Notes and
Reflections for a talk on Franciscan Mysticism by Maury Smith
1c
A psychospiritual hermeneutic.doc
Part I 1c A psychospiritual hermeneutic
Part II Tips on How to Read Francis,
Bonaventure and Angela.
Part I 1c A psychospiritual hermeneutic
First Reflection:
As I have been reading the primary
Franciscan source texts of the FAED and the commentaries on the Franciscan
sources I keep wondering about the uniqueness of the literary genre of the
self-revelations of the mystics.
Questions arise in my mind about the criteria for naming someone or
someone’s writings as mystical. I cannot
give these first reflections the dignity of calling this a prolegomenon of a
psychospritual hermeneutics but rather they are simply a beginning of an
interdisciplinary approach to questions about the meaning of written texts from
the viewpoint of communication theory, therapeutic communication and
interpersonal communication. Perhaps this is similar to epistemology in which
we attempt to answer the question of how do we know. Rather here we are attempting to establish
criteria for how do we know the meaning of a text when the interaction is
between a dynamic human living person and the static word on the page of a book
and especially when the written word was written at a different time and
culture and in a different language then our own mother tongue. I am raising
the question of the subjectivity of the reader.
See the bibliography for the writings of Cusato and Dalarun
raise the same question about subjectivity..
Jay Hammond relates how Bonaventure’s focus was in the
opposite direction, namely, how the text influences the reader to becoming the Vir Spiritualis. See “Contemplation and
the Formation of the Vir Spiritusalis
in Bonaventure’s Collationes in
Hexaemeron. in Franciscans at Prayer. ed. by Timothy J.
Johnson.Boston: Brill, 2007. pp. 123-165
Interdisciplinary endeavors go well when each profession
values the other discipline, is open to learning from the other and when the
other has at least some understanding of the basics of the other discipline. Each discipline develops its own language and
terminology. Unfortunately these criteria are not always present and in those
instances interdisciplinary projects do not go well.
In studying mysticism we have a unique
literary genre in the case when the mystic is attempting to express the
ineffable, the inexpressible mystical experience of God. This kind of text from
a mystic is so totally different from other kinds of texts in its self
revelation of the interiority of the mystic’s experience of God. In the study
of Franciscan Mysticism the classic example of such a text would be the text we have from Angela of Foligno.
And then there are writings from people
who are called mystics even though the text that they have written has no self
revelation of their experience. This is true of the writings of Francis and
Bonaventure. The difference between
Francis and Bonaventure is that we have an abundance of hagiographical writings
that indicate the mystical experiences of Francis. With Bonaventure we have
texts which are called mystical, perhaps these texts could be named as an
intellectual mysticism. It seems to me as a psychospiritual practitioner that
this presents a problem of hermaneutics because of the subjectivity of
communication.
The focus here is not on the texts of
intellectual discourse in academia. The question here is on the hermeneutic of
what is the criteria for naming a text that has no interior revelation of an
experience of God as mystical. This raises the issue of the personal
subjectivity of both the writer and the reader of this kind of intellectual
text. Is it valid for me as a spiritual therapist to use the behavioral
sciences theory of communication and especially therapeutic communication as
valid criteria for dealing with what I am calling “intellectual mysticism.” As
a therapist I deal with the subjectivity of the spoken word. When two people speak
to one another we have the possibility of two way communication and the
possibility that the message sent is the message received. The clarity of the
message is through a series of interchanges back and forth. (However, it is well known that miscommunication
happens frequently.) With written text we have only one way communication and
this is absolute with a dead author. With a dead author there is no possibility
for two way communication where meanings can be clarified.
This raises the issue of how objective are
we. From a therapists viewpoint the general attitude of most people is that
they are being objective and this is certainly the attitude of academia in its
intellectual writings. And yet many of the written text discourses between
experts in various field is through articles, chapters and books. On occasion
at various programs do scholars have an opportunity to have two way
communication with one another and this is the great value of such
programs. I would include even the event
when a speaker interacts with his audience. (On occasion with the clash of egos
these events do not present an opportunity for dialogue but rather an occasion
of two people talking past one another.) Now to be clear, this is all fine when
it is the exchange of intellectual ideas.
But here I am attempting to establish a hermeneutic for when is an
intellectual text mystical when there is no self revelation of an experience of
God but only an intellectual reflection in some way on the meaning of God. More
on therapeutic communication shortly.
As regards the
study of the classical texts of spirituality, I have a concern about the subjectivity of the person’s reading
the text. Jay Hammond explicates Bonaventure’s formation of the vir spiritualis and discusses the
text-reader interaction in that the person is changed and formed by the text. I
think this is true but beside the text’s influence on the person, there is the
other side of the person’s subjective interpretation of the text. I am
interested in what the person brings to the text. In other words I am concerned in how the
person in interpreting the text or perhaps even distorting the text. In a live dynamic conversation between people
the communication is two way.
Explanation and clarification is available. A person reading a text is a one way
communication pattern. In most cases,
you cannot ask the author to explain or clarify the text.
It is a tricky
matter of interpretation from the viewpoint of identifying a text as mystical
or not.
In therapeutic
communication theory a therapist not only listens to the content of a person’s
statement but also to the process, the feeling manifested. The content of a statement may be the exact
same words and yet have a totally different expression of emotions and thus a
different meaning is being expressed by the person. A simple example will best
explain what is being discussed here.
Let us imagine
that three different people say the exact same words, in this case:
“Get me the ladder”
But now let us
imagine that statement in three totally different situations.
In other words
the feeling tone and meaning is expressed with the same four words: “Get me the
ladder”
Now say aloud
the “Get me the ladder” with the situation named below in 1, 2 and 3:
Say aloud the
“Get me the ladder” as a calm polite request of a carpenter to a helper.
Now say aloud the
“Get me the ladder” as a boss who is angry with an inattentive worker.
Now say aloud the
“Get me the ladder” as a person desperately hanging on the roof of a house.
Of course the
first would have the meaning of a simply a request, information to the helper.
The second would
have the meaning of an angry person unhappy with an incompetent worker.
The third would
have the meaning of a desperate person in a life threatening situation.
I explain all of
this as a foundation for an approach for a psychospiritual hermeneutic.
We can be reading
a statement written by any author and because we do not have the feeling tone
in the written text (unless the author explicitly describes the feeling) and we
would not know whether the person is writing about a beautiful idea, a
spiritual statement or a mystical experience.
I would postulate
that we do not know with certitude when Francis wrote whether the writing was
simply an ideas he had or whether he was making a spiritual statement or
whether he was attempting to express a mystical experience through a
prayer. Educated guesses could be made
that his early writings were ideas he had that were helping to form him as vir
spirtualis. And that perhaps his “middle years” his writings were that of a
contemplative. And of course that his
later years he choose to express his mysticism in his later prayers. (This kind
of speculation is cut short if Bonaventure and Longpre’s evaluation is that Francis
was gifted by God at an early stage at the time of his conversion period.) But we have indication from Angela of Foligno
that her growth was not simply linear but that there were differently ups and
downs.
Tomkinson suggests a spiral in fact. But more about Angela later.
Tomkinson, Diane. “Angela of Foigno’s Spiral Pattern of Prayer.” in Franciscans
at Prayer. ed. by Timothy J. Johnson.Boston: Brill, 2007. pp. 195-219.
It is only in the
recent years that we have experimental psychologists doing research on
contemplatives. You may have read articles describing how the brain waves of
contemplatives change as the person enters into contemplative prayer. I
remember a research some years ago in which it was found that contemplatives
are more capable of accepting reality objectively then the general population.
Developmental
psychology is still in its infancy.
How do we apply
this to the mystic.
What is the
growth pattern of a mystic.
How do we
distinguish what is spiritual, contemplative, or mystic?
These terms do
not have standard meanings among the various authors of work on mysticism.
What is the
difference between a contemplative and a mystic?
May miracles be
used as a criteria that a person is a mystic?
And we do not yet
have a clear understanding of altered states of consciousness as opposed to
ordinary, contemplative, or mystical states of consciousness.
At this point in
time from a scientific perspective we do not know enough about the
psychological and spiritual development of a mystic. We are at an infancy stage in the research on
altered states of consciousness. And in
order for valid research to be done, it must be done with living mystics whom
we can interact with.
But from the
history of mysticism thus far there is a common theme that by the time a person
truly becomes a mystic, their experience is ineffable, they simply do not have
words to describe it..
Second Reflection
For a number of
years I have tested people with the MMPI, Shostrom’ Personality Orientation
Inventory and Shultz’s FIRO-B (funadamental interpersonal relationship
orientation-behavior).
Not only that but
for the seven years I was a novice director and we had a community building
workshop in the beginning of the year in which the Myers-Briggs, the FIRO-B and
a Management Leadership Profile were used.
I then lived with these people for a year. None of these tests can
capture sufficiently the person. People
who tested similarly had differences.
Reflect on your network of family and friends. Reflect on the people you know best in your
family and close friends; consider that each dyad has a unique relationship
with each other that is different then each persons relationship with another
person.
From these
observations I think that every person has a unique relationship with Trinity.
The mystery (person) relating to the MYSTERY
(Trinity)
I think about the
linguistic fact that we have only one word for snow. And we can only add adjectives to distinguish
snow: clean snow, dirty snow, wet snow like in the South, dry snow like in
Canada that can be brushed off a car with a broom in a half minute. And then
there is the fact that some Eskimo tribes have more then fifty words for
snow. This is where we are right now. We
have too few words to understand mystics. However I think we are on the brink
of several of the studies and research going on today converging in a way that
we will develop the language to be able to articulate more precisely in the
future about mystics and mysticism. And I also think that this will happen best
of all if we can bring together an interdisciplinary group with living mystics.
I raise these
psychospiriutal issues not because there are definitive answers but because
these are the kinds of questions and considerations that lead to more and
perhaps deeper understandings of mystics and mysticism.
Also there is a
tendency towards perfectionism as if we could ever know all we would like to
know about the mysteries of the faith. Some theologies give the impression that
they have solved the mysteries of faith. We simply have not. And yet I see this as a healthy situation for
our spiritual growth because when we think we know what there is to know about
a mystery, then we cease searching for the deeper meaning of that mystery. This then hinders our growth in relationship
to God as opposed to when we have questions and then search for a deeper
relationship with God. It is the same in the ordinary relationships of life
when we stereotype another person then we cease to explore who that person
really is.
In what I am
exploring here we need greater understanding and focus on both the person’s
background and the kind of text AND the interaction between the two..
The person is
made up of a number of important factors, culture, language, education, life
experiences and all of these are brought to the reading of a text. Ira Progoff
in his Intensive Journal approach has not only the Dialog with Person but also
the Dialog with the Relationship between two people. This later understanding is
not recognized by many.
Reflection Three:
Cusato, Dalarum and Hammond have all
raised the issue of what I call the subjectivity of the reader. When dealing
with mysticism we are dealing not only with the intellectual content of the
message the mystic may want to convey but also the interior psyche of the
mystic with all the interior experiences and emotions attached to a mystical
experience. This is not the case in most
scholarly discourse where the focus is on the intellectual content of a
statement and which according to the norms of objective scientific observation
is not concerned about the interior emotions of the scholar.
Francis's prayers convey his encounter with God, and he shares
them not only to inform, but also to transform the consciousness of others by
eliciting like praise from them, which in turn, leads to an opportunity for
encountering God's presence. In this sense, Francis's prayers offer a
consistent teaching of transformation that can be termed doxological mysticism.
Although his prayers do not present explicit information about mysticism, they
do convey an expressed teaching that mystical transformation occurs through and
in the act of praising God.27 To read Francis's prayers in such a way is to
discover that what first may appear tacit is actually a profoundly simple and
simply profound form of doxological mysticism.
27. Of course language mediates Francis's experience, and
even though experience qua experience remains inaccessible
to the observer, language attempts to convey the meaning(s) of experience to
others. Thus, mystical texts always present "encoded experience(s)"
which are charged with multiple meanings. So even though mystical "experience"
is always interpreted, mediated, and communicated through, in, and by language,
experience can and does precede conscious thought. In other words, there can be
an encounter/experience without language but no language without experience. It
is to this "immediate" or "direct" encounter that we
attempt to penetrate via Francis's prayers which employ language to convey his consciousness of the event.
See Hammond, Jay.“Contemplation and the Formation of the Vir Spiritusalis in Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaemeron.
in Franciscans at Prayer. ed. by
Timothy J. Johnson.Boston: Brill, 2007. pp. 123-165
The Prayer before the Crucifix (1205/06)28
While this prayer
is not per se doxological nor mystical, I include it for four reasons:
it is the
earliest of Francis's prayers,
it does contain
inceptive doxological elements,
it conveys
Francis's encounter with God during his initial conversion,
and it
illustrates how he mediates his prayer through Christ.
The prayer's
exact context remains hidden in the shadows of history.29
Yet its context
is not completely lost. After being disillu-
[
For the sake of
exploration and discussion may I take the position that only the mystical text
that explicitly
expresses an interior state demonstrates that a person is a mystic.
Other have dealt
with the theology, history and spirituality of the early Franciscan documents
and have done this with quality research.
Granted that we
know Francis is a mystic especially from the stigmata and then from his early
companions who provide the stories of his visions, dreams and the historical
fact of his stigmata.
I like to use the
example of an aquarium. We can research and
learn all kinds of information about an aquarium. We can search out all the different kinds of
glass boxes. We can spend a lot of time
learning about all the kinds of fish that best fit into an aquarium. We can learn about the right kind of water and
how to maintain a healthy environment.
We can learn all about the devices and the decorations we can put into
an aquarium. But none of these important
parts are an actual aquarium even though we can make an aquarium from
them. It is not until we put it all
together and sit down and enjoy the movement of the fish that we have an
aquarium. The whole is great then the
parts.
Does this mean that
Schumki and Hammond work was in vain? I
do not think so at all. Even if I do not
accept their conclusions their reflections give possibilities and insights into
the Franciscan texts. They have explored
the mystery. Many do not like mystery
because it is too vague, too messy, too bottomless, too uncontrollable, too
grey, etc. If we figure out the mystery
then we do not have a mystery. We end up like the mystic with the ineffable,
without adequate vocabulary. I applaud their efforts to attempt to understand
something of the mystery of Francis and mysticism; it calls forth the best.
Cusato in a couple of
his writings raises the issue of what I call the subjectivity of the reader. “First, what do we, as audience or
observe of a work of art, bring to our visual experience? What presuppositions
or assumptions about the event do we red into tan artist’s representation?” [Cusato Of Snakes, p. 33]. Cusato further asks how did Giotto understand
the literary accounts of the stigmata and how did Celano or Bonaventure
understand the event?
Cusato in his Foreword
to Dalarun’s Francis of Assisi and Power describes Dalarun as insisiting that
there is a tendency on the part of some to “have a disturbing tendency to see in the sources the Francis they
want to see or prefer to see or thing they see there on the pasge. They thus too often engage in what biblical
experts call eisegesis rather then exegesis: reading themselves into the
sources … And such inattention(or worse: such ingrained biases) ends up
distorting the data that is under one’s eyes in order to fit one’s
pre-conceived assumptions.” [Dalarun Foreword p. 4-5.] Three is a similar concern in the preface to
Delarun’s Francs and Power book.
In the case of Francis
and Bonaventure we have a few precious
comments of a personal nature that give a small glimpse into their
interior disposition. As opposed to
Ekchart, Angela of Foligno, John of the Cross, St. Theresa and St.. Teresa and
a host of other mystics who attempted to convey some understanding of the
interior expericne of a mystical encounter with God.
Part II Tips on How to Read Francis,
Bonaventure and Angela.
The reading of
Francis’s writings.
As best as can be
considered it seems like most all of his writings were written after he was a
mystic. And many of them were written about or after 1220 when re resigned
governance of the Order. On the other
hand he is a model for the ideal that one needs to reach towards.
For example let
me take one of my favorite statements from Francis,
Admonition One by Francis’,
“16
Behold, each day He humbles himself
as when He came from the royal throne into
the Virgin's womb; Phil 2:8
17 each day He Himself comes to us,
appearing humbly;
18 «ach day He comes down from the bosom
of the Father upon the altar in the hands of a priest. “
In all probability Francis is reflecting
on Philippians 2: 7-8 we read: “Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he
humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (FAED I p. 129)
Please note the connection
between the Incarnation and the Cross of salvation.
Traditionally the three great loves of St. Francis are the Crib, the Cross
and the Eucharist.
What is Francis saying here?
One of the most often expressed
understandings of the Eucharist is that it is an Eternal Sacrifice made by
Christ on the Cross and continues as Christ sacrifices for us in the Eucharist
for all eternity.
Francis is speaking here of an Eternal
Incarnation, that Christ comes to us everyday in the Eucharist.
It is like an Eternal Christmas. In Advent
we focus on the coming of Christ, his first coming, his second coming and his
coming to us in our lives everyday.
You may recall that at Christmas we had
our crib under the altar here. Well, in the Christmas of 1223 that is exactly
what Francis did at Greccio in Italy.
Francis saw a connection between the
Incarnation of Christ, depicted in the Crib and the Eucharist.
What do we learn from this? For Francis one of the best Images of Christ
is that Christ humbled himself to become one of us, he emptied himself of his
divinity to be with us. This is the
kenotic Christ. And this is the Christ who comes to us in the intimacy of holy
communion when we receive his Body and Blood.
Francis sees a connection between what the
apostles saw in Christ’s flesh and what we see in the sacred bread. Francis writes in Admonition One:
“20And as they saw only His flesh by their
eyes and believed that He was God as they contemplated Him with their spiritual
eyes,
21 let us, as we see bread and wine with
our bodily eyes, see and firmly believe that they are His most holy Body and
Blood living and true.
And Francis concludes this is how Christ
is always with us.
22 And in this way the Lord is always with
His faithful,
as He Himself says: Behold I am with you» until the end of the age.
Now for many
people who have not been awaken spiritually yet, the above reflection is
probably very insightful, a beautiful thought.
It is mostly an intellectual perspective.
For a
contemplative person this is more of an attitude, it is the way they view the
world. They see the connectedness in the
things of the world.
And for a mystic
this is they way they experience reality. They probably have an altered state
of consciousness in their perception of reality
Using the same
text from Francis, this raises an issue when we read the writings of
contemplatives and mystics. The printed
page is one way communication. We cannot
most often dialog with the author of a printed page. We cannot ask a question or ask for a
clarification. We cannot discuss the
text with a deceased author and most frequently we cannot even discuss the text
with a living author. With Francis because of what his companions and his early
biographers say of him and because of the historical fact of his Stigmata, we
accept that his writings are that of a mystic.
But may I reflect
on when did he become a contemplative or when did he become a mystic? And I can speculate that he may have written
this text as a contemplative and not yet as a mystic. Interpretation of reality is more tricky then
we are willing to admit at times. One
study that was done on contemplatives was that they had a more objective
relationship to reality then other people.
That contemplatives could face the chaos and grayness of reality better
then most. As I have written in another place both Bonaventure and Longpre
think that Francis was given the gift of being a mystic at an early age, almost
from the beginning of his conversion. So the point of this whole discussion is
to illustrate how Francis is to be read as a mystic even though from another
viewpoint we cannot prove he was a mystic through his writings that do not
reveal his interior state of experience.
(Click here for section on Francis)
Reading
Bonavenuture
And like Francis
Bonaventure does not reveal his interior state. Maybe we could call his
writings an intellectual mysticism. But one thing is for sure. The only way to
productively read Bonaventure is with a pencil in hand to outline what he is
saying. His writings are dense and he has such a deep understanding of the
relationships that exist between all that he is writing. Even though this
demands more effort then we are use to, the benefits of serious reflection on
especially his spiritual works are well worth the effort. By taking the time to
outline a particular writing we are more able to perceive the many
relationships that Bonaventure presents to us. He is still one of the greatest
masters of the spiritual life and he still can help us as we journey towards
God. By way of one example I note his Itinerarium
Mentis in Deum and especially chapter seven which I consider to be a
theology of centering prayer. (Click here for section
of Bonaventure)
Reading Angela of
Foligna
It is all well
and good to read about Angela but to read her actual text is an experience in
itself. To read her revelations is to enter into the world of the mystic. It is
an extraordinary world and a marvelous experience to read the text itself.
Nothing can replace or give us this experience except the reading of the actual
text. That is why with only a brief overview to give a context to the readings
culled from Angela that I assigned time to read excerpts of her text. In this
way I hope that I inspired the participants in the course to read Angela’s
writings. (Click here for the brief overview of
Angela and the selected texts.)
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