I titled this section before
I had written any of it. Even as I type now, I’m not sure what exactly I wish
to add, but I do know it must somehow involve these three things: Death,
Poetry, and Obedience. Part of me wants to retract everything after the
prologue and start again here—sticking exclusively to Love and metaphor—not
because I find my narrative problematic, but rather because, having worked
through all of this over months and years, the surface explanations that have
some vague appeal do not really convey the itch and ache and wonder of the
process. My slow conversion has been more like fitful vertigo than a sudden
epiphany, and probably such experiences are better described with colors or
music, not clumps of verbiage marinated in my own confusion. But like I said at
the outset, one impetus for beginning to write at all has been the need to face
the confusion for myself and understand it better. My deepest gratitude to
those who have had the patience and charity to follow along!
I started this series of
half-baked explanations by reflecting on Bishop Kallistos Ware’s remark that we
must be “loyal to the moments” in which we see deeply into the immeasurably
dear and everlasting depths of another’s irreducible particularity. Such a
being, exposed even briefly for his or her immense love-worthiness, is almost a
crippling force—like gravity to the habitually weightless. As I suggested
earlier, it is perhaps impossible to describe what I mean without sounding trite
or ridiculous; you must consult your own experience. One might consider, as a
rough parallel, the short scene in The
Horse and His Boy (my favorite) when the talking horse Hwin sees the great
lion Aslan for the first time. Terrifying as the experience is, her instincts
serve her well:
"Please," she said, "you're so
beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by
anyone else.”
Humility seems too mild a
term to describe the effect of the sublime on a receptive soul. Here Hwin faces
fear, forgets danger and death, and offers unto Beauty the only thing she
has—herself. Of course, real Beauty does not devour but feeds and fills—as
Christ himself, the manna of Heaven, feeds and fills. Yet a deep, even
momentary willingness to abandon our own appetites and instead to be the one
consumed can take a stubborn toll on the heart.
So where does death fit into
this reflection?
Some of us require trauma to
foster that willing abandonment. Pain, suffering, and death can be the
occasions of a power by which we become capable of seeing what is real. And to
see what is real is to love what is real, which is why, I suspect, few who have
ever endured great turmoil or loss ever really wish their suffering to be erased
or undone. We understand too dearly the change wrought within us by these
instances, so we could only entertain the retrieval of those bygone
circumstances and relationships if we could also retain the transformational
effects engendered by their absence; the resultant understandings are too acute
and intimate to leave us any conception of a future existence without the pale,
revelatory light they shed upon all moments.
Such moments are not, I
think, limited to the experience of physical death or personal loss—consider
divorce, abuse, rejection, mental illness, sickness, injury, etc. Although I
have less experience with some of these, I have seen and felt (and to some
degree shared) the damage of them in the lives of others; and I have also seen
and felt and shared the sweet and tender crop that many have yet managed to
harvest from such coarse and bitter seed.
For me, the first and most
painful occasion ever to scour the grime from the window of my private reflections
was the loss of a dear friend—a beautiful young woman of incredible talent,
wisdom, and emotional depth. Her sudden, accidental death (alongside two of her
friends) was devastating, and it permanently wounded hundreds of lives to
incalculable effect. I was only one such life, but it was a hard blow to my weak,
sentimental heart. I was in love with her, or at least had been, before
floundering in my selfish, juvenile insecurities. I felt inexplicably at fault
for her death; saw clearly my own stupidity; felt a lot of shame, self-loathing;
became at last aware of the great fissure I had allowed to grow between my mind
and my heart.[1]
I can’t offer a definitive
statement on the common features of a personal apocalypse, but somehow along
the way everything merely practical or empirical begins to seem dreadfully sere
or shallow—and then poetry makes better sense than anything else because
we can look through it all, recognize that everything must be more than it is (that
is, more than its apprehensible self).[2] Everything (all that really
is) is rich and good—so good, in
fact, that it burns the soul with an intolerable fire. Poetry seeks to find
words for this truth, or rather for all particular instantiations of this
truth. (I have already shared some of my thoughts along these lines.) Such
visions have the power to interrogate and torment the heart. When received as a
blessing, they will ask of you something that you cannot provide for
yourself. And those demands, therefore,
must include something or someone entirely outside your management. The independent, self-directed life is
exposed like an infant on a barren hillside. It wails and shrivels and dies in
its own futility. Thus may beauty spring out of anguish and yet grow also into a
desire for help, for submission, for obedience. All this was said better, of
course, by Hwin the Narnian mare, but how does it play out in the mind of a
theological (and poetical) bungler?
Philosophies comprehensive
enough to merit serious consideration will probably reflect one of two general
attitudes toward reality: Either 1.) Reality is something we discover and learn to cooperate with, or
2.) Reality is something we create
and therefore suit to our personal goals, perspectives etc. There may be some
limited sense in which these two dispositions can be blended, but I believe, in
the end, a thoughtful person will lean predominantly toward one view or the
other. Sadly, I think most of us—even those of us who affirm objective Truth—live our lives largely
devoted to the second view.
In the realm of spiritual
practice, the often unconscious commitment to our own preferences (assisted no
doubt by the phenomenon of “confirmation bias”) means that we more or less
choose for ourselves what is true, helpful, and good. It is no coincidence that
the word “heretic” derives from the Greek verb “to choose,” which implies that this
kind of self-enlightenment is the best way to end up in a dark hole of one’s
own pet conceptions.
Such a hole is where I found
myself—even though (or perhaps because)
my own conceptions were “chosen” largely from the American Protestant
traditions in which I had been reared. The academic license to speculate,
defend (proof-text), and systematize was part of my inheritance from a culture
(and country) built largely upon ideals of self-initiative, self-reliance, and
personal responsibility.
For a contrast, consider John
Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I teach
to sophomores each year. In it, Milton articulates in various beautiful
episodes the classical understanding of Liberty. It sounds like a paradox to
modern ears, but for Milton (and, I think, for the Church too) true Liberty is
equivalent to obedience. In this respect,
getting your way is frequently the
shortest road to a ruined life. Satan and Adam both prove that. As I recently
explained to one of my students, a fish is most free in the water, swimming and
breathing as it was designed. Supposing a fish could wish itself to be “better”
than it was made, the fulfillment of such a desire would actually mark the
beginning of its death, its suffocation. Most of us are suffocating, I think—trying to live outside of the
Church, straining our lungs with the oxygen of self.
In spite of my general
comfort and familiarity with the concept
of obedience, it was (and continues to be) a difficult disposition both to
understand and to adopt. It is useful to go carefully through the scriptures with a
renewed awareness of the thematic centrality of obedience. It is frequently and
inextricably linked to faith, to love, to righteousness, and to salvation.
Christ tells us to do what he says, to follow all he commands (John 15), to be
perfect as His Father is perfect (Matt. 5). As I’ve suggested in previous
installments, we often miss the full color of these exhortations—collapsing
instead into a kind of passive spirituality that correlates to a purely mental
conviction mistakenly labeled as “faith.” Nevertheless, “the rules of the Lord
are true…sweeter also than honey.” We are to do, to act, to obey—not just to
think, to feel, to believe. And if we are to embrace the precepts and
commandments of Christ, we’re going to need help. This is where I started back
in Part One. I needed help; I need help, and that, frankly, is precisely why
Christ established the Church, the “pillar and ground of truth.”
This is how the prospect of a
fully ecclesial self-hood unites my points about Death, Poetry, and Obedience: Suffering
opens the heart to what is real. What is real, we find, is not paltry, formulaic,
or even comprehensible. It involves flesh and fire and blood. It is beyond us, yet
for us and within us. (Go read Till We
Have Faces. You need better words and better stories than I have.) Perhaps the more pagan and irrational it all sounds,
the closer it comes to the truth (and therefore the further it is from pagan or
irrational). We must take counsel. We must sacrifice many of our most tightly woven
syllogisms. We must even make peace with going through the motions—“chew
sand,” as one monastic put it—until we find the clear water, taste the fountain
of immortality. We must obey; it is the only path to freedom. Orthodoxy is this
path. It is training in death, in poetic apprehension, and in submission to
Divine guidance articulated and curated by The One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church. So I signed up.
[1] There have been other
disappointments, losses, suicides that have since touched my life, deepening
and refining the evaluations and insights that this first wound began. The
process never really ends.
[2] It is true that some people
respond to grief by thinking that everything is less than it appears to be. I think that such an experience may be
a proper half to other revelations that serve as its full complement.
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