For several years now I have been watching the HBO series Game of Thrones, which is set in a medieval world of knights, kings, queens, dragons and monsters. It is also a world with many competing religions. Until recently, the religious aspect only showed up very briefly in tangential comments about those who kept to the "old gods," or those who put their faith in "the seven" and lately an interesting and cult of "the faceless men" has taken an important role in the character arc of Arya Stark. The faceless men are servants of "the many faced god." As is the case with most of the religions in the show, this cult bears only a passing resemblance to the religions of our world, but it is notable because along with whatever sorcery based religion is represented by the Red Woman who has Stannis Baratheon in her thrall, it appears to be monotheistic.
I am working my way through the novels and I notice that these sorts of things are discussed in more detail there, so I may be able to learn more from them than from the show, but I find the idea of the many faced god rather fascinating, because it mirrors a rather ubiquitous assumption about faith in the modern/postmodern world: pluralism. Not necessarily the belief that there are many gods, but rather the belief that many different faiths provide some pathway to whatever the truth of God actually is. That truth remains largely a mystery, out of necessity, and possibly for our own protection.
Let me say that, while I no longer see pluralism as a "dirty word," I do understand that it has several very real limitations. However, in light of the general trajectory of world events, I wonder if maybe pluralism is the only approach to our very real differences that is going to keep us from destroying one another in a massive conflagration that will probably have grim religious elements.
I am not going to say that all religions are equally valid in understanding the nature of God, which would be dishonest. What I would like to encourage is that followers of Jesus Christ, ought to be a little more circumspect and compassionate in their approach to those who hold to a different set of beliefs. In short, I think we need to stop labeling others, sometimes even other Christians, heretics and infidel.
The Children of Abraham have some rather large logs in our eyes when it comes to going on the warpath against the very people we're supposed to be a blessing to and for. Muslims blame and hate Jews and Christians for the fact that they inhabit parts of the world that are backwards and impoverished. Jews and Christians, while we have largely managed to make nice with each other since the end of WWII, still sort of mistrust one another (a lot of water under that bridge) and are united by an often justified fear of radical Islam. Atheists think we're all benighted fools laboring under a dark superstition, and agnostics, well they mostly don't know what to think, that's why they're agnostic.
And I just used more religious stereotypes than I'm really comfortable with, and I wonder if you noticed.
Categorical classification helps us understand our narrative. Whether it's race, creed, or what football team you root for, the world becomes easier to deal with if you clump people together. If you're left out there to deal with everyone as an individual it gets sort of difficult to do certain things, like wage war. War doesn't make any sense if you think about the individual people you are fighting, if you see them as human beings with hopes and dreams, with families and homes, only a sociopath or a psychopath would be okay with mass killing. We must group them by ideology and by some categorical principal: the king or nation they swear allegiance to, the god they follow, where and how they were born, and even their social status. We have to see them as other and lesser in order to truly rationalize killing them. What we do is essentially make them faceless people, and that in turn allows us to see them as evil.
Pluralism, for all it's faults, pushes back against that wave
Better theologians than me have pointed out that until we learn to see God in other people we will never truly know God. In fact, one of the earliest challenges of the church was learning to love each other as God has loved us. The first letter of John says it this way: "Those who say, 'I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." (1 John 4:20, NRSV)
Many people will try to explain that away by saying that brothers and sisters refers to people in the church. Fine. How is that working out? Let me know when you've perfected it, and then we need to go talk to some other people you're supposed to love. I'm pretty sure, thanks to the parable of the Good Samaritan, that we're probably not supposed to be that narrow with our love.
I suppose, if you take a certain view of salvation and such, that the most loving thing you can do for anyone is to get them to accept Christ by any means necessary. I might agree, except for the rather stubborn reality that Jesus definitely did not see it as his job to convince, convict or coerce anyone into believing him.
What Jesus does is present the good news that the kingdom of heaven is near and begins to flesh out the implications of that good news. What strikes me about his methods is that he rarely tries to scare people. Oh, he gets a little stern with the religious authorities who are a stumbling block, he warns people to be careful of the little ones, but most of his public teachings are about what the kingdom is like, in terms that pretty much everyone is able to understand.
He is much more pluralistic in his approach than any Jew of his era had a right to be. In large part, this is what drew the ire of the establishment: his wanton crossing of political, social, racial and religious lines. Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, even (gulp) Romans, are all recorded in the Gospels as people who heard, believed and were touched by Jesus' ministry. And that's going cheese off the fundamentalists and puritans no matter what.
How are you ever going to keep your message pure and theologically correct if you're that indiscriminate about who you tell and who you touch and who you eat with?
Jesus was not wishy-washy or bland in his proclamations and teachings, but he was compassionate and loving to people whom society had deemed unworthy. The prospect of using fear and manipulation to bring people into the fold was and is utter nonsense. You're not bringing them to Jesus, you're not showing them the way and the truth and the life, you're herding them into another sheepfold altogether, and so I guess that makes you a bandit.
Jesus was astonishingly patient with individuals and rather intolerant of principalities and powers. He could call the Pharisees a brood of vipers, but sit and teach Nicodemus patiently and lovingly. He understood that pluralism is necessary for individuals to come to God. Each person is unique and God must have many faces in order to be in a good and loving relationship with so many different individuals. But, as a very old prayer reminded him: "God is One." Don't try to unravel that mystery, let it be precisely that, a mystery.
I believe that Jesus is the way to the Father, I believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation, but because I do, I will try my best to follow Jesus, that means being a part of the Good News, not a continuing link in the violent and hateful bad news. I hope that if it came down to it, I would have the courage to die for my faith, but since Jesus is the author of that faith I can't see any way to justify killing in his name. We need to stop that. Yes, I think it would make God happy if all people of all faiths stopped killing in God's name. I think our crucified Lord calls us to go first.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
Through the Fear
Just as faith is not faith without doubt, so courage is not really courage without fear. In the first few days of the Camino, undoubtedly while I was struggling up a hill, and feeling rather like my body was going to quit on me, I had the thought that I could just quit. I could call it off, let my physical weakness get the best of me and just go home. I could have done that, but I didn't. As my body got stronger though I came to see that the impulse to quit was not actually very much about physical weakness, it was quite simply about fear, specifically fear of failure.
Somewhere in my mind there is this (probably unhealthy) idea that my body is not really that important. I have never been an athlete, or a physical specimen, my self worth has always derived more from what I could do with my mind (and perhaps even my spirit) than what I could do with my body. My forays into the world of physical excellence have been short lived and never really that excellent. I've been overweight and asthmatic for most of my life, and I realized on the side of that hill that I had always let that give me an excuse for giving up. I had never done anything physically impressive, and at the very least the Camino was going to be that: physically impressive.
I have mentioned all of this before, but it bears repeating, because you need to know that I was not particularly afraid of failing physically. The fear was that I might fail spiritually. My resolve might break, I might not be able to finish this trip because of what was going on in my head and heart rather than because of my legs and lungs. If my body let me down it would just be the latest in a rather long litany of failures and flops, but if I simply lost my nerve? Well that would be unacceptable.
Edwin Friedman, author of the seminal family systems work Generation to Generation, was working on a book called Failure of Nerve, when he passed away. The book (finished by his son and others) in it's best sections examines the way systems fail because of fear, primarily the fear that leaders have, but acknowledging that leaders are technically and really figureheads for the dysfunction of a system. Energy is contagious, if a system is anxious it will seek and most likely find leaders who reflect that anxiety. If a system is bold and generative, it will probably also find bold and generative leaders. And leaders can change systems for better or worse, and systems (and this I think is rather the more powerful force, but I suppose I'm biased) can change leaders for better or worse.
In church terms, one has several roles to fill in leadership: prophet and priest, (some try king, but that should probably be left to God). Prophet is the role that notices the wrong and addresses the struggles, prophets can either "afflict the comfortable, or comfort the afflicted," but they never simply accept the status quo. The priestly function, however, is not into rocking the boat. The priest is inherently invested in keeping things smooth and steady. Let the traditions that give us roots hold us steady, let the rituals and practices of our faith anchor us in the storm of life.
You might read these descriptions and think I am expressing a preference for one or the other, depending on your personal resonance, but I assure you, I fully recognize the necessity of both roles. The problem that exists is that neither role is immune from the anxiety of the system, and both can become perverse as a result of that anxiety. "Fear is the mind killer," says a fictional mantra from Frank Herbert's Dune. Indeed fear kills the faculty of rational thought, but it also squashes vision, it also shortens the perspective to consider only the most immediate concerns. Fear seeks out enemies and threats, and if it finds none, it will invent them, real and imaginary.
The prophet cannot speak truly, nor can the priest serve truly, when the system is overrun with fear. So how can one change the system? If it is already fearful and anxious, how does one change it? It is bigger than you are.
The first step is vision, having a idea that gives you a destination and some guiding principles.
Then you need to figure out your needs: knowledge, skills, and perhaps most importantly helpers and supporters. You need others who will go with you, because you will never change an anxious and fearful system by yourself.
You need to understand that failure is an option: your knowledge can be incomplete, your skills inadequate and your helpers and supporters inconstant, but your nerve cannot fail. Learn from your failures, adjust your plans, find new helpers, whatever you need to do, but do not let your courage fail, do not let the fear get the better of you.
That said, flexibility and empathy are important characteristics. Seek to understand your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and you will find this leads to an ability to bend but not break. I know, this sounds weird even to people who have spent time wrestling with Jesus' teachings on the subject. And it sounds especially troubling when you feel like your in a "fight or flight" confrontation, because fear is almost always winning the battle.
Mercy, forgiveness and grace are most often where the rubber hits the road and where the nerve most often fails us. It's self defense. It's the only sensible thing to do for the good of the whole. These are sentiments that are often attached to acts of violence. I won't judge their validity in the secular world, but in the community of God's people they ring awfully hollow.
Somewhere in my mind there is this (probably unhealthy) idea that my body is not really that important. I have never been an athlete, or a physical specimen, my self worth has always derived more from what I could do with my mind (and perhaps even my spirit) than what I could do with my body. My forays into the world of physical excellence have been short lived and never really that excellent. I've been overweight and asthmatic for most of my life, and I realized on the side of that hill that I had always let that give me an excuse for giving up. I had never done anything physically impressive, and at the very least the Camino was going to be that: physically impressive.
I have mentioned all of this before, but it bears repeating, because you need to know that I was not particularly afraid of failing physically. The fear was that I might fail spiritually. My resolve might break, I might not be able to finish this trip because of what was going on in my head and heart rather than because of my legs and lungs. If my body let me down it would just be the latest in a rather long litany of failures and flops, but if I simply lost my nerve? Well that would be unacceptable.
Edwin Friedman, author of the seminal family systems work Generation to Generation, was working on a book called Failure of Nerve, when he passed away. The book (finished by his son and others) in it's best sections examines the way systems fail because of fear, primarily the fear that leaders have, but acknowledging that leaders are technically and really figureheads for the dysfunction of a system. Energy is contagious, if a system is anxious it will seek and most likely find leaders who reflect that anxiety. If a system is bold and generative, it will probably also find bold and generative leaders. And leaders can change systems for better or worse, and systems (and this I think is rather the more powerful force, but I suppose I'm biased) can change leaders for better or worse.
In church terms, one has several roles to fill in leadership: prophet and priest, (some try king, but that should probably be left to God). Prophet is the role that notices the wrong and addresses the struggles, prophets can either "afflict the comfortable, or comfort the afflicted," but they never simply accept the status quo. The priestly function, however, is not into rocking the boat. The priest is inherently invested in keeping things smooth and steady. Let the traditions that give us roots hold us steady, let the rituals and practices of our faith anchor us in the storm of life.
You might read these descriptions and think I am expressing a preference for one or the other, depending on your personal resonance, but I assure you, I fully recognize the necessity of both roles. The problem that exists is that neither role is immune from the anxiety of the system, and both can become perverse as a result of that anxiety. "Fear is the mind killer," says a fictional mantra from Frank Herbert's Dune. Indeed fear kills the faculty of rational thought, but it also squashes vision, it also shortens the perspective to consider only the most immediate concerns. Fear seeks out enemies and threats, and if it finds none, it will invent them, real and imaginary.
The prophet cannot speak truly, nor can the priest serve truly, when the system is overrun with fear. So how can one change the system? If it is already fearful and anxious, how does one change it? It is bigger than you are.
The first step is vision, having a idea that gives you a destination and some guiding principles.
Then you need to figure out your needs: knowledge, skills, and perhaps most importantly helpers and supporters. You need others who will go with you, because you will never change an anxious and fearful system by yourself.
You need to understand that failure is an option: your knowledge can be incomplete, your skills inadequate and your helpers and supporters inconstant, but your nerve cannot fail. Learn from your failures, adjust your plans, find new helpers, whatever you need to do, but do not let your courage fail, do not let the fear get the better of you.
That said, flexibility and empathy are important characteristics. Seek to understand your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and you will find this leads to an ability to bend but not break. I know, this sounds weird even to people who have spent time wrestling with Jesus' teachings on the subject. And it sounds especially troubling when you feel like your in a "fight or flight" confrontation, because fear is almost always winning the battle.
Mercy, forgiveness and grace are most often where the rubber hits the road and where the nerve most often fails us. It's self defense. It's the only sensible thing to do for the good of the whole. These are sentiments that are often attached to acts of violence. I won't judge their validity in the secular world, but in the community of God's people they ring awfully hollow.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Sin Dolor, No Hay Gloria
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men shall be brothers then, until the sea shall free them.
-Leonard Cohen, Suzanne
There is enough trouble to make you seriously consider why you're doing this thing to yourself, which is question you often cannot answer. But ask it I did and I considered the nature of suffering.
As a Protestant, the Roman Catholic fixation with gore is a bit odd, but in every church there is a crucifix of some sort, and often a sculpture or a painting of the dead body of Jesus, either cradled in Mary's arms, or lying in the tomb. Some of the sculptures were quite gruesome, and yes, I am aware that flogging and crucifixion were horrific and actually the statues even with all their bloody stripes and spear wounds probably don't come close to how ripped up he actually was. What really got me though, was one day, when it was kind of rainy and cold and I was feeling just sort of dead in body and soul, I found myself looking up at one of these crucifixes, and I got it on the gut level. I was standing there, sort of damp, with my pack on, and I saw Jesus bleeding on the cross, and I understood, beyond the intellectual way I had always processed it before, why so many people find the suffering and dying part of Jesus so blasted important.
See, on my good days, I tell myself that Jesus' teachings about love and equality and how the Kingdom is drawing near to us, despite our imperfections, to be rather enough reason to follow him. Even if none of the supernatural stuff, the miracles, resurrection, the Trinity, was actually true, the fact that Jesus was anything like what the Gospels report would be enough for me to be his disciple.
Most of the time, I don't need him to be any more than the guy who said, "love your neighbor as yourself," and "let the children come to me," and "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Those things are light and life and they are big enough to challenge me to be better than I am.
But sometimes there is darkness and death, and then I need him to be on that cross and in that tomb, and especially I need him to come out again. It is when I'm at the end of my rope that I need to know the Jesus that would get himself beat up and crucified.
It's when I face things that seem to be beyond redemption that I need to know a God who has other ways of dealing with brokenness and evil. The crucified Jesus reminds me that everything has a purpose, even that, even the worst we can do, even death, even the tomb, even his grieving mother. For what it's worth, I thought of all the people who lived in a world that was even more nasty and brutish than the one we live in now, a world where kings and criminals were constant and mortal threats, a world where a barbarian horde or a rival warlord could ride in at any moment and kill, rape and burn everything that you held dear. I thought about all the people in the world who still live with some version of that reality, and I thought about how the crucified Jesus comforts them and tells them they're not the only ones who ever suffered, or suffered unjustly.
He reminds all of us that suffering can be redeemed and be redemptive. Given what I know about the middle ages, when many of those churches were first built, it's not really that mysterious that people would appreciate a reminder of how God is with them when things are particularly bloody.
I know it renewed my soul.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Follow Your Nose
Ever since I got the first inkling of a notion that I should go to seminary and prepare to become a Pastor, I have lived with a word, which I think I have largely misunderstood and often misused. That word is discernment. For those of you who have never dipped a toe into the waters of theological education, you probably have no idea how much this particular D word gets fumbled around with by students and professors and church advisers alike. From the very beginning they talk about discerning your call, meaning trying to become clear on whether or not you actually want to do this thing called ministry, whether it is actually God's Spirit moving in you or some misguided inner voice that is pushing you to follow a career path that it quite frankly not exactly a bed of roses. Then you discern what sort of ministry you would like to pursue, then you discern where and with whom you are going to pursue it.
Every time someone says "discernment," this deep spiritual process moves across your heart and mind like a fog, and you think, "Ahhh discernment, yes, learning what God wants from me and for me... deep water indeed."
Oddly enough though discernment actually ends up being fairly mundane in most cases. It is accomplished mostly by finding the place where you and your gifts fit into something. This in itself can seem arcane when you're in seminary because you rarely have a very firm grasp on who you are and what your gifts (at least for ministry) may actually be. For instance, for the first year of seminary the idea of preaching was terrifying. So much so that I would often tell people I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to be a Pastor, but maybe some other form of service to the church (I have no idea what I even meant by that). As it turns out, preaching is sort of my favorite thing to do, and has become the core of what I do in ministry.
But I never really got around this vague, mystical sort of idea about discernment, until last month. The Camino taught me to follow my nose (and a guidebook when necessary), to just sort of take each day and each need one step at a time, and watch what God does for you.
I know what you're thinking: "But you can't do that with life, you would inevitably run into to trouble!" And you may be right, I haven't and in fact I don't think I know anyone who has truly learned to completely let go of all their plans and schemes. But I do know that the more I trusted God for the needs of the day, the more I found blessings, and I know that sounds sort of prosperity-gospel-ish, but really it simply amounted to a state of mind that was more open to seeing God working. It wasn't that God was somehow more present, and more active, it was just that I was more aware of the presence and the acting. It wasn't that I always got what I wanted, but as the Rolling Stones point out, I got what I needed. Which consequently was not always what I wanted, but was often something I did not expect, but really needed more than I knew.
A couple places stand out: Carrion de los Condes, where we stayed in a parochial albergue run by Augustinian Nuns, the place was crowded, the showers ran out of hot water and we barely managed to find it in the first place, but the Nuns had an evening sing along before Vespers, they sang us folk songs and invited us to share songs of our own. Being as there was a guitar involved, I sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah for the group, and the Nuns and other folk joined in the chorus that just rang out in the common area. A few people were moved to tears, and I certainly felt a sense of the Spirit moving among us, and it opened doors to people we hadn't really been able to connect with because of language barriers. I was a little hesitant about the song, I was a little hesitant about taking the stage, but there was an invitation, and it just seemed like the right thing, and it was.
Another: La Faba, half way up the climb to O Cebriero, it was a German run association albergue, in a little town that was so far from anywhere, the beds were like medieval torture devices and again it was crowded and had too few bathrooms, but the place was immensely restful and peaceful, and there was a guitar to play. A man who spoke very little English was listening to Dad and I pass the guitar back and forth and obviously enjoying the music. He came over and asked me if I could play the song that he had on a video on his phone, it was a video of a wedding, a video I had seen before, a video of a priest singing, you guessed it: Hallelujah. I could and I did and for the second time someone was moved to tears, and not because of my singing voice.
I was just doing what I wanted, maybe even what I needed, and the Spirit moved. I was just following my nose and finding those places where I was supposed to be. It was discernment, but not vague or super spiritual, just letting God put you where you're supposed to be. Know when to stop, know when to go, know when to sing. Be who you are, give it over to God and watch what happens.
Every time someone says "discernment," this deep spiritual process moves across your heart and mind like a fog, and you think, "Ahhh discernment, yes, learning what God wants from me and for me... deep water indeed."
Oddly enough though discernment actually ends up being fairly mundane in most cases. It is accomplished mostly by finding the place where you and your gifts fit into something. This in itself can seem arcane when you're in seminary because you rarely have a very firm grasp on who you are and what your gifts (at least for ministry) may actually be. For instance, for the first year of seminary the idea of preaching was terrifying. So much so that I would often tell people I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to be a Pastor, but maybe some other form of service to the church (I have no idea what I even meant by that). As it turns out, preaching is sort of my favorite thing to do, and has become the core of what I do in ministry.
But I never really got around this vague, mystical sort of idea about discernment, until last month. The Camino taught me to follow my nose (and a guidebook when necessary), to just sort of take each day and each need one step at a time, and watch what God does for you.
I know what you're thinking: "But you can't do that with life, you would inevitably run into to trouble!" And you may be right, I haven't and in fact I don't think I know anyone who has truly learned to completely let go of all their plans and schemes. But I do know that the more I trusted God for the needs of the day, the more I found blessings, and I know that sounds sort of prosperity-gospel-ish, but really it simply amounted to a state of mind that was more open to seeing God working. It wasn't that God was somehow more present, and more active, it was just that I was more aware of the presence and the acting. It wasn't that I always got what I wanted, but as the Rolling Stones point out, I got what I needed. Which consequently was not always what I wanted, but was often something I did not expect, but really needed more than I knew.
A couple places stand out: Carrion de los Condes, where we stayed in a parochial albergue run by Augustinian Nuns, the place was crowded, the showers ran out of hot water and we barely managed to find it in the first place, but the Nuns had an evening sing along before Vespers, they sang us folk songs and invited us to share songs of our own. Being as there was a guitar involved, I sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah for the group, and the Nuns and other folk joined in the chorus that just rang out in the common area. A few people were moved to tears, and I certainly felt a sense of the Spirit moving among us, and it opened doors to people we hadn't really been able to connect with because of language barriers. I was a little hesitant about the song, I was a little hesitant about taking the stage, but there was an invitation, and it just seemed like the right thing, and it was.
Another: La Faba, half way up the climb to O Cebriero, it was a German run association albergue, in a little town that was so far from anywhere, the beds were like medieval torture devices and again it was crowded and had too few bathrooms, but the place was immensely restful and peaceful, and there was a guitar to play. A man who spoke very little English was listening to Dad and I pass the guitar back and forth and obviously enjoying the music. He came over and asked me if I could play the song that he had on a video on his phone, it was a video of a wedding, a video I had seen before, a video of a priest singing, you guessed it: Hallelujah. I could and I did and for the second time someone was moved to tears, and not because of my singing voice.
I was just doing what I wanted, maybe even what I needed, and the Spirit moved. I was just following my nose and finding those places where I was supposed to be. It was discernment, but not vague or super spiritual, just letting God put you where you're supposed to be. Know when to stop, know when to go, know when to sing. Be who you are, give it over to God and watch what happens.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Embracing Otherness
It goes without saying that a couple of Presbyterians were sort of fish out of water on the Camino de Santiago. We weren't the only Protestants (or even the only Presbyterian Teaching Elders), but we didn't even see a Protestant Church the whole time we were in Spain. It was very Roman Catholic.
The feeling was cushioned a little bit by the fact that so many Pilgrims are not Catholic, and many are completely non-religious, so among the Pilgrims we felt more or less at home.
But still, there was all this stuff, the whole setting, the story and the history that surrounded us were just drenched in a sort of Christianity that is foreign to me, partially because of the Catholicism of it, but partly because it was not even modern Catholicism, it was medieval Catholicism, which is an entirely different beast. And it has some distinctly beastly attributes, many of which I understand to be the heart of the disagreements that the reformers had with said church.
One of the reasons why Pilgrimage was pretty much a lost discipline for 500 years is the fact that the very purpose of Pilgrimage was to earn and indulgence, a physical act that begat forgiveness of sins, for yourself or for others. People risked life and limb and spent considerable resources to "earn" themselves a better afterlife. Theologically speaking, at least in Christian terms, this is utter nonsense and was anathematized in all its forms by reformed theology.
Yet when you anathematize (name abhorrent, condemn in the strongest possible terms) things, you often throw the baby out with the bathwater. You become a reactionary and often cannot ask yourself searching questions or hear the convicting answers. Case in point: Matamoros, the Moor Slayer, the medieval alter ego of Santiago. The Apostle James, whose bones are believed to be in the crypt under the chancel in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, has two general manifestations: the Pilgrim, who you will see as a sort of kind, balding man in a long robe with a pilgrim staff and a gourd for water. He is the evangelist, the one who wandered to the ends of the earth bringing the good news of Jesus to the world. Then there is the Moor Slayer, mounted on a war horse, complete with medieval armor and weapons and often literally slicing through a horde of North African Muslims.
Matamoros made me a little queasy, first of all theologically, and second of all factually. It is so obviously an anachronism, and it so obviously counter to the ethical imperative to love your neighbor and pray for your enemies, and turn the other cheek and all of that. Matamoros is a superhero who bears the name of an Apostle, a fiction that people living in a world threatened by an unknown and terrifying other looked to for comfort.
I want my faith to be more about the Pilgrim than the Moor Slayer, but then one day I was standing on a wall that used to surround the town of Mansilla de las Mulas, there's still a lot of the wall left, including a couple thick stone gates. I thought of what it must have been like for people who were just trying to live their lives in the face of marauders and wild animals and the threat of a foreign people sweeping down upon them to kill, rape, steal and enslave them. I thought about the fact that the Moors were not nice people when they went slaughtering their way through Spain. They were, quite frankly, a cold splash of reality.
I thought of the average peasant farmer outside of Leon, who would need to be able to flee to one of these walled cities for protection if the Moorish horde appeared on the horizon, and I thought about his wife and children being protected by the city and by Matamoros (even if he was just a legend), and it makes me at least understand why they carved his image on their churches.
I thought of all the violence that Christian people have supported and done over the centuries, and I understood, it no longer made me queasy, it just made me sad. And a good part of the sadness was rooted in the fact that much of it was so very necessary. Hitler needed to be stopped, Ghengis Khan was not a peaceful benevolent sort of fellow. For all it's faults the Roman Catholic Empire and the legacy it left was responsible for creating a world where freedom and liberty could become important values, and where things like the Reformation and the Renaissance could happen.
Do I like Matamoros? Not so much, but I came to understand why he exists. Do I now subscribe to the veneration of Saints? Do I think we ought to be more like the medieval church? Ummm, nope, but I have a better understanding of many things, and understanding increases my capability to love.
The feeling was cushioned a little bit by the fact that so many Pilgrims are not Catholic, and many are completely non-religious, so among the Pilgrims we felt more or less at home.
But still, there was all this stuff, the whole setting, the story and the history that surrounded us were just drenched in a sort of Christianity that is foreign to me, partially because of the Catholicism of it, but partly because it was not even modern Catholicism, it was medieval Catholicism, which is an entirely different beast. And it has some distinctly beastly attributes, many of which I understand to be the heart of the disagreements that the reformers had with said church.
One of the reasons why Pilgrimage was pretty much a lost discipline for 500 years is the fact that the very purpose of Pilgrimage was to earn and indulgence, a physical act that begat forgiveness of sins, for yourself or for others. People risked life and limb and spent considerable resources to "earn" themselves a better afterlife. Theologically speaking, at least in Christian terms, this is utter nonsense and was anathematized in all its forms by reformed theology.
Yet when you anathematize (name abhorrent, condemn in the strongest possible terms) things, you often throw the baby out with the bathwater. You become a reactionary and often cannot ask yourself searching questions or hear the convicting answers. Case in point: Matamoros, the Moor Slayer, the medieval alter ego of Santiago. The Apostle James, whose bones are believed to be in the crypt under the chancel in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, has two general manifestations: the Pilgrim, who you will see as a sort of kind, balding man in a long robe with a pilgrim staff and a gourd for water. He is the evangelist, the one who wandered to the ends of the earth bringing the good news of Jesus to the world. Then there is the Moor Slayer, mounted on a war horse, complete with medieval armor and weapons and often literally slicing through a horde of North African Muslims.
Matamoros made me a little queasy, first of all theologically, and second of all factually. It is so obviously an anachronism, and it so obviously counter to the ethical imperative to love your neighbor and pray for your enemies, and turn the other cheek and all of that. Matamoros is a superhero who bears the name of an Apostle, a fiction that people living in a world threatened by an unknown and terrifying other looked to for comfort.
I want my faith to be more about the Pilgrim than the Moor Slayer, but then one day I was standing on a wall that used to surround the town of Mansilla de las Mulas, there's still a lot of the wall left, including a couple thick stone gates. I thought of what it must have been like for people who were just trying to live their lives in the face of marauders and wild animals and the threat of a foreign people sweeping down upon them to kill, rape, steal and enslave them. I thought about the fact that the Moors were not nice people when they went slaughtering their way through Spain. They were, quite frankly, a cold splash of reality.
I thought of the average peasant farmer outside of Leon, who would need to be able to flee to one of these walled cities for protection if the Moorish horde appeared on the horizon, and I thought about his wife and children being protected by the city and by Matamoros (even if he was just a legend), and it makes me at least understand why they carved his image on their churches.
I thought of all the violence that Christian people have supported and done over the centuries, and I understood, it no longer made me queasy, it just made me sad. And a good part of the sadness was rooted in the fact that much of it was so very necessary. Hitler needed to be stopped, Ghengis Khan was not a peaceful benevolent sort of fellow. For all it's faults the Roman Catholic Empire and the legacy it left was responsible for creating a world where freedom and liberty could become important values, and where things like the Reformation and the Renaissance could happen.
Do I like Matamoros? Not so much, but I came to understand why he exists. Do I now subscribe to the veneration of Saints? Do I think we ought to be more like the medieval church? Ummm, nope, but I have a better understanding of many things, and understanding increases my capability to love.
Friday, May 22, 2015
All That You Can't Leave Behind (But Do Anyway)
Of the physical items that I brought on the Camino, there was one that almost got left at home, a red fleece sweatshirt. I'm so rarely cold and it was spring after all, and I had a jacket and a rain coat and multiple layers available. Then I sort of picked up the fleece thing, which I had bought because of its light weight, and I said to myself, "Gee, this weighs next to nothing, I'm gonna take it." As it turns out, I wore the thing almost every day, not while walking, I rarely needed more warmth when I was walking, but in the evenings, when things got cool and my body was exhausted and I just wanted something warm and soft to wear. Could I have left it and survived? Sure, but it made my existence so much more pleasant that it was worth bringing.
The hardest things to live without on the Camino, simply could not come with me. Of all the little choices I made in gear and of all the necessary, unnecessary, and sort of nice to have things that I brought, the heaviest weight to carry was the absence from my family. This being 2015, we pretty much got to "talk" to each other every day, through Facebook Messenger mostly because the internet in Spain is apparently a little thin on bandwidth, but occasionally we got a good enough connection to actually talk. And the talking usually made me feel worse, it was like a little taste of something that you crave really badly, or being able to sort of scratch an itch, it made me more aware of how much I missed them, and forced me to think about how much they were missing me. As the husband/Dad, I'm not sure which one of those is worse.
It's a peculiar thing about loving people very deeply, when you know they're suffering, you would rather take the pain yourself, so that they don't have to. When Jack was four and he had a bad asthma attack, we took him to the ER and as I held his hand while they put an IV in, it was the only time in my entire life that I actually wished they were jabbing me with the needle.
Yesterday, I talked about the physical struggle of the Camino, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of knowing that you're not going to see the people you love the most for a very long time. I have always had great respect for folks in the military who regularly spend even longer periods of time away from their loved ones, but now the idea of six months or a year away simply breaks my heart.
But you have to do what you have to do. You stay in touch, you hear, you read, you try to ease the separation, and you know it's temporary. That's the only thing that keeps it from being full fledged grief, you know you're going to be home eventually.
In the early part of the walk we stayed at an Albergue run by a Dutch Christian association. The hospitalero at the Albergue was a volunteer, from a church in Holland, he had never walked the Camino himself and asked us why we were doing it. At this point, about a week or so into the walk, some of us really didn't have good answers. The Albergue was in a place called Villamayor, on top of a fairly good sized hill, and the Albergue itself was at the top of a steep slope. He said he watched people climb that last bit of the hill every day and they often seemed like they were suffering. I told him that suffering was definitely a part of it, but that you just had to get through it, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
He still wondered why we would do such a thing, and I couldn't really give him very much of an answer. I told him it was hard, but that it was usually worth it, and the evenings where you could sit and talk to folks and have some beer, sort of made it all better. He said that he used to work in television and whenever he and his crew would have a hard day trying to film something, they would tell each other, "Sooner or later, it will be evening." That became sort of a touchstone for me, when things got physically difficult, however, whenever I started to miss my family, which happened fairly often, I just had to tell myself, "Sooner or later it will be May 20."
And now it is.
The hardest things to live without on the Camino, simply could not come with me. Of all the little choices I made in gear and of all the necessary, unnecessary, and sort of nice to have things that I brought, the heaviest weight to carry was the absence from my family. This being 2015, we pretty much got to "talk" to each other every day, through Facebook Messenger mostly because the internet in Spain is apparently a little thin on bandwidth, but occasionally we got a good enough connection to actually talk. And the talking usually made me feel worse, it was like a little taste of something that you crave really badly, or being able to sort of scratch an itch, it made me more aware of how much I missed them, and forced me to think about how much they were missing me. As the husband/Dad, I'm not sure which one of those is worse.
It's a peculiar thing about loving people very deeply, when you know they're suffering, you would rather take the pain yourself, so that they don't have to. When Jack was four and he had a bad asthma attack, we took him to the ER and as I held his hand while they put an IV in, it was the only time in my entire life that I actually wished they were jabbing me with the needle.
Yesterday, I talked about the physical struggle of the Camino, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of knowing that you're not going to see the people you love the most for a very long time. I have always had great respect for folks in the military who regularly spend even longer periods of time away from their loved ones, but now the idea of six months or a year away simply breaks my heart.
But you have to do what you have to do. You stay in touch, you hear, you read, you try to ease the separation, and you know it's temporary. That's the only thing that keeps it from being full fledged grief, you know you're going to be home eventually.
In the early part of the walk we stayed at an Albergue run by a Dutch Christian association. The hospitalero at the Albergue was a volunteer, from a church in Holland, he had never walked the Camino himself and asked us why we were doing it. At this point, about a week or so into the walk, some of us really didn't have good answers. The Albergue was in a place called Villamayor, on top of a fairly good sized hill, and the Albergue itself was at the top of a steep slope. He said he watched people climb that last bit of the hill every day and they often seemed like they were suffering. I told him that suffering was definitely a part of it, but that you just had to get through it, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
He still wondered why we would do such a thing, and I couldn't really give him very much of an answer. I told him it was hard, but that it was usually worth it, and the evenings where you could sit and talk to folks and have some beer, sort of made it all better. He said that he used to work in television and whenever he and his crew would have a hard day trying to film something, they would tell each other, "Sooner or later, it will be evening." That became sort of a touchstone for me, when things got physically difficult, however, whenever I started to miss my family, which happened fairly often, I just had to tell myself, "Sooner or later it will be May 20."
And now it is.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
I'm Baaack
Lately it occurs to me,
What a long, strange trip it's been.
-The Grateful Dead, Truckin'
Where to start.
That's really a tough question. The past forty days have been an odyssey indeed. I have been sharing pretty much only a few pictures and whatever little comment I could feasibly type with my thumbs, but there was so much, so many people, places and things, not to mention the rather peculiar and oftentimes difficult journey of the heart and mind.
I'm going to start with the fact that my clothes fit me a little better right now than when I left. I know, this is kind of a "well duh" sort of an observation, but it bears mentioning that this journey had a profoundly difficult physical component. It started to sink in on the bus ride from Pamplona to Saint Jean Pied de Port. We crossed the Pyrenees, and saw what we were going to be up against, and we knew we were not up for it. We looked at the elevations, we looked at what our eyes told us, we felt our too heavy packs and our too soft bodies, we were jet-lagged and car sick and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.
That seems like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It's difficult to sit here now and recognize the people that were convinced they needed a taxi, but that's after almost 500 miles, several mountain crossings, weeks of walking day in and day out and dropping about 20 pounds of softness.
Coming face to face with your physical limitations is actually a profoundly spiritual exercise, which I suppose is why there is at least a thread of ascetic practice in almost all religions. Encountering the place where your body just says, "no, I don't think I can do this," and then having your will and your spirit (and undoubtedly the grace of God) go ahead and do it anyway, sort of sets a tone.
Even though we chickened out of the via Napolean and took the via Valcarlos, we didn't really take the easy way, we just took the way that was a little safer if our bodies over-ruled our mind and spirit and decided to be super stubborn by having a heart attack or bad cramps or heat stroke or dehydration or some other corporeal nonsense. As it turns out we also took the way that didn't involve snow and 80 kph wind, so, you know, good stuff. We still had to slog our way up some pretty nasty hills, and we still had to confront the daunting truth that this was what we were going to do, all day, every day for over a month.
The first couple of days were particularly troubling for me. I was perhaps more out of shape than I expected, my pack was a bit heavier than was probably prudent, and most of all, since moving to Maryland, I have become rather less familiar with things called hills, let alone mountains. The climbs of the early stages were a bit of a struggle. I would walk about 15 meters or so and have to catch my breath. People would come by and say, "you need to keep moving!" in English, Spanish, German and French. I would say, "my lungs beg to differ." I knew they were right, I knew that every time I stopped I was losing momentum and worse yet, making no forward progress.
I did hope and actually trust that the climbs were going to get easier, or at least less torturous, but I was wondering when, exactly, that was going to take place. About half way up one of the mountains I stopped and thought to myself if was actually going to be able to do this.
And that's where the spiritual stuff started. I realized that I have never really done much of anything physically impressive, not really. Despite being 6' 4" and having a pretty good frame, I never played organized sports. My "Al Bundy" moment was one time in Seminary I scored six touchdowns during a game of flag football, not exactly climbing K-2. But here, on the Camino, I had a chance to really push myself, to do something that would sort of make people say, "Wow, 800 km?" that's a long way. Right about then a little old woman with a small backpack chirped past me and said, "Buen Camino," and I realized that if I didn't carry this pack, if I didn't do the whole thing, there really wasn't much to it. If I "bailed and mailed," which means shipping extra weight to Santiago via the mail, or if I simply threw stuff away, which a lot of people do, or if I just sort of tried to avoid the struggle of the climbs by taking a bus around the really difficult parts, I really wasn't going to make this the physical challenge I really needed it to be.
See, that's the thing, I think I was trying to impress someone, I don't know who. The Camino is not an Everest situation, it's not a one of a kind physical accomplishment. The Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail will put you to more of a test, and you will probably not be routinely passed by tour buses full of tourists with little daypacks, but the Camino will test your body, it will test your resolve and it will force you to deal with your own soul. The heaviness of my pack, and the nagging knowledge of those few things I probably could have done without became a metaphor for those things that you may not exactly need, but that you do need to carry.
So much of the "self-help" spirituality encourages you to try and free yourself of burdens and entanglements and strive for this sort of free and clear existence. But that is a terrible and impossible idea. Life is about weight, relationships are messy and tangled, but if you want to be a part of the good, you must sometimes carry the bad.
I am glad that I left some of my excess padding on those hills, but I am equally glad that I came home with all the things, necessary and otherwise, that I took with me. Not because they were ultimately useful, but because I learned to carry them.
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