Searching for God # 45

 Here is a tentative, speculative, and modest proposal of a theory…..

It may take a few minutes to set up the background, how it emerged, and why it might make some sense.

In the West, especially, where Christianity has established a firm foothold in the culture, the binary divide between good and evil, in both personal, private terms as well as on a macro, perhaps even global stage has taken hold. We have built a system of both rewards and punishments for those seeking ‘integration’ and acceptance and affiliation within the social and political structures of the society. Primarily, we encourage, foster, reward and sustain those who have chosen to ‘fight’ for the good, or fight against an enemy.

At the centre of our mindset is ‘conflict’ with the aim and goal of either championing a victory or slaying an enemy. And while, for example, the model of conflict and combat is more deeply embedded in the United States than it is in Canada, and perhaps also in some Scandinavian countries, competition and combat lie at the heart of both our economic and political/national security/global security thinking. We train warriors as athletes, as soldiers as scholars, as political leaders, as corporate executives and even as clergy.

Hillman’s “love of war” applies as much to the corporate and political boardroom as to the scientific research lab, as well to the medical/legal/finance/science/technology schools applications for admission. There is a fascinating, captivating and even seductive aspect to this mental and social archetype of ‘winning’ some various kinds of conflicts. Some fight against disease, some fight against social injustice, some fight against political or ideological opponents, some fight against cultural enemies, some fight against crime, some fight against lies, some fight against racism, sexism ageism.

Historically roots for these respective ‘fights’ or battles, it seems can be found in the heroic history of the battles of the Greek heroes, the Roman heroes, and the various intellectual thought pioneers, many of whose perceptions and observations have evolved into the foundations of western thought, attitude, perception and even to some degree belief.

On the fight for compassion, empathy, care and social sensibility, there is an archetypal model in the Good Samaritan parable in which the hated Samaritan finds and rescues the Jew taken for dead in the ditch, and raises him up, and finds him a room and support. The Good Samaritan can be considered the character foil for the military officer who is fighting for national pride, national security, national supremacy, national protection….the list of these goals and purposes continues.

The Jew in the ditch is an obvious ‘victim’ of some form of abuse and his immediate rescue and recovery beg immediate action. A disease, plague, or fatal accident or a natural disaster all demand immediate, urgent and emergent responses. And a kind of military discipline attends to the efficiency and effectiveness of all formal responses to these crises. Many of us come from families that wretched from crisis to crisis, in a pattern of crisis management that demanded immediate and urgent attention to some specific perceived crisis. There is a broad extant, informally trained brigade of ‘crisis management’ survivors even before they/we consider ‘what to do’ with our lives/careers/ finding purpose or meaning. Indeed, history is among other things, a testament to the urgent, heroic, emergent, decisive and creative responses to various forms of threat, many of them potentially lethal.

There is a kind of urgent perspective that is integral to the training of professional response practitioners whereby time as in very quick decisions require an insightful perception and apperception of the situation in order to determine a diagnosis as well as the ‘plan’ to address the situation. There is a required ‘hierarchy’ of both seniority and skill-set that almost ‘involuntarily’ falls into place, depending on the shared perception of the moment. Clichés such as ‘saving lives is our first priority’ are often chanted as both directives and ethical principles.

Empirical evidence is both critical and dominant in the assessment of such crisis situations. There is little if any time for reflection, until later when things like motives and backgrounds, character and relationships can begin to be the focus of investigators. These conditions are integral also to military engagements, although considerable planning based on ‘precedents’ can be and is conducted in combat training institutions. A similar model for both training and execution can be found in law schools, medical schools and in some religious/ministry development programs.

Attacking, disabling, destabilizing, ameliorating, or even eradicating some form of enemy, or evil, lies at the base of all of these social, political, academic and professional models of training and execution. And, too often, because of our conditioning as crisis managers, we either prefer or defer to some degree of procrastination before taking action in any incipient yet not full blown, crisis. It is a well-known cliché that doctors have been trained in the perception that at least 65-75% of all physical complaints that greet them in their general practitioner offices have a psycho-somatic basis. Naturally, such a piece of data could and does have an impact on the degree of urgency with which the doctor views the illness, as compared with the perceive urgency of the patient.

Front line professionals, in all fields, including fire, police, criminal investigation, military firsts to encounter the enemy all have a status as brace, courageous, essential and highly familiar and tolerant of profound risk. These are the ‘marines’ archetype of military service, or the ‘special ops’ and there are ‘special ops’ in almost all areas of human activity.

Even ‘warriors for God’ have been inculcated into the fold of society’s war class, only they are allegedly fighting to convert those considered ‘unsaved’ or ‘unbelievers’ prior to the intervention of the evangelist. Crisis management here often includes a hot drink, perhaps a blanket for those living on the street, and basic medical attention, and perhaps a hospital or clinic referral. Follow-up could often include additional counselling, perhaps finding shelter, job training, and preparation for re-entry into the mainstream of the society.

Just as there is no time for reflection in a case like an urban shooting patient admitted to the Emergency Department, and immediate attention and diagnosis and treatment are required, so too, such timing and appropriate interventions are required and expected on the street.

We are a culture, with avowed Christian roots, that spends an inordinate amount of time, money, personnel and public policy and research in ‘crisis management’….while at the same time, allotting considerable resources to the longer-term research, reflection and strategic planning, ‘for the next crisis’ whatever and wherever it may erupt. And while nature is one of the more ‘engaged’ characters in our having to attend to crises, especially given our ignoring and denying and defying the evidence of global warming and climate change for decades, we are still, as a culture, not fully engaged in the depth and meaning of this crisis.

Denial of death, at the core of our many denials, plays its own role in our procrastination, as well as in our perception that death itself is the most tragic of all of the threats we face. This, too, has a religious and Christian basis for which the church, having adopted the ‘sacred gift of life’ approach to human existence, has exaggerated the concept of death beyond the natural, whereas it is as natural an aspect of nature as is birth. Again, the crisis archetype frames the public and religious debate over abortion and ‘warriors’ have evolved and been formally and informally trained to fight for each ‘side’.

Enter Leo Tolstoy, again in this space, with his exhortation from the Sermon on the Mount to ‘non-violently resist evil with force,’ a critique which he claims is deeply inherent in each of us. Let’s look at this exhortation from the perspective of the crisis-management’ heroic and urgent, immediate, dramatic and high-risk intervention perspective with which we seem to approach many of what we consider our enemies, or evil.

Discernment of evil, unlike the ‘rush to judgement’ that prevails in tabloids as well as in high-profile criminal cases, and unlike the urgent and immediate assessment of a crisis, demands considerable reflection; it is not as quickly or as clearly determined as an ‘instant-gratification’ culture demands. A child is being abused, physically and/or emotionally, and needs to be rescued. Social policy requires an assessment, and as rapid a removal of that child from the abusive situation as is feasible or removal of the offending adult. It is a reported crisis, and the conventional wisdom is almost predictably and invariably compassionate identification with the abused child. Discernment of all options, including the potential transformation of the abusing parent is very low, if it exists at all, in the list of options on the template of the visiting social worker. We have made a ‘crisis’ of our ‘failure to protect the child’ as the behaviour driving the policy and practice of those intervening. Diagnosis, the parent is a criminal for having administered the abuse. Few if any cases represent a variant on this model.

Our investigations, because there are so many and so few trained professional social workers, are constricted in their options, again because we have labelled, framed and complicitly agreed that the situation cannot fall outside our statistical template. Immediate, urgent, emergent intervention by those trained in such ‘models of intervention’ is once again the model for the professionals. Relying on the empirical, literal, legal/medical model of crisis intervention, we have relegated much human behaviour to more crisis-management.

Hillman refers to this approach in his disdain of clinical psychology’s approach to abnormal psychology. Not only is the model dependent on pharmaceuticals, and diagnosis and the enhancement of the clinical psychological professional, based on the medical model, but it also excludes his proposed deployment of the imagination, in search of the archetypal gods and goddesses that might be impelling the individuals in any situation. One example that comes to mind is the ‘crucifixion’ as an archetypal model for the ‘instant, urgent, immediate and highly conflicted intervention of a congregation with what they all agree is a non-compliant clergy. Given that politics of power and money rules the church, the hierarchy, as in Morley Callaghan’s ‘Such is my Beloved’ dismiss a priest who has befriended two street prostitutes, without ever engaging in sexual activity with either of them.

Infamy, shame, scorn and excommunication are the chosen and the preferred ‘diagnostic and treatment plans for the Callaghan clergy who may be naïve and somewhat irreverent, especially of the mores of the congregation, and of course those ingredients are the essence of social fear and embarrassment. They provoke especially the established members of the cheque-writing elite whose cash is essential to keep the church doors open and the heating bills paid.

What is the evil is that situation, the priest’s naivety and physical friendship with the call-girls or the church’s hierarchical and establishment’s shame and reputation of hubris? Perhaps if the church, and each of the clergy and laity within its borders were to take to heart the exhortation of Tolstoy to non-violently resist evil, with force, a more creative, thoughtful, pensive and even patient approach, as an integral component of the theology of those engaged in the ecclesial and faith community could and would emerge.

What would/could be the impact of such a shift in perception, definition of evil and the plethora of options that would accompany an imaginative, non-judgemental, and non-interventionist urgency which seems to define many of our shared threats.

As the inverse of this proposition, it would also be helpful if we could remove the blinders and the defiers and the ‘hoax’ advocates on global warming and climate change, in order to being about the needed shared, collaborative, collegial and effective interventionist set of suites of programs to detain this existential crisis.

We have the potential to discern with a far more nuanced set of eyes, ears and imaginations, just where ‘evil’ lies and what part we each play in both its existence and its potential non-violent resistance, with force. Failing to deploy our imaginations, whether on the battle field, or on the atmosphere, or on the daily conflicts and tensions and threats that erupt daily if not hourly, seems like a self-sabotaging approach to public policy and practice as well as a negation or perhaps even a defiance of our Christian theology as people like Hillman, Moltmann and Tolstoy are urging. I include Moltmann’s concept of hope that never recedes even when there is no empirical evidence to support it. It is that degree of hope that undergirds this and all other pieces in this space.

Searching for God # 44

What might showing up ‘for’ or ‘to’ or ‘with’ God mean? The search for God, the core focus of these pieces, is one filled with both anticipation and trial and error….as are most, if not all of our human exploits, adventures and escapades. Is it Moltmann’s hope in what is beyond probable that drives us? Is it a search for some connection, relation to the beyond reason and imagination or even ‘imagined fantasy’ that drives many of us? Whether called the search for The Good, as Plato termed it, or whether it has a more personal, intuitive, beyond-cognitive and beyond the literal, empirical ‘experience’ that for some reason, again inexplicable, draws us forth, no one is certain. Nevertheless, the search continues as if fueled by its own energy.

Religion was not something tacked on to the human condition, an optional extra imposed on people by unscrupulous priests. The desire to cultivate a sense of the transcendent may be the defining human characteristic. (Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, p. 9)

During the tenth century, the Brahmin priests developed the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic religious discourse. The contestants began by going on a retreat in the forest, where they performed spiritual exercises, such as fasting and breath control, that concentrated their minds and induced a different type of consciousness. Then the contest would begin. Its goal was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahmin, in the process pushing language as far as it could go, until it finally broke down and people became vividly aware of the ineffable, the other. The challenger asked an enigmatic question, and his opponent had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced his opponents to silence—and in that moment of silence, when language revealed its inadequacy, the Brahmin was present; it became manifest only in the stunning realization of the impotence of speech.

The ultimate reality was not personalized god, therefore, but a transcendent mystery that could never be plumbed. The Chinese called it the Dao, the fundamental “Way” of the cosmos. Because it comprised the whole of reality, the Dao had no qualities, no form; it could be experienced but never seen; it was not a god; it predated heaven and earth, and was beyond divinity. (Armstrong, op. cit. p. 13)

Gallons of ink have been spilled, arranged in alphabetic signs, attempting to describe, picture, envision, imagine God….and the biblical stories from both Old and New Testaments have been among those attempts. Armstrong even titles her first chapter, ‘Homo religiosus’ as if to announce her purpose and the root of her intent to make the case ‘for’ God.

Those who prefer a ‘positive’ approach, attempting to delineate what, who God is, have chosen what is known as a cataphatic. An example is, ‘God is love’ or God is omnipotent, or wise or good. Using anthropomorphic attributions to God, describing God as a divine person with a personality and qualities such as love, mercy, justice, wrath is a cataphatic approach. Another approach to the divine, apophatic, approaches the divine by negating or denying what God is not. It recognizes that God is beyond human concepts, language and understanding.

From a website entitled religionsdepths.com, by Dan Tilreath, we read,

Kataphatic theology is indispensable. Without it, no religion or spirituality would be possible. We all need specific symbols-whether verbal or otherwise- to resonate with us if we’re to begin our journey toward the divine. Otherwise we’d have effectively no sense of where we’re going on that journey….

But there’s an all-important difference between a symbol and what it symbolizes. It’s the difference between saying the words, ‘Mount Everest’ and actually climbing Mount Everest, or in this case, the difference between saying the word ‘God’ or ‘Aphrodite’ and actually experiencing the divine. And that point where kataphatic theology falls flat is the point where negativity or apophatic theology comes in.

Apophatic theology uses human language and concepts to make us aware of hos far beyond human language and concepts the divine is. It does this by systematically negating those words and concepts-hence why apophatic theology is sometimes called ‘negative theology.’

(A)famous Christian mystic, Saint John of the Cross, writes, ‘to reach union with the wisdom of God a person must advance by unknowing rather than by knowing.’ The knowledge of, and devotion to, particular symbols of the divine is necessary to get us to a certain point, but past that point, those symbols become more of a hindrance than a help. If one stops at them rather than moving on beyond them to experience the divine itself-if one mistakes those symbolic relative truths for literal absolute truths-then one is worshipping an idol rather than the divine. Apophatic theology exists to prevent us from falling into that trap….

And from Cambridge.org, we read:

Human beings have always affirmed something of God, either as a result of speculation about the divine or as an affirmation of revelation about God-the Hebrew scriptures contain records claiming to be God’s self-revelation, and followers of other religious traditions have both claimed similar revelations and celebrated the divine in hymnic aretologies, that is lists of divine virtues. But this affirmation of the divine has always been hedged about by a sense of the mysteriousness of the divine, leading to the negating of any affirmations about God, thereby bearing testimony to the inadequacy of any human conception of God. So a Hebrew prophet exclaims in God’s name, ‘To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him?’ says the Holy One’ (Isaiah 40:25) and even the revelation of God’s name to Moses- ‘I am that I am’ (Exodus 3:14)- is an affirmation about God inviting or even requiring an apophatic interpretation. Similarly, within the Greek philosophical tradition, we find Plato asserting in Timaeus that ‘to discover the Father and Maker of the universe would be some task, and it would be impossible to declare what one had found to everyone,’ and in The Republic that the idea of the Good, for Plato the highest reality, is ‘beyond being.’

Is the search for God equal to, or identical with the search for the moral, ethical absolute that lies at the centre of much of religious debate?

Is the search for God equal to or identical with the search for the inner, unconscious in the human psyche, that uncovers truths different from what we call obvious motivations?

Is the search for God about a search for a community of men and women and children who believe some of the same ‘things’ and wish to search for God together?

Is the search for God analogous to the search for harmony with nature and the universe, as described in poetic detail by men like Wordsworth?

Is the search for God in any way analogous to the fable of the turtle born far from the ocean, and after many hurdles, hardships, risks and pain, finally reaches that ocean?

Is the search for God what we are all ‘left with’ when no other answer, proposition, theory, or even scene or sound or memory have all dissipated or disappeared, and Moltmann’s concept of hope remains?

That church ‘in the East’ from Rilke’s poem, was for me, not a building or a denomination, or a set of dogmatic dissertations or creeds, but a vision of what, like the turtle seeking the sea, to which I somehow seemed to be ‘being directed’….It was not a dream, nor a specific picture, nor a segment of a counselling or therapy session; it was not a direct urging of a colleague. On reflection, years decades later, I recall a scene in the hall of an urban high school in which I was walking and talking with a student when I heard, from across the hall, over the din of the commotion of between-class movements, these words from the iconic and unique and eccentric, art teacher, the victim of a house fire that destroyed his family and left him scarred for life, “There goes Atkins dishing out soul food!?

I had no idea what he meant, then, and I can only speculate all these four-plus decades later. The student and I were presumably talking about some piece of literature, a poem or novel, and whatever it was that I was saying was certainly not some intellectual literary theory, nor some nugget of psychological research, nor some historical vignette about the author. None of those academic, intellectual nuggets were ever at ‘top-of-mind’ for me. It was more likely some way to ‘connect’ the student with the character(s) in the piece, as well as for me to relate to the situation, then and with the literature. ‘Connection’ between characters in fiction, as well as between humans, and also between a human and ‘God’ has blinked like an unconscious (sometimes conscious) guide throughout my meandering life.

And, after that brief list of hypothetical questions above, perhaps for me, the question of where is God in any and all of the various situations we each encounter…or, and then this is the most challenging and riveting one, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

The question is founded on the premise that ‘not being forsaken’ is the promise and the ‘beyond-reality’ certainty, about something holding, sustaining, supporting, or even guiding a timid, tempestuous, curious, eccentric and solitary over-weight young boy in a small town in rural Ontario. Of all the many ‘forbiddens’ that the church and clergy detailed, none specifically resonated, even at a very early age. What did resonate, however, was a deeply inescapable urgent sense that pain and judgement and alienation and separation and isolation were often imposed on people often, if not always, without any justification. I have ‘protested’ such injustice, silently, privately and discretely from a very early age.

That drunken former NHL hockey player, whom my mother disdained, although he had graduated from dentistry school, was never permitted to ‘tell his story’ and I wondered, for decades what it might have been. The land-surveyor who left his marriage and moved out of town with a local nurse, and, course, caused a gossip field-day….made me wonder (to myself) what was behind that decision. Similarly, the medical doctor known for his medical brilliance, reputed to have, again, consumed too much alcohol at his cottage and swam naked to the bar at a nearby summer hotel….what was it that prompted such a dramatic moment? And then there was the at least half-dozen all men who, when I was an adolescent, each took their own lives, all of them gentle, reasonable, kind and well-reputed members of the community….what was going on in those lives that remained secret and silent and accompanied them into the unknown?

The purveyance of a born-again theology of fundamental evangelism that separated the ‘saved’ from the ‘unsaved’ (and condemned to Hell) that was floating through the community, having issued from the church where my parents were members, did nothing to help to understand, or certainly not to empathize with the more troublesome evidence that was emerging before our eyes, for all those seeking to find some meaning, purpose, or explanation.

Separation, alienation, isolation, and ‘a hierarchy’ of the value and respect for different people, starting with what seemed to be a kind of royal status of doctors, lawyers, and clergy. And immediately following them, were the business elites, whose successful operation of their enterprise evoked considerable public acclaim and respect…the Pepsi bottler, the local transport company that became known across the province, the construction companies, land surveyors, and then there were the first wave of university students returning home for summer break, hailed as ‘student heroes’ throughout the town, most, if not all of them, first-time entrants in their families.

Among the ‘saved’ there was an air of attempted purity and perfection, stretching as far as imitating the clothing of the local clergy, presumably as a sign of ‘loyalty’ to the new evangelist. I interpreted this picture as sycophancy in the extreme, especially as a foil to my father’s observation of four new ‘converts’ as ‘the four just men’ all of them, including my father, members of the church session.

I was never, at least in my mind, trying to ‘fix, or to ‘heal’ any of these issues, merely interested in and attempting to understand. And the question of a God, in the midst of this local cauldron of human tragedies, along side human ‘trophy’ successes, seemed to have some deep roots which begged pursuit.

And, when, as a mid-forties-educator driven to work too many hours each day, for what seemed like public acknowledgement, acclaim and applause, I knew something very incompatible with a healthy balanced life was my responsibility to ‘investigate’….and, naively perhaps, I thought perhaps studying and reflecting and entering a community of others who might also be seeking God, I enrolled in theology.

And the search and the story continues……

Searching for God # 43

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

And walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

Because of a church that stands somewhere in the East,

And his children say blessing on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church which he forgot. (Rilke) (Reprinted in James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code, p. 81-82)

Rilke’s attempt to describe a man’s absence, in the Hillman context of millions of men who have ‘abandoned,’ departed,’ deserted,’ or simply left what is considered to be one of, if not the most virulent fault a man can  commit, leaving their family, is a page I encountered some thirty years after I was that ‘first man’ in Rilke’s poem.

I had described a kind of emotional desert, to a therapist before leaving, without having read the lines, ‘dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses’……and when I first read the lines, I wept. Tears for seeing myself in the Rilke mirror, and tears for abandoning my three daughters. And the experience of revisiting those lines and those tears has become one that reverberates, without losing either their sting or their relief.

Decades after I left that family and that marriage, I learned that my then spouse had uttered prophetic words to my mother, her mother-in-law, “I thought I would be rejected if I showed up, and in the end I was rejected for not showing up!”

Showing up, or not showing up, are two of the most radioactive phrases in human relationships. That sentence reads like a trite cliché; nevertheless, clichés are only cliché because they are often the epitome of a kernel of truth, solid as a rock, deep as the earth, and the very antithesis of fantasy.

How does one even ‘know’ if or when another  is ‘showing up’? While there are no absolute assurances, I have a few petre dishes of experimental curiosity that have developed over a quarter-century of teaching, and another quarter-century of church exploration. These experiments have no clinical or research validation; they have no authority’s recommendation or validation. They are a kind of ‘intuitive’ tentative, and highly suspect ‘process of getting to sense’ another’s presence.

Perhaps others, too, have their own tried and proven experimental and imaginative methods of discerning whether another is ‘showing up’.

I often start with the eyes; if they are wandering while we are talking, I sense that the mind and especially the emotional heart might have ‘departed’ from the scene. It may be only a guess at first, and certainly the instinct risks falling into a stereotype of my own imagination. Thirty students sitting within a short range of the front of a classroom, with six classes each day, and decades of those classes (with different actors) are a significant part of my own laboratory. Eyes that are wandering, even if they are doing so unconsciously, are precisely the eyes and ears that I might wish to ‘check’ by posing a question with the name of that person at the end of the question. I, too, have been that student in my own grade twelve English class, when Ken Fulford asked a question while I was in the middle of a mind-wander into a very different picture from the one Fulford was attempting to explore with his students. His smile and his bemused, ‘No John!’ at my totally incoherent, ‘dumb’ and disconnected response are forever imprinted on my mind’s screen. What I remember is that I confused Jonah and Job, both Old Testament characters, although I do not recall his specific question. And he was and remains my most memorable and favourite instructor from high school. Not incidentally, his eyes literally and metaphorically sparkled with wit, impish humour, penetrating thought, and disappointment at a student’s failure to complete an assignment. And, like a recurring rhythmic beat, on each and every first greeting in the hall on his way to class, his eyes seemed to be smiling, demonstrating his deep joy at both the beginning of the day and the opportunity to ‘educate’ young minds as his obvious calling.

And after the eyes, there is that thing called ‘body posture’….not of the military erection in frozen entombment, but of the kind that says, ‘OK, I’m willing to listen, and to think about what is being said, (not only my this teacher, but by others in the classroom).’ And while, that body ‘sign’ is no guarantee of a brilliant mind, or even an imaginative answer to a question, it is a public indication of the beginning of ‘presence’ in the situation. And while the culture makes little of body posture, in terms of discerning the mood, attitude, or ‘state of mind’ of another, it does have relevance as a portion or the clues available.

Similarly, attire, not only the specific kind but also the manner in which it is worn, ranging from button-down, to relaxed casual, to more disjointed and care-free (or careless) can speak to the mood and attitude, the emotional state of another, as well as of the self.

And then there is that inescapable human voice that resonates with its unique timbre, pitch, volume, intensity, lyrical quality, velocity and depth. How one responds in a conversation can be as important as whatever the ‘content’ of the response might be. Speaking while looking away, or uttering sounds of detachment, disinterest and dispassion are also indicators of attitude, mood, emotion and state of mind, although the risk is much higher of misinterpretation, given that we can all mask how we feel, given hundreds of opportunities to rehearse our mask.

So, with all of those virtually immeasureable (except with AI, and even imitation and detection of identity may not reach discernment of mood or attitude) pieces of information, over time, and in and through the vagaries of one’s own mood alternations and interpretations, one generally can discern some of the at least typical patterns.

And with all of the extrinsic variables, there is another potent variable that underscores them all, and that is silence. Short, clipped, ‘flat’ responses in a conversation, while somewhat puzzling, are and never can be as enigmatic as silence. However, as one who almost literally ‘cataracts’ words and thoughts and impressions and observations, the risk in encountering silence is that I would exaggerate it especially if it follows some lengthy or even ponderous utterance on my part. Even unconscious comparisons can and do lead to mis-interpretations. Another, in my presence, might feel intimidated by sheer intensity of my verbosity both in number of words as well as in volume and pitch, depending on the level of excitement I might ascribe to any subject. My total blindness to that potential has kept me in my own darkness for decades.

Teachers are only playing by a professional model that involves engaging students in verbal exchanges of both oral and written kinds. As a non-teacher, outside the classroom, however, as a parent and a spouse, as well as a son, I really never consciously drew a line around my ‘verbiage’ in respect to what others might be experiencing. If they were interested, great; if they were not, I withdrew. And my own withdrawal, whether as a legitimate assessment of the ‘presence’ and participation of the other, might well have painted my own picture of a dry desert, as far as reciprocal conversation was concerned. In a classroom, I have been able to tease out a student’s shyness, lack of confidence, unpreparedness, or even temporary illness. And, based on such interpretations, I also adjusted my expectations. With adults, however, I rarely if ever was as discerning, or as adjustable. In coffee-shop conversations, the proximity of the other makes it quiet easy to discern reciprocity. Similiarly, when conducting radio or television interviews, as host, the guest is most often and most likely appearing on behalf of some issue or cause in which s/he has an interest.

If, however, one’s personal interests include public affairs, sports, movies and entertainment, religion and psychology, and books and ideas, and one’s occupation is basic engagement with adolescents on curricular topics, social engagement with adults takes on more prominence than if one were a dentist or doctor. In such cases, the patient would be listening to the diagnosis, and the treatment plans, and then the specific steps of that treatment. Personal conversations about a wide-range of subjects would be both infrequent and highly unexpected.

English teachers, from my experience, are so heavily burdened with grading papers, preparing classes, extracurricular activities, and restoring energy in quiet time, that they (and I) are not ideal participants in general conversation. Politicians, as public figures are circumspect about their utterances, lest they embroil themselves in a public spat. In short, after several years, I announced at home that I needed more than sixteen-year-olds with whom to associate and dialogue, and without  a horizon even dotted with invitations to adults to dinner, not over-flowing, I was going ‘to sell suits’. In my mind’s eye, I imagined having conversations with other men about their desire to acquire a part of their wardrobe to which I might be able to introduce them. And for a couple of years, that Friday evening and Saturday schedule provided a social ‘outlet’.

Selling is a different kind of showing up, highly dependent on being fully attentive to the customer’s mood, attitude and description of the desired and envisioned suit, sweater, shirt, or especially a tie or hat. Wrapping the mind around the current attire, mood, and demeanour of the client, one could usually have a glimpse of where to begin the conversation, and where one might suggest ‘we’ together begin to look at merchandise. Again, the inter-action intensifies the closer we come to the decision time. Does this ‘fit’ his image of himself? Does this comport with what his spouse would approve? Does this seem too loud or too old or too young for this client? Hints of hesitation morph into ‘road-signs’ for the retail sales clerk, whose imagination is acutely attuned to what he is hearing, and what might be a ‘next option’. This exchange, depending on its inherent and natural flow, either brings both client and clerk closer or leaves them merely detached, or perhaps even separating from each other, if not physically, certainly emotionally. Showing up need not necessarily generate a sale; partially showing up will usually decrease the likelihood of a sale. Disinterest, on either part, will likely devolve into what the car-dealers call another ‘tire-kicker’ who departs quickly.

Showing up as interviewer, however, is highly dependent on the degree of preparation one has done, prior to the moment the camera light goes on. Understanding not only the literal but the broader ideational meaning of the subject to be discussed, can only enrich the host’s engagement with the issue and the interview subject. The Inverse is also true. And, whether or not the dialogue is worth airing and also worth the host’s and the client’s time and effort, will depend, to a large extent, on the level of ‘presence’ of both.

And then there is showing up as chaplain-intern, or as pastoral counsellor intern, or even as deacon or priest…..all of them taking for granted a relatively high commitment to the presence of the professional. The client-patient-parishioner’s personal demeanour, however, will be the beacon of the lighthouse that guides, shapes and tempers whatever dialogue ensues. And, in all of these situations, when speaking about ‘showing up’ what is really being discerned (or not) is the level of trust between two (or more) people.

Showing up is the human interactive currency for building trust in relationships and from the last few paragraphs, it would appear that this scribe might have been either ‘too’ present’ or totally absent. Navigating between those two poles, and discerning where on a continuum a person or situation might ‘expect’ or ‘require’ has been part of the seasoning process which continues after all these years.

Literal, empirical, discernment, recovery of images, and discerning the import of those images, however, is only a small part of the process. There is also another layer to this ‘presence’ which goes beyond words that depict the literal.

We each have a different kind of lens in ‘perceiving’ a situation or a person. And that lens resides in, or comes from, or ‘metaphoric ‘gut’ as it were. Something deep inside us speaks to us about how we ‘feel’ (and feelings in this instance go far beyond ‘emotions’..in this case ‘feelings’ about another person tend to get at deeper questions like, ‘Would I like to have this person in my life?’ Would this person and I be able to ‘collaborate’? ‘Would this person and I rip each other apart?’ Is this person and I on the same page about those things that matter to each of us? Are this person’s values compatible, or counter-intuitive to my values? Is this person someone I can (or have already) ‘get to know’ intimately, in trust and in confidence?’ ‘Does this person even ‘know’ who I am?’ ‘How would I come to any kind of reasonable, credible and trustworthy answer to these questions?’

Would therapy bring two people who seem to be on a different wave-length, in spite of the fact that all public appearances, wardrobe, social and professional status, as well as the absence of addiction or even desire for alternatives?

And, perhaps it comes down to a different level of need, aspiration, expectation and purpose and meaning in life. If one’s needs and aspirations focus on the pragmatic, the fiscal, the empirical, and the public images of success, and are essentially met by those benchmarks, then, one can hope that they are in a deep relationship with another of similar needs, expectations, values and aspirations.

On the other hand, if the abstract, and the ideational, and the imaginative, and even the religious impulses are non-essential, for one, and profoundly necessary for another, there is a kind of impasse for which the courts use words like ‘irreconcilable differences’ to depict a cause of divorce.

Although these words were uttered some fifteen years prior to that ‘trip to the church in the East,’ I discerned, yet buried my latent desire, until finally, it was time. And those words, uttered in parking garage at Mount Sinai hospital, after a day in which I had checked out enrolling in theology in either Emmanuel or Knox Colleges, and had informed my then spouse, were:

If you go into theology, I will divorce you on the spot….and that is non-negotiable.

That ‘church in the East’ is not going away from some, and those words have had a life-changing impact on the lives of at least five people, a mother, father and three daughters. 

Searching for God # 42

Moltmann's theology of hope, in the face of no favourable evidence, as well as Hillman's nudge away from an exclusive literal, empirical appreception of the universe and Tolstoy's reading of the "Sermon" and dedicating the whole of humanity to that inherent vision, taken together, could not be more timely in their application than contemporarily.

The imagination lies ready, eager and able to be 'recruited, resurrected and re-applied' for all to reclaim. (From the last post)

I would like to recount a vignette from the early nineties, in central Ontario, where I had been assigned first as vicar and later as priest. It was a small village and the parish had been served previously by an evangelical, fundamentalist cleric who had encountered some conflict prior to his departure. That cleric had nurtured a small group of folk who subscribed to his literal interpretation of scripture, and were engaged in presenting the David C. Cook curriculum out of Waco Texas to children in the church school. I have mentioned this aspect previously; the curriculum directed instructors on what vocabulary to deploy when speaking with 5-and 6-year-olds who were ‘saved’ and a different vocabulary for those of the same age who ‘were not saved’. The moment I learned of this heinous division, I requested a different curriculum, what turned out to be ‘The Whole People of God’ designed in part by a former Toronto female cleric of my acquaintance. ‘Salvation’ had meant nothing to me at twelve, what could it possibly mean to a 5-or-6-year-old?

Soon after my arrival, almost unconsciously, I blurted out that the story in Genesis of the Garden of Eden was a myth. I understood myth as a word that described, not a lie, as the conventional secular culture deems it to mean, but rather a story, larger than history that has significance because it is often repeated. My understanding came from a literary perspective, specifically myths written and orally transmitted by the Greeks to help them explain processes they observed for which they lacked understanding. The Oxford Languages website says this about myth:

A traditional story especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

Instantly, and publicly, I was branded a heretic, and some even went so far as to label me the ‘antichrist’! If that sound beyond belief, it is a true story. I was both shocked and somewhat bemused. “How could I say such a horrible thing, when everyone knows that the Garden of Eden story is an important part of the holy word of God, and therefore is truth, absolute truth?” was one of the pathways through which I learned of my ‘theological blunder.’ The stated and whispered implication was that some were incredulous that such a statement could come from one who was assigned to their church as a clergy. Shortly after this incident, some plotted to show a video prepared under the auspices of the Dobson group, Focus on the Family. James Clayton Dobson was an American evangelical Christian author. I first learned of the plan when a lay reader who was about to read the announcements, whispered in my ear that this was planned. Although I did not know the source or the content of the video, I had my suspicions, and abruptly vetoed the announcement. As this was a three-point parish, and the announcement was to have been made in the first of the three Sunday services, I wondered what I would meet in the second of the three services.

Sure enough, the Warden rose, during the announcements, to inform the congregation that he was planning to show a video on Tuesday evening of the upcoming week. I had no opportunity to veto his announcement, until, immediately following the service, I met the then Warden in the sanctuary and informed him that until I had viewed the video and determined whether or not I was in agreement  that it be shown, it was not going to be shown.

His comment to the congregation, as justification for the proposal was ‘to demonstrate how the homilies of this man are heretical’….I had barely been ordained deacon in this obviously fractured parish, whose full history was never shared with me prior to my assignment. Needless to say, the video was not shown, and within the week, I asked for and received the resignation of the Warden.

However, the story does end there. The divide between born-again and some other kind of Christian lingered, very close to the surface of all conversations. Some were pleased that the literal, evangelical, fundamentalist regime was receding, if not being replaced. As the labelled ‘anti-Christ’ I nevertheless never regained a footing of either confidence or calm.

Was it brash and bullying of me to exert such pressure on those who were determined to derail my first assignment? In reflection, some thirty years on, I sometimes wonder if I might have shown more diplomacy, tact and political acumen. Nervous, anxious to establish myself in such a parish, and somewhat arbitrarily resistant to the whole evangelical, fundamental movement, from my childhood, as I have continued to be for decades, I was highly skeptical of the motives and methods of my adversaries, all of whom had been members for decades, and considered themselves ‘in charge’ of the affairs of that parish. I was an uninvited, unwelcome and pirated interloper, just out of theology school, and as I learned not much later that our paths, the parish’s and mine, were going to go our separate ways, in part because of my intransigence, and in part because of the incompatibility of the predominant theology of the parish and my own.

Analogously to the Democrat-Republican difference in perception and methods, the Democrats are generally less combative, and less strident in their opinions than the Republicans. In this case, compare the clergy with the Democrats and the power structure to the Republicans. And, like oil and water, there is little likelihood of a compatible blend.

Another personal anecdote, shortly after  the death of my father, when I learned that my father did not ‘hit it off’ with his father-in-law, my mother’s father. After spending a morning in a coffee shop reading a piece of research done by American scholars on the difference in thought processes between ‘conservatives and ‘liberals,’ I wondered out loud, while preparing brunch from my recently widowed mother, if this research might shed light on the tension between the two men in her life. I knew rather confidently that my father would call himself a ‘small-l’ liberal, and I suspected that my long deceased grandfather would have considered himself a small and a large ‘C’ Conservative.

Erupting, I now discern partly in grief and partly in release of repression, my mother blurted, “The only reason your father and my father did not get along was that your father was ‘no good’!” Shocked and surprised, I noted that it would be difficult to continue the discussion, following that remark….which prompted another outburst, “Shut up!” to which I objected, now on both scores, that my father was ‘no good’ and that at 54 I was being told to ‘shut up.’ After I threw the frying pan with semi-cooked eggs into the kitchen sink, protesting both issues, I heard, ‘Pack your things and get out of this house immediately!” I did, sadly, although the break had been decades in the making.

How and why do these anecdotes merge in this page, today, when I intend to explore the relevance of the imagination in my search for God?

It is the adamant, absolute convictions of some, from my experience mostly of political and religious ‘conservatives’ that has shaped my thinking and indeed, many of the conflicts in which I have been engaged throughout my life.

My imagination refuses to acquiesce when a clergy confines God to a box of rules including, ‘if you are a Roman Catholic you are going to Hell; if you wear makeup or go to dances, or the movies, or prepare meals on Sunday, you are going to Hell!’ that was at sixteen, when I refused to attend that church with that clergy.

And those memories, those encounters with the absolutes and the absolute convictions of the literal words of scripture as well as the moral codes that have been birthed from various period of Christian church history and debate.  Absolutism, as defined by colllinsdictionary.com, is:

A political system in which a monarch or dictator has unrestricted power, the triumphal reassertion of royal absolutism.

Of course, reading the bible literally as an historic account of empirical events, is not absolutism. Believing in the accuracy and inerrancy of the literal truth contained in these stories, whether from the Old or New Testament, is however, to deny both the degree of knowledge we have about who and when the Old Testament was committed to papyrus, and then translated multiple times, as was the New Testament a product of more than a single writing or a single translation. Church history, as well as biblical history, not to mention the various genres of writing, psalms, poems, battle and lineage accounts, visions, and decades-later repeated stories about the birth, ministry, crucifixion and Resurrection of one Jesus of Nazareth have all been enwrapped in holy writ, as much a political and historical document as a theological blueprint.

This is not intended as a screed against those who see ‘absolute truth’ in every word in the Bible. It is merely to say that such a view is anathema to everything I think, conceptualize, visualize and imagine about God. Indeed, so far outside my ‘capacity to know’ are the literal details of much of scripture, that, for continuing to search, I need and perhaps have conceived some kind of implicit alliance of God with my questioning and imagining mind….indeed questions about God are more important to me that ‘hard facts’ about God’s life, purpose, meaning and relevance to my life.

I have had to assuage young boys and girls about to take part in their confirmation ceremony, after answering various questions from their bishop. And finally I had to assure one young twelve-year-old, ‘I really don’t believe the bishop is driving four hours to conduct this celebration of your Confirmation in order to reject your name and application!’ Her response, a high sigh, with the words, “Oh that feels much better!”

The absolutism of conviction that ‘his homilies are heretical’ and ‘your father was no good’ perhaps have taken root in the manner by which the decalogue has been considered to be absolute. Ten Commandments, the standard to which all must aspire? or attain?  or be judged by?

And it is not only the Decalogue that helps establish such authority. The church, too, has adopted multiple ‘absolute’ dictums from scripture that, for example, prohibit abortion, prohibit female ordination, prohibit divorce among Roman Catholics, and without annulment renders a remarriage as adultery and prevents remarriage within the church. The whole abrogation of human sexuality under the umbrella and the rule of the church would be considered appalling to many, if they were to become familiar with the origins of that doctrine with Augustine. Indeed, for any church to consider it either has or needs to rule on the sexual relationships between humans seems, on its face, to be a self-sabotaging theological proposition.

While there are many theories about the basis of ethics, Lionel Tiger, the American anthropologist posits a biological basis. In his penetrating and challenging work, The Manufacture of Evil, (1987), he writes the following:

It is possible we have been systematically misled about our morality from the beginning. Why should God have interfered with Eden as he did, evidently for the dual offenses of sexual awareness…and empirical skepticism, that forbidden fruit? And why blame poor Adam, whom after all God made? And why was what happened in Eden the ‘Fall’? And why were Adam and Eve so harshly and disproportionately ridiculed for their sexual frisson? Were not those perplexingly pleasurable nerve endings in their genitalia there for a purpose? Was orgasm an accidental spasm, which happened to be so mightily pleasing that (later on when churches got going) its occurrence or not could be held up as a measure of obedience to God?

This is mad. No wonder practitioners of the morality trades have so enthusiastically separated man from animal, culture from nature, devotion from innocence. If morality is natural, then you don’t need priests as much as you’re likely to enjoy being informed by scientists. If morality is a biological phenomenon, then it is merely insulting to harass mankind for its current condition because of an historic Fall in the past and a putative Heaven in the future. When spirituality became a special flavor and ceased being fun, when mystical congregation and speculation became instead   a matter of bare knees on cold stone and varying renunciations: when involvement with the seasons and the other subtle rhythms of nature became formalized into arbitrary rituals governed by functionaries, then the classical impulse for moral affiliation became translated into something else: into a calculation of ethical profit and loss supervised by an accountant Church and a demanding God. A new tax was born. The Tithe. Ten percent for the first agents. (Tiger, op. cit. p. 32-33)

Talk about absolutism!....it never seems to end!

To be continued……..

  

Searching for God # 41

 In the last post, the words and thoughts of Jurgen Moltmann and James Hillman were juxtaposed on the subject of ‘hope’ the former from a theological perspective, the latter from an archetypal psychological perspective. Neither cancels or contradicts the other, although the Moltmann perspective relies on a depth of faith when no signs of probable change appear. The Hillman perspective is finely focused on the paradox of hope in a medical setting which, he speculates, might even lead to increased illness and anxiety….especially as, in hoping for the status quo, omits the subject of morbidity.

These two were followed by an extensive segment from Tolstoy’s ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You,’ a favourite source here, exhorting his and our readers to resist evil non-violently with force, as he proposes the application of the Sermon on the Mount.

The premise of a God-given inheritance of brotherhood, compassion, equality and the insight to recognize and to identify evil, while both broad and deep, when considering the nature of human begins, seems to eclipse effectively and unequivocally, or perhaps to imagine a rising above and replacing the notion of original sin, as another universal ‘step’ in the fulfilment of the aspiration and promise of the “Sermon”. The Moltmann notion of “looking to the future in hope”  (especially where there is no apparent probability for such a perspective) as integral to his theology seems quite compatible and coherent with the Tolstoy vision, as it also recognizes the ubiquity of violence imposed by those in power on those without a voice, as the core expression of human history.

There is a pragmatic perspective in Tolstoy’s recitation of history as unjust offensive and evil violence through the design and imposition of laws to which not everyone can or will agree in the light of a common, universal exhortation to resist evil non-violently with force. The principle has inspired and emboldened men like Ghandi and Mandela along with Martin Luther King Jr. and writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The realism expressed by Tolstoy and other writers may seem to contradict the ‘apocalypticism’ of a second coming.

And, while the apocalypse has, like a shooting star flashed across the screens of both theologians’ and science fiction writers’ imaginations for centuries, almost like a book-end to the ‘Good Samaritan’ and the Crucifixion archetypes as benchmarks, signposts and foundational images for Christian theology, Tolstoy impels his readers to live and breathe deeply of the contemporary injustices we see, and often turn away from in every generation.

Sadly, the church has, both by its direct actions and decisions, as well as by its complicity with the power structures of our society, defined itself as either or both ‘murderers’ or ‘accomplices’ in violence against those without power and voice to oppose. The pursuit of some kind of ‘pure order’ irrespective of how that order is defined, Natural Law,  Church Dogmatics, Church Tradition, and the discipline that one is both instructed to learn, and then to embody and incarnate, as dedicated and loyal ‘supplicants, pilgrims, and those in religious orders’ has come to erase, or to turn a blind eye to the darkness, the Dionysian and elevated the Appollonian and reason, including more recently literalism and empiricism to a status of near-sacred.

Celebrated artists, of course, composers, painters, dancers, photographers, actors and even highly successful political and military leaders have found favour among the church hierarchy; some have even been venerated. However, as for the ordinary lives of ordinary, non-schooled, men and women sitting in church pews, the catechisms and the expectations, the church rules on marriage, sexuality, inter-church relations, have clouded over, or perhaps even turned a deliberately blind eye to the successive, inescapable, seemingly irreversible and heinous forms of violence that secular authorities have designed and imposed, ‘for the protection’ of their respective people.

Only within the last two weeks, after months of violence in the deportation of immigrants and refugees from the United States, allegedly undocumented, did the Roman Catholic College of Bishops finally speak out publicly in direct and forceful opposition. Ironically and tragically, the Russian Orthodox church hierarchy has long ago expressed support for the illegitimate and illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Russian forces of Putin.

In a reflective piece on reflections.yale.edu, by Miroslav Volf, entitled, Christianity and Violence we read:

The more we reduce Christian faith to vague religiosity which serves primarily to energize, heal and give meaning to the business of life whose content is shaped by factors other than faith (such as national or economic interests), the worse off we will be. Inversely, the more Christian faith matters to its adherents as faith and the more they practice it as an ongoing tradition with strong ties to its origins and with clear cognitive and moral content, the better off we will be. ‘Thin’ but zealous practice of the Christian faith is likely to foster violence; ‘thick’ and committed practice will help generate and sustain a culture of peace.

Unfortunately, ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ Christianity evokes images of ‘saved’ and ‘unsaved,’ both words and judgements that were imprinted deeply in my earliest resistance to a ‘divided’ church and theology. While Christians will defer to the Judgement Day as the final verdict on the afterlife, and who is ‘admitted’ nevertheless, my experience within the church over several decades, tells me that ‘judgement’ on an hourly, daily basis pervades each and every sanctuary, as well as every committee a diocesan meeting. Never being able to discern between a ‘secular-cultural-personality’ divide, and a ‘spiritual-purity-impurity’ divide, there seemed in most of not all incidents to be a moral-divide.

As a divorced male, I was barely tolerated, if at all, on the list of ‘postulants for orders.’ As a curious, energetic and somewhat ‘debate-prone’ student in theology school, I was scorned by many classmates. “Just tell me what I need to know, without all the questions, so I can go out and save the world!” was one student’s protest when I asked a question of the church history professor. And I too shared my own ‘biases’ with a degree of ‘less respect’ for the theology taught and practices at Wycliff College, when I was enrolled at Trinity College. Fundamentalism, in all of its many forms, including literal biblical interpretation, prosletyzing and evangelizing to ‘save sinner’s and ‘grow the church numbers, seemed counter-intuitive to what I either envisioned the church to be or wished it would become.

My sense of  a ‘calling’ came not from the church’s leadership seeking another ‘star candidate’ but rather from my own inner voice asking me to ‘dig deeper into my psyche’ in order to find the roots of my driven-workaholism and insatiable appetite for public affirmation. My search for the ‘truth’ of my own addiction might be at least partly satisfied by opportunities for reflection, reading, a critical supervision, not so much of academic and cognitive rigour but of what I then considered ‘personal angst’.

Reflections on the deployment of power, especially power over others, has been like that proverbial crow on the shoulder, asking, in typical raw crow-like rasping voice, ‘Why is that power, regulation, law, rule, abuse even necessary?’ And, ‘what will be the blow-back from such abuses?’ It has been obvious from a very early age that everyone I had met had some kind of internal ‘compass’ that spoke clearly of ‘what was considered ethical and moral, and whether did not meet the ‘smell test’. From my perspective, however, judgements were often, if not always, made on the basis of a very superficial and templated, as well as stereotyped, perspective. In teaching, I often heard guidance teachers comment, ‘Well, how can we expect anything different or better from ‘him’ (or her), given that the whole family is dumb (or some other equally dismissive adjective)?’ Schools try to operate on two premises: prevent trouble, or minimize its spill-over into the public. The school’s need and interest often eclipses that of the student, whose personal life is only briefly known, checked or supported. Incidents of conflict, between students, or even between student and teacher are often categorized in a manner convenient to the schools ‘set of expectations.’ A similar pattern, only more rigorously and less legalistically enforced, happens within the church.   

 Ordination, for example, while submitting to obedience to the episcopal authority of the bishop, never seemed to me to be a sacrifice of my mind, body or spirit, and certainly not of my soul. Indeed, ‘questioning authority’ might be considered integral to my theology, on all questions. Personal and private salvation has always given way for me to the saving of the world; similarly, gender choices have always been more significant than the church’s isolation, contempt and ecclesial categorizing as ‘evil’. The ordination of women, another of the hot-buttons for many, also comes with the caveat, ‘How can I oppose ordination for my three daughters, should they seek such a choice?”

(Not incidentally), the recent stories about the surge of Anglican/episcopal clergy and bishops converting to Roman Catholicism, primarily on the basis of the ordination of women, is both appalling and unjustified. The monopolistic mysogyny of the Roman church can no longer be justified either sociologically or theologically. And, for many male clerics to find refuge in the Roman Catholic church, without having to question or face the theology of ‘equal access to ordination for women’ is a regression of the theology of the institution akin to the recent announcement of the retrieval of purgatory by the Roman Catholic church.

We all wrestle with the ‘problem of evil’ as a professor asked his first-year class to write about, from Augustine’s point of view. What is evil, how do we know what it looks like? How do we know the motivation of one who appears to be imposing evil on  another? How do we know what God considers evil? What authority do we seek and retrieve in order to justify our definitions and enforcements of punishments and sanctions of evil acts? Why has the church focused so deeply on private sin? Is the church’s need to control its patrons an aspect of evil? Can such a question even be permitted publicly, without transgressing church polity and church law?

Even if we accept that God has imbued humans with conscience, the lens through which Tolstoy views that conscience is very different from the protestant, fundamental lens on the Original Fall into sin of mankind, and the need for redemption and forgiveness, in other words, ‘salvation’. And Hillman’s note that we have attributed many psychic ‘problems’ to evil, and relegated them either to legal or medical ‘treatment’ (including medication, hospitalization, incarceration and other nefarious stripping of licenses, qualifications, and practices) is also a fresh and somewhat liberating perspective.

The secular authorities, as well as those charged with ecclesial authority and responsibility, would do well to reflect on how the ‘elimination’ of what is conventionally and professionally and clinically considered ‘abnormal’ psychology,. Such elimination, through imprisonment, or through voluntary and/or involuntary hospitalization may never be a pragmatic solution, nor an ethical solution, depending on the perspective of the investigators and prosecutors.

Being increasingly described by psychological terminology, by untrained and highly neurotic persons in authority, while perhaps offering a degree of efficiency and order, also compromises very often the remaining years of the subject’s life. Does either the church or the public authorities ever reflect on the ethics and morality of such a template which has obvious and universal application?

There is a cliché running around the social media that says something like, ‘Never before, if I said something like, ‘He’s evil’ would everyone in the world know who I meant!’ Now, indeed, everyone in the world knows at least one ‘face’ of evil….and the question begging a universal response, is, ‘How could we possibly face such a threat, given that it has a physical face and body?’

What does non-violent confrontation of evil with force look like for all of us, including all those engaged in a faith community? And, even if confronted, the whole world faces an existential threat, to which we all contribute, that demands a universal recognition, confrontation and remediation of its potential to human life: the rising temperatures of global warming and climate crisis….

Can we shift our perspective from one exclusively focused on individual transgressions to the summation of universal greed, narcissism and hubris three qualities which seem to identify many if not all of the billionaires and trillionaires. Acknowledging that the church must bear some responsibility and accountability for having taught and inculcated two thousand years of personal/private sin and evil, without permitting itself or institutions generally to be held accountable for their evil, especially the abuse of unfettered power and violence, the church, too, has an obligation to come clean on the perspective it has imposed and sanctioned from the beginning.

Is the church open to such a reflective consideration?

The clock is ticking…and the pace of theological reflection and accountability is predictably and invariably glacial.

Moltmann's theology of hope, in the face of no favourable evidence, as well as Hillman's nudge away from an exclusive literal, empirical appreception of the universe and Tolstoy's reading of the "Sermon" aund dedicating the whole of humanity to that inherent vision, taken together, could not be more timely in their application than contemporarily.

The imagination lies ready, eager and able to be 'recruited, resurrected and re-applied' for all to reclaim.

Searching for God # 40

Optimism in dire situations reveals an inability to understand what is going on or an unwillingness to accept it and in therefore an indication of foolishness or weakness. In contrast, hope during dire situations, hope notwithstanding the circumstances, is a sign of courage and strength….Hope helps us identify signs of hope as signs of hope rather than as just anomalies in an otherwise irreparable situation, as indicators of a new dawn rather than the last flickers of  a dying light. Hope also helps us to press on with determination and courage. When every course of action by which we could reach the desired future seems destined to failure, when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy, hope remains indomitable and indestructible. From the last post in this space…

Juxtaposed to this Moltmann ‘perception’ of hope, from a theological perspective, we find this, Hillman’s words on the archetypal psychological perspective on hope:

(The analyst) cannot hold out the usual hope for cure (of psychological issues) or even relief of symptoms. His analytical experience says that the hope which the patient presents is part of the constellation of his suffering. It is frequently governed by impossible demands to be free of suffering itself. The same condition that constellated the symptoms is just the condition which these symptoms are interrupting and killing---or curing. Therefore an analyst does not hope for a return to that condition out of which the symptoms and the hope for relief arose.

Because hope has this core of illusion it favors repression. By hoping for the status quo, we repress the present state of weakness and suffering and all it can bring. Postures of strength are responsible for many major complaints today—ulcers, vascular and coronary conditions, high blood pressure, stress syndrome, alcoholism, highway and sport accidents, mental breakdown. The will to fall ill, like the suicide impulse, leads patient and physician face to face with morbidity, which stubbornly remains in spite of all hope to the contrary. One might ask if medical hope itself is not partly responsible for recurrent illness; since it never fully allows for weakness and suffering the death experience is not able to produce its meaning. Experiences are cheated of their thorough effect by speedy recovery. Until the soul has got what it wants, it must fall ill again. And another iatrogenic vicious circle of recurrent illness begins. (James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul, reprinted in A Bue Fire, into and ed, by Thomas Moore, p. 78)

A clergy friend, now deceased, once commented in an off-hand manner, years before I had been introduced to the work and thought of Jurgen Moltmann, ‘We are in the hope business within the church community!” And, immediately, I smiled, reflecting on how deeply and intuitively I resonated with his observation, and smugly reminded myself, ‘that is another of the many reasons why I have entered this ‘business’ of active ministry. Without fully either comprehending or certainly not completely grasping whatever he might have meant by his comment, I experienced something like a comforting familiarity between ‘ordinary human existence and the need for and appreciation of hope, and this thing called theology, whatever that was supposed to be. Maybe the leap from journalism and high school teaching into ‘theology’ was not going to be that chasmic.

Decades later, as I sit in the chemo ward of an urban hospital (not as patient), watching the medical professions scurry to carry out their regimen of administering highly radioactive and immunotherapy drugs, I am very conscious of the Moltmann perspective on hope, in the face of morbidity ‘when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy,’ and also the paradox of Hillman’s ‘take’ on the psychological illusion of hope ‘for the status quo’ thereby unconsciously repressing present weakness and suffering and all it can bring.

Cognitively, each of us, dear reader, along with this scribe, can readily ‘conceptualize’ a hope that transcends all reasonable and legitimate probability as an integral and intimate aspect of our theology, as well as another hope that represses the very thing Moltmann’s hope transcends, morbidity. The former imagines a state of mind, heart and body that is only ‘imaginatively’ accessible….without being reduced to some kind of fantasy, fairy-tale or horror-show. The latter, Hillman’s perspective, on the other hand, turns the mind, heart and body away from the very fear and trembling inherent in morbidity.

Death, another ephemeral, ineffable, unknowable and mysterious experience, from which none of us can or will escape, lies at the heart of each perspective. Furthermore, both notions of hope wrestle with how to live with that prospect, whether or not we adopt, accept, tolerate or even countenance a conscious, imaginative, and prophetic perception and attitude to death.

Given the Christian premise that life is sacred and that death brings about a promise of some kind of ‘eternal life’ and Hillman’s archetypal psychological perspective that suicide is (or could be) a legitimate human decision, at first glance, it seems the two perspectives are contradictory, irreconcilable, and mutually exclusive.

And yet, are they really?

Is the Christian divide of death’s entry-door either a euphoric heavenly after-life or damnation compatible with a theological premise and incarnation  of unconditional, unqualified and irrevocable love? And is the question of ‘judgement’ based on a ‘morally’ and belief-centred faith in ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’ premised on the sacrifice of Calvary also compatible with such an unconditional, unfathomable, ineffable ephemeral love? What if, from a different theological, psychological, philosophical, ethical, moral perspective, death is an integral, intimate, sine-qua-non of life, including ‘life more abundant’? And, as for an apocalyptic Judgement Day, what if that is rendered as a metaphor derived from a ‘super-ego’ institutional parental imitation of the God the Father aspect of the Trinity?

Absolutes, from their inception, design and implications have to be considered as outside any and all ‘norms’ as human beings are generally capable and willing to ‘conceptualize’ the universe. And the question of moral perfection/imperfection being resolvable in and through the salvation that accompanies ‘surrender into faith in Jesus Christ Resurrected,’ begs so many relevant, significant and layered questions that tend to generate and reinforce a kind of theological and spiritual ‘child’ in both awe and fear of God that, to this scribe, is incompatible with my ‘questioning’of myself and of God. What does ‘surrender’ mean? What must be confessed in order to be eligible for penitential forgiveness? Who decides? What does ‘belief’ mean? And how does belief impact my daily decision-making? Is that single born-again decision compatible with a life-long relationship with a God who 1) has created humans in his own image (imago dei) and 2) who loves unconditionally and unreservedly?

Traditionally and historically, the Christian church has condemned, radically judged and attempted to convert the ‘savage’ as they considered indigenous peoples, in what, today, is considered an evil of the proportion of the Crusades. Indeed, given the church’s blindness, ignorance and denial of anything close to ecclesial ‘evil’ or even darkness, for and from which, it must be accountable, the concept of ‘institutional ethical and moral ‘purity’ and perfection has been laid bare for all, both those within and those without the institution, that the church’s basic premises beg both reflection and critique. Similarly, those who have committed ‘crimes’ or broken the church’s rules, expectations and laws, are deemed to require penitence, forgiveness and absolution. Redemption, especially from an agreed ‘indiscretion, malfeasance, disobedience, and ‘sin’ is considered accessible from the church’s institutional ‘marriage’ to God, acting as a surrogate for God.

A universe defined and parametered by such constructs, irrespective of how honourable and noble and ethical and more they may have been at their inception, have served to fossilize both the institution and its adherents, not to mention those hierarchically invested. Such frozen fossilizing, by definition, is counter-intuitive to a dynamic, intimately related, highly creative, imaginative and extremely loving force at the centre of the universe.

Wilhelm Reich, Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, writes this about God:

I know that what you call ‘God’ really exists, but not in the form you think: God is primal cosmic energy, the love of your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.

How does this echo the thoughts of Leo Tolstoy.

And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled. Not having followed Christ’s teaching generally and its application to social life in non-resistance to evil men have been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfil his teaching.

People often think of the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches. He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it but will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there are two, and he must  make his choice. (Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 186,187)

Before Christ’s teaching it seemed to men that the one only means of settling a dispute was my resistance to evil by force. And they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convince himself and others that what each respectively regards as evil, is actually, absolutely evil.

And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone. And such definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was attributed. Men resorted to violence against others, and convinced themselves and others that they were directing their violence against evil recognized as such by all….

Even at that time this was felt and understood by many. And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by force, but gave a new conception of life and a means of putting an end to conflict between all men, not by making it the duty of one section only of mankind to submit without conflict to what is prescribed to them by certain authorities, but by making it the duty of all—and consequently of those in authority-not to resort to force against anyone in any circumstances…..

Things went on like this for eighteen centuries, and at last reached the present position in which it is absolutely obvious that there is, and can be, no external definition of evil binding upon all. Men have come to the point of ceasing to believe in the possibility or even desirability of finding and establishing such a general definition. It has come to men in power ceasing to attempt to prove that what they regard as evil is evil, and simply declaring that they regard as evil what they don’t like, while their subjects no longer obey them because they accept the definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they cannot help themselves.(Tolstoy, op cit.  pps. 187-188-189-190)

Tolstoy’s is a hope that approximates and anticipates Moltmann’s without having to apologize for any psychological perception of Hillman. Moltmann links each moment both to the Alpha (the beginning) and Omego (The end), and thereby to beyond reason, beyond legitimacy and beyond optimism. Hillman cautions us on the perversity and obstruction of hope to repress all consideration of morbidity, when conceived, perceived and practiced in a scientific and medical context. Tolstoy’s perception of the evolution of humankind out of what we might call the law of ‘the jungle’ of the oppressive deployment of violence by some over others, to his exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount as the universal injunction to exercise non-resistance to evil by force, as a common, God-given inheritance to all humankind.

Can and/or will we be open to consider hope from both theological and psychological perspectives, as well as embrace Tolstoy’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount, for which he sees each of us responsible and accountable for the commitment to exercise non-violent resistance to evil by force, if and when we encounter what we all consider to be evil.

And the premise that we all inherently, indisputably and irrevocably have inherited in our psychic, and spiritual and theological DNA, a common, universal injunction, while it may challenge some, needs further consideration.

To be continued…….. 

Searching for God # 39

 Two books have recently been added to the shelves of ‘spiritual’ books,  both entitled respectively, Spiritual Boon, and Spiritual Boon Workbook, both by Rainn Wilson.

Mr. Wilson, appearing on Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning, noted that he has also engaged a ‘spiritual boom network or group,’ and by way of illustration, if a member notices a flower growing up through concrete or asphalt, s/he takes a picture and shares it with the group. Looking for, being open to, being surprised by, anticipating and searching for moments of beauty, altruism, kindness.

From a synopsis, on Amazon, we read:

He (Mr. Wilson) feels that culturally, we’ve discounted spirituality—faith and the sacred—and we need a profound healing and unifying understanding of the world that the great spiritual traditional provide…..Filled with genuine insight-not to mention enlightening Kung Fu and Star Trek references--Soul Boom delves into ancient wisdom to see our practical, transformative answers to life’s biggest questions.

The relationship to and between spirituality and religion, like the relationship to and between psychology and religion, shows much in common for all ‘perspectives’….and yet, there might also be some differences. And at the heart of the matter lies the ‘inner life’ and how it both perceived, conceived, engaged and attended.

A beginning of some clarification might be borrowed from Karen Armstrong’s. the Case for God:

Referring to the Upanishads, and the first universal principles of religion as they ‘saw’ them, Armstrong writes:

The truths of religion are accessible only when you are prepared to ger rid of the selfishness, greed, and self-preoccupation that perhaps inevitably, are ingrained in our thoughts and behavior but are also the source of so much of our pain. The Greeks would call this process kenosis,‘emptying’ Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace. The first Upanishads were written at a time when the Aryan communities were in the early stages of urbanization; logos (Greek word for reason) had enabled them to master their environment. But the sages reminded them that there were some things—old age, sickness, death—that they could not control. Something---such as their essential self-that lay beyond their intellectual grasp. When, as a result of carefully crafted spiritual exercises, people learned not only to accept but to embrace this unknowing, they found that they experienced a sense of release.(Op. cit. p 20)

A personal human emptying, and then a story about Moses ‘going to see’ God on Mount Sinai, an experience which later writers ‘would declare this to be impossible. When Moses begged to see Yahweh’s glory (kavod), Yahweh told him that no mere mortal could look upon the holiness of God and live. In a scene that would become emblematic, when Moses climbed Mount Sinai to meet with God, a think cloud and a blanket of impenetrable smoke hung over the summit. There was thunder and lightning and what sounded like deafening trumpet blasts. Moses may have stood in the pace where God was, but he had no lucid vision of the divine. The biblical writers made clear that the kavod (Hebrew word meaning honor, glory, respect and importance) of Yahweh was not God himself; it was, as it were, a mere afterglow of God’s presence on earth, essentially and crucially separate from the divine reality itself which would always be beyond human ken. (Op. cit p. 40)

A theme of emptying, on the one hand, and unknowing on the other seem to be evolving as integral to the various human attempts to ‘relate’ to (understand, approach, apprehend, perceive, apperceive, and honour, and pay loyalty and homage) to God…The interior self, one of the more puzzling of ‘psychic rivers’ and the ‘glory of God,’ another and even more unfathomable notions, throughout time and across continents and philosophies, and religions, nevertheless, perhaps like opposite poles in two magnets, (even that fails!) are universally drawn into a kind of vortex of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, ethics, morals, and aspirations and potential sanctions.

And one of the compounding dynamics in the pursuit of God, as a theological pursuit, is that humans have deployed what is known as anthropomorphism to God, the attributing of human characteristics or behaviour to God. Multiple narratives around the theme of worshipping, bribing, fighting for, ignoring and defying God, fill volumes, both of what is known as ‘holy writ’ as well as secular writings. And it is not either a large or difficult step, intellectually or imaginatively, psychically or relationally, from an ‘anthropomorphic God’ to a kind of default position that seeks to talk, and to think and to pray and to worship this human-like image, as if ‘it’ were a highly significant, highly impactful, and highly reverent personage, especially as Christians have tried to merge an historic Jesus with a Resurrected Christ as integral to and essential to the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

From hermeneutics.stackexchange.com, in  piece entitled, ‘What does Paul mean by ‘we have the mind of Christ?’ Quoting 1 Corinthians 2: 12-13:

For what person knows the things of a person except the spirit of the person who is in him? So, also, no on e knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. And we speak of these things, not with words taught by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.

And then this commentary:

The correct understanding of this passage is lost on people in the last few hundred years because, in order to support the dogma of ‘The Blessed Trinity,’ the English translators coined a new word, that had never existed in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and certainly not in English. That word is ‘spirit.’

Prior to that word being coined, the word ‘spirit’ would have read ‘breath’.

For the ancients, the invisible, personal breath was like an intelligent organ. The breath is how God and Jesus search the things of a man, and, if a man has God’s breath, he knows what God is thinking.

From Britannica.com, we read:

Holy Spirit, in Christian belief, the third person of the Trinity. Numerous outpourings oof the Holy Spirit are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, in which healing, prophecy, the expelling of demons (exorcism) and speaking in tongues (glossolalia) are particularly associated with the activity of the Spirit. In art, the Holy Spirit is commonly represented as a dove. Christian writers have seen in various references to the Spirit of Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures an anticipation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew  word ‘ruah’ (usually translated spirit) is often found in texts referring to the free and unhindered activity of God, either in creating or in revitalizing creation, especially in connection with the prophetic word or messianic expectation…..The definition that the Holy Spirit was a distinct divine person equal in substance to the Father and the Son and not subordinate to them came at the Council of Constantinople in CE 381, following challenges to its divinity.

Words that name concepts, especially abstract notions, have a kind of elasticity, that has permitted deployment in various times, tribes and troubles. The question of ‘supernatural’ as integral to all discussion of God with any potential connection and relation to the ‘natural’ lies at the heart of any and all attempts to ‘seek’ God.

In an age drowning in ‘self-help,’ ‘personal-improvement,’ and ‘spiritual and physical well-being,’ there is some inescapable, yet perhaps preventable, blurring of the lines between the self-help guru’s and the prophets, scientists and miracle-advocates of that region and the purpose, role, understanding and application of a faith or religious understanding and commitment. And while any and all attempts to discern between psychology (especially as it is practices and perceived clinically) and religion, (in these spaces, specifically Christian) risk blurring the lines, the reward is worth the risk.

‘Being a better person’ is a phrase fraught with mis-interpretation. Does it mean free from depression? free from conflict? free from lying and misrepresenting? free from fraud? free from a bad reputation? Being kind and generous? Being sensitive and a good listener? Being a student of sacred writings and ecclesial history? Ethics and morality lie at the core of all (or seemingly all) discernments and judgements of what it means to be a ‘better person’. And, above all, it also means ‘better than what? better than whom? by what standard? Comparisons, while appropriate in academic and intellectual discernments, invariably imply and include competitions, and those competitions also imply and include tensions over various perceptions, attitudes, values and beliefs.

Can one’s ‘spirit’ or ‘breath’ or ‘passion’ or ‘conviction’ or ‘identity’ be separated from one’s morals and ethics? Unlikely! And does pursuing a ‘boon in spirituality’ enhance the likelihood of others finding ‘inner peace, harmony, purpose and meaning’? Perhaps.

However, the goal of liberation from suffering and pain, or at least attempting to ‘cope’ and to ‘perceive its purpose’ lie at the heart of many personal disciplines, both within the religious and the secular domains. Stress-relief, physical well-being and enhanced concentration are often bandied about as ‘spiritual exercises’ in self-improvement and enhancement. And there are a plethora of disciplines designed to help individuals enter, engage with, and commit to regular meditation, (for example) prayer, physical movement (yoga), fasting, and various seasons of critical self-examination.

Similarly, turning points, issuing from serious trauma, loss, death of a loved one, divorce, firing, fires and floods, have an inescapable impact in turning one’s mind and heart and body to questions of meaning and purpose and profound relationships previously unasked or previously considered ephemeral and inconsequential.

Menus, templates, processes and plans lie at the heart of many of the contemporary ‘improvement’ approaches. And, for many, these guides are external, extrinsic to each person, and thereby are able to be offered, suggested, recommended and even ‘sold’ to those in need.

Religion, especially of the kind that values the ‘good samaritan’ parable as one of, if not its highest exemplar, too, enters one’s experience ‘from the outside’ in an avowed aim and purpose to ‘penetrate’ the inner beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and values of the individual.

It is this ‘inner-outer’ (intrinsic-extrinsic) dynamic that is one of the more problematic, both in self-help approaches as well as in many of the ecclesial and institutional methods and approaches of faith and religion. Transforming an outer-delivered, and externally ‘experienced’ set of beliefs, convictions, maxims and both ethics and moral standards, into an internal, inherent, authentic and personal ‘identity’ may well lie at the heart of both self-help and religion initiatives.

It is the difference in the question of ‘worship,’ and ‘awe’ and ‘belief’ and ‘hope’ not only in the quality of those experiences, but also in the promise of their delivery by which they appear different to this scribe.

The intellect, cognition, and behaviour (as exemplified in CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) are all shaped by a recognition, appreciation and application of thought models that, following authentic repetition and more repetition, eventually have the possibility of becoming internalized (Neural Linguistic Progamming holds this theory). And finding beauty in the dandelion peeking out from the asphalt, or the bird-song’s lyrical melody in the back yard, can and possibly will, if we are paying attention, lift our ‘spirit and mood’ out of whatever darkness we are in.

And, to be sure, we need to open our minds, hearts and bodies to notice, to pause to let the image register and to share those images as a proven path to a better and more intimate relationship with our environment, and thereby also with ourselves and with others. And, do those experiences comprise the seeds of a spiritual boom?….perhaps!

And will a surge of such shared experiences have the potential to enhance a similar surge in spiritual awakening? Perhaps.

And is there a difference in the quality, depth, purpose and meaning of such moments of joy and intimacy with nature, with the promise that accompanies one’s belief in and attachment to images of Calvary, Resurrection and the promise of eternal hope, as envisioned by Jurgen Moltmann…

From reflections.yale.edu, in a piece entitled, Theologies of Hope, by Miroslav Volf, we read:

In his justly famous book, Theology of Hope (1964), Jurgen Moltmann, one of the greatest theologians of the second part of the 20^th century, make another important distinction between hope and optimism. The source of the distinction relates to the specific way some ancient biblical writers understand hope. Optimism, if it is justified, is based on extrapolations we make about the future based on what we can reasonably discern to be tendencies in the present. Meteorologists observe weather patterns around the globe and release their forecasts for the next day; the day will be reasonably warm,  but in the early afternoon winds will pick up and bring some relief; now you have a reason to be optimistic that the afternoon will be pleasant…..The present contains the seeds of the future, and if it is well with these seeds, the future that will grow will be good as well. That’s reasonable optimism.

Hope, argued Moltmann, is different. Hope is not based on accurate extrapolation about the future from the character of the present. The future good that is the object of hope is a new thing, novum, that comes in part form outside the situation. Correspondingly, hope is, in Emily Dickinson’s felicitous phrase, like a bird that flies in from outside and ‘perches in the soul.’ Optimism in dire situations reveals an inability to understand what is going on or an unwillingness to accept it and in therefore an indication of foolishness or weakness. In contrast, hope during dire situations, hope notwithstanding the circumstances, is a sign of courage and strength….Hope helps us identify signs of hope as signs of hope rather than as just anomalies in an otherwise irreparable situation, as indicators of a new dawn rather than the last flickers of  a dying light. Hope also helps us to press on with determination and courage. When every course of action by which we could each the desired future seems destined to failure, when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy, hope remains indomitable and indestructible. When we hope, we always hope against reasonable expectations. That’s why Emily Dickinson’s bird of hope ‘never stops’ singing—in the sore storm, in the chilliest land,  on the strangest sea…..Writing as a 92-year-old, he (Moltmann) begins his…paragraph of (this essay) on patience autobiographically:

In my youth, I learned to know ‘the God of hope’ and loved the beginnings of a new life with new ideas. But in my old age I am learning to know ‘the God of patience’ an stay in my place in life….(Moltmann continues)

Without endurance, hope turns superficial and evaporates when it first meets resistances. In hope we start something new, but only endurance helps us persevere. Only tenacious endurance makes hope sustainable. We learn endurance only with the help of hope. On the other hand, when hope gets lost, endurance turns into passivity. Hope turns endurance into active passivity. In hope we affirm the pain that comes with endurance, and learn to tolerate it.

The hope to which Moltmann is not exclusive to or absent from the ‘spiritual boom’ eagerly anticipated by Wilson. It is, however, significantly different and promises a different kind of approach, expectation and state of both mind and heart.