Dear reader,
One of the best things about writing is the opportunity it prompts for further conversations. I love when you all share with me your resonances or pushback (a willingness I don’t take for granted!).
Two months ago, I wrote about Jonathan Edwards and his insistence that faith must involve the affections as well as the intellect–that head knowledge alone does not constitute faith. In particular, the affection that Edwards puts at the centre of his theology is the love of God’s beauty: an enthrallment with the excellency, glory, majesty, and loveliness of God.
A question naturally arises from this claim: do we need to feel emotionally “enthralled” all the time?
A desire for a spiritual high parallels our culture’s obsession with entertainment, with experiences that thrill us. We tend to be very sensitive–repulsed easily–to things that we perceive to be dull, boring, mundane.
There is a danger that our expectations for the spiritual life parallels this cultural expectation.
The Great Awakening saw similar “enthusiasm,” as it was called, for religious experience. Emotional enthrallment, convulsions, shouting, tears: these outward signs supposedly testified to the sincerity of a person’s religion.
In terms of personality, I often find myself on both ends of whatever spectrum is being described (sometimes introverted, sometimes extroverted, for example), and my display of “enthusiasm” is no different. In many ways, I tend towards being a staid, serious (“I’m not a fun teacher,” I apologise to my students when they beg me for a class game)…even as tears come easily. Turn on Anne of Green Gables and I’m sure to be a blubbering mess by the time Anne reads “Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver.”
I’ve learned to be suspicious, I hope in a healthy way, of my tears, because I know that the quick effusion of emotion that they signify doesn’t always lead to change, or action. I can cry easily over a painful film, or book, or personal testimony–and then “gone my way and forgotten it.” I say this tentatively, because I know the way in which emotion, particularly for women, is cast as a weakness and used as an excuse to dismiss feminine intuition and wisdom.
Perhaps, what I mean is that it is not the easy emotion that is the problem–I am glad that my heart is easily moved by beauty or the pain of another. Instead, any failure is a failure of my will: I don’t allow the movement of my heart to become a deep and lasting movement. It wrongly functions as a quick and easy way to feel good (see how sad I am for the victims of this tragedy!) without actually being good.
Even still, placing our confidence in ourselves, whether in our feelings or our actions, can create a cycle of doubt that makes it almost impossible to live with the joy and delight that Edwards sees as so necessary to the Christian life. Instead, we need to look away from ourselves, to Christ. Confidence in our faith comes not from constantly evaluating our emotions, but in fixing our eyes upon the One who was moved to tears and then raised Lazarus from the dead, who sweated blood and then gave himself up to an agonising death.
As I try to encourage my students to expand their breadth of reading across genres and time periods, I’m realizing that my own reading habits are decidedly Western. This month I read three novels from non-Western authors–Purple Threads, So Long a Letter, and Sweet Bean Paste.
Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane is the story of an Indigenous girl growing up in rural New South Wales under the care and love of her aunties. While she faces the turmoil from her mother’s wanderlust and from experiencing hostility and condescension because of her skin colour, her aunties’ strength and stories ground Sunny’s childhood. I particularly loved the descriptions of the land–I’m finding so many recently-written novels neglect rich description of the landscape, flora and fauna of the setting, but Leane’s writing sings when she describes the seasons and the land.
So Long a Letter is written by Sengalese author Mariame Ba. As the title suggests, the story is written in the form of a letter from the narrator, Ramatoulaye, to her closest friend, upon the death of the narrator’s husband. In the letter/story, Ramatoulaye recalls the suffering of her life, particularly the suffering caused by her husband’s taking a second wife, many years his junior. So many quotable lines, as Ramatoulaye observes life and people with sharp wisdom.
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa is the lightest of the three novels, and yet offers significant themes of human dignity and purpose through its supporting character, an elderly woman disfigured by leprosy.
O God,
you make the minds of the faithful
to be of one will.
Grant that we may love what you command
and desire what you promise,
that among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may always be fixed
where true joys are found;
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.
From the Gelasian Sacramentary
On the road with you,
Laura