Monday, June 4, 2007

SOLVITUR AMBULANDO: Some Milestones in my Ongoing Journey of Faith and Life

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter.
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark, cold, and empty desolation.
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
(T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”)

Introduction

Pilgrim Learner on the March

Longstanding Christian tradition has always used the analogy of the “way” when referring to the path of Christian belief and spirituality. At some point in the history of Christian spirituality, in fact, a believer was oftentimes referred to as a viator, a wayfarer (McGrath, 1999, p. 78).

This short essay deals with some select milestones in my own personal spiritual journey as a viator. As a contribution to Don Bosco Center of Studies’ pastoral-theological journal LANTAYAN, it veers away from the purely theological mode, and goes more towards the side of the pastoral – and somewhat more psycho-spiritual, and integrative – pole.

As one who has always loved nature, and who, for long has been passionate about long treks and hikes up mountains, the traditional image of wayfarer strikes me as more than just an empty analogue, but an existential reality. It has led me to define myself, through a personal mission statement, as was the fad in the late 80s, as “pilgrim learner,” a perpetual wayfarer and student in the school of life.

A Pilgrim’s On-going Story: Loving the Very Questions Themselves

Per Agrum ad Sacrum

Climbing up mountains is an arduous activity that is not for the faint of heart and weak of knees. It costs. It pains; and it can be discouraging at some point. But for those who persist and persevere, the rewards are great. Such rewards do not primarily have to do with achievement, such as reaching one’s goal, the summit. They have to do with the very struggle, the process itself of conquering one’s limitations, fears, and insecurities, and the consequent ability to transcend oneself and go beyond said limitations. Beyond these psychic rewards, though, are those that ultimately stand for one who is in search for inner meaning and connectivity to a God who makes Himself known in one’s daily experience.

For almost two decades now, I have learned to see life and faith as epitomized by those long and arduous climbs as a pilgrimage, a path that leads one through rough, uncharted terrain, a path that has taught me that quick answers to perennial questions do not come easy, and that as one plods on through life’s vicissitudes, one learns to have “patience with everything unresolved,” and “to love the very questions themselves”(Rilke, 1934). Like the pilgrims of old, who braved the elements out in the rough, I have learned to live life as a pilgrim, a viator, who may need to go through difficulties and trials (per agrum) and, hopefully find connection and intimacy with the sacred (ad sacrum), the divine, the God who is to be found in all things, who reveals Himself in my daily experience. Per agrum ad sacrum has thus become my own concrete image representation of this ongoing search for meaning and intimate connectivity with the God I have always claimed I believed in.

Per Agrum: The Dark Cold and Empty Desolation

Poetry and music, apart from nature, have been my faithful companions in my pilgrimage. They have put me in touch, not only with my own self, but also with the deepest core of common personhood that I share with the rest of struggling – and victorious - humanity. Poets have been my “mighty good companions” in the journey (Morneau, 1995, p. 151). Rachmaninoff’s deeply moving melodic masterpieces, Tchaickovsky’s bombastic, brilliant, and colorful chords, Hopkins’(Gardner, 1953) plaintive poetic prayers, Thompson’s (1979) faith-filled and flowing verses – why, even pop songs belted out by unsuspecting chanteurs and chanteuses – all reflect, for me, the wondrous reality that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God” (Gardner, p.27). Sharers all in the same human nature, they spoke to me of that “holy longing” that Rolheiser (1999) sees as the basis of all spirituality. T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (1971), particularly “East Coker,” spoke to me in a particular way as I entered through my midlife transition just as I underwent what Wicks (2003) calls a bewildering “slide into darkness.” A confluence of events, that happened after giving my best all through the most productive years of my early adult life, led me “through the dark cold and empty desolation” that Eliot (1971), I would like to believe, was speaking about.

Home Is Where One Starts From

To say that I underwent the dreaded midlife crisis precipitated or aggravated by the confluence of events I refer to above is an understatement. After ten years in leadership and enjoying the trust of superiors, and after pouring my heart out to tasks assigned to me, tasks which I would like to believe, I did responsibly and well, the unforeseen turn of events after the change of guards brought me to the dark basement of disappointment and anger. I was disappointed with people who I thought were friends. I was angry with God for allowing me to suffer unjustly. I was even angrier at those who, to my mind, caused my suffering. And I suffered deep within for feeling that way at all against anyone. I was tested to the core, and my spirituality was put in the proverbial crucible. My “operational theology” as against my “professed theology” (Jordan, 1986) was put to the mettle. But deep inside, I knew that there was no way I could skirt the process of growth that this crisis was leading me through – the naming, claiming, and the taming process that psychological and spiritual growth is all about. “Home is where one starts from,” as Eliot (1971) wisely counsels. It was a call to come home to myself, a call to self-responsibility. As in the story of Adam, God asked him to “name” every creature if he was to have dominion over them (Gn 1:20), I knew I was being called to “name the ghosts that haunted me,” as it were. I was being called to put a handle on whatever it was I felt, to name my issues and claim them for my own, instead of resorting to blame. Only then can the taming process begin.

Peregrinatio as a Coming Home to Self

My recent inward journey precipitated by my crisis experience gives full meaning to the root word (agrum) of what the pilgrims of old engaged in. For the dedicated pilgrims committed to finding what Countryman (1999) calls the “hidden holy,” it was far from going on a luxury vacation. It meant going through the agrum of discomfort, danger, and difficulty. It meant going out of their comfort zones, as they engaged not so much in searching for answers, as trying to find their “way.”
My own inward pilgrimage was helped by some invaluable mentors. I dug deep in my treasure trove of personages and idealized figures of the past, and found myself not wanting for models to emulate. Said group of mentors ranged from poets to prophets, from mystics to former mischief-makers – saints in their own right who were really sinners like me and the rest of humanity – who found, not so much answers, as a path that leads to love, a path that leads to meaning, to integrity, and to holiness, understood as wholeness. Nouwen, Merton, Kreeft, Tillich, Kushner, Rupp, Augustine, Therese of Lisieux, Teresa de Jesus, John Bosco, Hopkins, Thompson, Paul of Tarsus, Barrett-Browning, Rosetti, Unamuno, Hammarksjöld, Bocelli, Church, Groban, and a host of others, accompanied me as I wended my way through the “longest journey, the journey inward”(Hammarskjöld, 1976). With their help, I gradually came to realize that wholeness is a journey that starts from oneself, ineluctably marred by brokenness; that life is all about “growing strong at broken places” (Ripple, 1986), and that “home is where one starts from.” Through their prose, poetry, music, and musings, I was able to do a reading of God manifesting Himself in daily life, and find His indwelling presence in all things, in the tradition of St. Ignatius. Poets, in a special way, like Hammarskjöld did, offered me “markings that point the way to God and the Kingdom” (Morneau, 1995, p. 148). Pilgrimage for me, meant not only going up mountains, but also, and more importantly, going deep into myself and finding the stirrings of a God who really was calling me to wholeness and holiness, a God who was speaking in and through the unfolding history of my personal life.

Milestones along the Way

This pilgrim’s approach to life taught me that living and growing entail constantly making a “step into the unknown territory,” “a continual moving forward” (Chödrön, 1997, p. 20). It connotes having to go through uncharted, unpaved, and therefore, difficult paths, where milestones are a welcome gift to guide one’s journey. In retrospect, as I went inward and backwards through prayerful reflection, I realized I had been blessed by not just a few such milestones. As I grappled with midlife issues made more intense by the series of events referred to above, I came face-to-face with God’s invisible hand which guided me all along, starting from my childhood. Blessed with two loving and doting grandmothers in my early years, I learned about God through the mediation of two strong-willed, brilliant, and prayerful women. Although I saw a pattern of insecure, ambivalent attachment to my mother due to her absence on certain significant occasions, I realized I had internalized a caring, watchful, and tender object representation of God early on (Rizzutto, 1979). Object relations theorists and their work came in handy as a tool for my inward journey. I therefore find no difficulty relating to an image of God, not so much as father, but more so as mother.

Writing, and the ability to pen down insights, thoughts, and reflection, especially through journaling, has helped hone my skills, both at getting to the core meaning of experiences, and seeing the hand of God in unfolding events. Apart from affording me a valuable means for emotional catharsis, journaling has given me a tool to do a reading of God’s presence in daily experience. Since the time I slid into the basement of desolation with my personal and developmental crisis, I found a solace not so much in reading others’ works, as writing my own thoughts and insights on the dryness and desolation that enveloped me.

What constituted another milestone in this pilgrimage to my inner self were the many friends and confreres whose lives and experiences resonated with my own. By writing, I “read” God’s wondrous and mysterious workings in and through my pain and solitude. By resonating with my thoughts, I found valuable companions who walked with me through my Emmaus experience of abandonment, disappointment, and anger. Through the tears that often flowed in abundance, both literally and figuratively, the “parched land, desert and steppes” representing my proud, defiant, blaming, self-sufficient, and untamed self, began to “bloom with the abundant flowers” (Is 35:1-6)of self-acceptance, forgiveness, and inner serenity.

Looking back at my life, I find that there were certain trigger events that could either make or break a pilgrim’s resolve. Said trigger events, are, of themselves, clear milestones in the path to growth. One such trigger event happened just as I was just moving into the sixth full year of priestly ministry. Young and relatively brimming with energy, I was getting bored with the routinary and functionary job I was doing as school administrator. I wanted more. I longed to be given the chance to go for further studies, a desire that, in my low self-esteem, I could not verbalize before superiors. Just when I felt I was at my lowest ebb, just when I was dreaming of something big to please my parents and do them proud, the news that my mother, who lived 9,000 miles away, had suddenly died at a relatively young age of 63, came to me. The jarring news immediately plunged me to a deep emotional crisis. It opened up issues related to my ambivalent relationship and insecure attachment to my mother. It was a case of my inner world collapsing under the weight of clashing emotions that see-sawed from grief to anger, from dejection to disappointment, and from deep sadness to self-pity. The event released a Pandora’s box of issues I never knew, let alone acknowledge, I had. It was to be another important and significant milestone that dotted my pilgrim’s path to wholeness.

The crisis that the loss of my mother engendered led me years later to investigate a little more closely on the role of my family of origin in the development of who I became. Owing to a sense of abandonment, and belonging as I did to a big family where parental attention had to be divided between work and children, I realized that what Jordan (1999) refers to as “self-atonement procedures” as far as I was concerned had to do with achievement, being over-responsible, reliable and self-reliant. Behind the façade of responsibility and fidelity to duty, however, there lay a subtle film of anger, resentment, and a conflicted, ambivalent, and paradoxical intimacy with my mother. No wonder I could be overcritical and impatient on many occasions with her, even as I nurtured tender and loving feelings for her. Instead of naming and acknowledging the stories I really told myself, stories of “abandonment,” I blamed her and projected on her my unacknowledged inadequacies and insecurities. The depth and intensity of my grief when she died suddenly became a wake-up call for me to work towards a reframing of my personal story. My mother ended up being my most influential mentor in life and in death, and her passing a major milestone in the pathway that gradually led to my coming home to myself.

Work, Duty, Responsibility, and Self-Differentiation

The immediately foregoing milestone neatly dovetails with the next, which is the experience of being in control, in power, and saddled with a big responsibility. After I eventually earned my ecclesiastical graduate degree abroad, I was suddenly catapulted to leadership roles, something that I knew I needed in order to prove my self-worth to my parents, and again, do them proud. But by then, my mother had died. Even so, I found myself pouring out myself totally to my work. I did more than was expected of me. I found immense fulfillment in achieving, in performing, in keeping myself in the limelight. Ten years after, with the shift in top leadership, from which inner circle I also had to step down, I saw myself as one of those whom Nouwen (1981)calls the “filled and unfulfilled” (p. 23). I realized that my story was that of an “abandoned” child driven by an inner resolve never to abandon my charge, my community, my responsibility, and my multiple tasks and commitments. At the end of ten long and, by any standard, highly productive years, I felt limp and depleted like an empty sack, angry and disappointed that no one was there to appreciate all the work I put into my role. It was once again, a wake-up call for me to do an overhaul of my “self-definition”(Jordan, 1999, p. 78). It was clear I had not, in the words of structural family therapists (Friedman, 1985), adequately “differentiated” myself from my family of origin, as was obvious in the level of anxiety I felt about not coming up short with my tasks and responsibilities. Ten years being in the thick of things, while at the same time being on the thin ice of self-definition was too big and influential a milestone to be glossed over. Once again, a crisis eventually became an impetus, and a painful one at that, for growth and further development.

Being Still and Still Moving: Integration via Spirituality

My adventure up mountains in long multi-day treks started when I was bored as a young priest. Basically afraid of heights, I took up the challenge, and formed a climbing group. With the energy that came from the anxiety that a less-than-ideal sense of self-definition engendered, I found fulfillment and escape in long distance and cross-country treks. Paradoxically, I learned the art of being still while still moving in the famous words of Eliot (1971). Close to nature, awed and interiorly silenced by the majesty of God’s creation, I found connectivity with the God on whom I also projected my disappointments and resentments. As I trudged and traipsed mostly in exterior silence, I fell interiorly still. I was blessed with endless hours of reflection and introspection. I learned the art of communing with God through the awesome majesty of creation, whose presence showed itself through brilliant light by day, and cold, howling winds by night. Poetry, prayer, and presence before the pure, pristine beauty of the world-mothering God became integral to my expanding spirituality. I was “being still,” but “still moving.” I may have been a “pseudo-poet” who gloried in the words borrowed from others, but I was on the way to becoming authentically faithful to who I was, less driven to serve and worship what Jordan (1986) calls the “idols” that I have created for myself. At about the time I got the passion of trekking, I started the habit of going regularly for short reflective walks early in the morning, whilst the rest of the world around me was just awakening.

Peregrinatio as God-Think

Both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are redolent with stories of journeys and setting out on foot. Abraham, for one, was told to “go forth … to a land that [I] will show you” (Gn 12:1). He was even told to contemplate nature and see “the dust of the earth,” “the length and breadth of the land,” (Gn 13:16-17), and to “look up at the sky and count the stars” (Gn 15:5), and see in them signs of God’s forthcoming abundant blessings. His descendants, led by Moses, wandered through the desert for forty years, en route to the promised land (Ex 16 ff). In both cases, the journey was clearly one that was per agrum ad sacrum, a pilgrimage fraught with as much promise as pain, delight as well as disappointment, fulfillment along with failure.

But it was precisely the “dark, cold and empty desolation” that led to “a further union, a deeper communion.” The journey itself, the process, the moving forward, are what brought God’s people to inward stillness, that eventually convinced them of the veracity of God’s promises: “Fear not … I am your shield” (Gn 15:1). It was their “still moving” that led them to “be still.” It was what made them think and see for themselves the glory of God understood as presence, as shekinah, as dwelling in their midst. Theological reflection, as these stories tell us, is, at bottom, first and foremost, God-think, before it becomes God-talk. And both happen only when we are willing to go through the reflective and prayerful movement called peregrinatio.

Conclusion

Solvitur Ambulando: Journeying with the Risen Christ to Emmaus

We have now come back to where we started. All the milestones presented above speak of an ongoing journey. My path as a pilgrim-learner is dotted by a growing list of such milestones, some more important and significant than others, not one of them any less growth-enhancing and purifying in the long run. Each and every one points to the reality of life as a calling to move on, a calling to journey on through the rough fields and uncharted pathways that may even be filled with grief, disappointment, and a whole lot of “unresolved questions.” But the story of the grieving disciples on the way to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-23), reflecting as they walked, tells us that all along, the Risen Christ was journeying with them. They set out on foot dejected and forlorn. Little did they realize that, as they walked and as they talked, as they prayed, reflected, and swapped stories, a new chapter of God’s story – the story of God’s indwelling and salvific presence to His people in Christ, was being written. The two disciples’ grief and sorrow, like mine, were becoming major milestones in the ever expanding pathway toward fullness and fulfillment in Christ.

St. Augustine, the great mischief-maker turned mystic and saint, ever so earthly, ever so practical, one whose God-think fueled so much God-talk down through centuries of systematic theological reflection, a saint as worldly as he is heavenly, a man who traversed his own version of “per agrum ad sacrum,” who single-handedly became mentor and model to so many, including myself, had a flash of divine inspiration when he said: “solvitur ambulando” (Cousineau, 1998, p. 104). Things are solved while walking.


References

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