Speaking of prayer, in the last chapter, without speaking of God, has been intensely artificial. For God is the dialogue-partner of prayer. He is the one to whom I speak, or, better, the one into whose presence I come since not all prayer is speaking. Sometimes it is just a quiet repose, a deep satisfaction to just be in the presence of God. As a matter of fact, it was not possible to speak of prayer without mentioning God, and he came in time and again in the chapter. But now the time has come to focus directly on the other pole of that personal encounter. How do I experience God in my life?

I find God, to begin with, in nature. Its limitless expanse, its intricacy, its striking beauty tell me of him.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day pours out the word to day, and night to night imparts knowledge; Not a word nor a discourse whose voice is not heard; Through all the earth their voice resounds, and to the ends of the world, their message (Ps. 19:2-5).

The peace of a distant green field, the grace of clear running water, the beauty of autumn leaves or a sunset, enough almost to take your heart away all speak to me powerfully of the presence of God who made them and sustains them by his hidden presence.

Perhaps my years in the minor seminary, out in the country, where I used to take long walks, bred in me such a love of nature. Though I was born and spent my childhood in the city, and still love its excitement, there is a part of me that longs for the quiet, the open or wooded spaces beyond. I remember particularly being once at Mt. Savior Monastery in western New York. I had walked to the top of a hill. On the other side I saw spread out another wide valley, fringed by trees. It was about sunset, and I was reminded how God walked with Adam in the Garden in the cool of the evening. Everything seemed almost alive, so eloquently did it all speak of the Creator. Augustine tells of a similar experience in his search for God:

I asked the earth, and it answered: "It is not I." Whatever things in it uttered the same confession. I asked the sea, the depths, the creeping things among living animals, and they replied: "We are not thy God; look above us." I asked the airy breezes, and the whole atmosphere with its inhabitants said: "Anaximenes is mistaken; I am not God." I asked the sun, the sky, the moon, the stars: "Nor are we the God whom you seek," they said. And I said to all these things which surround the entryways of my flesh: "Tell me about my God, since you are not He; tell me something about Him." With a loud voice, they cried out: "He made us." My interrogation was my looking upon them, and their reply was their beauty.(8)

Another time, I was skiing in the Swiss Alps. At one point I left the regular ski trail, and took a small, deserted path through the woods. Suddenly I stopped. The fir trees towered high above me, each with its snowy burden. There was a hush, such as only a blanket of snow can create. Sunlight filtered softly through the dark branches. I sensed that God was near. "Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God's eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made" (Rom. 1:20).

The Deist idea of God had him creating the world, and then leaving it to its own devices. But classical theology has a more intimate doctrine: Creation is, in its every moment, sustained by God. I experience God in this way: as the Sustainer of every creature. Sometimes I entertain the image of an immense and mighty hand that upholds all things, and on which they rest.

I experience God, as well, in the unlimitedness of questions. The six-year-old with his incessant "Why?" can formulate more questions than even the wisest adult seems to be able to handle. In my own learning, I have discovered that every question answered usually gives rise to a couple more. I had heard it said, but experienced it for myself when I completed my doctoral dissertation. It was really a humbling experience: I realized how many questions I had left unanswered on my own topic of research. Even more, I was aware of the myriad topics I knew next to nothing about. As I look about me, I see this endless quest for knowledge continuing. Libraries are built, and filled to overflowing when the building is hardly finished. And still the products pour out books, articles, research reports, convention papers; and there is no one to call "Halt! We know enough for the time being; let's see if we can absorb some of this information."

I have the sense that the questions will go on and on until the end of time. I have the sense also that no last bit of information is going to fit in the final piece of the puzzle. I have the feeling, in short, that man's quest is for more than any finite amount of information will ever satisfy. Only God, I believe, is the Answer to the primordial question that we form by our very being. Thus, I experience him as pure Intelligibility. God himself is the ultimate response to our queries, the only truly satisfying answer, the last Word that needs to be, or can be, spoken. God is the frame of intelligibility around the picture of the world. Without that frame, the world is unlimited, undisciplined, disorganized; it makes no sense. The part cannot be understood if the whole is senseless. Sartre was right about that. If I experience myself, my life, my world as having meaning, it is because it is embraced by and draws life from an Infinite Meaning.

In a similar way, I experience God in the ceaseless desire and yearning of the human spirit. I remember when I was a boy, and I slept in the front room of the house. During the warm months the door would be open. On the next street there were two immensely tall trees, side by side. They never seemed to be still; there was always a breeze murmuring through them, rustling the leaves of the highest branches. That subdued but ceaseless movement became a symbol of my own restless heart. As I lay awake at night and listened to the soft sighing of the wind in those trees, I felt a conviction that life was more than I knew or experienced of it. I didn't know what it was that I wanted. I was just learning about girls, and had a vague presentiment it might have something to do with love. I was only sure that there was something missing.

When I was a young priest I would leave the office almost every night, when I was too exhausted to do anything more, get in my car, and drive to the lakefront. As I sat on the seawall, the endless slapping of the waves told me the same story about my restless spirit. ". . . for Thou hast made us for Thee and our heart is unquiet till it finds its rest in Thee," as Augustine put it so well. (9) I still know that yearning, but I realize now, as I did not as a boy, that it can find no finite satisfaction. Whatever wonderful things I experience, it persists through and beyond them. Like the curiosity that quests ever for knowing more, this restless yearning will be satisfied with nothing less than the ultimate Good, the final Happiness, the unlimited Beauty.

An essential aloneness is therefore a mark of the human condition. For all I will say about friendship in the next chapter, it is, in the end, limited. Sometimes we love someone so much that we want to be literally inside, totally merged with him or her. But an otherness always remains. I am I, and you are you. I can never totally know you, nor you me. I can never get totally within your experience of the world. We are finally separate, alone. Only in an unmediated union with God could I hope to have such a perfect community of knowing and loving. ". . . then I shall know even as I am known" (I Cor. 13:12). But in our this-worldly experience God is present only in being simultaneously hidden and absent. Consequently, our infinite desire to love, our longing for an unlimited good, cannot be fulfilled by another finite person; nor is it perfectly answered to, in this life, even by God. So I experience God as the elusive goal of that unlimitedly restless yearning.

Abraham Maslow calls them "peak experiences." They are the fleeting moments in which everything appears to "come together" perfectly, a situation in which nothing seems to be lacking for one's consummate happiness. Their very transience makes them at once limited and precious. They occur infrequently; but when they do, they make all of life seem worthwhile. Even one such experience, while it lasts, seems to more than compensate for all the dull days, the drudgery, the frustrations, the attacks, the bitter hurts. That is something of a comfort to me when I think how fortunate I have been, how many advantages I have been given, and how, by contrast, some people spend their whole lives in grinding poverty. Or others, in the history of the world, have been born and died within a time completely upset by war; still others have by injustice been consistently denied their chance, until they died in total frustration. But if in the whole of that life there was one such perfect moment, then I cannot feel that it was all not worthwhile.

What are the conditions for such an experience? They are hard to discern, and what can be said is more negative than positive. Externally, one's physical needs have normally been met. A person cannot be sick, or hungry, or tired. It is usually a time of leisure, not of work or rush. It often follows upon an accomplishment, some sense of a work well done. One has achieved a "place" in one's world. In a social context, that normally means acceptance by a group there is no feeling of being a stranger, a misfit, or an outcast. The peak experience may happen alone, but if not, then it is with someone a person is at least comfortable, if not intimate, with. Conditions are such as to allow a concentration on the present.

Internally, the person must be at peace with himself. His internal conflicts are resolved, and he is in an expansive mood. There is an "at-homeness" with all of nature, and the universe seems a friendly place I often experience these moments out-of-doors. There is a feeling of benevolence toward all of humanity. I have a number of times had these experiences in encounter groups. Such groups go through somewhat predictable stages. The first is one of superficialfriendliness the kind of politeness that society teaches us to observe, and that lubricates most of our daily contacts. Fairly soon, confrontation begins. Undiplomatic truths, usually suppressed, are spoken, and negative feelings articulated. When these are absorbed, a genuine liking develops in the group, but there is still a desire to remold others into a better way of being. Finally, and it usually happens at the end of the days together if it does at all, there is a time when everything seems to fall together perfectly. Each person is accepted exactly for what he or she is. The peculiarities that annoyed at first are now noted only with wry amusement. Everything that anyone does or says seems the perfect thing to do or say, because it is exactly "what he or she would do." For a moment, there is a glimpse of a new way people could be with and relate to each other.

But whatever conditions might be listed as usually required, there are really no rules for peak experiences. Still less is there a way to plan or bring them about. I think occasionally of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. She lived in Europe during some of the bitterest days of the 20th century, and belonged to the group most intensely persecuted by the Nazis. Her family's situation was desperate, and the external constraints on their life enormous. And yet, she would awake some mornings, and being alive and in love was joy inexpressible. I cannot pity her.

I find in such peak experiences an intense experience of God. I don't know how I know, and I can't fashion an argument out of it. I grasp, deep in my heart, that such an exquisite confluence of conditions could not be an accident; I know, in my bones, that what is happening is so obviously gift it could not be imagined without a Giver. It may be trite, but I recall at such times the poem of Browning:

God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.

There is another way I experience God: with those I love very dearly. This is not all the time. Very often I am so absorbed in a friend that I am, at best, minimally aware of God. But there are times when the relationship seems so good, when friendship is so comfortable, when the joy of being together is so intense, that I become aware of God as a silent third party to the relationship. He it is who somehow creates it, because all deep love is of God. He it is who formed me to be a gift to him or to her, and formed him or her as a gift to me. God by his presence blesses and guarantees the goodness we share with each other.

Finally, and above all, I experience God as Father. He has chosen to be intimately related to me. "I shall be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me" (II Sam. 7:14; cf. Apoc. 21:7). It is hard to conceive that Jesus gave us any more precious revelation than this. He made known the deepest secrets of God when he taught us to pray, "Our Father. . . ." As he himself confessed,

Father, Lord of heaven and earth, to you I offer praise; for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children. Father, it is true. You have graciously willed it so. Everything has been given over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him (Mt. 11:25-27).

Bonhoeffer has spoken of "man come of age." I don't deny the historical changes he discerns, but I prefer a different image. The essential dignity of man, and it remains so no less today than when Jesus announced it, is to be a child of God. "I assure you that whoever does not accept the reign of God like a little child shall not take part in it" (Mk. 10:15). The meaning of Adam's sin, as I read it in Genesis, was wanting to be like God "trying to be too big for his britches." That remains today, I am convinced, a compelling temptation for man.

I have singled out this experience of God as Father because my spirituality is very Father-centered. I rarely pray to Jesus or to the Spirit. No doubt this has been influenced very much by the experience of the liturgy, especially in pronouncing the priestly prayers. For the Canon and the official prayers of the liturgy are invariably addressed to the Father. In specifying this emphasis in my prayer, however, I am making no value judgments. I am not saying this is the best or only way to pray. I have surveyed the Christian tradition on this point, and find that no hard-and-fast rules can be discovered. If the liturgy addresses itself, in its most formal expressions, to the Father, there are also, dating to the earliest days of the Church, more informal expressions of piety, such as the "Gloria," that speak for the most part to the Son. The earliest pagan reference we have to Christianity is the Letter of Pliny the Younger. If we can trust the accuracy of his feel for theological nuance, the early Christians "sang hymns to Jesus as to a god." Some of the great spiritual writers exhibit what I call a "Father-mysticism," but others, equally renowned, reveal a "Jesus-mysticism." Hence I am not making rules for anyone else's prayer, but only describing my own.

In the relationship with God, then, I experience a Father's love; and the effect on my life is freedom the "freedom of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). For his love is an acceptance of me simply for myself. "It is precisely in this that God proves his love for us; that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). It does not depend on my becoming worthy of his love. Still less is it a love that is dependent on my talents, my accomplishments, the fulfillment of my duties. It is a love that regards what is deepest in myself; it brooks no qualifications or conditions beyond that. Such a love is freeing, because it does not demand that I do anything particular, or act in any special way; I only have to be me, since I am loved just for myself.

No doubt, such an experience of God's love does not arise in a vacuum. I don't think I would have understood the meaning of an unfettered, freeing love unless I had glimpsed the possibility of unconditional love in human friendships. Beyond that, I suspect, I could not conceive the meaning of a Father's love without a secure home and sense of acceptance as a child, and an experience of the love of a human father and mother.

God's love creates around me then a zone of freedom, a "play-space," in which I am called to do nothing but be my best self. I find in this notion the solution of a problem arising from our pervasive psychologizing. The language of the Gospel is one of self-abnegation: The Christian must "die to himself." "Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Lk. 9:24). But the language of psychology is of self-fulfillment. A person is invited to become all that he can, so that he has the healthy ego strength to say, "I'm okay; you're okay." This is a dilemma. Am I to seek to die to myself in a prayer group, and come alive in an encounter group? Do I deny myself on Sunday, and affirm myself during the week? Do I reject the Gospel as masochistic, and look for psychological salvation? Or do I cling to the tradition, and try to disregard psychology as best I can?

The image that God creates around me a play-space, in which I am invited only to be my best self, answers to this difficulty. For it is God himself who loves me, and wants me to become all that I can, to realize all my potential, to be my own truest self. Hence there need be no conflict between Christian experience and psychology; the two fit together perfectly. In fact, I am given new reasons for growth and self-fulfillment. If a person gives me a gift, he does not want me to throw it away or set it aside neglectfully. If God creates me, he wants me to make the most of that. If he has given me a play-space, he desires me to dance mightily within it. If God loves me, then I must indeed be worthwhile.

Realize that you were delivered from the futile way of life your fathers handed on to you, not by any diminishable sum of silver or gold, but by Christ's blood beyond all price . . .
(I Pet. 1:1819).

But what about the language of self-denial? Does that have to be abandoned? I don't think so. The fact is, we are not simple, integrated beings. There are many discordant pulls within our living, many different levels within ourselves. The process of becoming fully oneself is a process of integration. But in that process, some of the discordant aspects of myself will have to be suppressed or abandoned. I must die to superficial elements of myself, so that my deepest self the one loved unconditionally by God can live more fully. After all, in even the most severe of Jesus' statements, one dies to oneself not to die, but to discover a deeper life: ". . . whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Lk. 9:24). The ultimate meaning of Jesus' message is not death, but life: "I came that they might have life, and have it to the full" (Jn. 10:10). Therefore the Gospel's ultimate call is not to self-denial, but to self-fulfillment. Self- denial is only a means of arriving at that goal.

If this offers a theoretical solution to the dilemma, there are still some practical cautions to be added. Becoming fully oneself can involve a great deal of suffering and dying. Take the image of the dance. A ballet can create an extraordinary impression of light, grace and ease. But anyone at all familiar with the art knows the hours of practice, the years of rigorous training that go into such a presentation. Thus even "play" is not opposed to "discipline." Paul said the same thing in the image of the athlete: "Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things. They do this to win a crown of leaves that withers, but we a crown that is imperishable" (I Cor. 9:25). Second, selfishness is an ever-present tendency, and it is easy to confuse what I want with true self-fulfillment. This is to settle for a superficial satisfaction rather than a deeper growth. Another point is that I do not always know what my best self is, or what path I must take to achieve it. Often I discover this gradually as I try to live the Gospel, to listen to my own voices, to discern the best possibilities opening up to me. To become fully my deepest self, I must listen carefully to my truest and best impulses and desires. In this world stained by sin and marked so strangely by the blood of Christ, the call to growth may take me down some very unexpected paths and demand some unusual kinds of dying. If I myself cannot predict where my growth will lead, as I dance this playful-serious dance in God's play-space, even less, finally, does the secular psychologist have an infallible knowledge of what constitutes true human growth. Everything touted as self-fulfillment in the human potential movement is not necessarily so!

I experience a Father's love, then, as one that sets me in a zone of freedom, prizes me for myself, and invites me to realize my most authentic identity. I am given by the gift of his grace to play in the world in his presence.

To this point I have been speaking, clearly, of God the Father. To round out an account of Christian experience, the role of Christ and the Spirit in my life must also be articulated. In the history of spirituality the Christian life has often been conceived of as the "following of Christ." Another favorite approach is the "imitation of Christ." But my spirituality is not so much one of following Christ, or even of imitating him, but of identification with him. It is not so much that I follow Christ or imitate him; I am Christ.

That sounds like an extremely presumptuous statement. How would one dare . . .? And yet, I believe there is an important strain in the New Testament tradition that warrants this. Paul said: ". . . the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me" (Gal. 2:20). It is as if the whole person of Paul had disappeared, to be replaced by that of Christ. There are also the syn- words in Paul, a prefix he adds to make strange new compounds. ". . . He co-vivified us with Christ . . . and co-raised us and co-seated us in the heavens in Christ Jesus. . ." (Eph. 2:5-6).(10) In this text our identification with Christ is so vivid that even his glorification our future salvation is already somehow present in us. Again, Paul says:

We have been co-buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. If we have become co-sharers in the likeness of his death, we shall be as well in his resurrection. We know this: the old man was co-crucified, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be in thrall to sin. . . . If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also co-live with him. . . (Rom. 6:4-6,8).

There are also Jesus' words to Paul when he is knocked from his horse: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4), and Jesus' explanation at the last judgment scene: "I assure you, as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me" (Mt. 25:40).

The First Letter of Peter also witnesses to this thought. ". . . he has bestowed on us the great and precious things he promised, so that through these you who have fled a world corrupted by lust might become sharers of the divine nature" (I Pet. 1:4). This text became a very important foundation for the theology of grace in the Greek Fathers, as they loved to repeat that God became man, that man might become divine.

In this union with Christ, I identify above all with Jesus in saying "Abba, Father." This consciousness of his Father, this awareness of living "toward the Father," was a crucial part of Jesus' life. We see him often going aside to pray, sometimes for whole nights. Even as a child he is aware of the transcendent call. "Did you not know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Lk. 2:49). He explains to the disciples, "I have food to eat of which you do not know. . . . Doing the will of him who sent me and bringing his work to completion is my food" (Jn. 4:32, 34). The preservation of the Aramaic form in the Greek text persuades us that we have here a precious memory of the very word that Jesus used. "Abba" is an intimate term, somewhat like "Daddy," and departs radically from the usual Old Testament reserve in speaking to God. In sum, it constitutes a one-word revelation of Jesus' intimate relation to the Father. Thus I identify with Christ, in this intimate relation to the Father, when I pray, "Abba, Father." In fact, I think that through me (and other Christians) man continues to voice this "Abba" to the Father when Christ is no longer present in his mortal flesh to pronounce it. If, again, that seems presumptuous, we have Paul's warrant for it:

The proof that you are sons is the fact that God has sent forth into our hearts the spirit of his Son which cries out "Abba!" ("Father!").... The Spirit himself gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:16).

The priest has particularly been traditionally imaged as alter Christus, another Christ. He is called upon to pronounce in the first person the very words of Jesus, "This is my body; this is my blood . . . . " No doubt the experience of presiding over the liturgy has also given an impulse to this spirituality of identification.

To be one with Christ, to address the Father as "Abba," as he did, seems a wondrously exalted dignity and it is. "See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God! Yet that is what we are" (I Jn. 3:1). It is not a witness to my worthiness, but a manifestation of the incredible generosity of God. "To him whose power now at work in us can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, world without end. Amen" (Eph. 3:20- 21).

One of the paradoxical results of this spirituality of close identification with Christ is that it is hard to form a clear image of him. He is almost too close to be seen it is like trying to look at your nose. Since I rarely pray to Jesus, there is not the subject-subject relationship there is with the Father. At the same time, there is a sense of intimate closeness and oneness. "Christ is closer to me than I am to myself," to paraphrase Augustine.

Another implication of the spirituality of identification with Christ, however, is that the picture of Jesus in the Gospels becomes a revelation of what I am, and what I am invited to grow into. As I see him praying to the Father, preaching, healing, loving, suffering, dying, rising, then I know I am called to continue these same activities.

Growth in Christ, in this spirituality, means becoming increasingly transparent, so that the Christ within shines out in all that I do, all that I say. The areas in which I have not yet grown, the parts of myself that cannot be integrated into my one, best self these form an opaqueness that keeps the light of Christ from shining out to others. "In the same way, your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father" (Mt. 5:16). Growth in the Christian life is therefore the gradual elimination of these opacities, the process of becoming transparently what I am in hidden germ.

The Holy Spirit, of all the three Persons, presents the most elusive image in the Scriptures: "The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound it makes but you do not know where it comes from, or where it goes" (Jn. 3:8). I find it similarly hard to focus the presence of the Spirit in my life. But three images are particularly important to me.

The first is that the Spirit creates the bond of love between myself and the Father.

The proof that you are sons is the fact that God has sent forth into our hearts the spirit of his Son which cries out "Abba!" ("Father!").... The Spirit himself gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:16).

I have quoted these texts above, but I cite them again for what they say of the Spirit's role. It is he who forms in me the love I bear to the Father; it is also the Spirit who assures me that I am a son of the Father. As the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert (Mk. 1:12), so there is a force within me that escapes my understanding and conscious awareness. "The Spirit too helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be expressed in speech" (Rom. 8:26).

The image of the wind is the root metaphor of "Spirit" in the Scriptures. The Spirit is a presence difficult to locate, but it blows around me, in me, and through me. He is the atmosphere in which I live.

Finally, I think of the Spirit as the divine Sculptor, the finger of God that forms me progressively into the image of Christ. "All of us, gazing on the Lord's glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image by the Lord who is the Spirit" (II Cor. 3:18).

I have described in turn a relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; together they constitute a Trinitarian experience. Some reflections on this are in order. The implication of the spirituality of identification with Christ, as may have been noted, is that one enters, somehow, into the Trinitarian life itself. If I am Christ, if I can say "Abba" to the Father, if the Spirit prays in me in an ineffable fashion, then I partake in some way, at least analogously, in the very relations of the Three Persons.

This means that you are strangers and aliens no longer. No, you are fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God. You form a building which rises on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is fitted together and takes shape as a holy temple in the Lord; in him you are being built into this temple, to become a dwelling place for God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).

Or, to put it conversely, the Trinity no longer dwells in light inaccessible, but is plunged into history. This happens first of all, of course, in the Incarnation, where mankind voices in Christ, in a human way, the eternal relationship of Son to Father. But that immersion into history is continued in myself, as I also become a point of insertion of the Trinitarian life into human history. In me Jesus once more says "Abba" to the Father; in me the Spirit prays in a way that no human speech could convey. The death and resurrection of Jesus is continued in me, to appeal again to Romans, chapter 6.

I find this a salutary emphasis for bringing the mystery of the Trinity back into the mainstream of Christian living. Theoretically one of the most important affirmations of faith, the doctrine of the Trinity has become a peripheral concern in the life of most Christians. There must be something wrong here; and the spirituality outlined above may be one way of taking this doctrine from its usual highly theoretical existence and bringing it back into life-giving contact with Christian living.

The history of Christianity has in time placed a unilateral emphasis on the divinity of Christ. This is probably to be dated especially to Nicea, 325. Arius had denied the divinity of Christ, and the Church was forced, in response, to emphasize the equality of Christ with the Father. There is a movement in theology today, and even in popular culture, to rediscover the humanity of Jesus. I find that a spirituality of identification with Christ is very timely in this search for the human Jesus.

At the same time, there are appropriate limits to be set to such a theology of identification. It is also Scriptural to distinguish with John between the Son (huios) and the sons (tekna ). Jesus often speaks of "my Father and your Father" not that they are two persons, but that the relationship is different. Jesus alone is the "first-born of many brothers" (Rom. 8:29). The ultimate difference is always there: Jesus is an Uncreated Person, I am a created person.

I discover this distinction especially and most painfully in the experience of sin. This remains a part of Christian living: "All of us fall short in many respects" (Jam. 3:2). When I sin, I feel that I am far from any possible identification with Christ. "Leave me, Lord I am a sinful man" (Lk. 5:8), as Peter said. In the experience of sin there can be no commonality with Christ. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned" (Heb. 4:15).

In the first chapter I described something of the experience of prayer, which is both a paradigmatic and the most direct experience of God in my life. In this chapter I have developed other modes of my encounter with him: in nature, in the endlessness of questions and the ceaselessness of human yearning, in peak experiences, with those I love dearly. 'In the experience of God as Father, above all, I find the freedom of the children of God, and discover a spirituality of identification with Christ. Already in this chapter, then, I have spoken of "significant others," and attention must now focus on that communitarian element in the Christian experience.

"Community" means, first of all, those men and women contemporary with myself, those with whom I share this globe. In accordance with the movement so far, my consideration will begin with what is nearest myself, and move outward from there.

The new branch of investigation known as the sociology of knowledge has shown us how important surrounding social groups are for belief. No one really believes, or accepts as valid a basic way of looking at the world, without the support of his social environment. Community is important then, if for nothing else, to sustain us in the beliefs that we hold. That is why faith is never a purely personal project; it is lived only in and with the Church, which establishes a "climate of belief." "Faith comes through hearing . . ." (Rom. 10:17).

In my own life, no group is as important to me as a small circle of close friends. It is here, above all, that I have learned what it means to love and to be loved.

I remember very distinctly my first experiences of mature friendship. They took place when I was in my late college years, at the age of twenty or twenty-one. This doesn't mean, of course, that I had enjoyed no friendships previously; I had had not only chums but persons I felt particularly close to. But there was something so distinctly different about these experiences that they seemed of a quality quite apart from the prior ones. Whatever the reasons for this difference, they retain in memory the sense of a pristine opening of totally new personal horizons. As I was in the seminary at that time, these experiences were with men; but I have had many experiences of friendship with women since then, and have not found them to be radically different. The same reactions, to be detailed in a moment, merely take on new modalities.

With the caution that the experience was in many ways too deep for words, I think I might capture it best in the following terms: awe and wonder, acceptance for myself, self-confidence and humility, gift, another, loveableness. Such concepts, of course, unfold an organic unity, and thus they are all intertwined in more ways than could ever be detailed.

The basic marvel of it all, I think I could say, was that someone loved me. Someone that is another limited, sometimes weak, sometimes silly, but nevertheless real, flesh-and-blood human being. Loved how can you put it into words? He cared for me, valued me, understood me as no one else in the whole world. But above all, the surprise was the me. Why me? What was there about me? I could see other people to be attractive, but what was there in myself?

Still, I experienced myself to be loved. I was valued precisely for myself. Not for what I would do for him, not for any talents, not for my looks, not for what I had achieved, but just for me. I can remember very clearly stacking my self up against other persons at a high school age. I was better than this one at studies, but he always beat me at chess, I had to admit. . . the other one was smarter than I, but perhaps I compensated by being better at athletics. . . . This line of thought always ended rather sadly. For unless you were a genius in some line or another (and despite considerable talents in various fields, I wasn't), there was always someone who was better, if you extended the competition widely enough. So you tried to resign yourself to never being more than a big fish in a small pond.

What a different feeling this was! No longer was there a necessity to compete, or measure myself against anyone else. For I was loved for just myself. I could have argued in this new experience that I was a unique person, and in that at least no one could duplicate me. But somehow even argument seemed idle I just existed peacefully in the warmth of my friend's love.

The full acceptance of this wonderful revelation must have taken a discrete time—1 cannot now reconstruct how long it was before I lived with this new feeling and was brought to realize it deeply. But the effects were eventually far-reaching.

The primary feeling might be identified by a syllogism: If he loved me, then I was lovable. The logic, however, was not of the mind, but of something deep inside. I came to experience, in other words, my own value as a person, rather than as a function of a group, a role to be played, or a cog in a wheel. This deep realization that I actually was loveable led immediately to the grasp of a paradox about self-confidence and humility. Though I had in endless daydreams toted up abilities and talents, I discovered now that I had never really valued myself. Else why should I have been so surprised that someone could love me? Now I began to have a whole new self- confidence. But though I valued myself much more than before, somehow it was at the same time a much humbler attitude. There was no need any longer to arrogantly compare myself with others. If I could be loved for myself, then talents and achievements were rather incidental.

The experience was both self-reassuring and humbling, particularly because I was so aware that the love I received was gift. The love was free I could only be open to it. He could give it or not. Whatever self- confidence I might come to have, it could never be a proud or haughty one, because I felt so strongly the profound gratitude I owed to him for the gift that made me fully a person.

Since that time I have had many deep friendships. I have gradually come to accept the fact that I am lovable, that I too can be a gift to someone else. But in every new experience, especially at that exciting point where barriers are first beginning to fall down in self-revelation a process that happens much more quickly and easily now I never fail to experience something of that same thrill of awe and wonder when another person says to me, "I love you for yourself."

My own sense of who I am, then, is not a solitary or personal achievement; it is a gift of those who have loved me deeply. They have left a profound mark on my life, whether we are still friends, or whether we have in the intervening years drifted apart as so often happens in our mobile society.

Freed by this gift to be myself, I also learned in friendship what it means to love. For loving another is the converse of this experience. It is the effective communication to the other that he or she is worthwhile, lovable just for himself or herself. It is the message that a person is prized for what makes him or her unique; and while saying that is important, usually the words get through because they have been backed by deeds.

Love must regard what is deepest in the person; it can attach no other qualifications or conditions. I desire that my friend grow, that he become his best possible self. But beyond that I dare not specify. It is not for me to decide where that person's growth will lead him; it is not for me to impose on him my own visions and dreams of what he needs, in some false program of "personal improvement." Love does not bind, but opens up a room to grow. I return here to a favorite image: Love creates a play-space, a freedom zone, for the person. I imagine myself saying to a person:

In the gift of love, I create for you a space to play in. Others may coerce you to do this or that, to be one thing or the other for them; but in my play-space you are free. You need answer to no external criteria not even my own! You can just be yourself. If you want to be serious or silly, sad or slap-happy, you can. I only want you to be yourself, to grow into the truest possible you.

Of course, no human being gives that gift perfectly. In the limitations of finite human love, it is impossible to fully realize this ideal of totally freeing love. I have to have absorbed deeply the message that "I am lovable, good and worthwhile" before I can even conceive that I may be a gift to someone else. My past hurts and my present jealousies may, even then, mar the freedom I offer to the one I love. Still, in my experience, one human being is able to create for another a great deal of freedom, a considerable amount of room in which to grow.

The problem, in fact, is often the opposite. Though it may seem the easier part, many people are simply not ready to hear that they are lovable. They will do anything to drown out the message, to thwart the communication, to turn away the fearful truth with a jest, to read a compliment as a criticism, to ignore an insistent affirmation. It seems almost endemic to the human situation, like some dire consequence of original sin, that we grow up insecure and afraid, no matter how much love has been showered on us. The teenager, as he or she begins to grapple with the question of his or her personal identity, starts with the awful handicap of being quite uncertain and un- self-sure. For all the attractions of youth, I have no desire to experience such insecurity again. Even for an adult, the word of love may have to be spoken for long years and with incredible patience before the person really hears it, and begins to flower. And I am afraid that some are so closed to the communication, so sure that they cannot really be lovable, that they will never hear the message. They go on through life, making misery for all around them by their lack of self-esteem, but unwilling or unable to let anyone help them by the validation of a word of love. Indeed, I believe that is one of the ultimate questions of the ministry: how to make known to someone, not just verbally, but in an effective communication, the good news that he or she is lovable.

That may seem extreme, but I see the presence or absence of this feeling of personal worth, this self- confidence, self-assurance or sense of self, this "ego strength," as a linchpin of human behavior. The lack of this acceptance of oneself comes out in many destructive ways. Some persons never achieve anything because they don't believe enough in themselves. A subtle variation on this is the person who never risks anything because he is overly afraid of failing. Already disbelieving in himself, he is unwilling to assemble any further evidence of his worthlessness; at the same time he makes it impossible to demonstrate that he might sometimes succeed! A similar self- defeating attitude is seen in those who set unrealistically high goals for themselves, and then say, when they predictably fail, "See, I knew I could never do anything worthwhile." The shy person is often saying to the world, "Please don't pay any attention to me, let me shrink into my corner, as I'm not worthy of note." In the limit, such persons seem to be constantly apologizing for their existence. Others manifest their lack of a self-concept by demanding constant reassurance. They are ever seeking to be complimented extravagantly on whatever they achieve; but the void of self-doubt is a bottomless pit, and no amount of praise is ever really satisfying. The insatiable appetite for reassurance may in cases become quite tyrannical. Still others show their self-hatred by gaining weight or deliberately "looking their worst." Being overweight, especially in a woman, since our society puts so much stress on her figure, may be both a self-fulfilling prophecy and a "sacrament" a visible sign of, and a piece of evidence for, her unworthiness.

The pernicious effects of a poor self-concept may also be more subtle. The person who works constantly and compulsively may seem at first sight to be the exact opposite of the person discussed above, who is able to accomplish nothing. Yet fundamentally the same difficulty may be at work. Because the person does not value himself, he is forced to find his value in what he accomplishes. Often, however, this doesn't seem to be enough to establish his self-worth, and so he is forced to work harder and harder. The person who has to be constantly "doing for" someone else may be revealing that he does not feel he can be a gift just by "being for" another. Something similar may be noted in the defensive person who, precisely because he is insecure, has to constantly try to prove himself. The lack of a positive self-regard may often be at the bottom of much "role-playing" and many "fronts." The person in effect is saying, "I'm not really much good personally, but if I create a good enough front perhaps I can convince people otherwise." In the long run, of course, such behavior is self-defeating, because mature people do not care to relate to a front, but prefer to meet a real person; to the extent that he or she rigidly maintains the front, the person ensures that all his or her relationships will be superficial. Close to this behavior is that of the person who hides behind a role usually an authority role because he does not feel his personal value sufficiently to stand alone. Because he has placed his whole security in the role rather than in himself, he is likely to be unduly insistent upon the prerogatives of his office, and very threatened when anyone steps out of a subordinate role. Many "two- bit" tyrants would seem to be of this type.

The lack of self-worth may take on even more camouflaged forms. The loud braggart, who would seem to be supremely confident, might only be trying to convince himself. The person who is the "life of the party" may be only playing a role; in reality he may be the shyest person in the group. The aggressive criminal may be desperately trying to call to himself an attention he feels he will never achieve through more socially acceptable channels.

The absence of a healthy self-acceptance, then, can be seen as the root of many negative and destructive behavior patterns. But a description of the mature person may also be formed by simply reversing these characteristics. The self-accepting person has a solid sense of himself. He apologizes to no one for his existence, his uncontrolled feelings, both positive and negative, his legitimate desires, his reasonable thoughts, his own unique and personal experience. Because of this, he is able to avoid all the largely self-defeating personal styles described above. He values himself enough to be able to achieve his actual potential; at the same time he is not afraid of making mistakes, because he knows he will still be worthwhile. He sets reasonable goals for himself; if they prove too steep, he readjusts them without a catastrophic sense of failure. He is not overly shy, as he is confident he has something to offer to others. He appreciates praise but has no need of constant reassurance; he does what he does because he chooses it, and not because others will approve.

Confident of his ability to achieve, he has no need to drive himself unreasonably, or to constantly prove himself to others. While appreciating the importance of roles and even of defenses, he is not afraid to be himself in any situation. He wears his roles lightly, as it were, rather than oppressively imposing them on others; he is not afraid to redefine his role in accord with the needs of the persons he is dealing with. Such a person is creative; because he values himself, he implicitly understands that persons are more important than rules, regulations or social conventions; he is willing to adjust the rules when necessary to serve the needs of all the persons concerned.

Such a degree of positive self-evaluation may seem dangerously close to complacency, but the two should not be confused. For the very reason that he is self- confident, the mature man has no need to imagine himself as a paragon of perfection. Because he knows his basic value as a person, he is free to admit his weaknesses, his lack of abilities, the areas in which he especially needs to grow. But he continues to value himself positively in spite of his never-ending need for further growth; or, to put it another way, he values himself in his very openness to further development.

Perhaps it should not be passed over that, although immature behaviors are largely self-defeating, the mature human person has not therefore immediately entered into a realm of sweetness and light. Precisely because he continues to deal with people, many of whom are immature, he can expect some to be threatened by and to resent his maturity. Precisely because many people are compulsive in their work patterns, he may expect to be resented for his "laziness." Precisely because many people in their undervaluation of themselves place an inordinate security in rules, conventions and hidebound traditions, he may expect to be resented for his freedom in creatively dealing with and sometimes breaking those rules and traditions. But the mature person has no desire to regress to an immature stage he values his own growth too much for that just to please others; and he is confident that the deeper possibilities of human living open to a mature person far outweigh the problems "created" by his maturity.

What I have learned about love by experience and observation in friendship has been seconded by a more disciplined and systematic study. I have at times been called upon to do pastoral counseling, and Carl Rogers' model of "client-centered" therapy has proved most helpful in that endeavor. It has become for me, not just a "counseling technique," but a whole formulation of my mode of relating to others. I sometimes wonder if therapists choose one model of therapy over another because it is "better," or because it fits their own personalities more closely. In any case, I am sure that I find Rogers' thought so congenial because it agrees with my own personality and approach to life. To explain that, I shall have to give some account of his thought.(11) This will not be an academic presentation; I am interested more in conveying the "feel," the inner dynamics of the counseling relationship, as I have experienced it.

As "client-centered" therapy implies, the process of counseling is in this approach directed by the counselee himself. For a person unacquainted with the method, I find, that whole idea seems very hard to swallow. The first reaction is usually, "Well, no doubt it's called nondirective, but I'm sure it really is directive after all when you examine it." The model of the "layman" going to the "expert" for advice is such an all-pervasive model, in psychology as in many other fields, that it is difficult to imagine any other. The very word "patient" seems to deny that he can be an "agent." The second reaction, if and when the person becomes convinced that "nondirective" is meant quite literally and seriously, is that the idea makes no sense.

Why in the world should one let the client direct his own therapy? Isn't that the blind leading the blind? And why would anyone want to pay good money for the dubious advantage of having the patient explain to the therapist what he the patient thinks his own problems are?

To understand how there might after all be some sense to such an apparently backward procedure, the process as Rogers envisions it must be examined in more detail. It might be broken down into two steps: empathic listening and accurate reflection.

The first step is that of a very attentive listening to the client. Listening is often thought of as a passive process, but in the full meaning of the word it is an extremely active one. The therapist mobilizes every resource he has intelligence, feeling, past learnings, life experiences and focuses them intently, as it were, on what this particular person is saying. As the listening gathers up everything in the therapist, so it attempts to grasp the client's meaning on all the levels on which a human being communicates the information he may be offering, the particular feelings with which it is spoken, what is said in the lines and between the lines, the qualifications subtly introduced by intonation or gesture or facial expression.

After some experience of such listening, the therapist or trainee may discover with some surprise that people rarely listen to each other. Like the debater who is searching his opponents' statements for weak points and formulating mentally his riposte while his opponents are still speaking, many people are more taken up with their own thoughts and feelings than with those of the persons they are conversing with. Ordinary conversation, if examined, is usually found to be replete with feeling-cues unnoticed, obvious openers not taken up. Empathic listening, therefore, is a very active process, and a demanding one. After a few hours of such intense listening the counselor may well feel quite drained.

The second step is accurate reflection of what was spoken. The counselor attempts to put into words what he understands not just intellectually, but with his whole person the client to have said. The therapist does not of course attempt to say everything that he has heard. The re-expression is limited to what the counselor feels the client said more or less clearly and consciously or directly, and is also limited mainly to the "feeling content" of the statement. The last phrase needs some explanation.

Most statements contain both an intellectual and a feeling component. For example, suppose a person says, "I forced myself today to apply for a job." This revelation might be responded to in numerous ways. But questions that would tend toward information would be: What company did you apply to? Do you think you'll get it? Did they mention a salary? -How long have you been looking for a job? What type of work was it? Questions on the other hand tending to head toward feelings would be: You seem to have had to push yourself why was that? Did you feel good about it once you forced yourself to go? What's your aversion to job interviews? How do you feel about working? The Rogerian therapist would ordinarily be more interested in questions of the second kind than of the first.

Extreme cases of statements, of course, might be found that do not have both components. A statement in a scientific treatise tends to focus on conveying information to the total exclusion of feelings. A scream on the other hand may be pure emotional content and express no information as such at all. But the vast range of statements lies somewhere between the extremes. The meaning here is not that the feeling and intellectual components are neatly separated compartments; they shade off into one another. But it is clearly possible to stress one aspect or the other, as in the questions above. One further thing should be noted, however, about the above statement concerning the job interview: The feeling content is verbally present. In other statements it may just as well be expressed in intonation or gesture.

In the second step of the process, then, the counselor tries to express in his own words the feeling content of the client's previous remarks. He tries to do so without interpolating his own meanings or desires into the statement, his own further interpretations; he tries also not to blame the patient for any of hi? feelings, nor in reexpression to edit or censor some of the feelings out because he does not approve of them. Nor, finally, does he make his statement in a dogmatic fashion, but with at least an implicit question mark. If the client responds, "Yes, that's exactly how I feel!" he may reasonably conclude he has understood well. If the client says, "No, that's not exactly what I meant," then the therapist will listen again and try to form a more acceptable version.

Rogers likes to charact