More than Meets the Eye . . . or . . . This Changes Everything

Here's the situation. But before I tell you, I have to say that I'm skeptical myself. So anticipate that you, too, will be skeptical. Not only do I not blame you -- heck, I really do totally understand.

With that preface, here's the situation: there are moments, too few and far between, but moments still . . . when I come ever so close to sight.*

Yes, sight. Seeing. Seeing clearly beyond all this.

Moments where the "glass darkly" appears to have been manufactured differently so that the blurry or cloudy aspect is rubbed away from a little part of the bottle, so I can see through it instead of just seeing the green, cloudy tint of the bottle itself. And seeing through it is different than what I thought it would be -- it emphasizes my flaws, my weaknesses, my shortcomings, and my failures; but, thankfully, in ways that somehow seem to make me know that all will one day be well.

What do I mean "seeing clearly beyond all this"? Well, a lot of things. Seeing clearly beyond my pain in a failing marriage. Seeing clearly beyond my worries that my children and their children (my grandchildren-to-be) may veer away from God because of my own failures. Seeing clearly beyond the daily grind of a career in law and accounting and tax (to top it all off!). Seeing clearly beyond the nagging noise inside a part of me that somehow still seems to think that the only true service to God is and was in "ministry." And seeing clearly beyond the belief that I somehow control my own life. When I try to describe what this true sight is like, I am quite certain I will fail to communicate it clearly. Yet, for me, it's important to record this moment in time because the temporary sight is freeing me to experience (in moments only, unfortunately) true joy and peace.

When I was a high school student at a small Christian school, our class chose a "class verse" from Scripture. The one we landed on also happened to be my personal favorite at that time: Psalm 16:11.

"Thou wilt show me the path of life.

In thy presence is fulness of joy.

At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore."

Liking the fulness of joy and pleasures forevermore parts quite a bit, I'm sure it was easy to misunderstand the first sentence.

We Christians -- no, we people -- like the whole concept of free will. I get the choice, and I choose it myself. Maybe there's some truth in that -- I don't know -- but I'm not writing today to argue that point. Instead, I'm writing because the force of the first sentence of Psalm 16:11 hit me like a ton of bricks one day -- God shows me the path. The path He laid out. Maybe what I think are my free choices are so heavily influenced by the path illuminated in front of me that the choices, however broad they may feel, are all still within guardrails that line the path like gutter guards on the bowling lane.

And man, Scripture says, cannot even add a cubit to his stature. So it seems then that "my self is given to me far more than it is formed by me."

I don't want this to sink into some discussion of fatalism or determinism. That is not my jumping off point for this discussion. Rather, I just want to talk about how just pondering this conundrum -- with some help I'll describe later -- has brought me to the very edge of what feels like -- possibly for the first time ever -- true sight.

It happened while at least two things were happening simultaneously:

• The first thing that happened was that we began a series at church on Revelation, a book that is so strange in its imagery that it suggests the existence of an unseen world where more is happening in interaction with the world we do see than meets the human eye.

• At the same time, the second thing that happened was that I began reading The Divine Milieu by the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I've now read 71 of its short 133 pages, and I had to stop because its depth -- which, at times, is far too deep for me^ -- has somehow unlocked a door for me, much like the writings of C.S. Lewis unlocked doors for me in my 20s and early 30s.

Teilhard did not, I don't think, set out to explain or answer the problem of human suffering. Teilhard also writes differently than Lewis. Lewis wrote as an English professor and philosopher. Teilhard writes as a scientist. Teilhard, as a scientist, is not trying to boil the ocean (i.e., persuade atheists), but rather just to explain how the ocean works (i.e., articulate something of how life works so as to help the skeptic a bit).

L'essentiel est invisible pour les jeux.

In his introduction, Teilhard invites us to go with him back in time to the Agora, and he urges us to listen anew to Paul's description of God to the Areopagites, which he paraphrased as follows:

"God, who made man that he might seek Him -- God, whom we try to apprehend by the groping of our lives -- that self-same God is as pervasive and perceptible as the atmosphere in which we are bathed. He encompasses us on all sides, like the world itself. What prevents you, then, from enfolding Him in your arms? Only one thing: your inability to see Him."

The Divine Milieu is translated into English from French. Savary explains that the word "milieu" from the French has no exact English equivalent, and thus the translators kept the French word in the text whenever it occurs. Understanding the concept, however, is important.

Milieu encompasses both the English words "atmosphere" and "environment." To understand the concept, Savary suggests thinking of fish. Fish live in a "milieu" of water, yet are unaware of its importance until they are taken out of it.

This is a crude analogy, but it applies to humans this way: the most important spiritual fact of our existence is that at every moment we are swimming in a divine sea. Paul said it this way: "In Him, we live and move and have our being."

Milieu is a big concept. For if we are living in a divine milieu, then so must everything else that we can see: every tree, plant, animal, rock, molecule, and atom. All are held in this same divine atmosphere.

Again, Paul supports this in Colossians 1:15-17 -- "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

In Matthew 10:29-30, the divine milieu is so all-pervasive that Jesus said that God knows when a single sparrow falls and numbers each of our hairs.

We are swimming in the Divine "Presence" -- it is there even in the very air we breathe. This is why Romans says "we are without excuse."

Within this milieu, each man's existence has two parts: (i) what he does, and (ii) what he undergoes. "Activities," on the one hand, and "passivities" (for lack of a better word), on the other hand.

In both our activities and our passivities, God waits for us, unless He chooses to advance to meet us. We may marvel at how His sublime presence does not disturb our human-ness, although it shouldn't marvel us because we were made for it and it for us, and both ultimately then for God.

We get trapped in our thinking about what we do and what we don't do: commission and omission. Teilhard invites us to think differently, to think in terms of "things we do" and "things we undergo." And both are profoundly divinized by God as we swim in His milieu and He makes us perfect, mature, and complete.

Activities (Things We Do)

Of the two -- things we do and things we undergo -- we place the vast bulk of our attention on the former: things we do. Our energy follows our attention, and we place a lot of energy and attention on what we do. And when we focus so on what we do, we begin to compartmentalize those things into the sacred and the secular. And so little of what we do ever feels sacred, at least not as we think of the term sacred and not in the way we think.

Yet hardly anything is more certain in Scripture than that human action can be sanctified. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But still, we think, how is making my bed or changing a diaper or preparing financial statements or walking the dog -- how is any of this a sacred offering? The logical coherence or legitimacy of the proposition that "everything is sacred" is surely questionable.

We desire to do something significant, something meaningful, something that will make a lasting difference (like writing this blog perhaps) -- and Teilhard emphasizes that that very desire is written into our being, wired into psyche by God. But when we act, we fail -- over and over and over again. Any progress is slow even when we are at our best, and much of our lives are lived out in sleeping and eating and working our secular jobs. So how is this a sacred offering? How are we significant?

And what is the "Body of Christ" to do with all the people like me who have acted and not succeeded, who have been unable to make their mark, who have fallen on our face over and over again despite trying so hard, who weren't good enough to get the job or do the job or win the day? Teilhard believed that the Body of Christ could not be built or made complete without pain, suffering, loneliness, failure, destruction, and yes -- even death. So when I fail, the Body of Christ experiences the passivities that accompany my failed activities. In that sense, they are divine passivities as well as human ones.

The suffering produced by my active failures may be one reason why God has such love for the poor, the sick, the lonely, the victims, the marginalized, and the outcasts. He will wipe away every tear as he fully achieves his goal for the Body of Christ -- to save everything that was lost. He came not to save the righteous but the failures, of which I am one.

And so nothing here below -- not even our failed action -- is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred to those who can perceive the connection that binds our labor with the building of the kingdom of heaven. If we can simply see, as we leave the safe confines of church for the rest of the world, that we are continually immersed in God, then we will see that all action is sanctified, all action is sacred, and all action is significant.

This syllogism, he offers, is the proof of the conclusion:

Major Statement: "At the heart of our universe, each soul exists for God in our Lord."

Minor Statement: "In our universe in which each soul exists for God, in our Lord, all reality, in its turn, then exists for our souls."

Inevitable Conclusion if the Major and Minor Statements are True: "Hence, all sensible reality, around each one of us, exists, through our souls, for God in our Lord."

"If it is true then, as we know from the Creed, that souls enter so intimately into Christ and God, and if it is true, as we know from the most general conclusions of psycho-analysis, that the perceptible enters vitally into the most spiritual zones of our souls, then we must also recognize that . . . everything forms a single whole." We are privileged to participate in this ongoing reconciliation of everything to Christ, even by the humblest work of our hands. That is, ultimately, the meaning and value of our acts. We bring a little part of the creation -- the Body of Christ -- back to God in whatever we do.

Is it thus true then that the closeness of our union with him is in fact determined by the exact fulfillment of the least of our tasks? For when we do even those tasks in the name of our Lord, we have reached the point of realization that He must increase but I must decrease. It is not myself that I am then seeking, but rather that which is greater than me, to which I know I am destined. At this moment, I will have ridded self of ego to finally take on the motto Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG) as the ultimate reality. All I then do -- including personal development -- is "for the greater glory of God."

If I am to reach this point and remain there, though, I must detach from long-held beliefs about myself and my work. I must realize that much work is necessarily boring and that creative work generates birth pangs and inner tension. I must realize that some of my attempts will end up as failures and dead ends, and thus I cannot be attached to "specific outcomes" since they may not occur as I expected. Here, detachment is necessary to tear me away from misplaced expectations. And, most importantly, I must realize that I no longer belong to myself, but to the divine potential of my work.

In the clearest moment, thus, I finally reach this conclusion then:

Ultimately, my life is not about me.

Passivities (Things We Undergo)

Although we spend so much of our time analyzing our activities, it is the discussion of passivities (things we undergo) that has profoundly altered my worldview. Teilhard says that the term passivity is easily defined: "that which is not done by us, is, by definition, undergone by us."

"Seen from our point of view, the activities occupy first place because we prefer it and because it is more easily perceived. But in reality the passivities are immeasurably wider and deeper."

Immeasurably?

Yes. Passivities dominate our existence. Indeed, every activity we do is ceaselessly accompanied by passivities, in the form of reactions that direct, sustain or oppose our activities. Here's an example: my sister and I are both CPAs. Why? I can remember a photograph of both of us sitting with my mother as she "did the bookkeeping" for my dad's business. From our youngest memories, we were comfortable with books of accounts. Today, we're both CPAs. Actively, we practice our profession. Passively, the road to our profession was mapped out for us somehow.

Teilhard says there are two types of passivities: (i) the nice ones, and (ii) the hostile ones. Some passivities grow us (e.g., my mother's love and occupation), but others diminish us (we'll get to that later in this post). Teilhard exhorts us to look at both types (nice and hostile) -- look them square in the face -- until "we discern the kindling light of the blessed countenance of Christ."

That is a real art, an art that requires hard decisionmaking on our part in the face of adverse circumstances. Trust always involves risk.

I could, at this point, spend some time developing the "nice" passivities. For as surely as we should try to discern the kindling light in the "hostile" passivities, we must also remember to see the blessed countenance of Christ even in the "nice" passivities -- for if we fail to see Christ in the nice passivities, we may walk too deeply in the view that we are self-made. But I will save that discussion for another day because, at this stage of life, it is the hostile passivities that I yearn to see clearly through. And so I turn squarely to the hostile ones.

Over the years, I've read plenty of great books on suffering, perhaps most notably The Problem of Pain by Lewis and a few by Kreeft, Yancey, and the like. Teilhard adds something substantive to the consideration. And again, he's not trying to explain the problem of suffering, of God v. evil. He's only seeking to explain pragmatically how life works . . . and life works to a large extent by hostile passivities: things we undergo that are unpleasant to us.

With a twist on Romans 8:28, Teilhard asserts that ---

"Not everything is immediately good to those who seek God; but everything is capable of becoming good: omnia convertuntur in bonum."

With scientific steeliness, he makes two analogies:

• we are like soldiers who fall during the assault which leads to peace; and
• without sparing us death, God is like an artist who is able to make use of a fault or an impurity in sculpting stone to produce more exquisite lines or a more beautiful tone

But, alas, that peace in the first analogy and that exquisite production in the second analogy only comes after the hostile passivities that surround us cry out victory against us through death. God, however, never suffers even a preliminary defeat in our loss because, although we appear to succumb individually, the world, in which we shall live again, triumphs in and through our lives and deaths.

So what process does God use to accomplish the miraculous and marvelous conversion and transformation of our losses into a better life?

(Selah.)

Teilhard says there are two rather simple ways that God uses the hostile passivities for good, but also one most difficult way. The first two are simple to express:

1. Sometimes the passivities that we have undergone will divert our activity on to objects, or to a framework, that are more propitious. Consider, for example, certain aspects of Job's experience.

2. At other times, more often perhaps, the hostile passivities that we undergo so dissatisfy our frustrated desires that they oblige us to turn to "less material fields," which neither moth, nor worm, nor rust can corrupt.

But the third way is most difficult, and here Teilhard admits that "human wisdom is altogether out of its depth." And, at this point, he offers a few pararaphs of explanation from which I must quote liberally, for I cannot find a way to say it more powerfully:

"At every moment we see diminishment, both in us and around us, which does not seem to be compensated by advantages on any perceptible plane: premature deaths, stupid accidents, weaknesses affecting the highest reaches of our being. Under blows such as these, man does not move upward in any direction that we can perceive; he disappears or remains grievously diminished. How can these diminishments which are altogether without compensation . . . become for us a good? This [and only this] is where we can see the third way in which Providence operates in the domain of our diminishments. This third way is the most effective way and the way which most surely makes us holy.

"God, as we have seen, has already transfigured our sufferings by making them serve our conscious fulfilment. In his hands the forces of diminishment have perceptibly become the tool that cuts, carves and polishes within us the stone which is destined to occupy a definite place in the heavenly Jerusalem. But he will do still more, for, as a result of his omnipotence impinging upon our faith, events which show themselves experimentally in our lives as "pure loss" will become an immediate factor in the union we dream of establishing with him. [Hallelujah!!]

"Uniting oneself means, in every case, migrating, and dying partially in what one loves. But if, as we are sure, this being reduced to nothing in the other must be all the more complete the more we give our attachment to one who is greater than ourselves, then we can set no limits to the tearing up of roots that is involved on our journey into God.

"The progressive breaking-down of our self-regard by the automatic broadening of our human perspectives, when accompanied by the gradual spiritualization of our tastes and aspirations under the impact of certain setbacks, is no doubt a very real foretaste of that leap out of ourselves which must in the end deliver us from the bondage of ourselves into the service of the divine sovereignty.

"Yet the effect of this initial detachment is for the moment only to develop the center of our personality to its utmost limits. Arrived at that ultimate point we may still have the impression of possessing ourselves in a supreme degree -- of being freer and more active than ever. We have [thus] not yet crossed the critical point of our "ex-centration," of our reversion to God. There is a further step to take: the one that make us lose all foothold within ourselves -- oportet illum crescere, me autem minui. We are still not lost to ourselves. What will be the agent of that definitive transformation? Nothing else than death.

"In itself, death is an incurable weakness of corporeal beings, complicated, in our world, by the influence of an original fall. It is the sum and type of all the forces that diminish us, and against which we must fight without being able to hope for a personal, direct and immediate victory. Now the great victory of the Creator and Redeemer, in the Christian vision, is to have transformed what is in itself a universal power of diminishment and extinction into an essentially life-giving factor. God must, in some way or other, make room for himself, hollowing us out and emptying us, if he is finally to penetrate into us. And in order to assimilate us in him, he must break the molecules of our being so as to re-cast and re-model us. The function of death is to provide the necessary entrance into our inmost selves. it will make us undergo the required dissociation. It will put us into the state organically needed if the divine fire is to descend upon us. And in that way its fatal power to decompose and dissolve will be harnessed to the most sublime operations of life. What was by nature empty and void, a return to bits and pieces, can, in any human existence, become fulness and unity in God."

So, to Teilhard, nothing -- not even death -- is ever a total loss. The thrust of growth coming from divine milieu in which we live and breathe is so powerful that it is continuously resurrecting whatever has happened, no matter how bad or seemingly unredeemable events seem to be. Every partial or full death can end up in resurrection. Jesus' resurrection is a promise of that. And even his life and ministry promise the same, as Savary notes:

"No matter what the diminishment was in the people who came to him -- paralysis, madness, blindness, demonic possession, poverty, grief, leprosy -- Jesus would cure it. In fact, there is not one instance in the New Testament where Jesus explicitly refused to heal anyone."

From this perspective, we can learn to see in every diminishment the blessed touch of God upon us.

The higher good will all be accomplished in good time. "God will take his revenge (if one may use that expression) by making evil itself serve the higher good."

**********

At the end of his life, Teilhard returned to The Divine Milieu where he expanded on what he meant by "seeing Him." He wrote this:

"Throughout my life, by means of my life, the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become almost completely luminous from within . . . . Such has been my experience in contact with the earth -- the diaphany of the Divine at the heart of the universe on fire . . . Christ; His heart; a fire: capable of penetrating everywhere and, gradually, spreading everywhere."

Lord, this is my prayer today -- for the eyes to see like that.

Enable me, O Lord, to lengthen those momentary glimpses of clear sight, so that my life -- all the activities and all the passivities -- also helps others to see you, too.

____________________________

footnotes

* It is so frustrating to get so close to true sight, only to lose it when someone does something as inoffensive as cutting me off in traffic. It is so elusive that I had to write about this in a journal entry that few will read and even fewer will understand because my ability to express it is so limited.

^ This may be the most difficult book I've read in the Christian tradition. I would read a chapter and then stop to read a chapter in Louis Savary's study guide entitled "The Divine Milieu: Explained," which I recommend.