A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 2
In my last blog post, I described how communion is a deeper mode of knowing and how the symbol is an effective servant in our journey toward union with God. That is, symbols are necessary when pursuing communion. God is not an Object to be known, but a Subject to be experienced. This week, I will try to integrate Parker Palmer’s insight of objectivism’s failure and how subjectivism ties with our experiences of symbols.
Parker Palmer hits this theme (communion and how we experience communion) from the education angle. He observes in his earlier work, To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey in 1983, “The aim of objectivism is to eliminate all elements of subjectivity, all biases and preconceptions, so that our knowledge can become purely empirical. For the sake of objectivity, our inner realities are factored out of knowledge equation.”
Parker is not naïve in simply bashing the system and is not on a crusade to eliminate all objective education/training. He sees values in objectivism, albeit a limited one. Palmer sees that “inner realities” will not be awakened through some sort of empirical pursuit of objective knowledge.
Parker further clarifies:
. . . But it is even more important to recognize that narrow-minded or triumphalistic spiritualities are not the major obstacle to a universal community of nature and humankind. The major obstacle is objectivism that persists in making “things” of us all. This objectivism—with only a little prompting from religious or secular ideologies—is quickly translated into political and social programs of division, manipulation, and oppression. The threat to community posed today (whether the Christian Moral Majority or the Islamic fundamentalists) comes not from the heart of their spiritual traditions but from objectivism that reduces everyone not in their fold to mere objects for conversion if possible, or elimination if necessary.
I’ve seen plenty of narrow-mindedness or triumphalism both in myself and in the missions enterprise, not to mention in normal everyday operations. And they are no small giants to slay.
However, Palmer considers objectivism as the root of deleterious behaviors. One way this objectivism operates in my life is that it blinds me to play the “compare and contrast” game constantly with others, which is the main function of the ego. It legitimizes and empowers the “objectivism” of the world’s system which my ego uses to compare and contrast my best with others’ worst. This is one of the worst illusionary traps.
Subjective knowing has been viewed as a second class knowing and we are told not to trust it as it betrays the modern empirical objective mind. “If it can’t be proven objectively, it must be not real” is the basic idea. However, as Parker alluded, our inner realities cannot be awakened by objectifying pursuits. I want all to give permission to all, first of all, to pursue inner awakenings, which can only take place through subjective experiential knowing. Now, let’s consider how subjectivism and symbols tie together.
Symbols are everywhere. They happen in every day mundane life. They are epiphanies of God breaking through to us and reminding us that God is here and near to us. Symbols are subjective spiritual experiences that cannot be objectified. In this sense, we are all subjective mystics who are learning to experience God’s presence and access God’s love through symbols. However, as modern societies, we have conveniently banned or at least downplayed anything that is not quantifiable and logically explainable. If they can’t be objectified, then we are led to believe that they must not be trustworthy or not be worth of our time.
Symbols also come to us through books, conversations, being out in nature, observing children, and being in silence and solitude. And, of course, through prayer. The list goes on . . .
I have a growing resonance with Finley that prayer is “meant to lead us to a radical transformation of consciousness in which all of life becomes a symbol.”
Life then becomes a natural conduit in which we experience God and perfect and unfailing Love. This is Supernatural merging with natural and vice versa. We experience the extraordinary God in the ordinary. And we who are ordinary experience the extraordinary in the ordinary context called life.