living on spiritual scraps

Standing around the billiard table in the long ago and faraway, Keith and I might occasionally tease or encourage each other with the line, "No guts, no blue chips!"

The two of us were pretty fanatical about three-cushion billiards in college, once playing from 8 a.m. when the pool room opened until midnight, when it closed. We seldom talked as we played. Silence intensified the game and, in some sense, expressed our reverence for it, but now and then one or the other of us might observe a situation faced by the other and remark, "no guts, no blue chips." From an outsider's point of view, we were, perhaps, crazy -- two people walking around a pocket-less table on which three balls invited play. Nut-job pastime.

"No guts, no blue chips" was just a variation of the notion that great rewards flowed from great risks. In poker, blue chips were at one time the most highly valued among the red, white and blue ones. No guts, no blue chips; no guts, no glory; victory and riches required risk ... sometimes enormous risk. Situations present themselves in which the risk is great but success would bring great reward... IF things work out.

Well, sometimes Keith and I risked. Sometimes not. Sometimes were were rewarded. Sometimes not. When it's your shot, it's your choice. It's not as if someone else could make the choice. Your bet, your money; your risk, your reward; your success, your failure ... no guts, no blue chips.

The 17th century, mathematician, philosopher and Christian thinker Blaise Pascal suggested a logical approach to the practical utility of God and whether he/she/it existed. In his Pensées [Thoughts or Reflections], he postulated his approach in the form of a wager, or bet: 

You must wager. It is not optional. Which will you choose then? …Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” [Pascal's Pensees, section 233, translated by A.J. Krailsheimer]

Whether or not someone subscribes to Christianity, as Pascal did, still I think his approach can be understood by anyone who is serious about their spiritual persuasion. Everyone, in one way or another, is after the blue chips, the success, or the reward. The degree of seriousness may vary, but still, no one ever accepted a challenge in order to fail. And logical thinking is one way to advance or encourage or unravel the spiritual challenge: No guts, no blue chips.

Blaise Pascal

Books and teachers and temples and rituals carry with them a certain encouraging logic ... a logic much like Pascal's. It is a world of if-then ... if I am very, very, very, very good; if I am very, very, very, very observant; if I follow the rules very, very, very, very carefully ... then "you will gain all," whether in Christianity or any other. And of course it may be quite true. But, more important, it may not.

The trouble with this logical or merchandizing approach strikes me as obvious: Logic and blue chips may hold out hope and may inspire belief and may encourage action, but they are all premised in doubt. That doubt is based on the fact that no one can see into the future. Pascal and other informants may suggest that "you will gain all" (heavenly reward, enlightenment or something similar), but that reward and those blue chips are posited in a future that no one can know. A heart-felt belief may be very nice, but it lacks the world-without-doubt that the human heart may -- in my opinion, rightfully -- desire. The logical mind may be persuaded and the imaginative mind may have a field day (angels, virgins, joy, peace ...) but that field day is premised on a tomorrow that has not yet come.

The result of a world of belief or impeccable logic is a world forever tinged by doubt, and spiritual endeavor longs for one thing above all others -- the relief that comes with the eradication of doubt.

What must I do to eradicate doubt -- to get the blue chips? If logic doesn't work and belief doesn't work and imagination doesn't work ... is there anything that does work? And it is at this juncture that spiritual aspirants start making deals with whatever ineffable they have chosen. If I can't know God with an undoubted certainty, then at least I can be an ethical human being, compassionate and kind and ... well, better than the self-centered potential I can recognize in myself. It's the best of a bad bargain: I cannot have the blue chips, so I'll settle for the reds and whites; I can't have a big house in the suburbs, so I'll settle for a little one; I can't have my heart's desire, so I'll settle for what others conceive of as decent and caring and socially responsible. I'll stick with Pascal's logic ... be a 'good' person ... and push the implied doubt under the covers.

Deal-making spiritual endeavor is not unusual. Maybe it's just par for the course ... for a while. But the lingering doubt that deal-making brings with it ... well, the heart will never be at peace. No guts, no blue chips. The human heart does not yearn for compromises and petty merchandizing; it yearns for something bright and unalloyed, even when there is no such thing as something that is unalloyed. No more living on a diet of scraps.

And just because you cannot have it does not mean you cannot have it. To dream of a world in which doubt falls away is just dreaming. But to enter a world in which doubt finds no footing ... it's not as if there were any doubt about it. No more wondrousness, no more bliss, no more doubt born of idle speculation ... just ...

Blue chips.

If great risk provides an opportunity for great rewards, what world is this in which great risk offers no reward? Isn't it just the world anyone might live in from the get-go? The world in which deal-making logic and heart-throb imagination are unnecessary ... possible, but not necessary?

Every moment of every day -- no guts, no blue chips.

Where no compromise is possible, why compromise?