SYMMIMETIC THERAPY

NOTE: I once considered pursuing a doctoral program at Immaculata University in relation to “The Theology of the body" – perhaps a Doctorate of Psychology with emphasis on practical theology, i.e. symmimetic therapy: how becoming imitators of God together can create a healing community in which individuals may renew and rehearse right relationships by applying insights of the theology of the body. What follows are some thoughts I wrote in anticipation of a conversation with the school's Dean.

symmimetic therapy:
how becoming imitators of God together

creates a healing community

If becoming imitators of God together can create a healing community, what is a healing community?
In a healing community individuals renew and rehearse right relationships.

What does “becoming imitators of God together” mean?
Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us,an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. (Ephesians 5:1-5; New King James Version)

Rather than walking in lust, as do those who “are alienated from God” (Ephesians 4:17-20, New American Bible), Christians are to “walk in love, as Christ also has loved us” (Ephesians 5:2, NAB). Jesus Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, NAB); yet, embodied in flesh, God in Christ did not despise the body: “though he was in the form of God, . . . he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:6-7, NAB). He then lived just as humans must live, suffering the limitations of the body yet still able to please God. Those who follow Him are called to do likewise: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (John 12:15, NAB). Having such a graphic role model, Christians must become “imitators of God” by living their lives as Christ did, as “an offering and a sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2, NKJV).

Christianity shows an image of the human body that is indubitably true. It is this true showing that is right, making every relationship a performance in the theater of life: “we have become a spectacle [Greek theatron] to the world...” (1 Corinthians 4:9, New AB). One walking in the Holy Spirit joins with others in becoming imitators of God to create a holy community of healing. Those in such community conduct themselves according to the model we have in Jesus Christ: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, your should also do” (John 13; Phillipians 3:17-18, NAB). Such joining together to become imitators of God in Christ is what I have termed symmimesis, from the Pauline coinage in Greek, symmimetai. Mimesis – imitation or representation or following after – is the dynamic of theatre: the actor (mime, mimic) imitates life in presenting himself as a person following the model of real human being. Christians, following the full human reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, are called to be some mimics ministering healing throughout society.

The Christian show must be philographic, or rather agapographic, showing in how we live with one another, not the lust of man or woman, but the love of God in Christ. Others, seeing our witness, can then come to know God’s love in which we share through Jesus Christ, because it shows: “For in him dwells the whole fullness of the Deity bodily” (Colossians 2:9-10, NAB, italics mine). Thus is John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” so significant – in becoming imitators of God, men and woman discover how the body is not an obstacle to but an essential part of Christian discipleship.

How are right relationships renewed?
Right relationships are renewed by applying insights of the theology of the body.

How does one rehearse a right relationship?
One rehearses a right relationship by living each moment in an attitude of reconciliation. One must always be ready to reform oneself in accordance to being in right relationship with others. Christianity is following Jesus command, “Go and sin no more.” One must always carefully consider what one will do next, now that what has been done is now done. Thus is each action a rehearsal for the next act.

How is my concept of “symmimetic discipleship” related to JPII’s theology of the body?

I will explore what Kenneth Schmitz refers to as “community dramatized”; JPII’s final chapter of The Acting Person, asserts that genuine community can be achieved only by human beings acting as the persons they in fact are and might become (see Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, pp 86-87).

The following excerpt

shows a similarity between my idea of symmesis

and JPII’s concept of “participation and community”:

The notion of “community” expresses the reality [of] “acting and existing together with others” . . . . The human community is strictly related to the experience of the person . . . . We find in it the reality of participation as that essential of the person which enables him to exist and act “together with others” and thus to reach his own fulfillment. Simultaneously, participation as an essential of the person is a constitutive factor of any human community. Because of this essential property the person and the community may be said to coalesce together . . . .

In order to grasp more precisely the meaning of “participation – and that is now our chief aim – we have to look at it from the point of view of the community. Actually, such has been our standpoint from the first, and it is the reason why we have so often used the expression “together with others” in our analyses of the action and the being of the person. The notion of “community” is correlated with this expression while simultaneously it introduces a new plane of action or a new “subjectiveness” in the acting. Indeed, as long as we are speaking of acting or being “together with others” the man-person remains the manifest subject of the acting and being, but once we begin to speak of the community, then what so far has been contained in an adverbial sentence, can now be expressed in substantvial and abstract terms.

All the people existing and acting together are obviously exercising a role in a common action but a different way than when each of them performs an action in its entirety. The new subjectiveness is the share of all the member of a community, or, in a broader sense, of a social group. In fact, it is but a quasi-subjectiveness, because even when the being and acting is realized together with others it is the man-person who is always its proper subject. The human individuals constitute, each of them, the basic order of action. The term “community,” like “society” or “social group,” indicates an order derived from the first one. Being and acting “together with others” does no constitute a new subject of acting but only introduces new relations among the persons who are the real and actual subjects of acting. In all discussions about the community this comment is necessary to avoid misunderstanding. The concept “community,” also in its substantival and abstract sense, seems to come very near the dynamic reality of the person and participation, perhaps even nearer than such notions as “society” or “social group.”

(from “Participation and Community,” The Acting Person, pp 276-277.)

This may tie in, to the Expressive Arts certification program, particularly drama therapy.