September 29: St. Michael and All Angels

Collect of the Day: Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today's Daily Office

Getting Ready for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Each Monday morning Daniel B. Clendenin publishes an essay givng us opportunities to anticipate the lectionary readings for the coming Sunday. Next Sunday, October 4, will be the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (also the Feast of St. Francis), and many of us will hear these appointed readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B):

Job 1:1, 2:1–10 or Genesis 2:18–24
Psalm 26 or Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1–4, 2:5–12
Mark 10:2–16

Clendenin tells us that his essay this week takes a page from the pastor-poet George Herbert to consider humanity "Between Nature and Grace." In addition to writing fine essays, Clendenin also usually suggests a book or movie for reading or viewing; his recommendations this week are The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and the seven-part HBO series John Adam. For poetry he posts his all-time favorite poem, "The Revival," by the Welsh poet-physician Henry Vaughan (1621-1695). Clendenin's weekly publication, a "webzine for the global church," is read by our brothers and sisters in 230 countries. See what you think by visiting Journey with Jesus. You may even wish to subscribe and receive his weekly email announcements as reminders to read his essays and recommendations.

Susan, on another list, recently posted this remarkable quotation taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness:

Each of us has an ever-faithful companion--presence. Something that is always with us. Something that helps us to live with inner integrity and depth, to see through the outer coverings of others and of the world to their purpose and core being, and to get over placing ourselves at the center of everything. This companion-presence is Silence. It never goes away. We go away from it, become distracted and forgetful, and lose the manners needed to nurture companionship with it. We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. [...] Silence is palpable. [...]What if, to some degree, the "subjective" experience of God is also subjectively stated? ...What one names "God," for example, another may call "Silence." Certainly, in my devotions the lines between what I "know" of God/Silence often dissolve.

I share Susan's posting of this quotation with you because I have found that Sardello's observation, so creditably articulated, has often been mine. And perhaps yours? My friend Susan recommends that I get a copy of this book, and one reviewer at amazon.com confirms her recommendation: "Get this book now. Crawl naked over brocken glass to get a copy. Read this book before you die." It's Sunday morning and the Gospel, I hope, will remind that I do in fact need to die. I hope it will be a good death. If, however, I live through the week, I should be able to pick up my (used) copy in the mail box sometime this week.

In Open Mind, Open Heart, Fr. Thomas Keating discusses five kinds of thoughts that may come to us during our practice of Centering Prayer:

1. 1. wanderings of the imagination
   2. exploratory intellectual searchings
   3. attractive solutions to problems
   4. feelings of self-congratulation
   5. reawakened emotions arising from dormant traumatic experiences.
   

At one time or another in our contemplative practice many of us have experienced what Fr. Keating calls "the consequences of traumatic emotional experiences." While such experiences often occur in childhood, we may also encounter them in domestic arguments, the undoings of marriages, the death and suffering of loved ones, the horrors of the battlefield, and our encounters with poverty and injustice here and in the Third World. We live in a violent society; our movies, newspapers, and television shows constantly barrage us with scenes of pain, despair, and great unhappiness. Our personal lives have often carry the wounds of psychic damage. In Centering Prayer it would be unusual not to have violent images, feelings, thoughts, and memories intrude into our movement toward "unworded" contemplative prayer. When that happens, Fr. Keating gives us this exceptionally helpful advice:

When you feel restless, agitated, or pained by some emotional experience, you can't spend the time better than by waiting it out. The temptation is great when you are suffering from a distressing emotion to try to push it away. However, by allowing your attention to move gently toward the emotion and by sinking into it, as though you were getting into a nice jacuzzi, you are embracing God in the feeling. Don't think, just feel the emotion.

If you were blind and then got your sight back, even the ugliest things would be appreciated. Suppose you had no emotions and suddenly experienced one; even a disagreeable emotion would be thrilling. Actually, no emotion is really distressing; it is only the false self that interprets it as distressing. Emotional swings are gradually dissolved by the complete acceptance of them. To put this into practice, you must first recognize and identify the emotion: "Yes, I am angry, I am panicky, terrified, restless."

Every feeling has some good. Since God is the ground of everything, we know that even the feeling of guilt, in a certain sense, is God. If you can embrace the painful feeling, whatever it is, as if it were God, you are uniting yourself with God, because anything that has reality has God as its foundation. "Letting go" is not a simple term; it is quite subtle and has important nuances-depending on what you are intending to let go of. When a thought is not disturbing, letting go means paying no attention to it. When a thought is disturbing, it won't go away so easily, so you have to let it go in some other way. One way you can let it go is to sink into it and identify with it, out of love for God. This may not be possible at first, but try it and see what happens. The principal discipline of contemplative prayer is letting go.

To sum up what I have said on this fifth kind of thought, contemplative prayer is part of a reality that is bigger than itself. It is part of the whole process of integration, which requires opening to God at the level ofthe unconscious. This releases a dynamic that will be peaceful at times, and at other times heavily laden with thoughts and emotion. Both experiences are part of the same process of integration and healing. Each kind of experience, therefore, should be accepted with the same peace, gratitude, and confidence in God. Both are necessary to complete the process of transformation.

If you are suffering from a barrage of thoughts from the unconscious, you don't have to articulate the sacred word clearly in your imagination or keep repeating it in a frantic effort to stabilize your mind. You should think it as easily as you think any thought that comes to mind spontaneously.

Do not resist any thought, do not hang on to any thought, do not react emotionally to any thought. This is the proper response to all five kinds of thoughts that come down the stream of consciousness.

Note: There are two editions (and many printings) of Open Mind, Open Heart. The first was published in 1986; the second (The so-called 20th Anniversary Edition) in 2008. Although they are basically the same, in the 2008 edition, Fr. Keating has rearranged and revised the text in a catechetical (question and answer) fashion. The quotation cited in this posting may be found on page 98-99 in the 1986 edition; on pages 102-104 in the 2008 edition.

Images: Michelle Forsyth, Trauma, 2002. Cotton thread on cotton, 4 x 5 inches ; Sunday, July 9, 2006, 2006. Watercolor on Fabriano SP watercolor paper, 18 x 27 inches.

Reflective Silence during Evening Prayer

There is a set of paperback books on my shelf that has attracted my attention for years. It’s a four volume edition of the Philokalia. Last night, reading in and around the first volume containing St. Hesychios’ “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” I found myself underlining this passage:

Each hour of the day we should note and weigh our actions and in the evening we should do what we can to free ourselves from the burden of them by means of repentance—if that is, we wish, with Christ’s help, to overcome wickedness. (124)

St. Hesychios’ advice is good, and my prayerbook asks me to take advantage of it.

Each day at 5:00 p.m. in Evening Prayers, this prayerbook asks June and me to maintain a period of “silence for meditation.” We don’t observe an overly long silence (admittedly, sometimes it’s short), but most of the time we allow a minute or so to go by in which hear only the ticking of the clock or our own heartbeats. During that silence we reflect on what has happened during the day.

As the day passes, I know we are aware, more or less, of how things have gone. Nevertheless, the evening silence for meditation is an especially good time for summing up and reflecting on the day’s thoughts and actions. This “summing up” allows us to explore and examine the more subtle forms of egotism to which we are constantly inclined. In contemplative language, our review of these egoistic activities alerts us as to how we have been constructing what Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating call our “false selves.”

Each of us knows how to construct a bogus, phony, cooked-up, and specious self; that is, we are experts in creating identifies intended to deceive others—and ourselves!--as to who we really are. I, for example, am given to suggest to you that I’m a fairly decent practicing Christian. Writing these sentences is right now a movement in that direction. For example, I like to read. But lots of times I know I am tempted to read so that I can quote other Christians, a temptation which professional academics find especially fetching. My false self is especially prone to the production of such presentations. I like to associate myself with famous Christians; it helps to suggest that I'm a pretty good Christian. In other words, surely you will recognize me by the company I keep. Just take a look.

Luther, following St. Augustine, describes this tendency to fabricate a false self as the product of homo curvatus in se, “the human "curving" or turning in upon the self.” That is, as a human beings, you and I like to turn and direct our gazes upon ourselves. We’re the objects of our own fascinations.

Homo curvatus in se. Here’s how it works. Although I don’t usually say so emphaticly, I’m personally and often quite secretively convinced that my thinking is generally a little better than your thinking; my politics slightly more on target than yours; my spiritual life, especially when seen in the right light, is at least a tad better than most others. And, of course, my use of silence more productive than yours.

Homo curvatus in se among us humans is insideous. Dangerous. If left unchecked, it marginalizes others, struts our own egos, and eventually discounts as little or nothing what—or better yet, who!-- is our True Self: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Heading in one direction by the dynamics of homo curvatus in se, we desperately need to go in another direction. Curving, arching, and habitually swerving toward one’s self, we need to aim ourselves—minds, hearts, strength, and soul--toward someone other than ourselves: each one's True Self, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God in his grace gives us our True Self in Christ. In prayer we turn from our false selves and meet the Center of our lives, the True Self. Whenever we review our day and discover where repentance is necessay, we are going in the right direction.

God’s gift of a good prayerbook works wonders in this redirectioning. Here’s how it works. Just before we get ready to pray the Psalms for the day, my prayerbook suggests that I observe “silence for meditation.” That where and when I sit quietly for a while to review the day. This extended review invariably reveals numerous occasions when I sinned against family members, neighbors, strangers, and God. I didn’t do what I should have done, and I did what I should not have done. And all in the interest of promoting my false self, my egotistical, self-protective self.

After the “silence for meditation” June and I offer this prayer, echoing images from Psalm 141:

Let in incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever.

Aware that God’s loving kindness is descending upon us, we then sing the Psalms for the evening and end the day in God’s grace, centered in Christ, the True Self.

Images: Evangelical Lutheran Worship

A post-script: If an exploration of the undercurrents of self-deception and the management of false selves interests you, perhaps like me you may wish to purchase and read Gregg A. Ten Elshof's I Told Me So, recently published by Wm. B. Eerdmans.

The closing of our eyes in prayer

Last Saturday (during the Week of Pentecost 15) during Morning Prayer many of us read Chapter 8 of I Kings: it’s the story of Solomon’s dedication of the new constructed Temple. At one point, the story’s narrator says,

And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon said,

The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.

This is a remarkable detail of the dedication story because it turns up-side-down and inside-out our usual thinking about God’s glory. Usually we imagine God’s glory as a great brightening Light, a kind of blinding whiteness that bursts radiantly from God’s presence. Here, however, the glory of God comes cloud-like, a foggy darkness so solid that the priests had to grope their way around, unsure about their whereabouts, unable to stand and do their work. In short, God’s glory is also an enveloping darkness.

Those who practice Centering Prayer know that teachers like Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington make it a point to recommend that we sit comfortably “with eyes closed” when introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

To close one’s eyes is one way we allow God’s darkening glory to come upon us. Jesus himself recommended such environmental darkness for prayer when giving us guidelines, he recommended that we into our closet, shut the door, and pray to our Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6). As I have said elsewhere, inasmuch as first-century Jewish homes had no closets as we know them, it likely that Jesus is suggesting that go off somewhere alone, pull a prayer shawl over our heads or at least pull down our eyelids so that we enter a personal darkness to be with God--or better said, that God may be with us.

That is the experience of many when God meets them: Moses on Mt. Sinai, Paul when struck blind, Joseph in his dreams. The fourteenth-century classic on contemplative prayer is titled The Cloud of Unknowing. The anonymous author of that book tells us that it is when we enter a "cloud" and remove as many distractions as possible, even to the diminishment of following thoughts themselves, that God speaks His healing silence.

Yet even in darkness one may experience what appears to be simply darkness. A friend of mine recently told me about his contemplative practice this way:

Having a subjective “felt experience of God” would be nice, but I don’t really don’t look for that. Just sitting for twenty minutes or so and then listening to the healing silence that dwells behind all of the noise and chatter in the world is enough for me! Centering Prayer is a tool which quiets the mind and then allows a person to rest in silence for a short period of time every day. And for me that silence is not empty -- but it’s alive and good and has something to do with eternity and with God. Perhaps we should not expect more than that.

In the closing of our eyes, in whatever darkness we enter, we always sit as the guests of God who comes as and when He wishes. Fr. Keating has somewhere noted that that he "continues to meet people who are very advanced in the spiritual journey who insist that they have never had the grace of contemplative prayer as a felt experience of God.” Certainly my own experience has been something of the kind. My “felt experiences” of God have been terribly (I use the word carefully) brief, sometimes awefully (again I use the word carefully) brief. More often in God’s silence I find myself almost always wrapped in some kind of pervasive Love, healed, cured of anxiety, dissipation, and worry. In my "unknowing," without words in some strange way I am aware of God’s presence. At the same time, like those priests at the dedication of the temple, I sit gropingly, many times unsure as to where to stand and go. Nevertheless, as I raise my eyelids and look around (sometimes to see the difference between night and dawn), I realize God in his great dark glory has been with me.

Isn’t it so with you?

Image: Jack Baumgartner, Self-Portrait with Closed Eyes

Recent new about Fr. Thomas Keating

As some of you may know, Fr. Thomas Keating was hospitalized last week with a pulmonary embolism. On Saturday, September 12, he had a simple surgical procedure to ensure the clots do not move into his lungs. On Sunday evening, September 13, he returned to his home at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and is resting and in good spirits.

Fr. Keating is the author of many book on the theology and practice of contemplative prayer.

Listing Prayer

Many Christians look forward to those times during the day when they can find a time of silence for sacred reading, morning and evening prayer, and some form of contemplative practice, perhaps Centering Prayer. It may require that they rise earlier in the morning than others or go to bed a little later than some. To turn their intentions into action they also find it helpful to mark in advance their daily calendar for such times. Along with making a list of daily things to be done (don't forget to get eggs!), not a few find it helpful to write the word Prayer at the beginning and end of each day’s listing. All such habits help us keep time sacred, enter the Presence of God, listen to Our Lord, and respond to the Holy Spirit through the whole day--all twenty-four hours.

By the way, I found this observation earlier in the day while reading The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware:

It is common to regard contemplation as a rare and exalted gift, and so no doubt it is in its plenitude. Yet the seeds of a contemplative attitude exist in all of us. From this hour and moment I can start to walk through the world, conscious that it is God's world, that he is near me in everything that I see and touch, in everyone whom I encounter. However spasmodically and incompletely I do this I have already set foot upon the contemplative path.

Beginning Again

I realize that it has been quite a while since I’ve posted to Praying Daily. Since my last post on July 18 I have been in Georgia at our home on Jackson Lake, and while there I decided to wean myself away from the computer as much as possible. My days were filled with ample reading, a good bit of sweaty manual labor around the house, rounds of morning and evening prayer with June, some contemplative silence, evening boat rides, visits from family and friends, and Sunday Eucharists at St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia. Importantly, I had a lot of time to reacquaint myself with Flannery O'Connor, her stories, novels, and criticism of and about her. I was able to visit several times her home at the Andalusia, the dairy farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. One day I drove over to see the manuscript collection at Georgia State College and University. All of which is to say that while absent from Praying Daily here, I was able to find refreshment with family, friends, reading, and prayer. And, oh yes, with my son, pastor, and three other dear friends, I went to Haiti for a week in late July and early August. Now it’s time to return to Praying Daily and begin again our sharing of times and things prayerful.

You can expect not a few words from Flannery O’Connor in the coming days, and I’ll begin this blog renewal with one now. While at Andalusia, I bought a Flannery O’Connor Perpetual Calendar; each day it gives the reader either a quotation (sometimes with a sketchy cartoon), usually something from her letters, her stories and novels, or from the talks she gave at various universities and assorted literary groups. On August 18, here’s what the calendar gave us:

Isn’t that so? Well, it must be; I've copied it into my chapbook.

From the Chapbook

As some of you know, I keep a chapbook in which now and then I record sayings and quotations that I want to remember. This morning as I paged through my collection of observations, some sayings brought me consolation and encouragement; perhaps one or more of the following four will do the same for you:

• From even my sins God has drawn good. (St. Augustine)


• All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. (Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being, 307).


• Aim to make daily life sacramental which means literally to keep the sacred (sacra) in mind (mental). On other words, . . . seek a mindfulness--a mind full--of God's presence int he world. (Phillip Yancey, Rumors of Another World, 44


• [Concerning reading Scripture]: Come before the Lord and begin to read. Stop reading when you feel the Lord drawing you inwardly to himself. Now, simply remain in stillness. Stay there for awhile. (Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717), Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ.

Whenever I find it possible, I listen to Krista Tippett ’s weekly hour-long NPR program, Speaking of Faith. Each week Tippett interviews someone whose life and witness is a testimony to faith, ecumenically defined. Yesterday Tippett interviewed geophysicist and spiritual thinker Xavier Le Pichon during a program entitled "Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity — A Geophysicist's View." Here’s the beginning of the interview:

Ms. Tippett: Xavier Le Pichon is a pioneer on the field of plate tectonics. He was a formative figure at one of those junctures where science not only radically revises its own assumptions but changes the way all of us see the world. When he began his life as a scientist in 1959, the prevailing view among geologists is what we know call "fixist." There was no knowledge of tectonic plates beneath the ocean with fault lines and constant motion that across time had configured and reconfigured the earth's crust and entire continents.

Mr. Le Pichon: The earth was considered a place where everything was static. You know, things were moving up and down but never laterally. Actually, the earth is an extraordinary living being with the motions of the oceans and continents continuously changing, evolving, and this was a tremendous shock.

Ms. Tippett: Still a practicing scientist, Xavier Le Pichon is also a lifelong Catholic. Since 2003, he has lived in an intentional community he and family helped found to provide retreat for families caring for a loved one with mental illness. Before that, for nearly three decades, he and his wife raised their family of six children at the original French L'Arche community, centered around people with mental disabilities. This aspect of his life was foreshadowed by his previous adventures at great universities and exploring the depths of the world's oceans in submersibles.

Near the conclusion of the interview, Le Pichon spoke briefly about his prayer life:

Mr. Le Pichon: And I then discovered later on the love of the suffering people, which I found could not be separated from the love of God. Actually, I could not go to God unless I went through these people. And all this is, in a sense, incompatible. Somebody once asked me, "How do you maintain unity in your life? Aren't you schizophrenic?" And my answer was, "It's through prayer. I spend a lot of time in prayer." I pray at least one or two hours a day. And it is through the prayer of God that has taken people into this extremely different field. I think it's the power of God that when you ask him he lets you unify things that apparently cannot be unified.
As I listened, it stroke me as quite remarkable that Le Pichon, a world-reknown geophysicist, should openly say that he prays “at least one or two hours a day,” that in his prayers God has taken him to love suffering people, and that in prayer God lets him “unify things that apparently cannot be unified.”

Le Pichon prays an hour or so every day. While I don’t know how he prays, I suspect that a good portion of his daily prayers is taken up with the Church’s traditional Morning and Evening Prayers. As a Roman Catholic he may well call his prayers The Liturgy of the Hours. If my intimations are correct, Le Pichon surely uses the Psalms as the foundation of his prayers. By building his prayer life on the Psalms, Le Pichon is called to remember the poor, the weak, and suffering again and again as he daily murmurs or perhaps quietly sings the Psalms in his home. Remembering the weak and suffering in this way has led him, as he says, into an “extremely different field,” that of living within an intentional community whose vocation is to serve the mentally ill.

As a Christian Le Pichon finds God’s creative love for an evolving world a reason for awe and wonder. Again, while I don’t know exactly how Le Pichon prays, I suspect that sitting in Silence before such a mystery plays a considerable role in an appreciation for his True Self and his understanding as to how we humans have evolved under God’s care.

A world-famous geophysicist who has introduced us to the study of plate techtonics intentionally lives with those who suffer from mental illness. Remarkable! Through prayer God has given Le Pichon the desire and ability to unify two supposedly different ways of thinking and living: scientific examination and prayerful listening. Le Pichon is a witness to what a radically expanded understanding of prayer can do.

If you’d like to read the transcript of the entire interview, visit http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/fragility/transcript.shtml.

I'd rather be cleaned first.

Although C. S. Lewis is much loved by all Christians (and deservedly so!), it's not well known that Lewis came to believe that prayers for the dead and purgatory were, after all, commonsensical Christian realities in the Grand Scheme of Things; that is, they made a good bit of Christian common sense to those who trust and love God. Here's what Lewis says in Letters To Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer:

Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?

I believe in Purgatory.

Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the "Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory" as that Romish doctrine had then become . . . . The right view returns magnificently in Newman's DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer "with its darkness to affront that light." Religion has claimed Purgatory.

Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, "It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy"? Should we not reply, "With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first." It may hurt, you know." -"Even so, sir."

I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed." (Chapter 20, paragraphs 7-10)

Lewis had no doubt that God in his infinite love will welcome us into his Presence with open arms. But he also had reason to believe that we Christians will quite naturally like to polish our shoes, mend the tears in our shirts, and brush our teeth before we step into the Throne Room. Of course, if may be something of Lewis' British appreciation for politeness that prompts him to want to "clean up a bit" and comb his hair that teases him into an appreciation for purgatory. Be that as it may, such a Christian impulse reflects no desire to improve ourselves morally or engage in some form of salvation by works. The conviction that purgatory may be an appropriate vestibule for the Throne Room simply reflects a Christian's redeemed desire to "get ready for worship," making sure he or she knows well how to step into the Royal Presence. As I understand Lewis, a willingness to be in purgatory is simply living out one's desire to learn how to express a fully an appreciative life of Christian courtesy before God; perhaps we might well take a final lesson or two on how to sit, stand, and sing (or learn to play an instrument) before the Royal Family, the Most Holy Trinity.

The reason I mention Lewis' conviction that purgatorial training of some sort belongs in the Grand Scheme of Things is to suggest that our prayer life--especially if it takes the form in Centering Prayer--may also be a kind of purgatory as Thomas Keating suggests:

Contemplative prayer is a kind of purgatory. Purgatory in Catholic theology is a state in which we complete the journey to divine union in the next life if we have not quite finished it here. Every bit of progress means an enormous benefit for us and for everyone else in the human race. To be on this journey is really the greatest contribution one can make tothe human family. This journey does not just involve what happens in prayer; rather, what happens in prayer enables us to live daily life as a continuation of the purification process. The ups and downs of daily life, including its very everydayness, are the arena in which the Christian journey takes place. God is in solidarity with our lives and deaths, just as they are. Perfection does not consist in feeling perfect or being perfect, but in doing what we are supposed to do without noticing it: loving people without taking any credit. Just doing it. (Intimacy with God (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996, 63-64.)

Prayerful Clarity

In Further Along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck makes this observation:

When Jesus gave his big sermon, the first words out of his mouth were: "Blessed
are the poor in spirit." There are a number of ways to translate "poor in spirit," but on an intellectual level, the best translation is "confused." Blessed are the confused. If you ask why Jesus might have said that, then I must point out to you that confusion leads to a search for clarification and with that search comes a great deal of learning. For an old idea to die and a new and better idea to take place, we have to go through periods of confusion. It is uncomfortable, sometimes painful to be in such periods. Nonetheless it is blessed because when we are in them, we are open to the new, we are looking, we are growing. And so it is that Jesus said, "Blessed are the confused." Virtually all of the evil in this world is committed by people who are absolutely certain they know what they're doing. It is not committed by people who think of themselves as confused. It is not committed by the poor in spirit.

Peck is on to something, and if you're like me I suspect there's a good bit of confusion in your life as there in mine. Here I'm thinking not only about the numerous befuddlements we experience daily (Where the dickens did I put those pliers?), but more importantly my confusions have to do with genuine perplexities about complex moral issues (What about assisted suicides for those who suffer painfully terminal diseases?), family issues (Is it all right to counsel my son to obtain a divorce?), and matters of national importance (Can I be a Democrat while opposing abortion?). Sometimes, depending on whom I've recently heard, I find myself changing "sides" on issues for which other make seemingly persuasive observations. In short, it's not unusual for me to find myself in the middle of things--confused.

In prayer, that is, in the distillation of interior silence and listening, God, as Jesus promises, blesses those of us who are confused . As we read Scriptures (especially the psalms), meditate on the Gospels, say our Morning and Evening Prayers, attend to frequent Holy Communions, practice some form of centering prayer, and allow the mind of Christ to shape our vision and actions, entering daily silence gives the Holy Spirit opportunities to clarify what's possible, what's right, and perhaps where ambiguity about somethings is all right. After all, even our opinions and decisions, as good as they may be, are nonetheless always in need of more thorough saving and forgiveness. Lest we think we've "got it," there's always the possibility that God will give us not only the right decision, but also a good way to express it with love and compassion. And confusion about that is often the tough part.

Image: Fra Angeica (1387-1455), The Sermon on the Mount

Chipping Away

In The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir's Seminary P, Crestwood, NY: 1979), Bishop Kallistos Ware enters a sculptor's workshop to find a wonderful metaphor clarifying what happens when in contemplative prayer we strip away all the predicates of our descriptive selves (for example, "I'm a professor; my name is Andrew; I'm a Lutheran; I go to church; I'm the father of many children; I pray; I'm married; I like beer, and so on!") and release ourselves from notions of importance (or insignificance), success (or failure), current happiness (or sadness), intellectural abilities (or lack thereof), and so on. When we practice "letting go" of such illusive notions about who we really are and arrive at our innermost heart--where God is always intimately one with us--then we down-dwell with Him (or Her, as some come to know the Presence) and we realize and enjoy our True Self Jesus, who/Who we are:

The apophatic method, whether in our theological discourse or in our life of prayer, is seemingly negative in character, but in its final aim it issupremely positive. The laying-aside of thoughts and images leads not to vacuity but to a plenitude surpassing all that the human mind can conceiveor express. The way of negation resembles not so much the peeling of an onion as the carving of a statue. When we peel an onion, we remove one skin after another, until finally there is no more onion left: we end up with nothing at all. But the sculptor, when chipping away at a block of marble, negates to a positive effect. He does not reduce the block to a heap of random fragments but, through the apparently destructive action of breaking the stone in pieces, he ends up by unveiling an intelligible shape. (124)

Many ways to enter prayerful contemplative living

For those of us who live in the Bluegrass of central Kentucky, it' s almost always a pleasure to drive by a horse farm and enjoy the fencing.

Sometimes in the spring when the foals can be seen, I stop my car to say hello to mom and her newborn. Last year Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road (a lovely part of the horse country south of the Lexington) let me walk around its paddocks, taking pictures of the horses, barns, and fencing.

A lover of such fencing, I often think of them as reminders of how I spend my time "fence-walking" or pilgrimaging through life. Just as the placement of well-grounded fence posts provides solid anchorage for the railings of horse-farm fencing, so praying the Daily Offices and setting aside time for centering prayer serve as "fenceposts" for contemplative living. Between the posts, between our morning and evenings, there's a good bit of "railing," that is, our time during the day. Assuming that one's "fenceposts" (prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening) are well in the ground, we are fairly ready to put the railings in place and walk along their timbered bars, the hours between sunrise and sunset.

What is that "railing" walk for those of us who have the fenceposts in place? How do we pass our "day hours" as we go from post of post? Here, by way of encouragement, Merton suggests how one might live prayerfully and contemplatively as the day passes, inbetween the fence posts:

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Above, all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life-let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul. (New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961), 216.

What Merton is suggesting is that we allow our more or less concentrated contemplative times of prayer to extend themselves into every facet of living. With a contemplative heart, we say hello to the cashier at WalMart; with a contemplative mindset, we answer the phone to find out who's calling and why; with a contemplative attitude, we wash the dishes, do the laundry, grade student papers, mow the lawn, work on the budget, and work as an attorney, a salesclerk, a pastor, a custodian, or a retired professor. Just so, all of life becomes a contemplative journey.

Image: A picture of the paddock fencing I took at Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road.

The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

This morning Harry came over to share some coffee and chat about things. After we said Morning Prayer together, we managed to talk about Quaker Elton Trueblood and then our conversation turned to St. Paul’s listing of the “fruit of the Holy Spirit” in Galations 5:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

How, we asked ourselves, does one come to produce or enjoy such fruit? Harry suggested that the Spirit’s fruit isn’t “produced” by anything we do. I nodded in agreement: the fruit of the Spirit is simply the outward evidence of an inward indwelling or abiding in Christ.

After Harry left to distribute a carload of noontime “Meals on Wheels,” I had occasion to read again in my dog-eared copy of George Maloney’s Inward Stillness. And wouldn’t you know it! In Chapter 2, “A Silenced Heart,” Maloney makes this observation:

This [silent indwelling of God] is a gift from God’s Spirit. It flows as fruit from deep union with God outwardly to effect not only a deeper silence of the mind but a silence that affects also the very way we look at others, smile, the way we walk and talk. St. Paul described the fruit of such silence of the heart as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.” . . . When the heart is silent and the whole [person] is integrated, then she enters into the Kingdom of Heaven that is within. (31-32)

Those who practice contemplative living, prayerful listening, and frequent restful quietness within God’s presence, know from experience that Maloney speaks truthfully. When in Great Silence we quietly say goodbye to our self-nurturing egos and self-flattering illusions of importance, something wonderful happens. Quietly, often slowly but surely, the Holy Spirit begins the reshaping of our interior selves. Transformation takes place.

As we move through our days within this awareness of the Spirit’s creative use of silence—sometimes intense, sometimes not—we learn, as Maloney says, “to stand before God in honesty, humility, silent to our own need to tell God what we have been doing for Him” (33). In other words, any sense that we are doing something important simply goes by the bye. Instead, we become aware that God is doing something quite remarkable within us. Our actions—when done in love, joy, peace, and patience--are really the fruit of the Spirit.

Literally doing nothing, we center “upon God as the Source of all our energies,” as Maloney puts it. The point is this: we really don’t have to work real hard to bear fruit. Rather, it’s through “abiding” in God that we are set free to release the fruit of Spirit.

Isn’t that right, Harry?

World News This Week

While I'm not entirely sure, I think it was Reinhold Niebuhr who recommended that we pray with Scriptures in one hand and a newspaper in the other hand. That's good advice whether or not my memory of its ascription to Niebuhr is correct.

Several months ago Louise Heiss, a friend at Faith Lutheran Church, recommended that I subscribe to World News This Week, and I have found this ministry of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist
Lodi, California, USA, both a source of valuable information and a profoundly helpful resource for my prayer life. Here's how it works. Each week a volunteer scours through newspapers and news reports to learn where and how people are suffering from hunger, war, injustice, natural disasters, torture, false imprionment, economic stress, and environmental damage. Then that person writes a prayer and shares it with all of us who subscribe to World News This Week.

When I receive my weekly notice, I print myself a copy and place it in my prayerbook. Then, when its time for various "other prayers" (confessions, intercessions, thanksgivings, praises) in Morning and Evening Prayer, I pray one or more of the petitions, adding them to my prayers for family and friends. I pray these peitions slowly so that I keep their intent memorably in tact during the day. Admittedly, sometimes I don't know the circumstances surrounding some petitions and therefore find it necesary to do some research, usually right after my World News This We prayer incentives arrive.

You may want to look into subscribing to this service. Here, for example, is what I received this morning, what is now printed and placed in my prayerbook:

We pray for a commitment to life so full that we will not accept the ways of death. We pray to be led more fully by the Spirit. We pray to accept ourselves, and others, as children of God. Not enslaved by fear, but joyfully adopted into a family dedicated to witnessing the reality of life as it ought to be, we pray to live by the realization that Cornel West worded this way: “Indifference to injustice is more insidious than the injustice itself.”

Deliver us from indifference to the prevalence of slavery in the world. Let us not just pray for, but also devote our attention and contribute our resources to, the work of initiatives that combat child prostitution, that pursue liberation for individuals, that advocate for cultural and political change, and that break our hearts. Some say there is more slavery in the world now than at any time in its past. Deliver us from apathy.

Deliver us from indifference to the abuses of imprisonment. As we recall a fifth casualty of suicide among the detainees in Guantánamo, Cuba, let us not forget to mourn the death of a real person, a man from Yemen, a man with a name, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, held since February 2002, untried, allegedly a Taliban fighter. Let us not forget his fellow detainees, the Uighurs, and let us not accept the way journalists were denied information and access both to the suicide and to the protests of the Uighurs.

Deliver us from indifference to the efforts to suppress discussion of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China 20 years ago this week. All the old-fashioned forms of censorship are being supplemented with new efforts to make social networking unavailable. Let us celebrate the creativity, not to mention the courage, of those who would keep the images available. We pray especially for civic organizations in Hong Kong holding a vigil and otherwise noting the anniversary.

Deliver us from indifference to the circumstances of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and her country, Burma. Arouse effective response to the conscription of child soldiers, sexual violence, forced displacement and other violations of international law.

Correct our unwillingness to acknowledge the connection between prosperity and peace. Redouble our efforts to mitigate the damage that economic problems cause, not just for the sake of those who are most badly affected by also for all of us, who eventually suffer the consequences of a poorer world that becomes a more violent world.

Dismantle our preoccupation with simplicity. Grant us grace to understand and to work with the realities of no prevailing power group in Somalia, of no certain path for the swine flu virus, and of ills where we can find no one source of blame.

Finally, we pray you deliver us from indifference to evidence that some lessons are being learned. Brazil is set to show the lowest rate of Amazon deforestation in 20 years. Companies in the U.S. are responding to consumers, federal regulators, employees and environmental watchdogs with better monitoring of carbon emissions and with projects to reduce emissions. We can learn to expect better results when we make better efforts. Too often we come to you in childish ways, but always you respond to us with a wise love. We know that it is a human obligation to care for the world, and, we thank you for your abiding companionship in the effort.

Amen.

Image: Pray for the World

The Quiet Place

On a regular basis, a good many of us find it difficult to place ourselves both physically and spiritually in a "quiet place” where by desire and desert solitude we can simply “be” in the presence of God. I know that we're told that we can do so even in a busy airport where in some corner, amid all the announcements and distractions, we can enter an oxymoronic "terminal tranquility." But most of us beginning contemplatives naturally prefer the stillness of a garden, a room part, an empty chapel to the hurley-burley of a chair in WalMart. Somewhere deep inside of us there’s a nagging realization that Tom Merton has a good part of it right with this comment, made late in his life:

This will give us some idea of the proper preparation that the contemplative life requires. A life that is quiet, lived in the country, in touch with the rhythm of nature and the seasons. A life in which there is manual work, the exercise of arts and skills, not in a spirit of dilettantism, but with genuine reference to the needs of one's existence. The cultivation of the land, the care of farm animals, gardening. A broad and serious literary culture, music, art, again not in the spirit of Time and Life-(a chatty introduction to Titian, Prexiteles, and Jackson Pollock)-but a genuine and creative appreciation of the way poems, pictures, etc., are made. A life in which there is such a thing as serious conversation, and little or no TV. These things are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed. (The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. ed. William H. Shannon. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, 131)

Speaking for myself, I don’t really have a country life, my days cultivating the land; nor do I spend my hours in a “broad and serious literary culture” even though I’m a retired English professor. I wake up, sit in centering prayer for a while, have breakfast with June, do the traditional prayer office with her, and then try to make some headway in accomplishing the day’s obligations. Today, for example, I’ve got to “clean out” the debris (logs, old torn-away decks, hunks of styrofoam, and so on) from the lake cove. Jackson Lake is feed by three rivers; and when the rains come long and hard, upstream trash comes pouring into the lake. Since we live on the east side in a cove, the westerly winds blow the stuff up against the shore line. Right now it’s awful. So this week, my neighbors and I will load up a Georgia Power trash barge , and five or six times we’ll transport the head-high piles of river junk five miles down to the dam where we’ll unload it for recycling. That work will take four or five us three or four days. Some contemplative life, eh?

The good side of everything is that I get to work outside, away from the incessant noise of the TV. And while the lake trash sometimes smells awful (rotting leaves in the water), I do get to feel the sun’s warmth inbetween the showers, hear the screams of a hawk now and then, and see the rhododendrons in full bloom.

I take encouragement that Merton concludes his environmental remarks concerning the contemplative life when he says, “These things [“the exercise of arts and skills”] are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed.” Well, I suppose, like you, I too am getting “the type of exercise that is needed.” You do your office work, mow the grass, and feed the kids. I know that Merton himself was also frequently frustrated by his lack of time for solitude and quiet. After all, his monastery was nothing less than a huge bread factory, and he often complained about its noise and commercial preoccupations. The grind of the tractors in the fields were particularly bothersome (as were the roar of the bombers flying over from Fort Campbell.) All of which is to say that none of us has a so-called perfect place, neither inside or outside ourselves, wherein we may be always fully at rest in God. That will come only in death and life thereafter. But we should all take encouragement by the desire we have within us. That desire comes by the prompting of Holy Spirit. Keeping our eyes and ears open for beauty and loveliness, we can practice pausing often—and sometimes for quite a while—to enter the Quiet we seek. For me, sometimes the beginning of a contemplative turn comes just sitting to catch my breath. I know the same goes for you too.

There is in the heart "the peace of God that passeth all understanding," a quietness and confidence which is the source of all strength, a sweet peace, which nothing can offend, a deep rest which the world can neither give nortake away. There is in the center of the soul a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter and hush every other sound, we will hear His still small voice. (The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for theSpiritual Journey. Ed, Paul Harris. Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois. 1995) , 15.

The Interior Air

Thirty-three years George Maloney published his little book, Inward Stillness (Denville, NJ: Dimension, 1976); from my dog-eared copy I share this lightly edited (for more inclusive language) notice:

Silence is the interior air that the spirit of man needs in order to grow spiritually. Such silence leads us into the inner recess and there his Heavenly Father will recompense him (Matt.6:6). This recompensing comes to us in the healing of psychic disturbances, the chaotic meaninglessness of so many past experiences that hang like dried skeletons within our memories, the anxieties that force man into an isolation of deadly loneliness. We become consoled, loved by God in an experience that is beyond concepts. We know that we know God loves us! This being-loved-by-God experience at the deepest level of our consciousness restores our strength, pushes us to new self-giving and creativity. (30)

This is what happens during morning and evening prayer, within centering prayer, during the open intervals of our day, while awakening to night's dark silence, and when pausing long in the slow, quiet reading of Scripture. During such times we open ourselves to the mind of Christ. During such times, we breathe deeply "the interior air."

Image: Samantha Lamb, Breathing Deeply

Praying Selflessly

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together reminds us that we practice selfless prayer when we pray the psalms:

The psalms teach us to pray as a fellowship. The Body of Christ is praying, and as an individual one acknowledges that his prayer is only a minute fragment of the whole prayer of the Church. He learns to pray the prayer of the Body of Christ. And that lifts him above his personal concerns and allows him to pray selflessly.

To pray selflessly means that we practice a letting-go of many seemingly important personal needs. In the psalms we let the egocentric desires of the self recede into the background and eventually learn to let them go entirely. We enter the lives of other people, especially the poor. As we practice letting go of ourselves, we learn learn that our emptiness is filled with the suffering of others and the active Presence of God. We enter the place and space where "no things" weigh us down and we are lifted up with and for the world in Christ's Body to God the Father. This is the work of a lifetime, but it may surely begin and continue whenever we enter God's gift of the psalms.

_____

Image: Dean Mitchell, Rowena