The struggle to love God above all else is not an intellectual task. If it were it would easy. It is not simply a matter of deciding we want to do it and setting our minds to accomplishing it. We can't set goals and then design tasks for achieving those goals. It IS a task of the will, but it is not accomplished by sheer will power driven by the intellect. Loving God above all else is accomplished by surrendering the will to God. Actually, that is almost a tautology: tantamount to saying "the struggle to love God above all else is accomplished by loving God above all else."
So how is it NOT a matter of will power? Will power is knowing intellectually what is good for you and then using the power of the mind to accomplish or attain it. The mind works against the power of emotion and desire. Anyone who has gone on a diet knows how well this works.
In The Confessions, we see that Augustine already buys into Christianity intellectually. His mind is there. But he knows God doesn't want just his mind; God will only be satisfied with all of us - mind, heart, and spirit. We can only be happy if we give it all up for God. Augustine knows this and knows it means he has to yield his sexuality to God. He wants this with all his mind but his heart isn't there yet. He must count the cost and struggle if he is to truly yield to God.
Isn't this exactly how much of our moral struggle works out? We know what the right thing is; we just don't want to do it. It is the problem of the divided will. We know doing what's right is going to cost us - and our heart demands that we count the cost. Usually we have to go through a struggle before can let go and surrender to God. It is this struggle that Augustine recounts in The Confessions.
So letting go of that which is less than God becomes a central task of the spiritual (and hence the moral) life. We don't just do it once; we do it throughout our lives because we never fully yield everything to God.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Happy Life
Maybe another way of getting at what Augustine is about is to consider his understanding of happiness. As with Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, Augustine is a eudamonist - one who considers happiness to be the fundamental end or goal of human life. A key question that must be addressed, though, is what happiness entails. Is it simply pleasure, as Bentham insisted, or do we have to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures - pleasures of the mind vs. pleasures of the body, as with Mill?
Augustine is also intent upon the task of defining and distinguishing between different kinds of happiness. After his conversion, he retreated to Cassiciacum with some friends to reflect upon his conversion. There he wrote De Beata Vita (The Happy Life) where he sets forth what the happy life is: to live in relationship to God as the Summum Bonum (the highest good). To be truly happy, we must seek God and recognize God as that which will make us truly and deeply happy. The human person is hard-wired to seek God - indeed, as we seek that which is less than God we are really ultimately seeking God. God has made us to seek Godself ("You have made us for yourself"); once we realize that and offer ourselves to God, we may be peacefully happy ("Our hearts are restless until they rest in You").
This does not mean we may not take any delight in that which is not God. Augustine recognizes that we need to survive and even to thrive and that means enjoying the good things that God gives. But he also recognizes that the human heart tends to fix itself upon what it loves - to elevate it to the status of God and to become like that which it loves. He really is talking about idolatry here. We make gods of things like money, power, sex, food, drugs. These become more important to us than willing to live "a good and upright life" in relationship to God. We make ultimate what is not ultimate: money, power, sex, drugs, food. But these cannot satisfy the will and the endless pursuit of these finite goods draws us away from God. We pursue these things and become like these things - superficial and self-centered - and less like God.
Augustine is also intent upon the task of defining and distinguishing between different kinds of happiness. After his conversion, he retreated to Cassiciacum with some friends to reflect upon his conversion. There he wrote De Beata Vita (The Happy Life) where he sets forth what the happy life is: to live in relationship to God as the Summum Bonum (the highest good). To be truly happy, we must seek God and recognize God as that which will make us truly and deeply happy. The human person is hard-wired to seek God - indeed, as we seek that which is less than God we are really ultimately seeking God. God has made us to seek Godself ("You have made us for yourself"); once we realize that and offer ourselves to God, we may be peacefully happy ("Our hearts are restless until they rest in You").
This does not mean we may not take any delight in that which is not God. Augustine recognizes that we need to survive and even to thrive and that means enjoying the good things that God gives. But he also recognizes that the human heart tends to fix itself upon what it loves - to elevate it to the status of God and to become like that which it loves. He really is talking about idolatry here. We make gods of things like money, power, sex, food, drugs. These become more important to us than willing to live "a good and upright life" in relationship to God. We make ultimate what is not ultimate: money, power, sex, drugs, food. But these cannot satisfy the will and the endless pursuit of these finite goods draws us away from God. We pursue these things and become like these things - superficial and self-centered - and less like God.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Augustine and Self-Integration I
As a start in understanding self-integration as the integration of mind and heart, it might be helpful to look at St. Augustine.
Of course, all this talk about "integrating" the intellect with the emotions suggests that the intellect and emotions are at odds with one another and need to be brought into harmony. There is a conflict going on. In many ways, the best description of this conflict occurs in chapter 7 of Romans, where St. Paul describes the conflict of the will: "What I do I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15). Our passions and desires do not listen to the reason of the mind.
Augustine in his Confessions describes this same conflict as he struggles with his sexual addiction to bring his moral conversion to Christianity in line with his intellectual conversion. "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet!" (Book VIII, Chapter 7). That Augustine had to grapple with his sexual addiction before he could give himself to God is essential here. As Twelve Step programs acknowledge in the first few steps, the antidote to addiction is spiritual - recognition that one is helpless and only one's Higher Power can deliver one from the addiction ("Miserable one that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord" [Romans 7:25]).
Why is this? Why must it be God? Augustine's anthropology explains and provides a foundation for his moral philosophy. Augustine considers love to be the driver of the human will. But he uses "love" broadly. As the will seeks - whether it is for food, sex, power, esteem - the will is restless, never ceasing in its seeking until it finds what it wants. Augustine notices in himself, though, that even once he got what he wanted - he still felt empty. The will might rest in satiety for a moment, but it soon starts all over again. (Those of you familiar with Augustine can probably tell where this is leading: "O Lord you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" [Book I, Chapter 1].)
Augustine eventually understood that the only love that could satisfy the human will was love of God. He shaped his moral philosophy around this proposition. God calls humans to love God solely and to find appropriate love of that which is less than God through love properly ordered toward God. God wants us for Godself. God wants our ultimate allegiance to be to Godself. After that, of course, God wants us to have good things that we need. But those good things should never claim our love to the exclusion of God.
The integrated human person is one who has given oneself entirely to God - who has fallen in love with God and whose desires are appropriately ordered in relationship to the love of God. The lesser loves are characterized by a certain detachment toward the lesser goods of human life. We enjoy them for what they are but recognize that they are not God and cannot rule our soul because we are under God's rule.
This is where contemplative prayer comes in. We experience the profound love of God in the depth of the prayer. The regular practice forms us as God's own; we know that we are God's and we desire only to be God's. Contemplative prayer makes us God's own and instills the detachment within us toward that which is less than God.
Of course, all this talk about "integrating" the intellect with the emotions suggests that the intellect and emotions are at odds with one another and need to be brought into harmony. There is a conflict going on. In many ways, the best description of this conflict occurs in chapter 7 of Romans, where St. Paul describes the conflict of the will: "What I do I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15). Our passions and desires do not listen to the reason of the mind.
Augustine in his Confessions describes this same conflict as he struggles with his sexual addiction to bring his moral conversion to Christianity in line with his intellectual conversion. "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet!" (Book VIII, Chapter 7). That Augustine had to grapple with his sexual addiction before he could give himself to God is essential here. As Twelve Step programs acknowledge in the first few steps, the antidote to addiction is spiritual - recognition that one is helpless and only one's Higher Power can deliver one from the addiction ("Miserable one that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord" [Romans 7:25]).
Why is this? Why must it be God? Augustine's anthropology explains and provides a foundation for his moral philosophy. Augustine considers love to be the driver of the human will. But he uses "love" broadly. As the will seeks - whether it is for food, sex, power, esteem - the will is restless, never ceasing in its seeking until it finds what it wants. Augustine notices in himself, though, that even once he got what he wanted - he still felt empty. The will might rest in satiety for a moment, but it soon starts all over again. (Those of you familiar with Augustine can probably tell where this is leading: "O Lord you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" [Book I, Chapter 1].)
Augustine eventually understood that the only love that could satisfy the human will was love of God. He shaped his moral philosophy around this proposition. God calls humans to love God solely and to find appropriate love of that which is less than God through love properly ordered toward God. God wants us for Godself. God wants our ultimate allegiance to be to Godself. After that, of course, God wants us to have good things that we need. But those good things should never claim our love to the exclusion of God.
The integrated human person is one who has given oneself entirely to God - who has fallen in love with God and whose desires are appropriately ordered in relationship to the love of God. The lesser loves are characterized by a certain detachment toward the lesser goods of human life. We enjoy them for what they are but recognize that they are not God and cannot rule our soul because we are under God's rule.
This is where contemplative prayer comes in. We experience the profound love of God in the depth of the prayer. The regular practice forms us as God's own; we know that we are God's and we desire only to be God's. Contemplative prayer makes us God's own and instills the detachment within us toward that which is less than God.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Transformation and Self-Integration
So from the past few blogs, it is clear that I am approaching all this from two perspectives: my own personal experience of contemplative prayer and also the work I've done on what I call "self-integration" and the motivation of the will in my dissertation.
The idea that contemplative prayer (or any prayer, for that matter) shapes one's moral character is not exactly groundbreaking. Many authors and presenters focus on how the practice of contemplative prayer over an extended period of time transforms the practitioner (1). In fact, one of these writers, Dennis J. Billy CSsR, asks the question in the title of his article "What is Contemplative Ethics?" Still, I'd like to investigate more specifically how contemplative prayer helps us integrate our intellect with our emotion and how that shapes our moral character.
In my dissertation, I investigated the role of self-integration in the moral philosophies of St. Augustine and H. Richard Niebuhr (the lesser known of the Niebuhr brothers but in my opinion the more interesting). I will unpack the definition of self-integration in more detail in subsequent blogs, but for now what I mean by self-integration is the integration of rational and experiential knowledge with more bodily and emotional knowledge. By and large, the Western Enlightenment philosophical tradition has driven a wedge between the mind and the body. Niebuhr and Augustine recognize the need to integrate these. Both recognize that the emotions do indeed provide important knowledge, and if attended to and reflected upon by the intellect, can bring us to a kind of wholeness that each left to its own devices cannot. It is in attending to our emotions - which are mediated through our bodies - and then reflecting with our intellect upon our experience that we achieve integrity and wholeness - responding to what happens to us and not simply reacting.
This has important ethical implications. When we react, we do so unthinkingly and often out of fear. Often we find ourselves in ethically compromised positions when we react rather than respond. We lose ourselves when our emotions have not been attended to. A response in integrity comes from reflection - not just by applying abstract principles but from considering emotions, understanding what they mean, and acting accordingly.
Contemplative prayer is an excellent way to to be still and connect with God and our emotions and bodies. Western society is hopelessly in its head and action-oriented. Contemplative prayer provides a means by which to stop for a few minutes and simply be. We invite God into our whole being and by God's grace reconnect with our deepest nature. Out of this wholeness we respond when confronted with something that seems morally wrong to us - rather than going along out of fear of what might happen if we have the moral courage to speak out.
________________________
1. Dennis J. Billy, CSsR. "What is Contemplative Ethics?" Josephinum Journal of Theology 13:1 (2006):2-16; Fr. John Ettelsohn, OMI. "Transformation: Change That Lets Your Soul Grow Up." Nurturing the Contemplative Spirit Lecture Series. Contemplative Outreach of Indiana. November 12, 2011; Brian C. Taylor, "Changing Your Mind: Contemplative Prayer and Personal Transformation." Sewanee Theological Review 42:2(Easter 2005):182-197.
The idea that contemplative prayer (or any prayer, for that matter) shapes one's moral character is not exactly groundbreaking. Many authors and presenters focus on how the practice of contemplative prayer over an extended period of time transforms the practitioner (1). In fact, one of these writers, Dennis J. Billy CSsR, asks the question in the title of his article "What is Contemplative Ethics?" Still, I'd like to investigate more specifically how contemplative prayer helps us integrate our intellect with our emotion and how that shapes our moral character.
In my dissertation, I investigated the role of self-integration in the moral philosophies of St. Augustine and H. Richard Niebuhr (the lesser known of the Niebuhr brothers but in my opinion the more interesting). I will unpack the definition of self-integration in more detail in subsequent blogs, but for now what I mean by self-integration is the integration of rational and experiential knowledge with more bodily and emotional knowledge. By and large, the Western Enlightenment philosophical tradition has driven a wedge between the mind and the body. Niebuhr and Augustine recognize the need to integrate these. Both recognize that the emotions do indeed provide important knowledge, and if attended to and reflected upon by the intellect, can bring us to a kind of wholeness that each left to its own devices cannot. It is in attending to our emotions - which are mediated through our bodies - and then reflecting with our intellect upon our experience that we achieve integrity and wholeness - responding to what happens to us and not simply reacting.
This has important ethical implications. When we react, we do so unthinkingly and often out of fear. Often we find ourselves in ethically compromised positions when we react rather than respond. We lose ourselves when our emotions have not been attended to. A response in integrity comes from reflection - not just by applying abstract principles but from considering emotions, understanding what they mean, and acting accordingly.
Contemplative prayer is an excellent way to to be still and connect with God and our emotions and bodies. Western society is hopelessly in its head and action-oriented. Contemplative prayer provides a means by which to stop for a few minutes and simply be. We invite God into our whole being and by God's grace reconnect with our deepest nature. Out of this wholeness we respond when confronted with something that seems morally wrong to us - rather than going along out of fear of what might happen if we have the moral courage to speak out.
________________________
1. Dennis J. Billy, CSsR. "What is Contemplative Ethics?" Josephinum Journal of Theology 13:1 (2006):2-16; Fr. John Ettelsohn, OMI. "Transformation: Change That Lets Your Soul Grow Up." Nurturing the Contemplative Spirit Lecture Series. Contemplative Outreach of Indiana. November 12, 2011; Brian C. Taylor, "Changing Your Mind: Contemplative Prayer and Personal Transformation." Sewanee Theological Review 42:2(Easter 2005):182-197.
Monday, August 1, 2011
How Contemplative Prayer Transforms
When I was a younger woman, I was involved in a troubling relationship. I did not handle it well. I also happened to be in a centering prayer group at my parish. I was astonished in the midst of that prayer to experience the gentle presence of God nudging me to extricate myself from the relationship. It was so gentle, so loving - no condemnation, no judgment. Just truth.
I can't say that I immediately ended the relationship and lived happily ever after - although I did eventually live happily ever after! What the experience did do though was give me a deep realization of the depth of God's love and the helpfulness of centering prayer to bring me into the presence of that love.
God's love changes us - almost imperceptibly. First it heals us; then it tempers our spirit to love others. All of this sounds very linear; in fact, healing and tempering take place within us continually.
I was first attracted to contemplative prayer for the peace and healing. I stayed with it because I found I was a better person because of it.
There are those who are sure that the peace of contemplative prayer sinks the pray-er into passivity and quietism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contemplative prayer is not passive, self-indulgent navel-gazing. Yes, it is pleasurable and comforting. And what is wrong with a little comfort? We need comfort, healing, and peace to be able to act for ourselves, for others, and for God. The healing is necessary if we are to be strengthened for action. Centering/contemplative prayer (I'll use these interchangeably) equip one to act from the center of one's being and in true freedom - because rather than being driven by the pathetic will to power of the ego we are moved by love for and willingness to surrender to God's will.
In the next blog I'll share my experience of how centering prayer tempers the spirit.
I can't say that I immediately ended the relationship and lived happily ever after - although I did eventually live happily ever after! What the experience did do though was give me a deep realization of the depth of God's love and the helpfulness of centering prayer to bring me into the presence of that love.
God's love changes us - almost imperceptibly. First it heals us; then it tempers our spirit to love others. All of this sounds very linear; in fact, healing and tempering take place within us continually.
I was first attracted to contemplative prayer for the peace and healing. I stayed with it because I found I was a better person because of it.
There are those who are sure that the peace of contemplative prayer sinks the pray-er into passivity and quietism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contemplative prayer is not passive, self-indulgent navel-gazing. Yes, it is pleasurable and comforting. And what is wrong with a little comfort? We need comfort, healing, and peace to be able to act for ourselves, for others, and for God. The healing is necessary if we are to be strengthened for action. Centering/contemplative prayer (I'll use these interchangeably) equip one to act from the center of one's being and in true freedom - because rather than being driven by the pathetic will to power of the ego we are moved by love for and willingness to surrender to God's will.
In the next blog I'll share my experience of how centering prayer tempers the spirit.
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