Henri Nouwen: Being the Beloved

"The Problem of Scientific 'Truth'"

I submit to you this quote from Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought by Erich Fromm. Chapter is The Problem of Scientific "Truth"

"Many psychologists and sociologists have a rather naive concept of the scientific method. Briefly speaking, it consists in the expectation that first one gathers facts, one puts these facts through modes of quantitative measurements--computers have made that extremely easy--and then one expects that as a result of these efforts one will arrive at a theory or at least a hypothesis. The further assumption then is that, as in an experiment in natural sciences, the truth of the theory depends on the possibility of the experiment being repeated by others, always with the same results. Problems which do not lend themselves to this kind of quantification and statistical approach are supposed to be of a nonscientific character and hence outside the field of scientific psychology. [...] Essential to this concept of the scientific method is the tacit assumption that the facts themselves produce the theory if only the proper method is employed and that the role of creative thinking by the observer is very small. What is required from him is the capacity to arrange a seemingly satisfactory experiment without starting with a theory of his own which he may prove or disprove in the course of the experiment."

"Be mindful of the purpose thou hast embraced, and set always before thee the image of the crucified."

Hmm...

Free-Writing September 23, 2011

JMJ

My Jesus. Right now I am full to bursting with intellectualism. With thoughts, with conflictedness, with plans. But more than all of that I find myself drawn and pulled to You. There have been so many times that all my busyness, all my activity, and all of my plans have drowned out that still quiet voice that I heard so loudly today in mass.

Again I had so many thoughts that I couldn't just shut them down and see what was happening at the altar. So I remembered the model. Child, daughter, spouse. And I focused on child, because I knew I was comfortable there, and I knew that I could at least stop my incessant mental exertion with that.

And so I saw what happened on the altar with eyes unclouded, with heart wide open. I saw it in a way I had never seen it before.

Will you be mine?

That was the question I saw, arrayed by most glorious love and sacrifice. The beauty of it was astounding, that this God, God of the universe, was asking this question.

Will you be mine?

I said yes, in my heart and mind, because really how can you look at that and not say yes. But later, all the thoughts came back to distract me. Each thought like a door leading away from the room of my heart where Jesus was, each thought a door that I closed behind me, each part of my life a different compartment.

I'm frightened. Not of Him, and not necessarily of the act of opening all these doors at once. I'm frightened to change. It may not be perfect, this set-up, but it is familiar. But that's the language of sin. “I sometimes think that the only thing we have control over is whether or not sin.” J said that. There can be an extreme apathy about sin—oh, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm weak, or lazy, or I just don't care, so I'm going to do it. “It;” sin.

I'm frightened even having all these doors open, instead of carefully leading Jesus into them, one by one, and quickly locking the doors behind us. I'm frightened that He wants me to give up my crutches. These are people that I lean on when I forget I'm supposed to be leaning on Him.

And after I spent so much time searching! So much time convinced I'd never find people who would love the identity that I so carefully constructed around the tiny, naked baby inside of me. Who loves baby M? Mama Mary, daddy Joseph, baby J. They are the family who can raise this soul child that I am into a daughter and a spouse.

But, I'm afraid. And I'll go in a circle again and say, I'm frightened, and what about those people, anyway?

I can hear an answer: they only love a shadow M. They shy away from unexpected light. They keep to the dark. Why allow them to keep you there, as well?

“A woman's heart should be so close to God that a man should have to seek Him in order to find her.”

If they can't love the light, then they should not be able to find me, because Christ is the light and I must be with Him.

Union with Christ, part of an ongoing Journey

When I got to mass early today, I will admit that I had trouble focusing at first. I found that I was easily distracted, kept getting annoyed by small noises, and couldn't find that “Ahhh,” moment where everything melts away because I'm in the presence of Christ.

Then I remembered a conversation about approaching Christ that I'd had the night before with T. I was recounting the intricacies of what stops me from feeling consoled by Christ, and she said not to think so much about the complexities. I thought about the crucifix, and realized that I was spending all of my time looking inward at the sources and habits traced out by my sin, instead of focusing my energy outward into relationship and communion with Jesus.

I closed my eyes in the pew, dismissed my distractions, and rid myself of the inward gaze by contemplating the sacramental reality of the Eucharist that I would soon partake in. I thought of myself as a child, daughter, and spouse of Christ (the last has been difficult in the past), and looked at the altar in wonder and awe. Here I was, in God's house, especially near to Him, about to receive Him in a most intimate way. That sense of union; God wants to be with us like that all of the time. God wants to make our heart His home. When I realized that, with my heart open, I could understand it in a physical sense. Even though I had not yet received the Eucharist, of course, I felt a distinct and subtle peace. It wasn't like the sigh of relief or even the sense of a hug; it was a sense that the God of the universe wanted to just sit. Just be with me in the pew.

Here are some quotes from the Magnificat that I've read recently that have seemed especially poignant.

“The holy spirit cannot accomplish the fullness of redemption in us, cannot effect the conception of the Son of the Most High within us—and we cannot become another Mary, the Christian vocation in a nutshell—unless we seek the company of her through whom and in whom He is permanently present, not only among the choirs of angels in union with the Father and their Spirit, but also visibly and humanly in his Church and within the landscape of this world, so wretched yet so graced.” To Hear and Keep the Word, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

“...and within yourselves you will discover God's boundless goodness in having taken on our likeness by the union the divine nature has effected with our human nature. Let our hearts explode wide open, then, as we contemplate a flame and fire of live so great that God has engrafted himself into us and us into himself! Oh, unimaginable love! It would be enough if we had even appreciated it!” “Take Care how you hear,” Saint Catherine of Siena

“One must have the experience of God. The one who has had that experience feels transformed. That person knows what life is all about, the true one, the eternal life. He knows that God is the life of life and that, if we do not have an encounter with Him, the life of today will be hollow and empty. There is no other experience but that one: the face of a lover turned to his God, a God within himself, a God transforming him and making his whole life a loving gazed turned to the Other.” Father Maurice Zundel, Matthew's Encounter with Christ