Biography
Sr. Joan Chittister is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, and is Executive Director of BenetVision. She's an internationally renowned speaker, a regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter and Belief Net, and is the author of many books. [
"Faith: The Dispeller of Darkness"
I first discovered "dark" in a Swiss village at the top of the Alps. There were no arc lights along the railroad tracks in the valley below us. No lit up windows in the chalet's above. There was nothing but black night, a few faraway stars and no moon. The mountains were surely there, I could feel them behind me but I could not see them.
For an American accustomed to cities that never sleep and endless blinking strips of neon madness everywhere, dark was a shocking experience. I was standing on the edge of the planet somewhere, surrounded only by black nothingness. I was alone. Or was I?
The question has an urgency to it. It carries within itself the foundations of morality, the purpose of life. God is, God must be—my mind insists in the face of this complex universe and myown reflective consciousness. But where? There is no age that has not dealt with that question, there is no tradition that has not wrestled with that problem.
To the Hindu, all life came from a single source; therefore, God is in everything. To the Buddhist, we live to put on the eternal Buddha nature so there is eternal wholeness. To the Jew, God is outside of creation but intervenes in it and guides it, so we are not alone. To the Muslim, God is present everywhere. And to the Christian, to us, God's spirit, the spirit that is God, permeates this universe.
Then, why do I not see it? The Sufi tale puts it this way:
"How does one seek union with God?" the seeker asked.
And the Holy One answered, "The harder you seek, the more distance you create between God and you."
"So what does one do about the distance?" the seeker persisted.
The Holy One answered, "Understand that it isn't there."
"Does that mean that God and I are one?" the seeker persisted.
"Not one," the Holy One answered, "not two."
"But how is that possible?' the seeker cried, dismayed. And the holy one answered: "The sun and its light, the ocean and its wave, the singer and her song. Not one. Not two."
The Holy one makes the point: God and I are not the same thing but God is the essence of everything that is. Or to put it another way:
A heathen asked Rabbi Joshua, "Why did God speak to Moses from the thorn bush?"
And Rabbi Joshua replied: "God spoke from the thorn bush to teach us that there is no place where the Divine Presence is absent, not even in a thorn bush."
God, in other words, is everywhere—as truly in those things where we are sure that God is missing as in those things which we are sure are infallible signs of the presence of God. The presence of God does not depend on an act of God's will; it depends simply on our own realization that where I am God is.
The challenge then is to come to the point that where God is I am. Wherever. Whenever. It is not a case of God being present to me. It is a case of my being present to God. There is no degree of darkness that is not filled with the light that is God. It simply depends on our ability to see. And seeing takes concentration, takes contemplation, takes consciousness.
Amma Syncletica, one of the Desert Mothers of the fourth century said: "In the beginning of faith, there is struggle and a lot of work for those who desire to come near to God. But after that,
there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire: at first it's smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. But first," she goes on, " we must light the divine fire in ourselves with desire and with effort."
The important thing to remember in the spiritual life is that religion is a means, not an end. When we stop at the level of the rules and laws, the doctrines and the dogmas—good guides as these may be—and call those things the spiritual life, we have stopped far short of faith. Faith is the ability to see beyond all the things we make God to find God.
We make religion God and so fail to see godliness where our own religion is not, though the God of life and goodness are clear and constant in the simplest of people, the remotest of places. We make national honor God and fail to see the presence of God in other nations, particularly non-Christian nations. We make personal security God and fail to see God in the bleak and barren dimensions of life. We make our own human color the color of God and fail to see God in the one who comes in different guise. We give God gender and miss the spirit of God everywhere, in everyone. We separate spirit and matter as if they were two different things, though we know now from quantum physics that matter is simply fields of force made dense by the spirit of energy. We are one with the universe, in other words. We are not separate from it or different from it. We are not above it. We are in it, all of us and everything, swimming in an energy that is God.
To be enlightened, to have faith is simply to see behind the forms to the God who holds those forms in being. To have faith is to be in touch with the God within us and around us more than it is to be engulfed in any single way, any one manifestation, any specific denominational or nationalistic construct, however good and well-intentioned it may be.
It is a practice in many of our Benedictine monasteries—after bowing to the altar—to turn and bow to the sister walking in procession with you as you enter chapel for prayer. The meaning of such a monastic custom is clear: God is as much in the world around us, we remind ourselves, as much in one another, as on that altar or in that chapel. God is the stuff of our lives, the breath of our very souls, calling us always to a heightened understanding of life in all its forms.
To have faith is to know that heaven is not "coming." Heaven is here. It starts here. Is now. We have simply not been able to realize that yet because, like King Arthur and his search for the Holy Grail, we too often look in all the wrong places, worship all the wrong idols, get fixated on all the wrong notions of God. We are always on our way to somewhere else to find God when this place, the place in which I stand right now, wherever it is, is the place of my procession into God. Where I am right now is where God is waiting for me. What I'm doing right now is the site of my union with the life that is life and gives life.
To have faith I must put down my notions of separateness from God. I must make the effort to see God in this moment. I must let God speak to me through everything that seeps through the universe into the pores of my minuscule little life. Then the darkness of the night of the soul will disappear, then I will find myself, as Abbess Syncletica promises, at the flash point of the divine fire, then I will no longer doubt that I am not alone in the darkness.
I first discovered "dark" in a Swiss village at the top of the Alps. There were no arc lights along the railroad tracks in the valley below us. No lit up windows in the chalet's above. There was nothing but black night, a few faraway stars and no moon. The mountains were surely there, I could feel them behind me but I could not see them.
For an American accustomed to cities that never sleep and endless blinking strips of neon madness everywhere, dark was a shocking experience. I was standing on the edge of the planet somewhere, surrounded only by black nothingness. I was alone. Or was I?
The question has an urgency to it. It carries within itself the foundations of morality, the purpose of life. God is, God must be—my mind insists in the face of this complex universe and myown reflective consciousness. But where? There is no age that has not dealt with that question, there is no tradition that has not wrestled with that problem.
To the Hindu, all life came from a single source; therefore, God is in everything. To the Buddhist, we live to put on the eternal Buddha nature so there is eternal wholeness. To the Jew, God is outside of creation but intervenes in it and guides it, so we are not alone. To the Muslim, God is present everywhere. And to the Christian, to us, God's spirit, the spirit that is God, permeates this universe.
Then, why do I not see it? The Sufi tale puts it this way:
"How does one seek union with God?" the seeker asked.
And the Holy One answered, "The harder you seek, the more distance you create between God and you."
"So what does one do about the distance?" the seeker persisted.
The Holy One answered, "Understand that it isn't there."
"Does that mean that God and I are one?" the seeker persisted.
"Not one," the Holy One answered, "not two."
"But how is that possible?' the seeker cried, dismayed. And the holy one answered: "The sun and its light, the ocean and its wave, the singer and her song. Not one. Not two."
The Holy one makes the point: God and I are not the same thing but God is the essence of everything that is. Or to put it another way:
A heathen asked Rabbi Joshua, "Why did God speak to Moses from the thorn bush?"
And Rabbi Joshua replied: "God spoke from the thorn bush to teach us that there is no place where the Divine Presence is absent, not even in a thorn bush."
God, in other words, is everywhere—as truly in those things where we are sure that God is missing as in those things which we are sure are infallible signs of the presence of God. The presence of God does not depend on an act of God's will; it depends simply on our own realization that where I am God is.
The challenge then is to come to the point that where God is I am. Wherever. Whenever. It is not a case of God being present to me. It is a case of my being present to God. There is no degree of darkness that is not filled with the light that is God. It simply depends on our ability to see. And seeing takes concentration, takes contemplation, takes consciousness.
Amma Syncletica, one of the Desert Mothers of the fourth century said: "In the beginning of faith, there is struggle and a lot of work for those who desire to come near to God. But after that,
there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire: at first it's smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. But first," she goes on, " we must light the divine fire in ourselves with desire and with effort."
The important thing to remember in the spiritual life is that religion is a means, not an end. When we stop at the level of the rules and laws, the doctrines and the dogmas—good guides as these may be—and call those things the spiritual life, we have stopped far short of faith. Faith is the ability to see beyond all the things we make God to find God.
We make religion God and so fail to see godliness where our own religion is not, though the God of life and goodness are clear and constant in the simplest of people, the remotest of places. We make national honor God and fail to see the presence of God in other nations, particularly non-Christian nations. We make personal security God and fail to see God in the bleak and barren dimensions of life. We make our own human color the color of God and fail to see God in the one who comes in different guise. We give God gender and miss the spirit of God everywhere, in everyone. We separate spirit and matter as if they were two different things, though we know now from quantum physics that matter is simply fields of force made dense by the spirit of energy. We are one with the universe, in other words. We are not separate from it or different from it. We are not above it. We are in it, all of us and everything, swimming in an energy that is God.
To be enlightened, to have faith is simply to see behind the forms to the God who holds those forms in being. To have faith is to be in touch with the God within us and around us more than it is to be engulfed in any single way, any one manifestation, any specific denominational or nationalistic construct, however good and well-intentioned it may be.
It is a practice in many of our Benedictine monasteries—after bowing to the altar—to turn and bow to the sister walking in procession with you as you enter chapel for prayer. The meaning of such a monastic custom is clear: God is as much in the world around us, we remind ourselves, as much in one another, as on that altar or in that chapel. God is the stuff of our lives, the breath of our very souls, calling us always to a heightened understanding of life in all its forms.
To have faith is to know that heaven is not "coming." Heaven is here. It starts here. Is now. We have simply not been able to realize that yet because, like King Arthur and his search for the Holy Grail, we too often look in all the wrong places, worship all the wrong idols, get fixated on all the wrong notions of God. We are always on our way to somewhere else to find God when this place, the place in which I stand right now, wherever it is, is the place of my procession into God. Where I am right now is where God is waiting for me. What I'm doing right now is the site of my union with the life that is life and gives life.
To have faith I must put down my notions of separateness from God. I must make the effort to see God in this moment. I must let God speak to me through everything that seeps through the universe into the pores of my minuscule little life. Then the darkness of the night of the soul will disappear, then I will find myself, as Abbess Syncletica promises, at the flash point of the divine fire, then I will no longer doubt that I am not alone in the darkness.
Floyd Brown: Sr. Joan, you bring such wisdom and insight to our program and to any audience that you speak. I have to ask this question. We've heard the phrase that "there are no atheists in fox holes." We talk about faith and degrees of faith and where we get our faith from. But the thing that has amazed me in faith all this time is that when I see or hear the phrase "God is on our side" or you see people in a boxing match or something that will cross themselves. Who side is God on under these circumstances?
Joan Chittister: We've done a lot to make God a partisan God, a tribal God. There's no question. We've tried to capture God in ways that exclude everybody else. The fact of the matter is, it seems to me, that in our contest with one another even that contest is an invitation into a new knowledge of God: the way God works with the other, the way God demands that I work with the other. This notion that God is blessing our bombs has got to be absolutely the basic heresy of all times. That's the attempt to make God a magic god, a military god, a warrior god who will somehow or other support my sin and bring me out winner in the end. We have done more to diminish God than I imagine God ever dreamed could happen.
Brown: How have you experienced heaven on earth?
Chittister: Ah, heaven is in a thousand places! And I don't mean to be simplistic or to be superficial. I think we grow into heaven, too, Floyd. I think that when you're six years old you are a profoundly holy child if you know a rose is beautiful. If you don't know that by the time you're sixty, you have wasted fifty four years. Some how or other you come to see beauty where you never realized it was before. You come to see life. So where is heaven? Heaven is in all those places where God smiles on me as you do, where beauty enriches me as the rose does, as conflict grows me into a better self, as struggle makes me a stronger, more conscious woman. When I find God in struggle, when I find God in the conflict, I'm beyond plastic piety. I might be somewhere approaching real faith.
Brown: When did you come to the realization of a faith in God and how did it effect you and did you react?
Chittister: In the first place I had a lot of reasons to need faith in my life. I lost a father when I was three. He died and my mother was a twenty-one year old widow with a three year old baby. The Depression was barely over and my mother talked faith. There was something in this, there was some reason, and God would bring us through that. I went through polio at the age of sixteen and didn't walk for almost four years. I never doubted, however, that some how or other God would give me legs. I knew I wasn't done because the God inside of me was alive. I've certainly gone through a number of things in my adult life where all the administrative dreams you have in the world don't work and you find out that succeeding there is not what the whole process was about to begin with. And I come from Benedictine monasticism. It's a very simple tradition in the church. It says you must become the essence of the Scriptures and the Psalms and when you move into that, God is there and you'll get out the other side.
Brown: Thank you. You are such an inspiration. God bless.
Chittister: God bless you.
Joan Chittister: We've done a lot to make God a partisan God, a tribal God. There's no question. We've tried to capture God in ways that exclude everybody else. The fact of the matter is, it seems to me, that in our contest with one another even that contest is an invitation into a new knowledge of God: the way God works with the other, the way God demands that I work with the other. This notion that God is blessing our bombs has got to be absolutely the basic heresy of all times. That's the attempt to make God a magic god, a military god, a warrior god who will somehow or other support my sin and bring me out winner in the end. We have done more to diminish God than I imagine God ever dreamed could happen.
Brown: How have you experienced heaven on earth?
Chittister: Ah, heaven is in a thousand places! And I don't mean to be simplistic or to be superficial. I think we grow into heaven, too, Floyd. I think that when you're six years old you are a profoundly holy child if you know a rose is beautiful. If you don't know that by the time you're sixty, you have wasted fifty four years. Some how or other you come to see beauty where you never realized it was before. You come to see life. So where is heaven? Heaven is in all those places where God smiles on me as you do, where beauty enriches me as the rose does, as conflict grows me into a better self, as struggle makes me a stronger, more conscious woman. When I find God in struggle, when I find God in the conflict, I'm beyond plastic piety. I might be somewhere approaching real faith.
Brown: When did you come to the realization of a faith in God and how did it effect you and did you react?
Chittister: In the first place I had a lot of reasons to need faith in my life. I lost a father when I was three. He died and my mother was a twenty-one year old widow with a three year old baby. The Depression was barely over and my mother talked faith. There was something in this, there was some reason, and God would bring us through that. I went through polio at the age of sixteen and didn't walk for almost four years. I never doubted, however, that some how or other God would give me legs. I knew I wasn't done because the God inside of me was alive. I've certainly gone through a number of things in my adult life where all the administrative dreams you have in the world don't work and you find out that succeeding there is not what the whole process was about to begin with. And I come from Benedictine monasticism. It's a very simple tradition in the church. It says you must become the essence of the Scriptures and the Psalms and when you move into that, God is there and you'll get out the other side.
Brown: Thank you. You are such an inspiration. God bless.
Chittister: God bless you.
Never discount the inner stirrings of your heart. It is here that we begin to ask the most ultimate of questions,'how are the coming generations to live'?
....from the wordweaaver at SingingStones.Anne
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