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. And I’m here with Jim to introduce our new mystic for season 11. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yes. I’m glad to start up again, share these insights with the folks.

Kirsten Oates:

And so, who is our new mystic, Jim, for season 11?

Jim Finley:

The new mystic is Gabriel Marcel. And as always, we’ll start with who he was historically to help us better understand who he is spiritually. Gabriel Marcel was born in France in 1889 where he lived until his death in 1973. He was a bit of a prodigy, both as a musician, and as a composer, and as a playwright, but he was mainly known for his philosophy, and that’s what we’re going to be looking at.

From the very beginning of the Turning to the Mystics series of mystics we’ve been exploring, I’ve been focusing on the classical text of the Christian mystics that I was introduced to in the monastery and have guided and sustained me over the years. But in the previous session, we branched out and for the first time turned to a poet as mystic, T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets. We’ll be doing more poets in the future to Emily Dickinson and others. And now we’re branching out even more. We’re turning to a philosopher as a mystic, like a mystically awakened philosopher, turning to Marcel’s insights, guiding us in our spiritual path.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. Jim, for those of us who perhaps aren’t familiar with philosophy, could you give us just a high-level overview of what a philosopher does, what their focus is?

Jim Finley:

So we’re talking about philosophy in the big picture, so Plato, Aristotle, these different philosophers down through the ages into the current age, Marcel. A philosopher is someone who shares with us an understanding of what the meaning of life is or the meaning of reality. What’s it mean to exist? What’s it mean to be real?

So a philosopher doesn’t say, for example, “We know that truth is important.” A philosopher explores what is truth, where it isn’t just the goodness is important and the will we turn toward the good, but a philosopher would tease out and bring out into the open ways of understanding what goodness is. That’s philosophy. So, Gabriel Marcel is a philosopher, and so he’s going to share with us a meaning of what he sees to be really what it means to be a person and how that relates on what’s the meaning of being, what’s it mean to be, philosophia, like the love of wisdom.

Kirsten Oates:

And you wouldn’t say every philosopher was a mystic, and so how does it pair together that someone might be a philosopher and a mystic?

Jim Finley:

No. Yeah, there’s different branches of philosophy. So some aren’t mystical all, like pragmatism for example. Gabriel Marcel was often linked up with the existential thought of France, existentialism, exploring the meaning of existence. So although the father of existentialism is Soren Kierkegaard, who is a Christian, devout Christian, there’s a strong also in contemporary French philosophy, a strong vein of atheism.

So, Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, was atheist, and he thought the meaning of life is nausea, that there is no meaning. He wrote a book called No Exit, and it’s the persons of the Trinity realizing they’re each other’s hell and they’re trapped with each other forever.

Kirsten Oates:

Oh dear.

Jim Finley:

That’s hardly mystical. So, he kind of parted from this existential identity, and he referred more to himself as a neo-Socratic philosopher. And what Socrates is, when you look at the dialogues of Socrates, what he would do is he would engage in a dialogue with someone about, say, what is goodness. And they would begin by assuming that they knew what goodness was. And by the end of the dialogue, they realized they didn’t know at all what goodness was. But in realizing that, they started to understand what goodness is. So that’s what Marcel does. He kind of unravels assumptions to bring us to a clarity that when we hear it, it rings true. So that’s the tone of Marcel’s philosophy.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. Well, Jim, tell us a little bit more about his life, Gabriel Marcel.

Jim Finley:

He studied his graduate work in philosophy, but he wasn’t a philosopher in the sense the academy in a typical sense. He was not a tenured professor on campus at a university, but he was more of a loner, like thinking alone, apart to himself, but often invited to universities around the world to lecture. And a lot of philosophers were in very serious dialogue with him. They saw the relevance of his thought.

He was married. They had one adopted son. His wife would travel with him to these different lecture places. He wrote a little essay on his spiritual autobiography and noted that when he was very young, his mother died. And his mother was very influential in his life. He was very close to his mother. So very typical of the kind of insights of Marcel, the kind of things he says, thinking of his mother. He said, “It’s amazing how present a dead person can be.”

Kirsten Oates:

Wow.

Jim Finley:

And so he has those kind of poetic insights into what’s most fundamental in life itself. He’s always going back to the fundamental experiences in helping us explore the abyss-like depth of fundamental experiences of the day by day.

Kirsten Oates:

It sounds like he paid a lot of attention to relationships, the relationship with his mother, with his wife, with his son.

Jim Finley:

Yes. He was very big on what he referred to as intersubjectivity, that we all are distinct, but we’re all distinct presences interwoven with the presences of each other, as a communal oneness with one another, which he is then going to see as a communal oneness with the mystery of being, which he’s going to see as ultimately is a oneness with the mystery of God. So, he’s very big on interconnectedness.

Because one of the marks of being is communion. You realize your subsisting in a communion or in a communal oneness. We would say in Christian terms, echoing Thomas Merton, he says, “So when Christ says I and I say I, it’s the same I, the order of grace and love.” And that’s very Marcelian. He’s always looking toward this, how do we walk in the sense of communion? Our fear and confusion is we lose that sense of communion. That’s always there. But we fall into the fear of being isolated and alone and so on. So where does aloneness turn into solitude? And what is the communion of solitude? Marcel’s mind works along those lines.

Kirsten Oates:

So Jim, when Marcel began his career, and for quite a period of his career as a philosopher, he wasn’t a person of faith. He was an atheist, in fact. Is that right?

Jim Finley:

I don’t think he was an atheist. I think during all the time he was writing this philosophy we’ll be exploring, he didn’t personally find religious faith relevant.

Kirsten Oates:

Okay.

Jim Finley:

He didn’t feel moved or inclined to… Later he became Catholic and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. And matter of fact, other philosophers accused him of promoting Christianity in the name of philosophy. And he said, “But I came to these insights before I became Catholic this way.” So, this is really finding the presence of the spiritual outside the world religions.

Kirsten Oates:

Okay.

Jim Finley:

And another key thing then also is that’s how we understand new age spirituality. It’s the spiritual quest outside the world religions. You’re spiritual, but you’re not identifying with… You’re not Jewish, or Christian, or Buddhist, whatever. So the issue would be this, though. To what extent does the spiritual path outside the religions, to what extent is it infinite? That is, to what extent does it reach that we are the manifested presence of the infinite? And Marcel does that, and he does it outside of religion.

Kirsten Oates:

Then did religion enhance his journey into that?

Jim Finley:

I think what it did is it affirmed the relevance of his thought and saw how faith then is the revelation, the personal revelation of God being revealed through the scriptures of this mystery of being, this mystery of life, reveal in the Christian dispensation through Christ Jesus, our Lord, Jesus. And so, I think that’s why it spoke to him so deeply, so that the Eucharist, and the liturgy, and scripture, the life of devotional sincerity.

And even says that about the life of the philosopher, this wisdom. He said, “First, it’s found in a presence.” And the presence, he said, “A certain attitude must be brought to the portals of thought. It’s humility. And the wisdom is the wisdom that’s born and being stabilized in humility. Never humiliated but endlessly humbled by the unfolding of the mystery.” So that language is so resonant with the religious sensitivity.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

So when he became Cathi, he saw it as a way to celebrate that or a way to a community that expresses that and… That’s my sense.

Kirsten Oates:

Okay, to live into that humility, and community, and communion, some of the elements that he found. Yeah, beautiful.

Jim Finley:

Yes.

Kirsten Oates:

What a beautiful way to explore alongside Marcel who came into his faith through this deep study of reality and existence.

Jim Finley:

And turning to Marcel, I want to… In my approach, I want to stay true to the spirit of the Turning to the Mystics podcast. By that I mean this. I’m going to feel very free in exploring in very explicit terms the mystical dimensions of Marcel’s thought. There will in many cases be very present but implicit in his thought as a philosopher. It gets more and more explicitly mystical as he goes along, because he explores being. He realizes that his being is ultimately understood as infinite intelligence and infinite love, and that being is infinite and eternal, and ultimately it’s a God.

But still, he’s looking at it philosophically as the mystery of being, but I’m going to keep weaving it in to explicitly mystical language that the listeners are used to. Likewise, when we do the coaching session, I want to do a session on how to pray with Marcel, like what would it be to practice Lectio Divina meditation prayer and sitting in contemplation under the guidance of Gabriel Marcel. And that way, we’ll be of one accord in the spirit of the podcast.

Kirsten Oates:

Lovely. Just to say that back to you, Jim, that just like with T.S. Eliot’s poetry, we could have studied that for many different angles, as a literary work, as the way he expanded on the poetic rhythms, but you honed in on the mystical aspects of it, and so you’re going to do the same with Marcel.

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right. And using T.S. Eliot as an example, he has amazing, a very contemporary insights into the nature of time. Runs through the whole thing. Then he starts looking, though, where time opens out on eternity, like the eternality, like that which never passes away, ribbon through everything endlessly passing away, and is getting more and more open. And he explicitly ties that in then with Christ.

And so, Marcel does the very same thing. But in his philosophy, he doesn’t explicitly tie it, eventually, with his Catholic faith, but he ties it in with being as ultimately realize to be infinite, and eternal, and ultimately to be God. Come to through a mystical illumination of the nature of reality itself outside of religion. I think it’s kind of refreshing. It sees the universality of the presence of God, that the religions bear witness to the presence of God overflows religious belief systems and overflows into reality itself.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

The passage of time, the sun moving across the sky, what does it mean to love, what does it mean to die, is to see the divinity of the immediacy of these foundational things.

Kirsten Oates:

And that’s really how you define the mystic, Jim, is someone who experiences that presence in reality. And so for Marcel, once he had that in-depth experience, he saw that the Christian language and symbolism lined up with what he experienced.

Jim Finley:

Yes. I’m saying this, too, about what we’re saying who mystics are. He says, for example… He’s talking about being, the fullness of being. And he says, “We really can’t define it because it’s not categorizable. We can’t categorize that which is the source of all categorizations.” He says, “So really, it’s given to us not as a thought, but it’s given to us as a presence. We need to look at the moments we become more deeply present, and we experience that we’re somehow present in a way that we’re subsisting in a boundaryless presence. So we have to shift into that meditative mode of consciousness.”

So he’s going to say, “We all have little fleeting moments of presence,” and we might say in those moments were a momentary mystic. Mystics are those for whom that the divinity of the immediacy of what is is an underlying habitual state of sensitivity. And that’s what he’s leading us to. So he’s going to say, “Well, now that we’ve borne witness to this mystical dimension of presence, and we can see how elusive it is, what are the ways, what’s the path talk? What’s the path along which we can be habitually established in the divinity of presence?” And that’s where he follows the teachings of the mystic. They first bear witness to the divinity of what is. But then, what are the signs that were being lured toward a longing to abide in that oneness so fleeting, like glimpse? And then what’s the path along… Like the way of a pilgrim. See, what’s the path along…

And this is just what Marcel is doing. And the three ways he explores is fidelity, hope, and love. He looks very deeply at the fidelity dimensions of our life and how by exploring it and surrendering to it we can be habitually established and ever more mystical sensitivity to the divinity of the immediacy of standing up and sitting down of life itself.

Kirsten Oates:

So just like with many of the mystics, you talk about these vision aspects and then the path aspects.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

So the vision being like a worldview and then the path being how we might experientially find ourselves entering into that.

Jim Finley:

Yes. And I want to say something here. In my first session that I’ll be doing alone, I’ll be laying out the vision aspects of Marcel’s thought, like what’s life looked like through awakened eyes, the mystical worldview. And then we’re going to move from there and pointing out the ways that Marcel notices, ways that we all fleetingly sense that ourselves and we’re like a momentary mystic, in moments of awakened presence would become more present.

So then he says, “But notice how elusive it is. It’s very fleeting. It comes and goes.” So then he switches into path talk. What is the way of life where the path along which we become ever more habitually established in this boundaryless presence is presencing itself as our presence, the presence of all things?” And he does that by exploring the mystery of fidelity, the mystery of hope, and the mystery of love as three modalities of this path of mystical awakening.

He’s going to describe it in such a way we can tell he’s putting words to what we’ve experienced, and he’s helping us be more sensibly established in that. And one of the themes that I’ll be exploring, because it’s the heart of his teaching… I want to say it briefly here to just say it. He starts out he wants us to understand the nature between the problematic and mysterious dimension of our lives. And the problematic dimension are the problems that we face that are dualistically other than us.

So for example, the fact that my car won’t start is a problem, or the fact that some kind of insects are destroying my vegetable garden is a problem. Or there’s a mathematical question. How do I get the answer? So what we look for in the problematic, which is the realm of science, we look for a method to help us solve the problem. And then when we solve the problem, we move on to the next problem.

But he says, “A mystery is different. Because when we turn towards what’s mysterious, we’re turning towards that which includes us.” So when I ask, “What does it mean to be a human being?” it’s always me as a human being asking what is it to be a human being. When I ask, “What is consciousness?” it’s me and my consciousness asking what is consciousness. “What is love?” it’s me and my capacity for love asking what is love, what is death. So, being human, and consciousness, and love and death aren’t problems, they’re mysteries.

But here’s the key to Marcel’s thought. It doesn’t mean it includes us as everything reverts back to our subjective opinion, our subjective feeling. He means the opposite. He means it includes us in that we’re included in infinity of being itself as his portal or as his manifestation, as his thing. And that’s the mystical part of Marcel’s thought. He says, “I’m carried along by a mystery that transcends me and endlessly includes me as it manifests itself as me and one with the boundarylessness. And how do I come to the realization of that, and how do I live in that?” That’s what’s mystical about Marcel’s thought-

Kirsten Oates:

Wow.

Jim Finley:

… I think. Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. I just need to take a pause there. That was beautiful. Very inspiring. That really touched my heart deeply when you… I’m part of something that transcends me, but includes me.

Jim Finley:

Always includes me, because I’m woven into it, woven into me, carrying myself out, being endlessly identified with that which is endless.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

So, this is where he goes into his themes that we’re eternal, that we’re boundaryless. And you can tell by Marcel’s thought this is where we’ll be going very slow, because you can’t… Just like TSL, you can’t skim-read Gabriel Marcel. The medium is the message. We have to speak of it in an unhurried, poetic, invitational way that as the people are listening, they get a sense… It’s a way of putting words to what their awakening heart knows is true. It helps them to be more established in sensitivity to this dimension of themselves in the day by day.

Turning to the Mystics will continue in a moment.

Kirsten Oates:

Even the way you describe the difference between a problem and mystery, helps me understand why you have to pause and go slow on the side of mystery because the problem is objective. It has cause and effect. There’s a solution that can be stepped through. It’s linear, but then mystery takes us into a whole different-

Jim Finley:

Very different.

Kirsten Oates:

… experience. Yeah.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. And another key insight to Marcel, I think, where he’s always trying to help us see this practically, is he talks about primary and secondary reflection. So he says, “Primary reflection is reflecting on what’s objectively real and quantifiable as other than us,” my car won’t start, all that primary reflection. “Secondary reflection is the reflection of realizing the inadequacy of primary reflection, by being experientially grounded in that which transcends that which can be answered as a presence.”

And so the very way of listening to him, we can follow him by listening to his voice. He’s moving us into a secondary reflection. Otherwise, we couldn’t follow him. He’s not defining anything because it’s not definable. He’s not explaining it. It’s not explainable, because there’s no it to it. It’s not an it. It’s the infinite abyss-like reality of every it.

I think what Marcel’s doing also, I often think, he’s putting words to things that in our own awakening heart we know is true but we tend to forget. And he’s helping us remember and be more present to this unitive mystery that alone is ultimately real and we are its manifestation.

Kirsten Oates:

I’m curious about… You said he uses, in terms of the path, fidelity, hope, and love, which sounds very similar to faith, hope, and love, but you said he doesn’t put a Christian spin on it.

Jim Finley:

Yes. On purpose. He deliberately is avoiding the theological language of Paul, like faith, hope, and love of these people, love is the greatest. So he’s removing it from his revelation and scripture, faith, hope and love. And he’s removing it to how is the mystery of fidelity realizing the depth dimensions of life itself. How is hope realized in the dimensions of life itself?

For example, he’s going to start exploring how hope is not hoping for something that might happen psychologically. Hope is hoping that we’ll be ever more experientially grounded in what alone is ultimately already happening, is hope. So, that’s what he does.

And then when he turns to love, especially where he turns on that we’re eternal. You know you’ve learned to love someone when you’ve seen in them that which is too beautiful to die. And you know you’ll learn to love yourself when you see that in you that is too beautiful to die. So that’s the tone of Marcel’s thought.

Kirsten Oates:

Hearing you reflect on him, there’s a lot of themes you’ve pulled out in the mystics across our season. So, Gabriel’s obviously been a big influence on you, Jim, in the way you approach mystics.

Jim Finley:

He really. Yes, he has. Very much so.

So for example, St. John of the Cross says, “To have no light to guide you except the one that burns in your heart.” That’s very beautiful. And the light that burns in your heart is the light of God’s love. He’s shining out from your heart. And that’s the light of Gabriel Marcel. It’s the light that shining out from his heart. So as we listen to him, it starts shining out from our. And so you could see the threads of continuity or fit resonances. That’s what I mean by the mystical dimensions of Marcel’s thought.

Kirsten Oates:

Did you study philosophy in the monastery?

Jim Finley:

Yes. I should say this, too, is that when I was in the monastery, I was first introduced to Marcel. Thomas Burton would speak to the novices. He would mention Marcel and different people. But I also had an opportunity for two years to study a Philosophical Theology of the Middle Ages from Daniel Walsh. And Daniel Walsh got his doctoral dissertation of philosophy from Étienne Gilson, who was a famous Catholic philosopher of the Middle Ages.

So, I got to sit very deeply study with the Neoplatonic, Augustinian, Franciscan philosophical theology, the Primacy of Love of Duns Scotus and Bonaventure, and so on. But then also the Aristotelian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologica.

And that metaphysical language also had a very deep effect on me. So when I read Marcel, he’s in that, “How do we put words to what it means to be?” And also, we’d say this… Another way of saying it, this for example, is that God is not a being that exists. It isn’t we believe in some invisible being that exists. Rather, God is the word that we use for the infinity of being itself, being the infinity of being itself. And ultimately, we’re not either, because we’re subsisting in that. That’s what it means to be a person.

So that kind of metaphysical language, for some reason, it always felt very… I like it. And I think it’s implicitly present in deep psychotherapy, too. And the depths of psychotherapy. It’s like a language for the undefinable, unexplainable gift of yourself. It’s precious in your brokenness. And really, it’s the unveiling of your being. It’s the unveiling of your presence.

Kirsten Oates:

So those philosophers you mentioned that you studied for those two years, they were explicitly Christian. But then when you turned to Marcel, you found that implicit same mystical depth.

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right. And we’ll be turning to other philosophers, too, like Carl Yaspers, for example, as a philosopher. And so Carl Yaspers says, “The known is always accompanied by the Unknown.” And he said, “We might be tempted to think that we just keep knowing more, and more, and more we can overcome the unknown, but something in us rebels against us.” And he calls the unknown the all-encompassing. And the all-encompassing is the humility in which we have clarity with the known. He’s talking as a philosopher. But you can see that the spiritual resonance is in the depth and the beauty of that kind of language, and Marcel’s like that.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, yeah. It’s beautiful to have this different approach because I know as we’ve studied the different mystics and then the poet T.S. Eliot, some kind of mystical language just resonates better with certain people, doesn’t it?

Jim Finley:

Yes, it does.

Kirsten Oates:

So you love philosophy. It’s very resonant for you.

Jim Finley:

For me. That’s right. And later on, as we keep going, I want to look at the mystical traditions of all the great world’s religions of Judaism, deep study of Torah and Kabbalah, the deep study of Hinduism, Namaste. I am that. The deep study of the Buddha turning the wheel of the Dharma, what he realized on the night of his enlightenment, and how can we realize what the Buddha realized this way.

And so, we’re going to be looking also these different languages of the universality, of this mystical dimension of the immediacy of ourself as wisdom traditions. And so, each listener will listen, and some of it won’t speak to them at all. I mean, to each their own. A certain one that doesn’t speak to you, somebody else kind of goes, “Wow.” But when you go wow with someone, not for them. It shows you it’s universally personal, but it’s good to just be receptively open to all these voices. Because if you really listen, there’s kind of a musical quality that runs through all of them.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And I think we’re trying to tune into that and stay with that.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s the beauty of staying with you, Jim, across the seasons because you resonate at that same note. And even if we’ve discovered that the mystic is not for us going forward, I think there’s always something to get from each one, another angle of your understanding.

Jim Finley:

I want to add something else, too, as a clarifying note. These basic themes of Marcel, they were found throughout all of his writings. And so, there’s a book by Kenneth Gallagher called The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, who himself is a gifted philosopher. And so what he did, he went through all those writings and brought them into a succinct order in a single book. And Gabriel Marcel wrote the foreword to his writings and endorsed it and said, “Gallagher, this is it.” So what we’re always trying to do is, without watering these teachings down, to make them as accessible as possible, so I’ll be very carefully following Gallagher’s work.

Kirsten Oates:

So that’s the main book you’ll be using for this season?

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Because I’ll be using his sequence. And also then when he quotes Marcel, it’ll be in the context of that sequence. And I’m doing it for those who are… A lot of people won’t be inclined, but those who are so inclined can get Gallagher’s book.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. It’s called The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, and Kenneth T. Gallagher. The edition that I have is Cluny Press, Providence, Rhode Island. We’ll be posting this or clarifying it for people.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

2020 I think it came out. Likewise, when I go through quoting, I always give the page number in this edition of Gallagher. The other work that I’ll be using primarily is Gabriel Marcel’s own essay on the ontological mystery, meaning the mystery of being that the self embodies. And the ontological mystery is the first chapter of his book called The Philosophy of Existentialism. And the philosophy of Existentialism was reissued under a new title, The Philosophy of Existence.

Kirsten Oates:

Ah, yeah.

Jim Finley:

And so, I’ll be quoting also from that and giving the page numbers in that edition. And again, The Philosophy of Existence is Cluny Press, Providence, Rhode Island. So it’ll be the Ontological Mystery of Marcel and The Philosophy of Existence, and the Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel by Kenneth Gallagher. And those are the two main texts, but I’ll be referring to several others, but kind of more in passing, but always give the texts, and the title, and the author, and so on. So those who care to pursue it, like trying to make it as accessible and simple as possible, they can get a hold of Gallagher and sit down with it and get a cup of herb tea and settle in. You know what I mean?

Kirsten Oates:

Sounds good. Sounds very good.

Jim Finley:

But what we’re trying to do here is, without watering it down, illuminate it so you can put a language to this. It’s very simple, actually. Then once you get used to it, if you’re drawn to do it, it can be a kind of Lectio Divina to slowly sit with the obscurity of a text and underline it. It’s almost a kind of a meditatio, if you’re drawn to it. To each his own.

Kirsten Oates:

It’s reminiscent to me of Meister Eckhart, as I read Gallagher and Meister Eckhart. It’s got a similar kind of sense to it.

Jim Finley:

That’s a very good insight. See, because notice in St. John of the Cross, he gives a certain way to pray in Passage Through a Dark Night. Notice in Teresa of Ávila, she gives a certain way to pray as you enter the fourth mansion. Notice in A Ladder of Monks, Guigo II, he gives a certain way to pray. With Eckhart, there’s no way to pray.

Kirsten Oates:

Right.

Jim Finley:

Because what he does is he teaches a path of detachment, which meaning don’t have closure and any thought about anything at all. Don’t reject anything, but just know that… Don’t rest there as if it’s enough. And as you learn to be released from your dependence on thinking, a brighter life starts shining to existence itself, the birth of the word in the soul in life itself. And Marcel’s very much like that. That’s true.

Merton was very much like that, too. Merton never offers a way to practice contemplation. He gives insights into it, but mainly he’s concerned about the way of life, of how do we taste the divinity of the rhythms of existence itself. And so Merton, and Eckhart, and Marcel, you see that same thread running and others as well.

Kirsten Oates:

And you said Merton was the one that introduced you to Marcel?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, he’d give talks to the novices, and he would mention St. Augustine, different people. So, he would always be saying Marcel. But it wasn’t until I studied metaphysics with Dan Walsh and he would start talking about these medieval philosophers, as well as contemporary philosophers, and he spoke so highly of Marcel. So then when I got Marcel and started reading him, I was so moved by how beautiful his mind is. I thought, “Well, what a stunning presence Marcel is.” And I’ve been reading him ever since over the years.

Kirsten Oates:

I love that story from your memoir where you talked about how you’d never thought of yourself as intelligent, and then you started studying philosophy and metaphysics and your brain just lit up with understanding-

Jim Finley:

It did.

Kirsten Oates:

… and excitement. Yeah.

Jim Finley:

You know what’s interesting [inaudible 00:33:07], I was 18 at the time. It’s really interesting when a person discovers a gifted dimension of themselves they didn’t know existed, when they first light up about music, or dance, or poetry. You know what I mean? Or mathematics. They light up inside. Like something lights up, and that’s what it was for me.

And then I merged. The metaphysic and the mystical were woven into each other simultaneously, and it’s that… How they each mirror each other was really kind of foundational for me, along with all the world religions, the mystical lineages. And then later, I saw it as the depth dimension of healing as a psychotherapist. That is the depth dimension of the healing encounter. I think this way, yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

It’s one of the reasons I’m excited to study this alongside you, Jim, is just knowing that about your life and how this language awakened you to this aspect of yourself. Yeah.

Jim Finley:

Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

You knew someone who met Marcel.

Jim Finley:

Yes. There was a woman who came to one of my retreats. She had moved to France, and she didn’t know French. She just moved to France from England, I think. And Marcel invite people once a week to come to his living room at night to sit together in a circle, an intimate setting. She was invited to one of the professors to sit in on those evenings. And even though she didn’t understand a word of Marcel, being in his presence was so moving to her-

Kirsten Oates:

Oh, wow.

Jim Finley:

… so she learned French. So, she gave me three volumes of Marcel’s writings in French. I was studying French for a while, but I never stayed with it. But I was so touched by how moved she was by his presence.

And I think with all these mystics who when we read them in a sincere way, you sense the presence of Marcel. See, that’s why I say who was he historically to help understand who he is spiritually, because his deathless presence is in the beauty of his voice. It goes right to our heart. It speaks to us as perennial.

Kirsten Oates:

One of the interesting things about him is that he wrote a lot of plays, and they weren’t popular, and he was disappointed by that.

Jim Finley:

Yes. Yes, he was disappointed, see, because he’s so concerned about life. Because when you really look at it, Shakespeare, whatever, the powerful thing about a play, it reveals us to ourself. See, it helps us to see a dimension of life about ourselves.

So his plays, the characters in the play are embodying his philosophy. They’re embodying the sense of being. They’re embodying fidelity. They’re embodying it. And it was disappointing that it never really caught on.

Kirsten Oates:

Jim, how do you think Marcel’s insights help us with our modern challenges, with everyday life?

Jim Finley:

I think this is true of the mystics, too. I think this is true of Jesus and the Buddha faith. The thing about modern life, I think, and I think of the current political scene and the war in Ukraine and so on, we get so caught up in the intensity of the historical situation, it closes off experiential access to the depth dimensions of our life this way.

And that’s what trauma is, really. Trauma’s a traumatized capacity to be experientially grounded in the abyss-like depth that’s sustaining us always. Come what may, even up to the moment of our death, we get reduced to the outcome of the situation. “Oh, how’s this going to turn out?” Not that it doesn’t matter how it turns out, and not that we shouldn’t be present as we’re called to do so, to be a force toward the good as we think it should work, but it’s to be grounded in an inner peace. It’s not dependent on the outcome of our efforts because it’s the peace of God on which everything depends. And I think Marcel helps reestablish us in that.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful.

Jim Finley:

I think also, I have to say this too, lastly, he reestablishes us in that insofar as we linger in it long enough to let it soak in. See, if we just read it in passing before we turn on the TV and have lunch, it doesn’t touch us at all. So we have to be drawn by the beauty of his language to sit with it, to soak in and find a grounding place within ourself of that which he speaks. And I think that’s how he’s helpful.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. Well, I’m excited to linger on Marcel with you this season, Jim, and I’m sure our listeners will be also. So, what a great introduction. And we’ll put the details about the books you’ll be using in the show notes so that if anyone wants to read along, they can get the books. And I think that’s it for our first introduction.

Thank you, Dorothy and Corey in the background, and Vanessa now. We have some additional support. And Jim, thank you so much. I’m excited to do this season with you.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, me too.

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.