Flannery O'Connor: Mystery and Manners

   I adore her. She challenges me, requires something of me, and invites me to listen to the world and the happenings of the heart.

   The fiction writer presents mystery through manners, grace through nature, but when he finishes there always has to be left over that sense of Mystery which cannot be accounted for by any human formula.

   It makes a great difference to the look of a novel whether its author believes that the world came late into being and continues to come by a creative act of God, or whether he believes that the world and ourselves are the product of a cosmic accident. 

   It makes a great difference to his novel whether he believes that we are created in God's image, or whether he believes we create God in our own. 

   For the last few centuries we have lived in a world which has been increasingly convinced that the reaches of reality end very close to the surface, that there is not ultimate divine source, that the things of the world do not pour forth from God in a double way, or at all.

   For nearly two centuries, the popular spirit of each succeeding generation has tended more and more to view that the mysteries of life will eventually fall before the mind of man.

   In twentieth century fiction, it increasingly happens that a meaningless, absurd world impinges upon the sacred consciousness of author or character; author and character seldom now go out to explore and penetrate a world in which the sacred is reflected.

    We live in an unbelieving age but one which is markedly and lopsidedly spiritual. There is one type of modern man who recognizes spirit in himself but who fails to recognize a being outside himself whom he can adore as Creator and Lord; consequently he has become his own ultimate concern.

   Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental. When Emerson decided, in 1832, that he could not longer celebrate the Lord's Supper unless the bread and wine were removed, an important step in the vaporization of religion in America was taken, and the spirit of that step has continued apace. When the physical fact is separated from the spiritual reality, the dissolution of belief is eventually inevitable.

   Today's reader, if he believes in grace at all, sees it as something which can be separated from nature and served to him raw as Instant Uplift.

   Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

   The novelist and the believer, when they are not the same man, yet have many traits in common – a distrust of the abstract, a respect for boundaries, a desire to penetrate the surface of reality and to find in each thing the spirit which makes it itself and holds the world together. But I don't believe that we shall have great religious fiction until we have again that happy combination of believing artist and believing society. Until that time, the novelist will have to do the best he can in travail with the world he has. He may find in the end that instead of reflecting the image at the heart of things, he has only reflected our broken condition, and through it, the face of the devil we are possessed by. This is a modest achievement, but perhaps a necessary one.

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor

The Darkness Within the Mystic

   The boys are off on an adventure. Rockets, lava, and very high vistas of the stars. I heard there is a dent! Adventuring often leads to dents and dings. I inhale and remind myself it also makes memories and future adventurers. It's all good. Right? 

   I didn't intend to stay home this weekend, but stay I did. Sister is keeping me company.  I've cleaned the garage, paid the bills, and am catching up on life. Soccer and quilt camp kept us busy this week and rarely home. A good kind of busy, but I'm glad for a quiet respite, so is the sis. As of late, I'm feeling pretty good if I can keep the house plants alive, while trying to nurture a soul or two and keep mine from going insane, but that is life some seasons. No?

   I don't feel I've much to say, but I've been scratching away on paper all week while in the rover watching soccer or hidden under the stairwell at the quilting shop. I'm learning that showing up and committing to this thing called writing means focusing on the writing - whether I feel it or not. And so I proffer my latest meditation on Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Learning to Walk in the Dark.

   In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all. ~ Karl Rahner

   I told myself, I would work out and walk out these meditations. I proceed fitfully, and unfortunately there's no weight loss working out one's thoughts from pen to paper. The pondering usually adds poundage, but work it out, I must. That there's a mystic within each of us has been my place of pondering, and I find myself asking what is mysticism vs. a mystic and why is mysticism so negatively viewed in the evangelical church and yet revered in so many other places, cultures, and climates of the world?

   Merriam Webster links the mystic with words like miraculous, extraordinary, fabulous, and sublime, but also links the word mystic to soothe saying, metaphysical, paranormal, presaging, predicting, bewitched, augury, and unearthly. No wonder we are afraid of mystics in the evangelical church today. Mysticism is defined in Webster's as a religious practice based on the belief that knowledge or spiritual truth can be gained by praying or thinking deeply. I believe there is some truth to that, maybe a tiny portion, but I also snort/laugh at this. If thinking could make us spiritual, I'd be there! Here's to wishing. 

I offer this simple definition of a mystic:

  One who is inordinately concerned with knowing the will of God and knowing God. One who is willing to be alone and misunderstood in this world in order to access the divinity of God and see Him in the next. One who not only seeks to know His words, but also knows his Name. One who is willing to go against the grain of the one's culture to access the will of God and seeks to live that will out. One who wishes to see beyond the realm of the limited first dimension of this world into a deeper world which they sense exists where God is central and primary. (Sounds like a biblical prophet. Yes?)

   I believe within each one of us, there lives a mystic, but we either grow it or kill it, with our daily actions. We either listen to God's presence within us, or we occupy ourselves with the world until the world occupies us. The mystic within each one of us experiences God to the extent of our worship of God. The laws men make for God, and of God, the legalism, can no longer be the crutch upon which we lean. We must know Him intimately as  friend in order to follow his voice.

   Doctrines and creeds are no longer enough to keep faith alive. Instead the faithful seek practical guidance and direct experience of the sacred. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

   What of the saints? Augustine, St. Gregory l, Hildegarde of Bingen, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Terese of Avila come to mind. There are many others. What of the Desert Fathers and Mothers? I am not Catholic nor Benedictine nor Greek Orthodox, though there have been seasons of my life when these beliefs have called to me deeply and still do. We have much to learn from them. Yet, I've held onto my evangelical seat tightly, not because evangelicalism is the way, but because ultimately I remind myself that no matter where in the world I worship God, the act of worshipping and relating to God is not through method but through discipleship and relationship with Jesus Christ and worship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, I have felt the Spirit of God in many different houses of worship, but I have most sensed the Spirit in places where God worship is neither too loud, nor too controlled, but solely and soully focused on Him. For me, this has tended to be in Spirit filled evangelical churches. Nature or nurture? I'm not sure I'll ever know. I'm often wandering and wondering in my mind, seeking stillness to find Him.

   Some days, I seek to wander, and other days, I seek not to wander. What is the Way to God vs. the ways of men to God? I am often tempted to believe that my wandering mind, my unwillingness to adhere to, and die at the feet of a certain church creed, is unholy and unhealthy, for both myself and my family. Where is my loyalty to the creed????? Oops, I mean Christ. Often, I am tempted to believe that those who stand fast until the end (Christ's return) will have stood on firm principles and a steadfast steely attachment to the way. Unmovable men and women of steel. But rigidity has never helped me respond to Christ. I jerk myself upright, reminding myself that the only thing I want to attach my steely will to is the foot of the Cross; the Way, not the ways of men. 

   Certainly, I am never more unsure of someone, or their beliefs, or my own, than when confronted by the rigid certainty of another. Rigid creeds in another, cause me to ask if they have every really lived any kind of hardship. (Mercy and questioning required.) Shielded by a set of creeds, have they ever met Christ at His cross?  The Christ who suffered. The Christ who wanted another Way.

   But, I do not proffer knowing who will make it into paradise. Who is a mystic? Who is not? Who is growing and who is dying in their relationship to Christ? That's what it comes down to. Right? Yet, it seems to me, one season we are growing and the next season Jesus himself is calling us to the dying. Growing and dying are both critical to discipleship. So, as far as who's in vs. who's out, I have no clue. The Bible does give us a few hints about the ones who will fellowship with God: there will be few chosen, they will love God and his son Jesus, and they will come from all nations, peoples and cultures, as God said to Isaiah, "my house will be a house of prayer for all nations."

   And whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered and saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the remnant [of survivors] shall be those whom the Lord calls. ~ Joel 2:32 (AMP)

   More and more these days, I cast my lot with the mystic who seeks God's face at all costs, not with the knowing follower of a certain creed, who's beliefs are based on ideas that have not yet had their bars rattled and shook. I do not dismiss the importance of creed in the formation of our faith, but again, creed, can become law. Creed can become legalism. Laws and legalism will not save us. Relationship will. Save us in the dark.

  To decipher the dark is a mystery that reveals itself in time. That time is frequently in the beyond, where the shining light of God dispels the dark, and we are present, with the One. For one day, we shall know fully, just as we are fully known.

    For now, it is often not to know, but to choose to walk into the darkness. Trusting. He is there. To wade into deep pools, opaque and cold, this is my veritable quandary. This is my call. And it runs counter to my human nature which desires to know, name, and make known. Will I shed my cloak of human understanding and reasoning in order to know God? He left the Light and willingly walked into the darkness. He enters my darkness willingly. He chose the shroud, that we may know the Light. 

  

   And then there is Flannery O'Connor, God bless her soul. Bringing us right back to down to earth. Because she, like the saints, knew not take herself too seriously, but simply talk with her Lord.

   "What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying at present, I am a cheeze, make me a mystic immediately. But then God can do that - make mystics out of cheezes." ~ Flannery O'Connor Prayer Journal

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*As my copy editor/editor is out of town, I claim all grammatical mistakes as my own :-)

Musings: A Prayer Journal by Flannery O'Connor

A Prayer Journal BOOK LINK

   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 don't want to have invented my faith to satisfy my weakness. I don't want to have created God to my own image as they're so fond of saying. 

   If I have to sweat for it, dear God, let it be as in Your service. I would like to be intelligently holy. I am a presumptuous fool, but maybe the vague thing in me that keeps me in is hope.

   It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming. 

   Sin is large & stale. You can never finish eating it nor ever digest it. It has to be vomited. 

   If I ever do get to be a fine writer, it will not be because I am a fine writer but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me.