When I was in seminary (the second time, as an Episcopalian, not the first time, as a Presbyterian) a wise priest counseled us students: “You will find it quite helpful in your ministry always to have three important relationships: one with a therapist, one with a confessor, and one with a spiritual director.”
Strong words. Words which, received with mild skepticism back then, I embrace and affirm today. Nevertheless, I have not always lived up to them, for rarely over my two decades of ordained ministry have I had relationships with all three types of counselor at the same time.
What I have had during the past two decades (and before) is the gift of running.
While I doubt that I have another marathon in me, and while the Texas summer months always threaten to derail me (I admit it), running remains a lifeline for me. This is true in general, but it has been more especially true lately, over the past year-and-a-half (ish).
Is it just me, or have the last eighteen months or so seen a level of anxiety previously unknown? Granted, the pandemic is not World War II or the Great Depression, but there’s no doubt that it has brought with it a kind of malaise and dread which even those previous trials did not exude.
During it all (I include not the pandemic in isolation, but the multitude of effects it has wrought) I have run.
For me running is not a form of exercise; it’s a way of being present with myself.
Running is like contemplative prayer. Nay, it is contemplative prayer. In it I come face to face with my fears, my anxieties, my guilt, my obsessions, my sins, my worries.
Just as in contemplative prayer, on my runs, I’m confronted with all of these “enemies” (to use the language of the Psalms, for example, in Ps 59:1). They just “pop up” in my head and heart, accusing me, tormenting me. It’s quite a problem, in the heat of the moment. Our secular world’s solution? Distraction (usually by way of entertainment or social media) or escape (often through drugs or alcohol, or, less destructively, medication).
But for beings who would be spiritual, there is a better way.
“The way out is the way through,” says the old Buddhist maxim.
Running is my main way of “going through.” Through the pain, through the fear, through the anxiety.
Christ undergirds this image, for his “way out” was the ultimate “way through.” Through the cross, through death, to indestructible life.
I have a feeling that, in my struggles with anxiety, I am not alone. (Indeed, I know that I’m not: I’m a pastor, and I know my sheep!) What are your ways of coping, of dealing with the onslaught, especially during the pandemic? I’d sincerely like to know. (Email me!)
“The way out is the way through.” Thanks be to God for the “throughness” of the cross!
“Thus time for Bonaventure … begins and ends in God.”—John Milbank, “There’s Always One Day,” in Theologies of Retrieval, ed. Darin Sarisky (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 24.
So claims John Milbank, and I agree with his read of Bonaventure here (despite my qualms with what I left out in the above ellipsis: the word “literally”). My dissertation is an sustained attempt, during which I stumble upon and share many epiphanies, to defend Bonaventure’s stance regarding temporality. I try, that is, to show how—given certain hermeneutical planks, ancient and modern, propounded by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Heidegger, Ricœur, Gadamar, Péguy, and Pickstock—one needs to say that time begins and ends in God. If, that is, we are to make sense of history.
A fundamental premise, following Ricœur, Péguy, and Pickstock, is that history, pace Aristotle, must be regarded as a story or (to use the ancient Greek term) a mythos.
Why is this the case? It has something to do, among other reasons, with the structure of human mind, a structure which—as Augustine shows with his point about the Psalm in Confessions XI—is, in an important sense, irreducibly temporal.
Resisting, however, any hint of process theology, I deny that time is “in” God. Instead, as Plato has it in the Timaeus, time is a moving image of (God’s) eternity. Don’t forget: nothing is more real than an image. This created movement which is time, then, is really and truly a participation in God’s movement, “of one piece” with it.
Here, perhaps, is the beginning of a new and truly postmodern ontology: an ontology of fiction. Hence, regardless of Milbank’s take on Bonaventure’s alleged “literalism,” time’s beginning and end in God, while absolutely real, is anything but literal.
For my entire adult life, I have loved to run, mainly long distances. Currently I am running about 30 miles per week. 30 miles a week of prayer, silence, solitude, breathing, taking in the light, listening to and for God.
Especially for my long runs, I will occasionally drive to White Rock Lake in Dallas (about 75 miles away from my home in East Texas), where there is a lovely running path encircling the lake. On a cool winder day with blue skies and sunshine, it is truly glorious.
I’ve been running around the lake for about 7 or 8 years now … nowadays about once a month (but in a previous stage of life I’d do it more like once a week). Lately—the last five or six times—I have noticed a cyclist who whizzes past me (and every other runner and walker on the trail) who, near the top of his lungs, yells out, with loud Texas drawl “HOWDY! GOOD MORNIN’!” This is something I have “noticed”—how could one not notice?—or, rather, something with which I have been confronted, almost in the form of an audible assault.
I am sure that this man is well-intentioned. Yet his blaring, booming “greeting” is also, at least for me, somewhat irritating.
This man—I am confident in asserting—lacks self-awareness.
What is self-awareness?
I do not have a technical definition in mind to share with you. And yet, having thought about this for over a decade now, I believe that I do grasp the essence of it. Self-awareness is the sensitivity one develops, the ability to see that certain of their actions—actions which are purportedly for the benefit of another—are actually performed for their own benefit, in order somehow to make themselves feel better.
Conversely a lack of self-awareness manifests itself when one fails to see this, to perceive this, to appreciate this.
When I was a small boy my dad (whom I love dearly, beyond words) used to put his hand on my head and rub my hair, drastically re-arranging it. “Good boy,” he’d say, as he rocked my head back and forth, turning my blond locks into a tussle of messiness. Then, with a couple more pats on the head (as if I were a canine), he’d say again: “Good boy.”
Now, I love my dad! He (like the cyclist) was well-intentioned, in a way. And yet … as he expressed or emoted his feeling of affection for me, did he really have my own good in view?
Or the cyclist: as he whizzes past the runners and belts out his morning greeting for all of Dallas to hear, is he truly motivated by a desire for the good of his neighbor?
Or, rather, is he actually doing something, performing an action, somehow for the benefit on himself? (Perhaps to call attention to himself, perhaps to be able to think or feel better about himself?)
I see this same tendency in myself frequently. Even with my dog or my cat—to return to the issue of semi-fierce caressing of hair or fur—I sometimes think, “Am I doing this for their good, or is this supposed to make me feel better?”
Even if the latter is my true motivation, it is good, at least, to be aware of it.
I grew up in a wonderful family with a mom and a dad who loved each other, loved Christ, and were healthy in the sense that they were always repenting, always striving to be more faithful to Christ and to each other.
And yet … it was, in truth, a fundamentalist family. So some of the thematics would frequently emerge were, well, distinctive to that culture.
One example. A frequent tirade on the part of my father against “sinless perfection.” Apparently some Christians believed that it was possible to live a life in total utter obedience to God, with not a single shred of sin in one’s life. (Frequently my dad identified the precise target of his ire as followers of John Wesley and the occasional Baptist “Arminian.”) One interesting case study in this context was C. S. Lewis: while my family in general revered him with awestruck admiration (which, to this day, I still do), at times he seemed to imply a high view of “Christian perfection.”
What?!? Did he not get Luther’s point about semper justus et peccator?
It turns out—or so I’d argue these several decades later—that here as elsewhere Lewis was actually faithfully channeling a deep current of Catholic sensibility.
For premodern thinkers of the kind that Lewis strove to represent—thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas—”perfection” has a connotation somewhat different from my dad’s apparent grasp of it. It really begins with the notion of telos, since in Greek “perfect” is teleotês. It really just means a substance (in Aristotle’s technical language) doing its “work” so as to fulfill its purpose. When an acorn successfully becomes an oak tree, it is teleotês; it is fulfilling its purpose. Same for when a car gets you from point A to point B.
Yet no one in the premodern world would say that that acorn or the car is “perfect” in every respect. After all, the air conditioner in the car might be broken. Yet, if it gets you to point B, it is fulfilling its telos, and in that sense is “perfect.”
Now for most premodern thinkers after Aristotle, human beings are like acorns and automobiles: they have an objective purpose. (This is what Alasdair MacIntyre calls a “functional concept.”) Aristotle calls it eudaimonia, or “happiness.” He thinks, and Aquinas and C. S. Lewis agree, that humans are able to achieve happiness (in some sense).
One example of many would be St. Thomas’ Summae Theologiae, I-II, Q. 71 A. 1. There he states that
Virtue implies … a disposition whereby the subject is well disposed according to the mode of its nature: wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. VII.17) that virtue is a disposition of a perfect thing to that which is best, and by “perfect” I mean that which is disposed according to its nature.
Note the way he speaks of perfection in this passage.
Does this make them “Arminian”? Not at all: it just means that the imagined something different from what we do when they thought of perfection.
I’m currently rereading Augustine’s Confessions (for the third or fourth time), this time as part of the larger project that is my doctoral dissertation.
Lots going on in Book I. I want to give a quick list of some important themes, and then focus in particular on two: his way of overcoming destructive desires, and his “hermeneutic of suspicion” of the pagan Greek religious deities.
First, the quick list. Augustine introduces several themes which will emerge later in the book, including: the role of memory in the pursuit of God, language acquisition in infants, the pejorative nature of custom (Latin mos: see esp. xvi.25), his opposition to capital punishment, his deferred baptism (xi.17–18) his own identity as both sinner and victim, seeds of grace in the early years of his life.
One riveting theme, however, which I have not noticed in the past: his way of reading the pantheon of Greek deities, and the religious “system” in which they appear. In addition to reiterating his view that the Greek gods are veiled demonic, evil spirits, Augustine actually claims in this early book that a prime motivation for ancient pagan mythology is the need, on the part of the powerful, to justify their own immorality and corruption, particularly their sexual immorality:
Have I not read … of Jupiter, at once both thunderer and adulterer? Of course the two activities cannot be combined, but he was described as to give an example of real adultery defended by a fictitious thunderclap acting as a go-between.
Augustine, Confessions, I.xvi.25.
Here Augustine is participating in the great philosophical work of demythologization, adding his voice to the likes of Xenophanes and Plato before him. As for both predecessors, so also for Augustine: after ridding ourselves of pernicious myth, there is still a substratum of legitimate myth, good and proper myth remaining underneath. It is not the case for any of these demythologizers that once we dispel bad myth we are left with “science” or “pure reason” completely without remainder.
What is the real truth about ancient pagan myth? It underwrites and legitimizes the (sexual) immorality of those in power. “If Zeus can do it, then so can I,” says in effect, not only the likes not only of Homer but also of Terence:
But what a god ([Terence] says)! He strikes the temples of heaven with his immense sound. And am I, poor little fellow, not to do the same as he? Yes indeed, I have done it with pleasure.
Augustine, Confessions, I.xvi.26.
The second point of interest, coming from Book I, is the way Augustine deals with his illicit desires. Far from trying to beat down his lusts, he counters them with a stronger desire, a joyful aching, for God:
Bring to me a sweetness surpassing all the seductive delights which I pursued. Enable me to love you with all my strength that I may clasp your hand with all my heart.
Augustine, Confessions, I.xv.24
And again:
Even at this moment you are delivering from this terrifying abyss the soul who seeks for you and thirsts for your delights (Ps. 41:3), whose heart tells you ‘I have sought your face; your face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 26:8).
Augustine, Confessions, I.xviii.28
This article (written by me) was published in the Crucifer, the semi-monthly newsletter of my parish, Christ Church (Tyler).
On page 446 of the beloved Book of Common Prayer, we read that “The ministry of reconciliation, which has been committed by Christ to his Church, is exercised through the care each Christian has for others…. The Reconciliation of a Penitent [the official name of the rite under discussion] is available for all who desire it.”
Further, on page 317 of the same Book of Common Prayer, we read:
And if, in your preparation [for Holy Communion] you need help and counsel then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice, to the removal of scrupal and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith.
My experience as an Episcopal priest over the last eight years of ordained ministry in this church is that precious few parishioners in our Episcopal parishes makes use of this resource in the BCP, to their detriment. After all, as the Anglican dictum goes, “All may; some should; none must.”
And yet, my main point in this super brief Crucifer article is a “report” of sorts from the ground, from the “trenches.” Over the past several months, we here at Christ Church have seen the number of Confessions (to a priest) skyrocket. We are seeing “revival” of sorts of the Rite of Reconciliation. It is so very encouraging.
Most encouraging of all? On average the folks making use of this rite are under age 30. Thanks be to God! May this encouraging sign for the future only increase and continue.
I am having the most amazing time today in my room here at the Priesterseminar in Regensburg (though it is not completely free of various kinds of turmoil).
For years, I have noticed how the work or the process of dianoia is inherently taxing. It’s a ton of work. Not just that, but also it is stressful to the soul in a subtle way. For example, reading a dense text, or doing some kind of logical (or mathematical) proof, or learning a new language. It is the same kind of disturbing tedium involved in reading an owner’s manual when trying to assemble or repair some kind of appliance, such as a chainsaw, or searching Google to try to figure out how to do something on your computer such as editing a PDF or inserting the symbol for the currency Euro into a Word document.
Now, in my PhD coursework I became convinced that the opposite of this dianoia is in a certain sense what I call “intellect” or “nous” or “Verstand.” (CS Lewis has a relevant section in The Discarded Image; Also Plato’s divided line in Book VII [?] of the Republic.) For me perhaps the best way to characterize it is a “the moment of recognition.” It is when you have an “aha” experience and, either for the first time or in an act of remembering, you “see” something.
During my time in Munich, studying at the Goethe Institute, I was constantly oscillating between dianoia and Verstand. There were times in which I felt like I was existentially “in the weeds of William James’ ‘blooming buzzing confusion.’” During these times, for example, as I was trying to figure out the proper case ending for a dative masculine definite article, or trying to translate a paragraph containing many unknown words which I would then have to look up in the dictionary, I was unable—so it felt—to recognize anything. It was hell. But then, at other times I would have flashes of insight, recognition, in which I would suddenly “see” something, grasp something: a sentence from my instructor’s mouth, the dialogue of a video, etc. It was Heaven.
This whole dynamic—emerging from the blooming buzzing confusion into the state of recognition—has always reminded me of some scenes from the Matrix, just after Thomas Anderson’s celebral plug is pulled, and he slides down the tubular portals of existential chaos. By the end of the movie, though, not only can he dodge bullets; he can also kick the ass of the bad guy “on the back of his hand,” almost as if he is resting. This process is also, surely, closely akin to what certain thinkers mean by “waking up” or even becoming conscious.
When recently reading Nathan Jennings’s book, Liturgy and Reality (and discussing some things with him), and also while reading Returning to Reality and Bonaventure’s Hexaëmeron, I realized that, one of the riveting things about Verstand is that is occurs both before and after dianoia. (Actually, now that I think about it, I had realized this far earlier, since I have tried to teach this dynamic in various philosophy classes at UTT.)
The struggle for achieving the post-dianoetic Verstand—what Whitehead called “the simplicity on the far side of complexity”—is really the heart of my dissertation writing process. The goal of the difficult process of research is to achieve a vision of Ratzinger’s Bonaventure, for everything to “fall into place,” for the dissertation to “write itself.” I do think that this will happen—it has already begun to happen and it has happened in smaller-scale ways.
This pattern of nous–dianoia–nous characterizes:
- the exit and return structure of neoplatonism & Bonaventure;
- Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle;
- “Meno’s Paradox” regarding anamnesis & searching;
- Augustine’s divine illumination theory (exemplified in Bonaventure’s account of the creation of intellectual light on Day 1 in the Hexaëmeron).
This reality of Verstand, or Intellect, is also crucially related to faith, how Christian intellectuals historically have thought about faith. Faith is a kind of a recognition. It is the grasping of a gift, a word, a message, a vision … which originates not from one’s own mind or resources. It is not reason. Reason’s role—for example in both dogmatic and fundamental theology—is to take these gift-messages, and to work on them. To examine them, to string them together or synthesize them. To strive to approach “far-side” recognitions of simplicity. But the first move, that of Verstand, is the simple reception of the message, the recognition of it. This is the (the work of the) intellecus fidei.
On a more personal note: what I realized today in my Priesterseminar room is that, I can rest, very deeply, by engaging in Verstand, in particular the “pre-dianoia” Verstand. What I was doing was simply meditating on the Inhalt of a compilation of Nietzsche’s aphorisms. Even though I had to look up some words (such as “Vergänglicheit,” transcience) I felt like I was in heaven! Surely this is very closely related to the heart of true meditation, Christian meditation. Like the cow chewing the cud.
This is what I want to do with the Psalms, in multiple languages. This is what I want to do in the presence of God, with my heart, at the deepest level of my “ontological conscience,” openly, purely, freely, sensitively, listening.
Surprising though it may sound to some readers, I feel like, over the past six months, I have had something of a personal revolution. It is a revolution of the heart, in more ways than one.
About six months ago I was exposed to a couple of lectures by an Episcopal priest and church historian named Ashley Null. Null’s area of expertise is the theology of Thomas Cranmer, including the latter’s late medieval influences (such as Richard Rolle, Erasmus, and Lady Margaret Beaufort). Null points out that during this time in the history of England, waves of Gospel revival were washing up onto the shores of England.
Folks during this time were rediscovering not just Scripture, but how to savor Scripture. How to let the Scripture seep into the soul and to provide comfort, healing, peace, even deep spiritual pleasure. How to let the Scriptures be, for us, “comfortable words.”
It is in this context, Null points out, that Cranmer came to embrace and to promulgate a maxim which apparently originated with that disciple of Martin Luther, Phillip Melanchthon. The maxim is this: “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.
How did this maxim prompt a “revolution of the heart” in my own life? Somehow, I feel that God used it—together with several other things happening in my life at around the same time—to allow me to experience intimacy with God. All I can say is that I began to experience intimacy with God in a new way, right about the same time that I had this “discovery.”
You see, despite many years of struggle to gain clarity on such matters, not until a few months ago did I really understand the priority of the heart, and why it matters for the Christian life. Recently I have been putting it like this: God wants to satisfy our desires. God wants to satisfy our desires, not through food or sex or strong drink or entertainment or vacations. God wants to satisfy the desires of our heart, rather, through intimate communion with him.
It is the strangest thing. Strange both in its simplicity and at times in its evasiveness. It is strange that I did not really “get” this until the ripe old age of 45!
I have noticed two primary qualities which are connected to this newfound intimacy with God. The first is that, based on my experience, I can say that intimacy with God is almost the same thing as intimacy with myself. I have been reminded of the words of St. Augustine, that God is “closer to me than I am to myself” (interior intimo meo, see Confessions III.6.11). Somehow, over the past few months, as I have been spending time with God in a new way, I have also been spending time with myself in a new way.
The second quality which has accompanied this newfound intimacy is the return of childlike wonder. The experience of a childlike enjoyment of “mundane” reality, of simply existing, or being embodied, or breathing. Simply being a creature of God, always in relationship with God, is the absolute antithesis to boredom.
“What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind justifies” shows us the priority of the heart over the will and the mind. This is how God made us. We are fashioned for intimate communion with him. That the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire to thwart and ruin this intimacy is a painful near-tragedy. And yet, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.
For you and for me, intimacy awaits.
One part of my Christian journey which I have not spoken of very much ocurred as my tenure as an evangelical Presbyterian minister was drawing to a close. As much as I loved and still love that tradition, I knew that I needed to make a change. Why? Because with every fiber of my being I longed for a church which was more mysterious, more beautiful, more sacramental.
And so it is that, over a period of about a year, I had lunch with a priest in the Orthodox Church (a former Methodist minister). During that time I was exploring this ancient way of faith, which is so different from the church I grew up in, so different (you might say), from “your grandma’s church,” that it is barely recognizable.
To put it a different way, when you worship in an Orthodox church, it is almost like you are on another planet, in a different reality, in a different dimension. The worship is just so utterly foreign. From the perspective of a native Texan who grew up Baptist, it seems more like Hinduism than it does like “First Baptist.”
Therein lay its attraction. As the church in American & in the West continues its free fall of decline, I firmly believe that what people crave and long for is mystery. Something different from their normal, everyday experience. (Hence the sadness and pitifulness of the efforts of some churches to make their worship “relevant for modern people.” Yuck!) This is why so many people in western culture, for the last few decades now, have been flocking to Eastern religions, and even the popularity of yoga fits into this trend. Sadly, so many folks nowadays are totally ignorant of the historical rootedness, within Christianity, of “eastern” practices such as contemplation and mysticism.
Even though I ultimately opted for Anglicanism over Orthodoxy, these instincts have stayed with me, and this is where the liturgical and sacramental life of the church is such a gift for people today.
Nowhere is this more true or pertinent than in the liturgical seasons of the church year, and in particular during Lent. And this brings me to the main point of this Crucifer article: what a joy it is to witness the epiphanies which occur when “newcomers” discover our sacramental and liturgical life. When they discover it, begin to practice it, and go deeper into it. (The desire to see more of this kind of discovery is why we themed our college ministry, several years ago, “A New Way of Being Christian that is Very, Very Old.”)
Thanks be to God that dozens of individuals and families, right now, are coming to experience and appreciate and love the practice of Lent, that so many new folks attended our Ash Wednesday services this year, that over 30 adults at Christ Church South have expressed interest in Confirmation Preparation in the Fall, etc.
It is a joy to commend the Anglican Way to a culture which simply does not know. I remain convinced, today more than ever, that what our fragmenting culture needs, at the deepest level, is a connection to Jesus Christ which is stable, grounded, beautiful, communal, sacramental, and mysterious.
“A new way of being Christian that is very, very old!”
As we enter into our third full month of mission and ministry at Christ Church South, I’d like to give you an update on how I see things developing. I have two main points in this article: one about progress and another great leadership.
First, progress. I will never forget the first five Sundays at Christ Church South: the two soft launches the grand opening, Christmas Eve pageant & Christmas Day, and then New Years Day. Five weeks of craziness! Holy craziness, for sure, but craziness nonetheless.
Back then I did not even know how to turn on the lights. (I’m being serious here: the “stage lighting” for the altar, pulpit, and lectern in pretty important, and I did not know how to operate those lights for the first month and a half of CCS’ life. Kind of a problem when multiple people approach you & ask, “Fr. Matt, you’re in charge here, right? Can you help us turn on the stage lighting?”!)
I’m thankful to say that we have made all sorts of progress, by the grace of God. Everything from operating manuals for various pieces of technology, to a well-thought out customary for our acolytes, to best practices for baptisms, to managing the flow of traffic at the altar rail, to how best to host a reception in the Great Hall, details concerning our newcomer ministry. Every single, week, we make progress.
We are even in the process of creating a Christ Church South Wedding Customary, which will be seamlessly consistent with our Christ Church Downtown Wedding Customary. There are three weddings in our Christ Church South community coming down the pike! (Note: we will not have funerals at CCS for the time being, since we do not have a good space for receptions.) Have you ever heard the maxim, “Progress not perfection”? Much wisdom there. As long as we can improve our game every week, I am very happy!
Second, though, I want to mention the Christ Church South Ministry Council. This is a group of about 10 or so saints who are truly rolling up their sleeves, making huge sacrifices, and engaging in this ministry at the deepest level, in all areas. We had a “regrouping meeting” about a week ago on a Sunday after church. I just wanted to touch base with them, encourage them, thank them, and give them an opportunity to air any grievances with me.
At that meeting I was shocked. Not only were these dear “lay-priests” not burnt out & exhausted, they didn’t even have any major “grievances!” As a matter of fact, they were all super encouraged by what God is doing in our midst. They are having the time of their lives, and they are thankful!
Is their work hard and costly? They would certainly say that it is. But they would also say that it is well worth every second this labor of love.
Thanks be to God!
For the last couple of days, ever since the election of Donald Trump to the office of President, I have felt like a character out of a Walker Percy novel. Whether Binx Boling in The Moviegoer or Will Barrett in The Last Gentleman is more apropos does not matter. In either case, the character gains a certain clarity from an impending (or presently occurring) crisis.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Nothing clarifies the mind like one’s impending death?” The dynamics of these characters’ lives is not far from that sentiment. Truly, Binx and Will could be called–to borrow a Percian phrase–“last gaspers.”
To what catastrophe do I refer in my own life? I am talking about the above mentioned election of a tyrannical thug to the office of U.S. president. It is crisis of the highest magnitude, even if, like a molotov cocktail, it might end up providing a much-needed rupture within a system that is badly broken.
The clarity which this catastrophe has brought in my own life is as follows. I render it in the form of a (more or less real) dialogue between me and a good friend, “N.”
Me: I feel like the election has allowed me to “put my finger on” perhaps the main reason why I’m drawn to the Roman Catholic Church, and will probably, at the very least, die Catholic. It is this: I currently have (almost) no “ideological” comrades in my church. There is not a significant community in my church to whom I can look and say “we are united in being ‘for the world, against the world.'”
N: That is okay. Ideology is mere opinion. As Anglican / Episcopal Christians who are also presbyters in the Church, we are united in something thicker than ideas. We perform the divine service!
Me: Ah, yes! Thanks for reminding me of what is so easy to forget! Keep saying stuff like that to me please, bro. I do get it, and agree. But it’s so damn hard sometimes. But I do need to say that I do not regard Catholic Social Teaching as a mere ideology. And I guess that’s what I have in mind. It’s possible that I need to be in a church where I am in solidarity with others who uphold Catholic Social Teaching. Against the modern left, and against the modern right.
N: We have a similar catholic social teaching extending back to Richard Hooker. Let’s re-own that together.
My friend has a really good point. We Episcopalians (who are, of course, also Anglicans) do have a steady stream of social thought which finds a foundational starting point in Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and which flows like an underground current through many and diverse thinkers such as John Neville Figgis, William Temple, F.D. Maurice, Kenneth Kirk, William Stringfellow, John Hughes, Rowan Williams, and many others.
Why is it, then, that this tradition, this stream of social thought, is so little known, much less understood? Why is it that when you do a Google search on “Anglican Social Teaching,” hardly one hit even registers? Things are not much better when you search on “Anglican Social Theology.”
Hence, my moment of clarity. (We will see if I still have it a year or so, when I finish my PhD.) I am actively thinking about, praying about, and discussing with trusted friends who are mature in habit, heart, and mind, the possibility of launching an endeavor after I finish my PhD.
After all, if our Anglican tradition is worth belonging to, then it is worth developing, fighting for, “living into,” and commending to a hurting world which in so many ways has lost its way.
I am prayerfully considering starting, even while remaining a humble parish priest, an NGO / “think tank” / community of research and promulgation, a project to inculcate Anglican social teaching within our crumbling Western culture. This endeavor would include a community of prudent scholars who would develop and catalogue that body of Anglican social thought which exhibits the poverty of the modern partisan left and the modern partisan right. If I said that the last page of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, where he speaks of “waiting for a new St. Benedict,” together with the “Benedict Option” which takes this single page as a source of inspiration, were not ringing in my head and heart as a faint source of inspiration, I’d be lying.
Hence, my decision yesterday to purchase the domain name anglicansocialteaching.org.
Prayerfully, we shall see what happens. For now, I’m enjoying the clarity.
I have been meditating lately on Psalm 48:8: “As we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of our God.”
You see, faith is a “hearing thing”: it comes to us, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 10:17, “by hearing.” His reminder that “we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7) confirms the same point. Yet even though all this is true, and even though the book of Hebrews reminds us that “faith … is the conviction of things unseen,” nevertheless Psalm 48:8 presents us with the opposite perspective.
Yes, faith is a “hearing thing,” and, yes, we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. Nevertheless Psalm 48:8 reminds us that, in addition to all that, God desires that the contents of our faith also become visible. “As we have heard, so have we seen” means that the oracles of God, the promises of God, have now become manifest in the “real world,” the world of our sense perception, laid bare for all to see, to the glory of God. There is a time and a place for this, too. The heart of a Christian longs to see the things of faith become visible. The follower of Christ longs for the Kingdom of God—the reign of God—to become palpably present in the daily lives of men, women, and boys and girls. When this happens, faith has “become sight;” the word of God has become visible, palpable, seen.
I want to point to two examples of “faith becoming sight.” The first is Promise Academy, located in the building of New Days Community Church in North Tyler, near the corner of Broadway and Gentry. At this brand new school, in its very first year, the promises of God and the longing of God’s people are becoming visible. Here, at Promise Academy, hope is being provided for a handful of little ones (right now, the school only consists of Kindergarten; God willing, first grade will be added next year). At this school, a small number of mainly black and Hispanic kindergartners are learning how they are fearfully and wonderfully made, how God’s ways are the best ways, how trust and obedience in the God who loves them will bear fruit in their lives. All this is becoming visible: in their facial expressions, in the life of their families, in the physical beauty and orderliness of their lives (both in the classroom and out).[*]
My second example is a very different one, but one no less breathtaking: Christ Church South. The groundbreaking ceremony we experienced last week … this, too, is an example of “faith becoming sight:” a new Temple for the worship of God is being erected right in front of us! A new House of Prayer for all people and for a burgeoning community of friends in faith is being raised up, for all the world to see. Not only is God’s creation being transfigured from glory to glory, but sacred, sacramental space is being consecrated and set apart. Fr. David’s “message” at the perimeter of the construction sight “nailed it:” just imagine how many generations of lives will be impacted for the cause of Christ and the sake of the Kingdom.
All this in a contemporary world wracked by division, addiction, and heartache. A sign of visible hope, a leading indicator of Gospel victory. By the grace of God alone.
“As we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of our God.”
[*] To learn more about Promise Academy, please visit http://promisetyler.org/
I have made a couple of changes to the “pages” section of my blog. I have deleted the obsolete page “Philosophico-theological notebook,” and replaced it with what seems to me to be a much more relevant page, “crucial vocab.” My first entry in this new page: my “definition” of “science.” I hope to use this page as a place to “point” people to so that we can “be on the same page” when using specific terms in discussion.
My blog, 8+ years after its inception, remains valuable to me. (And, based on anecdotal conversations with real people as well as the “widget” I use to monitor the traffic, people actually read it.) I turned off the comments functionality a few months ago, and this was a wise move, I think. (Folks can comment on Facebook.)
Upcoming posts this month (hopefully):
- How prudentia or practical wisdom is like shock absorbers.
- On “ruducing difference to the same.”
- Pixar vs. St. Thomas on emotions.
- Philosophy and Theology: the difference history makes (has made).
- “Authenticity” and “hypocrisy.”
Warning: this post is intended only for philosophy geeks, or those who’d like to become philosophy geeks.
A dear friend, with whom I have been traveling the Christian journey of faith seeking understanding for two decades, asked me to explain how I understand what Kierkegaard means when he says that the human subject is infinitely negative. So here goes:
Hegel writes, “[t]his Substance is, as Subject, pure, simple negativity.” (Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, § 18)
Twenty years ago in a course on Kierkegaard and Derrida, I was deeply struck by the phrase, in connection with Kierkegaard, “infinite, negative subjectivity.” Turns out, however, I had no idea, metaphysically speaking, what it actually meant.
But I think I’m getting it now.
It is helpful for me to start with a Parmenidean insight. Parmenides, in absolute denial of the meaningfulness or the value of sense experience, states that being must necessarily be one, since nonbeing is not able to be countenanced. That is, it is not the case that multiple object exists, since in this case a kind of nonbeing would obtain: the A is not B. The horse is not the giraffe, and so on.
The cup on my desk is not the same as the pen on my desk. As cup, it is not pen. That is to say, with respect to the (essence of the) pen, the cup is not. It is “negative” with respect to the pen.
But as Dr. Wood said in class recently, it is not of the cup’s essence that it be “negative” with respect to every other object. (That is, the cup has a definite, individuated determination.) However, for “human awareness” (Dr. Wood’s words), this negativity is of its essence. That is, subjective consciousness has no essence other than it is not this or that or the pen or the cup or Socrates. (Unlike the cup, it has no definite, individuated determination.) It has no essence in this sense. It is empty. And yet, we deny that it does not exist. It does exist, also that it has no essence other than infinite negation.
One last note: this is (the logical outworking of) Cartesian subjectivity; it is the subjectivity which Foucault (along with Nietzsche) rejects.
It has been my great joy & privilege over the last few months to get to know Matt Magill of The Magills. My favorite Magills song by far is “Yes.”
Is there a love for me?
Can you deliver me?
Will you remember me?
Have you forgiven me?
The answer is always “yes.”
The answer is always “yes.”
If you’re askin’ … you’re already blessed.
What great news, especially for folks plagued by doubt & guilt.
Reminds me of Tim Keller: “A sense of God’s absence is a sign of his presence.”
And Thomas Merton: “Prayer is the desire to pray.”
And CS Lewis: “Do you doubt that you are one of the elect? Say your prayers, and rest assured that you are.”
And don’t forget Keller (again): we must learn to doubt our doubts.
For many traditional Episcopalians confirmation is somewhat normal. It is a familiar event, a familiar notion, a familiar thought. It is just something that one does in the course of one’s normal life. It is mainstream.
Indeed, what a blessing that for many this is the case. And yet for whole other large swaths of contemporary culture, nothing could be more bizarre and foreign than participating in a “special worship service” in which a man dressed in flamboyant robes with a pointy hat that looks like something from a comic book lays hands on you and claims to have brought you into …
… into what? Into an institution?
Now, I happen to believe that institutions are a good thing. Without institutions life unravels. Without institutions individuals are left exposed to the potentially oppressive manipulations of state power. Institutions are among the “mediating connections” that bind people together in society. All of this is very “meet and right.”
And yet, the specific characteristic that leaves many in our day with an anti-institutional taste in their mouths is that, all too often, the true motive for institutional activity is mere self-preservation. Why have a meeting? Why have a membership drive? Why raise money? Simply to promote the institution and its survival.
And so it is that, when scores of new friends from all across Tyler & East Texas (most of whom are “young” by Episcopal Church standards) have entered into the hallowed halls of Christ Church over the last three or four years to see what has been going on here, they are confronted by many and diverse aspects of an institutional life that it is foreign. There is a foreign hierarchy. There is a foreign vocabulary. There is a foreign, maze-like building. There are foreign gestures and traditions. There is a foreign ethos and culture. All of these foreign dimensions teeter on the brink of reinforcing the suspicion that one has just entered into … the bowels of an institutional monster.
And yet, there is so much more. You see, my mind is blown that people are “drinking our Kool-Aid.” But what they are drinking is not so much the new hierarchy and tradition and gestures. I do believe in all of that fantastic stuff, and I am confident that, over time, they will, too. But the main thing that folks are imbibing is not a new institution but a new family.
A new family that sticks together. A new family that is messy. A new family that is honest. A new family that does not agree on everything, but is absolutely committed to doing life together. A new family in which Christ is loved & served but not forced onto people. A new family where believing follows belonging.
All of this is both classically Anglican / Episcopalian and “postmodern.” It is “a new way of being Christian that is very, very old.”
Our new members of Christ Church who confirmed last Sunday … for many of them they are joining not so much a new institution, but a new family.
Please. I’m not one of those mealy-mouthed new agey types.
However, I do think that long distance running is (or can be) zen. It can be “done zen” or “performed zen.” Notice that here, as in the title of this blog post, “zen” is an adverb (though it can also be a noun or an adjective).
How so? I’ve been pondering this, actually, for about a year. When I ran my first (and most recent) marathon, I realized during about the 20-mile mark, when I was tempted to “give up” and stop running on that unusually warm & humid Texas February day, that I was free to continue running.
You see, early in my adult running career, I realized that I was free to stop running. As one whose distance running is a form of meditation or contemplation, I realized, in the spirit of Fr. Thomas Keating who describes contemplation as a “mental vacation,” that the worst thing I could do was to put pressure on myself to continue to meditate / run. (Yes, for me running and meditation are the same.) There is no shame, I realized, in setting out for a 10 mile run and then “quitting” at the 3-, 5-, 7-, or whatever-mile mark.
I wanted my running to be a kind of rest, a kind of exploration, a kind of play. To stifle that by a kind of exertion of my will power did not seem to promote the kind of contemplativeness I was seeking to cultivate. Hence, I exulted in my “freedom to quit.” If I felt like walking home for the second half of my run, I did it, and I sought to make that walking time, too, a time of prayer.
But then (before my first marathon) my inner world took another turn: I discovered the joy of working the Twelve Steps. One of the key emphases of this spiritual tradition of lived, practical wisdom is that one’s own will-power is not the answer. It is not the answer to overcoming addiction. It is not the answer to finding deep freedom. It is not the answer to becoming happy or satisfied.
Now, this breakthrough served to confirm my previous embrace of the “freedom to quit.” But (in the context of the rest of steps and the culture of the Twelve Step community) it also served to drive deep into my being an additional “lesson” which I had assented to intellectually but perhaps not embraced holistically: the humility of self-forgetfulness.
Not only is reliance on my own will power a death knell, but so also is one’s obsession with (or even consciousness of) self.
“How do I look?”
“How am I doing?”
“Do people like me?”
“Am I succeeding?”
So much of personal happiness is learning to wean oneself off of such habits.
And so it is that, when I was running my first (and most recent) marathon, and I desperately wanted to quit, I was cognizant of my “freedom to quit.” But then I immediately had another, instinctual realization. If I was free to quit, then I was also free to keep going.
Put it another way. One might assume that if a runner has true humility then she will not allow herself to quit. That would be soft; that would be self indulgent.
My “first breakthrough” was that this assumption is false, and that, actually, that kind of self-reliance is arrogant and self-centered, relying as it does on the strength of one’s own will power. Thus, the truly self-actualized, spiritual person / runner will paradoxically embrace her freedom to quit.
I still believe this, but what I realized in my “second breakthrough” was that sometimes when one quits, this, too is a form of self-obsession 0r self-consciousness. If I totally forget myself, then continuing to run (mile 10, mile 12, mile 22, etc.) is just as “available” an option, just as live-giving an option, as is quitting the run.
True, there is no shame in quitting. But, just as truly, there is no bondage in continuing to run. Once my self is transcended (this takes place moment by moment, nanosecond by nanosecond), at one level it does not matter if I quit or continue.
Hence I might as well continue.
This is a little window into my psychological experience of running. And this is why I say that running is, or can be, zen.
I am 42 years old. I’m an old man. Worse, I’m a middle-aged man. Deal with it. (Yes, I’m talking to myself.)
I’m much too old, for example, to write a subversive shard of provocative bricolage, assembling an argument about why Millenials are leaving the Church in droves (while claiming to be one of them).
May God grant me the grace & peace to admit who I am, to be comfy in my own skin.
Then, and only then, will there be a modicum of hope that “young people” — who these days often call me “sir” — will look to me as a leader, will consider me a resource for navigating the turbulent cultural waves of our time. (Such leadership will then be a “bonus,” not a motive for striving to be at peace with myself.)
In an culture in which “agism” is the last acceptable “ism,” I’m over it. I think I’m legit (hopefully in a humble way) … whether you feel the need to call me “sir” or not.
To be honest, I’ve never been a huge “fan” of the saying “Let go and let God.”
I vividly remember the summer of 1995, when I lived with a dear couple for the summer in Austin, a couple who were missionaries from Cuba doing a Hispanic, Spanish speaking church plant in Austin.
Now, I dearly loved this couple … so much that when Jaime died suddenly a few years later, I flew back to Austin from Philadelphia (where I was in seminary) to attend his funeral. Their faith was so real, so vibrant, so child like in its simplicity. And, of course, the life of an older couple depending on donors for their financial support provides many “faith challenges,” many opportunities to trust God.
And so, when Jaime y Luisa would talk that summer about “letting go and letting God,” I got it, and I appreciated what they were trying to say. And yet, the whole time I kept thinking to myself, “Yes, but there’s so much more to following Christ than just letting go. What about hard work? What about discipline? What about obedience?”
Fast forward the tape (or the mp3 file) to February 2014. I am exactly twice as old as I was that summer with the Echevarrias. I have been around the block a few times, and I have the bumps, scrapes, and scars to prove it. In particular, through some dear friends involved with the practice of the Twelve Steps formulated by Mr. Bill Wilson in the mid 20th century (with, by the way, the help of an Episcopal Priest in New York, the Rev. Sam Shoemaker), I have come deeply to appreciate the wisdom of the third step:
We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Not only have I grown to appreciate this maxim and the profound truth behind it, but God in his mercy is putting me in situations where I have no option but to put it into practice.
For example, running a 26.2 mile marathon a few days ago. Trust me, my will power alone was radically impotent to carry my body (what St. Francis affectionately called “Brother Ass”) across that finish line. As I smashed three times into “runner’s walls” which I could not imagine getting through, trying harder was the absolute wrong strategy. “Digging deeper” was a death knell. Every time the well-intentioned bystanders would cheer us runners on with words like “you can do it!” I had to screen out such advice with something like mental earplugs.
No, I emphatically could not do it. Left to my own resources there was absolutely no way I could “fight the good fight, finish the race” (2 Tim 4:7). My own will power was impotent, pathetically insufficient.
My only choice was – and is – to “turn my will over to … God.” Thy will be done … on earth, in heaven, in my life.
For me, this is what running is all about. Running, and the rest of life as well.
God has been showing me many new things of late, but for months now there is one truth, one dimension of reality, which seems to be dogging me, as if the Holy Spirit is really trying to get my attention.
Do you remember those passages (there are several of them), contained in the four Gospels, in which “the crowds” – it’s interesting how in the Jesus stories “the crowds” functions virtually like a major character in the plot – are following, chasing after Jesus? In the stories we find Jesus walking around embodying the Kingdom of God in his person, in his words, in his deeds, and quite reasonably the crowds of fellow Jews flock to him and pine after him, looking for a blessing, looking for encouragement and help, looking for relief.
And time and time again, what does Jesus do? How does he react to these throngs of hurting and broken people who are in desperate need? Time and time again, not always, but certainly most of the time, Jesus the Good Shepherd and Great Physician does something which, if one stops and ponders it, is mind boggling.
Time and time again, he runs away from them. He avoids him. If they are going one direction, Jesus heads inthe other direction. He hides from them. He tries to escape from them.
Why does he do this? He does it in order to be alone. In order to seek his Father’s face. In order to find rest. In order to be in God’s presence. In order to regroup. Perhaps we could say, “in order to keep, or to regain, his sanity.”
As one who is set apart for ministry in the church (that means I’m supposed to “help people,” right?) I find this riveting. This is food for thought. This is fuel for reflection and a new paradigm for what it means to serve God in the world.
Because – think about this with me – who is it that is in those crowds? Of whom do those swarms of people consist? If we imagine these stories as they invite us to imagine them, we begin to realize that those crowds are saturated with people who are hurting beyond measure. Those crowds are full of the same kinds of people who have seemed to be filling my life recently. People who are on the brink of divorce; people who will literally die if they don’t get medical attention; people who are on the brink of mental and emotional breakdown.
Think about it. Jesus was being pursued by people on the brink of death and divorce, and he fled from them. He could have “saved” them, but he did not. What this means is that their marriages actually ended in bitter, painful divorce. They really died. They really had mental breakdowns and collapses.
What in the world is going on? When you stop and think about it, it is pretty amazing. It prompts an epiphany of how – and why – we do ministry.
At the end of the day, I must stop trying to “save” everyone and everything. I must let God be God.
If the one person in the history of the human race really could solve everybody’s problems, then surely those of us who cannot should stop trying to, stop pretending that we can.
In the intense, daily work of Gospel ministry, I, we, must finally let God be God.
I have many, many reasons to be grateful. God in his faithfulness has showered my life with one blessing after another.
And yet, there is one gift I have recently received for which I must express thanks.
Bouquet and I had a wonderful trip to England earlier this summer. In addition to getting to Oxford to present a lecture at an academic conference, we had the opportunity to re-connect with some specific things which are truly life-giving to us: medieval history, Christian mystery, bucolic country sides, and plenty of time to stroll around (around Oxford, the Cotswolds, Salisbury, and London) and just be together.
The conference at Oxford was a success, and I felt like I did well in my first academic lecture to a group of peers and colleagues. In Oxford we stayed at St. Stephen House, a seminary founded during the Anglo-Catholic “Oxford Movement” of the 19th century, for the training of Anglican clergy and which is a part of Oxford University, and there Bouquet got to hang out with a group of pastors from all around the world who were studying CS Lewis. In Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds I went on a glorious 12 mile run through the meadows and ancient streets which I will never forget. In Salisbury we lingered at Old Sarum for hours and just reflected on God’s work in the world and in our lives. In London we worshipped at St. Paul’s (a 5 minute walk from our “hotel,” a glorified college dorm at the London School of Economics).
All in all the trip was wonderfully rejuvenating professionally (I’m hoping that my presentation will be published), pastorally (it was great just to observe how the clergy in England carry themselves), and personally (we ate lots of savory Indian food!). Our imaginations were kindled and our hearts and minds quickened. I had a sense that the Church of England is alive and that the Gospel continues to penetrate the culture. The sermon at St. Paul’s (as well as the worship at St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford) were Spirit-filled. At St. Paul’s there must have been 750 worshippers in attendance, from every conceivable tribe, tongue, nation, and people … listening attentively to a sermon about learning to live like Jesus Christ.
But the main point is that none of this would have been possible without our true family, the people of God at Christ Church (not Christ Church, Oxford but Christ Church Tyler). It would not have been possible without my bishop and my rector who allowed me to enroll in a PhD program. It would not have been possible without several friends who supported us financially and spiritually. It would not have been possible without the vestry’s generous gift of a continuing education fund. There are just to many people to thank!
Most of all, of course, we give thanks to God in Christ Jesus.
Thanks be to God!
For a while I’ve been convinced that what the church planting edge of the Episcopal Church should do is become more “eastern orthodox.” The Episcopal Church needs to be “strangified” for newer generations. Hence, this.
And yet … please take 3 mins and watch this video. This is the kind of church plant that I find compelling and viable.
Why? B/c there is a strong, clear, passionate, authentic Gospel-driven vision which is being proclaimed & articulated boldly by gifted, intense leaders.
This is what we need, IMO.
The following is the abstract of the paper I will be submitting at the “On the Soul” Conference this summer at Oxford.
Mathesis Newly Imagined:
Descartes’ Univocal Construal of Nature
In Plato’s Republic Socrates cannot speak of city without, virtually in the same breath, speaking of soul. In his ethical works Aristotle takes the same approach by weaving culture and nature together: “The human being is by nature a political animal;” “Every city exists by nature;” and so on. So it is that the mainstream of the premodern tradition saw nature as culturally construed, but in a way in that is symbiotically related to culture in a mutually dependent way.
This classical approach to physico-politics is not only metaxological in this way: it is also highly imaginative. Thinkers from Aristotle to Coleridge not only constitute nature with explicitly imaginative features, but they freely admit to doing this. For Aristotle nature emerges with the intuitive recognition of a certain proportion between self and creature, of soul in the animals familiar to his everyday experience. Hence the self is like, for example, a bird, and nature is always already soulishly imagined. For Coleridge, nature is God’s creation, or the imaginatively invested analogue of the techne of the imago dei.
Then we have Descartes, arriving on the scene in the 17th century. In his Le Monde Descartes reimagines nature in two innovative ways: he imposes the requirement of a priori systematizability, and he reduces matter to the mathematically amenable corpuscular.
In this paper I demonstrate how, in these two moves and in the flattened out mathematical schema they support, Descartes collapses nature and culture in his newly minted mechanistic construal of the world, in a move which is the equal opposite of that of the sophistic separation of the two, as described in a recent article by John Milbank (“The Politics of the Soul”). When the mutual coinherence of nature and culture is denied, the result is a vicious oscillation between identity and separation.
I will also establish that Descartes’ final articulation of nature, unlike that of Aristotle and Coleridge, univocally and reductively lacks any appeal to the imaginative faculty of the soul. For Descartes we don’t need imagination to conceive of the world, though this does not imply that imagination is not a means to Descartes’ end, whether acknowledged or not.
Finally I show, with the help of Jean-Luc Marion and Pierre Hadot, how this reductive collapse, together with the novel doctrine of the potentia absoluta dei which enables it, issues in a cosmology which is wholly and merely theoretical, in which there is no reason to think that it describes the world which actually exists. Do we want to talk about a world that actually exists? If so, I will argue, then as a first step we must admit and embrace the constitutive necessity of the imagination in any construal of physics or cosmology.
Almost every day, I have the joy of talking to a Christ Church parishioner who comes up to me excitedly and tells me about a new beer they’ve discovered. Wow! What a wonderful and interesting life I get to live!
For the fifth Lent in a row, however, I decided once again to do the barely thinkable: I decided to give up all alcohol for Lent. This, year, however, I did something even more unheard of: I went “Eastern Orthodox style,” meaning that I continued my fast even on the Sundays in Lent! (Did you know that a faithful Orthodox Christian lives about 40% of each year, about 40% of his or her entire life, fasting in one form or another?)
It has truly been an amazing experience. Not only have I lost ten pounds without changing a single additional variable. Not only am I sleeping better. Not only is my budget that much closer to being responsible. But, in addition to all of that, my prayer life has improved, and that is what I want to talk to write about in this blog post.
St. Augustine, in Book VII of the Confessions, has a life-changing epiphany when he “discovers” the “books of the Platonists,” or what today we would call the “neoPlatonists.” From those books he learns that God is “simple:” without body, without spatiality, not subject to time or to change. But also from those books he begins to incorporate an ancient insight of mysticism (shared, again, by the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy): that God reveals himself to the human soul in an experience which many mystics (including St. Augustine) call “divine illumination” or the “divine light.”
Now, when Augustine or someone like Symeon the New Theologian or indeed the neoPlatonist Plotinus speaks of this divine light, they always stress the importance of purity. In fact, neoplatonism injected into the stream of Christian tradition, inherited by the ancient monastics, the three-fold way of purification – illumination – unification.
Think about this “purification” like this. The human soul / mind / heart is like a multi-layered onion. You might think of the outermost layer of the onion as the noise which floods into our ears daily in the car, at home, in the coffee shop, or wherever. Beneath that external noise we have the many distracting thoughts which occupy our mind. Beneath that layer are the concerns and worries of our life (finances, health, etc.). Deepest of all one might find a painful and disturbing layer of damage caused, for example, by hurtful words spoken or things experienced in our childhood.
All of these “layers” essentially serves as distractions or barriers to the experience of the “divine light” of God in our innermost being. The goal of purification, then, not unrelated to the fasting of Lent, is to rid ourselves of the noise, to rid ourselves of the distractions of life.
This Lent I’ve experienced something of this purificaton, more this year than ever before. My “theology of the fruit of the vine” has not changed! I believe in myrth, conviviality, and feasting! I still wear beer t-shirts (even during Lent!). Young people still gather on my front porch after church and enjoy new, riveting beverages.
But my heart and mind are also captivated by the benefits of living without strong drink. It is a very small price to pay for deeper intimacy with my Lord.
Back in the day, when I was a little crazier than I am today, I preached a sermon at Emanuel Presbyterian Mission, a multi-ethnic church plant in which I was a founding co-pastor, in which I said this:
When you walk up to me and ask me, “How are you doing?” don’t expect me say, “Just fine.” I’m not “just fine.” I’m worse than that, and I’m better than that. In fact, when you come up and ask me how I’m doing, don’t be surprised if I respond, “I’m dying and being resurrected.”
Turns out that this sermon created quite a reaction in our young and growing diverse congregation, and from that point onward, when someone would approach a member of our community and ask them how they were doing, it was not uncommon to hear, “I’m dying and being resurrected … it’s the only way to fly.”
The gospel lesson from this last Sunday (Lent III), Luke 13:1-9, is an unusual passage. There are a great number of passages in the four gospels which are intended to encourage the downtrodden, the comfort the afflicted, and to encourage the down and out. Indeed we have a Lord who is constantly drawn to the outcast, whose heart beats to lift up the lowly.
But the Gospel lesson for Lent III (in Year C) is no such passage. If you are feeling discouraged today, this passage is not for you, for this passage (one of a small number of such passages in the Gospels) is aimed at the upbeat, the successful, those who are meeting their goals.
Jesus looks at these people, and tells them to repent. What?! Repent from what? These folks are not like the woman caught in adultery (John 8) who is suffering some rather nasty consequences of her sin. These people have not robbed a bank; they have not even kicked the cat or uttered a four letter word!
So why does Jesus Christ tell them to repent? In this passage we realize that sin is not breaking the rules. When one breaks the rules (whether it in terms of drink, sex, anger, or whatever), this is a mere symptom of something deeper. It is this “something deeper” from which we are called to repent. As Soren Kierkegaard said, “Sin is the attempt to build my life on any foundation other than God.” It is from this tendency that we are called to repent.
And, indeed, this is the point of Lent. Lent is the practice of weaning ourselves off of our dependence on false foundations. Lent is about repenting as a way of life, in the spirit of Martin Luther, the first of whose famous 95 Theses was “All of life is repentance.”
I’m reminded of what Richard Foster shared with some of us in his talk at the Renovation Tyler conference this last weekend. First thing in the morning, he lies on the ground, facing upward. He spreads his arms out in the cruciform shape of the cross, and recites Galatians 2:20 out loud:
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself up for me.
What a powerful way to learn repentance not just when we are feeling down and desperate but in every day, every moment, of our lives.
