Everything begins in mysticism and
ends in politics. —Charles Péguy
It seems to me that a
regular practice of contemplation makes it almost inevitable that our politics
are going to change. The way we spend our time is going to be called into
question. Our snug socioeconomic perspective will slowly be taken away from us.
When we practice prayer consistently, the things that we think of as our
necessary ego boundaries fall away, little by little, as unnecessary and even
unhelpful.
Whatever our calling on behalf of the world, it must proceed from a foundational “yes” to God, to life, to Reality. Our necessary “no” to injustice and all forms of un-love will actually become even clearer and more urgent in the silence. Now our work has a chance of being God’s pure healing instead of our impure anger and agenda. We can feel the difference in people on both sides of any issue.
Because contemplation feels
like dying and is, in fact, the experience of the death of our small self, we
can only do this if Someone Else is holding us in in the process, taking away
our fear. If we trust that Someone Else to do the knowing for us, we can go
back to our lives of action with new vitality, but it will now be much
smoother. It will be “no longer we” who act or contemplate, but the Life of the
One who lives in us (Galatians 2:20), now acting for and with and as us!
Henceforth it does not even matter whether we act or contemplate, contemplate or act, because both articulations of our faith will be inside the One Flow, which is still and forever loving and healing the world. Christians would call it the very flow of life that is the Trinity. “We live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) inside of this one eternal life and love that never stops giving and receiving. This is how we “die by brightness and the Holy Spirit,” according to Thomas Merton. [1]
Contemplation is no fantasy, make-believe, or daydream,
but the flowering of patience and steady perseverance. When we look at the
world today, we may well ask whether it can be transformed on the global level;
but I believe that there is a deep relationship between the inner revolution of
prayer and the transformation of social structures and social consciousness. We
need only look at the lives of the contemplatives in action that we read about
this week to know that it’s true. Our hope is that contemplation really can
change us, and guide our actions for compassion and justice in the world.
Dorothee Soelle (1929-2003) is an example of a contemplative who finds she must take action. I met her once in Germany at the Kirchentag (an assembly sponsored by the German Evangelical Church) and was deeply impressed. She was a first-rate scholar and noted theological author. I’ve been especially influenced by her book The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. For today’s meditation, Kerry Walters and Robin Jarrell describe this contemplative activist.
Society’s conventional image of a mystic is that of a person who withdraws from the world in order to journey inward. . . . The mystic is stereotyped as a guru sitting in splendid isolation on a mountaintop, utterly unconcerned with the world’s affairs.
But theologian Dorothee Soelle [Sölle], herself something of a mystic, argued that there’s actually little accuracy in this portrayal. Far from being withdrawn from the world or indifferent to the suffering that goes on in it, the mystic is uniquely motivated and qualified to respond to social and economic injustices. Genuine mystics, like Buddhist bodhisattvas, don’t renounce the world for the sake of a private spiritual illumination. Rather, they use the enlightenment they’ve achieved to do something about the world’s ills.
The reason for this, says Soelle, is that mystics have been liberated from the three powers that typically hold humans in bondage: ego, possession, and violence. They recognize that the standardly accepted division between I and not-I is an artificial one born from overvaluing oneself and competing with others for possessions . . . [which] in turn sets the stage for the “onset of violence.” But the genuine mystic understands that his or her connection with the divine is likewise a connection to all other humans and, indeed, to all of creation—a relationship, as Soelle said, that “borrows the eyes of God.” [1] Patterns of opposition and resistance bred by the division of I and not-I collapse to be replaced by ones of mutuality and community. Violence becomes obsolete, because the conditions necessary for its eruption disappear.
Soelle became interested in questions of religion and politics at an early age. She grew up under the Nazi regime and, like many Germans of her generation, never got over the shame of belonging to a nation that willingly collaborated with mass murderers. She was especially worried by the acquiescence of so many people who claimed to be Christian, and eventually concluded that part of the explanation was that they had compartmentalized their faith, transforming it into a private and “otherworldly” thing. Convinced that such privatization is a perversion of faith, Soelle worked as a theologian to demonstrate the social responsibility of religion and as an activist to put her theology into practice. She became one of the Cold War’s leading anti-nuclear voices, a dedicated opponent of both [U.S.] involvement in [the] Vietnam War and Soviet-style communism, and a proponent of liberation theology. The spiritual fuel of these activities was her conviction that the mystical worldview is revolutionary enough to resist “powerful but petrified institutions” that trade in oppression and violence. Consequently, her “most important concern” was to “democratize mysticism” so that society might be truly democratized as well.
Defender
of Liberation Theology
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Jesuit priest Pedro Arrupe
(1907–1991) was a deeply spiritual man who was entirely committed to serving
others, particularly the poor in whom he saw Christ. Authors Kerry Walters and
Robin Jarrell describe some of the pivotal events of his life:
He was three years into medical school in Madrid when a
miraculous healing he witnessed at Lourdes sparked Pedro Arrupe’s call to the
Society of Jesus. He entered the order at the age of nineteen and was ordained
seventeen years later after studying in Holland and Belgium.
Following doctoral studies in the United States, Arrupe
was sent as a missionary to Japan. He was serving in a Hiroshima suburb on the
day the atomic bomb fell and later described the horror as “a permanent
experience outside of history, engraved on my memory.” Calling on the skills he
had acquired years earlier as a medical student, he quickly converted a damaged
chapel into a makeshift hospital for the bomb blast’s victims. Arrupe remained
in Japan after the war years and was named Jesuit provincial there in 1958.
Seven years later, fellow Jesuits elected him Father General of the entire
order.
During his leadership of the Jesuits, Arrupe was
particularly supportive of his brethren who worked with the poor in Central and
South America. These Jesuits combined spiritual ministry with social activism,
convinced as they were that the poor were oppressed by wealthy landowners who
acted with the tacit approval of the Church. The Roman hierarchy condemned this
political involvement as well as the liberation theology, or gospel-based
privileging of the poor, that justified it. . . . Arrupe disagreed, and he
vigorously defended his priests, even after the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith officially condemned liberation theology. He also refused to
withdraw Jesuits serving in El Salvador, despite persistent death threats
against them, insisting that the people of that war-torn and oppressed nation
needed them. Six Jesuits who remained, including noted theologian Ignacio
Ellacuría, were murdered [along with their housekeeper and her daughter] in
1989.
Described by one of his friends as “a second Ignatius”
who “refounded” the Jesuit Order “in the light of Vatican II,” Arrupe focused
the Jesuits during his term as Father General on both renewed spirituality—as a
result of his years in Japan, Arrupe himself practiced Zen meditation daily—and
social justice advocacy. Along with other proponents of liberation theology, he
identified the suffering endured by the victims of war and poverty with Christ’s
Passion and taught that alleviating the one through justice was honoring the
other in faith.
Arrupe’s
leadership of the Jesuits and his quiet but persistent defense of their
involvement in liberation theology came to an end in 1981 when a massive stroke
left him paralyzed and mute. In resigning as Father General, he offered this
prayer: “More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I
wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative
is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound experience to know and feel
myself so totally in God’s hands.”
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) is remembered for her strength and courage in the face of an oppressive system. During the Civil Rights Movement, she inspired others to reclaim their God-given dignity and demand full citizenship in the United States. CAC faculty member Barbara Holmes writes:
[Fannie Lou Hamer is] a contemplative exemplar because of her spiritual focus and resolve. Her practices spoke to the depth of her contemplative spirit. In the face of catastrophic suffering, Hamer worked, loved, sang, and resisted the powers that be. She was jailed, beaten, and hunted by the enforcers of the social order after registering to vote. The treatment was so brutal that [civil rights leader] Andrew Young was sent to get her out of jail. Yet, she was kind to jailers who had been beating her for a week. . . .
Hamer was centered; she drew power from the example of her parents in their struggle to transcend the impossible situation of their lives. She faced daunting odds, as she was not dealing with an abusive individual but instead the power of federal, state, and local governments and cultural traditions that deemed her to be a nonperson. This designation of non-personhood did not deter her, for her contemplative entry into a deeper “knowing” came through her commitment to nonviolence. Adherence to the spiritual disciplines of civil rights activism required that she love the crucifier, bless the torturer, embrace the jailer, and pray for his or her salvation. . . .
According to her friend Virginia Gray Adams, “her back hurt and her spirit waged war without proper food or medicine. So when the movement came, there was rest”—not the rest that pervades the lives of most contemplatives [or what many imagine of monks and mystics], but rest nonetheless. Rest as you tell Congress to let your people go. Rest as you testify and lead a delegation off the floor of the Democratic Convention. Rest comes as rest comes—sometimes in the great feather beds of the wealthy and sometimes just a step away from hard labor. When it comes, it is balm to the spirit and solace to the soul. This is a rest that wafts from a wellspring of intentional justice-seeking as spiritual practice. These practices allow one to live in and out of the body and to inhabit hope as an ethereal but more permanent enfleshment. Fannie Lou Hamer was cloistered in an activist movement, finding her focus, restoration, and life in God in the midst of the beloved community already here and yet coming. . . .
Once upon a time there was a contemplative mother, a brave and wise woman of few words who entered the Civil Rights Movement as a [novice] enters a convent—not for retreat but for the restorative love of the community and the space to fight for justice.
Peace
and Advocacy for the Poor
Monday, July 13, 2020
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) gives us a
clear example of a contemplative activist. In her case, she began with
activism, converted to Catholicism around age 30, and eventually lived out her
two callings in a powerful and effective way. My friend John Dear, himself a
contemplative activist, writes this about Dorothy Day:
An activist and journalist living in New York City’s
Greenwich Village, [Dorothy Day] fought for labor rights, women’s rights, and
an end to World War I. In 1927, after her daughter Tamar was born, she was
filled with gratitude and received the gift of faith. She decided that the two
of them should be baptized in the [Catholic] Church. In response, her partner
promptly left her.
It was 1932, and Dorothy didn’t know what to do or how to
be a radical Catholic Christian. While attending a march against hunger in
Washington, D.C., she prayed that God would open up a way for her to practice
her radical politics as a devout Catholic. Her prayer was answered in the
person of Peter Maurin, a French peasant intellectual who was waiting for her
back in New York. Within a few months, they founded the Catholic Worker
Movement [on May 1, 1933]. [1]
The Catholic Worker Movement is alive and well today,
with over 200 active communities. Catholic Workers commit to voluntary poverty,
prayer, nonviolence, and hospitality to those in need. They also protest and
take action against systems of injustice, war, racism, and all forms of
violence. [2] Robert
Ellsberg, who worked with Dorothy Day in New York, continues:
[Dorothy Day’s] spirituality and her social witness were
equally rooted in the radical implications of the Incarnation. In Christ God
assumed our humanity. And we could not worship God without honoring God’s image
in our fellow human beings. We should feed them when they were hungry; shelter
them when they were homeless. We should not torture them; we should not kill
them.
In the 1950s Day and the Catholic Worker took on a more
activist profile. She was repeatedly jailed for refusing to take shelter during
compulsory civil defense drills in New York City. In the 1960s her activities
reflected the turbulence of the times—protesting the Vietnam War, fasting in
Rome during the Second Vatican Council to advance the cause of peace. She was
last arrested while picketing with the United Farm Workers in 1973 at the age
of seventy-five.
By
this time she was widely honored as the radical conscience of the American
Catholic church. But her life was not primarily occupied by activism or
protest. She was a woman of prayer, beginning each day with meditation on
scripture, attending daily Mass, and reciting the breviary [daily psalms,
scripture readings, and prayers]. By and large, her life was spent in very
ordinary ways, her sanctity expressed not just in heroic deeds but in the
mundane duties of everyday life. Her “spirituality” was rooted in a constant
effort to be more charitable toward those closest at hand
Who am I when
there is no more rushing around? Troubling emotions arise to the surface even
in my dreams. In contemplation I find a spacious place where I can bring the
messiness of my inner world to a peaceful center. From there flows service to
those in my immediate circles, particularly my elderly parents. In little
things I take delight: conversations over coffee with my wife, a morning jog,
the sighting of a goldfinch. —Tom A.
Contemplation: A Life’s Journey Sunday, July 12, 2020
I believe that the combination of human action from a
contemplative center is the greatest art form, one that takes our whole lives
to master. When action and contemplation are united, we have beauty, symmetry,
and transformation—lives and actions that heal the world by their very
presence. Jesus is the perfect example of this, but we can also point to the
lives of many saints, mystics, teachers, and even people we know who share this
gift.
For most people, the process begins on the side of action. We learn, we experiment, we do, we stumble, we fall, we break, and we find. Gradually, our thoughts and actions become more mature, but it is only when we begin to question our own viewing “platform” that we begin to move into the realm of contemplation. The contemplative side of the soul will reveal itself when we begin to ask, “How can I listen for God and learn God’s voice? How can I use my words and actions to expand and not to contract? How can I keep my heart, mind, and soul open, even ‘in hell’?”
Contemplation is a way to bring heaven to earth, but it begins with a series of losses, largely of our illusions. If we do not enter the learning process deeply, with curiosity and openness, we will use our words and actions to defend ourselves. We will seek to protect ourselves from our shadow, and build a leaden cover over our soul and our unconscious. We will settle for being right instead of being whole and holy, for saying prayers instead of being prayer.
True
contemplation is really quite down to earth and practical. It does not require
life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the
moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to move the
world, we need some “social distancing” and detachment from the diversions and
delusions of mass culture and our false self. Contemplation builds on the hard
bottom of reality—as it is—without ideology, denial, the contemporary mood, or
fantasy.
The
reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most
of us are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited
thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very
far. We cannot grow in the great
art form of action and contemplation without a strong tolerance for ambiguity,
an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety, and a
willingness to not know—and not even need to know. This is how we allow and
encounter Mystery.
This week the Daily Meditations feature contemplative activists who encountered Mystery and felt called to live out Jesus’s prayer that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Their lives embody the beautiful struggle that is revealed when we seek to hold heaven and earth together through our love and faithfulness to God, humanity, and creation.
What word or phrase resonates with or
challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?
Prayer for Our Community: O Great Love, thank you for
living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep
connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably
shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’
longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . .
Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers
in all the holy names of God, amen.
Story from Our
Community: Who am I when there is no more
rushing around? Troubling emotions arise to the surface even in my dreams. In
contemplation I find a spacious place where I can bring the messiness of my
inner world to a peaceful center. From there flows service to those in my
immediate circles, particularly my elderly parents. In little things I take
delight: conversations over coffee with my wife, a morning jog, the sighting of
a goldfinch. —Tom A.
Social Renewal as Spiritual Practice Friday, July 10, 2020
CAC Faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes points us to the interwoven nature of love—love of God, of self, and of neighbor. We cannot keep the Great Commandment without fully engaging in all three. In her wisdom, she sees this time of crisis as an opportunity for a great re-imagining of our society and how it might function for the good of all. Barbara says:
The practice I’m focusing on is self-love and love of neighbor. We tend not to be very good at either one, but during this time of isolation, we have equal opportunities to rest and to heal, to love and be loved. . . .
For me a spiritual practice that matters includes social renewal. Instead of blaming others about the state of our union, instead of blaming one political party or another, we actually can reflect on our own complicity and support of systems that abandoned the poor, warehoused our children in failing schools, and failed to provide adequate health care, even under normal circumstances. As a spiritual practice, we can wake up to the possibility of building a new order. We can improvise those possibilities; try them out in the creative microcosm of a shared public life, realizing that our way of life before the pandemic was not perfect. It could be improved so that all members of the society thrive. We’ve received reports that COVID-19 is disproportionally impacting communities of color. There are many reasons for this outcome, including the fact that people of color often have chronic health problems that make them particularly vulnerable to the disease as a result of poverty, poor or nonexistent health care, and economic disparities.
We should reconsider the contours of our national social contract. Our social and economic systems work on a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers. It didn’t have to be that way. We have the opportunity to restructure society, so it works as well for the have-nots and the almost-haves as well as it does for the wealthy. Do we really want a society organized to support the rich with the toiling of an underclass of marginalized laborers? Do we believe that it is every man, every woman for themselves, or do we want a society safety net for those who have fewer options and fewer resources?
From an article I wrote titled “Still on the Journey,” I believe that as a spiritual practice we can imagine and create “a political system responsive to the people and respectful of global neighbors, a health system that is comprehensive in scope and not profit driven, an educational system shaped by innovation, improvisation, technology, and practicality.” [1] The pandemic [and widespread demonstrations for Black Lives] have lifted the veil from our eyes.
Can we be honest now about what is not working? Can we re-envision new options? I believe that we can, if we want to.
Social
Renewal as Spiritual Practice
Friday, July 10, 2020
CAC
Faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes points us to the interwoven nature of
love—love of God, of self, and of neighbor. We cannot keep the Great
Commandment without fully engaging in all three. In her wisdom, she sees this
time of crisis as an opportunity for a great re-imagining of our society and
how it might function for the good of all. Barbara says:
The
practice I’m focusing on is self-love and love of neighbor. We tend not to be
very good at either one, but during this time of isolation, we have equal
opportunities to rest and to heal, to love and be loved. . . .
For
me a spiritual practice that matters includes social renewal. Instead of
blaming others about the state of our union, instead of blaming one political
party or another, we actually can reflect on our own complicity and support of
systems that abandoned the poor, warehoused our children in failing schools,
and failed to provide adequate health care, even under normal circumstances. As
a spiritual practice, we can wake up to the possibility of building a new
order. We can improvise those possibilities; try them out in the creative
microcosm of a shared public life, realizing that our way of life before the
pandemic was not perfect. It could be improved so that all members of the
society thrive. We’ve received reports that COVID-19 is disproportionally
impacting communities of color. There are many reasons for this outcome,
including the fact that people of color often have chronic health problems that
make them particularly vulnerable to the disease as a result of poverty, poor
or nonexistent health care, and economic disparities.
We
should reconsider the contours of our national social contract. Our social and
economic systems work on a zero-sum game where there are winners and losers. It
didn’t have to be that way. We have the opportunity to restructure society, so
it works as well for the have-nots and the almost-haves as well as it does for
the wealthy. Do we really want a society organized to support the rich with the
toiling of an underclass of marginalized laborers? Do we believe that it is
every man, every woman for themselves, or do we want a society safety net for
those who have fewer options and fewer resources?
From
an article I wrote titled “Still on the Journey,” I believe that as a spiritual
practice we can imagine and create “a political system responsive to the people
and respectful of global neighbors, a health system that is comprehensive in
scope and not profit driven, an educational system shaped by innovation,
improvisation, technology, and practicality.” [1] The pandemic [and widespread
demonstrations for Black Lives] have lifted the veil from our eyes.
Can we be honest
now about what is not working? Can we re-envision new options? I believe that
we can, if we want to.
Comments Off on Social Renewal as Spiritual Practice »
Brian McLaren, a member of the CAC Living School faculty, reminds us why it matters that we pay attention to our health, not only physically but spiritually and ethically as well.
In these challenging, difficult times, we are discovering a wisdom that we needed all along, and that wisdom is that we are all connected. We are not separate. We used to think that we caught diseases as individuals: “I’m sick; you’re not.” But now we realize, no, we catch diseases as individuals who are part of families, and families who are part of cities, and cities that are part of states and nations. We realize now that our whole species can become infected, and that our whole globe can be changed because of our interconnectedness. . .
Maybe this is also an opportunity for us to become enlightened about some other viruses that have been spreading and causing even greater damage, without being acknowledged: social and spiritual viruses that spread among us from individual to individual, from generation to generation, and are not named. We don’t organize against them, and so they continue to spread and cause all kinds of sickness [and death]. Social and spiritual viruses like racism, white supremacy, human supremacy, Christian supremacy, any kind of hostility that is spread, based on prejudice and fear.
What would happen if we said, as passionate as we are about being tested for coronavirus, we all wanted to test ourselves for these social and spiritual viruses that could be lurking inside of us? And then, when I come into your presence, I, in some way, inflict this virus on you. I make you suffer. What an awesome opportunity for us to say and begin to pray that we would be healed and cleansed, not just of a physical virus, but of these other invisible viruses that are such a huge and devastating part of human history. . . .
In this pandemic, many of us are nostalgic for the old normal. We want to get back to our favorite coffee shop, our favorite restaurant, our church service. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with so many of those desires for the old normal. But I’d like to make a proposal. If we are wise in this time, we will not go back unthinkingly to the old normal. There were problems with that old normal many of us weren’t aware of.
The old normal, when you look at it from today’s perspective, was not so great, not something to be nostalgic about, without also being deeply critical of it. As we experience discomfort in this time, let’s begin to dream of a new normal, a new normal that addresses the weaknesses and problems that were going unaddressed in the old normal. If we’re wise, we won’t go back; we’ll go forward.
Story from Our Community: I hear sirens constantly [where I live], ambulances transporting more and more people suffering from COVID-19. Inspired by a recent podcast episode of Another Name for Every Thing, I started to pray, “Lord, have mercy” every time I heard [an ambulance]. Over the weeks, I’ve added onto it: “Lord, have mercy. Give them the breath they need, both oxygen and the life-sustaining breath of the Holy Spirit. Grant them comfort and peace.” —Elizabeth G.
CAC
faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault addresses a fear that motivates all of us on
some level—the fear of death. It is a matter of true wisdom to know how to face
death wisely and courageously, which is why every religion and culture since
the beginning of time has tried to “make sense” of it in some way. From her
home off the coast of Maine, Cynthia shares these words, which come from the
very heart of the Christian tradition.
What is the wisdom that matters now? For me, it’s the Paschal Mystery [the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ]. . . . Simply, the one who would save his life or her life will lose it and the one who’s willing to lose it, will save it. In all great religious traditions, this is the eye of the needle. Everything that’s good, everything that’s abiding, everything that’s worthy, everything that’s generative about a human being arises on the other side of our fear of death. . . . The whole tradition we’ve had of “dying before you die” sounds like martyrdom from the outside, but what you really discover is, it’s the gateway to freedom.
Jesus
within our own Christian path not only tried to point toward what this new life
is, but he also took us there and left us with the promise that he carries
this, that he takes it on. Any one of us who summons the great courage within
us to gird up our loins and die before we die are not left unaccompanied. It’s
on the other edge of that that we’re really set free to courage, to compassion,
and to generosity—this is where the Paschal Mystery begins to come in.
The
values that are called the fruits of the Spirit by St. Paul—gentleness and
peace and forbearance, compassion, love, joy—these are alchemical products that
grow on the other side of the human being not afraid to die. We can find and
collectively draw on those wonderful gifts. But it requires the personal
willingness (as the old monks in the desert said), to “sit in your cell and
ponder the hour of your death” until you’ve really worked through your system
what this promise means: “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” [Romans
14:8]. . . . With that, having moved from something nice you recite on Sundays
to something you know in the marrow of your bones, then you walk into the
planet as a vessel of love and nothing can touch you.
To the extent
that we live our life from the heart now with utter integrity, death proves to
be no interruption to identity. . . . Who we are is held in the love of God
from before time; and as we lean into that now in life and taste it, we’ll be
prepared to really see death as the fullness of being and not as the lessening
of it.
Theology does not by itself provide wisdom in crisis. All theology must become a living spirituality to really change us or the world. It’s disappointing that we Christians have emphasized theology, catechism, and religious education much more than prayer and practice. The biblical book of Job is probably one of the greatest books on prayer that has ever been written. It breaks our stereotypes of what it means to communicate with God.
If we view Job’s story as a journey into an ever-deepening encounter with God, we keep the question of suffering from becoming an abstract debate observed at a distance. It is a text that only fully makes sense to those who’ve felt suffering, been up against the wall, at a place where, frankly, God doesn’t make sense anymore and we no longer believe “God has a plan.”
Job loses his livelihood, his savings, his family, and his health. His practical, religious friends appear as self-appointed messengers, to speak what they are sure is God’s answer to Job’s suffering. They offer the glib, pious platitudes of stereotypical clergy. What they do is try to take away the mystery, but they cannot solve the problem. God says you cannot solve the problem of suffering, you can only live the mystery. The only response to God’s faithfulness is to be faithful ourselves.
Most of the things Job says to God in his pain are not what Christians have been trained to say to God. The pretty words are mostly gone; there’s no “swirly talk,” as writer-pastor Molly Baskette calls it [1], that Christians so love to put in their prayers. Instead, Job dares to confront God, the very thing many of us were trained never to do. In fact, we called it blasphemy.
During Job’s crisis, he yells at God, accuses God of all kinds of things, speaks sarcastically, and almost makes fun of God. “If this is a game you’re playing, then you’re not much of a God! I don’t need you and I don’t want you!” It’s this kind of prayer that creates saints. Yet we can’t pray with that authority unless we know something experientially about God. We can’t pray that way unless we are assured at a deep level of the profound connection between ourselves and God. It takes one who has ventured into that arena where we say angels fear to tread.
Ultimately Job’s story reveals that God cannot really be known through theology and law. God can only be related to and known in relationship, just like the Trinity itself. Or, as the mystics assert, we know God by loving God, trusting God, and placing our hope in God. We cannot really “think” God.
Job’s religious friends and advisers have correct theory but no experience; thoughts about God, but no love of God. They believe in their theology; Job believes in the God of their theology. It is a big difference. The first is information; the second is wisdom.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
