Cite
Barry, William A. Spiritual Direction and the Encounter With God: A Theological Inquiry. Rev. ed. Mahwah, N.J: Paulist Press, 2004.
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FirstAuthor:: Barry, William A.
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Title:: Spiritual Direction and the Encounter With God: a Theological Inquiry
Year:: 2004
Citekey:: barrySpiritualDirectionEncounter2004
itemType:: book
Publisher:: Paulist Press
Location:: Mahwah, N.J
ISBN:: 978-0-8091-4294-1
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Abstract
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Notes
# Annotations
(2/14/2025, 11:34:23 AM)
Go to annotation “The Practice of Spiritual Direction,2 which I coauthored with William J. Connolly, took a particular stance on the purpose of spiritual direction that many have found helpful.” (Barry, 2004, p. 1)
Go to annotation “Moreover, experience itself, quite apart from whether we can _ have an experience of God, seems problematic to many people. — Experience seems, by its very nature, a purely subjective thing. Yet . spiritual direction focuses on experience and expects that people 49 will be able to encounter God thereJ” (Barry, 2004, p. 3)
Go to annotation “Spiritual direction, as a form of pastoral counseling, necessarily focuses on the experience of the individual. Such a focus can lead and, indeed, has led to the development of an individualistic spirituality. Moreover, because spiritual direction, like many of the modem “talking” therapies, has developed among the relatively well-educated, it has seemed removed from the cares and concerns of ordinary people. In fact, the tendency of much modem pastoral and psychological counseling has been to concentrate on the more privileged members of society” (Barry, 2004, p. 4)
Go to annotation “Reflection on our experience reveals the mysterious presence of God, who is always acting to draw us into community with the L Trinity and thus with one another; this community is the Kingdom * s F of God, and its bond is the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts.” (Barry, 2004, p. 5)
Go to annotation “he spiritual life and the practice of spiritual direction assume that God acts in the world and can be experi enced in the world” (Barry, 2004, p. 7)
Go to annotation “John Macmurray, the Scottish philosopher who died in 1976, came to the conclusion that modern philosophy had started down a blind alley when it accepted Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” as the foundation stone for the knowledge of reality and thus of any system of philosophy. With such a starting point, Kant’s critique is virtually unassailable.” (Barry, 2004, p. 8)
Go to annotation “Sn philosophy itself the dead end is agnosticism or atheism. If my primary knowledge is of myself as thinker, then I have no immediate knowl edge of anything outside myself. I have to argue to the existence of the outside world, and any argument one uses, as Kant has shown, is problematic. If the very existence of a world outside myself is problematic, the existence of God is even more problematic” (Barry, 2004, p. 8)
Go to annotation “Macmurray distinguishes an event from an action. An event is simply what happens. A hurricane, for example, and an automobile accident are events. The writing of this chapter is an action. Every event has a cause; every action has a reason or intentionj” (Barry, 2004, p. 9)
Go to annotation “As an alternative to Descartes’ starting-point, Macmurray pro poses that philosophy begin with what is primary in our experience; we are not primarily thinkers, we are doers, but knowing doers, that is, agents. Thus, philosophy begins with “I do” rather than with “I think.” Action includes knowledge: “To do, and to know that I do, are two aspects of one and the same experience This knowledge is absolute and necessary. It is not, however, knowledge of an object but what we may call ‘knowledge in action,’”4 that is, the unreflective, primary knowledge-of any experience of action. When I act, I know that I am acting and what I intend. Action is the actualizing of a possibility, the determining of a future. Hence, the possibility of action implies free will. “To deny free-will is to deny the possibility of action.. ..That I am free is an immediate implication of the ‘I do’; and to deny freedom is to assert that no one ever does anything, that no one is capable even of thinking or observing. “What is actual ized when I act is the past, and as such (i.e., as past) it is completely determined. In other words, the past cannot be undone; I am not free with regard to the past. But the future, precisely as future, is not yet determined; it is something to be determined by action. Thus, the condition of possibility for action is my freedom” (Barry, 2004, p. 9)
Go to annotation “When I act, I know that I exist, and I also know that what is not “1” (which Macmurray calls “the Other”) exists. I do not have to rea son to the knowledge of my own and the world’s existence. When I shake your hand, for example, I am absolutely certain (I know) that you and I exist. In action I encounter you)” (Barry, 2004, p. 10)
Go to annotation “Macmurray believes that the personal must be explained on its own grounds. A new pattern must be dis covered by reflection on human activity itself. This pattern he calls the “form of the personal /’J” (Barry, 2004, p. 11)
Go to annotation “’Take action as the positive. Any action is intentional. An event, on the contrary, is not intentional; it just happens. Thus event is the negative of action. Yet no action can occur in the absence of events because any action includes events (e.g., muscular contractions, molecular activity). But since with out these events no action would take place, any action is consti tuted by these events. Thus any action includes and is constituted by events, the negative of action. Another example comes from the dichotomy between thought and action. Again, action is the posi tive, since thought is defined as the negative of action. When I am just thinking, I withdraw from action. But when I act, I am also thinking. In fact, without thought I cannot act, since action is defined as intentional. As I act, I know what I intend to do. Thus, any action (the positive) includes and is constituted by thought (the negative).” (Barry, 2004, p. 12)
Go to annotation “Because we really are agents, the future of God’s action is not determined, since only the past is completely determined. So in some mysterious way God’s action depends on us. Our faith tells us that God’s intention will not ultimately be thwarted—as my intention in writing this book may be thwarted both by my own inadequacy and by the actions of other agents. At the same time our faith and our experience tell us that we really are free agents, not pawns in the great chess game of Creation. If our actions are truly free, then, again in some mysterious fashion, God’s one action includes them and adjusts to them in order to attain God’s intention^” (Barry, 2004, p. 15)
Go to annotation “It seems to me that God’s immensity is immeasurably enhanced if we under stand God as one who can attain God’s one intention for the world when that one action includes free choices by human agents that seem inimical to God’s intention. In other words, we reflect on our greatest gift, that which makes us humans at all, namely, our capac ity for action, and apply it analogously to God. If we knew the future, it would already be determined; hence, we would not be free. It is not an imperfection not to know the future; it is the con dition of freedom” (Barry, 2004, p. 16)
Go to annotation “Gods one action will be attained because God is God. How those who willfully refuse to be brought into friendship with God, into God’s family, are included in God’s one action is not for us to know. What we do know, in faith, is that no created being is excluded from the one action which is this world.” (Barry, 2004, p. 17)
Go to annotation “American philosopher John E. Smith” (Barry, 2004, p. 21)
Go to annotation “Because of the uncritical assumption so prevalent in our culture, most of us do not trust experience, and have the feeling that there is some objective litmus test of what is true or false, valid or invalid. One of the more common forms of prejudice against women, for example, is the assertion that “they are too subjective; they rely too much on experience and intuition.” The uncritical assumption derives from the same theory of knowledge that Macmurray decries as the source of the dualism that both pervades our culture and threatens to destroy it.51 do not know whether Macmurray knew of American pragmatism, but at this point he and Smith dovetail nicely. When I shake your hand, I encounter you.” (Barry, 2004, p. 22)
Go to annotation “Experiences are not episodic or unrelated. My experience of seeing a tree, for example, involves an ? encounter with a real tree at a particular season of the year, my past 4 experiences with trees, my state of mind and feeling this time, and 2 so forth. I am not a passive empty slate upon which the external world impinges. I am actively engaged in making sense of what 1 3 encounter. My world would be nothing but a confusion of discrete sense impressions if I did not organize them into a coherent pattern, and the organizing capacity is the result not only of innate structure, but also of what I have learned over my lifetime” (Barry, 2004, p. 22)
Go to annotation “In Smith’s terms: I encounter an object, and I am, at the same time, conscious both of the object and of my own operations. Experience thus includes all that I am conscious of now, where now is a temporal process, not a succession of unconnected instants. My experience depends both on the being that is encoun tered and on my own past history, my learned categories of apper ception, my desires, my purposes, my hopes and dreams” (Barry, 2004, p. 23)
Go to annotation “Any human experience, therefore, as the product of an encounter within the universe, has many dimensions. There is a physical dimension because we are physical beings in a physical universe. There is a biological dimension because we are biological beings in a biological universe. There are psychological and sociological dimensions because we approach any experience as a product of our psychological and sociological histories in the universe. We are not always aware of these dimensions of our experience, but they condition the experience nonetheless.” (Barry, 2004, p. 24)
Go to annotation “s there a religious dimension to human experience? If experi ence is encounter, the answer to this question turns on whether there is a God who is actually encountered, that is, who is imma nent in (as well as transcendent to) this universe, and on whether the person who encounters this God expects to encounter God, that is, is on the alert for God. The religious dimension of human expe rience is supplied by the believing and seeking person and by the Mystery encountered. For Christian believers any experience can have a religious dimension because they believe that God is not only transcendent to, but also immanent in, his created universe” (Barry, 2004, p. 25)
Go to annotation “In other words, any action of ours occurs within a universe that is one action of God. Hence, at every moment every human being encounters the Creator God, whose action the universe is. Whether we know it or not, God is ingredient in every human experience” (Barry, 2004, p. 25)
Go to annotation “Faith and experience mutually reinforce one another. If I did not believe in God, I would not experience him, although I might have to engage in some rationalizations to explain away some of my experiences. But because I believe in God, I discover in my experi ence more than what, at first blush, seemed to be there and name that mysterious “more” God. The experience reinforces my belief” (Barry, 2004, p. 26)
Go to annotation “Fit may tax our ingenuity to discern the presence of God in some experiences, but the difficulty should not blind us to the truth our faith teaches us” (Barry, 2004, p. 28)
Go to annotation “As noted earlier, when we encounter God through some historical medium, we do so not as a blank slate. The experience is colored not only by the nature of the medium, but also by all that we are at the time of the encounter, as well as by the conditions of the environ ment in which we live and move and have our being. Thus the weather, atmospheric conditions, the state of one’s health, one’s state of mind, one’s preoccupations, desires, expectations, whether one is alone or with others—all these influences and many more have a bearing on the experience. The very same experience that has a reli gious dimension has physical, biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural dimensions as well. Precisely because the encounter with God is multidimensional, Christians have always been cau tioned to be discerning.” (Barry, 2004, p. 29)
Go to annotation “When we speak of experiencing God, we use concrete, interper sonal language. We say things like this: “I felt as though God held me in his arms;” “God seemed like a light surrounding me;” “God said that he loved me.” Such language, which we must use in order to talk at all about God, makes it seem that God intervenes into the world to communicate with us. The tendency is to think of God as acting in the world from outside it. Many of our petitionary prayers, for example, ask God to do something to change our situation. We pray for rain during drought, for the healing of sick relatives, for a safe trip. In personal and communal prayer we ask God to be selfdisclosive to us. We want to hear, for example, words addressed to Israel such as “you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you” (Isa 43:4) spoken to us. And we take certain experiences as answers to our prayers. How are we to make theological sense of these faith experiences?” (Barry, 2004, p. 30)
Go to annotation “The Kingdom of God, as noted earlier, can be understood as what God intends for the one action which is the universe. God, in other words, is working out God’s intention of creating a universe where all human beings live in community with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and hence with one another. Whether we know it or not, whether we intend our actions to be in conformity with God’s one action or not, in this universe we encounter God’s intention and, in consequence, God at every moment of our existence, because we are part and parcel of the universe which is God’s one action” (Barry, 2004, p. 31)
Go to annotation “Let’s look at the same idea from another viewpoint. In Let This Mind Be In You25 Sebastian Moore leads readers to the conclusion that we can experience our creation and thus experience in absolute fashion how desirable we are. God’s desire for me makes me exist, indeed, makes me desirable. But God’s creative act is never done; if it were, we would not exist” (Barry, 2004, p. 32)
Go to annotation “God does not intervene from outside the world to make the encounter possible. God is always immanent in the world, because the world is God’s one action, just as in an analogous way I am immanent in my action. And just as I am not my action, but transcend it in some real way, so too, and a fortiori, God is not his action, but transcends it. God, we might conclude, is always calling us “beloved” and always drawing us into a dialogue of friendship and cooperation,” (Barry, 2004, p. 32)
Go to annotation “there is no experience of anything that is not at the same time an encounter with God. We may not and cannot always be aware that we are encountering God; hence, not every experience has a religious dimension for us. But, in principle, every human experience can have such a dimension, because God is always present and active in the universe which is God’s one action.” (Barry, 2004, p. 34)
Go to annotation “The arguments of Macmurray and Smith, taken together, give a at rationale for the major role of the spiritual director, namely, to help — n directees pay attention to their experience as the locus of their 5 encounter with God” (Barry, 2004, p. 35)
Go to annotation “If directors are not deeply interested in God, they might miss the experience of God that is going on in the ses sion itself in their haste to be “helpful” (Barry, 2004, p. 36)
Go to annotation “In order that an experience have a religious dimension two things are necessary: God who can be encountered directly and a person who is on the lookout for God.j” (Barry, 2004, p. 37)
Go to annotation “For the believer God is both transcendent to this universe and immanent in it. Because of God’s ) immanence, God is always encounterable. We are not, and cannot . % be always, aware of God, but we can, with the help of God’s grace, % F become more and more attuned to God’s presence through fidelity S to the kind of discernment entailed in the examen of consciousness” (Barry, 2004, p. 37)
Go to annotation “But do we, in practice, experience the Trinity? Rahner himself thought that most Christians were, at best, “modalists,” that is, people who quite unconsciously used the names Father, Son, Spirit indiscriminately for different modes of the one undifferentiated God.2” (Barry, 2004, p. 40)
Go to annotation “As long as we keep in mind that the three Persons are not three beings, we can say that the Trinity is the perfect community where nothing is lacking. These reflections should put an end to the romantic, but ultimately heretical, notion that God created the uni verse because of loneliness. Precisely because God is the perfect community, God had no need to create anything else. God creates the universe for no other motive than God’s own gratuitous and unfathomable love. It is as if the three Persons said to one another: “Our life together is so good; why don’t we create a universe where we can invite others to share it.“” (Barry, 2004, p. 44)
Go to annotation “But we also believe that we are divinized (a favorite term of the Greek Fathers), brought into the community of the Trinity by the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts” (Barry, 2004, p. 45)
Go to annotation “ODonnell argues for a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer. Thus, in a mysterious fashion we participate in the community life of God by participating in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. We participate in the rela tion of love which binds Father and Son together, the Spirit of God.” (Barry, 2004, p. 46)
Go to annotation “Finally, because the Spirit does dwell in our hearts, the spiritual journey is “not only a restless striving toward God,” but can also provide times of rest in the embrace of God.14 But such “rest” can only come through surrender to the unique mission God has for each of us, which requires openness to the develop ment of our relationship with God and discernment” (Barry, 2004, p. 46)
Go to annotation “Moreover, all human relationships are problematic; even in those in which positive motivation dominates, unintegrated fear is also present and can break out in unintended behavior that is damaging to the relationship. How often it happens that we hurt close friends by questioning their motives or by jealousy, and we wonder where these surprising outbursts come from. All of us har bor fears for ourselves that are unintegrated into our positive moti vation toward those we love.” (Barry, 2004, p. 48)
Go to annotation “Here, love is the positive that includes and is constituted by its neg ative, fear. Love is for the other; fear is for the self. When fear pre dominates, I withdraw from love of the other into myself. In all human relationships some fear for oneself constitutes love for the other precisely because we all know that the loved other can fail us, can leave us, can die. In a fully realized personal relationship where love predominates, the Other is the positive that includes and is constituted by its negative, the “I.” Thus Macmurray can say, as we will presently see, that the ideal of the personal is a world where everyone cares for everyone else and no one cares for him/herself.” (Barry, 2004, p. 48)
Go to annotation “Heterocentric motivation means that love for the other dominates and subordinates fear for oneself. Such heterocentric motivation, if it is fully positive, must, however, be inclusive of all those with whom the person is in relation. If I am positively motivated toward you alone, then I must fear all others with whom we are related and, in the end, fear that you will join them and leave me. Fear will predominate over love. The argument can be repeated for groups of two, three, and so on. “We can there fore,” says Macmurray “formulate the inherent ideal of the personal. It is a universal community of persons in which each cares for all the others and no one cares for himself. “T” (Barry, 2004, p. 49)
Go to annotation “The three attitudes (heterocentrie, submissive, or aggressive) lead to three different modes of apperception, or typical ways of perceiv ing the world, especially the personal world. The heterocentric atti tude leads a person to have positive expectations of others; the world of persons is expected to be a world where mutuality obtains. A predominantly egocentric attitude leads a person to negative” (Barry, 2004, p. 50)
Go to annotation “expectations of others. The submissive attitude expects a world where conformity is demanded; the aggressive attitude expects a world where power talk” (Barry, 2004, p. 51)
Go to annotation “If fear of the other is the predomi nant motivation, the members will have to work out ways of living and working together that protect against what is feared. Where the prevailing attitude is submissive, the society will develop ways of ensuring conformity without seeming to be coercive; “good form,” “the way we do things,” become the norms of behavior. Where the prevailing attitude is aggressive, the society will develop ways of ensuring the rights of all so that power does not get out of hand; law is the means, and obedience to it becomes the norm of behavior.1” (Barry, 2004, p. 51)
Go to annotation “A community, however, is a unity of persons as persons. It cannot be defined in junctional terms, by relation to a common purpose. It is not organic in structure, and cannot be constituted or main tained by organization, but only by the motives which sustain the personal relations of its members. It is constituted and maintained by a mutual aJfection” (Barry, 2004, p. 52)
Go to annotation “Community means friendship; its primary bond is the mutual love of its members, not some ulterior purpose” (Barry, 2004, p. 52)
Go to annotation “tion of the Lord. Of course, because they love one another and that love is outgoing, they may together decide to do any or all of these other things. Indeed, such “works” demonstrate their love or flow from their love, but they do not constitute them a community” (Barry, 2004, p. 53)
Go to annotation “our universe flows from the love of the Trinity, but does not constitute the community of the Trinity” (Barry, 2004, p. 53)
Go to annotation “If the individuals in a “community” fear one another more than they love one another, are they not in the position of the blind leading the blind in their “apostolic” work?” (Barry, 2004, p. 55)
Go to annotation “will attract followers in direct proportion to their approximation to being friends in the Lord.” (Barry, 2004, p. 56)
Go to annotation “TWhile we must not let the voice of sin drown out the whispers of hope, we need to recognize, with Macmurray, that personal relationships are problematic because in all of us there is uninte grated fear. Thus, in all of us who hope to be part of a commu nity of friends there is the possibility of the dominance of egocentric motivation and defensive behavior. Indeed, an honest look at most of what passes for Christian “community” would force us to admit that, in Macmurray’s terms, they are not com munities, but societies, where “good form” or law rule behavior. We need to bend every effort to create the conditions that make real community possible.” (Barry, 2004, p. 56)
Go to annotation “The danger of becoming such a national religion lies close to hand for all of us who profess Christian faith when patriotism holds the upper hand” (Barry, 2004, p. 56)
Go to annotation “We cannot attain the deepest desire of our hearts, union with the Triune God, apart from human community, and that human community has to be universally inclusive, at least in intention. So the church is absolutely necessary for our salvation. But, unfortunately because of unintegrated fears in all their members, every real church is only a pale image of the ideal church, the Kingdom of God. Still, the churches, for all their imperfections, do keep alive the message of Jesus and thus do keep before all of us the dream of God.25” (Barry, 2004, p. 57)
Go to annotation “25. In a Lenten series of talks on the BBC in 1964, John Macmurray showed that for Jesus “fear” is the opposite of “faith.” Macmurray argues forcefully that Jesus’ message was never so critically needed for our world as at present. And, he noted, for all their obvious imperfections, the Christian churches are moving toward unity. But the unity must be “a free unity in a bond of trust and affection, through which fear is overcome. It must give us a church which is not on the defensive and has learned how to exist not for its members, but for the world.” To Save from Fear (Philadelphia: Wider Quaker Fellowship, 1990), 12” (Barry, 2004, p. 58)
Go to annotation “But if fear is the root of all evil in the world, religion’s role is the overcoming of fear. The overcoming of fear, however, cannot be illusory. Religion must not become the opium of the people.” (Barry, 2004, p. 59)
Go to annotation “It is the experience of wholeness that allows one to know brokenness, the experience of being loved and lovely that precedes the experience of sinfulness, the experience of enjoyment and oneness with God that enables a person to see the present state of self and world as a fall from grace. Without such an experience of God’s primordial love and care, a person remains rooted in a distant, perhaps scrupulous, perhaps resentful, relationship with God” (Barry, 2004, p. 62)
Go to annotation “At this stage, also, people may experience the pervasiveness of sin and sinful structures in our world and in themselves. If personal sinfulness can seem so intractable, rendering us almost despairing of a conversion of heart, how much more powerless we feel before the enormous social, political, and economic problems we face today. It sometimes seems better not to read the newspaper or to watch the news on television. Darkness threatens to overcome the light. Consumerism, racism, nationalistic prejudices, the arms race—these cultural and social forces seem to rule us and our world. In our present world and church, the experience of being freed from the tyranny of sin must include a relative freedom from the overpowering sense of being trapped by these dark forces. With St. John, we must come to the felt conclusion that the light has not been, and will never be, overcome by the darkness (John 1:5), that, This experience of radical freedom from the fear that oneself and one’s world have been rejected by God shifts a person’s focus away from the self and toward the Other. Of course, fear does not entirely disappear, but it becomes integrated under the more powerful dynamism of love. People who are ready and willing are led into the dynamic of a developing relationship with Jesus. They want to know Jesus better, to know his values, his dreams, his vision, his loves and hates, in order to love him more and follow him more in fact, our fears are illusory°” (Barry, 2004, p. 65)
Go to annotation “A very deep experience of the Lord’s forgiving love, for example, may not, and usually does not, touch every aspect of the person. Later in life a new dimension of sinful ness may be uncovered that can call into question the growth in relationship that has gone on. New life crises can also shatter a sense of security and bring on old fears of God. Such “regressions” hap pen frequently to all of us. But if the original conversion formed a solid base, the person will, with relative ease, be able to return to the earlier level of relationship” (Barry, 2004, p. 67)
Go to annotation “forces that impel human beings to abuse and torture the innocent. There is nothing more opposite God than such evil” (Barry, 2004, p. 68)
Go to annotation “The paradoxical truth is that we can only have ourselves if we acknowledge the truth of ourselves, can only be ourselves if we sur render ourselves to the Mystery we call God.” (Barry, 2004, p. 70)
Go to annotation “Once again we come to the realization that we human beings have a very limited role to play in the unfolding of the one action of God which is the universe, namely to accept the call to communion with the Trinity and with one another without earning our way. This is a hard saying, indeed, for our egos. Yet it is really for our peace” (Barry, 2004, p. 71)
Go to annotation “Whatever the source, fear keeps us in either subservient or antagonistic relations with one another. If we do form bonds of com munity with some people, the fear shows itself in our attempts to make the community exclusive, “us and not them.” Only perfect love casts out fear, as the First Letter ofJohn says, and our peace lies in attaining that perfect love, or at least in moving toward it. That perfect love is the will of God. Hence, the ultimate happiness of each individual resides in trying to align him- or herself with this will of God” (Barry, 2004, p. 73)
Go to annotation “‘Based on our analysis thus far, fear is the culprit that keeps us out of tune, because fear motivates defensive thinking and action. When I am more dominated by fear than by love, for example, my attitude toward the world and toward others is egocentric.” (Barry, 2004, p. 73)
Go to annotation “The paradox is that the more I am governed by fear for myself and, therefore, the more helpless and vulnerable 1 feel, the more I think that I must and can control my own destiny.” (Barry, 2004, p. 74)
Go to annotation “Macmurray came to see that the crisis of the Western world could be traced to the underdevelopment of our affective potential. He argued cogently in a series of talks on the BBC in 1930 and 1932” (Barry, 2004, p. 74)
Go to annotation “And Macmurray believed, contrary to the tradition of the Western world, that feeling is more important than thought” (Barry, 2004, p. 75)
Go to annotation “want to do with it. So we are beginning to be afraid of the work of our hands. That is the modern dilemma.3” (Barry, 2004, p. 75)
Go to annotation “We Christians believe that God continually creates the world we inhabit in order to draw all persons and things into union with the interpersonal life of God. On the basis of this belief about the real ity of our world, those who do not believe this are irrational in that their minds are not in tune with reality. Moreover, those who do not at least try to attune their own actions with God’s one action are act ing irrationally.” (Barry, 2004, p. 76)
Go to annotation “when I am out of tune with the one action of God, when I am acting predominantly out of fear for myself rather than out of love for others, I experience the action of God as a rasp ing of my spirit, as it were, as a sting of conscience in my good moments, a sting I try to anesthetize as much as possible in my bad moments,” (Barry, 2004, p. 77)
Go to annotation “Gods will for each of us is not utilitarian; that is, God does not use us for God’s own purposes.13 We are not means to God’s end. Rather, if we were able to be perfectly attuned to God’s one action, we would be perfectly happy and would also be co-creators of this one action which intends a community of lovers. To the extent that we are in tune, to that extent we are happy and fulfilled and co-cre ators of that community” (Barry, 2004, p. 80)
Go to annotation “If I want to attune my actions and intentions with God’s one action and intention, then I must discipline my heart to hear what God’s inten tion is, or rather, I must let my heart be disciplined to hear how my actions fit into God’s one action” (Barry, 2004, p. 82)
Go to annotation “The wisdom necessary for discernment requires an acceptance of the present environment as the one and only theater for my action” (Barry, 2004, p. 85)
Go to annotation “% fear often predom inates in relationships between individuals, how much more does it operate in groups and between groups. Moreover, individuals and groups feel more and more powerless to change the conditions of their lives. The power of the state, of the military-industrial com plex, and of multinational corporations seems overwhelming. Economic, political, and social structures seem too complicated and intricate to be changed. If we do not believe in the possibility of effecting change, we will not group together to try to discern communally” (Barry, 2004, p. 86)
Go to annotation “That Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts can be likened to a tun ing fork set to the music of God’s action. We can become attuned to the one action by becoming more and more aware of the tone played in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Individually we can attune our actions to that pitch and tone, and by sharing our experience we can become more attuned to the whole range of the music of God’s one action.” (Barry, 2004, p. 87)
Go to annotation “God desires a religious community of shared experience of God’s own inner life. Admittedly, we are speaking of an ideal, but it is an ideal God wants for us and enables, if we are willing to let God do so. To move toward this ideal, we must let the Holy Spirit help us to subordinate our fears to love” (Barry, 2004, p. 92)
Go to annotation “Obviously ordination does not automatically give one the kind of gifts needed to be a spiritual director.” (Barry, 2004, p. 94)
Go to annotation “If all ministry in the church has as its ultimate aim to facilitate the development of community relationships with the Trinity, and thus with one another, then we need to take seriously the words ofJesus: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?.. .You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Luke 6:39-42). Applied to the present topic, Jesus’ words translate into a command to ministering people to work on their own rela tionship with God before they try to help others.” (Barry, 2004, p. 96)
Go to annotation “Spiritual directors take it as their central task to help people to develop their relationship with God and to live out the conse quences of that relationship, as we have repeatedly stated. They enter into a deep relationship with those they direct in order to serve the latters’ relationships with God.” (Barry, 2004, p. 98)
Go to annotation “(It should be noted that ministers, spiritual directors, and supervisors do not create the relationship with God; they help people to develop a relationship that already exists because God intends it.” (Barry, 2004, p. 100)
Go to annotation “The training of ministers has been pervaded by the insights of psychiatry psychology and social work. Ministry has been enhanced greatly by these insights and training procedures. If, however, we fail to move beyond psychology and into the heart of ministry itself in our ministerial training programs, we will, I believe, fail to help aspiring ministers to remove the plank from their own eyes, with the consequence of ministerial malpractice” (Barry, 2004, p. 100)
Go to annotation “Spiritual directors who trust only themselves and their own relationship with God, who do not seek spiritual direction or supervision for themselves, can do a lot of harm. Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware (even if there is no fee for direction).^” (Barry, 2004, p. 103)
Go to annotation “God works continually to convince each one of us that our real happiness and consolation lies in embracing God’s intention or dream. Moreover, God wants us to create institutions and structures and laws that will make this community life more possible for all persons” (Barry, 2004, p. 106)
Annotations
Imported: 2025-02-14 11:34 am
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The Practice of Spiritual Direction,2 which I coauthored with William J. Connolly, took a particular stance on the purpose of spiritual direction that many have found helpful.
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Moreover, experience itself, quite apart from whether we can _ have an experience of God, seems problematic to many people. — Experience seems, by its very nature, a purely subjective thing. Yet . spiritual direction focuses on experience and expects that people 49 will be able to encounter God thereJ
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Spiritual direction, as a form of pastoral counseling, necessarily focuses on the experience of the individual. Such a focus can lead and, indeed, has led to the development of an individualistic spirituality. Moreover, because spiritual direction, like many of the modem “talk ing” therapies, has developed among the relatively well-educated, it has seemed removed from the cares and concerns of ordinary people. In fact, the tendency of much modem pastoral and psychological counseling has been to concentrate on the more privileged members of society
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Reflection on our experience reveals the mysterious presence of God, who is always acting to draw us into community with the L Trinity and thus with one another; this community is the Kingdom * s F of God, and its bond is the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts.
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he spiritual life and the practice of spiritual direction assume that God acts in the world and can be experi enced in the world
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John Macmurray, the Scottish philosopher who died in 1976, came to the conclusion that modern philosophy had started down a blind alley when it accepted Descartes’ dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” as the foundation stone for the knowledge of reality and thus of any system of philosophy. With such a starting point, Kant’s critique is virtually unassailable.
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Sn philoso phy itself the dead end is agnosticism or atheism. If my primary knowledge is of myself as thinker, then I have no immediate knowl edge of anything outside myself. I have to argue to the existence of the outside world, and any argument one uses, as Kant has shown, is problematic. If the very existence of a world outside myself is problematic, the existence of God is even more problematic
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Macmurray distinguishes an event from an action. An event is simply what happens. A hurricane, for example, and an automobile accident are events. The writing of this chapter is an action. Every event has a cause; every action has a reason or intentionj
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As an alternative to Descartes’ starting-point, Macmurray pro poses that philosophy begin with what is primary in our experience; we are not primarily thinkers, we are doers, but knowing doers, that is, agents. Thus, philosophy begins with “I do” rather than with “I think.” Action includes knowledge: “To do, and to know that I do, are two aspects of one and the same experience This knowledge is absolute and necessary. It is not, however, knowledge of an object but what we may call ‘knowledge in action,’”4 that is, the unreflective, primary knowledge-of any experience of action. When I act, I know that I am acting and what I intend. Action is the actualizing of a possibility, the determining of a future. Hence, the possibility of action implies free will. “To deny free-will is to deny the possibility of action.. ..That I am free is an immediate implication of the ‘I do’; and to deny freedom is to assert that no one ever does anything, that no one is capable even of thinking or observing. “What is actual ized when I act is the past, and as such (i.e., as past) it is completely determined. In other words, the past cannot be undone; I am not free with regard to the past. But the future, precisely as future, is not yet determined; it is something to be determined by action. Thus, the condition of possibility for action is my freedom
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When I act, I know that I exist, and I also know that what is not “1” (which Macmurray calls “the Other”) exists. I do not have to rea son to the knowledge of my own and the world’s existence. When I shake your hand, for example, I am absolutely certain (I know) that you and I exist. In action I encounter you)
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Macmurray believes that the personal must be explained on its own grounds. A new pattern must be dis covered by reflection on human activity itself. This pattern he calls the “form of the personal /’J
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’Take action as the positive. Any action is intentional. An event, on the contrary, is not intentional; it just happens. Thus event is the negative of action. Yet no action can occur in the absence of events because any action includes events (e.g., muscular contractions, molecular activity). But since with out these events no action would take place, any action is consti tuted by these events. Thus any action includes and is constituted by events, the negative of action. Another example comes from the dichotomy between thought and action. Again, action is the posi tive, since thought is defined as the negative of action. When I am just thinking, I withdraw from action. But when I act, I am also thinking. In fact, without thought I cannot act, since action is defined as intentional. As I act, I know what I intend to do. Thus, any action (the positive) includes and is constituted by thought (the negative).
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Because we really are agents, the future of God’s action is not determined, since only the past is completely determined. So in some mysterious way God’s action depends on us. Our faith tells us that God’s intention will not ultimately be thwarted—as my intention in writing this book may be thwarted both by my own inadequacy and by the actions of other agents. At the same time our faith and our experience tell us that we really are free agents, not pawns in the great chess game of Creation. If our actions are truly free, then, again in some mysterious fashion, God’s one action includes them and adjusts to them in order to attain God’s intention^
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It seems to me that God’s immensity is immeasurably enhanced if we under stand God as one who can attain God’s one intention for the world when that one action includes free choices by human agents that seem inimical to God’s intention. In other words, we reflect on our greatest gift, that which makes us humans at all, namely, our capac ity for action, and apply it analogously to God. If we knew the future, it would already be determined; hence, we would not be free. It is not an imperfection not to know the future; it is the con dition of freedom
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Gods one action will be attained because God is God. How those who willfully refuse to be brought into friendship with God, into God’s family, are included in God’s one action is not for us to know. What we do know, in faith, is that no created being is excluded from the one action which is this world.
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American philosopher John E. Smith
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Because of the uncritical assumption so prevalent in our culture, most of us do not trust experience, and have the feeling that there is some objective litmus test of what is true or false, valid or invalid. One of the more common forms of prejudice against women, for example, is the assertion that “they are too subjective; they rely too much on experience and intuition.” The uncritical assumption derives from the same theory of knowledge that Macmurray decries as the source of the dualism that both pervades our culture and threatens to destroy it.51 do not know whether Macmurray knew of American pragmatism, but at this point he and Smith dovetail nicely. When I shake your hand, I encounter you.
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Experiences are not episodic or unrelated. My experience of seeing a tree, for example, involves an ? encounter with a real tree at a particular season of the year, my past 4 experiences with trees, my state of mind and feeling this time, and 2 so forth. I am not a passive empty slate upon which the external world impinges. I am actively engaged in making sense of what 1 3 encounter. My world would be nothing but a confusion of discrete sense impressions if I did not organize them into a coherent pattern, and the organizing capacity is the result not only of innate structure, but also of what I have learned over my lifetime
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In Smith’s terms: I encounter an object, and I am, at the same time, conscious both of the object and of my own operations. Experience thus includes all that I am conscious of now, where now is a temporal process, not a succession of unconnected instants. My experience depends both on the being that is encoun tered and on my own past history, my learned categories of apper ception, my desires, my purposes, my hopes and dreams
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Any human experience, therefore, as the product of an encounter within the universe, has many dimensions. There is a physical dimension because we are physical beings in a physical universe. There is a biological dimension because we are biological beings in a biological universe. There are psychological and sociological dimensions because we approach any experience as a product of our psychological and sociological histories in the universe. We are not always aware of these dimensions of our experience, but they condition the experience nonetheless.
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s there a religious dimension to human experience? If experi ence is encounter, the answer to this question turns on whether there is a God who is actually encountered, that is, who is imma nent in (as well as transcendent to) this universe, and on whether the person who encounters this God expects to encounter God, that is, is on the alert for God. The religious dimension of human expe rience is supplied by the believing and seeking person and by the Mystery encountered. For Christian believers any experience can have a religious dimension because they believe that God is not only transcendent to, but also immanent in, his created universe
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In other words, any action of ours occurs within a universe that is one action of God. Hence, at every moment every human being encounters the Creator God, whose action the universe is. Whether we know it or not, God is ingredient in every human experience
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Faith and experience mutually reinforce one another. If I did not believe in God, I would not experience him, although I might have to engage in some rationalizations to explain away some of my experiences. But because I believe in God, I discover in my experi ence more than what, at first blush, seemed to be there and name that mysterious “more” God. The experience reinforces my belief
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Fit may tax our ingenuity to discern the presence of God in some experiences, but the difficulty should not blind us to the truth our faith teaches us
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As noted earlier, when we encounter God through some historical medium, we do so not as a blank slate. The experience is colored not only by the nature of the medium, but also by all that we are at the time of the encounter, as well as by the conditions of the environ ment in which we live and move and have our being. Thus the weather, atmospheric conditions, the state of one’s health, one’s state of mind, one’s preoccupations, desires, expectations, whether one is alone or with others—all these influences and many more have a bearing on the experience. The very same experience that has a reli gious dimension has physical, biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural dimensions as well. Precisely because the encounter with God is multidimensional, Christians have always been cau tioned to be discerning.
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When we speak of experiencing God, we use concrete, interper sonal language. We say things like this: “I felt as though God held me in his arms;” “God seemed like a light surrounding me;” “God said that he loved me.” Such language, which we must use in order to talk at all about God, makes it seem that God intervenes into the world to communicate with us. The tendency is to think of God as acting in the world from outside it. Many of our petitionary prayers, for example, ask God to do something to change our situation. We pray for rain during drought, for the healing of sick relatives, for a safe trip. In personal and communal prayer we ask God to be selfdisclosive to us. We want to hear, for example, words addressed to Israel such as “you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you” (Isa 43:4) spoken to us. And we take certain experiences as answers to our prayers. How are we to make theological sense of these faith experiences?
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The Kingdom of God, as noted earlier, can be understood as what God intends for the one action which is the universe. God, in other words, is working out God’s intention of creating a universe where all human beings live in community with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and hence with one another. Whether we know it or not, whether we intend our actions to be in conformity with God’s one action or not, in this universe we encounter God’s intention and, in consequence, God at every moment of our existence, because we are part and parcel of the universe which is God’s one action
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Let’s look at the same idea from another viewpoint. In Let This Mind Be In You25 Sebastian Moore leads readers to the conclusion that we can experience our creation and thus experience in absolute fashion how desirable we are. God’s desire for me makes me exist, indeed, makes me desirable. But God’s creative act is never done; if it were, we would not exist
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God does not intervene from outside the world to make the encounter possible. God is always immanent in the world, because the world is God’s one action, just as in an analogous way I am immanent in my action. And just as I am not my action, but transcend it in some real way, so too, and a fortiori, God is not his action, but transcends it. God, we might conclude, is always calling us “beloved” and always drawing us into a dialogue of friendship and cooperation,
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there is no experience of anything that is not at the same time an encounter with God. We may not and cannot always be aware that we are encountering God; hence, not every experience has a religious dimension for us. But, in principle, every human experience can have such a dimension, because God is always present and active in the universe which is God’s one action.
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The arguments of Macmurray and Smith, taken together, give a at rationale for the major role of the spiritual director, namely, to help — n directees pay attention to their experience as the locus of their 5 encounter with God
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If directors are not deeply interested in God, they might miss the experience of God that is going on in the ses sion itself in their haste to be “helpful
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In order that an experience have a religious dimension two things are necessary: God who can be encountered directly and a person who is on the lookout for God.j
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For the believer God is both transcendent to this universe and immanent in it. Because of God’s ) immanence, God is always encounterable. We are not, and cannot . % be always, aware of God, but we can, with the help of God’s grace, % F become more and more attuned to God’s presence through fidelity S to the kind of discernment entailed in the examen of consciousness
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But do we, in practice, experience the Trinity? Rahner himself thought that most Christians were, at best, “modalists,” that is, people who quite unconsciously used the names Father, Son, Spirit indiscriminately for different modes of the one undifferentiated God.2
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As long as we keep in mind that the three Persons are not three beings, we can say that the Trinity is the perfect community where nothing is lacking. These reflections should put an end to the romantic, but ultimately heretical, notion that God created the uni verse because of loneliness. Precisely because God is the perfect community, God had no need to create anything else. God creates the universe for no other motive than God’s own gratuitous and unfathomable love. It is as if the three Persons said to one another: “Our life together is so good; why don’t we create a universe where we can invite others to share it.”
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But we also believe that we are divinized (a favorite term of the Greek Fathers), brought into the community of the Trinity by the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts
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ODonnell argues for a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer. Thus, in a mysterious fashion we participate in the community life of God by participating in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. We participate in the rela tion of love which binds Father and Son together, the Spirit of God.
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Finally, because the Spirit does dwell in our hearts, the spiritual journey is “not only a restless striving toward God,” but can also provide times of rest in the embrace of God.14 But such “rest” can only come through surrender to the unique mission God has for each of us, which requires openness to the develop ment of our relationship with God and discernment
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Moreover, all human relationships are problematic; even in those in which positive motivation dominates, unintegrated fear is also present and can break out in unintended behavior that is damaging to the relationship. How often it happens that we hurt close friends by questioning their motives or by jealousy, and we wonder where these surprising outbursts come from. All of us har bor fears for ourselves that are unintegrated into our positive moti vation toward those we love.
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Here, love is the positive that includes and is constituted by its neg ative, fear. Love is for the other; fear is for the self. When fear pre dominates, I withdraw from love of the other into myself. In all human relationships some fear for oneself constitutes love for the other precisely because we all know that the loved other can fail us, can leave us, can die. In a fully realized personal relationship where love predominates, the Other is the positive that includes and is constituted by its negative, the “I.” Thus Macmurray can say, as we will presently see, that the ideal of the personal is a world where everyone cares for everyone else and no one cares for him/herself.
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Heterocentric motivation means that love for the other dominates and subordinates fear for oneself. Such heterocentric motivation, if it is fully positive, must, however, be inclusive of all those with whom the person is in relation. If I am positively motivated toward you alone, then I must fear all others with whom we are related and, in the end, fear that you will join them and leave me. Fear will predominate over love. The argument can be repeated for groups of two, three, and so on. “We can there fore,” says Macmurray “formulate the inherent ideal of the personal. It is a universal community of persons in which each cares for all the others and no one cares for himself. “T
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The three attitudes (heterocentrie, submissive, or aggressive) lead to three different modes of apperception, or typical ways of perceiv ing the world, especially the personal world. The heterocentric atti tude leads a person to have positive expectations of others; the world of persons is expected to be a world where mutuality obtains. A predominantly egocentric attitude leads a person to negative
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expectations of others. The submissive attitude expects a world where conformity is demanded; the aggressive attitude expects a world where power talk
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If fear of the other is the predomi nant motivation, the members will have to work out ways of living and working together that protect against what is feared. Where the prevailing attitude is submissive, the society will develop ways of ensuring conformity without seeming to be coercive; “good form,” “the way we do things,” become the norms of behavior. Where the prevailing attitude is aggressive, the society will develop ways of ensuring the rights of all so that power does not get out of hand; law is the means, and obedience to it becomes the norm of behavior.1
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A community, however, is a unity of persons as persons. It cannot be defined in junctional terms, by relation to a common purpose. It is not organic in structure, and cannot be constituted or main tained by organization, but only by the motives which sustain the personal relations of its members. It is constituted and maintained by a mutual aJfection
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Community means friendship; its primary bond is the mutual love of its members, not some ulterior purpose
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tion of the Lord. Of course, because they love one another and that love is outgoing, they may together decide to do any or all of these other things. Indeed, such “works” demonstrate their love or flow from their love, but they do not constitute them a community
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our universe flows from the love of the Trinity, but does not constitute the community of the Trinity
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If the individuals in a “community” fear one another more than they love one another, are they not in the position of the blind leading the blind in their “apostolic” work?
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will attract followers in direct proportion to their approximation to being friends in the Lord.
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TWhile we must not let the voice of sin drown out the whispers of hope, we need to recognize, with Macmurray, that personal relationships are problematic because in all of us there is uninte grated fear. Thus, in all of us who hope to be part of a commu nity of friends there is the possibility of the dominance of egocentric motivation and defensive behavior. Indeed, an honest look at most of what passes for Christian “community” would force us to admit that, in Macmurray’s terms, they are not com munities, but societies, where “good form” or law rule behavior. We need to bend every effort to create the conditions that make real community possible.
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The danger of becoming such a national religion lies close to hand for all of us who profess Christian faith when patriotism holds the upper hand
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We cannot attain the deepest desire of our hearts, union with the Triune God, apart from human community, and that human community has to be universally inclusive, at least in intention. So the church is absolutely necessary for our salvation. But, unfortunately because of unintegrated fears in all their members, every real church is only a pale image of the ideal church, the Kingdom of God. Still, the churches, for all their imperfections, do keep alive the message of Jesus and thus do keep before all of us the dream of God.25
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25. In a Lenten series of talks on the BBC in 1964, John Macmurray showed that for Jesus “fear” is the opposite of “faith.” Macmurray argues forcefully that Jesus’ message was never so critically needed for our world as at present. And, he noted, for all their obvious imperfections, the Christian churches are moving toward unity. But the unity must be “a free unity in a bond of trust and affection, through which fear is overcome. It must give us a church which is not on the defensive and has learned how to exist not for its members, but for the world.” To Save from Fear (Philadelphia: Wider Quaker Fellowship, 1990), 12
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But if fear is the root of all evil in the world, religion’s role is the overcoming of fear. The overcoming of fear, however, cannot be illusory. Religion must not become the opium of the people.
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It is the experience of wholeness that allows one to know brokenness, the experience of being loved and lovely that precedes the experience of sinfulness, the experience of enjoyment and oneness with God that enables a person to see the present state of self and world as a fall from grace. Without such an experience of God’s primordial love and care, a person remains rooted in a distant, perhaps scrupulous, perhaps resentful, relationship with God
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At this stage, also, people may experience the pervasiveness of sin and sinful structures in our world and in themselves. If personal sinfulness can seem so intractable, rendering us almost despairing of a conversion of heart, how much more powerless we feel before the enormous social, political, and economic problems we face today. It sometimes seems better not to read the newspaper or to watch the news on television. Darkness threatens to overcome the light. Consumerism, racism, nationalistic prejudices, the arms race—these cultural and social forces seem to rule us and our world. In our present world and church, the experience of being freed from the tyranny of sin must include a relative freedom from the overpowering sense of being trapped by these dark forces. With St. John, we must come to the felt conclusion that the light has not been, and will never be, overcome by the darkness (John 1:5), that, This experience of radical freedom from the fear that oneself and one’s world have been rejected by God shifts a person’s focus away from the self and toward the Other. Of course, fear does not entirely disappear, but it becomes integrated under the more powerful dynamism of love. People who are ready and willing are led into the dynamic of a developing relationship with Jesus. They want to know Jesus better, to know his values, his dreams, his vision, his loves and hates, in order to love him more and follow him more in fact, our fears are illusory°
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A very deep experience of the Lord’s forgiving love, for example, may not, and usually does not, touch every aspect of the person. Later in life a new dimension of sinful ness may be uncovered that can call into question the growth in relationship that has gone on. New life crises can also shatter a sense of security and bring on old fears of God. Such “regressions” hap pen frequently to all of us. But if the original conversion formed a solid base, the person will, with relative ease, be able to return to the earlier level of relationship
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forces that impel human beings to abuse and torture the innocent. There is nothing more opposite God than such evil
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The paradoxical truth is that we can only have ourselves if we acknowledge the truth of ourselves, can only be ourselves if we sur render ourselves to the Mystery we call God.
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Once again we come to the realization that we human beings have a very limited role to play in the unfolding of the one action of God which is the universe, namely to accept the call to communion with the Trinity and with one another without earning our way. This is a hard saying, indeed, for our egos. Yet it is really for our peace
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Whatever the source, fear keeps us in either subservient or antagonistic relations with one another. If we do form bonds of com munity with some people, the fear shows itself in our attempts to make the community exclusive, “us and not them.” Only perfect love casts out fear, as the First Letter ofJohn says, and our peace lies in attaining that perfect love, or at least in moving toward it. That perfect love is the will of God. Hence, the ultimate happiness of each individual resides in trying to align him- or herself with this will of God
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‘Based on our analysis thus far, fear is the culprit that keeps us out of tune, because fear motivates defensive thinking and action. When I am more dominated by fear than by love, for example, my attitude toward the world and toward others is egocentric.
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The paradox is that the more I am governed by fear for myself and, therefore, the more helpless and vulnerable 1 feel, the more I think that I must and can control my own destiny.
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Macmurray came to see that the crisis of the Western world could be traced to the underdevelopment of our affective potential. He argued cogently in a series of talks on the BBC in 1930 and 1932
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And Macmurray believed, contrary to the tradition of the Western world, that feeling is more important than thought
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want to do with it. So we are beginning to be afraid of the work of our hands. That is the modern dilemma.3
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We Christians believe that God continually creates the world we inhabit in order to draw all persons and things into union with the interpersonal life of God. On the basis of this belief about the real ity of our world, those who do not believe this are irrational in that their minds are not in tune with reality. Moreover, those who do not at least try to attune their own actions with God’s one action are act ing irrationally.
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when I am out of tune with the one action of God, when I am acting predominantly out of fear for myself rather than out of love for others, I experience the action of God as a rasp ing of my spirit, as it were, as a sting of conscience in my good moments, a sting I try to anesthetize as much as possible in my bad moments,
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Gods will for each of us is not utilitarian; that is, God does not use us for God’s own purposes.13 We are not means to God’s end. Rather, if we were able to be perfectly attuned to God’s one action, we would be perfectly happy and would also be co-creators of this one action which intends a community of lovers. To the extent that we are in tune, to that extent we are happy and fulfilled and co-cre ators of that community
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If I want to attune my actions and intentions with God’s one action and intention, then I must discipline my heart to hear what God’s inten tion is, or rather, I must let my heart be disciplined to hear how my actions fit into God’s one action
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The wisdom necessary for discernment requires an acceptance of the present environment as the one and only theater for my action
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% fear often predom inates in relationships between individuals, how much more does it operate in groups and between groups. Moreover, individuals and groups feel more and more powerless to change the conditions of their lives. The power of the state, of the military-industrial com plex, and of multinational corporations seems overwhelming. Economic, political, and social structures seem too complicated and intricate to be changed. If we do not believe in the possibility of effecting change, we will not group together to try to discern communally
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That Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts can be likened to a tun ing fork set to the music of God’s action. We can become attuned to the one action by becoming more and more aware of the tone played in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Individually we can attune our actions to that pitch and tone, and by sharing our experience we can become more attuned to the whole range of the music of God’s one action.
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God desires a religious community of shared experience of God’s own inner life. Admittedly, we are speaking of an ideal, but it is an ideal God wants for us and enables, if we are willing to let God do so. To move toward this ideal, we must let the Holy Spirit help us to subordinate our fears to love
Pg.108
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Obviously ordination does not automatically give one the kind of gifts needed to be a spiritual director.
Pg.110
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If all ministry in the church has as its ultimate aim to facilitate the development of community relationships with the Trinity, and thus with one another, then we need to take seriously the words ofJesus: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?.. .You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Luke 6:39-42). Applied to the present topic, Jesus’ words translate into a command to ministering people to work on their own rela tionship with God before they try to help others.
Pg.112
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Spiritual directors take it as their central task to help people to develop their relationship with God and to live out the conse quences of that relationship, as we have repeatedly stated. They enter into a deep relationship with those they direct in order to serve the latters’ relationships with God.
Pg.114
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(It should be noted that ministers, spiritual directors, and supervisors do not create the relationship with God; they help people to develop a relationship that already exists because God intends it.
Pg.116
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The training of ministers has been pervaded by the insights of psychiatry psychology and social work. Ministry has been enhanced greatly by these insights and training procedures. If, however, we fail to move beyond psychology and into the heart of ministry itself in our ministerial training programs, we will, I believe, fail to help aspiring ministers to remove the plank from their own eyes, with the consequence of ministerial malpractice
Pg.116
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Spiritual directors who trust only themselves and their own relationship with God, who do not seek spiritual direction or supervision for themselves, can do a lot of harm. Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware (even if there is no fee for direction).^
Pg.119
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God works continually to convince each one of us that our real happiness and consolation lies in embracing God’s intention or dream. Moreover, God wants us to create institutions and structures and laws that will make this community life more possible for all persons
Pg.122
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