Unnamed, not Unknown.
by Harry
I am reasonably sure he’d say he’s just getting the bagels ready.
I accept that. That is what he’s doing, after all.
Across the room, as the rest of us finish praying through shacharit (the morning service), the guy who’s in charge of the bagels is getting the juice and milk; the jam, peanut butter, and cream cheese out of the dorm-sized fridge in the corner—and he’s toasting bagels, four at a time.
And that’s all he’s doing; he’s getting the bagels ready.
I want to say he’s doing something profoundly spiritual. I want to say he’s connecting us—to one another and to the Divine. But to name what he’s doing and to call it Significant ruins it. It makes it about me—about what I want it to be. It’s like this:
The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. The teachings are treated as an external thing, external to “me,” a philosophy which we try to imitate. We do not actually want to identify with or become the teachings.
(Chögyam Trungpa: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, p13)
I was going to write about how male spirituality is different from female spirituality. How all the talks and meditation sessions and yoga classes are so dominated by women. I was going to write about how men can be uncomfortable with that, but that maybe men’s authentic spirituality is one of action without calling it spirituality. It is. But it’s not just men’s spirituality that functions that way.
I spent much of my life uncomfortable with the word “spiritual.” It seemed fluffy and goofy and for guys who run around in kaftans with heads of garlic on strings around their neck. What I really thought was that it seemed weak and unintellectual.
I always considered the source of my power to be my brain. I could name things, understand things, remember things very well and very fast. And that’s not a bad thing. Naming has its place. Think about this:
For us, the naming represents a celebration of becoming aware, of knowing the universe at a different level than we had known before. One of my favorite examples is something that today we just take for granted. It’s called the electron. But there was a time before anyone ever dreamed that such an object could exist. In fact, we know the first person who had that dream. It’s a guy named G.J. Stoney. He was an electrochemist in England, and he said, “Hmm, there’s a funny bit of possibility that there’s a bit of matter smaller than an atom.” He was a person who later actually named the object the electron. So what does the naming do for us? Well, once we know it’s there, we can start to use it. And, boy, we’re using it at the very instant with the electrons that we’re manipulating to talk back and forth.
S. James Gates (On Being, June 6, 2013)
You wouldn’t be reading this now if not for the electron. Given the fact that there are probably about seven of you reading this, that’s less important than the fact that I wouldn’t be writing this now if it weren’t for G.J. Stoney and the electron he named. And that’s really only important because this was an assignment from my havruta.
We need to name things. We need to do it to make things work. But we also need not to be so smart.
I need not to be so smart.
As a man, I am a namer. A knower. Most likely a know-it-all.
And it’s been very hard for me to let go of that. And it always will be.
But understanding and knowing are not the same thing. Human beings can understand on a level beyond knowing and naming. We can just get the bagels ready.
Put the bagels in the toaster. They will pop up. After that, put them on the plate.
A Very Narrow Bridge 
Breakfast at a place familiar to the both of us was had by G and I. I had what I had before. The only difference was that I was with someone else and we decided to sit next to each other instead of across from each other.
It was the position we chose that made all the difference in the world. It not only changed the relationship to my daughter for that meal but it changed our relationship to the world for that meal.
To describe it any further will ruin it.
Fred
p.s. (you’re right.)
Fred, as usual, you have deepened this for me. Thank you.
Breakfast at a place familiar to the both of us was had by G and I. I had what I had before. The only difference was that I was with someone else and we decided to sit next to each other instead of across from each other.
It was the position we chose that made all the difference in the world. It not only changed the relationship to my daughter for that meal but it changed our relationship to the world for that meal.
To describe it any further will ruin it.
Fred
p.s. (you’re right.)
Harry lovely post. Reading this I’m taken back to my far past, and recall a passage I read as a philosophy in which the author, forgotten to me, wrote that philosophy was born in poetry and the moment that they named it it ceased to be poetry and became something else, so etching more akin to science which really is based on naming: Aristotle and his writings for example.
Fast forward to another point in my academic life. I was deep into Duchamp and Bergsonian metaphysics. The latter developed the philosophy Vitalism based on the simple analogy of all experience as a rubber band each moment feeding into and part of the next. The former raged against the prevailing definitions of art stating in his art an alternative definition that this is art and this how to do it.
The electron is a small part of other small parts each made of smaller parts. We strive to see to name these parts always finding more things to name. And while we name and understand do we understand it really? A fascinating thing to me about particle physics is that as we find smaller components the immensity of the universe increases but we are never able to truly know it to understand it as we as humans want to understand it. Perhaps we may not actually be able to understand it. But the fascinating thing to me is this incomprehensibility may be the point. We can’t name it. We can’t understand it. We can’t comprehend it. The beautiful irony to me in this is that are we not getting closer to God as we think we are delving deeper into science but we refuse to acknowledge that possibility as members of post enlightenment western cultures. Isn’t it in the old testament that we encounter a God who says I am who am and I am the one who has no name…? The unnameable the incomprehensible. Isn’t that it? Isn’t that enough?