Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

What jury duty taught me about church.

This is the third short piece in a short series thinking about church. The first two pieces are here and here.

A few weeks ago, I was summoned for jury duty, and for the first time ever I was selected. We deliberated for days. I’m still coming down from the experience. Without getting into too many of the details, it seemed pretty clear that somebody had broken the law and was intent on breaking the law even more, but it was not easy to determine for sure whether the person who had broken the law was the defendant.

Many of us were getting stuck on the idea of reasonable doubt. The defense attorney really helped with this, we felt, because in their closing argument they argued persuasively that the standard, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” should be held exceptionally high. Some of us also felt that the prosecution had not helped, because they hadn’t made a clear case for why the evidence should indicate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (though we admitted that maybe they hadn’t done so for good reasons that we weren’t aware of).

So we deliberated. For days. We poured over photos, physical evidence, and video. We wrote things on a large easel pad and taped big pages to the wall of the juror’s room. We read and re-read the descriptions of the charges, the definition of “reasonable doubt” we’d been given. We had “talking stick” sessions, where we went around the room and everyone had a chance to say what they thought, without crosstalk. We voted. We voted again.

As we labored through this process, it became increasingly clear to me that the exact same process calls spiritual seekers of any sort. No spiritul practice or faith emerges, except from a prophet, avatar, or seer. This, or a wisdom text so ancient that the original authors have been irretrievably blurred from view. Inherent to any spiritual process are truth claims by folks who have already gone further into this journey than we have. In spiritual work, we inevitably rely, to some extent, on the surpassing assertions of others.

But to fully experience what is available for us, we cannot really take anyone else’s messages at face value. As Rilke told the young poet, Kappus, wisdom that is simply told cannot necessarily be lived. We must growl over the evidence. Take any of the claims of the Christian tradition. Start with the big ones: Who/what is God? Who/what is/was Jesus? What is the Holy Spirit? What is the nature of sin? What is the nature of salvation? Can we foresee anything about the destiny of humanity on Earth? These and more can be, in fact must be, interrogated in pursuit of that which is true beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s worth playing with the idea of truth “beyond a reasonable doubt,” to indicate that a spiritual jury, interrogating deep spiritual truths, is not always going to reach a unanimous verdict. It is very, very difficult to articulate things that are enduringly true. And more to the point, that I can see, very few institutions are sufficiently careful about this.

To no small extent, spiritual inquiry is a personal process. But also, the truth emerges from dialogue. The claims of spiritual traditions are like seeds — we understand them more fully when see how they bloom in the rich, organic soil of actual human lives. So each of us is at least a little bit of the guru, the rabbi, the priest, to the other. At scale, there is an ample body of research that indicates that crowd wisdom can be exceptionally accurate. To no small extent, we can crowdsource even the avatar experience. “When two or more gather in my name . . . ,” as the saying goes.

When we turn our minds to these difficult topics, we develop. Our thinking and language becomes more crisp. Also, what we’re seeking has life, consciousness, spirit, dynamism in itself. So as we approach it, attempting to enter into its mysteries, it also approaches and infuses us. Certainly one of the basic tenets of Christianity is that our transformation is not entirely up to us. Entering into communion with the big ideas — particularly in shared, collective space — is an encounter with a holy, sanctifying spirit. The agency beyond our consciousness enters and works.

Incidentally, I wrote the paragraphs above a few weeks ago, and then I talked to a dear friend about these ideas recently, and he said, “Sometimes people just want to hear from people who have gone further in the journey. They don’t feel a need to litigate everything for themselves.” I’m sure he’s right. This mindset seems remote to me — I only know to interrogate — but the fault is mine. And it does seem to me that, whoever is doing the interrogating, the community can absolutely serve folks who want to listen.

The overwhelming majority of my life is abstractions. The other day, somebody asked me what was going on in my life, and I said, “What the heck happened in first century Palestine?” When I’m in a group of peers who are talking about their day-to-day lives, I often have almost nothing to say, so I sit and listen and grow. That’s good for me. Same can be the case for folks who are interrogating spiritual truths and folks who want to listen.

When our jury went into deliberations, the judge instructed us to select a foreman, and the group asked me to do it. Throughout the week, I was reminded that I have a definite theory of organizational structure — which is that a group only needs as much leadership as it needs. Ultimately, I think the mantle of power belongs in the center of the circle. Anyone should be able to pick it up and use it at any time — and then return it to the center of the circle. Out of everyone, one person is ultimately responsible for that mantle. But that’s a role of stewardship, not of dominion. People should be fully inhabiting their own intelligent, increasingly effective selves.

If you widen the scope in this way, you widen people’s access to their own intelligence, I believe. In our deliberations, all sorts of order emerged organically. One person decided to be our reader. Another decided to be the one to write and deliver our notes to the judge. A couple of people took charge of keeping the evidence organized. One person led a particular investigation of the video evidence for most of one of the days. I suggested we start every morning with a round of the “talking stick” (no crosstalk), and each morning I made a few suggestions for what we could do next. Everything I said was a just a suggestion, and with every suggestion I solicited consent. “Does this make sense?” “Is this okay?” “Does this jibe with what we think is true?” This seemed to firm up the emergent will of the group. We’d set a loose agenda, and then the structure of the day would emerge. “Let’s do this,” folks would say. “How about we try this?” Pretty soon, we were a surprisingly functional unit. It seemed that people could feel into one another’s abilities well enough, and we could all coordinate toward a common goal.

Any church, any sangha, is an invitation to emergence. Truth is emergent. Group process is emergent. We, as individuals, are emergent. This reality is self-evident whenever people gather, I feel. Even when people are speaking dogma, the surpassingly deeper truth, that spirituality is always an inquiry, is always, always in the room somewhere.

One person should steward a meeting, be responsible for its cohesion. But I don’t think that person is the sovereign. They’re more like the guard. They guard over everyone else’s pursuit of truth and sovereignty — like a gardener surreptitiously tending the emergence, and only as needed.

Folks started to share details about their lives. We’d follow up with each other — as a group. “How did the first day of preschool go?” “Did you get to make that business call you had to make before you got here today?” We celebrated and commiserated, collectively, with “aw”s and “oh”s.

We made an effort to keep the defendant in mind, to speculate about what that experience must be like. We tried to hold it all. It felt like we, the jury, were trying to hold it all, as a subset of a larger community, the judge, the prosecution, the defense, the court staff — as a subset of a larger community, the aggregate of all our neighbors in DC. All of this felt keen, and rich, and serious, and sacred. So, too, with spiritual work. Spiritual work, to me, is an effort toward God. And God holds all. The invitation is gently extended to us, as well.

In the end, we were a hung jury. The judge declared a mistrial and released us. We said warm goodbyes to each other, and our church of justice was over. Forever. Most of us had not told each other our names.

A church can last longer. It can last throughout life. One of its continual tasks is to find ways to talk about reality and process that are superior to dogma. To gather and interrogate the a broader spectrum of truths, deeply, together, seeking that which can be known beyond a reasonable doubt.