A Quest for One Salvation: The Antioch Conflict and Soteriology meets Catholicism and Non-Litrugical

It seems to me that differing definitions of purity continue to separate believers just as they did in the first century Antioch conflict at the Jerusalem council. Writing as a new Roman Catholic who has journeyed most of my life in sincere, but non-liturgical churches, I believe we Christians continue to redefine lines of theological, if not behavioral (this does in fact remain) purity, drawing lines in the sands of life to separate ourselves… but these lines are as trivially solved by a breath of wind. At the Jerusalem council, the debate over which parts of the Mosaic law Gentile converts would be held to was hot. Schnelle presents three different positions which might have been discussed on Gentile relations to Torah: first, freedom from Torah except for ethical requirements (no circumcision); second was limited observance of Torah without circumcision, and thirdly entire Torah observance including circumcision (Schnelle 131). As Schnelle mentions earlier in this chapter, this is a debate of two gospels: that of Circumcision and that of Uncircumcision (126-8). I imagine this would sound shocking to most Christians to imagine that  there could ever have been more than one salvific gospel preached by the Church universal, but noting that denominational rifts today are still marked by considerations of theological purity, should we be surprised to find that multiple gospels are still being preached today?

 

Of course, when saying “gospels” I am following in Schnelle’s use of multiple gospels, for as he notes, the “two gospels” are really two different set of practices/beliefs stemming from the confession of the same, one event of Christ’s sinless death for our sins, was buried and rose from the depths of the grave three days later, to ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father. The idea of having a universal faith with numerous identities creates an interesting sort of problem. The original Jewish religious identity was constructed out of two aspects of Torah we discussed in class, the halachah (law part of the Torah) and haggadah (story narratives of the Torah). Their history was constantly reinterpreting Torah to make sense and keep current this religious identity… what kind of threat was this upstart of a preacher, Paul, preaching that salvation through a Jewish Messiah, Jesus could come without a crucial part of Torah observance? Well, I see a similar distinction drawn between liturgical and non-liturgical churches. Since this is a Lutheran class, I hope there will be no offence taken if I label, for comparison’s sake, liturgical churches as the “Jewish Christians” of today and nonliturgical churches as the “Gentile Christians.” Jesus is in both equally, my heart feels quite confident proclaiming.

 

So there have been numerous councils within my church denomination, the Catholic Church, concerning what are termed within our walls as “ecclesial communities”… i.e., those without “the full sacramentals.” In Catholicism, the sacramental life seems to be the way of things… we have those seven sacraments which are viewed as the marks of our communion with God, supposedly instituted by Christ to dispense the grace necessary to try and live holy lives {please do not the heavy skepticism in my tone}. Baptism is like our circumcision, without it, there is no salvation? Confirmation seems necessary for the whole entrance into the Catholic Church, so perhaps both of those are our initiates, but then one reaches our third and central sacrament, the Eucharist… and I am sure many of my beloved Catholic associates would be hesitant to assure the safe place of one’s soul without regular attendance to the sacraments of Eucharist as well as Confession to prepare the soul for communion with our Beloved Jesus in the Eucharistic sacrament. I come most rootedly from a good, conservative Baptist tradition, without the slightest notion of what a sacrament was… living what some might consider an ignorant spiritual life, devoid of that fullness of life Jesus came to bring to the world. Was I? Was the second gospel of the Gentile Christians agreed upon to settle the Antiochan conflict a compromise to the message of Jesus and the rest of the Apostles? Some individuals may have felt that way, and later history shows that tides turned more against Pauline multi-gospel preaching, but I render an emphatic no to that question. There are in fact, if we are defining “gospel” as requirements of practice to maintain salvation (I cannot say obtain, I still believe faith is a gift we must receive and then act upon in faith), then today, multiple gospels exist… dictated by personal conscience and understanding of God’s requirements (Romans 14.-6, I think Schnelle and Paul would agree with me).

 

Paul’s act of initiating the acceptance of this “second gospel” of salvation is really quite astounding. Schnelle recounts how profoundly Paul’s Damascus road encounter with the Resurrected Jesus was in Chapter 14, “The Presence of Salvation,” inspiring this entire movement:  “Paul was set before the task of interpreting afresh, from the perspective of the Christ event, the history of the world and God’s saving plan within it—God’s acts in the past, present, and future and his own role in God’s plan.” (Schnelle 389)The Antioch conflict is a prime example of Paul putting this call into action, demonstration (in a way which must have seemed an innovation to conservative bystanders)… preaching a second gospel. Of course salvation is through Christ alone, and only by faith can one approach God through Christ (Hebrews 11.6), so it was this “gospel” of working out faith and identity in Christ that Paul introduced. Taking the Torah-centered Judiasm and reinterpreting it in light of the “new covenant” of Christ, Paul’s soteriology must have broken many Jewish toes.

 

Schnelle describes Pauline soteriology as a sort of negotiating between two distinct groups and many differing ideas which could not really be harmonized: “God’s first covenant continues to be valid, but only the new covenant saves.” (Schnelle 390) Perhaps the parable of Christ and the workers in the field could be appropriated to explain the salvation… the first covenant  (I don’t want to cheat the Old Testament of the validity and fullness of what God gave, but looking back with Paul’s retrospective rationalizations, I must consider the old covenant as working, but also requiring the renewal of God’s covenant with His People in Jesus’ new covenant) was necessary in order that the second covenant might come, but one the salvation of Christ rather than Torah was being preached, the first salvation was not necessary to accept, but could be reinterpreted through retrospection. Considering this, I wonder about the liturgical/non-liturgical church examples I brought up earlier. The Catholic Church has traced its origins and history farther than any other church I have yet experienced… bridging the gap between modern day Chrisianity and the time of the Apostles. J Dare I challenge with my own reinterpretive/innovative statement the idea perpetuated in my church that non-liturgical churches are missing fullness of salvation without sacraments, but that perhaps their very existence, born out of what is now a liturgical church, was necessary for a more full understanding of Jesus and our salvation through him? Though not possible without a mother, the children have grown up and assumed valid identity and relationship with the Father.

 

Christianity: Consecrated, Separated, but unified in an ascetical ideal of Other/Beyond?

So trying to think about Paul, this developer of the expanded Christianity we have today… Gentiles and Jews, and that the distinctions didn’t matter for authentic and full practice of the faith. I think Paul too from his own declaration of personal revelation by the resurrected Jesus was also largely responsible for the formation of the Christian religion. I did distinguish between the faith and what’s generally called the religion… church memberships, etc.  I think what I have witnessed in my own experiences of Christianity, the faith and the religion, I’ve noticed rather a disconnect from how we live our salvation, and how at least in my mind and some churches I’ve been in, the ideal is capsulated in an idea of “other” which is beyond grasp now. Its beautiful… and sometimes maybe a living too literally in line of that ideal has caused not the paradox, which is Christianity, but a contradiction.

I was sitting in my Paul Class at the Lutheran Seminary this morning, musing over Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7, discussion of a cultural ideal of stoicism and asceticism that may have existed in the mentality of the Corinthian people, whether or not they lived partying lives or not. So I got to thinking about the idea of consecration as a separation, ascetical existence…the Catholic sense of “highest form of life…” is that more Jewish than Christian? Didnt Jesus come to make up pure and different, in world, and were do we fit the other-worldly ideals. Are we in Catholicism preaching too much of a non-paradoxical gospel, and more of a human contradiction, by saying that; so how do we read 1 Cor 7 in light of the passion narrative? Jesus took flesh and touched women (;)). Maybe asceticism isn’t a problem, but ascetical life without the complementary acknowledgement of the beauty of the other vocation. But I really do wonder about what is it to be consecrated and not be apart from the world. Obviously we see that as something impossible… but somewhere in at least some of us… Ok, I’ll just talk for myself, ‘cause I can’t claim to understand any sort of generic Christianity apart from a confession of the rule of faith… I have some strange longing in me that seems to want to go beyond… a restless soul, one that even if filled up to a place I’ve never imagined, I still want to go farther/deeper. I don’t understand it. I love C.S. Lewis’ language of longing for Deep Heaven, though I have no idea what heaven is… and for Jesus, as some of the saints speak… though I am sure I fashion Him too much after my own wants, unconfessed needs, etc.

So take the idea of set apart and place it in context for Christianity… covenant. I kinda liked something pointed out from Paul’s perspective of Moses’ veiling his face story in Exodus (because it shone too brightly for the people to look upon… He’s spent a while in the presence of God’s glory…) 2 Corinthians 3.6-8, “6 He has given us the competence to be ministers of a new covenant, a covenant which is not of written letters, but of the Spirit; for the written letters kill, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the administering of death, engraved in letters on stone, occurred in such glory that the Israelites could not look Moses steadily in the face, because of its glory, transitory though this glory was, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit occur in glory!” Our professor read this as Paul reinterpreting the events of Exodus… Moses covering his face to hide the fading of the old covenant. Jesus is a new Moses, similar to Philo’s. …but more this-worldly. (2 Cor. 12.2… Paul’s trip up the mountain was important to him, but was not his imitation of Christ). Paul’s imitation of Christ was both suffering and glory. You don’t have the gospel without the paradox of the cross and the resurrection. So where do we find community in Jesus and all, because the Markian presentation of him a lot was pretty ascetical… that transfiguration ideal. We realize asceticism is unnatural to human people… what makes it soo fascinating? That beyond sense?

So where do we find the beauty of something so abnormal and not make it the most perfect imitation of Christ… are we as people capable of living after Jesus without making comparison and judgement between degrees and values of holy living. How much paradox do we invite into our lives and are we willing to let go of reason and be fools in the living out. I hardly think so often times if our imago dei is reason (human reason?). Maybe paradise is a cloister, a monastery, a hermits hut. But heaven starts on earth.

According to my author Schnelle in 2 Cor 5.16-17, Paul is saying that … “we know according to the flesh Christ”; in suffering that we know Christ or that we no longer know the fleshly Jesus? Whole range of human feelings, including, but not at its  peak in mystical experiences, is the expression of our gospel. Vs. 18 and 19… we are not trying to appease an angry God (Schnelle argues against the theory of atonement, that something else has to appease God); for God is reconciling us to Himself and we continue that; “18 It is all God’s work; he reconciled us to himself through Christ and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 I mean, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone’s faults against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” This was really interesting, considering what the homily on Sunday addressed… suffering as something receptive, we receive it. That hit a curiosity in me, maybe my interest in woman studies … but to receive suffering and not have it created in our own action. And the priest at St, Alberts said our reception of suffering was part of our action in atonement. Curious. I hadn’t thought of atonement coming anywhere but Jesus…. Hm, does some of that suffering-for-atonement come to play in separatist consecration?

Again, I wonder  how purely we can consider this life in relation to a belief/hope for the next… I cannot only treat life-in-matter in light of life-in-soul… what about these bodies; how on earth could I ever dare look at relationship as something for the sake of eternal soul, of course they are, relationships deeply affect us, even effect us, but my consideration of those I love cannot intentionally be where they might benefit my soul.

 

Self, Secrecy and Sacrifice

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine… and yet this insipid secrecy keeps defining my life,

the prowling, the stealth behind absence hiding. Its amazing relationship continues to exist at all, for the

more I’m finding my own self, the less I like to expose… remaining poised and recoiled, constrained in

a corset of life-woes which well-up and cement in a heart thick-lined, in-laid with blood… welling up and

designed to be filled, but withholding because of the cost of freedom which bleeding out would entail…

a giving up of a self which is fragilely held together by frosty particles of frozen belief… tendrils

of old memories and forsaken shells… the placentas of where we were formed and the nutrients

that used to infuse us… separated and born into ourselves as infants in a world as infantile as

the processing of each successive generation… the questions we birth in our continued quest of life

on earth. Is it always a quest or just what we make it?

Brought to term in a womb incubating many brothers and sisters, we wonder about matter

and meaning in future and purposes as we walk into each new day unalone though we isolate ourselves.

the patterns of our very masking reveal the cagedness inside us… a trapped soul, a chained animal,

a pinned ghost inside, we wonder if there’s something inside, when we feel,

when the brain-organs think… when all of us becomes engaged in something outside ourselves.

As much as ideas open doors to worlds beyond and imagination creates shape and color,

to be and be without at once seems encapsulated in the giving away of the only thing

we are ever really left with, even as we are always discovering it, ourself.

In our faith we have developed some myth that maybe You would save us from too,

Jesus in Heaven, through some Spirit You sent to earth, indwelling us as abodes at our invitation

propelled by Your calling…we dont understand the extend we are to shed

these fleshy minds to give and expand, to stretch into a place we can’t full hold,

to a person we cant grasp with our minds, but must come undone to be one with;

Still we puzzle over the movement of our selves and the longing of something else,

maybe soul, maybe not… and in relationship we wonder if a settlement can be found,

considering compromise, what is lost if there is no goal, no end, can we reach it

or touch it or imagine it if we believe in it? wherein lies the desired belief for a unity

that could be touched, but that gets a cold shoulder at each interaction, because

we throw on those invisible cloaks and wonder how much protection each interaction will take.

Look at us, intimacy with separation, what an oxymoron: guarding conversations

with second-thoughts, hiding our tears by turning our heads, half-heartedly embracing…

refusing to ask when what might revive the spark we each want, the interaction that will

draw us forward, the companionship that will boost the confidence of our strides into the future.

Where is the breaking point between that fragile ice of lonesomeness in solitude and

the burning lostness of treading our own ideals and personhoods underfoot in a herding stampede…

where do the extremes mingle and break free of their constraints in compliment of honesty

without empty exposure… where value needs no definition, experience needs no qualification,

but creates an event or personality of its own. Where can we find a place in the meaning

of submission and sacrifice… can we remove the stigmas of those to find a fullness of love…

something in-world that ties us together and wonders beyond. Let us at least create

in community, of two or more, a trust that will be itself in spite of appearance, and will know

itself between the reflections of others… and internal beliefs.

 

Care-webs, Death in the Shadow of Resurrection: Light-Hearted Chat or Real Community

Jesus, we’ve been talking for short concentrated periods in real seriousness… and sometimes all then time conversation which sounds like idle gossip and pleasantries in the Church foyers… so what is our prayer, Jesus? Is our openness to You and closedness to the rest of Your body symptomatic of a dualistic way of being? Jesus, we split ourselves up enough in what we do and what we think about.. sometimes, Jesus, I try and step out of my own polarized world… that of a lay person in religion… having imbibed the beliefs and values of the history of my people with our God through a written tradition that is interpretted by life in the Church as we’ve continued it… all different manners of life traditions. I think a general trend we can draw of the Christian church universal is this idea of consecration, as has been discussed in other threads of conversation… from our history with the Jewish nation, we obtain the idea of people called and dedicated to our God. Set apart for Himself, a people called to be Holy. For a working definition of Christian, I am considering all people who name the historical man Jesus of Nazareth with the same person as the Son of God who came as Christ to redeem the souls of His people and teach us a new way of living, which is love (a concept we’ll leave undefined for the moment). Yet while I see Christianity embracing this concept of a distinctive identity and separateness in terms of identity.

We dont understand ourselves… we have two concepts colliding with one another in our minds and lives.. that we are human living in-world and with others in a corporeal existence, and then that we dont belong here, we have a draw to something more. Maybe that comes from all my Protestant upbringing of the ways we consider life, the body, etc. Maybe in this catholic  world since we seem to be concerned with a continuation of the body of Christ in a very connected, physical reality as well as this relationship we call spiritual too. Its confusing, but it retains that concept of the Kingdom of God here already but now yet… so many profound things that affect the future and life of the universe and people as we know them… and so how do we move and make decisions in a world where our sense of relationality is so extremely odd. Christians equate a lot to/with God… a sort of verticle relationship we try and establish with more than God, but also this idea we hold of the communion of the saints… the dead in Christ among us in relationship if not physical presence, angels, etc.  I guess if I think about Christianity, there is something special about a connection we have believed in with Jesus that allows us to have a hope which is so strong it allows us to at least imagine the presence and existence of those relationships.

Maybe its the girl of me, but I see life as a web of reltaionship that in world, is limited to the connections we have between people we meet. I dont know if true care ever ends, but its very difficult to maintain an active care between people. The amazing hope that Christianity gives me is that there someday will not be tears because of such care. That someday if there can be a way for the care in relationships can always continue actively, not be interrupted by temporal and spatial interruptions like death and leaving… if actions will someday always be in line with the continuation and strenthening of relationships… then that’s heaven.  I’m young, but I see differences of understandings and don’t comprehend what it is that divides us. I guess i should talk about my own family first… my church family… or the immediate Church family I have just joined. My Catholic family. How we take relationships and in some perspective, exchange them… how we leave one for another, like in marriage… we had one way of relating to the world… to our families, but if we marry, we start a new family… we related differently with the world. I look at this Catholic Church and think… O, I have married into a new family. In terms of relationship, I can ‘t remember a time I didnt know Jesus… at least, know Him in as much as I disclosed myself to Him, because He works in that for deeper knowing. At least, I think so. He and I used to have quite a starved relatonship, because I guard so closely. now.. I am finding Him greater sharing with others who compose His body. I am only on 5 years of that way of relating… growing up from a young child in wanting to know Him with others, to a very young bride discovering her new family.

So this family… entering was the strangest thing, and a kind of wedding. I found a distance I still dont understand, that I didnt even feel immediately put between me and all the families I have ever been part of,except the ones where the relationship was created in Jesus. I didnt start feeling different regarding confirmation except when I came back from a long run, after a day of work… I came back to my room and touched the white veil I was going to cover my head with again (in theory) from that day on in church. Something inside me started shaking. And shook harder so I thought I might fall over through the whole service. And looking out over the congregation of Mary Magdalene Parish in Berkeley, gathered there in candellight on easter eve…something about the way I saw them had changed. Looking at them was so different. Something had changed, that all the gradual leading to this path had not. I was part of them in a different way. I could barely sleep that night… the next morning, I walked all the way to the priory, for prayer, Mass, and fellowship… I felt my soul confused by glowing… I was folded up into an embrace I didnt understand and found a oneness that was so different than what had been before. What changed… what was before, and what was this now? Something inside me the entire time felt guilty for relishing this oneness because it didn’t make sense… what had changed. Why did the other people I loved feel so aliented. I didn’t have to choose between, did I?

The oneness amazes me the more its revealed. But I find this same kind of connection with those people I have met Jesus with… so here is a family, and the family in which I am to understand the relationship which expands from here to Jesus… it seems to strange, that we have to learn to be alone with Him, in a sense, before we can learn to be connected with Him through a uniting love in our world all around us. Jesus is intricately woven throughout the tapestry of our relationships here. I have to believe that. So Jesus, show me what it is that I am constantly evading from giving You, my will. Maybe in the context of an improper submission I have so steeled up my heart in my will that I have forgotten how to let it go, and have dethroned You, manipulating my own life, unwilling to let faith or anything come in the way of the right I think I concieve in my mind. But Jesus, each time, I learn my own perceptions are so imperfectly formed, and mostly by my own fault of unwillingness to ask… so Jesus, change my heart and really make it willing to open. You walked such a low road… never had shame of your own to accept, but bore mine… and should I not learn to open my arms to my cross so that the mutual weight that falls into care is lighter with others? Infuse more grace, Jesus, more grace.

O what a tangled web we weave… no fate to blame our protective deception on. Clear each confused situation as the moments need answers. If your grace is more than enough, teach us to submit maybe our stubborn prides and freedoms to being closer with each other, slow honest steps.

 

We’re Funny Like That

So its 2pm as I am starting this little reflection, and I have been reading about white supremacy and other such topics for the majority of my late morning and sporadically this afternoon between desk job duties. Because questioning is what I do, and wondering is a way of relating to share life, to deepend relationship with others and get to know oneself better, before I run off to do another 8hrs at my second job, I am going to rummage through the contents of my head and invite any who have anything to save of themselves, of the ideas, etc… to please be free and do so.

The first thing that comes to mind is a curiosity with this state of existence, as one of my friends was voicing to me yesterday, “what is this life?” I have been struggling with the realitites of my humanity for as long as I can remember, usually most overtly manifested in questions about church, frustrations about human interactions (why CAN’T we all just get along?) and working out what it means to be finite and embodied (i.e., I’m not super girl, I can’t save the world, and I can’t manufacture hours out of nihil). The time issue has put pressure on everything else… from a chain line of reasoning, I decided not to take out loans, because I don’t want to go into debt, so I am working 40+ hours a week to make the rent/school and life-sustaining needs. I don’t mind that. But then, with 4 classes, there just isnt the time to grow into the changes that keep happening in my life and thinking. there aren’t the hours to rejournal through my theology and rework my “purpose” statements each time I rediscover something or other… or rework a mode of being. Thats sounds so silly and universalist to say. But its really just got to be heard in the context of an individual projecting their view of the world (as if it were universal) onto everything. Sigh. Thumbing through the pages of my journal, I saw more references to time-crunch-related exasperations… not enough sleep, not enough time, going too fast, etc, etc than much else. So with all that as qualification, I decided I was doing too much and couldnt help it till at least next summer. Its amazing how priorities change when one goes under the gun about things.

Since I mentioned universalism and the fact that I was reading on white supremacy, I think a few tentative remarks are needed on teh white supremacy, or issue of race, first. Now, Ok, I’m white, I’m a woman, I have had a very priviledged life because my parents cared about my education, they taught me to work hard, and I have never believed that something was to much for me to run after. I am in a theology graduate school, having the luxury of turning around and reflecting, while at the same time, literally working myself to near-death in order to have this experience. Its amazing, its exhilarating, its exhausting. So I understand I think, this concept of white priviledge, and I think most who react against it in theology would place me in the label of white and priveldged, and not really fully appreciating it… such as one of our authors did today: “thus, white supremacy is both personal and institutional, and all white people collude in it (even those dedicated to fighting it).” [from Gorsline's essay]… now, in my own thought, totally biased by my own life, who I am, and how I approach everything, I wonder why race is still held as an issue. On the one hand, I really do understand… oppressions seems to create a mutual dislike… those who are more powerful and prejudice create so much pressure on the marginalized that it breeds a hatred for the oppressors. Neither side is right…but when we start polarizing ourselves into churches because of race, or kinds of theology in which we define God in particular ways according to our color: a Black church? a White church? are we going to argue two plans of salvation, two?

this reminds me of a really fascinating conversation we had in Pauline class yesterday…our professor told us that initially Paul initially agreed to a two-gospel system, for Jews and for Gentiles after the Jerusalem Council in Acts…apparently this meant that one did not have to conform to the Jewish distinctives (food laws, circumcision, etc…, but that those Jews who did subscribe the universal salvation provided by Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, did not need to release those distinctives. We talked about how throughout his controversial life as an Apostle, Paul’s soteriology changed… at one time he criticized Peter for vacillating in behavior when with the Jewish Christians or the Gentile Christians, but then in 1 Corinthians 9. 19-23, Paul is saying He is all things to all people. Sigh. So what about Jesus… Jesus wasn’t trying to make all kinds of people feel like they had their own sorts of salvation, He preached to Yhwh’s people, or some Gentiles, about the covenant of the Jews with Yhwh, and the component of faith that allowed the covenant to expand beyond a particular people. I can thrink of two times in this past week where I’ve broken down to tears over our church.. but thats me misunderstanding again where to locate the community of this body of Christ in my life.

Church is probably about the most amusing and bizzare mystery in spirituality. Compared to Church, the purpose of theology and sacraments make sense. I look at theological theories and all, and think, wow, I understand how we historically have had to try and explain the events in our lives through God’s presence in them. Church, well now, we people claiming an equality in relationship by faith in Christ, yet we judge each other incessantly.And continue to separate. The way I see people, we’re all so different, so individual… the sameness between us is our biochemical makeup and that we’re human beings. Stressing sameness to much crosses the line of individuality… but if we consider ourselves all so different, we divide up what has been united. There’s sameness and difference in all of us… not so much so, I think, that we need to draw up little “types” of theology for ourselves, though our perspectives approaching theology will always be different, and not so much that i think we need a different church for every cultural difference… what happened to one Lord, one faith, one baptism; with many different ways of worshipping. Enough with the ranting. Ideas on this univeral faith in a particular world, share, please. Sometimes I wonder if we people came up with ideas of universals because they are so beyond us and our world would only fit into bare outlines of universal ideas. We’re amusing like that.

 

On a kiss for Jesus: From the heart of an introvert with an extroverted feminine ego

I’ve been considering the relationship of the Invisible God I had been acquainted with since before I can remember because of my family’s introduction.Since life is a fluidity, a mobile continuum, we people are always in the process of reevaluating what we believe, what we think, where we are in life, what our goals are. Perpetual discernment. So that’s where I am again… one of those swings of life, where everything one once assumed gets re-questioned because of a decision, a different place of life. So I’m here in California, my third semester of Grad school , studying theology which I’ve been told is faith-seeking –understanding. Sometimes I wonder about the studies I engage in, whether they are too heady about God and whether the categories and theories I’m studying about God tell me more about Him or more about the people in our world. The questions I’ve been asking lately are those concerning the sense I’ve developed of Christianity as an institutionalized religion being an evolved entity that negotiates between a plane of totalitarian, absolute abstracts and subjective experience of human persons. I look at what has become Christian religion, and I look at Jesus Christ, the Jewish Rabbi who was a bit looney, eventually a bit heretical, and a bit brilliant in his commentary expanding Moses. Paul took the unframed, thematic thoughts of Jesus and developed a lot of what we based Christianity off of today.

But look at us. A DC Talk song comes to mind (as I sit at work, enjoying a small piece of chocolate….) “what have we become, o self indulgent people; O what have we become, tell me where are the righteous ones! What have we become in a world degenerated? Speak your mind, look out for yourself, the answer to it all is a life of wealth, grap on and keep ‘cause you just live once, you got the right to do whatever you want, don’t worry about others or where they came from, it ain’t what you were it’s what you become…” So what does Christianity as a systematized, institutionalized faith look like to me at the moment, a 5 month and 12 day old Catholic in the most systematized and hegemonic system of thought. In saying that, I realize its incredibly pluralistic and diverse. But in the little Catholic world I live in, where liturgy is a commonly debated subject amongst people I know, an emphasis on the human dimension of embodiment is deemed deserving of the most dignity in creation, and Aristotelian thought is used to categorically delineate analogies to understand God from the world. Hm, and yet, too, a sense of wonder and mystery paradoxically eclipse all the human reason which is at our base of religious-beingness-in-world.

I would be the first to admit that I don’t intellectually understand a faith purpose for sacraments, these outward signs of inward grace… symbolic actions that are supposed to be embedded with a presence of Christ through an epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, and finding their doctrinal validity in a teaching that Christ instituted the sacraments, they are seen as necessary for a full celebration and participation in the Christian faith by my Church family. I struggle with that, as I struggle with any sort of necessary embeddedness in the physical world. And yet, my  recent personal encounter with sacraments beyond a sort of abstract theological consideration has brought a deeper intensity  to my own struggle with embodiment, with knowing my God, understanding (or rather living well in, because I don’t think human nature is something meant to be intellectually comprehended) my own self as a human woman.

I will tangent for a moment to mention, in line with understanding God through what I sense and comprehend in relationship, to discuss a Sufi Islamic poet whose evasive concept of the invisible, intangible Beloved and means of knowing, introducing Him has captured my imagination since I bought the collection of 43 of his odes, “Like This”. One of his odes answers the questions of persons wondering about things from the resurrection of Jesus to how miracles were performed with the interaction of a person: “Like this.” So how are we God’s presence to one another, is it known through this? “If anyone wants to know what ‘spirit’ is or what ‘God’s fragrance’ means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face close there. Like this.” So I am a bit curious about this manner of knowing God, in and through one another. Reading snatches of Levinas lately, and talking about this philosopher with some of my friends, the concept of knowing God solely through human interaction has come up again and again. I guess that’s where sacraments are “redemptive,” saving God’s reputation from being too tangled up in the persons we love.

Yet, there’s something to knowing Jesus the only way we can though others, in addition to the gift of revelatory text we’ve been given that is problematically composed and compiled by human persons. Yet, I unintellectually somehow sense the truth of this being divine revelation. I think that sense, that kind of knowing, must be my faith, which is still faith without re-creatable reason. I used to have reasons for everything I thought, by the dynamism of life combined with faith has altered those. Its really kind of exciting. We relive the same sorts of questions over and over, and each time, they are different. I love reading the Adekah, the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, partly because it manifests so many of my own questions, but also because each time I read through it to reflect on sacrifice in relationship, I see it in a different light. Still in composition of this year’s reflection. But it will be intensely relational. What does it mean to trust God in our lives, what does it mean to be open with others, how do those two planes intersect and where do we interact with God in this life here.

It makes me smile to think of the dear people who ask why try, why look for the more, why always be moving. This semester, I am attempting a new endeavor in understanding the rest of God… it sint so much a dismantling of an intense schedule (40+ hours of work a week, 4 classes including Hebrew, my foreign language of choice), but a disposition within the schedule. An attempt not to run between so many places… the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, the Hergl Center where I work almost 30 hours a week, and my little new El Cerrito apartment create the Bermuda triangle my hurricane self whirls between day in and day out. And as a laywoman with a heart to belong to my God, I find myself needing to learn a deeper sense of integration to maintain or recreate a spirituality in which I move through daily everydayness. I think that spirituality, whatever that means anymore, is becoming conflated with the concept of love in my mind. Maybe its not a conflation, but a unification.

If love is the way we are to be in the world, not just a love out of pity for the less fortunate, but a love which allows us to relate those things which are different from us, other, if you will… love is how we find whatever is equality is, by emptying our egos of their natural self-bent conceitedness to care and extend oneself to hear what the other person questions and cares for.  The title of these musings reveals something I am learning about myself and the way I love people… a heart inside with its walls on the epedermis of my skin, sensing or empathizing with others in relationship. That kind of alerts me to a dangerous sensitivity, which I often allow to fold up and hide away rather than expose with a question. So I am getting to know Jesus by Himself more through the text of scripture and other mysteries which don’t exactly seem to have a logic, and Jesus with others through trying to open myself a little more to this care for persons. Obviously, a busy schedule includes varying degrees of time for that to be shared in, and the personal one maybe least of all. In spite of that fact, I hope maybe some of these musings will encourage further life sharing, which seems to be just good in and of itself!

 

Rumi Ode 1620

There is a passion in me
that doesn’t long for anything
from another human being.

I was given something else,
a cap to wear in both worlds.

It fell off. No matter.

One morning I went to a place beyond dawn.

A source of sweetness that flows
and is never less.

I have been shown a beauty
that would confuse both worlds,
but I won’t cause that uproar.

 

Kiss Me, Kate: Musings on woman to husband from woman

I enjoy Shakespeare a lot… usually the two tragedies Hamet and Macbeth. But watching “Kiss Me, Kate” tonight, reminded me of some of the great lines and characters from other plays. So here is Katharina, the former Shrew, chastising her fellow women in regards to their treatment of their husbands. Musings to follow t a later time:

KATHARINA
Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.

 

Questioning the Covering: A New Breed of “Feminism”… Embracing a Female Nature and Covering Some Hair

Why do I wear a mantilla when I go to mass/pray/etc? Well, I must confess to having been inspired to do so years and years ago, as a young girl, reading I Corinthians 11; It really opened up some questions in my heart in terms of the differences between me and boys before God, my relationship with males in general, what is appropriate and what is not, what affects people and why… all that fun kind of stuff. Paul says he wants women to cover their heads when praying or prophecying…. because of the angels. I don’t understand the reason… not precisely, but what comes to mind is a song my little brother came home singing from Sunday school at age 4 or 5… the Centurion’s answer to Jesus when he asked Jesus to heal his servant: “I have a man under authority. I say come and he comes, I say go and he goes. Just say the word and I know he’ll be healed as I go.” So “because of the angels” could mean showing that the angels in relation to God, are under His authority. Or one could speculate that angels are called to be in submission to men, as well… though I can’t remember where I picked that up. Perhaps reigning beside Christ our brother, but not now. So wearing a head covering could be viewed as a public sign that I am in submission to someone. Of course, to me, that is Jesus… but the idea of submission is not so predominant to me as is protection.

I am a very independently minded woman, who tries to live her own life, make her own decisions, etc etc. So the idea of submission comes hardl, though a deep part of my feminity reluctantly realizes that I was made and desire to submit (I will try and qualify this later)…. but I see the mantilla as just what it looks like in my confirmation pictures: a wedding veil. I can’t always wear dazzling white on Sundays, but I adore donning that veil. Sometimes I get just a bit blushy when wearing it in places where other women don’t cover their heads, but I wear it more for Jesus than the benefit of others. What does that mean? I have talked with some of my male friends about women and headcoverings, and one of them was telling me after a Tridentine mass that to him, women covering our heads in church removes distractions so that our brothers may better worship. I responded by giving him a quzzical look: its going to take me a lifetime to understand some of the mystery of how the image of our Father in heaven is reflected and refracted by the sexual distinctions between men and women. What is the hair, this glory of a woman? It seems that the word “woman” used in the context of 1 Corinthians 11 could be referring to a wife or a woman in general.

Perhaps these are some of the most controversial verses in the Bible for we women who want to seek and understanding of ourselves in the image of God, not in relation to man: “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made for woman, but woman for man. That is why a woman (or wife) ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” (vs. 7-10, ESV) This seems to hearken back to the genesis context of human creation, woman being made as the fulfillment of human man’s loneliness… and seems to speak of what a social context which I was raised to understand as absolute theological order in my early life: woman is to be in submission to man… or I suppose one could hear those words (since I am unable to do the exegetical research at the moment) in a very special regard to woman. I am reading a book by John and Stasi Eldredge called Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul and it has brought to mind that there are many dimensions in which the feminine nature was indeed created that are considered exploitations now because we are unable to recognize the full beauty of what it means to be created for, to be given as gift, to be made as helpmeet. Before I explore some of these ideas further, I find it helpful to finish St. Paul’s reflection on male and female.

1 Corinthians 11.11&12, “Nevertheless in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman.” Rather equalizing sentences. Perhaps that would throw a perspective that if man was not now born from woman, men would be superior in the image of God. Somehow we women have begun developing ideas that we have been told for too long how to be women by misogynystic men and that without them or the ability to reproduce them in our lives, we have no meaning or purpose. Its interesting to study feminism, womanism, mujeristaism… and see how much women try and form and identity for ourselves that seems to compete with the conception we induce that male society has sold us. Has it? I am not going to deny the existence of male misogyny in the history of female identity… but we are not somehow independent from men even when embracing our own identities. To me, the headcovering in prayer or the presence of public worship reminds me of who I am. Many of the Catholic Mariological descriptions of woman come to mind in reflection of what the covering actually symbols (since “because of the angels” is rather confusing): Mary as the arc of the covenant, bearing Jesus… which could only be touched by consecrated hands.

When I think of woman, what I am and what I have been created to be, images of a moon and a mirror resonate in my mind: when my kind was given to man, man was able to see himself. He looked at woman, who was created after, before it was all finished in the mythical recounting of Genesis, and knew he was not alone. That is something to think on… the companionship aspect of womanhood…we have never known existence apart from relationship, while man has. But in the creation of woman, God gave a gift to man which was implicit in the fibers of womanhood: with-ness, likeness, relationship. When I think of Eve approaching Adam in the garden, I see him awed and unsure of what this creature is beside him. Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh… like him but far different… formed out of him, crafted to be beautiful in a kind of reassuring way, I think. Woman, it seems to me, was God’s gift of reassurance of His relationship with man. By the union of man and woman, there is a procreative miracle of life that continues the presence of man on earth… a tangible means of God showing His with-ness. When Adam looked at Eve, in his first words of declaration that she was of him, he saw himself. The reflection. But then he called her woman, for she was taken out of man. That recognition of difference, of otherness. And so embedded in our nature is this mysterious union of God/gift of God to the creation He made to reflect Himself. Woman completes the image of God in complement to man, not only by the procreative union of bringing forth children, but also in relational reflection.

In this way, all women are arks of God’s covenant of loving relationship with man, something which continues to awe and amaze me the more I watch male-female interactions play out in my daily living. It’s a mystery, and its beautiful. My veil reminds me of the fact of that relationship God has women into my being, and that it is something to be guarded. We all joke about women’s intuition, but I find truth in the relational percpetion of femininity, at least in my own person. My Jesus has given me a heart that is naturally sensitive towards the hearts of others around me and longs to reach out and help others bear the heavy burden of soul-in-world. The sensitivity combined with the openness and reaching for those at the edges and the corners can be a toxic combination of internal damage which I compile in my femininity and implode by cutting myself off from relationship. This veil on my head in public worship reminds me, like blinders on a horse (forgive the crude imagery), that I first and foremost have one heart to be focused on, that of my Lord, Lover and Savior Jesus Christ. From His heart flows all the strength I need, and all the wisdom and discernment of how to give myself to others in relationship. The veil is then my internal protection, an external reminder of the marriage between my heart and Jesus.

Of course, there is always more to muse on… I encourage my sisters (and brothers) to muse with me on this, on the relationality I’m talking about, and how we can increase the brightness of God’s image in one another as we share life and conversation together.

 

Unashamed Unknowing…

Unashamed Unknowing…

Written here on my face, the permanent impression of a puzzling wonder, a confused state

Of mind in which I cannot seem to shake the thoughts and questions, an inevitable break.

Wandering in heady space of lofty questing questions, where are we again, Jesus, when it comes

Down to how deeply we dare to treasure You at the risk of losing everything, but wait, I’m losing already, and I cant understand why with heavy sighs and deep heavings I work through

All my calculations again and realize I left out the magic, the element of surprise that

Unpredictable moment of chance that it takes for mr to free fall down again.

But its easy to toss up a feathery bag of words and a schedule full of ideas, just to find

Oneself pinned down under relentlezz boulders of commitment, of too little activity and

Spontenaity in life. Jesus You promise us light burden and easy yoke on Your part, but how

Much heavier do we made the weight of cares to carry by inserting our will over Yours.

I am still trying to understand, Jesus, just how much of me I am to trust You with, and just

What on earth that means… here I am, a little woman, a young child in a world full of

Amazing sights and stunning views, the gilt way of walking under the clouds shaded by early

Morning sunlight, the serenade of silence, lulling me to sleep and resotring my soul each night.

But where am I to hear Your voice, learn the one true right, the best of all there is  to be,

Know the confirmation of where You are taking me? As I read through books concerning life And death, I find myself musing on this place I have in a little world, on the purpose of being:

It strikes me that You, O High and Holy, Mighty but Lowly, have woven a path too intricate

For me to simply unwind… a complicated path I try and delineate as survival and do right…

Where do I draw the line between what I can force myself to do, and what would be good to do,

When I’m falling apart inside,or out? How long does it take to discern a vocation, do I have

Any idea what I’m studying about? It sinks like stones in the end, all of our work blows away,

But just in the moments now, its beautiful. We have little enough clarity to se You,

Because we are obstructing with a searching that gets in the way of the longing. The more I

Talk with You Jesus, the more convinced I am that this dissection just fragments more my little

Soul; and this propels me to learn nature more, the fabric You have woven Yourself into me by;

So here I am, dear Jesus, I try and try to become the woman You made me to be, but it just

Seems so full of too many longings, scattered heart, and distracted strains of attention span.

So I ask You, be my center and gravity, draw out all that is loose inside of me and tie it to Your

Hands… lock my fingers tightly in Your grip, and lead me in Your dance, I will follow in Your

Step… at least as best I can in my half-drunken state, sleepless and too full of heartache.

You came to heal the broken hearts, be the bread of the poor, husband the harlot, father the

Orphans… O how I forgot how to love You and I how I crawe to do so again… how confusing

And abstracted You seem to life in my head, that other bewitching dimension of life in the more than the sandbox I am fixated playing with in me. My feeble care would be strong but for itself,

So  I want to give it to You, trade my poverty for the wealth of Your heart. But You don’t quite

Believe in surgery, You won’t replace whats inside of me, transformation is a harder work of

Holiness; but I don’t even know what that means. You’ve got me still confessing, still on my

Knees unsure what it means to live without the things I have compacted into limited time.

Yet, I know the flavor of joy, I even feel the taste on my lips… Jesus, be still with me a moment,

Just let me inhale the sweet kiss of the words You exhaled on the page… one that I am choking

To consume the heavenly scent of all You hold out to me, the cool waters pouring over dripping

Face and feet, You wash me again and comfort the agony of my own unworthiness and make in

Me beauty. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be, not the kind of pretty full of conceit or puffed with

Its own pride, but an image of You in the way You gave me to be. Let me care for Your children

With the beauty You put in me, humble my soul to kiss the feet of Your forlorn beloved and

Bring me to my face to learn that You will scatter me to the wind to collect all of me, separated

Out and purified to be whole for You. I don’t know what You’re going to do, I’m not even sure

I  can hold onto You, I will remain as close to this edge as I dare, over it if I can bear any more

Of the tension inside between me and the call into the world… where You seem to want my feet,

Dangling dangerously over the cliff, ready to fall into Your grip.

I am not ashamed to be wanting more and more, to be curiously usure of You,

Of me, of the childish loving I hold in me.

Take it out and straighten my doubt to glimmer more like Your face.