Ash Wednesday

Today I wrestled with what this season of Lent means for me. I was reading some of Thomas Merton's thoughts on lent in his journals (A Year With Thomas Merton) a day or two ago. He wrote this: 

"Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dies, itself remains alone." So we cast off the flesh, not out of contempt, but in order to heal the flesh in the mercy of penance and restore it to the Spirit to which it belongs. And all creation waits in anguish for our victory and our bodies' glory.

(Feb 17, 1953)

Merton is one of my heroes, as anyone who has spent much time with me in the last couple of years would know! And I think his words here are right on. But I don't know if this is the time in my life to enter into Lent with the intention of denying the body, of aiming to part with attachments to people and things. I trust that this is eventually where I will be, but not yet (this is emphatically not the sort of self-denial that leads to withdrawal and leaving the world behind, but the type that ultimately leads to a fuller enjoyment of life, a wider embrace of the world and a deeper capacity to love). In the spirit of what I wrote in the first post, before I get into self-denial I must have a more well crafted self to deny! To me that would include a career, love, a few more tangible accomplishments under my belt, etc. What I have in mind is what Joseph Campbell called fulfilling your hero's journey. He had this to say (Italics mine):

One young lady came up to me, and she said, very seriously, "Oh, Mr. Campbell, you just don't know about the modern generation. We go directly from infancy to wisdom."

I said, "That is great. All you've missed is life."

So, I say the way to find your myth is to find your zeal, to find your support, and to know what stage of life you're in. The problems of youth are not the problems of age. Don't try to live your life too soon. By listening too much to gurus, you try to jump over the whole darn thing and back off and become wise before you've experience that in relation to which there is some point in being wise. This thing, wisdom, has to come gradually.

There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path…

What is is we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. 

-Pathways to Bliss

My prayer this morning was to work out what this Lent ought to mean for me, and to own and embrace that it's not going to mean for me what it meant for our beloved Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, no matter how much I admire him and have been nourished and shaped by his life and thought (After all, even he had his wild years; he fathered an illegitimate child by the time he was my age. Looks like I have some catching up to do... kidding). So I was encouraged when afterwards, I read this in Richard Rohr's Ash Wednesday meditation in his book for Lent (italics his):

"It seems that we need beginnings, or everything eventually devolves and declines into unnecessary and sad endings. You were made for so much more! So today you must pray for the desire to desire! Even if you do not feel it yet, ask for new and even unknown desires. For you will eventually get what you really desire!

…You are the desiring of God. God desires through you and longs for Life and Love through you and in you. Allow it, speak it, and you will find your place in the universe of things… Make your desires good and far-reaching on this Ash Wednesday of new beginnings. You could not have such desires if God had not already desired them first - in you and for you and as you!" 

-Wondrous Encounters

So this Lent it's my hope and prayer that I step more fully into myself, to open up to new things, to love, to risk, to mystery, to stepping out away from what's safe, comfortable, routine, and out into the precipice, knowing that I might fall flat on my face but embracing it all as part of the dance. (The image here is Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, taking that leap of faith off the ledge into thin air on the way to the Grail)

I desire to die to the old self that gives too much permission to fear and laziness (all those "what if?" questions) so that when Easter rolls around, I may truly be a new creation. 

Or, maybe in other words, as Sean Witty and the First Baptist Church in Newton have been saying it lately, I desire to work out "What does love require of me?" Love of God, love of others, absolutely, but also love of myself.  I don't see any division in these three. 


What does this mean more concretely? Some of that I won't share now but one thing I've chosen to do is write a meaningful, expressive post for this blog every week. I want to be a better writer, so this is me making that happen. I'm also going to try to get a psychology internship at Harvard or another top school in the Boston area this summer to prepare for doctoral studies in psychology post-Berklee. 

"Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now."

-Sister Joan Chittister, OSB 

Tony Jones on "A Better Atonement: Union With God"

Terrific post by Tony Jones. Check it out

Quotable:

"Every Wednesday during Lent, I’m going to explore an alternative to the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement, the dominant theory of the atonement in my part of the (theological and geographical) world.

...In other words, God’s love is not a characteristic of God. You know, how Westerners often say things like, “Sure, God is loving, but his love is balanced with his justice.” Or, “Without justice, love is not possible.”

These statements talk of God’s love as an attribute of God. But, for Eastern Christians,God’s very nature is love. It’s not an aspect of God’s being, it is God’s being.

Thus, the Trinity is central to the Orthodox view of the atonement, because the Trinity is an eternal, loving union of three divine persons. And it is into that union that God invites us."

Valentine's Day Reflection from Peter Rollins

Really beautiful. Check it out

Quotable:

"This is what love does. It does not make itself visible but rather makes others visible to us. Love does not exist but calls others into existence: for to exist means to stand forth from the background, to be brought into the foreground. Love does not stand forth but brings others forth. When we love our beloved is brought out of the vast, undulating sea of others. Just as the Torah speaks of God calling forth beings from the formless ferment of being so love calls our beloved from the endless ocean of undifferentiated objects.

In this way love is not proud and arrogant. She does not say, “I am sublime, I am beautiful, I am glorious”. Love humbly points to another and whispers, “they are sublime, they are beautiful, they are glorious.” She does not tell us that they are perfect despite their weakness and frailty, but that they are perfect in the very midst of their weakness and frailty."

Another blog!... Why?!

Hi, I'm John. I hope to express here my own inner world: struggles, reflections, questions, desires, dreams, creations, etc. as well as to highlight and promote causes, ideas, movements, etc. that I think worth passing along. 

Why another blog? 

There's really no good reason to read this blog, there are plenty of others written by people with more wisdom, knowledge, experience and perspective than I've got. This is mainly for me. If you're my mom or dad, you'll probably read it (at least I hope so!). I'm working out my place in the world, and I think this blog will help me in that process of self-discovery. I make no pretense of having something novel to bring to the table, but instead simply offer authenticity as I endeavor to wrestle with God (Israel), or in other words, work out my place and identity like Jacob in Genesis. 

Richard Rohr, whom I had the tremendous privilege and pleasure of getting to meet two weeks ago back home in Connecticut, had a book published last year called Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. It spoke to me very deeply. I'm spiritually inclined, to say the least (though at any given moment I'm probably not being all that spiritually-minded, as in truly present and awake, despite my intentions!), and my heroes are people like Jesus, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Mother Theresa, the Buddha, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, Martin Luther King Jr. and Saint Francis. I've been deeply inspired and nourished by the lives - actions, words and solitude - of men and women such as these. They all demonstrated living in the second half of life (a Jungian term) at its fullest. They were living in the big picture, the unified field. They had heard to the call to work out what they were here for and they responded to it with their lives. This is where I want to be one day, beyond the self-referential, ego-centric way of seeing that relates all experience, all knowledge, all truth back to me/my ego. However, thanks largely to Richard Rohr's work, I realize that I'm not all the way there yet; in order to move into the second half of life, you must do the first half well. Before you can give yourself away, you must have a self to give! So, at 23 years old and realizing I have a good deal more work to do in discovering who I am, I think keeping an online presence (regardless of how many or few pay attention!) will be helpful. Helpful in synthesizing my interests and passions and questions into my own voice in writing (and other forms of creative expression) and sharing it with whoever is interested. 

When I had the chance to ask Richard a question, I put it this way: "I feel like I have one foot in the first of half life and one foot in the second." I have been blessed enough to have had experiences of grace, of God, where the veil is very thin, when you can see the hidden wholeness in all things and feel the conviction deep in your bones that we are all blessed, sacred, loved and beautiful as we are, that the only thing left to do is to wake up to it and stay awake to it moment by moment. These sorts of experience jerk you clean out of any narrow, black and white, win/lose, us vs. them ways of seeing reality. These are tastes of the second half. But the fact remains that I still have first-half of life work to do, and I'm at peace with that. More than that, I'm excited about the journey that lies ahead. 

I have my uncle Ron Suskind to thank for directly encouraging me to get started with this. Certainly someone who knows a thing or two about finding your voice and expressing it!

What you can expect to see here: thoughts on theology, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, music (both others' and my own), culture, environmental concerns, perhaps some forays into politics here or there, as well as more personal reflections on my life - where I am, have been, am headed, etc. 

Thinkers/texts I'm most interested in right now, and who are likely to influence what is to come here: Joseph Campbell, Richard Rohr, Thich Nhaht Hanh, Thomas Merton, Carl Jung, the book of Genesis (particularly the story of Jacob)