The God of Our Desires

June 29, 2015

What lies deepest inside authentic faith is the truth that God is the object of all human desire, no matter how earthy and unholy that desire might seem at times. This implies that everything we desire is contained in God. We see this expressed in the Psalms, which tell us that God is the object of our desires, and in Jesus, who tells us that it is in God that our deepest hungers and thirsts will be satiated. And so we pray, without perhaps ever really being conscious of what we are saying: My soul longs for you in the night. You, Lord, alone, can fill my heart. You, O Lord, are my all. But is it really God that we are longing for in the night and aching for in our desires?

Do we really believe that God is the real object of our desires? When we look at all that is beautiful, full of life, attractive, sexually alluring, and pleasurable on earth, do we really think and believe that this is contained in an infinitely richer way inside of God and inside the life into which God invites us? Do we really believe that the joys of heaven will surpass the pleasures of earth and that, already in this world, the pleasures of virtue trump the sensations of sin? Do we really believe that faith will give us what we desire?

It would seem not. We, and most everyone else, struggle to turn our attention towards God. We find religious practice and prayer more of a disruption to life than an entry into it, more a duty than an offer, more an asceticism than a joy, and more as something that has us missing out on life than entering into its depths. In most of us, if we are honest, there is a secret envy of those who recklessly plumb sacred energy for their own pleasure, that is, we doggedly do our duty in committing ourselves to something higher, but, like the Older Brother of the Prodigal Son, we mostly serve God out of obligation and are bitter about the fact that many others do not. This side of eternity, virtue often envies sin and, truth be told, this is particularly true regarding sexuality.

But partly this is natural and a sign of health, given that the brute reality of our physicality and the pressures of the present moment naturally impose themselves on us in a way that can make the things of God and spirit seem abstract and unreal. That is simply the human condition and God, no doubt, understands. You would have to be a true mystic to be above this.

However it can be helpful to tease out more explicitly something we profess in faith, namely, that all that we find attractive, beautiful, irresistible, erotic, and pleasurable here on earth is found, even more fully, inside of its source, God. God is better looking than any movie star. God is more intelligent than the brightest scientist or philosopher. God is more witty and funny than the best of our comedians. God is more creative than any artist, writer, or innovator in history. God is more sophisticated than the most-learned person on earth. God is more exuberant than any young person. God is more popular than any rock star. And, not least, God is more erotic and sexually attractive than any woman, man, or sexual image on earth. We don’t ordinarily think that or believe this about God, but those statements are as much dogma as are the strictest church-doctrines on record. Everything that is alluring on earth is inside of God, in even a richer form, since God is its author.

However that does not take away the power of earthly things to allure, nor should it. Countless things can overwhelm us with their stunning reality: a beautiful person, a sunset, a piece of music, a work of art, youthful exuberance, a baby’s innocence, someone’s wit, feelings of intimacy, feelings of nostalgia, a glass of wine on the right evening, a stirring in our sexuality, or, most deeply of all, an inchoate sense of the uniqueness and preciousness of our own lives. We need to honor those things and thank God for the gift, even as we make ourselves aware that all of this is found more-richly inside of God and that we lose nothing when virtue, religion, and commitment ask us to sacrifice these things for something higher. Jesus, himself, promises that whatever we give up for what is higher will be given back to us one hundredfold.

Knowing this, we should live our lives fully enjoying what is earthy and earthly. The beauties and pleasures of this life are a gift from God, meant to be enjoyed. But, by being aware of their source, we can also then be free enough to accept the very real limits that life puts on our desires. And, better still, we need not fear death since what we lose will be trumped one-hundredfold by what we gain.

The Hero-Complex

June 22, 2015

Several years ago, the movie Argo won the Academy award as the best movie of the year. I enjoyed the movie in that it was a good drama, one that held its audience in proper suspense even as it provided some good humor and banter on the side. But I struggled with several aspects of the film. First, as a Canadian, I was somewhat offended by the way that the vital role that Canadians played in the escape of the USA hostages from Iran in 1979 was downplayed to the point of simply being written out of the story. The movie would have been more honest had it advertised itself as “based on a true story” rather than presenting itself as a true story.

But that was more of an irritation than anything serious. Art has the right to exaggerate forms to highlight an essence. I don’t begrudge a filmmaker his film. What bothered me was how, again, as is so frequently the case in Hollywood movies and popular literature, we were shown a hero under the canopy of that adolescent idealization where, by going it alone, the hero singularly saves the world, alone is the “messiah”, and whose self-sequestration coupled with a certain arrogance is presented as human superiority. But that, the classic hero who does it “his way” and whose wisdom and talent dwarfs everyone else, is an adolescent fantasy.

What’s wrong with that “classic hero” as he is normally portrayed in so many of our movies?

What’s wrong is that the great ancient myths and a good number of anthropologists, philosophers, and psychologists tell us that this kind of “hero” is not the mature archetype of the true warrior or prophet. The mature savior, prophet, or warrior is not “the hero”, but “the knight”. And this is the difference: The hero operates off his own agenda, whereas the knight is under someone else’s agenda. The knight lays his or her sword at the foot of the King or Queen. The knight, like Jesus, “does nothing on his own”.

But this isn’t easy to understand and accept. The powerful idealization we throw onto our heroes and heroines is, like love in adolescence, so powerful a drug that it is hard to see that something much fuller and more mature lays beyond it. The obsessive love that Romeo and Juliet die for is very powerful, but a mature couple, holding hands after fifty years of marriage, is the real paradigm for love. The lonely, isolated, unapologetic hero grips the imagination in a way that the more-fully mature man or woman does not: Alan Ladd riding off into the sunset at the end of the movie, Shane; any number of characters played by Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger; and, not least, the hero of Argo, overruling even the orders of the President in saving the hostages in Iran.

The Nobel-prizing winning philosopher, Albert Camus, in his book, The Plague, presents us with what should, by all accounts, be an example of a most-noble hero. His hero is a certain Dr. Rieux who, because he is an atheist, struggles with the question of meaning: If there is no God, then where can there be meaning? What difference does any virtue or generosity ultimately make? Dr. Rieux answers that question for himself by finding meaning in selflessly giving himself over, at the risk of his own life, to fighting the plague. What could be more-noble than that? Few things fire the romantic imagination as does this kind of moral rebellion. So, what could be more-noble than the hero in the movie, Argo, going it alone in taking on the regime in Iran?

Charles Taylor has a certain answer to answer this. Commenting on Camus’ hero, Dr. Rieux, Taylor asks: “Is this the ultimate measure of excellence? If we think of ethical virtue as the realization of lone individuals, this may seem to be the case. But suppose the highest good consists of communion, mutual giving and receiving, as in the paradigm of the eschatological banquet. The heroism of gratuitous giving has no place for reciprocity. If you return anything to me, then my gift was not totally gratuitous; and besides, in the extreme case, I disappear with my gift and no communion between us is possible. This unilateral heroism is self-enclosed. It touches the outermost limit of what we can attain to when moved by the sense of our own dignity. But is that what life is about? Christian faith proposes a quite different view.”

And so it does: We see this in Jesus. He comes into this world precisely as a savior, to vanquish the powers of darkness, violence, injustice, Satan, and death. But notice how, almost as mantra, he keeps saying: I do nothing on my own. I am perfectly obedient to my Father. Jesus was never a hero, a “lone-ranger” doing his own thing while barely concealing a smug superiority. He was the paradigm of the “knight”, the humble foot-soldier who always lays his sword at the foot of the King.

The Best One can do in the Circumstances

June 15, 2015

Recently I led a weeklong retreat for some sixty people at a renewal center. Overall, it went very well, though ideally it could have gone better. It could have gone better if, previous to the retreat, I would have had more time to prepare and more time to rest so that I would have arrived at the retreat well-rested, fully-energetic, and able to give this group my total undivided attention for seven days.

Of course, that wasn’t the case. The days leading up to the retreat were consumed by many pressures in my regular ministry; these were long days that kept me preoccupied and tired. Indeed, in the days leading up to the retreat, I had to do many extra hours of work simply to free myself up to lead this retreat. So I arrived for this retreat partly exhausted and carrying with me still a lot of pressures from my regular duties.

In spite of this, the retreat still went pretty well. I had enough energy and focus to make things essentially work. But it wasn’t the best I could do ideally, though it was the best I could do given the circumstances.

Given that confession, it’s fair to ask: Didn’t those retreatants have a right to have me arrive for this retreat more-rested, more-prepared, and more-ready to give them my full, undivided attention? Fair enough. They did have that right; except that this was mitigated by the fact that all the people who are daily affected by my regular duties also had that same right. They too had a right to my time, my un-fatigued self, my full energies, and my undivided attention. During that week of retreat, my office also got second best: I was not giving it my ideal best; but only what I could do, given the circumstances.

I suspect most time-management experts, and not a few counselors and spiritual directors, would tell me that the reason this tension exists in my life is because of my failure to set clear priorities and be faithful to them and that this sloppy indecisiveness is unfair to everyone on every side. If am over-extended, it’s a fault in my life, pure and simple, which I have a moral responsibility to correct.

But is it really that simple? Are we really meant to have this much control of over our lives? Don’t circumstance and need perennially trump that? Aren’t the generative years of our lives about much more than ensuring our own health and rest? Even if the purpose of our own self-care is not selfish but intended for the better service of others, isn’t that service itself the final culprit? There are needs all over and our resources are finite, isn’t that always a formula for tension?

Circumstance conscripts us and, in the words of Jesus, puts a rope around us and takes where we would rather not go, namely, beyond our comfort, beyond always being adequately rested, and beyond always being in control of our own timetable and energies. Admittedly it’s dangerous to over-extend yourself, except that it’s equally, perhaps more, dangerous to under-extend yourself so as to always have full control of your own energy and commitments and be always well rested and not over-taxed. We can burnout, but we can also rust-out.

This, of course, can easily become a rationalization for not setting proper priorities and for letting ourselves be non-reflectively buffeted by circumstance. But the opposite can also be a rationalization used to over-protect our own comfort and rest. That’s the tension, and it’s meant to be a tension. Sometimes we overextend ourselves and sometime we under-extend ourselves. Most of the people that I admire most in the world suffer from the former, overextension, and, paradoxically, it seems to give them more energy. Jesus, while cautioning proper self-care (Let us go away by ourselves for a while and rest. Mark, 6, 31) also tells us that we should pour ourselves out completely for others without worrying too much about whether this will kill us or not.

I had all of this in mind as I struggled while giving a recent retreat, knowing that neither the retreatants nor my office were getting my best energies … though both got the best that I could give, given the circumstance.

And isn’t this a good image for the whole of our lives? We have finite energies, finite time, finite attention, and we are constantly swamped by circumstance, need, and pressure. There’s always something! And so we are often caught in a major tension as regards our time, energy, and attention. In any given season within our lives, if we are honest, we might have to say: This wasn’t the best I might have done ideally, but it’s the best that I could do, given the circumstance!

Ultimately this is true for our whole lives. It’s never ideal, but it’s the best we can do, given the circumstance. And that should be more than enough when we stand before our Maker in judgment.

A Primal Understanding of the Eucharist

June 8, 2015

Christian de Cherge, the Trappist Abbott who was martyred in Algeria in 1996, tells this story of his first communion. He grew up in a Roman Catholic family in France and on the day of his first communion he said to his mother: “I don’t understand what I’m doing.” She answered simply: “It’s okay, you don’t have to understand it now, later you will understand.”

Jesus, no doubt, must have given his disciples the exact same advice at the Last Supper, at their first communion. When he offered them bread and said, “This is my body”, and then offered them wine and said, “This is my blood”, they would not have understood. There would have been considerable confusion and bewilderment: How are we supposed to understand this? What does it mean to eat someone’s body and drink someone’s blood? I suspect that in the face of their non-understanding, like Christian de Cherge’s mother, Jesus would have also said: You don’t have to understand it now, later you will understand.

Indeed in instituting the Eucharist at Last Supper, Jesus didn’t ask his disciples to understand what they were doing, he only asked them to faithfully celebrate it until he returned. Their understanding of what they were doing in celebrating the Eucharist only developed as they grew in their faith. But initially, Jesus didn’t ask for much of an understanding, nor did he give them much of an explanation for what he was celebrating with them. He simply asked them to eat his body and drink his blood.

Jesus didn’t give a theological discourse on the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He simply gave us a ritual and asked us to celebrate it regularly, irrespective of our intellectual understanding of it. One of his more-explicit explanations of the meaning of the Eucharist was his symbolic action of washing his disciples’ feet.

Little has changed. We too aren’t asked to fully or even adequately understand the Eucharist. Our faith only asks that we are faithful in participating in it. In fact, as is the case for all deep mysteries, there is no satisfactory, rational explanation of the Eucharist. Nobody, not a single theologian in the world, can to anyone’s intellectual satisfaction, adequately lay out the phenomenology, psychology, or even spirituality of eating someone else’s body and drinking his blood. How is this to be understood? The mind comes up short. We need instead to rely upon metaphors and icons and an inchoate, intuitive understanding. We can truly know this mystery, even as we can’t fully understand it.

During my seminary and academic training, I took three major courses on the Eucharist. After all those lectures and books on the Eucharist, I concluded that I didn’t understand the Eucharist and that I was happy enough with that because what those courses did teach me was how important it is that I celebrate and participate in the Eucharist. For all the intellectuality in those courses, their true value was that they ultimately said to me what Christian de Cherge’s mother said to him on the day of his first communion: You don’t have to understand now, later you will understand. Contained in that, of course, is the fact that there is something profound here that is worth understanding, but that it’s too deep to be fully grasped right now.

Perhaps this can be helpful in our search for what to say to some of our own children and young people who no longer go to church and who tell us that the reason they don’t go is that they don’t find the Eucharist meaningful. We hear that lament all the time today: Why should go to church, it doesn’t mean anything to me?” That objection is simply another way of saying what young Christian de Cherge said to his mother at his first communion: I don’t understand this. Perhaps our answer then could be along the lines of the response of his mother: You don’t have to understand now, later you will understand.

The British theologian, Ronald Knox, speaking about the Eucharist, submits this: We have never, he claims, as Christians, been truly faithful to Jesus, no matter our denomination. In the end, none of us have truly followed those teachings which most characterize Jesus: We haven’t turned the other cheek. We haven’t forgiven our enemies. We haven’t purified our thoughts. We haven’t seen God in the poor. We haven’t kept our hearts pure and free from the things of this world. But we have, he submits, been faithful in one very important way; we have kept the Eucharist going. The last thing Jesus asked us to do before he died was to keep celebrating the Eucharist. And that we’ve done, despite the fact that we have never really grasped rationally what in fact we are doing. But we’ve been faithful in doing it because we grasped the wisdom in what Christian de Cherge’s mother to her son: You don’t have to understand this; you just have to do it.

The Deepest Secret Inside Wisdom

June 1, 2015

Everyone longs to know something that’s secret, to know something that others don’t know, but that you know, and the knowledge of which gives you some insight and advantage over others who are outside the inner-circle of that secret. It has always been so. Historically this is called “Gnosticism”, which forever makes an appearance in one form or another.

Today we see this in society at large in the immense popularity of books like The Di Vinci Code and The Celestine Prophecy. Their lure is precisely in the hint that there are secrets that a few elite persons know that contain important, life-altering, information which we, the unenlightened, are ignorant of. Our itch, of course, is to be inside these special circles. We see this paralleled sometimes in religious circles in the over-fascination people have with the private revelations of various self-acclaimed mystics, in special books claiming to disclose critical new revelations from the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in the undue interest shown in things like The Third Secret of Fatima. Gnosticism has many cloaks.

At first glance, Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, seems to be hinting at just this sort of secret. He tells us there is a secret that is open to us which, if known, puts us into a special circle of enlightenment and community. In Mark 4, 11, he tells his disciples: To you is given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to those outside everything is in parables. Clearly here Jesus is distinguishing between two circles, one which grasps the secret and is then “inside”, and the other which does not grasp the secret and is then “outside”. Jesus seems to be saying that in following him we can be either “in” or “out”, depending upon whether or not we grasp a certain secret. Genuine disciples are those who (in today’s terminology) “get it”, and those who “don’t get it’ remain outside. But what are we inside or outside of? More importantly, what is the secret?

For Jesus, the secret is the cross; that’s the deep wisdom we need to grasp. If we understand the cross, all the rest of what Jesus teaches will make sense. Conversely, if we don’t understand the cross, all the rest of what Jesus teaches won’t make sense. Grasping the meaning of the cross is the secret to everything. But how, more concretely, should this be understood? What is the deep secret that lies inside the cross of Jesus? What, in essence, do we need to understand?

Various biblical commentators answer this in different, complementary ways. For some, it means grasping the wisdom that’s revealed in the cross. For others, it means understanding the brokenness of Jesus on the cross. Still, for others, it means understanding the invitation that is inside the cross which invites us to live out the demands of the cross. Each of these, in its own way, points to the most-profound secret of all inside human understanding, namely, that in giving love away in total self-sacrifice, at the cost of humiliation, brokenness, and death, we ourselves come to what’s deepest and fullest in life.

But, unlike all Gnostic secrets, ancient or contemporary, this is an open secret, available to everybody and, paradoxically, more-accessible to the “little ones”, the poor, and more-hidden to “the wise and the clever”. Jesus makes the point that he has no hidden secrets by emphasizing again and again that he only speaks openly and in public, never in secret, but in synagogues and market-places. Jesus has no hidden secrets, only open secrets that we fail to grasp.

Interestingly, we see that, in the Gospels, grasping the secret of the cross is not something we do once and for all. Sometimes we grasp it, and we are inside the circle of understanding; and sometimes we don’t grasp it, and we are outside the circle of understanding. For example, after Peter denies Jesus during the passion, the Gospels tell us that “Peter went outside”; and they are referring to much more than simply stepping outside through some courtyard door. In denying that he knew Jesus and in not stepping forward to assume the weight of what would happen if he remained faithful, Peter was stepping outside the circle of both true discipleship and of a true understanding of life. His denial of Jesus took him “outside”. We too, in our following of Jesus, sometimes step “outside” when we give in to temptation or adversity. But then, if we repent of our betrayal, like Peter, we can step back “inside”.

There are various ways that we can enter into an understanding of Jesus’ message and try to appropriate it for our lives, but few, perhaps none, take us so immediately to the center as does the invitation from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark to grasp and accept the wisdom of the Cross.

Inordinate Attachments – Moral Flaw or Struggle with Divine Energy?

May 25, 2015

The renowned spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, made no secret about the fact that he was emotionally over-sensitive and that he suffered, sometimes to the point of clinical depression, from emotional obsessions. At times, he, a vowed celibate, was simply overpowered by the feeling of being in love with someone who was hopelessly unavailable that he became psychologically paralyzed and needed professional help.

Yet, given Nouwen’s moral honesty and the transparency of his life, one would hardly ascribe this to him as a moral flaw, however emotionally-crippling it was at times. He simply could not help himself sometimes, such was his emotional sensitivity.

Almost all sensitive people suffer something similar, though perhaps not as acute as what afflicted Henri Nouwen. Moreover these kinds of emotional obsessions affect our whole lives, including our moral and religious lives. What we do in the pain and paralysis of obsession rarely does us proud and is often far from a free act. In the grip of an emotional obsession we cannot think freely, pray freely, decide things freely, and we are prone to act out compulsively in ways that are not moral. What is the morality of our actions then?

Classical spiritual writers speak of something they term “inordinate attachments”, and, for them, these “inordinate attachments” are a moral fault, something we need to control by willpower. However what they mean by “inordinate attachments” covers a wide range of things. In their view, we can be inordinately attached to our pride, to our appearance, to money, to power, to pleasure, to comfort, to possessions, to sex, and to an endless list of other things. They saw this as the opposite of the virtue of detachment. And, since its opposite is a virtue, “inordinate attachment” is, for classical spirituality, a vice, a moral and spiritual flaw.

There is a lot to be said positively for this view. Normally, lack of detachment is a moral flaw. But, perhaps there is an exception. An inordinate attachment can also be an emotional obsession with another person and this muddies the moral issue. Obsessions, generally, are not freely-chosen, nor are they often within the power of the will to control, at least inside the emotions. As our old catechisms and moral theology books used to correctly teach: We are responsible for our actions but we are not responsible for how we feel. Our emotions are like wild horses; they roam where they will and are not easily domesticated and harnessed.

Hence, I believe, the notion of “inordinate attachments”, as expressed in classical spirituality, needs to be nuanced by series of other concepts which, while still carrying the same warning labels, carry something more. For example, today we speak of “obsessions”, and we all know how powerful and crippling these can be. You cannot simply wish or will your way free of an obsession. But is that a moral flaw?

Sometimes too we speak of “being possessed by demons” and that also has a variety of meanings. We can be possessed by a power beyond us that overpowers our will, be that the devil himself or some overpowering addiction such as alcohol or drugs. Most of us are not overpowered, but each of us battles with his or her own demons and the line between obsession and possession is sometimes thin.

Moreover, today archetypal psychologists speak of something they call “daimons”, that is, they believe that what explains our actions are not just nature and nurture, but also powerful “angels” and “demons” inside us, that relentlessly haunt our bodies and minds and leave us chronically obsessed and driven. But these “daimons” are also very often at the root of our creativity and that is why we often see (in the phraseology of Michael Higgins) “tortured genius” in many high-achievers, romantics, people with artistic temperaments, and people like Van Gogh and Nouwen, who, under the pressure of an obsession, cut off an ear or check themselves into a clinic.

What is the point of highlighting this? A deeper understanding of ourselves and others, is the point. We should not be so mystified by what happens sometimes in our world and inside us. We are wild, obsessed, complex creatures, and that complexity does not take its root, first of all, in what is evil inside us. Rather it is rooted in what is deepest inside us, namely, the image and likeness of God. We are infinite spirits journeying in a finite world. Obsessions come with the territory. In ancient myths, gods and goddesses often fell helplessly in love with human beings, but the ancients believed that this was a place where the divine and human met. And that still happens: The divine in us sometimes too falls hopelessly in love with another human being. This, of course, does not give us an excuse to act out as we would like on those feelings, but it does tell us that this is more an encounter between the divine and the human than it is a moral flaw.

Contemporary Writers in Spirituality

May 18, 2015

Among those who write in the area of spirituality today, who’s being read? Here’s my list of spiritual writers who are highly influential today in the English-speaking world:

· Henri Nouwen- Dutch/American, Roman Catholic, priest. Perhaps the most widely-read and most-influential among all contemporary authors in spirituality.

· Thomas Merton – Roman Catholic, monk, one of the most influential spiritual writers in the past 100 years.

· C.S. Lewis – British, layman, Anglican. Well-known across both religious and secular circles. Brought a literary genius to his articulation of the Christian faith.

· Jim Wallis – American, Evangelical, layman, popular-evangelist, social activist, social organizer. The closest our age has to a “Dorothy Day”. Widely read and respected across all denominational lines.

· Thomas Halik – Roman Catholic, priest, Czechoslovakian, recent winner of the prestigious Templeton award.

· Parker Palmer – Quaker, layman, American, much-respected across all denominational lines. Has written brilliantly on the spirituality of education and on achieving a Christian balance in life.

· Alan Jones – Episcopalian, priest, American. Wisdom drawn from the deep wells of Christian tradition. Practical spirituality with depth.

· Carlo Carretto – Roman Catholic, hermit/monk, Italian. Carretto spend many years living as a hermit in the Sahara desert and writes out of that experience.

· Ruth Burrows – British, Carmelite, nun. Deep insights into mysticism, faith, and contemplative prayer. Eminent common sense, blended with a deep knowledge of the mystical tradition.

· Richard Rohr – American, Franciscan, priest, popular evangelist. Numerous books on prayer, masculine spirituality, addictions, overcoming dualism, overcoming sectarianism, finding balance in your life, scriptural commentary.

· Wendy Wright – American, lay woman, Roman Catholic. A specialist regarding Francis de Sales and Jane Chantel, but with wider writings, especially about the place of devotions within our spiritual lives.

· Peter Tyler – British, Roman Catholic, layman. A specialist in Carmelite spirituality. An emerging young voice.

· Thomas Keating – American, Roman Catholic, monk. The widely-accepted “canon” on contemplative prayer.

· John Main – British/Canadian, monk, a popular, trustworthy guide on Contemplative prayer.

· Laurence Freeman – British, monk, another trustworthy guide on Contemplative prayer

· Kathleen Norris – American, Presbyterian, lay, Oblate of St. Benedict. Deeply immersed in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and equally attuned to our spiritual struggles within contemporary culture.

· Trevor Herriot – Canadian, layman, Roman Catholic. A powerful apologia for protecting nature, but his more explicit spiritual writing are highly reflective essays apposite the place and role of our sexual energies in either protecting or despoiling nature.

· Barbara Brown Taylor – American, Episcopalian, priest, popular-evangelist. Strong literary writer with an audience within secular circles. A unique blend of insight, scripture, tradition, and balance. Always a worthwhile read.

· David Steindl-Rast – American, Roman Catholic, monk, had the distinction of being Henri Nouwen’s spiritual director. Writes with depth, drawing many of his insights from the richness of monasticism.

· Anthony de Mello – Indian, Roman Catholic, Jesuit. Brings the insights of Buddhism and Eastern spiritualities into his articulation of Christian spirituality.

· James Martin – American, Roman Catholic, Jesuit. A key, young voice within spirituality today. Widely popular, and deservedly so.

· Anne Lamott – American, Episcopalian, lay woman. A unique blend of insight, Christian commitment, and blistering iconoclasm.

· Marilynne Robinson – American, novelist, Congregationalist. Not a spirituality writer per se, but an exceptional novelist whose characters express her spirituality. An exceptionally bright apologetic voice.

· Simone Weil – French, Jewish, lay woman. Her writings manifest a spiritual sensitivity and depth that includes her in most discussions about contemporary spirituality.

· Etty Hillesum – Dutch, Jewish, lay woman. Her writings exhibit an extraordinary insight into spirituality. And she backed them up with martyrdom.

· Scott Hahn – American, Roman Catholic, layman. Very popular, catechetical and instructional.

· Rabbi Abraham Heschel – American, Jewish, Rabbi. Exceptional spiritual commentaries on the Jewish scriptures. Widely read and respected.

· Rob Bell – American, Evangelical, popular-evangelist. A brilliant young voice. Good balance, good insights, and an exceptional capacity to speak to a contemporary audience.

· Rick Warren – American, Evangelist. Stunningly popular across denominational lines. His book, The Purpose-Driven Life, has sold over 30 million copies worldwide, and is worth the read.

· John Allen – American, Roman Catholic, layman, journalist. Most everyone’s ear-to-the ground vis-à-vis what’s happening ecclesially around the world.

· Joyce Rupp – American, Roman Catholic, nun. Good, insightful, particularly popular with women.

· Michael Higgins – Canadian, layman, Roman Catholic. Does a lot of highly insightful journalistic commentary on contemporary spirituality. The official biographer of Nouwen.

· Joan Chittister – American, Roman Catholic, nun. Powerful social justice and feminist voice. Knows the tradition of monasticism very well and draws key insights out of its deep wells.

· Paula D’Arcy – American, Roman Catholic, lay woman. Inspires a near-cult following among devotees particularly apposite her spirituality of healing.

· Annie Dillard – American, Roman Catholic (convert), lay. Her writings invariably articulate an aesthetic and moral insight that is a natural friend of religion.

· Elizabeth Johnson – American, Roman Catholic, nun. An exceptional mentor for those who searching for a better intellectual apologia for their faith.

· Bill Plotkin – American, “Naturalist”, layman. Challenging writings vis-à-vis the place of nature in shaping our souls.

· Belden Lane – American, Layman, “Naturalist”, akin to Plotkin.

My apologies to those whom I didn’t name, particularly those young, emerging voices such as Kerry Weber, David Wells, and Bill McGarvey, among others. Who should be more widely read.

Artificial Light

May 11, 2015

What’s the use of an old-fashioned, hand-held lantern? Well, its light can be quite useful when it’s pitch-dark, but it becomes superfluous and unnoticeable in the noonday sun. Still, this doesn’t mean its light is bad, only that it’s weak.

If we hold that image in our minds, we will see both a huge irony and a profound lesson in the Gospels when they describe the arrest of Jesus. Gospel of John, for example, describes his arrest this way: “Judas brought the cohort to this place together with guards sent by the chief priests and Pharisees, all carrying lanterns and torches.” John wants us to see the irony in this, that is, the forces of this world have come to arrest and put on trial, Jesus, the Light of the world, carrying weak, artificial light, a lantern in the face of the Light of the world, puny light in the full face of the noonday sun. As well, in naming this irony, the Gospels are offering a second lesson: when we no longer walk in the light of Christ, we will invariably turn to artificial light.

This image, I believe, can serve as a penetrating metaphor for how the criticism that the Enlightenment has made of our Christian belief in God stands before what it is criticizing. That criticism has two prongs.

The first prong is this: The Enlightenment (Modernist Thought) submits that the God that is generally presented by our Christian churches has no credibility because that God is simply a projection of human desire, a god made in our own image and likeness, and a god that we can forever manipulate to serve self-interest. Belief in such a god, they say, is adolescent in that it is predicated on a certain naiveté, on an intellectual blindness that can be flushed out and remedied by a hard look at reality. An enlightened mind, it is asserted, sees belief in God as self-interest and as intellectual blindness.

There is much to be said, positively, for this criticism, given that much, much of atheism is a parasite off of bad theism. Atheism feeds off bad religion and, no doubt, many of the things we do in the name of religion are done out of self-interest and intellectual blindness. How many times, for instance, has politics used religion for its own ends? The first prong of the criticism that the Enlightenment makes of Christian belief is a healthy challenge to us as believers.

But it’s the second prong of this criticism that, I believe, stands like a lantern, a weak light, dwarfed in the noonday sun. Central to the Enlightenment’s criticism of belief in God is their assertion (perhaps better called prejudice) that faith is a naiveté, something like belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, that we outgrow as we mature and open our minds more and more to knowledge and what’s empirically evident in the world. What we see through science and honest observation, they believe, eventually puts to death our belief in God, exposing it as a naiveté. In essence, the assertion is that if you face up to the hard empirical facts of reality without blinking, with honesty and courage, you will cease to believe in God. Indeed, the very phrase “the Enlightenment” implies this. It’s only the unenlightened, pre-modernist mind that still can believe in God. Moving beyond belief in God is enlightenment.

Sadly, Christianity has often internalized this prejudice and expressed it (and continues to express it) in the many forms of fear and anti-intellectualism within our churches. Too often we unwittingly agree with our critics that faith is a naiveté. We do it by believing the very thing our critics assert, namely, that if we studied and looked at things hard enough we would eventually lose our faith. We betray this in our fear of the intellectual academy, in our paranoia about secular wisdom, in some of our fears about scientific knowledge, and by forever warning people to protect themselves against certain inconvenient truths within scientific and secular knowledge. In doing this, we, in fact, concede that the criticism made against us is true and, worse still, we betray that fact that we do not think that the truth of Christ will stand up to the world.

But, given the penetrating metaphor highlighted in Jesus’ arrest, there’s another way of seeing this: After we have conceded the truth of the legitimate findings of science and secular wisdom and affirmed that they need to be embraced and not defended against, then, in the light of John’s metaphor (worldly forces, carrying lanterns and torches, as they to arrest the Light of world to put it on trial), we should also see how dim are the lights of our world, not least, the criticism of the Enlightenment.

Lanterns and torches are helpful when the sun is down, but they’re utterly eclipsed by the light of the sun. Worldly knowledge too is helpful in its own way, but it is more-than dwarfed by the light of the Son.

Evolution’s Ultimate Wisdom

May 4, 2015

Evolution, Charles Darwin famously stated, works through the survival of the fittest. Christianity, on the other hand, is committed to the survival of the weakest. But how do we square our Christian ideal of making a preferential option for the weak with evolution?

Nature is evolutionary and, inside of that, we can perceive a wisdom that clearly manifests intelligence, intent, spirit, and design. And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than how in the process of evolution we see nature becoming ever-more unified, complex, and conscious.

However, how God’s intelligence and intent are reflected inside of that is not always evident because nature can be so cruel and brutal. In order to survive, every element in nature has to be cannibalistic and eat other parts of nature. Only the fittest get to survive. There’s a harsh cruelty in that. In highlighting how cruel and unfair nature can be, commentators often cite the example of the second pelican born to white pelicans. Here’s how cruel and unfair is its situation:

Female white pelicans normally lay two eggs, but they lay them several days apart so that the first chick hatches several days before the second chick. This gives the first chick a head-start and by the time the second chick hatches, the first chick is bigger and stronger. It then acts aggressively towards the second chick, grabbing its food and pushing it out of the nest. There, ignored by its mother, the second chick normal dies of starvation, despite its efforts to find its way back into the nest. Only one in ten second chicks survives. And here’s nature’s cruel logic in this: That second chick is hatched by nature as an insurance-policy, in case the first chick is weak or dies. Barring that, it is doomed to die, ostracized, hungry, blindly grasping for food and its mother’s attention as it starves to death. But this cruelty works as an evolutionary strategy. White pelicans have survived for thirty million years, but at the cost of millions of its own species dying cruelly.

A certain intelligence is certainly evident in this, but where is the compassion? Did a compassionate God really design this? The intelligence in nature’s strategy of the survival of the fittest is clear. Each species, unless unnaturally interfered with from the outside, is forever producing healthier, more robust, more adaptable members. Such, it seems, is nature’s wisdom and design – up to a point.

Certain scientists such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggest that physical evolution has reached its apex, its highest degree of unity, complexity and consciousness, inside the central nervous system and brain of the human person and that evolution has now taken a leap (just as it did when consciousness leapt out of raw biology and as it did when self- consciousness leapt out of simple consciousness) so that now meaningful evolution is no longer about gaining further physical strength and adaptability. Rather meaningful evolution is now concerned with the social and the spiritual, that is, with social and spiritual strength.

And in a Christian understanding of things, this means that meaningful evolution is now about human beings using their self-consciousness to turn back and help nature to protect and nurture its second pelicans. Meaningful evolution now is no longer about having the strong grow stronger, but about having the weak, that part of nature that nature herself, to this point, has not been able to nurture, grow strong.

Why? What’s nature’s interest in the weak? Why shouldn’t nature be happy to have the weak weeded out? Does God have an interest in the weak that nature does not?

No, nature too is very interested in the survival of the weak and is calling upon the help of human beings to bring this about. Nature is interested in the survival of the weak because vulnerability and weakness bring something to nature that is absent when it is only concerned with the survival of the fittest and with producing ever-stronger, more robust, and more adaptable species and individuals. What the weak add to nature are character and compassion, which are the central ingredients needed to bring about unity, complexity, and consciousness at the social and spiritual level.

When God created human beings at the beginning of time, God charged them with the responsibility of “dominion”, of ruling over nature. What’s contained in that mandate is not an order or permission to dominate over nature and use nature in whatever fashion we desire. The mandate is rather that of “watching over”, of tending the garden, of being wise stewards, and of helping nature do things that, in its unconscious state, it cannot do, namely, protect and nurture the weak, the second pelicans.

The second-century theologian, Irenaeus, once famously said: The glory of God is the human being fully alive! In our own time, Gustavo Gutierrez, generally credited with being the father of Liberation Theology, recast that dictum to say: The glory of God is the poor person fully alive!” And that is as well the ultimate glory of nature.

Praying for Those Not of This Fold – An Open Letter to Roman Catholic Bishops

April 27, 2015

Dear Bishops,

I write to you as a loyal son of the Catholic Church, with a particular request: Could you make an addition to our present Eucharistic Prayers to include an explicit invocation for other Christian Churches and for those who lead them?

For example, could the prayer for the Church and its leadership in our various Eucharistic Canons have these additions: Remember, Lord, your entire Church, spread throughout the world, and bring her to the fullness of charity, together with N. our Pope and N. our Bishop, together with all who help lead other Christian Churches, and all the clergy.” Might our Eucharistic Prayers have this kind of inclusivity?

Why? Why pray for other Churches inside of our Eucharistic Prayer? For three reasons:

First, we should pray explicitly for other Christian Churches during our Eucharist Prayer because Jesus did. In John’s Gospel, Jesus prays explicitly for those who hold the same faith but are separated, for whatever reason, from the community to whom is speaking at that moment. He prays for “other sheep that are not of this fold.” (John 10, 16) Raymond Brown, perhaps the most-respected scholar on John’s Gospel, among others, submits that at the time when John’s Gospel was written (somewhere between the years 90 and 100 AD) there were already divisions within the Church, akin to our denominational divisions today, and that Jesus’ prayer for “other sheep that are not of this fold” is in fact a prayer for other Christians who were separated in theology and worship from the community within which John places this particular saying of Jesus. And Jesus, with a heart for everyone and not just for those who are members of this particular community, prays for those others: “I must lead these too. They too will listen to my voice, and there will be only one flock, one shepherd.”

Second, if we, like Jesus, in fact love those who share the same faith with us but from whom we are separated, it should be painful for us that our Eucharistic table is not complete, that some of our family are not at table with us, that our table has empty places. Roman Catholics are not a whole family. Protestants are not a whole family. Evangelicals are not a whole family. Free Christian Churches are not a whole family. Only together do we make a whole family. A Eucharistic Prayer that prays only for ourselves as a community and for our Pope and our Bishops is somehow incomplete, as if we had no need to acknowledge and feel the real absence of so many sincere persons who are not with us as we celebrate the real presence of Christ on our table and experience the intimacy this gives us. It is joyful to celebrate with each other at the Eucharist; but we need, I submit, to acknowledge, and at a central place in our prayer, that we long for, wish well to, and pray for, those who no longer share the family table with us. And such a prayer should not be seen as a concession to our separated brothers and sisters. Its intent should also be to keep us, Roman Catholics, from being content with a family that is fractured, as if we have no need for those who are not with us.

Finally, there is too a practical consideration, sensitivity and hospitality: More and more, whether it be at funerals, weddings, interdenominational retreats, or other such events that draw other Christians into our Roman Catholic Churches, we are celebrating the Eucharist in situations that require, or at least should require, a keener ecumenical sensitivity. In these situations, personally, as a priest, I find it awkward and not fully-hospitable to pray for our Catholic community, for our Pope, our bishops, and our clergy, without any solicitude for, or mention of, other Christian Churches, their leadership, and their struggles for community in Christ. I think that hospitality asks of us (dare I say, demands of us) a greater ecumenical sensitivity than we have been offering at present. Wouldn’t everyone benefit if we did this? Wouldn’t other Christians, we ourselves as a community of love and hospitality, and the whole Body of Christ (which is wider than our particular historical community), be enriched if we, in this prayer that is so central to us, would pray explicitly for those who share the Christian faith with us, but are separated from us? Wouldn’t this be a gracious gesture of hospitality?

What would we be compromising by doing this? What are we protecting by not doing it? Would we not be more sensitive to the Gospel and Jesus’ words and actions by doing this?

So this is my straightforward plea: Please add an explicit invocation within each of our Eucharistic Prayers that prays for other Christian Churches and their leadership. You will be on safe ground. Jesus did this.

I offer this suggestion in all respect, as a loyal son of the Church.

Who am I to Judge?

April 20, 2015

Perhaps the single, most-often quoted line from Pope Francis is his response to a question he was asked vis-à-vis the morality of a particularly-dicey issue. His, infamous-famous reply: Who am I to judge?

Although this remark is often assumed to be flighty and less-than-serious; it is, in fact, on pretty safe ground. Jesus, it seems, says basically the same thing. For example, in his conversation with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, he, in essence, says: I judge no one.

If the Gospel of John is to be believed, then Jesus judges no one. God judges no one. But that needs to be put into context. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t any moral judgments and that our actions are indifferent to moral scrutiny. There is judgment; except it doesn’t work the way it is fantasized inside the popular mind. According to what Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, judgment works this way:

God’s light, God’s truth, and God’s spirit come into the world. We then judge ourselves according to how we live in the face of them: God’s light has come into the world, but we can choose to live in darkness. That’s our decision, our judgment. God’s truth has been revealed, but we can choose to live in falsehood, in lies. That’s our decision, our judgment to make. And God’s spirit has come into the world, but we can prefer to live outside that spirit, in another spirit. That too is our decision, our judgment. God judges no one. We judge ourselves. Hence we can also say that God condemns no one, though we can choose to condemn ourselves. And God punishes no one, but we can choose to punish ourselves. Negative moral judgment is self-inflicted. Perhaps this seems abstract, but it is not. We know this existentially, we feel the brand of our own actions inside us. To use just one example: How we judge ourselves by the Holy Spirit.

God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, is not something so abstract and slippery that it cannot be pinned down. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, describes the Holy Spirit in terms so clear that they can only be rendered abstract and ambiguous by some self-serving rationalization. How does he describe and define the Holy Spirit?

So as to make things clear he sets up a contrast by first telling us what the Holy Spirit is not. The spirit of God, he tells us is not the spirit of self-indulgence, sexual vice, jealousy, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness, or factionalism. Anytime we are cultivating these qualities inside of our lives, we should not delude ourselves into thinking we are living in God’s spirit, no matter how frequent, sincere, or pious is our religious practice. The Holy Spirit, he tells us, is the spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and chastity. Only when we are living inside of these virtues are we living inside God’s spirit.

So then, this is how judgment happens: God’s spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and chastity) has been revealed. We can choose to live inside the virtues of that spirit or we can choose to live instead inside their opposites (self-indulgence, sexual vice, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness, and factionalism). One choice leads to a life with God, the other leads away from God. And that choice is ours to make; it doesn’t come from the outside. We judge ourselves. God judges no one. God doesn’t need to.

When we view things inside this perspective it also clarifies a number of misunderstandings that cause confusion inside the minds of believers as well as inside the minds of their critics. How often, for instance, do we hear this criticism: If God is all-good, all-loving, and all-merciful, how can God condemn someone to hell for all eternity? A valid question, though not a particularly reflective one. Why? Because God judges no one; God punishes no one. God condemns no one to hell. We do these things to ourselves: We judge ourselves, we punish ourselves, and we put ourselves in various forms of hell whenever we do choose not to live in the light, the truth, and inside God’s spirit. And that judgment is self-inflicted, that punishment is self-inflicted, and those fires of hell are self-inflicted.

There are a number of lessons in this. First, as we have just seen, the fact that God judges no one, helps clarify our theodicy, that is, it helps deflate all those misunderstandings surrounding God’s mercy and the accusation that an all-merciful God can condemn someone to eternal hellfire. Beyond this, it is a strong challenge to us to be less judgmental in our lives, to let the wheat and the darnel sort themselves out over time, to let light itself judge darkness, to let truth itself judge falsehood, and to, like Pope Francis, be less quick to offer judgments in God’s name and more prone to say: “Who am I to judge?”

Principles for Interfaith Dialogue and Interfaith Attitudes

April 13, 2015

We live inside a world and inside religions that are too given to disrespect and violence. Virtually every newscast today documents the prevalence of disrespect and violence done in the name of religion, disrespect done for the sake of God (strange as that expression may seem). Invariably those acting in this way see their actions as sacral, justified by sacred cause.

And, if history is to be believed, it has always been so. No religion, Christianity no less than any other, has been innocent. Every one of the great religions of the world has been, at various times, both persecuted and persecutor. So this begs the question: What are some fundamental principles we are asked to live out apposite our relationship to other faiths, irrespective our particular faith?

What’s best in each of our traditions would suggest these ten principles:

1. All that is good, true, and beautiful comes from one and the same author, God. Nothing that is true, irrespective of its particular religious or secular cloak, may be seen as opposed to true faith and religion.

2. God wills the salvation of all people, equally, without discrimination. God has no favorites. All people have access to God and to God’s Spirit, and the whole of humankind has never lacked for divine providence. Moreover each religion is to reject nothing that is true and holy in other religions.

3. No one religion or denomination has the full and whole truth. God is both infinite and ineffable. For this reason, by definition, God cannot be captured adequately in human concepts and human language. Thus, while our knowledge of God may be true, it is always only partial. God can be truly known, but God cannot be adequately thought.

4. All faiths and all religions are journeying towards the fullness of truth. No one religion or denomination may consider its truth complete, something to permanently rest within; rather it must see it as a starting point from which to journey. Moreover, as various religions (and denominations and sectarian groups within those religions) we need to feel secure enough within our own “home” so as to acknowledge the truth and beauty that is expressed in other “homes”. We need to accept (and, I suggest, be pleased) that there are other lives within which the faith is written in a different language.

5. Diversity within religions is a richness, willed by God. God does not just wish our unity; God also blesses our diversity which helps reveal the stunning over-abundance within God. Religious diversity is the cause of much tension, but that diversity and the struggle to overcome it will contribute strongly to the richness of our eventual unity.

6. God is “scattered” in world religions. Anything that is positive within a religion expresses something of God and contributes to divine revelation. Hence, seen from this aspect, the various religions of the world all help to make God known.

7. Each person must account for his or her faith on the basis of his or her own conscience. Each of us must take responsibility for our own faith and salvation.

8. Intentionally all the great world religions interpenetrate each other (and, for a Christian, that means that they interpenetrate the mystery of Christ). A genuine faith knows that God is solicitous for everyone and that God’s spirit blows freely and therefore it strives to relate itself to the intentionality of other religions and to other denominations and sectarian groups within its own religion.

9. A simple external, historical connection to any religion is less important than achieving a personal relationship, ideally of intimacy, with God. What God wants most deeply from us, irrespective of our religion, is not a religious practice but a personal relationship that transforms our lives so as to radiate God’s goodness, truth, and beauty more clearly.

10. Within our lives and within our relationship to other religions, respect, graciousness, and charity must trump all other considerations. This does not mean that all religions are equal and that faith can be reduced to its lowest common denominator, but it does mean that what lies deepest inside of every sincere faith are these fundamentals: respect, graciousness, and charity.

Throughout history, great thinkers have grappled with the problem of the one and the many. And, consciously or unconsciously, all of us also struggle with that tension between the one and the many, the relationship between unity and diversity; but perhaps this not so much a problem as it is a richness that reflects the over-abundance of God and our human struggle to grasp that over-abundance. Perhaps the issue of religious diversity might be described in this way:

Different peoples, one earth

Different beliefs, one God

Different languages, one heart

Different failings, one law of gravity

Different energies, one Spirit

Different scriptures, one Word

Different forms of worship, one desire

Different histories, one destiny

Different disciplines, one aim

Different approaches, one road

Different faiths – one Mother, one Father, one earth, one sky, one beginning, one end.

Where to Find Resurrection

April 6, 2015

Something there is that needs a crucifixion. Everything that’s good eventually gets scapegoated and crucified. How? By that curious, perverse dictate somehow innate within human life that assures that there’s always someone or something that cannot leave well enough alone, but, for reasons of its own, must hunt down and lash out at what’s good. What’s good, what’s of God, will always at some point be misunderstood, envied, hated, pursued, falsely accused, and eventually nailed to some cross. Every body of Christ inevitably suffers the same fate as Jesus: death through misunderstanding, ignorance, and jealousy.

But there’s a flipside as well: Resurrection always eventually trumps crucifixion. What’s good eventually triumphs. Thus, while nothing that’s of God will avoid crucifixion, no body of Christ stays in the tomb for long. God always rolls back the stone and, soon enough, new life bursts forth and we see why that original life had to be crucified. (“Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ should so have to suffer and die?”) Resurrection invariably follows crucifixion. Every crucified body will rise again. Our hope takes its root in that.

But how does this happen? Where do we see the resurrection? How do we experience resurrection after a crucifixion?

Scripture is subtle, though clear, on this. Where can we expect to experience resurrection? The gospel tell us that, on the morning of the resurrection, the women-followers of Jesus set out for the tomb of Jesus, carrying spices, expecting to anoint and embalm a dead body. Well-intentioned but misguided, what they find is not a dead body, but an empty tomb and an angel challenging them with these words: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Go instead into Galilee and you will find him there!”

Go instead into Galilee. Why Galilee? What’s Galilee? And how do we get there?

In the gospels, Galilee is not simply a geographical location, a place on a map. It is first of all a place in the heart. As well, Galilee refers to the dream and to the road of discipleship that the disciples once walked with Jesus and to that place and time when their hearts most burned with hope and enthusiasm. And now, after the crucifixion, just when they feel that the dream is dead, that their faith is only fantasy, they are told to go back to the place where it all began: “Go back to Galilee. He will meet you there!”

And they do go back to Galilee, both to the geographical location and to that special place in their hearts where once burned the dream of discipleship. And just as promised, Jesus appears to them. He doesn’t appear exactly as he was before, or as frequently as they would like him to, but he does appear as more than a ghost and a memory. The Christ that appears to them after the resurrection is in a different modality, but he’s physical enough to eat fish in their presence, real enough to be touched as a human being, and powerful enough to change their lives forever. Ultimately that’s what the resurrection asks us to do: To go back to Galilee, to return to the dream, hope, and discipleship that had once inflamed us but has now been lost through disillusionment.

This parallels what happens on the road to Emmaus in Luke’s gospel, where we are told that on the day of the resurrection, two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus, with their faces downcast. An entire spirituality could be unpackaged from that simple line: For Luke, Jerusalem means the dream, the hope, and the religious centre from which all is to begin and where ultimately, all is to culminate. And the disciples are “walking away” from this place, away from their dream, towards Emmaus (Emmaus was a Roman Spa), a place of human comfort, a Las Vegas, or Monte Carlo. Since their dream has been crucified, the disciples are understandably discouraged and are walking away from it, towards some human solace, despairing in their hope: “But we had hoped!”

They never get to Emmaus. Jesus appears to them on the road, reshapes their hope in the light of their disillusionment, and turns them back towards Jerusalem.

That is one of the essential messages of Easter: Whenever we are discouraged in our faith, whenever our hopes seem to be crucified, we need to go back to Galilee and Jerusalem, that is, back to the dream and the road of discipleship that we had embarked upon before things went wrong. The temptation of course, whenever the kingdom doesn’t seem to work, is to abandon discipleship for human consolation, to head off instead for Emmaus, for the consolation of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.

But, as we know, we never quite get to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo. In one guise or another, Christ always meets us on the road to those places, burns holes in our hearts, explains our latest crucifixion to us, and sends us back – and to our abandoned discipleship. Once there, it all makes sense again.

The Passion of Jesus

March 30, 2015

The renowned spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, shares how he once went to a hospital to visit a man dying of cancer. The man was still relatively young and had been a very hardworking and generative person. He was the father of a family and provided well for them. He was the chief executive officer in a large company and took good care of both the company and his employees. Moreover he was involved in many other organizations, including his church, and, because of his leadership abilities, was often the one in charge. But now, this once-so-active man, this person who was so used to being in control of things, was lying on a hospital bed, dying, unable to take care of even his most basic needs.

As Nouwen approached the bed, the man took his hand. It’s significant to note the particular frustration he expressed: “Father, you have to help me! I’m dying, and I am trying to make peace with that, but there is something else too: You know me, I have always been in charge – I took care of my family. I took care of the company. I took care of the church. I took care of things! Now I am lying here, on this bed and I can’t even take care of myself. I can’t even go to the bathroom! Dying is one thing, but this is another! I’m helpless! I can’t do anything anymore!”

Despite his exceptional pastoral skills, Nouwen, like any of us in a similar situation, was left rather helpless in the face of this man’s plea. The man was undergoing an agonizing passivity. He was now a patient. He had once been active, the one in charge; and now, like Jesus in the hours leading up to his death, he was reduced being a patient, one who is ministered to by others. Nouwen, for his part, tried to help the man see the connection between what he was undergoing and what Jesus endured in his passion, especially how this time of helplessness, diminishment, and passivity is meant to be a time where we can give something deeper to those around us.

Among other things, Nouwen read the Passion narratives of the Gospels aloud to him because what this man was enduring parallels very clearly what Jesus endured in the hours leading up to his death, a time we Christians entitle, “the Passion of Jesus”. What exactly was the Passion of Jesus?

As Christians, we believe that Jesus gave us both his life and his death. Too often, however, we do not distinguish between the two, though we should: Jesus gave his life for us in one way, through his activity; he gave his death for us in another way, through his passivity, his passion.

It is easy to misunderstand what the Gospels mean by the Passion of Jesus. When we use the word passion in relationship to Jesus’ suffering we spontaneously connect it to the idea of passion as pain, the pain of the crucifixion, of scourging, of whips, of nails in his hands, of humiliation before the crowd. The Passion of Jesus does refer to these, but the word asks for a different focus here. The English word passion takes it root in the Latin, passio, meaning passivity, and that’s its real connotation here. The word “patient” also derives from this. Hence what the Passion narratives describe is Jesus’ passivity, his becoming a “patient”. He gives his death to us through his passivity, just as he had previously given his life to us through his activity.

Indeed the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke can each be neatly divided into two distinct parts: In each Gospel we can split off everything that is narrated until Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and call this part of the Gospel: The Activity of Jesus Christ. Then we could take the section of the Gospels that we call “the Passion” and call that section: The Passivity of Jesus Christ. This would in fact help clarify an important distinction: Jesus gave his live for us through his activity whereas he gave his death for us through his passivity. Hence: Up until his arrest, the Gospels describe Jesus as active, as doing in things, as being in charge, preaching, teaching, performing miracles, consoling people. After his arrest, all the verbs become passive: he is led away, manhandled by the authorities, whipped, helped in carrying his cross, and ultimately nailed to the cross. After his arrest, like a patient in palliative care or hospice, he no longer does anything; rather others do it for him and to him. He is passive, a patient, and in that passivity he gave his death for us.

There are many lessons in this, not least the fact that life and love are given not just in what we do for others but also, and perhaps even more deeply, in what we absorb at those times when we are helplessness, when we have no choice except to be a “patient”.

Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Death

March 23, 2015

Raissa Maritain, the philosopher and spiritual writer, died some months after suffering a stroke. During those months she lay in a hospital bed, unable to speak. After her death, her husband, the renowned philosopher, Jacques Maritain, in preparing her journals for publication, wrote these words:

“At a moment when everything collapsed for both of us, and which as followed by four agonizing months, Raissa was walled in herself by a sudden attack of aphasia. Whatever progress she made during several weeks by sheer force of intelligence and will, all deep communication remained cut off. And subsequently, after a relapse, she could barely articulate words. In the supreme battle in which she was engaged, no one on earth could help her, myself no more than anyone else. She preserved the peace of her soul, her full lucidity, her humor, her concern for her friends, the fear of being a trouble to others, and her marvelous smile and the extraordinary light of her wonderful eyes. To everyone who came near her, she invariably gave (and with what astonishing silent generosity during her last two days, when she could only breathe out her love) some sort of impalpable gift which emanated from the mystery in which she was enclosed.”

The emphasis on the last sentence is my own and I highlight it because, I believe, it has something important to say in an age where, more and more, we are coming to believe that euthanasia and various forms of physician-assisted suicide are the humane and compassionate answer to terminal illness.

The case for euthanasia generally revolves around these premises: Suffering devalues human life and euthanasia alleviates that suffering and the ravages of the body and mind that come with that suffering so as to provide a terminally ill person “death with dignity” and death with less suffering. As well, it is argued, that once an illness has so debilitated a person so as to leave him or her in a virtual vegetative state, what is the logic for keeping such a person alive? Once dignity and usefulness are gone, why continue to live?

What’s to be said in response to this? The logic for euthanasia, compassionate in so far as it goes, doesn’t go far enough to consider a number of deeper issues. Dignity and usefulness are huge terms with more dimensions than first meet the eye. In a recent article in AMERICA magazine, Jessica Keating highlights some of those deeper issues as she argues against the logic of those who have lauded Brittany Maynard’s (the young woman who captured national attention last year by choosing assisted suicide in the face of a terminal illness) decision to take her own life as “courageous”, “sensible”, and “admirable”. Keating concedes that, had she not made that decision, Maynard would no doubt have suffered greatly and would in all likelihood eventually been rendered unproductive and unattractive. But, Keating argues, “she would have been present in a web of relationships. Even if she had fallen unconscious, she likely would have been read to, washed, dressed and kissed. She would have been gently caressed, held and wept over. She would simply have been loved to the end.”

That’s half the argument against euthanasia. The other half reads this way: Not only would she have been loved to the end, but, perhaps more importantly, she would have been actively emitting love until the end. From her ravaged, silent, mostly-unconscious body would have emanated an intangible, but particularly powerful, nurture and love, akin to the powerful life-giving grace that emanated from Jesus broken, naked body on the cross.

We too seldom make this important distinction: We believe that Jesus saved us through his life and through his death, as if these were the same thing. But they are very different: Jesus gave his life for us through his activity, his usefulness, through what he could actively do for us. But he gave his death for us through his passivity, through his helplessness, through the humiliation of his body in death. Jesus gave us his greatest gift precisely during those hours when he couldn’t do anything active for us.

And this isn’t something simply metaphorical and intangible. Anyone of us who have sat at the bedside of a dying loved one have experienced that in that person’s helplessness and pain he or she is giving us something that he or she couldn’t give us during his or her active life. From that person’s helplessness and pain emanates a power to draw us together as family, a power to intuit and understand deeper things, a deeper appreciation of life, and especially a much deeper recognition of that person’s life and spirit. And this, impalpable gift, as Maritain says, emanates from the mystery of pain, non-utility, and dying in which he or she is enclosed.

In our dying bodies we can give our loved ones something we cannot fully give them when we are healthy and active. Euthanasia is partially blind to the mystery of how love is given.

Seeing in a Deeper Way

March 16, 2015

Sometimes you can see a whole lot of things just by looking. That’s one of Yogi Berra’s infamous aphorisms. It’s a clever expression of course, but, sadly, perhaps mostly, the opposite is truer. Mostly we do a whole lot of looking without really seeing much. Seeing implies more than having good eyesight. Our eyes can be wide open and we can be seeing very little.

I’ve always been intrigued by how scripture describes Paul immediately after his conversion. We always assume that it tells us that Paul was struck blind by his vision, but, I think, the text implies more. It tells us that Paul got up off the ground with his eyes wide open, seeing nothing. That doesn’t necessarily equate with physical blindness. He may well have been seeing physically, but he wasn’t seeing the meaning of what he was getting himself into. Someone had to come and open his eyes, not just so that he could see again physically but especially that he could see more deeply into the mystery of Christ. Seeing, truly seeing, implies more than having eyes that are physically healthy and open. We all see the outer surface of things, but what’s beneath isn’t as automatically seen.

We see this, for instance, in what’s contained inside the healing miracles of Jesus. In the Gospels, we see Jesus perform a number of healings. He heals lame people, deaf people, mute people, people with leprosy, and two women who for different reasons are unable to become pregnant. What’s important to see in these various miracles is that, almost always, there’s more at issue than mere physical healing. Jesus is healing people in a deeper way, that is, he is healing the lame so that they can walk in freedom and in service of God. He is healing the deaf so that they can hear the Good News. He is healing the mute so that they can open their mouths in praise. And he is healing those who are hemorrhaging interiorly so that they can bring new life to birth.

We see this most clearly at those times when Jesus heals people who are blind. He’s giving them more than just physical sight; he’s opening their eyes so that that can see more deeply. But that’s only an image. How might it be unpackaged? How can the grace and teachings of Jesus help us to see in a deeper way? Here are some suggestions:

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through familiarity to seeing through wonder.

G.K. Chesterton once affirmed that familiarity is the greatest of all illusions and that the secret to life is to learn to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again. We open our eyes to depth when we open ourselves to wonder.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through paranoia and self-protection to seeing through metanoia and nurture.

It is not incidental that the first word out of Jesus’ mouth in the Synoptic Gospels is the word “metanoia”, a word that opposes itself to “paranoia”. We open our eyes to depth with we shift from a posture of self-protection to a posture of nurture.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through jealousy to seeing through admiration.

Our perception becomes distorted whenever we move from the happy state of admiration to the unhappy state of envy. Our eyesight is clear when we delight in admiration.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through bitterness to seeing through eyes purified and softened by grief.

The root of bitterness is wound and the way out of bitterness is grieving. Tears clear our eyesight because they soften a heart hardened by wound.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through fantasy and auto-eroticism to seeing through appreciation and prayer.

One of the key movements within our spiritual lives is the movement from fantasy to prayer, a movement that ultimately frees us from wanting to press to ourselves all that’s beautiful to appreciating beauty for its own sake. We can only really see and appreciate beauty when we stop lusting for it.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through relevance to seeing through contemplation.

Our longing for relevance makes us look out at the world with restless, dissatisfied eyes. We practice mindfulness and see the richness of the present moment only when our disquiet is stilled by solitude.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through anger to seeing through forgiveness.

Nothing taints our eyesight as much as anger. It’s the most debilitating of all cataracts. And nothing cleanses our vision as much as forgiveness. Nobody holding a grudge sees straight.

· By shifting our eyes from seeing through longing and hunger to seeing through gratitude.

Longing and hunger distort our vision. Gratitude restores it. It enables insight. The most grateful person you know has the best eyesight of all the people you know.

Love is the eye! So say the medieval mystics, in wisdom that needs to be added to the medical vocabulary of contemporary optometry. Seeing straight has more dimensions than we normally imagine.