It’s been a busy week; I’ve had a lot of university-related business to take care of, and, much more enjoyably (for me at least), one of my closest friends just defended her dissertation. Consequently, there was much coordination and planning of festivities and chocolate cake!
I’ve been thinking about this blog quite a bit though, trying to figure out what tone to strike. I don’t have the eloquence of really great bloggers, nor do I have the wisdom and knowledge of some of the excellent Catholic bloggers out there.
On the retreat that our RCIA group made before Easter, some of us commented that we had never really known whether we were praying correctly, whatever that might mean, or that we were doing the “lectio divina” thing properly, or whatever else. One of our team leaders pointed out that “Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing badly.” In other words, just pray — just try — just do it.
Earlier on in the process, we had read together Romans 8:26-27 (“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.”) and talked about how relieved we were in just being able to put ourselves in God’s hands — that we didn’t need to do all the work in prayer. (This is going to sound naive to any cradle Catholics, and crazy to any non-Christians — but who knew there was so much wisdom in scripture? Growing up agnostic, and reading the Bible only for its literary or cultural significance, I never saw any of as speaking to me. Now I am bowled over whenever I read.)
So. Whatever is worth doing, is (still) worth doing badly. I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I will plunge boldly forth into this blog!
I am not sure how much I would like to post about the Vigil itself, other than to say that it was wonderful, simply wonderful. Every once in a while I have a sudden feeling of certainty that my conversion isn’t simply a matter of play-acting, of going through the motions, of simply getting sucked into the music and incense, of simply responding to human-created beauty rather than the divine, of being tricked by clever theologians, of being swayed by loving, believing friends. Because certainly I have doubts. How could I not? But at the Vigil — I had no doubts. I was hit over the head with awe.
(Between being confirmed and my first Eucharist, I still had the time for a few unkind thoughts about others to flit through my head. I thought to myself — “how can I have time for these thoughts? But how regularly they come! Clearly baptism hasn’t cured me from being a hater.”)
The experience of the eucharist itself was overwhelming for such a brand new Catholic. Yup, definitely God.
For the last week, people have been greeting me with “Congratulations!” and “Welcome to the family!” It’s been nice. One very very very old Jesuit wandered down all the steps of our department to my office to find me, to wish me welcome and to give me a hand-made Easter card. I certainly do feel welcomed — I wonder what it will be like when I am no longer in an environment that is so explicitly Catholic? When Catholics are in the minority? It will be different — and different from before, when I was simply an agnostic amongst other agnostics and atheists. For now, however, it is nice to have the community around me.
I was also fortunate enough to attend a talk by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., of the Vatican Observatory. He presented a wonderful slide show of pictures and stories. My favourite line from his talk was that it is “Difficult to do science when you’re looking into the microscope and going ‘Wow! … oh right, I was supposed to be getting a number out of here.” (Other favourite line: “Being a Jesuit, I’ve got a counter-example for every idea I’ve got.”)
After his talk I took out his book Brother Astronomer out of the library, and treated myself that evening by reading it cover to cover (dissertation be damned!). I heartily recommend it — he is chatty, humble, caring, and quite smart. He writes about the Galileo affair, his own vocation, his experiences in the Peace Corps, his trip to Antarctica gathering meteorites, and how the Church often shows up in the media.
What struck me as relevant to this blog is the sense of finding wonder and beauty in the universe — certainly the starry sky inspires all of us with awe (Kant of course wrote that the two things that inspired him with awe were the ’starry sky above me and the moral law within me’). For Br. Consolmagno, investigating science is another way to experience God and God’s presence. But how is it that Br. Consolmagno sees his awe as somehow divinely oriented — in the awesome workings of the cosmos he sees the same personality, sense of humour, sense of mystery (with an invitation to join the mystery), as he does in prayer — and others see it as non-divine? That ascribing any divinity to it is simply wrong-headed and misguided?
I am in the middle here, I suppose. In the midst of my previous agnosticism I had always felt that there ought to be some divinity to the starry, starry sky (my foray into Neo-Paganism had a lot to do with an excuse to reverence the Moon!) — I just couldn’t countenance, on empirical grounds, moving from ‘there ought to be a divine element here’ to ‘there is a divine element here.’ Now, however, it just seems obvious.
I ask, of myself, how I made that leap. I ask of others what their own response would be.
If you’re literally asking, I’d be glad to tell you, but it looks like your question is rhetorical. (I think you should add “awe” as a tag, btw.)
Ooh, ‘awe’ sounds like a good tag. I will add it.
My question isn’t (entirely) rhetorical — go for it! I’d love to hear what you think.
Okay, here goes: I think of God as a human-created construct, for many of us a psychologically desirable one, that may or may not correspond to something that exists objectively and would be “out there” even if we weren’t. (Since we’re trapped within our own human understanding, I don’t think it’s even logically possible for us to grasp whether such a thing would exist without us, so I don’t think the question is even relevant, although it seems to be very important to many believers, and also to people with strong counter-beliefs but shallow understanding, like I imagine Dawkins to be.)
I also believe that it’s very worthwhile to believe that the universe is not “benignly indifferent” as Camus would have it, and to cultivate a sense of wonder and affection for the infinite beauties of nature, and that it’s perfectly fine to conceptualize this sense of positive connectedness with the universe as a relationship with a caring Person. So for me, I’m happy to call that awe divine, as long as I understand that it exists in a relationship between me and something else that may or may not be created by me and my culture while still transcending us.
Neat — I am going to sleep now so I won’t start in on Rahner’s “term of transcendence” just yet…
I await your later posts.
I did get that Rahner book you mentioned, but he’s definitely going to have to wait for summer. I am way too ambitious with the library.