Reflections from Nashotah House: Some Musings on Life, Love and Relationships

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” –Romans 13:8

What is being if not becoming? All of life is teleological; everything is in process of becoming more itself. Nothing exists autonomously. Reality does not exist as a collaboration of individualistic efforts, but as an interdependent web of networks. No entity is a self-made existence. In the words of Simone Weil, “Whoever says ‘I’ lies.” To be at all is to be united to God, to the cosmos, to the earth, to all animated life, and to all of the human endeavor throughout history. Being is found in relation to the whole, being the micro of what is macro. All of evolutionary history has been shaped by the Christ pattern. Old life dies to give rise to the new, and new organisms are transformations of that which came before. In the evolution of all species we see the icon of the dying and rising Christ: "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." 

In each moment of human interaction, an old me is fading as it evolves into a new me; each moment a dying and rising. I either love you more in the moment or I am negligent towards the becoming of your very being by refusing the love that is due to you. In my relation to you, I either love you in a way that allows you to live more fully into your selfness, or I don’t. What is certain is that we are both on the path to becoming more of something together; relational being is not static. The process of becoming something beautiful and transfigured together is a rather messy one, which is why we spend large portions of our lives abstaining from granting the love that is due to those around us. Fear of the other, fear of those people who are different, compels us more than we would perhaps like to admit. 

In the back of my prayer book I have written a prayer which flows through my heart and off of my lips every morning at Mass. “Bless, O Lord, my enemies; for I do not seek to curse them but, rather, to bless them. My enemies have driven me into your arms more than my friends have. My friends keep me bound to the pleasures of this life; my enemies have dashed all of my hopes in this world. The unwise person does not see that an enemy is not an enemy at all, but merely a cruel friend, who cannot truly touch his inner life. Therefore bless, O Lord, my enemies; for I do not curse but bless them.” Interaction with all people is formative, but none more formative than interaction with those who hurt us. Our enemies do us a great service by revealing to us the path of Christ. It is through the loving and the forgiveness of, and the praying for, our enemies that true spiritual awakening happens. No person is more free than the one who love her enemies and pleads to God for their well-being. No person is more like Christ, the “Omega Point” of all evolutionary history and recapitulation of all human striving, than the one who loves as he does. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Who is it that is not indebted to those around them and those who came before them? In the bad examples of some, have you not learned how to treasure the good in others? In the love given by some, have you not learned how to be more yourself in the validation they've given you? Do you not think in certain ways because others have thought significant thoughts before you, causing you to wrestle? Have you not been significantly comforted by the romantic embrace of a lover? Have the inspiring words from a friend never altered the path which you've chosen in life? Who would be who they are if it were not for the environment they find themselves flourishing in? Who does not owe their very existence to not only God himself, but the entirety of the cosmos? “We are all up to our neck in debt. Where would we be without star factories? Without blue-green algae? Without rain forests? Without mitochondria in our cells?” Where would each one of us be without the vast otherness that envelopes our own existence? We truly are indebted, indeed.

The people of Nashotah House, the Holy Spirit’s pervading presence, and the natural beauty which blankets the campus, is shaping me more into the me that I need to be as I pursue God’s calling upon my life. I am not simply receiving an intellectual education (as if anyone can compartmentalize such a thing anyways). I am receiving a whole of life formation.

Being Episcopalian is also the most freeing thing ever. If there is any denomination that is about persons in communion, it is the Episcopal Church. I have never known Christian freedom quite like this; freedom to ask questions and still be accepted, liberty to believe differently than others and not be suppressed in the process, ability to entrust myself fully to ecclesiastical authority without the fear of being abused in the process. The Episcopal Church is far from perfect, but it is far from impersonal. It values the human person and the uniqueness therein because God himself has incarnated himself in the human person. It values persons in communion because the Trinity, God himself, exists as persons in communion. The Church does a better job than most at loving those whom other traditions have a harder time loving (or outright refuse to love because of how different they are from their value systems). In the other, in the sinner, in the politically ostracized, in the ethnically different, in the economically impoverished, in the young, in the devalued, the Church sees the icon of Christ all throughout.  

What is being if it is not becoming persons in communion? What is life about if not about love? I think this realization comes more easily to children than to adults. Our son will list off every person that he knows in prayer each night before bed, and he is 2! I have a hard time remembering to pray for the person that I just talked to! Our son knows that the stuff that he has did not come from him but from others around him. He remembers each toy that was given to him by someone else and he remembers who gave these things to him. “This is daddy’s jet…Santa’s firetruck…Grandpa’s go-go…” He sees life as a gift of otherness. 

Our son is becoming who he is in the context of a community of people who are loving him into existence. He danced with excitement whenever he saw “Mr. Rick” last night in chapel. He jumps with excitement whenever “Ms. Megan,” “Mrs. Tami,” or “Mrs. Teresa” come over to baby-sit him. He is excited to see “Uncle Jesse” in the Common Room. He prays for all of his “kid friends” on campus frequently. Because all of these people love him so, he wants to pray for them. He remembers them. He gets excited to go to chapel and to church because they have made these sacred spaces places where he feels loved in. Because of them, he is experiencing the love of God through them in these spaces. Because of this community, he is a child who is becoming himself in a loving Christian setting. They have truly treated him as a person in the context of their communion.

I don’t know if I have ever known a greater sense of gratitude than I do whenever I watch others love my son so well.

Ashley and I are “up to our necks in debt” to the Nashotah community for their contribution to the becoming aspect of our son’s being. 

The web of networks that I am currently situated in has taught me how to trust again. Nashotah people are people that I can trust the thing I treasure the most in this world, my son, with. I have chosen to trust the process with the Episcopal Church, and things have worked out better than I ever could have anticipated. The ordination process is going exceptionally well, and the Diocese is already talking to me about parish placement options (which is unheard of this early in seminary). The prayer book, the liturgy, the sacraments; God is using these things to shape me in ways that I wouldn't have been shaped otherwise had my family stayed put. God has chiseled through the layers of heartache, doubt, repressed memories, false selfhood, and sin, and he has healed me so much. I have truly tasted of the “medicine of immortality.” The pursuit of becoming more of what God has in mind for me has also revealed that I am becoming more of the me that I’ve always desired to be. There is an existential wholeness on offer for a person in this communion that I’ve never known elsewhere. The wholeness of the Catholic tradition, the wholeness of Church History, the wholeness of sacramental expereince, and the wholeness of a justice orientation draws out the wholeness of one’s being. It gives you an icon, showing you what you can become (by/in God’s abundant grace).

What is being if not becoming?