Something for us all to remember...

The tactic of nonviolence is a tactic of love that seeks the salvation and redemption of the opponent, not [our opponent's] castigation, humiliation, and defeat. A pretended nonviolence that seeks to defeat and humiliate the adversary by spiritual instead of physical attack is little more than a confession of weakness. True nonviolence is totally different from this, and much more difficult. It strives to operate without hatred, without hostility, and without resentment. It works without aggression, taking the side of the good that it is able to find already present in the adversary. This may be easy to talk about in theory. It is not easy in practice, especially when the adversary is aroused to a bitter and violent defense of an injustice which [the adversary] believes to be just. We must therefore be careful how we talk about our opponents, and still more careful how we regulate our differences with our collaborators. It is possible for the bitterest arguments, the most virulent hatreds, to arise among those who are supposed to be working together for the noblest of causes...

Nothing is better calculated to ruin and discredit a holy ideal than a fratricidal [and sororicidal] war among "saints."

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, Inc., 1966) pp. 73-74

Follow me...

Did not the Lord's flock actually follow him in tribulation and persecution, shame and hunger, sickness and trial and all the rest, and thereby receive eternal life from the Lord? What a great shame, then, that while the saints actually followed in the footsteps of the Lord, we, today's servants of God, expect glory and honor simply because we can recite what they did.

Saint Francis of Assisi
Admonition 6
with thanks to Portiuncula

Go with God, Gabrielle, we'll miss you!

Two of my favourite blogs, Contemplative Haven and Consecrated to Mary, by our sister in prayer Gabrielle, are going offline. She writes,

Dear friends, this will be my last post at Contemplative Haven. As I stated on my “Mary” blog, it is time now for me to slip back into a more contemplative life, offline. I want to thank you all for the years of friendship, fun, angst, joys, sorrows, humour and prayer - you have all sustained me - each and every one of you. May God bless you and keep you, and may you continue to flourish in your contemplative lives.

Gabrielle states on her "Mary" blog that she'll "leave Consecrated to Mary available for a while, in case there are any prayers here that you would like to copy, or any links that you would like to bookmark for your own future use." Hopefully Contemplative Haven will remain on-line for a while, too. If you're not familiar with this wonderful writer, do have a read through some of her back posts; her blogrolls and links lists are a treasure-trove, too.

Foolish, weak and inefficient...

We must learn to trust God. Developing that trust is worth some particular attention, worth making time to stop and pray, and be quiet in God.

That may be impractical, but the way of faith is not the way of efficiency. God has not called us to an efficient way of life. We are called to a way of faith. Much is a matter of listening and waiting.

Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

I am already forgetting the only thing that the silence has taught me: our lives are useable for God. We need not be effective, but only transparent and vulnerable.

God takes it all from there, and there is not much point in comparing who is better, right, higher or lower, or supposedly saved. We are all partial images slowly coming into focus, to the degree we allow and filter the Light and Love of God.

Richard Rohr, from Contemplation in Action

When we discover ourselves "hidden with Christ in God," we don't need any kind of self-image at all. I hope this doesn't sound too esoteric, because it isn't; it's what happens in true prayer.

This is what will happen when we expose ourselves to silence and stop exposing ourselves to the judgments of the world; when we stop continuously "picking up" the energy of others; when we stop thinking about what others think of us and what they take us to be. We are who we are in God - no more and no less.

Richard Rohr, from Simplicity

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

1 Corinthians 1.26-29

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Colossians 3.1-4

I always seem to come back to this disconnect between myself and "the world" of England in 2008. I think that what is happening to me, in itself a development of the character I was born with, I guess, is an outworking of the call to be a Tertiary, a Franciscan living not in a religious community, but in "the world". I have always struggled slightly with some of the Principles of the Thrid Order, where they speak of (4, 12 for example) of doing things "in the spirit" of the evangelical counsels. It comes over almost as a cop-out: OK, we Tertiaries are all caught up in property, marriage and careers, but hey, we'll have a play at being religious, just so long as it doesn't interfere too much with our lives.

Now, I know this isn't how Francis saw the Third Order at its inception, and it certainly isn't how most of my fellow Tertiaries live, but it has always felt a bit this way to me. More than likely, that's because of my own weakness, and my own tendency to seize on excuses for laxity! I have prayed long and perplexedly about it, and what seems to be emerging into the fog of my own confusion is what Rohr is saying in the passages I've quoted above.

Trying to follow our dear brother St. Francis, especially in the contemplative aspects of his life, is always going to set us against society's preconceptions about life. We are taught from an early age that learning and cleverness, strength, dynamism and effectiveness, are the best things we have to offer life; and in return, life will give us - or rather, we will seize - the "good things in life": wealth, fame, sexual conquest. The way of Francis, which is after all only the way of Christ, runs utterly counter to this philosophy. It does indeed look like a steep and narrow way sometimes, gazing up from the Oxford Street along the way to the desert, but at the end is glory!

The seventy returned [to Jesus] with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."

Luke 10.17-24

Only prayers of praise...

St. Francis passed on to us only prayers of praise. He went simply through his life finding new things for which to praise God at every turn: the little things, nature, the creatures, the animals, situations, his brothers - for whatever is happening, he praises God.

Francis is never achieving God's love; he is celebrating it! He continually celebrates God's love in everything he sees and experiences. Mature prayer always breaks into gratitude.

Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.

Richard Rohr, from The Great Themes of Scripture

Brother Bernard loses it...

How much grace God often gave to the poor men who followed the Gospel and who voluntarily gave up all things for the love of God was manifested in Brother Bernard of Quintavalle who, after he had taken the habit of St. Francis, was very frequently rapt in God by the contemplation of heavenly things.

Thus one time it happened that while he was attending Mass in a church and his whole mind was on God, he became so absorbed and rapt in contmplation that during the Elevation of the Body of Christ he was not at all aware of it and did not kneel down when the others knelt, and he did not draw his cowl back as did the others who were there, but he stayed motionless, without blinking his eyes, gazing straight ahead, from morning until noon.

Brother Bernard of
Quintavalle
Little Flowers of St. Francis - 28
with thanks to Portiuncula

I know just how he felt!

An act of surrender...

Maggie Ross has just posted number IV in her Ethics Issuing from Silence series. She begins:

When silence is the wellspring, day-to-day living evolves toward simplicity and unobtrusiveness. To inhabit silence naturally leads to embracing silence in the exterior as well as interior worlds. Changes to the way you live may take place subtly and gradually, almost without your realizing it.

and ends:

In short, there is good news and bad news. The "bad" news is that you will never again feel at home in the culture around you. The good news is that you now lead a life whose riches were once unimaginable. There is no language to describe it. Far from being a selfish exercise, a life lived from the wellspring of silence influences other lives - but without our being aware of this fact. Silence itself has resonances, but the way you have come to be in the world quietly opens the possibility of transfiguration to everyone around you.

I would urge you to click over and read the whole post. But I mention it here not just as a recommendation - heartfelt though that is - but because I am so convinced that this life of prayer comes to permeate all that we are, and that accepting that God has called us in this way is to accept the most profound rearrangement of all we have come to accept as "normal life".

Richard Rohr writes:

The most simple and spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's also the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love.

We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place of the soul without a great love, without the light and love of the Lord. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique...

We must learn to trust God. Developing that trust is worth some particular attention, worth making time to stop and pray, and be quiet in God.

That may be impractical, but the way of faith is not the way of efficiency. God has not called us to an efficient way of life. We are called to a way of faith. Much is a matter of listening and waiting.

(Radical Grace, Daily Meditations)

This act of surrender, this taking of our hands off the controls of our life, is anything but a trivial thing. It is perhaps the most radical act, short of dying, that we're likely to find ourselves involved in. As Rohr suggests, it requires courage - but not the raw, exhilarating courage that comes in some emergency, and permits acts of bravery we'd never consider if we had time to think. It's a long-term kind of courage, much more like the courage that keeps a mother at the bedside of her sick child through the cold hours before dawn. But this courage is ultimately a decision for joy, paradoxically enough. The love of God is the most joyful thing there is, and all we stand to lose are the things that stand between that love and our own heart.

For silence is not God, nor speaking; fasting is not God, nor eating; solitude is not God, nor company; nor any other pair of opposites. He is hidden between them, and cannot be found by anything your soul does, but only by the love of your heart. He cannot be known by reason, he cannot be thought, caught, or sought by understanding. But he can be loved and chosen by the true, loving will of your heart.

The Cloud of Unknowing

Mary, on her Birthday...

Saint Francis embraced the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ with indescribable love, because she had made the Lord of Majesty our brother and had obtained mercy for us. After Christ, it was Mary in whom he placed his trust and whom he chose as advocate, both for himself and his brothers.

Saint Francis of Assisi, from St. Bonaventure, Major Life - 9:3
with thanks to Porticuncula

Our Lady's origin is wrapped in silence, as was her whole life. Thus, her birth speaks to us of humility. The more we desire to grow in God's eyes, the more we should hide ourselves from the eyes of creatures. The more we wish to do great things for God, the more we should labour in silence and obscurity.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen OCD, Divine Intimacy, 1964

The second gaze

I make no apologies for reproducing the following without comment: I'm not feeling too well today, and in any case what could my comments add to such wisdom, truly? All I can say is that, as far as my slight experience goes, all Rohr says here has proved to be only too true!

My immediate response to most situations is with reactions of attachment, defensiveness, judgment, control and analysis. I am better at calculating than contemplating. Let's admit that we all start there. The false self seems to have the 'first gaze' at almost everything. On my better days, when I am open, undefended and immediately present, I can sometimes begin with a contemplative mind and heart. Often I can get there later and even end there, but it is usually a second gaze. It is an hour by hour battle, at least for me. I can see why all spiritual traditions insist on daily prayer - in fact, morning, midday, evening, and before we go to bed prayer, too! Otherwise, I can assume that I am back in the cruise control of small and personal self-interest, the pitiable and fragile "richard" self.

The first gaze is seldom compassionate. It is too busy weighing and feeling itself: "How will this affect me?" or "How does my self-image demand that I react to this?" or "How can I get back in control of this situation?" This leads us to an implosion, a self-preoccupation that cannot enter into communion with the other or the moment. Only after God has taught us how to live 'undefended' can we immediately stand with and for the other and for the moment. It takes lots of practice.

On a practical level, my days are two extremes: both very busy and very quiet and alone. I avoid most social gatherings, frankly because I know my soul has other questions to ask and answer as I get older. Small talk and 'busyness about many things' will not get me there. If I am going to continue to address groups, as if I have something to say, then I have to really know what I know, really believe what I believe, and my life has to be more experiential and intimate than mere repetition of formulas and doctrines. I am waiting, practicing and asking for the second gaze.

Your practice must somehow include the 'problem.' Prayer is not the avoiding of distractions, but precisely how you deal with distractions. Contemplation is a daily merging with the 'problem' and finding its full resolution. What you quickly and humbly learn in contemplation is that how you do anything is probably how you do everything. If you are brutal in your inner reaction to your own littleness and sinfulness, your social relationships and even your politics will probably be the same - brutal.

It has taken me much of my life to begin to get to the second gaze. By nature I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses, as you might expect. They are both good teachers. A life of solitude and silence allows them both, and invariably leads me to the second gaze. The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of Divine Intimacy is really all I have, and all I have to give, even though I don't always do it.

God leads by compassion toward the soul, never by condemnation. If God would relate to us by severity and punitiveness, God would only be giving us permission to do the same. God offers us, instead, the grace to 'weep' over our sins more than ever perfectly overcome them, to humbly recognize our littleness rather than become big. It is the way of Cain. It is a kind of weeping and a kind of wandering that keeps us both askew and awake.

So now my later life call is to 'wander in the land of Nod,' enjoying God's so often proven love and protection and to look back at my life, and everybody's life, the One-and-Only-Life, marked happily and gratefully with the sign of Cain. Contemplation and compassion are finally coming together. This is my second gaze. It is well worth waiting for, because only the second gaze sees fully and truthfully. It sees itself, the other and even God with God's own eyes, which are always eyes of compassion.

Richard Rohr, from Radical Grace, with thanks to Inward/Outward

The little lark...

Above all birds [St. Francis] loved the little lark, known in the language of the country as lodola capellata (the hooded lark). He used to say of it, "Sister lark has a hood like a Religious and is a humble bird, for she walks contentedly along the road to find grain, and even if she finds it among the rubbish, she pecks it out and eats it."

With thanks to Portiuncula

I love St. Francis' way of calling the animals, and indeed all creation, his sister and brother. I cannot think of them any other way myself, and their joy and their pain is my joy and my pain too. I remember feeling that way when I was very young - but it was not until God led me deeper into prayer that I recovered those feelings, purer and deeper now, and less changeable. Lord, keep me always close to all the wonders you have made, and keep my heart always open to my sister and brother creatures, whoever they are.

Trusting holy visitations...

The Incarnation is time to celebrate, or as Thomas Merton puts it: "Make ready for the Christ, whose smile - like lightning - sets free the song of everlasting glory that now sleeps, in your paper flesh - like dynamite."

And God goes ahead enfleshing spirit and inspiriting the flesh; while for us, who have learned, like Elizabeth, to trust holy visitations, our life leaps within us for joy!

Richard Rohr, from Near Occasions of Grace

Contemplation outside the walls...

So many people, including Catholics, have no image in their random access memory to attach to the words contemplative life, monastery or cloister. Such images have faded from the radar screen of our culture. There was a time when you could mention Carmelites, St. Therese of Lisieux or Teresa of Avila to help people focus the lens of association. Those words draw blanks now. People ask, “So what work to you do?” And you know they don’t get it.

Then I explain that the life of contemplative nuns is enclosed (confined to the monastery) in service to the apostolic work of prayer; communal prayer in the regular recitation or singing of the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours) and daily private prayer. Such concentration requires that we stay close to home...

from Contemplative Horizon

Monasticism tells us something important about the structure of our humanity. Almost every single one of the major world traditions has developed some form of cenobitic life. Just as some people - at all times and in all cultures - have felt impelled to become dancers, poets, or musicians, others are irresistibly drawn to a life of silence and prayer...

The monastic life demands a kind of death - the death of the ego that we feed so voraciously in secular life. We are, perhaps, biologically programmed to self-preservation. Even when our physical survival is not in jeopardy, we seek to promote ourselves, to make ourselves liked, loved, and admired; display ourselves to best advantage; and pursue our own interests - often ruthlessly. But this self-preoccupation, all the world religions tell us, paradoxically holds us back from our best selves. Many of our problems spring from thwarted egotism. We resent the success of others; in our gloomiest, most self-pitying moments, we feel uniquely mistreated and undervalued; we are miserably aware of our shortcomings. In the world outside the cloister, it is always possible to escape such self-dissatisfaction: we can phone a friend, pour a drink, or turn on the television. But the religious has to face his or her pettiness twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If properly and wholeheartedly pursued, the monastic life liberates us from ourselves - incrementally, slowly, and imperceptibly. Once a monk has transcended his ego, he will experience an alternative mode of being. It is an ekstasis, a "stepping outside" the confines of self.

From Karen Armstrong’s Introduction to A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor (New York Review of Books, 1982) with thanks to Vicki K Black

As Tertiaries, some of us feel called more to the contemplative dimension of St. Francis' life than to the active. As it states in the Principles of the Third Order, "We as Tertiaries desire to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, whom we serve in the three ways of Prayer, Study, and Work. In the life of the Order as a whole, these three ways must each find full and balanced expression, but it is not to be expected that all members devote themselves equally to each of them."

It's not necessarily easy, though, to reconcile the imperatives described in the two passages above with the demands of daily life outside a community. Henri Nouwen says,

How can we stay in solitude when we feel that deep urge to be distracted by people and events? The most simple way is to focus our minds and hearts on a word or picture that reminds us of God. By repeating quietly: "The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want," or by gazing lovingly at an icon of Jesus, we can bring our restless minds to some rest and experience a gentle divine presence.

This doesn't happen overnight. It asks a faithful practice. But when we spend a few moments every day just being with God, our endless distractions will gradually disappear.

I shouldn't imagine it will be any surprise, if you're a regular reader of this blog, that I should connect this with the practice of the Jesus Prayer - but it is by means of such "faithful practice", whether of the Jesus Prayer, the Holy Rosary, or any of the other prayers of what might be called "contemplative repetition", that we are enabled to keep a creative tension in our lives, rather than a destructive one.

Brother Ramon points out,

It is difficult to speak of the aim or goal of [contemplative] prayer, for there is a sense in which it is a process of union which is as infinite as it is intimate... The meaning and design of the Jesus Prayer is an ever deepening union with God, within the communion of saints. It is personal, corporate and eternal, and the great mystics, in the Biblical tradition, come to an end of words. They say that "eye has not seen nor ear heard", they speak of "joy unspeakable" and "groanings unutterable" and "peace that passes understanding".

But there are some things which we can say, which are derivative of that central core of ineffable experience. We can say that such prayer contains within itself a new theology of intercession. It is not that we are continually naming names before God, and repeating stories of pain, suffering and bereavement on an individual and corporate level, but rather that we are able to carry the sorrows and pains of the world with us into such contemplative prayer as opens before us in the use of the Jesus Prayer. God knows, loves and understands more than we do, and he carries us into the dimension of contemplative prayer and love, and effects salvation, reconciliation and healing in his own way, using us as the instruments of his peace, pity and compassion.

Thus we can say that the "prayer of the heart" unites us with the whole order of creation, and
imparts to us a cosmic awareness of the glory of God in both the beauty and the sadness of the world. The process of transfiguration for the whole world has begun in the Gospel, but it will not be completed until the coming of Christ in glory. And until that time we are invited, through prayer, to participate in the healing of the world's ills by the love of God. And if we participate at such a level, then we shall know both pain and glory. The life and ministry of Jesus in the gospels reveal this dimension, for Jesus was at one and the same time the "man of sorrows, acquainted with grief", and the transfigured healer, manifesting the glory of the Father upon the holy mountain.

Brother Ramon SSF Praying the Jesus Prayer Marshall Pickering 1988

The ways of peace...

Christ, no one on earth really wants the pain and horror of war.
We do not want to kill or be killed, to hurt or be hurt.
But we all see injustice,
and sometimes it makes us angry
and we see no other way to right the wrong
except by war.
Christ, teach us the ways of peace!
Calm our angry hearts
and grant to all peoples and their leaders
patience in the search for peace and justice.
Help us to be ready to give up
some of our comforts and power and pride,
so that war will leave the face of the earth
and we may work for you in peace.

"Teach Us the Ways of Peace" by Avery Brooke, in Plain Prayers in a Complicated World (Cowley Publications, 1993)

With thanks to Vicki K. Black

The recovery of tears...

This morning, writing about the relationship between contemplative and intercessory prayer, I remarked on Maggie Ross's reference to St. Isaac the Syrian, or St. Isaac of Nineveh, whichever you prefer, and I quoted my own favourite passage:

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.

(Ascetical Homilies, pp. 344-5)

This evening, to my amazement, Maggie Ross has posted an extract from an article first published in Sobornost, Spring 1987, pp. 14-23:

In the earliest days of the Church, tears had an integral place in Christian life, and we find their most eloquent champions in the early Syrian tradition, especially in Ephrem and Isaac. Like so many insights of the early Church, teaching on tears has fallen prey to theological reductionism, and what is communicated to us today is not profound insight into human nature, but spiritual imperative. As a result, especially in the West, tears have been relegated to the spiritual museum where they are regarded as quaint, embarrassing and even shameful. There is, however, a growing realisation that something is radically wrong with this view...

it is my thesis that tears are absolutely central to Christian experience, and that we need to recover them today. Tears signify losing one's life - or what one thinks is one's life; one's pseudo-life - in order to gain true life; tears are at the core of receiving and mirroring the outpouring of God's love in kenosis, which begins with creation and reaches its culmination in Jesus the Christ.

She goes on to quote from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, which I've taken the liberty of reproducing here in the NRSV:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. (Ch. 2 vv 5-9)

A very dangerous activity...

Contemplation is a change in consciousness. It brings us to see beyond boundaries, beyond denominations, beyond doctrines, dogmas and institutional self-interest straight into the face of a mothering God from whom comes all the life that comes.

To claim to be aware of the oneness of life and not to regard all of it as sacred trust is a violation of the very purpose of contemplation, the immersion in the God of life. To talk about the oneness of life and not to know oneness with all of life may be intellectualism but it is not contemplation. Contemplation is not ecstasy unlimited. It is enlightenment unbounded by parochialisms, chauvinisms, classisms and gender.

Transformed from within, the contemplative becomes a new kind of presence in the world, signaling another way of being, seeing with new eyes and speaking with new words the Word of God. The contemplative can never again be a complacent participant in an oppressive system. From contemplation comes not only the consciousness of the universal connectedness of life but the courage to model it, as well.

Those who have no flame in their hearts for justice, no consciousness of responsibility for the reign of God, no raging commitment to human community may indeed be seeking God. But make no mistake, God is still, at best, only an idea to them, not a reality. Indeed, contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then, of course, something must be done. Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within. We become new people and, in the doing, see everything around us newly, too. We become connected to everything, to everyone. We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.

Joan Chittister, from 30goodminutes.org with thanks to Inward/Outward

This is what I keep trying to say when I write about contemplative prayer as being not less involved than intercession as it is often understood, but more involved; not self-obsessed but self-forgetful.

Maggie Ross wrote unforgettably of this:

There are as many ways of intercession as there are moments of life. Intercession can become deep and habitual, hidden even from our selves. There is nothing exotic about such practice. What matters is the intention that creates the space and the stillness. Even something as simple as refusing to anesthetize the gnawing pain in the pit of your soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition is a form of habitual intercession. To bear this pain into the silence is to bring it into the open place of God’s infinite mercy. It is in our very wounds that we find the solitude and openness of our re-creation and our being. We learn to go to the heart of pain to find God’s new life, hope, possibility, and joy. This is the priestly task of our baptism.

She (Ross) references St. Isaac the Syrian (aka St. Isaac of Nineveh), the 7th Century anchorite, in her footnotes. I am not sure which passage she is thinking of precisely; but the one that comes immediately to my mind is this one:

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.

(Ascetical Homilies, pp. 344-5)

Those words probably come nearer than anything I've read to expressing what I've come to feel over the years I've been praying like this. It was only when I truly accepted the truth of St. Paul's words, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express..." (Romans 8.26 NIV) and admitted to myself that they perfectly described the way I came to prayer, that I began to understand what this strange calling might mean; and what living as a signal of a new way of being, a human sign of God's merciful presence, might involve. And that I am only just starting to know, at a very superficial level, since it once again involves paradox. A sign is to be seen; the calling of the contemplative is to hiddenness.

Jesus, the woman and the dogs...

I have read and heard a number of people's thoughts (here, for instance, and here) recently on Matthew's story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. To save you looking it up, here it is:

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, 'Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.' But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, 'Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' But she came and knelt before him, saying, 'Lord, help me.' He answered, 'It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' She said, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.' Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15.21-28)

Many of the recent comments I've read focus on the possibility that what we read here is an account of Jesus' growing self-awareness, his understanding of himself and his mission only gradually expanding to encompass the universal scope of the work his Father had sent him to do, and of himself as Saviour of the world, not just of Israel. Now, I'm not doubting that Jesus did come, at least in some respects, gradually to a full understanding of who and why he was, and of the divine dimension of his identity. It seems unlikely that he was born with the whole package, as it were, clear in his mind from day one. However, I'd always read this passage rather differently, and I was amused to discover this morning that the great Quaker theologian and philosopher D. Elton Trueblood read it much the same way.

What if Jesus were actually teasing the Canaanite woman? What if there was an obvious twinkle in his eye when he spoke those words, and an eyebrow raised in the direction of his disciples, who were after all rather prone to trying to maintain the exclusivity of his ministry (sending away the little children, for instance, and ignoring Bartimaeus)? Her witty reply would then make sense, and would be be far more believable humanly that way, than as a response to a cold-eyed denial. Come to think of it, can you really, honestly, imagine a cold-eyed denial from Jesus to anyone, let alone a woman distraught about her daughter's suffering?

If you'd like to read more on this, I can recommend Glenn Miller's fascinating article; and his eye-opening remarks about Greek words for dogs!

Our friends and our enemies - please pray!

Jesus Christ, our Lord, whose footsteps we're to follow, called his betrayer "friend" and willingly handed himself over to his crucifiers. Our friends, then, are all those who unjustly inflict upon us tests and ordeals, shame and injury, sorrows and torments, martyrdom and death. They are the ones we should love most, for what they're really inflicting upon us is eternal life.

Saint Francis of Assisi
Rule of 1221
Chapter XXII
with thanks to Portiuncula

Father Sergio Baldin, the Franciscan friar who is fighting for his life after being savagely attacked at a monastery in the foothills of the Alps near Turin, had recently enraged a local criminal gang by helping an Albanian prostitute to escape its clutches, church sources said today.

Colonel Antonio Di Vita, head of the Carabinieri in the province of Turin, said that although all options were open, the predominant police theory was that Father Baldin and three other monks, who were all badly beaten by three masked assailants, were the victims of an attempted robbery.

However Father Gabriele Trivellin, provincial head of the Franciscan order of Friars Minor, said that the "sheer fury" of the assault showed that the aim was not theft but revenge. He was backed by Cardinal Severino Poletto, the Archbishop of Turin, who said: "If you ask me if this was a punitive raid, I would say yes, the facts point in that direction".

Father Trivellin said that the monks, who are all being treated in hospital, were known to have had helped girls involved in local drugs and prostitution rackets to leave a life of crime and turn to religion. "I know that one young girl in particular recently presented herself at the monastery and asked for help," he said...

Father Baldin, Father Battagliotti, Father Salvatore Magliano, 86, and Father Martino Gurini, 76, a former missionary in Bolivia, were having their evening meal at the San Colombano Belmonte monastery near Turin when they were attacked by three hooded men who gagged and bound them before punching, kicking and beating them with clubs.

From a full report at Times Online

Please pray for the Brothers, for their attackers, and especially for the girls who may still be at risk.

A delicate and intricate machine...

The first recommendation tonight is: don't let us waste much time gazing at ourselves. A deepened and enriched sense of God is far more important than increased and detailed knowledge of the self. God, our redeemer and sustainer, is all and does all, and is the one Reality. Life comes with such thoughts. Plunging more deeply in him with faith and love will do more than self-concerned efforts. We can do nothing of ourselves but depress ourselves and get fussy.

Don't behave like the inexperienced motorist who goes for a drive and spends all day lying in the road under the machine examining the works. The soul is a delicate and intricate machine. When it needs pulling to pieces, it is best to leave it to God. Our prayer should be that of Saint Augustine: "The house of my soul is narrow. Enlarge it, so that you may enter in. It stands in ruins: do you repair it and make it fair."

First to last, put all emphasis on God. Attend to him. Forget yourselves if you can. Bathe in his light. Respond to the unmatched attraction. Be energized by his power. Try to realize a little of the perpetual molding action of his Spirit on your souls.

Have you ever seen the popular experiment of iron filings in the field of a magnet? Those little specks of matter are nothing in themselves, but when they are placed in the field of a magnet, each becomes a centre of energy, instantly influenced by an invisible power. They align themselves parallel to the lines of the magnet's force.

From The Ways of the Spirit by Evelyn Underhill, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999) - with thanks to Vicki K Black

The man who had become a living prayer

Often, without moving his lips, St. Francis would meditate for a long time, and, concentrating, centring his external powers, he would rise in spirit to heaven. Thus, he directed his whole mind and affections to the one thing he was asking of God. He was not so much a man who prayed, as a man who had become a living prayer.

Saint Francis of Assisi
Thomas of Celano, Second Life - 95
with thanks to Portiuncula

I think we sometimes forget the depth of St. Francis' contemplative life!

The centre of your own poverty...

A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us. He moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us. All variety, all complexity, all paradox, all multiplicity cease. Our mind swims in the air of an understanding, a reality that is dark and serene and includes in itself everything. Nothing more is desired. Nothing more is wanting. Our only sorrow, if sorrow be possible at all, is the awareness that we ourselves still live outside of God...

You seem to be the same person and you are the same person that you have always been: in fact you are more yourself than you have ever been before... You feel as if you were at last fully born... Now you have come out into your element. And yet now you have become nothing. You have sunk to the center of your own poverty, and there you have felt the doors fly open into infinite freedom, into a wealth which is perfect because none of it is yours and yet it all belongs to you.

And now you are free to go in and out of infinity.

[T]he depths of wide-open darkness that have yawned inside you... are not a place, not an extent, they are a huge, smooth activity. These depths, they are Love. And in the midst of you they form a wide, impregnable country.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, 1961, with thanks to Barbara, whose quotation from this passage set me off looking it up...

Merton is pushing the boundaries of what it is possible to express in human language, making what he once called, Raids on the Unspeakable. I don't know that, from my own slight experience of prayer, and with my own linguistic limitations, I can actually add anything to what Merton says here; but it certainly confirms what I have to my own small degree come near.

When we come anywhere near the immense unknowability of God - except as he reveals himself in Christ - our sight is darkened by his infinite light, and our hearing stilled by the breath of the voice that called the worlds into being. I Kings 19 - when Elijah stood on the mountain before the Lord, there was a great wind, then an earthquake, and then a fire, but the Lord was not in any of them, but "after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave."

This is perhaps what the anonymous author called the Cloud of Unknowing between ourselves and God, and he spoke of "smiting on" that cloud with our prayer - for it is all we can do. It is God who will open up to us, and what he opens is that door Merton speaks of here, in the very centre of all that we are. But it is only in extreme poverty of soul that we can come to that place, forgetting, as the Cloud author says, all we ever knew. There may be as many ways to that centre of poverty as there are people who pray; but the only way there that I know is through the terrible weakness of Romans 8.26, where, we having reached an end of knowing anything about praying, the very Spirit of God prays in our stead, with "sighs too deep for words."

Certainly it is in using words to bring us to an end of words - whether a prayer like the Jesus Prayer, or the Holy Rosary, or the Cloud author's "little word of one syllable" - that we come beyond knowing into unknowing, beyond seeing into a light so perfect that it darkens our vision, beyond hearing into the sheer silence of God. And in that "wide, impregnable country" is our true home, and our "infinite freedom." Oh, God, how I love you!

Settling down in the quiet...

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.

Thomas Merton: No Man Is an Island, with thanks to Inward/Outward

I think this has much to do with the sense that I have tried to articulate, albeit clumsily, in the last few posts, that it is only as we give up our relentless desire for self-determination - the "key-code to the soul's chartroom", as I put it yesterday - that we become free to be who we really are. The withdrawal "from effects that are beyond our control" is perhaps a better way of putting what I was trying to say about accepting losses. And "to exist without any special recognition" is surely that hiddenness which lies at the heart of my own call to follow Francis... and in that is peace, "peace which the world cannot give..."

St. Francis on the Eucharist...

With every fiber of his being Francis burned with love for the Sacrament of the Body of the Lord. It left him overcome with wonder for so great a condescension and merciful love. He was said to be disconsolate if, even once, he could not hear daily Mass, even if it was impossible to do so. He received communion often and with such devotion as to make others experience a like devotion. He rendered every reverence to so venerable a sacrament, offering the sacrifice of his whole self; and when he received the Immolated Lamb of God, he immolated his own spirit in that fire which was always burning on the altar of his heart.

St. Francis of Assisi - Celano, Second Life - 201
with thanks to Portiuncula

The ethics of silence...

It is as if there is a hidden glory radiating from each person which will reveal itself only to those who have been able to focus outward and wait in generosity, allowing their own hidden glory - hidden especially from themselves - to pour forth. Each person can realize this glory by relinquishing closely-held shibboleths to listen receptively to the silence, through the silence to the other. Even as the observing I/eye is elided, the glory pours through.

The ethics that issue from the work of silence are counter-cultural. The notion of relating to people with respect by creating a welcoming space where the often surprising truth of the other may unfold is often regarded with contempt by those who take their ethics from a Machiavellian perspective. For them, relating to others without trying to manipulate them is seen as weakness.

It is for this reason that leaders like Rowan William are often under attack from all sides. The ethics that issue from silence are kenotic, that is, they arise from a wellspring of silence that has manifested itself by pouring through those who have made themselves available to it. One reason history has a tendency to repeat itself is that there are so few leaders who understand the discernment of the need to wait to see what unfolds, to be inclusive, to not act. A leader who seeks his or her own self-interest and acts accordingly will inevitably be caught in the feedback loops that eventually generate division, violence, and abuse, while a kenotic leader can often be a catalyst for something entirely new to break in.

from: Maggie Ross: Ethics Issuing from Silence (III)

I want to examine this concept a little more clearly in future posts, but Maggie Ross's essay (which I'd encourage you to read in full if you've time) moves us into considering the counter-cultural nature of our faith in its contemplative dimension. We mustn't shy instinctively away from recognising this, saying, I'm not a punk or a protester, I can't be counter-cultural. There's a strong and respected line of exegesis that suggests that the main motive for Jesus' crucifixion, and for the later persecution of the early church, was precisely the counter-cultural nature of the Gospel.

In his excellent book Finding Sanctuary, Christopher Jamison OSB, Abbot of Worth, criticising the consumerist, market-driven society in which we in the UK live, traces it back to the initiatives of Margaret Thatcher's government of the 1980s. He says:

Twentieth-century Britain once had a raft of organisations such as trade unions and professional bodies, which dictated much of the pace of ordinary life. For example, trade unions protected people from long working hours for poor pay, and professional associations enabled doctors, lawyers and other professionals to regulate the way they worked. But by the 1980s British industry was falling behind commercially in the global economy, and it fell to the Thatcher government to tackle the problem. Their solution was to destroy or reduce the power of institutions such as trade unions. This would enable market forces to operate more freely and so force the British economy to modernise; the demands of the market would now dictate every aspect of life. This applied not only to the working classes but to the professional classes as well. Far from protecting people, the state now sought to maximise competition in order to ensure that market forces decided everything in the lives of its citizens. For example, the national institutions that provided water, gas and electricity were sold off to private companies, which cut costs while trying to meet the demands of the customer in new ways. Even the National Health Service had to create an 'internal market'.

This market economy led inevitably to the emergence of a consumerist approach to life, with the slogan: 'Let the customer decide.'... So British society now defines a person as a consumer...

In simple terms, the consumerist lifestyle forces people to work too hard in order to fulfil their consumer ambitions... Armed with this understanding, you can stand back from the culture and question it. You are a free person and you can choose how busy you want to be. Freely choosing to resist the urge to busy-ness is the frame of mind you need before you can take any steps towards finding sanctuary... (pp. 15-16)

Maggie Ross's phrase, "relating to others [by] trying to manipulate them" is precisely the consumerist way, manipulating the people into "engag[ing] in endless productive work in order to... fund endless consumption." (Jamison p.17)

It is only in emptying ourselves of this "endless consumption" that we are free to live by - live among - the ethics of silence. I am so moved by what Maggie Ross says of Rowan Williams in this context. We are so blessed by having an Archbishop who is a contemplative and an historian of spirituality rather than an ecclesiastical politician. In many ways he reminds me, especially in his 2002 Dimbleby Lecture, of William Temple - and that's no bad thing!

So why should we do what the government tells us? The structures and priorities of the market state alone will simply not deliver an answer to this question that isn't finally destructive of our liberty - because they deprive us of the resources we need to make decisions that are properly human decisions, bound up with past and future. We need to be able to talk about what we're related to that isn't just defined by the specific agenda of the moment. This presents religious traditions with enormous opportunities - and enormous responsibilities. Because we know that religious involvement in public life has not always been benign; but those of us who have religious faith have learned something of how to engage with the social orders of the modern world; and it is up to us to articulate with as much energy and imagination as we can our understanding of that larger story without which the most fundamental and challenging human questions won't even get asked, let alone answered.

Rowan Williams: The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2002

Letting it all go...

Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy... In other words, the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is "answered," it is not so much by a world that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, Doubleday & Company, 1969

It is that not expecting, not anticipating, some particular thing, that is so difficult for us. We have so many losses already, and this loss of self-determination even on the level of cognition seems like a loss too far, like the rich young ruler's wealth (Luke 18.18ff). Yet it is in losing ourself, losing even our keys to the doors of perception, that we find ourselves in God, gloriously.

Henri Nouwen once suggested that it will be like this with dying:

Dying is returning home. But even though we have been told this many times by many people, we seldom desire to return home. We prefer to stay where we are. We know what we have; we do not know what we will get. Even the most appealing images of the afterlife cannot take away the fear of dying. We cling to life, even when our relationships are difficult, our economic circumstances harsh, and our health quite poor.

Still, Jesus came to take the sting out of death and to help us gradually realise that we don't have to be afraid of death, since death leads us to the place where the deepest desires of our hearts will be satisfied. It is not easy for us to truly believe that, but every little gesture of trust will bring us closer to this truth.

Somehow we always try to cling onto stuff, our hands clenched tightly around it: if we feel we've got beyond hanging onto material things, we hang onto private hopes, personal ambitions, or the key-code to the soul's chartroom. And yet Jesus is saying all the time, "Let go! Open your hands! I've got something for you, my beloved..."

Oh, why can't we trust that what our Saviour has for us is better than anything we have, anything we could have, in this world?

St. Francis on the weapons of spiritual warfare...

In their pride, the demons take flight at the sight of the sublime virtue practised by those who are truly humble.

Saint Francis of Assisi
(Bonaventure, Major Life
CHAPTER VI -10)
(with thanks to Portiuncula)

The Holy Now

The holy Now is not something which we, by our activity, by our dynamic energy, overtake or come upon. It is a now which itself is dynamic, which lays hold actively upon us, which breaks in actively upon us and re-energizes us from within a new center. The Eternal is urgently, actively breaking into time, working through those who are willing to be laid hold upon, to surrender self-confidence and self-centered effort, that is, self-originated effort, and let the Eternal be the dynamic guide in recreating, through us, our time-world.

In the Eternal Now all become seen in a new way. We enfold others in our love, and we and they are enfolded together within the great Love of God as we know it in Christ. In the Now, people aren’t just masses of struggling beings, furthering or thwarting our ambitions, or, in far larger numbers, utterly alien to and insulated from us. We become identified with them and suffer when they suffer and rejoice when they rejoice. One might almost say we become cosmic mothers, tenderly caring for all.

The Eternal Now breaks through the time-nows and all is secure. A sense of absolute security and assurance of being linked with an overcoming Power replaces the old anxieties. All things of value are most certainly made secure through Presence. Faith, serene, unbroken, unhurried world-conquest by the power of Love is a part of peace.

For the experience of Presence is the experience of peace, and the experience of peace is the experience not of inaction but of power, and the experience of power is the experience of pursuing Love that loves its way untiringly to victory. The one who knows the Presence knows peace, and the one who knows peace knows power and walks in complete faith that that objective Power and Love which has overtaken him will overcome the world.

When we lived in the one-dimensional time-ribbon we had to think life out all by ourselves. The past had to be read cautiously, the future had to be planned with care. Nothing was to be undertaken unless the calculations showed that success was to be expected. No blind living, no marching boldly into the dark, no noble but ungrounded ventures of faith. We must be rational, sensible, intelligent, shrewd. But then comes the reality of the Presence, and the Now-Eternal is found to underlie and generate all time-temporals. And a life of amazing, victorious faith-living sets in. Not with rattle and clatter of hammers, not with strained eyebrows and tense muscles but in peace and power and confidence we work upon such apparently hopeless tasks as the elimination of war from society, and set out toward world brother/sisterhood and interracial fraternity in a world where all the calculated chances of success are very meager.

Thus in faith we go forward, with breath-taking boldness, and in faith we stand still, unshaken, with amazing confidence. For the time-nows are rooted in the Eternal Now, which is a steadfast Presence, an infinite ocean of light and love which is flowing over the ocean of darkness and death.

Thomas Kelly was a Quaker whose passion for the depths of faithful living is shared in the book, A Testament of Devotion, compiled by Douglas Steere in 1941 following Kelly’s sudden death at age 47. This piece is an excerpt from that book, with thanks to Inward/Outward...

I think Thomas Kelly has put his finger on much that we fail to understand in the life of prayer. If we look at time, or rather eternity - that which is beyond time - in this way, it makes sense of so much about praying beyond our own knowledge, or awareness even: "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." (Romans 8.26 NIV) Our being enfolded together in Christ with all we love and care about, all the broken ones whom we cry out for in uncomprehending pain, are brought into our prayer by our very nature as, "We become identified with them and suffer when they suffer and rejoice when they rejoice. One might almost say we become cosmic mothers, tenderly caring for all." This is all I've ever longed for prayer to be!

Cellular...

Wherever we are or wherever we are going, we have our cell with us. For Brother Body is the cell, and the soul is the hermit who dwells in it, meditating there and praying to God. Therefore, if the soul does not preserve quiet and solitude in its own cell, of what profit is a cell made by hands?

Saint Francis of Assisi, Legend of Perugia - 80, with thanks to Portiuncula

Sometimes, though, the cell made by hands is necessary in a symbolic, almost a sacramental, way - or any place of solitude and silence - as St. Francis himself found when he withdrew from the villages around Assisi, to pray alone on the slopes of La Verna. Sometimes I come to my quiet room with the sense of someone picking up a glass of cold, clear water on a hot day - and with just that sense of finding the one thing my whole being not only longs for, but needs, at the deepest, most basic level.

Counting the cost, a bit...

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course, it is the cross.

Flannery O’Connor, with thanks to Inward/Outward

I was talking the other day with a friend, trying to explain how I was feeling about prayer and love. It came to me as I tried to find words for things I don't really have words for, that I am just becoming increasingly vulnerable to my own imagination. Now, I don't mean imagination in the sense of making things up. I don't even mean what many people mean when they (far too loosely for my liking) speak of the "creative imagination". The thing I'm looking for is much closer to what I understand John Keats to have meant by his theory of negative capability.

I find myself increasingly unable to read news accounts, for instance, without entering into that condition of "intentional openmindedness" that Keats described; incapable of defending myself, or at least refusing to defend myself, against my own imaginative reconstruction of whatever tragedy or inhumanity I've encountered. It also involves an acute, concrete even, awareness that my own humanity is born of this broken world that holds such things; and that this world is only broken through the fallenness of people just like me.

At its worst, this becomes a kind of a waking nightmare. It certainly leads to sleep continually punctuated by what I can only describe as empathetic nightmares, dreams of horrors of which I am not the victim, but where I must observe, unable to intervene or participate or rescue.

At one point I found myself saying to my friend, "I think my nightmares are becoming the ground of my praying." Were it not for this, I think I might go mad. And yet... if I were to be offered the opportunity "to anaesthetise the gnawing pain in the pit of [my] soul that is a resonance of the pain of the human condition" (Maggie Ross) I don't think I would take it. And that has to be the love of Christ working in my heart through the Holy Spirit - because, I suppose, I am after all praying - for my natural self would leap up and grasp whatever anodyne was going, believe me!

Being counted among the poor...

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.

We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.

Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

St. Francis' words of love for Lady Poverty, whom he considered his "betrothed", remind us that as Franciscans we are called precisely to "embrace poverty" as our companion and lover.

The Principles of the Third Order state (10): "The first Christians surrendered completely to our Lord and recklessly gave all that they had, offering the world a new vision of a society in which a fresh attitude was taken towards material possessions. This vision was renewed by Saint Francis when he chose Lady Poverty as his bride, desiring that all barriers set up by privilege based on wealth should be overcome by love. This is the inspiration for the third aim of the Society, to live simply." They go on to say (12), "We as Tertiaries are concerned more for the generosity that gives all, rather than the value of poverty in itself..."

I have always felt that there was more to this poverty thing than generosity and simplicity, and Nouwen puts his finger on it here. There are more poverties than the material kind: the NRSV translates Matthew 5.3 as, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Our poverty is the emptiness we must embrace if we are to be filled with all that God has to give us, filled with his very, Holy, Spirit...

More hiddenness...

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.

Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

In many ways, here is the answer to my question yesterday. God in his grace has given me a little of each in this life I find myself leading these days, and it is quite remarkable how he has made it possible for me to live, to serve him, and yet to be open to the ordinary calls of my life with Jan, and in this village. I won't say I always appreciate his grace for what it is, nor that I always make proper use of all that he gives me, yet his grace is there, and in crazy abundance. God is good, beyond all we can ask or imagine!

On praying the Jesus Prayer...

I was thinking this morning that though I've often mentioned the Jesus Prayer in this blog, I've not written much about actually praying the Prayer.

Obviously, as I've written elsewhere, the Jesus Prayer is a prayer of repetition. Not the "vain repetition" of the King James Version translation of Matthew 6:7 (which the NRSV translates, more accurately, as "heap up empty phrases", which is more a criticism of long, wordy prayers than of repetitive ones), but the insistent, longing prayer of the blind men of Matthew 20:30-31, who would not keep quiet, but went on and on calling out to Jesus, "have mercy on us!" (The prayers of Isaiah 6, and Revelation 4:2 and 5:11-14 are prayers of repetition too, but of praise rather than of supplication or intercession.)

In the Orthodox tradition, the Jesus Prayer is usually counted by the 100 - this takes around 20 minutes, and is a convenient practical measure - and is prayed with the aid of a 50- or 100-knot woollen prayer rope, or a chotki, a set of simple wooden beads, often 33 in number.

In the West, a standard set of Latin Rosary beads is often used, or an Anglican Rosary.

These methods are all good, and have a long tradition supporting them, but the use of beads or a knotted rope will not suit everyone, since for some people the mechanical process will in itself be a distraction, rather than a defence against distraction. Some have found that the use of a visual focus, a candle maybe, or a crucifix, will bring the mind to the necessary level of concentration to avoid wandering thoughts and drifting attention - as well as having its own symbolic value; but for myself, nothing replaces the tactile. I have discovered that by far the most effective focus for me is a holding cross.

The holding cross can be used in both formal and informal prayer times, when walking for instance, and while it is ideally suited to the Jesus Prayer, it is most certainly not confined that that, or indeed to any, form of words. In fact that is for me one of its great benefits: unlike beads or a rope, the holding cross allows the Jesus Prayer to shade off into the prayer of silence, and back again, without any loss of rhythm or "falling behind", which so easily pulls the mind back, away from God, onto the mechanics of counting.

It is best to approach saying the Jesus Prayer with as few preconceptions as possible. Although I have read widely, and I hope deeply, on the Prayer over the years, I began saying it when I knew very little of the tradition, or the traditional methods, of praying the Prayer. It took hold, as God had obviously intended it should, and became simply part of who I am before God. The accounts of Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52), and the tax-collector at the temple (Luke 18.10-14), became part of my own story. In fact, although when I was first introduced to the Prayer by Fr. Francis Horner SSM back in 1978, he gave me Per-Olof Sjogren's wonderful book to read, a good deal of what happened in the years following were things for which I had no frame of reference. I only discovered much later that they were commonplace in the experience of those who pray the Prayer!

So don't be afraid, if God calls you on this way of knowing him, to strike out into the deep. After all, even the best maps can do no more than hint at destinations, and maybe warn of shoals; they can convey nothing of the sea-wind, the endless cry of the gulls, the wonderful scent of the waves as they break, or the peace there is in the lift and rock of the deep-water swell...

Theotokos

All of eastern piety, according to Vladimir Lossky, consists of the celebration of what is the goal of our salvation: overcoming the abyss between God and man. This is why there is added to the Christians' devotion to an incarnate divine hypostasis, Jesus Christ, a deified human hypostasis, Mary, whom Gregory Palamas calls: 'the boundary between the created and the uncreated'.

We hear about 'the eschatologism of the eastern Church'. Is the mystery of Mary not one of the most effective expressions of this hope? 'The last glory of the Mother of God', Lossky continues, is 'the eschaton realized in a created person before the end of the world. Tradition shows us the Mother of God in the midst of the disciples on the day of Pentecost... The Mother of God received with the Church the last and only thing she lacked, so that she might grow to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'

In pre-revolutionary Russia, close to a thousand icons of Mary were venerated in the liturgical calendar under various names—for example, 'Our Consolation', 'Provident', 'Softening of our evil hearts', and so on. The icon called Pokrov (Protection) represents the Virgin covering the entire earth with her mantle. The icon Znamenye (Sign, Miracle) shows Mary in the orans posture, with the Word of God on her breast. This is symbolic of the deifying contemplation which makes God present in the soul. On the icon of the Ascension, the Virgin represents the Church imploring the descent of the Spirit and the second coming of the Saviour. The veneration of the Mother of God represents one of the typical traits of eastern Christians because devotion to the Theotokos (God-bearer) agrees well with the characteristics of eastern spirituality.

From Prayer: The Spirituality of the Christian East, Volume 2 by Tomaš Špidlík SJ (Cistercian Publications, 2005), with thanks to Vicki K Black.

Hiddenness... again...

Hiddenness is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, quiet, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing - all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live. It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase "in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people" (Luke 2:51). It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.

Even during his active ministry, Jesus continued to return to hidden places to be with God alone. If we don't have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit...

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.

In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering whether blogging is an activity compatible with hiddenness! I suppose it's no more incompatible, though, than any form of creative work; and I actually find the idea of creative work which is completely anonymous, or pseudonymous, rather pretentious... so I guess I just need to stop looking at myself, and get on with it...

Now we are three...

Francis, the faithful servant and perfect imitator of Christ, feeling himself wholly united to Christ through the virtue of holy humility, desired his humility in his friars before all other virtues. And in order that they might love, desire, acquire, and preserve it, he gave them constant encouragement by his own example and teaching, and particularly impressed this on the Ministers and preachers, urging them to undertake humble tasks.

Saint Francis of Assisi, Mirror of Perfection - 73

Humility, love, and joy are the three notes which mark the lives of each of us as Tertiaries. When these characteristics are evident throughout the Order its work will be fruitful. Without them all that it attempts will be in vain.

The Principles, TSSF - 21

Today is the third birthday of The Mercy Blog. Doesn't seem possible!

Changing?

I know I've probably written this kind of thing before, but I feel the urge for a change coming on. I have grown comfortable with the routine of posting a quotation from Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen, et al., and then commenting, briefly or otherwise; or at least using the passage as a jumping-off point for my own thoughts. This isn't intentionally dishonest, but it does enlist my subject as a kind of human shield against uncomfortably close involvement with what's actually going on with me.

I don't propose to adopt an approach that's simply not like me. If you met me in person, you'd find I don't talk a great deal about shoes, or shopping, or sport. Not that I've anything against such things; I just don't spend much time engaging with them... What I am going to try to do is write more directly about what I'm actually thinking about, what's keeping me awake sometimes.

All this may mean somewhat more sporadic posts, or it may not. Bear with me, though, while I try and make this blog a little more worthwhile, if sometimes rather less easy to read!

The poor in spirit...

Meister Eckhart said that the spiritual life has more to do with subtraction than with addition.

But in the capitalistic West, we keep climbing higher up the ladder of spiritual success, and we've turned the Gospel into a matter of addition instead of subtraction.

What we should do is get ourselves out of the way! Then God will be evident. Then we can easily welcome Christ.

We've taken ourselves so seriously, although we're only a tiny moment of consciousness.

As a person I'm just a tiny part of creation, a particle that reflects only a fragment of God's glory.

Richard Rohr, from Simplicity

When I think of the grief so many people suffer - myself included, over the years - feeling that we're not climbing up "the ladder of spiritual success", or that we have slipped back down from somewhere we had once achieved, it brings tears to my eyes. It's only as we do discover our failure to "achieve" spiritually, when we discover that the ladder is actually a snake, that we being to become people God can use, people who can receive the love he has for us, people he can transform and heal and redeem and bring into the Kingdom to "live and work to [his] praise and glory."

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven..."

Poor little brothers and sisters...

Above all else St. Francis stands for love, but love that empties itself, love that is so secure that it can be poor. It can let go of its reputation, securities, and money.

In every age, Francis will be called the little poor man. He was free enough to be poor. He named his community "the brothers of the lower class" (friars minor). He changed sides intentionally...

Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

 

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please", while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there", or, "Sit at my feet", have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

(James 2.1-5)

In Francis' time, the minores were the poor, the servant class, while the majores were the aristocracy, the lords and ladies. It's a strange and unhappy thing, but even in our own time I've found this attitude among people in the church, and it is a stench in the nostrils of God! Francis' deliberate choice is a choice we must all, in one way or another, make as Christians. Maybe literally, as Francis and Clare (a highborn noble lady in Assisi) did, and maybe in other ways, but make it we must, if we are to follow our Lord, who read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

and went on to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4.18-21)

I've been a bit neglectful of this blog the past week. Just been very busy here, with PCC meetings and so forth. I'll try and get back to regular posting, if only brief snippets! Doesn't do to let the poor thing lie fallow...

Do what is yours to do...

When we see that the world is enchanted, we see the revelation of God in each individual as individual. Then our job is not to be Mother Teresa, our job is not to be St Francis - it's to do what is ours to do. That, by the way, was Francis's word as he lay dying. He said, 'I have done what was mine to do; now you must do what is yours to do.' We must find out what part of the mystery it is ours to reflect. That's the only true meaning of heroism as far as I can see. In this ego-comparison game, we have had centuries of Christians comparing themselves to the Mother Teresas of each age, saying that she was the only name for holiness. Thank God we have such images of holiness, but sometimes we don't do God or the Gospel a service by spending our life comparing ourselves to others' gifts and calls. All I can give back to God is what God has given to me - nothing more and no less!

Our first job is to see correctly who we are, and then to act on it. That will probably take more courage than to be Mother Teresa. To be really faithful to that truth is utterly difficult and takes immense courage and humility. We have neglected the more basic and universal biblical theme of 'personal calling' in favour of priestly and religious vocations. The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. That is everybody's greatest cross.

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs - with thanks to Sue

Paradox in practice...

Jesus is giving us a win-win scenario, but what we always do with the gospel is make it into a win-lose. That's the only way the dualistic mind can think. You're either in or you're out.

That's why the world does not love us, because we don't know how to include, how to forgive, how to pour mercy and compassion and patience upon events as God - thank God - does with us.

God's grace plays the middle, expands the middle, redeems the middle, and if that's not true, what hope is there? What hope is there if we don't learn how to hold the contradictions?

Richard Rohr, from Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox

Do you know, I think it's this that has come out of all that I've been reading about The Lambeth Conference? (Reading recent posts in Anglican Centrist and LambethJournal will give you much more about why I say this that I could in a few sentences.)

I honestly do believe that the Anglican Communion has an immense amount to offer the entire Christian Church at the moment; and it is precisely because of our present hermeneutical troubles that we are broken enough to do it. Our willingness to open ourselves to what the Spirit is doing, to the real nature of the Gospel as lived in our own time - rather than as lived in some "historical Jesus" New Testament reconstruction of the mind, or at some possibly romanticised period in Church history - is showing us more about the grace and mercy of Christ than we could possibly have expected.

I cannot resist quoting at length from Bishop George E Packer, Episcopal Suffragan Bishop of Chaplaincies and Bishop-in-Charge of Micronesia:

If the Anglican Communion would just turn over their troubles to my 40 member indaba group everything would be fine. We had a break through as an American female bishop likened our church to siblings arguing in the back seat of the family car. There was a murmur of final understanding since there had been a wonder if those Episcopalians were coming unglued. No, just poking each other the way kids do. "But we stay together and that's what makes unwanted boundary crossings by South American and African bishops so confusing." She said.

I was re-playing that fateful day in Minneapolis in 2003 in my mind when we confirmed Gene Robinson's consecration and how no one gave much of a passing thought to how this news would impact anyone in this room. Some have been beaten and called members of "the gay church" in cultures where sympathizers like that were stoned, others have died... not because of Gene but because dioceses have rejected the HIV-AIDS assistance from the American church's tainted money.

The conversation - for the Americans and the Canadians - had real remorse in it: we acted without care for the greater family and we were deeply sorry. I'm not saying the consecration wouldn't have happened but the hurt of disregard for them - which was plain and evident - would not have been there.

Then Bishop Michael of Sudan continued as he said that his church was only getting used to thinking about homosexuals now with that he composed a prayer right on the spot emphasizing his point. After the entreaty to "Our dear Lord" it was as sensitive a summary of their uncertain lives in his land that I had ever heard. We were silent. (I wonder if this Lambeth is about where had hoped the 1998 meeting would have been in the appreciation of basic gay lives and rights.)

The bishop went on to say that we had to give he and his people some time; elevating gay persons into leadership positions of authority was confusing to him and his congregations. "Can't a baptized person get into heaven without you making him a bishop for awhile?" He had us there. As he was speaking I wasn't sure if the nods were in sympathy or agreement. It seemed like both and it came about as there was an acceptance of North American remorse.

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Said our facilitator, "We seem to have arrived at a special level of trust." And that seemed to hold true for the heretofore stilted conversations about the Covenant too, that code of conduct we have all been dreading. Now, there was a growing consensus around the things which make us an affirmed, communion of churches in search of a grace-filled process which would come to the rescue when we get out of sorts with each other. It had been the meanderings in recent years for the right venue to discuss this which has been so maddening.

If we could only come up with a process of soft intention, setting our minds and hearts in the way Christ would want us to behave when things get enflamed... sort of a compact indaba. +gep