You Are the Beauty of God -- Carmelite Charism, Take Two

I am still processing the presentation I heard on the Carmelite charism by Jeanne Kamat, and since I am preparing to talk to my community about what I take away from it, blog I shall. I'm not even going to consider that or what I've already written about this, in an effort to shoot from the hip, or rather, to write directly from my very moved heart.

Many times, when I've struggled to communicate something to my husband, for example, I have said, "If I knew how to say this, I wouldn't have to say it." Wrestling things out into words is necessary for me to own things, and to know things. But it is also necessary, I think, for me to commit to things. To recognize the way in which I am called to walk.

Therefore, Secular Carmelites, for the sake of the joy of souls, you are the beauty of God in the heart of the world.

This is how Dr. Kamat ended the written version of her talk, which I just read this afternoon for the first time. This beauty of God in the heart of the world, as she teaches it, is the inner peace that chat omes from the confidence and courage that comes from affirmation, that comes from a life of prayer that transforms the soul and purifies it and unites it to God.

This thing about affirmation struck me hard. It was like a shovel digging down into my heart that made a bit of a klinking sound when it hit a rock of uncertainty. It is really safe to affirm a human being? Is it right to affirm a human being? Is it good to affirm a human being? Is it love to affirm a human being?

The question that need to be settled first is: what is a human being? Is a human being sin? Is a human being evil? The underlying klink I found wanted to object: Yes! Human beings are sin and they are evil! Therefore it is wrong to affirm people.... The only problem with this is that it flies in the face of the Scriptures, especially the second creation account on which Dr. Kamat based her talk. There is such a thing as original solitude, in which man was created to be in relationship with God. Human beings can commit sin, can live outside of covenant with God and can do evil and thereby become evil, but in their own being this is not what they are. This is exactly why sin is alienation from God, self, and others, and this is exactly what penance aims at: reconciliation and healing. This is basic Catholic theology.

Human beings are created through the Word of God, permeated by the Holy Spirit, by God the Almighty. This is our origin; union with this God is our intended destiny. This is who we are; this is how anything makes sense.

Is it good to affirm the life of a person? Absolutely. Is it love to affirm the life of a person? Absolutely. Is it safe to affirm the life a person? Hahahahahahah! Hahahahahaha! There is nothing safe about God; are you kidding? Up-end your entire life, bring total chaos to any establishment of darkness that has taken root, or that is connected to anything so rooted, pull everything completely out of your control, yes. When we live in God, we are not "safe," we are ALIVE.

I have a scene etched in my mind. I was in Japan, visiting this family whose job it was to help me learn Japanese, I think -- or maybe I was taching them English -- in any event, I went to their house once a week for dinner for a time. I was standing in their kitchen when this thought exploded inside my mind: To evangelize someone is to tell them who they are. To communicate to them the truth of who they are. I'm not sure why then and there, but it came like a flash of understanding that has only unfolded since that day. And here is a piece that goes "click" -- to affirm the life of a person is to impart to them the knowledge that they have an origin and a destiny.

The devil is a liar and comes only to kill, steal, and destroy. And we are born under his dominion. Unless we are both given grace and formed in it, we will not by nature know that we have an origin that is glorious or a destiny that is glorious, nor a vocation to belong to the people who minister this reality to each other and into those still under his dominion. That is exactly what he wants to kill off, steal, and destroy. He tells us lies about who we are until we either believe them or are so confused that we don't believe there is truth, meaning, reality, or goodness.

Several years ago I underwent a transformation that I can now understand as being rooted in affirmation. It was so powerful because it not only brought me healing in showing me who I was, but also showed me the vocation to which God was calling me. It was powerful both in its glory, and eventually in its pain as well -- because of that very process of purgation and purification and up-ending and uprooting of darkness. I regret only the pain I caused others in the process, but I do not regret one drop of the pain it produced in me. Dr. Kamat's talk also made sense of out of this for me, showing me the rock solid confidence and inner peace that affirmation gives, even as she spoke about our vocation as becoming the ones who create this very same thing in the world through our prayer.

In my lived experience in the last weeks that I've been meditating on this, I have found both increased joy and confidence in my interactions with people and greater pain. Understanding things from their deepest meaning gives energy like nothing else. I have often second-guessed myself about why I would interact with people to a point of paralysis and painful self-doubt. I would wonder what I should say, if I should say something, why I want to say something and so forth until I had no peace and no confidence. I would keep silent and appear cold, and then wonder why people felt I had done them ill when I had done nothing. I did not appreciate that one can sin mightily by omission when it comes to affirmation. I have also felt the pain of meeting a heart walled off in self-protection, miserable behind its efforts to not need affirmation. I see my younger self here. Then I find myself setting-to to find ways to love. This is creativity, and I think true creativity cannot come without this kind of pain.

And I haven't even gotten to the part of the talk which treated Jesus as our Shabbat, about how we are created for eternal Shabbat and living in the presence of God in time. About how the commandments really treat God's covenant promise to be constantly present to us, his requirement that we keep his fidelity to us constantly in mind and to respect those who minister it to us, and how our life falls into ruin when we turn from God, turn from rest.

In the few weeks before my travels, I was so stressed from constant activity, even from great and spiritual things. I could not un-crank, and physically I was feeling it. I find myself now asking, "What do people do?" in the sense of what are we really made for -- and seeing how it is love. We can and should be fully consumed in loving, but we can also be doing great things from a place that isn't consumed with loving, and then we will grow weary. Then, we need rest. But none of this need necessarily be about "cutting back" in what we do. We are made to be fruitful, and that can involve tremendous life output. We see that in the example of some saints. Rather, we need to "cut into" what we do with that creativity of love, and walking in affirmation, which makes us a conduit of life. "The soul that walks in love neither wearies others nor grows tired," said St. John of the Cross. When we use our own energies, we wear out. When we use God's, we are built up. The key is coming back every day to receive God's forgiveness and love -- and then to offer that very gift of love back to the Father that He gives.

It seems God has opened up a new chapter in my heart and life, and I am awed. He is good. I am very, very glad.

The Carmelite Charism

Last weekend I experienced the 2017 OCDS Congress in San Antonio. In many ways, it was a very ordinary event, but I'm also aware that God has spoken to new word to me. I mean, it isn't a new word. But as it was spoken, I became new. It was a moment when there was a loud "CLICK" in my spirit, and I became more whole. It's really hard to put into words, because it certainly isn't that suddenly a) I understand all things or b) I feel great as a result, so the delight I feel isn't an intellectual or an emotional rush. It is a spiritual delight, but a sobering one.

I found that the hub of this word spoken to me came in one particular presentation, by Dr. Jeanne Kamat, on the Carmelite charism. It wasn't so much that it was new information, but more like an impartation, when something is bestowed on one. I do have the text from which she spoke, and I have the audio of the actual presentation, but the Spirit is not going to be exactly in either of these. 

She began by saying that "the Carmelite charism is to pray and to create in the world the inner peace that arises from affirmation." She emphasized that we do this by affirming the life of the other person, regardless of how we see their faults, crimes, etc. We see the goodness of the person with the eyes of heaven. And, that to be such a witness of God's affirmation of the life of each person, we must know and affirm the goodness of our own selves (self-knowledge), and to know what we most deeply and truly believe. 

She went on to deal with the second creation account in Genesis as a basis for man's original relation with God, with himself, and with others, and then explored Wisdom literature and the prophets, highlighting that to be made in the image of God is not merely to be created as a relational being, but that we are indeed created out of Wisdom. 

Jewish understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures colored everything she said. I have yet to even completely take in the second half of the talk, but by the time she talked about Jesus fulfilling it all by actually imparting the Holy Spirit and being Himself our rest and making us a new creation that then enables His life to be present in the world through us... I felt like I was swooning under the presence of a Beauty unfathomable. 

If at the end I felt I was dripping exclamation marks from my pores, to be honest at the beginning I may have shed a few question marks. Her words about the place of affirming the life of God within dug into the inner recesses of my soul that had been formed by the doctrine of Total Depravity. Really? Isn't there something about humanity that is evil in essense? Scripture is pretty clear that there is an original condition of man which is not evil, is not divine, but does indeed come forth in beauty from the hand of God. 

Sin obfuscates. Sin renders us incapable of knowing God, of knowing who we are, of knowing what is right, of seeing according to Wisdom. Sin brings confusion and activates our passions to dig deeper away from the presence of God, and into deeper alienation from ourselves and from others. 

But Jesus comes to give life. His first affirmation of us is the Incarnation. As Dr. Kamat put it, what a impoverishment of the Incarnation if we see it only about God's plan to deal with sin, and not as the ultimate expression of loving desire for communion with us. The Incarnation as an act of God's desire for communion could be the theme song of my conversion to the Catholic Church. It has been a jaw-dropping meditation for me for 25 years. 

I was also able to see the occasions in my life when the power of affirmation healed me and changed the course of my life. This is a double-whammy because not only did the affirmation heal me, but it simultaneously taught me who I am and how God made me: to go and do the same. 

Words hold the power of life and the power of death (Prov. 18:21). We will be held accountable for every idle word (Mt. 12:36). We are commanded to speak only what will build others up according to their needs (Eph. 4:29). These are amazing Scriptures, and they point to our need, not to become self-obsessive, but to allow "the word of Christ to dwell" in us richly and to be transformed by his glory and the renewal of our minds.

Two years ago I was powerfully struck by a talk at the Milwaukee Congress by Fr. Marc Foley, OCD, which was about the words we speak and the silences we keep. This talk goes one step deeper, because this is about what goes on in the silence, when we rest our heads on the heart of Jesus and receive His breath, which then forms the words and silences with which we interact with the world. 

"When you rest your heart on Christ, He reveals the Father. He puts in love, wisdom, etc., according to your nature. It will permeate your being. You become capable. You are transformed. You don't have to know it." This ministry of affirmation arises mostly without our being aware of any divine transaction, but it is sharing the love, the affirmation, the redemption, the wholeness we have been given.

This is true. This is how it works. In this is my vocation. This is how I bear witness to God in the world.

I have been crucified with Christ; The life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-20)