In the eighties when I began doing the research and reflection necessary for this manuscript, I was in a seminary that was not exactly doctrinally Christian but at least a part of Christian culture. I had to come to terms with the quadrants produced by working with a Cross. The explanation I liked best was Paul Tillich’s because he spoke of the horizontal crossbar being extended experience on this earth surface (history and geography) versus the vertical timber as being aspiration to the transcendent and possibly rootedness in the deep interior of the person. I used to have a little riff about how the transcendent strikes through the ordinary again and again, not just once, so that the symbol ought to look like a whole lot of verticals and one horizontal.
But soon I went to the idea of a dot in a circle -- the dot being that which is most centered in the person and the circle as the most distant conceivable awareness that person has. I added the idea of the vertical at the middle of the dot: the person’s “axis mundi” or “umbilical attachment.” Then a life story seemed to be a matter of traveling on that schema from what is most central to what is most distant. But what starts out as the edge of the unknown can become the limits of what is allowed.
I had the assumption that a person is an instrument of mind/heart, the source of observation, the collection and integration point of experience. Thus the crucial importance of both sensory access (data) and brain function (theory), one informing the other in both directions. I thought about the many ways of extending one’s senses (microscopes, telescopes, various recording devices and intensifying strategies) to things that no human being alone could sense plus the strategies that make circumstantial evidence or testimony from others fairly reliable.
At that point neither I nor anyone else knew anything about “mirror cells” which allow one person to access the experience of another person, a phenomenon usually called “empathy.” When one sees a hand laid gently alongside the face of another, one feels it on one’s own face. I had done acting exercises in which one persuades someone else to copy one’s posture, expression, and -- ultimately -- emotion. So now I wonder how to make my little dot in a circle add some symbolism for empathy. Maybe a lot of circles with dots in the middle, with arrows going back and forth. Wireless. Bluetooth technology.
All along I’ve been quarreling with two common and stubborn Christian ideas. One is the concept of God. I do not believe there is a big humanoid in the sky and I do not think it is helpful to anthropomorphize the concepts of creation or love. The other is the pesky problem of the congregation, particularly when it becomes institutionalized, bureaucratized, and begins missionizing to capture others. So often this is a source of evil. Both of these problems are helped by considering empathetic sharing with others instead of the constant fortification of one’s own self-understanding. It is a way to escape both narcissism and anthropocentrism.
In fact, I think empathy was built into my liturgical structure (unawares) at the point of what I call “Dilation of the Spirit,” which is very much a matter of being conscious of others. (We say “raising one’s consciousness.”) To experience the Confession and the responding Assurance of Pardon “properly”, one doesn’t confess one’s own personal sins but acknowledges the tragedies of all people -- maybe all entities. To exist is to be limited, even broken. We all die. The Assurance of Pardon is really an Assurance that the greater whole continues, which can be a source of joy through belonging and participation. It can be powerful to sit with others and face these two extremes, sharing the experience.
V.S. Ramachandran is a brain researcher who is able to explain -- or begin to explain -- how the human brain, that three pound blob of jelly, works. Research shows that the brain is in a sense rhizomatic -- it is a network where cells (rhizomes) are connected by tendrils. At first it was thought that each cell contained the information for one function or thought or memory or sensation. Now we see that there are regions with specialized functions (face recognition, sense of time, attribution of importance) each with connections to other parts. In a living person the whole brain is engaged in a dynamic and constant dance of processing.
Something about this allows “recursive embedding” which I take to be the ability to think about ourselves thinking, so that I can not only invent a theological diagram, but go back later to see that it is too limited and to devise an addition. Then to reflect on the implications of this addition. Not only are we aware of other’s consciousness, but we are able to stand apart from ourselves, observing. We are our own guardian angels.
Over the years I’ve been criticized for being narcissistic (self-contained, uninterested in other people, more concerned with my own goals than theirs). This is reflected in my diagram of just ONE circle and ONE dot, so that it was about my own inner world and not about sharing with others. It might be suggested that my circle boundary is too hard to penetrate, that I’m isolating myself, don’t want to share. Or it might be that I’m keeping my boundaries high because otherwise I am too EASILY penetrated by other people and find myself dominated by their needs and ideas. I suspect that boundaries are situational: we string barbed wire to keep some people and ideas out, but quickly open doors for others and even find that some people can fly over our walls. (Sometimes we bond or even fuse with others, which is a different kind of problem.)
Boundary disorders can be either organic (the bit of brain that works with mirror neurons isn’t functioning) or psychological (you just don’t want to know -- maybe are afraid). If the resulting disorder is a problem, both possibilities need to be explored. Ramachandran does much work with people who have phantom limbs: an imagined limb that persists after the flesh has been cut off. He set up a screen to hide the amputated arm and a mirror so the amputee could see “both arms” -- one of them being the reflection. Then the amputee made movements with his good arm, “saw” the missing arm do the same things in the mirror, and his brain erased the phantom. (You can see videos of Ramachandran explaining on Edge.org, TED, or Charlie Rose.) It is possible that autism is due to missing or malfunctioning mirror neurons, which would cut the person off from empathetic connection with other people. They are not ignoring, but emotionally blind.
Sharing minds, emotions, visions, in a group is at the heart of congregational liturgies. At its most transcendent, it seems a participation in the cosmos. Not control, not protection of oneself, but joining in the ongoing dance. But for many people the key to the boundary is lost and they are isolated, lonely, unconsoled. An ordinary church experience does not reach them.
What are the keys that will open up boundaries? What screens and mirrors? Singing and dancing? Words? Sex? Danger? Drugs? What if a person outside the boundary has an accurate understanding of what is inside some person's boundary and presents it through the arts, whether talk, painting, pantomime? Will the barricaded person feel the empathy and open the door? This may be the real effectiveness of psychotherapy. But it might also be a salvific use of liturgy, to embody a phantom life.
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