"Glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate"

Joseph Campbell's The Hero wwith a Thousand Faces was published in 1949. Here is an excerpt from the section entitled Apotheosis, which rings with contemporary relevance:

Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense. The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children. Such comparatively trivial matters as the remaining details of the credo, the techniques of worship, and the devices of episcopal organization (which have so absorbed the interest of Occidental theologians that they are today seriously discussed as the principal questions of religion), are merely pedantic snares, unless kept ancillary to the major teaching. Indeed, where not so kept, they have a regressive effect: they reduce the father image back again to the dimensions of the totem. And this, of course, is what has happened throughout the Christian world. One would think that we had been called upon to decide or to know whom, of all of us, the Father prefers. Whereas, the teaching is much less flattering: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The World Savior's cross, despite the behavior of its professed priests, is a vastly more democratic symbol than the local flag.

The understanding of the final -- and critical -- implications of the world-redemptive words and symbols of the tradition of Christendom has been so disarranged during the tumultuous centuries that have elapsed since St. Augustine's declaration of the holy war of the Civitas Dei against the Civitas Diaboli, that the modern thinker wishing to know the meaning of a world religion (i.e., of a doctrine of universal love) must turn his mind to the other great (and much older) universal communion: that of the Buddha, where the primary word still is peace -- peace to all beings.

While it is not necessary that those of us who are disenchanted with the "pedantic snares" and the "disarranged world-redemptive words and symbols" of the contemporary Church become Buddhists, we might like to reflect on the fact that our brother Jesus (as fellow blogger Michael Bayly so aptly and touchingly refers to him) was neither theologian nor cleric, neither pope nor bishop; he was simply called "Rabbi" - teacher. He was not concerned with creeds, liturgy, or "the devices of episcopal organization." His only concern was love.

Facing the Minotaur and Finding our Way to Freedom

"The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved -- by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millennia. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain?

"Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, fell in love with the handsome Theseus the moment she saw him disembark from the boat that had brought the pitiful group of Athenian youths and maidens for the Minotaur. She found a way to talk with him, and declared that she would supply a means to help him back out of the labyrinth if he would promise to take her away from Crete with him and make her his wife. The pledge was given. Ariadne turned for help, then, to the crafty Daedalus, by whose art the labyrinth had been constructed and Ariadne's mother enabled to give birth to its inhabitant. Daedalus simply presented her with a skein of linen thread, which the visiting hero might fix to the entrance and unwind as he went into the maze. It is, indeed, very little that we need! But lacking that, the adventure into the labyrinth is without hope.

"The little is close at hand. Most curiously, the very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. For centuries Daedalus has represented the type of the artist-scientist: that curiously disinterested, almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the normal bounds of social judgment, dedicated to the morals not of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of thought -- singlehearted, courageous, and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.

"And so now we may turn to him, as did Ariadne. The flax for the linen of his thread he has gathered from the fields of the human imagination. Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twisted yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Mythology and Religion

Joseph Campbell on mythology and religion:

My favorite definition of mythology: Other people's religion. My favorite definition of religion: Misunderstanding of mythology. The misunderstanding consists in the reading of the spiritual mythological symbols as if they were primarily references to historical events. Localized provincial readings separate the various religious communities. Remythologization - recapturing the mythological meaning - reveals a common spirituality of mankind.

Joseph Campbell and the New Mass

This is from the PBS series Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers:

There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. Even in the Roman Catholic Church. my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. Every time…that I read the Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity. The altar is turned so that the priest’s back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward [gestures upward with his hands] like that.

Now they’ve turned the altar around; [it] looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration—all homey and cozy. They’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is: it’s to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

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On Ritual

A friend, a former Catholic, told me this morning that on the rare occasion that she does go to church, she almost feels like laughing because the whole liturgical pageant appears so ridiculous in its pomposity. She said that she would like to ask the priest if he could possibly not be aware of how ludicrous he looks in all his vestments and surrounded by all the trappings of the ritual of the Mass. I believe that there are many who would agree with her.

Of course I was at first deeply offended by her ridicule of something that is a hugely important part of my life. But once I got my ego out of the way, I recognized that I had never really asked myself why I found the ritual of the Mass so moving, especially when it is conducted with great reverence and skill by the celebrant. The morning Mass of last Christmas and the most recent Easter vigil in my former parish were liturgies that affected me most profoundly. Yet I had never thought of being a “liturgy queen” as anything more than having a great love of theatre mixed with nostalgia for a long-lost aspect of my childhood.


When I first returned to the Catholic Church after a long absence, one of the chief reasons for doing so was to become connected with something much larger than myself, something more significant, more meaningful, more serene than my own emotional turmoil, my own misguided and failed aspirations. I now believe that it is, for me and for millions of Catholics, the ritual of the Mass that helps to make that connection. That ritual, in all its component elements—the entrance procession, accompanied by the opening hymn, with the crucifer, the acolytes, followed by the priest in his vestments and moving slowly up the centre aisle of the church, and ending in the genuflection before the altar; the consecration of the bread and wine and the elevation of the host and the chalice before the assembled congregation; the final blessing by the celebrant—transports me to a place of peace and joy that the HD broadcast of a gorgeous opera from the Met does not, that a thrilling concert of baroque music does not, that a brilliantly written and acted play or film does not.

The transcendent effect of the ritual can easily be diminished or even ruined by any number of factors. The worst of these is, of course, the lack of true reverence on the part of the celebrant, a deficiency that can be manifested in many ways, such as a slovenly appearance, inadequate attention to the reading and proper articulation of prayers (making mistakes, mumbling, losing one’s place), poor singing (this of course may not be the fault of the celebrant), and an unsatisfying homily. This last offence may be the result of poor preparation, lack of consideration for the listener in the determination of the content, unenthusiastic delivery (the worst case of which is reading the homily from a prepared text). The celebrant can also be overly reverent, evincing a kind of “faux” piety that is nearly as offensive and distracting as not enough reverence. I have seen this phenomenon in my mother’s church, with a young priest whose ritual behaviour would be laughable if his homilies were not so reflective of a patronizing and condescending attitude to parishioners who are, for the most part, twice his age. Poor lectors, noisy children, cell phones, mediocre choirs, and latecomers are just a few of the many other factors that can mar the transcendent effects of ritual.

Of course it is not just to Catholics that ritual is important; ritual has been a critical factor in people’s lives for thousands of years. Joseph Campbell speaks of the “shaman’s song,” which is a “deep psychological summons” and a “visionary image” through which “the shamans center themselves.” He tells of Father Alberto de Agostini, “who was a priest and a scientist” and who lived among the Ona and Yagan people of Tierra del Fuego in the early 1900s. The priest-scientist speaks of “waking up in the night and hearing the local shaman playing his drum and chanting his song alone, all night long—holding himself to the power.

Now, that idea of holding yourself to the power by way of your dream myth is indicative of the way in which myth works generally. If it is a living mythology, one that is actually organically relevant to the life of the people of the time, repeating the myth and enacting the rituals center you. Ritual is simply myth enacted; by participating in a rite, you are participating directly in a myth.

The problem with Catholicism for many people—and for Campbell—is that it has ceased to be a “living mythology.” The insistence of the Church hierarchy on cleaving to medieval scholastic and neo-scholastic theology and to a literal-historical interpretation of Scripture makes the liturgy of the Mass, and all its ritual elements, appear irrelevant and therefore ridiculous. Yet as I have noted before, Campbell suggests that “it’s a good thing to hang on to the myth that was put into you when you were a child, because it is there whether you want it there or not.” But in order to breathe life into it, you have to “translate that myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy. You have to learn to hear its song.”

And my little sermon to the churches of the world is this: you have got the symbols right there in the altar, and you have the lessons as well. Unfortunately, when you have a dogma telling you what kind of effect the symbol is supposed to have on you, you’re in trouble. It doesn’t affect me that way, so am I a sinner?

The real, important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine message in such a way that you are capable of experiencing it. What the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other might be, in technical terms, is not half as important as you, the celebrant, feeling the Virgin Birth within you, the birth of the mystic, mythic being that is your own spiritual life.

Religious ritual also appears ridiculous—to many believers and non-believers alike—when the trappings of ritual are used, especially by senior members of the hierarchy, simply to impress upon others the importance of one’s ecclesiastical position and authority. In light of recent revelations about the Catholic Church and the complicity of members of the hierarchy in the most heinous of crimes, such misuse of ritual goes beyond the ludicrous to the utterly shameful.

My friend’s comments have caused me to examine and articulate a vital aspect of my love for Catholicism and my desire to continue to participate regularly in the liturgy of the Mass despite my recent decision to terminate my active involvement in the Roman Catholic Church. I am thus grateful to her for her honesty.

Saying "Yes" To Everything

In Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, Joseph Campbell names and explains the four functions of mythology. The first of these, he says, “is to reconcile consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence; that is to say, to the nature of life.” He goes on to point out that life for primitive peoples was nothing short of monstrous. Yet, unlike the so-called advanced or civilized cultures, their response to life was predominantly affirmative.

The first, primitive orders of mythology are affirmative: they embrace life on its own terms. I don’t think any anthropologist could document a primitive mythology that was world-negating. When you realize what primitive people run up against—the pains and the agonies and the problems of simply existing—I think it’s quite amazing. I’ve studied a lot of the myths of these cultures around the world, and I can’t recall a single negative word in primitive thought with respect to existence or to the universe. World-weariness comes later with people who are living high on the hog.


That’s the first function of mythology: not merely a reconciliation of consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence [“The organs of life had evolved to depend on the death of others for their existence. These organs have impulses of which your consciousness isn’t even aware; when it becomes aware of them you may become scared that this eat-or-be-eaten horror is what you are”], but reconciliation with gratitude, with love, with recognition of the sweetness. Through the bitterness and pain, the primary experience at the core of life is a sweet, wonderful thing. This affirming view comes pouring in on one through these terrific…myths.

Campbell says that in about the eighth century BC this affirming attitude changed and new mythologies developed, “mythologies of retreat, dismissal, renunciation—life denial.” People started saying “no” to life.




Then a third system developed, which Campbell calls an “ameliorative mythology.”

This worldview expresses the notion that through certain kinds of activity, a change can be brought about. Through prayer, or good deeds, or some other activity, one can change the basic principles, the fundamental [evil] preconditions of life. You affirm the world on condition that it follows your notion of what the world should be. This is like marrying someone in order to improve him or her—it is not marriage.

Campbell reminds us that this mythology “has come to us by way of the late stages in the biblical tradition and in the Christian tradition of the Fall and the Resurrection.”

One can confidently assume that primitive life featured frequent and devastating change: death and forced migration by disease, natural disaster, sudden attacks by other tribes or by wild animals. Pain, loss, and flight must have been frequent occurrences for these people. Yet their rituals and myths all reflect an affirmation of life—not only acceptance of change but “reconciliation with gratitude, with love, with recognition of the sweetness.”

I have recently been thinking about change because changes are taking place in my life. I have no control over these changes, yet instead of recognizing them as the gifts from God that they are, instead d of embracing them as part of life—and life is growth—I resist. Every year in my garden I see the beautifully fragrant lilac flowers, the miraculous roses with their lovely colours and their delicious scent, fall and die. The leaves on my gorgeous Japanese maple, so rich and vibrant in the spring and summer, die in the fall, leaving a bare framework of twigs to face the winter. These creatures of God do not resist the change; they accept everything. Yet I have not learned from them.

What we cling to most, it seems, and where we are most resistant to change is relationships and situations of so-called security. We are lulled into complacency by the comfort of friends who always call or e-mail or who are regularly available for a coffee or a meal or a concert. The occasional strains and slights are ignored because the person is loved and because these are part of every relationship. Once in a while, however, there is an event that occurs apparently out of nowhere and precipitates a major change in the relationship. When that happens, we are surprised and disappointed and confused and often deeply hurt. The fact is, however, that first, upon reflection the change is rarely as sudden as it seems, and second, if the change is recognized as God’s gift and accepted as such, growth can take place and peace can be experienced.

A very close friend of some years, who has in fact been mentioned in this blog, recently and rather suddenly stopped communicating. He had been busy for several months, deeply involved in courses he was taking. Our communication, which a year ago had been frequent and intense, had lessened somewhat since last summer. While I missed the contact and the intellectual stimulation that often accompanied it, I recognized and blessed his need to focus on his journey. I was not prepared, however, for his complete “disappearance.” I was by turns surprised, disappointed, confused, and hurt. And because the complete silence was so unusual (this person has been the antithesis of silent), I was also worried. But if he had decided to cloister himself utterly, I wished to respect his choice. Finally, my concern forced me to e-mail him and ask him to just assure me that he was okay. This morning I received his reply, in which he asked me to accept his silence.

We often fail to recognize that, like the trees and flowers in the garden, we are changing. For those who make a conscious choice to follow a certain path, and especially when that path involves passionate and creative exploration, change will be more intense and perhaps more frequent. Once we open certain doors, it seems, we have begun a process which takes on a life of its own and which cannot be reversed; that process opens other doors for us and pushes us through. My friend’s “disappearance” is a sign that I am going through or have already gone through another door.

I have always been a listener. What that means I am not sure; perhaps because I was confused about my path, I never really had anything I wanted passionately to say, perhaps I lacked confidence—it doesn’t really matter. Naturally, I have often attracted people who were in need of a good listener. My friend was one of these: I have had telephone conversations with him which have lasted for nearly two hours and in which I have hardly spoken. I have sometimes been resentful of this one-sidedness, but I recognize now that it was a reflection of where I was at that point in my journey. Moreover, very often what was said was deeply meaningful to me and profoundly influential in my life; it led me to explore new ways of thinking and of seeing life.

Since I have found my path, however, I am no longer just a listener. I have something to say, most of which I say through this blog, most of which I am passionate about. When I started the blog one of the people that I most hoped would read it and talk with me about the thoughts raised in the articles I posted was my “disappeared” friend. Now I understand why he has not, to my knowledge, read any of the articles. It is not because he does not love me or care about what I think or do; it is simply that he does not have the nature of a listener.

The truth is that I have grown and this incident is telling me to say “yes” to the change “with gratitude, with love, with recognition of the sweetness.”

I would not likely have been moved to ponder the whole notion of affirming life’s changes if another significant change were not about to take place in my life. Our long-term “homestay student,” who has been with us for five years and whom we have known for over ten years and who is truly a member of our little family, has accepted a job in his native country and will be leaving us in ten days. This is an important step in his life as he will be gaining valuable experience in his field and advancing his career. We love this young man very much and his absence will be keenly felt as he has been a big part of our lives. Naturally, we will stay closely in touch, but we must let him go.

This beloved son’s departure will have not only an emotional impact on us, it will also have a financial effect on me. The income he provided through his “homestay” fees has been steady for five years. I am not sure when and if he can be replaced. As I am a writer who makes no income from his writing, the homestay income I receive every month is how I pay my bills and my debts; any gap in the flow of this income can be problematic. As other students come and go much more frequently than every five years, my “security” is tenuous at best. Yet this is a change I must also embrace with joy because if I trust the process of doors opening, I know that this too is part of that process.

In A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle speaks of abundance:

The source of abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgement of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within.

Saying yes again.

Most of us do not endure anything like the pain and privation suffered by the primitive peoples. Yet we must learn (and I say "we" here, because I must learn), for our own happiness and peace of mind, to affirm life in all of its forms. What we often think of as bad—scarcity, separation, loss—is a natural part of the life cycle—of God’s divine plan—and if welcomed with gratitude and love, leads to new and healthy growth. Of course, I am not saying that we should not reject injustice, cruelty, and useless and unnecessary suffering; we must look these clearly in the eye when we encounter them and fight them to the best of our ability. But it would help us to remember that these too were faced by primitive people yet did not prevent those people from irrepressibly saying “yes” to life.

One of the keys to living a healthy and happy life is, I think, awareness or consciousness. The more we can be non-attached and alert to what is happening around us and to us, the less likely we are to be taken by surprise and the more likely we are to say “yes” to everything. Non-attachment does not mean coldness or indifference; we can and should be passionate. But it does mean not allowing our egos to cling to the issues that arise in our lives and to drain away the joy and the sweetness of living.

Enter Where There Is No Path

The other day I quoted from the Introduction to one volume of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Here is how the Introduction ends:

Here is a story that seems to me to embody the essential image of living one's life, finding it and having the courage to pursue it. It comes from an Arthurian romance, La Queste del Saint Graal, by an anonymous thirteenth-century monk.

There's a moment there in Arthur's banquet hall when all the knights are assembled around the Round Table. Arthur would not let anyone start to eat until an adventure had occurred. Well, in those days adventures were rather normal, so people didn't go hungry for long.

They were waiting for this day's adventure, and it did indeed occur. The Holy Grail showed itself to the assembled knights - not in its full glory but covered with a great radiant cloth. Then it withdrew. All were left ravished, sitting there in awe.

Finally, Gawain, Arthur's nephew, stood up and said, "I propose a vow to this company, that we should all go in quest of that Grail to behold it unveiled."

Now we come to the text that interested me. The text reads, "They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path."

You enter the forest at the darkest point where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path; each human being is a unique phenomenon.

The idea is to find your own pathway to bliss.

I believe that God calls us to seek the Holy Grail so that we may unveil it. He calls us from the dark forest where there is no path except the one we create for our unique journey. I also believe that if we have the courage to make that journey, God will guide us to the Grail.

The Grail is within.

A well-known Jesuit historian and educator, in an article written in America magazine some time ago, called Joseph Campbell, who was brought up Roman Catholic, an apostate. I respect the intelligent broad-mindedness of that writer, so I have to think that his tongue was in his cheek (or on his cheeks covering his ass). I can only say, thank God for this wise and blessed apostate.

Joseph Campbell: Translating Mythic Tradition into your Life

Because I have chosen to return to the Church in which I was baptized yet have irretrievably lost much of the faith I took for granted as a child, I am constantly in search of a way to reconcile my Catholicism with the call to be who I really am. Joseph Campbell shines a light on one possible path through the dark forest.

In the Introduction to the book Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, Campbell says the following about bliss:

These deities in myths serve as models, give you life roles, so long as you understand their reference to the foot in the transcendent. The Christian idea of Imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ - what does that mean, that you should go out and get yourself crucified? Nothing of the kind. It means to live with one foot in the transcendent, as God.

As Paul says: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." That means that the eternal thing works in me. And this is the meaning of the Buddha consciousness, the consciousness that is both the entire universe and you yourself.

The myth tells you that if you engage the world in a certain way, you are under the protection of Athena, under the protection of Artemis, under the protection of this, that, or the other god. That's the model. We don't have that today. Life has changed in form so rapidly that even the forms that were normal to think about in the time of my boyhood are no longer around, and there's another set, and everything is moving very, very fast. Today we don't have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition.

The rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is moss. So now you've got to do it yourself, ad lib. I speak of the present as a moment of free fall into the future with no guidance. All you've got to know is how to fall; and you can learn that too. That is the situation with regard to myth right now. We're all without dependable guides.

Yet even now you can find two guides. The first can be a personality in your youth who seemed to you a noble and great personality. Y0u can use that person as a model. The other way is to live for bliss. In this way, your bliss becomes your life. There's a saying in Sanscrit: the three aspects of thought that point furthest toward the border of the abyss of the transcendent are sat, cit, and ananda: being, consciousness, and bliss. You can call transcendence a hole or the whole, either one, because it is beyond words. All that we can talk about is what is on this side of transcendence. And the problem is to open the words, to open the images so that they point past themselves. They will tend to shut off the experience through their own opacity. But these three concepts are those that will bring you closest to that void: sat-cit-ananda. Being, consciousness, and bliss.

Now, as I've gotten older, I've been thinking about these things. And I don't know what being is. Ands I don't know what consciousness is. But I do know what bliss is: that deep sense of being present, of doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself. If you can hang on to that, you are on the edge of the transcendent already. You may not have any money, but it doesn't matter. When I came back from my student years in Germany and Paris, it was three weeks before the Wall Street crash in 1929, and I didn't have a job for five years. And, fortunately for me, there was no welfare. I had nothing to do but sit in Woodstock and read and figure out where my bliss lay. There I was, on the edge of excitement all the time.

So, what I've told my students is this: follow your bliss. You'll have moments when you experience bliss. And when that goes away, what happens to it? Just stay with it, and there's more security in that than in finding out where the money is going to come from next year...

Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you've cut off the welling up; try to find it again. And that will be your Hermes guide, the dog that can follow the invisible trail for you. And that's the way it is. One works out one's own myth that way.

You can get some clues from earlier traditions. But they have to be taken as clues. As many a wise man has said, "You can't wear another person's hat." So when people get excited about the Orient and begin putting on turbans and saris, what they've gotten caught in is the folk aspect of the wisdom that they need. You've got to find the wisdom, not the clothing of it. Through these trappings, the myths of other cultures, you can come to a wisdom that you've then got to translate into your own. The whole problem is to turn these mythologies into your own.

Now, in my courses in mythology at Sarah Lawrence, I taught people of practically every religious faith you could think of. Some have a harder time mythologizing than others, but all have been brought up in a myth of some kind. What I've found is that any mythic tradition can be translated into your life, if it's been put into you. And it's a good thing to hang onto the myth that was put in when you were a child, because it is there whether you want it there or not. What you have to do is translate that myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy. You have to learn to hear its song. (My bold and italics)

I know that I have found my bliss, and now I try to follow it every day. I also know that I sometimes cut off "the welling up of the energy that is the transcendent wisdom [God] within" me, as I go about the more mundane and sometimes frustrating tasks and events of my daily life. That I know these things is key; consciousness or awareness is also part of the wisdom within.

The song of my faith can be heard in the beautiful voice of the young priest who sings "Lift up your heart" in Gregorian chant so that it makes me shiver and brings tears to my eyes; it is in the in the transcendent symbolism (or in the reality) of the act of transubstantiation; it can be heard in the words of Henri Nouwen when he reminds us with such passion that we are not what we do or what others think about us, but we are the beloved sons and daughters of God.

Joseph Campbell, Eckhart Tolle, Henri Nouwen, Father Bob, my wise and loving friends Richard and Kaycee, and others have all helped me to realize and to be who I really am. Yet as a gay man and a "faithful dissenter" on many issues, I still feel a longing for a more welcoming and inclusive Catholic Church. This is what I told a friend in an e-mail I sent earlier today:

I would love to go to Mass on Sunday or on Wednesday night, or at Christmas or Easter in a church where all are accepted and loved, where the priest, man or woman, openly gay or straight, celebrates the liturgy lovingly and reverently and preaches the gospel of love. I would love to be in a church that welcomes young people and does not condemn them for doing what is natural for all young people to do; that welcomes and blesses the union of all loving couples, gay or straight, married or unmarried; that does not exclude or condemn those that respectfully disagree.

Will I ever realize this dream in the institution of the Roman Catholic Church? Will I ever be able to be truly myself - and be accepted as such - in my local parish community? I have to admire the Roman Catholic Womenpriests about whom Obie Holmen wrote in The Open Tabernacle. These women have decided not to wait for the great wall built by the Vatican over the centuries and fortified in the last 30 years to fall so that they might be taken in as full members of the Church.

Someone had to have courageously taken the first step to blaze a new path that travels under or over or around that wall.