Of Men and of Angels

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not love, then I have become a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

That's from one of St. Paul's letters to the church in Corinth.  It's a passage often read at weddings, probably because it speaks eloquently about agapic love.

I like it for another reason: it has a nice onomatopoeic pun in the Greek text.  Paul's "If I speak..." is lalo; his "clanging" is alaladzon, which sounds like the noise a gong makes and sounds like it could mean "un-speaking."  (In Greek, words that begin with "a-" are often like English words beginning with "un-".)

This week, as we approach the third Sunday in Advent, I was looking again at a poem I wrote during this week a few years ago, after the school shooting in Newtown.  In it I compared first responders and teachers and others who give up so much for the sake of the common good to angels.  That is my second-most read post ever.

The most-read post is one I wrote after Ferguson, about the militarization of our first responders, and the way the tools we equip ourselves with change the way we interact with the world - and with other people.

Both of these posts are about public servants.  Taken together they remind me that what is done in love can be heroic and life-giving, and what is done in fear can become tyrannical.  They remind me that we have a tendency to revere the outward signs of badges and uniforms, when we should judge characters by the habits they embody and by the actions that show the habits.

And they remind me that we have a long, long way to go before we can say we have learned to love one another.


*****


I should add that even the title to this post is misleading.  The word Paul uses is not "men" but "humans." I like the cadence of the old translation "men" but the word is anthropon, not andron.  Normally I prefer the more inclusive (and more accurate) "humans" but I first learned this verse in an older, poetic translation and the rhythm of it has stuck with me.

Theodicy and Phenomenal Curiosity

I have, right now, a terrific headache.  It is a long, spidery headache whose bulging, raspy abdomen sits over my eyes and whose long forelegs reach across my head and down my spine.  One leg is probing my belly and provoking nausea.  It came on suddenly, dropping from the air, and it has become a constant efflorescence of discomfort.  Each moment it is renewed.  I try to turn my attention away, and it pulses, drawing me back.  Fine, I will give it my attention and stare it down, dominate it.  No, it has no steady gaze to match; every instant it is a new hostility towards being.  It will not hold still, it is my Proteus, but I am no Menelaus.  I cannot grapple it into submission.

I should stop writing, stop looking at the screen, but I want, as Bugbee says in the first page of The Inward Morning, to "get it down," to attend to this moment as its own revelation.  I want, in a way, to put this idea to the test.  I can write and think when I am feeling well, but it is hard to write in times like this.

Life is interesting.  This, too, is an interesting moment, and this pain is interesting.

The urge to turn this into a rule for others is to be resisted.  My pain is interesting to me because I have chosen to make it so.  I have chosen to be curious while I am able.  And this is not the worst headache I've had, it's just strong and annoying.

But -- and this is the important thing, I think -- I must not insist that others do the same.  I must not say that "pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world," I must not say that "all things work together for good," that pain is all part of a bigger plan.

I admit that all of that may be true.  It may be that the suffering of others will be the darkness that makes the brightness of the divine and eternal chiaroscuro shine brighter.

But to insist that pain is good is the privilege of those who are in no pain and the blasphemy of those who have forgotten fellow-feeling.  It is lacking in sympathy, and in kindness.  It is, in short, lacking in love.

In one of his letters to the church in Corinth, St. Paul wrote something like this: no matter what I say, no matter how beautifully I say it, if I speak without love, I might as well not be speaking at all.  (I am paraphrasing, so if you're someone who's bothered by people paraphrasing the Bible and want to see his words, here you go.)

I cannot write any more right now.

*****

It is now several days later, and the pain is gone.  Which means that now, when I think of the pain, I do so through the watery filter of time, which bends and distorts the image like water bending the image of the dipped oar.  I no longer behold it as I did when I was in medias res, in the midst of things.  I'm glad it doesn't hurt, but I've got to remember not to make it seem easier than it was.

Years ago a surgeon cut me open "from stem to stern" (his cheerful words, not mine) and then stapled me back together.  I awoke barely able to breathe.  The painkillers they gave me didn't remove the pain, they only relocated it to a part of my brain that cared less, made it less the center of my attention. Even there, it constantly tried to crawl back into the center, to take over my consciousness.  I'm grateful that it did not last long.  My awareness of that gratitude gives me great sympathy for those who cannot make their pain end, who have no hope that soon the healing will make the pain a dull memory rather than a sharp presence goading their consciousness.

At the time, I found it a helpful strategy to attend to the pain as a curiosity, to tell myself "this is interesting," and to ask "what can I learn from this pain right now?"  I couldn't sustain this for long, but I could do it again and again, with ever-renewed curiosity, and I found enormous solace and spiritual interest in it.  It put me above my pain, and stripped my pain of its domineering attitude.  It no longer loomed over me while I gazed down at it with wondering eyes.

But again, this is extremely difficult to sustain, and it probably takes a certain weird, philosophical warp of mind to begin with, a phenomenal curiosity cultivated and strengthened by long habit well before the pain began.  It's hard to come up with something like this in the moment agony strikes.

*****

The upshot of all this, for me, is twofold: first, it is good to have discovered, in the midst of my own pain, that I may always regard my own life as interesting, no matter what happens.  Second, I must always remember that this is a curious discovery I have made about myself, not a universal fact for all people.

Of course, I am writing my discovery down here because I hope that it will prove true for others.  And I think its greatest application is not for the destruction of sharp physical pain but for addressing the flat white pain of boredom.  When boredom drops down from above and wraps us in its gauzy, nauseating silk, this, too, can become the object of our curiosity.  The very fact of our boredom may be examined, and examined profitably.

But in all our examinations, we must not be - we must never be - unkind by despising the pain of others, dismissing it and insisting that if we can dismiss it, they can too.

Can I Ask Questions In Church?

Today I heard a thoughtful, thought-provoking sermon about St Paul's Epistle to Philemon.  The heart of it was this: Paul urged Philemon not to claim his legal right, but to lay aside his rights for the sake of the big love that wants to remodel his whole life.

Nobody in their right mind wants that.

Which is why Paul describes that big love elsewhere as foolishness to Greeks - and, he might have added, to anyone else who takes reason seriously. 

After all, it's a little bit crazy to lay aside your legal rights for the sake of others.  In Philemon's case, Paul was asking him to:

• Forgive Onesimus, the indentured servant who ran away, breaking his contract with Philemon;
• Forgive Onesimus for stealing from Philemon as he fled;
• Welcome Onesimus back, not as a slave but as a family member.  

That epistle is often taken as a justification of slavery, since Paul doesn't simply condemn Philemon for owning slaves.  I think it is anachronistic to insist that an ancient text share our values; it is the product of another age.  But if we are willing to read the text, not as slaves to the text but as people open to learning from authors who are not wholly like us, we can learn a lot from its trajectory.  It may not attempt to overthrow the economic system of its age, but it does ask an individual to consider undermining his own economic rights for the sake of another.  That's a start, and a pretty powerful start if we then take up that invitation for ourselves. 

*****

One thing that made the sermon especially strong was its open-endedness: our priest didn't try to apply the sermon to any one social problem, as he could have.  Instead, he invited all his listeners to consider whether we'd be willing to have big love remake our lives.  In other words, rather than making this into a doctrinal roll-call or a chance to affirm that we all believe the same thing and then move on, unchanged, we were invited to consider, in quiet self-examination, whether we were willing to let love rule in our lives.

This is like Mary's approach in John's Gospel, when she tells Jesus "They have no more wine," then tells the servants, "Do whatever he says."  She knows enough to know that she doesn't know all the answers.  I think our priest was saying something similar today: he doesn't know all the answers, but he's committed to big love, and was inviting us to consider whether we also share that confidence.

To put it differently, he left us with a question to mull over for the week.

Which is often far more helpful than being left with an answer.

*****

Part of me really doesn't like church.  There's so much about it that bores me, and I usually like sermons least of all.  And when I'm not bored, I'm often surrounded by people I don't know very well, shaking my hand and passing a sign of peace.  It's an introvert-germophobe's introduction to the doctrine of hell, I guess, so it does serve that theological purpose.  I'd prefer a quick nod, some formal bowing, a lot of incense and some well-tuned bells, but you can't always get what you want. 

But you do often get what you need, and I think of church the way I think of prayer, or aerobic exercise, or dietary fiber: I need them.  Even, and perhaps especially, when I don't want them. And when they are a part of my life, my life feels more whole.

This can be hard to explain to others, so I understand if you think I go to church because it makes me feel good, or because my culture has made it hard for me to think of doing otherwise, or because I feel guilty when I don't go. 

I actually feel pretty good when I don't go to church, just like I feel pretty good when I decide to write a blog post instead of going on that four-mile run I had planned. 

And so often, when I attend churches, I hear or see things I wish I hadn't heard or seen.  These congregations founded on the worship of big love can become gardens overrun by the weeds of uncharitable hearts; some "hymns" I hear are schmaltzy or foolish, or unintentionally (I hope!) promote slavish and unkind ideas about race or gender.  At times like that, I'm tempted to give up on "organized" religion altogether.

*****

This morning was a pretty good morning.  Not only did I hear that excellent sermon that will provide food for thought all week, we also sang a hymn that was translated from a Medieval Hebrew liturgy.  Good hymnals and prayerbooks can be bouquets of the choicest flowers of religious poetry.  The Book of Common Prayer has often rescued my anguished mind when it cannot find words.  Often, when I sing hymns to the room-filling sound of a well-played pipe organ, I find myself wondering how people who do not have a congregation to sing with find opportunities to sing with others.  That probably sounds judgmental, but I don't mean it to.  I just wish there were more songs sung by people in our daily lives.  I suspect the near-universal ownership of iPods is a result of the vanishing tradition of singing together.

When I came home I saw that a friend had tagged me in a post on Facebook, where she shared this article about the importance of continuing to ask big questions.  To which I say "amen."

The article raises just this question of whether a decline in attendance at religious services decreases the places in which can we ask big questions:

"“For anyone who goes to church, these are the questions they are essentially grappling with via their faith,” said Brooks. Indeed, a measurable drop in religious affiliation and attendance at houses of worship may be a factor in the decline of a culture of inquiry and conversation." 

I don't know if that's true, and I don't want to claim that the sky is falling because the pews aren't full.  But I do find that sitting in the pew helps me, and I think it could be more helpful to more people if there were more sermons like the one I heard today.  It's good to ask questions together, and to let the questions do their work.

So I hope that more of us who think that meeting together to pray and sing and reflect on what we believe is a worthwhile practice will do as our priest did this morning, inviting others to turn with him to reflect on the big questions, and the big ideas, and the big love, that - in my case, at least - can keep us from living unexamined lives.