A Puzzle Unsolved    

 

Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
4/25/14

 

 

Remarkable for its literary excellence and imagery is this single sentence buried in the last paragraph of a recent New York Times book review:

 

"Should we really regard philosophy as a dog-eared crossword puzzle, first published some 2,500 years ago and still pored over by enthusiasts who, after 100,000 rainy Sundays, have managed to fill in only a handful of clues?"

 

One could substitute "religious beliefs," or, perhaps better, "religious dogma," for the word "philosophy." How much less conflicted the world would be were the universal answer to that question -- as regards religious dogma -- a resounding "YES!"

 

The final question in the review is surely rhetorical: "Wouldn't it in fact be rather disappointing to stop asking fundamental questions?"

 

My pastor looked out at his congregation this past Easter Eve and said in effect that he couldn't tell us much about God other than that we if encounter that cosmic force at all, it would be in one another and in the work for good that we do together. There was that "dog-eared crossword puzzle," unsolved as it has ever been, where deity is concerned, since the dawning of human consciousness.

 

I was not in some New Age church. I was in a local franchise of the oldest of all Christian communions in the West wherein it is possible and, in fact, probable that one will hear answers and where questions are generally brushed away by bold certainties long since determined to be the only acceptable orthodoxy.

 

I had spoken in that congregation's Lenten series a week or two earlier and said, speaking not only for me but for my wife, that we had come into its life seeking community, not catechesis, and, mirabile dictu, found the former but not the unwelcome latter. The people in that congregation we have come to know and very much like are -- eminently including the pastor -- the reason we are there.

 

It was not necessary for me to shed 50 years' worth of intellectual skepticism about Christian theology and practice to take a regular pew in that church and to allow myself to be befriended by some of the nicest people I have had the privilege to know.

 

My dog-eared crossword puzzle and I are welcome among them, no questions asked. Except that questions resonate up and down the nave of that church as people do what they have always done, say and sing what they have always said and sung, but made open to fresh interpretations of it all by the priest who says, "Well, I don't know." He goes on to say that we need to care for each other so that we can care for those who are uncared for beyond the doors of the church.

 

So there we are amidst the splendor of ancient rites, hearing said and sung their ancient texts, yet trying to figure out how all that stuff fits into our daily lives. No orthodox thunderbolts are heard, no demands that we believe one or another clause of any creed -- though the creeds are there for those who may need reference to them.

 

You could almost replace the cross on the church's tower with a question mark and still see the place and its people as it is and has been for going on three generations. Why? Because the dog-eared crossword puzzle is an accepted reality there as we seek community with one another. I think I am not wrong in saying that we go there with questions, expecting to hear more questions. And we do hear them, and they are challenging.

 

Somehow the priest, who has been working out his vocation for nearly half a century, melds ancient tradition with contemporary sentiment and syntax. He never comes across as an oracle of established truth -- other than the truth that he loves us and expects us to love each other. Perhaps needless to say, we love him, too.

 

It is unclear to me how it is that, awash in a vocabulary that dates perhaps as far back as 3,300 years ago and across many a cultural and language barrier, I can hear some of those fundamental questions being mulled over even as the familiar ritual unfolds as it has in some form for all that time.

 

Most of those we have come to know in the congregation are to one degree or another familiar with my agnosticism, research and published work, the latter having been characterized -- not entirely unfairly -- by many a critic elsewhere as heretical and even actionable before the authorities of the communion in which I was ordained.

 

All I've been doing and continue to do in my research and writing is to formulate such questions the contemplation of which might help fill in a few of those squares on that tattered crossword puzzle. If I ever do fill in a square, though, I'll do it in pencil, because who can know for anywhere near certain such things as boilerplate dogma proclaim as truth?

 

 

 


Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

Readers Write 
Essay 4/18/14: Just Outside the Gate    

 

Anne Primavesi, Newbury, West Berkshire, UK:
I have long benefited from your astringent biblical commentaries and thank you for them. In your "Just Outside the Gate" essay you make salient points about our role in climate change and our attitudes to Earth. My most recent book, "Exploring Earthiness: The Reality and Perception of Being Human Today," (Cascade Books) focuses on those attitudes and some of their present outcomes -- particularly what I call the "monetization of Earth." I'd like you to know you are not alone in your desire and continuing attempts to address these issues. And thank you for reassuring me that I, too, am not alone.

 

Patricia O'Hara, Santa Rosa, CA:  

In your essay ("Just Outside The Gate") you ask why preachers do not use their sermons to bring moral pressure on the powers-that-be to do something about climate change. In my career as a chemical engineer focusing on helping corporations understand the environmental impact of their operations, production facilities, and products, I worked with a team to create tools for engineers to use to really understand the relative impacts of the choices they made, on both the environment and their costs. Until the powers-that-be understand the total cost of the choices they make, taking into consideration the entire life-cycle of the product or production operation being considered, and put true numbers in for the cost of water and other starting materials, they have no reason to change what they are doing, as they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to create as much profit as possible this side of the law. Exerting moral pressure has not worked in our capitalist system, only showing them the true bottom line. I am now retired, but the work for making the business case for environmental sustainability is still being carried out by Anthony Veltri at the University of Oregon.  

 

Tom Hall, Foster, RI:

A telling exegesis of the Lukan parable. One of your best pieces.

 

Norma Sanford, Glencoe, IL:  

How appropriate to publish an essay about the poor as Jews have been observing their legendary deliverance in the Passover rite and Christians their own in Easter rites. Now to make the connection with those just outside the gate. Your writing is brilliant and to the point. Thank you so much.

 

Josephine A. Kelsey, Ann Arbor, MI:

Bravo! Well done! One of your best. Keep going on this theme, please.

 

Bob & Kathleen Rogers Storen, Royal Oak, MI:  

Thank you for this beautiful yet disturbing message and for the assigned readings.  We send our gratitude for these reminders of what the gospel is all about.

 

Rosalind McGregor, Cambridge, MA:  

I will take your essay "Just Outside the Gate" to church today, it being Good Friday. I think it is a perfect message for a day that has to do with suffering. I hope what I hear the rector say will be a quarter as good as what you wrote.

 

John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA:

Of course -- stating the obvious -- if global warming continues to heat up at its present rate, the consequences will be both Dives and Lazarus will eventually end up in hell. I always thought of all the blessings according Lazarus in the end, the greatest of those was not having to spend eternity with the likes of Dives.

 

Harry Dyke, Elkhart, IN:

What an incredibly gifted mind and interpretation in that essay! One could wish that masses within the church would read and reflect on the same. Connecting the environmental issue to the story of Dives and Lazarus is truly a theological bull's eye in stimulating preachers to address issues that are ultimate in importance.  You have given all readers reason to acknowledge the catastrophe we are inevitably going to witness if we don't take the evidence seriously.  

 

George Martindale, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia:  

When I went to the seminary -- probably around the same time you did - homiletics was learning how to speak in pear-shaped tones. Nobody taught us to make the kind of connection you made between the Dives/Lazarus parable and real-life issues. I can tell from other things you've written that you had Dr. George Buttrick for homiletics. It shows. He'd be proud of you, I'm sure.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

Thank you for a powerful piece on the perils we face due to the climate changes brought about by human profligacy, especially here in the wealthiest nation on earth. It is not just fact-denying Republicans and congregant-fearing preachers that refuse to face the ugly truth of our ongoing damage to the environment. It is every one of us who refuses to make disciplined changes in daily life and demand the industrial and governmental policies necessary to ward off environmental disaster. 

 

Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, NJ:

Great essay, but pearls before the swine! The people who read and at least partially heed your essays already have some concern and compassion for fellow humans. However and sadly, religious leaders are as politicized to the right and as self-seeking as their friends and fellow travelers, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and the vast chorus of right-wing cheerleaders who praise the wealthy for their wealth, and simultaneously demean and condemn the countless Lazaruses amongst us. We might be saved from our worship of Mammon (unbridled capitalism) by the "blessing" of a global depression. The rich, of course, would survive rather well, thank you; while the non-rich will be further ground into the dust of deprivation. That might arouse our ignorant and indifferent population to man the barricades and declare a second American Revolution. But I dare add that such action would be much too inconvenient!

 

Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, CA:
I can only assume the motive for those who deny climate change is fending off helplessness. The illusion of great wealth sponsors is the ability to escape the fate of lesser beings. I have no idea whether we have the ability to turn aside the catastrophe we already see underway, but I would vote for a huge increase in public spending, both to develop energy equivalents to burning fossil fuel, and for relief for those already undergoing terrible suffering. But I am not one who controls a significant percentage of the world's wealth. With the exception (possibly) of Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and perhaps a few others, obscene wealth seems to blind people to the reality that we either all succeed, or we all go down. No exceptions. What would it have taken to help Dives understand he was poisoning his own water? What would it take to persuade the Koch brothers?
 

Hershey Julien, Sunnyvale, CA:

I am glad to see you calling attention to the environmental crisis in your essay of April 18. The best way to reduce the harmful emissions of CO2 that are the primary cause of global warming is to replace burning fossil fuels (like coal in electrical power plants)  with energy from liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR). Second, it will help get LFTRs operational for the Congress to pass a bill introduced in the Senate, S.R 2006, the "National Rare Earth Cooperative Act of 2014."  So, tell your readers to ask their senators to support this legislation. Once small, modular LFTR units are supplying power for electrical generating plants all over the country, long, expensive transmission lines with their loss of power will no longer be needed to distribute electricity from big power plants.  The abundant, economical, safe power provided by these units can heat homes and commercial buildings; power factories; drive trains, buses, ships, and private cars. With gratitude for your thoughtful essays.



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