Constituting happiness

Latent in Milton's rendering of Paradise in PL V is a richly imagined understanding of the world, humanity, the creator, and the purpose/meaning of this inaugural state. Clearly we were meant to be happy; the beauty of the world carried significance; as fallen descendants, we must turn back to understand our present through an imagined glimpse of the world before all went astray.

A few snippets from a multi-faith conversation about pursuing happiness (from Krista Tippett's On Being) might be relevant.

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: The definition of a Jew, Israel is as it says in Genesis 34, one who struggles, wrestles, with God and with humanity and prevails. And Jacob says something very profound to the angel. He says, "I will not let you go until you bless me." And that I feel about suffering. When something bad happens, I will not let go of that bad thing until I have discovered the blessing that lies within it.

Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori: There's this ongoing tension between seeing happiness as joining with God, as communion with God, that's only possible in the afterlife, and the insistence that human beings are created to be happy, that happiness is possible in this life. There's the particular piece of Christianity that insists that sometimes suffering is a root to happiness for the larger community. That kind of suffering may not be chosen, but it contains blessing within it. The sense that our goal is this fully restored creation at right relationship with all that is and sometimes the journey there requires us to enter into suffering and to demand, to insist, that there is blessing in the midst of that, wrestling with the angel. It must be there. You have created us to be happy, you have created us to be good, now show us. Show us the way through this. Show us the possibility for which all that is is created.

Professor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: First of all, in the Arabic language, the word for beauty and virtue is the same, and goodness, all three. In the Islam — Muslim mind, they're not separated from each other. In the deepest sense, goodness — in the ordinary sense, these were external actions. In a deeper sense, virtue is within us. Beauty can deal also with external forms and it can deal with beauty of the soul, beauty of the spirit, within us. But beauty in a sense is a more interiorizing. Beauty is what draws us directly to the Divine, to the Divine reality.

The Dalai Lama: I always believe and also share with the people, the very purpose of our life is for happiness. Those nonbeliever also they felt that religion — religious faith is a — brings a lot of sort of complication. So without that, they feel the easier to achieve happy life. So I think the very purpose of our existence is for happiness. So that mentioned, your constitution. And then also is equally their right. You see, happiness not come from sky, but we must make a happy life. So we have a responsibility. The government cannot provide happiness. Happiness must create within ourselves and our family. So ultimately, our own responsibility, isn't it?

At the point we are in Milton's idea of humankind's trajectory, Adam and Eve need not wrestle with the angel. See Dore's image here.

Playing with God

An interesting conversation with two Jesuit astronomers about science, faith, and certain compatibilities of -- and incitements to -- both is here. One can listen or read the transcript. Here's a sort of Twitterized summary.

Wright on Philo

Krista Tippet interviews Robert Wright:

Today, a public conversation with Robert Wright. His book The Evolution of God charts an intellectual path beyond the faith-versus-reason debate. Wright takes a relentlessly logical look at the history of religion, exposing its contradictions. Yet he also traces something revelatory moving through human history.

Mr. Robert Wright: The basic direction in which social organization moved, that is, from hunter-gatherer village to chiefdom, ancient state, empire, and now we're on the verge of a globalized society, I'm arguing that the affect that that's had on our conception of God's compassion has tended to be a good one. That as the world grows, a social organization gets more complex, people get more inter-dependant, you see an adaptation on the part of God, and it does become a God of broader compassion.

One of Wright's heroes is Philo (20 BC - AD 50), a Jew living in cosmopolitan Alexandria, who, according to Wright, 

 Philo was trying to reconcile the Greek philosophy that he was encountering, which had a kind of a scientific aura, with his Jewish heritage. Trying to reconcile the Torah with a kind of scientific outlook. And I think that's why he talks about a God that's not anthropomorphic and talks about a God that imparts this order to the universe. So the laws of nature are manifestations of Divine Will. And a really interesting thing about Philo — we're getting around to the non-zero-sumness part — Philo saw the world as moving towards greater and greater interdependence and ultimately, as history is culminating, in a giant global society and, in fact, a democracy. And he saw that driven by the interdependence of people, but that society would congeal on a global level he saw as being driven by the kind of need that people have for one another as a practical matter. They have to get along. And this brings us to the term "non-zero-sum."

Philo, Logos, and Non-zero from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.

"the Exodus is alive and happening right in front of us"

From Selma to Montgomery

On March 21, 1965, civil rights leaders began marching from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. Accompanying Martin Luther King Jr. on his left are Ralph Bunche, undersecretary of the United Nations, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was the subject of a recent American Public Media show that looks at the man, his work, and his mission in light of the Judaic prophetic tradition. It's a great interview with Arnold Eisen (Chancellor of Jewish Theological Seminary) that includes snippets from some of Heschel's talks.

Is it a stretch to see relevance to Milton here? His work is suffused with the impetus of the Judaic activist tradition, even as he uses every tool of classical Greek and Roman art, science, rhetoric and philosophy in the making of his epic. Above all, he would seem to share with Heschel a commitment to struggle in a world in which faith in a creator at every turn is at odds with profound indifference. Below are a few moments from the show, the whole of which is worth a listen.(transcript) (podcast)

Mr. Eisen: You read Heschel and the story comes to life. For Heschel the story of the Exodus is alive and happening right in front of us...

... had [Martin Luther] King …not been murdered that day in Memphis, he would have been at Abraham Joshua Heschel's Passover Seder. The two became very, very close. They became allies not just in the civil rights struggle, but in opposition to the war in Vietnam. And this was a precious alleviation of the loneliness that both of them must have felt, that they had each other in the world. And it was all the more precious because they came from different faiths. As it were, it was a validation of God's concern for all the world, of God's speaking through people of various religious traditions and not just one....

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He wrote, "I suggest that the most significant basis for meeting men of different religious traditions is the level of fear and trembling, of humility, of contrition, where our individual moments of faith are mere waves in the endless ocean of mankind's reaching out for God, where all formulations and articulations appear as understatements, where our souls are swept away by the awareness of the urgency of answering God's commandment, while stripped of pretension and conceit we sense the tragic insufficiency of human faith."

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Within the poetry of his language and thought, Abraham Joshua Heschel often used the word "embarrassment." "The cure of the soul," he wrote, for example, "begins with a sense of embarrassment, embarrassment at our pettiness, prejudices, envy, and conceit; embarrassment at the profanation of life. A world that is full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival."

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There's this absolute insistence that what we are talking about here is in ineffable, will always defy words, and yet an insistence, as you said he said to you, words matter. Susannah Heschel has talked about how her father would say that, you know, she said, "He used to remind me that the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, with tanks and guns. It began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda. 'Words create worlds,' he used to tell me when I was a child."

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Mr. Eisen: When he said words create worlds, he was paraphrasing one of the most important daily prayers that Jews say: "Blessed is God who spoke and the world came into being." And Heschel was a master of words. He was a master of words not just in English but in German, Yiddish, Hebrew. I don't know enough to judge the Polish. But Heschel knew that what we say matters. That's one of the things he taught. He's a man who wants to summon something in us beyond our rational, logical faculties. He wants to summon our care.

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Rabbi Heschel: I would say to young people a number of things, and I have only one minute. I would say, let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can do — every one — our share to redeem the world despite of all absurdities and all the frustration and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live life as it if were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you are young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

 For Charles Laubheim.

Kosofsky on Jewish Customs in the context of the Old Testament

From the radio program Speaking of Faith:

When Scott-Martin Kosofsky rediscovered The Book of Customs in the late 20th century, he did so not as a rabbi or a scholar, nor as a passionately devout adherent of any strand of Judaism. For him, the different branches of Judaism seemed still to have more in common than apart, so he set out to recreate a Book of Customs, in English, for modern people. He delved into the structure of Jewish practice, the ancient stories behind its teachings, the rituals and symbols that had seemed dead to him for most of his life. He added historical detail and notes on contemporary application. Jewish life is really all about moments, he realized anew — moments that are set aside to honor God. To his own surprise he found himself not only chronicling this sensibility, but participating in its power.

A fascinating conversation with Kosofsky that draws on his experience of the Old Testament and history can be found here. In Judaism, "What you believe follows only after what you do," says Kosofsky. "So Judaism is very much about doing God's commandments and doing the right thing rather than believing a specific credo."

The Real Audio file is here. Near the end, he ponders whether we, the modern readers of the Old Testament, are dealing "with God or with the memory of God." Kosofsky is the author of The Book of Customs: A Complete Handbook for the Jewish Year