Searching for God #12

 In the last piece in this space, the notion of ‘being seen’ in our uniqueness (acorn), through the ‘how’ of whatever it is that we do was introduced. Hillman applies the word ‘soul’ to that invisible visible. And he advocates for evidence the personal, first person experience of each of us, uncluttered, and obscured by any sociological, or even medical or academic classification, type, class, demographic or diagnosis.

Ironically, as a first step in any search for God, we might begin by stripping all the ‘type’ words that have been deployed in the personnel files, the medical files, the academic files, the political files, and try to recover, uncover, the bare, naked, unflattering and even embarrassing words that attempt to display and depict the ‘truth’ of our identity and our experience. And, while the question is rhetorical, it is one begging to be posed: “Does any of this “being deeply and fully seen” happen in your experience of being a member or an adherent of a church?” Does it actually seem paradoxical that ‘in the presence of God’ as we describe our sanctuaries, we restrain our truth for our private conversations with God, while judiciously and studiously avoiding sharing even the most cursory and social conversation from each other. (I have witnessed parishioners leaving their parish church ‘because the sermon touched on conversations that took place in that community earlier in that week,’ without the mention of any names.)

Of course, private indiscretions, misdemeanours and ‘sins’ are expected inside the penitential, as an integral component of that liturgical ritual. What about the search ‘to be seen’ in a way different from the many superficial ways one is encountered and described in the secular environment? And, is Hillman’ s premise that relationships benefit from various parties in the community ‘actually seeing’ others in and through an imaginative ‘eye’ that looks not for the obvious personality traits, (friendly, shy, energetic, curious, detached,) and considers the option of looking differently into the darknesses, the oblique statements, the incomplete sentences, and facial expressions, the darting, or penetrating, the languid or cold eyes, not in order to find power and superiority over another, but to begin a different approach to appreciating their hidden identity, applicable to the church community?

Or is it another social, politically correct, quasi-business, quasi-welcoming the visitor, (the stranger wehom we are exhorted to ‘welcome’)?i

In other places here, I have made reference to the little book entitled, “Why I Do Not Tell You Who I Am,” by the Jesuit John Powell. And in his answer he says, (approximately recalled) “I don’t tell you who I am because that is all I have, and you might reject me!” The cogent and penetrating truth of Powell’s insight is arresting and a warning both socially and spiritually. Is our identity (not our ideology, or our gender, or our race, or our ethnicity, or our religion) not what comprises the sine qua non? And is it just possible that, in our quasi-pseudo-relational culture we have obliterated, obscured, denied, dismissed, disdained, and suffered from our shared blindness to that essence? I-It relationships are convenient, detached, disengaged, basically ‘thing-to-thing’…and off we go!

And add into the mix the (ironically) high priority we give to hierarchy, to organizational charts, to professional specialties, and to ‘business transactions’ in which we are either supplier or consumer of goods and/or services for a price. It is not merely an accident that we have lost touch with ourselves and with each other. We each participate in a jargon, perception and isolation/alienation of objectivity, detachment and a kind of ‘blindness’ to the ‘other’ daily, hourly.  Another complex  clouding coagulant to the clarity of phenomenology is the competitive instinct of every human being we have all encountered. If competition is rooted in our gestalt of all relationships, then, of course, we are going to be obsessively discreet, private and non-disclosing….and even those non-disclosures are evidence of ….what? nervousness, anxiety, avoidance, distraction.

It must be noted and emphatically underscored that religious and faith communities are replete with the incursion of every social and cultural ‘habit and expectation’ including the language used to enter into conversation with another. Numbers of bums in pews, dollars in collection plates, redecorating contracts, furnace repairs, organ repairs, bulletin production, secretarial and administrative services…all of them naturally adhering to the latest ‘labour standards’ of the respective jurisdiction…and the method of decision-making….including lobbying, private negotiations, politicking, and hierarchical power imbalances (between veterans and new-comers, between rich and poor, between educated and less, reflects, endorses and sustains the corporate business model.

Think for a moment about the difference in how one experiences the corporate culture of negotiations, transactions, budget assessments and the very notion of being ‘seen’ as a unique ‘soul’ ….even before the non-obligatory question of ‘belief’ or the other non-obligatory question of ‘how are you going to supplement and complement our community?’ There is a divide with a canyon of difference?

Emotions, reactions, even distractions are invariably disclosed in facial and body movements. And yet, in ministerial preparation, little if any of that ‘body literacy’ is even mentioned. It is saved for the pastoral counselling room, if at all. And, ‘body literacy’ need not be framed as a ‘girlie or woke’ concern. Indeed, if both men and women were familiar with body language, they would ‘know’ and appreciate their kids more fully, their families in a more nuanced  manner, and themselves, especially, in and through  a far more subtle, complex and imaginative lens. “Sure,” I hear critics cry, so if they/we were familiar with legitimate interpretations of body language, they/we would all fall entrapped into that hated drudge of being ‘psychoanalyzed’ by another amateur shrink!”

What does all this have to do with God?

For some, everything; for others, nothing. For this scribe, much!

First, any faith in God has the apparently inherent and implicit potential, echoing Merton from yesterday, of drawing out my/your/our most personal, private, and person-extensions of both fears and aspirations, courage and retreats. And I respond with both my words and my body mind and spirit. What I do and how is expressive of not only my character but also my ‘relationship’ with God. And that includes whatever ‘acorn’ might be inherited. Discovery of one’s being is, however, a life-long flowing river of experiences, including ‘all that I have met’…(not only the static arch of Ulysses). And, one cannot exclude one’s private visions, aspirations, dreams, anxieties, fears and doubts from that river.

Every relationship is inherently inclusive of both what ‘formal expectations’ one has of the ‘other’ as well as what one seeks to dedicate to the other. And the reading and interpretation of those ‘expectations’ and ‘dedications’ will naturally be a summation of what one has been told, what one has witnessed, what one intuits, and what one envisions or imagines. Released and unbounded expectations and dedications are by definition, inherent in any authentic relationship, especially one with God. And, rather than backing oneself into a corner of victimhood, either through an exaggerated application of the sin of the Original Fall, or a sainthood of exaggerated application of ‘healing the world’ one can potentially tend to resonate on the continuum between expectations and dedications in a community of trust and safety.

It is axiomatic to say or think or even believe, whether consciously or not, that we feel safe in our relationship with God…..or is that a bridge too far? Indeed, is it just possible, perhaps even likely, that if we have some doubt about our relationship with God, that doubt comes directly (perhaps unconsciously) from our inner voice whisp ering, ‘I am not now, and never will be good enough for God!’ All faiths can borrow from the Buddhist notion that our greatest enemy is our own mind….From Buddhismnow.com, in a piece by the Dalai Lama, entitled, The Real Enemy by Dalai Lama, November 10, 2019, we read:

It is very important for a practitioner of compassion to first of all see the destructive nature of delusion, and the faults that delusions lead to. In the chapter on Conscientiousness …Shantideva explains that delusions such as hatred, desire, anger and jealousy are within our own minds and are our own enemies. They do not have legs or bodies and so on, nor do they hold weapons in their hands, but they reside within our minds, control us from within, and make us their servants. The text explains that we do not realise that there delusions are our enemies, even though they reside within our minds, controlling and inflicting harm on us. So we never confront them or challenge them…Now these negative thoughts trick us. When desire and attachment appear, they seem to be as friend, as very beautiful and very dear to us. Then anger and hatred (negative thoughts) appear in our minds and they can seem to be like some kind of bodyguard—someone is about to hurt us and anger appears as a protector which gives us a kind of strength.

A brief anecdote from Facebook might help to contextualize this idea of ‘seeing’ the other, from a lonely septaguinarian named Peter sitting in a booth at a coffee shop:

(Seeing a tired nurse counting change)

‘Your scrubs say ICU but your eyes say, ‘I carried someone today. Rest well!’ She cried in her coffee. Told Millie the waitress, ‘This is the first time anyone looked at me, not just through me all week.’ ( Can’t pass the irony and the not-so-hidden message on those scrubs, “ICU”….is that evocative of “I see you?”)

Compassion, empathy, and seeing the body language that even the nurse might still have been unconscious about ‘showing’….kudo’s to Peter.

And also, we do not have to exhibit exhaustion or desperation or flaccid hollowness to be ‘seen’….indeed, it is to identify, cultivate, nurture, and endorse the incipient habit of even looking with a different eye. It has been said that we do not really listen to another, given that we are too busy preparing our reply. With ‘seeing’ our unconscious response is often barely noted, as we pass by. The loneliness of the 21^st century is, I think we might agree, deeper, more infectious and more disease-like than those in previous decades and centuries.

Providing ‘activities’ and ‘busy schedules’ for our young children, in imitation of those many parents are already slaves to, is another of the nefarious implications of a culture gone obsessive over business, transactions, efficiencies, networking and ambitious climbing some ladder or other. When the dental hygienist asks, at the end of an appointment, “Well, what have you got planned for the weekend?” as if I must have something important on my schedule. If I answer, ‘I will attempt to enter and to engage in each moment with those who matter,’ no doubt I will be greeted by a quizzical if not idiotic smirk that says, ‘What planet are you living on?’

Please dear reader,   on reflection try to consider these notes as invitations, not mandatory commandments…to a beginning of open, fearless, authentic, insightful and even imaginative opportunities to see, not only the altruism or kindness in those few people in the pews, but also sometimes even their ‘essence’ that may well still be unclear and unfamiliar to them, after decades of performing at a very high level. Dedication to self-acceptance, tolerance and esteem, like so many other learnings, as part of our reality, (without the cloud of sin and evil as foundational) can emerge from the mirror of the other’s actually ‘seeing’ us.

Uttering the words ‘God is Love’ has so many important meanings and opportunities, without attempting to rescue, or even heal another.

To be continued.......