A "Seminary Update"
"Prayer is the test of everything. When prayer is right, everything is right."
There comes a point in the life of prayer where the line between love of God and love of neighbor becomes significantly blurred, and the more one engages in the pursuit of God (and the true self) the more this line perpetually blurs. This is not to say that God is my neighbor, or that my neighbor is God (on some level these things can be said, I suppose). God is in my neighbor, though, and my neighbor is in God.
It was exactly a year ago when this reality hit me on an existential level, where I couldn’t help but to see all of life through this spiritual purview. I had just returned from my lengthy stay at New Camaldoli Hermitage. During my stay there I began to experience a shift within me that I couldn’t quite name. It felt like coming home, but it also felt completely new. I could feel the change blossoming within but I could not summon words adequate enough to depict the reality of the shift I was undergoing. Whenever I returned home I was asked to sit on panel during orientation week. We were asked to talk about our experience of Nashotah House and give practical tips in terms of “surviving seminary.” At one point, a fellow student (whom I have a deep respect for) began to talk about the seminary/family life balance. He told the group that “Jesus comes first, and then his family, and then everything else.” As admirable as his ideas were, placing his relationship with God and his relationship with his family above his "everything else," his line of thinking truly baffled me. Certainly, I would have employed this precise manner of thinking during some of the earlier periods of my life as well. Now, however, this line of thought just appeared to be unnecessarily dualistic and confusing to me. In naming my astonishment I was able to name the change the hermitage experience had triggered within me. I realized that I had come to a point where I simply did not view life through that sort of ideology anymore. Instead of pitting Jesus over and against family (or anything else for that matter) and prioritizing the Christ there, I realized that I could serve Jesus in my family. My family is in God and God is in my family; my "everything else" is in God and God is in my "everything else." I realized that I no longer wanted to isolate Christ from the relationships and cosmic intersections which I inhabit. In fact, the Christ had become profoundly integral to all of these relational dynamics.
There comes a point in the life of prayer where the line between love of God and love of neighbor becomes significantly blurred, and the more one engages in the pursuit of God (and the true self) the more this line perpetually blurs. This is not to say that God is my neighbor, or that my neighbor is God (on some level these things can be said, I suppose). God is in my neighbor, though, and my neighbor is in God.
It was exactly a year ago when this reality hit me on an existential level, where I couldn’t help but to see all of life through this spiritual purview. I had just returned from my lengthy stay at New Camaldoli Hermitage. During my stay there I began to experience a shift within me that I couldn’t quite name. It felt like coming home, but it also felt completely new. I could feel the change blossoming within but I could not summon words adequate enough to depict the reality of the shift I was undergoing. Whenever I returned home I was asked to sit on panel during orientation week. We were asked to talk about our experience of Nashotah House and give practical tips in terms of “surviving seminary.” At one point, a fellow student (whom I have a deep respect for) began to talk about the seminary/family life balance. He told the group that “Jesus comes first, and then his family, and then everything else.” As admirable as his ideas were, placing his relationship with God and his relationship with his family above his "everything else," his line of thinking truly baffled me. Certainly, I would have employed this precise manner of thinking during some of the earlier periods of my life as well. Now, however, this line of thought just appeared to be unnecessarily dualistic and confusing to me. In naming my astonishment I was able to name the change the hermitage experience had triggered within me. I realized that I had come to a point where I simply did not view life through that sort of ideology anymore. Instead of pitting Jesus over and against family (or anything else for that matter) and prioritizing the Christ there, I realized that I could serve Jesus in my family. My family is in God and God is in my family; my "everything else" is in God and God is in my "everything else." I realized that I no longer wanted to isolate Christ from the relationships and cosmic intersections which I inhabit. In fact, the Christ had become profoundly integral to all of these relational dynamics.
Once you begin to see God anywhere, truly, you begin to see God everywhere. In the Eucharist. In your wife. In your son. In a lake. In your
friend. In the air your breath. In a mountain. In your enemy. In the trees. In the food you eat. In the
silence. In the poor. In the marginalized. In the whole of your story. It is no wonder that Julian
of Norwich employed the language of "motherhood" whenever she spoke of God because all things truly exist in the womb of God, and the Divine nurtures the whole of the cosmos.
There comes a point in the life of prayer where the practice
of contemplation begins to feel redundant because the reality of contemplation
has pervaded all things, where one does not have to practice looking within or
without to find God because they already see God everywhere. Once you begin to
see God anywhere you begin to see God everywhere. The temple curtain is torn
asunder. All of reality becomes filled with sacramental presence. When this
happens you just want to live in the moment, and you become hyper aware of
those things within you which seek to steal this present moment from you.
Gratitude overtakes you, but the words to convey your emotions to others simply do not
exist. You can live from the very center of your person and speak from this
place, but no word can convey the reality you are experiencing. Things like, “I
love you” and “I am so thankful” provide a glimpse of the feelings behind such
phrases but they cannot encapsulate the fullness of the truth they are seeking
to convey. Whenever one speaks from the deep place one learns that they cannot
speak at all. This is not because words contain nothing, but that they simply do not contain enough. Words cannot convey the reality that defies description. Reality
is simply bigger than vernacular capacity (inopia vocabulorum). This is not so much because human
linguistics fail, but because reality simply overwhelms. All one can do is be
still and know that God is God.
Yes, there is one more year of seminary left. I will be
ordained to the transitional diaconate in the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee on
December 19th (or 20th. Ha, the powers that be have told me two
different dates, which is extremely odd because Episcopal dioceses never
struggle with disorganization). My family and I will be moving to Beloit, WI
next summer where I will begin serving as their priest (I will be ordained as a
priest right around the time I start there). Thanks be to God that these are
only peripheral matters for me at this point in my journey. Even if all of
these “terribly important” plans fall through, God will still be all in all. God will still be in my neighbor, and my neighbor will still be in God. The cosmos will still be in God, and God will still be in the cosmos. God will still be within me and I still will be within God.
In the meantime (kyrie eleison) may that line of love perpetually blur.
In the meantime (kyrie eleison) may that line of love perpetually blur.
"Prayer comes first. Neither serving nor preaching is
good if you are not praying. If you have not got Christ within, you cannot give
him to others. You can put words and doctrines before people, but that is not
preaching the Gospel. It is only when you have the Gospel and Christ within
that you can communicate it to others...The Gospel is primarily not a word to
be preached but the Spirit to be communicated" -Fr Bede Griffiths
With Much Gratitude,
TJ
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