Rooting Out Despair: the Interplay of Science and the Divine

Solar Flares, 2024

When I was a teenager, I went to a Catholic High School. Among many of the differences in my education is that every morning a small group of us, girls and boys, would gather for Mass in a small chapel. In retrospect it was very special. Unconstrained from the larger parishes we belonged to, we gathered as a group of teens in a small holy space and the service was one that we could relate directly with, as we related to each other. Through it, we could encounter awe. After classes, some of us belonged to a student organization called "Action for People Association" or AFPA. It was in that group that we put our belief in compassion into practice while at the same time doing things teens did, like flirt, discuss classes and teachers, and plan our weekends. The AFPA was an outreach group through which we had a menu of activities we could participate in such as work with inner city youth in afterschool programs, visit nursing homes, host paper drives to support non-profits (and the group), etc. Some of us began to sprout our first activism in events like the Hike for Hope—a citywide fundraising walk for the USS Hope. Within the sphere of that school, we were able to find connection through learning, play, faith, and action—what I now see as a magical combination.

Action for People Association yearbook pic, 1974

Some of these strands and the values gained, I've carried through my life—one devoted to education, learning, youth, and the greater good. Connection to Religion has been much more difficult for me to maintain. The community garnered and the mystery of the service is something I miss. My split from religion began after my divorce which coincided with the outing of the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church. Seeing behind the curtain to a system stained by pedophilia and a clear bias against women undid a very special connection for me—much as seeing clearly my former partner undid my intimate relationship.

And yet when it came to consecrating my love and commitment for Jim, a Catholic wedding was the one I truly believed in. An important part of that ceremony was when the priest asked all of the attendees to stand and bless us, promising their support for our marriage. It was an incredibly powerful moment backed by thousands of years of faith. 

"Set me as a seal upon your heart, As a seal upon your arm; For love is as strong as death, Jealousy as cruel as the grave; Its flames are flames of fire, A most vehement flame." —Song of Solomon 8:6

Since Jim's death, I have had to recreate my identity and my life. It has made me look deeply at every aspect of my life: my beliefs as a child until now, what I have learned and experienced, and the importance of moving out of the isolation of grief. Recently I was with a very dear friend and through our conversation I came to a clear understanding of what has gotten me through my dark night of the soul. I have explored many paths, joined many widow groups, gone through grief counseling, and have read practically every book there is on grief. Some folks turn to Religion believing that "it is all part of God's plan" or that "God will take care of me". I'm not that person I realized. It is the wisdom of Science that has gotten me through. A book that helped immensely is "The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss" by Mary-Frances O’Connor. It gave me the intellectual tools to know that where my mind was, was quite natural. Since then I've taken many deep reading dives into other aspects of our shared world that are frightening and worth grieving over. The books I've read in this respect are systems thinking books often through a historical and scientific lens. These have enabled me to remove the language of "blame" from our current problems and to see the root of the current order and possible solutions.

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And yet...that is not enough. I keep circling back to the mystery of the divine and to something more.

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Lake Champlain, 2021

The book that arrived on my doorstep, literally the day before Jim died, was Jan Richardson's "Sparrow: A Book of Life and Death and Life". It was written after her husband died and is deeply connected to her faith. That book was my guide during the social isolation of Covid which had locked me into my house cut-off from human touch and consolation during my first year of grief. Her writing was like meeting a friend who knew intimately what I was experiencing and helped me make sense of the liminal state between life and death that I was now in. 

With hand sanitizer and masks, the grocery store Shaws and the ski mountain Bolton became my churches—the two places where I could be with people. Truly that time of my life was Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell and dwelling on it is apt to return me to that traumatic state. However during that period, like Jan Richardson, I was able to find consolation in connecting to the divine through mediation and prayer. A milestone for me was being able to travel to Peace Village and spend a week with that very holy community in meditation, rest, and celebrating Diwali which "symbolises the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance"" (Wikipedia).

Bosch's Hell

Peace Village, 2020

This is where my life seems to pivot—on the balance between modern scientific, technological thinking and more ancient mythological thinking. In that I feel fortunate. Though I do not know the answers and am continually searching, that inquiry has given me a resilience that I see is mournfully missing in today's world. 

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Universally, we are experiencing a dark night of the soul, a frightening place even for those of us who lead first world lives. As we face concerns of "forever chemicals, environmentally caused cancers, a planet that is becoming overheated, opioids, and mass destruction of peoples through our military technologies to name a few, the curtain has lifted on our belief that technology and science make our lives better. At the same time, we have lost unifying beliefs in democracy, education, community, science, and/or religion that had enabled us to confront the unthinkable. What is that unthinkable? Impermanence, the reality of  societal change and individual death. This leaves us faced with confronting the unthinkable alone.

This week, I have read or listened to yet another article on the despair of our youth, boys in particular, the devastation of opioids, the division of this nation, the roll back of women's rights over our own bodies, the impact of systemic racism, the bombings in Gaza, and the war in the Ukraine. What I see linking these is a global underpinning of despair. Our inability to gaze upon and address the unthinkable in our lives. The power of fear over empathy that turns humanity towards ennui, anxiety, and worse, aggression. 

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I just finished reading Karen Armstrong's eloquent "A Short History of Myth" published in 2005. She begins with the dawn of humanity and concludes in 2005 with the story of how myth has allowed humanity to confront the unthinkable: how our myths have morphed as we have changed from hunter gathers to agrarian societies to dwelling in cities to the discoveries of science and technology. It's a fascinating tour of how we address our human condition and life's mysteries through story, symbolism, and ritual. In it she also seems to forecast the predicament we are in today.

"Logos has in many ways transformed our lives for the better but this has not been an unmitigated triumph. Our demythologised world is very comfortable for many of us who are fortunate enough to live in first-world countries, but it is not the earthy paradise predicted by Bacon and Locke. When we contemplate the dark epiphanies of the twentieth century, we see that modern anxiety is not simply the result of self-indulgent neurosis. We are facing something unprecedented. Other societies saw death as a transition to other modes of being. They did not nurture simplistic and vulgar ideas of an afterlife, but devised rites and myths that helped people to face the unspeakable. In no other culture would anyone settle down in the middle of a rite of passage or an initiation, with the horror unresolved. But this is what we have to do in the absence of a viable mythology. There is a moving and even heroic asceticism in the current rejection of myth. But purely linear, logical, and historical modes of thought have debarred many of us from therapies and devices that have enabled men and women to draw on the full resources of their humanity in order to live with the unacceptable."

In reflection, I see how this leads to today's unrest. As we face the uncertainty of life no longer as we have known it (brought acutely into sight with the pandemic), we are left without the psychological tools to confront our fears. 

The Temple of the Sun, Machu Picchu, 2021

Societies throughout time have had ceremonial events to bring youth into adulthood. In my own teenage faith, it was Communion and Confirmation, in ancient Greece it was the Eleusinian Mysteries, in the Paleolithic societies, it was candle lit ceremonies held deep within caves where youth confronted "moving pictures" of beasts formed through the flickering light on cave drawings. These ceremonial performances were enactments during which youth faced the unknown and the community participated and celebrated. These remind me of my own experience in those early morning chapels in high school. For the youth of today, and even more so during Covid, without a guiding community, our youth are often left to their own means to face down uncertainty. The tools easiest to find are often the experiences of endless TikTok "prescriptions", commercial video games, technology amplified bullying, drugs, unmitigated risks, and anxiety. We have not given our youth the space and tools to be adults. Think about how even 30 year olds complain about "adulting". We are letting our youth down while at the same time trying to over-protect them.

Prehistoric hand paintings at the Cave of Hands in Argentina

The same can be said for us adults. As we forgo many of the symbolic gestures and actual performances of adulthood, what we have lost is how to address the mysteries. With no clearly defined set of values, we turn to tribalism and its twin, combativeness. With no clearly defined questions or solutions to what we confront globally, with dis-information fed to us and truth harder to find, we turn instead to synthetic dopamine hits: drugs, Mommy wine culture, dubious social media influencers, celebrity worship, mega-churches, fake news, red versus blue, and megalomaniac leadership. All of which stop us dead in our tracks of solving what needs to be solved, or accepting what needs to be accepted. Social inequity, racism, care of our children, isolation and widespread loneliness, an overheating and overcrowded planet, a water crisis, an impending food crisis, human brutality...

Fame, Carroll Beckwith

So how do we find solutions today? Struggling through my own grief and the early isolation, fear, and anxiety, I believe it's a question that requires a personal and a universal approach.

Karen Armstrong would point us towards compassion and rewriting our myths/cultural stories into a context that is relatable to today's challenges. How do we create a hero's journey that is a model for today? She points to the arts, novels, and movies, such as Picasso's Guernica and James Joyce's Ulysses. She also took personal accountability and spearheaded the Charter for Compassion.

Nazi prisoners forced construction of a camp during the Holocaust, entered into evidence at the Mauthausen Trial. 

Viktor Frankl is also a guide. In his inspiring and sometimes difficult to stomach book "Man's Search for Meaning" he shares his and fellow prisoners' experiences during their imprisonment in the Nazi concentration and work camps and his work afterward. He points us to belief and empathy. In what could be a metaphor for society today, he states:

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."

He goes on to write his prescription for addressing the unthinkable:

"Sometimes the situation in which man finds himself may require him to shape his won fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross." 

And perhaps in this paragraph, a push against the divisions of our time:

"Regarding the second facet of the mass neurotic syndrome—aggression—let me cite an experiment once conducted by Carolyn Wood Sherif. She had succeeded in artificially building up mutual aggressions between groups of boy scouts, and observed that the aggressions only subsided when the youngsters dedicated themselves to a collective purpose—that is, the joint task of digging out of the mud a carriage in which food had to be brought to the camp. Immediately, they were not only challenged but also united by a meaning they had to fulfill."

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Divisions, divinity, science, art, connectivity. Where do we find the space for a "collective purpose", or to accept our unknown fate, or even cross our divisions? I am not sure, but I do believe we were given the opportunity to imagine the possibilities twice this Spring. The first time was during the eclipse and the second during the epic solar flares. Those were moments of divinity and unity. Many of us were able to witness these events with or surrounded by others. In both there were profound moments of communal awe. If we look at those, and if we make a point to remember them, I believe we can see the post towards which we must find our way. Those experiences were moments when we collectively experienced the awe of the Divine which was anchored in the here and now. Our questions become what are the experiences we share, what are the stories we will tell, how do we bring the next generation with us, and what are the actions we will inspire?

Neighborhood viewing of the eclipse, 2024