I’m reading Kathleen Norris’ “The Cloister Walk”. And I’m reading it slowly – not something I’m accustomed to – because I’m enjoying it so much. I thought I would share this. First she quotes the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner: “If I make this avowal of faith, it must pierce the depths of my heart like a sword, I must bend my knee before you, saying, I must alter my life. I have still to become a Christian.”

That really speaks to me.

Norris goes on, “To hear so esteemed a theologian cry out, ‘I have still to become a Christian’ was humbling. The words have stayed with me all day. I wonder if one of the reasons I love the Benedictines so much is that they seldom make big noises about being Christians. Though they live with the Bible more intimately than most people, they don’t thump on it, or with it, the way gorillas thump on their chests to remind anyone within earshot of who they are.”

A wonderful image: gorillas beating on their chests and roaring, puffing themselves up. “Look at me, Look at me, Look at me”.

(or: “well I’m the king of the swingers, yeah, the jungle VIP. I’ve reached the top and had to stop and that’s what’s bothering me…..”)

It’s the difference between the Bible as a tool for use (and therefore manipulable by our egos) and the Bible as the world in which we are formed – and which therefore manipulates us. Which shapes our imaginations and gets inside us so that we breathe it in and out. The womb from which we are born again.

(The difference between the daily office and choice-driven bible studies?)

I suppose it’s all about humility. Accepting the ever-present likelihood of being wrong (and not getting neurotic about that either, which is really only a spiritual form of narcissism).

“The old men used to say, ‘When we do not experience warfare, we ought so much the more to humiliate ourselves. For God, seeing our weakness, protects us; when we glorify ourselves, he withdraws his protection and we are lost’.”
(From Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers)