Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha" – review by Ron Dart

When New Directions decided to publish the first English translation of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha in 1951, it could never have foreseen the enormous impact it would have on American culture.

—Paul Morris (p. xiii)

Hinduism has been much misunderstood in the West since it has been introduced in one or another of its exaggerated forms. One image of it is that of the starving sannyasin who by dint of extravagant austerities claims to have realized himself as the soul of the All…The other is that of a religion of unbridled sexuality which the publication of the Kamasutrasas a paperback has done nothing to dispel.

—R.C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord (p. 163)

American witnessed a Hesse phenomenon that was for a European writer.—Paul Morris (p. xv).          

There has been and continues to be in our post-Christendom and post-Secular and Scientific Western culture and ethos a perennial spiritual longing and thirst that only deeper waters can quench. The West has a significant contemplative tradition as does the East. Kipling wrongfully suggested that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”. There have been many creative writers and thinkers in the last few centuries that, in our increasing global village, have sought to discern, how East and West might meaningfully meet—Hermann Hesse is certainly such a guide and mentor, one who in his layered and longer life, sought to bring together the wisdom and contemplative traditions of the West and East: Siddhartha was one of Hesse’s fuller forays into such thoughtful probes.

The sheer carnage and tragedy of WW I, for the more sensitive and thoughtful, raised questions about human suffering on our all too human journey. What does to mean to be human and live an authentic life? What are decisions worth the making, how can we be deflected from making such decisions and is there more to being human than the fleeting ego, throes of matter and projected public personas? It was these sorts of questions that greeted Hesse and begged a response. Hesse’s seeming turn to Buddhism as an initial attempt to face such questions after WW I was not, it should be noted, a scholarly and academic approach to examining the origins and sources of the emergence of Buddhism—Hesse’s interest was much more existential and personal. Hence, the Siddhartha of this short novella of sorts is not the Siddhartha turned Gotama Buddha (the enlightened one) of 1^stgeneration Buddhism—it is much more the story of every person who longs to live a more meaningful life (and the hard decisions that point in such a direction).

A Rainbow Seen through Celtic Eyes - Fr. David Jones

How is possible that a Republican political activist (at the national, state and county levels), an advisor to a very conservative former U.S. Senator and Republican candidate for President who nearly won his party’s nomination to be President, and a conservative Catholic become an ally to the LGBT community?  This is my story of how through a series of human encounters and events over a decade changed my worldview and allowed me to see all peoples with new eyes, through a prism seeing multi-colors.

I am a career U.S. Army soldier and senior field grade officer.  It was through a series of professional events that my personal perspective on LGBT peoples began to change as the Department of Defense (DoD) policy regarding LGBT peoples changed.  The first event involved a 3-star general investigation of a young sergeant who had “came out of the closest” during the transition period before the new policy was implemented.  We were still under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy where if one kept their sexual activity private, no one asked or cared.  If it was publicly discussed though, then any known LGBT soldier was immediately discharged out of the service.  I was assigned as the senior field grade investigating officer for this high-level case at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

A military police sergeant, a decorated combat veteran of Iraq, had publicly disclosed his sexual orientation before his pending honorable discharge out of service. He had honorably served his nation and nearly fulfilled his full military contract.  He was getting out to go to graduate school.  Unfortunately, it was discovered that he was “gay” by his chain of command, forcing the gears of the military bureaucracy to turn on.  I recommended no punishment be issued against this sergeant.  He had never once been in trouble for anything during his two full tours of service. He was a highly decorated non-commissioned officer, and overall, just a good guy.  It just didn’t make any professional or personal sense to me to punish this good solider for being who he truly was.

Q&R WITH BRAD JERSAK: “UNDER GRACE, ARE WE STILL ‘SINNERS’? IS CONFESSING SIN A DENIAL OF GRACE?”

QUESTION

Under grace, are we still ‘sinners’? Is confessing sin a denial of grace? What about saying “the Lord’s Prayer,” which asks God to forgive our sins? Some grace teachers regard the Lord’s Prayer as Old Covenant since Jesus taught it before the Cross and at the Cross, all sins were already forgiven. What’s your take on this?

RESPONSES

These questions are loaded with a backstory, for sure. I can hear the wounds of shame in how the words “sin” and “sinner” were used as bludgeons on sensitive hearts. And believe me, I can relate. As long as these are still associated with the old pangs of religious shaming, it will be hard to use them at all. What the New Testament describes is not what they came to mean for so many of us. But let’s try to work it out together.

The Foundations of Grace

Before anything else, let’s get the foundations of grace and our theology of the Cross firmly beneath our feet:

1. The Incarnation of Christ established God’s union with humanity at the conception of Jesus Christ, from the moment the divine Word assumed human flesh. This means the redemption project began, not at the Cross, but in the womb of the Virgin.
2. The Ministry of Christ proclaimed that the New Covenant Jubilee had already arrived, not at the Cross, but from the moment the Lord announced that the kingdom of God had come in him and from the beginning, he said, “TODAY this is fulfilled in your midst.”
3. The Cross of Christ (which includes his death AND resurrection) was the apex of his Incarnation and Ministry,when his Incarnation and Ministry are made absolute and universal by “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and the power of death is defeated.
4. “It is finished” means “it is accomplished.” Was there more to do? Of course! Christ still had to plunder hades, rise from the dead, ascend to the right hand of the Father, pour out his Spirit and continue rescuing lost sheep. “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” is the ongoing ministry that flows from the Cross.

Our New Identity in Christ / the Truth of our Being

With due credit to C. Baxter Kruger, the “truth of our being” (our ‘ontology,’ a fancy word for ‘being’) is “in Christ.” By faith, I identify myself as a beloved child of our Abba. That was established, not at my conversion, but already on the Cross, when I was yet “powerless,” still a “sinner” and his “enemy” (Romans 5:6, 8, 10). Already at the Cross, Paul says Christ died for us, forgave us and reconciled us to God (Romans 5:9-11). Forgiven, justified and reconciled-a child of God-that is the truth of my being, my new identity.

That said, the indwelling grace of Father, Son and Spirit in us is at work in me, transforming me so that the truth of my being becomes “the way of my being” (my real-life existence). The truth of my being in Christ (my identity) will impact the way of my being (my life) by the Grace of God. Our role is not through self-will and religious performance but by surrender to God’s Grace (2 Cor. 3:18).

Our New Life in Christ / the Way of our Being

God’s transforming Grace (the Holy Spirit) empowers our “new life in Christ.” They aren’t to be divorced. In an email exchange with Wm. Paul Young, we co-wrote the following:

• Our true identity in Christ emerges from within our real humanity, rooted in encounter, union and community. At its heart, the truth it knows, experiences and lives is that you are not alone. 
• There is another version of “our identity in Christ” that is a disembodied, dissociated, abstracted ideal, usually imagined in a separated “heavenly realm” (a kingdom elsewhere, not truly ‘in you’ and therefore, not truly ‘in Christ’). This idealized identity is a two-dimensional avatar that the self-deceived self assumes, and ultimately another delusion as disconnected from reality as Adam in his turning.

What we’re getting at is that identity (the truth of our being) doesn’t ignore or negate reality (the way of our being). It transforms it. And that includes the real struggles of our lives. And that struggle, we sometimes call “sin.”

Lamentations and (Anti)Theodicy - Mark P. Stone

“Theodicy: Ça se déconstruit”

Those words were too much,

too little was said, understood, imagined.

Win your peace, vindicate your god,

it is pyrrhic, brittle.

I thumb the pages of that same old text,

and hope—quelled to bare velleity, dim

and frail—whimpers o’er another

field of fallen sparrows.

God the All-Powerful, All-Passive,

rendered now a vacant notion

shorn of love, full of strength:

God omni(im)potent!

There are many other such cairns;

these ersatz gods will have their reckoning.

By a curious twist of history, one of the fragments of Lamentations found among the Dead Sea Scrolls switches the order of a few lines. The poems ofʾeikhah (the official title comes from the first Hebrew word, evoking something like a desperate sigh) are arranged acrostically, so this particular difference simply means changing the sequence of two letters in the alphabet. Scholars quibble about why this happened, but basically, it means that Lamentations 1:15-18 as it appears in our modern bibles also existed as Lamentations 1:15, then followed by verses 17, 16, and 18. Not unlike most of the Scrolls, this scrap is badly damaged and riddled with lacunae, but the last line is particularly interesting:

            My children are desolate [because] the enemy prevailed;

            the L[ord] is righteous, [because]...

            (4QLam, col. III: frg. 3, line 10 = Lam 1:16c, 18aα)

The line is meant to end, “The Lord is righteous, because I have rebelled against his word.” But what if we were to be openly tendentious in our reading? We might capitalize on this coincidence of history and decay: In the midst of slaughtered children, dare we whisper of a righteous deity? The very ink itself has been effaced, unwritten: “The L[ord] is righteous, [because]…” Because…why? The Scroll can only partially name this God and offers no reason, no justification, as though to do so has become an unspeakable act. Perhaps Irving Greenberg was right to exclaim, “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.”^[1]

            And yet…

Download Lamentations and Antitheodicy

[1]Irving Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire,” in Eva Fleischner, ed., Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust (New York: KTAV Publishing House, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, 1977), p. 23.

Authentic Christianity versus Ascendant American Christendom - Kenneth Tanner

What we see Christians doing and saying in the name of Jesus Christ in this country is alarming, frustrating, disturbing and—yes—angering.

I tend to the wounded daily. I see the tears in their eyes and hear the hurt in their hearts. I witness the harm and it crushes me. I’m not exaggerating.

Come talk to me and see the tears in my eyes and hear the hurt in my heart.

I believe that Jesus weeps over the minds and hearts of way too many who say they follow him, as he wept over Jerusalem.

There is an authentic Christianity but I believe we must leave Christendom in its ascendant American form in order to remain Christian.

There is an authentic church but I believe we must leave Christendom in its popular American structure in order to find the church.

There is an authentic God but I believe we must leave the God of Christendom in his dominant American mask in order to follow Jesus Christ.

There’s been so much abuse in the name of Jesus Christ and so many abusers of the name of Jesus Christ.

Week in and week out I sit across from the pain and destruction the abusers have left in their wake.

I get why so many have left the church and left the faith and—God help me—it makes me angry sometimes because what the wounded are leaving is not the credal faith of the church.

No, sir. They are leaving a faith and a God not worthy of belief. I don’t believe in the God or the faith they are leaving behind either.

I weep because the ones who are harmed by Christendom are not leaving the authentic Son of God who makes the world in love, and loves the world that he makes, who becomes what he makes in love in order to lay down his life for the creation he loves so that ALL might live.

This story is what Christians trust, not another story but this story.

But it’s time to pump the brakes, friends.

And here is what wisdom says: authentic Christianity is the defeat of rage, the conquering of frustration, the end of fear, the beginning of understanding, a kingdom of peace, the capacity to love.

What I am describing is sanctification.

We become saints—whatever we look like it on the outside and whatever our reputation—because we are fools for Jesus Christ.

As with anything else in life that’s worth anything this transformation is a process—a healing, not a curing. The wounds we endure remain but are transfigured.

All of these feelings—anger, bitterness, confusion, disgust, however valid—must give way in the end to authentic love.

One of the hardest things to get about authentic Christianity is its love for victimizers (not what they do but the people themselves) as much as victims.

Our God dies for the victims and the victimizers so that we might all die with him and live.

The wrath of God is revealed against all that is not love and will burn away all that is not love in us but the wrath of God does not seek the eradication of those who bear his image, not even those who abuse his name.

God in human flesh teaches us to pray, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

And we are not human until we are human as God is human in Jesus Christ on the Cross at the moment these words are uttered.

This never means we excuse or cooperate with or tolerate evil—the authentic God has no partnership with darkness—but it does mean we are invited to let the Spirit temper our rage and replace our frustration with peace and teach us what it means to learn to love all persons.

And to love them for the sake of love alone for love alone is credible. Love alone is worthy of trust. Love is credal.

This is our God. This is Christianity. This is the church.

Come to God and have life.

Come to the faith and understand the story of the world as the story of the God who serves the creation God loves.

Come to the church and become human as God is human in the flesh of a criminal hanging on a tree for the love of all persons and for the cosmos all of his creatures inhabit.

Join the church and become human as God is human.