learning to trust the darkness...

This weekend, in anticipation of traveling to L'Arche Ottawa on Monday for a few days in community, I am gathering up a few resources for the journey: some podcasts by Krista Tippett for the car; my tea pot, canister of loose Scottish breakfast tea, and the portable kettle; some CDs for the ride; and a few books of prayers and poems. Having started Richard Rohr's online course in Franciscan spirituality earlier in the week, I have been musing over the paradox of my profound love of sacred liturgy and Eucharist alongside my deep commitment to orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. Rohr summarizes one of the reasons I find myself drawn to L'Arche.

Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has never bothered fighting popes, bishops, Scriptures, or dogmas. It just quietly but firmly pays attention to different things—like simplicity, humility, non-violence, contemplation, solitude and silence, earth care, nature and other creatures, and the “least of the brothers and sisters." The Franciscan tradition teaches that love and action are more important than intellect or speculative truth:  Love is the highest category for the Franciscan School.

Following the wandering nature of these musings, a returning thought popped up yet again: I often feel like I could be so at home attending Mass nearly every morning if it weren't for the limitations of both my Reformed pension and the constraints of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. I love the experience of feasting on the love of Jesus during communion. I revel in the smells and bells and candles of good liturgy. And cherish both the silence and the chanting. Lost in this revelry, my heart suddenly called up the creative pyrotheology of Peter Rollins of Belfast. 

Challenging the idea that faith concerns questions relating to belief, Peter’s incendiary and religionless reading of Christianity attacks the distinction between the sacred and the secular. It critiques theism and it sets aside questions regarding life after death to explore the possibility of life before death ... designed to help us embrace the difficulties of existence and face the challenges of being human. It involves a deep critique of any religious/ideological system that promises an escape from doubt and anxiety. Exposing the true tyranny that the pursuit of certainty and satisfaction creates (by feeding the very problems the pursuit promises to fix). Pyrotheology helps to transform the doubts and difficulties of daily life into a fuel that ignites a journey into the depth and density of life. (It) offers an understanding

of faith that has nothing to do with the tired debates between theists and atheists. It uncovers how faith helps us resolutely confront our brokenness, joyfully embrace unknowing, and courageously face the difficulties of life.  (See: https://peterrollins.com)

Now this really speaks to the soul of my inward/outward journey: learning to trust the darkness, living faith as a commitment to compassion rather than doctrine, and accepting that my brokenness is also the way into courage, joy, and transformation. And still I yearn for regular liturgical nourishment. A poem and proclamation that Pádraig Ó Tuama calls "Creed" captures this dilema: 

I once was blind but now I can see
I once was him, but now I’m me
I once was cold, but now I’m not
I used to fear hell, where the fire is hot
I wanted to be straight, but the thing is I’m queer
I-thought-I belonged there, but I belong here

I once was wrong, because I thought I was right
I thought that the darkness was the same as the night and thought that the light was consoling and beautiful
all it asked was ‘be pure, and be right and be dutiful’
but light can be insipid and daytime can be vacuous
and no cult is so crude as the cult of the miraculous
I thought that walking on the water would be the end of it all
and addiction to articulation was the start of my fall

I fell into meaninglessness, I fell into sin
I fell into darkness, and I felt caged in
and I fell into the arms of something that was lurking
in the corner, in the shadows, and it’s been slowly converting
my methods and madness, into myth and new meaning
my sagas and sadness given girth and given grieving.

and now I believe in the god of the human
the good and the glorious, the generous and moving.

I once was blind, now I’m blinder still
and inside my own nighttime, I am silent and still.

There may be a chance to slip into Eucharist while I am away in Canada. We shall see. There will certainly be a common table each evening at supper where bread will be broken, laughter and stories shared, and hearts opened in love and trust. And this is certainly bread for the journey... 

credits:
+ https://fineartamerica.com/featured/st-francis-father-of-the-poor-rlffp-br-robert-lentz-ofm.html?product=duvet-cover
+ https://www.vianegativa.us/2007/12/wild-apples/