A Man's Most Attractive Trait

Jesus Christ loved men. And men were attracted to Jesus Christ. 

But why? 

What was it about the man, Jesus the Nazarene, that drew men to himself so effortlessly, the way a magnet naturally draws iron filaments?

He worked miracles--healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons--sure. 

He was an advocate for the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised, yes. 

He promised a greater reward in the next life than what was available to most common people of his time could expect in their present state.

But I think, on a natural level, there was something about Jesus of Nazareth that captivated both men and women alike, and that was this:

He was confident in who he was.

As anyone who has ever dated knows, women find confidence to be an overwhelmingly attractive trait in a man--with some qualifiers. Confidence that veers too far into bravado, or cockiness, has the opposite effect; it turns women off. A lack of confidence does the same. Confidence is like a spice--use it to season the dish, to give it that something flavor but without overpowering the food itself. 

Prostitutes were drawn to Jesus because they sensed he was not engaging with them with ulterior motives, or for the purpose of getting or taking something from them like most men they had transacted with. This man with a pure heart was innocence itself. When Jesus stepped between the mob and the woman caught in adultery, he didn't flinch but disarmed the men of their stones simply by a few words spoken while doodling in the dirt.

But men, too, were attracted to Jesus. Enough so that men would drop their livelihoods and leave their families before they even knew what they were doing. For his closest friends, it was more than the adulation of a prophet. It was love they felt towards him. Eventually, they were willing to die for Jesus, and he inspired their willingness to do so. All because of the confidence that came with knowing who he was, why he was sent, and from Whom he came was unwavering.  

This confidence, of course, is the confidence of divine Sonship. Jesus was only confident in himself because of the love of his Father, with whom there was no cognitive or spiritual separation. But it also comes out in his humanity. He is one who spoke and "taught with authority" (Mt 7:29); even when forgoing speech for silence, people were equally amazed (Lk 23:9). When he was alone and in duress, besieged by temptation, he doubled down on his confidence in his mission, his purpose, and his divine kinship (Lk 22:39-44; Mt 4:1-11). Even a man of authority, Pilate, "marveled" at Jesus' silent confidence before him while on trial (Mk 15:5).

Jesus' cousin John was equally a man who attracted crowds and followers, who inspired repentance, who was confident in the precision and force of the axe he wielded. Yet John recognized the prophecy of Isaiah that in Jesus the bruised reed would not be broken under his foot, nor would he snuff out the smoldering wick (Is 42:3). For "he is gentle, and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29). 

Jesus never went to war. He did not command armies and led no men into battle. He tempered the zealots and commanded unsheathed swords be put back in the scabbard. In the new economy of paradox, it is meekness that becomes strength. And yet it was this very confidence that inspired throngs of people to follow him for days into the wilderness just to hear him speak, to crowd into the temple to hear him speak, who would welcome him into Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey, that put him on the radar of those who were not attracted to him, but were threatened by him. They ask him "By what authority do you do these things, and who gave you this authority?" (Mk 11:28). These were men who drew their authority from the Law--something outside of them--whereas Jesus claims his authority from above--an exclusive and blasphemous claim.

In the same way Jesus was confident that "I and the Father are One" (Jn 10:30), we can be confident as Christian men and women that we belong to Christ as brothers and sisters, friends, adopted children of the Father, that our labor is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58). This confidence is attractive to non-believers, I would wager, when they themselves possess a purity of heart in seeking the truth, even when they may not know where it lies and even when that purity of heart is not total. When they are not hardened by unbelief, but open to the possibility, confidence in our standing as Christians can serve as a potent attraction to a life of faith, and ultimately, to life in Christ himself.

The Halo: Seat of Wisdom

Years ago, when I was acquainted with a New Age friend and periodically worked in her crystal shop to pay off a debt, I was introduced to the esoteric concept of "Christ Consciousness." I would have considered myself a Christian syncretist during this period of my life, having already had an elementary foundation in Buddhism and Krishna-Consciousness prior to my conversion to Catholicism, and so this gnostic understanding of the divine Christ figure was attractive. I was reading Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man and Thich Nhat Hahn's Living Buddha, Living Christ at the time, was inspired by monastic figures like Bede Griffiths and Thomas Merton, and interested in the metaphysical as well as quantum physics and the idea of sub-atomic energy. I even traveled to a remote jungle monastery (wat) in Thailand to attend a 10-day Vipassana ("to see things as they are") meditation retreat in an attempt to train and fortify the mind against illusion. The shores of orthodoxy were very much a distant land.

One tangential concept I did ponder a lot during this flirtatious period was why iconography and artistic renderings of Christ and the saints portray them with a halo surrounding the head. On the surface, the question had a straight-forward answer: to signify the divine presence in that figure. But why the head and not, say, the heart? Or even the whole body?

 

My New Age friend had a seemingly convincing answer: the head or "Crown" Chakra (Sahasrāra) was considered the highest of the seven seats of energy in the body. The aura of the halo signified the divine consciousness, a oneness and non-dualistic cosmic connection with all things, and in art it was not only Christ who was represented with this halo surrounding his head, but Gautama Buddha as well, who had arrived through human effort to a place of ego-death, Nirvana, enlightenment. The way one cannot put a rainbow in a jar but can nonetheless witness it visually in the sky, the idea of a divine halo surrounding the head of a saintly, enlightened figure made the most sense in terms of a metaphysical or quantum energy.

Quentin Tarantino (of all people) cinematically portrays what this powerful aura of energy emanating from an almost semi-divine being looks like in his 2004 film, Kill Bill: Vol. 2. When the Bride (Uma Therman) ascends the steps of an ancient forest monastery to begin her kung-fu training and suddenly sees her new master, Pai Mei, sitting cross-legged before her at the top, she drops to her knees before him. Within a few moments of being in his presence she appears to be overtaken by the energy (chi?) emanating from his being, almost like a kind of cosmic radiation. More significantly, the frame is shot with the camera just behind Pai Mei's head as the Bride kneels in a subservient position before him as the sound of the cicadas whirring in the background intensify until it seems like the head of Pai Mei is literally buzzing with a supersonic consciousness. (Check it out from minute 1 to 1:30 in the clip from the film below if you want to see what I'm talking about). He goes on to berate her and in a duel, brings her to a point of helplessness as he threatens to break her arm. This state of being broken down and having the ego completely razed is necessary, however, in order to be formatively built back up under the precise and selfless tutelage of the Master. The cup must be emptied before it can be filled.

This kind of discipleship of student to master portrayed in the stories of the Far East is one of intense training, unrelenting focus, and supreme human effort to attain such a state of enlightened consciousness, the goal being to eventually step off the merry-go-round cycle of life, death, and rebirth (Samsara) and escape the grip of māyā, or illusion. Such religious traditions also may employ historically universal asceticism (such as fasting) to aid in their efforts of transcending the cycle of suffering. 

For Christian disciples, the idea of submission to the tutelage of a master looks differently, since salvation for the Christian is not a matter of human effort, but of grace and man's cooperation with it. Just as St. Paul encouraged followers of the Way to "be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11:1), so do those in the monastic tradition subvert themselves to living holy men and women who have trod down the grass of concupiscence and made a path towards Heaven here on earth for others to follow after them. Figures like St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, St. Mother Cabrini and others attracted followers who wanted to learn from them not how to train the mind necessarily but to learn how to excel in the School of Love. In the Christian East, the yuródivyy or "holy fool" seeks to upend the rational, commonplace behavior of polite society and in doing so, attracts those seeking wisdom, prayers and miracles from what appears to be a madman. 

But the formation of saints is not confined to that of monasteries and convents. Many saintly figures throughout history were given the grace to achieve holiness in their state of life without the support of a human master. St. Juan Diego, St. Benedict Joseph Labre, Ven. Matt Talbot, and even modern figures such as Servant of God Chiara Corbella Petrillo or St. Carlo Acutis are a few that come to mind. They have died in the state of sanctity and either are, or on the way, to being canonized as saints in the Church. The common thread in this diverse tapestry of believers, however, is Jesus Christ and their submission to him as the Son of God, and to his Bride, the Church.

But this doesn't answer the question of why the representation of Christian sanctity in art and iconography has always centered upon the head of the saint. If the trait that all Christian saints hold in common is the lived-out perfection of caritas, wouldn't it make more sense that a halo appear over, say, their heart, since this is the spiritual center of a Christian person? We see this outpouring of divine love and concern visually represented and personified in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And scripturally, the heart is the seat of not only the emotions, but of the intellect. But in hagiography, the representation of sanctity is always a halo surrounding the head.

St. Alphonsus wrote, "If you pray, you will be certainly saved; if you do not pray, you will be certainly damned."  Salvation is impossible without prayer, and prayer requires an effort on our part. But with what faculty do we pray? With the head? The heart? And is prayer a matter of words, or a "groaning in the spirit?" The path of salvation for, say, a cloistered Carthusian may look different than that of a Franciscan Tertiary or Missionary of Charity, as one may never leave his cell and in doing so never have the opportunity to exercise charity to his fellow man, while the other takes as her mantra the simple admonition to give Christ under guise of the poor a cup of cold water to slake his thirst.

In the words of St. Anselm, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand." That is, the beginning of the path to union with God begins when the intellect is subsumed by a humble admission of its inadequacy. Belief then, is the vessel that carries the limp and destitute traveler to the shores of understanding. When they arrive, it is this faith born of belief that admits complete helplessness to sin and concupiscence and a clouded intellect. It is only then that the intellect can begin to build on these shores, forming one's conscience from the depositum fidei and the Logos--the Word in flesh and in holy scripture--not unlike how the Ethiopian eunuch was instructed and baptized by Philip in Acts 8:26-40). 

Prayer, then, is both the daily effort of setting bricks and mortar to build a solid house for one's soul to dwell (Mt 7:24-27) as well as the "faith seeking understanding" of bringing into alignment one's own consciousness with that of the mind of God. Because God's "thoughts are not our thoughts" and "as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways" (Is 55:8-9), this is not possible apart from the incarnation of Christ, the human manifestation of God's presence on earth. But in Christ, we are given the grace to be able to "pray without ceasing," to never be separated from his mind, his heart, his Spirit, and his love. "For who can separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom 8:35). It is only through our own volition that we turn the dial on the divine radio, disrupting the frequency and introducing static into our minds and hearts. During these periods of "dead air" we "seek him and do not find him" (Jn 7:34) and are susceptible to the pull of sin. 

In prayer, however, we cloak ourselves in the mantle of the Almighty and set up a rampart against the Father of Lies, the harbinger of illusion, the thief who comes only to break in, kill, and destroy the treasures of grace. We seek, through small daily efforts, to not only bring our will in alignment with God's will, but to make our will inseparable from His. This is the state of mystical contemplation that very few of us will ever achieve. But that does not mean we cannot hope to be saved, for salvation does not depend on man but on God; only that we will experience more disruption, more static, more confusion in our lives. Because in forgetting, in not being dialed in, we have forsaken our first love (Rev 2:4), the One we should love above all things and hold in our minds at all times.    

In the East, the breath is the anchor to consciousness--as long as you are breathing, you are alive, and so one can use the breath as a tool in meditation since it (the breath) is a constant. In doing so, one learns to empty the mind but also begin to see reality "as it is." Dukkha (suffering) is the result of this disjointed world view in which we do not perceive reality for what it truly is but instead hold on tightly to how we desire it to be. Just as fasting is not reserved for Christians alone but adopted by other religious traditions as well, so too the act of breathing is universal to all human beings. For the Buddhist, the anchoring of one's consciousness to the constant of breathing, simple a tool as it is, may be enough to lead one to a state of Enlightenment. 

For the Christian, obviously, noticing one's breath and using it as an anchor of focus is not enough to save one's soul (the concept of the soul being non-existent in Buddhism). However, one particular Christian attempt to bring into perpetual alignment their consciousness--their very being--with that of Christ comes from the Christian East, specifically in an anonymous work titled The Way of the Pilgrim. In this book, a Russian sojourner seeks to answer the question of how one may "pray without ceasing" and discovers the Jesus Prayer. 

I have practiced the Jesus Prayer on and off for many years after I was introduced to it by an Orthodox priest who sat next to me on a flight to New Mexico, where I was heading to spend a few weeks at a contemplative Benedictine monastery. He gave me a prayer rope--kind of the Eastern equivalent of a rosary--to assist in this prayer, which is, interestingly enough, tied to the breath. One breathes in Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God... and breathes out Have mercy on me, a sinner. The idea is that one can learn to almost "automate" this prayer so that it eventually, over many years, becomes as natural and commonplace as breathing itself. In doing so, one will eventually learn the secret of "praying without ceasing" and thus be always united with God sans separation. 

The Jesus Prayer, for all who adopt it, is a prayer of the heart. This particular prayer is meant as an ascetic nepsis, a spiritual broom used to sweep its chamber of the passions that disrupt it. In doing so, it both cleanses the heart of such disruptive passions and clears the mind to make fruitful contemplation possible. This would suggest, then, that there is a kind of spiritual runway existing between the heart and the mind. In being cleansed of its passions, the heart may soar in love, untethered from what binds it to earth. As it gains lift traveling this runway, it in turn elevates the wings of the mind to higher states of contemplation. Or perhaps it is a case of the mind being singularly focused in consciousness and united to the very Mind of God, a Mind which cannot be understood rationally but only approached on one's knees by emptying itself--of pride, of presuppositions, of activity and unruly frivolousness-- and in doing so, brings the heart into communion with that of Christ's own heart. Fides et ratio.

This conscioussness-based gnosis, however, holds the danger of being co-opted by syncretists and rendered sufficient in and of itself when it is severed from the heart. Love--charity, caritas--is inseparable from the life of the Christian disciple and from Christ himself. Does this love emanate from the mind or the heart? Perhaps this is a bit of a koan for the Christ-believer.  If the heart is the seat of the intellect, this dualistic thinking may, then, be a bit of a misnomer.  In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor freeman, male nor female. In Christ, then, perhaps there is no mind and no heart separate from one another. The deification of the individual, then, does not depend on one's breath or one's individual consciousness or single-handed efforts, but on the Incarnation of Christ who came to lay down his life for us. He gives us his very flesh to eat in order to enter into this life, and lends us his very back to traverse the chasm separating earth from heaven which he himself bridges.

St. Josemaria Escriva said once that "a saint is a sinner who keeps trying." In this he recognizes the effort--the trying--is necessary; a cooperation with the grace which preceded it. However, we can ascend by way of stairs, or, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux advocated, by way of an elevator. Or as Fr. Jean Pierre de Caussade imagined, a simple "abandonment to Divine Providence" which consisted of an ever-present awareness and participation in the "sacrament of the present moment." This "paying attention" for the grace of opportunity God gives us to do His will at every moment of every day is akin to listening to that radio which is dialed in to a station. So too, the Jesus Prayer, and countless other tools Christian tradition offers to bring our will in alignment with His. When we lapse into forgetfulness, of failing to pay attention, failing to pray, of "missing the mark" through sin, we inadvertently and ever so slightly turn that knob and everything comes out of focus and becomes static in which we cannot hear His voice anymore. When we stay tuned in, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day and year by year through conscious awareness and submission to this sacrament of the present moment, we come closer to aligning our will with His.

If anything, the halo is a kind of metaphysical tattoo, a branding that there is something special about this individual--not because of any merit of their own, but because of their willingness to empty themselves of that which blocks the pathway between the head and the heart, between their will and God's. Even in periods of radio silence, when God does not speak and withholds His consolations, they do not turn the dial seeking another station but instead hold the unbearable tension of such silence, entering deeper and deeper with every passing moment into the cavern of such silence, seeking even the slightest whisper, a single word, a brushing of presence. Most of us do not experience this sustained degree of consciousness because we do not bother to clear out the tunnel between the mind and the heart, but instead fill it like a junked-up hallway with immaterial "things"--distractions, activities, busyness, noise, passions and striving--that prevent us from hearing. It also prevents us from performing miracles, from healing the sick, from raising the dead, not because God does not give us that opportunity, but because we have chosen the "lesser part" instead. 

Like all iconography and art, the depiction of the halo surrounding the head of "a sinner who keeps trying" is an articulation of a divine reality that can only be communicated imperfectly. Were one to photograph a living saint or walk next to him or her, this "aura" surrounding the head would, of course, not be visible.  I wonder if a man or woman who is, say, halfway there during their sojourn here on earth--not quite perfected, but growing closer every day--has a budding halo, or a dim, barely perceptible "50% holy" one. Or if such illumination only comes at the moment of their death, when they have definitively run the race and received the hallowed crown, no longer in danger of being pulled from the rings of the ladder of divine ascent and are secure in their salvation. 

Mary of Bethany was a true contemplative, forgoing all things to simply sit and gaze at the feet of Jesus in seemingly useless adoration. Her sister Martha loved the Lord through servicing Him, attending to the many needs before her, and yet in doing so was accused by the Lord of being "anxious and troubled about many things." Her sister, Jesus points out, "has chosen the better part," and not only that, but that "it will not be taken from her" (Lk 10:41-42). And yet both--St. Mary and St. Martha--are united with their brother Lazarus as saints in the heavenly kingdom. All three have won the race and earned the crown. All three wear the halo. They did not all arrive by the same path. But all were sanctified in the end.

I no longer put any stock in New Age Gnosticism, and have abandoned religious syncretism as an esoteric way to God. For better or worse, I have stripped down my practice of the faith to the basics of Christian orthodoxy--mental prayer, rosary, Mass, confession, reading the Scriptures, periodic fasting and abstinence, acts of charity, spiritual reading, etc--but sustaining focus in a world of distraction and as a layman makes the "deep work" of prayer difficult. I am no religious and under no physical tutelage or Rule. I have sold myself as a slave to Christ yet still run away from my Master periodically to indulge my own whims of fancy. He does not send out the dogs after me, but patiently waits for me to wake up, come to my senses, and start making my way back home. My prayer--that is, my focused gaze on the person of Christ, my tuning into the divine frequency found in silence and contemplation--comprises 1/100th of my day. And I wonder why it is I sin, stumble in the darkness, am unhappy and discontent. It is because I took my eyes off his, the way one takes their eyes off the road, their eyes off the ball, their eyes off the prize. It is at times like this when I lament the seemingly childish and outlandish desire to become a saint one day, to wear the halo like my heroes and models, those who have gone before and those who show me a way. Not an escape from a cycle of rebirth, but a transcendence to a divine communion not reserved for just a future Heaven but available now, here, on earth. If only I would listen, love, pray, relent, surrender...die. To my idea of how I want to live and instead "see things as they really are." That is, as God sees them. 

How, then, can I--or anyone for that matter--pray without ceasing, live in the mind of Christ, make my will his, exist in the divine consciousness and partake in the sacrament of the present moment every moment of every day? How can I clear the hallway and get past the static and simply remember my first love, rather than being like the man who sees his face and then goes away forgetting what he looks like (Ja 1:24)? Will it always be fits and starts, imperfect, falling out of the flow? Will I be a sinner who keeps trying but never quite gets it, or who gives up before he finishes his race, who forfeits my crown, who scoffs at the idea of halos and like a child who grows up too fast, can no longer see them illuminating the night from the heads of those who have not given up and given in? Will enlightenment--of metanoia, of understanding, of seeing--come in an instantaneous flash of Zen-like grace--perhaps through tragedy or loss--like cold water thrown in the face of deep slumber? Or will it be a slow, steady, imperceptible slog: two steps forward on the path of understanding and one step backwards, day after day, year after year, in cooperation with grace? Will my heart and my head eventually be as one, just as the Father and the Son are One? And is our halo reserved as a posthumous medal of honor for a life well lived, or a sign of mystical communion that can be seen in this life on earth as well as in heaven?

"For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor 2:16)

The Problem With "Technology"

I'm currently reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I may have read it in my twenties but I honestly don't remember, so it feels like the first time. The book holds a Guinness Book of World Records for being a best-seller (5 million copies sold) while having been initially rejected by 121 publishers. (Gives me hope for my own writing)

I can see why. It's a tough book to put in a category--it was shelved in the Non-fiction section at the library, though it reads like a novel, even though it's not. It's more like a fictionalized autobiography of a father and his 11 year old son who take a motorcycle trip from their home in Minnesota to San Francisco with a couple of friends. It's not really about Zen, and it's not really about motorcycle maintenance (specifically) either, but Pirsig's attempts to carve out a nice in the world of philosophy with his ponderings on the issue of Quality using the father-son trip as a platform on which to build his ideas. 

Interestingly, Pirsig wrote the novel in 1968, I believe, after his wife divorced him and he was committed to undergo shock therapy (ECT) to treat his schizophrenia. He went to college at 15, and had a 170 IQ, so he was a really smart guy. Which is kind of remarkable, because while the book is coherent, knowing his background you kind of wonder "should I really put much stock in these philosophical pinings? Is this the manifesto of a madman?" 

When I was in my twenties I owned a 1979 Yamaha XS750 motorcycle. I took it to class, used it to get around, though the longest trip I took was from Philly to Wildwood Crest, NJ, where it stalled out in a rainstorm. It was always breaking down on me and my neighbor in the apartment behind me would graciously pick me up when needed with his pickup truck. I didn't know anything about working on engines or motorcycles, had no way of transporting it, and was at the mercy of mechanics to diagnose problems. After I got a flat and the plates were stolen (and then it was subsequently towed outside my apartment due to not being tagged), I surrendered the title and was glad to be done with the whole thing. 

I've bicycled across the U.S. and it was a good way to see the country because you are going slow, yet aren't confined by the barrier of a car which separates you from the country side. When it's hot, you're hot. When it rains, you get wet. Still, I wouldn't have wanted to drive cross-country; I drive enough as it is these days. 

On a motorcycle, you're traveling the same speed as a car, but aren't framed in by one. You're still exposed to the elements, and limited in what you can carry. There are more mechanical parts to break down than on a bicycle. So I guess seeing the country the way Pirsig and his son did is a 'split-the-middle' between bicycle touring and car-touring.  

The book is a little on the dry side, and I think that's because Pirsig definitely falls into what he calls the "Classical" camps, which he contrasts with the "Romantic" camp. Think of it as left-brain vs right brain, where the author falls squarely into the left-brained (logical, analytical, mathematical, engineer-type) classification. He struggles to understand his riding partners, John and Sylvia, and their aversion to all things mechanical and (as we will see below, 'technological') because they are what he would consider "Romantics." In the context of the below passage, he is referencing the couple having a dripping faucet at home but not being inclined to fix it, nor are they inclined to work on their own motorcycles and know how they work. For the author, it's hard for him to relate to this non-technical, non-mechanical way of thinking. 

I realized I am much more like John and Sylvia in the book, and I get kind of annoyed at Pirsig's overly-technical, engineer-type brain pontificating, even when talking about Philosophy. 

When it comes to technology, I would consider myself a techno-pessimist. Which is why the following passage spoke to me for some reason, even though it was 1974 by the time it the book was published. Still, I think those feelings among many people like myself with our relationship to technology square with the passage below, even though they were written over half a century ago.

I know I will suffer for my antipathy towards technology. I know I will be left behind if I don't get on board. Which fills me with fear and anxiety, because not only do I not understand it or incompetent with regards to it, but I feel shut out from it. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I may become a serf rather than a vassal--one at the whim and control of a force more powerful than I am, that doesn't care for me or my petty resistance or ideals or objections. The data centers will go in despite protest, the AI will subsume us, and I will soon be an old man shouting at the clouds. All this fills me with dread, and it's not 'technology,' per se, but the absolute helplessness I feel in its looming shadow.  

Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think.

------------

"It's not the motorcycle maintenance, not the faucet. It's all of technology they can't take. And then all sorts of things started tumbling into place and I knew that was it. Sylvia's irritation at a friend who thought that computer programming was 'creative.' All their drawings and paintings and photographs without a technological thing in them. Of course she's not going to get mad at that faucet, I thought. You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate. Of course John signs off every time the subject of cycle repair comes up, even when it is obvious he is suffering for it. That's technology. And sure, of course, obviously. It's so simple when you see it. To get away from technology out into the country in the fresh air and sunshine is why they are on the motorcycle in the first place. For me to bring it back to them just at the point and place where they think they have finally escaped it just frosts both of them, tremendously. That's why the conversation always breaks and freezes when the subject comes up.

Other things fit in too. They talk once in a while in as few pained words as possible about 'it' or 'it all' as in the sentence, 'There is just no escape from it.' And if I asked, 'From what?' the answer might be 'The whole thing,' or 'The whole organized bit,' or even 'The system.' Sylvia once said defensively, 'Well, you know how to cope with it,' which puffed me up so much at the time I was embarrassed to ask what 'it' was and so remained somewhat puzzled. I thought it was something more mysterious than technology. But now I see that the 'it' was mainly, if not entirely, technology. But that doesn't sound right either. The 'it' is a kind of force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman, mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster, a death force. Something hideous they are running from but know they can never escape. I'm putting it way too heavily here but in a less emphatic and less defined way this is what it is. Somewhere there are people who understand it and run it but those are technologists, and they speak an inhuman language when describing what they do. It's all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any sense no matter how often you hear about them. And their things, their monster keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to strike back at it, and hardly any way to escape it.

That attitude is not hard to come to. You go through a heavy industrial area of a larger city and there is all is, the technology. In front of it are high barbed-wire fences, locked gates, signs saying NO TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose masters you will never see. What it's for you don't know, and why it's there, there's no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn't belong there. Who owns and understands this doesn't want you around. All this technology has somehow made you a stranger in your own land. It's very shape and appearance and mysteriousness say, 'Get out.' You know there's an explanation for all this somewhere and what it's doing undoubtedly serves mankind in some indirect way but that isn't what you see. What you see is the NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT signs and not anything serving people but little people, like ants, serving these strange, incomprehensible shapes. And you think, even if I were a part of this, even if I were not a stranger, I would be just another ant serving the shapes. So the final feeling is hostile, and I think that's ultimately what's involved with this otherwise unexplainable attitude of John and Sylvia. Anything to do with valves and shafts and wrenches is a part of that dehumanized world, and they would rather not think about it. They don't want to get into it.

If this is so, they are not alone. There is no question that they have been following their natural feelings in this and not trying to imitate anyone. But many others are also following their natural feelings in this and not trying to imitate anyone and the natural feelings of very many people are similar on this matter; so that when you look at them collectively, as journalists do, you get the illusion of a mass movement, an antitechnological mass movement, and entire political antitechnological left emerging, looming up from apparently nowhere, saying 'Stop the technology. Have it somewhere else. Don't have it here.' It is still restrained by a thin web of logic that points out that without the factories there are no jobs or standard of living. But there are human forces stronger than logic. There always have been, and if they become strong enough in their hatred of technology that web can break.

Cliches and stereotypes such as 'beatnik' or 'hippie' have been invented for the antitechnologists, the anti system people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term. John and Sylvia are not mass people and neither are most of the others going their way. It is against being a mass person that they seem to be revolting. And they feel that technology has got a lot to do with the forces that are trying to turn them into mass people and they don't like it. So far it's still mostly a passive resistance, flights into the rural areas when they are possible and things like that, but it doesn't always have to be this passive.

I disagree with them about cycle maintenance, but not because I am out of sympathy with their feelings about technology. I just think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does as the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself. That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua." 

Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. William Morrow & Company, New York, 1974 (23-26).

You Have To Choose

It is a remarkable thing that some of the weightiest choices we make in our lives are undertaken with the lightest of reasoning. 

We marry because we "like being with" so and so. "He makes me laugh." "We both enjoy running." And so on.

We bring children into the world, sometimes inadvertently but most times having chosen to do so. Maybe so we have someone to love. Or that someone will love us. At least that is the wager.

These choices bring unforeseen consequences into our world, and to the world at large. Typically they are wonderful consequences. We rolled the dice on love, or made a calculated wager, and we are surprised by how much it pushes us, makes us grow and dig deep, forms us into someone we would have never been otherwise. Or we are surprised by our capacity to love and sacrifice for children, never having known a love so great in our lives before they came into existence. 

None of these choices--to love, to marry, to bring forth life--come with guarantees. There is no assurance of happiness or contentment, of being able to provide or having the kind of life you envision for yourself. The only guarantee is that you will die, and so will those you love. No one in the history of the human race has escaped this conundrum. 

But were the "what ifs" to choke out our purview like a cloud of gnats and we defected on the chance to choose--to love, to marry, bring life into the world--that too would be a choice. What we believe to be non-choices are not defections, but choices in and of themselves. We may choose to decline a proposal, or put up barriers to keep life from breaking onto the scene, to control our destinies and keep hurts and possible betrayals at bay.

The choice to remain single when one could have married is a choice, one with consequences--sometimes positive, sometimes heavy with grief and regret. And then you get to a point when choosing an alternative is no longer a choice.

The choice to remain childless, choosing to not have children, is a choice, one that often prioritizes one's own life and autonomy. A couple may believe they do not have the resources to do so responsibly, that they do not owe a world in need of replacement with new humans anything beyond themselves. Or maybe they are just prioritizing their own wants before anything else, refusing to let them be compromised. 

I think middle age brings the reality of the choices we make into focus. We choose, or fall into, one career at the expense of doing something else. By the time ten or fifteen years go by, one is more or less cemented into that path, and it becomes difficult (but not impossible) to change course. 

Even the "sins of omission" are a failure to do something for the good, and are in themselves a choice with consequences. We fail to step in and help in a situation in which we could be of benefit, maybe out of cowardice or inconvenience, like the priest passing the injured Samaritan. Or we fail to speak up when we could have made our voice heard. Or we bury our talents in the yard. 

God gives us freedom to choose as a great and risky gift. We can choose our own destruction or make choices to deify and join him, eventually, in the heavenly realm. Even when we choose wrongly, he forgives us and resets our path; we are not always destined to die eternally with the result of one wrong or bad choice. He can even use the consequences of those misguided choices to fortify us for the future, to teach us lessons we would otherwise not have learned.

And of course, love means nothing if it is not chosen, freely given. We choose to love God in our actions, not just our minds and hearts. We choose to get up and pray, rather than choosing to go back to bed. We choose to stop drinking, or to untangle ourselves from that toxic person, as a hard decision in the right direction. Choices take effort because of the consequences we have to then deal with. We reap from those harvests, eventually, the sum of good choices. But even the detritus of bad choices can fertilize the soil for a future harvest, provided we learn from it.

Having the opportunity to choose is also a privilege, one not everyone is afforded. A slave does not make choice. He is told what to do, what he can and can't do, where he can go and when he can sleep and what he must engage in. So even when we are afforded that "terrible freedom" Dostoevsky writes about, we should be grateful for it, because it makes us human, is part of the human condition--the freedom to make choices for ourselves. 

I do thank God I am not the sum of my bad choices. Even when we have to accept the consequences of those actions, there is forgiveness, and forgiveness itself is a choice of Christ's. Just as he chose to pick up his cross and not eschew it, he chooses to forgive us; he does not withhold it when we ask for it. He does not condemn us forever, unless we are unrepentant. Because of those choices Christ made (and they were true choices made in human freedom), we have life. Because of the choices we make, we bring life into the world and perpetuate the human race.