Mudballs That Glitter: More on the Body/Spirit

Near the opening of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston refers to human beings as “mudballs that glitter.” For over thirty years I have carried this image with me as a kind of shorthand for the spirit-flesh embranglement that we call “human being.”

Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.

Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.

Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.

Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.

Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you

Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being

If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?

Islamophobia: Bred of Ignorance, Breeding Violence

Fear and ignorance feed on each other, and when they are allowed to do so unchecked, they result in hatred and violence.

How many examples, from religious or secular history, do we need to confirm the truth of this statement?   There are too many to list, and we all have our favorites on that list—usually involving the persecution of our own people:  the early Christians, the pagans, the Protestants, the Anabaptists, the Huguenots, the Roman Catholics, the Armenians, the Jews, the Palestinians, the Tibetans, women, black people, gay and lesbian people...

Right now, in the United States and Europe, what we are most ignorant of and what we fear most is Islam.  Is our Pakistani neighbor or that Algerian or Somalian stranger a terrorist? Is that woman wearing a hijab or a burqah  a sign that our freedom to choose—from religion to the clothes we wear—is under threat? Do the mosques and Islamic centers appearing in “our” city landscapes mean “our civilization” is at risk?

It’s not just members of non-Muslim religions that are scared; secular people are, too.  Why do we assume that certain people living in our free, democratic societies do not share those values?  Because of their religion or dress? The people we are most suspicious of have come here precisely because of those values—because they value freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, and because they appreciate—in many cases far better than we do--the safety afforded by a pluralistic culture undergirded with laws to protect minority rights and enforcement agencies that, though not wholly free from corruption or prejudice, can be challenged by legal means.   

Who is the real threat to the United States and Europe today?  Not the millions of American and European Muslims trying to live decent lives with their families and communities.  The real enemy is us:  xenophobic nationalists, fundamentalists of all stripes, smug rationalists,  all of whom want the protections of a pluralistic democratic society for their way of life only, and who pre-judge everything they do not recognize as “theirs” to be impure, evil, or primitive. 

When will nationalists wake up to the reality that we are living and have always lived in a global, human world that transcends race and motherlands or fatherlands? When will Christian and other fundamentalists remember that "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18)? When will rationalists acknowledge that faith is not by definition irrational or anti-rational, but a well-reasoned way of orienting oneself in the world for good? 

When will we stop playing the righteous god punishing all who do not follow our ways?  When we will start using our imaginations not to inflate our fears but our understanding of others?  What would “Americans”  or “Europeans” do if anyone burned a Christian Bible?  The nation’s constitution or flag? What would they do if anyone vandalized their cemeteries? Fire-bombed their places of worship and social halls and schools?  Attacked one of their people on the street?  Publicized lies and words of hate about them on the Internet? 

In fighting ignorance and fear of those who differ from us, let’s start listening  to one another and learning about the other.  Let’s talk to our neighbors, find out their history, their values, their hopes, their dreams. And, as we learn about one antoher, let’s take as our guide not only the values of a free, democratic society, but also these words of Rabbi Hillel:  "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is interpretation." (Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, 31a).