This
piece was first given by Carol O'Connor at a Margaret Silf Summit in
Melbourne: Imagining the Self in a Spiritually Expansive World
offered by Kardia Formation, 19th May 2018.
….beyond
the threshold of want
where all our diverse straining
can come to wholesome ease.
where all our diverse straining
can come to wholesome ease.
John
O’Donohuei
(p 121)
The
Irish Celtic writer John O’Donohue emphasises in his book of
blessings To Bless This Space Between Us, that life is a
constant flow of emergence. In his blessing For The Unknown Self
he describes how our ‘unknown self’ calls us to evolve. We live
in the place of possibility, of thresholds which are possibilities
into new worlds. ii
He teaches that our ‘unknown self’ dwells in us gently, kindly,
knows our primeval heart and has the capacity in dreams to create
‘many secret doors / Decorated with pictures of your hunger.’iii
But
what premise can this rest on, what shape can it possibly even
outline in this first part of the 21st century, where the
world seems to have a sense that it’s shrinking not opening, where
the notion of ‘truth’ seems vague and slippery, not creative and
life giving, where abundance seems to be the exponential increase of
our non-biologically degradable garbage or arms of war, and the
growing list of endangered species? Viewed from one lens, the future
of our civilisation looks increasingly bleak, fraught and full of
suffering. In this context, the unknown self can seem to harbour only
states of unease and anxiety.
This
book of blessings was John O’Donohue’s final before he
unexpectedly died young. In it he wrote, ironically now, that ‘we
never see the script of our lives nor do we know what is coming
towards us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or
sequence’. For him although ‘to be in the world is to be distant
from the homeland of wholeness….we are confined by limitation and
difficulty….’ he also suggests a deeper recognition that ‘when
we bless we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers
and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness…’
We are physical beings subject to the laws of nature, but the future
stands on an unmade threshold full of potential. Blessings, he
says, are ‘different from a hug or a salute….(they) open a
different door in human encounter. One enters into the forecourt of
the soul, the source of intimacy and the compass of destiny.’iv
John
O’Donohue understood that primarily a blessing is about
relationship: with the self, with God, with one another. And
blessings are about wholeness. Blessings seek wholeness of the
self and community without denying the brokenness - the reality of
slippery truth, the fact of the degradation of our planet. They reach
into a source beyond our present frontiers and do this for the sake
of wholeness and healing.
To
reach into a source is to live with recognition of the self as being
in process: ‘we are distant from the homeland of wholeness.’ It
is an old truth that we’ve almost forgotten that the best things in
life take time, we need the leaning in of time to form who we
are becoming. The gift of time actually is the enabling vehicle
which evolves us. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury,
warns that we need to remember that we are shaped by time, otherwise
we are in danger of losing of what it is to be human. So, the
practice of silence and reflection enables us to ‘enter into that
forecourt of the soul,’ that source of intimacy which enables
possibility to emerge. Rowan Williams goes on to say: ‘Time is a
complex and rich gift; it is the medium in which we not only grow and
move forward, but also constructively return and resource - literally
re-source - ourselves.’ v
There
are two Greek words translated as blessing or to bless
or blessed in the New Testament. The first one is eulogeo:
to speak well of God, to ask God’s blessing on a thing - to praise,
to invoke, to consecrate something and set it apart for its ongoing
wellness in God. Luke 24:30 ‘He took bread and blessed it, and
broke, and gave to them’; Mark 11:9 ‘Blessed is he that comes in
the name of the Lord’; Matthew 5:44 ‘Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you.’ The second word is markarios - this
is the one we most often translate as ‘blessed’ from the
Beatitudes: it means to be a partaker of God and the fullness of God.
Makarios in particular has that deep sense of joy and grace.
Why
does the word ‘may’ often appear when we speak a blessing? John
O’Donohue tells us, ‘it is a word of benediction. It imagines and
wills the fulfilment of desire. In the invocation of our blessings
here, the word may is the spring through which the Holy Spirit
is invoked to surge into presence and effect. The Holy Spirit, is
the subtle presence and secret energy behind every blessing…’vi
The word ‘may’ is our link between heaven and earth.
The
biblical world Heaven, as explained by English theologian Paula
Gooder, was not understood as a spiritual place, over there in the
distance and somewhere I or you go to when we die. We have developed
a very different understanding of Heaven because we no longer share
the ancient cosmology that the earth is flat. Biblical understanding
was in fact that heaven is not an eternal realm far, far away from
earth, but a spatial created realm very close to earth, and created
to be alongside earth. The early Celtic Christians also believed that
Heaven is right here, and right now. Their sense of ‘thin places’
was resonant with the closeness of Heaven alongside earth. To employ
the word ‘may’ in terms of benediction, in terms of speaking well
of, is to affirm that this spatial realm of Heaven is right close
alongside earth and the ongoing work of the spirit between the two.
It’s
important here to note that blessings recognise God’s
goodness in the world, rather than establish it. So when you
bless something, you are not magically transforming it. Contemporary
English theologian Andrew Davison in his book Blessing which
has inspired my own thinking and forms the basis for this reflection,
explains, ‘blessings will not be about God’s holiness in
itself….. We do not make God holy but we can help our world to
make a better attempt at recognising God’s holiness and keeping it
in mind.’vii
So blessings do not make God great; they proclaim God’s greatness.
Blessings are about speaking well of God; they ‘call out’ if you
like, God’s presence in the world. They ‘call out’ in order to
show that light which already exists, but has still yet to be fully
revealed. And when we bless a place or a person, a vocation with this
understanding we are setting them out on a path which recognises
their ongoing relationship in and with God.
So,
in blessing, we acknowledge the closeness of heaven to earth and that
God’s action is caught up in the process of well making in our
world. God seeks wholeness and works for the good (in an ontological
senseviii)
here on earth. But we also acknowledge that God doesn’t play havoc
with laws of science or our physical embodiment. When we bless a
person before they have an operation it is so that they may be healed
- if not in body, then in mind; we bless someone before they die so
they transition in peace to eternal rest and the hope of rising in
Glory; we bless a house when newly occupied, so that those who live
under its roof may enjoy ongoing hospitality and love. These
blessings are a part of the redemptive process in the world. But they
don’t deny that tragedies and suffering and de-humanisation will
continue to happen. The violence in the world, the uncertainty, the
suffering doesn’t go away. But blessing does affect the way we
encounter them and move within and alongside them.
So
how is it that I have come to believe that ‘blessing’ is
subversive in our early 21st century world? Coming from
the French, the word subversive literally means, ‘from below
to turn’. There’s action happening in the world that’s turning
everything, but unlike many other actions in the world, this action
is happening from below. There’s a deeper urging causing the self
to shift. So then, what is it in our life that blessing is
coming under and trying to turn? And also where would blessings have
us turn toward?
Well,
here are six suggestions - and here again I acknowledge the work of
Andrew Davison in helping shape my own considerations:
Firstly,
blessings teach us, ‘that all is not entirely well with the world.'
ix
We are by nature broken and flawed. We need restoration and healing.
Each
of these six suggestions in some way deal with how and not
what; how we move in the world, how we travel with our
outer circumstances - not so much what we have to work with.
I’m often struck by how people can take something - an image
or a line of poetry - and use it for their own purposes. For example,
the poem Invictis by Henly, has a memorable final couplet: ‘I
am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.’ In 1995
this poem and these lines in particular, were chosen to be the final
words spoken by Timothy McVeigh before his execution - he was
responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 people and
injured over 680.
But
during Nelson Mandela’s eighteen year imprisonment at Robben Island
prison between 1962-1980 this same poem inspired him to stay alive
and dream about what God’s well making in Africa could possibly
look like. For Mandela the words brought courage and determination
to make Africa free from Apartheid, to make it a more just country
through reconciliation and accountability. His premise was on a
greater ontological good, and in 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for this journey towards national healing. For McVeigh, the
words meant the desire to take over control himself on a matter which
he considered unjust. Taking on the role as ultimate arbiter, and
taking revenge on the Government in such an abhorrent manner
completely invalidated any nominal cause he may have had.
Mandela
and McVeigh both used the same poem, but where for one it was used
with a sense of moving alongside God’s purposes for greater good in
the world, the other attempted to shrink the world and play god. By
acknowledging that we are all linked into much bigger processes in
the world, processes that seek through us to bring wholeness rather
than revenge or bloodshed, we release ourselves from a terrible
bondage.
Blessings
are subversive because they belong to the broken seeking to emerge
into a new wholeness, and are not captive to mastery or self-mastery.
Understanding practices of mastery or self-mastery as an education in
honing skills and talents can be a great benefit. But wholeness
cannot be sought only by learning to have control over who we are or
who others are and only by controlling our outer circumstances. To do
this would be to necessarily make the world small to our human
purposes, and bring on an unbearable burden. Blessings recognise the
mystery of healing in God. Because of this, they cut directly through
the belief that we must strive to be masters of who we are and what
we do.
The
notion of self-mastery permeates our ‘first world’ culture,
established on desire. There are self-mastery business seminars you
can attend; self-mastery cards you can purchase to teach how to
master compassion, enthusiasm, self-respect; there is a self-mastery
board game whose goal is to create your own self-mastery and to
regain a sense of equilibrium in your life. These work well as
tools of empowerment, but not as ends in themselves. And the
pervasiveness of self-mastery is also more subtle than this: there is
the desire to perfect the body: the increasing availability of
medical procedures (regardless of health risks) so we can become
perfectly designed physically. As adults we have access to a
range of drugs to help us master our emotions as well as our bodies.
I don’t mean here taking drugs that alleviate depression or
bipolar, or medical procedures that seek to heal disfigurement.
But, the misshapen understanding about the way we have been created
that seeks to control the self in attempt to fit an unrealisable
idealisation. In fact, a distortion of what it means to be a human
being.
So
blessing not only recognises, but makes a credible space for
the reality of our broken and flawed humanity. But how can blessing
help us understand our place in the world?
Secondly,
blessings remind us that what we are given in life is gift; and by
this they call us back into the priority of relationships with one
another. The world is on loan to us created from a deep well of
cosmic Love for creation, and we are each called to live a life of
sharing in it. In the Christian Church, unlike some other religions,
blessings are not commodities to be bought or sold. You can’t buy a
bag of eulogeo or makarios, even at Coles. So much that
is thought to be credible in our world is ‘for sale’; worth is
judged in terms of its monetary value. To live by the way of
blessing subverts the notion that life is premised on acquisition and
objectification.
They
also subvert the notion that we can live only in our heads; they turn
us back to the concrete reality of one another. As much as I relish
and am hooked into both technology and social media - I recognise
they risk taking me away from personal face-to-face interaction with
a person into a vicarious head game of avatars. The Face Book ‘wall’
is not a wall at all in any physical sense, but a moving tide of
thought posts which operate only in my own head space. Bitcoins are
crypto-currencies where transactions are verified by network nodes;
they may have power over earth’s resources, but operate only in
virtual communities. Advertisements work in the illusory and
objectification. Constantly being taken out of our bodies and into
head space we risk losing the connection with one another in the
embodiment of the physical world.
Technology
and social media and bitcoins are not in themselves the problem: it’s
when they are used to derail what it means to be human. The currency
of our lives often only puts money and virtual reality into
circulation; however blessings recognise mutuality in relationship to
be of more value. They are freely given touchstones which remind us
of the giftedness of life itself; that all creation comes from God.
In the Gospels Jesus is very present and real to each person he
encounters. He stays grounded in the body to the point where he
knows when someone touches the hem of his garment. We witness him
say ‘no’ to all things that get in the way of direct relationship
with one another and with God: he confronted the money changers in
the temple who exploited the poor by selling them offerings. He
taught that our relationship with God is not to be mediated nor
conditional. For relationships to be real they have to be founded on
mutuality, on listening, on noticing; breathing in the same space.
Time
itself is a gift. To hear rightly, that common phrase ‘Bless You’
is to be released into a process, a day by day, moment by moment,
realignment toward and in God. In an essay on St Benedict, Rowan
Williams says: ‘there are some good things that are utterly
inaccessible without the taking of time……good things that only
emerge in time as we look and listen, as we accompany a long story in
its unfolding….’ x
So, thirdly, blessings remind us that orientation towards God is a
life-long, ever deepening practice which takes time and opens us to
being shaped in time. There is no Manna From Heaven Fast Food outlet
or One Stop Blessing Franchise. To live in the spirit of blessing is
challenging work. We are so often resistant to what it means to being
shaped by time. And yet it would be an absurd notion to listen to the
fastest version of The Moonlight Sonata or receive the whole of the
musical Into the Woods by Sondheim in five minutes.
Perhaps
it’s the Beatitudes most of all in the Gospels which give us food
to really sit down with and chew over. Their very subversive
directives demand our taking of time even to begin to understand the
direction they are hinting. Classicist and Hebrew scholar Sarah Ruden
refers to this passage in the Gospels as a poem on ‘Blessingnesses.’
She explains that the ‘Greek speaking people in the wider Roman
Empire very likely experienced this passage as sort of chant.’xi
with each line divided into two parts. Rhythmically in the Greek,
the first part of each line ‘yields’ to the second. Thus, ‘…The
pounding comes in the second halves of the Beatitude’s lines, until
there are no longer any distinct lines.’ xiiTo
me, each line reads like a Zen Koan. Eugene Peterson translates the
first line in Matthew’s version: 'You're blessed when you're at the
end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his
rule.' This is a line to ponder. Again, it’s only in the sitting
with, giving time to, interrogating each of Peterson's translated
lines, that they can begin to make sense.xiii
By their very implacable tone they call us to remember what it is
essential in our lives with one another: authenticity, mercy, truth,
peace, groundedness.
So
fourthly, blessings are concerned with what is essential, and they
remind us to give thanks. In the Christian mass the church service is
centered around the Eucharist. This is the giving to us of what is
essential - the bread of life. The bread of life, the body of Jesus,
the feeding of divine love. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’
Yes, give us food for our body. But Lord, give us also your love. We
need love. And we need love to shape us.
Blessings
turn us towards the essential and in this turning they urge us to
practice thanksgiving. Therefore, we don’t bless things that are
excessive - plasma TVs or the latest Xbox game. They may be fun
extras. And we don’t bless those things that go against the common
good: weapons of mass destruction. We bless food and rivers and
houses; those necessary things we need each day and so often take for
granted. And we bless people because healthy relationships are
life-giving. Blessings expand the heart to recognise the true worth
of what we are given, they remind us about Who the giver is, and draw
us deeper into the mystery of life unfolding.
So,
in all this, who are blessings actually for? One of my favourite
Gospel stories is from the Gospel of Luke, 19:3. It’s the story of
Zacchaeus, who was a tax collector. He was also very short in
stature so that he was not able to see Jesus through the crowd. He
ran on ahead and climbed a tree. When Jesus reached the spot he
simply said, Come down Zacchaeus I’m going to dine with you today.
Christ is the one who is able to see the particular needs of each one
of us - be it even the most socially despised tax collector.
And
for Jesus, everyone is invited to dinner; everyone is invited to the
party, to the Eucharistic feast. City people, country people, fringe
dwellers. Smelly people, clean people, people with warts and people
with perfect complexions. Judas is invited to the last supper in the
full knowledge that he will betray Jesus. Because here at the
Eucharist people are not judged on moral or racial or religious
terms, but related to as persons. At the table of Jesus, whatever
inherent risk there is in worldly terms, here it is rendered
redundant and nonsensical. For what we are invited to share in this
meal is the coming together in blessing, for the inherent goodness in
God’s creation. Here is the place where the Word of God is
remembered, and praise and thanksgiving given for God’s Spirit
amongst us.
So,
fifthly, blessings are inclusive and they offer wellness for
everyone. They are subversive in our world because here is one
feast, a celebration, at which there are no insiders and no
outsiders. You actually don’t need a club membership card. And you
don’t need to pay any fees. And how subversive is this - especially
for the Church?
But
look what happens of its own accord in this meal with Christ: as a
social outsider, having received the inclusive invitation to dine
with Jesus, by Jesus himself, what does Zacchaeus then offer to do?
‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and
if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as
much.’ Luke 19: 8. He turns his whole life around to one of giving
to others. He’s not buying into a club membership, but his own
sudden recognition of the value of what he is invited to participate
in at such a deep level instinctively turns his desires into wanting
to share what he has with others.
All
blessings are particular and individual, but they recognise that the
calling out of goodness in one person is in effect the calling for
more life and more wellbeing for everyone. Blessings are inherently
inclusive, seeking to integrate and gather together, rather than
split off. No-one is considered unworthy or insignificant of notice
at our Lord’s table because that is the very place where we are all
healed.
Given
this then, that everyone is invited to participate in the life of
God, sixthly and finally, blessings affirm our interconnectedness and
interdependence.
At
the heart of Margaret Silf’s latest book, Hidden Wings, is
this salutation of the butterfly effectxiv.
What I say and do today, what you say and do today, can have bearing
on a child growing up in England or Sudan. When a person is blessed
before going on a pilgrimage, it can change the way that persons
relates to people they encounter.
Blessings
are subversive because they are relational in nature to a wider
community, rather than individualistic. When you bless someone for
their journey, or bless a church, or celebrate the Eucharist you are
recognising by this action that you and I, or you and this building
are linked together in some bigger action of God’s. And all our own
stories are linked into a much bigger picture of God’s story of
creation. No matter if we were born 2000 years ago and knew Jesus
then, or 4 000 years ago and didn’t know him; no matter if we live
the life of a hermit or recluse today - we are all a part of God’s
story of our planet earth and our time and space in the universe.
Indigenous
cultures have so much to teach us because they are steeped in this
innate wisdom. We may believe that we have been created prima facie
as existential, alienated beings. We may feel because of
dispossession, suffering or violence that we are split off. But as
Desmond Tutu teaches, there is a word in his language: Ubuntu. It
means, 'I am because You are.’ You and I, whoever you are and I am
in whatever circumstances, right now in this room - you are you
because of who I am, and I am myself because of who you are. And
this mutuality ripples out into the wider world beyond the edges.
This
whole reflection could have been about the Beatitudes, and I still
wouldn’t have said enough. As a group of statements about being
living in the fullness of God, they are outrageous and impossible in
worldly terms. But that’s just it, they are about life in the
kingdom of God. Benedictine monk and systematic theologian, Luigi
Gioia urges us not to understand the Beatitudes so much as a moral
code of conduct, but as a portrait of Jesus: his justice, his
perfection, his purity, his forgiveness. He writes: ‘and only
because of and insofar as they are related to him do they relate to
us.’ xv
In our humanity we fall vastly short of Christ’s perfection.
Perhaps
ultimately it’s only via music that the inward signs toward what
living with and in blessing as being an alternate way, can truly be
discovered. The composer Arvo Pärt has written a piece for the
Beatitudes. In his interpretation there are two distinctive traits
which really speak here. One is the silence that marks the gap
between the first half and the second half of each line. ‘Blessed
are the poor in spirit…..(pause)……for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.’ The pause is the silence, the time taken to absorb and
bring into effect the power of the second part of the line.
And
the second trait is the organ music itself. Initially only the voices
carry the music and the organ is gradually introduced. Its tone
begins like a short growl under the sung words, then departing in
silence, only to re-emerge in the next line. And each time the organ
sounds, it's own presence is a little more emphatic, a little more
insistent. This growl gradually increases in immensity and climaxes
at the end of the last line. What we hear here, I believe, is Arvo
Pärt drawing our attention to God’s great affirmation of living in
‘markarios.’ This affirmation is born from a deeply erotic, a
primal place. By erupting gradually underneath the words and building
up and up, the music itself finally explodes open as the surge of
Love – of God's very groundedness - strives to turn right around
our more worldly assumptions about what the nature of love means.
What we think, generally in our day to day transactional interactions
to be the case, in fact, in God’s realm is not the case.
To
live in this way of blessing is not a weakness, but a deep primal
strength which can only come out of the very foundations of a God of
Love. Makarios like eulogeo, is a call from below to
all of us in our world to turn around and open our hearts to the very
Giver of life, and begin to draw the wellness of life from this
subversive wellspring.
iFrom
'For the Unknown Self' in To Bless This Space Between Us, by
John O'Donohue, Doubleday, 2008, p 121
iiIbid
Introduction p xiv
iiiIbid
p 121
ivIbid
p165-7
vBeing
Human: Bodies, minds, persons, by Rowan Williams,
SPCK, 2018 p 78
viTo
Bless This Space Between Us Op
Cit p xvi
viiBlessing
by Andrew Davison, Canterbury Press, 2014, p 11
viiiIbid
p 26. Here Davison differentiates ontological goodness from moral.
Ontological is 'simply the good of being, and being it well. It is
the goodness that we can ascribe to an apple when we say a 'good
apple' whereas it would make no sense to say that an apple was
morally good, or morally bad for that matter. 'Good' said of an
apple means the apple lives up to what an apple can be...'
ixIbid
p 19
xHoly
Living: The Christian tradition for today by Rowan Williams,
Bloomsbury, 2017, p 65-66
xiThe
Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible by
Sarah Ruden,
Pantheon. 2017, p 80-81
xiiIbid
p 80
xiiiThe
Message: Remix by Eugene Peterson, Navpress, 2003, p 1434.
Peterson's transaction of the Beatitudes as a whole is worth a read.
xivHidden
Wings: Emerging from Troubled Times with New Hope and Deeper Wisdom,
by Margaret Silf, Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017
xvSay
it To God: In Search of Prayer by Luigi Gioia, Bloomsbury, 2017
p 91
