Category: Beauty

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Embracing Paradox

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Even in turning to God, we are likely – in our urge to escape the pain of this paradox – to engage in yet another form of irritable grasping or controlling in the face of eternal mysteries that are never for sale, and will repel any attempts as seizing or sieging.

I’ve been reading the comments of a few thousand participants in the listening sessions I facilitated for my diocese this fall. You can feel attempts at grasping among many of our longtime parishioners who (in a world where everything has changed so much and so rapidly) expect their parish church to be the one place where nothing changes – only it already has, many times over. You can feel the grasping in the comments of hundreds of others who expect everyone else to adopt their political or liturgical ideology. If only we all thought this way, or all did things this way, our pain and suffering would go away. They forget the flaming sword that will not permit us to return to Eden (Genesis 3:24).

I empathize with their fear and restlessness because I know those movements in my own heart! I have my own versions of grasping or striving or hiding when the tension feels unbearable.

The real invitation is go deeper into the paradox without trying to escape it, nor to escape the tension found therein. This is exactly what Jesus and Mary do on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Jesus, true God and true man, does not erase or eliminate the dreadful consequences of our human freedom. Rather, he brings eternal love into the depths of our humanity, loves us to the end, and invites us back into relationship – with his Father and with each other.

His mother Mary does not do what so many churchgoers do when feeling the powerlessness of this paradox. She offers no fixing, no advice, no comparisons with others who have it worse, no backing away from his Cross. She stands with and witnesses.

Her with-ness and witness continue on Holy Saturday, a day of Sabbath – a day of stillness and rest. “Be still, and know that I am God” – these words sound so pleasant and peaceful in other settings. Not so much on a day of Sabbath rest in which your Son is buried in the tomb, and you are utterly powerless. Even then, rather than grasping or escaping, Mary embraces the promises of Jesus and waits in Hope amidst the paradox, not knowing how he will fulfill these promises until it actually happens.

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, when so many questions remain unanswered, when the disciples are still downcast and doubtful, she abides with them and prays with them for nine days (Acts 1:10-14). They learn from her the capacity for passion and compassion that she exhibited so beautifully at each earlier moment of her discipleship, a capacity which grew and deepened as each mystery unfolded.

Yes, prayer and liturgy and Church are all part of our human response to this painful paradox – not so much being the answer itself, but the context in which The Answer can be encountered, again and again, stretching our capacity to receive – which also means stretching our capacity to suffer! The suffering of the Saints does not diminish as they grow closer to God. The greater their longing, the greater the gap feels between them and the living God. The greater their willingness to stay connected to others, the greater their capacity to suffer with. Show me even a few such saints, and I’ll show you a church community that is thriving on mission!

I find Brené Brown’s words both comforting and emboldening: “Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist. The longer we can hold that paradox, the greater our capacity to see and honor one another in our fullness AND in our contradictions.”

Faith and Christian community are essential, not as an escape from the tension of this world, but as a shared receptivity of the eternal, and of the mystery of each human person. It is in abiding relationship and receptivity that we can glimpse and taste the goodness of the Kingdom of God, and can persevere in our sojourning until this world definitively passes away, when Jesus comes again with full righteousness, wiping every tear away and abolishing death forever.

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A Mood Change

What is life like when we change our mood from “imperative” or “subjunctive” and learn to live in the indicative?

If that question makes no sense to you, don’t worry – I’ll explain along the way.

I love language. I love learning new languages. I love the experience of connection with someone else’s insights, beautifully expressed – all the more so when the words bridge a gap of time and culture. In another life, I could have been a philologist, like Tolkien or Lewis.

I even love grammar. I’m grateful to my high school teachers, who placed such great emphasis upon it. It served me well later in life when I was wrestling with Latin or Greek or German. With my own writing, being grounded in grammar is not unlike the months of training that Daniel underwent with Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid. Good grammar doesn’t make good writing, but it lays a sturdy foundation, without which creative expression will stagger and stumble.

During my many years of study, I had nine semesters of Latin and five of Greek. I answered hundreds of questions about declension and case, gender and number, tense and mood. My Latin Composition class in 1998 was at times a torture. Dr. Petruccione relentlessly and manically drove us through Bradley’s Arnold, always sporting a bowtie. Twice every week, we submitted our elaborate sentences, translated from English into Latin. If you missed one time, you dropped a letter grade. If you missed a single class, you dropped a letter grade. Late every Friday afternoon, I would wistfully watch my friends go to goof off, while I plodded off to class. The professor could tell that my mind was wandering, but could never catch me!

“And what mood is that, Mister Sakowski?” At the sound of my name, my distracted brain jolted to attention, frantically poring over the last 10 seconds. Somehow, I always come up with the answer. “Subjunctive!” He screwed up his face with a look of “I’ll get you next time!!” But he never did. What can I say? My body pays attention even when it’s not paying attention. I guess hypervigilance has its advantages.

What kind of overachieving college student enrolls in a challenging elective class on late Friday afternoons? The same kind, I suppose, as the high school student who spends four weeks of her high school summer vacation learning Latin, along with seven of her peers. In 1999 and 2000, home for the summer, I taught Latin upon the request of students at my alma mater. We had a blast.

Most of the students were highly competitive overachievers, but one struggled significantly. Honestly, he only passed because I found creative ways to give him points on his tests. It wasn’t hard, because he made up for his lack of Latin prowess with a wicked sense of humor. One section asked them to parse different words. I had to give him bonus points as I howled at his answers:

  Person?  Magister   [“Teacher” – the name the students called me]

  Tense? Very

  Voice? Sometimes mumbles

  Mood? Depends on the day…

As some of you know, verbs can have different “moods” – indicative, imperative, subjunctive, etc. The indicative mood describes or asks about matters of truth (what actually is, was, or will be the case). The imperative mood gives commands. The subjunctive mood expresses the “woulds” and “coulds” and “shoulds.”

When it comes to discipleship and morality, moods also matter! I’ve come to appreciate living in the indicative mood, rather than the imperative or the subjunctive. Eagerly pursuing the good is much more possible when we can tell the truth with kindness, when we can name particularly what actually is without judging it or pressuring it to be a different way. I wrote recently about this calm noticing and accepting of what is as a prerequisite for virtue.

I remember my early years as a pastor. I was overwhelmed and putting all kinds of pressure on myself. I had just returned from Rome, where I had been researching and learning in seven different languages in the writing of my doctoral thesis. Now I was shared as a pastor of two previously separate parishes, and ministering to the Latino community in the region. I had 5-6 Masses each weekend and felt impossibly pulled in three directions. I lived daily with a fear of failure and a felt trapped in powerlessness. No matter how many “shoulds” I checked of my list, it was never good enough – not for many of the people I was trying to serve and not for my harsh inner critic.

Those first several years, I wrote out my Spanish homilies. One memory that is clearer amidst the blur is my struggle to find effective ways in Spanish to translate “should.” That should say something about the content of my preaching at the time – both to others and to myself!

It was only a matter of time before present pressures and past unhealed wounds converged in an unbearable torrent. When I finally reached out for help, I found myself swept away on a journey of transformation that continues nine years later.

I definitely experienced a “mood change” along the way. I’ve been learning and re-learning the joy of living and relating in the indicative mood – accepting what is and engaging it with curiosity and kindness. Then deciding what to do.

Advice is overrated. It is exceedingly rare for me to tell people what to do. I’ve learned to be with, to notice, to point things out, or to pursue by asking curious questions – all in the indicative mood. When I show up that way, the others can tell that there is no judgment, no pressuring them to be a different way than they are now. They feel my genuine curiosity, wanting to get to know them, and delighting in them as they are now.

To those driven by moral imperatives or living in a “should” fortress, this approach seems madness. In their view, you have to get people to do the right thing, or you’re not being a good Christian. Can you feel the fear there?

How  can we discern what is truly good if we don’t slow down, be with, and perceive what truly is? And how can we see what truly is when shame and fear are in the driver’s seat? They literally and figuratively narrow our field of vision.

I’ve learned to pay attention to what shame is up to. Where there’s contempt, there’s shame. When I notice self-contempt or other-contempt coming up, I get curious. I acknowledge the shame (if I don’t, the shame will power up even more!). But I ask if it’s ok to look at what actually is, setting aside judgment for the moment. Can I just be with you in what’s coming up now?

One would think that all the shaming and pressuring to do what you “should” would be a place of greater truth-telling, but it actually isn’t. When shame is talking, we utter strong-sounding and vague statements like “totally messed up” or “wacko” or “off the rails.” We speak in language of always or never, all or nothing, good guys and bad guys, us versus them. If we calm down and slow down, we can look more honestly at what is really happening – often surprised in the discoveries we make! Pretending like certain emotions aren’t there (or wishing they weren’t there) is not truth telling. Pretending like we can live reaction-less lives is not truth-telling. It’s dehumanizing.

Calming down and slowing down, wondering about what really is (even if it seems unglamourous or “bad”), also allows room for desire to breathe and grow.

Desire can take us places that shame never will. Some of you have seen Monsters, Inc. – the Pixar film about monsters fueling their power plant by capturing the fear of children. Then they make a revolutionary discovery – that laughter is far more powerful than fear. Similarly, desire for goodness is far more powerful than any amount of fear-mongering or “shoulding.” When Christians feel threatened, it seems like only fear and shame will get results. It is much messier to get down in the dirt and look up at what’s really going on. But that’s exactly what humility does.

When we humbly, calmly, curiously, kindly, and truthfully look at what is, we begin to see a much more truthful narrative. We start to see the ways in which deeper desire has been shamed, silenced, belittled, dismissed, or hemmed in. I find that shame is the loudest when desire feels vulnerable and exposed. Rather than allow desire (yet again) to be abandoned, betrayed, dismissed, or disappointed, shame will take over the controls. Setting down shame feels risky! But only then can desire be untethered to seek and find the good, and in finding it to desire it all the more.

What mood are you in today? Do you put pressure on yourself to be a certain way. Is your life one of “I should…” / “I just have to…”/ “I really need to…”? What would it cost you to dial down that pressure for a while, to be with a safe person, and to look at what is? You just might discover your deeper desires, and how your good Father is inviting you to soar.

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There is a River

I am from the river.

When I was one, my family moved back to Wisconsin and purchased a little house along the Wisconsin River.

I could see the river from my bedroom window, pulled open on sweaty summer nights, or through the ice that clung to the curtains in January. The river beckoned, beautiful and dangerous: frozen yet fragile in the winter, rising and rushing in the spring, serene in the summer, reflecting bright bursts of color in the fall.

I spent thousands of hours, endlessly exploring in our backyard, between the deck and the dock I had helped my stepdad build. There, near the river, I would catch toads or turtles or grasshoppers. I would dig up worms for fishing, or get grass stains in my pants as I touched and tasted the flowers (the violets were by far the best!). More than once I wistfully watched as a ball plunged into the waters and floated away, eluding the reach of branch or cane pole.

As Heraclitus once suggested, you cannot step into the same river twice. Visiting home elicits a mixture of emotions. It’s the same basic house and yard, but remodeled, refurnished, and rearranged a few times over. The town has the same streets and many of the same buildings, yet feels noticeably different. For many decades, it was a booming paper mill town. Then they witnessed the loss of hundreds of jobs in the early 2000’s, followed by a total shutdown in 2020. What a change from my childhood and teen years, when Consolidated Papers was a Fortune 500 company and invested $400 million to build the state’s largest paper machine.

This fall, I am facilitating a few dozen listening sessions throughout my diocese, inviting our 156 parishes to pivot from maintenance to mission. For many parishes that are struggling, the invitation is felt as an immediate threat. Are we going to close?? What are we going to lose?

The Lord has often surprised me in this process, especially when I feel overwhelmed, fear failure, or put pressure on myself. It happened again a few weeks ago.

My friend showed me a brand new book by Robert Enright, Forgiving as Unity with Christ. I quickly realized – “O, this is going to be one of those books.” It’s going to take me at least six months to meander through the journaling and meditation prompts, which have already tapped deep places in my heart.

So there I was, working on wounds of resentment and unforgiveness (which include my avoidance of feelings of anger). The exercise invited me to remember a time when I received unconditional love from another human, and to enter vividly into that moment. Memories of 1999 cascaded into my imagination. At that time, I received remarkable compassion and kindness from a few friends, especially Peter. It was healing to recall the lovely ways that they attuned to me, drew near to me, held space for my raw pain, and showed empathy.

My gratitude and consolation were interrupted by the memory of how awful it was to lose Peter that November. He was only five months ordained when he unexpectedly and inexplicably died in his sleep.

Out of nowhere I found myself recalling Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It opened some of my deepest wells of grief, and I sobbed, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. I was not only feeling that sudden loss of a friend, who indeed glittered like gold. I was connecting with the universal human experience expressed in Frost’s poem. In this post-Eden world, the most amazing and beautiful moments never linger. It is agonizing. We were not meant for endings.

How painful it is to be like the poets or prophets – to have huge imagination and perceive beauty and goodness where many do not. It’s thrilling and delightful. You are eager to share the goodness with others. It’s awful because, often and even inevitably, the delight evaporates. Or it gets crushed, ripped away, or (perhaps worst of all) dismissed or spurned by others, who could have delighted in it. I think here of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37). He imagines and desires so much more goodness for them – but they don’t want it. Or, if they want it, they are unwilling to repent and receive it.

As I continued to pray, I realized the connection between my own intense feelings in the moment and what Jesus is inviting all of us into in the Rebuild My Church Initiative in my diocese. I often feel unsettled and fearful in the face of future unknowns. I keep catching myself trying to manage or control the process, fearing failure. The Lord keeps reminding me that the people of the diocese doesn’t need a project manager; they need my heart. My own experiences are a microcosm of what I’m inviting everyone else into. I have all my familiar survival strategies that feel so much more appealing than trusting and following the voice of the Good Shepherd into more abundant life.

When people first hear about “reimagining the structure of their parishes” or “pivoting from maintenance to mission,” their reaction is often one of fear, suspicion, and self-preservation. I am listening to them in their fears, while inviting consideration that we need not live our lives out of fear.

But the Good Shepherd has been prompting more in my heart. It’s not only the unknowns or the potential losses of the future that are unsettling; it’s what has already changed and changed again, but remains ungrieved. When hurts are unhealed and losses are ungrieved, our human tendency is to fight to hold on to what is already lost, perhaps even finding a scapegoat to blame for the struggles.

Case in point – the loss of Christendom. Fifty years ago, Fulton Sheen prophetically proclaimed, “We are living at the end of Christendom – not the end of Christianity.” Yet so many Christians and churches want to fight culture wars and save Christendom. Rather than weeping over the ruins and rejoicing that new growth is sprouting up, we are fantasizing that we can still stop the collapse – not unlike the Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands who had not yet heard that the war was over.

I’ve been inviting the participants at these listening sessions to reflect upon changes and losses in their families, communities, and churches that have already happened, but are hard to accept. If we don’t mourn those, we will be less capable of heeding the voice of the Good Shepherd, being surprised with resurrected life, and following him into green pastures and new experiences of more abundant life.

In addition to Robert Frost’s poem, my prayer prompted a recall of the 1990’s movie A River Runs Through It. I remembered my curious discovery in Mexico twenty-five years ago. I spotted the movie in a storefront, only the title in Spanish was Nada Es Para Siempre (“Nothing Lasts Forever”). You can’t step into the same river twice. Nothing gold can stay.

Interestingly, in Spain, the same movie bears the Spanish title of El Rio de la Vida (“The River of Life”). There is a river that gladdens the City of God (Psalm 46), running through the heavenly city of Jerusalem. That river brings healing and life and new fruitfulness (Revelation 22).

Whenever I imagine receiving from those saving streams, I sometimes sob. I feel the parched places in my heart soak in the superabundant goodness. It is wonderfully consoling and intensely painful at the same time. My desires awaken, allowing me to drink in divine life. Then, in receiving more, I ache for still more – and know that I still have to wait, mostly because of God’s kindness allowing me to go at my own pace.

In these listening sessions, the hardest questions for people to reflect on have been questions about Hope. Many of our parish communities, not to mention many of our priests, feel listless or lost! They watch their numbers diminish and fear for their very existence, feeling powerless to change. A few of them, I find, have lost all imagination for more. The felt fear is so intense, and the grip on self-preservation so tight, that there is no longer an imagination for what abundance could look like. It feels too painful and too risky to dream of a feast when you are unsure whether you will eat today or where your next meal will come from. Survival mode and scarcity tend to cling to each other.

When I am tempted to feel frustrated or judgy about this narrow-mindedness, the Lord gently reminds me of how patient and kind he has been with me in the very same attitudes. It is truly sad when I or others don’t desire the goodness or abundance that is right in front of us. Or, more accurately, we bury that desire beneath a hardened façade.

It is very much like the story told in the Pixar film Encanto. As with the Madrigal family there, it can be terrifying when the cracks of our façade begin to show, and the “identity” we had falsely propped gets exposed and collapses. But it’s always an opportunity to access the living God anew and remember who we really are. We get to go to the Cross and drink from the life-given stream that flow from the pierced heart of Jesus. He is the Good Shepherd who promises to lead us into more abundant life.

Yes, there is a river that flows through the Heavenly City. That river, too, is beautiful and dangerous. I ache for it and avoid it. That river runs through my divided heart, much like the river that divides my home town.

I am from the river.

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Emotions and Moral Virtue

What is virtue?

When I ask that question among Christians, the conversation typically turns to shoulds and have to’s. Virtuous people do the things they are supposed to do. The job of parents and Church leaders is to make sure we do the things we are supposed to do. What is most needed in this view is moral clarity about the rules. The world is full of unvirtuous people because parents and the Church haven’t been teaching clearly enough. If only we have more clear and distinct ideas about morality, all will be well (can you hear the influence of Descartes here?).

When I ask similar questions about emotions as they relate to virtue, at best emotions are named as “neutral.” More often, they’re viewed as a threat or obstacle. We can’t trust our emotions. Morality requires us to subjugate and control them.

“Love is a choice, not a feeling,” I’ll hear Christians say. Or they will even misquote Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) as teaching that “love is willing the good of another.”

Thomas does say something like that (Summa Theologiae I-II q. 26, a. 4). But he’s actually talking in that passage about love as a desire or an emotion, not yet love as a theological virtue.  He says that when we experience love as a desire, we want good for someone – whether ourselves or another. That desire for good may be rightly ordered or disordered. It is quite possible to want good things for others while trying to manage or control them (just look at the helicopter or Zamboni parents of my generation!).

Thomas actually sees these core human appetites as fundamentally good, and needing the direction and guidance of faith and reason. We desire pleasure and goodness; we are zealous for difficult goods. Often enough, that desire for pleasure is disordered, with a willingness to use or consume or manipulate. Often enough, our anger becomes a weapon used to harm ourselves or others.

I was blown away during my silent retreat last month. I spent much of the time praying with Matthew’s Gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about anger and lust (Matthew 5:21-30). Occasionally, I glanced at the original Greek as well as the Latin Vulgate translation that was familiar to Thomas Aquinas. In the Vulgate, Jesus speaks of one who is angry (irascitur) or one who views another with lustful desire (ad concupiscendum). It was one of those “aha!” moments for me – this is where Thomas Aquinas gets his seemingly technical names for the “irascible appetite” and the “concupiscible appetite.” All humans have these two core appetites: a passionate zeal for righteousness and an eager desire for pleasure and delight. Fundamentally, these two inner drives of the human heart are VERY GOOD, even though, as Jesus teaches, they are in need of integration and re-ordering toward the Kingdom of God.

Thomas Aquinas uses the word “passions” to describe what we would call emotions. The word “passion” literally means something that happens to us. We passively experience it. The word “emotion” suggests an interior movement in our body as a reaction to what we are experiencing. Every emotion, in his view, is an expression of one or both of these core human appetites. True, these desires and emotions are often disordered because of the Fall – but so is our will!

Oh, how interesting it would be if Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas were alive today. They curiously and keenly observed human nature, without the benefit of contemporary neurological research. Today, I am convinced, they would be fascinated by our insights into the brain’s limbic system and prefrontal cortex. Thomas observed that humans have a “common sense” – a part of our brain that blends all of our sensory input into one unified impression. This is how neuroscientists today understand the thalamus (with the exception of the sense of smell). Thomas observed how humans can behave like hunted deer, who have an embodied memory causing them to flee at the sight of a human form. This is how neuroscientists today understand the amygdala. It’s our brain’s security system. Before any sensory input reaches our rational brain, it runs through the amygdala, which sometimes launches us into a fight, flight, or freeze response. These reactions happen automatically, within ¼ of a second. They are pre-rational.

I recall a decade ago, driving home from a Friday night football game. I suddenly sensed a large spider rappelling down an inch in front of my face. Somehow, I found my car pulled over to the curb and myself seated in the passenger seat in less than three seconds. Only then did my rational brain register the situation, with no small amount of astonishment at what I had just achieved. Imagine if it had been a bat! 

I find that so very many Christians (myself included) attempt to grow in “virtue” by no longer having emotional reactions. That approach is dishonoring of the inherent goodness of our bodies. It’s also impossible! First comes the reaction of our limbic brain. Only a few seconds later does it register in our prefrontal cortex – unless our reaction is so intense that we stay stuck in a trauma response. With time and training, our reactions can be received and redirected. But they still happen. Developmentally, this type of training takes years. It’s what is “supposed to” happen in childhood.

Virtue is not a matter of eliminating emotion, nor of subjugating or controlling it. The virtuous person habitually, calmly, and skillfully gives rational guidance and direction to emotions. That is where the prefrontal cortex comes in – the highest and most developed part of our brain. It allows us a calm noticing, which in turn allows what today is called “affect regulation.” Our emotions settle down when they feel the acceptance and calm rational presence of the prefrontal cortex. They are then willing to accept direction – just like a child who truly trusts her caregivers.

Classically, this is exactly what moral virtue is – giving calm rational guidance to our emotions so that they can be ordered toward the good. Our emotions will not authentically accept rational guidance if they are not first received with curiosity and kindness.

Here is where emotionally intelligent parenting comes in. Rather than shaming children for feeling how they feel, mature parents are able to receive the big emotions of their children. They show a curiosity and compassion for what is happening in the bodies and hearts of their children. They help them make sense of it all. Every time that happens, neural pathways are formed and reinforced.

At least 70% of the information in our nervous system flows from the bottom up – as sensory input coming from our body to our brain. When that information is received without judgment, then calm and consistent direction can be given.

Many of us literally lack the neural circuitry for virtue to happen. Sure, we can suppress or subjugate our emotional reactions. We can flog them with “shoulds.” We can exile them or lock them up. But that is not virtue. That is external compliance (perhaps even 90-95% of the time). It leaves us feeling unfree, or even living a double life.

Many people come to priests asking, “Why do I keep doing that???” I gently invite them to notice the tone of voice in their question. We can ask the same question with intense self-contempt or with childlike curiosity (or somewhere in between). Only when there is curiosity and kindness does virtue begin to be possible.

What does this mean? I would suggest that most of us Christians today are not yet in the realm of moral virtue. We have a lot of pre-moral work to do, kindly accepting and patiently integrating our emotions – all the things we needed to happen earlier in life, but did not (and probably have not for multiple generations in most of our families). When you are in survival mode, there is less space for curiosity and kindness.

That is why, when people ask me, “Where did you grow up?” I am barely joking when I respond, “Oh, I’m still growing up!” I am still coming to accept that daily reactions will happen inside of me – frequently and sometimes rather intensely. I am coming to appreciate that it is precisely my capacity to be impacted by others, to receive them vulnerably, and to be moved by their uniqueness and their beauty, that allows me to love them with honor and delight.

May we all become again like little children, allowing ourselves to be moved anew by goodness and beauty in the world around us, and especially in other humans. May we all receive the patient nurture and care that we always needed. Then it becomes possible to become truly mature and wholehearted in virtuous living.

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Descartes’ Demand for Clarity

“I think, therefore I am.”

This is another quote we all heard as children. René Descartes (1597-1650), like Francis Bacon, represents a new era in the West, one which winds up exalting mathematical precision and technological dominance over receptivity, relationships, and human integration.

Many a college philosophy class begins by reading Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. “First philosophy” was, at the time, another term for metaphysics – not in the contemporary sense of pursuing occult knowledge, but in the classical and medieval sense of pondering existence itself; what does “to be” really mean?

Like Bacon before him, Descartes spurns the previous approaches. Rather than taking existence as a given and then reflecting more deeply upon it, he begins philosophy with doubt. He insists upon clear and distinct ideas – the kind brought by mathematics. He opens his musings as a solitary “I.” Can I really trust my five senses? How can I be certain I am not deceived? I seem to perceive the warm fireplace before me or the soft chair beneath me, but those perceptions are not clear and distinct like the truth that 2+2=4.

After doubting that the universe around me, other beings, or God exist, I realize that there is one thing I cannot doubt – that I doubt.  If I doubt, that means there is an “I” who is doubting. Therefore, I exist.  From there, I can reason to clear and distinct ideas about God and the world around me. So goes the reasoning of Descartes.

In his demand for clear and distinct ideas, Descartes prioritizes quantitative analysis over our awareness of what he calls “secondary” qualities – which include the perceptions of our five senses, but also things like goodness and beauty and love.

In the spirit of Francis Bacon one generation before, Descartes seeks power. He expresses his hope that this technical and tactical shift of knowledge will allow humans to become “like masters and possessors of nature.” Perhaps, he suggested in his Discourse on Method, it will even free us from illness and aging.

Can you see the connection with our contemporary culture and our obsession with looking forever youthful, or our exaltation of doing and performing over being and relating? Today, the transhumanist movement seductively offers us the dream of Descartes: we can seize the power to transcend our very mortality by means of technological modifications to our humanity. Terrifying.

I began studying philosophy thirty years ago, and am grateful for many wise professors, not so much for the information they communicated as the shared pursuit of wisdom in a respectful and playful environment. For most of them, philosophy was a way of being, not a collection of ideas.

In 1998, just as I was beginning my graduate courses in philosophy, John Paul II published his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (“Faith and Reason”). He called for a renewal of philosophy as a shared quest for wisdom and meaning. Human beings, he said, are philosophers (“lovers of wisdom”) by our very nature. We are curious. We desire to seek and to find, only to discover that there is still more to discover.

Genuine pursuit of wisdom, John Paul says, begins not with doubt but with childlike wonder. Nor is it an isolated “I” who thinks, but a “we.” The quest for wisdom is always a communal experience. Socrates did not seclude himself in a dark room; he walked the streets of Athens with other wisdom seekers and engaged in meaningful dialogue. Their pursuit of wisdom was a shared effort, trusting in the complementary gifts offered by community, in which the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

I remember feeling frustrated reading the Dialogues of Plato (which always feature his mentor Socrates dialoguing with others on a particular theme). Just when I thought I was getting the point, Socrates would disprove it, and begin exploring a new line of inquiry. Over time, he and his students would gain some real insights, but the conversation would result more questions than answers. I found that frustrating. In my own way, I was much like Descartes, harboring a felt need for clear and distinct ideas. I didn’t like the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing, the patient waiting for wisdom to emerge.

I even felt a clenching inside when I read John Paul II’s insistence on “the primacy of the inquiry” – that it is more important to keep seeking wisdom that to feel like you have arrived. At the time, I was keenly interested in apologetics. I felt a certain satisfaction in having clear and distinct answers to those who would dare attack my Catholic faith. I was only beginning to realize the reality that God is always greater, that he is always infinitely beyond my limited insight. Life provided plenty of painful opportunities to keep learning humility.

In the last decade, I’ve become much more trauma-informed. I still see the 1500’s and 1600’s through the lens of revolutionary philosophical ideas, many of which caused harm. But now I appreciate how much Europe was experiencing a collective trauma response. It was an era that boiled with contempt and violence – from the polemical divisions of Protestants and Catholics to the ongoing wars with the Turks to the resurgence of slavery and human exploitation in newly discovered lands. When we feel threatened, we gravitate to black-and-white thinking. Then, like Bacon and Descartes, we demand clear and distinct ideas. We are not okay with abiding in a messy in-between. Like Bacon and Descartes, we seize strategies that allow us to feel in control. We refuse to tolerate any experience of powerlessness. In those centuries, many Europeans (by no means all) felt entitled to power and privilege at expense of slaves or indigenous peoples. These days, many Americans (by no means all) feel entitled to live in “the greatest nation on earth,” with little regard for the status of immigrants or impoverished regions of the earth that serve our interests. Deep down, we know that our comfortable and privileged lives come at a cost to others, but we choose to ignore the signs.

Sadly, there are many Christians who style themselves as “conservative” or “traditional” without realizing how very modern their political and philosophical views are. Such is the rotten fruit of fear-mongering and the seduction of worldly power. It becomes black-and-white and “us versus them.” Too many times, such attitudes have allowed the rise of dictators.

When we find ourselves demanding certainty and clarity, we might become curious and ask why it must be so. There are so many different kinds of certainty: the clarity offered by mathematics, yes, but also the certainty of feeling loved and cherished, the security of belonging to a stable community in which everyone matters, or the shared delight in amazing art or music. Perhaps you have experienced what the poet T.S. Eliot describes: “…music heard so deeply / that it is not heard at all, / but you are the music / while the music lasts.”

The human experience is so amazing when we open ourselves to it – all the more so when we learn to trust each other and open ourselves to the mysteries of life with childlike wonder. It can be tempting to grasp at power and control during times of duress. Then it becomes easy to loathe “those people” and view them with suspicion and contempt. The cost of that kind of “freedom” is perpetual hypervigilance. No, thank you.

I refuse to succumb to that seduction. Jesus is the great “I AM.” Therefore, our restless and racing thoughts can be at peace. He holds us all securely in the Father’s love. He delights in every human being, image bearers that we are. He is grieved by all our contempt for each other, but not worried. He is the unconquerable Lamb, once slain, and forever risen. The peace of Christ is not a clear and distinct idea. It’s the fruit of an abiding relationship.

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Saruman and Francis Bacon

“Knowledge is power.”

That, at least, is what English philosopher Francis Bacon claimed in 1597. We may have heard that quote as a child, and never thought to question it.

Most people don’t realize just how radically our culture shifted in the West in the 1500’s and 1600’s. In my last post, I mentioned the exaltation of doing over being. There are several other shifts worth noticing – “knowledge is power” being one of them.

One of my earliest encounters with Francis Bacon was while wanting to play a game with my younger brother Jake. We had unearthed an old backgammon board, and I couldn’t remember the rules. Google wouldn’t exist for nearly two decades, so we went to the encyclopedia to look up “backgammon.” When I exclaimed, “I found it!” Jake, in his usual comedic way, pointed to the picture of an Englishman in a frilled collar and asked if the game was called “Bacon, Francis.” For months, he would periodically ask if I wanted to play a game of “Bacon Francis.”

As it happens, the progression from the encyclopedia to internet search engines to artificial intelligence is a progressive development, gradual at first and now exponentially accelerating. Having so much information instantly accessible does indeed bring massive power. According to Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor on Home Improvement in the 1990’s, “more power” is what it’s all about. But if that’s really true, shouldn’t our joy in life be increasing exponentially along with the increase in “knowledge” and power? Clearly, our culture is missing something.

I remember three decades ago, arriving at the University of Saint Thomas, waiting in line by the dining hall, and reading a quote on the wall from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Bacon was bold, even arrogant. He is acclaimed for paving the way for modern scientific method. Those who are eager to bash the Middle Ages (without really knowing the Middle Ages) have depicted Bacon as one who sets science free from its primitive restrictions.

One of Bacon’s works is entitled the Novum Organum. To be sure, that work offers valuable insight into a scientific process of observation, hypothesis forming, and verification. But he is claiming, in effect, to be a newer and better Aristotle. Aristotle’s six logical works were collectively referred to by his disciples as the Organum – a “tool” or “instrument” used in pursuing knowledge. Bacon is offering a new and better tool – better because it pursues knowledge in a way that allows far more power.

I suppose we could excuse Bacon for claiming to be greater than Aristotle. Vizzini did the same thing in The Princess Bride. But Bacon also subtly compares himself to Jesus. The title of his unfinished work is the Instauratio Magna. It’s a reference to Ephesians 1:10, where Paul praises the Father’s eternal plan “to restore all things in Christ.” Bacon proposes a scientific approach that can restore “the empire of man over all things,” man’s primeval power over nature that was lost in the fall (cf. Genesis 1:26-28). Rather than accepting our powerlessness and entering into a relationship with a savior, we are invited to seize power by means of more information.

Don’t forget the context here. Francis Bacon was also a member of Parliament, and was Lord Chancellor of England in 1620 when the first colonists landed at Plymouth. His writings herald an era that also embraced the imperial subjugation, exploitation of indigenous peoples, and a newly flourishing slave trade. Knowledge is power.

I’ve always been a lover of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Their hearts were more at home in the Middle Ages. By no means did they uncritically or naively believe everything to be amazing then. Indeed, Tolkien’s Silmarillion tells more tales of folly and woe than of wisdom or triumph. No, what they preferred was the holistic view of God and humanity in the ancient and medieval mindset – compared to the distortions of the last 500 years, which these days seem to be unraveling all sense of meaning in our human existence.

Tolkien offers a contrast between the two great wizards, Gandalf and Saruman.

Gandalf embodies the classical and medieval approach to knowledge and wisdom. He is genuinely curious about all beings: elves, dwarves, hobbits, eagles, ents, etc. He is powerful, to be sure, but has no interest in exploitation. He desires that everyone flourish in their own proper environment. He shows honor and delight. If you read Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) or Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274), you’ll discover an endless curiosity and eagerness to discover truth and goodness and beauty wherever it can be found. That is what “science” did in the ancient and medieval world. In Latin, scientia simply means “knowledge,” which was gained by curiously pursing the ultimate causes of what is observed here and now. Aristotle’s writings range from reflecting on the movement of the stars to the guts of animals to virtue and friendship to politics to the causes of being itself. A few of his conclusions or assumptions seem laughable today, but far less so when you consider the limited tools at his disposal.

Saruman, meanwhile, is an embodiment of “knowledge is power.” He uses his brilliance to manipulate, exploit, and subjugate. He nearly destroys Fangorn forest, fueling his factory, where he is also manipulating the genes of men and orcs to create a more powerful army. He obsesses with the rings of power. He overlooks the goodness and resiliency of the little people. Gandalf laments the folly of Saruman at the Council of Elrond when he declares, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

Our age desperately needs a rediscovery of curiosity and kindness. I’m not saying that modern science is all bad. I certainly appreciate advances such as dentistry or toilet paper! But we’ve devalued the curious pursuit and discovery of truth and goodness and beauty – something you don’t have to teach to children; it’s already a desire of every human heart!

There is so much delight in seeking and finding. There’s even more delight in shared quests and shared discoveries. Such an attitude is at the core of Aristotle’s description of friendship. Best of all, there is wisdom, humility, and awe in discovering that there is still more to discover. The more we grow in wisdom, the more we know how little we know. Bacon would have struggled as a student of Socrates!

In the words of Bacon’s much wiser contemporary, William Shakespeare, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” For a season, it was trendy to claim that Shakespeare didn’t really write Shakespeare – he was allegedly too uneducated to be so brilliant. The plays must have been written by someone like Francis Bacon, they said, who was so much more knowledgeable. Needless to say, I disagree.

Knowledge can indeed be turned into power. But to what end? Part of the problem is that modern philosophies also discarded any sense of purposefulness in nature. The only purpose is the one we impose upon nature by willing what we want. That is the spirit of Saruman, to be sure, but a departure from the path of Wisdom.

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