A Path for the Wise

That picture of Mother Delores Hart in my last post drew an above average number of readers.  People love good old traditional nuns—I love good old traditional nuns, but then I believe that the monastic life in its various expressions—traditional and modern—is very much a hope for both the Church and the world in which we live. 

        Sister Joan Chittester, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie PA, is a great example of the contemporary monastic.  I have never met Sister Joan though we have exchanged letters on a few occasions and she was a friend of a dear cousin of mine who died several years ago.  I have read a number of her books and find that while sometimes her ideas are challenging she can speak right to me.  One of my favorites is The Fire In These Ashes (Sheed and Ward, 1995).  In The Fire In These Ashes, Sister Joan says that the raison d’etre for monastic life is “to find God.”  You don’t become a monk or a nun for any other purpose than to find God. 

      I have always been a bit jealous of those who are called to the monastic life because at the end of the day, what is there except the search to find God?  I am a busy person.  I teach.  I run a library.  I give talks, retreats, renewal programs.  I am on committees.  I advise students with their research and papers.  I see people for spiritual direction.  I do a lot of things—but to what end?  Is life about keeping busy?  Or “putting bread and butter on the table?” I am a historian.  Do I really care about the Battle of Agincourt?  Am I supposed to think there is something worth caring about in the economic bubble of the twelfth century? Why should I bother with the Pirenne Thesis?  The fact of the matter is that history intrigues me not because some event a thousand years ago happened—things happening today have more import—but  because men and women in every age run around like ants on an anthill trying to find something? The question is: What are they looking for?  God?  No, of course not. At least not consciously.  But they are looking for meaning, for purpose.  And different people find different purpose in life.  For some it is love.  For some money. For  some power. For some freedom.  For some Beauty.  And does any of it last?  At the end of the day, does any of it matter?  No.  And so most just keeping running around in their busy circles.  But for those who wake up from their manic quest and realize how transient life is, the search then continues for that which is eternal. We want to set our eyes on some beacon that shines consistently drawing us on and through the pains and the sorrows, the transient joys and passing hopes of today.   Back in the third century people who realized how empty an unfocused life can be began going out into the deserts of Syria and Egypt.  They left their business and their families and their ambitions—and their religion—to live as solitaries, haunted by the realization that there has to be something more than money in the bank, love in their bed, a fancy house in which to live, and even moving ceremonies on Sunday mornings.  Perhaps the most startling thing is that they realized that a nice ceremony on Sunday morning wasn’t answering the call of their heart.  Here they were looking for God and they saw the emptiness of ritual and rite—the failure of religion to capture and hold the Divine Mystery.  Saint Antony Abbot is a prime example: he left his home and his pharmacy shop in Alexandria and shut himself up in an abandoned fort for over twenty years—never coming out, even for Sunday Mass.  

       Now I am not against Mass.  Far from it, I attend daily.  But Antony Abbot realized that the practice of religion was not enough.  There is something more, something beyond even the most fervent practice of religion.  Eighty some years ago Simone Weil wrote an essay in which she clearly distinguished the Love of God from the Love of Religion.  (Simone Weil, Waiting For God, trans. By Emma Craufurd, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.)  Religion is Religion—it isn’t God.  The Church is the Church—it isn’t God.  Religion or the Church can be the path to God and while it might advance you along the way, it ultimately will fall short of the destination. And often Religion or the Church are misused as paths that only circle back upon themselves.  Even the Sacraments will ultimately fall short.  The Uncreated can never be encapsulated in the created, the Creator in the creature.  This is why monks and nuns—real monks and nuns—have an affinity for agnostics.  They know how elusive God is.  God is always one step beyond us.  We arrive at the place where God was only to find that God has slipped away leaving a trace, a scent, some intangible sign that only makes us more ardent in our pursuit.  And at the same time we are pursuing him, ever more ardently, we begin to suspect that he is, in fact, pursuing us—luring us on ever deeper into  Mysterium—mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  And it is this that drives men and women into monasteries.  

        Sometimes in history the monasteries have taken on lives of their own—lives that distract the monk or the nun with the needs of administration, of building a church, of organizing the work, of feeding and clothing a community, of raising the money to do it all.  At the same time the formal prayers can easily replace the inner eros that impels the monk or nun on.  The need to practice the chant or shine the candleholders can seduce the heart away from its hunt and the monk or nun can forget the vision of their earnest years.  That is a tragic pitfall one hopes they can avoid. It is not unique to Christian monasticism—read the Dalai Lama and he will tell you the same about monks in his tradition who become lost in the superficial details and observances of their lives.   But monastic life is no place for religious people.  It is certainly no place for the pious.  Monastic life isn’t about the habit or the incense or even the chant.  All that is just icing on the cake—maybe even a seduction away from the heart of the life which is simply to seek God in his nakedness and in ours.

       And this is why we need to hear more of the monastic voices in the Church.  They have a wisdom that speaks beyond the superciliousness of the pious and directly to the dark night of the seeker.   As Elizabeth Barret Brownking wrote 

      Earth’s crammed with heaven

      And every common bush aflame with God

      And only he who sees takes off his shoes

      The rest sit round it

      And pluck blackberries

A lot of people are plucking blackberries—we need people in the Church today who can point and shout: “Fire!” For what a fire it is for those with eyes to see. 

Turning Religion On Its Head

Don't ever go to Rome without

seeing Caravaggio's "Inspiration

of Saint Matthew in the Church

of San Luigi Francese.

I had a fascinating conversation on the airplane last evening with a man who teeters between agnosticism and atheism.  He identified himself as an atheist but when he actually outlined his beliefs he is more at the rationalist perimeter of agnosticism than pure atheism in as that he admits, indeed somewhat warmly embraces, the notion of a spiritual dimension to reality by which he posits the existence and immortality, after a fashion, of what a Christian would call the “soul,” though he himself refrains from that word.  He actually more closely resembles the rationalist Deism of the American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson or Franklin in as that he denies the existence of a personal—or as he said personalist—deity but does subscribe to some sort of what one might call an “Eternal Order” of being.  I have met atheists before and found them, without exception to be fools.  I don’t think atheism itself is foolish; I believe that one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god.  (God being the deity of the three monotheistic religions; god referring to some sort, any sort, of a deity including the Jewish-Christian-Islamic deity.)  As I said, one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god and to date I have only met the stupid ones.  By stupid I don’t mean uneducated—education has long ceased being a bulwark against ignorance, much less stupidity, once it abandoned requiring philosophy as a foundation and allowed the houses of the sciences, mathematics, and technology to be built on the sand  of data rather than the rock of metaphysics.  To what purpose is knowledge if it does not impart understanding?  Agnostics, on the other hand, I often find to have the best minds because they are not afraid of the great and important questions but go fearlessly into the dark night of the unexplored queries that relentlessly lead the soul to deeper and deeper searching.  I have much more confidence in the faith of the true agnostic (as opposed to the intellectual sluggard whose laziness leave him or her indifferent  to the search for truth) than the rattler of dogmatic formulae—whether that be the Mormon missionary with his prepared answers or the catechism toting Catholic who thinks all theology lies digested in his (or her) brain once they had memorized the old Baltimore claptrap and calendar of saints.   

     This fellow on the plane is no fool.  Though he works in the technology field he has a Master’s degree in French literature from a prestigious east coast university.  In our wide ranging discussion—most of the way across the Atlantic—I found myself fascinated by his insights on politics, economic, sociology, anthropology and even religion.  It was our discussion of religion—where he confessed he was an “atheist, or perhaps an agnostic”  where I found myself articulating some basic beliefs, the methodology of belief rather than dogma per se, that gave me an interesting insight into my own way of thinking about religious faith as well as why there is tension both between believers and non-believers and among believers who see things from (at least) two very different perspectives. 

     When Patrick—his name—mentioned that he rejected religion and didn’t want his children exposed to it except as a sociological phenomenon, he said that religion claims to be authoritative over the human intellect and thus stifles the human mind in its pursuit of truth.  I know what he meant.  There are plenty of people who think “God said it; I believe it; that settles it, end of discussion.”  This might reflect an “evangelical” (I prefer to say pseudo-evangelical as I don’t think most evangelicals today are true evangelicals, i.e. those who shape their life according to the Gospel.  I think too many take the “Good News” (evangelion in Greek) and make it bad news, something with which to hit  people who disagree with them over the head.  Or it could reflect a lot of super-Catholics who agree unflinchingly with Church authority, or at least as long as Church authority agrees with them.  You know: the Pope is dead right on abortion and same-sex marriage, but when he talks about capital punishment, economic  justice, health care, war, and distributive justice—well that’s just his personal opinion.  What these “evangelicals” and “faithful” Catholics share in common is a highly vertical understanding  of how God communicates himself (I am not into inclusive language when we talk about God, though I don’t have a problem with those who are as long as they don’t get silly.) 

     Now before I go further, let me reaffirm that this blog is not a theological blog and I am not going to approach this question as a theologian, but as a social scientist—that is from a historical/anthropological point of view. 

     The books of Scripture all had historical authors.  Whether or not the Holy Ghost came down and sat on their shoulders, whispering words into their ears as their pens glided across the papyrus and parchment sheets, is not relevant to the historian.  They had human authors and they were written in historical contexts.  The Book of Daniel, for example, was written, or at least much of it was written, in the context of a Hebrew society that was being religiously challenged by Graeco-Syrian political overlords who were trying to move the Jews of their time from traditional belief to a more universal synchronistic religion that would unite the diverse peoples and cultures of their rule.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for a community of Jewish Christians who were trying to harmonize their ancestral faith with some startling new insights developing among the disciples of the lately crucified religious leader, one Yeshua from Nazareth and Capernaum in the Galilee.  And nobody has ever been able to figure out what the author of Revelations had in mind, though there are plenty of theories.  This historical context issue is not limited to Judeo-Christian revelation.  Mohammed wrote in the context of sixth century Arabia with is warring tribes, religious strife, and a society in which alcohol abuse was a significant problem.  He also wrote with a personal exposure to Judaism (less than favorable) and Nestorian Christianity (which was overall a positive experience for him).  The Buddha came out of a Hindu society and culture where he was veddy veddy upper crust and he seems to have had a traumatic introduction to the question of human suffering that shaped his life and doctrine.  Ignatius Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises in an attempt to share his own spiritual awakening with his followers.  Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is rooted in Saints Paul and Augustine but also was profoundly influenced in the way it was formulated by his own scruples and crises, not to mention his alleged digestive tract issues.  We could go on but there is no need.  The point is clear.  While some of these writings may claim to be of “Divine Revelation” that question is of no concern to the historian but only to the religious believer.  There is no objective way to determine with any objective certainty what is and what is not of divine revelation—if there were then faith would not be a required component of the equation. 

      Now, again, I am not writing from a theological perspective but solely from the historical/anthropological point of view, but religion, viewed from the social sciences, is not a matter of “Truth” being imparted from the top down—from God to the Pope, or some Chief Rabbi or Grand Mullah, or even the Dalai Lama (whom I admire tremendously.)  From a historical/anthropological perspective, Truth rises from human experience and crystallizes in the shared experience of a community of believers who shape it into doctrines and practices that reinforce it.  That is not to say that God is not involved but the historian or social scientist (in their role as a historian or social scientist) cannot speak of God but only of what he or she observes.  Of course, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and others can be men or women of faith as well as professionals in their fields.  As men and women of faith they can supply the God-piece to the puzzle but not in their work, at least not directly.  So while as a historian I believe that Christian Revelation –as all other religious systems—rises from human experience, as a man of faith I believe that the truths of Christian Revelation reveal themselves through human experience by the Grace of God.  What is the faith of the faithful is the crux question for me.  In the Catholic Tradition this called the consensus fidelium   and while it has generally been ignored for the last five centuries (some would say the last fifteen) it once was the crucial element in defining Christian orthodoxy. 

      Does this mean that all religion is on a level playing field?  Is the “truth” of Buddhist experience equal to the “truth” of Muslim experience and equal to the “truth” of Christian experience?   As a historian I affirm that each must be taken with the same respect and openness as the others.  I can also see, however, as a historian, that not all religious doctrines have the same success rate in articulating well the core human experiences.  Why has Buddhism lasted when Celtic religion died?  (I think the current revival of paganism is little more than a very ahistorical playing at nature cults.)   Where is Osiris now?  Where is Athena now?  While a host of deities have disappeared,. Jesus has lasted so far.  So have Allah, Shiva, and the Great Spirit.  Time shows that not all religions capture the Truth with equal resonance.  As a Christian, I believe that the religious experience around the teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth have a unique depth of human truth, that is to say that they reflect the Divine inbreaking into human experience with a unique and superior authenticity.  In other words, I believe they are Divinely Revealed, or better, capture the Divine Revelation, with a unique truthfulness.  As a historian, however, I can only observe they are one of the major religious traditions and comment on how they function in comparison to other belief systems. 

      This view of revelation as rising from human experience is problematic for Churchy people because it moves the cheese.  It takes power from the select few and distributes it through the whole body of the faithful.  It overturns power structures—casts the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly, so to speak.  This is why I think, as a Catholic, that we must restore the balance of power between the magisterium, the theologians, and the consensus fidelium.  Do you remember in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the image of Professor Snape dressed up in Neville’s Grandmother’s clothes?  I am afraid, as a historian, that that is what the magisterium looks like when left unsupported by serious theological research and rooted in the everyday faith experience of the everyday believer.  And that is why so many people walk away from religion—it has just too often become ridiculous looking to too many good thinkin’ folk.