I’m a Soul, Man; I’m a Soul-Man -part 2

On Saturday, I volunteered at the Parkhill Carnegie Gallery.  This is the former Parkhill Carnegie Library Gallery which was saved from a slow decline and demise by a group of volunteers - the Friends of the Carnegie Library.  It was renovated and turned into a gallery for local artists and a performance space.

In any case, I volunteered to hold down the fort – so to speak – as it was open to the public.  I have lots of time on my hands and was reading The School of Charity, a wonderful little meditation on the Christian Creed, by Evelyn Underhill.  Underhill was an engaging writer whose works include theology, spirituality, mysticism, and novels.  In addition, she was well known as a retreat leader and Spiritual Director.  In any case, I picked up this little book to pass the time at the Gallery and am very glad I did.  Perhaps it chose me rather than me choosing it. 

As I delved into the book, what grabbed my attention was the references to ‘soul’.  I had written about the soul last week and wasn’t planning to follow up with that but I took this to be a message and decided that I could see if I could get a handle on what Underhill says about the soul in this book. The first thing is that, although Underhill does refer to the soul quite a few times, she does not define it – at least in this work.  Even though she sees people as creatures of God, Underhill, quite rightly, sees people as being in great need of help.  God delivers us from “the imbecilities of religious self-love and self-assurance; and sink(s) our little souls in the great life of the race”.  Here, soul seems to be used as an essence of who we are.  This is followed up with a similar use when Underhill states, “Prayer is the give and take between the little souls of men and that three-fold Reality (God).” 

Although the soul of people is limited and small, Underhill holds that it can enlarge.  She opens her chapter entitled The World To Come with a quote from another author, Elizabeth Leseur, ‘I will ask of God such an enlargement of soul that I may love him with ardour, serve him with joy, and transmit his radiance to the world.”  For this to happen, the soul must be nourished.  Underhill recommends doing this through meditation on the Christian experience, “This is why meditation on the Christian mysteries, chewing the cud of the Gospels, is so nourishing to the soul, and so inexhaustible as a basis for prayer.”

Underhill’s belief in the importance of prayer in the soul’s growth is reinforced a little later and she notes that it is gradual and unseen to us, “This should make us realize how deeply hidden, how gradual and unseen by us, the soul’s growth in the life of prayer is likely to be.”  We will be supported in this effort by the Spirit of Divine Love, “our real situation as Christian souls – little spirits supported by the infinite Spirit of Divine Love”. 

In all this, the soul is calling out to us for connection with the Divine, “In the same way, the deep mysteries of the Being of God and the call of the soul cannot be seen by us, until they have passed through the human medium, a human life.” 

In all this, Underhill is agreeing with the understanding of the soul as an immortal part of our being which is seeking the Divine and through prayer may grow in relationship with the Source of our being.  It may be unseen and hidden; nevertheless, it is the reality of our existence and part of who we are. 

May you be blessed with souls that are nourished and grow on your journey.

After the Scream

Last week, I listened to the CBC radio program Tapestry which was discussing an exposition of The Spiritual Impulse in art, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mystical-landscapes-1.3842067/the-spiritual-impulse-in-art-from-van-gogh-to-monet-1.3842081.  It gave wonderful examples what could be described as mystical art by artists such as Van Gogh and Edvard Munch.

One example that engaged me on a deep level was the painting by Munch that directly followed his most famous work – the Scream which has that iconic image of a man in agony; a portrait of existential dread.  Munch was, not surprisingly, challenged by mental instability and spent some time in an asylum.  When he was released, he produced a work that expressed absolute radiance and joy – the absolute opposite of the anguish and despair of the Scream.  From his depths came the explosion of another kind – one is absolutely opposite in feeling and effect.  Rather than agony what was brought into being was  “The Sun”.  From the depths of darkest despair depicted in The Scream we travel to the heights of brilliant bliss of The Sun.

 

     
                                                    Edvard Munch. The Scream 1893
 

                                                   Edvard Munch. The Sun. 1910-13.

These two pictures are a wonderful exposition of the mystical journey or The Mystic Way as it was called by Evelyn Underhill.  As noted in the Tapestry program:
The Mystic Way (was) described by Evelyn Underhill as a five-part journey in which light periods alternate with dark.  It begins with an awakening, followed by a period of purgation, which can be seen as dealing with the shadow side of the psyche.  Then you come to a period known as illumination, where you start to see things in a new and perhaps original way.  For some this can be followed by the dark night of the Soul where there seems to be the absence of the divine.  The final stage is unity in which you understand that you are one with the divine.  Underhill understood this to be analogous to the artistic creative process.

For me, The Sun is an illustration of the beginning and the end of that journey – the alpha and the omega.  The image captures the essence of the journey which is the return to the beginning as described by T.S. Eliot, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

The image in the Sun is the explosion at the moment after creation - the Big Bang, when the universe was brought into beginning by the Word and began that Mystic Way.  It is also a final return to what Teilhard De Chardin called the Omega Point.  When all is joined in the ultimate unity. 

My you be blessed on your Mystic Way.

Ultimate Reality

Last week I wrote about the Snowmass Conference which was multifaith endeavor to engage in common points of agreement.  This was an example of how evangelism might move ahead in our multicultural and multifaith society:

In 1984 Father Thomas Keating invited a small group of contemplatives from eight different religious traditions—Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic, Native American, Russian Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic—to gather at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, to engage in what he called “a big experiment.”

The Snowmass Conference Eight Points of Agreement were the points of common understanding among the traditions.  In those eight points I was interested to note that the word they used for God (in the Christian context) was “Ultimate Reality”.  On consideration, I believe that this is a very good term for God.  It engaged me in part because I had just finished reading the marvellous introduction to mysticism by the wonderful mystic and spiritual director Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism.  This is a wonderful primer on mysticism and contemplation that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to explore that part of life. (A minor criticism of the form and not the content, the edition I have does not include page numbers so it is not possible to give page numbers for quotes from the book.)

Underhill poses the ultimate question which we need to consider, “What is reality”.  Underhill goes further and defines mysticism:

Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.  The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or lessor degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment.

There are many things which prevent us from that union with Ultimate Reality (in the terms of the Snowmass Conference Eight Points of Agreement).  We have personal blind sports which have been called complexes by psychologists.  We have filters that block out much of what is around us as anyone who has noticed, for the first time, something he or she has passed by many times previously.  We have the facility to project onto others characteristics that we don’t want to recognize in ourselves-the shadow in Jungian terms. 

If we move beyond mere psychology there is the reality of other sciences such as quantum physics and astronomy – not to mention astrology -  which reveal a reality beyond anything our natural senses can perceive.  Underhill expresses this, speaking of the artist and the contemplative as people who are able to see beyond the surface of things:

Both have exchanged the false imagination which draws sensations and intuitions of the self into its narrow circle, and there distorts and transforms them, for the true imagination which pours itself out, eager, adventurous, and self-giving, towards the greater universe.

If we are to see the world that the Ultimate Reality (God) has created we must move beyond seeing the surface of things and have eyes to see and ears to hear the wonder of that creation which is beyond the mere sensation that we have learned to perceive the world in ways which we have been required to learn in order to survive on a daily basis.  We are, in so many ways, like that group of blind men (I think in this case it is okay not to put this in gender neutral terms) who are describing an elephant from their different perspectives which Richard Rohr recently used to address our perception of reality:

How do we know what is real? I’m sure you’ve heard the story of a group of people who are blind describing an elephant, each from a different vantage. One person, feeling the elephant’s tail, described a rope. Another, arms encircling a leg, said it was like a pillar or tree. And so on. Every viewpoint is a view from a point. The more ways of knowing we use, the closer we come to understanding, and yet the full picture will always elude us. In this way, mystery is endlessly knowable. 

In so many ways we are people who are blind or deaf or without the sense of touch trying to grasp a piece of the Ultimate Reality – without the realization it is only a piece.  Many accept their experience of the part of the elephant as the whole truth and nothing but the truth of the world.  May your Ultimate Reality give you ears to hear and eyes to see more of that Reality.

Blessings on your journey.

A New Plan and A New Commandment

Last week I wrote about how God’s plan seemed to be much more specific and detailed in the Old Testament than the New Testament.  The instructions from God given to Moses on how to build the tabernacle were detailed down to the last jot and title.  Indeed, all the instructions in and around the law and how God was to be worshiped were extremely detailed.  However, the plan that we were given in the New Testament was, in comparison, a big picture approach which was built around the Great Commandment i.e. it all comes down to love.  That is all well and good, but how in God’s name are we supposed to manage that?  I find that to be a challenge; there are many people including me who find it a challenge to love as we are commanded despite our best efforts.

I received a comment on what I had written and I am always grateful for feedback.  I will quote the comment as I found it to be thoughtful and thought provoking, “I disagree that God is not a detail-oriented today. I think God is. God sent many prophets, gave us the law and the commandments, and then sent Jesus Christ, who established a church, filled with many saints and holy people. How much more detail do we want?”

I must agree, however, it seems that God does is working more indirectly in the New Testament and today, if I understand what the commenter is saying. Indeed, God does seem to be giving us a plan in different ways today than in the Old Testament.  That, of course, is what the new covenant in Jesus Christ is proclaiming and fulfilling.  Rather than a law which is incredibly detailed as in the Mosaic code, we have a law which can be summarized in the Great Commandment to love.  That does give us freedom.  We don’t have to worry about putting a step which is not in exact correct place.  However, with the freedom comes responsibility.  It is a responsibility which leaves a great deal up to us try and figure out what it means to love our neighbour and how we go about doing that.  Needless to say, this is not easy.  We need to discern on an ongoing basis if what we are doing is fulfilling that commandment and if not, how can we repent i.e. to turn around and get back on the correct path. 

I agree with the comment that God has also given us holy people to guide us in finding the path God intends for us.  Indeed, I recently attended a retreat which offered such help.  The retreat was offered by the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto.  It was entitled Praying With Evelyn Underhill.  Evelyn Underhill was one of those holy people who God sent us to give a guidance.  She was an Anglican mystic and spiritual guide who lived and practiced in England in the first part of the 20^th Century.

The retreat was different than many I had attended as it focussed on the practice of prayer rather than on transmitting information.  We were invited to do just what the retreat title said, to pray rather than to absorb a lot of information about Underhill and her life and teaching.  There was some of that but primarily we were to practice rather than being in what is more comfortable for me, a place where I can be in my head.  The approach which we were invited to participate in has three ways of praying which were taught by Underhill; Adoration, Communion, and Self-offering.  After a short introduction to each way we were given time to engage in that way.  Here is a brief summary of the three ways in Underhill’s words.

Adoration: “takes us out of ourselves, out of limited capacities and our own needs and emotions, sweeping us past all this to God as objective fact, as mysterious gift to us―sweeping us to a place where things of God enter the MIND.”

Communion: “The mystic is in love with God not in any idle or sentimental manner, but in the vital sense which presses at all costs through all dangers towards union with the beloved.”

Self-offering: “More is required of those who wake up to the reality than the passive adoration of God or intimate communion with God.  Those responses, great as they are, do not cover the purposes of our creation…The Church is in the world to save the world.  It is a tool of God for that purpose , not a comfortable religious club set in fine historical premises.”

On refection, the commandment of Jesus is where the rubber hits the road.  We have to come to that third step of self-offering which is the most difficult for me and probably for most people.  Most of us are not going to be able to jump to the third way without travelling the path through the first two.  However, the blessing that is offered by Evelyn Underhill and other holy and wise people is to give us a road map to follow on that journey.

Blessings on you journey.