16
commentary
December 10, 2013
‘The ups and downs of
faith have to do with
rhythms of ordinary life.’
Faith is not something you achieve.
If you try to nail it down, it gets up and
walks away with the nail. Faith works
this way: Some days you walk on water,
other days you sink like a stone. You live
with a deep secret, the poet Rumi says,
that sometimes you know, and then not,
and then know again. Sometimes you
feel the real presence, and sometimes
you feel the real absence. Why?
Like love, faith is a journey, with
constant ups and downs, with alternating periods of fervor and dryness, with
consolation giving way to desolation,
and with graced moments where God
feels tangibly present eclipsed by dark
nights where God feels absent. It’s a
strange state: sometimes you feel riveted
to God, steel-like, other times you feel
yourself in a free-fall from everything
secure, and then, just when things are
at their lowest, you feel God’s presence
again.
Why does faith have this confusing
dynamic? It’s not that God is cruel, is
playing games with us, wants to test
our fidelity, or wants us to do something
difficult to earn salvation. The ups and
downs of faith have to do with rhythms
of ordinary life, especially the rhythm of
love which has its periods of fervor and
dark nights.
All of us know that inside of any
long-term commitment (marriage, family, friendship, Church) there will be
certain days and whole seasons when
our heads and hearts aren’t in that com-
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T
he Valley Catholic
Spirituality
By Father Ron Rolheiser
Searching for a word filled with reality
mitment, even as we’re still in it. Our
heads and hearts fade in and out, but
we experience love as ultimately not
dependent upon the head or even the
heart. Something deeper holds us.
Sometimes we sense God’s presence
with our heads and hearts and sometimes both leave us flat and dry. But faith
is something deeper than imagining
or feeling God’s presence. How do we
come to that? What should we do in
those moments when it feels as if God
is absent?
The great mystic, John of the Cross,
offers this advice: If you want to find
God’s presence again in those moments
when God feels absent, listen to a word
filled with reality and unfathomable
truth. What might he mean by that?
How does one listen to a word filled
with reality and unfathomable truth?
How does one even find such a word?
The phrase might be easier to untangle if he was telling us to look for
an experience that’s deep and filled
with reality, for example, giving birth,
being awed by exceptional beauty, or
having your heart broken by loss or
death. These kinds of experiences are
real, unfathomably true, and jolt us into
a deeper awareness; so, if God is to be
found, shouldn’t God be found there?
John is asking us to look for a word
that carries reality and depth (in Scripture, theology, spirituality, or in secular
literature and poetry), that speaks to
us in a way that re-grounds us in some
primal sense that God exists and loves
us and that because of this, we should
live in love and hope.
God is one, true, good and beautiful,
and so the right word about oneness,
truth, goodness or beauty should have
the power to steady our shifting minds
and hearts. The right word can make the
Word become flesh again.
Words of authors have carried this
kind of truth for me at different times in
my life. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a
Soul, has steadied me in some moments
of doubt; John Steinbeck’s The Grapes
of Wrath, can still refocus my vision;
various passages from Karl Rahner,
John Shea, Raymond Brown, and Henri
Nouwen can help steady my ship; and
some words of Dag Hammarskjold
can make me want to live to mirror the
greatness of life.
Each of us needs to search for words
which, for us, are so filled with ???????)??????????????????????????????)???????????????? ???+???=?????????I???I????????????????????????????????????????????????)A????????????=?????M?????????Q???????)???M??????????Q`??!????????????????)?????????????????????????????()?????L?????????????????) ??-?????????)A????=???????
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