Eschatology

What follows is a paper that I recently wrote on Eschatology for a class taught by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker at Starr King School for the Ministry. In the class, students place themselves in theological conversation with our historical religious movement. Formatting this post is proving to be complex, so apologies if there are spaces in weird places:

Shams Cohen
Unitarian Universalist Theologies
Due 3/18/09

Eschatology

What is the purpose of earthly life, where do we come from, what happens after we die? Planting myself firmly in the midst of what seems to be so for historical Unitarians (though perhaps not so for Universalists), it is true that I, personally, am much more emphatically engaged with the questions of purpose on earth than I am with what came before or after. While my mystical side appreciates any revelation I might receive about what, in Sufism, we call "pre-eternity" (meaning the before and after), I find that, as a UU, I remain solidly agnostic on that topic, and I tend to become enraged when anyone asserts that they are sure of what came before or what follows after earthly life, especially if they are trying to motivate me by their surety.

The best answer I've heard so far on questioning the meaning of life comes from the Islamic Tradition in which Allah proclaims "I was a hidden treasure that longed to be known, so I created the creation that I might know myself" (Hadith Qudsi). At the same time, it is said that the human being accepted a charge that no other part of creation would submit to, to be the location where the Divine might be fully manifest in form. Therefore it is also said that one must "know thyself to know thy Lord."

For commentary on all of that, I'd like to share some teaching brought to me by Sufi teacher Fethi ben Halim. Fethi teaches that, not only does the knowing of all things point to a great knowing of Allah, but also that the "longed" in "longed to be known" is significant. In other words, the divine is known through longing. Fethi also explains that one's "Lord" is not a complete or objective knowing of Allah, but rather an expression used to convey one's particular and incomplete understanding of Allah at any given moment (hence your "Lord" is not the same as my "Lord" even though Allah is only one).

Actually this strikes me as very much in keeping with what I have recently come to understand about proto Unitarian Enlightenment and Romantic period ways of being with the Divine, especially when we get to folks like Coleridge and Schleiermacher, and later to Emerson and the Transcendentalists. These are all theological movements that stressed a personal relationship with the text and with reality as a way of intuiting one's personal truth about God. For example, Schleiermacher, whose thoughts were very influential on the 19th century Unitarians, wrote of "'the intuition of the self ' in and through the infinite'" (Livingston 100). Writing in the same era on the much beloved Unitarian topic of "reason," Coleridge professed:

Thirdly reason should be thought of not as a separate faculty but rather as a power, an intuitive apprehension by which the total personality – senses, will, and emotions – act as a whole. Apprehension of such supersensuous truth is the fruit of feeling and will in unity with sense and intellect; the heart acting upon and in unison with the head. Reason, therefore, is that power by which the faculties are united and are enabled to experience an intuitive apprehension of the truth. (Quoted by Livingston 90)

About which Livingston wrote:

For Coleridge the ideas intuited by reason are the objects of knowledge; they have real ontological status… Human Reason serves as the unitive power by which all disparate experiences and truths are bound together and apprehended as a spiritual Whole, because Reason is grounded in the one Being (God) who ' is the ground of all relations.' (90)

In other words: be a "supersensuous" witness to the sacred multiplicity manifest all around us, that, in truth, is part of a greater transcendent sacred oneness. Know yourself and your world in order that you might know your Lord.

Another similarity that this era of Christianity shares with Islam is the idea of offering a human prophet as an "example" of humanity perfected. Livingstone explains Schleiermacher's Christology this way: " Jesus Christ is best understood as the full historical realization of archetypical humanity" (108). Many of our Unitarian forebears, as well as Hosea Ballou on the Universalist side have offered Jesus as an example of what one might become and achieve as a perfected human being. And this notion of becoming a perfected human being in community with others who strive to embody the same perfections carries with it all the disadvantages, risks, and burdens that Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker spoke to us about during our class session on 2/18.

According to Parker these risks include: "relating to the present from the perspective of what should be", a should that we can supposedly bring about if only we are good enough, AND "an idealism that cannot completely fulfill us, since it is formed around absence" (ie the absence of the idealized world we imagine could be here now if we were only all working hard enough to have actualized our individual and communal divine perfection.) I would say that, within Islamic Sufism, I am at least spared from the full force of one of the other potential flaws that this theology can lead to according to Parker, that of "a hubris about our power" that can lead to us beating ourselves up.

Paradoxically, though Sufism commands each of us to be ever striving to perfect our qualities, it also at least acknowledges a power greater than our own upon which we are reliant and without which no advancement will occur. Ironically, Sufism's omnipotent God seems to be one of the things that our Unitarian and Universalist response to Calvinism might not permit me to hold onto without becoming a dissenter within our tradition. Yet this very God upon whom my fate depends is the only thing standing between my idealism and this "hubris about my power" that Dr. Parker mentions as a potential source of burn-out and mistake (dare I say "sin?").

I also have to say that I am an incredible relativist, and I believe that even though I have come to some surety about my own purpose in life, I do not claim to know the purpose for anyone else. However, I have some biases and suspicions! For me, when I came out to myself as I minister, I realized that my mission was: "to enliven people by nurturing the rediscovery and celebration of their own powerful Wholeness, and to create space for people to spiritually unfold, discover and celebrate the Power of Love and essential Oneness in beloved community " (from my web site:
http://www.soulemeregence.info/).

That is to say that I think each of us has a gift to bring; that when we learn to love ourselves and are supported in community, we have the ingredients to create heaven on earth right now, without first having to become perfected, and without having to display perfection. But those are still huge and idealistic "ifs"- if we learn to love ourselves- that can be a whole life's journey, and if we are supported in community- and here I mean not just emotional support, but sufficient resources for our physical necessities and a community that functions in an emotionally healthy enough way that there is some place for our gifts to be received when we bring them forward.

The notions that Dr. Parker explained to us when discussing Saving Paradise about how to overcome this be-perfect-or-beat-yourself-up response to what is absent actually reminds me a lot of what I've learned about in Sufism. Dr. Parker said that we need to look at "this here and now as a place of blessing and struggle," and that we can be present in paradise now with an "attentive and reverent response to what is already here" as a way of addressing our justice work.

As I studied Sufi restorative approaches with The School of Conscious Healing, I was taught that any dysfunction is actually evidence of the presence of a divine quality: a divine quality currently veiled and trying to be born. So that, in any given moment of "struggle" or "distress," one can choose to identify the divine quality that is trying to be born and get a handle on how to aid in that labor and delivery. Friendship, love, justice, compassion, these are all divine names that might be masked in any moment by enmity, hatred, injustice, bitterness. Yet they are not absent, and so do not create an idealism formed around absence or a burn-out from unanswered longing. In Sufi theology (and also in Jewish Kabbalah), all of the manifest realm is formed out of dualities, or opposites, so in the moment when we discover we are fighting, the peace is also right there waiting for us to open to it.

Perhaps this is what Dr. Parker means when she says that Saving Paradise offers a radically realized paradise rather than one which we need to progressively realize over time. There is no there there, only here now. This place must not and cannot be colonized… because it is already paradise.

We can see the tension between these two slightly different ways of approaching healing, or redemption, if we turn our attention to the current UU hymnals. If you compare the lyrics of "We'll Build a Land" to those of "Fire of Commitment," I think you can see this difference. "We'll Build a Land" sounds glorious, but is also really hard to believe in. "Bind up the broken … captives go free … good tidings to all the afflicted … dissolving all mourning … restoring ruins!" We've been trying to
build that land for quite a long time, and it ain't here yet! If that is the only marker of success, then we will beat ourselves up and experience burn out. However in "Fire of
Commitment," we speak of "beacons, courage, commitment, justice and freedom." These divine qualities are available here and now! We can call these forth from
ourselves in any given moment, marking our success and experiencing the fulfillment of our ideals by their presence.

This radically realized eschatology, affirming and engaging with the holy present in the here and now, does seem like a more sustainable way to be engaged with the purpose of living. Perhaps that is why I feel repeatedly soothed by this Sharon Welch quote currently being used as an email signature file by our colleague, Sunshine
Jeremiah Wolfe:


"We are not ushering in a new age.

We are not part of a grand cultural revolution.

We are not fighting the war to end all wars.

We are, quite simply, like all the generations before us, and all the
generations that will come after, learning to walk. " (26)

Perhaps not just learning to walk, but certainly still far from perfect, too easily burnt-out by organizing around an absence, representing an unattainable ideal, learning as a people how to refrain from killing and harming one another and our eco-system. I believe this sustainable movement is possible through a love that remains consciously in relationship to the Holy, the Holy that is, truly, present in each moment, here and now.


Works Cited

as-Shaddhuli, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rafia. Sufi teachings conveyed in
person 2001 – 2007.

ben Halim, Fethi. Sufi teachings conveyed in person. 2001 – 2006.

Burack, Charles. Classroom lectures on Kabbalah at SKSM 3/7 & 3/14/09.

Hadith Qudsi

Livingston, James. "Christianity and Romanticism." Modern Christian Thought:From the Enlightenment to Vatican II. New York: MacMillan Co, 1971.

Parker, Rebecca in SKSM UU Theology class lectures on 02/10/09

Qur'an.

UUA, Singing the Journey. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.
UUA. Singing the Living Tradition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

Welch, Sharon. Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work. Routledge: New York, 1999.

www.soulemergence.info