Thoughts on Atheism and Prayer

This was written in response to a friend's blog, who formerly was a believer, but who now, through the "The Truth of Rational Thought" has arrived at "ultimate truth":  that there is no God.  He had a recent post on the "power of prayer," as a response to those in his family, and those of his friends who are praying for him.  He closed the post with these words:  "If you are reading this, and you are one of the ones praying for my salvation, thanks, but no thanks. Why don't you instead go for a walk in nature, or help feed a hungry person, or teach some child to read, something, anything that would be constructive. While I appreciate the concern, you should know that no amount of prayer for me would/could never work, because your prayer's are unheard by anyone but you."

Two thoughts come to mind regarding what appears to be naïve and irrational thinking of people who “excuse” unanswered prayers by saying that “God’s answer is no,” or that “God has something else in store.” It is often caricatured by atheists as being absurd, as well as being inconsistent with a God who said, “Ask and you shall receive whatever you ask for in my name.”

It all runs into the example of Christ, who for any Christian, obviously needs to be the example and source of all thinking on prayer. As you know, when he was asked by the disciples how to prayer, the fundamental request was, “Thy will be done.” All other requests, in the Christian tradition, have this single caveat above all considerations.

When you look at the most poignant prayer that Christ prayed as well, we are confronted with unanswered prayer: “May this cup pass, but thy will be done.” Christ, the self-proclaimed Son of God’spetitional prayer was not answered, but his overarching prayer was, i.e.,, "Thy will be done," so why should the belief that God sometimes says, “no,” be absurd or naïve, in relation to determining whether or not Christianity is true or not? It may be absurd, but it is no case against Christianity since his example is clearly the Christian ideal, and contained within that ideal is unanswered petitional prayer. In his case, it’s clear that the answer was “no,” and it is also clear that God had something better in store, namely the redemption of the world.

It has always seemed strange to me when atheists attack Christian beliefs in prayer because their experience with it is completely consistent both with what Christianity has always taught, and secondly, that it consistently follows the very example that Christ showed in the Garden of Gethsemane. It seems that usually, atheist attacks on prayer stem from arguing against what atheists think prayer should be, if it means anything at all, rather than on what Christendom, stretched out over 2,000 years has always believed and taught about prayer. It seems to be the case in your post as well.

As to suffering, in the prayer that Christ prayed in Gethsemane can be found the answer to suffering that alluded Bart Ehrmann in his book, particularly in his chapter on Redemptive Suffering where he finds the belief that “others might need to suffer for my salvation” as personally repugnant. What he doesn’t get, despite his lauded position at Princeton Theological Seminary, is that “redemptive suffering” has nothing to do with others and their suffering for me, it has everything to do with my personal response to suffering, and what my suffering can do for others. The view of redemptive suffering is an invitation to the sufferer to find a purpose and a dignity in his suffering. He has flipped the entire history of the Church’s teaching on suffering on its head, and so of course it seems absurd to him and his expose against suffering is against something other than the Christian view of suffering.

Christ suffered for the redemption of the world, so the Christian answer is the best and only answer to the question of suffering that has ever vexed the world: out of suffering can come the greatest good, and the only surety that this can, and will happen, is contained within the heart of the sufferer, which in the Christian tradition, as you know, calls the sufferer to unite his suffering with Christ’s. Being a “living sacrifice” entails suffering, so within Christianity, even a man suffering from Ebola virus can rejoice in the very suffering he endures, for the redemptive good that can come from it, for others he loves, just as Christ willingly endured the travails of the Cross out of His love for us.

A Few Random Thoughts On Suffering

The following comes from Irenaeus' Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching, from the second century:

Now this world is encompassed by seven heavens, in which dwell powers and angels and angels and archangels, doing service to God, the Almighty and Maker of all things: not as though He was in need, but that they may not be idle and unprofitable and ineffectual.

In my mind, this is closely linked to Pascal’s teaching that prayer was given to us so that we might have "the dignity of causality," as well as Lewis’ poem about prayer, that says that when we pray, “for a moment, He enfeebles His power.” I believe that a strong case can be made that if we are invited to partake in the redemption of the world, through our suffering, it is not because Christ is in need, but rather it is a gift given to us that we “may not be idle and unprofitable and ineffectual.” The redemption of the world comes solely through Christ, but through his grace, He allows us to carry our daily cross on behalf of the rest of the world, as Colossians 1:24 teaches. This is a hard sell for a lot of Protestants, but C.S. Lewis believed it, Elisabeth Elliot believes it, and so do a lot of other Protestants, including me.

I stumbled on a quote from Jane Eyre a day or two ago:

I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.

Everyone has said something similar in our lives about someone we love. That's the love of Christ reflected through us, and it finds its most noble expression in being willing to lay down our life for a friend, just as Christ did. Though today that rarely takes the form of actual death, there are examples where this is exactly what God allowed. The most poignant example that I can think of is from A Severe Mercy, where Davy offered her life on behalf of her husband, Sheldon Van Auken. God viewed her as a "living sacrifice, holy and acceptable," and it was through the "severe mercy" of her death that Sheldon came fully to Christ.

We can endure almost anything, when we believe that by enduring it, we can somehow "assuage" another's grief, and even more so, when we know that we would do anything to work with Christ for another's redemption. Whenever we sacrifice anything, for anyone, we are closest to who we are as children of God, made in His image, in the image of perfect Love. Mother Theresa's example is a powerful one. From Come By My Light: "She had insisted that it would be 'worth going through every possible suffering just for one single soul.'" Mother Theresa carried much pain and despair in her life, and continually offered it up on behalf of the poor and lost in Calcutta, and counted it as worth the cost.

In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl relayed a story that took place in a deep moment of despair at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He was asked by some in his barracks to speak any encouragement that he could. He "told them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death should save the human being he loved from a painful end. For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his was a sacrifice of the deepest significance. He did not want to die for nothing." For the men in the camp, Frankl understood the truth of Nietzche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."

The most powerful quote I've read on suffering comes from Merton, who proclaims that our suffering is "something demanded by our own personal destiny." It is "the sacramental gift of Christ's love, given to me by God the Father along with my identity and my very name."

Our suffering is unique. We alone can carry it, and to run from it, at all costs, by deadening it in unhealthy ways, is to run away from God's plan for our lives and from the grace which He desires to pour out, in and through us. I am amazed at how Frankl's words resonate so closely with Merton's: "When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden." The call and invitation of Christ is to bear our particular burden, on behalf of our brothers and sisters, just as Mother Theresa--just as Christ did on behalf of us all.

Henri Nouwen Quotes

I'm having a great evening at home. I finished watching a film about Henri Nouwen which was excellent. I decided to sit down and transcribe a few of the segments, since I found them moving and valuable, and so I thought I'd share them. The first is an excerpt from his writing. The other three are transcripts of interviews. For me, that final paragraph is the most powerful.

• At the core of my faith belongs the conviction that we are the beloved sons and daughters of God. One of the enormous spiritual tasks we have is to claim that and to live a life based on that knowledge, and that’s not very easy. In fact, most of us fail constantly to claim the truth of who we are.

• Loneliness—this is a wound, this is a pain, when you don’t run away from it, but feel it through, and that sort of in the middle of the pain there is some gift hidden. And I more and more in my life have discovered that the gifts of life are often hidden in the places that most hurt.

• I was very, very convinced from the very beginning, that ministry is to lay down your life for your friends. OK? Like Jesus said: being a shepherd is the one who lays down his life for his friend. But laying down your life you have to have first a life to lay down, you know? You have to know who you are, and by laying down your life I don’t’ mean physical martyrdom, I meant your pain, your anguish, your doubts, your confusion. How can you really enter into that and discover there God’s healing grace, and to make that experience, that adventure with God in your own life, as the source of your ministry.

• Conversion is claiming again and again and again the truth of myself. And what is the truth of myself? That I am God’s beloved child, long before I was born, and my father and my mother and my teachers and my church got involved, and I will be God’s beloved child long after I have died. I go from God’s intimate embrace into God’s intimate embrace. God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, I’ve love you before you were born. I’ve knitted you together in your mother’s womb, I’ve molded you in the depths of the world, I was there long before any human being was there, and I love you, I love you and I’ve written your name in my hand—you’re safe in the palm of my hand, long before you were born. And I’m sending you into this world for a little time—20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years—that’s just a little bit—so that you’ll have the chance to say, “I love you too.”

MLK, Jr. Day

While I was driving to Kalamazoo this afternoon I was able to hear MLK, Jr's famous "I Have A Dream" speech, in its entirety on NPR. I was moved by his stirring words and powerful delivery as I always am. This time, however, I heard something in his speech that I've never heard before. I excerpt a portion of his speech below:

No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

As I listened, these words rang out as clear as day:

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Whoa. Wait a minute. One of the most important speeches in the history of America, made by one of the most important figures in American history spoke about "creative suffering" about faith in the concept that "unearned suffering is redemptive?" That, my friends, is going in my book.

I am curious to know if his reference to "creative suffering" is the result of having read the pamphlet of the same title, written by a Russian Christian named Iulia de Beausobre. I have seen this work referenced in some of the books on suffering that I've been reading, but I haven't had time to delve into it, though I have it at home from the library. I'm going to attempt to research if MLK, Jr. ever read the book or not. If he did, I'm sure this little pamphlet helped shape his views of peaceful resistance.

This is from the back blurb of the book:

It is against the background of terror and cruelty on a huge scale that Iulia de Beausobre illuminates for Western readers the way in which the Russian people have always received suffering, and what they have learned to do with it. it is particularly 'man's inhumanity to man' that she is concerned with. Cruelty is a manifestation, or symptom, of an evil whose roots lie deeper than anything in human experience, but it is precisely at its roots that evil has been decisively defeated by Christ in the divine mystery of suffering willingly accepted for the sake of love. It is because this deeply thoughtful essay is also the testimony of one who, with many of her fellow-countrymen, learned to claim the power of Christ's victory in face of their persecutors, and so make their suffering 'creative' like his, that its appeal is as strong and its message s cogent now as in the dark days of 1940.

I have a hunch that MLK must have been aware of this woman's work. It will be an interesting piece of history to track down, if I can.

The Ultimate End of Suffering

By his salvific work, the only-begotten Son liberates man from sin and death. First off he blots out from human history the dominion of sin, which took root under the influence of the evil Spirit, beginning with Original Sin, and then he gives man the possibility of living in Sanctifying Grace. In the wake of his victory over sin, he also takes away the dominion of death, by his Resurrection beginning the process of the future resurrection of the body. Both are essential conditions of "eternal life," that is of man's definitive happiness in union with God; this means, for the saved, that in the eschatological perspective suffering is totally blotted out.

--Salvicifi Doloris, John Paul II

Earthly Comfort

I just finished Elizabeth Elliot's The Mark Of A Man the other night, (during my found-reading time, at three in the morning).  It's fresh enough that many of the lines that struck me as powerful are still rattling around in my noggin.  This afternoon, I decided to pick up C.S. Lewis's Collected Letters, Volume III, and remarkably stumbled upon a phrase that Elliot had quoted of Lewis.  When I read it in The Mark of A Man, I wondered what the source was, and then today in the several thousand pages of Lewis's letters, there it was, right in front of me.  

I figure with that kind of serendipity, it was worth posting on my blog.  It's also been rolling around in my mind as I think about Christianity and belief, and I think it explains a lot why individuals choose to redefine their beliefs in God to accommodate life that is discordant with God's teaching.

"It is quite useless knocking at the door of Heaven for earthly comfort:  it's not the sort of comfort they supply there."

I believe it is easy to distort the promise that Christ made regarding His yoke being easy and His burden light into believing that this should apply to our earthly comfort and satisfaction.  I think much of man's disbelief could be nullified if we clung to the truth of what Lewis wrote in this letter.

We all desire earthly comfort.  God didn't promise to provide that to us.  But He helps us to persevere in the very lack of that comfort, and calls us to come to Him for true comfort, to become like the woman at the well.  Sometimes life is a succession of getting through one day to the next, relying solely on His daily bread to get us through.  I also believe that this is exactly where he wants us:  to realize that we need Him completely and solely.  If lack of earthly comfort, or if by living daily with pain or sorrow, bring us to that realization, then we've been given a gift, albeit a painful one. 

But that, of course, doesn't mean that the voids in our lives that we feel so profoundly are any less palpably lacking.  Thankfully we're just here for a brief time, and one day soon, all we will know is abundant joy.  

(Source:  C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 1102)

Quotes from The Cocktail Party

The Cocktail Party, a play by T. S. Eliot

EDWARD

I once experienced the extreme of physical pain,
And now I know there is suffering worse than that.
It is surprising, if one had time to be surprised:
I am not afraid of the death of the body,
But this death is terrifying. The death of the spirit--
Can you understand what I suffer?

REILLY

I understand what you mean.

EDWARD

I can no longer act for myself.
Coming to see you--that's the last decision
I was capable of making. I am in your hands.
I cannot take any further responsibility.

REILLY

Many patients come in that belief.

Later in the same scene:

EDWARD

I am at least free to leave. And I propose to do so.
My mind is made up. I shall go to a hotel.

REILLY

It is just because you are not free, Mr. Chamberlayne,
That you have come to me. It is for me to give you that--
Your freedom. That is my affair.

----------

Another scene:

CELIA

You see, I think I really had a vision of something
Though I don't know what it is. I don't want to forget it,
I want to live with it. I could do without everything,
Put up with anything, if I might cherish it.
IN fact, I think it would really be dishonest
For me, now, to try to make a life with anybody!
I couldn't give anyone the kind of love--
I wish I could--which belongs to the life.
Oh, I'm afraid this sounds like raving!
Or just cantankerousness...still,
If there's no other way...the I feel just hopeless.

REILLY

There is another way, if you have the courage.
The first I could describe in familiar terms
Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it,
Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us.
The second is unknown, and so requires faith--
The kind of faith that issues from despair.
The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.

CELIA

That sounds like what I want.

REILLY

It is a terrifying journey.

----------

JULIA, (speaking of Celia)

Oh yes, she will go far. And we know where she is going.
But what do we know of the terrors of the journey?
You and I don't know the process by which the human is
Transhumanised: what do we know
Of the kind of suffering they must undergo
On the way of illumination?

----------

REILLY, speaking of when he first met Celia

It was obvious that here was a woman under sentence of death.
That was her destiny. The only question
Then was, what sort of death? I could not know;
Because it was for her to choose the way of life
To lead to death, and, without knowing the end
Yet choose the form of death. We know the death she chose.
I did not know that she would die in this way,
She did not know. So all that I could do
Was to direct her in the way of preparation.
That way, which she accepted, led to this death.
And if that is not a happy death, what death is happy?

EDWARD

Do you mean that having chosen this form of death
She did not suffer as ordinary people suffer?

REILLY

Not at all what I mean. Rather the contrary.
I'd say that she suffered all that we should suffer
In fear and pain and loathing--all these together--
And reluctance of the body to become a thing.
I'd say she suffered more, because more conscious
Than the rest of us. She paid the highest price
In suffering. That is part of the design.

Quotes from The End of the Affair

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

'Oh, it's not done,' I said, 'but neither is adultery or theft or running away from the enemy's fire. The not done things are done every day, Henry. It's part of modern life. I've done most of them myself.'

I wanted to pray: to offer up some inordinate sacrifice if only he could be healed, but now there was no sacrifice left for me to offer.

And then I came into that dark church in Park Road and saw the bodies standing around me on all the altars--the hideous plaster statues with their complacent faces, and I remembered that they believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted to be destroyed for ever. I had done so much injury with this body. How could I want to preserve any of it for eternity, and suddenly I remembered a phrase of Richard's--about human being inventing doctrines to satisfy their desires, and I thought how wrong he is.

Let me think of those awful spots on Richard's cheek. Let me see Henry's face with the tears falling. Let me forget me. Dear God, I've tried to love and I've made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I'd know how to love them. I believe the legend. I believe you were born. I believe you died for us. I believe you are God. Teach me to love. I don't mind my pain. It's their pain I can't stand. Let My pain go on and on, but stop theirs. Dear God, if only you could come down from your Cross for a while and let me get up there instead. If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

I'm tired and I don't want any more pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don't want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.

...God has more mercy, and then I came out of the church and saw the crucifix they have there, and I thought, of course, he's got mercy, only it's such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment.

I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love.

'And you can't teach me about penitence, Mr Bendrix. I've had twenty-five years in the Confessional. There's nothing we can do some of the saints haven't done before us.'

Brother Lawrence on Suffering II

The opening line of this letter reminds of the words said by the blind Carthusian monk in the film Into Great Silence:

And because He is an infinitely good being, He eternally seeks our well-being. Therefore, there is no cause for worry in any of the things which happen to us. I often thank God that he let me be blinded. I am sure he let this happen for the good of my soul...God is infinitely good, and that all of his actions are in our best interest. Because of this a Christian should always be happy, never unhappy. Because everything that happens is God's will, and it only happens for the well-being of our soul.

Here is the opening paragraph of Brother Lawrence's letter of February 6, 1691

God indeed knows what we need, and everything he does is for our good. If we knew how much he loves us, we would readily accept the bitter with the sweet, and even the most painful and difficult things would be pleasant and agreeable. The most painful sufferings do not ordinarily seem unbearable unless we look at them from the wrong perspective. Furthermore, when we are convinced that it is the hand of God at work in us--that he is a Father full of love who allows us to endure humiliation, pain, and suffering--all the bitterness is taken away, and only the sweetness remains.

I like how he writes about looking at painful sufferings from the wrong perspective. That's what we do all the time.

Brother Lawrence on Suffering

In a letter dated November 17, 1690, Brother Lawrence wrote the following words that would seem strange and even unfeeling to the world. I happen to agree wholheartedly with Brother Lawrence:

I will not ask God to deliver you from your trials, but I will ask him earnestly to give you the patience and strength needed to suffer as long as he desires. Find consolation in him who keeps you fixed to the cross; he will release you when he judges it appropriate. Happy are they who suffer with him. Get used to suffering, and ask him for the strength to suffer as he wants, and for as long as he judges necessary. The worldly do not understand these truths, and I am not surprised; the reason is that they suffer as citizens of this world and not as Christians. They consider illnesses as natural afflictions and not as graces from God, and therefor they find in them only what is difficult and harsh for [our] nature. But those who regard them as coming from the hand of God, as signs of his mercy and the means he uses for their salvation, ordinarily find great sweetness and perceptible consolations in them.

The only place where I disagree with Brother Lawrence is "I will not ask God to deliver you from your trials." Certainly if our Lord asked if the cup could be passed, we can certainly pray this, just so long as our constant refrain is "thy will be done."

Lewis on Suffering

In a letter dated September 12/1951:

I have not a word to say against the doctrine that Our Lord suffers in all the sufferings of His people (see Acts IX.6) or that when we willingly accept what we suffer for others and offer it to God on their behalf, then it may be united with His sufferings and, in Him, may help to their redemption or even that of others whom we do not dream of. So that it is not in vain; tho' of course we must not count on seeing it work out exactly as we, in our present ignorance, might think best. The key text for this view is Colossians I.24. Is it not, after all, one more application of the truth that we are all 'members of one another'? I wish I had known more when I wrote the Problem of Pain.

God bless you all. Be sure that Grace flows into you and out of you and through you in all sorts of way, and no faithful submission to pain in yourself or in another will be wasted.

As I have been thinking about this book, I've wanted to make a case to Protestants of the belief about redemptive, or salvific suffering. John Stott wrote that the concept of redemptive suffering, in the way that Catholics view it, is repugnant to the Protestant mind. It is great help to have someone held in such high esteem in Protestant circles make a case for just this philosophy. I think this letter is a Godsend, literally. Elisabeth Elliot also writes strongly about the possibility of "offering it up" on behalf of others.

I think working on this book has been the most grace-filled endeavor I've ever embarked upon, and whether or not it is ever published, the act of writing it has brought me much closer to Christ. Moments like stumbling upon that letter nearly give me goosebumps, and I realize time and time again that God is answering my prayer that I will "read the right stuff." He keeps sending me to it, and bringing it to me, constantly. I can't tell you how exciting it is!

Libraries, and Centuries Past

It's been a long time since I've been in a university library. Having been to three different university libraries in two days I realize that I love them. Perhaps it's the smell of old books, or the sight of neatly stacked rows of books upon books, waiting to be discovered. What I notice most about libraries is certainly the smell...and the sounds, or lack thereof. I find the soft hum of the heating and cooling systems in a library a comforting sound, combined with the barely audible drone of fluorescent lights. All in all, being in those libraries yesterday and today reminded of how much I enjoyed doing research and research papers back in college.

I'm back to working on my book. I've been praying that God would cause me to read the right stuff. I find myself nosing around, sniffing out hints of ideas and often discovering that what was a puff of a thought has often led me to read something that is quite powerful. I realize too that my prayers for reading the right things for this book were in many ways answered years ago by the books that I happened to read. I remembered a passage from a book that I must have read 10 years ago that was in the MSU library. I found it easily yesterday and it will undoubtedly be central to at least one chapter of the book I'm planning. That's exciting to me, and it's confirmation to me that I'm supposed to be writing the book. And it's fun at the same time to see where God might take me--I'm allowing my mind to run wild and free when I think about this book, and even the slightest wisp of an idea is something I'm going to be pursuing, since I do believe that God will lead me to the writing that he wants me to read.

In my snooping, I've stumbled upon a 12th century monk, Bernard of Clairvaux. I picked up several books of him/about him today and I think some of his writing will shape this book. It stimulates me to read something written by a man seeking out God nearly 1,000 years ago and realize that there is nothing separates him from us, other than time. His writing about God is just as appropriate today as it was then. We men are all the same, from Adam to today.

Here's a rather lengthy excerpt that I scanned in from a treatise he wrote called "On Loving God." The language is redolent of the sensual language of the Song of Songs, and speaks of the Bridegroom and the Bride in beautiful ways. I have italicized the passages that I find particularly powerful. This is a phrase I do not want to forget: She beholds the earth which produced thorns and thistles under the ancient curse blooming once more by the grace of a new benediction.

The fruits which the bride (the Church) gathers from the tree of life (Genesis 2:9) in the midst of the garden of her Beloved are called pomegranates (Song of Solomon 4: 13; 6: 11). They derive their taste from the Bread of heaven (Hosea 13: 16; I Corinthians 15:54) and their color from the blood of Christ. The Church sees death dead, and its author vanquished. She sees captivity led captive (Ephesians 4:8) from hell to heaven, from earth to heaven. For "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians 2: 10). She beholds the earth which produced thorns and thistles under the ancient curse (Genesis 3: 18; Hebrews 6:8) blooming once more by the grace of a new benediction. In all of these realizations, the Church can say with the Psalmist: "My heart dances for joy, and in my song will I praise Him" (Psalm 28:7). She refreshes herself with the fruits of His Passion which she gathered from the tree of the cross, and with the flowers of His resurrection, whose fragrance will induce the Bridegroom to visit her frequently.

Then she exclaims: "You are fair, my beloved, yes handsome indeed, also our couch is covered with flowers" (Song of Solomon 1:15, 16). But speaking of the couch, the bride intends to express that all her desires are surrendered, and by reference to the flowers, she clearly indicates from whence her hopes are realized. She does not depend upon her own merits, but on the flowers of the field which have been blessed by God (Genesis 27:27, cf. Matthew 6:28-30). Jesus Christ delights in such flowers, for He willed to be conceived and raised in Nazareth (a name which means the consecrated).

Pleased by such perfumes, the Bridegroom enters willingly and frequently into the chamber of the heart that He finds is decked with the flowers and fruits of grace. For when He sees a mind occupied with the grace of His passion and the glory of His resurrection, He enters frequently and dwells there freely. For the tokens and memories of His passion are like the fruits of the past year. After all the times spent under the domination of sin and death (Romans 5:25), they now come to fruition in the "fullness of the times" (Galatians 4:4). The signs of the resurrection are like the flowers of a new year, blossoming like the verdure of summer under the power of grace. There fruit will then come forth in the general resurrection when time shall be no more in the eternal state. And so it is written, "Winter is over, the rain is past and gone, and the flowers appear on the earth" (Song of Solomon 2: 11, 12). The betrothed marvels at the arrival of summer in her companionship with the One who passed through the winter cold of death into the spring of a newness of life saying, "Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5). His flesh was sown in death and rose again in resurrection (l Corinthians 15:42). By His fragrance, the dried-up grasses revive in the valley fields, the frozen plants are warmed once more by the sun, and all the deadness is restored to life.

The renewal of these flowers and fruits, and the beauty of the field, all giving off a sweet perfume, enchant the Father Himself, So He speaks of His Son who has made all things new (Revelation 2 I :5). "The smell of my Son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed" (Genesis 27:27). Yes, indeed, it is a full field, "of whose fullness we have all received" (John 1:16). But the spouse enjoys greater intimacy by the knowledge that she may gather flowers where she is so inclined, and strew them over the depth of her conscience, so that the couch of her heart will be redolent with sweet perfume for the Bridegroom as He enters.

Terroir

I don't think about wine that often. I enjoy it, and I have the desire to become more learned in the various regions and styles of wine, but beyond that all I can say about wine is that I know what I like or don't like--once I taste it.

I'm slowly learning a bit more and since my last trip to Napa I've set myself on a course of self education. Remarkably I'm a member in good standing with the local library so I went and picked up three books on wine. One is an overall history of wine, one is a memoir written by a member of an Italian wine family and the third is a book called The Geography of Wine. Along with the Cook's Encyclopedia of Wine that I picked up cheap at Barnes & Noble these books will be the beginning of Project Vino. (Along with a few bottles of wine).


On each successive trip to California wineries I've learned more and more about wine. When I was at Cabrillo last year my friends and I took a trip to Ridge Winery, known for it's award winning Zinfandels. It's located in the Santa Cruz mountains, high atop a ridge with a spectacular view of the valley below (thus the winery's name).

As we walked through the vineyard I was struck with how poor the soil was and commented on the fact to my friend, who is a true oenophile.

"Exactly. The worst soil produces the best wines. Vines need to struggle to live which causes them to put all of their energies into concentrating life into the grapes."

I've thought about that from time to time and this year as I drove through Napa Valley it seemed that common refrain was echoed time and again. At one winery, the person guiding me through my tasting talked about the 2005 vintage and how it was a dry and difficult summer for the vines, how they struggled to survive that year--she said this with a glint in her eyes as she poured me what she described as a fantastic vintage.

As part of my education, I recently finished watching a documentary on the global wine industry called Mondovino. Burgundy, one of the premier appellations in the world, sits atop soil that wouldn't be suitable for many crops other than grapes. It was land that was given to Cistercian monks, who discovered through centuries that the Pinot Noir grapes that they found growing wild were well suited to the poor soil of Burgundy.

One modern French wine maker described it this way in the film: A long time ago, wine was produced by the monasteries for the monks themselves, for their guests, or as gifts. Their idea was to extract the best the land could offer for the greater glory of God. As well as for their monastery. And surely for their own ego and ambition too. The Dukes of Burgundy gave the monks the poorest land. And, if at that time, the Duke of Burgundy hadn’t given these lands to the monks, who, little by little, by close observation, over generations—it took centuries to understand things—then there would be nothing today.

Michel Lafarge, another Burgundian wine maker says this about the soil of Burgundy and its "First Growth," or "Grand Cru" vineyards:

There’s more iron, less fertility in the soil, up in the First Growths. The soil up there is poorer. A wine wants to grow in poor soil. If the soil’s too pretty, rich and powerful, the grape becomes too fat and rich too and won’t produce a wine of distinction. The grape is nourished by the soil, the roots, so if you have a superficial root, the wine is not as complex as if the roots go down deep.

The land and the climate is what is meant by the French term terroir. I have been thinking about terroir ever since my trip to the Ridge Vineyard and I have come to realize that the best soil for humans is soil that is poor and gravelly, short on nutrients, low on water, hot in summer and cold in winter. Grape vines have remarkably deep roots that seek out nutrients far below the surface of the earth--sometimes as deep as five feet. A good vintner prunes back the vines severely each year, metes out water in minuscule amounts causing the vines to work to live.

God knew what he was doing when he told the parable of the vine and branches, and it is no coincidence that Christ's first miracle was making wine at Cana. As I tasted wines in wineries across Napa Valley, reading and hearing about "Rutherford Dust" or "Oakville tannins" I began thinking about terroir, about the the fact that the best wines in the world grow in infertile land, land that would cause most other crops to fail. I thought about the passage in Psalm 63 where David cries out to God in "a dry and weary land where there is no water." I thought about Thomas Merton speaking of suffering as the necessary agent that allows us to be poured out upon the world like "wine, as strong as fire."

Suffering is the necessary ingredient for us to bear fruit, to serve God and to be transformed into the men and women that he desires us to become. Another wine maker in the Mondovino film says that the wine makers in Burgundy work to "orient their work towards the fullest possible expression of their terroir." But the difference between God is that he is not limited by the parameters of soil as the Burgundian wine makers are. Life brings us evil. God's redemptive power is so great that he transforms the evil that befalls us into something that is gloriously redeemed. The most acrid and lifeless soil is transformed through his grace and love into the richest humus. I believe that when we suffer, whatever we suffer, God uses it in our lives to help us us to reach the culmination of who God wants us to become. God plants us in the terroir where we will bear the most fruit, where we truly can become "wines of distinction," if we submit to his pruning and are content to live in the infertile world where he plants us. He doesn't desire us to become "rich and fat" grapes, which produce flabby wines. He desires us to struggle to seek him out, going deep to drink from the wellspring of his Love, going deep as the roots of the best vines must do.

Sir Thomas More

Do you ever marvel about the fact that men are the same, regardless of the age in which they live? I stumbled on a book by Sir Thomas More (of A Man For All Seasons fame) and I am enjoying the fact that a man who was born nearly 500 years before I was can speak to me today about issues that I and my contemporaries continue to face.

Here is a passage I found particularly insightful this afternoon from the book A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation:

For if we determine with ourselves that we will take no comfort in
anything but the taking of our tribulation from us, then either we
prescribe to God that he shall do us no better turn, even though he
would, than we will ourselves appoint him; or else we declare that
we ourselves can tell better than he what is better for us. And
therefore, I say, let us in tribulation desire his help and
comfort, and let us remit the manner of that comfort unto his own
high pleasure. When we do this, let us nothing doubt but that, as
his high wisdom better seeth what is best for us than we can see it
ourselves, so shall his sovereign high goodness give us that thing
that shall indeed be best.

Amen, Sir Thomas, Amen!

Thoughts on Marriage

I'm becoming convinced that the rough patches in life are given to us to cause us to learn the lesson that all we have is God. I've been thinking a lot about the wilderness as I work on this book I'm writing. Lord knows we all have our times in the wilderness, and what has struck me as the most profound insight is Merton's statement that God intends the wilderness to always be an idyllic time with Him alone.

That has given me food for thought, and I'm hoping that I can view times of wilderness like that. But I think we need to ask God how the wilderness can draw us nearer to Him, in an idyllic way. It's not simply enough to say, "OK...I'm in the wilderness...I'm supposed to be alone with God, like Israel before the Promised Land, and I'm supposed to like it."

I went to the Allegan Antique Market yesterday and had a good day. It turned out that yesterday was mainly concerned with picking up things for my kitchen. The major purchase was an old Hamilton Beach malt maker, made with some serious cast iron. It works, and I broke it in by making malts yesterday at my fellow west-siders' house. I bought a few other things as well, including several kitchen implements that you just can't find anymore. Maybe I'll post a picture of the haul.

I went alone, which I've done many times, but there's always a part of me that wishes that I had someone to go with who enjoys it as much as I. Yesterday, I consciously tried to pray to help me view that it might be an "idyllic time with God in the wilderness." Sometimes I know that I fear intimacy with God. I think of Lewis who describes Aslan as dangerous. God isn't safe, at least in our usual understanding of the word, of being "comfortable." But I do believe that I'm single right now for a reason, and that I'm going through the wilderness and in my profound desire for a wife, God is calling me to turn to Him for all of my desires for intimacy.

I've been reading a lot of Merton lately, and his writing is remarkably insightful. As I think about a future relationship with a wife, I'm beginning to wonder how intimate we should desire to be with our spouse. That seems a strange thing to say, but in Merton's writing, he speaks of the need to respect the need for solitude of the individual in every relationship, including in marriage. It would seem that he argues that a truly intimate love for a spouse allows for their need for their truest intimacy to be with Christ, their savior. It seems an honest take on marriage: we can only become so close to anyone, even though both parties have made vows to each other. Ultimately, the role of marriage is gifted to us all to help bring us closer to God and if pursuing an unhealthy intimacy with each other (ala A Severe Mercy) we're actually distorting the true purpose of marriage.

This is a new and revolutionary way for me to think about marriage, and for that I'm grateful. I think I've viewed marriage as my life preserver, but it can't be that. It must be entered into with love, with the desire and aim to help point the other to Christ. As I think about the wilderness, and the Promised Land, I realize I'm nearing 40 years, which will come in just two years' time. My hope is that I reach the Promised Land by then and have a wife.

Here is an excerpt from No Man Is An Island:

We tend to identify ourselves with those we love. We try to enter into their own souls and become what they are, thinking as they think, feeling as they feel, and experiencing what they experience.
But there is no true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude. I cannot be united in love with a person whose very personality my love tends to obscure, to absorb, and to destroy. Nor can I awaken true love in a person who is invited, by my love, to be drowned in the act of drowning me with love.

And later:

Charity is a love that fortifies the ones we love in the secrecy of their own being, their own integrity, their own contemplation of God, their own free charity for all who exist in Him.
Such love leads to God because it comes from Him. It leads to a union between souls that is as intimate as their own union with Him. The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to Him. We can come to understand others only by loving Him Who understand them from within the depths of their own being. Otherwise we know them only by the surmises that are formed within the mirror of our own soul.

And a final excerpt:

Charity makes me seek far more than the satisfaction of my own desires, even though they be aimed at another's good. It must also make me an instrument of God's Providence in their lives. I must become convinced and penetrated by the realization that without my love for them they may perhaps not achieve the things God has willed for them. My will must be the instrument of God's will in helping them create their destiny. My love must be to them the "sacrament" of the mysterious and infinitely selfless love God has for them. My love must be for them the minister not of my own spirit but of the Holy Spirit. The words I speak to them must be no other than the words of Christ Who deigns to reveal Himself to them in me.

Thoughts After a Wedding

I went to a wedding of a student of mine today. I don't say this very often, or lightly, but it was a beautiful ceremony. It's clear that this young man and woman desire to honor God in their lives and to follow Him. Everything in the ceremony pointed to Christ, genuinely and honestly.

The readings were beautiful, and one, from John 15, stirred quite a bit of contemplation within me.

1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.

2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

We took communion today, and this verse came to mind as I thought about the wine we drank as the blood of Christ. I began thinking about the power of story and how Christ used stories, parables and metaphors so often to convey fundamental truths about our life. I relish the fact that our Creator is a creator, a God of Story, a God of art and music, and believe that the depths of the stories He told can always be plumbed for hidden truths.

This passage about the vine and the branches, and the cup that we shared, brought to mind the passage I read in Thomas Merton a week or so ago, where he says that our suffering "is the Passion of Christ, stretching out its tendrils into my life in order to bear rich clusters of grapes, making my soul dizzy with the wine of Christ's love, and pouring that wine as strong as fire upon the whole world."

We are so familiar with the richness in the symbolism of the vine and the branches, of grapes needing to be crushed, to die and ferment into new life. We've all heard the sermons about the need for the Master Gardener to prune us so that we will bear more fruit. But what I've never thought about was something that flashed into mind this afternoon at this wedding, something that I had read about wine a few weeks ago that didn't resonate with me at all until today.

A friend of mine at work has been praising the wines from Spain, and specifically some wines that are coming from 100 year old vines that were abandoned long ago. I decided to research them some more and began reading about the wines that were being produced. The writer of the article I read reported that the new vintners recognized the wisdom of the vintners who had planted the vines near the turn of the last century, because they instinctively knew that the terribly poor soil and arid conditions were ideally suited towards making the best of wines.

Grapes need terrible soil to work their magic. When the soil is awful, the vines have to work harder--they create smaller grapes that are more concentrated with sugars, which when crushed, produce amazing and remarkable wines. I find this mind blowing.

It is no accident that Christ uses the metaphor of vines and branches, and speaks of wine so often, or that his first miracle dealt with transforming water into wine. Wine is about suffering--we are pruned in our suffering, we are crushed as he was crushed, poured out, as Merton says, as "wine as strong as fire upon the world." What dawned on me today was the fact that in order to be "wine as strong as fire," we've got to be planted in pretty awful soil.

Suffering, I'm coming to believe, is the soil God uses to make us into the sons and daughters that He desires us to become. It's clear that whatever ailments we might have, or what weaknesses may exhibit themselves in our lives, or whatever tragedies occur, as they inevitably do, all are being used by God to allow us to become wine as strong as fire, to then be poured out upon the world. And indeed, wherever God plants us, no matter what the quality of the soil might be, He recognizes that for us, for the particular wine He desires to produce within us, the soil we find ourselves in is exactly the right soil that we need to become the man or woman He willed for us to be from before the dawning of this world.

Musing on Sacrifice and Suffering

Here's an interesting philosophical and theological question: is there a kind of "suffering" when we obey God?

I think there can be sometimes, but only from a purely anthropological standpoint. There's no question that when we obey God, we are sacrificing our will in favor of His. It's not easy, right? "Sacrifice" suggests hardship. But it's a very different type of hardship than the more typical modes of suffering...but would you agree that a case can be made that in obeying God, there is a part of us that 'suffers?' Maybe sacrifice is more the right word.

Here's the paradox: when I give up eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzards anytime I want, there's certainly a sacrifice, and no one can tell me that I don't suffer! :-) But, there's no question that by choosing to eat more healthily, I'm better off. I'm thinner, I feel better about myself, etc. So given the choice, to sacrifice is without question better for me. So too with obeying God, right?

But even so, can you say that there is a part of us that suffers when we obey God? The reason I ask is that I've been mulling over an idea about a chapter in my book with the working title "The Suffering of Obedience." It feels wrong to have a chapter titled that, but I do want to address the reality in our lives that when we choose to obey God, we have to put certain things to death, and in so doing, we may even grieve things, even if they were not good for us to begin with. I think it's an honest take on the way we live, whereas a hyper spiritualistic take would be one in which we naturally "rejoice" that we've made the "right" choice.

I'd say the hardest thing about losing weight has been giving up those darn Reese's Blizzards, and there's never been any rejoicing over giving those up (which I haven't done entirely--I had one today, in fact.)

I remember someone I know who gave up smoking long ago, and she said that every time she smelled cigarette smoke, she wanted one. She was glad she had given up smoking, but it was forever bittersweet.

I think that's a certain kind of suffering, right?

I'm very curious what other people think.

Powerful Stuff from Merton on Suffering

Suffering, therefore, must make sense to us not as a vague universal necessity, but as something demanded by our own personal destiny.  When I see my trials not as the collision of my life with a blind machine called fate, but as the sacramental gift of Christ's love, given to me by God the Father along with my identity and my very name, then I can consecrate them and myself with them to God.  For then I realize that my suffering is not my own.  It is the Passion of Christ, stretching out its tendrils into my life in order to bear rich clusters of grapes, making my soul dizzy with the wine of Christ's love, and pouring that wine as strong as fire upon the whole world.

Amen, brother Thomas!

I think of the blind Carthusian monk I wrote about awhile ago, who thanked God for being born blind.  It was part of his destiny to suffer with blindness, and he realized that it was God's tender mercy that caused him to be blind, for he believed it was done for the betterment of his soul.  And the betterment of his soul can only be described in one way:  transforming him to be like Christ, who gave his life on behalf of others.  That is the business of heaven.

Here are further words on suffering from Merton's book, No Man Is An Island:

The Lord did not create suffering.  Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man.  But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.

I find that to be absolutely beautiful.

Viktor Frankl On Suffering

If you haven't read it before, I urge you to read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning. Written by a Nazi concentration survivor, it's a profound examination of how one can find meaning in the midst of suffering, even in the midst of such dehumanizing conditions as the author experienced. If anyone has suffered, it's a survivor of Auschwitz, and if he or she speaks about how to transform suffering into something that reflects our inner dignity and freedom, then I'll pay close attention. I've often thought that many of us have our own prisons where we suffer, whether it be a physical ailment, or something more psychological, like depression, or perhaps something moral, such as struggling daily with temptation. They are all prisons that Christ desires to free us from, but in the midst of the suffering, while we are yet behind their gates, he calls us to grow in our suffering, and indeed to embrace the suffering as a gift that transforms us. As Frankl says, "any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.' These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom-which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful."

Here are a few quotes that I think are quite powerful.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most difficult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

The following story never fails to move me, and I always wonder if I am able to echo in my own life the incredible statement this woman said in the midst of a concentration camp.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.' "

We have a Tree as well, that says to us in the midst of all of our trials, pains and suffering: I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.

Nouwen On Loneliness

I'm sitting in a coffee shop down in K'zoo, after having lunch with a delightful horn player. I realize quite clearly that there's no future there, but it was fun regardless. I'm too much of a dreamer, I think. I had hopes for this, and already had played out the summer in my mind. It makes me sad, but I suppose it just confirms that God wants me single right now.

Sitting alone in this coffee shop makes me think of some things I've been reading lately, namely an excerpt from Henri Nouwen's book, The Wounded Healer.

But the more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon--a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.

Therefore I would like to voice loudly and clearly what might seem unpopular and maybe even disturbing: The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift. Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence. The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him who can tolerate its sweet pain.

When we are impatient, when we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and incompleteness we feel, too soon, we easily relate to our human world with devastating expectations. We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge--that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfill our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations.

Many marriages are ruined because neither partner was able to fulfill the often hidden hope that the other would take his or her loneliness away. And many celibates live with naive dream that in the intimacy of marriage their loneliness will be taken away.