The God of Anticipation

“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life,” Simone Weil famously said, a quote I have used several times in my writings. But I wonder if she would be satisfied with this translation. In her “Spiritual Autobiography,” a letter to a Roman Catholic priest, she declares that the Greek word for “steadfastness” is “more beautiful” than the Latin word for patience, derived from the word for suffering. And one of my favorite biblical descriptions of God highlights his/her/their “steadfast love.”

Perhaps “waiting steadfast* in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life” is a better rendering of her insight. “Steadfast in expectation” sounds like “anticipation” to me.

I stretch this quote because of an “aha” I’ve recently experienced. God is a God of anticipation for me right now—anticipation of the end of the pandemic, but also anticipation of the end of my life.

We see this God of anticipation in our biblical tradition.

“I will be what I will be,” Moses hears from the blazing wilderness shrub as Yahweh commissions him to deliver a message to Pharaoh to “let my people go.”

“Behold I am doing a new thing,” Yahweh says through Isaiah.

“Follow me,” Jesus invited.

“I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, you will be guided into all the truth,” Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper. “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there you may be also.”

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth,” Jesus said in his final parting.

“I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” the mystic John testified of God’s future. “See, the home of God is among mortals.”

The kingdom or commonwealth of God is even now revealing itself to us. I witness a parallel in the Tao of Taoism and the “thin places” between heaven and earth in Celtic spirituality.

Recently I was quite taken with an ending of a prayer of an MCC pastor and leader that went something like this, “in the names of how you have been experienced in the past and the names of how you will be experienced in the future.”

Anticipation lifts us up. Etty Hillesum, who died at Auschwitz, wrote in her diary that she thought of God as her best self. My own experience is that simply the thought of God lifts me to my better self.

Undoubtedly a spin from my Process theology view—as I reflect on the universe, I see a process that anticipates life, that anticipates sentient beings who make the universe aware of its very existence, how it came to be, its possible meanings, as well as its hope for deliverance from its own destructive elements, whether viral as in a pandemic, or human when we disregard one another and our environment.

That process is how I am thinking of God in these difficult days.

*I chose not to use the seemingly more appropriate word “steadfastly” because it applies to the following phrase “in expectation” rather than the previous word “waiting.”

Recent posts that offer hope during our pandemic:

The Pandemic’s Monastic Opportunity

The World Is My Cloister

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

The Butterfly Effect

Partial view from our deck.

Those familiar with chaos theory may be thinking that’s what this post is about: how something so small as the flutter of a butterfly in one part of the world may cause dire weather elsewhere. This was a metaphor used in a paper by Edward N. Lorenz for the notion that one slight event can affect a complex system. Chaos theory was the theme of one issue when I edited Open Hands. (Click on the highlighted phrase and scroll down to my opening essay. Note designer Jan Graves’ creative arrangement of the columns.)

But if the flutter of a butterfly may have disastrous results, a butterfly that is still can have peaceful effects.

I learned that the morning I write this during my reading and prayers on our deck, which blessedly looks out at a ravine verdant with shrubs, kudzu, and very tall, leafy trees on either side of a narrow creek.

A small butterfly or large moth landed on the other side of an arm of a wooden chair beside me. I saw it land, but had to peer over an edge of the arm to see the tips of its wings and large round eyes. Otherwise it was hidden. I liked that it made no difference if it was a moth or a butterfly for its effect on me.

The motionless creature prompted me to remain still, lest I scare it away. (Wade has noted how still I can remain in bed at night, even when I lie awake, my brain going at full speed. Sometimes I silently do the verbal part of my morning prayers, which may return me to a peaceful sleep.)

My lack of movement gave me opportunities to observe:

+the gently creeping fingertips of light on the leaves of trees as the sun rose;

+the flicker of moisture in the mulch beneath the bird bath, then the rare drops that created it dripping from a crack in its basin;

+Luna the cat hanging on to the top of a neighbor’s fence while batting away at something on a shrub;

+a majestic hawk flying overhead in the blue sky, wings spread wide;

+the humid and warm stillness of air suddenly becoming a gentle, cooling breeze;

+the wisps of clouds moving swiftly above me;

+the unusual hush of the cicadas.

My very long pause seemed a proper preparation for resuming my reading of Thomas Merton’s Mystics and Zen Masters, which I referenced three weeks ago. I began by re-reading phrases and sentences I had underlined the previous day, and decided to share them in this post, as I did when I wrote of reading the mystical Cloud of Unknowing, leaving the reader to relate it to your own experience.

Merton describes the Tao Te Ching written by the mystic Lao Tzu. What follows are Merton’s words; but words in quotes are from the Tao.  I’ve made the language inclusive, but their relevance stands on its own:

+ The sage and the wise ruler are those who do not rush forward to aggrandize themselves, but cherish, with loving concern, the sacred reality of persons and things which have been entrusted to them by the Tao.

+ In the Tao, “which is queer like nothing on earth,” are found three treasures: mercy, frugality, and not wanting to be first in the world.

+One of its most astute sayings is that in a war the winner is likely to be the side that enters the war with the most sorrow. “To rejoice over a victory is to rejoice over the slaughter of others… Every victory is a funeral.”

+ “Heaven arms with love / Those it would not see destroyed.”

+ One “reaches” the Tao by “becoming like” the Tao, by acting, in some sense, according to the “way” (Tao). For the Tao is at once perfect activity and perfect rest.

+ The way of the Tao is…the way of supreme spontaneity, which is virtuous in a transcendent sense because it “does not strive.”

+ As soon as a human being becomes aware of doing good and avoiding evil, he or she is no longer perfectly good.

+ For Lao Tzu, if one were to be righteous, that one should first of all fly all thought of righteousness, and put out of one’s mind any ideal image of oneself as a “righteous person.”

+ The way of the sage is the way of not-attacking, not charging at one’s objective, not busying oneself too intently about one’s goals.

+ Taoism is not complete non-action but rather non-activism. It is supreme activity, because it acts at rest, acts without effort. Its effortlessness is not a matter of inertia, but of harmony with the hidden power that drives the planets and the cosmos.

As Merton understands the Tao, it is neither quietistic nor a doctrine but a “wisdom” and a “way of life.” He concludes of the West, “It is absolutely essential to introduce into our study of the humanities a dimension of wisdom oriented to contemplation as well as to wise action.”

Reflecting on these words underlined yesterday, I felt no need to go on to the next chapter of the book. The butterfly was still there; I was there, still. 

I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the butterfly for you, the reader of this intended post, but the moment I stood, it flew away.

Its flutter may wreak havoc elsewhere, but its rest had kept me in the tranquil eye of the storm.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Rediscover Your "Ox Mountain"

Living in China during the fourth and third century BCE, Meng Tzu* (Latinized by the West as “Mencius”), following in the footsteps of his sixth century spiritual ancestor, Kung Tzu (Confucius), represented their shared belief in the essential goodness of human beings and our “basic tendency to love” with the memorable Parable of Ox Mountain.

My paraphrase: 

Once upon a time there was a great forest on Ox Mountain, near an urban area. Residents of the city came and cut down all the trees, and the forest was no more. But nature tried to reclaim the forest, and the stumps sprang green shoots. The people, however, let their flocks loose to graze on the mountain, and they ate all the new growth. Their children and grandchildren never knew there had once been a grand forest on Ox Mountain, because now it appeared barren and desolate. 

In his 1967 book, Mystics and Zen Masters, (an unread copy of which I discovered a few weeks ago in one of those free libraries popping up in neighbors’ yards), Thomas Merton presents Meng Tzu’s conclusion: 

So too with man: he is naturally inclined to virtue, but his actions, in a greedy and grasping society, so completely destroys all evidence of his innate goodness that he appears to be naturally evil. 

This parallels the understanding of sin and human nature in Celtic Christianity, which I’ve written of admiringly.

To me, Meng Tzu’s experience gets magnified in a media culture, and magnified exponentially in our own time of a 24/7 news cycle on a global internet stage (or platform, if you will) in which the worst news gets our attention. Mahatma Gandhi once illustrated the problem with an example of two people locked in a dispute who resolve things peacefully, so do not get the attention they would draw if they fought publically or took the matter to court.  Gandhi suggested that’s why we have a skewed perspective on human nature. The good, the peaceful, the loving, the compassionate is not “news” because it aligns with how we believe things ought to be.

All of this flies in the face of what many of us are feeling these days, as we see fists raised angrily in the air in opposition to many of the values and people we hold dear.

But Meng Tzu, Merton writes, lived also “in an age (like ours) of war and chaos” (Parenthetical observation Merton’s).

Kung Tzu (Confucius) had not, according to Merton, entertained any sort of “sentimental humanitarianism.” Rather, he believed that people “could be good, but that for them to actualize these potentialities they had to live in a society that fully respected their hidden goodness, respected them as persons, with sacred and God-given rights, and educated them in the same respect…”

This sounds like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community.”

Merton explains that Kung Tzu’s understanding of personal development is very different from that of the West: 

Here we come closer to certain modern and pragmatic misconceptions concerning the development of the person: that is, the development of aggressiveness, of astuteness, of attractiveness, of diplomatic skills; in a word, the ability to succeed.  ‘Personality’ in this sense is the power to impose yourself and your wishes on others. For Kung Tzu, wisdom by no means consists in imposing your will or your ‘personality’ on somebody else, and making him serve your own ends by domination or by flattery. It is not that this is ‘wrong’ according to some abstract standard, but before all else it is unhealthy because it is unreal. The man who acts like this is untrue to himself and at the same moment, by the same token, untrue to heaven, whose will is embedded deep in his very heart. He can only act so because he has failed to get to the root of good action. He does not really know himself (p 63). 

Sorry for such a long quote! But I wrote “WOW!” in the margin beside this conclusion, because it opens my eyes to the stark contrast between views about the development of a person. It reminded me of Merton’s critique of the “false” or “inauthentic” self that too often characterizes our personhood. He writes of the feeling in his book Contemplative Prayer: “A sense that one has somehow been untrue not so much to abstract moral or social norms but to one’s own inmost truth” (p 24).

Merton earlier clarified that Kung Tzu does not describe “heaven” as a metaphysical concept but “a transcendent and objective reality,” parallel but more down-to-earth and anthropocentric than what his contemporary, mystic Lao Tzu, referred to as the Tao. Being in line with it brings order to chaos, harmonizing “with the ultimately real.” And it requires both religious community and sacred ritual, Li (“rites’), the way of life that gives “visible expression of the hidden reality of the universe”—in my view, a kind of living sacrament, which gives me new appreciation for the Christian Eucharist, whose central element could be said to be sacrificial love, another organizing principle bringing harmony out of chaos.

The Confucian ethic, Merton writes, “is the fruit of spiritual awareness. Thus, moral action is at the same time contemplative and liturgical.” Wow again!

My post on The Lord’s Prayer explained that it helps me align myself with the universe, so to speak: “Thy will be done in my earth and on this earth as it is in heaven.” For me, heaven is where human will is in sync with God’s will.

Our own “Ox Mountains” may have been deforested by the actions of the world and of ourselves.  Contemplation is an opportunity to let seedlings grow, replenishing our natural state. As the Ox Mountain Parable declares, “The moisture of the dawn spirit / Awakens in us the right loves, the right aversions.” 

*I am using Merton’s spellings of these names. I hope to explain the title “tzu” in a future post.

With colleague Debra Weir, I will be co-leading a contemplative retreat open to all April 30-May 4, 2018, at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama, entitled “Beside Still Waters.” Sacred Heart is a welcoming community and a beautiful place. Please come!

Please support this blog ministry: 

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Or mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Photo and text Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.