There may have been times when Julian
of Norwich sorely regretted ever having said, All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well… etc. This teaching, much relied on by the church
at present, sounds pretty glib to me in the circumstances. Many people are finding life tough. Father Richard Rohr, a well-known
contemplative teacher, feet on the ground, gives us a list of five tough principles drawn, he says,
from his study of initiation rites around the world. Here they are… you will find them negative
and perhaps depressing, but grown-up faith recognises them quite easily: 1. Life
is hard. 2. You are not important. 3. Your life is not about you.
4. You are not in control. 5. You are going to die. In
times like this it seems vital that our contemplative thought and practice is
realistic, present to pain, aware of what people are going through and are
often afraid of, bearing the truth.
Baptism, conversion to Christ,
initiation into the way of Jesus, contemplative life and prayer -- however we
think of these things -- is a process ever seeking to separate us from who we
think we are, or hope we are, and welcoming in us what St Paul called the new
person, who we really are, made and loved by God, growing up in Christ. I think the present hardships are reminding
us of the futility of sentimentalism in faith, dependence on domesticated
religion or religious entertainment, reliance on signs, wonders, miracles.
Life is hard, is the first principle,
and it is there in the hardship that we find the Way, the Truth and the Life[1]. For the most part the Jewish people have not
needed convincing or reminder of this– the great creation myths in the Book of
Genesis tell how God said to Adam: …cursed
is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your
life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…[2] In all the years of pastoral ministry, the
only person I can remember who seemed actually in vociferous denial that life
is hard was a businessman, a loud aficionado of Positive Thinking, who if you
asked him how he was invariably replied, “If I was any better I would be
dangerous.” So I learned never to ask him.
Fr Rohr says flatly: All
great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. He goes on:
We can obey commandments, believe
doctrines, and attend church services all our lives and still daily lose our
souls if we run from the necessary cycle of loss and renewal.
The Iona Community expresses
this plainly: Faith assumes uncertainty; the truth is hardly ever simple; the path
ahead is rarely clear...
Thomas Merton wrote: Let no
one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from
doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic
anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that
cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding
growth of superficial “doubt.” This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine
faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious ‘faith’ of
everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of
conventional opinion.
Life is hard, and unfair. Our hardships, great or small, are the place
of love’s unfolding… once we have become very doubtful about trying to manage
suffering through dogged endurance, willpower, denial, alcohol and other drugs,
blame and retribution, choosing victim and “poor me” narratives. Where we are, as we are, in what is
happening, is the cradle of faith and love.
It is the ministry of the risen Christ in us and among us, his Spirit
finding space at last in us to make all things new. One of the foremost tragedies of Christian
history is the way the church transmuted Jesus’s death into ever stranger
theories and systems of atonement for our “sins”. Our real and actual sins however, says
Richard Rohr, are blindness, egocentricity, illusions, and pride. These, in a myriad of ways, are what make
life hard. It is in stillness and
silence, in our heartfelt Yes to God in Christ, that the unfolding of love
works the one miracle that matters. And
then, as Jesus told his followers, my
yoke is easy, my burden is light[3].
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