Keeping Faith
A White Crane conversation with Fenton Johnson
Fenton Johnson is the author of four books, the most recent of which, Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey was the winner of the 2004 Lammie Award for Spirituality Writing. White Crane Editor, Bo Young spoke with Johnson.
Bo Young: … Keeping Faith's subtitle is "...a skeptic's journey"...what role do you think skepticism has in spirituality?
Fenton Johnson: Oh, that's an easy one. <g> I think I can answer it in a sentence. Or two.
Another term for skepticism—one that I first heard among the Buddhists — is "great doubt." When I began my research for writing Keeping Faith,
I thought that great doubt was a barrier to great faith. Across the
time of writing the book—which is to say, across the time of spending
large portions of several years living and practicing a contemplative
life—I've come to realize that for me, probably for many thoughtful
people, great doubt is a prerequisite for great faith. When I think of
Americans of great faith, I don't think of various fundamentalist
clergy, preaching from their smug certainties. I think instead of people
like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Audre Lorde and
Harvey Milk and Cesar Chavez and Gene Robinson. (Note that some of these
people were regular churchgoers and some never darken the door of a
church.) These people were beset with doubts all the time, as any glance
at their writings or speeches will show. Faith was for them a
discipline, an exercise in engaging doubt and turning its considerable
energy into a positive force in their lives and the lives of others.
A good morning to
ask that question—as gray and chilly as San Francisco can be in the
summers, and I'm all but swamped in a tidal wave of doubt regarding the
novel I'm struggling with writing.
BY: What do you mean by "engaging doubt"? And how can doubt be a positive force?
FJ: I've
come to see doubt—as I've come to see anger—as a force that can
undercut and overwhelm or support and nourish. Think of water, or fire.
Unchanneled, or undirected, either can be (and often is) a force for
destruction. The key lies in their channeling—in devising forms that
enable their energies to be turned to constructive ends.
Although
"devising" isn't the right word, because it suggests that each of us
must reinvent the wheel, and I don't believe that's the case. I see
myself as a reformer, at the same time that I value tradition. That's
why I attend a church (albeit a left-wing church) and sit zazen
(albeit with nontraditional sitting groups). I see these traditions as
providing models on which I can draw in channeling these potentially
destructive—or potentially constructive — energies. If I were a Native
American, I'd be engaged in powwows and sweat `lodges. I admire
non-Native Americans who seek those routes — so long as they do so from a
stance of respect and humility — but I think that in going so far from
their birth traditions they're choosing harder rows to hoe. As a writer
and a Gay man I have enough hard rows to hoe, so in embracing this
particular challenge I've opted for the standing forms. All the forms
have something to teach us, starting with the very value of the forms
themselves—which is as a means to channel and direct the forces of our
lives. We're all carrying a lot of anger these days, because we have
good reason to, though perhaps Gay men have more than our share. And so
the study and practice of the forms becomes especially critical.
BY: You may be one of the only seekers I’ve encountered who recommends “anger” and “doubt” as good catalysts for spirituality.
FJ:
Well, gee. I never met the woman, but I can imagine that Mother Teresa
was one of the angriest people on the planet—angry at the suffering she
witnessed, of course, but more to the point angry at its causes. How
could it be otherwise, when one only has to walk a few blocks to see
people who have so much more than they need and yet are unwilling to act
to alleviate that suffering? Imagine the suffering the Dalai Lama
witnessed in his youth, even as one sees in his face the peace he has
attained. That comes about—surely—not because these spiritual figures
were born with greater access to internal peace than you or I but
because they have earned it—partly through their own willingness to
embrace suffering as a means to an end. And what is spirituality,
finally, but a path through which one seeks to find redemption in
suffering, the world's and one's own?
There's a passage
from the letters of the Russian writer Chekhov that moves me greatly.
In describing himself late in his short life (he died at 44 of
tuberculosis), he wrote, "Write a story, do, about a young man, the son
of a serf,...brought up to respect rank, to kiss the hands of priests,
to truckle to the ideas of others...write how this young man squeezes
the slave out of himself, drop by drop, and how, on awaking one fine
morning, he feels that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer
that of a slave but of a real human being." What is the spiritual path
but the squeezing out of oneself, "drop by drop," the blood of the
slave—in this case, anger and doubt? But, since the universe wastes
nothing, the challenge then becomes: How does one use that old, tired,
angry, knee-jerk doubting blood? And that is the challenge of the
seeker.
BY:
One of the statements I loved in the book was "If I am to be brought to
faith, it will be through the body." Can you speak a little about this?
And how would you characterize your spiritual practice these days? The
Gethsemani monks sure seemed to make a pitch for you! How hard was it to
walk away?
FJ: The easier question first:
I like to think that some of the Trappists at Gethsemani [nb: the rural Kentucky abbey where Thomas Merton wrote, and near which Johnson grew up]
recognized in me the qualities that define a monk. I'd be honored. I
know many people whom I'd characterize as "monks" who haven't taken
formal vows, and I'd like to think that I'm among them, even as I
recognize and honor the discipline required to undertake to pursue
monasticism as a life commitment. I know from various sources that some
of the Gethsemani monks opposed the abbot's decision to allow me to
write about the monastery from the inside, so to speak. I'm not
surprised, and I understand their reluctance—opening one's house to a
writer is always a risky undertaking. At the same time, many other monks
recognized my sincerity of intention—sorely tested by the revelations
of sexual abuse, but still intact. I like to think that Keeping Faith
will ultimately benefit, not harm the institution of monasticism, both
inside and outside the traditional monastic enclosure.
As for coming to faith through the body: Sitting meditation (i.e., zazen)
taught me a great deal about discipline for the body. Perhaps someone
who'd been a serious athlete would have learned the same lessons in a
different manner — when I watch a diligent athlete such as a gymnast or
basketball player that thought occurs to me. But — largely because of
being Gay, and so as a child being so deliberately walled off from my
body — I had to come to that lesson relatively late in life. In the
rituals of the Roman Catholic Church I learned at least that the body
has a role in the expression of faith, but those rituals were and are
characterized largely by their sloppiness and indifference of execution —
the Church preferring these days to devote its energies to politics
rather than to the tending of its own liturgical garden. The Buddhists
taught me first and foremost to pay attention — is the head up? Is the
back straight? Are the hands correctly positioned? What that tradition
understands—what I had to learn — is that paying attention is the first
step to faith. And paying attention begins and ends in the senses. From
that place — sitting zazen — it's a short and logical step to
paying attention in other aspects of one's life. From there one begins
to see how little of life is under one's control, how the illusions of
the ego (money, sex, power) are barriers against the world's suffering
and its joy, how faith is a matter of letting go of those illusions so
as to be able to experience fully both the suffering and the joy.
BY: I’m
glad you take the time to redefine “suffering” as “dissatisfaction” in
Keeping Faith. I personally despise the whole cult of victimhood and the
almost fetishization of victim in both Western religions as well as
Eastern philosophies. One can get just so lost in righteousness. So I
was very heartened to read your clearer Buddhist interpretation of
“suffering” as “dissatisfaction” which also sort of echoes your ideas
about “anger.” But I’d like to talk to you about “gratitude.” Especially
around those things in life that are difficult or that actually leave
us with that feeling of “dissatisfaction” or in those very human
sensations of pain or loss. What role does gratitude have in your own
spiritual practice? Any thoughts?
FJ:
First off, another note on "suffering" vs. "dissatisfaction."
"Dissatisfaction" is the more accurate translation, because this is the
first principle of Buddhism, and thus the foundation on which the whole
philosophy is built; if it weren't universally applicable, it would be a
pretty weak basis. As a reasonably prosperous, reasonably healthy
American I can't really be said to be "suffering," at least not in the
context of much of the world's population; but we all suffer from
dissatisfaction, always and everywhere.
And what is the
antidote to dissatisfaction? Gratitude. (Move to the head of the class.)
Life is a gift, uniquely yours. No comparisons are permitted to others'
situations, whether "better" or "worse" — who can know the heart of
another? One's own heart is a lifelong mystery, which is to say a
lifelong exploration, a trail that constantly opens to new, strange,
unfamiliar territories, now the slough of despond, now the high pinnacle
of joy, and often the long, long plain of slogging on in between—but as
anyone who has seen the prairie in spring knows, the plain has its
rewards, too. The main purpose of God, or the gods and goddesses, is, I
think, simply to have a concept at which to direct one's gratitude.
And gratitude can
be hard, very hard. To give only one example: As I grow older I miss my
partner more, not less, as I see how much poorer my life is without
him. [ed. Larry Rose, who died of HIV in 1990 and was the subject of the memoir Geography of the Heart.]
And yet: How much richer I am to have known him at all; how excellent
that we were able to help each other along our paths. My mantra for
life: The harder path is almost always the more rewarding.
BY: A slight
change of direction…you speak about being a Gay man and this being a
“harder row to hoe.” Do you think Gay people, to use a modern term, have
any particular contribution to make to spirituality?
FJ: Did I write that? As my mother said, don't ever write anything down that you don't want somebody to read.
Being born Gay,
as Freud noted in his famous letter to the mother of a Gay man, is
certainly no advantage in any conventional sense. But being born an
English-speaking citizen of the Empire is an advantage that by any
historical standard outweighs all other considerations.
What I want to
say is that suffering can produce virtue; it's an old observation but
true. And Gays and Lesbians are given box seats in the theater of
suffering, but in that we're hardly alone. The challenge is to learn to
use suffering as a catalyst. I do think that desire lies at the very
heart of the mystery of life — some medieval mystics would go so far as
to equate God with desire — and Gays and Lesbians are given very
particular access to that aspect of the human experience. (This is at
the heart of why we have such a strong presence in the arts, since the
arts in all their forms are so often a means to the end of processing
suffering, of turning lead into gold.)
To be given
access to it is not the same as taking advantage of it, however. More
and more these days we hear the voices of Gay people who just want to be
like everyone else. Egads, what a fate! The Jewish mother in me wrings
her hands and says, "For this I raised a Gay son?" I believe absolutely
in the importance of community, and I believe that the cult of
individual genius may be our downfall. But our challenge — perhaps the
very key to our survival — is the creation of communities in which
everyone is not like everyone else—communities that celebrate
and encourage diversity and difference, and where we expend our energies
and resources in community celebrations of that diversity rather than
in every house having three cars and a yacht.
To the extent that we aspire to be like everyone else we're selling our birthright for a mess of pottage.
Johnson writes regularly for White Crane. The ninth of nine children of an Appalachian whiskey-making family, Fenton Johnson was named after and grew up with Trappist monks. He is the author of Geography of the Heart: A Memoir (Lambda Award and American Library Association Awards, Best LGBT Nonfiction, 1996) and Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey (Lambda
Award, Best GLBT Spirituality, 2004). He is on the creative writing
faculty of the University of Arizona and was a recipient of a 2007
Guggenheim Fellowship.
