I am a religious man and a reasonable man. For some, this a problematic statement. They would insist there is no such animal, that it is a non-sequitur to say someone is both reasonable and religious.
Admittedly, many of the people who assert such things have a child's notion of religion. I am reminded of a story told me by an older priest, who many years ago attended a debate at Union Theological Seminary in New York between the German theologian Paul Tillich and a logical positivist philosopher from Columbia University. The debate centered on the reasonableness of religion. The philosopher had the first crack and immediately launched into a dismissive swipe at the biblical account of creation, stating it was patently absurd to think, in this age of science, that God created the world in seven days or that the first woman was shaped from a rib of the first man. When it came time for Tillich's rebuttal, he stood up and said, "You'll get no argument from me. I thought this was going to be a debate." He then proceeded to describe the symbolic semiotics of religion, leaving the philosopher so flummoxed and embarrassed, he could not continue. The smug sense of superiority, coupled with an oddly literalistic and ignorant misunderstanding of religion, that characterized the positivist philosopher's attitude is reproduced again and again in the many atheists who imagine themselves to be enlightened, but who show a startling lack of knowledge or curiosity about theology, biblical scholarship, the relationship between psychology and religions, or the philosophy of religion.
At the same time, many secular skeptics have a difficult time dealing with phenomena that do not seem to be explicable in scientific terms: miraculous healings, the appearance of angels, demonic possession, etc. The typical response is, "Well, there has to be a natural explanation. Either this is a fraud or we simply don't understand the science well enough at this point." The notion that there could be a supernatural explanation is dismissed out of hand. In the grip of a naive realism, they refuse to consider the possibility of a transcendent reality existing outside the box of nature, i.e., that which is governed by physical laws. That said, I must confess that many religious persons are also reluctant to embrace supernaturalism. This is particularly true of people who subscribe to more liberal forms of religion. As a graduate of both Harvard and Union Theological Seminary of New York, stalwart bastions of liberal religion, I once counted myself among them... but not any more.
I first gained an inkling that there might be some invisible realm of reality that every once in a great while crashes into our own when I read a reprint of an article written by a professor of religion at Smith College back in 1963. The professor, Ralph Harlow, was a product of the same modernist, "enlightened" form of religion that had shaped my early understanding. Prior to a walk in a park he took with his wife, he would have explained angels as symbolic conveyors of God's word in Scripture: in essence, a literary device. On that day in 1963, he and his wife both heard voices behind them on the park pathway and kept looking back to see if someone was following behind, but could see no one. The voices grew louder and stranger, so that Harlow became convinced that a large gaggle of foreign students must have entered the park, but still they could see no one behind them. Then, suddenly, the voices were above their heads. They looked up and, to their astonishment, saw a flight of winged creatures in colorful, flowing robes, chattering with one another in an unintelligible tongue. Stunned, unable to take in what he had just seen, Harlow reached for a park bench and abruptly sat down. His wife slowly settled down next to him. He looked at her and before the words, "Did you see what I see?" were out of his mouth, he knew the answer. It was in her eyes. All she had to do was nod. Harlow's account of his experience in Guideposts magazine was the first plausible telling of an encounter with angels I had ever read, but it was not to be the last. I have since become convinced: angels are real. Some of the current crop of public atheists have expressed dismay that despite our ever-accelerating advances in science, so many, even among the well educated, still cling to such "superstitions." Perhaps it is because enough people have had inexplicable encounters like that of Prof. Harlow and his wife to render the secular skeptic's version of reality too limiting to fit "the data."
The second impetus to reconsider my perspective was my encounter with the work of Dr. Larry Dossey, a physician who has spent much of his career examining the relationship between healing and prayer. Dossey, when he was a resident at a large Dallas hospital back in the 1980s, had been dismissive of prayer as anything more than a source of emotional comfort. A scientific rationalist, he considered as ludicrous the idea that prayer could heal, or that God would heal through prayer... until, that is, he witnessed it firsthand. A patient of his who had "terminal" cancer in both lungs was completely, inexplicably healed, after his friends and fellow believers had prayed for him. There had been no therapy, no radiation or chemo. The physicians had told the man to make his final arrangements. There was no explanation for it that made sense within the bounds of science. Dossey began to wonder about the relationship between prayer and healing and the more he studied, the more evident it became to him that the two were profoundly and often dramatically linked. Dossey's testimony was later reinforced for me through the work of another skeptic who witnessed the healing power of prayer, the Pittsburgh journalist Emily Gardiner Neal. Their work had a profound effect on my own tepid view of prayer, which I saw largely as a way of remaining present to God and one another, but in no sense a pathway to physical healing. I have since become convicted of its power, but did not witness it personally until 2007. A lay woman in our church, a very active and influential member, had battled throat cancer in the early 90s and had been healed through the usual methods, but the cancer had suddenly come roaring back and her doctors were not optimistic about her future. When a prayer team from Faith Alive, a renewal ministry in the Episcopal Church, arrived at our church, she asked them to pray over her in the hope of healing. I joined in that prayer, but tempered my expectations because I had known many who had prayed and not received the physical healing they had pleaded for. But two weeks later, my parishioner burst into my office, so excited she could hardly contain herself. The cancer had vanished and her physicians were completely baffled.
I am admittedly astonished at the capacity of human intelligence to understand the physical realities of God's universe. It staggers the mind to think we can see to very edge of the universe and calculate the very moment when it all began. Science is undeniably powerful, revealing wonders our devout ancestors never dreamed of. But it no longer surprises me to think that there may be limits to what science can reveal, that there are phenomena that transcend the cosmic reality of matter and energy, that spirit may be more than thought, more than consciousness. Ironically, paradoxically, it is the very immensity of the universe science has revealed that confirms it for me. If God is capable of creating a cosmos of this magnitude, surely he has infused it with wonders that are beyond human ken. Angels and miracles? Why not? To my rationalist friends, I would quote Hamlet to his skeptical friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Seduction and Resistance
When they were teens, my sons often protested when I limited--or tried to limit--their exposure to violent or overtly sexual movies and video games. Setting aside the futility of the exercise, given that they were growing up in a culture that flooded their minds and hearts with a tsunami of violent or lustful images each and every day, I contend even now that I was right to do so. It strikes me as inconsistent, if not willfully blind, to maintain that the sight of beautiful art, the sounds of musical masterpieces, or the words of great literature can be transformative, and not grant the same kind of power to base images and ugly words.
Both image and word elicit response, regardless of their content. Sometimes our response is ephemeral. We react, then forget. They wash over us and drain away, leaving no apparent mark. But at other times, they remain, stuck in mind's eye or the heart's echo chamber, haunting or enchanting us for days, weeks, years, even a lifetime. They captivate us, for better or for worse, and we can find it difficult, if not impossible, to free ourselves. And once they hook us, they begin to shape our behavior, our interactions with the world around us. This is why companies spend billions of dollars each year on advertising. Their leaders know well the power of sound and image to suggest and gently direct our behavior, even against our better judgment. The power of suggestion is enormous; it is the essence of seduction. Totalitarian states have known this unpalatable truth for centuries. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruthlessly exploited it for their own purposes, placing entire nations under their spell.
When, in the early 1980s, the serial drama, The Holocaust, was shown on West German television, an enormous upswelling of anger and bewilderment erupted from young Germans born after the Second World War. They confronted the older generations, demanding to know how it could have happened in Germany, the nation of Bach, Beethoven, and Goethe. Often just as bewildered, tormented by guilt and regret, many older Germans protested that the younger generations, having grown up in a democratic, pacifistic culture born out of the defeat of Nazism, had no understanding of how brilliantly Hitler had manipulated the emotions of a frustrated, deeply wounded nation, or how easy it was to be seduced, to dismiss the brutalities of the SS and SA as regrettable but infrequent expressions of excess enthusiasm or as the propaganda of Germany's enemies. Hitler was mesmerizing, a master of symbol, word, and image. Only the strongest minds, those most deeply committed to a greater good--the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Sofie Scholls, and Willi Brandts--could resist. To many of the younger Germans, this sounded like an excuse, as it did to many outside Germany. But having seen Leni Riefenstahl's notoriously brilliant propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, I could not help but be sympathetic. In spite of myself, in spite of every truth I knew about Nazi Germany, she had my heart racing, entranced by the spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies, thrilling to Hitler's plane as it landed in the Berlin airport, anticipating the adulation of the crowds awaiting their leader's emergence onto the runway. If I could be so affected, what must the Germans of the 1930s have experienced?
Of course, the very success of The Holocaust in awakening the anger of young Germans is itself illustrative of the power of image and word, especially when they are married together in a single medium. It brought to life a horrific past in a way the dry academic history texts of West German classrooms never could, forced a public conversation long overdue, and became a powerful force for good. Image and word can be made to serve many different masters, many different purposes. Our capacity for discernment in assessing their end is crucial. The questions we need to confront are, Who is the master of the images and words we are experiencing? What is he telling us? Why? What is his agenda? What response does he want us to have? And what should our response be? In short, we need to assess critically what we are experiencing, to set it at the mercy of reason, examining it in the light of values we know to be true. I believe wholeheartedly this is why, despite being inundated by some of the worst dreck of the American entertainment and advertising media, my sons have grown up to be thoughtful young men. They have learned, at least in some fashion, to make these assessments.
And yet, I cannot help but fear for them and for the culture at large, precisely because so much of what washes by us is, in fact, unexamined. So great is the tsunami that we are unable much of the time to maintain a critical distance. And this is a peril. If, as Christian philosopher Dallas Willard insists, our character is determined by the company our mind keeps, how do we make sure we keep the right company? How do we resist the temptations blandished before us? How can we remain impervious to the pornographers who want to excite our lust, the demagoguing politicians who wish to enflame our resentments, the corporate pitchmen who seek to amplify our greed? Clearly, it would be of benefit to us to restrict our exposure in some measure, so as to allow some breathing room, and to focus instead on those words and images that feed our souls. As St. Paul put it to the Philippian church, "...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." These are the things that strengthen both our critique and our resolve to resist. Both Paul and Jesus understood how deeply our inner thought life impacts our actions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned his disciples to turn away from anger and lust within because he knew these were the passions that fed both murder and adultery.
Admittedly, such a prescription does not sit well in the American psyche, conditioned as we are to understand freedom as the highest good. As public atheist Christopher Hitchens once protested in a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, it smacks of mind control. But Paul understood the problem well. He, after all, was the great proclaimer of "the freedom of the Gospel" and rebelled against the deadening hand of the Law: "For freedom Christ has set us free." (Galatians 5:1) Yet, as he pointed out to the Corinthian church, just because we are free to do something does not mean that we should. All things may be "lawful" for us, but they may not be beneficial. In fact, says Paul, some things are bound to become our masters if we are not careful. (I Corinthians 6:12 f.) The key is discipline, a submission to the Way of Jesus that is as much about habits of the heart and mind as it is about what we do and say. The end is perfect freedom, the kind of freedom that comes from knowing what is good and right and true, and desiring it alone. This is the promise to Jeremiah that a day will come when the Law of God will be written on the hearts of Israel. It will no longer be necessary to instruct and correct, for all will know what to do and how to do it. (Jeremiah 31:31 f.) The good will become instinctive, as reflexive as a boxer's counter-punch.
If we can tune our minds so as to be able to do complex calculations or understand multiple languages, or compose exquisite poetry or music; if we can train our bodies to run and jump and respond with agility, speed, and grace; then surely we can train our souls, our hearts, to desire above all else what is good and true and do them. If we do not, if we refuse in the name of freedom or passion, we will in the end become slaves to the seducers of the world--not just the pitchmen and pornographers, but the tyrants, despots, and demagogues as well. And when it happens, we won't even notice, we won't even care, because it will be exactly what we lust and yearn for, exactly what we "want"... at least in the moment. Misery will undoubtedly follow... but by then, it will be too late.
Both image and word elicit response, regardless of their content. Sometimes our response is ephemeral. We react, then forget. They wash over us and drain away, leaving no apparent mark. But at other times, they remain, stuck in mind's eye or the heart's echo chamber, haunting or enchanting us for days, weeks, years, even a lifetime. They captivate us, for better or for worse, and we can find it difficult, if not impossible, to free ourselves. And once they hook us, they begin to shape our behavior, our interactions with the world around us. This is why companies spend billions of dollars each year on advertising. Their leaders know well the power of sound and image to suggest and gently direct our behavior, even against our better judgment. The power of suggestion is enormous; it is the essence of seduction. Totalitarian states have known this unpalatable truth for centuries. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruthlessly exploited it for their own purposes, placing entire nations under their spell.
When, in the early 1980s, the serial drama, The Holocaust, was shown on West German television, an enormous upswelling of anger and bewilderment erupted from young Germans born after the Second World War. They confronted the older generations, demanding to know how it could have happened in Germany, the nation of Bach, Beethoven, and Goethe. Often just as bewildered, tormented by guilt and regret, many older Germans protested that the younger generations, having grown up in a democratic, pacifistic culture born out of the defeat of Nazism, had no understanding of how brilliantly Hitler had manipulated the emotions of a frustrated, deeply wounded nation, or how easy it was to be seduced, to dismiss the brutalities of the SS and SA as regrettable but infrequent expressions of excess enthusiasm or as the propaganda of Germany's enemies. Hitler was mesmerizing, a master of symbol, word, and image. Only the strongest minds, those most deeply committed to a greater good--the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Sofie Scholls, and Willi Brandts--could resist. To many of the younger Germans, this sounded like an excuse, as it did to many outside Germany. But having seen Leni Riefenstahl's notoriously brilliant propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, I could not help but be sympathetic. In spite of myself, in spite of every truth I knew about Nazi Germany, she had my heart racing, entranced by the spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies, thrilling to Hitler's plane as it landed in the Berlin airport, anticipating the adulation of the crowds awaiting their leader's emergence onto the runway. If I could be so affected, what must the Germans of the 1930s have experienced?
Of course, the very success of The Holocaust in awakening the anger of young Germans is itself illustrative of the power of image and word, especially when they are married together in a single medium. It brought to life a horrific past in a way the dry academic history texts of West German classrooms never could, forced a public conversation long overdue, and became a powerful force for good. Image and word can be made to serve many different masters, many different purposes. Our capacity for discernment in assessing their end is crucial. The questions we need to confront are, Who is the master of the images and words we are experiencing? What is he telling us? Why? What is his agenda? What response does he want us to have? And what should our response be? In short, we need to assess critically what we are experiencing, to set it at the mercy of reason, examining it in the light of values we know to be true. I believe wholeheartedly this is why, despite being inundated by some of the worst dreck of the American entertainment and advertising media, my sons have grown up to be thoughtful young men. They have learned, at least in some fashion, to make these assessments.
And yet, I cannot help but fear for them and for the culture at large, precisely because so much of what washes by us is, in fact, unexamined. So great is the tsunami that we are unable much of the time to maintain a critical distance. And this is a peril. If, as Christian philosopher Dallas Willard insists, our character is determined by the company our mind keeps, how do we make sure we keep the right company? How do we resist the temptations blandished before us? How can we remain impervious to the pornographers who want to excite our lust, the demagoguing politicians who wish to enflame our resentments, the corporate pitchmen who seek to amplify our greed? Clearly, it would be of benefit to us to restrict our exposure in some measure, so as to allow some breathing room, and to focus instead on those words and images that feed our souls. As St. Paul put it to the Philippian church, "...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." These are the things that strengthen both our critique and our resolve to resist. Both Paul and Jesus understood how deeply our inner thought life impacts our actions. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned his disciples to turn away from anger and lust within because he knew these were the passions that fed both murder and adultery.
Admittedly, such a prescription does not sit well in the American psyche, conditioned as we are to understand freedom as the highest good. As public atheist Christopher Hitchens once protested in a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, it smacks of mind control. But Paul understood the problem well. He, after all, was the great proclaimer of "the freedom of the Gospel" and rebelled against the deadening hand of the Law: "For freedom Christ has set us free." (Galatians 5:1) Yet, as he pointed out to the Corinthian church, just because we are free to do something does not mean that we should. All things may be "lawful" for us, but they may not be beneficial. In fact, says Paul, some things are bound to become our masters if we are not careful. (I Corinthians 6:12 f.) The key is discipline, a submission to the Way of Jesus that is as much about habits of the heart and mind as it is about what we do and say. The end is perfect freedom, the kind of freedom that comes from knowing what is good and right and true, and desiring it alone. This is the promise to Jeremiah that a day will come when the Law of God will be written on the hearts of Israel. It will no longer be necessary to instruct and correct, for all will know what to do and how to do it. (Jeremiah 31:31 f.) The good will become instinctive, as reflexive as a boxer's counter-punch.
If we can tune our minds so as to be able to do complex calculations or understand multiple languages, or compose exquisite poetry or music; if we can train our bodies to run and jump and respond with agility, speed, and grace; then surely we can train our souls, our hearts, to desire above all else what is good and true and do them. If we do not, if we refuse in the name of freedom or passion, we will in the end become slaves to the seducers of the world--not just the pitchmen and pornographers, but the tyrants, despots, and demagogues as well. And when it happens, we won't even notice, we won't even care, because it will be exactly what we lust and yearn for, exactly what we "want"... at least in the moment. Misery will undoubtedly follow... but by then, it will be too late.
Friday, February 3, 2012
When Your Children Do Not Share Your Faith
This past Christmas, my two 20-something sons were "home", but not in one of the houses where they had grown up. It was our new place in Lancaster, where Ann and I have lived for the past year and a half. Though they both knew the place and seemed perfectly comfortable in it, I was keenly aware that it represented a kind of break for the two of them, and for us as well. Gone were the rooms they had made their personal bunkers, retreats that each reflected their unique personalities, filled with books and posters and gadgets. Instead, they bunked in a guest room and a study. While there were a few tokens of their past lying about the house--Michael's cub scout badge display, a medal of achievement for his work in a national competition; Alex's college diploma and graduation cap--it was clear to anyone who might come by that they were, indeed, guests and that they lived their lives elsewhere, apart.
While I know full well that Ann and I both went through the same break with our parents at the same age, I found it more painful than I expected, not only because it represents the loss of treasured time and a particular way of relating, as it does for all parents, but also because I was keenly aware of how different their worldviews had become from my own. This, too, is on some level, inevitable, but I found it particularly acute because I am an Episcopal priest, someone who has spent his life devoted to the Christian vision of the world, but neither of my sons consider themselves believers. They have respect for Christianity, to be sure, but they have yet to find faith. Though Alex remained active in our church youth group in his teens, neither he nor his brother took communion after the age of 14 or so.
There is a certain irony here, because I, too, diverged radically from my parents' worldview, as they did from that of their parents. Growing up, I darkened the door of a church but twice, once for a Lessons and Carols service at age 8 and once in Germany with my dad at age 6. Sunday morning at our house was for bacon and eggs, the Sunday Boston Globe, and the New York Times. Church was not even an afterthought. My dad was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy, but developed an antipathy for the Church after watching his priest bring down a breviary on his brother's head for failing to learn his catechism correctly. He went on to become a full-blown skeptic in college. My mother grew up in a family of Scandinavian pietists who worshiped in a Congregationalist church. Though she taught Sunday school in her teens, she had a myriad of questions her parents told her she should not ask. Eventually, she grew defiant and rebellious, rejecting Christianity for an angry atheism. While my dad has continued to show interest in philosophical questions touching upon religion, mom has absolutely no interest in discussing the subject and little other than contempt for religious thinkers.
But I, of course, had my own life, which took a different course. At the age of 14, I had a revelation of sorts on a Cape Cod beach, watching the sun set with my dog. I was suddenly enveloped in a sure and certain sense that God existed, and that he loved me and had created all the beauty I was seeing for me and for all the rest of us to enjoy from the inside out, in a way that he couldn't. Suddenly I found myself haunted by religious questions, longing to know what truth lay behind the Christmas carols I had always loved. I remained a seeker until my senior year in high school, when an invitation to a prayer meeting changed my life. I kept going to that prayer meeting, in the hope I would discover something. One night I left the meeting to ask God to reveal the truth to me and felt as if the spirit of Jesus had followed me home to confront me. The tearful confession of faith I made that night would one day, after a long, meandering trek, lead me to the door of an Episcopal church in New York City, where I was confirmed... and which would eventually sponsor me for ordination to the priesthood.
For me, Christianity is a beautiful vision. It helps me make sense of suffering. It gives me a sense of belonging: I do not feel alone in the universe, but cared for by its very author. It fills everything with mystery, longing, and hope. It gives me courage to move beyond my fears and anxieties, to grow and to risk. As St. Augustine once said, I believe in it "as I believe in the rising sun; not because I see it, but [because] by it I can see all else." It pains me to think my sons (not to mention my parents) do not share it. I find myself asking how I failed, wondering aloud why I could not find the words or live the life that would reveal to them this marvelous truth. It is true that, aside from reading them occasional Bible stories, singing them to sleep with "Amazing Grace" or "Be Thou My Vision," and saying grace at meals, I did not take a very proactive approach to their Christian formation. They attended church, they went to Sunday school, to be sure, but it seems to have had little effect, beyond giving them a rudimentary knowledge of Christian doctrine. The joy, the vision, was not contagious. I could not pass it on. And for that, I am inclined to blame myself.
But neither my parents nor theirs before them were able to "pass on" their vision either. Perhaps it is not something you can teach; perhaps it must be experienced. While we baptize our children, it remains to them to adopt the baptismal covenant as their own and make a mature affirmation of faith. It is something they must discover for themselves. They too have their own lives, their own journeys. It is not for us to say whom they will meet upon the road.
It is a mystery to me why God corners some of us, falling upon us suddenly and unexpectedly, to claim us for his own, while seemingly not others... and why one vision of who and what he is, and not another, takes hold of our hearts. While we can learn church doctrine the way we learn history or English grammar, the knowledge of God is different. It is gleaned through inference and extrapolation. We take our experience, which is often difficult to describe, and shape it with the accumulated wisdom of those who have experienced it before. We look for revelation and apply it to our encounter, trying to give it a more definitive form and substance, so as to make sense of it. If I had grown up in Iran or Thailand, and had somehow experienced in tone and emotion exactly what I had experienced on the Cape Cod beach or in my room after the prayer meeting, I suspect I would have become a Muslim or a Buddhist instead, simply because the understanding of God whirling around me would have been Muslim or Buddhist. This is not to say that the reality of God is subjective, only that our experience of him (her? it?) is. But for all that, John Donne and Rumi seem to speak an eerily similar language. The observations and expressions of the great mystics of the major faith traditions possess a striking similarity, a mutual resonance that tells me what they have experienced is that same ineffable Something we call God.
I hope and pray that one day my sons will experience that Something themselves. Perhaps they have already and have not known what to name him, despite all my efforts to give them a vocabulary by which to do so. Be that as it may, I know it is not something I can give them. They must encounter it themselves. Perhaps one day, once they have, the words that I have spoken about it, the efforts I have made to live into it, will begin to make sense to them.
I can only hope. It would be such a sad thing, to live without the vision it brings.
While I know full well that Ann and I both went through the same break with our parents at the same age, I found it more painful than I expected, not only because it represents the loss of treasured time and a particular way of relating, as it does for all parents, but also because I was keenly aware of how different their worldviews had become from my own. This, too, is on some level, inevitable, but I found it particularly acute because I am an Episcopal priest, someone who has spent his life devoted to the Christian vision of the world, but neither of my sons consider themselves believers. They have respect for Christianity, to be sure, but they have yet to find faith. Though Alex remained active in our church youth group in his teens, neither he nor his brother took communion after the age of 14 or so.
There is a certain irony here, because I, too, diverged radically from my parents' worldview, as they did from that of their parents. Growing up, I darkened the door of a church but twice, once for a Lessons and Carols service at age 8 and once in Germany with my dad at age 6. Sunday morning at our house was for bacon and eggs, the Sunday Boston Globe, and the New York Times. Church was not even an afterthought. My dad was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy, but developed an antipathy for the Church after watching his priest bring down a breviary on his brother's head for failing to learn his catechism correctly. He went on to become a full-blown skeptic in college. My mother grew up in a family of Scandinavian pietists who worshiped in a Congregationalist church. Though she taught Sunday school in her teens, she had a myriad of questions her parents told her she should not ask. Eventually, she grew defiant and rebellious, rejecting Christianity for an angry atheism. While my dad has continued to show interest in philosophical questions touching upon religion, mom has absolutely no interest in discussing the subject and little other than contempt for religious thinkers.
But I, of course, had my own life, which took a different course. At the age of 14, I had a revelation of sorts on a Cape Cod beach, watching the sun set with my dog. I was suddenly enveloped in a sure and certain sense that God existed, and that he loved me and had created all the beauty I was seeing for me and for all the rest of us to enjoy from the inside out, in a way that he couldn't. Suddenly I found myself haunted by religious questions, longing to know what truth lay behind the Christmas carols I had always loved. I remained a seeker until my senior year in high school, when an invitation to a prayer meeting changed my life. I kept going to that prayer meeting, in the hope I would discover something. One night I left the meeting to ask God to reveal the truth to me and felt as if the spirit of Jesus had followed me home to confront me. The tearful confession of faith I made that night would one day, after a long, meandering trek, lead me to the door of an Episcopal church in New York City, where I was confirmed... and which would eventually sponsor me for ordination to the priesthood.
For me, Christianity is a beautiful vision. It helps me make sense of suffering. It gives me a sense of belonging: I do not feel alone in the universe, but cared for by its very author. It fills everything with mystery, longing, and hope. It gives me courage to move beyond my fears and anxieties, to grow and to risk. As St. Augustine once said, I believe in it "as I believe in the rising sun; not because I see it, but [because] by it I can see all else." It pains me to think my sons (not to mention my parents) do not share it. I find myself asking how I failed, wondering aloud why I could not find the words or live the life that would reveal to them this marvelous truth. It is true that, aside from reading them occasional Bible stories, singing them to sleep with "Amazing Grace" or "Be Thou My Vision," and saying grace at meals, I did not take a very proactive approach to their Christian formation. They attended church, they went to Sunday school, to be sure, but it seems to have had little effect, beyond giving them a rudimentary knowledge of Christian doctrine. The joy, the vision, was not contagious. I could not pass it on. And for that, I am inclined to blame myself.
But neither my parents nor theirs before them were able to "pass on" their vision either. Perhaps it is not something you can teach; perhaps it must be experienced. While we baptize our children, it remains to them to adopt the baptismal covenant as their own and make a mature affirmation of faith. It is something they must discover for themselves. They too have their own lives, their own journeys. It is not for us to say whom they will meet upon the road.
It is a mystery to me why God corners some of us, falling upon us suddenly and unexpectedly, to claim us for his own, while seemingly not others... and why one vision of who and what he is, and not another, takes hold of our hearts. While we can learn church doctrine the way we learn history or English grammar, the knowledge of God is different. It is gleaned through inference and extrapolation. We take our experience, which is often difficult to describe, and shape it with the accumulated wisdom of those who have experienced it before. We look for revelation and apply it to our encounter, trying to give it a more definitive form and substance, so as to make sense of it. If I had grown up in Iran or Thailand, and had somehow experienced in tone and emotion exactly what I had experienced on the Cape Cod beach or in my room after the prayer meeting, I suspect I would have become a Muslim or a Buddhist instead, simply because the understanding of God whirling around me would have been Muslim or Buddhist. This is not to say that the reality of God is subjective, only that our experience of him (her? it?) is. But for all that, John Donne and Rumi seem to speak an eerily similar language. The observations and expressions of the great mystics of the major faith traditions possess a striking similarity, a mutual resonance that tells me what they have experienced is that same ineffable Something we call God.
I hope and pray that one day my sons will experience that Something themselves. Perhaps they have already and have not known what to name him, despite all my efforts to give them a vocabulary by which to do so. Be that as it may, I know it is not something I can give them. They must encounter it themselves. Perhaps one day, once they have, the words that I have spoken about it, the efforts I have made to live into it, will begin to make sense to them.
I can only hope. It would be such a sad thing, to live without the vision it brings.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, November 18, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, October 7, 2011
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:
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