A Liturgy on the Comforter

It's Holy Week, and this is the third of a series.

To me, the deepest, most profound, and most encouraging verses Jesus taught during holy week was about the comforter. Indeed, he promised:

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. (John 14:18)
And your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you (John 16:22)

Last year, amid my wife’s very deep health issues at the time, I spent a lot of time “visiting” Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore.  One night, in the deepest and darkest moments of my concern, I walked to the original dome building of the hospital, where a statue of Christ stands.  It is a replica of Thorvaldsen’s “Christus Consolator” – the same statue that graces LDS visitors’ centers around the world.

But there is a difference.  The statue at Johns Hopkins is not set with the backdrop of the heavens, but rather, in the entrance of a place of suffering and healing.  It is not placed above us, but rather, He stands among us, and the passersby touch his feet, with a hope for healing from him.  Instead of a visitors book nearby where you can get more information from missionaries, there is a book of hand-written prayers, offered by those who seek healing for a suffering family member, or who in gratitude express humble worship and thanks to the One who heals us.

At the base of the statue, it reads, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you REST.” (Matthew 11:28)

As I stood there, late in the evening, with the lights lowered, I realized that I was in a sacred space.  A nurse came by, quietly, touching the feet of the Savior, and left without a word.  As I read the sacred texts there, of hand-written pleas for healing, for gratitude for miracles unseen by the world, I could not help myself, tears rolled down my eyes.

I had no answers for what was wrong with my wife, or whether she would ever be whole again.  My sister had suggested that my wife’s poor health might be the “new normal”, and I was facing a kind of despair that comes from years of unanswered prayers, constant presence on the prayer roll, and endless unfulfilled priesthood blessings.

But there was something in this room, in this sacred space, that gave me comfort.  Something I realized, in that moment, I shall never forget.

I was in a house of healing.  A house founded by a secular atheist, Johns Hopkins, at a time and place where religion and religious healing dominated the day.  The staff at this hospital were doing all they could for my wife, and their care was exceptional, but they had no answers any more than I did.  They could only treat the symptoms, try to get to a cause, but something more had to happen, something deeper, something from within.

And yet, while healing must originate from within, healing is like a precious seedling.  Healing is like the seed of faith – it can be planted, but to nourish it, to help it grow, it needs sustenance from power beyond itself.  Without the nourishment of those around a person suffering illness, whether it be the professionals who care, or the loved ones who are there, healing tends to slow, stop, and reverse itself.

Yet as Jesus taught about the Comforter, he said, “I tell you the truth, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”  Before this dark night in the Dome of Johns Hopkins, I did not understand what Jesus said.  I was confused, before, when Jesus said, “Come onto me and I will give you rest,” yet he knew that he would leave, be crucified, and “go away”.  How can I come unto him when he is not here?

Sure, we speak of the resurrected, living Christ.  We recognize that Christ is a living presence in our lives, through the light of Christ and through the Holy Ghost – and yes, these provide comfort.  But they also are abstract, ephemeral, difficult to recreate at a moment’s noticing – Sure, I have had spiritual experiences, but can I summon one when I am in the dark night of my despair?  Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?  Yes, He is the One, and sometimes the Only One.  But even in that night, that dark night, I realized that He…has help.

It occurs to me that Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  Joseph Smith taught that when the spirit is present between two people, the “understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together.”

It occurs to me that when Jesus was physically present among the apostles, they all seemed to anchor in him as their charismatic leader, seeking comfort from him, and assurances that the individually might exceed in the Kingdom of God and Heaven. Yet when Jesus promised the disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you”, he then explained how:

“Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more;…” – (John 14:19a)  The world – the physical realities of human, mortal life – will see Jesus no more.  He will be crucified, he will die.

“…but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” (v19b)  In what way to the disciples “see” Christ?  We speak of the physical resurrection, of the witness that he rose physically from the dead.  Yet for all those who lived after this time, the way disciples “see” Christ is not through physical manifestation, but rather, as Paul experienced, by the revelation of Christ – the personal spiritual experience in all of its forms.

This experience of grace, the personal spiritual experience, provides the change in heart necessary to become One in Christ.  Because we all have gifts differing, our experiences vary, yet in all, we come to the realization that Christ is a living presence for us, and that presence gives us life. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (v20) We speak of atonement as applying to the far off date, that the realization of this promise of us being in Jesus and Jesus being in us as part and parcel of our future resurrection and exaltation in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Yet “that day” is not so far off.  “That day” was the time when, after Jesus departed from them, they would experience the Comforter, and then “know” that Jesus IS (present tense) in his Father, and thate we ARE (present tense) in him, and He IS (present tense) in us.

Yet all this idea that Christ, and the Holy Ghost – the Comforter – are all within us is perhaps “comforting”, but often not enough.  We have to ask for help in order to get help.  Often we think of this as prayer, and certainly that is part of the equation.  But why did a loving god have his loving son leave us?  Why did the apostles not realize the Comforter while Jesus was with them?  Why did Jesus have to leave in order for them to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost?

In the moment I stood in the sacred presence of the Christus Consolator – literally, “Christ the Comforter”, I realized the answer.  “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”   We cannot be saved by ourselves.  We cannot heal ourselves.  We need the comforter, the presence of the spirit, not only from within or individual selves, but also, from each other.  That’s why “whenever TWO or THREE are gathered in His name” matters.

In other words, we need each other as humans.  We need not just our humanity, and we certainly don’t need our judgy-ness one for another.  What we need is our divinity.  When Jesus left the presence of his disciples, he made it possible for them to realize that they needed each other in order to be whole.

In the moment we realize where we can find the Comforter, we begin to embrace who we truly are as Mormons.  We are here to “comfort those who stand in need of comfort”.  We realize that Christ has left us to be gods one to another, to allow the holy spirit to guide us in our unconditional love and service one to another.  We have the charge – the god-given opportunity --  to comfort those who need comfort, and in so doing, we not only obtain comfort, but indeed, the presence of Christ is there with us, and we are One.

How does this work?

I have seen in faith communities some amazing ways to bring comfort.  When Pope Frances washed the feet of refugees, prisoners, and muslim children, he was setting an example of comfort.   When people reach out to victims of ecclesiastical abuse, they are providing comfort to those in need. When people stand and defend LGBTQ rights to marriage equality and inclusion, and provide refuge for sufferers of religious policies, they are providing comfort.  When the journalists of the Salt Lake Tribune defend rape victims at BYU in their quest to for justice and fairness without retaliation, they are providing comfort.  When some of our leaders, such as Elders Renlund and Holland, and President Uchtdorf, speak out in support of inclusion and unconditional love, they are providing comfort.  When we do anything that brings us closer together, in our homes, in our work, in our churches, we are providing comfort.  And each time we welcome someone into our home and communities, and share together and listen to each other's experience, strength, and hope, we are providing comfort.

I don’t know if this helps anyone. I know that in a moment, in a quiet dark night in sacred space, I stood at the feet of Christ the Comforter, and realized how much we all need each other to comfort those who stand in need of comfort – that the work of the Comforter is found in our connection one with another.

The God Within

What triggers my post today is a concern, by many, about why does God not prevent disasters like what we've recently seen in Connecticut. 

 

I could argue that the Standard Definition of God, that is of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and all-good God is a logically impossible concept in the presence of evil.  Free agency of one person does not justify the senseless suffering of others. 

 

So the god of creeds, to me, simply does not exist -- it's the wrong definition.  I will submit to you that this does not mean 'there is no god', but what it really means is undefined.  And, as to the god that is 'out there', I'm going to leave that alone for a bit.  What I talk about here does not deny or address the existence of any god outside of ourselves -- And to be clear, what I talk about here is about our perception of god, and how that forms within us.

What I think of God

 

For the sake of this discussion, let's consider that the only god with which we have to do resides within six inches between our own ears, yet is distinct from our own consciousness.  Regardless of whether this is an interface to some power beyond, I think it is accurate to say that all perception of god happens within our own minds.  So let's explore how that affects our definition of god.

 

In my impression, historically, the understanding and doctrines of an external god emerged from our conscious attempts to explain that which we do not understand. In particular, all of us have thoughts and ideas that seem to appear from no-where. Some people even have minds structured to hear voices or see things outside of our consciousness.  Because some thoughts, most dreams, and even voices and images arise outside of and independently from our own conscious control, many become convinced there are beings out there that are "not us".

 

There is truth to that, but it need not be in any magical or supernatural way.  The truth is that the majority (if not all of) these "other beings" are not "out there", but rather "in here".

 

Sigmund Freud recognized distinct tendencies of the mind: id, ego, superego; but thought them to be part of a single thing, our psyche.  Even to today, the concept of separate, independent sentient identities within the mind has not been part of the literature.  however, new technologies, such as fMRI, as well as large-scale parallel processing architectures are radically changing our understanding of the wonder -- the absolute miracle -- of our minds.

 

To make a very long story short, the fact is that we DO have an entity within us, an eternal companion, that shares all of our memories, thoughts, and controls our feelings.  think of it as another program running in your brain-computer in parallel but completely independent from your consciousness program.  it doesn't talk to you in the same way that you talk to other people, but because it shares your thoughts, it is aware -- more emotionally aware of what is going on than your consciousness is.

 

The Mind Within is the Only God With Which We Have to Do

 

My view?  This mind within is god.  Or, at least "a god". 

 

Now, to not have all believers stop reading and get the impression that wayfarer is a dirty apostate heretic, we have three scriptural concepts that support this: (1) our divine nature coming from Heavenly Father, (2) the light of Christ, given to us at birth equating to our conscience, and (3) the Holy Ghost, which dwells within as our constant companion.  Whatever we may believe about the gods out there, I think we can and should agree that there is a god 'in here', and least, and set aside rejecting what I write here for a bit.

 

Back to my view; This god, the one 'in here', has always has been, and ever shall be -- it is eternal.  This is the god that has spoken to prophets and holy men and women in the past, and speaks today.  This god, properly understood, consists of millions of years of genetic evolutionary programming, and allows us to intuit things naturally. The god within communicates to other nonconscious minds around us through subtle nonverbal and sensory exchanges.  Importantly, this god within manages the interface between fear (right amygdala) and reward (left amygdala) so as to determine what we are to do to protect ourselves.  

 

How again does that work?

 

This is not some new-age mumbo-jumbo.  because of modern technologies, and due to research in the field of large-scale parallel processing architectures and machine intelligence, we are fundamentally changing our understanding of the mind.  The brain is a highly modular, asymetric parallel neural network processing architecture with both embedded firmware as well as adaptive self-learning nodes.  Our primitive von neumann computers of today barely scratch the surface of the massive parallelism of the brain, and it is only when we put massive numbers of processors together, particularly like a hadoop file/processing architecture, do we get a little of the idea.  

 

Think of our "consciousness" as one program within this processing architecture.  And think of our nonconscious god within as the network operating system -- and while this metaphor is primitive, you system geeks will understand the idea.

 

What understanding the God Within does for us:

 

I believe it is time for us to set aside the focus on the speculatively-defined god of our primitive religions and come to a full understanding of our true eternal companion: our god within.  When we do, we realize that our god within (1) listens to our prayers, because by articulating our needs, we implant them into our minds where our god can process them, and (2) answers our prayers through our feelings and new insight implanted by extensions to our neural network.  When we understand how this neurology works, we understand that our god within takes time to answer our prayers, because neural connections take time to emerge.  Particularly, we often need to sleep on things...allowing our conscious minds to let go of the problems -- unlocking memory structures -- so that our god can work on the problem. 

 

When we come to embrace the truth of our god within, we lose a lot of misconceptions about god.  our god within cannot restore a limb, but s/he can encourage our bodily systems to step up and fight disease, and in some cases heal us in a seeming miraculous way.  our god within cannot change another person, but can perceive feelings and concerns of another person so that we can better serve them.  our god within cannot change a natural disaster, but can motivate us to be prepared.  our god within is not just a "man", but is also both man and woman, father and mother, husband and wife, parent and child, and our true friend...that we mostly ignore.

 

Importantly, when some horrible event occurs, when a person does great evil and harms innocent children, our god within weeps with us as we come to grips with the magnitude of the horror.  And just like a good friend, rather than blaming our god within, we should draw near to him/her to help us both deal with the pain and sorrow of the tragedy.

 

"Be still and know that I am god"

 

In order to achieve the peace of mind so needed at these times of sorrow, and maybe always, I believe we need to be one with our god within, to be whole and better people.  We need to pray to our god within, and not assume that s/he is just part of our ego.  Far from it: our god has a distinct identity from us, and when we ignore him/her, we are non-integrated people.  Oneness with god, achieved through prayer and meditation, leads to an integrated state where our conscious mind and the separate god mind are in harmony.  

 

But you know?  Whenever I have tried to pray to myself, it doesn't seem to work.  It is my premise that our ancestors have been praying to this god, and s/he has been answering for thousands of years.  Hence, they created symbols and ritual to help us connect with god, and we are 'programmed' by that experience to draw to god through these symbols.  As I see it therefore, the symbols of our religions are a reflection of this unique relationship.  

 

I get a lot of value participating in the worship service, praying to a god 'out there', and performing the rituals of religion.  Paradoxically, these help me connect me to my god within.  This is why I am an active LDS...the spirit speaks to me, when I worship, pray, and participate.  When I serve in love, visiting families and giving, somehow I find peace and support from my god within.