One Priest’s Wondering Beliefs - John E. Bowers

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knowledge of western philosophers and Christian mystics he simply talks on the tapes, wandering from topic to topic, never exhausting one before he moves on, but frequently returning to revisit topics, moving in a circular or spiral pattern, all about the spiritual life. That is obviously his first love, teaching about the spiritual life. He does it well. And he takes me places, points out to me things that no one else has ever mentioned to me. He introduced me to the interior life, and to my soul which lives at the back of the interior landscape behind my eyes. And he invited me to spend some of myself exploring that interior landscape and getting acquainted with my soul.

      Over my years I have gradually come to conclude that there are basically two poles to the spiritual life. The external thrust is to spend oneself delivering God’s love (that is, mercy AND justice) to the world, to those around me. Feeding the poor, lobbying on behalf of the oppressed, being God’s active agent in the world. This is the social action effort of the church and of Christian people, really of all godly people. The other pole, the inward thrust is the exploration of the interior landscape, the befriending of one’s own soul, becoming close to the God who is the ground of our being and who is found through the soul. I learned some about that during my stay with the Cistercians; they did not teach me directly, I simply observed them, and heard squibs about their doing of it. Brother Gildas was taught his “cell would teach him everything he needed to know.” It took me a while to get myself around that idea. But when I heard O’Donohue talking about the interior landscape, and getting acquainted with one’s soul, I think I began to understand how the solitude and silence of the monk’s cell would teach one everything he needed to know.

      My ministries have always been focused on institutional issues, social system dynamics and such; and I have pushed gently toward social action, perhaps too gently. And I have ever so gradually tried to offer more and more around the inward journey, about the spiritual life, about the feeding of the soul. But I have been struck that very few are interested in that kind of stuff. Maybe it is food for only a few. Maybe the inward journey, like psychoanalysis, is only for a very few. Maybe the population of monasteries is about at the right level for the total population of our era. But as I age, I am more and more inclined to think that is what it’s really all about. That spiritual stuff is the real cornerstone. Both poles must be there for a healthy spirituality; but all the social action in the world is worthless to the doer without at least a bit of the inward thrust. Some of us are better at one than the other; but we all need some of both.

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      There are probably some other foundation stones which I have not yet thought to describe, or which may be so deeply buried that I am not even aware of them. If you poke and prod a bit in me we may together discover some more of them. This spiritual structure of mine is definitely a work in progress. But I suspect that these are the more important of those stones.

      Chapter 2: The Stepstones of My Pilgrimage

      –or–

      How I Got from Preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ to This Place in a Spiritual Desert

      There have been a few stepping stones as I wandered in this spiritual wilderness, stones that have given me a firm footing for at least one step, that have guided me, or even directed my wandering. I will tell you about them.

      But before I start I must first state a few axioms about my spiritual wanderings. The first I learned from my homiletics teacher. One day after class he corralled me, “Jack, you have an absolutely puritanical sense of honesty.” That comment followed on my refusal to preach what I did not myself believe (I had refused to parrot an obvious but obnoxious theological point). My puritanical honesty seemed a strange notion to him. I mulled over that notion of my puritanical honesty only a few instants and then agreed. As you read you need to be aware that I do have a puritanical sense of honesty. It is one of my drivers.

      The second of my axioms is that St. Luke’s is my chosen circle of standing stones. American Protestant Episcopalianism is the DNA of my spiritual bones, it is the flowing blood that gives me life. I was born into it; I chose it; it shaped me, my mind, my spirit. I could choose no other, even if I wanted to. And St. Luke’s is the flesh and spirit and community of American Protestant spirituality which I have chosen. I may be still somewhat new to most members, but St. Luke’s is today parent and forebear to me. So wherever my spiritual pilgrimage might lead me, St. Luke’s is a given, is axiomatic. That is not as simple as a conscious choice; it is home, and in my bones. It matters not what I think, what I believe, what direction my soul wanders, St. Luke’s is my circle of standing stones. It is where I live, even on days when I seem not part of it.

      My other axiom is this: as a servant of the church I have always been more of a searcher than I ought to have been. I was employed to tend to the institution; my drivenness was to relentlessly search for truth. Those two motivators are in conflict. Those who tend the institution serve best docilely and parrot-wise. My sense was always that we (church professionals) spent far too much energy and investment on very dumb institution matters, and far too little on helping people develop their spirituality and spiritual lives. But that latter impulse dumbfounded me because I, for one, did NOT know how to enable people’s spiritual lives, nor did I know anyone who could teach me how to do that. That seems to have been a lost art in the church. So I struggled very hard trying to keep peace within me toward the orthodox teachings of the church, mainly through my studies, particularly studies of the Scriptures, all the while stumbling along to keep the institution from bumbling into some roadside ditch. And finally I retired! I was no longer required by my professional responsibilities to stay within the boundaries of orthodoxy. I was free to wander! And so I have. Far and wide. Searching.

      For the next step of this narrative I borrow an image from my readings of sea-stories, particularly of the Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower series: there was once upon a time a naval battle maneuver called “club-hauling.” When a sailing ship in battle (a smaller warship, e.g., a frigate) was in immanent peril of being taken by broadside or boarding, one extreme means to escape was to turn the ship so sharply that the pursuer could not turn simultaneously and therefore lost tactical advantage, so that the pursued could then re-engage from a more advantageous position, or else flee to escape. Club-hauling was perhaps the only way to execute such a radical turn of a ship, and it could only be done in waters shallow enough that an anchor could reach and grab the bottom. While at full speed the captain dropped the anchor on that side of the bow to which he needed to turn. As the anchor grabbed the bottom it was stopped off and would then jerk the head of the ship toward that side wrenching the ship into that direction so quickly that the engaging enemy could not react fast enough to keep his advantage. The one disadvantage of this maneuver was the loss of the anchor; the cable had to be cut the very instant the ship was turned, and before the anchor slowed the forward motion of the ship; under those conditions there was no opportunity to retrieve the anchor; a best bower was expensive equipment. But to rescue the ship in battle, or better yet, to turn the tide of the battle was worth that cost. Club-hauling.

      In my spiritual pilgrimage since retirement I have experienced several club-haulings, books that have so violently jerked my head around as to send me spiritually off in an entirely other direction, escaping the muddle I was in, wondering whether to re-engage or to flee. While not as spiritually painful as my middler year of seminary when my childish theological foundations were necessarily ripped up and a more solid set of theological foundation stones set into place, while less painful, these have been equally traumatic and have sent my spirit wandering off in equally new and different directions.

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