Transcendent realism & defiant hope

Fair warning…my mind is skipping around a bit…I’m connecting things that even to me don’t seem connected. Except they are. So here we go.

Transcendent realism & defiant hope

This morning I read Tish Harrison Warren’s[i] piece in the NY Times[ii]. She ends with this.

The Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen called the hope of Christianity — the hope of Ash Wednesday — a “transcendent realism.” Transcendent realism confronts the truth of the grave. And it is in this truth that the most important questions of our lives get a hearing. We need more than diversion, work and pleasure. We need deep, resonant, defiant hope.

Her article was about the pandemic, Ash Wednesday, death, and hope.  My mind went to how Michelle Heyne and I reverence the celebrant as he enters in procession. You see the link, right? Probably not. Let me try to explain.

A symbol

Last night and early this morning I was reading a number of articles on President Zelensky of Ukraine.[iii] Speaking of defiant hope!! Writer after writer commenting on his courage and perseverance. Here’s one by Jonathan Last in the Bulwark.

Zelensky’s conduct over the last few weeks—which has been utterly extraordinary—has substantially buttressed Ukraine’s resolve. He has become more than a man. More than a leader. He has become a symbol.

What we are witnessing is the emergence of a figure who will become a key part of Ukrainian history for the next century. There will be statues of him all over the country. Ukrainians will name their children after him. This is like watching another country’s Washington or Churchill emerge in real time.

The title of the article was “Zelensky Has Become More Than a Man: A symbol.”[iv]

Last continues –

But at some point he may have to make a judgment about how his life best serves his country. Is it more important that he stay alive to lead? Even if he has to eventually leave Kyiv? Or would sacrificing himself to the Russians make the symbol even more powerful?

It is hateful to talk this way about a man because it is important to remember that Volodymyr Zelensky is not just a symbol. He’s a real person. He’s 44 years old. He’s married. He has two children, one of whom is not yet 10.

Human and a symbol

So, a piece of theory. Bruce Reed’s Oscillation Theory can help us see a bit of reality.  I wrote about it in an earlier article.

Reed writes of a movement from extra-dependency to intra-dependency. In essence from dependence upon God as mediated through worship, sacraments, the priest, and a dozen other symbols of religious faith to responsible participation in the life of the world. From dependence on something outside oneself to dependence on one’s own judgement. Thornton writes of the cycle as being “between conscious attention to God and subconscious reliance upon him. 

There it is. The priest as a symbolic person.  Human and symbol. The Divine doesn’t just reach us through the scriptures and sacraments. The priest is a symbol.

Episcopalians routinely bow during worship—toward the altar, the cross in procession, and at various times in the liturgy. Most parishes see some reverencing toward people: when those in the altar party perform some act of service such as handing a chalice to the deacon, or when the thurifer censes the congregation, and in some places the altar party and the entire congregation bow to each other at the beginning and end of the service. 

C.S. Lewis has a famous quote in “The Weight of Glory,”

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror or a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Lewis is correct. All are to be reverenced and honored. All are in the Divine Image. Yet we’re not going be genuflecting or bowing to everyone we meet. But I can do it for President Zielinski as he leads his nation in war and Father Kevin as he processes in to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Zielinski has become a symbol because of his actions in these past days. Kevin is a symbol by ordination and his presiding in the Eucharist. And it does me some good to bow on occasion.[v]

All the symbols point us to transcendent realism and defiant hope

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[i] Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She writes a regular column for the NY Times reflecting on matters of faith in private life and public discourse.

[ii] “Covid made us face death. But there is reason to hope.” by Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times 2-27-22

[iii] Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a former actor and comedian who has been serving as the president of Ukraine since 2019

[iv] In the Bulwark

[v] For those who don’t fully get the incarnational and sacramental world C. S. Lewis reminds us, “The body ought to pray as well as the soul. Body and soul are both the better for it.” Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1963, 1964), p. 17