Spiraling

Truth does not come at once or whole, although it can be sensed at once, as whole. Truth comes through a spiraling process of inquiry, in which the sought is present leading and pulling the search. One must return, in effect, again and again to the most simple, the most basic, but in returning, it is known better than before. One cannot linger here, but most move on, spiraling, through what may feel like a labyrinth, but at times, it opens up to wide and astonishing vistas. Again, only for moments, as one must move further, spiraling into dark tunnels, in which nothing is known, but hoping to gain light. It will come when it comes. Our task is to keep moving, continue searching, never to suppose that we have reached the sought-for, even though it was here all the time, causing the search as that which is desired, and hoped-to-be-known, or partially known. The end is always present, and sought. Our task is to seek endlessly, for that is our nature itself: human being the seeker of that which is always and ever present.

On Static And Dynamic Religion

 

                                                    Some Preliminary Thoughts
What I write is intended as a thought exercise, as an opportunity to wrestle with a few thoughts that have emerged into consciousness. These brief notes are not intended as a critique or as a guide for reform in the Christian churches. They are meant as a freely roving experiment to move towards truth, towards God beyond all that we are and know.

I use the word “religion” here advisedly, or tentatively. It is not a word I often use, because it is not clarifiable. The word “religion” is a term in popular usage, but because it is not really clarifiable, it is too vague for more strict philosophical analysis. “Religion” was a symbol coined by the Roman thinker, Cicero, and can be applied to all sorts of phenomena, beliefs, actions. The term may be useful as an approximation, however, and gives some initial understanding of what I seek to explore in these brief notes: some qualities of “religious” phenomena—of some structures that emerged over time out of the gospel movement that initiated the Christian faith.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that I found such a phrase as appears in the title to this essay (“static and dynamic religion”) either somewhere in Whitehead’s writings, or more likely, in Bergson’s famous Two Sources of Morality and Religion, a book which I have not read, but skimmed over years ago. Hence, I claim no originality in the theme itself, although the way I develop it will come from my present thinking. These thoughts are incomplete and tentative.

                                        1 A static view of reality and of matters of faith:
                                                   The Case of the Catholic Church

It seems to me that the so-called “Catholic religion,” as it has emerged since the early Middle Ages, and as it developed most of its present structures during the Medieval period of European history, is largely a product of static thinking. By static thinking I mean an overwhelming preoccupation with the supposed eternal and unchanging at the expense of the experienced realm of a reality in constant flux. Static thinking is grounded on a predominantly dualistic conception of reality, in which the realm of being is essentially separated from what becomes, or changes; the “heavenly realm” is understood as fixed and eternal, the “sublunar” world, and concretely our Earth, is understood as a realm of change. The attempt within emerging Christianity was to found a degree of heaven on earth, by establishing unchanging institutions. The Church was understood to be the Kingdom of God on earth, against which “the gates of hell could not prevail.” The Catholic structures embody desires for fixity and emotional security in social forms, in institutions, in dogmas, in the Sacraments, in modes of worship, even in its places of worship. The spirit at work in Medieval and modern Catholicism is, for the most part, a force favoring and protecting stability, or as little social-political-noetic-spiritual change as possible. These Catholic structures aim to preserve and to protect the status quo in the Church, and in the lives of the believers. They are intended to be rocks in the swirling stream of human existence “in this passing world.” The primary or at least overwhelming goal of this Catholic spirit, this static movement, is not so much holiness or growth in the Spirit, or a developing union with God, but the maintaining of what the Spirit helped to form in times past. The Catholic spirit in effect freezes the Spirit’s past movements and achievements into a kind of eternal, non-changing present.

According to this conception of the Catholic religion as giving a high priority to the static, the stable, the rigid, one can consider briefly its major institutions and teachings. First, consider the predominant conception of God as the “Almighty,” or “All-powerful Father.” There is in reality no empirical basis for assuming that God or the gods are “all-powerful.” The conception of the “Almighty” is not a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, but a conceptual leap of understanding, a leap out of the truth as experienced into a truth imagined and desired. “All-powerful,” and “unchanging,” God as the Beginning of all things, as the End conceived as a final state—these are all static conceptions of the Divine, abstracted and removed from concrete human experience. No one has experienced God as “all-powerful,” or “unchanging,” and yet Catholic dogma would encourage the believers to entertain such conceptions. The “afterlife” is generally depicted as a “heaven,” as some kind of life without change in any form, with fixed perfection;
again, there is no concrete experience on which such an imagined state of perfection can be truly grounded. As God is understood to be “perfect,” so “perfection” of the human being is imagined to be attainable in God beyond death.

Furthermore, the social structure of the Church is static and given to fixity, resisting any real or substantial change to the greatest extent possible. There are three estates in the Medieval Church, and one is not free to move from one to another. Medieval society had fixed estates, and so does the Medieval Church. Although a lay person may marry, the marriage is conceived as “indissoluble,” as a one-time event. (This contrasts with the apostolic tradition in the Orthodox churches, which allow for several marriages serially in time, before one is not permitted to marry again, and still share in the Sacramental life of the community). A lay person may become a religious in the church, or a member of the clergy (deacon, priest, bishop), but once the lay state has been abandoned for religious or clerical life, there is no turning back: one is fixed in place within religious life or clergy, or both. This notion of vows being rigidly fixed is not, of course, the only possible way of life. For example, a Buddhist monk takes numerous vows while living in community, but is free at any time to renounce the vows, to leave the monastery he or she made, and return to the lay state at any time. In the medieval Catholic conception, to the contrary, once a man or woman has taken vows, such vows are fixed, and unbreakable in law. Once again, free actions in time are treated as if eternal (as with priestly vows), or at least as permanent and binding until death (marriage and religious vows). Similarly, an ordained clergyman is not free to return to the lay state when he wishes, or when he should be released. Rather, the Catholic priest is statically fixed as a member of the clergy, even if he should no longer believe in God, or wish to be a disciple of Christ—or lives a deeply immoral and scandalous life, damaging to others. A priest is deemed to be a priest even when he acts in ways seriously contrary to the life of Christ. His status has been as rigidly fixed as the stars of the heavens were thought to be before Galileo and Kepler taught humanity that the heavens are themselves ever changing.

The medieval conception of the Catholic Sacraments also embodies a highly static conception of divine action. Baptism is understood as imparting a “character” which persists forever, into eternity. (Whatever this “character” is, I truly do not know, but leave it to theologians to explain, as they conceived it). During the “holy sacrifice of the Mass,” the priest-presumed to have been given a special “power” at ordination—is believed to “confect the Sacrament.” Then the “transubstantiated” elements may not be used for secular purposes afterwards (i.e., for bodily nourishment), but must either be poured into the earth (extra consecrated wine, the “Blood of Christ”), or, as the “consecrated host,” reserved in the Tabernacle for later distribution as Communion. The Communion elements and holy oils are understood to be statically fixed in their being after the religious service is completed. Their “transformed existence,” if we can use that expression, parallels the treatment of men as clergy, and women and men as religious in the Church: once vowed to God, always vowed to God.

Finally, consider briefly the issue of “Sacred Scriptures,” no doubt a conception early Christianity received from its first spiritual mother, Judaism. Once again, a highly static conception of truth and revelation shows up. Judaism had developed the conception of “sacred scriptures” as a fixed canon in response to existence in a culture bombarded by competing truths; it preserved Hebrew and Jewish experiences, even as it limited response and openness to a fuller truth. Similarly, Christian faithful and later Church authorities decided which writings were exclusively “canonical” (in the Sacred Book), and which were not accepted. Hence, the issue of a Sacred Book was presumably decided once and for all, closing off treating other texts as sacred that may come to light later, or be appreciated in the course of time. The notion of a sacred text also dulled the spiritual sense of ever-present attentiveness to the living Word, which is greater than formulated texts. Fixed truth takes precedence over the possibilities of emerging truths in time.

Succinctly we can say that the static God has static ministers, who confect static Sacraments, and instruct the faithful with a static Bible; what is required from the faithful is a static belief in the working of statically conceived “grace,” moving human beings towards the static perfection of an unchanging, static heaven. This is what I mean here by “static religion.”

One could press this theme further by showing ways in which Catholic Church teachings promoted a static view of the universe, with the earth, a body fixed in space, at the center. Or even more fundamentally, the way that God’s creative power is fixed as a past event, complete in a short span of time, as if God is not at work creating from moment to moment. For some fundamentalists in the Church, the “Second Coming” is fixed as a future event, as are the “four last things.” Rather than interpreted as activities always present, as part of an unfolding reality, events such as the last judgment, and heaven and hell, are fixed in a mythic, quasi-temporal, statically conceived future. Present reality is ignored to the extent that minds get absorbed in a static conception of the past, and an equally static and rigid conception of the future. The reality in which human beings actually live is overlooked for mythical objectifications.

                                         2 Towards a more dynamic view of reality and of God

Suppose one were to seek to understand matters of faith based on a more adequate view of reality, grounded not in fixed conceptions, but in reality as actually experienced? Suppose one were to approach matters of “faith and morals,” the stuff of “religion,” with a more dynamic conception of the Whole in which we participate with bodies and mental processes? In this section I attempt such a thought-experiment. Admittedly, my present offerings are elementary, perhaps facile; but one must begin somewhere if one is seeking to view reality by means of concepts and symbols more adequate to the task of exploration, and of right living. After all, we are not just chattering about indifferent matters, but seeking to understand reality, the divine Presence, and our place in the Whole. And we seek not only understanding, but living well and being at peace with what truly is, and with ourselves. In a phrase, we seek right understanding and right action in order to become more truly happy.

“Everything flows.” This familiar saying is one of the basic insights of Heracleitos of Ephesus, who flourished around 500 years before Christ. “Everything changes.” The philosopher, and indeed every human being, is conscious of himself as living in a dynamic, constantly changing world, in a reality with no fixed points, no certainties. “Everything” here means everything—all “being things,” using Heracleitos’ compact symbol. To the extent that one can speak intelligibly of reality, of the Whole, of “Everything” (Panta, or to pan in Greek), one is aware that each particular “being,” or “thing,” or “being-thing,” is from moment to moment undergoing all sorts of changes. What something is in one moment, it was not a moment ago, and will not be identically the next moment. All is ever changing. Indeed, one’s consciousness, one’s mind or soul, is not something given once and for all, not fixed, certain, or known. There is nothing absolute about consciousness, or about “oneself,” about the “I.” One does not know oneself with certainty, but discovers oneself gradually in the context of an ever-changing world, and as a living and changing part of what seems to be an ever-unfolding mystery. In knowing, one knows that far more is unknown than known, and what is known, is ever-changing, rendering partially obsolete the knowledge one gained even in the recent past. If one is truthful with oneself, nothing is known with certainty, and no thing is at once or forever what it is, or appears to be. There is no part of reality as experienced that is not changing itself and changing other things from moment to moment. One experiences processes, activities, changes, and not static persons, beings, things. Persons, beings, and things are approximations, relatively crude guesses of what is ever coming to be and passing away.

Nothing, no one, is experienced complete in itself, all at once, and known fully. Again in the words of Heracleitos, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Or as Plato developed this thought, “You cannot step into the same river once,” for in the very act of stepping, one is changing, and so is what one calls “the river.” The Whole, including all that one can experience or know in any way, is in constant flux. Every moment comes to be and passes away even before one can stop his flow of consciousness and think about the moment. It is now past, apparently never to return, for each moment is ever new. Again in Heracleitos’ symbolic language, “The sun is new every day.” Everything is ever new, fresh, alive.

A more dynamic faith would not aim at a “perfect God” who is “all powerful,” or “all-knowing,” or even “all good,” but be open to allow God to be whatever God is, and perhaps to become whatever God will become. Does God change? As a young man I asked the greatest philosopher I ever met, “Does God change?” His answer: “The best theologians do not know.” To claim that one knows that God does not change would assume that one knows all that there is to know about God—quite a claim for a limited being such as we find ourselves being. Borrowing from one such theologian, we can say that God is not God, or not a god, or a “divine being” in any intelligible way. What we call “God” refers to an experienced Presence at work in one’s consciousness, and apparently in everything and everyone experienced. What we call “God” is the source and end of reality, of goodness, of truth, albeit not the source in a statically-conceived past. God is not a being, but the present cause of being, the Agent working “above all, and in all, and through all,” to borrow a phrase from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. The divine is reality—or a “part” of reality—realizing itself in space-time. Such is one way to express the experience in basic (perhaps simplistic) words.

Faith must live and change, as the Divine is experienced as living and dynamic. One must grow with one’s changing faith: becoming more like the God who is good, loving, wise, creative. Faith is itself not static or given once and for all, and it is surely not a belief in words, teachings, creeds, or institutions. Religious faith, spiritual faith, is a loving and dimly knowing participation in the mystery we call “God.” Hence, faith is forever a going-out from what one has been or known, a venturing forth into the divine mystery. By faith one opens up to the Divine Presence, and trusts the One at work in all that is coming-to-be. The lack of faith leaves a person anxious, fearful, close-minded, untrusting, a play to darker forces such as hatred, ill-will, illusion, lust, greed. By faith one allows the goodness and truth of God to become actual here and now in this particular being. Faith is a conscious participation in the divine processes of creating, incarnating, judging, saving. Faith responds joyfully to the presence of God in the conscious, self-surrendering particular being (or “creature”). Through faith the divine incarnates itself here and now.

Here I seek to write from the perspective of faith, from a conscious participation in the Mind coming to be in a limited being. By “creating” we mean the divine Presence bringing greater order, creating beauty, greater truth. Creation is God realizing himself in space-time, or incarnating himself in finite matter and limited mind. In every “person” one meets God incarnating himself here and now; or in other words, one calls a “person” that in which one experiences the divine coming-to-be-present. Every living being, it seems, is to some extent experienceable as an incarnation of what we call “God.” Perhaps every atom, every molecule, is a partial realization of the divine creativity; I do not know, but raise the possibility. Is not all of reality as experienced charged with the creative goodness and beauty we call God? What is God doing with reality? Ordering it, “perfecting” it, making it more hospitable to goodness and truth. And God is at the same time allowing what exists in any way to share in eternity, to an extent; so reality is being eternalized or immortalized from within. (Is this true? It needs further exploring). Such a process of eternalizing the creature is called “sanctification,” “transfiguration,” or even “salvation.” The terms are many; the process is one.

                                                                    ***
If these thoughts are reasonably true, do they throw any light on what the Christian faith is or could be?

As God is dynamic and ever-creating, is there a need for a fixed body of “sacred text” to the exclusion of other writings? Are not all writings sacred to the extent that they are good and true, and move one to think about the Divine Presence, and to be more open to it, to embody God more truly in the world? Rather than have only “the Bible,” why not read many and various texts in order to grow in holiness and in wisdom? Why not consider “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” as worthy of one’s attention and respect? No one who has immersed himself in the Platonic dialogues, for example, could ever in good conscience deny that there is much in these writings that is philosophically and spiritually superior to much that one finds in the Bible. The same could be said of many Buddhist texts, or of various mystical writings generated in history. Reducing “God’s word” to one collection, to the bible, betrays both a misunderstanding of the nature of “God’s word,” and a blindness to the sheer wealth of spiritually enriching texts brought forth by the Spirit in human history. Or in other words: It is foolish to limit God’s ever-present revealing to a given text. Static religion borders on idolatry, or at least readily lends readily itself to it.

Then again, rather than seek to substitute a more “dynamic” approach to “religion” to the faith of the Churches as they emerged over centuries, why not suggest ways in which various embodiments can exist together? What good would be achieved by replacing the Judaeo-Christian Bible with some other collection of sacred books? Does it not make more sense to leave what has developed as it is, and by its side present other possibilities for due consideration? For example, a Christian could study books of the bible to gain insight into God and to live well and happily, but one could also be encouraged to study the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the writings of Heracleitos, the Platonic dialogues, and so on. Rather than replace static, fixed institutions with other would-be fixtures, it seems more reasonable to add, and not to replace. Above all, what is needed is to enter into a genuine faith-inspired openness to God, so that the living Word of God takes flesh in the mind of the hearer, in the human being responded to the God moving him or her to respond. In genuine faith, one is always listening for, and hearing, echoes of the divine Word.

Again, consider the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a case in point. The hierarchy as an institution developed slowly over nearly two-thousand years, and has become highly fixed and rigid in recent centuries. Some consider the hierarchy to be moribund. It does no good, I suggest, to try to change the ordering of Bishop-priest-deacon, or to insist that the institution be more inclusive, such as by ordaining married men or women. One could simply step back and let the hierarchy be what it has become. Perhaps it will continue to change, or again be open to change, but it does not make sense to spend one’s time and effort trying to change a fixed institution. It will happen when it happens; it will change when it changes. Or given the propensity of the Catholic hierarchy to resist changing itself, change will come only when the Pope in concert with a sufficient number of bishops should will such change. Without genuine change coming from the higher authorities, however, it would seem likely that the institutional Church as a whole will continue to wither, as it is unable and unwilling to adjust well to emerging reality.

Overall, however, we must keep this in mind: Our present task, the spiritual task for human beings, is not to seek to change an institution, but to open up to the freedom and joy of the Holy Spirit, of God’s life-giving Presence in our lives. So in addition to leaving the Churches alone with their sacred texts, priesthoods, clergies, ways of worship, rituals, sacraments, and so on, we explore another way: the way of fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding,” the mystical search for God.

What kinds of worship befits the living and true God, who is ever fresh, alive, creative, loving? There is a time for quiet meditation, or study, or contemplation in the ways practiced by Christian faithful, by mystics, Buddhists, and so on. There is a time for sharing gifts of the Holy Spirit in praying and singing together, for “hearing God’s word,” for examining one’s conscience and repenting, for looking after the needs of others. There is a time for a few men and women to gather to study and to discuss questions presented to us by present realities, and consider together the teachings of lovers of wisdom through the ages to help find reasonable solutions for our age. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

For my part, as I see it presently, the time is ripe for using one’s gifts, and for raising questions, exploring reality with the mind open to the Spirit. Now is an apt time for fides quaerens intellectum, for the Anselmian activity of “faith seeking understanding.” Now is the time to “wake from sleep,” to explore the “wonderful works of God” with true openness and a desire to serve God and creature in the modest way of right living. Now is the time to raise questions which have been neglected or forgotten. “Why is there something, why not nothing? And why is the world the way it is, and not some other way?” What is the meaning and purpose of human life? Why am I alive? What is the good at which I ought to aim? How can I, in some modest and quiet way, let the Creator work in me and through me? “Lord, what would you have me do?” How can I best serve the human beings in my life, here and now.

                                                                     ***
For the present, there is little I can add. Static structures, such as the hierarchy and the bible, the Sacraments and the liturgy, are a given, a part of reality as we find it. Attempting to change these structures that have emerged over time would seem to produce little good, and perhaps do damage to those who are highly attached to them. Many people have vested interests in these structures—power, prestige, jobs, money, emotional attachments. Even if these static structures are largely outdated, or overly limited in their abilities to assist human beings in their actual needs in our time, seeking to change them is largely a futile exercise. Let them be.

On the other hand, human beings need and deserve an ongoing sense of communion with the living, ever-creating, ever-renewing God. Rather than dabble with institutional reform, it seems to me, one needs to spend his or her efforts seeking to be response to the Presence of God stirring in one’s soul, and find effective ways to communicate to others the life of divine-human partnership. A dynamic religion may inhabit fixed and static institutions, leave them in place, and seek to engage people here and now with the God beyond all understanding. This God seems to be saying, as Jesus said of old, “Launch out into the deep, and lower your nets for a catch.” Jesus wasted no time trying to reform the static, fixed, even stultifying institutions of his contemporary Judaism. What Jesus did is a highly suggestive and fitting model: he embodied in his words and actions the truth and love of the real God, and presented this One to any and to all who would open their minds and hearts to His ever-flowing Presence.

"The Love Of Christ Controls Us"

The most frequently asked question I have heard over the years as a pastor, is:  “What is God’s will for my life?” Sometimes the concern is stated as a comment, rather than as a question, but it is equivalent: “I do not know what God is asking of me.” 
  
Awareness of not knowing is an essential part of growth in the wisdom of humility. There is much about ourselves, about one another, about our planet, about reality, and most assuredly about what we call “God” that we do not know. Ignorance is part of our human condition—even though many pretend that they know the truth, have God figured out, and know exactly how to live their lives. I think that we all need to undergo considerable change and spiritual growth “to enter the Kingdom,” that is, to live in true and abiding union with God. 

Even with our weaknesses, flaws, and ignorances, there is one resource available which truly “covers a multitude of sins.” There is one divine power available for any being who wants it, and will live it out. We call that power Love, or the Holy Spirit. The older word in English for Love was “charity,” from the Latin caritas, which is not the love of affection, or the love that is desire, or even friendship, but Love that wills to another all the good one wants for himself, or herself—and takes actions to benefit the other. Love works hard for others. 
  
When we are troubled, or perplexed, or wonder how to live, or what God is asking of us, the simplest and most obvious answer is probably the best: learn to love one another “in sincerity and truth.” “Love [Charity] does no harm to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the Law.” “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” These are precious and costly words by the Apostle Paul, who gave his life to bring us the Gospel. 

Love as kindness, as telling the truth, as bearing with each other’s flaws, makes life much richer, more beautiful, more pleasant. Without love as self-giving, as kindness, who could endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to borrow Hamlet’s phrase.  Love is not cheap or easy, but it is freely given by God’s presence to those who will live love truly.   

God who loves each being for one’s own sake, to benefit each of us, fill our hearts and minds with your divine Presence, with the Spirit who lives by loving. When any of us strays from the path of genuine love, turn us back, and help us to renew our commitments to love, even those who may wish us harm.  To love is to become like You in the modest measure granted to us as human beings.

On Two Approaches To Questions We Are Asked

A few days ago I spoke with a member of the clergy, who told me that he had recently met with a man, about age forty, who was no longer practicing his Catholic faith, but who was considering returning to the sacraments.  According to the cleric, when the man was getting out of his car, he asked, “What is transubstantiation?” Rather than answer the man directly, the clergyman told me that he wrote a 17-page, single-spaced paper on “What is Transubstantiation?,” which he plans to have published. This clergyman has had considerable theological training in his life, with advanced degrees in theology and philosophy. As he said on this occasion, “I am a student of metaphysics.”  So far, he added, he has not yet provided a copy for the man to read.  The man’s question became the occasion for an intellectual exercise. Needless to say, I asked this theologian some questions in our 5 or 10 minute conversation.  My few questions seemed to surprise him, and may have annoyed him; in any case, he did not appear to entertain my questions at all, but defended his scholarly approach. First, I said to the clergyman, “Why not ask the man, `Why are you asking about `transubstantiation?’  Then I added, “Why not ask, `When you share in the Eucharist, are you conscious of communing with the crucified and risen Christ, or not?” At this question, my clerical friend turned away and picked his nose, showing no interest in the questions I would have asked the possible seeker. As I think about this brief exchange, and writing a lengthy paper on the question, “What is transubstantiation?” I call to mind the well-known insight of the Buddha: “Such questions do not tend to edify.” Indeed, how can the question on “transubstantiation” possibly edify the one asking it? Again, in the more prosaic language of Hillary Clinton when speaking to Congress, “What difference does it make?” In truth, what difference does a person’s conception of “transubstantiation” matter for one’s spiritual life? In the context in which the man asked the question—while getting out of a car—does it even make sense to pour hours of work into researching the “doctrine” without asking the man a number of follow-up questions first? I would have communicated with him at a later time and asked, “Are you still wondering about transubstantiation?” If he said, “Yes, what is it?” I would ask him, “Why are you asking this question?” It may be that he heard the word and was puzzled by it. It may be that he holds weak or strong opinions about it. It may just have been a kind of throw-out question in which he feels no personal stake. Or it may be the kind of road-block verbiage that people can put up in order not to do what they may not want to do—such as return to the practice of the Catholic faith. There is more that needs to be pointed out here. In reality, the term “transubstantiation” was introduced by Thomas Aquinas in his effort to throw some light on the mystery of the Eucharist, of the Catholic celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection in “the Mass.” It is one of many possible “explanations” generated over the centuries. When I raised this point briefly with the theologically educated clergyman, he told me that it is a matter of “the real presence” that is at stake. I responded that even the phrase “real presence” was introduced only in the sixteenth century by an Anglican clergyman trying to understand the Eucharist, and that one need not be attached to any such terms or symbols.  He responded that “transubstantiation is in the Creed,” and when I asked him about “which creed?” he mentioned one from a Lateran Council.  And so it goes.  Are not these matters divorced from real life?                                                          *** I choose to take a different approach to questions, a different approach to human beings who ask them, and a different approach to matters of faith.  In truth I find such terms as “transubstantiation” substantially unnecessary for a person’s spiritual life. When one asks a question as the man did climbing out of his car, it does not seem reasonable to lift the question into an abstract intellectual realm and spend hours pursuing historical or theological research to find a suitable answer. Why the man asked the question is relevant, and he may or may not know himself. In the present case, the clergyman spun off abstractions by writing a paper, rather than speak directly with and to a human being who may well be seeking God—not rationalistic explanations. No doubt the clergyman would consider my response “anti-metaphysical,” or “anti-intellectual,” or perhaps “anti-Catholic.” What comes to the fore in such a clash is not being “anti-Catholic” or “anti-intellectual,” but this: How does one truly help another human being to seek God? To symbols lifted out of their experiential and intellectual context, such as “transubstantiation,” have any place in the life of a man or woman truly seeking God? Or do not such considerations truly cloud the mind with needless verbiage, when what is needed is simple faith? While I acknowledge a place among philosophers and theologians to explore real questions, I also know that far too many books and articles have been written on subjects which “do not tend to edify.” Contrast this clergyman’s response by writing a 17-page single-spaced article for publication with the way the first-rate philosopher, Eric Voegelin, treated me. When I asked Voegelin questions during our three-hour conversation, he never went off on a lengthy response, but answered simply, clearly, and surely for the benefit of my mind, right there on the spot. Voegelin was not using me as an opportunity to prepare a paper or a lecture, but bringing the light of his mind to help illuminate my mind. Or more accurately: Voegelin was moving me to be attentive to the reality of the divine Intellect that illuminates human understanding, and was present right there at the moment for me. Consider this example:  As I have written on several occasions, when I asked Voegelin, “What is the Holy Spirit?” he provided the simplest, clearest, and best response I can imagine:  “What do you think is moving you to ask your questions?” That is how to deal with a human being’s questioning: not to cut off the process, but to illuminate it.  If Voegelin had launched out into intellectual meanderings on “the Holy Spirit,” I would have understood little, and gained little. By his question in response to my real question, I was given a wonderful gift: Voegelin’s answer was itself a penetrating question, also moved by the Holy Spirit. In this brief dialogical exchange, I was immediately confirmed in the activity of asking simple questions intended to lead me into the reality called God.

Christ To You, Within You

To present the truth of reality, one must simultaneously work against untruths, or views that prevent reality from breaking into consciousness. If our parishioners suffered from the disease of self-divinization, I would not write the following interpretation. Rather, I would emphasize the truth that the God who is present is always and necessarily also the God who is beyond all knowing, all consciousness. Because our people have been exposed to more literalistic and fundamentalistic biblical interpretations, I write the following.

In reading a passage such as the inspiring 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, you ought not to think of it as words uttered once in space-time to the chosen Apostles, and then passed on to you. These words are much more intimate. What Jesus said to others, we do not know. It is good that we read the words as though Christ is speaking to us—to you, the hearer or the reader, here and now. And He is, if I dare to speak on behalf of the Risen One. The good news of the gospel, however, is even better than this. Christ Jesus is speaking to you, and within you, at the same time. Christ is the experience of the unknown God in the mind of believers. God as “Father” remains beyond experience, but God as Christ speaks to you—not from outside and far above, but as present within your own consciousness.

Consider this example to aid understanding. Jesus asks, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you you still do not know me, Philip?” In most of your cases, your name is not “Philip,” so feel free to hear your own name spoken. “Have I been with you for so long, and yet you do not know me, Bob?” Faith in Christ is our way of attending to God, of keeping God in consciousness (as in Romans, chapter 1). Of course it is important to seek to put Christ’s words into practice, but the most essential practice is to listen to Christ, to commune with him, to worship the God who keeps breaking in, even when we have locked the doors of our hearts and minds. The I AM is in you and with you as Christ, and in that sense, He shepherds, guides you, consoles, divinizes you.

A man or woman of faith can never be alone or abandoned. God as Christ, or the Holy Spirit (same God experienced as love, joy, peace, forgiveness) is in you, with you, through every experience and moment. “I will never abandon you; you are mine.” I hear those words as spoken to me personally, don’t you? If not, why not? “Why have you fear? Have you no faith?” Is Christ speaking to you?

Reflections On The Experience Of The Risen Christ

                                               1 Christ: beginning where one should begin

Consider “How Jesus became the Christ,” and other such phrases or titles. They have been employed for years. One can call to mind, as I do, reading parts of Schillebeeckx’s books on Jesus and on the Christ, and the way he selected certain New Testament texts for one book, some for the other. It was frankly absurd, and from a man who had obviously done an enormous amount of specialized research, and knows more about these subjects than I will ever know in this life. And then one finds the recurring patterns of different ideologies read into Jesus: Jesus the revolutionary; the socialist; the utopian dreamer; the conservative; the spokesman for the proletariat; the progressive liberal; the typical Jew; the first Christian; the libertarian; and so on. There is apparently no end to the game of reading contemporarily favored ideologies back into Jesus—whoever he really was. Ideological Christs do indeed wear out.

The older I become, and the more I desire to distance myself from ideologies of all types, and from unreasonable assumptions, the more I see that approaches to Jesus or to the Christ are often just plain wrong, or at least misleading. In truth, very little indeed can be known of a so-called “historical Jesus,” or the “earthly Jesus,” which as I recall was Schillebeeckx’s bizarre phrase. Who knows what Jesus actually said and did? “But we have the Gospels!” and “We have church traditions, and church teachings, and so on, which clarify what Jesus did, what he said, who he was.” Indeed, thousands of pages abound. But in fact we know Jesus in and through the Risen Christ, not apart from that experience. I shall explain this claim.

If one wants to gain some genuine insight into Christ, it seems necessary, or at least beneficial, to begin at the proper place, and to keep all sorts of details, claims, stories, words, and so on, in proper perspective. If one were to begin to try to understand who Christ is by beginning with one of the conceptions common among Churches, cults, Christians, scholars, and so on, one may well in fact be prejudicing and cutting off the inquiry just as it begins. It seems more sensible to begin at the point in which his early disciples began—after all, they wrote the earliest documents about Jesus. They did not begin with stories about Jesus, not with fading memories or remembered words and deeds, but with an encounter, an experience. Or perhaps with a series of mystical experiences, some of which are recorded, probably more remain hidden in the silence of things unspeakable.

From reading the New Testament over the years, and with the help of philosophy to clear the ideological brush away to see things more as they are, I recognize the wisdom in seeking to understand Christ not primarily from parables and miracles, and so on, but from the experience of Christ in the souls of particular human beings. Although the narrative of each of the New Testament Gospels unfolds in a more or less chronological or at least sequential order, it is wrong to try to find out who Jesus is in such a way. These Gospels were written by men who clearly “had faith” in Jesus Christ, who experienced, in one degree or another, God as present and active in their psyches, and who named this experience “Christ,” or at times—especially in the Apostle Paul or in the evangelist Luke—“the Holy Spirit,” or “Spirit.” The texts are written from within the experience of faith-union, and not as mere intellectual or pious remembrances.

Moreover, and crucially, the historically decisive experience of Christ was not his preaching on the Mount or his agony in the garden, or even his murder at the hands of the Romans, but the experience of some particular men and women to whom Christ “appeared” as “risen from the dead,” as alive after he had been crucified, and so on. Whoever had this experience remains largely unknown, but the written Gospel accounts name Mary of Magdala, Simon called Peter, the beloved disciple, most of the Twelve, and so on, as having “seen the LORD.” (The Apostle Paul claims, in I Corinthians, that on one occasion, more than 500 brethren were granted the vision of the Resurrected Christ on one occasion.) The experiences are described in various phrases. But an important point to keep in mind is that the attentive reader does not know whether or not any of the Gospel writers had the experience directly, or whether they are relating the experiences of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and others. Or again, the reader cannot tell if the aforementioned men and women had the experience, spoke about it, and then others were lead to a similar or related experience through “the preaching of the word.” This last case is indeed possible: someone such as Simon named Peter (“Rocky”) experienced Christ, and then Peter shared his experience—“preached Christ”—others heard and believed, and then they, too, experienced the reality of Christ alive and active in them, in their own body-souls. This is a possibility I consider likely. The participatory experience—“the LORD has truly arisen and has appeared to Simon”—was vouchsafed to particular human beings, who then “shared the experience,” or “witnessed,” and other “disciples” “came to believe” through their words. It seems to me that this process, this experience of the Risen Christ as LORD, is the heart, the living core, of the “community of disciples,” and to some extent remains the experiential core of the enormous tree that grew up to become “Christianity.”

But what I have written is partly reasoned, partly likely conjecture. I do not know, nor have I read a scholar who does know, whether or not any of the four canonical evangelists actually encountered the risen Christ themselves. I admit, however, that when I read the Gospels, I often mark in my notes passages that seem to me to reveal the experience of the evangelist. The famous question repeated twice towards the end of Luke’s Gospel is a good case in point: “Did not our hearts burn within us as He spoke to us on the way and opened us up to understand the scriptures?” Each time I read those words, they not only resonate in me, but I am quite sure that I am hearing the voice of the evangelist, based on his personal experience. (And why not? He was a human being open to God.)

Again, it seems likely that even if none of the four evangelists actually “saw the Risen Christ” in the way that Mary of Magdala or Simon Peter did, through faith they came to share the experience, and to know Christ in them and with them. Again, In reading the Gospels, it is not at all difficult to see that the authors have a living faith experience: not a set of beliefs about Jesus, but a sense of ongoing union with Christ. This awareness of union with God in and through what these men call “Jesus” or “Christ” is the essence of faith in the Christian sense. And yet, none of the evangelists explicitly says in his own words, “I have seen the LORD,” or equivalent words, although the evangelist known as “John” seems close to implying this reality again and again. Under the stories he relates—such as the encounter of the woman with Jesus at the well in Samaria—clearly encapsulate, communicate, a genuine encounter with the Risen Christ. They do not make sense otherwise.

Still, there is one New Testament writer who claims to have had the experience of Christ Risen as LORD. And his documents are, according to reputable scholars, the earliest New Testament documents. In fact, the letters of the Apostle Paul are the earliest known writings by a “man in Christ,” by what we call “a Christian.” And Paul repeatedly refers to his experience of the Resurrected Christ, and on significant occasions explicitly says things such as “have I not seen the LORD” and “Christ appeared also to me,” and so on. Although a secondary source, the Acts of the Apostles, written by the evangelist known as “St. Luke” (long held to be a disciple of the Apostle Paul) support such claims repeatedly. In short: in the letters of the Apostle Paul, we have documents which maintain in no uncertain terms that the author has experienced Jesus Christ crucified as alive, and as LORD—as the presence of the living God in his soul.

The decisive core of Christian faith is the awareness of Christ in and with one’s consciousness. To believe in Christ is to be aware that God is in one’s mind or soul, and that this divine presence is decisively and unmistakably linked with Jesus who had been crucified, and whom “God raised from the dead.” Christ is, among other things, the experience of God in communion with Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, and who is experienced as alive in one’s soul. This claim must be clarified.

                                                   2 Interlude: preaching and writing

Christ: What does it mean to preach as a Christian? What is writing in Christ? To preach Christ is to allow the presence of Christ in one’s soul or mind to communicate to other human beings in whom Christ is present. This is, I believe, what the Apostle Paul means at the opening of his letter to the Christians in Rome, in which he mentions preaching “from faith to faith,” that is, from the experience of faith in the preacher to the experience of faith in the hearer. In simplest words, but with an easily misunderstandable formulation for those who may wish to misunderstand: to preach is to present Christ, to allow Christ within to nourish Christ within.

It is difficult to preach from within Christ, because in the act of preaching, one must concentrate on the formulation of words, pronunciation, volume, receptivity of hearers, and so on. When one attends to such things, it diminishes, but does not necessarily negate, the awareness of Christ within that the preacher is interpreting. A preacher’s role is not to present “the Bible” or “the teaching of the Church,” and so on. A catechist may have such tasks. A preacher of Christ, on the other hand, must literally present Christ in speech. To this purpose is the preacher appointed by the Risen Christ: to communicate Christ as LORD to fellow human beings. As noted, the difficulty comes in public presentation, when one must be aware of so much else than the presence of Christ in the heart. The preacher could write the sermon or homily and read it, but that allows a veil of a written text to interpose itself between Christ-in-speaker and Christ-in-hearer. A written task puts up a veil. Preaching without a text allows the Risen One to speak here and now, and demonstrates faith in the preacher that Christ will indeed come through, that one need not be hyper-vigilant about every formulation, each word, because God is greater than our human conceptions. Exact formulations do not matter. God does not need precision; He needs a speaker to love and to trust Him, and hearers to love and to trust Him. The rest really does not matter so much. Imprecision, mistakes, sloppy phrases, mispronunciations: what are these compared to nourishing the spiritual presence of Christ in human souls?

Writing can be considerably different, as the one writing has time and opportunity to choose words more carefully, to polish formulations, to consider the effects of certain formulations on readers. Still, even in writing, one should prefer, I think, directness and truthfulness of communication more than learned formulations. Perhaps if one is writing for theological journals, one must be very particular about every formulation. But why write for learned journals, when the faithful need nourishment, and have often been deprived faith-filled, Spirit-filled preaching and teaching? Why write books to sit on library shelves, when men and women are longing for God? “Of writing many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” So writes Qoheleth. I agree with the first phrase, but not the second. Aristotle was correct, I think, when he wrote that study is the one activity that one can do the longest without being wearied. Study, or the concentration of the mind on particular problems, energizes and awakens the mind. Study employs reason, and reason in the Greek sense is the divine Intellect in a human being; reason and Christ are one. Perhaps if one fails to exercise or eat while studying, it could indeed be “a weariness of the flesh.” What awakens the mind is the right use of reason, and studying the things of God, and what truly matters in human existence, immerses one in life-giving reason. If one simply emotes and babbles without the use of reason, then one would presumably become weary, or at least wearisome to others. As the Apostle writes in I Corinthians, “In community, I would rather you speak a few words with reason than babble many words in the Spirit.” Christ needs to be presented by reasonable speech.

To preach is to present Christ, to speak from Christ within to Christ within, working through our human bodies, feelings, minds. Our humanity is ever present, and limits, hinders, “shapes,” in effect, the presentation of Christ. Man can limit God, but not overcome Him: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome the light.” Nor can any human being eradicate all of the effects of the divine light shining in, although some apparently work religiously at blinding themselves to the light.

                                            3 On the core of Christian faith

Now I will attempt to articulate what seems to me to be the core of Christian faith, the decisive center, the essence of faith itself. The attempt is fairly tentative, but must be made, even if I blunder a little. One cannot sit by and see Christian faith pass away into doctrinal quibbles and institutional game-playing. Too much is at stake: God in mankind, Christ.

The essence of Christian faith is the experience of the presence of God. The experience of divine Presence is grounded on the particular person’s loving trust and surrender to God. Without this faith-as-surrender, without simple, childlike trust, the divine remains, as it were, beyond the center of one’s being. Or the divine is present, as that is God’s nature—to be, to be present—but the human being is not attentive, not receptive to, not open to, the divine Partner.

The essence of faith is the experience of divine Presence. If one having this ongoing experience identifies the Presence as Christ or the Holy Spirit, one is within the Christian orbit; one is a Christian. If one identifies the divine Presence as the I AM that spoke to Moses and through the prophets, one is a Jew. If one identifies the divine Presence as Krishna or another god of the Hindu pantheon, then one is a believing Hindu. If one identifies the Presence as Intellect, as Nous, then one is a philosopher in the tradition of Heracleitos, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

Now, I will make a bold claim: the God experienced as present, and named differently, is one and the same God. The God of Moses, the Ehyeh-asher-Ehyeh, is the Johannine Christ: “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” The God of Aristotle, Reason, is the Christ of the great Fathers of the Church, the divine Logos. God is God, and this One is present to each and to all.

Why does a Christian identify the Presence of God within as Christ Jesus, or the Holy Spirit? Because these are the symbols, the names, with which one is familiar. The mind has been stocked with symbols, as a pond is stocked with trout. When one experiences divine Presence, the symbols at hand, the words already present in the mind, become the medium through which one experiences, and by which the participant than communicates his or her experience of the divine. Furthermore, the divine may choose, for its own reasons, to identify itself as Christ: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, LORD?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” God chose to reveal Himself as the crucified and Risen Jesus to the man who becomes, through the experience, the Apostle Paul. If God had revealed himself as Zeus, we may not have heard anything more from Paul!

Who is this God that is present? And why is it that the divine seems to be intensely present sometimes, but not always? Surely God can never be contained or controlled, and the attempt to grasp God in some decisive way leads to spiritual emptiness. Better by far to be open, receptive, longing, grateful, and “let God be God,” and experientially come and go as God wills. “The Spirit blows where it wills.” Indeed, it does. There are moments when the divine—as Christ, as Spirit, as Nous—is so burningly present that one cannot speak. These moments are the most intense and alive moments in life. And yet, they more or less pass from consciousness through the waves of time. One has a duty, I would think, when granted divine experiences, to remember them, to cherish them, to think about them, to share them with those men and women who will receive the things of the Spirit.

                                                                ***
You ever present, and ever beyond my understanding, shine in, as You will. Break through the veils have formed over your piercing eye, your divine Mind, and illuminate me, as You will. You are God; there is no other. Enkindle within once again the fire of your love, that I may experience You as You permit, and share you gratefully and joyfully with every you I meet. God of Jesus Christ, God of Moses and the prophets, God of the philosophers, God of all saintly men and women, God of every human being coming into this world: Be to us as You are, as You will. Amen.

A Poem, Its Sense, And Nonsense

Usually when I write mini-essays, or blogs, they have a serious tone and purpose. Now I try something different. What I submit below is partly serious, but also intended to be a little playful. Among other things, playfulness is truer to life, it seems to me, in this regard: Far more is mysterious and unknown than known, and in play, a human being abandons himself or herself to the mystery a little, and just dances, so to speak. A person who lacks playfulness is surely cut off from the greater mystery of life. Or so it seems to me. In playfulness I wrote the poem—a serious play, to borrow a phrase from Plato.

Two evenings ago, late at night, a kernel of a poem came to my mind in one immediate burst. I typed it up on my iPad. That process took no more than a minute. Then yesterday I sat down for perhaps two hours, while visiting my old farm house on Windy Nob, and slightly developed and edited the poetic kernel.

Now for the poem, and then for a little commentary, in which I do not intend to “explain the meaning” of the poem, but add a few notes to clarify a some of the intentional borrowings. Whatever the poem means, I will let it mean to the reader, and not deny someone the pleasure and adventure of discovery.

A song of the Odyssey

Fierce howling winds driving
salt into my aged face
and still I hear their ravenous sounds
assaulting voices tearing my flesh
consuming what remains of me

Odysseus, you gods,
I am wandering Odysseus
strapped fast to the mast
that I may hear the Sirens singing--
and gods they sing their rapturous songs to me--

Were I not lashed down
rock-bound like Prometheus
severing the golden cords of thought
I would hurl myself at once
into the raging wine-dark sea

Knowing that I am going
to my sure destruction--
so powerful the pull
so irresistible to me
these tempesting Sirens.

A few notes:

In the kernel or germ of experience and thought that came immediately to mind, I as writer of the poem was Odysseus, tied to the mast, to hear the Sirens. Clearly the background at large is Homer’s Odyssey, but the phrases and particular thought-formations are not, or so far as I am aware.

The first stanza. There is an influence here of Shakespeare’s aged Leer, ranting wildly in the night of his breakdown, buffeted by winds and storm. I recognize this influence in the first of the four stanzas. But also here are borrowings from at least two poems of T. S. Eliot—from the “Wasteland,” which I have neither enjoyed nor understood; and from a phrase from one of his early works about the “toothless gullet of an aged shark,” or words to that effect. When one writes, there are always words and images from earlier experiences or readings that come to mind. Early this day, I spent two hours in a dentist’s chair, with another broken tooth, and so the experience works its way into the poem—perhaps. Furthermore, this stanza received final formulation on “Windy Nob,” as winds were howling outside. Reality can break in, even into the mind of a would-be poet.

Second stanza. he setting is now unmistakably that of Homer’s Odyssey, in the delightful passage in which Odysseus has his sailors plug their ears with bees wax, and tie him to a mast, so that he can listen to the beautiful and intoxicating songs of the Sirens, without killing himself in pursuit. The phrase, “Odysseus, you gods,” is curious, but intentional. He speaks his name at once, but is addressing “you gods,” unspecified divinities or forces at work. There is in my mind the ancient Greek awareness of living in a cosmos, an ordered Whole, that is “full of gods,” and I deliberately tap into this experience, rather than into the Hebrew conception of the one transcendent I AM WHO AM. “Every myth has its truth,” and too much can be lost, too quickly, if the gods are not given their due in the scheme of things. There is a tongue-in-cheek play on the Mosaic “I AM WHO AM” with the character’s “I am Odysseus,” here the mere creature who is caught up in forces beyond his control or understanding. The last line of this stanza is a deliberate overturning of one of the last lines of Eliot’s early poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in which the poet bemoans that he cannot hear the mermaids (similar to Sirens) singing “each to each,” and “I do not think that they will sing to me.” Odysseus in this poem is confident that these mysterious forces do indeed “sing their rapturous songs to me.” Prufrock is timid, withdrawn; the character in this “Song of the Odyssey” is bold and courageous, as was Homer’s Odysseus. Life is an adventure, and most assuredly, “Fortune favors the bold.”

Third stanza. Borrowings from the ancient Greeks continue. The deliberate literary reference is to Aeschylus’ profound play, “Prometheus Bound.” The Greek word “Prometheus” means “forethought,” and I intend the play on this Odysseus character having forethought in telling his men to bind him fast to the mast, but now willing to overthrow forethought and all of reason by hurling himself into the sea to pursue the Sirens. There is another reason I brought in Aeschylus: in the play, Prometheus had disobeyed the gods, and was punished by being fastened to a rock, from which a bird would come and eat out his liver—if I recall the details properly. In this poem, Odysseus feels as though his insides are being devoured—referring back to the lines of the first stanza about “tearing my flesh, consuming what remains of me.” Here I have deliberately bound Odysseus and Prometheus together. By linking in Prometheus, furthermore, as from Aeschylus, the drama continues for age upon age, as the devoured liver keeps growing back. This Odysseus lives in a condition that returns. The phrase “golden cord of reason” is a deliberate borrowing from Plato’s late masterpiece, the Laws, in which every man is torn between the thick cords of the passions and the golden cord of reason, and man is in effect at the sport of the divine Puppet-Player, who pulls the cords. The phrase “wine-dark sea” is obviously an intentional reference to Homer, who uses repeated phrases in his epics, rather like Wagner’s Leitmotifs, and this is one of my favorites. As “wine-dark,” the sea embodies the great mystery of the divine in reality: mysterium tremendum et fascinens, “the mystery [at once] terrifying and fascinating.” That condition clearly lies as background for the whole poem.

Fourth stanza. “So powerful the pull” is a borrowing, again, from Plato, and especially from his use of the helkein symbol in the Laws: the “pull” of the divine golden cord, the “pull” of the thick, iron-strong cords of passions. That the Gospel of John gives prominence to the same symbol, same Greek helkein, also lies behind the choice of words. And that the Sirens are thought to be the source of the pull concludes the stanza and the poem. I wanted a word to pull together the experience in Odysseus, and “tempesting” seemed apt. It is a real English word, connoting powerful, often agonizing forces, and captures in a word the turbulence not only in nature (with wind, sea), but within Odysseus himself. And the use of the word is a final wink back at Shakespeare, whose last play, theTempest, is perhaps the most perfect example of serious-playfulness in English. And for one who knows that play, with tempest, winds, seas, playful magic, divinely wise Prospero (as in Providence), and so on, the reference to “tempest, tempesting” does indeed seem to pull the poem together.

15 April
Tax Day