Reformation of My Heart

Our friends and
neighbors Cathie
and CJ's hearts.

Like last week’s post, this entry from my book reflecting on the spiritual writings of Henri J. M. Nouwen might help us cope with the worldwide pandemic.

It makes no sense to preach the Gospel when I have allowed no time for my own conversion. –Henri Nouwen, The Primacy of the Heart, p 4.

Recently, during a retreat, someone described himself as a “square peg trying to fit into a round hole,” a metaphor with which many participants identified. But one retreatant who worked at a nineteenth-century historical site pointed out something new to us. In constructing a wooden building of that time, he explained, you wouldn’t want a round peg in a round hole because it could expand or contract, depending on temperature and moisture. It was actually better to have a square peg in a round hole to maintain the grip between the pieces.

In trying to fit into monastic life, Henri was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. He was an extrovert with an introvert’s calling. But the monastic life had a grip on him even if it wasn’t a complete or comfortable fit. This might also be your experience. Not all of us fit a monastic life, but maybe that’s all the better for its firm grip upon us. We are all called to monastic reflection, that is, moments we set aside for contemplation. If we can do this daily, we are all the more blessed.

Retreats are how we are most likely to fit the monastic way of life into our busy lives. It is there we may listen to sacred texts and to one another in new ways, as well as listen to our own hearts, our own centers, and to the God of our hearts. Unprovidentially, many of us want our retreats as full and busy as our everyday lives, and we anticipate a schedule of uplifting, stimulating talks, or we bring many books to read or plan many tasks to accomplish. But we need to find idle time lest we be distracted by time-bound idols.

In a previous book, Reformation of the Heart, I described two insights offered by participants in two different Henri Nouwen retreats I led the year following his death, one at Kirkridge in Pennsylvania and the other at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. At Kirkridge, a physical therapist explained that a wound has to heal from the inside out. At Ghost Ranch, a ceramic artist told us that, in spinning a pot, the shape of the inside determines the shape of the outside. So it is with the human heart. Our wounded hearts must heal from the inside out. And the gospel we proclaim is shaped by how we allow the good news of God’s love to shape our own hearts.

The truth is, however, that healing and love occur in the everyday events of our lives as well as on retreat or in what I call in my workshops “monastic moments,” brief opportunities to look inward. Healing and love may come to us in conversations with our friends, in caring for others, in serving a just cause, in catastrophic personal or public events, in life’s many interruptions, irritations, distractions, sorrows, and joys. Yet to have ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to feel, we need moments of quiet reflection to allow those many ways in which we experience healing and love to consciously convert our hearts so that we may be healers and lovers, better proclaiming the gospel.

+Heal my heart, so I may offer healing. Love my heart, so I may love.

I invite you to register and attend an online course/retreat I will be leading in September as part of the Spirituality Program of Columbia Theological Seminary entitled, “An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality.”

You may support this blog by clicking here. Please scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2002 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

An Unfinished Mystic

Henri Nouwen puzzles over a question.

Presbyterian General Assembly, Indianapolis, 1985 (crg)

I have finally read Michael Ford’s most recent “portrait” of Henri J. M. Nouwen. I didn’t jump into it when I received it last summer partly because I needed a kind of sabbatical from Henri for a few of the same reasons I kept my distance in real life. Paulist Press, at the behest of Mike no doubt, sent it as thanks for including some of my thoughts on whether Henri was a mystic.

Lonely Mystic: A New Portrait of Henri J. M. Nouwen is the most intimate glimpse of Henri yet, if that’s even possible, given his intimate self-portrayals in almost every one of his own books. It may make those who want to see Henri canonized squirm a little, though not because of any illicit affairs or theological heresies or tasteless behavior. He was the consummate “best little boy in the world” that every gay boy and man wants to be, but his calling to a celibate vocation kept him lonely and needy and sometimes, broken.

I read with particular interest the chapter on Frank Hamilton’s close friendship with Henri. Begun as Frank eagerly sought out Henri for spiritual guidance, over many years it transformed to a friendship that I would describe as “soul friends.” I had heard some of the stories recounted in the chapter from Frank himself over a private dinner when he attended my first Columbia Seminary spiritual formation course on Henri. A few other stories are found in Henri’s own books. Btw, I’ve been asked to teach the course again September 17-20, 2020, and I’m thinking I will use this new book as one of the texts, prompting intriguing changes in the content.

Though I resisted the tug of Henri’s emotional needs as well as the spotlight of having a famous friend, I envied Frank a little for the spiritual intimacy he and Henri shared. Yet I had my own life to live as a gay activist and, I hoped, a spiritual guide within the LGBT community, and my notoriety as such even prompted Henri to decline a desire to dedicate one of my books to him, at least, while he was alive. After his death, I dedicated Coming Out as Sacrament to him, an ironic twist in that Henri never came out, though Mike points out that many a gay reader recognized their own experience through his books in his passionate reaching out to others and to God.

Mike asked me to reflect on the question, was Henri Nouwen a mystic? Using Evelyn Underhill’s stages of a mystic, I saw that Henri had experienced all five, though as “dimensions” of mysticism, cyclical rather than sequential. The final stage, union, is debatable. In that context, I suggested Henri might be considered an “unfinished mystic,” never having finally “arrived.” Like the chapters about various events in Lillian Helman’s memoir Unfinished Woman or Rembrandt’s many self-portraits over the years, each of Henri’s books may represent a self-portrait of Henri at that point in time, amid different circumstances, contexts, and communities.

I’ve written before that, in the spiritual life, there is no finish line. And that the greatest spiritual danger is to believe one has “arrived.” There are no “finishing schools” for saints, which accounts for their often eccentric, countercultural, and prophetic ways. For Mike’s purpose, I used as examples Henri’s unfinished books on Adam, his charge at Daybreak (completed by Sue Mosteller, his literary executrix), and the Flying Rodleighs, trapeze artists,

who came to represent complete union with God. They had taught him the vital (life-giving) importance of “trusting the catcher,” in life and in death. That he never completed this book is emblematic of Henri’s own inability to let go. Instead of trusting, he was always trying to “catch the catcher” (take hold of God).

            [Lonely Mystic, 150]

As Henri explained in Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, the flyer is considered by the audience the hero in the trapeze act, as he or she lets go of the bar and does double or triple flips midair before being caught by the catcher. But the real hero is the catcher, whose timing is precise enough to reach for the flyer at just the right time. If the flyer tries to catch the catcher, the latter’s wrists might be broken, so trust in the catcher is key. Henri compared this to trusting God, the Divine Catcher, in life and in death. [Our Greatest Gift, 66-67]

Romantic Age poets saw worth and beauty in an unfinished work. Henri was a great romantic, and an “unfinished” mystic. That is what draws us to his writing—his vulnerability, his incompleteness, his wounds. Like the Jesus he followed, he was in every way like we are.

A couple of months ago, I considered bringing this blog to an end. Faced with the impenetrability of God in Christian mysticism, challenged by Buddhist mysticism and the concept of “no thing,” and only too well aware of my own limitations, I felt it was time to keep quiet, to keep silence. But angels keep troubling my waters, and I feel called to respond. And many of those angels are you, the readers.

To read other posts about Henri Nouwen, click here, and scroll down. For those of you who observe this season of Lent, they may add to your spiritual practice.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Souls "Flung Up to Heaven": Maya Angelou and Hildegard of Bingen

This week I am co-leading a contemplative retreat at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. Four years ago on this site, Dewey Weiss Kramer gave an uplifting course on Hildegard of Bingen for Columbia Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program. I decided to adapt today’s post from my reflections on that experience.

I am writing this in the wake of the news of the death of Maya Angelou, and this propinquity prompts me to note Hildegard and Angelou’s shared recognition of our musical and lyrical needs spiritually, as well as the role that deprivation plays in appreciating those needs. Both Hildegard and Angelou played many roles in life, and both were strong and savvy women, unflinching in challenging injustice as well as carving places for themselves in patriarchal systems and cultures.

Angelou took the wistful title and theme of her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, from a poem by African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.  As a poor African American girl turned woman from the backwaters of the South, Angelou knew deprivation on multiple levels.

Hildegard, from a wealthy family in Germany, used her privilege to create and defend a group of women religious, but wrote some of her most profound words and theology when her community was deprived of singing in worship by church hierarchy.

I fantasize about the harmony that these giants, Hildegard and Angelou, might make now that both have been “flung up to heaven,” in the words of the title of the latter’s last book, A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

At nine years of age, Maya Angelou chose to go mute for five years after naming her rapist and believing it was her words that killed him. It could be argued that her six memoirs that followed, perhaps all of her writings, were born out of that silence, a kind of self-imposed spiritual discipline that emulates the contemplative silences of the monastic life.

Silence may have allowed her to listen closely to those around her, better able to capture their choice of words and phrasings; to see life for what it was, better able to be a truth teller in a world of denial and deception; to deeply smell and taste and touch the world, better able to depict scents and flavors and textures; and then to conjure her worldly, earthy, and cultural experience in lyrical but accessible language.

Similarly, Hildegard’s contemplative life empowered her to describe her visions, coaching artists in their design, then to interpret “their truth,” their meaning spiritually and theologically, in her rudimentary Latin, the mystical language of the time.

And, of great interest to this writer, Hildegard listened to the music of the soul, creating her own forms of spiritual music that did not follow the conventions of the day, thus creating an ethereal, unearthly music, music that serves as a haunting reminder of the harmonies inherent in Eden (not far from that of angels) and in the unfallen first human creature, of whom she said, “If he had remained in his original state, the weakness of mortal man would not have been able to endure the power and the resonance of his voice.”  I have some sense of this, having heard Maya Angelou speak and read her work with a musical, resonant, majestic intonation.

We are blessed that Hildegard and Maya both found their voice.

I am one of those persons of whom Hildegard writes “sighs and moans upon hearing some melody, recalling the nature of celestial harmony.” Maybe these are echoes of the sound of Eden, as Hildegard suggests, or premonitions of heavenly bliss, or “the music of the spheres.”

I hear that music in lyrical writing, whether poetry or prose. That’s why I was so taken with Hildegard’s prayer, “O ignis Spiritus Paracliti,” which, even without music, sings to me, especially that phrase, “O sweet savor in the breast.” Like the Lord’s Prayer, it would be a worthy part of every liturgy.

Harmony comes from the integrity of body and spirit that I experience with Hildegard in the sacrament of music. Augustine’s reservations about the sensuality of music is the very thing that draws me to it as an instance of the Incarnation of God. Music is the Word made flesh—again.

“The body is the vestment of the spirit, which has a living voice, and so it is proper for the body, in harmony with the soul, to use its voice to sing praises to God,” Hildegard affirms.  Just as for Hildegard encountering one of the Trinity is to encounter all of the Trinity, in my view, to encounter an instance of Incarnation is to encounter all Incarnation.

That’s why Hildegard’s understanding that Incarnation was not the result of The Fall but intended from the beginning makes sense to me, especially as she views Creation itself as an incarnation of God, its fecundity, its greening (viriditas)—in my words, a divine impulse, a holy “oozing,” and the soul’s melody.

And the soul’s melody is not just human, it is in every creature, every atom, in the whole of the cosmos—nothing is truly inert in Hildegard’s view, everything is a “sounding icon” and “vibrations” of God’s self in everything.

As I wrote in Communion of Life:

Our original sin

Is not the seizing of forbidden fruit,

But failing to see

The infinite in the finite,

The luminous, sacred essence

Of the garden;

Failing to revere

The life that gives us life;

Trampling on the taboo,

Sequestering, quantifying,

And qualifying the holy—

The heart of our garden.

Forgive us, earth,

Be merciful in our willful ignorance

As you are gracious in your altruistic nature.

Hold us accountable, and then,

Hold us.

Reading this you will understand why I was so taken with Hildegard’s fresh understanding of human alienation, that the first human transgression was refusing the white flower, the fruit of humility offered by a benevolent God: “Its scent comes to the human’s nostrils, but he does not taste it with his mouth…for he tried to know the wisdom of the Law with his intelligence…but did not perfectly digest it…or fulfill it in full blessedness by the work of his hands. … He did not seek God either by faith or by works.”

  

Find out how you can support this blog—thank you!

http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Be sure to scroll down to the donate link below its description.

Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"All Theology Is a Kind of Birthday"

All theology is a kind of birthday

Each one who is born

Comes into the world as a question

For which old answers

Are not sufficient. 

Maybe you will do what I did when I read this first stanza of Thomas Merton’s “Untitled Poem.” Like a puzzling koan, it focuses my mind, causing me to read it again and again to glean its meanings before proceeding to the additional pages of the poem. Perhaps you too will stop at the words above, and that’s okay, because they’re much more profound than what I can offer.

Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver and the apostle Paul have joined me of late for morning prayers. I’ve read at least nine of Merton’s books, but this is my first exposure to his poetry. I’ve read occasional Oliver poems, but not a lifetime collection. I’m reading them for a Columbia Seminary Spiritual Formation weekend course on Christian Poetry and the Christian Journey: Illumination and Mysticism in Blake, Hopkins, Merton, Levertov, and Oliver that I will be attending later this month.

And I’m reading Paul because I created morning and evening prayers for the program’s recent Spiritual Immersion course, and the professor discussing New Testament spirituality suggested using liturgical elements from Colossians and Philippians, and that got me started again on Paul.

Though Tom and Mary seem to inhabit the same countryside, bringing Tom, Mary, and Paul into dialogue is only possible, perhaps, in meditation. All can be inscrutable (at least to me), and all can create golden one-liners and inspiring spiritual metaphors. Mary has always seemed free to me, borrowing from nature as much or more than from tradition, but Tom and Paul came to their freedom later in life.

Tom’s freedom makes his later poetry more accessible to me, his spirituality broader and more welcoming. Paul’s freedom makes his spirituality soar beyond the confines of his own traditional religion, and I better realize why the mystical Christ seems so important to him—a mythologized Christ helped him bust free from his religious rigidity.

My own experience is the opposite of Paul’s: I needed to bust free from the religious rigidity of a mythologized Christ sacrificed for sins to reclaim the life and teachings and belovedness of Jesus. “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Paul’s words about Christ are also true for me about Jesus. Yet at the same time, I do love Paul’s understandings of our unity with Christ and our spiritual community as Christ’s body, indivisible by condition or culture, sharing burdens and joys with one another, and sharing Christ’s spiritual inheritance as God’s children.

Mary Oliver best captures what I hope from life in these words from her poems “When Death Comes” and “October”: 

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

…

Look, I want to love this world

as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get

to be alive

and know it.

Posts about 9/11 in the U.S. on today’s anniversary:

9/11: When We Were One

Where Is God?

A post about Chile on today’s 40^th anniversary of their 9/11 coup in 1973:

Redeemed from the Pit

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support, click here. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.