A Story About God and Me

In the beginning there was/is/always will be God. God has a way of messing with tenses like that, but let's use present for reasons of immediacy. God is relational, the mystery of the trinity revealed to humanity through the emergent evolution of inspired interpretation. God is love. God is self-sacrificing on behalf of Godself, and on ours. God is.

Then there was James. James was a monk who lived in Phoenicia in the 6th century. As a young man, it was discovered that James had a the gift of healing. People came from miles around to be prayed for, and to be healed, and it was good.

God partners with James. Like a candle and a torch held together, the synergy of James and God makes a healing flame that blessed all those who sought it. Perhaps someone with more chemical awareness could parse what of the flame was from candle, and what is from torch, but James was not a chemist. And, God is always keen to team up with healing.

Back at the ranch, a young woman was brought to James by her parents in order that her insanity might be healed. James prayed for the woman, and her mind returned to her. Then, he slept with her. Overcome with shame and fear of discovery. James murdered the girl, and threw her body into a nearby river.

There are no reports of a conversation as with Cain over the body of the murdered beloved. God is heartbroken by the violence. God is enraged by the injustice. God watches with sorrow and anger while one of his children is cast into fitful and unjust sleep as another turns and walks away from the flame.

James wandered.

God is doing God's own thing. Chilling beyond the realm of human understanding, drawing folks into mystery only to extend past whatever borders that category might have. Ever being, eternally the same. The divine fire, the uncreated light, bathing creation in warm invitation to return to what it is completely, a flame.

James stopped, and dug a hole in the ground. Six feet deep. Six feet tall. Three feet wide. A grave that was denied to another, he would take as his own.

God waits, limitless by time and space and whatever other measure of distance a person can be. God sits in the grave and waits for James to return. 

James waited ten years. He was brought water and food by those who used to call him brother. But even those he used to call Abba could not bring him absolution. Perhaps he prayed. Sometimes the penitent do that, sometimes they do not.

God attends liturgy and evening prayers. God attends the funeral of the girl whose name is lost to history, and to her soul that will never be lost again. God attends to tears and laughter. God rejoices in forgiveness, and weeps over harm. God creates the universe in a rush of radiation and light, creating time and energy and matter all in an instant. God is the last one left at the end of it all, turning out the lights and locking the door behind at the end of this universe. God waits in the grave.

Ten years into James' self-imposed life of death it stopped raining. The farmers, which is to say, everyone, were none to happy with this, and so they prayed for rain. But, it didn't. The priests, who were also farmers and in need of food, also prayed for rain. But, it didn't. The monks and the abbot who were equally corporeal and reliant on grain prayed for rain. But it didn't. Somebody told James about the drought problem. Something he was already aware of due to the fact that all he had to look at were dirt and sky, both of which were unusually dry. James prayed. And, it did.

God sends rain, and God sends drought. God waits in the grave, and God invites James to pray. God forgives. God burns. God heals. God reconciles and fills the hole dug in the name of death with living water. God floats the dead out the graves and lifts them up to the light.

St. James the Faster (or St. James the Obscure as Reader Paul likes to say) is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church on the 4th of March, every year. The 4th of March, 1989 was the day I was born, and the day my parents named me Tyson James.

A Distorted Image

(Note: this was an assignment for my Therapy I class. The purpose of the assignment was to identify and write about our therapeutic "north star," as well as our understanding of human nature and the goal of therapy.)

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Meaning exists in the space in between. Nothing has meaning all by itself. Meaning comes from interaction, discourse, context, and relationship. Human beings are meaning-makers, which is to say we are relationship makers. Even the most elusive hermit or the most comatose schizophrenic without any meaningful contact with another person maintains internal relationships.  This relationality is why the doctrine of The Trinity in junction with the belief in the Imago Dei is so important. The Trinity tells us God is relational. We contain the divine image, and we find our divinity in relationships.

In an ideal world, all relationships between people would be open, honest, and clear. There would be no distortion in our varied attempts to connect, to give and receive love. The world as it exists, however, is full of distortion. Sin is the cause and consequence of these distortions. Sickness is the cause and consequence of these distortions. Humanity is a complex cybernetic beast. Change in one aspect of our system leads to change in the entire system. If one of us is sick, we all are. One person’s distorted attempts at giving and receiving love reverberate across the entire human network. In a sense, there is no such thing as individual pathology. Every sickness is interpersonal.

But, our disease is not ultimately fatal. The Imago Dei seeks after the same. There is a Gaelic saying, “one beetle recognizes another.”  The divinity in each one of us seeks to bring out and commune with the goodness in others. The Imago Dei is not a small icon of Christ buried in the rubbish heap of our bodies. All of our being is made in God’s image. The disease of sin is a corruption that can be cleansed, a distortion that can be corrected. The Fathers called this process theosis. The cause and consequence of theosis is love.

The goal of therapy, in the broadest and most general sense, is to assist a client in the process of theosis, to wrestle distortions, to heal sickness, and to love unto the possibility of more love. Interpersonal psychodynamic psychotherapy in particular seeks to delve into a person’s internal, primarily unconscious world, and to bring into the light that which has been living in darkness through the genuine connection of one Imago Dei to another. In these Imago-Imago meetings we seek to further reveal and strengthen both. The process sounds very mystical and ethereal, but in practice it tends to be messy and confusing. It had better be, otherwise it wouldn’t be real.

It may seem counterintuitive. We may think that the Imago Dei is only the good parts of a person or at the very least, that the distortions, disease, and corruption would not be counted among the image of God. I disagree. The image of God cannot be destroyed. A corruption of the image is still the image. We cannot help but be what we are, relational, love seeking and giving, divine beings. We can, however, help one another to be more what we are. We can help to strengthen and enliven the relationships between people, the place where meaning is born, and in so doing give more meaning, more love, more life. This is the goal of therapy.