Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

The Sacredness of God's Handiwork

I recently had reason, for a little while, to sit in a chapel overlooking a small lake, watching the wind playing with trees and birds foraging on a small sand bar. I was conscious of the rhythm of life, the rhythm of seasons, of light and darkness. I was deeply consciousness of the sacredness of God’s creation, and the way creation touches us, lifts us up, and in some sense renews us. Creation just is. It’s cycles and rhythms, its serenity and its wildness, its beauty, and its power remind me of our smallness; reminds me how little control we have over life. I thought of Job, and God’s question directed to him; in effect, “were you there when I created everything? Did you participate in its creation?” I was grateful for life, but deeply aware of the pain inherent in being human. I was peaceful in the presence of wind, water and sun. Peaceful and content for but a moment in time. 

“…How do we live in creation?  Do we relate to it as a place full of "things" we can use for whatever need we want to fulfill and whatever goal we wish to accomplish?   Or do we see creation first of all as a sacramental reality, a sacred space where God reveals to us the immense beauty of the Divine?  As long as we only use creation, we cannot recognize its sacredness because we are approaching it as if we are its owners.  But when we relate to all that surrounds us as created by the same God who created us and as the place where God appears to us and calls us to worship and adoration, then we are able to recognize the sacred quality of all God's handiwork…” 

Henri Nouwen

 

Caroline Myss: Prayer, Embodying Prayer, & the Reality of Evil

I recently listened to a fascinating and provocative interview with Caroline Myss. Likely there are a number of things people might want to critique, but it’s an interview I want to uncritically sit with for a while; there’s wisdom and insight in it. In this episode of Sound’s True, Tami Simon speaks with Caroline about faith and divine intervention, who or what hears our prayers, how to work with prayer in the face of illness, and why prayer is a force that counteracts evil in the world (Duration: 51 minutes). Parts of it – the section on prayer (see below) reminded my of the way prayer is described in two Hollywood films: Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty

Here’s an extended excerpt to whet your appetite. 

Tami Simon [Interviewer] …Caroline, you make a very intriguing statement about prayer, that "all prayers are heard," that all of our prayers are actually heard. I'm wondering if you can explain that. I'm sure that there are people listening who might think, when they hear a statement like that, "Well, that's certainly not my experience! I've prayed for plenty of things, and it didn't seem like my prayers were heard!" 

Caroline Myss: Well, I think you just offered me the way to answer that, which is that people look for their prayers to be answered the way that they expect them to be answered. They look for the external world to change, and they don't realize that a prayer is more about changing you than it is changing the world around you. We're the engines of change. We are the means through which the world changes, whether it's our personal world or the world around us. When you pray for change, it is you that is going to change, not the world around you. The answer to a prayer can put you in a desert. It can lead you to the darkest place within you, because that is the answer to the prayer. 

When someone says "an answer," they think of it like a scientific experiment, like there's one answer! They don't understand that an answer to a prayer is sometimes a journey that a person is initiated on, that sometimes an answer takes years to unfold, or weeks to unfold, or is a long time in realizing, that a person has initiated a cycle of growth because of a prayer. A prayer isn't answered like a letter or a scientific formula that says, "Here's the answer." It isn't like that, but we have a scientific mindset that we regard as the fundamental template of proof, and we try to reduce everything to a world of mathematics, to numbers, to test tubes, and to technology. That doesn't transfer to the world of prayer. 

CM: …To make a choice, negative or positive, sets a cycle in motion and you are held accountable for that cycle. You cannot pray to have yourself removed from that cycle. That's not a prayer that can be answered. You set it in motion, and you're held accountable. You can pray to have the wisdom to manage that cycle, but you cannot pray to be released from a cycle that you set in motion … 

… I just finished a workshop on prayer, and I said to my students, "Why are you here? What would make you come to this?" The first time I did one: "Why are you here?" Well, they asked me, "How do you pray?" "What do I pray for?" These are baby questions! "How do I pray?" "What do I pray for?" I said, "How do you expect your prayers to be answered?" Well, they expected their world to change, and I said, "OK, let's go into this. Let's plunge deeply into prayer." I said, "How do you pray and what do you pray for?" and I said, "Let's start with something as simple as: Take one relationship you're struggling with, just one. Take one you're struggling with. What is the source of that struggle and your pain? What is it? That person doesn't want to be with you anymore, that it's a child that doesn't want to see you, that you have some kind of wound?" I said, "If I were to leave you on your own, how would you formulate your prayer? Just tell me how you would articulate your prayer."

The prayers were articulated this way: "God, help heal this." I said, "Help heal what? What are you asking to heal? Where are you going with that prayer, 'Help heal this'?" I said, "Heal what?" I said, "Tell me, what was your participation in why this relationship fell apart? Just talk to me there. What did you do? What did you contribute here? How is it making you feel? Where are you at?" I said, "Let's practice what's called 'reflection.' Let's reflect on this crisis," and as I took them down deep into this, it became apparent to so many people that they were feeding this relationship with anything that ranged from the poison of jealousy, to anger, to the inability to forgive. I said, "Now we're talking about something to pray for! ‘God, make me forgiving, because I am enraged. I am so angry, and I can't get over my anger, and I have to start here.'" I said, "That's where you start. You start with your poison. You start with your poison. Get your eye off that person. Prayer is not about that person. It's about you and the poison you're pouring into something. Get your eye on the poison. Now let's go to prayer: 'God, help me with my own poison.' That's where you begin." And that's where we began… 

…People don't realize how darkness operates. It's not demonic ghouls and gargoyles that hover over your home at night. Evil gets you in your pride. It makes you more boastful, it makes you more arrogant, it makes you think that things that happen to everybody else, that you consider an ordinary or common person, can't happen to you, and therefore you make careless, risky, and stupid decisions. You decide that you can get a subprime rate and turn your house over, and that other people (other people!) will have financial problems, but they will never happen to you. Why? Because you're you, and these things just don't happen to you—only to find out they do, and you fell on your own sword. 

Designing Grandly and Well for the Sake of our Humanity

One of my favourite TV programs is the UK’s (and more latterly the Australian version) Grand Designs. I watch the program at so many levels. It’s not just about design and architecture; its more than that. A part of the interest is the role of form, beauty and space in nourishing what it means to be human and what it means to grow humanly. 

This same sense of engaging at multiple levels was also evident in a recent (24/09/11) Radio New Zealand interview with Kevin McCloud, Grand Designs’ front person. He talks about more than the program. He talks about the need to resist throwing out the old and replacing it with the new, the importance of taking context seriously in both the design and building phases of a project, and many many other fascinating topics.

You’ll find the interview here as a podcast. 

Julian of Norwich, Lover

I have a deep fascination for remarkable English woman and Mystic Julian of Norwich who became an anchorite, living in a cell attached to the church of St. Julian, Norwich, which belonged to the Benedictine community at Carrow. I’ve also been dipping into Denys Turner’s Julian of Norwich, Theologian (pub. 2011) 

“…I saw that he is everything that we know to be good and helpful, in his love he clothes us, enfolds us and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us. As I saw it he is everything that is good…” (Chapter. 5)

“…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…” Julian of Norwich.

“…And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus,’ It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God…”

 

Eustace Scrub and Contending with Our Own Dragons

For a number of reasons, not least the presence of a large Welsh flag in our office (World Cup Rugby tournament in NZ at the present time) I’ve been thinking about Eustace Clarence Scrubb (a sixteen year old boy) who is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. He appears in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle. In particular I’m thinking of the scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Eustice is transformed into a dragon out of his own “greedy, dragonish thoughts”. 

Significant parts of the narrative of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader concern Eustace’s growth – his becoming more human – as he is drawn into Narnia and aboard The Dawn Treader (a sailing vessel) along with Lucy and Edmund, and into adventures that bring him to realize how self-centred and self-absorbed he is; how blind he is to who is and how he is, particularly in relation to others. Part of the story is told with extracts from his diary, where we see how skewed his point of view is. He describes the ship sailing in perpetual storm (though the weather is fine), and portrays the others as foolishly denying the supposed rough seas and refusing to face the "truth" of the situation. One could add, the “truth” of his own life and the inner realities from out of which he sees and experiences, not only himself, but also his world. 

Eustace wanders off by himself when the ship puts ashore on an unexplored island. He falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and finds himself transformed into a dragon by "greedy, dragonish thoughts" in his heart (again, its important to take seriously the role of the heart; and to understand it as more than muscle that pumps blood through our bodies (was thinking here of a lecture Cynthia Bourgeault delivered earlier in the year in Auckland, and particularly the question and answer session where the metaphysics and mystery of heart transplants was touched on). 

Eustace is in constant agony from Lord Octesian's arm bracelet, which he put on as a boy but which is too small for a dragon's leg. Upon return to the Dawn Treader, he is nearly attacked by the crew until Lucy asks if he is Eustace, to which he vigorously nods his head. Being a dragon changes Eustace; instead of behaving like his usual sulky self, he helps the travelers find food, shelter, and a tree to serve as a new mainmast. The problem comes when it is time to leave the island, as the ship cannot hold or maintain a dragon. Reepicheep (a mouse) displays sympathy to Eustace's plight despite the boy's prior cruelty to the mouse and they eventually become friends. 

Eventually, Eustace meets Aslan, who returns him to human form by peeling off his dragon skin and sending him into a refreshing bath. Edmund shares with Eustace his own redemption story, observing that "you were only an ass, but I was a traitor." Eustace improves after this, though he still exhibits bad habits. Isn’t that so very human; to expect perfection in others; rather than to live with the full humanity of others, their struggles, strengths etc? 

For more on the “dragon” scene and the Narnia Chronicles more generally I highly recommend Archbishop Rowan Williams’ “Holy Week” 2011 lectures, which you can find here (downloadable as Mp3 podcasts). The titles of each lecture were: 'Not a tame lion', 'I only tell you your own story' and 'Bigger inside than outside'

 

“Eleven years of Catholic education had told me nothing about Christian meditation.”

This from Carl McColman. I found it interesting as it resonated with a conversation about language and communicating good news that I had on a university campus last week.

Carl’s reflection began by noting  an interesting reflection published recently in the Utah Statesman by a person named Michael Sowder: Finding Home in India. The author tells the story of his spiritual journey, and it’s a story I’ve heard again and again. Basically, it runs like this: born into a Christian family, Sowder (and countless others like him) finds himself befuddled by the sterile Christian education he received as a child. Eventually he goes on to find meaning and insight in contemplative spirituality outside of the church. And then, only then, does he finally realize that Christianity has a splendid heritage of mystical spirituality all its own. Sowder writes about discovering a copy of Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation on his parents’ bookshelf, and being shocked to discover that a Christian writer understood about meditation and contemplation! 

Just a thought for any Christian educators who might be reading this: a few generations ago, Christianity could afford to ignore its own mystical heritage, because in most places it was the only game in town (even as recently as 1950 or 1960, many American communities only had two significant faith presences: Christianity and Judaism, and since Judaism is as much about ethnicity as about faith, for most people it is not generally a faith to convert into). But this simple past is gone. Between the ongoing flow of immigration on the one hand and the growing number of Christians who abandon their faith for Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or some other faith on the other, not to mention the emergence of “new age” and “spiritual but not religious”  sensibilities which create the existential possibility of cultivating spirituality outside of traditional religious structures, Christianity is now a religion that has to compete (sorry to use such a crass term, but there it is) with other faiths for the hearts and minds of its children. 

When Karl Rahner said “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist” perhaps he was speaking prophetically about Christianity’s need to articulate its own message as an alternative to other mystical traditions like Vedanta or Tibetan Buddhism. If Christianity can be honest, and serious, about its own contemplative heart, then I believe many young people who abandon Christianity for other faiths … might stick around. Of course, they’ll probably be like me, dedicated to interfaith dialogue and eager to appreciate the many points of similarity among the world’s spiritual lineages. But that is a good thing. If Christianity chases away its young people who embrace inter-religious dialogue, it will gradually shrink into a shrill, almost-exclusively-fundamentalist religion, bitter and spiteful toward the rest of the world (and, therefore, utterly unfaithful to its own message of compassion, forgiveness and love)…” 

You can read the rest of McColman’s post here. The comments are quite interesting too. 

Bruce Levine at the Intersection of Psychology, Culture, Society, Activism, and Political Engagement

In the latest iconocast podcast Dr. Bruce Levine is interviewed, and the interview was an absolutely fascinating one. I hadn’t heard of Levine, but the subject interested me. I was nicely surprised and have now listened to the interview a couple of times. In it he talks about education, the social implications of student debt, the medicating of children and young people, 

Dr. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite.  A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines. 

You’ll find the podcast here. Its well worth a listen too, and very relevant to our NZ context, especially around student debt, and the medicating of children for so-call ‘personality’ and behavioural disorders.

Archetypal Psychology and the Journey

I’ve been doing some useful reading around an ongoing area of interest to me – psychotherapy / archetypal psychology and the journey toward individuation, transformation and human wholeness. This is within the wider conversation around what it means to be deeply human, relational, whole, free, and more fully alive – themes surely at the heart of the Christian “gospel”, and support by its practices, e.g. repentance, the extending of forgiveness, peace-making, community, hospitality particularly to the other who is different from us; a commitment to loving God, self and those we are connected with and in relationship with; justice; the commitment to incarnation, embodiment and an enacting of the good news; spiritual formation (think what have traditionally been called the “spiritual disciplines”) … the list goes on. 

In a very real way this post is a natural extension of yesterday’s post which had as one of its focuses “self-love”. 

Too often in our contemporary Western context people never consciously move beyond the level of Ego. Most Egos we encounter are not very developed. They are threatened by the interior journey, by the process of growth, individuation and transformation. They are threatened by the process of exploring previously repressed material and painful feelings and by any sense of mutual self-giving and union with another person or persons. The undeveloped Ego limits their seeing, their ability to discern the deeper and more important invitations of Soul (and Spirit). 

At this point we could note that the fundamental mechanism of neurosis is disassociation from the truth of who I find myself to be and the feelings and experiences wrapped up in that. It’s an avoidance strategy; an unwillingness (either consciously or unconsciously) to sit with ones feelings and to allow the deeper questions and currents of my life to reach my awareness. We avoid and distract ourselves from facing the deeper, oftentimes more painful feelings in our lives, especially when these carry the risk of challenging our sense of self and our relation to the wider web of networks and relationships to which we belong. Blaming others is an example of an avoidance strategy. We don’t sit with the questions of why we’re feeling as we are. We avoid following what I term the “white rabbit” down the rabbit-hole (think The Matrix when Neo has a choice to make; a choice represented by a red pill and a blue pill). We invest our energy in denial and avoidance with the corresponding result that we don’t grow as persons, individually and relationally. 

Just thinking aloud. 

But, back to Ego. Carol Pearson has written: “…There is a crying need in the contemporary world to honor (the developed) Ego, Self, and [the mysteries of the] Soul (or Psyche) and to recognize the ways that the ego [needs] to be reeducated (not eliminated)…” through the development of higher order transcendent functions (soul being a higher order than ego). “Indeed”, she says, “It is the union of Ego and Soul that makes possible the birth of the Self.” Further, she notes. You could add, the health of both, contributes to a healthy Self – that which is deepest, truest, freest, and most fully human about us. The [Truest] “Self” she says, “is an expression of wholeness, the end point of the individuation process (as distinct from the contemporary emphasis on self-actualization). 

“…Although Ego has often been thought to be the enemy of the Soul, it actually helps us create and maintain our boundaries – our sense of where we end and others begin. This strength allows us to be open to spiritual vision. Properly developed, the Ego grows but then empties itself, becoming the container that can house the soul without threatening mental, emotional, or physical collapse. Without a well-built container, there can be no real psychological or spiritual development, because there is no safe place to put it. A confrontation with the unconscious or with the transpersonal can crack an inadequately developed Ego and result in psychosis.     

Three stages of the journey – preparation (initiation), journey, and return – parallel the stages of human psychological development. We first develop the Ego, then encounter the Soul (or Psyche), and finally give birth to and deepen the Self. We see this journey in stories such as Pinocchio, and the Grail stories of medieval times, most popularly in the story of the Fisher King and Parsifal the Knight.

Fromm and The Art of Loving – Part 3 (of 3)

Following on from my two previous posts (here and here), we now move to the shorter final section of what is effectively an extended quote from Kathleen O’Dwyer’s article Is Love and Art? Today O’Dwyer (author of the 2009 publication The Possibility of Love: An Interdisciplinary Analysis) offers some thoughts (in conversation with Fromm) on the question of self-love: 

“…The concept of self-love is also a perennial subject of argument from philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. Analysis ranges over the apparent dichotomy between our obligations to ourselves and to others, as well as interpretations of selfishness, narcissism and self-centredness. In many case the issue rests on the varying interpretations of the phrase. The negative connotations of ‘self-love’ usually emanate  [in its extreme form] from associations with an exclusive and obsessive focus on oneself and one’s world, and a disregard for anything outside this self contained cosmos. In contrast, the idea of a healthy self love posits no contradiction between love of self and love of others; rather, the former is seen as an essential starting point for the latter [cf. the great love commandment in the Christian New Testament]. This is Fromm’s view: ‘Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love toward themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others. Love, in principle, is indivisible as far as the connection between ‘objects’ and one’s own self are concerned’ (Art, p.46). So self-love and love of others are not mutually exclusive, but co-existent. 

Fromm strengthens his argument by pointing to the distortions which ensue when the conditions of self love or self acceptance are not met; the parent who sacrifices everything for the children, the spouse who ‘does not want anything for him or herself’, the person who loves only ‘for the other’. Fromm discerns such expressions of ‘unselfishness’ as often being facades masking an intense self-centredness and a chronic hostility to life which paralyses ones ability to love self or others…” 

 

Fromm and The Art of Loving – Part 2 (of 3)

Following on from yesterday’s post, here is the second section of what is effectively an extended quote from Kathleen O’Dwyer’s article Is Love and Art? 

“…In opposition to this naïve, selfish, drive to escape separateness and aloneness, Fromm insists that ‘paradoxically, the ability to be alone [at home with ones deepest self – Paul] is the condition for the ability to love’ (Art, p. 88), and that the ability to experience real love is based on a commitment to the freedom and autonomy of both partners: ‘Mature love’, he writes ‘is union under the conditions of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality … In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one yet remain two’ (Art, p. 16). Thus the need for connection is answered through a relatedness, which allows us to transcend our separateness without denying our uniqueness. According the German poet Rilke, this is the only solution to the dichotomy of separateness and connection. Rilke argues that ‘even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to the exist, [but] a wonderful living side-by-side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible to each see the other whole and against a wide sky’ (Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, p. 34). Fromm says further that one must reach out to the other with ones whole being: ‘Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the centre of their existence’ (Art, p. 80). 

According to Fromm’s interpretation, real love is motivated by the urge to give and to share rather than by a desire to fulfil one’s own needs or to compensate for one’s inadequacies. This is only possible if the individual is committed to a ‘productive orientation’ [contra, a destructive narcissistic orientation] towards life [and relationship], since the productive character is more concerned with giving than receiving: ‘for the productive character, giving … is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, [and] my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, and hence joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it’s a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness’ (Art, p.18). However, in order to give, and individual must experience must experience a sense of self from which to draw that, which is given: ‘What does one person give another? He [or She] gives of [themselves], of the most precious he [or she] has; [they] give their life[s] … gives of [their] joy, of [their] interest, of [their] understanding, of [their] knowledge, of [their] humour, of [their] sadness’ (Art, p. 19).

For Fromm, mature love is an act of giving that recognises the freedom and autonomy of the self and the other, and in this sense, it differs radically from the passive, involuntary phenomenon that is suggested by the phrase ‘falling in love’. To Fromm there is a ‘confusion between the initial experience of ‘falling’ in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, ‘standing’ in love’ (Art, p. 3). Indeed Fromm claims that the intensity and the excitement which accompanies moments of infatuation is frequently relative to the degree of loneliness and isolation that has been previously experienced [I’d expand this sense of “previous experience” to include what happens when our sense of deep disconnection from self (our seeming loneliness) in the present propels us involuntarily, and thus most often uncritically and blindly outwards in search of an ‘other’ to ‘heal’ or fix us - for more see this post / podcast interview with Psychotherapist and Buddhist Bruce Tift - Paul]. As such [Fromm believes], it is commonly followed, sooner of later, by boredom and disappointment [which of course exposes the deeper questions and richer invitations to the practices and disciplines of deepening and growing mature love and loving]..."

Remember - this is an extended quote from O'Dwyer - Paul