Within that darkest night

de noche iremos, de noche,
sin luna iremos, sin luna,
que para encontrar la Fuente
sólo la sed nos alumbra

Luis Rosales (1910 – 1992) – Inspired by Juan de la Cruz¹

by night we will go, by night
without light we will go, without light
to seek for the Source
our only light is our thirst

Image credit: www.michalkarcz.com/home

“Let us never forget that this simple desire for God is already the beginning of faith.”
Br Roger, Founder of the Taizé community

In his poem Noche Oscura, John of the Cross uses the image of sneaking through a dark night to encounter his lover as a metaphor for the experience of mystical union with God. I understand his poem as speaking about the struggle of the spiritual journey in the absence of the presence of God. In the third stanza he writes:

Upon that lucky night In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,
I went without discerning
And with no other light
Except for that which in my heart was burning.

Much like the poem of Luis Rosales referenced above, John of the Cross is led only by a desire, a thirst for God. But God himself is, at this point, not present. I find a deep comfort in this concept and draw on a similar idea in my own spiritual life, although I frame it in a different way.

For my master’s thesis, I wrote on what I call spiritual homelessness. The experience of believing in God, and perhaps in certain aspects of a traditional faith tradition, but without a fixed doctrine or creed. This place of wandering, an in-between world of uncertainty, I see as similar to the dark night which John of the Cross speaks about. For him, it is a certainty within darkness. For him, if the soul proceeds, even without consolations, she has the possibility of reaching divine union. For me, it is a place of uncertainty. There is no final goal, except to live in the tension of this dark night and to acknowledge it as unknown. The similarity lies in the desire for God. This thirst, or burning heart, seeks for the divine but, in spiritual homelessness, does not necessarily expect to find it. In some ways it resembles exile, and personally I find that image a powerful one. As someone who was formerly a devout believer within the Catholic tradition, it was quite a painful process to realise that I no longer found myself at home there. What happened?

Well, much like doubting Thomas, I struggled, and struggle, to accept the risen Lord. I find myself saying with him, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”² But what is Thomas to do after all he has lived and experienced with Christ? What would he have done if, at that moment in the Gospel, Christ did not appear to allay his doubts? Perhaps he would have gone off and wandered the Palestinian desert, his life irreversibly changed by his time with Jesus, now unable to follow him but unable to return to what was before? But, maybe in that lonely desert of uncertainty, a small hope burns in his chest. For what exactly, he cannot say, but he cannot let go of everything that has been. As such, there is something of an experience of the absence of what one once knew, and now mourns. This is a via negativa but of a different sort to John’s. In his poem, John anticipates the divine union which follows the dark journey. For him, it is like entering a dark tunnel knowing that a beautiful scene awaits on the other side if one only keeps walking. Certainly, it is a difficult walk! But there is a joy to come. For the spiritually homeless, the other side is uncertain, all is uncertainty, but paradoxically, this is where one can rest – In unknowing.

I am reminded of a poem by Denise Levertov which was introduced to me by a colleague writing on apophatic theology.³ The poem, an excerpt from a longer piece entitled Mass for the day of St. Thomas Didymus contains a verse: Praise god or the gods, the unknown, that which imagined us.⁴ For the spiritually homeless, for me, the Unknown is a reality. Something I pine for yet cannot reach. Absent, yet present. I somehow know that I am sustained by it, despite not being able to define it. The key, for me, is that in this place of uncertainty, I rest. I do notstruggle to bring about a solution, or some sort of closure. It is lived as an open ending. It is framed by a desire for authenticity and cannot claim to know anything more than this. Perhaps this is something like the “path of dark contemplation” which John of the Cross speaks about. Of the soul’s journey he says, “it seems to be lost, and, being thus full of darkness and trials, constraints and temptations, will meet one who will speak to it like Job’s comforters, and say that it is suffering from melancholy, or low spirits, or a morbid disposition, or that it may have some hidden sin, and that it is for this reason that God has forsaken it.” But the comparison fails in one sense, because spiritual homelessness is being lost and the outcome is unknown. However, the comparison works in another sense, in that being in this place of uncertainty, there are those who would claim that it is not a sustainable way or a real way to live faith and something must be done to get out of it. I’ve liked the works of John of the Cross for some time now. Not only do I find his writing beautiful, I have always appreciated the image of the dark night. It always struck me as a very honest experience.

In writing this reflection I discovered the work The Cloud of Unknowing, a work by an anonymous English monk of the 14th century. Having only glanced at it, I immediately picked out elements I relate to and which tie into the idea of the dark night, and of spiritual homelessness:

But now you will ask me, ‘How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?’ and I cannot answer you except to say ‘I do not know!’ For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of unknowing where I want you to be! For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them – yes, even the very works of God himself – yet of God himself can no man think.⁵

Similar to the “divine darkness” of Psuedo-Dionysius, for both the author of The Cloud of Unknowing and for John of the Cross, God is that which cannot be fully known. Pseudo- Dionysius writes, “And such a one, precisely because he neither sees him nor knows him, truly arrives at that which is beyond all seeing and all knowledge.”

I cannot claim that my notion of spiritual homelessness is this place which is beyond all seeing and all knowledge, but I find the idea of the unknowability of God helpful and comforting in my own spiritual wandering. All this said, when I read what John of the Cross says about the spiritual ascent to God, I can’t help but feel that my position would not be welcome in the eyes of the saint. His journey is one of faith, into a sure knowledge that God is there and can be met in a divine, intimate union. My own life would probably not match up to his standards of a true spiritual life, and he would not be wrong! But in my own search for God I have discovered my own way, and it may not be perfectly practiced, but it is a way. I do think, however, that we are all spiritual wanderers, not only in the sense of being earthly pilgrims, but also in our solitude, in a dark night when our souls are bare before the Divine, and we realise that all our doctrines, creeds, and sure knowledge of faith means little before a Being which created an unfathomable universe and sustains it. Our squabbles over whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or just the Father start to seem somewhat irrelevant! Perhaps, then, I would humbly put forward the notion that what led me into this spiritual homelessness was the contradiction between sure doctrine and what seemed to me to be the ineffability of God. As such, I feel I can only marvel at existence and contemplate that “who imagined us”. So, I remain in this dark night, led only by my thirst.

Theologically, if we can say little about who God is, then we find speaking of revelation more difficult. How does one progress from this point? If we cannot know, then is there any point? My own answer is to accept the uncertainty and remain there. This renders much of classical theology difficult for me. A part of my concern is that I cannot accept atheism as a solution as it also makes dogmatic claims to certainty. Agnosticism is also a difficult option, as my life has been affected by my spiritual journey, and I have had experiences that would suggest a spiritual reality to me. Dismissing that would be dismissing a formative part of my history and of who I am. But if I cannot fully accept the Christian faith or another faith tradition, then I feel I am left in this no-man’s land of which I must make some theological sense. Therefore, the apophatic tradition is one way for me to speak of my experience of knowing God, but at the same time of not knowing. And so, in the writings of John of the Cross, I find a helpful aid in my spiritual wanderings.

1. I first encountered this poem in the form of a Taizé chant
2. John 20:25, NRSV
3. My thanks to Jake Benjamin for bringing this poem to my attention.
4. Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus, Levertov, Denise., poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/mass-day-stthomas-
didymus-excerpt, (accessed 16 May 2019).
5. Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works, Clifton Wolters, trans., (London, Penguin Books:
1978), 167.

Advertisement

Into the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The first time I became aware of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an actual place was in my early 20s when I was introduced to Medjugorje, a village in the east of the country known for its purported apparitions of Mary. The little knowledge this gave me was of a poor, post-communist country, still recovering from the ravages of war. A brief Google search back then pulled up some pictures of Mostar, which impressed me, but of anything more than that, I had no idea.

Bosnia returned to my consciousness when I made a friend from Croatia who was writing his Master’s thesis about the Bosnian Franciscans and their calls for peace during the war of 1992 – 1995. His passion for the country intrigued me, and as I learned more about it from him, I realised there seemed to be something to the place that brought out the best and the worst of people.

I took the cheap Ryanair flight from Charleroi to Banja Luka which landed after dark on a Friday evening. Banja Luka International Airport is no more than a single building with one runway that services a few flights a week. A shuttle bus waits at the flight times and takes passengers south to the city of Banja Luka. On the shuttle with me were two Flemish Belgian women who were staying at the same hostel as me. We agreed to team up to find our way to the hostel as we didn’t really know how to get there. The shuttle dropped us of in the centre of Banja Luka and we stepped out into the world of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A man who was on the shuttle with us advised us to take a taxi to the hostel because it was too far to walk so he waved one down and organised everything for us. My first taste of Bosnian hospitality and helpfulness. It cost 7 Bosnian Marks, about 3.5 Euros, between the three of us got us to the hostel.

The next morning, the lady at the front desk of the hostel greeted me as I came down stairs. The bar next door served breakfast, but I hadn’t booked this when I made my reservation. No problem in Bosnia. She led me to the bar and asked what I wanted to eat. With my British politeness I fumbled a reply saying whatever was easiest was fine. to which the response was, “Relax, don’t be so intense!” A common refrain in Bosnia, I was to discover.

Having eaten, I set out into the city to explore and was greeted by an Orthodox Cathedral, a communist looking square with concrete buildings and Cyrillic shop signs, and, rising up in the distance, a few minarets on the skyline broke the seeming European facade. Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the Republic of Srpska, is home to an old medieval fortress which is remarkably well preserved, and the beautiful reconstruction of Ferhat Pasha Mosque, a copy of the original which, sadly, was complete destroyed during the Bosnian war.

Let me briefly stop here to say a few things about the war. Bosnia is still framed by the war that happened between ’92 – ’95. And while I think the country is coloured and defined by so much more than this conflict, it is impossible to talk about Bosnia and not mention it. The war was a result of nationalist tensions during the breakup of Yugoslavia. After, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from the Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina followed suit which angered the Serbian leadership who claimed ethnic Serbs in Bosnia would be in danger. In a nutshell, these tensions spiralled into the conflict which ravaged the country for 4 years. I would encourage you to do some research on the war with the understanding that it was a complex situation and it is difficult to get impartial accounts about it, especially since it is still very fresh in the minds of people in Bosnia. It was a brutal and soul crushing war that has left the country with an underlying sense of pain, which is present on the faces of people old enough to remember. With that said, let me say that Bosnians are some of the warmest, most welcoming and hospitable people I have encountered. Something that struck me is how they so desperately want you to enjoy your time in the country. People happily go out of their way to help, and they enjoy doing it. (For more information on the war I’d recommend the BBC documentary “The Death of Yugoslavia” which is available on Youtube)

I arrived in Sarajevo on the Saturday evening of the 6^th of April, Sarajevo day, the day the city was liberated from the Nazis in 1945. Welcomed by my friend Goran, our first stop was a Ćevabdžinica near the station where we ate a typical Bosnian Ćevapi, a pita bread filled with meat pieces, a kind of cream cheese, and onion. We wandered through the city centre by night and had a beer in Baščaršija, the old Ottoman era district. At night, the tourist shops are closed and there are fewer people on the street, which really gives this segment of the city a magical feel. Old trams trundle along a ring route around the city and they come fairly regularly. Beware of the ticket control operators who skulk around the stations and pounce on anyone that gives a whiff of being foreign. This happened to me on my first day when I rode the tram without a ticket, and set me back 13 Euros. Not such a bad fine, but not a pleasant experience.

In Sarajevo, I was staying with my friend, Goran, who studies there. I met up with our mutual friend who joined us from Israel, Orian. She declared her love for Sarajevo the moment we saw each other in the old square, Seblij. She then proceeded to follow, in hot pursuit, a man carrying a tray of kanafeh which she insisted we needed to try. We didn’t try it. But we did make some new friends who she had asked where we could find the best kanafeh in town.

As Goran, explained, Sarajevo is a city of layers and contrasts. The first layer is the Ottoman era district which dominates the north part of the city centre. Old mosques, and Turkish style shops, strikes one as odd a European city. The next layer is the Austro-Hungarian architecture which is scattered around the city centre. A remnant of the Austro-Hungarian empire which encompassed Bosnia and parts of Montenegro in the south. The third layer is the socialist layer, clearly dominating the skyline with its stark concrete block apartments which all look the same. The final layer is the modern layer, built with money invested from the UAE and Turkey, modern skyscrapers stick out awkwardly from this eclectic mix of architecture. As you walk through the city, you’ll notice the scars of the war on the faces of the buildings, as well as on the pavement where fragmentary grenades exploded, cutting fractal patterns into the concrete around there epicentre. We noted that it was important that people don’t forget the war, but Goran, who has Bosnian heritage, felt that people also needed to deal with their pain and move forward. A first step, he felt, would be repairing some of the damage.

One gets the sense that you’ve gone back in time in Sarajevo. You can smoke in all the cafés and bars, the trams are slow and clunky, and the city has none of the modern slickness of a western European city. And that is a large part of its charm.

With Orian, I visited some of the Jewish sites in the city. The Museum of Jews in Sarajevo, and the Jewish cemetery on the hill overlooking the city. Before the war, one of the distinguishing elements of Sarajevo was its religious diversity. Orthodox and Catholic Christians lived side by side with Muslims and Jews. Sadly, the war tore this diversity apart as religion was linked to nationalist identity. I stopped by The Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in the city centre. A well put together display, the museum gives you a glimpse into the horrors of the war. That being said, it is quite a lot to take in and very heavy.

Thursday was our last day, so Orian and I took the bus to Mostar. Winding through stunning, sheer, rocky mountains, the bus passes azure glacial lakes which intertwine and flow on towards Mostar. The old city of Mostar has a mystical aura to it, mostly due to the mesmerizingly blue river which flows through it. The iconic Mostar bridge acts like a central force which the city revolves around. This bridge, which stood since the 16^th century, was blown to pieces by Croat forces during the war in an act of deliberate cultural warfare. The destruction was ordered by Slobodan Praljak who responded to international outcry that they would build “an even older bridge”. It was reconstructed 2004 through the help of international donors and serves as a bitter-sweet reminder of the fragility of history. Mostar is, unfortunately, very touristy, with locals trying to take advantage as much as they can of the foreigners who stream through the town everyday. One cannot blame them, but the old city is hidden behind a superficial layer of tourist targeted enterprise. I found it interesting that this city has such a mystical feeling to it and just near by are the pilgrimage sites of Medjugorje to the West and Blagaj, an old Sufi monastery, to the South. Something in that region inspires people to religion, it seems. Orian and I hitchhiked to Jablanica from Mostar on our way back to Sarajevo which allowed us a more local glimpse into life in Bosnia. In Jablanica, after encountering a few rude individuals we were warmly received by an owner of a bakery who gave us some delicious fresh bread for the rest of our bus trip back to Sarajevo.

The next day we all set off on our various individual missions. Goran had a presentation for his course that day, and Orian was catching a bus to Belgrade. I hopped on the train to Banja Luka which slowly makes its way through beautiful mountainous countryside. I flew back to Brussels-Charleroi that evening and, thanks to a Ryanair delay, ended up missing the final train back to Leuven. After two men tried to steal my bag at Brussels-Midi at 1:00am I decided that I’d cut my losses and take a taxi home.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a wonderful place, with warm, beautiful people. A trip there should be one of openness to the history and the present. As such, it can only be a journey of beauty and pain for the uninitiated. An “off the grid” tourist destination, it’s worth going there to support the economy and to get a glimpse into a somewhat forgotten region of Europe. The best way to experience Bosnia is to go with the flow, things operate on their own time there, and that’s part of its charm. Hvala lijepo, Bosnia!

Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam

Jesus, don’t want me for a sunbeam
Sunbeams are never made like me

– The Vaselines

I’ve always wondered why the Jesus narrative is so compelling. Why is Jesus the focus of so much cultural reference. Why, for instance, is the name Jesus Christ considered an expletive whereas Buddha is not? I guess in Christianised societies it may have to do with a rejection of the past. People consciously going against the “not allowed”. But is there more to it than that?

The song by The Vaselines, covered by Nirvana, Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam always hits me when I hear it. It is somehow a tragic song. The simple lyrics seem to hang heavy with pain. And perhaps that’s the reason why so many people relate to the song. Because they feel the pain of not being perfect. Or not being perfect enough, after having been told their whole lives that they needed to be a “sunbeam for Jesus”.

Tragic figures seem to be drawn to the suffering of Jesus. Jesus is a tragic figure himself and I think subconsciously, a lot of people see themselves in Jesus as he hangs alone on the cross. But there is also something repulsive about the murder of an innocent, the injustice of Christ’s death, which I think affects people deeply.

Why did Kurt Cobain cover this song? Obviously I can only speculate but to me this song is a prayer. A truly honest prayer. It’s something like the tax collector at the back of the temple.

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

Luke 18:9-14

There is an element of fatalism in both this song and the tax collector’s prayer. The tax collector’s job was considered “sinful” by many Jews at that time as he would have collected tax for the Roman oppressor. There is no indication he plans on changing his job and it would probably have been quite difficult to do so, but he acknowledges honestly, in front of God, that he is imperfect, and lives in an imperfect world, in an imperfect situation.

The song does something similar. “Jesus, don’t want me for a sunbeam, sunbeams are never made like me”.   Playing off the children’s hymn, I’ll Be Your Sunbeam, it seems to be saying, “I’m not perfect, and I can’t be”. However, the song’s most tragic element is its ultimate rejection of Jesus – “don’t ever ask your love of me”. Despite the catchy tune and tempo, that is an emphatically angry line! And I suspect that, although the addressee of the song is Jesus, it is actually addressed to the Church.

This anger at the idea that we are born sinful, that we enter the world already damned and need to be fixed is an understandable anger. And to question that idea is a sound theological question which brings you to the table with the likes of St. Paul, Augustine, Origen, and Justin Martyr, just for starters! It can be a damaging idea – which I am not putting forward my own views on here (maybe in a future post) – but it is an idea which seeks to explain suffering in the world. An attempt to answer the question: Why is there evil?

The reason I call it a tragic song is because although this sort of rejection of Christianity is usually equated with liberation from the “shackles of religion”, this song doesn’t hold that feeling – It feels like a goodbye song; a break up song. There is a real sense of loss and disappointment. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

If I could take away a message from this song, and from the prevalence of Jesus in modern culture despite its seeming rejection of religion, it would be that people know they are broken, hurt and wounded. People see the pain and suffering in the world and they direct their anger at the one institution which was supposed to take it all away but, ultimately, ended up adding to it. It is anger against hypocrisy.

I feel that this anger, while justified, is short sighted because the Church did not create Jesus, Jesus created the Church… and we are the Church – and so we need to ask what does Jesus really want me for? Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam, that is completely right – He wants me to, first of all, love and forgive myself, and second, to do the same for others. Forgiveness implies a conscious decision to love a person who you know is imperfect and you know will possibly hurt you again – and this applies to yourself too.

“Don’t ever ask your love of me”. Is the singer telling Jesus he won’t ever love him, or that he can’t accept Jesus’ love for himself? It is difficult to love ourselves and we often forget that the golden rule, “Love your neighbour” also includes “as you love yourself”. A rewording of this rule for our time might hold more weight: Accept your neighbour as you accept yourself.

Do I accept myself?

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments…”

“Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.”

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him,

“You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

10:17-31

The Oblivion of Being

This piece originally appeared in The Voice, KU Leuven student magazine. 

Thoughts on climbing an abandoned tower

Do you hear that? That’s the world around you. Right now, as you read this, life is.

There are moments, perhaps you can relate, when looking up at the spring sky and noticing the warmth of the sun gently falling in the chill of the air, that I feel okay. Things are okay. Amidst the confusion and pain, the love lost, the quiet forgetfulness of friendships, despite all of it, I am me, here, now.

Heidegger writes about Dasein, a “being-there”. For him, to be is not some esoteric concept but is the flesh and blood reality of being in this world, this life, right now; Part of a whole.

Interestingly, it is often when we are alone that we encounter these sorts of moments. Our solitude reminds us of our finitude and, in turn, of our Dasein. In some sense, to flourish is to acknowledge our smallness, to look into oblivion and be okay with it, because whether you appreciate it or not, the fact that you are, in the immensity of all things, is, in itself, remarkable.

Recently I explored an abandoned building in the Vaartkom, which is in the north of Leuven. I think it was an old Stella factory. I climbed in through a broken window, over a rusted handrail and into the eerie, dusty silence of a place long forgotten. Cautiously, at first, I clambered my way up creaky staircases, through corridors with leering holes in the floor. I climbed over machinery that had long since lost its purpose and up rickety ladders, under the curious gaze of roosting pigeons who cooed gently as I disturbed their rest. It doesn’t take long for our own constructions to turn against us, for shelters to become inhospitable and alien. Bushes had found cracks to grow in, moss had engulfed walls and ceilings, and slowly, nature had reclaimed its right to be there. It was precisely the abandoned emptiness of this old building that had enabled life to flourish once more.

I emerged from a small hatch in the roof, after forcing myself to climb a wrought iron ladder which, had its fastenings failed, would have sent me plummeting to my death. I had reached the top and, around me Leuven lived. A strange surprise greeted me here: my name, spray painted onto the side of the wall. It was as if I had encountered myself in that broken and wasted place, as if I had been waiting for me. It was a surreal moment. But it was also a moment that gives me hope; for life, for the world. In our daily battles, life is there, we are there but we forget this. We enter into the constructs and concepts that surround us but if we were to abandon them, even if just for a moment, we would find that we are larger than the systems that we follow and the roles we assume. We’ll find we were there all along, waiting for ourselves to brave the climb, to face our own smallness in the immensity of everything that is and be.

 

How Can I Believe?

God? Gods? A God? Goddess?

If you are anything like me, you’ve probably seriously questioned how on earth you can believe in any form of supernatural being. Or perhaps you wonder how you can believe in any of the world religions which seem to be a quagmire of complicated doctrines that people argue over incessantly to no avail.

I’m sorry, I can’t help you! Because it is hard.

A vast majority of the human population professes some form of faith. Some form of belief in a higher power. This in itself raises an interesting question. Is our desire for “religion” innate; Part of our makeup somehow? An evolutionary failsafe developed to placate our growing self-awareness? Or is there something to it?

I’ve been taking a course in the history of Western Philosophy this semester and what strikes me is how many philosophers have argued for the existence of God. In some ways, it seems to have been one of the primary discourses of philosophy up until the modern period.
One particular writer who I have found interesting is Anselm of Canterbury, an Italian bishop who lived in the 11th Century and was considered one of the greatest minds of his time. He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (in Catholic England) and is considered a saint in the Catholic and Anglican Church.

His idea that God is “that of which a greater cannot be thought” can at times seem like a ridiculously stupid argument and at others, pure genius.
His basic argument being that if you don’t believe in God, you must concede that you can think of the idea of God and understand the idea of God as something that transcends all other things. i.e. the greatest thing that can be thought.
But then he says, if you are thinking of something which nothing greater can be thought, then it must exist, because if it doesn’t, then it isn’t something which nothing greater can be thought! Because any existing thing would by default be greater by the mere fact that it exists!

There is obviously more to his arguments (see Proslogion) but my point is to show that the intellectual discussion and reasoning that went into many philosophers’ discussions about God was remarkable. This is in stark contrast to how people perceive “believers” today.

But perhaps the hardest thing to wrap our heads around is why there is suffering in this world. In light of the terrible conflicts and terror attacks around the world recently, you can be forgiven for questioning whether a divine being exists and if it does exist, what is its nature that it leaves us to suffer? There are of course arguments and discussions around this topic, but much of that rhetoric falls flat in the face of the reality of human suffering. You cannot spout philosophy or apologetics to a mother who has lost her child.

I remain, however, positively biased towards God’s existence. I mean this in the sense that even though I may doubt, I have not written off the possibility of a God and I have not written off the possibility that I can know something about this God; that relationship is possible. How we achieve this relationship? That is a question of faith!

The last few months have been quite a rollercoaster ride for me personally. Living in Leuven is amazing and I love my course immensely (despite the stresses!). I’ve learnt a lot about myself too, about my strengths, my faults and how to approach both of these things. I’ve enjoyed intimacy and I’ve hurt people, I’ve been reckless and I’ve been too cautious, I’ve been joyful and I’ve been terribly sad. And this is where, perhaps, philosophy falls short because what is logical about emotion and life and pain and joy? And this is where, perhaps, theology steps in and says, “I am not sure either, but I have some ideas.” And finally, faith steps in and says quietly, “I’m here.”

Lord my God, teach my heart
where and how to seek You, where and how to find You. If You
are not here, 0 Lord, where shall I seek You who are absent? But
if You are everywhere, why do I not behold You as present? But
surely You dwell in light inaccessible. Yet, where is light inaccessible?
Or how shall I approach unto light inaccessible? Or who will
lead me to and into this light so that in it I may behold You?
– Anselm of Canterbury

To Whom Shall We Go?

To whom indeed?

For what if Peter had turned to face the Lord only to discover He wasn’t even there? Who had he been following all this time? Crestfallen and alone, would he have gone back to his boat and cast out into the deep hoping to pull something up? Anything… His endless net never emerging from the dark waters no matter how much he pulled and struggled and cursed and screamed, it was
pointless.

Would he stare down into the depths, noting its emptiness, its continuous descent? Recalling, perhaps, a dream of walking on water?

Simon, did you hear? Did you hear a voice saying, “Follow me”? Were you sitting by the shore mending your nets, arguing with Andrew about the weather and tides? Did He pass you by?

Did you love Him?

Who? Did you ever know Him?

How do we proceed from these shores, once the wind has stopped and the view is clear? As we warm ourselves by the fire, which way do we choose when all ways are open; yet somehow all unappealing?

But sometimes…

Maybe…

Perhaps…

…in that silhouette on the horizon, a flicker in someone’s eyes, the breaking of bread there is a whisper. Faint. Soft. Like a passing wind high above.

Where were you, Peter? Where was I?

When the foundations were laid? I cannot tell you as I don’t know so much.

For now, all I can do is to sit on the still lake and wait, watching the shore for a familiar face.

Belief in the Questions

There are questions…  But God is in the questions.

I am about to embark on a new adventure in my life. Today I begin my Bachelor in Theology and Religious Studies here in Leuven, Belgium. This blog will still remain NOT a Theology class!

Interestingly, although I am about to start studying Theology, sometimes I don’t know whether I really do believe in God.
But then I realise that I do believe in the questions.
Perhaps this state of questioning and doubt is the right place to start a Theological exploration from.

The questions are existential ones and they seem to pursue me rather than the other way around. It would be impossible for me to ignore them without numbing myself in some way or another. And their pursuit ultimately means I must turn and face them.
They are ancient questions, they are the questions.

My hope as I start this new phase of life is to wade through the centuries of minds who have also been pursued by this existential angst. I don’t necessarily believe the questions have answers but I do think they will help me grow and learn.

“Let us never forget that this simple desire for God is already the beginning of faith”
Br.Roger of Taizé

Thoughts on Holiness

“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his
heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

These are ideas I’m still fleshing out but humour me for a bit.

I’ve found, as a Christian, a tendency to conflate the word chastity and the word holiness.

Consider a situation where a believing Christian (i.e – someone who accepts the main concepts of the Christian creed) is also sexually active and okay with it. There are many Christians who might view said Christian’s behaviour as sinful or wrong. And there could be many theological arguments as to why it is or isn’t wrong ranging from “the Bible says so!” to “pre-marital sex is contrary to the natural order.”

Therefore this Christian cannot be “holy” while they continue living in such a way. But say you are this Christian, and you are living a sexually active life but you still believe in social justice and caring for the marginalized in society; Mirroring Christ in compassion and the bravery to stand up against injustice. With “fornication” as the measuring stick for holiness removed, the places where you are really not practicing are highlighted. Sex is often the Christian strawman. If I’m not doing it before marriage, I’m okay! It is somehow the “prime achievement”.

Now I think chastity gets a bad rap. As it is often misconstrued, it is not the same thing as celibacy.
Chastity as defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church is “successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.” CCC2337
It goes on to say “Chastity presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respect the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life.” CCC2344

It is essentially the calling of humankind to become less selfish, less attached to material things, less sexually irresponsible and more self-aware.
To be chaste is then a part of holiness but to narrow chastity to mean “no sex before marriage” is to simplify its meaning.

I don’t think holiness is something we can see. It’s something I’ve thought about many times in Mass while I am kneeling or bowing down to pray. I’m torn between being able to worship with my body, to pray through my posture and with the concern with what others may be thinking. Whether positive or negative.

I shouldn’t care what other people are thinking but whether I choose to stand and kneel as required or bow before receiving the Eucharist, there is an internal monologue worrying what people might assume about me based on how I participate. Which is very silly – And why it is silly to look at other people in Mass and make assumptions about their participation. We can’t see holiness.

I believe holiness is brought about by an internal disposition of being open to our own insecurity and fallibility. Which is why someone like a drug addict who steals in order to support his habit could still be holier than a pious church goer; If he acknowledges his actions are wrong and admits he can’t beat his addiction and knows he is unlikely to stop stealing and lays this before God consciously or not, I believe God’s love and mercy are extended to that man incalculably! i.e. He is made Holy.

Holiness is a gift. Grace is an undeserved favour. And when it comes to faith working in love (what we do as Christians), we are accountable to God and to no one else. He knows our situations, our circumstances and our hearts.

There is no need to prove our holiness to others, and their view of our commitment or zeal is irrelevant. Whether we choose to pray standing up, on our heads or quietly in the corner, it has no bearing on our holiness whatsoever.
I’m not saying we can do what we want but that morality is complex and we are all flawed. We cannot make assumptions about other people’s relationship with God.

The way I see it is we should take care of each other, and God will take care of our holiness.

To Be Remembered

And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley

It’s saddening and humbling that all things are transitory. All our human endeavours: Architectural masterpieces, great works of art, cultures, beliefs – all of these things pass away.

Being in Europe this year has in some ways emphasised this reality to me. The beauty of medieval castles, an ancient monument or Roman ruins – They inspire a sense of awe at what has been.
But they will be gone one day. As will everything else. We see it in our modern cities now: things needing a lick of paint, cracks in the side walk, once grand office buildings of the 80’s now derelict and run down, rusty hand rails and sign posts; All things decay.

Is this something to lament? It strikes me that nature also decays but it does it in a way that replenishes itself. How is it that human beings, although a part of nature, cannot do this effectively?
In the building of monuments and amazing structures, ancient civilizations were trying to establish their primacy at the time but also, I suppose, they wanted to leave a legacy – to be remembered. And as I find inspiration in those amazing structures and breath taking pieces of art, perhaps that is the replenishment I’m talking about.

This desire to be immortalised, is it good or bad? If we detached ourselves from it, we’d be able to be present to the now and enjoy the time we have. But in some sense, in doing that we would lose much of what drives us to create. To create is, to a certain extent, to put a piece of your soul into the world and leave it there for others to see. The desire is for people to be affected by your work, and for that to happen you want to be good at what you do in order to be recognised. And “recognition” comes from the Latin root recognoscere ‘know again, recall to mind’ – To be remembered. You gain a small sliver of immortality.

We want to be remembered, to feel as though our life was worth something; the implication being that if it was worth something, we’d have had an effect on many people in a positive way. But perhaps “to be remembered” is not what we should strive for but rather to be a force for good. It would be better, in my mind, for no one to ever know who you were but to have made a positive change in the world. In a way that is true heroism, true selflessness.

All of these thoughts spawned from a rusted handrail and cracked staircase baking in the midday sun. That decay was compost for my creativity. So perhaps it is good that all things fade; It means there is always call for something new, for creativity to continue, growing from the sediment of old ideas.

And one thing is certain, although all things fade, our very presence on earth has in some way altered the outcome of the future. Every person you encounter, even for a moment, has been changed in some way, however small that change may be, it is irreversible!
Which is a little scary… and a little awesome.

Doubting Faith

I doubt a lot. Sometimes I feel that instead of having faith and some doubts, I have doubt and some faith.

But, I am aware of a deep desire within me to know God. Something inside knows I cannot be satisfied by anything in this world.

As I write this, I am sitting next to a rural home in the Transkei, looking out at green hills that rise and fall into the ocean. A sheep bleats and a strong offshore wind rattles a piece of corrugated metal lying against a chicken wire fence. The thought comes to mind that I cannot force faith. Faith is a gentle surrender to God’s presence within me and all around me.

Christianity is not about proselytizing moral values, nor is it about intellectual pursuit. It is not about being good and it certainly is not about being guilty or feeling ashamed. For me, the starting point of Christianity is the crazy idea that God, the God who created everything from the cosmos to the smallest particle, chose to become a man; Fully man. Not a superman but a flesh and blood human being with likes and dislikes, friends and family, hopes and ideas about what his life should be. Yet, he was also fully God. This is the mystery of Christianity.

Jesus’ life convicts me to be more, to do more for the outcasts of society. He himself was an outcast. It brings me comfort to know that he comes into my life as it is. He doesn’t ask me to move aside my mess, he comes into the mess. He is the friend who sits with you quietly as you weep; he the friend who knows that words aren’t always necessary; he is the friend who thinks you’re great as you are.

The last few days in this rural village have been peaceful and restful. At night, the stars gently astound. And in my doubts and in my faith I become aware of these moments when nothing else can explain this small life form, self-aware, marveling at creation. In a vast universe, my insignificance makes me realise how incredible my existence actually is. Life is too beautiful to be accidental.