"Living With a Wild God": Discuss!

7sistersapphist and I will be reading Barbara Ehrenreich's memoir, Living With a Wild God.

Anyone else interested, please join us. Spoilers will be allowed.

OK, I'm about halfway through this book, and have gotten to the mystical experience Ehrenreich had as a teenager. So far pretty underwhelming.

A lot of her narrative seems quite formless with a lot of (at least at this point) extraneous and off-topic information.

Still slogging through because I think Ehrenreich is usually worth reading and wonder when/if she's going to start pulling some strands together.

Nearing the end now, and I honestly don't know where this book is going. Ehrenreich writes around her mystical episode, dodging the real crux of the biscuit: So what? What does it mean, if anything?

Instead she offers pages and pages of biographical "context" consisting of horror stories from her dysfunctional family, minutiae of long-discontinued scientific studies that are singularly disengaging and even repellent, and strangely un-rigorous discussions of bits and pieces of philosophy and psychology that seem to explain nothing.

This is not the astringent Ehrenreich I usually enjoy; this work seems utterly purposeless.

Still withholding a final judgment on this in case she pulls something truly brilliant out at the end. But it's hard to see how she's going to pull these strands together.

I stalled at halfway through, too, after the chapter about her mystical experiences. Right now, I don't have a firm grasp on what her experiences consisted of-- beyond a vague dissolution of "thing-ness," anyway. But acknowledging how inadequate language is to describe such experiences, I'm going to reread that chapter and then continue on tonight.

Okay. I reread that chapter and am now 3/4 through. Like you, I'm hoping she pulls it all together.

I finished it this morning. I thought she did pull it together at the end, but will wait to see what you think.

Will add this, which won't give away the farm just yet:

Whenever I read books about religion by professed atheists, I look for the "Blake moment." It comes from a quote by Blake, also a mystic, "How do you know but every bird that flies the airy way is not an immense world of delight closed by your senses five." Does the atheist admit the possibility that there may be things beyond our grasp as humans with just five senses. Yes, there is that "Blake moment" at the end of her book.

(And whenever I read religious writing, I have a different litmus test, "cui bono?" Is someone peddling God for fame and fortune, or to curry favor with a religious hierarchy that purports to speak for God?)

I'll also say that I came away feeling that much of this book was bloated, irrelevant, and self-indulgent. And there are striking similarities between her book and many mainline Christian "conversion" stories (that are also bloated, irrelevant, and self-indulgent). In another 10 years, she might revisit this work and come up with something much richer and more finished.

Eagerly await your thoughts!

Finished last night. What to say, what to say?

Until I got to the final three chapters, I was convinced that despite Ehrenreich's insistence that she will never write a memoir, a memoir was exactly what the book is. Or at least a biography of her mind, starting with 180pp of adolescent intellectual inquiry, much of it eyeroll-inducing. I even gave it a new subtitle-- Portrait of the Artist as a Young (and Clueless) Nerdling. Buried in all that, Ehrenreich's extranormal experiences seemed occasional raisins in a big philosophy/family/education pudding. Made me wonder what caffeine-addled committee decided to market the book as an-atheist-comes-to-grips-with-her-own-mysticism.

Speaking of those experiences, while I certainly understand that language is inadequate, she's a writer, dammit; I expect better details. If not of the actual events, at least of her struggle to making sense of them immediately after. Instead, we go back to wading through the pudding.

Finally, Chapter 10... "Joining the Species." What a relief. Ehrenreich finally accepts that other people exist (a little late, eh? You're not 7, you're a grad student!), and concludes that fighting against human suffering is a worthy pursuit. Go, Barbara, go. Run with what those experiences revealed to you. Maybe you'll stitch these threads together after all.

Chapter 11... "Return to the Quest." I agree, nohrt4me2, that Ehrenreich does pull it all together at the end, but I think she gathers it up into one big fluffy ball... and drops it into a puddle, where it's hopelessly muddied. Beset by depression in middle age, she revisits her childhood seeking. "What is actually going on here?" Please, I'm all ears. Tell us what you make of it all now.

Well, she still rejects a monotheistic idea of God, omnipotent and parental. (First, though, she has to beat her breast a bit about how arrogant she'd been to profess her lack of faith publically... because we all know theists are just humble people, and atheists are scornful jerks... right.) However, through her library reading, "following whatever bat-crazy line of thought {that} turned up" (p. 208) she rediscovers... animism. Because she's shocked to learn that humans did not always hold dominion over the Earth, and once were eaten by larger predators. (Duh.) Because animals are not "just mechanisms responding to instinct and external stimuli," (p. 209) but seem to have consciousness. (Again, duh, but then, Dr. Ehrenreich, you didn't believe that other people were real until your early twenties.) Because her encounters with playful dolphins were "religious experiences" (p. 212), making her acutely aware of pre-monotheistic veneration. "If modern people can still get a thrill, as I do, from an encounter with a large and preferably wild animal, it is because such animals once were gods..." (p. 212-13). (Uh, no. Such animals once were gods because they had power over clawless, squishy us, and now we thrill to an encounter with danger even if it is no longer danger.)

Finally, Ehrenreich leaps off the Jungian bridge. "Amoral gods, polytheistic gods, animal gods-- these were all fine with me, if only because they seemed to make no promises and demand no belief. You want to know Kali or Epona? No 'faith' is required, because there are, or were at one time anyway, rituals to put you directly in touch with her." (p. 213) What? There exist or have existed practices to put you "directly in touch" with about any type of deity, including the Abrahamic god. What does "directly in touch" mean when no faith is demanded? Did the shining, burning cosmos give you its name? And if it did, do you really imagine that it would give the same name to everyone? Faith is absolutely required if you're going to assign a name. And then, the amoral, polytheistic, and animal gods of the past and present certainly make promises-- witness all the bargains humans have made with them while "directly in touch." They're gods. We appeal to them. Which brings us to the last big problem in this book... how is Ehrenreich defining "God/god" by the final chapter?

Chapter 12... "The Nature of the Other." "... thanks to my years of research into history, prehistory, and theology, I was intellectually prepared, maybe as recently as a decade ago, to acknowledge the possible existence of conscious beings-- 'gods,' spirits, extraterrestrials-- that normally elude our senses, making themselves known to us only on their own whims and schedules, in the service of their own agendas." (p. 215) Ehrenreich cannot exclude the possibility of conscious entities beyond our normal perception. Okay, none of us can. Their existence is impossible to disprove. But if such entities exist, what makes them "gods," or "God," with a monotheistic capital G if taken collectively? Doesn't godhead include active will and the ability to act upon us? If God could be akin to, say, a parasitic slime mold (pp. 230-231 and a delightful flight of fancy worthy of a full-length science fiction novel), it is indeed "the Other," and this book should be titled Living With a Wild Something-or-Another, and all this talk of "God" should be revised. Fine. I'd read the new manuscript. But frankly, I'd insist that Ehrenreich read Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (a very interesting book) first, and explain why she believes an "Other" would be the best explanation for her experiences when evidence strongly points to "Us."

Woof, that was far more than I intended, and it didn't even cover half of what I had to say. Enough, though. Obviously I had major problems with this book. Nohrt4me, if you got this far, I respectfully look forward to your thoughts!

I'm so glad to have someone to hash this over with, and I am grateful for your sharing. I hope you'll post more.

You echo a lot of my own thoughts as I slogged through this. Like you, I felt at times that Ehrenreich was really pretty clueless in spots, and laughed out loud when you wrote this: Because she's shocked to learn that humans did not always hold dominion over the Earth, and once were eaten by larger predators. (Duh.) Because animals are not "just mechanisms responding to instinct and external stimuli," (p. 209) but seem to have consciousness. (Again, duh, but then, Dr. Ehrenreich, you didn't believe that other people were real until your early twenties.)

Re Speaking of those experiences, while I certainly understand that language is inadequate, she's a writer, dammit; I expect better details.: I couldn't help thinking about Julian of Norwich's medieval work, "Shewings." It IS possible to describe EXACTLY what the experience was. Like any good scientist, Julian classifies the types of experiences she had over a period of days when she was gravely ill, describing some visions as visual, aural, and tactile, and some as ideas that occurred to her, that were more dreamlike. Her writing is clear and matter-of-fact. She wrote a first draft of her visions when they were fresh in mind, and then spent the rest of her life enlarging on them after much contemplation.

What is also clear in the writing of similar medieval visionary mystics is that the vision isn't the important thing; the important thing is the transformative effect of the experience and a shift from "me" to "us" thinking.

Ehrenreich isn't there yet. Her emphasis is on "what happened to me," not on how her thinking could change "us." Am thinking of the passage where she describes poisoning and crucifying white mice with thumbtacks in the name of science, and almost humorously refers to herself as the Dr. Mengele of mice. That passage, more than any other for me, belies a still very imperfect connection with the rest of the animate world that she claims she now has.

Moreover, a visionary who has truly been transformed has purged herself of some of life's detritus, and we would not get lugubrious anecdotes about her mean mother, her teenage maunderings, or her conflicted feelings about her father.

Ehrenreich does mention Teresa of Avila, but she doesn't seem to have learned anything from her about the nature of visionaries. Teresa of Avila (and Catherine of Siena, another mystic) essentially believed that we are of God, we are with God, and are of God, alive both in the world we can see and the one we can't. Teresa, for instance, wrote this, and she didn't mean it metaphorically:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

I don't think you have to read "Christ" in the above, or even "God." You could substitute "love" if you wanted to and still get the gist of what Teresa was driving at. So it's even harder for me to understand why Ehrenreich the atheist feels she has to get hung up about the nature of God.

Would also say that this book was something of a cautionary tale for me. I was raised by atheists like Ehrenreich's parents, but my life took a very different path from hers. Despite her antipathy for her parents, she still seems to feel the need to carry the torch for them out of some kind of loyalty. I saw my parents' militant atheism as something that ultimately made them miserable, that required them to reject other people as "weaklings" who needed a "crutch." If a belief in God was a "crutch," as they claimed, I was willing to try leaning on it in order not to be such a trial to myself and others. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, also an atheist, said of Hildegard of Bingen that even if her visions were migraines or some form of epilepsy, a "privileged consciousness" can make something inspiring from them.

Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena, ah, how I love their work. The luminosity, the generosity of spirit. And all the more marvelous for emerging from the Roman Catholic church of the period. Although I've heard Julian of Norwich referred to, I've never read her. Thanks for your recommendation; I'll have to find a copy of Shewings.

I don't think Ehrenreich is clinging to atheism out of some loyalty to her parents. Nor do I think she's "hung up on the nature of God." She's still, to my mind, an atheist. She does not believe in "God," as least as commonly understood in our Western culture. I think she's using terms very precisely, as a scientist ought. She's rejected the idea of the Abrahamic monotheistic god, and embraced (or at least allowed the possibility of) entities beyond our normal perception that make "themselves known to us only on their own whims and schedules, in the service of their own agendas." Whatever we might make of this, this is not "God," with its ordinary definition and all its historical baggage.

When asked about God, most (in monotheistic cultures) will picture an omniscient, omnipotent being in the sky, or something closely akin to it. A "god" acts upon us-- perhaps performing as our protector or advisor, perhaps judging our worth and dispensing justice, or in the case of polytheistic belief, perhaps being powerful neighbors we can cultivate friendships with for favors or protection, or being uber-animals that may send us single, physical manifestations of themselves (e.g. a deer or boar) to fill our stomachs. Can we call an normally undetectable entity (we'll use the singular, although plural also fits)-- acting purely on its own agenda, lacking omniscient surveillance or judgement-- "God?" There is no word for such a concept in the English language, at least as far as I'm aware. The words "spirit" or "ghost" don't work well, either, although they've been pressed into service by the Catholic church, probably for lack of better. There's "energy," too, but it's laden with layers of New Age, pseudoscientific paint. "A Living Presence," which Ehrenreich suggests (p. 218), may come closest, although it's vague. I'd love to hear any suggestions.

In any case, what we come down to is... what makes a god, a god? How far can we stretch its definition before it crosses the line into "not-God," something or someone unrecognizable and perhaps unnamed in our language? I think what Ehrenreich believes she experienced crosses that line for her.

I'm sorry to hear your parents were such miserable atheists. Of course I didn't know them, and I did not experience your childhood, but may I suggest that it's not the belief/non-belief that forms a personality? My own parents were run-of-the-mill Roman Catholics, and as we see all around us, merely believing in God does not make a person loving or kind. An authoritarian or arrogant atheist will be authoritarian or arrogant, and an authoritarian or arrogant theist will be authoritarian or arrogant. Many people do indeed use religion as a crutch, especially as an excuse for apathy about injustice. Your lovely quote from Teresa of Avila could be read as an atheist's response to that inaction, too. I shed my parent's Catholicism (in fact, all theism) a long time ago, but have nothing but respect for the Catholic Workers or liberation theologians. I respect anyone whose personal beliefs spur them to humanitarian action. In the end, I don't care whether that action stems from a deeply felt empathy or a response to the requirements of a loving deity or the voice of a burning hillside. Oh, I extend this to action to relieve animal suffering as well-- that little bit about Ehrenreich being the Dr. Mengele of mice disturbed me, too.

Oh, because the touchstone in my earlier post doesn't seem to be working... Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

Probably more to say after I've digested the above, but thanks for posting the touchstone. I have not heard of "Why God Won't Go Away."

Julian of Norwich is available free online: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/the-shewings-of-julian-of-norwich-part-1

Have waited in vain for the price to go down on Julian's Gospel by Veronica Mary Rolf, a very long analysis of Julian's work, so may have to get it on ILL.

I'm wondering if next year Ehrenreich is going to be embarrassed to have written this book. What a hodgepodge combination of silliness and intelligence. OK I get it, she's very smart and she doesn't want to wash dishes, and it took her decades to believe that possibly other people exist. I agree >7 7sistersapphist: that I could relax into some semblance of a memoir when she joined the human species. This is the Ehrenreich we all love. But then she slips back into the whole muddled god thing. I have to hand it to her, she doesn't just sit there, she does something, and the something she decides to do is to prove that god either does or does not exist. Not only, in my humble opinion, can this not be done, but trying to do so is enormously boring leading to the slime mold might be god sort of clap trap that I'm sorry to have wasted my time reading. I'm a complete atheist who is not interested in unanswerable questions. However, having just read Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death By Black Hole I have a great deal of respect for scientists who tackle unanswerable questions and find answers. It looks obvious to me that Ehrenreich had some sort of perceptual glitch or alteration that she allowed to have a skewed influence over her world view. The brain is a wondrous thing. Isn't that good enough? Do we have to call whatever new wonders we might encounter god?
>8 nohrt4me2: Your quotation is, I think, what she was trying to say but just didn't seem to be able to express.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

I'm a complete atheist who is not interested in unanswerable questions. However, having just read Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death By Black Hole I have a great deal of respect for scientists who tackle unanswerable questions and find answers. It looks obvious to me that Ehrenreich had some sort of perceptual glitch or alteration that she allowed to have a skewed influence over her world view.

As a Catholic (albeit a rather poor one by doctrinal standards), I'm not much interested in unanswerable questions, either. They seem to be the things that believers beat each other up (or to death) with.

While I think that science must inform faith, I don't think that science can answer everything, given that we are limited in our perceptions--five senses (and we know some of those are inferior to those of our dogs and cats), able to travel only forward in time, our ability to convey information circumscribed by the limitations of language, limited and spotty memory recall, etc. etc.

I'm wondering if next year Ehrenreich is going to be embarrassed to have written this book. What a hodgepodge combination of silliness and intelligence.

Oh, I think parts of that book are filled with embarrassment and shame, but those parts are necessary to the tired old conversion narrative she's boxed herself into.

She once was lost (divorced from her humanity) but then a miracle (or something she can't explain but was nonetheless real to her) occurred, and now she's found, was blind but now champions the poor and brightsided.

I'm always more interested in what happens to the "redeemed" once their shiny epiphany is over with and the dark night of the soul sets in. In many cases, they write not-memoirs in order to try to gin that excitement back up.

That sounds a lot meaner than I want it to, but part of my impatience with this book was Ehrenreich's having fallen into such a cliche.

What a hodgepodge combination of silliness and intelligence.

Exactly, Citizenjoyce.