Moving away from the partisan pretzel logic to explore spirituality

 In "How Faith Shapes My Politics" in the NY Times 9/24/2020, David Brooks writes:

"These realizations transformed my spiritual life: awareness of God’s love, participation in grace, awareness that each person is made in God’s image. Faith offered an image of a way of being, an ultimate allegiance."

He also writes:

"What finally did the trick was glimpses of infinite goodness. Secular religions are really good at identifying some evils, like oppression, and building a moral system against them. Divine religions are primarily oriented to an image of pure goodness, pure loving kindness, holiness. In periodic glimpses of radical goodness — in other people, in sensations of the transcendent — I felt, as Wendell Berry put it, “knowledge crawl over my skin.” The biblical stories from Genesis all the way through Luke and John became living presences in my life."

I think it's cool he uses the phrase "loving kindness"

For me the conversion to Buddhism helped me see, what I imagine in my limited spirituality, that god is the transcendental, what is beyond conditions, and unspeakable, unquantifiable, and a kind of feeling I get when I can see deeper after lots of meditation. That's probably not what spirituality is, maybe it's more the striving for the largest appropriate perspective. Who knows.

The article is about how absurd it is for a candidate for the Supreme Court to say that "faith" will not color their decisions. It colors everything you do. 

But in partisan America, there are two kinds of faith. One is a wise kindness based one. And the other is for fortitude when you're not being kind, to stand on your convictions about the limited use of the federal government, that thinks it's alright to do whatever to achieve your means, and that it's quite alright to be a selfish power hungry nihilist without a shred of insight or integrity. I may be speaking in a partisan way.

I'm trying to move away from the above duality, and pretzel logic. I'm trying to focus on pushing myself to the greatest depth, hight or whatever up or into metaphors you wish. I'm trying to accept the imperfections of the world as working grounds to challenge me. I continue to be firmly appreciative of everyone's freedom to choose their own spirituality, and to tolerate different personalities, cultures, genders, sex, race and class.

It takes a while but I'm finding some songs to capture the moment. 

Also