Week 3: Holy Fire and Holy Waves
Over the past few years, I have finally found a sweet and sustainable rhythm of prayer in following the thematic readings and meditations in A Guide to Prayer. This past week, I returned to one of my favorite passages on holiness:
Only by a stronger passion can evil passions be expelled and… a soul unoccupied by a positive devotion is sure to be occupied by spiritual demons…When Ulysses passed the Isle of Sirens, he had himself tied to the mast and had his ears stopped with wax, that he might not hear the sirens singing– a picture of many a man’s pitiful attempts after negative goodness. But when Orpheus passed the Isle of Sirens, he sat on the deck, indifferent, for he too was a musician and could make melody so much more beautiful than the sirens, that their alluring songs were to him discords. Such is the Master’s life of positive goodness, so full, so glad, so triumphant, that it conquered sin by surpassing it. Have you such a saving positiveness of loyal devotion in your life?[1]
What I find most profound in this comparison is that true holiness is depicted not as devastating or stoic restraint, but rather as far greater delight, a mastery of both evil (sirens) and good (music) where freedom can truly exist! Once can picture Orpheus riding along, plucking on a lyre and humming a melody that lifts his heart up and beyond. He coasts through the temptation with peace and joy.
As we consider the virtuous stream and life with God, we can see parallels between Orpheus and ourselves, but often it seems that we will never be “at home” in holiness, especially if we consider the depth of our own sin and desire for that which destroys us. Thomas a Kempis reminds us that the tumult on the waves is not caused by the external sirens of our lives but instead luring sung within us: “No one is complete free of temptations because the source of temptation is in ourselves…Just as a ship without a help is tossed about by the waves, so a person who lacks resolution and certainty is tossed about temptations.”[2] Like Ulysses, we are naturally powerless to the perpetual waves of temptation, and yet just tying ourselves up and away from the world will not squelch the dissonant melody. It arises from our own hearts. What hope do believers have?
I think of the refrain our country sings from time to time, “Would you be free of the burden of sin?... Would you o’re evil, a victory win?...What you be free from your passion and pride?... Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?”
Or to reference back to the vivid imagery in Homer’s epic, can one’s heart ever be truly free from the overpowering temptation and allure of sin so that the soul can truly live at deep peace in righteousness? And if so, how does one gain such holiness, purity, and freedom?
I love how Richard Rolle utilizes the imagery of fire in his contemplation of the holy life in both its negative and positive goodness. Rolle testifies to a literal warming in his body in encountering God, a sensation much akin to John Wesley’s “heart strangely warmed” at Aldersgate. From then on, Rolle turned to the image of the flame as a metaphor for a life fully devoted to God. Blaise Pascal, too, had a profound spiritual experience in response to a sermon in Port Royal. To remember the moment, Pascal sewed his recollection into the lining of his coat.
The first sentence was simply, “Fire.”[3]
Pascal, like Rolle and Fosdick, considers the positive and negative goodness, calling it “contraction” or better put, “dual capacity.” Human beings, according to Pascal, have both the immense glory of God’s image within them and also the propensity toward spiritual destruction and deceit.[4] And thus, this fire that comes at salvation enlivens both aspects of the human condition– the purifying and the passion.
First, fire burns away falsity, scorching the less real or less true. A spiritual fire cleanses the heart from sin and idols, a holy rage and hatred for all that stands against the way of the Spirit.[5] In a sense, the fire of God is a destructive purging and yet it only consumes that which will inevitable consume us, the “sirens” that will allure and then no doubt destroy us in time.
And yet fire is always an image of passion and desire. Rolle says that like holding a finger to a flame, “in much the same way a soul feels on fire with love feels, I say, a genuine warmth. Sometimes it is more, sometimes less: it depends on that particular capacity.”[] The warmth is not mere obedience or awe or even moral duty. The warmth of a fire of the soul is indeed true love of God. This is the positive goodness, the greater affection that expels and denies the temptation without even a second thought. This inner fire is not always steady, Rolle admits.
My friend Maggie calls this the embers and the flame of the soul.
Sometimes our love is like embers: faithful, steadfast, and deep.
In other seasons, our love is like a flame: visible, vibrant, and exciting.
And yet, Rolle acknowledges that the fire remains. Either expression is indeed good.
Simply put, Rolle sees the fire as both affectionate and purging forces. The flame of a holy life is “duly ordered love, so that, first, we love what we ought to love and not what we ought not, and second, our love kindles more towards the former than to the latter…So you will find there are people who have no taste for earthly things.”[6]
Like Orpheus, it is possible to find and even become one of those people who “have not taste” for the false promises of the Accuser and instead be entirely satisfied by the warmth of the Morning Star, the melodies of praise rising up within one’s own soul to God.
And yet, as we read Homer and Rolle, and one longs for this freedom and warmth of the holy life, one can easily be met by despair at how far such a presence seems from one’s current reality. How does one even begin to become one who is less tied to to the proverbial mast, actively resisting every temptation, to be the only naturally and intuitively enraptured by what is indeed good?
I don’t think it is any coincidence that Orpheus is a musician.
It is not his own beauty nor his own sexual fulfillment that empowers him to turn from the sirens, but rather his own creativity and mastery of songs. He was so in tune to the joyful convergence of sound that the sirens’ calls were mere discord.
The spiritual life is also a creative rhythm of beauty.
Richard Rohr writes that life with God is a dance within the Trinity.
Madeleine L’Engle says art is incarnational, where writing is a divine birth over and over.
Similarly Evelyn Underhill argues that the very life of the believer forms “part of the creative apparatus of God.”
And even Thomas Merton concedes that the life turned toward God is like a poem: “God utters me like a word.”
Indeed, we are called into union with a God who creates.
It is like when one tastes the delight of the creative epiphany or the physical conquest and falls in love with the creative exploit. In the same way, we receive the Great Love, are touched by the warmth of his flame, hear the melody of Divine mercy, and we can never go back.
And just as one does not become a Bach or Michaelangelo overnight or without any effort, those seeking a life with God do not partake in the divine melody without practice and discipline.
The saints echo time and time again that the spiritual life is cooperative. As grace is poured out, so too, our discipline and endurance are also required. Phoebe Palmer models extensive seeking of the Lord through scripture, prayer, and writing even in her darkest nights of the soul. John Calvin makes possible the strongest argument for discipline in what refers to as self-denial, that all action is taken under the authority of God’s will and law: “Without the discipline of self-denial we are either left to indulgence in the greatest vices without the least shame, or, if there is any appearance of virtue in us, spoiled by an evil passion for glory.”[7]
William Law echoes Calvin in the prescription for salvation where “all who desire to be saved must make self-denial a part of everyday life.”[8]
Maybe this is why many saints and apostles, like Saint Paul, compare the spiritual life not only to arts but to athletics:
“ I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.”[9]
There is positive goodness in gaining the grace of God to receive holiness; and here, too, is the negative goodness, to resist and retrain as the holy life takes root.
In this process of daily surrender in even the smallest aspects of life, there is a purging of other priorities, goals, and ambitions. Many of the devotional writers talk of the two central temptations being pride and lust, and these become righted in the wake of God’s flame.[10] In their place, God creates blessed humility and gentle self-giving. Or, as John Calvin says, we become more “calm and patient.”[11]
And thus, while there are indeed great artists, incredible athletes, and holy saints, there is never an end to the creative process. There are always more notes to make sing, more palettes of paint, more podiums and medals awaiting. The Greatest Good is limitless. And so, Gregory of Nyssa is wise to state that “[i]t is therefore undoubtedly impossible to attain perfection, since, as I have said, perfection is not marked off by limits…the perfection of human nature consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness.”[12]
An unexamined reading of Gregory of Nyssa would perhaps spur some to set down the instrument, drop the brush, or walk off the track. What was the purpose of trying to attain a virtuous life when one would never arrive?
And yet upon real meditation and prayer, one may find that the opposite is true. While obtaining the potency of God’s perfection is indeed impossible, receiving human perfection within creaturely limits is indeed our calling. And what a thrilling and vast journey we are called to in the Lord!
Perhaps C.S. Lewis alludes to the same creative question when he famously wrote:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[13]
Our desire for holiness– a life of fire, creativity, and endless freedom– is like gazing at the expanse of an ocean. Standing on the shore, it becomes clear no one will ever master the ocean, somehow claim its greatest depths, or obtain its most secret mysteries. This is awe, reverence, and worship.
However, such honor should never keep one from plunging in, delighting in its life, and befriending the place in such a way that it transforms us.
Perhaps, this is what Gregory of Nyssa means when he says that we can only “growth in goodness.”[14]
And perhaps this is what the Psalmist meant when he penned, “The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him.”[15]
Indeed, Teresa of Avila echoes the choir when she says that “God is so anxious that we should grow close to him that he calls us unceasingly to approach him.”[16]
As if God beckons us to approach the coast,
dive in off the rocky cliffs,
and enter headfirst into the lavish and limitless goodness of God. [17]
This past Monday, we drove a few hours up to Lake Michigan and the Warren State Dunes. The long weekend was the perfect excuse to get lost in the incredible expanse of the water, its waves crashing and lapping against the smooth rocks and mountains of glacial sand. My children, squealing in the water, kept saying things like “oh, I love the ocean!” or “salt water got into my eyes!” or “I love a nice day at the sea!” As if a small beach on the great lake could compare to the magnitude of the Pacific.
But then again, as I listened to them delight and dive into the whitecaps, I wondered if they knew something of the waters that I didn’t– if they knew that we don’t measure vastness with mere numbers or units like gallons or miles. But if the realest glories are the ones we enter right where we are, and we work the grace that we are given, growing slowly like walking timidly into the tide and sometimes in “quantum leaps forward” where we jump off the deep end. [18] And yet all virtuous life, all transformation in Divine holiness, begins right where we are. [19]
[Practices for the week are bolded in the footnotes.]
[1] Harry Emerson Fosdick, Manhood of the Master, from Rueben P. Job and Norma Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), 283.
[2] Thomas a Kempis, “Dealing with Temptations,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 80.
[3] Blaise Pascal, “Falling into Presumption,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 143.
[4] Blaise Pascal, “Falling into Presumption,” 143-145.
[5] Richard Rolle, “The Spiritual Flame,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 130.
[6] Richard Rolle, “The Spiritual Flame,” 131-132.
[7] John Calvin, “ The Joy of Self-Denial,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 138.
[8] William Law, “God the Rule and Measure,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 160.
[9] 1 Cointhians 9:27 (NLT)
[10] Gregory of Nyssa, Calvin, and Blaise Pascal all mention these two as central sins.
[11]John Calvin, “ The Joy of Self-Denial,” 141.
[12] Gregory of Nyssa, “Running the Race,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 124-125.
[13] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (New York: Harper One, 1976), 46.
[14] Gregory of Nyssa, “Running the Race,” 125.
[15] Psalm 25:14a (ESV)
[16] Teresa of Avila, “Striving to Make Progress,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 163.
[17] I’ve loved the aspect of friendship with God over the past few months. This exercise of developing friendship with God has been important to me during this start of the school year for myself and my children. Things have been hectic, and my disciplines– while deeply desired– are not as consistent as I would like. I’ve found time every afternoon to walk with God to my sycamore tree, talking with Him and listening. While I’ve missed my regular scripture reading and prayer from time to time, that friendship has kept me tethered in the depths, and I’ve delighted in God’s presence. Gregory of Nyssa, “Running the Race,” 126 and 128
[18] Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water, (SanFrancisco: Harper, 1998), 89-90.
[19] And so this week, I was set to practice the gentle reminder of Teresa of Avila. Whenever confronted with an anxious thought, I was to gently turn toward prayer and recollection, pondering the “positive goodness” of the holy life like turning toward the sea (or the lake) and choosing to love the good far more than I feared the worst.Teresa of Avila, “Striving to Make Progress,” 166 and 168.