In the past 12 months I’ve participated in 3 silent meditation retreats and 1 self inquiry retreat.
These taught me one thing: Life is absurd, and that is what makes it meaningful.
You at one point didn’t exist
Now you do
Then someday you’ll cease to exist again
Wow, what an absurd predicament we’ve been thrown into.
Albert Camus, popularizer of Absurdism, said the following:
Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it.
At the end of all that, despite everything, is death.
The more exciting life is, the more absurd is the idea of losing it.
Which has beckoned me to contemplate the relationship between Absurdity and God. Specifically these quotes by Camus:
I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone.
To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.
These feel awfully true to me lately. The word ‘God’ is feeling more and more right. But not the God of some text, rather a personal relationship to something infinitely more intelligible and orchestrated than my rational understanding of things.
To practice spirituality by praying is much different than to meditate.
One is passive and receptive, the other is active and participatory.
Absurdism without God leads to Nihilism.
Absurdism requires a connection to Beauty (with a capital ‘B’).
When we let the Beauty of life enrapture us, it inevitably leads to the recognition of Absurdity.
But without Beauty the Absurdity becomes really heavy really fast.
By committing to Deep Love and Deep Beauty we find a way to lean into Absurdity and not be overly shook by it.
Which brings us to the mystics of the ages (I discovered these quotes in the book Love Poems from God).
It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful. The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me to embrace God in all things.
Rumi says to us in a poem, “Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
With passion pray. With passion work. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?
If God said, “Rumi, pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,” there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not any act, I would not bow to.
How can you look so needy— God is growing in fields you own. He hangs from trees you pass every day. He is disguised as that peach and pine cone. Every sound I hear—He made it.
You have never been lost dear; it is God who became confused.
No. In serving God one is transformed into Him.
It is a lie—any talk of God that does not comfort you.
The experience of something out of nothing— is that not how one might describe magic?
I have a cause. We need those don’t we? Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in and everything starts to ache. My soul has a purpose, it is to love; if I do not fulfill my heart’s vocation, I suffer.
Food for thought. Or maybe just food for deepening into love for existence.
May you be well.
Ethan.
Excellent, and this line is critical: 'Absurdism requires a connection to Beauty (with a capital ‘B’).' Perfectly put.