“The Breast In Crisis” and the Crucifixion

This is something I wrote for a psychology class, it’s a response to an excerpt from Marilyn Yalom’s The History of the Breast. SInce breasts are probably fascinating to everyone (they certainly are to me!), and since writing this led to new ways of thinking for me ( I’ve never connected breast cancer with the crucifixion of Christ before), I thought I would share it. The first section is a summary of Yalom and the second section is my response.

Summary

As I understand it, Marilyn Yalom’s thesis statement is found in the third to last paragraph of the excerpt: “The breast has been, and will continue to be, a marker of society’s values. Over time, it has assumed and shed various cloaks of religious, erotic, domestic, political, psychological, and commercial hues. Today it reflects a medical and global crisis. We are anxious about our breasts, just as we are anxious about the future of our world.” By looking at the history of the breast in the Western world, Yalom is interested in discovering what our various attitudes and behaviors revolving around breasts reveal about human nature, experience, attitudes and behavior, especially as it relates to women, and what the current ideas associated with the breast might tell us about our present and our future.

The breast has meant many things to many people, with both positive and negative connotations, and the multiplicity of meaning tells us about the values, hopes, fears, struggles and challenges of different people in different times. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the breasts of Eve have been sometimes seen as representing temptation. For Medieval Christians, the infant Christ at the breast of Mary was a symbol of nurturance for all the faithful. In the Renaissance, the breast became an erotic symbol. During the French and American revolutions, a bare breasted Lady Liberty was a common symbol of the life-giving power of freedom and a democratic government. Freud popularized the breast’s place in a child’s emotional development, with breast-feeding as the first sexual experience.

Women since the 19^th century have been barraged with advertisements for breast “control” of one kind or another (bras, etc.), and the breast has become another opportunity for profit in the capitalist world. Women are tyrannized by socially constructed standards of beauty. The prevalence of cosmetic surgeries (breast implants, liposuction) and eating disorders reflect the extremes many women go to attain this impossible ideal (even supermodels are photo shopped).

Yalom says that what virtually all the historical attitudes toward the breast share in common are that they are from a male perspective. Whether it’s the nurturing breast of the Virgin or the tempting and sinful breasts of Eve, the many meanings given to breasts have been filtered through how men relate to them. Yalom found it difficult to find female perspectives before the 20^th century.

However, the voices of women have been emerging from a history of male-dominated views of the breast, talking openly about their breasts in various capacities. The bra burning of the women’s liberation movement symbolically rejected external control of women.

Recently emerging from a history of male-dominated views of the breast are the voices of women talking openly about their breasts in various capacities; erotic pleasure, the joy of nursing, the frustrations of impossible standards of beauty, and the grief of breast cancer. We live in a time where the breast has reappeared front and center in our cultural consciousness. Today, we see that the focus on the breast is highly sexually charged and associated with pleasure, while at the same time it has become strongly linked to death and pain with the alarming rise of breast cancer. Indeed, breast cancer is bringing women into “full possession of their breasts.” There are both timeless and time-bound factors at play in the current prominence of the breast; it will always have deep meaning for human beings as a symbol of a paradise lost as we face the difficulties of being a responsible adult, especially in the climate of “alienation endemic to post industrialized societies.” The more time-bound factor may be breast cancer; the return of large, sometimes erotic and sometimes objectified breasts to fashion and the media could be a way of denying our fears. The breast has been a marker of societies’ values (religious, sexual, political, etc.) Today it reflects a medical and global crisis (breast cancer). Will we succeed in combating breast cancer? If so, this would be a victory for us all and for life itself “in the face of everything that threatens to annihilate us.”

My Response

In the first sentence of the introduction, author Marilyn Yalom says that she intends “to make you think about women’s breasts as you never have before.” I can say that she succeeded for me, even having only read a 12-page excerpt. This excerpt from Joseph Campbell came to mind as I was reflecting on my response to this article:

“Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.” That is James Joyce… Take, for example, a pencil, ashtray, anything, and holding it before you in both hands, regard it for a while… Cut off from use, relieved of nomenclature, its dimension of wonder opens; for the mystery of the being of that thing is identical with the mystery of the being of the universe—and of yourself.”
Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

             Campbell may have been more referring to the “isness” mystery in everything (I’m thinking of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, where he references Meister Eckhart), while Yalom is dealing more with conceptual ideas, but nonetheless, one thing I have taken away from this article is that the breast, intensely regarded, is a gate of access to the mystery of life and death, the whole human drama, both the beautiful and the ugly.

To unpack that statement, I’ll get more specific. As a male, I am not always consciously aware of how male-filtered history is, and what a recent thing it is to have women publically speaking about their breasts (or anything else, for that matter). I find the interplay between a patriarchal Western history and this same male perspective’s fascination with the breast deeply intriguing. Though men in power (the ones writing history) have not been all too skillful in relating to females and respecting them as individuals with abilities and aspirations, they have nonetheless been enthralled by what is perhaps their most primal symbol in the Western imagination: the breast.

I think this might provide us with a deep insight into the complicated relationship between masculine and feminine, both in the external world and in the inner world of the psyche. Men need the nourishment, play and eros of the feminine but have not known how to approach her which has perhaps resulted in the revulsion toward the breast seen at certain times in the past and the objectification of the breast we see today (a breast is more like a soulless toy for many males in our culture than a dynamic, living expanse of subjectivity that can put us in contact with the mysteries of life). There has not been much integration of anima and animus in Western societies, at least not at the level of authority. Perhaps this is part of why Western history is scarred with so much violence.

The grave reality of breast cancer (1 in 9 women) clues us in to a bigger picture in which there are many forces at play threatening to annihilate life. The question of whether or not we can save the breast is also the question of whether or not we can save humanity. It strikes me as deeply poignant and compelling that, as a perfect parallel to our nuclear era characterized by alienation from our bodies, the planet and the Spirit, women now have to face breast cancer at alarmingly increasing rates. Women, who have been bearing the burden of so much of humanity’s brokenness, now are tragically bearing the wounds of Christ in a more immediate and fatal way, no doubt as the result of our collective ignorance (pollution, unchecked capitalist greed propelling the consumption of poisonous food and cosmetic products, etc.). My hope is that, just as the broken body and shed blood of Christ has been a prophetic symbol, a wake up call to those with eyes to see, to turn from scapegoating and violence, the wounds of our sisters, mothers, lovers and friends today might be a catalyst of transformation into a more integrated and compassionate humanity.

(The current breast cancer problem reminded me of this painting by Alex Grey)

Nuclear Crucifixion

 

Easter Reflection on Resurrection

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

-Paul Tillich

The resurrection is the symbol of hope that says God can and does create beauty and newness out of the worst messes that we make for ourselves, both collectively and individually. The resurrection, for me, has come to be the signifier and reminder that at my lowest, when all seems forfeit and meaningless, that this is precisely the place where Grace will meet me and lift me up. When I feel most isolated, most worthless, most full of self-loathing and regret, most unnoticed or at least unknown by my peers, the Resurrection is the ultimate hope that this darkness, this weight, or this sting that I feel will not be wasted in the economy of Grace. Resurrection is that which is newly injected and freely given into those dark nights when our face is in the dirt, when we are too weak to take another step and too discouraged to look up. It is purely gift, 100% received, never earned and often not even hoped or asked for.

Resurrection says that God not only works in these situations, but that this is actually where God does her best work. The resurrection seems to be telling us that our brokenness is God’s fertilizer of choice for the raising up of New Life. It is God’s springboard for breaking into our dreary, black and white world with astonishing and breathtaking color we couldn’t have dreamt of.

And of course, the significance of the Resurrection in my life has everything to do with the fact that it was the Resurrection of Jesus. It couldn’t have been just anyone. I’ve been extremely influenced and inspired by existentialism this semester thanks to a fantastic course I’ve been taking, and not too long ago I was reflecting on the life, death and Resurrection of Christ from an existentialist perspective. Existentialism is concerned with living authentically. To live authentically is first of all to be aware and mindful of the Call from your deepest Center, your True Self, or from God (I don’t believe these are mutually exclusive; I’m a panentheist) and then to live faithfully to the demands and invitations this Calling brings into your life. To live authentically begins with knowing deep down what you must do, not because of what seems rational, not because of plans made prior, not because of what he, she, they or it expects from you, not because you need to prove to Mom or Dad or your ex-lover that you are good enough, but because you are in touch with your Center and what he/she is Calling you to and, dammit, if you don’t, you’ll die never having truly lived with no one to blame but yourself. You could be the most successful, the best looking, the most liked, have lots of sex and travel the world, but if you’re not faithful to this Call, you’ll not have lived an authentic life. To live authentically is to hear the Call and to say “YES” with every fiber of your being, to will it and follow it because no one else will do it for you. Søren Kierkegaard says that the Saint is the one who wills the one thing. Rob Bell is amazing at what he does and, as is often the case when I am writing about something important to me, I am reminded of one of his NOOMA’s that brilliantly touches on some of these ideas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_IJemA5jXg

Jesus lived an authentic life. My understanding of Jesus was not that he was born with some supernatural awareness that he was divine, but that rather through a life of faith formed and sustained by prayer and his reading of the Hebrew scriptures, he became so intimate with YHWH that he came to know him as Father, even to the point of saying “I and the Father are one.” Through a life of the most careful attention to the promptings and callings of God within him, he became aware of a vocation to embody and even be God for his people and for the world.

Jesus probably could have had a pretty nice life by most standards. He was clearly an incredibly charismatic teacher steeped in his tradition’s scriptures, a brilliant mind, a master communicator and story teller. He was magnetic. He probably could have gained favor with the religious leaders of his day, become a famous and well-respected Rabbi, married a nice girl, and made a comfortable living. But Jesus was faithful to the Call, the call to be a sign and embodiment of God’s love for the least of these, which inevitably meant confrontation with and rejection of the power structures of his day. Jesus was authentic to his True Self, no matter what the cost. It wasn’t convenient, it didn’t cater to desires for comfort, pleasure and power, it hurt, it cost him everything, and I’m sure he knew this all from day one, but he did not let any of this stop him. He had a vocation, and Jesus’ “YES” to this call, expressed in his every word and action, has been the spiritual sustenance and hope of millions throughout the last two millennia.

“Misunderstand me, ignore me, threaten me, betray me, deny me, abandon me, arrest me, beat me, whip me, strip me naked and nail me to a cross, do your worst, I will not back down.”

Jesus was not above the pressure and pain of what his life led him into. On the night he was betrayed, he prayed in a garden that if it were possible, that “this cup might pass” from him, but after these anguished words and I’m sure through sweat and tears, he utters “But not what I want, but what you want.” We can take “what you (God) want” to mean Jesus’ Call to authentic living. Jesus was tempted to break, to shrink from his vocation to be faithful to Love, to embody the way of forgiveness and nonviolence to the point of death, but Jesus ultimately decides to be faithful. And his faithfulness leads him into the heart of despair and meaninglessness; this kind of authentic living is no feel-good self-help and certainly no prosperity gospel. According to the Gospel of Mark, the earliest and starkest of the gospels, Jesus seems to be in agony all throughout his passion. On the cross, he screams (this is apparently what the original Greek connotes), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus’ faithfulness to God leads to an experience of God forsakenness. Jesus becomes an atheist and feels the terror of it. Jesus’ faithfulness to the Call leads to an experience of absolute isolation and failure, because we lived in a really fucked up world where people who give their lives over to Love get killed for it.

But as we all know, this is not the end of the story…

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, [Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome] went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

-Mark 16

Jesus entrusted himself to the Call and on Good Friday, it looks like it was all for nothing. But then, when there was nothing anyone could have done to change it, Easter happened.

The Resurrection boldly proclaims that our broken cycle of ignorance, isolation, greed, hatred and violence is not all there is, that there is Another Way that plays a different song, one of peace, forgiveness, healing, compassion and love. It looks like Jesus. The Resurrection says that God was with Jesus all along and that God is forever and always with us, not because we are worthy but because God is Love, always given, never earned. The beauty of the cross and resurrection is that it excludes no one from the table, not even the ones who killed Jesus. In the raising up of Jesus, God is inviting us all to wake from our sleep of ignorance and separateness and be raised into the unity of the Divine Life with him.

The Risen Christ raising Adam and Eve with him (photo by yours truly)

The Resurrection is God’s “YES” to Jesus’ “Yes.” It is God’s “Yes” to us all. This is good news.

Theists Create Atheists, Atheists Create Theists – Beyond Polarities (Part 2)

Two spiritual giants of the 20th century respond to the question, “Do you believe in God?”

Carl Jung: Difficult to answer… I know. I don’t need to believe, I know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ25Ai__FYU

Joseph Campbell (asked by a man handing out religious tracts in NYC): I don’t think you have time for my answer.

This is continuing from my last post, where I started to share my thoughts on why the either/or, black and white polarity we often find people divided into when it comes to “atheism” and “theism” is, as I see it, unhelpful and misleading.

Instead of generalizing and making assumptions about what the experience of other people has been, I’ll share from my own.

When I embraced Christianity about two and a half years ago, the model of faith that I adhered to put a lot of weight on believing the right things. This makes perfect sense, because for many Christians, your locale for all of eternity depends precisely on whether or not your beliefs about God are correct! My understanding was that it was only worth being a Christian if “God exists”, that Jesus was physically raised from the dead (I’m not saying that he wasn’t!) and that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. I read arguments in support of these things, especially the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus/historical reliability of the Gospels, and it worked for me.

However, It only took about four months before this house of cards came under siege and started to quiver. For me, being a creationist was never an option, so evolution and a non-literal reading of Genesis was integrated from day one. However, shortly after hearing Francis Collins (geneticist and Christian) speak in Boston about the need for Christians to embrace evolution, I stepped in some quicksand and descended (ascended?) into a crisis of faith. Arguments for the existence of God that previously appeared solid began to reveal their structural flaws and I began to realize that, from a rationalist perspective, it’s entirely plausible, maybe even likely, that there is no Supreme Being called God. The constantly growing body of knowledge formed by scientific inquiry continues to fill in the gaps in our understanding where we previously needed to invoke a transcendent creator for an explanation. Sure, there’s always mystery, but precisely because it’s mystery, it doesn’t follow that I can be sure that a god must be on the other end of it; I just don’t know! And what’s more, if history repeats itself, as it tends to, what is mysterious now will likely have an explanation that doesn’t need a god in the near future.

Not only was I finding that there’s no bulletproof argument for the existence of God, but I was also being confronted with formidable reasons to doubt. I could make a list, but one doesn’t need to look any further than the overwhelming suffering that ceaselessly goes on in our world. Bart Ehrman, New Testament scholar and former evangelical turned agnostic, about sums it up here in an article called “How the Problem of Pain Ruined My Faith”:

“How can one explain all the pain and misery in the world if God—the creator and redeemer of all—is sovereign over it, exercising his will both on the grand scheme and in the daily workings of our lives? Why, I asked, is there such rampant starvation in the world? Why are there droughts, epidemics, hurricanes, and earthquakes? If God answers prayer, why didn’t he answer the prayers of the faithful Jews during the Holocaust? Or of the faithful Christians who also suffered torment and death at the hands of the Nazis? If God is concerned to answer my little prayers about my daily life, why didn’t he answer my and others’ big prayers when millions were being slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when a mudslide killed 30,000 Columbians in their sleep, in a matter of minutes, when disasters of all kinds caused by humans and by nature happened in the world?

We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this? We live in a world in which earthquakes in the Himalayas kill 50,000 people and leave 3 million without shelter in the face of oncoming winter. We live in a world where a hurricane destroys New Orleans. Where a tsunami kills 300,000 people in one fell swoop. Where millions of children are born with horrible birth defects. And where is God?”

http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/2008/04/why-suffering-is-gods-problem.html

This experience of profound doubt was terrifying because I had nothing to fall back on. I was confronted with the reality of death without a safety net of “eternal life” and the possibility of living in a meaningless, indifferent and chaotic universe. I wanted a way out, and so I turned to apologetics to soothe my existential anxieties with certainty and secure logical arguments, but this only made things worse. It’s a bad rabbit trail to go down. The arguments are never airtight, there’s always plenty of room for skepticism. This is not a bad thing, but I experienced it badly because for me, if I didn’t “believe in God,” then the only reasonable thing was to leave the faith and become an atheist and thus live a “meaningless life.” What I want to say here is that this is an unnecessary and misleading dichotomy and that a life of faith does not rest on “believing in God” as many of us have understood it. German theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich is very helpful here. From his Wikipedia page (italics mine):

“Throughout most of his works Paul Tillich provides an apologetic and alternative ontological view of God. Traditional medieval philosophical theology in the work of figures such as St. Anselm [and] Thomas Aquinas… tended to understand God as the highest existing Being, to which predicates such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, righteousness, holiness, etc. may be ascribed. Arguments for and against the existence of God presuppose such an understanding of God. Tillich is critical of this mode of discourse which he refers to as “theological theism,” and argues that if God is a Being, even if the highest Being, God cannot be properly called the source of all being, and the question can of course then be posed as to why God exists, who created God, when God’s beginning is, and so on… Rather, God must be understood as the “ground of Being-Itself.” … When God is understood in this way, it becomes clear that not only is it impossible to argue for the “existence” of God, since God is beyond the distinction between essence and existence, but it is also foolish: one cannot deny that there is being, and thus there is a Power of Being. The question then becomes whether and in what way personal language about God and humanity’s relationship to God is appropriate.”

In other words, the question is not “does God exist?” When God is understood as the Ground of Being Itself (or Himself or Herself), then there’s no way to even talk about whether or not “God exists.” There is a Source of All that Is, there is a Power of Being, and so yes, there is God. The questions shift toward “What is God like?” or “How do we live in tune with God?” Remember, there is not one verse in the Bible that is concerned with proving that there is a God! God is a given, God just is. When Moses asks God for a name, God’s answer is “I Am who I Am… tell them I AM sent you.” (Exodus 3) Rob Bell explores this beautifully here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-L1dA5eU-M <- Really, worth 11 minutes of your time.

I plan to go further into this next time by looking at how too much of an emphasis on belief has kept me from truly encountering God in the past. Thanks for reading!

Theists Create Atheists, Atheists Create Theists: Beyond Polarities (Part 1)

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

– Joseph Campbell

“Hippies create police, police create hippies… If you’re in polarity, you’re creating polar opposites.”

-Ram Dass, Be Here Now

I should preface this by saying that I imagine a lot of the ideas here are a bridge too far for some, and that I’m not looking to antagonize or change anyone’s mind, but only to share my experience and thoughts.

I used to be into Christian apologetics and believed it was important to know how to rationally defend Christianity from atheist attacks, but I’m not now and I don’t anymore. This post was sparked by a thought I had earlier this week, expressed in the title, that I found echoed while looking through Be Here Now by Ram Dass yesterday (see above quotation).

Now, to be clear, I’m not condemning or dismissing apologetics. I do believe it has its place. It has a long history in the Christian tradition going back to the early fathers, but in the last century it’s taken on too much weight, and it’s too easily forgotten that it is a product of Greek/Platonic/western rationalism rather than the Hebrew consciousness that informed Jesus.

I’m not sure how far back it goes, perhaps to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, but many Evangelical Christians seem to feel as though they need to be on the defensive. There’s a lot of talk about defending your faith and winning arguments. It’s very combative and dualistic. Through this kind of discourse, I imagine that a lot of Christians feel pressure to be right, to be able to prove that they’re right and to make other people wrong. I know I did. For example, this came up on the first page of a Google search for “apologetics.”

Always Be Ready (ABR) – Christian Apologetics: Defending Your Faith



www.alwaysbeready.com/
Quick Responses to Skeptics: by Charlie Campbell, Director of ABR What evidence do you have that there is a God?” The universe itself is evidence that there is …

Always Be Ready? Well, doesn’t that just fill the soul of the believer with the “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4)! To me, it seems more likely to induce anxiety, or if not that, then arrogance, rather than peace, humility and simplicity, which are qualities that Jesus made paramount (See Matthew 5/The Sermon on the Mount). I’m aware that this title is taken from a Bible verse (1 Peter 3:15), but I sincerely doubt that a website with a shield as its emblem and articles on why every single worldview in the entire world besides fundamentalist Evangelicalism is wrong and going to hell is what the writer of 1 Peter had in mind when he wrote “always be ready to make your defense…”.  Always be ready to what? To enter the mental gymnastics required for trying argue conclusively for the existence of something entirely invisible and imperceptible in any tangible way? I don’t know, that doesn’t sound very good to me. Did Jesus ever say that a good disciple must always be ready to argue? This doesn’t sound like the way Jesus approached faith. He never (correct me if I’m wrong) taught his disciples how to win arguments. Instead, he taught the way of love, mercy, sacrifice, compassion and unity with God. There is not a single verse in the Bible that attempts to prove that “God exists.” This is the pattern throughout the history of religion. You don’t find people saying “Well, you know, I was thinking about how there must have been a prime mover to get this whole show on the road, because nothing can’t create something, and unconscious matter can’t create life, and there is just way too much evidence of design, so some supreme being must have…” No, you don’t find that at all. God is a given. God is a Presence that flows through our veins and fills our lungs with breath (YHWH), a Lure that draws us ever deeper into lives of faithfulness, mercy and compassion, a Mystery written in our hearts and minds as well as in the “moon and the stars and the sun” (And we all shine on…). In the major traditions, what births spiritual awakening and the beginning of a religion is not objective, rational reflection but instead an entirely subjective experience of Mystery, Unity, or the Incoming of the Other. It’s the burning bush of Moses, the Awakening of Siddhartha underneath the tree of life, or the gift of the Spirit to Jesus upon his baptism. Last week I heard Richard Rohr share this quote by St. John of the Cross: “God cannot be known (rationally), only loved.”

Now, for how this ties into the idea that “theists create atheists, and atheists create theists”: The underlying assumption behind a lot of Christian apologetics seems to me to be that it’s important and foundational to the life of faith to be right and to know that you’re right, and that the symbols and stories of the faith must be literally true to be true at all. This is a very dualistic way of thinking and tends to put people in a black and white, all or nothing way of thinking where if there isn’t solid evidence for the existence of a Supreme Being/God, or if we can’t mount a compelling argument that Jesus physically rose from the dead, then Christianity is a delusion and a total waste of time. I think this is a very unstable, and more importantly, unnecessary and unhelpful way to hold your faith.

Many atheists are Christians who were no longer able to adhere to the model of literalism and certainty that they were taught were foundational to the faith. As Richard Rohr has said, the very software that the church has given so many people is what drives them away from it. They think that if God can’t shown to exist, then God is not worth “believing” in. Could it be that all this emphasis on arguments and reasons are distracting people from finding God where God is truly found?

I can’t condense all of what I wish to say into one post so I’ll continue next week by sharing my own experience of moving from a somewhat rigid belief-based faith to one that is experiential, sustained by inner-knowing and unknowing, and thus has plenty of room for my doubts.

“Lord, Make Me Chaste – But Not Yet” (Part 2)

Continuing with this idea of the necessary journey, a story:

The boy, all his life sheltered by a well meaning but overprotective mother, looks out the window at the kids playing across the street. With wide eyes he asks, “Mom, what are they doing over there? Can I go play?”

“Oh, nothing you need worry yourself with, Johnny. Those boys are trouble, why don’t you stay here where it’s safe? I’ll make you macaroni and cheese, your favorite!”

However, Johnny’s curiosity remains, and the prohibition (law) only makes the desire to “taste and see” even stronger. If you tell a child not to touch that hot stove or put their finger in that socket, what are they going to want to do? The Apostle Paul understood this very well, as seen in Romans and Galatians.

So the boy, if he submissively obeys the rules laid out for him, “stays at home,” never ventures out, and grows comfortable and secure in these confines, over time will likely grow resentful of “those kids over there” who seem to be enjoying themselves so much, especially if he feels that the authority of his mother is absolute and beyond questioning (the religious corollary of course being the Church or the Bible). Might this be why many religious people who are strictly forbidden from childhood to “dance, drink, smoke, chew or go with girls who do” are often so bitter and judgmental towards others? Condemning everyone who is “outside” and therefore wrong could be their way of feeling better about the fun they’re not having that those other people seem to be having so much of.

Another likely scenario is that Johnny decides he’s had about enough of Mom and her suffocating rules and so he takes the first opportunity he can to run across the street and hang out with those “bad kids” who sneak cigarettes behind the house and ride their bikes too fast. Mom (here representing the authoritative power) isn’t too pleased with this and responds with a firmer laying down of the law. This, of course, leads to more resistance from Johnny. This is the beginning of a feedback loop that keeps reinforcing itself, constantly fed by reactive behavior from both sides, continuing indefinitely “unless acted upon by an outside force.” This dynamic often leads to young people who go off the deep end with sex, drugs and rock and roll. Because they were given no rope at all, they just cut the cord entirely. When we fight fire with fire, everyone involved finds themselves in a hell of their own creation. Everyone loses.

This is the fruit of law without Grace. It either produces people who become the opposite of what the law teaches or people who follow all the rules but are seething cauldrons of judgment and resentment. Either way, law is their master. There is no freedom.

The beauty and power of Grace is that it says, “You don’t have to change, you’re loved and accepted as you are.” It removes shame and guilt with an unconditional embrace. It is in this space of absolute acceptance that people have the freedom to change, to be transformed and to grow into healthy, wise and healing people. I was blessed to be given this space by parents who did not impose laws or religious observance on me, but instead gave me freedom to find my own voice and path (even if it was partly because I was so damn stubborn!). Speaking from my own experience, that journey is inevitably full of detours that end up as some of our greatest teachers. I believe that my time spent wandering, experimenting, falling down and finding out for myself what happens when you play with fire or “push the red button” (Men In Black?) prepared me for the deep spiritual conversion that followed on the heels of that period of my life in ways that few other experiences could have. I don’t have a nice and tidy theorem for understanding this, but I do know that it is the experience of myself and countless others.

The journey itself is sacred

Although I have in many ways learned my lessons and moved on from early detours, I’ve been realizing that this chapter might not be done just yet. And so I am living in the tension of cultivating spiritual growth and also “following my bliss” (Joseph Campbell), allowing myself the freedom to not worry too much about the rules, to be playful, even if that means making a few more mistakes. But of course, the point is not to make mistakes; the point is to allow yourself the journey and not be too concerned with being wise and fully mature before it’s your time to be.

Campbell is very helpful here:

“So, I say the way to find your myth is to find your zeal, to find your support, and to know what stage of life you’re in. The problems of youth are not the problems of age. Don’t try to live your life too soon. By listening too much to gurus, you try to jump over the whole darn thing and back off and become wise before you’ve experience that in relation to which there is some point in being wise. This thing, wisdom, has to come gradually.”

Messy and ambiguous? You bet! But that’s life. Very few things are black and white; we deal mostly with shades of grey. The Bible is, in many parts, a text that is very comfortable living in this tension, and if religious traditions are ever going to nurture and produce more mature and healing communities rather than immature and regressive ones, they must embrace this reality rather than try to deny it with all-to-easy but ultimately inadequate answers that shelter people from the Real rather than bringing them into contact with it.

A brilliant excerpt from Things Hidden by Richard Rohr that really speaks into this:

“The major heresy of the Western churches is that they have largely turned around the very meaning of faith, not knowing and not needing to know, into its exact opposite – demanding to know and insisting that I do know! … [In the Garden of Eden, it] seems that God is asking humanity to live inside of a cosmic humility. In that holding pattern, we bear the ambiguity, the inconsistencies and the brokenness of all things, instead of insisting on dividing reality into the good guys and the bad guys. It is our ultimate act of solidarity with humanity.”

So I make it my prayer to live in love always, but to recognize where I am on the journey, embracing the first-half that must be fully lived into before a transition to second-half of life wisdom is truly possible.

This will continue with a third post.

“Lord, Make Me Chaste – But Not Yet” (Part 1)

-Augustine of Hippo

 “Be careful, you might fall!”

 First, there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall.  Both are the mercy of God! – Lady Julian of Norwich

Over the last couple of years, I have taken spiritual growth seriously. I have been reading writers such as Thomas Merton and getting deep into theology and spiritual discipline/practice (prayer, meditation). I have been trying to take Jesus seriously when he said, “Deny yourself and take up your cross,” and that “whoever loses their life will find it.” As of last fall, however, I’ve become aware that this headlong dive into second-half of life wisdom might be a little premature. Through the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Richard Rohr and others, I’ve been coming to see that my first-half of life quest has a few chapters waiting to be written.

Well, maybe it should have been obvious. I’m only 23, after all!

I trust I will successfully transition to the second-half when the time is right, and I am already mindful of the teaching of masters such as Jesus, Merton, Buddha, Rohr, the Dalai Lama and others on a daily basis. However, I might not yet be at the point where it’s right for me to leave everything and follow “the Way” as the Apostles did when Christ called them to leave their nets (read: their livelihoods) and follow him. I still have to figure out some of the who questions, to step more fully into my hero’s journey, which involves a lot of falling, messiness and confrontation with the unknown but is ultimately a thrilling adventure in which you step into your calling, becoming the gift that you are to the world.

If it sounds a little egocentric, it is.

It’s common, especially among the religious, to think that anything ego-driven is a bad thing, but I believe this isn’t true. We have these who questions that call out from our depths, and they are natural, healthy and good in and of themselves. They only become bad when we think it’s all there is, which is certainly what’s happened in the US; how else do you explain men in their fifties who think there’s no greater task than acquiring the next car, the next house, the next woman, or paycheck?

Once we get these questions answered, we are ready to transcend them and move onto the greater question of “what’s it all for?”

But I’m not quite there yet. I thought I was, but I’m not, and it’s liberating to have this awareness, to know where I am on the path.

“There’s no direct flight to the second-half of life,” Richard Rohr says. The pattern of many of the great holy men and women across the ages is that there’s a lot of falling and years spent as prodigals before stepping into their calling to be the saints history remembers them as.

The Buddha indulged himself without restraint before he left home to seek enlightenment. Augustine, who I quote in the title of this entry, is famous for his insatiable sexual appetite and conquests before his conversion. It’s believed by many that Francis of Assisi did a whole lot of partying before he lay down everything for Christ. Thomas Merton, my personal hero, was a man of profound depth, insight and wisdom, a bright light if there ever was one. At age 26 he become a Trappist Monk, renouncing life in the world for a life of poverty, celibacy, obedience and prayer. Before this, however, he partied through his college years and was quite the man about town, even fathering a child out of wedlock at age 21!

Siddhartha in his palace

Now, it’s easy to look at the lives of these individuals and say “Look how lost they were!” And no doubt, there is truth to this. We all have wounds from very early on, and the messes we make stem from and reflect them. However, I believe we might not have the legacy of people like Merton if they didn’t do all the searching and stumbling they did earlier in life. We learn by falling.

A problem with religious structures is that they often try to give people the answers to who they are and how they’re supposed to behave before the individuals do the questing, struggling, dancing, falling and discovering for themselves. It short-circuits and forecloses on the journey. Now, I’m all for providing a clear sense of morality and structure for young people, but we should welcome the inevitable questioning and pushing back when it comes. We can teach our children the 10 commandments and also expect them to start breaking them later on, accepting it all as part of a sacred process. We need to explore and we need to challenge. Trust the journey. In Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, it is only after the son is lost that he can be truly found in the deepest sense, experiencing the overwhelming, all-embracing, healing love of his father in a way he probably never would have if he had remained at home.

This will continue with a look at grace and law, ambiguity, more personal reflection, and how calling people to “follow Jesus” too early in life might have led Christianity to domesticate and completely forget what “following Jesus” actually means. Along those lines, this quote came to mind. It may not be a perfect parallel but I think it points in the right general direction:

“Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”

-Sri Ramakrishna

Hello

I’ve migrated to WordPress from blogger because I got tired of signing in and out of two different gmail accounts every time I wanted to do something with my blog. WordPress seems like it’s got it’s act together a little better, too. Anyway, I started a blog a few weeks ago: http://seedsonthepath.blogspot.com/ I’ll repost my last couple of entries here. That’s all for now. Namaste, grace and peace be with you!

The God You Don’t Believe In, I Don’t Believe In Either

“God.” Easily one of the most divisive, loaded, explosive, powerful, beautiful, and confusing words uttered by humans. As a Christian, I use the word “God” a lot. But what does it mean for me?

I imagine that what the word “God” has come to mean for me is different than what it does for many, religious and non-religious alike, and so I’m hoping to clarify where I stand and also gain some deeper self-understanding. I possess some apparent contradictions when it comes to God. I’m a Christian. I love and try to follow Jesus. I attend and serve in church gatherings. I read scripture, pray and meditate every day (well… almost every day). I have had glimpses and tastes of Divine Love that elevated me clean out of my hang ups and myopic egoism into another way of seeing, where everything seemed to be shining, alight with bliss, love, wholeness and beauty, and where I realized that there was never anything I had to do or attain, but only to wake up to what already is. There have been numerous occasions where I’ve been moved almost to tears by an inexpressible and inexhaustible tenderness and mercy radiating from ordinary, everyday things – a candle, a flower – transfiguring and sanctifying them. My heroes are mystics and contemplatives. Everything is spiritual.

But on the other hand, I have no idea what God is. I am not attached to any particular conception of God other than this – God is Love. That’s all I know. And so when I hear people attacking or dismissing “god,” I take no offense. I don’t feel threatened, nor do I have any desire to debate because I don’t believe in God. I only know God. God is not an object of belief “somewhere out there” that guarantees I’m right and gives me a sense of mastery and certainty in an uncertain world. The God I love is known only thru participation and cannot be rationally apprehended. I have no conceptual god to defend. Whether or not there is a God “out there” is not relevant to me. Faith has come to be not about covering over life’s inherent difficulties with easy answers but instead having the courage to face them and live authentically in the midst of them. (I am drawing heavily on Peter Rollins here).

Of course I have ideas about God, but they are subject to change and I don’t “believe” them. They are sketches and maps of the territory at best, never to be confused with the Reality.

It used to matter to me tremendously whether or not “God exists”. I expended ungodly amounts of time and energy researching arguments from both sides, wrestling and debating with myself whether God as the “big other” exists. It occurs to me now that this was time I could have spent actually doing what Jesus taught us to do – loving and serving the poor and downtrodden in my midst and being an agent of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation in a world that needs good news. No doubt, I would have found God there. God is not found in arguments or abstractions. God is found in Love. God is Love.

Through grace in its various guises, my journey has brought me to a place of freedom from needing to know just what God is. I have owned my doubt, not as something to be tolerated because, “well, after all, I’m only human,” but rather as something that is central to my faith. It is not something that is marginalized and ignored when possible, but instead embraced and given a seat of honor at the table. “To believe is human; to doubt, divine.” –Pete Rollins

I’m not too concerned with “what God is” because I know. Not objective, test-tube knowledge, but knowledge as of an intimate. (“Adam knew Eve”) Structured and defined beliefs are necessary at one point, but eventually you need to take the training wheels off.

How can someone know God if they don’t “believe in God”?

Christianity is an incarnational faith. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (The Gospel of John). The Mystery of God, that which is invisible, was revealed in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Christianity, then, is a materialistic religion. It’s about blood, sweat, skin, tears, flowers, wine, sex, earth, dance, music, art, gardens, food, air, love, fire, ice, grass, wheat, pouring your life into someone else, empowering the oppressed, freeing the captives. For me, faith is about here and now, not there or later. Heaven and earth are not separate. Heaven is a present reality.

Two quotes that say more in a few words than I have in many:

“God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought.” -Joseph Campbell

“And so, when the mind admits that God is too great for our knowledge, love replies: “I know him.” -Thomas Merton

While beginning to write this, I went into more detail about my thoughts about God – what I think God is, what I think God isn’t. But it all felt so distasteful, and worse, blasphemous. Not blasphemous in the sense that I feared a fire breathing, thunderbolt- throwing deity riding on the clouds would smite me. No, it felt blasphemous in the way you might feel if you were asked to describe your lover only in terms of their physical traits and you found yourself attempting to capture their irreducible, transcendent essence in a reductionist description of eye color, hair color, race, height, weight, etc. This is how I feel talking about God as an object for investigation or debate. It’s like trying to grasp light in your hand.

What I do believe is this: God cannot be embraced except in the embrace of the world, in all of its brokenness and beauty. The Divine cannot be affirmed except in the affirmation of life in all of its joy and anguish, serenity and despair. God is not an object that we know by holding to a particular belief system, existing somewhere outside of the world of space and time and then occasionally stepping in to push this button, pull that string, heal this person, give that person a parking space, etc. The entire Universe is alight with God and contained within God, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear (as Jesus was so fond of saying). There’s a Jewish Midrash that says there are burning bushes everywhere.

Now, to close with another gem from Merton:

(Don’t worry; I don’t think I’m a contemplative)

“In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is;

this is a great gain,

because “God is not a what,”

not a “thing.”

There is “no such thing” as God

because God is neither a “what” or a “thing”

but a pure “Who,”

the “Thou” before whom our inmost “I” springs

into awareness.”