Not Everything, But Not Nothing Either

I trust that you have all had a pleasant past two weeks. At the very least, these past two weeks have seen some new developments for me spiritually, I believe as much as anything due to my honesty in the previous issue, the generous responses I received concerning it, and especially more time to rest and recoup. I even went through a period in which I cited all my philosophical study as being so much straw, but I was reminded that was not really the case. Rather, it is a simple fact that just as perfectly good words can be taken out of context, so too can virtually anything in life become distorted when there is either too little or in this case too much of it. And we all need rest, reprieve, and a chance to refocus and regroup from time to time. I would dare say that quiet time is the one thing we as a society most lack and most fear but most need: time to settle our minds, focus our thoughts, and if possible turn our minds heavenward.

In conversation with a friend last week I was reminded of how important honesty is even for our own well-being. It is entirely possible to be surrounded by people and always talking and yet not find the kind of release that is found when we can let our guards down in safe company and get honest with one another. If it has been a long time since we have done this sort of thing, the words often come very slowly and when they finally start pouring out, they sound absolutely dreadful to us and possibly others. But when we can get those words pouring out in a safe environment, we at once both own them as well as spread them out before our eyes where we can take a careful look at them at arm’s length. It is very often the case that we find we do not believe what we really thought we believed, and if I have discovered anything startling these past two weeks regarding myself it is just how orthodox I remain in my thinking and in my beliefs. The ambivalence I had so often felt was an indicator of this remaining virtue, I suppose, but ambivalence would not be the ambivalence that it is if it were clear and distinct.

I have also discovered that the things we consider deepest and most meaningful are in many ways the most fundamentally human, and it would seem that the believer has uncovered a rare bit of insight when he suggests that we have not only been created in God’s image, but instilled with desires that, though sometimes thwarted or perverted, nevertheless positively thrive in the sunshine of all things good. We certainly all wish to be contented, at peace, happy, and whatever else we would like to add to that list. And to feel sorry for oneself and to sulk and to seemingly invite misery is really just more of the same in slightly different guise: we wish to pamper ourselves and seek the indulgence of others who will take pity on us. And then, when others offer us pity, we often refuse it because we hope thereby to gain even more pity by showing just how terribly awful our life really is. We human creatures are a funny lot, but the healthy not only come to terms with our foibles but learn to laugh at them in good-natured fun. Do we not also tend to take ourselves very, very seriously: far too, too seriously?

This past week, I came to a simple but startling awareness when I was finishing up Dr. Andrea Skaggs’ new Website; as I wrote to her: “I have found in the quiet moments this week (rare occurrences in my world, alas, but welcome) that I am content, and that counts for a lot. Working on your site recently may have threatened me with ulcers, but I am truly proud of the achievement and that means a lot. I hope you are proud too.” And of course she was proud, for we have both worked hard on the project as a team and the result is the best Website I have produced to date, with absolutely no offense meant or intended for any previous sites I have designed including my own. That’s all part of learning to let go and even laugh a little: to hold life loosely and release the iron grip. And why the iron grip? I suppose because we seek to control life, making it more manageable in our pursuit of peace, contentment, and tranquility of soul. To micromanage gives us a sense of controlling our destinies far more than it seems we actually do when we are truthful with ourselves. But you know, one thing I noticed in site design is that sometimes when you try to pin something down to the page—say a box with an e-mail signup form in it—all kinds of awful design problems can arise. In other words, when clamping down that element of the page, design flexibility is lost and the site often can’t meet the demands placed upon it from the various environments in which it must perform. There is certainly a time to fix an element to the page, but when one does, it is something like the roots of a palm tree. Allow me to explain.

The palm tree is one of my favorite metaphors in describing to others why I gravitate to the more traditional branches of the Christian faith (that’s my hidden orthodoxy peeking out again—I guess what I long for is purity, its disgruntled manifestations what I was confusing with heterodoxy). A palm tree has roots that are solidly anchored into the soil, yet its branches and its very shape yield to the wind. It is strong, it is rooted, but it is flexible. That, to me, is what is lacking in much of Christianity today. It is either not tethered at all—it has no roots and is merely relative in the popular sense of the word—or it is fixed and inflexible, its rigidity posing a threat when the winds arise: it just might snap. But we have all been overly rigid at times and we tend to become more so that way when life seems so out of control. Perhaps that explains part of the appeal of fundamentalism: it is a deeply felt desire to return to a purity, real or imagined, in which the world becomes a safe haven, fixed and boxed of course, but fixed and boxed in a way that from this perspective seems very appealing in a world that is at times bewildering and frightening. And then there is the passion that comes from such rigidly held beliefs: few persons appear less rational than someone who feels the world is soon to fly apart and is desperately clinging to any bit of flotsam and jetsam that may pass by: desperately clinging on for control. Many of us hold little but scorn for such approaches to the faith, but that surely is because we fail to see with eyes of compassion. Our Lord would not act as we often do.

There is the opposite tendency that is equally appealing, and that is to utterly relativize reality, re-contextualizing it until it has no remaining context and then stepping away as it flutters, tattered, away in the relative Southwestern breeze (for all breeze is Southwestern depending on our relativity to it). I find this approach comes easily enough anymore, particularly when I consider that so much of our world amounts to our perceptions, so much of our reality appears to be, at least in part, culturally negotiated, which helps to explain the vast differences we find between cultures and mindsets. Yet for however divergent and negotiated human reality may in fact be—for the world to us, is, after all, human sized and could not be other, for we have always looked out of human eyeballs and longed with human hearts—there is a logical limit to this as well. And even if common sense cannot entirely be trusted (for it has been shown to be wrong on more than one occasion), there is something to be said for living a little closer to the earth than what I often do in my philosophical studies. As ambivalent as I often feel about the more blatantly heterodox parts of On Religion, the book mentioned in the last issue, I agree with what Caputo says of his approach to philosophy, at least ultimately. Let us back up a bit and approach his thought in context:

Caputo’s mention of Kierkegaard is telling, as the better parts of his book (in my opinion) take after both Kierkegaard and Augustine. But what I had in mind as much as anything was much lower to the ground: his talk of steering the nose of philosophy “close to the earth.” For philosophy is surely not everything, but it is not nothing either: it is simply what it is and the truly wise will see it in this light. Most of the time, I believe I see it in perspective, but my perspective can get so easily lost and life is in oh, so many ways a matter of perspective: of the finding the right perspective, as I once said years ago. Caputo also writes a bit later:

There is more that I wish I could share here that I have read recently in the philosophy of religion—yes, when taken in balance, philosophy and theology do have a valid place—but for now we will leave the matter at that. To the degree that Caputo talks about God and the things God loves, I have enjoyed his book and it has been part of the means of redirecting my focus again to matters higher. I am not certain I disagree in spirit either with all that he says, for I believe at the least he means well. I am inclined to believe that in many ways we are even on the same page. Quite apart from what Caputo is or is not, what Caputo means or does not mean—quite apart from anyone, really—I have once again been desiring something very simple for my life: that it could be said of me by all who met me, even if they did not know to express it in so many words: “Eric is a friend of God’s.” I told a friend that yesterday in fact, and she penned back just this evening: “Glad you’re feeling back to your old self again and can see the light at the end of the tunnel other than the oncoming train! :)” That’s part of what friends are for, I suppose, to make you smile and offer their encouragement. We need friends to knock off our rougher edges.

I believe we can all be guilty of complicating life and making it twenty times harder than it needs to be. But if we could all truly be said to be friends of God and to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates, then a great many things that do not matter now would begin to truly matter and a great many things that matter a great deal now would no longer matter much at all. It would be tempting to lay out my own laundry list of the things that would not matter and the things that would, but I think we all really know the difference. We know when we are being self-righteous, even if it is just self-righteously dissing the self-righteous as we can be so good at doing at times. If we were friends of God, we would not be spending much time cutting religion down or building it up, for we would be too simple—and too busy—for such frivolities, and religion is not everything, but it is not nothing either.

Caputo’s quotation above mentions doing things, of when the Lord was hungry and thirsty, for we were so caught up in being a friend of God that we had forgotten to notice, thinking ourselves nothing, when, while in truth we were not everything, we were a great deal of something and a true blessing to those around us. I have started into a new book now written by a Lutheran minister that would perhaps in some circles be considered subversive, but only because in those circles it interferes with cherished beliefs. It is entitled The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity and is written by Jeffery J. Bütz. When I first saw the title, I immediately thought of the Gospel of Thomas and was half expecting to read some alternative account far off the path of orthodoxy. That is not what I found at all; from my perspective at least, it is more orthodox than many orthodox as it digs beneath the surface to uncover more about James, the brother of Jesus and early leader in the Christian community. The book is about James, but I think it says much about Jesus as well, and in particular His Jewishness. It butts up against Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism because it challenges the notion that Jesus had siblings (and thus that Mary did not enjoy perpetual virginity); it butts up against many Protestant readings of the Scriptures that make everything of grace and nothing whatsoever of law. It is part of the “new scholarship,” as it is sometimes called, headed up by such scholars as the eminent Anglican bishop N.T. Wright (called Tom by many of his friends and close followers) and others whose desire is not to be subversive, but to uncover the truth. If I have discovered anything in life, it is that those who seek the truth invariably will find themselves strangers in this world, in it but not of it, often distrusted by the so-called orthodox for daring to think for themselves, and equally at odds with the truly heterodox for having their roots deeply buried in orthodoxy despite their flexible trunks. We should not fear the truth: none of us.

Bütz’s book, as I have said, reminds us of Jesus’ Jewishness, and ties into Caputo’s idea of authentic faith “doing things.” It does not just do things, for that would insinuate that it had no base at all. Rather, it, like Jesus, strives to do the things it sees God doing. It, being a friend of God’s, does not long ask “what would Jesus do,” but as my much-respected rector Father Ken says, it simply does what Jesus did. And as his assistant Father Jon says, the ten commandments, once carved in tablets of stone, are embodied in the commands of Christ of loving God and our neighbor as ourselves—He told us that if we loved Him, we would keep His commands—and these commandments have been written on tablets of clay, engraved in the heart of every believer. The stone tablets are not everything, but they are not nothing either. Their central message remains, and their message is not one of oppression, but one of love. They do things, like putting God first and foremost, honoring Him with their choice of words and deeds, and treating their neighbors as themselves, not only by not stealing, cheating, or coveting their neighbor’s spouses, but by honoring their neighbors, their parents, and raising their children to do the same. For while it seems that love has wings, it also has clay feet and is seen treading in places one of refined tastes would never go, for in the willful blindness of love, it does things: yes, Caputo, religion—true religion is about loving God and one’s neighbor, and that means doing things: that means doing the things Christ did, doing the things Christ saw His Father do.

We have, so often, the two extremes: those who would so easily sweep away and those who would swallow a camel yet strain a gnat. And very often, we have it just backward, for often when we so easily sweep away, we are swallowing camels and straining gnats of a different sort and when we are straining gnats and swallowing camels we are so easily sweeping away. So it would seem that either extreme, that both extremes, are actually the same extreme seen from a different angle and that there is really only one center, a rather narrow center not in terms of who it excludes but in terms of who find and live in it. The narrow gate that few find is often not found by those who think they have found it, for the narrow gate is not intentionally narrow and exclusive; rather it is narrow because it is that evasive center of peace and joy that so few truly find and live in, at least for long. Such an admission really does not tell us anything about who is ultimately in or out of any world to come (only God knows such things), but it tells us the all-too common story written in the lines on our faces and the needless toil we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

The recipe for a spiritual life filled with power hasn’t really changed a lot all these centuries later. It involves a cycle of spending time in prayer and then taking the renewed perspective this approach fosters out into the world where it will act naturally of its own accord; having spent time with the Father and His Son, it is only natural that we will do the things that the friends of God always do. Having found the narrow gate and the eternal life that now animates the current air we breathe in a close and intimate communion with Christ, we now take this fragile yet most powerful spark and fan it into full-blown flame. Thus the cyclical nature of the spiritual life: breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, prayer, fasting, meditation (breathe in), faith, hope, charity (breathe out): breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. And whatever else we may do, let us not forget to breathe in! (One who has not first breathed in can scarcely be expected to breathe much out.)

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