God Beats Small-Time Blues

October 1, 1987

Sigmund Freud once stated that neurosis is the disease of the normal person and that everyone is neurotic to some degree. This is true if one defines neurosis as he did, simply as meaning that one suffers more than one needs to. Neurosis, for him, is more a dis-ease than a disease. For Freud, this dis-ease comes about because of the repression of sex. In his understanding, we are so hopelessly and incurably sexed, with such limited access for sexual expression, that we are forced to repress most of our erotic energies. Eventually these repressed energies dominate and preoccupy our lives in a negative way. Everyone, subsequently, lives in a fundamental disease. There is certainly some truth in that.

More recently, thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Ernest Becker have argued that we are all neurotic, but have suggested that the root of our dis-ease is not so much repressed sexuality as the repression of our fear of death. For them, we have a deep sense of our own mortality and, consciously and unconsciously, repress it. Eventually this causes a neurosis which robs us of the full joy of living because we are afraid of dying. Again, obviously there is much truth in this. More recently still, a number of psychologists and novelists, among others, have suggested that there is a different reason why we are fundamentally dis-eased.

For them, while repressed sexuality and fear of death certainly unsettle our lives and cause untold restlessness, they are not the real reason why our lives are seldom peaceful and contented. They submit that our neurotic restlessness has another cause. In our western world, we live in a culture that stresses the importance and significance of the individual, while at the same time downplaying the importance of God. These two emphases, the significance of the individual life and the absence of God, cannot go together without creating an intolerable restlessness inside each of us. Because a fundamental dis-ease results when the truths that are revealed by God are taught in a world that postures independence of God.

What happens when we are raised to believe that we are, each of us, precious, special, and meant to leave a lasting mark on this earth…and we live in a world in which we are obscure, unknown, homogenized, taken-for-granted, and deprived of meaningful self-expression?

What happens when we are taught that our lives have deep significance and that our personalities, our dreams, our pains, our joys, and our loves have infinite importance…and we live in a world which cannot give us this sense?

What happens inside of us when we sense how precious are our individual stories, in all their unique intricacies, and we live in a world which is not interested in our stories and is bored when we begin to speak of ourselves?

What happens when we are told by our world that our daydreams are true and that we are infinitely precious, but that same world, precisely because it no longer relies on God to give us that preciousness, cannot offer us a sense of specialness?

What happens? In brief, we get very restless. We become deeply and hopelessly dissatisfied. The joys that our lives do give us tend to pale and be insignificant because we feel that they, and we, are small-time, small-town, obscure, too little known and recognized.

We end up frustrated, feeling trapped in a domesticity that excludes us from where we would like to be and from whom we would like to be with. Our families and friends do not satisfy us because they, like ourselves, seem small-time. They are too much like us to be of help in our restlessness. We crave relationships with the famous, the powerful, the achievers, with those who have attained significance in the world’s eyes and whose stories the world deems precious and interesting. We become obsessed with the need for self-expression, with the need for achieving something that is unique and lasting. We fear dying without leaving a permanent mark. Our daily lives seem poor and uninteresting, and we live so much of our lives waiting, waiting for someone or something or some moment to come along and give us significance and preciousness.

Our world teaches us that we are significant and precious, but then deprives us of the one thing that can make us so, God. This sets off an incurable ache. A sense of our individual significance and a lack of a sense of God cannot go together without creating a restless and intolerable dis-ease. Only God can give us the sense of our own preciousness and ultimate significance. Only in a life rooted deeply in prayer, where we can live contentedly hidden in Christ and, there, accept the martyrdom of obscurity, will our aching and dissatisfaction cease and our dis-ease give way to restful contentment.

Make Your Welcome Hearty

September 2, 1987

In October of 1933, Peter Maurin wrote the following poem and commentary in The Catholic Worker:

People who are in need

and are not afraid to beg

give to people not in need

The occasion to do good

for goodness sake.

Modern society calls the beggar

bum and panhandler

and gives him the bum’s rush.

But the Greeks used to say

that people in need

are ambassadors of the gods.

Although you may be called

bums and panhandlers

you are in fact the ambassadors of God.

As God’s ambassadors

you should be given

food, clothing and shelter

By those who are able to give it.

Mohammedan teachers tell us

that God commands hospitality

And hospitality is still practiced

in Mohammedan countries.

But the duty of hospitality

is neither taught nor practised

in Christian countries.

The poor are no longer

fed, clothed and sheltered

at personal sacrifice

But at the expense of the taxpayers.

And because the poor

are no longer

fed, clothed and sheltered

at personal sacrifice

The pagans say about Christians,

“See how they pass the buck.”

Maurin goes on to comment that a church council of the 5^th century obliged bishops to establish houses of hospitality in connection with every parish. These houses were open to the poor, the sick, the orphaned, the aged, and the needy of every kind. The idea was that one must always be ready to recognize Christ in the unfamiliar face and so every parish and every home was to have its “Christ room,” a room set aside to receive the ambassadors of God who appear in the form of the needy and the visiting.

Hebrews 13, 2, asks us not to neglect hospitality, remarking that, in receiving strangers, “some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Lately we have neglected hospitality. There’s been a bad slippage. No longer in our parishes, homes, and hearts is there a “Christ room.” Not only do we no longer see hospitality as a privilege, we no longer even see it as duty. Maurin is right, the Islamic world is doing much better at it than we are.

Why is this so? Are we more selfish? Are we busier? Is Christianity as a religion less hospitable than Islam? There are a number of reasons for the demise of our sense of hospitality. One of them, surely, is the one Maurin points out, we have turned the duty of hospitality over to government agencies, the taxpayer, social security, social services. They are asked to take care of the widow, the orphan, the aged, and the stranger. More importantly though, the demise of hospitality has occurred because we have developed a sense of privacy and efficiency that militate against it.

Our culture is becoming ever more narcissistic and idiosyncratic, that is, more and more we have the attitude that things are our own. We speak of my space, my time, my family, my home, my community, my room, my stereo, my plans, my agenda, my friendships, my effectiveness, and even, in a way, of my church. In such a context we allow other persons into our lives, our homes, our communities, and our churches, most selectively. We are hospitable to our own, to those who meet our standards and our timetables. This invariably excludes the poor from our hearts, homes, and churches, since they have no sense of our standards and timetables. Their problems are neither antiseptic nor conveniently scheduled.

Compounding this is the problem of efficiency. Thomas Merton was once asked what he thought the worst problem was facing Western civilization. Instead of answering with something like “injustice,” “moral decay,” or “lack of interiority,” he simply replied: “Efficiency!”

Our problem in the Western world, everywhere from the Pentagon to our monasteries, is that the plant must run! The classes must be taught, the crops must be sown and harvested, the kids need to be driven for their lessons, the meeting must run as scheduled, the supper must be cooked, the essay needs to be written, the mortgage needs to be paid, the plane needs to be caught, things must keep running, there is no other way, the show must go on, we need to do what we need to do!

In all that, partly, we are losing our souls because in it there is no space or time for hospitality and hospitality is the mark of a truly gracious soul.

Would that the hallmark of our Christian homes and churches be the graciousness of our welcome and would that when we die, each of us, might be most remembered for that, our hospitality, the graciousness of our welcome!

Saying Goodbye Part Of Life

September 1, 1987

T.S. Eliot once said that home is where we start from. These words describe my feelings as summer draws to its close. For me, it’s been a summer away from home: trips, workshops abroad, lectures and teaching in various places, a summer of meeting new people and of saying goodbye to them. Saying farewell doesn’t get easier with time. There’s a death in every goodbye, one painful enough to make us wonder whether the initial shared time was worth it.

This summer, I taught in three different countries and shared deeply within the lives of very different groups of persons. At the end of each of these times there were goodbyes. That was always a sad time, a deeply restless time, a time when death hangs in the air. There were grateful smiles and au revoirs, but all of us knew that most of us would never see each other again and that, certainly, this particular group of persons would never be together like this again.

What does one do with that? Pretend it’s not hard? Put on the stoic’s face? Callous oneself so as not to bleed? Offer it up to God? Whatever else needs to be done, certainly the experience needs to be picked up and examined. The metaphysics of a farewell. What’s in a goodbye? What kind of symbols give vision and consolation at moments of parting?

There is a story told about a Jewish farmer who, through carelessness, did not get home before sunset one Sabbath and was forced to spend the day in the field, waiting for sunset the next day before returning home. Upon his return home he was met by a rather angry rabbi who scolded him for his carelessness. Finally, the rabbi asked him: “What did you do out there all day in the field? Did you at least pray?” The farmer answered: “Rabbi, I am not a clever man. I don’t know how to pray properly. What I did was to simply recite the alphabet all day and let God form the words.”

That parable sheds light upon many things. Here I use it to help understand what happens when a group, any group, meets and shares life and then must say goodbye. When we meet and share life, we come, each of us, as one piece of an infinite alphabet of personalities. Like a letter in the alphabet we each have our unique shape, our own background, and our own special set of dreams and heartaches. We bring uniqueness, but, together, we form a word, a community, a family, a melody, a something which is bigger and more significant than ourselves. But always, since home is where we start from, it is only for awhile. This side of eternity, no group lasts, every community, every marriage, every family, every gathering, every preciously shared moment, has an ending. The word breaks apart. There is always a death in that breaking; ideally, a paschal death, a death in which one loses the smaller circle, the smaller synthesis, the smaller life, to come, eventually, to something bigger, to a wider consummation. Christ taught us that in his death.

We begin leaving home when we are expelled from the womb and life is a series of farewells after that. We spend our lifetimes trying to create homes and communities, but eventually, always, these break apart. To live with that, without giving in to an unhealthy stoicism, nostalgia, or despairing depression, it is important that we understand both the dynamics of death and of Christian community. The death we experience in saying goodbye is not terminal, but paschal. We break up a word to become parts of a bigger one. Smaller circles give way to larger ones. Christian community and true intimacy are not lost. True community, like true friendship, is a shared spirit. It need not be lost when physical death, distance, and commitments break us apart.

Community is not, first of all, nor necessarily at all, a shared roof, a shared city, a shared task, or even an explicitly shared friendship. It’s a shared spirit, a shared way of life. Before Pentecost, the disciples were physically together under one roof, clinging to each other, but they were not in real community. After receiving the spirit, they were never together again under one roof or in one city, but they now were in community. Community, family, intimacy, these are constituted first of all by living in the same spirit, Christ’s spirit…charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, mildness, faith, and chastity. When we live within these, we are in deep intimacy with all others who are also living within them, irrespective of the separation that distance and time can cause.

Life has its seasons. There is a time to be together, of intimacy, of shared time and celebration, when God makes us into a word. However, there is also, always, a time when the demands of life, duty, and the Holy Spirit call us to move along. Then is the time for farewell, for pained embraces, for tears, and for the bitter restlessness that accompanies that. But, it’s not like we’d never met. What’s been shared, the word we made, breaks up only to become part of something larger…and we regain each other in that.

When we’ve shared a common spirit and keep that spirit, it no longer matters if we are thousands of miles apart, we remain part of each other, in deep intimacy, silently nurturing each other as we help bring about the final consummation within the body of Christ.

Sitting At A Mystic’s Feet

August 1, 1987

Recently, while traveling in England, I was offered a rare and privileged opportunity. A former student of mine arranged for me to meet with Ruth Burrows, the Carmelite spiritual writer. A certain mystique surrounds Ruth Burrows. First of all, although she is one of the foremost spiritual authors of our time, very few people know her real name or know where precisely she lives. Ruth Burrows is her pen name.

What is known about her is that she is a Carmelite nun, living somewhere in England. In her books, she is most careful to disguise places, dates and names. Nowhere do you see on the covers or dust jackets of her books particulars regarding her person, age, place of residence, involvements, and so on. She prefers, for many reasons, a certain anonymity. She is a Carmelite, trying to live the hidden life of Christ. More importantly, there is a mystique about her because she is, in some circles, much to her own chagrin, regarded as a mystical writer. In our age, that kind of insinuation creates its own mystique, usually a false and harmful one. Burrows, herself, rejects the label “mystic,” especially as the word is commonly understood. However, because of the nature of some of her writings, that title is destined to plague her. She does deserve some extraordinary label since her writings are, in fact, exceptional. She is one of the great, and deep, spiritual writers of our time. She is the author of more than a half dozen books, but is best known for three of them: Her autobiography, Before the Living God, which, perhaps more so even than Merton’s, Seven Storey Mountain, traces the struggles of a soul to come to single-mindedness in Christ; her Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, which gives a novel and systematic outline of the spiritual life; and her recent, Ascent to Love, which is the best commentary in English on John of the Cross.

By way of introducing you to her, I offer you here a small smorgasbord of quotes from her:

On anger and bitterness:

“Bitterness is an infallible indication of selfishness.”
“The heart of trouble is the craving for attention, to have one’s own way.
“At the heart of anger lies the rebellion against what is truly human.”

On suffering and desolation:

“In paschal suffering, we cling to God, in neurotic suffering we cling to ourselves. In clinging to God we experience Gethsemane, in clinging to ourselves we experience neurosis.”
“Christianity must never be allowed to degenerate into ‘Cross-tianity.’ We must never make an ideology out of suffering. That is the constant temptation, to think ourselves superior or deep because we suffer. Everything that can be said of consolation applies equally to suffering. True religious experience erases all sense of being special and superior, even in the area of suffering.”
“Suffering is not an infallible indication of growth, it can just as easily indicate neuroses. We must be careful not to cast a mystical garb over indigestion.”

On sloth and laziness:

“I am slothful when I feel that the total demands and promises of God are not for me and therefore I do not hold myself responsible in failing to meet them.”

On pride and honesty:

“I am shocked to see how little contrition, searing contrition, features in our living and dying. Only a saint can afford to die the death of a saint. The rest of us need to go out as sinners in our own eyes and in the eyes of our entourage, and our peace must come from trust in God’s goodness, not in the complacent but unexpressed assumption that I have lived for God.”
“The way we worry about spiritual failures, our inability to pray, our distractions, our ugly thoughts, and the temptations we can’t get rid of…it’s not because God is defrauded, for he isn’t, it’s because we are not so beautiful as we would like to be.”

Given all this, it was with considerable nervousness that I ventured into the ungrilled parlor of a small monastery in rural England. What kind of person would I meet? A writer larger than her words? A spiritual figure more powerful than her books? None of these questions now seem important enough to reflect upon. I met a woman of about 60, whose face, person, and words reflect everything her books talk about: Faith in God; exceptional prophetic vision; humor; the choice for life; the difficulties and pain in that choice, a pain that is not neurotic but which steadies, warms, and matures the heart; the importance of the ordinary, of the hidden life of Jesus, of the martyrdom of obscurity where Christ is all in all.

There is something deeply easeful in her person and manner. I was soon very much at ease. Never did I open my briefcase with its carefully prepared interview sheet. We talked of many things, the church, religious life, John of the Cross, the Carmelite reform, her ideas as expressed in Guidelines, and of her novices (her real pride and joy). Her books are strong. Everywhere they stare death, desolation, and chaos boldly in the face. It was not surprising to me; therefore, that the person I met radiated all that is antithetical to death, spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. Like her books, her person exudes consolation, hope, life and energy.

Reading Ruth Burrows, or meeting her, makes you realize more than ever that our Christian faith is far from dead. We are very much alive!

Choosing Between Sacraments

July 2, 1987

Christianity is the most pagan of all religions. It is the most earthy religion because it believes that God has become incarnate in earth. What an astonishing belief! Ordinary life is sacrament. To live and relate ordinarily is to eat the body of Christ. It is impossible to exaggerate this mystery, the Incarnation. Whenever we neglect its full depth we lose perspective and, among other things, pit one kind of sacrament against another.

Let me illustrate with a few examples: For the past two years, I have been helping a friend discern between marriage and priesthood. My friend is extremely idealistic and prophetic by temperament. His choice has been a tortured one. He is deeply in love with a woman and is strongly attracted to marriage. At the same time, he feels strongly drawn to full time ministry within the church. An admirer of Dan Berrigan, Mother Teresa, and Jean Vanier, he yearns for a radically displaced and prophetic lifestyle. Reading Kierkegaard is, for him, more inviting than watching television, and the idea of being arrested regularly for social protest appeals to him more than holding season’s tickets to the opera or to a sporting event. Looking at marriage, he is attracted, but afraid; afraid that marriage will mean non-displacement and ordinariness, a drowning in the ordinary pressures of life, kids, diapers, shopping, mortgage payments, car pools, house cleaning, home and school meetings, bowling leagues, and lawn and garden work on weekends. Evenings will be spent on the floor entertaining toddlers, not reading Kierkegaard or plotting religious and social change. For my friend, it seems like the sacrament of marriage (and all that it implies) and the sacrament of ministry are, at a point, incompatible.

More recently, while preaching a retreat for Episcopalian priests in the U.S., I was approached by a young, idealistic, priest who was also discerning. He has been ordained for only two years. He loved the ministry but was the father of two young children. He felt that he did not have the energy and time to be responsibly present to both family and ministry. He was torn and forced into a choice he did not want to make. Tearfully he told me that he would probably resign from the ministry: “I have to pick between the two sacraments,” he stated. Sadly, there exists in the church, and within life in general, a false dichotomy that pits sacrament against sacrament, one part of life against another. True, we must make hard choices, sometimes, between full-time professional ministry and marriage and kids, or between a radical prophetic displacement or a more ordinary prophetic life. But the alternatives can be too strongly dichotomized. There is a real danger in thinking that we are doing ministry only when we are doing something which takes us beyond the ordinary life of marriage, kids, diapers, mortgage payments, bank lines, and decisions about drapes and carpets. Concomitantly, there is the danger of seeing our lives as meaningful and important only when we are doing certain kinds of important things.

Thus, for example, we take so much meaning from achievement and productivity. For many of us, meaning and self-worth come from producing, from succeeding in projects and things which society considers as important. The flip side of this is that we feel worthless and bored when we are not doing things that the world considers important. Hence, for example, the businessman completing an important deal feels important; the housewife at home with toddlers does not. More subtle, but more important, is how we falsely dichotomize what is important within the very rhythms of our daily living.

We tend to take our meaning from only one side of life, that side of life which stimulates us intellectually and emotionally. Thus, we live for good conversations, good books, good entertainment, stimulating friendships, interesting learning experiences, exciting courses, interesting trips, and for hobbies and involvements which make us feel creative. The rest of the things we do, shopping, cleaning, necessary meetings, paying bills, waiting in lines at the bank, and the other thousand and one odd things we have to do each day to keep daily life flowing, are seen as necessary, but meaningless. They give us nothing in terms of a sense of ministry, stimulation, or meaning. They are a necessary burden, like paying taxes, but we feel that we have more important things to do than wait in lines, wash dishes, or play babble-babble games with toddlers. When we feel like this then we have a one-sided understanding of both the body of Christ and of life itself.

Life is not just worthwhile and meaningful when there is stimulating friendship, entertainment, travel or creative involvement within our day. We are not just doing ministry when we minister professionally or when we are displaced radically from ordinary life as a Dan Berrigan or Mother Teresa might be. Christ is in the ordinary, incarnate within the earthiness of our lives. Family life can be life within the Trinity, the marriage bed can be the Eucharist, and the tedious tasks of dishes, picking out drapes and standing in lines at check-out counters can be as important in ministry as preaching and teaching. A life consumed by the demands of small children can be as radical a form of protest against the culture as is an arrest at a peace demonstration.

There is a place for professional full-time ministry, and there is a place for radically displaced prophets, the John the Baptists who radically challenge our culture, but their vocation is not any more important, nor indeed meaningful, than is the vocation of the ordinary, unrecognized, pressured-by-everyday-concerns prophet who must live more radically in the world of domesticity, mortgages, shopping and check-out counters. Within the body of Christ everything has its place, its meaning. Life doesn’t fight life, and sacraments do not fight each other.

Leaving God’s Mark

July 1, 1987

“We nurse within our hearts the hope that we are different, that we are special, that we are extraordinary. We long for the assurance that our birth was no accident, that a god had a hand in our coming to be, that we exist by divine fiat. We ache for a cure for the ultimate disease of mortality. Our madness comes when the pressure is too great and we fabricate a vital lie to cover up the fact that we are mediocre, accidental, mortal. We fail to see the glory of the Good News. The vital lie is unnecessary because all the things we truly long for have been freely given us.” (Alan Jones, Journey into Christ, Page 57)

All of us, I am sure, know what is meant by those words. On the one hand, we sense that we are extraordinary, creatures under divine providence, precious and significant, irrespective of our practical fortunes in life. We intuit that we are not mere evolutionary accidents, simple victims of fate, chance, luck, randomness, and accident, doomed to disappear forever. Deep down there is the feeling that we are God’s children, under God’s providence, loved and called to a birth, life, meaning, and significance that is unique and infinitely precious. We sense too that we are precious not on the basis of what we accomplish or achieve during our lives, but simply on the basis of being created and loved by God.

But this intuition, however deeply felt, normally wilts under the pressure of trying to live a life that is unique and special in a world in which billions of others are also trying to do the same thing. Can billions be infinitely precious and utterly unique? In the end, mediocrity, anonymity, and mortality overwhelm us. We begin to fear that we are not precious, nor under divine providence. There is, instead, the sense that we are merely mediocre hacks, trying to make the world believe that we are something different. One among billions of others, clawing and scratching for a little uniqueness, meaning and immortality! When we feel like this, we begin to believe that we are precious and unique only when we accomplish something which precisely sets us apart and ensures that we are remembered. For most of us, the task of adult life is that of guaranteeing our own preciousness, loveableness, meaning, immortality, and sanctity.

In the end, we do not believe that we have these, independent of our own accomplishments. Hence, we cannot, without bitter frustration, live ordinary lives of anonymity, hidden in Christ. We try, instead, to stand out, to leave a mark, to accomplish something extraordinary, and so ensure the fact that we will be recognized and remembered. Few things torment us and are as destructive of our peace and happiness as is this problem: We have set ourselves the impossible, frustrating, task of assuring for ourselves something which only God can give us. Because of this ordinary life does not seem enough for us, and we live as restless, competitive, driven persons, who are forced, precisely, to fabricate a lie to cover up the fact that we are mediocre. Why is ordinary life not enough for us? Why does it always seem that our lives are small-town, small-time, too insignificant, not exciting enough? Why do we habitually feel mediocre, dissatisfied, unhappy at being like everyone else?

Why the propensity to leave our mark? Why is there such a torment in the insufficiency of everything attainable? Why does our own situation so often feel oppressively domestic? Why, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, do we want to fly above the rest, to leave the pack behind, and to somehow be more special than others? Why can we not embrace each other as sisters and brothers and, in humility and gratitude, rejoice in each other’s gifts and each other’s existence? Why the feeling that the other is a rival?

Why the need for masks, for pretense, for hype, for all kinds of lies that let us project certain images about ourselves? Because we are trying to give ourselves something that only God can give us, ultimate uniqueness, significance, and immortality.

Protestantism has always proclaimed that the central part of Christ’s message is the statement: “Faith alone saves.” We are justified by faith alone. They are right. That simple line reveals the final secret, namely, that God gives eternal life. Preciousness, meaning, significance and immortality are free gifts from God. If we could believe that we would become a whole lot more restful, peaceful, humble, less competitive, grateful, and happy. We would no longer hopelessly pursue the search for the holy grail. Ordinary life, in all its domesticity, shared with billions of others, would contain enough to ensure our preciousness, meaning, and significance.

As Thomas Merton once said: “It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my Fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially so about it as mine, though doubtless it is not somebody else’s. I must learn to live so as to gradually forget program and artifice.” (John Howard Griffin, Follow the Ecstasy, Pages 37-38)

Ordinary life is enough. Preciousness and significance come from being loved by God, not from what we can achieve. In the end we are not mediocre, and there is no need to fabricate the vital lie.

Our Greed Pulls The Trigger

June 1, 1987

It is getting to be frightening to watch the news. Terrorism is everywhere, and daily we appear less capable of protecting ourselves against it. Still fresh in our minds is the recent hijacking of the TWA jet by Lebanese Shiites, but that was merely one incident, resulting in just one death. Terrorism itself is spreading like a mushroom cloud, ominous, out of anyone’s control, a new kind of ultimate threat.

Lebanese shiites, Palestinian nationalists, Irish IRA extremists, Indian Sikhs, Central American death squads, Italian Red Brigades, German Baader-Meinhof gangs, Spanish Basque Nationalists, Filipino insurrectionists, Iranian extremists, Tamil separatists and their Sri Lankan counterparts, all of these groups bomb, kill, kidnap, and deal death and terror daily. This is not to mention hundreds of other groups, less internationally prominent, who do the same. Then there is still the isolated terrorist, the guy who goes berserk and shoots himself and his family, or who shoots people indiscriminately at bus stops or at a San Diego MacDonald’s. Violence of this kind is always wrong and we are right to be angry. But we are not right when we naively believe that terrorism is the work of a small number of sick and deranged persons. Too common, and spreading, is the belief that if a few Ayatollahs, Khadafys could be eliminated, then all would be peaceful. Terrorism, in this view, is seen as the product of individual fanaticism, a small accident of history, the product of isolated and deranged minds.

But terrorism is the natural by-product of our present way of life and the economic and social system upon which we depend. Like pollution, breakdown of relationships, sexual promiscuity, economic greed and high blood pressure, it is the inevitable result of a world structured like our own. As Russell Baker puts it, it is “one of the many embarrassing by-products of our blessings.” Bottom-line, our way of life is based too much upon greed. We live believing that whatever we can attain, providing it is done lawfully, is ours by right and that the accumulation of excess is itself a sign of success. Everything within our culture exalts that idea and thus greed, like cancer, continues to grow. Crassly put, we try to suck as much out of life as we can get. The fact that others get less, are weak or have less access to the good life is not important. Then, after we have what we want, we want peace, we want to be protected, we feel enraged that anyone would dare take from us what is ours. But the problem is that we took from someone else and we are taking more than our share. There can be no peace without justice. Terrorism flows from that. As violent, frightening, morally abhorrent and wrong as it is, it is a voice of the poor; perhaps, at times, the only voice they’ve got left.

Because of this, our response to terrorism must be both compassionate and nuanced. Our reaction, in fact, must include resistance. The demands of terrorism should not be met and all precautions should be taken to prevent it. But such measures, while demanded in the short range, must be sharply dissociated from our natural instinct to silence terrorism by brute force, namely, by revenge, by brutal retribution, by counter violence and by excessively increasing security, police and security measures. Frightening in this regard is the stunning popularity of the movie Rambo, a film about terrorism which crassly depicts the triumph of good over evil in terms of a superman counteracting terrorists by brutally crushing them. The popularity of this film (not the least of whose fans is Ronald Reagan) shows how deeply engrained is the feeling that the roots of terrorism lie within a few very wicked people and that the answer to terrorism is simply to eliminate those few. Frightening, too, is the idea that our crushing of those few amounts to the triumph of good over evil. Rambo could be a good film, if there were justice in the world. As it is, it feeds what’s worst in us.

Terrorism may never be stopped by brute force. Perverse as this may sound, it has too many moral roots. It stems ultimately from injustice. Moreover, it can never be stopped by brute force. Terrorism will stop only when the poor are given enough to live for, so that they do not need to give up their lives in suicidal martyrdom. Terrorism will stop only when the poor have another voice that is actually heard. Terrorism will stop only when peace is secured on justice. None of these will happen if our present greed continues. As long as we feel we have a right to milk from life as much as we can take, we will always live in fear, in a fragile peace.

Longing Is Our Spiritual Lot

May 2, 1987

On Feb. 12, 1944, 13-year-old Anne Frank wrote the following words in her now-famous diary. “Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing-so longing-for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone.

“And I do so long…to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know that it would get better with crying; but I can’t, I’m restless, I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, ‘can’t you satisfy my longing at last?’

“I believe that it is spring within me, I feel that spring is awakening, I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally, I feel utterly confused. I don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do, I only know that I am longing.”

There is in all of us, at the very centre of our lives, a tension, an aching, a burning in the heart that is insatiable, non-quietable and very deep. Sometimes, we experience this longing as focused on a person, particularly if we are in a love that is not consummated. Other times, we experience this yearning as a longing to attain something. Most often, though, it is a longing without a clear name or focus, an aching that cannot be clearly pinpointed or described. Like Anne Frank, we only know that we are restless, full of disquiet, aching at a level that we cannot seem to get at.

When we look into history, philosophy, poetry, mysticism and literature, we see an astonishing variety of ways in which this aching is expressed.

For instance, many of us have read Richard Bach’s little parable, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. This book spoke deeply to millions of people. It is a very simple story: Jonathan is a seagull who, when he comes to consciousness, is not satisfied with being a seagull.

He looks at his life, and the lives of other seagulls, and he finds it too small: “All a seagull ever does is eat and fight!” So Jonathan tries to burst out.

He tries to fly higher, to fly faster, to do anything that might break the asphyxiating limits of being a seagull. He doesn’t know what he wants, he only knows that he is hopelessly restless, that he must break out.

Many times he crashes and almost kills himself, but he keeps trying.

This is a story obviously more of the human heart than of a seagull. It describes our search, our aching, our congenital propensity for the limitless, the free, the total embrace.

In more abstract ways, this has been expressed in history: Philosophers speak of “a desire of the part to return to the whole”; mystics speak of “the spark of the divine in us”; the ancient Greeks spoke of something they called “NOSTOS,” homesickness (a feeling of never being at home, even when you are at home).

The Vikings called it “wanderlust,” the insatiable need to push further and further into the horizon; Shakespeare talked of “immortal longings”; G.M. Hopkins called the human spirit “an imprisoned skylark”; Augustine prayed to God: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”; E.E. Cummings, poet, once said: “For every mile the feet go, the heart goes nine.”

All of these feelings are in all of us. We are all deeply and hopelessly erotic and “dis”-eased, incapable in this life of finding lasting rest. This restlessness, however, must never be seen as something which sets us against what is spiritual, religious and of God.

In fact, this hopeless aching and lack of ease is the very basis of the spiritual life. What we do with the eros inside of us, be it heroic or perverse, is our spiritual life.

The tragedy is that so many persons, full of riches and bursting with life, see this drive as something which is essentially irreligious, as something which sets them against what is spiritual. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our erotic impulses are God’s lure in us. They are our spirit!

We experience them precisely as “spirit,” as soul, as that which makes us more than mere animals.

Our soul is not an invisible kind of tissue floating around within us, that stains when we sin and cleanses when we are in grace and which ultimately floats away from the body after death. Our soul is our eros, our minds and hearts in their deep restlessness.

Living the tension that arises out of that is the spiritual life. In that sense, everyone has a spiritual life – either a good one or a destructive one. Our spirits make it impossible for us to be static, we must move outside of ourselves.

That movement outward (which is experienced as a double tension: a hunger which drives us outward and an attractive outside person or object which draws us outward) is either beneficial to us or destructive. When it is beneficial, we have a good spiritual life; when it is destructive, we have a bad one.

It is important, therefore, that we do not identify the spiritual life with something which is exotic (for religious fanatics), extraordinary (for professional contemplatives), or as something which is not for those who are full-blooded and full of eros.

It is non-negotiable. If you are alive, you are restless, full of spirit. What you do with that spirit, is your spiritual life.

Staring Chaos In The Face

May 1, 1987

We live in pain and division. In the world, in the church and within ourselves, there is much anger, hatred and bitterness. It seems ever harder to live at peace with each other, to be calm, to have simple joy within our lives and to not alienate someone just by being. Within ourselves, despite the fact that we have virtually every practical reason to be happy – friends, health, material affluence – we experience anger, jealousy and woundedness. Seldom are we satisfied. Seldom are we truly free of bitterness, anger and feelings of being slighted and overlooked. Very seldom are we fully at peace with life and with others.

Beyond this, we live in a world that is full of painful division. It has its own wounds. Poverty, social injustice, the inequality of women, racism, abortion, sexual exploitation, narcissistic yuppies, untrustworthy political leaders, and simply millions and millions of persons caught up in excessive self-interest. It is hard for us, as adults in our world, to simply love, be understanding, and be at peace with others and with life. We are wounded, within and without. The temptation is towards bitterness, anger, withdrawal and paranoia. That is the road to hell because bitterness is hell.

What is needed to stop our slide toward this is reconciliation, at every level. What is reconciliation? It is reality that admits many levels. Here I want to speak of reconciliation as personal healing, as a coming inside of ourselves to a new wholeness and a renewed sense of childlike joy. Reconciliation, at this level, involves many things. First of all, it involves the recognition of our woundedness, our neuroses, our bitterness, our narcissism and narrow loyalties, and simply of our lack of joy. Just as for an alcoholic there can be no real change before there is the basic admittance of the condition of helplessness and need, so, too, in our struggle to come to personal healing. There can be no healing until we admit sickness. And we are ill: compulsive, angry, competitive, bitter, narcissistic, cynical, humorless, paranoid, self-pitying, jealous, sombre and joyless.

The roots of this woundedness stretch deep into our past, and beyond our past into the history of the world. We are not just part of the chain of love, but are likewise part of the chain of neuroses and wound that stretches back, ultimately, to Adam and Eve. We can sometimes point to certain events and persons that have hurt us deeply and blame much of our pain on them. However, these events and persons themselves point still further back to distant events and persons that wounded them. There was some original sin – and life has not been harmonious, nor seemed fair, ever since.

Reconciliation begins when we truly admit this. So long as we pretend otherwise, it is not even meaningful to use the word. When we claim our woundedness, however, we are brought face to face with our own helplessness, our need, our need for God. Then, as Henri Nouwen puts it, our hearts “become the place where the tears of God and the tears of God’s children can merge and become tears of hope.” (Love in a Fearful Land, Page 93) The first step in real reconciliation is the tearful acknowledgement of our woundedness, our helplessness, our sin. In this admission is a painful dying and a joyous rebirth.

Ashes make the best fertilizer. Tears wash away sin. Honesty induces the labor that gives birth to conversion. When we cry honest tears, we are flooded with the desire to pray, to forgive, to serve others, to build a just social order, to live more moral lives, to love beyond resentment and bitterness. That is the movement toward reconciliation and joy. Why? Because searing honesty brings us face to face with our own woundedness and helplessness; our helplessness, in turn, brings us face to face with a redeeming God. In that encounter, we learn that we are loved sinners. Gratitude is born. A genuine sanctity follows.

Novelist Iris Murdoch once stated that to be a saint is nothing less than to be warmed and vitalized by gratitude. Gratitude is the key to all. We come to personal healing and to reconciliation with others to the exact extent that we are warmed and vitalized by gratitude. To rid ourselves of resentment, bitterness, jealousy and paranoia requires a powerful fire. Only the gratitude that flows from knowing that we are loved, loved despite wound and sin, is a large enough flame to burn wound from our lives. The rest follows: When we are vitalized by gratitude we will automatically move toward deeper prayer, wider loyalties and a more embracing heart. Reconciliation begins when we stare our chaos in the face. In that, we will be brought face to face with our helplessness and our need for God. Prayer will then begin, crying out from the very depths of our being. We will be laid bare and will realize that we are loved sinners, in solidarity with other loved sinners like ourselves. Gratitude, reconciliation and healing will follow.

Saints For Complex People

April 2, 1987

“I was born into this world with a tortured sensitivity. For long I have puzzled over the causes of my psychological anguish.” Thus writes Ruth Burrows, the British Carmelite, in the opening lines of her autobiography, “Before the Living God.” Reading her autobiography and her spiritual writings has been, for me, a very consoling experience. Here is a lady of tortured sensitivity, of near pathological complexity, a person who has struggled through years of anguish to arrive eventually at the single-mindedness that constitutes Christian sanctity. Reading her story gave me hope. If a person of her temperament can achieve single-mindedness, there is hope for the rest of us. Her story also sparked other reflections:

Soren Kierkegaard once wrote that to be a saint is “to will one thing.” He is correct, but that makes sanctity a difficult task for those of us who, by nature and temperament, are complex and sensitive. Christian sanctity lies in single-mindedness. Unfortunately, that tends to be identified with non-complexity. Books on spirituality, past and present, tend to present an ideal which is simplistic and alienating for many people. The impression is given that to be spiritual is to be uncomplex, not restless, not torn by deep conflicts, contradictions, yearnings, doubts and erotic lures so that faith, commitment and single-mindedness become a painful heroism. We see this clearly, for instance, in most books on the lives of the saints.

Many times when I have finished reading or hearing about the life of a saint, or someone else that is being held up to me as a model to imitate, I find myself asking: Didn’t this person have any struggles? Were they never torn by complexity and doubt? Did they never have romantic heartaches and earthly pulls which made their choices for God and service pained and tearful? Did they never succumb to self-pity and believe Kazantzakis’ words 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”? (N. Kazantzakis, St. Francis, Page 139)

French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, once explained that he was an atheist because ambiguity is the fundamental phenomenological fact within existence and belief in God denies one this experience. That is a sophisticated way of saying: “Life is too complex to fit into the simplistic schemae of spirituality.” Most of us have never read Merleau-Ponty, but most of us have felt the resistance he talks about. Like his, our hearts, too, resist an ideal that seems too simplistic to incorporate our full experience. Spirituality says it is simple while everything inside of us screams that it is complex.

We need saints for the complex, saints who start their stories like Ruth Burrows and then chronicle how a complex, tortured and divided heart can eventually come to “will one thing.” Looking into the spectrum of contemporary Christian spirituality, I see examples of writers who are trying to do this: Ruth Burrows, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Jim Wallis, among others. None of these present themselves as an ideal to emulate, but their writings give hope to those of us who are complex and struggling because at the heart of their message is their own struggle to bring a divided heart to a single-mindedness in Christ. In their words, I find consolation and new hope. Thus, for example, Burrows writes:

“I was left, it seems, struggling with the misery of my temperament and yet, thanks in a great part to a loving home, gradually choosing to do right. Inevitably, I would seek to escape from the drab misery of my life as I experienced it by living in a world of fantasy, and yet I was made to realize the falsity of this activity and renounce it. No one instructed me in this. No one understood me enough to counsel me…

“I have spoken of the strong romantic elements in my nature. It is true that this can lead to unreality but it can likewise lead to truth. In my case, it was a profound dissatisfaction with life. I was looking beyond and above, waiting for the secret door to open, waiting for the beloved to appear and transform my life. I tended to approach life with intense expectancy, wanting to extract from it the last ounce of sweetness, only to be bitterly disappointed, finding it insipid if not downright sour…

“I have known doubt, tearing anxiety to a frightful degree. For nearly 30 years, I have groped in darkness.” (Before the Living God, Page 3 and 31)

Nouwen writes of his struggles:

“Indeed, how divided my heart has been and still is! I want to love God, but also to make a career. I want to be a good Christian, but also to have my successes as a teacher, preacher or speaker. I want to be a saint, but also enjoy the sensations of the sinner. I want to be close to Christ but also popular and liked by many people. No wonder that living becomes a tiring enterprise.” (The Gensee Diary, Page 59)

Or again:

“I crave personal attention and affection. The life in a parish suddenly strikes me as cool, mechanical and routine. I desire friendship, a moment of personal attention, a little interest in my individual experiences…The fact that my feelings are so general and touch practically everything I see, hear and do, shows I am dealing with a genuine depression…”(H. Nouwen, I Gracious!, Page 131)

For those of us with a tortured complexity, words like these bring comfort and challenge, for they show both the ideal of Christian spirituality – to will one thing – and the struggles of the complex heart in trying to do that.

Easter Arsonists Of The Heart

April 1, 1987

Theologian-poet, John Shea, once commented on the resurrection appearances of Jesus:

“On the road that escapes Jerusalem

and winds along the ridge to Emmaus

two disillusioned youths

drag home their crucified dream.

“They had smelled messiah in the air

and rose to the scarred and ancient hope

only to mourn what might have been.

And now a sudden stranger falls upon their loss

with excited words about mustard seeds

and surprises hidden at the heart of death

and that evil must be kissed upon the lips

and that every scream is redeemed for it echoes

in the ear of God and do you not understand

what died upon the cross was fear.

“They protested their right to despair but he said,

‘My Father’s laughter fills the silence of the tomb.’

Because they did not understand, they offered him food.

And in the breaking of the bread

they knew the impostor for who he was –

the arsonist of the heart.”

–The Hour of the Unexpected

The resurrection of Christ challenges us to new life – to believe, precisely, that there are surprises hidden at the heart of death: that every scream, tear and cry is redeemed, and that God’s laughter is stronger than death. Ultimately, belief in the resurrection asks us to believe that, despite a strong experience to the contrary, reality is gracious, light does triumph over darkness, love over self-interest, justice over oppression, peace over chaos, fulfilment over hunger. Faith in the resurrection is the trust that, in the end, everything is good.

But it is hard, almost impossible, to believe that. Why? Because experience constantly belies it. At least, so it seems. Despair comes easier than faith. Too often self-interest, loneliness, oppression, greed, bitterness and darkness triumph in our world. It seems naive not to believe that they represent our Omega, our final unresurrected, non-redeemed destiny. The disciples of Jesus, themselves, experienced a lot of doubt, even on the original Easter Sunday. They, like us, were mourning crucified dreams.

What reversed this? What moved them from despair to new hope?

It was not just the fact of the resurrection that changed them, for they doubted, huddled in fear, locked doors, despaired and tried to go back to their old ways of life even after they had seen the empty tomb. What brought resurrection faith was the in-the-flesh appearance of the resurrected Christ. Slowly, gently, through these appearances, Christ built up their faith until they no longer needed these appearances. We are built up in faith through appearances of Christ in the flesh. Where does the resurrected Christ have flesh in our world?

The resurrected Christ appears to us in the flesh in those persons who are arsonists of the heart, who truly make our hears burn within us. What kind of persons burn messianic holes within us? Those who speak of mustard seeds, who tell us about the value of what’s hidden, small and insignificant; those who tell us that pain can bring deep meaning and redemption; those who tell us that, despite all, reality is gracious and we can trust and love. They are those who tell us that we should be less afraid, that paranoia is an illness, metanoia is salvation; who tell us that bitterness is not noble, it’s hell, that cynicism and stoicism are forms of despair, that life is not tragic, that tears are redemptive, that the Christian call is to celebration.

They are those who tell us that it is not too late for us, that there is still plenty of time to live anew, to become what we were meant to be, beyond self-interest. They are those who tell us to make merry and dance, for all is well. These kinds of words stir what’s best within us, burn holes in us, stir faith, roll stones back from tombs, show us the resurrected Christ in the flesh.

And that flesh always looks ordinary. The arsonist of the heart invariably looks like someone we know, an ordinary somebody, like the resurrected Christ in his appearances – a gardener, a cook, a stranger. It is interesting to speculate as to why the disciples so often didn’t recognize Christ after the resurrection. After all, he had only been dead for a day and a half when he first appeared. Yet Mary Magdala, who surely knew him well, took him for a gardener. Later, on the road and on the shore, his disciples took him to be a stranger, then a cook. Only in the breaking of the bread did they recognize him as the Christ.

That is why as we journey together, mourning so many of our crucified dreams, we would do well to be attentive to what causes arson in the heart. We should learn to look more closely at each other’s faces during the breaking of the bread.

Keep Your Faith In Balance

March 2, 1987

I share with you here four tales of imbalance. Each is the story of a person who is sincere, Christian and dedicated, but has fallen from wholeness. From these stories of imbalance, hopefully, we will be able to see where proportion lies.

A tale of the neglect of social justice: A bishop I know recounts this story. One day, he received a phone call from an angry lady: “Why,” she demanded, “are you and the other bishops so hung up on social justice? Why don’t you stick with what the church is all about, liturgy, prayer and morality?” He answered her with another question: “What would you do, if you were a bishop and someone called you and said: ‘Our parish priest refuses to preach about private prayer and private morality. He tells us that these are fads that a few contemplatives have started. They are not important in the Christian life?’” “I would suspend the man on the spot!” was her reply. “Then,” replied the bishop, “what am I to do with a person who phones and says: ‘Our priest refuses to preach social justice. He tells us that this is just a fad started by the liberation theologians and a few social-justice types. You can be a good Christian and never practice social justice?’” This lady’s question betrays a dangerous imbalance: Spirituality is reduced to prayer and private morality. As important as these are, they are not enough.

A tale of the neglect of prayer and private morality: Some years back while doing graduate work, I was working as a chaplain at a hostel in a poorer section of San Francisco. One of the persons I was working with, a very dedicated person, once said to me: “Father, do you really think God gives a damn whether you say your morning and evening prayers, whether you hold a grudge, or whether you hop in and out of bed a few times with someone you aren’t married to? These small, private things are so unimportant. “What possible difference do they make in the light of the larger questions of peace and justice? God hasn’t got time for our private little prayers and little moral struggles!” For him, spirituality meant the struggle for peace and justice, the taking care of God’s poor. Just that. Private prayer and private morality were so dwarfed by these larger issues so as to be seen as unimportant. As important as is the struggle for peace and justice, being a prophet implies more.

A tale of the neglect of joy and celebration: Two years ago, I attended an international conference in Belgium on local church which brought together people from all parts of the world. On the second-last day of the conference, the organizers called a halt to work, to all the discussing and theologizing. We were all sent off to the beautiful city of Brugges for tours, cocktails, dining and celebrating. In my own group was a young nun from the Third World. There was no doubt that she was a woman who prayed, whose private morals were beyond suspicion, and that her whole life was being lived for the poor. But she struggled, and deeply, to be joyful, to celebrate, and not to be angry and bitter. She found our half-day celebration a tough chore, an evil to be endured, a waste of time and an insult to the poor. Again, I submit, there is here an imbalance. What is lacking from this lady’s life? Certainly not prayer, private morality or a preferential option for the poor. What’s lacking is friendship, celebration and the greatest asceticism of all, that of being a joyful, celebrating and non-bitter person. Prophetic witness lies as much in being a happy and non-bitter person as it does in being a person of prayer, morality and social justice; though, admittedly, the former is based a lot on the latter.

A tale of the neglect of love: Recently, after delivering a talk on prophecy, a lady challenged me: “You spoke too little about anger! You were too soft. Prophecy is all about challenge, anger and righteousness. Without a proper anger, you cannot be prophetic!” She said more, mostly about the need for anger and a bitter challenge to the mainstream culture. Again, at least in her challenge to me, there was imbalance. She spoke constantly of anger, of challenge, of criticalness. Never once did she mention love. Her attitude towards the culture was that of disdain, bitterness, anger and disgust. Nowhere in her did I detect compassion, sadness, sympathy and love towards those, or about those, she was supposedly preaching to.

A prophet, as Jim Wallis suggests, is always characterized more by love than by anger. Likewise, as psychology points out, we can only truly challenge another to change if that other first feels loved by us. There are certain non-negotiable prongs within Christian spirituality – namely, prayer and private morality, a commitment to justice and peace, the discipline of joy and celebration, (i.e. the Christian duty to be a happy person), and the duty to challenge by love.

And the key to health is proportion.

Living In Joy Is Hard Work!

March 1, 1987

Perhaps the most demanding asceticism within life is the discipline of joy. Rarely is this recognized. For most of us, the word joy itself rings superficial. It speaks of empty victory celebrations, mindlessness, lack of full awareness, naiveté and lack of depth. There is a cynical adultness in our reaction to joy: “If you knew better, if you were fully awake, you wouldn’t be this happy!”

Mary Gordon captures this excellently in her novel, Final Payments. She describes her feelings upon entering a room in which some university students were having a party: “I would look among the faces of the students for a face I could love. I would look for something original, something arresting in the shape of the chin or in the eyes, something that suggested the belief that there was residual pain that could not be touched by legislation. But they all looked so relentlessly happy and healthy that they did not interest me. I realized I was looking for someone who was sad, and I was angry at myself for making the equation, my faith’s equation, the church’s equation, between suffering and value.” (Final Payments, Page 139) There is, too often, an equation, in the church and in the world in general, between depth and heaviness, joy and superficiality. This is a curious, but understandable, algebra.

Former Christian spiritualities tended to focus on the incompleteness of life…We live “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” There was great strength, and some real wisdom, in that. It gave people permission to cry, to taste life’s bitterness without feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with them, and it helped people accept the truth that in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished. In this way, it helped stem frustration and allowed people to suffer the martyrdom of an incomplete and inconsummate life more calmly and heroically. But from saying that life will always be incomplete and full of inevitable pain, it is an easy, though false, step to affirm that therefore depth and maturity lie in being heavy, grim and stoic. Unfortunately, that has often happened and Christian asceticism has too often lost its link to joy. Newer spiritualities, generally, have fared no better. Superficial affirmations that we are a resurrection people and therefore should always be bouncy, upbeat, enthusiastic and never down, help re-enforce the false equation that joy means superficiality because the components are impossible to live. To live on this side of eternity means tears, incompleteness, bitter loneliness, and seasons of life wherein it is simply impossible to be bouncy and upbeat.

Other current spiritualities, at least as they are frequently lived out, affirm the equation between joy and superficiality by emphasizing anger, indignation, righteousness, and an undue sense of purpose and urgency about everything. In such a view, just as is the case in Marxism, joy again becomes something superficial, naive, and even something that positively stands in the way of genuine conversion and growth. Then, just as in the older view that life is a “valley of tears,” living becomes a grim, humorless, joyless and often bitter affair. These last words – grim, humorless, joyless and bitter – describe to some degree the church and secular circles we move in. Most frequently, these circles are sombre, anxious, over-burdened, cynical, humorless, heavy places, hard untender places. There is an undue sense of urgency and precious little childlikeness, freedom and simple joy. Worse still, and this is the real un-joy, our circles are also characterized by melancholy, distrust, anger, bitterness, suspicion, jealousies, and an unhealthy adultness and realism that lets us characterize laughter and play (as C.S. Lewis so aptly puts it) as a “disgusting and direct insult to the realism, dignity and austerity of hell.” (The Screwtape Letters, Page 58) As Christians, we need to be reminded that real asceticism lies in joy itself.

It is far easier, and it takes infinitely less discipline, to be heavy than to be light. Heaviness, resentment, anger, grudges, moroseness and lack of joy come naturally; light-heartedness, forgiveness, long-suffering, humor and joy have to be worked at. They require discipline and asceticism.

A commentator recently looked at the world and the church and remarked: “Crabby contentiousness is here to stay!” It is – so long as we confuse joy with superficiality and depth with heaviness of spirit.

Conversion Is Revolution!

February 2, 1987

We live too frustrated by our own mediocrity. The problem lies not in our unwillingness to convert, but in our inability to convert. We keep trying, by the way of good resolutions, to wage war against the bad habits of our hearts and minds. But we fail, grow discouraged, and generally live with a non-expressed despair, which lets us believe that for us, things cannot really change.

What’s at issue? The congenital moral ineptness that St. Paul speaks about in Romans? Perhaps. However, I suspect that more of the problem lies in our unwillingness to move toward the radicalism and upheaval that genuine conversion implies. Perhaps the best analogy available to us for understanding the real meaning of the word conversion is that of revolution. Conversion is an interior revolution. Anything less radical simply misses most of the meaning of that word.

When we look at the phenomenon of a political-social revolution, we see that a successful revolution brings about a new consciousness and a new system, a “new guard.” This replaces an “old guard,” a previously established consciousness and way of doing things. Such a revolution is characterized by, among other things, two salient features:

1. It is dramatic, not gradual: Revolution is not evolution. It is not a smooth transition or a peaceful, gradual, non-painful, non-upsetting thing. It is an upheaval, a radical overturning. It arises precisely when people have despaired of gradual change. When simple evolution and ordinary everyday changes provide the necessary growth, then revolution is not necessary. Revolution becomes necessary only when the old order is hopelessly stagnant, when there is no longer any hope that peaceful, non-violent, gradual change can bring about improvements of any significance.

2. All revolutions culminate in a purge: Once the new consciousness and order have been established, they must – and very quickly, too – purge themselves of all elements which are not single-mindedly and unequivocally supportive of the new ideals and the new system. That is why virtually every political-social revolution in history has been followed by a blood bath. All that is dissident is systematically eliminated. Why?

Because the new guard knows that, unless this is done, it will forever live under the danger that the old guard will rise up and recapture the new. For a new consciousness to survive, dissident and residual elements of the old guard must be killed off. As Scripture puts it: “You cannot put new wine into old wineskins!”

In real life, these dynamics are brutal, bloody and often times morally deplorable. When applied to an interior revolution, to radical conversion within our hearts and minds, they still remain brutal and violent, but they can be moral and they can help lead us to the truth that sets us free.

Conversion, to be effective, must be radical. It must be revolution!

If we were the type of persons that we should be, there would be no need of dramatic conversions within our lives. Evolution would be sufficient. We could grow through gradual, easeful, non-radical and non-violent means. Unfortunately, most often, that is not the case. There is no real evolution. We sense within our lives an immaturity, bad habits, a mediocrity and a moral ineptness, which barring an extraordinary intervention of grace, will keep us forever falling into the same pit.

Aristotle said: “Habits become one’s second nature.” He is correct. Bad habits do become our second natures. We make all kinds of resolutions to break out of these but find ourselves basically helpless. Year after year, we make the same good resolutions, and year after year we break them. What must we learn from this? That, after a time, we can no longer rid ourselves of bad habits by means which are easeful, gradual, don’t hurt too much and do not disrupt our lives too much. Too many things have been happening for too many years.

Evolution is no longer possible for us. Revolution and a certain violence are necessary. We must radically shake up our lives. But most of us do not like the subversive. We try instead, year after year, to change ourselves through good resolutions, through means that will not be too dramatic, painful or disruptive. That is why we fail and stay ever the same: mediocre, frustrated, and unable to break out of bad habits that have dominated our lives. It is our fear of dramatic upheaval, painful uprooting and new patterns of life that are hostile to established habits that, precisely, allow our bad habits and mediocrity to keep the upper hand.

Genuine conversion and real change will come when we have the nerve to risk dramatic upheaval.

When Sinners Rationalize

February 1, 1987

Several years ago, after the pope had been heckled during his visit in Holland, a Belgian newspaper ran an editorial that commented as follows: The difference between the Dutch and the Belgians can be seen in their separate reactions to the pope. In Holland, people don’t keep the commandments, but they still want to be saints, so they demand that the commandments be changed. In Belgium, we don’t keep the commandments, either, but we know we aren’t saints and so we admit it and ask for redemption. Perhaps there is bias in that comment as it relates to the differences between the Dutch and the Flemish, but it is insightful in another way.

Our culture struggles with honesty, with admitting weakness. Much within us and around us invites us to rationalize, to make excuses, to demand that standards be changed or re-integrated because we cannot live up to them. Less and less, even in prayer and confession, do we find searing honesty and contrition. This proclivity to rationalize and not admit weakness and sin is, singularly, the most deadly temptation facing each of us. Failure to admit weaknesses and acknowledge our sin as sin is infinitely more damaging than weakness and sin themselves. Failure in self-honesty is the start of the sin against the Holy Spirit, the only sin that can never be forgiven. We are familiar with Christ’s warning that there exists a sin, a certain blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which can never be forgiven. What is this sin?

Simply put, it is the sin of lying to oneself until one becomes so warped that one believes one’s own lie. Falsehood becomes truth. The reason this sin cannot be forgiven is not that God does not want to forgive it, but rather that the person no longer sees the need for forgiveness. Living in darkness is seen as living in light; sin is seen as grace; perversion as virtue. The person living in this state feels a certain disdain for what is genuinely virtuous, innocent and happy. S/he would not accept forgiveness were it offered. This sin begins always with rationalization, with the failure to admit to sin. And much within our world and ourselves feeds this temptation to rationalize, to take ourselves off the hook, to make ourselves look good by denying our weakness and sin.

We see this everywhere, in our tendency to avoid confession of all kinds, in our inability to take personal responsibility for our own unhappiness, and in our tendency to not admit our moral misery. We see it, too, in our inability to be searingly contrite in confession – whether in a church or elsewhere. More and more, our confessions are more protests against moral authority and rationalizations than they are honest admissions of simply being human and sinning. More common than genuine contrition is anger towards moral authority, especially towards the church. In my opinion, this does not augur well. The heart of anger, as someone once wisely stated, is a rebellion against what it means to be human.

Too rare, today, is the confession of the publican: “I’m a sinner! I’m a mess! I am morally inept, unable to live what I believe. I do dumb things because I am weak. There’s no excuse. And, God, I’m miserable, be merciful!” More common is the tendency to blame the church, its moral authorities, or our past religious training for the fact that we suffer from guilt and un-freedoms which leave us less than happy.

Ruth Burrows, in her “Guidelines for Mystical Prayer,” states: “I am shocked to see how little contrition, searing contrition, features in our living and dying.

“Only a saint can afford to die the death of a saint. The rest of us need to go out as sinners in our own eyes and in the eyes of our entourage, and our peace must come from trust in God’s goodness, not the complacent but unexpressed assumption that we lived for God.” (Page 69)

She goes on to tell the stories of two nuns with whom she lived. The first was a sister who was not faithful to her life of prayer. She lived in mediocrity for most of her life. However, she admitted it. She never played games, pretending she was anything other than what she was – mediocre. As she grew older, she made more of an effort at fidelity, but habits die hard and she died before she fully succeeded. But she died a happy death, a sinner asking God to forgive her a life of human weakness. The second sister also lived a life of mediocrity and infidelity in charity and prayer. Unlike the first sister, however, she never admitted this. To herself and to others, she postured saintliness. The result was a sad lie; harmful, most of all, to herself.

Only a saint can afford to live and die that role. The rest of us must live and die in searing contrition, sinners asking God and others to forgive us a life of weakness. In such honesty lies redemption. In anything less honest lie seeds, which, if allowed to grow, lead one to begin to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Signals That Spell Sanctity

January 2, 1987

Self-delusion is always easy, and nowhere is it easier than in our assessment of our own spiritual health. How do we know whether we are healthy or not? How do we know whether we are actually praying or not? Doing God’s will or our own? Living in the Holy Spirit or someone else’s spirit? Acting in charity or self-interest? Growing or stagnating?

Discernment is difficult. We may not simply conclude that things are going forward when we feel good about ourselves and backward when we don’t. Lack of pain, self-assurance, a sense of security and the sense that we are getting ourselves together are not necessarily criteria by which we judge growth and health. How do we judge whether or not we are spiritually healthy?

I would like to submit here a brief chart. Each column represents a basic tonality that our lives can have:

Restless	Restful
Compulsive	Inner Freedom
Hyper	Calm
Impatient.	Patient
Angry	Empathetic/Compassionate
Competitive	Humble/Connected to others
Bitter	Understanding/forgiving
Self-preoccupied/narcissistic	Self-forgetful/solicitous of others’ needs
Pragmatically-enslaved	Able to play/enjoy
Cynical	Child-like
Disdainful of ideals	Idealistic
Humorless	Healthy sense of humor
Easeful with ideologies	Living with painful complexity
Narrow loyalties	Ecumenically-hearted
Unenthusiastic	Some element of sparkle
Need to control	Easeful
Paranoid/constantly sensing threat	Able to live in vulnerability
Caught in rat race/sensing loss of control	Prayerful
Feeling like a minority of one	A sense of God’s presence
Sense of helplessness	Hopeful
Self pity/constant sense of personal injustice	Altruism/charity
Joyless/sombre	Joy/a sense of gratitude

Looking at this chart, it is evident that one can never, once and for all, achieve restfulness, inner freedom, calmness, patience, self-forgetfulness, and all the rest of the qualities that would have us living fully in God’s spirit. We vacillate between these two columns, but we know when our lives are more colored by one set of qualities than the other. And we shouldn’t play games with ourselves, believing that we are maturing and growing humanly and spiritually when our lives are colored with bitterness, when we lack humor, and when we live somber, unenthusiastic lives that are devoid of gratitude and playfulness. It would do most of us well, I suspect, to approach the sacrament of reconciliation sometimes with the following words: “Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

“I need reconciliation because I am restless, compulsive, hyper, impatient, angry, competitive, bitter, self-preoccupied and narcissistic. I am also pragmatically enslaved, cynical, disdainful of ideals, humorless, too easeful with ideologies and I have narrow loyalties.

“Beyond that, I tend to be unenthusiastic, I have a need to be in control. I am paranoid and sense others as a threat. I am caught in the rat race, I don’t pray enough and feel like I am losing control of my life.

“I generally feel like a minority of one, have a growing sense of helplessness, am too prone to self-pity and constantly feel slighted. Worst of all, there is too little joy in my life. I am too sombre.”

After the priest would have gotten over his shock, you, like the publican in Scripture, would go home justified, actually having prayed.