Desire

I am belatedly "discovering" the work of Sebastian Moore. His Jesus the Liberator of Desire is a brilliant blend of philosophy, ascetical theology, and psychology focused on Christology. Nearly every other sentence sparks a sense of recognition: "Yes, that is what I believe," or "Thank you for putting into words what I've sensed but haven't been able to articulate."

He is well worth quoting at length:

I have long been persuaded that desire is not an emptiness needing to be filled but a fullness needing to be in relation. Desire is love trying to happen . . . Desire does not spring from a sense of emptiness, it is true. But there is in it a sense of incompleteness. As I experience it, it is still in the process of becoming desire, it is still finding its subject. It is still getting a "who" . . . and thus the notion of a person as a relatedness - which gave Augustine his breakthrough on the Trinity - becomes more deeply rooted. The desire whereby I am drawn to another is partly constituitive of who I am. To be drawn to another is to become more myself. (p. 18)

Now, this strikes me as very counter-cultural in the West, where the individual is defined over-against the other rather than in relation-to the other. To be given my identity in relation to others is not something against which we must struggle, but is how the self comes to be at all. It is in relationship that the fullness of who we are comes to expression, overflows.

Of course this scares us to death, because our identity is not something under our control, but rather is something in the process of unfolding as it is given to us. Moore again:

Fear is of the changing of the ego that the progressive unfolding of desire brings about. We fear the unknown. Especially we fear becoming someone we do not as yet know. To liberate the desire for this becoming is to come into the perfect love that casts out fear. I have discerned in myself - and have found others in agreement - the curious fact that I dread not needing the things I now think I can't live without, more than I dread actually losing those things. Any takers? If you agree here, you have an excellent example of our dread of spiritual growth - a fear stronger than the fear of deprivation. Who really wants to feel like Jesus? (p. 19)

Jesus liberates us from the fear of becoming who we are in relationship to others (and to the Other). Moore is restating in contemporary language the anthropology (and pathology) of desire elucidated by St. Paul in Romans. What is striking to me about this is the re-framing of our typical sense of "emptiness" as " repressed fullness." The appropriate metaphor for the human condition is not that of an empty bottled that needs to be filled (the metaphor that advertisers would have us adopt), but rather that of a full bottle that needs to be emptied - that is ready to burst from being stopped up. This has many practical, pastoral implications, I think, in addressing problems as diverse as addiction and global climate change.

We are killing ourselves and the planet by trying to fill an empty bottle. We are trying to solve the wrong problem. We need to empty the bottle, to let go, to give ourselves away to others rather than continually taking from them. As we do so, we discover that the "bottle" is bottomless. A final quote from Moore for today:

The development of desire is a progressive changing of what is desired and who is desiring. That which demands and shapes this changing is the trust-relationship with the mystery in which we live . . . The need to change and grow is the need of this dialogue to deepen. The need for this process to come to a full transformation stems from the ultimacy of the mystery that initiates it. For the finite to become one with the infinite is a total transformation . . . Human identity is in the mystery that we call God. We become who we are to the extent that this mystery is working on us, changing us. (p. 19)

It is this full transformation, this undergoing of union with God that is the way in which we become our selves; it is this process of becoming into which we are baptized in Christ. Moore has a lot more to say about death, suffering, and sin as these relate to this process. More on Moore later, I hope.

Threats Real and Imagined

I have to confess a somewhat masochistic streak: I lurk on Stand Firm far more frequently than is healthy. I recently came across a comment on a post there that reiterated the tired rhetoric of the religious right, to the effect that the "gay agenda" constituted the greatest threat ever to the Christian religion and its institutions. Now, this would be funny were it not so commonplace. It betrays a remarkable ignorance of the extent to which gay men and lesbians historically and presently have been crucial to the maintenance of Christian religious institutions, particularly male clergy. And organists.

Seriously though, I think there are any number of real threats to Christianity and creation that cry out for our attention. Global warming and climate change is probably number one on the list. While some on the right wing of the Church decry our commitment to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, what they fail to realize is that this commitment comes from a recognition of the real threats to Christianity, Christian institutions, and, more importantly, the human project on this planet: the poverty, disease, and oppression that destroy the people of God and the earth that sustains us.

If Christ is the Savior of the world, then his Body, the Church, should be committed to Christ's project of saving (healing) that world, no?

Sebastian Moore has identified what I take to be the real threat we face, that which undergirds the maintenance of all the other death-dealing forces arrayed before us: the loss of hope and of community. "The world to which the Christian story no longer speaks," writes Moore, "is a world in which individualism has deadened the nerve of a common hope that has been unforgettably quickened, traumatized, and re-enlivened with the joy of God." (Jesus the Liberator of Desire, p. x)

The is surely true in the West, where our growing consumerism, social mobility and consequent isolation, our very "success" has reduced our world to what we can make, sell, buy, and control. It is a small world indeed, without connection, without mystery, and without hope. Community, and particularly the memory it carries, is the source of hope. The Church, if it is to be about the work of saving, healing, must create communities capable of memory and therefore of hope: the memory of the Forgiving Victim who sets us free from our isolation and fear and obsession to be for others in healing community.

Just yesterday I found myself in conversation with a young man, Sam, after our Taize worship service. He had become interested in contemplative prayer and was looking for a place to practice silence in community. He intuitively recognizes and longs for what we need to counter the real threats we face: a willingness to acknowledge the mystery at the heart of things, to give up our quest for control, so that we can be present to others in their vulnerability and need. He wants to know Christ, to die to self so that Christ may live in him!

Sam is pointing the way forward: compassionate service grounded in contemplative community. He understands the real threat. This is the way forward for those of us "who are suffering a double oppression: of a worn-out but still discouraging secularism, and of an ineptly resumed ecclesiastical tyranny." (Moore again) So, let us ignore the comic attempts at control exerted by Pompous Primates and patiently awaken the latent hunger for mystery and meaning within the secular culture that finds us curious if not frightening. For it is the loss of hope that is the real threat we face.