Giving Away Your Power
We can do it in subtle ways, and writers, it can show up in your work.
It has been said that an author’s first book is often an autobiographical statement. That’s certainly true in my case; my first book, published in 1997, was called Spirituality and was, in part, a record of me trying to work out the tension I felt between religion (particularly my interest in mystical Christianity) and forms of spirituality that were not religious in nature, from Neopaganism and New Age practices to the secular spirituality found in rock ’n’ roll.
I grew up in a conservative, middle-class white American home, where religious observance was seen as the only legitimate form of spirituality; but I was also exposed from my adolescence on to the work of visionaries like Yogananda, Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and others who invited me to consider how spirituality without the confines of religion can be meaningful and valid. In some ways, this became a major through-line of my eventual career as a writer and content creator. Again and again in my work, I’ve aimed to balance the often competing demands of religious communities with private and personal spiritual yearning.
Recently I remembered a conversation I had with Caroline Westerhoff (1940-2022), whom I knew through the Episcopal Church here in Atlanta. Caroline was the author of several books of interest to Episcopalians, like Calling and Good Fences; her husband, John Westerhoff (also a distinguished author) mentored me in the art of spiritual direction, and both of them offered kind encouragement to me when I was just a shy 30-something layperson who wanted to write about spirituality.
This particular conversation took place after Caroline read several chapters of my first attempt at writing about spirituality — a project that I eventually abandoned in favor of a different approach that led to my first book. The abandoned project was called “Listen: An Introduction to Spirituality.” In it, I imagined four different young people with different approaches to the spiritual life: one was an atheist, one a fundamentalist, one a contemplative, and one a new ager.
The manuscript was immature, and Caroline was kind and gentle as she pointed out to me that it wasn’t ready to be submitted to an editor. But what I most remember about that conversation was not so much her criticism of my writing style as her questioning why I gave so much oxygen in my book to fundamentalism.
“Carl,” she said, “you seem to be giving fundamentalism a lot of power in this book.”
Surprised by this question, I tried to defend my manuscript by insisting that lots of Christians were fundamentalist and therefore it needed to be critiqued. But she was not moved by my argument, sensing that the real issue was not all the fundamentalists “out there” so much as it was my own inner conflict regarding authoritarian religion. She repeated herself.
“You don’t need to talk about fundamentalists or fundamentalism to make a positive statement about contemplative spirituality. So, again, I ask you, why are you giving them so much of your personal power?”
I did not have much of an answer for her at that time, and now, more than 30 years later, I am amused by the fact that my latest book (Read the Bible Like a Mystic) still gives more attention to refuting fundamentalism than it probably needs. But if anything, her pointed question turned out to be a long-lasting gift, for it forced me to consider how much of a fine line there is between criticizing something and being obsessed by it.
Fundamentalism bothers me; it certainly did then, and it does still. I get angry when I think about how fundamentalist communities can scapegoat women, queer people, and indeed almost anyone who doesn’t fit in. But there’s the old saying that comes from a Methodist preacher, W.L. Watkinson: “far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.”
If I’m busy cursing the darkness of something like fundamentalism, rather than lighting the candle of contemplative wisdom, perhaps Caroline was right: I had simply given too much of my inner power to a fundamentalist boogeyman.
I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to criticize people or positions we find problematic: sometimes it is necessary to denounce the darkness in order to help people understand why candles are necessary. But sometimes we just need to get on with thinking about, and doing, the good work that needs to be done, even if there are others who oppose us and try to stand in our way. We don’t always have to fight the enemy; sometimes we can be clever and find a way to sneak past our adversary unawares.
If you’re like me and easily get wound up by religious fundamentalists, political extremists, or even relatives who knows how to trigger you, I hope you can join me in trying to safeguard your own personal power. There’s no need to squander our energy worrying about those who might never like us anyway. After all, it is far better to simply set our sights on the goals that matter to us, and use our resources to support those objectives.
