Pain and Transcendence

One of the topics I am very interested in investigating in The Splinter is the use of pain as a tool for religious transcendence and as a vehicle to achieving "ecstatic union with God" (Flynn).

The Christian use of self-flagellation seems to be seen as achieving a number of different goals :

1. An act of penance to punish oneself for sins committed and purify the soul.
2. As a blocker of sensual urges.
3. As a ritual sacrifice.
4. Vicarious pain as a vehicle towards sameness - the imitation of Christ.
5. To precipitate ecstatic visions and an experience of union with the divine.

Today, we see pain as being wholly negative. Self-inflicted pain is seen as not only negative, but as an incontrovertible sign of psychological disorder (Walsh). In his review of Glucklich's book, "Sacred Pain", Steven post remarks that "the ability to control pain medically has created a culture in which the experience of pain is judged to be unacceptable and, when completely unavoidable, unambiguously tragic" (Post).

Yet still there are some cultures and societies in which these rituals are practiced, notably in the Philippines (Barker), and in the Opus Dei, whose founder wrote " I don't believe in your interior self-denial if I see that you despise, that you do not practise, mortification of the senses" (Escriva).

Moira, the female protagonist in The Splinter, would seem through modern eyes to be a very psychologically troubled teen. There is a desire, on the part of the reader, to ascribe her acts of self-flagellation, as part of a pathology left from some dreadful trauma. The reader naturally expects that it will turn out that she has been abused in some way. In fact, I purposefully killed off her father, before the story begins, in order to remove the obvious assumption that she has been molested.

I don't want to offer readers an easy answer to Moira's self-inflicted violence. However, in this draft version, after getting some quite specific feedback, I realize that I have not given the reader enough alternative reasons; I have not investigated her immense sense of loneliness early enough in the story.

I'm a little trapped here, because at one point or another in the story, Moira gives many reasons for her mortifications, all the ones I've listed. I wanted to show her own lack of understanding about what drives her. I wanted the reader to take that same journey, but I have given no alternate clues, hanging at the corners of the text. And I need to do this. I'm not quite sure how.

The more I investigate the writing of this work, the more I realize that it is essentially a story about existential loneliness. I'm an atheist - I don't believe that what Moira sees or feels is God. But I do believe passionately in her anguish. And I do believe that she sees this union as the only way to assuage it. And pain as a way to effect this union.

So, how does self-inflicted pain do this? Reading a number of primary documents: letters and autobiographies as well as instructional and devotional texts by notable mortifiers gives some clues.

In his "Ascent of Mount Carmel", St. John of the Cross writes:

"For until the desires are lulled to sleep through the mortification of the sensual nature, and until at last the sensual nature itself is at rest from them, so that they make not war upon the spirit, the soul goes not forth to true liberty and to the fruition of union with its Beloved." (St. John of the Cross).

For him, self-flagellation is a way of dulling the calls of the flesh, quieting the distraction of them so that the soul can concentrate itself on the union. Ligouri agrees: "External mortification helps internal mortification and it is in a certain sense necessary in order to control one's senses" (Jones).

Catherine of Siena tended to see her pain part of a purification process. She speaks in God's voice when she writes: "When my servants remain united to me I prune them with great suffering so that they will bear more and better fruit" (Catherine of Sienna) and St. Francis Borgia felt similarly: "Thus did he apply himself to the mortification of his senses and the crucifying of his flesh. And it was hereby, he arrived at so high a pitch of sanctity and perfection" (Rodriguez).

In "The Interior Castle", Teresa of Avila infers an intimate association between the experience of pain and ecstatic vision: "just as the soul is about to become enkindled, the spark dies, and leaves the soul yearning once again to suffer that loving pain of which it is the cause" (St. Teresa of Avila).

Louis de Montfort believed that in order to have union with God, a level of spiritual 'wisdom' had to be attained and that the experience of pain was the gateway to this wisdom. "Wisdom is not satisfied with half-hearted mortification or mortification of a few days, but requires one that is total, continuous" (Montfort).

In his book on St. Rose of Lima, Frank Graziano attempts to attribute the totality of her self-harming to a sublimation of sexual urges (Graziano). Although I don't agree with him, I think he gets very close. He is very much swayed by the language that is used to describe her as being a "bride of Christ" and it is true that she was married to him in a "mystical" wedding ceremony. He associates this with many earlier European writings that contain obvious erotic language and imagery in their descriptions of sacrifices, mortifications, and the general devotions of many of the saints who pursued ecstatic experience. I think this is a fair reading.

Similarly, Hilary Fraser's reading of St. Teresa's divine visitation with an angel who pierces her heart is that of sexual sublimation:

"The element of sexual repression in her account is unmistakable...never has religious ecstacy been expressed in such erotic terms. St. Theresa is ravished by the beautiful seraph with his phallic fiery spear, and her intense pleasure/pain is the bittersweet pain of sexual climax" (Fraser)

There is no doubting that the passage she refers to is erotic. However, where is the repression? Angels are specifically described as having no genitals - so how might congress take place, other than metaphorically? It seems to me that in all these readings, there is a desire to see as repressed or sublimated what is quite clearly expressed. The problem, for the interpreters is that they cannot conceive of a sexual/conjugal relationship with anything other than another human being. But all these women could and did.

However, referring back to my previous post on desire, I believe this differentiation between eros and agape is erroneous. And therefore, this eroticism of pain and the physical yearning for divine presence is not a sublimation wherein the lover uses God as a proxy, but rather that the object of erotic desire is God, that pain is believed to allow for mortals to have intimacy with God, and that the ultimate consummation of that love takes place after death.

References:

Flynn, Maureen. "The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64.2 Summer, 1996 257-278. 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466102.

Walsh, Barent. "Review: The Scarred Soul." Psychiatric Services 51.6 June 2000 821 - 822. 22 Apr, 2008 http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/51/6/821.

Glucklich, Ariel. "Self and Sacrifice: A Phenomenological Psychology of Sacred Pain." Harvard Theological Review 92.4 October 1999 479-506. 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509869.

Escriva, Josemaria. "The Way: Mortification." Escrivaworks. unknown. Opus Dei. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-181.htm.

Post, Steven. "Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul." First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life March 2002, 22 Apr, 2008 http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=1982.

Barker, Nicholas. "The Revivial of Religious Flagellation in Lowland Christian Philipines ." 1997. University of Hawaii at Manoa. 22 Apr 2008 http://www2.hawaii.edu/~millado/flagellationfolder/flagellation.html.

St. John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mount Carmel." Catholic First. unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/johnofthecross/ascent/ascent03.cfm.

Rodriguez, Alonso. "Mortification: The Practice of Christian and religious perfection, Vol 2. ." Google Books. 22 Apr 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=WjbnjEusunkC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA69&vq=Francis+Borgia&output=
html&sig=2PWt0CoyV-J7950ObYUrDZTiOsc.

St. Catherine of Siena, "The Dialogue of Saint Catherine." Intratext Library. Unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0139/_P1X.HTM.

St Teresa of Avila, "The Interior Castle - Six Mansions." Catholic First. Unknown. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/stteresa/castle/interiorcastle4.cfm.

Jones, Frederick. "Selected Writings By Alfonso Maria de' Liguori." Google Books. 1999. Paulist Press. 22 Apr 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=aTg754j-t0C&printsec=frontcover&output=html&sig=
5-nDeW_DLnnBRBjpH4J3h0GS9hQ.

Montfort, Louis de. "The Third Means: Universal Mortification." The Love of Eternal Wisdom. 1989. Eternal Word . 22 Apr 2008 http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/LEW.HTM#Sixteen.

Graziano, Frank. "Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima." Questia Online Library. 2004. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.questia.com/read/104900403.

Fraser, Hilary. "St. Theresa, St. Dorothea and Miss Brooks in Middlemarch." Nineteenth Century Fiction 40.4. March, 1986 pp 400 - 411. 22 Apr 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3044729

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Investigating Desire in The Splinter

In my story, 'The Splinter', my main character states her reason for her practice of 'mortification of the flesh'. Initially, at a young age, she tells her priest:

"I'm atoning for my sins, Father. I'm paying for them with pain. Just like Jesus."

Later, when confronted on what the priest considers her aberrant behaviour, she tells him:

"Oh, it's not just my sins I'm atoning for, Father. I'm atoning for other people's sins too. Since they won't confess or do penance, it's my obligation, my privilege even, to do it for them."

As the story goes on, the reasons she gives for inflicting pain upon herself change, but the desire that drives it remains constant and abstract. Is this eros or agape?

As you might notice, if you jump to my other reflective journal, for LPW 700, I've been reading Plato's Symposium (Plato, 360 B.C.E) The Symposium is, in a way, an inquiry into erotic love. However, it would be foolish to interpret the term "erotic" as meaning only sexual. It's clear from the rhetorical speeches in the Symposium, that what the men around the couches are speaking of is something much closer to the idea of desire (Levy, 1979).

Diotima, Socrates' teacher, tells him that inherent in the concept of love (in the sense they are discussing it) is lack. Love wants something. Furthermore, she tells him that there is only one 'desire' - that it shows itself differently at different stages in its upwards journey towards perfect desire: the contemplation of beauty - perfect, formless and incapable of loving in return (Diotima's Speech, 360 B.C.E.).

How does this, even by the Greek definitions, differ from agape? In my opinion, this sort of desire not only mirrors but is an alternate definition of Christian concepts of a desire to be one with God. I realize that in order to back up this statement, I'd have to do a lot more research into early Christian doctrine, and I'm glad that this is a piece of fiction and not an academic paper, or I could spend years looking at this!

Another take on desire is that of Georges Bataille, author of "The Accursed Share", describes a theory of economics based on fulfilling need and excess. The use of excess, he tells us, is that of sacrifice. He goes on to explain that excess must be used as sacrifice in order that a) it not be simply abused in a quotidian way and that b) it be consumed so that the cycle of need can reoccur, and life continue with normality, pursuing its needs. The excess of human energy is what Bataille defines as erotic desire. And, it must be 'sacrificed' in order to maintain balance (Bataille, 1988).

Serge Carfantan, writing on Nietzche's interpretation of desire, reminds us that very often:

"The true object of desire is not necessarily what it appears at first glance to be pursuing. This is why we do not always know what we want. Were we able to view our desires in the full light of consciousness, we would begin to perceive that the process of desiring is never without the projection of the representation of a want: want of another person, want of recognition, want of affection, want of self" (Carfantan, 2003)

But Bataille disagrees: "The object of sensual desire is by nature another desire. The desire of the senses is the desire, if not to destroy oneself, at least to be consumed and to lose oneself without reservation" (Bataille, "The Object of Desire and the Totality of the Real")

This, for me, and for my story, is where Moira's desire - the excess of her needs - turn to the pursuit of divine ecstasy:

"If only she could keep her mind on how every stroke of the flail on her back was slicing a little more of that awful filth away from her soul... She yearned for the relief that came when her heart shone like pure polished gold, free from all stain, from any taint of evil. She would get up on her knees and arch her back, pushing out her chest to show God how clean she had made herself. In those moments her whole body vibrated with an invisible, divine energy. It streaked from her toes all the way to her head and back down again. Every muscle quivered with the joy of knowing that she was just that much closer to an Imitation of Christ" (The Splinter).

Eric Gans, in "The Erotic", says that:

"As Bernini's famous statue of Saint Theresa reminds us, religious ecstasy and erotic ecstasy can take much the same form. How then shall we distinguish between eroticism and religion, eros and agape? Erotic desire, as we have seen, is based on the reduction of the triangle of mediated desire to a relationship between desiring Self and desired Other in which the latter serves as both object and mediator. God as the originary mediator of all desire is surely the mediator of my desire for his Being" (Gans, 1998).

I don't find that Gans' distinction is ultimately convincing. It's based on the concept that the "desired Other" and "God" are different things. I would argue that, as most people can't conceive of God without personifying him/her/it, then God is as much a "desired Other" as anyone else.

Certainly, in Moira's case, inherent in her desire to be one with God, is the promise to be rid of her existential loneliness:

"Please. I can't do it by myself. I've tried, but I get tired and dizzy. You have to help me, Simon, please. I want to see the Virgin. I want to feel her grace pouring down on me, cleansing me of sin, and taking me into the divine light

She reached her arm over him, pulling herself up, until her face was next to his. "Please, Simon. I feel so alone. I need to be with Her" (The Splinter)

In The Splinter, all three main characters struggle with a sense of existential angst. All three have tried to purge it: Jacob, the ex-junkie, has sought the numbing stillness of heroine; Brother Simon, through sex, pain and then through the self-sacrifice of work; and Moira, through pain and ecstatic prayer. And society approves of none of them.

Moira has read and is devoted to the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, who describes her relationship with God and pain thus:

"In the beginning I was afraid--it happens to me to be almost always so when our Lord leads me by a new way, until His Majesty reassures me as I proceed--and so our Lord bade me not to fear, but to esteem this grace more than all the others He had given me; for the soul was purified by this pain--burnished, or refined as gold in the crucible, so that it might be the better enamelled with His gifts, and the dross burnt away in this life, which would have to be burnt away in purgatory" (The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus).

John Blevins discusses the schism in the church between eros and agape. In his opinion, the Christian traditional interpretation of Jesus taking on human form is an act of erotic, not agapic love. He is made 'flesh' in order to 'know' humanity better. Inherent in this, says Blevins, is the acceptance of erotic love as a vehicle to achieve divine transcendence (Blevins, 2007)

So why does my Moira look to the ancient past for her models of how to achieve this?

In "A Preface to Transgression", Foucault puts it very nicely: "The proof is its whole tradition of mysticism and spirituality which was incapable of dividing the continuous forms of desire, of rapture, of penetration, of ecstasy, of that outpouring which leaves us spent: all of these experiences seemed to lead, without interruption or limit, right to the heart of a divine love" (Foucault, 1977)

Or, if you are feeling a little lazier, you can listen to Foucault on this issue at YouTube.

Reference:
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books, 1988.

Bataille, Georges. "The Object of Desire and the Totality of the Real." Generation Online. Unknown. 19 April 2008 http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpbataille2.htm.

Blevins, John. "Uncovering the Eros of God." Theology and Sexuality 13. 3. (2007) 289-299. 19 April, 2008 http://tse.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/289.

Cartanfan, Serge. "Lesson 4. The obscure Object of Desire." Philosophy and Spirituality Website. Unknown. 19 April 2008 http://pagesperso-orange.fr/philospir/Lesson4.htm.

Gans, Eric. "The Erotic." Chronicles of Love and Resentment. 1998. UCLA. 19 April 2008 http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw128.htm.

Foucault, Michel. "A Preface to Transgression." Language, Counter-memory, Practice. 1977. Google Books. 19 April 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=OMRWM0-gSnMC&pg=PA29&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=
0_0&sig=jPz40kU0lI1eVNtarg-kbiLaXdY.

Levy, Donald. "The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium." Journal of the History of Ideas 40.2. (Jun. 1979) 285-291. 19 April, 2008 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709153.

Plato, "The Symposium." Internet Classics Archive. 360 B.C.E.. MIT. 19 April, 2008 http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html.

Teresa of Avila, "The Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus." Gutenberg Project Website. 1904. 9 May 2008 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8trsa10h.htm.

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Inspiration for The Splinter

I decided to write The Splinter for a whole bunch of reasons. The trigger was that the writing list, ERWA, where I was acting as theme story editor, has a regular theme story competition and I was having to write the guidelines for the monthly themes. One of them was on religion and myth. In writing the parameters for the story call, I thought about what kind of stories intrigued me, so I began to do some research on the topic. In my wanderings, I ran across Butler's Lives of the Saints, and then St. Teresa of Avila.

After reading her autobiography: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, it occurred to me to take a step back from the revulsion I felt about this woman who, by all accounts, tortured herself into an ecstatic state throughout most of her life. It was easy to write her off as a delusional woman suffering from some mental illness. It would have been easy to blame it on the sexist, repressive sub-culture of the Church, within a sexist, repressive culture of 16th Century Spain.

I'd studied 16th Century Spain during my Spanish A' Levels and I'd read "Lazarillo de Tormes" in the original Spanish. I knew quite a lot about what society was like during the period. Catholic Spain still had the memory of Moorish occupation fresh in their minds. The city of Granada had only been reconquered in 1492. The Spanish Inquisition, which had started only 20 years earlier, and lasted until almost the 18th Century, was in full swing. It was a time of religious intolerance, and hyper-Catholicism. Nonetheless, most Spanish women weren't flagellating themselves to bloody pulps. What was so attractive about it to St. Teresa?

What, I wondered, did she get out of all that pain? What was she searching for? What was the payoff? No one, no matter how mentally ill, keeps on hurting themselves over years unless they are achieving something by doing it. I started investigating other saints who had gained notoriety for their excessive acts of mortification.

The idea grew in my mind: what if there were a modern-day St. Teresa? How would her family, her friends, the Church treat her? How could modern words be put to that great yearning for unity with God sought after by the self-mortifying Saints?

The idea for the story of The Splinter grew out of this.

References:

Butler, Alban. "Lives of the Saints." Sacred Texts. 1894. 15 Apr 2008
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/index.htm

St. Catherine of Siena, "The Dialogue of Saint Catherine." Intratext Library. Unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0139/_P1X.HTM.

St Teresa of Avila, "The Interior Castle - Six Mansions." Catholic First. Unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/stteresa/castle/interiorcastle4.cfm.

St. John of the Cross, "Ascent of Mount Carmel." Catholic First. unknown. 15 Apr 2008 http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/johnofthecross/ascent/ascent03.cfm.

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Change of Heart

As you might have gathered from my previous post, I've changed my mind on what to use for my final portfolio piece for my masters.

To be honest, I'm rather ashamed of this. Carolyn, my tutor, very generously offered to read the first chapter of 'The Waiting Room', and I sent it to her. Her feedback was wholly positive and encouraging.

So, why did I change my mind? The outline of the story was already there, the plot, the story arc, the characters were all established. The problem was, it's 80,000 words. Not only that, but it's 80,000 words I wrote more than a year ago.

As I started to work on the manuscript, I could not help but be appalled at my own writing. Making this into something I might be happy to submit to a publisher was going to mean a complete re-write. Since I work full-time teaching and I'm doing this masters, it became obvious to me that it was just unfeasible to produce a finished version in two semesters.

I emailed Carolyn and told her this, feeling pretty sheepish. I felt like I was letting her down. I could imagine her rolling her eyes and thinking: "Flakey!"

Yes, sometimes I really do feel like a flake. Not because I don't believe I'm a competent writer, but because I have such a horror of facing work I've done in the past that I now consider sub-standard. I really do wonder how other writers do it. Dredging up drafts from the past and not wanting to slit their throats in shame rather than try to salvage whatever kernels of good writing have survived once the crap is carved away.

I spend quite a bit of time on the net hunting down advice on this. Perhaps I'm using the wrong search words, but I found nothing. Do other writers not have this problem?

I decided to put it as a question on my ERWA writer's email list.

"Have any of you ever had to take a look at older pieces of writing and polish them and thought...oh, FUCK, this is terrible. I can't look at it?"

One of the responses I received made me really think about what I was doing to myself:

"Sure. But then I forgive myself for getting better at my craft over time. Fix the story if you can. If it's too much to deal with, chuck it aside and start fresh. There's no reason to make the process of writing anymore painful than it already is."
Bradean, Kathleen. "HELP! Do you ever read your old stuff and want to throw it away?." E-mail to Madeleine Morris. April 10, 2008

So, I've decided to "forgive myself for getting better at my craft".

Synopsis of "The Splinter"

The Splinter is a morally ambiguous story of Moira Tierney, a young Catholic woman who has aspirations of entering holy orders. She has a history of practicing 'mortification of the flesh' in an attempt to achieve what she believes to be a state of religious ecstasy.

Her mother and parish priest decide to intervene and she is sent into the care of a Catholic monk, Brother Simon, who runs a half-way house for recovering drug addicts, and who has a history of this practice himself and has been "reformed".

There are struggles between them, both on emotional and ideological levels, which results in each transgressing the other's idea of moral law.

The story is told as a flashback. Now, in the present day, Moira not only carries a physical reminder, but the psychological burden of the consequences of her past actions and beliefs. It is left up to the reader to decide if she has achieved redemption.

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