The Double Refuge 🍷 Prologue
Boxes That Spin
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In The Double Refuge I explore the relation between doubt and belief. I argue that one can help in understanding the other, and also that one can be a refuge for the other: belief can be a refuge from existential alienation, and doubt can be a refuge from spiritual dogma.
While doubt can be a liberating thing, it can also be punctuated by chaos and meaninglessness. And while belief can be a liberating thing, it can also take too solid a form, can reduce your world to doctrines and catechisms, and can put you in a different type of box.
In the following poem, I suggest trying to get outside the boxes of strict doubt (or skepticism) and strict belief (or fundamentalism). Or, if the idea of being within a box makes sense, I suggest a transparent one, or one that opens wide on all six sides. I suggest letting it float up into the air and spin from one perspective to the next:
Hendrik Conscienceplein, Antwerp (Photo RYC)
If you do find yourself in a box, let it be a free and open one. Let it allow you to look 360 degrees all around you. Look up high into the air at the cloud and galaxies, and look down below at the rivers flowing into the ocean and the ocean creatures floating in the deep. Let the rivers and the ocean be a metaphor for the one place you should also look: the contents of the box.
Observe the dimensions of your perspective, knowledge, sensations and perceptions. Note the continual mystery of your feelings, the oddness of your thoughts, and the mere fact of your existence. Give yourself the luxury of wondering at what the Upanishads call not so much what you think as that you think, not so much what you are as that you are.
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In The Double Refuge I’ll explore this openness, both in its doubt (or open agnosticism), and its belief (or open theism). I’ll stress a sensibility that allows us to grab onto doubt or belief without the feeling that we have to let go or have to hold tight. Richard Rohr gets at something similar in “Glimpses of Wonder,” the sixth chapter of his book, The Naked Now (2009):
[Mary] was deeply disturbed [by the words of the angel] and wondered what they might mean. - LUKE 1:29
[The disciples in meeting the risen Jesus] were so in wonder that they could not believe it. - LUKE 24:41
"Wondering" is a word connoting at least three things:
Standing in disbelief
Standing in the question itself
Standing in awe before something
Try letting all three "standings" remain open inside of you. This is a very good way to grow spiritually, as long as the disbelief moves beyond mere skepticism or negativity.
In a box, or standing and wondering, let your stance be an open one. It’s your life, why limit it? Why close the shutters or lock the doors? Or, as Walk Whitman suggests, go even further:
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
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Next: 🍷 The Battered Caravanserai