On authority and obedience, power and violence.

This article, written by Sandra Schneiders, was published 23 years ago. It makes some important remarks about the notions of authority and obedience. We often speak about the more obvious issues that confront us, like violence and the obvious need to pursue peace. But matters are not always that simple. Sure, we have learned that violence itself is complicated. It comprises physical violence, but there are also covert forms of violence - verbal violence, structural violence, gender violence, family violence and many others. Recognizing them means empowering one to resist them. But with this article Schneiders guides us towards understanding that the struggle against violence begins much earlier and on a deeper level than we normally tend to think. It begins where we are confronted with authority and obedience. In also begins when we encounter power.

This article was taken from http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/884056schneiders.html

SPIRITUALITY TODAY
For the Trumpet Shall Sound: Protest, Prayer, and Prophecy -- Conference Proceedings
Aquinas Center of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, October 26-30, 1988
Winter 1988 Supplement, Vol.40, pp. 59-79.

Sandra Schneiders:
                       Religious Life: The Dialectic Between Marginality and Transformation

Dr. Sandra Schneiders, I.H.M., is Associate Professor at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. She is the author of Women and the Word and New Wineskins.

THOMAS Merton began, early in his monastic career, to explain religious life and especially the enclosed contemplative form of that life, to what he then regarded as "the outside world." At first his attitude toward the "world" was more than tinged with the contempt and even arrogance of someone who saw himself as having chosen the better part in contrast to those who did not have the spiritual wisdom or moral courage to abandon the sinful context of ordinary life for the purity of the cloister.(1) Toward the end of his life he came to realize that "leaving the world" was more an interior project than a change of geography and that a lifestyle that was obligatory for him because of a personal vocation might not be appropriate for another who shared exactly the same ideals and pursued them with equal zeal and generosity.
In the 1960s, shorn of the insulation provided by a false sense of superiority, Merton began to take seriously the criticisms of religious life addressed to him by people like Rosemary Radford Ruether.(2) He felt challenged to address, inwardly but also in writing, the occupational hazards of the form of life he had originally considered as selfevidently superior. He realized that religious life, especially the cloistered form he had embraced, could easily pander to spiritual narcissism, back to nature romanticism, evasion of social responsibility and moral laziness.(3)
In Merton's time, especially during the socially and ecclesiastically turbulent '60s, the cloistered contemplative form of religious life required a justification that so-called apostolic religious life did not.(4) At that time ministerial religious life seemed adequately justified by the good works religious did, whether in traditional ministries such as education and health care or in more controversial involvements such as social justice activism.
In our own day the situation is reversed. Spirituality is as "popular" today as social activism was in the'60s and it sometimes makes unholy alliance with the self-absorption of "me-generation" narcissism. A single-minded pursuit of one's own spiritual integration and identity, which Merton often presented as the ultimate goal of monastic life and which is integral to the healthy spirituality of our own day, is no longer looked upon with suspicion by the "yuppie" cohort even though they may understand that pursuit in terms Merton would have found obscene. But in any case, it is less the contemplative form of religious life that is questioned today; it is the ministerial form.
The questioning of ministerial religious life comes from several sources. First, Americans in general, including Catholics, have ceased to regard the Church as a quasi-department of health, education, and welfare for immigrant communities. What religious once supplied through Catholic schools, hospitals, and social services is no longer expected primarily or exclusively from these agencies. And even if it were, the depletion of personnel and financial resources within religious orders makes impossible the continuance of these services on the massive scale characteristic of the first part of this century.
Secondly, the adaptations of religious life that were mandated by Vatican 11 and eagerly undertaken by religious orders, especially those of women, have effectively destroyed the mysterious subculture of religious life that evoked a certain fascination in Catholics and nonCatholics alike. Exotic dress, cloistered houses, and quaint if not macabre customs have given way to an ordinary life-style that no longer offers potential members instant identity or social status.
Thirdly, the theology of superiority that made religious life the "best" vocational choice for the spiritually serious as well as the object of a certain admiring awe on the part of those not called to religious life has been seriously undermined by the Conciliar teaching on the universality of the Christian vocation to holiness, the baptismal foundation of ministry, and the sacredness of matrimony as a state of consecrated life for believers.(5)
In short, one can not only save one's soul and serve one's neighbor but also achieve the fullness of the Christian life without entering a religious order. Therefore, it seems to many, the only reason for entering religious life is to escape from the burdens of life in the world while enjoying the security of a congenial lifestyle enclave and meaningful employment coupled with relatively high status in the ecclesiastical social structure. No doubt the fact that religious life has been stripped both of its claim to a unique kind of social usefulness and of its religious mystique' has contributed to the decline in numbers of candidates. But perhaps this stripping away of claims to superiority which were never well founded has also created the providential climate in which religious life can be radically re-examined in terms of its true meaning and role within the Church's vocation to herald, signify, and serve the coming of the Reign of God.
It is not my intention in what follows to defend religious life. For those who are genuinely called to this life, as Merton often pointed out, no defense is necessary, and for the enemies of this life no defense is possible.(6) Religious choose religious life because, in some deep way, they must. Like the artist who has to paint or the poet who has to write, religious have to do what they do, not because it makes sense but because life does not make sense for them on any other terms.
However, it may not be out of place, even in an ecumenical setting, to try to explain Roman Catholic ministerial religious life, not in order to justify it but in order to clarify its potential for contributing to the quest for justice in our world. Throughout his religious life and especially toward the end Merton was convinced that the life he had chosen was significant for the social justice agenda of his time. In his journal for December 22,1964, Merton records a sudden realization. He had, for days, been distracted at prayer in his hermitage by the incessant booming of guns at nearby Fort Knox. Then he notes,

The guns were pounding at Fort Knox while I was making my afternoon meditation and I thought that, after all, this is no mere distraction. I am here because they are there; indeed, I am supposed to hear them! They form a part of an ever renewed decision and commitment, on my part, for peace. But what peace? I am once again faced with the deepest ambiguities of political and social action.(7)

I, and many other religious in the Church today, are equally convinced that the quest for peace and justice is integral to our choice for religious life.
THE MEANING of RELIGIOUS LIFE
For several reasons the attempt to explain religious life is risky, if not doomed to failure. First of all, religious life is not a Platonic essence realizing itself in accidentally diverse historical instances.(8) It is a life-movement at the heart of the Church which has taken very diverse forms at different periods in church history and is undergoing massive change in our own times.(9) These forms themselves are integral to the life as it is lived by its adherents and so any attempt to separate essential content from accidental form is based on a misunderstanding f the life itself. In other words, it is difficult to talk about "religious life" as such because, in a very real sense, like human nature it does not really exist as such but only in concrete and ever-changing forms.
Secondly, as Merton once remarked about his reflections on Cistercian life and prayer,(10) whatever I say about religious life can and probably will be disavowed by some people who live this life with convincing authenticity. Nevertheless, in order to reflect on the relationship of religious life to the quest for justice in society and the Church I must attempt to explain that life itself.
I have already suggested that religious life can no longer be understood as an ecclesiastical job corps or as an exotic spiritual subculture and that it must not be understood as a comfortable lifestyle enclave for the religious elite.(11) Furthermore, if religious life is to be significant for the Church's identity and mission today it must be so because of what it is and not just because of what some religious, in fact, do (however valuable that may be) because religious life is not merely a collection of individuals who engage in a variety of good works but a distinctive state of life in the Church. (12)
By state of life I mean a permanent, stable, and public form of consecrated life in the Church, such as matrimony or religious life, which raises to visibility in a special way some aspect or dimension of the Christian mystery which all the baptized are called to live but to which all do not witness in the same way. Thus, my first task is to say what I think religious life, as a state of consecrated life in the Church, is and means. To what aspect or dimension of the Christian mystery does this state of life witness in a special way and what is the significance of that witness in our time?
Throughout his life Thomas Merton was preoccupied with the issue of solitude, his own vocation to solitude, the role of solitude in monastic life, and the contribution of lived solitude to the Church and to the world. Although Merton tended to engage this issue primarily in terms of flight from the world and physical isolation, first in the monastery and then in the hermitage, solitude is actually at the heart of religious life as such because that life, whether enclosed or ministerial, is constituted by the vow of consecrated celibacy.
It is perhaps not at all fortuitous that at the end of his life Merton finally encountered the most serious challenge to his vocation to solitude not in his voluminous correspondence, his frequent visitors, his world-wide reputation as an author, his social involvements, or his travel but in the experience of falling deeply in love with a woman.(13) At that point, he had to choose celibacy not as he had in entering the monastery, i.e., as a flight from his own immaturity and self-centeredness, but as the free sacrifice of a relationship which could have become the center of his life (14) On May 11,1967 he wrote that his love for this woman was "part of me" and that it revealed "[m]y need for love, my loneliness, my inner division, the struggle in which solitude is at once a problem and a 'solution.' And perhaps not a perfect solution either."(15)
Celibacy, chosen as a public and permanent state of life, establishes the religious in an existential solitude which no bonds, however deep, of friendship, community, or solidarity in mission can mitigate. Aloneness is, in a certain sense, the inner structure of the life of the religious as faithful and fruitful mutuality is the inner structure of matrimony. This aloneness, if cherished, attended to, and dwelt in as the heart of one's vocation, finds its positive meaning in contemplative prayer.
The solitude which religious choose through their public and lifelong commitment to celibacy raises to visibility in the Church the fundamental aloneness of every human being before God. I would like to explore two particular aspects of religious solitude, experienced as characteristics of this state of life, which have particular relevance for the relationship of religious life to the quest for justice: immediacy to God as a mode of Christian experience and marginality as a position in the secular order. It will be my thesis that immediacy and marginality are the foundation of the vocation to prophecy which Merton regarded as essential to the religious vocation.(16)
IMMEDIACY AS A MODE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE
The characteristically human way of seeking God and working for the transformation of the world in Christ is through material mediation. As incarnate spirits, born in the flesh and immersed in history, we work out our salvation in and through the material universe in which we live and move and have our being. This is our natural element. Nevertheless, natural and good as this approach is, there have always been some people who have felt called to bypass, as much as possible, the earthly mediations of the divine and to seek God with an immediacy that would be as foolhardy as Hosea's marriage unless it were a response to God's own invitation. In the Christian tradition we find such people from the very beginning of our history. They were the Christians of apostolic times who chose virginity rather than marriage; the men and women of the fourth century who abandoned the city for the starkness of the desert wilderness; the monks and nuns who roamed the roads of medieval Europe; the n-issionary religious who set out alone for regions where the name of Christ had never been heard.
For Merton, as for most religious of his time, the immediacy of the religious' search for God was expressed in terms of "leaving the world," because the secular order is quintessentially the mediation in and through which human beings naturally live and seek God. But toward the end of his life Merton himself acknowledged that leaving the world was less a geographical than a spiritual project.(17) And since Vatican II religious, especially those in ministerial forms of religious life, have come to a new realization that leaving the world is not a matter of physical flight from, much less condemnation of, the secular order. It is a matter of choosing, affirming, and trying to live the immediacy to God which celibate solitude announces and involves and to do so in solidarity with other Christians whose primary orientation is to the secular order as the mediation of God's will in their lives.(18)
It is difficult to say what immediacy as a mode of Christian existence means. It certainly has nothing to do with an artificial "separation of powers and functions" in the Church which would charge clergy and religious with the sacred sphere and laity with the secular sphere. Rather, it has something to do with where one starts, regardless of whether one is dealing with specifically religious or explicitly secular matters. The religious who is true to his or her vocation starts with God, not primarily as the ultimate horizon in terms of whom everything is done, but as the first point of reference in which being and action originate. One comes to every historical experience out of one's immediate involvement with God rather than seeking God primarily through one's historical relationships and activities.
Obviously, such a stance is more than a little ambiguous in itself and it is a lifetime project to develop such an approach as habitual and consistent. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that this approach to the relation between God and creation is non-natural and therefore very dangerous. I do not say this it is unnatural or anti-natural for nothing is more fundamental to our humanity than the quest for God. But because it involves at least a partial bypassing of the natural mediation of God which our condition as incarnate spirits demands, it is a dangerous path. Merton realized this and often acknowledged that he was both utterly incapable of living this way and even more incapable of abandoning the attempt to do so. Religious life is not the heroic quest of the spiritual athlete but a wrestling in the dark of ordinary human beings who, for some reason known only to God, have been attacked by a messenger who holds the secret of their name and will not release it without wounding them.
MARGINALITY AS A POSITION IN THE SECULAR ORDER
The attempt to live such an immediacy to God on a day-to-day basis has led to the development of a lifestyle in the Church which places religious on the margins of the social order. I am not speaking here of any attempts by ecclesiastical authority to enclose the daily lives or suppress the political involvements of religious, but of the marginality that derives from the choices religious themselves make and even institutionalize for the sake of maintaining their immediacy to God. Religious choose not to forge a common destiny with any other individual human being through marriage and not to integrate themselves into the world's historical process by procreating and raising the next generation of human beings. They choose not to participate personally in the profit economy either by working for personal gain or by making independent use of what they earn. They seek to guard an inner and ministerial freedom that is often incompatible with ordinary involvements in the political order. They choose a form of community life that transcends personal taste or advantage and intends to witness to the transcendent inclusivity of Christ's universal reign. These foundational choices are the coordinates of a lifestyle which places religious on the margins of the secular order as what Merton called "guilty bystanders" rather than at the center of secular life where they might exercise the leverage of tax-paying and draftable citizens.
Religious today share the anguish Merton often expressed over the ambiguity of their marginal position. Just as no one living in the flesh can retreat into total immediacy to God so no one living on this planet can stand fully outside the secular order. Religious not only eat and sleep and play; they also vote, serve on juries, hold jobs, and corporately own stock and real estate. And it is rarely absolutely clear when and whether marginality is the condition of prophecy or an excuse for selfprotection. As Merton well said, religious life is "neither worldly nor unworldly. It is not artificially 'other-worldly: It is merely intended to be liberated and simple."(19)
But as the monk realized, the more complex life in contemporary society becomes, the more difficult it is for one to live freely and simply, and the more important it becomes for some people to attempt it and to create a lifestyle in the Church which witnesses publicly to the desirability and possibility of living that way. By describing this attempt in terms of immediacy and marginality, rather than in terms of flight from the world or a dichotomy between the sacred and the secular, I am attempting to avoid fruitless arguments over words and even ore fruitless involvement in ecclesiastical politics while continuing to affirm that religious life involves an inner stance and a public lifestyle which witnesses to the primacy and all-sufficiency of God and grounds a vocation to prophecy.
RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THE VOCATION TO PROPHECY
Prophecy is not primarily about foretelling the future. It is about telling what time it is, what it is time for, in the present. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel put it, the prophet's "essential task is to declare the word of God to the here and now." (20) Jesus is the prophet par excellence, the one who announced that the time is now and what it is time for is the Reign of God. Prophecy requires three things: a clarity of vision and acuity of hearing that is a participation in God's view of history; the ability to announce that vision effectively both to the powers which oppose God's Reign and to the people who are oppressed by those powers; and the willingness to pay, even with one's life, for the ultimate triumph of God's covenantal order, the Reign of God.
First, the prophet has to see, to hear, from God's point of view. As Heschel says, "the fundamental experience of the prophet is a fellowship with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the divine pathos."(21) The immediacy to God and the marginality to the social order that the religious attempt to live is directly ordered to sharing God's perception of humanity in history, to the cultivation of sympathy with the divine pathos.
The choice of celibate solitude is ordered to contemplation, the actualization in prayer of immediacy to God. Contemplation is the place, the locus, of the coincidence of the contemplative's view with the divine view. If there is one theme that Merton returned to more than any other it is that of contemplation as the entrance of the human person into the sphere of God. In contemplative prayer, according to Merton, we pass through the center of our own being into the very being of God where we see ourselves and our world with a clarity, a simplicity, a truthfulness that is not available in any other way. (22) And it is this view of reality which the contemplative must bring to bear upon the social order. For the religious, celibate solitude has as its primary purpose the fostering of such contemplation within which the religious participates in the divine perspective from which prophecy arises.
Anyone who has read much of Merton's writing on social issues has some sense of what the contemplative vision of society and history means. Merton gradually discovered the meaning of freedom, peace, community, love, and justice through his ongoing contemplative practice and so he was remarkably clear-sighted although certainly not infallible in discerning violence, slavery, mob psychology, and false mysticism masquerading as the quest for justice. His profound and public disturbance when a young member of The Catholic Worker staff, Roger Laporte, immolated himself to protest the Vietnam War probably did more than many at the time could grasp to keep the Peace Movement on track.(23) Merton may not have been right in the strategy of his response; he acted precipitously and without full knowledge of the facts. But he was certainly right in focusing attention on the relation of means to ends even when the ends are unquestionably right. However urgent the quest for peace, human sacrifice could not be used as a means to attain it.
However, Merton's protest of that tragic event sharpened for him the issue of marginality. Some of Merton's friends in the Peace Movement, people he deeply respected and loved, who were irate at his intemperate response to Laporte's action, expressed their anger by condemning Merton's monastic distance from the public activities of the Movement. Merton was profoundly challenged by their charge that he was "in the wrong place" at this crucial time and that one whose body was not on the line had no right to pontificate on the issue. His reflection, however, drove him deeper into his conviction that it was really his own still unpurified self that was so vulnerable to and controlled by the image of him that others had. He had to choose again to remain on the margins, to remain a "guilty bystander" in the eyes even of those he most respected, in order to preserve the inner equilibrium and clarity of vision from which his own prophetic contribution could be made.
Religious, including those who are not in monasteries and thus physically marginalized, will always have to deal with the charge of relative non-involvement in the secular order and their own inner questioning of where one really should be when the stakes are as high as they are today. Many members of ministerial religious orders, of course, have participated personally in public social protest, engaged in organized political lobbying, and even held public office. But religious life itself, as I have tried to show, involves a certain social and political marginality by the very fact that religious do not have the same personal stake in the ordering of secular life that their lay companions do. It is not our children, our jobs, our homes that are on the line, or at least not in the same way.
Marginality, as Merton tried to explain to his contemporaries, if it is lived authentically at all, is agonizing ambiguity. Without any attempt at self-justification or any claims to superiority, it gives the religious a hermeneutical vantage point which is somewhat analogous to that of the poor and oppressed, those who are marginalized not by choice but by violence. To be outside the system, especially when one does not have an alternate source for the goods and services the system should make available, allows one to discern the contradictions and the violence of the system that those who participate fully in it are less equipped to see. It is no accident that women rather than the ordained in the Catholic Church have analyzed the clerical system and are making clear to the whole Church why a religious caste system cannot finally serve the ends of ministry. It is no accident that blacks rather than whites, even whites who actively participated in the civil rights movement, exploded the myth of equality of the American social system.
Religious are marginal by choice, but that marginality is in the service of prophecy, not of escapism. From the edges of the system there is a view of what the system does to those who are excluded, to those who are made means to other people's ends. If contemplation fosters immediacy to God, marginality fosters immediacy to the oppressed. The religious wants to be where the cry of the poor meets the ear of God. To feel the pathos of God is not a warm and comfortable religious experience; it is an experience of the howling wilderness driving one to protest.
The characteristic temptation for the religious, one which Merton felt very often and analyzes repeatedly, is to abandon the vocation to solitude and throw oneself totally into the fray on the side of justice for the oppressed. There is something self-evidently right about that choice. Indeed, it is the right choice for most believers. But for some it is not the right choice because God asks something different of them. Whatever direct action they may take, and for many religious in ministerial orders it may be extensive, their essential vocation is to be a consistent locus of that prophetic insight born of immediacy to God and social marginality which is essential to the spiritual integrity of all action on behalf of justice.
The second requirement for prophecy is the ability to speak the vision to both the oppressor and the oppressed. To the former the prophet must speak a message of criticism and a challenge to conversion, and to the latter a message of hope energizing action toward a different future. Walter Brueggemann in his marvelous book, The Prophetic Imagination, (24) says that the first task of the prophet in speaking the vision is public lamentation. To lament is to declare, not by denunciation or condemnation but by public weeping, that everything is not all right. The guardians of the status quo, those who own, operate, and profit from the going system, want the oppressed to believe that everything is basically as it should be, that the system is designed and guaranteed by God, and that eventually all the minor problems will be remedied. The prophet says that the system is not God's plan; that God is on the side of the oppressed, of those whom the system grinds up and presses down; that the system does not have minor problems but that the system is a major problem.
The second task of the prophet is to recall God's promises and so, by projecting a vision of an alternate future, to engender hope. Hopelessness is a surrender to inevitability and the unchangeableness of the present arrangement. Those who control the system do so by paralyzing the imagination of the oppressed through the control of language for what cannot be said cannot be thought or sought. The prophet is one who has a fund of language that does not come from the system. It comes from the Word of God. With this new Word of promise the prophet can seed the imagination of the oppressed with the images that subvert the conviction of inevitability and divine legitimation of the system and engender hope for a different world.
Immediacy to God and social marginality are what equip the religious for this double prophetic task of public lament and energizing hope. In solitude and prayer the religious experiences the divine pathos for God's people. Sharing the divine pathos does not result in a new political program to rearrange the available pieces of the social puzzle but in a lament that will not be silenced, a howl of protest from the heart of the desert. It is the weeping of Rachel for her children who are no more; it is the lament of Jesus over Jerusalem which does not know the time of its visitation. But contemplative immersion in God also results in a new vision derived not from the status quo but from God's promises, in new images that will energize alternative strategies, in new language for the saying of things we were not supposed to think. Amos Wilder called Jesus' discourse in parable "the language of the Kingdom," a new idiom voicing things hitherto undreamed and unleashing energy toward a new creation?(25)
Social marginality plays an especially important role in the prophetic task of announcing God's Word in the present social, political, and religious situation. While much can be done from within the system to ameliorate its worst effects there are few people who are willing and able to cut off the institutional branch on which they are sitting. To be on the edge, as Jesus was, gives one a certain freedom to see what is really happening and to say what one sees regardless of the consequences. Merton spoke often of his marginal situation which he valued because it gave him the distance which enabled that critical balance which is something "the monk owes to the world [f]or the monastic life has a certain prophetic character about it "(26)
The third requirement for prophecy is the willingness to suffer, even to die, for the sake of the newness one is commissioned to announce. As Brueggemann says, the prophet speaks only "at great political and existential risk. (27)
Immediacy to God in contemplation and social marginality is the source of strength for those who dare to criticize the establishment, whether secular or religious, and for those who energize the people for change. Prophets, from Moses on the far side of the Jordan to Jesus in Gethsemane, from Martin Luther King, Jr., on the balcony in Memphis to Dorothy Day in the soup kitchen in New York City, from Oscar Romero in the Cathedral of El Salvador to Teresa Kane in Cathedral of Washington, D.C., have testified that the willingness and the strength to lay down one's life for justice's sake comes from face to face en counter with the living God who hears the cry of the poor.
Social marginality makes the prophet a natural target for establishment violence, both secular and ecclesiastical. The prophet lives on the edges of the system, not just physically but ideologically. The rules of the social order do not have a self-evident priority for the prophet for whom the presumption is not in favor of the establishment's values but always in favor of God's justice for the oppressed. Thus, the prophet not only challenges the law but when necessary breaks it and encourages others to do the~same. This is a dangerous way to live and, as Jesus remarked, the tombs of the prophets are eloquent testimony to the tension between "social order" and prophetic criticism (cf. Luke 11:4552). In a sense, prophets court death, physical or spiritual, because their vocation is not to survive within the system but to change the system.
A CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO RELIGIOUS LIFE
            AS PROPHETIC PHENOMENON IN THE CHURCH AND WORLD
Although prophets stand on the margins of society their vocation is intimately related to the historical moment in which they live. Thus, in speaking of religious life as a prophetic phenomenon in the contemporary Church we must attend to the present ecclesial situation. I want to suggest that religious life today faces a challenge which has ramifications for both Church and secular society and that the challenge is specifically to play a dangerous prophetic role in relation to a question which daily becomes more urgent. The question is that of obedience to lawfully constituted authority in Church and civil society.
Both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton felt called upon to deal with the issue of obedience. King, following Gandhi, introduced Americans to the extensive use of civil disobedience as a non-violent strategy against racism and continued American prosecution of the Vietnam War. Merton, especially toward the end of his life, repeatedly questioned the current understanding of the religious vow of obedience that gave the superiors and the censors of his order nearly absolute power over the details of the monk's life and work, and drove candidates from monastic life by the imposition of a rigid and mechanized uniformity on all members of the community. Merton saw the potential for tyranny on the part of the superior and for infantilization on the part of the subject in the absolutist interpretation of the vow, and he repeatedly protested against it. But both King and Merton saw themselves as dealing with the abuses of authority. King did not question the validity of civil authority nor Merton the validity of religious authority. They did not question whether obedience was the appropriate response to authority but only when, how, and whom to obey.
In the twenty years since the deaths of these two prophetic figures, which are also the years of the aftermath of Vatican Council II, the question of obedience has been exacerbated by the progressive deterioration of morality in American public life and the increasingly autocratic exercise of papal power in the Church. We are, in my opinion, being driven to face the question at a deeper level. It is no longer sufficient to ask whether authority is being exercised badly and, if it is, how it can be reformed. Nor is it sufficient to refuse obedience to those who abuse authority. It is time to ask whether there is something faulty in the very conviction that God's will is necessarily or ordinarily expressed to most people through the will of a few people who hold office in Church or state. In other words, it is time to question whether our understanding of authority as the right of some to command and obedience as the obligation of others to comply with commands reflects a divinely ordained arrangement of human affairs or whether it represents the sacralization of an intrinsically faulty human ideology of power. In short, is obedience a civil and Christian virtue or the strategy of those in power for maintaining systems of domination, a strategy which plays into the codependency of the multitudes who would rather react than act, rather surrender autonomy than assume responsibility.(28)
A number of factors are raising this question at the present time. Historically, Nazism culminating in the Holocaust has called into question for all peoples of all times the alienation of personal responsibility through blind obedience to authority, which has traditionally been proposed to Christians as the supreme imitation of Christ in his obedience unto death.
Within the disciplines of philosophy and theology thinkers like Dorothee Soelle and Nicholas Lash have undertaken specific reflections on obedience in Christian experience. Soelle in a provocative little book called Beyond Mere Obedience(29) accuses Christianity of elevating obedience to the pinnacle of the structure of virtue, a place that the Gospel assi s to charity. Lash, in an equally provocative book, Voices of Authority,(30) describes the relativizing effect which the irreversible multiplication of authorities in every field of thought and action is having on the traditional understanding of authority and obedience.
In the practical order we are seeing the devastating effects of military obedience in incidents like My Lai; the ultimate dangers inherent in the chain of command mechanisms that control the use of nuclear weapons; the immorality in government that is permitted and justified as following orders; and the repression and demoralization of one group after another in the Church by the oppressive use of ecclesiastical authority. All of these factors are forcing us to ask whether the widespread situation of authority-generated injustice and oppression is merely an accident of the misuse of authority or a challenge to re-examine the entire issue.
Religious make a vow of obedience. This constitutes a claim to know something about the nature and role of obedience in Christian experience as well as a responsibility for safeguarding its evangelical character. But any spiritual practice, if carried out by large numbers of devotees over the course of centuries without radical reflective reexamination, can degenerate into an ideologically sustained routine. At that point it can be used against its own deepest purposes and those purposes themselves can become unavailable. I would suggest that this has happened to Christian obedience in general and religious obedience in particular. I would also suggest that religious, in virtue of their vow, are called in a particular way to engage in a prophetic critique of the assumptions which undergird our understanding of obedience as a Christian virtue.
Because of the importance of the practice of obedience by subordinates in the power operations of those in office, any challenge to the traditional understanding of obedience is bound to be viewed as subversive. The administration's defense of Oliver North as an American hero is no more disturbing than recent events in the Catholic Church which make it very clear that virtually anything will be tolerated except a challenge to papal authority.(31) What has correctly been called "creeping infallibilism" has combined with a ruthless centralization of ecclesiastical control that is clearly aimed at the suppression of all centers of authority in the Church except the juridical one. Theological development, pastoral creativity, episcopal teaching, respectful dissent by the faithful, and the exercise of the legitimate autonomy of religious congregations have all been the objects of vindictive repression in recent years. (32) In every case acquiescence has been demanded in the name of obedience.
It seems to me that this situation is not merely an in-house Catholic problem. Catholics form the largest single denomination in the United States and are represented in disproportionately high numbers in the national legislature, the military, and the federal law enforcement agencies. Catholicism is, for better or worse, the strongest moral voice in contemporary Christianity, and it is Christianity which supplied the moral and spiritual rationale, the theology, for the understanding of obedience to which Hitler appealed, illegitimately no doubt, but very effectively.(33) It is Christianity, through the family, the parish church, and the parochial or church school, which continues to teach a theology of obedience that presents submission to parental civil, and Church authority as the quintessential Christian virtue.(34) What I want to suggest is that the understanding of obedience with which we are currently operating is dangerous in the extreme. We are playing spiritual and societal roulette by our failure to question radically the assumption that, in the absence of immediate and compelling evidence to the contrary, doing what we are told by those in positions of authority is the best way to fulfill the will of God.
Feminist analysis has helped us to see how patriarchy, the hierarchal system of domination and subordination which originated in the family as male headship in relation to women, children, and other dependents was gradually generalized as the appropriate, indeed divinely instituted, principle of all organized social life. (35) Our current theology of obedience rests on a sacralization of patriarchal ideology. As feminist criticism enables us to see the essential destructiveness of patriarchy as a principle of social organization, it also enables us to see that the theology and spirituality of obedience as it has been generally understood throughout the Christian centuries is highly questionable.
It is not within the scope of either our time here or my abilities to attempt a full scale reconstruction of the theology of obedience. But perhaps it is possible to suggest certain theological propositions which, if mutually articulated, could function as coordinates for a renewed theology of obedience. The first is that obedience, if it is to be understood as a Christian virtue, cannot derive its intrinsic value either from its contribution to human power structure or from its contribution to social order or efficiency but only from its role in an enlightened search for and commitment to the divine will.
Secondly, and as an immediate corollary, obedience in the sense of the term, i.e., interior submission of mind and will to the will of another, can only be offered to God. It is an expression of our creaturehood, of the experienced fact that we are not absolute originators of our own being and action but responders to God's creative initiative. The more deeply a person enters into union with God the more attuned to the divine voice he or she will be. If there is someone whom we might expect to hear and articulate that voice with particular clarity it is surely the saint or the prophet rather than the office holder.
Thirdly, all human beings are essentially equal before God and nothing, including accession to civil or ecclesiastical office, erases that foundational equality. All hierarchical systems are provisional human arrangements which implicate us in various processes of cooperation, but none of them creates the conditions of ontological superiority and inferiority implied in the classical understanding of obedience. Finally, no human being, however highly placed or specially consecrated, actually holds God's place in relation to another human being. A person, because of his or her role in the community, may enter in special ways into the systems of mediation of the divine will that we attempt to construct as more or less reliable supports for our fallible discernment, but no human being speaks, purely and simply, with the voice of God. Therefore, there is no escape from the inalienable responsibility that every human bears to discern God's will and to act on that discernment regardless of the consequences. This responsibility is not fulfilled by merely ascertaining that the action commanded is not sinful, as the classical formulation has it. We are responsible not merely not to sin but to participate in the positive achievement of God's will in our world.
A radical rethinking of the theology of obedience in terms of these coordinates, namely, the religious meaning of obedience as a direct response of the creature to divine love rather that as a response of one human being to another, radical human equality, and the realization that personal moral responsibility can be neither eradicated nor alienated by assigning discernment to another, could lead to a new and healthy understanding of authority and obedience in both Church and civil society. It would definitively undermine the unaccountable exercise of power masquerading as authority as well as the facile alienation of responsibility in mindless subordination. It would delegitimate the recourse to violence for the sake of dominative control and necessitate the development of means of persuasion and reconciliation.
It is my conviction that religious have a particular stake in responsibility for the development of such a renewed theology of obedience. By undertaking the prophetic task of rethinking the vow of obedience which they profess in the context of that immediacy to God which characterizes religious life, and beginning to practice that vow differently on the margins of the institution, they can offer to the Church and through the Church to society at large resources for the Exodus from patriarchy which is fundamental to the building of a just and peaceful world.
Undertaking such a prophetic task will not be looked upon tranquilly by either the ecclesiastical or the civil establishments. To repudiate the understanding of Church and state as intrinsically unequal societies, to undermine the ideology of obedience as religiously mandated submission to those in power, to call into question the simple equation of office with authority, and to reimagine obedience as contemplative attention to God in every situation is to threaten the system which keeps believers sheep in the Church and citizens pawns in society. It is to energize people for autonomy and responsibility. Those in power rarely surrender it willingly, and so those who would undermine that power for the sake of Gospel freedom must be prepared for the fate of all those who have claimed that it is better to obey God than humans.


NOTES

1. Merton himself repudiated his youthful approach to the world. See, e.g., his 1966 Commonweal essay, "Is the World a Problem?" which is available in Contemplation in a World of Action, intro. by Jean Leclerq (Garden City, NY: Image, 1973), pp. 159-79. On the first page of the essay he confesses that he is partly responsible for the absurdity of the title's question: "...due to a book I wrote thirty years ago [The Seven Storey Mountain], I have myself become a sort of stereotype of the world-denying contemplative -- the man who spurned New York, spat on Chicago, and tromped in Louisville, heading for the woods with Thoreau in one pocket, John of the Cross in another, and holding the Bible open at the Apocalypse. This personal stereotype is probably my own fault, and it is something I have to try to demolish on occasion."
2. See Merton's correspondence with Ruether between 1966 and 1968 in The Hidden Ground of LoVe: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. by W. H. Shannon (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux,1985), pp. 497516.
3. See, e.g., "Vocation and Modern Thought," Contemplation in a World of Action, esp. p. 68.
4. Merton's major writings on the renewal of religious life are collected in Contemplation in a World of Action. Several essays in the collection deal with the special problems faced by enclosed religious. The traditional canonical terminology for the forms of religious life breaks down in contact with the lived experience of contemporary religious. I will use the term "enclosed" or "cloistered" to designate the form of contemplative religious life characteristic of orders like the Trappists and "ministerial" to designate what are usually called "active" or "apostolic" congregations. Merton himself suggested that the difference between his form of religious life and others lay in the fact that ministry, in the explicit sense of the term, is not part of the experience of Christian mission for the monk. See "Appendices" in Contemplation in a World of Action, p. 245.
5. Cf. Lumen Gentium V, "The Call to Holiness"; Apostolicam Actuositatem, esp. I, 3, "The Foundations of the Lay Apostolate"; III, 11, "The Family"; and Gaudium et Spes, II, 1, 47-52 on the special holiness of marriage and its role in the modern world. References to Conciliar materials are to Documents of Vatican ii, ed. A. P. Flannery (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1975). It is disturbing that Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter, Mulieris Dignitatum, published on September 30, 1988, reiterated the superiority of virginity to marriage. See para. 22.
6. In his journal entry of January 31, 1965 Merton wrote: "...I no longer have the slightest need to argue with these people [those who "misunderstand the meaning of contemplation and solitude and condemn it"]. I have nothing to justify, nothing to defend. I need only defend this vast simple emptiness from my own self and the rest is clear." A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965, ed. and pref. N. B. Stone (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1988), p. 142.
7. A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965, p. 117.
8. The opposite impression would be created by the document published by the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in May 1983, "Essential Elements in Church Teaching on Religious Life;" available in Origins 13 (July 7, 1983). For extensive and intensive responses to this document see Religious Life in the U.S. Church: The New Dialogue, ed. R. J. Daly et al. (New York/Ramsey: Paulist, 1984).
9. I have developed this theme of religious life as a movement in New Wineskins: Re-imagining Religious Life Today (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1986), pp. 18-44.
10. See Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1962), p. xiv.
11. I am indebted for my own reflection on the temptation of religious to the establishment of a lifestyle enclave to John Grindel who, in a 1988 unpublished paper entitled "Individualism and Religious Life" delivered to the National Formation Conference, applied the critique of American individualism by Robert Bellah et al. (Habitats of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life [Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1985]) to religious life.
12. Because Lumen Gentium VI, 43 says that religious life is not an intermediate state between the clerical and lay states some religious have begun to speak of religious life as "stateless." In my opinion this is a mistake. Religious life is not a hierarchical state but it is definitely a "state of life." As Perfectae Caritatis 10 says, "Lay religious life, for men and for women, is a state for the profession of the evangelical counsels which is complete in itself."
13. For an account of this experience in Merton's life see Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), pp. 435-458. See also John Howard Griffin, Follow the Ecstasy: Thomas Merton, The Hermitage Years, 1965-1968 (Fort Worth: Latitudes Press, 1983). Griffin provides a full scale treatment of Merton's relationship with Margie Smith.
14. Griffin, Follow the Ecstasy, pp. 81-82 quotes Merton as saying: "My chastity is not merely the renunciation of sin or of sexual fulfillment but the renunciation of a whole mode of being, a whole conception of life and of myself."
15. This quotation from the Restricted journals is from Mott, The Seven Mountains, p. 458.
16. Merton mentions this in many places, e.g., in "Problems and Prospects," Contemplation in a World of Action, pp. 28-30.
17. See the chapter, "To Choose the World," in Monica Furlong, Merton: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 252-269.
18. It is somewhat dangerous to draw this distinction at this point in ecclesiastical history since the Vatican has been at pains in recent years to reintroduce a dichotomy between the sacred and the secular dictating an artificial and basically inoperable separation of functions between clergy and religious on the one hand and laity on the other. My proposals have nothing to do with this dichotomy or its conclusions.
19. "Problems and Prospects," pp. 43-44.
20. Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets [Harper Torchbook, vol. I] (New York/Evanston/London: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 12.
21. Heschel, The Prophets, p. 26.
22. See Merton's "The Inner Experience: Society and the Inner Self (II)." "The Inner Experience" is a collection of essays from an unpublished work which were published serially in Cistercian Studies 18 (1983) and 19 (1984).
23. See Mott, The Seven Mountains, pp. 427-430.
24. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).
25. Amos N. Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 1-17.
26. Cf. "Problems and Prospects," p. 28.
27. The Prophetic Imagination, p. 67.
28. I am dependent for this idea on the theory of Anne Wilson Schaef expounded in When Society Becomes an Addict (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).
29. Dorothee Soelle, Beyond Mere Obedience, trans. by L. W. Denef (New York: Pilgrim, 1982).
30. Nicholas Lash, Voices of Authority (Shepherdstown: Patmos, 1976).
31. This became distressingly evident when priests, ordained by schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefevre, who refuse to accept the doctrinal and disciplinary implications of Vatican II, were readmitted to full Church membership and priestly functions provided they submitted to the Pope. In other words, communion of faith and practice is less essential than obedience!
32. I am alluding to the repressive actions taken against theologians Charles Curran, Hans Kung, Edward Schillebeeckx, Leonardo Boff; against Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen; against episcopal conferences; against the signers of the New York Times advertisement on dissent from official teaching on abortion; against individual religious such as Agnes Mary Mansour and against whole congregations through the process of approval of Constitutions.
33. Soelle in Beyond Mere Obedience, p. 7, supplies this quotation from Rudolf Hess who was a commandant in Auschwitz: "I was brought up by my parents to give due respect and honor to all adults, particularly older persons, no matter which social classes they belonged to. Wherever the need arose, I was told, it was my primary duty to be of assistance. In particular I was always directed to carry out the wishes or directives of my parents, the teacher, pastor, in fact of all adults including household servants, without hesitation, and allow nothing to deter me. What such persons said was always right. These rules of conduct have become part of my very flesh and blood."
34. John Bradshaw, a family therapist whose theories on societal dysfunction in America are gaining considerable attention, in Bradshaw On: The Family: A Revolutionary Way of Self-Discovery (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1988), calls the theologically reinforced attitudes toward obedience used in American child-rearing "the poisonous pedagogy." See esp. p. 1-22.
35. For a thorough-going theological treatment of patriarchy and its effects on theology see Rosemary Radford Reuther, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983).

To reveal marvelous things....

I became aware of the art of Albert Herbert (1925-2008) through my work on the interpretation of Jonah over the last few weeks. The more I research him, the more I am intrigued by this remarkable and idiosyncratic painter.


Some interpreters associate his highly creative dream-like and poetic images with such famous figures like the mystical painter and author William Blake. He is perhaps best known for his rather unique and mystical paintings of Biblical subjects. His work on Christ’s derobing and his picture of Mother and child are truly stunning.


Through religion, Herbert maintained, one discovers an inner world of existence and the sense of being human. Herbert wanted to depict inner life and experience rather than objects or scenes in the “real” world because for him art had to do with feelings and emotions. He learned from Francis Bacon that feeling drives the creative act of painting. So he desired to paint things as he “felt” they looked like rather than they “really” were.


Because he wanted to communicate this intention of his art to a wide audience, and because he realized at a certain stage that he felt most at home within his Christian context, he resorted to painting Biblical and religious motifs, symbols and figures. This was his “figuration”, which contrasted with the highly popular tradition of abstract painting (in which he “officially” participated for some time). As a result of his own figurative approach which he developed later after he abandoned abstract painting, he was often ignored and even snubbed – being regarded as a painter of lesser importance out of touch with what really mattered.


He painted Biblical figures in a mystical manner. This meant that they had a polyvalent, enigmatic nature. They were presented in such a way that they could be interpreted in different ways. At a later stage of his life he became interested in children’s art. His paintings obtained a “childish” playfulness, though they communicated deep and profound feelings. He began to paint primitive figures, striking because of their colourful, but enigmatic, transcendental quality. One commentator remarks that he wanted to communicate through his art that one could still experience “exaltation.” Art, he once commented, is to reveal the marvelous.


To some extent one can find good “explanations” for his work. As a young eighteen year old boy, he traumatically experienced during the Normandy invasion in the second world war how more than seventy five percent of his group of soldiers were killed mercilessly in combat at the hand of German snipers. He returned from the war as a religious person. His involvement in religious painting continued for most of his life. He, for example, received on public commission to paint 14 stations of the cross. But the church found the end result too disturbing. It is now in a chapel in London. He died with the remark: “I am floating on a lake.”


In an article on the spiritual reading of the Old Testament, Barbara Green refers to Wendy Beckett’s reflections on Herbert’s painting of Jonah (from 1988). Beckett, together with Herbert, sees Jonah as representing humanity’s typical refusal to heed God’s call and humanity’s “no” to the divine beckoning. And God, in “desperate” love, makes Jonah taste the meaning of his no. Jonah is swallowed by the whale. The painting of Herbert in 1988 (he painted two others of Jonah in the whale) speaks of Jonah’s confrontation with his call to self-sacrifice and service. He has to give up the security of his safe haven. The picture of Jonah symbolizes a “poor, naked, frightened Jonah and the world of responsibility and maturity that awaits him.” He is considering his options: “ease and safety and self-love, as opposed to work and risk and self-giving.” It is a dilemma which is to be found in Jonah’s own mind. Yet – writes Green, “God’s love awaits him on every side.” (cf. Blackwell Companion to Spirituality, 49-50).


To some extent Herbert’s understanding of Jonah was autobiographical: he was tempted to succumb to modernist painting and its demands for an abstract approach, but finally he understood that figuration was his calling. In this sense Herbert, like Jonah, was challenged to accept a calling which demanded from him faithfulness to a deeper cause.


Reading all this and experiencing some of the impact of Herbert's art, I realise once again in more depth how spirituality is about the relationship of the divine and human. It is a relationship which transforms humanity to become more mature and to grow deeper into things that really matters. It is a process, determined by the awesome touch of a loving God. This touch, however, often comes to us through the hands of great artists....


Visiting London in May has suddenly become more exciting. I shall be visiting that chapel....

Daily drudgery....

I should like to bring my daily drudge before you, O Lord - the long hours and days crammed with everything else but you. Look at this daily drudge, my gentle God, you who are merciful to us men and women for whom daily drudge is virtually all we are. Look at my soul, which is virtually nothing but a street on which the world's baggage cart rolls along with innumerable trivialities, with its gossip and fuss, with its noisiness and empty pretension.

A prayer of Karl Rahner!

To share joy.

Joy is meant to be shared. This is especially true in a religous context. The first Christians stood in awe before the mighty deeds of the apostles (Ac.2:43). They “feared” God. But this had nothing to do with anxiety and panic. We read in the same description that they broke bread with joy and that they praised God. In a simple way they experienced happiness when they had their meals together, but in the deeper, spiritual life, they could also praise God with much joy (Ac.2:47).

The sharing of joy is an essential characteristic of a community of believers. And it is fascinating to see how the church is formally structured to express this joy:

To worship God with hymns and song is one of the most important ways of expressing joy. Music, especially music that touches one, can make worship a special experience. People would remark after a service that the music was beautiful. They sing hymns with extraordinay enthusiasm when they are together in joy. When one sings special words with beautiful music it can inspire one and transform one in a deep spiritual manner. It is one of the most fitting ways to express joy in worshipping God. Then one is also truly celebrating the love of God as the true source of joy.

But joy is also communicated in proclaiming the Word of God. The preacher who lives from the gospel, the good, joyful news, will radiate joyful words. And it is not possible to communciate joy when one is innerly desperate, broken, without hope and overcome by depression. But to proclaim joy does not mean, however, that one has to smile all the time or that one has to feel happy all the while. It is a disaster when one wants to fake joy or to exaggerate one’s happiness.

Joy can be subdued, sober, simple. On Good Friday it is the death of Christ which is celebrated, remembered joyfully. On such a day joy is expressed differently than on the day of celebrating Christmas or Pentecost. When we say farewell to a loved one who has died, one can feel much joy amidst the sorrow of loss and bereavement. It is a joy because of having been blessed by the life and presence of the one who has died. It is joy because of so much happiness which we had shared with the one who has died.

Joy can be there, even in the times of great adversity, because of the never-ending presence of God in our lives. We can be joyful in sorrows, writes Paul in 2 Corinthians. He knew – he sang songs of joy in jail. Ultimately we feel joy because God shares divine blessings with us.

We feel happiness because we share it with the Other.

To see and taste God (Ps.34:9). What is mysticism?

There is little doubt who the great mystics in history are. A number of names immediately come to mind. There are Hildegard of Bingen and Bernard of Clairvaux from the 11th century, Meister Ekchart from the 13th century, Jan van Ruusbroec and Juliana of Norwich from the 14th century, Ignatius van Loyola from the 16th century and many others. These authors were key figures in the history of mysticism.

It is interesting that they are described as “mystics.” We read their texts and we know intuitively that they are about mysticism. But at the same time differences come to the fore as soon as we start discussing the nature of mysticism, It is clear that mysticism can be understood in different ways. Scholem (Die jüdische Mystik; 6-7)who wrote important publications on mysticism, thinks that we can begin to understand mysticism by noting the simple remark in Psalm 34:9. “Taste and seeing that the Lord is good.” Mysticism is about the intimate way in which the presence of God is experienced directly and immediately. The goodness of God is tasted and seen.


This verse makes us aware of what may seem like a contradiction. God who is so completely different than creation, can be so intimately in a relationship with creation that the divine goodness can be tasted and seen.

This focus on an intimate relationship with the divine is a general trend in mysticism. On the one hand mysticism has to do with what is unthinkable – it brings us before the divine which transcends our reality. It has to do with experiencing the divine presence. And then, secondly, this amazing phenomenon, that Creator and creation interact in an intimate way, is then to be expressed in human language.

Here we have to do with the conflict between mystical thought (human thoughts and words) and mystical experience (our experience of faith). We struggle with this already on a most elementary level when we triy to explain to others what happened when we experienced the divine touch.

I liked the Scholem’s remarks about this. He wanted to emphasise that people have a religious experience which is unique. It is an experience which transforms and changes everything. Someone is distanced from his or her own being (an ecstatic experience). It is an infinite experience. The inner being of someone is lifted up to the highest level (“den endlichen Aufschwung der Seele zur höchsten Stufe).

And yet Scholem writes, one should be careful about reducing mystical texts to this insight. There are some authors who do not like to speak of mysticism as "unification with God." They think that such an understanding eliminates the borders between God and humanity. They are wary of associating the mystical experience with the divinisation of a human being – something which is often the case in contemporary contexts in which pantheism has become so prominent.

This description of mysticism as unification is in any case very wide. There is not really something like an experience of unification with God in religions. This abstract formulation is an attempt to help us in a general way to understand mystical texts. In reality we have a mystical authors who wrote in language of the time about their experience of faith. Mysticism always has a specific character and context. We should therefore always ask how Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, wisdom teachers, rabbis, laity, monastics, Desert Fathers and any others spoke about their mystical experiences. It is similar to music. Music is about an octave of eight notes which produces sound and which has an impact on people. But music will sound very differently where Bono and U2 or a symphonic orhestra or a jazz band perform.

But there is also another important facet which must be emphasised. Anyone can play a few notes on the piano and think he or she is on the way to stardom. Music, however, is more than loosely connected notes. Mystics did not have a vague feeling of divine intervention or some relationship with God. They also did not have one or other vague feeling of divinisation. For them it was not a matter of a human being reaching an extraordinary state. They thought in the language of their time and context about the indescribable, unfathomable touch of God which transformed someone and changed his or her life completely. And each of them expressed their unique experience in a particular form.

Taken as example Jewish mysticism. Scholem writes that the early Jewish mystics never spoke of unification with God, although we could say that this is what their texts are about. It is a vital characteristic of Jewish mysticism that God remains completely different in the divine relationship with humanity. God is so overwhelmingly different that the one who sees God, dies – as is remarked in Hebrew Scriptures. And yet, mystics experienced God in an intimate manner. They spoke of special, personal experiences which brought them, in mystical ways, to seek God. Mystical authors would express fundamental experience in different ways according to the context and time.

An example of this would be Jewish mystics of the second century. They expressed their mystical experience of God in terms of language from their time and context. They used especially Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 with their throne visions. In both these visions the visionaries stand in awe before the transcendent majesty and glory of God and experience their own unholy existience in an acute manner. The point is that, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, these mystics express their experience by speaking of their journey to the heavenl y regions and their presence before the throne of God. In these regions they are given heavenly secrets which are vitally important for their future existence. God is transforming them and bringing new life to them.

Later on, however, the Chassidim used much lesser symbolic language in their depiction of their mystical experiences. One of them explained his mystical experience as follows, “Many people serve God with their human understanding. Others, however, contemplate the divine ‘ nothingness.’ The special mystical experience given to people who are regarded as worthy, is beyond all human comprehension. But after this vision and experience of God en returns to one's normal state and comprehension, but now one is filled by divine glory.”


Mysticism is therefore not a simple matter of speaking about an encounter with God. It is a special experience which is expressed with much difficulty in human language. Where these texts are finally written down and read, they have an extraordinary impact. In them people recognise the deepest meaning of life. They contront the reader with the Mystery of our existence. It is only in the direct, mystical encounter with the divine that humanity finds complete peace.

Joy comes to those who search for it.

I met someone today who told me about his difficult times six years ago when he was involved in a divorce. Dark, depressive thoughts overshadowed his existence. Now, six years later, having met someone whom he loves greatly, he can hardly imagine those extremely negative experiences which brought his into a deep depression – they now seem so unreal to him.

In his life joy and sadness are clearly closely linked. Like many, as we saw in the blog yesterday, he also experienced how his life offers both its sad and its joyful moments. This is real: life is not only about joy. Faith is not only triumphant. It fails and it know unhappiness. At that time, though, he seemed to have lost this perspective. For him life was simply a prolonged, sad experience.

The point is whether we allow our sadness to overshadow our existence. Often we allow our deep thoughts to dominate what we feel and how we live. We cannot relativise our feelings. It is difficult to say to ourselves: “but one day there will be the good times again.”

Our life is about much more than the sadness and unhappiness that we must occasionally experience. Life is about denying sadness the upper hand. It is about challenging ourselves not to become a victim of our disappointments.

This is easier said than done. My friend would not have appreciated it if someone told him six years ago not to worry since there will be good times again in the future. He would not have liked to hear that he is too overwhelmed and obsessed by his negative feelings.

But then, what does one do in such times other than sharing one’s grief with God and thus moves away from grief? As we experience deep inner anguish and loneliness, we may feel abandoned by God and all else. But these negative feelings bring us to seek God so that we can be reunited with the divine presence.

On the one hand, one could accept such times as part of life and then see it as a challenge which one should face and which one should see as a time to be stripped from everything which keeps one from seeking God. This means letting our sadness go, allocating to them only a restricted place in our lives.

Or we can also see these times as the divine invitation to seek God as the Father who cares for those who are unhappy. One needs to enter the sphere of Fatherly love, to seek the intimate closeness to God, so that one can be touched by the divine joy. It may be difficult to seek God since we are so overwhelmed by our loneliness and sadness. We become so preoccupied by these negative feelings that it is difficult to break away from them.

And yet, this is what we need to do – to seek God’s presence which brings us inner peace and joy. For many who suffer such negative feelings, the road to healing will be steep. Searching in God does not always mean that we will experience joy instantly.

Most probably we shall find that our healing takes a long time and comes gradually. As we seek God in our sadness, it may be that we experience but one tiny moment of graceful joy and sense of belonging with God who cares for us, only to feel much sadness again. It is like a journey per foot on a road by night without any light. We walk carefully and haltingly. But then a car speeds by and we see that we are still on the right road and we recognize the direction in whcih we should travel. That one moment of light brings a sense of direction in our lives.The one moment of joy may bring the relief and begin the process of healing.

Relief from sadness does not always come easily. But when we search for it, we shall not be disappointed. Joy comes only to those who reach out to it....

Often as we walk through dark days, we despair. But then invariably, later on we say: if I now look back I can only say that it was by the grace of God....

Our sadness should not speak the last word in our lives.

On happiness. Joy does not fall from the sky.

This week one of the brave opponents of the apartheid system and a most respected journalist, decided to end his life. He shot himself, having told his friends that he was fed up with what was happening in our country. His death was front page news, with some of our most distinguished leaders appealing to those in power to understand that his death signals to hem how crime and corruption are driving people to acts of extreme desperation. There is in our land deep depression as our social fabric falls apart.

The journalist’s death affected me deeply. As a young man, I often felt inspired by his fearless stand against apartheid. When others in high moral positions supported a devastating racist political system, cut off all debates and ostracised those who dared to express dissent and opposition (him included), his lonely, brave voice gave us hope and strengthened us in our own opposition to the system. I respected the integrity with which he wrote and fought an often lonely battle against injustice – something he did throughout his life.

But I am writing this because of something else I read yesterday. I was reading a book by Anselm Grün on spirituality in which he writes about joy. He writes about the fact that our society knows so little joy and that we perpetuate and intensify our feelings of misery by our constant negative attitudes and pronouncements.

I kept on reflecting on what he writes – especially because joy is so vital. Joy in life is not just an emotion that makes our existence a pleasure or provides us with good feelings. Joy is a key to survival. If we lose our joy in life, we often arrive at a point where we completely give up on life.

As a contrast to this miserable situation, Grün draws attention to the fact that the Bible is full of feasts which are celebrated with much joy. For this one only has to read the Psalms. The deeper life of which the Bible speaks, is a life of joy.

But, and this is the point, life, even in the Bible is not merely about joy. The best Biblical symbols of this is the slavery in Egypt, the wearisome journey through the desert to the promised land, the cross and the suffering of the first Christian witnesses.What is true of the Bible, is simply also true of life. We experience in our everyday existence wonderful moments of joy, but then, in a moment, it can be taken away from us by one negative word, a news article, an angry look, a word of criticism or a seemingly insignificant event – all of which can makes us sad and miserable. Life has its beautiful moments, but also its moments of sadness.

Life does not only consist of joy. And religion has nothing to do with a permanent state of joy. Life is also sad. There are the moments, also for those with faith, that one wakes up and does not want to face the day ahead.

There are days when we have no courage, that we are lost in emotions of despair and fear. That we are angry, upset, violent. There are times that we get ill, fall in debt, worry about the future – all of which make us sad. There is no one who can escape this darker side of human existence. Even the most happy people experience moments of sadness.

The difference between the Bible with its happy and sad moments on the one hand and contemporary society with its misery, is that some people become victims of their sadness. When they look at life, sadness dominates and overshadows all moments of light – to the extent that the good no longer exists for them.

Others understand that life is much more than sadness. Why should one let the darker moments overshadow the moments of fulfillment, of joy, of meaning - however fleeting or small they may be? Why should one be conquered by fears and unhappiness? Life is ultimately about much more. It becomes a matter of perspective: does one look at sadness as the end of happiness or does one look as sadness which happens, but which is ultimately overshadowed by happiness.

One can become so obsessed with darkness and depression, that one succumbs to them and is destroyed by them. Despair becomes a spiral movement in which one is constantly drawn deeper and deeper. In Biblical times believers somehow managed in their darkest moments to hold on to the light, the deeper things that really matter. In jail, engulfed by darkness, Paul and Silas sang songs of joy at midnight, the darkest time of the night. Their secret was that they sang hymns “to God” (Ac.16:25). They were aware of the divine presence in their midst – something which transformed their situation.

It was the same Paul who advised his readers to be joyful. But he knew he had to add, quite tellingly, that they needed to rejoice “in the Lord” (Phil4:4). And, finally, he also added, that they should rejoice “always.” It was a challenge to them – he knew such joy has to be sought. It does not fall from the sky.

On happiness. Joy does not fall from the sky.

This week one of the brave opponents of the apartheid system and a most respected journalist, decided to end his life. He shot himself, having told his friends that he was fed up with what was happening in our country. His death was front page news, with some of our most distinguished leaders appealing to those in power to understand that his death signals to hem how crime and corruption are driving people to acts of extreme desperation. There is in our land deep depression as our social fabric falls apart.

The journalist’s death affected me deeply. As a young man, I often felt inspired by his fearless stand against apartheid. When others in high moral positions supported a devastating racist political system, cut off all debates and ostracised those who dared to express dissent and opposition (him included), his lonely, brave voice gave us hope and strengthened us in our own opposition to the system. I respected the integrity with which he wrote and fought an often lonely battle against injustice – something he did throughout his life.

But I am writing this because of something else I read yesterday. I was reading a book by Anselm Grün on spirituality in which he writes about joy. He writes about the fact that our society knows so little joy and that we perpetuate and intensify our feelings of misery by our constant negative attitudes and pronouncements.

I kept on reflecting on what he writes – especially because joy is so vital. Joy in life is not just an emotion that makes our existence a pleasure or provides us with good feelings. Joy is a key to survival. If we lose our joy in life, we often arrive at a point where we completely give up on life.

As a contrast to this miserable situation, Grün draws attention to the fact that the Bible is full of feasts which are celebrated with much joy. For this one only has to read the Psalms. The deeper life of which the Bible speaks, is a life of joy.

But, and this is the point, life, even in the Bible is not merely about joy. The best Biblical symbols of this is the slavery in Egypt, the wearisome journey through the desert to the promised land, the cross and the suffering of the first Christian witnesses.What is true of the Bible, is simply also true of life. We experience in our everyday existence wonderful moments of joy, but then, in a moment, it can be taken away from us by one negative word, a news article, an angry look, a word of criticism or a seemingly insignificant event – all of which can makes us sad and miserable. Life has its beautiful moments, but also its moments of sadness.

Life does not only consist of joy. And religion has nothing to do with a permanent state of joy. Life is also sad. There are the moments, also for those with faith, that one wakes up and does not want to face the day ahaed.

There are days when we have no courage, that we are lost in emotions of despair and fear. That we are angry, upset, violent. There are times that we get ill, fall in dept, worry about the future – all of which make us sad. There is no one who can escape this darker side of human existence. Even the most happy people, know their moments of sadness.

The difference between the Bible with its happy and sad moments on the one hand and contemporary society with its misery is that some become victims of their sadness. When they look at life, sadness dominates and overshadows all moments of light – to the extent that the good no longer exists for them. Others understand that life is much more than sadness. Why should one let the darker moments overshadow the moments of fulfillment, of joy, of meaning? Why should one be conquered by fears and unhappiness? Life is ultimately about much more. It becomes a matter of perspective: does one look at sadness as the end of happiness or does one look as sadness which happens, but which is ultimately overshadowed by happiness.

One can become so obsessed with darkness and depression, that one succumbs to them and are destroyed by them. It becomes a spiral movement in which one is constantly drawn deeper and deeper. In Biblical times believers somehow managed in their darkest moments to hold on to the light, the deeper things that really matters. In jail, engulfed by darkness, Paul sang songs of joy at midnight. The secret was that they sang hymns “to God” (Ac.16:25). They were aware of the divine presence in their midst – something which transformed their situation.

It was the same Paul who advised his readers to be joyful. But he knew he had to add, quite tellingly, that they need to rejoice “in the Lord” (Phil4:4). And, finally, he also added, that they should rejoice “always.” It was a challenge to them – he knew such joy has to be sought. It does not fall from the sky.

The Bible as Word of God

We speak of the Bible as the “Word of God.” We think of the “Word of God” often as a "book" with pages which we read and study. And we see ourselves as believers who are people of the Book. This “bookishness” of our faith, sometimes tend to make us think that we are not as privileged as the disciples of Jesus. They had Jesus, they could listen to Him, hear Him ad follow Him. We, however, no longer are with Jesus. We “only” have words of Jesus.

But is is not that simple. Luke begins his first story in his Gospel with the wonderful narrative about two devoted Bible students: Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, receive the announcement of his birth. They are described as observant of “all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly” (Luke 1:6). This is spirituality: they are transformed by their relationship with God. Their relationship with God is determined by God’s word, the law. The words of the Lord shape them, become a reality in their lives and remain the source of their ongoing devotion to God. They “only” have a Bible, but they live wholeheartedly from this Word of God.

Luke’s story about these two people therefore also includes God’s story in their lives. They know the divine words given to Moses. They are inspired by what Moses heard from God and what was later recorded as God’s will to Moses in the Old Testament as part of our Bible. The story about Moses is the heart of the story of Luke and of these people’s lives. In the history of Moses we have two stages: Moses experiences the divine word – and he becomes the messenger who brings this word to the people of God. He is a minister of the word.

But note that there is another “story” in this first narrative: The story of Moses is linked with the story of Gabriel. The angel brings God’s word to Zechariah and Elizabeth. He, Gabriel, tells them, “I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news.” They hear from the angel the Word of God, the Gospel, the Good News. Gabriel heart God’s Word and communicates it to them. Like Moses who received the Word from God, Gabriel also becomes a witness to the Word.

Thus begins the gospel of Jesus- with the Word of God to these two people. It is a powerful word. It transforms them, changes them and they become messengers of the Good News. Long before the birth of Jesus, the Gospel is heard!

We do not “read” a Bible or “merely” study a “book.” We, like the believers in the time of Jesus and like Jesus himself, have the Word of God which changes and transforms people’s livers in an irreversible manner. The Bible as Word of God contains many smaller “Words of God.” Jesus too lives from the Word of God. He preaches from the Word, for example, in the synagogue (Luke 4) and in the Sermon on the Mount. He heard the Word of God, for example, when he was baptized. And he became the Messenger, the one who witnessed to the Word of God and who embodied the Gospel of Good News.

Now Jesus has left, but we still live from God’s word – like people of all times. We have more than a Book. We are not less privileged than people in the time of Jesus. We also can live from God’s Word which inspires us to become messengers.

No wonder Luke adds a prologue to his gospel in which he talks about the words of Jesus which he wrote down. His book is meant to write the words of Jesus in the most reliable manner (Luke 1:1-4). He knew how vital God’s Word was. It was the Word from which Jesus lived – as he testified to Satan during the temptation, which set the hearts of the Emmaus disciples aflame, which made them witness even though Jesus disappeared from their sight and it was the Word which brought the Ethiopian to be baptized and which filled his life with joy.

In complete amazement:. The presence of God in our lives.

We can talk, pray, meditate and listen to God without experiencing God.

Acts begins quite soberly with a last discussion between Jesus and his disciples in which He tells them what will happen after his ascension (Ac.1:1-10). Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit who will empower them to become witnesses (Ac.1:8-9). They then return to Jerusalem, as Jesus asked them (Ac.1:4), where they pray and elect a successor for Judas (Ac.1:12-26). There is a lot of talking, reflection, meditating and praying going on in this introductory passage. They are busy, these disciples,as they respond to the message of Jesus and awaits what will happen.

And yet, there are also indications of something extraordinary in this passage. It focusses strongly on the Holy Spirit as the promise from the Father (Ac.1:4; but esp. 1:33) who would empower them to become witnesses. Characteristic of spirituality the passage focusses therefore on God’s relationship with humanity through the gift of the Spirit who will transform the disciples. Whilst there are references to God’s initiative and actions to deepen the divine relationship with humanity, the disciples from their side also respond to the divine actions by their prayers and the election of someone to succeed Judas. These are all precursors to the acts of empowerment which are to follow and which would bring humanity to do extraordinary things. The resurrection is not enough. That was just the beginning. Now follows the process of transformation. But the moment of empowerment is prepared by their accepting attitude to what Jesus wants from them – to return to Jerusalem – and their prayers. At the same time they also quite practically prepare for the gift of empowerment by appointing a successor to Judas. In this way not only God, but the disciples also are actively at work to nurture and intensify their mutual relationship. It is indeed a process of growth in a relationship: intense discussions as a group with Jesus, careful consideration of what He wants from them, prayerful response and preparation for what is to follow and practical arrangements for the future.

All these things illustrate various aspects of the growing relationship of God with humanity and the loving response of humanity to the divine actions in their lives. It has to do with divine gifts, support – but also about farewell, about new forms of relationship. At the same time there is devotion, obedience, retreat, discernment of God’s will and trust on the divine guidance. The relationship between God and humanity takes on many forms and varies constantly. It is indeed a journey in which this relationship develops in various forms and ways.

But there is something unique to this first phase of Acts in that everything comes to completion on the day of Pentecost. Everything is directed to and is preparation for this event: it is the day on which the divine promises become a reality and the Spirit touches and changes people forever. What was expected previously, is experienced on this day. Here a divine fire burns in people. They are inspired by a Spirit of love in the service of God. Perhaps even because they awaited it so intensely, their experience is so intense.... It is the great moment of transformation.

It is easy to reduce Pentecost to a moment that people are being empowered and transformed. They become fearless witnesses, we say. But Pentecost is about much more than this. People are changed, but they become people who worship God in amazement as the God of power who is present in their lives. It is not what they would do on that day, which makes most sense. It is what God did and what God is doing and God’s fulfilling presence which is what everything is all about.

This is clear in the simple description of the Pentecost events. A heavenly sound “from heaven” fills the house and fire tongues descends on each one of them. Heaven descends to earth. And then, according to Acts 2:11, they proclaim the mighty deeds of God. It is the divine presence and deeds which fill their hearts and make them break out in spontaneous witness. Pentecost is for Luke the coming of the Lord (Ac.2:20). It is the day of the Lord’s coming in power and glory. God is present among us through the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is a powerful reminder that God desires a relationship with us which is intimate: ultimately God is with us as God who is stronger than death. We must remember and meditate on this constantly. From the very beginning God was with us as the fire of love who renews us.

We can speak, think, meditate and even pray without really experiencing the presence of God. Pentecost reminds us that ultimately we have to experience our faith as contemplation – as the refreshing, powerful experience of the divine presence. On this day our prayerful waiting is over – what we expected, is finally a reality. Our longing for God is transformed into our joy in the divine presence. Finally, finally we experience the God of fire and of love....