On this blog I often 'fulminate' against regarding God as an abstraction - something I regard as an error by which Christians 'collapse into' pure monotheism; characterised by an emphasis on worship and submission without need for comprehension or (more than minimal) agency.
The historic and continuing success of Islam at displacing Christianity is (I believe) ultimately because it is based-upon the clear authority of an absolute and abstract conceptual God; and so much more coherently than mainstream, traditional Christianity: this purity of monotheistic power being what many (past and current) Christians apparently most want from their deity (rather than what Jesus showed and told and tells us).
At another extreme is the causal, chatty, man-to-man way of relating to God; which I associate with the short stories about the Italian priest Don Camillo, written by Giovannino Guareschi. If you don't know these tales, I'd certainly recommend them as very enjoyable pieces.
One feature is that the parish priest Don Camillo pops-into his church, addresses Jesus on the cross, and has two-way conversations with God (or Jesus on the cross) characterised by a very down-to-earth and humorous tone. In context, these are great fun; but theologically there is a lot wrong with having a chat with God as if he were a cosmic uncle or bishop.
Don Camillo is Roman Catholic, but this a style that may also be associated with 'low church' protestants; who may report an active spiritual life of this 'conversational' type; reporting their prayers in such a way.
What is wrong with such a mode of interaction with God is that it is mundane, worldly, shallow, materialistic. Modern Man craves and needs so much more.
A chatty, friendly relation with God is no different in quality from our relations with other people in this materialistic world. Modern Man is alienated - that is, he finds life shallow, meaningless, purposeless - and adding God as just another 'pal' (albeit a cosmic and powerful pal) to one's collection of friends does not address this deep sense of isolation.
(Alienation is the experience of subjectivity being cut-off from objectivity; the problem of solipsism - regarding the external world as unreal, combined with the problem of regarding our own self as unreal, labile, unreliable...)
I am saying that Don Camillo is absolutely correct that God is indeed a Being, a Person; and that we ought-to relate to him as a person; but relating to God as we relate to other modern people in a mainstream kind of way is grossly inadequate. Don Camillo relates wrongly to God, because he relates wrongly to everybody; if he was real his life would be alienated, his contact at secondhand.
In sum, we do not want merely to communicate with God (or other people) - no matter how comfortably or comfortingly; we want more. We need more - because that is not enough, nothing-like enough...
The 'everyday' does not answer. We want to experience direct contact, to have a direct and shared knowledge of God, and of other persons - bypassing the distance and uncertainty of language, bypassing the problems of intention and understanding - a direct, shared, knowing.
This is not highfalutin, not abstract, not an intellectual process at all; it is as down to earth as Don Camillo - but it is conscious and freely chosen. Many of us have experienced it with love - that wordless and direct and conscious knowing that answer all our craving, and in-which we are (for a while) perfectly satisfied.
Don Camillo is depicted as if perfectly satisfied; but he is like a child or someone from an earlier simpler and much-less-conscious era. In reality he would not be - he is an educated man, trained in abstraction. He cannot be unconscious, spontaneous, genuinely simple.
We are not Shire hobbits, and cannot go-back to that spontaneous rustic instinctive life. If taken as a life plan, that would be a false fantasy, a pretence, an ineffective fake; no matter how enjoyable the fantasy may be to read-about.
But we cannot stay where we are now, stuck in our alienation; because here we despair, here we are existentially isolated and paralysed by doubt; and our societies are are consequently demotivated unto death.
The proper course is to go forward beyond communication to communion, beyond conversation to intuition. To do this requires Love, and to realise that Love is not an emotion but a chosen commitment to shared purpose.
8 comments:
It’s both/and I think. We care Gods children as Christians, He is also King. On state occasions the princes and princesses say “Your Majesty”. Behind the doors of the palace in private, it becomes ‘dad”.
One of the greatest catholic moralists, Alphonsus Ligouri explicitly says that God loves a good chat. God I think wants honesty, and since we’re explicitly told to pray about almost everything, some topics require a more conversational style. Of course anything can be corrupted or done wrongly, but I think of the intimacy of my own conversations with my own father. There’s still a level of familiarity I don’t go to, such as that with my friends, but it is a very respectful familiarity. Also, in public, from my youth up I am very careful to show that I respect him and not to embarrass him with any disrespect or needless conflict. I think God chose the Father symbolism for this very reason, among other reasons.
@Michael - Just to clarify - I did not say familiarity was wrong; but inadequate.
Just some thoughts.
Unless you become like little children...not literally, of course.
Consider the meaning of Abba. Don't family members chat?
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Every mass is a "communion service".
Sometimes mass or prayer move to tears, sometimes they are experienced as rote.
Not every moment is a peak experience.
We should perhaps put aside our expectations. Even saints have dry spells. Changes can be small and incremental.
God is pleased when we seek Him, even if we approach imperfectly. One doesn't have to be a mystic. Maybe God allows an A for effort. Reaching out is love and good will. It is intentional. And yes, the road to hell... that is why we have role models. We will never be perfectly satisfied in this life, for now we see as through a glass darkly. Those we love we know but imperfectly. We are certainly inadequate, by nature.
But agreed, sometimes there is "knowing."
From the role models-
"'My daughter...why do you not tell me about everything that concerns you, even the smallest details? Tell Me about everything, and know that this will give Me great joy.' I answered, 'But You know about everything, Lord.' And Jesus replied to me, 'Yes I do know; but you should not excuse yourself with the fact that I know, but with childlike simplicity talk to Me about everything, for my ears and heart are inclined towards you, and your words are dear to Me.'(2; 921)
--St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul
"We must speak to God as a friend speaks to his friend, servant to his master; now asking some favor, now acknowledging our faults, and communicating to Him all that concerns us, our thoughts, our fears, our projects, our desires, and in all things seeking His counsel."
--St. Ignatius of Loyola
OTOH-
"Anyone who has the habit of speaking before God's majesty as if he were speaking to a slave, careless about how he is speaking, and saying whatever comes into his head and whatever he's learned from saying prayers at other times, in my opinion is not praying. Please, God, may no Christian pray in this way."
--St. Teresa of Avila
A mystical experience, or direct knowing, cannot be willed. We can and do will prayer, speaking to God. People primarily use language to communicate. We speak. That's a whole other topic.
Just some thoughts.
Unless you become like little children...not literally, of course.
Consider the meaning of Abba. Don't family members chat?
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Every mass is a "communion service".
Sometimes mass or prayer move to tears, sometimes it is experienced as rote.
Not every moment is a peak experience.
We should perhaps put aside our expectations. Even saints have dry spells. Changes can be small and incremental.
God is pleased when we seek Him, even if we approach imperfectly. One doesn't have to be a mystic. Maybe God allows an A for effort. Reaching out is love and good will. It is intentional. And yes, the road to hell... that is why we have role models. We will never be perfectly satisfied in this life, for now we see as through a glass darkly. Those we love we know but imperfectly. We are certainly inadequate, by nature.
But agreed, sometimes there is "knowing."
From the role models-
"'My daughter...why do you not tell me about everything that concerns you, even the smallest details? Tell Me about everything, and know that this will give Me great joy.' I answered, 'But You know about everything, Lord.' And Jesus replied to me, 'Yes I do know; but you should not excuse yourself with the fact that I know, but with childlike simplicity talk to Me about everything, for my ears and heart are inclined towards you, and your words are dear to Me.'(2; 921)
--St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul
"We must speak to God as a friend speaks to his friend, servant to his master; now asking some favor, now acknowledging our faults, and communicating to Him all that concerns us, our thoughts, our fears, our projects, our desires, and in all things seeking His counsel."
--St. Ignatius of Loyola
OTOH-
"Anyone who has the habit of speaking before God's majesty as if he were speaking to a slave, careless about how he is speaking, and saying whatever comes into his head and whatever he's learned from saying prayers at other times, in my opinion is not praying. Please, God, may no Christian pray in this way."
--St. Teresa of Avila
A mystical experience, or direct knowing, cannot be willed. We can and do will prayer, speaking to God, and receiving the Blessed Sacrament, communion with God. People primarily use language to communicate. We speak. That's a whole other topic.
@P - Actually, I think - here, now, and in future, one *does* have to be a mystic; else one will sooner or later go over to the dark side (as so many have done, are doing).
This, because the institutions are all apostatising, liberalsing, or being destroyed. If each Christian needs to go it alone, primarily; then he must be a genuine mystic - else how will he discern correctly?
Luckily we all have it in us; since we were 'designed' for all situations.
Children are natural mystics (albeit 'pagan', animistic), but hardly any modern 'adults' (arrested adolescents) are mystics.
But an adult cannot go back and become unconscious and spontaneously mystical, as are naturally children; our mysticism should be chosen and conscious.
And not just any kind of mystic but mystic Christians (or Romantic Christians, as I prefer to call it); and that is the task.
I respectfully submit that we already have been given the truth. Our job is to “shine and dart about as sparks through stubble” (Wisdom 3:1, 7). One can attempt to create conditions conducive to receiving a mystical experience, but one cannot will such an experience into being. We have what we need right now if we remain faithful to it and we can choose to do so. We fail because of our apostasy,imho.
My love of Don Camillo, and also of this blog, makes me want to push back on this. Some things to note:
- Don Camillo chats only with the Son, not God the Father.
- Jesus speaks to Camillo only from the cross that stands above the altar of the church, and nowhere else.
- The conversations are not "chatty," with exchanges of pleasantries, etc. They are always directly matters of the heart.
- Jesus speaks with the voice of Camillo's conscience, and always from the standpoint of someone vitally concerned with those things that are both smallest and most important. Jesus directs Camillo away from his selfishness. And what he directs him to are not global or universal issues, but always to the hearts and suffering of those around him.
- Both Jesus and Camillo are playful, but in a way that is somehow a cloak of the deepest reverence, rightly avoiding coming too close to the impossible seriousness that would be necessary without the cloak.
Take away any of these things and the artistry would fail. And I think that the setting is also important. Post-WWII Italy was locked in a life-and-death struggle between Communism and Catholicism, with the Church on retreat. In many ways, this struggle has now blown up into the entire modern predicament. And during that struggle, in Don Camillo, Christ from his cross is vitally concerned not with sides or winners, but with the daily lives of the people of a small village near the Po. There is truth here.
Don Camillo is being republished and retranslated, I discovered recently, with some of the stories that had never appeared in English or Italian finally seeing the light of day.
I took the bait and looked up the video. Here's the English version, narrated by Orson Welles.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLf6VQyJJkE
Very short and necessary intro, so watch from the beginning. The first "conversation" starts within a few minutes. But you have to watch from the beginning to understand the context.
-B.S.Linger
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