(no title)

I started writing this post a few days ago and when I logged back into WordPress, the draft came up as ‘(no title).’ I thought it was a perfect title for a short musing on negative theology.

On our drive out to Alberta on Monday, my wife asked me what sort of conclusions I came to after finishing my papers on negative theology. My reply was something to the effect: “Well, negative theology is critical. It is an absolute must in any theology. It is irreplaceable. We can’t do without it. It allows us to become ‘silent’ and ‘catch our breath’ when we’ve been chattering and making noises about God that we think say it all. Critique is the gift of negative theology. We have to knock down our idols, recognize the total inadequacy of language to encapsulate the Divine. Negative theology helps us realize how idiotic we sound talking about mystery.”

I can imagine this all sounded pretty bleak to her.

I wasn’t done.

“But! But! We must speak! We need to say something about God and that something is poetic. It is not necessarily precise scientific facts, verifiable, fixed once and for all. Instead, we need metaphor, narrative, story, liturgy, art, iconography, and a host of other mediums to ‘speak’ about God in still meaningful ways. And we must always realize that our ‘languages’ about the Divine are interpretations that are open to new possibilities.”

The next day, I randomly came across this quote that I thought was such a simple way of expressing the whole of what I’ve learned this past year.

When those who love God try to talk about Him, their words are blind lions looking for springs in the desert. (Leon Bloy)

The lions need water. But their imperfections prevent them from finding and beholding the totality of the wellspring they search for. Their search is not in vain, but it is a difficult task to undertake.

Why not become all fire?

Unless the eye catch fire
The God will not be seen
Unless the ear catch fire
The God will not be heard
Unless the tongue catch fire
The God will not be named
Unless the heart catch fire
The God will not be loved
Unless the mind catch fire
The God will not be known

William Blake

Excerpts from Ibn Abbad

4: Desolation

For the servant of God

Consolation is the place of danger

Where he may be deluded

(Accepting only what he sees,

Experiences, or knows)

But desolation is his home:

For in desolation he is seized by God

And entirely taken over into GOd,

In darkness, in emptiness,

In loss, in death of self.

Then the self is only shes. Not even ashes!

5: To Belong to God

To belong to God

Is to see in your existence

And in all that pertains to it

Something that is neither yours

Nor from yourself,

Something you have on loan;

To see your being in His Being,

Your subsistence in His Subsistence

Your strength in His Strength:

Thus you will recognize in yourself

His title to possession of you

As Lord,

And your own title as servant:

Which is Nothingness.

Some notes on Logotherapy – Pt 1

I finished reading Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning on the bus yesterday. The second section of the book is an essay entitled “Logotherapy in a Nutshell” wherein Frankl expands on his therapeutic technique. “Logotherapy,” writes Frankl, “is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.” (104) Logos can be translated from the Greek as meaning and as such can be explained as a therapeutic technique in which the patient illuminates and confronts their existence and its meaning. It is also a future focused therapy; logotherapy seeks out and cultivates “the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.” (104) The patient is brought face to face with their ‘existential vacuum’ after which they must grapple with and reconfigure the meaning of their life. Recognizing the meaning of their life, or particular situations, can essentially break up their depression, anxiety, or other neuroses that are often simply reinforced by other therapeutic techniques through “vicious circle formations and feedback mechanisms.” (104)

What does it mean to be ‘free’?

Freedom of choice is not, itself the perfection of liberty. But it helps us take our first step toward freedom or slavery, spontaneity or compulsion. The free man is the one whose choices have given him the power to stand on his own feet and determine his own life according to the higher light and spirit that are in him. The slave, in the spiritual order, is the man whose choices have destroyed all spontaneity in him and have delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to his own compulsions, idiosyncrasies and illusions, so that he never does what he really wants to do, but only what he has to do. His spirit is not in command, and therefore he cannot run his own life. He is commanded by his own weak flesh and its passions––fear, greed, lust, insecurity, untruthfulness, envy, cruelty, servility, and all the rest.

As an explanatory note, Merton is not saying the body is evil when he speaks about “flesh.” The physical is not bad.

Merton, The New Man, 179