Healing: At-One-Ment

In an earlier blog, “The Haunted Lake,” I suggested writing, reading, loving others and actually reaching out, physically and emotionally, to help us and others heal. We are trying to sort out the bad fish, the ever hungry carp that eats up the sweet memories that live in the deep Lake Austin of our sub-consciousness and consciousness.


There’s something in the human touch.  Pick up a baby and see. I ask you, isn’t there something eternal in a handshake, an embrace? I see Darwin, he who changed our world forever, dying, lying quietly, his huge hand in Emma’s, “my love, my precious love.” The other side of earthworms and apes.


I want to convince you that Terry Warner’s credo, “who we are is how we are with others,” lies at the heart of connection with Self, with God, and, of course, with others.


I’m willing, as well, in the spirit of tolerance, to suggest that a number of what I will call God Concepts seems to help us as humans who are respectful  and loving of our neighbors.  If it helps to substitute Energy or what one scientist calls “Empowered Selfhood free of all the trappings of organized religion,” so be it. Having read all of the works of the popular Stephen J. Gould, I came to admire his mind and unequivocal belief in a biology-dominated view of the world.  That was his Weltanschauung.  I could picture him reading late into the night, working through his probably battered copy of Darwin, finding fascination and peace, because it worked for him; Darwin met his needs, as the Prince of Biology does for many others in the world.  And they are kind, respectful people.


And what we have in Adam Gopnik’s study of Darwin the man is a sensitive, humane peek into Darwin at home, which was often his laboratory. He tested earthworms with his daughters’ help at the piano. Which tones on the keyboard would the worms respond to? Let’s see. Let’s turn this into a family home evening. You graph the responses, Anne, I’ll arrange the worms, etc.

We must find space for all of God’s children, regardless of their ”godliness or ungodliness.” Strangely enough, the so-called “demons” often turn out to be “angels.” We reach only a few meters of the inner Darwin as we watch him watch by his daughter’s bed. A death-watch and much sadness.

How Darwin was as a Victorian father, husband, and gentleman-scientist tells us who he was as a humble human being. A neighbor worth knowing and loving, like my own Darwinian neighbor.

At the risk of being glib with such words as “godliness” or “holiness”  or "sinner," I’ve been willing to use those words conscientiously and with conviction, whatever the price.

I do call your attention to a blatant paradox. I speak for tolerance, but my own spiritual journey, which began when my parents became LDS in 1942, continues in that landscape. So when I finish, calling for a Oneness of All in God, I raise questions about an abundance of “God Concepts.” Here I include science with its rainbow connections and its own set of rules.

I believe in the ultimate plurality of happiness. We will reside where we are happiest and best suited.  For example, I cut a wide margin for Muslims, who in the other World, continue living in what the Koran calls “the meadows of the gardens.” Datepalms, mosques, Koranic studies—an endless oasis. And they will be happy, free of the repugnant idea of an Intercessor, Christ, free to follow Allah. Some may decide on a lane change, and become Christian or  perhaps even LDS. One thing for sure: The repressive, often violent mistreatment of women and others will cease forever.  Of the so-called 40 virgins and the abundance of wine I have no insight or answer.

My perspective, then, family and friends, is shaped and informed by my LDS theological convictions. And my interpretations. Clearly and happily, some would say are, without authority.  Some of my own grandchildren, independent of orthodoxy or dependent on orthodoxy, as they are in their rich variety, will beg to differ from Old Son. Bless You!

I have often presented my own mother in the spotlight of these now 45 blogs, presenting her honestly and openly but with an abiding, eternal love. She is, in my mind and soul, becoming what she was destined to be. And I will not be surprised at her Glory when we meet.

Prescient, like her mother, Lucy, Mom was sensitive to things of the Other World.  What she felt and heard was mere silence to me.  My folks spent nearly 20 summers in my brother’s apartment or with us, or even in their own apartment.  As I approached the podium one Sunday to teach a Gospel Doctrine lesson, Mom told me later, her eyes filled with tears, "I remembered in a flash all the unkind words, the belt once in awhile, the irritability and the yelling, and I whispered, 'I’m sorry, Father.'"

“Hush--you gave him the Gospel,” was the quiet, penetrating response. There she sat, on the third row of a generic LDS chapel. Not Notre Dame, not Easter morning.  Just another Sunday . . . .

The film Five Corners charts Harry’s [Tim Robbins] path to peace and forgiveness. Watching Martin Luther King’s famous Washington DC speech, he decides Vietnam was enough war, the civil rights movement a cause worth giving one’s life to, even if it means teaming with a group of African Americans on their way to a very dangerous Mississippi. The rub, of course, is that Harry’s father, a cop, has been killed by an African American recently. Meeting the threatening Heinz, fresh from prison, he tells the psychopath [the great John Turturro], “I love you, Heinz.” See how that gives Heinz pause, later, and saves Harry’s life.

No, Cain, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We are care-givers, nursing the countless wounds of our family, the community, the human family. We are volunteers in a giant hospital. The wounds, the illness are within and without.

Estranged, alienated, Entfremd, we look forward to the day when we are One.  The Haunted Lake becomes Walden Pond, surrounded by trees and laughing children on a warm Saturday afternoon in Concord. Free at last, thank God, we are all free at last.

Atonement: Yes, two become at-one. The cross and the garden are now part of our own personal landscape.

PS:  I will now take some time off to rest for a spell. Be safe, my beloved friends and family.