Surprised by Joy or Ogni Parte Ad Ogni Parte Splende: Whitterings, June 2008

OGNI PARTE AD OGNI PARTE SPLENDE
“Each of the ‘Nine Angelic Choirs’emitting its radiance to the ‘Nine Celestial Spheres’.”
Dante, Inferno VII

During Lent my parish read C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’. In it Mr Lewis tells the story of his search for Joy from when he was a child until his Conversion to Christianity. He speaks of his first experience like this:

“The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering current bush on a summers day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old house when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It was sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Not, certainly for a biscuit-tin filled with moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past. Ιοϋλίαν ποθω (Oh, I desire too much) and before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace once again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison.”

Surprised by Joy, Page 16

It is a fascinating autobiography because, although it does contain a great deal about his external life, it is more about the journey of his soul discovering its destiny and as such the interior moments that look so ordinary from the outside are monumentous on the inside. For example he accepted Christ while riding in the passenger seat of a car on the way to a neighbouring village whilst silently staring out of the window at the passing landscape.

He describes this journey of the soul as being a longing for joy something quite different from happiness or contentment.

“The Feeling is … it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy, is never in our power and pleasure often is.”
Surprised by Joy, Page 18

“And with that plunge back into my own past there arose at once, almost like heartbreak, the memory of Joy itself, the knowledge that I had once had what I had now lacked for years, that I was returning at last from exile and desert lands to my own country; and the distance of the Twilight of the Gods and the distance of my own past Joy, both unattainable, flowed together into a single unendurable sense of desire and loss, which suddenly became one with the loss of the whole experience… And at once I knew (with fatal knowledge) that to ‘have it again’ was the supreme and only important object of desire."

Surprised by Joy, Page 83

“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago and further away or still ‘about to be’”.

Surprised by Joy, Page 89

On my day off last week I watched a metaphysical film called ‘The Nines’. It is a series of short films that explores the nature of a character and his relationship with his creator as well as an exploration of the artist and creation. The film is interesting enough but a little too philosophical. At least that is up until almost the last scene when the entire film comes together in one unexpected emotional climax of a profoundly religious character. The character and his relationship with his creator is resolved using the motive of the incarnation of Christ. I am afraid I can not explain any more than this.

The climax of the film takes place against with the song called ‘The Other Side of Mt Heart Attack’ by the liars going on in the background. It is a simple song that begins very slowly and reaches a crescendo while repeating the words “I won’t run far. I can always be found. If you need me I can always be found. If you want me to stay I will stay by your side. I want you to find me so I’ll stay by your side. I can always be found.” The simple incarnational words set against a cosmic background and coming so unexpectedly I found deeply moving. I bought the tune off of iTunes and as I sat in the dark listening to it a surprising thing happened. The very longing that I had been reading about in Surprised by Joy returned to me like a great gathering storm and tears ran down my face.

Although my mind can not conceive of it and I know the images I see are from my imagination there is still a deep sense of hope that one day the thing I most long for, both for myself and the whole of creation, will happen. One day, when we least expect it, in the middle of the mundane unfolding of our small lives, something will happen. We will not at first know what it is because it will be unlike anything we have ever known. Imagine how a sunrise would look to the inhabitants of a land of darkness where there has never been any light not even the pale light of the stars. At first there will be confusion and disorientation and then slowly it will begin to filter through to our sluggish minds and hearts. The thing that we have been praying, waiting and longing for our whole life is actually happening. The world is being changed! The day when all the injustice, all the pain all the unfulfilled love and desire will be undone, when all the broken pieces will be made whole again. The New Jerusalem. The angelic realms will swell outward to include all of creation: OGNI PARTE AD OGNI PARTE SPLENDE.

I know that on that day when Christ broke the bonds of death and rose upwards like the sun upon this world of sin and death that this happened. I know that He has already risen, that he already loves, that he has already redeemed. I know that what I most hope for is the foundation of the Faith and is already present regardless of whether my darkened mind and small heart can perceive it. Although most of the time I do not feel it and I do not even remember that I hope for it and I do not actively seek it I still plod forward with some deep hidden hope. It is in these small moments when through the lens of the imagination in flight we are given a faint glimpse of the Kingdom of God that has come upon us that we remember why we are Christians, and why it is that we need not ever be afraid.

I end with a prayer of the Franciscan Priest who died in the World Trade Centre on September the 11th.
“There will always be the people who want to destroy what God builds up through good people, but God will overcome. And God someday – I don’t know how he is going to do it- but he’s going to make the headlines rather than the devil. He will in the end, so don’t give up. We pray together, we hold hands together, we believe together, we love together, we’re saved together, and God reigns. Amen.”

The Reverend Father Mychal Judge OFM

Anglican Donatism and the Intellectual Integrity of the Churh or Laudator Temporis Acti: Whitterings, April 2008

LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI
Horatius, Ars Poetica (Epistulae II.3), 173.

Those of you who regularly read this column will know that I consistently decry the Church’s continued, uncontrolled drift into the shadows of post-modernity. In many ways this puts me firmly in the camp with some of the people I most strongly disagree with theologically. I agree with many conservatives that the church often seems rudderless, lawless, and controlled by a secularist agenda (whether consciously or unconsciously). Scripture, tradition, theology and reason seem to be abandoned by the church for a sort of perverse and willing prostitution of herself to the world and her ways.

The use of a sports game metaphor may be helpful. The more conservative are usually playing on the right field, with the right equipment, and by the right rules. Many liberals, with whom I tend to agree a good bit more, and the most conservative have started playing their own individual games, with alien equipment, and by their own rules. One of the reasons that a seriously flawed conservative theology (Donatism) is gaining such strength in the church today is that too many of the grounded liberals have wandered off the field and abandoned the game. I may disagree with many conservatives but I agree with their struggle to wrestle with Scripture and Tradition in the search for truth. I accept the rules of the game. I may agree with many liberals but I usually strongly disagree with how they came to hold their position and it’s theological (if there is one) foundation.

Many church leaders today seem to feel little obligation to give account of their opinions and decisions in the light of Scripture, Tradition or Reason. They claim it ‘feels’ right. It is exactly the same sort of radical subjectivity that escapes the duty to be honest to the community as a born again Pentecostal who claims that they ‘know’ what is true simply because they have had a personal religious experience and are now ‘saved’. You can find no common ground on which to challenge them. They have escaped accountability to anyone. This is the antithesis of Catholicity in which the whole body is held accountable to one another (emphasis found in each of the Gospels and especially in St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the First Letter to the Corinthians and the Letter to the Colossians).

I can not be too strong in my condemnation of this avoidance of responsibility. It is actually heresy. The abandonment of mutual accountability severs us from the body and thereby from Christ Himself. I have mentioned before Elie Wiesel’s claim that if you must choose between Christ and the Truth you must always choose Truth because the Truth is Christ and to choose Christ over the Truth is to choose who you think He is, an idol of Him, and not who He really is.

C.S. Lewis claims that what he learned during his first meeting with his tutor William Kirkpatrick, and his further two years of Socratic dialogue with him, paved the way for his eventual conversion to Christianity.

“I said I was surprised at the ‘scenery’ of Surrey; it was much ‘wilder’ than I had expected. ‘Stop!’ shouted Kirk with a suddenness that made me jump. ‘What do you mean by wildness and what grounds had you for not expecting it?’ I replied I don’t know what, still ‘making conversation’. As answer after answer was torn to shreds it at last dawned upon me that he really wanted to know. He was not making conversation, not joking, not snubbing me; he wanted to know. I was stung into attempting a real answer. A few passes sufficed to show that I had no clear and distinct idea corresponding to the word “wildness’. And that, in so far as I had any idea at all, ‘wildness’ was a singularly inept word. ‘Do you not see then,’ concluded the Great Knock, ‘that your remark was meaningless?’” “On what had I based (but he pronounced it baized) my expectation about the Flora and Geology of Surrey? Was it maps, or photographs, or books? I could produce none. It had, heaven help me, never occurred to me that what I called thoughts needed to be ‘baized’ on anything.” He concluded: “Do you not see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatsoever on the subject?”
Surprised By Joy p. 156

Lewis said that this drove him to try and practice what his own beliefs dictated:

“For I had learned something from Kirk about the honour of the intellect and the shame of voluntary inconsistency.” Surprised By Joy p. 200

Oh, that we still had a church that felt these two things as sharply as She once did! I have already written about the chaos that has come upon us because the two ‘sides’ do not dialogue in order to both grow by a soteriological teleology but instead wage a war of attrition. What many do not realise is that the extreme conservatives that are seeking to break communion with their Bishops and the ‘enlightened’ liberals who casually discount Church tradition are both fundamentally making the same mistake. They have become anarchists. I can not tell you how many times I have tried discussing the pros and cons of a particular view with a liberal churchperson or arch conservative only to come quickly to that subjective wall that knows no breaching. It does not matter what the topic is, whether it be what the best age for Confirmation is in this society or what should be taught about Lent, there really is a better and a worse answer. Some things are simply a matter of taste, such as churchmanship, but these are surprisingly few when one looks at how theology integrates even the smallest details of our lives. I do not claim to know what that answers necessarily are but I do know that the struggle to reach it must, at a base minimum, contain a loyalty to Scripture, an acceptance of the claim that tradition has on us (the Councils of the Undivided Church, the Three Creeds, the Teachings of the Church Fathers and the Saints, Church History, as well as the heritage in Anglicanism of the Book of Common Prayer and our body of Canon Law) and a critical honest openness to truth. This critical thought process is open to objective analysis on the basis on rationality, logic, consistency and empirical evidence.

Often you get the “Well, I feel” that bla bla is the best or right way. When asked why they will often say what amounts to “I think this because I think this” or “I do this because this is what I do.” Why do we accept this nonsense? The way you feel about Confirmation is irrelevant in deciding how the application of the Sacrament is best adapted to modern circumstances. If the feeling has arisen as an intuitive by- product of a wrestle with the theological and liturgical work of the last thirty years in this area, and a reflection on adolescent psychological and sociological development, and a familiarisation with the statistical studies of different practices then it’s veracity should be accepted. It should not if it is just what it usually is – a cover for cowardice and sloth. The Cowardice is the fear of being the one to say to a community that things must change. For example teaching a community that expects its nine and ten years olds to be Confirmed why this should no longer be the practice and then having to manage the long period of conflict that results from the change. The sloth is found in not doing the research, the reading and the thinking that is expected of us in areas of important debate. Often the person simply has not done enough ‘work’ to, as the Great Knock would say, ‘have any right to have an opinion on the subject’.

If you think this too harsh I would be more than pleased to hear another interpretation. I, simply, can not see how else modern church people (including clergy) can so easily, and seemingly without guilt or shame, ignore and even contradict the basic theological foundations of the faith (and yes there is a some consensus as to what a bare minimum of this consists of!), liturgical principles laid out in the two Prayer Books, National Directives, and National, Provincial and Diocesan Canons and Policies, common sense, and sometimes even decency.

There are three prevalent responses to challenges to stated opinions and practices. Often the response is something along the lines of “well no one takes that seriously” or “I do not believe that”. They may well be right, but it is still up to them to show the community why. Funnily enough no one seems to use arbitrary spelling just because they ‘feel’ a word would be better spelled another way. Recently I had a disagreement with a churchwoman about the circumference of two pavement candles. I thought they were different and she that they were the same. When I took out a tape measure and showed her that one was two inches thicker then the other, she simply looked at me and said sullenly “well I feel they are the same size’. As Alice would say “Curiouser and Curiouser”.

The second response is a philosophical mistake that C.S. Lewis suffered from and is even more prevalent today: chronological snobbery. A good friend, he says, cured him.

“..he made short work of what I have called my ‘chronological snobbery’, the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realisation that our own age is also ‘a period’, and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”
Surprised By Joy p. 241

The third most common argument often used is that Christ has ‘freed’ us from ‘The Law’. This is simply not true. We are free from the cold, external observance of the Mosaic Law. We are, however, still called to the observance of the internal observance of the ‘Law of Love’. The ‘rules’ I refer to (traditions, canons, policies) are also not the same as the “Law” because these regulations are born from within the church as a way of maximising our potential for holiness and minimising our tendency towards corruption. They are as St Paul says a way for “Everything to be done decently and in good order.” The laws of the community and the radical search for freedom must be balanced. Aristotle reminds us that almost all of the problems that face us in life can be reduced to the question of getting the right balance. These rules are constantly to be tested as St Paul reminds us to ‘test everything’ and amended as the collective wisdom of the church sees fit. For as long as they stand, however, they still have authority for us. If you disagree with a structure or rule then you are, by the “Law of Love” as part of the body, fully expected to argue for its change or abolishment. You are not free just to ignore it because of your own conscience. This is to fall prey to the enemy who seeks to cut us off from one another.

“When Milton's Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? 'Here, at least, we shall be free.' And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He's going to be free, but he's going to find himself in hell.”
B. F. Skinner

This article is not a plea not for a privileged elitism. It is a plea for meritorious elitism (people should be classed by their merit). It is a plea not to persecute those who have special gifts just because they make us feel uncomfortable or insecure (the last thing we need is to have everyone brought down to the same level in mediocrity). It is mostly a plea for returning to the basis of Catholic Church – that we make ourselves accountable to one another. We are not all brilliant theologians, pastors, liturgists, administrators, and teachers. We are not meant to be. If we try to do everything this makes us feel weak and incompetent and it isolates us. This isolation, this consultation of only a few like minded people, is born of the enemy of faith – fear. If we acknowledge that each individual gift is a gift of the whole body then we compliment one another. If we take consul together and consult those who have strength and gifts in their particular fields we have a better chance of discerning the Will of God. This means we do not need to be afraid of having our weaknesses examined because we can use the strengths of others to strengthen ourselves.

The challenge of others actually helps us to grow “into the full stature of Christ”. The only way to do this is to accept the ‘rules’ which reflect the living discernment of the community as the starting point for our wrestle for the truth as a family. This belonging to a family is messy and it means being vulnerable to one another. This is why the current trend of using professional business models in the church are so horrific. It means that we tend to ‘handle’ people when there is conflict. To handle people means that we intentionally do not let ourselves be open to the challenge of painful disagreement with those who challenge us. We keep them at a ‘safe’ distance emotionally. We may be more successful in getting ‘personnel’ issues dealt with but we lose the intimacy and the suffering we are called to participate in by the following of Our Lord. You can not justify ‘handling’ people in a community that is to model the Christ of the Gospels. This is why the National Church has issued the guidelines ‘A Call to Human Dignity’ adopted by this Diocese several years ago. However it does not help that the document is seldom referred to and seldom utilised in out conflicts. It might as well not exist. It is a perfect example of my overall point.

I have written at length in previous articles about some of the reasons that I believe that this rampant subjectivity has arisen. I have also written about the insecurity and fear that makes us so defensive and insecure. I simply want to remind people: that God is actually real; that we, as Anglicans, worship and approach him as a community; that this makes us accountable to one another, and to the faith, traditions and discipline of the Church; and that any religion that is comprised of only what we already think or feel is falsehood – only a projection of ourselves onto God. The God we serve ‘passeth all understanding’ and leads us to become that which, today, we can not even imagine.

TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I, 101

Confession of a Marshwiggle or Living as a Narnian: Whitterings, February 2008

"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

Puddleglum

I was recently discussing with a friend some of our fears. I was saying how I sometimes fear looking back on my ministry and regretting lost opportunities that I would be able to see so clearly in hindsight but was blind to now. He spoke about the fear of one day losing his faith and thereby making his life a bit of a joke. This last fear really struck a chord in me and made me think.

Of all the things that I fear losing, my faith has never been one of them. I think this is because I do not see that faith is a set of beliefs or a code of practice but rather a way of being. I think faith is analogous to intuition. Although we do not know exactly how intuition works, many believe that it works in a way similar to the normal mode of using our five senses only on the unconscious level. The senses only work consciously when things are obvious enough to make us take notice of them. If someone using only their senses walked into a room after a couple had been fighting, and then that couple pretended everything was fine, there would need to be blood or broken glass for the newcomer to know that the couple had just been fighting. However someone using intuition in the same situation would know instantly without any obvious clues. There would be a huge amount of information flowing through the brain from the senses but all of it too subtle to register consciously: the level of testosterone and adrenalin in the air, the dilated pupils of the eyes, the flush of the skin, and the subtle defensive and aggressive movement of the bodies. All of this information would be flowing through the unconscious mind the same way the grosser senses flow through the conscious mind. The unconscious mind then throws this information upstairs to the conscious mind as a knowing feeling. The intuitive ‘knows’ in a similar but different way from the sensor. The sensor can tell you why they have come to the conclusion about their interpretation of reality that they have. An intuitive will not, even though they may know a great deal more about the scene than the sensor. The sensor is to belief as the intuitive is to faith.

Faith is basically the trusting of the universe, an openness to God and His creation On a basic level having faith is about letting go of control and letting God step in. As St Julian of Norwich told us “All will be well, all will be well and all manner of things will be well. Nietzsche’s nihilistic view of reality led him to conclude that all man can do in the face of the overwhelming emptiness and meaninglessness of the universe is to look into it’s great abyss and then dance upon the edge of it. Kierkegaard’s Christian answer to Nietzsche is that one must make the next step of faith and instead of dancing on the edge of the void one must rather jump into it. Only then will God appear and catch you.

I have also taken great comfort from the example of Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. The climax of the book takes place in the underground kingdom of the evil Green Witch. She takes the heroes of the story, including Puddleglum, prisoner and is casts a spell on them using magical smoke from a fire and soothing words to make them believe that Narnia and Aslan, and everything they have known are all just figments of their colourful imaginations. It is, of course, Plato’s cave in reverse. The characters are taken from the light of day into the cave and made to believe that the shadows are real and not the things casting them. The witch just about wins when the Marsh Wiggle Puddleglum, a curmudgeonly pessimist amphibious creature, rouses himself at the last second and throws himself into the fire. The dampening effect of his froglike skin on the fire dispel the smoke and the pain from being burned brings him back to his full mind. The short statement that he gave to the Witch at that moment is the best answer to classical atheism I have ever come across. To me he gives an assurance to us Christians that the path of faith is the only possible way forward in our lives.

"One word, Ma'am," Puddleglum said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worse and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up thing seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

So for me faith is not really about belief or consciously knowing it is more about moving steadinly forwards with trust. Faith is following in the footsteps of the disciples, sometiimes blindly but still with certainty. One step in front of the other. John Henry Candinal Newman, our dear friend who caused those of us who are Anglicans such lingering pain, sums it up in his famous hymn ‘Lead Kindly Light’. This song was reportedly sung on the Titanic by Marion Wright just before it sank in a service led by The Reverend Fr Ernest Courtenay Carter, Vicar of St Jude’s Whitechapel. It was also sung by Betsie ten Boom on her way to a German concentration camp in WWII.

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou

Shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path; but now

Lead Thou me on!

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,

Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still

Will lead me on.

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile,

Which I Have loved long since, and lost awhile!