Silence and Listening - Lent Beginnings

 

He had thought that to pray was to talk; he learned that to pray is not only to keep silent, but to listen.

- Søren Kierkegaard

I think I was in college when I first realized that prayers did not need to be words. I learned that I don't have to come up with words to say that sound right, or fit the situation, or that might seem correct. There is no correct or perfect way, it's about drawing close. This was a huge relief for me, as someone who was previously afraid to pray out loud in groups because I worried I wouldn't have the right words to say. 

Prayer can be a sigh and deep breath. Prayer can be a glance up to the clouds in thanks. Prayer can be a 30 second moment with closed eyes in silence, listening. Prayer can be a word of blessing to another person. Prayer can be one word, said internally in a meditative (almost chant) within yourself. Focus on the word "grace" or the name "Jesus" for three minutes and you will come out of those minutes in a completely different frame of mind. A mind focused on Jesus has a way of steering you into the centered place best to live into the closeness to God.

Today is Ash Wednesday. We are entering the season of Lent - a 40 day journey through a period preceding the greatest gift of love but until then, this season is usually viewed from the world around us as a darkened, depressing, restrictive (requiring us to give up something) season. And it is true, we do travel through a time of focusing on the suffering. The dark, dusty things of life come up. 

Dust to dust.

Do we forget that we came from dust? We focus quite a lot on the "to dust" part as we deal with death and suffering in our lives. No escaping this fact of our lives, so why not meditate on how much of a gift it is that we have limited time? Do you think it's a gift to have a finite amount of time here, or would you rather have an earthy life that spans centuries?

Grace upon grace.

Going ahead before us, the path is formed in grace, shaping the space we go into. We have nothing to fear because grace is going before us, preparing our way. Jesus has already formed the way ahead of us, in His harrowing of hell clearing the path, opening all the doors through the dark places so that light can leak in and we can follow.

My tea cup is not empty, it is the space of grace, waiting to be filled with a moment of prayer. 

Coffee with Kierkegaard

 

Faith therefore is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition;  it is not an immediate instinct of the heart, but is the paradox of life and existence.

- Søren Kierkegaard

It was early on Saturday. Surrounded by soupy overcast skies and with a twinge of change in the weather, I ventured out to the downtown bookshop, Pressed. It's a delight coming early in the morning, as the quiet atmosphere makes me feel as if it's all my own, for a few minutes anyway. After ordering a coffee and a brief browse of the shelves (saying hello to my own published books on the shelves) I settle down at a table with a rose latte (wonderfully delicious), and pull out the book I keep anticipating getting to open again for any time I can grab - Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard. 

This is a re-read for me, but oh how this is like reading all afresh. I have learned in the last few years how to read S.K. as I would find myself sometimes feeling rather confused by his genius. He's hard to keep up with sometimes, so with him I read slowly, digesting each sentence. I now follow him with a deeper understanding, and wow, the effort is worth it. He makes me think about things I realize now I have always pondered and yet never explored. And he argues head-on with the philosophical viewpoints of his day (which have passed down to our own day in altered ways through Hegel then others). S.K. is now known as the grandfather of existentialism. Future philosophers take pieces of his ideas (on the individual and the absurd) to create their own version of modern 20th century philosophy, yet removed from Christianity. When those modern thinkers talk about the absurd, this is what S.K. holds up for us to see more deeply into the paradox of Christianity in Fear and Trembling.

The story of Abraham and Isaac is well known to us, and yet how have we explained this story? Have we failed to see by what ethical and moral standards this story makes sense in the world where a father is set to sacrifice his son? S.K. argues that there is something higher than the moral and ethical of this world, and he looks to the story of Abraham as containing a teleological suspension of the ethical. The teleological is that which is concerned with the design and purpose in the materials world. S.K. explains that looking at Abraham from a purely ethical standpoint (as if ethics was the highest thing, which by the way would be thinking like a Greek), Abraham could be called a murderer. The fact that he was willing to sacrifice (murder) his beloved son is a terrible thing to behold in that viewpoint. And yet, if we are able to suspend our worldly view of the ethical and accept that by virtue of the absurd (meaning something which we cannot explain or understand) we can come to the conclusion that there is something higher at work here, something far greater, that is faith.

Abraham is the representative of faith, and that faith is normally expressed in him whose life is not merely the most paradoxical that can be thought but so paradoxical that it cannot be thought at all. He acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is precisely absurd that he as the particular is higher than the universal...By virtue of the absurd he gets Isaac again. Abraham is therefore at no instant a tragic hero but something quite different, either a murderer or a believer. The middle term which saves the tragic hero, Abraham has not. Hence it is that I can understand the tragic hero but cannot understand Abraham, though in a certain crazy sense I admire him more than all other men.

S.K. compares Abraham with the Greek tragic heroes to pull different points on how they are not representing the same thing. For the Greek tragic hero, the ethical is the highest, that is, a relationship between father, son, daughter, etc. There is no personal relationship with their deity. There is nothing higher than that in their world. However, S.K. is drawing us to overstep the ethical entirely and into a higher telos (end).

Abraham is willing to give everything up (resign it all, including his most beloved son Isaac) for God, which S.K. refers to as infinite resignation. Doing this allows one to be lead to faith, and in faith one acquires everything. This is why Abraham is known for his faith, and praised for it. He gave everything up to gain it all through faith.

I have much more to read - but reading into S.K.'s thoughts makes me feel the need to stop and think about it, write about it, and keep reading. Hopefully I will get to have some more coffee with Kierkegaard soon.

In This Silence is the Beginning

 

Precisely because a human being has the ability to speak, for this very reason the ability to keep silent is an art...
In this silence is the beginning, which is first to seek God's kingdom...
The beginning is not that with which one begins but it is that to which one comes, and one comes to it backward. Beginning is this art of becoming silent, for there is no art in keeping silent as nature is.

- Søren Kierkegaard

I write and think a lot about what it means to be silent, taking moments of quiet and contemplation. I seek to carve out meditative moments amidst the rush of busy days. It's been a bit of a life study for me and how much it contrasts with the busy world, and yet, mingles with it at the same time. But why does it matter, I hear people ask. Who cares as long as I am happy, they say. I don't like quiet, I despise silence, I hear people state. But then I see how their lives are tossed around like a choppy ocean.

When I wake up to a beautiful, chilly morning and look out my windows my heart soars into the pale twilight sky that is slowly awakening. I just ponder the wonder of it all in silence, and think of how science cannot explain this wonder. I ponder how anyone could gaze out at the same scene and think that it is all by random chance, or has no purpose or meaning.

Science explains some of what we observe and summarizes the ways this or that works. The study of nature often astounds even scientists, leaving them in wonder. So how do we explain the wonder? What about the mystery? And the strangeness of things?

The kinds of mysteries we will not be able to explain cannot be bifurcated into pieces to cut and analyze. These wonders are works of God's creation we may not be able to explain, for if we could, we would be like God, and that is not possible. Part of the beauty of life is the wonder and mystery. 

Silence holds the space for wonder and mystery.

If all we had were known facts. If nothing was unknown or mysterious (meaning we had nothing to research, nothing to ponder, nothing to dig into, nothing to learn). If every single thing was explained and had no mystery to it - this would not be a world I would want to live in. Part of the nature given to us as humans is to learn and seek out the mysteries of creation and have questions. To be curious. To learn and grow. This is a gift of being human, and not a god.

Silence allows the space for ponderings and questions to float to the surface and be raised to the Creator.

The way God created us was to have questions. Those questions should draw us closer to Him (to be sure, what He wants all along is closeness with us, personally). For if we ask Him something, we lean in closer to listen or to pay attention to what He might reveal. It's the leaning in part that is important. That little bit of effort we give to meet God over the void, and notice that all along He has been leaning close to us.

Thereafter, we might get a glimpse, a whisper, or silence. Sometimes there is no immediate answer and for good reason we cannot see anything yet. If our desire aligns with God's desire for us, we will have the answer we need exactly when we need it. If we continue to seek the answers only within ourselves, selfishly seeking what we want because it makes us feel good, that path might not align with God's desire for us and we may not feel like anything is being answered because we are leaning in a different direction.

So we come back to the silent moments. The soft, still moments where we can let go of the worldly notions that take our attention away from eternal things, like seeking God's kingdom. We are too easily distracted, too easily pleased (as C.S. Lewis wrote (to paraphrase) - we become far too easily pleased, as our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We end up playing in the mud missing out on the holiday at sea - the glory God has in store for us). We often don't even know the glories that God is wanting for us, being too satisfied with our narrow selves. 

Silence is standing in awe at the view of dawn and asking God...

Barfield on Lewis

 

Now, whatever else he was, and as you know, he was a great many things, C.S. Lewis was for me, first and foremost the absolutely unforgettable friend, the friend with whom I was in close touch for over forty years, the friend you might come to regard hardly as another human being, but almost as a part of the furniture of my existence.

- Owen Barfield

I thought I knew quite a bit about the long friendship and the debates between the two intellectual giants, C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and then I read this collection of Barfield's essays and addresses he made after Lewis passed away, and I feel like a whole new light has been shed on my shoddy knowledge that seems now to be very basic indeed. First, I loved Barfield's notes on the letters Lewis wrote, and how they were like a continuation of the conversation they were having. Barfield described how Lewis would slip in some turn of phrase or sly allusion that would make him laugh out loud. Having read volumes of Lewis's letters, I smiled, as they are some of the most enjoyable letters I have ever read by any author.

Barfield and Lewis met in Oxford around 1919 and developed a friendship that lasted over last forty years until Lewis's death. Before Lewis converted to Christianity, he and Barfield would have many philosophical debates know as "the Great War", but those debates died away after Lewis became a Christian, because Lewis couldn't even "bear it", according to Barfield when he inquired about previous debates. Bear what? It's all speculation, but perhaps Lewis couldn't bear to think he believed in the atheistic ideas he believed before converting. Because, as Barfield explains, Lewis changed a lot over the years, developing and growing in his theology. He pointed out that you cannot judge Lewis and his total theology by just reading one book like Mere Christianity. Barfield contrasts those changes as he says that he himself never changed his thinking over all his years, and yet Lewis and Barfield have both contributed to opening our eyes to layers of truth while peeling away idols the world seeks to feed us.

There were many sides to Lewis. Barfield explains on several occasions how Lewis the writer had a literary critic side, a fiction/imaginative side, and a Christian apologetics side. The triune sides all remained segregated, Barfield explains, except in The Great Divorce, where there is happy marriage (paradoxically) of the imaginative and the apologetic. The slim book book combines his ethical belief of the Everyman consisting of a succession of momentary choices, which is where his theology followed. Lewis believed that the spiritual life was not to be thought of as a flow or development, but rather "a series of steps, and each separate step is either in the direction of heaven or it is in the direction of hell."

Barfield goes into detail on the different sides of Lewis and his literary contributions in all those angles. In the matter of the modern world, he points out how Lewis saw the so clearly what was really going on with the popularization of the Darwinian concept of evolution and the more and more prevalent ideas of materialism, subjectivism, and relativism, which were influencing the general public opinion. Side note: how much more can we see that today, as we have the advantage of hindsight and the retroactive viewpoint, and how valuable have his writings been to us now.

The one thing he never tired of doing, or would not let himself tire of doing, was to expose the appallingly muddled thinking on which all three of them rest, by way of a battery of very simple, very lucid, and totally unanswerable arguments reinforced by equally simple and vigorous metaphors. 

This showcases Lewis's skill in argument. Right after this sentence, Barfield mentions there are many examples on which Lewis does this (I could mention many of his excellent essays) but The Abolition of Man as one of his favourite examples of how Lewis puts his arguments into action. 

Barfield doesn't hide how he had hesitations with some of Lewis's theology, and we could spend time picking apart his discussions with Lewis about the imagination (and whether it was a vehicle that lead to truth), but I think we would end up at a spot where each of them placed a deep importance on at least the theory of imagination as Barfield states -

The use of imagination is one thing; a theory of imagination is another. A theory of imagination must concern itself, whether positively or negatively, with its relation to truth.

 Their friendship has shown us how to debate well within friendship. To respect one another so deeply, to be able to still be close and disagree on some philosophical notions. It is a delight to read that Lewis was part of the furniture of Barfield's existence.