You’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer and told you have two months to live.

Powerless, right?

The message of Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer is familiar:  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

But what about taking Niebuhr’s prayer a step further.  What if you actually chose the bad things you can’t change?

Without a doubt, you wouldn’t have chosen terminal cancer had been given a choice.  Who willingly chooses cancer?  Cancer chooses you.  But choose it in return and you’re back in control.

One of France’s favorite saints, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, did just that.  Here’s how her version of Niebuhr’s prayer might have sounded:  ”God grant me the serenity to embrace the things I cannot change, to choose them as if on my own terms, to choose them as if I wanted them.”

Thérèse, a Carmelite nun, died a drawn-out and painful death from tuberculosis.  She vomited blood.  Bedsores afflicted her.  Her Mother Superior denied her the relief of morphine.  Unable to take a sip of water or swallow a spoonful of food without suffering waves of nausea, she practiced what she called the Little Way—the choosing of what was handed to her.

One of Thérèse’s biographers, Monica Furlong, finds genius in the Little Way:  “to lie dying an excruciating death that took away the little privacies and forms of self-control which are precious to most of us, to endure almost unremitting pain, to have to rely on others for the smallest services…was to have ‘the last shred of dignity’ forcibly ripped away.  What else to do then but to ‘choose it,’ to respond to it out of freedom rather than out of necessity?”

Some interpret the Little Way as the way of subservience, especially for women.  But, as Furlong points out, the Little Way has “an almost ironic quality to it.  ’If I may have nothing,’ it says gaily, ‘then I will turn reason inside out and make having nothing the most enjoyable of possibilities.’”  In essence, Thérèse charts a way “to live out an impossible situation.”

And so, faced with terminal lung cancer, the Little Way would say, “if I may lose my life to cancer in two months, I will turn reason inside out and choose the cancer.”  Seemingly powerless before the advance of one’s disease, one may choose snatch the cards one’s been dealt and play them triumphantly, powerfully, as if they were “the purest piece of luck.”

Did her practice of the Little Way as she succumbed to tuberculosis make Thérèse a saint?  According to Furlong, “at the time of her canonization Cardinal Vico described how, in the early days of the Catholic Church, people became saints by popular acclaim…  Several centuries had passed without a popular saint.” And yet, Thérèse became such a saint.  In her, ordinary people saw courage and strength.  From her, they drew encouragement to face the bad things in life.  They embraced her as their own.  Indeed, rare is the church in France without a statue of Saint Thérèse.

Often, the Little Way is not the best way.  The Little Way isn’t the best way for the Russians who are pouring into the streets to protest Vladimir Putin’s over-reach.  Many challenges are worth a good fight—like securing hot meals for underprivileged kids in public schools, or seeking refuge in a battered women shelter, or working to prevent contamination of the drinking water in your community, etc.  These are not scenarios that call for the Little Way.

But some scenarios come without options.  They have only one possible outcome.  A bad one.

May you never find yourself power-less.  If you do, the Little Way could return you to a sense of power-fulness.  You could decide to embrace the non-negotiables that life throws at you.  You could put yourself back in charge.

Resource:  Monica Furlong, Thérèse of Lisieux (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1987).

No longer content to hike the Appalachian trail or climb Denali, devout secularists have turned their sights on pilgrim routes.  One such route is the Way of St. James which wends through rugged French terrain, up and over the Pyrenees, and across the desolate plains of Northern Spain until it reaches the city of Santiago, just short of the Atlantic coast that ancients believed to be the edge of the world.  The Way now attracts a great deal of attention not just from pilgrims but from such challenge-seekers.  Anxious to share the good news of this difficult, but achievable journey, some return home and write guides to assist their fellow non-pilgrims.  So what?  So this:  some of these writers, anxious to underscore their secular motivations, betray in their travelogues their distaste for religious piety.

Such is the viewpoint of Conrad Rudolph, Professor of Medieval Art at the University of California Riverside.  In Pilgrimage to the End of the World, his book about hiking the Way of St. James, he repeatedly reminds the reader that he is most definitely “not a believer in miracles or the otherworldly.”  The book’s very title serves as Rudolph’s first disclaimer.  A bona fide pilgrim undertakes the journey to reach the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela because its Cathedral is reputed to house the remains of Jesus’ disciple, Saint James the Greater.  Rudolph, seemingly worried that he’ll be mistaken for a religious pilgrim, signals, in his title, that the real goal of his pilgrimage was not the purported relics of St. James but the Atlantic Ocean, the “End of the World,” which is three days further on foot.  No wonder then, that when Rudolph reaches Santiago, traditionally the “emotional high point” of the journey, he describes his arrival as “fun but not emotional.”

And so we have the novel phenomenon of pilgrimages undertaken by secularists, so embarrassed by the religious trappings of their journeys that they feel compelled to trumpet their lack of faith.

Rudolph defends his decision to hike The Way by explaining that he is merely following the ancient tradition of the “curious” onlooker.  According to him, even in Medieval times, “many were highly curious about the world around them.”  Apparently, this condition was so widespread that it was common for condemnations to be issued against those who made pilgrimages merely for reasons of “curiosity.”

Okay, point taken.  Except that Rudolph’s curiosity never extends to wondering what it might be (or have been) like for pilgrims to undertake the journey to Santiago out of faith.  Indeed, most pilgrims, are not “inveterate hikers” like Rudolph and so they, like their Medieval forebears, likely endure greater suffering as they negotiate rough terrain with heavy backpacks.  What motivates them to keep going day after day?  How does their faith sustain them when they are ailing, hurting and still weeks from reaching their goal?  If Rudolph asked these questions of pilgrims he met along the way, he does not share the answers in his book.

The Way of St. James was especially popular during the Middle Ages.  It attracted many pilgrims from France but pilgrims also set out from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, the eastern Austrian domains, and Slovakia.  Before they could officially begin their treks, they first had to reach the town of Le Puy in France’s Massif Central.  Then, braving bandits, persistent hunger, unpredictable weather, and ankle-busting paths, they set off to walk the thousand miles to Santiago.  There’s every reason to suspect that the roundtrip journey would have lasted six months since Medieval pilgrims covered, on average, about 15 miles a day.  While they belonged to all social classes, most pilgrims were penniless agrarians, serfs who set out for Santiago after becoming too broken down to provide useful labor to their masters or freeholders who “were better off in theory only.”  Although poverty-stricken and often in ill health, tens of thousands set off on pilgrimage every year.

Why did these Medieval serfs and freeholders choose to undertake this journey?  According to William Melczer, a Medieval scholar, they had many reasons.  Pious love for St. James was the most common.  Some went simply to pray.  Others wanted forgiveness for a laundry-list of minor transgressions.  Many used the journey as penance to atone for particularly soul-searing sins.  Still others made their way to plead for better health and relief from pain.  Their spirits were open to God and they had faith.  How often they must have prayed, especially when they looked at the path ahead, knowing full well that having overcome one challenge, they would reach another.  They rarely had enough food, often they had only pathetic shelter.  Somehow, though, every morning, they found fresh courage and set off anew in spite of the hardships they had already endured and in spite of the hardships that awaited them.

Interestingly, theologians have discouraged pilgrimages.  Church Doctors like Augustine railed against them.  In his opinion they were “pointless” because the holy cannot “be localized in any given place.”  And since the holy is everywhere, it follows that the holy is not found in extra measure in places where sacred relics are housed.  No matter.  For hundreds of years, pilgrims have ignored these theological directives.  They know that when life follows its regular rhythms, the holy, though everywhere present, is easy to ignore.  So they walk to be with God.  During a thousand miles of contemplation, the holy is close—as close as one’s breath.

Why did Rudolph undertake this journey?  He’s quite unclear on that score, fuzzy even.  He writes about wandering through the early dawn light along a mountain ridge in northwestern Spain where the wind rustled the grass, the sun sparkled, and sheep bells sounded faintly from far off vales.  His language is evocative and lovely, his prose pleasant.  From time to time, he invokes the language of magic, saying “it was almost as if a spell had been cast.”  Perhaps afraid of venturing into intellectually indefensible territory, he changes his mind and rejects magic, writing that, after all, “experiences like these can happen anywhere.”  And then, he recants, explaining that, unlike walking Appalachian trail or hiking Denali, there is a special pay-off to pilgrimages because these experiences “don’t often happen with either the regularity or the strength that they did on the pilgrimage, where every day is an adventure…”  Hmmm, not sure most hikers would agree.

In the end, Rudolph shifts gears again.  It is not the “almost-magic” quality of his experiences, he decides, but the people he meets who made the journey a special event.  The people are, he recalls, “almost consistently as interested in what you’re doing as you are yourself.”

Oh oh.   Wait a minute here.  There’s just a little problem.

People were consistently interested in what Rudolph was doing because they assumed that he was travelling to Santiago out of deeply-felt, religious convictions.  Although a hiker, he decided to wear a clamshell tied to a cord around his neck.  The clamshell is the symbol of St. James.  By wearing it, Rudolph styled himself as a pilgrim.  It placed him, he admits, in a “special group…worthy of immediate public informality, warmth, and help, no questions asked.”  He recounts how, in a small mountain village, two old women “bless” him when they learn he is a pilgrim.  Even more notable, he says, are those who ask him “to pray for them; one horribly desperate man clearly needing it, or something, very badly.”

For unfathomable reasons, Rudolph accepts those prayer requests.  Sort of.  After he arrives in Santiago and enters St. James Cathedral, he explains (with a clear conscience) that, “no,” he didn’t pray for the “horribly desperate man.”  Nor did he pray “for any of the others who had asked [him] along the way to pray for them.”  It is enough, he decides, to “think about them” as he stands in the transept.  How lame is that?  Would the “horribly desperate man” agree with him or would he hope that even a hiker like Rudolph would, upon reaching the Cathedral at the end of the road, drop his pride, bend his knees, and pray?

These, then, are some of the quandaries you will face if you are a devoutly-secular hiker interested in hiking the Way of St. James or some other pilgrimage route.  Why choose this option instead of a hike through one of America’s or Europe’s fine national parks?  Will you wear the pilgrim’s badge?  Will you accept the kindness of strangers even when you realize they offer it because they mistake you for a pilgrim?  Will you accept prayer requests?  Will you honor those requests?  How?

Whatever you decide, you will be just as welcome on the pilgrim routes as you would have been in Medieval times.  To close, here are some verses from “La Pretiosa,” a 12th Century hymn about a hospice for pilgrims on the road to Santiago.  Other stanzas describe how monks would wash the feet, cut the hair, and trim the beards of male pilgrims—services you are, sad to say, unlikely to find today.

Its doors open to the sick and well,

to Catholics as well as to pagans,

Jews, heretics, beggars, and the indigent,

and it embraces all like brothers.

Resources:  David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago:  The Complete Cultural Handbook (New York:  St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000); William Melczer, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York:  Italica Press, 1993); Conrad Rudolph, The Pilgrimage to the End of the World:  The Road to Santiago de Compostela (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Are you satisfied with a purely secular approach to the Christmas season?  If not, you might consider spending some time reading the New Testament gospels and reflecting on the life and teachings of Jesus that they depict.

Skeptics will resist this suggestion but could soften their stance when they learn that respected thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Buber (yes, the 20th Century Jewish philosopher!) would have nodded their assent.  Both considered the gospels to be sources of immense wisdom.  They had no illusion about the human authorship of the Bible; this did not prevent them from engaging it energetically and with seriousness of purpose.  In so doing, they testify to its importance.  Both adopted unique approaches to Scripture; their approaches offer helpful examples of how we too might to read it.

Although he didn’t consider Jesus to be divine, Thomas Jefferson was inspired by the Biblical Jesus’ message—albeit in its distinctly human dimension.  New Testament verses concerning morality and sin met with Jefferson’s approval but the miracles and Jesus’ resurrection struck him as implausible.  Jefferson decided to extract the passages reflecting his ideas about Jesus from the four Gospels to create a single, unified gospel.  Over a period of several years, he selected passages from six different (hardcopy) Bibles, cut them out (with scissors—yup, the old, old-fashioned way), and pasted them together (with glue) to create his own, integrated gospel.  His Bible selection included excerpts from the King James Bible, a Greek Bible, one in Latin, and two more in French.  He entitled his cut-and-paste Bible:  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

What follows is the narrative of Jesus’ birth from Jefferson’s Bible.  Because this account only appears in the gospel of Luke, Jefferson relied on uniquely on Luke to redact his version of the nativity:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.  Lk 2:1

(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)  Lk 2:2

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. Lk 2:3

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David.)  Lk 2:4

To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.  Lk 2:5

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.  Lk 2:6

And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them at the inn.  Lk 2:7

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS,  Lk 2:21

And when they had performed all things according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.  Lk 2:39

Although this passage doesn’t include the moral teachings so important to Jefferson, it does show that he had no qualms about altering sacred Scripture to make it his own–including the story of Jesus’ birth.

Given when and where he lived, it isn’t surprising that Jefferson considered Jesus, the man, a source of inspiration.  However, it is surprising that Martin Buber, best known for his book of Jewish theology, I and Thou, considered Jesus his great brother.  Buber found much significance in Jesus’ suffering, his self-doubt and his death.  Indeed, Buber wrote:

“From my youth onwards, I have found in Jesus my great brother.  That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand…  my own fraternally open relationship with him has grown ever stronger and clearer…  For nearly 50 years, the New Testament has been a main concern in my studies.”

In Jesus, Buber found a great son of Israel.  He found the genuine Jewish principle manifest in Jesus’ teachings.  He also felt a strong kinship to the Jesus depicted in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke—that is to say, a strong kinship for the plain and embodied man grappling with concrete situations.

For Buber, it was this Jesus, the one who, struggling in the depth of the actual moment, found eternity.  He had the highest regard for the man who lacked certainty about his nature, who experienced shocks to this certainty, and whose last question was ‘Why’?

If Buber had less affinity for the version of Jesus depicted in the gospel of John, this was because John’s Jesus entered the spiritual realm where he was no longer open to attacks of self-questioning.

Buber ascribed enormous importance to passages like the following one from the Sermon on the Mount (in the gospel of Matthew): “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors SO THAT you may become the children of your Father in heaven.” Based on his research, Buber held that until Jesus spoke those words, nowhere else had love for others been described as the path to becoming a child of God.

In Buber’s view, Jesus’ statement rose out of Israel’s faith, it implied it, and yet at the same time, supplemented it.  It opened the door to all those who really love.  Buber celebrated Jesus as the religious leader who challenged human beings, for the first time in our history, to Love our enemies and pray for our persecutors so that we might become what we were meant to be, brothers and sisters to one another.

Should you, like Buber or Jefferson, decide to revisit the Bible during this season of Advent then, like them, you will want to acknowledge the ugly parts of the gospels, or of any other Biblical book for that matter, if that’s what those passages deserve.  Neither Buber nor Jefferson approached Scripture with naive reverence.  They relied on their analytic and critical skills to winnow “the grain from the chaff.”

Jefferson explained his approach in a letter he wrote to William Short, a Unitarian with whom he corresponded about religious matters during the years he worked to create his personal Gospel.  In one of those letters, he said:

“We find in the writings of [Jesus’] biographers matter of two distinct descriptions.  First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.  Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.”

If you (re)visit the gospels, why not start with the gospel of Luke?  Not only does this gospel contain the story at the core of this season’s Christmas celebration, but it is prized for its literary elegance, its great interest in the poor, the “lost,” women, Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles.  Luke’s book has received much praise for what has been called his universalism based on his willingness to be inclusive of a variety of interests and audiences.  Some have even speculated a woman wrote this gospel.

Who knows, after reading Luke’s account, you, like Jefferson and Buber, might discover beauty and truth in the Biblical story of Jesus.  You might even, in this busy and often spirit-draining time of Advent, find a meaning in Jesus’ birth that’s all your own, enabling you to invite him to the bash you’re throwing in his name.  On some level this holiday is universal–there’s something in it for everyone–Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Christians and atheists.

So go ahead, pick up a Bible and find the gospels.  Read a passage.  Or two.  What is there to lose–except the sinking feeling that Christmas is little more than an opportunity for gift-giving and sweets-eating?

References:  Thomas Jefferson, The Jefferson Bible:  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1989); Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. Norman P. Goldhawk (London:  Routledge & Kegan, 1951).

5th August 1858: Beacon Hill, Boston, the site of the oldest surviving Black Church and a centre of the abolitionist movement. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

Did some African American slaves prefer suicide, even if they were afraid of dying?  How many chose to end their lives?  How many regretted not having the means to do so? Suicide requires courage, but requires less courage than submitting to torture. Death is not always the worst outcome, what’s worst is suffering that goes on and on, horror without pause. Whereas hope is a leap of faith, courage is an act of will. It is willful courage that is required to face torments one cannot change or escape.

Yet, in spite of the brutality and dehumanization of slavery, African Americans developed a strong tradition of song, often inspired by their religion.

There is no greater testament to the tenacity of the human spirit than the songs of slaves.  We, regardless of our heritage, have much to learn from the ways they dug deep within to discover, beyond their physical and mental suffering, embers of joy and loving-kindness, embers they, with willful courage, turned into light.

Matthew 5:15-16  (Part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount):

15  No one lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
16  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that you may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

This Little Light of Mine (African American spiritual, circa 1750-1875):

This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Ev’ry-where I go,
I’m gonna let it shine.
Ev’ry-where I go,
I’m gonna let it shine.
Ev’ry-where I go,
I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Building up a world,
I’m gonna let it shine.
Building up a world,
I’m gonna let it shine.
Building up a world,
I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

References:  ”This Little Light of Mine,” Hymn #118 in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1993); Between the Lines:  Sources for Singing the Living Tradition, edited by Jacqui James, 2nd ed. (Boston:  Skinner House Books, 1995).

“Spiritual but not religious” is the topic at hand.  And according to the work of Heinz Streib, a psychologist of religion at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, the ever-more popular phrase, “spiritual but not religious,” mostly reflects ambivalence about organized religion.  

Surprising?  Maybe not.  If you’ve paid attention, folks out there who label themselves “spiritual but not religious” usually add a wave of the hand and a shake of the head to indicate their disapproval of religion in-general and their level-headed decision to embrace ‘spirituality’ instead.

While spiritual and religious are different words, the difference may end there.  At least, that’s what was revealed by a recent study conducted by another psychologist of religion, Peter Hill (as reported by Streib).  Participants in the study identified themselves as either religious or as spiritual but both groups ended up with equivalent scores on a test for ‘religiosity.’  In essence, then, the test-subjects who considered themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’ actually qualified as ‘religious.’  Yikes.  Probably not something the ‘spiritual’ types wanted to hear.

But spirituality and religiosity both refer to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences that arise during one’s search for the sacred.  In fact, Streib ended up wondering whether it makes any sense for scholars of religion to spend time studying spirituality in addition to religion.  Better, he concluded, to stick with the single category of ‘religious.’

Too bad, really, that members of organized religions, including non-doctrinal ones like Unitarian Universalism, call themselves ‘spiritual not religious.’  They’re members of organized religions after all; but, instead of claiming, with pride, their chosen faith, they use a label that underscores their ambivalence toward any religion, including their own.  

Sure, they may have trouble putting down the burden (bad memories, anger at clergy, rejected teachings) of their previous religion(s).  But, who knows, reclaiming the word ‘religious’ might just indicate a healthy level of healing.  It would announce that they’ve moved on.  As for those who have always been unchurched, the willingness to call themselves ‘religious,’ in this most pluralistic of times, would announce a desirable respect for religion (with a capital R).

So, “spiritual but not religious” people of the world, here’s a challenge.  Try calling yourselves ‘religious’ for a couple of weeks.  No handwaving or headshaking please.  See how it feels.  You might just discover the label fits after all.

One such manual was written by a Spaniard called Francisco de Osuna in the early 1500’s.  A Franciscan monk whose life was dedicated to prayer, he not only meditated on the passion of Christ but he also practiced what he called ‘recollection.’  This term doesn’t mean ‘to remember,’ but rather to collect one’s self again and again—the way we use the word when we say something like:  ”she’s always so calm and collected!”  For Osuna, becoming spiritually ‘collected’ was best achieved through a process of prayer designed to go deeper into one’s self rather than designed to turn outward to ‘mere word and reading’ (a dig at lectio divina?).  Perfect recollection “is a moderation and serenity of the soul that is as quiet as if becalmed and purified and disciplined in harmony within.”  Osuna wanted nothing less than to achieve a state of nearly-permanent recollection, or of alertness and receptivity to God.

Osuna’s recollection demands both mental concentration and active directing of the mind, but the pay-off of such hard work (so he claimed) is making friendship and communion with God possible—a friendship he described as “more sure and more intimate than ever existed between brothers or even between mother and child.”   

He wrote several books but the Third Spiritual Alphabet is the ‘how-to’ guide for recollection.  A ‘spiritual alphabet’ will strike some as strange.  Osuna decided to organize his maxims and treatises according to the letters (and the Spanish tilde) of the alphabet as an act of humility.  In his words, “We must become as little children, learning our ABC’s of spirituality.” 

Osuna’s alphabet proceeds logically, describing the process one follows as one ascends from the lower stages of recollection to the higher.  One is to move through the three major forms of prayer, from lowest to highest:

1. vocal prayer (active)
2. prayer of the heart (active)
3. mental or spiritual prayer (passive)

Realizing that distractions and run-away thoughts can plague even the most experienced re-collector, Osuna recommends disciplining the soul gently and lovingly.  The exercise of recollection, he says, ‘is not achieved by force but by skill’ and ‘nothing is more skillful than love, which should be like the whip used to start a top so it will spin again and always turn without falling over.”

Osuna also warned that, especially at first, we must be ready to dedicate lots of time and effort (he recommended 2 hours per day!) to practicing spiritual prayer.  If we persevered, he promised that the day would come when we would realize that the highest stage, spiritual prayer, “is most certainly worth more than an entire year in vocal prayer.” 

Recollection requires that we learn to calm and quiet the understanding.  Since God (or at least the God recollection is designed to reach) is beyond the capacity of ordinary thought to comprehend, we cannot approach God via ordinary thought.  Instead, we must achieve the nearly-impossible feat (especially for the novice) of directing all of our spiritual attention to God.  If we pull this off, then “In the darkness of unknowing the soul feels reassured by the light of spiritual consolations, when it feels the stirring of joy in the soul as a result.”

To critics of spiritual consolations or to those who practice them for no other reason than to tap into the happiness-center of the brain (the left frontal cortex), Osuna would have countered:  as “long as we do not desire them for our own sake but for the sake of loving God, then they are entirely appropriate.”

So, if you’re one of those lucky people with a couple of hours a day to spare, then by all means, try Osuna-style recollection. Whether your God is utterly transcendent or not, no one ever promised exercise would be easy, not even the spiritual kind.

Reference:  Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. by Mary Giles (New York:  Paulist Press, 1981), 7, 22-23, 386-7.

Stuff 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.)  

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 18^th 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). 

For most people of faith, religion is more than a philosophical discussion.  And for most,  “God is the God of religion only when He is our God and we can speak to Him.”  Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote those words.  He ministered to Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt before they were shipped to Nazi death camps. He also wrote that “The deeper God’s love [is] felt, the more human [is] its form of expression…One cannot pray in concepts; one cannot hope in definitions and in the abstract.”

When we reach out, in prayer, to the God Whom Baeck calls the God of religion—the God Who is our God—our prayers reflect our intimate relationship with God.  We pray to God Who is always here and everywhere, the God Who is with us in all places and at all times, the God Who is as close to us as our own breath.  When we pray, we talk to God without any need to catch God up on what’s happened in our lives (unlike a friend we’re meeting for coffee).  We talk to God without preamble, sure that God has traveled with us every minute of the day, aware of our thoughts, our worries, our triumphs.  We lift our voices to God Who’s been with us at every step, and Who is still here, right now.  We lift our voices to God, the most intimate of intimates. 

The Christian Reformer, Martin Luther found it significant that Jesus called God, not Father, but Abba, the Aramaic word for Daddy (see Mark 14:36).  For Luther, the Lord’s Prayer might rightly be prayed like this:  “Our Daddy, Who art in Heaven… “

At one time, English-speakers had pronouns that captured the intimacy we bring to prayer—Thou, Thee, Thine.  These pronouns disappeared in the 17th century, folded, for good or for ill, into the formal pronouns, You, You, Yours.  However, European languages like French, Spanish, and German retain the informal, intimate pronouns English-speakers have lost.  Prayers in those languages show the tender and personal way in which people of faith often speak to God.  The informality of these pronouns underscore how we presume a personal God whenever we turn to God with trust and openness.   

This prayer (lightly edited) appeared on a poster in the Cathedral of St. Denis.  It was written by Brother Roger; until Brother Roger was murdered in 2007, he led a Christian ecumenical community in Taize, France, that is dedicated to peaceful reconciliation.  Rabbi Baeck and Brother Roger had very different Gods but they could have prayed this prayer together.  The Naked Theologian’s English translation appears below the original.  Note the words “toi”, “tu” and “te” in the French version—these are pronouns used when speaking to close friends, loved ones, and children.

Toi, [Dieu], tu vois qui je suis,                       
            j’ai besoin de ne rien te cacher                       
de mon cœur, tu m’accueilles avec                                   
            mes peines et mes inquiétudes                       
                        tu comprends tout de moi.           

Thou, [God], Thou seest whom I am,
             I need not hide anything from Thee
of my heart, Thou welcomest me with
            my sorrows and my worries
                        Thou understandeth all about me.

Baeck taught that we have faith in God before we have thoughts about God.  What do you say when you pray?  The way you talk to God may be different from the way you think about God.  Listen in on yourself—see what you think.  

Shall we close with the Hebrew word for “so be it”?  Let’s.  Amen.

References:  Albert H. Friedlander, Leo Baeck:  Teacher of Theresienstadt (Woodstock, NY:  The Overlook Press, 1991), 80-1.

For Martin Luther King, Jr., God didn’t become a living reality until he discovered the presence of God in his everyday experience. Not until he had felt an inner calm (that he believed was not his own) and had discovered resources of strength (that he believed were not his own) did King conclude God was at work in his life. Not until he had felt a sustaining hope (that he believed was not his own) in spite of threats to his life, discouraging setbacks, and the hardships of a bitter struggle, did he conclude God was at work in his life.  

Some call the calm and strength and hope King felt, salvation.  Others, resurrection.  They experience tranquility in the face of tragedy, the whence of which they can’t explain.  They experience courage in the face of danger, the whence of which they can’t explain.  They experience hope in the face of failure, the whence of which they can’t explain.  They become convinced the whence is God.  God has saved them.  God has resurrected them. 

Is God at work?  Although we can argue about the whence of such experiences, the experiences themselves cannot (and should not) be denied.

Before he discovered God’s active presence in his life, King had believed that God was a metaphysical category, a remote form without content.  Many persons, not just King, have a God who seems remote, removed from our everyday lives, removed from our ordinary problems and concerns, removed from our deepest sorrows and greatest triumphs, ‘out there’ somewhere, seemingly unreachable, seemingly unconcerned.  

The technical term used (not just by naked theologians) for this kind of God is ‘transcendent’ because that God lies outside or transcends the human realm.  

If a quick glance at our history can serve as a reliable guide, most human beings have little tolerance for vast distances between themselves and a transcendent God.  Even a theologian like King who enjoyed and excelled in abstract thinking could not leave God in the heavens—God did not become a ‘living’ reality for him until he perceived God as present in the commonplace–in the human realm.

The technical term used (not just by naked theologians) for this kind of God is ‘immanent’ derived from the Latin, in manere, ‘to remain within’.  

The history of human theological ideas shows that human beings who believe or have faith in a transcendent God often find ways to ‘reach up’ to God or to understand God as ‘reaching down’ to them. This human-God distance has been breached in creative ways—think of Moses who sees God’s backside.  Is prayer not also a way to breach the distance?  Contemplation?  Reading Scripture?  Practicing Kabbalah?  The list is long.

When King writes, “in many instances I have felt the power of God transforming the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope,” he reveals that, for him, God ‘reached down’ and transformed him personally.   King’s God has a loving purpose and controls the universe; God is a cosmic companion in the struggle for righteousness; God is a benign power with feeling and will; God is responsive to the deepest yearnings of the human heart (though King does not say how).  

Is King’s God still too distant or too immanent?  

Whether too distant or too immanent, King’s God sustained him in his work to secure a different, better world. 

How do you bridge the distance (if any) between yourself and the divine?  How does your God sustain you?  How does your God sustain you in making the world a better place for more people? 

It’s your turn to expose yourself.