Fire Within chapter 01

I'm from Missouri so you'll have to show me

Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer (Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.) https://ignatius.com/fire-within-fwp/ - Join me in reading “Fire Within” at any pace. I think that there will be weekly posts (one per chapter, which I write in a notebook and then type in with [bracketed commentary]) but who can say. If you do not want to receive posts from this read-along, go to your Settings for this subscription in Substack and there is an option for which sections of Without Cost you want to receive. If any of us survive this read-along, I intend to do The Living Flame of Love: Study Edition next.

Chapter 1: “A Question of Relevance”, or we might say “A Long-Expected Party” or “it's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.”

Here is my motive, Lord, in creating this read-along. This book has been on my shelf for a while to re-read (after I gave my previous copy away [while cleaning house], I eventually ran into another copy [probably at the Sacred Heart of Jesus store in Bloomfield]) — because I want to test whether it holds up to my memory of it several years ago as a reasonable starting point to recommend to people. What I want is for people to know “the Good News is better than you think” [“the Good News is better than you think” is an idea that I tried to sell once to a pair of people on a street corner who were promoting a sect that believes only a small specific number of people, which probably does not include them, will go to the nicest sort of heaven, i.e., that (as one hears sometimes about at work when asking “why can't I use this software that I thought we had a license for”) there are purportedly a fixed number of seats there as though God is selling theater tickets to a limited showing — this is silly, on the face of it, but we ought to examine our own consciences to see whether we are acting as though we too think we are called to something merely middle-class]; what I want is for something to inspire in more people a willingness to radically cooperate with God in the way that He ordinarily works. [The way that He ordinarily works is a way that we would perhaps have assumed is extraordinary.]

In the end we do not rest on “what am I going to get out of it?” [because that is not how love thinks but rather “what can I give”] but in the beginning it is where we begin: what am I investing and what return do I expect? For example, do I invest “the first 10 minutes of my day, spent in silence, seemingly useless” and expect in return “calmer, better able to live my life with kindness towards people who currently exasperate me; more patient”? Look at how small this return is compared to what we are promised in actuality! It is a teaspoon of happiness and contentment and we are promised as much joy as we can contain.

But, Lord, I have veered from my subject and also I have forgotten to whom I am talking, which is You. I said “I'm from Missouri so You'll have to show me” and I meant it in earnest as an honest skeptic [willing to change my thinking based on experimental data, rather than someone who intends to collect data to “prove” what he already thinks]. A teaspoon of contentment paid (in relative terms) almost immediately, in an experiment which I was documenting, was a real and (qualitatively) “measurable” result with which I would have been satisfied, not knowing that more is promised. (How shall I believe what I have not heard? and how shall I hear without someone who tells me? and how shall someone tell me unless they are sent? cf. Romans.) Where, Lord, were the people who should have told us? Were we deaf and could not hear? Did they speak but we in the hardness of our hearts not understand? Did we hear, and understand, and think “he is not talking to me” in a false humility?

But You, O Lord, are no respecter of persons [here I was facetiously thinking of the wind-up to the pitch when the Pharisees ask about paying taxes, e.g. Mark 12:14] and you admit to intimacy anyone who will sit down and shut up for long enough: Your mother who was innocent; the woman who loved much because she had been forgiven much; the Beloved Disciple; the Apostle whom you chastised for [here I search for an understatement and find a tangent] kicking against the goad. How many of us, even now, are walking down on the up escalator? — earnestly striving to stay in a comfortable place [spiritually and materially: the two are inseparable] that we understand rather than be borne higher into the unknown darkness? St. Therese of Lisieux famously claimed the arms of God as her elevator to lift her to holiness because the stairs are too high for a little child to climb. Anyone can ride an elevator, all the way to the penthouse [here I seem to have turned the “wine cellar” in Song of Songs on its head, evidently positioning a honeymoon suite in a rooftop garden], who is willing to.

In the University of Pittsburgh's tallest classroom building the soi-disant Cathedral of Learning (whose chair does this building contain?) there is an elevator that goes all the way to — the top? Not, in fact, the top — I have been to the boardroom at the top for amateur radio exams [perhaps in some other century] and after you get off the first elevator you get on a smaller, sketchier, more dubious one, and this one, if you trust it, will take you to the top where there is a view. When you are there you know it is the top. You have to know it [i.e. the second elevator] is there and be admitted to it. Now, Lord, I know that You are not particular about who You admit to Your janky second elevator [whether they knew it is there or not!, unlike the literal building elevator], and it is licit to desire to ride it to the top. But Your janky second elevator has a big red NO THANK YOU button inside: St. John of the Cross says that You try people a little and that You back off if they reject what You offer (I know that You try again later in another way, but think of the lost time? How much time I have wasted; “late have I loved You.”)

This is why it is necessary to present a picture of what is at the top and to explain (I, personally, am intimately convinced THAT I SHALL DIE when I am on a roller coaster outside kiddieland) that in fact it is perfectly safe and working as intended (but do keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times). It is not so much like childbirth, where you really cannot get off this ride until you arrive at its end. [“Transition” in childbirth is, I think?, chiefly distinguishable by the conviction “nope, I cannot do this, game over, RIP me” but of course there is not an option not to and then the kid pops out anyhow fueled by dramatic irony.] But [it is] like it because we are told it will be more than worth what we suffered.

On page 4 the author says “This claim is verifiable in experience for anyone willing to pay the price of pursuing it.”

If you want to read this book, but do not have a copy on hand and do not feel like paying for one, contact me with some address at which I can send you whatever your expected cost for the book plus shipping is. I know how to send PayPal (so any online tip jar with a PayPal option will do, if you direct me to it with an estimate of the cost), or how to write a check, and I think I have enabled direct messages for free subscribers [if you do not get a response from me then I did not get it]. You, for your own part, will undertake to have bold aspirations like St. Therese of Lisieux, or, if you have the “Show-Me State” temperament, to make an earnest experiment, willing to “try it and find out.” I DARE YOU. I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU. [Rolling my eyes at myself; this is incorrect usage of “I double dog dare you” which as you know is reserved for situations in which the dare has been refused, not for mere emphasis. Give them a chance to refuse it before escalating.]

Next chapter: https://withoutcost.substack.com/p/fire-within-chapter-02