Light that is one…

Last night as I was going to sleep, contemplating a song I’m working on and awash in the media coverage of religious warfare in the Middle East and at home, I leapt up to find a note pad and wrote down these words:

The disease of alienation
The balm of empathy

This morning I heard my wife singing to our cat Hugo – we both sing to both of our cats all the time – and the song she was singing reminded me of “Douglas Traherne Harding,” from the album The Big Huge by the Incredible String Band. (This is the only ISB album with which I have any familiarity, and it goes back a long way: one of the first songs I ever sang with my first partner, in 1970, was “Cousin Caterpillar” – which I still perform from time to time.)

The chorus, such as it is, of “Harding” is:

One light, the light that is one though the lamps be many

I was raised in a family that was not only not religious, but not particularly spiritual. I came to my spirituality, such as it is, through my own experience, reading, thinking, and observation. I never went on any vision quest; I have not read most of the important religious texts. I was a plain suburban kid, the child of liberals, who made my own way in the world and in the universe, making it up as I went along and eventually developing a firm belief that we are not separate from nature nor from each other.

One light, the light that is one though the lamps be many

Maybe it’s just that I have never been wealthy enough to become greedy, nor frightened enough to become alienated. Growing up in a Democratic household (not that the principles were ever explained, but my parents fought for justice and against racism, and never pretended that government was per se a bad thing), I acquired the habit of compassion long before I was in any position to practice it. And nowadays I do my best to model a compassionate life in a society that appears to have banished the very concept from the public discourse. George W. Bush raped and tortured the word in the 2000 election (“compassionate conservatism” my ass), and the corpse rots in the sun somewhere out near that fake “ranch” in Crawford, Texas.

We listened to “Douglas Traherne Harding” in the car on the way to the Farmers’ market this morning, and as it so often does, the words of that chorus brought tears to my eyes:

One light, the light that is one though the lamps be many

I thought about the Daily Show interview I watched last night, in which a Middle East expert explained how the Sunnis and Shi’ites are battling each other even as they battle the West. And a day or two earlier, another Daily Show bit highlighted the murderous absurdity of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all claiming the exclusive affections of the same God – and killing each other in His name.

One light, light that is one though the lamps be many

I walked around the Farmers’ Market, taking pictures of the ugly-beautiful heirloom tomatoes and watching my healthy, happy neighbors and their kids, buying blueberries and basil from the people who grew them and marmalade and granola from the people who made them. I looked up at the Grand Lake Theatre marquee, thankful that Allen Michaan is willing to put his mouth where his money is. And that song kept playing in my mind:

But if you’re walking down the street
Why don’t you look down to the basement
And sitting very quietly there is a man who has no head
His eye is single and his whole body also is filled with light
And the streets are his and all the people
And even the temples and the whole world
And many’s the time he walks to the river
And seeing the ferryman and seeing the tollman
The light within him leaps to greet them
For he sees that their faces are none but his own

One light, light that is one though the lamps be many

There is more to say on this subject, but I’ve got to get moving. One more quote from the same Incredible String Band album, from the opening song:

Maya, Maya
All this world is but a play
Be thou the joyful player