BACK FROM JERUSALEM, Returned from Palestine

Have returned from Holy Week celebrations in Jerusalem and the beach at Tel Aviv. Still in a state of shock from the experience, and not ready to blog about it yet, but here are some random thoughts. 

 Stayed in a wonderful Palestinian run hotel, the Jerusalem Panorama Hotel. Here is the view from my bedroom window, with the Old City walls and the Dome of the Rock in the distance, and the charming little Palestinian grocery down below - where the old owner eyed me with some suspicion, but whose young son could not stop grinning every time he waited on me:

Such a profound immersion in a rich multi-cultural, multi religious, multi - political experience. For the first time in over 50 years, Jewish Passover, Orthodox Easter and Western Christian Holy Week + Easter all coincided within the same week. My hotel was filled with Orthodox Christians from Eritrea and Ethiopia and Jews from Galilee, Baptists from Namibia - and a rather frightening group of intense black Anglicans from Uganda, whom I encounterd in the Garden Tomb, the Protestant alternative to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I spent part of Good Friday morning and Easter Saturday eve - afternoon at the American Colony hotel, talking with Munther  Fahmi in his revered bookshop. Munther is a Palestinian who has been living in Jerusalem for the past seven years on his US passport, but - though he was born in Jerusalem -  he is now faced with expulsion from Israel by the authorities, who take a dim view of his progressive bookstore with everything available on the Middle East crisis one could possible want. I bought seven books from him and read them in the lobby of the hotel early Good Friday afternoon. The message was clear: One cannot come to Israel to celebrate the Holy Week mysteries of the Passover of the Lord without immersing oneself in the ongoing passover anguish of the Palestinians in Israel, a suffering that also consumes the Israelis as well. Read his story here at Jonathan Cook's website:

At 2pm I made my way down the Via Dolorosa, and by some miracle I managed to get inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher right before it was closed to the public. The crush of people inside was frightening and I had to push my way vigorously into the Orthodox sanctuary, where I managed to find a seat on a bench next to some devout and very friendly Orthodox ladies. They all had large bags beside them, filled with provisions to last the long night until the great ceremony of the Miracle of the Holy Fire on Saturday at 2pm. I had neither the provisions nor the stamina to last the twelve hours sitting on that small bench (and what about using the toilet?). However, I was there for the tolling of the great bell at precisely at 3pm and the beginning of the very solemn Orthodox ceremony. Endless chants and songs, the blessing and incensing of the tomb and sealing of the entrance:

At one point in the ceremony, high pitched feminine screaming rang out in the area around the tomb, screaming such as I have never heard in my life, a piercing anguish and horror that pierced one's bones. It was the cry of anguish one would expect when a plane is crashing or a bomb is about to be expolded - which is what I feared was about to happen. There were many shouts of men, the sound of a scuffle, and these horrifying high pitched screams from women, containing within all of their decibles all of the pain and terror of the world. Israeli soldiers ran into the crowd (I did not really have a clear view, since the ornate entrance barrier of the Orthodox sanctuary barred part of the view.) The lady next to me got up and went over to the crowd at the entrance and stood on tip toe, trying to see what was happening. She came back to her seat and simply shrugged her shoulders at me, as if to say she could not make sense of it all. A frightening moment and the first time in my life I have heard such sounds - sounds, however, which  have been all too common in Palestine and Iraq for many years.

 At 5pm, I managed to push my way out of the church and through the police cordon outside, with crowds of angry pilgrims attempting to push their way into the church. I wandered down the alleys of the Old City to the Wailing Wall, which seemed an appropriate place to visit on Good Friday. And I was faced with this sight:

Saturday afternoon I went back to the Garden Tomb (where I had been the previous day) and there ran into the disturbing Anglican group from Uganda, making quite a loud noise in the garden with screaming and shouting and hand clapping. The very polite British manager of the garden had to come out to quiet them several times, after which they looked very affronted and angry as they paraded around the garden in the company of their bishop dressed in a very bright maroon cassock. They left  the garden shortly after this, leaving a cloud of dark negativity behind them. I asked the director where this group was from, and he told me, "Uganda," with raised eyebrows. While one shouldn't stereotype on the basis of cultural assumptions, it is the Anglican Church of Uganda which has cut itself off from the North American Anglican communion over the issue of 'homosexuality." This group was frightening to observe, and while I regret my prejudices, they struck me almost to a 'man' as being very psychologically primitive. Not so the lovely Black Baptists from Namibia, friendly, charming, jolly, open hearted, each of them wearing their little white baseball caps with the green logo for "Covenant Tours." In this way, on Holy Saturday Eve, in the Garden Tomb, for one brief moment I felt I had encountered the dark stain which contributes to the homophobia of the Anglican Ugandan Church. But perhaps I am mistaken ???

Back at the hotel later in the evening, I spoke with the charming elderly ladies from Eritrea, all in their 60's, 70's and 80's, here on tour for the Holy Week festivities. 

They were going out to their church at 9pm for the Easter Vigil, and were returning to the hotel at 2pm. I asked if I could join them and they laughed and said I would have a much better time joining the 'young  Eritrean men,' for the ceremony of the Holy Fire at the Cave of the Tomb of Mary, down the hill adjacent to the Franciscan Church of Gethsemane. They could not have been more right. The experience was so joyful, so moving, so hilarious and humanly touching that it brought tears to my eyes. The tomb was packed with several thousand young me all in their twenties, as far as I could tell. No children, no teens and very men above the age of 30. There were also several women, clearly wives with babes in arms, but they constituted less than 10% of the whole group. I found myself surrounded by such joy and celebration and had to take many, many photos of couples of beautifully smiling men with their arms around one another - that I had no time to take photos of my own. Here are some poor attempts which do not capture the rapturous joy of this moment and these beautiful, friendly, overflowing young men. How humbling and inspiring to experience the Christian mystery celebrated in such a different way, far far from one's own rather tepid Catholic ritual. Speaking which, after leaving the beautiful men of the Eritrean Orthodox Church I wandered in with a group of Spanish pilgrims right into the Church  of the Garden of Gesthesame for the Catholic Easter Eve Vigil - which was indeed moving and profound, partly because this pilgrim group was obviously from a single parish and were already united in spirit, with beautiful, heartfelt singing. Yet we could not match the boundless, overflowing, rapturous joy filling the Tomb of Mary next door and spilling out into the night.

Back at my hotel in the evening, I listening to the mournful tolling of the Holy Sepulcher bell, a profound sound which echoes over the Kidren Valley and Getheseme up until midnight. It was joined at 10:30 by the haunting sounds of the Muslim Muezzin from the Mosque next door. Such sounds echoeing all across the valley, haunting, beautiful, and inexpressibly  romantic, tragic and sad.

The following morning, after celebrating Easter in the early dawn with the Sisters of Sion at their beautiful Church on the Via Dolorosa, Ecce Home, I took the bus to Tel Aviv and spent the day on the beach meditating on this profoundly moving spiritual pilgrimage, filled with such unexpected encounters and experiences. I've only briefly touched on the meaning of the trip for me, but put simply, one cannot celebrate the Resurrection of the Risen Lord, without immersing oneself in the very real sufferings of oppressed peoples everywhere - whether it be the Palestinians groaning under a 40 year occupation or gay people in Uganda cowering in fear of discovery of their basic identity. 

The following Monday, I boarded the plane for Prague at Ben Gurion airport, vowing to return.

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Preaching Peace thru Holy Week

As we prepare to enter Holy Week, I offer this wonderful web resource as an antidote to much of the hate driven Christian preaching of late. It's called Preaching Peace and here is it's manifesto:

…A strange new world, a new creation, where the old cosmos is truly passing away.  We welcome you to join us, to open your ears to hear, to turn away from being conformed to this violent, hierarchical, sacrificial cosmos and be transformed by the renewing of your mind to the life and thought of Jesus, the model of true humanity, who is leading us into the Peaceable Kingdom.

It is a world where Jesus’ understanding of his heavenly ABBA turns this ‘present evil age’ upside-down.  It is a way of thinking and living that is scandalous and foolish to this cosmos of violent human culture.  It is a world where the eagle flies with the dove, the lion lays down with the lamb, where the young dream dreams and the elders see visions, where there is no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no male or female, and a little child leads us all.

Even as Jesus had to explain his life mission to his own disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, we also need to listen to his instruction regarding the meaning of his life and death.  We wish you welcome and say, “Well met,” on the journey.  May the spirit of Jesus lead us as we travel and reason together.

One of the many rich resources of the site is the book, The Jesus Driven Life, which gay theologian James Alison describes as:

“…a great new resource in the Christian Adventure. The Jesus Driven Life is thoroughly ecumenical in its scope, richly biblical in its sourcing and gloriously Christ-centered in its excitement about God.”
James Alison

And this endorsement from one of the most well known 'progressive' Evangelical theologians today, Greg Boyd. (The Wikipedia page devoted to him makes for very interesting reading.)

“For all who sense that there’s something profoundly off with the westernized Gospel they’ve been given, …and even more for all who don’t yet sense what’s wrong, The Jesus Driven Life is a ‘must read’!”
Gregory Boyd

Will the real Jesus please stand up…

Who is Jesus Christ for us today? What has happened as Jesus, the rabbi from Galilee, has been displaced as the center of the Christian faith and replaced with false portraits? How can we understand the relation between this nonviolent Jesus and the violent God of most Christian traditions? What might Christianity look like if it truly followed this Jesus?

These ideas and many others are demystified in this book. Utilizing the work of Rene Girard, The Jesus Driven Life takes us beyond the dead ends and false trails of much Christian interpretation of the Bible. Come discover a new and exciting Way of living in the world as true humans who imitate the crucified and risen Lord!

The Jesus Driven Life is everything you wanted to know about Jesus but were afraid to ask! This is a manual for understanding Jesus’ life and times, his hermeneutics, his understanding of God, his mission, his passion and his model of living the ‘shalom’ of his ABBA.

The website also offers a beautifully re-envisioned Stations of the Cross, which refrains from romanticizing Jesus' suffering or making him a passive victim.

Here is the First Station: (See the complete series here: www.preachingpeace.org/.../The_Stations_of_the_Cross.pdf)  The link doesn't seem to work, put if you do a google search for Stations of the Cross, it comes up about five entries down the list - or it did for me. Very beautifully done.

Station I
Jesus is condemned to die

All: We adore you O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Leader: Pilate said, “I find no fault with this man,” but when the crowd grew loud, he grew silent. “I wash my hands. You deal with him.” Pilate had the knowledge and the power to stand and say no to the world as it sought to crush the Lord of Life. He didn’t use either.

How many times do I have the knowledge and the power to say no, and stay silent? How many times do I participate, by my silence, in the Passion of Jesus? Who will die because I do not say no?

Silence

All: Dearest Jesus, you hear my silence and you still love me. Because you say no to the world, the world says no to you. By the power of your Holy Spirit, give me the courage to stand and say no with you. Help me to take up my cross and follow you.

Like a lamb you stood there silent,

“Crucify!” we shouted, vi’lent,

Pilate washed his hands and sighed.

 www.preachingpeace.org/.../The_Stations_of_the_Cross.pdf

I leave tomorrow for Israel to celebrate Holy Week and Easter in Jerusalem. 

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Swami PrakashakaBOOM Will Fondle No More and The Vatican Goes on Trial

Swami PrakashakaBoom

Hardly a laughing matter, but I love this eclectic little website devoted to tracking down Indian guru child molesters. Even the name - GURUPHILIAC- exemplifies the wit with which these highly intelligent people go about their task - debunking the fornicating fakes and creepy gurus, while also taking time to praise a few well balanced, sane and unpretentious spiritual teachers. Does this have relevance to the Catholic scene? You betcha. Most of the kreepy gurus are accused of fondling young girls - with the exception of Sai Baba who fondled them all, but had a propensity for young boys. A Santa Barbara friend of mine was a devotee until her 14 year old son was groped by Sai Baba in a private 'initiation' ceremony. She hauled him out of the ashram that very evening and they were on the next flight back to the US the following morning. What does this mean as a reflecting mirror on Catholic priest molesters? Don't know, really, and wouldn't want to make a 'gay' connection, of course, only to point out that altar boys are far more available to altar priests than little girls are to worshiped Guru Divinities. The common denominator, however, is the undue reverence and obedience given to exalted male priestly figures who claim to have a monopoly on the dispensation of sacred power, and the easy way this reverence can be manipulated and abused. I appreciate this site, however, because they go out of their way to recommend some very sensible spiritual guides who make no claims to complete enlightenment. See Heart of Now.  I also have to admit to a feeling of relief that 'we are not alone' in the propensity of over-exalted sacred figures to satisfy their wanton desires upon the innocent.

Not so with the cover up, however, and this brings me to Queen's Consul Geoffrey Robertson's book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, which I've just finished (picked it up in a Florence book shop last February).

The book is far too rich for me to summarize quickly - except to say that he does build a very plausible case for Vatican and specifically, Pope Benedict's, vulnerability to charges of 'crimes against humanity' which could very likely be lodged with the European Court of Human Rights. He also demolishes the argument that the Holy See has any legal standing in calling itself a state, and really has no business having six very vocal observers and lobbyists at the UN sessions. The legal arguments are complex and convoluted, but Robertson makes them remarkably clear and logical. I found it an enthralling, if shocking, read. Yes, we've heard it all before, but never in such detail and laid out case after case - of Vatican obfuscation and obstruction of justice. Nauseating is too delicate  a word to describe the effect on the reader, and one is left pondering the folly of humanity in allowing such a scam to continue for so long. The Vatican, quite simply, is harmful to children.

In reference to groping gurus, here is  Robertson's response:

The Church's response, still echoed by those like Alan Dershowitz who defend the present Pope, is that hierarchical sex abuse occurs in all religious institutions and in secular schools, and it is wrong to 'stereotype' the Roman Catholic priesthood. But the evidence does reliably show a remarkably higher level of abuse in Catholic institutions (see chapter 2) and in any event, the defense misses the point, namely that this church, through its pretensions to be a state, with its own non-punitive Canon Law, has actually covered up the abuse and harboured the abusers. Moreover, this particular religion endows its priests with god-like powers in the eyes of children, who are put into their spiritual embrace from the time when they first develop the faculty of reasoning.....'Catholics are indoctrinated from their childhood that priests take the place of Jesus Christ and are to be obeyed at all costs, and never questioned or criticized.' (Fr. Tom Doyle). A church that puts its children from this early age under the spiritual control of its priests, representatives of God to whom they are unflinchingly obedient, has the most stringent of duties to guard against the exploitation of that obedience to do them harm. That duty includes the duty of handing over those reasonably suspected of child sex abuse to the secular authorities for trial and, if convicted, for punishment. It is this duty that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a.k.a. Benedict XVI, has for the past thirty years adamantly refused to accept. 


Again, the value of the book, in my opinion, is not its exposure of the extent of the cover-up and Vatican intransigence in dealing with requests for confidential information about accused molesters. We've heard all of these stories before, even though Roberson does a great service by gathering so many shocking examples into a single read. The book really packs a wallop because of the tightly argued thesis from a first rate legal mind that the Vatican has no legal ground to call itself a state and therefore no excuse for claiming immunity to criminal prosecution, as it has tried to do on many occasions. The book  has had a wide readership, particularly among other first rate legal minds, and there are already rumblings from Belgium of a test case that will be brought before the European Court of Human Rights charging Benedict with crimes against humanity. The defenses are cracking, and I can only see this as one more hopeful sign of the Holy Spirit - not wreaking vengeance, so to speak, but helping us all to dismantle the false idol we have created out of high priestly authority in the church.

By an odd coincidence,  on the same trip to Italy that yielded this find in a Florence bookstore, I also picked up -in a Vatican bookstore - two books on the traditional sacerdotal priesthood, Jesus Our Priest, by Gerald Collins, S.J. and Goodbye Father, by Richard Schoenherr, a massive sociological study of the Roman Catholic priesthood, completed in 1995, but not published until 2002. Both authors express their deep appreciation and reverence for the mystery of the sacerdotal priesthood in the church and affirm its fundamental necessity for the Catholic charism. Collins is more traditional and more mystical, Schienherr more cognizant of the many contradictions and distortions of sexism in the church which ultimately undermines the very value of the priesthood he so cherishes. But it was a shocking and highly ironic juxtaposition for me to go from Robertson's book to the other two (reading back and forth), and to be reminded so graphically of what horrendous harm has been occasioned by our exaltation of the sacred all male, celibate priesthood. Robertson was, in fact, the antidote to Gerald Collins, even though I found Collin's foray through the history of Catholic reflection on the priesthood to be deeply moving - yet ultimately deeply sad. We have gone astray with something so sacred and have allowed it to be sullied and torn and ultimately discredited. Something of great sacredness is at the core of the Catholic sacerdotal priesthood, but erecting a clerical caste around it (of whatever gender or sexual persuasion), only serves in the end to destroy it. The very nature of the priesthood needs to be redefined and freed from its present straightjacket of ecclesiastical control. How that is to be done I leave to the Holy Spirit - but not in a passive fashion. The signs are being given us of the way forward, it is up to us to properly discern them and then devotedly act upon them with heartfelt dedication.

I end these reflections with Robertson's dammning indictment of Benedict XVI:

What will be required of the Vatican, as a signal of a new commitment to put children first, is the complete abandonment of Benedict's claim that the Holy See has the right to deal with suspected felons under an obscure, inefficient and secret ecclesiastical process. But Canon Law provides a form of power, and perhaps Benedict's fatal flaw is his attraction to power - to the pomp and circumstance of statehood, to the queues of world leaders who come to bend at his knee and kiss his fisherman's ring, and to the satisfaction of having delegates promote his ideology with six seats at UN conference tables. Journalists often tell how this kindly old man offers to share his food with them, but an analysis of his behavior suggests a man in thrall to power and unable to give any of it up - even for the sake of innocent children. When it ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Holy See quoted the words of John Paul II, to the effect that children 'are that precious treasure given to each generation as a challenge to its wisdom and humanity'. John Paul II himself, as we now know, failed that challenge by cosseting notorious child molesters and turning a blind eye to the mounting toll of child victims. So did his closest lieutenant, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. On the question of whether Benedict XVI is capable of the wisdom and humanity to protect the children of his church, the jury is out.

Needless to say, this book was written and published before the recent revelations of criminal cover up in Philadelphia. 

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Martyrs of Disobedience for the Faith, Ludmila Javorova, Father Roy Bourgeois and Franz Jagerstatter

Two significant events have occured within the past week which are signs of the times and harbingers of the future. Members of the underground Roman Catholic Church of Czechoslovakia during the Communist years, including marred and women priests, were honored in Vienna last Saturday (4/1) at its UN City Church by receiving the distinguished  Herbert-Haag-Foundation Award for Freedom in the Church. Present at the ceremony was Ludmila Javorova, the first woman priest ordained by Bishop Felix Maria Davidek, the leader of the clandestine group. Though ignored by Rome after the fall of Communism and told she was not a licitly ordained priest, Ludmila continued to consider herself a priest in Christ, though she humbly obeyed the Vatican order to desist from all essentially priestly sacramental functions. She has lived her sacrifice quietly in Brno all these past years and  has been an inspiration to the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement for years as well. She is 79 years old.

"At the award ceremony she said: 'The work has been begun. Others must continue it. Even if the Vatican considers the matter closed, it is my firm belief that at some point in the future this dossier will be reopened.'"

At the prize-giving ceremony in Vienna, Bishop Davidek’s Koinótés was for the first time publicly recognised for what it was – a valiant effort to assure the Church’s survival under persecution. In their laudation, the Swiss theologian Professor Hans Küng of Tübingen University, Professor Hans Jorissen, a former professor of dogmatics at Bonn University and probably the leading connoisseur on the clandestine Church outside the former Czechoslovakia, and Professor Walter Kirchschläger of Lucerne University, all deplored the potential that had been lost. As Professor Jorissen said, “The concept of a missionary re-evangelisation in the Czech Republic, which today is one of Europe’s most secularised countries, could have used the experiences of the clandestine Church, which was, and could still be today, a model for re-evangelisation.”

Read the full story here at the London Tablet.

Ludmila's moving and inspiring life story can be read here:

See the equally moving story of the first (clandestinely ordained) Anglican woman priest, Li Tim-Oi, ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Ronald Hall of Hong Kong in 1944. Tim-Oi is already being honored and recognized for her sanctity. Read the full story here.

The second event, which is related to the the first, is the formal announcement yesterday (4/8) by Maryknoll Father Roy  Bourgeis that he will not recant from his public support of women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, thereby inviting formal laicization  upon himself.  This story has been ongoing for some time and is rapidly becoming one of the iconic events of our time.

(read his full statement at Diane Dougherty's blog here)

Father Roy refers to the long standing Catholic tradition of primacy of conscience and references in particular the witness of Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, the Austrian martyr killed by the Nazis for refusing to serve in the army of the Third Reich. What Father Roy does not mention is that Blessed Franz was pressured by his Bishop and three  Catholic priests he turned to for advice to comply with the conscription order and join the army, all four men insisting that participating in the army of the German Third Reich was perfectly compatible with a Catholic conscience. By not complying, Franz was accused by his bishop of causing "grave scandal" to his fellow Catholics who had joined the army, exactly like Father Roy is accused today by his Markyknoll superiors of causing 'grave scandal' to the faithful and his fellow priests. 

Here is a very interesting comment from a fairly conservative blog in reference to Jagerstatter's meeting with his bishop (what follows the statement, however, is a rather bizarre twist to the story as the writer exemplifies the tendency of the canonization process to squeeze the saintly figure into a more orthodox mold):


Recognising that they could not reach common ground, Bishop Fliesser finally told Franz Jägerstätter that, in exceptional circumstances, one may act 'according to one's conscience'. The Bishop had made a concession to Franz Jägerstätter with this statement, by not toeing the official party line. With this statement, however, he put the onus squarely on Franz Jägerstätter's shoulders. It must have been devastating for Franz to realise that there was no approval from the Church for his proposed action. The responsibility and the consequences for his decision to refuse military service were his and his alone.

Indeed. And how many of these heroic witnesses do we need to convince us of the relative and limited value of 'official authority' in the Church and of the myriad ways in which we are tempted to turn this authority into a false idol. We need to ask ourselves why the same story keeps repeating itself over and over and over again. The striking example of Father Roy Bourgeois is yet another sign from the Holy Spirit of our need to be constantly reminded, cautioned and warned of the dangers of an exaggerated respect for authority and of the holiness of principled disobedience. And as Bridget Mary reminds us at her blog, Pope Benedict has recently canonized two excommunicated nuns.

"Mother Mary McKillop, the foundress of the Australian-based Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, was, in 1871, officially excommunicated by her local bishop, on the grounds that she "'she had incited the sisters to disobedience and defiance." 

"Mother Theodore Guerin, foundress of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary of the Woods, was once locked into a room in a rectory by her bishop, who was infuriated by her (similarly) independent spirit." He later excommunicated her. 

America Magazine Blog

See also Robert McClory's interesting book, Faithful Dissenters.

The real gift of the Spirit in all of these inspiring stories is the gift of freedom from the mystique of authority in the Roman Catholic Church, and the peace and  joy within the soul  that are the fruits of such dissent and the rewards for walking in the footsteps of the Master. This is why when I heard this recent story of Father Roy Bourgeois, while I felt for his pain, I also rejoiced in his own 'exaltation' (if that is not too strong a word), and rejoiced for the Church as well, which only grows through suffering. He is being conformed to the pattern of Jesus' own dissent from the injustices of his day. What could be a more honorable path to follow than to be called to live 'outside the door' with the poor and the marginalized, while the rich and powerful feast at the table of the privileged within the  hallowed walls of the sacred institution. Paraphrasing Thomas Merton, cautious distrust of authority should be an essential element in the educational process of every newly catechized Christian. We are fallible human beings and collectively we tend to corrupt the very institutions designed to serve and transmit our most sacred values. This applies as much to the formal institution of the Church as a whole as it does to the phenomenon of the Marian apparitions, with all of their bizarre secondary offshoots.  An essential obligation of every conscientious Christian is to be constantly alert to the signs of such corruption, constantly on guard against the tendency to create false idols, and continually attentive to the gentle signs of the Spirit, calling us both to preserve the purity of the essential charism as well as to embody it in new forms more appropriate to the times. The fruits of the Spirit are peace and joy in the midst of trial and contradiction. Let us rejoice in the honor being given to these great dissenters of the faith.
 

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The Three Mary's, the Dark Mother, and the Mists of Medjugorje

Taking off for Jerusalem in a week for the Holy Week celebrations, first time in my life this has become possible. Will be staying at a hotel run by a Palestinian family I met  some six years ago, whose son was working as a taxi driver as well as a member of the Palestinian Authority. He picked me up outside the Jaffa Gate and took me to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial - and waited for me for three hours, after which he took me to his home in East Jerusalem, where I was feasted by his mother.  One of life's mystical connections. He described for me how difficult it was for him to get into the Palestinian territories, even with his 'government connections,' taking nearly three hours to traverse a  stretch of road that should have taken fifteen minutes. And we have been friends ever since.

Then in May I take off for the south of France to the coastal port of Saintes Maries de la Mar for the annual festival of the Gypsies in honor of St. Sara and the three Mary's - Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary, mother of Lazarus, and Mary Magdelaine, the 'wife' of Jesus together with their daughter, Sara. According to the legend, the three women and infant girl were expelled from Jerusalem around 40 AD and traveled by boat across the Mediterranean without sails, oars or provisions, arriving miraculously upon the shores of present day France. The story, of course, is an embarrassment to the Roman Catholic Church which has modified the story, making Sara a dark skinned servant. Hence the devotion of the dark skinned and outcast Romany to this mysterious saintly figure.  And of course, the story piqued the interest of an American pop novelist, Dan Brown, resulting in The Da Vinci Code. 

For three days in May, the Gypsies converge on this sea coast town from all over Europe for their annual pilgrimage, three days of prayers and song and dance and celebration. It has long been one of my dreams to join them (as it has been to join the Christians in Jerusalem for Holy Week.).

In preparation for this journey, I've been re-reading China Galland's great book, Longing for Darkness, Tara and the Black Madonna, which describes China's own pilgrimage through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, Yugoslavia and Poland in search of images and sacred sites devoted to the dark mother. 

China Galland has a wonderful website devoted to images of the Black Madonna, Images of Divinity, though she hasn't updated it in a while - and a very interesting blog, Circles of Love,  also not updated, but well worth pursuing.

China also has a wonderful, wise and insightful chapter on her journey to Medjugorje in 1988, and her meeting with the visionary, Mirjana, which is well worth reading for a sensitive, spiritual, feminist but non-Christian view of this on going phenomenon. She also received from Mirjana the clearest account of the controversial statement from the Lady of Medjugorje that 'all religions are the same,' which turns out to be quite different than the apoplectic accounts on some ultra conservative websites.

'All people of faith are one in the eyes of God, only on earth have we created such divisions.'

"Our Lady has never specifically said that our only way back to Jesus is the Catholic Church. She did say that she was 'the mother of All,' and this on more than one occasion."

Not quite the same as the way it has been translated world wide. But then there is so much distortion on the web about this Marion phenomenon that one must be wary and cautious and exercise careful discernment.

I was involved in a minor debate on the issue at the website,  Open Tabernacle, in response to a posting there, but after prayer and reflection, decided I was not to enter into a debate, but merely add some reflections in the comments section. In June, I will be returning to the Shrine for my annual seven day retreat, staying at the home of my friend, Phero, who is sixty six years old, who has lived through it all, and who has taught me so much about the history of the village, the rise of the tourist industry, the holiness and the madness, the lies and defamations, and the unparallelled sacredness that fills the valley with light.

To give just one example. I had read on a website hostile to Medjugorje, that the visionaries were profiting off of the phenomenon, lived comfortable lives in luxurious houses and that the youngest visionary, Jakov Colo, lived in 'a luxurious, expansive orange house in the suburbs with a satellite dish on the roof." When I mentioned that to Phero, he said, "Well, let's go take a look at it." I protested vigorously, because I didn't want to become just another silly, crazy pilgrim/tourist gawking at a visionary. But Phero said we wouldn't bother them, just take a look at the house. Off we went in Phero's rattly truck some ten miles outside of Medjugorje itself to another small hamlet that seemed set down in the valley for no apparent reason and he stopped by a modest orange house set aside in a grove of trees. It looked very peaceful and secluded. By California standards (my home state) it would be considered lower middle class. By Croatian standards it was just average, and not as big as Phero's house. It did indeed have a satellite dish on the roof - but then so does every house in the region, because that is how the TV stations are received. A minor story perhaps, but once it gets blown up by prejudice and hatred it became a 'luxurious, expansive orange house with a satellite dish on the roof.'
I had also seen the house of the visionary, Mirjana, in Medjugorje itself and this as well was very modest, though it had an extension on the side for extra rooms for pilgrims. But in terms of taste and luxury it would be considered lower middle class by normal US standards. 

This is not to say that all of the disturbing stories about Medjugorje have no substance to them. The tales of money swirling around are too many to dismiss, but even so they must be carefully checked, very carefully, since there is so much irrational animosity surrounding this shrine. However, there are also many sincere observers, some of them original supporters, who have felt obliged in conscience to distance themselves from the shrine. However, it is a  great pity that more progressive Christians have allowed the religious right to own such religious sites, (once they have adjusted the messages to remove any suggestion that 'all religions are the same). These conservative groups make such a loud noise and cause such confusion by equating the messages with their own aggressive right wing agenda, which in turn provokes a violent reaction from skeptics and scoffers. If anything, Medjugorje is a progressive Marian movement, and a profound manifestation of the re-emergence of the divine feminine. The messages themselves are remarkably simple and uncontroversial, and they seem to have been composed deliberately to avoid controversy and division, as they scrupulously avoid all of the contentious issues in the Church. In the words of Marija spoken to China Galland, "Fasting, prayer, peace, conversion, and mass - this is the main message of what Our Lady wants." Nothing could be more simple - or more profound - or less sectarian. Progressives in the Church  do a disservice to the Church and to the Marian mystery by allowing the ultra orthodox to not only "own" the Marian apparitions as their personal property, but to dominate the conversation. Something profoundly ecumenical is being expressed here at Medjugorje, and this was never more apparent than during the height of the war, when more prayers were uttered in the main Church for the Muslims and the Serbian Orthodox than for their own Croatian fighters. (Phero's vehement testimony). Swastikas and Croatian fascist symbols appeared in the souvenir shops, the Croatian National Defense League terrorized the village, ultra nationalist groups sometimes appeared on Apparition Hill itself, and Croatian soldiers in the field sometimes carried the banner of the Lady of Medjugorje - all of these were distortions of the fundamental message of the Lady in White. But across the threshold of the sanctuary, peace reined and the villagers of Medjugorje remained faithful to the gift that had been given them, the gift of peace and reconciliation.

I will now close these reflections with some passages from China Galland's account of her visit to Medjugorje and the apparition which she witnessed in the church choir:


Marija and Ivan are praying out loud at first, softly, I can hear them, then I feel a clammy heat sweep through me and I no longer hear them. They are looking up intently, at what appears to be the same spot in the air. Then their lips stop moving. They nod their heads as though indicating that they understand something that's just been said to them. Ivan seems to ask a question, but no words are uttered out loud. Marija nods. ...Something clearly has come over them, though I cannot see or even sense anything of what is going on for them. In this moment I have no doubt that they are seeing Mary. I am present for - and very close to - a remarkable event, and I give thanks, put down the camera on the floor next to me and bow low, touching my forehead to the floor out of respect, then kneel quietly with them until the apparition is over, perhaps five minutes. Then they make the sign of the crosss, return to themselves and begin to leave.

I was in front of Marija and Ivan the whole time they were seeing the apparition. I watched them closely from the very start. Marija is guileless and strong. Yes, they seem to see something, why can't it be Mary? What may seem far-fetched to many seems possible to me. I am grateful to have been allowed into the presence of the Mother of God, or God the Mother, as I think of her, but we are always in this presence. Only rarely do we become aware of it....

The simple aphorism "take what you need and leave the rest" releases me from imagining that I have to resolve or understand what is happening at Medjugorje. As I leave I'm acutely aware of how different this experience has been from earlier ones. People stare at the sun in Medjugorje. There is talk of miracles and more mention of Satan than I've heard in years. Yet the quiet flood of joy and happiness that I experienced in the choir loft is a clear indication that something true and good has happened for me here. Many moments here have moved me. Of some, I remain wary.

Cyril's words, "the messages are a mystery, they must be approached with prayer," I took with me from Medjugorje.

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Misa del Pueblo in honor of Oscar Romero

Attended a glorious performance last night of Mozart's Requiem by the American choral group Viva la Musica in one of Prague's most beautiful concert venues, the Basilica of  Sts. Simon and Jude. The opening number, however, was a fifteen minute composition in honor of Archbishop Oscar Romero,  entitled Misa del Pueblo by Rene Ochoa. The mass is filled with a sense of joy and celebration very much in the spirit of the Resurrection. Here are his comments from the program notes:

Misa del Pueblo was inspired by the life - and death - of Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, who was tragically assassinated in 1980 due to his support and efforts on behalf of the poor of his country. He remains for me an enduring symbol of the greatness of the human spirit and the sacrifice that is often required to bring peace and justice into our world.

Misa del Pueblo was originally written for a small church choir of untutored musicians in San José, California. When first heard, Misa included but a single melodic line with its text and a guitar accompaniment. Years later - at the suggestion of Shulamit Hoffmann - I expanded the initial scoring to include four-part choir and the characteristic instruments of the Mariachi - strings and trumpets. A piano part and simple rhythmic suggestions for a percussionist have also been added.

The music is "folksy" and "popular" in its style.

In light of the recent "push" to canonize Pope John II, it is well to remember this truly heroic figure and the fact that his canonization process is "stalled." This from Wikipedia:


Three decades after Romero's assassination, the canonization cause is stalled. In March 2005, Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, the Vatican official in charge of the drive, announced that Romero's cause had cleared an unprecedented hurdle, having survived a theological audit by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the time headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later elected Pope Benedict XVI) and that beatification could follow within six months.  Pope John Paul II died within weeks of those remarks. Predictably, the transition of the new Pontiff slowed down the work of canonizations and beatifications. Pope Benedict XVI additionally instituted liturgical changes that had the overall effect of reining in the Vatican's so-called "factory of saints." Later that year, an October 2005 interview by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, appeared to stall the prospect of an impending Romero beatification. Asked if Msgr. Paglia's predictions checked out, Cardinal Saraiva responded, "Not as far as I know today." In November 2005, a Jesuit magazine signaled that Romero's beatification was still "years away."

Many suspect that the delay in the declaration of heroism and martyrdom is due to the fact that Romero is closely tied to, but not directly involved with, the liberation theology movement espoused especially by the Jesuits of Latin America. The charge has been dismissed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who have pointed out that Romero has not yet met certain criteria to move on to the next levels of the inquests, processes which have historically taken decades to roll into motion.

Hmmm. Well, it hasn't taken decades to roll into motion the processes for the canonization of Pope John Paul II, whose beatification is imminent and whose canonization will likely take place within five years. Does it really matter? In the light of eternity, I suppose not, (and certainly not to me, an outsider looking in) but it is another sign of how the truly Christ-like have a way of being marginalized by official institutions. Such is human nature  and human history, and such is the power of the life giving Spirit, which moves gently and slowly, firmly and irrevocably, in the subterranean depths. The marginalization of Oscar Romero in this fashion is a sign of joy and hope in the future, signaling to us that the power of the Resurrection is still working it's way in this world in it's mysterious, contradictory and paradoxical fashion. The powerful (within the church and without) may seem to "win," but the workings of grace are irresistible.

I should probably add that 'thirty years' or even fifty is not a long time for an official recognition of sainthood - in fact this feels quite responsible.  It is the other canonization processes (Jose Escrivea, JPII) that have been irresponsibly 'speeded up'.

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Joy in Adversity: Petr's Spiritual Call as Minister to Gays

 

(Photo is of Jan Hus, Catholic reformer burned at the stake by the Inquisition in 1414 for teaching the fundamental equality of laypersons and priests, insisting that both should receive communion under both species. He is frequently and mistakenly described as a "Protestant Reformer," but at the time of his death he considered himself a full member of the  Catholic Church, despite its ban of excommunication against him. His witness and death gave inspiration to the Czech Hussite Reform Churches, including the Czech Brotherhood. Nearly six centuries after his death, Pope John Paul II expressed "deep regret for the cruel death inflicted upon Jan Hus.")

Just had dinner tonight with my young gay Christian friend, Petr (pronounced Petra), who is studying for his Master's in Divinity with the seminary of the Czech Brotherhood Reform Church, of which he is a member. His seminary shares many of the same professors as the Catholic Faculty of Theology of St. Charles University. Petr has a strong sense of calling to be an openly gay minister in his Church, even though 'officially' the Czech Brotherhood is not at all open  to acknowledging gay people and their relationships. In fact, Petr was eligible for ordination two years ago, but was denied this privilege because his Church elders are quite suspicious of what he might do with his ministry. So he is being monitored closely and his Master's thesis is also being carefully scrutinized. He is being required to read a great many books (in English!) on reparative therapy, designed to 'turn' homosexuals into decent, healthy, well-adjusted heteros. I felt a certain chill go through me as he showed me his extensive library on the subject, but Petr is such a sensitive, fair-minded, tolerant soul that he gently protested that, in fact the books, have some worth, and many of the authors are genuinely sympathetic to gay persons and only suggesting that, perhaps, they might be happier and more well adjusted if they could turn their sexual orientation around. Furthermore, many of the gays they deal with are coming from profoundly addictive lifestyles and the therapy does have some benefit in healing them of their addictions, which then allows them to see themselves with greater clarity and objectivity. Many of them discover that they are in fact bisexual, and therefore capable of harmonious and fulfilling sexual relationships with the opposite sex. Many, as well, discover after the therapy that they truly are same sex orientated, for which the therapy is a blessing for making that clear. Petr says he stays clear of the more aggressive and intolerant forms of reparative therapy in his studies. He also said it was very good for his thesis to be able to understand and evaluate both sides of the argument, and that his professors were not insisting that he endorse reparative therapy, only that he give evidence of having fairly considered it. In the face of Petr's gentle charity and  wise tolerance, I felt somewhat chastened in my own resentment and anger towards such treatments, though I remained concerned that Petr not be too 'brainwashed' by these studies he is compelled to make. However, in his library he also has extensive literature on the spiritual values and gifts of being gay and being gay partnered. There is no question of Petr's own very strong sense of calling as a gay Christian man, who is open to normal same sexual relations with other gay persons (at 26 Petr is not yet partnered, but open). 

And as I sat on the carpet in his small upstairs study, with the books scattered all around us on the floor, with gentle flute music from the mountains of Northern Thailand playing in the background, I was conscious of Petr's own special gift as a charismatic gay man chosen 'in the Spirit' to remain within a suspicious religious congregation and to seek to change it from within. For some reason, I was reminded of the fourth vow of stability Trappist monks take, promising to remain in their monastery for life. This vow is a gift as well as a promise, one which  the monk cannot make without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. So, too, Petr seems to have received a similar gift of perseverance, which gives him his inner strength and his radiant serenity within a trying situation. Many of his church members, he tells me, are closeted gays, too afraid to come out, yet unwilling to leave the church which they love and which feels like their spiritual home. They come to Petr for advice as to  how they, too, may persevere in their faith and within an unwelcoming community. Yet, as Petr described his elders to me and their relationships to him, it sounds like his gentle, compassionate, understanding self is gently wearing away the walls of intolerance and suspicion. They are, after all, allowing him to complete a Master's thesis on the topic of Gay Christianity, and to take a primarily positive approach, but they are not quite ready yet to allow him access to full ministry in the Church. However, I'm confident this will come in time.

Feeling Petr's inner serenity and grace - which is as palpable in the room as the fragrance of  incense - I had to marvel at the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, calling us each to our own special place in our own  special time. Some gay Christians are being given the grace to move beyond their intolerant communities and to find more welcoming, life affirming sources of spiritual support. Others are being given the grace of heroic perseverance, to remain where they are, giving a firm, but gentle, persistent,  and loving non-violent witness to the holiness of being a fully sexualized gay human being. I had to marvel at the signs of the Spirit at work everywhere in a wide variety of religious communities in such a similar fashion. Petr's grace and serenity, wisdom and compassion testify to the life giving fruits of his own religious community, which is the locus of God's grace for him, despite its present intolerance towards gay persons. Such a witness makes relative any claims to exclusivity or superiority on the part of any religious community. Many gifts, one Spirit, working her own wondrous miracles of openness and tolerance, but doing so through the life giving, long suffering passion of  devoted Christians such as Petr.

 

As a further sign of the Spirit's synchronicity,  I casually opened one of Petr's books resting on the carpet,  Donald Bloesch' Spirituality Old and New, and I came across this remarkable passage which I felt encapsulated our entire evening with its spiritual colloquy.

The Church Within:

One of the hallmarks of mystical spirituality is to uphold the invisible church over the visible church. The true church is the company of the committed who reside in all denominations and sometimes outside of any particular religious fellowship. According to Gerad Heaard, the true church is comprised of holy souls in all religions. The real people of God are those who are making progress toward sainthood. They are those who have put to death the animal nature within them and have become fully or purely spiritual.

Christian mystics, in contrast to generic mystics, continue to affirm the role of sacraments and rituals in the life of faith; yet they consider these things expendable or at least not absolutely essential. Meister Eckhart regarded the sacraments and even the "human shape of our Lord Jesus Christ" as obstacles to spiritual grown. The important thing is to get beyond visible signs to invisible reality. According to Geert Grote, founder of the mystical Brethren of the Common Life, the valiant soul will leave "the scriptures and external signs behind" as he or she makes progress in the Christian life toward the perfection of faith. 

As a type of religious association, the mystical society is a fellowship of kindred souls, not a mission station to convert the world. The mystical society will often take the form of a parachurch fellowship that is generally supportive of the church as a social institution. Yet mysticism in its celebration of religious experience unwittingly loosens the tie to the institutional church. ...

As I have noted earlier, institutional Catholicism has always mistrusted mysticism, though it has sought to use the mystical witness to consolidate its hold over the faithful. Christian mysticism at its best calls us to rise above parochial loyalties to a genuinely catholic vision of the truth.

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PHILADEPHIA HERE I COME: Following the Spirit Away From the Institution

In light of the recent scandal in the Catholic diocese of Philadelphia,  a horror story which I have no wish to summarize - except to say that this will be worse than Boston for the American Catholic Church. -I thought I would re-quote passages from a sermon by Bishop Thomas Gumbelton (see the full posting here), making it clear through words of wisdom that many people are 'leaving the Church' not simply as an act of personal will or revulsion in response to such scandals, but in obedience to a personal call of the Holy Spirit. The scandals, as shocking and reprehensible as they are, simply provide the catalyst - the objective, concrete support - for a powerful interior movement, leading many  sincere seekers into the wilderness of faith. Many such courageous souls are carrying the 'Catholic charism' with them in their hearts, providing safe haven during a dark age. We need to ask what the Spirit is telling us about this mass exodus, and not simply view it as a sociological phenomenon - or as a flock of mindless geese scattering haphazardly during a storm. The presumption should be that the Spirit is leading many of these sincere spiritual asylum seekers, providing them with the interior guidance to discover alternative sources of spiritual nourishment outside the formal institution of the Catholic Church. What should that tell us about 'the Signs of the Times,'

(The title of this posting is an ironic reference to Irish playwright, Brian Friel's, first major success, Philadelphia Here I Come.)

That is another thing we find happening in our church today, where God seems to be leading some of us, many of us in fact, away from sort of a blind obedience to laws that were created, the human laws, even though they were created within the institution of the church. A couple weeks ago, I was part of the national meeting of the organization called SNAP, which is a Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests. Now these are people, almost all of whom have had bitter experience with the hierarchy of the church.

They can’t go into a church like this anymore; they’re too traumatized and hurt, so they have to find their own way, but for many of them, it’s a deeper faith life than they’ve ever had before. They discover God loves them, they can follow the path where God is leading them.

And, you know, there are 30 million people in this country, 10 percent of this population in the United States, who have walked away from our Catholic church, from the institution of the church, probably some in your families, but that doesn’t mean they’ve walked away from God for some of them because perhaps they’re gay or lesbian and they’ve been excluded, called disordered, and they can’t accept that. They know they’re good people so they have to walk away, but it’s God calling them, and with confident assurance and strong conviction, they go where perhaps they would rather not have gone. But they do it because they have faith.

So all of us, I think, have to keep on listening in our lives to God speaking to us deeply within our spirit and develop a relationship to God, not a relationship to a human institution, not a relationship to human laws, not intellectual assent to doctrines, but we must develop a relationship with God that will give us that confident assurance and strong conviction that when God asks us to move in some way in our life, or to accept some difficulty in our life that we would rather not, that we can go where God needs us with confidence, with joy, and with peace in our hearts.

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ONE NATION UNDER GOD: Sacred Art and the Mystical Dimension

 

This extraordinary portrait of the face of Christ was created by the remarkable artist, One Nation Under God (formerly known as Steve Kreuscher. He is now seeking a suitable Church that would like to incorporate this great image into its sanctuary. ) By a fortuitous "accident," we became friends when I posted one of his mystical paintings of  The Immaculate Conception of the Divine Degausser at Gay Mystic - without permission, I might add.

When I first viewed this astonishing painting, I was stunned into silence, because One Nation's work has such a powerful effect on the viewer, drawing her into the interior depths of being. It took me several minutes before I realized this was not an image of The Immaculate Conception, as we have come to think of it (mythologically or not) because then the feminine figure would be that of St. Anne, the mother of Mary. Rather, this is a painting of The Annunciation, that moment when Mary's YES to the Spirit incarnated the Divine Son within her womb (which can actually be seen within the figure's lower quarters). Other symbols include the flowering boat, the stream flowing into the horizon, the citadel on the left, the frozen fountain on the right, the flames of fire, and of course the white Dove itself, descending from a mysterious figure above. Rarely, if ever, have I seen a more powerful image of the spiritual fecundity of the feminine than this radiant work of art. It stuns the viewer into silence, suggesting realms within realms of infinite and multiple spiritual dimensions,  and resonating with the viewer's own interior depths. In fact, it brings the viewer's spiritual depths into conscious awareness, symbolizing for us our own most intimate mystical reality, and the indwelling Spirit within. Such is the power of great religious art to evoke the mystical and the sacred. Even the title is shocking in it's originality, The Immaculate Conception of the Divine Degausser. 'Degaussing' is the process of eliminating an unwanted magnetic field (Wikipedia), and clearly the artist means to suggest the power of the Divine Son to eliminate from the world the negative magnetic field of "Original Sin."

'One Nation Under God' very graciously thanked me for featuring his work (rather than scolding me for my presumption) and we exchanged a series of emails through which I came to know more of the work of this very unique and deeply spiritual artist. He referred me to his website, Yessy Art Gallery, where more of his work is on display and for sale.  Preparing this post on One Nation's work reminded me of the remarks made by Robert Dessaix, quoted in my previous posting, Twilight of Love, that 'the music, paintings, Cathedrals,' don't make up for the 'huge disappointment' the Church has become to many. Perhaps for some, but for those individuals whose hearts are open, sacred art of this quality has the rare ability to assist in a religious awakening. At the very least, it conjures realms of mystery within our own being that make us pause, reflect and wonder.

Another astonishing painting, which evokes the power of the Church at it's most mystical is this one, entitled, The Angel Comes.  The symbols need no explication, the divine light within, the luminous cross which casts a shadow before the couple below,  the beads of prayer evoking the rosary, the parent figure  pointing the way to the young girl, the severe angular designs - which, when the viewer steps back from the whole, clearly become the welcoming arms of the Angle figure, which is the Church itself. In times such as ours, when so much heartfelt (and heartbroken) criticism is leveled at the Church and it's official leadership, it's well to be reminded by such glowing works  of art of the mystical dimension of the church which transcends all reasons and disputations, divisions and disputes. Even the black cross itself that shadows the path for the two figures below, suggests the trials of faith that await the seeker before one can cross into the threshold of Divine Light.

 

One Nation has since added this 'correction' to the above painting. Rather than amend the posting itself, I will quote his comments in full as a reflection on how we subjectively interpret an artist's work:

The Title of the piece is "Trinity's Angel", and it is about my very close personal love relationship with my 8 year old granddaughter, (who also is a great artist herself also, for 8 years old. ), and it is also about me teaching her about Jesus and the things of the Lord, and about angels watching over us, and about what her name, Trinity, means spiritually speaking.  When she was 4 years old, I had her pray with me to ask Jesus to come and live in her heart, and Jesus has meant everything in the world to her since that fateful day at 4 years old when she had her very powerful mystical experience.

As a fitting end to this reflection  on this remarkable religious artist, here is another heart stopping piece (in honor of artist, M. C. Esher) which evokes the formidable and disorienting power of the sacred, turning our ordinary perspective upside down and dissolving our customary sense of self through the relentless and terrifying power of the purifying Spirit. Look closely at the eyes as the ichthus (fish) becomes the dove becomes the ichthus becomes the dove again (The ichthus is the Christian symbol from the Greek, taking the first letters of the phrase, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). The dark, blood-red cross transforms into the luminous, glowing Angel figure, whose wings blend with the dove-like figure above, whose own outstretched wings embrace an image suggestive of a sea shell,  a symbol used for centuries in the Catholic tradition for pilgrims engaged in the religious quest. Pope Benedict, in fact, has a scallop shell at the point of honor on his coat of arms.

For those familiar with the image below, the  sea shell in One Nation's painting above might also conjure in the memory  the great painting by  Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, the chaste goddess of Love. 

As mentioned above, One Nation Under God is looking for a suitable Catholic Church that is interested in using his portrait of the face of Christ, posted above. If you know of such a church, you may contact him at his website, Yessy Gallery. One Nation has made this final comment about his intentions for his Christ portrait:

I want the portrait of Christ to be about 12 to 20 high, multi-layered, very powerfully 3-D, with strong white light shining through the inner most white layer, and the necessary lighting to light up each layer, so that even in a candle light service the whole portrait of Christ will be lite up and glow outwardly towards the congregation, in such a powerful way, that it almost enraptures their spirit into Heavenly places just by gazing upon it as their heart and their minds dwell upon God.

I have found the work of this remarkable 'Catholic' artist to be deeply inspiring and uplifting. Contemplating his work has brought a healing to my own soul and a clarity and serenity as well, making me more conscious of and more grateful for the infinite riches of the indwelling Spirit of the Divine Degausser.

By way of a lovely contrast, I would like to close these reflections with the work of another spiritual artist who draws inspiration from another great religious tradition, Thai artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat.

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TWILIGHT OF LOVE: Loss of Love, Loss of Faith and the Religious Quest

Still reflecting on 'lapsed Catholic' Colm Toibin's journeys through Catholic Europe, which he chronicled in his travel book, The Sign of the Cross. I was particularly moved by his encounter with Scotland's "only Catholic novelist," Thomas Healy, author of Fathers and Personality. Healy replied to Toibin's description of him by saying the thought had never occurred to him, but that, yes he supposed he was Scotland's "only Catholic novelist," though, like Toibin, he was of the lapsed variety. The two men then went on to discuss the importance of there being 'Catholic novelists," particularly of the lapsed variety, to chronicle both the experience of having grown up Catholic and the pain of loss experienced when one leaves the womb of mother church. Once again, we see writers chronicling that sense of nostalgia for a long ago time when the sacred seemed near and comforting within the Catholic institution, coupled with the bittersweet sense of loss and regret when the institution seems to fail to sustain them in their faith (though the issue is more complex than this simple summation).  This tragedy is now being compounded many times over, as thousands in Europe flee the Roman institution in light of the sex abuse scandals and the institution's failures to protect it's own children. How can one believe in a benevolent spiritual Power at work within the institution and which the believer presumably can access through the aid of the institution, when this Power seems impotent to prevent the most horrific forms of corruption within the power structure of the Church, a corruption that leads to the debasement of children. "Get behind me, Satan," would seem to be a very sensible reaction to such a religion (though one which I don't personally share, since there is evidence of a spiritual power at work throughout the larger church independent of a corrupt hierarchy). The loss of faith for millions as a result of this crisis is going to be devastating and the moral responsibility for this loss falls like the  blade of the guillotine upon the necks of those responsible.

Reading Toibin's books led me by a circuitous route to Australian novelist Robert Dessaix's lovely travel memoir, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev. Dessaix's thesis is that Turgenev was the first great modern Russian writer to exemplify the prophecy of Dostoevsky that once God and religious faith are banished from the world, the human person loses its soul, and 'love' in the full human sense becomes impossible. All that is left is lust and sentiment, affection and friendship, dalliance and flirtation, but the depth of love has been lost with the loss of all faith in God and the Sacred. The human person becomes flat and one dimensional.

This reminds me of Graham Greene's criticisms of modernist writers, Virgina Wolf and E.M. Forster:

for having lost the religious sense, which, he argued, resulted in dull, superficial characters, who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper-thin". Only in recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul carrying the infinite consequences of salvation and damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace, could the novel recover its dramatic power.  

Of course, Greene himself strongly objected to being called a Catholic novelist, rather than a novelist who was Catholic, and in his later works, his religious themes were replaced by humanist ones. 

Dessaix also maintains that Turgenev was the first great modern Russian author to simply lament the state of emptiness of the modern world, without the frenzied religious agenda of a Dostoevsky or a Tolstoy. Paradoxically, Turgenev chronicled this loss while himself living out a passionate and quite extraordinary love affair of  over forty years with the opera singer, Pauline Viadot, herself a married women. As far as we can tell, their relationship was never consummated sexually and was accepted by Louis Viadot, the husband, even when Turgenev moved to Paris and bought a home near the Viadot's, frequently dining with them and playing with their children. It is one of the most unusual love stories in history, a menagie a trois without the sex, but there I go trivializing it in the modernist sense, when in fact the quality of Turgenev's devotion and fideilty was something quite profound. Nonetheless, Dessaix insists that the tragic sorrow of Turgenev's life was his deep conviction that without religious faith, human love in all it's depth and profundity had simply become impossible. 

Here I must pause to say a word of thanks to my dear friends Bill and Steve (you know who you are) who so graciously led me to Stamford's Travel Bookstore (on Floral Street, off of Long Acre Street in London). Among the many riches  I found on Stamford's shelves were the works of Colm Toibin and Robert Dessaix's sensitive and insightful study of Turgenev, Twilight of Love. How mysterious are the ways of Providence, leading us -through the interventions of friends - to those books we seem to need right at the moment, which turns out to be a moment of grace and synchronicity

Speaking of Turgenev's desolation of soul, Dessaix remarks:

Given his spiritual desolation, his joylessness (unrelated, as I see it, to unhappiness) and given his comfortable circumstances, I find it odd that Turgenev did not drift into mysticism of some kind. Inner emptiness and a full stomach, after all, make a good start. He did dabble in the supernatural, but that is not the same thing at all. Some trigger was missing in his psyche, something failed to fire.  He made an effort from time to time to put his spirit in order, as one does at a certain age, but putting your spirit in order best follows some sort of insight, surely. No transforming insights were granted him." (pg. 67)

That concluding sentence reminds me of Colm Toibin's "Why?", referred to in the previous posting. Why is no supernatural insight granted, when the seeker is so sincere? What is the source of the mystery of religious faith and it's absence?

Later in the book (pg.169), Dessaix refers to Virginia Woolf's own judgment about Turgenev, a judgement I find highly ironic in light of Graham Greene's own criticism of Woolf.

I believe that Virginia Woolf was essentially right about Turgenev. What the seer tries to understand in Virgin Soil, I said, thinking aloud, is not the historical details of the failed attempts of high-minded radicals to foment revolution amongst the peasants in the late 1860's, but how it is impossible to believe in anything - even a cause as just as revolution - or to sacrifice yourself to that cause, when you don't believe in yourself (don't love yourself), when you see yourself as nothing but a pinprick of mould on a grain of sand, about to be dead forever, just a biochemical reaction in a brain, as we might say nowadays. Commentators can argue endlessly over whether or not the radicals in Virgin Soil are Bakuninists or Blanquists or unhistorical fabrications, but such cogitations are beside the point: they are just the scenery for a play about the complete breakdown of any rational for acting (or loving) in an utterly senseless world.  

As Dessaix explains, religion as a solution to his inner emptiness left Turgenev cold:

Religion (and in particular Orthodoxy and Catholicism) seems simply to have failed to hold his attention. I feel much the same way about astrophysics and sport, for example, although I know that for millions of human beings the cosmos revolves around these things. 'God', or at least the Orthodox Christian god, was not the answer to any question Turgenev was interested in putting.

He was aware, however, ...that 'whoever has (religious) faith has all there is and can lose nothing, while whoever has no faith has nothing'. In need of consolation (as we all are), he kept a close watch all his life for something to have faith in, some sign that he might not after all lose everything in dying...

Born at a time when most people still believed in some sort of three-tiered universe -there was the supernatural world, the natural and, at some remove, there were human beings - he had lived on into an era when there was only indifferent nature left, which is more or less where we find ourselves stranded today. Everything else... was just words. Outside the natural universe, there was nothing.

 

Ironically enough, one of Turgenev's most affecting characters, the young girl Liza in Nest of the Gentry, is possessed of a burning religious faith:

Liza (had) in a sense already been ravished by God, just as Pauline had been by music. At an early age 'the image...of God squeezed with a kind of sweet force into her soul,' Turgenev tells us with unusual directness,'filling her with awe and reverence...and Christ became something close and familiar to her, almost kindred.' After an episode like this, any 'possession'  Lavretsky (her suitor) had planned had little chance of fulfillment. (pg. 230).

This was, however, a ravishment of soul that remained foreign to the great Russian writer,  Turgenev himself, just as Colm Toibin looks on from afar at the burning faith of Polish Catholics walking on their knees around the sacred icon of the Black Virgin of Czestochowa.  Turgenev was not contemptuous of the power of religious faith, far from it, he seemed to harbor a deep seated respect coupled with a lilting sadness at his own incapacity for such devotion.

'The naturalness of death is far more frightening than its suddenness or unusual form,' he wrote to ' Countess Lambert, for whom, like Liza, the solution was simple: religious faith. Turgenev was not about to argue with her ('Only religion can conquer this fear,' he agreed), but 'religion itself must become a natural need in man,' he wrote, and in him it wasn't. If a man doesn't have a natural religious bent, he went on ruefully, 'all he can do is avert his eyes frivolously or stoically (and in essence it doesn't matter which).'

In the absence of any viable, living religious faith, love, then becomes impossible, the love, that is, that ruptures time and reveals to us a hidden, transcendent dimension. Love-sickness is still possible, as are desire, affection, infatuation, lust, sentimental attachment, adoration, married bliss, enduring fondness, passionate but passing infatuations.  But not the love that breaks through the barrier of time and reveals to us Eternity.

The love that saves us from time... or at least opens up a crack in it, allowing us...'to think we have glimpsed the other side', is of a different order. It is this kind of love which seemed hardly possible any more to the mature Turgenev. If it proved impossible, that would mean that what we see is all there is. And that would mean that ultimately everything is futile. ...(pg. 249)

Only religion, as Turgenev noted ruefully, has made any serious attempt to call time's bluff and remove our fears of the executioner. Yet, for all it's huffing and puffing, what a huge disappointment Western Religion has turned out to be. We were expecting so much more. The music, paintings and cathedrals don't make up for it. Jesus mentioned something about the kingdom of God being revealed to us -and quickly, too - and what might that be if not a rent in the fabric of time? However, as Mark Twain remarked, what we got instead, with lighting speed, was the Church. (pg. 250).

As I stumble my way towards a conclusion to these spontaneous reflections, it will certainly not be the judgment that the present sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is responsible alone for the loss of religious faith in Western culture at this present moment, since this malaise has been a long time coming.  But it has certainly contributed to the decline! It is more like the final nail in the coffin for many struggling Catholic souls who were already hanging on by their fingernails to a religious practice that seemed to leave them atrophied and an institutional authority they found abusive. Just how abusive is now being made graphically clear day by day in what amounts to one of the greatest trials of faith the Catholic community has ever had to face. (This just in from Bridget Mary's blog:

"Following a long and painful investigation of the sexual abuse of children in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, a Grand Jury has issued a final report stating that they have no doubt that Cardinal Bevilacqua’s “knowing and deliberate actions during his tenure as Archbishop also endangered thousands of children in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.“ This endangerment included vulnerable and poor immigrant children from the Hmong community.

"Cardinal Bevilacqua is one of America’s best known Roman Catholic Cardinals. He is also considered to be one of the most notorious protectors of dangerous sexual predators, in the history of the Catholic Church in America.")


In the light of such revelations, many are simply leaving in disgust and who can blame them? To quote from an Irish reader's comment left on my previous posting, (who is not referring explicitly to the sex abuse scandal):


Irish rural poverty seemed to be a terrible thing, especially for the women. But my mother was brought up in Irish rural prosperity (amid numerous tragedies), independence in thought on morality and religion, revolutionary activity and government retaliation, cultural richness, teenage adventure and misadventure, and strong local Catholicism. Yet she left in disgust at the meanness of the culture, and for personal reasons.

Most of my relatives in the US and Ireland and other countries are no longer Catholic. And like me, few or none miss it at all on a personal level but are saddened to see the disappearance of kind and pastoral priests in favor of rigid "churchmen."

Heartbreaking as such experiences of mass exodus are to contemplate, beyond them all is the unfathomable mystery of the religious quest itself, which does not always end in fulfillment  even for the most sincere of spiritual seekers. Lapsed Catholics like Colm Toibin and Thomas Healy look back on the Church with a kind of nostalgic sadness, willing with part of their being to accept the sign of a healing light within the walls of mother church, but for all their goodwill unable to find it. Who is to say why or why not? Some do  maintain or discover an open door into the sacred within the traditional religions (and I continue to be passionately 'Catholic' in my own devotion), others through meditation on their own, or through an unaffiliated spiritual master like Eckhart Tolle,  others through nature, and others simply seem to have discovered a "little white bird,' within their souls which sustains them in times of the most horrific terror without the mediation of any faith or explicit spiritual practice. 

I'm thinking here (among others) of Heda Kovaly, wife of Rudolph Margolius, who was condemned to death during the infamous 1952 Slansky trial in Prague. Spurned by all of her friends, spied on by her apartment building neighbors, Heda contracted a mysterious illness that left her completely paralyzed on her bed, while her ten year old son Ivan remained powerless to help her, the two of them facing starvation. Yet during this ordeal, Heda maintains a 'little white bird' visited her interior being, assuring her that all would be well, as indeed it was some days later (of complete paralysis), when an old friend found her and broke through the door. 

But Robert Dessaix himself, in The Twilight of Love,  offers another example of this inexplicable faith in the  worth of life, a faith that seems to find its sustenance completely outside the realms of organized religion:

Riding in the funicular later that afternoon through the firs and pines to the top of the Merkurberg, I took pleasure once more, as I always do in (Ilse's) company, in her effortless ability to make life good and revel in it. How does she do it? I can never quite work it out. Certainly not through resignation - Ilse is not resigned to anything. Yet she by no means closes her eyes to the things that chilled Turgenev's soul - she grew up in Berlin during the war, after all; until recently she worked in an old people's home, listening to the 'crackling sound of death' on a daily basis; she has seen what nature and humanity are capable of, from Phnom Penh to the football stadium in Santiago. She, too, I think, although much loved, has failed to win what Turgenev thought of as 'the main prize in life's lottery' (a mere spouse does not qualify). And she has no religious faith at all, as far as I can see, or even much sense of its absence. Yet she is joyful. I almost turned to ask her how she did it in the funicular car, but didn't. And once we got to the top, as happens on the top of mountains, it didn't seem important any more to find the words. (pg. 67)

This reminds me so much of a passage from a 'secular saint', that I've always found so inspiring. AS a fitting close to these reflections, here is Albert Camus' glorious paean of praise to the light of his childhood on the beach at Tipasa, Algiers,  which sustained him through a lifetime of witnessing and resisting humanity's cruel injustices:

At noon, on the half-sandy slopes, strewn with heliotropes as if by a foam which the furious waves of the last few days had left behind them in their retreat, I gazed at the sea, then gently rising and falling as if exhausted, and quenched the two thirsts that cannot long be neglected if all our being is not to dry up, the thirst to love and the thirst to admire. For there is only misfortune in not being loved; there is misery in not loving. We all, today, are dying of this misery. This is because blood and hatred lay bare the heart itself: the long demand for justice exhausts the love which nevertheless gave it birth. In the clamour in which we live love is impossible and justice not enough. This is why Europe hates the daylight and can do nothing but confront one injustice with another. But I rediscovered at Tipasa that, in order to prevent justice from shriveling up, from becoming a magnificent orange containing only a dry and bitter pulp, we had to keep a freshness and a source of joy intact within ourselves, loving the daylight which injustice leaves unscathed, and returning to the fray with this reconquered light. Here once more I found ancient beauty, a young sky, and measured my good fortune as I realized at last that in the worst years of our madness the memory of this sky had saved me from despair. I had always known that the ruins of Tipasa were younger than our new buildings or our crumbling towns. There, the world was born again each morning in a light that was always new. O Light! This is the cry of all the characters who, in classical tragedy, come face to face with their destiny. Their final refuge was also ours, and I now knew that this was so. In the depths of the winter, I finally learned that there lay in me an unconquerable summer.

 

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