William Noble ‘69: Reflections on a Vision
The Rev. William C. Noble, Class of 1969, wrote this reflection for the Journal of Religion and Health in Summer 2003, while he was a resident in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the Blanton-Peale Graduate Institute, New York City. Yet as indicated by the date preceding the reflection, it sprang from a deeply embedded memory of a mystical experience he had in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd during his early years as a seminarian. Noble explores how an event in the normal routine of seminary life opened him to an experience of the timeless reality of creation itself. In the process he reminds us of the power chapel life brings to our lifelong formation. Noble is now semi-retired and serves as supply at two parishes in the Diocese of North Carolina, as well as continuing his work as a psychotherapist. In addition to his private practice, he is about to join Preby Psych, a clinical practice in Charlotte.
8 December 1963, New York City
The relentless grime and soot of more than a hundred winters blanket the fortress walls, the windows, and the tower of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, smoothing and blending its Victorian gothic points with the less prominent neighborhood brownstones of Manhattan’s West Side, and blocking all natural light from the chapel’s cavernous interior—hallowed by the presence and prayers of generations of seminarians, but lighted by an ancient and inadequate system of shaded 40-watt bulbs, dusty drop cords, and snap switches.
Three times a day—day in and day out—faculty and students come together in this place to pray, to think, to sing and to scheme; to gossip, to rest for a time, to sleep and to dream. Daily Evensong, Noon-day Prayers, and the Holy Eucharist celebrated at seven every morning.
Jumping out of bed at the very last and carefully calculated moment, responding to my roommate’s threatening call, having brushed my teeth and jerked on my clothes like some accelerated automaton, I glance out my window down to the street to see the new day’s thickening traffic. Noisy and impatient trucks carrying goods to the morning markets; five white-habited Dominicans close the convent gate and begin their daily walk to Mass at Corpus Christi Church on the corner of 10th Avenue and 21st Street; muscular stevedores in groups of three or four head in the same direction for the deep-water piers of the Hudson to begin a different kind of work; and as the earliest of many, two blue-blazered school boys saunter towards the subway to take the “E” train to their fashionable private school on the Upper East Side. Turning from the window, I wrap myself in the seminarian’s capa nigra, pull its black, wool cowl over my head and stalk in silence to the cold dark chapel and to my regular place between two other kneeling and shrouded figures. Another grey winter morning; another dark day; another liturgy.
The celebrant begins the Mass and chants the greeting and collect on a low, flat note that could as easily have come from the horn of the Queen Elizabeth II, moored just down the street, as from the pipes of the chapel organ. The Old Testament reading is garbled, and my mind goes back to the dreams of the night before as soon as the lesson is announced. As routinely as thousands of other New Yorkers step off the curb dodging cars before the traffic light changes, I stand and turn to the altar with the gospel announcement, sign the cross on forehead, lips, and chest, and hear mixed with faint street noises, “I am the light of the world, anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark . . . when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He . . .”
After the prayer of intercession, the celebrant approaches the altar to make the offering. My eyes absently follow the two seminarians who walk slowly past my place in choir carrying the gifts. I turn to face the altar, and I see. I do not see the dark, enclosing walls of the chapel as I had seen for so many times before; nor the stony Good Shepherd with six carved companions in the reredos—I see more. I see beyond.
It is as if, with what must have been the brightness of the very first day, the world outside and beyond is shining in the newest sunlight. The dark wall of the chapel is now no more than a gauzy film, a sheer curtain, a scrim. As the celebrant lifts the bread and wine, I see caught up in the offering—in it, by it, and through it—the long line of commercial trucks waiting on 21st Street, the secretaries already late for work, the nuns, the workers, and the school boys; and beyond them, the neon confusion of Times Square, the blue and white of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the silver steel of the George Washington Bridge, the red brick apartment buildings of Morningside Heights and the Bronx, Westchester County, and New England green, Canada and the world. And clarifying and uniting this dazzle of color and energy, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below . . .”
The experience was for only a moment. It lingered with me in my self- imposed silence and wandering of that first day; it has lasted for years. It was given, as a couple of other experiences have been, for a lifetime.
What can I make of such an experience? It was a religious experience; it was an aesthetic experience; it was an experience of the psyche. It was altogether unexpected, and one for which I had in no way prepared myself. It was a gift undeserved; a joy retained since. I will examine and comment briefly on the experience as remembered—now for nearly forty years—in the light of its content and situation under the simple categories of when, where, what and why. These comments are made with the intent to clarify; but as a joke is explained at the risk of humor, these comments are made at the risk of losing the beauty and strength, the vitality of the experience.
The event was situated in a particular time and occurred on an ordinary day. It was in the early morning of a particular day of a particular winter, December 8, 1963. If one were able to mark the beginning and the end of the experience, one could say that it happened at a certain moment, or within a certain few minutes of that day. The experience had the same chronological particularity as, say, tooth brushing or a phone call. With a beginning and an end, the experience lasted for a specific time. It was over in a few minutes, certainly over before the end of Mass.
In contrast to this chronological particularity, the event was experienced by me as timeless. As there was no horizon in the vision, there was no sense of beginning or end to it. There was certainly visual movement, direction, even ascendance; but the movement took no time. In a paradoxical way the event was timeless, and at the same time, time-bound—as I am time-bound.
During the rest of that day I chose not to be with anyone or to talk with anyone. I did not go to class. I did not speak with friends. I wanted to be alone, because I feared that in talking, I would lose or reshape the memory; and I hoped in vain to revisit the vision, as if it had occurred in a land or space all its own.1
I was caught up into the experience, into the “moment” of the vision. I was touched and moved and unaware of the passing of time. And afterward, it was as if this sudden experience of timelessness lingered to influence the rest of the day. From Mass until the evening, I wandered about the seminary and the neighborhood with no sense of where I was or of the passing of time—and with no interest in either time or place—as a person for whom place, and the passing of time were of no consequence and holding no fear.
Time is the central category of finitude, according to Paul Tillich. He observes that those philosophers who emphasize the negative point to the impossibility of fixing the present moment—time never stands still. For them, the present is only a moving boundary line between the past and future. As Tillich notes, “to be is to be present. But if the present is illusory, being is conquered by non-being.” More positive philosophers, Tillich says, point to the creative character of the temporal process, to its directness and irreversibility, and to the new produced within it. But time “swallows” up what is created.2 All things return to dust. In short, one must look outside time and space for meaning. But look to what? For what?
What if one could imagine; what if one could experience a friendly and engaging timelessness? What if one could look outside time to a friendly timelessness that would give a hopeful meaning to time as we ordinarily know it and experience it? As I have said, I was caught up in the vision, in the ‘moment’ of the experience. I was touched and moved and unaware of the passing of time. This sudden experience of timelessness lingered to influence the rest of the day and to make it as if place and the passing of time were of no consequence . . . of no threatening consequence at all.
Time is so closely linked with space. According to Tillich, time creates the present through its union with space. “To be means to have space . . . this means above all a physical location—a body, a piece of soil, a home, a city, a country, a world.”3 This observation brings us from the when to the where of the experience.
To put the question another way: To what extent was the vision objective? To what extent was the experience beyond me and over against me; beyond and over against all the tangible things of life. The content of the experience, although transcendent as seen in the vision, was the tangible reality with which I was so familiar. The vision was constructed, as it were, of realities with which I was in some way or another already knowledgeable. In so far as the experience participated in the objective reality of the world, i.e., the world of a red brick gothic chapel; a white stone altar, a marble reredos, idling trucks, pedestrians, public buildings and monuments, regions and countries; it was the objective, elevated to something more, calling to the subjective— the beauty “out there” calling to me, inviting me to see, to see beyond, to appreciate and to participate.
The where of the experience was not of this world, but the where of the experience, in so far as content was concerned, was of this world. The content of the experience was recognizably of this world; but of another world as well. This transitional space is located “between subjectivity and objectivity, between our unconscious and conscious, between faith and fact.”4 I was touched and moved, grasped and carried through familiar territory into a territory with far more unity and beauty, meaning and purpose, than I had ever before imagined or seen or visited. A space, transcending my ordinary space, in order to give my ordinary space—my body, my piece of soil, my home, my city, my country, my world—my self—deeper meaning and purpose. The movement of offering was the movement of the particular offering made that morning in that particular place; it was also the subjectivity of “my” offering. Although it was not the experience of other persons in the chapel, it was suddenly the movement of all; it was the offering of all creation. It was the offering of all colors, all forms, all sound, all music; inviting me to see, to wonder, to participate, and to live. The categories of objective and subjective were collected in the vision in the moment of invitation and participation.
Ann Ulanov writing in Finding Space: Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality, says “Religion is about mystery itself teaching us of itself, for our brief and lasting satisfaction.”5
In the action of offering, we are able to see the what of the experience. The offering was the offering of bread and wine, but also the offering of the world, the offering of all creation, to the God who had created and loved it into being in the first place. Objectively, it was an offering. To the other people present, it was an objective liturgical offering like so many others on so many other days before. Subjectively, for me, it was an offering like no other before. The objective reality existed, not alongside, but with and within another reality, a subjective reality. But when I say, “subjective reality,” I do not wish to suggest a reality of less substance, less importance, or less truth than the tangible reality of the ordinary objective offering. If anything, the subjective offering was the most real, the most important, the most compelling liturgical offering of my life.
But is this vision real? Or to put the question another way: Is this God real? Is this God—author of all the world and this vision to be trusted? Ann Ulanov says, “Yes!”
“Is this God real? Or a product of my fantasy?” receives a resounding answer “Yes!” and to both. Truth and fantasy no longer compete according to degrees of subjectivity (the more of it, the more false) and objectivity (the more of it, the more true.) It cannot be a true and a real God unless we have helped create it. For example, the Nicene Creed recites: “. . . true God from true God ” This God breaks the bonds of subjective-objective dualism.6
The “subjective” reality of the vision was not one that I could alter or change as I wished. Although the experience must be described and understood as subjective reality, I was not in control of the experience. If one can say so, there was in the subjectivity of the vision, an objectivity. There was always a sense in which the vision was over against me and the world, inviting participation, but never permitting alteration or adjustment.
How can we know the purpose of such a vision or experience? How can we know why? Comparing the thought of Bonaventure and Anselm, Hans Urs von Balthasar says quoting Anselm, “The nearer one draws to God, the higher becomes the experience of beauty; ‘For there is a great beauty in the construction of the world, and far greater beauty in the Church, which is adorned with the beauty of the gifts of grace and holiness, but the greatest beauty lies in the Jerusalem above, and the beauty greater than the greatest (supermaxima) is in the highest and most blessed Trinity.’ ”7
With divine things, the business of grasping them in thought always involves a stage of being taken over and grasped, and it is the nature of the created spirit to be oriented precisely to this: “For nothing satisfies the soul except what exceeds its power to grasp.”8
So no one should think that for the study of theology it suffices to have “reading without unction, speculation without devotion research without wondering, prudence without exultation, hard work without piety, cleverness without humility.”9 Rather, the purified soul is prepared by devotion, wondering, and exultation for the spiritual experiences of being transported out of itself, which allow it to experience God “as the highest beauty.” For “we attain to ecstasy (mentis alienation) for two reasons: occasionally from an abundance of devotion, at other times again from extreme joy.”10 For Bonaventure, ecstasy (usually described as excessus) is “the highest and chief manner of knowledge,” but scarcely anyone understands it if he has not experienced it, and will experience it only if he “is rooted and grounded in love, in order to understand with all the saints the length and breadth and height and depth,” which is what truth that is experiential and genuine consists in.11
In no way did I grasp the vision; more accurately I was grasped by the vision that joins the objective and subjective. I was grasped by the God who joins the objective-subjective, transcendent-immanent. “Relocating our focus within the transitional space, we see that we make transition from subjective and objective God-images to the reality of God as an objective subject intimately involved with us but addressing us from beyond ourselves, external to our- selves; we see the transcendent and immanent theologies form two sides of the same coin.”12
Why was I given this vision some forty years ago—a vision that seems as fresh as though it were given this morning? To take, to give thanks, and to offer in gratitude is to acknowledge a primary dependence on God, to enjoy the fruits of the moment as gifts to be shared acknowledging an interdependence with others, whether with friend, family or the larger community; and to have seen “the great beauty in the construction of the world” is more than an invitation to live in faith, open to love and life. To have seen this vision is to have been given God’s own assurance that all things are securely held together and that we, as an offering, are a part of that whole.
Notes:
1 In Finding Space—Winnicott, God and Psychic Reality, Westminster John Knox Press, Louiville, Kentucky, 2001, Ann Belford Ulanov looks at what happens in the space between our experience of our own self and our experience of God. I have found this book particularly helpful in trying to locate and to understand this experience. I do not think that the experience was an experience of God, but I think it was an invitation to be in the space between me and God— between God and me. “Located in this transitional space, we see that our religious experience arrives neither from outside ourselves, like a ligntening bolt, nor totally from inside ourselves, as from a dream, but in the space in between.” Page 20.
2 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume I, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illi- nois, 1957, page 193.
3 Ibid, page 194.
4 Ulanov, Finding Space, p. 18.
5 Ibid.
6 Ulanov, Finding Space, p. 26.
7 From the Breviloquium, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume II, “Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles,” Hans von Balthasar, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1984, page 267.
8 Ibid., page 267.
9 Itinerarium, 4, 3 of Bonaventure as quoted in von Balthasar, page 268.
10 These reasons are taken from Richard of St.Victor, von Balthasar, page 268.
11 Ibid., page 269.
12 Ulanov, Finding Space, page 20.