I've spoken of Christian Wiman in this BLOG before (see "Riven Things in All Creation," June 26, 2013).  His recent book, My Bright Abyss, has received great attention as a poet's expression of an honest faith.  His is a faith born of struggle, comfortable with ambiguity, and open to doubt.  Wiman has recently been appointed at Senior Lecturer in Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School (and the Institute for Sacred Music), where he's teaching "Poetry and Faith."  In an article about that appointment by Ray Waddle, Wiman describes the doubt that can texture any honest affirmation of faith in the modern world:

'Poets today aren't very concerned about theology, or they're only accidentally concerned," he says.  'One of the reasons is the trend of secularization that characterizes all disciplines. 

'More generally, though, the problem is: we know too much.  We think we know too much for the Christian story to be true.  We know too much historically, cosmologically, anthropologically for this one story to be true.

'But that's the paradox, because the more we know, the more we should realize how little we know.  As physics demonstrates, we can't even observe phenomena without distorting them.  Uncertainty is built into our fixed knowledge.  If that's the case, then—good Lord—think of the mistakes we're making.'*

For nearly two years Pinnacle has had a monthly "roundtable" gathering of folks interested in faith and science.  It's been a terrific conversation, often touching on just the kinds of things Christian Wiman is talking about.

We think that faith is impossible in a scientific culture, or at least we're taught that.  But those who teach us that idea often don't know science very well, and they certainly don't know faith.  What does seem true, though, is that the character or feel of faith changes in a scientific culture. 

We can believe simply, with a kind of "first naivete" (as the late philosopher Paul Ricoeur once called faith that hasn't been tested by intellectual or existential fire):  "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."  And we can find great comfort, security, and a good life in that place.  We can also disbelieve simply, with another kind of naivete:  "Jesus loves me is a lie, for the Sciences tell me so."  And we can also feel secure, even if cosmically alone, in that assumption. 

Yet we can also let doubt, questioning, testing, and other parts of modern life enliven our journey and blur some boundaries.  That can be exciting.  It can also be frightening.  And it can also feel inevitable.  In that space we let ourselves make great mistakes, while still being open to God.   And through that, a new naivete of faith (or of doubt) can return, beyond our wandering—or maybe in the midst of our wandering.  It can look like the first naivete, but it can be entirely entirely different.  It can move beyond ambiguity, even while it still includes ambiguity.  It can be a "second naivete" (Ricoeur's term again).  If it's a second naivete of doubt, it can be less ure of its doubt and more open to God than some belief can be.  If it's a second naivete of faith, it can sound just as sure as the simpler faith, but it can know the cost of that once more simple affirmation:  "Jesus love me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."  And it can feel that affirmation as a gift, at long last.  More real.  More present.  More true. 

* Ray Waddle, "Chrstian Wiman: the limits of language, the persistence of love," in Notes from the Quad (http://notesfromthequad.yale.edu/christian-wiman-limits-language-persistence-love)

In the summer of 1982 I found myself in a work camp for "youth" (which meant folks in their 20s) in Agamy, a village on the Mediterranean outside of Alexandria, Egypt. It was at a Coptic Orthodox Center and sponsored by the Youth Program of the Middle East Council of Churches. Many Orthodox and Protestant Egyptian Christian youth were there. Five of us were there from the U.S. There were some Europeans, a handful of Sudanese, and a few others. We spent hours in Bible study, learning some cultural traditions, enjoying time together, eating, fumbling over language, and swimming in the Mediterranean. Our work was to build walls, lay stones for walking paths, and do some other repairs and improvements on the Center. The work side of the camp was run by a recently graduated Egyptian engineer. 

Being achievement-oriented Americans, the small group of us from the U.S. would huddle up at the end of each day to chat about our experiences. We were humbled at the ability of Copts to sit for three hours of rapt attention to a bible study or lecture without a single break. We told stories about parties and other cultural experiences and corrected each other as we noted missed cultural cues and more. We wondered about the health implications of well over a hundred people dipping into a single cask of water with one tin cup, but breathed in and went along. We spoke of all that we were learning. 

At one point the technological rationality that's second nature for achievement-oriented Westerners came through us in pointed form. We were concerned that too little progress was being made in a couple of the project areas. We were only there for a few days, after all, and we wanted the camp to leave a legacy of physical improvements in the place. We wanted to say, "we did that" and we wanted our newfound Egyptian friends to enjoy the fruit of the campers' labors. So we chatted about the finer calculus of tool to worker ratios, the ordering of projects, and what was doable in what amount of time so as few projects as possible would be left unfinished. As one example, we wondered why two or three people were assigned the job of scooping sand with one shovel into one bucket for the manufacture of cement. We saw better ways of using human resources. And so with compassion and respect for sure, but also with a sense of superior organizational skills and commitment to success we approached our young engineer-director with some ideas. 

He was gracious and hospitable. He listened very carefully and thanked us as friends for our ideas. He nodded often, and even wrote some things down. And then he looked at us with genuine wonder—not a hint of condescension. He said, "What you are saying is so valuable, and I thank you. But if I put only one person on that job with one shovel, wouldn't he get lonely? No one should have to do a job alone. Jesus doesn't want us to be alone." 

There's an economics deeper than efficiency, and there's profit greater than what numbers can calculate. There's a quality of life that can't be pointed to. There's a legacy of relationship—even friendship—in how we build that might be more complete than even the perfect thing we're building. I'm grateful for that simple lesson, and still need to learn it.

The gospel is more radical than we'll probably ever really know.

Just thinking out loud about a difference that makes a difference in Christian ethics.  That's the difference between "charity" and "mission" (for lack of a better word). 

It would be easy to disparage one in order to lift up the other, which would predictably leave charity a sad, if gilded, handmaid of mission.  I'd rather not do that, though.  Charity, or what we've also called "benevolence" has its place.  Without it, mission would be impossible.  Charity gives to perceived need or in support of a social good, and perceived needs should be met and social goods should be supported.  I like charity.  It's good when people give of what they have to help, even if it's the extra and not the "stuff." 

I should be more charitable.  And so should you.  I got no truck with charity.

Ah, but mission.  Mission is a God-given something else.  It's fleeting, harder to point to, but as essential to living a good and holy life as charity. 

How do we spy the difference?

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Well, a charity usually tickles one part of us.  Maybe it something that pulls at the heart.  Maybe it's a problem that needs the attention of your mind. 

A mission, however, tickles all of us—heart, mind, spirit, and even our network of relationships.

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A charity inspires us to act on its behalf.

A mission teaches us something we didn't know, even if we didn't think it would.  In that, it changes us. 

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A charity satisfies our impulse to help.

A mission unsettles us.  It feels as much given to us as chosen by us.  It's not an obsession that controls us; it's a passion that makes us.  And there's a difference between those two.

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A charity provides an opportunity to achieve a goal. 

A mission humbles us with a reordering of our priorities.  When something becomes a mission, we can tolerate failure and setbacks without giving up, for we labor on toward faithfulness and truth in a mission rather than toward mere success.

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A charity is in some ways self-satisfied and goes about recruiting others.

A mission is open to correction, and frees others to participate with simple invitation.

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A charity expresses our sense of responsibility.  Our response is a gracious "you're welcome."

A mission shapes our identity, and feels like a privilege.  Our response is an enthusiastic, "No . . . thank you."  A mission is not the object of our generosity, but a subject in our redeeming.

--

I think I need a mission. 

I'm always grateful to my friend Bill Smith who sends a daily quote to his circle of followers, always timey and often personal. Recently, he quoted up a 2005 Kenyon College Commencement speech by the late novelist David Foster Wallace that has "gone viral" this graduation season. It's gone viral in part because an LA production company pushed it out. Manuscripts and a video are still being passed around.

I've excerpted it even more, for a little taste of something I want to comment on this week: 

…in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship....

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

...The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. 

That is real freedom...

If you have a second, read it again. Then indulge me to add a thought.

Wallace faced his own set of struggles in life, yearnings for freedom that took their toll, but in this address he touches on a deep and lasting truth. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once said that believing in the Infinite, in God, is not simply believing in something bigger than what we believe in for day to day freedom in an ordinary world. Believing in God transforms belief itself. It's a different kind of belief, not just a different object of belief. It's different because it's not a harnessing or a comprehension of the Infinite. It's a letting go into the Infinite, an acceptance of relationship, a moving into mystery, and an inarticulate realizing that belief in God will lead to more unknowing than knowing as it grows from understanding to understanding. It is also a receiving of a way of living that issues from this kind of believing—a way of love, moving self from the center and letting the presence and needs of others become a part of our being. 

This kind of believing becomes a kind of trusting, which in turn becomes life- and freedom-giving, not life- or freedom-controlling. It sometimes begins in a switching of the objects of our trust­, from penultimate to ultimate things. But it can't be left there. For it eventually does change how, not just what, we trust.

So Wallace was right, I think. But in light of what I've added here, I also think he advocated an impossibility. For I can't in the end make myself believe in an ultimate way. I can only turn my face in that direction, confess the less than ultimate things in which I put my daily trust, and ask that the Ultimate—who I can't help but call God—might reveal itself (Godself) in ways known to it (God) and so also give me ability, will, sensation, inclination, courage, confidence, grace—ah, grace—to trust it (God). And ask it (God) to provide the grace and the community in which it (God) might be trusted in God-congruent ways—to believe in God in a God-offered, God-given, God-appropriate way...

The Foster speech (with thanks to William Smith):
Text: http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf