A Spiritual Reflection – What Karen Armstrong’s Case For God Really Means To Me?

This post is irregular in two ways.  One, I am often – if not always – happy with what I publish here.  Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with the book summary I wrote on a Sunday morning, 7am to be exact.  But the more I read that post, the more disconnected I feel.  I wish I have exposed more of me.  I guess a book summary is a book summary; a self-reflection is a self-reflection.  Holding back, I was and hence this post – an amendment, an addendum, a companion to that book summary.

Two, I seldom write about my spiritual journey.  Two reasons.  First, I do not consider myself as a spiritual role model.  The topic of God is not something I can articulate well.  My sister Lora, for example, can do it brilliantly.  Too bad, she has taken a break from writing.  I sincerely hope that she will write again soon.  Second, I prefer to embed God’s goodness in the things that I do, things that I write, and things that I create.  I think it is hard to make an impact to people’s lives by talking about God, with my limited articulation skill on this very topic.  It is much easier for me to take an indirect route instead.

Karen Armstrong’s “The Case For God” has much impact to my inner self in various ways.  New knowledge aside – which I have covered in my previous post – my personal spiritual journey suddenly makes so much sense. As my humble tribute to the book and to the gifted author, here are what I have interiorized, thus far.

1. My First Ekstasis
2. My Religious Upbringing
3. Finding God
4. Where Do I Go From Here?

My First Ekstasis

I suspect ‘that’ was my first ekstasis, now that I have read the book.  I do not remember much about my childhood.  But of the few scenes that I remember, this one in especially leaves a deep impressive.

When I was young, perhaps less than ten, I would sit somewhere in the living room and start to ponder, by asking a series of simple questions that lead from one to  another.  I would look at a nearby object and ask: where does the table come from?  A tree.  Where does a tree come from?  The Earth.  Where does Earth come from?  The Universe.  Where does the Universe come from?  Or I could ask: where do I come from?  My mother.  Where does my mother come from?  My mother’s mother.  Where does she come from?  So on and on, searching for that one answer beyond words.

Bear in mind that I was very young, with little knowledge in my head, I wasn’t that smart to figure things out (probably still don’t).  But I would expand my questions, till a point whereby everything broke down.  I remember vividly that my mind would go black, I would see the swirling stars.  I would feel as though I had left my body, lost in a spiritual world.  I would lie on the floor with eyes closed.  The more I did it, the longer I would stay in that state.  It was a strange feeling, a very good feeling.  One day, I was scared.  What if I could not come back?  And then I pondered lesser and lesser.  All of a sudden, I lost that ability, that out-of-the-body experience.  I miss those swirling stars a lot.  Till this day.

Could this be my first ekstasis?  To go beyond myself and transcend the normal experience?

My Religious Upbringing

I studied in a Catholic school, brought up in – I suppose – a Taoism (Daoism) family.  During one class, our teacher asked each of us which religion we belong to.  When it came to my turn, I had no clue how to answer that question.  In Chinese, what my parents did was called “Worshipping God”.  But “Worshiping God” is not a religion, is it?

So we had a family meeting.  And have decided that it was Taoism.  Next day, I had an answer to my teacher.  And to all whom asked.

As I grew up, there are more who tell me that Taoism equals to idol worshiping (which is bad) than those like Karen Armstrong who thinks that the religion does have something we can learn from.  And probably due to the influence I had in school, one day I asked my parents a deeper question on what Taoism is?  Where is the Taoism ‘scripture’?

Those questions shocked my mother a bit.  Or it could be a great deal as I often find it hard to fully measure her emotional intensity until it erupts.  As my parent attempted to explain, I gathered that different deities are being worshipped upon.  Each comes with a legend of its own.  The Chinese are familiar with the associated folk stories.  When I insisted on the ‘scripture’, my father started to recite passages written by the ancient Chinese.  For example, there is one passage that is structured in words of three, full of morale codes, how the Universe was created, the philosophy of mankind, and etc.  I asked my father if there was a book somewhere in the house and he said none.  His parents recited these passages to him when he was young and he – like all those before him I suppose – learned the passages verbally.

Fascinated with Chinese literature I was, I did not go far with the study of the myths of the Chinese legends.  Nor did I go far with the study of those passages, which I still think they are beautiful to recite.  After I have read “The Case For God”, something struck me.  Folk Taoism it may be, this ancient religion contains the mythos (myths), morale codes and stories to ponder upon, and a ritual that my parents – together with many Chinese – regularly do.  The religion is still a living one, helps to construct meaning in face of our hardship.  And liberating as it sounds, there is nothing wrong with the religion I was brought up with – I realized.

Finding God – Part I

Till today, I am still proud that as a then-non-believer, I could score an A for Religious Studies prior to moving to UK for my A-level study.  Many of my classmates in Hong Kong struggled.  But to me, Religious Studies was one of the most enjoyable subject.  Examination questions often came in the form of: this and this happened as written in the Bible, what does that mean?  What are the implications?  If it is a question that worth a score of 20, you need at least 20 points based on your interpretation that in turn, based the various quotations from the Bible.  For me, I would provide not 20, but 40 points.  Because I knew even if I missed half of the number of points as required by the question, I would still score full mark.

That worked of course.  But how did I find that many interpretations to start with?  The good news is that Bible is a highly structured highly cross-referenced set of materials.  The four Gospels tells a similar set of stories in slightly different perspectives.  And within the Gospels as well as other texts in the Bible, it is easy to find linkages to expand your interpretation.  No doubt I had to get some basic concepts right (like what is the Trinity).  But I had no problem in interpreting the Bible as far as the examination is concerned.

My journey to find God has been a bumpy one.  Just as Karen Armstrong mentioned, I too have gone through the stage whereby I used science to find God and to find God in science.  What is God?  Where is He?  Surely God has to be observable.  Or are we created by aliens instead?  And I have also gone through the stage whereby I read the Bible literally and started to have found more and more things that did not make sense.

Throughout the years of frustration, I have finally decided that a free thinker was probably best to describe who I was.  Yes, there must be a God somewhere because in no way we could explain nature’s design if otherwise.  But I did not go further than that.

Finding God – Part II

Looking back – especially after reading the book – I think it is the rituals and the myths that brought me [back] to Catholicism.

Many times, a friend would approach me and ask what he or she should do to convert his or her partners into the same faith.  I wish there was an easy answer.  But here is my brief story.

Cynthia has never put pressure on me to be a Catholic like her.  When we first started as a couple, I often accompanied her to Churches and sat in through the Mass.  It didn’t bother me to the least.  I often find Churches and Cathedrals a serene place to be at.  Besides, it never failed to amaze me how persistence Cynthia wanted to attend a Mass, regardless of the weather, or even the fact that we were in a foreign city.  Each time I attended the Mass, I observed the ritual.  The more I read about what is behind each ritual, the more meaningful the Mass is to me.  Soon, I wanted to participate in the process, to have that moment of divinity.  It was no swirling stars for sure.  But of the many moments I experience in the Mass, that moment of offering a piece of me and to take in a piece God – as my godmother once told me – is still the defining moment every time I receive the Communion (after I have baptized).  We humans need the physical touch in order to communicate feeling and love.  Hence we hug, we hold hands, we kiss, and etc.  And that piece of God, in the form of a host received during our Communion, is as physical as it can get.

But that host is just …

OK, I have tossed science out of the way long time ago.  A little bit of faith – as a matter of commitment and practical living according to Karen Armstrong – is all I need.

I went through an accelerated baptism course, delivered inside a priest’s office with he and I and Cynthia as my support.  When the priest asked me if I believe in the garden of Eden, that God took a rib from Adam and created Eve, in less than a heartbeat I replied, “Yes, I believe.”  I took a leap of faith, literally.

The priest laughed and told me that, “No, it is a story, a myth.”  In fact, many times, when we studied the scripture in detail, he would say, “This is a mystery”.  How can God work in such a mysterious way?  Back then, I have accepted this mystery mentality.  A mentality that apparently did not sit well with some of my Protestant friends.  We could have an open dialog one day, ended the night with some open questions.  And the next day, my friends – with their network of Protestant’s support – would return with a long list of answers, the counter-arguments.  It was as though the scripture has answers for everything.  Even on the question why Catholicism is not part of Christianity.

I am not an articulated theologist.  And I often retreat from these long list of canned Q & A and fall back onto what I am comfortable with – a standardized Mass from any given Catholic Church all over the world that has the very same prayers, the very same scriptural readings, on any particular day; that we may not have answers to everything in life; and there are more than one way to interpret the scripture, as Karen Armstrong says.

Later, as I read “The Case For God”, I have come to the realization that God is unknowable.  But that doesn’t stop us from our ritual and meditation.  And to that extend, the mysteries and the standardized Mass works for me.  The eventful (and standardized) Catholic calendar too works for me.

Where Do I Go From Here?

I agree with Karen Armstrong.  We cannot find God using science.  Nor any religion today has a final say.  Personally, I have deep respect to other religions.  And I have read into some of them too (for it is hard to accept and respect other religions if you don’t know what they are).  I can also understand where atheists or free thinkers come from.  Maybe the gap between the not so devoutly faithful and the free thinkers is not really as much as we think it is.  As for my personal development, I shall take Karen Armstrong’s advise that religion should be a constant practice, an ability that is built over time.  One day, the intensity of those swirling stars may return.  Perhaps not in the exact form.  But ekstasis in experiencing God, I hope, no less.