GIFT OF SOLITUDE

“One’s solitude belongs to the world and to God. Are these just words? Solitude has its own special work: a deepening of awareness that the world needs. A struggle against alienation. True solitude is deeply aware of the world’s needs. It does not hold the world at arm’s length”

— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 12

Solitude is what my wife and I have been enjoying the most during this sabbatical. Due to COVID-19, we have been enjoying an additional level of forced or induced solitude, one might say. From an initial disappointment to frustration to now a cautious optimism of seeing fruit in our awareness, we’ve experienced multiple stages in our sabbatical. One constant theme, whether forced or not, has been solitude. Plentiful and luxurious time to dig deep, see ourselves naked without many oughts, pulls, and distractions, in all the complex proneness of our being, simply to be aware. I am not sure whether I can say there has been “a deepening of awareness of the world’s needs.” What I can say clearly is the crystallization of awareness of ourselves and our needs. I was zooming with a friend who I haven’t connected in a while and basically uttered to him that sabbatical is not for the faint-hearted. Because sabbatical asks some of the life’s most foundational questions: from What have I done? to How I have done what I have done? to Why I have done what I have done? to Who am I? to How then should I live my life?. . . It is amazing how well you get to know yourself in solitude when you are stripped of exterior noises and distractions. Just when I think turning off external noises and input is a significant feat, there awaits a gargantuan task of facing the dark and shifty interior battles. Compared to my complex interiority, exterior challenges seem like a child’s game. Over time, who I think I am or who I think I should be just melts like wax, and I find myself weary of playing the game of falsities and unrealistic expectations both from within and without. Dare I say from the growing awareness of ourselves, we can begin to project awareness of the world’s needs and see the world in pain and in need of mending through our own naked but true selves.

True solitude is an ability to turn off the noises from outside while not rejecting the world. Perhaps a final (or at least a penultimate) destination of true solitude is finding freedom within. Inner freedom then has the capacity to interact, see the freedom outside of us or lack thereof, and appropriately engage the world. In other words, pursuing and finding inner freedom builds capacity for each of us to do our part in breaking chains of bondage on societal levels.

Could it be that true solitude connects the dots between our needs and the world’s needs through rigorous and persistent work of awareness of ourselves? To put it differently, could it be that our inner freedom functions as the key that can unlock certain aspects of the world (based on our unique experiences of freedom) that are still under the bondage?

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.

Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

-Howard Thurman, an influential civil rights leader, theologian, author, and philosopher

Thurman’s words narrow the field of awareness to aliveness. Nonetheless, he helpfully bridges our aliveness and the world’s needs. Frederick Buechner, a prolific author and theologian, echoes, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” The business of knowing our deep gladness is a deep and hard soul work of awareness and cannot be gleaned without paying the dues of solitude.

Even if we think we’ve arrived at certain awareness of ourselves, for the most part, our attempt to contribute to the world will be more of misses than hits. Continuing despite the misses and disappointments, and rediscover and gain better clarity of our awareness awaits us all. Then, we begin to see glimpses and hints of our impact to the world, ever encouraging us to take further and deeper steps. There comes a time when we just know when our soul’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.

Thomas Merton knew that he was called to solitude, an extreme kind even among the monks' standard, let alone average folks like me. He also knew that he possessed the uncanny gift of writing, though he experienced an often testy and roller coast relationship with his writing. The world would not know or would not have received the gift of Merton without his written books, journals, teachings, prayers, and poems. But it wasn’t his gift of writing as incredible as that was that ultimately impacted and satiated the world. His call and unwavering devotion to solitude allowed him to discover himself and discover the world’s needs. His writing was merely a tool in which he contributed to the world. 

There is a saying from the Desert Fathers tradition. In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses and begged him for a word. The old man said, "Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything." The Desert Fathers’ tradition is too ascetic and radical for my taste and liking, but the truth remains as a timeless exhortation. We must “go and sit in our cell” often and long enough to discover ourselves and our contribution to the world. There simply is no other way. Wilderness experiences that many biblical heroes have gone through are forced solitude with nowhere to run or turn. Think of Moses, Joseph, David, Paul, and even Jesus, to name just a few. Moses’ story in particular is poignant. When Moses was a prince, he, not being aware of himself and had not yet found inner freedom, saw the “world’s hunger” and took the matters into his own hands and killed an Egyptian. Got into deep trouble and had to flee for his life. It was after 40 years of tending sheep in the wilderness, he was able to discern and obeyed God’s call to satiate the “world’s hunger.” Henri Nouwen’s exhortation is apt here. He wrote in his book, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, that the first movement is a movement from a desert of loneliness to a garden of solitude. None of us can avoid loneliness. The question is, what do we do with loneliness? Or how do we embrace loneliness as an invitation from God?

We all have gifts, different and unique to us. God wants us to use and steward these gifts for our sake, for the body of Christ, and for the world. However, without solitude, these gifts can become noisy gongs or clanging cymbals. Solitude then serves as a critical process of interior discernment where and how we can utilize our gifts, talents, passions, and skills.

One of our aspirations in the future, going forward, is to protect and nurture solitude beyond the sabbatical. This desire will have practical ramifications. We know we have to count the cost. The rhythm of solitude is not something we want to sacrifice. Having tasted and thus appreciated this incredible gift and duty of solitude, we realize that this is worth stewarding, preciously at this stage of our lives.

 How do you or will you guard and steward solitude?

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TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND WISDOM

The last two days were the hottest days in my memory in Pasadena, California, where we have resided since 1990.  My iPhone weather app “screamed” with a reading of 115 and 111 Fahrenheit degrees, respectively on the two days. On top of the mind-numbing heat, we were willing victims of Pasadena’s rolling blackout on one of the evenings. Embracing that as an opportunity to walk Luna, our Husky, who has our maximum empathy in this unbearable weather (I empathize by imagining wearing a down jacket in this heat!), the streets are eerily quiet and pitch dark with stubborn heat rising off the pavement. We run into one of our neighbors whose block was saved from the blackouts. I blurt out, “I guess it (this hot weather) is good for my sanctification.” With a twinkle in his eyes and a faint smile, he tells me, “Yeah, you need it more than I do.” Without denying it, we laugh a good laugh and walk back home. Instinctively, I decided to wet my shirt to cool down, still feeling sorry for Luna.

A balmy 84 degrees this morning. During my silence this morning, I had the thought of cleaning the filter of our only window AC unit. Was that God who reminded me to clean it? Or was that my busy mind-chatter to survive? I don’t know. When I did take out the filter, I was appalled by how filthy it was, and after cleaning it the AC is working better than ever in years! I thanked (?) God for reminding me. J My wife thanks me for cleaning the AC filter, and it promptly makes my day. It is a good day.

Then, I read the story of the daring nun who hid and saved 83 Jewish children during World War 2. You can check it out here if interested (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54033792). My heart moves to compassion, and I momentarily find myself thinking about the afflicted and the disenfranchised in our day. No action now, but I tuck that aside as a possible building block into something later. I say to myself, “We'll see.”

I then read a few pages of Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. In the book, I come to the quote by Gandhi, “How can he who thinks he possesses absolute truth be fraternal?” I read it several times. . .

Merton responds to the quote above.

“ Let us be frank about it: the history of Christianity raises this question again and again. 

The Problem: God has revealed himself to men in Christ, but He has revealed Himself first of all as love. Absolute truth is then grasped as love: therefore not in such a way that it excludes love in certain limited situations. Only he who loves can be sure that he is still in contact with the truth, which is in fact too absolute to be grasped by his mind. Hence, he who holds to the gospel truth is afraid that he may lose the truth by a failure of love, not by a failure of knowledge…Knowledge expands a man like a balloon, and gives him a precarious wholeness in which he thinks that he holds in himself all the dimensions of a truth the totality of which is denied to others. It then becomes his duty, he thinks, by virtue of his superior knowledge, to punish those who do not share this truth. How can he ‘love’ others, he thinks, except by imposing on them the truth which they would otherwise insult and neglect? This is the temptation. (Merton, CJB p. 37-38)”

I was stuck after reading this section and could not read anymore. . . What Gandhi asked in earnest is the age-old question that has been repeated for centuries upon centuries by those who were repulsed by Christendom but were attracted to Jesus Christ as Gandhi was. History is unfortunately littered with the blind efforts of Christendom to level others to conformity. This was done in the name of Jesus but certainly not by the Spirit of Jesus. The truth is often attacked in the name of truth. The truth can only be revealed as the truth when embraced in love.

Knowledge is bondage, more than we care to admit. I grew up hearing and embracing that knowledge is power. If there is ever a modern worldview, this is the most prominent of them all. I would ask now: what of power then? Power for what? Power for whom? So what? What do we gain? What do we lose? I tell myself that my focus is not to accumulate knowledge and to make sense out of reality and dish out such knowledge, but to live out of wisdom. Alas, this is a hard lesson to live by.

To be sure, knowledge is not same as truth. The absolute truth can only be understood by love as in loving and following Jesus. This truth becomes absolute only in its embodiment of Jesus. This truth is gentle, kind, patient, and full of grace. Above all, this truth is love. Consequently, this truth acted out in love, ultimately on the cross. Without love, this truth morphs into a set of wooden beliefs that forces all others to follow. Without love, this truth becomes a mere knowledge that is onerous and worse, creates warped barriers to Jesus. In short, we proclaim and live like Jesus. We do not proclaim what we think is the absolute truth, apart from love. We “preach” Jesus, not Christianity.

Knowledge can be service if it is channeled out of love and to love. Wisdom is “knowledge deepened by love,” Ilia Delio writes. Wisdom teaches us how to live out of love for God, myself, and others.

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KNOWING GOD

For some time now, I have been engaging the Scripture through an ancient practice called lectio divina (sacred or divine reading). There are various methods to this sacred reading, but one unifying approach is engaging my senses and imagination more than my logic or rational mind when reading the Scripture. I try to immerse myself as part of the story, engaging the imagination to hear, see, speak, smell, taste, touch, and/or feel. I don’t approach Scripture with a focus of an objective minded study but a subjective “reading” of my life. (I actually do not think that there is pure objectivity when reading the Scripture. No one is excluded in bringing our “stuff” into the text).

In this vein, my questions are not “What is God really trying to say?” or “What does this text mean?”

Lection Divina allows for a reading of my life subjectively while trying to steer away from finding the objective answers for all time for all places. My questions are like “What are some words, phrases, and sentences that grab my heart today?” and “What is God inviting me to reflect and to do?” and “What is my response to God?”

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“Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” ”

— Mark 7:31-37, ESV

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I meditated on the above passage multiple times over the course of one week a few weeks ago, immersing myself in the story twice with two separate groups and twice privately. Each time, different words/phrases and invitations ensued. First time, what got me was the word they. I asked myself, who are “they” in my life and who is my community? I was duly reminded of multiple loving and caring communities my wife and I are part of, prompting me to thank God. Second time, the phrase “taking him aside from the crowd privately” grabbed my heart. I sensed that that was what Jesus was doing with me during this sabbatical and thus deeply affirmed my heart. I am experiencing an elongated intimate and uninterrupted time with Jesus. Third time, the phrase “be opened” captured my current groaning and complaint to God. I asked, “God, open the doors of my future and what I should do.” I asked, “Can’t you just say ‘Ephphatha’ again?” The final time, I imagined the man now able to speak plainly after being healed by Jesus. This healed man was now me. I then embraced God’s invitation for me to “speak”—that I must speak based on what God has shown me and what Jesus has done in my life. I realized afterwards, the invitation to “speak” was an answer to my questioning cry of “be opened” after my community carried me to Jesus and Jesus subsequently met and healed me privately. The invitation was not to ask Jesus to open doors for my future but for me to “open doors” of unaware souls through my “speaking.”

LECTIO DIVINA

is an exercise of engaging the Scripture with an honest reflection of my life using my imagination and senses. The Bible is a collection of sacred writings written by those whose lives’ trajectory merged with God’s story. For the Bible to be Bible, it must interact with authentic experiences of our lives and impact our lives’ trajectory to sync with God’s purpose. Only in this way does the Bible make its full intended impact on humanity. It is meant to be read subjectively, authentically, and truthfully engaging each of our lives. It should not be that we read the Bible, but that the Bible is reading us! If we believe that God is going somewhere (and we do) and that God has a trajectory, our calling then is to align our lives’ trajectory with God’s.

The root meaning of ‘orthodox’ refers to “straight, true, or right praise or opinion.” “Straight, true, or right” based on what?

I propose such a posture only comes from the authenticity and truthfulness of our heart. We can only stay straight, true, or right based on who we are. We do not represent objectively the so-called pure and right opinion. God remains hidden from any dogmatic and concrete opinions about who God is. God refuses to be known by any intellectual pursuit of humans. God is known and unknown. Known because we have experienced God in authentic and real ways. Knowing God is a personal and intimate act. We know God because we experienced God.

I reject the notion that we can know God by deducing God into a set of truths and a belief system. (Mozart rejected Protestantism by saying that “Protestantism was all in the head.”) Also, we leave the unknown-ness of God unknown and as mystery. We dare not turn “mysteries” of God into some formulaic “truths.”

Thomas Acquinas said, “The extreme of human knowledge of God is to know that we do not know God.”

Orthodox truths flow right out of our heart. Our heart recognizes songs, poems, movies, paintings, nature, “hints, and guesses” as transparent mediums of our orthodoxy. Do not search orthodoxy outside of your heart. Orthodoxy rests in our authentic hearts. Our duty is to stay on the straight, true, and right path according to our heart and pay attention to “hints and guesses” and mediums God supplies us with.

I close this blog with a poem by T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages (from stanza V)

Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation

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A PILGRIM SPIRITUALITY

“Follow your heart.” -John Bunyon

Korean people, including my parents, who have lived through the Korean war and its aftermath and its recovery based on a collective conscientious sacrificial effort know what it means to be poor and hungry. One general characteristic among many positives of that generation (the so-called “the greatest generation” according to Tom Brokaw) is that they often hoard and have difficult time letting their stuff go. It is an understandable trait. Had I lived through those times, I would have easily acquired the same trait. I know. Compared to my wife and my children, I am by far the biggest hoarder in my family. A few months ago, our entire family was “spring cleaning” our garage, trying to organize it after years of accumulation of stuff of who knows what. We decided to take EVERYTHING out of the garage first and then make the decisions on whether to keep or to toss. At the end of a few hours’ work, I could not believe how empty our garage looked. I realized quickly that I was the most sentimental hoarder. I kept asking, "Why would we throw that stuff away?" I was met with stares that said, "Are you kidding me?"

I have not gone on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain yet. Hopefully in the near future. . .  That was our grand plan during our sabbatical this year but alas COVID-19 hit, and the rest is history. I read several books and watched numerous movies/documentaries and clips on the pilgrimage. One of the inevitable lessons I will have learned is the carrying load, deciding how much stuff to take on the journey (The French Way is about 769 km long). Hearing from those who have gone on the trip, all shared the same lesson of lessening the load they carried. I often heard and read that every ounce (not even pound) counts. They would carry the guide-book (there is only one reputable one that is recommended) and it is not a light book. So what they would do out of survival mode is to simply rip off the pages they did not need. I have not gone on the trip so I can’t say too much about it.

However, I can venture to draw the parallel of how much stuff we carry between the Camino pilgrimage and our life—as pilgrims not as refugee-mentality-driven hoarders.

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This practice of letting go and unburdening is at the core of pilgrim spirituality. You learn to travel lightly. More generally, as I ponder about the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, I cannot help but to draw parallel between the French Way and my own life’s journey as a pilgrim. Below are some of the hard but precious lessons learned (and still learning and deepening) from my own life’s journey.

A Pilgrim Spirituality is . . .

. . . finding joy and grace through releasing and unleashing.

. . . discovering contentment through little, plenty, and surprises.

. . . finding answers through questions, hints, and guesses.

. . . giving myself grace for getting lost.

. . . saying “I don’t know” often.

. . . knowing when to rest, slow down, or speed up.

. . . realizing my actions are contextual and immediate wherever I happen to be.

. . . seeing what is real to me is not necessarily what is Real.

. . . making friends with doubts, curiosities, sufferings, and darkness.

. . . placing love over certainties and convictions.

. . . listening to the wildness of my body and nature around me.

. . . widening my parochialism and prejudices.

. . . recognizing The World is bigger than my world.

. . . discerning my inner prompts, inner cries and disillusionments.

. . . welcoming disillusionment with arms wide open because through disillusionment I wake up from my illusions.

. . . feeling and naming all feelings I feel.

. . . embracing both mundane and sacred. In fact, it is about learning that mundane is sacred and sacred is mundane.

. . . owning nothing but gaining everything.

. . . receiving every day as a pure gift and not under compulsion to control.

. . . making no distinction between what is human and spiritual.

. . . waking up to being fully alive, seamlessly integrating my humanity and spirituality.

. . . thanking God for my existence, others’ existence and everything around me.

. . . living as a willing and grateful citizen of the cosmic divine welfare system that is governed by the generous love of God.

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CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION

What is the link between contemplation and action?

Our actions stem from our perception of “what is real.” Actions must find their firm footing based on our rationale and convictions of what we perceive to be real. We don’t just act and do something. We act based on our understanding of reality. We are always governed by inner guidance that justifies our actions based on our interpretation of reality. I do the act of flossing because of my perception of reality that flossing is good for my dental care. I do the act of listening because my interpretation of what is real needs me to listen and care. I do the act of going somewhere because my understanding of what reality dictates at the time.

I have shared Parker Palmer’s definition of contemplation, “any way one has of penetrating illusions and touching reality.”

“A long, loving look at the Real” is another definition of contemplation that is widely accepted and used.

Parker’s definition names illusions explicitly where the second definition implies it. Both definition focus on the quality of touching and seeing reality as is. 

If our actions stem from our perception of what is real, then discerning and seeing what is real is absolutely crucial because it drives our actions. Furthermore, separating illusions from reality or sifting reality from swarming illusions is clearly the most important contemplative practice. Illusions disguise as being real. That’s why they are illusions, false, fake, or pseudo reality. Illusions compete for my attention to pretend to be real over what is positively real. I know that my illusions are dense and thickly crusted, making the work of penetration grinding and challenging. I have illusions about my abilities, my importance, my influence, my accomplishments, my motives, etc.

ILLUSIONS

As “real” as my illusions are, all societies and cultures possess illusions. Societal illusions pose a greater challenge of penetration than individual illusions.Illusions such as what peace looks like, what racial inequality looks like, what social justice looks like, what genuine spirituality looks like, what democracy (or other political systems) looks like, etc.

The illusions are thick and dense, and they comprise a long list. Whether at the individual level or the societal level, we have seen that illusions beget other illusions that create inexorable and vicious cycles of nonsense. I have illusions about how good a father I am, and those illusions get embraced and perhaps even replicated by others who I think I have some influence which may also be an illusion. Not only that, internally, my illusions as a father cause my self-worth illusions to grow unbeknownst to me.

We are all familiar with the saying “Don’t just stand there, do something.” There is time and place for that, but in the context of illusions clouding out what is real, perhaps we need to reverse the saying: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” This is where the admonition and exhortation of taking a “long, loving look at the Real” is persuasive. I ask myself, when was the last time I just stood and watched something for long enough to appreciate the complexities and intricacies of reality? I am not talking about material things made by human hands necessarily, I am talking about the things in nature, whether it is a single leaf, a coy wild flower by a hiking trail, a tiny ant busily searching for something, a blue sky filled with cumulus clouds (my fav) stretching as far as eyes can see, a dog napping, etc. I believe when our actions become derivative of a long, loving look at the Real, then our actions speak louder and become much more meaningful and impactful. From my own experience, too much of our action is re-action, based on external provocation of what is not real. This further betrays who we are interiorly or what we want to do based on our free and creative spirit and thus our actions lose the meaning and impact they deserve.

All our beginning point is the same in that each of us is created to bear the image of God with no exceptions. All our end is and should be to become the likeness of God, as we read in the creation account that we are made in the image and likeness of the triune God. So then, I propose that all of us are created to become. The word become ties contemplation and action, or if you prefer, being and doing, seamlessly. The key quest of becoming is aimed at become like what or more precisely who. The idea of becoming assumes that there is a destination, and that destination is to become the likeness of God. Jesus puts it this way, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Furthermore, the way to become is to follow Jesus with the perfect and creative help of the Holy Spirit. This is what our human and spiritual journey is about.

But following Jesus on our way to become the likeness of God does not mean all our journeys are exactly the same.  At the root, our becoming is to be fully alive, as each life is uniquely and unrepeatably different. This is where the fun and craziness start. All our journeys as pilgrims of becoming is different as we are to figure out and map out our own paths. At the same time, there is also a universality in our journeys that we can learn from each other as fellow pilgrims. There is both peculiarity and universality in our pilgrim journeys.

To be fully alive is to become, a combination of both to be (contemplate) and to do (act). As each of us do our part in becoming, we can see the world becoming as God intended. 

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WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO FOR YOU?

“What do you want me to do for you?”

The question Jesus asked Bartimaeus the blind (Mark 10:46-52) comes to me as if Jesus is asking the same question to me today…

Last week, I hiked with 3 of my friends at the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park trail in California. We have been friends since our college days. Though we were relatively close to the ocean, the typical cool ocean breeze was scarce or maybe even non-existent. Definitely warmer than we had hoped for hiking temperature, however, we were just delighted to be together. All of us are nearing the big 60 mark. Our conversation included usual family updates especially during the COVID-19 season, our work, as well as somewhat obligatory health updates as in what’s not functioning well in our bodies and how we need to better care for ourselves. One friend is a missionary and a counselor. He and his wife served in Taiwan for multiple years. His recent studies and training led him to now counsel people, and I have seen him immensely enjoying his job (really his ministry), which brings me joy. He is a safe harbor for many restless and needy ships. Another is a trained pharmacist but has developed his own pharmacy business and has done quite well over the years. An avid reader, he is also a wine connoisseur and knows his stuff on other “fancy” drinks. He has a knack for being at the right place at the right time with the right people. Very good people and resource connector he is! Last but not least is a CPA who co-owns a productive CPA firm. A self-acknowledged workaholic, but now he is ready to retire (in five years he says), slow down, and focus on “sucking out all the marrow of life.” A sympathetic person at his core, he is meticulously caring and a defender of the needy. During our outdoor brunch after the hike, he boasted rightfully how his son in NYC texted him saying he was praying for our friends’ time to be meaningful.

One of our conversations revolved around pursuing after our passions, especially as we near our retirement mark. How there are so many other passions that our current work does not sufficiently capture or contain. . . from simple and mundane things as serving at a church, exercise, travel, taking classes at a city college, and spending time with adult children, to a deeper groanings of our passions including establishing a non-profit to help young underprivileged children in Asia to help people to better manage and steward their finances and thus better position themselves to help others to deep listening to people’s pains, grievances, and problems and offer practical and sustainable solutions.

Next day I am confronted and reminded by the question Jesus asked Bartimaeus. “What do you want me to do for you?” The “me” here is Jesus! Jesus who is fully trusted and trustable. I picture Jesus standing in front of me and asking the question and warmly inviting me to respond with his eyes locked on mine. Everything else blurs out of focus in the background. As is the case with Bartimaeus, I believe Jesus already knows what my response is even before I start to piece some meaningful words together. I am forever catching up with Jesus as it should be because Jesus is always ahead of me. He is the way.

And then I blurt this out to Jesus.

I want to live a simple, unhurried, and meaningful life in a quiet and uncrowded place. This whole statement would normally be shocking even to myself because I would not have written this statement 10 years ago.

I want to find joy in small things in life. I want to slow down long enough to smell the lavender, trace butterflies with my eyes, find meanings in poems and paintings and songs and other creative works, recognize people as God’s gifts, etc. The list goes on…

I want to read, write, and speak. This summarizes my desire to grow, understand, perceive, and to communicate. Communication toward communion with God, ourselves, and others. I uttered an inner cry a week ago that “I must speak” during one of the group spiritual direction where I volunteered to share. During the session, my wife shared that it sounded like a lion roaring coming from my soul.

I want to engage in group spiritual direction with my wife. We have been immensely enjoying facilitating several groups in this season. There is deep joy welling up in how we complement and supplement one another.

I want to guide and develop people to discover God’s divine blueprint in them as God’s image-bearers. I say “I” but it is really being an active assistant to the Holy Spirit that is already working.

Then I imagine Jesus saying, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.”

How would YOU respond to Jesus’ question, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Remember, Jesus already knows our response. We are always in a catch-up mode. 

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ILLUSIONS AND INVISIBILITY

My life is governed by illusions and invisibility more than I care to know and admit. I think I have my life under control and have the capacity to direct and live my life as I will. Truth to be told, this is a grand illusion. This illusion works like a mirage, creating false projections and worth of myself and my life. Like a poorly constructed tower, illusion can tumble down quickly, giving me a real dose of how harsh and “unrealistic” reality can be. But this harshness is an invisible gift from God if I accept the felled nature of the tower, which is my ego.

Being a general director of Frontier Ventures (formerly known as the U. S. Center for World Mission) was one of my towers. Enamored with Dr. Ralph Winter who was the visionary founder of the storied missionary organization, I decided to remain at “home” to mobilize rather than go overseas to serve. How I started my directorship was an act of obedience, albeit a reluctant one. Over time, however, my ego got fed and fed again and went “to my head.” I knew it was lurking in the back of my mind. At the same time, I reasoned, truthfully, that all my efforts were not necessarily to benefit my ego. Therein lay the hidden fact of how carefully the illusion was constructed. When time came for me to step down from my role, the tower I built came crashing down. My ego took a hit and I found myself desperately trying to salvage my ego. Then I heard God whisper to me in a still small voice but resoundingly clear, “Son, you have no idea how good this decision is for you (my true self).”

SEEING…

My interpretation of what is and the reality of what is will never synchronize perfectly. There will always be a gap between the two. I suppose one of life’s goals is to narrow this gap. Often, I see what I see or worse—I see what I want to see. I don’t see what is seen.

Illusion is the warp and woof of my interpretation of reality stemming from my ego. It is illusion because I turn and twist to fit and boost my ego. (To be fair to myself, some interpretation of mine do not originate from my ego.) Parker Palmer’s definition of contemplation is fabulous. He says that contemplation is “any way one has of penetrating illusions and touching reality.” Illusions are not illusions if they are easily recognized. Illusions are illusions because they are carefully and densely encrusted, making it slow to expose and difficult to penetrate. It is almost impossible to see what just is without the honest and vulnerable work of penetrating illusions that surround it. The work of penetration starts with simple honest awareness and acknowledgement. And to do it with self-compassion. . .

“First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!”

— Lady Julian of Norwich

Falling is the mercy of God, waking me up from illusions. Greater the illusion, the harder the fall. Recovery is God’s invisible work of grace and mercy. I don’t see the recovery coming and yet when it arrives, I know it is totally God’s mercy. Harder the fall, the greater the mercy of God. This process of recovery overflowing with mercy is a divine orchestration by God, invisible from my line of sight and perspective.

Illusions from Reality and invisibility of God’s grace and mercy function as perfect match made in heaven. Both are unseen initially. Recognizing illusions require lifelong commitment of dogged pursuit of how our ego works. Experiencing God’s invisible mercy, however, is all grace. There is no effort on ours. There can’t be effort on ours, otherwise it is not grace. 

Meister Eckhart said, “For God to be is to give being. For us, to be is to receive being.”

The ancient and eternal nature of our being is to receive from God whose name means to give.

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TELL IT SLANT

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson

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Occasionally, I read what I wrote earlier in papers, blogs, or even email exchanges (sometimes forced to read as people respond to my writings), and I must admit, it often feels too cerebral, detached, and jumpy, lacking detailed fillers.

I am an impatient writer, not willing to take time and space to carefully explain things. I am a jumpy writer, leaping from one thing to another with little or no explanations in between. Some have asked how did you go from here to there? I must confess, I have a monkey-mind, not uncharacteristic of type 7 on Enneagram… Another confession. I am a terrible instruction reader or follower. In fact, I can’t. It drives me nuts. My wife and my children know. I messed up more than I care to remember when assembling IKEA furniture because I just would not follow the detailed and tedious (my language) but sometimes helpful instructions. In a related vein, as I write each blog post, I can almost hear my wife advising me to give examples from my life, which I have done from time to time. The credit goes to my wife if those examples made sense and enhanced the content…

It is true that my writing has helped me immensely (especially during the sabbatical) as it forced me to process retrospectively as well as prospectively. I am aware that what I process is not necessarily the objective truths (and will never be), but subjectively interpreted and couched truths. It is how I make sense out of who I am and how I perceive the past, present, and future. I suppose it is my way of telling myself truths and telling them slant. In many ways, I realize afresh that I can’t handle the direct truths, for I am prone to pollute the truths with my narrow and limited filtering efforts. “Coming to me slant” grants me uneasy and yet valuable time to reorient my life according to the truth. (As an Asian, I can appreciate this idea of telling it slant, as it is one of the virtues of indirect communication. I guess one minor distinction may be that telling it slant in the Asian context is about saving each other from shame more than the possibility of truth blinding us.) I would like to think this idea of coming to us slant is like experiencing God’s tangible grace in discovering our own life paths filled with questions and self-discovered answers. Thus, “the truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.”  

I tell myself that the only thing that really matters is Jesus and him crucified, as Paul succinctly summarized (1 Corinthians 2:2). Everything else is secondary and tertiary and so forth. Thus, we filter everything that happens in life through the lens of Jesus Christ and him crucified. Jesus Christ is his birth, his childhood, his occupation, his relationship with God and the Holy Spirit, his teachings, his questions, his healings, signs, and wonders he performed, his relationship with family, disciples, and sinners, his confrontations with religious and political leaders, his extraordinary and mundane actions, etc., mostly taking place in the obscure and backward country in Galilee interspersed with his presence in the Gentile regions and Jerusalem. It is what Kosuke Koyama aptly calls, “Three miles an hour God,” as the average person walks 3 miles an hour. While Jesus had a clear focus in life and why he came to the earth, he was in no hurry—he wasn’t zipping around performing incredible feats of multi-tasking. It is a miracle of divine restraint in the human form. The way Jesus lived his life makes it possible for us to follow and imitate him! Additionally, observing what Jesus did on this earth and how Jesus lived his life, Jesus was a master par excellence of telling it slant. And then there is his cross and resurrection which is his ultimate culminating work on this earth and his ascension.

I write not because I am an expert but as a seeker. it is my way of grabbling toward the Truth. I am exhorting myself that my writing is ultimately to reflect the reality of Jesus Christ in my life and provide meaning to myself and perhaps to others who resonate with my content and style. Then what I ought to be doing is to declutter and detach anything that stands in the way of Jesus… In the end, it needs to become a deep realization and actualization of Jesus Christ being the perpetual way, the eternal truth, and the never-ending life. Nothing more and nothing less.

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RIVER AND WIND

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

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Above is one of my favorite poems by John O’Donohue called fluent. “Would” captures my heart today. It’s a hopeful word that speaks to my deep intuitive desire that can easily be drowned in fear and anxiety of “surprises” of the river. I also want to “flow”, not manufacture or perform for approval and affirmation.

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look.”

— W. H. Auden

“Forgetting themselves in a function” is to flow. There is something terribly attractive about letting ourselves just be in innateness and noncoercion. I ask myself when does my eyes reveal the rapt expression? 

I would like to lay one more layer to this line of reflection. Adrian Van Kaam was a writer I turned to during my soul’s darkest days, a few years ago. The Dutch Catholic priest writes in his book, Living Creatively, that originality “is like a unique mark each man receives at birth. It is his latent ability to be himself in his own way.” One question is how do we turn our latent unique potentiality into operational unique reality? Van Kaam presents an interesting insight, “His originality shines through not in what he does but in the way he does it, not in the customs he has but in the way he lives them.” Speaking for myself, when I think of being in flow and being fluent, I immediately think of what I do, not how I do what I do. What Van Kaam is saying, I would like to think, is that our originality flows out of being and that our created nature dictates and discerns how we live our life, uniquely and unrepeatably. After Jesus healed a deaf man, “And they (the crowd) were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak‘” (Mark 7:37). Mark made sure to capture the word well that can be translated as beautifully, finely, or excellently. It is about acting rightly. It is different from merely doing the right things but doing the right things rightly.

A couple of practical insights from Van Kaam are helpful to consider. He advises that giving specific directions to our spontaneous inclinations is a first step. This is no failure proof step. This first step is riddled with risks, and requires courage. Even then, what matters is that we listen long enough to discern our soul’s spontaneous inclinations to lay out actionable steps. Van Kaam goes on to say that courage is one value (especially in our day) that is lacking for us to live our own lives in the seas of doubt and anxiety. Courage does not mean fear-less, doubt-less, or anxiety-less, but shows up into translated action in spite of fear, doubt, and anxiety. Courage to be and to do. . .

CONNECTION

Finding or creating a community that imbues courage and freedom seems to be a must for all of us. Discovering our originality and flow can never be an isolated journey.

I am a huge fan of Sohyang, Korean singer, with a God-given angelic voice. Talk about being in the flow or forgetting oneself in a function. She embodies being fluent. She recently sang in Begin Again Korea (Korean TV show) a song called A Song of Wind. I would like to share the link and my translation of the lyrics below. Be blessed as I was blessed.

When will I be able to hear
the song of the wind?
As time passes, will I ever realize
the reason why flowers wither?

People who leave me and
People who I meet
All the passing relationships and longing
Where do they all go?

I cannot know with my tiny wisdom
What I do know is how to live now

Many times of failure and anguish
We have realized they can’t be avoided
If now love is the answer
I will love everything in this world

People who leave me
People who I meet
All the passing relationships and longing
Where do they all go?

I cannot know with my tiny wisdom
What I do know is how to live now

Many times of failure and anguish
We have realized they can’t be avoided
If now love is the answer
I will love everything in this world

Many times of failure and anguish
We have realized they can’t be avoided
If now love is the answer
I will love everything in this world

I will love everything in this world

I will love everything in this world

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RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE | PART 4

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 4 OF 4

What would our participation in the missio dei look like (or change) if we embrace wholeheartedly the concept of inherent dignity and respect for each human being?

This assertion is miles away from simple rejection of modernity in favor of post-modernity’s (or post post-modernity's) dismantling of anything centric or specifically western-led systems. As I alluded earlier, pursuing union with God is not an individualistic journey. We were created by the “community” of (the triune) God. In other words, we are created not only to belong to ourselves as individuals but to one another. That is ontologically embedded in our creation account. 

There is a big difference between personalism and individualism. Personalism recognizes the inherent dignity of the person and not the individual self. Borrowing words from Thomas Merton, this recognition of inherent dignity requires respecting “the unique and inalienable value of the other person, as well as one’s own, for a respect that is centered only on one’s individual self to the exclusion of others proves itself to be fraudulent.” Personalism allows oneself to see oneself as well as others with compassionate and generous eyes. This posture of compassion toward oneself and others is a crucial foundation for all our missio dei efforts.

 So how do we move forward in our participation in missio dei? In short, a new missio dei model would have to have as its origin imago dei. It would certainly not start from the Great Commission, which is to highlight the several selected verses in the New Testament. It would not even start with the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12). We must go all the way back to the creation account. Additionally, the fact that we are created in God’s image and likeness means that we are created by Love (which is the curt conclusion of Apostle John). No wonder Jesus summarized the Old Testament into the commandment of loving God, loving oneself, and loving our neighbors. Jesus’ “neighbor” would even include our enemies. Thus we are created by Love, for Love, and to Love. Love is an ontological concept. Love is a culmination of why God exists and why we exist and why the entire creation exists. Love is both our identity and the final vision of our human and cosmic destination.

Love integrates who God is, who we are (and who we are becoming), and what this world needs to become. God’s kingdom coming on this earth articulates that vision of love immersing into every single fabric of reality. To be sure, for love to be love, it has to show itself in action. When we say God “touched” us or we experienced God, what we are saying is that we have experienced unconditional love, grace, and mercy. As such, we can begin to envision this circle of unconditional love touching, impacting, and ultimately transforming all (every human soul, all peoples and societies and structures, as well as all of God’s creation) on this earth.

Personally speaking, I’ve noticed that my motivation for missions has progressed from obedience to pursuing the glory of God to love in the last 36 years. It is certainly not wrong to serve God out of obedience or pursuit of the glory of God. However, love unites God, myself, and others. Who I am and who I am becoming is excluded when I operate out of obedience and the glory of God motives. What we are told is that we must “die” to ourselves and surrender in order to serve God, which is not wrong, but incomplete. Love explains and answers my life’s trajectory from its origin to final destination. From this perspective and motive of love, our participation in missio dei has to be subservient to the Great Commandment. Love is the final and ultimate barometer for why and how we engage in missions.

Love trumps strategy and effectiveness. Love rejects any effort that is stemming out of our need to control and to preserve our elitism. Love truthfully creates a fair field of collaborative play among all (churches, other spiritual communities, agencies, and nationalities) who are involved in missio dei as we each are faithfully pursuing to become Love (that is unconditional). True collaboration is possible as fellow pilgrims on this journey of becoming Love and a deep and profound sense of solidarity finally would find its place of belonging. Who we are and who we are all becoming dictates what and how we do. In other words, our human doings are natural by products of our human beings. Naturally, I hope how we mobilize, recruit, train, and deploy our workers reflects this new missio dei model.

Finally, I dream of a new “order” (community of people beyond any one religious stream) where people’s recovery and discovery of inherent dignity of their soul is taken with utter importance. Naturally, discovering one’s unrepeatable unique inherent dignity and identity is never an isolated individual journey. It can only be done in an intentional community where safety, generosity, and freedom are viscerally and continually experienced. The cultivation of our beings experienced in intentional communities are a true testament of God’s Kingdom coming on this earth and a good gift (good news) to this world where people(s) do not have to become like me (or us) to be accepted and to flourish.

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RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE | PART 3

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 3 OF 4

Control Through Certainty and Effectiveness

Reflecting on our current participation in missio dei, I’d like for us to consider the detrimental effects of how our drive toward certainty betrays the very concept of imago dei. The drive and even obsession toward certainty creates elitism and perhaps unintended “class system.” It inevitably creates and draws the line of who is right and who is wrong—driving toward orthodoxy as if there is one supreme orthodoxy! The areas of certainty undoubtedly stem first and foremost from unattainable theological certainty and spill into areas of systems of how missions is done and should be done. Our concept of God can never amount to God. Our idea of God is not God. God is so much bigger than what Christianity claims God to be. God refuses to be contained in a religious box! God’s altar cannot be confined to churches or cathedrals or mosques, but the whole world is teeming with the wideness and wildness of God’s “wholly” presence.

Certainty exists when the world is built on simplicity. (Here, I am certainly J not saying that there isn’t any certainty in the world.) We’ve become more aware of the fact that life and the world are complex, more complex and mysterious than we care to admit. Recent books by Gregory Boyd and Peter Enns described certainty as an “idol” and “sin” respectively.[1] Paul Tillich’s seminal book[2] ends with this italicized sentence, “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.” These books show that doubt is not the enemy of faith, but certainty is. Doubt is a natural and integral process of the spiritual journey. The drive toward certainty at its worst can translate into control and even manipulations, often disguised as carefully constructed “effective” systems.

Effectiveness is a top currency of modern progress. Bible addresses faithfulness, sometimes even against being effective. The actuating force toward effectiveness showcases itself as results (or fruits) driven, which has its roots in money, which also translates into control. If the results or fruits are the natural outcome of faithfulness, we ought to be glad and rejoice. Fruits are God’s gifts of encouragement to us, affirming that we are on the right path. However, our posture should be fundamentally that of seeking faithfulness, not effectiveness. Bible also portrays God’s love as never possessive or controlling, which is to say God’s love is unconditional. Can you imagine God operating out of effectiveness?

Imago Dei as a Foundation for Missio Dei

What then are some implications for embracing imago dei as a foundation for missio dei? Right off the bat, it levels the playing field, as it were. Nobody is above or below, in or out, with or without. We are all created in the image of God and the likeness of God. No exceptions. This foundationally should change how we relate to one another as fellow human beings. (We are human beings, not human doings, by the way.) This leads to the biblical concept and image of all humanity as fellow pilgrims and sojourners toward union with God. As we know, the concept of imago dei (Gen 1:26) is closely followed by the cultural mandate (Gen 1:28). The cultural mandate is a natural outflow of action from the reality and vision of imago dei. In other words, promoting the cultural mandate without the foundational assertion of imago dei can easily be distorted and dangerous in such ways that it can tilt and favor certain race over the others.

Paul Hiebert’s assertion of “centered set model” (over “bounded set”) some 40 years ago is a helpful framework with a couple of cautions. One is that while affirming that Jesus Christ is at the “center,” we dare not add our own theological convictions. The other is a precaution that no one (or group) judges who is moving closer to the center, who is going sideways, or who is going astray. If we are not careful, it can easily turn into a judgment game of who is closer. I understand this language of “moving closer to the center” is significantly better expression than “who is in or out.” Even then, it requires humility and vulnerability of our journey of all from all. Furthermore, Paul Hiebert’s addition of “self-theologizing” as the fourth self along with earlier foundation of the “three-self principle” proves intelligible for embracing imago dei. In other words, the concept of imago dei is the starting point for the four-self principle. Without this understanding, four-self principle morphs into a mere behavioral list of what to do or what not to do. Mike Stroope’s book, Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition, where he encourages the use of the words like pilgrim, witness, and the kingdom is quite helpful. In this vein, I am continually in favor of “alongsider” language.

[1] Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty by Gregory Boyd was published in 2013. The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs by Peter Enns in 2017.

[2] Courage To Be was published in 1952.

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RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE | PART 2

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 2 OF 4

This spiritual drive originates from the truth that all human beings are created in the image and the likeness of the Triune God. From the “community of producers” of God, each of us were created in the image and the likeness of God. The end of spiritual journey is to be in union with God (transformed into the likeness of God), thus fulfilling the vision of imago dei. The Gospel of John confirms the narrative this vision unlike any other book of the Bible, highlighted by Jesus’ prayer of union at Gethsemane.

What would happen if current and future missions endeavors (our participation in missio dei) were to be launched out of the imago dei? The so-called “Third World Missions” phenomenon started in 1970s (though there were earlier pockets of this phenomenon, the decade of 1970s is widely accepted to be the beginning of the movement) and thus within in our lifetime. Even the “global” colonization drive and craze is only one generation removed. My parents still remember living under the Japanese occupation. In U.S., it is uncovering and helpfully exposing the systemic stronghold of the white privilege and white supremacy mentality that has seeped into so many layers of the society ever since the founding days of the nation. White privilege is “a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context,” writes Robin DiAngelo, in her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism. Charles W. Mills in his book, The Racial Contract, defines white supremacy as “the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today.” As I write this paper, U.S. is experiencing dozens of irenic protests and contentious outbursts of anger and mayhem all over the nation (and around the world), notably sparked by the latest incident of incidents--the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His dying words, “I can’t breathe,” may have prophetic utterance on global societal consciousness as well as missional consciousness that is built on white privilege and supremacy.

The current impact of U.S.’s clumsy dealings with COVID 19 is aiding deglobalization, which is synonymous with dewesternization. The current missions endeavor is a milder or more sophisticated extension of the blatant western colonization which existed not too long ago.[1] In other words, no one would dare to admit publicly that the current missions effort is another form of westernization based on white privilege. To be sure, the Protestant missions effort was launched right from the colonial context of western dominance and privilege. I would be quick to affirm that we have made tremendous progress toward equality and integrity of the vision of imago dei—that all are created in God’s image and likeness and that no one is above or below, in or out, or with or without. Even then, there are subtle nuances and remnants of white or western privilege at work. At the same time, the flavor of the Church globally remains generally western, and sometimes the Church in the majority world remains more western than the West. It is a highly complex web of reality and thus I am not isolating western as simply the West.

[1] To be fair, I accept and understand that not everything in western colonialism was inherently bad. Even then, the colonialism in general promoted and maintained a belief and system of advantage based on race.

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RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE

I was asked by Bangkok Forum (Bangkok Forum is the name of the annual consultation of Korean mission leaders to evaluate and suggest ways forward in improving Korean mission effort) to write a paper on how COVID-19 impacts and alters the Korean mission movement. Seeing COVID-19 as an opportunity to change, my angle was to reexamine and question foundational and systemic ways of doing missions. As I began to work on the paper, George Floyd’s brutal killing took place on May 25.

I see COVID-19 decelerating and perhaps forever altering the shape of the globalization drive, which I say in my paper is synonymous with dewesternization. Westernization is based on white privilege and supremacy. It is designed to perpetuate and maintain the status quo of white dominance. Yes, the missions arena is no exception. This process of dewesternization is a welcome change. To be sure, the idea of dewesternization is not new, but the root of systemic white privilege and supremacy has not been adequately exposed and transformed. Thus, dewesternization can be viewed as one of the least common denominators for both COVID-19 and the impact of the death of George Floyd. If this is true or close to being true, then we stand before a historic opportunity and call to reclaim the concept of imago dei (the image of God) which Richard Rohr calls “the original blessing.” I will be sharing this paper with you in 4 part series.

Thank you for reading and reflecting!

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BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 1 OF 4

COVID-19 is like a colossal and unpredictable hurricane that is wreaking havoc on countless lives, and systems and consequential ideologies both on societal and global levels. It is unlike we have ever seen in anybody’s lifetime. One area that has been dealt a significant blow is how people “do their religions.”

There has been enough distance both physically and mentally (and should I also say fundamentally) from regular religious activities for the last several months that many are asking what their religious participation really means for them in their everyday life. This period of quiescence and pause is doing us a service of creating sparks of epiphany for many to realize that their religiosity and spirituality do not necessarily mean the same thing. What COVID 19 has accelerated is this spiritual awakening that is independent of one’s religious affiliation or level of religiosity. This is not to deny that there are not also others who see greater value and attraction to their religion. Some choose to be spiritual without being religious while some choose to be spiritual while being religious.

The phenomenon of pursuing spirituality without being religious (or beyond religion) is not new. It can no longer be seen as a dawning movement, but perhaps that of a bright mid-morning reality. Brian McLaren’s book published in 2016, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian, deals with this topic head on. I’ve also personally witnessed and dialogued with pockets of people and leaders who are in this migratory journey globally and thus are familiar and agree with McLaren’s assertions. My only disagreement with McLaren is his usage of the term, Christian. It is no longer a movement of a Christian kind. It is fundamentally another reformation in the making, potentially as disruptive and hopeful as was the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago. I published a paper on this topic, “Another Reformation on the Horizon,” from a missiological perspective in 2006.[1] What I failed to see lucidly at the time was a reformation from within Christianity. These streams of genuine followers of Jesus from Islam, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions and followers of Jesus outside of traditional Christianity are converging like no other time in history, at the least blurring or perhaps even effectively dismantling the known and accepted boundaries of religions.

To be human is to be spiritual and to be spiritual is to be human. Whether to be religious or not is secondary. Jesus was a spiritual person. He did not fit into any one religious category of His time. He did not choose Judaism over other religions in His time. (He would not place Christianity over other religions in our time!) That was what drove the devout religious Jews piping-mad toward Jesus. Jesus could not and would not be confined within Judaism. Jesus both affirmed and rejected certain aspects of Judaism. Jesus was impelled to transform the religion from within to be as close to the “Kingdom spirituality,” like the parable of mustard seed. He refused to play the game of favoritism and presented Himself as the Savior and Messiah for all, regardless of their cultural and religious traditions.

This spiritual drive originates from the truth that all human beings are created in the image and the likeness of the Triune God. From the “community of producers” of God, each of us were created in the image and the likeness of God. The end of spiritual journey is to be in union with God (transformed into the likeness of God), thus fulfilling the vision of imago dei. The Gospel of John confirms the narrative this vision unlike any other book of the Bible, highlighted by Jesus’ prayer of union at Gethsemane.

For more info, you can go to https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/23_1_PDFs/17-19%20Chong%20Kim.pdf.

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PERPETUAL REFORMATION

I am one who believes that continual reformation of the Church is needed. Deeper still, is the need for reformation of humanity’s collective God-given-consciousness—how we see God, how we see ourselves, and how we see the relationship between God and us and with one another. From this need for perpetual reformation, fundamental questions stemming from our contexts such as the meaning of life, how we ought to live our life, how societies and communities need to function, etc. would naturally emerge.

In many ways, unrelenting reformation is inevitable and necessary. The Protestant Reformation was a desperately needed reformation originated more from cultural disconnects and discrepancies rather than clear theological convictions. Theological differences were more incidental than primary. The main driving force was the cultural disengagement from the Latin ecclesial world of dominance and absolute authority tainted by corruptions and pagan practices. Luther and Calvin did what they had to do. If not them, there certainly would have been others. It was a cultural revolt against the religious control of the Latin South! (I published an article back in 2006 under the title of Another Reformation on the Horizon. In the middle of the article, I dealt with the Protestant Reformation more specifically. (I am warning you, it is a LONG article!)

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I reject the notion that our call is simply to go back to the Reformation and recover what we think we lost. I also reject the notion that Christianity before the Reformation is all rubbish and we are to reject everything Catholic. I would encourage us to embrace the trajectory that was launched by the Protestant reformers. And this trajectory existed long before the Reformation, as there were many other “reformers” throughout history. We are to steward our unique “understanding of the signs of the times” to reinterpret, or if you like, contextualize, how God’s Kingdom ought to be the reality in our times. We are our unique voices in our generation!

This forces us to be students of our times as well as students of God’s ways revealed both in Scriptures and in creation (including our consciences). We then need to engage afresh in serious and robust “conversation” between our understanding of our times and God’s ways both individually and collectively. This duty and burden of “conversation” is unique to our time and should be ever ongoing. This will lead to prophetic (multiple) voices declaring what they are seeing and understanding followed closely by apostles who are eager to break new ground and spearhead new and fresh movements.

Reformation is called for because it helps to question how we got here and helps to shed unnecessary and ill-fitting requirements and boundaries that are not (really never meant to be) for our time. June 19, 2020, is radically different even from April of 2020. June of 2020 is a whole new world and reality away from June 2019. It is and should be a tireless effort in reinterpretation or deeper interpretation of what we think who God is and how God’s Kingdom needs to reign on this earth now.

Parker Palmer speaks with sheer honesty that is fitting for our time. It is a long quote but worth pondering.

“I would be lost in the dark without the light Christianity sheds on my life, the light I find in truths like incarnation, grace, sacrament, forgiveness, blessings, and the paradoxical dance of death and resurrection. But when Christians claim that their light is the only light and that anyone who does not share their understanding of it is doomed to eternal damnation, things get very dark for me. I want to run screaming out into the so-called secular world—which is, I believe, better-named the wide, wild world of God—where I can recover my God given mind. Out there, I catch sight once again of the truth, goodness, and beauty that disappear when pious Christians slam the door on their musty, windowless, lifeless room. Next to a Christian eclipsed by theological arrogance, an honest atheist shines like the sun. Next to a church proclaimed by its exclusion of “otherness,” a city of true diversity is a cathedral.”

I spoke of trajectory earlier. The overarching question is this. Where does this continual reformation go? Where should it be headed? In the words of Stephen A Smith, ESPN sports analyst, “What’s your end game?” It can neither be toward an arrogant theological perfection nor any religiosity’s appetite toward exclusion of otherness. This is the wrong panacea. Rather, it is a call to radical and generous love, more precisely Love. Because God is love, God is steering the entire creation toward union with divine intimacy, which is love both in essence and action.

Could this be God’s Kingdom coming on this earth?

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FREE TO LIVE A FREE LIFE

Galatians 5:1-6, 13-18 (The Message)

1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

2-3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.

4-6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.

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Apostle Paul gives an “emphatic” warning and offers what life of freedom really looks like.

“For freedom, Christ set us free.” This statement from Paul is congruent with Jesus’ “mission statement” (in the words of prophet Isaiah) from Luke 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

This is one reason I am so drawn to Jesus! He is forever the ultimate defender and uplifter of the underdogs. “The poor, the captives, and the blind” were the underdogs in the culture in Jesus’ time, because their predicament was believed to have been a direct result of their sins and thus God had rejected them and had withdrawn God’s blessings from them. Conversely, being rich was believed to be a direct blessing from God. Thus, Jesus’ words upset these widely accepted beliefs. Later, Apostle John succinctly captures Jesus’ powerful words, “The Truth will set you free” (John 8:32). John also does not fail to grasp Jesus’ own punchy line, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).

Paul is absolutely clear in making the distinction that freedom is neither self-seeking nor self-indulging (e.g. “I get to do whatever I want to do or whatever pleases me,”) but in its practices and ultimacy toward and for others. Paul warns us that unless we embrace and live for others, we will “destroy” our freedom. This false freedom can and will destroy our true freedom. Paul goes on, “The free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.”

“Freedom gives and serves, while selfishness hoards and adds. The purpose of freedom is to do good.”

Living under “the rule-keeping system,” “the obligations of the slave life of the law,” and “your own religious plans and projects” are what Paul starkly calls the “old message” and slavery. Rather, “What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” Paul calls the Galatians and the later saints to “use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.”

The old messages of “rule-keeping systems,” “obligations,” and “religious plans and projects” are still alive and well, and they can put us and others in bondage. Matters turn grave when the old messages become the accepted norm and thus heralded blindly, putting others under the slavery of what Walter Wink calls, “domination systems.” We “fall out of grace” and are “cut off from Christ” when operating out of these old messages. Often times, old messages don’t start out being bad or old, but the exact opposite. Initially they can be noble and even necessary. But over time, they morph into old messages, if exercised without the freedom in Christ that sets us free. Keeping our eyes open for the entrapment and illusion of old messages is part of the freedom discipline and part of the freedom for which Christ invites us to fight for. There is a poignant truth that while Jesus always forgave individual sinners, He neither forgave nor succumbed to old messages and domination systems.

FREEDOM

must be undergirded by love. Freedom is always subservient to love.

The ultimate barometer of our freedom lies in the unselfish, outward, and others-oriented action founded on love. In this case, our external behaviors and actions flow directly from our interiority. One way to gauge our inner freedom is to observe our external behaviors (without pride or self-condemnation but with honesty and self-compassion) because they are the true reflection of our interiority.

Back in 1998, I took my family to Singapore for a 2-month break (it was supposed to be a furlough, but at the time, I did not know or have the tools for rest and renewal…soul care was a foreign concept for me then). While we were in Singapore, I learned that one of my (notice I am saying my) staff decided to move on to some other ministry. I remember having a difficult time with it internally and was forced to deal with the loss. In the following days, I eventually realized that I was operating under the harmful premise that the ministry of the Korean American Center for World Mission was mine. “How dare God move one of my staff workers to some other ministry!” was my honest thought at the time. What blasphemy and danger! I confessed my sin and released not only the staff but the Center. I still vividly remember a clear bodily sensation of freedom I experienced when I “opened my fists” and let them go. Years later, I came across what Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun, captured in her book, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love, “Personhood is the freedom to be oneself and to love what one is without possessing one’s being; to know oneself in another.” That is the great paradox: freedom is the unconditional-others-directed-love, which is the true reflection of our interior freedom. Freedom is serving others in love. 

The Truth that sets us free is not a concept or a carefully constructed belief system. It is a Person! The Truth is not this or that, but a Who. It is Jesus Christ!

“It is impossible to find Truth without being in love.” -Abraham Joshua Heschel

Could it be that the truths we have come to know and accept in life are Personal characteristics of Jesus Himself? The Truth cannot be and refuses to be downgraded to knowledge. Knowledge and Truth are not the same. While knowledge is about knowing something or someone, Truth is knowing the Someone. Knowledge can lead us to the Truth but can never be a substitute for the Truth.

Ilia Delio wrote, “Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love.”

We know the Truth through being perpetually in love with Jesus. That is wisdom leading to the Truth at work.

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GROUP SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

You have a special treat this week. I’ve asked my wife, Grace, to write a post on group spiritual direction. She writes below that we “somehow stumbled into several group spiritual direction spaces” recently and she is right. I knew that she as a spiritual director deeply resonated with group (groups range between as small as 4 and as big as 8) spiritual direction perhaps even more so than the one on one kind. For me, this opportunity has been a surprising discovery—simply savoring the process of “accompanying” others and being “accompanied” by others. At the core of who I am, this practice fulfills my deepest desire of freedom—inner freedom to pursue and discover one’s authentic created being. One particular joy I am experiencing is that my wife and I get to do this “ministry” of accompaniment together. (It is more her leading and facilitating and I get to ride along beside her.)

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Group Spiritual Direction

By Grace Kim

Someone recently wrote to me, “Together, may we be part of a movement of space-makers!” My heart fills with hope as I ponder such a movement. A core value I have is holding hospitable space for others. Chong and I have somehow stumbled into several group spiritual direction spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have discovered that we love building community around group spiritual direction. Group spiritual direction builds deep connections within a community in ways that are counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.  

Group spiritual direction provides a space that is hospitable and safe. We begin with grounding ourselves together in the reality of God’s loving presence. We then have a time of reflection where we can examine our lives and recent interior movements. This can happen through a variety of practices, such as Lectio Divina, Prayer of Examen, reflection questions, etc. We take turns “presenting”. The space is made and held in which the presenter can hear herself and become attuned to how God is with her in the moment. The rest of the group is there to support and hold her in that loving presence of God and to pay attention to the movement of the Spirit for the presenter and the community. The group is blessed as we attune ourselves to the presenter and to God’s presence with her. Our own desire for God and love for the presenter find spaciousness and deepen as we listen to the Spirit together. At the end of a session, we often jokingly will say, “This is like a drug.” I think what we are saying is that we have ventured into a space and experience that is unlike what we normally experience anywhere else, which leaves us hungering for more. 

Such a space is fostered through some foundational beliefs that we agree to enter into together. The first is the agreement that the presenter himself holds the key that can unlock the answers that he is seeking. ee cummings said, “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.”  In group spiritual direction, we listen deeply, so the presenter can experience the sacredness of his being and his own story. Chong and I have been deeply impacted by Henri Nouwen’s definition of hospitality. Nouwen says, “The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations.” This is a beautiful description of the art of group spiritual direction.   

Another foundational belief is the deep trust in the work of the Holy Spirit that is already taking place in the presenter’s life. As a community, we enter together into what the Spirit is doing. The group, as such, does not try to give advice or offer solutions. We trust that God has been actively at work in the presenter’s life and that “he who began a good work. . .will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6). We are all cooperating with the Holy Spirit together to bring about what God desires to bring about in and through the presenter’s life. We are all participating in the One Love, Who is God.  

As you may know, Chong and I are in a season of discernment for what God may have for us for our next season of life and ministry. We have found joy in engaging in group spiritual direction together and want to explore further opportunities. If you are part of a group or a community who seek a fresh mode of building deep connection and a sense of belongingness in an atmosphere of love and freedom, Chong and I would be happy to talk to you about helping you cultivate such a group! 

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JESUS SPIRITUALITY

Jesus was not a “Christian” nor did He found a religion called Christianity. Jesus lived an embodied spirituality that focused on pursuing union with God. Union foundationally with God, absolutely yes! But also union with ourselves, with others, and with creation. The world has yet to fully see what this spirituality of union looks like. . .

Jesus’ spirituality for all humanity can and should reside in all cultures and religions without one culture’s or religion’s domination and dictation. Jesus’ spirituality towers over any one culture or religion. It is clear from stories in the Gospels that Jesus didn’t force Gentiles to become like Jews or adopt Jewish ways of living. Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well has a universal message, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24, ESV). She remained as a Samaritan to follow Jesus (both in her culture and religion) and furthermore, shared her intimate life-changing encounter with other Samaritans back in her village (John 4:39-42).

The watershed moment of the Gospel breaking through beyond the Jews to the gentiles is well chronicled in the Book of Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council. The Council opened the flood gate for gentiles to follow Jesus inside their cultures and religions. Centuries later, when the Protestant Reformation took place, a similar movement took place in creating an environment where peoples could follow Jesus in their own cultures and religions without becoming “Roman” and taking on the Latin way of thinking and living. And now. . . I see another “reformation” taking place. There are many around the world that are moving away from institutionalized Christianity and other religions.

PEOPLE ARE DESPERATELY SEEKING

“Jesus spirituality” of pursuing union with God, oneself, and with all of God’s creation.

Jesus becomes absolutely central in the spiritual reformation and revolution. One cannot pursue union with God without following Jesus. Jesus with curt dogmatism and certainty told us that He is the way, the truth, and the life! Furthermore, Jesus modeled how to be in union with God. The Book of John traces and elaborates both plainly and mystically this theme of union with God and how Jesus went about this transformative journey, thus providing the blueprint for all humanity where no one is excluded.

This spirituality is not a one size fits all or some sort of cookie-cutter spirituality, forcing everyone to be the same. To be human is to be spiritual. The converse is also true, to be spiritual is to be human. Being authentically human means that we all are unrepeatably unique. Thus our “spirituality in the making” will all look different. At the same time, our spirituality all point to one thing: union with God. Ways to get to and experience our unrepeatably unique spirituality is to understand God’s unique creation, that is each and every one of us.

Pursuing union with God is not merely an interior journey of transformation. One’s pursuit of union with God naturally translates into outward contribution and benefit to the world.

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THOMAS MERTON

Thomas Merton rescued me. By now, you can see that I am a huge fan of Merton. During arguably my darkest nights of desperation, his writings gave words to my soul that I didn’t know existed. The first Merton book I picked up was New Seeds of Contemplation. I still vividly remember uncontrollably weeping when reading the book, in a café in K-town, Los Angeles. My wife looked at me, like, “what’s going on with you?” While I would not say I am a “Merton expert," I can say his writings profoundly impacted me more than anybody in the last 7 years. Merton’s writings greatly influenced contemporary contemplative authors like Richard Rohr and Parker Palmer (among countless others) both of whom I have followed fairly religiously.

Probably the way Merton has impacted me the most has to do with accepting myself (the contradiction that I am a saint and a sinner at the same time) as who I am and what God “had in mind” when I was created. Merton captured poignantly, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” Merton gave me permission to pursue and discover who I am and provided a roadmap toward sanctity and salvation as to what my remaining life’s pursuit ought to look like. 

This week’s blog, though, is not about the above topic. Rather, I would like to share a couple of snippets of Merton’s “obscure” and expansive insight as well as his comical human side. The first extensive quotation comes from Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), toward the end of his life. He was criticized by some to have turned into a heretic, because he dove deeply into Zen traditions and other Asian mystical religions. Merton clearly respected the writings and thoughts of Chuang Tzu, but he also delineated Chuang Tzu’s teachings from Apostle Paul’s. Merton writes, “Once this is clear, one can reasonably see a certain analogy between Chuang Tzu and St. Paul. The analogy must certainly not be pushed too far. Chuang Tzu lacks the profoundly theological mysticism of St. Paul. But his teaching about the spiritual liberty of wu wei and the relation of virtue to the indwelling Tao is analogous to Paul’s teaching on faith and grace, contrasted with the “works of the Old Law.” The relation of the Chuang Tzu book to the Analects of Confucius is not unlike that of the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans to the Torah.” What I've come to appreciate in Merton in this case is his generous and broad-mindedness about what truths are. The proverbial  “all truth is God’s truth” certainly is at work here. To borrow Richard Rohr’s language, “everything belongs.”

Specifically, Merton shares one wisdom story from Chuang Tzu. Merton distills the story into a nugget of gold in the last sentence.

“One of the most famous of all Chuang Tzu’s “principles” is that called “three in the morning,” from the story of the monkeys whose keeper planned to give them three measures of chestnuts in the morning and four in the evening but, when they complained, changed his plan and gave them four in the morning and three in the evening. What does this story mean? Simply that the monkeys were foolish and that the keeper cynically outsmarted them? Quite the contrary. The point is rather that the keeper had enough sense to recognize that the monkeys had irrational reasons of their own for wanting four measures of chestnuts in the morning, and did not stubbornly insist on his original arrangement. He was not totally indifferent, and yet he saw that an accidental difference did not affect the substance of his arrangement. Nor did he waste time demanding that the monkeys try to be “more reasonable” about it when monkeys are not expected to be reasonable in the first place. It is when we insist most firmly on everyone else being “reasonable” that we become ourselves, unreasonable. (P. 32, The Way of Chuang Tzu)”

In another story, Merton shares a wild and comical side of his humanity. I could not help but to chuckle because I could totally see myself in Merton’s experience. This one is from Merton’s The Sign of Jonas.

“Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go out to the woods on the other side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before. Once or twice at Saint Bonaventure’s I took lessons. Father Roman tried to teach me to drive a little broken-down Chevvie he had there. Yesterday I took the jeep and started off gaily all by myself to the woods. It had been raining heavily. All the roads were deep in mud. It took me some time to discover the front-wheel drive. I skidded into ditches and got out again, I went through creeks, I got stuck in the mud, I bumped into trees and once, when I was on the main road, I stalled trying to get out of the front-wheel drive and ended up sideways in the middle of the road with a car coming down the hill straight at me. Thank heaven I am still alive. At the moment I didn’t seem to care if I lived or died. I drove the jeep madly into the forest in a rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and and I sang “O Mary I love you,” went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushed madly into the underbrush and backed out again.

Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stem to stern. I stood in choir at Vespers, dizzy with the thought: “I have been driving a jeep.”

Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the jeep out again (P. 258-259, The Sign of Jonas).”

Thanks for letting me share. . . 

My question to all of us today is. . . How is your unique journey of discovering your true self unfolding?

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A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 3

This week, for my final entry on communion, we will take a slight detour exploring how longing and belonging ties back to communion.

No one of us, as well as the entire creation, is created to exist in isolation. Rather, we are created to belong. Isolation, no, but, solitude, yes. Solitude enhances community and paves the road to communion which is a lifeline for the soul. True solitude originates from the place of need to belong and to commune while isolation rejects the very notion of the need.

John O’Donohue speaks insightfully, “Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from isolation to intimacy.”

Henri Nouwen speaks of a movement from “a desert of loneliness to a garden of solitude.”

Isolation creates a desert of loneliness. Loneliness is a symptom of heightened modern isolation. Solitude is an act of longing to belong. In our day and age, materialism and consumerism have aided individualism to deeper isolation and have blinded and dulled us to the need to belong. Our heart does not and will not know how to rest until it finds belonging. “The heart is an eternal nomad,” writes O’Donohue.

The problem is we have learned to long and belong to “things” thinking that they would satisfy our eternal desire when in fact, our heart ultimately is looking for love. Love is the only gift that true belonging can bestow, and our heart will know. When we find love, everything else fades away. One characteristic of the sanctification journey is to chase away and reject “wrong” longings while continuing to say “yes” to the eternal Longing this world does not understand or value.

The restless eternal longing is the longing after both God and for ourselves. This is the same longing. This longing after God and for ourselves (as in discovering our true selves) is generated by none other than love. Love is the source of our search for Ultimate Longing and for ourselves. This then naturally translates into true longing for others as well as being that longing for others—all toward generating love and intimacy. Our life lives a life of belonging, belonging to God, to self, and to others.

One of the better books on the topic of belonging is John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes. He writes, “The word ‘belonging’ holds together the two fundamental aspects of life: Being and Longing, the longing of our Being and the being of our Longing.”

COMMUNION + BELONGING…

What O’Donohue calls belonging and what Merton calls communion are almost identical. Our life is ultimately created to belong and to be in union with God, ourselves, with others, and with the entire creation.

Communion and belonging are inseparable, really. Pursuing belonging will lead to communion; pursuing communion will put belonging in its rightful place. The longing to belong is an ancient and eternal God-given gift. We mistakenly think it is “our” longing, but it is God’s longing working in us. Without it, there is no homing device for us to find true home, to Ultimate Longing who is the triune God.

As we learn to exercise and practice belonging with others and the creation, we are awakened to deeper Ultimate Belonging. This is an upward spiral movement.

Nature often unlocks our soul’s longing. When our heart and mind find rest being out in certain settings of nature in solitude, we realize that our soul’s at rest and allow us to declutter our mind and heart to discover what our true longing is. Over time every tyranny fades away and every callus softens, and being out in nature brings uncanny focus into what truly matters or what we long for in our soul. This is a unique contribution of Celtic spirituality that opens up nature to be God’s open sanctuary to discover our soul’s true and unique colors and songs and dances. Nature gifts us with tranquility and has the ability to declutter our messy modern mind that sides with objectivism and ignores our soul’s language which comes to us in symbols, flashes of intuition, and/or still small voices.

When Merton speaks of “symbols” it is confirmed by voices from our soul thus leading to a deeper mode of knowing, communion.

Our soul’s voices are essentially our authentic and eternal longings which were programmed and created by God.

Our longings validate the fact that we are pilgrims on the journey of discovering our true selves for our own sake and for the sake of the world.

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A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 2

In my last blog post, I described how communion is a deeper mode of knowing and how the symbol is an effective servant in our journey toward union with God. That is, symbols are necessary when pursuing communion. God is not an Object to be known, but a Subject to be experienced. This week, I will try to integrate Parker Palmer’s insight of objectivism’s failure and how subjectivism ties with our experiences of symbols.

Parker Palmer hits this theme (communion and how we experience communion) from the education angle. He observes in his earlier work, To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey in 1983, “The aim of objectivism is to eliminate all elements of subjectivity, all biases and preconceptions, so that our knowledge can become purely empirical. For the sake of objectivity, our inner realities are factored out of knowledge equation.”

Parker is not naïve in simply bashing the system and is not on a crusade to eliminate all objective education/training. He sees values in objectivism, albeit a limited one. Palmer sees that “inner realities” will not be awakened through some sort of empirical pursuit of objective knowledge.

Parker further clarifies:

. . . But it is even more important to recognize that narrow-minded or triumphalistic spiritualities are not the major obstacle to a universal community of nature and humankind. The major obstacle is objectivism that persists in making “things” of us all. This objectivism—with only a little prompting from religious or secular ideologies—is quickly translated into political and social programs of division, manipulation, and oppression. The threat to community posed today (whether the Christian Moral Majority or the Islamic fundamentalists) comes not from the heart of their spiritual traditions but from objectivism that reduces everyone not in their fold to mere objects for conversion if possible, or elimination if necessary.

I’ve seen plenty of narrow-mindedness or triumphalism both in myself and in the missions enterprise, not to mention in normal everyday operations. And they are no small giants to slay.

However, Palmer considers objectivism as the root of deleterious behaviors. One way this objectivism operates in my life is that it blinds me to play the “compare and contrast” game constantly with others, which is the main function of the ego. It legitimizes and empowers the “objectivism” of the world’s system which my ego uses to compare and contrast my best with others’ worst. This is one of the worst illusionary traps.

Subjective knowing has been viewed as a second class knowing and we are told not to trust it as it betrays the modern empirical objective mind. “If it can’t be proven objectively, it must be not real” is the basic idea. However, as Parker alluded, our inner realities cannot be awakened by objectifying pursuits. I want all to give permission to all, first of all, to pursue inner awakenings, which can only take place through subjective experiential knowing. Now, let’s consider how subjectivism and symbols tie together.

Symbols are everywhere. They happen in every day mundane life. They are epiphanies of God breaking through to us and reminding us that God is here and near to us. Symbols are subjective spiritual experiences that cannot be objectified. In this sense, we are all subjective mystics who are learning to experience God’s presence and access God’s love through symbols. However, as modern societies, we have conveniently banned or at least downplayed anything that is not quantifiable and logically explainable. If they can’t be objectified, then we are led to believe that they must not be trustworthy or not be worth of our time.

Symbols also come to us through books, conversations, being out in nature, observing children, and being in silence and solitude. And, of course, through prayer. The list goes on . . .

I have a growing resonance with Finley that prayer is “meant to lead us to a radical transformation of consciousness in which all of life becomes a symbol.”

Life then becomes a natural conduit in which we experience God and perfect and unfailing Love. This is Supernatural merging with natural and vice versa. We experience the extraordinary God in the ordinary. And we who are ordinary experience the extraordinary in the ordinary context called life.

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