05.06.05 Phil Genesis1:26-31 & John 1:1-9 Introduction to Celtic Spirituality
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Genesis 1,
with its description of humanity made in the image and likeness of God, is like
a foundational text in our Scriptural inheritance. Everything else that is said
about us in the Scriptures needs I believe to be read in relation to this
foundational truth, that the image of God is at the core of our being. In the
Old Testament the prophets go on at great length, of course, about what has
gone wrong in us. They passionately name the injustices that we are part of,
our capacity for faithlessness and wrongdoing, and they call us to change. Similarly
in the New Testament, John the Baptist and Jesus can be seen to stand in the
prophetic tradition, and they too call for repentance and the need to be born
again. ‘Repentance’, derived from the word ‘metanoia’, simply means a turning
around. But it is a turning around not in order to become something other than
ourselves. It is a turning around in order to become truly ourselves. It is a
turning around to be reborn to what is deepest in us, namely the image of God.
The gift of nature and the gift of grace both flow forth from the mystery of God. The gift of nature, which comes to us through conception in our mothers’ wombs, is the gift of being, and at the heart of the gift of our being is the sacred image of God. The gift of grace on the other hand is the gift of well-being. It is not opposed to the gift of nature. Rather it restores us to our nature. Grace is given to reconnect us to the sacredness of our true selves, and to free us from the falseness of what we have become in our lives and relationships. It is given to make us truly natural, not to make us other than natural or more than natural. The Creator and the Redeemer are one. The mystery of redemption is not in opposition to the mystery of creation. Rather it is given to restore us to the original beauty and untameable wildness of God’s image within.
In the Biblical tradition the Garden of Eden represents what is deepest in us. It is not a place from which we are distant in space and time. Rather it is a dimension of the soul from which we are separate, our genesis in God. The Biblical story is not of the Garden of Eden being destroyed, but rather of Adam and Eve moving into a type of exile from the garden. They become fugitives from their place of origin. The story points to the way in which we live in a state of exile from what is first or deepest in us. James Joyce, the Irish novelist, described one of his characters as living at a distance from himself. That is a fine description of how most of us live much of the time, at a distance from our true depths.
A 19th-century Scottish teacher in the Celtic tradition used the analogy of royal garments. Apparently in the 19th century royal garments were still woven through with a costly thread, a thread of gold, and, if somehow the golden thread were taken out, the whole garment would unravel. So it is, he said, with the image of God woven into the fabric of our being. If somehow it were taken out of us we would unravel. We would cease to be. The image of God is not simply a characteristic of who we are, which may or may not be there depending on whether or not we are baptised. The image of God is the essence of our being. It is to these depths that we are invited to wake up.
Some of you will be familiar with the writings of Antony de Mello, the Indian Jesuit priest who the other year, long after his death, received the distinction of being blacklisted by the Vatican. His writings were blacklisted. It is the dream of every author, for it immediately multiplies sales. Fortunately the Vatican is slow to perceive this phenomenon. But Antony De Mello used to like to tell the story of the father trying to wake his son up for school in the morning. He knocks on his son’s bedroom door and tells him to get up. And the son says, ‘I’m not going to get up and I’ll tell you three reasons why. The first is because I hate school. The second is because the children tease me, and the third is because education is boring.’ To which the father replies, ‘Well, you must get up and I’ll tell you three reasons why. The first is because it is your duty to get up. The second is because you’re 45 years old, and the third is because you’re the headmaster.’ We need to wake up to who we truly are.
Abraham Heschel, a leading 20th-century American rabbi, said that the greatest sin of humanity is our refusal to be truly ourselves. Similarly early in the Christian tradition, in 3rd century Egypt, Antony of the Desert, one of the first great contemplatives of Christianity, used to say to those who came out to see him in his desert hermitage, ‘When you die and go to your place of judgement, you will not be asked whether you have become another Antony, or another St Paul or St Mary. You will be asked whether you have become truly yourself.’
What does it mean to be truly ourselves? What does it mean to be made in the image of God and to live from our true depths? In part it is to say that the wisdom of God is deep within us, deeper than the ignorance of what we have become. To be made in the image of God is to say that the passion of God for what is just and right is deep within, the yearnings of God for creativity and for new beginnings, the longings of God for love and reconciliation, and the willingness to give of our self and be broken because of love for the other. All these longings have been woven into the fabric of our being.
The reality, of course, is that we live at a distance from these depths. As Henri Nouwen, the great spiritual teacher in the 20th century, used to say, ‘We all have a home address, but we can’t often be found there.’ Or as St Augustine said in relation to his journey of return to God, ‘It was not you, O God, who was absent from me. Rather, I was absent from myself and therefore from you at the centre of my being.’ To return to God is to return to the true centre of our being.
The 9th-century Irish teacher, John Scotus Eriugena, said, ‘We suffer from soul forgetfulness.’ We have forgotten who we truly are. And more than simply forgetting who we are, Eriugena says that we are diseased by an infection of soul (or leprosy of soul, as he calls it). And just as leprosy has the power to distort and disfigure the human countenance, making it appear grotesque and even monstrous, so sin has the power to distort the countenance of the soul, perverting it and making it appear ugly, so much so that we come to believe that that is the essential face of the soul. And just as leprosy is a disease of insensitivity, of loss of feeling, so sin obstructs our inner sensitivities and we fall further and further out of touch with what is most truly within us and within one another. And more and more we treat ourselves and one another as if we were not made in the image of God. In the gospel story of Jesus healing the lepers, when he offers the grace of healing, he does not give them new faces. Rather, he restores them to their true faces, and to the freshness and sensitivity of their original countenances.
I don’t believe that the gospel, which means good news, is given to tell us that we have failed or become ugly in our souls. That isn’t news and it isn’t good. We already know that about ourselves. We know that we have failed one another, even those whom we most love in our lives and would most want to be true to. We know we have been ugly in what we have done. We know we have failed people throughout the world today, who are suffering from injustices and wrongs that we could have done more to prevent. So the gospel is not given to tell us what we already know. Rather, it is given to tell us what we don’t know or what we have forgotten, and that is who we are, sons and daughters of the Everlasting, made in the image of the mystery of God.
The 19th-century Scottish teacher, Alexander Scott used the analogy of a plant suffering from blight. If such a plant were shown to botanists, even if the botanists had never seen that type of plant before, they would define it in terms of its essential life-features. They would not define it in terms of its blight. Rather, they would say that the blight is foreign to the plant, that it is attacking the essence of the plant. Now this may seem a very obvious point botanically, but maybe it is such an obvious point that we have missed the point when it comes to defining our essential nature. We have tended to define ourselves in terms of the blight, in terms of sin, in terms of what has gone wrong in our souls, instead of seeing that the ugliness of sin is infecting what is deeper still, the mystery of the image of God at the core of our being.
What will heal the infections that are within us and between us in the world today? Eriugena says that Christ is the medicine of grace. He restores our memory. He shows us who we truly are, freeing us from our inner forgetfulness. He is our epiphany. He shows us the face of God. He shows us also our face, the true face of the human soul. And he heals the infections that are within us, allowing the wisdom and creativity, the passion and longings that have been planted within to be born again in our lives. Our nature is sacred but it is wounded. The medicine of grace is given to heal us, to restore us to our true nature.
And as we are healed I believe that we will find that what is deepest in us is love, for we are made in the image of Love. The capacity to love and the desire to be loved are deeper in us than any fear or hatred. Jesus says, we will find ourselves by losing ourselves. We will be born again to what is truest in us by dying to what is false in us. We will gain our lives, not by fearfully protecting ourselves or isolating ourselves but by sharing ourselves, by giving ourselves away, in love. It is precisely as we lose ourselves in love that we truly find ourselves. That is what will secure what is truest and everlasting in us, an opening of our lives to one another, allowing the passion and creativity of God to flow again from our depths. It is love that sets free the inner river of our beings.
There is the marvellously ridiculous story of the old Scottish couple named Jock and Mary celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. At the end of a long day of partying, sitting at home together, Jock says to Mary, ‘Mary, I’m proud of you.’ Mary, who is hard of hearing by this stage, says, ‘What was that, Jock?’ So Jock says again, ‘Mary, I’m proud of you’, to which Mary replies, ‘That’s all right, Jock, I’m tired of you too.’
How terrible if we don’t hear what is truly being said. How tragic if we spend our lives not hearing what is being uttered from the very heart of life, the passionate love of God for each one of us and for every living being. I believe that as we listen in our souls with the gospel of Christ we will hear the intimations of a boundless love. Yes, of course, we will also hear fears and confusions within us, but deeper still I believe that we will hear in our souls what the prophet Isaiah heard in his soul when he listened and heard the words, ‘You are precious in my sight and I love you.’ These are the words of the Everlasting Lover. They will not be unspoken. They set us free, not to be someone other than ourselves but to be truly ourselves.