Keeping It Real: On WA.I.T.T. & Reality

I remember a few years ago asking a friend what he was doing? He simply answered, “Keeping it real”. I laughed at the time. It was a phrase that was in common usage, almost told as a joke, but actually it has deep meaning. Afterall being real, living real and keeping it real is the only way to live. To live is to inhabit reality and to be fully alive in reality, doing the work we are here to do, for the good of all. To truly live spiritually alive can only occur in the real world, as challenging as it is. Our current life situation can put a strain on this. I know myself I am living an increasingly two dimensional life and this makes creativity difficult. I don’t like it, yes I am having to adjust, but would rather not live this way. That said it is absolutely necessary, only this week we passed the loss of 100,000 souls to this virus in this country alone and over 2million the world over. So we must live this way or God only knows what the death toll would be. We have to live this way, this is life, this is real life.

Life does not work out as you would expect it to, thus we have to constantly adjust and find ways to stay connected fully to reality. We also have to find ways to stay connected to one another. I am growing weary of this situation that we are all living through, but I, well all of us, have to live in this reality; this is our reality and we all have to guard against the danger of attempting to shape it to fit into what we would have it be, just because the world is not working out the way we would like it to be.

I have noticed frustration this week as I have heard some colleagues talk a bit too much about the potentials for growth in this current climate. Yes, there are opportunities to connect with new people. That said let us not pretend that this is not an ideal or even advantages reality. It is not, although it has allowed us to spread our nets a little further, well we could have been doing that anyway. For most of us the pandemic has reduced our experience of reality. We are living through frightening and destructive times. This is the reality of what we are living through. My word I do hope that we are all able to live through it.

So what do we do, we adjust, we adapt. We are doing this as well as we can. It is important to always remember that life rarely works out the way that we expect it to and that this is always the case.

I recently came across the following tale from my favourite Mulla Nasrudin, the holy fool. I love Nasrudin as he has this wonderful way of turning our expectations upside down. Here he acts in an unexpected way, which fools the would be thieves of his slippers.

"Some boys planned to steal Nasrudin's slippers and run away with them. They called to him and pointed to a tree. 'Nobody can climb that tree,' they said.

" 'Any one of you could,' said Nasrudin, 'and I will show you how.'

"He removed his slippers, then tucked them into his belt and began to climb.

" 'Nasrudin,' they cried, 'you won't need your slippers in a tree.'

" 'Why not?' Nasrudin said. 'Be prepared for every emergency, I say. For all I know I might find a road up there.'

Of course Nasrudin sounds ridiculous here. Of course, he won’t find a road up in the tree, even if he expects it could happen. Now while the story teaches that we can find our way in life in unexpected ways, there is a larger point being made. This is that reality is not your enemy, but it certainly can become the enemy of your expectations.

Yes, life often does not work out the way that we expect it to and this can lead to disappointment. The truth is that often life brings experiences that contradict the way we believe it ought to work out. Now when this happens fear can begin to take a hold and this it would appear is what leads to the rejection of reality for some kind of fantasy. It is not reality that is causing the problem, but our expectations about how reality should work out. Why should life work out the way that you and I expect it to?

Life is a constant conversation; we all live by what David Whyte has named “The Conversational Nature of Reality”. Life does work out exactly as we expect it to and we do act in exactly the way that the world expects us to. Reality exists in that conversation, which is never how we expect to be, that goes on between ourselves and one another. To keep it real it requires us to live there, often in the discomfort of reality, where life is rarely how we expect to be. While realising that we are living in this same reality.

Reality is the only place to live. The problem it seems is that for some in order to do so, reality has to be rejected for some other distorted view of life. This it appears to have been an increase in this these last few months, which has led to more and more folk falling down the rabbit holes of all kinds of “conspiracy theories”. These are a distortion of reality into something else, as if there was some kind of plot against the world. It is claimed that reality is not what we are experiencing, that we all living in some kind of Matrix or some other science fiction film. That reality is not real at all. I suspect that the fact that we are living ever increasingly two dimensional lives has helped to fuel this, we are not able to connect as we would like to and for good reason. This can lead to a sense that we are not all in this together.

It is true we often create worlds in our heads, that differ from the world of reality. It is a child like coping mechanism. This though can stop us living the life we are here to live, to do the work for the good of all. This alternative reality can at times turn vicious and deadly, and can lead to all kinds of scapegoating, as it has done throughout human history, when one group or other is blamed for all of life’s troubles, QAnon is just the latest example of this. There have been many others throughout the ages. They are taking on more prominence in our time due in no small part to this general sense of physical separation that we are having to live through. We have to live this way, of course we do, but there are many detrimental consequences of this.

This brings to mind a tale from Anthony DeMello’s “One Minute Wisdom”

"The Master claimed that the world most people see is not the world of Reality, but a world their head creates.

"When a scholar came to dispute this, the Master set two sticks on the floor in the form of the letter T and asked, 'What do you see here?'

" 'The letter T,' said the scholar.

" 'Just as I thought,' said the Master. 'There's no such things as a letter T; that's a symbol in your head. What you have here is two broken branches in the form of sticks.' "

Sometimes all we see are symbols. We look at the symbols and fail to see the reality.

Reality is a deeply sacred thing; we need to live in reality. This is where faith comes alive, where we can do our good works for the good of all. We need to love and respect reality and thus bring the spirit to life through it.

In “An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith” Barbara Brown Taylor writes: 

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”

I am missing three-dimensional connection. I am missing the physicality of interaction and the gritty reality of live entertainment. Yes, there is much we can connect with and there is truly high quality music and theatrical performances being created through modern technology. Zoom is great in helping us to stay connected but none of it is quite the same as living breathing flesh and holistic connection. I miss the feel of being with people of enjoying live entertainment, of seeing the whole of a person, it is tiring making do with reductionist experiences. I miss the physical nature of live entertainment. I miss the vibrations that shake through your body from live music, seeing the spittle as actors spit out there words, I am also missing the smell of everything. Life is too sanitised, I miss the grime and dirt, where so much of life grows and nurtures.

This week I remembered a concert, many years ago, at Cross street Chapel. It was the beautiful physicality of two East Asian musicians that had a powerful effect on me. The flautist moved me particularly watching this tiny body working over time to control the beautiful sound she was creating, as the vibrations moved through my body. I remember thinking of the years of practice that must have gone into creating this beautiful work of art that I was not just experiencing with my ears, but my whole humanity and with others too.

It brought to my mind those wonderful words of Wendell Berry from his poem “How to be a poet”, the second stanza

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

Yes, two-dimensional activity is wonderful, it allows folk to connect and to enjoy so many things that they would be utterly cut off from without it. I am grateful for this and I am fully engaged and conversing with it, but it is not real in the trustiest sense. It does not involve me wholly, it does not touch my spirit in exactly the same way. It is enough for now and must remain so for quite some time, it has to be, but it is not a replacement for the reality of the three-dimensional life.

To live spiritually alive, requires us to engage fully with reality. This is why I have never liked the following phrase by the twentieth century French Jesuit Priest and Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who claimed that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”It is often heard by folk who like to call themselves “spiritual but not religious”. Now while I think I know what people mean by it; it bothers me greatly. The reason is that in my view it appears to diminish the human, the physical life. It seems to suggest that the physical life is of lesser importance, merely a home for the spirit. That what comes before and perhaps follows our physical life is somehow more important than this life. That somehow our human experiences are less than sacred. I am not convinced; dualism has always troubled me. I personally do not see a separation between body and spirit. This disembodied spirituality troubles me. The reason is that if we see the body as somehow less than spirit, or on the other hand see nothing sacred at all in our humanity this can lead to all kinds of troubles. I personally see the body as deeply sacred indeed. For me the body is a beautiful expression of the spirit come to life. Life is a sacred thing.

Life is a sacred thing, and we are all in this together. Something that two-dimensional living can sometimes lead us to lose sight of. We are in this together, we must not forget this, if we do we will be able to do the work we are here to do, for the good of all.

We need to remember W.A.I.T.T. it needs to become the acronym of our time, it may well be the acronym of the last twelve months; “W.A,I.T.T” “We Are In This Together”, “W.A.I.T.T.” We are bound to each other and this planet, our bodily home, across races, ethnicities, gender identities, economic status and nationality. Every person matters, everything matters and yet at times, due to our physical separation we can lose sight of this, it can seem like a fantasy, something that is not real and two-dimensional living can exacerbate this.

We must not lose this sense of “W.A.I.T.T.”, we need to embody this reality and find ways to build ties to one another and widen our circles of concern. This is the work of faith, this is faithful living. This is not easy, it is hard work and our current situation make it even more difficult.