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Authors: Brennan Manning

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BOOK: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
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The impostor’s vocabulary abounds in puffy, colorless, and self-important words. Is it mere coincidence that the gospel lacks self-conscious, empty language? The Gospels contain no trace of junk words, jargon, or meaningful nonsense at all. Unharnessed and untamed, the impostor often sounds like a cross between William Faulkner and the Marx Brothers. His unctuous pronouncements and pontifications are a profusion of half-truths. Because he is the master of disguise, he can easily slip into feigned humility, the attentive listener, the witty raconteur, the intellectual heavy, or the urbane inhabitant of the global village. The false self is skilled at the controlled openness that scrupulously avoids any significant self-disclosure.

Walker Percy captures this evasiveness in a chilling scene from his novel
The Second Coming:
“She spoke with the quietness of people after a storm which had drowned out their voices. What struck him was not sadness or remorse or pity but the wonder of it. How can it be? How can it happen that one day you are young, you marry, and then another day you come to yourself and your life has passed like a dream? They looked at each other curiously and wondered how they could have missed each other, lived in the same house all those years and passed in the halls like ghosts.”
[9]

Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the shutdown of communication with the outside world, but rather a process of coming to stillness. Silent solitude forges true speech. I’m not speaking of physical isolation; solitude here means being alone with the Alone, experiencing the transcendent Other and growing in awareness of one’s identity as the beloved. It is impossible to know another person intimately without spending time together. Silence makes this solitude a reality. It has been said, “Silence is solitude practiced in action.”

It is much like the story of the harried executive who went to the
desert father and complained about his frustration in prayer, his flawed virtue, and his failed relationships. The hermit listened closely to his visitor’s rehearsal of the struggle and disappointments in trying to lead a Christian life. He then went into the dark recesses of his cave and came out with a basin and a pitcher of water.

“Now watch the water as I pour it into the basin,” he said. The water splashed on the bottom and against the sides of the container. It was agitated and turbulent. At first the stirred-up water swirled around the inside of the basin; then it gradually began to settle, until finally the small fast ripples evolved into larger swells that oscillated back and forth. Eventually, the surface became so smooth that the visitor could see his face reflected in the placid water. “That is the way it is when you live constantly in the midst of others,” said the hermit. “You do not see yourself as you really are because of all the confusion and disturbance. You fail to recognize the divine presence in your life and the consciousness of your belovedness slowly fades.”

It takes time for the water to settle. Coming to interior stillness requires waiting. Any attempt to hasten the process only stirs up the water anew.

Guilt feelings may arise immediately. The shadow self insinuates that you are selfish, wasting time, and evading the responsibilities of family, career, ministry, and community. You can ill afford this idle luxury. Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx wrote, “In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere[ly] being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.”
[10]

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. Experience has taught me that I connect best with others when I connect with the core of myself. When I allow God to liberate me from
unhealthy dependence on people, I listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, and am more compassionate and playful. I take myself less seriously, become aware that the breath of the Father is on my face and that my countenance is bright with laughter in the midst of an adventure I thoroughly enjoy.

Conscientiously “wasting” time with God enables me to speak and act from greater strength, to forgive rather than nurse the latest bruise to my wounded ego, to be capable of magnanimity during the petty moments of life. It empowers me to lose myself, at least temporarily, against a greater background than the tableau of my fears and insecurities, to merely be still and know that God is God. Anthony Padovano commented,

It means I don’t figure out and don’t analyze, but I simply lose myself in the thought or the experience of just being alive, of merely being in a community of believers, but focusing on the essence or presence rather than on what kind of pragmatic consequences should follow from that, merely that it’s good to be there, even if I don’t know where “there” is, or why it’s good to be there. Already I have reached a contemplative stillness in my being.
[11]

Being alone with the Alone moves us from what John Henry Newman called rational or notional knowledge to real knowledge. The first means that I know something in a remote, abstract way that never intrudes on my consciousness; the second means I may not know it but I act on it anyway. In
The Waste Land
, T. S. Eliot wrote, “It’s bad tonight, my nerves are shattered. Just talk to me. I’ll make it through the night.” In solitary silence we listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls us the beloved. God speaks to the deepest reaches of our souls, into our self-hatred and shame, our narcissism, and takes us through the night into the daylight of His truth: “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. . . . You are precious
in my eyes, because you are honoured and I love you. . . . The mountains may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken” (Isaiah 43:1,4; 54:10).

Let us pause here. It is God who has called us by name. The God beside whose beauty the Grand Canyon is only a shadow has called us beloved. The God beside whose power the nuclear bomb is nothing has tender feelings for us.

We are plunged into mystery
 
—what Abraham Heschel called “radical amazement.”
[12]
Hushed and trembling, we are creatures in the presence of ineffable Mystery above all creatures and beyond all telling.

The moment of truth has arrived. We are alone with the Alone. The revelation of God’s tender feelings for us is not mere dry knowledge. For too long and too often along my journey, I have sought shelter in hand-clapping liturgies and cerebral Scripture studies. I have received knowledge without appreciation, facts without enthusiasm. Yet when the scholarly investigations were over, I was struck by the insignificance of it all. It just didn’t seem to matter.

But when the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and Infinity speaks, when God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, when His love flashes into my soul and when I am overtaken by Mystery, it is
kairos
 
—the decisive inbreak of God in this saving moment of my personal history. No one can speak for me. Alone, I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my winter years, either I escape into skepticism and intellectualism, or with radical amazement I surrender in faith to the truth of my belovedness.

At every moment of our existence God offers us this good news. Sadly, many of us continue to cultivate such an artificial identity that the liberating truth of our belovedness fails to break through. So we become grim, fearful, and legalistic. We hide our pettiness and wallow in guilt. We huff and puff to impress God, scramble for brownie points, thrash about trying to fix ourselves, and live the gospel in such a joyless
fashion that it has little appeal to nominal Christians and unbelievers searching for truth.

From hound-dog disciples and sour-faced saints, spare us, oh Lord! Frederick Buechner wrote, “Repent and believe in the gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.”
[13]

The chorus of voices quoted in this chapter call out to us to claim the grace given to John Eagan: Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.


4 •

Abba’s Child

YEARS AGO,
I directed a parish renewal in Clearwater, Florida. The morning after it ended, the pastor invited me to his home for breakfast. Sitting on my plate was an envelope containing a brief note from a member of the church. It brought tears to my eyes: “Dear Brennan: In all my eighty-three years, I have never had an experience like this. During your week of renewal here at Saint Cecelia’s, you promised that if we attended each night, our lives would be changed. Mine has. Last week I was terrified at the prospect of dying; tonight I am homesick for the house of my Abba.”

A central theme in the personal life of Jesus Christ, which lies at the very heart of the revelation that He is, is His growing intimacy with, trust in, and love of His Abba.

After His birth in Bethlehem, Jesus was raised in Nazareth by Mary and Joseph according to the strict monotheistic tradition of the Jewish community. Like every devout Jew, Jesus prayed the Shema Israel
 
—“Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one Yahweh” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
 
—three times a day. Jesus was surrounded with the Absolute, dominated by the One, the Eternal, the “I Am Who I Am.”

In His human journey, Jesus experienced God in a way that no prophet of Israel had ever dreamed or dared. Jesus was indwelt by the Spirit of the Father and spoke to God using a name that would scandalize
both the theology and public opinion of Israel. The name that escaped the mouth of the Nazarene carpenter?
Abba.

Jewish children used this intimate colloquial form of speech in addressing their fathers, and Jesus Himself employed it with His foster father, Joseph. As a term for divinity, however, its use was unprecedented not only in Judaism but also in any of the great world religions. Joachim Jeremias wrote, “Abba, as a way of addressing God, is
ipsissima vox
, an authentic original utterance of Jesus. We are confronted with something new and astounding. Herein lies the great novelty of the gospel.”
[1]
Jesus, the beloved Son, does not hoard this experience for Himself. He invites and calls us to share the same intimate and liberating relationship.

Paul wrote that “those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry ‘
Abba
, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Romans 8:14-16,
NIV
).

John, “the disciple Jesus loved,” views intimacy with Abba as the primary effect of the Incarnation: “To all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Hadn’t John heard Jesus begin His farewell discourse in the Upper Room with these words
 
— “My little children” (13:33)? Thus John exclaims, “Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).

The greatest gift I have ever received from Jesus Christ has been the Abba experience. “No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). My dignity as Abba’s child is my most coherent sense of self. When I seek to fashion a self-image from the adulation of others and the inner voice whispers,
You’ve arrived; you’re a player in the kingdom enterprise
, there is no truth in that self-concept. When I sink into despondency and the inner voice whispers,
You are no good, a fraud, a hypocrite, and a dilettante
, there is no truth in any image shaped from that message. As Gerald May noted, “It is important to recognize these self-commentaries for the mind tricks they are. They have nothing to do with our real dignity. How we view ourselves at any given moment may have very little to do with who we really are.”
[2]


During the course of a silent directed retreat, I journaled the following:

Wernersville, Pennsylvania, January 2, 1977
 
—Outside, it’s dark and below zero. That pretty well describes where I’m at inside. The opening night of an eight-day retreat and I’m filled with a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, even dread. Bone weary and lonely. I can’t connect two thoughts about God. Have abandoned any attempt at prayer: It seems too artificial. The few words spoken to God are forced and ring hollow in my empty soul. There is no joy being in His presence. An oppressive but vague feeling of guilt stirs within me. Somehow or other I have failed Him. Maybe pride and vanity have blinded me; maybe insensitivity to pain has hardened my heart. Is my life a disappointment to you? Are You grieved by the shallowness of my soul? Whatever, I’ve lost You through my own fault, and I am powerless to undo it.

So began my annual retreat. The physical fatigue soon passed, but the spiritual dryness remained. I groaned through two hours of desolate prayer each morning, another two in the afternoon, and two more at night. Always scatterbrained, disoriented, rowing with one oar in the water. I read Scripture. Dust. I paced the floor. Boredom. Tried a biblical commentary. Zilch.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, I went to the chapel at four p.m. and settled into a straight-backed chair to begin “the great stare”
 
—meditation.

For the next thirteen hours, I remained wide awake, motionless, utterly alert. At ten minutes after five the next morning, I left the chapel
with one phrase ringing in my head and pounding in my heart:
Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness
.

Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone. The mere presence of that special someone in a crowded room brings an inward sigh of relief and a strong sense of feeling safe. The experience of a warm, caring, affective presence banishes our fears. The defense mechanisms of the impostor
 
—sarcasm, name-dropping, self-righteousness, the need to impress others
 
—fall away. We become more open, real, vulnerable, and affectionate. We grow tender.

One of my favorite stories is about a priest from Detroit named Edward Farrell who went on his two-week summer vacation to Ireland. His one living uncle was about to celebrate his eightieth birthday. On the great day, the priest and his uncle got up before dawn and dressed in silence. They took a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney and stopped to watch the sunrise, standing side by side with not a word exchanged and staring straight at the rising sun. Suddenly the uncle turned and went skipping down the road. He was radiant, beaming, smiling from ear to ear.

His nephew said, “Uncle Seamus, you really look happy.”

“I am, lad.”

“Want to tell me why?”

His eighty-year-old uncle replied, “Yes, you see, my Abba is very fond of me.”

How would you respond if I asked you this question: “Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God
has
to love you?” If you could answer with gut-level honesty, “Oh, yes, my Abba is very fond of me,” you would experience a serene compassion for yourself that approximates the meaning of tenderness.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion [tenderness] on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15,
NASB
).

Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is
compassion
and that the heart of God is defined by
tenderness
. “By the tender mercy [compassion] of our God who from on high will bring the rising Sun to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). Richard Foster wrote, “His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes of God. Like the proud mother who is thrilled to receive a wilted bouquet of dandelions from her child so God celebrates our feeble expressions of gratitude.”
[3]

Jesus, for “in his body lives the fullness of divinity” (Colossians 2:9), singularly understands the tenderness and compassion of the Father’s heart. Eternally begotten from the Father, He is Abba’s Child. Why did Jesus love sinners, ragamuffins, and the rabble who knew nothing of the Law? Because His Abba loved them. He did nothing on His own, but only what His Abba told Him. Through meal sharing, preaching, teaching, and healing, Jesus acted out His understanding of the Father’s indiscriminate love
 
—a love that causes His sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike (Matthew 5:45).

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews.

The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . nor even his partisanship for the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that he got involved with
moral failures
, with obviously
irreligious and immoral people
: people morally and politically suspect, so many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types existing as an eradicable evil on the fringe of every society. This was the real scandal. Did he really have to go so far? . . . What kind of naive and dangerous love is this, which does not know its limits: the frontiers between fellow countrymen and foreigners, party members and non-members, between neighbors and distant people, between honorable and
dishonorable callings, between moral and immoral, good and bad people? As if dissociation were not absolutely necessary here. As if we ought not to judge in these cases. As if we could always forgive in these circumstances.
[4]

Because the shining sun and the falling rain are given both to those who love God and to those who reject God, the compassion of the Son embraces those who are still living in sin. The pharisee lurking within all of us shuns sinners. Jesus turns toward them with gracious kindness. He sustains His attention throughout their lives for the sake of their conversion, “which is always possible to the very last moment.”
[5]


The Holy Spirit is the bond of tenderness between the Father and the Son. Thus, the indwelling Spirit bears the indelible stamp of the compassion of God, and the heart of the Spirit-filled person overflows with tenderness. “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us” (Romans 5:5). As partakers of the divine nature, the noblest aspiration and the most demanding task of our lives is to become like Christ. In this context, Saint Irenaeus wrote that God took on our humanness so that we might become like God. Across the centuries this has meant many different things to many different people. If God is viewed primarily as omniscient, growth in wisdom and knowledge becomes the foremost priority of human existence. If God is envisioned as all-powerful, seeking authority in order to influence others is the way to become like God. If God is perceived as immutable and invulnerable, granite-like consistency and a high threshold for pain is the way of godliness.

The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses it like this: “Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.”
[6]

Scripture points to an intimate connection between compassion and forgiveness. According to Jesus, a distinctive sign of Abba’s child
is the willingness to forgive our enemies: “Love your enemies and do good . . . and you will be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35). In the Lord’s Prayer we acknowledge the primary characteristic of Abba’s children when we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus presents His Abba as the model for our forgiveness: the king in Matthew 18 who forgives a fantastic sum, an unpayable debt
 
—the God who forgives without limit (the meaning of seventy times seven).

God calls His children to a countercultural lifestyle of forgiveness in a world that demands an eye for an eye
 
—and worse. But if loving God is the first commandment, and loving our neighbor proves our love for God, and if it is easy to love those who love us, then loving our enemies must be the filial badge that identifies Abba’s children.

The summons to live as forgiven and forgiving children is radically inclusive. It is addressed not only to the wife whose husband forgot their wedding anniversary but also to parents whose child was slaughtered by a drunken driver, to the victims of slanderous accusations and to the poor living in filthy boxes who see the rich drive by in Mercedes, to the sexually molested and to spouses shamed by the unfaithfulness of their partners, to believers who have been terrorized with blasphemous images of an unbiblical deity and to the mother in El Salvador whose daughter’s body was returned to her horribly butchered, to elderly couples who lost all their savings because their bankers were thieves and to the woman whose alcoholic husband squandered their inheritance, and to those who are objects of ridicule, discrimination, and prejudice.

The demands of forgiveness are so daunting that they seem humanly impossible. The demands of forgiveness are simply beyond the capacity of ungraced human will. Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the wounds inflicted by others. In boundary moments such as these there is only one place to go
 
—Calvary.

Stay there for a long time and watch as Abba’s Only Begotten dies utterly alone in bloody disgrace. Watch as He breathes forgiveness on
His torturers at the moment of their greatest cruelty and mercilessness. On that lonely hill outside the city wall of old Jerusalem, you will experience the healing power of the dying Lord.

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