Monthly Archives: April 2009

#20 God: only four short steps away

28 Tuesday Apr 2009

Posted by in God, Prayer, Religion, Spiritual Exercises, Spirituality

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dreamstime_4843913Stuff in books can help us pray.   The monastics prayed through divine reading – in fact, a twelfth-century Carthusian monk by name of Guigo II worked out the four-step process that’s been in use ever since.

And what are those four steps? Reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. 

You’ll want to select a passage—a paragraph from a book, a short poem, or a few verses from Scripture.  You can choose a favorite passage or one that you find challenging.    

Before you start, take a few deep breaths.  Now you’re ready to begin.

First, reading.  Read your passage slowly several times, paying attention to the words, how they fit together, their rhythms, their meanings, their themes.  If you’ve chosen a ‘secular’ poem or piece of prose, you may wish to rewrite it to turn it into a prayer.  If you’ve chosen a theological or scriptural passage, rewrite it (if need be) to make it fit your theology.  Or you can use the text as is—whatever works best for you.

Take this stanza from “Ode to the Table” by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. The words in bold are Neruda’s originals; I added the italicized text to turn Neruda’s stanza into a prayer.

Oh God,
You made the world a table
“engulfed in honey and smoke,
smothered by apples and blood.
The table is already set,
and we know the truth
as soon as we are called:
whether we’re called to war or to dinner
we will have to choose sides,
have to know
how we’ll dress
to sit
at the long table,
whether we’ll wear the pants of hate
or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.
It’s time to decide,
they’re calling.”
Help us make the right choice, oh God.

Second, meditation.  Which words or passages catch your attention?  Sit quietly with them.  Let them sit in your mind like stones in your hand, smooth if comforting, rough if challenging.

How would this work?  If you used the Neruda example for your text-based prayer, you could reflect on the juxtaposition of honey/apple with smoke/blood.   Or you could focus on the image of the world as a table—what would it mean to imagine the world as a place where you eat, where life is a meal—what would nourish you, what would make you ill, what would make you hunger for more?  How about the idea that in times of war, we have to make a decision?  If you had to choose sides, which would you choose?  You could consider whether one side is always the side of hate and the other the side of love, as Neruda suggests.

Third, prayer.  Respond to the meditation by praying, not intellectually, but by speaking (aloud or in your head) your own words directly to God.  

Fourth, contemplation.  Set all words aside if you can and enter into the space created by the word-prayers.  This is a time of simple focus on God, a time of resting in God.

If you carry out the spiritual practice of divine reading at the same time every day, it will become a habit.   An hour is ideal, or half-an-hour in the morning and another at night.  This may sound like a lot but the mind often takes a while to settle into quiet receptiveness.  Also, you’ll want to choose comfortable clothes and a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed or distracted. 

Four short steps.  Try them.  They just might work.

References:  Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Table,” in Odes to Common Things, trans. Ken Krabbenhoft, 19-21 (Boston:  Little, Brown, and Company); Alister E. McGrath, Christian Spirituality:  An Introduction (Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 1999), 84-87.  (For more suggestions on how to turn texts into prayers, see Post #9, Build-a-prayer-workshop.)  

 

#19 Theology is to spirituality what honeycomb is to honey

20 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

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For some, spirituality trumps theology any old day.  For those who call themselves ‘spiritual’, the word ‘theologian’ brings to mind self-styled intellectuals who have stepped into a self-made ivory tower from which they engage in a fruitless search for knowledge of God.  Too bad these theologians look for God in abstract commentaries written by other bookish-types rather than in the vibrant, pulsing life so obviously going on around them (if only they’d look up from their books!).  The stereotypical theologian has a clear preference for the subtleties of his or her own imagination (theory) rather than for doing useful works among ordinary folk (praxis).  He or she relies on reason and distrusts feelings.  A sad head-shake for these poor theologians is appropriate right now—if you’re ‘spiritual’ that is.

Unlike theology, spirituality (the ‘spirituals’ explain) is interested in love and personal experience.  The reasons of the heart are closer to God, they say, than the reasons of the head.  Spirituality trusts love and distrusts logical arguments.  And anyway, the best ideas are the ones that help people, the more directly the better.

Although the tug-of-war between theology and spirituality may seem like a contemporary phenomenon (the word spirituality is an 18th century invention), the same struggle took place in Western Europe as early as the Middle Ages.  Elected Chancellor of the University of Paris in 1395, Jean Gerson, criticized theologians for lacking in common sense and failing to base their study in love.  That didn’t stop him from also making the case that as long as they didn’t ignore the world, they had valuable contributions to make.  He summed up the situation with this helpful analogy:  Just like viscous honey needs a honeycomb, spirituality needs theology.  Just like honey needs the structure of the honeycomb, spirituality needs to be structured by a thoughtful and organized mind.  On the flip side, theology needs to be filled by spirituality because “the ideas of the mind must also warm the heart and lead to activity in the world.”  Gerson tried to unify spirituality with theology while preserving the integrity of both.

Gerson’s analogy illustrates the fact that spirituality without theology is a puddle of sweet goo; it can’t be handed over (except in extremely messy form) to other people or to the next generation.  Likewise, theology without spirituality is a lovely structure made of bland wax most people don’t want to eat.   

The Renaissance humanist, Pico della Mirandola, agreed, pointing out that although “we can live without language, although not well, but we cannot live at all without the mind. “  For him, the person who is untouched by poems and novels and other people’s stories may not be humane, but the person who is untouched by logical inquiry and understanding is no longer a human being.  Sounds harsh, maybe.  But Mirandola was on to something. 

We can’t be spiritual in a generic way.  Our spirituality is tied to our beliefs about the human being, about ethics, about meaning, about God.  To understand what those beliefs are takes more than a contemplative practice; it requires mindful reflection.  Questions like “does God care about me?,” and “what did God mean by the command to love one’s neighbor?” call out for our attention.  They call out for us to try to answer them, at least provisionally, by studying alone, or in groups, or in conversation with great thinkers through their books.  Theologians ponder the most fundamental of the fundamental questions about the human and the divine.  At times, these questions may appear overly subtle and specific but that’s going to the case any time answers are being pursued in the most serious way.  And besides, to learn to love, we need not give up logic; to lead a life of simplicity and good deeds, we need not trump every question put forth by the intellect . 

Spoken like a true theologian, don’t you think?   

HNFFT:  Must we choose between spirituality and theology?  Or can the two be integrated?  

Reference:  Steven Ozment, “The Spiritual Traditions” in The Age of Reform 1250-1550:  An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe, 73-134 (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1980). 

#18 God and the Devil duke it out in the john

14 Tuesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Ethics, God, Philosophy of Religion, Theological Ethics, Theology

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dreamstime_2557163WC.  Water Closet.  Privy.  Crapper.  Must stripped-down theology sink to the level of the toilet?  But this is precisely where the ‘father’ of Protestant Christianity, Martin Luther (1483-1546), claimed he had been given his most important of realizations. Luther didn’t stop at the marketplace when talking about the presence of God (and the Devil).  If God is present—everywhere—then God must be present in the privy! 

Medievals knew what we, in developed countries, have forgotten thanks to improvements in sanitation.  Because contemporary plumbing has created a near-perfect divide between us and our excrement, if we are to inhabit Luther’s mental space (okay, scatological space), we have to turn to the closest analogy most of us have—the so-called honey-pots at state fairs and fourth of July celebrations.  The state-fair WC isn’t just any old privy, but the most disgusting, degrading, and degraded places that many of us are likely to visit.  The state-fair WC is that space where we have no choice but to come ‘face to face’ (or nose to nose) with s–t, both as biological product and as existential condition.

So what’s with God and the Devil in the WC?  Here’s the scoop, as compactly as possible.  Martin Luther, the prophet of ‘salvation by faith alone’, wanted nothing less than to overturn our genteel, conscience-oriented morality.  Most of us trust our consciences to clue us in on what’s right and what’s wrong.  We rely on our inner voice to tell us what to do.  And then, if sacrifice is required, we struggle to satisfy that voice’s demands.  This describes the conventional morality in Luther’s day—and it remains the conventional morality in ours.

Following that line of thinking, we would conclude that if the God of conventional morality wanted to make us responsible for our wrongdoings in the after-life (a reasonable proposition), such a God would be something of a gentle, accountant type of God.  We would reach the pearly gates of heaven and stand quietly in front of a plain table while God checks a ledger for our name.  Once God finds the entry chronicling our lives, God would carefully weigh what, if any, punishments would be the best match for our bad choices and our lapses (if we’re lucky, God overlooks the majority of these).  Indeed, a liberal Unitarian Christian like William Ellery Channing taught ‘salvation through character,’ and although he believed God was too good to condemn human beings to eternal hell, he still believed that God required wrongdoers to do some kind of penance before they were admitted into God’s presence.  This is an eminently rational belief—God’s punishment will fit the crime, which is why so many people hold onto it.  Tenaciously.

But, for Luther, the issue was not a question of morality versus immorality, but of God versus the Devil.  Luther had concluded (based on his intensive study of Scripture) that God saves us whether we’ve made right choices or not.  All we need to do in order to be saved is have faith that God will save us.  Period.  No requirement for good behavior.  God has promised to save us; we need only believe in this promise and we are saved.  No ifs, ands or buts.  The devil is that voice in our heads (you’re hearing it, right now, aren’t you?) that says—nope.  I don’t believe God would give us such a sweet deal.  Saved no matter what?  Even child molesters who refuse to change?  Come on.  What kind of nonsense is that?  Only someone who is completely irrational could believe such a thing. 

You’ve got the picture though.  For Luther, when we’re sitting on the loo doing our thing, God stands on one side with a promise of salvation (saying all you have to do is believe in my promise), and the Devil stands on the other side (saying, don’t you believe God’s promise, it’s too good to be true).  The Devil is the one who sounds rational—he insists on what we already know–there’s some kind of hitch, some kind of small print God’s not telling us about. 

A contemporary of William Ellery Channing, the Universalist minister, Hosea Ballou, challenged the view of people like us.  In an article, “Salvation Irrespective of Character,” he argued that God was like a Father who loves all of His children whether they are saints or sinners:  “Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled.  You cleanse it and array it in clean robes.  The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it?  Or, did you wash it because you loved it?

Most of us are adept at keeping our minds and hands busy but a visit to the crapper offers a chance to pause.  If, in the toilet, we reflect on our lives for just a few seconds, we come face to face with the degraded choices we’re being asked to make, and with the degrading choices we’ve already made.  And that’s when, if we’re honest, we call into question our ability to choose the right thing and our ability to do it.  We’ll wonder whether our consciences can reliably discern what’s right from wrong.  And we’ll wonder whether we have the self-discipline to do what’s right.  God overlooks all these difficulties, Luther teaches.  Sitting in the privy, this hard truth was revealed to him.  In the privy, he realized that, more often than not, he was powerless.  He also realized that, even here, in this disgusting, unsanitary place, God came to his aid. 

No bull.  For Luther, the crapper is a place of faith.  He insisted that God is there.  The devil too.  And God wins (and we win) if we trust in God’s promise. 

Can you?  And what about that promise?  Do you buy it?

Reference:  Heiko A. Oberman, “The Devil and the Cloaca,” in Luther:  Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1989), 151-7.

#17 Out with the old God, in with the new

06 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in God, Philosophy of Religion, Religion, Religious Philosophy, Theological Ethics, Theology

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dreamstime_8393599For Jews, Passover is supposed to be historically real.  The Haggadah (the text that sets the order of the Passover meal) commands Jews to consider themselves to have gone forth in exodus from Egypt.  The Haggadah emphasizes this absolute demand lest Jews be tempted to reduce it to the level of a metaphor.  “The authority is clear,” writes the Jewish theologian, Arthur A. Cohen (1928-1986).  Each Jew is to tell him or herself, “I was really, even if not literally, present in Egypt and really, if not literally, present at Sinai.  God contemplated my virtual presence then, thirty-odd centuries ago.”

At the very least, Cohen’s description of Passover signals to non-Jews that even if they celebrate something they call Passover, set a table no Orthodox rabbi could fault, prepare a kosher and hametz-free meal, and say all the right prayers from a Jewish Haggadah, their Passover is NOT a Jewish Passover.  Only Jews can comply with the absolute demand to go forth in exodus from Egypt.  Jews remain the chosen people no less today then when they were the people chosen by the Nazis for termination.  Cohen tells us, “the death camps ended forever one argument of history—whether [the Jews] are the chosen people.”  Chosen for departure from Egypt or chosen for the death chambers, “they are chosen, unmistakably, extremely, utterly.”  Certainly, others are able to contemplate this history. For the Christian and for the non-Jewish secular opponent of racism, the exodus is a paradigm of liberation from slavery, and the death camps are a paradigm of human brutality.  But the simple fact remains that they cannot share these historical events with Jews.

In the post-holocaust era, many ask (and if they don’t, they should!) how God could have witnessed the holocaust and remained silent.  The question persists, and rightfully so:  why was God silent—here, silence means “inaction, passivity.” But silence can also mean, at its worst and most extreme, utter and absolute indifference. What kind of God, worthy of the name, God, remains indifferent?  What kind of God stays silent “when speech would terrify and stay the fall of the uplifted arm?”  As millions of Jews were murdered in Europe, where was the God who had not hesitated to use miracles to liberate them from Egypt?  Where was the “Interruptive miracle, that the sea open and the army of the enemy be consumed?”  Unacceptable, of course, are any claims that the holocaust figured in God’s providential plan. 

For Cohen, the “interruptive model” of God is an ancient model of God.  This ancient model treats God as a “respondent;” God responds to situations of extreme hardship.  Under this model, the greater our need for God, the greater the certainty God will assist us.  Under this model, we assume that “the world is never independent of God.”  While Cohen agrees that the interruptive model of God undermines our freedom to do evil, he worries that it also undermines our freedom to do good.  If we could count on God to intervene, what would prevent us from slipping into moral passivity and quietism?  If we could count on God to intervene, what would prevent us from abandoning the hard work of becoming more moral people?  What would prevent us from shirking the sacrifices we’re called to make to help others have better lives? 

What we need, Cohen concludes, is not the interruptive God who is “the strategist of our particularities or of our historical condition.”  What we need is a new model of God.

Not content just to call for a new model, Cohen proposes one.  For him, God is not the cause of historical events.  God does not alter history.  But neither is God “wholly other and indifferent to the historical.”  Cohen understands “divine life” to be a “filament within the historical”–a filament of something like tungsten (tungsten is the metal used in electric light bulbs; when heated by electricity, the tungsten filament becomes incandescent and causes the bulb to glow).  As a filament, the divine element of the historical is a fragile conductor always intimately linked to the historical—its presence secures the significance of events while remaining separate from them.  Although we know that the filament exists in history and that it’s in continuous community with us, we don’t know its exact location.  Because we don’t know its exact location, we can’t manipulate it for our own purposes.  Ever elusive, God remains God.  This elusiveness preserves the historical as the realm where human beings are free to act.  This elusiveness also means that, at all times, even in extreme situations, it’s up to human beings, not God, to provide the current to heat the tungsten—it is we who either make the filament incandescent or burn it out.

Yes, the Passover Haggadah commands the Jew to consider him or her-self to have gone forth in exodus, liberated by the interruptive God.  But Cohen argues that God is “not ever interruptive even were the sea to part and close or the earth of Auschwitz to open and the murderers to fall in.”  God is not the “strategist” of our particular situations or of the particular age in which we live.  Instead, God (for Cohen) is the mystery of our future possibilities.  If we begin to see God less as the God who interferes whenever interference is welcome (i.e. when it accords with our needs) and more as the immensity whose reality prefigured our existence and whose fullness and unfolding are the hope for the future, then, Cohen promises, “we shall have won a sense of God whom we may love and honor.”  We shall have won a sense of God whom “we no longer fear and from whom we no longer demand.”  We shall have won a sense of God who is, for Cohen, the actual God.

HNFFT:  Is your model of God an interruptive model?  If so, as someone living in the post-holocaust era, how do you make sense of God’s silence?  How does the interruptive model impact your freedom?  Does Cohen’s filament model work better for you?  If yes, why?  If no, why not?

Reference:  Arthur A. Cohen, The Tremendum:  A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York:  Crossroad, 1981), 11, 23, 92-7.