The Passivity of St. Joseph: He Gives to His Beloved in Their Sleep

“If the Lord does not build the city, in vain is your rising so early, your going so late to rest; for he gives to his beloved in their sleep.” My new statue of St. Joseph sleeping reminds me that his most important work happened in passivity: when he was asleep. Four times he received heavenly messages in his sleep. He was passive, at rest, unconscious, in-deliberate and inactive. Not the passivity of an inert rock; his passivity was attentive, sensitive, alert, receptive! He was a man of action: he did indeed take Mary as his wife; he did protect his family by flight into Egypt; he did return at the proper time and provide for and protect Mary and Jesus. But all this steadiness in strength, determination and protectiveness sprang from a prior receptive passivity in sleep. So we see vividly in the case of St. Joseph that the Lord does indeed give to his beloved in their sleep. God’s grace works independent of and prior to our initiative: like the planted seed that is growing quietly in the ground. God’s love is sovereign: our primary task is to be still, to be quiet, and to know that God is God. It is in that quiet and peace that we receive the seed, the Word, and it is then that we are moved to act, out of a fullness of love and the Holy Spirit. All fruitful, joyful activity springs from a prior passivity. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of rest...physical, emotional, mental spiritual. 12-steppers are vigilant against becoming hungry, angry, lonely, tired...HALT...which trigger their addiction. For me tired is the worst by far: if I let myself become fatigued, physically or emotionally, I become another, dark person. My absolute number one priority...before prayer or work or relationships...is to get my rest! But interiourly, a spirit of rest...of confidence, trust, peace, steadiness...is absolutely essential. The original sin was one of activism: rather than trusting and resting in God’s peace, Eve took the advice of the serpent and acted on her own initiative, and then seduced Adam into the same. We Americans are disastrously prone to shallow activism with our pragmatism, technology, meritocracy and aversion to contemplation. Our age is not vulnerable to a quietism of lethargy and presumption; rather ours is a restlessness of hyperactivity, consumption and empty entertainment. Our action will be joyful, peaceful, fruitful and beautiful to the extent that we learn to rest in the Lord.

A Spirituality of Feelings

If acceptance of a feeling is a profound, complex and immensely significant act, it is only the first step. Feelings do not come on their own but are always/already interiorly connected to other realities including: thoughts, habits or acts, memories, hopes, acts of the will and relationships. Imagine my boss gives me a dirty look and I become both sad and mad. The feeling is unavoidable and can only be objectively accepted and acknowledged. But immediately I am flooded with related thoughts:  "I am such an idiot; I do everything wrong; I will never amount to anything!" or "He is such an idiot; no wonder everyone hates him; he is a piece of garbage!" These thoughts must be separated from the initial feeling; they are already moving me beyond the feeling into an attitude of self-hatred or resentment. And so, while I accept the feeling I clearly and firmly reject the thought that follows it and almost seems to live in it. I might say: "I made a mistake and am only human and will learn from this" or "I know the boss is stressed and having family problems and I will accept this small injustice" or "Here comes my inferiority or anger problem; I will call my friend at the break and talk about it." So here we see the important role of things like cognitive therapy which addresses the thought process but leaves the feelings to move along on their own. The marvelous "spottings" method of Dr. Low's recovery method for nervous people is a remarkable case of early cognitive therapy in which the sufferer of anxiety learns to substitute objective for negative thoughts:  "This is distressing but not dangerous; humor is my best friend, temper my worst enemy." The power of positive thinking of Peale (in proper measure) finds its place here in the cognitive. My own favorite, from the Pentecostal tradition, is the "power of praise" by which the believer habitually gives thanks and praise to God in ALL things, even the catastrophic and tragic, in belief that "God works all things to the good of those who love Him." This habit of thought, practiced diligently, has revolutionary impact! The second reality that is deeply related to feeling is habit or act. For example, the frustrated child has already learned to express his anger by biting or throwing his food. This again is more than a feeling; it is an action. While the feeling of frustration cannot be avoided, the action must be stopped. Here we have the role of discipline, punishment (or "consequences" for the culturally correct), behavioral modification, asceticism, and "a program." So, the addict learns to pick up the phone and call his sponsor instead of going to the bar; the believer remains in prayer even when it feels empty and futile; the spouse re-affirms his fidelity even as he feels a chill. Memory is a third partner of emotion: a feeling normally recalls, however obscurely, memories:  the bosses dirty looks reminds me that my father never came to my games or always yelled at me from the stands. And so, a feeling needs to be scrutinized, especially when it is inordinately intense: am I responding to a memory? Here we see the role of classic psychoanalysis: identification of a hurt is not a full healing but it does bring some distance and an opening for healing and newness. In charismatic prayer we have here the "healing of memories" and in deliverance the prominent role of forgiveness of those who have hurt us.  The forth is the most important: hope. Every feeling brings with it a spiritual act of despair or hope: my sadness casts me into discouragement or moves me to consolation and encouragement. Hope, springing from faith, is the essential and quintessential human movement. At the ultimate and deepest level, (capital H) Hope in the supernatural sense is the only adequate antidote to death, tragedy and heartbreak. But even short of that, a natural human hope is the force that moves us forward through adversity and suffering towards the good. We see here that the greatest enemy of the human spirit is precisely despair. The deepest pain cannot destroy the human spirit; but despair can. At the core of every addiction and sin is a quiet act of despair: I am lonely, I will get high and watch porn. At the heart of every worthy human action is hope or prayer: I am lonely, I will volunteer at the soup kitchen. Every movement into truth and goodness is an implicit prayer, even when done by a cognitive atheist. And so the fifth element is already included in the act of hope or despair:  an act of the will. An emotion is an opportunity for an act of the will: my feeling is hurt; now I can choose to self-pity, to resent, to converse, to retaliate, to reconcile and eventually forgive. Lastly, feelings always occur in the context of relationships and so the feeling, the remembrance, the physical act, the movement of the will, the hope or despair...all enter somehow into a complex of relationships with family, friends, colleagues and God. And so, every feeling, even if covertly and implicitly, open up to influence from Another...or it doesn't. A feeling, then, must be accepted as it is, in its integrity. But a feeling is never just a feeling: it comes bound up with thought, habit, memory, will, hope, and relationship. It opens out into ever greater event, encounter, drama and promise.

A Psychology and an Ontology of Feelings

A sound psychology directs us to accept, acknowledge, own and experience our feelings. To deny, repress, ignore or flee an unwelcome feeling is ultimately destructive since it will re-emerge in a covert and dysfunctional manner. However, to "accept a feeling" is a deceptively subtle, mature, dense and difficult act. To say "I am angry" or "I am sad" is already to have a degree of interior peace so as to distance oneself, at least partially, from the feeling; it is to achieve an intellectual clarity and confidence about what is happening; it is to remain engaged and at the same time transcend the emotion. A profound and paradoxical relationship is established when I say "I am angry": the Self or the Soul is at once saying "I am angry; I am my anger; anger defines me" even as he is saying "I am able to distance myself from my anger; I am more than my anger; I can consider and understand my anger and make decisions about what to do with it." So: I am my anger even as I am more than my anger! This paradoxical relationship is rooted in the body-and-soul nature of the human person. I like to ask: Which is true: "I have a body" or "I am a body." Both are true to a degree; but neither are entirely true. The two mutually infuse each other and must be held in tension:  I am my body but I am greater than my body. I do not live in my body the way I wear a summer suit; but there is an indefinable, mysterious way in which I am more than my body. A similar dynamic is at work in the 12 steps of AA. By saying "I am Joe and I am an alcoholic" I am defining myself as an addict, as one afflicted with a condition impervious to acts of my will. But implicitly I am also confessing that I am more than this condition; that in acknowledging it, publicly, I am already starting to escape or transcend it. Implicitly, I am believing that "I" am more than this condition; that there is hope for deliverance even as my own will, on its own, is not able to free me. Similarly, in confession we say "Bless me Father, for I have sinned!" When the sinner says with the repentant thief "You Lord are innocent but I am guilty; remember me when you come into your kingdom," he identifies as a sinner but he is hoping that there is a Soul or a Self that is able, miraculously, to be separated from sin (if not by his own agency) and so he is confessing "I am more than my sin if you will have Mercy upon me." And so we see that the path to liberation from feelings, from addiction, from sin and even from death is Confession of the truth: "I am sad; and I am addicted; and I am sinful; and I am terrified of death! But I sense that I am more than that and I hope in your Mercy O Lord!"  (The next blog will be on the spirituality of feelings.)

Just Friends: Romance and Friendship

"Just friends!" my daughters would assure me, all through adolescence, when I would inquire about a male friend. Looking back, I think they were being honest. Something in my family's emotional DNA: we were for the most part, all (happily) delayed in the development of our romantic faculties. But we made up for lost time: at the end of college or soon after we all met someone, fell in love, married and lived (imperfectly but for the most part) happily ever after. This raises the question: when does a friendship become romance? Indeed, what is a romance? I will define it: a mutually exclusive, possessive relationship in which the lovers share and seek Joy through a union that is deep, intense and multi-leveled (emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical and social). Romance, ideally, is a movement into spousal or conjugal union, marriage. What distinguishes romance from friendship is its exclusive and possessive nature. Interiorly, what structures it is the act to seek:  to search for fulfillment in a union with my beloved.  In a romance, I look to my beloved...I seek...for a fullness of joy and satisfaction. Romance is a disastrously unstable relationship:  the higher the elation the deeper the eventual sadness. A crash is inevitable since the euphoria is a transient satisfaction of profound if unrecognized interior loneliness that the beloved can never fully quench. Yet, in the best of circumstance, when couched in an context of maturity, faith, virtue, family and fidelity, Romance can mature into patient, enduring, sacrificial and finally satisfying spousal union. But it must go through the dark night...and many stormy mornings, rainy afternoons, and freezing evenings. If the quality of Joy abounds in romance, it is equally true that all loves are structured by Joy. And so, there can be a romance-like quality to many a relationship which remains, nevertheless, a friendship. Feelings of delight and desire come and go like the breeze and the sunshine and are themselves not constitutive of romance. What is decisive is the "turning" and the "seeking" and the "looking" for happiness from the one who is loved. This definition helps clarify the foggy notion of emotional or psychological adultery. While physical adultery is clear, graphic and easily identifiable, the emotional is not. Yet, we can imagine a married person, a priest or religious who remains physically abstinent but is not genuinely faithful and chaste. But is not a feeling or emotion, however intense, that despoils the heart and soul. Rather, it is an interior act of the will, a looking toward the beloved in the manner of idolatry, a turning away from the spouse or the sacred vow. And so feelings of delight and desire will invade our ordinary friendships randomly, unwillingly, inevitably. They can charm, inspire, encourage and enlighten us! They can frustrate, embarrass, seduce, and demoralize us! In the agony and the ecstasy of romance, they are fruitful when they move us, in God's grace, to renew, deepen and intensify our abiding and fundamental fidelity: to spouse and family, to God,  to vocation and mission and to all our friendships. The Gospel announces that life is ultimately the Great Romance: of love between our Bridegroom and ourselves. Penultimately, romance eventuates in Calvary: some denoument of loss, sadness and tragedy. But this is a purifying movement into the Great Union of love. May all the agonies and ecstacies of love move us into intimacy with our Great Lover and purify us in all our loves!

Intimacy and Reverence

Every relationship...and Love in all its splendid forms...is a dance of intimacy and reverence. This is not exactly the same as closeness/distance although the two polarities are analogous and mutually infuse each other. Mysteriously, genuine intimacy with the other enhances reverence so that proper closeness elicits respect, esteem and even (with God) adoration. The human body...in its fragility, corruption, radiance and bi-sexuality... is the temple of intimacy and reverence. In its sickness it can repel us even as its pain elicits our compassion. In its beauty it can draw us into reverence, or into a false intimacy of use and disrespect. Pope Francis tells us is that we will be judged according to how close we become to all flesh. Clearly he is speaking of reverent intimacy, specifically with the flesh of those who suffer. Our Lord Jesus, in his newly-resurrected body (He is NOT a ghost or a spirit, but emphatically a body, albeit glorified...he shows his wounds, eats fish) pushes Mary Magdalen away ("do not grasp me") even as he draws the distant, skeptical Thomas close ("put your hands into my wounds"). In these contrasting encounters, we see Jesus protecting distance and reverence with the woman and overcoming distance and establishing intimacy with the man. This suggests that the feminine, especially the maternal, impulse is to enclose the Other in an improper closeness; while the masculine is to remain distant, autonomous and indifferent. Clearly, the female psyche is intrinsically open to and accepting of the other where the male ego is discrete, rigid and excluding. And yet, the opposite dynamic is common in the area of romance where the male attraction, insensitive and overwhelming, pushes past boundaries while the womanly instinct (where it has not been compromised by a culture of promiscuity) is to protect her inviolate, precious integrity. And so in romance there is a special responsibility for the woman to protect reverence as the crude masculine longing for a more physical and superficial intimacy requires discipline and correction. And then again, in other contexts the stronger emotional nature of the woman calls for moderation by the male mind with its higher capacity for distance, objectivity and sober judgement. The complexity, creativity, nuance, and fecundity of the the dance of intimacy/reverence, between man and woman but in all relationships, is endless and reflective of the Absolute Intimacy and Distance within the Three-In-One!

Movements of Love

There are five distinct, but interwoven, movements in every love: care, esteem, delight, companionship and pain. Care is the desire for the well-being and flourishing of the beloved; it is tenderness in the face of suffering, fragility, vulnerability, misery and preciousness. It is particularly pronounced in maternal and paternal love. Esteem is appreciation for the goodness, virtue and inherent value of the beloved. It includes reverence for the profound, mysterious dignity of the other and admiration for particular qualities of goodness such as kindness, courage, intelligence, faith, and compassion. It is particularly strong in filial love towards parents and those we admire including leaders, heroes and saints. Delight is the heart and soul of love: it includes approval but goes beyond the cognitive to a celebrating joy in the beauty of the beloved. And so we see that at his baptism and transfiguration, Jesus is the object of his Father's delight:  "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." By companionship (from the Latin: "to have bread together") we mean here that friends, family or lovers always share in Good and goods, Truth and truths beyond themselves: family and children, mission and vocation, Church and community. Genuine love always opens up beyond the immediate relationship and overflows fruitfully and generously into eventfulness and novelty. Lastly we must acknowledge the dimension of suffering and loss that inevitably characterizes love as we know it. Pain and grief are inevitable, even as they take a variety of forms: death, disappointment, unrequited love, and tragedy of various kinds. Such suffering becomes meaningful as sacrifice when it purifies, expresses and strengthens the love. Quintessentially we see this sacrifice in Jesus on the cross: in the physical, psychological and spiritual agony (including the feeling of abandonment by his Father) he forgives the repentant thief, he forgives his torturers, and he consoles his mother and disciple. In this world love cannot avoid suffering; but in the person of Jesus we see that all love with all its pain is already infused with the Delight of heaven.

Great Desire

Desire...the deep, abiding, insatiable, Capital-D Desire...not the fleeting desires which distract us from deep Desire...Desire! It soon becomes obvious to the reflective soul that no person or thing, no quantity of money or success or achievement or power...not even the greatest love affair or family...can finally satisfy the longing of the human heart! What is the meaning, purpose, destiny of this profound, unquenchable longing? This is The Big Question! And there are a limited number of answers. Let us consider four: Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist and Judaeo-Christian. Buddhism considers desire and suffering as illusory so it presents a path to enlightenment whereby the observant is relieved of both desire and pain into a state of serenity and unity. To an outsider, however, this is finally a negative, indeed nihilistic view of desire as ultimately futile. Hindu faith articulates the classic cyclical view, including reincarnation, in which life is an endless circle that returns always without a final purpose, resolution or end. The immortal soul is destined to return endlessly to earthly life like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Again, there is a futility to Deep Desire! Lastly, atheism in its classic forms (Freud, Marx, Nietzche) denies any final, ultimate meaning to life and counsels us to find limited, but ultimately despairing, consolation in small-letter loves and truths. (A word about agnosticism as not-knowing: this is a skeptical and often honest and humble posture that is finally unstable and is moving, if slowly, into Trust or Suspicion! It is no final resting place! ) By contrast with these nihilisms, Christian faith (and its relatives Judaism and Islam) is indeed Good News:  Desire is destined for super-abounding fulfillment beyond our wildest expectations! St. Augustine said it best: "Our hearts are restless until we rest in you O Lord!" We are created by an infinite Lover who desires (but does not need) us and infuses us with a desire for infinite Love...and we are destined to fulfill this desire...beyond our wildest imaginings! And so, our path is not to suppress or deny or flee desire, but to inflame it infinitely! Our task is not even to control Desire or desires in the way of moralism or stoicism! Quite the opposite, we are destined to enhance, deepen and strengthen Desire, and even our desires, into fire! And so, we need not fear frustration or futility or sadness or desire! We need only to intensify Deep Desire...and all the smaller desires that feed it: longing for love, meaning, achievement, safety, serenity, agency, intimacy, truth and beauty! And so our prayer can be:  "Inflame me with love for you O Lord; let this fire consume what is not of you; and purify all my loves!"