An Open Letter from a Restless Pilgrim

November 15, 1990

Recently I received a letter from a lady whom I have never met, but who occasionally writes to me. She writes when she is frustrated and, at that time, is unable to talk to those whom she does know. I have a number of such letters from her and, despite different dates and wording, they all have roughly the same sound. Let me, with her permission, open up these letters for you. I synthesize and paraphrase:

Dear Father: (Reader)

I don’t know why I am writing to you. We don’t know each other, but I thought maybe we might understand each other. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karin, but that is not important, though you need to know some of my background to understand what I’m sharing.

In fact, I don’t quite know what I am sharing, but I am going to give this a try. I’ll start with the feeling and then try to fill in some background. I’m frustrated and on the surface there should be no reason for this since I’m young (just turned 40), healthy, happily married (in that I think don’t have enough reasons in my marriage to be unhappy), have two nearly grown (healthy and good) children, have a job that I basically like and which gives me some creative outlet, have some very supportive friends, and, while not rich, am also not poor. There’s no one big thing that is radically weighing on me.

But that’s the smooth surface. Some other things lurk underneath. They don’t seem all that big or serious but they can at times, like right now, render everything else pretty unsatisfying and make me almost hopelessly restless and frustrated.

The frustration I am talking about is not some big existential angst, like Camus and Bergman talk about; or even midlife crisis, or the types of things they suggest therapy for nowadays (victim of childhood abuse, Adult Child Of an Alcoholic, lack of self-esteem). I even did therapy once for some of those things (and it helped). But this is unconnected to that.

It’s frustrating to talk about because it seems like such a small thing, something of no importance; certainly not something that should outweigh my blessings … but yet, it’s there, and it doesn’t go away. So I’m struggling and frustrated.

I want to share my person (my values and my spirit) in a way that I am not sharing them right now, especially in my marriage (but everywhere else too). Nobody seems interested, at least not most of the time. My husband is a good man, the proverbial “Israelite without guile”, but he isn’t interested in this kind of sharing or self-disclosure. He prefers an emotional and spiritual celibacy, even when he doesn’t like sexual celibacy. With some of my other friends, there’s depth to a point, but almost always, there is a line that we don’t cross. It seems there is always one block or another to this kind of sharing. It’s the wrong time, or the wrong place, or the wrong people are around, or we’re too tired, or the mood isn’t right.

Sometimes I wonder who is interested in anything beyond the simple sweetening of life!

All this probably makes me sound like the typical person who is frustrated by the plainness of a life and a marriage which don’t measure up to the ideals and expectations of romance and self-fulfillment in the culture. Maybe there’s a bit of that here. But that’s not my frustration. I am not naive about romance, nor about salvation laying in self-fulfillment. I’m old enough to have known another time (my parent’s poverty, their making due, their sometimes crushing realism). That’s in my genes. I grew up praying daily the words “to thee we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” If anything, I am a crushing realist. I am hardly looking for the finished symphony, the perfect consummation in a marriage or elsewhere, though I dream of it. I know enough of life (and romance and marriage) to know that, in some fashion, all of us will always sleep alone. What I’m looking for is not a lover, good sex, an affair with somebody who’s sensitive and who will make everything better.

So what am I looking for? Maybe this letter is just trying to name it. A kindred spirit maybe? Somebody to sleep with in a different way? (But would that be an infidelity to my marriage?) Some ear to simply really hear me? Some other person to know what it’s like? A statement of frustration that would overcome the torture of repressed expression? A saying out loud of a whispered truth that, in this world, we are all celibates whether we marry or not?

You tell me, am I filling in what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ or am I just neurotic as hell? Is my marriage, such as it is, all I should expect or am I selling myself short? Is my life, such as it is, all I should expect or am I being sold short? Am I suffering Christ’s loneliness or am I just a frustrated woman approaching middle age? What’s the difference between being a pilgrim or earth or just being sexually frustrated? What is proper expectation?

Please write to me and venture some opinion. Right now I don’t know.

Peace,

Karin.

Understanding Suicide

November 11, 1990

In the years that I have been writing this column, I have on three or four occasions done an article on suicide. Each of those columns prompted a flood of grateful letters. The gratitude came from the fact that those columns suggested that, in most cases, suicide claims its victims in the same way as does a heart attack, a stroke, cancer, or an accident. There is no freedom not to die. Suicide victims are, like victims of sickness and accidents, not responsible for their own deaths and suicide should not be a matter of secrecy, shame, moral judgment, and second-guessing.

Canadian poet Margaret Atwood once wrote certain things need to be “said and said until they don’t need to be said anymore.” With this in mind and given the painful misunderstandings that habitually surround suicide, I was all set last week to write another column on suicide which would reiterate the fact that suicidal depression, like certain other physical diseases, was a terminal illness and not a free choice that connotes moral and psychological delinquency, when a new book by William Styron, the author of ‘Sophie’s Choice’ and several other classic novels, fell into my hands. Entitled ‘Darkness Visible’, A Memoir of Madness (Random House, N.Y., 1990), the book chronicles Styron’s own descent into suicidal madness and his helplessness as he spirals into that hell.

Since Styron writes more clearly than I, and is sharing firsthand the experience of suicidal depression, allow me to quote him extensively:

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. … to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer. …

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this caldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.”

And Styron describes graphically how the depressed person thinks such thoughts of oblivion: “many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow of my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. Death by heart attack seemed particularly inviting, absolving me as it would of active responsibility, and I had toyed with the idea of self-induced pneumonia, a long, frigid, shirt sleeved hike though the rainy woods.”

After reading virtually all the literature, medical and psychological, on the issue, Styron suggests the suicidal depression is, in the end, caused by chemical imbalance, despite the fact that other factors (lifestyle, childhood, moral values, memory) play in. Modern sensitivities, he contends, make us reluctant to use old-fashioned words like madhouse, asylum, insanity, melancholia, lunatic, or madness, but “never let it be doubted that depression, in its extreme form, is madness. The madness results from an aberrant biochemical process. It has been established with reasonable certainty (after strong resistance from many psychiatrists, and not all that long ago) that such madness is chemically induced amid the neurotransmitters of the brain, probably as a result of systemic stress, which for unknown reasons causes a depletion of the chemicals norepinephrine and serotonin, and the increase of a hormone, cortisol.”

Styron was one of the lucky ones. With his suicide already planned, he “drew on some last gleam of sanity” and, in that, realized that “could not commit this desecration on” himself and his loved ones. He woke his sleeping wife and she drove him to a hospital. In its “safety” and given “seclusion and time” he healed. He lives today, healthily, and he tells the insiders’ story.

That insiders’ story is doubly valuable. Not only should it helps us to understand suicide more deeply and thus exorcise it of its shameful stigma, but, once its anatomy is better known, we should be able to better help others (and ourselves) in its prevention.

Beyond that, a proper understanding of suicide should help us all walk more humbly and compassionately in grace and community, resisting the bias of the strong and unreflective who make the unfair judgment that people who are sick want to be that way and who are blind to the fact of their own psyche’s exquisite fragility and perishability.

Unnoticed Blood

November 4, 1990

Nearly one hundred years ago as Therese of Lisieux lay dying she told her sister, Pauline, that the entire foundation of her spirituality came from her contemplation of the face of the suffering Christ (“the Holy Face”, she called it). She described to her sister how she was always struck by the Good Friday texts (from Isaiah and from the gospels) that describe the face of God’s suffering servant on earth, how that face is marred, unattractive, and either ignored or despised by those who see it.

Therese (whose real religious name, incidentally, was “Sister Therese of the Holy Face, and not “the little flower” or “Therese of the Child Jesus”) then tells Pauline: “One Sunday, looking at a picture of Our Lord on the Cross, I was struck by the blood flowing from one of his divine hands. I felt a pang of great sorrow when thinking this blood was falling to the ground without anyone’s hastening to gather it up. I was resolved to remain in spirit at the foot of the Cross and to receive its dew.” (Story of a Soul, p. 99). In a later conversation, she adds: “I don’t want this precious blood to be lost. I shall spend my life gathering it up for the good of souls. … for “to live from love is to dry Your Face “Vivre d’Amour, c’est essuyer ta Face.” (Last Conversations, pp. 126 & 134).

This metaphor – noticing the preciousness of Christ’s blood, gathering it up, and gently drying the face of the suffering Christ – is the metaphor Therese uses to describe her entire vocation. It’s this that constitutes the deep foundation upon which she grounds the other elements of her spirituality.

For her, Christ is still bleeding in the sufferings of persons on this earth, in our sufferings, yours and mine. And, as was the case with Jesus, this blood is, mostly, dripping unnoticed, unvalued, and often to the tune of another’s indifference and ridicule. Therese’s sensitivity (which was born out of her own suffering, her deep prayer, and from the unique way she was loved and valued and made to feel precious as a small child) alerted her to preciousness that was seemingly being wasted. Like a sensitive artist watching a masterpiece being heartlessly defaced and destroyed, the sight tore at her heart and so baptized and displaced her so that her whole life became nothing else than an attempt to do something about it.

Before dying, Therese promised that she would even spend her eternity, heaven, coming back to earth to continue to gather these unnoticed drops of blood and to continue to dry the sufferer’s face.

What a powerful and fruitful image this could be for contemporary spirituality as we struggle to bring together the demands of piety and private morality with the demands of social justice and committed action in the world. Martyr’s blood is still flowing; Christ’s blood is still flowing, the suffering servant of God is still being ridiculed on this earth … both in the poor of the world (the victims of injustice) and in the workplaces and homes of the not so poor (which is, perhaps, the main reason why this latter group so easily and blindly places the role of victimizer).

Christ’s suffering is still going on, the cost of living charity, joy, peace, justice, patience, mildness, and chastity, is evident in faces everywhere. Tragically, we are not inundated with spiritual artists who notice that something precious beyond words is being defaced and destroyed. Nobody seems too bent on “hastening to gather up” that blood, nobody seems to notice how uniquely precious it is, and nobody seems to have the fully discriminating insight, Therese’s insight, into Christ’s suffering face.

If Christ’s suffering face was truly understood we would see the coming together of private morality and social justice, of circles of piety and social action … for social justice circles would recognize the preciousness, importance, and utter non-negotiability of the tiniest private moral, psychological, or spiritual action and circles of piety would begin, immediately, to make the preferential option for the poor since they would immediately see that in the lives of the poor something precious beyond words is being defaced and destroyed – and nobody is noticing or caring!

Beyond that, once we would start saying to each other, “to live from love is to dry your face”, our habitual propensity for anger, self-pitying, self-righteousness, and giving up in despair would give way to a resurrection of, precisely, charity, joy, peace, justice, patience, mildness, and chastity in our lives. Why? Because the faith of Christ is always built upon the blood of the martyrs.

What’s needed, both in social justice and piety circles, are more persons with the insight of Therese of Lisieux, more persons who notice where Christ’s blood is being spilt today and who say: “I don’t want this precious blood to be lost. I shall spend my life gathering it up.”

The Miracle Of It All!

October 28, 1990

Several years ago, while doing my doctoral thesis, I had the privilege of having as mentor and promoter the distinguished Belgian philosopher-theologian, Jan Walgrave. One day, while discussing a point in philosophy, he asked me: “Do you ever sit on a park bench and ask yourself: Why is there something instead of nothing?” The presence of so great and saintly a man curbs any temptation to lie so I had to answer: “To be honest, no. Or, at best, very rarely.”

“Then you are not a philosopher!” he gently suggested. “A true philosopher asks the question every day for it’s a miracle that anything at all exists.”

Having met, occasionally, in persons like Walgrave and others, true philosophers, I know better than to claim citizenship in so contemplative a realm. True philosophers, like true mystics, true poets, and true artists, are rare. My natural thought patterns are normally too pragmatic to be numbered among them. More unfortunate still, like most other non-philosophers, I generally take the world and most everything in it for granted.

Sometimes though I have my contemplative moments and, lately, in doing some reading in science regarding the origins of our universe, I am beginning to realize why philosophers such as Walgrave do not so easily take the world for granted. When one examines the current scientific hypothesis regarding the origins of our universe (the so-called “Big Bang” theory) one realizes that it is a miracle, something beyond the human imagination, that there is something instead of nothing.

Science today tells us that our universe had a birthday. Roughly 15 billion years ago there was a ‘time –zero’, a time when everything in our universe as we have it now was not. Everything that is now in our entire universe began about 15 billion years ago with an explosion (the “big bang”) from something which was tinier than a single atom. Moreover, for our universe, our world, and human life to have come about a mind-boggling combination of factors had to be just right. I say “mind-boggling” because it is when we examine those factors that we are left with the philosopher’s wonder at why there is something at all instead of nothing. Let me list just a few of these “mind-bogglers”:

First off, as Stephen Hawking writes, “If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang has been smaller by one part in a hundred thousand million million it would have all re-collapsed” and we would have no universe. On the other hand, if it had been greater by one part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for planets to form. That equilibrium (upon which depends the existence of our universe) is, even today, still balanced on that same razor’s edge.

Second, if the nuclear force caused by this great explosion were even slightly weaker we would have only hydrogen in the universe. If it were even slightly stronger, all the hydrogen would be converted into helium. In either case, we would not have the present universe, the planet earth, and human life. Moreover the explosion was just strong enough so that carbon could form; yet if it were any stronger all the carbon would have been converted into oxygen. Again, a variation within a millionth of a part, and we have no earth and no life.

Finally, in the first seconds that followed this great explosion, for every one billion antiprotons in the universe, there were one billion and one protons. The billion pairs annihilated each other to produce radiation … but the one proton was left over. A greater or smaller number of survivors (or no survivors at all, if they had been evenly matched) and, again, we would not have a universe. And, to accentuate this anomaly, normally there is a symmetrical balance between particles (a billion proton for a billion antiprotons). Why the billion and one?

And then the complexity that is ultimately produced by this big bang! For example, there are a hundred trillion synapses (points at which a nerve impulse passes from one neutron to another) in a human brain and the number of possible ways of connecting them is greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

Looking at all of this, the chance coincidence of so many trillion possibilities that had to be exactly right for a universe and life to emerge, even Stephen Hawking admits, “there are theological implications.”

My mentor, Walgrave, used to define these “theological implications” in the following way … “The next time you are sitting on a park bench and looking at a tree, or you are looking into the eyes of someone you love, there should flood through you gratitude for the marvel of it all and you should ask yourself: Why is there something instead of nothing?”

A Vocation for the Last Stage of Life

October 12, 1990

I teach a course in World Religions. Part of the benefit of that is not only that it forces me to read and study these religions, it also gives me the opportunity occasionally to engage in some actual dialogue with them. During the years that I have been teaching this course, I have been in dialogue with a Hindu professor of theology. A gentle, saintly, and prayerful man, he is deeply appreciative of Christianity and, like Gandhi (who was also a Hindu), is seldom out of reach of his New Testament.

However one of the areas that he criticizes within Christianity is the fact that, in recent centuries, we do not have much in the way of a spirituality for the final stage of our lives. As he puts it, “you have no vocation for those who are retired, unless they are professional religious or monks.” He ties this criticism to something larger and he is worth hearing on this:

“Christianity is no longer visible in the marketplaces and part of this is that you have no SANNYASINS (holy persons) there. Your Sannyasins are all in monasteries, tucked away from the world. In Christian cultures all of your street people (those who do sit in the marketplaces and beg) have no religious witness value because they are not begging for religious reasons, but only because they have no other way to live. You do not have a vocation for your older people – where they can become sannyasins who sit in the marketplaces, beg, and by their very presence and appearance force everyone to think that there is a God.

Think what a witness it would be if very successful people, doctors, presidents of banks, athletes, journalists, teachers, business people, tradespeople, farmers, and married persons who had raised children successfully, people who had all kinds of other options in life (a home in the country, winters in the South, golf in the summers, travel to other countries) would instead be sitting, begging, in supermarkets, malls, street corners, and sporting arenas. Nobody could feel superior to them or treat them with pity, as we do with the street people who sit there now. These sit there because they have failed in life. But think … if you sat there, detached, with nothing, begging, because you had been a success in life. What a witness and vocation that would be! Christianity doesn’t have that, it has no such ideal for those who are moving out of active life.”

He’s right. We have no SANNYASINS, and very little in the way of a spiritual ideal for people who are moving out of active life.

In Hinduism, life is understood to have natural four stages:

Up until you get married and begin a family, you are considered a student. As a student, your primary focus is to enjoy your youthand to prepare for life. Then you become a householder which begins with marriage and ends when your last child is on his/her own and your mortgage is paid and you can retire from your job. As a Householder, your task is family, business, involvement with civic and church groups. These are your most active years, your duty years. The next stage is that of being a forest dweller. This is a period which should begin precisely when you are free from family and business duties. This is meant to be an extended period wherein you withdraw from active life and study and meditate your religion. (For example, you go back to school, perhaps do a theology degree, do some extensive retreats, and so on.) Then, at a point, you return to the world as a Sannyasin, as a person who owns nothing except faith and wisdom. You sit in marketplaces as a street person, as someone with no significance, property, attachments, or importance. You are available to others for a smile, a chat, an exchange of faith, or for concrete acts of charity. You are a street person, by choice, by vocation, for God, for others; not because you do not have other options (the golf course, winters down South, the cottage in the country) but because you have already made a success of your life. You are now readying yourself for death, to return to God as naked and possessionless as you were when you entered the earth.

Those are the stages of life as Hinduism understands them. My professor friend highlights how in Christian spirituality we are weak regarding the last one … and our witness in the marketplace is also weak because of that.

In the early centuries of Christianity, spirituality saw martyrdom as the fullest expression of Christian life, the ideal way to cap off a full life. Justin, Polycarp, Cyprian, and countless others “retired” into martyrdom. Later, Christians used to retire into monasteries and convents. What is offered to us to retire into? The country club? But does this prepare us for death and help make Christianity present in the marketplace?

I think my friend is right. We need a spirituality for Christian SANNYASINS.

Consolation In Old Prayers

September 29, 1990

In his “Confessions”, St. Augustine describes how he became a committed Christian after a long struggle that involved two conversions: one which intellectually convinced him that Christianity was correct and the other that empowered him to actually live out what he believed. There were nearly nine years between these two conversions and it was during this time (when in his head he was a Christian but in his actions he wasn’t) that he used to say his famous prayer: “LORD, MAKE ME A GOOD AND A CHASTE CHRISTIAN … BUT NOT YET!”

Interestingly enough, a contemporary of his, also a saint, Ephraim the Syrian (306-373 A.D.) wrote a very similar prayer:

“Sorrow on me, beloved! that I unapt and reluctant in my will abide, and behold, winter hath come upon me, and the infinite tempest hath found me naked and spoiled and with no perfecting of good in me. I marvel at myself. O my beloved, how daily I default and daily do repent. I build up for an hour and an hour overthrows what I have built.

At evening I say, tomorrow I will repent, but when morning comes, joyous I waste the day. Again at evening I say, I shall keep vigil all night and I shall entreat the Lord to have mercy on my sins. But when the night is come, I am full of sleep.”

What Augustine and Ephraim name with such clarity (and not without a touch of humour) in these prayers is one of the great difficulties we face in our struggle to grow in faith and human maturity, namely, the tendency to go through life saying perpetually: “Yes, I need to do that, but now is not the time!”

It’s consoling for us to know that saints struggled for years with moral mediocrity, laziness, and bad habits, that they, like us, could for years cave in to these things with the shrug: “Tomorrow, I will make a new start!” For years one of

Augustine’s favorite expression was, “Tomorrow and tomorrow!”

“Yes, but not yet!” How often does this describe us? “I want to be a good Christian and a good person: I want to live more by faith, be less lazy, less selfish, more gracious to others, more contemplative, less given over to anger, bitterness, and my tantrums. I want to stop giving in to gossip and slander. I want to be more realistically involved in justice. I want a better prayer life. I want to take time for things, to spend more time with my family, to smell the flowers, to drive slower, to be more patient, less hurried. I have so many bad habits that I need to change, there are so many areas of bitterness in me, I am defaulting on so many things, I really need to change, but now is not the time …

First … First, I need to first work through this relationship, to grow older, to change jobs, to get married, to get divorced, to finish school, to have a good vacation, to let my ulcer heal, to get the kids out of the house, to retire, to move to a new parish, to get away from this person (or persons) … then I will get serious about changing this all. “Lord, make me a mature Christian, but not yet!”

In the end, this is not a good prayer. Augustine tells us that, for years, as he said this prayer he was able to somehow justify to himself his own mediocrity. But steadily a cataclysm kept building within him. God is infinitely patient with us, but our own patience with ourselves eventually wears out and eventually we explode. In Book 8 of the “Confessions”, he writes how one day, while sitting in a garden, he was overcome with his own immaturities and mediocrity and suddenly “a great storm broke within me, bringing with it a great deluge of tears. … I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes … in my misery I kept crying, `How long shall I go on saying, tomorrow, tomorrow. Why not now?'”

When Augustine got up from the ground, his life had changed; he never again finished a prayer with that added little nuance, “but not yet.”

We all have in our lives habits which we know are bad but which for a variety of reasons (laziness, addiction, lack of moral strength, tiredness, anger, paranoia, jealousy, the pressure of family or friends) we are reluctant to break. We sense our mediocrity, but we take consolation in the fact that saints themselves often defaulted by praying: “Yes, Lord, but not yet!”

There is valid consolation in that prayer. It teaches us something about the incredible mercy of God under which we live. God, I suspect, copes better with our faults than we cope with each other and with ourselves. However, like Augustine, even as we say “tomorrow and tomorrow” a storm steadily begins to build within us. Sooner or later our own mediocrity will sicken us and we will cry out: “Why not now?” The “new song” that the psalmist invites us to begins with that line.

Further Reflections on Catholic Annulments

September 20, 1990

Several months ago in this column, I wrote a certain defense for the Roman Catholic practice of granting annulments for marriages that have failed. In that article I argued that an annulment is not just “Catholic divorce”, that it doesn’t deny that a real marriage had existed, and that it doesn’t in any way jeopardize the legitimacy of the children of that union. To do this, I made a distinction between marriage as a purely social and legal reality and marriage as a sacramental bond.

I’ve received somewhat of a critical reaction. Essentially the criticisms can be reduced to two:

i) The concept of a sacramental marriage which I gave was seen as far too idealistic and, by its standard, nobody, it was argued, can really be said to have a sacramental marriage.

ii) The distinction I made between a social/legal reality and a sacramental one was also seen by some as, ultimately, false and an annulment was understood by them not as an adjudication as to whether or not a certain reality had existed, but simply as the church’s acceptance of the fact that a marriage has failed and the church now in compassion reaches out, wipes the slate clean, and offers the parties the possibility of a new beginning.

My need to respond to these criticism stems not, I hope, from a need to defend a position, but from a need to clarify it.

In the original article I defined sacrament as “anything that visibly or tangibly gives expression to any aspect of God’s revelation or saving grace … anything that tangibly prolongs the saving action of Christ.” To this (taken from Edward Schillebeeckx), I added a qualification taken from St. Augustine: ” … and for something to be a sacrament there must be a certain likeness to the reality it signifies; otherwise you do not have a sacrament at all.”

Applying this to marriage, I stated that marriage is a sacrament when the love between a man and a woman has a certain likeness to the way God loves the world and the way Christ loves the church. Given that definition of marriage, a marriage is only a sacrament when “it radiates freely chosen love, commitment, fidelity, deep care, profound respect, great tenderness, hospitality for others, and a willingness to dies completely to self for the sake of that love.”

Reading this, many asked, “how can human love approximate such an ideal?” These qualities, they argued, would only be present in a perfect marriage. According to those criteria, basically nobody would have a marriage.

It’s this point that I address myself: What’s key in Augustine’s qualification is the phrase “a certain likeness”. The church presupposes, given the limits of human love, that no marriage in this world will ever meet this standard perfectly. No two persons in this life can ever love each other as freely, faithfully, respectfully, tenderly, and selflessly as God loves the world and Christ loves the church. However, with that being admitted, it must also be admitted that for a relationship between a man and a woman to bring Christ into the world (since love, to be sacrament, must “be food for the life of the world” and not just mutual narcissism) it must have “a certain likeness” to the free, faithful, respectful, tender, and selfless way that God and Christ love us.

A “certain likeness” does not mean it needs to do this perfectly, but it must do it in some way, however minimal.

This is not, I submit, an impossible ideal, since we, in fact, promise exactly those things in our marriage vows. What else are the marriage vows if they are not a promise to love freely, faithfully, respectfully, tenderly, and be willing to die for each other? When the church grants an annulment it judges (perhaps wrongly in some cases) that this particular relationship did not concretely in life radiate what it promised in its marriage vows.

The very fact that the relationship broke up is, already, by most opinions a sufficient indication of this. As C.S. Lewis once put it, any love that dies had, at its very beginning, already some inherent flaw … and, by my application of the criteria, was then never truly a sacrament that symbolized God’s love for the world (Ephesians 5).

The question, of course, then arises: If the simple fact of failure is sufficient grounds for annulment, then why have the procedure?

The process of annulment is necessary, as the previous article stated, for the freedom of conscience of those who are undergoing it and for the clarity of their status within the rest of the Christian community. Moreover, it helps to bring about the type of closure that makes for a truly new beginning, personally and communally. I have seen many instances where individuals, while being bitter about the process while it was going on, were extremely grateful for it after it was over. That gratitude, I submit, came about because they understood, after it was over, the benefits not just of an act of compassion, but of an act of adjudication.

Beyond Ideology II

September 17, 1990

Beyond Ideology II

For any community to survive it must continually create life as well as preserve it. In short, it must always have both a liberal and a conservative principle.

We see, for example, in the New Testament a certain tension between Peter and Paul. One suspects from reading Scripture that they were, by temperament, very different and not persons who would spontaneously have chosen to work with each other in ministry (not to mention choosing to go out to dinner together!)

In a crass oversimplification, it might be said that Peter represents the conservative principle and Paul the liberal one. They had different temperaments and concerns: Peter more solicitous about memory and history, Paul pushing edges. Together they were two of the main architects of the New Testament. Today, on our Christian calendars, they are given a single day together, the feast of Peter and Paul.

There is, I submit, a certain pedagogy in that two characters who are temperamentally so different, liberal and conservative, both celebrated on a single feast day; both, as we saw, needed for community, each bringing a separate gift.

The liberal brings faith in the future, the push not to stagnate, the demand to ever stretch mind and heart, the imperative of change and evolution, and the important truth that faith, truth, and life are not a baton that is handed on from one generation to the next like a stick in a relay race.

The conservative brings respect for memory and history, the demand for universality in ethos, and the important truth that something is lost when something is gained and that, accordingly, all change must be scrupulously adjudicated.

But each, unfortunately, invariably brings something else to community as well, namely, its own particular neurosis. It is the latter that makes “the family unhappy in its own way.”

What are the faults and neuroses peculiar to each?

Although their temperaments are very different, at one point, liberals and conservatives are the same in that both very often operate out of an anger and bitterness that leads to disrespect and incapacity to genuinely listen. This, sadly, is particularly true within church circles. I am not sure whether my own experience is atypical or whether I’ve had a wide enough experience outside of church circles, but, for myself, the most unhappy, angry, and bitter persons I have met, I have met in church circles and theological classrooms. I wish that weren’t so, but we are a family unhappy in its own way!

Beyond this shared bitterness, liberals and conservatives differ in their faults:

More peculiar to the liberal is the tendency towards self-hatred, to rewrite his or her own past in bitterness. As well, more peculiar to the liberal is the tendency towards intellectual arrogance, to judge that anyone who does not agree with his or her position is backward, unenlightened, not sensitized, a dinosaur. The ultimate accusatory judgment of the liberal is always: “If you were brighter and more informed, you could not think as you do!”

More peculiar to the conservative is the tendency towards timidity and the plain fear of change. As well, the conservative is perennially given over to paranoid judgment and, here, the ultimate accusatory judgment is always: ” If you were sincere, and still prayed, you could not think (and destroy values) as you do!”

Moreover, liberals and conservatives, today, tend to wield power differently. If a liberal doesn’t like you, he or she will write an article against you, accusing you of intellectual backwardness. If a conservative doesn’t like you, he or she is more likely to try to get you fired or silenced. Liberals resort more to intellectual intimidation, conservatives tend more to pragmatic power … and both sides tend to ridicule, disrespect, and selective listening.

The purpose of this listing of virtues and faults is, I hope, positive in that, in examining them, we might be less prone to identify the needs of community with our own temperamental needs. In seeing both the functions and dysfunctions of liberal and conservative ideology we might be more tempted to, first of all, to resist the tendency to identify truth with judgments that are colored by our own temperament and its needs. Moreover, once it is admitted, by liberals and conservatives alike, that both principles are necessary for community, then there is a chance that not only will there be some mutual respect and genuine listening, but, finally, we will be able risk some genuinely new things without hating or losing our past.

We will always be ideologues, all of us. The beginning of wisdom is the recognition of this fact. True dialogue can only take place when this is the acknowledged starting point, on both sides of any debate. Moreover, once this is acknowledged, both liberals and conservatives will, more easily, see what they bring to community, both positively and negatively, In that insight, we, incurable ideologues that we all are, can begin a little to live beyond ideology … and, in that, our family will be less unhappy “in its own way”.

Beyond Ideology (1st in a 2-part series)

September 12, 1990

091290

Leo Tolstoy begins his famous novel, “Anna Karenina”, with the words: ” All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The church today, despite a growing health that manifests itself at a deeper level, is an unhappy family … unhappy in our own way! Tension, anger, and bitterness is dividing not just the sincere from the insincere and the committed from the non-committed, but is, more distressingly, dividing the sincere from the sincere.

Liturgical services, theological classrooms, religious publications, renewal centers, and religious meetings and discourse in general invariably have a certain edge and edginess to them: conservative versus liberal, European theology versus liberation theology, universal church versus local church, feminist versus antifeminist, pro-life versus pro-choice, pedagogy versus andragogy, social justice versus the economic status quo, those for women’s ordination versus those against, left brain versus right brain, piety versus criticism. Increasingly, it is becoming harder for sincere Christians to even worship together.

Much of this is, of course, good. Tension is a sign of life and, as Freud once put it, the only body with no tension in it is a dead one. Love that does not confront is more properly called sentiment and so the path of faith and community, this side of eternity, is always marked by tears and misunderstanding. In this, all families are similarly unhappy.

Some of this tension, however, does not afflict all families. Behind the ugliness (and it’s ugliness that makes people not want to worship with each other) lurks ideology.

Simply put, most of us have bought into either a liberal or a conservative consensus which now functions as an ideology, acting as conscience, as hermeneutical key, and as eye and ear through which we then selectively see and listen. Accordingly, most of our reactions, opinions, rhetoric, indignations, enthusiasms, and causes then become highly predictable according to whichever ideological catalogue we are following. If it prescribes an indignation, we produce it, if it prescribes an enthusiasm we produce it, if it prescribes a cause we take it up, if it prescribes a cliché we mouth it … small wonder nobody has, as yet, set up a DIAL-AN-IDEOLOGY hotline!

In such an atmosphere free critical thinking, not to mention basic human respect, is generally absent. In its place we frequently see what’s worst in both conversativism and liberalism, namely, ideological rhetoric paraded as criticism and intimidation replacing respect. This is unfortunate because the good scribe should pull out of his or her sack the new as well as the old … there is a demand for both the liberal and the conservative principle in the church and within all human community. Let me try to explain:

Liberal and conservative are, long before they become ideologies, first of all, temperaments that we are born with. We are born, temperamentally, as one or the other, just as we are born white or colored, female or male, light haired or dark-haired. Granted many other factors – sociological, political, and economic – play into this, but, in the end, we are either liberal or conservative by temperament. Moreover, it seems that, like the ratio of females to males, at any given time the church and the larger family of humanity seems to divide itself roughly 50-50 between liberal and conservative (as voting habits and power blocs give ample testimony of).

This, while it is perennially irritating for both liberals and conservatives, is healthy and the survival of community depends upon it. A community comes together and stays together and grows together only when there is both an active conservative and liberal principle present.

Thus, for example, in a family it is very important that there be a conserving principle, someone who holds things together, who preserves the family traditions, who demands a certain ethos of family members, who makes sure the house runs, that the meals are cooked, that the bills are paid, that everyone contributes, and who, at times, has the authority to call to order and demand that family members be home sometimes and assume certain responsibilities. Without this conserving principle, as many a frustrated parent knows, family life soon dissipates, a home becomes a boarding house, and a family degenerates into a number of individuals each doing his or her own thing.

On the other hand, however, for a family to survive you need, as well, a liberal principle. You need someone to constantly push edges, to critically examine the family traditions, to show where ethos is bias, to open windows, to invite the family to do new things, to bring new people and new attitudes into the house, and to generate new life so that the family does not suffocate in its own traditions, biases, limits, and idiosyncrasies. To have a family you have to do more than preserve life, you must constantly also create life.

It is no accident that God populates the world with both liberals and conservatives. Each is vital for the formation of community.

On Sabbatical

September 6, 1990

Recently I began a year of sabbatical. Initially I was euphoric … one whole year with no responsibilities except those that are self-imposed! What a delicious luxury!

That euphoria hasn’t subsided much, but a curious guilt has begun to color it: Sabbaticals are an extravagant luxury that few can afford, the prerogative of the rich. The poor don’t get sabbaticals, for them there is no escape from the work, pressure, and responsibilities imposed by circumstance and duties of state. Beyond that, a sabbatical offers the perfect setting for a self-indulgence that can be rationalized and given a high symbolic coating.

Those issues are worth reflecting upon.

What is a sabbatical? Curiously, the term which is religious in origin and intent, is almost never used anymore in religious settings (where words like “retreat” have replaced it) and has survived for the main part in university circles. University teachers and other such professionals go on sabbatical. In church circles we no longer have much of a theology, nor practice, of sabbaticals. This is unfortunate for the concept of a sabbatical is, in the end, deeply religious.

Sabbatical comes from the word “sabbath”. God, as Genesis reports, worked for 6 days creating the world and then on the 7^th day, the sabbath, rested. What is meant by that curious phrase: “God rested”?

What is meant here has not so much to do with God’s busy-ness or leisure as it has to do with the purpose of creation. The sabbath is the end of creation, the feast for which creation was made, the prefiguration of the world to come, the opportunity for us, already, to taste (every 7th hour) the final state (rest, reconciliation, and play) for which we were made. As Jewish theology has it, God set up things in such a way that already in this life, with all its pressures, tears, and tensions, every “sixtieth hour” we should taste the world to come.

Hence according to scripture, life should have a rhythm: work should be followed by play, pressured and designated time by unpressured and undesignated time. Every “sixtieth hour” we should taste a little bit of heaven – especially given that the hours in between are consumed by demands, work, and duties. Very practically, according to our religious tradition, life is supposed to have the following rhythm: you work for six days, and then spend one day on sabbatical; you work for six years and then spend on whole year on sabbatical. In the past that rhythm, at least as it pertained to having a sabbatical every 6 days was maintained through our observance of Sunday as a day of rest. Once a week, everyone went on sabbatical and this was meant to remind us that, ultimately, we were not created for work but for play, that we do not live by work alone and in the end won’t live by work at all.

Moreover, the sabbath was understood as being more than just a time of rest. It was meant too be a time or reconciliation, a time when one tried to bring oneself and everything else into sympathy with all other things. Hence it was a time to forgive debts, to let go of resentments, and generally wipe the slate clean in order to be more in harmony with everything.

Understood in this sense a sabbatical is not the prerogative of the rich but a religious duty for everyone. Without the sabbath, the sabbatical, without the rhythm of life wherein every “60th hour” we taste the end of life and are called to reconciliation, life becomes a compulsive endeavour wherein work, duty, ambition, greed, and resentments consume us. Without sabbaticals we tire, lose our capacity to pray and enjoy, and, most importantly, lose our capacity to forgive. Whenever we sense ourselves as “caught in the rat race”, we are no longer living the proper rhythm of life as Genesis lays it out.

But a further distinction needs to be made: Sabbatical means unpressured, free, time. There are 2 kinds of unpressured, free, time, just as there are 2 kinds of solitude: We can speak of unpressured time as a private, personal, restful, therapeutic space (one kind of solitude), and we can speak of unpressured time as desert conversion space (another kind of solitude). The former is advertised in tourist brochures; the latter was modeled by Christ in the desert.

A sabbatical, ideally, is a time for both of these. It’s a time to rest and play, a time when one can claim one’s own time. But it’s also a time for conversion and prayer, a time when one must confront one’s demons in the desert. This, as the testimony of Christ and the saints assures us, is often not a peaceful process. The pressures of our work and our many duties, for all their demands, cushion us from the many demons of resentment, greed, jealousy, and fear that haunt deeper recesses within us. One doesn’t need to rest long before they make themselves felt … and the restful therapeutic space becomes the desert, a battleground for opposing spirits.

With these thoughts in mind, I begin a sabbatical year, asking for prayers that it might, indeed, be a time wherein I taste that “one-sixtieth part of the world to come” and wherein I might, through some desert experience, might find myself more in a “general sympathy with all things.”

Goods, Gods and Eastern Europe

September 3, 1990

The Gorbachev years have brought, as we know, the breakup of radical Marxism in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall, the symbol of unfreedom, has been smashed. All across Eastern Europe new political, economic, social, and religious freedom has been granted. This has triggered a new surge of optimism in both East and West.

Politically, this optimism appears justified. The break-up of radical Marxism makes the expression “cold war” obsolete. NATO and the Warsaw Pact, happily, need to re-define themselves. There is new progress in disarmament and many more nuclear and conventional weapons will now rust in peace.

What about the religious repercussions? Does the breakdown of radical Marxism signal a new resurrection for the churches in these countries? Will there be, after more than 40 years of persecution, a burst of new Christian life?

There is a lot of naïve optimism that this will be the case. Fundamentalist preachers are licking their chops and preparing crusades which, in their own words, “will bring forth the biggest harvest of souls since the first Pentecost.” The mainline churches are more cautiously optimistic but also view the situation with a certain joyful expectation. They, unlike the fundamentalists, are less sure as to what that expectation is.

What’s to be said about this? Will there be a new burst of Christian life and spirit in Eastern Europe?

It is never easy to read the signs of the times. However, some factors are already indicating that there is perhaps less reason for optimism than both the fundamentalists and the mainline churches will admit.

First, regarding the fundamentalists’ belief that Eastern Europe is now this ripe field of faith, awaiting harvest (their harvest): One wonders how someone can have any sense of the history of Christianity in these countries, of their martyrs both present and past, of their struggles and their resistance, and still believe that we, coming from an affluent and pampered culture, will bring them the good news! That’s more than naivete and blindness to history. It’s also a blindness to the Gospel.

A second factor might also be mentioned here: If one were to count heads attending church on a given Sunday, one would make this interesting discovery: In the so-called free world about 21 per cent of the population attends church on a Sunday. In the Soviet block roughly the same amount, 21 per cent, also attend. Given that, I am not so sure that the labels: ”Godless Communism” and “God-fearing democracy” mean much, Ronald Reagan, American rhetoric, and fundamentalism notwithstanding.

Looking at Eastern Europe, one fears whether, like in the West, present goods will soon lead to absent gods.

I was struck by the scenes shown on television when the Berlin Wall first came down. East Germans rushed in joy to the West. There were shouts and songs of freedom and celebrations of reunion with equally joyful West Germans. Hearts around the world warmed as we witnessed the joy. But there were other scenes which warmed the heart less. East Germans flooded to the West not just to celebrate with relatives and neighbors, but to ogle at Western consumer goods, motorbikes, VCRs, colored television sets, stereos, and other things which we once were naive enough to believe constitute the good life.

We have long since lost that naivete. Granted, these things have brought us comfort materially, but comfort and meaning are not exactly synonymous. Watching this scene, a cynic might well have commented: “Welcome to Western emptiness!”

My fear is that the new freedom that has opened up in Eastern Europe will not produce a new Pentecost (or, “harvest of souls,” as some would call it). At least not in the short run. Rather it will bring about a very old and worn infatuation with the good life as it is understood in terms of buying power, consumer items, opportunity for travel, and the like. When you are poor, you are born to be saved. When you are affluent, you are born to be pleased. When you are poor, you are more interested in God, when you are rich you are more interested in the sweetening of life.

This is not to say that it is better to be poor than to be rich, though Jesus did say something very similar. Poverty, in the end, is something to be eliminated, not idealized. Likewise it is not better to be oppressed than to be free, though, again, the Beatitudes hint at some funny paradoxes here. The Gospel is about freedom, not oppression. Hence, all Christians should rightfully celebrate the new freedom in Eastern Europe.

However, before any naive rhetoric regarding resurrections, Pentecosts, and harvests of souls be tossed around, one might profitably re-read the Beatitudes…and then re-watch film footage of East Germans looking at Western VCRs, motorbikes, and stereos. A gnawing fear appears suggesting that absent goods may have something to do with present gods. Given that, one fears that there may be some major disappointments for the poised harvesters of souls among both the fundamentalists and the mainline churches.

The Journey Of A Soul

August 20, 1990

Nothing is as important today in theology and in church life as is the task of continuing the marriage between social justice and the Gospel. One of the groups who have been true pioneers in this area is the SOJOURNERS community based in Washington, D.C. under the leadership of Jim Wallis. They live in a community which builds its life around the Gospel, prayer, and the eucharist, they work actively with the poorest of the poor, they protest radically against all forms of violence and injustice, and they reflect theologically upon their praxis. In them you see something which is too often absent in circles both of piety and of social justice, namely, a radical commitment to both Jesus and justice.

With this in mind, I would like to alert readers to a recent book by one of its members: Turning Toward Home, a Sojourn of Hope, by Joyce Hollyday (Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1989). It’s Hollyday’s autobiography and it chronicles her journey of faith.

The book’s main interest lies not in the fact that she is associate editor of SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE and is married to Jim Wallis (things which she barely mentions) but in the fact that it is truly the story of a soul, a pilgrim soul tempted to many options but which, eventually, through the grace of God is able, in Kierkegaards’s definition of sanctity, to will the true thing.

It’s an important story because, as Dan Berrigan writes in the Foreword, it is not that easy to will the true thing. “Joyce is the story of all of us. At least in ricochet, in longing. (And in recoiling from?) The story we wish were ours, the story we fear might be ours. The life we pray for (and against), the life we know we are called to (at least in metaphor, and according to circumstance), the life we wish could happen, or wish could never happen, to us. Admiration and fear, that uneasy mix.”

Unlike so many autobiographies which tend towards self-indulgence, narcissism, and exhibition, hers faces outward and chronicles a faith journey. It’s a journal of a soul, in the best sense of that phrase.

She begins with the story of her childhood, how she grew up in a comfortable middle class home in Hershey (the chocolate capital of the U.S.). Even as a very young girl faith was already very important to her. However, dreamt the dreams of her generation: a good education, the right husband, the right job, the right home in the right suburb, kids, comfort, travel, culture, recreation. She had all the tools to actuate the dream, but faith and circumstances singled her out for something else and baptized her (remember, baptism means displacement and conscription).

As a college student she went to work with the poor in Harlem. Her life was never to be the same. After an undergraduate degree in Maine, she enrolled in the Yale divinity program, bent on ordination. Sometime before her junior year she decided instead to leave school and join Sojourners. Sojourners has been her life ever since.

The book is rather brief on most of the chronological detail of her life, even after joining Sojourners. She does describe in brief detail some of her work, a couple of arrests for peaceful protest, and trips to Central America and to South Africa. Mostly though the book is about her journey into Jesus and into justice, and the struggle to keep those two ever together.

It’s an exposition of her, and Sojourners ethics, a consistent ethics—one which begins with the Gospel, prayer, and eucharist, flows into (as they call it) “the waging of peace,” tries to be consistent in its stance for life (e.g., she is both a feminist and pro-life, believing the life of a woman and a child may never be pitted against each other), and ends up in gratitude and celebration. For her, as for Sojourners, piety must be wed to Jesus and Jesus to piety and both must ever be wed to gratitude and celebration. That, in brief, is the perennial task of Christianity.

The book is a challenge to many things: First of all, to let ourselves be more displaced, baptized, by the needs of the poor. Conscription by circumstance: “This world cannot be a home for any of us until it is a home for all of us.” It’s a challenge to greater courage: “There are some things so dear and so precious and so eternally true that they are worth dying for.” It’s a challenge to patience, to give ourselves over to the struggle without expecting quick results: “Although we never see results, faith demands that we act. We act for the sake of the faithful ones who went before us and showed the way, trusting that we would follow—and for those who will come after us on the journey.”

Finally it is a challenge to reconciliation: “Eras of Christian history have been marked by prevailing theologies addressed to particular historical situations. Emphasis has been placed at various times and places on salvation, conversion, or grace; on pietism, evangelism, mission, or liberation. I would assert that what we most need today is a theology of reconciliation—a faith that acknowledges Christ’s redeeming grace, the social burden of the Gospel, and the promise of a new unity in the body of Christ which cuts across all lines of division. At this juncture in history, we must heal the divisions and learn to live together, or none of us will live at all.”

God has a history of calling prophets with strange backgrounds. Amos is pulled away from sheep and sycamores. Joyce Hollyday is pulled away from idle class dreams and the chocolate capital of the U.S. Her writings bear a striking similarity to those of Amos. Turning Towards Home is a truly prophetic book that deserves reading.

Hesitation and Reserve … Virtue or Timidity?

August 15, 1990

Czechoslovakian novelist, Ivan Klima, ends his book, My First Loves, with the following lines:

“Suppose I spent my whole life just waiting, waiting for the moment when at last I saw that starry face? It would turn its glance on me and say: ‘You’ve been incapable of accepting life, dear friend, so you’d better come with me!’ Or, on the other hand, it might say: ‘You’ve done well because you knew how to bear your solitude at a great height, because you were able to do without consolation in order not to do without hope!’ What would it really say? At that moment I could not tell.”

What Klima is saying as he ends this book is that it is not easy to distinguish virtue from timidity, high eros from sterility, and genuine patience from lack of nerve. He was a young man when he wrote this and, at that point, he wasn’t sure.

At this point in my own life, on any given day, making any given decision, I also am not always sure what is virtue and what is timidity? However, more recently, I am becoming somewhat steadier in the conviction that what must now be defended (both in secular and religious circles) is the value of bearing one’s solitude at a great height, the value of living without certain consolations so as to live in a certain hope.

Why do I say this? Because today the dominant philosophies in our world and the dominant spiritualities in our churches militate against reserve, repression, sublimation, and chastity. This is novel. In the more recent past we saw quite a different emphasis.

We are coming out of a culture of poverty which, of necessity, demanded that we repress many of our needs. Goods were simply absent for most of us and patience, doing without, and repression were a matter of necessity. There wasn’t a choice. As well, for this reason, among others, Christian spiritualities of the recent past stressed the same things, namely, doing without, patience, reserve, chastity, repression. The attainment of life’s pleasures were not seen as all that important since, in this life, “we mourn and weep in this valley of tears”.

In this kind of situation, in a culture of poverty and in churches which stressed life after death (often to the detriment of life after birth) renunciation, doing without, and all forms of chastity were almost automatically identified with virtue. Virtue’s task was to sweat blood in the garden. Conversely, of course, anything that went against this was, without much discrimination, seen to be self-indulgence and sin.

Affluence, new philosophies, new spiritualities, and a reaction against the past, have, today, reversed these equations. Reserve, repression, sublimation, and chastity, once so exalted on the totem of virtue, are now more identified with being uptight and missing out on life. For good and for bad, we are invited to push beyond reserve, chastity, repression, and sublimation to taste life more deeply and more really and not just write high philosophies and spiritualities about it! The spirit of our age nauseates when there is talk about “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears”. Instead it invites us to taste life more deeply, in name of God and religion and virtue. It tells us that we’ve only the one life and so we must live it well, fully, without timidity, with a certain courageous selfishness.

The results have been mixed. On the one hand, it has made us less uptight, less timid, more honest about our needs, and more appreciative of the goodness of God and creation. As well, it has made us more aware of the fact that Christ’s promise to give us life applies to life after birth as well as to life after death.

On the other hand, however, it has also made us more restless, more frustrated, more dissatisfied, and, at times, more irresponsible and less respectful. Once the lid is blown off reserve, chastity, repression, and sublimation, we all simply put up with less frustration in our relationships, marriages, jobs, vocations, and in our churches. A new struggle begins vis-à-vis fidelity, respect, and patience.

Moreover a new struggle also begins regarding virtue and timidity. Klima’s dilemma becomes our own: In renouncing something, am I being virtuous or do I simply lack nerve? Is this a higher respect, or am I simply uptight? Am I living a life of chastity or am I insulting the goodness of creation? Have I got sterility confused with an higher eros? If God called me home now would he scold me for not living life fully or would he congratulate me for bearing my solitude at a great height?

Nikos Kazantzakis once stated that “virtue sits completely alone on top of a desolate ledge. Through her mind pass all the forbidden pleasures which she has never tasted and she weeps.”

Virtue does weep for what it has to renounce. Morality does envy immorality … but only for a while. Persevered in chastity, sublimation, patience, and sweating blood in the garden, spawn something far other than envy. Their fruit is gratitude for the sublime only comes as a result of sublimation, first best only comes when 2nd best is renounced, and great love is the result of great patience and great respect.

Like Ivan Klima, there are many times in my life when I am not sure am I incapable of accepting life or am I bearing my solitude at a great height? But there are also some moments when I am sure – sure that God and great love can only be born in my life when I have learned how to wait properly.

Interruptions Can Be Our Real Work

July 16, 1990

David Steindl-Rast once commented that we tend to be resentful when things interrupt our work until we realize that, often times, interruptions are our real work.

Most of us tend to be impatient and resentful, sometimes deeply so, when our plans are interrupted by demands which deflect our energies from what we would ideally like to be doing. Sometimes this is minor: an unexpected phone call interrupts our work or our favorite TV program. Sometimes the interruption is major: an unwanted pregnancy interrupts our career or education; economic demands interrupt our plans to be a writer or an artist; the demands of a family interrupt our chance to travel, to see movies and plays, and to have the type of hobbies and recreations we would like, or the loss of health interrupts our career.

Countless things, big and small, constantly derail our agendas, force us to alter our plans, and slowly kill our dreams. Very often we are resentful: “If only! If only this hadn’t happened! Now I have to wait to go back to school, to resume my career. Now I’ll never have a chance to fulfil my dream.”

Sometime in middle age, or even earlier, this resentment takes a more radical form: “I’ve wasted my life. I’ve been a victim of circumstances. I’ve given in to the demands of others and now I’ll never get the chance to do what I really wanted to do.” Sometimes, however, as Steindl-Rast points out, the opposite happens. Instead of resentment there is gratitude. We realize that the interruptions, so unwelcome at the time, were really salvific and, far from derailing us off of our real agenda, they were our real agenda.

A few examples can be helpful here. I am sure all of us have known individuals or families where an unplanned pregnancy suddenly turns all plans (economic, career, travel, new house) upside down. Initially there is some bitterness and resentment. Later on the unwanted interruption turns into a much wanted and loved child who creates a happiness in life that dwarfs what might have resulted had original plans not been derailed by that interruption.

A.N. Wilson, the British historian, in a recent biography of C.S. Lewis, describes how Lewis’ life as a teacher and writer was, during virtually all of his productive years, interrupted by the demands of his adopted mother who made him do all the shopping and housework and demanded hours of his time daily for domestic tasks. Lewis’ own brother, Warnie, who also lived in the household (and who generally refused to let his own agenda be so interrupted) laments this fact in his diaries and suggests that Lewis could have been much more prolific had he not had to spend literally thousands of hours shopping, walking the dog, and doing domestic chores.

Lewis himself, however, gives us a far different assessment. Far from being resentful about these interruptions, he is grateful for them and suggests that it was precisely these domestic demands that kept him in touch with life in a way that other Oxford Dons (who never had to shop and do housework) were not. Historians like Wilson agree and suggest that it was because of these interruptions, which kept Lewis’ feet squarely on the ground, that Lewis came to insights which appeal so universally.

As these examples demonstrate, what initially is experienced as an unwanted interruption can, in the end, be our real agenda.

This, though, is not always true. Our lives are not meant to be left to pure circumstance and fate. We must also actively choose and create destiny. It is not always good to accept whatever happens. We have dreams and talents, and these are God-given, and so we must fight too for our agenda.

However, we must look always for the hand of providence in our interruptions. These often constitute a conspiracy of accidents within which God guides our lives. If we were totally in control of our own agendas, if we could simply plan and execute our lives according to our own dreams with no unwanted derailments, I fear that many of us would (slowly and subtly) become very selfish and would (also slowly and subtly) find our lives empty of simple joy, enthusiasm, family life, and real community. We do not live by accomplishment alone!

The very word baptism means derailment. Christ baptizes Peter on the rock when he tells him: “Because you said you love me, your life is now no longer your own. Before you said this, you fastened your belt and you walked wherever you liked. Now, others will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.” To submit to love is to be baptized… and to let one’s life be forever interrupted. To not let one’s life be interrupted is to say no to love.

C.S. Lewis once said that we will spend most of eternity thanking God for those prayers of ours that he didn’t answer. Along the same lines, I suspect we will spend a good part of eternity thanking God for those interruptions that derailed our plans but which baptized us into life and love in a way we could never have ourselves planned or accomplished.

Lewis also once said that God’s harshness is ultimately kinder than human gentleness and that God’s compulsion is our liberation. In our interruptions, not infrequently, we experience this.

Annulments – Catholic Divorce?

June 16, 1990

In past few years Roman Catholic marriage tribunals have been granting annulments with increasing frequency. This has not gone unnoticed among both conservative and liberal critics.

Among conservatives one hears the remarks: “The church has gone soft. It’s caved in and is now ratifying infidelity. What ever happened to ‘for better and for worse … until death do us part?’ The church is playing fast and easy with sacrifice and commitment.”

Among liberals the criticisms are expressed differently, but with equal distaste: “Annulment is simply the Roman Catholic version of divorce. Why have it? Why make couples dredge up all that hurt and pain again? This is simply another one of the church’s needs to control, to have power … a celibate hierarchy again meddling in married peoples’ lives. What does an annulment decree (‘you never had a marriage’) say to the children of those couples – that they are illegitimate? What does it say to the couples themselves – you didn’t know what you were doing?

Beyond these criticisms there is, very often, among those applying for annulments a deep resentment about the fact that they have to undergo this procedure and the sense that it is unnecessary, too expensive, and an undue infringement upon them. “Why”, they ask, “is the church making us do all this when we already have a civil divorce?”

What’s to be said about all this?

Whatever the value of all of these criticisms, they are, in the end, shortsighted and their persistence suggests that some very crucial insights into the complex reality of what makes a sacramental marriage are absent.

A marriage is a union between a man and a woman that involves a certain exclusive commitment. However there are various kinds of unions and commitments: psychological/emotional (love/intimacy), legal/social, and sacramental.

What an annulment does is speak only to that latter reality, the sacramental one. It considers that psychological, social, and legal realities only insofar as they impact upon the sacramental one. Civil divorce is the procedure that examines the other realities.

A marriage is a reality with both social and spiritual dimensions. A marriage ceremony, when performed in a church, already recognizes this. It binds the couple socially, legally, and spiritually and it sanctions their love in a way which invites the couple to make that love a sacrament – beyond its purely legal and social dimensions.

But what is a sacrament? Simply put, a sacrament is anything which visibly or in any other way tangibly gives expression to any aspect of God’s revelation and/or saving grace. A sacrament, as Edward Schillebeeckx so aptly puts it, “visibly prolongs the saving action of Christ.” In a child’s definition, this means that a sacrament is anything that gives skin to God.

St. Augustine, in his definition of a sacrament adds this necessary addendum: “and for something to be a sacrament, there must be a certain likeness to the reality it signifies, otherwise you do not have a sacrament at all.”

For the love between a man and woman to be a sacrament, it must, then, have a certain likeness to the way God loves the world and to the way that Christ loves the church. Hence it must radiate freely chosen love, commitment, fidelity, deep care, profound respect, great tenderness, hospitality for others, and the willingness to die completely to self for the sake of that love.

When the church grants an annulment, it is not saying that there was never a psychological/emotional, social, or legal reality there. It is not saying that the children of that union are in any way illegitimate (“bastard” is a legal, not a spiritual, term). It does not deny that there was in fact a true marriage.

It speaks only to the sacramental dimension. What an annulment says is that there was never a sacramental reality there, namely, that this relationship was never able to give expression to and radiate to others the love that God has for the world and the love that Christ has for the church. It says that, for reasons which it specifies, the marriage of this particular couple was not able to embody the freedom of love, fidelity, care, respect, tenderness, hospitality, and willingness to die for the sake of the other that is radiated in God’s love for us. In effect, it says that the condition that Augustine specified for something to be a sacrament was not fulfilled … the love did not have sufficient likeness to that which it was meant to signify. In most cases, the very fact that it ended, already signifies this, any love that dies is not very apt to signify God’s love for us.

Annulment is not just Catholic divorce, an unnecessary addition to the already overly painful and humiliating civil procedure. It is a necessary statement about sacraments which is given, not as an accommodation to human weakness or for the benefit of a celibate hierarchy, but for the freedom of conscience for those who apply for it and who want the comfort of both of knowing that God constantly opens new doors for them and that the entire Christian community is clear and at ease with their status.

Abrasive Rhetoric

June 10, 1990

A couple of years ago, I was at a conference on social justice. The final speaker was a very impassioned young man and after his talk several of us gathered near the podium to engage him in some further questions. He expressed how frustrated and disappointed he was that so few people ever took up his challenge.

“Why?” he asked, “are people who are sincere so reluctant to get involved in justice issues?” One man present responded by saying: “Maybe I would be tempted to get involved if people like you didn’t always insult me with your rhetoric!”

I use this story not to accuse particularly the orators of social justice. I hope to make a wider accusation, with this story serving only as one kind of illustration: One of the biggest factors working against community and against our ability to work together as a church or world is abrasive rhetoric. Simply put, too often the language that tries to promote truth and justice is insulting to others, judgmental, arrogant, patronizing, self-righteous, and more apt to drive persons still further away from the truth it is trying to promote than to invite them to embrace that truth.

This style of language, full of both truth and disrespect, is characteristic of groups both on the left and on the right in the church and world today. We see it in liberals and conservatives, feminists and antifeminists, pro-life and pro-choice persons, social justice advocates and the defenders of privilege. We see it in those who push for the universal against the particular and in those who push for the particular against the universal. We see it in those who push religion and in those who push against it. Invariably the language that tries to defend and promote the truth carries not just passion for the truth but a good amount of hatred, judgment, and arrogance as well.

The sad consequence is that rather than unite and rally others around the truth (which is the object of the discourse) it divides … and it divides not just the sincere from the insincere, and the committed from the non-committed, but it also divides the sincere from the sincere. In the end, it divides the truth from itself.

In doing this, it hardens positions and it creates illicit dichotomies that force people to choose between two positions which, ideally, they should both support.

To offer just a couple of illustrations: The rhetoric of feminism often alienates others (particularly other women) who, rightly or wrongly, feel trapped in choosing between feminism and pro-life, feminism and a contented staying at home, and between feminism and obedient service in the church. Conversely, the rhetoric of antifeminism often alienates others (again, particularly other women) by suggesting that if you are unwilling to say that “abortion is murder”, if you are not uncritically supportive of the status quo in the church, and if you dare suggest that a woman’s true place can also be outside the home then you are insincere and warped by contemporary ideology.

The rhetoric of conservatives often forces you to choose: “Either you are loyal and a defender of the status quo or you are irresponsible and helping to bring down values and morals.” The rhetoric of liberals suggests: “Either you are dissatisfied with the status quo or you backward and need your consciousness raised!” The rhetoric of pro-choice says: “If you defend the rights of the unborn, you are anti-woman.” Pro-life suggests: “You can only defend abortion if contemporary ideology has warped your morals.”

Rhetoric of this kind is not the truth that Christ promised will set us free. It neither unites nor invites. It doesn’t lead to community because it doesn’t melt hearts. Instead it polarizes us into camps, spreads paranoia, narrows our sympathies, and freezes us all more deeply within our immaturities and biases because, within it, there is too much that insults and tries to intimidate.

If we are to promote peace and justice, truth and charity, then peace and justice, truth and charity, must also characterize our language. Scripture tells us that the spirit of God is recognized by charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long suffering, constancy, mildness, and chastity. Sadly, it is these qualities which are normally absent from most discourse in the areas of religion and justice. This is often defended with the idea that the demands of justice, truth, and charity call us beyond the simplistic idea that somehow we always have to be “nice” to each other. Not infrequently too there is a reference made to Jesus’ anger and his driving the moneychangers from the temple.

Again, in this rhetoric there is some truth. The demands of truth, justice, and charity, if taken seriously, eventually shatter the idea that we must, at all costs, be nice to each other. However, the demands of charity and justice never ask that we let go of charity and justice themselves in our discourse (even as we claim for ourselves a higher charity and justice.) The kingdom is not built through insults and disrespect. Our language must take that seriously.

Today, at many levels, community is disintegrating. It’s becoming every harder to unite and rally people around anything. There are many reasons for this … not the least of which is our failure, in our rhetoric, to properly respect and love each other.

An Open Letter from a Restless Pilgrim

Understanding Suicide

Unnoticed Blood

The Miracle Of It All!

A Vocation for the Last Stage of Life

Consolation In Old Prayers

Further Reflections on Catholic Annulments

Beyond Ideology II

Beyond Ideology (1st in a 2-part series)

On Sabbatical

Goods, Gods and Eastern Europe

The Journey Of A Soul

Hesitation and Reserve … Virtue or Timidity?

Interruptions Can Be Our Real Work

Annulments – Catholic Divorce?

Abrasive Rhetoric

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