholic Edition, etc) of the Bible in the late twentieth century!

In 2014 you can discover a lot about Jesus, or at least of the God of whom he spoke, by your own delving into bits of the gospels which make sense to you, by dipping into 2000 years, and more, of philosophy and theology, by being inspired by artists and poets and nature, by listening to contemporary writers and preachers, and by your own contemplation/meditation/prayer. (Note the word 'and' in that last sentence...) 

Anticipating our next book by Richard Holloway we could quote, in the context of the above reflections, a poem by Yehuda Amichai which he quotes in an earlier book of his, Doubts and Loves: 

     And a whisper will be heard in the place
     where the ruined
     house once stood.

To finish as we began with the unfathomable TS Eliot: 
     
     We shall not cease from exploration
     And the end of all our exploring
     Will be to arrive where we started
     And know the place for the first time.




On February 9th Wychwood Circle will meet to discuss Richard Holloway's Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt. 7pm- 9pm at the library in High Street, Milton under Wychwood, OX7 6LD.

MORE THAN ONE WAY UP THE MOUNTAIN

Far more can be mended than you know

Spufford in his Unapologetic was highly articulate in talking about the value of experience, of re-thinking and re-telling the Christian story, in seeing how the story and the subsequent theology can resonate in the modern mind and make “hopeful” and “realistic sense”.  It’s interesting to find two highly respected reviewers giving the book much more than the time of day – and also that they both quote all or some of Spufford’s final paragraph.  It bears quoting here:

“If, that is, there is a God.  There may well not be.  I don’t know whether there is.  And neither do you, and neither does Richard bloody Dawkins, and neither does anyone.  It not being, as mentioned before, a knowable item.  What I do know is that, when I am lucky, when I have managed to pay attention, when for once I have hushed my noise for a little while, it can feel as if there is one. And so it makes emotional sense to proceed as if He’s there; to dare the conditional.  And not timid death-fearing emotional sense, or cowering craven master-seeking sense, or censorious holier-than-thou sense. Hopeful sense. Realistic sense. Battered-about-but-still-trying sense. The sense recommended by our awkward sky fairy who says: don’t be careful. Don’t be surprised by any human cruelty. But don’t be afraid. Far more can be mended than you know.”

In our discussions in Wychwood Library, we recognised the strengths of his argument and admired his bravery in laying bare his soul and describing in detail his own experience and raw thinking.  But our focus nevertheless returned to some of the objections to religious belief in general, and perhaps Spufford’s version of Christianity (eloquent though it is) in particular. Some of the routine arguments resurfaced in a way that Julian Baggini once described so mischievously:

“The most vocal atheists and the believers who take their bait appear ever more like a long-married couple who prefer the familiarity of their dysfunctional relationship to the emptiness that lies beyond amicable divorce. They trade the same old niggles and complaints with no hope or expectation of mutual understanding.”

The Chisholm Trail

Two images came up in the final stages of the discussion, neither of which is original.  When Andy Thayer from the Chase Benefice (Chadlington etc) spoke to us in September he compared the Christian, or even the religious, experience to the Chisholm Trail in North America: it’s so wide that it can be seen from space, and the countless pilgrims and searchers on the religious trail to our own Chicago (where in the 19th century cattle fetched a much higher price) can join it from many directions, pursue their own particular route along the trail, never meet more than a handful of the others, and still reach their goal.

The other image is the old one of the mountain with one peak but many slopes. God is the peak – so high as to be hidden in the clouds, so that even to begin the ascent requires some sort of faith and/or hope. And some of us are engaged on the climb on our own familiar side of the mountain, while others are trekking up another slope. Some of them we can see, some of them we can compare notes with, some of them we’ve only heard of, and no doubt some are right round the other side of the mountain and we can only guess that maybe they are pursuing much the same goal along a totally different path: we’re all facing upwards towards the top of the mountain.  

Different paths up the same mountain

The analogy is normally used to describe the equivalence of different established traditions and religions in speaking about God and portraying the religious life. But maybe it is equally apt as an image for those around our Circle in the library in West Oxfordshire on a Sunday night, and all the others not present as well. All of us who have ever given ‘spiritual things’ (or just ‘serious things’) a thought are probably somewhere on the lower slopes of that mountain, whatever we conceive it to represent. Many are out of sight, others are really quite close by, some have – alas – tried to prevent others getting up it, or just insisted that they climb a prescribed path. 

What we all share is that the slope can be steep (even if the views are rewarding) and characterised by a great number of obstacles and distractions which get in the way of an easy ascent – and in many cases put us off altogether.  The obstacles could be our religious instruction at school or church, the Bible, the church, even Jesus – or at least what we’ve been told about him. The distractions could be science, or consumerism, or shallow living.  Name your favourite and add to the list!

Yet obstacles and distractions can be either side-stepped or overcome. There is no reason why a mountaineer should climb a mountain in a straight line, let alone follow a well-beaten track. And if you are finding the going hard, or getting nowhere, or coming across the same old vertical cliff face or soggy ground which prevent further progress, why not choose a slightly different path? Or maybe a radically different one? By all means, stand still and consider the options, but don’t give up, and don’t go back down again!

Religion was made for man

To coin a phrase – one which Jesus is not reported to have said, but might well have done – religion is made for man, not man for religion.  If yours doesn’t work, try another. Don’t be brow-beaten by your parents, your religious leaders, your childhood experience, the idols which it’s much more cool to worship …  – don’t let anyone or any bad experience stand in your way.

And the final question – and the final analogy of the mountain – is one you may have seen coming.  Why climb the mountain at all? Why aim for the invisible peak? I think someone else answered that once before (and I’ve no idea whether he was religious or not): because it’s there.

February 9th: At our next meeting we discuss LEAVING ALEXANDRIA: A MEMOIR OF FAITH AND DOUBT by Richard Holloway - the former Bishop of Edinburgh who resigned from his office and left the church as his doubts increased. (Canongate, 2012)

It could be interesting to make the link from Spufford to Holloway by reading this review of Unapologetic by Richard Holloway: Guardian Sept 2012

March 9th: We are pleased to have been able to invite Dr Nicola Slee to join us for this meeting and her topic will be POETRY AND FAITH. Please come and bring friends. 

SPREAD-OUT THEOLOGY

Theologically spread out

I recently came across – and warmed to – a suggestion by Daniel Hardy (Finding the church, SCM, London 2000) that “we need to learn to think of Christian faith as by nature spread out, as something extended by its spread-out-ness.”  This contrasts with the traditional tendency to think in concentrated terms, focusing on Bible, church, beliefs, certainties, and it appeals to Alison Webster, who in her introduction to a book on the church and society warns readers of her own preference for “theological ‘spread-out-ness’”.  

Webster goes on: “Some readers will no doubt think it so spread out as not to qualify as ‘theology’ at all.” (Wellbeing, SCM, London 2002) But she also quotes theologian Stephen Pattison who characterises contemporary theology as “a kind of whispered conversation on matters esoteric conducted in a foreign language behind closed doors in a distant attic” (Political Theology journal, 2000).  It is certainly true of much traditional religious language that it is not helpful in analysing contemporary issues – either for oneself, or in communicating them to our own culture. 

Translation

Later in the same book, Webster quotes the phrase ‘the story-formed community of the church' to make the point that the Christian story does not resonate for everyone.  I like the comparison Jeanette Winterson has drawn between an artist and a translator (quoted in Webster, p 124, and see below) and the parallel Webster makes between artist and religious person:

"For the Christian, for instance, the question is: how to pass into the secular world the insights of one's Christian heritage? How to tell the Christian story in that context? But also, crucially, the question must be put the other way round: how to pass back into the corporate christocentric language of the church the insights of the other languages?"

'Smart-arse'  

Our current reading matter at Wychwood Circle is the “tumultuously challenging” Unapologetic by Francis Spufford (Faber, London 2012).  Someone in the group spoke for several who can’t bear his style when she said that he wrote like a ‘smart-arse’.  (Given his own free, not to say abrasive, use of language, he could hardly object to such a blunt description...) But the point was also made that this did at least make a refreshing change from pompous preachers, sentimental hymns and fervent evangelists.

Jeanette's point ("The artist is a translator... ") is surely relevant to the idea of replacing stuffy old Christian language with contemporary parlance, even if the temptation is to overdo it.  Spufford is using very modern (some said, juvenile) language to address a very modern audience.  Maybe his primary audience is indeed our teenagers who are normally so completely switched off by any religious rhetoric. In this, we should say (in a rather quainter style): all power to his elbow!

The world, the flesh (or the 'human propensity' etc) and the devil 

A four-letter word crops up persistently in Unapologetic, usually – and fortunately – within an abbreviation (the ‘HPtFtU’), itself a deliberate euphemism for another unacceptable word, ‘sin’.  His point is that, whatever we believe about religion, we know that we do as humans have a natural propensity to muck things up.  This concept turns out to be central to his argument and it has become topical this week with the current controversy over changes to the wording of the baptism in Anglican churches. 

The ‘devil’ has been cast out of the baptism service – experimentally at least.  And not before time, given that no-one has talked of him/her/it seriously for a good many years now. Inevitably there will be a backlash from more traditional worshippers who see this as abandoning the concept of sin. Yet Spufford places this concept (or his modern formulation) at the centre of his defence of modern Christianity, and as crucial to the “emotional sense” which his title promises.  His chapter heading uses the words of the singer Leonard Cohen, “The Crack in Everything”.  

Andrew Brown is worth reading on the current controversy in the Guardian this week (Article Jan 6th), where he talks about trying “to rescue the meaning of sin so that it recovers some of its primal sense of wrongness.” He goes on: “This is an almost novelistic endeavour, but Francis Spufford had a good go at it in Unapologetic.”

Sunday 12th January at Wychwood Library

On Sunday we continue our discussion of Spufford’s book, focusing on all or any of the final 5 chapters, from the unputdownable chapter on “Yeshua” to the final “Consequences”. Join us at Wychwood Library (OX7 6LD) from 7pm.