Finding God

Spiritual writer Anthony de Mello insisted that there was such a thing as "One Minute Wisdom."

He meant that insights and "aha moments" occur to us in an instant.

He tells the story of a student who asked the Master, "But surely one minute is too brief?" And the Master replied, "It is fifty-nine seconds too long!"

The disciple was puzzled, and the Master explained, "How much time does it take to catch sight of the moon? Opening one's eyes may take a lifetime, but seeing is done in a flash."

Later another disciple asked, "Where can I find God?"

The Master answered, "He's right in front of you!"

"Then why do I not see him?"

"Why does the drunkard fail to see his home? You must find out what makes you drunk. To see God you must be sober!"

And yet another pleaded, "Help us to find God."

"No one can help you there."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean."

Poet Mary Oliver probes the mystery too, in her poem "Summer Day."

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean --
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Finding God should be easy, but it's not, even with the help of the Baltimore Catechism. I remember well the question and answer:
Q. Where is God?
A. God is everywhere.

It was a reassuring answer, but I was puzzled. Teacher said God was indeed everywhere, but apparently not so much in Buddhism, Hinduism, or even in the Protestant churches.

Our supposed Catholic monopoly on God was unsustainable.

The Bishops at Vatican II clarified it a bit when they said that the sole Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, but many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside its visible confines.

Where there is truth, there is God. I believe that the fullness of the Gospel is found in the Catholic tradition, but I have to acknowledge that God can be found elsewhere too. It would be unconscionable to think a little Buddhist child could not go to heaven.

St. Thomas Aquinas advised us not to be prejudiced by the sources of our information. When something is good, he said, we should commit it fast to memory.

We need not fear the truth wherever we find it. We should not be surprised if God pops up in the unlikeliest places.

The Problem of Truth

I took offense at something someone said to me recently.

Instead of humbly accepting his remark, I let resentment dictate my response. I told him I did not like what he said.

He replied that he meant no offense, but I let him know that his words were indeed offensive.

I thought of him as a man with a gun who, shooting randomly and without aim, hits someone and then apologizes, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shoot you. That was never my intention."

Whether he intended it or not, he fired and his bullet struck me in a fleshy, weak, too-sensitive part of my being, and I challenged the shot.

Later I was upset, not so much by being hit, but for my making an issue of the pain. Jesus' words in the sermon on the mount kept coming to mind: Offer no resistance...Turn the other cheek...Love your enemies...Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Once again I failed to respond with Gospel values.

Finally in prayer I asked first to forgive and be forgiven, and then to discover the lesson I was to learn from this incident.

God took me at my word. Within hours of my prayer, while I was reading Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, I had to pause over what I take to be God's advice.

In the novel the holy man Father Zossima explains how important it is for people to be honest with themselves, "The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others."

He goes on, "The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of molehill --he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness" (Book II, chapter 2).

I just hate it when God answers prayer.

So then, the lesson of my incident returns me to the problem of truth.

The advice of Polonius to his son Laertes comes to mind, "This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

There I have it. Three rather significant witnesses: Jesus, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare!

In today's political climate, too many public servants are eager to take offense, or at least make offensive something their opponents have said or done. The culture of political correctness has run amok.

But I must be careful not to become distracted by the sensitivities, vindictiveness, and pleasure of resentment prevalent today in politicians, pundits, and members of the press. The lesson of my incident is a lesson for me.

So Jesus and I are going to have to put our heads together and formulate for me, again, his sage observation of 2000 years ago, "I am the way and the truth and the life."

If the truth will set us free, maybe it will free me from taking offense at the words of even random shooters.

To Be Honest

I've come to believe that the most difficult virtue to acquire is honesty, and the hardest thing to speak is the truth.

Dishonesty in politics, religion, advertising, business, and social issues is so prevalent that we have become jaundiced and take deception for granted. Diogenes' lamp burns and still he searches for an honest man.

My dictionary defines honesty as "truthfulness, sincerity, freedom from deceit." A more in-depth look at honesty insists that honesty and dishonesty flow from one's intention.

A man could be telling the truth but if his intention is to deceive, he is dishonest. A woman could speak a falsehood but if she truly believes what she is saying and intends to tell the truth, she is nonetheless being honest.

Would it not follow then that honesty is devotion to the truth?

During his trial, Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he had come to testify to the truth. In a response jaundiced by years of military and political intrigue, Pilate asked with sarcasm, "What is truth?"

Had he been at the Last Supper, Pilate would have heard Jesus' unsettling claim, "I am the way and the truth and the life." In his defense Jesus explained, "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

A mystic of the Middle Ages, Meister Eckhart, proposed that "only the hand that erases can write the true thing." I think he meant that to be honest one must assess and re-assess what he says in order to convey the truth.

Poet/novelist Stephen Crane addressed the difficulty and fear that accompany one's search for the truth:

The wayfarer
Perceiving the pathway to truth
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
"In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

I think he recognized two things: truth is rare, and it is intimidating to pursue it.

If then I am correct that honesty is devotion to the truth, it follows that Christians can best acquire the virtue by devotion to Christ: "The truth will make you free...I am the truth...Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart!"

And yet our pursuit of truth, even in and with Christ, is a slow trek. Seldom is it discovered at first glance, and impatience often curtails the chase. It is easier to accept another's word as truth than it is to engage in a personal, dogged quest for it.

I suspect this failure to research the truth and make it a personal discovery accounts for the apathy and infidelity of many Christians. Catechism answers may be sufficient for children, but adults need more. Unexamined truth is seldom convincing in the face of pressure.

Fundamentalists will cry "Foul!" They will insist that one must accept a truth as true simply because an authority has said it. Fundamentalists seek security. Faith-filled people, however, wrestle with the truth --they probe it, test it, and confirm it. Faith by its very nature is risky, and it is in the investigation of truth that it becomes truly believable and binding.

Jacob wrestled with God; that is why he is called Israel. Jesus wrestled with his Father; that is why he could say, "As you will, not as I will it." Countless saints have gone into the wilderness and struggled with confusion and doubt; that is why they are saints.

The Church no longer decrees that error has no rights. It is the freedom to be wrong that leads to the assurance of truth. How many discoveries and inventions came only after long periods of trial and error.

The hero in Morris West's The Heretic put it well: "I claim no private lien on the truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness."

It is the virtue of honesty that promotes the pursuit of truth and protects the pursuer from heresy. It questions without fear because it always seeks the truth. Authority has its place in proposing truth, but no authority can absolve a rational being from being honest. Honesty imposes the obligation of probing the truth and making it one's own.

I've come to believe that honesty is the most difficult virtue to acquire, and the hardest thing to speak is the truth.