Trust the Night...an old piece rediscovered

The Gospel of John says "Nicodemus came to Jesus by night." And so must we, groping in darkness for the outlines of an unseen presence.
   On the day this was written I had had a CT-Scan at the hospital. This was to satisfy my doctor's concern over a small spot located in the upper regions of my left lung. "It's probably some old scar tissue," he mused. "Probably nothing to worry about." (It wasn't)
    It is dark inside a lung, I presume, and into that darkness the electronic gadget probes, seeking truth. It's beam passes undeterred through my outer wall and into the cave of my inner self.
    That night the inner truth about my left lung was hovering somewhere in cyber-space, waiting for my doctor to look on the web and retrieve it.
     Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk and a favorite spiritual author of mine, says that night is a time for monks to learn to "trust in night". This is because "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." If there were no darkness, how could we perceive the light?
     Does God live in the dark interior of a person's lung? Was God speaking to me through an as-yet-undiagnosed "2mm density" nestled there in the darkness? Brother David believes that God speaks through EVERYTHING, in one way or another. I wondered if God were saying, "Jonathan, I am going remove all your darkness, so that light can fill you up completely? " I thought to my myself, "I wonder if you mean to remove all the parts of me that enclose the dark, like, for instance, my skin and skeleton and things like that. If that is what you propose, I hope you can hold off for awhile, a long while, even." Did I hear God chuckle in the darkness? "Hey, this is not funny!" I exclaimed. "I know you are scared," God hinted, whispered. "Trust the night."
    We follow Nicodemus into the night, seeking Jesus. "You must be born from above," Jesus tells him, and us. New flesh, new bones, new self, new life. We are to become spiritual Neo-Nates, blinded by the light, our outer walls having slipped strangely away.
     "I can do this without having cancer," I pointed out to God. "Thanks for reminding me", God said, and then, once again, "trust the night."

Christ the King of Bullies

CHRIST THE KING OF BULLIES

I can’t stand bullies. Once, when our daughter Caitlin was in Middle School, I was watching her play soccer and overheard the opposing coach tell his team to “trip those other girls.” (In fact, he said it loud enough so everyone in the stands could hear). Without thinking, I said to Nancy and our other children sitting beside me, “If somebody trips Caitlin I’m going to burn his car.” No one got tripped, and I have never burned anyone’s car, but my violent aversion to bullies remains. Thus, I take great pleasure when, at the end of each episode of “CSI: Miami” or “Criminal Minds”, the depraved bad guys get blown away by Horatio Kane or some other representative of heroic goodness.

I think many people feel a deep-seated urge to see evil brought down and righteousness vindicated for all to see. In the First reading for “Christ the King Sunday”, the Prophet Ezekiel reflects this same concern when he depicts Israel’s vindication in terms of a shepherd who destroys the bullying fat sheep and establishes safe, bully-free pastures for those who had been oppressed.

“Thus says the Lord GOD: I shall judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide… I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.” (Ezekiel 34: 20/21, 16)

You might say that God is going to punish the false shepherds of Israel by burning their cars.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The summer I turned 18 I went to work for a church agency in Chicago that ran a summer camp for troubled boys. Some of the campers were the same age as me, and some were expert bullies, but I can state with certainty that all of them had been bullied themselves, some by abusive or negligent parents, some by the system, and some just by life. Knowing these boys as I did, it became impossible for me to demonize them. It seemed clear that, if there was to be any healing, any change in the cycle of violence, it would not be the result of any form of revenge or punishment, much less burning someone’s car.

I would say the same thing about the way God works. If Christ is “King” in any sense, it is because he establishes an entirely different sort of kingship. In Ephesians 1:20, we read how “God put [the divine] power to work to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion…[and] put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things…”. That sounds like standard kingship language, except for the part about “far above.” I take this as an indication that the “power” of Christ is of an entirely different sort than that which, as Mao Tse Tung put it, “grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Christ is a king who rules from the cross, without armies or police to enforce his decrees. His authority is exercised in forgiving, healing, and blessing, without coercion, and without revenge.

In one way or another, we are all bullies, and therefore have lost all claim to serve as righteous avengers. Christ the “King” appears among us as a “Good” shepherd, seeking out the lost and restoring the scattered flock. When he himself is scapegoated and bullied, Christ the nonviolent Lamb absorbs the violence and renounces vengeance. When the resurrection occurs, it does not result in some vast public vindication of his kingship, but only in confirmation of what his message had been all along: nonviolent discipleship, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation. Christ is a “king” who appears incognito, hungry and in need of food, sick and in need of treatment, homeless and in need of shelter. According to the Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday, there is only one way to become a citizen of this kingdom, and that is the way of compassion. “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to Christ the King.”

As always, there are ways we can exclude ourselves. We can insist on our prerogative to burn the cars of those we regard as bullies, and then expect that we ourselves be exalted as heroes. We can insist on the standard version of kingship, power, and dominion. It seems clear that God will let us do that, but in the gospels it is even more clear that God will not desist from subverting our violent righteousness, exposing our pretentious rage, and enticing us into a kingdom “prepared before the foundation of the world.”

Healing dream

At the worst point in my bout with pneumonia, I dreamed of staying in a decrepit college dorm with some frightened roommates. "The homeless ones are coming," they told me. There was a knock on the door, and 3 dark figures pressed forward wordlessly, carrying blankets and pillows. "Wait," I said, pressing back against them, "there is no more room here. Go down to the student lounge and wait there for me. I will help you find a place to stay." They departed silently, and I awoke soaked with sweat, and for the first time in many days, my lungs were clear.

Purgatory

Many years ago, in Indiana, I was visiting in a nursing home and happened to glance out a glass doorway at the end of a hallway and was struck by the stark image of dry, standing corn in the field behind the facility. The sky was gray and the corn stalks brown, shuddering randomly in the October breeze. "If you lived here," a voice sounded noiselessly in my head, "that cornfield would be your salvation." 

     A less appealing future is just as hard for me to imagine now as it was then, but to today that same image, brittle and brown as ever, appeared to me as I dozed in the hospital where I reside for the time being, hoping to recover from pneumonia. "Where do you suppose that came from?" I wondered. But there was no question as to which corn, which bleak prospect, or which Jonathan was being evoked and summoned.

Last night, pneumonia-ridden and feverish, I dreamed a familiar scenario of attending a conference/family reunion/deer camp in an unnamed seaside hotel. The event went into recess for the night, and a group of us stepped outside onto the beach. It was full night, with the white sand and low surf reflecting the moonlight. There was no sound...except for someone coughing. Coughing? It was me, gasping for breath as I felt myself drowning in pulmonary fluid. 

  Awake, I reached over to wake Nancy. "I can't catch my breath." "Have you used the inhaler your doctor gave you?" Bless you, Nancy, for your unfailing sense of timing. A couple of puffs, and the spasms slowed, at least for awhile. 

    But the image of black water and bright, empty sand remains, alongside the Indiana cornfield at the of a hallway. These are not cheerful visions, but neither are they simply downers. I understand them as somehow purgatorial, stark rather than menacing, invitations to an oblivion that, after all, includes Nancy and this hospital and the potential, always present, for some obscure salvation. 

4 Directions Prayer

DIRECTIONS PRAYER

FACING EAST… I WELCOME THE COMING DAY, the possibilities, the decisions, the surprises, the risks.

TO THE SOUTH… I WELCOME the warm places, the softness, the congeniality, the fun, the joy that will transpire this day.

TO THE WEST… I WELCOME the deaths, the endings, the losses, the disappointments, the things I cannot change.

TO THE NORTH… I WELCOME THE moments of solitude, the introspection, the silence, the memories, insights, and the recollection of dreams.

GREAT AND HOLY SPIRIT, permit me trespass once again into the sacred precincts. Let me touch my relatives with reverence, humility, and skill. Lord Jesus Christ defend me from demons, idols, and every form of self-deception, and bring me safely to my true home.

six veils

The Six-Fold Veil

At his feet the six-winged seraph;

Cherubim with sleepless eye,

Veil their faces to the Presence,

As with ceaseless voice they cry,

“Alleluia, Alleluia!

Alleluia, Lord Most High.

The Liturgy of St James

Six veils.

1. The no-thing of space, emptiness, not-yet-ness, imageless night.
2. The cataclysm of things in their coming-to-be, their biggest bang, their horrendous pilgrimage, their disappearance into no-thing.
3. The shape of the earth, sky, and sea- the chemistry of primal life, the evolving biosphere, the dawn of consciousness.
4. The deeds and histories of men and women, the meals shared, the sudden losses befallen unawares, the unimaginable losses, the long hours of unrelieved regret, the end of hope.
5. Attempts at worship, exquisite efforts at music fit for God, the awareness of being surrounded, immersed, transfixed, translated, permeated with sacred heaviness.
6. Endings, closures, finalities, doom and diminishment. The Mass is an ending. The life is a death. I have died. I have risen. I am here.

Six veils over the vision of God. The music stirs each veil in turn, sometimes even rends it in two, exposing the level next beyond, exposing the silence between the notes and phrases, silence soaked in sound, silence baptized in bass notes, veils blown softly aside as if by vibrant wings.

Jezebel Revisited

Few characters in the Bible are presented in as negative a light as Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel and nemesis of the prophet Elijah in First Kings. Jezebel connived with her husband to defraud and murder the solid citizen Naboth. She was an enthusiastic idolater and devotee of the local Canaanite divinities known as Baals. She is even presented as a Freudian-style castrating woman, mocking her husband and shaming him into act

ions totally contrary to Israelite law and tradition. Her collusion with Ahab brought the Israelite monarchy into a nightmare of injustice and folly.
Such unrestrained evil makes Jezebel seem less of a historical figure and more of a prototype or a symbol. As the stories unfold, she takes on the larger-than-life features of a witch-queen, a wicked stepmother, or a manipulative siren. She incarnates the dark side of femininity, the seductive power of pagan nature-religion, and the unconscious fears men project most intently upon powerful women. Is Jezebel too bad to be true?
In the Bible, the prophet Elijah is also larger-than-life, the prototypical spiritual warrior who confronts the evil witch-queen and her whiney consort. Yet even Elijah is susceptible to primal dread of hostile feminine power. Condemned to death by Jezebel, he “…went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ (I Kings 19:41)
The God of Israel comes to his rescue, of course, and he ends up in a cave in the same mountain where the Law was revealed to Moses. There Elijah experiences a profound epiphany, the details of which invoke for me images of the birth process common to all human beings. Elijah goes to the entrance of the cave, and there experiences in sequence “a great wind”…an “earthquake”… and “a fire.” Only then is God revealed in “sheer silence”(NRSV) or, alternatively, “a still, small voice.” (KJV). At birth, human beings emerge from a cave-like tunnel and are met with a blast of cold air, propelled out of the safety of the womb by a series of world-shaking contractions, and finally gathered into warm, protective coverings and spoken to in soft, reassuring tones.
Here is the antidote to all misogynistic fear and blame: gratitude for having been nourished, birthed, and protected by our mothers, and by our God. Our salvation lies in the future, where we can become free and mature individuals and form wonderful adult companionships with our mothers. In this story, God is not to be found in the mighty wind, the powerful earthquake, or the consuming fire, but in the “sheer silence.” (I Kings 19:12) Even the macho God of Israel has a soft side. Maybe what God is saying to (at least some of) us here is “guys, get over it!” Except more gently, in a “still, small voice.”
In the Bible, Jezebel comes to a sorry end, thrown down from a city wall by two eunuchs (how’s that for Freudian symbolism!) and eaten (most of her, anyway) by dogs. Under different circumstances perhaps Elijah, transformed by his encounter with the “God of sheer silence,” might have staged an intervention with Jezebel, supported her in dumping the hopelessly codependent Ahab, helped her overcome her addiction to idol-worship, and ultimately collaborated with her in developing a kinder and gentler form of Jahwistic religion.
It is unreasonable to expect that Elijah could (or should) have acted this way. But is it so unreasonable for us?