The Chest, Part 1.

The Man had sought all methods he could to find a solution to his dilemma. Prayer, incantations, magical potions, scientific inquiry, logical deduction: all of these he had pursued in earnest at various times, and still he was faced with his dilemma. The weight of it had almost become bearable over the years. He still felt the Burden, but it had become such a part of his life that the pain and weariness it caused were a natural state. He could no longer remember what it was like to not feel the weight of the Burden.

He looked in the mirror and sighed. He turned slightly to see the Burden squatting there on his upper back like an obscenely huge tick. The straps which criss-crossed his chest dug into the muscles so deeply, it almost looked as if they were growing into his body. They were so tight he couldn't even fit his pinky finger between them and his skin. He had tried many ways of cutting them, and only after injuring himself-with no damage to the straps-had he given up trying to cut the straps by normal methods.

He wasn't even sure what was inside of the strange pack that just seemed to appear on his back one day. He had an idea that it had been growing there for years, perhaps his entire life, and he had paid no attention to it until noticing the weight of it that day.

Burdens are like that, he mused. When we are young and thoughtless we don't pay much attention to the consequences of our actions. We go about seeking delight and joy and entertaining our senses, as though there is nary a cost to be paid for our frivolity. Only too late do we come to understand the true cost of our narcissism. If we ever do...

He though of his many friends who think they have no Burdens to bear. How wrong they are: the Man could see theirs as clearly as his own. Some of them were hunched over by the weight far more than he. How could they not know of the great bag of woe strapped to them, forcing them to walk about like some sort of goblin or less than human animal?

He could only conclude that they never looked in a mirror. No, that was preposterous: they had to look in the mirror to care for themselves. In fact, how could such self-absorbed people not look in the mirror at every chance? Perhaps the problem was that they were not looking into the right sort of mirror?

The Man wondered if his own mirror were special, blessed with powers that allowed him to see the burden that others couldn't. No, that wasn't it: no matter which mirror he looked into, he still saw the Burden.

Even passing by a shop window he saw it there, lurking on his back and gradually sapping the life out of him. As time had passed it grew noticeably larger, and he wondered if there would come a day when he would be no more and, upon looking into the mirror, all he saw was that great, hideous thing that was the Burden.

He realized it was not the mirror that mattered, but how a person looked into it. They had to want to see beyond their own reflection, based as it is on the illusion of Self, the idea that each “ME” is the Center of the Universe, and everything else revolves around “ME”. (The illogical notion that there are billions of Centers of the Universe simultaneously occupying the planet is never considered by the Narcissist. That's why narcissism exists, because people consider only what they want to see in the mirror, not what is actually there. Their indifference to reality is why they don't recognize their own Burdens, nor are they bothered by the weight. Some even seem to take pride in knowing the weight is there, but not realizing it is a Burden.)

So... he could see the Burden, not only on his own back, but on the backs of others. What set him apart? Why such a gift? What made him so special...the Man ceased that dangerous line of thinking. After years of seeing and feeling the weight of his own Burden, he'd recognized he was nothing special. He was just a Man carrying his own Burden,and all he had come to desire from life was to be free of it. To think too much of himself would simply make the Burden grow even faster, of that he was certain.

Not that he didn't feel compassion for others who bore their own Burdens, (whether aware of them or not). He found that the more he tried to deal with his own burden, the stronger his desire to help others with theirs grew within his heart. He had long ago decided that, should he find the Key to getting rid of his Burden, he would gladly and freely share it with others.

He knew there were others who had come to see their own Burdens. He knew they could see his as well. It seemed that once a person was able to see his own Burden, all Burdens became visible to him. The Man eventually recognized that all who are able to see Burdens shared the same look in their eyes, a sort of desperate hope for a solution combined with a humble resignation to the weight of the Burden, and the occasional fire of determination to be rid of it one way or another.

He had even seen some people without any Burdens clinging to their backs. At first he thought it was simply because he lacked the ability to see them. He realized after a time that these people also walked tall and proud and free and full of joy, and not as with some of the worst Narcissists, who were that way because of total denial of their own and any other Burdens in the world. No, these people were genuinely free of any Burden, and walked as human beings were meant to walk, in total freedom, able to look at themselves in the mirror with total integrity and acceptance of their true selves.

The more he saw such People, the more he wanted that freedom for himself.

So it was that a Day came when there was a knock on the door of his home. It was just a single, loud rap that oddly sent echoes reverberating through his small house for a second or too (as though he was standing in a great hall, rather than a living room with scarcely enough room for a sofa and the easy chair he was sitting in, reading a book.) He hadn't had a visitor for ages, so he was at first hesitant to get up and answer the door.

He waited for a second knock, and, when none came after nearly a minute, he sprang out of his chair and rushed to the door, hoping he might catch Whoeveritwas if he were walking away.

He opened the door to find no one there. He cautiously leaned out a bit to look to each side of the doorway to see if someone were hiding there, but all he saw was the windows and shrubbery beneath them. He took a step forward, intending to walk to the gate of his front yard to look up the street to see if anyone was heading away from his house. That's when he nearly tripped over the Package.

It was about the size of a loaf of bread and wrapped in plain brown paper. There was no address on it, so he guessed it hadn't been delivered by the usual Post. The only writing on it was in a simple, yet elegant script:

Per Your Request.

The Man stared down at the Package for a moment, perplexed. Then he furtively glanced up and down the street, as though picking up a Package at his own front door were some sort of suspicious activity. Taking a deep breath and a sigh, he quickly picked up the Package and darted back inside.

He sat down on the sofa and placed the Package on the low table before him. He stared at it for some time, wondering who it was from and asking himself many questions regarding what could be in it and the peculiar way in which it was delivered. He considered for a moment that it might be some sort of bomb or trap or something entirely too dangerous to open. He leaned over and gave it a listen, and heard nothing. He tentatively picked it up and and shook it: he heard and felt a very slight bump from within, but that was it.

Well, there's nothing else to it he thought, then he quickly tore at the wrappings like he was once again a child opening the biggest present on his birthday. What was revealed was an old looking, nondescript chest. It was of greyish colored wood, that looked like it had once been red oak or cherry. It was constructed very much like his mother's jewelry chest, a simple wooden box with a hinge lid and single hasp in front. There was a note attached to the top, written in a much less eloquent (even messy) script. It read:

The Answer to Your Inquiry Lies Within.

There was no signature, no initials, nothing to identify who wrote the note and, presumably, who sent him the Chest.

The Man stared at the Chest, many thoughts flooding his mind, for a very long time. So long that he was startled when he realize the sun had gone down and it was past his dinnertime. He hadn't touched the Chest the entire time, so he finally picked it up, quite gingerly, and rotated it in his hands to examine it. He found no other markings to give any indication of who the Chest was from or what it contained.

He stood up and walked over to the mantle, placing the chest just below the mirror on the wall above it. He looked in the mirror, shaking his head as he saw the unavoidable Burden, then looked at the Chest.

The only “inquiry” I have made for years is how to remove the Burden. Could it be that whatever is in this Chest will allow me to do just that? The Man's heart began to pound and his breath quicken at the prospect that the Chest contained some sort of blessed, magical thing that would at long last relieve him of the Burden.

He realized that he was grinding his teeth in thought, painfully so, and took a step back from the chest. He rubbed his face and again looked into the mirror. Shaking his head, he reached for the Chest, placing his thumb below the hasp.

End Part 1 of “The Chest”

"We're all the same..."

Dear Well Meaning Friend,

I know you are completely sincere when you try to defuse discussions about race, ethnicity, religion and prejudice by saying, “we are all just the same. Why can't we just get along?”. I do have to point out, however, that we are not the same, at least not when it comes to how our various cultures, religions, and the color of our skin, affects our world view and behavior.

Sure, we all have the same basic wants and needs: food, air, water, shelter, the desire to love and be loved, to be free, to be respected and appreciated. We all bleed the same color blood when cut. For the most part, we all are conceived, born, age and die in the same ways. That's because biologically, we are all the same species. Yet, to reduce our cultural diversity to biological uniformity is a grave error in perception which actually fosters problems rather than offers solutions.

I'll explain what I mean from the perspective of a Native American, specifically from a Mohawk perspective. Please understand, friend, that I am not offering this explanation as a way of putting you down or creating conflict or trying to make myself appear superior to others. (In fact, I will touch on the subject of superiority and inferiority later on.) I'm doing this because, as I noted above, what seems like a good approach to racial, ethnic and religious differences actually isn't.

Let me start with a foundational difference within my traditional, Mohawk culture.  My Mohawk ancestors lived in a culture that was Matriarchal. Clan Mothers had the ultimate authority. Clan membership was passed through the mother. Property rights were held by the women. Our male sechems (chiefs) were chosen by the Clan Mothers, who held the right to veto the sechems' decisions and if necessary, remove an unsatisfactory one from office.

Our very language communicates the idea that women are fully equal to men, and in a certain way "superior", because they bear the gift of creating and nurturing life, whereas men can only manipulate that which is already created. So profound was our view that women possess great spiritual, creative power that it was they who oversaw the cultivating of our crops. We never had a need for “Women's Lib” or Feminism because we never placed women as being beneath men in any way.

This fact alone tells you how different the Mohawk were, and are, from Euro-American culture. Europeans, and then Americans, have always had a Patriarchal society, which treated women as second class citizens for centuries. They were the property of their husbands, viewed as tools for sexual gratification and child bearing. For centuries they were not allowed the same education as men, because it was expected that they would be satisfied being wives and mothers. In the U.S. women were not even allowed to vote until 1920, and then it took a Constitutional Amendment because the foundational document of the United States did not originally allow women the same rights as men!

So, caring friend, your very idea of how women should be treated is going to be fundamentally different from mine and my traditionalist Mohawk relations. This applies to some extent to all First Nations, even those which have a Patriarchal, rather than Matriarchal, tradition.

Many other aspects of Mohawk culture were, and are, different from your own. Our spiritual tradition, as with other First Nations, holds that nearly everything in Creation is to be considered sacred. We view ourselves as spiritual beings dwelling, temporarily, in a physical world that is not truly separated from the spiritual realm. Most of your religions tend to teach that we are physical beings seeking spiritual experiences. We see Creation as existing as one great circle. 

Your culture tends to impose a dualist view, in which there is the World of Flesh and the World of Spirit. It becomes very black and white for you, because the World of Flesh is inherently evil but the World of Spirit is inherently good. We don't see it that way, because we don't view Creation in terms of either/or, black and white. It's a multicolored, holistic Creation in which both sides of everything are needed, they coexist in order to maintain balance.

We have many items we consider sacred: drums, rattles, flutes, pipes, eagle feather fans and other feather items. All of these are treated with great respect and according to certain protocols. Your religions tend to say that this is a form of idolatry, that no “thing” is needed to commune with Creator, only prayer and faith. With that we will agree: our sacred items are used to demonstrate our faithfulness in both their making and in their use.

We don't try to convert others to our religions. We view that as something between each person and Creator. We, as Mohawk, see no threat or are not concerned that the Navajo or Lakota or Tlingit have a different spiritual tradition than our own. The same Creator set before them traditions that are different from ours. Different, but not better.

In your culture, there is constant argument about which religion is the right one. Yes, you have many who feel that “all religions lead to God”. But you have many more who argue constantly that their own religion is the only right one. This even occurs within the same belief, such as the thousands of Christian denominations or the various sects of Islam. This constant conflict of spiritual ways is one reason why we have been so skeptical of missionaries trying to convert us to their “true path”.

The most telling difference in our spiritual views is this: the First Nations views our relationship with Creator in terms of where we dwell, that we live and die in the place we believe Creator placed us. Your religions tend to focus on the historical events in which you believe Creator manifested Himself as a demonstration of His love. To us, our land, and the provision it offers, proves His love for us. For your religion, it is His intervention in events throughout history. Therein lies the major difference in our view of land.

We view land not as something we own, but as something of which we are a part. The land “owns” us. All of us. Equally. As a community. It is not ours to sell, but rather to manage as stewards. This includes offering a place for others to dwell in peace, if they so desire and are trustworthy. Taking us from our land is disruptive to us not only physically, but spiritually. It is the same for us as locking up all the churches and confiscating all the Bibles would be for Christians.

You view land as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. It is used to make a profit: indeed your culture views all of Creation as something which can be exploited for profit. It is normal for you to think you can own more than you need: more land, more possessions, more money, more power. Your culture even values people not for who they are, but for how much they have. Those who have the most are allowed to exploit those who have little, and it's called “good business”. Some of your culture even blame the poor for being poor!

These seems to be because in your culture, you are always looking for enemies, for reasons to fight. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is automatically a potential enemy. Of course, not all of you are this way, but it is so deeply ingrained in your culture that you cannot escape it's influence. Your culture applauds competitiveness and the arrogance that goes along with it. Our culture does have competitive games, but in the end we applaud those who cooperate more than those who contend with others. That is because ultimately, our lives are richer, and even depended upon, a sense that we are all family.

Our view that we are all related leads us to have a very different view of private possessions. Many of our Nations held all but the most basic items such as clothing or weapons in common. It was not unusual for someone to simply pick up an item that was not in use and make use of it for a time, even if that item “belonged” to someone else. The “owner” always knew he could get it back when he needed to use it.

We celebrate birthdays not by heaping presents upon the person, but by that person and her family giving away what they could to their family, friends, and members of the community. Our chiefs were often the poorest people in our communities materially, because they tended to give away what they had to those in need.

Our spiritual elders and our healers dare not demand any sort of fee for their services. Such things as the ability to heal are a gift from Creator, and so should be given freely to the community. They didn't fret about this, because the community made sure such vital members as healers and those with spiritual wisdom were provided for.

So it is we had a very different views on material possessions and wealth. In fact, in many of our Nations, a person's wealth was counted by how many relations he had given something to, by how she had enriched their lives, by how much better off the community was for his or her presence and efforts.

By contrast, your culture is very much about making a profit off of even the most sacred of giftings. Your religious leaders and healers can be some of the wealthiest people around. You even find it acceptable to withhold care for the sick or injured if they don't have the money to pay for care.

Overall, my Mohawk ancestors would be called “Socialists” by those of your current culture. The implication by some who did so would be to claim that we were inferior to “Capitalists”.

Which brings up what I mentioned above about being superior or inferior. Euro-American culture is driven by the desire to conquer, to improve, to own more, make more, be more than everyone else. There are things that are admirable about this desire, such as it leading to improvements in technology. Better food, clothing, shelter, medicine, tools and machines have come as a result of the drive to improve that is at the heart of Euro-American culture. If only you tempered that drive with greater respect for Creation, and people, so that less harm was done to the earth and to others in your pursuit of “bigger, better, faster, stronger”.

By contrast, our cultures took such things very slowly. Because we emphasize our relationships with Creator, Creation and other people over accomplishment, we would be reticent to make “improvements” that might be too disruptive. We were content to live at a level of harmony with the earth and each other that didn't drive us to force changes in our lives.

I will grant that this is because we were blessed to have a vast land available to us. There was not a lot of pressure on our resources. Between our spiritual traditions, our views of community and the simple, Eden-like environment in which we lived, there as not the “Mother of Invention” (necessity) pressing us to develop technology as was the case with Europeans.

Europe had a great deal of people in a relatively small area. Your feudalism meant that nobles owned a disproportionately large amount of land compared to the commoners. You divided yourself into nations based on bloodlines and who was supposedly given divine mandate to be king. It is no wonder that you developed such a competitive world view and were forced to always find ways to make the most of what you had, and to defeat your enemies.

Such a crucible of conflict has bred a deep attitude of competitiveness over the centuries. This attitude naturally leads to assumptions of what is inferior vs what is superior. Superior is what will win: inferior is what will lose. The result is that Euro-American culture indoctrinates individuals into the attitude that if anyone questions your status quo, they are attempting to prove their own status quo to be superior to yours. After all, that is what you would do, right? There is little room for the idea that diversity is not only not a threat to the status quo, but can actually enhance people's lives.

The Europeans came to Turtle Island, looked upon how the First Nations lives, and immediately declared us to be primitive savages. Because our political, economic and social structures were different from the Europeans (though no less sophisticated), we were judged to be simplistic in our lives. Our less developed technology regarding metallurgy, construction, medicine etc (though our agricultural wisdom was greater than yours) led the early colonists to deem us as inherently inferior to themselves. Their religion even led some of them to classify us as less than human.

As a result, for some Europeans found it quite easy to enslave and murder us in the Name of God. For others it was a Manifest Destiny to push us off our lands and force us to adopt their culture, language, religion and form of government. The First Nations suffered five centuries of such treatment. Millions were killed or died from disease and deprivation. We have been driven off our traditional, sacred lands. Our languages have almost disappeared. Our spiritual traditions have been suppressed, even outlawed. Our form of government has been replaced. We have, as a people group, suffered the greatest disruption in human history.

People cannot endure such things without there being profound changes. Scientific research has even uncovered evidence that such catastrophic events cause changes in the DNA that is passed on to children and grandchildren. The reality is that the First Nations (along with many other minorities) have suffered events that still deeply affect us today, and will continue to affect our people for generations to come. We cannot just easily dismiss the impact of the past upon the present, and the future.

Despite modern efforts to improve things minorities still suffer from the differences between the majority, privileged group and ourselves. We see the same events and statistics, but because of our differing world views, interpret and process them differently. At times we simply don't come to the same conclusion as you do regarding what to make of a given event or statistic. It is our view, not yours, that we are expressing.

Which brings up the hardest part of this letter, friend. 

Consider this: maybe, when you try to defuse arguments about race, ethnicity, religion and prejudice by saying, “we are all just the same. Why can't we just get along?” what you are really saying is “You should all act like I do, and be like I am, and view the world as I view the world. Then we can all get along because we are all pretty much the same.” That is how we, as minorities, can interpret such a statement. Coming from someone who embraces the majority culture, (a culture that committed offenses against minorities) we see a not too dissimilar attitude from that which contributed to the worst aspects of colonization: slavery, genocide, betrayal and theft.

If we were only just like you, there would be no conflict. 

You see, my friend, the very fact that we are members of a minority (different) culture, race, ethnic group or religion means we are indeed different from members of your culture in many profound ways. Please accept that not as a threat, but as an opportunity to embrace and celebrate how each of our cultures can enrich the entire world and in so doing, each other's cultures.

You want to defuse conflict not by changing yourself and your culture's view of diversity, but by attempting to make the diversity disappear. The only way to do that is to get us, those who are different, to disappear as well, either by assimilation or annihilation.

It's that attitude, even more than any words or actions, that causes us concern.

On Being Dogmatic

We all reach for those things we cannot grasp. We seek answers to questions that define our existence and our place in the universe. We reach out to those things which help us make sense out of our own behavior and that of the rest of Creation. We have an innate need to believe in something, to find an reference point which anchors our perception of reality.

In reaching out, we often become develop certain inflexible opinions about what we have observed and experienced. When we decide that our conclusions are an objective, unassailable expression of what we have observed and experienced, it becomes dogma, rather than belief or opinion.

Dogma is created in the mind of man. Whether you believe in a divine Creator, or an impersonal universe, neither of these is responsible for any dogma people insist on embracing. Both are objective in and of themselves, but both also are at the mercy of the subjective perception people have of them.

There are absolute truths, of course, for both the believer in the Divine and the Atheist. What must be remembered is that our perception of whatever truths we witness and accept is flawed, and so we are unable to develop an absolute perception of any absolute truth.

What this means is that we are best off leaving our declarations of those truths we see at "I believe" or "This is how I see things". As soon as we decide to say "This is the way it IS!", we have imposed our own flawed and imperfect reference point-ourselves-upon what otherwise would be an objective truth.

A person from a faith which believes in inerrant Scriptures might say "I can show you the absolute truths of my beliefs in my Scriptures". But can that really be done. Speaking as a Jesus follower who is quite familiar with the Bible, I can attest to just how many different interpretations, and resultant dogma and doctrine, can arise from the same passage from the Bible.

Indeed, I'm of the opinion that, given what the Bible says about faith, we honor Creator more by simply saying "I believe in Him" than by trying to present a set of empirical proofs of His existence. After all, according to Hebrews 11:6, without faith-that is, the evidence of things not seen, the essence of things we hope for-it's impossible to please Creator. Absolute proof of His existence obviates the need for faith. Both believers and atheists err greatly in this regard.

The Bible itself was written within specific historical and cultural context, and is viewed by each of us in specific historical and cultural context. That is not to say that there is no truth in the Bible. Rather, it's a humble admission that, as Paul wrote, what we see is but a poor reflection of the Spiritual reality we will some day witness face to face. We only know in part right now. We cannot declare the incomplete reflection of Truth to be an Absolute without imposing our own will upon it. This, in my opinion, is a form of idolatry, setting our own minds upon an alter as judges of Creator's truths.

Therein lies grace,and faith: we say "I believe..." and trust that Creator, in His love and Mercy, holds us accountable for that little bit we get right rather than all the things we get wrong. I used to be a very strong proponent of the idea that to truly honor Creator, to really follow Christ, I had to be dogmatic about certain things. Then I came to understand how flawed my own expression of certain truths can be. I had a choice to either ride a carousel of trying to objectify my subjective perceptions, or to understand that my own faith, and Creator's mercy, count for far more than what I think I know to be Absolute Truth. I've found it makes my spiritual walk both simpler and more fulfilling to concentrate on who I am in Creator rather than whether I can prove that what I believe about Him is Absolute Truth.

It's up to His Holy Spirit to convince people of the Truth anyway.

Atheists and those who look to science as the source of all truth are no different, really. One can argue there are scientific absolutes, such as gravity or the speed of light, but that would be both incorrect  and missing the point when it comes to dogmatic belief(both of these aspects of the observable universe have variances in definition and constants, depending on which school of physics, such as Einsteinian or Quantum, is applied). Certain "constants" are assumed to be constants inasmuch as we haven't yet uncovered or accept evidence to the contrary. (Yet even light slows down when passing through certain substances, such as a diamond.)

First, just saying "there is gravity" is not a basis for belief in science as a purveyor of absolute truth. There has always been gravity, even before men came up with a name and a theory of physics as to why it exists and how it affects the universe. What is still lacking is an explanation of exactly how gravity works. There are several theories, but no one can say "this is the right explanation, and all others are wrong." Ironically, in a discipline declared by some to be based on absolutes, there is as much bickering and disagreement regarding many of those absolutes as there is among theologians.

Many scientists are careful to use the term "observable universe" or "to the extent of our knowledge" when dealing with such matters. Any scientist worth listening to will readily admit that what we know is a small fraction compared to what we don't know. (that "dim reflection" idea again.) Perception of the evidence, and conclusions reached, is often far more subjective than some scientists will let on. There are even theories that our our observation itself alters the universe in some way. "Schrodinger's Cat" is a perfect example of how scientific thought itself allows for observation/perception to directly affect the outcome of a given, observable action.

Some try to become dogmatic about their preferred theory, but ultimately the only proof is in their own dogmatic attitude. Gravity is what they say it is simply because that is what they choose to believe, and they will not accept an alternative theory. "Overwhelming evidence" proving a theory isn't really that overwhelming if scientists also admit that have only uncovered a small fraction of what lies out in the universe that exists beyond our own limited perception of the moment.

The expression of scientific thought, as with Scripture, is often subject to the perceptions and dogmatism of those doing the interpretation. For years, dinosaurs were great, lumbering ancestors of modern geckos, monitor lizards and other reptiles. Now popular scientific opinion is they were more closely related to avians than reptiles. Did the evidence that led to the first dogmatic views of dinosaurs change? No, but as some new evidence came to light, the perception of that evidence evolved within those viewing it.

If you could ask a dinosaur what he was, reptile or avian, he would say he is just a dinosaur.

So the expression of science, as with spirituality, is very much dependent on the perception of those who believe either one, or the other, or both to be purveyors of truth. Since that perception is imperfect, so to is the expression of truth human beings rely on to communicate what they perceive in either scientific or spiritual matters.

What I am saying is that in my opinion, scientific dogma is just as flawed an approach to truth as religious dogma: both assume the "believer" is perfect and has an unimpeachable reference point upon which their dogma is based. Since our reference points themselves are more or less subjective (because we choose them through conscious decision), at least some part of what we state to be truth is also subjective.

Dogma is therefore subjective in essence, not to mention expression.

That being the case, being dogmatic regarding science is simply the other side of the coin of being dogmatic about spiritual matters. Since both disciplines involve an imperfect, or incomplete, knowledge of the universe, neither can become so dogmatic as to disqualify the other as part of a world view or perception of the universe.

Science and spirituality are complimentary, not mutually exclusive. It's only in the mind of dogmatic individuals (no matter how intelligent they may be) that the two come into opposition. People who say one disqualifies the other from expressing truth, or that one can only believe in one or the other, are basing this opinion on their subjective dogma, not on the evidence each presents as to the nature of the universe and the existence of a Creator.