12. Teresa also makes the claim that self-knowledge is the first room to find, but regardless, self-awareness occurs toward the beginning of the soul’s journey (Interior Castle 1.2.8–9).
13. Teresa, Life of Saint Teresa of Avila 8.5 (Cohen, 44).
14. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle 7.4.12 (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, 412).
15. Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila, 18–26.
16. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle 1.2.9 (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, 24).
17. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle 6.9.16 (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, 179).
18. Teresa, Book of the Foundations, 31.
19. “The soul’s progress does not lie in thinking much but in loving much” (Teresa, Book of the Foundations, 28).
20. Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle 7.4.15 (Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, 415).
21. Keating, Intimacy with God, 96.
22. Heschel, Sabbath, 7.
Part 4
The United Life
LIVING IN COMMUNITY
The church is the primary presence of God’s activity in the world. As we pay attention to what it means to be the church we create an alternative community to the society of the world. This new community, the embodied experience of God’s kingdom, will draw people into itself and nurture them in the faith. In this sense the church and its life in the world will become the new apologetic.
—Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
—Romans 15:5–7
10
Belonging Together
LONGING FOR COMMUNITY
In salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in a human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people.
—Pope Francis, Gaudete et Exsultate
We are utterly and desperately alone. At least, that’s what life feels like for a lot of people. To quote Stanley Hauerwas again, the project of modernity is an “attempt to produce a people who believe that they should have no story except the story that they choose when they had no story.”1 We inherit nothing. We pass nothing on. This popular sentiment was clear in Taylor Swift’s commencement address at New York University in 2022. She passed on this advice to the graduating seniors: “And I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news: It’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: It’s totally up to you.”2 It’s totally and eternally up to you. Good luck.
This loneliness and this rugged individualism have only grown with time. Robert Bellah and a team of researchers investigated how Americans viewed themselves in contemporary society, and their results were published in 1985.3 The researchers identify two groups of self-understanding. They term the first group “utilitarian individuals.” This group sees the goal of life as being successful, as moving up the social and economic ladder. These people can, and indeed must, improve by their own efforts alone. The world has competing interests, and people need to look out for their own, to pursue “success” no matter the cost. Whatever works. The second group of individuals are called “expressivist individuals.”4 The key to a good life is feeling good. That’s really the only criterion. Material success is not as important as it is in the utilitarian mindset. Rather, the material aspects of life are valuable only to the extent that they lead to personal happiness. The measure of an activity or choice’s worthiness is the pleasure that it brings the person. Whatever feels good. By and large, these are the two ways that Americans understand themselves and the two sets of values they use to make decisions. We are individuals through and through.
No one should be surprised, then, that Americans are also lonely and isolated. In a book published in 2000 called Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam tracks the loss of civic involvement in America. Whereas people used to join community clubs or groups, be involved in civic affairs, or join bowling leagues, now people “bowl alone.” They don’t join groups, but they take Taylor’s advice: “It’s totally up to you.” More and more, Americans don’t have friends to do activities with or to live alongside.
The impact of aloneness and isolation is the damage it does to social trust. We live in a story where we shouldn’t trust others, and even if we wanted to trust others, we couldn’t, since we don’t know others very well. There is no one to trust. And these studies were published before smartphones were on the scene and social media took off! The promise of connection has only put us in online echo chambers that hold the promise of real community but none of the benefits. Social isolation and fragmentation have only increased in the last twenty years.
Theologian Myles Werntz describes our modern times of self-making this way: we must “take on the burden of the world, carrying the weight of being self-made and self-sustained.”5 The crisis of anxiety among young people cannot be blamed simply on this type of rogue individualism, but the individualism sure can’t help. Imagine going out into an uncertain world, being unsure of yourself and unsure of who to be or where to go, and knowing you can trust absolutely no one. That sounds more like terrifying news than good news to me.
The modern story that we have no story unless we choose a story when we have no story turns out to be a false story. Stanley Hauerwas argues that “to be a community which lives by remembering is a genuine achievement, as too often we assume that we can ensure our existence only by freeing ourselves from the past.”6 The church remembers. Church carries a narrative that confronts the world in which we live. Remembering is the church’s witness.
In essence, you can’t have part 1 of this book (truth) without community. To deny the church is to deny the communal narrative and to accept the individual narrative that you can choose your own story—and that you can carry that narrative to the next generation. But of course, if you live like this, you have no future generation to pass anything on to. The next generation should not listen to or trust you.
The true story is that we inherit a story and that we are intimately connected not only to others but also to place. We always see from someplace, and that fact doesn’t need to be considered a limitation. It can be seen as a gift. We are unable to understand God apart from others or understand ourselves apart from others. We live mediated lives, gifted lives. We all came into being from two other people, and from our earliest beginnings we were dependent on parents who loved us into existence. We depend on others throughout our entire lives and will likely die in dependency on our children or on strangers. There’s no getting around it. We are relational beings. I have good news: it’s not totally up to you.
The world around us may say that each of us is utterly alone. But we need other people, and Jesus gifts us with those other people in the church. Spiritual formation is a group project.
THE STORY OF COMMUNITY IN THE BIBLE
Our relational life starts with the trinitarian life of God. Being made in God’s image means being made in and for relational intimacy. Out of the trinitarian love of God—three persons in one essence—God creates. Before anything material existed, there was relational love.
When God creates, everything is good. After creating human beings, he looks back on all that he has made, and it is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). But God also notices something that is not good: the aloneness of man (2:18). So God makes a helper for Adam, a companion. When Adam discovers his helper, he sings a song. At last, someone fit for relationship.
But the relational intimacy does not last long. That serpent sneaks into the garden. First, he challenges their trust in God. “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Gen. 3:1). God can’t be trusted. Humans must have the wisdom to trust themselves. When Adam and Eve take the fruit, they bear the fruit of their decision. Immediately, they hide. The intimacy they had with God has been broken. When God calls out to Adam, Adam blames Eve. He goes from singing a song, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23), to “the woman whom you gave to be with me” (3:12). He throws Eve under the bus, even seeming to blame God for giving him the woman. The other is no longer a gift but a burden. Sin exiles humans from God and separates them from each other and from the land.
The vertical and horizontal fragmentation of relationship only intensifies throughout the biblical story. From the harmony of community in the garden, the story of brokenness and isolation spreads quickly. After the fall and exile from the garden, the next story we read is that of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1–16). Brothers, born to be companions, end up rivals. Cain kills Abel. When God asks Cain where his brother is—this question is reminiscent of God’s question to Adam in Genesis 3:9—he responds, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (4:9). Individualism says the same thing: we can’t be held responsible for other people.
Early civilizations come and work together on the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9), which seems like good news. They are doing community building! But they use their relational connection to build a name for themselves. Their pride results in a break in intimacy with God, so God scatters the people and gives them different languages. Now the ways people speak are a further source of separation between them.
The story of Israel is the story of a continual fracturing of relationships. God chooses and blesses a people, not a loose gathering of individuals. His call to Israel is to be a people, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5–6). He chooses different representatives to be leaders over his one people. But each leader lets the people down, from Abraham to Moses to David. God said the seed of Eve would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), but this seed seems elusive. No one can be trusted. All there seems to be is relational dysfunction.
