Contemplation and Celibacy, part two
Fr. J writes in response to my post Contemplation and Celibacy:
Celibacy is itself a mystical reality when well lived such that it is not simply an instrument for individual holiness projects. …. If you read the best literature on religious life at the moment, it is all focused on the concept of consecration in this world for the sake of the kingdom. It is spirituality that neither diminishes this world nor the pursuit of the divine. One is not counter to the other but serves the other. In other words, even in the most eremetic of religious lives, the religious is not an isolated monad questing after some abstract holiness.
My apologies to Fr. J or to anyone else who read yesterday’s post as an attack on celibacy. That was most definitely not my intent. In implying that a celibate contemplative life could be pursued for self-involved reasons, I am merely commenting on the human capacity to distort any gift from God. Heaven knows, plenty of people get married or have children for selfish reasons as well. Furthermore, anyone who pursues the contemplative life — whether religious or married — can do so for selfish reasons. I think every contemplative needs to think about this issue, again regardless of one’s larger vocation. (more…)
The Audacity of Government
This week on the public radio program “This American Life” the theme is “the Audacity of Government” — specifically the administration of George W. Bush. Anyone with a sense of decency and fairness will find these stories horrifying and appalling. Even taking into account a “liberal bias” (whatever that means), the picture painted here of our current government ought to make Americans ashamed — and angry.
If you don’t have a chance to hear this broadcast, you can purchase a downloadable copy from Audible.com for only ninety-five cents. I encourage you to do so. Even though we will be rid of George Bush in another ten months, this story has a moral that extends beyond his hubris. I believe a democracy is only as strong as its citizenry is informed, and so we all need to be paying attention to the ways in which government can abuse power.
Here’s how this broadcast is described on the Audible.com website:
We’ve noticed a trend in a number of actions taken lately by the United States government. Tiny things, things you probably haven’t heard of, but with big implications, like harassing widows and defying a century-old and utterly benign treaty – with Canada! So we’ve decided to spend an hour admitting and talking about the fact that everyone knows is true: America’s become a jerk.
Contemplation and Celibacy
A comment thread on my post about the World Clock has me thinking about the relationship between contemplation, celibacy, and child-rearing. (more…)
Quote for the Day
For the sages say that it is impossible for rational knowledge of God to coexist with the direct experience of God, or for conceptual knowledge of God to coexist with immediate perception of God.
— St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ
Leonardo Boff
Inside Costa Rica has published an interesting interview with Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, one of the major voices in the liberation theology movement:
Celtic Devotions
Celtic Devotions:
A Guide to Morning and Evening Prayer
By Calvin Miller
Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008
Review by Carl McColman
First, a confession: I don’t really like daily devotional books, least of all when they’re arranged in a structured “say this prayer on the morning of day 5″ and “say this prayer on the evening of day 13″ kind of a format. I try not to be a liturgical chauvinist most of the time, but I must admit that books designed to get you to in the habit of praying every day usually send me scurrying back to the Liturgy of the Hours.
So I’m biased against this book from the get-go. I tell you this not so much as a warning, but rather as a corrective: my praise of this book may seem less than exuberant, but that stems from my own prejudices rather than from the merits of the work itself.
For the fact of the matter is, the Liturgy of the Hours, in its 8,000+ page glory, simply isn’t for everyone; even most Catholics have no idea what it is, and faced with it would probably see it as intimidating rather than inspiring. Anglican and Lutheran variants on the daily office are not much more user-friendly. The church universal may have a grand and glorious tradition of daily prayer, but it really doesn’t impact the life of the folks in the pews much at all, except for the occasional liturgy geek (and yes, that’s me).
So books like Calvin Miller’s new Celtic Devotions keep coming along because, well, frankly, they represent “liturgy for the rest of us.” This slender volume of prayers and meditations is arranged in a thirty day cycle, with one reading and one prayer for each morning and evening. Each day has a basic theme, often steeped in Celtic sensibility, such as “the sanctity of all life,” “Lord of all nature,” or “dying with Christ.” Some of the writings are Miller’s own work, but much of the material presented here comes from original sources such as the Carmina Gadelica or the writings of one of my favorite Celtic scholars (and Miller’s own mentor), Seán Ó Duinn. Holding the entire thing together is Psalm 119 — the longest of the Psalms, an extended meditation on righteousness and a favorite among the Celtic saints (and monastics in general).
So what you get for your money is a gentle introduction both to Celtic spirituality and to a basic liturgical cycle. This book is as unassuming as the humongous Liturgy of the Hours is imposing, so it’s clearly the more welcoming way to begin a daily prayer discipline. And indeed, this is a book for beginners, and for what it does, I think it does it charmingly well. Of course, like anything geared to beginners, its strength is also its weakness: at a mere 122 pages, it doesn’t have a lot of content, and readers may find themselves quickly hungering for more. For those who want a meatier experience (or for us vegans, a tofu-ier experience) of Celtic-themed daily prayer, check out the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer — here is an actual breviary used by Christians today who are seeking to revive authentic (as opposed to romantic) models of Celtic Christian community. Indeed, I suspect anyone who uses Miller’s book will probably only go through it once or maybe twice, and then will want to graduate to something more substantive. But that’s really how it should be. Celtic Devotions is meant to be a threshold marker: in grand Celtic style, it offers hospitality to those who are crossing the door into the worlds of Celtic prayer — or daily liturgy — for the first time.
Moses and John
Gregory of Nyssa, writing about the life of Moses as an allegory for the mystical life, says “Moses vision of God began with light; afterwards God to him in a cloud. But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.” (from the Commentary on the Song of Songs).
But compare this to the prologue of the Gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him. What has come into being in him was life, life that was the light of men; and light shines in darkness, and darkness could not overpower it. … The Word was the real light that gives light to everyone; he was coming into the world.” (John 1:1-5, 9; New Jerusalem Bible).
Here we seem to have a paradox. Christ calls himself “the light of the world” and John pretty definitively states that the darkness could not overpower this light. And yet Gregory describes Moses as seeing “God in the darkness” as he “rose higher and became more perfect.”
We have the advantage, in holding these two seemingly contradictory texts side by side, of two thousand years of Christian tradition to lean on. We have Pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross, and The Cloud of Unknowing. We get it that the “darkness” of which John speaks (the darkness of evil and sin) is not the same as the darkness of which Gregory speaks (that place beyond which the light of our feeble intellects can shine). Still, there is a wee bit of disorienting counter-subversion that seems to go on when we Moses and John side by side. Is darkness our enemy or our friend? The mystical tradition answers this question, simply, “Yes.”
But when it comes to evil, darkness isn’t the only game in town. A long-standing (although not uncontested) tradition equates the rebellious angel Satan with Lucifer, the “bearer of light.” Light can seduce as well as illuminate, just as darkness can provide rest as well as cover for perfidy.
When we talk about “light” and “dark” in a spiritual sense, we speak of mythic imagery as much as the presence or absense of luminous energy. Many people in our day love the Taoist yin-yang symbol, suggesting that light and dark have a continual balance and equilibrium. From a nature mystic perspective, that’s a compelling, powerful, useful symbol. But as soon as we start to dance in the trans-natural world of Christian mysticism, we’ve entered a funhouse where both light and dark have ambiguous, un-fixed value and meaning, and all things appear slippery and maybe not quite are what they seem.
The takeaway: In God we trust. Everything else gets questioned.
The World Clock
Here is a sobering website: The World Clock documents a number of rapidly growing figures, including population growth, consumption of fossil fuels, military expenditures, abortions, and number of species to have gone extinct, all since the beginning of 2008. It’s a sobering, frightening picture.
Questions of Balance
A woman named Rajie who has just read The Aspiring Mystic emailed me with these questions:
I’ve prayed to god and the universe to help me find a mentor, teacher, friend, group, community…really anything…and although some opportunites have arisen, they just didn’t feel right. Any suggestions? I really don’t wanna go at this alone, I have so many questions and just really would love to bounce different ideas and thoughts off of another mind.
How does one maintain/find a balance between confidence and humbleness?
Also, did you find it difficult to find a balance between your inner and outer worlds?
I’m reminded of the old Moody Blues album, A Question of Balance. Even the first question is about balance: balancing the need for community or mentoring with the need to be true to one’s self. (more…)
Straitjacket Needed in Assisi
They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Now Becky Garrison of the Wittenburg Door reveals that an even finer line exists between mysticism and psychosis…
Quote for the Day
We are personally convinced that a ‘Christian non-dualism’, to borrow Vladimir Lossky’s expression… is not to be dismissed on the basis of the Faith,… nowhere does Scripture make the slightest allusion to anything of this kind, at least explicitly, but is this sufficient reason to discard it? Scripture does not say everything and, moreover, does not need to. It teaches us only what is necessary for our salvation.
— A Monk of the West, Christianity and the
Doctrine of Non-Dualism (Hillsdale, NY:
Sophia Perennis, 2004), p. 129
Two Monks
Last week I had two brief conversations with two different monks. One told me that, based on his years of contemplation, the entire point of the Christian life is communion with the Holy Trinity, God as three persons. The other monk told me his experience of God was impersonalist.
On the surface, it is so tempting to try to dissect or deconstruct what both of these guys are up to. Whose experience is more valid, more authentic, more nuanced, better interpreted, more orthodox, more (dare I say it) real?
Thankfully, that is only a surface desire, largely borne out of my writerly desire to understand (which is directly plugged in to my prideful desire to manage my own experience). I’m not saying we should just blow off attempts to understand where people are coming from when they share insights into their experiences of prayer or contemplation. But insight needs to arise out of a gentle desire to grow in grace, not some sort of ego-driven compulsion to control.
Several times every day, these two monks gather in the same choir and join their voices in sung prayer and praise. I assume that many times they have sat together in a shared silence. While one is communing with the loving persons of the Trinity, the other experiences an impersonal or perhaps transpersonal presence of the Divine. And yet, they sit together. They praise together. They live together. Neither one of them seems too worked up that the other’s experience (or, perhaps better said, the other’s interpretation of his experience) is so different. I suppose this is possible because each understands that the spiritual life is really about God, not about themselves or the beauty or truth or goodness of their experience.
They live an experiential faith. And they hold their experience lightly.
The Thread of Love
So today is Holy Saturday, when the liturgical churches commemorate Christ’s descent into hell following his death on Good Friday. His underworld journey culminates in the bursting forth of the resurrection that we will commemorate tomorrow.
Yesterday I wrote, “When Christ died and journeyed through hell, it was as if he were threading the thread of Divine Love through the needle of the death experience.” In his “absence” from his disciples, he was performing a mighty act of salvation with cosmic implications.
How can we integrate this mythic truth into our lives today? The Christ story leads to his ascension into heaven and a promise of his eventual return. If the crucifixion led to a cosmic descent (with the Easter return), then this era we live in now — the time between the cosmic ascent and the eschatological return — is analogous to Holy Saturday; the entire era of the Christian community (basically, from now until the end of the world) is a sort of epochal “Holy Saturday” when we might struggle with experience of the absence of God (as articulated so profoundly by mystics like Pseudo-Dionysius and John of the Cross), but we can rest secure that, somehow, this experience of absence is cosmically linked with the threading of Divine Love throughout not only the hellish underworld, but indeed the entire universe.
The mystery of the Christian faith can be summarized in three short sentences:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
Holy Saturday is the link between the first two sentences, and so the Holy Epoch in which we live today is the link between the last two.
Playful Mysticism
G. K. Chesterton said “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly,” and Jesus warns his followers, “I tell you, whoever doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a little child, he will in no way enter into it.” I don’t know about you, but when I think of “like a little child,” what immediately springs to mind is not only faithful trust, but also a spontaneous playfulness and love for all things fun, joyful and silly (the English word “silly” actually comes from a Germanic word that also meant “blessed”). I know we’re not accustomed to think this way, but I think Christians need to be exploring the playful dimension of mystical spirituality.
Here on Good Friday, it’s easy to get caught up in the horrors and terrors of a faith that centers on sacrificial love — sacrificial to the point of death. But I think we need to remember that ours is not a funereal religion. We commemorate Christ’s death not because of its horror (and yes, it is a horror) but because, paradoxically, it offers hope. How? When Christ died and journeyed through hell, it was as if he were threading the thread of Divine Love through the needle of the death experience. Once that love radiates through death, it cannot destroy us, even if it marks the finality of our earthly existence. If death is no longer something to fear, then ours is a faith of joy and delight.
And if ours is a faith of joy and delight, than even on this Good Friday, let us be people of joy, of play, of fun.
I’m not sure how to unpack this idea in the light of Christian mysticism — but I’m working on it. And wherever the Spirit leads me, I think you can trust that it will show up both on this blog and in the book I’m writing.
But until then… may the reverence of this solemn day dance not by itself, but partnered with an inextinguishable gladness in your heart.
Fourth and Walnut
The day before yesterday – March 18 – was the fiftieth anniversary of the epiphany Thomas Merton experienced at the corner of Fourth and Walnut street in Louisville, Kentucky. Merton immortalized that experience in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (and which I quote at length on my Thomas Merton page). Conjectures was published in 1966, eight years after the epiphany took place; here is what Merton initially wrote about it, in his journal on March 19, 1958:
Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream — the dream of my separateness, of the “special” vocation to be different. My vocation does not really make me different from the rest of men or put me in a special category except artificially, juridically. I am still a member of the human race — and what more glorious destiny is there for man, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race!
I have heard it said that the dividing line between the early Merton (writings that are deeply mystical, but tend to be narrowly Catholic) and the later Merton (where he opens up about social justice issues and deep interfaith exploration) occurred when he began reading the Zen Buddhists in 1960. But I rather think that the emergence of the mature Merton took place at that singular moment on a street corner in 1958, when the scales fell from Merton’s eyes and he no longer saw being a monk as some sort of higher calling, but rather that the dignity of his calling as a monastic was, in fact, the same dignity we all share.
Incidentally, nowadays Walnut Street has been renamed Muhammad Ali Boulevard – but the intersection is, this year, being named “Thomas Merton Square” in honor of the ephiphany. It’s rather neat to see a landmark named in honor of a mystical experience!
Field Trip Mom
An Atlanta blogger/photographer who calls herself “Field Trip Mom” because she takes her children on adventures around the area recently visited the Monastery of the Holy Spirit and posted some lovely photos on her blog:
Quote for the Day
Seek peace with all people, and the holiness without which no one can ever see the Lord. Be careful that no one is deprived of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness should begin to grow and make trouble; this can poison a large number. … What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or gloom or total darkness, or a storm; or trumpet-blast or the sound of a voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them.
— Hebrews 12:14-15, 18-19, New Jerusalem Bible
A Letter from Tucker
This arrived in my email inbox recently, and seemed well worth passing on.
A letter to Sally Kern from a senior
in high school in OklahomaOklahoma Representative, Sally Kern, in a recent meeting with some of her constituents, equated homosexuality with terrorism and malignant cancer. She was recorded saying that “Homosexuality is a bigger threat to our nation than terrorism or Islam.” She continued that “According to God’s words, it is not the right kind of lifestyle… Gays are infiltrating city councils… It’s deadly and its spreading, and it will destroy our young people, and it will destroy this nation.”
Today my nephew attempted to deliver a letter to Sally Kern but was stopped by a highway patrol man. With his permission I am distributing the letter to all news stations and thought I would include it here. Maybe we can all stand to learn a listen from this smart, loving, young man. He more than most has reason to hate. He lost his mother, my sister, in the Murrah Building bombing.
Elizabeth
Rep. Kern:
On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would’ve likely have included one more. Over 800 other Oklahomans were injured that day and many of those still suffer through their permanent wounds.
That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn’t live up to them pay with their lives.
As you were not a resident of Oklahoma on that day, it could be explained why you so carelessly chose words saying that the homosexual agenda is worst than terrorism. I can most certainly tell you through my own experience that is not true. I am sure there are many people in your voting district that laid a loved one to death after the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. I kind of doubt you’ll find one of them that will agree with you. I was five years old when my mother died. I remember what a beautiful, wise, and remarkable woman she was. I miss her. Your harsh words and misguided beliefs brought me to tears, because you told me that my mother’s killer was a better person than a group of people that are seeking safety and tolerance for themselves.
As someone left motherless and victimized by terrorists, I say to you very clearly you are absolutely wrong.
You represent a district in Oklahoma City and you very coldly express a lack of love, sympathy or understanding for what they’ve been through. Can I ask if you might have chosen wiser words were you a real Oklahoman that was here to share the suffering with Oklahoma City? Might your heart be a bit less cold had you been around to see the small bodies of children being pulled out of rubble and carried away by weeping firemen?
I’ve spent 12 years in Oklahoma public schools and never once have I had anyone try to force a gay agenda on me. I have seen, however, many gay students beat up and there’s never a day in school that has went by when I haven’t heard the word **** slung at someone. I’ve been called gay slurs many times and they hurt and I am not even gay so I can just imagine how a real gay person feels. You were a school teacher and you have seen those things too. How could you care so little about the suffering of some of your students?
Let me tell you the result of your words in my school. Every openly gay and suspected gay in the school were having to walk together Monday for protection. They looked scared. They’ve already experienced enough hate and now your words gave other students even more motivation to sneer at them and call them names. After all, you are a teacher and a lawmaker, many young people have taken your words to heart. That happens when you assume a role of responsibility in your community. I seriously think before this week ends that some kids here will be going home bruised and bloody because of what you said.
I wish you could’ve met my mom. Maybe she could’ve guided you in how a real Christian should be acting and speaking.
I have not had a mother for nearly 13 years now and wonder if there were fewer people like you around, people with more love and tolerance in their hearts instead of strife, if my mom would be here to watch me graduate from high school this spring. Now she won’t be there. So I’ll be packing my things and leaving Oklahoma to go to college elsewhere and one day be a writer and I have no intentions to ever return here. I have no doubt that people like you will incite crazy people to build more bombs and kill more people again. I don’t want to be here for that. I just can’t go through that again.
You may just see me as a kid, but let me try to teach you something. The old saying is sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Well, your words hurt me. Your words disrespected the memory of my mom.
Your words can cause others to pick up sticks and stones and hurt others.
Sincerely
Tucker
Running the Numbers
Here is a web page well worth visiting, from artist Chris Jordan:
Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait
Here’s the artist’s description of what you’ll find on this page:
This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.
~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007
Quote for the Day
Mystical writing was indeed the forerunner of today’s radical theology and deconstruction… Jacques Derrida can be described both as an intellectual subversive whose work leads to the view that any text may be interpreted to mean almost anything, and as a mystic. Well, yes, mystical writing is indeed politically and linguistically subversive and always was so…. The mystic seeks to create an effect of religious happiness by liberating religious language from the Babylonian captivity of metaphysics. When the writing does succeed in melting God and the soul down into each other, the effect of happiness is astonishing.
My Holy Week
Early this afternoon I’ll be boarding a flight to Newport News, Virginia, where I will be assisting my father tomorrow as he moves to Athens, Georgia, to be closer to me and my oldest brother. We tried to get dad to move down here last year, when my brother and his wife moved down, but dad balked at living with family. Now we’ve arrangements for him to go into an assisted living facility, and he’s looking forward to the move (so are we). The only fly in the ointment is that I’ll miss the Atlanta Julian Meeting’s gathering on Tuesday evening to do the Stations of the Cross according to Julian of Norwich.
After returning to Georgia Tuesday evening, on Wednesday I finally begin my long-awaited bass guitar lessons!
Lest it sound like my observance of Holy Week is being swallowed up by worldly pursuits, I am planning on participating in the Sacred Triduum observances at my church: mass on Thursday evening, Good Friday communion service on Friday, and (possibly) the Easter vigil on Saturday. I say “possibly” because Sunday morning we’ll be getting up and going to Athens to take my dad to church for Easter. The vigil will run late, and we’ll need to get up early to drive the 75 miles to get dad. If it were just me and Fran we’d probably tough it out, be we have Rhiannon to think about as well. So we’ll be playing Saturday by ear.
Just another normal week at the McColman house. It just happens to be Holy Week.
Monk Habits for Everyday People
Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants
By Dennis Okholm
Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007
Review by Carl McColman
Okay, so this book has a lame title. But the point of the book is neatly encapsulated in its subtitle: here is an introduction to the spirituality of St. Benedictine, written by a Presbyterian theologian who has a background in both Pentecostalism and the Baptist community. In other words, this isn’t some sort of Anglican “we’re just like Catholics only without the Pope” kind of a book. Dennis Okholm lives and writes squarely out of the reformed tradition, and as far as I can tell he understands how to love and appreciate monastic spirituality while remaining true to his identity as a Protestant Christian. And because the book is so utterly devoid of any kind of axes to grind (whether Roman or Reformed), what emerges is an elegant and eloquent testimony of how Benedictine spirituality really is simply Gospel spirituality. It may be written for Protestants, but I got enough out of the book that I’m convinced it would be useful for many Catholics as well. (more…)
Please pray for Atlanta
The city of Atlanta was devastated by a tornado last night. The damage is amazing; this morning downtown looks like a war zone. Click here for more about it.
Fran and Rhiannon and I are safe (we live in the Clarkston/Stone Mountain area, about 10 miles from downtown).
Please keep our city in your prayers. We haven’t seen destruction like this since since the great fires of 1917 and 1864 (courtesy of a fellow named Sherman).
