Metaphors for the Spiritual Journey: Mountain or Whirlpool?
Metaphors for the Spiritual Journey
Mountain vs Whirlpool
Meditation to honor the two Feasts this week.
All Souls and All Saints (Feast of Ourselves)
The mountain as a metaphor for the spiritual life is certainly endorsed with Christian mystics, as it the ladder. Merton's Seven Story Mountain, etc.
But the mountain as a metaphor of spiritual development has both pluses and minuses. Higher or Up is typically viewed as better than lower and down. But higher also implies that the Divine Mystery is to be found by going upwards, above and beyond human nature, more angelic, so to speak. My question is whether that is actually the direction where the mystical life of grace and total surrender to grace and embracing our humanity really takes us?
Is not the direction of the spiritual life horizontal, Incarnational, truly becoming vulnerable to one another, and risking ourselves in surrendering to that force of love to be found deep in everything? Is growth and development of awareness and heart and spirit, both an inward and deeper journey, into the mystery of our own messed and gifted humanness?
The connotation of whirlpool is being carried by a current of grace despite my human efforts, into a surrender of myself to the Force of Love that have haunted me, like the Hound of Heaven, exorably.
Advantages and disadvantages. Higher on the "mountain" we see "more", the vast vistas of Beauty that surround us, and have always surrounded us. But the constant implication of "mountain" is that it is ourselves who is doing the climbing. And it is not really so, is it?
Connotation of whirlpool means that we are caught, willy nilly, in a force beyond our reckoning and beyond our self-help. The spiritual life is mostly a surrender of Ego and our lives and hearts to a Force that has grabbed us. Actually it is an inner force, deeper force, our Best self calling to our hearts to let go, let go of everything except the immensity of God's love.
The mountain metaphor for spiritual growth and development too easily lends itself to a sense of superiorty, above or higher than others, closer to God above. But we know now that God is no longer Above, Up there, be here, already, among us, between us, in all of our woundedness and loneliness and heart wanting a vision that can carry us into the Mystery already present, but hidden. At the deepest part of the whirlpool is a void, a chasm of nothingness, of mind-lessness, of total surrender in which we truly lose ourselves.
For me, altho until now I have not compared the metaphors, the whirlpool metaphor is a better symbol of grace, of the undeserved nature of grace. We can and will swimagainst the current, but it always surrounds us, like the giftedness of life itself. Our challenge is more of awakening, of awareness, of surrender, than that of climbing up, above ourselves and above others, always assuming that the Divine Mystery is to be found Up, by going Higher, by leaving the common-ness of humanity. Whirlpool suggests that the Divine mystery is to be found as much within or more than Without.
Simply some thoughts. I may send you some handouts on the spiritual life. Certainly it is the great adventure, once accepted, but, for me, does not permit any view that places me above or beyond or higher than any other.
Who are we more likely to trust as a spiritual guide, one who has lived on the mountain or wone who has embraced the messiness and hidden beauty of human-ness?
One of our most prominent writer on the spiritual or contemplative life say the journey as both inward and outward. Merton in many ways integrated his spiritual writing with self-awareness and self-criticism. Yet I propose that his orientation remained essentially Platonic. There is no evidence in his writing that he truly loved, with affection and compassion, any single member of his community, nor anyone else.
At the height of his popularity, he invited human love and affection from a young nuyrse in her 20s while he was in his 50s. Then this revered master of the spiritual life rejected it and her. There are stunning revelations for anyone who looks in his biography. He admitted that he would like to have had her so to speak, "on call." Ultimately the reason he gives for not leaving his vows was that he would lose his place in the sun, his fame.
It is there for the reading. Merton fans rationalize it. The fact is that he used his fame to invite human love from a much younger woman and then rejected it after playing with it.
Merton kept his vows and his image and his popularity. If "God speaks to us in terms of human experience," according to Pope John 23rd, Merton, in my opinion, is not a good role model.
Give me instead an wounded and bruised alcoholic walking the 12 steps with compassion and courage.
Paschal Baute
October 30, 2007
Mountain vs Whirlpool
Meditation to honor the two Feasts this week.
All Souls and All Saints (Feast of Ourselves)
The mountain as a metaphor for the spiritual life is certainly endorsed with Christian mystics, as it the ladder. Merton's Seven Story Mountain, etc.
But the mountain as a metaphor of spiritual development has both pluses and minuses. Higher or Up is typically viewed as better than lower and down. But higher also implies that the Divine Mystery is to be found by going upwards, above and beyond human nature, more angelic, so to speak. My question is whether that is actually the direction where the mystical life of grace and total surrender to grace and embracing our humanity really takes us?
Is not the direction of the spiritual life horizontal, Incarnational, truly becoming vulnerable to one another, and risking ourselves in surrendering to that force of love to be found deep in everything? Is growth and development of awareness and heart and spirit, both an inward and deeper journey, into the mystery of our own messed and gifted humanness?
The connotation of whirlpool is being carried by a current of grace despite my human efforts, into a surrender of myself to the Force of Love that have haunted me, like the Hound of Heaven, exorably.
Advantages and disadvantages. Higher on the "mountain" we see "more", the vast vistas of Beauty that surround us, and have always surrounded us. But the constant implication of "mountain" is that it is ourselves who is doing the climbing. And it is not really so, is it?
Connotation of whirlpool means that we are caught, willy nilly, in a force beyond our reckoning and beyond our self-help. The spiritual life is mostly a surrender of Ego and our lives and hearts to a Force that has grabbed us. Actually it is an inner force, deeper force, our Best self calling to our hearts to let go, let go of everything except the immensity of God's love.
The mountain metaphor for spiritual growth and development too easily lends itself to a sense of superiorty, above or higher than others, closer to God above. But we know now that God is no longer Above, Up there, be here, already, among us, between us, in all of our woundedness and loneliness and heart wanting a vision that can carry us into the Mystery already present, but hidden. At the deepest part of the whirlpool is a void, a chasm of nothingness, of mind-lessness, of total surrender in which we truly lose ourselves.
For me, altho until now I have not compared the metaphors, the whirlpool metaphor is a better symbol of grace, of the undeserved nature of grace. We can and will swimagainst the current, but it always surrounds us, like the giftedness of life itself. Our challenge is more of awakening, of awareness, of surrender, than that of climbing up, above ourselves and above others, always assuming that the Divine Mystery is to be found Up, by going Higher, by leaving the common-ness of humanity. Whirlpool suggests that the Divine mystery is to be found as much within or more than Without.
Simply some thoughts. I may send you some handouts on the spiritual life. Certainly it is the great adventure, once accepted, but, for me, does not permit any view that places me above or beyond or higher than any other.
Who are we more likely to trust as a spiritual guide, one who has lived on the mountain or wone who has embraced the messiness and hidden beauty of human-ness?
One of our most prominent writer on the spiritual or contemplative life say the journey as both inward and outward. Merton in many ways integrated his spiritual writing with self-awareness and self-criticism. Yet I propose that his orientation remained essentially Platonic. There is no evidence in his writing that he truly loved, with affection and compassion, any single member of his community, nor anyone else.
At the height of his popularity, he invited human love and affection from a young nuyrse in her 20s while he was in his 50s. Then this revered master of the spiritual life rejected it and her. There are stunning revelations for anyone who looks in his biography. He admitted that he would like to have had her so to speak, "on call." Ultimately the reason he gives for not leaving his vows was that he would lose his place in the sun, his fame.
It is there for the reading. Merton fans rationalize it. The fact is that he used his fame to invite human love from a much younger woman and then rejected it after playing with it.
Merton kept his vows and his image and his popularity. If "God speaks to us in terms of human experience," according to Pope John 23rd, Merton, in my opinion, is not a good role model.
Give me instead an wounded and bruised alcoholic walking the 12 steps with compassion and courage.
Paschal Baute
October 30, 2007
posted by Paschal Baute | 10:15 AM
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