Eliezer Wiesel (1928–2016) was a writer and activist, whose book, Night, describes his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The following is a short reading from Night that describes the hanging of three prisoners. As a musical accompaniment, I added the 2nd movement from The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki (1933–2010). The first movement uses a 15th-century Polish lament based on the lament of Mary, mother of Jesus. The second is inspired by a message written on the wall of a WWII Gestapo cell. The third is based on a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son, killed in the Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent.

This reflection closes out the first week as a way of feeling the heartfelt, deeply human and profoundly spiritual place that religious questioning can, and often does, arise from.

SUPPLEMENTAL REFLECTION

Today’s reflection mixes a truly beautiful piece of classical music by Górecki with a piece of harrowing writing from Wiesel.

There are a number of reasons why I wanted to include this reflection close to the beginning of this journey. The main one being the way in which the music and writing destabilize the usual separation between sacred and secular, between belief and non-belief. There is something simultaneously pious and profane about their cry.

For instance, when you listen to the words, the question arises as to whether the idea of 'God hanging on the Gallows' references how the death experienced in the camps contains a metaphysical dimension (involving the death of God, Meaning, the Absolute). Or whether it offers a type of proto 'Weak Theology,' in which God no longer exists, but 'insists' among the suffering (this notion being best articulated by thinkers like Vattimo and Caputo). Or whether it echoes the type of a/theistic mysticism best seen in the life of Simone Weil (who you'll encounter later in the practice).

The power of the reflection, for me, lies in the undecidability between these. It feels like a powerful expression of The Passion. A profound suffering that, in its very immanent protest, expresses something Wholly Other.

This reflection points to a wider transformation that happened in the aftermath of Shoah. This was the birth to a type of existential expression of faith that began to grapple with what Dostoevsky talked about when he sought a religious experience that fully embraced the human experience in its most profound dimension.

In many ways, this reflection is a foreshadowing of what we will see take shape in the last few weeks.

A more contemporary version of this type of experience can be seen in the album Curse Your Branches, by David Bazan. An album that is a heartfelt rejection of faith. But which, in its very form, traces the very shape of faith.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

I’ve enclosed links to ‘Night’ and the whole Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.. I’ve also included a more contemporary example of the same kind of experience. A profoundly personal critique of the religious that has the feeling and form of faith. It is a link to the album Curse Your Branches, by David Bazan.