FINISHED READING - Three Books by Richard Holloway

I was drawn to Richard Holloway's writing, because his spiritual journey contains some elements I felt were comparable with my own. He felt like a person from whom I might learn something about practice outside of a religious tradition.

Godless Morality, Keeping Religion out of Ethics was first published  in 1999. It proved a step too far for the C of E, making the position of Richard Holloway the then Bishop of Edinburgh untenable, he felt he had to resign. The ramifications of that decision rumble on for him still. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, published fifteen years later he is still trying to make sense of what his religious understanding and relationship to his faith is now. Simultaneously out or sync with, whilst remaining lovingly connected to, aspects of the Christian spiritual tradition. 

It can be easy to use ones knowledge of doctrine as this killer blow to win or close down discussions.  On the personal level of an individual practitioner it isn't necessarily helpful for someone in a position of authority to always 'put right' your views. Particularly if a fuller exploration of meaning, or a moral dilemma maybe required.  Sometimes you just have to take that long rambling journey, in order for any change to become a really genuine one. You can't use the word of god or the Buddha as a short cut to insight.

'Revealed religions tend to blow a smokescreen round the living reality of the faith-doubt experience and out of the smoke emerges - doctrinal certainty!  Behind a great clatter of mirrors and a great fog of smoke they move from faith to certainty. Believers are not encouraged to take the plunge of faith, they are invited to swear to the certainty of a series of historic claims that come in propositional form'

All religions, theistic or otherwise, move from believing provisionally 'as though it were true' to the swearing of oaths of loyalty to the veracity and certainty of some pre-packaged absolutes. The one and only true way to see reality. Its not even that these are wholly wrong or wholly right, they're just incomplete facsimiles. Virtual truth mistaken for the real. The unknowable air of mystery swept aside by the assertion of incontrovertible doctrine.'*

In many ways all his books ask the same questions - To what extent does the way we hold to religious doctrines and religious institutions help or hinder spiritual progress, practice and life.? What light do these cast on the meaning of human Life?  Looking in the Distance from 2004 examines that very human search to explain the how, why and what we are here for.

'even if we choose to go overboard and swim alone, we have not necessarily abandoned the religious quest; not if we think of it as the name we give to humanity's preoccupation with its own meaning or lack of meaning'**

Confident assertions of belief from scientists or religious leaders about where we and the universe have come from, rarely fully convince. There is a certain amount of confirmation bias going on in the solutions we come up with. Whether they explain things through the concept of god or an unconditioned emptiness or the universe as a self contained solid state. All end up imagining something beyond our current comprehension and hence lack verifiable evidence.  Leaving us in a state of unknowing. Nonetheless its worth noting how quickly opinion, conjecture and hypothesis quickly become firm belief and fact.

'Those of us in this place of unknowing believe that the war of opposing interpretations is pointless, because the mystery of Being can be neither demonstrated nor destroyed by explanation, it is a wound that has to be endured.'**

We can't help ourselves from wanting to fill that void with something though. As G K Chesterton once said, 'When men stop believing in god, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything'  Perhaps as the Buddha indicated the search for answers to our lack of meaning, god or no god, these only send your mind into a speculative spin. Off in pursuit of an endless fools errand. Basically don't bother yourself with them, its a useless activity - get on with your meditation.

' living in this state about the ultimate meaning or unmeaning of things is so arduous and painful that its entirely understandable that we constantly create theoretical objects for ourselves onto which we project a fictitious reality in order to rescue us from uncertainty.'**

Staying and sitting with uncertainty and the insecurity that arises from it, is a meditative practice. Its seldom done for long.  As we persist in grasping at certainty through beliefs and security in scientific fact or religious authority,which neither can fully or securely sustain. 

In The Stories We Tell Ourselves from 2014 he takes familiar biblical stories and reinterprets them. Trying to counter more traditional, literal interpretations by perceiving them as archetypal stories, myths we can be guided by. Towards the end of The Stories We Tell Ourselves, he draws a few conclusions about what use these stories might be. What is the ultimate purpose of any spiritual teaching? Are they to enable you to discover things for yourself, or to instruct you in the doctrinal authority of what you must do?  Volition and outcomes are primary.

'Better to do the right thing as if God did not exist than to do the wrong thing in the name of God whose existence you are certain of'***

Whilst not a practicing Christian, I am interested in how Holloway reframes the image and purpose of god. That perhaps it is better if god is not personified, conceived of as 'no thing', a way, or to not existing at all. The individual is then left holding the responsibility for directing their impulses towards the good or god within themselves. The teachings of Jesus do not lose their relevance or usefulness the moment the epithet 'son of god' is removed. The term 'son of god' may not have been used as a literal statement of fact, but more a state of interconnectedness, a way of being. Maybe even the whole purpose of human spiritual practice.

I struggled at times with some of the Christian theology and language. I couldn't always cross them over into concepts I could find useful. But I did resonate with the overarching purpose of these books. In a way, does it matter what 'the stories you live by' are, what you put your faith in, what you believe in even? Particularly if they are all 'incomplete facsimiles' of the truth anyway. The act of faith is an orientation, a boat you inhabit and travel in.- destination towards the unknown or unknowable.

Perhaps the focus should be more  on -What happens as a result of them,? - How do you respond and act? - What do you do? -What are the consequences and benefits they produce upon yourself, upon others, upon the world? These questions remain the same regardless of whether its religious, political, economic, social or cultural stories, beliefs and ideologies we are following.

' Given that the universe is what it is - however you understand it - what are you going to do about it? How have you personally decided how to respond? What story have you decided to live by? Whether or not you know it, you are already living by a story you are telling yourself. So, what difference does your story make? Upon whom does it impact? Are you aware of its impact? Come to think of it, do you even know the story you are living by?'***

CARROT SCORE - 6/8

* from Godless Morality, Pub. Canongate Books 1999
** from Looking in the Distance, Pub. Canongate Books 2004

*** from The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Pub. Canongate Books 2014