Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

“You must Love in Order to be Happy!”: The Tree of Life

I recently had the delight of watching Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life for the first time. Given it’s theatrical release was some time ago, I’d had plenty of feedback on the movie from friends and such like, so I must say I went into it with mixed feelings. I was however pleasantly surprised – yes, you could say it was self-indulgent, pretentious, lacking as an attempt at story-telling, and I must say I was frustrated by not being able to hear a number if the voice-over reflections. But, negatives aside, you could also say a lot more about The Tree of Life. At one level it’s a film about spiritual-searching; a reckoning with the nature of God, and the perennial relationship between God and suffering. 

The story is set in 1950’s Waco, Texas, one of the cities in which Malick himself lived in his earlier life. Indeed there is a strongly autobiographical dimension to this film if you know a little about Malick and family and upbringing. 

It was evocative at so many levels. As one friend reminded me, and this was my experience as I watched it, “its very meditative”, i.e. there’s something wonderfully rich to be gained from engaging this film contemplatively – a kind of film-divina – a kind of divine seeing; a way of engaging what was most alive in me; most in need of being held by me; of being opened by me – of being entered into. Malick’s fusion of visual image, sound, movement, symbol, narrative, and humanity deeply nourished the journey, particularly once I was able to sink beneath the surface of my life and sit with its deeper and altogether frail realities. In this sense my experience of The Tree of Life was a deeply sacramental one; an experience enriched by the wonderful film score. 

A number of commentators have described it as a “mytho-poetic” work. Others have rightly commented on the fact that Jack’s character(s) (played by Hunter McCracken & Sean Penn as the adult Jack) grows along classic Oedipal lines, i.e. a strong attachment to his mother, and conflict with his father which is eventually resolved, both as Jack makes peace with his Father (whom he’s more alike than he imagines) and with himself in midlife. The central narrative / visual-symbolic thread that tied it together was the altogether natural human instinct to create a polarity between grace and (human)nature / natur(al) law. Or perhaps between love and law – “you must love in order to be happy!” These dualisms are embodied in the characters of Mr and Mrs O’Brien. Yet, against the backdrop of creation these polarities need to be understood as two sides of the same reality. There is an intrinsic unity between grace and nature. 

Key themes: 

• Grief and death.
• Grace.
• Love.
• Healing and meaning-making, and the importance of nature in the healing process.
• Relational and family dynamics.
• Disappointment and the loss of dreams.
• Crisis & awakening. The personal invitations to face into reality, the invitations to change and to growth, especially directed at males (cf. Mr O’Brien – who by the way falls within very normal limits as a father, particularly one in the 1950’s, but equally likely he’d fit in respect of some of his behaviours in the 21^st century as well. For me the film highlighted very natural and acceptable differences between males and females and the ways in which they embody and enact their various roles. As one commentator has written, and I read myself into his words, the portrayal of Mr O’Brien is “less the stuff of Dickensian nightmare than a portrait of a well-intentioned but all-too-human man who falls short of his own standards in any number of departments” (PDF of the review here). Mr O’Brien’s is a journey into a deepening sense of his humanity, both its brokenness and its profundity. His is no less a journey than any of ours, and he appears no less open to that than anyone else; perhaps his experience of crisis and grief predisposes him more than others? As a male I both cringed at and delighted in his character, played so well by Brad Pitt, and ultimately I found him a misunderstood (by Jack in particular) but ultimately hopeful character). His, like all of our humanity was a broken and wounded one, but they were realities he appeared willing to face into redemptively and transformatively. 
• The role Mystery in human living and relating.
• The importance of Beauty in human living.
• The importance of Nature and Creation / reverence and awe. 

Consequences, Judgement, and Thinking About God & Self in Meaningful Ways

Barry Taylor offers a few thoughts on what he terms “magical thinking”. I always find it interesting reflecting on god in times of crisis; who is god? Where is god? Does god give a shit? And what kinds of people do we become in times of crisis? What drives us? What animates us? What feelings? And where are the invitations to transfiguration – too engaging with the deep places in our lives – where is the “more”? Why do some people find it so difficult to face self-critically into their own inner realities, preferring instead to blame God, to blame others? God’s invitations to become more than we currently are. Invitations to grow up. There are invitations too, to grow our conceptions and experiences of God. 

Anyway, Taylor’s reflection took me to some useful places, some places free from magical thinking (not one of my natural inclinations) including my reflecting again on Bruggemann’s conceiving of God’s judgment: “… God will not intervene to protect us from the inherent consequences of our pervasive sin…[from our choices]. When we so blatantly violate God's intention[s] … the expected consequences will follow.  

Here are some excerpts from Taylor: 

“…I know that life is understood by more than rational thinking but every once in a while I want to shake a few people and demand that for once they take off their religiosity-smeared glasses and look at life with a different lens--the devil is not out to get them, they are not in a spiritual warfare battle because the doctor looked pensive while he was doing the biopsy, they haven't upset god, and if by some mad chance they had pissed off god enough to bring them to this place in their life, surely their own belief in grace and Jesus would be enough to let them know that their sins are not accounted to them--Jesus!! I just want to scream right now. I completely get why all the detractors of religion are so militant--some of it is completely bloody nuts, and worse, it leads people into terrible places in their life… 

…Tomorrows lectionary gospel is Mark's account of the Transfiguration of Jesus--a strange tale for Mark to tell smack dab in the middle of his somewhat dark account of the life of Jesus-a resurrection story written back into the account to perhaps offer those early follower some comfort or guidance in the midst of the shitstorm of their existence. What struck me most about the story was the response of Peter, one of the disciples. It's his misplaced piety that sticks out--he is enthusiastic, ecstatic even, and wants to make shrines for Jesus and Moses and Elijah (if you don't know the story--it's in the Bible--Mark 9)--but he is completely off-base, that is the last thing that needs to happen. We are told by the writer that his response is simply fear-driven and that fear cuts him off from experiencing the very thing that might perhaps sustain in his moment of fear. We tend to locate our ideas of the sacred in a particular way, or in a specific location (my church/synagogue/mosque/temple etc) - but it is often fear that drives that choice and the transfiguration story is an invitation to experience something else, something more--in fact a 'sense of the more' is what permeates the story for me.

I realize that my views about sacredness, about religion, about god, are different than others, and I have no desire or need to convert anyone to my way of looking at it all, but I do strongly resist the way people speak and act for god when it is ultimately fear that is driving things. Perhaps we need to deal with ourselves, our desires, our drives and our fears before we can start to think about god in meaningful ways…”

Read the whole reflection here.  

Questing: Deepening ‘Flirtations’ with the Divine

“…Surveys show religious people are happier than the secular. Why is this? Is it — as an atheist friend quipped – that "ignorance is bliss?" Not long ago, that's what I would have concluded. Like many people of my ilk — cerebral East Coaster, highly skeptical and, yes, latte drinking — I reflexively viewed the religious as less sophisticated. And, if I'm brutally honest here, somehow less intelligent, or at least more narrow-minded. I don't feel that way anymore…” 

Eric Weiner, author of Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. 

You can read the rest of Weiner’s short reflection here. Hat Tip to Ian Mobsby @ Moot (here – for Ian’s useful reflection).

 

Theology: "Self-consciously and robustly Christian, and comfortable in its own Christian skin"

This from a recent issue of the UK publication Anvil, part of an interview with theologian Miroslav Volf:

“Anvil. What do you see as the future trends or trajectories of theology — particularly from a global perspective?

Miroslav Volf. I don’t know, I don’t pretend to be a prophet. First, I would like to see theology be self-consciously and robustly Christian, and comfortable in its own Christian skin, not be defensive, but celebratory, highlighting the beauty of the one who lies at the centre of Christian theology, Christ who is “the key,’ as my colleague Kathryn Tanner argues in her recent book. At the same time, I would like to see theology open to learning from others, secular thinkers and thinkers from other religions. Second, I hope that theology will pick up real issues that move people, that touch their lives, that express both their afflictions and their aspirations. I hope theology could take critical issues of the day up and shed on them the light of the Gospel. It ought to foster knowledge and love of God and neighbour, and make it plausible that such life is a life of true human flourishing…”

 

The Prophetic Imagination of Walter Brueggemann

Krista Tippett (Speaking of Faith) introduces her conversation with Walter Brueggemann on her blog (22^nd December 2011): 

“…Walter Brueggemann is not merely an expert. He somehow embodies this tradition of the prophets that he knows as well as anyone living. He is wise and forceful, quick to laugh, passionately challenging, and fiercely hopeful. He demonstrates as much as teaches the way the prophets of the ages are disruptive of politics and culture as usual.

He helps me understand that part of a prophet's power is in wielding language poetically rather than stridently. Beginning with the words they choose, they transcend ideological splits that actually inhibit us from seizing the great challenges and problems of our time.

…He points out that the prophetic voice is not issues-based. It accomplishes the harder, more necessary work of reframing the big picture of what is at stake, so that we can take in the reality of our moment in a new way, with a new sense of what might be possible.

Prophets help us connect the dots between the world as it is and the world as it might be. Prophets tend to emerge in moments of chaos and change, and this is surely a description of our age as of the 1960s or of the era of the biblical fall of Jerusalem. Walter Brueggemann helps us reclaim some important language for being people of change and chaos: the healing necessity of "lamentations," the difference between being bold and being strident, the hard and life-giving work of letting go of comfort for the sake of what is important…”

Krista Tippett. 

You can find the interview here. 

A Wounded Prophet, Arthur, and the Visionary-Prophetic.

When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him [Jesus], for they said, “He is out of his mind.” Mark 20-22. 

Mike Riddell over on The Insatiable Moon blog recently featured a fascinating essay, The Wounded Prophet, by Sally Clay. When I read the title I must say I thought of Henri Nouwen, specifically the biography with the very similar title A Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri JM. Nouwen by Michael Ford. Nouwen suffered from debilitating depression (see also the excellent Henri Nouwen: A Spirituality of Imperfection (pub. 2006) by Wil Hernandez). You might also think of Nouwen’s own title The Wounded Healer. Think too of John the Baptist! Picture him in a contemporary urban Western context! 

Anyway, Sally Clay’s essay is well worth a read, and if you’ve had the opportunity to see my favourite movie of 2010 The Insatiable Moon then Clay’s essay will likely bring to mind some of the central themes of that movie, especially as they coalesce around the themes in Clay’s essay. Indeed, reflect on Arthur’s role as a “wounded prophet” (that's Arthur up there on the left). 

Here’s some excerpts from Clay’s essay: 

…I found psychology presented as part of a spiritual process, a psychology of the heart (Freemantle, 1975; Govinda, 1969; Trungpa, 1972). Finally I could admit openly that my experiences were, and always had been, a spiritual journey -- not sick, shameful, or evil. I was already a worthwhile person, right from the start, and there was a way to work with my own mind to transform fearful mental states to peaceful ones… 

…If mental illness is a disease of the mind, what is the nature of the mind? If altered states have value, what is there to recover from? What is our model of wellness? Is it true, as some say, that spiritual realization is the highest aspiration of the human race? If it is, should not that be our model of wellness? How do we recover to that state of wellness? Is recovery for a mental patient something different from the wellness of any other person?

Why do people in mania consistently experience an urgent call to save the world, and call themselves messiah or savior? Is this merely grandiose, or do such people truly hear a call to help others?

We know that people called schizophrenic hear voices. But why do they listen to them? Why in this culture are some forms of mental illness so excruciatingly painful and so interminable? Is illness the reason, or is there a tragic misunderstanding of global proportions? Who is ill -- is it the visionary or is it the society itself? 

… Until recent times, altered states of the kind I have described were an integral -- and integrated -- part of human experience. Among the ways they were incorporated into society were the shamanistic/healing way, the contemplative/teaching way, and the prophetic/leadership way. It is only recently that altered states have been medicalized and stigmatized. It is only recently that powerful drugs have been used to suppress the altered states that once produced our prophets and our saints.

Not surprisingly, it is also recently that society has fallen into a spiritual crisis of unprecedented proportions. In case you had not noticed, we no longer have any shamans or prophets. There may be those who go by those names, but somehow the mental experience that shapes such people is missing. This lack is sorely felt. We are lost now, lost on a global scale. Our world has lost its meaning, and our religions have lost their authority.

Not surprisingly, millions of people today are seeking to reach an altered state in the only way that they know how -- through the use of mind -- altering drugs. We may try with all our might to get rid of the drugs, but as long as we are human, we will not get rid of the need for altered states…”

You can read Sally Clay’s full essay here. I highly recommend it as a meditation written around the core question: what does it mean to be human, to be truly human…?

Hunger, Love and the Postmodern Apocalypse.

I found fascinating a short reflection by Carl Raschke, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, and who writes regularly on religion, Christianity, culture, and postmodernism. He’s titled it: Hunger and Love - The Logic of "Late Capitalism" Unwinds into the Postmodern Apocalypse. 

Here’s some excerpts: 

"...In Civilization and its Discontents – a text that figures such as Derrida and Deleuze, for example, tend to cite – Freud sums up what might be called the “secular eschatological” implications of his lifelong work with the following quote from the German poet Schiller: “hunger and love serve as the gearworks of the world.”  

… Our increasing consumption and production of “significations” rather than material commodities - i.e., Baudrillard’s distinction between the “hyperreal” and the real – would solve that problem, so we were told… 

… Baudrillard a generation ago playfully characterized the hyperreal as the order of “processing simulacra”, of self-generating significations in the form of commodity images, fantasies, political and social ideas, collective idealizations, and so forth.  He argued that these idealizations take on a life of their own, and that we become increasingly unaware that they do not somehow rest on any tangible base stratum of things, a theme popularized in such movies as The Truman Show and The Matrix.   

But, more importantly, we do not recognize their generative and addictive power to guarantee what our senses assume is “really” real.  Hence, the expression “hyperreal”, which according to Baudrillard is “more real than real.”    The triumph of hyperreality in our time can thus be considered a reversal of the old order of repressed desires, which Freud diagnosed, in the sense that their purely virtual character now function as a whole new form of “repression” or unconsciously displaced meaning… 

… The “crisis” Marx predicted [in Capital], which actually did not come ironically until the early twenty-first century after communism itself had crashed and burned, would be a result, Jameson implied, not so much of the complete “immiseration” of the working class through capitalist expropriation of the value of their labor, but the transmogrification of labor itself into aesthetic trivialities and human consciousness itself into a whirl of  frivolous enjoyments (think mall shopping or cable television), the endless production of new commodified intensities propelled by insatiable sexual appetites (think contemporary art and internet porn),  the raising of compulsive triviality and narcissistic emptiness to the level of the pseudo-sublime (think Facebook)… 

…As the slow motion apocalypse of the global system of empty significations (i.e., “late capitalism”) gathers momentum, hunger returns.    Not only the hunger for food, but the hunger for significations that are not hyperrealities, that are not pure differentia.  A hunger for a meaningfulness that is truly transformative and “sustainable”… 

…We pollute our spirits with the subtle hyperrealities we have no idea are no longer real at all.  The love of God satisfies the hunger and environmental hysteria of the postmodern soul, but it is a love that does not come through the endless natterings of the “symbolic order,” let alone the political as well as the religious preachers of completely virtualized fantasies of a new heaven and earth, of a redemption that can be carried out through out through social media theater, through nothing but private and collective gestures, posturing, or signifying inanities. 

 The apocalypse that is at hand is the apocalypse of a real God who really loves us and really loves through the real love that we show in deeds rather than our gestures, our placing of our hearts along with our bodies in the space of those who desire love, who desire intimacy, closeness, and relationship.  The love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor (and even more so the love of child, spouse, significant other).  

The second commandment is no Baudrillardian simulacrum.  The true parousia of Christ (“Behold, I am coming soon”) is not “deferred” Derridean avenir. 

Hunger and love.  The real is relational and the relational is real.   It is NOW!” 

You can read Raschke’s complete article here. 

Thomas Merton and the True and False Self – Final Part (2 of 2)

Following on from the last two posts, here and here, we now conclude with the final selection of quotes from Michael Casey’s outstanding essay in the May 2011 issue of Tjurunga (An Australasian Benedictine Review). It’s titled: From Being to Consciousness: The Journey to Spiritual Awareness and was originally given as a conference to the Contemplative Awareness in Life and Love meeting on May 10^th 2011: 

“The inner self is not an ideal self, especially not an imaginary, perfect creature fabricated to measure up to our compulsive need for greatness, [popularity, to be attractive, to be wanted etc]. On the contrary, the real “I” is just simply ourself and nothing more. Nothing more, nothing less. Our self as we are in the eyes of God, to use Christian terms. Our self in all our uniqueness, dignity, littleness and effable greatness …[Our] real and “homely” self, nothing more, without glory, without self-aggrandisement, without self-righteous and without self-concern.” (Merton, “The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation (1) CSQ 18 (1983), p. 9). 

…Merton goes on to elaborate the notion that sin is, in essence, the dereliction of the true self in favour of its imposter. 

[“…Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self… my false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love – outside of reality and outside of life. And such a life cannot help be an illusion. We are not very good at recognising illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves – the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin…” (Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions, 1961), p. 34.)] 

“All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and thirst for experiences, for power, honour, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures… like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface … I am hollow and the structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake… [They have reduced themselves to a life lived within the limits of their five senses… but it is not the bodies fault. It is the fault of the person [themself], who consents to the illusion, who finds security in self-deception and will not answer the secret voice of God calling [them] to take a risk and venture by faith outside the reassuring and protective limits of his five senses…” (New Seeds, pp. 27-28)] (Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, (New Directions, 1961), pp. 34-35).     

“…A contemplative is one who has transcended divisions to reach a unity beyond division … [their] mission is to be a complete and whole [person], with an instinctive and generous need to further the same wholeness in others, and in all of [humanity]…” (Merton, “The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation Prospects and Conclusions (VIII),” CSQ 19(1984), pp. 340-41).

…It is only the true self that is capable of genuine relationships with other selves, because the true self is not threatened by the differences in others; contemplative experience authenticates person identity and makes it somewhat independent of the external assessment of others…”

Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams

I’ve had it ordered since around 2010, but it appears that Ben Myers book Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams is nearing its publication date. Can’t wait to get and read my copy.

Related, is a brief edited extract from the book. The article us titled: POLITICS OF THE EMPTY CHURCH: WHY ROWAN WILLIAMS DEFENDED SHARI'A LAW and naturally enough its written by Ben (Thanks to my Aussie-Kiwi friend Jason Goroncy for bringing it to my attention). Here’s a few excerpts from Ben’s article:

“Contemporary western societies have witnessed the emergence of a new tribalism, fuelled by the logic of capitalism with its proliferation of niche identities and by the politics of multiculturalism with its advocacy of mere "difference," while lacking the language to articulate any vision of a common good. 

Such multicultural pluralism is a mirror image of the postmodern ethics of difference, where each person is assumed to be absolutely "other." 

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argues that, once this doctrine of otherness has taken hold of political imagination, we are left with the depressing prospect of "a world in which there aren't and couldn't be any real discussion of the goals and destiny of human beings as such." 

…The resulting social order starts to look like a Hobbesian war of all against all, a chaotic rivalry between segregated interest groups, each ruthlessly brandishing its own rights and freedoms while the State is reduced to the role of suppressing open conflict by policing the borders of "difference"… 

Taking up the philosophy of Hegel, Williams argues that the church is not one interest group alongside others, but a community whose only "interest" is the interest of all… 

… If Christ is anything less than the redeemer of the world, it will not make sense to speak of him as our own "personal lord and saviour." He can be relevant to anybody only if he is relevant to all. 

Here Williams develops Hegel's argument that there is no such thing as mere individual freedom. Freedom is mediated through community, and any purely individual freedom is pathological. 

Human persons "have no legitimate interests that are purely private or individual" - there are no legitimate individual ends which do not somehow coincide with the good of the whole community. 

Williams also views the concept of "rights" along these lines. Rights are not something that I brandish like a weapon against the rights of others. Rather I relinquish my purely private rights "so as to negotiate with other persons a good neither mine nor theirs." 

Wherever one social group is convinced of some particular right, it is their responsibility to enter into a wider process of negotiation in order to discover how their own aims can form part of a common good… 

…For Williams, then, political engagement is a form of self-emptying, or "kenosis." Politics begins where I am dispossessed of my attachment to my own interests, and I accept responsibility for the interests of others…” 

Ben’s brief article offers some really fascinating insights, insights that can be read into an applied in a whole range of contexts, from marriages to friendships and relationships of all sorts, to family (whanau) contexts, to workplaces, and so on. 

I’m reminded again of the tremendous gifts that people like Williams offer society, and am grateful to people like Ben who have the gift of being able to articulate Williams thinking and theology to a wider audience, which of course includes me. 

You can read Ben’s full article here. 

Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation

Thomas Moore writes the foreword to a soon to be re-issued edition of Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation by V. Walter Odajnyk. 

Here are some excerpts from his foreword: 

“…Spiritual traditions offer ways to make these simple, primal ways of meditating more formal and more effective. More sophisticated ways of meditating take us deep and have an even greater impact on our emotions, worldview and sense of self. They calm us not just by quieting the body and the mind, but by cleansing the impurities of our psychological and spiritual condition, a point made by that well-known champion of meditation and the dark night of the soul, John of the Cross… 

… In my own favored language, I would say that there is a spiritual form of meditating that takes us beyond ourselves and a soul meditating that remains close to life and personality, using art, images, ritual and nature as aids to contemplation… 

… Professor Odajnyk makes the important point that meditation is an effective way to contact the complexes and to reach the archetypal level of experience. I can imagine it having a useful role in the therapeutic analysis of the psyche. I might even go so far as to say that at times therapy itself is a kind of meditation. Dream work, for instance, takes you deep into reflection on images that are full of interest and relevance because they shed so much light on the underworld of our daily experience… 

… I wouldn’t recommend a purely Jungian style of meditating, but Jungian ideas can enrich the experience and importantly bring the deep psyche into the picture. Sometimes people become so focused on their spiritual progress that they neglect the deep soul…”