Living into Our Questions and Doubts. Desert Spirituality

Living into our Questions and Doubts. Desert Spirituality

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”—Alan Jones.

I first heard this quote attributed to Alan Jones, former dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, at a Trinity Wall Street conference at Kanuga in 2001. It warmed my heart when I heard Jones affirm this, and I have shared it with many others. Anne Lamott is also a writer and speaker to whom many attribute the quote. Theological friends tell me it is actually from Paul Tillich’s work, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, pp. 116-117!

I will stop tracking it down, but I am confident the sentence is scriptural in its wisdom. I share it with many who come for spiritual direction regarding their doubts.  

In his book Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality, Jones writes about doubt and the discovery and nurturing of the soul in the spirituality of the Desert Fathers. The spirituality of the desert involves encountering God, then feeling God’s absence, and finally experiencing the divine joy of God’s presence again. Jones describes this threefold experience of soul-making after awakening with the first conversion, which entails self-knowledge, often with tears; the second conversion, in which things seem to fall apart; and the third conversion, which occurs when we enter the life of contemplation.

These awakening periods have recurred for me: at church camps, when I suddenly decided to go to medical school, during my discernment process for the diaconate, and at Cursillo. The conversion of self-knowledge with tears came to me, and the falling apart when I decided my only hope to survive was to enter a 12-step program. It also came when people close to me: my grandfather, my mother, my father, and my brother died, and now, as my mobility becomes increasingly limited. 

Often, only at the death of a loved one do we clearly recognize the nature of genuine love, as many of us did in years past with the death of our dear friend and deacon Linda Brown.

 Jones describes those tears as like the breaking of the waters of the womb before a child’s birth.

 The task of love, as experienced in the “desert,” is to free us of our well-built-up exoskeleton.

Soul-making is paying attention to invisible things that do not lend themselves to manipulation and control. It requires receptivity to the life of the mystic rather than being a problem solver. Too often, we spend most of our energy building up our frail ego by setting dozens and dozens of minor situations before it, while the life of the soul is aborted. If the world is to change, we must first change, which happens when we live more deeply into our questions and doubts.

 Sharing our doubts can sometimes bring us together more effectively than sharing our faith, as our faith eventually strengthens. It is a paradox.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Nouwen: We Are Loved for All Eternity

Nouwen: We are Loved for All Eternity

“God loved you before you were born. God will love you after you die. God says, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ You belong to God from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little opportunity during a few years to say, ‘I love you, too.’”—Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (Convergent Books, 2017).

Nouwen reminds us that we were loved before our birth and will be loved after we die. Love never dies. We brought love into the world, and we have the opportunity to enlarge and multiply it and give thanks for it. Yet, in some mysterious way, we also leave part of love behind and take love with us when we die.

Love is the inheritance, the legacy we leave behind in the world. Death has no power over love. If only we could keep remembering that our true vocation on this earth is to love: to let members of our family know they are loved; to let our neighbors know they are loved; to let those in our city, those in our state, those in our country, and those in our world know they are loved.

This is a monumental job, but we will be given daily times and places to do this. Love may not always be on our agenda, but we will find opportunities to respond if we are open to it. David G. Benner1 calls this awareness enlightenment—seeing with the eyes of the heart. He also believes this is a gift of the Spirit readily available to all.

Because of some of my mobility issues, I now sit in a special elevated chair. Some of the fantastic people I work with at my church made a sign for my chair to let me know that I will always have a reserved place, and that we are all still loved, even with our handicaps. I treasure their act of love and share it and pass their act of love on to you.

1 David G. Benner Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, 2012), pp. 144-146.

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/