Trilectic

In previous posts, I've laid out a schema for reading narratives that seeks a way to determine whether the Spirit is actually present.  However, though I've often strayed into phenomenology - that is, into analyzing a situation as a divine/human encounter rather than reading the narrative produced from that situation - I want to try to stay at the narrative level.  The theory is a tool not just for reading past experiences but for reading experiences as they're happening.

Staying away from phenomenlogy (which is a whole 'nother can of worms), the most we can accomplish in our analysis is (a) determining if the narrator(s) (including ourselves) believe the Spirit is present and (b) determining if the narrative matches traditional and authoritative narratives of the Spirit's presence.  Even though the narrative cues match our criteria for identifying the Spirit's presence, still we may be mistaken, but I'm kind of stuck as to getting more precise:  ultimately, whether the Spirit is/was present or not becomes a question of belief more than analysis.  However, analysis can demonstrate that, if the narrative is way out of whack, the Spirit could not be present and remain the Spirit spoken of in scripture/tradition.  In that situation, we're dealing with a (S)pirit or a communal spirit rather than the Spirit.

The term "trialectic" points to the conversation or debate between the community members and God.  Persons express in their personas their conviction/personal history about the Spirit's presence.  These expressions are negotiated in the group's ethos, some being accepted while others are rejected, so that a group's ethos becomes entrained towards a particular set of expressions that the group holds as Spiritual.  From the other end, God's persona - again, I tend to limit this to the Spirit's persona - engages individuals, so that each person (perhaps) brings to the group ethos a persona that bears convictions about Spiritual experiences.  Further, God's persona interacts with the group at the ethos level, meaning God's persona engages both individual personas and the group's ethos simultaneously.  And in a more distant way, God's persona engages the group's surrounding ethoi, since a group's ethos is simultaneously engaged with God's persona and external ethoi.  Again, these are all narratives, constructed in the real process of living and praying and worshipping, etc.  As narratives, they are available to us to read, given that we can understand their expressions.

In this trialectic, all three parties - persona, ethos and God's persona - are available for critique and evaluation.  A "Spiritual" persona is always open to evaluation whether it is actually "spiritual," "(S)piritual" or "Spiritual," primarily from a particular set of criteria.  These criteria, of course, depend a great deal on the persona and ethos of the person(s) evaluating, which leaves a lot of room to consider whether there is something new going on that may indeed be Spiritual in a form we've never seen.  However, I do return to scripture as the authoritative and revelatory witness to all things Spiritual:  should a group claim an experience to be Spiritual that not just extends the scripture's witness but in some ways goes counter to it, I'm going to be real skeptical whether the Spirit is actually present.  But, again, that brings into play my own ethos, especially in terms of scriptural interpretation:  I read scripture a certain way, my tradition places its own limits on my reading, I may be stupid, etc.  Yet this messy situation is always the case, so there's no way around it.

Further, I'm interested in this process primarily not to evaluate someone else's narratives but to help me judge my own:  how can I recognize the Spirit's presence in my own life?  Now, you may say that the experience of the Spirit itself will be so clear and distinguishable that I will instantly know, and indeed that tends to be the scripture's witness about the matter:  when the Spirit is present, Spiritual things happen (e.g., speaking in tongues, burning heads, visions, dreams).  But scripture itself is a narrative, produced not in the moment of Spiritual experience but on reflection:  the process of writing scripture has been one of identifying and promoting those experiences that the writers deem Spiritual, so even at the point of experience, to be able to recognize the experience as Spiritual means I do so by reference to such narratives as scripture.  Again, the Spirit's presence may make such identifications redundant, but, again, this is phenomenology rather than reading:  to read a narrative, even my own, means I have to have some distance to it, even while it's going on.  Hence identification, apart from the ecstasy of the experience, is always a reflective matter.  And in this reflection, in my opinion, I take myself out of the experience and into the narrative about the experience.

Another way to say this is I move my attention from the personal to the persona.  When I ask myself, "Is this the Spirit," I'm actually pointing to my evaluation of a personal persona - who I am vis-a-vis the Spirit - and the Spirit's persona - who the Spirit is when it comes to me.  My presumptions about my Spiritual persona include openness, meekness, receptivity, sensitivity, holiness, etc.  My presumptions about the Spirit's persona include movement, inspiration, otherness, depth, etc.  So I'm checking both my and the Spirit's persona - reading them - to see if they fit quite valid criteria.  For instance, I think many of us would be unwilling to call ourselves Spiritually open when we're jealous or envious or proud, etc., though the Spirit may catch us even in those moments.  Likewise, I think few of us would point to the Spirit's presence in an event that is cruel, inhumane, miserly, etc.  Again, the Spirit can blow where it will, often in new and surprising ways, but the problem is in the reading:  I'm trying to validate a Spiritual experience and contrast it with a spiritual or (S)piritual experience, and that entails a critical act of reading, even in the middle of an experience.  Conversely, I may actually miss-interpret the Spirit's presence because of the limits to all criteria:  the Spirit exceeds our criteria, so using them necessarily limits our reflections on the Spirit.

The same process holds for groups and their ethoi.  A group caught up in the Spirit is actually a group caught up in an engagement between their ethos and the Spirit's persona, both of which are narrative constructions.  Being constructions, they have a history and life quite independent of the group's current experience.  For a group to KNOW it's experiencing the Spirit instead of simply experiencing the Spirit means the group is critically aware of its ethos and the persona of the Spirit it embraces.  I'm tempted to argue that even to experience - rather than only to reflectively know - relies on these same narratives, as does a person on her own narratives regarding her and the Spirit's personas, since one needs to recognize an experience to experience it in any real way.

Now, according to scripture (primarily Christian New Testament), the Spirit engages a persona primarily through dreams and visions.  The other avenues of the Spirit's engagement - tongues, prophecy, love, compassion, etc. - all happen at the level of ethos rather than persona.  Now, one may argue that dreams and visions bypass persona, that they are complete interior matters unmediated by the messy intercourse between personas (human and Spirit).  That may be phenomenologically correct and I don't want to discount it.  However, simply having a dream or vision is never the end of the matter:  at the very least, on returning from the ecstatic state, the person asks, "What did that mean," and by asking the question the person returns to the narrative level.  Dreams and visions must be interpreted, it seems to me, and interpretation is a narrative action.  Without interpreting, a person (from the outside) seems to be in danger of confusing the Spirit with spirit or (S)pirit.  Indeed, I think I'm bold enough to argue that a person, to be faithful, MUST seek to interpret such experiences:  this is a should, to me.  "The Devil walks in slippery shoes," the old song says.  In my terms, I think it is always a danger to confuse a (S)pirit (a spirit is less dangerous, perhaps) with the Spirit.  In our culture, for example, we can probably recall instances where divinely-granted wealth (a (S)pirit, perhaps, but at least a spirit) is promoted as a real work of the Spirit (which, even though purported to be in scripture, seems far from the scriptural witness).

The key to experiencing or evaluating God's presence in our lives, it seems to me, is to look at the narrative level, which this trialectic attempts to do.  Narratives - stories we tell ourselves and each other - are not simply passive and reflective:  narratives are the means by which we form the only world we will ever know.  Such hard distinctions as sacred and profane, holy and mundane are actually narrative constructs:  one would be hard pressed to demonstrate their reality outside our narratives about them.  We tell stories that divide our world this way.  Consequently, the way we construct narratives can also construct our world (as Berger so clearly argued, see "Sacred Canopy," older but still brilliant).  By emphasizing reading narratives I'm also emphasizing the other side - constructing narratives.  You and I bear a world-creating responsibility, especially as God is concerned:  we, along with the Spirit, create a world in which the Spirit moves and breathes, for without our side of the deal, even though the Spirit blows where and when it will, our narrative constructions and the world derived from them would be Spiritless.  Thank you for reading.