The Oates Journal (ISSN: 1098-1446) is a publication of the Wayne E. Oates Institute addressing issues related to spirituality, ethics, and healing from the perspective of pastoral care and counseling.

Hindsight

I chose my dissertation topic through a serendipitous process of elimination. I knew I wanted to do a hands-on study of a world religion, and Native American religion was accessible geographically and financially. I chose European-American women as my focus because I knew that no meaningful study of Native people was possible in the time available--and because of my interest in feminist thought.

When I drove west in May of 1991 for three months of field work among women totally outside my range of experience, I did so with many misgivings. Although years of critical thinking at Louisville's Southern Seminary had shredded most of my fundamentalist presuppositions, now and again I still felt the after-effects of Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri. I recognized them in the anxious question I asked Dr. Edward Thornton, my dissertation supervisor, before leaving, "What if the spiritual forces I open up to in my research are evil?" In essence, he answered, "Pray, and dive in." So I did.

Studying world religions with John Jonsson had made phenomenological methodology second nature to me. I fully intended to take part in the scheduled Native American workshops as an impartial participant observer. But what does it mean to be a participant observer? To truly attempt to enter into the mindset of a culture as if it were your own, as if your most inviolable beliefs had no prior claim on your loyalties? For me that summer it felt like losing my way, questioning the worth of every path, wandering into thick mist with no promise of clearing.

I returned from my summer of spirit-journeys, sweat lodges, vision quests, and shield-building more alive than I had felt for years, but deeply conflicted. The women's voices I had recorded seemed to speak from my own buried heart, unlocking grief and anger I had never allowed myself to feel. The actual writing of my dissertation became the first step in a journey of reconciliation between my alienated self, the tradition of my birth, and my new experience of the grace of God/ess in the living earth. This journey has become the task of a lifetime.

In hindsight, the integration I struggled to achieve in my dissertation was prophetic of the path I have followed since its completion. Many of its questions are my questions today. What is the face of Deity for me? Can that face ever change? Does the Creator show the same face to all humankind? How does God/ess speak to human beings on the cusp of the twenty-first century? How significant are personal experiences of Deity in light of traditional claims of revelation? Can firm distinctions be drawn between imagination and vision? What possibilities for wisdom, as well as for emotional and physical healing, lie in spiritual experience? What is humanity's place in the family of creation? To what extent is the Creator's spirit present in nature? Does God/ess communicate to human beings through other created beings? How much responsibility does humankind bear for the fate of the earth? The questions roll off my tongue like a seeker's catechism.

Today

Although, for me, the face of Christ will always overshadow any others, one answer has spoken clearly to my heart: God/ess does not show the same face to all who come seeking. In unimaginable grace and love, the Creator offers us the face we are best able to see; that face changes as we change, just as it changes from culture to culture. We all see through a glass darkly; on a day yet to come we will see face to face.

I look at world religions today through this lens. Earth-based religions, wherever we find them, have always known that the Creator has many faces, and they honor them all, wherever they perceive them--in the eyes of beasts, the spirit of trees and rocks, the power of the elements, dreams of spirit-beings, the love and wisdom of human beings, the aweful majesty of the God Above Gods, and the Mystery of all that is. Some images are clearer than others, some traditions more faithful to their truth. It seems to me that the visionaries of later religious movements focused on particular aspects of Deity always present in primal religion, and amplified them singly as best they could, in the light of God\ess' revelation.

With the establishment of the world's "great" religions, we have come full circle to the beginning again. Today we can look at each of the Creator's faces with the understanding and wisdom that each tradition has brought to this great portrait. Contemporary people can often see this portrait most clearly through a transformed primal vision, where established religious traditions do not compete for preeminence: thus, perhaps, our present enthusiasm for earth-based religions. Mystics of all traditions have been telling us these same things for centuries, if only we had ears to hear.

My own experience of God/ess since stepping out on the path opened by my dissertation has led me to accept the Creator's presence in non-human nature as personal fact. Beasts and birds come bearing messages of Spirit. If I listen attentively, trees speak in their own language. The earth comes alive. I would be classified, academically speaking, as a panentheist: one who believes that Deity is greater than all of the created universe, yet present in all of it. I try not to place limits on the mysteries of creation or Deity's activity in it. Whenever I do, I seem to invite object lessons on the limits of rational thought.

When these lessons come, they inevitably tear my life from its safe moorings, casting me into existential chaos. Then poetry is often the only language possible to express my pain: because change--massive paradigm shifts like those we are experiencing in our society--cannot be absorbed without pain.

O God of my birth

how can I trust

what I cannot prove I know?

Nowhere can I find it

in the Book

nor Acts

nor Annals

nor yet the Revelations.

The Fathers know it not

while the Mothers

draw back in shadows

silent.

What is wisdom?

How does it come to be?

When does human flesh

pause

and know itself

ennobled with the gift?

I sit

confounded

within the whirlwind's eye

flinging prayers

like pebbles

out

to track their flight.

Where is my solid rock

when all beneath my feet

is but shape-changer's laughter?

 

-- Carol L. Francisco

excerpt from "Tracks,"

unpublished poem.

 

Do I scoff at the possibility of angels? One is sure to cross my path. Do I look askance at spirit guides? One will certainly appear to me. Do I doubt the continuing existence of human souls from earth's distant past? An ancient forebear will speak wisdom to me in dreams. Do I dare to question the validity of visions? A waking dream will deliver a hundred-volt charge. Logic is no defense where I walk now; God will not be bound by our theology.

At times I wonder how many of us walk here today. I suspect there are more than I know. Perhaps, as the prophet Joel prophesied, God is pouring his spirit out upon us in greater and greater abundance as we push ourselves closer to ecological disaster. Perhaps, as Carl Jung foretold, with the waning of Christian symbols, more of us are learning to plug into the Source. I can only hope one or the other is true: unless we learn to value humanity and the creation within which we have our being, soon we may have no more chances to do so.

Tomorrow

As I contemplate the next ten years, I fear for our species and our planet. My professional efforts are engaged in doing what I can to contribute to the healing of both. As I teach inner city college students in religion, I aim for two goals: first, by taking students through the steps of learning theory for themselves, I hope to help them begin to think creatively and make informed judgments of their own. Second, by exposing them to the power of religious Story, I hope to create in them a hunger for such Story in their lives--a hunger that will leave them dissatisfied with the counterfeits that too often pass for Story in the mass media.

As a research director for a non-profit institute, I am one of many trying to bridge the gap of prejudice that alienates science and religion, and thus cripples the capacity each has for healing our world. Here also I work with story, seeking again to awaken within average people a hunger and appreciation for real Story that nourishes the soul and heals the spirit. We each have stories to tell--if only to ourselves--stories that can heal if they can somehow connect to the deep Stories woven into the fabric of creation.

As a woman with a voice in the Church, I try to point those who will listen toward non-human nature. Serious time spent in company with the earth can do more to encourage sensitivity to God/ess' presence among us than all the words in the world. Trees may do more to open walled-off hearts than months of sermons. Streams could replace Xanax; mountains offer cures for high blood pressure; wilderness solitude nudges blood sugar down. Nature might keep us human.

Just as it holds out hope for human healing, this ancient cure--recently reclassified as eco-therapy--may offer hope for wilderness as well. If unmolested nature indeed heals human ills, then perhaps at last we have found for it a monetary value even business can respect: wilderness cuts health-care costs.

The One

stands joyful

in our mighty groves

as if no sword of separation

ever fell.

The burning love of God

flames hot within

and human sin

can never quench its glow

though all the world turns black

with hatred's fever.

Perchance

my child

among you there are legion

who will never heed

Creator's voice

nor see that hope endures

on earth

if they do not

at first perceive that voice

that hope

outside the human roar.

 

 

-- Carol L. Francisco

excerpt from "Song for a Moist Heart,"

unpublished poem.

Must Read Resources

Frank, Arthur W. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

 

Arthur Frank finds wisdom and healing in the story of his own woundedness, as well as the woundedness of others; he summons readers to the same awareness of story in their own lives.

 

L'Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. New York: North Point Press, 1995.

Madeleine L'Engle shares with readers a glimpse of her own discovery of touching the Sacred and participating in Mystery through the creation of her art.

Momaday, N. Scott. The Ancient Child: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

N. Scott Momaday tells the story of a man driven to return to his spiritual roots in order to survive in the present; as time loses its linear thread, and past and future overlap, he finds healing by facing his own worst darkness, and in doing so, brings healing to all Creation.

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