Gestating Compassion

June 14, 1995

We live with a lot of anger, polarization, and bitterness, both within the world and within the church. The very fabric of community is being torn apart by this. In all that anger, the sincere are alienated from the sincere, good people are finding themselves at odds with other good people, and everywhere there is an atmosphere of despondency.

What is sad, among many other things, in all of this is that almost all of us, on all sides of virtually every issue, are using truth and the gospel to make hard, non-compassionate judgements. In both civic and church circles there is little to be seen in the way of gentleness, softness, and forgiveness. The zeal for orthodoxy and the passion for justice, especially among the more enlightened and supposedly sensitive, are producing a lot more anger than compassion.

This is a cruel thing to say, but all this angry zeal and passion, no matter how high the cause which fuels it, is not a sign that truth and the gospel are breaking through. When truth and the gospel break through, the first mark is compassion, not anger.

The word of God first meets the world in compassion, not judgement. Irrespective of whether we attempt to speak our truth and prophecy from a liberal or a conservative pulpit, we want to remember that. We mediate the word of God correctly, speak for truth and justice, when, and only when, we are recognized for our gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness – towards everyone, and not just towards those in the same ideological camp as ourselves. Unfortunately, this is not easy to do.

Too often we take in the word of God, we let ourselves be consecrated by truth, and then very quickly turn towards others in anger and judgement. Allow me to illustrate this with some typical examples:

I take a good course in liturgy and learn how, ideally, a liturgy should happen. Then, what follows, like smoke follows from fire, is that very soon I am disgruntled and angry about the liturgy in my own parish. I sit in the pews and mutter to myself: “This is a liturgy? I can’t worship in this way!” Pretty soon, I am looking for a different parish or even a different church. Or, I become sensitive to the issues of social justice. All too soon, I am looking at the world and the church through very angry eyes: “All this injustice and everyone is asleep to it!” Or, if I am more conservative of temperament, I read the spiritual classics, with all their emphasis on private morality, and I begin to fill with a holy anger and judgement as I look at a world that is given mostly to ignoring these demands: “Our world is losing its soul! There is no morality left!”

It is so easy, all in the name of truth, morality, orthodoxy, justice, and genuine concern for others to become an angry, judgemental person. Likewise it is so tempting, in the name of all of the same things, to look at those we share community with and see them as backward, unenlightened, selfish, ignorant, and petty. That is the temptation. But when we succumb to it, our anger negates compassion.

What should be happening? The word of God, and all that it demands in the name of truth, justice, and love, must enter us. But it must not leave us as anger and judgement. It must leave us as compassion, wide understanding, gentle forgiveness. For it to do this, however, requires that we first hold it long enough inside of ourselves for it to gestate into compassion. We must nurture the word of God until it can finally flow out of us as did the incarnate word from Mary, as a gentle child. When it flows out in anger and judgement, we have given premature birth. A premature baby needs some further incubation before it can be a peace at the mother’s breast, or anywhere else. Small wonder many of us are so angry and judgemental within our communities.

Before the word of God flows out of us, we should first hear it saying inside of us: “You are my beloved child in whom I am well-pleased. You are blessed in my eyes.” Once we have heard those words, God’s central words to us, then we have a chance of looking out at our world and seeing it somewhat in the same way as God sees us, as blessed, as a source of delight.

I was once at a seminar given by Michael Meade. At its conclusion he said something to this effect: “If this has been meaningful to you, don’t be full of advice for everyone when you get home. Instead give someone a gift.” God asks the same regarding his word.

The Word Made Flesh

June 2, 1995

Francis of Assisi once said: “Preach the word of God wherever you go, even use words if necessary.” We might want to reflect upon that, given some of the recent shifts within the churches regarding how we understand the word of God.

In the past, Roman Catholics were notorious for not reading the bible. Most Roman Catholics had a bible, but didn’t ever read it and were never much encouraged to do so. Moreover, within the liturgy, the word of God was not given a very important place. Sometimes it was not even read in the vernacular and, after the Gospel, the priest delivered a sermon rather than a homily. In Roman Catholic liturgies, the word was dwarfed by the Eucharist.

Protestants fared better with the bible, both outside of church and inside of it. For them, the written word was central. They were encouraged to read the bible and, at their liturgies, the written word of God was given prominence and their ministers delivered homilies, not sermons.

Vatican II and the theologies that developed within its wake were an important corrective within Roman Catholicism on this point. We were challenged to give the written word of God more prominence both within our private lives and within the liturgy. For the main part, this has been good. However, now, I feel, there is need again for a corrective measure. Why?

Because we have become (for lack of a better term) too purist in our theology of the word of God and too narrow within our theology of the liturgy. More and more, I am seeing, among our brightest, most sincere, and best educated clergy and laity, a theology of the word of God that is, at once, critically impoverished and less than fully Catholic. Allow me just a couple of typical examples:

A few years ago, while doing graduate studies in Europe, I was living at a major Seminary. During my last year there, one of the secretaries at the seminary, a deeply Christian and most gracious woman, a young person who was an exemplar wife, mother, and friend of many, died of cancer. I went to her funeral on a bus full of young seminarians and student priests. At her funeral the homily was delivered by one of her uncles, an American priest, who had been flown in for the occasion. He delivered what, to my mind, was one of the best homilies I ever had the privilege of hearing. In it, he picked up this woman’s life as a word of God, related it to the mystery of Christ, and then, with that, both consoled and challenged all of us there, especially her husband and her children. On the way home, on the bus, all the talk among the seminarians was about how dreadful and liturgically inappropriate the homily at been. At one point, I turned to one of the seminarians and said: “I thought the homily was outstanding. Why do you think it was inappropriate?” His answer: “He never used the word of God, he gave a eulogy!”

That answer and that indignation, typify a reaction that is growing within the Catholic community. More and more, the idea is that the word of God is perfectly synonymous with the written word of Scripture. For this concept, we are the poorer. Recently a nun shared with me how, at her mother’s funeral, the presiding priest, a young man who had just graduated from a good theology school, had conducted the entire funeral, homily and all, without ever referring to her mother, save for those times when the ritual prayers called for her name. She was, rightly, furious and felt cheated. Her mother had been an extraordinary person, a fine Christian. That day, in church, there was more than the written word to be read. Her mother was a word of God. In her, the word had become flesh and it had dwelt amongst us. That word, sadly, was left unread, uncelebrated.

Sometimes I am asked by people who have the responsibility of preaching, priests and laity alike: “Where can you find good stories to use in homilies? How do you bring the word of scripture down to the people’s level?” Those are sincere questions, but not good ones. The task is never to bring the word of God down to people’s level. The task is not to search in books and homiletic aids for good stories. The words and the stories that we need to preach effectively are still being written. They need to be read out of the lives of the people we are ministering to, out of our own lives, and out of the events of the day.

The word of God is not a baton, passed on in a relay race. Nor is it a deposit of faith, a treasurer chest of truths handed down from one generation to the next. The word of God something to be eaten, digested, and given flesh to. Reading it requires both eyes: With one eye we scan the bible, with the other we examine what the flesh that has been influenced by it looks like.

Chastity Revisited

May 31, 1995

Already thirty years ago, before the sexual revolution, Albert Camus had written: “Chastity alone is connected with personal progress. There is a time when moving beyond it is a victory – when it is released from its moral imperatives. But this quickly turns to defeat afterwards.” (Quoted by P. Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, p. 233.)

Moving beyond chastity initially feels like a victory but eventually it becomes a defeat. Our, post-sexual revolution, generation might want to think about that. What is meant by those words?

Whatever they mean, they are not understood by our generation. It considers the move beyond chastity as anything but a defeat. For it, this is a progress, a sophistication, a liberation from a past ignorance, an eating of the forbidden fruit which is more of an entry into Eden than an expulsion from it. Today, in Western culture, and in more than a few church communities as well, chastity is seen as naivete, timidity, frigidity, lack of nerve, being uptight, a certain innocence to be pitied.

One salient example of this can be seen in the debate surrounding AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and venereal diseases. In this discussion the argument for chastity is generally seen as naive, impractical, narrow, religious (as if chastity was a religious concept), old-fashioned, and even dangerous. Conversely, those who argue on basis of condoms claim all the high ground – intellectual, moral, and practical. The same holds true today essentially in the entire discussion about sexuality and life. Chastity is given little place and even less respect. At best, it is seen as an unimportant and impractical ideal, at worst it is an object of ridicule. We are the poorer for this.

In some sense, and I submit this is not an overstatement, chastity is the key to everything. Joy, community, love, and even full enjoyment in sex depend upon chastity. When a society is chaste, community will happen; when a family is chaste, it will find joy in its everyday life; when lovers are chaste, they will experience the full ecstasy of sex; when a church is chaste, it will experience the Holy Spirit. The reverse is also true. Chaos, joylessness, erotic numbness, and hardness of heart are generally a fault in chastity. To say this, however, implies a certain understanding of chastity. What is chastity?

Too often we identify chastity with a certain sexual purity or with simple celibacy. This, however, is too narrow. To be chaste does not mean that one does not have sex. Nor does it imply that one is in any way a prude. My parents were two of the most chaste persons I have ever met, yet they obviously enjoyed sex – as a large family and a warm vivacious bond between them gave more than enough evidence of.

Chastity is, first and foremost, not even primarily a sexual concept – though, given the power and urgency of sex, faults in chastity often are within the area of sexuality. Chastity has to do with all experiencing. It is about the appropriateness of any experience. Chastity is reverence. Sin, in the end, is irreverence.

To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, sexuality, entertainment, phases of life, and all the opportunities that life offers in a way that does not violate them nor ourselves. Chastity means to experience things reverently, in such a way that the experience of them leaves both them and ourselves more, not less, integrated. I am chaste when I relate to others in a way that does not transgress their moral, psychological, emotional, sexual, and aesthetic contours. I am chaste when I do not let irreverence or impatience ruin what is gift, when I let life, others, sex, be fully what they are. Conversely, I lack chastity when I cross boundaries prematurely or irreverently, when I violate anything so as to somehow reduce the gift that it is.

Chastity is respect and reverence. Its fruits are integration, gratitude, and joy. Lack of chastity is irreverence and violence. Its fruits are disintegration, bitterness, and cynicism (infallible signs of the lack of chastity).

Our generation, since it suffers so much from violence, disrespect, emotional chaos, lack of community, sexual irresponsibility, despondency, cynicism, and lack of delight might want to be slower in denigrating chastity. It might too, should it ever summon the courage, sort out what, in the area of chastity, is victory and what is defeat.

A Time for Reconstruction

May 24, 1995

During the past twenty-five years we have witnessed, both in the world and in the church, a deconstruction so radical that it has few parallels in history. In short, all of our major institutions – family, church, marriage, nation, and even the classics within literature, art, and music – have been in some way discredited. Virtually all of our cherished institutions and values have been shown to contain within them a certain racism, sexism, imperialism, cultural and historical bias, and a simple narrowness.

Liberals argue that this deconstruction is good. Conservatives argue that it is bad. The purpose of this reflection is not to argue either way. It is to suggest that, good or bad, it is now time to begin to rebuild. It is time for some reconstruction. Deconstruction must now give way to something further.

Why?

Put one way, it is time for reconstruction because there is no longer any enchantment left in the world; everything is undercut, explained away, rationalized away, cynically justified, and cynically pardoned. Put in a less abstract way, it is time for reconstruction because while we are very sophisticated, hermeneutically critical, and growing in sensitivity vis-a-vis racism, sexism, and the ecology, we are also growing steadily in a certain despondency and chaos.

Simply put, we are not a very happy generation. All of this criticism has left us with a certain hermeneutical purity, but it has also left us struggling for security, stability, and chastity, unable to give our children much, or anything, to believe in and unable to give our own selves much, or any, community. It has also left us struggling to experience any delight and enchantment in our lives. We are a little like the adolescent who can now point out his parents’ faults. He is less naive, and equally less happy, for knowing this.

With this in mind, allow me to submit a few principles for reconstruction. These principles do not suggest that it is illegitimate to do any more deconstruction or that one should close one’s mind to the real faults within our institutions. No. To commit oneself to reconstruction is not to make a vow of naivete. Nor is it to buy into that cheap upbeat attitude that would always put the best face on things, irrespective of what needs to be denied. Sound principles for reconstruction are, in the end, really tenets for a positive Christian criticism:

The type of criticism that leads to positive reconstruction is characterized by the following:

It works more by affirming what it believes in than by affirming what it does not believe in.
It is never elitist, nor arrogant. It does not consider the general populace ignorant and unenlightened.
It criticizes the bad by the practice of the good.
It knows that cynicism and resignation are too easy since they require no conversion, no commitment, and no attunement to divine providence.
It accepts the real limits within community and does not make perfection the enemy of the good. It has a willingness to carry the dark side of things.
It never, in the name of justice or orthodoxy, brackets the non-negotiable virtues of faith, hope, charity, and chastity, irrespective of urgency and cause.
It does not divide the sincere from the sincere, the good from the good, the committed from the committed.
It works off the premise that we hold within us two great worlds and two great wounds; the divine and the pagan, the wound of human nature and the wound of divine love.
It has wide loyalties – heaven and earth, liberal and conservative, old and new, male and female, passion and purity, patriarchy and matriarchy, androgogy and pedagogy, rationality and emotion, the institution and the individual, social conscience and private morality.
It never, for reasons of ideology or orthodoxy, denigrates beauty, colour, manners, and proper aesthetics.
It is not afraid to kneel, to adore, to admit it own sin and helplessness.
It takes its centre outside of human ego, outside of both the hurts and the glories of that ego.
It takes its centre in the greatest of all events within human history: The fact that Christ has died, that Christ has risen, that Christ will come again.

Safe in God’s Arms

May 17, 1995

When someone close to us dies, especially if his or her life has been a rather troubled or painful one, we take consolation in the thought that he or she is finally “safe in God’s arms”. But what is contained in that thought? What does it mean to be safe in God’s arms?

How do God’s love and mercy work? How does God’s justice take into account our imperfections, sin, and selfishness when we die? To be in heaven is to be at one with God and with all others of good will. Given this, what happens to us when we die and are still too full of false will, false freedom, and simple selfishness to be truly at one with God and community? How can we be safe in God’s arms when there is still inside of us much that is resistant to the selflessness that is required to live, as Scripture puts it, in the land of the living?

Jesus tells us in the Gospels that his will is entirely one with the Father. Few human persons, perhaps none, die in a condition which is that ideal. So what happens to us when we die? The afterlife is something beyond present imagination and so it is risky to use images from this life to try to understand it, but, given the infinite love and power of God, perhaps the following image might be helpful.

Picture this, a common enough image: A very young child is in the throes of a tantrum. Angry, sobbing, kicking, stubbornly wilful, resistant to every effort to be helped, the child is closed in on itself. Then, somewhere past the time where any reasoning or persuasion can do any good, the mother picks up the child. But the child is not exactly compliant. He or she continues to kick and scream and fight the mother, trying to push away from her and continue the tantrum.

However the mother’s is not put off by this. She understands it for what it is and calmly, though firmly, continues to hold the child and to press it to her breast. Slowly, or perhaps even instantly, the fighting stops. The child continues to cry, but now the tears are different. They are no longer the tears of anger and resistance that infantile grandiosity, false will, and immaturity bring. No, they are the tears that the prodigal son cried when he was embraced by his father, tears that, precisely, move one beyond grandiosity and selfishness to peace and rest. They are the tears of helplessness and trust, tears that result from letting go of false will and false self-importance. At a point, the child comes to quiet and peace. It is safe in its mother’s arms.

Few images, to my mind, are as helpful to understand what happens to us when we die as is this one. Except for cases where there is truly a hardened and hopelessly distorted heart (a situation which, while theoretically important to affirm, is, I believe, most rare in fact) our false will, immaturities, prejudices, angers, sick secrets, sin, and straight out selfishness are our tantrum, our infantile kicking resistance to love. God, like any good mother, understands these for what they are and, like any good mother, knows too what to do.

He, She in this case, picks us up and, despite our kicking and resistance, holds us safely in her arms. Then, since our alienation is not that of someone who is strong enough to commit the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit (a sin of strength) but is rather the weakness of someone who is suffering from the immaturity and selfishness of a child, our resistance will be short-lived. Soon, very soon, we will cease kicking against love and we will let ourselves be held – in will and in true freedom as well as in body, mind, and soul. We will be safely in God’s arms, finally in the land of the living.

This image is also helpful in understanding what, classically in Roman Catholic theology, has been taught as the state of purgatory. Catholics and Protestants have long argued about the existence or non-existence of purgatory. For Catholics purgatory was thought as necessary since some purification is necessary for us in order to live in heaven (otherwise heaven would soon turn into earth!) Protestants, basing themselves on scripture which teaches at there are only two eternal states, heaven and hell, have basically always rejected the idea of purgatory. Purgatory, however, should not be understood as a place that is separate from heaven. It is the pain of entering heaven. Thus, it is not a place, it is an anguish. Purgatory is the purifying pain that is felt by the selfish, resistant child, kicking against the mother. But it is a momentary pain, one that gives way to quiet peace and contentment just as soon as the struggle against love ceases.

Social Justice: Not An Option

May 7, 1995

Margaret Atwood once suggested that things which are painful and difficult to say should, nonetheless, be permitted the present tense. Painful truth, she submits, should not be washed or cauterized, but needs, instead, be said and said again, until it doesn’t need saying any more.

This is true, unfortunately, of social justice. One would think, hope, that today there would be no question whatsoever that, within Christian life and spirituality, social justice is not an optional item. It is a non-negotiable essential.

Sadly, that is not the case. For many of us, social justice is still seen as one specific, and negotiable, theology or as one optional part of spirituality. It is still seen as something we can take or leave. Scripture and Christian tradition, however, do not give us that option.

Already in the Book of Genesis, Scripture lays down a principle which, if taken seriously, demands social justice within every relationship we have. It tells us that creation reflects the glory of God and that all men and women are the glory of God. This affirmation, understood correctly, is what social justice is all about: How do we protect the dignity of each woman and man?

The Prophets flesh this out, with a clarity that leaves us no escape clause: For them, the quality of our faith depends upon the character of justice in the land. And, according to them, you judge the character of justice in the land in the following way: By how a society treats three groups of persons: widows, orphans, and foreigners. They picked these groups because, at that time, these groups were the most vulnerable and least empowered among all the people. Perhaps less has changed than we suspect in the 2800 years since the Prophets threw out that challenge, given how widows, orphans, and foreigners fare in today’s world.

Jesus takes up these ideas and deepens them. For him, we are not just like God, but, given the incarnation, God is also like us. This affords us, every single one of us, an incredible dignity. To protect that dignity requires social justice, namely, structures, institutions, and laws, that promote and protect the dignity of every human person indiscriminately.

Moreover, Jesus deepens what the Prophets said about widows, orphans, and foreigners. For him, how we react in the face of their plight (and, by implication, how we react to the systems that help cause their plight) ultimately determines our salvation: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these (widows, orphans, foreigners) that you do unto me.” Jesus identifies himself with the poor, with those on the edges, and tells us that whatever we do, good or bad, to them, we do to him. Furthermore, this is not just true for how our private lives, our personal sin or virtue, touch the poor, but also for how the systems (all the social, economic, ecclesial things we take part in) touch the orphan, the widow, and the alien as well. What we, or our systems, do to them, we do to Christ.

The common conception is that the church picked up this motif, in its social encyclicals, only about a hundred years ago and is, only now, insisting on social justice. That is too simplistic.. The church has always insisted on social justice. That insistence has simply taken on various forms:

The church has always upheld the dignity and sacredness of each human person and it has always affirmed (at least in theory if not always in practice) that each person must therefore have personal access to those freedoms, goods, and protections which can ensure that dignity. It also, rightly, insisted that these rights all have corresponding responsibilities. Further, it also recognized that these rights and responsibilities play themselves out within a concrete community. It then taught that there are three essential levels to this community: family, nation, and humanity.

Prior to its social encyclicals, the church focused much of its social teaching upon the first of these levels, the family. Then, from the late nineteenth century until the more recent social encyclicals, the focus was on the issues created by the industrial revolution, wages, unions, and governmental responsibilities to the poor. Today, its social teachings focus more on the third level, humanity and the problems of world peace, gender, race, and the like. In this development we see a consistent line, and a consistent emphasis, on one of the great, non-optional, imperatives of the Gospel, social justice.

The Wreck Of The Deutschland

May 3, 1995

This is not an easy time to be a nun or a Roman Catholic sister. Inside sisters’ communities, vocations and finances are at a dangerous low and, outside, nun-bashing is at a dangerous high. Conservatives, liberals, and average Catholics alike do not seem particularly sympathetic to what is happening today within female religious orders. More common is cynicism about their future, nostalgic and overly-romantic (“flying nun”) mythology about their past, and an essential indifference to their present.

I say this with sympathy, as one who, for the most part, admires nuns and as one who feels that there needs to be a real wake-up among virtually all Catholics regarding the contribution, past and present, of Roman Catholic nuns.

Let me submit a little thesis here: During the past thirty years, the years between Vatican II and today, within Roman Catholicism in the Western world, nuns, as a group in comparison to other groups, have done the following:

1) Taken the teachings of Vatican II the most seriously.

2) Risked the most in terms of money and institutional security in the types of commitments they have chosen to make on the basis of gospel principle.

3) Taken the most seriously the gospel demand to make a preferential option for the poor.

4) Sustained a life of prayer and private morality as well, or better than, any other group.

5) Given more to the Catholic community and received less in return.

In short, in the last thirty years, among all large religious groups (as distinct from simple individuals) I see Roman Catholic nuns as the group that has taken the gospel the most seriously, some faults notwithstanding. Yet, and this is the irony that needs explication, today, among all groups within the church they are, visibly, the most in trouble. Short on vocations, short on money, short on sympathy, and short on being understood by the secular world, the very future of many sisters’ orders appears uncertain.

And this is not being seen, and assessed, without a definite glee in some circles. Among certain conservative groups, this “demise” is seen as fitting retribution. Had the nuns kept to their traditional ways (habits, convents, proper respect, proper propriety) God would be rewarding them with vocations, but, given their last thirty years, what else do you expect? Among certain liberals, the view is that this type of religious life has run its cycle, a new reality has rendered it obsolete. All that is left for nuns to do is to die honourably.

But all this can be viewed differently.. The state of most female religious congregations in the West today is not a sign that they have failed or been unfaithful. To the contrary. Gospel fidelity rarely leads to the kind of success that is measured in terms of numbers and financial security. The gospel asks that we die for others, that we pour ourselves out selflessly without being too concerned about our own living and dying in this world, that we remain faithful even if everything seems to be crumpling.

This nuns have done. They have poured themselves out. One looks to the past and sees the countless nuns who worked in our Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, and parishes, doing the thankless things, the anonymous things, the quiet things that were so essential to the building up and educating of the Catholic community. One looks at the present and sees sisters’ communities at the cutting edges of so much of what is the still unfinished agenda of Vatican II. To offer just one example, among all religious groups in the West, Catholic and Protestant, women’s orders are, proportionately more than anyone else, at considerable cost to themselves, putting their financial portfolios to work for the poor.

When Archbishop Romero was threatened with death by the Salvadorean military, he said: “If you kill me, I will rise in the Salvadorean people!” I do not know what the future is for active women’s religious orders in the West, but I do know this: They have already risen in the lives of Catholics in the West. The effect of their leaven and their silent martyrdom is everywhere.

In 1875, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the poem, The Wreck of The Deutschland, in memory of five Franciscan nuns who drowned when a ship sank. Seeing this dying within the larger mystery of God he wrote: “His mystery must be instressed, stressed; for I greet him on the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.”

No Rut Like My Own!

May 1, 1995

If you are over twenty-five years of age, and sensitive, there is a good chance that, like most of the rest of us adults in the Western world, you are living in chronic depression.

What is chronic depression and why am I suggesting that most of us live in it?

Depression is one of those things that can be understood best by examining its opposite. The opposite of depression is delight. When there is delight in my life, I am not depressed. Conversely, when there is no delight in my life, I am.

However, delight itself should be correctly understood. Real delight is not be confused with the kind of upbeat optimism and the life-of-the-party zip that is peculiar to certain temperaments. In fact, often times these can hide a deep depression. Delight has little to do with being the life of the party and even less to do with who sees the bottle as half full instead of as half empty. Delight has to do with this: If on any given day, particularly on a very ordinary day, in an ordinary situation – walking home from work, driving my car, washing dishes, getting out of bed, eating a meal with my family, pausing for a breath at work – I feel my life, my body, my sexuality, my mind, my soul, my purpose on this planet, and I breath the air, look around me, and spontaneously say: “God, it’s good to be alive!” then I am experiencing delight.

Conversely, I can be a good person, can work hard and unselfishly for years, can genuinely help others, be faithful, admired, and spend years doing altruistic things and never have a thimble full of genuine delight in my life. All that goodness and effort can be too work-driven, duty-driven, and compulsive to give me much in the way of delight.

Today, among adults, not very often does one hear the expression “God, it’s good to be alive!” Not very frequently does one witness outbursts of spontaneous delight at the goodness of it all. Depression is more the rule. Where one does still see delight, spontaneous joy in the goodness and excess of life, is among children, the very young.

Go to a primary school playground sometime and observe little children who have just been let out for a recess. What you hear is a din of shrieking – laughter, shouts, crying, and mostly screaming just for the sake of screaming. Not very many of these sounds are conscious attempts at communicating anything; mostly it is simply spontaneous outburst, frequently expressing delight. I say this, not to idealize children’s playgrounds, more than enough cruelty, selfishness, and bullying happen there, but to point out that all that shrieking is what an un-depressed atmosphere looks and sounds like.

There is no small irony in the fact that today we are all too often irritated by children shouting. All that shrieking is interfering with a depression. It is an affront to the serious business of living. Best to classify the louder children as hyper-active and sedate them. Few things irritate a depression as much as does spontaneity.

I point this out because today, both in the world and in the church, it is politically correct to be depressed, unhappy, heavy, sullen, and hyper-serious – all in the name of being adult, searching for or defending the truth, having a proper sense of reality, working for justice, and taking the Gospel (the “good news”) seriously! Small wonder everyone is off searching for his or her inner child!

Moreover, no ideological camp is better or worse than the others here. At the end of the day we all appear equally depressed: Conservatives with all our anger and over-seriousness, liberals with all our self-hatred and hot-wired intensity about justice, there are precious few spontaneous outbursts of “God, it’s good to be alive!” within our civic, academic, church, or government circles.

I say this with sympathy, as one whose spontaneous feelings too frequently vent themselves in outbursts that do not exactly bespeak delight. It is hard, in our culture, to be adult and not depressed, too much conspires against delight. But recognizing, and admitting, our chronic depression can be helpful. Like an alcoholic who cannot be helped until he admits he has a problem, so too our culture. Delight cannot be forced, but at least I should know that it is far from ideal to go through life saying: “Be it ever so humdrum, there’s no rut like my own!”

Choosing Between Two Kinds of Storm

April 24, 1995

“We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.”

T.S. Eliot wrote those words and, with them, suggests that our choice in this life is not between calm and storm, but between two kinds of storms.

He is right, of course, but sometimes it is good to vary the metaphor: We live in this world caught between two great gods, chaos and order. It is important to know they are most different from each other.

Most artists worship at his shrine (and MTV daily gives us superficial glimpses of him). He is also god of sleeplessness, the god of restlessness, and the god of disintegration. In fact, he works precisely by disintegration which is itself the foundation of novelty.

Order is the god of water, the god of prudence, of chastity, of common sense, of stability, of hanging on. He is the god of pragma. He likes systems, clarity and a roof that doesn’t leak. He is more worshipped by the conservative temperament and few artists pay him homage.

The business and ecclesiastical worlds, however, more than compensate for this. By and large, he is their God. He is also the god of boredom, the god of timidity, and the god of fearfulness and rigidity. With him, you will never disintegrate, but you might suffocate. However, while he does not generate a lot of excitement, this god keeps a lot of people alive.

Allegiance to either, to the radical exclusion of the other, not infrequently leads to a self-inflicted wound by a bullet to one’s own head. When chaos reigns unchecked by order, moral and emotional disintegration soon unleash a darkness from which there is often no recovery. When order too totally dispels chaos, a certain self-annihilating virtue, posturing as God, drains life of all delight and possibility. It is dangerous to worship at only the one shrine.

Both gods are needed. The soul, love, the church, practical life, and the structures of society need the tempering that comes from both fire and water, order and chaos.

Too much fire and things just burn up, disintegrate. Too much water and nothing ever changes, a suffocation sets in. Too much letting go and the sublimity of love lies prostituted; too much chastity and love shrivels up like a dried prune.

No. Both gods are needed—in practical life, in romantic life, in ecclesiology, in morality, in business and in government. Risk and prudence, MTV and Gregorian Chant—both contain some whisperings of God. It is not of small consequence that we should feel caught between the two.

It should not be surprising either because God, the God of Jesus Christ, is the God of both—fire and water, chaos and order, liberal and conservative, chastity and wasted love. God is the great stillpoint and God is also the uncapturable principle of complete newness, resurrection.

That also should come as no surprise to us because God is the God of love. In fact, God is love, and love wants and needs both order and chaos. Love wants always to build a home, to settle down, to create a calm, stable and chaste place. There is something to in love that resists the kind of surrender that obliterates everything. Love is about order. That is the thing in love that precisely pulls us out of our emotional and moral disintegration. But love is also about chaos. There is something in love that wants to be taken, and taken where one would rather not go. There is something in love that wants the new, the foreign, that wants to obliterate boundaries. That’s the fertile principle within love—and it has kept the human race going!

In the tempest there is life and there is God. In it, as Michael Meade puts it, we are initiated, initiated through immersion into the intense fires of desire and the stunning waters of surrender.

Difficulties In Living The Free Life

April 19, 1995

I am not sure how often I have read Zorba the Greek. It is a haunting book with a strange power to ignite.

Most of us know the story. An intense, reflective, morally uptight, cautious young writer meets Zorba. In him, the young writer sees celebration, freedom, and zest personified. Zorba is a man given to total spontaneity, all heart. He lives freely, loves freely, and simply bursts into dance whenever the occasion calls for it.

Zorba takes life as a child, trusting, without hesitation, and he declares that the only unforgivable sin is to not abandon yourself in love when asked (in some less philosophical version of that statement).

The book haunts because, measured against Zorba, most of us appear as emotionally crippled, uptight, non-celebrating, very inhibited persons. Moreover, recent studies have shown that there is a certain co-relation between how autonomous a person is and how religious he or she is. Simply put, the more autonomous a person is the less religious he or she is. The reverse is also true, the more religious a person is the more unfree and inhibited is he or she. At least so it would appear.

Where does that leave us? Are religion and real freedom incompatible? Does religion make us uptight? Should we abandon the gospel for Zorba? Does Christian morality, taken seriously, rob life of spontaneity, richness, and freedom?

These questions can torture the mind. Yet there is a point where the torture must give way to a certain exorcism. What is at issue here is a certain fallacy that, if left unexamined, wreaks much emotional havoc. What is the fallacy? The identification of pre-morality with genuine liberation, the identification of the mind of a child with the mind of a truly free person.

Zorba is presented to us as the paradigm of freedom. But what this would have us believe is that it is easy to celebrate and love and take life. It would have us believe that society’s rules, personal inhibitions, feelings of guilt, and agreed upon standards are of minimal consequence. In short, it would have us believe that we can live free as the birds, soaring, unencumbered by the demands and expectations of others.

Unfortunately, anyone who is even remotely moral knows that it is not so easy, and is in fact quite impossible because as we try to share our lives in love and celebration without exploiting and raping each other, we run into an emotional, psychological, moral, sexual, and spiritual complexity that makes the studies of a brain surgeon look like elementary arithmetic. Only two types of persons do not know and respect this: the amoral-immoral, who ignore or flaunt the moral structure; and the pre-moral, children, who are insufficiently developed to recognize morality.

When a child’s spontaneity and unchecked zest for life push her into uninhibited enjoyment, irrespective of consequence, there is no element of rape present because she is just a child and we see the selfishness as being cute.

The ideal that is presented in Zorba the Greek is precisely that, the pre-moral, actions of a child – cute, inhibited, happy, but irresponsible. What masquerades as autonomy and celebration is largely pre-moral spontaneity and there is an immense difference between this and true adult freedom because the latter must be sensitive to a moral and aesthetic structure which, when respected, induces constant hesitation, agony, inhibition, and frustration. Loving is not a simple business.

The Kingdom of God can only come about when all of us can sit down at the same table and share food, wine, love, hearts, bodies, sex, and spirit with each other. That coming together is not easy, as the cumulative frustration of humankind more than adequately attest to.

Zorba was on to something: That coming together does require much spontaneity, abandonment, and the child-like giving and receiving of life which permits a simple enjoyment that is not paralysed by an unhealthy frigidity and neurotic over-reflection.

However, it also requires a very unchildlike discipline – wide respect, chastity, patience, and waiting. The moral order is as intricate and complex as the central nervous system and brain structure within the human being. In loving we must tread sensitively – considerably more so than did Zorba.

I Believe In The Resurrection

April 12, 1995

In the early 1920s William Butler Yeats wrote a poem entitled, The Second Coming. Its message is strong, adult, and ultimately quite depressing. Yeats sees a certain dissolution of civilization as he has known it, things are falling apart. What is at the root of this falling apart? He gives his answer in a single line: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

The center cannot hold. That’s a powerful statement, but it is somewhat of an anti-creed, a negation of the heart of faith, for what it expresses is the very opposite of what lies at the centre of the Christian credo: “I believe in the resurrection.”

What Yeats is expressing, either as an expression of his ultimate feeling about things or simply as a more superficial and emotional bewailing of the fact that chaos seems to be triumphing over order, is the belief that at the deepest centre of things no God in charge. If the center does not hold then nothing in the end guarantees love, life, and goodness. Nothing really underwrites us. Good things may well occur within history and within our lives, but they are, in the end, accidental constellations, random happenings which are vulnerable to dissolution when the chance forces that produced them die. If the center does not hold then everything that has happened up to now is the product of chance not providence.

To believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, the Christian creed in a single line, is to believe the opposite. It is to believe that at the center of things there is a power who is Lord of the universe and fully in charge, irrespective of falling civilizations, the apparent triumph of chaos over order, and the presence of death itself. The earliest Christians used to have only a single line to their creed: Jesus is Lord. For them, that said enough. It said everything. It said that at the center of all things there is a gracious, personal God, and that this God is powerful enough and loving enough to underwrite everything.

Jesus already had a sense of this, even before his resurrection. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when everything was crumpling into chaos and darkness and his whole life and message seemed a lie, he prayed: “Father, all things are possible for you.” In a darkness, anarchy, and hatred as bad as this world has ever known, when the world had gone mad and things were truly out of control, and when his own death was imminent and certain, Jesus said words to this effect: “God, I know that you are still solidly in command!” Things were falling apart but he sensed, and this is the very essence of faith, that there was still a centre that held. The world seemed to be collapsing, but God was still firmly in charge: “All things are possible for you.”

We believe in the resurrection of Christ, precisely, to the degree that we believe that the center holds or does not hold, namely, to the degree that we can, in any circumstance of life, say, and mean: “Lord, all things are possible for you.”

And, in the end, this is not a theoretical thing, a matter of orthodoxy or raw intellectual commitment: Do I believe in God or not? Do I believe in the empty tomb? Can I say the creed and mean it? Notwithstanding that these are important, faith in the resurrection of Jesus is something more down-to-earth and ordinary. It is a practical thing, an every-day trust, a feeling, a sense, however inchoate but real, that, in the end, there is a deep anchor that is holding everything together and that we, for our part, can get on with the business of living and can live in trust, knowing that our inadequacies, failings, and even our deaths, are not the final answer. Faith in the resurrection is a lived sense that God is still in charge.

“Father, all things are possible for you.” To be able to say that when everything seems to be in contradiction to it, is to truly pray the creed. It does us little good to go to church and publicly recite the words: “I believe in the resurrection” but then go out and live haunted by the fear that things are falling apart, that chaos is taking over, that the center is not holding, and that we have no choice but to live in either distrust, disillusionment, or cynicism. To say the creed is to live with the sense that, in the end, Someone is in charge and that Someone is stronger than death and is a gracious and loving presence, even when we are sweating blood.

Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of faith, is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.

By His Stripes We Are Healed

April 4, 1995

What a curious line, what a curious logic! One person gets lashed, another gets healed; one suffers, another is set free; one dies, another comes to life.

An odd logic, but a gospel logic; gospel not just because it appears in the bible (1 Peter) but because it contains the kind of paradox that lies at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Life comes from death and, sometimes, the death that produces life within us is not our own but the death of someone else.

How does this work? How can we be healed by someone else’s suffering? Or, perhaps even more importantly, the reverse: How can we suffer so as to heal someone else?

This concept, vicarious suffering, has an important place within all the great religions of the world. That should tell us something. No spirituality worth the name does not, at some point, make a place for it. In Christianity, it lies at the heart of everything: Christ died so that we might live. By his stripes we are healed.

Now we have not always had the best explanation of how that works. Too often, both in theology and in spirituality, we took a metaphor too literally. For example, in theology, there was the idea that because of sin, original sin and our own sin, some great debt is owed to God and the sufferings of Christ and of good people fill in that debt to the benefit of the rest of us. Scripture, on occasion, though not often, expresses this in metaphor. However if this idea is taken literally it does not do much justice to God. It makes God seem arbitrary, petty, and legalistic, and it gives the idea that there is, somewhere, a divine credit union within which sin and merits must be balanced like a bank book. Sin makes a grace withdrawal. Sacrifice makes a grace deposit.

We had this idea in a popularized form within spirituality, although, admittedly, not in as crass as sense as just expressed. The idea was that good people could make sacrifices for others. Thus, for example, a good mother with a wayward son would make sacrifices for her son. She would do virtuous acts and offer them up for her son and he, on his part, would somehow be helped by that. By her stripes he was healed.

We want to be careful not to be too cynical about this. The logic behind this needs refinement, but both the sincerity of intention of the mother and the net result of her sacrifice should not be underrated within the economy of grace. Her sacrifice does help her son, if he is at all open to grace. However, it helps him not because there is a divine credit union where her deposits of grace let him overdraw his account, so to speak, but because in the economy (perhaps not a good word here) of grace we are, indeed, helped by the sacrifice of others. How?

Let me illustrate with one simple example: Growing up as a young boy, I had a brother who was two years older than myself. He was not only older chronologically, he was also considerably more mature. One Sunday afternoon, during a spring when I was eleven and he was thirteen, we were playing outside the house when we came upon a copper boiler that my mother had put there to catch water from the snow as it melted on a roof. There was a crust of ice over the water and, being a young boy, I wanted to break it. I picked up a small steel crowbar and was about to poke into the ice with it when my brother warned me: “Careful,” he said, “if it slips you will ruin the boiler, it’s sides are soft.” Then, seeing that I was going to do it anyway, he tried to wrench the steel bar away from me, but, before he was able to, I slammed it into the ice … and, just as he had predicted, it glanced off the ice and punctured the side of the copper boiler, effectively ruining it.

The next morning at breakfast, my father, having seen the ruined boiler and having deduced the cause, confronted my brother and myself at the table: “Who ruined that boiler?” Frightened and ashamed, but deeply aware of my guilt, I sat in silence, too immature to admit what I had done. After a brief pause, my brother spoke: “I did,” he said, “I was trying to break the ice with a crowbar and it slipped and went through the side of the boiler.” My father admonished him briefly, telling him that, at his age, he should have known better. He, for his part, he did not protest that he did know better, nor did he look at me in anger, or gloat in glee. Mostly he just looked at me as a younger brother who was a bit immature and needed an older brother to bail him out.

He took the rap for me and, because of that, I grew up a bit. He suffered, I matured. By his stripes I was healed.

Listening to Christ’s Heartbeat

March 28, 1995

The last supper account in John’s gospel contains a curious picture. The evangelist describes the beloved disciple as reclining on the breast of Jesus. What is contained in this image? A picture of how each of us should be focused as we look out at the world.

When you put your head upon the breast of another, your ear is just above that person’s heart and you are able to hear his or her heartbeat. Thus, in John’s image, we see the beloved disciple with his ear on Jesus’ heart and his eyes peering out at the world.

This is an image, a mystical one. Among other things, it is a picture of gentleness. What is shows, however, is not a saccharine piety, a sweetness hard to swallow, but a softness that comes from being at peace, from being so rooted and centred in a love that one can look out at the world without bitterness, anger, jealousy, the sense of being cheated, and the need to blame or compete with others.

In John’s gospel, it is also a eucharistic image. What we see there, the image of a person with his ear on Jesus’ heart, is how John wants us to imagine ourselves when we are at eucharist. In its reality, that is what the eucharist is, a physical reclining on the breast of Jesus. But the picture that John shows here is more than a eucharistic picture. It is also an image of how we should touch God and be sustained by him in solitude.

Henri Nouwen once said: “By touching the center of our solitude, we sense that we have been touched by loving hands.” (Show Me the Way) Deep inside each of us, like a brand, there is a place where God has touched, caressed, and kissed us. Long before memory, long before we ever remember touching or loving or kissing anyone or anything, or being touched by anything or anybody in this world, there is a different kind of memory, the memory of being gently touched by loving hands. When our ear is pressed to God’s heart – to the breast of all that is good, true, and beautiful – we hear a certain heartbeat and we remember, remember in some inchoate place, at a level beyond thought, that we have been gently kissed by God.

This is what is deepest, archetypally, within us. There is an ancient legend which holds that when an infant is created God kisses its soul and sings to it. As its guardian angel carries it to earth to join its body, she also sings to it. The legend says that God’s kiss and his song, as well as the song of the angel, remain in that soul forever – to be called up, cherished, shared, and to become the basis of all of our songs.

But to feel that kiss, to hear that song, requires solitude. I do not feel gentleness when inside of me and all around me there is noise, abrasiveness, anger, bitterness, jealousy, competitiveness, and paranoia. The sound of God’s heartbeat is audible only in solitude and in the gentleness it brings. John of the Cross once defined solitude as “bringing the mild into harmony with the mild”. That was his way of saying that we will begin to remember the primordial touch of God when, through solitude, we empty our hearts of all that is not mild, namely, noise, anger, bitterness, and jealousy. When we become mild we will remember that we have been touched by loving hands and, like the beloved disciple, we will then have our ear to the heartbeat of Christ.

Thus, inside each of us there is a church, an oratory, a place of worship, a sanctuary not made by human hands. And it is a gentle place, a virgin place, a holy place, a place where there is no anger, no sense of being cheated, and no need to be competitive. It is a soft place; but it can be violated, through rape, through a giving of oneself that does not respect oneself, and, especially, through lying and rationalizing and the cauterization, warping, and hardening of heart that follows upon that. Conversely, though, it is also a place that can remain inviolate, sacred, and untouched, even through external rape.

It is in that place, entered into through solitude and gentleness of spirit, that we have a privileged access to God because that is the place where God has already touched us and where we, however dimly, remember that.

We have been touched by loving hands. The memory of that touch is a brand – warm, dark, gentle. To enter that memory is to lean on the breast of Christ, just as the beloved apostle did at the last supper. From that place, with our ear on Christ’s heart, we have the truest perspective on our world.

The Passing of a Shepherd

March 21, 1995

One of the foremost anthropologists of our century, Mircea Eliade, once commented that “no community should botch its deaths!” Deaths, like births, are important times, formative periods, for all families. There is a spirit, a grace, to be received and a community is poorer if it botches the moment, if it is not properly reflective and receptive.

Sometimes it is not so clear how this all works: How are we blessed in someone else’s death? How is a community, a family, pulled together through a death? How do we remember correctly so that, unlike the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we recognize in a new presence the person who has passed on?

These are questions very much in the hearts of the people in the diocese within which I now live because a short while ago, our bishop, James Patrick Mahoney, died of a heart attack. He was a robust man, still quite young and much loved, and he died prematurely. He was a friend of mine and also the man who ordained me to the priesthood, and so, for me, his passing had an extra significance.

How does one celebrate a death like that so as not to sentimentally eulogize nor sloppily forget? One does it by looking on his life as the word made flesh. The ancient church writers used to say that God wrote two great books: the bible and nature. But God has written more than two books. God’s word takes on flesh wherever you see someone who, in his or her flesh, gives concrete shape to the unbounded energy and love of God.

This our late bishop did for us; not perfectly, of course, nobody does, but enough that, for us who knew him, God became a bit more believable. He incarnated a lot of things. He could. He was huge of body, heart, and faith. He was also huge in humility.

His distinguishing characteristic was precisely his humility; something which many, confusedly, saw only as a sense of humour. But those who did not see the depth under that surface missed the reality. He as a humble man, not in that false sense where one protests that he is inept and not fit for his responsibilities, but in the true sense where humility manifests itself in earthiness, in lack of pretence, in hospitality, and in a sense of humour which does not make a pompous, narcissistic tragedy of everything. He had his two big feet solidly planted on the earth and for this reason power never went to his head. He could laugh at it, not because it did not take it seriously, but because he understood human power for what it is, not much.

There was a lot to admire in the man. He had a conservative temperament, but he never let that, nor other personal preferences, interfere in his actual decision making. He made decisions on the basis of conscience and not on the basis of temperament. I remember a particular meeting in which he made a very difficult decision, one that went smack against his own preferences. One of the priests, not without some anger and sarcasm, said to him: “You did that just because it is politically correct!” “I did it,” he said, swallowing hard for reasons his critics would never know, “because it is correct!”

And he loved the church, in every aspect of his person and in his every decision as a bishop. He loved it completely. He hurt when it hurt, he rejoiced when it rejoiced, and he mourned when it mourned. He defended it always, even to excess. He was a soft man, a bishop who found it hard to come down hard. He could only be hard when he felt the church was being hurt. One year he delivered the convocation address at the college where I was teaching. It was a gala event, expensive clothes, flowers, formality everywhere. His message, as always, was challenging and laced with humour, earthiness, and a deep love for the church. At one point, he addressed the graduates in particular: “You have all just graduated with degrees in theology and ministry and you are being sent to minister in the church in various places. A word of advice to you: If you come into my diocese, I am not so concerned whether you have all the proper theological papers. Don’t get me wrong, I respect theology and professional training, but … if you come into my diocese I want, first of all, that you love the church and if you don’t (and this is some of his vintage earthiness) I don’t want you buggering around in my diocese!” He meant it. I don’t doubt it’s good advice.

Twenty-three years ago, this man ordained me to the priesthood. He whispered a little wise crack, under his breath, as he was anointing my hands. Two weeks ago he died. I know where to look for him. I’ll seek him out, not in his grave, but among those who are humble, laugh a lot, and who love the church.

Two Great gods

March 14, 1995

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

T.S. Eliot wrote those words and, with them, suggests that our choice in this life is not between calm and storm, but between two kinds of storm. He is right, of course, but sometimes it is good to vary the metaphor: We live in this world caught between two great gods, chaos and order. It is important to know that they are most different from each other.

Chaos is the god of fire, the god of fertility, of risk, of creativity, of novelty, of letting go. He is the god of dreams and brings what is idealistic, fantastic, and chaotic. He is the god more worshipped by the liberal temperament. Most artists worship at his shrine [and MTV daily gives us superficial glimpses of him]. He is also the god of sleeplessness, the god of restlessness, and the god of disintegration. In fact, he works precisely by disintegration which is, itself, the foundation of novelty.

Order is the god of water, the god of prudence, of chastity, of common sense, of stability, of hanging on. He is the god of pragma. He likes systems, clarity, and a roof that doesn’t leak. He is more worshipped by the conservative temperament and few artists pay him homage. The business and ecclesiastical worlds, however, more than compensate for this. By and large, he their god. He is also the god of boredom, the god of timidity, and the god of fearfulness and rigidity. With him, you will never disintegrate, but you might suffocate. However, while he does not generate a lot of excitement, this god keeps a lot of people alive.

Chaos and order, fire and water, are very different gods. Both, however, demand the respect accorded a deity. Unfortunately, like all one-sided deities, each wants all of us and to give that submission is dangerous. Allegiance to either, to the radical exclusion of the other, not infrequently leads to a self-inflicted wound by bullet to one’s own head. When chaos reigns unchecked by order, moral and emotional disintegration soon unleash a darkness from which there is often no recovery. When order too totally dispels chaos, a certain self-annihilating virtue, posturing as God, drains life of all delight and possibility. It is dangerous to worship at only the one shrine.

Both gods are needed. The soul, love, the church, practical life, and the structures of society need the tempering that comes from both fire and water, order and chaos. Too much fire and things just burn up, disintegrate. Too much water and nothing ever changes, a suffocation sets in. Too much letting go and the sublimity of love lies prostituted; too much chastity and love shrivels up like a dried prune. No. Both gods are needed – in practical life, in romantic life, in ecclesiology, in morality, in business, and in government. Risk and prudence, MTV and Gregorian Chant – both contain some whisperings of God. It is not of small consequence that we should feel caught between the two.

It should not be surprising either because God, the God of Jesus Christ, is the God of both – fire and water, chaos and order, liberal and conservative, chastity and wasted love. God is the great stillpoint and God is also the uncapturable principle of complete newness, resurrection.

That also should come as no surprise us because God is the God of love. In fact, God is love, and love wants and needs both, order and chaos. Love wants always to build a home, to settle down, to create a calm, stable, and chaste place. There is something too in love that resists the kind of surrender that obliterates everything. Love is about order. That is the thing in love that precisely pulls us out of our emotional and moral disintegration. But love is also about chaos. There is something in love that wants to be taken, and taken where one would rather not go. There is something in love that wants the new, the foreign, that wants to obliterate boundaries. That’s the fertile principle within love – and it has kept the human race going!

God is both of these and that is why it is healthy that both of these be kept always in a healthy tension. To be healthy, we need to bring them together within ourselves and we need to bring them together not as we would bring two parties to meet at a negotiating table, but as we would bring together a high and a low pressure system to produce a storm. In the tempest there is life and there is God. In it, as Michael Meade puts it, we are initiated, initiated through immersion into the intense fires of desire and the stunning waters of surrender.

Our Children and God’s Love

March 8, 1995

There is a story floating around, fairly common within homiletic circles, that merits retelling:

There was a father of a family who was confronted one day by his wife who challenged him to spend more time with his 14 year-old son. “He needs you,” she said, “and you are neglecting him!” “He doesn’t need me!” the man protested. “He’s at an age where he should be cutting the family strings somewhat more.”

His wife, however, insisted and the man, more out of guilt than conviction, went into the living room where his son was watching television and asked him to accompany him on a trip to the market to buy groceries. The son, more out of boredom than interest, agreed and so the two set out. In the car on the way to the store, the father tried to get a conversation going:

“How’s school?” “Okay,” came the reply.

“How’s basketball?” “It’s okay.”

“What were you watching on T.V?” “Nothing!”

After that exchange, things went silent. At the grocery mart, still in silence, they loaded the items they wanted into the shopping cart and waited in line while a very slow, inept, and disinterested cashier dealt with the customers ahead of them. Finally, when their turn came, the father, quite out of sorts because of the unnecessary wait, deliberately tricked the cashier. He placed a fifty dollar bill on the counter and then, thanks to the inattention of the cashier, was able to substitute a twenty dollar bill for it before the cashier picked it up. The price for their groceries was nineteen dollars and the cashier gave the father thirty dollars change – on a twenty dollar bill. But, instead of walking out of the store thirty dollars richer, the father instead calmly (though obviously making his point) pointed out to the cashier his mistake and returned to him the $30 that he had, in his inattention, incorrectly given.

As they walked out the door, several other customers who had experienced a similar irritation with the cashier said to the father: “You should have kept the $30. It would have taught the slob a lesson!”

When they were in the car, his son said: “Dad, that was neat!” Then, without any prodding from his father, the son began to talk and to share with him a lot of things about his life, including how school was going, how basketball was going, and what he had been watching on television. The father, for his part, said little and, in fact, heard little for he was thinking: “If my son had not been with me, I would have kept the thirty dollars! Moreover, my wife is wrong, my son doesn’t need me … I need him!”

We need our children, and for more reasons than this story, good though it is, makes obvious. Our children raise us, not vice versa. It is they who put a rope around us and take us where we would rather not go, namely, into an adulthood and into a selflessness that, without them, we would never attain. We become adult by having and raising children. This, perhaps more than anything else, moves us beyond being children ourselves. Why is this so?

Some of the reasons are more obvious than others: When we are raising children it is more natural for us to stop thinking of ourselves as children, when we are forced to respond to others’s needs we tend to be less focused on our own. Raising children forces us to live a certain virtue. It is conscriptive adulthood; we mature, almost against our will. But there is a deeper dynamic operative too: Children have the power to fire within us the deepest and most powerful surges of love that we can ever experience in this life. More so than does romantic love or the love that we have when we get involved in causes, love for our children is a love that can take us beyond ourselves, break our narcissism, and let us genuinely imitate (weak though it may be) the life-giving love of God.

There is something in children, some combination of helplessness, dependence, innocence, trust, vulnerability, simplicity, playfulness, and simple physical beauty that opens the heart to selflessness in a way that our other loves do not. That’s why celibacy can be dangerous: Perhaps there is nothing in this world as powerful to break selfishness as is the simple act of looking at our own children. In our love for our children we are given a privileged avenue to feel as God feels – to burst in unselfishness, in fire, in joy, in delight, and in the desire to let another’s life be more real and important than my own.