A Response to “The Word of God” Letter
P. Mark O’Loughlin cfc
November 2006
I am grateful to our Congregation leaders for their recent letter on “The Word of God”. It encourages me to wrestle again with those fundamental life questions facing us all — Who am I to be? How am I to live? I know, of course, that no letter is ever going to distil out a simple wise guide. Our human attempts will always bring ambivalence and unreality. I find this letter no exception. But it does bring me “The Word of God”.
I resonate enthusiastically with the sentiment of the opening paragraph that we mould our lives around reflection on God’s Word as experienced in our lives and those of our communities and families. This is congruent with our 2002 Congregation Chapter’s The Heart of Being Brother and its call to a spirituality grounded in relationality. But I am jolted by the dramatic shift in the second paragraph with its focus on study of the Scriptures and sharing round them. What follows is an attempt to explore this latter theme that the Scriptures are the primary source of “The Word of God”. But there is constant ambivalence in this pursuit. It is the initial thematic element of the opening paragraph that is echoed again and again, such as in the citation of Constitution 36 — Radical obedience to God’s will demands attentive listening to the voice of the Spirit speaking to us both in the community and in the world around us. And, paradoxically, many of the sources of wisdom quoted throughout the letter are not from Scripture or about Scripture.
At the end of the letter there are two addenda that acknowledge other sources of “The Word of God”. One is contact with the poor. The other is through creation. I find the latter incoherent. It fails to capture the experience of the vast numbers who find “The Word of God” through earth and cosmos. There is nothing here of the “radical relationships of equality” of our Congregation Chapter.
I am grateful for the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer — A time will come when we will once again be called so to utter the Word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming. His words prophetically challenge me as Brother. Here is “The Word of God” for me. And it is not coming from Scripture. I acknowledge that Dietrich would almost certainly have been aware of the Scriptural wisdom of Deuteronomy (31:14) — No, the Word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance . But Dietrich is where we begin. I am thinking, too, that we are not far here from the wisdom of Shakespeare, offered in the advice of Polonius to his departing son Laertes (Hamlet Act 1 Scene 3) — This above all,—to thine own self be true. A primary “Word of God” for me is inner fidelity, invited in the above instances by Bonhoeffer and Shakespeare, not Scripture.
As I first read into the letter my response was to feel guilty, even become self-recriminatory that I am not giving enough formal time to reading and reflecting on Scripture. But on reflection I judge that the letter is in fact narrow in its perspective on the Christian life and spirituality, and representative of a time warp. I felt sucked back, not prompted forward. “The Word of God” for me is a book of many pages. When I ask myself what are some of the significant pages of this book of the Word I find many — my relationships within province community and local community and parish community and scientific community and friends and family; my engagement with planet earth; my exposure to literature and the fine arts; my marine research; my ministries; and, as noted above, my inner truth. All speak “The Word of God”.
On reviewing this hastily written list I am surprised to realize that I have not listed Scripture! I am aware that I am now living in a “post-Catholic” world. The words of Dietrich continue to echo for me, and I am wondering whether I am indeed finding myself in a “post-Christian” world. Unexpectedly I find the very question liberating and not frightening. The spirituality and language of young people encourage me to judge that theirs is a “post-Christian” world. What a challenge, then, to be relevant and prophetic in such a world. To be “Brother”. We are told in the letter (page 8) that — If this conversation (with the Bible) does not take place, then we cease to be Christian. Perhaps this assertion is, ironically, more an invitation than a condemnation! I am conscious that Jesus of Nazareth stepped beyond his tradition. He let go. He incarnated the sort of point of departure to which Dietrich is referring.
Are the Scriptures important for me? Yes, certainly. I hunger for more of the Wisdom carried there. But I experience constant frustration. Only the mythic truth in the Scriptures carries meaning for my personal and daily life, and I rarely hear it shared or explored. Sunday Mass is an arid desert in this regard. Theological and religious and spiritual writings rarely invite glimpses into this “Word of God”. I can read the Scriptures knowing that the words carry mythic truth for me. They describe the reality and potential and wisdom and challenge and opportunity and choice that face me every moment of my life. But this is a lonely journey in the absence of like minds.
A recurrent difficulty for me in reading the letter is the assumptive language about “God” and “God’s plan”. “God”-language carries too much ‘baggage’ for me to any longer use it, or read it without frustration. I was indoctrinated too well into having a sense of a “God” as a discrete entity, located somewhere (“up there”), a ‘person’ (even three persons!), with a combination of ‘natures’, with gender associations (exclusively male), with human capacities for hearing and seeing (often voyeuristically), rewarding and punishing, the exclusive repository of all that is “holy” and “sacred”. Such a fabrication. So unreal. To be constantly confronted with “God”-language in the letter is very distracting. I keep having to ask myself what on earth (or in heaven!) does the writer assume? I experience similar difficulties with the confused usage of “Jesus” and “Christ”. I do have a strong sense of the sacred, of the transcendent, of the interconnectedness of all being, but I need the new language.
My year has been one of significant loss and pain — the personal family loss of my sister to incoherence and a nursing home, and the disposal of our family home; and the personal congregational losses I feel with the imminent dismantling of my province community by the unappreciative controllers of SOFCO, and the disempowerment of our school communities through the erection of a costly EREA. But my life is graced, and I am reminded of this and challenged by the Scriptural Word in Matthew (20:16) — How can you be ungracious when I am generous? And there is a non-Scriptural Word from Aeschylus in his Agamemnon that resonates repeatedly with me — And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us, by the awful grace of God. I live in confidence that there will continue to be upwellings of Wisdom from the many sources of the Word, by the awful grace of God.
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