Wabi sabi acknowledges three things: "nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished." So, at first glance, it seems to celebrate the very thing that causes suffering. Yet, Basho found that wabi sabi led to enlightenment. So what is going on here? Basho himself studied Zen for several years and traveled in disguise as a Zen priest, yet he clearly became attached to people and places, wept openly beside ancient battlegrounds and other sites of romance or valor. He suffered gladly the pains of attachment and sympathy, identified with nature and its pathos. Either he was not very disciplined in his Buddhist practice, or he understood something about attachment and loss that we could do well to learn.

God is alway visible
the moment
the inner eye
is clear.

 - Rufus M. Jones, 1901

No one is born just once. If you're lucky, you'll emerge again in someone's arms; or unlucky, wake when the long tail of terror brushes the inside of your skull.

I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.

 Indeed, Whatever Happened to the Soul? is an attempt to establish a perspective on human nature that would allow for greater resonance between science and faith. We have tried to describe the nature of humans from the perspective of disciplines ranging from biology to theology in a way that is reconcilable and congruent. Our attempt has been, in every case, to achieve descriptions that both represent the current state of knowledge in the discipline and harmonize with the descriptions from the other disciplines. In order to increase by a few degrees the warming relationship between science and faith, we have attempted to sound a multi-disciplinary resonant chord (to mix metaphors).

Our core theme - the key of the resonant chord - is a monistic, or holistic, view of humans. In order to avoid confusion with reductionistic or materialistic forms of monism, which we do not wish to espouse, as well as to denote a particular form of monism, we have chosen the label "nonreductive physicalism" to represent our common perspective. Thus, statements about the physical nature of human beings made from the perspective of biology or neuroscience are about exactly the same entity as statements made about the spiritual nature of persons from the point of view of theology or religious traditions. We would disavow the opinion that human science speaks about a physical being, while theology and religion speak about a spiritual essence or soul.

To be fully human involves a certain stance toward the things of creation: delighting in things without seeking security in them.

The proper posture for the creature is one of receptivity. In Perelandra we see several ways in which this posture could be corrupted or destroyed. First it is always possible to seek ways to assure ourselves of repeating the pleasure. This is what makes money so suspect in Lewis' eyes - it is a means by which we assure ourselves that we can have the pleasure whenever we want it. It provides a measure of independence. One no longer has to throw oneself into the wave. Second, even when one pleasure is given, it is (as the Lady discovered) possible to turn from what is given to something which is (thought to be) preferred. And this, in turn, is what makes a life oriented toward the future suspect for Lewis - to commit too much of one's hopes and happiness to the future will make impossible the posture of receptivity appropriate to a creature.

In either case-whether we try to secure means for repeating the pleasure at will or turn from what is given to something else which is desired - Lewis thinks that we will eventually lose the capacity for delighting in what is received. For to treat a created thing as something more than that is to destroy its true character. To seek in any created thing a complete fulfillment of the longing which moves us is to make of it an object of infinite desire and, because it is only a created thing, a false infinite. It may still be sweet, at least for a time, because it is intended by its Giver to be a source of delight. But in the end it will be poison for the person who gives his heart only to it. Hence the constant temptation: the lure of the sweet poison of the false infinite.

Let me tell you why God made the world.

One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father's fixations. From all eternity, it seems, he had had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kinds of unnecessary things - new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked, God the Son suddenly said, "Really, this is absolutely great stuff Why don't 1 go out and mix us up a batch?" And God the Holy Spirit said, "Terrific! I'll help you." So they all pitched in, and after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Spirit put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; pine cones kept dropping all over the place, and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and mastodons, grapes and geese, tornadoes and tigers - and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them, and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and said, "Wonderful! just what I had in mind! Tov! Tov! Tov!" And all God the Son and God the Holy Spirit could think of to say was the same thing: "Tov! Tov! Tov!" So they shouted together "Tov meod!" and they laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for beings to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing And for ever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the son drank their wine in unitate Spiritus Sancti, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia saecula saeculorum, Amen.

It is, I grant you, a crass analogy; but crass analogies are the safest. Everybody knows that God is not three old men throwing olives at each other. Not everyone, I'm afraid, is equally clear that God is not a cosmic force or a principle of being or any other dish of celestial blancmange we might choose to call him. Accordingly, I give you the central truth that creation is the result of a trinitarian bash, and leave the details of the analogy to sort themselves out as best they can.

The more two people open to each other, the more this wide-openness also brings to the surface all the obstacles to it:  their deepest, darkest wounds, their desperation and mistrust, and their rawest emotional trigger points.  Just as the sun's warmth causes clouds to arise by prompting the earth to release its moisture, so love's pure openness activates the thick clouds of our emotional wounding, the tight places where we are shut down, where we live in fear and resist love.

"If this faith and certainty makes them compassionate people, that is wonderful and I applaud them, I don't care what they believe, they can believe what they want as far as I am concerned, but if their certainty makes them intolerant, or belligerent, or full of hate, or even murderous as we have seen recently, we have seen an awful lot of religious certainty which is not attractive and which I don't envy, and which I find is a great danger, then that's not ok, that's bad religion, and that is the litmus test. Paul says you can have faith that moves mountains but if you lack charity, it's worth nothing." - Karen Armstrong