AN ENSLAVED
HEART - The worship of false gods
Settling
down with idols
A second perennial theme in Carmel's spirituality is the need
to decide which God to follow. Our tradition was born on Mount
Carmel, the scene of the struggle between the followers of Yahweh
and the followers of Baal. Elijah encouraged the people to be
clear about their choice of the one, true God. The Carmelite community
as well as individual Carmelites have had to continually wrestle
with the forces of disintegration and fragmentation brought about
by the pursuit of idols.
Nicholas the Frenchman in his Fiery Arrow letter to the Order
accused members of losing their way as they migrated from the
desert to the city and its allurements. He accused them of following
their own disordered desires under the guise of necessary ministry.
The reforms of Albi, Mantua, John Soreth, Teresa of Avila, and
Touraine continually reminded Carmelites to have one God, and
to serve that God with all their heart.
The saints in our tradition knew how hard it is to find and follow
the true God, among the many gods offered us. This Presence deep
within our lives is met in the world around us. In his Spiritual
Canticle poem John of the Cross observes that "All who
are free tell me a thousand graceful things of You..."(5)
Teresa of Avila counselled, "Let creatures speak to you
of their maker".
In our exuberance however, we continually ask of God's creation
more than it can be. We regularly pour our heart's desires into
some part of God's creation and ask it to be the fulfilment we
seek. We ask some part of God's creation to be uncreated. We take
a good and ask it to be a god.
The heart, weary from its continual pilgrimage, seeks to settle
down and make camp, refusing to go on. It settles down with lesser
gods, finding some joy, peace, identity, security or other alleviations
of its desires. This short term relief masks a spiritual problem
and also a problem in human development. John of the Cross was
convinced that when the individual centres on something or someone
other than God, the personality eventually becomes dysfunctional.
Such "attachments" create a situation of death. Whatever
or whomever I am asking to be my god, my desires' deepest fulfilment,
cannot bear the expectation. The idol will begin to crumble under
such pressure as I ask it to be my "all". And because
we cannot grow past our gods, a lesser god means a lesser human
being. Consequently, that to which I am "attached" is
dying under my need, and I am dying because my deepest desires
can find nothing and no one to match their intensity.
The self-transcending dynamism within our humanity will not allow
us to declare that we have "arrived" at journey's end.
By declaring a premature victory as we cling to idols, we are
engaging in inauthentic self-transcendence. In other words, the
heart is no longer free to hear and follow the invitation of the
Beloved. This slavery of the heart is the result of disordered
desire. The solution, the liberation of the heart, is not accomplished
by annihilation of desire but by its reorientation.
Disordered
relationship
When our tradition talks about attachments, it does not mean that
relationship with the world is a problem. Certainly, sometimes
the world is a problem. But we have to relate to the one world
we have. Relating to the world is not the basic problem in attachment;
it is how we are relating that becomes the problem. Our
saints are talking to adults whose heart has been enslaved by
someone or something in place of God. It is not necessarily the
person or thing that is the problem, but the way we are relating
to them, the disordered way our desire or longing is being expressed.
It is immaterial whether the idol is valuable or not. The relationship
is the critical factor. An incident in the life of John of the
Cross is illustrative. One of John's friars had a simple cross
made of palm. John took it from him. The friar had little else,
and the cross was certainly not valuable, but John discerned that
the friar was clinging to his crude cross in a disordered way.
It apparently had become a non-negotiable indicating that the
friar's relationship to it was skewed.
John observed that whether the bird is tied by a cord or a thin
thread, it is still tied. The heart is enslaved by its idols and
no longer free to hear the invitation of the Beloved. John identifies
a craving in attachments which makes the person poorly attuned
to God. John was convinced that a person becomes like that which
she loves. This false god will encourage a false self.
It is important to emphasize that the Carmelite tradition does
not advocate withdrawal from the world. It is advocating a right
relationship with God's world. Without interpretation Carmel could
be understood to be saying that involvement with the world is
a hindrance to relationship with God. On the contrary, it is in
God's world that God is met.
The Carmelite tradition is addressing those whose hearts have
gone out to the world seeking fulfilment and have become scattered
and fragmented in their search. Pouring their heart's desires
into possessions and relationships s which cannot meet the intensity
of these desires, the Christian begins to experience an impasse
in life. It is a deteriorating situation. The world the Christian
is clutching so frantically is having life squeezed out of it
by the expectations. And the Christian is being conformed to idols,
not transformed into God.
A contemporary theme related to our traditional theme of attachment
is addiction. We are coming to realize that we are all addicted
in one way or another, and that only God's grace can free us from
our addictions. One can be addicted to obviously destructive things,
but one can also be addicted to the church, addicted to the Pope,
addicted to religious practices, even addicted to Carmel, and
addicted to God as we create God to be.
In other words, we can ask part of God's creation to be uncreated,
to be the nourishment for the deepest hungers within us as individuals
and as a people. We are asking from God's creation what only God
can give. And our tradition insists that nada (nothing), no part
of God's creation, can be substituted for God. Only the one who
is nada (no thing, yet everything) can be sufficient food for
our hunger.
When John of the Cross drew a stylised mountain to picture the
journey of transformation he drew three paths up the mountain.
The two outside paths, one of worldly goods, the other of spiritual
goods, did not reach the top. Only the middle path of the nadas
attained the summit of Carmel. He amplified his teaching in the
picture with several lines of text at the bottom. The lines of
the text were variations of the theme, "to possess all, possess
nothing".
The text at the bottom of the picture gives insight into John's
basic understanding of the spiritual journey. He agrees that we
are made to possess all, know all, be all, etc. But he also understands
that we will never have all if we ask any part of God's creation
to be sufficient for these hungers. His counsel to possess nothing
in order to possess all is a cryptic encouragement to never ask
some thing (some part of God's creation) to be all. Only the one
who is no-thing can be our All.
Such asceticism sounds difficult unless one understands that John
is addressing men and women who have tried the other paths in
life for fulfilment. Their hearts have gone out in search of the
one who loved them and they have become enmeshed in life with
hearts broken and scattered. John's counsels are words of life
for people dying for lack of proper nourishment. He is pointing
out the path of life for pilgrims who have lost their way.
A
prophetic role
One writer suggested that the Carmelite vocation is to be suspended
between heaven and earth, finding no support in either place.
That is a rather dramatic way of saying that ultimately our faith,
our confidence and trust in God may have to be its own support,
and God leads us beyond all of our earthly and spiritual constructs.
At the end of her life, Thérèse of Lisieux found
her life-long hope for heaven mocking her. John of the Cross reminded
us of St. Paul's observations: if we already have what we hope
for, it is not hope; hope is in what we do not possess. The
spirituality of John of the Cross has been described as a continual
hermeneutic on the nature of God.
Does this suspicion of human intentions and constructs make Carmelites
eternally curmudgeons? Or does it allow us to bring a sharp critique
regarding the human heart and its idol-making propensity? Is it
not actually a ministry of liberation, freeing us from all the
ways we enslave ourselves and give ourselves away to idols? Is
not the Carmelite critique a challenge to not cling to anything,
to not make anything centre in one's life, other than the Mystery
who haunts our lives. And in that purity of heart, really only
achieved by God's spirit, are we able to love others well and
live in this world wisely. The Carmelite challenge is to cooperate
with God's love, often dark, which is enlivening and healing us.
This continual listening for the approach of God, in the middle
of all the words and structures we have constructed, is a prophetic
task for Carmel. Which God are we to follow? The gods of our addictions?
The gods of ideologies and limited theologies? The gods of oppressive
economic and political systems? The gods of all the "isms"
of our time? Or is our God the God who transforms, heals, liberates,
enlivens?
Archbishop Oscar Romero was a traditional, careful, studious cleric.
He was a good man, reserved, pious, prayerful. But his conversion
came when he saw another face of Christ, a face somewhat different
from the Christ of his piety and prayer, a face somewhat different
from his theology, a face different from the Christ familiar to
the hierarchy of El Salvador. It was the face of Christ in the
face of the people of El Salvador; it was the face of Christ truly
incarnated in history and finding its outlines in the struggles
of his people. Romero said,
"We learn to see the face of Christ - the face of Christ that also is the face of a suffering human being, the face of the crucified, the face of the poor, the face of a saint, and the face of every person and we love each one with the criteria with which we will be judged: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat". (6)
The idols of our times are not just personal loves and possessions, but are especially the idols of power, prestige, control, and dominance which leave most of humankind looking in at the banquet of life. Romero commented:
"The poor person is the one who has been converted to God and puts all his faith in him, and the rich person is one who has not been converted to God and puts his confidence in idols: money, power, material things ... Our work should be directed toward converting ourselves and all people to this authentic meaning of poverty." (7)
Many of our provinces have participated
in confronting the idols of our times through liberation movements
in many areas of the world, including the Philippines, Latin America,
North America, Africa, Indonesia, and eastern Europe. Today, the
inequities between north and south often point to idols of "isms"
which keep a majority of the world in a emarginated condition.
Summary
The hungers of our heart send us into the world seeking nourishment.
In many ways we ask the world, "Have you seen the one who
did this to my heart, causing it to ache?" Our heart finds
itself scattered over the landscape as we ask each person and
each possession and each activity to tell us more about the Mystery
at the core of our lives.
So enamoured by the messengers of God, the soul mistakes them
for God. We take the good things of God and ask that they be god.
The heart, tired of its pilgrimage, seeks to settle down and make
a home. It pours its deepest desires into relationships, possessions,
plans, activities, goals, and asks that they bring fulfilment
to our deepest hungers. We ask too much from them and they begin
to crumble under our expectations. Over and over the Carmelite
saints remind us that only God is sufficient food for the hungers
of the heart.
Questions for reflection:
- What are the idols, the non-negotiables, that have become part of my life? What are those things without which I cannot go on? Am I hurting them by clinging so tightly to them?
- Where and how have I become unfree in life ? Am I unfree to follow my deepest desires? Am I unfree to hear God's call into God's future, which is dark to me? Am I unfree to hear my community's needs?
- Have I, unconsciously, been building my kingdom rather than watching for the reign of God? Have I, without being aware of it, removed God from the centre of my life and placed in that centre my noble goals, my prophetic work, my understanding of the demands of the kingdom? Have I slowly over the years forgotten to ask, "What does God want?"
- Have the passions which brought me to Carmel been domesticated and left to wither? Have I become compulsively active, perhaps becoming more a functionary of an institution rather than a disciple of the Lord?
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