Trust the unknown

CC Jean Stimmell

Maggie Jackson wrote “Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure,”  a book praising “not knowing.” This is a very counterintuitive claim because, in our gut, we all hate uncertainty: it scares us at a primal level. This fear has been baked into our genes from prehistoric times for a good reason:  not knowing where our next meal was coming from could spell starvation; the rustling sound in the dark might not be the wind but a sabertoothed tiger intent on making us its next meal.

However, Jackson makes the case that nowadays, under most circumstances, embracing uncertainty is good for us. She shows us how embracing uncertainty can spark creativity, improve problem-solving skills, and help us lead better, more hopeful lives.

Of course, when it comes to uncertainty, Buddhists are way ahead of us: they have practiced “not knowing” for thousands of years, aware that life is an ever-moving target. The more confident we are that we know the right way forward in a world that is constantly reshaping itself, the less open we are to other possibilities that might have more merit.

Kaira Jewel Lingo makes this clear in this Tricycle Magazine quote from 2022 that I saved: “But when we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential and life could unfold in innumerable ways. So rather than avoid and fear this place of uncertainty, we can embrace it and all its gifts.”^⁠1

But embracing uncertainty isn’t easy; it can be paralyzing.

Kaira Lingo gives an example from her own life when she was wrestling with a life-altering decision on whether to forsake her life as a nun, “questioning this vow that I had assumed would carry me through my entire life.” In that time of transition, she didn’t know who she was anymore and had no idea who she might become.

“I was in the midst of a process, like the caterpillar that must dissolve itself completely in the chrysalis to become a butterfly. It was terrifying and extremely uncomfortable  when I wanted answers and clarity when I was used to knowing who I was and where I was going.”^⁠2

I believe that we as a society are now going through that same agonizing transformation as Kaira Lingo did.

We are at the end of a historical epoch, undergoing a dizzying transition into a complete unknown. As Jackson tells us, when thrown into pivotal moments like this, we have to step up to the plate and be the most clear-eyed: able to embrace uncertainty, not deny it.

Unfortunately, in highly stressful times like these – human nature being what it is – our instinctual response is to put on blinders and double down on what we think we know. This is especially true if one is an ideologue – whether on the left or the right – the urge is to beat the drum even harder.

That means that MAGA voters, rather than raising doubts about Trump’s extreme agenda, double down on whatever the president says, no matter how absurd. On the other side, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, you vilify anything MAGA.

Truly, we are in a pickle. Our culture is dissolving before our eyes while our environment is going up in smoke. Like butterflies, we are collectively entering the chrysalis; our future is fraught but unknown. We have no choice but to act with humility, accepting that none of us has all the answers. We have no choice but to work with our fellow citizens, collectively learning as we go on how to navigate this time of momentous change, disruption, and breakdown.

xxx

¹ https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhism-decision-making/?utm_source=Tricycle&utm_campaign=61a360f7d0-Daily_Dharma_02_05_2022_S&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1641abe55e-61a360f7d0-307712649

² Ibid.

 

Stillness

 

    Jenness Pond    

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

I am looking at a photo I took at the apex of summer.  It is a hazy, sunny day, but dead still: no wind, not the slightest breeze. The world is in suspended animation: more like a painting than a living landscape. There’s no sense of foreboding, only a feeling of peace and serenity, a blessed escape from the jittery world of appearances, disconcerting like the flickering lines in the early TVs I watched as a kid.

Today, of course, things are different: TVs are now unblinking portals in technocolor looking out on a world gone bonkers while our own country is sinking fast under our spastic new president.

Seeking stillness is my safe harbor in the storm. But I'm a piker compared to pico Iver, the writer and world traveler who has carried it to an extreme. He and his wife moved to Tokyo to live in a tiny apartment without a bedroom or TV.

Pico recently wrote a fascinating little book about his transformation, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere^⁠1, based on his TED talk. In it, he argues that our perspective—not the places we visit—tells us where we stand.

He quotes Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who had this to say after spending five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic in temperatures that dipped to 70 degrees below zero:  “Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

In many ways, Pico and I are kindred souls, like the way we feel about going places: “Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into lasting insights.” 

He quotes like-minded individuals like his friend  Leonard Cohen, who spent years at  Buddhist retreats: “Going nowhere isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.”

Pico follows in the tradition of Joan Halifix, a well-known Buddhist anthropologist who informs us Indigenous people live this higher truth every day of their lives:  “This wisdom cannot be told, but it is to be found by each of us in the direct experience of silence, stillness, solitude, simplicity…and vision.” Their wisdom is a precious resource that could help us repair our rapidly disintegrating world.^⁠2

Echoing this indigenous wisdom, the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr considers silence to be “the very foundation of all reality. It is that out of which all being comes and to which all things return.” Unless we learn to live there, “the rest of things—words, events, relationships, identities—all become rather superficial, without depth or context.^⁠”^⁠3

I fear that the wisdom imparted by the likes of Iver, Halifax, and Rorh is too much for our driven, information-obsessed society to absorb, chattering away like a class of kindergarteners who have gorged on too much candy and soda.

¹ Iyer, Pico. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. Kindle Edition)

^{2 3} Joan Halifax. The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (Kindle Locations 1417-1421). Kindle Edition.

^{3 4} Rohr, Richard. Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation (pp. 1-2). Franciscan Media. Kindle Edition.

What rough beast is slouching toward us to be born

I write on many topics, including the lyrical essay I wrote last week about growing up in the Green Forest. But do not be mistaken. My attention is riveted on Washington, where the biggest catastrophe of my long life is unfolding. President Trump and his sidekick Musk are rapidly neutering our country, bringing our democracy and open way of life to an abrupt end.

Their actions have momentous consequences beyond what ordinary language can convey. They have a mythical dimension, something only a poet can grasp. I am reminded of "The Second Coming,” a well-known poem by W.B. Yeats, written in very unsettled times, soon after the end of World War I. It describes a mysterious and powerful alternative to the Christian idea of the second coming of Jesus.^⁠1 Here is a summary of his poem:

Flying around in a widening spiral, the falcon can no longer hear its owner’s call. Things are breaking down, and their foundation is giving way. Pure destruction and lawlessness have spread across the world, and so has a tidal wave darkened by blood. This tide has swallowed all the rituals of innocence. The best people aren't motivated to act, but the worst people are impassioned and eager.^⁠2

The poem ends, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” We now know the identity of that rough beast, his “ gaze blank and pitiless as the sun:” It is Donald Trump.

The poem spells out our situation today: Two feuding sides without a center. Trump is the reason why, spurning the democrats whenever they try to find common ground.

A good example is the bipartisan immigration bill that Congress worked on for four months, representing the first significant overhaul in decades that truly addresses the root issues at the border.

But Trump opposed the legislation and used his influence over republicans to kill it. He didn’t want the border problem solved because he wanted to continue to play on people’s fear and anger about the immigration crisis to help him get elected.

That’s Trump’s master strategy: fabricating a foil to fight against. He can only win by dividing us because he has no policies to unite us. He needs someone to blame, like baselessly calling Joe Biden a corrupt criminal. Or defaming all democrats as evil, godless communists.

He has no interest in uniting his fellow Americans: What he wants is absolute power. That’s why he looks up to his buddy Vladimir Putin, who has what he craves: unlimited dictatorial authority.

Rather than promoting policies to help working Americans, Trump chooses to inflame cultural differences to animate his base: fear-mongering immigrants as blood-thirsty killers and vilifying trans people, who comprise less than one percent of our population, as if they were the worst existential crisis we face.

Meanwhile, Trump ignores truly existential dangers like man-made climate change, which is already wreaking havoc all over the globe. Worse than merely ignoring it, Trump calls it a hoax despite indisputable evidence. A good example is the recent study showing that the 36 biggest fossil fuel companies create fully one-half of all the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.^⁠3

Why does Trump choose to deny irrefutable reality? A recent news story in the Washington Post illuminates this question, pointing out what matters most to Trump.

At a meeting of the top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden's environmental policies while stopping new ones from being enacted. He had only one condition: “You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House.”^⁠4

Like everything else, Trump’s position on climate change is purely transactional. Nothing is based on substance or fact. His only goal – as the malignant narcissist he is – is to be the Grand Poobah^⁠5 of the world.

His takeover is happening as we speak, out in the open, right in front of our eyes.

Merely mouthing the words that we are a democracy is empty rhetoric. What makes democracy real is our government institutions, which are grounded in our Constitution’s system of checks and balances and staffed by dedicated public servants not beholden to either party.

It is true that Trump can’t abolish these institutions outright —only Congress can do that. Instead, he is attempting to mortally wound them by directing Musk to gut them so thoroughly that they will no longer serve any useful purpose.

Don’t be fooled: we are in the middle of a coup, bloodless so far. By wantonly destroying our hallowed institutions, Trump is destroying our democracy.

xxx

Footnotes:

¹ https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/the-second-coming

² Ibid.

³ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/05/half-of-worlds-co2-emissions-come-from-36-fossil-fuel-firms-study-shows

⁴ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/

⁵ Grand Poobah is a satirical term derived from the name of the haughty, prideful character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885).^[1

Why we need religion

Facade of demolished church in Dover, NH (2017) 

In this new age of extreme individualism, we are abandoning religion in order for each of us to pursue independent paths, locked in the iron grip of consumerism. This isn’t going to work because, as William Butler Yeats warned in his iconic poem The Second Coming, “the center can’t hold.”^⁠1

I’m going to make a surprising – and perhaps rash – argument for a person like me who doesn’t go to church: I believe that our root problem is the demise of religion as a vital institution in America.

While writing this piece, I encountered an unlikely ally in Russell Moore, Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today. In his book Losing our Religon, he has similar worries about the fate of his faith community as millions of younger Americans leave his church: “Can American Christianity survive?”^⁠2

Undeniably, our vibrant religious myths have withered way, opening up a dangerous void which, I fear, will be replaced by Yeat’s approaching ogre: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”^⁠3

As a former sociology graduate student, I am aware that religion has been an indispensable part of every human society in history. However—and this is the controversial part—I hope to demonstrate why every human in history has lived in a myth, not reality.

We can easily see this truth when accepting the strange myths that primitive tribes practice, but challenged to acknowledge that our current cultural myth is science and rationality. As the old saying goes, if you are a fish, you don’t know you are swimming in water.

If you are willing to accept my premise, at least for the sake of reading this essay, I want to explore alternative myths that might be capable of replacing religion’s former role. I have adapted some of these from Bernardo Kastrup’s book More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth, and Belief^⁠4 and the Academy of Ideas^⁠5.

Consumerism: Consumerism is an all-encompassing myth that overvalues the accumulation of wealth and material goods. People who are successful discover they are no happier and often more depressed than before; meanwhile, we are destroying our environment.

Nationalism: According to Kastrup, “Those who look at the world according to the statist myth view all social problems as requiring political solutions…. But the more people in a society that adhere to this myth, the closer society moves to totalitarianism.”^⁠6 A tragic consequence that is taking root in our country as we speak!.

Science and rationality. Kastrup suggests that one of the primary reasons that religious myths are being abandoned is because we have become “too literal, too rational, and too scientific.” Viewed through the prism of science, many of religion’s literal claims may look absurd, yet symbolize a greater transcendent truth.

Transcendental myth: We know when we are living a transcendental myth because it will resonate at the core of our being, changing a banal existence into one of genuine meaning. According to Kastrup, such a myth can anchor our experiences in a larger, more profound reality, “offering purpose and direction amid life’s inevitable challenges and suffering.

Transcendental myths can serve as a unifying bond in a culturally disparate country..

Carl Jung wrote, “The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe.”

According to Kastrup, language is too limited to convey profound truths about human life and the universe. Religion goes beyond words to connect with what Jung called the unconscious mind, the arbiter of our primal needs.

In conclusion, if one examines a myth from the standpoint of cold rationality, Donald Trump’s transactional business model makes sense—but only to machines, robots, and ultra-rich people like Elon Musk. Meanwhile, it is an abomination to all of us regular folks whose highest duty is to honor our sacred bonds to family, friends, and community—not some sleazy transactional deal.

xxx

Photo Credit of church:  CC Jean Stimmell

Footnotes:

¹ https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/william-butler-yeats/the-second-coming

² https:

//www.amazon.com/Losing-Our-Religion-Evangelical-America/dp/0593541782

³ Ibid.

⁴ Kastrup, Bernardo. More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief \

⁵ 

⁶ Ibid

xxx