OF POETRY AND ROCK-CLIMBING

“To reach the Creator, I must make myself a creator – at least in so far as my dispositions are concerned. I must break all the moulds in which I constantly fashion myself, for they are invariably restrictive; I must reject all securities, all familiar words, all riches, so as to offer myself utterly poor and virginal to the breath of the Spirit. In this way is the only creativity that counts made possible: the creativity that forms Christ in us, that gives birth to the Son, the creativity which forms ourselves, not just some object, into a poem of love to God, a poem that is completely unique.

Sometimes the Spirit gives me my being through solemn words of love, sometimes through words of joy. There are very mundane words, like bread, or water; there are words of humiliation, of suffering, even of sin. It is necessary to let ourselves be formed, through these various words, so that the glory of God may be sung. 

If I am the poet of the poem which is my life, I am also the priest. The word which is given to me – as a Christian*  and, in a particular way, as a priest – has the power to transform all things into the body of Christ. This is my body, this is my blood, given for you. Just as  God creates, by his Word, at every moment, so he recreates us, takes us up again in all our humanity, with the whole of creation, into the eternal offering of the love of Christ to the Father, into the heart of which we are immersed by the sacrifice of the Mass.” (The Wound of Love, 162-3)

*The priesthood of the faithful is a genuine participation in the priesthood of Christ, and gives us from the start the power of offering ourselves and all things in Christ, with the ordained priest. This dignity conferred in baptism is all too often forgotten.

This is from a chapter on Conversion, called “To Create is to Forget”. At first glance, it seems as remote from our lives as the life of the Carthusian monk who spoke it and those who heard it. This is hardly the Christianity wich we learnt (if we learnt any at all) in a local parish church, in the odd Christmas sermon, or the Christianity we read about and decided was only for those who had the magical gift of faith which we, like most people, just didn’t happen to get. 

When I first read this and other texts in the volume, my reaction was, “Why didn’t anyone ever talk to me about the Christian religion like this?” I felt like the weekend rock climber I once was, coming face to face with El Capitan and those who made its first ascent (3,000 feet of smooth vertical or overhanging granite).

Now, having read it a number of times and thought about it, I realise that while it is the word of a contemplative monk and a priest – and thus of someone who can and must devote all his time and energy to this alone – we others are not necssarily excluded from it. If we absorb this, say, in our morning prayer at the beginning of the day, and keep its essence (as St Francis de Sales said) as a “posy” or buttonhole bouquet to sniff at periodically in the intervals of work or play –- when we are driving, or bicycling, or walking; while we are doing the dishes or cooking –, then the breaking of moulds, the emptying out, the opening of inner doors and shutters, followed by the delicate reshaping of our inwardness to become a line, or a stanza, of that poem becomes not only possible but an entirely natural step to take. 

(The third paragraph, of course, goes quite far, and is a challenge. Even for the Carthusian priest, saying that all things can become the body of Christ might be questioned by his superiors as being dangerously Teilhardian; but his insistence on the priesthood of all believers, conferred by baptism, is currently very much echoed even by our local parish priest. More about that in a future post.)

El Capitan, Yosemite, California

A SCHOLAR AND A GENTLEMAN

Today is the feast of one of my favourite saints, François de Sales. He was born when Philip Sidney was 13, in what is now the Haute-Savoie, the region of Annecy (a town in a setting so lovely that it cries out for a small university). Destined for the law, he decided instead on the priesthood, and became Catholic Bishop of Geneva. As Geneva was a Calvinist theocracy, this was a tricky job. Wisely, he decided not even to try installing himself there, but lived in Annecy instead.

I came across François as an undergraduate, through Louis Martz’s excellent book The Poetry of Meditation, in which he shows the influence of Renaissance Christian meditation practices on the religious Metaphysical poets. The main forms of such meditation were found in Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and in François de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. I still have my old paperback copy of this latter book, very tattered and almost read to bits. François de Sales was known for his learning, but especially for his tact, his diplomacy, and his genuine kindness (useful qualities for a Catholic Bishop of Geneva). Together with his closest friend, Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, he founded and directed several religious orders.

Rereading the Introduction not long ago, I found it a little more uncompromising than I had remembered it, but still a masterpiece. And the Salesian meditation techniques are far more accessible to ordinary people living in the world than the Ignatian version. Each meditation is based on an hour’s duration, divided into three 20-minute parts. The Composition of Place consists of using the imagination to visualise a scene from, say, the Gospels, to place oneself inside that scene as vividly as one possibly can, and to live it. The Analysis uses the intelligence and its ingenuity to figure out what meanings each aspect of the scene contains – anyone who has read some Renaissance literature, such as Spenser, will have an idea of the richness of meaning to be found. Finally, the third section uses to faculty of the Will, to draw conclusions for one’s own life and to pray for the strength and intelligence to live these in one’s daily reality. And – this is typical of François – at the very end, he says, you go back over the whole meditation, pick out two or three of the moments you have found most valuable, and tie them into a “spiritual posy” or bouquet that you then put into your buttonhole, to take out and look at and smell for the rest of the day. What a charming man, this Gentleman Saint.