Fr. Zosima and Alyosha, Part I

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One of the most remarkable figures in all of literature is Dostoevsky’s Fr. Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. It is unique in that it is a portrait of a holy monk, indeed of a spiritual guide. Fr. Zosima plays such an important role in this major work of literature and in Dostoevsky’s mature vision that it is worth spending some time pondering this figure.

Fr. Zosima is an “elder” or spiritual guide, a “spiritual father,” in Russian a staretz. This is a universal type that is found in most traditions–most notably, the shaman, the guru, the zen master, the lama, the spiritual director, etc. There is a certain commonality to all these figures, but it is also important to point out that each is not reducible to this commonality and that each carries a particular uniqueness that emerges from their tradition. This is all the more so for the Russian staretz–this is true to such an extent that one almost wants to take the staretz out of this list. He is SO different from the others. This is a debatable assertion but perhaps it will become more convincing as we go on.

In 19th Century Russia, in the Optina Skete, a few hundred miles from Moscow, this tradition of the staretz was in full bloom. In a sense this tradition goes back to the Desert Fathers of Egypt and the beginnings of Christian monasticism when someone would come to one of the holy older, more experienced monks for a “word”–which was not just good advice but a matter of life and death for the spiritual journey of the one seeking the “word.” Both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and so many other big names in Russian culture visited Optina at that time and had lengthy encounters with the staretz. There were a number of them through the century until the Communist Revolution in 1917 destroyed all that. But among these there were 3 giants: Leonid, Macarius, and Amvrosy. The last one is the one both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy got to know in several visits, and he is the one who is Dostoevsky’s model for Fr. Zosima. Now what is important is not that Fr. Amvrosy met all these big figures, but that in fact most of his visitors were common people, indeed mostly peasants, and there were hundreds of them every day, and they came for a multitude of reasons, hardly any of them would pertain to what we would call “spiritual practice”–in other words most came not with some question about “spirituality.” In a sense it was all very simple, there is God and there is life, and that’s your spiritual practice! Some of the great zen masters were like that, but here the spiritual practice is even more immanent in daily life and its pains and aches and enigmas and problems. The important thing is to focus on them in the right way. Both the staretz and the zen master would agree that there is no secret teaching here–“the Way” begins with your next step right in front of your nose. But the staretz often brings “more heart” to the situation as it were. Dostoevesky witnessed a peasant woman who had lost her child and had come to Fr.Amvrosy. Dostoevsky portrays this encounter in the novel with his fictional Fr. Zosima. First of all, Zosima unites his heart with her heart, so she is not alone in her sorrow and grief. He acknowledges the sorrow and grief–it is legitimate and true. He then unites her heart with the heart of her dead child. She and the child are in a communion that transcends death. All this takes place in a matter of minutes. Then comes a woman who has killed her husband who had been extremely abusive to her. Again what is striking is the calmness and compassion of the staretz. In both cases the person who presents themselves before the staretz feels themselves in deep trouble. In both cases the operative dynamic is communion, so that neither person is left isolated in their darkness. And it is no ordinary communion, but the realm of mercy and forgiveness and understanding and tenderness. In other words, the most important thing the staretz does is open up to each person the nearness of God to their own heart no matter what predicament they are in. This is a special gift of Russian spirituality.

Consider this scene from early in the novel. The Karamazovs, the three sons and the Father, and several friends come to the monastery to meet with Fr. Zosima ostensibly to settle a dispute between the father and one of them, Dmitri. This is a dysfunctional family to say the least. Old man Karamazov, Fyodor by name, is abusive, manipulative, lecherous, greedy and a buffoon on top of it all. Dmitri is a total hothead ready to explode in emotion and on the verge of being out of control. Ivan seems to be a cold intellectual, the best educated of them. Alyosha, the youngest, has become a novice monk and has come under the wing of Fr. Zosima. He seems to be the only one with his humanity still intact. So they are there with all the other people who have come to see Fr. Zosima. He gives them a private meeting during which the father, Fyodor, makes a total ass of himself and Dmitri explodes as usual and so much more happens. The staretz takes it all in even as he seems very tired and sickly. Then, in the words of Dostoevsky:

“But the whole scene, which had turned so ugly, was stopped in a

most unexpected manner. The elder suddenly rose from his place.

Alyosha, who had almost completely lost his head from fear for him

and for all of them, had just time enough to support his arm. The elder

stepped towards Dmitri…and having come close to him, knelt before him.

Kneeling in front of Dmitri Fyodorovich, the elder bowed down at his

feet with a full, distinct, conscious bow, and even touched the floor

with his forehead”

The meaning of this gesture is the key to understanding the spiritual meaning of this novel. Dmitri is enmeshed in a deep darkness; he is on the verge of killing his own father–he is very much tempted, driven to such a thought. He is certainly very capable of doing such a deed. In the Russian hesychast tradition, God is MOST present in the deepest and darkest places in the heart and in the most trying moments. Recall the mysterious words of the Lord to Staretz Silouan on Mt. Athos: Keep your heart in hell and despair not. A more mundane expression of this is the old Pauline adage: where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. For the Russian staretzi this was not a trite expression but a profound spiritual truth, and so Fr. Zosima intuits Dmitri’s heart and the overwhelming presence of God there in the form of unspeakable mercy and forgiveness and nearness–or better yet, oneness. He does not preach to Dmitri, but uses his whole body in this gesture to open Dmitri’s heart to an awareness of the reality of God within Dmitri’s tortured heart. Dmitri is totally shaken by this gesture and he runs out of the monk’s cell.

The staretz is very much able to read a person’s heart, but sometimes the medicine that is applied is a bit more analytical. When the old father is ranting and raving in front of the gathering and being abusive under his buffonery, Fr. Zosima does not get sharp with him but calmly and peacefully tells him: “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.” This is an acute analysis of Fyodor’s problem, which really is a problem at the level of the heart. True Fyodor should give up his drunkeness, his lechery, his greed, his abusiveness, but all these are merely symptoms of his real problem. Incidentally, Gandhi made the same kind of analysis with regard to violence–the root of it was lying to oneself and to others.

Another encounter along this same line takes place with an upper class lady that comes to Fr. Zosima. She is benevolent in her actions; engages in charitable activities; engages in all kinds of movements “for the benefit of humanity.” However, she confesses to Zosima that she has the hardest time tolerating people close to her, those she has to deal with in close encounters–how they “rub her the wrong way.” She can’t stand people who don’t show gratitude to her. She actually shows a grasp of her state of heart:

“In short, I work for pay and demand pay at once, that is, praise and a return of love for my love. Otherwise I’m unable to love anyone.”

Zosima leads her into still greater depths of self-knowledge and then beyond that into an awareness of the Lord who is Love and who is leading her to a place she does not want to go:

“Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts. I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing, compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science. But I predict that even in that very moment when you see with horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have not come nearer your goal but seem to have gotten farther from it, at that very moment–I predict this to you–you will suddenly reach your goal and will clearly behold over you the wonder-working power of the Lord, who all the while has been loving you, and all the while has been mysteriously guiding you.”

Then there is the pathos of what Fr. Zosima tells his young novice monk, Alyosha. As Zosima is dying, he sends Alyosha away from the monastery–he reads Alyosha’s heart as one who will discover oneness with God in another way: “For the time being your place is not here. I give you my blessing for a great obedience in the world. You still have much journeying before you. And you will have to marry–yes, you will. You will have to endure everything before you come back again. And there will be mujch work to do. But I have no doubt of you, that is why I am sending you. Christ is with you. Keep him, and he will keep you. You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow you will be happy. Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow.”

So we can see something of the authentic spiritual guide in Zosima. The two absolute criteria for authenticity in a spiritual guide are compassion and freedom. And one of the existential ways that freedom manifests itself is that the authentic spiritual master does not seek or hold disciples–he/she only seeks the good of whoever comes to them. The hesychast staretz is so immersed in prayer and so totally surrendered to God that he now becomes merely an instrument in God’s hands to facilitate the work of God in every situation and with every person. This is far beyond being a teacher of a spiritual practice. Everything else is secondary or tertiary!

In Part II of our reflection, in a later posting, we will consider the heart of Fr. Zosima’s teaching to his monks, and very importantly, Alyosha’s trial and breakthrough with Fr. Zosima’s death.


A Few Words About Nothing & The Mystery of God, Part I

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Shakespeare’s King Lear says, “Nothing will come of nothing.”  In common terms, so true; but in the classic Christian doctrine of creation–“creatio ex nihil”–creation out of nothing–the whole universe, the whole of reality comes out of nothing.  This is not a Biblical account but a spiritual and philosophical intuition and result of a certain line of reasoning.  Here we are in the antechamber of a great mystery.  Of course one can deny the whole thing by saying that this whole always existed, never not-existed.  We are merely a random rearrangement of elements that always existed–ultimately we are the result of chance.  Between these two positions there are some philosophical choices about what line of reasoning one finds more plausible.  Ultimately of course the choice is never made without other directing influences.  But in either case, there is this annoying and mysterious reality of “nothingness” still hovering around.

Let us clarify:  there is nothing, and then there is “nothing”.  By “nothing” we do not mean just an empty space.  Afterall, an empty space is still something!  So “nothingness” here will mean  a lot more than just emptiness in the normal sense.

There is a nothingness that is beyond all our conceptions of nothing. It is not just non-being as opposed to being.  No it transcends the opposition of being and non-being.

There is a poverty that is beyond poverty.

There is a silence which is beyond all silence.

There is a  solitude that is beyond all solitude.

There is a communion beyond all community, togetherness and connectivity!

There is a Name beyond all names and it cannot be named.

Such is the spiritual and mystical intuition that inhabits a number of traditions.

The cawing of the crow in the freshness of the morning stillness emerges out of this Nothingness and returns to it.  When your log fire goes out, this is where it goes to.

One of the deep metaphysical fears lurking in the thought of death is that we will slide into nothingness.  Even some of the saints have reported that at the approach of death there was this chilling, cold feeling of nothingness opening up before them.  They go beyond this, of course, but some will say this is simply a delusion; others will say that they transcend this fear of non-being that death signifies and they transcend into the Nothingness beyond non-being.

The Christian notion of God is beyond both being and non-being, and this is the beginning of the mystery of God.  Classic Catholic mystical theology has always said that we know God most when we realize that we do know God.  St. Augustine said: “If we can grasp it, it’s not God.”

Most Christians rely on the figure of Jesus in the New Testament, both artistically and in the ideas and images in their minds.  They also may rely on the images of Mary and the saints.  This seems to bring the reality of God close to them in a comforting way.  All this is absolutely true and good.  However, what too often happens is that a person never really encounters the awesome mystery of God which abides in their hearts and surrounds their lives on all sides.  Without some such encounter of this awesome Mystery, our common piety is apt to deteriorate into something trivial and superficial.  Mystery is the essential foundation of the spiritual life.  When our spiritual senses are alive, we sense that our lives are immersed in a holy mystery that is closer to us than we are to ourselves.  It is also a Mystery that offers itself to us as Gift in every concrete encounter with every concrete reality.  And yet it is also at the same time a Mystery that is Wholly Other–so other that it best be left described as Nothingness.

When we say “mystery” we do not mean the word in the usual sense.  It is not something to be solved, a puzzle or a riddle that we can solve given enough time and resources.  No, the mystery of God is something much. much deeper.  The great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, spoke of “the human being in the presence of Absolute Mystery.”  Some Christians might balk that after Jesus we have this knowledge of God and that’s it.  This is a delicate theological point, which we will ponder in Part II, in a later posting.  Suffice it to say now that even after the revelation of Jesus Christ, there still remains the absolute incomprehensible mystery of God. The incomprehensibility of God is an infinite richness that we will never exhaust, and it remains even after God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ–Mystery remaining Mystery, not because of a lack of intelligibility, but because of an excess of intelligibility.

There are all kinds of images of God in the Bible.  Some of them profound; some of them good, enticing, inviting; some of them not so good, even repellent.  Not all images of God are equal.  A fundamentalist approach makes each image equal and each image basically infallible–not realizing how humanly constructed they are.  Mystery takes us beyond all images, both the good and the not good.

Apart from the Bible, people of all kinds have promoted all kinds of other images of God.  And everyone, including atheists, have an image of God whether they care to realize that or not.  New Agers often have this sense of God as somekind of universal force; old and modern deists have this image of God as the Great Clockmaker–somewhat scientifically acceptable.  Often personal images of God are reduced to someone who doles out punishments or treats/rewards.  In that case you try hard to appease this entity.  Then Mormons have this image of God that is very peculiar coming from the Christian side–God is seen as being in the form of a man, physically so.

And what do you mean when you say the word “God”?

Property, Ownership, and Poverty

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In Catholic monasticism there is a vow of poverty.  Something similar can be found in the other monastic traditions. Also even for people not under vows but who are trying to live a serious spiritual life the dynamic labeled here “poverty” takes on a critical importance.  Right at the outset it should be said that there is both an external and an internal dimension to this notion of poverty.  And it should also be noted that ultimately the internal dimension is the most important–it is where one’s sense of identity abides, who you are, and what is the point of it all.  This latter shall be extensively discussed when we get to Ash Wednesday and Lent in a later posting.  Furthermore, nothing said here should be construed as a cosmetic overlay on the misery and social poverty of billions who are exploited and abused by economic and social systems that preach “a world of plenty.”  In fact if the rest of us simply practiced a humane poverty that problem would be partially solved.

Before we get to the notion of poverty in the spiritual journey, a few words are needed about the notions of “ownership” and “private property.”  In the modern West we have practically made a god out of these ideas. Tolstoy said that all property is theft–a typical Tolstoyean exaggeration, but you see what he is getting at.  It is at the very least a social construct, perhaps one could say a fiction, or to be more kindly and comprehensive, a myth.  In the Republic Plato says that at the core of every society there is this thing which he calls a “noble lie.”  It is something which is at the foundation of that society, a basis for its cohesion, yet it is also a fiction.  And every society has a “noble lie.”  And only those who are truly enlightened by what Plato calls “philosophy”–which is not the modern meaning of that word–truly “know the score.”  So for the modern West perhaps this notion of “private property” is at least one aspect of our “noble lie,” the myth that holds things together in our culture.

It is so arbitrary, isn’t it–I mean you draw a line here and you say stuff on this side of the line is “mine” and stuff on that side of the line is “yours.”  And I have a piece of paper that says this stuff is “mine.”  The sociologist Robert Bellah has pointed out the deeper psychological and spiritual implications of ownership(in his masterly study Habits of the Heart).  Say I want a car to get from point A to point B on some regular basis(already questionable to start with, but let us proceed on that assumption).  I could easily buy a Ford or a Chevy but I am “well off” and I buy a Mercedes.  The average Joe Blow can afford a Ford or Chevy but he cannot afford a Mercedes.  The whole point of owning a Mercedes, paying that extra amount, getting that leather, etc.,  is deep down, unmasked, a desire to say: “I am not like you; I am different; I am well off.”  I own a Mercedes because Joe Blow cannot own one, and when I drive around I proclaim that difference and I establish my sense of identity in that difference.  A total spiritual fiction.  Perhaps even to say, “I am a better human being.”  In any case,  the  notion of ownership has a very real bearing then on our sense of identity at the core of our being.  In the modern West this is simply a matter now of “you are what you own,” or “the one with the most toys at the end wins.”

Think of land, of Mother Earth, and this notion of “owning” it is even more bizarre.  Most aboriginal peoples have a founding myth where the territory they inhabit is given to them by the Great Spirit or a Deity, but it is a matter for the tribe’s use or thriving, not for ownership in the modern sense.  Everything of that land is seen in relation to that original gift.  Needless to say complications can arise as people did migrate and climactic conditions forced some tribes out of their territories into another place, etc. Conflicts could and did arise.  In the movie, Grapes of Wrath, based on Steinbeck’s novel, there is a scene early on where a sharecropper’s cabin is demolished by a bulldozer sent by the bank who now owns the land the sharecropper is sitting on.  The movie and the book raise the question of ownership of land–whose land is it anyway, and what does it mean to “own” anything?

All religious traditions have a very mixed record with regard to this point.  Institutionally they participate in the ideology of the culture in which they are situated.  This is reflected then in something like their notions of ownership and property and the meaning of poverty.  Monasteries have owned serfs and huge amounts of land and stuff; religious groups have owned slaves and have been very powerful in terms of their wealth.  Incidentally, in a related matter, monks have also been associated with violence and war at times as they succumbed to the ideology of their society–there is a new book coming out soon which details this even for Buddhist monks who normally are considered to be non-violent.  However, alongside this, in a kind of contrary and subversive spirit, each tradition has also had its holy men and women who have deconstructed their society’s  and their tradition’s notions of ownership and have redefined the value of poverty.  In the Christian tradition we find figures like St. Francis and Dorothy Day among so many others, and these stand in contrast not just with Wall Street greed, but also in contrast to folk like the European Protestants who theologized that wealth was a sign of blessing from God–the conclusion being then that those who had wealth were “blessed” and those who didn’t, well,…..   They seem to have ignored the Sermon on the Mount and followed one vein of Old Testament theology, which in itself was critiqued  by other voices within the Old Testament.  Today we see some of this in modern America in the so-called Gospel of Prosperity.  Also in some of these mega-churches where the member is offered all kinds of ministry in order to prosper, to invest well, to be healthy, to be happy, to be successful, etc. Everything except for the thirst for holiness.  Leon Bloy’s famous quip is forgotten: “The only sadness is the sadness of not being a saint.”

In any case, there is a peculiar problem within Catholic monasticism(which probably also afflicts other monastic groups like the Buddhists).  The Catholic monk, if he/she is a member of an officially recognized order will take a vow of poverty.  That means he/she will give up ownership of stuff–everything is owned by the community as it were.  The problem is that so many of these official communities are so well-endowed–often they sit on enormous land holdings, and often the monks have “all the comforts of home” at their fingertips while never having to worry about paying any bills or where their next meal will come from.  Some will even have access to “Our Lady of Visa” and can go shopping on the monastery’s bill–of course with the abbot’s blessing.  Now the standard reply to this kind of criticism is that with the vow of poverty the monk lets go of controlling his belongings, that there is a check on any human urge to own and possess, and that primarily the vow is meant as an interior work–or as often it is put, spiritual poverty is what counts.  Now this is largely true, and we shall get to the significance of interior poverty in a later posting, but it still must be said that this apologia for a comfortable life while professing “poverty” sounds dubious to many people.  There is a connection between external, material poverty and so-called spiritual poverty, but that connection is very difficult to articulate except in the context of a whole spiritual theology.

We won’t attempt that now, but it is striking that almost all reform movements within Catholicism and within Eastern Orthodox monasticism have called for a return to a real external, material poverty as an expression of something deeply spiritual and authentic.  St. Francis, for example,  did not preach just an interior poverty–his Lady Poverty was one tough lady to be sure!  For those not in official monastic life but who are serious about a spiritual life, there are many other prophetic figures.  There is Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement.  There is the even more interesting and more significant figure of Gandhi, about whom we shall have to reflect at another time.  And there is our own American Henry David Thoreau, who summed up the whole dynamic of ownership and property for someone who seeks spiritual health: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Ok, you will probably want to point out some inconsistencies on the part of any of these figures, as if that would vitiate their teaching.  Inconsistencies granted.  As Emerson put it:  “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Irregardless of who our role model may be we will find ourselves somewhere along this spectrum that ranges from St. Francis(or St. Nil) to the Tsar of Old Russia(or maybe to one of our billionaires)–the Tsar’s winter home in St. Petersburg had 1050 rooms, 1886 doors, 1945 windows, and 117 staircases–there is an Indian billionaire that is building his own skyscraper in Mumbai that will probably top this!).  Doubtless we are much closer to St. Francis than to these other folk, but whatever be the case we need to keep a critical eye on the dynamic that is really operative in our lives and social situations.  Do not let any communal ideology or cultural ideology or national ideology or religious ideology blind us into making ownership and property some kind of hidden deity–in other words, we really must have that, we absolutely need that, we have earned that–or it belongs to the community, not to me, so that’s ok….etc. etc.   There is a big difference between having the stuff that makes life humane and decent and a felt need to live in huge homes, gated communities, drive expensive cars, have all the latest toys, etc. etc.  To be in this condition is to be dangerously blind  to our real condition, to our relationship to others, to our true identity.  Recall Jesus’s parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man(Luke 16: 19-31).  Amen.

Enoch & Paradise: An Introduction to Russian Spirituality

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There is a line in the Book of Genesis that is easy to miss considering the monumental nature of what is presented there.  One translation reads:  “And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”(Gen5:24)  Another translation: “And Enoch walked with God, and he vanished for God took him.”  A simplistic reading of this would be:  Enoch was a good man and then he died.  No, this line has a lot more to say than that!

Note that there are three elements in that verse:

  1. Enoch walks with God
  2. Enoch “vanishes” or “he was not”
  3. God took him

The first term, “walking with God,” is not some vague reference to moral uprightness or saying one’s prayers.  It refers us directly back to the state of paradise described in Genesis 3: “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…”  Although the situation being presented is the narrative of the Fall, the implication of this line is that the human being’s natural condition “before the Fall” was this “casual intimacy” with God–as if walking in a garden with a friend.  So to “walk with God” is to be present to the Divine Presence which fills all of creation.  Now there are degrees and depths to this “presencing”, and it is not until one “returns to Paradise” that it is in its fullness.  This “return to Paradise” was a great theme of the early monastic fathers and the hesychasts of the Russian tradition.  Once the Fall has taken place; once Adam and Eve have asserted the primacy of their ego identity, not receiving the Divine Life as a gift but thinking they could just “take it” as it were; then we are no longer “in Paradise”; we are no longer “walking with God,” walking within the Divine Presence in its fullness.

The next element is this mysterious vanishing, “he was not.”  The “vanishing” is concomitant to “walking with God.”  The Russian hesychasts saw that the “return to Paradise” was signalled by the stripping off of the masks and disguises of the ego identity, by a kind of nakedness of personhood, so that one could say that one’s ego centered identity has vanished.  The general term they used was “humility,” and this has nothing to do with the psychological posturing of the ego or with the sickness of self-hatred and self-rejection–this is a theme we shall return to again and again.  And this is in harmony with the teachings of all the great traditions in their own terms.  For example, the Sufis talk about fana or annihilation–this is the extinction of that very ego centered sense of self.  When al-Hallaj says, “I am the Truth,” he is not blaspheming as the conservative traditionalists would have it, but what he means is that his sense of “I-ness” now comes from God, not from any egocentric affirmation.  His whole identity is now “of God.”  When one “walks with God” one realizes that only God truly IS–and everything else in relationship to that “Isness” is as nothing.

The third element tells us: “God took him.”  It is God’s agency that accomplishes this–not our own efforts, which in any case would be shot through with egocentric desire no matter how “spiritual” they may seem.  There are no techniques, no methods, no practices that will accomplish this “return to Paradise.”  The story in Genesis of the Tower of Babel is one parable of the futility of “reaching heaven” by our own efforts.  According to the Russian spiritual fathers, the return to Paradise takes place through faith, through humility, through continual repentance, and through total forgiveness.  This is an enormous topic to which we shall return many times during this year, but let us consider just one aspect of this “return” now.

The “return to Paradise” now begins at the “foot of the Cross.”  This will mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people in a thousand different situations, but for sure it is now no longer a matter of our moral uprightness or our spirituality or our knowledge that will bring us “home.”  Consider the following scene from Luke 23:39-42:  “One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!’  But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’  Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

In Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov we find several concrete existential depictions of what this “return to Paradise” is like.  It can almost be summarized in three words: forgiveness, responsibility, repentance.  And these three will need an extensive explanation because they are a lot more than the usual surface meanings we give them.  In any case, Dostoevsky presents the early life of his creation, the great spiritual father Fr. Zosima.  As a young man he was a military cadet, and he gets himself into a duel over a girlfriend.  The night before he is in a foul mood and he strikes his servant in the face over a trivial matter.  He cannot sleep very long:

“Suddenly I got up…I went to the window, opened it, looked into the garden–I watched the sun rising, the weather was warm, beautiful, the birds began to chime.  Why is it, I thought, that I feel something, as it were, mean and shameful in my soul?  Is it because…I am afraid of death, afraid to be killed?  No, not that, not that at all….  And suddenly I understood at once what it was: it was because I had beaten Afanasy the night before!  I suddenly pictured it all as if it were happening over again: he is standing before me, and I strike him in the face with all my might, and he keeps his arms at his sides, head erect, eyes staring straight ahead as if he were at attention; he winces at each blow…this is what a man can be brought to, a man beating his fellow man!  …it was as if a sharp needle went through my soul.  I stood as if dazed, and the sun was shining, the leaves were rejoicing, glistening, and the birds, the birds were praising God…I covered my face with my hands, fell on my bed and burst into sobs.  And then I remembered my brother Markel, and his words to the servants before his death: ‘My good ones, my dears, why are you serving me, why do you love me, and am I worthy of being served?’  Yes, am I worthy? suddenly leaped into my mind.  Indeed, how did I deserve that another man, just like me, the image and likeness of God, should serve me?  This question then pierced my mind for the first time in my life.  [I remembered my brother again]: ‘Mother, heart of my heart, truly each of us is guilty before everyone and for everyone, only people do not know it, and if they knew it, the world would at once become paradise.’  Lord, I wept and thought, can that possibly not be true?  Indeed, I am perhaps the most guilty of all….  And suddenly the whole truth appeared to me in its full enlightenment: what was I setting out to do?  I was setting out to kill a kind, intelligent, noble man…. I lay there flat on my bed, my face pressed into the pillow….  Suddenly my comrade, the lieutenant, came in with the pistols to fetch me….    ‘Wait a bit,’ I said to him… I ran back into the house alone, straight to Afanasy’s room: ‘Afanasy,’ I said, ‘yesterday I struck you twice in the face.  Forgive me.’  He started as he were afraid, and I saw that it was not enough, not enough, and suddenly, just as I was, epaulettes and all, I threw myself at his feet with my forehead to the ground: ‘Forgive me,’ I said.  At that he was completely astounded: ‘My dear master, but how can you….I’m not   worthy…’  And he suddenly began weeping himself, just as I had done shortly before, covered his face with both hands….  [He goes to the place of the duel]    They set us twelve paces apart, the first shot was his–I stood cheerfully  before him, face to face…looking at him lovingly….  He fired.  The shot just grazed by cheek and nicked my ear….and I seized my pistol, turned around, and sent it hurtling up into the trees….  I said to my adversary: ‘My dear sir, forgive a foolish young man, for it is my own fault that I offended you and have now made you shoot at me….  Gentlemen, I cried suddenly from the bottom of my heart, look at the divine gifts around us: the clear sky, the fresh air, the tender grass, the birds, nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, we alone, are godless and foolish, and do not understand that life is paradise…and we [then] shall embrace each other and weep….'”

This moment of conversion and enlightenment then infuses all of Zosima’s life as a monk and a spiritual father and it is a constant in his teaching.  We shall return to his teaching extensively in later blogs, but suffice it to say now that for Fr. Zosima and the Russian hesychasts, “paradise” was returned to by a radical redefinition of our human identity through our acceptance of “our neighbor” in love, forgiveness, humility and mercy.  First of all, this will inevitably place us “within the dynamic of the Cross.”  Then furthermore this uncovers the real nature of our relationality to all of reality.  And then we are “walking with God.”

Russian Spirituality: Coming Attractions

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This blogger will be re-visiting the Russians (an old favorite of his) this coming year, and a number of postings will reflect an ongoing reflection on this tradition.  Yes there are all these great spiritual traditions within the world religious scene, and within each of the great global traditions there are as it were “subtraditions.”  So within Christianity there are the Spanish Mystics, the Flemish Mystics, Benedictine Spirituality, Ignatian Spirituality, Celtic Spirituality, Franciscan Spirituality, and a large number of others.  Among these, within Eastern Christianity, there is Russian spirituality.  And perhaps it is a debatable point, but in the opinion of this blogger there is no deeper spiritual tradition or religious body of thought.

Now every spiritual tradition is embedded in a certain cultural matrix and is carried within a particular history.  The religious mind both shapes the cultural “container” and also in turn is shaped by it.   Russian spirituality is perhaps an example of this to an extraordinary degree.  To really get into the Russian religious mindset, one will have to touch base with people like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak, etc., just as much as with explicitly religious and theological writings.  One will also have to get a feel for the cultural forms in which that religious thought expresses itself.  This is, of course, true for all the traditions, but it is claimed here that this is more true of Russian spirituality–a claim that is certainly debatable.

There is a further difficulty.  Russian institutions, social relations and general way of life cannot be explained in terms familiar to the Western reader.  The Russian is neither European nor Asian and not something in between either.  But Russian culture has always felt a deep attraction to Western ideas, trends and styles.  In the 18th and early 19th Centuries the focus of that was France; today it is the U.S.  As this complex relationship unfolds there is both imitation(sometimes to a ludicrous degree) and at the same time an emphasis of its “difference” from the West(sometimes to an  exaggerated degree).  That love/hate relationship distorts the usual presentations of Russian culture and religious thought.

Russian spirituality has a power and a beauty and a depth and a sweep that cannot be surpassed–certainly not within Christianity.  Having said that, it must almost immediately be pointed out that Russian culture and the Russian character has the “other stuff” also to an extraordinary degree.  On the one hand Russian history is filled with incredible cruelty and brutishness, anti-semitism, fanatical irrationalism and emotionalism, authoritarianism and excessive passivity, etc, etc.  On the other hand, you will never find human compassion or fellow-feeling or human solidarity run any deeper anywhere else; you will not find more beautiful religious forms of worship; you will not find a deeper contemplative spirituality; you will not find a theology that is both most creative and most traditional at the same time.  How these contradictions can coexist must be part of the story.

There are various topics and themes within Russian spirituality, and some of them are very particular to this tradition.  During the year the blog will reflect on all of these themes:

humility

the spiritual father or staretz

kenosis/ the self-emptying of Christ

the role of suffering

the fool for Christ

salvation and mysticism through beauty – a very controversial and misunderstood topic

sobornost and umilenie

the heart

hesychia

cosmo-theandric mysticism

Sophia

sophianic theology

Divine Wisdom

These themes can be found more or less in the other religious traditions in one way or another, but there is a certain combination of these themes within the Russian religious mind that makes this tradition so exceptional.

Merton and Christmas

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There is a beautiful meditation on the meaning of the Christmas Gospel by Thomas Merton.  It comes in essay form, and it can be found in one of his lesser known books: Raids on the Unspeakable.  The title of the essay is: “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room.”  With his usual acuteness Merton reflects on the Christmas Gospel and hits a bullseye on two important points.  First of all, he realizes that the narrative is a mythopoetic presentation and not just a collection of historical details that may or may not be significant.  No, every detail, no matter how seemingly trivial,  and every image in the narrative resonates with deep meaning–there are no “throw-away lines.”  Secondly, he also, in a brilliant theological move, reflects on the eschatological character of the Christmas Gospel.  The Christmas Gospel is NOT primarily a reflection on some past event, but rather it is an announcement of the beginning of The Great End.  The Christmas Gospel proclaims that the time of fulfillment has arrived, the fullness of time has come.  Therefore it is also the time of decision; the time of repentance.  Note that  after the Christmas narrative, the Gospel jumps to take us  out into the wilderness where John the Baptist is preaching repentance,  and Jesus as an adult goes out into the wilderness to be tempted.

Merton latches on to one seemingly very insignificant statement in the narrative:  There was no room for them in the inn.  With the coming of the end a great bustle and business begins to shake the nations of the world.  The time of the end is the time of massed armies, wars and rumors of wars, of huge crowds moving this way and that…the time of the end is the time of the crowd.  And the eschatological message is spoken in a world where, precisely, because of the vast indefinite roar of armies on the move and the restlessness of the turbulent crowds, the message can be heard only with difficulty.

So the inn was crowded–because of the census, the eschatological massing of the “whole world” in centers of registration to be numbered, to be identified with the structure of imperial power.  One of the purposes of the census was to discover those who were eligible for service in the armies of the empire.  As Merton points out, the Bible had not taken kindly to a census when God was the ruler of Israel (2Sam24).  Truly the Son of God had emptied himself to take on humanity, but not simply to fall into a faceless mass, a crowd.  It is a sign that he is born outside that crowd.  But who can read that sign?

Another detail of the Christmas Gospel of significance: the tidings of great joy are not announced in the crowded inn.  Merton:  “In the crowd news becomes merely a new noise in the mind, briefly replacing the noise that went before it and yielding to the noise that comes after it, so that eventually everything blends into the same monotonous and meaningless rumor.  News?  There is so much news that there is no room left for the true tidings, the “Good News,” “the Great Joy.”  So the Great Joy is announced in silence, loneliness, and darkness, to shepherds living in the fields and apparently unmoved by the rumors or the massing of the crowds.  And the Great Joy is not to be confused with all the little joys that are offered by a consumer culture to those who “have.”

Even though the “whole world” is ordered to be inscribed, the shepherds do not seem to be affected.  They remain outside the agitation and untouched by the vast movement.  “They are therefore quite otherwise signed….  They are the remnant, the people of no account, who are therefore chosen–the anawim.”

So there was no room for Him to be born in the inn.  The time of the End is the time of “no room.”  No room for nature.  No room for a human being in his/her own heart.  No room for quiet, for solitude.  No room for thought.  No room for awareness, for attention.  People are worked to the point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment, filled with gadgets and stuff.  A human being finds no space to rest within his own heart but is constantly driven out–he simply becomes part of “the crowd.”

Merton: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited.  But because he cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room.  His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power…. those who are discredited who are denied status of persons, tortured, exterminated.  With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.  He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.”

Dickens & Christmas

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One of the most famous Christmastime stories is by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Several different movie versions of the story were produced over the years, and now it is a standard and still  a favorite at this time of year.  Set in Victorian England, “a long, long time ago,” it seems almost like a fairy tale, and its happy ending makes people feel good and “somehow” it feels right for Christmas. For some it simply is part of the “sap crap” surrounding Christmastime.  However, there are disturbing elements in the story–disturbing in a good way–things that should awaken us, not lull us into a sentimental slumber.

Dickens calls his story, A Christmas Carol, and this signals to us that the story is a mythopoetic presentation; it is a kind of “carol,” announcing, celebrating, rejoicing–but what?  The story is not really about Christmas; it is “located” within the context of Christmas.  What it really is about is the transformation of a man’s heart, and Dickens wants us to connect it with the meaning and message of Christmas.

The story begins by presenting us with the figure of Ebenezer Scrooge, and it is Christmas Eve in London.  Scrooge is a person who has spiritually and humanly lost his way–he is more a child of the new Industrial Revolution and the unfettered capitalism of his day, rather than a child of God.   He lives only to make money; only that “which fattens the purse” will he entertain.  This is the social milieu Dickens was living in,  and a lot of his art aimed to bring to light “man’s inhumanity to man” which the prevailing social system enhanced.  The underlying philosophy of the economy was that self-interest is beneficial for all of society, or in the memorable words of Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good.”  One does not just sell a product or a service but sells it at the highest price possible because the accumulation of wealth has become an end in itself and intrinsic to self-identity.  Why stop at being a millionaire when you can be a billionaire.  You are what you own.  Homo Consumerus has arrived.   The New Testament, among various texts, tells us that the accumulation of wealth can be a real problem in our relationship to God, but what Dickens is emphasizing is that this leads to a distortion and concealment of our true relationship to “our neighbor.”  It leads to an atomized view of society where you just have this collection of isolated individuals each acting for their self-interest irregardless of how that affects others(or today we would say the environment also).

Dickens presents Scrooge as very unhappy, a real grouch, and his unhappiness runs very deep. Dickens describes his condition:  “But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone…squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching…. Hard and sharp as flint…secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features….” Scrooge’s isolation and lack of fellow-feeling is most obvious by its contrast with what is present in other characters that Dickens brings on the stage right at the outset of the story.  There is his nephew who comes to visit him at his office and wish him a Merry Christmas.  Scrooge is totally dismissive. He sarcastically asks what profit is there in “keeping Christmas,” and the nephew answers that Christmas is “the only time I know of….when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”  Incidentally, what the nephew is referring to is much more deeply presented in Russian spirituality,  and they have a word for it: umilenie, which translates literally as a “melting of the heart” or “tender compassion,” but which means a oneness of heart.

Then there is his bookkeeper, Bob Cratchit, to whom Scrooge is barely able to give Christmas day off and whom he generally mistreats as a throw-away worker.  Then there are the two gentlemen who come to the office–they are collecting alms for the poor and destitute.  Scrooge dismisses them sarcastically and without hesitation.  He comes home late after work, and there begins the real story of his transformation.  First he is visited by the ghost of his old partner Marley.  Marley appears all bound in chains:  “You are fettered,” said Scrooge trembling…..  “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost.  “I made it link by link….”  And then the ghost tells Scrooge that Scrooge himself is “bound in chains that he has made of his own free will.”  Scrooge is frightened but also puzzled–what is this all about, you were a good business man, Marley!   “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  “Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.”

Then Scrooge is visited by three ghosts or spirits.  First comes the Ghost of Christmas Past, which takes him into his own past to relive both the joys and pains of his past, to open up his heart, to see where things went wrong.  This is the only way to true repentance.  The past is the key to making progress into the future.  Then came the Ghost of Christmas Present, and here Scrooge is taken to see what is going on right under his nose as it were.  He sees the life of his poor worker, Bob Crachit, and his poor family and their crippled little boy Tim, and he sees the lives of those who are poor in London that Christmas Eve.  His heart has already been opened up and now he is more vulnerable to recovering his “connectedness” to his fellow human beings.  Finally comes the Ghost of Christmas Future, and here Dickens is a master spiritual teacher–the reality of death pervades this whole episode, and one might ask how does this belong in a Christmas setting, which is all about birth and new beginnings.  Actually Dickens is in harmony with all the great spiritual traditions in that facing the reality of one’s death in a very concrete way is the great motivator and provider of the energy needed for a transformation of heart.  From this point on Scrooge will live his life with a sense of care for all people but especially those who are already present in his life.  He is no longer motivated by self-interest, but the dynamic of his life will now be an outpouring of self for the benefit of all. This means the using of his resources for the benefit of all and not exploitation. This transformation is both the true celebration of Christmas and the true meaning of Christmas, and from a Christian standpoint it is the Mystery of the Incarnation which opens the door to this transformation.

Advent & Christian Eschatology

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In the Christian calendar this time of year is commonly called “Advent,” and the scripture readings in most of the major churches pertain to the so-called “Second Coming.”  In a peculiar way the Church prepares for the celebration of the Mystery of the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh(sarx in Greek–important as we shall see later), by meditating on a mysterious promised second coming at something called “the end of time.”  In our secular society, of course, this time of year is only a shopping season for Christmas–and here Christmas is mostly a “feel-good” time marked out by a bizarre collection of symbols that no longer are hinged to anything religious: snowflakes, candles, wreaths, eggnog, Santa Claus, reindeer, even secular angels announcing the good news of lower prices(can angels lie?), etc.  This time of year is very important to the business world, and so these symbols can be found everywhere.

 

If you are a Christian, please do not say, “Oh yeah, I understand: God comes to us in Jesus, and then there is the Second Coming at the end of the world.”  Trust me, you do not understand.  No one does.  These are great mysteries, and they should not be treated as if understood–but because of the repetition of the feast and its secularization and commercialization the whole Christmas season is a kind of pseudo-religious cultural cliché.

 

Here we will focus on the so-called Second Coming and what Christian theology calls “eschatology.”  The scripture readings point to an endtime scenario of cosmic proportions.  Read literally, as the fundamentalists do, this leads to some unfortunate conclusions–among which the mass of humanity is condemned to an eternity in hell for various reasons, and only an elite few are saved(in some readings 144,000).  Here we can use two science fiction movies as illustrations.  The first one is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  For too many Christians the Second Coming of Christ is like a Super Alien coming to an elite, select few.  It signals its coming in various ways; then it comes and  takes the select few with it; and the others, well……  Of course this caricature is preceded by another caricature that has to do with the first coming or the Mystery of the Incarnation where, in the terms of Christian theology, God is fully and uniquely present in Jesus Christ.  That caricature we may draw from another movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  For too many Christians the Mystery of the Incarnation is reduced to a kind of body-snatching on the part of God.  You know that there is this Jew, Jesus, who looks like us, seems like us, but if you look closely at his eyes, you will see something different, something strange–ah, he is not one of us afterall. It is body-snatcher christology.  The similarity between these two caricatures is that it reduces God to the Ultimate Outsider, the Super Alien.

 

Now there are different valid theological interpretations of the so-called second coming.  We won’t get into that, but let us explore one important aspect of the meaning of these scriptures that refer to the Second Coming.  Here we will draw on Shakespeare for some help.  Recall his play Macbeth and the soliloquy by the main character, Macbeth:

 

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

………………………Out, out brief candle

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.  It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

 

Someone once said that Macbeth is the first atheist existentialist.  Not sure about that, but he does articulate a view that is more common than one might realize: the ultimate meaninglessness of life.  Strip away the veneer of a facile optimism, the veneer of a surface social life where one runs around consuming and “having fun” in a prolonged sequence of moments; strip away the veneer of those “little projects” and goals in life, and one big question lurks underneath:  what’s the point of it all?  what is the meaning of all my activity? what is the meaning of life?  As long ago as Pascal and even long before that, many wise voices have pointed out that so much of human activity, especially modern frenetic activity(Thoreau’s “most men live lives of quiet desperation”–not so quiet anymore) is actually a diversion from facing head on the question of the meaning of our life.  Even religion can become merely a prop to ward off the sense of meaninglessness.  As one British author caricatured the naturalistic novel as ODTAA–one damned thing after another–so is the flow of history.   History, both personal and our collective human history, seems no more than a surface procession of events and happenings with no point to it.  Now different religious traditions have different ways of dealing with this question, but here we are concerned primarily with the Christian tradition, and here there is an “appeal to God” to render life meaningful.  Very often this is a superficial maneuver when God is brought in as an explanation when one has run out of one’s own resources to deal with the situation.  God becomes a kind of conventional answer with certain emotional reassurances.  But a “cheap appeal to God” will not endure the next challenge.

 

So there is another “threat of meaninglessness” that challenges any and every easy “appeal to God.”  Here let us bring in Dostoevsky and his novel Brothers Karamazov.  Dostoevsky has one of his characters, Ivan, relate a story of how an innocent child was torn to shreds by dogs that a rich baron set upon the  child for a trivial reason.  Ivan throws out a challenge to his monk brother, Alyosha:  how can this happen in a world created by God?  what is the possible meaning of claiming there is a good and loving God?  Ivan doesn’t even contest or argue with Alyosha about his faith–he simply “turns in his ticket to this universe.”  He calls this universe ultimately absurd and meaningless if such things are possible, and so he implicates the God that Alyosha believes in, the God who has created this universe.  In a sense Dostoevsky has anticipated the questions raised by the events of the Holocaust and all the genocides through the centuries.  The postmodern thought world, where everything, even religion, has become a commodity to make you feel good, and we are all happy consumers, the postmodern verdict on all this suffering would be: “In the grand scheme of the universe  your suffering is utterly meaningless–life and all that comes with it has no transcendent meaning or value.”  Of course it is never put so directly or so openly–more like it would be: “Shit happens”; “Bummer.”

 

It is interesting and important that Alyosha does not answer Ivan or argue with him.  We cannot answer the hard questions that someone who is a bearer of such suffering presents to us.  Certainly not by a cheap appeal to God, as if we had a grasp of what we are really claiming to know.  Again, the different religious traditions have different ways of dealing with this situation, but suffice it to say that we can DO the following 3 things:

  1. We can try to prevent victimization as much as it is possible within our power even at great cost to ourselves and our own security.
  2. We can stand WITH the victim in his/her suffering–not as some outsider who brings in the notion of God more to reassure ourselves that everything is really ok.
  3. We can abide in faith.

 

This last thing needs some explanation, and here we return to our reflection on Advent and Christian Eschatology.  This is the point of all those varied “end of time” scripture readings.  They are meant to empower us in a symbolic way to abide in faith in the most “un-faith-filled” situations in the course of history.  Now let us consider this line of poetry:

 

for thirty pieces of silver he sold him

 

This is actually not the full line–we left off the last syllable–here is the full line:

 

for thirty pieces of silver he sold himself.

 

In the first quote we had left off the last syllable, “self.”  With the addition of that last syllable the whole sentence is transformed from a brute fact of history into a revelation of an inner meaning of that fact.  But it is only when you get to that last syllable that you understand. This is an interesting illustration of the situation. So history is experienced as this flow of  “one syllable” after another, offering us one naked fact after another, but what Christian eschatology claims is that 1.) there is a “last syllable” that transforms the meaning of it all; and 2.) that this “last syllable” is both “at the end of time” and within our hearts already.  This is due to the fact that when the Divine Logos became flesh, in the traditional translation, it entered history, that which human beings create–and the second coming will be a kind of completion and fulfillment of what began in the Incarnation. The Greek word is sarx–the Word became sarx–that is the flux and flow of human existence, the transience and impermanence of the human reality, in Buddhist terms, samsara.  The “last syllable” of history is now both within history already and “at the end” of history.  The scripture readings, then, point in two directions:  first, that there is a great(indeed, a cosmic) significance to history–history is not just “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”– and the collective history of the human family is significant and not just our own personal holiness or realization and that we as community and as human family share in the unfolding of this meaning, and so the suffering of every man, woman and child, no matter how obscure, is now not lost in the sequence of events but connected to that “last syllable” and therefore part of that which will render history meaningful; and secondly that there is a great significance even to the smallest human activity within history–nothing is “not meaningful”–even offering a drink to a thirsty stranger is now of great significance and meaning because “you did it to Me.”  These eschatological scripture readings, then, empower us, in a symbolic way,  to abide in faith.  Even in the darkest situation, even in the most incomprehensible events, even when all resources for meaning are helpless, we abide in the mystery of faith, not with cheap solutions, but within the silence of our hearts where we sense the presence of that “last syllable,” and beyond the horizon of our history where we look for the manifestation of that “last syllable.”  We abide in the faith that leads to boundless love and transcendent meaning.

 

Interreligious Dialogue

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 In a sense interreligious dialogue is nothing new.  People from various traditions have been talking to each other for many centuries and borrowing ideas and practices from each other to enrich and expand each tradition.  It has been said that St. John of the Cross borrowed some ideas from the Sufis, and the Sufis imported some practices and methods from the early Christian monks.  Hindus and Buddhists seem to have reached the ancient Hellenistic world and had exchanges with the Neoplatonist thinkers and mystics in the West. Also, Buddhism borrowed stuff from the native shamanic religion of  Tibet, and so on, and so on.  However, in the 20th Century, interreligious dialogue takes on a new intensity and scope, and there is a felt need to engage “the other” as never before.  We might attribute that to the simple recognition that we all better get along if we are to have a truly liveable planet.  This might be called an “ethical dialogue”–we discover we need to talk to one another and to cooperate on many levels if we are to ward off the dehumanization of our lives by war, violence,  famine, technological and economic manipulation, and finally global warming.  It is the recognition that truly “No man is an island.” 

 

But much more than that has also been unfolding in interreligious dialogue.  Perhaps for the first time there is a felt need on the part of many people in various traditions to encounter and engage “the other” precisely as “other.”  No longer, it is felt, that we can stay within the “fortress” of our own tradition, aloof from “the other.”  Nor is “the other” to be seen as a threat or an entity to be swallowed up or conquered.  No, that very “otherness” is to be respected and maintained and held in a kind of positive tension.  “Difference” is now seen as a gift which needs unpacking and unfolding until we discover its real Truth.  To borrow a term from Eastern Christian iconography, the “difference” between me and you is now to be seen as “the space of the heart.”  It is in this space, which is “our difference” that we sense the discovery of our One Heart.

 

 

Those of us who are members of the Christian West need a deep moment of profound repentance before we can truly engage in this kind of dialogue.  We have not dealt well with “otherness” or “difference.”  When Christian Europeans discovered the New World and encountered “the otherness” of the native peoples, they debated whether these people were to be considered as human beings.  Then they enslaved them or exploited them if not totally exterminating them.  Ultimately this shows a profound fear of “otherness” and a deep-seated arrogance at the heart of Western Civilization that most Westerners even today do not recognize.  It comes covered over with a thick veneer of benevolence dished out from a seeming position of a superiority engendered by all our marvelous gadgetry. It will take profound humility to even recognize this arrogance.  Now whatever problems other traditions carry that might impede this dialogue, their adherents must assess that themselves.

 

 

Interreligious dialogue has taken place on several levels.  On one level people from different traditions have come together to share and exchange views on matters of life experience, on matters of practices and methods, on solutions to practical problems, etc.  This is very good and it fosters friendships and collaborations that are very helpful.  But there is a level that is also very difficult: that of teachings, doctrine, claims made, historical statements, etc.  Here we run up against some interesting problems.  Again we will address the issues only from the Christian side.  Those from other traditions have to address these issues in their own way.

 

 

First of all we will just skip the problem of fundamentalism–it fears dialogue; it wants no part of dialogue.  Now institutional official Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism have fostered dialogue, but it seems so often that a “conversion dynamic” is at work deep down in these well-intentioned encounters.  What happens is that the “otherness” of “the other” is seen as only a kind of preparation for “our message,” and in a friendly way “the other”, given enough time and effort, can be transformed into a mirror image of ourselves. The actual theological position is of course more complicated and more multifaceted, but the gist of it is still a kind of reduction of the “otherness” to a surface reality. Strangely enough a similar problem lies at the other end of the dialogue spectrum.  Here also “the otherness” of “the other” is a surface reality, but in this case we can easily skip “that otherness” because it is merely in words or language, and then we move to a premature proclamation of oneness.  No transformation is needed because we are already one no matter how different and contradictory the teachings may seem.  Here also many are well-intentioned, but in attributing “difference” to mere word play or in the mere inadequacy of any tradition to “grasp the whole,” they miss the point:  “difference” is neither a superficial reality, nor a negative reality, but a gift with which and within which  we should abide together in love and freedom.

 

There probably is a need to mention some lived examples of the above.  Very well known is Thomas Merton.  Much, much less well known is Rabbi Ariel Bension.  He was a Sephardic Jew born in Jerusalem, and he was one of the first Sephardi to study in a modern European university.  He wrote a book that is also not well-known: The Zohar in Mulim and Christian Spain.  Rabbi Bension had intimate knowledge of both Kabbalah and Sufism.  During the last phase of his life he was a rabbi in Manastir, a Sephardic and Sufi center in the Balkans, where Jews frequented the Sufi assemblies of their Albanian and Turkish Muslim neighbors–that is before the Nazis and the Serbs massacred both.  Rabbi Bension died in 1932.

 

 

Somewhere Jesus in the Gospels says: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  This is a radical statement as it stands in its naked simplicity–not very comforting to the spirit of our times, nor of any times actually.  But let us broaden this saying even a bit more in the context of what we are discussing.  Each of our traditions is loaded with riches–we are rich in rituals, practices, teachings and doctrines.  Paradoxically enough these may become a real obstacle to our entering “the kingdom of God.”  Here let us listen again to the Sufi Bayazid Bastami: “The thickest veils between man and God are the wise man’s wisdom, the worshipper’s worship and the devotion of the devout.”  In a sense we have to pass “through the eye of the needle”–this is what it means to encounter “the other” (and of course from the theist perspective the Ultimate Other is God!).  As Jesus says, for man this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.  And that means giving ourselves to the process and letting it carry us to a place we never foresaw.  Now that does NOT mean jettisoning doctrines, teachings, etc. when they become inconvenient for what we think is unity.  But it does mean that we begin to feel that we need each other; that we need “the other” precisely as other; that what “the other” brings to the table begins to open up new dimensions of understanding of our own tradition.  This is only the first step.  We take it.  Then we see where the next step will be. We learn to live with “the otherness” of “the other”; we dwell with the “mystery of the difference” even as we open our hearts to “the other.”  Perhaps we will have some hard questions for “the other”; perhaps he/she will have some hard questions for us.  This is where we must not be impatient We may even discover that our own tradition is actually a mystery that needs to be rediscovered by us!  We may find a very big question lying at the very center of our heart, a question about our own identity(cf. Abhishiktananda).   Let us listen to the great German poet Rilke who was writing to a young beginning poet, but whose words are very applicable to our situation:

 

 “I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

 

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paradox & The Language of Spirituality

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Lao Tzu:

Thus it is said:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.

Yet it nourishes and completes all things.”

 

 

 

 

T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets:

(summing up the whole program of St. John of the Cross)

“In order to arrive at what you do not know,

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess,

You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not,

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know.

And what you own is what you do not own.

And where you are is where you are not.”

 

 

Abu Said, “Sufism is glory in wretchedness and riches in poverty and lordship in servitude and satiety in hunger and clothedness in nakedness and freedom in slavery and life in death and sweetness in bitterness…”

 

 

No matter what tradition you are following, if you are on the monk’s way, you will be familiar with the language above–it is the language of paradox and contradiction, and it is the only way that one can really speak of the deeper realities.  Now there are at least two critical mistakes to avoid when encountering such statements.  One mistake might be called “fundamentalist”; that is, one takes such statements in a kind of simplistic, literalist sense; one uses them as formulas or recipes in a spiritual cookbook.  The other mistake might be called a “liberal fallacy”–one takes such language as mere wordplay, or logical nonsense, or as a kind of manipulation of language which amounts to saying nothing.  But what is striking is that no matter what tradition you are following some form of this paradoxical language will be there.  No matter how that tradition uses that paradoxical language, it inevitably points to the “ungraspable” nature of the ultimate reality that the tradition is trying to open up for you–that is, it is ungraspable by the rational mind and the ego self.  Because the Ultimate Reality is not another thing in a world of things, the ego self experiences it as nothingness–there is “no thing” there to grasp, to possess, to manipulate, etc.  Yet this Ultimate Reality fills all, sustains all, is manifest by all, and finally it pertains to your deepest identity.

 

 

In Christianity we find many of its mystics and spiritual writers resorting to such paradoxical language as sampled above in the T.S. Eliot quote.  St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing are just a few of the more illustrious examples.  But what is important is that we find paradox right at the heart and origins of Christianity–in the Gospels and the New Testament.  There we learn that to be “first” one must seek out the last place; that to be “first” one must be the servant of all; that to save your life means you will lose it, and to lose one’s life means to save it; that to be the “greatest” one should be the “least”; that wealth is real impoverishment; that real blessedness can look and feel “real bad”; etc. The average Christian seems numb to the provocative nature of this language–in a sense it has been “dumb downed” to a general “feel good” message. Such language now takes its place among the other cliches and platitudes of pop culture–like Be Yourself…etc….

 

Now perhaps the most powerful of all paradoxes in all the world religions is not in the realm of language but in the realm of symbol: the cross, or in the Catholic tradition, the crucifix.  Here we may note in passing that there are different theological interpretations given to the cross vs. the crucifix.  Suffice it to say that the crucifix is more dramatic and concrete–the image of a man nailed to slabs of wood, dying a horrible death.  The cross can seem a bit more abstract and open to more abstract “readings.”  Before we go any further, it needs to be acknowledged that this symbol has been coopted for absolutely terrible uses.  Afterall the Crusaders carried the cross while committing slaughter of Moslems, Jews and even other Christians.  The Grand Inquisitor carried out his duty of leading people to torture and execution under this sign.  The Conquistadors did their dirty deeds while accompanied by priests carrying this sign.  Right in our own time in Serbia, right in the shadow of churches bearing this sign, Christians(so-called) massacred their Moslem neighbors.  Nevertheless these horrific distortions and betrayals, the cross, or the crucifix, carries the unconcealment of a Mystery that only the language of paradox can approach.

 

When one enters a Catholic church anywhere in the world, what strikes one is the centrality of the crucifix.  It is unmistakeable and unambiguous that whatever this reality speaks of is at the center of that community of worship.  And whatever be the different theological interpretations given to this symbol, it does point to the importance of this one man’s concrete, historical death by execution.  And Christian theology, whatever its various interpretations of this symbol, would always agree that the historical moment this symbol encapsulates is a most profound manifestation of the nature of the Ultimate Reality, which we call God.

 

 

Right from the beginning in the New Testament there are different theological readings of the significance of this man’s horrible death by execution.  But perhaps the most fundamental one and most important one brings us to the heart of the paradox that this moment signifies: God is totally present in the “most ungodly” place and situation.  Everything else flows from this fact–including the Christian Mystery of the Resurrection.  God is within this “nightmare and hell”–not outside as some external agent.  In the place and situation that seems most abandoned by God, in the darkness in which there seems not a trace of divine light or any kind of light, in the moment in which there is not a speck of happiness or hope, right there is the fullness of God present.

 

 

Louis Dupres has reflected most deeply and eloquently on this fact.  He has reminded us of that old American slave hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my lord?”  The slave sang this with his/her lips and knew in his/her heart that truly they WERE there because they ARE there–HE is truly being crucified in them, in their misery and wretchedness.  He is THERE where they are.  But Dupres does not stop with this observation–he brings it home to all of us.  Let us listen to him:

 

“Christian piety has always sought an intimate presence to Jesus’ Passion rather than a mere commemoration of the past….  To be with Him in the present of His agony and rejection when no triumph was in sight, that is to be where he really was.  But to be present to His hour means more than to be present there in feeling.  It means entering into the dark reality of my own suffering, lonelines and failure.  Only in the brokenness and pain of life am I with Him where he continues to live His agony….  Does it ever go beyond the pain of thin-skinned selfishness, the disappointment of vulgar ambitions, the frustration of unpurified desires, and the loneliness of self-inflicted isolation?  How dare I call what possesses so little dignity “suffering”?  Whenever I lift my eyes to the crucified Savior it is mostly to move away from my private misery, certainly not to move into it.

“Nevertheless, Christian piety teaches that very suffering of mine, however despicable and even sinful in its origins, is Jesus’s agony in me.  Comparing my pain with Jesus’s Passion may seem blasphemous.  But all suffering began with a curse.  His as well as mine.  Whether pain has its roots in private weakness and failure, or whether it is inflicted by an entire universe of weakness and failure, the effect remains the same.  To him who suffers, suffering means always failure.  Jesus’s words on the cross–My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?–do not express the attitude of one who is performing a clearly understood, effective sacrifice….

“Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?”  Was I there in my suffering?  For that is where He is being crucified–in me, not in Jerusalem….  In this world there can be no grace but through redemptive suffering.  To encounter God’s agonizing grace I must walk into the bleak desert of my private pain and humiliation.  Perhaps I shall be able to accomplish no more than silently to accept my inability to accept.  But not more is expected: to confront my bitterness, rebellion, greed, jealousy, rage, impatience is to encounter Jesus’ agony in my own.  I must find Jesus’ agony also in those private worlds of suffering around me, which I am so reluctant to explore and so unable to comprehend.  Here also I am invited to accept, without understanding, Jesus’ agony in the uncouth, the uncivilized, the unlovable.  On Good Friday failure itself has become redemptive.  That Jesus fails in me is the joyous mystery of the union between God and me.”

 

Amen.

 

Here paradox has seemingly reached its limits within the Christian tradition.  But Meister Eckhart will take us further–another time.