RonRolheiser,OMI

Our Unfinished Symphony

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“In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.”

Karl Rahner wrote those words and to not understand them is to risk letting restlessness become a cancer in our lives. What does it mean to be tormented by the insufficiency of everything attainable? How are we tortured by what we cannot have?

We all experience this daily. In fact, for all but a few privileged, peaceful times in our lives, this torment is like an undertow in everything we experience. Beauty makes us restless when it should give us peace. The love we experience with our spouse does not fulfil our longings. The relationships we have within our families seem too petty and domestic to be fulfilling. Our job is inadequate to the dream we have for ourselves. The place where we live seems boring in comparison to other places. We are too restless to sit peacefully at our own tables, sleep peacefully in our own beds, and be at ease in our own skins.

When we feel this way, our lives will forever seem too small for us and we live them in such a way that we are always waiting, waiting for something or somebody to come along and change things so that real life, as we imagine it, might begin.

I remember a story a man once shared with me. He was forty-five years old, had a good marriage, was the father of three healthy children, had a secure, if unexciting job, and lived in a peaceful, if equally unexciting neighborhood. Yet, to use his words, he was never fully inside of his own life. Here’s his confession:

For most of my life, and especially for the past twenty years, I have been too restless to really live my own life. I have never really accepted what I am – a forty-five- year-old man, working in a grocery store in a small town, married to a good woman, aware that my marriage will never fulfil my deep sexual yearnings, and aware that, despite all my daydreaming, I’m not going anywhere, I will never fulfill my dreams, I will only be here, as I am now, in this small town, in this particular marriage, with these people, in this body, for the rest of my life. I will only grow older, balder, and physically less healthy and attractive. But what’s sad in all of this is that, from every indication, I have a good life. I’m lucky really. I’m healthy, loved, secure, in a good marriage, living in a country of peace and plenty. Yet, inside of myself I’m too restless to ever fully appreciate my own life, my wife, my kids, my job, and the place where I live. I’m always at some other place inside of myself, too restless to really be where I’m at, too restless to live in my own house, too restless to be inside of my own skin.”

That is what the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable feels like in actual life. But Rahner’s insight is more than diagnostic, it is prescriptive too. It points out how we might move beyond that torment, beyond the cancer of restlessness. How do we do that?

Precisely by understanding and accepting that here in this life all symphonies remain unfinished. By understanding and accepting that the reason we are tormented is not because we are over-sexed, neurotic, ungrateful persons who are too greedy to be satisfied with this life. Not that. The deep reason is that we are congenitally over-charged and over-built for this earth. Built that way by God. We are infinite spirits living inside a finite world, hearts made for union with everything and everybody but meeting only mortal persons and mortal things. Small wonder we have problems with insatiability, daydreams, loneliness, and restlessness! We are Grand Canyons without a bottom. Nothing, short of union with all that is, can ever fill that void.

To be tormented by restlessness is to be human. Moreover, in accepting that we are human and that therefore, for us, there can be no finished symphony this side of eternity, we can become more easeful in our restlessness. Why? Because we now know that everything comes to us with an undertow of restlessness and inadequacy, and that this is normal and true for everyone.

 As Henri Nouwen once put it: Here, in this world, there is no such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy.  Rather, in every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance.

Peace and restfulness can come to us only when we accept that limitation within the human condition because it is only then that we will stop demanding that life – our spouses, our families, our friends, our jobs, our vocations and vacations – give us something that they cannot give, namely, clear-cut pure joy, full consummation.

When is Fear Healthy?

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Why don’t we preach hellfire anymore? That’s a question asked frequently by a lot of sincere religious people who worry that too many churches, priests, and ministers have gone soft on sin and are over-generous in speaking about God’s mercy. The belief here is that more people would come to church and obey the commandments if we preached the raw truth about mortal sin, God’s wrath, and the danger of going to hell when we die. The truth will set you free, these folks assert, and the truth is that there is real sin and there can be real and eternal consequences for sin. The gate to heaven is narrow and the road to hell is wide. So why aren’t we preaching more about the dangers of hellfire?

What’s valid in this kind of reasoning is that preaching about mortal sin and hellfire can be effective. Threats work. I know. I grew up subjected to this kind of preaching and admit that it affected my behavior. But that effect was ambivalent: On the one side, it left me scared enough before God and life itself to fear ever straying very far morally or religiously. On the other side, it also left me religiously and emotionally crippled in some deep ways. Simply stated, it’s hard to be intimate friends with a God who frightens you and it’s not good religiously or otherwise to be overly timid and afraid before life’s sacred energies. Fear of divine punishment and fear of hellfire, admittedly, can be effective as a motivator.

So why not preach fear? Because it’s wrong, pure and simple. Brainwashing and physical intimidation are also effective, but they are antithetical to love. You don’t enter a love relationship because you feel afraid or threatened. You enter a love relationship because you feel drawn there by love.

More importantly, preaching divine threat dishonors the God in whom we believe. The God who Jesus incarnates and reveals is not a God who puts sincere, good-hearted people into hell against their will on the basis of some human or moral lapse which in our religious categories we deem to be a mortal sin. For example, I still hear this threat being preached in our churches: If you miss going to church on Sunday it’s a mortal sin and should you die without confessing it, you will go to hell.

What kind of God would underwrite this kind of a belief? What kind of God would not give sincere people a second chance, a third one, and seventy-seven times seven more chances if they remain sincere?  What kind of God would say to a repentant person in hell: “Sorry, but you knew the rules! You’re repentant now, but it’s too late. You had your chance!”

A healthy theology of God demands that we stop teaching that hell can be a nasty surprise waiting for an essentially good person. The God we believe in as Christians is infinite understanding, infinite compassion, and infinite forgiveness. God’s love surpasses our own and if we, in our better moments, can see the goodness of a human heart despite its lapses and weaknesses, how much more so will God see this. We have nothing to fear from God.

Or have we? Doesn’t scripture tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? How does that square with not being afraid of God?

There are different kinds of fear, some healthy and some not. When scripture tells us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the kind fear it is talking about is not contingent upon feeling threatened or feeling anxious about being punished. That’s the kind of fear we feel before tyrants and bullies. There is however a healthy fear that’s innate within the dynamics of love itself. This kind of fear is essentially proper reverence, that is, when we genuinely love someone we will fear betraying that love, fear being selfish, fear being boorish, and fear being disrespectful in that relationship. We will fear violating the sacred space within which intimacy occurs. Metaphorically we will sense we are standing on holy ground and that we’d best have our shoes off before that sacred fire.

Moreover, scripture tells us that when God appears in our lives, almost always, the first words we will hear are: “Don’t be afraid!” That’s because God is not a judgmental tyrant but a loving, creative, joy-filled energy and person. As Leon Bloy reminds us, joy is the most infallible indication of God’s presence.

The famous psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, was once asked by a young fundamentalist: “Have you been saved?’ His answer: “Saved? I’m still trying to figure out how to be spent!” We honor God not by living in fear lest we offend him, but in reverently spending the wonderful energy that God gives us. God is not a law to be obeyed, but a joyous energy within which to spend ourselves generatively.

Being Rich, But in a Hurry

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Several years ago, I went with another priest to visit a mutual friend. Our friend, a successful businessman, was living on the top floor of a very expensive apartment overlooking the river valley in the city of Edmonton. At one point during our visit, he took us out on his balcony to show us the view. It was spectacular. You could see for miles, the entire river valley and much of the city.

We were in awe and told him so. Thanking us for the compliments, he shared that, sadly, he  seldom came out on the balcony to drink in the view. Here are some of his words: “You know, I should give this place to some poor family who could enjoy it. I could live in a basement apartment since I never have time to enjoy this. I can’t remember when I last came out here to watch a sunset or a sunrise. I’m always too busy, too pressured, too preoccupied. This place is wasted on me. About the only time I come out here is when I have visitors and want to show them the view.”

Jesus once said something that might be paraphrased this way: What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and are forever too much in a hurry and too pressured to enjoy it.

When Jesus talks about gaining the whole world and suffering the loss of your own soul, he isn’t first of all referring to having a bad moral life, dying in sin, and going to hell. That’s the more radical warning in his message. We can lose our soul in other ways, even while we are good, dedicated, moral people. The man whose story I just shared is indeed a very good, dedicated, moral, and kind man. But he is, by his own humble admission, struggling to be a soulful person, to be more inside the richness of his own life because when you live under constant pressure and are perennially forced to hurry, it isn’t easy to get up in the morning and say: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.” We are more likely to say: “Lord, just get me through this day!”

As well, when Jesus tells us that it’s difficult for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he isn’t just referring to material riches, money, and affluence, though these are contained in the warning. The problem can also be a rich agenda, a job or a passion that so consumes us that we rarely take the time (or even think of taking the time) to enjoy the beauty of a sunset or the fact that we are healthy and have the privilege of having a rich agenda.

Full disclosure, this is one of my struggles. During all my years in ministry, I have always been blessed with a rich agenda, important work, work that I love. But, when I’m honest, I need to admit that during these years I have been too hurried and over pressured to watch many sunsets (unless, like my friend, I was pointing out their beauty to a visitor).

I have tried to break out of this by conscripting myself to regular times of quiet prayer, regular walks, retreats, and several weeks of vacation each year. That has helped, no doubt, but I’m still too much of an addict, pressured and hurried almost all the time, longing for space for quiet, for prayer, for sunsets, for a hike in a park, for a glass of wine or scotch, for a contemplative cigar. And I recognize an irony here: I’m hurrying and tiring myself out in order to carve out some time to relax!

I’m no Thomas Merton, but I take consolation in the fact that he, a monk in a monastery, was often too busy and pressured to find solitude. In search of that, he spent the last few years of his life in hermitage, away from the main monastery except for Eucharist and the Office of the Church each day. Then, when he found solitude, he was surprised at how different it was from the way he had imagined it. Here’s how he describes it in his diary:

Today I am in solitude because at this moment “it is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my ancestors lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion about my life, especially so about it as mine …  I must learn to live so as to forget program and artifice.”

And to check out the sunset from my balcony!

When we are rich, busy, pressured, and preoccupied, it’s hard to taste one’s own coffee.