Massaging the Self or Embodying the Divine?
[“Teresa of Avila wrote of her need to distinguish experiences beginning in God and terminating in the self, and those beginning in the self and terminating in God; the latter left the self altered in unpredictable and sometimes alarming ways, but had the effect of enlarging it rather than simply consoling it” (Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square. London: Bloomsbury, 2012; citation from Teresa’s The Interior Castle, IV,1,4-5).]
O Lover,
In a recent re-reading of Williams’s work I realized he is addressing an issue which has for some time been shadowing me. In chapter 26 entitled “Religious Lives” (314-38) exploring Etty Hillesum as exemplar, he distinguishes expressions of faith focused on the nurturing of the inner self (he calls these “spiritual”) and those centering on participation in Your embodied Presence in materiality (he calls these “religious”). Williams, who views Hillesum of the diary and Westerbork transit camp in 1941-42 as a clear example of the latter, argues for the relevance of this distinction in all seasons.
Allow me to elaborate upon how this distinction finds expression in my life. Over the years I have sensed that what Williams terms the “spiritual” can gravitate toward the massaging and reassuring of the (still) autonomous self. In elaborating upon this drift he employs Teresa’s model in her Castle of “beginning in God/ending in self.” I have experienced this tendency within toward self-absorption, sometimes to the point of narcissistic and/or solipsistic, whether involving fixation on faith disciplines or issues of eternal destiny. The very pining for interior peace in the now can be in the interests of my fabricated self and thus egoic. Perhaps even more prevalent are the temptations of self-interest in pieties and spiritualities regarding the afterlife. In short, in addition to confusingly connoting incorporeality, the category of “spiritual” can segue into the masturbatory.
In contrast, Teresa advocates for “beginning in self” and “ending in God.” This, Williams continues, is graphically exemplified in Hillesum’s movement in two short years from personal identity crisis to “chronicler,” “witness-bearer,” and embodiment of Your Presence amid the unspeakable; from deeply fragmented and chaotic self-absorption to a materialized vocation of shared responsibility for Your embodiment in the world; from the temptation to mirror the enveloping hatred to rendering tangible and thus safeguarding “a little piece of You, God.” While largely avoiding theological jargon, Etty’s faith is shown to be profoundly incarnationalist, part of Your ever-expanding tabernacling via Self-concretion. “Spiritual,” thus understood, is too thin a term for such a radical embodiment of Your penchant for enfleshment (Jn 1:14).
Williams’s discussion of Teresa and Hillesum helps me to see yet more clearly the cruciality of surrender (gelássenheit) of the fabricated self (me) in favor of what Merton called the True Self (You). The latter option is surely not for the timid; it has You inviting me to surrender what I judge to be my last and greatest achievement, the ultimate nonnegotiable: my personal and distinguishable identity. And all of this relinquishment to what end? The whatever, whether distinctiónis or indistinctiónis, grounded in Your trustworthiness and Your cosmic dream, and with no asterisks in the margin! This Your Oneing is for me the farthest reach, the meaning of fíat volúntas Túa (“may it be done to me according to Your will” [Mt 6:11 in the Vulgate]) beyond which I am unable to think, act, or aspire. Whether offered during this my present breath, in the future moment of my physical death, or amid whatever else there may or may not be “after,” this “letting go” is my “yes,” my unqualified and unconditional “yes” to You, O Lover. Beyond that there is nothing to be said.
