Sin and Grace

This week in the Ignatian retreat, we complete "My Personal Graced History". I go over my sins and blessings. I find remembering and describing my past difficult, so this is a one pager. In this issue, I also reveal insights. I believe that I finally, last night, reached the final point on the Veltri diagram. More on this anon. I'll also talk about sin.

Now for a summary of the Veltri diagram, from his Orientations Vol 2: Part A, p. 82, if you want to look it up.

Stage one: things are going great, you have a loving awareness of God's presence. The looming cliff beckons, unseen. Stage two: transition. The rocks just before the cliff edge. It takes effort to pray--actually it seems more difficult and difficult. Stage three: desolation. You fall over the cliff. You feel like giving up because prayer seems fruitless. Job had it easy. Stage four: the beginnings of enlightenment. You survive the cliff experience. How selfish you have been; it has been all about you and not about God. The final stage: consolation. Going over the edge was actually good for you. Jesus is very personal. You are ready for stage one again.


Colloquy on Genesis 3. I am in the Garden with the first man and woman who, curiously enough, do not have names until after they sin and eat the app--I mean forbidden fruit. For all I know it was a banana; Freud would love it. Visualizing myself in their shoes, well you know what I mean--they were naked--my sin would not be disobedience or rejection of God's love, at least not directly. I would have been curious as to why I wasn't allowed and what would happen if. Would I have dissembled after? Probably. Why? Embarrassment.


No, I think the sin came not in eating the fruit, though the disobedience was bad enough, but in trying to shift the blame after. When did the sin occur? When they considered but did not reject the eating impulse? In the actual eating? After? Given that they in essence lied about their motives and cast recriminations upon God: one of his creatures tricked--beguiled in the KJV--Eve. Implied criticism of his creation, I suppose, but an honest report. I didn't know any better. Adam's error was the greater. Not because he was the man and supposedly in charge, but because he passed the buck. "The woman which you gave me."

What was God trying to tell me in this passage? From my journal:

That he wants to be reconciled. When God pronounced the "curse" to the serpent that humans would hate his kind, childbirth would be called labor for a reason, and that man would have to sweat the small stuff, was He predicting consequences or imposing them? I think it more likely the former, but I'm not a Biblical scholar. Maybe we'd still be in a state of grace if they hadn't passed the buck.

I note that my prayer time is discursive in nature. I do a lot of talking but don't seem to let God get a word in edgewise, assuming that He would speak to me auditorily. He's as likely to send me images and messages through animals.

I have a silly idea--sacramental suffering. When we suffer for no good reason, burning joints, for instance, it is benefiting someone. Mystically. Maybe that grace of a good day experienced was paid for by my aching all day? (A tip of the hat to Evelyn Underhill's the Spiritual Life.) This is contradisposed to necessary suffering, like learning how to conjugate French verbs. This is not to say I shouldn't take aspirin, but it is a grace to put up with your spouse.

Sin is breaking God's heart. Now where did that idea come from? I had always thought of sin a dark spot on a mirror, seen darkly through. Sin as contamination as opposed to erecting a barricade. Pepper spots spreading out on the surface of the water. Grace is like soap. It gets things clean. Zestfully clean. 

The Triple Colloquy--pray to the Virgin, who leads you to her Son, who then leads you to the Father. All I get this first time is the traditional imagery of a woman with a blue shawl on her head. I am concerned about my cats. One of them wants to go outside desperately and relishes rolling in the leaves and grass. I am resisting opening to the Divine. I ask the Virgin to tell me how Felix got out. The cat inadvertently(?) shows me. Going now to the Son, I feel peacefully serene. According to the Exercise, I am supposed to be focusing on what a cesspool of sin I am--a weeping ulcer. During the prayer time, I feel anything but. I do tend to wallow in it, though.

The Personal Graced History--the light of blessings & the darkness of sin. I am not able to do the topic justice in the time permitted. I can hardly remember my life, let alone details of it. I tend to have these periods of intense anxiety--mind-numbing. I traced it back to 1976, when I was thirteen and then further back to me as a small child. Then I begin to remember other experiences of my life. Good experiences.

Sorry this isn't clearer--I had a rough Thanksgiving. Drama to remember for the future.

Shame and confusion, but for what?

I still don't get it, I fear.

My colloquy sessions (done at the foot of the Cross) are more like journalling. Perhaps God is speaking in my words, as opposed to me channelling Him (I prefer to capitalize the gender-neutral male pronoun). The way it was introduced was I say something, then God does. My spiritual director disagreed: I not be afraid to put words in God's mouth. Perhaps my "prayer-as-journalling" session is OK and what my actual journal should read like is a summary. Or how I feel about what comes out, summarized. I don't know. I am at sea and not in a good way.

Insight highlights:

Passage: Lk 15:11-32 -- the Prodigal Son

We are the Prodigal, but who is the older son? According to a preacher I heard, (context: a free-food thing) it is us--the good people of the church. I guess that makes the Prodigal "sinners". Us again, in my view. Maybe the older son is unfallen angels, who might be understandably incensed at all the attention the black sheep is getting.

It doesn't matter.

In what ways have I squandered my inheritance?

My immediate answer is, Bilbo-like, time. I have wasted fifty years plus some days. What do I have to show for it? I am disabled/retired, no money except what my wife has inherited. No prestigious career. I have talents, which I can also be said to have wasted, since I make no money from them: service, the photographer's eye, and a knack for writing and proofreading (my impish Muse suggests proof-rede-ing: take no advice from a trickster). I also know things. OTOH, I have positively impacted others' (son & grandson) lives and am of good character, modulo a burble or two, like going through an inheritance or two and incurring (non-reporting) debt. Also, I am king of the nested parentheses and Oxford comma.

I tend to be absent-minded and have to work at remembering what has happened to me. Would this be because I want to forget things or is it meds-related? I have no time-date stamp. An example is remembering what happened last Sunday between 1PM and 4PM. I got out of church at 1PM because I remember looking at the bathroom clock. I (vaguely) know that we were left for a local buffet-style pizza place at 4PM. Struggling, I remember piece-meal, with difficulty, what I did in the interval. Maybe I only misappropriate time. In any case, my conclusion of the time squandering thought-loop is: I am a better human being and that is enough.

The colloquy periods are essentially me chattering with God barely able to get a word in edgewise. There is not, in my opinion, much difference between my journalling and my prayer sessions. One of the key points about prayer is not just that you talk to God, but that you shut up occasionally also. Hmm. Just had a thought. Sin is radioactive waste. You can't get rid of it. Not responsibly, any road.

Passage: Romans 7:14-25 & 5:1-11

I probably don't have much original to add to this theme of involuntary servitude to sin from which we are saved by Christ's redeeming sacrifice. There is a  disparity between my own depravity and his death. In my prayer, I get an answer, the veriest echo: I do it willingly. It is agony. We feel pain when we struggle against our own sin.

From my journal:

I am reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died for conscience. As I recall, he was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler & executed by hanging: the short drop. Hitler as Satan incarnate or as his agent. Both deaths: cross & noose, are styled hangings. ... What sort of death do you require of me?

According to the Exercises, I am supposed to feel shame and confusion before the Cross. I'm not big on shame and confusion--it's wasting God's time. I don't know whether Ignatius dwelt on this because he was Spanish, because he was 1600s era, or because he was Roman Catholic.

I stand at the door and knock, but no one answers.

Principle and Foundation

The First Week.

The Retreat in Daily Life (RIDL or Ignatian retreat) takes place over at least thirty weeks, each being a day of the Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. The first four or five weeks were called Disposition Days, where we built ourselves up to ready for the gruelling course ahead. Our book, Draw Me Into Your Friendship, has the original style language on the left and a modern rendering on the right, which is intended to be more palatable to today's reader. I am not intimidated by 1600s style thought and sometimes find the modern rendering a bit fluffy.

I met with my spiritual advisor a week late because of a schedule conflict. I felt uncomfortable, like a student who hasn't done his homework. In a way, I hadn't. I felt guilty that I wasn't spending enough time with the work. It is supposed to be an hour a day, with one day off for good behavior. Twenty minutes reading, twenty minutes praying, twenty minutes journalling. The reading took more like ten--I was reading for content rather than for deeper meaning. I would either do Centering prayer (read the Cloud of Unknowing for more detail) or just journal. That went well and would sometimes go on for a bit more than twenty minutes. Turns out I am not supposed to do Centering Prayer, but Colloquy (which, if you remember from last week, is trying to let God speak through your writing).

Turns out it's very difficult. I spend pages feeling like I'm talking to myself. I say as much in as many words. Then out of nowhere comes the thought: God wants my heart. I resume resisting. Remember what happens when a wire resists--it gets hotter and eventually glows. Electrical resistance creates heat and is "caused" by properties of the medium that "resist" electrical flow. Poetic, ain't it? I am not supposed to judge the content--not supposed to filter. Just keep the pen moving, like a freewriting exercise.

Occasionally disturbing content, ancient memories, arise. I won't go into excruciating detail. That's what it would be for the reader, learning of my hidden bugaboos. Memories of abuse, basically. Stuff I've processed before and am surprised to keep seeing arise. This time, the memory is almost physical. I remember how it feels. The emotions/sensations I felt. The answer to my question, where was God at the time of the abuse, is that He was present, but suffering. It's all free will's fault. My abuser, whom I forgave--a liberating event--was free to act as well. Now rationally, I realize that he had issues of his own and probably thought he was acting in good will. So perhaps the fault, if there is such, lies with me. Maybe I am/was too sensitive. The victim trap, I call it. 

I keep at it. I am supposed to look "through" the Scripture passage, like it's a window. A lens, perhaps. I try staring at the page (well, it's a smart phone screen, but Dear Reader understands). Sort of zone out, disassociate. The text: Philippians 3: 7-16. I write:

For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things...to know him and the power of his resurrection & the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death. What are you trying to say to me here? I am supposed to put words in God's mouth.

"You think you have lost all things? You still have your son."

I could be filtering, but I don't think that was God, as He is supposed to be gentle and not sarcastic. I am not hurt, exactly, but my bogometer registers. God seems hard to hear, sometimes I am not aware of words, exactly. Dialogue with the blank page is difficult. I have a sense of warmth in my chest. Then the cat manifests, out of nowhere, the way they do. He wants in the window but is baulked by my bedside dresser clutter. He is momentarily bipedal.

Seems like a good time to take a break, both then and now.

 

God is near and so are the cats...

You wouldn't think so, but cats can tell time. Every evening, about nine o'clock, they gather around me. Why haven't I gone in to do Ignatian retreat, they want to know. Magnus, the aloof white one with blue eyes, seems to be the spokescat. Phoebe, the Siamese, insists on kneading my arm, and Felix wants o-u-t-s-i-d-e. That's why cats sit in windows. 

The theme this week is that God loves me & cares for me. He (I use the pronoun in its gender-neutral sense) suffers. That's why I feel guilty about my faults. We haven't gotten into the sins part yet, but maybe that's just the depression talking. Perhaps there is imbalance. From my spiritual journal:

Dominant prayer feeling is a deep sadness. Compunction. I also feel, believe, that I am rather silly. Sad, really. Self-concerned. Self, self, self.

How do I die to self? All my efforts in that direction end up back to ME. There is a saying by John Climachus about this. "Before I can bind him, he is loose, before I can condemn him I am reconciled to him, before I can punish him I bow down to him and feel sorry for him." etc.

What a messed up bunch of beings. When we are up, we are down.

It is difficult to talk about yourself without a certain amount of self-reference, alas. For me, praying is like talking to myself. You can listen for a long time trying to hear what God is saying to you, because His first language is silence. 

You will notice that I use the male pronoun throughout, mostly because I am a traditionalist. I -like- Rite I. I want to bewail my manifold sins and wickedness because there is no health in me (I'm making part of that up). English doesn't have a pronoun that does God justice. When I was a Hellenic polytheist, I thought of God as They. (I don't think the Theoi are false, or demonic--I no longer worship Them, although it -is- handy to be on Hermes' good side). In my college days, I found the broody chicken imagery meaningful.

A prayer technique we are supposed to practice is Colloquy. I suck at it, at least as far as being confident that it produces answers. As you may have noticed, I like to run my mouth. To myself I talk and answer to boot. When it comes to quoting God--putting words in the divine mouth--I'm afraid of hubris. 

The next Scripture is in Jeremiah--where Yahweh is quoted as saying that he was going to make it a place of horror. The first thing that comes to mind is the Holocaust, since I am pretty sure the prophet was prophesying against Israel. My memory is not what I used to think it.

This week, my mood could be better. I seem to set Jan off, try as I may not to. We're worried about money. People are late paying us. That's the trouble with being a landlord - you are only as prosperous as your tenants. During the Jeremiah passage, I fretted about that situation. One tenant is behind, another talks about moving out because he can't pay the utilities. We helped him with the water bill, I'm not sure why. We finally got both of his issues dealt with. The other tenant will pay us next week. They are frequently behind. You can see the fretting. I'd delete this bit, but it exemplifies what my prayer life has been like. Fret fret fret.

My prayer session was mostly worrying. We, as Christians, are advised not to do so. Is it doing that when you "lay the issue before the Lord in prayer"? It helps to talk about it, I hear. That is the received wisdom about various trauma, like dealing with fearful episodes. 

The last reading is about the eschaton--Revelation. "I stand at the door and knock." Sounds occult, somehow. Doors of perception. Don't worry if that bit makes no sense. I couldn't figure it out either. Apocalyptic writing has that effect on me. Symbolic language is code. Everyone thinks that Babylon is Russia, or the US when it is in sinful mode. It's not. It's ancient Rome. Jewish writers couldn't come right out and say it or risk the cross or worse. Time for another quote.

For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I believe (like many Americans?) that I should be self-sufficient. I feel ashamed when I am not. So I remain silent instead of asking for help. I make jests. I belittle myself. But then, where would I start? Acting helpless ain't in it, either. At our own eschaton, what will we have? Not much. Six feet or so, if our heirs can afford it. The verse goes on to tell us to buy fine gold & ointment for our eyes. See truly, speak your truths, and be free of self-deception. All our time is borrowed. 

 

Prayer Makes Free?

The theme this week (in the Ignatian retreat) is God makes us free.

We began seriously doing the examen, a way of looking over your day and seeing where you went wrong and where you went right. It’s a bit more than that, but that's it in a nutshell. You prayerfully ask for forgiveness for the bad and offer thanksgiving for the good. As a result of this process, I have developed some insight into myself, some objectivity. 

In addition to my psychotropics, I get an injection thrice monthly. It messes with my moods. Think testosterone poisoning, except that it's a low dose. The resulting volatility often takes me by surprise. This time, during an argument (fight?) with my wife, I realized that I was about to blow my top. In the past, the eruption duration and strength would be much greater. This time, I was able to limit it--I only stormed outside. I walked around the block, fuming. When I got back to the house, I was still upset, recognized it and waited until I was calm before going back inside--rational.

I've also upped an antidepressant (I take two), but I think the contemplative skills I've been learning--have they canonized Thomas Merton?--have helped me not be controlled by my moods. Talking about it also helps. Maybe this blog and the concomittant blathering on about my condition will help someone else.

The Scripture passages--Gen 22:1-19 (Abraham attempting human sacrifice), Lk 1:26-38 (the Annunciation), & Phil 3:7-16 (Paul talking about what he’s left behind and to what he’s pushing ahead).

I didn’t get much mileage out of the Genesis passage. I kept thinking of Sarah hiding in the bushes, trying to distract her husband with a ram so that she could save her son. Abraham is a homicidal maniac and Isaac is a bit simple. Strong, but simple. Or to be charitable, Abraham is overly trusting, goes a bit too far, thinks things will end up OK. God told me to kill my son. Hurm. If the angel hadn’t stopped the proceedings, would Abraham have killed his only son? Well, he did have Ishmael. I did get the possibility of the Lamb of God/Only Begotten Son trope, but not right off.

From my journal:

How do I distinguish delusion from the voice of God? Not a trivial problem, I think. How do I trust in God? What if God is asking me to sacrifice something dear, like I don't know what? What is God calling me to do? I used to think it something diaconal, but I suspect that to be mania, grandiosity.

I can't put emotions into words.

I found the Luke passage interesting. Mary dares to question. “How can this be? I am a virgin.” she asks. There has to have been some really cool special effects--lights and those awe-inducing low tones--because the angels always say “Fear not!”. Is Mary hiding laughter behind her hand? Remember that Sarah (mother of Isaac) giggled when Yahweh's angel gave her similar news. 

In the last passage, Paul talks about how the things he’s lost (status in the Jewish community because he associates with Gentiles, opposes circumcision, etc.) are as rubbish to the glory of Christ. He makes statements like these elsewhere, as well. He then talks about pressing on to becoming a possession of Christ. Not possessing, but possessed (but in a good way).

What things have I lost, memory, confidence, self-respect, and the like? Not lost as a result of becoming (or rebecoming) a Christian, but because of a mental health diagnosis. I don’t feel the flow of creativity on this topic at the moment, but there is material here. Who thinks I have lost status? Me? My wife? Have I lost status? Does someone with a mental illness--albeit controlled by medication--have the right to have status? You are only as powerful as you think you are, I suppose. Applying the diabetes standard--in mental illness, the organ affected is the brain--the answer would be yes. So why do I feel otherwise? It’s stigma. People are afraid that mental illness is contagious. See last week's article about scapegoats.

The second half of the Pauline passage talks about “being in training”, which then leads me to ponder how I should be in training and for what. More self-censorship--the continual monitoring to avoid weird behavior (can’t do much about the weird thoughts)?  Perhaps there is something, like EFM, that I should look into for the future. Perhaps it’s continuing along the Ignatian pathway. Continual self-questioning seems to be in it, for now. Is self-doubt of God? I wonder, sometimes. 

I realize that I am not free--yet.