I am reading a fascinating philosophical work by Edith Stein, the controversial once-Jewish nun who was made a saint for her death at Auschwitz. The book is called the “Science of the Cross”, and the work does not mean what the title implies to a 21st century audience – the title refers not to “CSI: Golgotha,” but rather to forming an authentic intellectual discipline to frame Christian mysticism with.
I am not far into it, but she is already challenging me in some fascinating ways. One of those ways is a bold new phrase that turns my conceptions on their ear – what she calls “Holy Objectivity”, which she describes as “the original receptivity of a soul re-born by the Holy Spirit. Such a soul reacts to all events in the proper way and at the right depth; it has in itself a living, moving power joyfully ready to let itself be formed, unhampered by false inhibitions and rigidity.”
She calls this objectivity, because she truly and genuinely believes the natural state of our interaction with God (and also our environment) is emphatic. We are not naturally indifferent – it is the cares of life that wear away at our hearts, making us feel joyless, or unmoved. And where God is concerned, our benchmark is that first joyful moment of conversion – that moment when God says, “And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 11:19) That is who, as Christians, we naturally are – the freshly born soul with a heart that can feel terrible grief, incredible joy, but never the grey middle.
I so often hear of people who search longingly to regain the vaguely remembered feeling of unity with God – trying to find the spark of the Holy Spirit. They will switch churches, switch denominations, even switch religions if necessary, to regain the feeling they once felt. Mother Theresa herself was such a person – after a beatific year surrounded by the presence of God, she felt an emptiness for many of the years of her work that she struggled to keep in check. It is certainly not unusual to not only feel without the Holy Spirit, but to be on a quest to reignite it within.
The problem we have, however, if Edith Stein is right, is that we’re often looking in the wrong place. “Holy Objectivity” suggests that the “heart of flesh” is our natural state – our benchmark. Instead of asking where the Holy Spirit is, what we really need to ask is rather what is impeding it?
Think back to your last certain experience of the Holy Spirit. What has come since? Doubt? Have you looked back and attempted to rationalize a scientific way that might explain it away – neuro-chemical reactions? Anxiety? Worry that God has left you? Despair? Something you’ve done that you are sure precludes God’s mercy? Distraction? Things in your worship environment that have taken the focus off the divine and onto people, church activities, or even the church itself?
If you look carefully, the Holy Spirit never left you, and God certainly never lost the capacity to forgive you. You took your own road work, stop signs, traffic jams and inserted them directly into the path of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit is gentle and uninsistent enough that yes, it may seem like it has even left you. But it never did.
St. John of the cross, in the Spiritual Canticle, writes of this affliction of the senses:
Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me to my sorrow, O my Beloved!
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.
He tells us that we cannot look outside for the resolution of this sensual deprivation. No building can fix this for us. Only contemplation opens up the fruits of the church for us, “God is therefore hidden within the soul, and the true contemplative will seek Him there in love, saying, ‘Where have you hidden yourself?’”
As Jesus himself said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” When you were baptized, you joined God, and God joined you, to dwell within. He has never left.
If you don’t see him, you don’t need to go looking – just remove the obstruction.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Seek and you will find
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2 comments:
Ok, so here's the question, how do I find out what the obstruction is? I feel more alert and religious than I ever did before.
In eight words: "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46) We are surrounded by distraction. The other day, I was out in the woods, and I stopped - just stopped. No rustling with the clothes, no waving my maul around, no walking about. In the late fall, there are no birds, no bugs, and on a calm day, nothing really at all. I realized, as I do once in a while, that I have a very mild case of tinnitis! And I'd bet most people do, but we seldom get quiet enough to notice. It can be hard to let God's presence in in the midst of such distraction. That may be in part why Jesus' instructions on prayer in the beatitudes is to go into your room and close the door to pray. You can't honour him or hear him when the world is at hand beckoning.
I think the problem we often have is we look for this connection in the wrong places. The reason Christians have gone to church all these years is to demonstrate the unity of our worship and work as a community of believers, to "exhort one another" (as St. Paul might put it about preaching), and in the older churches (Anglican, Orthodox, Coptic, Catholic) to participate in sacraments (others do this more sparingly than every Sunday.)
What you do with the youth groups is definitely from God, and that is true even if you don't uniquely feel it. In fact, I think the rapturous sentiments of the Pentecostals and other charismatics can even get in the way some of the time. We don't do these works to get "high on God" - we do them because Jesus told and inspired us to ("Love one another, as I have loved you.") If you do that, and share your agape (love) with your youth group, then God is with you, and you are with him, even if there are no flowing endorphins for a sign. Not to be too tacky, but its kind of like what Morpheus says in the Matrix - there's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.
To rebuild that feeling connection at home, there are a couple of meditation techniques I suggest. I'll write more about them as posts, with the caveat that different things work for different people. Some people feel that awe and reverence at church, even with all the distractions (I didn't always, but now do.) I'll write some about that, too! :-)
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