Catholica: What's the meaning in all this?

For the last few days I've been preparing a Tom's Take on the demise of the lay apostolates and what might replace them in the Church of the future. All those plans began to get cast aside sometime early yesterday afternoon when I began reading a long address (8,500+ words) that Sr Joan Chittister has given entitled Theology, Ecology, Women and World Peace.

As I write this I still don't know very much about where or when this lecture was delivered. I came across it posted on one of the email lists I subscribe to. I read it in three separate sessions yesterday and last night deliberately steeling myself away each time so that I could savour and reflect on what this woman is saying. In all honesty I think this is the single most powerful spiritual or theological article I have read possibly in my entire lifetime.

As its title, and length, suggests it is is an address on a broad canvas of issues but at its very heart it is calling — or, more properly, presenting — a manifesto for looking at our theology and spirituality in an entirely new way. Really, I think this is something akin to a Gettysburg address — and the language is so powerful that one can actually detect in the text of the transcript how it rippled out and electrified the audience who were there.

I wrote the foregoing last night and since then have learned a little more about Sr Joan Chittister's lecture. Before coming back to that I want to divert your attention to a discussion John Brigg's and I have started on the discussion forum in response to Milly's reflection yesterday. I want to respond to this comment by John. (Bear with me, this does all lead back to what Sr Joan Chittister is also saying.)

Milly's thoughts on prayer (Main Forum)

posted by JohnB, 21.11.2006, 09:48 58.107.129.137

Dear Brian: I know the life you are attempting to lead, and the photos are lovely. But even those birds are dependent on us. As we keep expanding our footprint on the globe we are destroying the environment for those very birds. In a way, we are their mortal enemies. And those birds you capture with your lens are also riddled with anxiety, anxious about food and water, anxious about other predators such as the cuddly cat. I think it is an exaggeration to say they don't worry. I don't think God cares for them very well at all — they are born into a savage natural system that constantly threatens to extinguish their fragile lives.

I watched the Ansett show last night and the way old Reg left his kids to fend for themselves, even though he was rich. It had a profound effect on the kids. I don't think they are grateful for his "tough love".

We as citizens are facing some huge environmental problems where the future of the planet is affected by the decisions we make. I'm taling about Global warming and the huge push for growth. WE can look forward to a future where our children and their children will be worse off than us, and more of the wild species will face extinction. We have to worry and think of the future.

It's like most of the teachings in the Bible-they are highly idealised, way out of touch with the reality of our existence. Try living your life according to the Beatitudes — we have to make compromises all along.

John

John was in part responding to this series of photos I placed in my previous post of the birds outside my window yesterday.

This is truly what intrigues me. In one sense what I am attempting to do is almost fundamentalist or literalist. I am acutely aware everyday of the enormous contradiction. When I originally made the decision I was in fact very conservative in outlook. I find it curious within myself that while all the politics has melted away the original foundational dream hasn't.

I think there is a truth in those words of Jesus I quoted. Where my outlook has changed significantly though is that I no longer see "the truth" sitting in the surface level literalism. For example it has only since I have been living up here and able to view these birds so closely — less than ten paces from where I am sitting — that I do see the almost constant anxiety. And the ways they fight one another. In fact yesterday's photos were unusual in that it was one of the rare occasions when I've seen birds of two different types sharing the birdbath at the same time. Even then it was an "uneasy peace" that only lasted briefly until the more dominant bird in each case gestured pretty rudely to the less dominant one to rack off.

At a bigger level again though we can see that Christ's words are largely allegorical. Looking at the bigger cosmos we do see that there is "an overall plan". There is what we Christian's would call "a Divine purpose" or "Divine direction". There is a harmony in nature where the Cosmos does look after itself, does heal itself, does compensate to adjust to all the tempest and anxiety in order to maintain what I would describe as "an overall equilibrium" and "truthfulness" or "obedience" to the underlying plan or Cosmological objective — something we Christians would again lable as the Divine Plan or Objective.

There are contradictions in all of this that I don't pretend to understand. One is the anxiety thing we have both observed. Another though is that nature doesn't "build silos" as we human beings do. At the same time we have to be acutely aware that many species have become extinct — perhaps because they were unable to build the equivalent of silos to take them through some drought or flood.

The contradiction is also sitting there as a big "two-fingered sign" constantly taunting us in the core of what Alex is constantly talking about in his advice to "trust the Divine will". It's not easy trusting in God alone. We all have to battle with these voices of insecurity in our heads, with the needs of our ego to be loved and respected. How do we do it? I don't think there are any easy answers yet, at the same time, I do believe we have to try if our ultimate (Divine) destiny is to be fulfilled.

One of the lessons I think I've learned along the way is that "heaven" is NOT some Divine reward for being socially conformist, a goody two shoes or "obedient" in that sense that a four-year-old understands the word obedience as some mix of sucking up to mother and not offending mother to earn a cat's bum mouth scolding. Yet isn't that the model of what "faith", "Catholicism" or "Christianity" is presented as to most people? Certainly the Divine Objective — this "thing" we abbreviate into the word "heaven" — does involve obedience, conformism and "being good" but it is not in that idolatrous sense of being obedient to our own insecurities, conformist to the expectations of the community, our family, the bishops or our own deep, deep human need to be loved, respected and accepted by the community around us or the significant others in it whose love, respect and acceptance we individually crave. Our obedience and conformism has to be directed to this mythical, mystical or mysterious "thing" we call "the Divine Will" or "the Word" or "the Logos" that sits at the foundation of each of our lives — and of ALL Life. "Being Good" is not some kindergarten game of sucking up to "the Divine Will" or "the Word" or "the Logos". It is a process of slowly, slowly learning how to think, act and feel as God "thinks, acts and feels". Of course all of us feel so distanced from God. We tend to think it is arrogant, even sinful, to aspire to be like God yet, contradictorily, isn't that what our religion and faith calls us to be when it asks us to aspire to holiness or sainthood?

All of what I write here is very intimately related to the jaw-dropping experience I've had in the last 24 hours reading this address from Sr Joan Chittister entitled Theology, Ecology, Women and World Peace. In the last half hour I have finally found out something about this lecture. It is available on the net as a download but it will cost $US9.95 ($AU12.92). The copy of the text I have seems to be an updated version of the Massey Lecture she originally gave on 19th July 2004 to the Thomas Merton Society. You can hear a preview of the lecture or take out a free trial subscription and listen to the whole address at www.thegreatlecturelibrary.com.

What Joan is writing is unashamedly a feminist perspective but, if you listen carefully, particularly to the final concluding section to the lecture I'm sure any intelligent person will also hear it is an affirming lecture for men also.

I honestly believe that I have not heard any spiritual lecture — by bishop, priest, or even Pope — to come anywhere within a Bull's roar of this one in re-casting our Catholic and Christian story with an entirely new sense of meaning and vitality.

PS: I have held over my conclusion to the "Communication Challenge" from last week and will run that as an extra column in the next few days.

LINK: If you have difficulty accessing the lecture contact me privately by email.

PHOTO CREDIT: The photos of the birds are from my private collection taken yesterday afternoon at the birdbath on the deck outside my study.