I’m a snob. But too
often, I’m a snob who prefers to stay stuck.
Case in point, it’s a Saturday morning, and even though the roast
profile of Starbucks coffee is way, way too dark (I mean, way), I’m here nevertheless, reapproaching Lectio Divina for the
first time in 5 years. I justify myself
with the monastic tradition: it says we should consider each night a
death and each morning a rising again. It also says that each day we should say
to ourselves “Today I will begin.” But
I’m convicted by reality: on the eighth day, when the stone was rolled
away, I have no idea how Christ rose without coffee. Those who taught me Lectio would say
it breaks several of the method’s guidelines, but the truth is, I’ve got Queen’s “Under Pressure” in my earphones
and a crappy cup of joe on standby, as I leaf through to John’s gospel. For me, shooting for perfection is
unrealistic at this point, and Lectio that wakefully rocks the fuck out is
better than no Lectio at all.
“In the beginning was the Word” is a standalone Koan. Before I get
into the whys and the wherefores, a few disclaimers: All Koans have correct
answers. The Zen tradition
dictates that the answers to Koans not be revealed. Though I’ll freely admit to
oversharing during certain chunks of my journey, these posts will adhere to the
tradition fairly strictly. For
that matter, since the fears and insecurities that undergird my search are
different than those that drive others’, the Koan most likely has multiple
accurate responses. I am more
concerned with how I came to the answer, and the kinds of spiritual work “in
the beginning was the Word” does.
Given my old hobby of using all-things-spiritual to buttress my
sad, white egotism, I move with the hesitance of a child, whose scarred hand remembers
the searing heat of his first mistakes. Answers aside, treating “In the
beginning was the Word” as a Koan involves the “Steps of answering Koans:” I need to admit my fear, make a
decision, answer with body, not mind, and make a non-verbal response. If you handle it that way, good luck. Though I may be wrong, I believe that I’ve
found an answer. What’s below is simply a
musing on how the Koan might enrich Christianity.
Regarding emptiness, our culture says one thing, religion hazards a
reply, but (no surprise here) it’s ultimately in my own blend of Zen and St.
John that I find the most complete answer. The Zen question “What is mu?” is
the closest thing, in my view, to “in the beginning was the Word.” Allow me to unpack societal and religious perspective,
though, before letting loose my own hot air.
In the popular mind, sin is billed as the only way to express the longing
for non-being. How many people
have we heard saying “I had to sin so that I’d know what goodness is.” As a cultural case in point: in his
voiced intro to the song “I’m not Afraid” Eminem says “I guess I had to go to
that place [in his case, a “place of addiction”] to get to this one [a place of
recovery.]” This makes me, and perhaps all those who’d follow the kenotic path,
fidget nervously. For my part,
I’ve always wondered: must sin be the only way of accounting for the kenotic
path, and for the sense of absence so many contemplatives experience in prayer? Even though it’s an unavoidable part
of our inheritance, must sin be the only way to unify opposites? Adyashanti and
others claim sin created our dualistic mindset in the first place. Again, it’s an “if Satan casts out Satan,
his kingdom can’t stand” situation. By
and by, we’ll find a morally neutral way to account for the positive role of
absence in the economy of the sacred.
The theological traditions of East and West have ample resources to
respond to culture. Chrysogonus Wadell,
the wonderful, cantankerous hermit who introduced me to monasticism, said
something once. I think it was
an Abraham Joshua Heschel quote, but someone out there will probably make a
liar out of me. In the intervening
years, I’ve been unable to find the quote, and it doesn’t matter. Chrysogonus said “We do not take the
words of God into our mouths. Rather,
we enter into the Word, because the word is bigger than we are.”
A koanic response to “in the beginning was the Word” would unite the past tense reference with the present
moment. In a sense, this is a
maneuver quite like the Jewish concept of Remembrance. What our older brothers in faith
remember in the Mah Nishtanah, (why is this night different from all
other nights) becomes present and personal.
“We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God brought us out with a
strong hand and an outstretched arm.” It piggybacks on the fact that, for God,
remembrance equals existence. When
the psalmist asks God not to remember his sins, he’s asking that they be
rendered non-existent.
The messianic corollary is “What the messiah does not remember is
not saved.” So when the Good Thief
says “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus’ response isn’t just about their
mutual nearness to death. Between
God and his people, mutual remembrance is only conceptual when there’s a thing
remembering and a thing being remembered.
On its most basic level it’s less dichotomous. In another
stand-alone Koan, Jesus simply says “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Whether the Good Thief grasped the meaning of
the Koan before his death is immaterial.
Egoic death is only a crucifixion metaphorically. We’d be well served to remember, metaphor
is a luxury.
With the resources of Judaism
alone, the above three paragraphs suggest “In the beginning was the Word”
is the presence of absence in which God dwells.
It unites the past and the present, and brings together the potential
and the actual.
Now to tackle the Zen question—what is mu?—mentioned above. A quick wikipedia search will reveal that
“mu” is the negative principal. Of
course, in the positive sense, God made everything, seen and unseen. The philosophical tradition that
undergirds Christianity is a bit intolerant of contradiction. “Can God make a stone” asks our
philosophical tradition “which he himself cannot lift?” I won’t waste time answering that
here. Let it simply suffice to
point out that, if I were to handle it from a more Eastern framework, Western
minds might find my answers suspect.
If Logos is not non-being, and if non-being isn’t a part of the divine economy, then
it’s a stretch for the Christian God concept to account for the palpable presence
of absence in contemplative experience.
The believer still waffling between avoiding or smothering God
inevitably feels, by and by, as if God is absent. In fact, God is present, but quiet, and
manifests himself to those who become like him.
The term is “passive volition”—willingness, not willfulness. And if Logos is not non-being, it’s nearly a
stretch to explain the Kenotic path that first Christ—and later those who knew
him—followed.
Not just Christ, but in fact, all creation groans on the cross of
decaying finitude and infinite longings.
Christ’s kenosis expiated our sin, and our kenosis shares in that
victory, but there is a morally neutral reason that our dying daily leads to
kicking the cosmic bucket. To put it
plainly, that is how the Logos, the negative principle, rolls.
A scribe asked Jesus “what is the greatest commandment.” Jesus says, in essence, “Put your
whole self into loving God, and Love your neighbor as yourself.” When the scribe echoes back something
similar, Jesus says “you are not far from the kingdom of God.” One of Cynthia Bourgealt’s best
points is that “resisting sin” is destined to fail. Sin gave us a dualistic perspective
in the first place, and dualism can’t solve itself. In the end, Slim Shady’s resort, and our
culture’s resort, to the “I had to sin to be good” argument may not be too far
off: it may simply be a dualistic expression of the longing to unite opposites.
Further, St. John’s prologue continues: “All things came into being
through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” If Logos is mu, then I suppose
existence gives form, not just to the divine desire for being, but for
non-being as well. If our being
is positive, and the expression of both being and non-being, it only remains
for us as a culture to claim the resources available in “non-being” to unify
opposites in a morally neutral way.
Sure, God created you and I so that our visible substance could
share the sandbox with his invisible substance, but he also created us
with a vast inner emptiness. When
our pail and shovel stop amusing us, maybe we’re drawn inward, and maybe the
process makes us realize that God is the sandbox as well. When we communicate as the
psalmist did, out of our own inner well of non-being, “deep [calls] on deep, in
the roar of waters.” And in the
end we say, with St. Paul “In him we live and move and have our being.”
Whatever your answer to the Koan, the mere reading of the words “In
the beginning” unites the past with the present moment. God gives what he wishes, when he
wishes: inducing a wakefulness deeper than caffeine, this is at least
possible for his Word. But
as for convincing me that Lectio rocks more than Queen, show me a snowball
unmelting in Gehenna and we’ll talk.
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