In a journal entry from December 1961, Thomas Merton wrote simply: “Humility is more important than zeal.” The Trappist monk had been speaking into social issues that were important to him, and had been investing a lot of time and energy in writing articles that might have some sway on the cultural landscape.
In short, there was a whole lot of Merton invested in these issues and causes. One magazine editor wrote him a letter, explaining that they would publish one of his opinion pieces in their magazine, but to be assured that the piece would cause a firestorm. And in some ways, Merton was ready to engage the fight from his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the Kentucky hills.
But then, this line: “Humility is more important than zeal.” More on Merton in a moment.
My religious background taught me that zeal was very important, that what really mattered was a person’s “fervor for the Lord.” There was even an expression for those who seemed most zealous: they were “on fire for the Lord!”
But in that tradition we talked little – none, that I actually can remember – about humility. We never talked about out-of-check ego. We never talked about the dangers of power run amuck.
What ended up happening, at least from my observation, is that those who were most zealous, those who pressed and pressed and pressed “for God” ended up burning out – myself included, for a season – and dropping out . . . sometimes bitter than they had “done so much for God” but without seeing the results they wanted . . . or resentful that while they had “given their all for God,” God didn’t seem to reward them as they expected. Some gave up the Church. Some gave up God. Others plugged on through the burn-out, convinced that the lack of reward for their zeal was connected to some sin within them that God would not tolerate nor honor. It’s a difficult, recurring cycle that lives within many of us.
I’m not in Merton’s head, but from what he writes, I think he had the sense that zeal really came down to his own efforts, dependent upon his own energy to bring about the ends for which he labored. Humility, on the other hand, kept him grounded in both his strengths and his weaknesses . . . in both his light and his shadow . . . in both his gifts and his brokenness. Humility took him out of the driver’s seat, so he didn’t have to manage the issues and manipulate the outcomes. He could do whatever was his to do, and leave the end to God.
The issues for me are different from Merton’s issues, but I want to affirm along with him that humility is more important than zeal. Zeal is about our human energy, our own desire to move things. Humility is rooted in truth . . . the truth about ourselves and the truth about our world.
I carry with me his words this week: “Humility is more important than zeal.”
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Lenten Thoughts about Comfort and Happiness
Through Lent – and even for weeks before – I’ve been immersed in scripture and story that speak to the spiritual journey through the wilderness. Most of us don’t choose spiritual wilderness as much as spiritual wilderness chooses us. In the run of life, we find ourselves in places that feel unexpected, untamed, and uncomfortable.
Last week, I spent several days with fellow pilgrims in a wilderness setting at the Benedictine monastery in Pecos, New Mexico. The setting is not primitive, but it is rustic in a sense. The place is not dangerous – the bears, mountain lions, and feral dogs that dwell in the surrounding mountains notwithstanding – but wilderness tends to put us in a place where we are out of control . . . where we are not entirely comfortable.
The stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd – 5th centuries are set in the wilderness of Egypt and the Middle East. The lives of these faithful Christians testify to how life can be harsh and demanding; yet, in that harshness their lives were transformed. In many respects, the very harshness of the surroundings brought to the surface their own darkness. They dealt with their inner darkness in order to be more fully the persons God created them to be.
Some of the Christian mystics have called the harsh and difficult settings of our lives our “furnace of transformation.” In other words, the discomforts of life become the fire that purifies us. The aspects of life that are beyond our control become the things that bring to light the illusions we carry. Wilderness itself, while not necessarily comfortable, is a place in which we learn to lean more fully into God and into the interior resources that God has placed within each one of us.
Frankly, this flies in the face of what contemporary religion, especially Christianity, has come to embrace. Christianity is offered as a path to happiness, a road to personal fulfillment, the way to make a good life even better.
Jesus, we are told, does not want us to be unsuccessful, but rather wants us to have health, wealth, and only good and pleasant experiences. Those who experience lack, disease, or discomfort must be lacking proper belief, or be poor in prayer, or be unfaithful to this Jesus.
[Apparently, there is another “Jesus” on the loose who did not experience being run out of town by local authorities, who was not cursed by the religious crowd, who was not betrayed by his closest friends, and who did not end up crucified on a cross between criminals.]
Preachers posit all light and no darkness, all comfort and no discomfort, all abundance and no emptiness, all happiness and no sorrow.
For a few days now, I’ve had in mind these words of C. S. Lewis, sent to me by a long-time friend. I ponder them in light of Lent and in light of my own expectations of the spiritual life. Try them on for yourself.
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy.
I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.
If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable,
I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” (C. S. Lewis)
These seem to me to be important words as we journey through Lenten wilderness with Jesus, toward death and the cross, and onward to the empty tomb.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Snow and Ash: An Ash Wednesday Poem by Steve Garnaas-Holmes
I've recently found the work of Steve Garnaas-Holmes through some friends who regularly forwarded his poetry and psalm-work to me. His website is www.unfoldinglight.net. Steve will also add you to his daily mailing list if you you'd like.
His work has touched me, and this morning's poem is beautiful.
SNOW AND ASH
This snow, deep but fine like ash
drifting over your sidewalk
will be gone in weeks.
But you shovel it today anyway
because today you need to walk out of your house.
You shovel it while it is snow
before it is regret.
Before it melts
this short life is yours
to choose well with,
what to shovel, what not to shovel.
Hard to do, to put your shoulder
to the work of compassion
when you could stay in.
So many conflicting winds
would drift your life
into ruinous places.
Only the warm energy of life
guides you, carving out
this path and not another.
Mortal,
pause amidst your labors,
and receive the grace you need.
Remember you are snow,
and to snow you shall return.
--Steve Garnaas-Holmes (www.unfoldinglight.net)
His work has touched me, and this morning's poem is beautiful.
SNOW AND ASH
This snow, deep but fine like ash
drifting over your sidewalk
will be gone in weeks.
But you shovel it today anyway
because today you need to walk out of your house.
You shovel it while it is snow
before it is regret.
Before it melts
this short life is yours
to choose well with,
what to shovel, what not to shovel.
Hard to do, to put your shoulder
to the work of compassion
when you could stay in.
So many conflicting winds
would drift your life
into ruinous places.
Only the warm energy of life
guides you, carving out
this path and not another.
Mortal,
pause amidst your labors,
and receive the grace you need.
Remember you are snow,
and to snow you shall return.
--Steve Garnaas-Holmes (www.unfoldinglight.net)
Monday, February 16, 2015
Monday, February 16, 2015 – A Pre-Lenten Reading
Introduction to “The Wisdom of the Wilderness”
by Jerry Webber
During Lent, I’ll provide daily meditations based on the stories and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (3rd – 5th centuries) on my Lenten blog (www.dailylent.blogspot.com). I've posted this introductory material on that site . . . it is intended to give some basic background and context to the Desert Christians: Who were these men and women? How did they get to the desert? What did they do there?
In the years after Christ, followers of Jesus faced a number of challenges. For many decades, Christians were persecuted by a hostile Roman Empire, which viewed Christian faith as atheistic (Christians did not worship the gods of the Roman Empire, nor the Emperor as deity). Christians were imprisoned, tortured, or put to death, often for sport in the Roman Empire.
Another challenge arose about three centuries after Christ, when Constantine became Emperor of the once-hostile Roman Empire. The new Emperor declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Empire. Suddenly, the hostile Romans became the Christian Romans. Everyone in the Empire was called a Christian.
From these two very diverse scenarios, a movement within Christianity arose in the wilderness areas of Egypt and the Middle East. Christians who were serious about deepening their life in God fled from the cities into the desert in order to seek a life of spiritual discipline, hoping to grow in their love for God (heart, mind, soul, strength) and others. These Christians, living mostly in wilderness communities, were the first monks (from, “monos”, meaning “one”).
The movement into the wilderness actually began around A.D. 269, when an eighteen-year-old Egyptian named Antony heard scripture read in the church. He listened to the Gospel story of the rich, young ruler with his heart, and when he heard Jesus tell the rich ruler, “Go, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me” (Mt. 19:21), Antony felt those words were spoken directly to him. He sold his property and gave away the proceeds, holding back only enough to care for his sister (the parents of Antony and his sister had died in an accident previously). He moved outside the city gates, befriending the religious men who sought lives of holiness by living outside the city walls. As he listened still more in the coming days, he was led further into the wilderness to take up the life of a Christian hermit.
Antony intended that he would live alone, allowing a life prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude in the wilderness to be the setting for his own purification. Over many years, he lived in complete solitude and endured terrible trials. When Antony emerged from his solitude, people recognized him as an authentically “healthy” person who had dealt with his own inner darkness in a whole and life-giving way.
Others began coming to him, urging him to help them come to a deeper sense of their own most authentic self. They sought healing from him, and wise counsel. Groups of disciples gathered around him, for whom Antony was a spiritual guide. Antony also made frequent forays back into the cities of Egypt, into the churches of the area, and before the bishops in Alexandria.
After Antony, a slow trickle of men and women entered the Egyptian desert in order to follow Christ more closely. These desert Christians found freedom to express their love for God through spiritual practice, both in solitude and in communities of seekers that sprung up in the wilderness. The first rule for these Desert Fathers and Mothers was charity toward all. Love and charity, for these Christians, seasoned every ascetic practice of the desert.
The wisdom of the wilderness actually grew up around these men and women who were seeking God and who, through their own spiritual practice, were attentive to their own interior shadows. They literally lived in the Egyptian desert. But metaphorically, they also lived in a spiritual desert, sensing that within their cultural milieu, they existed in an arid wilderness in which they needed to be spiritually lean and fit in order to survive. The desert was their place of their fitness, learning, and becoming . . . learning about God, self, others, and the created world (the four contexts of any wholistic spirituality) as they became the persons God created them to be.
It is important to know that the Desert Abbas and Ammas (Fathers and Mothers) were not ascetics for the sake of being ascetics. They did not strictly adhere to a code of spiritual discipline simply for the sake of being disciplined. They sought to be aware of their own internal darkness, to bring that darkness under the love of God, and then share their wisdom with others who would endeavor a similar spiritual journey.
For some today, their harsh asceticism seems outdated and irrelevant. They engaged in practices that seem extreme. Whether fasting food, sleep, sexual gratification, conversation, or the company of others, they could go to extremes. But always, asceticism was the means, not the goal. Their spiritual disciplines always pointed to a purpose beyond the practice. The spiritual practices were shaping them to be the kind of person who knew their own self and who knew what tripped up the self, in order that such a person could love God, self, and others more completely.
These Desert Fathers and Mothers – as they have come to be known – were shaped by love, but also by a desire for purity of heart, the purification of actions and motivations, in order not to drown in the world’s excesses. They chose to do this as best they could by living apart from the constant tugs and pulls of society. And paradoxically, by withdrawing from society, they were able to engage society and culture in an entirely different way, both through their prayer and with their wisdom.
Finally, a short word about how this wisdom was generally passed on. Usually, groups of disciples would gather around a certain Abba or Amma, living in close community with him or her in the Egyptian desert (generally in huts or caves, called “cells”). The mentoring would take the form of apprenticeship, in which the novice disciple would learn from the life, words, and actions of the Abba or Amma. Thus, there are a number of stories told about things the spiritual Fathers and Mothers did in interacting with others.
There are stories, too, that simply communicate the pithy sayings of these wisdom figures, told often as koans or paradoxical word riddles. Usually these wisdom sayings would be initiated by the disciple, who would approach the spiritual Father for instance, and say, “Father, give me a word.” The Father would offer a sentence that, then, the apprentice was invited to chew on for its meaning in his/her life.
The wisdom of the wilderness, then, is contained both in stories from the lives of these Desert Christians and in their sayings. We’ll explore their wisdom through the coming days of Lent. The daily posts will be available at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.
– Jerry Webber
Introduction to “The Wisdom of the Wilderness”
by Jerry Webber
During Lent, I’ll provide daily meditations based on the stories and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (3rd – 5th centuries) on my Lenten blog (www.dailylent.blogspot.com). I've posted this introductory material on that site . . . it is intended to give some basic background and context to the Desert Christians: Who were these men and women? How did they get to the desert? What did they do there?
In the years after Christ, followers of Jesus faced a number of challenges. For many decades, Christians were persecuted by a hostile Roman Empire, which viewed Christian faith as atheistic (Christians did not worship the gods of the Roman Empire, nor the Emperor as deity). Christians were imprisoned, tortured, or put to death, often for sport in the Roman Empire.
Another challenge arose about three centuries after Christ, when Constantine became Emperor of the once-hostile Roman Empire. The new Emperor declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Empire. Suddenly, the hostile Romans became the Christian Romans. Everyone in the Empire was called a Christian.
From these two very diverse scenarios, a movement within Christianity arose in the wilderness areas of Egypt and the Middle East. Christians who were serious about deepening their life in God fled from the cities into the desert in order to seek a life of spiritual discipline, hoping to grow in their love for God (heart, mind, soul, strength) and others. These Christians, living mostly in wilderness communities, were the first monks (from, “monos”, meaning “one”).
The movement into the wilderness actually began around A.D. 269, when an eighteen-year-old Egyptian named Antony heard scripture read in the church. He listened to the Gospel story of the rich, young ruler with his heart, and when he heard Jesus tell the rich ruler, “Go, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me” (Mt. 19:21), Antony felt those words were spoken directly to him. He sold his property and gave away the proceeds, holding back only enough to care for his sister (the parents of Antony and his sister had died in an accident previously). He moved outside the city gates, befriending the religious men who sought lives of holiness by living outside the city walls. As he listened still more in the coming days, he was led further into the wilderness to take up the life of a Christian hermit.
Antony intended that he would live alone, allowing a life prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude in the wilderness to be the setting for his own purification. Over many years, he lived in complete solitude and endured terrible trials. When Antony emerged from his solitude, people recognized him as an authentically “healthy” person who had dealt with his own inner darkness in a whole and life-giving way.
Others began coming to him, urging him to help them come to a deeper sense of their own most authentic self. They sought healing from him, and wise counsel. Groups of disciples gathered around him, for whom Antony was a spiritual guide. Antony also made frequent forays back into the cities of Egypt, into the churches of the area, and before the bishops in Alexandria.
After Antony, a slow trickle of men and women entered the Egyptian desert in order to follow Christ more closely. These desert Christians found freedom to express their love for God through spiritual practice, both in solitude and in communities of seekers that sprung up in the wilderness. The first rule for these Desert Fathers and Mothers was charity toward all. Love and charity, for these Christians, seasoned every ascetic practice of the desert.
The wisdom of the wilderness actually grew up around these men and women who were seeking God and who, through their own spiritual practice, were attentive to their own interior shadows. They literally lived in the Egyptian desert. But metaphorically, they also lived in a spiritual desert, sensing that within their cultural milieu, they existed in an arid wilderness in which they needed to be spiritually lean and fit in order to survive. The desert was their place of their fitness, learning, and becoming . . . learning about God, self, others, and the created world (the four contexts of any wholistic spirituality) as they became the persons God created them to be.
It is important to know that the Desert Abbas and Ammas (Fathers and Mothers) were not ascetics for the sake of being ascetics. They did not strictly adhere to a code of spiritual discipline simply for the sake of being disciplined. They sought to be aware of their own internal darkness, to bring that darkness under the love of God, and then share their wisdom with others who would endeavor a similar spiritual journey.
For some today, their harsh asceticism seems outdated and irrelevant. They engaged in practices that seem extreme. Whether fasting food, sleep, sexual gratification, conversation, or the company of others, they could go to extremes. But always, asceticism was the means, not the goal. Their spiritual disciplines always pointed to a purpose beyond the practice. The spiritual practices were shaping them to be the kind of person who knew their own self and who knew what tripped up the self, in order that such a person could love God, self, and others more completely.
These Desert Fathers and Mothers – as they have come to be known – were shaped by love, but also by a desire for purity of heart, the purification of actions and motivations, in order not to drown in the world’s excesses. They chose to do this as best they could by living apart from the constant tugs and pulls of society. And paradoxically, by withdrawing from society, they were able to engage society and culture in an entirely different way, both through their prayer and with their wisdom.
Finally, a short word about how this wisdom was generally passed on. Usually, groups of disciples would gather around a certain Abba or Amma, living in close community with him or her in the Egyptian desert (generally in huts or caves, called “cells”). The mentoring would take the form of apprenticeship, in which the novice disciple would learn from the life, words, and actions of the Abba or Amma. Thus, there are a number of stories told about things the spiritual Fathers and Mothers did in interacting with others.
There are stories, too, that simply communicate the pithy sayings of these wisdom figures, told often as koans or paradoxical word riddles. Usually these wisdom sayings would be initiated by the disciple, who would approach the spiritual Father for instance, and say, “Father, give me a word.” The Father would offer a sentence that, then, the apprentice was invited to chew on for its meaning in his/her life.
The wisdom of the wilderness, then, is contained both in stories from the lives of these Desert Christians and in their sayings. We’ll explore their wisdom through the coming days of Lent. The daily posts will be available at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.
– Jerry Webber
Monday, September 15, 2014
Thoughts about Genie-Gods and Darkness
The story is too long to tell today. In brief, while in a restaurant recently, I heard a monologue at the table next to me in which a person was "instructing" others at his table in how to get good things ("blessings") from God. This fellow described God as "a blank check" who is just waiting for us to ask for "all the treasures in God's storehouse." We don't have more, he said, "because we don't claim what is already ours."
I won't describe the mix of emotions I felt as this scene unfolded within a few feet of me . . . those of you who know me well will be able to guess a few of my feelings pretty easily.
What I finally came to as I walked out of that scene was the desire to reach out to the 5 or 6 people around that table and say, "You know, if this doesn't work out for any of you in the days ahead, come see me. Here's my card."
Because I know a whole bunch of people -- many of the folks I hang out with day in and day out -- for whom religion and cultural expressions of Christianity have not worked out. From old-school Catholics to prosperity-Gospel evangelicals to hard-shell Baptists . . . and everything else along the spectrum . . . I spend a lot of time with folks whose personal experience has not lined up with the teaching of a particular expression of the Church. Many of these folks have dropped out of organized religious expression, yet they have not given up on some expression of their faith. They wait and they hope. They are people of soul who long for something authentic that will not shrink from the darkness of our world -- or the darkness of their own interior. They are people for whom religious expression and spirituality are not an escape from the real world, but a healing engagement with it. They are people who take seriously the inner life and its expression in the outer world, not because it gets us "the treasures of God" as some kind of self-interested blank check, but because it connects us to a Source that is generously endless and life-sustaining.
I wanted to say some of this to those sitting at that table . . . to offer them a place to go and a people to be with when their God-as-Santa-Claus systems stopped working. Alas, I didn't intrude on their party, so I let them be. (I likely would have been written off by them as an infidel, anyway.)
The entire scenario, as I've reflected on it for a couple of weeks, has also reminded me of how much more appealing is a life of goodies and treasures, a life of all sunlight where a huge Genie-God makes all the roads smooth, takes away all the disease, removes all the stumbling blocks at work, gives us what we want on command . . . as if we shouldn't have to deal with difficulty, crisis, tragedy, or death. (In the Genie-God scenario, Jesus dealt with death, tragedy, and darkness so that we would not have to. His death means that we get the goodies.)
Maybe it's just my personality, but I tend to be drawn to those who are honest about both the darkness and the light. It seems to me that those who are in touch with darkness -- the world's and their own -- offer a tremendous gift to the world. They don't gloss over the darkness, nor do they run from it. They are comfortable in it, not needing to change it into sugar-canes and sweetness. Sometimes the darkness does get transformed into light, but those who can abide in the darkness do not demand that it be so in order to be happy. They find their happiness and delight regardless the weather.
I've noticed in recent years, for example, that poets who are familiar with darkness catch my attention. I've thought of all this today because I re-read a poem by R. S. Thomas this morning. Thomas was a Welsh pastor whose poetry is tinged in darkness. No, more than tinged, his poetry is immersed in darkness. It would be too breezy to call him a pessimist. I simply think of him as a realist, fully engaged with God and with life so that he doesn't hide from the difficult questions. He sometimes is comforted by God's presence, for example, but more often he confronts God over God's perceived absence. His poetry has the feel of the Hebrew Psalms that confront God and question God and demand answers from God, knowing that they may or may not come. And whether they come or not ceases to be the issue. At the core Thomas, like the psalms, engages God.
This is the poem I have considered again today. The last few lines are the lines I'm living with today.
Pilgrimages
R. S. Thomas
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went, travelling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching the gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil
that turns saints’ bones to dust,
dust to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. These people are not
late or soon; they are just
here with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
-- R.S. Thomas, Later Poems: 1972 – 1982 (London: Macmillan, 1983), 125 – 26.
I won't describe the mix of emotions I felt as this scene unfolded within a few feet of me . . . those of you who know me well will be able to guess a few of my feelings pretty easily.
What I finally came to as I walked out of that scene was the desire to reach out to the 5 or 6 people around that table and say, "You know, if this doesn't work out for any of you in the days ahead, come see me. Here's my card."
Because I know a whole bunch of people -- many of the folks I hang out with day in and day out -- for whom religion and cultural expressions of Christianity have not worked out. From old-school Catholics to prosperity-Gospel evangelicals to hard-shell Baptists . . . and everything else along the spectrum . . . I spend a lot of time with folks whose personal experience has not lined up with the teaching of a particular expression of the Church. Many of these folks have dropped out of organized religious expression, yet they have not given up on some expression of their faith. They wait and they hope. They are people of soul who long for something authentic that will not shrink from the darkness of our world -- or the darkness of their own interior. They are people for whom religious expression and spirituality are not an escape from the real world, but a healing engagement with it. They are people who take seriously the inner life and its expression in the outer world, not because it gets us "the treasures of God" as some kind of self-interested blank check, but because it connects us to a Source that is generously endless and life-sustaining.
I wanted to say some of this to those sitting at that table . . . to offer them a place to go and a people to be with when their God-as-Santa-Claus systems stopped working. Alas, I didn't intrude on their party, so I let them be. (I likely would have been written off by them as an infidel, anyway.)
The entire scenario, as I've reflected on it for a couple of weeks, has also reminded me of how much more appealing is a life of goodies and treasures, a life of all sunlight where a huge Genie-God makes all the roads smooth, takes away all the disease, removes all the stumbling blocks at work, gives us what we want on command . . . as if we shouldn't have to deal with difficulty, crisis, tragedy, or death. (In the Genie-God scenario, Jesus dealt with death, tragedy, and darkness so that we would not have to. His death means that we get the goodies.)
Maybe it's just my personality, but I tend to be drawn to those who are honest about both the darkness and the light. It seems to me that those who are in touch with darkness -- the world's and their own -- offer a tremendous gift to the world. They don't gloss over the darkness, nor do they run from it. They are comfortable in it, not needing to change it into sugar-canes and sweetness. Sometimes the darkness does get transformed into light, but those who can abide in the darkness do not demand that it be so in order to be happy. They find their happiness and delight regardless the weather.
I've noticed in recent years, for example, that poets who are familiar with darkness catch my attention. I've thought of all this today because I re-read a poem by R. S. Thomas this morning. Thomas was a Welsh pastor whose poetry is tinged in darkness. No, more than tinged, his poetry is immersed in darkness. It would be too breezy to call him a pessimist. I simply think of him as a realist, fully engaged with God and with life so that he doesn't hide from the difficult questions. He sometimes is comforted by God's presence, for example, but more often he confronts God over God's perceived absence. His poetry has the feel of the Hebrew Psalms that confront God and question God and demand answers from God, knowing that they may or may not come. And whether they come or not ceases to be the issue. At the core Thomas, like the psalms, engages God.
This is the poem I have considered again today. The last few lines are the lines I'm living with today.
Pilgrimages
R. S. Thomas
There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went, travelling the gallery
of the frightened faces of
the long-drowned, munching the gravel
of its beaches. So I have gone
up the salt lane to the building
with the stone altar and the candles
gone out, and kneeled and lifted
my eyes to the furious gargoyle
of the owl that is like a god
gone small and resentful. There
is no body in the stained window
of the sky now. Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.
There are those here
not given to prayer, whose office
is the blank sea that they say daily.
What they listen to is not
hymns but the slow chemistry of the soil
that turns saints’ bones to dust,
dust to an irritant of the nostril.
There is no time on this island.
The swinging pendulum of the tide
has no clock; the events
are dateless. These people are not
late or soon; they are just
here with only the one question
to ask, which life answers
by being in them. It is I
who ask. Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?
-- R.S. Thomas, Later Poems: 1972 – 1982 (London: Macmillan, 1983), 125 – 26.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Belief As a Lived Experience
Every person is a theologian. Everyone thinks about God. Even the thought that there is no divinity is way of considering ultimate things. The process of thinking God doesn’t exist, or thinking that God doesn’t matter, is one form of theology.
I know all that sounds like double-talk, but really it’s not. And there is more . . .
What we truly believe is not what we say we believe, or what we think we believe. No. Our actual belief is what shows up in our lives, in our daily experience, in the way our lives are ordered.
For example, numerous persons through the years have suggested that even many Christians – those who claim faith in God through Jesus Christ – are practical atheists. That is, while many of us claim allegiance to God through Jesus, we may also order our daily living as if God did not exist, or as if Christ did not matter, or as if God’s Spirit had abandoned the world. We would be offended to be called atheists, yet the day-by-day run of our lives is not touched by our faith in God.
What we believe about God also shows up in our practice of prayer.
For instance, entering into prayer with a posture of openness, in which we seek to stay open to the vast and mysterious work of God within us and in the world, invites a larger theology of God . . . a belief that God holds all things together. It invites me to trust that even though I cannot see the full picture from where I sit, God is directing the affairs of the world in a way that brings healing and redemption. It invites me to trust the hidden work of God’s Spirit, which most often takes place behind the “veil.” Contemplative prayer and meditation, therefore, are far from lazy or watered-down forms of prayer. Rather, they invite a fuller faith in God and less reliance on my own vision or abilities.
Other prayer forms also reveal our belief-systems. The Hebrew Psalms are packed with raw emotions and honest declarations about how the psalmist experiences life.
“Defend my cause, God,” they demand.
“Why have you abandoned me, Lord?” they inquire.
“Destroy my rivals,” they pray.
This is not the prettified, holy-sounding, “godly” language I was taught in the Church. In fact, I was instructed to pray prayers that were beautiful and lofty, that extolled God’s virtues – most often telling God what God surely already knew – with eloquence and an appropriate sense of wonder.
[Strangely enough, these were also the prayers that kept me far from prayer for decades. When I realized I could not pray those lofty, eloquent, holy-sounding prayers with any degree of honesty, I gave up on the whole business of praying.]
The Psalms of the Old Testament were literally a God-send for me. In them I found people praying real, raw prayers, not the cleaned up and sanitized version of prayer I had earlier been taught.
But it took me awhile to learn to pray honestly as depicted in psalms. My theology, what I believed about God, was that if I made one wrong move, said one “bad” word, made some flippant gesture God-ward, I would be punished. Had you asked me what I believed about God, I would have said that God loves me unconditionally. But my practice did not reflect that belief.
My actual experience was fear of God, afraid that I would somehow, in word or deed, wander beyond the limits of God’s love. I couldn’t be honest. I couldn’t say what I truly felt – unless, of course, what I felt was “pure” and “holy” and “upright,” and you can imagine that was a very small percentage of the time – because if I did, God would make me pay.
It actually took me years to learn to pray honestly. It happened bit by bit, baby steps forward, learning to actually trust that the cord with which God tethered me could not be severed, that there was nothing – absolutely no-thing – that could take me beyond God’s love and mercy. Only when secure in God, only when fully trusting that I was held without condition in God’s heart, could I pray honestly the reality of who I am and how I experience life.
What you and I truly believe always shows up in our actual lives . . . in our prayer, in our daily experience. What lives in our minds may be an expression of what we want to believe. Our practice of daily life demonstrates our actual belief.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
What Should I Tip for a Good Humiliation?
Saint Francis of Assisi prayed for one humiliation a day.
He was not a masochist. He did not seek out suffering. He was not an out-of-touch ascetic who thought pain in and of itself united one to God.
Francis knew that humiliation and embarrassment touched something within him to which he was attached . . . some image of himself that was important to his sense of self, yet was actually unrealistic or untrue. Humiliation would strike at the inner person, the areas where he was heavily invested and highly defended, and "bring him down a notch."
Francis also knew that his band of brothers tended to idealize his life, tended to make an idol of him as their leader. He knew that their deification of him was misplaced; thus, humiliation for him was a doorway into humility. (It's no accident that "humiliation" and "humility" both derive from the same root, humus, which means soil, dirt, or earth.)
Embarrassment works the same way. A person has an image that is projected outward, the way we want others to see us. Then something happens in our life-world that suggests we are not who we thought we were, or not who we have wanted others to believe we are. Embarrassment. Red-faced, we limp toward reality.
So here's my story:
Over a week ago, I went to the lady who has been cutting my hair for about 6 years now. An immigrant from Vietnam, she and her family have made a life for themselves in the United States. Her elementary-aged daughter is often in the shop, reading books or working on coloring books. I have come to know her and her family, even through the challenges of language and cultural mores.
I'm an easy hair-cut. #3 clippers on the top, #2 on the sides. Years ago I gave up on styling my hair . . . just cut it down short, and I'll never have to see a comb or hairbrush for the rest of my days. The whole process, from getting into the barber's chair to shaking off the hair and moving on, takes about 7 minutes on a good day.
On this day, I slid into the chair and she began to pump the foot pedal to lower the chair -- this happens every time -- as low as it would go in order to #3 me evenly across the top. Only this time, when she got the chair as low as it would go, she said, "I need you to be lower in the chair."
In 6 years, I'd never needed to be lower before. But I accommodated her, scrunching down in the chair as much as possible. (You gotta get that #3 even on top, dontcha know?) Making conversation, I said -- good-naturedly, I might add -- "What happened? Did I grow taller?"
She said, "No, just fatter."
I was a little shocked. Didn't expect THAT! I mumbled something like, "Yeah, I've gained some weight," hoping we could move on to something else, like what was coming up after the commercial on "General Hospital."
She charged on. "Do you like being fat?"
"Not really."
"Does it make you uncomfortable, like when you try to sleep at night? How does it feel?"
"Uh, not very good, I guess." By this time, I'm tiny in the chair, a seven-year old could not have been hunkered down lower. "I know that I need to lose some weight," I whispered.
"You should try eating less."
The last 6 minutes, 30 seconds of the haircut went on in silence.
Then the moment of decision: Because the haircut is fairly inexpensive, I usually give her a substantial tip. So what should I do this day? A sizable tip, and a "Thanks for the humiliation"? Or -- as per usual -- puff up, say nothing, pay only for the haircut (and NOT the humiliation), and sulk home?
My friend -- and she IS my friend! -- gave me something to carry along for several days. Why did her comments feel so offensive? humiliating? embarrassing? The truth is, I've put on over 20 pounds in a relatively short period of time. I know it's a problem, and certainly the people around me know that it's a problem, but she is the first and only person to say something about it. And I know I should eat less, but I don't.
My first response to this humiliation -- it really is a MINOR humiliation on the grander scale of things -- was to eat a huge basket of onion rings that night. I showed her!
Over the next several days, though, I remembered Francis and his words about humiliation and embarrassment, about how humiliation often comes from very public assaults on our pride and ego, about how embarrassments often take our heads out of the clouds and ground us in our fundamental humanity.
The ego-self (self-interested, self-referenced, self-centered) is a ruthless dictator. Easily offended, it wants to defend its ground, to stake its selfish claims. But St. Francis knew that a small, undefended ego is very difficult to embarrass and almost impossible to humiliate. The large ego projects an image of ourselves (how we see ourselves or how we want to be seen), and when that image is shattered, we feel humiliated. But with the small ego, there is no image to protect or defend. Security and esteem do not come from outside ourselves.
So sitting in the barber's chair that Friday, I was humiliated to hear the truth. My clothing tells me that she is right. The mirror tells me that she is spot-on. I'm just not accustomed to someone coming right out with the obvious. She touched a place where I feel a little prickly (and vulnerable, and even helpless on some days). It's not that what she said was untrue or offensive, only that it struck at my large ego, my inflated sense of self, the self I want to believe in and the image I want to project to others.
How do you tip for that kind of humiliation?
I'm trying to imagine what St. Francis would do.
He was not a masochist. He did not seek out suffering. He was not an out-of-touch ascetic who thought pain in and of itself united one to God.
Francis knew that humiliation and embarrassment touched something within him to which he was attached . . . some image of himself that was important to his sense of self, yet was actually unrealistic or untrue. Humiliation would strike at the inner person, the areas where he was heavily invested and highly defended, and "bring him down a notch."
Francis also knew that his band of brothers tended to idealize his life, tended to make an idol of him as their leader. He knew that their deification of him was misplaced; thus, humiliation for him was a doorway into humility. (It's no accident that "humiliation" and "humility" both derive from the same root, humus, which means soil, dirt, or earth.)
Embarrassment works the same way. A person has an image that is projected outward, the way we want others to see us. Then something happens in our life-world that suggests we are not who we thought we were, or not who we have wanted others to believe we are. Embarrassment. Red-faced, we limp toward reality.
So here's my story:
Over a week ago, I went to the lady who has been cutting my hair for about 6 years now. An immigrant from Vietnam, she and her family have made a life for themselves in the United States. Her elementary-aged daughter is often in the shop, reading books or working on coloring books. I have come to know her and her family, even through the challenges of language and cultural mores.
I'm an easy hair-cut. #3 clippers on the top, #2 on the sides. Years ago I gave up on styling my hair . . . just cut it down short, and I'll never have to see a comb or hairbrush for the rest of my days. The whole process, from getting into the barber's chair to shaking off the hair and moving on, takes about 7 minutes on a good day.
On this day, I slid into the chair and she began to pump the foot pedal to lower the chair -- this happens every time -- as low as it would go in order to #3 me evenly across the top. Only this time, when she got the chair as low as it would go, she said, "I need you to be lower in the chair."
In 6 years, I'd never needed to be lower before. But I accommodated her, scrunching down in the chair as much as possible. (You gotta get that #3 even on top, dontcha know?) Making conversation, I said -- good-naturedly, I might add -- "What happened? Did I grow taller?"
She said, "No, just fatter."
I was a little shocked. Didn't expect THAT! I mumbled something like, "Yeah, I've gained some weight," hoping we could move on to something else, like what was coming up after the commercial on "General Hospital."
She charged on. "Do you like being fat?"
"Not really."
"Does it make you uncomfortable, like when you try to sleep at night? How does it feel?"
"Uh, not very good, I guess." By this time, I'm tiny in the chair, a seven-year old could not have been hunkered down lower. "I know that I need to lose some weight," I whispered.
"You should try eating less."
The last 6 minutes, 30 seconds of the haircut went on in silence.
Then the moment of decision: Because the haircut is fairly inexpensive, I usually give her a substantial tip. So what should I do this day? A sizable tip, and a "Thanks for the humiliation"? Or -- as per usual -- puff up, say nothing, pay only for the haircut (and NOT the humiliation), and sulk home?
My friend -- and she IS my friend! -- gave me something to carry along for several days. Why did her comments feel so offensive? humiliating? embarrassing? The truth is, I've put on over 20 pounds in a relatively short period of time. I know it's a problem, and certainly the people around me know that it's a problem, but she is the first and only person to say something about it. And I know I should eat less, but I don't.
My first response to this humiliation -- it really is a MINOR humiliation on the grander scale of things -- was to eat a huge basket of onion rings that night. I showed her!
Over the next several days, though, I remembered Francis and his words about humiliation and embarrassment, about how humiliation often comes from very public assaults on our pride and ego, about how embarrassments often take our heads out of the clouds and ground us in our fundamental humanity.
The ego-self (self-interested, self-referenced, self-centered) is a ruthless dictator. Easily offended, it wants to defend its ground, to stake its selfish claims. But St. Francis knew that a small, undefended ego is very difficult to embarrass and almost impossible to humiliate. The large ego projects an image of ourselves (how we see ourselves or how we want to be seen), and when that image is shattered, we feel humiliated. But with the small ego, there is no image to protect or defend. Security and esteem do not come from outside ourselves.
So sitting in the barber's chair that Friday, I was humiliated to hear the truth. My clothing tells me that she is right. The mirror tells me that she is spot-on. I'm just not accustomed to someone coming right out with the obvious. She touched a place where I feel a little prickly (and vulnerable, and even helpless on some days). It's not that what she said was untrue or offensive, only that it struck at my large ego, my inflated sense of self, the self I want to believe in and the image I want to project to others.
How do you tip for that kind of humiliation?
I'm trying to imagine what St. Francis would do.
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