Blog #28. July 1st

The Blessing and Curse of Uncertainty

Which way do I go?

Oh, straw man, I am on the way to Oz and I don’t know how to find it. Toto and I have been lost and my house fell on the wicked witch of the west and and…..As the straw man said, “some people say, go this way. And some people, go that way; of course, the road goes both ways….” Oh straw man you are no help at all!….. We have had so much trouble; don’t you know anything? “Sob, that’s just the trouble, Dorothy, I don’t have a brain, nothing but straw:-(”

On June 30th, I was packed and ready to head for the Istanbul Ataturk Airport. With plenty of time, I decided to take the Metro as opposed to a taxi. It was a long way, 28 miles, but a relatively simple tram, with one transfer at Goldenhusu, that led to an underground route. My flight was at 2:15 PM, so I left at 10:30 figuring I could make it in two hours easily. I squeezed in to the crowded tram at the SultanAhmet station, with my baggage that Saturday morning, more than ready to escape from the intense, heat, energy and pressure of Istanbul in the summer. I had three fares left on my Metro card. Slowly, the tram filled even tighter, heat, body odor, breathless humidity, and pushing and pulling more with each stop. The riders were irritable and struggling to get on and off before the doors slid shut.

Gradually, after 10-12 stops, the tram began to clear, after 15 stops I was able to sit. Then, I heard in rapid Turkish that I couldn’t fully understand the words Ataturk Airport transfer station. It was too soon, not where I had been told and marked on my transport map, to transfer. It was now about 11:45, taking much longer to cover the distance than I had thought. I became anxious. Should I get off at the next stop coming up within the ext minute. desperately, I looked around and tried to communicate my question to other riders, in my broken Turkish. Some looked baffled, two men said “gidiorsunuz, burda” “yes, you get off here”. I tried to show one of the men the map which showed another station to be the transfer stop. He shook his head and queried another man in accented heavily accented Turkish, pointing at me, as the tram was pulling to a stop. Another very weathered man in threadbare clothes with a worn basket of old mechanical parts, who had not said a word, said “yok!” and remonstrated in a rapid, Turkish, completely incomprehensible sentence. One word that I understood was the name, Guldenhusu and havilimani (airport). The doors closed and the tram started gathering speed. I was committed, perhaps there were two ways to get to the airport. Another man gestured that he was getting off at Guldenhusu also and would point me towards the transfer tram. I relaxed and watched the map, the passing stations and the man carefully. He did not look as sure as he acted. Two stations before Guldenhusu, as the tram slowed to a stop, he said “git, git” (go, go!). It was a totally unfamiliar stop, so I said “hayir, yok”, (no, there is not!) and remained on the tram. He shrugged and seemed to agree. Two stops later, I got off the tram in good order and saw a sign to the Havilimani-Kuruse line. I started to climb the stairs to cross over to the other side, but the man said, “yok! And pointed emphatically to the ramp on the same side of the track where I currently was. It was now nearing 12:15 and I was feeling a sense of urgency. So, I walked up the ramp and managed to board the train just as it was pulling away. I breathed a sigh of relief and checked my ticket boarding time etc. However, after two stops that were unfamiliar front the Metro map, I recognized that I was indeed traveling away from the airport. Just before the doors closed on the third stop, I stepped off, hauling my bags and surveyed the scene. I examined the map once more, asked two young Turkish men for confirmation, and quickly crossed over the overpass. I waited only two or three minutes before I was able to board the next tram headed for the airport. It was now 12:30, and I practiced deep breathing and mindfulness, (inner mantra-“trust in the process, its all part of the experience….”) and relaxed while remaining highly vigilant :-). The three mistaken stops rolled by as did the minutes, then we were heading underground with 7 stops to the airport. Breathe, breathe.

At 12:50, I disembarked at the airport stop underground and began to follow the signs. Towing my rolling bags and wearing my mid sized backpack, I began to walk a long, empty, tiled tunnel, echoing my steps. Turning, another long (300 yards?) tunnel stretched before me, then twice more, for perhaps a bit less than a mile. I came to an underground entrance to the airport, in which a rapidly moving security line was checking all bags in the x-ray device before allowing people I to the airport. Remove the belt, the wallet, the pen, the watch. Take it the IPAD and this time also remove the Kindle, and I was through and moving into the crowded, echoing lower chamber, filled with kiosks of various airline and signs pointing in all different direction. I had to get my boarding pass. I went to the single Turkish Airlines opening and there was no one behind the desk. I asked the next door airline who pointed me toward Lufthansa’ saying they were handling the Turkish airlines ticketing. I waited about ten minutes in line and the lady said “no, she is there”, pointing at the Turkish Airlines kiosk. At 1:25 PM, I quickly got my ticket and checked baggage, but for the first time, she would not let me carry on my mid sized backpack, only my little Jansport daypack.

Reluctantly, I conceded and headed for the gate, which turned out to be in another terminal. I had to wait a few minutes with a crowd to board a shuttle to take me to the right terminal. Now, 1:40, I began the trek to the gate which involved at least 4 turns and two escalators, one of them not working. On and on, I walked, while thinking anxiously that the bag that I had abruptly been forced to check on had my medication and all toiletries in it. Again and again, I had to let the thought of lost bag go. When, I arrived at the gate, a large crowd was lined up to board and pushing forward. Now, 1:55, I noted no one moving past the boarding agent. As I edged into line, minutes went by, then a half hour, no information was given. I decided to sit down. About 35 minutes later, 3:05, we began boarding, crowding into another shuttle that took us out to the airplane. We sat on the tarmac for another 25 minutes and then we were off, at 3:30. Still trying not to perseverance about possible loss of my unplanned checked bag, I was very glad to exit Istanbul.

The two and a half hour flight was smooth, with a window seat. I watched the mountains, lakes, dry plateau unfold below me. We sat for another 12 minutes or so until we could get to a parking spot. After taking the crowded shuttle to the terminal, I faced a sign pointing forward saying International flights and Baggage and to the right, Domestic Arrivals. I was arriving on a Domestic flight, but I wanted my baggage. I asked an airport official making notes on a clipboard at the junction, which way I should go to pick up my baggage. He asked to see my ticket and passport, looked vaguely alarmed, and wrote in my name and passport number at the bottom of a list of twenty or so names. He pointed me toward a door back onto the tarmac, as I protested, and led me into another shuttle telling me to wait and it would take me to my baggage. I had a very bad feeling about this, but paused in the shuttle for a minute or two, only 3 other people on it. As I stood up to seek additional guidance, the man returned to the shuttle and apologized and nodded with seeming embarrassment at a more senior airline official as he passed. The luggage had started to come out. Fairly quickly, both pieces of my luggage emerged and I happily exited the airport looking for a guy with a sign with my name on it who would take me to my stone cave hotel, 50 km away in the little town of Goreme, in the heart of the weird, volcanic land of Cappadocia.

I begin to realize that a key part of travel and pilgrimage is the constant exposure to uncertainty, especially when in a country with a foreign language. Again and again, I am startled, tense, anxious, caught “off guard” by the daily uncertainties. What will I eat? How will my stomach accept it? Will I get sick if I eat this? Is the drinking water potable? What will happen if I drink it? Which country, which city, which hotel, B&B, or Inn, which way will I walk? Which road will I take?

Where do I want to go? How will I get there? Is this person trustworthy? Whom shall I ask for directions? Which way is this taxi driver going, is he taking me for “a ride”?
Which bus do I take and where is it going, how will I know when to get off? Is it going the right direction? Could this hotel have bedbugs? Is it safe to leave valuables in the room? Where can I change currency, what rate will they give me? Will my pocket be picked in this crowded bazar or tram? What will unmarked things cost? On and on, goes this spiritual exercise of releasing the need to know, the desire for predictability, expectations? When traveling, it’s all clear that expectations are a feeble effort to retain control of what is beyond control.

There is the blessing and the curse of uncertainty when I travel. The excitement and novelty of surprise, of the new and unfamiliar is part of the “juice” that travel brings. The possibilities of renewal, growth, learning, wonder, awe, freshness, the epiphanies and theophanies are all blessings of travel and pilgrimage. When I use the word pilgrimage here, I mean the intention to allow myself to be changed by the journey, as much or more than any destination, to discover God “on the way”, more than through a visit toI some holy relic or sacred place, though that is precious also.

Both enlivening and exhausting, I wrestle again and again with the desire to make the world after my own imag(ination). The illusion of certainty and expectations to be met that I often hold at home, is stripped away again and again. It’s a remarkably difficult pattern to shake off? It seems to recur and cling with such desperate fear of the raw reality of life in the world out there totally beyond my control. This habit of mind and emotion creates such conflict and anxious despair. Yet, I am always tempted to try and create the world as I imagine and expect it to be for my comfort and security. What would it be like to live without expectations, to let God create the world, and life to happen as it will, to unfold as it is?

I think it would be at last the surrender, the yielding of my little will and idolatrous belief in the illusion of power, to the divine flow. I would still make decisions all the time, moment to moment, But I would not cling with worry to the results. It would be walking my talk of living in the moment and trusting the process. In the moments when I am able to watch and relax from my inner observer, place of spirit, honest and naked, vulnerable in truth to the world and it’s surprises, I feel so alive and filled with joy and wonder. As I reflect on my pattern of wanting and demanding things be as I desire, I am astonished by the grace and gentleness of the divine teacher.

I am reminded of Teillard de Chardin’s image that I love, in his book, “The Divine Milieu”, in which he suggests that God’s ongoing creation occurs through his/her right hand and left hand, molding me as clay. My unfolding life occurs through an inner place of choice and experience of the spirit remaking my inner being (when I yield) as the left hand of God. My outer experience, what happens, serendipity, hardship, pain, loss, and friends, loved ones, circumstance, it’s all grace as the right hand of God molds and creates me.

Can you sense the inner and outer molding, creative unfolding, unpredictable, uncontrollable emergence of the I AM, both within you and in the dailiness of your life?

The left (inner) and the right(outer) hands of the creative divine masterpiece happen in me all of the time, when I tune into spiritual awareness, one with the divine flow of Life. Will I let them, will I trust those hands? Will I stubbornly resist? Is my painful stiff neck a metaphor for being “stiff necked people” as Yahweh describes the Old Testament Jews, in Exodus 32:7. God states to Moses: “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people”. It is repeated again in Exodus 33:3 and 34:9. In Deuteronomy 9:4-6, Moses describes his people again as stiff-necked. This first appears when God has brought his people out of slavery in Egypt, and while Moses is up on Mount Sinai, receiving the ten commandments from Yahweh. His brother Aaron, who is left in charge, is forced by the people to make a golden calf, a “god” they are more familiar with, can know, and control. God left the Hebrew people to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, due to their stiff-necked idolatry, trying to control their god and escape the mystery of the One True Yahweh.

I sometimes also think of my stiff painful neck with the metaphor of Jesus as shepherd, he has his shepherds crook around my neck, trying to guide me, and I am struggling against the divine flow or life, trying to do it my way.

This area of uncertainty is one of many surprising ways that modern day quantum physics is supporting what religious mystics have long believed and practiced about the mysterious unknowable nature of reality and the universe. This realization began in 1927 with a physicist named Heisenberg, who was studying the dual nature of light, both wave and particle. And he noted that the act of observing such light wave/particles changes them, so that there can be no certainty as to the absolute location or momentum of the observed light. In fact, one cannot even know if light is composed of particle or wave because observing it may turn it from one aspect into another. This was postulated as “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”. Nowadays, this principle is showing up everywhere physicists look at reality whether subatomic or the expanding universe. Evidence shows that opposites are linked and reflect each other wherever and whenever they occur. As the mystics knew, reality is fundamentally paradoxical.

Carl Jung, the pioneer of depth psychology taught that psychologically, the Real Self can emerge when a person can hold the tension of opposites, two contradictory feelings, beliefs, or images. He described heparin pile that he called enantiodromia, which observed how opposites tend to emerge in the psyche, when one side is held too long or strongly. One polarity tends to create its opposite. This occurs within a person’s psyche and also within the collective psyche, the outer world. Strongly asserting one position creates its opposite.

A famous spiritual writing from the middle ages is called “The Cloud of Unknowing”. Meister Eckhardt’s classic of mystical writing in the 13th-14th century, “The Dark Night of the Soul” describes his experience of God as unsearchable, unknowable, an infinite void. This way of describing the infinitebecame one of two primary ways that seekers could experience God, the Via Negativa (unknowable void) as opposed to images, metaphors, prayers, and scriptures, and certain forms of meditation, the Via Positiva.

It is a powerful spiritual discipline to live authentically in mystery without false clinging to control. I am discovering that my travel, pilgrimage is challenging spiritual exercise, often uncomfortable and stressful.

“I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and I got 100%”.
Woody Allen

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain ; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”.
Albert Einstein

“Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines”.
Richard Buckminster Fuller

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have the answers that might be wrong. If we only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain…. in order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
Richard Feynman

“The mistake is thinking there can be an antidote to uncertainty.”
David Levithan

“Embrace relational uncertainty. It’s call romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It’s called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It’s called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It’s called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It’s called revelation.”
Mark Batterson

“when in doubt, be ridiculous.”
Sherwood Smith