The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

1874 Edition of the
Imitation of Christ
from France

This morning have been reading from my favorite book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.  I think this is the greatest religious book ever.  It's had great influence on my life.  I quote below then comment.

Why desirest If thou wilt know and learn anything with profit love to be thyself unknown and to be counted for nothing.  That is the highest and most profitable lesson, when a man truly knowth and judgeth lowly of himself.  To account nothing of one's self, and to think always kindly and highly of others, this is great and perfect wisdom.  Even shouldest thou see thy neighbor sin openly or grievously, yet thou oughtest not to reckon thyself better than he, for thou knowest not how long thou shalt keep think integrity.  All of us are weak and frail; hold thou no man more frail than thyself.

I've found that in life that people who think they know everything can't learn anything new.  They have closed minds.  You can't learn unless you can admit that you don't know.  Vanity is what causes people to be unable to admit that they don't know something.  Many people I still meet can't reveal that they don't know something already and try to cover it up if something comes up that they don't know anything about.  As though that is some kind of embarrassment.  You can always tell what people know and don't know and if they are covering.  Covering one's weaknesses is vanity.  Vanity exists in proportion of how much ego one still has.  People who have a large amount of vanity have large egos and lack spirituality.  The ego must be outgrown and that is the purpose of religion.

The Fire

Frank in the Falcon

On January 13th, a big red house where 25 people lived, on the opposite corner from where I live at Castleton and Park Ave. in Port Richmond, Staten Island, burned.  I heard the fire engine sirens as I was waking up at about 7:00 a.m.  Being a shutterbug, I took my camera and went outside.  No one was hurt, but a lot of poor families became homeless.

The funny part of this story, at least for me, is how much attention I'm getting out of this event because of my photos.  Later I saw a reporter from Channel 1 News at the scene and I showed him my photographs that I had printed out on my computer.  He interviewed me and I was included on the news in the fire story.  I thought this house fire was a significant story because of the architectural significance of the house.   When I saw the story on the news, it surprised me to learn that all the interest being shown to the fire was because the house was turned into a rooming and apartment house illegally. No one has yet mentioned anything about the architectural significance.

After the fire, a fire marshall from Brooklyn, who was investigating the fire, heard about my photos and came to my building.  My building security guard gave him a photo that I had given her.   She wouldn't give him my apartment number, but he left his card.  I then sent him some of my photos, which he called to thank me for.  Then today two more fireman who were fighting the fire heard about my photos and came to see me.  I gave them pictures that they said are going to be in a magazine.  They are going to send me a copy of the magazine.   This is a video I made that I put on flickr.  Staten Island lost about 230 firemen on 9/11.  It's been nice getting to know some of the fire fighters a little better.




Some of my photos:

The House Before the Fire

Update: 2/2/2012 The next day after the fire a tall wood fence was built around the half-burned house. This wall projected out into the street. Cars coming from the street in front couldn't see the oncoming traffice because of the wood fence causing several accidents. Then one night I heard a great "Boom." The wall in the Street fell down in the street. Fortunately there wasn't any cars passing at the time. The fire department arrived within 5 minutes. My photo below shows the firemen holding up the fence while it's being repaired.

The Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Ávila

I've been reading more of The Way of Perfection by St. Theresa.  The most famous chapter in this book is chapter 38, which is considered one of the greatest examples of spiritual writing ever, and I agree.  It's changing my opinions on many subjects.  One of which is that I never liked the idea of removing oneself from society in order to become more spiritual, like nuns and monks do.  That seemed the easy way out to me.  I thought people should apply their spiritual values to improving the society they live in.  One reason for this view is the way that the Catholic Church behaved during WWII and especially in Germany, when they ignored Nazism and I believe even consorted with the Nazis just for the sake of expediency.  If you remove yourself from society, you tend to accept and try to live with whatever that society is advocating at the moment, because you feel that you are not really a part of it anyway and it doesn't really affect you.  That seems to me a rather selfish way to live.  The Catholic Church always seems to agree with the status quo.  That is one reason I am not a Catholic.

However, Chapter 38 of this book is so great, I'm beginning to change my mind.  I think St. Teresa is making me start to think like a nun.  Perhaps the only way that one can lead a truly spiritual life is by turning one's back on society and separating oneself from it.  It's hard to change your values from those of your society and to follow God completely when you have to deal with the society that you live in every day and play by its rules.  Maybe it is better to live with people who share the same values and want to live by the same goals that you do.  That being becoming as close to God as possible.  If you have to concentrate on earning a living that is hard to do.  Chapter 38 in this great book is about that amongst other things.  The other great thing are her thoughts on meditation.  I've been close enough in my life while meditating to understand the state that she is describing and to believe it is a goal that is attainable.  I feel that believing in God and using God as the object of meditation is far more effective than how the Buddhists do it.

The other day , while I was taking the bus into the City, I was reading chapter 38 on my Kindle.  It put me in such a wonderful state of mind that I never wanted to arrive in the city and have to get off the bus.  I was transported to another world.

A few quotes from chapter 38, which is mostly about humility, that I could identify with.  All religions teach the importance of humility, and yet it is very hard to find a person who actually has it.  People who set themselves up as an example for others to follow certainly don't:

...we are in the habit of saying that we want nothing and care nothing about anything: but as soon as the chance comes of our being given something, even though we do not in the least need it, all our poverty of spirit disappears....

...for the person who is truly humble is always doubtful about his own virtues; very often they seem more genuine and of greater worth when he sees them in his neighbours....

...Well, we make our vow of poverty, and then one of us, believing herself all the time to be keeping it, says:  "I do not want anything, but I am having this because I cannot do without it: after all, if I am to serve God, I must live, and He wants us to keep these bodies to ours alive."  So the devil, in his angelic disguise, suggests to her that there are a thousand different things which she needs and that they are all good for her.  And all the time he is persuading her to believe that she is still being true to her vow and possesses the virtue of poverty and that what she has done is no more than her duty....

Thinking About Christianity on Christmas Morning, December 25, 2011

The Wartburg room where
Luther translated the New Testament
 into German. An original first edition
is kept in the case on the desk

I'm trying to think of something to say for Christmas Day 2011 that will not be a complete waste of reader's time.  However, maybe everything I say is a waste of reader's time.  I don't know.  I thought that maybe a few words about Christianity might be appropriate. I also think it's appropriate to think about one's Christian beliefs on holidays like Christmas and Easter, if not any other time.

I am a Christian, not just because I was born into this tradition, but because I have read and studied other religions, and have objectively chosen Christianity as the one that I think has the most to offer me.  However, my background may also have something to do with that.

I think it's a really hostile and a hurt person who denies their own religious tradition.  This reminds me of James Joyce, who left Ireland, turned his back on his country and religion, but then wrote about nothing else and still always went to church on Easter.  Although I have considered the idea of becoming a Catholic and even took classes at St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC to prepare for becoming a Catholic, I never did.  The classes only confirmed to me that I was really deeply Protestant.

One really amazing thing happened this last year.  While on Ancestry.com, I learned that Martin Luther was my 15th great grand-uncle.  His father, Hans, was my 16th Great Grandfather.  Since learning that, I have been reading and studying Luther.  I've always been more of a Calvinist, who are more radically liberal than was Luther, but in studying Luther, I have changed my mind on some subjects.

1.  I always thought that infant baptism was ridiculous because a baby can't know what is going on.   Baptism is a symbol of God coming into one's life, but that's something that is subjective.  You can't make God go into someone else's life by dabbing water on it's head.  Accepting God is a psychological process mostly done by adults.

I now believe in infant baptism.  Mostly, because I can't see any harm in it.  I also think it establishes in the child when he grows up and knows that he has been baptized some feelings of belonging and tradition.  I think having these kinds of feelings is important and helps in self-esteem and feeling that one has a place in this world and is not just a drifter.  I also think it is comforting for the parents to know their child has been baptized and that will give him some Christian roots.  Luther was much more into outward symbols than was Calvin.

2.  Most Protestants, especially the Calvinists and people like the Mennonites, are against religious statues which they think are symbols of idolatry.  Mennonite churches are also bare rooms.  They have no religious icons or statues because they associate this with idolatry.  Religion is something that comes from inside.  God comes to us through the spirit, not through praying to some statue.

I no longer believe that anything is wrong with praying to a statue, if it makes the person feel better and closer to God.  I don't see anything wrong with seeing art objects in churches.  I think people understand that the statue is only a symbol for the spiritual.  The statue, or whatever the material object is, can serve the purpose of getting oneself out of being entirely introspective.  I think introspection can be carried to an extreme.  Objects in reality can keep us more balanced between the inside world and the outside.  I don't believe in entirely denying the outside world, like Monks.  Cutting oneself off from the outside world in order to get closer to God, I think too easy.   The people I admire are the people who become part of the world and try to make it better.  Not the people who find it so unsympathetic to their nature that they feel they can't live within it.  These people are usually people who have been deeply hurt in their lives.

Luther's Writings

Martin Luther as an
Augustinian Monk

3.  My changed thoughts about the Eucharist.  I always believed that the bread and wine in the Eucharist ceremony symbolized the body and blood of Jesus.  This is the traditional Calvinist belief.  After all, Christ is is up in heaven sitting next to God, which is a picture that many if not most Protestants have in their head.  Luther said that this isn't right.  That when Jesus said that the bread and wine was his body and blood, he didn't mean it symbolically but literally.  It's rather hard to tell when Jesus is being reiterated in the Bible, if He should be taken literally or symbolically.  Catholics and Evangelicals take Him, and everything else, more literally than do the Protestants.  Luther was more religiously conservative and closer to the Catholics than Calvin.  Luther was an Augustinian Catholic Priest before his revolt again the Catholic Church.  However, his revolt was only against everything he saw as corrupt in the Church, not most of it's basic Augustinian philosophy.   (1) this idea that Jesus is sitting some place next to God is entirely anthropomorphic.  It's making God and Jesus both appear as people in one's mind.  Neither are people, they are spirits.  Both God and Jesus are everywhere and part of everything that exists, therefore they also exist literally in bread and wine.  I think the main purpose of the Eucharist is to remind us that God and Jesus are everywhere and in everything around us.  I also think that when one is taking the bread and the wine, that if they feel that is literally and actually Jesus's body and blood that the experience becomes much more meaningful.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, whatever you may believe, but believe.  

St. Teresa of Ávila

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

I just started reading The Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of 
Avila.  Also she called St. Teresa of Jesus.

One reason I think this book is relevant today is that she writes a lot about money and people's relationship to it.  In this time of material hardship what she says may sound unrealistic to the secular mind, but I don't think it does to the religious mind.  In my mind it's the absolute truth.

Although I'm not a Catholic, I study and read a lot of what the Catholic writers and saints have written, because it's so good and true.  I believe in studying different religions and I learn from all of them.

St. Teresa lived during the life and rise of Martin Luther and really puts the Lutherans down as lost souls.  It's true that the first Protestants in Germany had a very rocky beginning.  However, I think other things she says in this book are great.  I consider myself essentially a  Protestant, but a Catholic in many philosophical ways.  I can't accept authoritarianism of any kind--if it comes from man--not when it comes from God.  However, I've also been studying Martin Luther who despite his rebellion against the Catholic Church was still very authoritarian.  Despite his rebelling against the Catholic Church, he thought it wrong for people to rebel against their governments or secular rulers.  He didn't believe in being a protester.  Luther thought that the peasant uprisings in his day were bad, and that their being slaughtered was justified.  In our time, that's something very hard to understand.  I think because we have seen more of history since the 1500's, our hindsight provides a longer historical view.  Luther believed that the kings and men in power were put there by God and their authority should be accepted.  Luther's rationale was that Jesus didn't protest, but endured and suffered his enemies and died on the cross.  However, it seems to be that in his life, before his dying episode, he did do a lot of protesting, which is basically why he ended up being crucified.  He was crucified because he protested against the society in which he lived and the practices of Judism.  Jesus's main objective was reforming Judism.  He also thought that the Roman's were scum.  If he had just accepted everything, he wouldn't have been crucified.

[Since I discovered that Martin Luther was my 15th great grand uncle, I've been studying him, although I was fascinated by him before I even found out this fact.  This I think shows that discovering one's ancestors can be of value.  It has stimulated my interest in history tremendously.]

St. Teresa on the materialistic side of life (quotes from her book)--[St. Teresa addresses her sisters because she was a Carmelite nun.]

Let us not pray for worldly things, my sisters.  It makes me laugh, and yet it makes me sad, when I hear of the things which people come here to beg us to pray to God for; we are to ask His Majesty to give them money and to provide them with incomes--I wish that some of these people would entreat God to enable them to trample all such things beneath their feet.  Their intentions are quite good, and I do as they ask because I see that they are really devout people, though I do not myself believe that God ever hears me when I pray for such things.

I totally agree that God does not hear when you pray for money.  When I ask God for something that is spiritual in nature, I'm blown away by how fast he gives me an answer.  Even when I've prayed for some relief of some physical ailment, I'm been cured quickly.  However, when I've prayed for money or to better my sustenance, which is how I phrase it when I pray, nothing happens.  That's because I'm praying for the wrong thing.  I believe that if you pray for something that God in his infinite wisdom doesn't think that is good or right for you, he will ignore your prayer.  Anyway, that's how it has worked in my life.

...and are we to waste our time upon things which, if God were to grant them, would perhaps bring one soul less to Heaven?  Mo, my sisters, this is no time to tret with God for things of little importance...

Do not think, my sisters, that because you do not go about trying to please people in the world you will lack food.  You will not, I assure you:  never try to sustain yourselves by human artifices, or you will die of hunger, and rightly so.

...For the love of the Lord, let us not forget this: you have forgone a regular income; forgo worry about food as well, or thou will lose everything.  Let those whom the Lord wishes to live on an income do so: if that is their vocation, they are perfectly justified; but for us to do so, sisters, would be inconsistent.  Worrying about getting money from other people seems to me like thinking about what other people enjoy.  However much you worry, you will not make them change their minds nor will they become desirous o giving you alms.  Leave these anxieties to Him Who can move everyone, Who is the Lord of all money and of all who possess money...

The irony is that she talks of poverty and its importance and the evil of material concerns while at the same time saying that Lutherans are lost souls who will burn in hell.  Luther revolted against the greed and material concerns of the Catholic Church.  The same thing that Avila is against.  Luther revolted because the Catholic Church was selling "get out of hell" cards for money.  The Catholic church owned castles and land in many countries, and these countries sided with Luther because they wanted their land back.  The way that Avila writes about poverty, she seems to totally disregard the practices of her own Church.  She seems to think that rebellion for any reason is a great sin that will cause a person to go to hell.  However, it is true that some of Luther's followers went too far and undoubtedly ended up in hell, but they were probably there to begin with.

I also don't agree that the best way for a religious person to find God is to remove oneself from society to help avoid temptation and the wanting for the material aspects of life. That seems too easy to me.  I don't believe the best way to solve a problem is by just removing oneself from the situation.  It seems stronger to me to stay and change things.

However, I agree with her that she offers a path to perfection, which is her goal.  If you feel that you are on that path, I would recommend this book.

The world is but a dream


On Amazon.com I wrote a review of a book called "Start Where You Are" subtitled "A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron, who is an American Buddhist Monk.  Her main thesis was Don't take yourself or life so seriously because it's only a dream anyway.


Around 1567, Saint Avila wrote :  

Now it seems to me that, when God has brought someone to a clear knowledge of the world, and of its nature, and of the fact that another world (or, let us say another kingdom) exists, and that there is a great difference between the one and the other, the one being eternal and the other only a dream;...

Pema Chodron, an American, rejected Christianity for Buddhism, but as of yet I haven't found one idea in Buddhism that doesn't exist in Christianity, except Buddhists don't believe in God.  I think the reason for that is that the Buddhists can only think of God in anthropomorphic terms, and they reject Christianity because they think that is the way all Christians see God.  Christianity is far more metaphorical than Buddhism, and people who have trouble understanding metaphors seem to like Buddhism better.  I also think that people who reject the religion of the culture into which they were born, comes from deep hurt from people in their culture.  They knew people who professed to be Christian, but were mean and terrible, so they reject Christianity altogether as worthless.  But every religion has people who are mean and terrible, because they have no understanding.  It isn't the fault of the religion.

This idea that the world is but a dream, or a shadow, of the real world, which is spiritual and eternal, comes from Plato.  Although I think that many people, most likely Saint Avila, probably come to this conclusion on their own and have never read or heard of Plato, but Plato was the first in literature that I know of who expounded this idea.  The idea may have existed before Plato, and I'm not just well-read enough to know about it.