OF WATER AND LIGHT

“For with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light.” (Psalm 36)

Coming upon this while reading through the day’s psalms, I always feel a thrill run down my spine: the sure sign of true poetry. The well of life reminds me of Spenser’s characterization of Chaucer as “the well of English undefiled”. The well, of course, is not un puits but une source, a wellspring, a spring in the grass from which water flows unceasingly. God, says the Psalmist, is not the well: the spring is with him. It is near him, in his proximity; it is complicit with him, on his side, part of what God creates and wants us to recognize. 

We may imagine – as God always lets us imagine – himself, the Ancient of Days, seated in a meadow of his own creation, perhaps on the Seventh Day, tired but content, contemplating a new and unspoiled planet, and at his foot, in the unimaginably lovely fresh grass, a spring bubbling, its water coursing in rivulets down the hill. The water is life. Which is very insightful of the Psalmist: we now know that the sine qua non for a planet to support life is the presence of water. And the spring of that life is with God.

He created it, after all; but the beauty is that he kept it with him: close to him, never far away. He does not let the bubbling up of life out of his sight. Whatever it becomes later; whatever mud weighs it down, whatever filth pollutes it, whatever cruel droughts dry it up; if we trace it to its source, we shall find God, watching over it.

Life and light, in the good fortune of English, are alliterative twins; and the image of life is followed by an even more puissant one of light. Light allows us to see: to see things, to see the world, to see our neighbours. But what allows us to see light? In one sense, light is invisible; but what the Psalm tells us us that that is only one sense. In another, we see light; but we see it “in thy light”, in the light of God. No easy image of the Ancient of Days here. Can we get our mind round this? “In thy light shall we see light.” Light, the very essence of our consciousness, the primary element that allows us to see everything else, is itself secondary. We see it in, in the context of, as part of, as an emanation of, His light. 

How do we adjust this to our known and felt experience? We think we see light all the time, whether we ‘believe in’ God or not. We live, move and have our being in a world where light is an everyday occurrence. So in what way can it be secondary? Perhaps we should entertain the possibility that only when we see light in His light do we see light pure, light as it was created to be when God said “let there be light.” Any light, then, which we see on our own, without first adjusting our mind’s eye to God, is a polluted light, a light subtly touched by original sin. An uncomfortable thought; but those who have known conversion can tell you that it changes even your way of seeing – i.e. light. Perhaps they, for the first time, are seeing light in His light.

And finally, both life and light together spurred the Psalmist – unknown to us, but he must have existed as a real person, King David or no – to compress them together and so make a flash of pure poetry. Which in itself is always a new way of seeing.

RADICAL YOUTH?

Sister of Charity in India

In France, one of this week’s events is a new film by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, director of Les Héritiers (the Inheritors), a wonderful movie about a high-school class and their project on teenagers in the Holocaust. The new film concerns what we now call the “radicalization” of teenage girls, who often in a short space of time become what they think are strict Muslims and set off for Syria. Listening to an interview with the admirable director, who has lived with these girls and their families for three years, I was struck with a dolorous thought of great force: WHERE IS THE CHURCH?

            From what Mention-Schaar said, it was clear that many if not most of these girls, not at all from a Muslim or even immigrant background, were responding to on the one hand a barrage of indoctrination on the vile immorality of Western capitalist society, and on the other hand a burning desire for a life that is pure, upright, dedicated to both a divine plan and human betterment.

            Uh, huh. There was a time – and my wife remembers it well from her own childhood – when such girls burned to be missionaries or teaching nuns or religious working with the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa was an example of those, probably a minority, but still, who went through with it.

            But even before this connection came up, when last year was proclaimed a Year of the Religious, and a number of people were lamenting the decline in vocations, I was astonished by the lack of recruiting, advertising or even public relations the Roman Catholic Church (and the Anglicans are no better) is doing on the subject. Supposedly, they want the young or the relatively young: many orders take no one over 45. But are they lifting a finger to get them? No. For a time I was a member of an Internet group of Carthusian enthusiasts called the International Friends of St Bruno. In the 2 or 3 years I spent with them I don’t think I ever saw a posting from someone under 40.

            It is, and probably always has been, a feature of the teenage years to want to be an arrow on a divine bow: straight, sharp, noble, and aimed and shot at a deserving target. Nowadays, it does not occur to many to turn to a religious order to be arrowed; but the social networks turn a startling number of them to an Islamist jihad. Were we to see a tenth of that recruiting activity, both in quantity and in quality, on the social networks for the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Benedictines, the Cistercians or the Franciscans, the number of novices would shoot up; and even if only a minority stay the course, fewer monasteries and convents would be inhabited only by the agèd and fewer would close. And for those who want activity, who burn to help the downtrodden, the Sisters of Charity are still in Calcutta and elsewhere. Pure you can be; dedicated you have to be; needed you will be. Of course you won’t have the thrill of the Kalashnikov; but on the other hand you won’t have the sweat and the bad breath of the freedom fighter on top of you whose slave you have been declared. And nowadays, your parents might even – oh joy! -- disapprove.

young Carmelites

Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal