Letter to a Friend

It's miserable now, and the world no doubt seems like it's ending. In a way it is ending.. the world as you once knew it is no more. The sooner you accept that you can never go back to this world the better.. but of course you're probably in no position to accept it yet.

I lost my mind during my separation.. I mean I was lost completely. During that time I had to do whatever it took to keep from going off the deep end into suicide. It meant creating a space for myself right where I was. It meant rethinking what it meant to be me.. you know, who I was as a man apart from anyone else. Throughout history men (and women) have found themselves in that place.. and they have left some heart-wrenching monuments along the way. It is a human truth that each one will move through that moment in a different way. Some will indeed commit suicide.. others will become destructive towards others and themselves.. still others will channel their feelings into a momentous creative act.. some will travel. Each one is different.

The reality is life is an open possibility.. even though it may not feel like it right now. It is. The key is not to do something stupid that will narrow those possibilities.. In the moment this kind of foresight is rare.. but it is vital. Destructiveness is ultimately futile. Suicide works in that it ends the pain, but it's permanent, without the possibility of discovery or a new event. But all men, having considered suicide and persevered, realize what a small thing it was, in the end, that caused them to consider death, the most unchangeable human act. The act is not commensurate with the suffering... There is no human experience that is as permanent as death (including suffering), and so the suicidal act is ultimately excessive. What you need is not excessiveness, but simplicity. 

Here in the early hours of darkness is no time to lose your head.

Freud on Reason and Religion

"Our God, Logos, will fulfil whichever of these wishes nature outside us allows, but he will do it very gradually, only in the unforseeable future, and for a new generation of men. He promises no compensation for us, who suffer grievously from life. On the way to this distant goal your religious doctrines will have to be discarded, no matter whether the first attempts fail, or whether the first substitutes prove to be untenable. You know why: in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate, so long as they try to preserve anything of the consolation of religion. No doubt if they confine themselves to a belief in a higher spiritual being, whose qualities are indefinable and whose purposes cannot be discerned, they will be proof against the challenge of science; but then they will also lose their hold on human interest."

Sermon on the Occasion of the Newtown Massacre

One cannot possibly stand before you today and neglect to say a word about the tragic events of recent days.  I would be remiss in my duties to take the pulpit without reference to an event that has drawn the whole world into itself, has caused so much suffering, so much soul-searching. 

At such times one’s pastoral duties must reflect the needs of the people.  To one, consolation.  To another, a listening ear.  To still another, an explanation (as if one can be offered, no matter how crucial an attempt may be).  For some the greatest consolation may come in the form of an explanation.  For others, a prayer or silence.  At the present time, from this stage, it is hardly possible to do all these things. 

One should not forget that a pastor too is caught up in history, in the same events we are all caught up in.  She is not above such events, but in her own way must come to terms with them.  In other words, this platform is not a privileged place where suffering and soul-searching are absent as if, as pastor, one has greater spiritual fortitude and tranquility.  On the contrary, the question of innocent suffering and the growing culture of death around us shakes the pastor to her core.  For this question is one that begs two others that necessarily follow: Where is God and where are God’s people?  The first wonders at God’s seeming absence while the innocent suffer and die: in the present time, young children, six and seven year olds.  This question is really quite an ancient one.  The second one, which is also ancient, wonders at the child of God’s place in the world.  That the Church of God is surrounded by a culture of death is certain.  That the Church of the Father of heavenly lights is already highly influenced and even saturated with this culture is equally certain.  The lesson of Luke 4, in which the Lord encountered a demon-possessed man in the synagogue, is not lost on us here.  Today we must be prepared to admit that among us too there lie powerful forces of evil.  One cannot be naïve in this regard.  There will always be weeds among the wheat, not just people of poor character among other people of relatively better character (!), but within our own hearts too we find weeds and wheat.

We will start with our first question: Where is God?  This is necessary because the answer to our second question regarding the people of God flows naturally from this.  First I think we can all agree that God was not there as the tragic events unfolded.  But we must be clear what we mean when we say “God was not there.”  We know that God, according to Paul and the poet he quotes in Acts 17 is that Being in whom we move and have our own being, and that for this reason he “is not far from any one of us.”  Presumably then he was not even far from the one responsible for the school tragedy.  That is, he is present-for-us at all times.  He is not, in some crude manner, a material substance that fills in the spaces between objects, but rather God is Spirit.  When we say “God was not there” we mean then two things: 1) The actions of the murderer do not reflect the will of any God we know, and 2) God was not there in the form of substance, however powerless, i.e. God did not physically restrain the murderer.  In these ways God was absent.  We must admit, as those who believe in a God, that God was nevertheless present in some way.  This way we call “Spirit.” 

One might ask, “what good is it if God is only present in Spirit, but cannot even lift a finger to help.”  One is entitled to ask this question, and indeed it should  be asked quite openly, even perhaps, especially in the Church of God.  For when we call on God for aid in troubling times, we should not imagine the most fantastic things, as if the greater our imaginings are, the greater our faith is.  We are not unaware of God’s chosen instruments of action, of the place where Spirit moves.  We are not ignorant of the meanings or implications of the Incarnation.  We have seen how consistent is God’s plan in that in our Saviour dwelt bodily the fullness of the Deity (Col.2:9), and now in his Church so too his Spirit dwells and moves.  The apostles were not in error to fall upon the ground and worship him, a man who hungered and grew thirsty, who defecated and shared all our bodily functions, though by all appearances their actions were shear madness.  So too the body of Christ today is made up of many undesirable parts and yet here Spirit moves.  God is Spirit.  This Spirit, who moves where Spirit wills, was surely moving in those present at the recent tragedy, those who made every effort to save the lives of the children in their care, those too who dashed to the scene to stop the murderer, even if it meant losing their own lives in the process.  This spirit of self-sacrifice and love is surely the Spirit whom we are speaking of.  So while we reject the crude notion of a God made up of particles of matter, and absent this type of God from the scene, we simultaneously acknowledge a much more tragic, yet for that very reason, triumphant Spirit present in the self-giving love and care of those present.  We cannot forget that if God can be pierced on a cross, he can be pierced in the heart of his people. 

This is the answer to our second question: “Where are God’s people?”  They are where the Spirit of God moves.  When they act and love they manifest the Spirit to and in the world.  Just as Eternity miraculously made its way into the body and form of a human being, so too Eternity now rises up out of this same body, each one of us -out of our finitude and smallness, it nevertheless rises!  You see God was not helpless to act in these tragic events, God did act.  Just as God once relied on a frail human body, so too God continues to rely on frail beings, beings afraid to act, to speak out, afraid to challenge the forces of nihilism and death that pervade our culture, afraid to meet the cross on our own, these creatures God lives amongst and shows himself to the world through.  Yet we have seen in the self-sacrifice of a few for the many that this is not a spirit of timidity, that in the end the will of the Father is our spiritual sustenance, a cup we are capable of drinking if we will take it in our hands as the few have done. 

The time has come to dispense with false notions of a God, with the individualism that runs so rampant we are not able to recognize in the Church the collective body of Christ, the Spirit of God.  One should not read the promise: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt. 28:20) without simultaneously reading “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18): the Spirit that now dwells among us.  “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you” (Rom. 8:9). 

What will be your basic orientation to the world around you dear child of the Spirit?  Will you confront the forces of death and decay with your comrades, shining a light into every dark corner, even those corners of your heart?  Will you participate in this culture of death and sit idly by, allowing the cup you've been offered to pass to others?  Or will you take this cup and drink it to the dregs with the conviction that today, as far as you and the great company of your comrades are concerned, Spirit will rise?

Regarding justifications

When will the justifications not be enough?

It is the case that the answer to the question of innocent suffering is simultaneously the fulfillment of our need for an explanation.

For this reason the justifications will always be enough.  The dissonance thinking animals experience as a result is reinterpreted as faith, real, suffering faith.

This does no honour to the slain whatsoever, but rather reinforces individual ego.   The religion of apology and silent yet suffering fidelity is the religion of Ego justification.

The only proper response is not to justify the very One who supports and reinforces ego, but rather to reject this One as a prosthesis. 

There is no ultimate meaning here.  The suffering of innocents is the necessary consequence of our animal nature.  Looking for answers anywhere other than this sublime (and yes, monstrous) animal is an affront to human being and existence. 

Eternal Returning

Rilke

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love

and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,

and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others

fall: again and again the two of us walk out together

under the ancient trees, lie down again and again

among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

The Odyssey

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine—
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again—
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours
They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Andrew Lang, 1844-1912