[MD] Zen and the Art of Religion

[John Carl]

Here is the passage I recently read, that sounded like an MOQ approach
to religion.  Especially his take on hierarchies...


We are way too complex
and so is the world--
too much surprise,
too many possibilities,
too much that defies our limited logical categories--
to fit everything through the narrow filter of reason
alone.

We're like fish, swimming in the rational waters of the Enlightenment,
disconnected from a number of other ways we know and feel and
experience.  We've been swimming in this sea, enjoying it and
benefiting from it, but slowly realizing that it hasn't be totally
good for us.  The intellect has a way of building a fence around the
heart, cutting us off from what we know to be true in a way that is
hard to prove according to the properties in which proof matters.

Fossil evidence and carbon dating and exploration and discovery are
central to the endless human desire for answers.  New theories arise,
they're proven, tweaked, adjusted and sometimes a better theory comes
along to replace one that has proven holes in it -- that's the
scientific process.  It's magnificent at lower levels of hierarchy,
helping us understand neurons and rocks and oceans and species.

But it fails at higher levels of hierarchy when we encounter holism.
Science shines when dealing with parts and pieces but it doesn't do
all that well with soul.

It can do a brilliant job of explaining how we and other species have
adapted and evolved but it falls short when it comes where the caring
humming within us comes from.  When I'm talking about grenzbegriff
kind of faith I'm talking about the kind of faith that sees science
and faith as dance partners they've always been, each guiding and
informing each other, bringing much-needed information and insight to
their respective levels of hierarchy.  To see them at odds with each
other is to confuse the levels of hierarchy, resulting in all sorts of
needless debates, misunderstandings and terrible bumper stickers.

This is important because for many in our world, somewhere alonf the
way reality got divided up into
the secular and sacred
the religious and the regular,
the holy and the common--
the understanding being that you're talking about either
one
or
the other
but not both
at the same time.

This disintegrating understanding of reality--
is lethal, and it cuts us off from the source.

Because sometmes you need a biologist,
and sometimes you need a poet.
Sometimes you need science
and sometimes you need a song.

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