Purity Culture – Conclusion

This is the fifth and final installment of my reflections on the “purity culture” often found in Christian homes and churches. Out of fear that young people will be corrupted by the sex-obsessed culture, we sometimes miss the mark ourselves. We link shame and sexual desire together in ways God never intended; we abdicate our responsibility of providing apprenticeship in chastity; or we model a moralistic self-righteousness rather than humble growth and fruitfulness. Perhaps the biggest mistake is turning “purity” exclusively into a moral issue and/or a sexual issue. That is certainly not the biblical view nor the Catholic view.

Lie #5“Purity” is mainly about sexual morality

In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:7). Isn’t it interesting that most American Christians hear these words and instantly imagine sexual morality?

Yes, Jesus proceeds to address adultery and lust in the subsequent chapters. But he also addresses murder, aggression, anger, unforgiveness, and greed. He teaches about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. He invites us to seek first the Kingdom of God, and in so doing to persevere in seeking, asking, and knocking.

Above all else, Jesus speaks from start to finish about a relationship with God the Father. He invites us into communion. He desires us to be “blessed” by our Father, who sent his own Son to die for us while we were yet sinners. We do not and cannot earn our way into relationship by good conduct. We enter our covenant with God as ones who are poor in spirit; grieving and mourning, meek and humble; aching with hunger and thirst. Jesus knows that we will be presenting broken lives to God for mending.  Purity of heart means bringing God all of the scattered pieces of our shattered hearts! It is then that real growth can begin.

In other words, when Jesus speaks of being “pure in heart,” he is inviting us to be wholly and wholeheartedly consecrated to God. That means allowing every dimension of our being to be blessed by him. It is the opposite of hiding away pieces of ourselves in shame! It was the devil who tried to convince Adam and Eve to run and hide after they had disobeyed God.

Toxic shame is perhaps the single greatest obstacle that keeps us from letting ourselves (ALL of ourselves) be loved by God and others. Many of us are more susceptible to shame because we learned to tie performance and relationships together: “I am only lovable if…” or “I am only lovable when…” To the extent that those lies have purchase in our hearts, Christian morality becomes a torment rather than Good News.

The urge to hide ourselves is challenging enough when we feel shame over moral faults. But the devil has worked still greater harm in many of us. In moments of betrayal, abuse, abandonment, or neglect, he has crept in and whispered lies – convincing us to hold contempt toward our desires, our bodies, our sexuality, or our capacity for delight. We then enter a false battle for “purity” – trying to rid ourselves of that which is best in us! If we feel shame every time we feel desire, how can we grow in healthy relationships? Hiding ourselves does not lead to intimacy.

Our shame can be healed by moving away from hiding and towards relationships: becoming truly and safely seen, known, heard, understood, and cherished – not some idealized version of ourselves, but as we currently are, a work in progress.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2518) speaks of purity of heart as a threefold sharing in God’s purity: in our charity, our chastity, and our orthodox belief. In other words, we are created to share in divine Goodness, divine Beauty, and divine Truth.

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty – the human heart has an almost insatiable longing for all three! The devil HATES this longing in us, but cannot erase it. So he attempts to divert and distract us away from the intimacy of relationship that is at the core of all three.

Our intellects are ordered to the Truth. Purity of heart includes surrendering to the Truth whenever the evidence is in front of us. The humble heart is willing to be proven wrong – or incomplete. The arrogant heart resists the vulnerability of surrender – either through obstinate refusal to believe what God has revealed or through a dogmatism that thinks it knows everything – as though Truth is an object we could possess. The closer we get to divine Truth, the more we realize how little we truly know!

Our wills are ordered to Goodness. We long to love and be loved. And so God commands us to love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is a two-way street: freely receiving and freely giving. Growing in purity of heart includes recognizing any ways in which we are blocked – either in giving or receiving. The more we love, the greater our ache to become more God-like in our love.

Our ache for Beauty flows from both our intellect and our will. Here we find the intense desire of eros that is such a glorious divine gift. No wonder the devil tries so hard to ruin it! Early and often, he entices us to curse our desire for Beauty – to feel shame around this God-given longing.

Yes, our desires often run wild – overindulging in food, becoming possessive in relationships, or wandering into sexual fantasies. That is why the Catechism speaks of “apprenticeship” in chastity. There is an appropriate pruning or discipline – not for the sake of cutting off desire, but of fully claiming it.

The word “purity” is first and foremost about our relationship with God –with sexuality as only one dimension. It is a damaging distortion to use “purity” in a moralistic sense. Instead, the Catechism of the Catholic Church devotes ten full paragraphs to the much more helpful words “integrity” and “integrality” (see nn. 2338-2347). Little by little, we learn how to put all the pieces together, aided by healthy relationships with God and others.

Becoming a whole person in our sexuality, our desires, our emotions, and our relationships is not a matter of “on” or “off,” maintaining or losing. It is a lifelong task. The Catechism proclaims this integration to be “a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life” (n. 2342).

We are called to keep growing in charity, chastity, and truth our whole life long. The more we grow, the more we will long to grow. Getting a taste of God’s Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is described by many of the mystics as a “wound” – but in this case a wound of love that keeps us coming back to our lover for more. Once we begin tasting from the spring of living waters, our thirst for God intensifies. We desire more; we ache; we taste; we desire; and so the cycle of growth continues.

Apart from those living waters, we wither and die. If we only bring parts of ourselves to the living waters, the relationship will remain impartial and restricted. God desires ALL of us. The mystics desire ALL of him. Unlike lust, however, there is no devouring here. Jesus and his bride become one flesh, in a way that causes both to flourish. Every healthy and holy human relationship imitates that heavenly nuptial union. It is indeed a daunting and lifelong task to keep maturing in imitation of Christ. We need not shame ourselves or others in the process, but allow the kindness of God to keep spurring us on to deeper repentance.

Savoring and Our Resistance

What is it like for you to savor? I’m not just talking about delicious food, but any profound experience of beauty or goodness or truth. When I look into myself and others, I find that it’s surprisingly hard to stay in the present moment and savor.

We can consume and devour, insatiably wanting more, ruining ourselves or others in our gluttony or greed or lust. When we do so, there might be a flitting moment of pleasure, but no joy. More often, we do not allow ourselves even to be in the present moment. Rather, we numb ourselves and live a disembodied existence – buried in work, binging on pleasures, or staring at a screen. We find it easier to be passive spectators than actively engaged children of God. After all, we have no skin in the game when we watch the news, distract ourselves with sports, play video games, or scroll through social media.

Meanwhile, God is always seeking to allure us and amaze us with experiences of truth and goodness and beauty. What is it like to slow down and take in the honor and delight of these moments? Not to take a picture and post it on social media – but just to savor?

I struggle to savor, even though I recognize that God has gifted me with a heart that intensely delights in truth and goodness and beauty. I perceive his handiwork in places that others often don’t. Yet it’s a gift that I resist. I’m starting to understand why: I’m afraid to suffer.

When I discover a surprising new truth, I feel an intense arousal and delight, followed by even more longing. It’s as though I am four years old again. I have such an eagerness to discover the truth and surrender myself to it. If I allow myself to stay in the experience, I’ll desire to keep learning more. I’ll ask “why?” a thousand different ways. I will eventually reach moments of disappointment or sadness. I may feel alone or rejected in a mocking world that doesn’t allow time or space for such questioning. For sure, I’ll discover the limits of human knowledge. No matter how much I learn, there will always be more that I don’t know. Savoring means tolerating both the intense joy of learning and the ache of not-yet knowing.

When I stumble on human goodness, I easily cry. It can be an inspiring scene in a movie or a book. It can be a heroic moment in the everyday life of a person that I’ve known for years. Suddenly I catch of glimpse of God’s goodness blazing brightly, and the tears flow. I feel intense joy and gratitude. I feel regret for not having noticed and delighted in this goodness before. I feel that painful ache – an ache for this person’s goodness to be celebrated, an ache for more goodness in myself and others. In the depths of my heart, I long to give myself freely and wholeheartedly in sacrifice. Yet so many other parts of me are terrified of feeling vulnerable and unprotected. I resist a tenderhearted trust in God for fear of what might happen. I readily relate to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in the first half of the story, but not yet in the second. I can be with him lying prostrate on the earth, begging the Father to let the cup pass. I desire also to be like Jesus standing with strength and willingly giving himself over to Judas and the mob. But I resist the vulnerability involved, and often find myself like the turtle yanking his head back into the shell – even when the shell is starting to rot on the inside.

I see beauty every day, when I take the time to notice it. Too often I feel an urge to rush past it, telling myself that I don’t have time to savor it today. When I do pause to take it in, there is so much praise and delight in my soul – and again that longing, that ache, that sense of the eternal Beauty that cannot be contained in this passing world. My intuition knows that this moment of beauty is only a glimpse, and that it is going to fade. There is such a mixture of sweetness and sadness there. It feels easier just to avoid the ache by avoiding the intensity of the beauty.

Yes, even though God created my heart for truth and goodness and beauty, I sometimes resist those experiences. I consume and devour, rather than slow down and savor. I rush on to the next thing, rather than pause and delight. I gravitate towards “rest” that is actually disengagement and numbing out – disconnecting from my five senses and my body rather than being more intensely present in the moment. It takes emotional and spiritual effort to rest in an embodied way, even when I have the time.

I experienced this resistance the other day in the face of a spectacular winter sunset. It was a Sunday evening after a very full week of work, including several overwhelming moments of frustration, powerlessness, anger, anxiety, fear, and shame. I just wanted to “chill” or “veg out,” as we often say. I turned to look around just as I was about to enter my house, and saw the entire western horizon painted with a dozen contrasting shades, all reflecting upon the ice and snow. And I just wanted to go inside and veg out. I fought an intense spiritual battle just to stand there for fifteen minutes. I kept feeling an urge to exit the scene, to pull out my phone, or to go in the house and move on to the next thing. But a wiser and deeper voice within me told me to stay and to savor.

I wept.

I wept at the stunning beauty. I wept over the resistance within my heart. I felt shame and frustration. My heavenly Father doesn’t mind my sins and struggles, but sometimes I cannot stand them.

We resist savoring because we don’t want to suffer; we don’t want to die; and we most definitely do not want to wait in hope – all the while feeling the painful longing of the “not yet.”

Isn’t it interesting that we sabotage our deepest longings? Part of us would rather be disembodied and joyless than fully alive with our five senses in the present moment. It is often the artist, the poet, the prophet, or the saint who calls us to our senses. I think of the intense delight and praise of Francis of Assisi as he savored God’s creation – all the while suffering in his longing to rebuild Christ’s Church. I think of the words of the poet T.S. Eliot in the early 20th Century: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” We prefer to be “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Rather than desire and dream and risk, we will settle for “living and partly living.”

God has created us for so much more, and he sent his own Son to awaken these desires in our heart. The child Jesus will awaken these longings that his Father has placed in our heart. It’s a dangerous undertaking that will lead both him and us through suffering and death – and to eternal life. Will we follow?

Learning to Saunter

Have you ever had that experience of always assuming you knew what a word meant, only to discover that it actually bears quite a different meaning?

I had one of those moments with the word “saunter.” I had encountered it often in books, usually with the same phraseology: “He sauntered in.”  To me, in context, it always felt synonymous with “strutted,” and I never bothered to look the word up.

But one day I was on vacation, a guest at the home of friends, reading one of those life-coaching plaques in their home (I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess which room of the house it was in).   The plaque gave dozens of tidbits of advice for joyful living.

One of those sage counsels was “Saunter aimlessly.” It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the phrases on the plaque. “Strut aimlessly”??  I suddenly found myself hearing the admonition of Inigo Montoya:

“You keep using that word – I do not think it means what you think it means…”

So I got out my dictionary. Actually, let’s be honest – I got out my smart phone, which is ironic, because the smart phone is quite possibly one of the greatest disrupters of sauntering in all of human existence.  But it gets the job done as a dictionary. The scales fell from my eyes as I read the following:


saun·ter
/ˈsôn(t)ər/
verb
1. walk in a slow, relaxed manner, without hurry or effort.

It was so much more than an “aha!” moment. It was one of those divine taps on the shoulder. Perhaps I had misunderstood this vocabulary word all my life because I am not so skilled at sauntering.

Well actually, that’s not entirely true. Deep down, my heart LOVES to saunter. Have you seen those Family Circus installments that trace little Billy’s meanderings with a dotted line? I definitely have a little child inside that absolutely delights in sautnering – exploring the nooks and crannies of God’s creation in a spirit of curiosity, awe, and adventure. But many other parts of me rise up to squelch that childlike longing.

My workaholic and perfectionistic tendencies don’t tend to leave space for little Derek to saunter. I experience restless urges within me – an urge to “get caught up,” and urge to be constantly productive, and an urge to meet the impossible expectations of others. My inner critic warns me that there is no time for such childish pursuits. If I stop to smell the roses, an inner alarm goes off, warning me to move on to the next thing or raising my internal level of guilt about being selfish or lazy.

I apparently did not know the meaning of the word “saunter” during my four years living in Italy, but it was often right there in front of me. I recall feeling frequently annoyed at the locals, stuck behind them as they strolled aimlessly down the sidewalk – on those few Roman streets that are actually wide enough to have sidewalks. Somehow one Italian could effectively block an eight-foot wide space, always walking down the middle, often smoking a cigarette, and veering randomly to the left or the right as they sauntered along without a care in the world. Italians are not exactly known for efficiency or industriousness, especially the further south one goes. There I was, descended from neurotic Northern Europeans – and even among my own people bearing a legendary reputation for productivity and overachieving. Needless to say, I did not blend in, nor did I try to. I found ways to beat the system and accomplish the tasks I felt driven to do – but not without resentment and frustration. I could have learned some lessons from those Italians.

In truth, we cannot live as humans without sauntering sometimes. Our ultimate purpose in life is to abide with the Lord forever. Each one of us carries deep within us a yearning for rest. If we do not honor that yearning, it will find ways to express itself – often in fruitless fantasies or mindless escapes that do not actually refresh us.

Desiring our happiness and wellbeing, God commands us to engage in Sabbath rest. He rests on the seventh day and invites us to participate in his rest. Easier said than done!

I remember the summer of 1995, at the end of my freshman year of college. I felt a conviction that, as a student, my labor was academic – which means observing Sunday as a day of rest from my studies. I made the decision not to do homework on the Lord’s Day. I thought it would be incredibly hard to “get my work done” without utilizing Sunday. I was wrong there. Those adjustments proved easy to make, and helped me be more intentional about my time the rest of the week. There was no challenge academically. Rather, what surprised me was how exceedingly difficult it proved to spend the newly found time on Sunday in real rest and rejuvenation. I found my heart restless as it tried to indulge in various kinds of entertainment or pleasure.  My prayer felt scattered and distracted. It surprised me that rest could be so hard!

I remember a similar restlessness on many of my retreats over the years – worrying about “doing it right.” I eventually learned that the Lord would bless me regardless, and now I cherish my retreat days each year. They are one of the rare times in the year that I seem to feel greater freedom to saunter. At so many other times, there is something inside of me that seeks to sabotage authentic rest. It doesn’t feel safe to be blessed and to receive. There is a vulnerability in it that is so wonderful and so terrifying at the same time.

I think “sauntering” can be even harder for me, because sauntering still includes a certain sense of movement and purposefulness, albeit in a more carefree manner.  I tend to set myself up with impossible tasks and then always feel in a hurry, always under stress. I walk fast. I drive fast. I plow through tasks. I am disciplined and driven. In that setup, there is little permission to move at a slower pace, to welcome interruptions as opportunities to receive, to wonder at and delight in the amazing beauty that surrounds me.

These moments of sauntering, puttering, meandering – whatever the right term is – are so essential for me to feel safe, to be open and receptive, to notice and to care, to be in awe and to wonder, to learn, to grow, to be generous, to appreciate, to be grateful, to affirm and encourage others, and to praise God. I am so much less human if I do not allow space for sauntering in my life.

Thankfully beauty often breaks through in spite of my defenses. It sneaks in the back door and catches me by surprise.  At those moments I have a choice to make. Will I rush on to the next thing and miss an opportunity to abide with the one who loves me so much? Or will I be kind to myself, allowing myself to take in the goodness and beauty, to savor it, to delight in it, and to praise the God who gives such good gifts?

Jesus, teach me to “saunter aimlessly” and to learn to be at peace when I do so.

Gradualness: Conclusion

It saddens me that there are some Church leaders who are appealing to “gradualness” and “accompaniment” in a confusing way, as a means of pushing their own agenda. They prefer to avoid difficult conversations about what is objectively true or good, particularly in areas such as marriage or sexuality or gender.

While I wholeheartedly agree that it is often unwise to broach such topics in the first or second (or even tenth) conversation, it is unjust and unloving to avoid them indefinitely. Christian life is all about conversion. Conversion is all about an ever-increasing surrender to the truth and goodness and beauty of God. If we hold back parts of our life in that process, our conversion will falter or fail.

Remember the example of Jesus in John’s Gospel. He always begins with encounter and dialogue. He first sees the people in front of him. He gazes upon them with understanding, empathy, and love. He awakens holy desires in their heart. And then he challenges them with the deeper truth.

The story of the Samaritan woman at the well is a marvelous example. She feels truly noticed, understood, cared for, wanted, accepted, and loved in a way she has perhaps never felt before. As her heart awakens to love, she begins to ache with a deep and intense spiritual thirst. Jesus is accompanying her step-by-step through this awakening and growth. Then, when she shows a strong readiness to follow him, he broaches the difficult subject: “Go, call your husband, and come back” (John 4:16). She admits the truth. The man she is with is not her husband, for she has had five husbands.

Had Jesus started the conversation there, the woman would likely have felt judged and shamed. She would have entrenched herself even more deeply in her misery, loneliness, and self-protection. But Jesus did not begin there. He began with seeing and loving the person in front of him. Indeed, it was precisely because he loved her so much that he also chose to discuss the difficult questions with her – when she was ready.

The apostle Paul, too, understood the fullness of conversion that must take place. His whole life was one relentless desire to belong freely and wholeheartedly to Christ. If anything was ever hindering his love, he desired to be rid of it. How could he truly claim to love Jesus otherwise? To love someone is to grow ever more intimate in the relationship, willing to overcome barriers and obstacles. The growth is gradual and not without much bumbling and stumbling. But when the commitment to growth is unflinching, the progress will continue steadily.

In Philippians 3, Paul warns against those who are “enemies of the Cross of Christ.” They do not want self-denial or suffering. By contrast, the Cross of Jesus is an invitation to pour out our love in free and wholehearted sacrifice.

I truthfully admit that I fear the Cross, that I struggle to trust God and surrender, and that I avoid dying to self on a daily basis. But when I search the depths of my heart, I also see that it is my deepest desire to lay down my life for others! It is my true calling and my true destiny.  I have come to learn that I cannot short-change the receiving of love from God and others. If I do not learn to be vulnerable and dependent and receptive, I will never be capable of sacrificing freely and fully.

God made us to love and be loved. Receiving love means trusting, lowering our defenses, becoming vulnerable, and learning to depend upon God and others. Giving love means sacrifice and (yes) the Cross. Every single disciple of Jesus is called, ultimately, to learn how to love and be loved in this way.

The enemies of the Cross of Christ want a Christianity that does not ask for heroic love. There is no such thing. We are all called, to borrow the image of Gregory the Great, to climb to the top of God’s mountain. It is a rugged and relentless climb, attained only by patience and gradualness. Although we all need to rest and relax, it is utterly unhelpful to settle on a permanent plateau and deny the need to climb any further. If we have sin in our life, we will ultimately need to repent of it. To refuse to repent is to refuse to love.

We in affluent nations are especially susceptible to avoidance of the Cross. We are often unaware of just how anesthetized we have become. We falsely believe that we are entitled to so many comforts and delights (luxuries which billions of others in the human race do not enjoy and never will enjoy). We live with the illusion that we shouldn’t have to suffer. We forget the fall, and the wages of sin, justly deserved. Jesus has paid our ransom and offers us a healing path, but not one that avoids the Way of the Cross. As Paul explains to the Philippians, those who are “mature” understand these things. “Mature” (teleoi) means that one is focused on the telos (the “goal” or the “summit”). No permanent plateaus. Further up and Further in.

It is a grave error to try to separate love and truth. Some focus so much on the truth that they forget to love the person in front of them unconditionally. Others, in the name of love, are willing to ignore or abandon the truth. In the words of Paul, “Love rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

Gradualness is so important – NOT as a means of avoiding difficult truths, but as a means of training us, one step at a time, to embrace the truth in all its fullness.

Lessons from Master Yoda

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” These days I find myself pondering those words of Master Yoda. For the sake of the unfortunate uninitiated souls somehow still unfamiliar with the Star Wars universe (I suppose there are still one or two left), I can remind everyone of the plot of The Empire Strikes Back. After a dull childhood on a desert planet, Luke Skywalker has found himself swept up into great space adventures, joining the rebellion against the evil galactic empire. He begins to discover his true destiny as one of the Jedi, the ancient noble protectors of the galaxy, who are able to tap into “the Force” to do things that normally would seem impossible (e.g.,glimpsing the future or moving objects through telekinesis).

Much of the movie depicts Luke’s training with Yoda, the legendary Jedi Master. After Luke crash lands his spacecraft into a swamp, he encounters an odd creature. He does not realize it is Yoda, whom he seeks, because he is expecting a massive and mighty warrior. Instead, he encounters a diminutive 900-year-old Muppet.

Yoda proceeds to train Luke with all the methodology of a Zen master. Again and again, Luke discovers that his preconceived expectations do not match the deeper reality. The training stretches him physically and mentally and emotionally, often resulting in childish pouting and fits. At one point, Yoda asks the impossible – for Luke to use the Force to lift up his spacecraft that has sunk into the marsh. Yoda assures him that the task is no different than moving a small rock. It is only different in one’s mind. It is at that point that Yoda utters two of his famous taglines: “You must unlearn what you have learned” and “Do or do not; there is no try.” Luke “tries” and does not. Yoda then stuns Luke by doing the impossible and lifting the ship.

Eventually, Luke grows and matures. He needed more time to unlearn what he had learned. His transformation was slow and gradual, sometimes painful and frustrating, but also featuring moments of  breakthrough and liberation.

I can definitely relate. As you probably know by now, during these past couple of years, I have been on a journey of personal healing and freedom. To summarize the experience, I can turn to the words of another Luke, namely, the Gospel writer. Mine has been the experience described by Simeon during the Presentation in the Temple. As the Virgin Mary brings the baby Jesus, Simeon speaks a cryptic prophecy over her: “A sword will pierce through your own soul, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35). These past couple of years, I have experienced an ever deeper relationship with Jesus’ mother Mary. Staying close to her sorrowful heart, I have found my own heart being laid bare, layer by layer.

Like Luke Skywalker, I have found some steps of the journey to be exhilarating. He discovers hidden abilities and begins doing things that he never would have imagined possible. I have definitely discovered new joy and freedom, hidden blessings and gifts. Many of you have marveled at the way I slowly but surely lost weight (over 70 pounds!). That has been more a side effect of healthier living than a direct goal. The journey into my heart showed up in my body. What had previously been impossible suddenly began happening.

At other times, like Luke in his training, I have found myself pushing against invisible barriers – the diabolical lies and unholy agreements forged long ago in my heart. God has been delivering me from lies of shame, fear, rejection, and abandonment.

Lately God has been uncovering layers of self-protection, going back even to my earliest years of life. I have been learning to see my whole life as a big and beautiful story, guided by God and, yes, sharing at times in Christ’s suffering. Obviously, I do not explicitly remember my infancy, but I am beginning to understand how profoundly painful it was. My father was recently returned from the Vietnam War, in which he had navigated bombing missions. He felt personally responsible for those deaths. As I was born, he was plunged into addictions and significant mental health challenges. My mother, overwhelmed, moved back to Wisconsin for support, seeking to reconnect with the Church and with extended family. But in the meantime, with both parents traumatized, there were inevitably times in which I as an infant found myself feeling alone and unnoticed, uncared for and unloved. At times during my prayer, I have experienced fragmented and very painful emotional memories – along with deep consolation and healing. God has been showing to me that, even before conscious thinking, I made a vow that it would be much safer and much less painful to be “independent” and look after myself. I repeatedly ratified that vow over the course of my childhood amidst painful family situations. I used my imagination to forge an enormous inner world, one to which I could safely escape, and in which I could avoid the awful pain of feeling unwanted or unloved or rejected.

That inner world was beautiful, but lonely. I suppose that I needed some level of self-protection, and continued to need it for a while. The problem is that I don’t need self-protection anymore – yet still find myself engaging in it – even against God himself. I daily call on the name of Jesus to break the chains that I forged when I made that unholy vow, all those years ago. With help from God and others I am unlearning what I have learned. I am learning to be loved and to love.

I suspect that most of you, like Luke and like me, have many lies to unlearn as we all seek to abide in love and truth.

Hiraeth Part II: Beauty Breaks Through

In my previous post I explored the human experience of hiraeth, which the Welsh describe as a bittersweet ache of our heart for some kind of elusive homeland. It’s a rather unique word describing a rather universal human experience – at least for those willing to look deeply within their heart.

I suggested that the experience of hiraeth is ultimately an invitation into Christian hope. In the remotest depths of our heart we “remember” a homeland that has not yet come into full existence. We have tasted its fruits, like the Israelites on the edge of the promised land. Like them, we are held back by sadness and fear. By the power of God, Joshua (Yeshua in Hebrew) led the Israelites through dangers and into the promised land. Jesus (also Yeshua in Hebrew) will lead us through the dark valley and into his Kingdom, the fruits of which we begin to enjoy even now.

Even with Jesus at our side, it can be so hard to muster the courage to re-enter the dark and scary places of our heart. We live in a world that encourages us to escape reality and numb our pain. Instead of grieving well, many brokenhearted people turn to manifestly destructive behaviors: drunkenness, illegal narcotics, internet pornography, sexual promiscuity, impulse shopping, overeating, chain smoking, or compulsive gambling. Aside from addictions, we find more subtle ways of hurting self and others as we try to cope: being critical or sarcastic, “fixing” others, engaging in manipulative behavior, lying, peevishness, or fault finding.

Perhaps we don’t turn to behaviors that are directly hurtful, but run from our pain all the same. I think here of activities such as daydreaming, spending long hours playing video games, binge watching TV shows, a never ending quest for tattoos or piercings, fanatical exercising, plunging into busyness or careerism, obsession with sports, and so forth. We numb and anesthetize, hoping somehow to avoid our pain forever. But it will not go away on its own.

Please don’t get discouraged in reading these lists! Probably all of us engage in some level of coping. It’s part of our survival instincts – which are there by God’s design to help us get through the troubles of life. The problem is when the “high alert” switch gets stuck in the “on” position and we don’t learn how to calm down and face reality.

I look back now on my childhood and realize that I had an enormous amount of emotional and spiritual pain without knowing how to face it. I coped for several years by turning to extensive daydreaming, and so I struggled in school and in sports. As I entered adolescence, I learned how to pay attention and became an overachiever. All seemed well, but it was actually a new way of trying to escape from pain. I spent my down time playing thousands of hours of video games, and otherwise strove towards every accolade I could achieve. There was good that came from all of these things – but they ultimately avoided the pain rather than help me overcome it.

Thankfully, truth and goodness and beauty have a transcendent power. They are always capable of lifting up the human spirit. In my Catholic high school years, I experienced a significant spiritual conversion. Even as I strove to “achieve” in my religion classes, I was captivated by the objective truth and goodness and beauty that I encountered. God writes straight with our crooked lines. My faith and spiritual life deepened, and I went on to have many profound moments of conversion.

Nonetheless, there was still plenty of minimizing and false hope, ignoring the signs that all was not well with my soul. It was only during the most recent years of my life that I realized the need to grieve some of those old wounds in earnest.

For me, as for many others, there were formidable walls of pride and self-protection. In my need to feel safe, I found ways to isolate and protect those places of pain – also keeping the out the good in the process. At times truth and goodness would beat at the door, and I would yield, even if it was painful. I cannot stand to live a lie. But I can be pretty darn skilled at minimizing. My mind is a gift that sometimes works against me.

But beauty breaks through. It has a way of catching us when our guard is down and sneaking past our defenses. Occasionally over the years I would find myself tearing up at scenes in movies. I didn’t always understand why (and was glad no one could notice in the darkness of the theater). But when I became serious about facing past wounds and growing in hope, I realized that I would benefit from turning actively to art, music, poetry, movies, and other aesthetic expressions. I sought and found those that spoke to my heart. And speak they did. I let the tears flow – sometimes cathartically. I talked to trusted friends and to the Lord about what I was experiencing. Layer by layer, the encounter with beauty has helped to heal my heart and increase my hope.

We all have dark and scary places in our heart that we would rather avoid. Thankfully, like Peter and James and John on Mount Tabor, we occasionally receive a glimpse of glory, a foretaste of our true destiny. Like them, we can find the strength to endure the darkness of Good Friday and journey forward in hope to the glory of the Resurrection and Ascension.

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