Spiritual Autobiography and Spiritual Maturity
A Reflection from a Visit to Duke Divinity School, North Carolina
I spent four days recently in and around Durham, North Carolina. A friend and I went to attend a conference and to speak with a number of writers and professors about their work and their perspective on matters of church and faith.
One of the people that we were pleased to speak with was Richard Lischer. Richard, who goes by “Rick”, is James T. and Alice Mead Cleland Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Duke Divinity School. As much as that title sounds about right for the academy, Rick was about as down to earth and friendly as you could imagine. We met at an amazing, mostly outdoor, coffee shop called Guglhupf Bakery. Clearly, it’s a popular spot because, not only was it busy, but everyone we met in the area knew how to pronounce it.
In preparing for our conversation and in the time since, I read some of what Rick Lischer has written. His CV is very extensive and the writing that I read had that wonderful combination of being thoughtful and challenging, while at the same time focused on the reality and beauty of humanity and the gift of faith.
Lischer’s most recent book, Our Hearts are Restless, addresses the topic of spiritual autobiography. Lischer’s consideration of spiritual biography is about much more than “testimony.” In considering major figures in Christian history, ancient and contemporary, Lischer offers the reader an opportunity reflect on their own life, particularly in the context of transcendence, in the context of God and faith. He says simply, but profoundly, in the introduction, “Some lives are construed as if lived in the presence of God.”
This is one of the hopes of spiritual autobiography. It is about so much more than “I once was lost, but now I am found.” That sentiment is hopeful, to be sure, but it is not complete.
One of the people that Lischer considers is the monk and writer Thomas Merton. Merton was an influential and somewhat famous voice in areas of politics, culture, and religion. In speaking of Merton, Lischer brings out a concept that I think is helpful in releasing us from some negative ideas of faith towards something more expansive and life-giving.
Lischer takes up Merton’s spiritual autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, and cites poignant and beautiful imagery and language in the book. He speaks of Merton feeling the stirrings of faith in reading a letter from Gerard Manley Hopkins (poet and priest) to John Henry Newman (theologian, academic and priest). Around the same time, Merton is reading Augustine’s Confessions and feels a personal prompting like that of Augustine in his conversion.
As Lischer puts it, “With that, Merton leaves his room and walks the nine blocks down Broadway to meet a priest at Corpus Christi. A light rain is falling, (now Merton’s words), ‘And then everything inside me began to sing.”
Weeks later, Merton is baptised into the church. His reflection on the day:
“I went downstairs and out into the street to go to my happy execution and rebirth. The sky was bright and cold. The river glittered like steel. There was a clean wind in the street. It was one of those days full of life and triumph, made for great beginnings.”
The concept that I am thinking about, that Lischer brings out so well, is the disdain that Merton initially has for his pre-faith self. Merton speaks in derogatory terms about his past. After Merton’s baptism he makes his first confession and remarks in his autobiography, “I tore out all those sins by their roots, like teeth.” Merton changes the name he refers to himself by from “Tom Merton” to “Father Louis.”
As Lischer says, “In his autobiography Father Louis is extremely hard on Tom Merton.”
Merton (now calling himelf Father Louis) takes up a kind of faith that many of you might have known in evangelical circles. Lischer calls it an “Everything Must Go!” faith. Lischer points out some of the classic renunciations, “Secular pursuits, literature, politics, good food, The New Yorker, the love of women - everything.” In this concept of faithful living, as Lischer says, “Ordinary callings and professions are not built to accomodate the holiness demanded by God.”
What is great about Lischer’s writing is that it doesn’t leave us there. Even if some aspects of evangelicalism may have been gifts to some people, there was often a failure to get past the kind of spiritual adolescence that Merton exemplifies in this part of his story. Lischer (and Merton) help us to see a vision of greater spiritual maturity that does not disdain the secular, the ordinary, and the everyday.
Lischer quotes C.S. Lewis about the reality of faith. Lewis points out that life after conversion consists mostly of the same things as life before conversion. These same things are done with a new spirit, but they remain the same things. Here is Lischer again, “Merton will come to a similar conviction but it will take him a long time, long after the publication of The Seven Story Mountain. Finally, he will criticize the busywork of the monastery where he lives and yearn for the ordinary holiness of farmers, housewives and college professors. In his middle age, he will renounce not Tom Merton, but Father Louis.” (Amen amen - though noting the “housewife” reference. Merton had some spiritually immature views of women for much of his life)
The point I am hoping that you will see is that disdain for life before faith is not spiritual maturity. Disdain for the secular and the ordinary is not holiness. In fact, it may often be a kind of arrogant spiritual immaturity.
You may have felt these things yourself and, as your faith changes, you may fall into the trap of thinking that real faith requires that initial zealousness. Perhaps you were part of a church that held such spiritual adolescence as a virtue, not only in early days of faith, but for the long haul.
You don’t have to see it that way. You may, like Thomas Merton, “renounce not Tom Merton, but Father Louis.”
Great piece. Merton led a fascinating life.