"there must be a renewal of communion between
the traditional, contemplative disciplines and those of science, between the
poet and the physicist, the priest and the depth psychologist, the monk and the
politician." Merton
While Merton affirms
that our symbols can bring us into closer contact with reality, he cautions
against identifying them with reality. In a sense, he was saying, with Ralph
Waldo Emerson : "Heartily know. When half-gods go, The gods arrive.".
"What is this (contemplative prayer) in
relation to action? Simply this. He (and she) who attempts to act and do things
for others or for the world without this deepening of his own
self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have
anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion
of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his egocentered ambitions, his
delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas."
Thomas Merton," The Climate of Monastic Prayer"
And now God
says to us what God has already said to the earth as a whole through his
grace-filled birth: "I am there.
I am with you. I am your life. I am your time. I am the gloom of your
daily routine. Why will you not hear it?
I weep your
tears. Pour out yours to me, my child.
I am your joy.
Do not be afraid to be happy; ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living
that is really more suitable than the anxiety and grief of those who think they
have no hope.
I am the blind
alley of all your paths for when you no longer know how to go any farther, then
you have reached me, foolish child, though you are not aware of it. I am in
your anxiety, for I have shared it by suffering it. And in so doing I wasn't
even heroic according to the wisdom of the world.
I am in the
prison of your finiteness, for my love has made me your prisoner.
When the total
of your plans and of your life's experiences does not balance out evenly, I am
the unsolved remainder. And know that this remainder, which makes you so
frantic, is the reality of my love which you do not yet understand.
I am present
in your needs. I have suffered them and they are now transformed but not
obliterated from my heart. This reality--incomprehensible wonder of my almighty
love--I have sheltered safely and completely in the cold stable of your world.
I am there. Even if you do not see me now, I am there.
It is
Christmas. Light the candles. They have more right to exist than all the
darkness.
It is
Christmas.---Karl Rahner, SJ
Thou shalt
know Him when He comes
Not by din of
drums--
Nor the
vantage of airs;
Nor by
anything He wears.
Neither by His
crown, nor His gown
For His
Presence known shall be
By the holy
harmony
That his coming makes in thee.---15th Century Anonymous
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 12, 2004 05:56 PM:
I cannot report a loss of affect as much as I can discern, rather, a tendency
for feelings to follow me into action rather than leading me into action.
St. Thomas described how our love of God increases in proportion to our
knowledge of God. And this is true.
St. Bernard described how our knowledge of God increases in proportion to our
love of God. This, too, is true.
The knowledge of God that St. Bernard describes, however, surpasses that which
St. Thomas was speaking and writing about. St. Thomas was talking about that
knowledge of God that comes from both natural and supernatural revelation, a
discursive knowing that increases through our study of philosophy, metaphysics,
theology and such, such a knowing as could never attain to God's essential
nature even as it might infinitely advance toward same.
The love of which both Thomas and Bernard spoke of, however, can indeed
communicate with God's essential nature, leading one to a mysterious type of
knowledge that certainly informs our normative sciences (of logic, aesthetics
and ethics) and descriptive sciences (for instance, natural science) but which
also far surpasses them, a knowledge difficult to describe or articulate. Such
a love, I believe, is experienced on the threshold of contemplation.
Such is the love which casts out all fear. And here is the link to the loss of
the affective ego that I'd like to explore. The perfect love that casts out all
fear is a love that has grown in dependency on God, has learned to trust God,
that knows that, however bad the situation or dire the circumstances, in the
final analysis, all will be well. It is the mystical love of Julian that sings
all may, can, will and shall be well and is the realization of the promise that
you will know that all manner of things will be well. Here, then, is the
distinction we draw between existential fear and neurotic fear, existential
guilt and neurotic guilt, existential anger and neurotic anger, the existential
always in service of life and love and relationship, the neurotic invariably
life-detracting, love-detracting, relationship-destroying. We are not dealing
only with neuroses that are overcome in the process of individuation but also
those sinful resistances to conversion that are overcome on our journey of
transformation, distinct but intertwined realities.
So, I would describe the loss of the affective ego as an energy inversion
whereby the emotions and feelings and affective life don't so much energize our
behaviors by initiating them but rather energize our behaviors by reinforcing
them. It seems that this state could be effected all of a sudden through some
precipitating event or could arise through time and a habit of virtue.
I will stop here as my thoughts are fogging up, but there is a dynamic of love
and surrender that seems to be involved and either a sudden metanoia or a force
of habit where this dynamic is concerned?
pax,
jb
Love, eminently reasonable, needs no reason, inasmuch as it is sufficient unto
itself. Happiness, finally, cannot be pursued but must ensue. So, too, with
good feelings. They aren't needed but will often ensue, which is to say,
follow, love.
[ July 12, 2004, 06:12
PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 13, 2004 12:12 AM:
Merton noted that often, when we are in pain and conflict and contradiction, we
incorrectly associate same with old wounds, with old injuries that truly have
been resolved and healed already. During such times, Merton encourages us to
consider the very real possibility that we are, rather, being invited to open
ourselves to a new level of being through such pain and conflict and
contradiction. In other words, if we are not properly attentive, then we run
the risk of stagnation, desolation and aridity, sometimes for months or years,
dwelling on the wrong integrative and transformative issues, missing the
invitation to move to another level, a level that could be attained in a day
even.
One of the chief obstacles to advancing in the spiritual life, then, is to gain
a certain clarity of vision regarding the route to sanctity or to psychological
integration (routes that are much intertwined) and then acting as if the vision
itself is the attainment when, in fact, it is not the mapping of the journey
that marks our growth but the walking of the road, which is to say that, if you
are on the illuminative or unitive way, then get on with it, and so on.
Further, the mapping never involves the entire journey but entails, rather, our
next good step, a step which is the spiritual equivalent of taking the entire
journey Thus it is that the entire road is traversed, one step at a time in
faith with the trust that that step is truly what is required for now, for
today. We can get caught up with seeing the road and then fail to walk it, is
our constant peril.
Two lessons here: Sometimes one has to quit beating one's head against the wall
just because it feels good when you stop. Sometimes one has to quit circling
the same developmental block on the journey just because some of the signs look
the same, which is to say that emotional memories can get in the way by
misleading us into thinking that our pain is rooted in old unresolved issues
when it is moreso about leading us in a new direction entirely (with a genesis
in new issues), inviting us to another level entirely. Then, once we see this
new direction, it is of the essence to WALK it and not merely content ourselves
in the consolation of SEEING it!
Well, this is a very loose rendering of the meaning I gathered from Merton and
any misconstructions are my own. I will leave it to the forum to sort through
how the integration/transformation of the affective ego fits in, for that may
be a better way of describing what I think is going on in what is being called
the loss of the affective ego. Point is that old emotional memories can get
improperly associated with new spiritual emergence issues and that we can
misdiagnose the reason for our present pain, conflict and contradiction.
pax,
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 13, 2004 04:14 PM:
I believe
it was in that very same lecture that Merton noted that the spiritual path and
the path of scientific breakthroughs is analogous. Specifically, the steps are:
1) We find an issue, sort through it and set about to solve it. 2) We grapple
and grapple with it until we realize that it is virtually irresolute,
unsolvable, beyond us, too difficult. 3) We let go and move on. 4) Sometimes,
years later, the solution comes to us in an instant, in a flash.
Nothing very profound here. We've all used this apporach in balancing our
checkbooks, eh? But the point is that that is how our human natures are
constructed and that that is how our unconscious and conscious minds and
spirits seem to interface.
Seeing after not before is axiomatic for the spiritual mapping of the journey.
Others' journeys, even those of the great mystical doctors, let's say the
Carmelites like John of the Cross and Teresa of Jesus, can give us touchpoints
for the journey, indications that we are on the road, but they have no predictive
value. The same is true with Ignatian and sanjuanian discernment such as re:
consolation and desolation, maybe even such as regarding loss of affect,
depression, acedia, beginnings of contemplation -- where we are moreso
discerning retrospectively and not so much being guided prospectively.
Finally, BINGO re: this wisdom as not being a property of the mind even though
it works very much in concert with the mind. The contemplative gaze in love
transcends our cognitive and discursive faculties and penetrates through to the
Divine Essence, actually communicating and relating to God's essential nature,
a nature that is, in principle, incomprehensible.
We must be careful, however, in confusing incomprehensible with unintelligible.
If these experiences were unintelligible and God was unintelligible, this forum
wouldn't be possible, huh?
pax,
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 13, 2004 04:46 PM:
Another Mertonesque thought: We are moving toward an existential realization of
how critical to our spiritual survival prayer really is. This realization is
attained when we feel our need for prayer as acutely as we would feel the need
for a breath when underwater.
That is my crude rendering from memory. I think this has something to say to us
all whether we are called to discursive mediation, lectio, meditatio, oratio,
contemplatio, operatio or what have ya. Whatever our prayer gift as led by the
Spirit, it is to be engaged with the sense of critical and acute and urgent
need that affirms our radical dependence and perennial state of existential
crisis.
Now, don't get Merton wrong. This is all dialectical. One moves into crisis to
lose crisis. One loses self to gain self. First, there is a mountain. Then,
there is no mountain. Then, there is. One recognzies one's radical dependency
to move to place of radical trust. One experiences one's emptiness and abject
poverty to realize one's utter fullness. One moves into paradox and pain and
contradiction to realize that, whatdaya know, all is well.
This is something re: the loss of self that is affirmed by the Sufi
(Islamic)and the Hasidic (Jewish) mystics and that Merton, building on Buber as
well as the Sufis, so well understood.
So, too, with human affects and desires. John of the Cross speaks of disordered
appetites and Ignatius speaks of inordinate desires. It is not the appetite or
desire we seek to eradicate, ultimately, but through proper ascticism and
renunciation, we lose our emotional energy that intitiates so many of our
behaviors (both virtue and vice) only to regain it to reinforce our virtues.
Think of Ignatian discernment re: consolation and desolation, for example, and
of how the different spirits console or afflict us, variously, as we either
cooperate with Grace or backslide.
This dialectic is working, I believe, with the affective ego. Now, there may be
something very deeply analogous going on with spiritual consolations and
desolations and psychological affects that is not completely identical. This
could account for how psychologically developmentally deformative influences
might intefere/interact with spiritually transformative processes. This is no
easy nut to crack and might profoundly influence with what facility one moves
through an existential crisis to the experience of no-crisis-after-all. IOW, a
spiritual emergence issue that gets foisted upon someone may not achieve its
dialectical goal of teaching one to breathe underwater but could, for all
practical purposes, drown a person.
When He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him, He said all men shall
be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them.
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 14, 2004 12:39 AM:
continuing with Merton
Merton speaks of a Sufi scholar, who draws many parallels to psychoanalysis,
which is to say who sees the therapy process as analogous to the spiritual
journey.
If in therapy our primary concern is the resolution of unresolved subconscious
conflicts, then Sufism might be thought of in the same way, only on a deeper
level.
In therapy and normal individuation, we are resolving certain conflicts, the
resolutions of which 1) take us from an infantile level, take us from the
merely instinctual animal to a human type of being where our cognitive and
affective development is concerned 2) then further take us and adapt us to
successful social and cultural beings.
Many struggle at the first level, such as with an Oedipus complex, by way of
example, staying Momma's boys their entire life, but most get through it to the
second level of struggle, some falling prey to escapes from the difficult
realities of social-cultural life. AA is an example of a good way to deal with
such evasions, helping primarily by providing motives to change, wise to the
fact that one has to want to change in order to change and no one can do it for
us. This is pretty much where conventional therapy stops, helping one deal with
one's neurotic evasions of social responsibility.
This, however, is insufficient for bringing about the general honesty required
to go deeper and to become an authentic human who has faced life's fundamental
challenges, life's BIGGER problems, gaining life's existential awareness.
What are these BIG PROBLEMS? 1) continuity vs discontinuity - death 2)
creativity - having a life that is meaningful, a presence that makes a
difference.
What are the mistakes that even analysts/therapists make here? What mistakes
are made by us as individuals at this level? We treat these issues as if they
were problems of social adaptation (that second level we talked about). IOW, if
you are esteemed by your society or in a particular cultural milieu, then
you've conquered these problems, your presence not only has made a difference
but lives on, in a manner of speaking. WRONG! This "solution" leads
people into a further evasion from a truly meaningful life. This blueprint is
wrong and must be torn up and thrown away. [Think here of our affective reward
system and not only what vices are reinforced by certain emotions but also by
what so-called virtues are being reinforced by our range of emotions. There
needs to be a rewiring.]
What is called for, rather, is a BREAKTHROUGH into existential awareness. IOW,
we recognize that this social esteem and instinctual control we have gained is
MEANINGLESS, not meaningless, to be sure, for our functioning in ordinary life,
but certainly in terms of life's ultimate meaning. {Here Merton recommends
Viktor Frankl.]
So, from this deeper level, our social success is meaningless. On one hand,
though, it is great and necessary, but, otoh, it is TOTALLY NUTS!
How do we get in touch with what is needed on the deeper level? Through the
Psalmist is one way, for the deeper level whether praying the mad, glad or sad
psalms is always GOD.
The CROSS is the demonstration of this struggle, the realization of this
conflict in Jesus, a conflict between the establishment of the religion, such
as in society, on one hand, and the realization of authentic religion, such as
in one's heart, otoh. It REJECTS the silly notion of "Keep the rules and
there you've got all the answers," which Merton calls a wooden nickel. It
similarly rejects: "Don't keep the rules," which is a stupid form of
the same silly game.
The ultimate solution to our biggest subconscious unresolved conflicts, our
existential questions, is experiencing our rootedness in God, God in our very
hearts. Death loses its significance as an end because we are already
finalities, already ends unto ourselves because of our being-in-God,
being-in-love, which is sufficient unto itself with no further reason or
justification. Our creativity is found in our issuing forth from the Creator
and not in anything we do to gain social approval or cultural amenities. The
obligational has become aspirational. One then studies and prays, fastening and
binding one's spirit to God, clinging to God, after the manner I wrote about
previously, needing prayer as badly as one who is under water needs a breath.
Then, in all we see and experience, God is present, and we don't at all take
seriously the self we have to be to operate in society, the role playing, the
best things in life not being demanded by us but received a pure gift from God
FOR ME, who lets God be Himself in me, when my false self has vanished.
The old emotional programming, that was even formative and not deformative,
must be re-wired, in order to move on to the deeper level of a human
being-in-love-with-God. Hence the dark Nights. Hence, the transformation of the
affective ego as we move from a false to a true self.
pax,
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 14, 2004 09:39 AM:
re: The old emotional programming, that was even formative and not
deformative, must be re-wired, in order to move on to the deeper level of a
human being-in-love-with-God. Hence the dark Nights. Hence, the transformation
of the affective ego as we move from a false to a true self.
continuing -
Hence, what Merton is describing is our social persona, which must die. True
enough, our formation from the animal-instinctual to the social-cultural self
is required, is necessary for the journey. In fact, we cannot surrender this
self to the Cross, which is to say, to the existential crisis, until we have
fully come into possession of same.
The existential crisis, then, involves a confrontation of the I with the
not I , of the true self with the false self, and, when it is upon us,
everything we see and observe and relate to in our existence is then seen
through the lens of this crisis, of this Cross.
For society-at-large, then, the Gospel is this lens. The problem is that we
have talked about the Cross so much, about the Gospel so much, that we have, in
some sense, trivialized it and robbed it of its profound and radical
significance for our individual lives and our lives in community. While in this
crisis, however, we come to realize that the reason the world has so many huge
problems -- socially, culturally, politically, economically -- is because of
people, people like me who are living on a phony, superficial level of
existence, out of contact with our true source, Who is God, alone.
The ultimate idolatry, then, is our self. So, we take this socially-formed self
and crucify it and it is not like going to a movie or coming into an Internet
discussion forum but is, rather, much more like walking into a fire.
The reward system, the reinforcement mechanisms, the old emotional programs,
which worked so well for those of us who made it through our formative years
with more formation, reformation and information than deformation, must be
transformed. This mirrors, in fact, how our loving knowledge of God no longer
comes through our senses, no longer is accompanied by sensible consolations,
but is a direct communication with the Divine Essence that is beyond our
discursive faculties. All of this is a massive upheaval of the way things have
been for us --- cognitively, affectively, morally even, for it is no longer a
mere following of the rules that brings one closer to God, although that part
of our formation was absolutely necessary. This is a huge project and
undertaking, multilayered and multitextured and quite unique for each
individual, although we have discussed the touchpoints and the mapping of this
journey.
The soul now approaches the God, Who needn't approach, Who dwells within, and
the heart remains restless that has not made God its all. Rooted in God in
radical trust and surrender, a new reward and reinforcement system gets set in
place, where Love of self for sake of self has been transcended by love of God
for sake of self, which has been transcended by love of God for sake of God,
'til, finally, our true self emerges and we love that self for the sake of God.
The dialectic takes us back into self-possession, paradoxically, by
self-surrender. This has cognitive, affective and moral aspects.
This is why we are here.
pax,
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 14, 2004 12:31 PM:
What comes to mind with respect to adulterers and murderers like both King
Herod and King David, is what, ultimately, makes the difference between our going
Herod's route or that of David?
To a certain extent, all that society asks by way of reformation is that we be
rehabilitated into a good social persona, that we function well in our
interpersonal dealings -- politically, econmomically, socially and culturally.
IOW, society asks that we follow the rules, that we obey the law. Adherence to
the Law is what was required of these Old Testament persons, in accordance with
the Old Covenant. David became a good man and a great king by meeting these
standards. He became his true self, the psalmist, when he went deeper in his
relationship to God.
So, in its very essence, the Old Covenant very much corresponds to that second
level of development, that which pertains to our socialization, and, although
there were certain prophecies and foreshadowings, the crosses borne by these
peoples were not the same as THE CROSS. Certainly, there must have always been
some opportunity for humans on earth to partake of the transformative process
effected by Jesus for once and for all through his birth, life, passion, death
and resurrection. Indeed, many did undergo such radical transformation,
especially, one might suspect, someone like David, the Psalmist, who points the
way to Jesus, to the Father, in the Spirit.
At the same time, the explicit announcement of the New Testament, the
proclamation of the Good News, the living out of the Gospel, of the Kerygma,
through the Cross, marked an existential crisis at a global level for ALL
PEOPLES, and played itself out as, not a total renunciation but, as a total
surpassing of the old way. This is directly analogous to the death to self that
is called for on the journey of each individual but involved a type of death
for the People of God as a whole, who were being called to a new level of
intimacy.
Again, we invoke, as individuals, because we have been convoked, as an entire
People of God. We are called as a People and respond, radically alone (in many
respects), as individuals.
Another lesson that is taught about David by Louis Evely (whom Phil will fondly
recalled) is That Man Is You , which is to say: what is wrong with the
world is ME.
What happens as we make the turn and drop the persona, which, again, was
formatively necessary, is that we seek enlightenment out of compassion for the
world, which constantly suffers our unenlightened selves. No longer are we in
search of consolation or sensible positive affect because Perfect Love is its
own reward, is totally unconditional, entirely kenotic.
We lay down our false selves, not for our own benefit, not because we are tired
of the pain it causes us, but because of the pain we are transmitting to our
loved ones, to the world. Any pain that is not thusly transformed, however
neurotic or psychotic or emotional or idiopathic, we transmit to others. We
seek to be rid of this pain that we may desist from transmitting it to others.
Perfect Love and Perfect Contrition are inextricably bound up. It is suffcient
to enter the Kingdom, through the law, through the old gate, of following the rules
and being sorry for the consequences to ourselves when we don't. That was the
old way and it still works.
BUT, if we take up our cross, go through the existential crisis, and come to
that breakthrough where we are moreso sorry for our sin because of the
consequences to others and to God, then we crucify the Old Man and rise as a
New Creation, seeking the contemplative gaze, as Teresa says, not so much for
the consolations but, rather, in order to gain the strength to serve. We become
Christs. We allow God to be God-in-us, our truest selves. This isn't a
requirement, but it is an invitation. The most important one that any of us
will RSVP or not.
pax,
jb
[ July 14, 2004, 12:32
PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 14, 2004 02:18 PM:
Let me insert this here. Losing something like fear does not mean that we have
come to any pollyannish conclusion that all of the bad things that could happen
to us are not going to happen --- rather, it means that, we know full well they
are even likely to happen but are nothing, ultimately, to fear. So, too, with
guilt, anger ... We give up the neurotic version in exchange for the
existential version, which is quite THE CROSS to arrive at the resurrected
version, which is ALL IS WELL.
This, too, is dialectical, like the Kingdom. It is on its way. It has already
arrived. Paradise is ours to inherit. It is already in our hearts. All is
decidely NOT well, temporally, in this earthly tent wherein we dwell, BUT, in
reality, ours is a robe of resplendent glory and, eternally (not at the end of
time or for a long time, but outside of time where we have both origin and
destiny), ALL is, indeed, well.
[ July 14, 2004, 02:23
PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on July 15, 2004 05:09 PM:
Another distinction from Merton.
Merton discusses two of the types of confessio, of confession, but I don't
recall the latin terms for both. One was laude or praise. The other was re: the
more familiar "It was me. I done it." that we know from the
Rite of Reconciliation and from police shakedowns, or parental busts re: hands
in cookie jars.
This distinction makes for rich reflection and meditation but I'll try to
control my imagination and focus on the transformative process.
The confession of praise is the converse: "It was God. He done it."
The psalms are about 50:50 penitential supplication taking the form of "I
done it" and of praise taking the form of adoration of "He done
it."
Now, there comes a point where we pass through existential crisis or a series
of crises and recognize that there is little meritorious effort on our behalf
other than cooperation with grace and that all else is pure unmerited Grace.
This is part of recognizing our radical dependence on God, Whom we can trust
because, well, look around at What He Done!
My point pertaining to this thread, however, is that, prior to getting to that
place of praise and He Done It, we must get both to the place of I Done It re:
our abject sinfulness as well as It Isn't/Wasn't Me! re: our manifold blessings
and very existence.
Part of the nondual experience, then, is the existential realization of It
Isn't Me --- not this creation, not these feelings, not these thoughts, not any
rule-following or goodness, iow, It Isn't Me cognitively, affectively or
morally, that's responsible for starting all of this, holding it all together
and taking it anywhere.
This can be quite liberating.
The famous singer-songwriter, James Taylor, once made a wisecrack about AA, saying
that half of the people that are in it are trying to come to the realization
that they are not God, while the other half had the job once and are
desperately busy trying to tender their resignation.
Well, it isn't enough to stop with It Isn't Me, and that, I believe, is where
an existential experience of the no-self can leave us. But this apophatic
realization must be dialectically related to HE DID IT! IT'S HER! and this is
the positive, kataphatic content that is truly fitting and proper, coming from
a tongue that cannot confess same without the initiative of the Spirit's
prompting.
So, the loss of the affective ego can occur, in any of the many ways we have
conceived it and experienced it, I think, and particularly in a manner that
Merton wisely discerned was apophatic, natural, impersonal, existential, but
needing completion in the kataphatic, supernatural, personal and theological,
these processes nurturing and mutually enriching and entailing one another.
This is where Tony deMello went awry to some extent in some of his later work
and it is where Bernadette likely errs, too.
Point is, the confession of It's Not Me is necessary but not sufficient.
Gotta run. Going to a Herman's Hermit concert!
pax,
Herman's Hermit
[ July 15, 2004, 05:12
PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on :
re: It is hard for me to remember, and trust, that God works so much better
beyond our faculties, and that this accounts for much of the apophatic
aridities we go through.
Was that ever well said. Further, the apophatic aridity and godforsaken sense
of Godforsakeness can find no relief, and very little consolation in a mere
cognitive assent to the notion that Well, I cannot feel His Presence but I
know He is there because the absence is existentially pervasive, which is
to say experienced as an absolute absence cognitively, affectively, morally,
spiritually, physically. There are no faculties mediating His Presence. And,
any counsel or direction to the contrary pretty much gets filtered as a
brilliant rationalization, to try to put words to the Little Flower's bout with
profound angst as well as what I have been through myself.
When the knowledge through love arrives it is as certain as it is obscure,
differing from our earlier journey where our vision was clear but tentative
(cf. Benedict Groeschel). Without faculties, behavioral psychology of reward
and punishment, which is to say, of reinforcement collapses. The energy
paradigms of psychoanalytic psychologies get stretched very thin, except for
those that have cultivated a jungian-type depth. This is why the work of Arraj
of putting sanjuanist spiritual theology into dialogue with Jung is so
important. It is not unlike Merton's Sufi master friend who tried to put Sufism
in dialogue with psychoanalysis.
Carry on,
and thanks from all of us
jb
PS I forgot to make my point which is that, without the affective ego,
without the reward/punishment reinforcement mechanism fully in place, absent
consolation --- when one continues to persist in moral behavior, in loving
interactions with others, because Love is its own reward ---- One has then
NEVER been closer to loving with Unconditional Love, BY DEFINITION. The Paradox
is, then, One Has NEVER BEEN CLOSER to GOD, WHO IS PURE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. We
prayed to be transformed into the Imago Dei, well guess what: Our prayer was
answered -- just when we thought that God was dead and we were abandoned.
Sounds like the last moments on the Cross? because IT WAS! You have died with
Him and now you RISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[ July 15, 2004, 11:53
PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on August 16, 2004
11:48 PM:
There is much of each of our own journeys that we can relate to in others'
journeys and, even then, so much is unique, too. Even then, for instance in
Catholicism, where most will subscribe to integrative and holistic approaches,
we still draw distinctions between those symptoms that are best dealt with
through 1) spiritual direction 2) moral guidance 3) reconciliation or
confession 4) healing ministries 5) psychological counseling 6) group therapies
7) pastoral counseling 8) evangelization ministry 9) medical and
pharmacological therapy 10) psychiatric therapy 11) other forms of ministry and
sharing, even such as in an internet discussion forum.
Your list of symptoms is somewhat varied and doesn't lend itself to a cursory
appraisal. It may be a useful exercise for you to group these symptoms under at
least a few of the above-listed categories. After you've done that, it would
likely be very useful to then list them in a descending order of severity,
which is to suggest that you give some thought to the amount of discomfort or
distress each gives you, including the amount of dysfunction and disruption
each causes in your life when experienced. Then, it would be important to list
the most disruptive and uncomfortable symptoms in a descending order with
respect to their frequencies, which is to ask "how often" do you
experience same. For that matter, list those things, by type, that energize you
and make you feel most alive and connected to reality and other people, too,
along with their intensity and frequency. What may be acedia for some, clinical
depression for others, loss of affective ego for still others, or other forms
of desolation and/or illness, could well be, for another, an almost
companionable, which is to suggest even comfortable, companionable aridity of
sorts (com + pan means with bread (food), iow, we are even nurtured,
somehow, by the aridity) . Very difficult to discern without protracted sharing
and Q&A.
Some of these may seem to you as rather benign, while others are more
distressing. To the extent you have a firm conviction that many of these
symptoms are indeed from some type of spiritual emergence process, as they say,
from a spiritual emergency, then it would be most helpful to find medical and
psychological and religious professionals who are both sympathetic to and
somewhat familiar with same. This can be a challenge but asking around and even
shopping around can pay big dividends.
The care and nurturance of a soul is a most awesome task! You will appreciate
this from C.S. Lewis:
"It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and
goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk
to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly
tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if
at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each
other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these
overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to
them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all
friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations
-- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is
immortals whome we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal
horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be
perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and
it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from
the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no
presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling
for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or
indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment." From
__The Weight of Glory__
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities and with the awe and
circumspection proper to them that I respond to your request (you, who are no
ordinary mortal, but rather an everlasting splendor, to be sure). I thus
respond with no flippancy, no superiority and no presumption!
God's richest blessings on this part of your journey to glory,
jb
[ August 16, 2004,
11:58 PM: Message edited by: johnboy ]
Posted
by johnboy (Member # 31) on August 18, 2004
12:30 PM:
Merton has
touched upon this dynamic, when he speaks of existential crisis, which is very
much related to the Cross for Christians although it happens with all people,
even in science. The dynamic, more specifically, involves our confrontation
with a problem. We initially perceive the problem as soluble and we work
mightily to solve it. It matters not whether it is a philosophical conundrum or
some scientific hypothesis or some existential crisis/spiritual emergency. We
exhaust all of our resources and then arrive at the point where we pretty much
conclude that this particular issue is insoluble. At this point, we resolve to
leave it alone, give it a rest, to forget about it altogether. So, we do. Then,
when you least expect it, whether in a dream or while playing or working or
chopping wood and carrying water, the solution comes to us in a flash, totally
gratuitously and unmerited as pure grace, so to speak. Now, this dynamic is
very natural and involves the workings of the human mind at a subconscious
level, intuitions bubbling up to the surface, to be sure, not unaided by the
Holy Spirit.
This dynamic works when you cannot balance your checkbook, too
I just wrote some notes on this recently. I'll dig them up and share them if I
can find them.
Also, though, it is especially worthy of note that this process seems to
describe how many if not most major breakthroughs occur in the advance of human
knowledge, however personal or existential, however theological or scientific.
It is also worthy of note that we cannot skip any of the steps and expect it to
work
pax,
jb
Posted by
johnboy (Member # 31) on August 19, 2004
03:12 PM:
A break in your day
A poet can transform life's pain and make it beautiful. -------> hope and
beauty
A poet can transform paradox and remove obstructions from a pathway. ---------->
faith and truth
A poet can construct a koan that when solved through a life experience, at the
same time, heals the experience. ---------> love and goodness
The blues is the roots. All other music, its fruits. ------> death and
resurrection
|
|
|
|
Ths Psalms capture the history of
Israel.
The Psalms capture His Story, too.
The Psalms capture My Story, too.
The Psalms capture Mystery.
We invoke because we have been convoked.
The journey of each soul recapitulates the journey of the People of God.
The journeys of the great saints and mystics predict the journey of the
Mystical Body, too, ontogeny predicting phylogeny.
As the glad psalms, sad psalms and mad psalms are our prayers, our lives, so,
too, the entire Old Testament and New.
The first disciple, Mary, and her story as told in the Gospels, best
illustrates our story, our invitation to be in relationship to the Father and
Jesus and the Holy Breath in the same way. And so, we look for the Magnificats
of our lives and we look for the Passions, too.
What are our Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, individually
and collectively?
As the Body of Christ, as a suffering and celebrating humanity, what twenty
events of the 20th Century, would represent, for all of humankind, the Mystical
Body, its Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous and Glorious Mysteries?
Joyful-
1
2
3
4
5
Sorrowful
1 The Holocaust
2
3
4
5
Luminous
1 The Life of Thomas Merton
2
3
4
5
Glorious
1
2
3
4
5
And it may help to think in terms and analogies of the Rosary mysteries, but we
needn't be limited to that.
I'll leave this here as an ongoing liturgy. Make your prayerful suggestions for
our group meditation and celebration of Our Story, His Story, History, Mystery
...
pax, amor et bonum,
jb
The Lord is Our Shepherd
We lack nothing
In
defining humankind, why is it, you think, we must say that we are more than
just a "rational animal"?
Why would that not capture us?
Because we are also pre-rational and nonrational in our faculties?
Yes, perhaps in part.
Moreso, however, because we are the Imago Dei and, created in the very image
and likeness of God, we are in large measure comprised of a depth dimension.
Thus, each person we meet will be an inexhaustible and unfathomable mystery.
And that is the major impetus behind the virtue of fidelity, which allows us to
remain in relationship to discover ever new and ever more compelling reasons to
come together.
Kumbaya, sisters and brothers.
Kumbaya, my Lord.
Kumbaya,
jb
Joyful-
1 The Marian Apparitions
2
3
4
5
Sorrowful
1 The Holocaust
2 The Existential Vacuum (Viktor Frankl)
3
4
5
Luminous
1 The Life of Thomas Merton
2
3
4
5
Glorious
1 The New Pentecost
2
3
4
5
When we look at humanity, we need a robust anthropology and psychology and an
authentic humanism. We are radically social and inescapably in solitude,
working to live fully in solidarity and compassion, and in celebrations of our
unity in diversity, always against manifold and multiform forces of alienation.
The same way Maslow gifted psychology with a paradigm shift from one of
pathology to one of holistic wholeness and health as exemplified in
self-actualizers, our formative spiritualities must be grounded in a
theological anthropology that is derived from the hagiographies of the great
traditions. It is the best existential realizations that should inform our
essentialistic possibilities and not, on one hand, imagined transcendence, or,
otoh, unimaginable travesty. An accurate theological anthropology gifts us not
only with a better theotics but also, because of the Imago Dei, good theology
and Christology and pneumatology and a more accurate theodicy, too.
What is clear is that any good anthropology will recognize this
essentialistic-existential chasm, let's say the s-x factor, which requires an
initiative (justification) by a clearly Transcendent Reality, for we cannot
deal with s-x on our own. What also becomes clear in the lives of the great saints
and mystics is that our cooperation with grace (sanctification) can takes us
places on the journey of transformation that the human social sciences can
neither imagine nor conceive. For that vision we need lives of incredible
holiness and the Arts. We need to tell Our Story, the whole story, luminous,
joyful, glorious and sorrowful. How has your own personal story experienced
same? What forces of alienation have you allowed to sweep you away and what
manner of grace has always retrieved you from such poignantly painful
aloneness? If you have ever cried out with the Psalmist from the depths of your
heart, whether glad or sad or mad, is it not because you heard the vast chorus
of human voices and simply joined their songs and dirges, their joys and lamentations?
Do we all thus sing because He lived the life and lived the words and now we
conform ourselves to His Image and Likeness? to His Word, His Way, His Truth
and His Life?
deep peace,
jb
pax,
jb
Just a
teaser, food for thought.
Much of this discussion seems to be about accounting for the
essentialistic-existential chasm, which classically has been considered to
result from original sin, which I like to consider as a combination of our
finitude and of the effects of everyone else's personal sins on me and mine on
them.
re:
essentialistic-existential chasm -
that would be between our possibilities and their realizations
iow, we always come up short
1) The classical account is to describe this chasm as an ontological rupture,
located in the past.
2) Others, like Jack Haught, who employ a process approach might moreso
describe it as a teleological rupture, located in the future.
3) I have also considered whether or not it is not both of those PLUS
a) an epistemological rupture, existing in the present
b) an axiological rupture
c) a cosmological rupture
4) All of this is very aristotelian, thomistic even, whereby
a) ontological relates to material causation and God as Primal Being
b) teleological relates to final causation and God as Primal Destiny
c) epistemological relates to formal causation and God as Primal Ground
d) axiological relates to instrumental causation and God as Primal Order
e) cosmological relates to efficient causation and God as Primal Origin (ex
nihilo) and Support (continua)
Seems to me, %^%$#, you are engaging the epistemological rupture in your
musings re: information and God and closing that essentialistic-existential
chasm thru sanctification processes, etc Of course, there must be a
justification process, too, and there will also be a glorification process.
I don't offer this as a substantive comment to any of your musings. Rather, I
offer it as a heuristic device to help you and maybe others contextualize your
musings -- iow, a hatrack or coat closet or set of placeholders. If it helps,
fine; it not, just ignore it.
Substantively, there is but one rupture and I have only suggested what its
aspects and attributes might be, observing that you are grappling with one of
them. Now, I'll leave y'all to the grappling ... and maybe these other aspects
can shed light, too, maybe not. I don't view any of these as a least common
denominator but all of them as different hermeneutical lenses.
pax!
deep peace
jb
--------------------
Don't you know it's gonna be alright - John Lennon
And you will know that all manner of things shall be well - Julian of Norwich
Some
other thoughts:
In an authentic pan-entheism, maintaining our metaphysical realism, which is
moderate and critical but not extreme realism, when we speak of God's attributes
in terms of, for instance, Primal Ground, Being, Destiny, Origin, Support, etc
and invoke analogies to causations: efficient, instrumental, formal, final and
material ...
we mustn't forget that we are not trying to precisely locate and completely define
that nexus that relates us in terms akin to the givens of proximate reality:
forces, axioms and primitives (like space, time, mass, energy and some think,
even consciousness). And, even though modern physics and biology and psychology
and philosophy of mind have all, in various ways, hinted at a rehabilitation of
sorts of formal causation, which could (should) take its place next to the
forces, axioms and primitives, still --- whether formative
(information-related), efficient (force related), material (matter related),
final (semiotic & telos related) or instrumental (tacit dimension or axiom
related)
--- iow, whether epistemological, cosmological, ontological, teleological or
axiological ---
--- iow, whether Primal Ground, Primal Origin and Support, Primal Being, Primal
Destiny/Goal or Primal Order---
we are saying that there is something relating us to God that is LIKE
information, that is LIKE a FORCE, that is LIKE being, both esse and essence,
that is LIKE downward causation and intrinsic telos, that is LIKE tacit
dimensionality and landscapes that passively configure other realities ...
we are saying that Primal Ground is like a ground but more dislike it really,
Primal Being is like being but more dislike it really, etc
So, the univocity is only with respect to attributes of God, which we address
metaphorically, and, because of the necessary equivocity, even those metaphors
are weakened to the status of weak analogies.
So, how is God intelligible? Through His effects which we know only by their causes
even as we understand not a whit about those causes -- whether formal-LIKE,
efficient-LIKE, material-LIKE, final-LIKE, instrumental-LIKE.
And, this leaves us immersed in paradox, which is ineluctable ... but it is
something, in our metaphysical pursuits, that we just have to get over! Dualism
is not wholly satisfying and cannot be from a scientific perspective, and
neither is monism and neither is pluralism. From a metaphysical perspective,
which accepts its constraints (occulted ultimate reality) before it begins its
enterprise, these ontologies are pretty good hunches and we can, very
reasonably, argue about which hypothesis is the best. And an acceptable
criterion is the reductio ad absurdum we run against our intuitions about: what
are the implications of this system, when logically extrapolated, for what we
already know about life in relationship with others and the cosmos and about
spiritual life, integrally conceived?
And I see y'all doing that to some extent. Good criterion. I just wanted to reinforce
the analogical nature of our knowledge of ultimate reality. It is not so much
that we might not one day stumble over these answers as much as there is no way
to scientifically or formally figure out that we did (per Godel)! Thankfully,
the Stumbling Block of the Incarnation, folly to some, has become our Stepping
Stone.
Hope I made sense here. Again, this is just another suggested thomistic
framework and not a comment on the substance of your musings.
pax,
jb
the "Collected Works of St. John of the Cross" translated by Kavanaugh & Rodriguez (ICS) have a Scriptural Index which reveals that Juan cited almost every book of the Old & New Testaments in his writings and the citations number somewhere between 800-1,000 bible references (i haven't counted but that is a fair estimate)!!
it is easy to understand how new students of contemplative spirituality focus on, what is to them, the novelty of Juan's via negativa. one would err, however, by failing to take into account Juan's fidelity to Scripture, Sacraments, Liturgy and almost-Ignatian emphasis on "God in All Things" and almost-Franciscan emphasis on creation. (how's that for a litany of kataphatic modalities?)
Denis Read OCD, an ICS member, calls Juan the "liturgical mystic" and sanjuanist spirituality "liturgical spirituality". in addition to Juan's love and fidelity to Scripture, to the Eucharist (one of greatest personal trials in prison in Toledo was not being able to celebrate Eucharist) and to the other sacraments (strong emphasis on reconciliation), Juan quoted the Church's liturgical books liberally, including hymns, antiphons of the LOH - Divine Office, Roman Ritual, etc etc etc!
Richard Hardy, PhD in "Embodied Love in John of the Cross" states: "The question we must answer is whether John is espousing the goal of an ethereal, "purely spiritual" love, or rather an embodied love replete with sensuality and delight." Juan's emphasis on nature, the imagery of his poetry, his relational imagery reveal a man overflowing with sensuality and delight! he is selling us on nothing less than Divine Eros and as Hardy says: "in the light of this erotic love challenges today's Christian to embrace a lifestyle that risks all for the sake of all."
the apophatic-kataphatic remains in a highly creative tension with Juan and gets resolved, not by emphasis on one mode versus the other, but rather by a rhythmicity, by Juan's recognition of God's every "spiration" and by Juan's "re"-spiring in accordance with same. Juan does NOT move us away from sensory delight but to purified sensory delight. Juan does not negate the kataphatic devotion but moves us to transformed devotion. it is reminiscent of the early Tony de Mello who would have us not cling to a note, not because the note is not beautiful, but so we would not miss the symphony. the early-Tony bids us "Wake Up!" and take it all in. the later-Tony did articulate a radical apophaticism which is, to me, at the least, an impoverished formative spirituality.
perhaps my studies of neurological and biological circadian rhythms biased or sensitized me to paschal rhythmicities, liturgical seasonalities, liturgical rhythms of the day and night, and finally to resolve apophatic-kataphatic tensions rhythmically, cyclically.
sanjuanist liturgical mysticism is "mysticism par excellence" and i will not be bashful in pointing out that negativa et positiva is the summit of mt carmel even if negativa sans positiva is a pretty high oriental base camp and positiva sans negativa is equally high on the occidental side of the mountain.
Thomas Keating on
aprophatic/kataphatic contemplation -
a misleading distinction
suggesting opposition between the two, in fact, a proper preparation of the
faculties (kataphatic practice) leads to apophatic contemplation, which in turn
is sustained through appropriate kataphatic practices.
*** Thomas Keating; Open Heart,
Open Mind.
I guess i burned a lot of bandwidth to suggest that there are "onenesses" and there is the ONENESS. people from manifold religions, traditions, paths can and do experience both on their earthly sojourns.
my discernment, in the final analysis, is that when one is desiring or yearning or panting or longing or aching or wounded or in the desert or in dryness or in desolation or in aridity or in the dark night, and there experiences
a "luminosity of the will" which sees clearly a path of love through the dark,
a "steadfastness of the heart" which follows steps in the sand after that lover Who has trod unseen beyond the many dunes ahead, and
a kenosis, but not of those Godly attributes which Jesus didn't cling to, but rather an emptying of,or a fasting from, the appetites to acquire those attributes (which are not our inheritance in the first place), then they will know that all shall be well.
Are you desiring or yearning or panting or longing or aching or wounded or in the desert or in dryness or in desolation or in aridity or in the dark night but passionately committed to Truth, Beauty, Justice and Love, with them as friends= philia? because of storge = your connaturality with them?
Are you unswervingly dedicated to these paths because they are their own rewards?
Then I would say you have an agapic love for God.
Hang on and the day will come when you will desire to desire, yearn to yearn, long to long, will ache bittersweetly, will drink of the dryness and will experience the aridity as Presence. Then you will have an erotic love for God, too.
You will know that this Lover is desiring you. She is yearning and longing for you, no less than you for Her. You have been transformed from image to a greater likeness because you will be experiencing within you God's very experience of and toward you! You wanted to be like God?!? Well that is how He feels toward you! deep desire! endless longing! boundless yearning!
When you realize this, you will be brought to the heights! you will have ascended Mt Carmel by descending to the depths! you will have entered a horizonless, beatific expanse having gone deep within your own interior mansions!
I'd say that in many respects, our storge and philia of God are our natural endowments, our humanity, our image, our connaturality and that agape and eros of God (and Hers toward us) are our supernatural endowments, our deification, our likeness, our transformation.
inauthentic paths perhaps place eros in front of agape. this is a perilous path in human relationships as it is, however much western civilization has idolized romantic love. God will not let us suffer that peril with Her and so agape without eros comes first, that is to say the aridity, the darkness.
lo and behold, we pursue agape and eros ensues and you will know this when the darkness becomes a luminosity of numinosity, the dryness becomes a fountain of charity, the longing becomes fulfillment, the desert an oasis of purified love.
there is no temptation to "throw in the towel" or to give up searching for this Lover. the darkness is limerance. the dryness is infatuation. in their perfection they are transformed into a Divine "Glandular" Chemistry of rarified eros, far removed from the pre-pubescent or adolescent hormonally-driven selfish energy.
in reflecting on aridity or darkness or the metaphor du jour within the context of our agapic and erotic love for God
i thought of how, in our human loves, we typically pursue eros then agape ensues or the relationship dies; i recall how when we experience the raging hormones, the glandular chemistry, the limerance, the infatuation, we don't want the eros to end, as it surely will in many respects. it is a type of yearning that has been called "falling in love with love" and we have observed this addictive cycle of euphoric recall.
i then thought of how, in our love for God, we eventually must pursue agape and have eros ensue (not that we don't try the other way around) and how the relationship perdures in this "approach". occasionally we hear anecdotes of married lovers having started out as friends prior to falling in love and how such relationships seem superior in many aspects.
and you will recall this from earlier:
well the yearning and longing and pining away for God does not end after we are wounded. people talk about what a curse it would be to stay in limerance or infatuation throughout the course of any human relationship. well i've got good news and i've got bad news.
the bad news: our erotic love for God that ensues in the wake of our agapic love persists; this insistent longing, this yearning, this aching and wounded heart, remains a "curse" of the beloved as this eros endures.
the good news: this curse transforms to blessing and the eros perdures, the yearning never ends, the longing goes on and on. now think about it. do you *really* want this "falling in love with Love" to end?
this, in fact, is what it is all about Alfie!
befriending desires, welcoming darkness, drinking from a dry well, are all about eros staying with you in your love relationship.
it is delightfully wounding. it's the driest but the most delectable vintage. it is perpetual orgasmic energy on the brink, never post-climactically spent. it is a forever-parched thirst unquenchable in the pouring rain. it is a beauty ever-revealing, neither timid nor coy, but never exposed from all vantage points. it is an expanding horizon ever receding. it is an appetite ever-tasting morsels, but never satiated. do you *really* want this to end? this is what calls you forth, sends you where you'd not otherwise go.
anyway, give some thought to this because it may be that, as dark nights go, the only difference between a twilight and a dawn might be a hermeneutic of your own making, might come about from facing west and not east. your desire to have God's hermeneutics is the beginning of His work in you and, at that stage of a true dark night (one not due to mere backsliding), other than pure desire on your part, the rest of the work is His. i just offer these ideas as a way to companion with you while you wait (for what could be a very long time).
And so our truth-seekers will continue their discourse and
analyses; our justice-seekers will continue their advocacies; our
love-complements will build vibrant communities and continue to
serve. What I wish to advocate, here, though, is the notion that
we need to better nurture both the individual and collective
application of our intuitive faculties, especially in our western
spiritualities. Tony deMello spent his life teaching the
importance of awareness versus analysis, of insight versus
information, perhaps patterned after the founder of his order,
St. Ignatius, who emphasized the need to "taste" the truth versus
merely "knowing" the truth. Oliver Sacks' book and movie,
"Awakenings", describes how brain-damaged individuals can be
roused out of stupor by music and art when nothing else can reach
them. None of this is to denigrate the other modes of
contribution. It is offerred as an affirmation of what has been
too often neglected, of what we might more often be about in
spiritual direction.
From Amos Wilder:
"Imagination is a necessary component of all
profound knowing and
celebration ... It is at the level of
imagination that any full engagement with life takes place."
From Morton Kelsey: "God
knew that human beings learn more by
story and music, by art,
symbols, and images than by logical
reasoning, theorems, and
equations, so God's deepest revelations
have always been expressed in
images and stories."
And so, perhaps a different experience of the mystery of God is
in store for the asking. Our growth in freedom, in love ...in
awareness via all faculties ...may ensue.
The Passion of Jesus &
Mary & Joseph
And of John the Baptist &
Elizabeth
Narrator: I asked them of
their hopes and dreams
Of how it seemed to them
On a road that led to Calvary
That began in Bethlehem
Mary answered first: "My
hopes and dreams,
Every single part of me,
Awaited my Messiah,
With Him I longed to
be."
Joseph looked at her and
nodded:
"What you just said is
true ...
But as for me, my hopes and
dreams:
My every thought was you.
"At the time of our
betrothal,
The fulfillment of my life
Was to take your hand in
marriage,
To take you as my wife."
"I was first the
handmaid of the Lord,"
Said Mary as she smiled,
"But what devastation
you endured
When you found I was with
child."
Joseph said: "My heart
was broken;
How bitterly I wept;
Exhausted in my pain and
grief,
How wearily I slept."
Mary smiled: "The angel
in your dream
Your every doubt erased;
Then the baby leapt within my
womb
When warmly we embraced
!"
Joseph: Our road would wind,
go up then down,
His way seemed hard to learn.
Mary: But angels came in
Joseph's dreams
At every single turn.
Joseph: Like the time we went
to Egypt
Where we stayed 'till Herod
died.
Mary: Or when we came back to
Israel
And you'd thought the angel'd
lied.
Mary: (You see Herod's son
took Herod's place
So, again, we'd have to
flee).
Joseph: And warned, again,
within a dream,
We left for Galilee.
Mary: So, too, on your road
with Jesus,
You may find your plans and
schemes
Will be readily displaced there
By our Father's hopes and
dreams.
Joseph: There'll be times
your heart is broken.
There'll be times your dreams
are dashed,
When you dwell in desolation,
See no sun, just smoke and
ash.
Mary: All will share His
Passion and His Death
From the time of their
conception;
Those who take life's road
with us
Will share His Resurrection.
Mary: Our road began with the
Word of God,
Where a witness, Elizabeth's
son,
In a town in the hills of
Judah,
Spoke of Jesus, the Chosen
One.
Elizabeth: Little boys we
carried in our wombs
Knew one another, even there
!
And were destined, both, for
early tombs,
Any mother's worst nightmare.
Mary: My son was killed by
Pilate,
With indignity and disgrace.
Elizabeth: My John was
brutally murdered,
Beheaded at Herod's place.
Narrator: I asked of Mary:
"What of Pilate ?"
"What of Herod ?"
of Elizabeth.
"Of the people who
rejected them
Even in Nazareth ?"
They both were silent, for a
while
Then each, in their own turn,
Spoke openly and lovingly
Of the lessons they had
learned.
Mary: Like my Joseph, through
King David's line,
Did my baby, Jesus, come
A Savior given unto us
Each and every one.
Elizabeth: Yes, adulterers
and murderers
Like Herod (King David, too)
Were the reason that Our Lord
was born
Mary: And also me and you.
Elizabeth: No it's not for us
to understand.
It's not for us to see:
What of David ? Pilate ?
Herod ?
Mary: What of them or you or
me ?
Mary: Like the criminals
murdered with Him
On His left and on His right
'Til one's dying breath He'll
save you
Bathe you in Eternal Light.
Narrator: Elizabeth stood,
took Mary's arms.
They embraced with loving
tears.
Then as at The Visitation
John and Jesus then appeared
!
I watched in silence and in
awe
With love and peace and joy,
As with such warmth and
tenderness
Each mother hugged her boy.
They were little kids like
yours and mine !
With faces oh so fair !
Their mommies kissed their
little heads
Ran fingers through their
hair.
They pinched their cheeks,
held little faces
In between each hand,
Looked proudly down into
their eyes
Each mother's little man.
There they saw the face of
God and lived
As the prophet said they'd
see.
They all stared in little
Jesus' face
Then turned and said to me:
All: We'll have all been
there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
Each generation's moms and
dads
Each daughter and each son;
The loves we'll have shared
continuing on,
The pains we'll have shared
forgotten,
With the God we'll have known
from ages hence
From Mary's womb begotten.
For nothing can quench the
love of God
Not anguish nor distress
Persecution, famine nor the
sword
Peril nor nakedness.
Neither death nor life nor
angels
Not any principality
Could stifle the love of
these mothers' boys
From here to Eternity.
I then said: "Lord, take
and receive,
Take all of my liberty,
My memory and understanding,
Like The Baptist I want to be
...
For you'll increase as we
decrease
In answer to our prayer
'Til it almost becomes a
challenge here
To know who is standing
there...
For I've entertained angels
unaware
In your poor it's plain to
see
Life's purpose is found as we
get confused
'Tween them and you and me.
No the heart of man has not
conceived
No eye could ever see
The things the Father has
prepared
For The Baptist, you and me !
Narrator: What pains in life,
dear Jesus,
Caused your greatest agony ?
What of the blood, the sweat,
the tears
That blessed Gethsemane ?
Jesus: He heaved a sigh:
"I'll tell you now,
The worst of pains, my
brother,
Came from the swords that
pierced the Heart
Of my dearest, sweetest
Mother."
"The first sword ? In
the temple,
Among the doctors of the law,
What a joy-filled, happy
moment,
When my mother's face I saw !
Mary: Have you ever lost a
child ?
Known the tears, the fear,
the dread ?
Have you ever feared your
little one
To be given up for dead ?
Jesus: Well, her look that
day was haunting,
'T was a look of total loss.
I was to see it yet again
As I hung there on the Cross.
Narrator: What of the Chief
Priests and the Elders
Or the Scribes and Pharisees
?
Of the ridicule you suffered
there
As they tortured, spat and
teased ?
Jesus: Jesus sighed again and
said: "You know,
On my mother, that was tough;
It was watching her in agony
That, for me, was really
rough."
As for Caiaphas and Annas,
The men with clubs and
swords,
Those who called out: 'Play
the Prophet !'
Or who mocked me with their
words ...
I'd grown use to that in
childhood,
Never really did fit in,
Not with neighbors, not with
townsfolk
Not even with my kin.
You as parents are familiar
With these feelings from such
pain
When your children don't fit
in
With the others who are
playin'
On the playground, in the
school yard,
Out about the neighborhood.
How my mom and step-dad
suffered
Cause they knew I never
would.
Narrator: Jesus, what of the
Sanhedrin
And the lying witnesses ?
Or the soldiers there who
stripped you
Spat or hit you with their
fists ?
When the crowd called out:
"Barabbas !"
Scourged and crowned you with
the thorns ?
What terror gripped your
heart there ?
Were you 'specially then
forlorn ?
Jesus: No, not the passers-by
that jeered me
Or who gave me wine with gall
Nor the ones who drove the
nails
Pierced my side, cast lots
and all
Not even when they lifted me
Did it torture me the most;
It was that one last look in
momma's eyes
That gave Daddy up my ghost.
Aside from the pain this
caused my mom,
What still truly hurts the
most
Are things that are done by
the ones that I love
In whom dwell the Holy Ghost.
With sacraments of initiation
received
Along with such loving
formation
For the life of Me, brother,
I don't understand why
They abandon the Way of
salvation.
The Sanhedrin, the High
Priests and Elders
Who hit me and spat in my
face
Did not cause my Heart near the
confusion
As those who abandoned the
place
For after saying they'd never
disown me
The moment the Shepherd was
struck
The sheep of my flock were
soon scattered
'Cause their Master was down
on His Luck.
You, too, have seen
transfigurations;
You know you have had your
good days
But still like my beloved
apostles
Don't you go your own
separate ways ?
Like Zebedee's sons on the
road there
Does your selfishness cause
any fights ?
In your own ways you press
one another
For seats on my left and my
right.
No, I tell you I'd rather be
spat at and jeered
Even scourged and then nailed
to a cross
By the people who never have
known me
As opposed to somebody I've
lost
Like you whom I've known
since your childhood
Baptized as an infant and
then
Have countless times known me
in Eucharist
Who's always considered my
friend
Can't you see what you've
done
To a world dire in need
Anytime when, like Peter, you
fall ?
The scandal ensues
A soul 'bout to choose
Chance misses hearing my
call.
Next time you pray into my
Passion
And gaze up at your Friend on
the Cross,
I'm not there cause of people
I've never known
It's those, maybe you ? that
I've lost.
I'm A Stranger in Paradise
Think of God as one who
relentlessly pursues you.
I have often thought of God
as follows: She is a cute little girl on the playground Who is chasing me, much
to my chagrin. I run from Her. She never quite catches up with me. When I am
very young, I really want nothing to do with Her. She remains a nuisance. She
remains in pursuit of me whenever I set foot on the playground, even as I am
getting older.
In my pre-adolescence, I
glance over my shoulder at times and I feel confused; I sometimes think of
maybe letting Her catch me, but I am unsure for it seems best to stick with
that strategy which has served me so well from childhood. After all, what would
the boys think of me, letting Her catch me?
The days and years go by and
the playground pursuit is the only constant in my life and I am glancing over
my shoulder longer and my confusion is giving way to new feelings.
I notice Her Beauty and I
imagine what it would be like to be close to Her and, for the first time, I
feel strangely and strongly attracted to Her.
I resolve to get caught.
I wonder:"What in the
world was I thinking all these years, running from this gorgeous
Creature?"
And She catches me and we
collapse laughing and giggling into the flowered clovers and we embrace and the
universe explodes with meaning and all of the eros and limerance and
infatuation and chemistry of that universe are focused here, in time, in me, in
Her, in us and I am left there, at once mystified and even somewhat stupefied!
Then, of a sudden, She is
gone. I look around and see Her standing there and our eyes meet and we smile
and She takes off running, laughing and giggling, taunting and teasing, now
with me in pursuit! How the tables have turned!
And now I am filled with
longing, yearning, pining for She has run clean over the horizon and out of
sight! But, at times, I think I hear Her giggle and swear I can glimpse Her
face in a crowd.
At all times, I think of Her and my heart aches, sweetly.
***********************************************************************
And the above describes the purgative and illuminative and unitive ways and the "wounding" and the dark night. In some moments, I've thought of heaven, purgatory and hell as consolation, desolation and isolation (moments when I'm looking through Ignatian lenses). Think of the discerment processes of The Spiritual Exercises and how God speaks to us in consolation and even accompanies us in desolation. Consolation & Desolation are His/Her Effects on us. Isolation is another matter entirely, sin being alienation and damage to relationship.
The loneliness of "i"solation ... comes from the old "riches to honor to pride" or "this is mine; look at me; "i" am" (rather than I AM = YAHWEH) and is a hell I've personally experienced due to pride and anger and a cutting-off of myself from God and others.
It was Hell running away from that little girl (and I didn't even know it!).
Purgatory may be where we continue to run away, even as Her Beauty is illuminated and our wills are transformed (much in the way our glands undergo transformation in puberty).
In Heaven, there will be no more dark night, no pursuit...just flowered clover
and ... ... Her.
I believe that our consolations and callings and vocations are "assignations" with our Beloved and that some assignations are missed in life, by all of us. We don't have just a few "missed assignations" in life; they are manifold and multiform. A single "missed assignation" will NOT place anyone in eternal isolation or eternal loneliness or eternal hellfire. However, that a "misoriented" fundamental orientation or poorly "optioned" fundamental option may be reinforced by recurrent self-imposed isolations must remain a distinct possibility because He is a gentlemanly suitor; as Lover, She is a proper lady; as beloved we are Free.
So what is desolation? aridity? the desert? the dark night? the longing? the yearning? the endless pursuit? this wounded heart?
It is my Beloved attracting me, drawing me, seducing me, calling me with a siren song which She has placed in my heart!
It is the song in Her heart, too! for She is in longing and yearning and endless pursuit also!
Her pursuit and mine are the same!
Her heart is wounded and this pain in my heart is Hers! The pain in Her heart is mine!
Thus our wills are becoming entwined.
And we are running alright, but it is toward each Other. This is what we are "feeling" in aridity, even absent cognitive awareness of same, but you will come to know this with your HEART.
She is all the Beauty I've ever glimpsed, Truth I've ever sought, Justice I've ever needed. She brings Love because She brings Her Self.
This Dark Night is the Brightest of All Dawns as I realize that by traveling at the speed of Her Light which now emanates forth from my bosom, I no longer "see" the light but rather am being overwhelmed as it transports me, light to Light, love to Love.
This aridity is but the experience of "G" forces, accelerating me through a black hole to the Other Side into a life:
" a life into which we are taken up with our whole history... a justice for which we are already fighting ... a freedom which we have already felt ... a love in which we already shared here and which we bestowed here ... a salvation of which we have already had a hint ...eternity understood not purely affirmatively as time continued ...however not understood purely negatively, as static negation of all time ... eternity instead understood dialectically in the light of one raised to life, as the temporality which is dissolved into finality ..."
from The new earth and the new heaven, pg 221, Hans Kung, 1996 ETERNAL LIFE ? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem ---translated by Edward Quinn, Crossroad Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017
In traditional formative spirituality, especially the sanjuanist/teresian Carmelite approach, the purgative and illuminative and unitive "ways" make so much sense to me. We can all experience in our lives the active & passive purgations, some illuminations and at have least glimpsed the unitive vision.
The metaphors of a log catching fire, of a garden being watered, of mansions in an interior castle, of the ascent of Mt. Carmel, of dark nights, etc are timeless and, ergo make possible, in theory, a process of purgation antecedent to a unitive life.
My experience of being pursued by this Little Girl on the playground suggests that one person's Hell is possibly another's Heaven.
How do I know this? I have experienced glimpses of both heaven and hell that had everything to do with my hermeneutic and nothing to do with Who God Is.
Will God stop pursuing us even in the afterlife ?
I think there will be little boys in purgatory running away from that Little Girl for a very long time. They may run away forever; that is possible and has to remain possible.
Is it probable ?
Not from what I've seen of Her Beauty!
All may be well, can be well, will be well, shall be well and you will know that all manner of things will be well.
Also from Kung:
"In death a new future is offered to man (and woman), to the whole, undivided person: ...not in our space and time ... not in a different space or different time ...a new future wholly different ...But if we want to make use of metaphors it is a departure inward: a retreat as it were into the innermost primal ground and primal meaning of world and man, into the ineffable mystery of our reality ... " (ibid. pg 114)
enough effabling about the Ineffable,
gotta run, here She comes again!
in her Spiritual Autobiography, Simone wrote:"As soon as I reached adolescence I saw the problem of God as a problem of which the data could not be obtained here below, and I decided that the only way of being sure not to reach a wrong solution, which seemed to me the greatest possible evil, was to leave it alone So I left it alone."
"The very name of God had no part in my thoughts.''
"In those days I had not read the Gospel."
"I had never read any mystical works because I had never felt any call to read them."
"I had never prayed. I was afraid of the power of suggestion that is in prayer."
one day, however, Simone was reciting a poem, by George Herbert (1592-1633), entitled 'Love' . it was a poem she had learned by heart and had repeated often. she reports that she was ''concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines."
it was during this particular recitation, she claims: ''Christ himself came down and took possession of me.... In this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved face.''
***********************************************************************
Love
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew near to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd any thing.
"A guest," I answer'd, ''worthy to be here".
" Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkinde, ungrateful!? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.''
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
''Who made the eves but I ?"
''Truth Lord, But I have marr'd them: let my shame
go where it doth deserve."
''And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame ?"
"My deare, then I will serve."
"You must sit down,'' sayes Love," and taste my meat."
" So I did sit and eat."
***********************************************************************
Simone continues:" In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them.... God in his mercy had prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact.''
even as she rested firm in her new found certitude, she vividly recalls the Dark Night and the following Dawn:"Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell. A kind of horror submerges the soul. During this absence there is nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God's absence becomes final. The soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least to go on wanting to love, though it may only be with an infinitesimal part of itself. Then, one day, God will come to show himself to this soul and to reveal the beauty of the world to it, as in the case of Job. But if the soul stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something almost equivalent to hell."
despite her implicit Catholic faith, Simone chose to remain unbaptized and outside the Church: "You can take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India and ancient China, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of human hearts where religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visible christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. The love of those things which are outside visible christianity keeps me outside the Church."
Simone argued, not for any syncretism or radical pluralism, but for recognition of the implicit faith of other peoples. This was an inclusivistic Christocentrism, that, many years later, would become prominent in Vatican II and, most recently, has been even more clearly articulated by John Paul II in his encylcical "Fides et Ratio" (faith and reason). According to Simone: ''So many things are outside the Christian Church, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise they would not be in existence. All the immense stretches of past centuries except the last twenty are among them; all the countries inhabited by coloured races; all secular life in the white peoples' countries; in the history of these countries, all the traditions banned as heretical, those of the Manicheans, and Albigenses for instance; all those things resulting from the Renaissance, too often degraded but not quite without value."
Simone is not objecting to Church dogmas, rituals or moral codifications. she was, in fact, attracted to the liturgy, to Eucharistic adoration, to hymns and rituals and even held Church doctrine as true. rather, she was a voice of prophetic protest against exclusivistic ecclesiocentrism:''I am kept outside the Church .... not by the mysteries themselves but the specifications with which the Church has thought good to surround them in the course of centuries.''
one thinks here of the "mystical core of organized religion" as explicated by Stendl-Rast and of the deterioration of dogma, ritual and moral codes into dogmatism, ritualism and legalism. whatever the authentic Church teaching at the time, i can personally attest to the fact that, before Vatican II, at a grass roots level, the faithful had clearly received the message that non-Catholic religions had no salvific efficacy.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
a quote from Isaac of
Nineveh:
"It happens at certain
moments that delight and enjoyment invade the
whole body. And the fleshly
tongue can say no more; to such degrees now
have earthly objects become
but dust and ashes. The initial delights,
those of the heart, fill us
while we are awake. The spirit burns at the
hour of prayer, at the moment
of reading, in the course of frequent
meditations or long
contemplations. But the final delights come to us
differently, often during the
night, in the following way: when we are
between sleep and
wakefulness, when we are asleep without being asleep
and awake without being
really awake. These delights invade a person and
the whole body throbs. It is
clear then that this is nothing other than
the kingdom of heaven."
I got this intuition meditating on the Trinity with the "grammar" of Julian of
Norwich. First I thought of the psychologists and theologians who speak of our
*desire*, our *intention* and *action*. Then I thought of how Julian restated
that all *may* be well, all *can* be well, all *will* be well, all manner of
things *shall* be well, and you will know that all manner of things will be well.
Next I thought of the Father's *permissive will* who designed things such that
all *may* be well and this was His *intention*. And it followed that the Son's
*efficacious will* was such that all *can* be well and this required His
*action*. The Spirit's *desiring will* which says "I will, I would" that all
things *will* be well corresponds to *desire*.
Now these Persons being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent ...
when They conspire with perfectly aligned permissive, efficacious and desiring
wills ... a *mandatory will* of the Holy Trinity proclaims that all manner of
things *shall* be well.
In the Holy Trinity thus resides *Desire* and *Intention* and *Action*.
And we, made in God's image and likeness, recognize these faculties in ourselves !
And what do we find in ourselves but DESIRE, longing, yearning !
And here is the Grace, the Holy Spirit which animates us and draws us, this
*desire* precedes our assent and helps preserve it through the indwelling
promptings of the Spirit.
Through our free cooperation with grace, our will is transformed such that we
share, increasingly, the *intentions* of Our Father (Thy will be done) and our
*actions* progressively conform to those of the Son. And, if like Mary, we
ponder these things in our hearts, we will know that all manner of things will be well.
And I take heart and carry on because I have heard that others have been *gifted* with the same heart-rending, soul-searching journey of both incredulity and desire, for as Gerald May says:
We
are conscious not just because our hearts are beating but because they are
yearning (1).
The
only way to own and claim love as our identity is:
to fall in love with love
itself,
to feel affection for our
longing,
to value our yearning,
treasure our wanting,
embrace our incompleteness,
be overwhelmed by the beauty
of our need (2).
Love is present in any desire ... in all feelings of attraction, in all caring and connectedness. It embraces us in precious moments of immediate presence. It is also present when we experience loneliness, loss, grief and rejection. We may say such feelings come from the absence of love, but in fact they are signs of our loving; they express how much we care. We grieve according to how much of ourselves we have already given; we yearn according to how much we would give, if only we could (3).
And I would add that we desire to desire, yearn to yearn and long to long.
If you feel attracted to the good just because, to the truth just because, to justice just because, to beauty just because, to love just because
... you know they are their own reward ...
and you may be poised on the horizon of loving, God just because.
We dialogue with Other and others *just because* they are ends sufficient unto themselves.
In closing, a word from
Thomas Merton:
"And so, many contemplatives
never
become great saints, never enter into close friendship with God,
never
find a deep participation in His immense joys, because they cling
to the
miserable little consolations that are given to beginners in the
contemplative
way."
gulp! oh well. Therese of Lisieux and Simone Weil, pray for me.
Teresa
of Avila did say that we must desire and occupy ourselves in prayer not so much
so as to receive consolations but so as to gain the strength to serve. Still, a
careful reading and parsing will note that she didn't negate or eliminate
our desire for consolations but only added to them. I like the simple
distinction between eros or what's in it for me? and agape or what's
in it for God & others?
Agape, however, does not extinguish or negate eros, but, rather, transvalues it
and recontextualizes it. Thus we do not let go of what's in it for me?
even as we strive to transcend it with agapic love.
Merton teaches on Bernardian Love: 1) Love of self for sake of self; 2) love of
God for sake of self; 3) love of God for sake of God; 4) love of self for sake
of God (and I like to add for sake of God and others, including the cosmos).
None of these transcendent movements is intended to negate the earlier
movements but, rather, transvlaue and perfect and recontextualize them.
In other words, the Old Covenant still works. Imperfect contrition is all that
is needed to enter the Kingdom, which is to say, I detest all my sins because
of thy just punishment (consequences to me). The New Covenant transvalues the
Old, moving beyond what we might call a) imperfect contrition, b) eros, what's
in it for me? and c) enlightened self interest (love of God for sake of self)
and inviting us to a) perfect contrition (but most of all because I have
offended you my God, and my people, and the cosmos), b) agape, what's in it for
all beside me? and c) true enlightenment, which results from a compassion that
ensues from our awakening to our utter solidarity. Thus you take care of
yourself and desire consolations to strengthen yourself to serve God and the
people you so very much love (love of self for sake of God and others). We seek
consolations so we can empty ourselves of them in service and love.
When they don't come ... perhaps ... we are being told to ... Give it a rest
... (or to quit backsliding, it depends) and we are being reminded that Someone
else is in charge. And when we persist in loving service even in utter
desolation, our consolation comes from conforming ourselves to our Redeemer,
Who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at but emptied
Himself ... and loved unconditionally (but conditions are okay in our finitude
and human condition).
I suppose I am suggesting that purity can and even should very much involve
something in return; God would have us be on the lookout for His blessings --
our Dayenu -- at every turn. Or maybe I am saying impurity, of a sort, is okay.
But our intention is indeed impure/suboptimal if it does not seek the greatest
glory of God (ad majorem Dei gloriam, AMDG). Even if apokatastasis were true,
universal salvation, which is to suggest that Christ's sacrifice was so
efficacious all will be saved, eventually -- the true Lover would not rest or
be content or indifferent -- but would always be seeking Ignatius' degrees of
humility 1) not to commit mortal sin 2) not to commit venial sin 3) not to
offend God in the least but to in fact imitate Him in His passion, seeking not
only His Glory but His Greatest Possible Glory!
Like a parent ... as a Parent ... I think God wants us to know and seek what's
in it for me when we visit. His refrigerator, cookie jar and pantry and
playroom and television are ours for the asking. I know He'd have us leave
refreshed and to go forth and serve others, too --- and has suitable
chastisements in store when we don't. But more than anything else --- God wants
us to know the joy of being parents, which, in my experience, will very much
include the willingness to be taken for granted.
Curiously, I believe He leaves us in desolation sometimes --- maybe --- for the
purpose of allowing us to love Him and others unconditionally, being taken for
granted by others and even taken for granted by God! And thus we get to imitate
Him perfectly as we are conformed to His likeness in unconditional love.
There is a paradox here: Lord, make me holy, but only as holy as you want me to
be. Lord, let me imitate You, but only as much as You want me to!
After a time, I have been less and less able to discern the difference,
emotionally, between desolation and consolation. I think I just surrendered and
quit caring and worrying about it. When I run out of steam, I stop. When my
batteries are recharged, I go. I desire to do His will and do not know if I am
or not but I do not worry about that either -- for I know that my desire
pleases Him if nothing else (Merton).
This is not wholly unrelated. There is a fallacy in any
stage theories and developmental theories that takes the form of negating lower
stages rather than integrally transvaluing them. My whole discussion above can
apply to the kataphatic and apophatic devotions, too. Although there are prayer
movements and practices that now emphasize sensation and perception, now
emotion and motivation, now discursive and now nondiscursive approaches -- an
integral approach implies the whole human knowledge manifold or evaluative
continuum is placed at the Spirit's disposal for God do to what She will when
praying in us, for no prayer is initiated other than by the Spirit -- not
kataphatic, not apophatic. Our entire being-in-love is placed at God's
disposal. Apophasis and kataphasis are held in creative tension whereby
kataphasis glories in God's intelligibility through metaphor and apophasis
glories in God's impenetrable mystery and incomprehensibility as we acknowledge
our metaphor is but a weak analogy. We hold on loosely but don't let go, as the
song says.
The analogy would be -- when I speak metaphorically and analogically, you and i
both know it without me having to explicitly point it out, usually.
Conceptually, when I am having a kataphatic experience, it is simultaneously
being apophatically qualified, especially when we are speaking cognitively. The
point of clarification might moreso surround the affective aspect. No need to
reinvent that wheel insofar as both the sanjuanian and ignatian discussions of
consolation and desolation and discernment treat this robustly? Which would be
to suggest that -- how one responds to distractions, to desolation, to
consolation -- in prayer and living --- cannot be captured in a one-size fits
all prescription? Sometimes they should be ignored and sometimes embraced and
often times even shunned -- it depends.
pax,
jb
I am
looking forward to this series: The Way of Christian Spirituality
One thing of immediate interest to me is Pope Benedict's augustinian rather
than thomistic perspective, which has large implications for our theological
anthropologies. To keep it simple, I would just say that Pope Benedict's
perspective on human nature is more pessimistic than JPII's.
One major issue such a perspective will address, for example, is what human
nature is capable of without the benefit of Divine revelation. Another issue
would be to ask just how depraved we are vs how good we are (on a continuum, of
course), before grace builds on nature, which is to ask, perhaps, what type of
foundation does human nature afford the Spirit as each soul begins its journey
of transformation?
Pope Benedict, in relying so much on Augustine, will be very aware of the very
best that Luther had to offer by way of critique and is in a very authoritative
position, theologically, to advance ecumenical dialogue with Protestantism.
This would make for a great papal legacy and great strides have already been
made, for example, regarding the joint accord between Catholics and Lutherans
on the doctrine of justification. [Much credit is due Hans Kung, too, whose
role has, regrettably, been largely unacknowledged.]
Benedict will also be in a position to point out what he would perceive as
Luther's shortcomings insofar as he informs his augustinianism with the
Catholic analogical imagination over against the Protestant dialectical
imagination. See this from The White Robed Monks of St.
Benedict.
So, when it comes to human nature, it is essential that we flesh out our
presuppositions regarding our theological anthropologies. The most pessimistic
versions would be any like a radical, augustinian Protestantism and the most
optimistic would be any like a transcendental thomism (of Rahner and Lonergan).
JPII and Benedict's perspectives would fall in between, JPII more optimistic
than Benedict but less than the transcendental thomists, Benedict more
optimistic than Luther but less than JPII.
This not only has important implications for theosis, for spiritual
transformation, but also for our ecclesiology, how we conceive church. The more
pessimistic view is going to give impetus to a more centralized governance, for
example, reserving more teaching authority for the magisterium and imputing
less docility to the Holy Spirit to us anawim? This view is surely tempered
though by our incarnational approach, which sees God's grace and the Spirit's
indwelling in all creation, in every creature, particularly the human being,
who is made in the very image and likeness of God!
One of the better balancing acts regarding theological anthropology and
optimism-pessimism is that of Jesuit theologian Donald Gelpi, who tells us that
the truth about human nature lies somewhere between the belief that we all long
spontaneously for the beatific vision and the belief that creation and humanity
are totally depraved and devoid of goodness due to God's radical absence and
rare disclosure. Gelpi employs a foundational theology of conversion and I
think this is right-headed --- because how the institutionalized church
(sacramentally and otherwise) facilitates conversion is the ultimate measure of
doctrinal orthodoxy.
It is important to recognize that, whatever their theological anthropologies,
Benedict and JPII and Paul VI and John XXIII and Rahner and Lonergan and, to
some extent, even Luther, were in unity regarding essentials of our faith and
what we are deliberating will invite a plurality and diversity of perspectives
regarding various accidentals.
With Augustine, then, and Benedict, in essentials, may we celebrate our unity;
in accidentals, our diversity; and in all things, charity. [And this is not to
deny that there is some disagreement on what exactly is essential and what
accidental 
]
So, that's an intro of where I will be coming from: listening to the disparate
voices and praying for our discernment for our next good steps as individuals
in response to these considerations.
Subject: True Self/False Self and Merton
Mrs. %^&$#, I'm going to bcc: others on this. It is timely, for Lent.
In response to your inquiry, below are some of my notes and ideas on Merton
as they pertain to the True Self. I will mark in bold type those that you
may want to scroll down and read first, in order to get his main thrust. One
thing I would emphasize is that, in one manner of speaking, we must build a
false self at early stages of human development. That false self is what we
acquire as our parents and teachers work to transform us from animal beings
to social beings. If you talk to teachers nowadays, you might get the
impression that we are not very successful at even that!
In other words, this false self is what results from our socialization. We
take on a social persona. This is an indisepensable step in human
development, in my view. If I am hearing Merton right, we do want to help
people form these social personae, which are part of what our false self is
all about. So, to some extent, our pedagogy and catechesis is not incorrect,
when dealing with young folks in a developmentally appropriate way. The
chief problem, which I think is what you have really caught onto, is that
socialization is but one part of transformation and humanization. We, as a
Church, need to teach people how to come into full possession of this
false-self/social persona in order to surrender it!
But, life is a better teacher, here, has been my experience.
[Or as Rohr points out, there are two paths to the realization of the true self:
mysticism and suffering.]
Most people do not surrender their false self
or social persona without first passing
through an existential crisis. What the Church must do, perhaps, is to stand
ready with a special program or pedagogy or catechesis for those who have
recently experienced an existential crisis, such as with spiritual direction
and grief counseling and other specialized small groups. To some extent,
this is the strength of AA, Al Anon and other such support groups. As I
write, below: The ultimate idolatry, then, is our self. So, we take this
socially-formed self and crucify it and it is not like going to a movie or
coming into an Internet discussion forum but is, rather, much more like
walking into a fire. All of this is a massive upheaval of the way things
have been for us --- cognitively, affectively, morally even, for it is no
longer a mere following of the rules that brings one closer to God, although
that part of our formation was absolutely necessary. The soul now approaches
the God, Who needn't approach, Who dwells within, and the heart remains
restless that has not made God its all. Rooted in God in radical trust and
surrender, a new reward and reinforcement system gets set in place, where
Love of self for sake of self has been transcended by love of God for sake
of self, which has been transcended by love of God for sake of God, 'til,
finally, our true self emerges and we love that self for the sake of God.
The dialectic takes us back into self-possession, paradoxically, by
self-surrender.
What happens as we make the turn and drop the persona, which, again, was
formatively necessary, is that we seek enlightenment out of compassion for
the world, which constantly suffers our unenlightened selves. No longer are
we in search of consolation or sensible positive affect because Perfect Love
is its own reward, is totally unconditional, entirely kenotic.
We lay down our false selves, not for our own benefit, not because we are
tired of the pain it causes us, but because of the pain we are transmitting
to our loved ones, to the world. Any pain that is not thusly transformed,
however neurotic or psychotic or emotional or idiopathic, we transmit to
others. We seek to be rid of this pain that we may desist from transmitting
it to others. Let me insert this here. Losing something like fear does not
mean that we have come to any pollyannish conclusion that all of the bad
things that could happen to us are not going to happen --- rather, it means
that, we know full well they are even likely to happen but are nothing,
ultimately, to fear.
Part of the nondual experience, then, is the existential realization of It
Isn't Me --- not this creation, not these feelings, not these thoughts, not
any rule-following or goodness, iow, It Isn't Me cognitively, affectively or
morally, that's responsible for starting all of this, holding it all
together and taking it anywhere.
Hopefully His servant,
pax, amor et bonum,
johnboy
One of the richest reflections on this I
have ever come across is in Merton's __New Seeds of Contemplation__, especially
in the preface and first three chapters, which reflect on what contemplation is
and is not and what the true self and false self are. The most concise summary
I could come up with would be that, 1)for our true self, our joy is found in
God's glory; 2) our will is oriented to God's love; 3)the work of our journey
is to co-create with God our identity through and with and in God; 4) that we
may become wholly in His image, holy in His image; 5) when we do have our
memory, understanding and will integrated and holistically operative, we
experience our true self but 6) this co-creation of our identity and this
surrender of our memory, understanding and will to faith, hope and love are
effected through theological virtue gifted by the Spirit by an elevation of
nature through grace and transmutation of experience through grace and not by a
perfection of the natural order by our natural efforts, which is to say 7) we
are in need of salvation to overcome both death and sin and the most
fundamental vocational call we answer is 8) to be saved and then 9) transformed.
In other words, we don't enter the monastery or undertake a life of prayer to
make us better human beings -- rather, we urgently and in crisis and seriously
and radically place the utter dependency and abject poverty of our selves
(which are nevertheless good) at God's disposal in order to be dramatically
rescued.
end of that thought
now pertaining to how good we are and are not:
One thing about Benedict that differs from JPII is his augustinian versus
thomistic thought. This makes for a distinctively different theological
anthropology, among other things, one that is moreso pessimistic vs thomism's
optimism and much more pessimistic than the transcendental thomism of Rahner
and Lonergan (which WAS too optimistic). This has practical implications for
any theories of how grace builds on nature insofar as it describes, in terms of
goodness, how much nature brings to the table before grace does its thing, how
much humankind can accomplish, for instance, in discerning natural law, before
being apprised of divine revelation.
Reflecting on the augustinian perspective reminded me of its account of the
Trinity, which, analogously, exhibits faculties of memory, understanding and
will, which is reflected in humanity. These faculties are fully and perfectly
integrated in the Trinity but humankind experiences them as sometimes
attempting to operate autonomously or, as I would say, in a dis-integrated
manner, which is to say, not holistically. Now, to the extent these comprise,
in part, the human evaluative continuum or knowledge manifold, perhaps it would
be fair to say that they try to operate autonomously and disintegratedly in our
false self but then, through ongoing transformation into the imago Dei, are
re-integrated and begin to more often operate holistically and in a more fully
integrated fashion, like the Trinity, in our True Self. What would be the
implications for prayer?
Prayer, in the false self, would be as noisy as a churning cement truck but as
powerful (transformatively efficacious) as a sewing machine.
Prayer, in the True Self, would be as quiet as a sewing machine but as powerful
(transformatively efficacious) as a cement truck (or Sherman Tank, choose your
own metaphor).
In the false self, prayer would variously employ this or that aspect of the
human evaluative continuum willy-nilly and based on temperament and human
biases, such continuum not holistically engaged, not fully integrated.
In the True Self, prayer would employ such a human evaluative continuum as
mirrors the fully integrated memory, understanding and will of the Trinity and,
as such, it would be holistic and, hence, simplified. Here we are talking about
simplicity in its most superlative sense. It means the whole person is pray-ing
and at the disposal of the sovereign Spirit, Who will guide it in all manner of
consolation, desolation and therapy, all such movements to be interpreted
through traditional discernment exercises and helping to direct our next good
step.
[The next paragraph is my embellishment of what I heard Fr. Rohr saying.]
So, we pray in that manner that best silences the false self, quieting it and
its faculties, however discursive or nondiscursive, and this manner may be for
some the rosary, for others the Eucharist, for others walking meditation or
this or that practice coupled with this or that discipline. And we thus pray in
a manner that most fully engages the True Self, allowing it to commune with God
in utter simplicity and most holistically and integratively --- as quietly as a
sewing machine but as powerfully as a cement truck.
Being quiet and simple and powerful results from being holistic, single-minded
and whole-hearted - praying the True Self.
Being noisy and complex and inefficacious results from being disintegrated,
monkey-minded and divided in one's affections - praying the false self.
It is not so much what temperament or which faculties we bring to prayer or not
but, rather, which s/Self.
Now, some have called any prayer from the True Self contemplation. Others more
narrowly conceive it, differentiating contemplation from other prayer in many
different ways (such as charisms differentiated from infused gifts of the
Spirit, etc). Those conceptualizations and usages are not my concern here.
As we consider prayer from lectio, oratio, meditatio, contemplatio, operatio,
glossolalia and so on, I would suggest that it is not any of these formulae
that we'd prescribe as generally normative --- for these will vary per
temperament and charism and/or gift from a sovereign Spirit, Who initiates all such
promptings.
What is a norm to which we should all aspire is prayer from the True Self,
which knows gentleness and compassion for the false self, one's own and
others'. And these false selves are good and necessary selves for us to
function in the human condition in this world but are still otherwise
suboptimal for communing with God and realizing solidarity with others.
Thus it is that all prayer lives are oriented through time toward increasing
simplicity --- not so much from alternating and purposeful engagements and
disengagements of various aspects of the human evaluative continuum as from the
purposeful engagement of the True Self and disengagement of the false self;
hence, the quieting disciplines and silencing practices are directed at our false
self but not really at the human evalutive continuum as constituted in the True
Self.
Now, it just so happens that the human evaluative continuum of the True Self is
quieter and simpler --- but this moreso results from its efficient integration
and powerful holistic deployment (and does not require any particular, narrowly
defined practice or privileged asceticism).
This is a
personal clarification. It is my view that Fathers Keating and Rohr have
substantively and not superficially engaged The Cloud and other Classics in our
Tradition and that they have depthfully and not facilely employed the many
elements of the contemplative tradition in their approach to CP, which is to
say that I do not resonate with any notion that there are fallacies in their logic
and I would not want to caricaturize their approach and thereby dismiss
strawmen.
What is at issue for me is not the validity of their logic (these folks are
excellent critical thinkers) but perhaps the soundness of certain conclusions
regarding what exactly takes place in this or that practitioner of CP.
Discerning the soundness of these conclusions is something that can only be
done in the crucible of experience and this process of discernment must avoid
its own set of fallacies, one of which is that the abuse of something is no
argument against the use of something. To properly get at the soundness of
their conclusions, the discerning community will have to go beyond personal
anecdotes to sociological and psychological studies to measure the effects of
this or that practice on intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and
religious conversions.
What most seems to be at issue, as best I can discern, can be illuminated by
distinctions drawn by Maritain and by Merton. Maritain distinguishes between
philosophical contemplation, intuition of being, natural mysticism and mystical
contemplation. Merton distinguished between apophatic/kataphatic,
immanent/transcendent, natural/supernatural and existential/theological. There
are all sorts of other distinctons that come into play, too, such as between
passive and active meditation, open and closed, receptive and concentrative,
attentional and intentional and relational. There are the distinctions between
active and passive and infused contemplation, between charisms and gifts of the
Spirit, and an acknowledgment of the Spirit's sovereign action on the soul,
notwithstanding our efforts. There are manifold psychological considerations
that come into play also as we integrally and holistically conceive the human.
Clearly, we must concede a depthful knowledge of these distinctions to all of
the participants in this dialogue.
The distillation of the concerns is this: There are manifold and varied
asceticisms and disciplines and practices in our contemplative traditions, all
of which can serve to dispose one to receive the gift of contemplation, all of
which can facilitate our cooperation with grace as it builds on nature. Which
of these practices should be pursued only with the guidance of a prudent,
learned and experienced spiritual director, following certain caveats, for
instance, because they facilitate receptivity/docility to the Spirit with a
greater tendency to facilitate concommitant experiences of natural mysticism,
enlightenment, kundalini arousal/awakening and such (which can be most
efficacious but also, in many ways and in a word, unruly)? And if things do get
unruly, have we provided resources for dealing with same? Is the jury still out
on this? Has enough evidence come in? I dunno. I am not competent to answer
that. The issues raised are important. And I am confident that the major
players involved with them are prudent, learned and experienced, folks of large
intelligence and profound goodwill.
I will close with Thomas Merton:
quote:
What
one of you can enter into himself and find the God that utters him?
Finding God means much more than just abandoning all things that are not God
and emptying oneself of images and desires. If you succeed in emptying your
mind of every thought and every desire you may indeed withdraw into the center
of yourself and concentrate everything within you upon the imaginary point
where your life springs out of God; yet, you will not really find God. No
natural exercise can bring you into vital contact with Him. Unless He utters
Himself in you and speaks His own name in the center of your soul, you will no
more know Him than a stone knows the ground upon which it rests in its inertia.
And what Merton says is true. Nothing we can do other than
to dispose our self to receive the gift of contemplation. Like the stone, we
exist because God sees us. We are good because God loves us. Unlike the stone,
and Merton doesn't say this here but he wouldn't deny it, we can through
natural exercises experience a natural mysticism, an intuition that we are
receiving our being as we stand on the face of being looking in. This opens us
to immanent being and an existential awareness and initiates us in apophasis
and, if pursued further, can even give a metaphysical hint at creatio ex nihilo
and creatio continua (for pantheism and even panen-theism are too riddled with
incoherence). And one would have to believe that, pursued even further, some of
the great nonChristian mystics moved even past deism to a relational encounter,
which begins to properly nuance a pan-entheism and an indwelling of Being in
being, standing, then, on the face of being looking out.
But, there is more and, even though, anticipating the teilhardian perspective,
Duns Scotus metaphysically suggested the Incarnation was foreordained from all
eternity and not occasioned by any felix culpa, who woulda thunk it that the
Logos would be uttered in Mary's womb, born in a manger, nailed to a cross and
then raised to glory? Even thought this was all foretold in the OT, still, nobody
thunk it! If anyone had gone beyond the attentional to the intentional to the
relational, still, they had not conceived of the intensely personal. [And,
it seems to me, that anyone formed in a Gospel tradition is going to ultimately
arrive here and have their kataphatic devotion even more robustly experienced
through moderate apophasis.]
Merton:
quote:
Our
inner self awakes when we say yes to the indwelling Divine Persons.
We only really know ourselves when we completely consent to receive the glory
of God into ourselves.
Mary went first. May we follow like her.
pax,
jb
re: comparing that
Merton quote with certain aspects of CP, yes, you read what I was writing
between the lines
That's why I offered that quote.
On the one hand, the emphasis on nondiscursive method coupled with the use of a
mantra would seem to moreso expose the average CP practitioner to experiences
of natural mysticism, enlightenment and such with their concomitant energy
upheavals and psychological by-products. This is one way of judging the
practice, as you say, given its methodology.
On the other hand, given what is actually taught and emphasized about CP within
the context of a life of prayer that is otherwise kataphatic (reception of
Eucharist, sacraments, lectio divina and such), one would not expect the
average CP practitioner to experience natural mysticism or enlightenment,
should such occur, in exactly the same way as one who is practicing TM or Zen,
especially given where CP seems to aim, which is an intimate and affectionate
and illuminating loving, personal relationship with God.
So, what we have is CP's claim that it is not Zen or TM even as it employs a
very Zen-like methodology coupled with CP's claim not to be a technique or
method but, rather, a relational communing. What we also have is some evidence,
no too few anecdotes, that many CP practitioners have experienced unruly energy
upheavals.
So, I am suggesting that, to get to the bottom of what is going on, we really
need some sociological surveys to discern what mostly goes on with CP
practitioners, what seldom goes on, what often goes on and such --- because the
practice, its aims, its methodologies, it teachings and its emphases have some
built-in ambiguities [not necessarily bad] due to its innovative blending of
contemplative traditions.
And we must carefully probe to discern how faithfully practitioners have
practiced and how frequently and intensely and such. Some energy upheavals and
psychological perturbations could occur with any practice or formulae engaged
with great frequency and intensity. To this day, I attribute my own
kundalini-like symptoms to glossolalia, but it could have happened with the
Rosary, even, prayed somewhat nondiscursively. Of course, all prayer has a
tendency to move toward simplicity in the life of an earnest pray-er. And
should have some integrally transformative efficacies. If there are
inefficacies, we need to see precisely where they lie: in the practice or the
practitioner. You and others have raised important questions. We'll one day
have the answers, sooner than later, I believe. Meanwhile, people should
proceed with some caution and with spiritual direction should certain
perturbations present or unruly disturbances manifest.
I think we are very much on the same page except that your trained intuitions
and experience have already gifted you with an informed perspective on what the
answers to these questions are and how such sociological surveys would play
out, what they would reveal. For my part, I can appreciate what all of the
parties are saying but feel that the final arbitration of the claims and
counterclaims will need to be social-scientifically discerned through
well-designed surveys and follow-up interviews. Would make for a great
dissertation.
pax,
jb
To some extent, it is the very nature of apophasis to invite us beyond image,
beyond affect, beyond concept ... ergo, what is taking place during the
apophatic experience is necessarily not going to be explicitly Christian or
anything else for that matter, except for the remnant of relational
intentionality that the Christian pray-er brings to the moment of prayer as a
pray-er at the outset. This is all very dialectical and not in the hegelian
sense of synthesis but in the catholic approach of both/and/neither.
The connection to the goal of our spiritual tradition is, in my view, to
reinforce the Dionysian mystical logic of 1) God is | x | and 2) God is | not x
| and 3) God is neither | x | nor | not x |, which ties into our theologies of
the univocity and analogy of being, where our statements about God are
acknowledged not only as metaphorical but as very weak analogues, where no
univocal predications can be made between God and creatures but only equivocal
predications. The roles of kataphatic affirmation and apophatic negation and
eminent predication (e.g. God is beautiful but not beautiful like us or
creation but Beautiful most pre-eminently) are complementary and not over
against each other. They offer perspectives and cannot be blended or
intertwined (again, no synthesis) without violating the integrity of each of
these moments or movements. It is the preservation of this integral nature of
apophasis and kataphasis that Keating attempts to maintain by distinguishing
between the practice of lectio divina and CP, affirming both movements but
advising against their facile combination.
So, the bigger concern for me is not at all theological but that which I
expressed re: energy upheavals and psychological perturbations, like the
examples you provided (and like your and my own!). I am wondering how much this
is happening and exactly why, although I think we have more than a clue as to
why. At the same time, my upheavals were rather orderly, still ... there has
got to be a better caveat emptor.
In my opinion there isn't enough apophasis in our tradition and this leads to a
bad malady all its own ... radical fundamentalism(s). At the same time, I agree
that the jury is out on whether or not CP is one of the cures for this, among
the others that already exist in the normal flowering of a prayer life, in the
ordinary journey of the soul awakening to the true self, in the conversions
facilitated by the institutional church and its sacraments and sacramentals and
manifold and multiform liturgical/spiritual exercises.
pax,
jb
johnboy
Below is a sidebar conversation I was having with someone
else re: the Rohr-Keating retreat, where the subject of the true-false self terminology
came up. I thought I'd tack it on here:
It turns me off in this sense. It is bad terminology. Unfortunate use of words.
But we work with them because of their heritage in our tradition.
Why unfortunate? Because of what you said: False self is not bad.
I prefer to use: early on our journey and later on our journey,
thus and such happens. [This is not to deny that many unduly put off the
journey to such things as transformation and even adulthood.] The early stages
of formation and transformation are good. So are the later. And nothing that
takes place on our early journey is abandoned. The false self represents our
socialization, moving from little animals to humans. It represents our
humanization. And our humanization and divinization are inextricably
intertwined, not really distinguishable really. The more fully human we become,
the more we reflect the Divine Image, the imago Dei. So, we don't abandon the
false self. Not at all. Rather, we take full possession of it in order to
surrender it to crucifixion. [And one cannot surrender what one does not form
and possess.] We give it up in order to be radically saved (from sin and
death); it is no mere pious gesture. Thus the seed falls to the ground and dies
... Thus every other metaphor for the Paschal Mystery ...
This is my False Self.
I give it up for you.
We awaken to the True Self when, like Ignatius, we see ourselves as God sees
us. We awaken to our True Self when we realize that being socialized and a good
citizen and a good person and more perfect ain't what it's about entirely;
rather, its about being a Lover and being beloved and about being saved from
sin and death by Jesus. It is a VERY big deal, the biggest thing anyone's got
going. It is THE grail for which we quest and is wholly, wholly holy and holy,
holy whole.