spirituality Archives

“This is not a renunciation”

February 16, 2023

I want you to model the spiritual life. Live it deeply. Theology is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be grounded in an intimate relationship with Me, an intimate openness to My Word.

“Aren’t I already open, Lord?”

Yes, but you turn away. You know the problem. You hold Me at arm’s length and listen to Me only part of the time, and only partially, not as a whole person. You need to draw Me into yourself totally—live through Me—and let Me guide you totally.

“But that sounds miserable. I couldn’t have fun and enjoy life any more.”

No, it doesn’t mean that. You will find life perfectly pleasant. This is not a renunciation. It is an affirmation, a growing in a certain direction, in a certain domain.

This reminded me of saying a sad farewell, before getting married, to all I would be giving up—having my apartment as messy as I wanted, living on pizza, watching the Late Late Show. It’s amazing what a bachelor can cherish as the good life.

“Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Nothing dramatic. Just pause in the course of the day to take Me in. It doesn’t mean you have to interrupt other things you’re doing. But I will be co-present and a co-participant. Try that now, as you eat your lunch.

“Okay, Lord.” I drew Him in and unwrapped my sandwich. “Let me share this with You, Lord.”

Good.

That day I ate lunch “with God.” But most days I do not.

“For the first time, humans mirror Me, look at me eyeball to eyeball.”

December 8, 2022

God and Humans

I wondered how God interacted with these first humans. “Did You communicate with them verbally?”

In a sense. Early on, they do not have what can properly be called a language.

They have sounds and gestures (and) live in a very short time-horizon—no signifiers for things distant in time or space. I communicate in grunts and such like, in their inner ears, to give them a sense of awe and My presence. Of course, their consciousness is still very undifferentiated.

This is not a criticism or insult. They are quite wonderful creatures.

Some respond in a very spiritual way. They catch the drift and are in awe, and feel the splendor of creation and My divine presence.

“Do you give them commands?”

Yes. Some “grunts” are warnings not to do something. They live on the edge of subsistence and can be very cruel.

Life is brutal and they are often brutal. They die young. But that does not keep them from responding spiritually.

“What does this mean for You, for Your life?”

For Me, it means the first spark of real interpersonal interaction, not just vague spiritual rapport.

From very early, humans—protohumans—have a sense of something more, something higher. (Their sense of) the divine is not just fear and wish-fulfillment, though there is plenty of that. There is a real sense of relating to Me as a Person, not just as the vague spirituality of nature.

It is hard to convey in retrospect but, at this point, I do not quite know I have a personality, an individual personhood.

Events pass through my consciousness. I have a sense of My intelligence pervading the world, of fulfilling a universal telos. I feel a spiritual rapport with life. But none of that constitutes a sense of personhood, of an I standing opposite a You. The protohumans gave Me that, or I developed it or became aware of it in relation to them.

For the first time, human beings mirror Me, look at Me eyeball to eyeball.

The Creative Spiritual Edge

March 29, 2014

The Creative Spiritual Edge

Buber was saved from the brink of suicide by reading Immanuel Kant. Unsolvable questions arise, Kant argues, from trying to reason about space and time as if they were characteristics of reality in itself. They are really just forms of our experience, he says. This reassuring view gave Buber “philosophical peace.”

There now came to Buber “an intuition of eternity,” not as endless time, but as “Being as such.” I moved deeply into myself to get some sense of what this might mean. I felt a great rushing, gushing, like a geyser, welling up inside me and rising up through all tiers of reality, an energy or life-force, creative and growing, but much more basic and undifferentiated than these terms would suggest, as if it were the very Being of these forces, running through the whole of reality. It rushed, expanded, created, grew not just outwardly but in a vertical dimension as well, from the primordial base up to the creative spiritual edge. It was, in some sense, erotic energy from bottom to top, with no level, not even the most elemental, ever eclipsed. The vision ended, I slumped back in my seat, breathing hard.