The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [18]
The Path of Exploration
A few years ago, I worked with an Off-Broadway acting company that was producing a new play about the relationship between Jesus and Judas called The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. After some meetings with the actor who would play Judas, as well as the playwright and the director, I was invited to help the cast better understand the subject material. In time they asked me to serve as “theological consultant” for the play. This isn’t as strange as it may seem: the Jesuits have historically been active in theater, having used it extensively in their schools from the earliest days. (More about “Jesuit theater” later on.)
Over the course of six months, I found myself talking with the actors not simply about Jesus and Judas but also about their spiritual lives, answering questions prompted by our freewheeling discussions about the Gospels, about sin and forgiveness, and about faith.
Several of the actors had toggled between one religious tradition and another, seeking something that would “fit.” One actor, named Yetta, who played Mary Magdalene, told me that her mother was Catholic and her father was Jewish. They decided to let her choose her own religion when she was grown. “But,” she said, “I haven’t chosen yet.” (By the way, when I quote people in this book, or tell their stories, it is with their permission.)
My time with the actors was one of not only discovering the theater but also meeting people who were traveling along a path I hadn’t encountered before. They were on the path of exploration.
Given their profession, this was not surprising. A good actor often researches a new role by spending time with a person from a particular background. An actor prepping for a role in a police drama, for instance, will hang out with real-life police officers. So the idea of “exploration” comes naturally to them. Stepping into another person’s shoes for a time is not that different from entering into another religious tradition for a time.
Others—not just actors—more settled in their religious beliefs often find that their own spiritual practices are enhanced through interactions with other religious traditions. Several years ago I was astonished by the richness of my prayer one Sunday morning in a Quaker meeting house near my parents’ home outside Philadelphia. While I had ample experience praying contemplatively on my own, and worshipping together during Catholic Masses, the Quakers’ “gathered silence” (praying silently together) was a type of contemplation I’d never before imagined. Their tradition enriched my own.
I have wandered freely in mystical traditions that are not religious and have been profoundly influenced by them. It is to my Church, however, that I keep returning, for she is my spiritual home.
—Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931–1987)
Exploration comes naturally to Americans in particular and is a theme celebrated not only in U.S. history but in our great works of literature: Huckleberry Finn is an explorer. So are the heroes and heroines of the novels of Jack London and Willa Cather, to name but two favorite authors. Our homegrown religious writers—especially the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—were inner explorers. “Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road,” wrote Walt Whitman, “Healthy, free, the world before me, / The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”
Exploration comes naturally in American faith as well. Turned off by their childhood faith, or by the failings of organized religion, and lacking extensive religious training, many Americans searching for a religion that “fits” embark on a quest—itself a spiritual metaphor.
The benefit of walking along the path of exploration is plain. After a serious search, you may discover