GOD SPEED
My father died believing it was more important to cling to his belief in the Catholic Church than to trust where that journey leads. He perceived my siblings’ switch to other religious denominations in their adult, married life as a failure on his part, as something to grieve. He considered loyalty to a religion more important than a vital, dynamic spiritual life.
The late Anthony de Mello once said, when it comes to religion, we are all like “frogs caught in a well.” Each religious metaphor or denomination is a separate well. God is outside, beyond the Baptist well, the Hebrew well, the Catholic well. Seeking the God beyond our well is the journey through and beyond all the masks of God, to the God beyond all metaphor.
“All religion is true,” said Joseph Campbell, “for its time.” The metaphors or masks of God change over generations, throughout different cultures, as we can only speak in metaphor about the transcendent energy or presence we experience at the core of life. Religion means “linking back,” as religion is an attempt to put a face or word or ritual on something larger than the human dimension, even our categories of thought.
Metaphors change over time, for every culture, for every human being, as the transcendent energy beyond time and space can only speak to and inform each person in their own categories of thought or experiences of wholeness. A wise spiritual leader knows how to use metaphor and story and contemporary experience to touch the heart and soul of the one who is sitting before them, asking them a question, experiencing a devastating loss.
I think that’s what the story of the first Pentecost tried to convey. It was how the Spirit spoke to different peoples “in their own tongue,” in their own metaphors, so they could hear the truth they needed to hear that convinced the apostles Jesus had risen — not the empty tomb. Jesus told them they would know he had risen when they saw the Spirit working among them. Religion’s task is to be open to the interpretation of the many truths it tries to put in words, to allow the imagination and the flow of metaphor to enrich the truths, not imprison them.
It’s when the metaphor becomes frozen — True for all time — that the difficulty arises. The truth beneath the metaphor – the reality to which the metaphor points, the truth about which the metaphor speaks – is true, but the metaphor used to talk about it changes with consciousness and experience and the spiritual dynamic of the imagination.
Kahlil Gibran says it well: “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.” Say not ‘I have found the path of the soul.’ Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’ For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, but unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.” The unfolding of the spiritual imagination awakens the soul.
If we trusted the spiritual imagination to serve the Spirit, we would say, “Jesus said it this way,” not “Jesus said…” Jesus was exquisite in his use of metaphor to tell the story, to reveal the truth. He knew the image would carry his listener to wherever the listener needed to go to hear the truth that would speak to him. Jesus trusted the Spirit to do the interpreting. He was only clear or definite when explaining to his apostles, “in private.”
We help young people develop a healthy spiritual life by asking them about their experience of God, how they would describe the ways God touches their lives right now. This imaginative approach to God is expansive, not constrictive. When we talk to them about God in ways that touch their imagination, we captivate their hearts. They experience it rather than learn it. By doing this, however, we allow them to follow where their imagination leads. Even if it leads them to another religious denomination or religious ritual.
The more we encourage our youth to explore the imagination and its interface with tradition – our collective memory of God as church – the more dynamic their experience of God will be. Religion should point to God’s presence among us, not point to itself. This suggests images and rituals that emerge from our personal experience of a personal God, rich with imagination and play.
Religion, to use another metaphor, becomes a road map we give our youth, a tried and true way through the forest, citing dangers and pitfalls and successful passages. To help youth develop a healthy spiritual life, their personal spiritual life, would be like individually taking them into the forest and encouraging them to develop an inner compass that will assist them in facing the challenges they will personally encounter on their journey to the God beyond our knowing.
This inner compass would enable them, when we are no longer around, to find their own way through the maze. Both are important for our youth – an external religion and a personal internal compass. Should our youth misplace the map, they will have that internal compass to find their own way home.
Caroline Myss said, so long as our heart, mind, higher self is managed by the tribal will – those from whom we receive our metaphors and truths – we will move at the tribal speed and not at our own “spirit speed.” We will miss the urgings of the God within us. We will move with our mind towards the experience of God rather than an awe-filled imagination that awakens soul.
My father might have delighted in his children’s journey to God had he been taught that imagining God in as many ways as we can, and celebrating that, is grace rather than disloyalty. The church in which we celebrate is not as important as our personal encounter with God. It is, as de Mello suggests, a well from which we draw our first encounter. Important, but not an end in itself.
To my father’s credit, had he not played the devil’s advocate in everything except religion, I might not have learned to love the questions as I do. Thanks, Dad.