A Sensible God

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A Sensible God (12/18/2007)

My God used to be very sensible. But, of course, I was really too young to understand. As a boy I saw him frequently, got the scent of his fragrance, heard his voice, tasted his words in my mouth and reached out to curl my small hand around a single finger of his. Every one of my five senses connected me to him.

I made the mistake of talking to adults about this. They mussed my unruly mop of hair and smiled indulgently at my naivete—that is everyone except my great-grandmother who had managed to survive into old age without ever losing her mystical ability and my grandfather who was a life-long druid. A second, even bigger, mistake was made on my behalf; I was sent to school, initially to the nuns and later to the Christian Brothers. They told me that God wasn’t sense-able but rather that he was sensible, as in he followed common sense. And I believed them, because they wore the insignia of God and the important adults in my life all deferred to them.

For the next 13 years, I was meticulously versed in this sensible God, this down-to-earth, commonsensical divinity, who wore sensible brown shoes and created people to be sensible plodders. Sure, he did produce the odd mystic, but they were all safely dead. For the rest of us, the advice was to keep our heads down and measure out our lives in teaspoonfuls; dull, pain-filled, anxious lives that were best navigated by common sense, old wives’ tales and Old Testament examples. For God was a commonsense God, even when he consigned unbaptized babies to Limbo or sent sinners into everlasting flames for missing mass on Sundays or eating sausages on Fridays. This, too, made sense.

At age 18, I entered the seminary, and God became even more sensible. In exquisite detail, Dogmatic Theology, Sacramental Theology and Moral Theology constructed a fully consistent, logical framework, backed by scriptural references that made it madness to be agnostic let alone atheistic.

That is until I started at the university and majored in mathematical physics and pure mathematics. I was introduced to the God of the gaps. He was slowly being edged out by science and given increasingly unimportant portfolios until such time as science itself had enough manpower and evidence to give him a golden handshake (with the presentation being made by Nietzsche) and retire him to an Old Folks’ Home.

Religion reacted by either vigorously defending the commonsense God of the scriptures or deftly surfing the scientific waves, remaking God to survive the Copernican Revolution, Darwinian Evolution, Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. The more creative theologians even managed to find scriptural references that foretold all of these discoveries. These religious thinkers claimed that God is still really sensible and predicted that real scientists would eventually see the light.

At age 26, I landed in Kenya in a remote area without phones, electricity or companionship. So I did the reasonable thing, I began dabbling in mystical ideas, radical new cosmologies and in thinking-for-myself. We all have mystical experiences, but typically we regard them as unsubstantial, like the dreams of the night. So I began recording and working with the dreams of the night and also with the visions of the day. I had an aha experience when I read that in Hebrew vision and dream are synonyms. So when the prophet Joel said, In the days to come I will pour out my Spirit on all humankind; your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams he wasn’t discriminating against the senior citizens; for dreams are visions you have while you are asleep, and visions are dreams you have while you are awake.

God was very sensible again; but now he made sense because I experienced him by transcending my five senses, commonsense, theology and science but, instead, utilizing the soul.

And then, today, the 18th of December 2007, something else happened. It has been raining heavily for three days and the forest is spectacular during the rainy season; and my dog Kayla needs to walk. We set off, me in my rain gear and she in her house clothes; and we bumped into God—again and again and again.

First, I tasted Him on pearl-shaped droplets of water that hung on each twig. Every leaf on every tree was a chalice of God-life. I stuck my tongue out under a broad leaf and reverently received communion; the blood of God from a Eucharistic minister called Madrona. It was as ecstatic a moment as my First Holy Communion at age seven.

Then I saw Him. He sat astride a faery horse that wore green, gossamer-thin garments of ferns about its fetlocks. God’s long flowing locks were made of light-green lichen, and each strand was a lace lattice for catching dreams and attracting visions. His steed was planted upon the hillside with its powerful limbs soaking up energy from the earth as he rested on his journey. We saw each other and each whispered, Namaste.

As I continued to walk, I realized that each time I dug my sturdy staff in the ground I touched an acupuncture point on the skin of Gaia, and she responded by sending shivers of Earth energy up my spine.

Then I smelled Him, fleetingly. I had walked through a power spot! I stopped, backed up, and moved my head from side to side and sniffed like Kayla taught me. There it was again. I stood absolutely still and sniffed again. I had it! An entire shelf-full from the Akashic Records tumbled into my brain releasing a myriad of memories from many lifetimes on this planet. They danced like children newly reunited with long-lost parents.

It was evening before I returned home; all was still in the forest. I listened more silently than before and then I heard it, the sound of the sunset. It resonated in every cell of my body; light vibrating with light. After a few moments it was utterly quiet again; and then a new song sounded; it was the slow sensual symphony of the moonrise, a half-moon teasingly concealing the left side of her face. This song would last for the entire night. And the stars responded with a poem of their own; a poem crafted by the genius of a Yeats, in the language of a Rilke and spoken in the mystical tones of a Rumi.

Finally, I climbed to the top of my shrine, the place I call, Cnochan Dara na Naomh or The Hillock of the Oak Tree of the Avatars. An ancient Scrub Oak rests there, a garland on the crown chakra of that sacred space. It is always the culmination of my daily pilgrimage. I rested my right hand on the weather-beaten bark and through my now-sensitized palm I could feel the heartbeat of the acorn that begot it; the slow powerful thump-thump-thump of the druid-tree.

So today I came full circle. Today, as I had done in my childhood, I smelled God, I felt God, I heard God, I saw God and I tasted God. After 61 years in this incarnation, I can say once again, My God is a very sensible God!

2

How God Flunked Law School

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."

Mother Teresa

In the summer of 1965, I was temporarily possessed by the spirit of King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. I didn’t seek out this gift, it was thrust upon me. I had just finished my first year in the seminary and was on summer vacation. It was that year, also, that saw the conclusion of Vatican II, but most of its decrees had not yet been promulgated. In particular the magic thinking about who could receive the consecrated host at mass and how to do it, was still in place.

It started one Sunday afternoon when our second-next-door neighbor, Hannah Donovan came to our house in a complete panic. She had her son, Paul, in tow. Paul was five years old and was constantly in trouble of one kind or another. But now he had really blown it! He was a big kid for his age, but it would be two more years before he would be prepared by the teachers to make his First Holy Communion. That felt to Paul like a long time to wait. So on this Sunday morning, as pious parishioners lined up to approach the altar rails, where they would kneel with eyes closed, mouth open and tongue stuck out to receive the Jesus-filled wafer, Paul decided to join their ranks. He had seen the drill countless times and figured he had it down pat. So he took his place, stood on the kneeler to elevate his stature advancing his age a few years, closed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Bingo! Pay day! He processed back to his seat, hands held in a holy steeple, while Jesus dissolved in his mouth. All of his family had gone to an earlier mass, so no one noticed the blasphemy until it was too late. A neighbor woman was the first to spot it. She grabbed his head and pried his jaws apart. Too late, Jesus had already disappeared down his gullet! No sign. So she marched him home and told the awful truth to his mother. They sat in horrified silence for several minutes, trying to estimate whether or not God’s outrage at this blasphemy would be visited on all of Mayfield, or merely on the Donovan family. They thought about going to the priest, but feared automatic and immediate excommunication. Then, Hannah had a brain wave, I’ll bring him up to Sean OLaoire, he’s on his way to becoming a priest. He’s a neighbor we’ve known since he was a child and has known Paul since his birth. Maybe he’ll be able to advise us. So that was why a procession of neighbors was now coming in our front gate with an unrepentant Paul being prodded along ahead of them.

My mother made tea for them while they poured out their distress. A secondary concern, it appears, was that, based on past performance, Paul was very likely to repeat this sin. When they had spent themselves and had finally run out of words, I asked if I could see Paul alone. So he and I retired to the back garden.

I asked him, What did it taste like? He said, It was kinda stale. I said, You’re absolutely right. Here is a chocolate, it tastes much better. Stay away from communion until they improve the recipe. I’ll give you the nod when they do. He simply replied, Okay." It made perfect sense to him. And it solved the possible recidivism, for he didn’t attempt any more Eucharistic encounters until he was formally prepared for it two years later.

The news spread, so exactly two weeks later, May Crowley, who lived nearby came determinedly across the park with her eight-year-old son, Colm. Colm, it seems was also guilty of a Eucharistic mortal sin. He had been at communion that morning, as he was entitled to, having been prepared officially and having made his First Holy Communion a year before, but on the way back from the communion rail it was noted by several parishioners and his own family that he was having an oral wrestling match with the Messiah.Jesus was stuck resolutely to the roof of his mouth and no amount of tongue-twisting or jaw-gymnastics could dislodge him. Colm’s face was going through all kinds of contortions and his head was jerking from side to side, like somebody with advanced neuropathy, but all to no avail. Jesus was hanging on for dear life like a rock climber on the face of the Eiger. So finally Colm did the only thing possible; a thing however which was mortally sinful; a thing that could speed his immortal soul to eternal perdition. He stuck his right index finger in his mouth and forcibly ejected his Lord and savior and swallowed him live. And the entire congregation had witnessed this sin.

So here they were again in our living room. May Crowley gave us all the graphic details as the mandatory tea was being prepared. What fascinated me most, however, was that throughout the entire proceedings she had a firm grip on Colm’s right hand in such a way that his index finger stuck out on its own, separated forcibly from its fellows. It was as if she were afraid that this erring digit which had sinned by illegally touching the body of Jesus was now being held in solitary confinement lest it touch any secular object and thus compound Colm’s error. By now his finger was bright red, partly from the pressure his mother was exerting on it, and partly, I suspect, through the nocebo effect (it you believe bad things will happen, they do) as a result of the dire predictions being enunciated by his terror-gripped mother. I asked him, How does your finger feel? He said, It’s hurting like crazy, as he turned a pained, fear-filled countenance on me.

I had another brainwave. So I announced to his mother, Let’s go down to the church, I know how to solve the problem. The church was only a two-minute walk from our house, so we set off in procession, me in the lead, followed by Colm and May Crowley, the latter still clamping her son’s right index finger in a death grip. My own mother brought up the rear. We entered the side gate of the chapel yard and ascended the steps to the entranceway in front of the big swinging doors. At each side of these doors was a stone holy water font. I now took control of Colm’s right hand and dunked it devotionally three times, with great solemnity into the font as I intoned, In the name of the Father (dunk) and of the Son (dunk) and of the Holy Ghost (dunk). The mothers responded, Amen!

I released Colm’s hand and asked again How does it feel now? A very-much relieved Colm replied, It’s grand now; it isn’t hurting me at all, at all!

So we all went back to my house for more tea. And King Solomon went back to building temples, offering to bifurcate baby boys and to entertaining his locally grown and imported wives and countless concubines.

All of this begs the question, What happens when divine law gets mixed up with human laws and when human laws fossilize.

(A) God’s Great Inferiority Complex

An inferiority complex can manifest in one of two ways, straightforwardly as poor self-image, lack of self-esteem and self-deprecating hand-wringing Uriah Heep style protestations of unworthiness. Or it can appear in an over-compensatory fashion as arrogant, boastful self-promotion. The God of the Torah suffers from the latter form. Again and again he blows his own shofar, making promises that he cannot keep and claims that he can’t substantiate. All in all he is a paper tiger, with a huge ego, bad temper and a pitiful track record as a provider.

He seduced the highly impressionable Abram from Ur of the Chaldees with promises of a land flowing with mild and honey. So Abram, at the tender age of 72, left his idol-maker father’s house and followed this promise. Twice within his own lifetime, Abraham had to leave this land flowing with milk and honey because of famine and go elsewhere to avoid starvation. Not on milk and honey alone doth man live. It appears he also needs bread. Then in the days of Abraham’s grandson Jacob, another famine drove the entire family to seek food and refuge in Egypt. The Egyptians welcomed them at first and then enslaved them for 450 years. In the 600 years between the times Abraham flourished (1850 BCE) and Moses flourished (1250 BCE) God was unable, 75 percent of the time, to protect his chosen people. Over the next 1,300 years up to the time of Jesus, he didn’t improve a whole lot on this dismal record; 40 years wandering in the desert complaining of lousy grub and bad water; 200 years trying to conquer the promised land; a civil war in 930 BCE, on the death of Solomon, which divided the country into two, Israel in the north, consisting of 10 tribes, and Judah in the south consisting of two tribes; 721 BCE the northern kingdom is wiped out by the Assyrian Empire, the 10 tribes deported and never heard of again; in 598 BCE the southern kingdom is overrun by the Babylonian Empire, Jerusalem ransacked, the temple destroyed and the two remaining tribes exiled; in 529 BCE they are allowed to return when the Persian Empire overran the Babylonians; they had some semblance of autonomy until Alexander the Great’s armies conquered all before them beginning in 333 BCE and instigated Greek rule; in 187 BCE the Maccabees revolted, and self-rule was initiated until two warring brothers invited the Romans in to settle their dispute; the Romans obliged in 70 BCE and stayed for a few hundred years. And from the time of Jesus, to our own times, God’s record is even more pathetic: in 133 CE the Bar Kokba revolt was put down viciously by the Romans (who had flattened Jerusalem and the second temple 62 years before); the Jews were in exile up until the founding of the modern state of Israel by a United Nation’s vote in 1948. No sooner had they achieved nationhood again after a 2,000-year-long period of foreign rule or exile, than they were attacked by five Arab armies who vowed to drive them into the sea. This effort was repeated in 1967 and in 1973. And very recently we’ve had the Intifada and the war with Hezbollah.

All in all, this God is a pathetic, little loudmouth with a batting average in the low teens. But here he is in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, offering his new deal to Moses and his people. First, he boasts, I am more powerful than any other God; I am wiser than any other God; I am more just than any other God; I am closer to my people than any other God to his people. Then the empty promises, I will give you a land of your own; and I will protect you forever from all of your enemies. Finally, the payback, You have to keep my law and promise never to attempt to change any part of it."

(B) The Fossilization of Law

It’s bad enough that we bow the knee to this caricature of a God whom we ourselves have created; it’s bad enough that we really believe that the laws we find in the bible actually emanated from the intelligent ineffable source of all that is; but the final indignity is that we fossilize these laws by elevating the letter while ignoring the spirit. Religions of all stripes are replete with ridiculous examples of this. For example, a Jewish hen who lays an egg on the Sabbath has thus broken the injunction against servile work, and therefore whoever eats this egg is an accessory to her crime.

Saint Paul, who was never renowned for his retiring, self-effacing personality, claims that his version of law and gospel is the only authentic one, and if anybody else (even an angel) comes preaching a different line, people are to refuse to believe.

But the Roman Catholic Church is in a class of its own when it comes to turning human precept into divine decree. So, from the people who gave you the how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? debate, here are some beauties: Limbo, a place or state of natural happiness where un-baptized babies spend eternity, bereft of the vision of God. Presumably they are fed intravenously and wear self-cleaning diapers. Purgatory, a spiritual de-lousing facility, where you can get into the express line, if somebody on Earth gains a plenary indulgence coupon and names you as the beneficiary. Hell for all eternity for knowingly eating a hotdog on a Friday. Hell for all eternity for failing on any given Sunday to attend a mass in a language you don’t understand, celebrated by a priest who has his back to you. Hell for all eternity for the failure to be born Catholic, or willfully refusing to become a Catholic once you learned of it’s divine hegemony.

And then there was the fine print. Take respect for the consecrated host, for instance, to revisit crimes and situations similar to those of Paul Donovan and Colm Crowley. Every Catholic Church had, outside the door of the sacristy, a pipe (perhaps six inches in diameter) sunken in the ground with the top four inches showing. It was called the sacrarium. If a sacred cloth (e.g., a purificator or a stole) needed to be put out of commission because of stains or tears, it would be ceremoniously burned and the ashes placed in the sacrarium.

One day in a theology class, the Reverend Professor asked one of the students, Mr. Murphy, what would you do if you were an ordained priest who had just pronounced the words of consecration over the bread Hoc est enim corpus meum, only to have a mouse climb onto the altar, steal the consecrated host and escape into his mouse-hole? Without batting an eye, Mr. Murphy, who was an even more dedicated comic than myself, replied, I would burn down the church, father, and put the ashes in the sacrarium!

There was a morbid fascination with protecting the consecrated host from mishap, with all kinds of delicate situations being prophylactically prepared for e.g., What would you do if, while giving communion to a woman with a low cut neckline to her blouse, the host were to fall into her cleavage? Or, suppose, just as you were pronouncing the sacred words of consecration over the wafer, a bread truck were to pass by the open door of the church? To safeguard against this Eucharistic-meals-on-wheels scenario it was decreed that only a bread container (paten or ciborium) that was actually sitting on the corporal (a roughly 12 by 12 cloth placed atop the altar linen) was impacted by the words of consecration; so, no sourdough Jesus or sweet baguette savior.

Each group attempts to retrofit great teachers from the past with its present set of prejudices, beliefs and dogma. I recently came across a new-age community based on Hindu teaching but with a great regard for Jesus—their Jesus, a Jesus who, they tried to convince me, was a vegan and non-drinker. When I quoted passages from the gospels in which Jesus coached his disciples how to fish, cooked fish for them and ate fish with them (John Chapter 21); they told me I was making it up. When I pointed out to them that Jesus not only drank wine, he made wine on one occasion, 180 gallons of it! (John Chapter 2), they told me it was non-alcoholic wine. A typical case of Here’s my belief, don’t bother me with facts.

It seems to me that there are four main reasons why the spirit of the law gets calcified into mere human commandments. Firstly, it happens academically, or out of necessity and soon becomes a tradition, then a sacred tradition and finally an immutable divine decree.

Let me give you two examples of this. A friend of mine, Maureen Locke, as a young girl was being groomed for domesticity by her mother. This involved, as part of the syllabus, learning how to cook. Maureen progressed quickly, so soon her mother felt she was ready to learn how to do the Sunday roast. Each Sunday the family had potatoes, cabbage and a hunk of beef. Her mother took the hunk of beef, snipped off the two ends and then placed all three pieces on the cooking tray and slipped it into the oven. There, she said, That’s how it’s done! Maureen asked, Why did you snip off the two ends? To which her mother replied, That’s how you have to cook roast beef! But why, insisted Maureen, they’re all on the same tray? Child, her mother patiently and patronizingly intoned, When you are cooking roast beef you have to snip off the two end pieces. That’s how you have to do it. But it doesn’t make any sense to me Maureen protested. Who taught you how to do it like that? Why, your grandmother did, replied her mother. I’m going to ask grandma, then said Maureen. Go ahead, said her mother. She’ll tell you exactly what I told you. A few weeks later, Maureen paid a visit to her grandmother and explained her predicament, finally asking in frustration, So why grandma, do we have to snip off the two ends before we cook the roast beef? Well, it’s very simple, child, when I was teaching your mother how to cook, we were quite poor. We only had a tiny oven. So in order to get a piece of roast beef into it, I had to snip off the two ends and arrange the three pieces on the tray, so they could all fit in! Problem solved—necessity, in this case was the mother not only of invention, but also of tradition.

Here’s another example for you. The ordinations in Kiltegan, where I trained for eight years to be a priest, used to be held on Easter Sunday each year. The newly ordained priests, however, remained in the seminary until June, and at that time they were given their mission appointments (Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, etc.) by the Superior General. So they said their masses daily in the seminary. Now before the decrees of Vatican II were promulgated there was no such thing as con-celebration, rather each priest said his own mass with a congregation of at least one—typically an acolyte (altar boy). So your typical church had 15 or so little chapels, each with an altar, and between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. daily all of the priests said their private masses. Since these chapels abutted each other, there would be a constant hum of priests audibly intoning the ancient Latin rubrics. Lots of altar servers were needed. In April of 1965, as I was finishing my first year in the seminary and just a few months before my King Solomon experiences, it fell to me to assist the newly-ordained Father Frankie McAuliffe in his daily masses. The first day, I laid out his vestments for him, set the altar, arranged the sacramentary and the lectionary, prepared the wine, water and bread, and put my little bell in position. Frankie bowed, kissed the altar and began, Introibo ad altare Dei … (I will enter unto the altar of God.) And I responded, Ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam (To God who gives joy to my youth) and we set off at a healthy gallop. There were no incidents until we had finished the offertory prayers and then Frankie, noticed with deep consternation that I had forgotten to light the two altar candles before we began the mass. He looked furtively around to see if any of the other priests had spotted this grievous error. Apparently they hadn’t. Each one was bent to his task, engrossed in the mystery. Frankie whispered to me, Light the candles, we have to start again. Blushing deeply, I got the taper and matches and we fired up the two candles. Introibo … said Frankie once again Ad deum … I replied with relief and conviction.

Now Frankie was a very bright man, a very good theologian and deeply spiritual to boot, but in 1965 he was still stuck in the magical thinking of the theological times. The church had very definite requirements about the conduct of the Eucharist. And one of these requirements was that you had to have two lit 65 percent bee’s wax candles, in order to celebrate a valid mass. One candle would not do; candles whose composition was less than 65 percent bee’s wax would not do; and 140 unlit candles, even if they were 92 percent bee’s wax would not do.

Why candles at all? Because, presumably, long before electricity or gas or even hurricane lamps had been invented, priests needed light to read the sacred texts. Necessity once more had birthed twins, and one of the twins, law, had become divine decree.

I think that the second major reason for the calcification of law is simple hygiene. In the case of the ancient Israelites, their 613 laws were composed at a time when they were newly escaped slaves, living in the desert for 40 years. They were visited by all manner of medical and sanitary issues, with infectious conditions being the primary killer of those who survived the frequent violent clashes with desert tribes. So Moses, practical man that he was, created a community-based health-care system with an emphasis on preventive medicine. It was a stroke of genius and saved countless lives. It may well be the origin of the adage, cleanliness is next to Godliness. But good and effective and life-saving as these decrees are/were, they did not emanate from the ineffable Godhead as mandatory injunctions carrying huge criminal penalties if ignored. You may as well claim that the precept Thou shalt wear condoms for all acts of intercourse is a divine decree, because with the AIDS epidemic it could save millions of lives today. That is one medical safeguard that the Catholic Church is not likely to insert into its slate of divine commandments.

Many of these sanitary and medical issues, of course, carry moral content, which is not the same as insisting that they are divine decree with eternal punishment for the offenders.

The third major reason, I believe, for how law is abused