I’ve been reading through a really neat book that Aldous Huxley wrote. There was a saying in there that came to me the other day, and I had to go back to it.
The essence is this: Our relationship with G-d defines the shape of our life in the form of a sponge. The particular traditions and teachings that we pick up along the way are what fills the sponge, but if you squeeze all that tradition out, you’re still left with the underlying sponge – the relationship with G-d.
Tradition and intellectual teaching is just the fill that we use to let the sponge take shape. Like a living sponge, filling it lets it grow, the more it grows, the more it’s able to absorb.
In a life made full by a robust and deep relationship with G-d, the sponge grows. The more the sponge grows, the less it’s about the tradition and intellectual teaching, and the more it’s about the relationship with G-d.
When ripe, we should be able to squeeze the tradition and dogma out of the sponge completely, and yet the relationship with G-d remains full and complete and strong.
Here’s the quote that got me thinking about this:
Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls ‘the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity’ be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true
Nature of Things.
“The Abbot (Chapman apparently is referring to Abbot Marmion) says St. John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St. John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St. Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.â€
from Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy
Folks I know who have a problem with religion should resonate with some part of this. After all, the most common complaint that the “non-religious†have about religion is that it’s so shallow – that it focuses too much on human traditions and interpreted teaching, rather than searching for real meaning in the world we live in.
I think they’re right in many ways. Too often, our religions fail to encourage us to grow and mature in our faith. Too often, our religions want us to grow in our relationship with the church, rather than in our relationship with G-d. The best pastor or rabbi should be looking for ways to help parishioners become so strong in relationship with G-d that they no longer need the pastor or rabbi.
A wise boss used to pound the idea into my head that my job as a leader was to be wise enough to work my way out of a job – to help people around me grow so that some of them would go past me, or at the very least be ready for my job. It’s a hard leadership style to truly live, though I always strived toward it.
This wisdom and teaching has a place in the seminaries of the world, as pastors and rabbis would be well served to try and achieve the same thing. In my experience, most pastors work to keep their flock contained, and dependent, and tied to what’s taught in that church. Instead, pastors should be trying to help people become the most absorbent sponge possible, ready to move past that pastor and on to ponds where even more can be absorbed.
A faith sponge can only grow when it’s constantly given just a little more to absorb than it’s ready to absorb.
Go see how much you can absorb this week.
