Tag: Relationality

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Relationality

(for part 1 click here, for part 2 click here, for part 3 click here)

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before God our Creator. For God is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand. Oh, that today you would hearken to God’s voice!

Introduction

Have you gotten out of the habit of communing with other people? I think I have. Well, to be honest, being social is very low on my list of things I regularly think about. When we first lived in Grand Junction in 2014, it took about ten months before I realized that the looming feeling I had was something called “loneliness.” Have you heard of it? I don’t get lonely; I can go for a very long time without any social interaction. A. Very. Long. Time. So, when I had this weird sensation and finally realized that there’s a term for it and that it there’s no drug to take to eliminate it, I struck out to make a friend. Just one. And I did! Lyuda and I have been friends since late 2015.

But this story feels like a distant memory of eras long gone. I’m reminded it’s been awhile since I’ve done something like that: gone out and made a new friend. I think it’s something to do with what we’ve suffered over the past few years. Now, as I said, it takes me a long to get “lonely”, but three years in? It feels especially tangible right now, right on the surface. Do you feel lonely? If you do, you are not alone. We’re all lonely. We’re just now starting to pull together and peek heads out of our shells…three years later. For three years, we’ve been bombarded with the fear of a virus that is very contagious, making it impossible to share place and space with others. Not to mention the caustic socio-political environment, tearing friendships apart, families asunder, and drawing thick lines in the sand. So, we’ve became pros at shutting down and closing off because our lives depended on it; we’ve become experts at speaking vapidly to stave off emotional outbursts, or worse? So, the coming back is hard… at times, too hard; isn’t it just easier to stay in, stay closed, stay distant, stay safe? I’m fine on my own, …right?

I fear we’re losing our relationality and nothing seems to satisfy.

Romans 5:1-11

For if while being hostile to God we were reconciled to God by means of the death of God’s son, much more since being reconciled we will be saved by his life. But not only [that] but even boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we now received reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10-11)[1]

At the core of what Paul is saying here in Romans, is that by virtue of the believer’s relationship with God through Christ, they are given space and time with God and with each other. Paul begins by explaining that in being justified we have peace with God and not only with God but with the world even in the midst of not having peace with other people.[2] During Advent I mentioned, “Peace exists because God is and God is within us.”[3] Herein is the foundation of that peace, according to Paul: God reconciles us to God through God’s son, Jesus. If this peace is done by works, we do not have a guarantee that peace with God exists. However, if it is by God’s doing, it’s secured and constant because it’s promised and God fulfills God’s promises. Every day we are justified and made right with God, every day we have union with God by faith because it’s by God’s mercy and not our own actions and even in spite of them.

By faith in Christ we have peace with God because by clinging to the promises of God we declare God to be truthful and true, rendering to God the things belonging to God: honor, delight, and trustworthiness (this is what it means that we “boast on the basis of hope of the glory of God”). In this way our relationship with God is aligned by our union with God; and if the relationship with God is aligned so, too, is our relationship with the world. In this new alignment with the world born from being children of God by faith,[4] we have peace with the world, because reconciliation with God allows us to interact with the world and with other people in a liberated way unencumbered from the burden of using the world and other people as means to an end (i.e. to secure a good relationship with God).

Paul anchors suffering and endurance in this union with God that we have by faith in Christ. Because we stand (“we are established”) in the grace of God, we have hope because we receive the love of God having been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit having been given to us. According to Paul, our union with God is the means by which we endure tribulations, for where we are God is, so, too is God’s love for us and the world. Therefore, our hope does not disgrace or shame because God promises to be present in our afflictions and sufferings and God is trustworthy and honest, because by Christ we have seen God suffer on our behalf.[5]   

Paul reminds his audience that if they received all of this while they were hostile (ἐχθρὰ ὄντες) to God and still missing the mark (ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν), then how much more will they receive in their reconciliation and union with God. Now God establishes God’s love for us, yet while we still missing the mark, Christ died on behalf of us. It is our missing the mark that brings Christ to the cross, for our ability to determine good from evil runs askew, as promised back in Genesis 3. Yet, even though we put Christ to death, God resurrects him meeting our demand for death with God’s gift of life.[6] This is love, this is grace: not giving someone what they deserve but giving them that which they do not deserve. Where we had the right to be judged and condemned for Christ’s death, we are given life, love and liberation.[7]

Now, receiving this divine grace and love while we were still hostile to God, how much more do we receive as those reconciled? We receive God, we receive the whole world, we receive ourselves in right relation with God and the World, thus with others.

Conclusion

We are rightly timid to derive our relationality from our own strength, trying desperately to reduplicate past experiences. We are right to be nervous to venture outside and commune with others, putting ourselves in physically vulnerable situations beyond our control. We are far from being out of the woods of the pandemic, and there are new bugs around, putting precious lives at risk. It is right to be cautious with whom you share your dreams and wishes for the world; the caustic socio-political climate that started back in 2016 is still percolating—for many people things are continuing to go backwards, away from what they had, or thought they had. Relationality right now is intimidating: with neighbors, with friends, with family, maybe even with ourselves.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we reverse this trend of losing relationality, this threat of loneliness? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for relationality.

As those who have been encountered by God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are those who have been given life, love, and liberation. We are given union with God, we are given solid ground to endure the hardest tribulations with the most amount of hope. We are not given hope founded on false expectations for the future; rather, we are given hope that is present tense, that calls to mind what God has done, thus remembering what God said God will do. This type of hope is here, it is now, it is in spite of the world, transcends the world, and is for the world.[8] In our union with God we do not need to run away from chaos of multiple relational fractures or cling to what is behind denying the disordered relationality at hand. Rather, we can stand here, where we are, in the chaos and tumult, in the trial and tribulation, and know we are not alone for God resides with those whom God loves, with those who suffer, with those who have the audacity to experience their awakened hunger for God.

In this way, beloved, we are not alone; through God’s love for us we are not alone for we are with God. And if we are with God then we are with each other. It’s here where we’re brought further out of ourselves and our desperate attempts to keep ourselves from the difficulties of this life, from the anxiety of what lies outside the security of our homes, and from fear of the other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find relationality with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 43. “Since we are justified through God’s imputation, therefore by faith, not by works, we have peace the world and with God, although not yet with men and the flesh ….”

[3] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/12/04/peace-even-now/

[4] LW 25, 43-44. “Through whom , as our Mediator, we have obtained access, to God by loving and knowing and delighting in Him, by faith, because there will be no salvation through Christ without faith, to this grace, of peace, remission of sins, and justification, in which we stand, through the firm confession of faith, and we rejoice, not in a present thing before men but in our hope of sharing the glory, the exaltation, that is, the glorification in the future life of the sons of God, those who are of God.”

[5] LW 25, 44. “And endurance produces trial that we might be proved by God and found without deceit and guile and hypocrisy, and trial hope, that is, of ‘the glory of God,’ as has been said (v. 2). 5. And hope does not disappoint us, because it neither deserts nor fails us. All these things, I say, happen because the love, etc.,’ because the love, which creates an insuperable attachment, of God, that is, from God, has been poured, freely poured out, not received by merit, into our hearts, because love performs its works voluntarily; for works done unwillingly and by force do not endure, by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, through Christ from God the Father”

[6] LW 25, 44-45. “For hardly, it is extraordinary, I say, to die for the ungodly, for what is righteous, that is, for the sake of righteousness and truth, will one die—though perhaps, it is customary to die, for what is good, for its usefulness and desired features, one will dare even to die. 8. But God, the Father, shows, He makes it more commendable and worthy of love than all these things, His love, with which He loves us, for us, that is, the love which has been given to us, because on His part, in that while we were yet sinners, which he earlier (v. 6) expressed with ‘while we were still weak,’ at the right time (an expression which is not in the Greek at this point but only above) Christ died for us, the ungodly, so that we might not die in all eternity.”

[7] LW 25, 45. “For if, while were enemies, because of our sins, we were reconciled, so that we were not deserving of perdition, to God, not by our own merits or those of anyone else, except by the death of His Son; much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we, as His own, be saved by His life, in his resurrection to eternal life. 11. And not only  so, do we rejoice in tribulations, but we also rejoice in God, that is, because we have a God and He is our own God, because He has given Himself to us, through our Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator, through whom we have now received our reconciliation, the remission of sins, so that we may receive God Himself, through One. I say. Christ.”

[8] I’m reminded here of similar tones in this post by J. Scott Jackson, http://derevth.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-peace-that-disturbs-berrigans.html

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Existential Hunger

Psalm 103: 1-5 Bless God, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy Name. Bless God, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits. God forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities; God redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness; God satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.

Joel 2:1-2

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of God is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like [darkness] spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

Joel begins his prophecy speaking of doom. The ever-present feeling of a storm cloud hovering somewhere over and above, out of sight, unable to be touched, deep in uncertainty, it floats just beyond the periphery of awareness and intuition. It’s there…I think… Our world seems thrust into a void of ground-opened-up-beneath-our-feet; nothing is certain so nothing is certain. How did we get to the peripheral of doom? I might be able to point to a myriad of ideologies and concepts that have rent asunder our communion and community; but I’m not sure those are the only things to blame. There’s no monolithic like the ones promoted by pundits and political candidates. Going backwards won’t stave off that doom cloud; ignoring it is never the answer; rolling over and just acquiescing…this is the way it’s always been, *shrug… Is this what freedom and bravery look like?

I think part of that doom cloud is our own doing. We’ve spent too long in the realm of suspicion and skepticism;[1] stripping back everything leaves us with nothing. Don’t get me wrong, the post-modern gift of suspicion and skepticism gave us liberation to question everything and the audacity to refuse blind trust. We’ve stripped back stories and myths, tradition and ritual, authority and expertise, normativity and expectation in the pursuit of authenticity, truth, love, and liberation. We’ve transcended prohibitions that controlled us; we’ve gone as far as to imagine existence without the threat and promises of God and God’s judgment relegating human beings to this or that afterlife. We’ve even attempted to live in the absurdity of life without the justification of divine purpose and predetermination.

Suspicion allowed us to strip back and question many things that needed and need to be questioned, but it hasn’t replaced what it took. Finding out everything is a lie is not the same as being given truth. Realizing the ground under your feet is an illusion, doesn’t mean you are now standing on firm ground. Humanity can’t live sola suspicio (on suspicion alone); it’s a great location for a vacation, but no one can live there forever.[2] If we only have skepticism then we only have destruction, and if only destruction then we have despair and death. In desperation to sooth, we cling to whatever we can touch and feel, see and taste, convinced it’s the only thing we can grab on to in order to locate stability in a world seeming like a freefall into an endless void.

Joel 2:15-16

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

Joel declares a summons. Sound the trumpet! Do something to alert the people to the doom cloud rollin’ in. Get the attention of the people! They’ve grown numb; they’ve grown desperate in their hunger, the aftermath of sola suspicio. I know it may sound odd to make this claim, but I think we’re hungry. Hunger takes many forms. I think on an existential level—a level that incorporates our entire being, spirit and body—we’re famished, desperately hungry.

As people, as Christians, as a society, as a nation, we’re so hungry that any sustenance will do, no matter how malnourishing it is. The rate at which we consume is mind blowing. And we consume in the technical definition of the word: until there’s nothing left. Our planet is falling apart under our feet and above our heads because we can’t control how much and how fast we consume. We consume people and relationships; only staying with them while they serve us and our obscure pursuit of happiness and comfort. We consume to numb the pain and discomfort of the doom cloud beginning to obscure our peripheral vision. Whether it’s full seasons on Netflix, substances altering our minds, purchasing clothes, phones, cars, houses—whatever—we’re trapped in a cycle of take and eat, never slowing down enough to see and know that what we have in our hands is precious, of the earth, of labor, of goodness. The modern dictum of Rene Descartes has run its course; no longer is it, “I think therefore I am”. Rather it’s, “‘I consume, therefore I am.’” [3]

Tool’s “Stinkfist”

But it’s not enough, I need more
Nothing seems to satisfy
I said I don’t want it, I just need it
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive

There’s something kinda sad about
The way that things have come to be
Desensitized to everything
What became of subtlety?

How can this mean anything to me
If I really don’t feel anything at all?
I’ll keep digging
‘Til I feel something[4]

As a means to stave of the despair and dread of doom, we consume people and things. Everyone and everything have a function and purpose as a means to my end. Consumption is a new hallmark characteristic of our post-modern/post-enlightenment existence. The irony? It’s all been in the name of the liberation of the self from the tyranny of mythology, angry divinity, and religious captivity, but the self is now found imprisoned to new despots and tyrants: fear, anxiety, loss, sola suspicio. We’ve not gained ourselves; we’ve lost ourselves.[5] The self can’t exist in the vacuum created by suspicion’s consummation with consumption. Nothing is the only end goal here. Needing more and more, digging deeper and deeper, there is less and less ground to stand on, fewer and fewer people and things with which to be in living and true relationship.Skeptical until there is nothing to lean back on; consuming until there is nothing left, we end up isolated and alienated from ourselves and from others. And we find ourselves inching closer and closer to destruction.

Joel 2:17

Let the priests who minister before God
weep between the portico and the altar,
saying, “Spare Your people, Abba God,
and do not make Your heritage a reproach,
an object of scorn among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”

Joel returns to summoning, this time calling on the priests of God. Pray for your people! Pray for God’s beloved! This one is inching precariously close to the precipice of death! Joel is aware that of their own power the people cannot disentangle themselves from the threatening doom cloud rollin’ in. They’re desperate, they do not feel the firm ground under their feet, they are not secure, they are not assured; tumult and chaos rule the day, anger and fear the emotions du jour. Skepticism and suspicion have brought them so far but have dropped them off on the side of the road, cold and wet, thirsty and hungry. Whither is God!? the prophets cry out. Is this all? Have we been abandoned to the pit and the void of skepticism and consumption? Where is God? Where is life? Where is love? Where is comfort? Where is hope? Where is liberation?

It is time to put a boundary around how far skepticism and suspicion take us. It is time to realize and feel our hunger. We must stop and take a moment and feel the discomfort of our hunger pangs, we must feel the loss, grieve the pain, suffer the injustices, and grow alert, becoming more and more aware…

…we are hungry for stability
…we are hungry for identity
…we are hungry for relationality
…we are hungry for community
…we are hungry for solidarity

We must become aware that we are hungry for unconditional love, resurrected life, and present liberation; we must become aware that we are hungering after God…[6]

Joel 2:12-14

Yet even now, says God,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to God, your God,
for God is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether God will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind God,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for  God, your God.

[1] “Hermeneutics of Suspicion” ala Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Heidegger etc.

[2] I’m in fluenced here by the work and life of Dorothee Sölle in her memoire Against the Wind, specifically the chapter “Suspended in Nothingness” p.13.

[3] “The motto of the postmodern world and life therein may well be, ‘I consume, therefore I am.’ The artificial of creation of needs is an essential component of economic life; the countermodel of ‘live simply so that others may simply live’ is denigrated as sheer romanticism. We are further removed than ever before from an economy that sustains subsistence and is not hounded by progress. To be ‘over-choiced’ with thirty different kinds of bread does indeed develop the shopper’s awareness of differentiation and sense of taste. However, from the ego that is becoming dependent on such a surplus of choice, it also takes away the time and energy for other life pursuits. The ego is diverted and, with the help of the world of consumer goods, ‘turned in on itself’ (homo incurvatus in se ipsum), as the tradition used to depict the sinner.” Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry, 212-213.

[4] Tool “Stinkfist” written by: Paul D’amour, Daniel Carey, Maynard Keenan, Adam Jones. Ænima. 1996.

[5] “He who makes use of another person as a means of achieving his own ends not only humiliates that person but also degrades himself. To treat another person as if she were a thing is to become a thing oneself, a servant to the functioning of the very ‘thing’ being manipulated. By demanding sacrifice, such a person destroys his own freedom. As the one in control he becomes the one controlled. In alienating others from that which they wish to be and can become, he alienates himself. Because he concentrates on domination, on employing others as means to his own ends, he loses all the other possibilities open to him. For example, he no attention to anything that does not fit his purpose. He loses the ability to enjoy living because he must constantly reinforce his life by accomplishments relationship between people is so interdependent that it is impossible for one person to prosper at the expense of another. In the long run such exploitation proves detrimental to both.” Dorothee Sölle, Beyond Mere Obedience, 34-35.

[6] “I need to ground heaven on earth. (Den Himmel erden!) The best ally in this crazy enterprise that we sometimes call “faith” I find in the Bible. The book tells me the story of God’s covenant with us under realistic conditions.” (p. x) and, “In order to dialogue with the Word of God, the praxis of the prophets and Jesus, we need the clearest understanding of our own praxis. When we delve deep enough into our own situation, we will reach a point where theological reflection becomes necessary. We then have to “theologize the given situation. We read the context (steps 1 and 2) until it cries out tor theology. The only way to reach this point at which we become aware of our need for prayer, for hope, for stories of people who have been liberated, is to go deeply enough into our own sociohistorical context. The theologian will discover the inner necessity of theology in a I C given situation and its potential for unfolding theological meaning. We have to reach this point of no return where we will know new that we do need God. This is the basis of doing theology, but the only way to come to this point is worldly analysis of our situation.” p. xi Dorothee Sölle, On Earth as in Heaven.

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Intertwined

Our legs are intertwined Your right leg drapes heavy over my upper left inner thigh There is no movement It just rests as you sleep a deep peaceful sleep Skin to skin thigh to thigh like it was meant to be there since the beginning of time as if these two were created for each other I rest on my back experiencing the weight of your leg resting across mine Love Gratitude Thankfulness emotions that overcome my mind I turn I roll over bringing my right leg parallel to my left My thighs press  together in symphony with gravity not resisting with fight not pressing with intentionality just turning and rolling and resting my thigh on top of yours on top of mine In the process I feel your weight press against me more I pause and take in the wonderful sensation Union You and me intertwined My arm sleepily shifts with me and extends beyond me to embrace you You are fast asleep on my left arm pressed up against my breast and my right sweeps to grasp your back and pull you closer to me Closer to me than you already are if that is possible Your forehead meets my lips as I bring my head down to kiss you and I pause and inhale you You are the smell that I have fallen in love with the moment you first came into my world I am grateful for you So grateful I didn’t expect you I didn’t see you becoming intertwined with me but you did and here we are in my bed draped mutually across each other intertwined mutually with each other like lovers Lovers of the truest meaning of the word lovers Lovers Sensual sensual in the safest sense of the word sensual Skin touching skin Comfort and safety Freedom thus mutuality There is no fear here The love I feel for you is real love I love you and would lay my life down for you I let my lips linger over you enjoying this silent moment this moment you don’t know about This moment you are unaware of where I can love you with no reciprocal action Just love you from the bottom of me to the top of me toward the bottom of you to the top of you Love The warmth of your body radiates over mine as I have you in my embrace You stir I subtly and slowly pull back to give you space intending not to wake you up Lest I lose this moment forever I gently and slowly lean in one more time for one more kiss and risk letting relaxed fingertips of my right hand run gently, lovingly, and sensually over your hair all the way to the nape of your neck I smile I love you I steal one more kiss I love you I roll away and lay upon my back to let sleep take me over once again.

 

 

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