Week 2 (Part 2): The Homework

What fed me today (15 January)?

It’s interesting to me, this century-long split between the sciences and the arts. Not just ‘interesting,’ but important. We have become a culture who believe the only reliable form of knowledge is that which can be verified empirically—so that anything apart from scientific inquiry—ethics, aesthetics, religious beliefs—is a matter of faith or personal belief, subjective in its form, and, therefore, in the end not very important—since there is no way to appeal empirically whether utilitarian ethics or deontological ethics, or whether Buddhism or Islam, is true. Our culture ends the conversation with, “Well, who am I to tell you what’s right?”

Unfortunately, this philosophical shift in favor of empiricism affects even this class—despite the very old tradition within the arts which binds them to all three: ethics, aesthetics, religious beliefs—since the way Fiona justified Buddhist meditation practices was to establish their benefits—via brainwaves and brain states—for being creative. If there were no such justification on scientific grounds, one might object to Fiona’s use of Buddhist meditation practices as a violation of the separation of church and state.

But we are artists. Until only very recently (within the last hundred years or so), art has—almost without exception, almost necessarily—been connected to right and wrong, to beauty, to spirituality (since its direct ancestor is mythology). But we do not trust this sort of knowledge anymore, and so we must talk in terms of science.

But I want on principle to refuse this justification. Thankfully, I suppose, brainwaves can be empirically detected, analyzed, and evaluated—and thankfully (for justification's sake, at least) the spiritual discipline of meditation “does” the same thing that creativity “does.” Still, let us pretend that no brainwave machines existed. Would we be without the benefit of meditation, simply because we could not detect that the brainwaves are the same? Would we be forced to resign ourselves forever to believe that spiritual disciplines have no place in our state-supported arts (as they are taught in Pennsylvania’s public university system)?

Therefore: What fed me today was my walking, slowly, intentionally, all around the conservatory. I gave the discipline an intentionally spiritual/religious modification, which, in my own case is Christian; I resolved that I would not be able always to concentrate on my breath, since I am by nature imperfect, hopeful, anxious, prideful, full of selfishness and fortitude, full of good and evil, and I will think about all kinds of things as I sit calmly. One of the great truths of Christianity, after all, is, I do what I do not want to do. Then, from this tension—I breathe. I allow the breath to draw me back, to remind me, to cover me in grace. It is almost as though a voice were saying, Yes, look at all that inside of you, and really it is worse than you think, and here, despite all that, here I want to offer you this gift, this breath, here is beauty for you, here is calm, here is foregiveness.

This practice, as I walked slowly around the conservatory, as I sat for a while and contemplated the flowers—this is what fed me.

What, if anything, did not feed me?

Nothing whatever comes to mind.

Do one intentional practice, and journal about the experience.

And so, this week, Alli and I took Jonah to receive his four-month vaccinations. In response, later that night, he got a fever. And, of course, we worried. We called the doctor. We took his temperature. Over and over. With two different thermometers. Just to make sure.

And he stayed up, late into the night, crying. His legs, from the needles that had gone in, were sore, and he writhed in pain. His head was hot. He could not stop crying. And so I was reminded of the days when he had colic. It was as though he were once more just two months old, crying without end. He could not stop crying. He could not stop crying. He could not stop crying.

And so here is my intentional practice: I held him in the dark. I walked around and around my house: through my living room, into the kitchen, out the other end into the dining room, and back into my living room. And, as I had done when he had colic, after a long time I whispered to him, over and over, for probably thirty minutes or more, “I am here with you. I am here with you. I am here with you.”

Despite his crying, I felt my breath. I walked around and around. I breathed. I walked. I breathed. I held my son. And I said, “I am here with you.” After about ten minutes, Jonah stopped crying. After about twenty minutes, I heard my voice as though it were someone else speaking, and I began almost to father myself, to fill the hole left empty by my own father, as though I heard the voice of the father I’d never had, of—and this is the religious part—the father I believe I do have. After about thirty minutes, I understood that this time in the kitchen, this is what I’m writing after. This is the struggle of each of my protagonists, and of the narrator most centrally. I began to see the story unfold very clearly in my mind, and I felt as though I were with them. I felt as though I were among my characters, struggling and despairing and hoping right with them, which perhaps is a great way to end an everyday-parenting-event-turned-spiritual-practice-turned-personal-and-artistic-breakthrough. Really, this was a beautiful night.