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WHERE IS THE HOLY?
When the great Chinese sage, Chuang Tze, was asked by his disciple, Tung Kuo, “Where is the Tao?”, he replied, “There is no place where the Tao is not.” When challenged to name at least one place where it is, Chuang Tze said, “It is in the ant.” His disciple was somewhat offended that the Tao should be so low down in the order of things, and said, “Name another place,” and Chuang Tze replied, “It is in the tare”, a common weed. “Why so low?” challenged Tung Kuo. And the great sage declared, “It is in dung!” And Tung Kuo made no reply. I suppose this might be the earliest instance of someone declaring, “Tao happens!”
I thought of that story when I learned via email this past year about a cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary that was offered for sale on e-bay. How low down can you go, Chuang Tze, and still find the Tao or the Holy? The email that I got from Golden Palace.Com offered you the opportunity to Make Your Own Sandwich with the image of your face in place of the Virgin Mary, which you could then send to your friends!
This brought to mind an experience I had years ago when I was shaving in the upstairs bathroom of the old Norwell Parsonage. I noticed the abstract paste-on wallpaper designs around the portable cabinet above the toilet. Darned if one of those abstracts didn’t look a bit like Shakespeare or even Jesus. It was uncanny. So, I thought to myself, “Every morning I’m shaving with Jesus and the Bard. A real Unitarian miracle. I wonder if I should report it.” If only I had photographed it. I might have been able to sell it on e-bay.
Well, wouldn’t you know, a few years ago we had an opportunity to visit an unusual Catholic shrine to Mary in Clearwater, Florida. The shrine was located at a former office building on the infamous Route 19 with its miles of wall-to-wall malls on both sides of the road. By natural or supernatural means a gigantic rainbow image of a human figure manifested on the windows of this Clearwater office building. It apparently looked very similar to pictures of a 470-year-old apparition of the Virgin Mary just outside Mexico City, called Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Our Lady of Clearwater had also become a shrine for many Catholic believers. We stopped by to see it and to say a prayer for my Aunt, a devout Catholic, who was dying from cancer. Prayer books, white crosses, votive candles were all around the shrine with someone continually chanting the rosary and offering prayers over the loud speaker.
It had been reported that the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg expressed skepticism about the image on U.S. Route 19. Glass experts explained it “as the result of corrosion of metallic elements in the glass’ coating.” Nevertheless, crowds kept coming and praying and lighting candles. I admit I was moved. Though it may strike one at first as a little hokey, still there’s no denying there was a religious sensibility being expressed by those who came to pray.
If God or the divine is the ground of all being, then why not here, even in a rainbow glass image, chemically created by the corrosion of metallic elements? After all, there is no place where the Tao is not. Wherever it came from, however it was created, whether natural or supernatural, the rainbow image of Mary was an awesome sight, and lovely to behold, a good example of finding God or the Holy in the commonplace.
The following year we were in Florida again visiting my mother and sister. We were saddened to learn that vandals had that very day thrown stones (shot pellets I later learned) through the rainbow windows destroying the image of Mary or whatever it was. What once was will now be only a memory, but the sense of the holy lives on. I ask you: “Where are your religious shrines and holy places?”
If you think about it, you’ll realize that the Tao or the Holy is first in the mind of the beholder, in the soul or the psyche, before it is recognized in the outer manifestations of nature or the world. And yes, as the great sage of old reminds us, the Tao is in the ant, the tare, and in dung, no less than it is in a cheese sandwich, or perchance your own face in the mirror. When you find it you will be nourished by it.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR PSI SYMPOSIUM PRESIDENT
RICHARD M. FEWKES
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