To Combine Peace and Inevitable Longing

To Combine Peace and Inevitable Longing

How to do it?

I listened to a homily today on how we Christians should be living as filled with the incredible longing for heaven as could possibly be imagined… and my mind wandered to the people whom I deeply love, admire and respect who find themselves within similar relationship to Jesus as I have…. And I wonder. I wonder how their lives are characterized by that longing. Because when I hear it spoken about, I understand that longing in the core of my being. But a life driven by such an ache does not end up in a rat race… which mine frequently is. To my own error. And yet, the people who come to mind…. They long, but there is a kind of peace in their longing.

A contradiction.

As if the most immediate need imaginable can wait as long as necessary to accomplish itself.

What sense does that make?

None, and thus I am perplexed.

I see the rawness of my drive, and don’t understand that.

I see a glimmer form in the eyes of these beloved when the rawness of my ache is bared. And in its vulnerability, they meet it. And do not question it. And affirm the good in its existence.

But also exhort me to take my passion somehow further than the frustration it will inevitably end in if I “compromise” it. O heavens, what does that mean?

Compromise?

Where is the rule or standard which I sacrifice?

Somehow, my nature is made to question, and be made again and again, and my malleable form must continue to take its shape, for always and forever, so it seems.

Yet they have taken shape in not having a sort of form, a non-stability that remains consistent.

They have taken up an internal rule that regulates their inconsistency. That draws out the rawness and the childish wonder in them and continues to fuel it.

These people are the rare gems who  refuse to be tames and smoothed.

I see that inner desire within them and relate, and uncomprehending we push further.

Yet it is the wisdom of their peace that I lack, for in myself, all the rawness and bared soul I proffer to the world is a mere striving and chasing wind. I flit each moment by and tend to not take in its beauty. You souls who have been far longer than my little life has imagined, teach me by example and imitation for I am yet too young to run and know no limit to my energy, to my danger

 

Insert God Here, the way I see it

Revelation does not come for the begging, the asking, the emptying of the self and waiting

For filling: here I sit, worn to my core turned inside out and pummeled till there’re holes

The size of craters forming in the walls of me—relationally thin, the ice freezing over,

I don’t think God would want me to wait for Him. In almost-quiet I sit, longing for stiller

Contemplations and the ends of all my driving desires and I think of my Maker, that all-Consuming

Fire raging in my bones, the source of all my groveling agony; I’d tune You out too, if my

Willful decree was to atone, to rub and rob out of me my desires, life in this flesh—nothing but

A black cavity of self would remain. And self would consume all presence of gift I would have,

There’d be no room for You to slip into the corners of my life and burrow Yourself under

The barrage my heart endures living: this existential miracle of being. Inside out of these eyes,

The world within creates the one without—the blood of my veins coats the pages that write

The words of my soul, stammering-into-being the thing that is me before the unknowable,

The unimaginable my essence longs to see. O cherish me, Lover. Like endless rivers running

Into the sea, babbling brooks gurgle and oceans cry out Your love for me… if I imagine they do.

If not, its still water lapping onto the shore, still rough-hewn stones rounded into pebbles, wearing,

Wearing away… maybe I am just to put my thoughts into the places You made, make ichabod a

New Eden, barren spirit pregnant with the luster of heavenly gaze, all golden-clad and jewel-encrusted

In the pearly-white purity of the absurd acceptance which becomes necessary to Imagine You into being

In my little life, to give away to You all I must share. Hands anchored in Your earth, sunk in the dirt

Up to my knees—eyes searing the deep blue sky—I may wait until I die but You will not come

To me in the darling presence I long to see; Your embrace will not encompass my belief, as perceptively

I rest my trust in a lower degree of tangibility—the abstraction of telos too far beyond me. To leap,

To invent, to accept and step out over the edge of a cliff… O, to fall or to soar, then?

On this rollercoaster I ride, skipping into a belief which in my creativity, I must abide if I form,

Un-invented, yet inexpressibly aching within to burst out and infect, to consume and then enmesh

Within the tightest weave of an acceptance all its own—O trembling faith, is it this frame you must call home? You parasite uninvited, you infant unsought—you burrow deeper within me. Is there no bottom

You will reach, any relief that cannot break out your roots from the soil of my being? Are you too

Deeply wound, is my life’s blood now your drink? For you have ravished my mind and left it desperate,

Wanting more. But you seem so fragile, such tender, delicate shoots… though your resilience once

Within remains unparalleled. Faith, my child—not mother but seed, implanted within me, not to

Nourish, but feeding off within me of its own will and course, so weakening my will and with such

Sweet poison draws forth the illusions I believe, the invisible specters I call forms, the absurdity

Which casts my eye in search of a brighter view. And casting my gaze to and fro, I find no comparison

Nothing I can know like this seed knows me, eroding away the woman I was, transforming my lucidity

Into ravings as it mocks at my senses and decries the hearing of my ears—O I have such a black hole in

Me, I think You must be real: and so, since unwelcome in my heart Your breath must have invaded, to

Seduce me to such conclusion, my memory has faded away and all I’ve got left is the passion

To see, to know, to become, to be: Here You’ve aborted me, but for that firing charring the internal

Dignity. I insert You, God, lest You chew me up , into each moment I can possibly remember what

The desire is within me. Expect not all of them, but each remembered hope, each dream—to be a new face and figure. Draw me beyond to You.

Revelation does not come for the begging, the asking, the emptying of the self and waitingFor filling: here I sit, worn to my core turned inside out and pummeled till there’re holesThe size of craters forming in the walls of me—relationally thin, the ice freezing over,I don’t think God would want me to wait for Him. In almost-quiet I sit, longing for stillerContemplations and the ends of all my driving desires and I think of my Maker, that all-Consuming Fire raging in my bones, the source of all my groveling agony; I’d tune You out too, if my Willful decree was to atone, to rub and rob out of me my desires, life in this flesh—nothing butA black cavity of self would remain. And self would consume all presence of gift I would have,There’d be no room for You to slip into the corners of my life and burrow Yourself underThe barrage my heart endures living: this existential miracle of being. Inside out of these eyes,The world within creates the one without—the blood of my veins coats the pages that writeThe words of my soul, stammering-into-being the thing that is me before the unknowable,The unimaginable my essence longs to see. O cherish me, Lover. Like endless rivers runningInto the sea, babbling brooks gurgle and oceans cry out Your love for me… if I imagine they do.If not, its still water lapping onto the shore, still rough-hewn stones rounded into pebbles, wearing,Wearing away… maybe I am just to put my thoughts into the places You made, make ichabod a New Eden, barren spirit pregnant with the luster of heavenly gaze, all golden-clad and jewel-encrustedIn the pearly-white purity of the absurd acceptance which becomes necessary to Imagine You into beingIn my little life, to give away to You all I must share. Hands anchored in Your earth, sunk in the dirtUp to my knees—eyes searing the deep blue sky—I may wait until I die but You will not comeTo me in the darling presence I long to see; Your embrace will not encompass my belief, as perceptively I rest my trust in a lower degree of tangibility—the abstraction of telos too far beyond me. To leap,To invent, to accept and step out over the edge of a cliff… O, to fall or to soar, then?On this rollercoaster I ride, skipping into a belief which in my creativity, I must abide if I form,Un-invented, yet inexpressibly aching within to burst out and infect, to consume and then enmeshWithin the tightest weave of an acceptance all its own—O trembling faith, is it this frame you must call home? You parasite uninvited, you infant unsought—you burrow deeper within me. Is there no bottomYou will reach, any relief that cannot break out your roots from the soil of my being? Are you tooDeeply wound, is my life’s blood now your drink? For you have ravished my mind and left it desperate,Wanting more. But you seem so fragile, such tender, delicate shoots… though your resilience onceWithin remains unparalleled. Faith, my child—not mother but seed, implanted within me, not toNourish, but feeding off within me of its own will and course, so weakening my will and with suchSweet poison draws forth the illusions I believe, the invisible specters I call forms, the absurdityWhich casts my eye in search of a brighter view. And casting my gaze to and fro, I find no comparisonNothing I can know like this seed knows me, eroding away the woman I was, transforming my lucidityInto ravings as it mocks at my senses and decries the hearing of my ears—O I have such a black hole inMe, I think You must be real: and so, since unwelcome in my heart Your breath must have invaded, toSeduce me to such conclusion, my memory has faded away and all I’ve got left is the passionTo see, to know, to become, to be: Here You’ve aborted me, but for that firing charring the internal Dignity. I insert You, God, lest You chew me up , into each moment I can possibly remember what The desire is within me. Expect not all of them, but each remembered hope, each dream—to be a new face and figure. Draw me beyond to You.

 

God: The Two Questions by Rabbi Neil Gillman

God: The Two Questions

by Rabbi Neil Gillman

The two perennial questions regarding our human awareness of God are “How?” and “Who?” The “How?” question asks “How can we know anything about God?” The “Who?” question asks “Who is this God about whom we are inquiring?” Each question assumes at least some tentative answer to the other. To ask how we know anything about God assumes some minimal agreement as to the nature of this God. Similarly, to inquire about the character of this God assumes something about how we can know anything about God’s nature. Both inquiries should be conducted simultaneously, however impossible the task.

To begin with the How question, in my first book, Sacred Fragments, I suggested that there were three classical pathways to an awareness of God: rationalism, empiricism, and existentialism. I am now inclined to conflate the latter two, recalling that some existentialist thinkers have suggested “radical empiricism” as an alternative name for their approach. These two approaches are not totally mutually exclusive, but the distinction remains helpful at least for pedagogic reasons. Rationalists assume that God can be reached primarily by the use of reason, by thinking, by argumentation. Empiricists contend that God can be reached by looking and/or listening, or, to use a more general term, by perceiving.

I clearly am not a rationalist, but I also have learned that human perception is an enormously complicated affair. We know that we don’t see with our eyes – we see with our brains. In fact, 60 different parts of the brain are involved in the simplest act of seeing anything. Part of the process is biological – the complex exchanges among the billions of neurons in our brains – but we also bring everything that we are into our seeing – background, culture, gender, education, age, and the rest. Seeing is an aggressively interpretive activity. We are not passive recipients of a premade reality “out there.” Rather, we construct the reality that we see. And if this is the case in seeing an apple, how much more is it the case when we claim to perceive God.

Seeing is not believing. We see what we believe we are going to see, or are prepared to see, or wish to see. Besides, we Jews do not claim that God is perceivable as an apple is perceivable; even in the Bible itself, instances of human beings perceiving God are very rare. Moses, we recall, was told, at least once, that he could not see God’s face, that no human being could see God’s face and live. More likely, seeing God is like seeing a pattern. I have used the analogy of connecting the dots in our childhood drawing games, except that now there are far more dots to connect and many numbers assigned to each of them.

This is why I conflate empiricism and existentialism. The first claims that we can invoke experiences, data of some kind – nature, history, the human experience in its totality – to support our perception of God. The second insists that there is no data; there are no perceptions. Awareness of God is a “leap” beyond the data; it is a decision, a choice, a judgment call, totally interpretive and subjective. But with our newfound understanding of human perception, that subjective quality seems to be omnipresent in all of our experiences. Even perceiving an apple is apparently somewhat subjective; perceiving a pattern is all the more so. If there is a range of subjectivity in human perception – for example, from seeing an apple, to seeing a subatomic particle, to seeing Freud’s ego in a human being – I am inclined to locate seeing God on the more extreme point. Awareness of God is very much a subjective call, a choice, a basic orientation to the world.

One final word on the How question. All knowledge is essentially the work of the brain – that organ that science is just beginning to understand. How chemical reactions in our brains produce an idea of God is infinitely mysterious. I can envision an emerging discipline, neurotheology, which will inquire into the neural basis for our theological inquiries, parallel to such other disciplines as neuroethics, neuroaesthetics, and the rest.

Now to the Who question. We all carry with us some image of God, from the bearded old man in a white robe sitting among the clouds to Mordecai Kaplan’s “power that makes for salvation.” The Bible itself presents a veritable kaleidoscope of such images that morph from chapter to chapter. And beyond the Bible, rabbinic aggadot, the visions of the mystics, Maimonides’ “knowledge knowing knowledge,” the God that inhabits the poetry of Yehuda Amichai simply extend the range. I call these images “word pictures” because though our ancestors did not produce graven images of God, they did create a rich variety of pictures using words rather than paint or metals. Maimonides referred to all of these images of God as metaphors that convey the same truth: Our ways of talking or thinking of God cannot be literally true. No human being can know what or who God is in God’s essence. God in God’s essence is not “really” the way we envisage God.

Whence these images? When I could no longer believe that Torah was the result of a verbal revelation from a supernatural God, the only other alternative was to view it as the creation of a human community, whatever role God played in that process. (This raises the issue of a theology of revelation, which would take us far afield.) Clearly, then, the images of God in Torah were created over generations by human beings, by men and women much like you and me.

Where did they get these images? From knowing themselves.

This may explain an additional dimension of these word pictures. The God of the Bible is strikingly human – in the biblical anthropomorphisms, in the vividness of God’s emotional life, in God’s propensity for entering into intense interpersonal relationships, in the complex motivations that God invokes in dealing with humanity. This God is a thoroughly personal God. Hence my conclusion: Theology recapitulates anthropology. We can trace a one-to-one nexus between our ancestors’ evolving selfawareness and their changing images of God.

This God is also exceedingly vulnerable. None of the conventional characterizations of God seems more questionable than the claim that God is omnipotent. If the Bible testifies to anything about God’s dealings with humanity, it is the testimony of failure. God never gets what God wants – from Adam and Eve in the creation story to the destruction of the Temple, the ultimate punishment of Israel’s rebellion against God’s wishes, and the ultimate testimony to God’s failure as the midrashim on God’s reaction to the destruction of the Temple confirm.

Where is God? Hopefully not everywhere, however we may wish to use that response to our children’s inquiries. Obviously not in space, as God is not in time. Both space and time are human conventions, not applicable to any reality beyond nature and the human. My own preference is to reverse that chasidic answer to the Where question. Rather than claiming that God is “wherever we let God in,” I prefer, “wherever we put God in.” Our ancestors put God into nature and into history – first in the biblical era, and then throughout the rest of their historical experience. That “putting in” reflected their consensual reading of nature and history, viewed as one giant, unified panorama, all under God’s supervision.

Our own Conservative rabbinic authorities followed the same pattern when they composed an Al HaNissim (On the Miracles) liturgy for Israeli Independence Day. Of course there is no objective evidence that God was miraculously responsible for the victory of the Israeli Defense Forces, just as there is no objective evidence that God was responsible for the victory of the Maccabees, a post-biblical event. But in antiquity, our ancestors put God into that victory, and our own authorities did the same in our day. That call was thoroughly subjective; the Orthodox world does not recite that liturgy.

Finally, my colleague Professor Steven Brown suggests that in place of the Where question, we should ask the When question – “When is God?” – and locate those moments in our lives when we sensed God’s presence most acutely. Abraham Joshua Heschel would have applauded this suggestion. In his most beloved and influential book, The Sabbath,Heschel suggests that Judaism is a religion of time and that Jewish ritual is “architecture of time.” That striking metaphor captures the fact that we live our lives subject to the iron rule of time, and that we must learn to treasure those sacred moments when we touch transcendence.

I am hardly unaware that this approach to the God question may trouble many believers. It eschews objectivity, triumphalism, and certitude in favor of tension, ambiguity, and a degree of agnosticism. It encourages pluralism, admits the legitimacy of atheism for those who see the world differently than believers, and cautions that the cardinal theological sin is security. For this believer, at least, it represents a path that is both intellectually honest and even to a degree emotionally gratifying. But that judgment represents my own subjectivity asserting itself.

Rabbi Neil Gillman is the Simon H. Rifkind and Aaron Rabinowtiz Emeritus Professor of Jewish Thought at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Posted at: http://www.uscj.org/God_The_Two_Question8136.html

 

Contemplative Heart-Waltz

The darkness and the light seem to mix quite nicely in a tender place in me

Labeled “compromise”; what that means, I disagree, is not such a blending

To erase you and me, but a complimentary melding of two differences.

They’ll never agree, we understand—but heart with heart and hand in hand,

We stand to survey the carnage of war on the landscape of life beneath us:

Conquests for truth, holocausts to the Right, ichabod of peace which leaves

Only room to fight, to try and trump another’s games, to erase our wills

And degrade our beliefs until ashamed of who we are, who we are becoming,

We drag ourselves through the terrors of night into a compromise called “belief”

…the overwhelming of one man’s truth by another’s… it destroys the fibers of

What we ache to be, the compliment of relationship we dare to call unity.

Here I stand with you, you besides me, everything seems alright held in a respect

Of disagreement, a harmony. What resonates in me, isn’t true for you, but I’d never

Dream of forcing you to accept my point of view. All I request is that you love me

Enough to accept what I see as part of me. Challenge me, spur me on with your

Creative energy—let’s grow old and let life unfold, learning to see as each other sees.

I am with you, you beside me—lifting the lid of Pandora’s box, disclosing the treasures

We torment ourselves in worry over—the seeds of actual living in life, the richest

Fruits of wonder. Seek God with me, in this path of unknown being, just in living

Out our lives and always awaiting what’s coming with a peace and a rest, not too tired

From seeking nor running after colorful puffs of wind, we know life keeps coming,

That it’s unexpected, as unpredictable as a rainbow’s unique prism is seen.

We find joy in each moment, we hold on to peace, but probe in the margins for

Forgotten, discarded thoughts, for patterns of reason to engage with others who’ve

Lost their sense of curiosity; and when we’ve lost ours, we pray others will come to

Be as we once were, and see beyond what we’ve seen… and then my dream travels on:

Dispersing like light of the setting sun, sparkling over the sea—out of my day dreaming,

I look up and you’re with me still—the day’s ending quietly and off into the moon we’ll

Walk, dark through the starlit night and see what awaits us in the days to come.

 

Fooled by the Gibeonites: Choosing the Perfect Compromise

I was rereading the story of Joshua making a treaty with the Gibeonite people of Canaan… how it was a mistake on Joshua’s part, because since God had commanded Israel not to make treaties with the people of Canaan, and he forgot to ask God what to do. Once fooled, Joshua held to his word and God assisted His people, and they defeated the other Canaanites who ganged up on Gibeon for going to their Invaders, Israel (read for yourself, Joshua 8-10). That was the first text that came to mind when considering that situation mentioned in the previous blog… the aspect of separation in Christian relationship. But then I was thinking about Yhwh Himself…. An how He fashioned man after His own image (whatever we want to play with that as meaning in a million and one interpretations) and how He must have fashioned Israel after Himself, to show His glory. A holy people, set apart…since God is Holy. I was reading a little bit about then definition and etymology of the word “holy.” It seems to be full of many connotations inferring separation, being set apart, a special designation above and beyond the ordinary and common.

Holy would be apart from this life. I used to think a lot about the designation of God as Holy and how I was taught man never could be, though we are commanded to be in several passages. Yet, in a rather fascinating conversation I had with school friends over dinner Sunday evening, I perceive that our popular conception of being holy, of imitating Jesus in that manner, is best expressed in isolation: locking ourselves in a closet and putting our minds to work on sole concentration of “the Holy.”Uh… this is holiness? ‘Scuse me, but while I recognize the benefit of solitude and contemplation for re-gathering ourselves and preparing our hearts to pursue God in the world, I don’t think the holiest thing we can ever do, the most concentrated we can ever be on God , is outside of our active life. I love the Dominican way because it mixes the contemplative and active. I think a contemplative side of life is always necessary as a place of rest from the normative life, a way of finding stability and order or keeping our life orderly. But again, I think the place of holiness, where we become Holy, find the Holy, is in active living.

So… I think the next section of this should be called something like “distracting ourselves to the Holy.” That is really the foundational point I am arguing. Should everyday life be a distraction from the ways we’d rather be pursuing God, in study and prayer? That is the mentality I’ve had my entire life, until recently, when I have found it impossible for the past 5 years to get enough of that time with God. Have I compromised then, but accepting the fact that my attention span and energies and daily living will never permit for that Mary-like adoration… that it is not my calling of service, my vocation? I mean, I will never have the soul of a Martha even if I act like her quite a bit… I can’t dichotomize the sisters. In the moments where God calls me to be still and pins my heart down like the Angel of the Lord wrestling with Jacob, I will be still and wait for Him. Everyday stuff tends to be more busy-bee Martha… but not all of my everday living is chaotic. I understand the need to wait upon our Lord for direction, in usually an active sense of waiting… and also the need for contemplative stillness, but I think that this can also be used as a guise for certain types of souls to hide a selfish laziness… which perhaps I am prone to (or else a fear of stillness before God, self, and others).

There is an insidious tendency within Christendom to care with a utilitarian sort of consideration that seeks God in the midst of even persons. For me, it doesn’t seem as if to seek God in relationship with another human person has to be utilitarian. I want to love the people I come to love for whom they are. And I think in real love, we cannot help but see God… like the presence of a rainbow in the combination of sunshine and rain. If God is Goodness and Love, then its impossible to not run into Him if all such is present in a relationship. And this too is where I mean that activity is the path to holiness, because there is no relationship with the outside world in the “direct contact” of sole contemplation. So take up both, pursue the holiness in the working out of your faith, and let it rest when you have quiet alone moments with God. I think its an equally brave person who can sit alone with himself and God as can walk into a place with people he has known all his life and being willing to love. Is it not learning to love that makes us holy? And what, still, is Holy?

 

To Make a Treaty With the Canaanites

Obedience requires submission (at some level or other), something I always struggle to do because of my naturally rebellious personality. So, Moses has been on my mind a lot lately, for thousands of reasons… so we’ll set this dialog where it began… how I came to know the God I have met as Yhwh… the mountain-God according to the Incarnations of Immortality series I just finished reading. I was trying to look up how to deal with those slippier situations of ethics and morals and all… things not so explicitly commanded in the ten commandments. So I looked at the situation of God and His little people… teaching them how to be His people. I overlooked many instances where His most important commandments were not mixing their blood with Canaanites, mixing their lifestyles with those of the Canaanites, because this would all lead to aborting God on the altar with the babies that would be required as sacrifices to adopt another god. What does that mean , in the world today?

I struggle with everything inside me against this divide that seems to arise between Christians and those who are not, from within the Christian group. This difference and separation seems to arise even within the very definition of Christianity itself. For a person so drawn to the unifying sense Jesus brought with Him, this is the most devastating thing about my faith, if not in the faith itself, then the understanding of more devout people than I can number. To define people as apart in that manner… tears me to pieces. I understand to some extent the need for definition, categorization… in some way I understand, but another I do not. Under some standard, we are all God’s people in my way of seeing the world. Somehow, we are His creation, the work of His hands, and so His. But the degree of relationship which characterizes a “Christian” is not shared by all, so I do not want to universalize that  term or project it on anyone. See, if everything Christianity teaches is true, if Jesus came for the sake of relationship between God and man, man and other men, and man with himself (universally using the male here, sorry)… then there is a fantastic relational value to everything Jesus expounded upon.

He didn’t really say anything new. Moses said it before Him, Jeremiah…Jesus added commentary and example, defined by Paul  theologically… at least as most popular Christian tradition. Anyways, the popular traditions and all aren’t what concerns me. Rather, the separating aspect (for fear of contamination). I think human nature tends to say that people who spend time together become like one another. Why the tendency of the Christian to the Canaanite, in the detrimental behaviors? And what would those be? The last two blogs I’ve written have discussed a sort of the fact/relationality combination of what Christianity is all about. In my first on this topic, January 6^th, I gave some observations and opinions about a debate between four Christian apologists/pastors and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t think the difference between Christians and Canaanites can necessarily be morality on a human-to-human level. Hitchens makes a very good case for that. If we’re not all going to be selfish pigs, and care for our earth, one another and all living creatures. So the concern from Christians about affiliation with “Canaanies” must be worship.

Since the Israelites were warned about intermingling, worship must have been Yhwh’s first concern. And why? His spokespeople always seemed to be warning them about their sexual engagements at some level or other, so God must really know the power of persuasion implicit in intimate relationships. I think it makes sense that personally and communally our most intimate relationship is to be our God. Do not Lovers  “worship “each other??? So our God is to be our ever-present, invisible Lover. What does that mean for every other intimate relationship in our lives? I guess that’s the real question. So what is a treaty with Canaanites now? Where is the compromise of obedience in our affiliations? Any thoughts? Is this “Othering” as in alienating our fellow human beings, what do you think?

 

Undefining an Understood Dichotomy: Responsorial Blog… ENGAGE!

Already my last blog caused a bit of stir with at least one of my friends, because my emphasis of relationality seems to be pitted against rationality. It was not my attempt to dichotomize anything, but actually work against what I feel is a typical dichotomy (thank you Brett). I am a woman presenting a perspective, and I don’t expect to be put in categories as misogynistic or misanthropic… feminist or chauvinist, because I am just writing. Sharing thoughts and ideas need hardly be categorized all the time, and that is why I often balk at having to define myself or my ideas as feminist, orthodox or otherwise. I’d rather be indefinable, since that seems more the actuality of the human condition… nothing ever fully defines who we are; we are composed of so many parts of identity to apply a label cheats the whole of who we are. I emphasize relationality more than reason because I don’t think relationality attempts to categorize persons by terms, whereas reason, logical in its descriptions, almost can’t help itself. But of course one needs both to understand the world we live in. While everything we do processes in some way through the intellectual dimension of our being, we are always in some way too defined by the relational dimension of being, which is not un-intellectual, but does not work in the same capacity as the “reason” in human nature.

Having tried to make clear that I am not dichotomizing, merely being human in my tendency to refer one way of seeing things over another, but I would prefer we stayed in conversation about a practical sense of indefinability. Why should we care so much about defining this and that, and not just describe ourselves or the conversations we are trying to have. It seems in all the academic study I’ve done, there are always attempts to define this approach or that system, and then descriptions about them. How is that we humans find it so orderly to operate off patterns and systems of our own creation, when in fact they actually contradict the very ways we operate oftentimes. But what’s the point of it all. I’m just talking with whoever is actually engaging this. I am very curious about the Christian engagement of the world. I wouldn’t want to draw great sweeping principles about what that means, but the Christian identity seems pretty specific to me on certain points. I guess everyone really debates those. I mentioned yesterday something alluding to the fact that each person’s Christianity is probably drastically different from each other. But the real question is a little harder to me than what seems to be fact that everyone sees and knows Jesus differently depending on how different we each are.

I mentioned in a blog early in the Fall semester concerning the issue of the totality of the Christian perspective, how do we hold universalizing beliefs while at the same time recognizing the uniqueness of each person’s perspective? I understand that holding the principle of a belief does not mean that all individuality is lost upon acceptance; Christian conversion should not be a mere surrendering of the brain and self at the door… I hardly thing that is the self-sacrifice required of us. Yet, in some I know, the facts of Christianity have brewed a sour bile wherein disbelief and denial are the only reasonable options. But like I also mentioned yesterday, Christianity is not only fact but also relationship. How do we see the two together? That fact we teach of the dual Humanity/Divinity of Jesus the Christ, and the personal side of the knowing Him that I alluded to in how I have come to see more of Him in persons I know. So how can we see conversion. Usually I think of the term as kind of a dirty word, because it means that something in a person needs changing (which I guess isn’t so bad really… but its often taken quite offensively, because hellfire and damnation is assumed if conversion never occurs). Now is something like that judging another, inhuman to say, etc?

What does relationship with God even mean? Religion in the sense of ritualistic practice (liturgy), moralistic teachings, etc, etc? I like the picture of St. Dominic… “it was said that St. Dominic knew how to speak only of God or with God; this is what made  it possible for him to be always charitable toward men and at the same time prudent, strong, and just.” Always talking with, to and about God… constant conversation. That’s relationship. Out of our ways of relation comes behavior. If a converted soul is one that is smittenly in love with God,  we can abstract reasons and principles about that relationship from the bigger picture of that relationship itself. A relationship which can’t be defined. I love knowing people and watching them love Jesus. Or love other people. You can only learn so much about love from watching two people in love interact with one another. But you cannot know love. I am simple saying that same sort of watching, describing, observing is what the facts of Christianity and the varying doctrines and all do. But they do not manifest God to us, and I think that is their chief lacking. And that is part of the problem with all of us who are Christians.

We exist in a very little part of the world, where to us, it seems reasonable that God is the center of everything, and that is so very obvious. When in fact, it’s a pretty hidden fact that depends on belief. A lot of things can be argued about as fact, the existence of God and the like, but it depends on what you believe as to what is fact to you. Does belief come from relationship? In some ways yes and in some ways no. But in the ways that it does, we can look into those relationships and see a way that we can never know, only travel. Religion, or our journey of life… all the relationships we encounter, remember and cherish over the years… they are parts of the journey that cannot so much as be analyzed, but embraced. You embrace belief, and then seek to know parts of it. I hope I can never fully articulate or even know the part of my faith, of myself, of each person I engage in relationships with that can only be held in that embrace of person-to-person. Its not a knowledge or understanding, its an embrace which holds the capacity to become a part of. We enter into each person we embrace, and they into us. Forget trying to hold reason there. That is the other part of knowing which goes beyond that factual, reasoning understanding. That’s all I was trying to say.

 

New Year, Truth, Relationality?

Welcome to the new year, what will be different than last year?

Blogging hasn’t become an entirely foreign exercise, but the stretching of thoughts from personal reflection to something a little more publicly presentable.  Perhaps more public dialogues with Jesus would be an appropriate form of beginning again. Already 6 days into the new year… the Christmas season is officially over I believe and some of us are still trying to sort out the pieces of what last year was and what we might like this year to become. Its fascinating to try and think about the constancy of change in ourselves and identities as we progress through life. I’m a year older than I was last January, and have lived what feels like a lot more like since then. I’ve learned to worry a little less and trust a little more… as if this great world all a great tapestry, and our perspective of the world is how we see our thread of life interacting with all the others around us, then I wonder what a perspective of faith really does. I say perspective because unlike a lot of great and famous Christians, I don’t really think faith is so reasonable if you look around the world.

My housemate and I listened to a debate between four Christian authors and Christopher Hitchens that was held early last year at some book expo… playing with reason and logic and I think making absolute fools of themselves by frustration and insults. We can debate, we can even argue, but don’t let’s get anger and flustered responses get in the mix. I liked a lot of Hitchens’ points, they were reasonable. His main argument is that there is no supernatural and no need of it for morality and all. All the more complicated points of the argument I don’t think were super necessary. See, I think there are places of fundamentally different perspective that cannot be resolved in debate which manifested themselves in this 4-on-1 presentation. I don’t say the Christian faith is logical. I say it works on its own internal logic, assuming certain foundational beliefs… I think Hitchens would agree with me, he said similar things in the debate. The Christian men arguing with him were trying to change his fundamental perspective of life, which had no supernatural belief and needs none. All their neat arguments from cosmology, fine-tuning, etc. are not sufficient to convince a person of the existence of God. To be honest, I find apologetic debates and often theology itself quite frustrating because they are trying to prove as fact something which cannot be proven. I think facts are rarely the clinching ties which convince and change people.

I wrote early last December about personal truths, and it is a subject I would like to revisit again. I am not talking about relativism, though most of my male friends with whom I dialogued regarding this subject expressed feelings about my thoughts as too relativistic. I hate to bring the gender dialogue into this discussion of convincing and argument, but I did happen to notice that all the debaters in the 4 Christians vs. Hitchens argument were men. I’m not usually one for sweeping generalities, but perhaps in as much as their breadth loses accuracy, perhaps it also has some truth to it too. To be quite generic, many of my friends out here in Berkeley tend to categorize men as more systematic, categorical, working within boxes, whereas women are more interconnected, interdisciplinary, relational, concrete. Let me offer my 2 cents on this issue of argument and convincing (I’ll call it a female opinion since I am a woman): no one’s argument using reason or logic ever convinced me of something being true. Words and the meaning/interpretations associated with those words often have little value to me unless they come in line with what I know to be truth. Perhaps this is the deeper question, how truth is discerned and known .

Well, that always brings me back to one of my favorite subjects, Jesus. I speak daily, usually in written form with a person I love more than anyone else I know, an invisible person… much like Psyche’s Cupid.. someone whom I learned about through my childhood teaching of religious texts and practice, but took on other, personal dimensions to me, first in the religious leaders I grew up watching, imitating and respecting and the persons made important to me through my faith teachings. It was always about people and through people that I learned who Jesus was. Yes, I never would have met the ideas and parts of Jesus’ identity that I hold without the doctrines embedded in Paul’s Letters and Luke’s account to Theophilus, but my own “canon” was composed of people. I used to try and make lists describing the relationships where I met more of Jesus than in the pages of the Bible. But the Biblical authors have come alive for me in my academic study… Paul is a person I am constantly trying to know deeper… but its when his personality comes into question and interpretation that one feels as if one can know him. So my canon is composed of people… religious or not, if human beings are truly made in the image of God, a presuppositional basis I’ve bought into, then I meet more of Jesus and God in each person.

Because I am convinced of truth through relationship. It is people I know closely who have the most sway over my thoughts. In each conversation, I open to what the person is saying, the more if I trust them… usually I have to be critical after-the-fact because in the moment of conversation, I have to be rapt in what the other is showing me. God can’t be completely relational, but that’s a side I am weaker in. Seeing the convincingness of relationality over “fact” is much easier. Fact is a term that is defined differently by each person who uses it based on their belief system. So while I would wish Christianity to be all relationship, one can’t deny the religious fact-systems that exist in its basis as a religion as a whole. We have rules and principles to deal with that don’t make sense from a purely relational perspective. But I think those things are secondary to the relationship with God… I think the Spirit introduces one to enough of those principles we argue about as doctrines in and through the fact of continuing relationship. I guess my whole point is that I will never be an apologist. I can’t get up and preach to people who don’t share my way of seeing the world because these are two different worlds that exist simultaneously without the connection of relationship that would be necessary to merge the two. Perhaps that is found in religion, but it doesn’t just stay in religion.

So why do we Catholics argue about the reasonability of everything? Reason is how we are made in the image of God? Reasons don’t matter half as much to me as love. If I can learn to love someone, I can learn to listen to every thought and opinion they have, see each part of their identity and treasure it. I don’t need to debate with them. Jesus has done so much for my life. That was the only gospel Paul had to preach, the life, death, resurrection of Jesus and hope of return in the way it had changed and affected his life. That is all I have too. Stating the way things should be seen in facts hardly matter as much as they are seen and the unity one can find in all those things in the place of relationship (different kinds of love. Agreement in relationship? Do we need to see everything the exact same way? Well, hardly! But then, there is more to truth than being convinced of it, there is practice of belief, etc. etc. Yet I think maybe femininity needs to lend Christianity more persuasion in relationship. I would never want to see someone forcibly change belief. But belief comes after we know someone. I know people, so I believe things about them. Jesus is one of those persons. Christianity? There are more problems there than with Jesus, but that’s a longer conversation! Thoughts on truth in relationality?

 

Christmas Holiday Letter 2009

Christmas 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Another Christmas, another year flown by… at 21, life already seems to be flowing faster than sand out of my hands. This is the second Christmas I’ve spent apart from family due to life/career choices of pursuing a dual Masters of Art Theology/Master of Divinity at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California.  A combination of these choices and searching for our Father’s plan, I find myself living on an edge more often than not, struggling between radical independence and moments of restful trust. So much has happened and so much could possibly be recounted, but as I have given my life to Jesus to continually shape through the direction He has molded into my spirit, one of questioning and probing, I would like to share with you some of the change in this year’s journey that has affected my Christology and allowed me deeper understanding of who I am in light of this Jesus. Backtracking….

The question of a personalized Christology, explaining who the Jesus I speak to in my little journal, blogs, about to friends and all is arose rather recently in a class I took this semester in which my professor challenged me to develop my hidden Christological thesis behind all my ecumenical arguments in the class. I found myself become self-conscious that the Jesus I was arguing from stemmed from belief intertwining with a full-bodied identity in which parts such as head, heart, and soul were inseparable. The more I continued to write in all my classes this semester,  the less confidant I became in my ability to articulate this person: doctrines seemed too formalized and impersonal if true, scripture passages shaded in my coloration were difficult to communicate because my own light of interpretation was too complexly my own to explain in brief, and my own comprehension of this Jesus I try and articulate with my life has been etched into my being through our historical relationship that stretches into childhood. So who is my Jesus, and why would I cling to Him so tightly? In this question, I reflect over the year, retrospectively searching for the hand of God and the provision of hope in Jesus without which the life I now live would be impossible misery.

Before Spring Semester 2009 began, I took a very small intersession course (for several weeks in the month of January) on the subject of “popular religiosity,” the populous practice of faith/religion which usually reinterprets and appropriates the doctrines and teachings of centralized, institutionalized religions to practical uses or personal meanings. In this spirit of realizing difference between definition and use, between “power” and personal possession, I began an exploration of Catholicism and many of my own faith components. Studying a lot of feminist authors and theologies over the Spring, I tenuously began the end of my confirmation journey. Becoming Catholic with a capital “C” ended up being one of the hardest things I have ever done, because my heart still centralizes a Jesus without distinctions (sacraments, denomination, particular authority, etc), and because it seemed to cause nothing but trouble with loved ones. My Dominican friends became all the dearer struggling through this new step on my journey after Church, that elusive and mystical earthly body of Jesus, with me. Completing the process, my questions did not abate, reassuring me that Jesus had not left me upon becoming Catholic.  Having settled a bit more solidly into my degree program, I maneuvered academic requirements more smoothly and with less terror than I had approached them with my first semester. Yet it became increasingly apparent to me that for my academic, spiritual and generally functional sanity that I needed to change my living situation, and thus find more work. Two things that were heavily on my mind at the end of school term, launching into summer work training.

Running my first marathon on my minimal sleep and poor eating habits and high stress levels of the Spring Semester burned a good portion of that worry out of me. God and I have this way of communicating in which we exchange heavy blows: I fight till exhaustion and He has His way with my heart after I have tried every other way. Stubborn, stubborn Hannah, Jesus said to me, you work so hard and try so much, why not lose the worry and risk a little more? The theme of our relationship! Miraculously if felt, I was offered a different position at my current job which offered more hours and thus enabled me to find a quiet apartment with a friend where we could foster an environment of peace and rest. A little haven. That has been an amazing change… more than a room of my own, a place to call home-for-now. A Church identity had given my life a little stability, which in turn threatened its edginess, but a place to go to rest and just be allowed my individualism and creativity to thrive again.

Finally to Fall semester, the excitement of Scripture returned to my life studying the Apostle Paul, and being introduced to questions with which I had previously vague familiarity: the authenticity of Paul’s authorship of all books attributed to him, his own ecstatic Christology which inspired his theological writing and in turn influenced the Gospel writers… Paul and I became travelling companions again and as I re-read his letters over and over, I sensed in them the same spirit of Jesus I was trying to communicate. So I began to try and articulate my Jesus: first in mimicking through attempted comparison and analogy what Paul was saying, then by trying to voice my own Jesus. Yet the whole semester failed to be enough time for me to learn to describe the Jesus I know now. I would never seek for a definition, which could then be categorized as heretical or orthodox accordingly, but Jesus is this person, beyond the pages of the Gospels and Paul, whom I have come to know, who is the way He is to my heart’s eyes because of who I am, how I approach life, how I see people, and how others impact me.

I still want to live a life that is like Jesus, and the only part of that which I would be sure of is His devotion to God, continued reinterpretation of the human identity into which He was born and teachings which also challenged others to walk more closely with the Father. The Jesus I have come to know and am further coming to know is one who must be engaged in an essential dialog… that is really the only way to be with Him, I think. He is invisible, after all… I began speaking to Him as Psyche to Cupid who hid himself from her eyes… with a longing that would be filled, dangerously tempted to light a lamp, but knowing there is no lamp to light. The only way to deepen and enrich His and my conversation is to expand my life dialog with people around me, whose eyes and being capture some divine spark, and allow them to work on and influence my personhood along with my own introspection for better relationship. A constant re-interpretation of Living Tradition, Scripture.

Many blessings on this holiday season (Christmas/New Year), and may you come to speak with Jesus in the manner of your life-conversation that best develops Him to you, and you to Him!

In His Hands,

Hannah

 

Evolution of Justification and Presentation of the Gospel in 1 Thessalonians and Galatians: From Separate to Unified Identities In Jesus Christ

Comparing and contrasting the first epistle to the Thessalonians with that of Galatians, I will pay particular attention to the differences in doctrine highlighted by Schnelle with particular emphasis to the discussion of justification and Paul’s transition from an acceptance of two gospels (the gospel of circumcision and the gospel of un-circumcision) to one, unified gospel in Galatians. Since the issue of justification naturally leads to Paul’s unification of the two-gospel approach to salvation, I will begin by discussing Schnelle’s position on justification in 1 Thessalonians. Transitioning to Paul’s change in theology, I will conclude by emphasizing the unity which comes through  acceptance of an exclusive identity in baptism.

I doubt the Apostle Paul considered that his own writings would have such dramatic implications in defining the faith of Christians for centuries when he began inscribing his letters. Yet how much of the developmental processes of the theologies we abstract from Paul today have been erased through continued reinterpretation? When writing on Christian justification in 1 Thessalonians, Schnelle notes that “the doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works in the law, as found in different on Galatians and Romans, was not yet a constitutive element of Pauline theology.”[1] Schnelle notes that there is a difference between the way “gospel” is used between 1 Thessalonians and Galatians, making it difficult to find bases for the Torah-critical Galatian theology of justification.[2] According to Schnelle, the substance of Paul’s gospel in 1 Thessalonians can be described as “God’s eschatological act of salvation in Jesus Christ, the risen one who will return in the near future to save believers from the divine wrath erupting as part of the final events.”[3] While this content persists as the foundation of Paul’s theology, a new tone is added when encountering the Galatian crisis, that of criticizing obligation to the Law in order to participate in this gospel.

The first picture we perceive of Paul’s understanding of justification is depicted through classical imagery of a “final judgment:” election as members of the community of faith who are exempted from the wrath of God will help in the final judgment of the world, though the Church too will be purified through a fiery judgment.[4] Based off Paul’s “repeated admonition to appear blameless before the Lord at his coming,”[5] Schnelle points to a theme of justification that is not necessarily tied to his later “specific doctrine of justification.”[6] In the sense Paul speaks of human acceptance before God throughout 1 Thessalonians, “Paul was able to refer especially to the missionary preaching of…Jewish Christianity in order to express various speaking and conceptual contexts the situation of human beings before God”[7] contrasted to his specific polemic against the Jewish Christians in the Galatian doctrine of justification. Thus 1 Thessalonians provides the foundation for Paul’s understanding of Christian justification which is further developed in the anti-law polemic of Galatians.

Departing from the Jewish Christian basis he utilizes to emphasize a theme of justification in 1 Thessalonians, Paul (according to Schnelle) critiques the law/Torah basis of Jewish Christianity, developing a new doctrinal understanding of justifying Christian covenant. Schnelle asserts that for Paul, “the Torah itself testifies to Christian freedom from the Torah.”[8] At this point in Paul’s doctrinal evolution, “everything depends on maintaining the freedom grounded in the Christ event, realized in the gift of the Spirit, and confirmed by the Scripture and not perverting it into its opposition through Torah observance.”[9] In Galatians, Paul begins to associate “the theme of righteousness/justification…with baptismal traditions”[10] which allows him to develop a more inclusive doctrine of justification. Schnelle describes the doctrine as “inclusive because it is oriented towards the effective making-righteous of the individual believer individual believer in baptism through the power of the Spirit without any criteria of exclusion”[11] as were found in the preaching of his Jewish-Christian opponents. Schnelle sums up the doctrine itself by describing that “in baptism the individual Christian is delivered from the dominance of sin through the power of the Holy Spirit and thereby made righteous, so that within the horizon of the paraousia of Jesus Christ, he or she can live a life corresponding to the will of God.[12]

Since the doctrine of justification in Galatians is based upon the baptized believer’s transformative participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, Paul’s justification is based on a present action rather than eschatological judgment as in 1 Thessalonians. Introducing the ritual of baptism in his inclusive doctrine of justification, Paul also strongly emphasized exclusive aspects of this doctrine when forced to consider “the value of circumcision and Torah observance as conditions for entrance into the people of God.”[13] Reacting to these Jewish conditions to covenantal entrance into God’s people (and thus justification), Paul develops “in a twofold aspect,…an exclusive doctrine of justification:”

(1)   Paul excludes the possibility that the (Law) can play a synergistic role in the event of justification.

(2)   He likewise excludes new excludes the possibility that Jews and Jewish Christians have a privileged hamartiological status based on salvation history.[14]

In this point of his discussion regarding the Galatian doctrine of justification, Schnelle clarifies how it is that Paul determines to unify the “two gospel” approach to the practice of Christianity.

Since “the Judaists insistence that the Gentile Christians must be circumcised compelled Paul to break with the compromise solution made at the apostolic council,” he is propelled to develop a countermove calling “into question the importance of the Torah even for Jewish Christians.”[15] Recalling that the Jerusalem Council “compromise” was a formulation of “the Gospel of Uncircumcision and the Gospel of Circumcision”[16] around a nucleus of Christ’s death and resurrection after 3 days, 1 Thessalonians contains a unity in early Christian identity which includes “typical marks of Jewish identity, such as monotheism and numerous ethical admonitions.”[17] 1 Thessalonians generically characterizes the basis of the two-gospel identity, that “believers participate in the transformation of the Son and from it derive their own new self-understanding as those who are saved,”[18] upon which both Gentiles and law-observing Jewish Christians who did not see baptism as taking the place of circumcision or salvation “as something that transcended the law”[19] could agree. Yet the Galatian doctrine of justification precisely calls into question the existence of these ritual distinctions within the body of Christ, erasing the compromise for a real unity.

Schnelle’s understanding of the Galatian justification hangs on his consideration that baptismal traditions “designate baptism as the place where God lets himself be encountered and experienced.”[20] Thus “traditions and concepts associated with baptism not only formed the theological link between inclusive and exclusive doctrines of justification,” but also “the function of rituals in identity formation” helped to stabilize not only the Galatian believers’ identity, but also that of all Gentile Christians. For Schnelle, “the baptismal traditions guard the exclusive doctrine of justification from the danger of ethical indifference because they designate baptism as the place and means of the tangible presence of God’s act of forgiving sins and conferral of righteousness in the power of the Spirit”[21] versus any other ethnic identity distinction. Uniting the gospels for the circumcised and the uncircumcised under the common identity of baptism in which “there can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female — for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”[22] Baptism is the essential element by which this unity is accomplished, for Schnelle emphasizes that if God’s righteousness is going to be a “power that determines human life,” this power must be “an act of God tangible to human experience.”[23]

---

[1] Schnelle 188-9.

[2] Schnelle 189.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Schnelle, 190.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Schnelle, 293.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Schnelle, 300.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Schnelle, 301.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Schnelle, 126.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Schnelle, 191.

[19] Schenlle, 127.

[20] Schnelle, 301.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Galatians 3.28, New Jerusalem Version of the Holy Bible.

[23] Schnelle, 301.