Brother Lawrence: Listener Questions

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome everyone to season 12 of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to brother Lawrence and practice of the presence. And I'm here with Jim to respond to the questions that have come in this season. Welcome Jim.

James Finley (0:38)

Thank you, yeah. This is the 12th season and there were 12 disciples, so we're on a roll.

Kirsten Oates (0:44)

We're on a roll. Wonderful. And I want to start by just saying thank you to everyone who made the effort to send in a question. The questions really help the season really make sure we're tracking with people and that we're being responsive to what's not clear and what insights people are getting. And Jim, this season, the questions yet again, were just wonderful.

James Finley (1:10)

Yeah, they were.

Kirsten Oates (1:12)

Unfortunately, we don't have time to answer them all, but we do read them all and we're very grateful for them. So thank you again. And with that, we're ready to get started, Jim?

James Finley (1:23)

Yes.

Kirsten Oates (1:23)

Wonderful. So the first question is from Andrea and she says, I've heard elsewhere that Brother Lawrence was too bothered by his sins to be able to maintain himself as a hermit. In your telling, he was too troubled by PTSD. I can see that sin and trauma are both forms of separation from connectedness. So I see the connection between sin and PTSD, but the tone feels so different in the two renderings. Can you speak to this?

James Finley (1:54)

Let's say that in a broad sense, PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a psychological symptom that separates us from the ability to rest quietly in the goodness of our own life. It exiles us because we're still caught up in the trauma, even because it's still going on.

We're just becoming internalized and it gets triggered in all kinds of ways. And so the whole healing process is how to be healed from its hold on us so we can step back in to the truth of ourself and the goodness of ourself as a healing process. So there's that. Sin, insofar as sin means deliberate acts of doing things that are harmful or causes suffering to ourself or others. And we do them on a certain hardness of heart. We do them anyway. It separates us from the truth of who we are as God's beloved. Through an act of repentance and through an act of conversion and through an act of discipleship, we're healed of that. And that's the good news. I mean, that's the thing. There's also another sense of sin, which is relevant. That is, in a broad sense, the fallen state is that we're separated from the ability to experientially abide in God's self-donating presence in our life, day by day. In that exiled state, we act out the things that we do, and we get caught up in the fears. And so both sin and trauma. And the issue is, where do those two touch each other? I used to give a series of retreats every year to people trained to be spiritual directors, and see where does clinical depression and the dark night of the soul touch each other. It's a complex thing. As a clinical psychologist who worked with trauma, with people who wanted spirituality to be a resource in their trauma, I've thought a lot about the interface of that. I think that's what you're touching on. It's a significant thing, really.

Kirsten Oates (3:51)

That's so helpful, Jim. Those definitions are really, really helpful. And I think part of this question is that in older versions of Brother Lawrence's work, they used the word sin to describe the trauma that he faced and then Carmen defined the sin more in modern day terms as PTSD. So just wondering what you'd say about that in terms of his desire to be a hermit.

James Finley (4:15)

One, he could have meant sin as a sense of his own sinfulness. He could have meant that an ongoing conversion process. But also PTSD because of that he was at war and the things that he saw. And also he was grievously wounded with a wound in his leg he had had all of his life. And so that combination of the things that he saw that he got internalized and the wound that he suffered, I think both were there. I used to work in a hospital with Vietnam vets who were on alcohol treatment center.