Tillich: Of Grace, Providence and Cheeseburgers

I grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois called Carmi. Fourteen miles away, just across a rickety toll bridge over the Wabash River, was New Harmony, Indiana - a site of several communal living experiments in the first half of the 19th century. 

Mainly New Harmony was a place one drove through on the way to Evansville - the largest city within easy driving distance of Carmi. My parents would occasionally go there to shop for groceries, and it was here that I went to see a podiatrist who told me that I had the flattest feet in seven counties. When I was in high school, friends and I would occasionally go there to see a new release movie. This is where, for example, I saw the "Exorcist."

The bridge across the Wabash

The toll booth on the Illinois side of the river

I heard recently that this old bridge is going to be torn down. Back in the 70's, I think the toll was 25 cents. There are probably all kinds of stories that could be told about this bridge and toll booth. One that I recall was when Ruth Ann Smith, my employer when I worked as a bus boy at Two Tonys Smorgasbord in Carmi, told us how, instead of paying a quarter (or whatever it was) she handed the toll booth operator a cheeseburger and drove on.

But I digress. When I was a kid, my family occasionally went to New Harmony, and I recall the "Roofless Church" that is pictured in the lead photo. I also vaguely recall a park adjacent to the church dedicated to the memory of the German Lutheran theologian, Paul Tillich. In those days, I had no idea who Paul Tillich was, nor did I know that his ashes are interred in the garden. (Why I don't know - yet.)

I was introduced to Paul Tillich in my freshman year in college at Illinois Wesleyan University. (It's interesting ... I have written before about memory. As I have been thinking about that year at Wesleyan, memories have come back of hallways, of classrooms, of professors - places and people that I haven't thought about in years and thus thought that I had lost my memory of that time of my life. It is so exhilarating to experience the thrill of memory!)

That year really opened my mind to a lot of new ideas and concepts as I took Humanities classes and a religion class called "Man and His Quest for Meaning." It was in the latter that I first heard the terms "Christian existentialist" and "Christian Humanism" and read some writings of Tillich, who was a German Lutheran theologian and one of the most profound religious thinkers of the 20th century.

I was so taken with Tillich's writings that I read more than was assigned in class and even purchased the first volume of Tillich's Systematic Theology to read over the summer. But the following fall, I transferred to the University of Illinois, joined a fraternity and largely abandoned what I had found so exhilarating the previous year. What residual interest I had was extinguished when I joined the Mormon Church at age 24.

It wasn't until I came out three years ago and started on my (rather rapid) journey out of the Mormon Church that I once again encountered these words of Tillich, which resonated deeply:

This is only the last couple of sentences of a passage that speaks of grace and acceptance, both divine and by oneself - a passage that I plan to revisit and perhaps blog about.

In my reading over the past couple of months, I have run into numerous references to Tillich, most recently a couple of days ago in my reading in Catholic Means Universal, by David Richo. In writing about faith, Richo quoted the following passage from Tillich's book, The Shaking of Foundations:

"Faith in divine providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence. Providence does not mean a divine planning by which everything is predetermined ... Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. Providence means that the demonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world [such as those unleashed during the Second World War] can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted."

Bust of Tillich in New Harmony, Indiana

Richo added his own thoughts about "providence." "Actually," he writes, "providence means that in the face of suffering, cruelty, death and injustice, we have it in us to go on loving ... It is not that external situations rectify themselves but that interior powers of love remain intact no matter what. Our capacity to love surveys the pain and abuse we have experienced."

This, I think, is a large part of where faith comes in. We, I, need to have the faith that, no matter what,  we have it in us to love, to go on loving, to grow in our capacity to love.

I'm grateful that I have discovered Tillich once again after all these years. This post turned out entirely different than what I had originally contemplated, and it is a grace that, through this post, I have continued to re-establish contact with and embrace who I was before I joined the Mormon Church.

From the Archives: Me, My Inner Catholic Boy and Coming Out

In May 2011, I published the following piece on my former blog. I have slightly edited it and have added some additional comments at the end. (The picture above is of my first communion class at St. Theresa's Church in Salem, Illinois, 5 December 1965. I am second row far left in front of Sister Mary Josine. Father (stern-face) Sulkowski is in back.)

************

About six weeks ago, I went to a Catholic mass for the first time in 25 years.  I didn’t know how I would feel or what I would think. I was amazed that morning how many memories from my childhood came flooding into my mind, how many parts of the mass came back to me, how I was able to almost instinctively give some of the prayer responses after all this time. I was also touched, that first Sunday, by the priest’s homily, which struck me as far more profound and “true” than virtually any [Mormon] sacrament meeting talk I had ever heard. I came away feeling like I wanted to go back.

That opportunity came the next Sunday, as a (gay Mormon) friend expressed a desire to attend mass. So I took him. I found my thoughts that Sunday turning toward my mother, who had been raised Catholic and who had died several years before I came out. She and I had had a troubled relationship during the last 15 years of her life because of my abusive childhood. But, as I attended mass and thought of her, I came to see her in a new light, and I felt like I was imbued with grace to forgive her for the abuse I had suffered as a child at her hand.  

My mother as a young woman with two unknown girls
in front of a Catholic church and convent in East St. Louis, where she grew up

That grace continued to bless me as new thoughts came into my mind about my mother.  It occurred to me, for example, that both she and I had tried to achieve perfection in our respective families, only to become our own worst enemies.  Both my mother and I had desperately tried to do the “right thing” – she trying to be the perfect Catholic mother and have perfect Catholic children; me trying to be the perfect straight Mormon father and have the perfect Mormon family. But in both our cases, irony of ironies, doing the “right thing” got in the way of that which was truly needful – the formation and nurturance of healthy, happy family relationships.

My older sister Karen's first communion day, with Mom and my brothers (I'm in front of Karen)

I bring this up about my mother because it made me think about the faith of my childhood and youth: Catholicism. Attending mass also seemed to be precipitating the endowment of grace I was experiencing with respect to my mother. I pondered over this and went back the following week, ostensibly to give my son the opportunity to fulfill school requirements and to see a different religious service.  

The real reason, however, is that I wanted to go back: something was resonating with me. I was having “spiritual” experiences as I attended mass. I felt like I was reconnecting to something that had been lost. I also felt like I was at the right place at the right time during this part of my journey.

Because of these feelings, I began to consider the possibility of going back to the Catholic Church. I thought about it. I looked up what I would need to do to go back. I even communicated with my brother – who is an active Catholic – about it.  

I went to mass again on Palm Sunday. I was beginning to feel other currents, however, that challenged the feelings I had been having about the Catholic Church. Specifically, I wondered whether I could ever feel at home in a church and faith that did not accept me for who I am - gay.  What I came to realize is that, though there are aspects of the Catholic faith that resonate with me, and perhaps will always resonate with me, I didn’t want to be part of a faith community that is not accepting of members of the LGBT community.  

I also came to realize, I think, that my gayness had in fact become part of my personal theology, my personal relationship with God, and I began to feel I could not be part of a faith community that conflicts with that personal theology and does not affirm that personal relationship.

This was brought home to me in a discussion around that time with my sister about religion, sexuality and faith.  I realized, during the course of that conversation, that even though I had intellectually accepted that God created me the way I am and that He loves me for who I am, I was, nevertheless, not fully “out” to God – or so I felt. I saw that there was still a part of me that believed that God could not or would not accept me for who I am. That part of me, that person, had been well entrenched within me for decades – one of the many consequences of living in the closet for all that time – and would not be easily silenced. 

I was still seeking permission to be who I am.

*********

During the past 2-1/2 years, I have given myself permission to be who I am. It's an on-going process, but I have journeyed many, many miles since I wrote the above piece. Since that time, I have come to see that I do not need permission from some members of the Catholic hierarchy to be gay. Nor do I need permission from any members of a faith community to be who I am. I realize now that the thoughts I expressed in May 2011 were those of someone who had not yet developed an "adult faith." 

A Catholic Buddhist psychologist that has written books that have had a profound impact upon me over the past 3+ years - David Richo - has expressed where I think I am now in his book, How To Be An Adult in Faith and Spirituality:

"[Adults who have a maturing faith] want to think for themselves and design beliefs based on their experience ... they trust an inner organic wisdom over injunctions that impose one set of values on everyone ... they want to feel devotion in accord with what moves their hearts."

Speaking of an organic spirituality, I had a profound realization the other day that is a reflection of where I spent almost 30 years of my adult life, i.e., in the Mormon Church. The realization? That the question is not whether a "church" is "true," but rather whether a church/religion/spiritual path is "true" for ME. 

And so I have embarked on a path that is true for ME, that is based on MY experience, not someone else's.