Loving in an Age of Darkness

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This blog is second in a series on an interview with Rowan Williams in the New York Times that was so cogent, so relevant to my goal of helping people searching for God that I don’t want to deprive the blog’s readers of any of his wisdom. So, I’m using the interview in successive blogs. For those of you unfamiliar with him, Williams is a poet, theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury - principal leader of the Church of England. The Times story, is entitled, “The New Atheists Attack a God I Don’t Believe In, Either.”

Back when I was in the seminary, studying to be a priest, one of my classmates and I got into a conversation in which he said regarding my faith: “It must be nice to be so certain, to be so sure of it all.”

I denied such certainty but without providing details. Fact is, I struggled with faith during my time in the seminary and have done so much of my life. Mostly through centering prayer, I believe I’m getting better at recognizing God in others, in the natural world and in myself – the most difficult "place" of all.

Just Around the Corner

Mine is sometimes the “just around the corner” kind of faith that Rowan Williams talks about in this interview. I believe, and have done what I can to inform myself about my faith, but sometimes God is still around the corner of my spiritual vision.

I sometimes doubt God’s existence, but more often my ability to relate to God, an experience shared with Williams.

“Looking back,” said Williams, “there have been very few times when I felt what you might call a substantive doubt of the whole thing. You know, “Is any of this true?” It’s much more, “Does any of this make sense where I am?

“…How much am I making (faith) my own? How much is it really making sense of where I am? And there have been periods, especially of personal loss and personal awareness of struggle and uncertainty, where it’s been not so much I doubt that God exists, but I don’t know whether I’m connecting with what’s there — and I don’t know how to.

Rowan Williams
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“And, of course, there may be times when you have an absolutely traumatic shock to everything you believe in and everything you hold dear.”

In that regard, Williams quotes a troubled character in a book he read who is “living next door to a convent, and all he can do is to go to Mass every morning. And I thought, yes, I see what’s going on there. He’s doing the next thing. He’s treading water, you might say, but also, he knows something can be done — not to keep the darkness at bay but to keep breathing, to keep moving, to keep open to something.”

For me, the best way to do that is through prayer, not for “results” exactly, but to be, and stay, as close to God as possible. And one of the “places” I feel closest to God is at the Catholic Mass.

One of the greatest influences on Williams’ spiritual life has been the famous Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who in his book “The Brothers Karamazov” a character talks about the suffering of children. And that, says Williams, is “Dostoyevsky saying: ‘You think you have reason for not believing?” And referring to the suffering children, “I can show even better reasons for not believing.”

Make Your Choice

But Dostoyevsky’s response is to say that “love is possible in the middle of this. The moment of reconciliation, of love, of forgiveness, of acceptance is as real as all the nightmares that he describes. Dostoyevsky, as it were, flings down his pen and says: ‘Well, there you are. You make your choice. The world is full of evidence against love, against reconciliation, against the possibility of a God who holds the world.

“The probabilities stack up in a fairly unpromising way, and then a moment happens where the light gets in, where something in the world refuses to be crushed….”

That reminder, I believe, is crucial in our times when love, kindness and compassion seem scarce amid antipathy and indifference - to remember that God, who is love, is everywhere and in everyone.