Unlearning and Climbing Down Ladders

Unlearning and Climbing Down Ladders

“When C. G. Jung was an old man, one of his students read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and asked Jung, ‘What has your pilgrimage been?’ Jung answered: ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.”’—C. G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé, eds. (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 19, footnote 8.
Richard Rohr describes the spiritual path of unlearning and climbing down as “The way down is the way up.” But, unfortunately, we do spend our lives learning and unlearning, climbing up and climbing down. Thomas Merton said, “People may spend their entire lives climbing the ladder of success, only to find when they reach the top that the ladder is leaning against the wrong building.”

When three spiritual leaders share this secret, I listen. My experience is that people who try to stay at the top of the ladder are soon overtaken by younger, more competent colleagues in their profession. Attempting to contend with this paradox leads many people to seek spiritual direction. They realize that their old life no longer holds the answers. Their soul cries out to be heard.

The “climb down” can be gentle, with the help of our friends who care for us because they love us, not due to what we have accomplished. They see the face of Christ in us and try to describe it to us. We meet some fascinating people on the way down whom we would never have paid attention to previously. The outer life becomes less important. Our inner life speaks more clearly and becomes heard. The descent is an ascent.

 Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go (Crossroad Publishing, 2003), pp. 168-169, 172-173.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Connecting Through Our Woundedness to Christ the King

Connecting Through Our Woundedness  to Christ the King

Ravena Mosaic

“The world has never seen, except once, the kind of king we mean when we speak of Christ the King. Our king reigns from a cross and rules on his knees. His crown is thorns. His orb and sceptre, a basin and towel. His law is love. We are here to tell the tale of lives transformed by loving service, and this king has set the example for us all.”—Br. James Koester, SSJE

“The reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded!”—M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum (Touchstone, 1998).

Henri Nouwen also tells us that we become less, not more, vulnerable when we share our woundedness. It takes enormous energy to pretend we are “just fine.” We hide who we are, wearing masks and trying to be something we are not. As we take off that mask, we can now employ all that energy simply to be ourselves, to become the person God created us to be. We become more human. In turn, others share their wounds because they recognize us as a safe place—another human being who may have just an inkling of what pain is about.

Letting others know we are human, that we have pain, and that we make mistakes is also a path into the divine within ourselves and others. This is the path we are all seeking. A wide, gaping entrance to this path opens through our wounds directly into the Christ, the Holy, and the Spirit, each within the other.

This is the path from Good Friday to Resurrection. We especially remember Christ’s woundedness and our woundedness, and that connection to Christ the King within us on this Christ the King Sunday on our liturgical calendar. So many images of Christ on this day are of a King on a cross. A King we can always recognize by his wounds. A king who has overcome the cross.

Jake Owensby describes the reign of Christ the King as one of love, forgiveness, and mercy, not a kingdom of punishments and rewards. Christ offers us a love that will not die, that often enters us through our woundedness. That love can only live by overflowing out of us, expanding God’s reign of love on the earth until it is like his reign in heaven.1

1Jake Owensby, “The Peculiar Reign of God,” https://jakeowensby.org/, November 18, 2022.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Death of JFK CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley on November 22, 1963

 November 22, 1963: Death of JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley

new yorker

Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley is a novel by Peter Kreeft about U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and authors C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) meeting in Purgatory and engaging in a philosophical discussion on faith. It was inspired by the fact that all three men died on the same day: November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, Huxley died of cancer, and Lewis died of renal failure. We see from the three points of view: Kennedy's "modern Christian" view, Lewis's "conservative, orthodox Christian" or "mere Christian" view, and Huxley's Eastern pantheist" view of God. The book progresses as Lewis and Kennedy discuss Jesus's being God incarnate, to Lewis and Huxley discussing whether or not Jesus was a deity or "just a good person." Wikipedia

We are sometimes asked who we would like to have for dinner, living or dead. Any number of people would invite Kennedy, Lewis, or Huxley. Peter Kreeft’s novel takes us into his imagination of what a conversation between these three would be like, since they all died on the same day. Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College and King’s College and a Catholic apologist, writes a fictional book that reads much like a play, with constant Socratic dialogue among the three men.

 Huxley, an English writer and philosopher,  portrays God as an Eastern pantheistic, universal force, viewing the universe as divine rather than a separate, personal deity. He believes God is not a distinct being, but the underlying essence of all existence, meaning everything is part of God.

Huxley sees the ultimate spiritual goal as achieving a state of unity with cosmic consciousness, in which individual identity dissolves into the larger whole.

In contrast, C.S. Lewis presents a more traditional Western theism Christian view of God as a personal being who interacts with humanity and can be known through faith. While Huxley's God is not a judge, Lewis's God is a moral authority holding individuals accountable for their actions.

Kennedy represents Western secular humanists and the modernist Christian view.

Most reviewers believe the author is biased toward Lewis, the central figure and most fully developed character, and that the author poorly represents Kennedy. Still, the concept is so intriguing. So often, we do think of friends and family who have died, and if they are having some form of conversation with each other. At some later date, we will all have a chance to learn more!

The book’s ending also speaks perhaps to the author’s concept of God. A fourth character, the Light, appears and says, “Are you coming?”

Joanna. joannaseibert.com