spiritual genealogy

auld lang syne

retrospectives: stories I grew up with

I guess I’m at the age when I’m starting to look back over my life and think again, a little deeper, and certainly with a different perspective, on the things I’ve learned in my life.  With friends and family scattered far and wide, a weblog seems like a good place to do that.  (Another weblogger whose writing and insights are exquisite, can be found here.  His blog may be inactive for a while, but he'll be back soon.)  Since this is the season of AULD LANG SYNE, I thought it would be appropriate to start with a retrospective.

An old friend recently commented that my ‘Great Radiance’ blog is trendy because it features diversity of belief.  But I wrote back to her that diversity isn’t a trend in my life, nor an ideal, it’s just ‘reality!’  I grew up in a racially, religiously and ethnically diverse neighborhood, and my parents were staunch proponents of tolerance and respect when it came to these kinds of differences.  So I grew up with that perspective, and if anything, diversity has become more and more a reality of my life with the passing years. 

This is one of the stories I grew up with, it’s a part of my personal mythology:

muslims forced to eat pork

The following is a story about my father, a life-long seafarer, who was already fifty-one years old when I was born.  He was a cancer survivor who’d lost the hearing in his left ear.  As a young man, he’d taught himself navigation, and rose up through the seamen’s ranks to become captain.  With English as his second language, and the condition known as ‘profoundly hard of hearing’, communication with my father was largely a non-verbal affair.  But he was nevertheless a master of communication, and despite his problems we had many long, intimate talks, with me mostly listening.  My parents friends used to say Niels could spin a yarn.

His fine blonde hair was turning gray, and thinning out on top, when I first knew him.  But he had the sea in his eyes, blue and gray by turns, according to his two chief moods, peaceful and slightly melancholic.  And sometimes the stars twinkled in those blue eyes, too.  He seemed to be nearly always good-humored, and there was some gentle knowingness in his face, which set people at ease.  I thought he was a remarkable man, and so did many others.  It was a privilege to know him, the old capt’n.

He used to point out the stars to me, from our wooden bench in the backyard, a small plot of grass behind a narrow brick house in Philadelphia.  The Seven Sisters was our favorite constellation, the Pleiades.  He explained how to use a hand-held sextant to navigate by the heavenly bodies.  He told me about the far-distant places he had seen, about South America, and the Middle East, Mauritius, and India.  I would go there with him in imagination, never dreaming that someday I’d stand in some of those same places myself.  He especially liked to talk about how varied the different cultures of the world were, and how there are many paths to the Divine, and we must treat the religions of other peoples with great, great respect. 

Even in his seventies he was still upset by an incident that occurred decades before, when he saw an instance of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ in connection with diversity of culture and religion.  His ship was sailing in the Middle East, along the coast of Yemen or Saudi Arabia, during a famine in those lands. 

People were calling out to the sailors from the beach alongside the water, to please give them whatever food they could spare.  There was the usual language problem, but somehow they deciphered what the people were asking.  My father instructed that a launch should be sent ashore with whatever hard bread, flour and dried pease could be spared.  They could take these staples home and cook them for themselves.  But some of the men, laughing among themselves, went down to the galley, and returned with a sack full of chunks of cooked meat turning rotten.  They threw the sack onto the shore.  The people were so hungry, they began to devour the meat right on the spot, while the launch returned to the ship.  Once safely aboard, and underway again, these men shouted out to the starving Muslims, that the meat they were eating was pork!  As the ship pulled away from the scene, my father watched the desperate Muslims attempt to force themselves to vomit out the forbidden meat.  The pathetic sight made a deep impression on my father. He could never forget such cruelty, perpetrated by his own people, his own sailors.  He paid off the ship as soon as he could.  He didn’t want to work with that crew of men.  He was still affected by it, decades later. 

When I heard this story as a teenager, it deeply impressed me, and moved me toward the track I'm on at present.  I didn't want to be like those sailors, ridiculing the sacred tenets of others' religion & culture.  This was definitely a flagstone on my spiritual path, and a link in my spiritual genealogy. 

spiritual genealogy

Welcome to my new site.  In these pages, I hope to explore my own spiritual genealogy, which means everything that has significantly influenced  me spiritually, along with whatever reflections, connections, inspirations or archeological digs which may come along with this territory. 

We all have a spiritual genealogy, and I invite you to share yours on these pages.  Look for the word 'COMMENT' at the foot of each day's post, and share your spiritual genealogy too.

I would like to say, right at the outset, that I hope to apply some critical thinking to these spiritual influences, and these pages will not necessarily be full of sweet recitals of goodness and light.  But there may be some of that.  It's just that there are so many informative books available on these topics today, that our perspectives on spiritual traditions and on spiritual growth can undergo sea-changes right now. These changes are what interest me.  I hope to quote from some of these books where appropriate, and I look forward to your responses. 

I thought I'd list my spiritual influences, in a preliminary way at least, and in no special order of importance:

Christianity, especially Catholicism, (in which I was raised), theology, church  history, 'heresies'

Monasticism, Ministry, Laity, Marriage & Family Life

Gnosticism, whose influence has come through the church, but also through literature and art, and through friends over the years

Hinduism & Buddhism - my seafaring father brought them to us

Poetry - which must stand as its own category in my spiritual  world

Prayer & Meditation, techniques, sufi dancing, etcetera

Literature, Film, Music - in that order

Carl Jung - and associates - a very powerful influence in my thinking

Philosophy, Metaphysics - I was a philosophy undergraduate

Healing, Service

Nature - what an incredibly rich spiritual source!

People

Current Events

Science

Yes, there have been significant spiritual, life-changing influences coming from all these sources, and I look forward to sharing them in this blog.

BTW, Happy Holidays!