Seeking God and Learning to See with New Eyes

[[Hi Sister Laurel, it wasn't until I read your comment on Benedictines entering a community "to seek God" that I realized I had always thought of God as missing somehow, or maybe just remote -- maybe too far away to really be concerned with me. I didn't think of him as absent exactly, but so much of prayer seemed to be calling on God to come and act, so that there was a sense that God was absent and had to be coaxed to come near and do what I prayed for. If God wasn't remote like that then why hadn't he already done whatever we prayed we needed?!  

It was frustrating, and I think that sometimes I failed to pray at all or even to believe in God's caring for me or those I love, because I had learned to pray as though God was distant. It is really different to think of God as right there, dwelling with and in us. But what do I do with the idea of asking God to take care of this or that situation, or to rescue me from whatever I need rescuing from? Does that also have to change? As I thought about everything you wrote, what most hit me was the way the idea of "seeking God" had changed and changes everything else. It is almost like the childhood game, "hide and seek," except that I began to see that God does not hide himself. We just need to find him.]]

Many thanks for your comments and sharing. I love your image of the childhood game; I think it works particularly well for us human beings who would like to believe sometimes that we can hide from God. Let me suggest a different and similar game that works especially well in helping us understand the idea of seeking God in the ways I spoke of in my last post, namely, "find the hidden objects". I am sure you know the game. A room or other setting is filled with all kinds of ordinary and extraordinary stuff, and one has to find the objects being named. They are present in plain sight, but they are also often difficult to spot. We have to learn to see them, learn to stop looking past them, for instance, and recognize them when they show up in the unexpected place,  as an unusual variation, or in a surprising orientation. I think seeking God is a lot like that game. Remember that the Gospels call us to see with new eyes. When our eyes are opened in the ways that occur when we are loved and love as God creates us to be and do, we can begin to see as the Gospels affirm is necessary and appropriate to human beings truly made in the image of God.

At the same time, seeing in this way takes practice, and often the hard work of learning to be attentive to the signs of truth, beauty, goodness, integrity, potential, holiness, and so forth, even or especially in the most ordinary aspects of reality. We learn to let go of and heal older ways of seeing (for instance, ways that are unduly biased, rigid in our expectations, lacking in generosity, or ways that are judgmental and otherwise lacking in love and humanness). We do the same with ourselves as we meet ourselves again and again in our confrontations with others, in prayer, in lectio and the inner work and conversations associated with spiritual direction, etc. The reading of Scripture as we pay attention to the ways Jesus sees and treats others can help us learn to be attentive in the ways we need to be, and these examples encourage us to see others and the whole of God's creation differently than our contemporary consumerist and deeply transactional world often encourages us to do.

You ask specifically about what you should do with a notion of God rescuing us from particular situations, because you have a sense that that, too, has to change. I agree that it does, but some of what you already do will remain the same. The fundamental thing to change is your sense that God is remote from you or may not even care about you. In part, this will mean embracing a God who protects your freedom and God's own, even while He offers to be your God and to embrace you as God's very own.** I can assure you (yes, this is my experience as well as that of Saint Augustine and many many others!) that God is closer to you than you are to yourself, and also that God delights in you, loves you with an everlasting love, wants the very best for you (better than you can ever imagine for yourself), and accompanies you wherever life's journeys take you. As Romans 8 reminds us, nothing whatsoever can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

So, by all means, pour out your heart to him; pour it all out to God, no matter how joyous or despairing, how apparently faithful or lacking in trust it is. Be open to becoming aware of God's presence and the fact that you are ultimately not alone in this or in anything at all! Ultimately, the darkness cannot win out; the oppressive silence that seems to mark absurdity and emptiness will become the backdrop for everything that sings God's praises, while tears of pain and the anguish of hopelessness will be transfigured into tears of joy and the consoling solidity of meaningfulness and hope. It is God's presence that changes everything.  If you can be assured of God's presence and practice attentiveness, not living in an idealistic or unrealistic way, but in light of what we are promised because of the fact and truth of Jesus' Resurrection, Ascension, and sending of the Spirit as well, and if you can begin to find God both in the world around you, and in yourself, you will gain greater and greater ability to see clearly with the new (and very generous) eyes God gives and the Gospels call for from us. 

By the way, when I have played the "Find the hidden objects" game, I find that I get really tired and, after a time of intense focus, am unable to see what is right in front of my eyes. I would encourage you to be patient with yourself in this journey of learning to seek God, rest as necessary, take breaks, and turn your mind and heart to something else for a while (recreation is a critical spiritual practice), and then come back to it all again when you are fresh. Just remember to remind yourself that God is there with you in your recreation as well! Welcome him and let him be Emmanuel in this, too! God has waited an eternity for this opportunity to celebrate life with you!! Glorify him! Practice allowing it!!

** Please see other articles here on the nature of authentic human freedom. The Christian sense of this reality is countercultural and thus vastly different from common notions of freedom. 

The Two Main Pathways to Seeking God

[[Hi Sister Laurel,  if one cannot make the journey into existential solitude hermits are committed to making, does this mean they cannot seek God? This sounds elitist to me. I am not able to live as a hermit or to make the kind of inner journey you do. I have other responsibilities, including a full-time job and a family to raise.]]

Important questions. Thanks for these! While recently I have written mainly about this journey into the depths of existential solitude, I have not meant to exclude the other ways we are called to seek God. Whether we are Benedictines or others who make this the focus of our lives or not, we are each called to seek God. It seems to me that there are two main (and interrelated) pathways to doing this. The first is to seek God outside of ourselves; the second is to seek God within ourselves. I think all of us are called to undertake both of these ways of seeking God, though not in the same way monastics or eremites might do this. This is not a problem since every human journey towards fullness of meaningful life is also a life in search of God.

The first way or route to seeking God, it seems to me, is about being open and attentive to the world around us. We seek God in the ordinary events, places, activities, and people of our lives. We may also, therefore, seek God under other rubrics or names: truth, beauty, integrity, order, spontaneity, life, love, faithfulness, courage, and so many others. This extraordinary or "sacred ordinariness" is something I have written about many times here, and it is something my friend, Rachel Denton, Er Dio, wrote about when she said, [[The heartbeat of my hermitage is its sacred ordinariness. It is an experience, in silence and solitude, of total immersion in the humdrum of daily life. A hermit is one who has, perhaps, become so overwhelmed by the immensity of the privilege of sharing Jesus’ humanity that she chooses to spend her whole life contemplating the mystery and manifestation of that gift in the most simple and ordinary form of living. A hermit lives out the mystery of the Incarnation in her own body, her own blood. A hermit says, “Christ, from the beginning of time, and in the fullness of time, chose being Jesus, being human, as the best way of expressing the love of the Trinity.]] Waiting in the Tabernacle of the Hermitage 

I think Sister Rachel Denton, Er Dio, expresses a mature, exemplary, and accessible approach to this first dimension of the eremitic journey. It is a dimension that every person, and certainly every Christian, should recognize as central to the human task of "seeking God" and the Divine task God sets us of becoming more fully and authentically human. In this way, Rachel's life is an exemplar of what each and all of our lives can and should reflect.

The second route or dimension of the search for God is the inner one, the path of existential solitude (for only we can make this journey into the depths of our own being, though again, we tend not to be able to do this alone). At the same time, I want to reiterate that even hermits, who undertake this journey in a more focused and exclusive way, do not do this by themselves. They have a spiritual director, a delegate or superior, and sometimes other hermits to assist them in assuring they do not lose their way or stray from their ordained path to fullness of life. At the same time, neither do hermits undertake this journey only for themselves. We do it because God, through the ministry of the Church, calls us to do it, yes, and we do it for the sake of the Church's proclamation of the Gospel and the salvation of the whole of God's creation.  I want to repeat what I wrote recently because it affirms the universality of this need to engage with and explore existential solitude.

Redwoods Abbey Altar during Tenebrae

[[. . .for some, the hunger for fullness of being and meaning, the yearning to be whole or holy and to allow God to be Emmanuel as fully and exhaustively as he wills, both for one's own sake and for the sake of others, will demand a different kind of commitment, a deeper and more exhaustive engagement with and in existential solitude. Some of these persons are called to be hermits.  Consecrated eremitical life is an ecclesial vocation undertaken for the sake of God's call to fullness of life. [The call to an engagement with existential solitude] belongs to each of us and to the Church itself. The hermit embraces the call and journey she does to witness to the God who is the ground and source of abundant life, meaningful life, eternal life, LIFE in relationship!! She explores the depths of herself and discovers that God is truly present, reaching out with love and mercy at every moment and mood of her journey -- even in the shadow of death and despair or near-despair. ]]

Every person is called to seek God and their truest self in existential solitude. Some become aware of this call during periods of illness or bereavement. Some will do so when they are thrown back on their own resources in some other way and experience their own weakness and incompleteness. Others will come to a moment of conversion occasioned by some special experience of transcendence and the Transcendent and begin to seek God and their own truest self in a more explicit way. (This could be an experience in Church, a visit to someplace stunningly beautiful, an experience of accomplishment or self-discovery that surprises and puts one in touch with themselves in a new way, etc. The possibilities are almost infinite.) Each of these persons and the events that mediated this need and desire to engage with and explore their own inner solitude, can look to the hermit (and often to other religious and monastics) and be reassured that their journey is not an empty one, no matter how difficult the circumstances that lead them here or how dark and treacherous the inner depths they will traverse. This is part of the "for others" character of the eremitic life. 

If we really understand this (and if those seeking to be hermits today truly understand it), I think it will make clear the eremitical journey is not an elitist one, but one made on behalf of others so they may have faith and hope rooted in the fact that, whether we discover God in the sacred ordinariness of our everyday lives, or in the challenging depths of even sin and death, the One Jesus called Abba comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place.

The Crucified God: Emmanuel Fully Revealed in the Unexpected and Unacceptable Place (Reprise)

 Several years ago, I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will come and really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. 

          + First, we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide, so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. 

          + Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent -- rather like air is present in our lives and he is impassible, incapable of suffering in any way at all. Because he is omnipresent, God seems already to be "Emmanuel," so we are unclear what is really being added to what we know (and what is now true!!) of God.  Something is similarly true because of God's impassibility, which seems to make God incapable of suffering with us or feeling compassionate toward us. (We could say something similar regarding God's immutability, etc. Greek categories are inadequate for understanding a living God who wills to be Emmanuel with all that implies.) 

          +  And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The eternal and transcendent God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who, in Christ, enters exhaustively into the most profoundly historical and personal lives and circumstances of his Creation and makes these part of his own life in the process.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus (that is, his entire living into death) to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God-in-Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience and the realm of human history, but in that same Christ, God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event, heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day God will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms dimensions of it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so, in Jesus' life and active ministry, the presence of God is made real in space and time in an unprecedented way --- that is, with unprecedented authority, compassion, and intimacy. He companions and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives, and sanctifies us. He is a mentor, and brother, and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum, we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death, God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us that our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us, as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross, having apparently failed in his mission and shown his God to be a fraud. (From one perspective, we could say that had he succeeded completely, there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion.) Jesus had spoken truth to power all throughout his ministry. On the cross, this comes to a climax, and in the events of Jesus' passion, the powers and principalities of this world appear to swallow him up. But even as this occurs and Jesus embraces the weight of the world's darkness and deathliness, Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus, even failure, but especially this one, can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability and all the world threw at him without mitigation. 

Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God (that is, his obedience) in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto godless death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the absolute lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death, Jesus again remains open (obedient) to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin and death into himself and makes these his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

In perhaps the most powerful passage I have ever read on the paradox of the cross of Christ, John Dwyer (my major professor until doctoral work) speaks about God's reconciling work in Jesus --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel to transform everything --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal One takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

Second Sunday of Easter: Knowing and Proclaiming Christ Crucified and only Christ Crucified! (Reprise with Tweaks)

Today's Gospel focuses on the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, and one of the lessons one should draw from these stories is that we are indeed dealing with bodily resurrection, and especially, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. In other words, it is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we, precisely as embodied persons, will come to perfection beyond the limits of death. It is not just our souls which are meant to be part of the new heaven and earth, but our whole selves, body and soul, (and in fact, the whole of creation is meant to be renewed)!

The scenario with Thomas continues this theme, but is contextualized in a way which leads homilists to focus on the whole dynamic of faith with seeing, and faith despite not having seen. It also makes doubt the same as unbelief and plays these off against faith --- as though faith cannot also be served by doubt. But doubt and unbelief are decidedly NOT the same things. We rarely see Thomas as the one whose doubt (or whose demands!) SERVE true faith, and yet, that is what today's Gospel is about. Meanwhile, Thomas also tends to get a bad rap as the one who was separated from the community and doubted what he had not seen with his own eyes. The corollary here is often perceived to be that Thomas will not simply listen to his brother and sister disciples and believe that the Lord has appeared to or visited them. But I think there is something far more significant going on in Thomas' proclamation that unless he sees the wounds inflicted on Jesus in the crucifixion, and even puts his fingers in the very nail holes, he will not believe.

What Thomas, I think, wants to make very clear is that we Christians believe in a crucified Christ, and that the resurrection was God's act of validation of Jesus as scandalously and ignominiously Crucified. I think Thomas knows on some level anyway, that insofar as the resurrection really occured, it does not nullify what was achieved on the cross. Instead it renders permanently valid what was revealed (made manifest and made real) there. In other words, Thomas knows if the resurrection is really God's validation of Jesus' life and establishes him as God's Christ, the Lord he will meet is the one permanently established and marked as the crucified One. The crucifixion was not some great misunderstanding which could be wiped away by resurrection. Instead it was an integral part of the revelation of the nature of truly human and truly divine existence. Whether it is the Divine life, authentic human existence, or sinful human life --- all are marked and revealed in one way or another by the signs of Jesus' cross. For instance, ours is a God who has journeyed to the very darkest, godless places or realms human sin produces, and has become Lord of even those places. He does not disdain them even now but is marked by them and will journey with us there --- whether we are open to him doing so or not --- because Jesus has implicated God there and marked him with the wounds of an exhaustive kenosis.

Another piece of this is that Jesus is, as Paul tells us, the end of the Law and it was Law that crucified him. The nail holes and wounds in Jesus' side and head -- indeed every laceration which marked him -- are a sign of legal execution -- both in terms of Jewish and Roman law. We cannot forget this, and Thomas' insistence that he really be dealing with the Crucified One reminds us vividly of this fact as well. The Jewish and Roman leaders did not crucify Jesus because they misunderstood him, but because they understood all-too-clearly both Jesus and the immense power he wielded in his weakness and poverty. They understood that he could turn the values of this world, its notions of power, authority, etc, on their heads. They knew that he could foment profound revolution (religious and otherwise) wherever he had followers. They chose to have him crucified not only to put an end to his life, but to demonstrate he was a fraud who could not possibly have come from God; they chose to crucify (or have him crucified) to terrify those who might follow him into all the places discipleship might really lead them --- especially those places of human power and influence associated with religion and politics. The marks of the cross are a judgment (krisis) on this whole reality.

There are many gods and even very many manifestations of the real God available to us today (many partial, some more or less distorted), and so there were to Thomas and his brethren in those first days and weeks following the crucifixion of Jesus. When Thomas made his declaration about what he would and would not believe, none of these were crucified Gods or would be worthy of being believed in if they were associated with such shame and godlessness. Thomas knew how very easy it would be for his brother and sister disciples to latch onto one of these, or even to fall back on entirely traditional notions in reaction to the terribly devastating disappointment of Jesus' crucifixion. He knew, I think, how easy it might be to call the crucifixion and all it symbolized a terrible misunderstanding which God simply reversed or wiped away with the resurrection -- a distasteful chapter on which God has simply turned the page. Thomas knew that false prophets (and false "messiahs") showed up all the time. He knew that a God who is distant and all-powerful is much easier to believe in (and follow) than one who walks with us even in our sinfulness or who empties himself to become subject to the powers of sin and death, especially in the awful scandal and ignominy of the cross --- and who expects us to do essentially the same.

In other words, Thomas' doubt may have had less to do with the FACT of a resurrection, than it had to do with his concern that the disciples, in their desperation, guilt, and the immense social pressure they faced, had truly met and clung to the real Lord, the crucified One. In this way, and only in this way!) their own discipleship could and would come to be marked by the signs of the cross as they preach, suffer, and serve in the name (and so, in the paradoxical power) of THIS Lord and no other. Only he could inspire them; only he could sustain them; only he could accompany them wherever true discipleship led them.

Paul said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified" because only this Christ had transformed sinful, godless reality with his presence, only this Christ had redeemed even the realms of sin and death by remaining open to God even within these realities. Only this Christ would journey with us to the unexpected and unacceptable places, and in fact, only he would meet us there with the promise and presence of a God who would bring life out of them. Thomas, I believe, knew precisely what Paul would soon proclaim himself, and it is this, I think, which stands behind his insistence on seeing the wounds and putting his fingers in the very nail holes. He wanted to be sure his brethren were putting their faith in the crucified One, the one who turned everything upside down and relativized every other picture of God we might believe in. He became the great doubter because of this, but I suspect instead, he was the most astute theologian among the original Apostles. He, like Paul, wanted to know Christ Crucified and ONLY Christ Crucified.

We should not trivialize Thomas' witness by transforming him into a run of the mill empiricist and doubter (though doubting is an important piece of growth in faith)!! Instead we should imitate his insistence: we are called upon to be followers of the Crucified God, and no other. Every version of God we meet should be closely examined for nail holes, and the lance wound inflicted by the world of power and prestige. Every one should be checked for signs that this God is capable of and generous enough to assume such suffering on behalf of a creation he would reconcile and make whole. Only then do we know this IS the God proclaimed in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, the God of Easter, the only one worthy of being followed even into the darkest reaches of human sin and death, the only One who meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place; only this God is the One who makes all things new by loving us with an eternal love from which nothing at all can separate us.

Seeking God: What does this Mean?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I wondered what it means in monasticism to say one is "seeking God", I mean it's not like God is actually lost or something! Also one is entering a monastery where one is pretty sure God is present. Why do Benedictines define their lives or, I guess, the purpose of their lives as "seeking God"?]]

LOL! It's a serious question and yes, the phrase is a bit enigmatic isn't it? But you have actually implicitly answered the question in your own lightly poking fun at it. We can imagine someone wandering all over the place in search of God, and of course, we can imagine such a person eventually coming to the monastery to focus and deepen their search precisely because there is good reason to believe God may be found in a privileged way there. But once a search for God is narrowed in this way why would Benedictines define their lives in terms of "seeking God"?

As you say, it is true that God is not lost, but in some ways we and our world certainly are. The person we described earlier is looking for God and is thus simultaneously engaged in seeking her own truest self. She and we are each in search of a life which is meaningful; we are looking for a life that fulfills all the potential we carry (by the grace of God) deep within ourselves, a life that is purposeful and coherent; this is inherently wrapped up with the search for God. We find and embrace our truest selves only to the extent we find and are "found" and embraced by God. To commit to seeking God is to commit to finding, claiming, and thus becoming our truest selves in God; it is to commit to finding our way home to, with, and in God and it is to commit to living this "at-home-ness" wherever we are or go so that our lives are transparent to God's in the same way.

Another way of saying we are seeking God is to say we are seeking the best way possible for us to learn to love, to actually love, and to be loved into wholeness. These goals overlap and are dependent upon one another. Especially we cannot learn to love nor love without being loved; we cannot learn or be empowered to love as exhaustively as we are called to love without allowing ourselves to be loved in an analogous way. For this reason we are called first of all to be those who allow God to be God. Moreover, since God is Love-in-Act, this means allowing God to love us. Cistercian houses are known as "Schools of Love; their Benedictine nature "seeking God" and being a "School of Love" coincide. These two aims are the same.

There are more ways of saying this and other ways of thinking about "seeking God". While, as you say, it is true God is not lost, God is also not obvious to most of us nor can we find God in the way we find the keys we inadvertently left on the table earlier or someone in a game of "hide and seek". We have to understand that this commitment to seeking God is a commitment to allow God to be personally present to us; this in turn means making our very own those ways God is found by and finds us! We will travel all those pathways ordinarily supporting and guiding such a journey and make our own such things as lectio, Scripture study, prayer, journaling, community life, intellectual and physical work, liturgy, silence, solitude, ministry, time outdoors and with nature, etc --- all the privileged ways God speaks Godself to and is heard by human beings. We make these regular, familiar, and beloved parts of our everyday lives and (perhaps too) others which are special to us: music, art, writing, etc.

Gradually we learn to open ourselves to the extraordinary God of the ordinary so that we might walk through our days with the eyes and ears of our minds, hearts, and bodies wide open to the presence of God. We do all we can to cultivate this kind of openness and attentiveness, this kind of obedience to God and to our deepest selves. Remember that the very first line of the Rule is the imperative that we "hearken" or "listen" ("Ausculta!"); this focus on obedience is the key to any search for God; it is also the source and ground of the monastic value of stability, and so, to the Benedictine way of life. After all, obedience is also the way we will allow God to claim us as God's own while stability affirms our trust in the presence of God in all of what we consider "ordinary" reality, but certainly that God exists right here and right now. With each choice we make to hearken and embrace God in this way we also allow God to create the persons we are called to be.

Thanks for the good questions. I hope this is helpful.

SURPRISE! Christmas Eve Day 2008

(Artist unknown. Credit will be given as possible.)

This evening on Christmas we celebrate the response to God's Word Jesus is and will grow in grace and stature to become. (Remember that Christmas is the Feast of the Nativity and that Incarnation involves the whole of Jesus' life and death.) We should be clear that our own capacity for incarnation is similar to that of Jesus'.

Each of us is called to become an incarnation of the Word of God, though not in the precise sense as Jesus. Each of us is called to be Daughter or Son, a response to the One who calls us to authentic humanity and to be heirs of his own Kingdom, though again, not in a way which obviates Jesus' uniqueness as Incarnate Word. The need to hold together both parts of this paradox is one of the most serious in theology, and one of the most difficult.

It is interesting to consider "what if" questions from time to time, and the question regarding Jesus' gender is one of these. If we cannot at least understand that the Word of God COULD have been definitively incarnated in a woman, if we cannot understand the humor (and seriousness!) of the above cartoon, but instead become offended by it, perhaps we have yet missed the point of Christmas and a God who TRULY comes to us in the unexpected way and place.

Seeking God in the unexpected place, Acts 15:7-21

Throughout the last five weeks of Eastertide the Church has been reading through the book of Acts. We have been following the story of the early church's growing pains, and a learning curve that has been slow and painful going at times. At every turn the disciples and the fledgling church had to come to terms with a God who worked in unexpected and surprising, even scandalous ways.

At first the challenge was to believe that a man they thought was messiah could die. Beyond this they had to come to terms with the fact that in Jesus, a man crucified as a blasphemer, one who therefore died a godless death according to the God-given Law they cherished and honored was actually vindicated by God; he was raised BODILY from the dead and then ascended to sit at God's right hand --- meaning he was present now in power! Believing in the events was one thing, but coming to accept all they implied about God and the way he worked in the world, as well as what these events meant for established traditions and praxis was another whole challenge. All of these events meant that the channels of grace they had treasured and honored were no longer the privileged place where God was to be found. The Law was no longer the privileged Word of God, the Risen and ascended Christ was. No longer was the temple the place where heaven and earth met and God dwelled; the risen and ascended Christ was the new Temple. No longer were the Jews alone to constitute Israel, but instead all who came to Christ IN FAITH and lived in him were the new and extended people of Israel!

It was somewhat analogous to our having another Catholic come to us one day and saying: "God has done a new and unexpected thing in the life and death of so-and-so! As a result, HE is the privileged channel of grace for us now! Our Sacraments have been relativized; they are no longer the privileged way God comes to us, the privileged way he is mediated to us. THIS MAN IS!" It would be a tremendous amount to take in, a lot to get our minds and hearts around --- just as the Christ event and all it implied was a tremendous amount for the early church to get their minds and hearts around. I think we can appreciate the kind of learning curve this would occasion --- and the kind of crisis!!


In today's first reading, we see the church facing such a crisis and coming to the critical point in this process of growth, this learning curve she has been on. Paul and Barnabas have been preaching the gospel to the Gentiles without demanding they take on the burden of the Law and circumcision --- that is, without becoming Jews in the process of conversion. They were allowing Gentiles to become part of the new and extended Israel without becoming Jews!!! In fact, he was insisting that this is what the Gospel of Christ called for! Others of course, in this case the pharisaic party of the community of believers, insisted otherwise and were harrassing the Gentile Christians with all kinds of demands Paul considered anti-Gospel! So Paul and Barnabas came to Jerusalem to resolve the issue, and what we have in today's readings is Luke's account of that event.

An image central to today's first reading is that God has purified the hearts of the Gentile Christians. What Luke is doing here in this reference to purification is calling to mind the tearing of the temple veil and noting that the boundary or wall between sacred and profane has been torn asunder. Peter's speech cannot be heard without also hearing echoes of the dream he had back in chapter 10 where a large sheet or sail is lowered and all kinds of animals are contained in it, both clean and unclean, and Peter is told to eat from it. Horrified Peter refuses, but is told essentially, "What I have rendered clean (what I have purified), don't you dare call unclean!! What I have made sacred, you do not call profane!"

And this is the final thing the early Christian had to get their minds around in terms of the Christ event, not only that he who was crucified has been raised and vindicated by God, but that through his death, resurrection, and ascension, the boundary between sacred and profane has been torn asunder. In Christ God entered into the realms of sin and death and transformed them with his presence. As a result, he is found in the unexpected place, the place where he once could NEVER have been found. In terms of today's reading, he is found active and powerfully present in the Gentiles, and he is so apart from the Law, apart from the temple system, apart from all those things which were sacred and once the privileged mediators of the sacred! Salvation comes to everyone equally and in the same way, through faith in Jesus Christ!! Through faith ALONE, not through law and temple, not involving circumcision!!

And of course, some Jewish Christians found it hard to affirm this original instance of "Through faith alone!" They demanded the imposition of the whole Law and circumcision to the Gentile Christians. But we know how the story ends: after long debates and listening to accounts of God's work among the Gentiles it was decided not to impose these demands, to allow them to be part of the new Israel without also becoming Jews! And as we hear from Jame's speech, a few conditions were applied, but minimally and just enough to insure that Jewish and Gentile Christians could come together around the table of the Lord. Jewish Christians compromised by letting go of Traditions and interpretations of Scripture they treasured, and Gentile Christans were asked to refrain from anything smacking of, or touching upon idolatry --- all so they could all comfortably come together around the Lord's table and share in covenant fellowship! It was an astounding and inspiring resolution.


Several things about today's reading struck me, especially regarding how this fledgling church faced and resolved the crisis.

First, despite (and through) all the arguing and debating, this is an inclusive church seeking to do all she can to bring about legitimate unity and fellowship. She is not trying to exclude people from table or covenant fellowship. She is seeking to find ways to make it happen, and in doing so she compromises; she lets go of treasured traditions and reinterprets Scripture in light of what God has done outside her visible or accepted boundaries. Secondly, she is a discerning church. She is concerned with seeing where GOD is at work, not with defining where he CANNOT be at work, cannot be found. She looks for him in the unexpected place because that is what the Christ event teaches her to do. Thirdly, she is a docile Church, willing to be taught by those outside her accepted or visible boundaries. In today's reading the heart of the Gospel --- that salvation comes to all by faith, and that God works in the same way among all people --- is re-taught to this church by Gentiles. And fourthly, therefore, she is a humble and obedient Church, one who listens for God's voice and submits herself to it, no matter how unexpected the place it comes from, and no matter how difficult that may be.

The challenge today's first reading present us with is immense. We must be the kind of people who constitute THIS KIND OF CHURCH: intentionally inclusive in a seach for legitimate unity, discerning of the God who comes to us in the unexpected place, the unexpected person, the unexpected religion, etc, and docile: willing to be taught by those we thought could NOT teach us, willing to humbly listen to and submit to the Word of God however it comes to us. The veil between sacred and profane has been torn asunder by Christ's life, death and resurrection. He comes to us now bodily raised and present in the power of the Holy Spirit --- a spirit that "blows where she will"! As a result, we MUST BE a people who seeks God and allows ourselves to find him (and be found by him!) in the unexpected place, and not merely through the accepted and privileged channels of grace we know so well --- no matter the cost. This is the God today's first reading proclaims and the challenge it sets before us!