I've been thinking a lot of my turning back from a gnostic error three years ago. This is not to say that gnosis is not both good and important; however, as I wrote on the title page of a journal a couple years ago, "it is not the secrets which save us." I'm currently reading Tom Wright's commentary on Paul's First Letter to Timothy (which I didn't even connect to the name under which I'm writing this blog until this very second oddly enough). Part of Tom's response to the last chapter yield this paragraph:
The contemporary Western world has seen the rise of new forms of 'gnosticism'. Many people today long to believe that they possess a hidden identity, long covered up by their outward body and circumstances. Many then believe that true life consists in being true to this hidden identity at all costs. Some even try to make out that this is Christian teaching. It wasn't, and it isn't. Jesus calls us now, as he called his first followers, to accept his offer of new life, not to discover a secret one we already have. To put it another way, he calls us to 'find our lives by losing them'. And the life that we find will be the resurrection life in God's newly recreated world.
Three summers ago I lost my life in this way. Over the course of two weeks in August 2007 I did the following things:
Resigned a post as master of a lodge (in a christian kabalistic tradition) in Seattle.
Experienced the onset of an appendicitis, only to have it seem to go away and thus not actually be said appendicitis. This was the very weekend that I stopped taking the calls of my provincial master who I felt had painted me into an administrative corner as we were trying to save our lodge from dwindling numbers and facilities problems (if you happen to be consulted do _not_ build a flat roof in Seattle).
Got on a plane to Berlin in order to go to an international conference that I now knew I wouldn't be attending (those who were convening are wonderful people who benefit the world in countless unknown ways; the sin of my error was mine and not theirs).
Enjoyed an eye opening pilgrimage in an amazing city, noticing the presence of my brothers and sisters of the order, silently blessing them and keeping to myself.
Wrote for three hours at Cafe Roxy in Sudstern to the Grand Master to take care of said resignation and the loose ends involved. Ironically enough this cafe is two blocks from the Papal Nuncio's residence.
Followed my attraction to churches, particularly the Marienkirk in the north eastern part of the city, where I purchased a little icon and lit a candle to support the work of my brethren.
Got back on a plane to Oregon only to have the pain return on the last leg of my journey.
Within a couple days of landing I was in an ambulance to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy as it turns out I carried an encysted ruptured appendix half way around the world and back and was still in good enough shape to get myself onto the operating table. I kept hearing nurses whisper things like, "He's just walking around!"
The morning after my surgery, my entire family (who are usually one state away) got on a plane bound for Rome. That just happened to be the summer of European vacations.
Lying in the hospital bed I was visited by my boss and a colleague from work but more importantly two others who are the only two friends I really felt I had left at that point. It was then that I realized how much my world had shrunk (for reasons other that this current chain of events). One of those two friends is, well there's really no other way to say this properly, a brilliant and talented sorcerer. However, he was raised as a Mormon, and as anyone can tell you, when the shit really hits the fan we will always go running back to the religious understandings of our childhood. With those two friends and me as the third, there was an honest to goodness laying on of hands and prayers for healing in the name of Jesus, which though a scandal to none of us was remarkable none the less just for the fact that it occurred.
I got better. I slowly and respectfully divested myself of responsibilities within the order while at the same time slowly and respectfully reinvesting myself in the church. Somehow from the moment of my return I knew my priorities had changed because that same month I began setting aside money from every paycheck specifically for divinity school.
That was most certainly a dying to my prior self understanding, and but for the grace of God, would have been my actual physical death as well.
Someone else who made a very similar error and someone who I've felt a kinship towards for most of my life is Judas. He made a mistake. He thought he was doing what was necessary. He was wrong and because of it he watched the person he loved most in the world be brutally killed. More than that, because of his error he lost the only people who could have sustained him in a crisis like that. However, Jesus forgave him before it even happened. Back in 2006 I followed the Gospel of Judas story very closely. I even gave a presentation on the topic. More bizarre is the fact that the symbol from the codex (a hybrid of a Maltese cross and an ankh) which is embossed on the covers of the first two official National Geographic books was a symbol that I had been using as a personal talisman for two years before those books were published. No idea what that means, but it is indeed the case. That gospel follows the trajectory as if Judas had been right. Personally I think he understood what he had done just when it was too late.
Last year on Good Friday our bishop preached an amazing sermon on related lines of thinking. It was during that service where the loud thought ringing in my head was, "Judas was wrong and Judas was sorry". The bishop had a cute story about Judas approaching Jesus while he was hanging on the cross to ask for forgiveness. Jesus, ever compassionate, looks down at his friend and says, "Judas, Judas, you don't look so good. Tell me what's wrong." He's always calling us home. We've never gotten too far to reach.
Amen.
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