Mother Teresa's Foot

I think I finally got it figured out. No, really. This whole thing with the RC church, and using Girard’s theory of course, it’s made me focus down on the problem of desire.


There can be no doubt that desire is imitative and violent. (Quick big frame example: Mr. Ahmadinejad wants a nuclear weapon. Why? Because everyone else has one. If you’ve never encountered Girard before check the study page on this site.)

Way back, in the very first springs of human development this violent desire gets impacted into human culture through myth and ritual forms of all sorts. Rules and hierarchy are very important too. What results is that humans don’t know which end is up. They think violence is part of the order of things. In fact it is divine. You can know the gods by their cosmic violence. And so the whole of society follows suit.

Something new had to come into the world in order to break wide open this rigged system. The name of the new thing is Jesus and the fore-giveness he shows. Because of Jesus it is always possible for individuals to live in a Holy Spirit of love, free of the kingdoms of death that rule this world. But, exactly, the whole world remains a dense system of violence. It takes centuries and centuries to break down its apparatus of falsehood, let alone the violence by which it lives.

I believe that is actually happening, but in the meantime it does not solve the problem of desire for a believer, and that’s what the focus is here.

Imitation of the other could not happen unless there was an even more primordial unity with the other. How would we want what the other wants unless we’re somehow already linked, unless somehow I am already the other person and the other person is me? So there is in fact a more original at-traction or drawing together of me and the other. The fact that it quickly becomes competitive does not negate its original condition. At the organic and sub-organic level it goes without saying that this huge force of attraction exists. I will call this primordial attraction “eros” to distinguish it from desire.

In the past Christians, once they have learned the message of forgiveness and love, have pointed their eros at heaven. That’s the place where it will be possible to release and experience fully the aboriginal unity of all things. In the RC church this has been the case but, at the same time, they also pointed the eros toward themselves, toward their concrete forms, and that is one of the key things that marked out this tradition and has led to its profound crisis.

I do think scripture intends us to recognize and actively seek earthly eros. It can only be done in a heart free of violence and it will express itself in service, justice and peace, but it is real, physical and intended for creation. I think the “woman” of the Johannine writings, in all her multiple realizations, is a figure of this physical eros. At the point of the cross, standing under it, creation is freed from violence, and the disciple is brought into relation with her as his mother. The disciple accepts the woman into his/her closest life. Then at the end of the bible the whole earth becomes this woman, the New Jerusalem come down out of heaven as a bride of Christ. God and Christ are themselves in the most powerful erotic relation with the earth.

So now back to the crisis in the RC church. The RC tradition in some measure relied on this eros to make celibacy work. The priest loves the people and the people love the priest. But it was all mixed up with power and militancy against the world, and with societal changes in the 20th century it became more and more actively corrupt. That’s the way I see it. I think the crisis in the RC church is a crisis of eros and it simply cannot be resolved in the present set-up of the church in this present moment of history. The forms of eros in our contemporary world are far too diverse, multiple, subtle and generative to be ever contained in the strategy of celibacy devised in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

But that does not mean that true Christian eros for this earth has gone away. No, it is more vital and real than ever. Against the collapse of clericalism on the one hand and Left Behind violence on the other communities of emerging Christianity will practice a true physical eros, a closeness to the earth and to each other, without violence but also without separation. Only communities of such fullness of life will be able to embrace the rampant eros of the modern world and transform it into love, through and through. I look forward to a time when Christian leadership will express itself in real Christ-like humble proximity to the physical, to the world’s pain and, even more deeply, to the world’s joy, its longing for union with itself.

I once had a long one-on-one conversation with Mother Teresa. We talked about the church for over an hour. It was my big moment, my dancing-with-the-stars in the Catholic stratosphere. The content of the conversation doesn’t much matter—in fact I didn’t really get answers—but what was fascinating was being with this woman who had an immense passion for the physical world expressed in service to the poor. The most impressive thing was the power of her passion, which was humble but galactic in weight. Being next to her was how I would imagine the experience of being a small spaceship circling a giant star, being pulled into her orbit. At one point I noticed her foot extending beneath her sari. I could see the bones and the blue veins and I became fixed on it. She saw me looking and quickly pulled her foot back. But the image is sealed in my mind and I think it’s because it was so physical. The whole weight of this woman’s eros was expressed in it. I’m always longing for Mother Teresa’s foot.

Tony