What Is Your Art?

I often find myself saying to someone--and most especially a young person--”Everyone needs an art.  What is your art?”  More often than not, the one with whom I am speaking looks surprised, or blinks, or says, “I do not know,” or “I don’t have an art.”  But some say, “Sure I have an art.  It is...”

It seems to me that one way to express our human task is for each of us to live our own life artfully, playfully, creatively, with imagination, purpose, zeal, and love.  No one can live your life for you; you must do it for yourself.  And an essential part of living one’s own life is to approach life and one’s duties with playfulness.  Life without play is not life, but lifelessness.  Animals play.  Human beings play, and those who live well, who are good human beings, are playful and joyful in their tasks.

Each person needs an art.  By art I mean a more or less deliberate and thoughtful way of being playful.  Play can be wholly unstructured and spontaneous; to become art, play needs thoughtfulness, a degree of ordered intelligence, a sense of purpose in what one is doing.  

A truly great and creative artist communicates freshness, joy, playfulness, as well as thoughtfulness and control, in his or her art.  If it is mere haphazard noise or motion or form, it is not art; if it is not done with playfulness and a zest for life, it may be art, but it would be dull and simply unimaginative.

When in your life are you most you?  What do you do that reminds you of you, or makes you feel more alive, more joyful, more awake?  I think that in those activities that you truly enjoy and feel alive, you are being playful, and possibly exercising an art.  

Consider a real artist:  The music of J.S. Bach is not only the most learned music I know, but the most creative and playful.  Having mastered every aspect of the science and art of music, Bach is free to explore all sorts of possibilities, and ever delights in fresh forms, sounds, ways to express his faith in God and sheer joy in life.  For those without ears to hear, Bach’s music is “boring,” and that means that the hearer is not attuned to the play, the spiritual freedom, the intellectual self-overcoming that is ever real and alive in Bach’s music.  Bach’s music is still utterly alive because he poured his playful life into the music, and did so with consummate skill and artistry.  

Playfulness keeps us vital and refreshed; one’s art is a thoughtful and considered form of play.  When you “do your art,” you feel at home, alive, awake, joyful, and you have an inner awareness that you are doing what you ought to do, you are being true to yourself--regardless of whether or not another person appreciates what you are doing.  Art is its own justification or purpose, and does not really require another’s praise or even appreciation, although as human beings we like to communicate and share our arts with others.  But a genuine artist would find ways to do his or her art even “on a desert island,” “far from the madding crowd.”  

Art is not achieved at once or suddenly.  Rather, it takes work, effort, concentration, and attuning to the Spirit who brings forth what is good and beautiful.  The inner eye must be opened, and see the beautiful in things or beings around oneself, and respond.  For example, when a photographer is moved by beauty in nature, he feels drawn to compose the kind of photograph that will do justice to the beauty glimpsed, or even make it more accessible to the viewer.  He needs to decide what to include and what to exclude, how to create a balanced and beautiful photograph given the material presented around him in nature.  In a sense, the photographer is doing homage to the God of beauty present around and within him, and he wants to honor this divine Beauty in his photograph.  

Art honors the Artist of All.  It testifies to the Spirit’s activity to keep bringing goodness and beauty into being.  Art is creative, because the Creator is working through the artist in the act of creating--whether or not the artist is aware of the divine power at work.  

To say that everyone needs an art means this:  Each human being must find his or her way to honor the Creator by being creatively free, to honor Beauty by bringing beauty into being.  Art ennobles life, it spiritualizes life.  There is no real spiritual life that is not lived freely and creatively, and hence playfully, and--with some practical knowledge and skill--without expressing itself in an art.  When a human being does his or her art, the Creator is glorified and worshiped, and the human being becomes at once more truly human and more divine.  Art lifts one out of the narrowness of the self-enclosed soul, and moves the soul into union with the Artist of all.  

That We May Share In The Divinity Of Christ

Elizabeth asked, “Who am I, that the mother of my LORD should come to me?” Who am I, who are you, that the mother, and brothers, and sisters of our LORD should come to us? Who are we that the LORD God Almighty--

   He Who is in the Beginning,
   Who is the Beginning,
   He Who is and was and will be forever,
   He Who IS the great I AM,
   He Who brings forth all out of nothing,
   Who is the One in Whom all have their being,
   Whose wisdom guides all things through all,
   Who brings each and all to perfection in Him,
   Who is Life, and the Life is the light of human beings,
   He in Whom is light beyond our mortal sight,
   And in Whom is no darkness at all,
   Who is the complete Good and the source of all goodness,
   Who is Beauty Itself and is joyfully seen in all that is beautiful,
   Who is pure Love, and Whose love lives in all who love--

Who indeed are we creatures, that the LORD God Almighty should come to us, not only in power and majesty, but as a helpless infant, cold and hungry, needing love?

   “O great Mystery, and wonderful Sacrament,
   that animals should see the LORD
   lying in a manger.”

Let us worship and pray to this awesome and mysterious One:

   “O God, who wonderfully created the dignity of human nature,
   and still more wonderfully restored it,
   (and who wonderfully created the dignity of every creature)
   grant, we humbly pray,
   that we may share in the divinity of Christ,
   who humbled Himself to share in our humanity....”

  “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us...”

Present Yourselves As A Living Sacrifice To God

Occasionally I hear comments on various matters of worship and practice at our community Masses. I may make fuller comments available online or in a hand-out, but let a few remarks suffice for the present. At the outset, please understand that I am a Benedictine, not a diocesan priest, and Benedictines have a distinctive approach to liturgy that may differ from that of most parish priests. All of us need to respect liturgical norms of the Church and diocesan policy; but most importantly, we approach liturgy as a work of the Holy Spirit, who sets us free, and who seeks to build us up in charity.

For those who want to know the details of church rules, you may consult the diocesan website or read the “General Instruction of the Roman Missal” (GIRM) available online. I believe that approaching worship through lists of rules is to proceed in the wrong way. Indeed, never once in all of my years in the monastery did I hear our Abbot or any priest or monk refer to “rules” for worship. No one ever talked about the GIRM. Benedictines learn to pray, in solitude and liturgically, by doing it, and maintaining the living community’s practices. Custom and practice matter far more than abstract rules, and must always be respected. Rules are useful as guidelines to correct serious abuses. I have seen faithful and generally respectful worship in our communities. The only “abuse” I felt duty bound to correct was to remind the faithful that hosts are made of wheat and water only, in continuity with the tradition of Jewish bread for Passover (matzah). At Mass we celebrate the New Passover of Christ from death to life eternal, and our movement into the “promised land” of God’s Presence with our LORD.

I recommend keeping at least these two thoughts in mind for our common worship. First, from St. Paul in Romans 12: “I implore you, by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (or: reasonable service). Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern the will of God: what is good and acceptable and perfect.” As I see it, these words are the best general statement of the essence of Christian worship in the New Testament.

The second quotation to keep in mind comes from St. Augustine (c. 400), and should help us keep perspective, and not get lost in nit-picking: “In essentials, unity; in non-essential matters, freedom; in all things, charity.” Essentials of our faith are very
few; non-essentials are many. Charity should ever guide our worship and lives.

Notes On Cultivating A Spiritual Life In An Ecumenical Age, Part III

“The unexamined life is not worthy of a human being.”  To examine oneself means that one must not merely look for “sins,” for serious short-coming and faults, but perhaps even more for the thoughts, beliefs, distortions, habits of thinking that promote a way of life that is less than fully human, less than truly alive, less than a life lived in communion with the One Who Is, which we by tradition call “God.”

It would seem evident to anyone with “eyes to see” that we live in a culture that is spiritually dying, even as there are signs of renewal and life.  If one seeks to live a spiritual life, how can one not sympathize with the prophet Isaiah’s lament:  “Woe is me, for I am lost; I am a man of unclean lips, living in the midst of a people of unclean lips.  For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6).  Or what human being, with any kind of spiritual sensitivity, does not share the exasperation of the prophet Jeremiah:  “The false prophets cry `Peace, peace,’ when in truth there is no peace.”  Spiritual decadence or corruption is readily found both within one’s own heart and in the culture in which we all share.

In the case of our American culture (or lack of culture), it is often the institutions which could and should be carriers of truth to help guide and form human beings that have become distorters of truth, corrupters of human beings, agents of spiritual lassitude, if not death.  It is not only the mass media that are to blame for the cultivation of so many unthinking, unawake souls, although surely television, movies, popular music, and so on, do indeed contribute to the spiritual diseases within our hearts and culture.  But the agents of education--from elementary schools, high schools, colleges, graduate and professional schools--surely do their part in imparting false beliefs and distortions of reality, rather than in helping to awaken human hearts to the beauty, truth, and goodness of reality.  As a professional educator for many years of my life, I can say without doubt that all too often education is far more about helping young persons get jobs and fit into this culture of corruption, rather than providing the tools they need to sift through lies, distortions, false opinions, habits of non-thinking.  “Education” in America is far closer to propaganda for the masses than most of us seem able to see or to admit.  How often, and to what extent, are young people taught to examine themselves for the ignorance in them, for the lies in their own souls, for their bad habits, for their lack of wisdom and insight, and to root out illusions and habits of sheer mental laziness?  All-too-often, young people are coddled and warped by the belief that “you are good just the way you are,” and “you are free to cultivate your own values,” and “your reality is whatever you choose to make of it.”  Education in America has been impoverishing spirits and minds far too often, rather than teaching human beings how little they know, how poorly informed they are, how ignorant they really are, and how much work each must do so that his or her life is truly “worthy of a human being.”  What young people need is assistance in developing habits of critical thinking, overcoming their own personal weaknesses, seeking truth rather than mere opinion, questioning what they are taught rather than swallowing opinions as truth.  Education in America has been cultivating spiritually and mentally challenged human beings for many years, and the results should be obvious to anyone who tries to examine the results without bias.  We are the products of such poor and failing education.  And we are lacking.  “Know thyself.”

But mass media and education are not the only carriers of poor formation, distorters of human lives.  American political life, which could and should be a calling for more noble men and women, has clearly become the haunt of jackals and wild beasts more interested in seeking their own advantage, in deceiving the masses with false hopes and promises, with preferring power to the public good.  As for truth, expect little from political leaders--especially on the national scale--and you will not be so disappointed.

Sad to say, religious institutions of all sorts share in the process of misguiding and impoverishing human spirits.  Although there are exceptions in the world of media, education, politics, and “religion,” it has been common to see that “religions” cultivate mindless belief instead of living faith, institutional life rather than independence of thought and judgment, conformity to rules and practices rather than freedom of heart and growth of intellect.  So many people have “found religion,” and so few seem to be in search of God.  And that is pathetic, to say the least.  

“Because you say, `I see,’ your blindness remains.”  

Notes On Cultivating a Spiritual Life In An Ecumenical Age, Part II

What nourishes the human mind, heart, spirit?  What builds up a human being personally, mentally, spiritually?  

How often is this question even raised?  How much more time is spent talking about what builds up the body or promotes health of body?  I have seen many ads on television for “body building,” and perhaps none for “soul building.”  As a people in history, have we not badly neglected the cultivation of our minds and hearts?  Have you and I, dear soul, not neglected the cultivation of our minds?

What nourishes or refreshes the mind?  Let’s consider that simple question.  It is personal, and answers will and must vary.  But we share a common human nature, so there will be a strong similarity among our answers, if we are truly considering what nourishes us, and not just “what we like to do.”  For example, some folks clearly “like to shop,” but one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that shopping is life-giving, although at times it may provide a needed and temporary distraction from one’s mental or personal problems.  But shopping, just as mindless television watching, can become an attempt to escape from one’s problems, or simply to escape from reality.

What nourishes the mind?  First, telling the truth, speaking the truth from one’s heart to the best of one’s ability is perhaps utterly basic and essential.  Speaking the truth is to nourishing the mind what walking is to keeping the body healthy.  A person who deceives himself or others, and you regularly avoids speaking the truth from the heart, has a badly formed character, and is even now, in the present, failing to nourish his or her life in God.  We must breathe air to live, we must eat and drink to live, we must sleep to live, and we must tell the truth to be alive in spirit.  A lying or evasive mind is spiritually dead or dying.  Again, speaking the truth is perhaps the most basic action to develop one’s spiritual life.  

What nourishes the mind?  As one must speak the truth to be alive spiritually, so one must listen to truth, seek the truth, discern and decide between untruth and truth, reject errors, flee from lying, weed out of one’s mind false beliefs, lies, errors.  Truth nourishes the mind.  And what, in short, is truth?  Truth arises from communion of the mind with reality.  What is real is real, and must be respected and revered, or else one is breaking from truth.  No one who hates or dislikes reality can know the truth, or speak the truth.  Well has it been said that truth is the conformity of the mind with reality.  The mind that knows truth is conforming to what is real, rather than merely to what one happens to want or like or already believe. 

Hence, knowing the truth, so essential for a good human life, for spiritual life, requires that one constantly seek to conform to reality, and not to what one already thinks, believes, wants.  How does one conform his or her mind to reality?  

Some things that keep the mind from conforming to reality are evident:  drug and alcohol abuse; living lives of deception, distortion, dishonesty, theft; an habitual preference for what one already believes than for what is true, or real; immersion of the mind in images, stories, beliefs, without doing the hard work of seeking to “test the spirits, to see if they are from God.”  From my experience, both mass education and much of “institutional religion” are too often confirming people in their prejudices, wants, and lazy mental habits, and not stirring them up to seek truth.  On the contrary:  To conform to reality, one must constantly sift through his or her beliefs, opinions, “values,” and thoughts to see which ones are true according to reality, and which are just vague, empty, or distorted opinions about reality.  No one can grow spiritually without a constant and sustained effort to seek the truth, to reject falsehoods and beliefs (however long held and dear to one’s heart), and to choose again and again to love the truth that is real, rather than untruths that are mere illusions.  

“The search for truth begins with one’s awareness of existence in untruth.”  No human being can cultivate a rich spiritual life without becoming painfully aware that much in oneself is not true or real, but a kind of habitual living in unexamined untruth.  In the immortal words of Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worthy of a human being.”  A demanding, even ruthless examination of one’s own life is for every human being the essential foundation for any genuine spiritual life.  

A Note On Spiritual Life And It's Requirements In An Ecumenical Age, Part I

The first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John remain an excellent beginning point for a discussion of spiritual life:  “What are you seeking?” 

What a person seeks, and the amount of energy put into that search, are highly indicative of the person’s character, spiritual interests, desires, needs.  

How do you spend the bulk of time not required by work and personal duties?  What one does in “free time” shows what one seeks, and what one seeks shows a person’s “spiritual life.”

From observation of myself and others, I think that most of us need wiser and more beneficial use of our “free time” to cultivate a rich and rewarding spiritual life.  We wither because we are not nourished.  We are not nourished because we do not know what will truly provide the food we need for spiritual growth.  Nor do we truly know our needs for wisdom, truth, beauty, goodness, divine love.  

As a whole, the American people, our people, use most of their free time for nearly anything but spiritual growth and development.  What do we do?  We “entertain ourselves,” we “shop until we drop,” we “watch sports,” we “surf the net,” we “hang out in bars,” or we “make some money.”  Basic necessities of life must be met, but most of us have hours each week when we are free from required duties or from “making a living.”  How we use that free time is the problem.  What is “leisure,” and how does one use it?

Granted that some use of “free time” may profitably be spent in entertainment or “relaxing” in one way or another, the substantial part of free time could and should be the opportunity to cultivate one’s spirit; to grow in wisdom and learning; to learn to live well and happily; to commune with nature, with dear friends, with God.  

For many people, it seems, participating regularly in freely chosen “religious services” can be a form of cultivating one’s spiritual life.  But simply attending a service, and not being attentive, or prayerful, or present in mind, or nourished by the experience, may be more of an habitual duty than a true exercise in spiritual development.  “Going to church” is no guarantee that one is growing spiritually as a human being.  In fact, one may simply be inculcating habits of laziness, or letting the mind drift without focus or purpose.  

“What are you seeking?”  What ought one seek?  And how?  And what means are available to help us in the search?  

Do Animals Have Souls? Do They "Go To Heaven"?

Several years ago, while eating a meal with three other Catholic priests, the claim was made that “animals do not have souls.” I had been praising my dog, Rummy, for his high intelligence and most gentle personality. In response, the three priests firmly asserted that “in Catholic doctrine, animals do not have souls, and they do not go to heaven.” The response I gave did not impress the priests, for they clung to their position. We need to be less dogmatic, more open on such questions.

Here, in brief, is my response: First, I do not take my bearings on such controversial questions from supposed “Catholic teaching” (which regarding animals is highly diverse over centuries); rather, we need to consult experience examined by reason. Second, it is very odd, if not sheerly contradictory, to say that “animals do not have souls.” The priests with whom I was speaking all knew Latin, so they should have known better. “Animal” is derived from the Latin word “anima,” which means “soul.” According to ancient understanding, preserved in Latin, animals are beings having soul (anima). The evidence is that they are self-moving and feeling, and give evidence of some thinking. In the case of dogs, they can reason about cause and effect, and clearly are capable of making choices. To claim that they “have no souls” denies experience.

Now, do dogs and such creatures “go to heaven”? Do human beings “go to heaven”? For the present, let this suffice: All life is in God, who is “not the God of the dead, but of the living.” To live is to share in what we call God. To die is a cessation of biological processes. If any creature lives beyond death--as we surely trust we do--it is not because of some power of their own, but because of God. Each lives by God’s free gift. And consider the words of Pope John Paul: “When God gives life, He gives it forever.” Only to human beings? Why? I put it this way: In God each being lives forever, for God is forever. “Because I live, you will live,” as Jesus said. To exclude non-human creatures from God’s gift seems arrogantly human-centered to me.

As we approach Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation, please reflect on the humble wisdom of a beautiful medieval poem, known as the “Magnum Mysterium,” “the great mystery.” I am longing to set this to music:

O great Mystery, and wonderful Sacrament,
that animals should see the LORD
lying in a manger.

A Note On Spiritual Preparation

One often hears that “Advent is a time of spiritual preparation,” and so it should be. (Indeed, every moment of our lives should be a time of preparing for God.) But what is this “spiritual preparation,” and what is one suppose to prepare for?

Perhaps the prophet Amos answered that “what for” most concisely: “O Israel, prepare to meet your God.” In light of Christ, we know that the goal of human life is a complete union with God, “I living in you, you living in Me.” Along the way to complete union, each of us is offered opportunities to encounter the true and living God. The moments of divine-human encounter may be rare or happen more often, but they are life-transforming. In Advent the Church invites us to concentrate our minds and hearts on awaiting our complete union with God, and preparing to meet him here and now, as the LORD wills--and we cooperate.

What is a fitting “spiritual preparation”? “Be watchful,” “pray,” “keep alert,” for “even now the axe is laid to root of the tree.” Recall that in last week’s Gospel, we heard Jesus tell us, Watch!” But he did not tell you what to watch for, or how to watch. He left that utterly open: “Be attentive!” And then we have the classic call, “Repent, for the Reign of God is at hand.” Let’s flesh those words out a little: “Change your heart, your attitude, your ways, because God’s Presence is here and now. Open up to it.” Consider, too, the negative preparation that each must go through in life’s trials and preparations: giving up our illusions, our false expectations, our insistence that God dance to our tunes, our foolish attempts to force God into history. It is, rather, for us to adjust our ways to the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty, and not seek to manipulate God by magic spells, illusory beliefs, selfish demands, special words. And that spiritual work is far more demanding than we may have yet understood.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Listen, open your heart, attend to His Presence. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Without the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit, you and I cannot open up to the Divine Presence, to live in God and for God. By the Spirit we “give up childish ways” and “enter into the joy of our LORD.” Easy to say, but in reality, “costing nothing less than everything.”