Oh We of Little Faith

I started writing this post while I was on pilgrimage with my old choir back in January of 2019, but I didn't post it then, as there was something missing. Some experience or some message that was incomplete and which my journey over the past 4 years has opened up. It is more appropriate to continue this thought process today.

Being a pilgrimage, we toured sites of particular significance to the catholic faith:

The shrine of St. Catherine at the Basilica San Domenico. The relics of St. Catherine (her thumb and her head) are held here and where it was so cold, we could see our breath at the mass we sang.

We also sang mass at the Basilica of St. Peters - yes the Vatican - twice. Being at the seat of the Catholic Church and the ground where St. Peter was killed was remarkable. Not just the sheer magnitude of the ... everything about it, but also the history of a conversation started 2000 years ago regardless of where people in power have taken the conversation since then.

We also visited Assisi, the grounds were St. Francis lived and died. St. Francis was charged by God to fix his Church which was falling into pieces. The current pope took the name Francis in the same context, to fix the Church which is falling into pieces.

ASIDE: In shamanic journeys lately I keep hearing this same message, "Clean this shit up".

I share all of this not just because it was a heart-wrenching, beautiful, and exquisite journey, which it was, and not just because it was such a privilege to sing with my colleagues in some of the most beautiful and significant catholic locations on the planet, which it also was. 

I share this because as a neuroscientist and as a student of humanity and the context in which it grows, I was mystified by the saints and their works and how they influenced the world around them. Their lives are described as miraculous, in fact, to be canonized a saint, there needs to be at least 3 miracles attributed to you. I find it funny that after millennia of trying to eradicate magic, it is still a requirement that magic has to happen for you to be hallowed a saint. 

You don't hear much about miracles these days - not without snorts of derision in the same breath. Is it because "miracles" aren't? That they are attributed to something else? Or is it that they just don't happen anymore?

I have a theory about what happened to miracles, and it has to do with how we relate to ourselves within the context of our society.

But first, for context, I want to share my favorite TED talk of all time with you. Elizabeth Gilbert (no relation) speaks about creativity and genius, and the way humans get messed up with the current view of their own creative genius.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius

I bring this up because it points to a shift in how we view ourselves in the context of our world over the last epoch. We hold ourselves as separate. Separate from the world around us, the environment, the elements, the animals, separate from the people around us, even separate within ourselves (we have both a mind and a body?).

Now for my theory regarding miracles and what happened to them - it's actually more of an assertion. 

We no longer have the faith a miracle requires.

Hear me out... Jesus, Francis and Damien all healed lepers in a time where there was significant stigma regarding the affliction. In fact, there is still stigma regarding leprosy, even in Florida. Lepers were relegated to the margins, literally, of society and were required to loudly proclaim their status to anyone approaching them. Yet, when they were healed (as with many other miracles in the bible), it was their faith that was acknowledged to have healed them. They somehow embodied something that allowed them to be healed. It's like there are instructions for how to have miracles happen. In fact, the many interpretations and translations of the bible have effectively butchered the text so that the magic it used to teach is impotent.

Check this out as a possible interpretation of how to pray from the original texts: 

" All things that you ask straightly, directly.. from inside My name - you will be given. So far you haven't done this,... So ask without hidden motive and be surrounded by your answer - Be enveloped by what you desire, that your gladness be full"

                                                                            Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix

In the King James version of the bible, the second half of the directive is completely gone. The part that tells you how to have the miracle, the magic, if you will. 

Perhaps, it was too much like divine revelation, too much like the magic the church was trying to eradicate?