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 philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. And I’m here with Jim to answer the listener questions that have come in for this season. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yes. As always, glad to be together with these people, yes.

Kirsten Oates:

And I just wanted to start off by thanking everyone who took the time to send us a question, it really just helps to round out these seasons and to help Jim and I know that the seasons are landing with people. It’s such a help, isn’t it, Jim, to get these questions?

Jim Finley:

It is. And also, in reading them, I’m always moved by the sincerity of the questions because you can tell that it’s coming from the very place that these teachers would hope that we would listen from which is the depth of our heart, the attentiveness and our sincerity. So, it was very moving to sit with these questions, yes.

Kirsten Oates:

Lovely. And rather than categorizing the listener questions into themes like we’ve done in the past, we’re actually just addressing them under the session they came under. And because a number of the sessions had a theme, fidelity, hope or love, they categorize themselves based on the sessions. So, are you ready, Jim?

Jim Finley:

I’m ready, yes.

Kirsten Oates:

Excellent. So, our first question is from Jack and he says, as I listen to you discuss Marcel’s beautiful goal to reveal our essence, I reflect on my own journey. After nearly seven decades of searching, I discovered what is the answer to me in one simple reflection, the essence of my being is peace. However, the profoundness of what this means to me is completely lost when I try to share it with family or friends. I think this touches on your statement that a Marcel thought may deeply reach one person but not another. Maybe you can help me explain the power I comprehend in the statement better.

Here is how I try to explain it. In moments when I have no pain, anxiety or fear, I’m keenly aware that my very essence is an incredible feeling that we would define as peace. Then I began to realize that peace is more than a feeling, it actually defines my essence in those moment. Once this essence was revealed to me, I thought about it when the inevitable pain, anxiety and fears would come along and I realized they are temporary. And even more importantly, I realized peace was alive and well, existing still beneath the temporary states of pain, anxiety, and fear. It is the only part of my consciousness that is eternal. Because I am in this temporary human state, pain, anxiety and fears will occasionally cover my peace but now I know the peace is always there and that tempers those temporary human conditions. The beautiful thing is that, when I’m released from my temporary human form, my pure essence will continue to be eternal peace.

Jim Finley:

Yes. I sat with this and here’s what came to me, how I find this helpful, what you’re asking here. The first is this, it’s again bringing to mind what’s at the heart of Marcel’s teachings. That is the nature of the self, my self extends out into the nature of consciousness, the nature of love, the nature of reality and, ultimately, the nature of God. And it does so because my self extends out into God because the infinite presence of God is extending itself out into me as a very self of myself which is the divinity of myself, my nothingness without God. And that’s our very ontology or our very being. The gift of the Thou is when it shines through into consciousness, we experience it. And how we would experience it is a metaphorical word, it would differ from each person and certainly one word is peace, by peace I give to you. “Not as a world give do I give to you,” Jesus says which is the peace of God.

So, I think it’s that, I think it’s the gift of a word. It’s a sacramental way of expressing this unit of mystery, of God’s infinite self being given to you as the depth of yourself. The next thing is this, is that, when we try to explain this to people, they don’t know what we’re talking about. It’s a gift to be sensitive to this, not everybody has that. The Thou dimension of themselves is they’re there in the mystery of who they are but they’ve not been graced with the conscious clarity of that depth. That’s why they don’t understand it, it’s not being given to them to know what you’re talking about. So, there’s a certain kind of solitude in the depth of this gift, it’s a kind of a solitary attentiveness that you can’t really communicate it unless you’re with someone who experiences it also which is the gift of our being together on these podcasts like kindred spirits, birds of a feather flock together. And so, that was my sense of that.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s so helpful, Jim, and I hope that Jack experiences from you and us feeling seen and recognized and I loved reading his description there, I found it very touching and helpful.

Jim Finley:

I want to add one more thing too. I do think that sense of aloneness and not being seen is there somehow sharing in the aloneness that God feels and not being seen by us and somehow that aloneness is there’s something divine about the aloneness itself.

Kirsten Oates:

Okay, next question is from Ruth. I love the idea that art is an encounter with the Thou in a person, place thing or experience, it almost seems like a helpful way to define good art. But in practice, when seeking the Thou encounter and making art, the artist is solving a practical problem, how to fulfil their calling and live as an artist. What happens when embracing mystery is itself the solution to a problem?

Jim Finley:

I want to switch over from art to poetry for a minute too. We talked about this before, we’re going to be doing Rokha later on in the sessions. This person sends poems to Rokha and says, “Would you tell me if my poems are any good?” He said, “You’re looking outward now, you must not do that. You must ask yourself in the stillest hour of your darkest night, must I write poetry? And if the answer is yes, you must build every moment of your day, even its most incidental moments, in fidelity to that.” So, that’s the art. But what’s always there is the craft of sitting before a blank piece of paper and committing yourself to learning the craft.

The craft, in a way, is the problematic, how am I going to do that, how do I structure this, how do I do and the same with the artist. But what’s interesting is not craft as dualistically in the problematic order but rather it’s craft as that which incarnates the mystery, the ascesis or the discipline that channels the beauty flowing through your commitment to that discipline. And I think that’s the distinction, they intermingle with each other at that level.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. It makes me think about how, in a certain way, those of us that feel drawn to this path, we’re trying to craft our personalities in a way to allow space for this love and peace to flow through.

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right. And also another thing is we do commit ourselves to that craft, we keep leaning into the process but it comes into its own when it catches fire in the flow of who we unexplainably are.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. When we find a natural way to express it, whether it’s art or helping others or being a mother, yeah, they all become a version of art, I guess.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. The artistry, the divinity of the day by day.

Kirsten Oates:

Excellent, okay. So, next we have a question from Joseph. I’m wondering if Jim could explain in simple terms what is meant by seeing the Thou. Is it similar to seeing the holiness, wholeness and sanctity of a person, place or moment?

Jim Finley:

First of all, yes, it is seeing the beauty and the whole, yes, that’s the Thou. But I think, too, the insight Marcel’s trying to appreciate is let’s say first we’re saying that the mystery of the self extends out into and participates in the mystery of humanity, the mystery of love, the mystery of consciousness, the mystery … And it goes on and goes out and participates in the mystery of God and it participates in the mystery of God. And it participated in the mystery of God because the infinite presence of God is presencing itself and giving itself away as the presence of ourself, it’s in that reciprocity. So, that reciprocity, we might say that’s our ontology, that’s who we ultimately are.

So, let’s say that trans-subjective communion is the reality of who we are. What the Thou is is for that trans-subjective communion of the divinity of ourself shines out as experienced. See, that’s the key, it’s experiencing the Thou dimension that’s always there but the Thou moment is where it shines out and it’s experienced is what makes it the Thou.

Kirsten Oates:

And then it gives it that quality of wholeness or holiness or sacredness, yeah.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, it’s like an experiential realization of this all-encompassing oneness, the mystery that is at once God in ourselves and all things really but it’s shining out. And another way to look at it is there are moments where it shines out as all, where we’re taken by it or it shimmers and shines but what we’re experiencing is a reality that’s always there and, therefore, in moments that we may not experience that we live, that it’s always there. We live by it even though we’re not … We can be habitually established in the experiential realization of what’s always there even when we’re not experiencing it.

Kirsten Oates:

You have that knowing in your heart that it’s true even if you’re not, yeah.

Jim Finley:

That you have that knowing in your heart, exactly. Because when you think about it too, anytime we deeply love somebody and anything, we don’t always feel that love. But even though we’re not feeling it, we have faith that love that we don’t always feel is always there and we’re asked to be faithful to it and walk by it and it’s like that, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, that’s a helpful example. Thank you, Jim, yeah. Okay, this question came after Bob listened to dialogue one and he asks, in this time, activism, protesting and problem solving are being called for constantly. It strikes me that, if one is not careful, that could easily pull one away from the Thou moments and into constant problem solving where some of us love to live. Do you have any thoughts on how to keep the Thou in the activism or is activism to be avoided in order to not lose the Thou sense of being?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, it’s a very delicate question, it’s an important question. I think the intention, the activism is an act that incarnates the preciousness of God’s oneness with you as the mystery of your very self and it calls for action because it calls for you to be in service to the place where the herd is. It actually heightens our sensitivity to suffering, our involvement in it. The challenge is always, as the person suggests, is that we can get so caught up in the intensity of the concern that we’re responding to, we lose our groundedness in the Thou dimension and it falls into a Thomas Merton called activism so you get in the fray of arm wrestling with it.

And so, that’s a delicate thing, I think it’s a matter of our daily quiet time in the rendezvous and asking for the grace that our engagement is an engagement that’ll be the incarnate expression of the Thou dimension that’s being addressed in the healing of the suffering of a person, of the community, whatever. I also think another dimension of this, as long as that’s our intention and there’s a learning curve, we’re always sensitive to that, that’s a lifetime sensitivity that we cultivate and we give ourselves permission not to be able to be consistently doing it perfectly always because we get caught up in the moment and that’s the humanity of it. But I think, little by little over time, we can be more and more consistently grounded in the depth dimension such that the activity of expressing our concern for an issue is itself incarnating the Thou dimension and that comes, I think, with maturity over time.

Kirsten Oates:

Jim, would I be right in saying that when Jesus said love your enemies, that He was really pointing to this idea of not losing the Thou dimension in standing up for something?

Jim Finley:

It’s like this, do I love my enemy? There’s a very real sense of which I certainly don’t love how they’re treating me and I don’t love what they’re doing to me and I shouldn’t and so their activity is the enemy. And so, what I’m to do is to realize, as misguided as their ways might be, and I also need to protect myself from their behavior, that’s a whole mystery of boundaries and justice and I need to be realistic about this. But at the same time, know that, in the deep down depths of that person, their hurtful behavior is how misguided and disconnected they are from the Thou dimension of who they are or they wouldn’t be treating me this way. So, at one level, I have to always be setting the boundary and, at the other level, I’m setting it for the truth of being grounded in the Thou. That’s why I like Richard Rohr saying, in the Bible, that Jesus never said blessed are the nice. Some people are always so consistently nice, you don’t know how they feel.

So, if anger is a God-given emotion that restores the boundary that was violated, there’s a grounded anger, it’s not revenge, it’s not hate, it’s not reactivity, it sets the boundary. And that’s why I think people too and contemplatively grounded people in the political realm. I also think as a therapist where I work with trauma, you can see the delicacy of this question how important it’s to discern.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, that’s really helpful, Jim. It is so subtle in all the ways you have to approach something like this.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. I was talking to somebody recently and he said, “When I get involved in hating what they’re doing, it slips over into hating them.” And my thought is, yes, I don’t hate them but I do hate the way you’re acting hurts people, I hate that. Or put it even stronger, isn’t that I hate it, I deeply regret it and, therefore, I want to square off with you and hold my own and confront it.

Kirsten Oates:

So, this question came in after session two on fidelity and this question comes from Brian. I’m very grateful for your discussion of Marcel’s take on fidelity and I found the example of visiting the dying friend at the hospital to be very moving. I have been struggling with some anxiety recently and came across some passages from Merton’s book Contemplative Prayer, page 75 that trace anxiety back to infidelity and here’s the quote. The real import of dread is to be sought in an infidelity to a personal demand of which one is at least dimly aware. The failure to meet a challenge, to fulfill a certain possibility which demands to be met and fulfilled, the experience of dread, nothingness and night in the heart of man is the awareness of infidelity to the truth of our life. In your clinical experience, have you observed a relationship between anxiety and infidelity? If so, would seeking out fidelity in my life perhaps be a pathway towards overcoming anxiety? Where would I begin?

Jim Finley:

There’s a helpful level of anxiety in that we’re careful not to be presumptuous, that we just assume we can already know the answer. And so, anxious is really a humble guardedness or a very humble awareness of the limitations of my inability to be fully present to what’s happening, there’s that. The next level for me is that, well, that’s true I need to do my best to be as insightfully grounded as I can be. And I think the third level is sensing that the sincerity of those first levels are there. I need to be free of the anxiety, that what if I’m doing it wrong. It’s the prayer of Thomas Merton, I don’t see the road ahead of me and I don’t know where I am going. And the fact I think I’m doing Your will doesn’t mean I’m actually doing so but I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please you and I hope I have that desire and all that I’m doing.

And he says in the mystical part and he says, “If I do this, you’ll lead me by the right road even though I don’t know anything about it.” That’s a deep statement. For You’ll never leave me to face my perils alone but You’ll never leave me to face my perils alone in a way that I’m not able to comprehend and that’s the subtlety of it, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Can you speak a little more to that idea of dread, Jim?

Jim Finley:

It’s interesting, I’d have to look at the passage that he’s referring to. But there’s another passage, it makes a distinction between dread and compunction. My understanding, the passage that I’m aware of and I have to compare it to this passage, is that dread is the experiential realization of the fragility of our very existence like a flame that flickers in the wind. Which means we’re not yet aware of the deathless thou of ourself, the precariousness of the approaching death. Dread is that, in this fragile flickering existence of myself, my compunction is that I’m a fluctuating fragility that’s unfaithful to the gift of myself and my fragility is compunction. And he says a contemplative community is a community of people gathered together for what no one in the community can do which is the grace of God that shines out in the brokenness.

Kirsten Oates:

So, when this person asks about where would they start to help find this fidelity in the midst of their anxiety, it’s really getting back to that daily rendezvous?

Jim Finley:

Yes. And I think maybe put it this way too is that we’re always working on not having the onus, not having the gravitas be to the extent to which we’re being faithfully true to what we’re called to be faithful to but rather we’re in the faith of God’s infinite fidelity to us, loving us in the misguided efforts to be faithful because, otherwise, it’s ego. See, am I clear-minded yet? Am I this? That? But I’m handing myself over to the love that’s infinitely in love with me in the sincerity to be faithful in the midst of the ways of still vague and confused because I’m just a human being that God’s infinitely in love with.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes.

Jim Finley:

I think that’s the thing.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s beautiful. So, there’s a kind of fidelity and sending in the question to you, this idea of anxieties come up and the question comes in and the response is, the more you can trust in God’s fidelity to you even when you’re anxious, is the God’s always.

Jim Finley:

That’s very good. See, in a way … You see this a lot in therapy too. See, the very vulnerability in which the person shared this with us is itself a sense of having faith of God’s fidelity to the depths of this person asking the question so it brings it out into the open.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. So, thank you so much for sending that in and we honor your fidelity that’s already arising so beautifully, yeah. Another question on fidelity and this one’s from John and he’s from Australia so I can use my deepest Australian accent to read this one, Jim. Okay. So, thank you for this latest podcast on Gabriel Marcel, I can see how it speaks to my inner experience of God and yet remains not easy to explain. This question may help me understand a little better about what Marcel meant by fidelity. Listening to Jim and you explain Marcel’s example of visiting a dying friend, being moved by the friend situation and the promise to return then Marcel gives two reasons that explain why he would return to visit but Marcel explains neither of these two are examples of living up to his understanding of fidelity.

Jim, you then give us a synced and in-depth understanding of what he means by fidelity. What I believe may help me understand this concept better is if you can apply this to what would lead him to return to visit his friend and remain true to living out of what he means by fidelity.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. My sense is this, he’s with the dying friend, the friend is dying and he knows he’s dying and you know that the friend is dying and the friend knows that you know that they’re dying and you’re so moved, when you’re in their presence, you promise you’ll stay close. A few days go by and you no longer feel that feeling and, therefore, should you be bound to a feeling that you have that you no longer feel. And what we’re saying here is I think the subtle point Marcel is getting at. I say I could be faithful to staying close to the friend in order to not break the image that my friend has of me as someone who’s faithful. Also, I could be faithful to live up to my own image of myself if I said I’m going to stick to my word. But Marcel says, as understandable as those are and they are understandable, it’s really knowing that the issue isn’t that you felt something in the presence of the friend, it’s not a feeling.

It’s that, when you were with the dying friend, the Thou dimension of the dying friend came shining out experientially and, likewise, as it came shining out, it awakened the Thou dimension in you in which you said you’d stay close and that’s what you’re faithful to. And so, I think the point is this, I think it’s a subtle thing, there’s a kind of an integrity of being faithful to an interior illumination that we can’t explain or comprehend but there’s a certain integrity and to be faithful to it. And I think this is true in a relationship or it’s true of when I was a therapist or even giving this talk, there’s a certain fidelity that’s not adequately explainable but you’re called to do it out of the integrity of who, out of the depths of yourself, where the Thou dimension came shining through in your experience of being faithful to this and that’s what helps me to see this.

Kirsten Oates:

And Jim, we’re really here in the realm of what we call discernment in Christianity, this idea of discernment and it’s bringing me back to that question on art. And we were saying there’s the craft, it is almost like the craft of discernment and that’s … Do you think that’s quite an individual craft to learn it in your own being?

Jim Finley:

I do think that. I mentioned that there’s this woman I was seeing in therapy who was an artist and she was talking about art school that she went through learning art and all of it. She talked about the anarchy of the ineffable when the paintbrush moves across. John Cage says the artist doesn’t get into the seriousness of art until they get to the point they no longer know what they’re doing he said, otherwise, it’s craft. Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create is the courage to lean in the unforeseeability of letting something unfold within you, you don’t yet know what it is, that arc is something like the divinity of yourself. And if you can tell when you’re in the presence of art that it’s not just craft, I think that’s why we go through an art museum and are quiet because we can sense this came from a very deep place in the person. And when I sit with the art, they help me to see the deep place and the ordinariness of my self in flower or the hillside or whatever.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, yeah. But the craft is important to be able to reveal the art and I’m suggesting discernment is a bit like the craft to reveal the art.

Jim Finley:

It’s like with me at psychotherapy in trauma for years but I was in doctoral studies for five years learning the craft.

Kirsten Oates:

Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

Jim Finley:

But it’s the craft and the service of the artistry-

Kirsten Oates:

Exactly.

Jim Finley:

… that transcends the craft. And you can tell when you’re in the presence of someone for whom it’s still a craft, there’s a mechanistic feel where they’re just going through a sequence of shoulds rather than a person who’s coming out of something, the craft is internalized a certain stance. It goes beyond the sum total of the craft itself, it touches the depth of the person who’s hurting.

Kirsten Oates:

And so, would you say, Jim, in this description that Marcel offers and you helped us understand, there’s a little bit of the craft in there. I can check in am I doing this … I can check into myself and go, “Is this coming out of my need to have a certain image? Is this coming out of,” and that’s the craft of discernment.

Jim Finley:

I think that’s true. I want to take the way we’re responding to this question. So, when you read the question, I pause for a moment. But in the pause, I’m re-stabilizing myself in the craft because I’ve done this for a long time. I have a nuanced sensitivity to how do I respond in a way that’s faithful to the very spirit of these mystics themselves, that sensitivity to the craft that is the learned experience over time. That’s why the more we, whether it’s therapy or spiritual direction or anything, the more we learn to do it over and over, the more we learn through experience.

And I like Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, where he talks about making a mistake while he’s playing live and he says I’m not here to prove something, I’m here to share something and mistakes or the foibles is what the … Somehow the beauty shines out to being comfortable, otherwise, that’s what anxiety is, it’s anticipatory anxiety I won’t know how to do this right. Instead, I’m not trying to prove anything, I’m just here to do my best to be as helpful as I can and …

Kirsten Oates:

That’s so helpful. So, we do our best to find that thread of fidelity knowing that our mistakes were on a learning curve and, yeah, that’s really helpful. Thank you, Jim. Okay, this is a question from John and he asks, as I listened to the podcast, my contemplative frame of mind came to an abrupt halt at the words Mary, mother of contemplatives, pray for us. St. Francis, pray for us. This is what you do at the end of each session after the practice. For me, they marked a transition from the contemplative to the theological. I thought what do the words mean? If I’m asking Mary to pray for me, what exactly is that I’m asking for and to whom am I making the request? It sounds like I’m addressing the Theotokos, the mother of God but this is a theological construct resting on a base of several other theological constructs. Here’s the question, how does someone whose mystical spirituality is informed by science and philosophy come to the terms of his church’s tridentine expression of faith?

Jim Finley:

Let’s say there is this mystical unit of realization that the present moment already is the generosity of God and there’s a sense there already is that to be asking for intercession. See, help me. What sense does that make? Is that in that slipping back into old patterns? But my sense is … And sometimes it is that, by the way, we do slip back in those patterns, there’s truth to that. But there’s another way of looking at it is that it’s really true that there’s this mystically realized all-encompassing plenitude of God but it’s mediated in the incarnate moment that it’s met in someone. No, it is not a vague atmospheric thing and, if I concretize it this way, I’m lessening it, it’s the concretization of this person or this event or this moment is the concrete sacrament of the universality that shines out through that encounter.

And the second thing is this about intercession, help me with this. See, Jesus says seek and you shall find but you have to seek. Knock and it shall be open but you have to knock. In the Lord’s prayer, give us this day our daily bread. You might say, Jesus, what are you saying? Infinity, what do you mean? The infinite bread already is the reality of what I am. So, it’s the intercessory sense of that we’re always the petitioner asking for what deep down we know is already there but we’re always asking for it. Give us this day our daily bread, give us this day. And it’s the same with us turning to Mary, that understanding the whole mythology of Mary in the early church. See, if Jesus, the teaching of Jesus has a human nature and a divine nature but who Jesus is the Logos, the second person of the Trinity and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And because she’s the mother of Jesus, Mary is Mater Dei, she’s God’s mother and so devotional sincerity to Mary.

And in the Cistercian Order that I belong to, there’s this rich … It’s almost the mystical dimensions of the feminine. So, the monastery was the Abbey of Gethsemani that I was at but it’s our Lady of the Abbey Gethsemani and all monks take the name of Mary. So, my name was Finbar but I was Brother Mary Finbar and that’s why I also say Mary, mother of contemplatives, pray for us because she’s the archetype of the contemplative soul. When the angel appears to her, Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee and she says he’s looked on as the magnificat, he’s looked his servant in her nothingness. Henceforth, all generations will call me blessed and, therefore, she models our nothingness and there were absolutely nothing without the plenitude of God shining out through us, that’s the unity.

But I’m always asking for it from the standpoint of my faltering attempts to experientially be grounded in the unity but I meet it in the sincerity of asking for it. So, this person’s very question, notice, they’re asking for intercession when you think about it and that’s what makes it a holy question. And we meet each other in the questioning because we meet each other where we’re sustained by God and the unfolding of unresolved things and, as they say, sincere.

Kirsten Oates:

But if those things don’t feel authentic to you or they don’t work for you, those particular things like Mary or?

Jim Finley:

I thought of that too, yes. If it doesn’t seem authentic to you, it doesn’t apply to you, forget it.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, mm-hmm.

Jim Finley:

Take a walk. Because you have to live according to the light that you’ve been given and, if that doesn’t make sense, why fool with something that doesn’t make? But what you can do, if you care to, is ponder. It doesn’t make sense at one level but these people aren’t stupid. It isn’t why is the church so dumb that it’s saying these things, it says them over. When Pope Francis died recently, he wasn’t buried at the Vatican, he was buried at this little chapel devoted to Mary because he wanted to be buried next to Mary. There’s something mystical about that, about the divine motherhood of God.

Kirsten Oates:

You can have Brother Mary Finbar, pray for us.

Jim Finley:

Exactly, exactly. If I’m ever canonized someday, people might say that. There you go. And of course, I will help if you ask for my celestial plenitude come to your aid.

Kirsten Oates:

Fantastic. Well, I hope it’s a long way off.

Jim Finley:

Oh, yeah. Well, see what God has in mind.

Kirsten Oates:

Okay. Jim, next question is from Rory who’s writing into us from Dublin in Ireland and the question is about a passage in the book that I don’t think you focused on but it’s in Gallagher’s book. So, the question is, the words of Gallagher, fidelity creates the self. Might one rephrase this to say that fidelity realizes the self? Here, realize has the double meaning whereby fidelity brings about or grows the self and brings a greater understanding or realization of the self. The term create implies that fidelity takes on the action of God. Second, if we look for an example of love as both a recognition and an assertion of illimitable presence and as fidelity to Thou and I, to the communion of self in the other one and in oneself, one finds it in the act of giving one’s life for the other. Jesus is the exemplar of this willing action, dying on the cross as an expression of love for all beings but we also see a coming together of fidelity, hope and love in the willingness of the parent to give her or his life for the child.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, this is a subtle point, really, I think but it’s good one. And so, we would say, yes, that it’s not so much that fidelity creates the self but moments of fidelity actualize in manifested ways. The mystery of the self is it’s eternally created by God stepping forward to actualize the creation. But there’s another way of looking at this is that I’m thinking, for some reason, too of a singer who steps forward to sing and especially the singers gifted and they sing and the whole room is moved by it. So, in a way, it’s an event that’s happening, it’s an experiential event that, in some sense in time, is actually in the moment being created. But it is a moment that’s actually created in the moment that actualizes the eternality of the beauty of the song.

So, somehow God is the infinity expressing itself as the actualization of that moment where we’re removed and God’s the immediacy of being moved. That’s why the moment we step back to reflect upon or to define it, we’ve just stepped away from the immediacy because that’s the infinity. This is why Gabriel talks about in how incarnate it is or it’s always concrete, it’s not a theory. It’s almost like the divinity of phenomena itself of the act itself, yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. I love what you’re saying that it’s found in the immediacy of the present moment. You can’t grasp it, you can’t … Yeah.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. So, God’s the infinity of that immediacy.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

And that immediacy is the incarnate presence of God. So, it’s a nuance layered meaning of the word create.

Kirsten Oates:

And in fidelity, in a moment of fidelity, we recognize it but not as something we can analyze, understand it but we experience it.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. Notice something also and I think they are, again, a singer or a concert pianist. Also notice what’s very interesting is they need to step forward and be completely there. It isn’t as if they’re…I’ve done this so often, I’ll just do it and go have lunch. They have to step forward in the totality of being completely present so that the music might flow through their fidelity to it. And I think it’s that immediacy of the presence that accesses our presence and we’re collectively moved this way. So, I think that’s another nuanced sense of it for me.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, that’s helpful. Okay. Well, Jim, we’re now moving to questions about hope and the first question is from Liz. Jim stated in part the darkness which is the unawakened part of ourselves. Specifically, what is the unawakened part of ourselves and why is it darkness to us?

Jim Finley:

This would be my sense of it. If I’m in a situation, the darkness is that I think the nature of the situation is nothing more than what I’m able to experientially realize it to be, it’s just nothing. It’s like a conditioned state. So, I’m in a conditioned state in the midst of a condition and it’s nothing more than that. And that’s why I think then everything depends on can I get through this or not or how can I do this because absolutizing the conditioned state rather than saying instead the concrete immediacy of the conditioned state is the incarnate manifestation of the unconditioned that’s shining through this conditioned state and I think that’s the difference. And Meister Eckhart, if we think of God as generosity, the generosity of the infinite is infinite and we are the generosity of God or the song God sings. But the generosity of God as an infinite generosity that’s incarnate … That transcends and is wholly incarnate in the present condition even as it transcends it and so to be sensitive that that’s true.

It is what it seems to be but it never just is what it seems to be. It’s always infinitely moral what it seems to be and the darkness is that in me that doesn’t know. So, when we talk this way poetically, I say there’s that in us that poetically sees this, there’s that in us that doesn’t see it yet or to be endlessly tender-hearted toward the part that doesn’t see it yet. I can’t seem to get past my inability to see the infinity is shining out through the present situation but I don’t need to get past it because God’s infinitely in love with me and my inability to get past it.

Kirsten Oates:

Mm-hmm. And I think you’ve said in the past, Jim, that trauma is the experience of being completely cut off from that.

Jim Finley:

That’s it. And by the way, if you put it that way, the trauma meaning a wound. So, the wound is not just the traumatizing event, big or small, but the foundation of trauma is a traumatized ability to experience the abyss-like presence of God flowing out and is present in the trauma itself. That’s really the depth of trauma is the traumatized capacity to realize this upwelling of the infinite presence of God being poured out and given even if you’re hanging on the cross, in the midst of your deathbed or the loss of the loved, whatever. And when you’re shooting the rapids and you’re in the midst of the trauma, you can’t feel it but you’re not supposed to, you can’t be politely traumatized. But in hindsight, when you look back at it, you can see, as horrible as it was at the moment, that also played its part in the story of your life, that’s part of who you are today.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. That infinite presence arises from the darkness and it can do it from in your mind’s eye looking back on the event, yeah.

Jim Finley:

And I also think that’s something else too is that, when we do get reactive this way, we’re overtaken by something, we’re just human, we can know, yes, I am reactive right now but I’m having an episode and I need to take a long walk or a long hot shower, get some herb tea, talk to a friend and so I can contextualize the scary thing and see it within a context and not be so flooded by it because to be flooded by it is to be traumatized. That’s what trauma is.

Kirsten Oates:

Would you also say, Jim, even for moments where you are in more of a connected state to that infinite ground, because it’s infinite so there’s a humility that comes with this path that God’s infinitely knowable even though experienced in the present moment and so we can always be open to more of God?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, that’s very good. We talked about it, Marcel talks about this too. He said a certain attitude must be brought to the portals of thought, humility. Because humility is the realization that, however much I am able to experientially comprehend it, what I experientially incomprehend and there’s even more of it because it’s infinite. That’s the stance of humility.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, I really love that. The next question is from Eva. After listening to the session about hope, I’m still unclear what I can hope for when my child has a complex health condition and she deeply desires to have a partner but struggles to find one. What do I hope for when my heart aches?

Jim Finley:

One way of looking at it is this, that you would hope that your child would be able to move into a healthier place. You’d also hope that maybe someday she’ll find the partner to spend her life with, you would hope for that because you love her. But what hope in a Marcelian sense is it includes that but it’s to know that nothing’s lacking in her lack and nothing’s lacking in all that’s lacking and it’s because you love her. You don’t love her any less because she lacks, that the very love for her is a plenitude that transcends what she’s lacking because she’s not reducible to what’s lacking, she’s irreducible to who she is as the one that you love.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. That’s bringing a tear to my eye, that’s beautiful, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. And there’s another little piece of it too is it maybe that you would hope for her, your child, and for you. Let’s say she never gets past this painful struggle, she might not and let’s say she never does find somebody and she might not is to know that somehow the mystery of that has also folded into the mystery of God in her life. And she would come to a certain kind of … The peace that surpasses understanding, of being sustained in a peace that isn’t dependent on getting past it because you’re not yet past it yet there’s a piece that sustained you in your inability to get past it. I think there’s that also.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, mm-hmm. And to know that God’s the one in charge, it’s all unfolding inside of God so, one level, it’s ultimately trustworthy.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. And I think this is what Paul meant when he said I have a thorn in the flesh and the things that I want to do to be true to this love I don’t do and the things I don’t want to do because they compromise my fidelity I do. And I asked God to remove it and God said leave it there because the thorn is where you learn to depend on Me because, if you could take the thorn out, you’re depending on yourself. The thorn in the flesh is our teacher.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Some people have much harder thorns.

Jim Finley:

They do. It’s important to realize that too. And the reason it gets so big, that’s what trauma is, the thorn is so big, you’re flooded by the thorn and this is why you’re always searching for someone to help you find your bearings and to stabilize it and someone sees you in your pain and can help you out of that place. That we dare not romanticize it or speak about it in spiritual terms is to be deeply disrespectful of the person’s pain, we have to meet them, I’m so sorry you’re going through this right now so they know they’re not alone in the painful place.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. I love what you’re saying because God’s love and presence ultimately matters but our expression of that to each other matters very, very much.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

It can be really helpful, yeah. So, now we have some voicemails to listen to and the first one is from Trey.

Trey:

In my study using William Barclay’s commentaries, somewhere in one of those commentaries, he indicated that the Greek word for hope that is used in the Bible is certainty, is translated as certainty. I have believed that ever since and, when listening to the study of Gabriel Marcel and hope, when you and Kirsten talk about it, I continue to use the word certainty for the kind of hope that Gabriel Marcel is speaking to. I would like you to reflect on that. Thank you so much for being our spiritual teacher for the last two years, thank you.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, that’s very good. St. Paul of truth say faith is a substance of things hoped for. So, at one level, this is how Marcel starts out, hope refers to a hopeful outcome of an unresolved situation. I hope this turns out this way and it’s real, there’s a certain kind of hope. There’s another kind of hope and it’s someday I might … I hope that someday I’ll learn that there’s nothing missing. See, there’s nothing to hope for because nothing’s missing and that’s the certainty. We shared the story too, I think, in the reflection. Sister Macrina Whittaker, this Benedictine nun that I knew, she was asked to submit an essay to a collection of essays on things you’re certain of.

And so, it was a collection of essays from politicians and actors and actresses and so on, and they thought they’d ask a Benedictine nun what you’re certain of, we were talking about this. And she said, “The things that I used to be certain of, I’m no longer certain of. The things that I’m certain of that I’m still certain of, I’m no longer certain in the way I used to be certain and I’m fairly certain this will continue.” But then she said, and then this is the mystical part, the hope this person’s talking about, “But there’s a flame that burns in my heart and I live by that.” It’s already the fulfilment, it’s already shining out at the unfulfilled and that’s, yeah-

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, lovely.

Jim Finley:

That’s a big thing. Yeah, it is.

Kirsten Oates:

Thank you for the question, Trey, and for speaking it in your own voice. It’s so lovely to hear people’s voices. So, next, Jim, we’re turning to a voicemail from Julian who has a question about hope, a really deep question about hope and he also shares a piano composition that he created. So, we’re going to hear, just listen to a short amount of him playing the piano and then, at the end of the episode, we’ll play the full piece which was only a couple of minutes. But thank you Julian for sending that in and now let’s listen to the question.

Julian:

I really want to stay grounded in the hope that Marcel talks about that extends past circumstance. My question is, on a practical level, how might we do this especially in utterly devastating situations? For example, I saw a play where a Buddhist monk walks in agony down the street shortly after the Hiroshima bombing, his skin is horrifically damaged and in despair he shouts, “There is no God and there is no Buddha.” It’s tragic to see someone who has devoted themselves to the mystical path of Buddhism as a monk reject his tradition.

So, let’s say that Gabriel Marcel is a close friend of this monk and happens to see him walking down the street, how does he help himself and the monk stay grounded in that fidelity to hope? This is a practical question about putting philosophy into action and suppose that they will stay together for several weeks or months. This question has been on my mind in a really significant way these past several months and often I process ideas with piano music. So, I want to share this musical composition that will help you understand what this question means to me on a deeper emotional level.

Jim Finley:

That’s a very good question, here’s what comes to me. Person is running down the street from burn like, “There is no Buddha, there’s no nothing.” I’d answer this way is you’re right. If by Buddha you mean the Buddha that protects the horrible thing happening, this is in Christianity too, the mystery of the cross, whatever it means that God takes care of us, it doesn’t mean that God takes care of us as in preventing the cruel thing, the unfair thing, the brutal thing from happening, look what happened to him. And so, we have this imaginary sense of a protector. When we’re unprotected, we lose our faith. So, there is a certain point then of losing our faith but what we’re really losing, which is a very fragile thing, because a person’s lost but, if you’re that person, you’re with them in the lost place.

As I say, when we risk sharing what hurts the most in the presence of someone who will not invade us or abandon us, we can learn not to invade or abandon ourselves. And you sit with the person, you don’t lecture them, you don’t preach to them, you’re just with them in no Buddha, so you’re with them. But notice, by the very fact you’re with them in no Buddha, little by little, the person suggests over time that’s Buddha. I share this story too, the story of Buddha and Jesus are similar and that they both had this deep spiritual awakening and Jesus was an itinerant preacher for three years preaching the good news and died. The Buddha had this awakening and, in the great awakening, he was an itinerant preacher turning the wheel of the Dharma to free all sentient beings from suffering. And he lived into the old age, he became very elderly and fragile.

And the story is that he died of … The historical story is he died of accidental food poisoning and, when his attendants saw what happened, of course they were very upset and they said we’re going to go tell brother the cook what happened and I’ll paraphrase it what the Buddha says. He said, “Don’t do that.” He said, “Our brother the cook already has self-esteem issues. If you tell him he killed the Buddha, he’ll be in therapy for years.” He says, “But besides, what’s better? A meal lovingly prepared to nourish the body of the Buddha or a meal lovingly prepared that sent the Buddha to his final liberation?” That’s the light of the resurrection shining in Buddha language.

So, when we’re with that person who’s hurting, that’s the fear that we won’t be seen because we can’t see ourself. Sometimes you’re in the presence who sees in you a preciousness or a presence you’re not able to see and they can be your way back to yourself. This is a deep, start of, deep trauma work has to do with this actually.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s a deep question. Because also in that example, the physical pain is very, very real so that you’re physically suffering and that’s challenging.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. I want to say something else about physical pain or to people who have chronic pain, severe pain. If the pain is intense enough and goes on and on and on, it’ll bring you down. You can see the inner logic of suicide. And if you’re burning to death, you have a gun in your hand, might you shoot yourself? You might. And so sometimes a suicide, it’s always tragic that they couldn’t find a resource that’s bigger but, in a way, it was their paradoxical way taking care of themself and being delivered from the unbearable. And so, you see the layered subtlety of these questions. And what we’re always hoping for at least is, if we’re unbearable pain, it’s a journey. I’ve worked with people with unbearable physical pain, chronic pain and also unbearable psychological symptoms too, severe depression, it goes on and on, it’s a hero’s journey.

And sometimes, even though they’re hurting like blazes and they hurt, sometimes you can tell you’re in the presence of someone who’s found a sustaining presence, being present to the unbearable. And I don’t know, it’s a very mysterious dimension of humanity, it’s important to be aware of. And by the way, are they going to be able to sustain it? Maybe, maybe not, that’s not the issue. The issue is the subtlety of the question that’s being raised because, even if they lose it at the end, the presence of God doesn’t lose them.

Kirsten Oates:

Now, this is our last question on hope and it’s a voicemail and it comes from Jimmy.

Jimmy:

Hi. I am wondering what Gabriel Marcel might say about a predicament I’m having. I’m finding in my morning quiet time or rendezvous with God, my prayer has been much drier and quieter and I’ll say formless. And it’s not accompanied by discouragement or frustration, it’s simply just less requests, less focus on the practical, hope this goes well, hope that goes well and it is relatively new. So, I’m wondering what Gabriel would say about entering this new phase and how I can respond to it. Thanks.

Jim Finley:

First of all, I’m assuming that this shift that’s happened in your prayer is not related to things going on in your life around being depressed or an ability to feel pleasure, I’m assuming that’s not part of this without the essence of it. So, what I would say, if we go back to St. John of the Cross, you could listen to when we did John of the Cross but also in the ascent of Mount Carmel because the essence of St. John of the Cross is this. He said what happens … He calls this we find our way to God in a passage through a dark night. And the dark night is, to say it poetically, is that God sees we become too overly identified with the finite ways of experiencing the presence of God. That is our insights, our consolations, our motivations, our intention, efficacious unto holiness. So, what God does, therefore, is God, as a gesture of love, removes the ability to be consoled. And also then God removes the ability to understand anything. He says in the Ascent of Mount Carmel book two on faith, he said, if someone born blind we’re told about the color yellow, they would know through faith that the color yellow exists but they wouldn’t, being born blind, know what the color yellow is.

He said this is the way with God. We say God is eternal, God is love, well, we don’t know what it means, we do not know what it means. And so, what God does then is God sends us into a quiet … It’s you go to your rendezvous with God and God doesn’t show up for the rendezvous. And if you don’t panic and listen deeply in this darkness or this loss of reinforced feedback loops, he says, “Oh, night lovelier than the dawn.” He said what’s actually happening is that your finite eyes are being blinded by an infinite light that utterly transcends your ideas, transcends your consolations, transcends your which moves towards these mystical states of mystical marriage and so on. So, it’s a grace. See if it speaks to you or not, John of the Cross, and walk with it and see. He’s played a big part in my life, actually.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. It also reminds me, Jim, of Teresa of Avila who I really resonated also with her path when that she talks about the prayer being stilled in the fourth, fifth mansion where she talks about suddenly and I think she calls it the prayer of quiet.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, what Teresa says, she uses the example in the fifth mansion of the caterpillar, the silkworm and the butterfly. So, the silkworm spins this cocoon around itself and disappears but it comes out as a butterfly, flies away, she says, who would believe it? She says, so what happens, there are states of quiet that are so quiet you can no longer maintain awareness of yourself and reflective consciousness. They’re not there, you disappear from yourself. And therefore, when you return back, you kick around, you get your bearings back, you don’t know if anything happened because you weren’t there. She said but you do know because there’s three signs of this.

One, there’s a certainty that you were in God and God is within you and you can’t explain it. The second sign is you only want to do God’s will and she said, thirdly, you’re like a butterfly with tattered wings. Everything you land on, see, this is not the beloved, this is not the beloved, this is infinitely less the infinity of the beloved. But when you accept and realize it’s nothingness compared to the beloved, you realize the presence of the beloved is shining out in the things nothingness, the divinity shining out through the poverty of everything, which is the mystical state.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yeah. This reminds me so well of how … Because Jimmy said he’s listened to all our seasons but isn’t it amazing that you listen to them and then something changes inside of you. So, this prayer that he used, the word formless, its become formless and now, when he goes back and listens to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, maybe it means something very different to him. I love that about these teachings.

Jim Finley:

Me too. Another thing I think also, see, because these things are inherently subtle and they’re hard to find anyone to talk about but, when you read or listen to the mystic, you can tell they’re talking about what you’re experiencing and you can’t explain it. And that’s the power of the recognition of something.

Kirsten Oates:

Mm-hmm, fabulous. Jimmy, let us know how that resonated and if you find something good in Teresa or John of the Cross. We wish you well on your journey.

Jim Finley:

We’re in deep water here.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

So, it isn’t like, “Next question, please. Let’s move on to the next one.” It isn’t that, we were just barely touching on the depth of the sincerity, hopefully, in a respectful way that sheds light on it and it’s important to see that, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. You do a beautiful job of that, Jim, I really appreciate it. Yeah, big questions. And another one here and now we’re in the realm of love, moving from hope to love. So, this is from Sally and she writes I scared myself half to death this morning when listening to the session on Gabriel Marcel, I thought I should send in a question in case there are others who might be having anything like a comparable response. I’ve been listening to this session as my dog Alameda has been suffering through the final stages of cancer, I had to end her life two days ago so I write this in the very early stages of mourning her loss and losing her physical body. As I followed the season, Alameda has been the beloved thou that has first come to mind during your sessions, she was lying near to me most of every time I listened.

Everything you have said about the I-Thou relationship has fit my relationship to her perfectly and given me much solace as I witnessed her rapid decline in the past several weeks. Today, however, when I was listening, the comments about the it-ness of the physical body, I thought immediately about her dead body which had been carried out the front door of my home so recently. When I began to reflect on how her body was her it-ness and so was gone forever even though her loving spirit would never die, I felt a deep confusion and panic well up in me. You see, I was realising that I couldn’t and never had imagined Alameda as anything other than a body. I realised that although the earlier sessions I had imagined her as nothing other than a beautiful body of fidelity, invincible hope and love. I couldn’t dissociate these spiritual qualities from her bodily character. And I’ll just leave it there, Jim. Any thoughts or reflections on that?

Jim Finley:

Yes. I’m touched by this because, my youngest daughter, she had to have her dog put down and, the vet, she said the person was very kind and sensitive. Do you want the dog to be on the table? Do you want … She wanted to hold the dog while it died.

Kirsten Oates:

Mm, wow.

Jim Finley:

And this was just three days ago and-

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, it’s so sad.

Jim Finley:

But she saw that the dog was suffering so much, so much so she talked about she’s still in the intensity of it. It’s amazing how deeply bonded we can be to an animal this way so, when they die, this way. So, I have some thoughts. First of all, what’s interesting when the dog dies, it’s body’s there but the dog’s not there. It’s like when a human being dies too and you see a loved one die, their body’s right there but they’re not there. And so, in a way then, the body of the dog embodies the presence of the dog but the presence of the dog is no longer present in the body that embodied it but the presence of the dog is mysterious. So, here’s another way that I look at it, the image that I use with this. When I was in the monastery in a class in medieval philosophy, I asked the philosophy professor, this was in Thomas Aquinas and so on, could we say that, after the geographical Tokyo no longer exists, they’ll still be Tokyo? He said, yes, he said, because Tokyo is in God’s mind and God never forgets.

So, if God knows we’re having this, right now, if God knows we’re having this talk right now and the people later God will be with them as they listen to it. And if God never forgets, when we all die, we’ll all go into having this talk forever, that everything’s eternal. And therefore, it is eternal because God creates the dog and God sustains the dog and knows the dog so the presence of the dog is in the presence of God. That’s why Father Richard Rohr, he had his dog Venus, he said something very bold, he said, for me, Venus is Christ. Venus died, he had to grieve the loss of it. So, here’s my hope, seriously, if everything real is eternal, and I believe that it is in the divinity of everything, my hope is that, when you die and cross over into heaven, you’ll see your dog waiting there for you with its tail wagging see, because that’s the eternality of your dog which is one with the eternality of yourself.

Everything that begins in time ends in time. But when we’re born isn’t where we begin, it’s where we emerged out of God. And when we die, we’re not annihilated, it’s God exhales us under the earthly plane and then, when we die, God inhales and the circle completes itself eternally. That’s how I see this, I find it consoling.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yeah. It is just orienting to a different mind that will have a whole different mind that is capable of this more infinite experience, yeah.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. And the people who have this mind are called mystics.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And the reason we turn to them, is they’re the ones who help us have this mind. And by the very fact the listeners are touched by it, it means they have that mind too or this wouldn’t make any sense to them. It bears witness that we already know this but we’re learning to be ever more habitually stabilized in what we can’t explain.

Kirsten Oates:

Well, we’re with Sally in her grief, just nothing … It’s just terrible to lose a precious companion like that, yeah. Okay. So, now we have our final question which is a voicemail from Elise.

Elise:

My question is how to sustain what you’re saying in the midst of despairing and heart-wrenching situations that just tear at the soul, wounds to the soul where you just have no understanding of what’s happening, you don’t understand why you have been rejected and kicked to the side and just treated in such a terrible way really. I just am agreeing with everything you said about never stopping the love, never. That’s divine. I guess I just wonder could you address that desperation, that terrible feeling inside where this continues to repeatedly happen to you even though you extend love and more love and more love because that’s what life’s all about. So, thank you again, I’m so grateful always and I send you both love and best wishes for more success because this is one heck of a lovely episode and a lovely show. Thank you.

Jim Finley:

I want to talk as a therapist first and the mystical dimension. If they’re rejecting you, you let them know that they’re rejecting you. And you’re asking them not to do that because they’re being abusive because you deserve to be respected. They don’t have to agree with you but that means that they do respect you for who you are. And if they don’t, you’re asking them to stop doing that. And if they can’t, you don’t engage with them anymore. This can be very deep especially if it’s your own mother or a father or an ex-spouse but that’s setting the boundary, setting the boundary. That’s why I say there’s no … That the healing, it’s anger. Anger is a God-given emotion that restores the boundary that was violated. I will not passively be present and allow you to speak to me in a violating way that violates the preciousness of myself. And it’s not just who they are externally if they’re still being rejecting and abusive but also the interjected abusive present because their voice lives inside of us.

Kirsten Oates:

Oh, yeah, mm-hmm.

Jim Finley:

It lives inside. And here’s what’s sad about it, the traumatized child part believes every word. So, a lot of therapy is breaking that bond and setting the boundary. The next thing is this. It’s so important, sometimes when we’re exposed to this over and over, we can get pulled into it ourself. It was in a previous session some time ago, the story of one of the Desert Fathers, one of the early hermits, Christian hermits is he heard a knock at the door of his hermitage and, when he opened the door, it was a mother and a father with their little girl. They said, “We’re sorry to intrude on your solitude but, as you can see, an evil spirit has turned our daughter into a donkey.” And that hermit says, “Well, come in. I see, I see, come in.” And so, he had them sit down, he asked the little girl if she was hungry, she said yes.

So, he fixed her something to eat and he sat down and talked with her while she ate. And when the parents saw how lovingly he listened to her and talked to her, he saw the evil wizard didn’t turn their daughter into a donkey, the evil spirit put a spell on them in believing their daughter was a donkey. And when they all left, they were so grateful to have her daughter back and she was grateful because it’s hard to be a little girl when your parents think you’re a donkey. And that’s the deep part and, that’s the trouble, we buy into it, we internalize the rejecting voice and, in a way, we’re being re-parented by abuse. And it’s amazing how deep that bond can be, how to break that. So, I think insights like that help me to see this.

Kirsten Oates:

Because this question is asking about sustaining love but what I’m hearing in your answer too, Jim, is that anger is a way of sustaining love because it’s standing up for the thouness of yourself in a way, honoring your own thouness.

Jim Finley:

It is. But there’s something else too, it’s also honoring the thouness in them because God’s infinite love for them as the Thou is invincible but they become lost in hurtful patterns. So, you set a boundary to the pattern but, as setting to the boundary to the pattern, it doesn’t mean that you forget that God’s infinitely in love with the hurtful person. So, Bishop Desmond Tutu, see, we always hate the hateful act but we never hate the person who did the hateful act. Father, forgive them, they know not what they do, this way. That’s a subtle thing, it’s true. It honors them too.

Kirsten Oates:

I like that what you’re saying because you’re inviting them to be a better version of themselves which is to recognize the dignity of themselves and the truer nature of themselves.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. See, because if you go along with it, I know this is complicated in real life, I’m not saying this is easy. If you go along with it, you’re in collusion in going along with it because you’re actually reinforcing the rejection of you because you’re going … You give external compliance to avoid being attacked or abandoned. But when you set a boundary, you’re giving them a chance to listen to themselves and just maybe it might help. Maybe not right away but, in a way, you modeling that boundary might help them to be more grounded and aware of what they’ve been doing.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. That’s so helpful. You said earlier about how Jesus never said blessed are the nice and that niceness isn’t the equivalent of love, yeah, because sometimes love requires a boundary and holding fast. Yeah, yeah, very helpful. Well, we’ve come to the end of our listener questions, what wonderful questions and, yeah, thank you to everyone who sent us a question. We don’t get to them all but we’re really grateful to read them and know how you’re tracking with us. So, thank you and thank you, Jim. Thank you to Dorothy and Vanessa who are in the background today.

Before we close the episode completely, I wanted to bring us back to Julian’s beautiful piano piece and we’re going to listen to it as we close out the episode and see you next season.

Jim Finley:

Yes.