Souls & Saints

I just finished Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss again, subtitled ‘meditation of a modern believer’. Christian is a professor, poet, a phenomenal writer and cancer survivor.  The book is not for everyone, particularly as he says if there is not a philosophical bone in your body. He writes about the deep questions of life, death, God or gods—is there one or any?—and suffering. That is where his mind went, where my mind went when the doctor informed me “you’ve got cancer”. Ironically as I check the date at the top of the screen, this very date, December 20th years ago, is the day my urologist called to tell me, Merry Christmas!  It’s funny (not ha ha funny but weird funny) that certain dates get indelibly written into our heads.

My mind went all over the place.  Is this the beginning of the end—will I die with this? I was flooded with multiple decisions about treatments and the process of choosing.  What about work?  I dove into reading, made phone calls to those who knew more (supposedly) and got phone calls from too many who thought they did.  I quit answering the phone and let my wife play receptionist.  One guy who I didn’t know (a dad of a friend of my daughter) who also had prostate cancer (and died within the year) called to evangelize me launching into a full blown soul saving spiel knowing nothing about me.  Others had definite opinions of treatment.  There were several treatments but in the end it was about what I could deal with—knowing myself.  

Obviously I am here to write these thoughts down.  I live in gratitude for these two decades I might not have had.  That is one benefit of reaching beyond the ‘three score and ten’ and having contemplated death.  And for me, not only my own death.  After dealing with a brain tumor for nearly ten years mom died way back when I was forty-two.  Her death followed those of the many men who I knew who died with AIDS.  As I stood at the gravesides of guys often younger than me—in my late thirties, I was deeply conscious of lives cut short, wonderful, creative, loving men that would have continued to contribute great things.  Back then many chose to judge, not only those who’d passed away, but me too.  I was thrown under the bus receiving hateful letters that I would burn in hell for helping those guys and their families.  According to them I was standing in the way of God’s judgement on these guys. I feel certain I would make the same choices to help today and I am so less sure anymore of all the judgement stuff.

Way back, shortly after the birth of our second child, we were courted to move to Manhattan at the Lamb’s Club just off Times Square.  Paul Moore, the charismatic leader, ministered to drug addicts, prostitutes, gays, lesbians and even a few ‘normal’ people—lots of very creative ‘lights of Broadway’ church members.  Early on talking to Paul, he referred to his congregation as ‘the saints’.  At the time, my understanding of ‘saint’ was reserved for the holiest of all of us.  Now, I agree with Paul (both of them, the one in NYC and in the Bible).  We are all saints in various states of formation.  

Christian Wiman gets my mind, or soul, going in all kinds of directions. 

“I believe in absolute truth and absolute contingency, at the same time.  And I believe that Christ is the seam soldering together these wholes that our half vision—and our entire clock-bound, logic-locked way of life—shapes our polarities.”

“—Christ is not merely a point in time, but a portal to eternity.” 

Christian includes other great quotes:

“To hoard the self is to grow a colossal sense for the futility of living”.   

Abraham Joshua Heschel

 (Hint: it’s not all about me—I am not the center of the universe)

“There is another world, but it is in this one”.      Paul Eluard 

Then Wiman concludes “We are each of us—every single one of us—meant to be a lens for truths that we ourselves cannot see”.  “But to live in faith is to live toward a truth that we can but dimly sense, if at all, and to die in faith is to leave an afterimage whose dimensions and meanings we never even have guessed at”.

Between my readings of books like The Cloud of Unknowing, The Myth of Certainty, Everything Belongs and so many others—and my bent for sci-fi, I go to some wild places in my head these days.  

I am thinking like Eluard, that there are realms of being that we are in simultaneously…now.  What we’ve heard about heaven out there is really more ‘in there’.  The kingdom is within we are told.  This idea offers an explanation of angels and clouds of witnesses who are close, not far.  

Angel sketches by Neil who gave free massages to guys with AIDS—that others were afraid to even touch.

True reality is not in this physical world/realm, it is mystically where souls reside, where we’ve come from, but not really ‘from’ because we are still in it now.  We are taught about our unique souls yet I’m not so sure of that either anymore.  I’ve wondered if this soul of mine was a ‘hand me down’, that my soul belonged to others, maybe several others historically.  That I stand of sorts on their shoulders in being able to see things not to my credit, but to theirs. I see through their ‘eyes’, their experience. They offer perspectives, vantage points adding to my understanding.  I’m just not all that brilliant alone.  It brings home to me that it is more about my connectedness to the whole than getting lost in my individuality. This doesn’t negate that I do bring something particular to the table of humanity but maybe that is what it is ALL about, the refinement of humanity.  Our chance in living—however long that is— to improve the lot of mankind.  To be better lovers, than haters, than fearers.  It’s one tough assignment that I’ve failed at time after time…but not always. 

The transformation of the character of mankind…via my own seems to be the desire of the Creator whether you call Her (just lost a few) God, the Force whatever.  No name (or pronoun) will ever contain what I speak of.  It encompasses everything.  

So our souls come from a realm that I suspect we simply return to in time.  I even wonder these days if some (not many) souls get the opportunity of another term at living—reincarnation (there go another few of you).  I just know that I have met some that we label ‘old souls’ even in their youth.  Their wisdom was way beyond their chronological years and something in me recognized it somehow.  

So what is a soul?  It’s not visible or touchable (well, in some ways so very ‘touchable’)  It is spiritual, mystical.  I have a spirit (synonymous with soul?)—the conduit to the Great Spirit that my native American friends refer to.  It all sounds pretty sci-fi to me and the longer I live the sequels get even wilder.  

Ironically Wiman agrees that to try and logically get our heads around all the suffering in this world as well as that of my own experience ends in futility.  But suffering is one of the key portals—if not the main one.  “To know Him, Christ, in the fellowship of his suffering” is ringing in my ears.  And it is in sharing the suffering of others that we connect with them, with all of humanity in this and all the realms.  Most of the books, the movies the entertainments we immerse ourselves in has the subplot…the loss, the death and then redemption beyond that portal.

So much for all this conjuring up at Christmas.  Maybe for me it’s just this season is a mixed bag; my cancer diagnosis and then mom died on Christmas Eve (not the best choice mom).  It’s all bittersweet now. I don’t dwell on the loss but in all I’ve gained soul wise. 

It is a ‘bright abyss’, these are meditations of this believer.  

A truly Merry Christmas to you!