Spiritual Truth Research Articles

An Optical Theme in The Merchant’s Tale

An Optical Theme in The Merchant’s Tale

D.H. Lawrence and Environmental Consciousness

A belief in the superiority of our species to non-human nature and our right to manipulate it has deep roots in the Western intellectual tradition; it can be found in the earliest Judeo-Christian scripture and it is one of the basic tenets of humanistic philosophy. Yet there exist within that tradition the beginnings of an alternative worldview that acknowledges environmental realities and questions or contradicts the prevailing belief in the rightness of man's attempts to dominate nature through technology. It was evident in embryonic form in the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century; but although the Romantics valued sometimes even worshipped external nature, their emphasis was almost always on the needs and aspirations of To writers like Wordsworth, Emerson, and even Thoreau, untouched nature offered a haven from the growing distastefulness of industrial civilization or a medium for the pursuit of spiritual truth. Although the Romantics did not endorse the outright material exploitation of nature, they still looked upon it primarily in terms of its potential human utility. Some later imaginative writers, however, have called anthropocentric and humanistic assumptions sharply into question. Robinson Jeffers proposed a philosophy of inhumanism, a shifting of emphasis from man to not man. Such a shift is evident in the thought of a number of twentieth-century writers, among whom D. H. Lawrence was both the first and the most prominent. In referring to the strain of thought about the human relationship to nature that characterizes not only Lawrence's work but also that of writers like William Carlos Williams, Aldous Huxley, Jeffers, Kenneth Rexroth, Ted Hughes, and Gary Snyder, I prefer to use the term post-humanism. Jeffers, in his inhumanism, celebrates the non-human but often characterizes homo sapiens as a disastrous evolutionary mistake. Lawrence and the other modern writers who in a sense are his followers in the development of a new environmental consciousness celebrate the whole of life, and recognize human potential for creative rather than destructive participation in it. Lawrence's post-humanism looks at the human species as part of a larger living whole, valuing that whole in its complexity and integrity. Post-humanism values all living things and the inorganic environment on which they depend, recognizing that all life and the conditions that sustain life are interrelated. It asserts that man can be, if he abandons his anthropocentric assumptions, a contributor to, rather than the destroyer of, the pattern of nature. 359

From Sermon to Parable: Four Conversion Stories by Flannery O'Connor

TN a I958 letter, Flannery O'Connor discussed major theme of L her writing: It seems to me that all good stories are about conversion, about a character's changing. . . . action of grace changes a . . . All my stories are about action of grace on a character.' Like many of O'Connor's statements about her writing, this one is useful if it is properly qualified. Most of O'Connor's stories, of course, are about sin and redemption, but not all of them actually depict the action of grace on a character. In seven stories, for instance, O'Connor clears way for a character's redemption but stops short of delineating it. stories freeze protagonists in their moment of spiritual truth and do not reveal whether they will in fact accept salvation proffered.2 These open-ended stories are best described by what O'Connor said of one of them, The Enduring Chill: It's not so much a story of as of self-knowledge, which I suppose has to be first step in conversion (HB, p. 299). stories which leave question of salvation unanswered include some of O'Connor's best, such as Good Country People and The Lame Shall Enter First, but in writing them author was able to avoid task of realistically describing effects of conversion. O'Connor was well aware of aesthetic problems inherent in depicting grace in fiction. She stated in The Church and Fiction Writer, Part of complexity of problem for Catholic fiction writer will be presence of grace as it appears in

The Radical Transformation of the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Some Women Writers of Quebec

The frequency of mother figures in Quebec literature indicates the central importance in Quebec society of the role of the mother and of family life in general. Such an orientation was probably inevitable since in the past Quebec depended for its survival as a unique Frenchspeaking community in North America upon the perpetuation of very traditional values. The mother was allowed no individual identity in this value system; she was seen solely in terms of her maternal function within the family unit, recognized and appreciated for her domestic virtues alone. The daughter was usually a mother's projection or else her replacement, most often defined in terms of her relationship to the father and master of the household, esteemed or despised according to whether she reflected positively or negatively the mother's qualities. During the 1950's and 1960's a number of women writers produced works in which the mother figure and mother-daughter relationships did not conform to these traditional stereotypes.2 In these works mothers were usually presented in a strong, negative light, as perhaps resentful of their children, overly possessive, hateful, unloving, devoid of feeling, incapable of any kind of authentic response to the world around them. For writers, if not yet for critics, this was a period of separation and refusal, a refusal that is still the starting point for many women writing today. However, other women writers of the 1970's succeeded in going beyond that separation to new affirmation and solidarity. They came to realize with great urgency that without continuity from mother to daughter, women remain detached from their origins and fragmented in their being. Whatever psychological theories may say, the daughter who cuts the umbilical cord completely detaches herself irretrievably from a part of her own past. An exciting collective vision emerged in Quebec during the seventies: that of the unrecognized wonders of the mother-daughter relationship taken in its biological, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects. Writers are speaking out in anger about all they were never allowed to know. They are moving on to the new open spaces in the feminine imaginary--that unexplored area of the female imagination-to the formulation of new myths and symbols, to a fresh use of language, and to the search for the energy which comes from the discovery of origins. The establishment of a new mother-daughter relationship means women's touching women, affirming the genuine bond among daughters, mothers, and grandmothers, challenging social taboos and the moral and religious traditions, listening to the inner voices which speak spiritual truth, whether of ancient goddesses or of other suppressed forces.

Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing

A number of scholars in this century have noticed the image of God or Jesus as mother in the spiritual writings of the high Middle Ages. The image has in general been seen as part of a “feminine” or “affective” spirituality, and neither of these adjectives is incorrect. The idea of God as mother is part of a widespread use, in twelfth-century spiritual writing, of woman, mother, characteristics agreed to be “feminine,”and the sexual union of male and female as images to express spiritual truths; the most familiar manifestation of this interest in the “female” is the new emphasis on the Virgin in doctrinal discussions and especially spirituality. And the frequency of references to “mother Jesus” is also part of a new tendency in twelfth-century writing to use human relationships (friendship, fatherhood or motherhood, erotic love) in addition to metaphysical or psychological entities to explain doctrinal positions or exhort to spiritual growth.

Toward A Biblical Theology of Marriage and Family Part 3: Gospels and Acts

Spiritual symbolism emphasizes with dominance in the New Testament as a major purpose of marriage and family. God teaches us truth regarding the Church by reminding us to study the relationship between husbands and wives, parents and children. In the New Testament also we encounter a uniquely Christian view of divorce from the teaching of Jesus and major segments of the Gospels deal with the relationship between the Father and Son establishing the Deity of Christ by establishing the family relationship in the heavenly Trinity. The sin of adultery comes in for particular condemnation in the teaching of Jesus as recorded by the Gospel writers. We quickly learn in opening the pages of the New Covenant that God intends to reaffirm all that He said of the family in the Old Testament while adding relatively few new concepts. No fewer than 13 indications of family terminology identify spiritual truth regarding the relationship between God and man. It remains for the writers of the Epistles, particularly the Apostle Paul, to clarify many of the concepts but the ground rules are established from the lips of Jesus Himself.

Whitman and the Phrenologists: The Divine Body and the Sensuous Soul

Insisting that the “Me” is the center and meaning of all experience and that reality is indistinguishable from the self, Whitman turns to the phrenological concept of the soul as the agent that makes the physical self susceptible to the spiritual and the infinite. He insists that it is the soul's office, literally, to translate the sensuous data apprehended by a physiologically endowed man perfectly attuned to the universe into the spiritual truths that are integral in the mystic union of all Being. So closely does Whitman identify robust health with spiritual awareness that this forms the basis of his materialistic monism, arguing that the body and the soul are merged into an indivisible One. Since the body is the soul, the sensible is in fact the suprasensible, and matter is mind, dualism presents no problem. Instead of the two principles, in Whitman a single identity is achieved when the active soul “charges” the surrounding universe and perceives the ideal in the actual. Major phrenological ideas also inform Whitman's unique equalitarian transcendentalism, his sensual mysticism, and his poetic catalogs where the persona, fusing with a cumulative imagery, signals his union with the larger Oneness where all contradictions are resolved.

Images on theBeatusPage of some Medieval Psalters

Attempts to find significance in the images that fill the margins of Gothic manuscripts are usually frustrated by the unrestrained mingling of grotesques and more realistic images, neither related to the page on which they occur. We have tended to assume, therefore, that however magnificent and serious the decoration of a manuscript page, its margins were a sort of spatial mardi gras where anything was allowed, even the secular products of playful illuminators. Seduced by the worldliness of marginal drolleries and grotesques, we have often forgotten that it is just the familiar, the common, and the worldly which are likely to be seized on for allegorical expression of spiritual truths.

Images on theBeatusPage of some Medieval Psalters

Attempts to find significance in the images that fill the margins of Gothic manuscripts are usually frustrated by the unrestrained mingling of grotesques and more realistic images, neither related to the page on which they occur. We have tended to assume, therefore, that however magnificent and serious the decoration of a manuscript page, its margins were a sort of spatial mardi gras where anything was allowed, even the secular products of playful illuminators. Seduced by the worldliness of marginal drolleries and grotesques, we have often forgotten that it is just the familiar, the common, and the worldly which are likely to be seized on for allegorical expression of spiritual truths.

Dreamwork and Spirituality

Our dreams reveal many aspects of a spiritual process at work inside us, from simple metaphoric reflections of life-situations or inner roles, to dramatic confrontations with choices on our life-journeys; and from direct warnings of future events to vivid affirmations of a numinous reality beyond the material world we live in. Active dreamwork with the roles presented in our dreams can give the dreamer a deep sense of hearing spiritual truth from within. I summarise my rationale, methods, and classifications. quoting (with permission) a few dream examples.

Teaching Young Dogs Old Tricks! Management and Spiritual Lessons From America’s Most Selective School — Clown College

Our success in integrating faith and learning for a postmodern generation lies not in learning new tricks but using old evangelistic practices we learned when we first came to Christ. By doing so, we are teaching young dogs (our students) old tricks. The focus of this paper is on how one of the authors uses top 10 lists to tell his personal story to communicate business and spiritual principles. It begins with a discussion of top 10 lists and how they can be used effectively in a classroom. The main portion of the paper presents “Top 10 Lessons from America’s Most Selective College,” which communicates 10 important business and spiritual truths learned at Clown College. The final portion of the paper discusses how others might use personal stories to integrate faith and learning in the business classroom.

Church and State in Christian History

The dialogue, which has often become a controversy and a conflict, between church and state constitutes one of the great themes that run throughout European history. It is closely allied to, and is indeed often confused with those other recurring dialogues between liberty and authority, between the individual and the group, and between law and conscience. In the actual flux of events several of these debates may coincide. The possibility of conflict between liberty and authority, between individual duty and the law, is as it were built into the fabric of human relations. It is the predicament of Antigone, where the decree of the ruler conflicts with the claim of personal love and human piety; the predicament of Thomas More when a spiritual truth as he saw it conflicts with the will of a king and the decision of parliament. But the dialogue of church and state is less elemental than these others, and a discussion of the problems that are included under an index-entry as 'church and state' can become very confused unless the terms of the discussion are clearly understood. The area of the church and state battleground is closely limited. Strictly speaking, we need the presence of two bodies of organized human beings; on the one hand the 'polity' or totality of a race or a region organized to achieve a prosperous existence as a social, civilized group, and on the other hand the 'church' or totality of a religious body organized to direct and protect its members in their progress to a spiritual end. This, however, is not the only possible situation. As we shall see, it is possible, and indeed usual for both church and state to include the same or nearly the same group of people; it is also possible for an organized state to confront an imperfectly organized religious group, and for an organized church to face a politically unorganized multitude. In these two last situations the church-state contest exists only in a rudimentary

The Rhetorical Function of Proverbs in Walden

WALT WHITMAN'S descriptive phrase for Leaves of Grass, language experiment,1 is applicable to much of the literature of New England Transcendentalism, not least to the writings of Henry Thoreau. The experimental character of Transcendental prose and poetry has its analog, if not its origin and sanction, in a theory of language expressed most vigorously by Emerson. According to this theory, the of nature and outward experience reflect factstruths of the all-pervading divinity which of necessity symbolize themselves throughout the phenomenal world. Nature, then, is the language of spirit; but man's language is also symbolic.2 In the most rudimentary sense, words are signs of natural facts-that is, symbols of spiritual truths at the second remove. Since, however, the mind of man shares directly in the same divinity which manifests itself in the material realm of nature, man's language could be something more than a faint echo of the Over-Soul's. It could, on the contrary, itself be creative -either by depicting and organizing physical facts in such a way as to make their latent spiritual meaning more apparent, or by literally giving significance to its referents through metaphor and analogy. (Man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. )3 In the hands of the responsible artistthe artist who was true to himself-such metaphors would not be whimsical or fantastic but profoundly true, consistent both with nature and with spiritual law. This was so because the profound self which the artist respected, and on which he relied, was the author of nature. Emerson even ventured to suggest that man in his hypothetically perfect development could speak nature into being-could evoke or express the sun and moon and stars out of himself.4 More especially even for Thoreau than for Emerson, this basic philosophy of language was accompanied by a curiosity about particular linguistic and semantic phenomena. Words being man's characteristic expressive symbols, it was worth the while to study the etymology of rival,5 or to compare the Massachuset and Abnaki Indian meanings of Musketaquid, the aboriginal name for the Concord River (W., III, I57, 187).6 To do so was to realize the fundamental design of human experience everywhere and thus to discover oneself.

India's Foreign Policy Today: Reflections upon Its Sources

Occidental nations had distinct images of India long before they recognized the new republic ten years ago. To Herodotus and his contemporaries India was the scene of fabled wonders; to devout Christians in the Middle Ages it was the likely site of Paradise; and to the learned of later enlightened centuries it was above all the abode of superior wisdom. In fact, nothing about India seems to have attracted Western scholars so much as the religions and philosophies that originated in the subcontinent millennia ago. The fundamental principles of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism were analyzed and exposed with scholarly care during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Western minds, increasingly convinced of the essential “materialism” of their own heritage, made a steady pilgrimage to the repositories of the great spiritual truths that India held.

Dover Quarterly Meeting: Some Rhymed Reminiscences of Joel Bean

DOVER QUARTERLY MEETING: SOME RHYMED REMINISCENCES OF JOEL BEAN With an Introductory Note by Anna Brtnton* Joel Bean (1825-1924) born on a New Hampshire farm, was descended from several generations of New England Friends. Throughout his long life he was student, farmer, teacher, writer, and, above all, minister of the gospel. Religious visits took him to many parts of this continent, over unbroken prairies to visit new meetings, through Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, up and down the West Coast and again and again to New England and Pennsylvania. With his wife, Hannah E. Bean of Philadelphia, also a teacher and a gifted minister, he visited, in the 1860's, the Hawaiian Islands, "that loveliest fleet that lies anchored in any ocean," to which they were to return again and again in later life. Ten years later Joel and Hannah Bean paid a religious visit to Friends in Great Britain and Ireland. This memorable experience brought deepened realization of the spiritual truth and of the power of the distinctive principles of the Society of Friends. Lifelong friendships developed which were kept alive through stimulating correspondence. Their home and school in West Branch, Iowa, were a center of intellectual and religious life. In the 1880's Joel Bean and his family removed to California where at College Park, not far from San Francisco, the first independent meeting was established. This meeting welcomed in membership persons who retained connection with all the branches of the Society of Friends. It also included persons of other religious affiliations. Here, as elsewhere, Joel and Hannah Bean were the center of a congenial and active group of Friends. The following verses form part of a rhymed chronicle entitled "Recollections of Childhood," written by Joel Bean for his daughters. When the harvest was housed in the fall of the year, And October's rich tintings began to appear, We were happy a fifty mile journey to take By the skirts of the mountains and shores of the lake, To Sandwich, where the Quarterly meeting was held Amid beauties of scenery never excelled. * Anna Brinton, formerly Executive Director of Pendle Hill, is a granddaughter of Joel Bean. These verses were communicated to the Editor by Herbert C. Jones of San José, California. Readers of the Bulletin will be reminded of Charles F. Jenkins' "Quarterly Meeting at Gwynedd" in our Spring Number. 100 Notes and Documents101 On the way we joined others at Wolfboro Bridge, From Dover and Berwick and New Durham Ridge, From Farmington, Chestnut Hills, Rochester Plains, Till we formed a procession of long carriage trains. As near to the end of the day's drive we drew, A landscape most charming attracted our view: On neighboring hills twin villages were seen, The meeting house stood in the valley between, The woodlands with brilliance of color were crowned, And mountains in majesty circled around. The Friends of the town for their guests were prepared, Choicest comforts and company freely were shared, In families reared where "the strength of the hills" Were blest with the dew that from Heaven distills. The Hoags and Meaders and Budes and Frys, Varneys, Peaslees, and others to memory rise Whose virtuous habits and vigorous toil Drew out of that rocky ungenerous soil The means to build homes of the purest and best; Such as studded New England and dowered the West; And characters strong, whose descendants have shed An influence far o'er our continent spread. When the Meeting assembled, the large house was filled, To reverent worship the concourse was stilled. The house of the Lord was a temple of prayer, And the Master Himself was the minister there With the gifts of His Spirit His servants were stirred, And lips were anointed to utter the Word. To the Quarter in winter the long files of sleighs To Rochester wended through drifted highways. At Dover, the meeting convened in the Spring But that which the largest assemblies would bring Was the one at North Berwick, in summer-days held. When the mowing and reaping were done in the field, And the holiday rest was a holy day feast, And thanks-giving for blessings and bounties increased. 102Bulletin of Friends Historical Association...

Emerson and the Political Economists

FOR Emerson economic laws and phenomena were reflections or publications of great spiritual truths, just as nature itself such a reflection or publication. True political economy, he wrote, is not mean, but liberal, and on the pattern of the sun and sky.' What he believed about the stuff of economics, however, he did not necessarily believe about the economists-or political economists, as they were called in his day. In most cases, he was sure, the political economists failed to realize the potentialities of their material: they robbed it of its broad significance and reduced it to trivia or, worse, falsity. With notable exceptions he thought their outlook limited, their writing unprovocative, and their conclusions inadequate. To understand why he felt so, we must first examine his distinction between the reason and the understanding. For Emerson this difference was a profound one. In writing to his brother Edward in 1832, he explained the two faculties in this way:

The Humanism of Paul Elmer More

It is primarily, of course, as a critic of literature that Paul Elmer More commands attention, for the Shelburne Essays reveal critical powers of remarkable range and sensitiveness. Here, however, there will be no attempt to examine his critical work in detail; our concern is rather to trace the development of the philosophic and religious thought from which his work of criticism in principle derives. More was convinced (and here he is in accord with other exponents of contemporary American humanism) of the prime importance of relating the study of literature to a central body of ideas which might give it unity and direction. In the preface to his Platonism, the first volume of the series entitled “The Greek Tradition,” he writes: “I can foresee no restoration of humane studies to their lost position of leadership until they are felt once more to radiate from some central spiritual truth. I do not believe that the aesthetic charms of literature can supply this want, nor is it clear to me that a purely scientific analysis of the facts of moral experience can furnish the needed motive. The former is too apt to run into dilettantism, and the latter appeals too little to the imagination and the springs of enthusiasm. Only through the centralising force of religious faith or its equivalent in philosophy can the intellectual life regain its meaning and authority for earnest men.”

Church and Stage

Aladdin’s lamp revealed, to its fortunate possessor, the riches of this world and many would fain have h rub of it; the lamp of Faith which has infinitely greater powers is not so popular. This is odd. The riches of that other world, where one may ‘turn but a stone to start a wing, ‘lie idle; yet we are of that other world in saecula saeculorum.Speaking under correction (for my similes may be as inaccurate as they are inadequate) I would assert that the rays of our lamp not only pick out abstractions, ideas, reasons, and so forth, the apprehension of which adjusts the soul to the Divine Will, but shines upon material things to be seen; and, having an ‘x’ quality, upon things to be heard, felt, and even tasted. The beams of its light not only dispel the immaterial darkness so that we may see the material way, but enlarge the mind so that we enjoy the journey on it; in short, the light enables us to see God in his creation, especially at its fulness within the narrow borders of his Church.The Church, irrespective of specifically spiritual truths, is the most amazing storehouse of material truths, the truths also of sound and sense which, as the ray shines upon them, are seen to be of the very texture of Beauty. The adventurous soul under this illumination feels as though she were inspecting the wardrobes of heaven and at last apprehending the music of the spheres.

Spiritual Truth as Revealed in the World of Nature

Spiritual Truth as Revealed in the World of Nature

Ornament

As remarked by Clement of Alexandria, the scriptural style is parabolic, but it is not for the sake of elegance of diction that prophecy makes use of figures of speech. On the other hand, “The sensible forms [of artifacts], in which there was at first a polar balance of physical and metaphysical, have been more and more voided of content on their way down to us: so we say, ‘This is an ornament’ … an ‘art form’ … [Is the symbol] therefore dead, because its living meaning had been lost, because it was denied that it was the image of a spiritual truth? I think not” (Andrae, Die ionische Säule, Bauform oder Symbol, 1933, Schlusswort). And as I have so often said myself, a divorce of utility and meaning, concepts which are united in the one Sanskrit word artha, would have been inconceivable to early man or in any traditional culture.