More Thoughts on Manic-Depressive Illness

My last post, written after reading Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Madness and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, ended with three questions:

• How can I conceive of a God who would design our brains to be capable of the horrifying pain of an unraveling mind as happens in severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of a person with severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of the spouse and family of a person with severe mental illness?

Another way of asking the first question is to ask how severe mental illness fits with a view of the world as gracious, as opposed to hostile or indifferent. As I think about this, I realize that Kay Jamison herself provides an answer. She says that, as excruciatingly painful as psychosis and depression can be, this is out-weighed, for her, by the joy she has experienced in life. Kay actually values her mania, at least in its milder manifestations, and she sees her depression as the price she has to pay for the mania.

When Kay first experienced symptoms of manic-depressive illness in her teens, the mania was not extreme. It allowed her to think fast, to feel euphoric, and to be exceptionally productive and creative. In subsequent years, the mania become more extreme, but Kay remembers even some of her psychotic visions with joy. Here is what Kay says on pages 90-91 of An Unquiet Mind:

People go mad in idiosyncratic ways. Perhaps it was not surprising that, as a meteorologist's daughter, I found myself, in that glorious illusion of high summer days, gliding, flying, now and again lurching through cloud banks and ethers, past stars, and across fields of ice crystals. Even now, I can see in my mind's rather peculiar eye an extraordinary shattering and shifting of light; inconstant but ravishing colors laid out across miles of circling rings; and the almost imperceptible, somehow surprisingly pallid, moons of this Catherine wheel of a planet. I remember singing "Fly me to the Moons" as I swept past those of Saturn, and thinking myself terribly funny. I saw and experienced that which had been only dreams, or fitful fragments of aspiration.

Was it real? Well, of course not, not in any meaningful sense of the word "real." But did it stay with me? Absolutely. Long after my psychosis cleared, and the medications took hold, it became part of what one remembers forever, surrounded by an almost Proustian melancholy. Long since that extended voyage of my mind and soul, Saturn and its icy rings took on an elegiac beauty, and I don't see Saturn's image now without feeling an acute sadness at its being so far away from me, so unobtainable in so many ways. The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness of my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness was one I should willingly give up.

When Kay first began to take lithium to control her psychosis and stabilize her moods, she was appalled at the flatness of her emotional life. She now takes a lesser dose of lithium that controls the extreme fluctuations in mood but does allow for some mood amplification followed by some mood dampening, in other words, slight mania and slight depression. The dampening is worth it to Kay because of the benefits from the amplification. Apparently, you can't have the amplification without the following dampening--you get the full cycle or none.

So, back to God. Here are some things I notice.

• ABUNDANCE. God deals in abundance--there is an abundance of beauty and variety in minerals, plants, and animals. Within that abundance, there are things that I as an individual may not like--poison ivy, mosquitoes, manic-depressive illness. These are, nonetheless, part of the abundant whole.
• EXTREMES. God deals in wide ranges with vast extremes--from sub-atomic particles to super-nova, from the monotone gray of an overcast sky to a flaming sunset, from the silent rabbit to the roaring lion. Manic-depressive illness is an extreme of human experience.
• NATURAL PROCESSES. God deals with natural processes that unfold dispassionately. The universe does not reconfigure itself to avoid harming a person in the path of an avalanche, a tornado, or an out-of-control automobile. Manic-depressive illness is part of the gene pool and manifests itself in individuals with those genes.

It may be that, if God had to edit out everything that humans find unpleasant or harmful on the physical plane, the world would not be as beautiful, stunning, and fascinating.

It also strikes me that God's intentions are not necessarily our intentions. I, for example, consider a good life to be a life of financial security, physical comfort, and mental interest. God, I expect, considers a good life to be one of compassion and character growth.

I probably don't need to concern myself with the question about what God expects of a person with manic-depressive illness because I am not that person.

As for the spouse and family of a person with manic-depressive illness, it strikes me that our U.S. American society is at the far extreme of individualism, expecting individuals to manage their own problems and expecting families to manage their family members on their own. But, just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, it probably takes a whole village to contain a person with manic-depressive illness. Instead of making this the responsibility of an overwhelmed spouse or family, if this were considered the responsibility of the whole community, then the weight would be far less, and compassionate and workable solutions would far more likely emerge.

Thoughts & Questions about Manic-Depressive Illness

I have recently read two books by Kay Redfield Jamison: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Kay is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She also has manic-depressive illness, which she is able to control by taking lithium.

Kay describes what it is like for someone with severe mental illness to watch their mind unravel. It is absolutely horrifying to be trapped inside an unraveling mind. One cannot control one's thoughts, which race so fast that nothing makes sense. One sees and hears things that aren't there, often very frightening things. One watches the distress on the faces of one's family and friends, who simply cannot comprehend one's behavior. One behaves in ways that cause one intense shame.

One often ends the pain by committing suicide.

Some of the things Kay describes, particularly concerning mania, seem incredible to me. Someone in the early stages of mania feels on top of the world. She feels invulnerable. She is full of over-the-top energy, putting her on a high. In this state, things make sense that would never make sense in a normal mood. A person in mania will often dress provocatively, initiate unwise sexual encounters, and spend thousands of dollars on unneeded merchandise. When the mania ends and a normal mood returns, this person is faced with the shame of what she has done and with the bills she has accumulated for appalling purchases that made perfect sense in the manic state but which now make no sense at all.

If the illness is not treated, it escalates. The mania becomes so intense that the person cannot stay still, cannot sleep, and cannot control her cascading thoughts. The person may become paranoid and even violent.

Eventually depression follows the mania with its all-encompassing heavy blackness that sucks all joy from life. Life becomes unbearable, and suicide is often the result. The pain of an unraveling mind and the inability to do anything to stop it is excruciating.

Yes, there are now treatments for manic-depressive illness, but for centuries there were no treatments, and even today, not everyone responds to the treatments. For some people, the current treatments don't work.

Descriptions of losing one's mind--as happens in manic-depressive illness, in depression, in schizophrenia, and in Alzheimer's disease--are truly horrifying. For me, this raises an important question: How does God fit into this? How can I conceive of a God who would design a brain capable of such horrible suffering?

I can at least begin to understand other types of physical suffering that keep the mind intact. People are able to endure these, sometimes with great grace and courage. I can also begin to understand suffering inflicted by humans. Again, people do endure this, sometimes with remarkable love and forgiveness. But how does one endure an illness that causes one's very mind to unravel. Without a functioning mind, with what does one do the enduring?

So it's hard for me to envision a way of seeing God that includes severe mental illness. It makes me wonder why on earth God couldn't design a brain incapable of such unraveling.

And what does God expect of someone with severe manic-depressive illness? It's clear that a person in mania often violates normal standards of morality in the areas of sex, finances, and kindness to others.

And what does God expect of the spouse of someone with manic-depressive illness? I don't see how it's possible to live with a manic-depressive spouse who has sex with others, runs up impossible bills, and is violently paranoid. Manic-depressive illness is devastating to the spouse, family, and friends of the person with the illness. A good friend of my mother's had a daughter with severe mental illness who simply refused to take medication to control her illness and absolutely drove her family nuts with her uncontrollably wild behavior. She also had a number of unwise pregnancies and brought babies into the world with no means of providing for them. Yes, I understand that a person with manic-depressive illness is truly ill, but what is the person's family supposed to do with a person who causes utter havoc in the lives of everyone around her? Is the family supposed to just exist in utter havoc? What does God expect of the spouse and the family in this situation?

So these are my questions:

• How can I conceive of a God who would design our brains to be capable of the horrifying pain of an unraveling mind as happens in severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of a person with severe mental illness?
• What does God expect of the spouse and family of a person with severe mental illness?

Compassion at the Heart of Faith - Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong's study of world religions has shown her that compassion lies at the heart of each one. Thus, we can say that at the heart of Being is compassion. Karen says that compassion is feeling with another. It is putting ourselves in another's shoes, standing where another stands, seeing through another's eyes--and acting accordingly.

Karen connects compassion with ecstasy. Ecstasy occurs when we empty ourselves of the self, when we step outside of ourselves, when we leave behind our local individualized self--and step into something larger. By being compassionate, by feeling with another, we step out of our own self-focused experience and into the experience of another.

How do we enter into the mind and feelings of another? Karen Armstrong says that one way to do this is to use our own pain. In other words, when we are treated in a way that causes us pain or discomfort, we can take careful note and resolve never to do that to someone else.

I am not a naturally compassionate person, but I can think of at least one very small way that I practice compassion. (Recognizing this very small way helps me to grasp what compassion is and how it feels to practice it, and then hopefully to expand upon it.) Here is my very small baby step in compassion. First, I have noticed a particular type of situation that causes me discomfort. Sometimes when I am telling a story or sharing a thought with one or more other people, an interruption will arise. For instance, if we are at a cafe, the server may come to take our order or another person may arrive and join our group. After the interruption, the conversation may veer elsewhere, and I don't get a chance to finish what I was saying. When this happens, I feel disappointed.

Knowing how I feel when this happens to me, I try not to let this happen to others. When someone is telling a story or sharing a thought and an interruption occurs, I try not to let the conversation veer away before the person has the chance to finish. I do this by saying, for example, "Jane, I want to hear the rest of what you were saying about Edgar Allan Poe." This allows Jane to finish what she was saying without seeming to put herself forward, in case she feels uncomfortable being the one to reintroduce her story. (I've even started extending this compassion to myself. Since I've been doing this for others, I find that, after an interruption, I can more easily say on my own behalf, "I'd like to continue what I was saying about Alice Walker.")

I find that I experience a nice warm feeling when I can do this for others and when I can do this for myself. I also think that this is what it means, in a very small way, to love one's neighbor as one loves oneself. In this conversational type of situation, I show the same consideration both for my neighbor and for myself.

I would say, too, that to be compassionate in one's work, one needs to feel what it is like to be on the other side. A doctor or a nurse who has been hospitalized with illness or injury can more readily feel with his or her patients. Psycho-therapists are required to undergo psycho-therapy themselves in order to feel what the process is like for their clients. A teacher of English to speakers of other languages would do well to take a course in Vietnamese or Arabic or Hungarian to understand what it feels like to be confronted with learning a very different language and culture.

Self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy also occur when we lose ourselves in contemplation of something greater--as a scientist does in her lab, an architect in his building, a lawyer in her client's case, a painter in his studio, a musician in her composition, a dancer in his movement, a reader in her story, a writer in his characters, a chef in her cuisine, a teacher in his subject. This loss of self in something greater can occur both as a creator and as an admirer: it can occur for the artist who sculpts a statue and for the art lover who admires it, for the chef who prepares a beautiful meal and for the gourmet who savors it, for the poet who composes a poem and for the reader who enters into it, for the gardener who creates a garden and for the flower lover who basks in it.

Karen Armstrong has found that she experiences self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy through her study of and writing about world religions. She has learned to have compassion, to feel with, people of other faiths. On page 290 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "It was not enough to understand other people's beliefs, rituals, and ethical practices intellectually. You had to feel them too and make an imaginative, though disciplined, identification." Karen explains how she did this when writing about the Prophet Muhammad. On page 278 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "I had to make a daily, hourly effort to enter into the ghastly conditions of seventh-century Arabia, and that meant that I had to leave my twentieth-century assumptions and predilections behind. I had to penetrate another culture and develop a wholly different way of looking at the world. It required a constant concentration of mind and heart that was in fact a type of meditation. . . . I was learning the disciplines of ecstasy." In fact, on page 287 of The Spiral Staircase, Karen says, "I was finding in study the ecstasy [and, I would add, the compassion] that I had hoped to find in those long hours of prayer as a young nun."

On page 63 of The Case For God, Karen Armstrong speaks of Socratic dialogue as a means to self-emptying, compassion, and ecstasy. Karen says, "In a Socratic dialogue, therefore, the 'winner' did not try to force an unwilling opponent to accept his point of view. It was a joint effort. You expressed yourself clearly as a gift to your partner, whose beautifully expressed argument would, in turn, touch you at a profound level." On the same page, Karen says, "Like any good initiation, a successful dialogue should lead to ekstasis: by learning to inhabit each other's point of view, the conversationalists were taken beyond themselves." I love that: "learning to inhabit each other's point of view."

Compassion, then, is the heart of religious faith. A very legitimate question to ask about any religion is this: Does this religion lead to a compassionate life? That is the gold test.

Thoughts on "The Queen of Sheba & Her Hairy Legs" - C. G. Jung Society Presentation by Ronnie Landau

Last night David came over for supper. (I baked homemade cornbread, which was delicious, and we also had tossed green salad, cheddar cheese, fresh fruit, Fruits Rouges hot tea, and dark chocolate.) Then we took off for a presentation at the C. G. Jung Society titled "The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs" by Jungian analyst Ronnie Landau. (Ronnie is a woman.)

Apparently the Queen of Sheba was extremely beautiful. She also had hairy legs--very, very hairy. The story goes that, when the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon of Israel, Solomon (who had heard of the hairy legs) arranged a path for her to approach his throne that would involve lifting her skirts to step over some watery areas. This allowed Solomon to verify that, yes, the Queen of Sheba did indeed have extremely hairy legs. The Queen of Sheba agreed to an application of creams to remove the hair before further involvement with Solomon. The Queen of Sheba then stayed a while in Israel, consorted with Solomon, and finally returned to her country.

So, in the Queen of Sheba, we have a very beautiful woman with very hairy legs. Do we see the hairy legs as a deformity or as part of her beauty? If we see the hairy legs as undesirable--why?

We do seem to be averse to body hair, at least for women. Yet women naturally have body hair--arm hair, underarm hair, leg hair, and pubic hair. Many women shave their underarm hair and their leg hair, and some even shave their pubic hair--at least they try to have just a small confined area of pubic hair, and they certainly don't want any pubic hair to show around the edges of their bikinis. Women who pose nude for Playboy have usually removed all but a very small amount of their pubic hair. Even men, I think, don't want to have too much body hair. A man with lots and lots of body hair probably feels like an oddity.

Why is this? Drawing on points raised in the presentation "The Queen of Sheba and Her Hairy Legs" and on my own additional reading and experience, I would say that this is because body hair is adult-like and animal-like.

First, body hair is a sign of adulthood. Children have smooth bodies, while adults have body hair. Feminists in the 1970s pointed out that women were traditionally supposed to remain childlike, while men took on adult roles. The husband earned the money and made the decisions for the family, while the wife raised the children, did the housework, obeyed her husband, and was financially supported by him. Men dominated all professional fields and ran the country, while working women confined themselves to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work, and women weren't even allowed to vote. The visual sign of body hair complemented the adult role of men, while the visual sign of a smooth and hairless body complemented the childlike role of women.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many women stopped shaving their legs and underarms. They allowed themselves to be naturally hairy. I believe that this was a way of saying, "I am an adult. My body hair is a visual sign of my adulthood. Adults have body hair. I will relate to you as a fellow adult."

Second, body hair is something that we humans share with animals. Animals, particularly many mammals, have body hair, or fur. Certainly, the primates do. Body hair connects us visually to our animal nature. It seems more traditionally acceptable for men to have this animal connection than for women to do so. Even men, though, don't want to be too animal-like--excessive body hair for a man is not considered attractive. We seem to feel it important to separate ourselves from the animals, from our instinctual nature, from our sense of smell. (It was pointed out at the Jungian presentation that head hair is very acceptable, probably because we are happy to adorn the site of our brains and intellectual functions with hair. Our head and intellect are seen as exclusively human, while our bodies are seen as connected with animals.)

As David pointed out, the 1960s and 1970s celebrated hair. Not only did many women stop shaving their underarms and legs, but many men grew their head hair quite long and acquired beards. I do think that this was at least partly to celebrate our animal nature. Sex, in all its sensual appeal, was celebrated--its smells and sounds and tastes. I believe that hair was part of the primal enjoyment of sex that came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s.

So, to reiterate, the traditional practice is that men don't want too much body hair so as not to be too animal-like, but that they do want enough body hair to show that they are adults. Women, on the other hand, don't want any (or want very little) body hair so as not to be animal-like and so as to remain childlike. Traditionally, there has been something shadowy about our animal nature for men and women and about adulthood for women. This shadow is represented by a hairy body, or by the Queen of Sheba's hairy legs.

What would it look like for us to embrace our shadow--for men and women to embrace our animal nature and for women to embrace our adulthood?

Well, I think we would be openly hairy. We would openly enjoy the sensual side of life--not only sight but also sound, touch, taste, and smell. We would enjoy all these sensual aspects of sex. In addition, women and men would openly be peers, fellow adults. Women and men would stand together as fellow adults, embracing our animal nature, in all our hairy glory!

Our hairy glory. We consider head hair beautiful. Can body hair not be beautiful, too? When we embrace the animal/adult shadow, we will have "The Queen of Sheba and Her Beautiful Hairy Legs."

What is Faith? - Marcus Borg

In The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, Marcus Borg examines faith through four lenses, each encapsulated in a Latin word. Marcus then synthesizes these four views to provide a fuller picture of faith. Marcus' picture of faith goes far, far beyond the idea of faith as giving intellectual assent to a set of beliefs.

Having grown up within the Roman Catholic Church and its faith-as-belief system, I am moved and excited by Marcus Borg's picture of faith.

FAITH AS VISIO. Visio is faith as seeing: the way we see the world. Marcus says that there are three possible overall ways to see the world: as hostile, as indifferent, as gracious.

If we see the world as hostile, Marcus says that we will respond defensively. We will set up systems to protect ourselves from a threatening reality. If we see the world as indifferent, Marcus says that we will also respond by seeking to protect ourselves, though with less paranoia. A hostile universe is out to get us, while an indifferent universe is not. Yet we need systems to keep ourselves safe in both cases: whether from active threats or from nature's vagaries.

Faith, though, Marcus says, invites us to see the world as gracious. Nature is abundant, beautiful, and varied. The world is full of feasts for the eyes (sunrises and sunsets, gardens, clouds, butterflies), for the ears (bird songs, music, rain and wind, silence), for the skin (the touch of our animal friends, warm clothes, running water, breeze), for the nose (sweet olive, coffee, rose, mint), for the tongue (chocolate, strawberry, peach, oregano, pepper). Our minds are storehouses of pleasurable material--our memories, our thoughts, our imaginations. We can experience the deep joy of creation--writing, music, visual art, ritual, celebrations, decorated space, inventions, ways to serve and give enjoyment to others. We have each other--our families, friends, colleagues, neighbors.

I would say that seeing the world as gracious includes an acknowledgment of those places where we will encounter hostility or indifference in an overall gracious world. Thus, it is well to recognize the evil of which people are capable and to take sensible precautions--locking doors in the city and suburbs, staying out of dangerous neighborhoods, being alert when walking on the street at night--for some people will indeed hurt us. It is also well to respect nature--seeking shelter during a thunderstorm, evacuating for a serious hurricane, avoiding contact with poison ivy--for lightning, hurricanes, and poison ivy operate indiscriminately.

I would say that seeing the world as gracious leads us to relax at the core our being, to enjoy our lives, and to be grateful. If we are accustomed to seeing the world as hostile or indifferent, I believe that we can move into seeing the world as gracious by consciously practicing relaxation, enjoyment, and gratitude. These are certainly things that I need to do because I did grow up seeing the world as hostile. I was actually taught by my father that the world is a dangerous place where rapists and other criminals abound and that people in general don't care about you and are out only for themselves. I was taught by the Catholic Church that a God of Wrath was always ready to judge and punish me unless I believed correctly and avoided sin.

So here are some ways to practice faith as visio.

• Relaxation at my core. Set aside time daily to relax into centering prayer.
• Enjoyment of life. Plan a weekly artist date, as described by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, and consciously enjoy it. Plan one or more small pleasures to consciously enjoy daily: a pot of ginger tea, a piece of dark chocolate, a bike ride on the levee, a hot shower, a good book, a talk with a friend.
• Gratitude. Take time each evening to thank God for the blessings of the day. Expand this into additional times of gratitude throughout the day. Expand this into a continuous prayer of gratitude. Thank at least one person for something every day.

FAITH AS FIDELITAS. Fidelitas is faithfulness. Marcus says that we show our faithfulness to God by "being attentive to the relationship" (page 33). Marcus explains, "We are attentive through the simple means of worship, prayer, practice, and a life of compassion and justice" (pages 33-34).

I see this as nurturing one's relationship with God as one would nurture one's relationship with a spouse, a daughter or son, a sister or brother, a friend.

FAITH AS FIDUCIA. Fiducia is faith as trust. Marcus says that fiducia is "radical trust in God" (page 31). Marcus says that "faith is like floating in seventy thousand fathoms of water" (page 31). Marcus continues, "Faith as trust is trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live and move and have our being" (page 31).

In the Catholic Church, I did not learn to trust God. I learned to fear God instead. Not only did I learn that God would judge and punish me for wrong belief and for sinful thoughts and acts, but I also learned that even God's love was painful. According to the Catholic Church, God actually sends suffering to those God loves. The saints, for example, were especially close to God, and they suffered a lot. Most saints suffered terrible illnesses or were tortured for their faith or were allowed to share in the sufferings of Jesus through such odd and painful phenomena as the stigmata. If not, they became pleasing to God through inflicting suffering on themselves: fasting, wearing hair shirts, fashioning a crown of thorns for themselves, flagellating themselves. As a child, I knew that I didn't want God to love me too much because I didn't want all that pain. God was not someone I wanted to get close to.

To this day, I struggle with fear that, if I indicate a desire for closeness with God or a changed life, God will grant my request in a terribly painful way. I think, for example, of Joni Eareckson Tada, who prayed that God would change her life--and shortly thereafter she had a diving accident that left her paralyzed from the neck down for life. As a result, Joni has indeed experienced a changed life and a much deeper relationship with God--but this truly horrifies me and makes me VERY hesitant to ask for those things. I DON'T want a deeper relationship with God if it means paralysis or pain. I've heard many stories of people who asked for those things--and ZAP--they were placed in extremely painful situations that did result in changed lives and closeness with God--but at what cost! A cost I don't want to pay.

Well, and don't you know, Marcus says that the opposite of fiducia is worry and anxiety--exactly what I have just expressed in the preceding paragraph. And exactly what my life is full of. I am a person who frequently worries and feels anxious.

Marcus cautions that, if we recognize worry and anxiety in ourselves, the idea is not at all to come down on ourselves harshly. Rather, Marcus invites us to "recognize the good news implicit in this realization" (page 32). Marcus reminds us, "Growth in faith as trust casts out anxiety. . . . Faith as radical trust has great transforming power" (page 32).

I understand this to mean that, as a person with high levels of worry and anxiety, I have plenty of material with which to practice fiducia! I can certainly take baby steps in fiducia and grow gradually in trust. I would say that the ways to practice fiducia are very similar to the ways that I have listed above for practicing visio, which is closely related. I would simply add to the practice of relaxation at my core: besides setting aside time daily to relax into centering prayer, it would be well to take a few moments to do so right when I notice myself becoming worried and anxious.

FAITH AS ASSENSUS. First, Marcus clarifies that the view of assensus as mere intellectual assent to a set of beliefs is a misunderstanding.

Second, Marcus puts forth three affirmations that he sees as central to Christianity: affirming the reality of God, the centrality of Jesus, and the centrality of the Bible. I can affirm the reality of God and even the centrality of Jesus. About affirming the centrality of Jesus, Marcus says, "It means seeing Jesus as the decisive disclosure of God and of what a life full of God looks like. It means affirming Jesus as the Word of God, the wisdom of God, the light of the world, the way, and more, all known in a person" (pages 37-38). Yes, I can affirm that.

I find it hard, though, to affirm the centrality of the Bible. About the centrality of the Bible, Marcus says, "Just as Jesus is for us the Word of God disclosed in a person, so the Bible is the Word of God disclosed in a book. Being Christian means a commitment to the Bible as our foundation document and identity document. The Bible is our story. It is to shape our vision of life--our vision of God, of ourselves, and of God's dream for the earth" (page 38). Oh, my! No. The Bible is not my identity document, and it is not my story. It is the identity document of the extremely patriarchal Hebrew culture, and it is the story of the men of that culture. What on earth can Marcus Borg be thinking?

Well, okay, I can affirm the reality of God and the centrality of Jesus, but not the centrality of the Bible. However, I am not going to concern myself with the Bible right now.

I should also mention that Marcus qualifies what Christians affirm: "Christian faith as assensus means to affirm all of the above deeply but loosely. Deeply: faith involves our loyalty and trust and seeing at the deepest level of the self. Loosely: we need to avoid the human tendency toward excessive precision and certitude" (page 38). In other words, we recognize that, while these are our central affirmations, other religious faiths very legitimately hold other persons and scriptures as central. Thus, we affirm what we affirm in humility and openness. We don't know everything, and others have deep wisdom from other sources. We do not have the exclusive truth.

Finally, Marcus explains the way to understand assensus, which is found in the meaning of the word credo, with which the creed begins. Marcus says, "But credo does not mean 'I hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following statements.' Rather its Latin roots combine to mean 'I give my heart to' " (page 40).

Therefore, Marcus explains, here is what we are saying when we say the creed: "Thus, when we say credo at the beginning of the creed, we are saying, 'I give my heart to God.' And who is that? Who is the God to whom we commit our loyalty and allegiance? The rest of the creed tells the story of the one to whom we give our hearts: God as the maker of heaven and earth, God as known in Jesus, God as present in the Spirit" (page 40).

Marcus says, "Most simply, 'to believe' meant 'to love.' Indeed, the English words 'believe' and 'belove' are related. What we believe is what we belove. Faith is about beloving God" (page 40). To belove God, Marcus says, is "to love God and to love that which God loves" (page 41). We develop and demonstrate this love through acts of compassion and justice.

WHAT IS FAITH? Faith is beloving God. We love God and we love those God loves--ourselves, other people, all creation--and we show this love through acts of compassion and justice. We see the world God created as gracious, and we demonstrate this vision by relaxing at our core, enjoying our lives, and expressing gratitude. We are faithful to nurturing our relationship with God. We grow in deep trust of God.

Faith as Belief: A Modern Phenomenon - Karen Armstrong and Marcus Borg

Many Christians today understand Christian faith as giving intellectual assent to a set of beliefs. Such Christians would also say that one should live according to Jesus' teachings on attitudes and behavior. But they would insist that, without basic orthodox beliefs, one can't call oneself a Christian.

In my previous post, I showed how Karen Armstrong learned that other religions emphasize faith as practice rather than belief. In fact, the view of faith as belief is quite recent.

On page xi of her Introduction to The Case For God, Karen Armstrong explains that people from pre-historic times until the Enlightenment understood the difference between logos, or rational thought, and mythos, or mythical thought. Karen says that rational thought helps us to function in the external physical world: to fashion tools, to build structures, to solve problems. Rational thought deals in facts. On the other hand, Karen says that mythical thought helps us to understand our psyches: to move through grief, to face life with courage, to love deeply. Mythical thought deals in symbols.

Pre-Enlightenment people understood the difference between a factual account and a myth. A factual account tells about something that happened at a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular way. A factual account is true if the events recounted actually happened in the physical world as stated. A myth is not a factual account. Karen Armstrong says, "A myth was never intended as an accurate account of a historical event; it was something that had in some sense happened once but that also happens all the time" (page xi). A myth is true in the sense that it imparts deep truths about life.

This distinction of logos and mythos was lost during the Enlightenment, the period of time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when science came into its own. Karen Armstrong explains that the huge success of science, based on rigorous rational thought, led to an over-emphasis on logos. Karen explains that science brought wonderful technological and economic improvements to people's lives and that people, therefore, began to rely exclusively on rational thought to the inclusion of mythical thought.

Karen Armstrong shows that people even began to apply rational thought inappropriately to myth. For many, it became impossible to believe in God as portrayed in the Bible because many of the Bible accounts are not factually true. Mythical truth was abandoned. Karen says, "In particular, the meaning of the word 'belief' changed, so that a credulous acceptance of creedal doctrines became the prerequisite of faith, so much so that today we often speak of religious people as 'believers,' as though accepting orthodox dogma 'on faith' were their most important activity" (page xv).

Marcus Borg, in The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, puts it like this: "For many, Christian faith began to mean believing questionable things to be true--as assenting to the truth of claims that have become 'iffy' " (page 29).

This misguided effort to apply rational thought to myth has resulted in at least three responses.

• Fundamentalism. Karen Armstrong points out that, to hold onto their faith in a purely rational world, fundamentalists insist on giving rational intellectual assent to religious teachings and stories. Christian fundamentalists insist on believing the Bible to be factually true and and on interpreting the Bible in a literal way that was foreign to earlier Christians.
• Atheism. Karen Armstrong also points out that Atheists, especially today's New Atheists, respond to this literal interpretation of religion--which seems completely incredible to them--with a rejection of the whole idea of God.
• Drifting. Marcus Borg points out that many people are spiritually adrift. They can't give intellectual assent to the incredible accounts in the Bible, so they see no place for themselves within Christianity, and they have found nothing to replace it.

This indicates to me that we have actually regressed in our religious understanding. Many of us simply don't understand mythical thought. We apply rational thought to everything, even when it is not appropriate. We do this because logos is all we know. We have lost the whole marvelous and necessary faculty of mythos.

Faith as Belief vs. Faith as Practice - Karen Armstrong

This post will contrast the understanding of faith as belief, which is the understanding held by many present-day Christians, and the understanding of faith as practice, which is the understanding held by other religions. I will draw on Karen Armstrong's insights from her second memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, which chronicles Karen's life in the world after seven years of convent life as a nun, and her most recent book, The Case For God. Karen examines the Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist view of faith as practice rather than belief.

In The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong describes her surprise at learning that other religions do not subscribe to a set of beliefs. Karen first learned this during a lunch-time conversation with her Jewish friend Hyam Maccoby. Hyam explained to Karen that Jesus, a practicing Jew of his time, may have belonged to the school of Rabbi Hillel, a leading Pharisee, who summarized the whole of Jewish teaching in this way: " 'Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you' " (page 235).

Karen couldn't quite understand how the whole of Jewish teaching would not include at least some specific beliefs. So she asked Hyam, " 'What about faith? What about believing in God? What were those pagans supposed to believe?' " (page 235).

Karen reports Hyam's reply: " 'Easy to see that you were brought up Christian.' Hyam didn't have a high opinion of Christianity, I noticed. 'Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really. There's no orthodoxy as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like' " (page 235).

Karen describes how stunned she felt at this: " 'No official theology?' I repeated stupidly. 'None at all? How can you be religious without a set of ideas--about God, salvation, and so on--as a basis?' " (page 236).

And here is Hyam's answer: " 'We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,' Hyam replied calmly, wiping his mouth and brushing a few crumbs off the table. ' "Right practice" rather than "right belief." That's all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it's not important in the way you think. It's just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. We Jews don't bother much about what we believe. We just do it instead' " (page 236).

Karen Armstrong found this same emphasis on faith as practice in Islam. In The Spiral Staircase, she says of Islam, "Muslims had to cultivate within themselves a caring, generous spirit that made them want to give graciously to all, just as God himself did. By concrete acts of compassion, performed so regularly that they became engrained, Muslims would find that both they and their society would be transformed" (page 280). Karen also says, "Repeated actions would lead to the cultivation of a new awareness. The point is that this was not a belief system, but a process. The religious life designed by Muhammad made people act in ways that were supposed to change them forever" (page 281).

In The Case for God, Karen Armstrong recounts a story told of the Buddha. The Buddha insisted that his monks practice a complete program of yoga that emphasized acts of compassion, and he refused to discuss questions of belief with them. One monk, however, simply couldn't pull his mind away from cosmic questions. Karen says, "One of his monks was a philosopher manque and, instead of getting on with his yoga, constantly pestered the Buddha about metaphysical questions: Was there a god? Had the world been created in time or had it always existed?" (page 23).

The Buddha refused to discuss this. As Karen reports, "What difference would it make to discover that a god had created the world? Pain, hatred, grief, and sorrow would still exist. These issues were fascinating, but the Buddha refused to discuss them because they were irrelevant: 'My disciples, they will not help you, they are not useful in the quest for holiness; they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge of Nirvana' " (page 23).

Karen explains further about Nirvana and the role of acts of compassion in attaining Nirvana: "Nirvana was the natural result of a life lived according to the Buddha's doctrine of anatta ('no self'), which was not simply a metaphysical principle but, like all his teachings, a program of action. Anatta required Buddhists to behave day by day, hour by hour, as though the self did not exist" (page 24). Further, Karen explains, "By far the best way of achieving anatta was compassion, the ability to feel with the other, which required that one dethrone the self from the center of one's world and put another there. Compassion would become the central practice of the religious quest" (page 24).

This post has shown how Karen Armstrong came to understand faith as practice rather than belief, as she studied Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. My next post will examine how Christians became so fixated on faith as belief.