Welcome
Autobiography
God
in All Things
- Preface
- Chapter
1
Oh God,
Why?
- Preface
- Chapter
1 - 6
God In All Things
Chapter One: Split Spirituality
Spirituality Popular: Churchgoing Dwindling
‘SPIRITUALITY’ HAS BECOME A fashionable word. Thirty years
ago it was rarely used outside religious circles: today it appears frequently
in the press and in novels, plays and films. We find the word in political
manifestos and in the proposals of government, education authorities and
the health service. ‘Spirituality’ has found its way into
business boardrooms, and in many large bookshops there is a prominent
‘spirituality’ section on the ground floor. In the same shops,
‘religious’ books are likely to occupy a few shelves upstairs!
Today’s growing interest in spirituality is accompanied by a growing
disinterest in churchgoing, with the exception of those who attend some
of the black-led churches. According to the survey compiled for the BBC
Soul of Britain series, church attendance fell by over 20 per cent in
the years between 1989 and 1998. According to the same survey, more than
76 per cent of the national population had undergone a spiritual or religious
experience that was still affecting them. These are remarkable statistics.
I do not know the average age of the congregations to whom the churches
minister, but in my experience of church meetings and church services,
the average age of the regular churchgoer is about fifty-five and rising
annually.
People are looking for spiritual guidance and the majority fail to find
it in the mainstream Christian churches. Today we distinguish between
being ‘spiritual’ and being ‘religious’. In this
context, the word ‘religious’ implies membership of a particular
church, regular attendance at its services, and adherence to its regulations.
It is very often the most Christ-centred and committed people who are
particularly critical of the Church, as they experience it. The ‘Church’
is accused of being hypocritical and out of touch, and more interested
in self-preservation than in caring for others. The clergy are accused
of being unable to listen, unable to accept criticism, and of behaving
like control freaks. In such criticisms, Church/institution tends to be
identified with existing clerical structures.
Pie in the Sky?
We have a very understandable movement away from ‘Church’
alongside a growing interest in spirituality: this is a clear indication
of a spirituality that is seriously split. Spirituality without some visible
form is like breath without a body. On the other hand, a visible form
(Church) without spirituality is like a body without breath.
Spiritual movements have been springing up within Christianity since New
Testament times, engendering great enthusiasm, attracting thousands of
very committed people, and then splitting into separate factions before
disappearing altogether. Christianity is, essentially, a down-to-earth
religion.
In the words of St Irenaeus writing in the second century, ‘God
became a human being, so that human beings might become God.’ The
word ‘spirituality’ refers to the presence of God, ‘the
Spirit’ within us and among us. God is the Spirit of unity, of love
and of compassion. If our life in the Spirit is genuine, it must find
expression in the way we relate to one another and the way in which we
organise our lives, both corporately and as individuals.
The essence of Church is the Spirit of God, and the Church is called to
be the effective sign of God’s presence within us and among us.
I am using the word ‘Church’ in the sense of the visible inter-relationship
that must grow and develop among those who become aware of, and respond
to, the Spirit rather than referring to any particular Church. A key function
of Church is to point beyond itself and to make us more perceptive and
responsive to the Spirit present in all peoples and all things. All church
structures need to be provisional, and all are in continuous need of reform
– if we divinise particular structures we are in danger of falling
into idolatry. The Spirit is found through our relationships with other
human beings, and in order to enable us to relate successfully we need
an organisation that is pliant and adaptable because it is open to the
Spirit. Spirituality that is not embodied in some kind of organisation
easily becomes ‘pie in the sky’, while Church without spirituality
can pose a dangerous threat to human life and freedom.
Spirituality/Church?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘spiritual’
as follows:
1 of, or concerning, the spirit as opposed to matter. 2 concerned with sacred or religious things; holy; divine; inspired. 3 (of the mind etc.) refined, sensitive; not concerned with the material. 4 (of a relationship etc.) concerned with the soul or spirit etc., not with external reality.
According
to this definition, the only link between the spiritual and the material
is to be found in ‘sacred or religious things’. In the light
of such a definition it is hardly surprising that we should have difficulty
in explaining the relationship between spirituality and everyday life.
Readers may well ask themselves whether, according to this definition,
they rank as spiritual persons or not. How much time, attention and energy
do I give to sacred things – the Church, religion, and so on –
as compared with the attention I give to material things? What would be
the effect upon you and your household if you became ‘spiritual’
according to the dictionary definition?
Such a definition reveals the enormous split in our spirituality. By ‘split’
I mean that God and the things of God are divided off from ordinary everyday
life. God is confined to Church, religion, the sacred and the intangible.
In the light of such a definition we could be forgiven for supposing that
‘spiritual’ persons must have minds and emotions of a highly
refined and delicate quality – so refined that they are unconcerned
with other human beings or with any created thing apart from those that
qualify as ‘sacred’ or ‘religious’.
Theological Language Underpins the Split
We speak of natural and supernatural, spiritual and material, eternal
and temporal, sacred and secular, grace and nature. While these can be
useful distinctions, they can easily be misunderstood to indicate that
there are two separate layers of reality: the natural, material layer,
and the supernatural, spiritual layer. The conscientious Christian is
encouraged to consider the supernatural to be of greater importance than
the natural, the spiritual as more important than the material. And grace
is perceived as being of infinitely greater value than nature. Such misunderstanding
leads us into ‘doublethink’. Imagine that you are setting
off on a long-distance flight and you find yourself praying for a safe
journey. What kind of pilot would you like God to provide for you? A pilot
who is spiritual according to the dictionary definition, a pilot whose
mind is on God, the soul, the sacred, etc., and not on material and temporal
things? Or would you prefer a good solid atheist whose primary interest
during the flight is concentrated on the instrument panel and bringing
the material plane with its material passengers safely back to their earthly
destination?
Religious Instruction Confirms the Split
I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. From an early age I knew that God
was all important, and for that I am grateful. God, in my childhood memory,
was as homely and familiar as the rest of my family. Saying nightly prayers
was as natural as kissing my parents goodnight, although the prayers took
a bit longer. On reflection, my difficulties with God began when I was
given religious instruction.
The spirituality presented to the Roman Catholic Church of my generation
was divisive and split. It was divisive because we were taught that there
was no salvation outside the Church, which was one, true, Catholic and
apostolic. So the world was divided into Catholics and non-Catholics.
As Catholics, we were forbidden to take part in the services and prayers
of a ‘false’ religion, which banned us from attendance at
any other Christian Church apart from the Greek and Russian Orthodox.
It was divisive within our own lives, because we were taught an extremely
split and dualist spirituality.
The body, of which we were most immediately aware, was considered to be
a threat to the spirit. One Catechism question enquired: ‘Of which
must you take most care, of your body or of your soul?’ The answer
was: ‘I must take most care of my soul. The body, if not corrected
by self-denial, will certainly carry us to hell’! Such a spirituality
was also divisive in leading us to think of God as separate and apart
from us. In the words of the Catholic Catechism of my generation, God
was ‘The supreme Spirit who alone exists of Himself and is infinite
in all perfections’. Not the kind of God with whom one could feel
at home, or want to have around on holidays. Because the spiritual was
so emphasised and separated from the material, ‘worldly’ matters
were not considered important. Worldly matters included our total emotional
life. True faith did not seem to have much relationship to our experience
of life on earth. Consequently, one could be a devout and committed Catholic
without any awareness that political, social, economic and cultural questions
were not only relevant to living faith in God, but integral to that faith.
In 1891 Pope Leo XIII had published the first great social encyclical,
which came to be known as ‘The Worker’s Charter’, but
its importance and implications had still to reach most of the pews fifty
years later. There was, however, a great emphasis on the ‘corporal
works of mercy’, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, shelter
for the homeless, etc. If Catholics did not necessarily tend to think
globally, they generally acted locally with great generosity.
The previous paragraph is a deliberate caricature in order to show the
extent to which my early religious instruction encouraged a ‘split’
spirituality. Such a caricature fails to do justice to the very attractive
elements I found in Roman Catholicism, and that I still find there. It
is this very attractiveness that leads me to complain constantly about
the split that hides the face of God. Until we acknowledge the enormity
of this split in our spirituality, we shall be unable to change; church
numbers will continue to dwindle, and we shall find ourselves clinging
to some Christless structure.
The Split Affects All Christian Denominations
It may be objected that the spirituality that I have been describing is
no longer taught within the Roman Catholic Church. Why am I harping on
about past history when today’s spirituality is far less dualistic
and much more integrated?
The problem of split spirituality is wider and deeper than we realise.
For the past forty years I have worked with Christians of many different
denominations. The details of our spiritual upbringing may be different,
but, in my experience, we all suffer from a split in our spirituality.
I worked at one time with a group of Christian psychotherapists, the majority
of whose clients were Roman Catholic priests or members of religious congregations.
On one occasion I asked the psychotherapists whether they ever asked clients
about their prayer life. Their unanimous answer was ‘No’.
When I asked the reason, I was told that it would be ‘unprofessional’
to enquire about the prayer life of clients. The reason given was that
if the psychotherapist focused attention on a client’s prayer, the
client might use prayer as a way of escaping from the psychological problems
that had to be faced. If prayer is based upon a split spirituality it
is undoubtedly true that it can be used as a way of escaping the problems
that beset us, but this type of prayer tries to bypass the facts. And
God is always in the facts. We cannot escape God’s reality checks
for long!
It is possible to use forms of prayer that are ‘unearthed’,
which bear no relation to what is, in fact, going on, as a way of escaping
from our responsibilities. The psychotherapists with whom I worked were
aware of this problem and their reaction was understandable, but they
were wrong in assuming that their clients’ prayer was necessarily
split.
A divided spirituality leads us to split the spiritual from the psychological,
as though the two words referred to different parts of the person. This
is a dangerous misunderstanding. It can, for example, lead us to think
that the only people who are suitable for spirituality work are those
who are 100 per cent psychologically sound. Such a principle would have
excluded many of the greatest saints from spirituality work, not to mention
the vast majority of the human race! There is no inner state in any human
being that can be described as ‘purely psychological’, for
God is present and at work in all our states. The distinction between
psychological and spiritual does not denote two separate areas of our
human psyche. It rather indicates two different ways of approaching the
single psyche. As psychologists and as spiritual guides we must not create
no-go areas for God – or for the psychologist. It is, however, necessary
and valid to approach those areas in differing ways. It is in this context
that there is a valid distinction between the spiritual and the psychological.
The Split Continues
The majority of Christians in the developed world are not opposed to a
nuclear defence policy, and an even greater majority still believe in
the necessity of war to preserve peace on earth. This support for nuclear
defence and for war as a means of bringing peace is an indication of the
divided nature of our spirituality. We all want peace, and we reckon that
the possession of a nuclear arsenal, as well as conventional arms, is
the best way of ensuring that peace. Most nations subscribe to the Roman
aphorism ‘To preserve peace, prepare for war’, an aphorism
that wins the support of the majority in most Western countries. Because
of our split spirituality we can both pray for peace and at the same time
support a policy of national defence that militates against peace. While
our reason may convince us that the possession of nuclear arms is justified,
ethical and sensible, we may experience acute discomfort if we allow God
to enter into our prayer for peace. When Jesus appeared to his frightened
disciples on Easter Sunday evening, he said ‘Peace be with you’
and showed them his hands and his side (John 20:20). The world’s
peace is achieved through trying to become invulnerable: Christ’s
peace comes through vulnerability. This truth brings us to the very uncomfortable
heart of the matter.
We have become so used to a split spirituality that we no longer notice
the split, which divides our hearts from our heads, our reason from our
emotion. Consequently, we can produce well-reasoned arguments in favour
of war and of the need for nuclear arms while, at the same time, praying
to God earnestly and sincerely for peace. Without realising what we are
doing, we take remarkable care not to let God interfere with our practical
plans for peace. The point of the peace prayer is not to argue for pacifism,
but simply to illustrate the truth that because of the split in our spirituality,
we do not allow God to interfere in our practical plans for peace and
war, or any other matter.
The following exercise is an imaginative one. You attend a church service
on Peace Sunday and listen to this peace prayer. It has been composed
by someone whose reason has convinced them of the legitimacy of nuclear
defence and of just war as a means of bringing peace to the world. In
the prayer, the composer, aware of the split in our spirituality, allows
God to enter into the reasoning behind the prayer. The exercise is simply
to notice what emotional effect this prayer has on you. Does it leave
you strengthened, happy and hopeful in your attitudes, or unhappy, angry
and confused? The prayer illustrates what happens when we allow God access
to our feelings, when we allow our prayer to become ‘earthed’.
Here is the prayer:
Dear Lord, inspire our scientists that they may invent yet more lethal weaponry (so that our deterrent may prove even more effective). Protect us from any unfortunate accident in its testing (lest it destroy us and our own cities rather than our enemies). Bless our economy that we may put these weapons into plentiful production (otherwise we cannot deter). Have a special care of the hungry, the homeless, the sick and the aged of our own land and of other lands until such time as our defence commitments allow us to contribute a little more to these worthy purposes. Strengthen our leaders in a strong defence policy. Drive out from our midst any who by thought, word or deed undermine our national security, and grant us the protection of nuclear weaponry now and forever. Amen.
This
prayer is not offered as an argument against nuclear deterrence, but simply
as an indication of the split nature of our spirituality. How did you
feel as you read the prayer, and what did you do with those feelings?
Some elements in the masculine culture still regard feelings and emotions
as a sign of weakness rather than a source of wisdom. We have developed
ways of praying that allow us to discount feelings. We may justify such
an attitude to ourselves by claiming that we are trying to free ourselves
from distractions (any activity involving the material physical world
qualifies as a ‘distraction’). Such an elevated form of prayer
has the great advantage of keeping God from interfering in our plans.
Could the real reason for our split spirituality be the fact that it keeps
God out of the way?
Another Example Illustrating the Present Split in our Spirituality
Each reader will have a different way of carrying out the following exercise
– and if you carry it out several times you may find yourself coming
up with a variety of answers. The exercise introduces us to the use of
the imagination, which can open up deep wells of spirituality within.
To begin the exercise, sit down and relax. Imagine there is a ring at
your front doorbell. On answering it, you meet on the doorstep the Risen
Lord himself. Somehow, you know beyond any shadow of doubt that it is
he. What do you do now? How do you greet him, what do you say? Presumably,
you welcome him in and you invite all your friends to come and meet him.
‘You’ll never guess who we have staying with us this evening!’
In the course of the evening, you find yourself making fatuous statements
to the Lord of all creation, such as, ‘Do make yourself at home’.
Jesus seems very pleased with your invitation and tells you that that
is why he has come.
Now take a leap of two weeks in your imagination. Jesus is still staying
with you. What is it like at home now? To stimulate your imagination,
you might recall some Gospel passages, sayings you wish Jesus had never
uttered such as, ‘Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on
earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on a household
of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the
father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter,
daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law
against mother-in-law’ (Luke 12:51–3). And the letter to the
Hebrews tells us that ‘Jesus Christ is the same today as he was
yesterday and as he will be for ever’ (Heb. 13:8), so he is obviously
not going to change! How has it been at family meals during the last two
weeks? What has Jesus said or done that has caused some members to leave
the table in a tantrum, slamming the door behind them? In Jesus’s
own lifetime, as far as we can judge from the Gospels, relations with
his own family were not always easy. Apart from the infancy narratives
in Matthew and Luke, the only information we have about Jesus before his
public life began concerns a family row, when he goes missing for three
days at the age of twelve. He is eventually found by his distraught parents,
sitting in the Temple in discussion with the doctors. During his public
life we learn from the Gospel of Mark that the family of Jesus thought
he was possessed, and his own comments on family life are not complimentary.
When told that his mother and brothers are looking for him, he replies,
‘Who is my mother, my brother, my sister? Whoever does the will
of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’ (Matt.
12:50). So life may not be too peaceful at home, after two weeks with
Jesus present.
Told to make himself at home, Jesus begins to invite his friends to your
house. Who were his friends in the Gospels, what kind of people were they,
and what did respectable, religious people say about them? Who is coming
along your road now, what is happening to the curtains in the house opposite,
and what is happening to local property values? How are things in your
own family and with your own circle of friends, now that Jesus’s
friends are also calling in?
You may then decide that it is not right to keep Jesus confined to your
own house, so you arrange for him to give a little talk in your parish
church. You remember the little talk he once gave to the chief priests,
the scribes and the Pharisees, assuring them that the tax-gatherers and
the prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God before they did. He gives
substantially the same sermon to the faithful of St Jude’s parish
church. There is uproar, and the parish loses its principal benefactors.
You return home with Jesus, who has now become the major problem of your
life. As you ponder the question, ‘What am I to do with him?’,
you know you cannot ask him to leave, for he is the Lord of all creation,
so what are you to do? Perhaps you could look around the house carefully,
find a suitable cupboard, clear it out, clean it up, decorate it, sparing
no expense, and have good strong locks put on the door. You then invite
Jesus to step inside, turn the lock on him, put flowers and a candle in
front of the cupboard door, and every time you pass, you bow deeply. You
now have Jesus in your house and he does not interfere any more!
Is this an image of what we have done with God? We lock God away in the
sacred, supernatural, heavenly, spiritual cupboard, where we can show
great reverence, hold splendid services of worship, singing praises and
thanking God for the blessings bestowed on us and the prosperity granted
us. This religious behaviour keeps Jesus out of the way, so that God no
longer interferes in our everyday life.
This split in our spirituality affects every aspect of our lives. It can
only begin to be healed when we acknowledge it. Reluctance to acknowledge
goes deep into our unconscious and can manifest itself in righteous indignation
against the apparent flippancy of this imaginative exercise.
How did you feel during the exercise, and what did you do with those feelings
during the exercise and afterwards? Did you perhaps feel that it was disrespectful
to make fun of sacred things and ‘contaminate’ spirituality
with worldly material comparisons? If so, could it be that your image
of God and of Jesus makes it difficult for you to feel ‘at home’
with God?
Ineffective Spirituality
If we isolate God by keeping him out of the way of everyday life, we also
isolate ourselves, pursuing an individualistic spirituality that disconnects
us from ‘material, temporal things’. The split in our spirituality
separates us from one another and this enables us to perpetrate appalling
damage in the name of religion – the history of the twentieth century
provides plenty of examples. The personal damage inflicted upon ourselves
may be less obvious – the following example may help to make this
point clearer:
A former military chaplain was appointed to a parish in England. He came,
he saw, and he had everything reorganised within a week. The parish included
a very lively Third World group. They met regularly, studied, brought
visiting lecturers to the parish, ran a Fair Trade stall, and every month
they had a special collection for some Third World project. The new parish
priest decided unilaterally that there would no longer be a monthly collection
for the Third World: in his estimation, once a year would be sufficient.
The Third World group members were furious. They met together, seethed
with anger, deplored this rampant clericalism, and decided to draft a
letter of complaint to the bishop. While they were still at the drafting
stage, Father made a fatal mistake. There was a men’s club attached
to the parish. Father changed the beer in the club without consulting
the beer drinkers. There was uproar. The men rose, united as never before,
and confronted the new parish priest, threatening to withdraw their money
and their presence from the Church unless he restored the beer. Father
relented. I never heard the end of this story, but I hope the parish priest
relented, and restored the monthly collection for the Third World group,
who then thanked the beer group for their intervention and invited them
to become members!
What is my beer factor? What is it that really moves me into action, as
distinct from the things that I claim move me into action? The Third World
group were very sincere and committed people, who loved God and recognised
God in the poor and the hungry, but somehow these convictions did not
connect with the core of their being in the immediate way that beer deprivation
connected with the core of the club members’ being and resulted
in immediate and effective action.
Separation of Head and Heart
A divided spirituality causes a fissure between our reasoning minds and
our feelings and emotions. Emotion is the driving force in our lives and
a split between thought and feeling ensures that the driving force is
not directed: it is like a car with a very powerful engine, but a permanently
damaged clutch. We may roar and splutter with indignation on certain issues,
as the Third World group roared and spluttered about the parish priest,
but our split spirituality will ensure that nothing creative happens.
The search today, among churchgoers and non-churchgoers alike, is for
a more holistic spirituality, more firmly connected to life experience.
A striking instance of this search is to be found in the phenomenon of
New Age spirituality, which appeals across generations, races, nations
and classes, and does so without any apparent central organisation.
The New Age phenomenon arouses acute discomfort among many Christians,
who fear the interest in witchcraft and the occult shown by some New Age
devotees. In spite of some of its zanier manifestations, there are aspects
of the New Age movement that are in fact extremely healthy, and in tune
with Christianity to the extent that they manifest the search for a spirituality
that includes not only the spirit but body, mind and all creation. Many
New Age followers have a particular interest in Celtic spirituality and
in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit priest
and scientist, who saw the whole of creation in terms of a gradual transformation
of matter into spirit. Teilhard de Chardin combined his Christian faith
and his scientific knowledge in order to produce an integrated vision
of the universe, which he described in one of his books as ‘The
Divine Milieu’. The New Age is reminding us of the same ancient
truth: God is present in all things. Our Christian spirituality must therefore
be holistic, including body and mind as well as spirit, because God became
one of us in the person of Jesus. And in the words of St Irenaeus quoted
above, God did this ‘that we might become God’ – an
astonishing statement that can make us feel uneasy, because we are not
accustomed to thinking of God, or of ourselves, in this way.
Christians are becoming increasingly aware of the need for an integrated
and holistic spirituality which, like New Age approaches, includes body,
mind and spirit. An illustration of this trend is to be found in Retreats,
the ecumenical journal of the Retreat Association. This publication lists
over two hundred retreat houses and centres of spirituality. The majority
are in Britain, although European retreats also appear, and in most cases
the programmes of the centres are included in the advertisements.
There is a bewildering variety of retreats and courses, many of them run
by laity rather than priests and nuns, and almost all are open to people
of all faiths or of none. The titles of the retreats reveal the growing
interest in a holistic spirituality that addresses body, mind and spirit.
Titles include: Dance and Movement, Circle Dancing, Clay and Painting,
Icon Painting, Dreams, Calligraphy, Aromatherapy, Massage, Healing of
Memories, Healing of Life’s Hurts, Myers Briggs psychological personality
indicator, and the Sufi Enneagram. Elsewhere I heard of a ‘Swimming
with Dolphins’ retreat off the coast of New Mexico. Dolphins would
appear to be the best of gurus, perhaps because they are attentive and
friendly, but do not talk!
Until recently, Roman Catholic retreats lasting longer than a weekend
were generally reserved for clergy and nuns. During the 1970s, individually
given retreats were introduced for lay men and lay women so that someone
who was not a priest or nun could stay for a week or longer in a retreat
house or conference centre, and spend time each day with a personal spiritual
guide. Prior to that, a Roman Catholic wanting to deepen their walk with
God would be encouraged to make a weekend retreat that usually consisted
of three or four conferences each day, almost always given by a priest.
In between conferences, the retreatants would reflect and pray over what
they had heard or read in some spiritual book. They were expected to keep
silence throughout the weekend.
Being Holistic is not the Same as Being Holy
The new developments in retreat giving are excellent in that they aim
to develop the whole person, recognising the sacredness of body, mind
and heart, as well as the holiness of the spirit. It is good, also, that
such retreats are becoming increasingly ecumenical.
We meet God when we meet one another across the divisions of our churches:
we exclude God when we refuse to communicate with one another. It is also
desirable that an increasing number of married and single people should
be giving retreats, for the Holy Spirit is given to each individual. In
spite of all these undoubted benefits, there is, however, a danger in
these modern developments. It is frequently stated nowadays that holiness
means wholeness, hence the emphasis on ‘holistic spirituality’.
While genuine holiness will always strive to be holistic, the fact of
being ‘holistic’ does not necessarily imply holiness. We can
be whole without being holy, just as we can be holy without being whole.
God told Israel to ‘Be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy.’
God did not say, ‘Be holistic, as I the Lord your God am holistic.’
As an illustration of the difference between being holy and being holistic,
here are thumbnail sketches of two characters. Which of the two do you
consider to be the more ‘holistic’?
The first character is a middle-aged man who is gifted, intelligent, intuitive,
creative, artistic and a music-lover. He is vegetarian, teetotal and a
non-smoker. He is also a powerful orator and an excellent communicator.
The second is also a middle-aged man who is intelligent and intuitive.
But this man is of a melancholic disposition, afflicted with suicidal
tendencies and bent with rheumatism. Which of the two is the more holistic?
The first seems to be the obvious candidate – but this is a portrait
of Adolf Hitler. The second character is Father Henri Huvelin, a famous
French spiritual director who died in 1910 and was spiritual guide to
the great theologian and philosopher Baron Friedrich von Hugel (1852–1925),
and to the inspirational French mystic Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916).
Von Hugel describes the strange sense of peace and joy that he always
experienced after visiting Father Huvelin, who lived with so much mental
and physical pain.
To be holy, we must strive to be holistic, but to be holistic is not the
same thing as being holy. What, then, is holiness? This is the question
for the following two chapters.
Exercises
These exercises may help to reveal a split in our spirituality, and a
first step towards healing it:
1
Imagine Jesus visiting your house. Do not try to reason things out, but
see what your imagination suggests. Have a conversation with Jesus in
your heart, telling him of your hopes and fears, needs and longings.
Having imagined the scene, try writing a description of his visit and
your own reactions. The description might be intended for a friend, or
for a local newspaper.
2 What was your own felt reaction to the peace prayer on page 8? Why do
you think that you experienced this reaction? Where does this reaction
come from, and how are you going to react to it now?
3 Scribble down some examples of split spirituality that you experience
in yourself. Do you want to do something about this? What do you think
you can do?