Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Power to Create Out of Nothing

“… [Resurrection / Ascension, the power of which] makes possible new forms of togetherness … it pushes us into ways of being with each other that we didn’t know before… [In Christ’s resurrection] we’re ‘called out” into the possibilities of becoming human together; being stretched by each other in new ways; daring to allow ourselves to be stretched by each other in new ways… pulled, stretched, nudged, and cuddled into our Selves becoming new creations. All the power of Creation out of nothing is there… is at work in and through us. It’s the power to create, not to destroy…” 

- James Alison

This quote begins to get at why I have long had a real affinity with the Resurrection Icon above; the possibilities represented in Christ mediating between Adam and eve; in Christ holding them both to and within himself. An perhaps in Jungian terms we might talk of Christ wholly embodying in himself both the anima and the animus - thus offering to us all the possiblity of wholeness and deep humanity. 

 

Weddings and Reminders

I don’t know about you, but Christian wedding services are for a great time to reflect on marriage, specifically from within the context of Christian commitments and virtues. While I haven’t been to a wedding recently, a dear friend was the marriage celebrant for a recent wedding. I had the privilege of reading the order of service and of reflecting on its words, themes, and the passage of Scripture (Colossians) that was central to it. Indeed, I pulled down a couple of commentaries to look at the passage in more detail and within the broader context of whole letter. It was fascinating, and at the same time both affirming of my own understanding, but challenging in relation to how I embody those commitments to the unfolding biblical narrative and drama in my everyday life and relationships.

Here are some excerpts from the order of service, including an adapted story, which has undoubtedly been recontextualised a number of times over a number of years: 

“…Praying is an outlook, a sustained energy, which creates a marriage and makes love and forgiveness life-long. Eternal love never fails; our love needs to forgive and be forgiven. As we pray and forgive we minister reconciliation.

Those who marry are God’s minister of reconciliation and change to each other. As they grow together, wife and husband foster one another’s strengths; they provide each other with the reassurance and love needed to overcome their weaknesses. From this beginning God draws them now to a completely new life. They become more awake to each other, more aware of each other, more sensitive to each other’s needs. They journey together through change and they grow and deepen the truths of who they are; with the support of the other they face into their own brokenness, the pain and shame in their own lives; they take responsibility for themselves; they find courage in the generous acceptance and loving commitment of the other; they each become freer, more fully and deeply human, and more alive; the ways they change enriches the other; the differences they each embody and enact stretch and gift opportunities to the other; and so, open to the other, open to the journey, commited to one another, trusting one another, working, protecting and nurturing their relationship it will grow and deepen and they will each be transformed, both in the good times and the not so good times that are inevitable in every marriage relationship. Forgive generously and deeply; forgive yourself, forgive your partner, make space for each other to grow and change, to stumble and fall, protect and nurture what you have, be there for each other. Hold to the good.

Making space for the other to grow and change, means also being willing, for the sake of love, to forget and to allow new realties and learning to be embodied and enacted. To not forgive, and just importantly, to not forget is to condemn the other to never becoming more than the action or actions you're unwilling to forget; it is to put the other in a box, and to close down the possibility of newness and gifts of change. To forgive but to hold onto unforgetting is not to truly forgive; for the not forgetting condemns the other to remaining in our minds and hearts the person they were, not the person they are becoming through grace and the transformative work of Spirit and love. Do you want to be forgiven? Do you want space and freedom to change and grow? Do you want the unforgetting of the other to always condemn you to never moving, in their eyes, beyond the past they're unwilling to forget? Ironically, not forgetting imprisons the person unwilling to forget as much as it does the person who can never get past the unforgetting of the other. Never let yourselves draw a line between forgiving and forgetting. They're both entertwined. Unforgivennes and unforgetting do as much damage as each other.

If you do not forgive and forget, the legacy of the past wound or wounds will dominate choices in the present. Yet to be in relationship, to invest in it trustfully, is to presupose the possibility of disappointment, hurt, and/or betrayal as well. If we do not trust, then we have not invested at the depth that makes intimacy possible. If we do not invest at this risk-laden depth; if we won't allow ourselves to trust, then genuine intimacy is precluded... Our capacity to forgive and forget, allowing the other the space to grow and change, is an implicit recognition of our own fraility, our own native ability to hurt and betray; a recognition of our own woundedness, and of our own desire too to be gifted freedom and space ourselves in order to grow and change within the deep love and life-long commitment of marriage. 

Walk in the way of God's love.

God forgives and God forgets for that is the way of deepest and truest love. It is the way of the cross. It is the way of peace and healing. 

Colossians 3:12-14 

As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another. Forgive as God has forgiven you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. 

Story 

There was once a girl and a guy who met and fell in love. They shared solid kiwi values of hard work, honesty and integrity which had been passed to them by their families. They shared an awareness of God in their lives.

On their fifth anniversary they lit the candle. It had been a hard year. Their son had been unwell and the girl had had to take time out from the business to care for him. Conditions were rough and the business had been hit by adverse market returns. The bank was on their case. 

The table was covered with bills. They put the candle in the middle of them and sighed with deep tiredness. They looked at each other in the flickering light.

What was it we said? She went to find the service booklet from the back of the wedding album. Together they repeated the words of their vows. 

I take you to be my husband/wife (the two words merged as they spoke them together) to be with you whatever happens to us - in prosperity and hardship...

The words lit up just as the candle flame glowed through the glass.

They paused. We promised. They said. 

Ten years later the business was going well, they had expanded. They weren’t so hands on anymore. The guy was developing other business interests and the girl had returned to her career. Being taxi to the children’s activities made life hectic. They had bought a beach house. Life was fun and very good. But in their busyness they had hurled acid words at each other and avoided making time to get things sorted if you weren’t so preoccupied with your own stuff things would be different - was what they said. 

It was, people said, “a fairy tale romance” and, trusting their love enough to take the risk, they married. Not only did they share their lives but they worked in business together.

Every year on their anniversary they followed their ministers’ invitation to light a candle and reflect on the year that had passed.   

The words in health and in sickness ... as long as we live shone out – heavy with meaning. They looked at each other.

In their look they knew that the promise of hope, God’s intention for them in marriage, had been fulfilled in the grace and the glory of their promise well kept. 

Their fifteenth anniversary day arrived. Neither of them particularly wanted to light the candle and reflect. It was one of the children who brought it from the back of the cupboard, put it on the table and left the room. The candle sat between them a reminder of what had been. Eventually the candle was lit. At first they looked away but as the candlelight played they caught sight of each other.

One of them started, the other joined quietly with the familiar words.

I take you to be my husband/ wife to be with you ...to love, protect and serve YOU. These words leapt into life just as the word hardship had ten years before.

They paused- reached for the others hand – and closed the gap.

We promised - they said. 

On their 45^th anniversary they had seen many changes- they had long since passed the business to another generation, they had been travelling and visited family members in different parts of the world. Life was rich with new interests and they were enjoying the maturity of long standing friendships, children, grandchildren’s weddings- and they were an important part of their community. During the year they had had to down size their home and let go of many things, which carried precious memories. He had resigned from places of influence and she was waiting on the results of medical tests. They sometimes wondered if they would make their fiftieth. They got out the candle, which had been carried from place to place for so many years. They lit it. They joined hands.

Together they began the by now very familiar words...

I take you to be my husband/ wife to be with you

Whatever happens to us...”

 

New Life in Dismal Places – Final Part (2 of 2)

In yesterday’s post I highlighted James Hollis’ “series of meditations … [and] … psychological observations” titled: Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places. I offered some quotes from his introduction. Today, I offer some more quotes gathered around the theme of “the search for meaning” and the importance of suffering in that search:

“…The purpose of therapy is not … to remove suffering but to move through it to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites. As Aldo Carotenuto observes: “Psychotherapy is not the construction of models according to which human suffering is channeled and labeled; it is the examination of suffering, the discovery of the dense fabric of correspondence between external and interior events which constitute every life.” 

…Jung considered that a neurosis is not only a defence against the wounding of life, but an unconscious effort to heal such wounds. Thus one may respect the intent of the neurosis if not its consequences [and the behavior that issues from it]. Symptoms, then, are expressions of a desire for healing. Rather than repress, or eliminate them, one must understand the [deep(er)] wound they represent… 

…Few have [realised]… the profundity of [the] autonomous force [i.e. the “unconscious”] operating within, quite outside of one’s ability to comprehend, will away or even predict. Thus obsessions, addictions, [extreme or out of character behaviour], and projections of complexes [and woundedness onto other individuals, relationships, and the wider world, of which we are a part] originate from within ourselves [and] are transferred to the outer world, unconsciously burdening others even as we complain of their oppression [and behaviour; including their unconscious responses to our projections and woundedness]… 

…What psychodynamic therapy seeks to promote is a new attitude towards ones psyche… to align oneself with those forces within rather than reflexively adjusting always to the powers without, thereby furthering our [own] self-alienation, if to feel grounded in some deep truth, the nature of our nature, [and the realities, contradictions, and paradoxes of who we are] … 

…As Carotenuto puts it, “maturity implies not so much avoiding being abandoned, but in abandoning ourselves with few … if we succeed in bearing the anxiety of solitude [and the seemingly universal fear of abandonment], new horizons will open for us and we will learning finally how to exist [in a healthy independence, contra unhealthy dependency] from others,” i.e. we find ourselves becoming more deeply centered, contented, and comfortable in our own deep realization of the truth of who we are. 

“…Most of life is a flight from the anxiety [and fear] of being radically present to ourselves” [vulnerable and undefended before, and unblaming of others]… Indeed, next to the fantasy of immortality, the hardest fantasy to relinquish is the thought that there is someone out there [some relationship] who is going to fix [and heal us], take care of us – spare us from the intimidating journey to which we have been summoned. No wonder we run from such a journey, project it onto guru’s, [new relationships and people in our lives], never [able to be] at home with ourselves… Avoiding the dismal states of the soul becomes itself a form of suffering, for one can never relax, never let go of the frantic [and oftentimes misguided] desire to be happy and untroubled, can never rest easy… 

“…The goal of individuation is not narcissistic self-absorption … [but is instead] wholeness, not goodness, not purity, not happiness. And wholeness includes the descent, which the psyche frequently imposes on the unwilling ego… 

… Invariably, the task involves some new level of [personal] responsibility, some more honest encounter with the shadow, some deepening of the journey into places we’d rather not go. Our task is to live through them, not repress them or hurtfully project them onto others… 

…Soul work is the prerequisite not only of healing but also of maturation… 

Carontenuto again, “…The ultimate purpose of psychotherapy is not so much the archeological exploration of infantile sentiments [and behaviors] as it is learning gradually and with much effort to accept our own limits and carry the weight of suffering on our own shoulders for the rest of our lives. Psychological work, instead of providing liberation from the cause of serious discomfort , increases it, teaching [the person] to become adult and, for the first time in his/her life, actively face the feeling of being alone with his pain and abandoned by the world…

…Jung observed that the opus, the work of the soul, consists in three parts, “insight, endurance and action.” Psychology, he noted, can assist only in the provision of insight. After that comes the moral courage to do what one must, and the strength to bear the consequences…”      

New Life in Dismal Places

James Hollis is a Jungian Psychotherapist who makes the understanding of Jungian Psychotherapy highly accessible through his many books and essays. He’s been someone who has very helpfully resourced my own journey for a many years now.

In his “series of meditations … [and] … psychological observations” titled: Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places he offers as his “introduction” an accessible reflection on the search for meaning and its importance to us.

I quote some of the key themes:

“…Jungian psychology, and the disciplined practice of personal growth it promotes, offers [the] perspective … that the goal of life is not happiness but meaning…” 

“… Jungian psychology, as well as much of the rich religious and mythological tradition from which it draws many of its insights, avers that it is the swamplands of the soul, the savannas of suffering, that provide the context for the stimulation and the attainment of meaning…” 

“… Without suffering, which seems the epiphenomenal requisite for psychological and spiritual maturation, one would remain unconscious, infantile and dependent. Yet many of our addictions, ideological attachments and neuroses are flights from suffering… [A very large percentage of the populace] have chosen to be neurotic, that it to mount a set of phenomenological against the wounding of life. Such defenses… entrap the soul in an ever-reflexive response to life, which grounds one not in the present but in the past… “ 

“…An old saying has it that religion is for those afraid of going to Hell; spirituality is for those who have been there…”

“…From where do many of the most meaningful moments of our lives have their source? It is in the swamplands where soul is fashioned and forged, where we encounter not on the gravitas of life, but its purpose, its dignity and its deepest meaning…” 

…How ironic, then, that modern psychology so often addresses only the behaviors, which can be observed and converted to statistical models, or cognitions, which can be reprogrammed, or biochemical anomalies that may be medicated. While all of these treatment modalities are significant and helpful, they seldom address the most profound need of the modern, namely, to render ones journey meaningful…”

While neuroses are more often than not avoidance strategies (for more on neuroses see this post), “…Jung suggested that neurosis “must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.” Note that he does not rule out suffering, only the meaningless of life against which neurosis is a defence…” 

To be continued.

 

Reading and Overreading: Engaging in Readings

This looks like an interesting book on a subject that both fascinates me and challenges me intellectually. I’m looking forward to dipping into it. Christine Mitchell from St. Andrew’s College Saskatoon helpfully reviews Colin Davis’, Critical Excess: Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Žižek and Cavell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Here’s an excerpt from Mitchell's review: 

“…Davis suggests that Levinas is the author (of the five) who comes nearest to a theory of overreading: in his writings on Talmud, Levinas argues that commentary is necessary to text, and that it is never finished, as each reader brings something new to the text… Levinas was “a bad reader” but only because of his “unshakeable conviction that an encounter is possible, that I might learn from it, and that I will not respond to it by committing murder” (p. 107).

Another aspect of Derrida’s work, jouissance, is picked up by Davis in the fifth chapter, on Žižek. In Žižek’s work, Davis argues, we confront again the question of textual versus critical authority, but through the playful readings of popular culture. Žižek, a Lacanian, does not apply Lacan, but rather assumes that textual knowledge is as valuable as theoretical knowledge. By juxtaposing a critical text with a work of art, Žižek asks what they can tell us about each other. Davis argues that Žižek’s writings exemplify his philosophy: his philosophy is daring and outrageous (e.g., “the critic can only be faithful to the work by accepting to distort it” p. 113]), and his writing is similarly daring and outrageous; form = content (unlike Deleuze in some respects). For Žižek, the text’s latent or hidden meanings can be exposed and expressed through the unconventional interpreter. The interpreter’s own enjoyment and pleasure in the task makes him the master of the text. Yet, by becoming the master of the text, Davis argues, Žižek ultimately ties textual meaning to one meaning, rather than leaving it playfully open. In that way Žižek is like Deleuze: the effect of his writing is greater than what it says; “Žižek’s writing sometimes warns us of the dangerous power of the delusional Master an sometimes surrenders itself to its own heady exuberance” (p. 134).

The final author Davis discusses is Stanley Cavell. Like Derrida, Cavell sees the strange in the ordinary, both in literary texts and in film. Like Žižek, Cavell suggests that overreading, interpretation in the most outrageous way, is the best way to discover what is new; “the fear of overreading is a desire for containment, a longing for the familiar, the stable and the knowable unspoiled by the taint of uncanniness” (p. 140). Unlike Žižek, who allows theory to have the final word on an artistic work, Cavell allows the artistic work to have the final word on theory. Cavell, Davis argues, truly allows his philosophy to be taught by art. Film is doing philosophy – by interpreting film, one is doing philosophy. Cavell’s mode of argument, argument by the accretion of assertions, is homologous to how a film does philosophy. He takes responsibility, noting that, as Davis says, “there is no arbiter of validity outside oneself” (p. 162). Texts don’t mean, they know, and Cavell’s interpreter appeals for assent to a recognition of that knowledge.

You can read the full review here.

God Alone Suffices

Let nothing disturb you

Let nothing dismay you

For all things are passing

Only God never changes

Patient endurance attains all things

God alone suffices. 

- Teresa of Avila

 

We are 2011 Rugby World Champions

And to think Stephen Donald made possible the win...

Tom Wright on Academia, the New Earth, and Simply Jesus.

It was good to check in on their website and discover that the Nomad Podcast us back up and running, this time facilitated by Dave Ward (along with Tim Nash). It’s a podcast I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years, from the first 2009 podcast with Tom Wright talking about “New Creation”, to Rowan Williams in February 2010 talking about “Fresh Expressions”, to Jonny Baker in February 2010 talking about Mission and Alternative Worship, to Brian McLaren, Stuart Murray, Ian Mobsby, Kester Brewin, and Kiwi theologian Cathy Ross in February 2011 talking about the invisibility of women in mission.

The latest podcast (8^th October) is a second conversation with Tom Wright, this time around the topics of academia, the new earth, and Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (Wright’s forthcoming book).

You’ll find the podcast here. 

The Self: Expressing Ourselves in the World.

A fascinating strand of a recent conversation with a dear friend was about the question of fear, and more specifically (my paraphrase), “how would we live and what might we do differently if we did not experience fear?” It resonated with some reading I’d be doing. 

“… As we express our Selves in the world – having experienced suffering and loss, and having discovered that we do survive them – we are no longer controlled by fear. Therefore, we are more free to take risks. Because we have discovered our identities and vocations, we make a genuine contribution to the world. Because we have tapped into our creativity, we are likely to find ways to be rewarded for our efforts. Because we have learnt how to love, we tend to receive love from others as well… 

… The more grounded we become in manifesting our unique [or truest and deepest] selves; the less [activity, stimulus, distraction etc] we need to have [in order] to be happy. [We live out of a deep sense of inner peace and contentment]. We do not need lots of work; we need only the work that is our own. We may not need many loves, only those that will truly satisfy. We may not need so many possessions, but really treasure the ones we have, because they reflect something in [and of] ourselves. We may not even need as much money, because we spend it on things and activities we really enjoy. 

Slowly, but surely, we begin to discover that we do not need to climb the ladder of success to be happy; we need only to be fully ourselves. If we do so, we have everything. The cycle of repetitive suffering abates, partly because it comes to be expected and hence not feared [cf. the opening paragraph of M. Scott Peck’s A Road Less Travelled “Life is difficult…”], and partly because of the growing realization that we do not always have to be a unified Self to feel whole…” 

Carol S. Pearson. 

While Pearson speaks out of the fields of archetypal psychology and psychoanalysis, there are a significant number of resources and practices within and beneath the much travelled surface of Christian tradition (both East and West), which help and enable the necessary life transitions towards integration, wholeness, increasing contentment, freedom, peace, healing and transformation, relational health, healing of memories, and a fullness of life. We all accumulate so much during our lifetimes, and that accumulation of inner and mental constructs so often adversely affects every area of our lives and our relation to the world and to each other. Surely, in part, this is a valid dimension (other dimensions include the socio-political) of the “Good News” enacted, embodied, and gifted by Jesus of Nazareth – liberty to captives, to the blind new sight (cf. Luke 416-22). For more on this perspective you might want to have a look at Thomas Moore’s Writing in the Sand: Jesus, Spirituality and the Soul of the Gospels. Or, Alexander J. Shaia’s (with Michelle Gaugy) 2010 book The Hidden Power of this Gospels: Four Questions, Four Paths, One Journey

There are rich resources to assist with “shadow work” (though we would name it in that way) and with the emergence of the true self (cf. the writings of Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, and M. Basil Pennington – to name just three persons). The Christian tradition is a living and vibrant tradition, which when you’re willing to journey ever more deeply into it, offers so many riches, particularly around its contemplative traditions and practices. 

Religion and Poetry

This June 2011 post is nearly 100% pinched from Mike Crowl down in Dunedin. I had the privilege of meeting Mike for the first time, in Dunedin, earlier this year.

Here’s one of Mike’s June 2011 posts on poetry. 

“A poet’s work is all about creating a language that is big enough to represent both the world you inhabit and the next, larger world that awaits you."

I'm currently revising the poem, Poetry and Religion, by Les Murray…Like many of Murray's poems, it takes a bit of unpacking to get to the gist of things, especially as he can make use of ordinary words and give them additional meanings: 'concert', 'attracted', for instance. And the section where he uses the 'mirror' imagery is quite dense until you work over it a number of times... for me, anyway. 

Here it is in full. 

Religions are poems. They concert

our daylight and dreaming mind, our

emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

 

into the only whole thinking: poetry.

Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words

and nothing's true that figures in words only.

 

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,

may be like a soldier's one short marriage night

to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

 

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition;

like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete

with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

 

You can't pray a lie, said Huckleberry Finn;

you can't poe one either. It is the same mirror:

mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,

 

fixed centrally, we call it a religion,

and God is the poetry caught in any religion,

caught, not imprisoned. Caught as in a mirror

 

that he attracted, being in the world as poetry

is in the poem, a law against its closure.

There'll always be religion around while there is poetry

 

or a lack of it. Both are given, and intermittent,

as the action of those birds - crested pigeon, rosella parrot -

who fly with wings shut, then beating, and again shut.

  

I love these two lines [I do too – Paul]

 Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words

and nothing's true that figures in words only…”

Thanks Mike. You can read his full post here.