Pastor or Ritualist

Posted on November 19, 2022 by admin

a summation of arguments past in part excerpted from a letter to JT, October 2022

Regarding the distinction between being a pastor and being a ritualist, my lucubration on the topic brought forth Psychotherapeutic Drama: rebranding ritual (January 2021). I believe that a great deal of the contemporary loss of sapience for “going to church” is the clerical confusion of the two distinct roles of pastor and ritualist. Conversation belongs to the pastoral role. The auditorium atmosphere excited by the westward position in the Eucharistic celebration invites conversation not prayer. Clergy and congregation talk to one another. The focus is on one another. This is to be expected. When one stands face to face with another one is inclined to look to the other. Where in all this is God? God may be in all places and in all times, but we are not disposed, not psychologically positioned, to “be” before God in all places and times. Thus we have need for an extraordinary space-time, a sacred space-time wherein the human is oriented both internally and externally to be overshadowed, subsumed, incorporated into the sacred. One may devoutly recite the confessions of sin and of faith standing face to face, but those confessions can depart from the pedestrian only when all face the same way, all kneel, all bow, before the one great symbol of our guilt and our redemption. The stance becomes “in Christ before God.” Here alone can all be, as it were, spiritually de-sign-ed, emptied of self-image, to enter into the profundities of being human, into the fallibilities of our existence and the possibilities of our nature. It needs be stressed, openness to the profundities at the base of reality does not simply happen in ordinary space-time. It requires a separation from the ordinary, its movements and rhythms. Spiritual exercise requires its own type of sensitivity, one studiedly expectant of the profundity within which we stand. One needs be made clam and focused to be aware of the in-spira-tion, the in-spirit-ation. One may recite prayers until the end of time. Unless one halts time and stands (or more appropriately, kneels) before Eternity, one remains both in the world and of the world, and the “world” cannot save man because the “world” here is the home of that comfortable and necessary component of our nature, the ego with its propensity to babble on about itself. Only the depths of us (the divine power dwelling within us) has the dynamic (the Spirit, the grace) to propel us forward, the illumination to reveal to us our faults and fallibilities, and for-ward-giving-ness to excite our realistic, our realizable, possibilities. One needs a rarified atmosphere—within and without–to feel, to discern, that depth within of God. God is the soul of us, not the ego. But God is not accessible to the ego. The Inner Sanctum is always behind the veil, always beyond the congregation. Only by falling into its other-worldliness, its extraordinariness, its aloneness, its silence can a congregation become a sacred assembly, a holy communion feeling the truth of its sin and its redemption, its apocalyptic (revelatory) power. It is the art of the ritualist, the administration of studied psychotherapy, that can affect this. That exercise is the re-member-ing of the assembled into a community through an enfolding into the mysterium of the sacred symbol. The pastor may give one on one counsel and comfort, advise and guidance, but such are preliminary to the spiritual exercise of the community as community. Clergy today do not provide either pastoral care or ritual therapy in adequate supply, but the understanding of the psychological essence and weight of ritual is most glaringly absent. It is my hope that my article on this topic gave some consideration to the issue.

I do note that the practice of reciting the offices (the prayers at morning, noon, evening, and night) “in Choir” (in seats set face to face) might argue the positioning invites, as in the westward position for the eucharist, conversation. The responsive nature of the recitation of psalms and sentences would seemingly support that. However, they that are accustomed to such practice will swiftly note that the focus is always upon the text before one, and the reflection to which it summons. One is not inclined to look at the person or persons opposite. Even in such places where “the Table prayers” (the prayers said before the altar) are the custom, the orator faces the cross, not them gathered. No one in the choir offices is carrying on a conversation or a dialogue with anyone other than the Spirit. The precentor or hebdomadary do not “preside” but form a part of “the choir.” They are not officers with whom one is given to converse. A polyphony of voices is the essence of this sacred recital, and that, in itself, underscores the polyphony of the spiritual, the multiple faces of the psyche, ever finding a new voice, a new harmonics, in which to speak, and so adds to the soul-focus and movement of this form of prayer.

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The absence of beauty and social disintegration: reflections

Posted on June 18, 2022 by admin

“The world is a beautiful place – to be born into – if you don’t mind happiness – not always being – so very much fun – if you don’t mind a touch of hell – now and then – just when everything is fine – because even in heaven – they don’t sing – all the time – The world is a beautiful place – to be born into – if you don’t mind some people dying – all the time – or maybe only starving – some of the time – which isn’t half so bad – if it isn’t you – Oh the world is a beautiful place – to be born into – if you don’t mind – a few dead minds – in the higher places – or a bomb or two – now and then – in your upturned faces – or such other improprieties – as our Name Brand society – is prey to – with its men of distinction – and its men of extinction – and its priests – and other patrolmen – and its various segregations – and congressional investigations – and other constipations – that our fool flesh – is heir to -” [i]

Thus wrote Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1955. The world then was in the throes of a new existential bipolarity. A world war had ended, but the world was divided between the Red and the Free. There was the sustained chill of a cold war that threatened at any moment to become red hot. Optimism was ripe, and so was fear. From the de rigueur grey business suit to the pragmatic of Niebuhr’s morality the too real divide betwixt black and white created a grisaille world. This evidenced itself in a heady utilitarianism that sometimes spilt over in to the comedic, as when it was, reputedly, suggested that dust covers be added to the hems of the draperies in the White House. Yankee sensibility sought a world hegemony before the cold handed fist of communism. Carefree happiness was always looking over its shoulder for a bomb, and so it was never really carefree. Ambivalence cannot be sustained. It could not here be sustained in part because suppressed was pragmatism’s dark side, its unacknowledged shadow: a moral and ecological vacuity. This made for the charge of hypocrisy, and there was, as always there is, a younger generation ready to set out the gravamen. Beatniks and Bohemians left the grey world for darkened coffee houses and a bright new society. Better drugs would make their successors not Hep-cats but Hippies. The world, however, had its own momentum. While ersatz world wars played out in smaller theatres, everyone knew the war of the worlds was not ended, merely, as was so much else, pragmatically suppressed. So it was last century. But so it has always been in one form or another. The scenes change, the actors come and go, but the plot of human history is as constant as the plots of soap-operas. The issue of the day is this: human history has reached a pivotal point wherein it has bucked heads with evolutionary history. The contest is now twixt Man and Earth, because Man has dared to imperil himself by defying the beauty of Earth.

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O my soul: an éclaircissement

Posted on April 17, 2022 by admin

Despite at least two articles attempting to elucidate the human want for immortality, I have been again quizzed as to exactly what it is I think about “life after death.” If there were a simple answer, it would be I believe in eternal life because life is of itself everlasting. Is that a solecism, or is it a summons to confront the need to consider the breadth and depth of life? Lest one be confused as to the correct answer, it is the latter. To do that one needs to consider the interconnectivity of life, the nature of consciousness and the panoply of psychic powers upon which it rests, and the nature of time. These items have been addressed in The Question of Immortality and in My soul magnifies the Lord. There ought to be no need to revisit the points of consideration set out in those works. If one in interested in approaching with any degree of seriousness some insight into the idea of life everlasting, one cannot expect an answer in twenty-five words or less. Unfortunately, when people ask a profound question, they often want exactly that. We have been weaned to expect that the profundities of existence can and ought to be simply plopped down before us in crystalline clarity, or to have them delivered to us on a sugared spoon. Why then we have brains, minds, souls? Can we cease to be infantile in the approach to the deepest questions? Can we not realize life’s meaning and depths do not reveal themselves with the click of some remote control or the snap of a question? Life is not simple, and neither are its workings.

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Logic and Creativity

Posted on February 19, 2022 by admin

I was recently told: “The Gods of logic have spoken.”  “No!”  I responded. If it is logical it is not divine.

A God is divine in being creative. .Logic does not apply.[i] One may look upon the work of creativity and analyze it according to a logic, but creativity itself defies logic. Creativity is art in its transcendence of logic. Logic belongs to the creature in its creatureliness. It is a tool to navigate creation. It is the tool we use to organize the world. Logic makes for law and order. As it is a human endeavour, it is susceptible to a flaw–the definition of terms. The parameters put upon each term in a logical equation always suffer the uncertainty of both individual rational understanding and individual psychological nuance. Thus, the product of logic is never a perfection. It never makes for a perfect order. It makes an order susceptible to continuous investigation, explanation, and expanding parameters of understanding.

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“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour”: a peregrination around soul

Posted on December 14, 2021 by admin

Protasis

The first words of the Magnificat reveal Mary’s moment of illumination. They depict that startlingly calm event within which nature knows Fiat lux is always the Lux mundi. Here we have the awareness that Creativity[i] is of itself incarnating, that “Let there be light” enwombs the “Light of the world.” In the physics of this world, directly or derivatively, all light comes from the sun. In terms of the science of the soul, be it directly or derivatively, all light within man comes from the supernal Logos, the divine Word who eternally speaks the cosmic reality. Soul in its depths knows this. Reason can classify things for its pragmatic purposes. It is, however, from the depths of soul that come those scintillations of humanity that give meaning to life itself, that evolve the brute into individuality, personhood, wisdom. Soul knows its moment of “magnification” is the hour of its core come to light. Here self-awareness and world-awareness awaken, embrace, and wisdom is made incarnate. Continue reading →

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Reflections before the creche

Posted on December 10, 2021 by admin

We stand before a cattle shed. It is a bridge between nature and the homes, the hostels, the inns we make for our dwellings. Above it rise the heavens, stars twinkling and angels aglow. This humble shelter is a home to fellow creatures adapted to our use and benignly dubbed domesticated. They themselves are a bridge spanning the civilized and the wild. They are of the ancestral line not fallen from grace, but which must too often suffer the beast within us. Within this stable also are shepherds. They are Jews. They are come here startled by a celestial wonder. While anciently the work of shepherd is noble, for David himself tended his father’s sheep, today it is less princely a work. The righteous most members of society look down upon it for here the myriad rituals and purifications cannot be observed. These shepherds may be of the Chosen, but are decidedly not of the best type. Opposite are the Magi, wise, noble, and scholarly men. They are Gentiles. They are here after an arduous journey propelled by their learning and love of inquiry. Between these two groups are Joseph and Mary, simple working-class folk. They are here as the icons of faith, faith in their religion, their God, and in each other. They have survived the trials of an unexpected pregnancy and a contemplated divorce. They themselves have been on a journey, and the child over whom they hover was not this moment expected to arrive. Yet here they are. Here they all are, a most unlikely mix of class and ethnos. They are here surrounding a child, a new-born full of the promise every new life into this world brings. Yet, there is one character in the sacred narrative not here. He cannot be here. He is Herod, the king, the egoist mad with the want of power and the fear of ever loosing it. Such a creature cannot see in this child promise, only threat, for ego despises any challenge to its power, be it merely perceived or real. Ego believes only in itself because it is all it has.

But we have not asked who is this child? Prince of peace we are told. He alone will carry this tale to its end. This prince will come to stand before another king, another Herod descended from the first, and like the first as relentless and ever cunning in his thirst for might. Before him he will have stand this child become a man, bound not only in chains but in presumed fealty. The child will have nothing to say to him. Is there anyone in him the child can address? How does Peace speak to the thirst for power? How does soul speak to ego except to stand silent and await ego to cease for a moment its expectations and excitations?

But that is why we are here—to cease being something of our own making, our own cares and concerns. We are here to stand before a child dubbed Saviour and Joy, the joy of man’s desiring. We are told he is Creativity’s child. He is creation’s voice dwelling in the depths of soul, summoning each to grow in wisdom and graciousness. We stand here and gaze because here is the image of that within us that can have no image. We stand here and look upon divinity in its infancy. We look upon that creative spark that has made us and ever wills to make us loving, forgiving, wise. And we are true to the depths of us to pray: “Amen, so let it be.”

The shepherds go off to their work amazed and praising God. The Magi, who can read the heavens have read also the madness of the king, and so return home under the cover of dark to vanish into their studies. The beasts, having been reined into man’s world, go wheresoever man leads. The angels, always but flashes of celestial light, are gone in a glance. And like so many forced to flee their homes because a potentate mad for power has turned the country into a field of blood, Joseph and Mary with their infant in tow escape into a foreign land.

How go we from this place? The creche before which we stand is a beginning. Who we become as we leave this place is our sacred narrative to weave or to ignore. May we each elect to be like unto that child at its centre, today and each tomorrow being for our wee bit of this world a healer, a saviour, a person ever open to finding the creative response.

To my readers, and to all—a blessed and merry Christmas. Charles Victor

 

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on Preaching: an excoriation and exhortation

Posted on May 14, 2021 by admin

Preaching in the sacred liturgies of the church is a sacred task: to break open, to reveal, the meaning of the sacred symbol-words, and to encourage, to inspire, their embrace. It is not the time to exercise ego. Indeed, as the essay that proceeds this pounds out, any thing, any minutia, that saps of ego is desecratory of the sacred.  One may need briefly to relate the chosen text to the present time. One may summarily note the anxiety of sequestration due to a pandemic as an introduction into addressing the anxiety felt by the disciples after the execution of their leader, but it is not the time to prattle on about your missing of travel, family, or outings. Preaching is never the time to talk about oneself. If one wishes to share with one’s fellow congregants and spiritual charges from among the details of one’s life, the time to do so is in some social setting, not the sacred liturgy. Where in scripture do we read of Jesus nattering on to the crowds about how he feels? The Apostle Paul is not shy about details of his life, its blessings and woes, but Paul is writing letters to congregations, not engaged in sacred ritual.

If one cannot resist the urge to talk of self, of one’s talents, hobbies, family and friends, travels and travails, then one needs to resign one’s position as preacher. If one can do neither, then cut out your tongue, open your skull and rip out your cerebrum, and lest you be tempted to sign something, cut off also your hands, for you have disserved the sacred task given you. While I will grant that you well might be a good-willed, pleasant, and personable sort, when it comes to the execution of the sacred task entrusted to you to open the Word of God to the people of God you are as dense as and as dumb as a cabbage. Go! Slither away, useless, tiresome servant. I cannot sit silent while the church of God is assailed by ignorami and the ignominious.

If one is to open the Word of God, one needs to begin with opening it, uncovering it. It is an act of revelation. What means the symbol? It is only here, in the midst of proclamation and celebration, in the midst of the enclosure of sacred time and space, that the Word can be so dis-robed and elevated without either secularization or desecration. Two items come here into play. There is a need for some degree of exegesis. The scriptures emerge out of a society and culture foreign to the present in both time and temperament. In this regard one needs set the sacred words in a context wherein culture can speak to culture. This exegetical exercise gives way to the second item necessitated: the uncovering of the depth meaning of the sacred within the sacred terms. One cannot in preaching talk of Jesus’ dying for sin, rising, and ascending into heaven as literal or historical events. They refer to spiritual realities, psychic truths, and have, therefore, never been literally true or historical happenings. One needs to explain the psychic, the religious, the spiritual reality pointed to by such terms as propitious death, resurrection, ascent into heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, and the sending of God’s Spirit upon all flesh. These terms, when untethered from literalism, release their potential to speak of the soul’s suffering, its hope, its faith, its capacity to open itself to creativity, to the integrity of creativity’s thrust. To preach one must explain the words of a culture foreign to the present, and one must explain the symbol-words of a psychology, a spirituality, a soul-science to the present. One must then inspire openness to that summoned spiritual journey both in inner reflection and community life.

The breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup are sacred symbols that replicate this sacred breaking open of the Word and the sharing of its Spirit. No minister would dare speak of self in rehearsing the words of institution or in the distribution of the consecrated elements. Why then is preaching taken as a ground for the entertainment of one’s own ego and the literal hiding away of that Spirit which is the essence of meaning? The entirety of the sacred rituals is to open man to the meaningfulness of creation, of the life we share with, not simply this world, but the cosmos. The soul is not the ego—and we are all delinquent here of confusion even to the point of wanting not so much soul to have life eternal as for ego to go on forever. Soul is something we are given, something in which we share. It is life. Ego is something we make up to navigate us through life. We are answerable for ego, for what we make. We are more answerable for that with which we are entrusted—life, and its manifest in us, the soul. Ego is merely one facet of what we make of soul. Indeed, we even dishonour soul by speaking thusly, as if it were something we have and can manipulate. Soul makes us, intends to make us, and thus we speak of God as the father of souls, as Soul, as Spirit. If we heed not within the voice of soul, the voices of soul, for God himself speaks of self as “Us”, then we get lost in the everyday world (the “flesh” as scripture would say), and confuse soul with ego, id and shadow with sin, super-ego and anima with grace, and in that drag heaven into the mud, the dust and tears of man thinking he can be like unto God without honouring, without living the harmony intended for man with man and man with nature. Life is intentional, that is, freely creative. It is not a matter of pitting good against evil, you against me, we against them. It is about finding the propitious way forward gracefully—be it toward a symbol-notion of a Jerusalem, a Sion, a Pentecost, or more simply a creative and caring way to make today and tomorrow resilient, livable for all. In the founding narrative creation proceeds one day at a time by Spirit and speaking Word, by empowered and undisclosed word. Creativity is always in abeyance, always hovering above the dark and chaotic, unless meaning, meaningfulness, is disclosed: “Let there be light!”

Let them that preach in the church put aside self, and preach simply the truth of both the Spirit and the Word entrusted to it as its life, its soul, lest creativity find another body to enliven, and the church suffocate in the “flesh”, in the tomb of literalism it has failed to open.

 

 

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