In the past several years I have been more than a little hurt when, on more than a few occasions, friends of mine would leave the priesthood, the convent or even the church itself because they felt that they were too full of the zest for life, too sensual, too sexual and generally too human and complicated to live the spiritual life. Most often the complaint sounds something like this: “I can never be a real spiritual person. I am just too restless! I want to live too much! I am too full of life! I feel like Zorba the Greek! I want to experience things more! I am just too unspiritual!” Such an attitude, while extremely common, is extremely dangerous for it is either a grave rationalization or a very serious mistake. It is deadly in either case. When in fact someone in all sincerity believes that they are too full of life and eros, restlessness and complexity, to live the spiritual life they are being sucked in by a viral heresy which would have us believe that eros, the drive for life, is fundamentally irreligious. That is always a serious and costly mistake because eros is the very basis of the spiritual life and everyone, absolutely everyone, must live a 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 that is essentially irreligious, as something that sets them against what is spiritual. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our erotic pulses are God’s lure in us. They are our spirit! We experience them precisely as “spirit,” as that which makes us more than mere mammals.  However, again and again, in my ministry and in my friendships I am confronted with persons who sincerely believe that they are unspiritual when, in fact, they are deeply spiritual persons. Unable to form a vision within which they can integrate their drive for life, celebration and sexuality, into a commitment which includes church-going, Christian sexual morality, prayer and involvement in a Eucharistic community, they are forced into a false dilemma: They must choose between a Christian commitment (which appears as erotic suicide) and a life partially away from Christian community, sacraments, prayer and morality, but within which they feel they can be fully human, sensual, sexual and celebrating. This dilemma, within which the church is seen as a parasite, sucking life’s pulse out of its subjects, then allows society’s amorality to parade itself as being ultimately life-giving and the true defender of eros.

A perfect example of this is seen in Mary Gordon’s poignant novel, Final Payments. Her heroine, Isabelle Moore, is a very bright, talented, deep and frustrated person who has to choose constantly between faith-God-church and her tremendous passion for life, celebration and sexuality. Poor Isabelle can see no room to express her passion within the confines of a religious commitment. So she is forced to abandon her religious practices and all links to church in an effort to find passion and full life in celebrating life and sexuality with her non-Christian friends. Isabelle, like so many of us, misunderstood her passion and drive for life as something essentially non-religious. That forced upon her this illicit dichotomy. Few things are hurting us as badly at present as that misconception because what it does is identify the spiritual life with piety, naïveté, lack of sensuality and sexuality, lack of passion, and lack of interest in, and zest for, life itself. When such an attitude is sincere, as it sometimes is, it still serves to block any deep journey towards the type of love, friendship, sexual integration and Christian commitment that could bring one genuine life. When such an attitude is a rationalization, it also hides the true meaning of our drive for life. However, in this latter case, it is more dangerous since it then becomes an excuse to selfishly pursue pleasure and to refuse to offer a fiat to God and community.

Moreover, whether sincere or insincere, it is too an incredibly arrogant and judgemental stance for it implies that those who do commit themselves to church, sacraments and Christian sexual morality are simple, unsexual, unsensual, and somehow less bright and less interested in life than we are. I submit that this type of attitude, however sincerely adopted, is the most cutting insult that anyone can offer to a person who is committed within the church. Be that as it may! My purpose in writing this is not apologetic. This is a plea: If you are the type of person who, precisely, understand yourself as too complicated, too bursting with eros, too-driven in the pursuit of life, too sensual and too sexual, to be a real spiritual person then don’t, please don’t, see this drive as something irreligious. Nobody is more qualified than you, nor more called, to live the spiritual life. The more erotic you are, the more spiritual you are, but know that only in the building up and in the consummation of Christ’s body will that spirit with all its noble and lusty impulses find peace. Know too that only in the chastity of that body will that sensuality and sexuality spawn lasting bonding and new life.

For reasons too complex to be fully understood, even by themselves, many writers, poets, and artists end up living in countries far distant from their own. English poets have been notorious for migrating to Italy, American painters like living in Paris, and Russian novelists, given the chance, frequently defect to the United States. Commonly too these artists and writers produce lengthy laments as to why they can no longer live in their homelands. Longing and frustrated, desiring greatly to be home, they feel bound by a complex of factors that prevent their returning there. They feel exiled. Sometimes their exile is self-imposed; at other times they sense that the choice has been forced on them. In either case there is, generally, a sense of restless dissatisfaction. I have chosen to call this column (to be a regular feature in the WCR) “In Exile.” Superficially, I have chosen this title because I am now living in Europe, far from much of what I consider as home.

I do not pretend to be a Robert Browning, writing Home-Thoughts, From Abroad, nor a Thomas Wolfe, spinning deep insights out of an exile’s pain, but I do take some amateur’s vicarious delight in the small parallel. For much more significant reasons, I have chosen this title because all of us live our lives in exile. We live our lives seeing (as St. Paul puts it) “as through a glass, darkly.” We live in our separate riddles, partially separated from God, each other, and even from ourselves. We experience some love, some community, some peace, but never these in their fullness. Our senses, egocentricity, and human nature place a veil between us and full love, full community, and full peace. We live, truly, as in a riddle: The God who is omnipresent cannot be sensed; others, who are as real as ourselves, are always partially distanced and unreal; and we are, in the end, fundamentally a mystery even to ourselves.

In that sense we are, all of us, far away from home. We are in exile, longing to understand more fully and to be understood more fully. The asphyxiating ambiguity of the riddle we live in slowly tires us. Daily our hunger for consummation within the body of Christ intensifies. We feel so distanced from so much. We would want to go home! And, while we are on this pilgrimage, our perspectives are only partial; our vision, even at best, is only that of the “foreigner,” one out of the mainstream, who does not fully see nor understand. From this exiled perspective I will offer my reflections. I will try to offer them humbly and honestly. However, given the fact that Adam and Eve too were my first parents, I suspect that, more often than may be justifiably excused, bias may displace honesty, and arrogance may parade itself as humility. For this I apologize in advance. The column itself will take a variety of forms. Margaret Atwood once said: “What touches you is what you touch!” I plan to touch on a whole lot of things, stuff of all kinds.

Mostly I will offer reflections on various theological, church and secular issues. (That about covers everything!) Occasionally, however, prose will give way to poetry and more serious reflection will be replaced by satire. As well (though not often) I will offer a review on some book which I deem particularly excellent. The reflections will not be in any way systematic, though occasionally I will do five or six columns in a series on one particular theme. If there is any one umbrella under which these diverse reflections might find a home, it is precisely their title, “In Exile.” All of them, in their own way, are trying to untangle the riddle, to end the exile, to help get a pilgrim home! In Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot writes: “What we call the beginning is often the end – and to make an end is to make a beginning.”

This, folks, is a beginning!