Religious Scholar

Two billion people—one third of the world’s population—attended all or part of the same Anglican church service Friday.

This is astonishing, perhaps the first time in the history of world religion that so many people have observed, listened to, and in a sense participated in a single religious service. Thanks to television and the Internet, the Royal Wedding on April 29, 2011, brought more than a storybook marriage into the lives of people around the globe. It brought the Book of Common Prayer, the great Anglican hymns, “Guide me, O Thou great redeemer,” “Lord divine, all loves excelling,” “Jerusalem,” and the Lord’s Prayer, accompanied by the sight of one of the world’s great Gothic masterworks, Westminster Abbey, and the soaring music of Walton, Parry, and Elgar. No one who enjoyed this ceremony, whose heart beat faster as the strains of Crown Imperial accompanied the royal couple’s departure from the Abbey, can ever again claim to dislike classical music!

International political and cultural leaders joined in the singing and prayers alongside relatives and British royals (and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few space aliens beamed in, summoned by satellite dishes masquerading as fashionable millinery!). It was good to see the Archbishop of Canterbury looking fit and reflective, and celebrities including Elton John and David Furnish immersed in the church’s ancient rite of worship, praise, and wonder.

Those who turned on their TVs or computers to catch a glimpse of pomp and circumstance may well have left with something more: the surprising impression that religion is alive in the world. Despite the dogmas and restrictions that shut people out, religion is where we turn to celebrate life’s joyous milestones and grieve its heart-rending tragedies. In these rites, prayers, and songs—as diverse as the cultures from which they sprang—we find our place in the family of man and gain a glimpse of the infinite love that some call God.

A relative told me recently, "I learned how to meditate today! Oprah interviewed a guy who's an expert. I closed my eyes for two minutes, and felt great!"

Hmm. Was that meditation? Or a relaxation technique? Yoga teachers since Patanjali wrote his Sutras have been distinguishing between the two. Relaxation is a way to calm the mind and refresh the body. Relaxation techniques such as closing the eyes, tensing and releasing the muscles in sequence, can accomplish this, and may be all a person needs.

Meditation, on the other hand, is a deepening of awareness, possibly a pathway to communicate with one's own idea of the Deity or the essence of life. Relaxation techniques prepare one for meditation, but are not the same as meditation. In fact, many meditators find their practice the opposite of relaxation! Some meditators sit rigidly on a hard floor, their legs crossed uncomfortably, for hours in a practice that may continue for years without any observable results. On the other hand, meditation may result in what some practitioners call "bliss" or deep communion with the divine. It's very different from lying on the floor and letting your cares float out the window.

Look at it this way: Playing a scale on the piano with one finger can help a person understand music. But it's not the same as conducting Beethoven's Ninth. Meditation is a noble path for those who aspire to a deeper, richer life. But for many people, simple relaxation may be just the ticket.

Two years ago, I scaled the rocky face of Jingshan Hill in Beijing. As I struggled to the top, a large, heavy backpack working against me, I made one last burst of effort and swung myself over the last ridge of stones. I arrived at the place of five pavilions--temples, actually--overlooking the Forbidden City and the flat expanse of Beijing sprawling endlessly beyond on a rare day of brilliant blue sky and sunshine. The extremity of my effort, compounded by a lifetime of reading books and eating cookies rather than climbing hills, made the final destination a triumph as sweet as heaven. Exhausted, my confidence and spirits rose to a rare height as I contemplated the enormity of my feat.

Enormity? Well, maybe not. I just discovered that the entire height of Jingshan Hill is 47.5 meters...barely 150 feet (or half a city block)! My "Outward Bound"-type adventure seemed to shrivel up into a big fish story: a marlin reduced to the size of a minnow.

But it made me think. Often it is not the stretch we go, but the effort we make that counts. As this is true in our daily lives, so it is in our spiritual practice. Great effort produces great results. The less fit experience more triumph from short sprints of unexpected intensity than the seasoned athlete from a long, predictable course. Eagerness, intense focus, and heart-felt desire, these are the relishes which spice up our meditation and prayer no less than our efforts to scale the small mountains of every day life.

Art by Sarada at http://xelucha.deviantart.com/#/d33guia

Sarada took this and other "burned books" photos in the woods the other day. She did not "plant" or rearrange them in any way, but photographed them as found. If there can be "stories in stone," certainly there also may be messages in the fragments of burned books whose pages speak to us from the forest floor.

A couple of my friends are always telling me they are atheists.  Come on. These are the same people who love music, love people, love food, love poetry, love art, love nature, love beauty.  What do they think God is?

The celebrated atheist H.L. Mencken loved Bach, possibly the most spiritual of all composers, and would travel from Baltimore to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, each year for the Bach Festival.  Atheist: right. Give me a break. If you don’t hear the voice of God in Bach’s music, what do you hear?  Mechanical sonorities? The progression of modulations through time? Human intelligence and emotion filtered through German culture?

Cliches from popular and religious literature say it all. “Love makes the world go ‘round.” “All you need is love.” “God is love.” The Deity is not the old greybeard in the clouds, sorry.  When music flows from Bach’s brain onto paper into the hands of performers, through their voices and fingertips, out into the air, through our ears, into our minds, flooding our hearts:  that is it.

Call it what you like. You may despise religion, embrace nihilism, and reject the notion of a supreme being. But if you have ever loved, you’ve felt the Pulse.  We may not be able to weigh or quantify or measure It. But it is knowable. And it is love.