An Image that Stirred Me

During a recent discussion with my family, my sister wondered if God could really hear a single prayer with all the other prayers flying around the world.  My brother then gave an example of two electrons that can now be split by modern technology.  No matter how far apart these electrons are moved, thousands of miles apart, each electron is still somehow "conscious" of the other one, and will still react to whatever happens to its "twin."  If we change the spin direction of one of the two, the other will instantly react and change its spin also.  Amazing science!

The example of the two electrons continues to haunt me, in a good way.  I cannot stop thinking about how each one of us is somehow an "electron" of the Divine Creator.  If we are created in His Image and Likeness, if His breath has given us life, we must also be animated by His Spirit, and He is keenly aware of where we are and what affects our lives.  On our part, we may not be as aware of our other twin, or Partner, but His Spirit in us still communicates with its Divine Counterpart: in Him we live and move and have our very being, Scripture tells us.

The Book of Romans tells us that the Spirit of God prays in us when we do not know how to pray for ourselves -- and moreover, He prays in us with "unutterable groanings."  I have read about someone who experienced the Spirit praying in him and over him when he himself was helpless to even pray for himself.  So, to answer my sister's question, it is not so much a question of God "hearing" our prayer as that He Himself is doing the praying for us and in us.  And it is more that we, like the twin electron, become conscious of what the Spirit is praying in us and respond to His prayer by joining our mind and heart to His intentions.

Einstein said that any scientist who does not believe in God is either a very bad scientist or he is lying.  It makes sense to me that the world God created would tell us a very great deal about its creator, if we only had eyes to see it.  I have been reading lately a book called Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other wonders of the Universe.  The book begins with a quote from Abraham Heschel, one of my favorite authors:  Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.  Then we read this:

Thomas Aquinas said that a mistake in our understanding of creation will necessarily cause a mistake in our understanding of God.  Imagine what that means for us who live in an age in which scientific discoveries have taken us far beyond the truths we held in our youth.

Heschel said that the insights that connect us to God come not on the level of discursive thinking but on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery, in our awareness of the ineffable.  Living in radical amazement brings us into the space in which great things happen to the soul.

Before she entered the cloister at 15, Therese of Liseux traveled with her father to the Alps, because she said that beauty opened her soul and made room for God.  We might say the same for science, if we believe in intelligent design of the universe.

A Prayer Journal

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to.  You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth's shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.  The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know you God because I am in the way.  Please help me to push myself aside.

-- Flannery O'Connor, Journal, 1946

Yesterday, I wrote about 'icons' through which we catch a glimpse of God, and I said that Flannery O'Connor has always been one of my favorite icons.  Her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" took my breath away when I first read it; like Jesus, she has a way of turning all our expectations upside down.  Her writing exposes our prejudices, "exalting the humble and casting down the mighty." 

Her prayer journal, which she kept for only one year as a college student, reveals an inner life seeking God.  She earnestly desired that her writing be service to God:  Please let Christian principles permeate my writing and please let there be enough of my writing published for Christian principles to permeate, she wrote.  But her seeking God was neither "pious" nor sweet -- it was rough and honest: 

I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them.  My attention is always very fugitive....My intellect is so limited, Lord, that I can only trust in You to preserve me as I should be....I would like to write a beautiful prayer, but I have nothing to do it from.  There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise; but I cannot do it.  Yet at some insipid moment when I may possibly be thinking of floor wax or pigeon eggs, the opening of a beautiful prayer may come up from my subconscious and lead me to write something exalted. I am not a philosopher or I could understand these things.

Even as a twenty-year old college student, O'Connor consecrated her life to God, asking that He lead her where she should go.  She feared remaining in church because of laziness or fear of hell; she wanted more of God than she deserved to ask, in her opinion.  She was often discouraged about her work, but wholly believed that it was God who directed her in it:

Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story -- just like the typewriter was mine.....dear God, I wish you would take care of making it a sound story because I don't know how, just like I didn't know how to write it but it came.

O'Connor's honesty and humility inspire me as much as her stories.  One of the funniest and yet most inspiring books I have read is The Habit of Being, a collection of her letters to friends and acquaintances.  Reading this book often sent me into peals of laughter, even though I was reading it in bed late at night.  O'Connor's unpretentious ways of seeing life were a reflection of her honest appraisal of her own weaknesses and those of others, and yet of her absolute faith that God is with us through it all.  Once, someone asked her opinion of the feminist movement, still in its very infancy.  Her reply was that she had never thought to divide the world into "male" and "female" categories; rather, she said, she tended to divide people into "irksome" and "not so irksome" labels. Now, that's honest!

Through Flannery O'Connor's eyes, the world tends to be set upright and its falsity exposed.  In contact with her, through her letters, her stories, and her prayers, I begin to see things sometimes the way I imagine God might see them, could I consult Him. 

Icons

Every person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world 

--- Mother Maria Skobtsova, Orthodox Nun and Martyr (1891-1945).

 The woman quoted above survived the revolution of 1923 in Russia and escaped to Paris where she began to serve destitute Russian refugees.  She opened a soup kitchen and lived in the basement, where she slept on a cot beside the boiler.  After the German occupation of Paris, she worked with her chaplain to hide and rescue Jews, leading eventually to her arrest, along with her son.  She died on Holy Saturday, March 31, 1945, after two years in the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

I have a friend who does not like icons, because she thinks they are "creepy."  I never quite understood the art of icons myself, until I read that the wide, staring eyes of the figures mean that we are supposed to gaze through them to heaven, and through them, heaven is supposed to gaze back at us.  When I visited a Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg, I began to appreciate icons more.  There, one is surrounded by icons, as many as can be placed on the wall, not just one layer, but several layers of icons -- one at eye level, one above, and one below.  As I stood there amongst the Russian worshippers following the service, I did have the feeling of being surrounded by saints through whom I could see the face of God and through whom God could see me.

And the "saints" were not just those who depictions hung on the walls, but also those who devoutly worshipped God, who stood around me making the sign of the cross frequently and bowing low in reverence.  (No one sits in a Russian Orthodox Church, as there are no pews or kneelers -- everyone stands. From my observation, it might make for a more devout and attentive American congregation if we followed their practice.)

Anyway, I recalled that experience several days ago when I read the quote from Maria Skobtsova-- every person is an icon of God incarnate in the world.  I had always heard that we were supposed to see Jesus in every person we meet, but most of the time I failed miserably on that account.  Occasionally, I would see a suffering soul -- an alcoholic, a homeless person, someone suffering from hunger or poverty -- and I would see the suffering Jesus.  But on a day to day basis, especially when I worked with some difficult people, I simply did not know how to "see Jesus" in them. 

However, recently, I spent some time with someone whose values and views on life had often clashed with my own, someone I had resented at times for her obsession with Hollywood and tv stars and their lives.  While she was talking to me about the recent death of a Hollywood star, I suddenly recalled Maria Skobtsova's quotation -- and I saw in my friend an "icon" of God.  Jesus is the "exact Image" of the invisible God -- and we are partial, totally inexact, and poorly representational images of the invisible God --- but images nevertheless.  A person can give to others only what she herself possesses, and whatever God has given to any of His creatures is a part of who He is and what He possesses. 

So through our eyes, others can see God, and God can see us.  Sort of changes the way we see things, I think.  Tomorrow, God willing, and computer cooperating, I will write about one of my favorite "icons" of God  -- Flannery O'Connor.