On Finding Ourselves in God

One of the things I love most about Carmelite spirituality is the attitude that finding God and being united to Him is the most important part of a day. How we go about seeking that – what method of prayer we use, what posture we adopt, where we go for retreat, what vocation through which we choose (or that He helps choose for us!) to serve Him – is much less important than the need we have to find our love expressed for Him in and through our own personalities and our own particular circumstances.

I have just discovered a fabulous novel: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by the brilliant, and profoundly Christian author, C.S. Lewis. You may already be familiar with this work, and if you are, please share your thoughts…I have only begun to think about the implications of the story! Although it is set in the timeless world of myth, Lewis taps into the  real-time concerns of the human soul in the contemporary world: love, loss, suffering, beauty, justice, in short, all the Real Realities that we encounter in our personal relationships to God.

The myth that Lewis retells is that of Psyche & Cupid.  Psyche, as you may know, is the Greek word for “soul,” and so one could read the story of Psyche and her tribulations can be understood psychologically as well as spiritually. Because although it appears to be pre-Christian, with the characters addressing the gods and discussing the mysteries of their interactions with humans, it is quite clear that the truest ramification of the novel is Christian, as hinted in Orual’s cry of despair when she finally calls out, “Oh, Lord, I can no longer do this on my own strength!”

Just a bit more background: The story is retold from the perspective of Psyche’s oldest sister, Orual, whose abusive father, the King, has always reminded her that she is ugly compared to her beautiful sisters. Through her many sufferings, Orual eventually becomes the world’s wisest, most generous Queen the world has ever known. Beneath the veil that she has donned to cover her ugliness, however, she endures a deep bitterness, resentment and anger against the gods.

In the course of Orual’s journey, all revolving about her anguished love for Psyche, she learned much. Three of the lessons learned that particularly struck me are:

On loving others: sometimes we can love others so much that we hurt them with our very love….we love them selfishly; we love them jealously; we forget to love them to the extent that we can let them be who they need to be, and accomplish the work their souls need for them to accomplish.

On justice: On her way to court where she will be allowed to lodge her complaint against the gods, Orual asks whether divine justice is possible. Her wise mentor answers, “Oh child, if the gods were to render justice, what would become of us?”

On anger against God: This could be the major theme of the novel, and made the biggest impression on me. The novel begins with Orual writing out her bitter and angry complaints against the gods for having taken away from her all those she loved, especially her beautiful Psyche. Is not her anger against the gods so much like the anger at God that many of us have experienced?

Finally, after much suffering and tribulation, Orual is led to a court where all of her ancestors are present as witnesses, and is invited by the Judge to render her complaint. Loudly, she reads from her book of anger, and goes on and on until the Judge stops her by saying “enough.” In the utter silence that follows, she realizes for the first time what she had been doing. She had been rehearsing over and over the same complaints for years, “starting the first word again almost before the last was out of her mouth.”

And how often do we do the same with God? “Why God?” “I loved him so much and you took him from me!” “He was too young to die and you took him from me!” In bitter anger, we rehearse again and again the same course of events that God allowed to happen, and we accuse Him of the injustice of it all.

Orual would have kept on going ad infinitum with her tirade if the Judge hadn’t stopped her, and she realized that the voice, strange to her ears, was her own real voice, one that she had never heard before. As soon as she realized that, the Judge asked if she had her answer, and she said yes. Lewis writes:

The complaint was the answer….when the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

I am intrigued by the last line, which of course gives the entire work its title. How can God meet us face to face until we have faces? until we find our voice? And how best does that happen? Only by complaining? Some of us do, maybe. It would be nice to think there are less painful ways to go about it, but I have to say that I can really relate to the plight of Orual. Have you ever found yourself angry with God, asking “why? why?” and hearing only a deep and profound silence in return?

As St. Teresa of Jesus pointed out, the journey to finding God, uniting ourselves to Him, means first coming to know who we are. C.S. Lewis seems to be showing us in this brilliant piece of writing how a vital relationship with Him means unveiling our real faces in all humility, no matter how unbeautiful they may be. It means digging deep beneath the babble and discovering the essential words, no matter how angry and bitter they may be, in order that the soul might speak and flourish in the divine life for which it was intended.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Advertisement

Tags: carmelite spirituality