Flannery O'Connor on Losing Your Faith

[DemBones DemBones]

This is from a letter she wrote in reply to a friend's letter.


"I think the experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it can belong to faith if faith is still valuable to you, and it must be or you would not have written me about this.

I don’t know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith."


Read the rest of the letter here:


http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/o-connor-faith.htm?source=DailyDig

(The Bruderhof are a Mennonite sect that live communally and are pacifists. They'll send you a daily quote if you sign up and their site has many articles, poems, and e-books. They have collections of readings for Advent and Lent, too.)

BTW, I haven't checked the Gospels, but I think Flannery misspoke. I have always seen the prayer "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" associated with St. Augustine.

[Maeve]

1. Mark 9:24

I like the New American translation, tho: "I do believe! Help my lack of trust!"

It's a father asking Jesus to cure his son "if you can" and Jesus says "If? All things are possible to those who (believe) trust."

One of the good things about having been brought up Protestant--I did get a fairly good Bible education. But on the Catholic side, several of the saints wrote about the "dark night of the soul" when we go thru spells when God seems distant, if there at all.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Thanks, Maeve! That verse never came up in

my Protestant Sunday School days -- too suggestive of questioning the faith for the kiddies, no doubt. And, as you say, no Protestant talk of the "dark night of the soul."

So did St. Augustine take his other famous short prayer -- "Lord give me chastity. But not yet" from the Bible?

Edit: Interesting how that verse is concealed within a story I'd heard/ read many times. You've got me wondering how many other things I've missed within the context of stories!

[Maeve]

3. I think that one is original with Augustine

Not that he was the first to have that thought, tho, I'm sure! :D

We were a pretty heavily-Bibled family. I've still got the nice four volume set of stories for kids we had a home--lots of classic paintings as illustrations, including a huge number of engravings by Doré; a classly production, unlike some of the cutesy stuff I've seen.(You know, the ones with illustrations done in the style of Strawberry Shortcake and Friends?)

My mom never has figured out how I could stray to the papists...

[Padraig18]

4. "...stray to the papists...."

LOL! I love that phrasing, Maeve!

:P :hug:

[DemBones DemBones]

5. DId you have those leatherette zip-up Bibles when you were a kid?

The kind with your name embossed in gold on the front and a gold cross for the zipper pull? I got one from each of my grandparents in third grade; fortunately, one was white and the other was black. Oh, and at least one was the red-letter KJV, with all the words of Jesus in red. You may be too young for those but all the little girls had them in the Fifties. They were de rigeur for church, like white gloves and black patent Mary Janes. :-)

Edited to fix smiley. Some of the smileys' mouths are disappearing -- do you think it's leprosy? :scared:

[Maeve]

6. No, but at one time I think I had six Gideon New Testaments

They were allowed to come to our public school once a year. White gloves disappeared as I grew up, but I remember having to learn to tie someone else's shoes in kindergarten because all the shoes I wore buckled!

The smiley problem is probably just a bug. :eyes:

BTW, did you hear the latest theory that TB may have been the key to the decline of leprosy? Apparently, the immunity to TB carries over to leprosy.

[AngryOldDem]

7. I had two white Bibles

If memory serves, one zipped, the other didn't. My name was gold embossed (just like the Bibles Ryan O'Neal's character sold in Paper Moon), and Jesus' words were most definitely in red.

And Maeve (combining response to two posts into one) I too remember getting little Gideon Bibles in school.