FAITH AND GRATITUDEby jonahAt the very least, Christianity is a beautiful and inspiring story. But the story of Christianity is more. The story of Christianity is more than an account of historical events. The story of Christianity reveals and describes our inner most being. The story of Christianity is an expression of our hunger for something beyond the stars. The story of Christianity is our story—an expression of our desire to penetrate the deep, dark, emptiness of existence—to explore the Great Mystery of Being.That we are, who we are, and why we are the way we are, is the Great Mystery of Being. This Great Mystery of Being is What-is. No theology, philosophy, history, psychology— or any science—offers us a complete and satisfying explanation. But here we are, all alone, lost in space. We are born, we live, and we die but do not know why. Our birth, our life, and our death all belong to this Great Mystery of Being. A Philosopher once said: “I think, therefore I am.” But I am, even before I think—even before I am aware of my existence. Even while in deep slumber, I continue to be. So, how far back do I go before awareness? And what about death? Will I continue to be, even in death?As far as I know, I began as a single cell floating in a cosmic ocean inside my mother. But of this, I have no personal recollection. I know it to be true because our observation is that this is how each and every one us began. Inside my mother, I grew very rapidly passing through many stages of development. Then, suddenly, my cosmic world came to an apocalyptic end—I was born. I was ejected into a cold world full of sounds and glaring lights without meaning. Now it was necessary for me to breathe for myself and to seek out nourishment for myself in a new, strange, bewildering world. Even in the cosmic world of the womb, I was beginning to develop some sort of awareness. So here, in this strange new outside world, there was awareness from the very moment of my first gasp, but still no meaning, just confusion. When I was cold, or hungry, or in anyway uncomfortable, I cried. When I was satisfied, I returned to the eternal slumber from which I was slowly emerging. Slowly I began to awaken. My first awareness was not unlike the awareness of the flower that turns to the warmth of the sun, and seeks out minerals and moisture in the soil. But I was on my way to becoming a creature who could say: “I am”. I was on my way to self-awareness. As I was becoming aware of the strange new world around me, I started to take sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings, and store them in my brain as patterns of connections between nerve cells. In this way I was forming memories and images and fantasies that I experienced as pleasant or unpleasant. I developed the extraordinary ability to represent these images and fantasies with words—first spoken, and then written. I could reflect upon these images and fantasies, sometimes questioning, sometimes with wonder and awe, at other times, with fear and dread. I could anticipate pleasure and pain. But this was only the beginning. In interaction with the people and things that surrounded me, I was also beginning to develop an image not only of this strange outer world but also of myself. How varied and how lasting are these early images! I learned to reflect upon them; I learned to test them; I learned to shape them; I learned to use them. I was becoming self-conscious and aware. I was becoming a person, an individual—an object to myself, an “I”, distinct from all the other objects and individuals in my world. I was becoming a human being with self awareness. But when did I first begin to form and shape my image of a God? I really can’t remember. It was so long ago that I can hardly recall how my image of God grew and developed. And it took many, many years before I realized that my image of God was not really God. A finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. Images, ideas, words are like a finger pointing to things, but they themselves are not the things they point to. And so to what does my image of God point? Over the years, my image of God has changed many time. My earliest recollections are shadows, like dreams from the distant past. They are not primarily of God but of religion. It’s dark and we’re on our way to church for evening devotions. The moon is full and my mother is explaining where the moon goes during the day and the sun at night. “The world is round like a big ball,” she says. “During the day the sun is on our side of the world where it is daylight. During the night the moon is on the our side of the world where it is dark. The daylight comes from the sun and the sun shines on the moon at night.” “What keeps us from falling off the world at night?” “Gravity” she says. I imagined gravity to be like big spikes coming out of the ground and holding me fast to the earth. I keep picking my feet up very high and very fast to see if I can catch gravity doing its business. “Where did all this come from?” I ask. “God made it,” is the simple reply. So my image of God points to a mysterious person who made the sun and moon, the day and night. Back in that distant past there are also shadows of stained-glass windows depicting people dressed in strange clothes. There are stories about these people. There are the things that I do that are approved or disapproved. Things approved are good; things disapproved are bad. Light and darkness, pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad emerge slowly into my consciousness. All of this and much, much more is thrown into the blender of my experience of needs and wants and desires and fears. The light and darkness, the sun and moon, the good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant, mother, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, priests, nuns, saints, devils, angels, the Eucharist, Communion, catechism all became part of the montage that made up my inner self. All became intertwined with my image of God. My first crisis of faith came when I was eight or nine years old. In a geography book I read about the “Big Bang” theory of creation. This explanation never mentioned God. Things just happened and not because God said: “Let there be…” The fantasy, the image, I had of God was too small for that kind of a universe. My image of God had to grow and develop. And it did. During my seventy plus years this has happened several times. Several times I have found my image of God to be too small for my cosmology and it had to expand. Late in life I’ve discovered that this is the problem with our fantasies and images, with words and ideas. They point to things but are not themselves the things that they point to. So, then, to what does my image of God point now?My image of God points to the reality of my experience of that which is beyond philosophy, beyond theology, beyond physics, beyond all sciences. My image of God points to the reality of the Great Unknown. My image of God points to the reality of Being—to the reality of existence. In the Jewish religion, God has no name. This is very profound. God really has no name. God is what is. God is whatever ultimately is real. All religion, including Christianity, is a human attempt to express in words, in rituals, in stories, in rules etc. that which is beyond—the inexpressible, the Ultimate Source of Being, the Great Mystery. Religion is born, sometimes out of fear, with awe and wonder. A Native American prayer is: “O! Great Spirit…whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to the whole world, hear me! I am small and weak; I need your strength and wisdom.” I am small and weak and alone in a universe that often appears hostile. Each breath I draw may be my last. With religion I acknowledge my vulnerability—my smallness, my weakness, my complete and total dependence on forces beyond my control. With religion I acknowledge the Great Mystery of Being and reverently bow down before It. I once wrote many years ago: “Something there is, there in the dark/ I know its there and I’m not afraid./ Why do I say I’m not afraid?/ Doesn’t that seem like a strange remark?” Strange, indeed! But it is a sincere act of confident trust—an act of faith. The scripture scholar, Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, has a wonderful discussion of faith. For some faith is primarily—and even exclusively—a matter of the head. It is assent of the mind. They believe that their image of God is what God really is. And so for them faith is stubbornly clinging to what is unbelievable even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. To reject the image of God they had as a child is to lose their faith. But like crayfish, in order to grow, it is necessary to discard the rigid shell of childish impressions. For us as Christians, faith must be open-minded assent to God, to Christ, to the Bible, and to the community of believers living and dead. Because the assent is open-minded, our understanding, appreciation and devotion to God, to Christ, to the Bible and to the Church as a community of believers can grow and deepen. Faith is assent but faith is more than assent. Faith is also confident trust. Confident trust is the proof of our assent. Jesus said that not everyone who says “Lord, lord” will enter God’s kingdom. The Apostle James said that faith without good works is dead. In the garden, Jesus prayed that he would be spared the terrible suffering that he foresaw coming his way. But he ended his prayer with confident trust: “Not my will but Thine be done.” On the cross his faith was sorely tested. He cried out in the words of the Psalmist: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” And then with his last words he breathed out his utter trust in God: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” That is faith—real faith. Without loving trust faith is empty—without loving trust faith is only an ideology. Finally, faith is the mother of gratitude. The believing heart looks to God with loving trust. That I am here, that I was born, is a gratuitous event—a gift, a grace. That I am the way I am, that I’ve had the opportunities I have had, are to some extent determined by choices, but to an even greater extent, they are gratuitous events. We sometimes call it “luck”. We sometimes call it “chance”. But is it only luck? Is it only by chance that things are they way they are? Or are they due to choices? To whoever, or whatever is responsible, I’m grateful. To be is better than not to be. I once read a story in which one of the characters faulted God for creating him without consulting him first. I’ve met young people with such a negative view of life and of this world that they never want to be parents. And then there are persons who feel that it is better for a child not to be born than to be born in poverty or to be born mentally or physically “defective”. I’ve also known people who enjoyed all the comforts and privileges this world has to offer but were unhappy and escaped in drugs and alcohol and ultimately even took their own lives. How sad! What greater gift is there than the gift of life? To be unappreciative of this gift, is gross ingratitude. That I am is proof that I am loved? I was blessed with loving parents, but even if that were not true and I was an unwanted “accident”, I know I am love, because I am. I am not responsible for my own existence. My parents are responsible for bring children into this world but my parents are not responsible for my existence. They had no idea of who they were bringing into this world. I was not any of my brothers. Nor was I my sister. That I—this unique center of self-awareness I call me—came into this world at a certain time in a certain place is purely and simply “an act of God”—that it was by luck or chance, no; that is was by choice, yes. From the moment of conception, I was chosen. This is true of me and it is equally true of all of you—of each and every one of us. Jesus said: “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you.” “Love consists in this:” John writes, “it is not we who loved God, but God loved us”(1 John 4: 10) Further on John continues: “In love there is no room for fear, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear implies punishment and no one who is afraid has come to perfection in love”. (1 John 4:18) “Something there is there in the dark/ I know Its there/ and I’m not afraid.” And so, even though I am small and weak—a sinner, I feel loved. And my heart swells with gratitude. “I thank you, Lord” I pray. “I thank you for the breath of life; I thank you for the length of days.” posted by Jonah 3:56 PM . . .
