Union with Christ: A Bibliography
This is fun. The title says it all:
An Annotated Bibliography of Resources Pertaining to "Christ in You" and "Union with Christ"
A new dream, an old friend, and the price we pay for following our hearts
Last night I dreamt about my good friend, co-author, and non-biological sister — Dancingwriter on LiveJournal. We were both attending a conference out of state (perhaps the 2007 International Congress on Medieval Studies?), and while many of the folks around us were using this time away from home (and their spouses) to behave like teenagers, she and I spent pretty much all of our free time with each other, hanging out, talking — something we’ve never had trouble doing! — and rather blithely ignoring the hormonal frenzy surrounding us. It made perfect sense, as we both share a deep love for our respective partners, along with a genuine sibling-like affection for one another. The dream meandered along, making no point other than this celebration of friendship and fidelity. I woke up thinking I need to call her; haven’t seen her since June which means it has been far too long.
What an innocent dream, and so Catholic of me — to dream about maintaining my chastity with a trusted friend while everyone around us threw their boundaries to the wind. But in truth, it’s not really inherently "Catholic" or "Christian" at all: Dancingwriter and her husband (KingoftheWho) are dedicated followers of the old Welsh ways, leaders in the community and highly respected for their gentle personalities, strong sense of values, and committed love for one another. In the neopagan subculture where so much interpersonal excitement is driven by various people’s adventures (and misadventures) in polyamory, their devotion to one another shines like a beacon of hope.
It’s been two years now since the agonizing summer of 2004, when I struggled internally with a call to explore Catholicism that threatened to sabotage just about everything about my life at the time: my writing and teaching career, my social network, my existing religious/spiritual identity. I had several friends to whom I regularly confided my struggles, but Dancingwriter was not one of them. The reason? We were collaborating on a project together — Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses — and I didn’t want to jeopardize it. As I saw it, if my draw to Catholicism were only a "phase," then no point in sabotaging the book by drawing my co-author into the web of my internal struggle. And if it were more than just a phase, then I knew this would be my last pagan book — and at the time, I wasn’t ready to give up being a pagan author, not yet. So I worked on the book, and strived to be as authentically "pagan" as I could, and I hid from my co-author and my editors and anyone else associated with the book the insistent dynamics of my increasing sense of being called back into the world of mystical Christianity.
Now it’s 2006 and everyone knows the choice I made. Meanwhile Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses gets panned on reconstructionist e-lists for no other reason than because I’m one of the authors — fallout from how some Pagans feel angered and betrayed by the path I’ve followed. Well, if anyone had a right to be furious with me, it’s DancingWriter. And yet, in response to my spiritual wanderlust she has been nothing but gracious and kind, giving her "brother" the space to follow his path even while she’s clear that it’s not a path she shares. If more Pagans — and Christians, not to mention adherents of other faiths — could share in her large and generous spirit, what a wonderful world it would be.
Now, ours is a world which keeps on spinning, and as the old Wiccan chant affirms, "She changes everything she touches." These days my interests lie in tracing the development of the Orthodox doctrine of deification (theosis) and how it correlates to Ken Wilber’s integral theory of consciousness; I’m learning all I can about Benedictine and Cistercian spirituality, with a particular focus on its relevance to laypersons here in the 21st century; and of course I remain profoundly in love with the writing of Julian of Norwich, and out of the class I’ll be teaching on her this fall, I want to develop a curriculum for presenting the core ideas of Julian’s spiritual theology to those who may not be familiar with her work.
So what about Celtic stuff? Frankly, my main interest in the Celtic world these days is in looking at the affinities between pre-Roman Catholic Celtic Christianity with Eastern Orthodoxy, and seeing to what extent those affinities may have defined what made "Celtic" Christianity unique in the west. Put another way: is deification part of what made the Irish spirit so persistently mystical?
These are interests I love, and I have good friends who share these passions. My life, so deeply transformed when I became a Catholic, is settling in to its new identity, and I’ve got more going on in the writing and teaching department than I expected this soon. But when I think of dear old friends, like Dancingwriter, a sigh does escape my lips. I wonder: would my enthusiasm for tracing the influence of Plotinus in the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius just bore my old friends to tears?
I’m afraid so. But of course, not so afraid as to change who I am. After all, I wouldn’t want to throw my boundaries to the wind.
