Love and Desire - An Exercise in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi": Part Three

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

— Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Book of Common Prayer

This collect exposes profound paradox and ambiguity in the Christian life. In it we come face to face with the complex interplay between prayer and belief, between “the law of praying, [and] the law of believing” — in Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi. In other words, when we truly pray this collect we wrestle with praying what we believe and believing what we pray.

Part Three

Two significant and fundamental structures of Christian existence in this world then derive from the moral and existential paradox and ambiguity of the Incarnation. These structures of Christian being pertain to (1) knowledge or experience of divine reali­ties in this existence and (2) to our attachment to mun­dane realities in this life.

A first essen­tial to grasping and faith­fully embodying true Christian existence is realiz­ing that in this life we know those transcendent realities only fragmentarily and obscurely. Inasmuch as the Incarnation is a painful or complex affirmation of this world, wherein we recog­nize this world as home and as the locus of divine activity, we expect to know God’s presence in this life. Yet experience of divine realities is not a seamless continuum of rap­ture and radiance. Nor does such experience always yield manifest clarity and certainty about divine activity in quotidian matters. Although the Incar­na­tion truly signifies and incorporates the revelation of God’s love and activity, yet there remains a hidden quality about this disclosure, about this love and activity, and about our resultant life in Christ. As with a church’s stained glass window, light at times illuminates and conveys storied graces in form and color. At other times, absent of light, the window recedes into a shadowed obscurity of flat form and senseless color.

A second essential of faithfully acknowledging and persevering in this life while yet anticipating the next is understanding that in all our grasping of this life must also be our letting go of this life. That is, the very animus and character of Christian existence consist in the dynamic of ever laboring to sustain that which we must let go. Unless we were to give up on this life and resign ourselves to destitu­tion and death, we must grasp at this life in love and desire, but in the very act of grasping we must apprehend the passing of the objects of love and desire. Our attachments in this life—which we must make—must finally be provisional, partly because death will come, but even more because we must not idolize created objects. Hence, the imperative in the attach­ing and in the loosing is both existential and moral. So we Christians spend our earthly existence laboring for and making attachments to those things—family, friends, denomination, country, land, and more—that we must finally detach ourselves from; and we must even now will the loosing of those attachments.

From the Incarnation then we take into our hearts the truths of crea­tion and redemption, of judgment and affirmation in divine love. We find that our translation into the sphere of God’s grace is real here and now, yet it does not effect our immediate exemption from this world of great sorrow and great beauty. Thus we learn most sharply and profoundly the paradox and ambiguity of Christian exis­tence in this life.

Paradox: because we who are most enjoined to seek and embrace the next world are at the same time those who are most enjoined to embrace this world.

Ambiguity: because in all we experience in this exis­tence there is an ineluctable admixture of mundane and transcendent realities, of depths of sin and heights of glory.

Therefore, in but not of this world, we work out our faith in true Christian exis­tence, ever praying that we may love and desire divine realities in all things and above all things.

Love and Desire - An Exercise in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi": Part Two

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

— Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Book of Common Prayer

This collect exposes profound paradox and ambiguity in the Christian life. In it we come face to face with the complex interplay between prayer and belief, between “the law of praying, [and] the law of believing” — in Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi. In other words, when we truly pray this collect we wrestle with praying what we believe and believing what we pray.

Part Two

The remedy comes in this: knowledge—spiritual and experiential—of the transcendent excellence and desirability of divine realities, ultimately stored up for us for joyous experience of them in the next life, yet also truly and sweetly apprehended in the loves and desires of this life. But the application of the remedy is no simple balm. For as indicated, the question or issue locates in the paradox and ambiguity of this most difficult calculation: how do we love and desire divine realities in these present realities and yet above them? Understanding the doctrinal basis theolo­gically, how do we then apply the doctrine experien­tially in our daily existence?

I do not presume to prescribe the daily calculation of right love and desire, as if that could be done in advance and by another. Nor do I suggest that the remedy leads to a cure, if by cure is meant the overcoming and leaving behind of questions and struggles in seeking right love and desire. Rather, having in mind the paradox and ambiguity of redeemed life this side of the grave, I hope in the following paragraphs to indicate key, fundamental structures of Christian understanding and being. These structures provide the material for the quotidian calculation that is the working out of our salvation in “fear and trembling.” The calculation remains the task of faith for every Christian every day.

The application of the remedy begins in grasp­ing an essential signifi­cance of the Incarnation with respect to the import of creation and redemp­tion for our daily Christian existence. We are accustomed of course to considering the paradox of the Incarnation in terms of the metaphysical and theological para­dox of the union of the divine and human natures. Yet equally as significant for the Christian life is the moral and existential paradox of the Incarna­tion: specifically, how it is at one and the same time an affirma­tion and a judgment of this world and our existence therein. It is this moral and existential paradox of the Incarnation, with its resultant ambigu­ity for present Christian life, that we must grasp.

In his article “Christian Action and the Coming of God’s Kingdom” (in Confessing Christ and Doing Politics), James Skillen has written this of Christians:

Of all those who live on earth, we are most fortu­nate and have the most for which to be thankful. God has given us all things in the creation to enjoy and to nurture. We belong here. We were made for the earth and it for us.

Skillen, in his own context, touches on a notion that carries over into an aspect of the paradox and ambigu­ity indicated above; namely, this sense of right­fully being in God’s creation.

The truest proof of this is the Incarna­tion itself. As it intimately demonstrates that this world is the locus of God’s presence and activity in love, it signifies an affir­mation of this world, of the goodness of mundane existence as originally created. The impli­ca­tions of this affirm­ation are two.

(1) This exis­tence must not be con­ceived as so wholly disjointed or separated from God as to be despairingly bereft of the divine pres­ence.

(2) Nor must we as Christians con­ceive of ourselves as so redeemed from this present existence that we negate any sense of good and beauty in it or any sense of our proper place in it.

Would it not be far easier to deny this world and our existence in it, thereby to give up our lives here that we might now be tran­slated to the next world? Yes, of course, were it faithful and moral. Yet God in Christ, not abhorring this world’s womb, humbly and uniquely entered into its life in love.

It follows then that in this life we can know something of the divine goods and objects of desire, for we now live in God’s creation, the place where divine love is mani­fested and known. Moreover, as the incarnate Christ once knew this existence as home, so we Christians properly exper­ience this world as our home, as the place created for us to exist. It is God’s creation, where­in we were made and of which we are an organic part. The Incarnation demon­strates divine love for it and for us in it. Hence, we join God in Christ in affirming this world in its graces and beauties and accepting our place in it.

At the same time, the Incarnation does not signify a simple or pain­less affirmation of this world, for the Incarnation occurs for the redemption of the world. In this regard the Incarnation points us beyond this world as home to the next, for redemp­tion is necessary only where the judgment of sin and sickness has been pronounced. While the af­firma­tive aspect of the Incarnation persuades us to embrace our life in this world and to seek right love and desire therein, the redemptive aspect of the Incarna­tion moves us to embrace the next life and to seek its loves and desires above all else.

Would it not be far simpler and easier to be at home fully in this world, in this life? Yes, of course, were it faithful and moral. Yet God in Christ has irrupted into our existence in judgment and redemption to proclaim the inauguration of a new existence.

This announcement of the kingdom of heaven shakes to the core our sense of at-home-ment in this life. By his gracious bending low to us in the incarnate Christ and calling us to a new heaven and earth beyond, God dislo­cates and dis­contents us in this present world, created in grace but now corrupted in sin. Thereby we are made uneasy aliens in our very existence. And to heighten the paradox, in that we yearn for the heaven­ly perfection of the next life, we must even celebrate that which here makes us aliens!

Therefore, we acknowledge God’s creation and redemption of this world as known uniquely and defini­tively in Christ incarnate. On the one hand, we experience this world as home, for we know it is God’s created place for us. On the other hand, we also know it as home only transiently and provisionally, for we believe God has eschatologically prepared for us “such good things as surpass our understanding.” Conse­quently, we look beyond this world and seek God’s redeemed place for us in the new heaven and earth.

We find then, without ignoring sin and corrup­tion, that there is a certain continuity between the true goods and desires of this life and those divinely wrought and promised for the next. While we exper­ience dis-ease and disorder, we also experience the invigorating consolation of grace and beauty in this world.

Hence, two alternatives are morally and exis­tentially forbidden for Christians. As we long for the redemptive perfection of this world in the next, we cannot simply negate or give up on this world and our life in it, as has been done in some theological formulations. At the same time, neither can we con­flate the goods and desires of the next life with those of this life, for if the graces and beauties of this existence are all we know, we of all persons are most to be pitied.

[Part Three tomorrow]

Love and Desire - An Exercise in "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi": Part One

"O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

— Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Book of Common Prayer

This collect exposes profound paradox and ambiguity in the Christian life. In it we come face to face with the complex interplay between prayer and belief, between “the law of praying, [and] the law of believing” — in Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi. In other words, when we truly pray this collect we wrestle with praying what we believe and believing what we pray.

Part One

The collect points to the great transcendence of God and the glorious blessings and promises eschatologically stored up for us. Thus the collect stirs our hearts with intense hope and sweet anticipation of the perfection of the next existence. At the same time it disturbs us in our life. This collect, deeply prayed, stirs up troubling questions about the sorts and conditions of love and desire in this mundane existence. Between the realities of this existence and the next, how do we love what we love, and how do we desire what we desire? What is the relationship between those transcendent and excellent realities and the reali­ties of love and desire known in this life? Thus in this collect we confront issues ineluc­tably bound up in fundamental paradox and ambiguity for Christian life.

The collect begins with this deceptively straightforward assumption — that God has prepared and promised us such good things as surpass our understanding and exceed our desire. Great comfort and joy move our hearts with such a high doc­trine. Yet also, reflecting further on the collect, we encounter more than just comfort and joy. We discover nuances of meaning and life that reveal deep paradox and ambiguity in Christian existence.

As noted, the collect states, almost casually, that God’s good things and promises surpass our understanding and exceed our desire. In fact this idea introduces a problem. To experience comfort and joy in an eschatological hope for those good things, their nature must not so surpass our present understanding that we know nothing of them at all in the things of this world and this life. The divine blessings and promises must bear some relationship to the loves and desires we know in this world — some relationship that does not negate our present exis­tence but heartens us in it. Otherwise, in that it directs our hope and anticipation to the next life, this doctrine of surpassing blessings and promises would only drive us to sheer despair and denial of this world, of our perceptions of and desires for the good and amiable in this life.

Yet, we should not misunderstand the point here. I am not arguing that the nature of those transcendent realities must be “thus and so” in order to fit our experience of this world, as if our understanding of and desire for this world’s blessings and beau­ties determine what is true or false of transcendent realities. That would dis­order matters radically, for the first beauties do not establish the last. The last beauties establish the first. Rather, I argue that the eschatological bless­ings and promises, while surpassing our present under­standing, must somehow be graspable within the experi­ence of our mundane loves and desires. Somehow in what we love and desire of good things in this life there must be real and discernible hints or prefig­urings of those sublime gracious realities yet to come.

Were this not so, we would be forced to conclude that those blessed realities so surpass and exceed our understanding and our loves and desires that there is only radical disjunction between the goods and hopes of this life and those of the next. Were this true, utterly shorn in this life of even the least hints or prefigurings of the sublime nature of those divine realities, we would eventually conclude only despair about the nature of this existence. This life and this life alone would equal the pitiable sum of all we love and desire; death would enter the absolute negative that zeros out the sum. No accumulation, no depth, no height, no strength of good and beauty in this existence could overcome or even compensate for the futility and terror experienced in the final and absolute loss of all such good and beauty in the utter oblivion of death.

We must be clear about this. I do not argue that therefore the loves and beauties of this world are or ought to be the sum of reality, the sum of all our hope. The argument here depends precisely upon the opposite truth; namely, that finally all our hope must rest in the surpassing things and promises yet to come. However, as stated above, the argument contains the further assertion that in our ultimate hope we must taste some sense of those surpassing goods in the very things of this ordinary existence.

If our present loves and desires grasp nothing at all of those promised excellencies, then in actuality all we really know of good and desirable things rests wholly upon things and experiences of this life only. Hence, as this life will inexorably be wrenched from our grasp, and as we could put no hope in that of which we have absolutely no knowledge, our response would be only utter fear and loss at the devastation exacted upon us by death. And no hoarding of good things and desires could forestall the sheer and horrifying bankruptcy of that inexorable devastation.

To pray the collect then presses upon us this crucial issue: the relation between love and desire for mundane goods and beauties and love and desire for those transcendent goods and beauties eschatologically stored up for us by God. As we begin to wrestle with this issue in depth, we find bound up in it a deeper and darker question — a stark question that confronts us with almost imponderable depths of paradox and ambiguity in mundane Christian existence. Why persist in this existence rather than pass on directly to the next?

After all, in the next exis­tence are the surpassing blessings of divine reali­ties. This fact and the hope we derive from it expose to us the ultimate inadequacy of this exis­tence, even as we do and we must know love and desire in this life for as long as we persist in it. This question and the issue from which it derives are not mere intellectual meanderings. They are the very stuff of faithful loving and desiring in this life.

This crucial issue then re­solves into this intense and ineluctable dilemma of Christian existence in this world. We cannot give up mundane objects of love and desire, else we give up life itself. At the same time, we cannot grasp these objects as if they were ultimately adequate and final sums of love and desire, else we give up the next life.

How then do we love and desire in this mundane life when our love and desire cannot ultimately rest in their objects? How do we love and desire the things (personal and impersonal) of mundane life even as we know our love and desire cannot ultimately rest in them, and as we know that our love and desire cannot now entirely locate in transcendent realities (because they surpass our under­standing and exceed our desire; because they are eschatological, whereas we as yet are not)?

How then in this life do we attach ourselves to penul­timate realities—and we must attach ourselves to them or we effectively give up this life altogether—even as we long to grasp transcendent divine realities? How do we love and desire divine realities in all things of this life—implying an acceptance of this life and its realities—yet finally above all things—implying a rejection or a transcendence of this life and its realities—without commit­ting one of these errors:

(1) reduction of the nature of divine realities to fit wholly within our present experience, whereby we lose the eschatological tension of love and desire, and thus deify this life; or

(2) elevation of divine eschatological realities so above our experience of love and desire in this life that present realities are utterly distinct from them, whereby either (a) we despise this life en­tirely in longing for the next life, or (b) we cling desperately to this life because we know absolutely nothing of the hope and comfort of the next?

[Part Two tomorrow]

In the Sanctus

In the Sanctus, during the Eucharist, we exclaim these splendid words of praise:

"Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest!"

If all this is so, and I have no doubt that it is, then it means that in all things we may catch at least a glimpse – a reflective impress, if you will – of the divine glory and beauty. It means that somewhere or somehow in all things, in all of everything, the awe-full splendor of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – may be found. (Or, shall we say, it may find us!) So it is that we pick up a piece of dirt-crusted quartz and apprehend in its milky form the glory of the divine, a glory which in our sinful world is often murkily – yet truly – present. And likewise we stand upon a mountain like Old Rag Mountain in western Virginia, look west across the Shenandoah range, and contemplate the folded composition of the ridges in likeness of the way in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit “fold together” intimately and inseparably in the triune perfection of the Godhead. And if all this is so, then it means that in the handicapped person we perceive the Christ whose gait was cruelly broken by the perverseness of this hard-hammering world, and at the same time, we hope for the Christ who forever leaps and praises God like a strong deer, once shot and broken by the ruinous Hunter of this world, now raised and perfected in wholeness of limb and heart. Indeed, if the praises of the Sanctus proclaim truth, and I do not doubt that they do, then it means that we need only open our eyes and hearts to God’s being in our world, or our being in God’s being, which is glory, which is what the world is full of, so we should not miss it!

For Christ-like Love

Most merciful God, you have shown us true love in Jesus Christ. Though he was in the form of divine being, he took the nature of sinful humanity, even the nature of one condemned and outcast by that very humanity. Loving us, who despised and rejected him, he showed us sacrificial and holy love, without limits, without boundaries. Make us new people, most loving God, that we might love without limits, without boundaries; that we might be a neighbor, especially toward those condemned and outcast by a world turned away from love. In the name of Jesus Christ, who is one with you and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.

Our Chief End or Purpose

The Reformed Shorter Catechism asks, What is the chief end or purpose of humankind? and gives as answer, To glorify God. So also Jonathan Edwards argues that the end for which God created the world is his own glory. To many modern persons these positions seem pernicious and inhumane. But such persons mistake the point, for they see not that these doctrines center in love, that most divinizing and humanizing of instruments. In other words, to hold that our end is to glorify God is not to reduce us to sycophants of an egomaniacal monarch. Rather, it is to proclaim that our end (our telos — our purpose and fulfillment) is to love God. In our own human relationships is it not the end or fulfillment of our love, when true and pure, to glorify the beloved? What then but that our end is to glorify God himself, not out of abject servitude, but out of eucharistic love. And is this not then a doctrine in which we rejoice, that such is our true and pure end, to glorify God! For he who is our Alpha and Omega made us for that very end; and thus he honors and glorifies us, for so he passionately desires us to fulfill our end, which is love of him.

An April Storm from the Atlantic

Nail-hard, gale-driven rain
harrows the saucer magnolia.

Joy sorrow
judgment redemption
joint the outstretched limbs
body the purpled flowering
now scourged by rain and wind
scattered, plastered to pavement and mud.

Christ beauty – bodied forth –
descends again to earth.

Yesterday the sweet season adorned by blossoms.
Today again the tree of wintered severities.

Long, O long! for summer, for leaves, for leaves upon leaves!

A Weeping Cherry in April

So many long years of suffering all weathers:
Trunk and branch gnarl, drooping slowly toward earth,
As bark thickens and roughens, then fissures.

How exquisite in April this cataract of blooms,
This petal-clustered blushing, surging over the earth –
Weeping beauty anew from wood twisted limbs.