“The mother and father are your attachment to beliefs and blood ties and desires and comforting habits. Don't listen to them! They seem to protect, but they imprison. They are your worst enemies. They make you afraid of living in emptiness.”
The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (Harper, San Francisco, 1997)
“I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self-defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy - they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. But for the moment they are not enough, their action is no stronger than a flower, battered beneath a military jackboot. They want stiffening, even if the process coarsens them. Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all. Herein I probably differ from most people, who believe in Belief, and are only sorry they cannot swallow even more than they do. My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in that Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is: "Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief." ”
E.M Forster “What I Believe” in Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
Everywhere these days I seem to get into conversations about religion, about faith, about belief. As an adolescent I chose a vigorous atheism, a faith in science, in an enlightened secular society. I wanted to throw off a cultural attachment to unquestioning belief, an inheritance in which the past is our parent. But it didn’t really seem a difficult choice, I felt that the world was sloughing off false beliefs and moving toward a reasoned future, logic would eventually eradicate systemic flaws like monopoly capitalism, nuclear weapons etc etc. Since then I have mixed with friends who have traversed worlds of spirituality and mysticism – I’ve remained a tough nut to crack, but I have gained more respect, tolerance and open mindedness about the spiritual path. Not for religion mind, not for the religio – the obligation, the bond, the submission.
And now a debate I thought was over is all around me, fundamentalism in many forms manifesting in the world – Western Imperialist, Right wing Christianity, Zionism, Wahhabism. All of it to my mind - fascist.
That ‘spiritual’ belief can lead people towards violence, hatred, oppression is so amazingly depressing it’s difficult to know how to react to it. In me it evokes that adolescent spirit which determined to throw off unthinking for intelligence, for inquiry. It stiffens me as Forster says, it makes me say: "I am a Kaafir" – an unbeliever.
A recent television documentary - Dispatches – Undercover Mosque (Channel 4, 15th January 2007) [widely available on YouTube] revealed some of the hate speak being traded in radical mosques – homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, intolerance. In conversation last night a friend and I despaired at this version of Islam, wished that other followers of the faith were more visible. Perhaps it is too easy to say “what about the Sufis?”, but isn’t it also too easy to concentrate on the purveyors of hate?
Those who trade in hate cover their weakness in many faiths, ideologies, politics – I have no wish to isolate radical Islamists.
I believe in a perennial wisdom that is in all faiths and yet is also felt by the faithless.
I believe in LOVE.
Like This
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.
The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.
How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.
[Rumi, Translated By Coleman Barks]
Well here we are in the 21st Century, I wonder if anything is different? I think there is a movement towards more meaningful engagement - but perhaps that is because I don't really look to the art world "greats", the largely male celebrity figures of the art world for my artistic fix. I'd rather stick with the marginal figures, the unknowns, the gallery system rejects and refuseniks. I don't really want some totalitarian style social realism, neither am I normally turned on by agit-prop - nevertheless I do sometimes enjoy an art piece which actually says something.
But for some reason I still find Mark Wallinger's Tate Britain installation "State Britain" a bit wanky. Not that I have seen it in the flesh, but the whole idea seems to be to take a political act and turn into an artistic one. I think maybe I'm looking for something going in the opposite direction?
