I recently attended the 27th Annual Simon Silverman Symposium on Phenomenology, “Phenomenology and the Theological Turn.” With Jean-Luc Marion giving the key-note address, possibility and impossibility were very much part of the conference conversation. According to Marion, God enters philosophy in defiance of the conditions of experience, arriving as an unconditioned impossibility. Both Marion and Richard Kearney (also on the panel) made reference to biblical examples of impossibility, predominantly Abraham’s welcome of the three strangers/Sarah’s conception of Isaac and Mary’s reception of the Annunciation. In both these cases, God was welcomed in as an impossibility.
While I agree with this depiction of God as impossible, it doesn’t address how one might relate to such a God once admitted. How do we wait for (wait on?) God without succumbing to the temptation of insisting that God has indeed shown up? And shown up on our terms? In addressing an impossible God, I find the peril of idolatry is two fold: the contrivance of a divine artifice which remains under our power and the contrivance of a religious posture in privileged possession of that power. Certainly, it is important to admit God on God’s own, albeit impossible, terms. How do we wait on (for?!) an impossibility for which we do not yet know to ask?
To appeal to the biblical examples, Abraham in his wildest desperation for an heir did not think to ask for a child beyond Sarah’s natural ability to carry one. Likewise, it could not have entered her head to imagine herself as a pregnant virgin (and with the messiah no less). She was betrothed to Joseph with all the expectations of a normal married life. The question remains: how did they maintain their openness to the inbreaking of the impossible? How do we maintain in receptive vigil without forcing the vision?
These questions had personal significance for me as well. Just previous to the conference, my youngest sister was involved in a near fatal bicycle accident. The right side of her skull was shattered and the doctors couldn’t make any guarantees about her recovery.
Because it takes brain injuries 36-72 hours to fully develop, those first three days were scary ones for us. In order to reduce the risk of swelling, we were not allowed to talk or touch my sister. With our hands clasped tightly around the possibility that she could die, we were left to mutely stand, sit, or kneel. We kept vigil over the respirator moving her breath in and out. We meditated on the blip of the machine that measured the swelling. We prayed.
But in praying for my sister’s recovery, our prayers resolutely remained within the realm of the possible. Although her recovery may have seemed impossible, we could still manage to wrap our minds around the idea of her recovery. We occupied ourselves praying for a possibility, however seemingly remote, to become an actuality.
That being said, can praying for the possible be thought as a way of practicing openness toward the impossible? As we ruminate on specific hopes and fears, these possibilities are positioned to potentially shred their significance in our address. In other words, the overemphasis on a particular concern potentially exposes that concern to suffer a loss of privilege. Prayer invites a crisis point of agency: What difference does it make? What choice do I have? Throughout his work, Marion refers to this crisis point as vanity, the same vanity that is invoked by Qoheleth in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. In petitioning particular concerns, our perspective on their import potentially shifts; one concern becomes indistinguishable from the others. At the same time, we lose the expectation of specific response. Just as specific possibilities become undifferentiated, we have to admit to an inability to predetermine God’s potential arrival. Like being in the pitch dark with your eyes wide open, at the crisis point, God is either nowhere or everywhere at once.
In both biblical examples, Sarah and Mary confront the specifics regarding possible conception. Sarah laughs out loud at the thought, while Mary, still unwed, is more concerned about the mysteries of coitus. Through a confrontation with and a divestment of specific concerns, they arrive at a place of surrender to the unanticipatable. Having reached this crisis, both open themselves to miraculous impossibility.
As I prayed specifically for my sister, I became increasing aware at how many other people in the world suffer without reason. I became increasingly convinced that I had no exceptional claims. While at no point did I cease to be concerned for my sister, my address to God changed from specific concerns to a contemplation of the senselessness of suffering as a whole. Recovery became a small (but still identifiable) focal point on a broader landscape colored by small graces and great love.
Often prayer is described in the Christian experience as a surrender of human agency or a laying down of burdens, but too often this concept is practiced in terms of exchange. One kind of agency is merely traded for another: mine for God’s. However, prayer can be practiced as a pilgrimage with a long trail of intentions and expectations shed along the way. We arrive at the altar only after admitting to an absence of vision and failure of imagination. In this way, the petition for the possible we envision opens our eyes to the impossible for which we did not yet think to look.
RESURRECTION
(for Charlotte)
while the other is still swollen,
shut and purple,
the stone rolls away
from one blue eye.
my sister stares out
from the tomb;
her glance falls on me,
unfocused,
like an errant shaft of light.
until this moment of seeing,
i had not believed.
Recent Comments