A Distinction within a Unity
O Lover,
There is a seeming distinction which surfaces within my awareness of You, especially when I am in severe straits.
On the one hand, I might scramble to recall—indeed, recapitulate—moments in time past when my awareness of You was flowering. Some of the Christian mystics—Thérèse, Heschel, and Wiman come to mind—who explore and/or model this pattern of latching onto the faith of a past moment or season or person in a time of need. Such an emphasis presupposes several things: that “no man [or moment] is an island”; that the reach of Your commúnio sanctórum extends far beyond the individual self and fleeting moment; that You frequently engage us via the mediation of other beings or situations.
On the down side of this pole, there is the danger that I will clutch the past experience at the expense of trusting You alone, that such experiences might serve to shield and buffer me from the immediacy and risk of surrendering myself to You unqualifiedly. The greatest hazard is that I would absolutize such past proxies with my spiritual life then becoming increasingly a museum (mausoleum?) in which I am flirting with idolatry. Yes, what might be called “vicarious spirituality,” whether the idealization of past moments or the pedestalling of paradigmatic mystics, can have a dangerous shadow side.
In contradistinction to the above, I might seek in a time of trouble, in the words of Eckhart, to “behold [You] nakedly” (immediately, unmediatedly, directly, undepictedly). It might mean a refusal to accept as decisive any and all penultimate templates, whether verbal or graphic, cognitive or imaginative, allowing myself to be engaged by You face to face, eye to eye. It might mean both my spirit and body crying out my vulnerability, doubt, and needfulness amid a fray which, a la Jacob’s dark night (Gen 32:24-32), either may or may not end with Your blessing. It might mean that I, stripped and in over my head, can only wait in solitude, darkness, silence, and pathlessness.
The down side of this pole requires little elaboration. From You whom I love I am also repelled. To remain in Juan’s “dark night” requires more spiritual courage than I can generate. Your only splendor is, in the words of Wiman, a “Bright Abyss.” I do not address You as “Lover” without also being aware of the cliff edge from which You are beckoning me to launch. Thus I would never use Otto’s term mystérium for You without its companion treméndum. And yes, I would prefer that “The One with whom we have to do” (Heb 4:13) be more manageable.
Having distinguished these two poles, I realize yet again that I have long since come to view them, like most great truths, as being in paradox, a matter of both/and rather than either/or. The above paradox is a road wending its way between two hazardous ditches: the one proxy piety, the other fear-fueled paralysis and despair. Self-protective, the former resorts to distance and the past for reassurance, certitude, and/or method; the latter in the here and now can find the Cauldron of You more than it can bear. But together—in tandem, reciprocity, intertangleness, complementarity—together they can draw the trekker deeper into Your Divine Life.
But, alas, albeit nurtured along the way in part via reinforcing mediations and consolations, I am never, finally, fully content with any of them, Your (self-deferring) Son not excepted. The scale of the desire You have nurtured within me correlates only with You. Ironically, it was Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-394) whose writing from the deep past aided me in recognizing both that the thirst, finally, was always for You, and that it would never be fully satiated, whether in this life or the greater. While I can waver fecklessly and be distracted by virtually anything, I was crafted to be with and within You. Although I have moments when I wish that it were otherwise, this thirst malady has long since been diagnosed as chronic and for the duration. Thus I am marooned, an aspirant, a novice in térra apophática. In this regard I have been ruined for life: Tu Sólus, nothing else will do.
