The Double Refuge 🍷 Bubbles Winking at the Brim
A Bird’s-Eye View
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On this page I give a brief overview of the sections and chapter in The Double Refuge. Click here if you want to skip to the next page: Wine & the Ocean of Love.
The Double Refuge begins with five introductory chapters. 🍷 Bubbles Winking at the Brim and 🍏 Agnosticism suggest that Open Agnosticism and Open Theism can be intoxicating, destabilizing, and also regenerating. The next two chapters illustrate how the Double Refuge might be applied in real-life situations: in 🇲🇽 Señor Locke I explain how the Double Refuge helps me deal with the trauma of sense impressions — especially after being sexually abused at a ‘Christian’ camp, being robbed at knife-point in Mexico City, and being beaten up and robbed in Istanbul; in ☯️ Herr Jung I explain why in dealing with trauma and nightmare I use Empiricism and Open Agnosticism, combined with Open Theism, instead of the archetypal approach of Carl Jung. Because I use a great deal of my own experience in these two chapters, they serve as a self-introduction of sorts. Finally, 🧩 Butterflies Landing delves into more involved terms and concepts, such as positive-sum theology, non-dualism, Eliot’s unified sensibility, and Keats’ negative capability.
The five introductory chapters are followed by two large sections. In the first of these sections, Pathways to Doubt, I deal with historical, philosophical, and scientific currents leading to Open Agnosticism. I emphasize the effect of science on religion, especially the way astronomy and natural science dismantled Medieval literalism, and led to Deism, agnosticism, and existentialism. I also argue that the course of culture and history is more accurately reflected by the interplay of doubt & belief than by the bifurcation of reason & revelation. I go so far as to suggest that existential and religious paradigms can not only complement each other, but can also merge.
The chapters within Pathways to Doubt follow a rough chronological order. I start by looking at the revolutionary impact of astronomy in 🔭 The Sum of All Space, and at the parallel rise of science and skepticism from the 16th to 20th centuries in 🔬 Science & Mystery and in ♒️ A River Journey. I then look at the skeptical and empirical strains in agnosticism, from the Greeks to the 19th century (❤️ Three Little Words), after which I look at the shift from pre- to post- Darwinian thinking in Dickens’ England in 🦖 At the Wild & Fog, at the relation between agnosticism and theism in the 20th century French existentialists Sartre and Camus in 🎲 Almost Existential, and at a mystical version of the contemporary existential heroine in the song, “A Lighter Shade of Pale” in 🧜🏽♀️ The Mermaid: Existential & Then Some.
In the second section, Currents of Religion, I emphasize the diverse history of religion, as well as aspects of mysticism that survive the collapse of certainty. I explore the clash between Mesopotamian and Judaic religion, the fusion of doubt and belief in Daoist and Transcendentalist writers, and the clash between secularism and fundamentalism in Rushdie’s early novels. I argue that the Judaeo-Christian tradition diverted many currents away from our collective theology, and that we should allow these currents back in. I argue that the Double Refuge, with its open borders and its lack of doctrine, can act as a conduit between doubt and belief, and can also act as a refuge from the ravages of both. I go so far as to advocate for a complete reset — a Christianity 2.0 — that 🔹 includes rather than excludes, 🔹 encourages questions rather than banishes doubts 🔹 embraces other religions and philosophies rather than labels them as vain philosophy 🔹 posits a Love that transcends religion itself rather than a love that’s reserved for a chosen few.
The chapters within Currents of Religion also follow a rough chronological order, beginning with an overview of religious history in 🌎 Many Tribes. I then look at the influence of Mesopotamian civilization on Judaism & Christianity in ♒️ The Currents of Sumer, at changing religious paradigms in ⏯ Systems and in ✝︎ St. Francis, at mysticism in Classical China & Whitman’s 19th Century Transcendentalism in 💫 Believing in the Mystery, at the battle against dogma in the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century in 🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt, and at the age-old puzzle of death in ☠️ Ars Moriendi.
Next: 🍷 Wine & the Ocean of Love