Spiritual Story (Paul)

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
--T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

As is the case with many of you, a main point in my spiritual story is my conversion into the contemplative life. At this point I can most fully describe this as a conversion from a theology of certainty to a theology of mystery. I am still trying to work out a language to describe and understand both the continuities and changes in my life between “now” and “then.” I want to respect both.

I was born Massachusetts, my pregnant mother praying daily at the foot of her bed for a “warrior for God.” One of my earliest memories is of my parent’s telling me God had a special plan for me in heaven. I thought that they said “plant” so I went around daydreaming that it might be a cactus! Another important early memory is my first conversion: in the car with my mom and I asked curiously, “Am I going to heaven when I die?” I was four and my mother didn’t think that I was ready for “that talk.” But I started hysterically crying, “I need to know!” Shortly, I prayed that Jesus would clean my dirty heart and live inside me. Though some consider stories like this one as religious psychological child abuse, I am grateful and consider it an important point in my journey, the validation of the spiritual life of a child. When I was eight, my parents moved to North Carolina to get away from snow and liberals. I was home schooled, and my family joined an evangelical Pentecostal church with a strong program for children. In my time there, which lasted until I went to college, I had quite a few significant spiritual mentors and many important moments of spiritual growth, though all in a context of “certainty” that I no longer find as edifying. This phase of my life included a broad mix, most of which I am still grateful for, wonderful spiritual experiences in the wilderness, several “Youth Camp” cycles, lots of service and ministry inside and outside of church, and maybe a few metaphysical miracles. For the sake of this story in this space, I need to skip over this. As with all of your stories shared here, this one is a partial account.

I came to college at Southeastern University quietly, sincerely wanting wisdom and intimacy with God. As with some of you, the transformations in my understanding about life and God were largely influenced by Rickey Cotton through courses I took with him, conversations we had, and books he taught me (T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as a particularly important one). But I don’t want to ignore the other influences, other professors, several humbling falls, and my previous spiritual experience. I believe that God long prepared me for a contemplative way of knowing and living. For example, even before college I began to practice silent prayer on my own. My conversion took place over about a year and a half. There was a series of necessary changes. First, my politics took a concrete intellectual turn toward the socially marginal--as is the case with many social conservatives, my heart was already with them, . After this my theological-philosophical foundations for “certainty” were unpinned. I let go of the “absolutes” of literalism, objectivism, and emotionalism, which had not led me to the wholeness and revival I was told to expect as a teenager. With these intellectual barriers to truth removed, I was open to look for God in more relational ways, through art, silence, community, and tradition. In other words, my philosophical conversion opened a space for me to be able appreciate millennia-old practices of knowing the unknowable. I have walking on this path for the past year and a half.

In the past few months I believe I have entered my next phase of transformation, which involves the practical details of life, particularly, the practical details of housework. My political, philosophical, theological transformations I believe are largely complete. Now, partially through readings books like The Rule of Benedict and The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work,” I am embracing that part of the spiritual work in front of me which God would have me do right now, cleaning the house, vacuuming, washing dishes. In cleaning the house, and in the perspective it gives me on the actual “importance” of my intellectual work, I am growing in balance, in humility, in love.

--Paul Corrigan