Ilia Delio on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the “New Elijah”

One of the books I’m currently reading is theologian Ilia Delio’s The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love. I’m reading this book ahead of a talk Delio is scheduled to give at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis on Friday, September 29.

As both a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and a theologian, Ilia Delio specializes in the area of science and religion, with a particular interest in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the meaning and impact of these on theology.

As well as being the author of numerous books, including Christ in Evolution and Making All Things New: Catholicity in an Evolving Universe, Delio is also the founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online educational resource for promoting the vision of French priest, scientist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin and the integration of science and religion.

Delio’s 2013 book, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love, seeks to illuminate the “everywhere active, all powerful, all intelligent Love that guides and directs our new awareness of inter-relatedness and inter-being.” Writes Delio:

We all have a part to play in this unfolding Love; we are wholes within wholes; persons within persons; religions within religions. We are one body and we seek one mind and heart so that the whole may become more whole, more personal and unified in love. This is our Christian vocation, to live in the Christ who is rising up from the ashes of death to become for us the God of the future.

In the following excerpt from the introduction of The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Delio highlights the significance of scientist and mystic Teilhard de Chardin on our collective understanding of the “unfolding Love” that is all around us and within which we have our “wholeness of being.”

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Stories create meaningful lives; they provide cohesiveness and direction. For centuries Christianity told a grand narrative of God, creation, and humanity that held such power and conviction that virtually all systems were based on it. We believed everything in the Bible to be historically true. Now, modern biblical scholarship discloses that stories of the Old and New Testaments were prayerfully created for the purpose of community, rather than as historical narratives. Yet, the stories of the Bible are deeply embedded in our religious consciousness and have provided images and symbols to define our relationship with God. In the Middle Ages theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure elaborated a system of Christian thought based on the Bible, the church fathers, medieval cosmology, and philosophy. Core Christian doctrine was formed against the backdrop of the concentric, static, and hierarchical Ptolemaic universe. To this day all our core doctrines are fitted to this universe even though, as early as the sixteenth century, modern science began to describe a new universe that departed from the static, Ptolemaic one. The inability to engage a new religious story, however, has confirmed us to the old one. The impasse we find ourselves in is centuries old, and until we can purity our memory we are heading down a dangerous path.

The church has had trouble embracing the prophets of a new age, especially those announcing new stories and new ways to think about God and God’s saving plan in Christ. In the mid-twentieth century a voice cried out in the desert declaring that a new (and exciting) story had arisen, although no one of institutional rank listened to him. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit scientist and one of the most profound spiritual writers of the twentieth century. A paleontologist by training and a specialist in the Eocene Period (fifty-six to thirty-four million years ago), he was engaged in some of the most significant evolutionary discoveries of human origins. As he searched for artifacts to piece together the human story, he spent long periods of time in the desert (mostly in China), which enabled him to reflect deeply on his Christian faith and the significance of his faith in view of evolution. Like the desert fathers of old, Teilhard was removed from the noise of modern life and pondered deeply the meaning of Christianity in an age of evolution. His unique blend of science, Jesuit spirituality, and profound spiritual-mystical insight produced a body of writings that has yet to be explored fully. He grasped and sought to articulate the import of evolution not only for science but for modern culture. He wrote without the rigor of academic theology, that is, without a particular method of theology or a defined philosophical framework. His writings, therefore, are not systematically organized and have not attracted the serious scholarly attention they deserve. Rather, his work has been interpreted largely as poetic and spiritual. He was censored by Rome because he rejected original sin in light of evolution; as a result he was prohibited from publishing his writings during his lifetime. Thus he never benefited from peer review. Despite refinement of his ideas, his insights are remarkable and prophetic. Teilhard is the new Elijah, calling forth a new path of salvation in the twenty-first century.

Evolution is a controversial word. . . . While scientific materialists maintain that evolution is self-explanatory and self-sufficient to address life’s deepest questions, religious fundamentalists fear that evolution opposes the work of God by contradicting scripture and crushing the dignity of the human person. Yet, evolution kindles the dawn of post-modernity because it marks the break from a closed, static world of law and order to an open world of change and play. Evolution is less a mechanism than a process – a constellation of law, chance, spontaneity, and deep time. Evolution tells us that nature is not a closed, causal system of events but a complex series of fluid, dynamic, interlocking, and communicative relationships. From a scientific perspective evolution provides a framework for understanding nature’s intricate mechanisms. Although I am not using evolution in a scientific manner, I am using the concept as a paradigm based on modern science to understand the meaning and purpose of Christian life today. In this respect I follow the path of Teilhard de Chardin but widen his thought in dialogue with twentieth-century thinkers. In my view, evolution is the story, the meta-narrative of our age. It is not only a scientific explanation for physical reality; it is, rather, the overarching description of reality, the cosmological framework for all contemporary thought.

. . . Teilhard spoke of evolution as the emergence of consciousness and complexity. As entities become more complex in nature, consciousness increases or develops. I understand consciousness as the mindfulness or awareness that underscores, in some way, evolution’s direction. The question of consciousness belongs to philosophy, and Teilhard himself sought to articulate a new philosophy based on the energy of love. . . . and thus a radical shift from the world of being as substance to a world of love-energy and consciousness.

. . . Love is the fundamental energy of evolution. . . . Love is a consciousness of belonging to another, of being part of a whole. To love is to be on the way toward integral wholeness, to live with an openess of mind and heart, to encounter the other – not as stranger – but as another part of oneself. When we enter into the heart of love, that integral wholeness of love that is God, we enter into the field of relatedness and come to see that we are wholes within wholes. This is the consciousness we need today, an integral wholeness of love that is open to new life; a being-at-home in love that can evolve. By centering itself on the fundamental energy of love, Christianity (and all religions) can find new meaning and purpose by allowing modern science to challenge its stories and, at the same time, to offer the world of scientific reductionism a creative vision for the world. To do so, we need to pull back, pray, and reflect in our inner worlds who and what we want to be in our outer worlds.

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not be at all,” Karl Rahner remarked. We need to discover the inner desert of the heart, that “still point” of love within us that empowers us to do new things. This center of love is God, the inner power who seeks to evolve, to become more conscious and unified. . . . Our challenge today is to trust the power of love at the heart of life, to let ourselves be seized by love, to create and invent ways for love to evolve into a global wholeness of unity, compassion, justice, and peace-making. As a process of evolution, the universe is incomplete, and we humans are incomplete. We can change, grow, and become something new. We have the power to do so, but do we have the will? We need a religious imagination that ignites our energies to move beyond mediocrity and fear, one that anticipates a new future of planet life.

Our failure to be enkindled is because our image of God is old. Evolution discloses a new God, an immanent-transcendent fullness of love that inspires us to create anew, a new earth with a new God rising from within. The Gospels tell us of God’s faithful presence. We are invited to trust, surrender, and believe that this world can be different, that justice and forgiveness are possible for the earth community. God’s love is ever new, always with us yet ever before us. To live in this love is to be committed to the whole, to live in the whole, to think the whole, to love the whole, to be “turned to the whole.” Evolution is “whole-making” in action, the rise of consciousness that realizes self-separateness is an illusion.

– Ilia Delio
Excerpted from The Unbearable Wholeness of Being:
God, Evolution, and the Power of Love
Orbis Books, 2013
pp. xv-xvii, xxi, xxv-xxvi

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Ilia Delio
• “The Most Authentic Statement of Created Life”
• Our Bodies Are Part of the Cosmos
• The Holy Spirit: Giver of Knowledge, Light, Inspiration, and Guidance
• Surrender Yourself
• A Kind of Dancing Divinity
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Judy Cannato
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Beatrice Bruteau
• Biophilia, the God Pan, and a Baboon Named Scott
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence (Part I)
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence (Part II)
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence (Part III)
• Remembering Cletus Wessels, O.P. (1930-2009)
• Remembering and Honoring Dorothy Olinger
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe

You Are My Goal, Beloved One

The following is an adaptation of Lesson 287 of A Course in Miracles – Volume II: Workbook for Students.

The original text uses the metaphor of father for the Divine Presence. I use the metaphor of lover as expressed in the phrase “Beloved One.” As with the previous adaptations I’ve shared (see here and here), if this one resonates with you, feel free to make it even more meaningful by using your preferred images and words: “God,” “Allah,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Holy One,” “Mother.” I trust that they all serve as different pathways leading up the same holy mountain or, to use another metaphor, different gateways leading inwards to our center, the deepest part of which we all share. For as Henri Nouwen so beautifully reminds us: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”

Where would I go but into Your presence, my Beloved One? What could be a substitute for the peace You bring? What gift could I prefer before the peace of the Beloved One? What treasure would I seek and find and keep that can compare with my true Identity? And would I rather live with fear than love?

You are my goal, my Beloved One. What but You could I desire to have? What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of illusions and futile substitutions for the truth of Your Love? You are my only goal. I would be as You created me. What way but this could I expect to recognize my Self and be at one with the holy core of my true Identity.

Yes, You are my goal, Beloved One. Only You.

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I appreciate Marianne Williamson’s thoughts on Lesson 287, which she recently shared as part of her daily “Mornings with Marianne.”

There is a part in the Course in Miracles where it says that the most passionate love you have ever felt on this earth is but a fraction of the passion you feel for God. [This is because] there is a longing, a yearning for that from whence we came, and that from whence we came is our identity. Why? Because an idea does not leave its source and each one of us is an idea in the mind of God.

The first half of the Workbook is all about dismantling the thought system based on fear, while the second half is training us to substitute it with a different thought system, one based on love. In doing so, we are constantly affirming the holy perception, the true perception. And there is nothing more truer or more holy than our oneness with God.

The Course in Miracles says we achieve so little because our minds are undisciplined. We have goals that are all over the place, including the goal of holding onto our pain. But our pain is the ego’s peak experience. [We must strive instead] for singleness of intention – “You are my goal, my [Beloved One]. Only You.”

Say to yourself: My goal is to remember God. And in doing that I remember myself. Therein lies my peace. And from this simple place you dwell within the complexity of the world, but with much greater power and in far more peace.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• The Soul’s Beloved
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• Be Just In My Heart
• Beloved and Antlered
• “Here I Am”
• Sometimes I Wonder . . .
• Vessels of the Holy
• No Altar More Sacred
• To Be Held and to Hold
• An Erotic Encounter with the Divine
• Spirituality and the Gay Experience
• The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace

Artwork: “Soulmates – Essence of Love” by Salem Beiruti.

Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One

The following is an adaptation of Lesson 245 of A Course in Miracles – Volume II: Workbook for Students.

The original text uses the metaphor of father for the Divine Presence. I use the metaphor of lover as expressed in the phrase “Beloved One.” As with the previous adaptation I shared, if this one resonates with you, feel free to make it even more meaningful by using your preferred images and words: “God,” “Allah,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Holy One,” “Mother.” I trust that they all serve as different pathways leading up the same holy mountain or, to use another metaphor, different gateways leading inwards to our center, the deepest part of which we all share. For as Henri Nouwen so beautifully reminds us: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”

Your peace is with me, Beloved One. I am safe.

Your peace surrounds me, Beloved One. Yes, wherever I go, it is there with me.

Your peace sheds its light on everyone I meet. I bring it to the desolate and lonely and afraid. I give Your peace to those who suffer pain or grieve for loss or feel bereft of hope and happiness. Guide them to me, Beloved One. Let me bring Your peace with me.

And so we journey on. With You beside me I radiate to all the world, through my actions of body, speech and mind, Your transforming peace, the Voice of Love.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• The Soul’s Beloved
• Be Just In My Heart
• Beloved and Antlered
• “Here I Am”
• Sometimes I Wonder . . .
• Vessels of the Holy
• No Altar More Sacred
• To Be Held and to Hold
• An Erotic Encounter with the Divine
• Spirituality and the Gay Experience
• The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
• Prayer of the Week – July 6, 2010
• Clarity and Hope
• Cultivating Stillness
• Cultivating Peace
• Andrew Harvey on Radical, Divine Passion in Action
• Ahmad Joudeh: Dancing for Peace
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism

Images: Calvin Royal III.

Be in My Mind, Beloved One

The following is an adaptation of Lessons 232 and 233 of A Course in Miracles – Volume II: Workbook for Students.

The original texts used the metaphor of father for the Divine Presence. I use the metaphor of lover as expressed in the phrase “Beloved One.” If this prayer/reflection resonates with you, feel free to make it even more meaningful by using your preferred images and words: “God,” “Allah,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Holy One,” “Mother.” I trust that they all serve as different pathways leading up the same holy mountain or, to use another metaphor, different gateways leading inwards to our center, the deepest part of which we all share. For as Henri Nouwen so beautifully reminds us: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”

Be in my mind, Beloved One, when I wake, and shine on me throughout the day today. Let every minute be a time in which I dwell in You. And let me not forget my hourly thanksgiving that You have remained with me and will always be there to hear my call and answer me.

Beloved One, I give You all my thoughts today and ask that You give me Yours. I give You all my actions as well, that I may do Your will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained and wasting time with illusions. Be my guide today. May I be open to Your love, the tenderness of which I cannot fully comprehend but which is Your perfect gift to me.

As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of You and of Your love, and let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of Your care, and happily aware that I am Your Beloved One.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Be Just In My Heart
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• The Soul’s Beloved
• Beloved and Antlered
• Sometimes I Wonder . . .
• Vessels of the Holy
• No Altar More Sacred
• To Be Held and to Hold
• An Erotic Encounter with the Divine
• Spirituality and the Gay Experience
• The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace

Image: Paulo Pascoal (photographed by Francisco Martins).

"More Lovely Than the Dawn"

God as Divine Lover

A Sermon by Michael J. Bayly

Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ
August 30, 2009

I had the honor of delivering the “message” this morning at Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ. As regular readers will recognize, in writing this sermon I borrowed extensively from two previous Wild Reed posts: Song of Songs: The Bible’s Gay Love Poem and Sometimes I Wonder. I also wrote the “Acknowledging Our Humaness” reading (which the community says together) before the gospel reading, which I always find a beautiful and meaningful experience.

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First Reading: Song of Songs 2: 8-13

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountain, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.


Contemporary Reading: Jean Houston (from her book The Search for the Beloved)

Eros has a mission with the soul. Without Eros, the soul cannot grow; the psyche remains infantile. Eros gives psyche its yearning, its impetus, its desire for the fullness of life. The lure of Eros may not necessarily be sexual, but it is often a lure of “muchness,” a lure into deep gestating patterns of reality where you see the great forms of things, the Patterns that Connect. This lure call you to the places of re-creation in the soul where you are seeded, spiced, excited, stimulated, evoked into becoming. You become much, much more than you were, and you create much, much more than you could have before. Eros connects the personal to something beyond, and brings the beyond into personal experience. . . . Without Eros in some form, creativity suffocates; the soul does not grow. . . . Creativity is grounded in the longing for the beloved, the extended archetype of the self within the soul.


Acknowledging Our Humaness: Lover God, we give thanks and praise for the gifts, responsibilities, and challenges of embodiment. Through this wondrous experience you call us to places of re-creation within and among us. Sometimes we hesitate in journeying to such places and experiencing the fullness of life they offer. Instead, we prefer the comfort and safety of stagnation. Yet still you call us into becoming all we can be as embodied, relational individuals and communities. We thank you for this call, Beloved One, and seek your guidance and strength as we strive to lovingly respond to it.


Gospel Reading: Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written:

This people honors me with their lips,
But their hearts are far from me;
In vain do they worship me,
Teaching human precepts as doctrines.

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that be going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

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Homily: “More Lovely Than the Dawn”: God as Divine Lover

During my college years in Australia in the mid-1980s, there was a popular song called “You I Know.” Written by Neil Finn and performed by Jenny Morris, this particular song includes the following lyrics:

Sometimes I wonder if I know myself
as well as I know you.
But it’s you I know
and no one else will do.
Yes, it’s you I know,
with all you put me through.
When I was drifting down,
you pulled me up again.
And it’s you I know,
you’ll love me to the end.

I’ve been very much aware of this song as it features on a Jenny Morris greatest hits CD that’s currently serving as my workout music. And when I hear “You I Know” I not only hear the words of a love song between two people, but also a spiritual ode, a psalm, if you like – one that could be sung by any one of us to our own deep sacred core, that presence within that Viktor Frankl calls the “partner of [our] most intimate soliloquies.”

There’s a sense of trust and joy in the awareness and embracing of this sacred presence. And as a gay man this is something I don’t find surprising in the least. After all, gay people by nature possess, I believe, a unique aptitude for ecstatic, joyful approaches to spirituality. Thus I find it both natural and helpful to image God, that sacred partner of my most intimate soliloquies, as a lover – an enthusiastic lover who yearns for me to feel his loving touch, his transforming embrace. In the language of the mystics, such an ecstatic image serves as the “Beloved of the soul” – and as a potential mirror image of God, the Divine Lover.

Some may find such an image shocking. But it’s really not that outlandish. After all, throughout Christian history there have always been mystics and saints who have embodied highly erotic experiences of the sacred.

We heard in our contemporary reading Jean Houston’s contention that the source of such erotic experiences, Eros, has a “mission with the soul.” And that “without Eros in some form, creativity suffocates; [and] the soul does not grow.” This is because Eros gives us the “desire for the fullness of life” – something our brother Jesus talked about and yearns for us to embody.

But what exactly is Eros?

For theologian Diarmuid Ó Murchú, Eros is the foundational energy or force that brings everything in creation into being. In their book Holy Eros, James and Evelyn Whitehead describe Eros as the “mysterious Presence at the heart of the world.” It’s a presence that’s known “through and beyond sexual arousal,” and the “vital energy” of this presence “courses through the world, enlivening and healing hearts.” The Whiteheads note that this presence “comes as gift, with a power that creates, sustains, reconciles, and heals. It is a presence that engages us personally, leading humanity beyond narrow self-interest into fuller participation in life.” In short, Eros is a presence that defies simple definition, but as theologian Michael Himes reminds us, the “least inadequate” way we have to describe it is as radical love.

You may recall that Jean Houston refers to the “lure of Eros,” which is another way of talking about the call of radical love to places within our lives and relationships that evoke and facilitate transformation – both personal and communal.

For some of our spiritual ancestors, this “lure of Eros” was indeed sexual. And in the case of St. John of the Cross, it was homosexual. Take for instance John’s beautiful poem, “On a Dark Night.” In setting this poem to music in 1994, singer/songwriter Loreena McKennitt observed that it is “an exquisite, richly metaphoric love poem between [John] and his god. It could pass as a love poem between any two, at any time.”

Of course as a gay man, the thing that appeals to me most about John’s poem is that it depicts his lover as another man.

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
– oh, happy chance! –
I went forth without being observed

. . . Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping,
and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand
He caressed my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

Toby Johnson writes that the allegorical explanation of John’s beautiful “On a Dark Night” is that it is about the stage of depression in the religious life, the so-called ‘dark night of the soul.’ Yet he is adamant that there is nothing in the poem about depression or spiritual suffering. Rather, it’s about sexual passion. Perhaps the lover and beloved represent the soul and Christ, says Johnson, but it’s still a homoerotic image.

Believe it or not, the Bible too has its share of homoerotic imagery. There’s the “beloved disciple” resting his head upon the breast of Jesus; there’s David and Jonathan; and there’s the Song of Songs – a book from the Hebrew scriptures that biblical scholar Paul Johnson describes as the “Bible’s gay love poem.” We heard as our first reading this morning an excerpt from Song of Songs, which is sometimes erroneously called the Song of Solomon.

Sadly, although there are male homoerotic texts, to be unearthed, there seem to be no female ones. There may have been a time when the Hebrews were not totally homophobic, but they appear to have always been totally patriarchal and thus sexist. As a result, female encounters of the divine mediated and expressed through female perspectives and experiences – including lesbian perspectives and experiences – are not part of the Hebrew tradition. This is indeed tragic.

Of course, some are outraged by the suggestion that anything in the Bible may actually have been inspired by God’s transforming presence within the loving and sexual relationship between two men. The attempts to obscure this reality are just another example of people’s fear not only of homosexuality but also of homoeroticism in human life – including the spiritual life.

But isn’t the idea of homoeroticism and, by extension, homosexual relations condemned by Jesus as “fornication”? No. The exact meaning of the word that’s translated as “fornication” is still unclear. What we can say is that it’s basically concerned with exploitive sexual relations, such as prostitution. And as Jeremiah Bartram points out in his commentary on today’s gospel reading, the “sexual evils that [Jesus] includes in his catalogue of perversity can apply equally to heterosexuals or to gays: fornication, adultery, and licentiousness. These three vices are orientation-neutral.”

I’d like to conclude by saying that in any discussion of the erotic in one’s spiritual life it’s important to remember that the ultimate goal is union with the Divine. I may visualize a handsome man when thinking of my “Beloved,” but I know full well that if I stay focused solely on the physical than that becomes problematic, spiritually. Any image of the “Beloved of the Soul” should serve as a focal point, an icon, if you will; and, like all icons, its purpose is to attract us so as to direct and encourage us ever further into the mystery that is Divine Love. Staying forever at the surface level doesn’t facilitate that wondrous transformation spoken about by St. John of the Cross, as well as by many other mystics across time, cultures, and religions.

I guess it’s like one’s relationship with one’s earthly beloved – one’s husband or wife or partner. For the record, I’m not in a relationship. But if I were I would like to think that as the years go by and both my beloved and I age, our love will have deepened to the point where we wouldn’t be seeking to satisfy our physical needs with others whose looks have yet to fade. We would have gone beyond surface things, while still being open to acknowledging and appreciating them.

Catholic author John McNeill once wrote: “Gay people constantly are in a process of discernment on how to integrate their growth in intimacy with God with their search to live out human intimacy in its fullness.”

How true! And how exhausting this process can be. I mean, it really is never-ending, isn’t it? And not just for gay people, of course, but for everyone. Still, it is more of a challenge for gay folks, I believe, as within so many secular and ecclesial institutions, homo-negativity and homophobia remain rife. Accordingly, our experiences of God in our lives and relationships are frequently dismissed and maligned. We’re told to distrust and view as life-denying our discernment of God’s call to seek and experience fullness of life – a fullness that for most of us involves seeking and building relationships that are lovingly and sexually expressed.

Yet Matthew Fox reminds us that as gay people we have a “keen awareness that . . . a healthy spiritual life must be holistic; it cannot be based on a denial and rejection of the necessary sexual component in our search for intimacy with God.”

For many people – past and present, male and female, gay and straight – this journey toward intimacy with God, and by extension with self and others, has been reflected through and enhanced by the image of God as Divine Lover.

Yes, God the Divine Lover: the constant companion, the Beloved; always present deep within and all around us – guiding, accompanying, supporting, loving.

. . . Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

May each one of us know the touch and embrace of the Beloved, of God our Divine Lover. Amen.

Michael J. Bayly
Spirit of the Lakes United Church of Christ
August 30, 2009

For other homilies I’ve delivered, see the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany
Praying for George W. Bush
On the Road with Punk Rockers and Homeless Mothers
Something We Dare Call Hope
Soul Deep
Disarming the Weapons Within
The Harvest Within the Heart
Somewhere in Between
Dispatches from the Periphery

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
God is Love
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Getting It Right
Making Love, Giving Life
Relationship: The Crucial Factor in Sexual Morality
The Sacrament of . . . Relationships
Dew[y]-Kissed
Jesus and the Centurion (Part 1)
Jesus and the Centurion (Part 2)
Compassion, Christian Community, and Homosexuality
Love is Love
And Love is Lord of All
Charis
Cherish
Lover of Us All
Just Now and Then
One Fearless Kiss
The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
The Gifts of Homosexuality
The Challenge to Become Ourselves

"That Utterly Profound 'In-Loveness'"

A selection of finalists for the 2008 Archibald Prize is currently on display in Port Macquarie. Included is the 2008 winner of the prestigious Archibald Prize, Del Kathryn Barton’s “You Are What is Most Beautiful About Me: A Self Portrait with Kell and Arella.”

About her winning work, Barton says:

This painting celebrates the love I have for my two children and how my relationship with them has radically informed and indeed transformed my understanding of who I am. The title of the work – you are what is most beautiful about me – alludes to that utterly profound ‘in-loveness’ that all mothers have for their children. Both my children have taken my world by storm and very little compares to the devotion I feel for them both. The intensity of this emotion is not something that I could have prepared myself for. The alchemy of life offered forth from my inhabitable woman’s body is perhaps the greatest gift of my life.

I think Barton’s powerful words also describe God’s love for humanity. The Christian tradition, after all, tells us that we are “children of God.” Unlike some religious folks, I have no problem imaging God as “mother.” Indeed, I resonate with the words attributed to Pope John Paul I: “God is both father and mother – but more mother than father.”

I am also mindful of the Roman Catholic understanding of church as “Mother Church.” Yet this seems to me to be a very different kind of mother than that described so beautifully by Del Kathryn Barton. “Mother Church” has always seemed to me to be insecure, smothering, and overly controlling – qualities more reflective, I’d say, of the mothering experienced by many of the men in charge of the church, than of other more healthy expressions and experiences of mothering.*

I think one hallmark of good psychological and spiritual health is an openness to growth and change. (I recall how the Desert Fathers and Mothers understood sin primarily as the refusal to grow!) Barton seems to me to be a very healthy individual and mother. I’d even go so far to say that I believe she has a truer sense and thus a more truthful articulation of what it means to be a mother than do the clerics of the Roman church. Her observation, for instance, of “that utterly profound ‘in-loveness’ that all mothers have for their children” is simply wonderful and beautiful.

It’s an “in-loveness” that, like any authentic love, opens all those involved to radical transformation. Thus Barton can say that “my relationship with [my children] has radically informed and indeed transformed my understanding of who I am.” Here again is another significant difference between a real mother’s awareness of what it means to be a mother, and the Church’s. We only need to observe the Church’s (lack of) understanding and treatment of its female and gay “children” to realize the profound lack of relationship it has with these groups and its utter unwillingness to have its self-understanding and teachings informed and transformed by them or by any healthy and respectful relationship with them.

It’s all very tragic and dysfunctional, wouldn’t you say?


* Such negative qualities represent the shadow side of feminine energy. Sadly, these qualities have been embodied for generations by some women, more often than not out of sheer frustration and despair at the oppression of patriarchy and the shadow side of masculine energy – conquest and domination. I don’t think it’s an over-generalization to say that many “mama’s boys” from these same generations became priests, and that many of these, in turn, perpetuated this unhealthy expression of mothering through their fixation on a warped understanding of “mother church.” It’s an understanding that, sadly, has been almost deified – and certainly codified into the church’s self-understanding.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Voices of Parental Authority and Wisdom
The Bishops’ “Guidelines” – A Parent’s Response
Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents
Grandma Knows Best
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 1)
Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part 2)

In the Garden of Spirituality: Michael Morwood

.

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

- Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on spirituality continues with an excerpt from Michael Morwood’s 1998 book, Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium.

_________________________________

We each have our images and thoughts about God and our relationship with God. Spirituality is simply the manner in which we allow these images and thoughts to direct the way we live. We can, for example, picture God as a cruel dictator. That belief would have an enormous impact on our relationship with God, our style of prayer and worship and self image.

We could, on the other hand, perceive God as incredibly loving and understand ourselves as richly blessed with the presence of God’s Spirit. Obviously, in the second example, our spirituality will be quite different from the first example. What we believe and image and the way this influences the way we live, relate, pray, and worship - this is our spirituality.

As Catholics, our spirituality has been shaped and packaged for us by centuries of experience, thought, and reflection. We inherited a Catholic worldview at an early age. We took this on board, unquestioningly in most cases, and tried to be faithful to it.

One of the problems being encountered today – and one we must face if our spirituality is to be real – is that much of our inherited spirituality was shaped by religious thought patterns and worldviews that are now questionable, if not irrelevant.

It is somewhat like trying to perform heart surgery in a modern hospital with only the knowledge of fifteenth-century medical science. It is not that anyone wants to scoff at the medical knowledge of earlier centuries. That would be unfair. Likewise with our religious worldview and our spirituality. The intent is not to belittle earlier thought patterns which sustained Christian living for centuries. The intent is rather to look at the basics of our religious beliefs in the light of today’s worldview which is vastly different from that which shaped Christian thought in its beginnings. What we find is good news: the Christian message blends beautifully with today’s worldview.

Christianity has always maintained that God is infinite, that God is everywhere, that God’s presence sustains everything that has existence. . . . God permeates all creation.

Let us pause and examine what this means for a spirituality.

It surely suggests that we must rid ourselves of notions that we have to buy or win God’s love or presence. God’s presence is an essential condition for existence. You cannot have “more” or “less” of it.

Every one of us is permeated with God’s presence. The pope does not have it any more than the truck driver or the nurse. The vital difference comes not from the reality but from the recognition and the naming of the reality, that is, naming and recognizing oneself as someone who gives flesh to, gives human form to, gives particular, unique, personal human expression to the reality we name God.

God comes to expression, comes to a particular life in ME. In me, God can speak, can move, can dance, can compose music or write poetry, can make love and create life, can laugh and can cry at the imperfection of it all.

The reality we name as “God,” mightier and more vast than 400 billion galaxies, permeates my existence as a human person. Certainly God is infinite and unknowable; but we look into our hearts and lives, and there is this same God bursting to life in us. Why do we keep looking elsewhere to find God? Why do we stay locked into a spirituality that looks for God in the heavens in preference to a spirituality that focuses on the God within and among us, urging and prompting us to claim our sacred identity - and to live it? Here is the arena of conversion and the heart of Jesus’ message to all of us who have ears to listen.

Our spirituality needs to articulate more clearly and more thoroughly this basic relationship between God and ourselves. It should emphasize both the reality of God’s presence with us, and our responsibility to allow that presence to emerge and be seen in the way we live. Our basic sin, if we are to talk about an “original sin,” is our blindness to this reality of who we are and the ways we block the emergence of the sacred within us. The story is not of a “fall” from a perfect state of consciousness and developed conscience; rather, it is the story of the slow emergence within human beings of the realization that the sacred is deep within each of us.

- Excerpted from Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium by Michael Morwood (Twenty-Third Publications, 1998, pp. 97-98).


Others highlighted in The Wild Reed’s “In the Garden of Spirituality” series include:
Zainab Salbi
Daniel Helminiak
Rod Cameron
Paul Collins
Joan Chittister
Toby Johnson
Joan Timmerman
Uta Ranke-Heinemanm
Caroline Jones
Ron Rolheiser
James C. Howell
Paul Coelho
Doris Lessing

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Reflecting on Inclusive Language

Three letters-to-the-editor were published in yesterday’s Star Tribune in relation to recent events at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. One of these letters has caused me to reflect on gender inclusive language and to recall the insights of theologian Elizabeth Johnson (right) on the use of feminine images of God.

But first, here are the letters from yesterday’s Star Tribune:


They kept the faith

My heartfelt support – emotional and spiritual – goes to the people of St. Stephen’s parish who have chosen to relocate their worship service (“The push for conformity shoves away parishioners,” March 2).

I know a number of people, myself included, who choose not to support the worship dictates of the men who call themselves our leaders. We have kept our faith, but we have lost our church.

Diocese spokesman Dennis McGrath states that “they had plenty of warnings to get their act together.” What a heavy-handed, thuggish way of putting it!

Apparently they did get their act together and found a place where they could celebrate their faith in a way that harmonizes with their values.

Susan Weyrauch
Eden Prairie


Whose gospel is it?

Let’s see if I got this right – among other things, the parishioners of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church thought they, mere mortals, could improve upon the teachings of our creator, our Lord Jesus Christ, and change the words to the prayer that Jesus himself taught us to pray (“Our Father and Mother, Who Art in Heaven”?)

Yikes! Who died and made them God?

Joe and Becky Eibenseiner
Sauk Center, MN


WWJD?

What would Jesus do? I doubt very much he would alienate devoted followers using tough-guy talk like Dennis McGrath did when he said, “They’ve had plenty of warning to get their act together.” This is the type of intolerant leadership that drives people away from the church.

For many people, congregations such as St. Stephen’s and St. Joan of Arc’s are their last stop before leaving the church for good. The basic tenets of the Catholic Church are faith, hope and charity, yet for these faithful, it gives no hope or charity.

Would Jesus put more emphasis on carrying out the message of his gospels or following the rubrics?

I think he’d be leading the disenfranchised parishioners out the front door of the church down the road to where faith, hope and charity have real meaning.

Joe Boller
Minneapolis

______________________

Joe and Becky Eibenseiner clearly oppose using feminine images when thinking and speaking about God. Furthermore, they base this opposition on what we read in the New Testament about Jesus’ choice of words and images for God . Yet it seems obvious to me that since Jesus lived in a patriarchal society he would have used predominately patriarchal language when talking about God. Does this prohibit us today from employing other images and language when speaking about God? I don’t believe so. After all, as the late Vincent Rush used to say: “All revelation is culturally conditioned.” This for me is another way of saying that God is ultimately bigger than any one image that can be ascribed to God.

Also, if the Eibenseiner’s are that picky about adhering to the exact words of the historical Jesus, then I assume they say the “Lord’s Prayer” in Aramaic!

According to the Chancery, one of the “problems” with St. Stephen’s was that inclusive language was being used in the English-speaking liturgies. (Such language is still being used in the 9:00 a.m. liturgy now being held off church property.) Hence we begin the “Lord’s Prayer” with: “Our Father/Mother who art in heaven . . .”

Why do folks like the Eibenseiner’s and those in Chancery feel so threatened by inclusive language and thus by feminine images of God?

Theologian Elizabeth Johnson addressed this and other related questions in a recent interview with the editors of U.S. Catholic magazine.

Following are excerpts from this interview.


U.S. Catholic: Let’s talk about “God acting womanish,” as you call it. Where does this theology stand today?

Elizabeth Johnson: There are major images of God in a female form in scripture and in our mystical tradition especially. Maternity is the main one, but the wisdom texts about Sophia are another. Some theologians make the case, too, that the Spirit has a female name in Hebrew and acts in feminine ways.

Then come the questions of why aren’t we using those images of God in our liturgies, why aren’t we teaching young people that this is an approach to God that can be used as well? The three major words for God are still Father, King, and Lord in Christian hymns, prayer, and liturgy. What that sets up unconsciously, whether you want it to or not, is the assumption that men have more in common with divinity than women do. Those three particular images also are very patriarchal because they refer not just to a male but to a ruling male, somebody who is dominating or being father in a patriarchal sense. Now that isn’t, of course, what scripture means or what Jesus meant when he called God Abba.

If you combine Father, Lord, and King with the God of theism, then you’ve got a problem. That’s one of those static ideas that does not feed the souls of a lot of people, men as well as women.


U.S. Catholic: Why?

Elizabeth Johnson: It’s very simple. Women are no longer relating to men in their lives as lord and king, and father no longer has that sense of control and domination that it had in a previous era. Women are no longer relating to their own fathers that way, let alone marrying men who act as fathers that way. Look at the partnership concept in marriage. Fathering is much more nurturing than it used to be.

There’s little that women then can bring into a relationship with God who is going to be their lord and king or their father. It goes blank, and not only that, but women are very uncomfortable with it. It’s not just neutral, it’s negative. Women think, “I don’t want a dominating man: Go away until you grow up and learn how to treat me like a human being.” When that comes into the religious life of women, it becomes the heart of this crisis. You can have all the dictums in the world, but the old images just don’t work anymore.


U.S. Catholic: What does it mean that we call God by male terms?

Elizabeth Johnson: I have this sentence that I quote over and over again: The symbol of God functions. The male symbol of God functions to privilege a certain way of male rule in the world and to undercut women’s spiritual power, women’s own sense of themselves as made in the image of God.

We women have to abstract ourselves from our bodies to see ourselves in the image of God if God is always depicted as male. It has serious ramifications for spirituality and for the identity of believers and for the community.


U.S. Catholic: Why is there so much resistance to using feminine images of God?

Elizabeth Johnson: I think the rejection of the inclusive language lectionary, which the U.S. bishops applied for in 1992 and which was rejected by the Vatican, was a clear recognition that once you start making room for even nonsexist language about humanity, let alone feminine images of God, there’s a fear that women will want to move in socially and politically, and then you’ve got a challenge to church structure as we know it. I think there’s a great deal of fear of women’s power.


U.S. Catholic: Can you imagine a church that took female images of God to heart?

Elizabeth Johnson: Let me say, I think women and men are equal in sin and grace. I don’t think women are going to be the salvation of the church or of this country. I think we can all get on power trips. I’m convinced of it, maybe because I’ve been in a women’s religious community, and I have six sisters. I am disabused of this romantic notion of women’s greatness as compared to men.

At this moment in history, women have figured out what’s wrong with the current pattern and how their experiences have led to different ways of relating, organizing, and running things. Given the chance, they would bring that pattern into the church and let it play off and see what develops.


To read U.S. Catholic’s interview with Elizabeth Johnson in its entirety, click here.

Elizabeth Johnson and Images of God (Part II)

The Wild Reed’s sharing of excerpts from U.S. Catholic magazine’s recent interview with theologian and author Elizabeth Johnson continues with Johnson discussing her understanding of “the living God,” her perspective on revelation, and her thoughts on the use of feminine images for God.

(Note: For Part I, click here.)

________________________________

U.S. Catholic: You frequently use the term “the living God.” What does that mean?

Elizabeth Johnson: It’s a term found all through the Bible. I love it. The living God is always ahead of us, always surprising, always calling us to come ahead. Wherever “the living God” is used, it indicates a life of fullness, of flowing water, new reality, new justice, new peace. The different theologies I studied use different words for it: getting back to the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of life.

U.S. Catholic: These new theologies of God start with human experience. What’s the significance of that?

Elizabeth Johnson: When I was writing She Who Is, it dawned on me that our original approach to God, where God first reaches us, is through our experience – and that’s the Spirit. The Spirit is present in nature, in our human interactions, in the depths of our own soul, at the end of our reaching out in love.

Take the Catholics of Latin America. Where did they get the idea of God as liberator? They didn’t just say one day, “Let’s have a new idea of God.” It started in the struggle for justice, for a well that had clean water so babies wouldn’t die before their first birthday. In that work, and in their prayer and reflection over that work, people said, “This is what God wants us to do.” Then when they read the Book of Exodus, they read it with new eyes because of their new experience.
In every single one of these theologies, it is experience that opens the door, that leads the way in. Then theologians come along and think about it, but they couldn’t do that without the experience of the Christian people first. We believe, as St. Anselm said a thousand years ago, that theology is faith seeking understanding. You have the church—the community—and theologians reflect on what the community’s faith means. The experience is there as a primary source.

U.S. Catholic: What is revelation then?

Elizabeth Johnson: In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, revelation became highly intellectualized. It came down to doctrine: We knew certain truths, certain beliefs. You’re a Christian if you believe this. I would say Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, The Constitution on Divine Revelation, changed all that. Its opening sentence says, “In his goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will.” In the gift of God’s own self comes understanding something of who God is, so revelation becomes much more experiential right from the start. That experience is then articulated in words and finally it is written down. We call it revelation.

I always regret that word, revelation. It sounds like an object, but it’s a relational dynamic that has brought to birth wisdom in the Christian community about God and fidelity in the way people live.

What we are called to believe is actually a mystery, God’s own giving self. Rahner uses the image of the horizon: You see it, but you never get there. You can’t control it or comprehend it, because then it wouldn’t be God.

U.S. Catholic: How can different images of God all work together and still be Catholic?

Elizabeth Johnson: There can be many theologies among people who still believe in one Creed. Theology is simply an articulation of what faith means in this time and place for this people, so that will change over time. The Creed is a point of unity. We come together over the heart of the confession of faith and the reception of the Eucharist that unites the community.

U.S. Catholic: Isn’t there the potential for so many different theologies to get out of control?

Elizabeth Johnson: Yes, but whose control, exactly? Certain theologians who wrote in every one of these theologies have been criticized by Rome. This approach can be threatening to a hierarchical power structure, because it says that truth also resides among the baptized, that those who are filled with the Spirit have a wisdom.

I don’t mean to knock the institutional church. Rahner wrote that the church has its charisms and its offices, and that often there’s tension between the two. Theology is a charism, and the office is often in tension with that. The good function of the church office is unity; it keeps everybody from losing the heart and soul of what we believe, from falling into fads and trends and that sort of thing. I would never not want to have a central authority that functions as a uniting factor.

U.S. Catholic: Let’s talk about “God acting womanish,” as you call it. Where does this theology stand today?

Elizabeth Johnson: There are major images of God in a female form in scripture and in our mystical tradition especially. Maternity is the main one, but the wisdom texts about Sophia are another. Some theologians make the case, too, that the Spirit has a female name in Hebrew and acts in feminine ways.

Then come the questions of why aren’t we using those images of God in our liturgies, why aren’t we teaching young people that this is an approach to God that can be used as well? The three major words for God are still Father, King, and Lord in Christian hymns, prayer, and liturgy. What that sets up unconsciously, whether you want it to or not, is the assumption that men have more in common with divinity than women do. Those three particular images also are very patriarchal because they refer not just to a male but to a ruling male, somebody who is dominating or being father in a patriarchal sense. Now that isn’t, of course, what scripture means or what Jesus meant when he called God Abba.

If you combine Father, Lord, and King with the God of theism, then you’ve got a problem. That’s one of those static ideas that does not feed the souls of a lot of people, men as well as women.

U.S. Catholic: Why?

Elizabeth Johnson: It’s very simple. Women are no longer relating to men in their lives as lord and king, and father no longer has that sense of control and domination that it had in a previous era. Women are no longer relating to their own fathers that way, let alone marrying men who act as fathers that way. Look at the partnership concept in marriage. Fathering is much more nurturing than it used to be.

There’s little that women then can bring into a relationship with God who is going to be their lord and king or their father. It goes blank, and not only that, but women are very uncomfortable with it. It’s not just neutral, it’s negative. Women think, “I don’t want a dominating man: Go away until you grow up and learn how to treat me like a human being.” When that comes into the religious life of women, it becomes the heart of this crisis. You can have all the dictums in the world, but the old images just don’t work anymore.

U.S. Catholic: What does it mean that we call God by male terms?

Elizabeth Johnson: I have this sentence that I quote over and over again: The symbol of God functions. The male symbol of God functions to privilege a certain way of male rule in the world and to undercut women’s spiritual power, women’s own sense of themselves as made in the image of God.

We women have to abstract ourselves from our bodies to see ourselves in the image of God if God is always depicted as male. It has serious ramifications for spirituality and for the identity of believers and for the community.

U.S. Catholic: Why is there so much resistance to using feminine images of God?

Elizabeth Johnson: I think the rejection of the inclusive language lectionary, which the U.S. bishops applied for in 1992 and which was rejected by the Vatican, was a clear recognition that once you start making room for even nonsexist language about humanity, let alone feminine images of God, there’s a fear that women will want to move in socially and politically, and then you’ve got a challenge to church structure as we know it. I think there’s a great deal of fear of women’s power.

U.S. Catholic: Can you imagine a church that took female images of God to heart?

Elizabeth Johnson: Let me say, I think women and men are equal in sin and grace. I don’t think women are going to be the salvation of the church or of this country. I think we can all get on power trips. I’m convinced of it, maybe because I’ve been in a women’s religious community, and I have six sisters. I am disabused of this romantic notion of women’s greatness as compared to men.

At this moment in history, women have figured out what’s wrong with the current pattern and how their experiences have led to different ways of relating, organizing, and running things. Given the chance, they would bring that pattern into the church and let it play off and see what develops.

To read U.S. Catholic’s interview with Elizabeth Johnson in its entirety, click here.


Recommended Off-site Link:
Fordham Scholar Driven to Seek Answers to the Eternal Question of Faith and Reason - Julie Bourbon (Inside Fordham, October 9, 2007).

For other Catholic theologians highlighted at The Wild Reed, visit:
Hans Küng: Still Speaking from the Heart of the Church
In the Garden of Spirituality: Uta Ranke-Heinemann
John Allen on the Censuring of Jon Sobrino
Paul Collins and Marilyn Hatton
“The Non-negotiables of Human Sex”– An Interview with Daniel Helminiak
In the Garden of Spirituality: Joan Timmerman
Mary Hunt and Our Catholic “Stonewall Moment”