jdhomrighausen

"A vocation is something which cannot be had for the asking. It comes from heaven and from our first nature."

I am a student in the honors program at Modesto Junior College and the philosophy online program at University of Illinois at Springfield. I'm also president of our college Philosophical Society.  The life of the mind is my vocation.

Ever since my discovery of William James' "Will to Believe" in my first philosophy class, I have been interested in what the philosophy and psychology of religion can say to one another. Since then I have also begun walking down a Christian path and wonder how these ideas seep into theology.

"All who bear a message, all poets, all seekers and also those who are on the alert to pick up truths that lie scattered around us, must plunge deep into the vast emptiness that is plenitude."

(Quotes from A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life.)

I have a tendency to write lots of thoughts on scrap paper in moments in frenzied insight.  This was written the day of my candidacy speech for student senator.  It still stands.

Why did I want to run?

I feel called to service for my college.  Service is a vow of obedience, an asking at the end of the day: what have I done for my fellow students today?

Right now is a historic time for the community college system.  We need to be on top of developments in education.  Funding is being cut as never before in the history of the community college system in California.  It's crazy.  I am at a great time to be a student senator.

Also, like being in a religious order, what each of us do individually only matters in the context of the organization.  Apart from it, we have no title and far less power.  Keep that in mind if we choose to drift apart from the rest of the group!

Use your power to empower others.

Remember: I am able to do good, but I am not the only one who can do good.  However, I may be the only one called to do the kind of good I do.  This is an awareness of both humility and how we are called by God to individual paths.

I've recently started practicing Zen.  There's even a local meditation group in the Soto tradition.  It's….different.

Despite literally doing nothing but sitting and focusing on my breath, it's physically and mentally exhausting.  Physically because like modeling it requires you to stay in positions for a long period of time, and after ten minutes any position is painful.  Mental because not thinking is so difficult.

I've found there's a difference between swatting a thought down and letting it doe naturally.  What does it feel like for a thought to die naturally?  My friend Tina says it's like watching trains go by: they may be interesting, but you don't jump on them!

The breath is the best part.  Like all concepts, the self, and life, it arises and dissolves and has little substance of its own - so the practice is itself a metaphor.  I saw this today while at the gym, cooling down int he hot tub - the bubbles came up and disappeared, all very Zen-like.

The breath also leaves me alone.  I have no thoughts to hide in, to escape discontent.  I see what sorts of thoughts pop into my head.  What kind of emotional habits come up?  By practicing not following my thought trains going by, I find myself being able to dissociate more from my thoughts, and perhaps not defining myself by them.

Most interestingly, I was able to take a huge step forward in this monster of sexual temptation I've dealt with this year.  I remember one session where a fantasy came up, and I just let it go - and now this is my model for any other time in the day.  This is a good example of how Zen can help me (a Catholic) strive for virtue.

Peace!

I've decided to move over to a new blog.  However, I'll keep this one for communities.

Peace!

Today, my philosophy of religion class spent five minutes on syllabus stuff and the rest of the class answering foundational questions on religion, truth, the need for religion, and interactions between various religions.

Because the discussion was open-ended, I got to hear a lot from other students. Some of the recurring views:

1. Religion as separate from the rest of life.
The professor asked a question: What separates religious beliefs from non-religious beliefs? To me this is a trick question. One student brought up the example of political beliefs - those are clearly not religious beliefs! I gave the example of the Pope. When he gives a homily on the importance of religious freedom, it's both a political and a theological statement.

The college students I am around think it is easy to separate religion from other spheres of life because of our secularized mindset. How can people take religion or faith seriously when they see it as just one activity among others rather than a deepening perspective that influences all of life's decisions?

2. Religion as "your own truth."
To those who don't enjoy academic debate (that's most people!) it is rude to start arguments or tell others they are wrong. Hence the convenience of the "it works for you" model: it's your truth, but not for others. Something is true for Jonathan, but not true for Grant. But this is just a psychological fact. It doesn't answer the philosophical question: who is right?

3. The brainwashing model.
This is the favorite of atheists. Remarks such as "religious people believe that everything that their religion teaches is empirical, true, factual." Here religion is "an ideology for social control." Religion is a virus perpetuated on poor, innocent, gullible minds who never think reflexively about what they are getting into. This view tends to speak more about the childhoods of the individuals holding it than it does about reality.

I increasingly see myself as a light - a light for the public college students around me with their many different ideas and needs. I can explain what I am about, I can show an example of the sort of calm, reflective, trying-to-live-with-integrity Christian they may never have met before, and occasionally I will try to argue people out of wrongheaded ideas. (Being a philosophy major is good training for this.)

How do you deal with these mindsets?

From an email I sent to an old friend. Writing to a particular person seems to help me write better. She asked how my bible study classes are going.

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My Bible study classes are quite eye-opening. It's offered through the diocesan school of ministry as a four-year lay ministry training. About 8-10 students in the class: curious Catholics, a woman who does confirmation for children, my carpool who teaches 7th grade at my parish school. Of course I'm the only one under 40 (maybe 50). So far we've done Exodus, Leviticus,. Numbers, just finished Deuteronomy, and now tackling Genesis. In preparation I've read a great short book on Genesis by Pope Benedict - a series of homilies he gave in 1981 about the meaning of creation. (I'll be glad to drop it off at your PA house if you're interested. Someone with your intelligence could digest it in a few hours.)

I've enjoyed these classes because we learn the important hermeneutics needed to read Scripture. Most importantly we've focused on the historical-critical method and how it can both free us from immature, anti-intellectual ways of reading Scripture and open us to the rich theological meanings rather than narrow historical or scientific interpretations. This is a great affirmation of the intellectual expansiveness that attracted me to the Catholic Church in the first place. First, there is so much room for everyone, from conservative apologists like Peter Kreeft to radical feminist theologians like Sister Joan Chittister to thinkers trying to learn from other religions like Francis Clooney SJ. Second, that even though there is this breadth of thought, there is depth (i.e., the Unitarians have breadth, but are so wishy-washy there's little to grasp onto). I like that.

But the Scripture Institute also invites personal reflection, and it's about half-lecture and half-discussion. That's important to me, because not being in a Catholic school I am not surrounded by that sort of spiritually conducive environment. It seems a lot of my spiritual maturation is attempting to capture a way of being in the world which others naturally live and trying to make it rub off on me until it becomes my natural way of being - enough so to become a priest, especially a Jesuit who is often called to live a deeply spiritual life in a deeply non-spiritual environment. Hence going to a public school can be very good preparation for the Jesuit order, and thankfully I have a knack for seeking out mentors both spiritually and intellectually.

I'm taking a break from philosophy this upcoming semester. I've tired of the subject and have other intellectual projects I need to get to, mostly the project of homo religious: trying to understanding who we are as religious beings seeking some sort of wholeness or divinity.

At this point in my intellectual journey I've found questions which can occupy me for a lifetime. This seems to be a mass of problems related to religious experience and religious pluralism. Are all mystical states the same? In what ways do they differ? This problem leads into a mass of issues in philosophy of language and mind - such as how we use language to describe experiences which are ineffable. Ineffable experiences are not just mystical. All dreams are ineffable: you can never describe them in words!

So I am now finding the tools to help me answer those questions. One thing I have found is that many approaches in analytic philosophy are just wrong. I had the opportunity to take a class in analytic philosophy of mind, but then realized it would probably be all about the mind-body problem. This is simply uninteresting to me. How do we perceive? This is interesting. William James' approach of introspection grabbed me first, and now I know that it is similar to an entire school of European philosophy!

So I see myself studying phenomenology in the future and using that to tackle problems of religious experience - and experience in general. Taking a class in twentieth-century thought was quite helpful in this discernment because I now have a good grasp on who I should study: go with Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Quine, avoid Derrida, Ayer, and early Wittgenstein. Other thinkers seem useful but not relevant to my questions (Foucault, Habermas).

Lately I have been thinking about my future as a thinker - is this ascetic, demanding life one I can handle? Is it one I want? This in the context of discussions with girlfriend Ruby about joining the Jesuits. I feel I'm at a juncture now, trying to figure out whether I want a more conventional life with family and kids or a life more focused on putting my brain to the service of God. Thankfully I can remain at this juncture for a while.

Peace,

Jonathan

Ruby (girlfriend) is away on her parish retreat this weekend. We decided to take a break. We've done this before - when she was at summer camp without her phone, when we had a big issue to sort out once - and it's great. I find time to think, space to think. This reminds me - clerical celibacy is not just valuable because priests are more mobile, need lower salaries, and have more time, but also because they can keep a certain spiritual quiet without having another always there.

So I find time to contemplate more. I write my thoughts down in my journal before typing them - that helps me type better, I feel less self-conscious.

Today I feel very hopeful. I sent a letter to a professor at my online university (U of Illinois, Springfield) requesting her to supervise me for some independent studies. Though I have always been one to make a good impression on those above me, I am still doubtful she will want to help me.

I've also found two great resources online for Ignatian spirituality: one is a British site called Pray-As-You-Go, and the other is a site called Online Ignatian Retreats, hosted by Creighton University. Both have audio walkthroughs of the examen of consciousness, a great tool for finding out uncomfortable things about yourself. For instance, this week

1. I find I try to hard to control my future. Why should I bother now deciding where I will be in 2012? Yes, I will finish at MJC and my BA at the same time. But where I go depends on whether or not my grandpa will still be alive (at 98 years old? wouldn't surprise me for him). If he is, I do not think I could bear to leave him for some far-off university.

This tension, this desire to have every crevice of my life planned out, can only lead to bad. Rather than focusing on how God moves me in a daily way, I focus on the future, on the grand plan. Any other phrases I could say here are so badly cliched I can hardly type them without laughing - "it's a gift, that's what it's called the present," "live for the day," etc.

2. Prayer comes in silence; when we can turn off TV's racket, turn off Ke$ha blasting on the radio, turn away from things loud to any of our senses, then we can decipher the divine moving in us. But my mind, conditioned by my own ADHD and a culture that reinforces it, seeks the disordered, the gossipy, the shallow. Philosophy provides no refuge, not with its controversy, its divisive practitioners.

An example: this week I got behind in my duties as president of the philosophy club. People showed up to the meeting unprepared because I sent out the reading too late. I got angry at them rather than admitting my mistake. Way to keep a positive atmosphere.

Anyway, the examen can be pretty harsh, but I'm glad I can think about these and steer clear of them. Or at least try to.

(Written 9/25.)

For my English class we read a selection from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In this book she looks at systems and sustainability: the fact that her living in a desert part of Arizona is unsustainable, the fact that the current system of transporting food is unsustainable, the fact that the oil usage used to transport that food is unsustainable. She concludes she needs to live on a farm in the rural South and grow her own vegetables. She begins eating only local food. She is surprised by most peoples' lack of know-how on where food comes from.

For her, it's about finding wholeness, finding out about where the things we eat and buy come from. In how many little, unseen ways are we harming the earth and our descendants?

As I read this, I was sitting in my car in the Costco parking lot, watching a woman load five big boxes of soda into her monster Suburban. This is fractured. There is no wholeness, only a path of destruction: to one's body, to the environment, to one's sense of wholeness with the material creation God has given us.

This is a sin.

Suddenly realizing I could not stay in the ivory tower my whole life (not that any Jesuit has), I felt a deep pang to do something. Environmentalism is a neglected issue in Christian circles. Indeed, some welcome global warming as a sign of the apocalypse. The next day I went to Bill Anelli's office - he was my environmental ethics teacher for the summer and is quite involved in local environmental issues. Hopefully he can put me in touch with some local groups.

There are so many ways I can explore this - next semester I am taking an environmental conservation class, for starters. Sadly the environmentalist club at MJC is dead.

Taking things one hop at a time,

Jonathan

AMDG

(Written 9/25.)

To my loyal fans (if any) -

I've been so crazy the last few weeks. Thankfully, I feel that I am growing spiritually and intellectually like never before. In my second year at MJC, I'm settled in.

This Sunday I am beginning the next phase of becoming Catholic: the catechumenate. I've been blessed to have a great RCIA director who both affirms and challenges me. The discussions we've had range from the movement of the church (slow) to the need for repentance, which is still a tough one for me to get my head around. Most importantly she understands my need for the life of the mind.

I'm still attending St. Paul's Episcopal - dual citizenship.

What I'm up to:

Classes - freshman comp, 20th-century philosophy, pragmatism (independent study), introduction to metaphysics + epistemology

The comp class is really below me - I write well instinctively. But I've put it off, so I'll swallow my pride and get through it.

20th century philosophy is taught by a continental-trained instructor. The class is divided into three sections: analytic, pragmatism, and continental, and we're doing everything: structuralism, postmodernism, critical theory, logical atomism, Dewey, Wittgenstein.... I'm curious on how well we'll get into the use of language.

The pragmatism class is with Dr. M. He's very stern but soft, and likes his pet thinkers quite a bit. We're doing Peirce, James, Dewey, then a few weeks at the end on how pragmatism effected others such as Quine and Rorty. I have to work for this class quite a bit more, because it's quite a disaster if I don't have anything to talk about on the readings, given that it's an independent study.

I'm also doing an honors project with it - a 10-15 page paper. I think I'll do something religious experience. Professor is bored by religion discussions. Too bad.

Intro to M+E is online via university of illinois. It's not quite what I thought it would be - rather than a high-level overview of both it's structured around classical problems in both. Lately we're doing Descartes and skepticism. Does an external world exist? What beliefs count as knowledge?

I'm also doing a scripture study through the diocese. It's a 30-mile drive but it's worth it! This first year is Old Testament: Genesis-Kings. Rather than only doing that "how does this make you feel" stuff, we're doing history, culture, context, THEN asking how it speaks to me personally.

Additionally, I've joined an informal discussion group in Turlock called Alexandria West. They study ancient wisdom traditions - not with the analytic bent that I tend to bring to things but with an appreciative bent. The sessions are 4-8 every other Sunday, with half of it being Buddhism and half astrology. Buddhism interests me, but astrology....hehe, no.

I'm still doing philosophy club. :) That sums it up.