Lark in the Clear Air
In honor of Samhain, here’s a little bit of lovely Irish music for you, sung by the lovely Irish singer Cara Dillon…
Saturday with St. Benedict (and me)
If you’re in Atlanta and looking for something to do tomorrow, why not come out to the Church of Our Saviour in Virginia-Highland, for the inaugural meeting of “Saturdays with Saint Benedict” — a bi-weekly group exploring Benedictine spirituality and its relevance to young adults today, co-sponsored by the Church of Our Saviour’s 20s & 30s group, and the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s Young Adults group. The morning kicks off at 10:00 AM with the Eucharist, followed by a gathering at which I will be speaking on Benedictine Spirituality and my experience as a Lay Cistercian in formation. Although technically this is a young adults’ group, I suspect you won’t be kicked out if you have a little bit (or a lot) of gray hair (and if anyone says anything, just say you’re with me).
The Church of Our Savior is located at 1068 North Highland Avenue in Atlanta. We’ll be meeting in the Lady Chapel (located off the lower courtyard; unfortunately not wheelchair accessible as the courtyard is below street level and accessible only by stairs).
New (and not so new) books from friends
One of the sweet things about being an author and a blogger is that I’m always learning about wonderful new (and just “new to me”) books, often from friends of mine, either folks I know in person or acquaintances that I have found through Facebook. So this morning I thought I’d highlight a few of these books, books which I think readers of this blog will enjoy. Actually, I myself have not yet read any of these books (!), but I have at least looked at them all, and they all look pretty juicy.
First, here are two books from folks here in the Atlanta area. In neither case is my friend the author, but with Planet of Grace my friend James Stephen Behrens provided the photographic illustrations to accompany Bernadette McCarver Snyder’s text; and this recently issued edition of The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel was translated by local scholar Carmen Acevedo Butcher. My connection to both of these persons comes from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit: Father James is one of the monks at the monastery, and Carmen I met when she came to the Abbey Store to buy some fudge! Planet of Grace is all about the spirituality of life embedded in the earth (“biosphere one”), with lovely photographs all taken on the monastery grounds. The Cloud needs no introduction to readers of this blog, as it is one of the towering masterpieces of English mysticism (and Christian mysticism in general).
Now for a few books from my online friends, only one of whom I have met face to face, and he only briefly. Theology of Wonder is the oldest book on this list, having been published in 1999, it is by the Orthodox Bishop, Seraphim Sigrist. It consists of a series of short meditations “where Arthurian legend, Russian iconography, Jewish wisdom and Eucharistic community come together in a stirring intimation of the world seen whole,” in the words of reviewer Michael Allison. The Orthodox Heretic is by the bad boy of emergence Christianity, Peter Rollins, in which he (according to the blurb on the back of the book) “presents a vision of faith that has little regard for the institutions of Christendom. His uncompromising critique of religion, while often unsettling, is infused with a deep and abiding love for what it means to genuinely follow Christ.” Hmmm — I don’t know, but based on how wonderful his first two books were, I’m willing to bet it will be a pretty sweet read; it also consists of a series of short parables and tales. Finally, Diana Butler Bass’ A People’s History of Christianity approaches church history with the same kind of iconoclastic “tell the story from the bottom up” methodology that Howard Zinn used in his classic A People’s History of the United States. Not surprisingly, Butler Bass gives far more air time to the mystics than most conventional church historians ever bother to do. Might be because she is interested in how ordinary Christians actually struggled to live out the gospel. What a radical idea!
So there you go. Happy reading…
Matthew 7:1
I had a dream last night in which I was counseling a woman, perhaps a little bit younger than me, who had struggled with addiction much of her adult life. Eventually she began to turn her life around and became involved in a small church. Unfortunately, she still would act out from time to time, and this impacted her religious life when, at a church picnic, she engaged in a sexual encounter with another member of the church — a married man.
As she told me this story, she mentioned that as a new member of the church, she had an assigned friend — sort of a sponsor or “big sister” — who reacted with anger and shaming when she learned of the indiscretion. After I heard the entire story, I said to her, “I’m not sure how useful it is to pass judgment on how immoral your actions may have been; rather we should simply discern how your choices are, or are not, the most loving for all concerned.”
I woke up and the dream has stayed with me. It has no bearing on anything that has “really” happened to me, although certainly during my Pagan years I had plenty of friends who engaged in all sorts of sexual activity that would make your average churchgoing Christian’s toes curl. I think this is more likely related to a conversation I had with a monk the other day about Catholic identity as an adult convert. He emphasized over and over again that “we are the church,” meaning that it is a mistake to think only of clergy or the hierarchy when thinking of the church: that the church consists of all the people who gather together, not just those who do it full-time.
We are the church. And we have no idea what to do when members of our ranks engage in acting-out behavior, especially such behavior as directly or indirectly hurts other people. Far be it from me to condone adultery or other forms of sexual malfeasance. But when I consider the dynamics of my dream, I am reminded of Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery. He saves her from being stoned by challenging her accusers to let only a sinless person cast the first stone, and one by one they leave. Finally he tenderly ministers to the frightened woman, reminding her that it would be a good idea not to put herself in that position again.
Absent from both my dream, and the Jesus story, is any mention of the man involved. How often are we inconsistent in handing out our judgment, zeroing in on someone who is vulnerable, or lacks social standing, and making them scapegoats for all our collective sins?
We are commanded by Christ not to judge one another. Meanwhile, if we do not maintain some sort of collective boundary-setting that distinguishes healthy/okay behavior from other actions that are not healthy and not okay, only chaos will ensue. Somewhere between judgment and chaos is the place of Christian sensibility, where we can begin to address the great sins of our time: and I’m not just talking about who’s in bed with who. I’m also talking about who’s judging who, who’s abusing who, who’s oppressing who, who is trashing the environment, who is getting wealthy at the expense of others, who is curtailing the life and freedom of others on the basis of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity, who is destroying their own lives or the lives of others with drugs or other unhealthy substances. And on and on the list goes.
It’s all really quite overwhelming, which is why I suppose Jesus was far more interested in us working on the sticks in our own eyes rather than the splinters in each others’. Perhaps the best way to move out of judgment and into loving discernment is to begin doing so with our own selves.
“An enlightened power of reason and a love common to all”
John Ruusbroec (1293-1381) is one of the greatest of the Christian mystics. His masterpiece, The Spiritual Espousals (sometimes translated as The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage) in my opinion belongs on the short list of “must read” classics of western mysticism.
Here is just a taste of the poetic breadth of his wisdom. At one point in the book he writes about the various gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in Isaiah 11. One of these gifts, Understanding, can be seen as comprising several effects, including simplicity in the spirit, enlightenment, and love in the will. To quote the mystic himself, spiritual Understanding leads to “an enlightened power of reason and a love common to all.” In other words, the Holy Spirit’s gift of Understanding transforms the intellect (leading to enlightened reasons) and also the will (leading to love for all).
How, then, does this manifest in the life of the believer? Ruusbroec provides a list of qualities that is well worth reflecting on:
- Humility, the “foundation of all virtue,” is the starting point of the life of enlightened reason and common love;
- Worship, which when offered with honor and reverence to God will “lift up in spirit” we who seek God’s love;
- Praise, Thanksgiving and Service, the elements of worship, will in Ruusbroec’s words enable us to “thus become free”;
- Confessing and lamenting the blindness and ignorance of human nature — rather than focus on our private moral failings, he calls us to confess, in solidarity with others, all the corporate failings of our human nature;
- Desiring the enlightenment of all — if we confess the sins of all, ought we not also fervently desire the healing and transformation of all?
- Beseeching God’s mercy on behalf of others, so that they might advance in virtue; this leads to greater corporate love for God;
- Giving generously to those in need, out of God’s rich goodness — Ruusbroec recognizes that this is more effective than mere evangelizing of others; supporting those in need helps to naturally create the space where we all may love God more;
- Offering to God our imitation of Christ, which, when done out of love, will deepen our sense of God’s response to our prayer;
- Offering to God our devotion to the angels, saints and all good people, which will deepen our sense of being part of the communion of saints; in Ruusbroec’s words, “we will thus be united with them all in the glory of God”;
- Offering to God the good work of the church and our participation in the Eucharist — another surprise: many might think of the Eucharist as belonging at the head of a list like this, but Ruusbroec places it at the end. The good work of the church, including the miracle of the sacraments, does not lead our response to God’s gifts in our lives, but rather functions as a summation of that response. Ruusbroec affirms that through our participation in the sacramental life of the church “through Christ we might meet God, become like him in a love common to all, transcend all likeness in simplicity, and be united with him in essential unity.”
Ruusbroec summarizes this list by flatly declaring “this is the richest kind of life I know.” It seems to me that not only does the spiritual gift of Understanding naturally lead to the cultivation of all these other blessings, but that it can work the other way around: and we who seek to live the life of joyful response to God’s grace can work on each of these ways of responding to Divine Love, and in doing so we create the space in our souls for the gift of Understanding to be poured in.
Tessa Bielecki’s Recommended Reading for Growing in Intimacy with Christ
In her CD teaching series Wild at Heart: Radical Teachings of the Christian Mystics, former-Carmelite-turned-desert hermit Tessa Bielecki offers a wealth of suggestions of books one can read to deepen a sense of who Christ is. This veritable library for Christian formation includes poetry, art books, lives of saints and mystics, and children’s stories. In other words, it’s not just a dry selection of commentaries on the Gospels, thank heaven. Indeed, it is such a wonderful list that I took the time to write down all her recommendations, and so I’m archiving it here (this is somewhat of a selfish exercise, for many of these books I myself am unfamiliar with, and so this list is in large measure a wish list for yours truly). Let me begin by recommending Wild at Heart itself: it’s a six-CD set that in many ways beautifully complements my forthcoming Big Book of Christian Mysticism: it celebrates Christian mysticism not as some interesting footnote to church history, but as a living, breathing, dynamic spirituality into which each of us are being called, here and now, in our own unique way of course. If you enjoy reading my blog, I think it’s safe to say you’ll enjoy Tessa’s CDs.
Once you get your hands on Wild at Heart you’ll find disc four to be filled with all sorts of interesting recommendations for further reading. Here is that list, for your browsing pleasure. The first eight titles include poetry, not all of which is necessarily Christian or even religious, but which can initiate us into the mystery and wonder that lies at the heart of an encounter with Christ. Then comes two books that feature images of Christ from around the world, that can help to liberate us from the idolatry of only envisioning Christ in our own image. Bielecki then turns her attention to Christian mystics and to Christian saints, noting that one way to deepen our intimacy with Christ is by learning more about the greatest lovers of Christ throughout history. Finally, she caps off her list by commending C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, noting that his image of Christ as the wild lion, Aslan, can be particularly useful for those of us who lead overly domesticated lives.
With the poets, Bielecki only mentions the author by name, and so I’ve taken the liberty of selecting a work or two for each author that seems to best represent that particular poet’s work. Of course, if you are drawn to a particular poet, you may well wish to take your exploration further.
So here’s the list:
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume One and Volume Two- Denise Levertov, The Stream and the Sapphire
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Major Works
- Czesław Miłosz, Selected Poems
- Peggy Rosenthal, Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry
- Peggy Rosenthal, The Poet’s Jesus
- Peggy Rosenthal, Praying Through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times
- Peggy Rosenthal, Imagine a World: Poetry for Peacemakers
Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus- Ron O’Grady, Christ for All People: Celebrating a World of Christian Art
- Harvey Egan, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism
- James Harpur, Love Burning in the Soul: The Story of Christian Mystics from Saint Paul to Thomas Merton
- Phyllis McGinley, Saint-Watching
- Robert Ellsburg, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets and Witnesses for Our Time
C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia — incidentally, Bielecki strongly recommends that the Narnia books be read in the order in which Lewis wrote them (beginning with The Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe) rather than in chronological order according to the story (i.e., beginning with The Magician’s Nephew). Newer versions of the Narnia box set arrange the books in story-chronological order; but older, out of print boxed sets — like the one I’ve linked to here — arrange the books in the order written.
So there you go. Happy reading, and happy deepening of your intimacy with Christ.
Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves
Ken Wilber describes a significant malaise of our time as “boomeritis.” What he means by this is the tendency among highly educated and self-actualized persons (as typified by the baby boomer generation) to embrace values that include pluralism, egalitarianism, subjective/personal understandings of truth, and a general “live and let live” ethos, but that often appears marred by egocentrism, narcissism, and self-absorption. In other words, a laudable value system that promotes freedom of conscience can also devolve into a fragmented world where everyone does his or her own thing and, as a result, community flounders. I’m reminded of a friend of mine — a highly educated, successful businesswoman, who is devoted to her own spiritual practice — who always speaks of truth in possessive terms: she has “her truth,” I have “my truth,” and so on. In her cosmology, everyone is entitled to his or her “own” truth. What is not possible is any kind of grand narrative or truth claims that take us outside of ourselves and force us to play on a level field with everyone else.
I was reading one of Wilber’s books this morning in which he describes this problem, and thought about one of the reasons I was drawn back to Christianity from Paganism (a pluralistic, egalitarian spirituality if there ever were one). It had to do with the culture of self-sacrifice, humility, and asceticism that is at the heart of Christian spiritual practice. These values are often rejected by non-Christians as dysfunctional and/or patriarchal. But I think the Christian emphasis on self-denial can also function as a corrective to the pervasive narcissism of our time.
The danger in Christianity comes when believers settle for narrow or limited models of Christian experience. For example, one widespread model of Christianity in our culture emphasizes pre-scientific ways of understanding the cosmos or pre-modern ways of relating to authority (in other words, fundamentalism: think Jerry Falwell). Another model emphasizes scholarly approaches to the Bible and often has a strong bias toward social action — but against the culture of self-sacrifice that has historically exemplified Christian spirituality (the liberalism of Rudolf Bultmann or Bishop Spong epitomize this variety of the faith). Alas, relatively few people in the pews really seem to be engaging with a full and rich experience of Christianity: combining a deep devotion to the traditional spirituality of the religion with the challenges of bringing Christianity into dialogue with the knowledge of science or the wisdom of other faiths. Those who do embody, as far as I have seen, some of the most beautiful expressions of the faith. In other words, Christians who seek to be wise as serpents (by embracing science and multi-culturalism in addition to their own faith identity), but also innocent as doves (by taking seriously Christianity’s call to self-denial, thus dodging our cultural tendency to narcissism and individualistic self-absorption) often seem to be the most truly Christ-like in their values and relationships.
Fundamentalist Christianity is anchored in obeisance to unquestioned authority and a tribal way of thinking about the world at large. Liberal Christianity rejects the above and instead tries to “de-mythologize” scripture and express the faith in a rational, and even anti-metaphysical way, emphasizing social justice over spiritual transformation. Then there is postmodern or emergence Christianity, which acknowledges that the Christian narrative is only one among many narratives, and often celebrates Christianity as a subversive, counter-cultural project. The problem with each of these expressions of the faith is that they are often hostile to the others. Perhaps when Christ issued the call to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16), he prophetically envisioned a time when some Christians would be authoritarian/tribal, others rationalist/materialist, and still others multi-cultural/pluralist. We are wise when we engage with all three of these expressions of the faith; and we are innocent when we refuse to allow any one of them to ignite our own narcissistic tendencies, by which we would trade devotion to the wild, untameable God for a smaller faith that is geared toward personal comfort and self-satisfaction.
What does it mean to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves? It means to pray our way into a truly Integral Christianity. I don’t think it’s been born yet. We’re still in the labor pains.
Quotes for the Day
We don’t lack time, we lack focus.
— Tessa Bielecki
Leisure is not a privilege for those who have the time, it is a virtue for those who take the time.
— Brother David Steindl-Rast
Both of these quotes come from Tessa’s Wild at Heart:
Radical Teachings of the Christian Mystics
Recycling Trumps Richard Rohr (at least for me)
Readers of this blog know that I’ve been excited about hearing Richard Rohr speak in Atlanta this coming Saturday at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip. Indeed, if you are in Atlanta and are free on Saturday, I would encourage you to go — although it’s my understanding that the response has been so great that they’ve had to move the event from the fellowship hall into the Cathedral nave.
But, as it turns out, I won’t be there.
A couple of months ago my wife and I learned that the city of Decatur (just up the road from us) hosts semi-annual Electronics Recycling Days. These events provide environmentally and socially responsible recycling opportunities for families and businesses to dispose of computers, printers, televisions, stereo components, cell phones and other telephones, batteries, and various other items.
Because we hate to throw stuff out, we have literally been hoarding broken down computer and other electronics equipment for the past decade. Our garage is full of the stuff. When we learned of the Recycling Days, we resolved that we would lug all our stuff to it the next time it happened.
And, of course, it’s tomorrow, October 24 — right when Rohr is speaking.
Sure, we could wait until the next Recycling Day, probably next April, but we want to keep our promise to ourselves (and if you saw the condition of our garage, you’d understand why). I know other opportunities to hear Father Richard will present themselves (and actually, he’s speaking at a Catholic Church on Sunday evening, but he’s talking about the Emergent Church which we figure will just be a summary of the conference we attended last March).
So if you’re going to hear Richard speak, sorry we’ll miss you. I’m sure he’ll give a wonderful presentation. But since he’s a Franciscan friar, I imagine he would heartily approve of recycling as the reason why someone couldn’t make it out to hear him.
Quote for the Day
The grace of God is to God himself as sunlight is to the sun — a means and a way leading us to the latter. It therefore shines within us in a simple, one-fold way and makes us deiform, that is, like God. This likeness constantly sinks away, dying in God and becoming and remaining one with him, for charity makes us become one with God and causes us to remain living in union with him.
— Blessed John Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals
Location, Location, Location
It is said that there are three important concerns in real estate: “Location, location, location.” It’s funny because it’s true.
If you love to golf, your dream house is adjacent to a golf course — maybe not so close that you get golf balls flying through your windows, but close enough to walk to the clubhouse. Likewise, if you love the ocean, there’s nothing like beachfront property; if the lake is your thing, then you want waterfront property. And so it goes.
My wife and I keep going back and forth about where we want to retire. Her best friend lives in Asheville, NC, and we just love that town, nestled in the mountains and filled with more culture — and vegetarian restaurants — than you’d ever expect from a community its size. The one thing it lacks, alas, is a Cistercian monastery. So competing with Asheville is good ol’ Conyers, GA, where the Monastery is. Wherever we end up, we will be drawn there because of something (or some ones) we love.
Human axiom: we want to be close to what it is (or who it is) we love. I’m reading John Ruusbroec these days, and he speaks eloquently about being “touched” by God. We who are drawn to the contemplative life want to be touched by God. We want “God-front” property. The location we seek is God-location.
The punchline to the joke, of course, is that God is everywhere. The only thing separating “God-front” property from locations that feel or seem far removed from God is the dynamics of our own thoughts, mind, attitude, choice. When we build our house on the land we have been given, do we build it facing the lake, or do we turn it away?
Even if we build our house like a strong fortress, God can seep in through the cracks. God is funny that way. It is said that it takes more effort for our facial muscles to frown than to smile. I think the contemplative life works the same way. We work hard at being distracted. The key, it seems to me, is to learn to relax into God’s loving presence.
That’s when every location becomes a Divine location.
Four sources for personal and spiritual nourishment
The other day I had an insight about four essential sources for my own spiritual nourishment. I described this to a friend last night, using a cross as the visual metaphor to tie these elements together.
At the foundation of my spirituality is, of course, the tradition in which I am immersed: the wisdom teachings of two thousand years of mystics and contemplatives, united in our common devotion to the life and passion of Jesus of Nazareth. In the diagram I call this “theology and mysticism” but I think the entire culture of the Christian faith belongs here, including liturgy and sacraments, prayer practices such as lectio divina and centering prayer, the call to live a holy life, the austere beauty of the Rule of St. Benedict and monastic spirituality, and so forth. The grounding of who I am spiritually is anchored in the Christian faith.
But in order for spirituality to be “real,” it’s not just something we can learn about, it is something we must live. God is not just an idea to be a studied; God calls us into an experiential relationship — with God and with each other. To live the Christian faith means to be vulnerable to the wild and joyful leading of the Holy Spirit, who comes to us in ever-new and surprising ways. The tradition teaches us how to pray and how to meditate; and there still comes a point when we must sit down (or get on our knees) and actually do it. While I’ve placed this “experiential” dimension of spiritual nurture at the crown of the cross, this is not to say that such experience is purely a head trip — on the contrary, a relationship with God must be embodied.
So the vertical axis of the cross brings together received tradition and immediate experience. Meanwhile, the horizontal axis — the arms of the cross — reach out to embrace the world, obeying the mandate to love others as we love ourselves. For me, this takes two particular forms. On the one hand, I am continually nourished by a relationship to nature and, increasingly, to science. By this I do not mean to suggest that spirituality should be reduced to a merely empirical endeavor. But I do think science, nature, and good old fashioned common sense, can be healthy correctives to the shadow side of metaphysical speculation, which can lead to surrendering personal power to sources that are unwise or unloving. Christianity is an incarnate, embodied faith, and so it does not contradict the best wisdom from the world of science and natural philosophy. Indeed, current scientific research into meditation and human consciousness represents an exciting venue of cross-fertilization between the world’s great contemplative traditions and the human capacity to gather verifiable knowledge: see the work of thinkers and researchers like Ken Wilber or B. Alan Wallace for more on this.
The other arm of the horizontal axis reaches to all of the world’s great wisdom traditions that emerge from sources other than Christianity. Mysticism is not just a Christian phenomenon, it is a world phenomenon, and the testimony of amazing spiritual journeyers from around the world can shed light on our own path. While I am particularly drawn to Celtic wisdom and Buddhism, the wisdom teachings of Vedanta, Taoism, shamanism, Judaism (particularly Kabbalah) and Islam (including Sufism) all belong here as well. Engaging in constructive dialog with other traditions does not need to imply lack of fidelity to one’s own path: on the contrary, it can be a powerful way to deepen the practice to which we are already committed. This has certainly been my experience.
Finally, one of the most important dimensions of any spiritual practice — community — is represented by the circle in the Celtic Cross. In other words, community is something which encircles and encompasses all four dimensions: we encounter community in the tradition, in experiential spirituality, and in the larger community of naturalists/scientists and practitioners of other paths. Community is essential all the way around.
So there you have it. It’s very personal, so I don’t know how useful this diagram would be for others. Some might think nature belongs at the bottom rather than Christianity, and I can see the logic of revising the diagram that way. But since I have committed myself to the Christian tradition, I thought it makes the most sense to place Christianity at the foundation. Nature, off to the side, is not meant to be marginal, but is meant to include the entire sweep of natural reality, encompassing both material and spiritual dimensions of reality (I see “matter” and “spirit” not as two separate entities, but rather as two dimensions along the continuum of the cosmos).
So, I hope this is helpful. Perhaps you can come up with your own diagram of the sources for your personal and spiritual nurture?
God is love (and the Eskimo words for snow)
There’s a popular urban legend that the Eskimo have many words for snow. It’s kind of like saying “Europeans have many words for water” — there is more than one language among the Inuit, and even within one language, often various words are employed to describe similar phenomena: think of the English words river, rain and ocean, for example. The urban legend persists, though, because it asks an interesting cultural question: how do languages evolve to parse out distinctions in meaning? The Urban legend maintains that there are so many Eskimo words for snow because the Eskimo live in a world where snow is so prominent. If you’re surrounded by snow, so the reasoning goes, sooner or later you’ll learn to distinguish — and name — the differences between powdery snow, wet snow, icy snow, and so forth.
Yesterday I was thinking about one of my favorite Bible verses, I John 4:16:
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
God is love. That just about says it all, doesn’t it? But then, there are all those Eskimo words for snow. Just what do we mean by “love”? And how do we understand that “God” is it?
Forgive me for being rather base in my thinking, but when a hot and bothered sixteen year old boy pants into the ear of his cute girlfriend “I love you,” I rather suspect that what he’s thinking about is somewhat removed from what a mother has in mind when she croons those same three words to her baby. C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves in which he considers the distinctions between friendship, eroticism, familial affection, and agape, that Greek word (used by John in the above referenced Bible quote) which Lewis, following the Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren, defines as self-sacrificing love. Incidentally, this understanding of agape is not without its critics — see Markus Vinzent’s Agape and the “Christian” Gospel. But whether we agree with Nygren and Lewis or not, plenty of questions arise as we ponder this notion that God is love. Is God all kinds of love? Is God only self-sacrificing love? What is the relationship between God and eros? Is love a “continuum of experience,” where the differences between eros, filias, caritas, and agape are differences of degree rather than of kind? And if so, what then does this say about who God is and how we relate to God?
Parker J. Palmer in The Promise of Paradox minces no words when it comes to this idea that “God” can mean different things to different people:
As far as I can tell, a person who believes that he or she speaks God’s truth in pure, unadulterated form — or believes that some other mortal being speaks that way (e.g., one of the folks whose words ended up in the Bible) — is an idolater, a person who worships false gods, the false gods of human formulation. I want to say to them, “Neither your concept of God nor mine is the same as God. It says so in the Bible, and it’s just plain common sense. So we should learn to talk to each other in hopes of understanding God — and maybe even each other — a little more deeply.”
Phyllis Tickle talks about how about every 500 years or so the church goes through a form of evolution that includes, among other things, re-thinking how we understand authority. I think Palmer’s words are emblematic of this, and signify the dawning of a new, post-Protestant Christianity, that no longer anchors authority in scripture (or in whoever has the most influence in how they interpret scripture).
I’m not sure where in the Bible Palmer sees “Neither your concept of God nor mine is the same as God,” except perhaps the verse that comes just a few lines before the one I quoted above:
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
— I John 4:12
To me, this sums it up rather nicely. None of us have God figured out, but if we focus more on loving one another (and God), we’re way ahead of the game as opposed to the temptation to keep arguing about God, thumping our chests and jockeying to prove who’s right, while love gets thrown out the window. And that’s pretty much every kind of love.
So… I’m not sure what love is, and I certainly have no way of putting God into words. But maybe it’s like “light is a particle” and “light is a wave.” Truth is love, and truth is God. I’m not entirely sure what either of these mean, but the more I explore one, the more it sheds light on the other.
In a monastery bookshop
Today someone came into the Abbey Store and walked up to me and said, “I need a book with a title like ‘The Third Alphabet’ or something like that.”
“Oh, I imagine you mean The Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna,” I said. I explained to the customer that it’s not a title we keep in stock, being rather obscure even for our clientele, but I offered to special order it for her.
She said she’d have to think about it.
“If you’re interested in Teresa of Avila, it’s probably one worth having,” I said. “After all, it’s the book that Teresa herself credited as being one of the most important spiritual books she ever read.”
“You’re right,” said the customer, her face lighting up. “I attended a lecture that Susan Muto gave on St. Teresa not long ago, and she mentioned it. I’ve been looking for it ever since. In fact, you’re the first person who had any idea what I was talking about.”
I smiled. “Why do you think I work in a monastery bookstore?” I asked her, and we both laughed.
Quote for the Day
The way of the cross is often misunderstood as masochistic, especially in an age so desperately in search of pleasure. But the suffering of which Jesus spoke is not the suffering that unwell people create for themselves. Instead, it is the suffering already present in the world, which we can either identify with or ignore. If pain were not real, if it were not the lot of so many, the way of the cross would be pathological. But in our world — with its millions of hungry, homeless, and hopeless people — it is pathological to live as if pain did not exist. The way of the cross means allowing that pain to carve one’s life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need.
— Parker J. Palmer, The Promise of Paradox
Quote for the Day
Mysticism involves not just intense forms of contact with God, of whatever duration, but also a transformed life. It is part of a process that begins, as we have seen, with acts of asceticism, reading the scripture, spiritual direction, and preparatory forms of prayer, but it is meant to spill out and over into a new mode of living.
— Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism
Teresa of Avila
Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila.
To honor her, I thought I’d mention a few books that newcomers to her work might find helpful.
Teresa’s writings fill three large volumes, not to mention her letters which fill up another two books. But for students of the contemplative life, three works are truly essential: her autobiography, and two manuals of instruction in prayer and mystical theology: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Here are my recommendations for exploring each of these:
The Book of My Life is Teresa’s autobiography; this edition features a contemporary translation by Mirabai Starr that beautifully captures Teresa’s enthusiastic voice.
The Way of Perfection: Study Edition is from the definitive translation of Teresa’s work published by the Institute for Carmelite Studies.
The Interior Castle with Spiritual Commentary features the classic translation by E. Allison Peers, along with new annotations from Redemptorist Father Dennis Billy.
The Interior Castle is one of the truly essential works of Christian mysticism. But it can be a dense and challenging work, in which Teresa’s profound theology is often as not obscured rather than helped by her rambling, stream of consciousness writing style. Thankfully, a number of contemporary scholars have written guide books to help us explore the Interior Castle. Here are three commentaries you might find particularly useful:
Entering Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle by Gillian T. W. Ahlgren
Interior Castle Explored by Ruth Burrows, OCD
Where Lovers Meet: Inside the Interior Castle by Susan Muto
Gillian Ahlgren, Ruth Burrows and Susan Muto are all recognized as authorities on Teresa and/or on the spiritual life in general, and each of these books are accessible and handy guides to Teresa’s masterpiece.
Finally, let me wrap this up my letting the great mystic speak for herself…
The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.
— Teresa of Avila
Saint Rafael Arnáiz
This past Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI canonized six new saints. One of them, Saint Damien of Molokai, has received the lion’s share of the attention, because Father Damien (who served a leper’s colony in Hawaii in the 19th century until he eventually succumbed to the disease himself) has been a celebrity for many years. But for members of the Cistercian family, just as exciting has been the canonization of a rather humble and largely unknown Spanish Cistercian oblate, Rafael Arnáiz Barón. Earlier this year my Lay Cistercian community read and discussed a short biography of Blessed Rafael, as he was known then; Sunday’s ceremony “upgraded” him from “blessed” to “saint,” acknowledging him as a figure worthy of admiration, imitation and veneration.
My knowledge of Saint Rafael is admittedly pretty minimal. I know that he died young, after struggling for years with diabetes, and that he spent most of his short adult life bouncing back and forth between living at the Trappist Monastery where he was an oblate, and returning to his family’s home for periods of convalescence. His illness finally claimed him in his 27th year.
After we studied Saint Rafael, I managed to find a secondhand copy of a book of his writings published in 1964. called To Know How to Wait. It’s a small little book, mostly just filled with vignettes and brief little meditations, many rather ordinary, but a few quite luminous in their insight — for example:
God asks of me silence among my fellow men; I gladly offer it, though after all I don’t regard it as a sacrifice as the world does, since to keep the tongue quiet is to give the heart rest.
Amen.
But what I love the most about St. Rafael’s little book is, simply enough, its title: To know how to wait. It seems to me that this is a lost art. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am pretty much a babe in the woods when it comes to patient waiting. I wait pretty much only when circumstances force me to, and rarely do I embrace the opportunity to wait: mostly I just chafe against the situations in life where waiting is called for (at a red light, in line at the post office, looking for a check in the mail). 
So I don’t really know how to wait at all. It seems to me that knowing how to wait has something to do with the “meditation minutes” I wrote about a few days ago: it has something to do with cultivating contemplative mindfulness as an ongoing part of our lives. When we can do that, when we can embrace life’s interruptions and waiting-times as opportunities for silent self-donation to God, then — and only then — do we truly “know how to wait.”
Thank you, St. Rafael, for this simple little insight.
N.B. If you want to learn more about the St. Rafael, his biography has been published: God Alone: A Spiritual Biography of Rafael Baron by Gonzalo Fernandez. I haven’t read it yet, but it has been a popular title among my fellow Lay Cistercians.
The Big Book of Christian Mysticism — available for pre-order!
I’m thrilled to announce that my forthcoming book, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality, is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com.
The book won’t be published until August 2010 — but why wait? Place your pre-order now by clicking here.
The Big Book of Christian Mysticism
And while I cannot say for sure that this is the final cover design — publishers will often change a book’s cover, sometimes at the last minute — I can say that I hope this is what the cover will look like, for I sure do like it. In fact, let me use stronger language than that: I love it. It anchors mysticism in the monastic tradition; it is clearly Christian without being in-your-face religious, and it has just the right touch of both beauty and mystery.
What do you think about the cover design? Please let me know, either by email or by leaving a comment here.
Quote for the Day
In their ignorance some think they do not desire God unless they are always calling him with the words of their mouth or else by words of desire in their hearts, as if I were to say, ‘Ah, Lord, bring me to your bliss’, ‘Lord save me’, or something of this kind. These words are good whether sounded in the mouth or formed in the heart, for they stir a man’s heart to the desire of God. Nevertheless, a pure but wordless thought of God or of any spiritual thing — virtues, the manhood of Christ, the joys of heaven, or the understanding of holy scripture — may, with love, be better than any such words. For a pure thought of God is a true desire for him, and the more spiritual your thought is, the greater your desire; therefore when you pray or think about God or do any outward deed for your fellow Christian, be in no doubt or perplexity as to whether you desire God or not, for the action shows it.
— Walter Hilton (1340-1396), The Mixed Life
A New Pagan Blog
My friend Laura, who is one of my cohorts from back in my Pagan days — and who, despite being a former Catholic herself, was one of the most supportive of my friends when I was called to abandon Neopaganism in order to enter the Catholic Church — has begun a blog devoted to the Goddess Persephone.
Go check it out: Maid to Queen: Meditations on Persephone
Quote for the Day
God loves without limit and this puts a loving person most securely at peace.
— Blessed John Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals
A Gaelic Priest and Front Row Seats
One of the wonderful things about working in a monastery bookshop is that I get to meet all sorts of interesting people. Just yesterday I met Fr. Ross Crichton, a young priest from Scotland with bright eyes and a warm smile. Fr. Ross is in Georgia this week visiting friends, and they brought him by the monastery and made a point of introducing him to me (I make no secret of my love for all things Celtic). Fr. Ross and I hit it off immediately, and my admiration for this young priest only grew when he told me that he celebrates the mass in Gaelic as well as in English.
His church is St. Mary’s, Griminish, on the Isle of Benbecula in the Western Isles (the Outer Hebrides) of Scotland. You can read a bit about the parish here. According to Wikipedia, the Isle of Benbecula still has over 56% Gaelic speakers. It’s off the beaten path — but if you should ever get there, go to mass at St. Mary’s and say hi to Fr. Ross.
And now, for something completely different… tonight is a big Christian rock concert in Atlanta, the “Third Day Family Picnic,” featuring Third Day, Jars of Clay, and about a half dozen other bands. My wife, who is just amazing when it comes to winning free stuff from her favorite radio station, won us a pair of free front row seats to this gig. Of course, with Rhiannon there’s three of us, and the front row of the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, alas, isn’t exactly wheelchair accessible. We solved that dilemma by inviting one of Rhiannon’s friends to come to the concert with us, and bought tickets for her and Rhiannon in the accessible section. Not exactly front row, but Rhiannon is happy enough to spend the evening with her friend, and mom and I get to sit close enough where we can watch the guitarists and bassists do their magic. A fun time is anticipated for all.
Christian Meditation in the Fourth Century
If there is any monk who wishes to take the measure of some of the more fierce demons so as to gain experience in his monastic art, then let him keep careful watch over his thoughts. Let him observe their intensity, their periods of decline and follow them as they rise and fall. Let him note well the complexity of his thoughts, their periodicity, the demons which cause them, with the order of their succession and the nature of their associations. Then let him ask from Christ the explanations of these data he has observed. For the demons become thoroughly infuriated with those who practice active virtue in a manner that is increasingly contemplative.
— Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer
Evagrius Ponticus, who lived in the fourth century, was one of the Desert Fathers. Here in the 21st century, we tend to assign the turbulence of our minds to subconscious forces rather then demonic forces. But whether we are trying to take the measure of “some of the more fierce demons” or simply trying to become more centered in Christ, Evagrius’ advice is well worth heeding. Indeed, I stumbled on this quotation in B. Alan Wallace’s wonderful book Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism and Christianity, where he quotes Evagrius as an example of a Christian teacher who advocates a discipline of calmly and non-graspingly observing the mind: a basic meditative technique that, in our day, is far more commonly practiced among Buddhists than Christians. But Wallace’s point is that such an exercise has deep roots in the Christian tradition; indeed, the Desert Fathers and Mothers are the headwaters of post-Constantinian Christian spirituality.
As an interesting aside: anti-mystical Christians who attack meditation often do so because of a groundless metaphysical argument: that if we “clear our mind” we are leaving ourselves open to demonic attack. This is ridiculous for two reasons: first, it is as impossible to clear one’s mind as it is to consciously stop one’s heart from beating: the point behind meditation is to relax and slow down the mind, so that we can become conscious of the luminous space between our thoughts. And secondly, as Evagrius makes it clear: if a demon is going to attack us, he’ll attack us through our thoughts, not through the silence between them. With that in mind, meditation, far from being a vulnerable practice, actually is a powerful tool that any spiritual warrior would want to use; for it enables us to calmly observe our thoughts, learn to practice non-attachment in relation to our thoughts, and — again, as Evagrius points out — empowers us to gently turn our thoughts over to Christ, for the purpose of discerning which thoughts are truly worthy to act on. Indeed, if more of us could learn to submit all our thoughts to the light of love, wouldn’t the world be a better place?
