Monday, June 11, 2007

READING GOD IN DAILY EXPERIENCE


Journaling as a Way towards Greater Spiritual Literacy



Journaling as Journey to the Self

The journaling process, understood basically as keeping “a personal record of one’s thoughts, experiences, and inspirations,” which “records events, activities, ideas, feelings, struggles, and meaning into one’s life” (Johnson, 1990, p. 614) has for long been hailed as among the important activities for those who have seriously embarked on an inward journey to the self. Introspection is a conditio sine qua non of deeper self-awareness and self-understanding. Owing to the fact, however, that the human person is more than just his or her intellectual self, such self-knowledge and self-understanding can lead to genuine and healthy self-acceptance only if the individual-in-journey can integrate what I personally refer to as both “headsight” and “heartsight” in a gradual process that respects the integral nature of the human person as endowed, not only with the capacity for insight, but also with the capacity for deep and varied feelings at any given time in his or her lifespan. It is a well-established fact among therapists and counselors that insight alone is not enough to propel a person onward to mental health, affective maturity, and sound social adjustment. Neither is mere emotional activation sufficient for the purpose (Young, Klosko & Weishar, 2003, p. 57).

This short essay attempts at articulating the nuggets of learning that accrued from this meaning-making and formative process that journaling has been for me in the recent past. By drawing on a few selected snippets of my own journal, I hope to affirm and validate said invaluable nuggets of learning that represent the happy marriage between theory and practice in the important inward journey that journaling essentially is. I hope, furthermore, that this essay could inspire seminarians who are my intended primary audience, and all others who have taken to the serious task of embarking on the “longest journey, the journey inward” (Hammarskjöld, 1976).

A Conspiracy of Human Faculties

Mind-heart-body-spirit integration principles must have something to do with the meaning-making, and formative nature of the journaling process. Human experience, for it to be understood and made sense of in its totality, needs the full cooperation of all human faculties. What is perceived by the mind, what is felt by the heart, and what is grasped by the human spirit, all come to full significance only when the body participates, when the whole person is engaged. Journaling, which engages the whole person, is one such human process that needs the “conspiracy” of all the internal and external human powers. Said powers are put in collaborative mode in the process of journaling, which then leads towards attaining full significance of one’s experience.

Writing as “Reading”

First in the list of learnings is the paradox of writing that translated, at least for me, into veritable “readings.” That which Dorff (1995) refers to as an inward “meditative movement” that starts from surface to depth, and from the depth back to the surface of life, which is the process of journaling, indeed, became a “revelatory” experience (pp. 157 - 161). The journaling process afforded me “fresh readings” both of who I am, and who God is in relation to me. Like what Colombas (cited in Studzinski, 2000) said about the lectio, it became for me a way to “reading God,” and which gave me “a living connection with a real presence” (p.621). At some point, by “reading the texts that life itself provides” (p.623), I acquired additional insights on my ongoing journey towards “differentiating” myself, and my search for the internalized object representations that shed light on the process of the “birth of the living God” in my life (Rizzuto (1979). Immediately following is part of my journal entry last September 20, 2004, which hopefully illustrates this first, and other succeeding nuggets of learning:

A moving account presented by Oprah in her daily show earlier today got me glued to the TV screen for some time as she recounted the story of Mattie Stepanek, a 14 year old boy, who, for years suffered heroically from a rare degenerative muscular dystrophic disease. I have heard about the story before, but this was the first time I got to know a little more detail about Mattie’s incredible, extraordinary saga of poetry writing (since he was three years old), peacemaking, and the joyful acceptance of the inevitable.

Mattie was a fighter and a dreamer. He fought all his life against unimaginable odds, owing to his rare sickness that also took the life of three other older siblings earlier on. He dreamed about meeting personally with Jimmy Carter, living life to the full, devoting his time to poetry, dreaming and working for peace in the world, to conjuring up future possibilities in what he knew was his limited time on this earth. He adored firefighters and wanted so much to be able to get onto a real fire truck.

This great little boy of barely 14, was a giant in faith, in trust, and in love for the God he believed in. He believed so much in prayer, and offered his own suffering for others. Though tiny and frail, this little boy was really a towering character when it comes to facing suffering with courage and ebullient, contagious joy.

Mattie, for his young years, was a prophet who did more than speak about God. No, he did not preach about Him. He lived his faith in God and preached His existence a lot more eloquently by the way he lived – and died. He was a prophet with an urgent message – a message that could not wait for perfect conditions for it to be delivered. He brought forth that message with alacrity and unmistakable joy through his frail body wrapped in tubes and lines that would have weighed anybody else’s spirit down, eaten as it was by a progressively debilitating disease. He was, physically speaking, a walking stop watch. His end could come any minute, and he knew it. But the prospect of dying any minute did not prevent him from allowing his spirit to soar high, far beyond any time limit, in order to drive home the message that it is possible to live life to the full even if one is dying a slow, sure, and obviously painful death. Nothing, not even muscular dystrophy, could prevent him from publishing several compilations of his own poems for his 14 short years of life here on earth.

Alone in the privacy of the Rectory dining room, I could not go on with my early dinner. I was choked with awe, and struck with utter admiration for a boy who was all of 14 but who taught a man who was well into his forties precious lessons for life. I cried my heart out, not out of sadness for Mattie, for I knew, and he knew, he was going to that happier place with his creator and God. I cried, not out of sadness for him, but for myself, and so many others like me in the world, who do carry on with life, but who cannot carry forward a message and a meaning to share with others. I cried not for a young life wasted, but for so many adults’ lives lying fallow and sterile with so many concerns that have nothing to do with man’s “ultimate concerns.” I cried for the muzzled prophet in me, who may clam up at times, and who can easily give in to the forces of discouragement and despair that he sees in a world of violence, terrorism, and social sin. I cry for the reluctant leader (king) inside me, who has allowed cynicism to block all enthusiasm to give his contribution towards the building of a more loving, just, and compassionate world. I cried for the priest in me who may have sacrificed his younger visions and dreams on the altar of the expedient, the convenient, and the tried and tested earthly wisdom.

I cry not for Mattie. I cry for myself. I cry for a world rendered less meaningful by the demise of a towering priest, prophet, and king that was this little boy of 14.

I got temporarily “lost” as I allowed myself to be carried by an inner force that told me to savor those moments when God once more revealed Himself to me in that liturgy of daily encounter with God in and through the mundane elements of my daily life. Deep within me, I knelt down figuratively before an overwhelming manifestation of a God who continues to live and to show Himself in the modern-day prophets He raises time and time again. As the TV blared with noisy commercials after the touching program, I was lost in a prayerful, worshipful, grateful mode before the altar that was now my life. Those few, precious minutes ended up much better than the longer time I spent in formal prayer earlier today.

I saw Mattie on TV. I saw his pain, his joy, his courage, and his unflinching faith – all the way up to the last minute of his short life, succumbing physically to a deadly, disease, cuddled by an equally ailing, but loving, soon to be bereaved (for the fourth time) mother. I looked at mother and child. I saw Michelangelo’s La Pieta in concrete. Beyond the tears that clouded my eyes, I saw a vision I would not have exchanged for anything else in the world at that time.

I saw God … I saw Him smile that wide-eyed, innocent, and winsome smile of courageous hope in the then emaciated face of a dying boy Mattie. The young poet, the writer, the enthusiastic peacemaker has gone home to the Father, but left traces of the love, workings, and the presence of the same God in his short earthly life, in his “heartsongs” and other writings.

Love, says Kahlil Gibran, is a joyful trembling. In the presence of this awesome love of Mattie’s God – and mine, I broke into inwardly trembling sobs of happiness at the great gift of the person of Matthew Joseph Stepanek to me and the rest of the world.

Experience as locus theologicus

Theology is basically reflecting on God. But insights on God do not just happen in the abstract. Theologizing can only take place by using eminently human tools and wisely employing said tools to make sense of Him who chose to relate with His creatures by irrupting into human history, by becoming part of our collective and personal experience. God revealed, and still reveals, Himself in history. Scripture is basically a record of a people’s faith in the same God’s workings in their collective history. But God also reveals Himself to everyone here and now, in the daily experiences of every believer. Scripture is the historical text of a people’s faith trajectory. Daily experience is the text that individuals who share in that same faith trajectory, can and ought, to “read” as they go on searching for the same God who became all things to all women and men, and who shed off His divinity, and took on the form of humanity (Phil 2:6-7). Daily life is the running text that manifests to us contemporary human beings, the saving and loving presence of this same God in concrete. Human experience, therefore, poses as a potent source for an eminently existential mode of theologizing. Said theologizing, however, need not always be the academic kind, the sublime sort of “armchair theology” that does not quite leave the premises of the classroom and the hallowed halls of theological institutes and libraries. I refer to a theology that makes for a personally appropriated truth about God personally acting and living for me, in the here and now of daily life. Here is a portion of what I penned down on Sept. 28, 2004 where I write about a persistent physical affliction that spontaneously arose almost a year earlier:

Now that I am not in control of anything except my own life, now that I am not in-charge of anything or anyone, there are no anger outbursts to disturb my peace and that of other people. But something else took their place – little tiny skin eruptions that cause as much distress as those external irritants in the past. And the net effect of both is just the same – the loss of serenity, the lack of acceptance of reality, and a loss of interest in prayer.

Today, as in many other days, the first reading at Mass is from the Book of Job. Job’s story is one that I find myself relating to on a very real and concrete sense. I am surprised at the sudden close affinity I feel for Job and his “sores.” I am surprised at how much more meaningful Job’s story has become for me, a story that I had always known in the head, but not in my heart.

My itches, discomfort, and distresses have allowed me to revisit an old story. That old story of a distant personage by the name of Job has now become mine. But it has also challenged me to fully re-appropriate not only Job’s experience, but also his response to a God who allows the suffering of the just.

Perhaps the parallel between Job and me ends just there – in the experience of suffering. But I find myself unable and unworthy to push the comparison further, for I was not as accepting and resigned as he was. To my shame, I have not readily found God in all this. I saw it as an undeserved affliction. I looked for causes and retraced all my steps in the recent past. I heaped blame on a whole lot of things. I even suspected the food that people shared with me. And most importantly, through all this, I failed to see God and his subtle workings in and through this experience, which, after all, does not come anywhere near that of Job and of many others.


Fresh Readings of Old Realities

Nowhere is this phenomenon of God’s gentle self-manifestation more true than in the way my journaling has led me to come to grips with powerful feelings of both joy and sadness, etc., with successes and failures, with internal and external conflicts, even with suffering – my own, and that of others I care for. Indeed, “all can be read for the deeper messages they may contain” (Studzinski, 2000, p. 624). The process opened me up to fresh readings of what I considered old truths, affording me additional surprises to an already mysterious enough existence that is human life in its entirety. Getting into the act of writing that is eminently personal and honest, it could not but lead to a “revelatory” experience. In my case, it has helped unfold a developing conviction that my “operational theology,” in some ways, still has some catching up to do with my “professed theology” (Jordan, 1986). It has afforded me the chance to give a close look at my own “object relations” as applied to the God I profess to believe in, and love (St.Clair, 1986). What follows is part of my entry for October 7, 2004:

An insight came to mind as I drove from Dundalk to Columbia for class. These past days when I feel tested by lack of health, when time that I could otherwise spend for more reading, is spent focused on my self, my woes, and my discomfort, not to mention having to spend time to go to the doctor, the lab, and what appear to be long minutes applying medicine to my strange skin eruptions, I had been wondering why I have never been successful at praying about my sufferings. I realize that all these years, I have not been able to lift up my pain to God in prayer, at least, not as naturally as I would lift up joyful events to Him in prayer.

I get spiritually paralyzed during moments of suffering. I just get petrified. Prayer does not seem attractive and appealing.

This has bugged me for as long as I can remember.

I realize now somewhat belatedly that my image of God is really that of a parent, specifically, the image of mother. As a child, when I was in pain, I always expected Mother to know what ails me, and to know exactly what to do with my pain. When she did not come to my rescue, I would, I have come now to realize, make some kind of a “sit-down” strike against her, acting passive-aggressive to one I expected to have solutions for me.

I was being passive-aggressive with God whom I look at as my parent who should “parent” me when I am in distress. No wonder I do not pray as I ought. I realize now that I am actually making the equivalent of that sit-down strike.

I wonder what St. Paul would tell me were he to come to me today. “When I was a child, I acted like a child …But now that I am a man …?

Reading Wisely, Becoming Whole and Holy

Journaling, as a way of reading my own personal “signs of the times” has a focusing quality that tends to keep the clutter and the extraneous noises of life away. Writing that is meditative, the type that makes one embark on that journey inward, has that added benefit of leading one towards healing. Honest acceptance of what goes on from deep inside, acknowledgement of the real feelings either for or against anything that happens from without, can open up stuff and issues that may not have been sufficiently dealt with in the past. There is a sense of coming home to oneself that ensues, even as there is an overlapping sense of coming home to a God, who, I realized more than a few times, was there, walking with me to my own Emmaus experience of sadness, dejection, and confusion (Lk 24:13-35). One is healed. One is made whole, and one becomes holy. From my false images of God brought about by my faulty object representations of Him, in the “idols” (Jordan, 1986) that I, in my own private logic, have created in childhood, I felt gradually liberated. My wholeness, therefore, spilled over into holiness, as I learned to relate to a personal God, instead of an idol against whom I would make, what I call, my “sit-down strikes” that showed themselves in dryness and lack of interest in prayer.

What immediately follows is a part of my journal entry for November 5, 2004:

I have always loved music. As a child, I have always desired to be able to play the piano, but since my parents then had no means to have us learn the piano, I could not. Later, in the seminary, through self-study, I was able to get by up to a certain extent on what we then knew as the harmonium. Music, I always knew, had a way of making prayer more existential, more felt, and more real to me. Somehow, I knew that through music, I could get in touch not only with my inner self, but with God, to whom my “mind and heart” easily could be lifted up to. Even before I got to hear St. Augustine’s famous words, “qui cantat, bis orat,” I already knew that singing and playing music for the Lord somehow led me closer to Him.

The lecture on African-American music and religiosity interested me a lot. I already knew the basic truth that through “spirituals” the former slaves were able to put meaning to their difficult lives of continual suffering, and to “ritualize” or “sacramentalize” their emerging basic faith and religiosity in a way that was patently different from the way their masters did. Music, for them, was not just something to while away leisure time, if ever they had it. Music was, for all practical purposes, equivalent to a sacrament, a sign, a powerful ritual that pointed to the depth of their meaning-making according to their own brand of biblical hermeneutics.

I knew I was treading on sacred ground when some of their music was being played in class. Although I may not have appreciated the structure, the melody, and what appears to me as a repetitive mode of their musical phraseology, I knew that that was their way of connecting with the sacred in their lives. I knew that that was their way of giving external expression to their Christian hope, which by absolute necessity, had to be kept underground. It was their version of the early Christians’ faith-in-the-catacombs. It was their way of externalizing something that would not have been allowed to be translated openly into a system of symbols that they felt was a monopoly of their powerful masters, a set of symbols that obviously translated into structures of oppression, injustice, suffering, and pain, all of which were contrary to what their biblical hermeneutics led them to be convinced of.

Prophecy as a gift from the Spirit of God uses a variety of symbols and languages. What the former slaves could not do openly in word and public preaching, they did in song. In the oppressive experience of their own Babylonian and Egyptian exile, they found their own “harps” which they played by the equivalent of the “rivers of Babylon.” There, they “sat and wept.” There, they sang their songs. In their prophetic imagination, they were proclaiming and raising an alternative consciousness, not necessarily, in the minds and hearts of their masters, but in their own hearts and minds. In a situation where they were oppressed by their own experience of “kings” and powerful “princes,” their hopeful imagination led them to conjure up an alternative society where salvation need not come to them as doled out by their oppressors but by their own emerging prophetic and salvific faith community.

Spirituality is eminently a personal search, a personal journey. And being personal, it ought to be eminently idiosyncratic. It ought to capitalize on all the elements of a person, or a people’s giftedness. Gifts vary from person to person, from culture to culture, from people to people. Union with God as a process and a goal need not always be done according to the terms of the minister, the missioner, and the apostle. That would be tantamount to treading on people’s sacred ground.

I still have to grow more in my ongoing search for my own meaning-making symbols and methods that connect me to the God of my faith. Whilst there is nothing wrong with using the universal symbols that the Lord offered to us as legacy, like the Eucharist, there is also nothing that should prevent me from using my own that capitalizes on my idiosyncratic gifts and talents.

I need to personalize my very institutionalized faith. I need to break ground and explore how to help others also define their own sacred grounds, their own secret inner gardens of peace and salvation.

Perhaps it is time I used more of what I enjoy more in prayer – music. Qui cantat, bis orat, after all.

Reading Fully, Seeing Truly

Studzinski (2000) reminds us that spiritual illiteracy is a big problem in the twenty-first century. A culture awash in information, but needy in terms of formation, is what characterizes our times. Priestly formation, for one, is still heavily focused on the academic aspect. Pastors are trained to read profusely, think objectively, write scholarly, and preach passionately. Formation is lopsided in favor of academic training. Despite the many outstanding and brilliant documents from the Church, holistic, integral formation that caters to the whole person, seldom goes beyond the planning mode. Written texts by way of scholarly writings, including Scripture, become the minister’s primary focus of concern. But to be fully rounded, “the other texts that life itself provides” (p. 623) need to be paid attention to. Ministers not only ought to be well read. They also need to be clear eyed. They need to have that “sacramental stance” vis-à-vis reality that is the vehicle for the hidden holy, the icons and representations of a God who has come “to pitch his tent in our midst” (Jn 1:14). For us priests who mediate God in sacramentality, it is not just a question of reading fully, but seeing truly the many varied and subtle ways God comes and reveals Himself to His people. If so, then, we ought to become God’s transparencies. “What we have heard … seen with our eyes, looked upon and touched with our hands … we proclaim now to you” (1 Jn 1:1-3). In sum, the journaling process has helped me become more spiritually literate, and thus, better able to “find God in all things” to use the famous words of St. Ignatius.


References:
Dorff, F. (1995). Meditative writing. In Wicks, R.J. (Ed), Handbook of spirituality for ministers. Volume 1. New York: Paulist Press (153 – 173).
Hammarskjöld, D. (1976). Markings. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishers.
Johnson, B.C. (1990). Journal keeping. In Hunter, R.J. (Ed), Dictionary of pastoral care and counseling. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Jordan, M. (1986) Taking on the gods: The task of the pastoral counselor. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Rizzutto, A. M. (1979). The birth of the living god: A psychoanalytic study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
St. Clair, M. (1986). Object relations and self psychology: An introduction. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Studzinski, R. (2000). Reading and ministry: Applying lectio divina principles in ministerial context. In Wicks, R.J. (Ed), Handbook of spirituality for ministers: Perspectives for the 21st century. Volume 2. New York: Paulist Press (613 – 627).
Young, J.E.; Klosko, J.S. & Weishar, M.E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner’s guide. New York: The Guilford Press.

Fr. Vitaliano Chito Dimaranan, SDB
Lantayan Journal - DBCS
June 2005

1 comment:

SoulSearcher said...

An awesome piece on journaling, Katoto! I will be a weekly subscriber to Ascende Superius.