First Principle and Foundation (2)

Last week I wrote about the principle of Ignatian Spirituality which is to develop the first principle and foundation of your spiritual life.  The first principle and foundation of Ignatian Spirituality is:

God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by doing this, to save their souls. God created all other things on the face of the earth to help fulfill this purpose. From this it follows that we are to use the things of this world only to the extent that they help us to this end, and we ought to rid ourselves of the things of this world to the extent that they get in the way of this end.

The question which came to mind when considering this is, how do we know if the first principle and foundation is true to who we are created to be?  What if someone has determined that their first principle and foundation is to gain as much money, or material goods, or power that they can, and heaven help anyone who stands in their way.  There does not seem to be anything that will determine, in and of itself, that a first principle and foundation is what will be good for the world or for the individual who professes this.  Christians can, of course, base their first principle and foundation on the Great Commandment of Jesus i.e., to love others as he loves us and to love our neighbours as ourselves.  This seems to be, what you could say, is what lies beneath the first principle and foundation of Ignatian Spirituality.

I was reminded recently, when considering this question, of a traditional aboriginal teaching to help us further unpack this question:

A wise elder is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”

This states the quandary quite clearly.  It is possible to have a first principle and foundation that feeds either of the wolves which are inside each of us.  We have the free will which God has given us to decide which wolf we feed. 

Another way of looking at this issue, which is not directly a religious one, is to examine it from the perspective of unity and division.  Does a principle and foundation work for unity or does it promote division in our lives and in the community?  Northrop Frye, the great literary critic and author of the Great Code, addressed this in his preface to The Bush Garden, subtitled, Essays on the Canadian Imagination:

Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariat and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity. 

That was written circa 1970 and is ever so true today where the mean and contemptible activity which strives for disunity seems to fill the news. 

Which wolf will you feed on your journey?  May you be blessed to feed the one which brings love and unity.

My Time is Not God’s Time

I am at a point in life when I take six pills each day – some are by prescription and some are vitamin supplements.  Some time ago I decided to swallow – not one of the pills in this case – but my pride and admit that it would be easier to have one of those seven day containers for my pills as I didn’t always remember if I had taken my pills or not – perhaps there is a pill for that but it is not on my list of pills.  In any case I recharge the daily pill container on Friday’s – nothing significant about the day but it is just when I do it.  It used to be Thursdays but I forgot to take them one day a while ago so it became Friday proving even a good system is not foolproof. 

Well, I am telling you this because I am always amazed when Friday rolls around and it is time to recharge the pill container.  How could a week have gone by so quickly?   A long, long, time ago in a land fairly far away when I was a child, a week seemed interminable.  I remember saying to myself at one point, I hope the weekend would last forever so I wouldn’t have to go back to school–being the kind of child who seemed to be out of sync with school and never in the right place in my learning experience – but that is a story for another day.  In any case the week at school did seem to last forever. 

Time does seem to be very flexible and stretches out or shrink in my experience.  I was at the Long-term care yesterday to do an Anglican worship service for the residents.  Visitors have to have a COVID test which requires waiting for fifteen minutes to get the results.  Another visitor remarked that this period was always the longest fifteen minutes of her life.  I was going to mention that it didn’t seem as long as the two minutes of silence on Remembrance day which I used to have to count out when I presided at Remembrance Day Services.  This, of course, has nothing to do with it not being significant – just the opposite.  Every second of that silence holds deep significance. But I didn’t get the chance as the staff person gave us the all clear and I headed off to the gathering congregation.  Time does seem to be flying by these days but it couldn’t be that I am getting old - can it?

Time flows on and there seems to be no stopping it.  As the Joni Mitchell song says, “it won't be long now, till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”  

When we move into timelessness and eternity we are moving from our time to God’s time.  Some time ago, I listened to recordings of Northrop Frye’s lectures on the Bible and Literature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Swyk_ZRy8.  He notes that the creation story in Genesis did not happen in linear time, it happens in God's time.  In effect, it is a timeless event which is happening all the time. 

As Frye notes, the Bible speaks of time in two different ways; time is either Kairos or Chronos.  Simply put, Chronos is measurable time which has a beginning and an end.  Kairos, on the other hand, means an opportune time, a moment or a season such as harvest time.  St. Paul uses Kairos in the passage from Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  

If you have ever been caught in a moment when time seemed to stop or disappear, you have moved from Chronos to Kairos.  We need to be aware of when we want things to happen on our schedule, in Chronos and become aware that they sometimes happen in Kairos.  It is a reminder that as much as we like to believe it, we don’t often set the agenda.  That can be frustrating but it can also be liberating.

May you be blessed on your journey to experience it In Kairos and well as Chronos.           

Should We Expect Answers, and if so, What Kind?

It is human nature to ask questions and expect or at least want those questions to be answered.  This seems to raise the question, should all questions be answered. You can probably think of many questions which you would like a definitive answer to.   Was there actually a virgin birth?  Did God create the world (however, you define it) in six days?  Or perhaps, why do bad things happen to good people? Coming from a different perspective, why do people believe in conspiracy theories which are patently absurd? 

In the past week I read two perspectives on this that I have found helpful which I want to share with you.  These are rather lengthy – particularly the second one – however, I believe they are worth the read. 

The first is from Richard Rohr and is addressed in one of the Core Principles of the Center for Contemplation and Action (CAC) which was founded by Fr. Richard:

The Sixth Core Principle of the CAC: Life is about discovering the right questions more than having the right answers. Father Richard expands on this counterintuitive wisdom:

This principle keeps us on the path of ongoing discernment, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10). The key concept here is the contrast between the words “discovering” and “having.” A discerning and inquiring spirit will make us discoverers in touch with our hidden unconscious and the deeper truth. A glib “I have the answers” spirit makes us into protectors of clichés. Answers are wonderful when they are true and keep us on the human and spiritual path. But answers are not wonderful when they become something we hold as an ego possession, allowing us to be arrogant, falsely self-assured, and closed down individuals.

The second perspective in from Northrop Frye, the great interpreter of the Bible from a religious/literary perspective:

One of the principles involved has to do with the relation of question and answer. When you answer a question, you accept the assumptions in the question, so that the answer, if it is a satisfactory answer, consolidates the mental level on which the question is asked. If it is the answer, it also annihilates the question. If you ask me where the nearest telephone is, I can accept the assumptions in the question, answer it, if I know where the nearest telephone is, and consequently annihilate or abolish that particular problem which the question symbolizes. But if you ask me, 'Where is God?', I can say only that conceptions of 'where' do not apply to God, and that the only way of answering such a question is to refuse to answer it. I cannot answer the question because I cannot accept the assumptions in the question. It's one of those 'have you quit beating your wife' questions, in which the matter of accepting the assumption in the question is primary.

Now it is for that reason that no serious religion ever attempts to answer questions. Because seriousness, whether it is in religion or in art or in science, is a matter of proceeding steadily to better and more adequate questions. In religion, the questions that you raise are not answered except in the most perfunctory ways because, if you think about it for a moment, you will see that to answer such a question as, 'Why do innocent people suffer?' or, 'Why is there evil in a world created by a good God?' really cheats you out of the right to ask the question, and certainly blocks your further advance. It prevents you from reformulating a question with rather better assumptions in it, and so proceeding in the way the human mind does proceed in dealing with very large and serious issues, by trying to make the assumptions in the questions it asks more and more adequate.

In conclusion, you might say it is better to give than to receive i.e. ask and not expect a definitive answer.  Grace is in the ability to formulate more searching questions into the mystery which is God.

May you be blessed to have the right questions on your journey.

I acknowledge that we are on the original homelands of the many Indigenous Nations who have lived since time immemorial in Canada or as many First and other Indigenous Nations note; Turtle Island.  All of the lands in Canada are the subject of up to one hundred Treaties signed by the Crown in the right of Canada
with these Nations. I will only mention a few of the Nations: the  Cree, Ojibway, Blackfoot, Blood, Dakota, Mig M'ag, Huron, Inuit and these lands are also home to the Metis people. 

Proof and Faith

One of my summer activities has been to listen to a wonderful series of lectures by Canadian icon Northrop Frye, literary critic who delved so deeply in the bible with his seminal work The Great Code.  The lectures entitled The Bible and Literature at the University of Toronto are available on-line at https://heritage.utoronto.ca/content/video/bible-and-english-literature-northrop-frye-full-lecture-1.

One of the statements by Frye in lecture 9, which caught my attention and made me sit up and take special note, was his assertion that “the more trustworthy the evidence, the more misleading it is.”  Frye was asserting this in relation to proof and the desire that people – at least some people - have, to find hard evidence of the events and accounts which are contained in the bible.  One example is the craze some years ago following supposed discover of the remains of Noah’s Arc on Mt. Ararat.  Then there was the case of the ossuary (vessel) that was purported to hold the bones of James, the brother of Jesus.  Especially notable is the Shroud of Turin which is held to be the burial cloth which was used to wrap Jesus’ body after the crucifix.   People seem to want and even need physical proof to affirm their beliefs that are the foundation of their faith.

I must confess that I have had this desire at times for proof and I was particularly taken with the Shroud of Turin years ago when it was first in the popular press.  It is, perhaps, human nature to desire proof of what is presented to us as reality, especially these days when there is so much in the news and on social media that needs to be questioned.  So, when Frye made the statement that the more trustworthy the evidence the more misleading it was, it didn’t make logical sense to me.

However. I was very pleased and relieved that he clarified this statement later in the lecture.  Here is the clarification from the transcript:

The point that I want to return to when we come to the Book of Job is that no serious religion ever tries to answer anybody's questions, because in any serious or existential matter the progress in understanding is a progress through a sequence of formulating better questions. An authoritative answer blocks off progress; it blocks off all advance. The answer consolidates the assumptions in the question, and brings the process to a dead stop. That is what I mean when I say that the more trustworthy the evidence, the more misleading it is. Trustworthy evidence means a kind of authority that stops you from asking any more questions.

This is the sign of a good teacher who does not want to close off the human desire to explore possibilities and enable the student to discover what is revealed which will lead to further discoveries.  This was the message in the account of the disciple Thomas who demanded proof that Jesus had been raised from the dead.   Jesus answered him and us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  This is essential when it comes to ultimate truths life and the world.  If we look at the belief in God from what is called the God of the gaps in which our faith is based on what science can’t explain – at least at this point.  As the result of scientific discoveries, we have to adjust our belief in God and what God is doing in the world based on what science can now explain.  However, the discoveries of science do not close off our exploration of how God has created and continues to create life and how God is calling us to be the people God created us to be.  Those questions just lead to more questions and I do not believe that science will ever provide the definitive answer or answers in the realm in which God is working.  It is love through which God created and continues to create.  Love will never be weighed or measured or put under the most powerful electron microscope.

May you be blessed to continue to formulate questions le seek better answers that will lead to yet more questions on your journey.  

  

The Trials of Job

I have recently been attending a Zoom discussion group at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in London, Ontario which is using lectures by Northrop Frye on the Bible as Literature.  The lectures can be found here https://heritage.utoronto.ca/content/video/bible-and-english-literature-northrop-frye-full-lecture-1, and I highly recommend them.  Northrop Frye was a great literary critic who explored the impact of the Christian bible on Western Art and literature in his works, The Great Code and Words of Power.  The group is using video of his lectures at the University of Toronto in the early 1980’s in the discussion.

The current lectures are on the Book of Job in the Christian Old Testament.  The Book of Job describes the account of a man, Job, who is the subject of a bet between God and Satan to see if Job, a man who, “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil,” can be turned from loving God.   Satan bets that if everything that Job possesses is taken away from him, he will curse God.  Satan is, in effect, betting that Job is just a fair-weather friend to God.  With the agreement of God, Satan is allowed to take everything away from Job, his vast possession and his children.  The only caveat is that Satan must not harm Job physically, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!”  Even this condition is renegotiated and God gives Satan permission to attack Job’s health and he is, “inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”

After a debate with friends who seem to embody the expression, ‘with friends like these, who needs enemies’, Job demands and receives an opportunity to appear before God and demand the justification for what has happened to him.  God does not answer Job directly but justifies himself by declaring that Job, in effect, has no right to question him as Job was not present when God created the world:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
   Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

God seems to come off looking like a bully and a tyrant – at least at first glance – and this has been the debate among theologians and biblical scholars probably since it became part of the canon of scripture. However, engaging with the scripture as part of the study group I have seen another possibility.  Frye gave me an appreciation of the meaning of property.  He noted that it means what is proper to a person.  Drawing on this, I believe that the Book of Job can be understood as an exploration of what it means to be a human being in its essence.  What is being demonstrated by the author of the Book, is what it means to be a human being.  Is the essence of a person the things which the world identifies with that person – his or her job, his or her possessions, his or her achievements?  Or does the fact that humans are created in the image of God the essence of how the person is?  Humans will identify with the image they present to the world.  Carl Jung calls this their persona.  If that is taken away, they are in danger of losing the identity, their self-image.  Job had all that made him valued to his world.  Even his wife told him to “curse God, an die.”  However, he showed himself to be true to whom he was in his essence.  This was the trial of Job in which he was found to be not guilty.

I do not know if I would pass the trials of Job but I might just take the advice of Job’s wife.  I hope that I will never have to face trials anything like Job’s.  I know that my journey has been an attempt to find out who I am in my essence. 

I hope that you are blessed on your journey to find the essence of who you are.  

It’s Ironic Isn’t It?

 I have been reading The Great Code by Northrop Frye, the eminent literary Critic.   The subtitle of the book is, The Bible and Literature.  The Great Code does just what the title promises and gives us a Code or key to a deeper understanding of the Bible and unfolds myth and metaphor as a way to unlock meaning woven into the texts that lie in its pages. 

There are many parts of the book which had a profound impact on me.  However, one passage that resonated particularly with me in the book is found on page 73, “The Bible’s vision of misery is ironic rather than tragic.”   This book is not light reading but is it most worthwhile delving into the depths of Frye’s approach to the Bible.  This phrase was up there with the most puzzling.  I wany to try and unpack this statement and explore what is behind this statement.

The first thing I became aware of in considering this is that I was not completely sure what irony actually is.  One thing I could be sure of is that it wasn’t “rain on your wedding day” as claimed by Alanis Morrisette in her breakthrough hit, Ironic.  Here’s a link if you want to be reminded about the song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tqW-Gno2k.

Just because it rains on your wedding day doesn’t make the occasion or the experience ironic.  One clear definition of irony is, “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.”  There is often a humorous result.  Some examples of irony in literature which I fund on-line include:

·         In the[GL1]  final act of Romeo and Juliette, Shakespeare employs dramatic irony to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.  Friar Laurence sends a messenger to tell Romeo about Juliet’s plan to drug herself into deathlike coma. We watch in horror as the messenger fails to deliver this vital piece of information. And though we know that Juliet is not really dead, we see Romeo poison himself because he cannot live without her.

·         Johnathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a classic example of verbal irony. He begins seemingly in earnest, discussing the sad state of destitute children.   whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. Seems reasonable enough. But things take a very ironic turn.  I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.  Is Swift sincerely proposing that we eat children? No, but he has indeed inverted our expectations and written a wonderfully ironic essay which critiqued the situation in Ireland.

There is no humor in the first example but there is very dark humor in the second so we can see that humor Is not an essential component of irony.  However, to turn back to Frye’s statement, can the misery in the Bible be seen as ironic?  In his preliminary discussion of this, Frye notes that literature (remember Frye is treating the Bible as literature), has two great organizing patterns, comedy and tragedy.  Comedy does not relate to humor but, rather, is the restoration of the natural order i.e., a happy ending.  Tragedy does the opposite; toward a fulfillment of the saying, “no man is happy until he is dead” to use Frye’s example.  Frye notes:

To see misery as tragic, as a destroyed and perverted form of greatness and splendor, is a primary achievement of Geek literature.  The Bible’s vision of misery is ironic rather than tragic, but the same dialectical separation of the two worlds is quite strongly marked. 

Frye goes on to explain the difference between God’s time and our time as God declares in Isaiah, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

I believe that Frye is stating that misery (tragedy) in the Bible is ironic because in God’s time all will be restored.  There may be events that are tragic from our perspective but in God’s time, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)   

May you be blessed with a portion of irony and may all be well on your journey.

---

 [GL1]

What Time is it Anyway?

Yesterday, I commented to Lorna that it seemed we have been at the cottage for a lot longer than the three weeks we have been here.  She agreed with me which is nice because that doesn’t always happen.  In some ways, our time here has been timeless.  It always does to some extent but it seems more so this year perhaps because most of this time has been in quarantine and focussed around getting tested for COVID and getting our second shot which happened last week.  There has been a sense that one day flows into the next without too much to differentiate one day from the other.  In any case, I want to be clear that it has been a very pleasant time as it always is here at our Island home.

That experience of timeless time does raise a question for me about time and our focus on time in our culture today.  Our culture is very much ruled by time and time is to a greater or lesser extent our master.  We are used to measuring our days by what we have scheduled which, of course, is governed by time to a great extent.  This is less so when we are retired – our schedules are more flexible but there are still the surprizing number of activities which we participate in – numerous Zoom events which are scheduled to begin at a particular time – meeting and lectures and workshops and classes.  Zoom seems to have become pervasive in our lives along with the occasional Skype meeting. 

Another aspect of time is its flexible nature.  I’m sure that you are aware of how time can seem to slow down or speed up.  Sometimes a few minutes seem an eternity and sometimes an hour or more can seem to go by in the flash of an eye.  I have said before and will say it again that the longest two minutes in my life has been the two minutes of silence in a Remembrance Day Service.  This, of course, has nothing to do with it not being significant – just the opposite.  Every second of that silence holds deep significance. 

Exploring the issue of timelessness further, when we move from time to timelessness, we are entering the area of God’s time versus our time.  In timelessness we can speak of eternity.  Eternity does not mean a long time.  Eternity is beyond time – it is a state in which time does not exist.  This is something which is difficult for most of us to grasp.  We are like fish swimming in the water of linear time.  Our lives are measured by time which passes – things begin and end.  We wake up in the morning and check what time it is if we are fortunate enough not to be woken up by an alarm clock.  We begin an activity at a particular time and end it after the passage of time.  Time flows on and there seems to be no stopping it.  As the Joni Mitchell song says, “it won't be long now, till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”  

When we move into timelessness and eternity we are moving from our time to God’s time.  I have been listening to recordings of Northrop Frye’s lectures on the Bible and Literature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Swyk_ZRy8.  He notes that the creation story in Genesis did not happen in linear time, it happens in God's time.  In effect it is a timeless event which is happening all the time. 

As Frye notes, the Bible speaks of time in two different ways; time is either Kairos or Chronos.  Simply put, Chronos is measurable time which has a beginning and an end.  Kairos, on the other hand, means an opportune time, a moment or a season such as harvest time.  Paul uses Kairos in the passage from Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  

If you have ever been caught in a moment when time seemed to stop or disappear, you have moved from Chronos to Kairos.  We need to be aware of when we want things to happen on our schedule, in Chronos and become aware that they sometimes happen in Kairos.  It is a reminder that as much as we like to believe it, we don’t often set the agenda.  That can be frustrating but it can also be liberating.

May you be blessed on your journey to experience it In Kairos and well as Chronos.