Jim Finley:

Greetings. I’m Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates:

And I’m Kirsten Oates.

Jim Finley:

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates:

Welcome everyone to season 11 of Turning to the Mystics, where we’ve been turning to the philosopher Gabriel Marcel. In this episode, I’m going to dialogue with Jim about his fourth session on love.

Welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yes, thank you, love’s a good note to end on with Marcel.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes, I’m looking forward to the dialogue. And just to give the page and book reference. You read from The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel by Kenneth Gallagher, and you read from chapter five III, which starts on page 86 and goes through to page 90, the section on love.

Jim Finley:

The end of the chapter, right.

Kirsten Oates:

So before we dive deep into love, I found it helpful each time we look at these path elements, fidelity, hope and love, to ground us back in the vision element just as the reference point. Because the path is helping to concretize what we experience in the vision aspects.

So Jim, just using Marcel’s words, Marcel’s really helping us to recognize that we tend to spend the majority of our time focused on the problematic, our thoughts, our consciousness is aligned to this realm of the problematic. And Marcel’s inviting us to recognize that alongside that realm is always present the realm of mystery. And he’s helping us see ways we might be more open to and might recognize when this realm of mystery breaks through into our consciousness. And would you say also, Jim, he’s saying that our life is kind of without meaning and trends towards despair without this realm of mystery being concretized in our lives?

Jim Finley:

Yes. I think it is good to start this way, to reinstate ourself in this vision. That Marcel is reminding us that yes, the problematic, which is the realm of what’s dualistically other than ourself, we look for a solution or an answer. My car won’t start, the roof is leaking. So that’s real.

Mystery is different in that it’s dimensions of reality. And turning towards them we realize we’re always included in what we’re turning towards. So when I ask what is it to be human? What is consciousness? What is love? The mystery of my very presence is meaning the mystery of extending out into consciousness, into love, into meaning and so forth. And he goes on to say not only that, and this is really getting closer then to Marcel, is that the mystery of ourselves extends out into the infinite mystery of being. Which Gallagher points out as really extends out into mystery of God. And it extends out into the infinite mystery of God, this extending itself out, and giving the mystery of itself away is the very mystery of our self. And that’s Marcel.

So it’s an inter-subjective, trans-subjective communion that we’re subsisting in. That’s our ontology. That’s the ontological mystery of our being. But then he says but we tend not to be aware of that. As you point out, we’re overtaken by the problematic and so forth. So what you’re talking about then are certain moments where this unit of mystery, this communal mystery, of the mystery of the infinite giving itself away is the mystery of ourself, then our nothingness without the infinite. Where it breaks through into consciousness. That’s his point. Moments of awakening like thou moments.

And breaking through into consciousness he singles out three aspects of this. One is fidelity, and really in the succinct way of saying, is fidelity is the experience of God’s infinite fidelity to us in giving the very mystery of God to us as the mystery of ourselves. God’s ever faithful, that’s the covenant of this communal oneness this way.

And then with hope, we realize the experience of hope in Marcellian sense as experience, is that we realize it’s a moment of awakening in which instead of in the ego self thinking I hope that. Meaning the outcome is some unresolved concern. We hope it turns out the way we hope. That hope is the realization, there’s nothing to hope for because nothing’s missing. Because the eternal plenitude of God is being given to us as the eternal plenitude of ourself. And that’s the eternality of ourself. Our body dies. That which just begins in time ends in time. But the mystery of who we are does not begin in time, when we’re born, who we eternally are out of the depths of God appears in time. And the self that appears in time ends in time.

And so the image of the child on the merry-go-round, swinging around into view, that’s where we are in time and we appear. And when the child swings out of view, that’s when we die and disappear. But who we are, this ultimacy of ourself is the eternality of ourself. The self that never passes away, endlessly ripping through all this endlessly passing away. And there’s a certain moment in life where we fleetingly experience that.

So now we’re going to be talking about love. So we’re being very free here to state explicitly in the mystical language, which is implicit in Marcel, that God is love. It’s the mystery of the infinite love of God being completely poured out and given to us as the mystery of the loved nature of our very self. And love that covenant, love we’re bonded in this moments and we’re going to be looking at where it breaks through into consciousness. And not just consciousness where we’re aware that we love someone because of their characteristics or their qualities. But rather we love them because we glimpse in them the thou dimension, that their very presence is the incarnate immediacy of the very presence of God incarnate in and as the presence of the beloved, as the beloved.

So where this leaves us then, when we look at love, is when there are these flashpoints of communal oneness. And they tend to pass because we’re busy. So what we’re talking about then, what is the path in which we become ever more habitually established in the thou dimension that is the divinity of every moment of our life. So we’ve seen how we explore that infidelity, we explored it through hope, and now we’re going to explore it in love. And in the later session we’re going to talk about how to pray with Marcel as a spiritual practice this way. So that’s the gist of it.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, that’s so helpful as an introduction, Jim. And this idea of becoming more established in this mystery and the mystery is infinite. So it’s not like you reach a point and you’re fully established, it’s something that will always have deeper and deeper aspects.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. You say like Marcel says, we’re being carried along in a mystery that endlessly transcends us, even as it always includes us. In that we’re trying to have that sense of ourselves, yes.

Kirsten Oates:

Well, for me it was so helpful that Marcel used the word fidelity because it’s a word that I don’t use much. And so I kind of oriented towards more of a beginner’s mind in learning about fidelity. And what I’ve realized in approaching love that I have some conditioning around what I think love is or my own personal concerns about love, those kinds of things. So an invitation for me to step more into beginner’s mind and really invite Marcel to be my teacher on love today.

Jim Finley:

That’s good. I put it this way. I think it’s a good point really. Let’s say anyone asks us about our love for someone that we love very much. And they would ask us to express it to help them understand better. You wouldn’t be quick to just come out with a quick answer. You’d pause for a moment. Searching for words that would begin to resonate or ring true to this love, which really is not definable, which would reduce it to the problematic.

Likewise, if you’d ask any poet about their commitment to poetry or why we’re moved by poetry or any musician or why we’re moved by music or any form of selfless service to the community in which we’re enriched in the service, we would pause. Love then always has that quality because it’s always heartfelt. That it always comes from a deep experiential intimate realization of what we can’t adequately explain. In other words, these are modalities of the infinite mystery of God, giving the very mystery of itself to us as the mystery of ourself.

And so fidelity then, the mode of fidelity, the mystery of fidelity is that God is ever faithful in giving the infinite presence of God to us is a very mystery of ourself. The hope that what Marcel has in mind is that God is always … there was moments to help us realize that there’s nothing to hope for. It’s not that I hope that. Which is in time like the outcome of a situation. But hope is realizing that there’s nothing to hope for and that nothing’s missing. The infinite generosity abounds in all directions. And there are moments where we realize that.

And now we’re talking then about love, this love or the beloved of infinite love. And so the love never fails, its fullness of love. And this is what makes it very close to spiritual direction. Which makes it really kind of spiritual reading. And also to the depth dimension of therapy to I think in its most deepest, most subtle points.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. So I’d love to just walk through some of the points you made in your session, such a beautiful session. I’ve been looking forward to the opportunity to dig a little deeper. You began by saying Marcel approaches his understanding of love as any experience which opens us to another can be called love. Until in the end we may not only say that communion is founded on love but that communion is love. So this idea of communion. Jim, how does Marcel define communion in relation to this love?

Jim Finley:

First of all, communion is the ultimate nature of reality. We’re subsisting in communion with the infinite mystery of God, pouring itself out and giving itself away completely as the mystery of ourselves. Communion then is the ultimate nature of the reality that we’re subsisting in. It’s an all-encompassing community of infinite generosity incarnate is the very mystery of ourselves, this communion.

He’s always starting concretely in life. This applies to any experience that moves us toward the other as the beloved is love. I think what it does, as soon as we do that, we can say that there’s something innate about the mystery of ourself that remains forever incomplete, an isolation all unto itself.

That somehow we’re somehow fulfilled in obedience to the urge or the impulse because we seek communion. And Marcel would say even deeper, it’s not that we seek communion with someone, but we seek with someone to realize the communion that we’re already in with them. Because we’re siblings of this infinite love. And so anytime we’re moved this way.

But I would like to extend it further too and say then that this love refers to a kind of the thou dimension of the depth dimensions of our very self. The mystery of our very life, that we’re unexplainable. The very next breath from once as it arrives this way, the gift of ourself and the depth of our ourself.

And it also applies to all of nature, the thou dimension. We look out at the world and we seek to be that we’re in a communal oneness with the gift and the mystery of the world as mystery. And so I think it’s that way. We’re in an inter-subjective, trans-subjective communal state. And what we’re trying to do is to be healed from that which hinders us from being everywhere habitually established in that communal state, which alone is real. How to be healed from the perception that we’re out here all by ourself trying to get to another day.

Kirsten Oates:

You said in the talk that somehow the mystery of who we are includes an openness in love towards another. And it’s towards this thou dimension of the other.

Jim Finley:

I was reading on St. Augustine recently, reminded of this. He’s talking about Jesus’s statements, he’s thinking of about love your enemies, even to love your enemies. And St. Augustine’s statement is to realize that you’re a human being. And that the person you perceive as your enemy is a human being. And because you’re both human, to hate your enemy is to hate yourself.

And so we’re trying to find the common ground of our communal oneness with each other. That’s the way I put it too. That each of us is unique addition of the universal story of being a human being. And this story is playing itself out in endlessly varied ways, as my life, as your life, as the life of everyone who’s living with us on this Earth right now. We’re all woven together in the interconnectedness of ourself. And so every instance of love, father, mother, sister, brother, but also extending to the stranger in the street, that we’re all interconnected and one with each other. And love then is the expression of that and the desire to abide in that and to be aware of that interconnectedness this way.

Kirsten Oates:

It’s helpful you brought up this idea that Jesus said to love our enemies. I think that was coming to mind to me as I was trying to deepen into this understanding of love. And just now you talked about that it’s the common ground, this kind of common ground as human beings that is the ground for this love. And so what I’m hearing is that’s not built on the characteristics of each of us as human beings. It’s built on something much deeper. So the behavior that my enemy is engaging in or the characteristics of my enemy may need to be called out or I may need to set a boundary or I may need to protect myself from someone. But even still, that common ground remains, that we’re connected in something deeper. Am I getting that, Jim?

Jim Finley:

That’s really true. Jesus has a good point. If we sit in openness to the beauty of this love interconnectedness with each other, and every time we’re drawn to love another, we’re manifesting that and sharing in that. But then isn’t it also true that sometimes some of the deepest suffering in our life are betrayals of love?

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yeah.

Jim Finley:

And so what happens is we’re drawn in the beginning to the characteristics of the person that we find lovable. They’re sensitive, they’re caring, they’re honest, they’re vulnerable. But as we get into this relationship with them, hurtful characteristics start coming out. They’re withholding, they’re judgmental, they’re prejudiced, they’re sarcastic, they’re insensitive. And those characteristics, we’re not to love those. Not only do they dishonor the dignity that we deserve to be treated, but really the one who’s doing that is just honoring themselves. So what we’re always trying to do then, as we get into the realities of day by day love with each other, the thing about a true friendship or about father, mother, sister, brother, the authenticity of relatedness. It always has to do and tied in with honesty. So when you say to the person, “I love you very much, I know that we love each other, but sometimes when you, whatever it is, it hurts my feelings. I feel invisible, I feel not respected, I don’t like it.”

Now if the other person says to you, “It’s hard to hear, but I know it’s true and I want to do my very best to not do that anymore.” They’re all the more lovable. And every time they have a slip, they come and acknowledge the slip. That’s how people go deeper. And then they turn around and it’s your turn, the things about you they don’t find … You’re no walk in the park either. You tend to be …

And so ideally speaking, we always are working towards, in love, refining the characteristics of ourself, the patterns of ourself, to always keep them ever more conformed to the truth of love. And we’re always working on being healed and being delivered from the characteristics that hurt love. Marcel says the real problem is is when the finite self refuses to admit. Like they dig in. Then we have to navigate that. How do I be true to love and sort all this out? And that’s the realities, especially if it involves a husband or a wife or children. You just have to sort out what is love asking out of me? How do I negotiate this? But the ground out of which you’re negotiating it is you’re grounded in the love that transcends characteristics.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, I think that would be helpful also for the person hearing the feedback. If you’re grounded in the realm of the problematic, even thinking of yourself as someone who’s broken who needs to be fixed or someone who does terrible things and needs to know that in the midst of being able to look at yourself more clearly through the eyes of another, you’re grounded in this love that gives you the courage to look at your own characteristics and allow being or presence to help with the transformation.

Jim Finley:

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they talk about making a fearless inventory. And you look at the pattern of your life, of the things you’ve done to hurt yourself and to hurt other people out of your addiction. So then it raises the question, well, what’s a fearful inventory?

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

If you think that you are adequately understood in terms of your weaknesses it causes shame. And therefore you’re inclined to deny, you don’t want to hear it. I already know enough broken things about myself, thanks, but no thanks.

But what if no matter what it is that’s being looked at is brokenness. It’s brought out into a love that’s infinitely in love with you in the brokenness. And that’s the fearless inventory. And that’s mercy. See, that’s the love of God. And ideally speaking then, the one that we hurt is embodied or grounded in that love. To be there for us. But sometimes it’s complicated because they’re not grounded either.

Kirsten Oates:

Right. Yes.

Jim Finley:

And I think this is where spirituality touches psychotherapy and the sifting out. And this is where it’s so helpful to find a taproot of your heart grounded in a sustaining love that transcends the problem at hand and illumines it and offers you guidance as you walk through it without losing your balance. And it goes the way it goes.

But as long as you’re walking your walk in love, regardless of how it goes, even if the relationship falls apart, it fell apart with integrity. It fell apart really … And lessons to be learned in how it fell apart. Because it fell apart, and at the end of the process you discovered something within yourself that no one can ever take away from you.

And likewise, you also know the person with whom it didn’t work, there’s a preciousness within themself and they couldn’t find it. But it’s there. And so there’s a kind of a fragile wisdom that’s born out precarious … we all have a past, we can look back. We’re going through our own versions of this one way or another.

So I think this is implicit in Marcel. I know this is the therapist in me talking this way. But I think it’s implicit. It’s not some idealized ethereal thing. But it’s always concretely lived in the midst of characteristics, but grounded in a depth of oneness that transcends and permeates the characteristics. And he’s trying to help us find a way to that.

Kirsten Oates:

Jim, you’ve said a number of times that we are placed in this finite existence in this realm to learn how to love. And so it sounds like it’s through the messiness of trying to love each other we realize, one, we’re inadequate to truly love someone. And another human being’s inadequate to be truly loved in a way. Am I right in saying learning to love is learning to tap into and be mentored by this love that’s always present?

Jim Finley:

I think that’s very true. And again, I’m so touched by therapy is so much about all of this. Here’s how I often put it. Is it not true that the things you cherish most about the gift of life, about fragility, about being endlessly tenderhearted, about being fiercely truthful in the presence of honoring how you and others deserve to be treated, is it often not true that those deep lessons you live by, you learned in hours of darkness and brokenness, is it not true? And this is not to romanticize the brokenness. And not everyone, some people get lost in it. They don’t find their way out.

On this Earth, I think after they die everyone, we’re beyond the veil then. But a lot of times, a lot of what we seek to live by are deep lessons that we learned in our own broken places. And that’s why when we’re raising children, for example, say an adolescent is a two-year-old with hormones and the car keys. And they have just as much a right to make a fool of themselves as we did. But they count on us to to set guidelines as best we can. And so we’re always trying to help each other out to find our balance in our fragilities. And that’s where this deep love, this infinite love of God, endlessly transforming our characteristics like contemplative character transformation, turning us into an older and wiser, grounded, attentive person.

Kirsten Oates:

You’ve said so many times, but part of that journey is the humility of the daily rendezvous. Which is to say I can’t do this on my own and the humility to open ourselves to be mentored, to be transformed is a part of the journey.

Jim Finley:

Yes. And I think too this is where St. Paul talks where he said I have a thorn in the flesh. So the things I want to do are the things I know God’s asking of me to do. I don’t. And the things I know God wishes that I wasn’t doing, I’m doing. So I’m always to do my best to get past those things. That’s the moral imperative.

But grounded in the peace that’s not dependent on whether I get past it or not. Because he said he asked God to remove that thorn. He doesn’t tell us what it was. And God says leave it there because that’s where you depend on my infinite love for you and your brokenness, which is salvation. And that’s salvific, being infinitely loved in the very brokenness itself makes community possible because then there’s empathy with the unexplainably precious nature of the brokenness of the people around us this way.

So it just shows you how delicate all this language is right now about love and grounding us in this very oceanic love that utterly transcends and permeates the conditions. And as we waver and lose our balance, no matter how regrettable that might be and what we do to ourself and others, we know that when love touches suffering, the suffering turns love into mercy. And the mercy is oceanic and eternal. And that’s our deliverance really.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s so helpful to hear that about the thorn in the flesh. Because there’s this sense of a desire to perfect love and to be the one who can love perfectly. And so to know that in this life that we might have moments of loving perfectly, but the bigger experience is to know we’re loved perfectly and to continue to lean into that.

Jim Finley:

Yes. You know that saying, I used to keep it on my desk, I pray, I meditate, I chant, I drink green tea but sometimes I still want to smack somebody. Here’s the thing, that our inner peace isn’t dependent on our ability to get past the patterns that we know that compromise what love is asking out of us. Rather it’s solely dependent on the love that’s infinitely in love with us and our inability to get past it. Because otherwise it’s the ego still trying to make it on its own terms this way. Rather than being caught up by a love that transforms and transcends us in the midst of the unresolved matters of our heart.

Kirsten Oates:

Important reminder.

Jim Finley:

It is.

Turning to the Mystics will continue in a moment.

Kirsten Oates:

So back to some more words from you, Jim. You said we move toward the other as having a value in their very presence that we recognize. And therefore we seek to merge and be one with that value that we see in the other this way. In marital love, when one is holding the beloved in their arms, they wouldn’t say that they’re holding love itself in their arms, but neither would they say the beloved that they’re holding is dualistically other than the love. And here right away we start to see this unit of communal sensitivity this way. And while this is true of marital love, it’s true of all forms of love.

Jim Finley:

I think that’s so true. It helps us put words to this this way. So in marital love, when we’re holding the beloved in our arms, you say we wouldn’t say we’re holding love itself in arms, which is infinite because God is love. We’re not holding God in our arms. Yet neither would we say the beloved that we’re holding is dualistically other than the infinite love of God. Rather we would say that the presence of the beloved as the beloved is the infinite presence of God is presencing itself in and as the presence of the beloved. Which is why we cherish the jewel this way. We’re so moved by it.

But then this extends out in all directions. To be in the presence of a child, you sense within yourself in the presence of the child you’re in the presence of God. So this is extended out endlessly in all directions. And this is why also it’s to be extended out endlessly in all directions to the passing strangers in the street. That God so loved the world, he sent his only begotten son. Christ is God’s response to us. And our dilemma is to become identified with us as unexplainably precious in the midst of our dilemma. We’re met in the brokenness. And then by acknowledging the brokenness, which is repentance, salvation, the deliverance occurs. Free at last, free at last, God Almighty, free at last. And yeah, that’s the tone of it I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yeah. The way you said then that we can love all beings, the stranger. So it’s so far beyond characteristics.

Jim Finley:

It is.

Kirsten Oates:

Because it might be someone we don’t even know. But what I’m hearing is that we subsist, this idea of being or presence, we could also call it love, so we subsist in love. And so really it’s about tapping into that recognition for any human, any being. So that stream of love is always present. And how can I be more consciously attuned and aware of and in alignment with what’s already present?

Jim Finley:

Yes. The vision of Marcel is this communal presence. This infinite presence is infinitely giving the infinite presence of itself away is the miracle of our presence. The presence of others in all things. And this also applies to animals and to trees and the darkness of the night and all of it. All this is pouring out of this presence this way. That’s the God-given godly stature of ourself rendering everything sacred.

The next issue has to be then that we tend not to be aware of that. And so love teaches us to be aware of it when we sincerely try to love each other. Love goes deeper and deeper. And when it’s illumined by God with the gift of faith, we realize that God’s the infinity of the love that we’re experiencing in the love for the person. And that our love for the person is the sacrament of the concreteness of God. But it’s always being worked out in the messiness of the real world, walking through our days one day at a time, noticing there’s something kind of sweet or tender or mysterious about the unresolved matters of things.

We learn to take a deep breath and abide in that and listen to it. And then this is what makes Marcel’s spiritual reading because in the rhythm of his voice we pick up cadences of a unit of mystery. We know it’s true when we hear it. So how can we then let our time with Marcel be like the rendezvous. And then know that as I go through my day, I’m to be more habitually sensitive to all that as I go through the rhythms of my day. And as I keep trying to live that way as best as I can one day at a time, as the months and years go by we ripen hopefully. Ever more stabilized in this love that we cannot even begin to explain.

Kirsten Oates:

When you were talking just then, Jim, it made me think that it’s actually in the problems we face, so the ups and downs of life which we would see as problems that we’re drawn to this mystery. But just like the person in the hospital bed, he might start out hoping that his problem would go away, but if he stays with that hope he might discover this eternal hope that even if his problem, his illness doesn’t go away. And it sounds in a similar way with love, that we face problems in our life in the ways we’re loved or not loved, and it’s kind of through the realm of the problematic that the mystery shines through. Am I getting that?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, I want to know, it’s very good, I said one more piece to it. Let’s say we’re not in the midst of problems, we’re in the midst of wonders. This person that I love very much and they love me or I’ve been given a creative gift that enriches me and my effort to share it to reach with others, whatever it is. So all of that, all those gifts are the web of conditioned states. But we see shining through the conditioned states an infinite joy that transcends as an incarnate in those states. Because those conditioned states are ephemeral. They might not … I mean, they’re temporary. We can be grateful for them while they’re there. But there’s something in the joyful things conditioned state which is the unconditioned love is incarnating itself in the joyful state. And so we’re always sensitive to that. We’re always passing through this horizon where we’re just conditioned.

But the same thing is also true of the problematic, especially in trauma or sources of suffering. It’s risky because it can bring us down. We need to be very careful. But it’s also true that in the struggle with the unresolved thing we can learn to discover within ourself that we’re not alone in the midst of the dilemma. That there’s a kind of, and this is this quote from Marcel, we realized that there’s this mysterious principle really, it’s in connivance with us and it’s on our side.

And then Marcel says provided that what we will is worth willing and we will it with all of our heart. So in the midst of the unresolved ups and downs, there’s a certain principle that’s in connivance with me and my desire for a resolution that finds itself in a certain love that can’t be explained. And that’s what makes Marcel so intimate I think this way. As soon as we try to thingify it, like turn it into a conclusion we’re missing Marcel. He is always keeping us right at the edge of finding a language for our own awakening heart knows it’s true but can’t explain. And he’s trying to help us be more stabilized there.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. A couple of examples you gave along those lines, Jim, about discovering this love in joy or in suffering. You said Marcel invites us to look at very often some of the deepest, most intimate suffering that we endure, we experience love in the desire for love. And so feeling that we don’t deserve the suffering that we’re receiving or that we’re experiencing is a sense that we’re worth all that love is worth and how can we lean into that.

Jim Finley:

That’s a good point. I’ll put it another way. I want to apply it to therapy too and trauma. Let’s say we’re in a traumatized state, which is overwhelmed and flooded. But see, what’s most terrifying about the trauma is that we’re no longer experientially able to know that we’re loved. And this is why sometimes we can pass a person on the street, we see the fearful look in their face, and we stop to ask are you okay? Maybe without realizing we saved their life. Because if you can see me in my suffering and I’m worth seeing, you can see in me a depth or a presence. Because I’m afraid that I am what’s wrong with me. See. I’m afraid that what was done to me, my symptoms, whatever all that is.

But if I can instead know that there’s a depth within myself that utterly transcends the suffering. This is why I say too. Sometimes we get the feeling we’re in the presence of someone who’s more present to us than we are because they can see in us a value or a preciousness that we in the midst of our pain can’t yet see. And so we have kind of a faith in their faith in us. We’re helping each other to be re-parented. In love, there’s always a footing in this love that’s invincibly always there, but it’s buried under the rubble of the dark, convoluted place. We’ve lost our way in our own life.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. That’s like one of those events that you’ve talked about where the light shines through, where consciousness is illuminated by something more. Yeah. That’s beautiful. I also love the way Marcel talks about when we might first fall in love with someone. You’ve spoken a little bit about this earlier. But just reading Marcel in the first place, if love really reaches the being of the other, then how can it be exposed to error? And yet it is no uncommon observation that love is often bestowed on unworthy recipients and callously betrayed by them.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, we’re back to this … This is another way of saying it this way. That if I’m in a relation with someone or in the midst of an unresolved troublesome situation. And it might not related … it might be that I have a medical diagnosis, it can be anything. I’m in the midst of some pain. Here’s the thing about it. If I think that somehow the mystery of God’s wonders with me is some ethereal dualistically other than the pain that I’m in, is confusion. If I think this pain that I’m in, there’s this whole reality that has the authority to name who I am, that’s confusion.

So we’re always looking for, see, the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness grasps it not. See, the light is always shining in the darkness because it’s the light of God. It’s just that the darkness in its confused state can’t grasp or comprehend the light that’s shining right through it. This is why Saint John of the Cross talks about the dark night of the soul. And the dark night of the soul he says, what the dark night of the soul really is in his sense is our finite eyes are blinded by an infinite light.

This is why Thomas Merton once said, one Jungian analyst once said, I’ll put it this way, what we’re most terrified of is joy, because there’s no control in joy. Merton says, we can bear being conditionally loved but we can’t bear being unconditionally loved because there’s no control in unconditional love. And this is salvation, see. And yet, even though the very lack of control in love that we’re so terrified, it’s the very liberation from control that we long for. And that’s the path we’re trying to one day at a time find our way to eventually stabilizing that sensitivity.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. A couple of quotes are coming to mind. So Marcel says that in this experience you might feel you’re not who I thought you were, you’re not who I thought you were to be, you are no longer the one that I love. And what I’m hearing in you, Jim, you’re not who I thought you were to be, in one way you are infinitely more and in another way you’re infinitely less because-

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right, that’s exactly right. See, you’re not who I thought you were, that’s the level of characteristics.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes.

Jim Finley:

See, you’re not who I thought you were. But here’s the thing. And I didn’t see it, either because it was always there and I didn’t want to see it, or because you were hiding it because we always want to be on our good behavior and it starts leaking out. But it isn’t just that I didn’t see it and out it comes. And Carl Jung talks about the shadow. And the shadow is the unacknowledged aspects of ourself. Another way of looking at the shadow is the shadow is that we’re unaware of the divinity of ourself. See, we’re unaware that there’s …

Merton says there is that in you that belongs entirely to God. You can’t do anything to destroy it because it’s in you that’s God and God’s alone. You can’t diminish it. He says you can’t add to it either because it’s infinite.

But that’s the shadow. Marcel says, in our faith, in the words of Jesus, the gentle light, we know that it’s true. But he’s inviting us to look at certain moments where fidelity and hope and a certain, like it shines like a certain moment that’s unexplained. Like near-death experiences are like this too. There’s a certain kind of effulgence or immediacy. It’s more real than this. See. And so I will not break faith with my awakened heart in this hour of tenderness or this hour of loss. I was quickened with a fullness without which having tasted it my life will be forever incomplete. But I know that it’s never incomplete because it never ceases to give itself to me completely. But I need to be healed from what hinders me from realizing that. That’s the thing.

Kirsten Oates:

Right, right. Yes. And in these messy conditions, like realizing the beloved isn’t as perfect and as I thought they were or we’re not as perfect together as I thought we were, and so can I lean into something deeper? You say in the midst of conditions living in the light of the unconditioned.

Jim Finley:

Yes. Another realm of this, by the way, the present political situation here in America. A lot of people find, not everybody, a lot of people find it to be extremely distrustful. And it is distrustful from a certain … So you could look at all that it is.

But the other thing is this, can I get so distraught about how distrustful it is that I forget that this infinite love of what we speak, we’re being sustained by it. See. And if I could find my footing in that, it would give me a kind of a clarity to contextualize the problem that we’re in and not catastrophize it. So that’s universally applicable to every situation. This is what Marcel is trying to help us see this.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. The political realm seems to have really dug in deep to the realm of the problematic. And it enjoys creating enemies versus inviting us to love our enemies it seems. Like creating very adversarial sides sadly.

Jim Finley:

Not to get sidetracked into social dimensions of this, it goes too far. But to realize it goes in waves because no matter how dark it gets, we can look back through history, the unexpected lights are shining through the darkness. And transformation, sometimes just through one person, and it lights up a whole community of people with a renewed commitment. And this is true in family systems and community, in the church, in the world.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Well, I think that gets to that beautiful quote by Marcel, “Love only addresses itself to what is eternal, immobilizes the beloved above the world of genesis and vicissitude.”

Jim Finley:

And the example I used in the talk because I think it’s so apt, it fits. That when parents, a newborn infant is born, so genesis is becoming, this is states of becoming. So the newborn infant and the newness of it’s becoming is limited, can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t … is limited in it’s becoming. But they’re smitten by the presence of the infant because there’s something about the infant that shimmers with the eternal, like it’s holy. And their ability to see that reveals them to themselves as capable of seeing that.

And furthermore, what’s true of this infant, like the limitless nature of itself and his limits is true of me in the midst of my abilities. There’s something in me that’s endlessly limited and the limitless is shining out. And so every instance in life has that potential to be stabilized in that sensitivity.

And this also has to do, see, freedom from genesis, which is the unfolding of becoming, but also vicissitudes, namely the rise and the fall of the unforeseeability of circumstance. And the rise and the fall of the circumstance. What is it in the endless wavering of situations is an unwavering effulgence that sustains us in the wavering. A love kind of stabilizes us in that.

Kirsten Oates:

You said, Jim, in other words, only then do I attain to the unconditionality that transcends and endlessly permeates the conditions that I’m living in. And those conditions are themselves incarnations of unconditionality. That’s the way, praise the Lord.

Jim Finley:

That’s really true.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. That’s the hardest thing to believe, yeah.

Jim Finley:

It’s really true. And some examples that I use that helps me is we use the example of Martin Heidegger. He says one way of understanding the horizon is the point beyond which we can’t see. So right now, I’m sitting here, now I live at the ocean right here. So I look out at the horizon, I can’t see beyond the horizon. He says there’s another way of looking at the horizon. The horizon is the point at which the infinite unseen is manifesting itself. And so for the palms of my hands are God’s horizon. That’s the insight.

Lying awake at night in the dark listening to your own breathing, primordial, vast and unexplainable. So God’s the infinity of that. And lying there in the dark is the incarnate sense of God. And Marcel’s trying to not just look at little moments where we got glimpses of it and we know it’s true. But have the path talk we seek to be ever more habitually stabilized in this, that we know this too. So we don’t lose our balance so much in the ups and downs of life.

Kirsten Oates:

And like you said earlier, in the ups and downs of history, it’s always been this way.

Jim Finley:

Always. Always been this way. Look at, that’s the mystery of the cross.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes.

Jim Finley:

It’s always been this way.

Kirsten Oates:

And so I was going to turn to the way you ended the talk. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And all things are made through him. And without him has been nothing that has been made. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jim Finley:

Yes. In the light of this whole conversation, in the light of the gospel to the Christian dispensation of divinity. It doesn’t say that the word became humanity. The word flesh is the weakness.

Kirsten Oates:

Oh, wow.

Jim Finley:

And so Jesus is the revelation of God’s response to us. And the weakness is to walk with us as precious in the weakness. And that’s why it’s the acceptance of the weakness is the portal of salvation through which we’re delivered from the tyranny of weakness in the midst of weakness. And this is why Gallagher says, it’s really true, we’re talking about salvation. And that’s really the deep healing of salvation.

Kirsten Oates:

So that the word became flesh became the full experience of what we experience which is our inability to love and our amazing ability to love.

Jim Finley:

There’s a certain way that we can put words to the nature of our own life and where we are. In a certain way we’re doing it right now with Marcel.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

But when we really look closer at this kind of language, everything being said is said from a certain place where we pause to ponder. And we pause to be more unexplainably present in the presence of a situation that we’re in, whatever it is. And to be more present in the midst of the situation that we’re in as subsisting in an infinite presence that’s presencing itself as the situation that we’re in. And so the darkness of the night, the smell of flowers, the passage of time, we’re trying to find our way to this kind of unexplainable, like the flowing presence presenting itself and ribboning itself to the boundaryless nature of the concreteness of every situation.

Kirsten Oates:

So we’re not abandoned in any circumstance.

Jim Finley:

Not in any circumstance. And that little prayer by Thomas Merton too. My Lord God, I do not see the road ahead of me, and I do not know where it will end. And the fact that I think I’m doing your will does not mean I’m actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I’m doing. And if I do this, and this is the key, and if I do this, I know I’ll be on the right road even though I may know nothing about it, see, for you’ll never lead me to face my perils alone. And that’s love, see, and that’s hope. See, that’s the hope. There’s nothing to hope for. See, it’s already right … God’s the divinity of the crest of the wave of the situation that I’m in. And that’s the fidelity, ceaseless fidelity to me in the wavering ways of my infidelities. Marcel the teacher, this is his language. And notice how it echoes with all the mystics. And how it echoes with the depth dimension of everything that Jesus says.

Kirsten Oates:

It really does, yeah.

Jim Finley:

It does, yeah, it does.

Kirsten Oates:

So on that closing note, what I’m hearing is these qualities, fidelity, hope and love are really qualities of God, so God’s fidelity to us, the hope that God’s eternality, the hope that God was never born and will never die and we live inside of that mystery. And then the love, which is our relationship and communion with God and all beings, never abandoned.

Jim Finley:

Exactly right. But I want to add one more piece to it. You’re exactly right. This is what Marcel means by fidelity. So fidelity then is the infinite love of God’s fidelity to us in giving the mystery of itself away as the mystery of ourself. But then the next thing is just, and being awakened to that, our fidelity is our … and the reciprocity of that destiny is fulfilled. So how can I complete the circle by seeking to live in fidelity to this love that’s infinitely faithful to me in my wavering ways? See.

And likewise, I realize in hope, this moment, there’s nothing to hope for. But how can I learn to live in the eternality of the passage of time. And everything that’s passing away in the deep down depths of things, everything is eternal. Including this conversation we’re having right now.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. I love the way you said we complete the circle of fidelity, and that’s the way we complete the circle of hope. It starts with God, but in our freedom we might have the opportunity to complete the circle. Yes. So the love circle, Jim.

Jim Finley:

The circle completes itself. And that’s why I said, when we were in the time when we were talking about Thomas Merton, that when I was in the monastery and studying medieval philosophy with Dan Walsh, Thomas Aquinas, and I asked him, “Could we say after the geographical Tokyo no longer exists there’ll still be Tokyo?” He said, “Yes, because Tokyo is in God’s mind and God never forgets.” And so it isn’t just that God’s here right now listening to this conversation, but because God never forgets when we die, we’ll go into having this conversation forever. That it’s the eternality intimately realized in the midst of the passing away of all things and touching that which never passes away.

Kirsten Oates:

Beautiful. And so to complete the circle of love, we complete it when we realize we’re the beloved and we might operate knowing with that kind of knowing.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. And something else too, just like we’re powerless to bring ourselves into existence, we didn’t create ourselves. If you ever watched a loved one die, we’re powerless to keep ourself in existence lest we be presumptuous. We’re powerless to be anything other than infinitely loved by infinite love. We can’t do a thing about it. That powerlessness, which is the sovereignty of this oceanic mercy that carries us along and draws us to itself. All these teachings are trying to help us. And when we listen to it it sounds so beautiful. But in our heart, we know it’s beautiful because it’s true. And so we’re trying to be ever more habitually stabilized in this. It’s the way we live our life so that we can pass on this contagious energy to others by the way we listen to them and care about them and are honest with them and so on.

Kirsten Oates:

Well, what a beautiful dialogue. I’ve kind of got tears in my eyes. It’s just been a lovely opportunity to walk through love alongside you, Jim. I really appreciate it. And thank you for sharing Marcel.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, so grateful to share it. Because all these mystics we’re sharing, it’s meant so much to me. So what a gift it is to share it like this in this heartfelt way. So it blesses me too, so it’s beautiful.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. And I look forward to our coaching session. We’ll kind of bring everything together and look at how people might implement or integrate this into their lives.

Jim Finley:

Exactly. And how we want to look at it, like we did with all the others too, I want to look at it first in prayer, meditation, it’s Lectio Divina meditation. That’s what we’ve been doing here. And what are the points at which that falls into worthlessness like contemplation. And we’ll look at it experientially. And how those two modes showing up unexpectedly through the rhythms of the day. So we’ll look at that. Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Oh, I look forward to that. Well, thank you for today, Jim. And thank you to Vanessa and Dorothy and Corey supporting us in the background with great love I think. And look forward to next time, Jim, thank you.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, thank you. Beautiful. Thanks.

Kirsten Oates:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Turning to the Mystics, a podcast created by the Center for Action and Contemplation. We’re planning to do episodes that answer your questions. So if you have a question, please email us at [email protected] or send us a voicemail. All of this information can be found in the show notes. We’ll see you again soon.