Finding Peace

I am become in His presence as one finding peace.
(Song of Songs 8:10)

Medieval Catholic mystics loved what was then known as the Canticle of Canticles because it has so many layers of meaning. It can be read as the relationship between the soul seeking union with God and the Beloved object of that search. There is a transcendent dimension to this quest, a longing to  'dwell in this translucent darkness and, through not seeing and not knowing, to see Him who is beyond both vision and knowledge' as the writer called Dionysius the Areopagite put it. This indeed would be the very summit of peace, to be in the presence of the Blessed Trinity; adoring and loving.

Yet such a high aspiration seems very distant and enormously difficult to all but a handful of ordinary, simple Christians. Reflecting on this Pope Benedict XVI said 'in the end, the path to God is God himself, who makes himself close to us in Jesus Christ.' That is, to find peace in His presence it is only necessary to find Jesus. Or, to put it another way ' none knows the Father truly except the Son, and those to whom it is the Son’s good pleasure to reveal him.' (Matthew 11:27)

One of the effects of the Incarnation, of Jesus being both fully human and fully divine, is that heaven has been brought down to earth so that we who are earthy can be raised to heaven. When we become clothed with Christ we can enter into the presence of His Father and ours and so find the One who is Peace, Peace Himself. The mystical union ceases then to be the business of merely a few ascetics or philosophers and becomes the achievable object of all the baptised.

To find Jesus, though, doesn't mean simply to know His name or to profess faith in Him with our lips, though both these things are necessary. It is to enter into a loving relationship with Him in each of the places where we encounter Him. In the sacrament of the altar, in the liturgy, in the Gospels, in our prayers, in the depths of our own hearts. This continual exchange of love is both the path to divine union and the achievement of that union. We are in His presence always but it is only when we realise that presence through an outflowing and inflowing of love that we can say that we are also at peace now and forever.
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The painting is Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Rembrandt van Rijn.

Frodo the Mystic

Towards the end of the Lord of the Rings there is a significant piece of dialogue-

" 'Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together,' said Merry. 'We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded.'

  'Not to me,' said Frodo. 'To me it feels more like falling asleep again'."

Each of the hobbits have, physically, travelled long distances but Frodo alone has travelled to places beyond the merely physical. He has had peak experiences of darkness and light and these have taught him that the world we inhabit, so close at hand and seeming solid, is really ephemeral by comparison with what lies beyond the boundaries of normal vision and experience. In that sense he resembles the traveller in the cave allegory of Plato, having seen the Sun he knows that normal life is a focussing on shadows.

More than that, Frodo has been wounded-

'There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?'

Although his injuries were inflicted with malevolent intent, aiming to subdue him to the rule of evil, they have not been effective. His restlessness does not seek slaves to satisfy itself like a Sauron or a Saruman. No, Frodo’s hopes are set elsewhere-

...the ship went out into the High Sea on into the West, until at last on a night of rain, Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

The purpose of Christian mysticism is to seek union with God not to enjoy what classical authors call ‘consolations.’ Nonetheless, for many mystics transcendent moments, glimpses of the Divine do form part of the journey. Those moments of grace have the twofold effect that Frodo experienced, that is they make the mystic see the world differently, as less substantial, and they resemble a wounding. The Catholic mystical writer St John of the Cross put it like this-

Where have you hidden,

             Beloved, and left me moaning?

             You fled like the stag

             after wounding me;

             I went out calling you, but you were gone.

Having been wounded the only cure is to seek out the One who inflicted the wound since He alone has the power to heal. This search, though, will often lead through lands of desolation and darkness, akin to the lands Frodo travelled across in his quest.

Why, since you wounded

             this heart, don't you heal it?

             And why, since you stole it from me,

             do you leave it so,

             and fail to carry off what you have stolen?

All we can do is travel, the final decision about when or if we shall encounter the One who heals and then be healed is not ours but His. Tolkien indicates this by the way in which he allows providence and not Frodo himself to effect the destruction of the Ring on Mount Doom. Frodo’s time in the Shire, however, is not simply a passive waiting for the final journey. Although he is little seen and less regarded by most of the hobbits of the Shire it is his wisdom and guidance which lies behind the active measures, and the compassion, by which Merry, Pippin and Sam set things to rights. Mystics, contemplatives and hermits are not called to self indulgently seek a private fulfillment but to be witnesses to the world of the deep truth that lies hidden to eyes that do not seek it. Frodo uses his experience, and his wounds, as a guide to those who have travelled less far than him.

One of the concerns of most religions is to help prepare people for death and Frodo’s last few years in the Shire and his final journey into the West can be seen as metaphors for old age (or sickness) and death. But there is no real contradiction between the mystical path of seeking union with God and the more common one of preparing for a good death. The end is the same, to be at rest in the eternal heart of infinite love who is our God. The mystic, like Frodo, experiences here and now a foretaste of what each of those who are faithful to the end can hope to experience forever.

(this post first appeared on the Quiet Column blog under the name of Étienne McWilliam)

LOTR quotes can be found at http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/returnking/quotes/shire.php

St John of the Cross quotes from

http://onetruename.com/StJohn.htm

The Esoteric Christ?

                                          Did Jesus Teach a Secret Gnostic Doctrine?

And when he was alone, those present along with the Twelve questioned him about the parables. He answered them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables
Mark 4:10-11

Since ancient times there have been those who say that Jesus taught one doctrine openly and another, higher, one secretly to those initiated into His circle.From time to time groups have emerged, and still emerge, which claim to be custodians of this doctrine or to have 'rediscovered' it. A claim which, of course, it is impossible to either verify or to disprove. A somewhat related theory suggests that during His youth our Lord went to India and upon His return taught some form of Buddhism or Vedanta Hinduism to those followers whom He had first drawn to Him by preaching a radical form of Judaism.

To some extent these are all conspiracy theories; a way of viewing the world which is notoriously difficult to unsettle. Anyone who wishes to believe such a theory, whatever form it may take, is meeting a psychological need and is likely to be impervious to those facts which fail to meet that need. Nonetheless I think that it is a worthwhile exercise to demonstrate why I think these are untenable approaches for explaining the mission of Jesus.

It is certainly true that there are a number of texts which show our Lord unfolding His teaching in a veiled way (the parables) before huge crowds and in a more explicit way (the discourses) before His disciples. What they don't show is that there is any difference in content between the parables and the discourses, the latter explain the former they don't alter their meaning. Moreover the category of 'disciples' is not clearly defined. The Apostles were a group of 12 who accompanied Jesus but the disciples were simply those who were attracted to Him by His teachings and works. We cannot then assume that wherever Jesus went the disciples who listened to Him were a fixed group of people. In all probability those who joined the Apostles to hear the explanations of the parables were people who had been in the crowd and who desiring to learn more had come forward to ask questions. To believe in an esoteric doctrine we need to suppose that Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds then more clearly in His discourses to the disciples and then more clearly still to an inner circle of initiates including the Apostles and Mary Magdalene. And there simply is no warrant in the texts to assume that this third stage happened.

Another point to note is that there are texts in which our Lord quite clearly suggests that He is not preaching a secret doctrine. In Mark 4, for example, we have- 'He said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light.' (Mark 4:22) And before the Jewish High Priest He said- “I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me? Ask those who heard me what I said to them. They know what I said." (John 18:20-21) So either Jesus was lying, in which case He has not a spiritual leader worth following, or He was telling the truth in which case there is no esoteric doctrine of the Christ only the public one.

History suggests that all but one of the Apostles met a violent death, martyred for the sake of the public doctrines of the Christian Church. There are some who dispute this but the Gospel certainly points to Peter's martyrdom (John 21:19) and Paul's willingness to be martyred (Acts 20:22-24.) There is no doubt either that many Bishops and others one can assume to be in the inner core of the Church willingly suffered torture and death for the openly professed doctrines of the Church. Now, why would they do that if they held those particular doctrines to be of little importance besides the esoteric ones which they secretly believed? One answer would be that the secret teachings were equally liable to persecution by the Roman authorities. The problem with that is that the various Gnostic groups and sects who claim to hold and teach the esoteric doctrines of Jesus Christ do not, in fact, advance anything that the Romans would have found half so objectionable as they thought Apostolic Christianity to be.

If Jesus is the unique Incarnation of the Son of God whose crucifixion and death redeems those who acknowledge Him to be Lord and Saviour then Christians are obliged to refuse worship to anyone else. This is the thing which most annoyed the authorities of the day and led to the persecution of the new movement. However, the Gnostics tend to claim that Jesus is simply, like the Buddha, the one who has most fully attained the life of the Spirit. What He offers is not Himself as such but His teachings. That being so there is no compelling reason to allow yourself to be killed for asserting His unique divinity when you believe that anyone can become equally divine by accepting His teachings and living them to the full. If you think that an esoteric doctrine exists then it requires you to suppose that it was held and taught not by the Apostles but by some other group who constituted an inner circle separate from the only inner circle for which we have any textual evidence.

There is an equal but opposite argument advanced by some Protestant Evangelicals that the Catholic Church dwells too much on what it calls 'mysteries,' especially regarding the Sacrifice of the Mass.It is said that the Church is pretending that the clear and simple message of Jesus has some hidden meaning that only priests can penetrate on behalf of the faithful. This is to misunderstand the meaning of the word 'mystery.' It signifies that there are things beyond the power of the human mind to understand fully. It does not signify that there are things which are fully known but deliberately hidden. It is, for example, impossible to fully unpack a sentence like ' I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world' (John 6:51) without coming up to the boundaries of the knowable. In that sense Christianity is and always will be a mysterious religion. What it isn't and never has been is a two-speed religion with the fullness of revelation reserved for initiates and some second-rate hand-me-down reserved for a gullible public. The Christ of the Church is the Christ for all.

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Enlightenment Too? Who Needs #Buddha 3?

Part of the quest that points people Eastward as the desire to achieve enlightenment. This is understood as a moment in time when suddenly one "gets it". Everything which before was seen as in a glass darkly suddenly becomes limpidly clear and understood not only as an idea in the mind but as an entering into the ultimate truth such that from that moment one inhabits and is inhabited by that truth, that reality behind the reality. A model for this is provided by the Buddha. After experiencing this moment he reputedly said-

153. Through many a birth in samsara have I wandered in vain, seeking in the builder of this house (of life). Repeated birth is indeed suffering! 

154. O house-builder, you are seen! You will not build this house again. For your rafters are broken and your ridgepole shattered. My mind has reached the Unconditioned; I have attained the destruction of craving

Dhammapada 11 

Leaving aside the belief in reincarnation, which is something many Westerners who attach themselves to Eastern spiritualities are more than happy to do, the questions that interest me are-

• Does this moment of satori, as it is referred to in Zen, consist of a genuine and genuinely valuable insight of life changing significance?
• Is there anything analogous and arguably superior to it within the Christian tradition?

Only those who have actually experienced such a Bodhi Tree moment can really answer the first question of course and I can make no such claim. Basing myself, however, on the description of the effects of such moments and the subsequent life paths of some who have claimed to have them I can draw some tentative conclusions.

Firstly, making having such an experience a primary goal of life leads to practices of self discipline, self control, benign (if detached) compassion and an emphasis on the non-material non-passionate aspects of life which are on the whole beneficial spiritually and emotionally. For the reason that they are also rather challenging more people, perhaps, desire enlightenment than pursue such paths seeking to shortcut the process with the aid of drugs, ritualism or the gadfly practice of flitting from teacher to teacher or book to book. This creates something of a spiritual version of the dieting industry which relies upon repeated failures leading to new attempts to avoid doing the obvious thing of eating less and exercising more or its Buddhist/Taoist/Vedanta equivalents.

Secondly, satori certainly sounds like a final snapping of the threads. A reaching of the point where one is definitively, so far as it is ever possible for frail humans to do anything which they don't subsequently undo, detached from the desire for things or for sensual pleasures as an end in themselves. That being so it simply must be a life changing experience and a valuable one too since it is a heart-recognition of the simple truth that we can all profess with our lips that the ownership of things and an enslavement to desires and whims is no route to happiness. The caveat to that is, once you are detached what then? Is it an end to growth and if not then into what do you grow? If you have realised the truth then repeating the same realisation again and again achieves nothing but if your understanding can grow then what you recognised in the first place was but a fragment of truth.

It seems to me that Christianity can offer two analogues to this own well known and one less so. The first is that which is pretty much accessible to all and is the initial conversion experience, like that of St Paul on the road to Damascus. Most Christian traditions afford examples of this and it is variously referred to as conversion, being born again,  personal assurance of salvation and so on. The experience of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is interesting in this context-

It was while here that the ideas for what are now known as the Spiritual Exercises began to take shape. It was also on the banks of this river that he had a vision which is regarded as the most significant in his life. The vision was more of enlightenment, about which he later said that he learned more on that one occasion that he did in the rest of his life. Ignatius never revealed exactly what the vision was, but it seems to have been an encounter with God as He really is so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, and experience that enabled Ignatius to find God in all things.

A Brief Biography of St Ignatius 

These Christian experiences sometimes come like a bolt from the blue, as in St Paul, and sometimes after a time of searching and prayer, as in St Ignatius and also St Augustine. What is common to both is that they are experienced as a gift. They come by an act of the grace of God, they are the work of the Holy Spirit. They are certainly life changing and definitive but they are not the pure product of self directed effort they are rather a turning point in a relationship, a moment where love deepens. They are also, therefore, the foundation for growth since it is a relationship which never ends and a love which can never be exhausted.This is because, in Catholic understanding at least, conversion is not an event it is a process albeit one which can incorporate more or less dramatic event within itself.

Unlike Christian mysticism this kind of conversion experience is not a hard to find secret buried deep in the Church's repository of ways to know God. Most Westerners with a Christian background will be at least vaguely aware of the type of thing which I have described. Yet they eschew it in favour of the spiritual athleticism of the Eastern spiritualities, or its faddish diet-like equivalents. I would hazard that this is because it is a dependent process, it is a violation of the individualistic autonomy which is the prize possession of the modern Westerner. We must accept that we are wholly reliant on the initiative of God to make real progress. The Little Way of St Therese, where we make ourselves very small so that Jesus can easily pick us up and carry us up the stairs is an anathema to this mindset. Humility is one of the least popular of the virtues in our times. I think, incidentally, that this is peculiar to the Western approach to these traditions and that Asian understandings of their own faiths are much more open to being humble.

The second analogue to satori is Union with God. This is the high point of Christian mysticism and represents the peak of the notion of divinisation, God became Man that Man might, by grace, become God. St Catherine of Genoa, quoted by Underhill, said  “My me is God, nor do I know my self-hood save in Him,” or as she said elsewhere.My being is God, not through participation, but through true transformation and through annihilation of my own being...So in God is my me, my I, my strength, my bliss, my desire. But this 'I' that I often call so - I do it because I cannot speak otherwise, but in truth I no longer know what the I is, or the Mine, or desire, or good, or bliss. The point being that the mystic is caught up into the mystery of God and the boundaries between self and God cease to exist. She has realised the oneness of creature with Creator, realisation meaning not an intellectual understanding but a whole person submerging in what is beyond all finite understanding. She may return to earth as it were but never after loses that consciousness which she has gained, provided only she remains humble and accepts as gift and not earned reward all that she has experienced.

These mystic peaks, however, only qualify to be called enlightenment in the sense that the knowledge of the fact that we really know nothing is the fullest enlightenment that we can have. The idea of Union transcends the notion of satori. It is an entering into the Divine life and it's entering into us. As conversion is relationship so Union is consummation. Technique plays a part in helping us reach this point but to be melted in the embrace of the beloved ultimately requires His initiative so humble love and hopeful patience are the greatest techniques we can deploy. And these are seldom highly desirable to the Western seeker.The Christian, however, might argue that with such a goal to aim for these virtues are a small price to pay.


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Who needs #Buddha?

How the Mystic Heart of Christianity has been hiding in plain sight

At one time or another many Westerners, myself included, have rejected Christianity and looked for answers to our spiritual needs in the wisdom of the East. The clear market leader here is Buddhism in many and various forms. The Hindu tradition around the Bhagavad Gita also has its Western niche audience. There is too a thriving trend for mix-and-match a la carte Eastern spirituality where consumers buy into the ideas that stroke their spiritual erogenous zones while ignoring any inconvenient ballast that accompanies them. The then Cardinal Ratzinger once suggested that European Catholics who converted to Buddhism were guilty of a kind of spiritual auto-eroticism a statement which sounds harsh but, like Buddhism itself, has a distinct portion of truth contained within itself.

My purpose here is not to criticise these major world faiths. The Catholic Church, in the document Nostra Aetate , recognises that these ways of seeking God are not without glimpses and flashes of Him who cannot be hid. No, my business here is to suggest that we are often too eager to discard a Christian faith which contains within itself precisely those elements which we most like about the Eastern faiths and moreover does so in a far more incarnated ie fully human sense. In part also this easy abandonment of our own historic faith is assisted by Christianity itself hiding its mystical light under a bushel. An added attraction about the Eastern faiths is that by looking at them from a distance we are not bothered by the vulgarisation of them in actual Eastern societies or by the abundant failings of their practitioners and these perhaps are the very things that distance us from Christianity. We in the West get the refined essence of Buddhism and the dirty washing of Christianity.

One of the biggest selling points of the Eastern traditions is the habit of meditation. The clearing of the mind from cluttering thoughts, feelings and distractions so that an inner light, a tranquil crystal clear lake, a pure lotus blossom or whatever other metaphor of choice springs to mind can manifest itself and we can enter into a personal zone of peace. In this state we can encounter the Reality which underlies the bewildering, deceiving surface aspects of our lives and our selves and so become Real in all that we are and do. This is a worthy project but few who embark upon it consider for even a nano-second that by far and away the most popular form of meditation in the West is the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It is, perhaps, in this meditative format that we come up most clearly against the incarnate and disincarnate contrast between the two modes of spirituality. In the Rosary the mind is indeed emptied of clutter. This is done to focus upon Jesus and Mary and the God who intervenes directly in human history thereby strengthening our relationship with Him. Other historic Christian meditative approaches have a similar sort of focus. The Orthodox Jesus Prayer or Prayer of the Heart, popularised in the wonderful little book The Way of a Pilgrim, the single word focussed upon in the Cloud of Unknowing, the dry, barren desert St John of the Cross writes about in The Dark Night of the Soul. Each of these, all of these, in some way or another encourages us to leave behind the distractions and delusions of the everyday world to centre ourselves on that which, or rather whom, is the very centre and cause of our own being and all being.

The aim of Eastern meditation, be it self, Self, Overself, Atman, Nirvana, is ultimately impersonal or even a simple nothingness. That of the Christian is profoundly personal, it is all about relationship. For the Western seeker after inner peace who picks up a smattering of Buddhism or Vedanta this is all hypothetical. What they want is what works, what offers the sand for the white dove to sleep in. Often they turn to the East because it offers a series of techniques which promise to deliver the goods and which they have never found to be on offer in Christianity. Yet when it comes to the simple mechanics of it all the techniques that the West uses are in many respects more or less identical to those of the East. But the West holds them as a well kept secret and the East proclaims them from the housetops. In part this is a necessary consequence of the fundamentally different approach between a faith which is missionary and active and sees its raison d'etre precisely to be incarnated in the hurly burly of daily life and ones which see withdrawal and a passive fatalism as more suited to their genius. In this sense Christian meditation is viewed as a process by which one recharges ones batteries before returning to the fray rather than as an end in itself. Which is more or less exactly what Westerners who turn East want it for too and did they but know that it was there they might turn to it instead.

Its not all about technique though. Whilst both Eastern and Western approaches promise an inner calm, a rest for the restless heart, a way of renewal, a discovery of meaning the Christians does so not on on the basis of an ever increasing spiritual athleticism leading to the winning of a spiritual gold medal. Rather the basis for success is a surrendering, a clearing the way to enable the Grace of God, the still small voice, to speak clearly to us. It is not a technique which transforms us it is a gift. The Christian way claims to be superior, I personally believe that it is so having experienced something of both, but the proof is purely experimental. My only suggestion are these, the Church should make more widely available the treasures of mystic spirituality she possesses and people from a Christian background should not be quite so eager to throw out the baptised baby with the admittedly grubby bathwater.

End of Part One

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Pointless Images

36 Bend my heart to your instructions, not to selfish gain.

37 Avert my eyes from pointless images, by your word give me life. Psalm 118/9 (New Jerusalem Bible)

In an era where English was used in a more elegant fashion the translator might have written "incline my heart" or possibly "sway my heart". What is at issue here is a change of direction in our life's journey and our willing acceptance of a guiding force or power to be the focal point of our heart compass. To talk about a heart swaying is to acknowledge the always real possibility of first bending one way and then bending back upon oneself to return back whence we came, and beyond, upon the road we so need to abandon. To talk of an inclination is to consider that whatever weaving goes on the final destination towards which we aim remains constant. Simply to bend suggests the adoption of an awkward and difficult to retain posture. Which may not be entirely inappropriate for the plea that David is making here is for assistance in doing something that we cannot do ourselves alone.

The word "heart" is rich with meaning and evocative power in the context of Sacred Scripture and Christian tradition, the Orthodox talk of "prayer of the heart", the Catholics of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Blessed John Henry, Cardinal, Newman chose as his motto cor ad cor loquitur, "heart speaks unto heart." The heart is the true centre of a person. It is their essence, that within them which points always towards the true, because it is always itself true. In fact, the mystics would say that it is God Himself since only He is ever true and pointing towards truth so that our own heart, the wellspring of our individual life, is God. He is within as well as without. This would mean that heart speaking to heart is not two hearts but one which nonetheless in a divine paradox is not a monologue but a fruitful dialogue. The mystery at work here is that of a unity of being containing a multiplicity of persons. We are each within God and He within us so that we are one. We are each created uniquely by the One to abide within Him in just the fashion that we are suited to and no other. Our individual personhood is not lost in unity, it is fulfilled.

When David, then, talks of our heart being bent by God towards God He is not referring to that in us which is always inclined in that direction. He is talking of the imagined heart, the simulacrum of a heart, that we create and establish as a pointless image for our eyes to gaze upon and our desires to follow. This is ever bent in an awkward posture since we have created it, however unconsciously, with the express purpose of turning ourselves away from the light which disturbs us and towards the gloom where all is cool and not at all challenging to our sensual desires. In a sense he is asking that we be un-bent.

To the contemporary mind bending to instructions conveys the unpleasant, apparently pointless, image of the individual exchanging freedom for servitude. Of all the illusions we cherish that of absolute individual autonomy is perhaps the most precious to us today. We demand our rights a hundred or a thousand times before we place the same pressure on ourselves to fulfil our obligations. Or, at least, we appear to since the world only functions as well as it does, and we within it, precisely because so many of us fulfil our obligations and discharge our duties a hundred or a thousand times more frequently than we evade them. In truth most of us most of the time do the right thing because it is what the heart impels us to do even while our head, our vain imaginings, pushes us in a different way. What David is praying for here is just this, to unite our thoughts and our imagination to our heart. The instructions we seek are the words which will express to our mind what the heart already knows to be true.

It is, nonetheless, the case that when we come under these divine instructions that we constrain our actions or potential actions and must do real violence to our desires for selfish gain. We embark upon a path of struggle. It is a commonplace of spiritual writers to say that in service is our real freedom but we cannot pretend that this is any other than a freedom which is experienced as a constraint, a gain which feels like a loss. The wound that Original Sin has made in our natures allows us to desire as good things that which harms us and to experience as harms those things which are good. This is why David calls upon the assistance of the good God to make this submission to instructions, without Him we cannot follow the path that leads to happiness. He it is that strengthens us to see that submission, service and self-forgetfulness, those paths that lead away from the pursuit of moment to moment pleasure, is the one road that leads to happiness.  If we seek pleasure alone we do not seek happiness, if we seek happiness who knows what pleasures we shall find along the way?

Among the distractions from that one road which assail our heart are those pointless images of which David speaks. It may be a metaphor for the things which blind the eyes of the heart, but, there are too very many actual images, pointless and aimless, which attract and hold the eyes in our head. It is an often used cliché, sometimes employed even by the fiercest of those partisans of absolute individual autonomy, that we are "bombarded with images". And it is true but not the whole truth. Frequently, daily, hourly, we choose many of those images with which to bombard ourselves. We choose what pictures will distract us. We choose what images will strengthen our resolve to commit actual sin and give us new and varied pleasures of selfish gain. It is not a wholly free choice but a choice it certainly is. Whether it be the Shopping Channel or the Pornography Channel it is a means to reinforce the inclinations we wish to reinforce and drown out the heart voice that calls for us to gaze upon that beyond images which contains all images as realities. The Children of Israel rebelled by creating out of their own resources a Golden Calf to worship. I heard an Anabaptist theologian defining worship is "giving your undivided allegiance to". Like the rebellious Israelites we also give our allegiance to what we produce out of ourselves which is a roundabout way of giving our allegiance to ourselves alone. They are pointless images because they are as insubstantial as our own ego's which a moments careless driving or a day's illness can destroy utterly.

So what we need is life and, moreover, a life which will endure the greatest of traumas and disasters and triumph even over the apparently final drama of death. David asks for that single word of God which is life itself. He did not know what that word was when he asked for it. He did know that there was just such a word and that God would one day speak it and liberate His people by it and through it. And He did. The word is Jesus and praised be His name.


     

Desire, the powerful enemy of the soul

Reflection on The Letter of James 1:13-16

¹³No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 
¹⁴But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 
¹⁵then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. 
¹⁶Do not be deceived, my beloved.

There is a popular school of thought which suggests that the major world religions are basically moral codes, guides about how you should live your life, with supernatural bits more or less artificially tagged on in order to reinforce the point. Certainly history can show us examples of rulers of states or heads of families who, irreligious themselves, encourage religion in lesser mortals as a way to ensure their obedience and compliance with the rules. No doubt too there are many practitioners of religion, including religious leaders, who embrace their faith first and foremost out of a love of order, hierarchy, obedience. I think these all miss the point.

Virtue and morality are not burdens that we take upon ourselves to please a demanding and vengeful God. Vice and immorality are burdens that we shed in order to travel more easily towards a realm of perfect love and pure light. The desire for self satisfaction through possessing for oneself material objects or intense sensual experiences or other persons produce more fetters for our bodies and souls than any number of self sacrificing or self denying acts. Jealous anger, frustrated desire, contemptuous disregard for the needs of others these are the things that make of our days a torment and of our desires a prison. It is only when we leave them to one side that we can truly begin to experience a sense of freedom.

Religion, in the Christian sense, is primarily about a relationship of self giving love and the more freely and fully we can give it then the more fully, and fulfillingly, can we receive it. Each desire for selfish goods is narrow and circular, beginning and ending with ourselves, and so limits our potential to receive what is wide. It is not by taking on a moral code that we can come to know God, it is by knowing God that we can take on a moral code which aids us to know Him better and love Him more, a love primarily expressed through serving and loving our neighbours whom He also loves with a perfect love.

The mystical Theologia Germanica has this interesting passage  

If there were no self-will, there would be no proprietorship. There is no proprietorship in heaven; and this is why contentment, peace, and blessedness are there. If anyone in heaven were so bold as to call anything his own, he would immediately be cast out into hell, and become an evil spirit. But in hell everyone will have self-will, and therefore in hell is every kind of wretchedness and misery. And so it is also on earth. But if anyone in hell could rid himself of his self-will and call nothing his own, he would pass out of hell into heaven. And if a man, while here on earth, could be entirely rid of self-will and proprietorship, and stand up free and at liberty in the true light of God, and continue therein, he would be sure to inherit the kingdom of heaven. For he who has anything, or who desires to have anything of his own, is a slave; and he who has nothing of his own, nor desires to have anything, is free and at liberty, and is in bondage to no man.

This, I think, clearly makes the point that the primary cause of our spiritual sufferings is not that an unjust God forbids us to be gluttons or serial adulterers or possessors of unjustly acquired wealth. The primary cause is that we desire to possess when happiness, in truth, consists of letting go. This is the clear example that Jesus sets us, as laid out in Philippians 2 by St Paul-

 ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 
⁷ but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, 
⁸   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross. 

The image of God the Son leaving behind the glory of heaven to become not only a human but a human born into poverty is a sign that we too need to leave all to obtain all. A similar image is also, perhaps, contained in the story of  Prince Siddhartha leaving his palace and kingdom in order, eventually, to become the Buddha. The one desire that brings us happiness is the desire to love perfectly and to be perfectly loved. All other desires are lesser and will lead us not to lesser happinesses but to greater unhappinesses.



Note. The title of this piece is from a line spoken by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 3:43 "Know Him therefore who is above reason; and let his peace give thee peace. Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul."
All scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version.