Joel Borreo

1. Gay Spirituality, John of the Cross and Dark Night Joel Borreo 1

2. Introduction Thank you for this privilege. It’s a blessing in disguise. I’m discovering the gifts of your persons and of your spirituality. Awareness of several things: The clutches of the churches’ and the society’s homophobia were encompassing. The official pronouncements of my church was constricting. I felt compassion. I allowed it to show through the sacrament of reconciliation and spiritual direction. 2

3. OBJECTIVES Acknowledge, affirm and strengthen the spirituality of gay persons as resource. Introduce St. John of the Cross, his teaching on “dark night” and his writings. Identify some Sanjuanist for further consideration. 3

4. PARTS GAY SPIRITUALITY ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, “DARK NIGHT” AND HIS WRITINGS. SOME SANJUANIST TEACHINGS FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION. 4

5. PART 1: GAY SPIRITUALITY 2 concrete experiences The author had been a professor of Spirituality at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada for many years 5

6. Jess and Max Jess, a man of Asian background raised within the Roman Catholic tradition, became terribly stressed by two great fears. [This was after his partner tested positive for HIV/AIDS.] First, the thought of losing his partner, Max, pained him tremendously. “I felt frightened. I felt afraid that he would die and that I would lose him, that the relationship would end, that I would be alone in this world.” The fact that both were closeted and not really part of the gay community in their city deepened that fear. The isolation Jess felt overwhelmed him. Second, during the time of the relationship as well as during Max’s illness, Jess lived a traditional, if not conservative religious life. Max’s atheism created a fear in Jess that if Max died, “he won’t be saved.” 6

7. Jess and Mac cont’d... However, Jess gradually changed his way of thinking; he described his attitude at the time of the interview in the following way: “My notions of death, heaven, hell, spirituality have all completely changed now. But at that stage, that is where I was at.” The religious formation which Jess had received was at the root of both his fears. Homophobia prevented both him and Max from being open about their deep love for each other. Society’s deep-rooted fear and even hatred of gay men made Max and Jess remain in hiding. Homophobia made them lead unauthentic lives, which in turn made it impossible for them do develop a deeper spirituality. 7

8. Stan and Mario [Mario was terminally ill. When asked what enabled him to go on caring for Mario, Stan found that it was] “faith in God… I don’t know why this happens… I guess it’s the power of love and the power of God speaking to us through incredible things.” Love empowered him to be there every step of the way, and faith gave him the conviction that somehow God remained present and part of Stan’s and Mario’s pain—not as an unaffected bystander, but feeling it with them. For Stan, his love and his God could not be separated; both had been a part of his life even before meeting Mario. And both remained with him through the ordeal of Mario’s illness and death—not removing the pain, but enabling Stan to live it. 8

9. 9

10. Responses: - painful experiences: being hated; being rejected; being judged; self-rejection; isolation; alienation; discrimination; unjust treatment; fear; pain; conflict with traditional religious beliefs; stigma; shame; being ridiculed; hiding. - positive and life-giving experiences: shifts in the way they understand things; giving and receiving love; presence of God; liberation; self-empowerment; authenticity; commitment. - values engaged: authenticity; integrity; love; faith; fidelity; hope; commitment; sexuality; relationship with others; relationship with God; relationship with society; acceptance; self acceptance; family; church; security 10

11. 11

12. What is spirituality? Richard P. Hardy: “Spirituality in its best sense affirms life, the body, and the world as well as the transcendent dimension in human life. It is not something that removes us from life but enfleshes us ever more in relationship to each other, the world, and the Transcendent, whether seen as primary value or God. Spirituality here includes an essential part of human life: one’s sexuality, which pervades the whole of any person’s being. Making love becomes one of the highest forms of the integrating process of spirituality. An authentic spirituality not only roots us in life; it enhances our bodiliness as the only possible way to develop spirituality and to live it.”Loving Men, pp. 19-20 12

13. how spirituality can be a resource: • affirms life, the body, and the world as well as the transcendent dimension in human life. • does not remove us from life but enfleshes us ever more in relationship to each other, the world, and the Transcendent, whether seen as primary value or God • embraces and integrates all the essential part of human life, including our sexuality. Making love becomes one of the highest forms of the integrating process of spirituality. • does not only root us in life, but also enhances our bodiliness as the only possible way to develop spirituality and to live it. 13

14. 14

15. James L. Empereur, S.J., Roman Catholic Theologian • Gay Spirituality • Gift to Christian spirituality and spiritual tradition. 15

16. Empereur: “Homosexuality is one of God’s most significant gifts to humanity. To be gay or lesbian is to have received a special blessing from God. All humans receive their own special graces from their creator, but God has chosen some to be gay and lesbian as a way of revealing something about God-self that heretosexuals do not. On the acceptance on this premise all authentic and successful spiritual direction with gays and lesbians stands or falls.” (Spiritual Direction and the Gay Person, p. 1) 16

17. Empereur: How gays and lesbians can contribute to spirituality “Many gays and lesbians are poor in relation to their sexuality. Often because they cannot have their identity and feelings validated, they resort to a kind of dualism by denying their sexual energies. They hide these feelings deep within themselves. Gay and Lesbian Christians often do this because of the stance of the churches toward them. This is a form of injustice which still exists. But it is precisely here where gay spirituality can make its contribution to spiritual tradition. I mean that it is by addressing this injustice that gays and lesbians can minister to the rest of us through their liminal status. I wrote previously: ‘Today, the first step in the area of justice and gay and lesbian people is the justice they owe themselves in self-affirmation and in taking on responsibility for the choice they have made regarding a given relationship…’” 17

18. how gay spirituality as a gift is a very challenging ministry: • a ministry of vulnerability in the pursuit of a more just Church and society and a more justice oriented spirituality. • a spirituality of justice with priorities which may differ from other justice-seeking groups… a justice which flows from compassion rather than based on rights or moral imperatives… a holistic justice where the usual dualism has been tempered. 18

19. how gay spirituality as a gift is a very challenging ministry:cont’d • witnessing of a healthy gay man to human integration through love of oneself and claim of one’s goodness as given by God—where male is not dominating female, where the focus is not on genitality and reproduction, where the importance of diffused touch throughout the body is affirmed. • manifestation of the fundamental affinity between the erotic (in Lorde’s sense) and justice because in them the erotic can find a spiritual home in their relationships. • ministry to heterosexual relationships by pointing to the qualities that must be found in married life if sexual pleasure is to be experienced as a form of spiritual bonding and of liberating communication 19

20. PART 2: JOHN OF THE CROSS, “DARK NIGHT” AND HIS WRITINGS painful experiences: being hated; being rejected; being judged; self-rejection; isolation; alienation; discrimination; unjust treatment; fear; pain; conflict with traditional religious beliefs; stigma; shame; being ridiculed; hiding. Question: Are these painful experiences the reality that John of the Cross refers to as “dark night?” My simple answer : “yes” and “no.” I’ll elaborate on these later. 20

21. JOHN OF THE CROSS • 16th century Spanish mystic • considered a co-reformer of Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) of the Order of Carmel. • no stranger to the realities of pain and hardship. • father belonged to a wealthy textile-merchant family. • being merchant indicates his father was probably of Jewish background • mother was probably a morisco, or Moslem convert. Certainly a weaver. 21

22. JOHN OF THE CROSS • Jews and Moslemswerepersecuted and marginalized. • When John’s father married his mother, the family disowned him for not following the family’s expectation to marry someone in the higher level of the social ladder. The family also stripped him of the family’s wealth. John was therefore born to parents who were rich in love but poor in material possessions 22

23. JOHN OF THE CROSS • at a very young age, lost his father and another brother to sickness and hunger. • worked his way to being a productive and responsible member of the society through begging and hard work. • got so tired of begging that as a prior, years later, would refuse to visit wealthy benefactors • As a teen-ager, worked in a hospital for people with sexually transmitted disease. This experience is probably the source of his imageries like “sweet cautery,” “delightful wound, “gentle hand,” “delicate touch,” etc. • while working as confessor in a large community of nuns, was unjustly accused of disobedience and rebellion, and subsequently arrested and imprisoned in the basement of the Carmelite Friary in Toledo. 23

24. JOHN OF THE CROSS • In prison, John kept himself occupied. He started composing poems, including the first 29 stanzas of his poem Spiritual Canticle. • On account of his few poems, John found his way to the top of the list of Spanish lyric poets. He is hailed as “the most poetic of all the saints.../and the most saintly of all the poets” and declared by the Spanish Ministry of National Education as “national patron of poets.” • His own experiences of pain and hardship made him sympathetic and compassionate to people who suffer. His writings were shaped and influenced by such experiences. • He can be a great resource for those who have similar experiences 24

25. Spiritual Canticle 26. In the inner wine cellar I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad Through all this valley I no longer knew anything, And lost the herd which I was following. 27. There He gave be His breast; There He taught me a sweet and living knowledge; And I gave myself to Him, Keeping nothing back; There I promised to be His bride. 25

26. “DARK NIGHT” So, my answer as to whether the painful experiences we named above [such as: being hated; being rejected; being judged; self-rejection; isolation; alienation; discrimination; unjust treatment; fear; pain; conflict with traditional religious beliefs; stigma; shame; being ridiculed; hiding] are the reality which John refers to as “dark night” is “yes” and “no”. - “yes” in the sense that John’s “dark night” definitely involves pains and difficulties, as his prescription in 1 Ascent 13,6 shows. 26

27. “DARK NIGHT” Prescription: prefer the difficult: Endeavor to be inclined always. not to the easiest, but to the most difficult; not to the most delightful, but to the harshest; not to the most gratifying, but to the less pleasant; not to what means rest for you, but to hard work; not to the consoling, but to the unconsoling; not to the most, but to the least; not to the highest and most precious, but to the lowest and most despised; not to wanting something, but to wanting nothing; do not go about looking for the best of temporal things, but for the worst, and desire to enter into complete nudity, emptiness, and poverty in everything in the world. (1A 13,6)

28. A CLOSER LOOK AT John’s prescription: • It shows us that pain and difficulties are parts of John’s “dark night.” • It could turn people off. • It could give the impression that John is a masochist. • Actually, in prescribing this, John is no different from other wise men, like Buddha, who accept that life is difficult as a great truth. Like them, John knows that it is when we accept and embrace the difficulties of life that it ironically ceases to be difficult. • Scott Peck resonates with John when he writes in The Road Less Travelled: “Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

29. A CLOSER LOOK AT John’s prescription: • John’s goal in prescribing this is to render a person free to love. • Love is the center of John’s teaching: When evening comes, you will be examined in love. Learn to love as God desires to be loved and abandon your own ways of acting. • On the one hand, love can be demanding; and on the other hand, our natural inclination to the easy and pleasurable can stand in the way of fulfilling love’s demand. • By getting used to the difficult, a person becomes more free and able to fulfill the difficult demands of love. • John can be a resource in disciplining our way of loving, and in finding meaning in the difficulties we encounter.

30. Questions • Do we see in the stories we cited that because of love, partners embrace, not the easiest but the difficult? • What difficult experiences have you had because of love?

31. “DARK NIGHT” • My answer is “no” in the sense that John’s “dark night” is not all about pain and difficulties. John’s “dark night” is a lot more than that. • In 1 Ascent we see the realities that John calls “night”: • the process which spiritual persons call purgations or purifications, which a person undergoes in order to reach the state of perfection, (1A1,1) which he prefers to refer to as “union”; • the denial and deprivation a person has to do; the road, which is faith, that a person has to travel to union with God; • the point of arrival, namely God (1A2,1). • We also realize that while the image of “night” is quite powerful, it is limited, and John resorts to the use of other imageries like “journey.” 31

32. Context of John’s “DARK NIGHT”: • relationship with God • relationship of faith, hope and love, which has demands, and therefore entails pain and suffering • requires the intentionality of the human person to be in relationship with God. • Outside of this relationship and if not demanded by this relationship, the pains and difficulties experienced by a person is not “dark night” in a strict sanjuanist sense. • As Thomas Dubay points out, “Sanjuanist nights are contemplative experiences, not ordinary sufferings attendant on human life such as illness, depression, failures, contradictions and blames.” (Fire Within (San Francisco: Ignatius Press: 1989), p. 160.) 32

33. Appropriation of John’s “DARK NIGHT”: • Examples: • love I recently saw in a husband for his sick and actively dying wife. • committed love between gay couples, and the sacrifices they are capable of doing, because of such love, as yourselves are testimonies of, and as we have seen above. • the threats and challenges of HIV/AIDS to the whole society and particularly to the gay community a dark night, as Richard P. Hardy writes: • HIV/AIDS is indeed a journey into a dark night which comes on those who enter it with a vengeance. It brings with it fear, doubt, and a bewildering array of other feelings which conspire to tear everyone in its path…(Loving Men, p. 78) 33

34. 2 kinds of “DARK NIGHT”: • Active dark night: It refers to what human persons can do to advance in the journey to union with God. John deals with this in his book Ascent of Mt. Carmel. • active dark night of the senses • active dark night of the spirit. • Passive dark night: It refers to what God does to help human persons to advance in the journey to union with Him. John deals with this in his book The Dark Night. • passive dark night of the sense • passive dark night of the spirit. 34

35. John’s Writings • Major writings. The long ones, as in books: • Ascent of Mt. Carmel.} probably two parts of one • The Dark Night. } and the same work • Spiritual Canticle: commentary to the poem with the same title • Living Flame of Love: commentary to the poem with the same title • Poems • Letters • Minor writings, the short ones: Sayings of Light and Love, Precautions, Counsels to a Religious. 35

36. How to read John’s writings • I would suggest that John’s works be read in the following order: • Start, biography. A good one is Search for Nothing, by Richard P. Hardy. Another one by the same author is John of the Cross, Man and Mystic. • Poems and “Sayings of Light and Love” • Letters • the Prologues to his major works • Spiritual Canticle • LivingFlame • Ascent of Mt. Carmel • Dark Night • other Minor Works. 36

37. Influence of John of the Cross Manuel de Falla, Spanish composer. Composed Nights in the Gardens of Spain. It is said that when he died, a copy of the collected writings of John of the Cross with notes in de Falla’s hand writing on the sides of the pages was found among his possessions. 37

38. Influence of John of the Cross Salvador Dali: inspired by John’s sketch of the crucified Christ to paint ‘Christ of St. John of the Cross.’ 38

39. Influence of John of the Cross • In Steven Payne’s article “The Influence of St. John of the Cross in the United States: A Preliminary Study,” (Carmelite Studies IV), he mentions the following writes or figures as having been influenced by John of the Cross: • Dorothy Day • Thomas Merton • T.S. Eliot • Thomas Green • anti-Vietnam war activist Daniel Berrigan 39

40. Influence of John of the Cross Gustavo Gutierrez, Latin American Theologian. A friend of mine who attended the Congress on St. John of the Cross in Avila on September 26, 1991 quotes Gutierrez as saying, “I feel at ease relying on Saint John whenever I have to give my people in Peru an answer to one of their most pressing questions: ‘How is it God loves us in spite of what we are going through, in spite of all we are suffering?’” In the same Congress, he delivered a conference on John of the Cross entitled "Relectura de San Juan de la Cruz desde un pueblo y cir cunstancias nuevos," an English translation of which appears in the Winter, 1992 issue of the journal Spiritual Life. Among his books where he cites and speaks of John of the Cross are: We drink from our own wells: The spiritual journey of a people and The Density of the Present: Selected Writings. 40

41. PART 3: Some Sanjuanist Teachings for Further Consideration • “The soul’s (human person’s) center is God.” (LF 1:12) • Kevin Culligan’s explanation • Bill Wilson’s discovery Questions • What is the place of God in your life? • How does your relationship with God affect your life? 41

42. PART 3: Some Sanjuanist Teachings for Further Consideration • “If anyone is seeking God, the Beloved is seeking that person much more.” • Echoes the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin • The human person is the apple of God’s eye Questions • Have you ever been or felt lost? How were you “found” again? • Have you felt you have lost God? How did you “find” Him/Her again? 42

43. PART 3: Some Sanjuanist Teachings for Further Consideration Romance On Creation “I am very grateful,” the Son answered; “I will show my brightness to the bride you give me, so that by it she may see how great my Father is, and how I have received my being from your being. I will hold her in my arms and she will burn with your love, and with eternal delight she will exalt in your goodness “My Son, I wish to give you a bride who will love you. Because of you she will deserve to share our company, and eat at out table, the same bread I eat, that she may know the good I have in such a Son; and rejoice with me in your grace in fullness.” 43

44. PART 3: Some Sanjuanist Teachings for Further Consideration Romance On Creation, explanation • setting: creation • God the Father is in dialogue with the Son • the Father initiates the dialogue • subject of the dialogue: the bride • bride = a mystical symbol representing each human person, all of us, gays and straights. • also a relational imagery: one cannot speak of bride without a bridegroom • Son = the bridegroom. • We are called to be in relation with God in love. • John wants to show that the Father looks at each one of us intensely • reminds us of Genesis, where we see the human person is the center of God’s creation. 44

45. PART 3: Some Sanjuanist Teachings for Further Consideration Romance On Creation Questions • How does it feel to be reminded that from conception you are meant to be a bride, to be in relationship with God? • Is there anything that alienates your from yourself, from others and from God. What is it? What is God’s invitation for you about it? 45

46. Conclusion • Gay spirituality: resource, a gift, a challenge • John of the Cross, the Dark Night, his writings. • Night is the sure guide. • Paradox: the dark night is the sure light. • O guiding night! • O night more lovely than the dawn! • O night that has united • the Lover with his beloved, • transforming the beloved in her Lover. 46