Summer '73 July 3, l973

Research Assembly THE DARK JOURNEY Sanctification #2

Congregation A

( First Draft) JAS

We are in a time of resurgence but this should not be thought of as a time of romantic giddiness in that everything now is all right. Yes we are in a time of resurgence when life is vital, life is birthing, life is ripping open, life is creating, life is surging, life is benevolent and life is life. But also life is inert, life is dying, life is boxing in, life is destroyini, life is ntagnating, life is malignant, and life is death. And there is a brutal struggle betweon these that goes on in the midst of our evcryclay lile, arlcl so it is with societies, nations, and cultures and the global village. Resurgence is only founcl in tra~edy, found in the midst of that brutal struggle. Today with the breakdown of civilization and the loss of meaning, purpose, roles, structures and symbols, awakened man, after being assaulted for at least 50 years, sees the tragedy of life which is death, but he also sees the possibility; he also sees resurgence, not just as a vision but as actually going on. Then his vision is of even greater possibility or a greater potential.

The intensification of resurf,­ence is sanctification. And these series of twelve lectures are to l~oint to that L'rocc`ss. The first I,lock of four di.;collrues is about the clynamics oL sanctification. l'he riecorld b].ock of four is about the relationship of sanctification to the Othcr World. The last four reflect on the relations of sanctification to the Post­Modern World. Yesterday, our lecturer talked about the first lecture in the dynamics of sanctification section or "Universal Benevolence". Today I want to talk about sanctification as profound integrity and tomorrow our speaker will talk about it as endless felicity, and then the fourth day our s~,eaker will talk about it unlder the rubric of the religious life. One thing to notice as you look at t:llc overall structure is that tile [irst lectur~e in each block ir; rtlat``l to each otll~r`, aurl llil ;elollll willl

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Before we g~et into the major part of what I'm going to say, I want to back up a little and talk about self­hood because in one sense to talk about sanctification you're pushing beyond the ontological and we therefore need some way to be clear about the eschatological, or about the dynamics of self­hood in general. Ones life is made up of relationships and I guess there would be millions of them if you could count them all. There are such things as your family, your nation, all the whole wide world or whatever else ~lou want to talk about. Next we are always stwnbling upon ourselve. conscious of these relationships. You are constantly having to take an attitude toward those relationships. In other words you are conscious of the fact that you are conscious. You participate in all relations with various images, moods and decisions. Sometimes my relationship to my family is a very pleasing one, and sometimes it is an ancTry one. Sometimes it involves a certain course of action, and another time it embodies a decision to take a different course of action. I'm always waking up living in various kinds of relationshipc with i~nages, n~oda tones and decision) that hold them for me. Now to do that is to be a human t.einf, acting out tlis hu~rianess. There is no other kind of life that you or I h1ve ever found ­than that kincl. Now once we see that, we have a basic decision tliat is at the bottom of and prior to every other decision. It involves the final attitude we will take toward such a 1~rocess. It involves our consciousness of our consciousness of consciousness. Will we say yes or will we say no to all our relationships. It is this alternative that life presents us with sharply and clearly. Every other decision rests on or rides on this fundamental or basic decision. And the thing about it today is that a lucid man knows this is the way life is. Life has hit hi~n hard enough that he has been forced to see it. And you can see this, for example, in the Schlitz beer commercial, "Life is once around the c]ock; therefore live it with gusto." Now what ­they do, of course, is rehearse ­the relationshil' you l~.lve to t:al~e not j\~::.t to the beer but to life. But they are not pushing at the final relationship. They are not grounding themselves transparently in the power that gives them every relationship. But I do like the gusto, that's a good word. It has something of the feel of resurgence, that is, brutality, power or just the ongoing wrestling with life into the future. However, they reduce resurgence in its sociological form down to sailing a boat or something like that and you do that with gusto so the whole question of integrity is raised.

We want to talk about Profound Integrity today. Obviously everyman is a man of integrity; for example, I have a friend that says everyone knows that the family comes first. She keeps telling me that over and over. Well, it's rather obvious if you take it at face value, that certainly for her the family is the center of value, the family is the cause she serves and therefore integrity is defined by her relationship to the family. Or, I remember during World Har Two I was in a foxhole with shells coming down all over the place, machine gun bullets, and mortar shells and everything else and brother you have your head down sex feet below the earth, looking like an ostrich both fore and aft and you wouldn't dare stick your head up above without pain of a direct order. Suddenly some crazy, I mean that a literally, crazy marine came falling into the foxhole hollering, "Where are they, where are they?" We didn't know what to say as we all sort of huddled there in teh foxhole. Then a sergeant said, "Where's your rifle?" "Where are they?" he said, "I got my gun." He had a dinky pist.1 that looked like a popgun in face of all those shella falling out there. No one said a thing and finally one guy motioned toward the enemy and the sergeant yelled, I'M going to get them, I'm going to get them,"and he went out. We heard later on that he hacl killed eighteen of the enemy with kiln revolver, and was awarded posthumou~;ly the Medal of Honor. Now he was a man of integrity, for beneath his action and his thrust was the nation as the center of value and the object of his cause. And I can tell you I was glad he was such a man of integrity, and that there were men of integrity.'n the midst of that battle I was in, but that is still not what we are talking about.~ Only when you shove that cetner of value and cause to serve as the totality of all, or that power that gives and takes away everything, is integrity laid bare. Then it becomes Profound Integrity or Radical Integrity where your center of value is the Mystery itself and your cause in life is to serve that Mystery.

Now to try to spell out what we point to with the term Profound Integrity. But first I want to read you a poem. Maybe some of you have heard it.

In the middle of the road there was a rock.

There was a rock in the middle of the road

There was arock.

In the middle of the road there was a rock.

Never will I forget this happening,

That my tired eyes have seen

Never will I forget that in the middle of the road

There was a rock

There was a rock in the middle of the road.

In the middle of the road there was a rock.

When you learn to live your life you have a great appreciation for whatever comes along, and even though, being a lucid man, you know that life is tragic and permeated with the Mystery, yet the Mystery seems to give you great appreciation for life as well as the negations in life. You have human sympathy and your concerns and your compassions are many. Then something happens. In the middle of the road appears a rock and when that happens it happens. The question is , "What is your rock?" In the middle of the aa road there i8 a rock. In my journey of appreciation of life, in my relaxed almost wandering gaily into the future . . .There is a rock in the middle of the rock, there is a rock. And that rock is that happening where the whole world crashes in upon you. The whole world falls upon your back. This is hard to talk about and most anything you say to describe it doesn't seem to do justice to the happening.

As you know this neighborhood in the daylight and around this building is safe but at night in certain spots away from here you wouldn't want to be wandering alone. Last summer a friend of mine was telling me that he was walking down one of the86side streets just about dusk. There came three fellows toward him and he said that just by looking at them fright came into his being. So he sort of was tense and walked looking straight ahead but they just sort of walked by him and didn't even look at him. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked over his shoulder and saw an elderly woman who must have been 70 or 75 about 30 feet behind him and they pounced on her and began to take her purse away from her. She wouldn't give it up so they knocked her to the ground and she still wouldn't give it up and she began to make noises like an animal, ahe just went, "Aaaah, aaaaash, aaaash," he said. As he made those noiaea it just went through my whole being, and I never have been able to get rid of the cry that woman made. It is like all of mankind is making that king of cry throughout the world. All the world just crashes in upon you, and

when it comes it comea and you're crushed to your knees. You don't know where it

so

comes from nor do you care. You don't ask, "How," you"re/concerned with your

response. The pain isn't that the world has fallen on your back. The pain is that

of integrity. So here you are. It all comes clear. That world is on your back.

It ia as though the universe has your name on it and you see now what is really real in life. But why did it have to happen? But it did happen! The univeree chose you. Here ia that great big world, and you are one tiny little person having to bear it. And it chose you to carry it around. I had a friend one time who lost his arm in an automobile accident and the rest of his life he went around with that one arm. It happened to him; he lost his arm and he never was the same. He couldn't turn the clock back. That 'a just who he wee. And it's the same kind of thing when that world falls on your back, directly on top of you ­ that is juat the way it ia for the reat of your life, and you can never turn the clock back. We would like to take only part of the world, here and there, but it's the whole world on your back.

I remeuber on the late, late show not too long ago, they had a movie called The Han With The Golden Arm. The "golden arm" wee that the main character wee on

| The Dark Journey Page 6 drugs and he c ~ ldn't kick the habit. He called that "a monkey on his back." The sho, was about his going through a crisis in his life in the midst of which he was able to kick the habit. But from then on he had to guard himself like he'd never guarded himself before. When somebody tried to chide him, he said, "The monkey is still on my back. Then he slowly said, "Everyone has a monkey on his back." The world is a monkey on your back and the only thing you have to deal with for the rest of your lives is that world. That is what life is all about.

lsaa There I am with that world and the future on my hands and then I am aware of a horrible struggle­­a struggle of mortal combat. I am struggling for my life.

Oh, it starts out sort of slow and I ithink I can get out from underneath that world; if I go here or do that I'll get rid of it. I simply can't live here; ­ I don't ase the seriousness of it or maybe I can do something to be relieved of it.

Then slowly that deadly strife keeps coming and I'm fighting for my life, fighting for my freedom or to have a little rent or comfort or to be left alone l just part of the time. Yes, the world is on my back. The world now becomes an l alive monster. The awe breaks loose everywhere. Even the horror movies have become transparent now to the alien images of the awe. It is like creeping flesh. You know what that is like in a horror movie. Eerie noises come to you. When you walk out l in the peace of nature vines reach out to wrap you up and squeeze you to death. Rooms close in on you. Ghost comes in through your locked door. Hands grab you in the dark. Graves open up to gobble you. Zombies walk the streets to claim you. You literally begin to receive blows and that alien image assaults everything you l cherish, everything you hold dear or makes life worth living. And the horrible thing about it is that you know it will never let you go. It will never let you alone until it drives everything to the abyss. You become overwhelmed and conquered as you are assaulted both outwardly and inwardly. You descend into a sense of thick darkness.

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At this noint you are cast out from yourself, and you look at your whole future. Life will never he any other way, and what I discover now is that enemy I have is myself. The enemy is myself. Not just me, but the essential self, the self I am being forced to invent. I will now and ever after 1~e forced to invent in every situation that self. I have to create the self that stands forever with the world on its hack, the whole burden uDon its hack. That's the one I am given to he.

At this point I become aware of a deep offense. Oh mv God when you talk about an offense, this is the offense that ~oes to the hottom of existence itself. For the abyss that the aliF`n irnape shoves me into, drives me into, is not a hot­tomless pit as you woul`] ordinarily thilkk, hut it is full. It is FuL1 oF humiliation. It is full of weakness. It is full of suffering, and it is full of hatred. The assault on my life keeps me in constant humiliation. I see that I have been living in unreality. Eveytime life assaults me, it shows me where I have been grasping for something that is not real and I feel impure and revoltingly unclean. To add to this I 6tdd that I have !­>etraved myself. It's not somethin~ from outside, I've betrayed myself! I've du~ed myself, and therefore `, Freat sense of unworthiness comes over me, agoni~.inr' self­douht that even do~hts m~r a,>;];tv to 3udp;e what is ~oinc· on, and now I can no lonaer evF?n trust mvcielf. Thf~n the feeling is, "My God, this is permanent!" This is alwa~rs the way it's ~o:in~ to he, just humiliation, humiliation, humiliation.

Next this nothing in everythinP comes as a great we;,aht. It T'ecomes an unhearahle burdFn. I feel impotent an`1 weak, hopelessly weak; a weakness that I can't even understand. It's almost lil.e you have permanent hepatitis, waddlin~ around trying to act as if you're alive. At the slightest touch, your life just fades away, as :i.f you're hein~ 1.rut.~ll\, and unjustly o~lr~;se.l, an`1 whatever

The Dark Journey Page 8 no longer stand livin~g with such a weak human being as you are.

Added to these twin ''pains" is a creeping sense of doom that we are forsaken and victims of a total and relentless hatred. Something out there is out to get you, something out there hates you, something assaults you from which there is no escape and no hope. All of life for the rest of your life is to ~uffer truly at the hands of that malignant monster or whatever it is out there that's chewing you up. You experience deep emptiness inside as you try to deal with that and feel that madness is taking over within you and you will be totally annihilated from within as well as without. Still you yearn, but it has no object, and that induces more sorrow and more suffering, and you just suffer, surfer, suffer, until you seem to be suffocating under such ;orrow. Worst of all you­seem to be paralyzed in the midst of that. You wait for relief and help to come; then you see you are waiting for nothing; and even in that waiting you see you are waiting for waiting and that is a double whammy, a trap in itself. Then you become doubly lonely, weak, empty, and frustrated and your suffering is driven deeper.

Finally you become so racked with painful doubt as to why you are so oppressed that your insides scream. It is like the Psalmist says, you have got a whole belly full of howling dogs inside of you, that scream and scream and scream out at Life and the way life acts and pushes upon you. That alien 1m~gc assaults you, and inside a deep war goes on within you, a war to the finish. You cannot stand that enemy that is there, you cannot deal with it and you have got to destroy it, as it seems to be destroying you. It is a war between that alien image which in its weird way is also an alien desire which I am now aware produces my humility, weakness, and suffering and therefore in the midst of this a raging hatred comes out like it had never come out before as you bitterly feel yourself placed in such an unJust situation. Then a strange awareness comes that your own hatred has become part of the cruel, overwhelming burden put upon you.

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At this point lucidity sees clearly the situation. You do not have any possibility of winning, not one wit of possibility, either way you are dead. You know if you run away your lucidity is going to burn you up because you know the way things are, and you know you will be burnt to a crisp. But if you stay and stand and pick up your life you are going to be burnt to a crisp anyway. You are damned if you do and you are damned if you do not. And my God, this is the way it is.

I was talking to a fellow not too long ago ­ the pressure had built up in him and he was saying, "I'm going to leave the Order." Now by leaving the Order was for him a symbol of getting out of life. I asked, "What is going on?" And he began to spell out in his own words just what I have said. I asked, "Where are you going?" He answered, "I don't know, there is no place to go; I guess I will stay." This burning lucidity is that kind of irrational reasoning. Who would be so silly to follow it ? There is no rhyme or reason to it. It is not like you rise up and make some great big old decision, I am going to do this. It is more like fainting into the arms of that alien image. You just give up and surrender your life to him. Or you gust die or you give yourself up to this alien image ­ to this awe that assaults you. You live the way life is. You invade the swamp, the quagmire of this abyss that is so filled full with humility, woclkness, ,uffering and hatred. You take that into yourself, and you embrace it all, which is accepting the burden of the world that you have upon your back.

Once you surrender yourself, you see the essence you are out to invent was invented before the beginning of the world, and it was that essence that was moving in upon you. Or again, it was the image of radical integrity which relates you to the totally of the nought, to the Mystery itself. To live in profound integrity is beyond any particular relation, beyond the moral, beyond any relation I`~,wov',, r'~L: ytJ\it' I 41111 i I y, (:Il{J Il.l1: i(~l) t)t' .Illyl l, |~', t.l~.lL yt)\, ('t)~litl L­.~lh `~'l~o`~t.

L u are no w out over Lil~ ~llJyss, and tile only way tll.~t you 1ive is in relationship l

The Dark Journey Page 10 to the mystery, to th,e all in all, and to creation itself, inwhich the mystery is constantly placing you and spinning you. To be human is to carry the whole world on your back, and the rest of your life is struggle, but is truggle in radical integrity, not struggle against radical integrity. ­

Such a struggle uses us up at every moment, life is perpetual intensification of consciousness. Every moment I wake up in a situation I have a new radical demand upon myself, to totally expend myself in that situation and it does not make any difference how much I expended myself yesterday, I now have a demand to expend myself fully. I never will forget a few months ago a situation happened that had never before happened to me. I found myself flowing into that situation, and soTnething happened inside of me. My God I tingled all over, and knew I lived in that situation. Do you know what? I have been afraid of that kind of situation ever since. It is like there is a room that I am afraid to enter, because I know it is going to take the totality of my life, the most profound intensification. No matter how profoundly your life was intensified yesterday, at this moment you are again called on to expend it completely, to grasp it without qualification. This means you grasp it in the midst of your humiliation in being an unreality, self­betrayal, and self­doubt and knowing that you always find yourselE~ in such a situation. That is where your intensification comes to continuous meaning.

Being a lucid man who lives out of what he sees, your life desires to be one of action and of service. You want to give yourself to the situation; and what you see is that you can intensify at any point that action to raw courage, to the fortitude to stand, to fulfillment as strong as death or to the cruciforTn principle. My (~od, to do so, I must take into myself rny weak'Iess, my intense feeling of inadequacy, of being drained, of L)e;ng brutally ol~prcssed ~ln(l seeing myself a pitiful creation. Or again, I find myself motivated. When you are in this position, you are not a slob in the first instance at all. No you are

The Dark Journey Page 11 l motivated, but being motivated and having a zest for life you also know you can grasp motivation and intensify it into total participation in being itself. Your inner being burns with a sweetness, a sweetness that has the fascination pole of awe at the center on it. But to intensify that motivation into total participation in being means that you grasp your suffering, of seeing yourself as a doomed victim of the outside and internal forces of hatred, of being burned out, of objectiveless yearning and being paralyzed in the midst of waiting for n~thinF.

Finally you see a boldness in your life. In fact vou can b^ veh~nently bold. Intensificaiton of this means gr ~ni~g that all the energy within you can be picked up and used to seize a situation for the future. Or again ''011 r~n grasp that from then on with radical intens ~;~ ion that you dare to seize God. 13y seizing God I mean you have found out what you always wanted to know, all you have been yearning and waiting for aLl of your life, and now your total life can ~ro into that. But to do this you have to grasp your hatred wh;^h is to grasp your painful doubts. The cruel deadly war going on in you, the cruel unjust situation that assaults you, and then your hatred itself which has become a cruel burden, and you do not even know whether your hatred is hatred against life itself that spins you into the abyss again, or genuinely shov~s you into authentic relationship to the Mystery itself.

Finally my life is to see that "my being" is like "being itself", that is, my living radically detached froln idols and radically engaged with the Mystery. Then I know I am like being for I participate in being. And as such I participate in the endlessness of being. It is what the poet meant by "going to heaven", for it is an experience beyond time and space.

We have a story that helps us to hold this. It is the story of Jesus our eschatological hero. He is the picture of the sanctified one. He is the transparency of humanness itself. In the Gospels is the mythology of sanctification and it breaks loose in at least three places in the New Testament: Baptism,

The Dark Journq~y Page 12 Transfiguration, and~the Crucifixion/Resurrection story. You recall at the baptism when he comes up out of the water,a voice comes out of the ~eavens and says, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." You know I have never gotten over being amazed at infant baptisms. Whether it is the right symbol to use, I do not know, but I have never gotten over being amazed at it. You just imagine taking a small, almost one hair breath from death, weak baby and mark him with a sign that says whatever happens to him for the rest of his life, his life and all that goes on is pronounced good. Can you imagine such a strange rite. I remember Voltaire's Candide, which was a cynical indirect attach on Christianity. He had a character in there named Pangloss and Pangloss was the prototype, a caricature, if you please, of the life style of the Christian. Wherever he went everything was goocl. They were always running swords through h~n, or he was falling out of windows, or chariots would run over him, or buggies would hit hirn, or wheels would cut him to pieces, or they would shoot him with arrows or flintlocks, and he is always getting up and saying, "That's good" and keeps walking on. He was sort of a divine zombie who took his crummy life and spun it. Voltaire in his cynicism only got hold of one pole of the offence of Baptism. The other pole is Jesus ordination so to speak. He had one task set before him ­ to release all mankind to live their lives. The movie "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" captures this in Jesus' style. Af~ter

his baptism came the temptation which Jesus refused and From then on llc walkocl

my son,

straight on to tho cross. "Thou art/my bc l~ved, in whom 1 am well 1,lcase~l.''

Then Jesus as the eschatological hero is transpar cot as thc rcsurrecterl one. You and I have been taugh­t to sentimentalize the resurrection, but the resurrection is the crucifixion, or be­tter there is no resurrection except in the midst of crucifixion. The scriptures are clear about this. You remember the next to the last thing that our eschatological hero said before he died, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Eli, elf, lame, sabachthani." And the last thing

The Dark Journey Page 13 he said was aaaaaaht A scream! What is resurrection? What is life? It is "My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?" to humiliation, suffering, weakness, and hatred? Why hast thou forsaken me? The New Testament is clear as are our fathers: they recognize no other aeath but crucifixion. This crucifixion was Jesus crummy death. Nobody paid any attention and the guy dying does not care. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And what did that crummy death look like? He took it and spun it and it became life giving ­ it became transparent. You have yourself a crummy death of humiliation, weakness, suffering, and hatrecl, as he did. To be a zombLe is to avoid that death; but to live it In(l lo bestow life is to take your crummy death and to spin it and to make it transparent­­"Ye men of Galilee­­why stand ye here? Why stand ye here?"

Also sanctification is visible in Jesus as the transfigured one, or the Divine presence. Remember how he went up on the Mount of Transfiguration and there Moses and Elijah appeared beside him? Peter, always the straight man, wakes up and say, "Oh, master, it is wonderful to be here. Let's build three tents, one for each of you, you, Moses and Elijah.'' And then a voice comes again, "This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him." In other words, beyond the law and the prophets, stands the one who creates structures and calls them into question. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to you, why stand ye here? We are free to create wonder in every situation, free to create and free to bring jud~;nent, exposing the creative activity of the Mystery itself, and its brutal resurgence showing all men life, and allowing them to be beckoned by it.

The myth of sanctification is acted out by McMurphy, the main character

in the play, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, lle came into a mental hospital ward

anL1 immediately became a hero to the imna es. They were all sick anL1 perverted,

~I l 1. ilUlll.l~\ 1't] j\,L'tI.i, dllil tl'oy ll`l~l over~y ~iil~ ol l~rol)ll~lll yo~l (oll l(l ·tr~t`~llll ol tllat colllLI

! niakt tllcn' inllotent McMurl~hy in contrast we; lLive Vitl1 UtiLI /.c:;tiul. Ilt

The Dark Journey Page 14 would go around and ~cheer them up, defend them, and pat them on the back. Ile became their hero, and they wished they could be like him, but he was almost like a dream. He was not a real possibility for them; they were twisted and perverted; they could not live like that. McMurphy stood up for them, he did whatever was necessary for them, and defended them against the structures. He became even more their hero for they could not stand up against Big Nurse, a tyrant who controlled their lives even to the point of death. In the process McMurphy so alienated himself in the structures that he had to leave or else face certain destruction. One night he stood at the window the inmates had opened for him, and he was ready to go out and escape. But he looked back at all the human rejects and he came back in. I do not know McMurphy's inner being, but imagine the humiliation, that he was called, elected, to help the human rejects, who were not even worth taking care of in theeyes of the people there. Also think of his weakness in the situation which now he could not handle, a situation that got out of hand. Also imagine the intense suffering going on in him. He was a doomed victim, of the hatred of Big Nurse. Or again imagine his own hatred: hatred of the situation, hatred of Big Nurse or was it hatred of life itself? In other words was he throwing his life away for spite, or was he throwing his life away for those rejects? McMurphy spun his crummy death. He came back and did what any of them could do, that is on behalf of the others offer up their lives. No longer was he a hero that would be a dream in their minds, but he became a reality in the midst of their lives and that reality was transparent. When the hospital took McMurphy and destroyed him, everyone on that ward knew they could live. They could have life; and finally what life was all ab~llt ;n the midst of that humiliation, weakness, suffering a hatred, was daring to embrace that, in embracing the world.

From no on, from beg,inninl' to end it is your world, and you are to live in relationship to bearing that world, in ~r]i~al integrity.

Josoph A. Sllcker