Beware Your Own Myth

When I was in my late 20s and early 30s, I taught math and coached track at a boarding school for "motivationally challenged" boys.  I was an intense and quiet person then, opinionated, and forceful in the expression of those opinions when asked, but not very talkative.  Generally, my students considered me a soft touch.  When asked which teacher they would want to have to face were they ever in deep trouble, the answer was usually, "Mr. Currier."  The faculty, on the other hand, apparently thought of me as aloof, even arrogant, though I was completely ignorant of this until some years later, when a former faculty member shared this with my wife.  My colleague had no reason to slam me or be less than honest.  We had had a good, collegial relationship, so I trusted her observations.  My wife confirmed that some of her own friends had had the same impression.

Hearing all this left me stunned and bewildered, because it wasn't how I conceived myself, nor was it how those closest to me viewed me.  I had assumed that, in the adult world, my self-conception was what others would perceive about me, but that was not, in fact, the case.

I have come to realize since then that living from the inside out, as we all do, limits our vision and warps our self-understanding.  This is not to say that those who stand outside our mind's eye are any more accurate than we are in developing a full picture of who we are.  Far from it.  Looking from the outside in has its own limitations, many of them quite constraining (stereotyping, projection, etc.).  Nonetheless, a perceptive friend or colleague is often much more aware of how we interact with the world and the impact we make on those around us than we ourselves are. Some of us listen thoughtfully to their observations and revise our self-understanding in light of the assessment of those we trust.  Many more of us, I suspect, persist in our delusions about who and what we are.

Over time our self-perceptions, however inaccurate, build themselves into a history that tells the story of our pilgrimage through life.  The older I get, the more history I accumulate, the more aware I become of how prone we are to "editing" those histories.  We are convinced, usually, that our memories ensure a reasonable facsimile of the truth of our stories, whatever the limits of our perception.  But memory is a very slippery thing.

Most of us understand our memories to be something like a digital recorder that has the bad habit of dropping files, leaving gaps in the data.  Nonetheless, we usually assume that what our memories retain is basically accurate.  Contemporary memory studies, however, have shown that it is a much trickier and less reliable tool in recording the past than we think.  We often unconsciously edit what we remember, bleeping out what might cast us in an unfavorable light or what causes us the deepest pain.  Sometimes we fill in the blank spots with material that never existed.  Our minds work to construct a coherent narrative that makes sense, even if it does not correspond to what actually happened.   The discovery of false memory syndrome and documentary films such as "Thin Blue Line", which, along with the use of DNA testing, have called into question the reliability of eyewitness testimony, have given us reason to doubt the veracity of any history we construct.  Indeed, anyone who has ever sat down at a family reunion to swap stories has had a hint of how prone we are to self-delusion when a sibling or a parent interrupts our story to say, "Hey wait!  That wasn't how it happened.  Here's what I remember!"

The limits of our self-perception and the unreliability of our memories have convinced me that our self-constructed histories, the stories we tell ourselves about who and what we are, are not "the truth" about us in any objective or empirical sense.

This is a disturbing notion. It compels one to ask, "Who am I then?  If not who my memory and my sense of self tell me I am, then who?"  It casts doubt on all our perceptions, not just our self-perception.  If I cannot perceive the real me, how can I hope to perceive the real in anything?  Perhaps everything I experience is nothing more than illusion, an elaborately constructed myth that lends coherence and meaning, but nonetheless bears little correspondence to the world as it truly is.

I believe that God has created me as a unique and precious expression of his own "image."  In my capacity to love and to create, I reflect that image in my own peculiar way.  But my awareness of what this way truly is is skewed and darkened.  When St. Paul wrote that now we see in a mirror "dimly" (I Cor. 13:12, NRSV)-- or, more literally, "in a riddle" (en ainigmati) --I suspect this is what he had in mind.  He was aware that his own perceptions, as profound as they were, still lacked a fullness and maturity, that in some way they still represented "childish things."  He longed to know both himself and the world as God knew them and to be known by others as God knew him.  He recognized the provisional quality, the incompleteness, of his vision.  And yet he was so entranced by the riddle, so captivated by intimations of its solution, that he could not abandon the pursuit of a fuller, truer vision of "the Real", which he saw in Christ, the fullest embodiment of God's image ever to grace the cosmos.

In Praise of Inauthenticity

A priest I know once talked at length in a seminarian supervisors' group session about his desire to be "authentic."  Since the 1960s, the word "authentic" has been used frequently in religious circles (and elsewhere) to describe someone whose way of life has integrity, who is genuine and honest.  Authenticity is a lofty goal, but one I know we cannot meet, and so I challenged him on it.

I told a story once related to me by an older priest, who had attended a lecture on the Nicene Creed by an elderly patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church "back in the day," as the "authenticity movement" was just taking root.  When the good bishop had finished his lecture, he fielded questions from his audience.  A seminarian stood up and said he did not think he could say the Creed with any real "authenticity" because it was so full of mythological imagery, including doctrinal statements about the virgin birth of Jesus he could not possibly recognize as true in any objective, empirical sense.  The patriarch stared at him over his glasses in silence for a few moments and then said slowly, "Young man, this creed represents the accumulated wisdom of the Church.  It took nearly three hundred years to formulate and has been reaffirmed by the Church again and again over more than sixteen hundred years of subsequent history.  Who are you to set your understanding above it?  Far greater minds and hearts than yours or mine have wrestled with it and been shaped by it.  As a representative of the Church, it is not for you to set it aside.  You may struggle with it all you like, that is a good thing, but you must not toss it aside in the name of some imagined 'authenticity'.  You are not fully formed in Christ--none of us are--and therefore cannot describe yourself as 'authentic' in any true sense.  Rather, you need to say it every day as a prayer, in the hope that it will shape your mind and your heart, so that one day you will understand it as it is meant to be understood." 

My friend was, I think, a bit upset at me, judging from his expression.  He said that I had misunderstood him, that it wasn't that he did not recognize his present understandings as limited and still "in process", but that he wanted to be transparent, the kind of person who was true to his heart, and not some phony pretending to be someone he was not.  But his attempt at clarification did not turn away my objection.  I wondered aloud how anyone could be fully transparent, given the truth that most of us cannot see very clearly into our own hearts.  I could not help remembering Jeremiah's lament, "The human heart is deceitful above any other thing, desperately sick; who can fathom it?"  (Jeremiah 17:9, REB)  I said I did not know who I was, really, "authentically".  I knew I was in the process of becoming someone, someone whom I prayed would be conformed to the image of Christ, but the fulfillment of that longing only would come with the fullness of time.  As the old patriarch no doubt would have affirmed, it was that person, and not the person I was now, that I should understand to be the authentic Jonathan. 

This did not sit well either.  In hindsight, I think I should have more clearly acknowledged the validity of wanting to be transparent and genuine.  It is something we all long for and a noble aspiration.  And it is our destiny, if we are true to our calling and forge ahead in our pilgrimage, trusting the Lord will lead us in the way.  Paul gives voice to this yearning with great eloquence, most especially in I Corinthians 13: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I am fully known."  We long to have the fig leaves of Adam and Eve stripped away, to know the perfect intimacy of Eden before the Fall.  But the road is long before that joy becomes ours once again.  It demands an arduous trek through a desert land, a confrontation with the sin that has made it impossible to know ourselves or one another fully, and a deep supply of grace.

What's more, pushing to reveal too much of ourselves can backfire, precisely because we are, in the world as it stands, prone to disharmony, unable to enter fully into oneanother's hearts.  Misunderstanding and hard feelings easily undermine a relationship when opinions and perspectives are shared that may be upsetting or off-putting.  Yes, honesty about our own struggles with sin and relationships can help in developing personal connections because it makes clear we know the burden of being human--we can "relate"--but we had best be judicious in what we choose to share and what we don't... and with whom.  Our sense of community is always tenuous and provisional, this side of the Kingdom, and what little we do have is, in part, based on a kind of studied ignorance, a willingness to look away from those things that would divide us and fix our gaze upon those things that unite us.  Too much information can kill a good thing.  I do not want to know too much about the self-doubts and late-night anguish of my president or bishop.  I do not want to know too much about the political biases and animosities of my parishioners.  I do not want to know too much about the sex life and fantasies of my parents or my children.  Let me keep some of my illusions.  I need them.  They lend me a kind of stability, a stability I need to move forward and not fall into despair.  God knows I have enough trouble struggling with my own inner demons, let alone those of others.

So yes, spare me the fully authentic.  Inauthenticity, in judicious, well measured portions, is good for me.  Paradoxically, it is the very thing that gives me the strength and courage to carry on, a peculiar, inverted grace that makes it possible for me to work toward the authentic.  I cannot bare myself and become too naked too soon, or I will perish in the fiercely cold and unforgiving winds of a hostile world utterly unlike the warm and open paradise of Eden.

Shame and Grace

We sometimes hear certain cultures described as "shame cultures."  By this, anthropologists mean cultures that seek to compel conformity through shaming, imbuing people with a sense of worthlessness when they fail to live up to the social norms of the community.  Japan is considered a shame culture, as are many African and Middle Eastern cultures.  By contrast, Western cultures are thought, by dint of their embrace of individual freedom, to have transcended the abuse of human shame and to celebrate the individual, with all his idiosyncrasies and foibles.  But if this is so, why the high level of suicide and depression in Western cultures relative to the rest of the world?  Why are so many of our counseling centers and psychotherapy couches filled with people with so little sense of self-worth, haunted by their inadequacies, by a conviction of their own "failure"?  Why do people report themselves happier in Nigeria than in France?

In his brilliant but unfinished work, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that shame is a consequence of our disunion with God.  He points to Genesis 2, the story of the Fall, as the mythic revelation of this truth.  He says that shame demonstrates an awareness of this fractured union, driven by the human desire to become "like God,"  i.e., to make our own choices utterly apart from God, to define our own good.  The impulse to cover up, to hide, that is intrinsic to shame, is a indicator of our sense that we have broken something vital.  Perfect intimacy has been destroyed.  Judgment has been introduced.  What is "good" and what is "bad" must be discerned and separated out, now that we know good and evil.   

In many cultures, this discernment is made by a group of elders adhering to longstanding tradition.  Anyone who fails to conform with their judgment is shunned  and those who have transgressed are not easily reconciled back into the culture.  He or she carries a black mark that taints the family, clan, or tribe.  Reconciliation and forgiveness are unlikely.  Second chances are nearly impossible, unless one leaves the group completely.  The burden of shame is huge.  Occasionally the stain is seen as so great a blight upon the family name that it can be removed only through some form of "honor killing." 

In the West we have convinced ourselves we are too "advanced" to submit ourselves to such treatment.  We argue that human dignity won't allow it, that human beings are redeemable, that forgiveness is always possible.  Those who transgress, rather than hiding in shame, sometimes make public and open confessions as a way of "working through" the whys and wherefores of their actions.  They often are welcomed back into the fold once they have "come clean" and admitted their fault, especially if they pledge to reform.  Quarterback Michael Vick, President Bill Clinton, and former D.C. mayor Marion Barry all demonstrate the point: few transgressors remain beyond the pale forever.  There is almost always a road back to respectability. 

And yet, huge sectors of our population, crossing all ages and income levels, report feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy, a kind of shame that seems unrelated in any direct way to a specific action in the world, but rather to who they are... or, more accurately, what they have become.  These people describe a sense that somehow they have not "made the grade," that they have not lived up to their own best expectations for themselves.  They see themselves as failures in a culture of success, a culture that says you can be anything you choose to be.  Not infrequently they are, by any objective, external measure, actually quite successful, but internally they are convinced that they have not measured up, that they have been judged wanting, if only by themselves.

Perhaps this is the dark side of a culture that dares to assert the limitless possibilities of individual achievement without an adequate understanding of human frailty.  Disunion with God cannot be overcome through human effort.  It can only be transcended by grace, by God's free gift of himself.  We cannot "achieve" our way back to Eden, but yet, somehow, we have convinced ourselves we can.  As long as we believe this to be true, consciously or unconsciously, we will continue to be haunted by a sense of failure that is rooted in shame, in an innate awareness that we are not who we should be.  We tell ourselves we are not the professional success or the lover or the parent we should be, but the problem goes deeper than that.  And paradoxically it is only by recognizing the depth of our predicament that we find the freedom to forgive one another, to forgive ourselves, and set ourselves in a position of openness, so that God can find us again.

My Contemplative Prayer Retreat in England

I am writing this to you from Bath, England.  Yes, I'm sitting in a pub and nursing a pint.  The retreat is over and I am, I have to admit, relieved.  Not that it was a bad experience.  Far from it.  It was one of the most intense spiritual experiences of my life.  I am just not used to meditating three times a day, keeping silence at every meal, and wrestling with the Spirit for several hours each day.  I have been on silent retreats before, to be sure, but never of this intensity.  I'm prayed out!

            The leader of the retreat was Dom (a title of respect for a Benedictine abbot) Laurence Freeman, the current leader of the World Community for Christian Meditation, a group founded by Freeman's late mentor, Dom John Main, to promote the use of Christian meditation, a form of contemplative prayer long cherished in the monastic tradition, but little known outside monastic circles until the 1970s, when Fr. Main in England and Fr. Thomas Keating in the U.S. helped to found a worldwide movement to spread the use of contemplative prayer and awareness of the mystical tradition of the Church within the broader Christian community.  Their work was greatly assisted by the writings of Thomas Merton and Basil Pennington, two highly articulate advocates of contemplative practice beyond the monastery walls whose work continues to have wide influence, as well as by Vatican II and the Ecumenical Movement.

            Today the practice of contemplative prayer and Christian meditation has spread well beyond the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church.  There are contemplative prayer and meditation groups in almost every mainline denomination and the movement is even beginning to gain notice among more ecumenically minded evangelicals.  The retreat I attended was dominated by Anglicans, but included a Methodist and a Presbyterian, as well as a handful of Roman Catholics.  It was evenly divided between men and women and included three Americans and three Irishmen.  Most had come to Christian meditation or contemplative prayer through contact with an active group of contemplatives within their communities.  For some, it was a relatively new discovery, while others had been practicing for decades.

            The retreat, which was specially directed toward priests and ordained ministers, focused on the need for silence in a world filled with constant stimulation and interruption, where it is hard enough to hear oneself think, let alone hear God.  Solitude and silence were sought by Jesus for his own times of prayer, in "a lonely place" apart.  While we have no direct knowledge of how Jesus used his solitude, it seems quite plausible that contemplative practice has its roots in Jesus' prayer life, since the post-apostolic Fathers and Mothers of the church who first described contemplative prayer insist they received the tradition from the apostles themselves and those who knew them.  It may be that Jesus' instruction to "go into your room and close the door" was a figure for entering into a silent place within yourself, as the Greek word used for "room" (tamieion) is an odd one, referring to a store room in a villa, not the kind of room most of Jesus' disciples ever would have used.  Its location suggests interiority, depth, darkness, and quiet. 

            The practice of contemplative prayer or meditation is deceptively simple.   The practitioner chooses a "sacred word," perhaps the name of Jesus or "peace" or "love".   It can be a single word or phrase with meaning for the meditator, but should not be too elaborate.  Fr. Laurence suggests maranatha or some other Aramaic or Greek phrase, so as not to make the associations so immediate as to start a chain of thought too quickly.  (I like eirene humin, "peace be with you.")  This word or phrase is silently repeated whenever thoughts enter the mind, gently nudging them aside.  The aim is to free one's mind as far as possible of conscious babble so you can wait on God and become more sensitive to his promptings.

            Contemplative prayer is not intended to displace other types of prayer, such as intercessory prayer, confession, or prayers of adoration.  It is, instead, a complement to them.  Most other forms of prayer entail offering our words to God.  Contemplative prayer opens us to receive God's word in our hearts.  It is a way of listening, rather than a way of speaking, in the holy conversation that encompasses all prayer.

            My own practice of contemplative prayer has helped me find a still point in my life, a centering point where I am able to re-orient my mind and heart to the things of God.  I have come to realize through contemplative prayer and meditation just how noisy and cluttered my interior world is and how little room there is for God to get a word in.  It is not that I suddenly hear God's voice rumbling in my head when I pray this way.  Rather, it seems to have sensitized me to God's subtle presence throughout my life and kept me from sinking into that sort of dull materialism that seeks only stimulation and sensation, so prevalent in the modern world.

            It is not an easy practice.  Anyone who has ever tried to keep silent for a minute, stilling the "gerbil wheel" of thought that constantly churns in our minds, knows well how much of a struggle it can be.  But it is one that bears a surprisingly great amount of fruit when practiced with any reasonable regularity.

            At St. Thomas, here in Lancaster, we have a contemplative prayer group that meets every other Sunday at the home of Marianne and Harrison Gordon, both of whom are practiced contemplatives.  Mildred Lorch has extensive experience in contemplative prayer as well.  In short, there are resources available for anyone in the parish who would like to learn more about this life-giving form of prayer.  It is my hope that, in the near future, more people in the parish will have the opportunity to discover how fruitful Christian meditation and the contemplative path can be.

P.S. Anyone wishing to know more about contemplative prayer and Christian meditation should check out the following websites:

http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org

http://www.wccm.org/

Advice To A Newly Married Couple

You want "advice" about marriage?  I'm guessing I'm qualified to give it, since I've been married to Ann for more than 28 years. 

It staggers me to say that.  28 years.  I've lived with Ann longer than I lived with my parents… and, quite obviously, much longer than I ever lived alone.  She knows me more intimately than any parent ever would.  She knows all my warts.  And she still loves me. 

Now there's a miracle!  

When I got married,  I was a mere lad of 25.  And Ann was even younger.  But I felt all grown up.  I thought I was reasonably mature.  I had my fancy college degree.  I was responsible.  I was in seminary, for heaven's sake!  In fact, I was so impressed with myself, I was convinced I was wise enough to avoid all, or at least most, of the "mistakes" my parents made in their marriage. 

That's what I thought.  But what I discovered was actually more like the revelation of historian Thomas Carlyle's wife Jane, who said to her husband a few years after they had married, "I am not at all the person you and I took me for."    

This is the first grand insight of marriage: you are both more prideful, stubborn, self-centered, and inconsiderate than you ever imagined.  And if you ever vacillate or have any doubt about it, your spouse will be only too happy to explain to you the truth…or at least, the truth about you, if not him- or herself.   The fact is, you take your mess along with you when you get married.  All the neuroses of the family, all the anxieties, secrets, resentments and feelings of anguish come with you, like it or not… not to mention the ones you cultivate all on your own.  They're like the smelly old gym bag your mom keeps throwing out but somehow keeps showing up in your closet.  You just can't let it go.

Once the truth dawns, what then?  Well, you have three choices: 

You can opt out.  Lots of folks do.  Most divorces happen within the first seven years of a marriage.  People think, "This is too hard.  I'm too crazy, you're definitely too crazy, so I'm outta here!" 

You can stay, refuse to change, and be miserable.  Some folks do take this option, to save face, or "for the sake of the kids". 

Or you can grow up… together… at last. 

But it must be done together.  When one spouse wants to change and the other refuses, it's a very sad thing and no good can come of it.  It can only be done together.  In fact, this is precisely why you have one another, it's the reason marriage exists, the deepest, truest reason.  You are to be the instrument of one another's transformation, a transformation into a person more loving, more honest, more open, more wise, more whole than you are now. This is the work of love.  Because you have made this covenant together, it is your work now, the work of a lifetime. 

And it is hard work.  You have to fight against all the bad habits of the past, all the unkind words and inconsiderate gestures.  You have to change behaviors you were hardly aware of.  You have to confront yourself.  You have to find the courage to enter into and look upon forbidden psychic and spiritual landscapes where signs warning "Don't go there!" are posted, with your eyes wide open.  And you have to place your mind and heart in the mind and heart of the other, not only as a way of offering empathy and compassion, but also so you might understand how best to challenge the other, confront the petty cruelties and unkindnesses, the denials and self-delusions we are all guilty of, so that he or she may hear you.  It is work that requires a tender heart and a very tough mind. 

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev once pointed out you cannot love in general.  You can only love someone, and it can only be done "in minute particular."  In other words, the little things matter.  The greetings in the morning, the tone of voice,  the gentleness, the touch of the hand: they matter.  So does doing the laundry, making dinner, cleaning the house, lending a hand.  Listening matters, and so does talking, honestly, openly, kindly… though listening matters more.  You cannot remain obsessed with your interests, your wants, your needs, or assume they are identical to those of your spouse, and expect love to do its work.  It won't.  That's why you need so much to listen: to know the difference.

And while marriage is a cooperative venture, you cannot expect it to be "50-50" all the time.  There will inevitably be times when one or the other of you will carry most of the load.  Grief, depression, disability, illness and addiction can afflict any marriage.  Inevitably, one or more of them will afflict yours.  This is when your vows really begin to matter.  The traditional vows pledge fidelity "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health" until you are parted by death.   I expect you promised something similar.  So when your beloved loses a parent and is lost in grief for months on end, you open your heart.  It does not matter how painful it is or how lonely it makes you feel.  When he is sucked down into the vortex of dementia, you open your heart.  When she is facing breast cancer and possible disfigurement, you open your heart.  You must expect it to be painful… but take courage:  God will help you, because it is the work you have covenanted to do.   It is how love is made real in a world of flesh and blood.  It is how it is lived.  The reason St. Paul compared marriage to the union of Christ and his Church is because husband and wife are called to be Christ to one another, to incarnate him by offering a deep, sacrificial love to each other. 

If you are both true to this calling, in heart, mind, and action, however imperfectly, something mysterious begins to happen, something that truly is miraculous.  The rough edges begin to wear smooth.  Somehow that smelly old gym bag doesn't keep showing up in the closet the way it used to.  You find yourself growing gentler, more compassionate, more hopeful, more at ease with yourself in the world, and more capable of courage.  Both of you, together. 

The Canadian writer Robertson Davies wrote a wonderful novel called The Lyre of Orpheus, much of which is spent contemplating how men and women love one another (or don't) and how their relationships fit into the grand scheme of things.  At one point, the protagonist, the Rev. Simon Darcourt, turns to his psychiatrist friend and says, "Marriage isn't just domesticity, or the continuance of the race, or institutionalized sex, or a form of property right.  And it damned well isn't happiness, as the word is generally used.  I think it's a way of finding your soul."  As a man married for 28 years, I couldn't agree more.   When marriage does its work, it reveals a truer, deeper vision of the persons you were meant to be, and gives you the strength to live into that vision.

Of course, it is always a work in progress.  And there is much stumbling and fumbling along the way.  You will hurt one another… sometimes inadvertently; sometimes, sad to say, on purpose.  It can't be helped, human beings being what they are.  But if you are true to the struggle and work to live your vows daily, there will be healing… and, one day, unfathomable blessing, a sense of grace beyond deserving.   You'll look back and wonder, how did it happen, that we should come to this place, so bright and beautiful, when all we did was try to love each other?  And you'll but barely remember the tears that made it possible. 

I promise you.