In addition to his vision of societal renewal through ‘cult, culture and cultivation’, Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin strongly believed in the power of conversation as a means to move towards clarity and truth. This ethic is rooted in a Benedictine spirituality, where deep listening to God and to others is a key virtue. In our ongoing reflections, we intend to regularly return to this topic of ‘conversation’ as the fourth component of societal renewal.
By conversation, we mean both conversation between people, and the conversation between timeless spiritual principles and the urgent concerns of our time. By taking up a stance of attentive, spiritually grounded listening, we can hear the voice of God speaking through other people (who are themselves bearers of God’s image and likeness), and through the great struggles, fears, hopes and longings of our collective human society. As part of this practice of listening, we will be inviting colleagues to share some of their own insights and reflections on the spiritual life—including voices from people whose calling and experiences range far beyond our own.
In this spirit, remaining in conversation with others and with the world is simply a way of acknowledging reality. All of us are bound to one another in webs of relationship—materially, technologically, ecologically, socially, and spiritually. Let’s briefly consider each of these webs, and their implications for living in the Way of Christ:
Material– The material web of relationship is a reminder that even our most basic needs come from somewhere else, through relationship with other people and other beings. I’m writing this reflection on a Macbook. It’s parent company, Apple, has suppliers in 43 countries. Just by using this one device, I am tied into a web of material relationship with thousands of people across the globe. I have little idea what the labor conditions are of any of these people. It’s probably impossible to be fully aware of the consequences of the production of our material goods in a global economy, even with efforts to support fair trade. Our basic ethic on our homestead has been to try to consume less, to produce as much of our own food and fuel as we can, and to source our material goods from within our local and regional economy as much as possible – thus allowing at least a partial restoration of conscious relationship within the web of our material dependencies. Yet even in our home production, this year we bought chicks from Pennsylvania, seed potatoes from Maine, and fuel for the chainsaw, tractor, and stove from who knows where. We can mitigate, but cannot easily escape, our dependence on the global web.
Technological– The ‘world wide web,’ offers near instantaneous transfer of information from anywhere on the planet. It’s an incredibly powerful technology that connects human minds and thought. I remember when the internet was first becoming accessible to everyday folks in the 1990s. There was a sense that this technology would bring humanity together, uniting us and allowing us to overcome our divisions though the ability of people to communicate freely across the planet. Thirty years later, we see that our inner divisions simply followed us online, and the internet has served to entrench divisive thought (as well as mindless distraction) as effectively as it has supported communication. I believe the ‘web’ can be a powerful and helpful tool when used rightly. It’s an incredible resource for learning technical information, and it makes it much easier for people who are already in relationship to communicate information, coordinate schedules, and generally get things done more efficiently. It is a powerful tool when used as a platform for those who are silenced by larger structures of power, such as those living under oppressive governments, or the culturally and economically marginalized in any society.
However, when the ‘web’ of information technology is used as a substitute for the other webs of relationship, it becomes isolating. Like eating junk food, it fills our mind and emotions with the ‘empty calories’ of pseudo-connection. Popularity on social media is not a substitute for real human intimacy. Furthermore, the internet provides an endless portal for disinformation as well as information, and a ready medium for any type of groupthink to find endless reinforcement within its own echo chambers. The medium of the internet, social media, and even email are simply technologies that enable people to communicate from their current level of thought and consciousness. As Jesus says, ‘from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Lk 6:45). Coupled with a separation from actual contact with the embodied reality of other people, significant time spent online seems to reinforce constrictions of mind and heart, rather than provide a venue for the expansion of relationship and communication. Since our online interactions are by definition disembodied, they also can lead to an increased loyalty to and identification with ideas and ideologies rather than connection with people in their full range of emotions, histories, and complexities.
Where I am most concerned about engagement in the ‘world wide web’ is my observation (both within myself and within others) that it tends to deaden sensitivity to the other webs of relationship in which we live and breathe. Significant involvement with the online world tends to decrease awareness of the body, of our external environment, and sensitivity to the spiritual world. In connecting across the miles through a technological medium on the mental level, the subtle awareness of spiritual interconnectivity becomes more difficult to access. There’s no easy way of escaping some use of information technology in our modern world, but I believe it must be used with great caution by anyone seeking to deepen their spiritual life or even to fill their life with authentic and meaningful human relationships. On our homestead, we’ve largely limited our internet access to an office about a hundred yards away from our home, with the intention to use it primarily for work rather than entertainment. Yet even so, it’s amazing how often I’m drawn into distraction and wasting time in its nearly infinite well of information and opinions.[1]
Ecological– The ‘web of life’ is one term for the interdependent relationships all living beings - humans, microbes, trees, mushrooms, puppies, spiders, etc - have with all the other living beings in their local ecosystem. As humans, we are intricately woven into this web of life, even if the industrial world tends to obscure this fact. Even our own bodies are, in a sense, interdependent ecosystems. Each human has roughly ten times more bacterial cells living inside our guts and on our skin then we have human cells in our body! Our food, of course, comes from other forms of life, as well as most of our clothing, shelter, and fuel.[2]How does our life affect the lives of the plants, animals, fungi, and microbes around us? Are we in conscious relationship with these other beings, or is our participation in the web of life largely unconscious? Through two decades of leading retreats on spirituality and ecology, I’ve found that shifting from an unconscious to a conscious relationship with the web of life is immensely grounding and healing for most people. It’s a step towards living in reality as it actually is.
Social– Our social web is our human realm of connections and interpersonal relationships. These are tremendously important for emotional well-being. We thrive on human connection, intimacy, and friendship. In our modern, industrial world, loneliness is a chronic problem as our lives are typically oriented around economic demands rather than prioritizing human connections. Traditional hunter-gatherer and agrarian cultures often had built-in cultural systems for maximizing human contact and intimacy, which was far more essential for economic survival in these cultures than in the anonymity of modern life. Friendships and familial intimacy, as well as a wider network of positive social relationships, are a key part of a thriving human life.
Yet, these relationships and the social web are by their very nature finite. Sociologists and anthropologists have speculated that each of us can only sustain about 3 to 5 very close relationships in our ‘inner circle’, and maintain around 100-200 up-to-date interpersonal connections, given the limits of time, space, and the socio-relational capacity of our brains.[3] Beyond this, we are interacting with people outside our circle of intimate connections. The social web and our ordinary emotional capacity alone cannot provide the resource needed to engage with all people from a place of love. The social ‘web’ is a web we need to honor and nurture, but we must also recognize it has finite value.
Spiritual – The ‘web’ that relates most closely to the Way of Christ is the spiritual web of relationship. In the New Testament, Christians are described as ‘members of the body of Christ’ (1 Cor 12:27) and ‘One in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28). Jesus describes Christ-followers as branches connected to the same divine vine (John 15). When we enter into the depths of prayer, we find an inner realm in which we experience our oneness with all others who are following Christ, and deeper still, a oneness with all human beings, and finally, a oneness with all life. In this spiritual ‘web’ of unity and interconnectedness, we can experience true com-passion (suffering with) for all people, as we intimately share in their experience of being. This compassion goes far beyond the normal emotional limits of our social connections, where we are only able to love those whom we know and understand.[4] This inner realm, where we contact the ‘spiritual web’ of interconnectivity, is the hidden ground for the experience of unconditional love. This web is the Realm (or ‘Kingdom’) of God, the source of the deepest and most enduring love possible for a human being. Thomas Merton beautifully describes entering into this realm in his vision of 1958:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”[5]
This web is also the root source from which truly liberating action in the world takes place. It is the place from which Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were able to forgive the perpetrators of apartheid and chart a new way forward in South Africa. Tutu wrote: “God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.[6]” Recognizing the power of prayer to lead us into this realm, Tutu also said that if (oppressive) governments realized how powerfully subversive contemplative prayer was, they would ban it immediately. Tutu’s work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa called on a level of compassion and forgiveness that was sourced far beyond the limits of the ordinary human web of social relationships and emotional responses to past abuses. He was sourced in the deeper web of the Spirit.
This web of the Spirit is a common human spiritual capacity, one might even say our spiritual inheritance as children of God. It is the deepest, most enduring web of relationship. Cultivating the awareness of this web of relationship is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves, to humanity, and to all life, for from awareness of this web of love our greatest compassion flows.
As we engage in conversation both within and outside of these reflections, our intention is to be attentive to the ways in which our own bodies, minds, and souls are shaped by and bound to these webs. And with this awareness, we pray our relationship with all things—our material needs, technology, and all human and other-than human life—would be grounded in this web of the Spirit.
[1] Of course, the difficulties many face with too much screen time and interface with information technology has only become more poignant with the COVID pandemic, where many are required to work remotely. Students in particular are being shoehorned into a much more digitalized educational experience in many parts of the US, with their entire schooling taking place online.
[2]So-called ‘fossil fuels’ and products made from them (like plastic) are, of course, derived from living beings – just beings that lived and died tens of millions of years ago.
[3]This inference was based, in part, on British anthropologist Dr. Robin Dunbar’s analysis of the size of the human neocortex and its relationship to our social capacities.
[4]‘If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?’ – Jesus in Matthew 5:46
[5]From Merton’s book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1968
[6]From Tutu’s book, God has a Dream, 2005
We have a young section of woods on the homestead that we estimate to be around 15 years old. And yet, mushrooms abound - signs of a healthy, older forest. Just over the remnants of the stone wall that demarcates the property line is a much older, well-managed forest where healthy mycelium is clearly established and has extended its web into our humble sapling stand.
This post is part of the ongoing series:
- Cult, Culture, Cultivation and Conversation -
Imagining a vital human community
Peter Maurin, who started the Catholic Worker movement along with Dorothy Day, spoke of renewing society through the practice of ‘cult, culture and cultivation.’ Writing and speaking in the early 20th century, Maurin saw Western society in precipitous decline and envisioned a wholistic, spirit-centered restoration of vital human community. In our Metanoia reflections, we are adopting Maurin’s template, while adding a fourth ‘c’ of ‘conversation’.
- Cult -
Reflections on spiritual practice and growth, both communal (ritual, liturgy) and personal (spiritual discipline)
- Culture -
Exploration of human culture, renewed by spiritual insight and just relationships between people and with the land
- Cultivation -
The work of building fertility and abundance in land and discovering ways to live in healthy interdependence with the natural world
- Conversation -
Spiritual dialogue with pressing social and cultural issues and dialogue with other thinkers and perspectives beyond our vision at Metanoia.