Tomasino Blog

This was written on Friday, July 6th, 2007. I had originally written it for myself, but I think it probably belongs here.

Two days ago, I spent the evening contemplating the connection between the soul and God. The thought process began that afternoon while I was running at the gym. While listening to an audio-lecture¹ about Saint Augustine on my iPod, the author brought up the Platonists’ concept of the inner world and began comparing it to John Locke’s philosophies, and finally discussing Augustine’s conclusions on the subject. The lecture really stuck with me and led me to some long overdue decisions.

The single greatest barrier between me and Catholicism has been Jesus; his validity, his divinity, and his relation to God. That is to say, I have had a very hard time believing in the doctrine of the Trinity, and while it has not kept me away from the Church per se, is has kept me from making a permanent commitment in the manner to which I feel called.

Without believing firmly that Christ is the path to salvation, indeed, without believing that Christ is himself God in every essence of being, it would have been hypocrisy to commit myself to a life of that teaching. Even more-so, it would have driven a wedge of lies into a place already tender with doubt. So for the past few years, I have avoided the commit-of Christ, I wanted it very much. I prayed as often as I could for God to steal away the doubts in my mind, to solidify my faith. In the end, each night I was assailed by my uncertainty and disappointment.

The problem I had with faith was that of rationality. Despite everything I have read² and everything I’ve been taught, I still find it difficult to respect the numinous irrationality of God. My search has been with the empiricism of mysticism and the rationality of logic; and while my greatest triumphs of faith have always come from those moments when I, in my creature-consciousness, feel my place juxtaposed against my creator to be proclaiming my unworthiness with greater truth that can be known to mankind, after the fleeting moment of hierophany fades, I breathe deeply and again make the false attempts to puzzle out the unspeakable mysteries with inadequate tools.

It was most certainly a gift of God’s grace that led me down the path that day in the gym. The lecture was able to put some things into perspective that had long been out of place in my mind, and this reasoning led me down that same path of logic, but this time it led me with the open heart and compassion necessary to understand and believe. Here is the path:

John Locke envisioned our mind as a dark room in which we sit alone. There are no windows or doors in this room, at least not that can be used to look outside. Instead, there is a small lens that lets light trickle in and form a picture on the opposite wall. In this camera obscura, literally “dark chamber,” we interact only with this image reflected on the wall. We do not see the true object, only a reflection.

This argument reminded me at once of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which our entire world seemed to be nothing but shadows dancing on the wall, while in reality³ (or in the ideal reality, I should say) the world was filled with real creatures who were walking in front of a fire and casting those long shadows. The Platonists built upon that allegory in their further discussions of the inner self. The ideal world is like a giant crystal sphere, they thought, holding in it all the perfection of Truth. Our minds are tiny faces on the surface of this sphere, perpetually looking outward from it.

Augustine knew the Platonist teachings very well and worked hard at integrating these philosophies with the beliefs of the Church in his day. He saw this sphere as an obvious symbol of God, but it was incomplete. The ideal world is not God, but rather like the heavens that surround him. God is, after-all, indivisible, he is One. And so Augustine saw the picture a little more clearly than those who came before him. In this newer metaphor, God is the single point from which all of the sphere is derived. He is inconceivable, immeasurable, and unique. Around him he is surrounded by the world of the ideal or perfected bodies⁴. On the surface of the sphere are tiny individual spheres. These are the spheres of our souls. In each of these is a small window that glances back into the greater sacred, but we are isolated from it, floating on the surface. This was the key for me to understanding why Christ came to us, why God would not just enter the physical world as God the Father, and why we had a need for the Holy Spirit.

The first question I asked myself when I heard Augustine’s idea of these metaphorical sacred spheres was why can’t we gain access to God by studying those windows in each of our souls? Just as some people believe, couldn’t we gain access to heaven by acting right and looking inward? But that question overlooked a very basic problem, or perhaps a more basic question that needed to be asked. Why aren’t we in that inner sphere already? What has kept us on the surface? That answer, as Augustine found it, was sin.

When the first man sinned in the garden⁵, he sinned for all mankind. He broke the special bond that had connected us with all of the perfect things next to God. He ruined the possibility that we could lead a perfect life. And in doing so, he justifiably damned us all to leave God’s presence. Why, then, did Jesus Christ come and die for our sins? That answer now seems quite self-explanatory. And what tools were granted to us that we could avoid the pitfalls of being human? The grace of God is in each of us, asking a simple two-fold task. Love God with all your heart, and Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

It is that love and compassion that truly makes us a part of Christ’s Body, the Church. It is that Body that is forgiven its sin and has a chance of salvation. All of the logic of it seems very clear to me in using that analogy, but on its own it is still empty of the emotional quality of faith. However, as I meditated over the image of the sphere of God, our souls dancing on its surface, of Jesus–whose essence always was in that great, eternal sphere–being born into our profane little world to forgive a lost people and offer them the chance to come home, of God’s mercy and His presence, that is when I finally felt at peace. I was no longer meditating over those things in doubt or theory. They were a part of me like the air I breathe, as surely true as anything can be.

I prayed to God that my doubts would be taken away and replaced by faith. Two days ago, God answered my prayers.

1. The audio-lecture I refer to is by Professor Philip Carey.
2. In particular, Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy) by Rudolf Otto, and The Sacred and the Profane by Mircae Eliade, which are referenced here.
3. It should be clarified that the ideal world might not be that single step back from the cave wall, but perhaps an infinite number of such revelations. The concept is the same, in any case, that there is a perfected reality, though it may not exist in our physical world. Professor Philip Carey makes an excellent allusion to it in his metaphor of the Pythagorean triangle.
4. The term “bodies” is inaccurate as the things in this sphere do not have an only “physical” body.
5. This as well may be a metaphorical story that is suggestive of man’s development from unconscious creature to self-awareness, when the we first became capable of pride-the original sin. It is, in that context, a sin that is shared by all people and entwined in the very essence of what it is to be human.

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I love this reading. It’s the most direct explanation of faith in the New Testament, and though it’s not meant to be a precise definition, per se, it teaches us something remarkably important about it. Faith is more than an on/off switch. It is more than whether you think God is real or not. Faith is not a synonym of belief.

Faith is a gift and it’s a response. It is a mystical part of us that forms up around our hope and orients on the awesome. It is our ground-work, the foundation upon which we walk. It is the strength upon which we build up our belief, because it allows us to look at the numinous, the ineffable, and give us the strength of will to answer yes. It is God’s hand reaching down to us and saying, “It’s okay to believe.”

I think that’s what I love most about faith. It doesn’t come from us. It, like all of our great gifts, comes from God. We are asked to take it, be thankful for it, and offer it back to him. When we don’t have faith, what we’re really doing is turning away that gift, and that, in a nutshell, is true free will. God offers us something and we can choose to accept it or not. The rest of what we call freedom is an illusion, but I’ll write more on that another day.

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When Burke began writing about the sublime, he offered a wonderful new delineation. It was his observation that while beauty comes from the appreciate of aesthetics, the sublime comes from our abject fears, especially our fears of things that can kill us. Terror, he said, is akin to pain in our minds. It anticipates it and so experiences a shadow of what pain is. I suppose one could say that in anticipation of death we experience a little bit of that death. Oh wait… someone did say that!

One day when I was in boot camp, our division went down to the pool area for swim training. There were a number of different things we were going to practice once we got wet, not the least of which was the invaluable skill of not drowning; but before we could press on to the details, we had to get in the water. The pool had a diving platform over the deep end. I couldn’t say exactly how high it was, though I’m certain that memory over time has increased the height by no small margin. Still, I clearly remember being intimidated at the first sight. It was big, no fooling around.

The instructors explained what was about to happen to us as we stripped into our bathing suits. The divisions were lined up heel to toe in that familiar Navy fashion, each recruits back pressing uncomfortably close to the chest behind him. We formed a long sinuous line around the pool and up to the long ladder of the platform. Someone had thought to turn out most of the lights in the building, turning the water into a strange black unknown. A spot light shined down on the tip of the platform, though, bathing it in a yellowish light that called out the dust more than illuminating anything interesting. We stood there, carefully focusing our eyes on nothing in particular. As one of the lucky guys with glasses, I found myself even more blind than usual, having had to leave them back on the pile of clothes to my side. My entire world was reduced to a sweat stained white t-shirt in front of me, and the hazy, bright heat of the lamp far overhead.

My nervousness started climbing up into my throat as I took each step on the ladder. Step, choke, step, choke. As I reached the top, things took on a whole new reality. The ground was different here. It was roughly textured, like grated asphalt or maybe one of those rocks people use to exfoliate. The platform felt solid enough, even though we were so high. There were more instructors up here too. They split our thin line into several, each as tightly grouped as before. I thought we looked like the heads of a hydra, reaching out over the water like gaping jaws.

Up ahead of me, four recruits stood in my line leading up to the illuminated edge. The one in front took a step forward until his feet were as far as they could go. To his sides, another five were in step with him. The line reminded me strikingly of gallows. A sharp command sounded out from an instructor too near to be anywhere but the platform, but seemingly invisible as he stood just outside of the light. “Go!” he shouted, and the men stepped forward into oblivion.

The giant hall was not made for normal acoustics. Sounds ricocheted off the metal walls again and again while each splash and command stretched on forever. The line pressed forward. My heart was thundering so loud that I thought it must be echoing off the walls too. We stepped forward. Another vague splash and the air was empty. The little group of men in front of me shortened dangerously while I tried to come to grips with what was about to happen.

I was instructed on what to do. I knew how to cross my arms, how to position my feet, and where my hands should rest. I knew that once I hit the water I would need to swim forward and find my group, buddy up and distribute the PFDs so we could all stay afloat. I knew somewhere in my mind that Navy Seals were lurking down below in the water, waiting for poorly conditioned recruits to kick when they shouldn’t, or splash too much. They were waiting like sharks in the water, there to teach us a lesson. Somewhere in all my thinking, a few more splashes were heard.

The last body in front of me disappeared into the darkness and left behind that bright spot light glaring into my eyes. I could see the edge of the platform. I could feel the rough stone on my feet, gripping. A command was uttered and I stepped up to the edge, my toes hanging off into the darkness. I didn’t look down; there was no point. I knew already that it would just be darkness and sounds.

In my head, my mind raced with thoughts, trying to catch up with what was happening. Things were moving too quickly. I wasn’t ready to go yet. My throat was solid and my chest weighed down with a heavy feeling I couldn’t understand. I could feel the breathing of the recruit behind me, and I wanted to step to the side, look around, catch my breath, ask for a minute, do anything.

“Go!”

My hands crossed, gripping my shirt and my nose. My feet stepped. I was falling. But no, that wasn’t right, I was still protesting, trying to find my place, to center my fear and deal with it. I needed to get it in check before I could…

Splash!

The water was cold and it hit like the shock from an old wool blanket. I shot back up into the air and took a gasping breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. It was over.

It took me a while to understand how my body could act on one set of signals from my brain while the rest was so overly concerned with meaningless things like fear. My arms and legs did what they were told to do. They did it without a pause, without doubt, and without error. They did it without the fear that was all pervasive in my mind.

When Burke talks about the sublime sense of terror, of feeling ones own mortality, I think he only halfway addresses the origins of that psychology. There is obviously a great meaning in the way our animal fears can plague us. We can be shaken to the core, go pale as a ghost, or just let our jaws drop. I don’t think that’s enough of the story, though. It doesn’t address that other part of us.

That night on the platform, I was told what to do, but I hadn’t been trained at it. It was no mere reflex of action. It was not a conditioning to follow orders when they came from that self-confident voice. It was a spark of control over the uncontrollable that had come to me through pain, practice, and the knowledge that fear was no longer useful. I find something of the sublime in that and wonder at its meaning and place in my future life. Will I have cause for it one day?

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There are so many kinds of love. There’s the love of pets and the love for them, the love of a favorite TV show about to begin its series finale, the love of your favorite baseball team when they’re down by one in the bottom of the ninth. There is the love of family and of friends, and the love of people you met for five minutes in an office years ago but have never left your memory. There’s also a love of each and every day, every moment ticking away on the clock. A love of time, of place, and of being.

Deus caritas est. (God is love)
    - 1 John 4:16

Theologians talk about caritas, or agapē, when they talk about God’s love for us. It’s an overwhelming, pure, unlimited kindness that goes beyond romance or want or even need. It is what first Corinthians talks about when it says it isn’t boastful, it isn’t proud. It’s the type of love, in particular, that religious are to seek in their relationships with, well, everyone.

It’s still hard for me to find that type of love, even (or especially) in relationships I’ve had for a long time. Maybe that makes it harder, though. When I have a certain type of love for someone already, it is so much more difficult to shift that into caritas, into charity. Romantic love, especially, screams at me saying that it is more important, or deeper than charity, that it deserves to be respected and explored. I know in my mind that’s not all true, that it gets a part of its strength from its self-serving nature. Still, the difficulty remains. It’s a struggle I don’t foresee becoming any easier with time.

It may not be easy, but when it comes I feel it more strongly than anything else. I know that if any of my tiny loves compare to it, it is only as a shadow cast along a wall in passing. God’s love is enormous and subtle, and it provokes such awe and clarity that it wakes us up from our petty dreams to point us in a direction and say with the clear clarion only available to angels, "Here it is! Here I am!"

Still, even with the experience in my pocket, there are days when I fall for the old habits. I want love, not just to love. It’s inescapable, even if it weren’t broadcast across our culture in blazing lights. That want is human as well, and I don’t think I can necessarily call it wrong. Though the selfless love may be altruistic and divine, and thus qualitatively better, that doesn’t diminish the greatness that comes from being loved by another person. Just because one thing is infinitely good, infinity minus one is still increasing without bounds. (There’s a cardinality vs. cardinals joke in there somewhere, but my math nerd skills aren’t up to it)

I know what I should do. I know that I need to bridge those gaps and put things in the right perspective. Times will come in the future where I’ll experience this same dilemma and I should put in the practice now at developing those relationships into a love that is healthy for celibacy. Based on what I’m experiencing so far, I’d say it’s a slow process.

Of course, I can’t turn a blind eye to romantic relationships. Even though it’s not the path I’m headed down, I already find myself counseling other people on theirs. I typically take the position of offering up my mistakes as a guide for things they might want to avoid, but that’s only really appropriate for surface level advice. So many friends are coming to me these days with worries about finding a love in which to share their life. I guess with all of us hitting our 30s, they’re beginning to wonder why life hasn’t fallen into place like they expected. But that’s the key, isn’t it? Life is never what we expected. How many of us can look back at our 8th grade yearbook, slide our finger down to the “What do you want to do when you grow up?” line, read off our grand plans and say honestly, “Yup, I nailed it.” How many of us planned out our futures when we left for college? How many of us are even in the same career as when we began? These are just the mechanical things of the day to day. They are jobs, homes, cars. How much more complex and unpredictable is love!

Even though it’s unpredictable, and life takes us on twists, that doesn’t help people who feel left behind, who feel alone. I want to say, “of course you’ll find someone!” I want to tell them that it will work out better than they could have planned, but that’s not the way of life, and it’s not the way of God. He challenges us at every turn. The better we are at things, the more skilled or talented, the more the challenges become. He never abandons us, but he doesn’t make it easy.

It’s tempting to take a break from your life and look to the side, at the lives of others passing by like cars on a highway. It’s tempting to look and say, “look how easy they have it! They’re in the carpool lane and it’s moving so quick.” We so rarely see their challenges, though. We trick ourselves into simple habits, like pretending that if we could only have this one thing, all of life would be okay. That’s never the case, though, is it?

More often than not, I think my friends will find the love they’re looking for. It might happen soon, or not for many years. Most will find it. There is another group, though, who may not. That’s the big conspiracy of our modern world. That’s the horror movie too scary for the big screen. What happens to the people who never find a romance to last the rest of their lives?

They live and love anyway.

That’s the big secret. God doesn’t call us all to married life! Just as he doesn’t call everyone to religious life, just as he doesn’t give us all the same gifts and passions. And that’s okay.

I know we all want it, but the wanting isn’t love in itself. The wanting is just the self crying out at the outrage of not having what others have. There is still love available for everyone, even if it isn’t romantic love. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s anything less than romance, either. It is far more grace-filled and awe-inspiring. It is the love that creates worlds!

Whether you’re one of those people who has already found your special love, one who is still looking and will discover it soon, or one of us who will live by the love of charity and fill your life with the friendship of many, God’s love is there for every single person, without exception. It’s even there for us screw-ups who misuse it, abuse it, and fail to spot it when we should be on our knees thanking heaven. It’s there for sinners and saints alike.

Let all that you do be done in love.
    - 1 Corinthians 16:14

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After I was accepted into the novitiate, the Vocation Director offered a warning that the time before entrance day could be very difficult. He was right on the nose with that one. Despite my best efforts to stay on task, my prayer life has been slipping. I need to refocus what I’m doing and get back on track.

There are a number of books I should be reading right now that could help me prepare, but instead I’ve been bingeing the Dresden series. It’s really started getting good and I’m just tearing through them so fast that it’s really satisfying, but I think it has contributed to my present situation. Normally I institute a very strict policy for myself that I can read only one fantasy novel between my non-fiction books. This keeps me from going off the deep end and losing myself into rich series, like I did with the Wheel of Time back at Rowan. I’ve let myself become lax, and that will have to change.

As soon as I finish reading the 9th book in the series, I’ll be jumping back into The First Jesuits, which is incredibly interesting, but reads like an encyclopedia. Still, it is one of the books I’m supposed to be reading in preparation for entrance day, and I’ve let it slide now for too long.

What about you folks out there? Is there something going on that you’ve lost sight of, something you need to refocus, to stay on target?

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