a marxist god in the here and now

A fellow leftist Christian recently said, "I've long since made my bed alongside Dostoyevsky saying something to the effect, 'even if it were incontrovertibly proven to me that Jesus was not the Christ, still I would choose to believe in him.' Because for me faith in this arena is never based on the veracity of an historical theory but on a choice." But the same person also then asked, "What does it mean to believe in Christ while adhering to a materialist conception of history?" Indeed, how can one be both a Christian and a materialist at the same time? Do they just shrug and say, like Whitman, 'so I contradict myself! Contradiction is the bugaboo of mankind'? It's a question worth pondering, and it got me thinking about my own answer as both a Christian and someone who adheres to a materialist conception of history with leftist politics.

There's a line from Brian Sanderson's novel Oathbringer I rather like: "One can believe in a story without believing it happened." It's a powerful statement that holds a lot of truth. I can't count the number of stories I've read that have deeply affected me over the years despite being works of fiction or not historically accurate, many shaping the very person I am today because of how strongly I believed in them and their message. The story of Jesus is no different. While I believe much of the story of Jesus is true and/or represents truth, I'm also ok if it's not historical because of how it inspires me to think and act, along with the hope it instills and the support of his teachings designed to make us more loving to all of creation even if we're not always loved back by it in return. History or myth, fact or fiction, it has the same impact.

When I read the bible, what I see is the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that's filled with equality, abundance, and peace. It's a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth remembering and sharing. And Jesus himself embodies the spirit of this dream. His name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation." His message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary proclaims in Luke 1:52-53, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing." His birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings. His life was spent trying to bring a new and more egalitarian world into being through acts like healing the sick, feeding the hungry, opposing economic exploitation, chastising the rich to distribute their wealth to those in need, and working to bring those on the margins back into the heart of the community. He opposed Roman imperialism, religious hypocrisy, persecution, and violence. He spoke of compassion, forgiveness, universal kinship, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, making concern for others the entry fee to the kingdom of heaven. And he did all of this because he was inspired by universal love and compassion for the human condition, choosing to be part of, and actively lead, a revolutionary Jewish movement of oppressed and economically-underprivileged classes against the layers of economic, political, and religious exploitation and domination imposed upon them by the ruling elites of the Roman empire.

It's a dream that I share, and just as this revolutionary spirit helped guide the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, I believe it'll also help guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system that's idolized and globalized greed, oppression, and violence. And for me, Christ is a living symbol of that spirit—a spirit that's present throughout the course of human history.

That spirit is also present in many other places, like social and political movements and monasteries—the former reflecting the active aspects of revolution and the latter reflecting the contemplative aspects and desired outcomes of equality and community. I think Ernesto Cardenal touches upon these contradictions and their synthesis when he wrote In Cuba:

At breakfast some Marxists asked me about our community at Solentiname. I explained that we try to lead a life in common, with no "thine" or "mine," a life of voluntary poverty—free from the desire for money and from the demands of a society of consumption. We live in brotherly union, all working for the community. We are all equal. And then I stopped. I understood that what may seem very novel in the capitalistic world is a daily reality in Cuba. (I couldn't talk to them about prayer because it would be misinterpreted, and I wouldn't know how to explain mystic union to people who don't believe in God.) I was afraid that they were going to ask me what need there is for such communities in a socialist society. At that moment I would not have known what to say.

I kept thinking of the question that the young Marxists might have asked me. It seems to me that in a perfect socialist society it would not be necessary to "flee from the world" in order to live the Gospel. In any case, the material life of those communities would be the same as that of all the others. And I remembered what St. John Chrysostom said (in a letter to a rich man): "If cities were Christian, monasteries would be unnecessary."

To me, God is love. God liberates. God is the spirit of revolution. And Christ loves. Christ is a liberator. Christ is a revolutionary. And as Marcus Borg wrote, Christ "revealed what can be seen of God in a human life" through his words and actions. God is among us when our hearts are full of this revolutionary spirit born out of love for the world. I consider myself Christian because I follow Christ's example—not the Christianity of imperialism, wealth, white supremacy, etc., but the revolutionary Christianity of Jesus and the liberation of the poor and oppressed.

All that said, God is also the ground of being and the laws of nature underlying the causal relationships present throughout the universe—i.e., mental and physical actions and results, causes and effects, etc. And historical materialism is simply the study of the material causes and conditions that shape human society and the ways we're encouraged (and forcefully prodded) to think and live, as well as who benefits from and suffers under those social relations. Here, Jesus is clearly on the side of making those social relations egalitarian and challenging the authority of exploitative classes, while his story emphasizes the ways in which God works with us and through us if we truly know and embody love.

There are undoubtedly mystical and supranatural elements to his story that point towards something that lies beyond our material world — to what we call God, transcendence, ultimate reality, the divine, the unconditioned, etc. — and our ability to achieve union with the divine, from his contemplative and intimate connection with God and frequent times of solitary prayer to the miracles he performed such as walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying food for the hungry, and raising the dead, including his own resurrection after being executed by the state in a method reserved for those who opposed the authority of Rome in some shape or form. His own resurrection story may have been literal or simply expressing the resurrection of what he lived and died for in the lives of those who carried on his message, but many seem to miss his mission here on earth and the way he represents God manifest in human form, acting within history. As David Inczauskis, SJ writes, "Many Christians, jumping straight to spiritual reality, transcendence, and the afterlife, forget that God reveals in matter, in this world, in history. They look to the sky for a God who came to earth." Whichever way we may choose to view the resurrection narrative, whether as history or myth, the story of Jesus is ultimately the story of a human being embodying the presence of the divine on earth who bridges the gap between the transcendent and the concrete by centering their spiritual message on how we treat one another (particularly the poor and marginalized), and hence the rift between humanity and itself created by our tendency to, in the words of Feuerbach, "suppose the essence of nature outside nature, the essence of humanity outside humanity, the essence of thought outside the act of thinking."

Jesus' life and teachings stress unequivocally that our beliefs and convictions in a 'heavenly kin-dom' should be reflected in our actions; and our actions shouldn't cause harm, but act as seeds for happiness and liberation. That to me is what matters most. Because whatever happens after this life is over, if we live righteously right here and now, then not only will this world be left a little better than we found it after we're gone, but we've also served to store up treasure in heaven.

A brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative

Just for fun, I jotted down a brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative:

Socioeconomic inequality

1. Capitalism is an economic mode of production that, on the most basic level, functions as a circulatory process in which money is utilized to produce commodities (e.g., goods, services, etc.) that can be sold for a profit within markets of exchange: money -> commodity -> money + extra, repeat ad infinitum.

2. Living human labour expended in the production process adds/creates much of the additional value that forms the profit realized in the exchange process.

3. Due to private property rights, capitalists own and control the means of production (e.g., factories, equipment, land, etc.), as well as the products of the production process and any surplus value created. As such, labourers are forced to relinquish their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated into and created by the production process. Workers, in turn, generally receive the value of their labour power and little else in the form of wages, ultimately alienating them from their labour and its products, and limiting the choices available to them in the sphere of their socioeconomic environment, hindering them from fully realizing themselves or their potential.

4. Capitalism itself has its beginnings in violence, oppression, and theft as well as innovations and industriousness. Countries with emerging mercantile markets enclosed local common land; colonized other lands; stole land, wealth, and resources; and exploited slave labour in what Marx called the process of 'primitive accumulation.' Then after the industrial revolution, those in power further forced their own people off of communal land and into the cities to work in the factories under new social relations, one in which they were forced to sell their labour power to someone for a wage, not fully realizing that the person who now owns that labour power owns the products of that labour and all the extra value added by their labour, and pitting them against one another for the jobs needed for their survival and comfort.

5. We now live under a predominantly capitalist, worldwide socioeconomic system in which a small minority own and control the means of production and the majority must work for a wage to survive, pitting competing capitals and workers across the globe against one another forming tiers of exploitation, particularly among members of the working class and poor.

6. The logic of this process leads to capital accumulation (i.e., the accumulation of wealth) on the part of capital as opposed to labour due to the former's ownership of the means of production and finance and the value created in the production process, creating and sustaining inequality.

7. The logic of capitalism tends to favour owners in that it seeks to increase the amount of profit extracted by capital while at the same time keeping the amount of wages received by workers as low as possible, as well as by giving the owners control over the production process, conditions of labour, labour hours, etc. In addition, workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.).

8. Capitalism contains within itself multiple contradictions that lead to unequal social relations between capital and labour and causes cyclical economic crises. For example, the logic of capital accumulation tends to lead to cyclical crises of overaccumulation that effectively causes the economy to stall by stopping the circulation of capital and preventing it from ultimately realizing profit, i.e., capital's own self-interest (accumulation for accumulation's sake) destabilizes the economy and creates things like violent economic crises, social and political inequality, unemployment, etc.

9. The logic of capitalism also depends upon the drive to continuously grow and the consumerism needed to feed that growth — resulting in negative impacts to the environment and compelling capitals and capitalist states to compete for markets, resources, cheap pools of labour, etc., often at the expense of the environment and workers — while simultaneously creating artificial scarcity to maximize profits. This generates privation for the dispossessed and national conflicts over land, raw materials, markets, labour pools, etc.

Political inequality

10. Money, as a representation of value and medium of exchange, is a form of social power. As a form of social power, money is also a driving force in the political process and the shape of states, whose access to and control of markets is important for their geopolitical success.

11. The more money one possesses, the more influence one potentially has in this socioeconomic system. The capitalist class, then, logically has a disproportionate advantage within this system, especially when it comes to influencing and shaping society, than the working class and poor.

12. Those in positions of power make the rules (i.e., laws and loopholes) and tend to do so with a view to their own preservation and well-being. Their own preservation and well-being depends upon serving the interests of capital and finance, who fund them and control key areas of the economy. Democracy is also often limited to voting in occasional elections, with most working-class people priced out of running, and almost completely absent in the workplace.

13. Due to owning the means of production (material as well as mental), the capitalist class has the ability to shape the dominant ideas and ethics of society as well as its material shape and social relations. So not only do they have an enormous amount of control over the strings of political and economic power, they have an incredible amount of control over the ideas that we're exposed to and consume — which serves to influence our perceptions of the world we live in and even one another — ultimately helping to "manufacture our consent" for the status quo.

Implications/Addressing socioeconomic inequality

14. It follows, therefore, that substantive changes in the political-economic arena that benefits the working class and poor rather than capital and finance needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down because their interests are diametrically opposed.

15. This form of political-economic opposition requires the working class, poor, and marginalized to expand their class consciousness, unite in common cause, and use their superior numbers and indispensable place in the capitalist mode of production to offset the disproportionate and essentially undemocratic influence of monied interests.

16. The greater the solidarity amongst the working class and the dispossessed, the greater the potential opposition to the power of capital (this is the power of things like unions and strikes). And the greater the opposition, the greater the potential for substantive, systematic change that favours the majority of the citizenry rather than the wealthy, ruling elite.

17. Radical change, then, necessitates a coordinated, working-class mass movement, particularly one geared towards more fully democratizing our economic system and institutions. As such, anti-capitalists (e.g., socialists, communists, etc.) seek alternatives to this logic and fight for revolutionary changes that'll help lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society by critiquing capitalism, attempting to expand working people's understanding of capitalism, and organizing them to challenge the capitalist mode of production and its logical outcomes. There have been both successes and failures in this historical struggle, with plenty of painful lessons learned as a result. But many of these failures have at their root a concerted effort by capitalist states and those who benefit the most from capitalist social relations to prevent alternatives to capitalism from emerging, let alone succeeding, through military and economic violence. And we shouldn't let these missteps and setbacks prevent us from continuing to try and assert our political autonomy, democratize the economy, and create a world in which all that we produce belongs to everyone and we're capable of providing for the needs of all.

Conclusion

Capitalism has undoubtedly helped us reach a point of technological advancement and innovation sufficient to achieve material abundance. But to fully realize that abundance, we must transition to something new, something characterized by the maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

proletariat blues

Is it just me, or is our society grinding many of us into exhaustion, depression, and hopelessness while forcing us to find any sort of rest, pleasure, or distraction we can just to get us through the day and the next after that and the one after that, etc.? A society where workloads are too heavy because it's not profitable enough if we have enough people to do the job. A society with rents and mortgages many of us can't afford. A society where more of our taxes go to the military weapons of war to kill the workers and poor of other countries when we can't even house or feed those in need at home. A society where the rich are getting richer and shooting themselves into space while everyone else struggles more and more to make ends meet, making us fight each other for the scraps left over. A society where we wake up each day dreading the commute and having to spend the majority of our waking hours trying to earn a wage rather than spending them with our family and friends and enjoy the amazing world we're born into. Is it just me who wakes up every day tired, beaten, and wishing for something better for all of us but only has the time and energy to heat up dinner in the microwave and watch a couple of episodes of something mind-numbing before going to bed to do it all over again tomorrow? Am I the only one who truly believes it could be better than it is if we actually had a real voice and choice in how our society was shaped instead of it being shaped for us by those who benefit from it the most, sitting on their thrones of money, power, and privilege?

sex work is work, but is it revolutionary?

I've been thinking about sex worker lately from an anti-capitalist lens. I've known a number of sex workers in my life, and while I don't have anything inherently against sex work in the sense that I view sex work as real labour and believe those engaging in it should be able to do so freely and safely (as opposed to being pushed into the shadows, risking increased exposure to violence or criminal records), I do have reservations about the industry itself and the way capitalism has the tendency to commodify everything, including making human emotional and sexual relationships transactional, alienating labour, exploiting labourers, etc.

On the one hand, within the context of capitalism, we need sources of income to make a living and have access to necessities, not to mention luxuries and things generally needed for enjoying our free time, and sex workers perform emotional and sexual labour in order to acquire or supplement that income — labour which our society has made sordid and dangerous because of puritan taboos and patriarchal power dynamics — so I support the rights and safety of sex workers and the normalization of sex in general. The labour, autonomy, and humanity of sex workers all need to be respected, as with every other worker, and I feel like people (mainly men) in our society have been conditioned to not respect these things in women, sex workers, etc. So that obviously needs to change, and we should support sex workers as well as our own sexuality.

One the other hand, I find the expansion of capitalism and the omnipresent commodification and unequal social relations it engenders within all spheres of human life disturbing from a leftist point of view, and I wonder what the best way of balancing my support of sex workers with my desire to revolutionize capitalism and the ways it's shaped our world might be. The push to expand, protect, and normalize sex work in order for sex workers to make a living more safely is paradoxically a push to expand the commodification of our world and relationships and the general prostitution of labourers, thus making it that more difficult to create an alternative to the current state of capitalist wage labour and the exploitation inherent to it.

I find myself in the position, then, of supporting sex workers but not so much the industry they find themselves a part of, which transforms their bodies and emotions into the commodities being consumed. And not all sex workers choose to be sex workers, so they need to be taken into consideration too when discussing sex work in the aggregate. But obviously outlawing sex work isn't the answer since it'll still happen, just within an even more coercive and violent arena than that of the marketplace. So the question I'm pondering is, what's the middle way here? How can I best support sex workers while also seeking to dismantle the socio-economic system fuelling the commodification of people's bodies, attention, and labour-power?

I was curious if anyone else has had the same thoughts and has come up with a resolution to these antagonisms, so I mentioned this on a friend's FB page about sex work who's also involved in sex work hoping that someone in their large network might have some insights. And my friend's answer was essentially that sex workers are the foot soldiers of socialism:

You always approach everything from a "how do I destroy capitalism" standpoint: but you can't expect it to be destroyed from the bottom up. You can't expect the most marginalized classes to participate in the dismantling if they are simply trying to survive. The middle path here is to understand something important:

Sex workers are a major participant in the attack of capitalism from the grassroots; from the ground up. Support them as much as possible. Pump capital and fuel their work because they do something extremely important: They FUNNEL capital from the wealthiest and most privileged classes and, in general, fuel the economies of their own: they support each other, they support artists and revolutionaries and progressive politicians. They are an extremely efficient vehicle to funnel money from (generally wealthy, generally white) men into these marginalized areas. They are footsoldiers.

Definitely some provocative ideas that are worth considering. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea of marginalized people making a living and not struggling. And I'm also sympathetic to the way that sex workers cooperate and help support themselves, other artists, etc. But I'm not convinced that the expansion of the sex industry under capitalism is necessarily good or revolutionary. For one, capitalist social relations are still in effect, even if not always directly, so the wealthy (often white men) are ultimately profiting off of it as much as (or even more) than the sex workers. Here, it can be anyone from the owners of content platforms like OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. to sites like Twitter and Instagram where they advertise, owners of brothels and strip clubs, etc. So capital, landlords, etc. are taking their cut where they can even if many sex workers are independent performance artists with some level of personal control and freedom.

In addition, while web-based platforms have made it safer and easier for sex workers to work, that's just one subset of sex work. And creating larger markets for sex and sex work also helps to increase demand in the black market economy underlying capitalism that's also fuelled by the very same wealthy (generally white) men, which in turn finds support in other areas and side hustles, from the mild to the brutal/domineering (e..g., men working behind the scenes who are often not exposed; pimps and madams; sex traffickers; the concierge at the expensive hotel who knows where one may find a child prostitute, like the pedophile ring accidentally uncovered by Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.). Then there's the increased level of objectification and alienation of labour that sex work (and wage labour in general) entails, where the commodity being consumed is the person's body and emotions, and these are in some way divorced from the person, being sold to their consumer, not only normalizing and expanding sex work (which isn't inherently negative) but also transactional relationships and consumerism (which may not necessarily be good).

Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced sex work itself is a revolutionary form of labour that can instigate a transition away from capitalism and towards a more egalitarian and less exploitative alternative moreso than other forms of labour, nor am I convinced that the majority of sex workers are anti-capitalist and actively seeking to upend capitalism. In so far as expanding sex work can expand solidarity among different types of workers, I can see how it may contribute to this, as well as from the activity of radical sex workers. And I do think they have a current need and right to make a living. But on a broader, more theoretical level I still have issues with the appearance sex work takes under capitalism. I don't see how simply taking and redistributing money from the wealthy will do any more good than other means of wealth redistribution such as taxes, or how it's qualitatively different from other places the rich spend their cash. And my concern is still the same, that it's ultimately just making sex work more easily exploitable by capital while doing little to challenge current social relations and power dynamics.

Consequently, I support the decriminalization of sex work, as well as the bodily autonomy of sex workers, since it does no good to penalize people who are often already marginalized and struggling (although middle-class women are a growing demographic, as well) from making a living that doesn't harm anyone. And I support normalizing it in the sense of removing the stigma and shame of being a sex worker or enjoying sex, allowing them to be more open about it and utilize community resources, modern technology, and their social circles to advertise and work rather than seedier and more exploitative options. Hence, I'm cautiously optimistic about it improving from what it once was. But I'm not yet comfortable idealizing sex work as an inherently revolutionary occupation, nor one free from danger and exploitation. Just as the relative comfort and security of workers in more developed countries like the US is dependent upon more oppressive and exploitative conditions of labour in less developed countries, effectively subsidizing our higher wages and standard of living despite our own inequalities, the relative comfort and security of some sex workers likely comes at the cost of others who are less fortunate and more marginalized.

engaged spirituality retreat

I had a pretty good time yesterday at the engaged spirituality retreat hosted by the Benedictine Sisters at Queen of Angels Monastery, which focused on the similarities between Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh and how an inner spiritual life can help to fuel social engagement. I got an early start and arrived in Mt. Angel, OR at about 7:30am in the hopes of catching the 8am mass at Mount Angel Abbey. It was my first time there, and I was curious how it compared to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It's a bit larger, and there are at least triple the monks at Mount Angel. The monastery has a seminary as well as a brewery, and it seems to attract a fair number of people. During mass, they welcomed three new oblates, members of the community (usually lay people) who wish to deepen their spiritual practice in the tradition of the monastery they officially associate themselves with. There are no vows per se, but there are promises that are made publicly during mass. It was my first time witnessing that particular ritual, after which the oblates were given Benedictine medals blessed by the abbot.

I left mass right after communion because the retreat itself was close to starting. Luckily the convent where the retreat was taking place was only about 5 minutes away. I arrived right on time. The retreat was run by Peggy Lindquist and Terry Moe. Peggy is a member of Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing, and Terry is a Lutheran pastor and community organizer. Terry is also the author of the book Pastor Robyn gave to me, The Bush Still Burns, written about Terry's journey from pastor to organizer and how that changed both him and the community he was leading. The retreat began with one question, what does engaged spirituality mean to me? We were encouraged to keep that in mind as we progressed through the day, which was divided into five parts.

Part one was focused on a meditation practice from Hanh that combined mindfulness with visualizations to help promote stability, serenity, insight, and joy. Everyone was given four stones to hold as a tangible way to help remain mindful. And with each stone we held, we were encouraged to breath in and out mindfully while visualizing and embodying four separate qualities. For the first, breathing in, we saw ourselves as a flower and breathing out we felt fresh, energized, joyful. For the second, breathing in we saw ourselves as a mountain and breathing out we felt solid, stable, grounded. For the third, breathing in we saw ourselves as still water and breathing out we reflected all that is, mindful of things as they are without the ripples that our minds tend to create. And for the fourth, breathing in we saw ourselves as space and breathing out we felt free, expansive, open. And she read a couple of passages from Hanh, one of which stood out for me:

There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes to wash the dishes. If, while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. (The Miracle of Mindfulness)

If we're not mindful and simply running on autopilot or else doing something with the thought of getting or doing something else, we're not truly present. We're missing out on that moment and the very act of living itself, because living only takes place in the present. And so much of what we accept as reality and hold to be real and solid is actually an illusion or distortion and the product of the stories we tell ourselves rather than things as they truly are. In the suttas, for example, the Buddha used similes like a glob of foam floating on the river, the hollow core of a banana tree for someone seeking heartwood, and a magic trick—the point being that often what we see lacks the substance we imbue it with (SN 22.95). And in the bible, a similar idea can be seen in places like Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8, which coincidentally happened to be the first reading during mass:

Rejoice, O youth, while you are young
and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart,
the vision of your eyes;
Yet understand regarding all this
that God will bring you to judgment.
Banish misery from your heart
and remove pain from your body,
for youth and black hair are fleeting.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the evil days come
And the years approach of which you will say,
"I have no pleasure in them";
Before the sun is darkened
and the light and the moon and the stars
and the clouds return after the rain;
When the guardians of the house tremble,
and the strong men are bent;
When the women who grind are idle because they are few,
and those who look through the windows grow blind;
When the doors to the street are shut,
and the sound of the mill is low;
When one rises at the call of a bird,
and all the daughters of song are quiet;
When one is afraid of heights,
and perils in the street;
When the almond tree blooms,
and the locust grows sluggish
and the caper berry is without effect,
Because mortals go to their lasting home,
and mourners go about the streets;
Before the silver cord is snapped
and the golden bowl is broken,
And the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the pulley is broken at the well,
And the dust returns to the earth as it once was,
and the life breath returns to God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
all things are vanity!

Mindfulness, then, can be a tool to help ground us and centre ourselves in the present moment. And it can also help us become free of the influence of the three poisons of greed, aversion, and delusion, as well as our clinging to what isn't real or important. The Buddha calls the habitual stories and false perceptions we create papanca, "mental proliferations," and much of our suffering in life comes from believing in them. But true peace comes from letting them go and seeking out and resting within what's true and real. For the Buddha and Hanh, this is nirvana, realization of the unconditioned, the cessation of suffering created by our misunderstandings and wrong perceptions. And for Merton, this is God, the unconditioned, the ground of being. It is all an ineffable oneness. So rather than taking refuge in fleeting moments and indulging in misunderstandings and wrong perceptions, we're invited to be aware, be awake, and to truly live in the present moment.

The second session was about the brotherhood between Merton and Hanh. Although they only met in person once in 1966, they shared a lot in common and admired each other greatly. They both were monks. They both grew up in the midst of war. They both were led by their spiritual practice to be engaged with the world and speak out against injustice and war, even when doing so was difficult and came at a cost. They both wrote very similar things about the role that nature played in their spirituality. They were both writers and poets. They had been monks for about the same amount of time. And they both shared an understanding of spirituality that was ultimately nondual in nature. But even though they shared a number of similarities, they shared differences as well, e.g., Merton was an adult then he entered monastic life whereas Hanh was a teen; Merton was constrained by his monastic traditions and cloistered life while Hanh was much freer and eventually started his own order; Merton found himself drawn every deeper to solitude while Hanh was very active and establish a number of monasteries and retreat centres. Nevertheless, they both stood against war and injustice and each did what they could to address these issues and inspire others to do the same, primarily through their writings.

Session three was "walking with monks in nature." They shared a couple of passages from each monk on their ideas about and experiences in nature, about how nature called them to deeply spiritual experiences and insights. Nature was very much a meditative canvas on which both monks painted poetic pictures that nourished them and gave them an appreciation of the greater whole. And with their words and some brief instructions, those of us that were able were invited outside to practice walking meditation around the convent. We took slow, mindful, deliberate steps. And with each ring of the small bell, we were encouraged to stop and take careful notice of our surroundings and anything we saw, heard, felt. I ended up alone and on the train tracks that ran behind the convent and noticed that I had a lot in common with Merton, which is why I was so drawn to him and his writing. I took in the sun and the breeze and tried to be fully myself while being aware that I felt more at home and more comfortable in solitude. I felt like just following the tracks to wherever they led, leaving everyone and the retreat behind. Not out of aversion towards them, but because of the peace I felt in that moment. As much as I am a social creature and like to have social interactions, I feel a distance between me and others and have a hard time bridging the gap. And often in solitude, I feel something deeper.

We all eventually returned to the retreat centre and were encouraged to discuss our experiences with each other. Peggy stopped by our table and mentioned how she noticed the difference between the wet, green, well-kept grass and the drier, brown, scratchy grass and how we're often drawn towards comfort and creating comfortable surroundings and circumstances but mused "what do we lose by going got comfort rather than reality?" It was an interesting question.

The fourth session focused on engaged spirituality. Much of this was about the response of Merton and Hanh to war, specifically the American war in Vietnam. And we were asked to think about how our spirituality engages with the big issues of today (e.g., climate change, violence, poverty, racism, etc.). A big theme was how a deep spirituality helped these two monks address these kinds of issues, both by nurturing a deep wellspring of compassion and empathy for the suffering of others and by helping to provide the mental and physical strength needed to endure difficult times. There were readings from each monk, as well as a discussion of the ways they spoke out and the difficulties they faced. Merton addressed these issues mostly in his writing, as he wasn't free to leave his monastery and be more physically present. Hanh, on the other had, spoke out against the war vocally and helped victims by creating an organization of volunteers to help rebuild rural school and establish medical centres, but he was eventually exiled from his homeland for 39 years for speaking out against the war, in which time he continued to speak out against a host of issues and established a number of monasteries and retreat centres. Hanh was convinced that if you create peace in yourself, you create peace in the world. There is no clear separation between self and other, individual and world. If you are full of anger, the world just has that much more anger in it. And if you act out of hate and anger, then you will be planting seeds for future hate and anger and suffering. As for Merton, it was noted that, at the time of his death, he'd found himself in the midst of an interfaith journey to Asia in a dialogue with Buddhists but has also found himself craving more and more solitude. And just a week before his death in 1968, Merton recorded a mystical awakening experience prompted by the reclining Buddhas in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka:

Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more 'imperative' than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery.' All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya . . . everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.

And that kind of internal, unifying experience, when cultivated and matured, leads back outwards, as illustrated by Hanh in Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet:

If you see the suffering in the world but you haven't changed your way of living yet, it means the awakening isn't strong enough. You haven't really woken up. In Zen, sometimes a teacher will shout, or hit you, so you can wake up—they'll do whatever it takes. The Zen master's shout is like a crash of spring thunder. It wakes you up and, with the rains that follow, grasses and flowers will bloom.

The fifth and final section was pointed back towards us: how do you envision an engaged spirituality? At some point, Terry made the point about the importance of this nondual way of seeing and of and/both: action and contemplation, in breath and out breath, world and spirit, mindfulness and engagement, on the cushion and off the cushion, etc. In essence, they complement each other. It's not just one or the other, both are important and needed. We were invited to think about the question and to name an intention for ourselves for our spiritual engagement going forwards. My intention was to give more hope to the world and make it a better place than I found it, even if just a little. Part of that is trying to be a better person and not causing as much harm. And another is to be engaged with a spiritual community that's also engaged with social justice to help with that because I can't do it alone. I've felt demoralized and discouraged, and I need some motivation as well as guidance on ways to be involved, which is one of the things I'm hoping Spirit of Grace can help me with.

I've found through my own personal experience that, if you dig deep into yourself and find a well of love, compassion, and peace, there's often an urge to share that with others. And one of the ways to do that is to try and address and relieve the suffering of others as much as possible. To cease doing harm when you're the one causing it. To acknowledge and take a stand against injustice and with the victim of that injustice. And that's not easy. The roots of our own suffering and unskillful actions run deep. And the problems of the world have complex and often omnipresent causes that will take great effort and a lot of time to fix. So we need to find ways to renew our strength and motivation (fresh flower). We need patience and solid footing (mountain). We need to see clearly, to find ways of doing it effectively (still water). We need to be open to new ideas and people and ways of doing things (space). And we need to know what we can offer. I don't entirely know what I can offer at this stage in my life, but I have a few ideas. One thing I'm doing is trying to fight for an enlightened religion that's based on love, compassion, and peace. I'm trying to offer what empathy and healing I can at work. I want to dedicate some of my time and money to good causes with the right direction. And perhaps someday, offer something to the world with my writing as well.

After the retreat, I stopped at Mount Angel Abbey's Benedictine Brewery to pick up a couple of beers for my friend for his birthday and happened to have a chance to talk to the brewmaster, Fr. Martin. I asked him about some of the beers and which ones were from his recipes, as well as about his journey to the monastery. He was an engineer at Honeywell making really good money before someone suggested he visit the monastery, and something about the place and the life of a monk called to him. He said that the decision to become a monk wasn't necessarily an easy one, but he knew that it was the right one once he was there. I mentioned my own interest in monasticism and experiences at various monasteries and how I felt called to monastic life yet wasn't sure if it was the right thing for me, and he invited me to contact Fr. Odo if I was interested in attending one of their discernment retreats. It's definitely something I'll consider.

'the dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns'

Just finished reading Dan Brown's Origin, and two passages near the end caught my eye.

The first appears in a discussion between Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal and the difference between patterns and codes. Langdon explains that patterns are "any distinctly organized system" and "occur everywhere in nature," whereas codes "must carry information" and "do more than simply form a pattern—codes must transmit data and convey meaning" (pg. 602) The implication being that patterns can be found in nature and form independently from the laws of nature while an intelligence must be behind codes. The discussion then turns towards DNA, which Langdon says is the paradox—is DNA just a pattern naturally found in nature or a code? Because DNA carries genetic data, Ambra excitedly offers, "You think DNA was created by an intelligence!" But Langdon's response offers a cautious yet meaningful disclaimer that I feel reflects my own personal feelings and point of view on the matter:

Langdon held up a hand in mock self-defense. "Easy tiger!" he said. "You're treading on dangerous ground. Let me just say this. Ever since I was a child, I've had the gut sense that there's a consciousness behind the universe. When I witness the precision of mathematics, the reliability of physics, and the symmetrics of the cosmos, I don't feel like I'm observing cold science; I feel as if I'm seeing a living footprint...the shadow of some greater force that is just beyond our grasp." (pg. 603)

The second occurs in a conversation between Langdon and Fr. Bena, a priest in charge of Sagrada Familia, while discussing a major new scientific discovery of sorts and the historical conflict between science and religion, which again reflects my own personal feelings and point of view on the matter:

"It is very obvious to me," Bena said as they walked, "that there is only one way Christianity will survive the coming age of science. We must stop denouncing provable facts. We must become a spiritual partner of science, using our vast experience—millennia of philosophy, personal inquiry, meditation, soul-searching—to help humanity build a moral framework and ensure that the coming technologies will unify, illuminate, and raise us up...rather than destroy us." (pg. 630)

At the end of this exchange, in discussing the concluding line from William Blake's work Vala, or The Four Zoas, "The dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns," which Fr. Bena has some trepidations displaying prominently in one of the most famous basilicas in the world, Langdon reassuringly suggests that the line could "just as easily say: 'Sweet science will banish the dark religions...so the enlightened religions can flourish'" (pg. 631). And I find myself holding onto the same hope.

For example, it brings to mind Stephen Hawking's answer to a question about technological advancements and 'technological unemployment':

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

In contrast, my heart burns for justice and equality, and recalls for inspiration and nourishment the words and actions of others whose hearts burn with the same fire, from labour organizers and socialists like Eugene Debs to spiritual teachers like Jesus, who, reading a scroll from the prophet Isaiah, summarized his own spiritual mission thusly:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19)

As well as the words of the apostle James, Jesus' younger brother:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. (James 5:1-6)

But only a mature and rational yet mystical (i.e., contemplative) religion has a chance to be this kind of voice, this 'spiritual partner' to science. And if it isn't, or can't evolve to be, then it's empty, hollow, and surely doomed to die, Christian or otherwise.

eco-socialism or barbarism

Just saw this article from the BBC:

Climate change: 'Rising chance' of exceeding 1.5C global target:

There have been a lot of dire articles like this lately, and I find it truly frightening. The ruling class and capital are essentially driving us full speed off a cliff. Working people are the only ones that can slam on the brakes, but our means of subsistence is tied to the car going full speed, making that a difficult choice to make in the short-term while we figure out how to design a whole new car. The car represents the economy, and the brakes are any means of pressuring systemic change needed to slow or stop the rise of CO2 levels, electoral pressure, strikes, slow downs, etc. And the car has to be divested of fossil fuels and not be dependent upon perpetual growth without stalling (crises).

As Frederick Engels observes in Anti-Duhring, "both the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself [including everything from cyclical economic crises and inequality to environmental degradation and accelerated climate change], and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place." And so, like Karl Kautsky warns in The Class Struggle, "As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism."

Coincidentally, I was also listening to NPR today and the subject of the TED Radio hour happened to be "A Century of Money," starting with Kathleen Day's "What Can The 1929 Crash Teach Us About The 2020's Economic Crisis?" and ending with Abigail Disney's "How Can Corporations Treat Their Lowest-Paid Employees Better?" And the frustrating part was that they get so tantalizingly close to the reality and the required solutions, but then they fall way short. For example, near the end of Abigail's TED talk, the host asks, "[W]e've had now a century of these lessons. Do you think we need another moment where we have a reckoning and say, you know, we need to fix the system; let's set up a better way of doing this?" And Abigail's answer is, "What I say is they're humans working in your company, human beings. They have all the same needs and desires that you have. You have to treat them with the dignity you would want to be treated with yourself. Like, that's just the starting point. Then go make all the profit you want to make. But if your business plan starts with exploitation and you can't make - get to profitability without doing that, then you need to go get another business plan."

One problem with this is that the logic of capitalism doesn't work that way, and in fact, it often works better precisely due to increased exploitation of labour, giving the capitalist class more profits to accumulate, more to share with shareholders, and more to speculate with and transform into more money. And this logic also gives them a greater say in the political sphere due to the superior social power their wealth and economic influence grants them, meaning laws and taxes and legal enforcement through the judicial system often favour the employer over the employee, the rich over the poor, etc. And the morality that capitalism engenders, in turn, favours the employers and the wealthy as the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. So if you're rich, it's because you work hard and make good decisions and have earned it, while if you're poor it's due to your laziness and bad decisions. Or think of the disparity in the way wealth is redistributed and how we treat the recipients—one example being the way corporate subsidies are relatively easy to get and not questioned in the same way as social welfare, whereas government welfare for individuals (e.g., SNAP benefits, Section 8 vouchers, etc.) is looked down upon and often difficult for people to get.

So when Abigail gives her earlier moral appeal to CEOs like Bezos when she says, "So what I want to see happen is if I'm a CEO and I know that some of my workers are on food stamps or going to food pantries, I want to be ashamed of myself. I want other people to feel shame on my behalf. The fact that that's not happening says that the CEO considers himself to be of a class and even a species different and distinct from the people who do the hardest work at the company," she's close to the mark as they ARE a distinct class from working people. However, it falls short because moral appeals carry little weight in the face of the immense influence of the logic of capitalism on behaviour and social relations. This logic not only gives rise to these class distinctions and socioeconomic inequality [conditioning capital to accumulate wealth and exploit labour], but also views the success of the wealthy as a moral good. And no amount of shame on the behalf of a single person can overcome the determination of the logic of the entire system, the desire of shareholders, or the effects of cyclical economic crises that are created but contradictions internal to the way capitalism functions.

In essence, people at least see and understand that there's a problem and that people are suffering immensely between these periods of prosperity, and some even within them. And during the Depression, the changes that took place, including things like the legalization of unions and collective bargaining, banking deposit protections, and the New Deal works projects, were a direct result of the growing rise of labour activism, strikes, unions, and the organization or working people and the poor by socialists and communists. Things were so dire, the ruling class and corporate leaders were afraid of a political and economic revolution. And these measures, along with the destruction of both Asian and European means of production and a thinning of the working class during WWII, allowed the American working class to prosper like never before. Except those measure were a temporary fix to a problem that arises from contradictions inherent to the system itself, i.e., capital's need to exploit labour to produce profit, the need for continual growth to avoid economic downturns, the coercive pressures for capital to accumulate (creating inequality and the tendency towards monopolization), the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time due to increases in technology and productivity, cyclical crises caused by things like overproduction and the inability of capital to function as capital, the contradiction between use value and exchange value, etc. And this doesn't even touch upon the ways the need for perpetual growth and the political power of capital has irreparably harmed our environment.

Altogether, the way capitalism functions can be tweaked to make things slightly better (at least temporarily), and things like higher taxes on the wealthy, regulations, and other government policies can help stem some of the gross inequality that we see, as New Deal programs and policies show. However, they can't fundamentally change the way that capitalism functions, nor can that put working people on equal footing with employers and capital, because the latter always has the final say. Capitalist property rights give capital the final say over the workplace and the share of the fruits of the labour that the labourer themselves actually receive (wages) because capital owns the means of production, the labourer's labour-time, and everything that it produces.

Until we devise an economic system that isn't forced to operate on a model of continual growth and that gives working people real ownership of their own labour and its fruits, along with truly democratic institutions of decision-making, we will be forced to endure at least this gross level of socioeconomic inequality, recurrent economic crises, a distant and disinterested ruling class, and the worst case scenario of a looming climate catastrophe. And no amount of moral shaming will change that. (Plus, it's hard to shame a person who has the ability to do whatever they want and even fly themselves into space at a whim.) But time is running out, and I think the Spanish Minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzón, is absolutely correct when he writes in his conclusion to "The limits to growth: eco-socialism or barbarism" that:

Taking up these challenges will not be a matter of simple political prescription. Once again, nor will it be a question of winning arguments. Rather, it will be to do with the ability to put together broad social and political alliances able to prepare the ground for a whole historical and social block to emerge. Local initiatives and global proposals, classical traditions, and new ways of thinking, along with social and institutional action, must play a part in this broad community, in an exercise to build a social fabric feeding on imagery and looking towards a horizon of peace, justice, equality and social rights within the planetary boundaries.

In the past, the idea of an alternative – socialism or barbarism – was popularized by Rosa Luxemburg against the bellicose backdrop of the First World War. The traditional Marxist conception of the time theorized that capitalism was at such an advanced stage of development – in its imperialist phase – that the only thing that could come out of it was international socialist revolution or the destruction of every trace of civilization under the yoke of the war and its consequences. In a way, there were indeed revolutions and a lot of destruction. Not only Europe but the whole world was devastated by two World Wars and totalitarian regimes, while those turbulent times swept away millions of human beings, including Rosa Luxemburg herself, assassinated in 1919 during the Spartacist uprising.

Presently, that alternative is perfectly valid. Human civilization, any civilization, can only build horizons of justice and well-being if it can find a way to do so within the planetary boundaries. Fitting within or readjusting to those boundaries, if we may put it like that, can happen in either an organized or a chaotic manner, the worst-case scenario being ecological collapse. Any of the intermediate scenarios will in any event oblige us to reorganize ourselves through other rules. But we must not forget that the politics striving hardest to prevail in these situations of emergency and collapse is that of authoritarianism, discrimination, inequality, and militarism. It is, once again, barbarism. To avoid it, we must open an alternative road based on other principles and values, democracy, human rights and social justice. This is the route towards eco-socialism. It is therefore a matter of choosing between eco-socialism or barbarism.