FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

The Other: The Origin and Meaning of the Term

~ Zane Yi was raised in the Christian tradition and is fascinated by the interplay of philosophical and theological thought through history. He teaches and studies philosophy at Fordham University, where he is a graduate student. Zane and his wife, Angela, live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

If you’ve browsed this website, you’ve most likely come across the frequent use of the term “the Other.” You may have wondered, “What does it mean? Where does it come from?”

The term has been developed by European philosophers and came into usage through the work of Jewish/French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), an extremely influential, some might call quintessentially “post-modern”, thinker. Levinas fought in World War II, taught philosophy at the University of Paris, and is also known for his Talmudic scholarship. Levinas’ extensive writings are permeated with this term, but are notoriously hard to digest. Here is a short overview of the meaning of the term.

According to Levinas, when we encounter another human being, the face of the Other speaks to us and ethically obligates us.

The innovative nature of this claim becomes more evident when Levinas’ thought is compared with the thought of a Frenchman that is more familiar to many people--Rene Descartes. In his quest for absolute certainty, Descartes infamously describes his method of radical doubt. One must doubt everything—the beliefs inherited from one’s parents and teacher, and even one’s own senses!  After demolishing this shaky edifice of beliefs, one can reconstruct a stable building of knowledge built from indubitable facts.

What is the indubitable and, therefore, foundational fact? Descartes claims that he cannot doubt the fact that he is doubting. “I think, therefore I am,” he purportedly claimed. Starting from this point, one begins to work one’s way to other certain facts.

Following Descartes’ lead, many philosophers seem to think that the primary task of philosophy is an epistemological or metaphysical one. What we desire most is absolutely certain knowledge. How do I know that the external world and others exist? (Believe it or not, philosophers have spent much time and energy trying to answer this question!) With the proper method of acquiring knowledge (epistemology), one can ascertain what is real (metaphysics).

Ethics, or “practical philosophy”, is a secondary concern; “knowing” (epistemology) and “reality” (metaphysics) take priority. Once we know what is real, we can find out what is good and right. Furthermore, figuring out the good and right is reduced to the derivation of principles or maxims from abstractions. 

In contrast to this, Levinas treats ethics as a "first philosophy."  According to Levinas, we are immediately aware of the Other through our encounters with him/her (and their "face") and the Other places obligations of care and respect on us, before we begin to theoretically speculate on things, people, life, truth, ourselves, or anything at all! This obligation towards the Other cannot be reduced to linguistic formulations and commands, and transcends race, gender, or religion.

Levinas’ innovative claim is powerfully illustrated by one of my professors, Merold Westphal, who uses an excerpt from Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front to help readers understand Levinas’ insight.

The following is taken from Westphal’s new book Levinas and Kierkegaard in Dialogue (p. 3-4). (The pagination is from Remarque’s book.) 

On a foray between the trenches, I have become separated from my comrades and have found refuge in a crater filled with water and mud. Suddenly a question occurs to me. "What will you do if someone jumps into your shell-hole? Swiftly I pull out my little dagger, grasp it fast and bury it in my hand once again under the mud. If anyone jumps in here I will go for him...stab him clean through the throat, so that he  cannot call out; that's the only way; he will be just as frightened as I am;  then in terror we fall upon another, then I must be first"  (184).

As suddenly as the question arises, a body falls on top of me. "I do not think at all, I make no decision--I strike madly home, and feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp and collapses. When I recover myself, my hand is sticky and wet. The man gurgles....It sounds to me as though he bellows....I want to stop  his mouth, stuff it with earth, stab him again, he must be quite, but [I] have  suddenly become so feeble that I cannot anymore lift my hand against him"  (185).

Overcome by the desire to get away, I move as far away as possible in the shell-hole, watching and listening.  Morning comes, and the gurgling continues, drawing first my unwilling gaze and then my whole body is a crawling journey to the side of the dying man. "At last I am beside him. Then he opens his eyes. He must have heard me, for he gazes at me with a look of utter terror. The body lies still, but in the eyes  there is such an extraordinary expression of fright that for a moment I think  they have the power enough to carry the body off with them...the gurgle has  ceased, but the eyes cry out, yell, all the life is gathered together in  them....The eyes follow me. I am powerless to move so long as they are there" (187).

When I am finally able to move, I strain some muddy water from the bottom of the crater, give it to my dying enemy, and then dress his wounds as best I can. The gurgling resumes. After the passing of an eternity, the young Frenchmen passes into eternity at about three in the afternoon. "I prop the dead man up again so that he lies comfortably...I close his eyes. They are brown, his hair is black and a bit curly at the sides. The mouth is full and soft beneath his moustache; the nose is slightly arched, the skin brownish; it is now not so pale as it was before, when he was alive. For a moment the face seems almost  healthy;--then it collapses suddenly into the strange face of the dead that I  have so often seen, strange faces, all alike" (190).

Just as the compulsion to help had followed the compulsion to flee, now the compulsion to speak takes over. "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible, too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of you bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late...I will write to your wife" (191).

Who is the Other in a religious context? We have many terms for her. The unbeliever. The religious fanatic. The liberal. The fundamentalist. The pagan. The goy. The kafir.

Such labels are usually based on a theoretical understanding of the Other (often a misconception), but actually prevent us from a genuine encounter with her. Sadly, in the end, this only impoverishes our own humanity and our experience of the depth and power of our own religious traditions.

We know ourselves most fully in the presence of the Other.

It’s my hope and prayer that Faith House will become a place where encountering the Other, not thinking or talking about him or her or them, is “first philosophy.”

A Sabbath Poem (Hafiz - 4)

AT THIS PARTY
~ by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)

I don't want to be the only one here
Telling all the secrets--

Filling up all the bowls at this party,
Taking all the laughs.

I would like you
To start putting things on the table
That can also feed the soul
The way I do.

That way
We can invite

A hell of a lot more
Friends.

(from The Subject Tonight Is Love: Sixty Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz,
versions by Daniel Ladinsky, Pumpkin House Press, 3rd ed, 2000)

Thank you our friend Daniel Ladinsky for sending us this book! A sweet gift.

Live Words: One Body

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and 'one body,' will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another's achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time.             
   
                                                    ~ Thomas Merton

A Sabbath Poem (St. Catherine - 2)

THE MIND'S RUIN
~ by St. Catherine of Siena

I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age.
The cheeks of the sun were pale before Him,
and the earth acted as a shy
girl, like me.

Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,

though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at times flicker,

for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace.

I have seen what you want;
it is there,

 a Beloved of infinite
tenderness.

Burning Rage Meets Burning Grace

~ John Hubers is currently a PhD student at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago concentrating his studies on the history of Christian-Muslim relations.  Prior to this he served as the Director of the Reformed Church in America's mission program in the Middle East and South Asia as well as pastor of international congregations in the Arabian Gulf states of Oman and Bahrain.  I (Samir) met John in Boston at the meeting of Interfaith Relations Commission of National Council of Churches held at Harvard University this past June. He told me this story and later send it to me.  It first appeared in a shortened form in the Other Side Magazine, October, 1997.

It’s the summer of 1981. I’m sitting with my missionary mentor in the book- smothered office of a Coptic Orthodox bishop downtown Cairo, Egypt.  He is speaking of the riots still smoldering in a slum not far from where we were sitting. 

He tells us how it started. 

A fanatical faction of the Ikhwan al Muslameen (Muslim Brotherhood) discovered that a Christian landowner had not properly registered a piece of property in the local deeds office. Seizing the moment, they occupied the land, planted a flag on it and announced their plans to build a mosque.  The Christian went to the police to protest.  They made noises, but did nothing.  The stage was set for a drama that no one saw coming and few wanted. 

It happened when the heated exchange reached a boiling point.  The spark was the squatters gathering a mob at the owner’s home with hostile intent.  The owner came to the door with a pistol in his hand.  He said, “leave!”  They said, “no!”  He fired a shot in the air.  Someone shouted:  “Christians are killing Muslims, Christians are killing Muslims.”  And the fires started burning.

For three days violent gangs bearing the name, but not the spirit of Islam, ran wild through the warren of streets targeting Christians and their shops.  A priest from Upper Egypt in Cairo visiting his brother had his head split open with an ax.  It was a low-level massacre.

At the height of the riots a gang approached the local church with gasoline cans in their hands and arson on their minds.  The parish priest saw them out of his office window.  And there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop them.  He had been praying for an end to the destruction and murder; now he prayed for a miracle. 

As they got closer he noticed another group of men gathering in the street; neighborhood shopkeepers, Muslims he knew as friends. His heart sank.  “Dear God, not them, too!”

Then he noticed that the shopkeepers weren’t joining the mob.  Instead they were forming a phalanx around the church.  He opened his window to listen to the exchange.  What he heard assured him that God is good . . . God and his neighbors.

“This is our church,” said the shopkeepers, “these are our friends.  If you want to burn it down, you’re going to have to kill us first!” 

Burning rage met burning grace.  And grace won.  The church was spared.

A Sabbath Poem (Rabia - 2)

WHERE I KNEEL
~ by Rabia of Basra

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is
illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,
a church

that dissolve, that
dissolve in
God.

(Thank you Lorelei Cress for sending us this poem!)

New Frontiers: The Act of Hyphenation

~ Kyle Fischer works with not-for-profit organizations (www.reserveinc.blogspot.com) and in music (www.endup.org). He will attend Union Theological Seminary in New York City in the fall of 2008.

In yoga class at the YMCA the instructor says, “Now reach forward, place your palms face down on your mat, and pull the floor toward you.” Contemporary thinking about space and time tells me I do not have to understand her instruction as metaphor. Standing outside the door of Faith House, I am cheered by the idea that parts of our theology could take similar forms, contemplative strategies along the lines of asking your yoga students to pull the floor towards them.

My girlfriend is a Hindu, definitely a polytheist. She is Australian, raised without religious affiliation of any kind, matrilineally Jewish (but non-practicing), mostly of English extraction, also Malaysian and Indian. But to all appearances, she is a white girl whose skin tone might indicate a passion for carrots, with striking red hair. She talked with me on our first date about her internal struggles with adopting a Hindu religious practice. At first it looked so aesthetically other, so foreign, that is was hard for her to get her head wrapped around something her heart already understood. She found it got easier with practice.

She was surprised, and moved, when I responded by asking her if she wanted to pray together. I would have been happy to adapt my prayer to her idiom. And in fact we didn’t, not then. We got to talking instead.

In sharing our practices since then, and listening to Hindu teachers explain their views on their own terms, I am beginning to feel comfortable with a multifaith religious identity of my own. This requires an act of hyphenation that baffles some. Those of us raised in a particular faith can be very resistant to this kind of plurality. I know because I feel it in myself sometimes, despite the repeated assurances of my parents to their inquisitive little boy that Buddhists and Hindus were not going to hell.

Since considering seminary, I’ve been thinking about my family background in the Disciples of Christ denomination. My dad was a Disciples minister, as was my grandfather, and my great-grandmother.

Dad always explained the denomination in two words, “mainline, liberal.” The Disciples story was explained to me in shorthand – as a frontier church, originally, the Disciples’ formation came out of a need for people of diverse Christian backgrounds to meet together under one tent. Therefore they adopted only very limited doctrinal beliefs.

Is there a lesson in the Disciples model to be applied to our multifaith discussion about religious practice without doctrinal borders, as love draws us out onto new cultural frontiers?

Is there a way to write that sentence in about a third as many words? And what do we call such a practice?

From a universalist Hindu perspective, I am a Jesus devotee. Y’all don’t mind if I call myself a Christian though, do you?

Jesus taught us to look for him in other people. I’ve felt his presence in teachings from other faiths. You never know where the One Love is gonna pop up.

A Sabbath Poem (Eckhart - 2)

WORLDS ARE FORMING
~ by Meister Eckhart

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

Our First Preview Gathering: Breathing in ... Faith House

~ by Juliet rabia Gentile

Outside the lavender gray sky opened and a torrent of rain poured down, inside all who were gathered moved and swayed to the sound of the affirmation of unity, La illaha ilallah, there is no reality apart from God. This was the auspicious beginning of the first of three inaugural preview gatherings of Faith House Manhattan.

We began with a suggestion from life: breathe. What does it mean to breathe? In this frenetic place of paradox and contradiction, this city we call home: Manhattan, all those gathered collectively took a breath of fresh air, put aside our certitudes and concepts and moved towards a new vision of what it means to be:  Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or another sojourner. We all embarked upon a journey to find something new: the other.

The Stranger, the guest at the table, these are concepts that play a central role in the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What does it mean to be a guest? What does it mean to open one’s home to the other? Islamic oral tradition relates that it was the practice of the Prophet Abraham to abstain from eating unless he had a guest at his table. At one time he even waited an entire month without food because no guest or beggar came to his house seeking a meal. In this way Abraham is an example of the most extreme form of hospitality, that which seeks the other in order to survive. Abraham, the father of monotheism, had a tent in the deserts of Arabia, a tent that was open on all sides. Under this tent he invited all to join him and to pray, to feast and to learn from one another. Each one of us has followed his example in answering the invitation of Faith House: by inviting each other to be guests at our house, to seek shelter under our tent.

Just one week ago we gathered and watched as this creation took form, as a modern tent of Abraham was erected in mid-town…

The day began at 4pm with a sound of shofar. The program began with Samir Selmanovic, our coordinator, extending an invitation to all those gathered. This invitation was to enter Faith House with an open mind, to experience “holy awkwardness.” By accepting this invitation, each one of us entered the “living room” of Faith House, a place where one can share a meal, a thought, a dream with friends. A place where one can share a concern, ask a question, ask for help. A place where everyone is welcome to be themselves, to live…

Reflecting this plurality, the three co-leaders, Jill Minkoff, Bowie Snodgrass and myself came forward to each recite the central prayers of our traditions (The Shema, The Lord's Prayer, and Al Fatiha). Lauralea Banks led the group in a moment of silence to honor the multiplicity of spiritual traditions that were not formally represented that day.

Following this prelude of unity, the afternoon progressed with a short guided meditation on ”breath” from the Islamic tradition. This prayer, known as dhikr kafi or silent remembrance, consists of sitting silently and focusing on the heart while repeating the name Allah with each breath, Al- on the in-breath, and -Lah on the out-breath. The goal of this prayer is to drop away from the mind-space, to leave behind the have-to’s and must’s of daily life, and enter the Heart. The Heart or qalb in the Islamic tradition, is a place one can enter at any time and be with the Lord and Beloved alone, a place of refuge, of silence. From this space of embodied prayer we moved into a brief explanation of the common types of prayer practiced in the Islamic tradition. This explanation flowed naturally into another experiential exercise. This time we plunged into the prayer known as dhikr jali or audible remembrance. Those gathered began chanting, La illaha ilallah or there is no reality apart from the One. As the intensity of the chanting increased I began to sing a kaside or traditional improvisational song. After the chanting finished we all sat in silence for one moment before Jill led us in the fun and spirited exercise of “breathing life into Faith House,” along with the children.

This concluded our experience of reflecting on the foundation of our community: Life. This experience opened up new horizons and questions about what it means to be connected to each other and to our common Source of Life, as the life-breath which sustains us without question, distinction or hesitation. 

We can only experience this community with your participation. Without the other, we cannot fully know ourselves. It is the goal of Faith House to invite everyone to this banquet table, to this tent of Abraham, to enjoy spiritual fellowship, to learn together, to grow together. There is so much yet to discover and to share.

Mevlana Jellaludin Rumi writes in his poem, The Guest House:

The human being is a Guest House
every morning there is a knocking at the door
a new arrival: joy, anger, sadness
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all
even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of all its furniture

Treat each guest honorably,
for He may be clearing you out for some new delight
The dark thought, the shame, the malice
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

In this poem Rumi suggests that even what appears to be bitter may be inwardly sweet, may hold some hidden gold, some hidden wisdom for us. It is with this openness, with this sense of hospitality that we wish to invite you to be our Guest. We invite you to bring your hopes, fears, and questions to the door of Faith House, so that we may all learn together, the secrets that have been sent from beyond…

Thank you to all those who have brought Faith House into the world and to all those who will contribute in the future.

The doors are open. Enter in. Welcome to the adventure!