How many of you are at the library for the first time tonight . While, double welcome to you. How many of you attended the library of Congress Flagship presents the National Book festival . Nice. Nice to see that. Welcome back. How many of you have attended one of these National Book festival presents . Good, keep coming back. We like you. Thank you so much. Welcome to the library of congress National Book festival presents, a vibrant new series of programs inspired by the National Book festival and meant to bring you into the heart of this historic dynamic institutions, the library of congress, your library. This is a brandnew effort to which we hope to spark conversation and engage and inspire and entertain you with some of the most diverse, provocative and notable writers of the day. In every program that we put before you say from the childrens writer, dave pelkey, to a conversation with the haitianamerican wonderful literary novelist [inaudible] to the program you come to hear tonight we mean to connect the works of living writers to a larger history, a deeper understanding. We delight in making those connections for you and delight in provoking the kind of exchanges that make all of us more informed and mindful citizens could they are part of that collective mission by peter tonight and thank you for joining us and thank you for helping us carry this storage. I hope you have taken a moment to look at the display of religious texts our curators have put out for you nextdoor. Perhaps youve taken a tour of some of the librarys holdings that will make tonights conversation come alive for you. We try to incorporate these features in every program and we want you to experience the depth and breadth of this library, of your library. But to cut to the task at hand i am thrilled to be standing here to introduce one of the worlds greatest minds on spiritual studies, a writer and scholar who has contributed richly to our understanding of faith, scripture and history of religions around the globe. She is, of course, Karen Armstrong, the current investor for the United Nations alliance civilization and the event you dont know what that alliance is its a dedicated ambitious body within the United Nations that mounts actions internationally against any form of extremism Karen Armstrong would like to make the world talk to one another. Its an alliance that nurtures communication and strives to defuse tension between those who profess different faiths. She is also one of the forces behind the charter for compassion, a campaign she began about ten years ago after she won the ted prize. The charter for compassion is a publicly created document in more than 30 languages that urges the people and religions of the world to embrace the essential values of compassion so fundamental to many of the worlds core beliefs. This is no matter what your religion. Karen armstrong began her career as a religious sister, a member of the Roman Catholic sisters of the holy child in england from which she separated when she enrolled in studies of Saint Annes College in oxford to study english literature. She has been a teacher, a historian, a writer, a Television Personality on religious issues but always and above all, she has been an explainer, a connector, the lesson throughout in her new book, the lost art of scripture, is about the worlds major faiths and religions have more in common than you might think. The differences over which the been fought and the hard hatreds that have been made harder are, if you study the very heart of scripture, actually very few and surmountable. Its a hopeful message. Karen armstrong is the author of the bestselling history of god, she is given us consistently brilliant, deeply researched and thoughtful works among them, through the narrow gauge, tongues of fire, the holy war about the crusades, mohammed, a biography. Buddha, faith after september 11, 12 steps to compassionate life and my own favorites, her gripping memoir, the spiral staircase, my climb out of darkness. Now she gives us this timely and important new work, the lost art of scripture, a book that explains where faith resides in our brains and our hearts and it is in short, an examination of the way sacred tests have been coopted by hardliners and fundamentalists around the world who insist that these books should be taken literally at their word. When, in fact, she argues so well that sacred texts are works of art and they are tools to approach the divine, roads to a Higher Consciousness and were never meant to be rigid and unbending written in stone. She is here to tell us about this clarifying work of history in a time of intolerance and mutual comprehension, her voice is at once, a comfort and a clarion call. At the end of her top talk we will take your questions and i hope you will formulate them as she speaks to you. Please, help me welcome the prodigiously talented writer and thinker, Karen Armstrong. [applause] thats a wonderful welcome. Thank you. Why is scripture a lost art . Well, first of all, lets think if you are reading a book like pride and prejudice. You are not astonished or even dismayed to hear that mr. Darcy or mr. Bingley never existed. [audio difficulties] we are reading of scripture and a very factual way. We are factual people. In the early modern. We started turning in europe and here in the United States towards reason, logic, enlightenment and all of these things, in science particularly have done one of all things for the world. But its no good reading scripture or they say the stories of scripture as though they were factual. Anymore than pride and prejudice is. Because before about the 18th century was impossible to write history as we know it today because its only since the 18th century where we started to learn about ancient cultures. We learned, develop the science of archaeology and learned how to decipher ancient languages, that we could make, that we could recreate the world of the past. But as human beings, as perhaps the older members of the audience will agree with me, its more natural for us to forget rather than to remember. [laughing] as scripture tells us what we should remember, and it does so in a way that brings out the reasons why we should remember these texts and the stories of scripture, what they mean, rather than what actually happened. Now, ive got only a few minutes to talk and its quite a fat book as you can see. I thought i would just focus on three things about how we misinterpret scriptures and lost art. One of the things im not going to go into in great detail but intrigued me first and get me started on this project was the fact that scripture was essentially a performative art. Some of you may have seen those wonderful bibles on display, but thats a fairly recent thing. Scripture before was memorized. Most people couldnt read until the 18th century. You recited your scripture. You sang it. The quran means recitation, and muslims dont read the text as we do, even when theyre learning it by heart they dont learn it from a text. Its recited to them and they learn it that way. As the catholic child i got scripture filtered through the gregorian chant and the cadences of that chant, but we never read the bible much. It was always done in the setting of music and also acted out in rituals, because we learn things far more with our bodies than with our minds. We learn more about human nature and the world through movement and gesture. I am told people, if someone is talking and they use a lot of gestures, people will believe the gesture rather than the words. Because the body doesnt lie so much. But im going to take three different things, and the first one is that scripture tells us what we must believe. That it gives us truth that we must accept. Its a very odd idea. Came in rather late, roundabout the time of the protestant reformation. And you will remember that luther said famously that a poor man armed with scripture can learn as much about the faith than any pope or bishop. Give everybody the bible and they will be fine. Well, that didnt work because as the reformers soon found that they couldnt agree with one another about what scripture said, even on absolutely fundamental matters like the eucharist. This was so disturbing that from the beginning the Protestant Movement was split, and scripture is full it is not teaching us anything. How can it, because it is talking about a reality, we call it god over here, in india they call it the and that means the all, it is everything that is. Its reality itself so you cant define it, a word, which literally means, from the latin root, to set limits upon something. You cant limit god. As a catholic child at the age of eight, i learned my catechism, and one of the questions was what is god . And in a single sentence we had him summed up. God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of itself and is infinite in all perfections. Well, at age eight i have to say that left me rather cold. [laughing] but i now think it is quite entirely incorrect, because first of all it takes it for draw a breath and define a word a breath and define a word as i said that means to set limits upon our reality that is, that cannot be grasped. And furthermore alone exists of himself . Thomas aquinas before the modern. Probably something european thought in his great theological and said god is not one of the things that exists. All things that we know exist are very temporary. They come and they go. They failed. They are able. Feeble god is being itself. That force of life. It is certainly not a he who alone exists. And it tells you nothing about god and neither does the bible. I guess what ive only got a little while, i just want to take one scripture that you probably, any of you will know well, the book of genesis. In chapter one of genesis, the famous chapter one, we have a portrait of god, and everything a god should be. There he is in total control, totally powerful. He simply has to speak and it comes into being. Unlike other creation stories, which the bible also includes, god doesnt have to fight any terrible monsters, sea monsters in order creation is no great struggle to him, as he speaks and it is done. And god is totally good and fair, and at the end of every day he is very benign. He blesses everything that he is made and says it is good. Even his old enemy the sea monster that he was supposed to have destroyed, he blesses him and they are made peaceful. The rest of the book of genesis systematically undercuts that nice picture of god. [laughing] by the end of chapter three, the god who was in total control of his creation, has lost control, cant manage them all, human beings. They are off on their own. The god who was so benign becomes a cruel destroyer in the time of the flood, in a fit of what we can only call peak. He decides to destroy the whole human race. He saves noah and his family. Wonders why, as soon as no a get out of the ark he gets drunk and commits some horrible secular act. But he wipes out the entire world. So much for the benign god. And the god who is completely impartial in chapter one, blessing all that he has made, has favorites. Hes endlessly choosing one person after another for no good reason as far as we can see. Cain and abel, jane brings his sacrifice, god says no. He takes a bowls sacrifice instead. Why . No reason at all. And hebrew tells us his face crumples like the face of a child when it is shot by something and it puts iron in his soul as you have the first murder and he kills his brother, abel. And he goes on doing this, god does, he chooses jacob rather than easel, the older twin and youre made to feel the pain of the rejected one. Have you no blessing for me, father . He christ in despair. Father, bless me, too. I cannot do it. And poor hagar just dont in the desert dumped with her baby son by abraham at gods command to face almost certain death. This is not the benign god we think. And at the end of the book of genesis god was continually butting in and intervene and advising, disappears from the world. And joseph and his brothers have to struggle with their own insights and dreams, just as we do. And that image of god has been steadily undercut because this is a world that we know. This is a world where people do die in terrible, senseless disasters, natural disasters. This is a world that is not fair. None of those people he has chosen is particularly good or better than the other, and yet they are the ones that prosper and get the blessing, and that is what we see, always. And we are left at the end wondering what is this god . And notice later on moses meets god in the burning bush and says what is your name . Because to know the name of someone gives you power over them. God says, i am what i am. Now, thats been translated to say god is saying he is a selfsufficient being, but this is the early hebrew and it didnt have that kind of metaphysical thought yet. They had not developed a metaphysical tradition. Its a phrase used in hebrew of deliberate vagueness. When you say, the bible will say they went where they went, it means i dont know where they went. [laughing] basically what god is saying is my drug business, dont ask me. And similarly he chooses moses, the stamerer, to speak for him. Moses says to them look, god, why are you choosing me . Ever since i child ive had this terrible speech impediment and no one can hear a word i say. And god says never mind. Your brother will speak for you. So were only getting what god has said to moses secondhand, and you wonder really how much moses has understood. And furthermore, it is aaron, the speaker who is guilty of the idolatry because its his idea that the israelites worship the god in the form of a golden calf, narrowing god down to a single image. Moses, he still prefers moses, cannot speak because god is unspeakable. The great taoist scripture begins the tao that can be named is not the eternal tao. If you could say what god is, you can say what that tao is. Thats not the tao. If you can say what it is, thats not god at all. And so heaven does not speak to says confucius of the highest reality in confucianism. Heaven does not speak. We just get glimpses of what we can see. And in one of the taoist scriptures, confucius nephew is supposed to say i sit quietly and forget. I forget everything ive been told. Not building up all this knowledge about god. So scripture is not telling us what we should believe. It is rather opening our minds and hearts to the fact that we we speak about god we do not know what were talking about. The tao that cannot be named is not the eternal tao. Very early in the tenth century, the priests of india, ancient india, used to have a competition, and they would go off into the wilderness and they would fast and pray, and they would come together to the indians loved competitions. The object of it was to find a word that sums up the all, that is everything that is. And so the first priest, a challenger, drawing on all these huge learning and all his mystical experience would come out with a phrase that he thought summed up the brahmin, the all. The other priests would have to reply, build upon that and reply, but the priest who won the competition was the one that reduced the all to silence, and in that silence, he was present. The brahmin was not present in the learned declarations but in a sudden realization of impotence of speech, when you face the divine. And so when we go why did we have catechisms in the first place . Because after reformist and the couldnt agree themselves upon scripter they said they were still thought of ordinary people read the bible anymore. That was clearly out, and so they had to have catechisms instead, and both the catholic leaders and the protestants did this. So you would approach the scriptures through a set of catechism on theological answers divided by human beings like that, what is god. One of indias favorite scriptures is the story, a terrible story of an appalling war. Its hard to see any light a glimmer of hope in it at all, even at the very end when they all go to heaven. Its not clear that there is a heaven at all actually. You are not left wondering whether heaven exists, and certainly youre left in grave doubt about what they were up to and that is one of their best loved scriptures. Because instead of giving us answers, it plunges us into obscurity, get rid of your catechisms and oppose, let yourself see the ambiguity of scripture. Scripture does not look, expect us to go back to the original meaning of the text. Now, in modern scholarship thats what we do, isnt it . We go back to the earliest account of something or the earliest version of a story of something, and we go back to the original text. And indeed thats what the protestants, reformers wanted to do. They wanted to go back to the early church to reproduce the early church. Theres a problem about that because they were men and women of the early modern period, not the First Century of christianity, and its impossible for us to go back, especially as all the first christians were jews who had an entirely different view of scripture. We are still doing that today. Sometimes in very distorted forms. Youve got in saudi arabia, for example, the one hobbies who reproduced a lot of century customs and mores wahhabi going back to what the prophets had done at the time but they are not men and women of the seventh century. There are even fundamentalists in this country who have suggested that they revive the old hebrew legislation, which would include the stoning of disobedient children. We are not programmed to do this. In every scripture tradition that i stated, and i found this out while i i didnt think this at the beginning of my research, it consists that you move forward and apply it to the present. Invent it, if you like. The jewish people, after they lost their temple which was destroyed by the romans in the year 70, could not read the old hebrew text in the same way because the whole of that spirituality is centered around the temple and theres a terrible hole right in the heart of the scripture. They didnt just chuck it up. They develop something called midrash. Which means to go in because go in search of something. You would take, someone would come to one of the rabbis and ask him a question, and if he would answer it by taking a verse from the book of psalms, lets say, or another verse from one of the prophets, and another from the book of genesis, texts that have no relation to one another, bundled them altogether and there you got an answer that answers this particular question. So it was inventive, and midrash was invented and perfected by the great rabbi who died, he was killed by the romans in the early second century. And there was a story told about it, the fame of his brilliance was so great that it reached heaven, and moses got to hear about this. And he was intrigued so he wanted to find out so we came down to earth and tended the rabbis scripture class and he sat in the back row among, at the very back. But found to his intense embarrassment that he couldnt understand a word of the torah text the rabbi was expounding, the torah that it been revealed to him on mount sinai. Instead of being miffed about it he goes back to heaven, shaking his head probably rather like a proud father say my children have defeated me, but theyve grown up. They have gone beyond me. One rabbi put it this way, he said every time that which was not revealed to moses was revealed to the rabbi and his generation. Scripture revelation was not something that happened once in the distance past. It was present whenever a jewish student with his teacher confronted the sacred text and found something new in it. And then the early versions, there would be a page on which the student must imbibe his own thoughts, his own discoveries. He would they were told to imagine that he and his master were standing together on mount sinai with moses and taking the revelations further. Because revelation was not something that happen once in the past. It happened every time that a jew confronted the sacred text. In the new testament, the writers of the new testament, matthew, mark and luke particularly had performed their own kind of mid rash. This was more like a sectarians by the dead sea which saw the own Movement Predicted in the past. And matthew, for example, never misses a chance of taking a bit from the Old Testament as they called it, and apply it to jesus. He quotes the prophet hosea and said i took my son out of egypt. Obviously hosea was talking about the exodus of egypt with moses. But no, matthew applies it to the baby jesus who was forced to flee king herod, but when things died down he came back to palestine and he is brought out of egypt. Thats just one example. Theres one story in the gospel of luke, second century, early second century possibly, which shows how this worked. It wasnt just a clever stunt. Was something that was profoundly after the crucifixion, two disciples distraught, they thought jesus was going to the messiah in the died terrible death. Leaving jerusalem and going to the village, and they are sad and distressed obviously, and a stranger approaches them and said you look awfully upset. Is there anything i can do to help . Im always relieved theres disciples were not sort of stiff upper lip brits who would have replied no, no, were fine. That wouldve been a story. But they do, they make themselves vulnerable and they meet the strange and you laugh at them but they say we thought jesus was the messiah and look what happened. He said, starting with moses, he goes through all the scriptures showing how it applies to jesus and take her to his crucifixion. Scripture says nothing of the sort. This is more invented midrash. And at the end, you know the end of the story. They have supper together when the stranger breaks the bread they see that it is jesus and he disappears. They say and this is important bit, did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the scriptures for us . Their hearts swelled with joy and this was an insightful thing, not just a cerebral cleverness. That, look, is saying how well see jesus today, in the breaking of bread in this inventive scripture, and when we reach out to a stranger for help. Every time in the 12 century, wonderful jewish philosopher, every time you recite a piece from the koran it should mean Something Different to you. And if it doesnt mean Something Different to you, youre not reciting it correctly, because youre not sufficiently in the moment to say what youre going to do. Finally, im looking at the time, but theres a lot of spirituality today that is all about me. Im not condemning any of this but yoga for example, is not designed as a sort of aerobic exercise. It was designed to get rid of ego, that selfish thing that always turns everything on towards ourselves, i was thinking ourselves. Let the ego go. Similarly, mindfulness. The buddha design mindfulness and told his monks to practice it not so they could feel more centered in themselves but they could realize their self did not exist. The self is a fiction. It had no reality. And so theres a scripture, is not about me. It cant just tell us about our own private internal spirituality or our relationship with god. It must have practical action. The story about the buddha, we often see him, dont we, lost in concentration in yoga trance, and he did a lot of yoga. Theres a story about him in the biblical description that when he had achieved enlightenment he was basking in this newfound peace, and in contingent that perhaps he should teach other people about how to do this. And he thought well, no, im not going to do that because its very difficult. It means youve got to let the ego go and most people are just not going to be interested in that and are not going to do it. At which point brahmin, the highest god gave a terrible cry and says the world is lost. The world is utterly lost, as he dissents from heaven and the god kneels before the enlightened man and he says, lord, please preach your message. Look at the world. Buddha looked at the world with the eye of a buddha and saw the pain of the world and spent the next 40 years, we never see this, but its in the scriptures, going around to the towns and villages of india helping the people to deal with their suffering and a way to overcome it. This is all the scriptures tell us to act. Later, i think he would tell his monks to do the same. After achieving enlightenment you must go back to the marketplace, immerse yourself in the pain and nastiness of the world in order to assuage it. Youve got a job to do. And so this outward turning was crucial. Confucius went for thought further. They said dont wait until you have achieved enlightenment. You will gain enlightenment by helping other people because it helps you to put yourself to one side. The gospels are full of it, too. When the kingdom comes to earth, those who get into the kingdom of jesus says that those who will cry lord, lord, and say the prayers nicely. But i was hungry, he gave me to eat. Thirsty, he gave me to drink, in prison and you visited me. The reaching out to the suffering of the world. And sometimes you go to church, sing a few hymns and then go home to lunch, and thats the end of it. It isnt. The end of the mass, i dont know what they do now but the priests would say go, you are sent forth. It didnt mean go home to lunch. [laughing] he meant you are now to go and immerse yourself in the pain of the world. And i want to end with the confucian vision of how that should be done. Because i think its very appetite to our polarized rights today. He said you learn compassion, confucian say, and that meant the golden rule. Confucius was one of first people to enunciate the golden rule. His disciples asked him, master, which of your teachings could we put into practice all day and every day . And what is the Single Thread that runs through all your teachings . And he said, likening to the self. Look into your own heart, discover what gives you pain, and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else. And you do it not just when you feel like it, all day and every day. And that means all day every day you are leaving yourself behind and putting yourself in the position of another, and thats how you gain enlightenment. Anyway, you start, the confucians would say later, in the family. Thats where you learn compassion, now to live with other people in relation to the family. You cant go and put the world right if your own family is in disarray, but it can start in the family. You then move out into the next circle, in the city which you dwell. And look, ask yourself, people are living in the streets this year . What, in london, for example, i come from, which city, 25 of the population are living in poverty. We should be going out to that. Then the third circle to move out into the whole country, but finally to the whole world. And the whole world is, now we are so globally small, linked together as never before, unable to get away from one another and yet we are retreating into nationalistic ghettos like brexit. Moving away from the fact that we have that outward reach toward the whole world. So thats what the scriptures are saying. Not to focus and just sing a few hymns, not to slavishly find out what scripture said 500 years or even 1000 years ago. What is the same to you now, how will it heal the moment now . And remember that it will tell you nothing about god. It will make you realize that when you are in the form of the divine, you come to the end of what words and thoughts can do. Thank you. [applause] will thank you so much. Thats extraordinarily illuminating and inspiring talk, dr. Armstrong. Thank you so much. We will have a question and answer with the audience, but i have a little surprise. And im going to ask my colleague, one of the great curators of this library, to present it. Mark . Hello again. Hello again. Hello, everyone. You will recall you came through and had opportunity to show some sacred texts. Those of us who are fans of yours know that weve been on this journey for many a book which weve learned that sacred text changes over time in place them both in terms use in meaning. Whether it be in our case of our collections of 14 century hungarian manuscript of the bible, to the printing of the gutenberg bible in 1454, to the printing of the King James Bible in 1611 and beyond, sacred text has always been in flux. However, there is one aspect of the material that we showed you today which is a constant, its true, and even as far back as a 15th century was real, and that is jerusalem. And so whether it comes from bryden box pilgrimage to jerusalem in the 1470s and 80s, or to this, the image of jerusalem from the nuremberg chronicles in 1493, jerusalem has remained as the center, an image of truth and reality while all the rest of the world was displayed in fiction and fantasy, jerusalem was always portrayed realistically. So as a remembrance of your time with us today i would like to give you jerusalem. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Its so wonderful when we can connect what we have in this last library with something that you just said, so thats a real for us. We will now take questions. Should we raise the house lights so we can see one another . Questions for dr. Armstrong. We have microphones floating through the room and they will be happy to hand you a microphone and give you a voice. Thank you for your talk. Do you think humanity has finished writing scripture quacks do you see as creating more scripture . Well, one of the interesting things that my editor in new york asked me to do when you read the first draft of my new book, he said, you know, you say that scripture starts going off in the long. We start getting all analytical and scientific about things. And scripture is an art form. Perhaps there are artists who at that time were writing scriptures better. I had fun with this. I was right. He said why dont you include some . So why did first of all miltons paradise lost builtins. Builtins god is a disaster, really, that is the god of the catechism. Hes endlessly going on about foreordained and free this entry that. Utterly boring. But satan is a triumph. Because what hes doing is rescuing goodness. Milton was a calvinist but he did not agree with calvins, the calvinist doctrine of predestination which when you are born you are predestined to go to hell or to heaven. This was the disgusting view of god, and it was really torture. People were having breakdowns. Satan had become a figure of absolutely monstrous evil. We know that melton read hebrew. Use one of the few people who are allowed to read the scriptures because the reformers said you would only read scripture if you could read in the original languages which would put most of us out, greek and hebrew. He read and on the last day of creation, the rabbis noticed that got instead of saying it is good, he said this is very good. Why . Because, said the rabbis come on that day god created the evil incarnation in human beings. Because we human beings are the only evil beings in the world. Animals are not evil. But we had these big brains that make us do evil. But so is evil inclination could ask the rabbis . Yes, they said. Because without it i meant would not marry a wife or engage in trade, for example. Instinct is good but it can be easily converted and become hurtful and harmful and dangerous point and in trade which the rabbis are breaking on you have to do, your partners are down and jeff to win it put people out of business. Without we are a mixture of good and evil and that is what satan is. Satan is a human being. He is made evil human. There theres one passage in mis paradise lost where he sees eve for the first time before she is fallen. He becomes, milton said, stupidly good. Hes so lost and entranced by her. Milton put onto his satan selects scylla quiz that are worthy of hamlet or macbeth about his regret for what he is done, about the mixture of good and evil, that all of us are. There are other scriptures that i mentioned. I also look at thomas mann, joseph book, for macbooks that tells the story of joseph and his brothers but it also is discussing the rise of nazism in germany at that time. Its a comet on his own time. And finally i had David Grossmans little book, a difficult story, but i very unlikely hero, a kind of bug really. But goldman, if you want to see what mid rash is like, you see it, you see it, grossman takes every single sentence and comments on it and comes out with some beautiful thoughts about human nature in the person of that unlikely hero, samhsa. So, yes, i think we can probably are attempts to find scriptures, new ones. They can become rather sloppy and sentimental, when theyre applied with rigor in the way that milton did and grossman and man, you have an intelligence that make you see the scriptures differently and apply them to your own. And wonderful accommodation of scripture and literature, thank you for the complete answer. Right over there. I had a quick question. Given the fact we are in the Worlds Largest library, and tonight you have reminded us that throughout the history of writing, the primary way we had communicated, taught and learned, was through oral technique. Much of which we probably have forgotten since we engaged in writing so much since not only the invention of the breast but everything you talked about a couple centuries later. Do you see that in modern technology, social media, the world of all the various devices that we have that we are shifting in some historic way away from understanding and communicating in writing to something that is morphing to some combination of something that is less writing and again become either more oral or visual and Something Different that we have experts before . Are we moving move into a new f communication that may be something similar to the ancient but not quite . You may well be right. Im not very [inaudible] yes. You may well be right. What slightly worries me, we were talking about this earlier about the phone. Is we are never in the moment anymore though. I will tell you a story. I was in singapore recently as i was in a restaurant, and a couple came in to have lunch together and they said that at the table immediately took togr phones and started talking to other people, which they did for the entire lunch. And then when the guy, lunch arrived, he took a photograph of his hamburger so he could say we had lunch, this was the hamburger that we had. Instead, scripture is asking us to be in the moment, and very often when you see people, i see them walking up and down my street which is very pretty, 18thcentury street in the middle of london, beautiful curve. They are not looking at it. They are yakking on to someone on the phone or people are walking along a beautiful cliff on the sea after chatting to someone in the office. We have to be in the moment. I worry in social media about the ugliness of some of it, the bullying, the fact that children are sometimes being driven to suicide by the unkindness. Because you dont have to look someone in the face and tell them something horrible. You can do it anonymously without taking the consequences. Probably you have had this here, but there have been suicides and there are even websites we can go to find out how to commit suicide, as a 14yearoldyearold child did quite recently in birmingham. I think, like all im not saying its evil because its good and evil next, i think. It could bring us together more, and i think of the Prophet Muhammad for a moment. Because when the koran came down, it wasnt always on some lonely mountaintop like moses. People would come and talk to him about a problem in the community, and we are told that he wouldnt just say just think about that or no, he would think deeply into it. So deeply he would grow pale and sweat even on a cold day, sometimes he would shake with the effort of struggling to find an answer, and then out with come this message on the koran, from the depths of his heart, from the depths of his being. Sometimes he would say come up. He would shake, but out of that effort, when he was doing was really entering into that moment with the whole of him, his body and the soul entering to get as deeply into the problem as possible. And i fear that some of it, whole idea of the tweet, whatever characters it is, i think this could become and escape from the present moment. The present moment is all we have. We might all be dead the next moment if something happens or a terrorist suddenly marches in. We dont know, and the scripture tells us to live in that moment. But i dont want to sound too much like a sort of iconoclast of this because i am too old to enjoy and inhabit it fully. And i havent embraced it much. I dont want to be endlessly chatting, and i hate the telephone, even the regular ones. [laughing] i find it an intrusion when i am writing and or thinking. I really prefer seeing people facetoface, but still i may be one of those iconoclasts, just, but its probably a bit of good and a bit of evil, as all things are. Great question, thank you, and a marvelous answer. We had time for one more question i believe. Im prefacing this by i am interpreting you as saying that scripture is not closed, even though we talk about sacred scripture and canyons, and that the engagement with scripture should not be something that we are just taking and freezing in time, okay. In much of human endeavor, thats what we want to do as both religious scripture, that is come to take the United States constitution, to take communism, the works of marx and lenin, et cetera. It occurs to me that there is a dynamic year, and i like your comment on this, that that dynamic is one of fear. And it comes to me from the standpoint that once upon a a e i pretended to be a musician. And as the musician i never performed exactly the same, because if i did it was dead. If i engaged with it i discovered something new. So my question to you is, what you were saying about scripture, it is like somebody performing a piece of music. You must constantly engage. It is a challenge. You dont know where its going to go, and that should be informing how you relate to people whose scriptures are different than yours. I think thats a really profound remark. I do think, i think about the fear, too, because i think about fear. We are all frightened beings. We have good reason to be fearful at the present moment. I think scripture teaches us, i think what i heard you say, scripture makes us look at things were afraid of, like extension, that if you do the same thing over and over again exactly the same, somehow its a died. And we are all frightened beings. Beings. We are all going to face our own deaths, and we have to live with that. Thats what some of what youre saying, its probably a bit about the death fear. We want to leave our mark, for when we have gone in that. We go back to the past to make it, revive it as it were and make it live again in the present. And so what was the last thing you said . [inaudible] music . [inaudible] dont repeat it. [inaudible] yes, definitely. Because we are now living in a world where we know about other peoples scriptures. And other peoples religions. You see travelers would come back from four different lands and tell us about weird stories that goals on in other parts of the world. Now we understand the depth and the profound similarities that we see right in china, india, muslims, christians, jews, in their scriptures. We see how profound the likenesses are as well as the differences. And that makes some people afraid because they want their faith to be singular. And its when we began to find out about other people scriptures that we started dating fundamentalism, people going back and saying this is the bedrock of faith. Mine is better. But, and that is linked up to the terrible weight of nationalism is coming up at the moment, brexit, for example. Yet i keep saying it and if you come from britain, thats all we hear about these days. [laughing] fills some of us with despair. I dont know how the country going to come back together again after this. We are so profoundly divided. But here you have remember when the berlin wall came down and people were dancing in the street . Weve seen people cheering at the prospect of war between mexico and the United States. So that you have since wanting your little scripture, your little world to be the one. We cant do that anymore because the world is coming to us. It comes to us in the form of migrants die every day to try to get into europe and the united kingdom. You heard this terrible story about those 29 people from vietnam recently i just died in a refrigerated car at essex, y to get into the united kingdom. Keeping out, keeping other people scriptures at a is a result of fear. And yet the scriptures are all asking us, its like confucius, to go out from in a series of concentric circles to embrace the world. Go out to all tribes and nations. Let me finish on a word, with a phrase from the koran. Which is seen by so many people as an evil scripture. People havent read it of course and if you have read it i said thats not how you read the koran. You dont read the koran. You listen to it in arabic, not as this is his last message to his community. He knew he would be dying season and they made the mecca pilgrimage together and he spoke. He told them not to fight one another, that muslims must not fight one another. We are all one family. And he ended with this phrase in which god speaks to the whole of humanity. And i think its something that we need to learn today. Oh, humankind and is using, hes talking about adam and eve that we all came from a Single Person but i get to get a bit of midrash year and suggest that we all come from a man and a woman. Each one of us, a fusion of opposites coming together to make a new person. Oh, humankind, he says to the people of the world, we have created you all from a male and female. And we have formed you into tribes and nations so that you may get to know one another. And that should be our task today. [applause] dr. Armstrong, thank you for that enlightening talk in which you have brought us down deep to places where we dont usually go, and then brought this up to an illuminated explanation of faith and its true roots. Thank you so much. Please help me thank dr. Armstrong, and please meet her at the signing tables next door where you can actually ask another question or two, perhaps. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the u. S. Senate will meet today. Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell added todays session in anticipation of an agreement on the next round of coronavirus economic relief. Reports are a deal has been reached. The next economic stimulus is expected to be about 500 billion and would include more funding for the Small Business loan program that ran out of money last week as well as funding for hospitals and the national covid19 testing program. You can watch the senate like today at 4 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Enjoy book to be now and over the weekend onto schedule