2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. (Mark 9:2 - 10)
The Transfiguration story is important at several levels. It is especially challenging to those who have given themselves to an intentional journey of deepening life in God. Within a narrative full of movement (Jesus took . . . led them . . . they were coming down . . . all indicating journey and action), Peter gets struck by how "good it is for us to be here" and his desire to erect shelters, tabernacles, or booths. His suggestion that they create a memorial marker speaks to the perpetual human tendency to freeze spiritual experience in time, to codify the experience in order to remember it and perhaps to have it again at some later time.
Did you have a meaningful spiritual experience at this particular retreat center? Then go to that place again, and see if you can replicate that experience.
Did you sense God speaking to you through this book or author 10 years ago? Then read the book again, or another by the same author, and God will repeat the vision.
Did you find a particular set of spiritual practices meaningful to you as an adolescent? Then return to those practices in order to have a similar spiritual experience.
Did something significant happen to you today? Take a picture, post it to Facebook, and set it to your social media timeline. Next year on this date you'll be reminded of what happened today.
Was a particular sermon or worship experience meaningful to you? Buy the cd of the sermon and service . . . you can replay it as you drive around town, and be reminded always of the way you felt God come close in that experience.
Of course, these methods are not all bad, and I'm not suggesting there is never a place for them. All of them, however, are attempts to recreate a particular experience of God. There are so many different ways to build shelters and set up monuments to spiritual experience, just as Peter suggested on the mountain.
The real danger in the spiritual life is that the experience itself becomes a commodity, sought in and for itself. Most humans are complete addicts in this way . . . when something feels good, especially when we feel we have tapped into the numinous in a significant way, we want more of it. We want to repeat the same experience of peace . . . we want to have the same sense of generosity again . . . we want to know ourselves loved deep-down, not just for a moment, but always.
Addiction to spiritual experience is especially seductive, and because it is "spiritual," we assume it must be good. If a little is good, then more must be better, right?
Hear Thomas Merton:
The one great danger that confronts every person who takes spiritual experience seriously, is the danger of illuminism or, in Monsignor Ronald Knox's term, "enthusiasm". Here the problem is that of taking one's subjective experience so seriously that it becomes more important than truth, more important than God. Once spiritual experience becomes objectified, it turns into an idol. It becomes a "thing", a "reality" which we serve. We are not created for the service of any "thing", but for the service of God alone, Who is not and cannot be a "thing". To serve Him Who is no "object" is freedom. To live for spiritual experience is slavery, and such slavery makes the contemplative life just as secular (though in a more subtle way) as the service of any other "thing", no matter how base: money, pleasure, success. Indeed, the ruin of many potential contemplatives has been this avidity for spiritual success. (The Inner Experience, ed. by Thomas Hart, p. 139.)
The language of "idolatry" hearkens back to the Ten Commandments, which begin with the command to have only one God. To be sure, to use the language of idolatry for something which is seemingly good, like spiritual experience, seems extreme. Yet, that is the very nature of idolatry. Even good things that are not God must not be worshiped.
Let me be clear. I'm for spiritual experience.
Worship may be a spiritual experience.
Retreats may provide an experience of God.
Spiritual practices may open us to spiritual experience.
But spiritual experience is at least one degree away from God. As Merton says, the goal of the spiritual life is not experience, but God . . . to know God in a direct, unmediated way.
For this reason, the Christian mystics have proposed silence and solitude as the most basic contexts for knowing God, rather than some setting in which emotions and excitability were the driving forces. In silence and solitude, there are no words to get in the way, nothing about silence and solitude that can truly be described or prescribed, no way for the experience to be manipulated in order to get a particular experience of God. There is only God in the naked silence.
Also, this is the reason many of the great monastic traditions -- going back to the Desert Abbas and Ammas of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries -- gathered in places which seemed extreme, building monasteries in places that were not lush or aesthetically abundant. Deserts, rocky outcroppings, and frigid tundras have provided monastic settings which tend toward the extremes. They have been chosen most often because their fierceness lends itself to the rawness and immediacy of God, rather than to an excitable religious experience. (20 years ago, Belden Lane's book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, was a testament to this fierceness.)
Again, please do not diminish spiritual experience. Most all of us are prodded forward by spiritual experience, even the experience of God. But the goal is not more experience. The goal of life is God.
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Velocity's Pull on the Spiritual Life
I have circled around the word velocity recently as a descriptor of my spiritual state. Velocity describes the reality of a life which gets ramped up slowly, subtly, without my noticing. As life's velocity increases, insidiously calling for more -- more time, energy, attention -- daily existence begins to feel out of sync, careening wildly from moment to moment. Velocity keeps its foot pressed to the gas pedal.
I remember a phone conversation with a mentor decades ago, the man who was most responsible for my vocational path, who influenced my choice of seminary, who was an early role model in so many ways. Separated by miles, I asked him over the phone how he was doing. I still remember his answer these decades later: "I'm lurching from crisis to crisis."
I knew then, as I know now, that "lurching from crisis to crisis" is no way to live life deeply, though I knew from experience exactly what he was suggesting. I've lurched from crisis to crisis aplenty in my own life -- often wearing the lurch as a badge of honor -- and I suspect you recognize lurching as a part of your own experience, too. Especially in the West, lurching is assumed to be the norm, not an aberration. In fact, if pressed, many of us would insist we don't have a choice, believing pedal to the metal is "just the way life is for me."
Like riding a super-train, I can live at such velocity that I observe the landscape through which I travel as a blur, as here-one-second, gone-the-next. I become a traveler speeding through the terrain as swiftly as possible.
That kind of velocity also means I lose touch with people. Connections get frayed. I don't have time for conversation. Actually, I don't have time or patience for anyone or anything not traveling at the same velocity at which I am traveling.
Family members don't respond to texts quickly enough to suit me.
Being put on hold by someone at the mega-corporation and listening to elevator music for an hour feels like an insult to my self-importance.
Deadlines I had not anticipated feel like an affront, a personal insult: "Don't they know how busy I am?"
Emails go unanswered for days.
Excessive velocity has all sorts of ripple effects on me.
About 20 years ago, I read Henri Nouwen's words: "Without silence and solitude it is impossible to live a spiritual life."
You can frame Nouwen's statement -- which has proven accurate, at least in my own experience -- in any number of ways.
**Without time to be still, life will be a blur.
**If you don't make space to ask, "Who am I?" and "What am I doing?", the oughts, musts, and shoulds will consume you.
**Without silence and solitude, life will be an endlessly repetitive cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis.
**If you don't pause to sit still regularly, you can never truly know the "you" who lives inside your skin.
**If some external thing, some external person, or some external norm determines your velocity, you will miss the one life that is hidden inside you.
** If your existence is all strategy, time-line, and accomplishment, you'll never connect with people in a life-giving way. People will be your accessories or they will get in your way.
I walked over an acre of land yesterday in about two hours. For several months I've been on the speeding train, so over dirt and rock I walked slowly. I had no agenda but to set foot on as much of the soil as possible. I wasn't trying to accomplish anything. I felt no compulsion to hurry. I merely wanted to walk, to notice, to listen. The late Gerald May called it "the power of slowing."
Several things stood out to me. I'll mention one.
The birds (Cardinals, Eastern Bluebirds, among others), the plant-life (60 foot oaks, irises, hostas, rose bushes, and pine trees coming up volunteer), the clouds, breeze, and drizzling rain . . . all did not care one bit about my velocity, about how busy I have been . . . not one care that my tax return needs to be tended to, that I have phone calls to make, appointments to keep, details about life that require some strategic maneuvering on my part.
Schedules and plans and "lurching from crisis to crisis" don't mean a thing to the created world . . . the created world which, after all, has a wisdom all its own. Only I, as the human in that setting, had felt the compulsion to travel faster than a human is made to travel.
Whether my velocity allows me to participate in this other, more inviting world or not, creation goes on singing, breezing, drizzling, foraging.
At question, at least for me: "In which world is my deepest, hidden self most invited to participate?"
I remember a phone conversation with a mentor decades ago, the man who was most responsible for my vocational path, who influenced my choice of seminary, who was an early role model in so many ways. Separated by miles, I asked him over the phone how he was doing. I still remember his answer these decades later: "I'm lurching from crisis to crisis."
I knew then, as I know now, that "lurching from crisis to crisis" is no way to live life deeply, though I knew from experience exactly what he was suggesting. I've lurched from crisis to crisis aplenty in my own life -- often wearing the lurch as a badge of honor -- and I suspect you recognize lurching as a part of your own experience, too. Especially in the West, lurching is assumed to be the norm, not an aberration. In fact, if pressed, many of us would insist we don't have a choice, believing pedal to the metal is "just the way life is for me."
Like riding a super-train, I can live at such velocity that I observe the landscape through which I travel as a blur, as here-one-second, gone-the-next. I become a traveler speeding through the terrain as swiftly as possible.
That kind of velocity also means I lose touch with people. Connections get frayed. I don't have time for conversation. Actually, I don't have time or patience for anyone or anything not traveling at the same velocity at which I am traveling.
Family members don't respond to texts quickly enough to suit me.
Being put on hold by someone at the mega-corporation and listening to elevator music for an hour feels like an insult to my self-importance.
Deadlines I had not anticipated feel like an affront, a personal insult: "Don't they know how busy I am?"
Emails go unanswered for days.
Excessive velocity has all sorts of ripple effects on me.
About 20 years ago, I read Henri Nouwen's words: "Without silence and solitude it is impossible to live a spiritual life."
You can frame Nouwen's statement -- which has proven accurate, at least in my own experience -- in any number of ways.
**Without time to be still, life will be a blur.
**If you don't make space to ask, "Who am I?" and "What am I doing?", the oughts, musts, and shoulds will consume you.
**Without silence and solitude, life will be an endlessly repetitive cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis.
**If you don't pause to sit still regularly, you can never truly know the "you" who lives inside your skin.
**If some external thing, some external person, or some external norm determines your velocity, you will miss the one life that is hidden inside you.
** If your existence is all strategy, time-line, and accomplishment, you'll never connect with people in a life-giving way. People will be your accessories or they will get in your way.
I walked over an acre of land yesterday in about two hours. For several months I've been on the speeding train, so over dirt and rock I walked slowly. I had no agenda but to set foot on as much of the soil as possible. I wasn't trying to accomplish anything. I felt no compulsion to hurry. I merely wanted to walk, to notice, to listen. The late Gerald May called it "the power of slowing."
Several things stood out to me. I'll mention one.
The birds (Cardinals, Eastern Bluebirds, among others), the plant-life (60 foot oaks, irises, hostas, rose bushes, and pine trees coming up volunteer), the clouds, breeze, and drizzling rain . . . all did not care one bit about my velocity, about how busy I have been . . . not one care that my tax return needs to be tended to, that I have phone calls to make, appointments to keep, details about life that require some strategic maneuvering on my part.
Schedules and plans and "lurching from crisis to crisis" don't mean a thing to the created world . . . the created world which, after all, has a wisdom all its own. Only I, as the human in that setting, had felt the compulsion to travel faster than a human is made to travel.
Whether my velocity allows me to participate in this other, more inviting world or not, creation goes on singing, breezing, drizzling, foraging.
At question, at least for me: "In which world is my deepest, hidden self most invited to participate?"
Friday, February 17, 2012
Stumbling through the Psalms, Setting Aside Conditionality
I love the Hebrew Psalms. I've cut my praying teeth on them. They were my early teachers in prayer, and I still sit with them daily.
These days, though, I frequently have the experience of praying the psalms and then finding myself listening more deeply to the words I'm praying . . . listening to the assumptions about God and the world that are implicit in the psalms . . .and noticing the assumptions about who and where I am that are suggested in the prayers.
While I love the psalms and continue to learn language for raw and honest prayer from them, I also concede that they present stereotypes for prayer that can be very misleading.
Today I spent a lot of time with Psalm 86. In the Book of Common Prayer, it's the lead psalm for the 17th day of the month. So I prayed things like this:
"Save the servant who puts trust in you." (86:2)
"Be merciful to me, O God, for you are my God." (86:3)
"Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul." (86:4)
"Great is your love toward all who call upon you." (86:5)
"In the time of my trouble I will call upon you,
for you will answer me." (86:7)
I prayed those few verses, then mentally stepped back to notice what I had prayed. I saw that God was depicted as the One who responds conditionally to those who trust, to those who make God their God, to those who lift up their soul to God, to those who call out to God. In this pray-er's mind, God's response toward humans is conditioned upon these kinds of things. God only responds to those who are faithful. God only intervenes in the lives of those who call upon God. (Notice the use of the word "for" in the verses above.)
Not only that, but the pray-er -- bless his or her little heart! -- only prays because he/she believes that God will answer (v. 7). We are left to assume that if the person praying were not convinced God would respond to the prayer, he/she would never offer the prayer.
So not only is God depicted as a God of conditional care and response, but the devotion of the psalmist is conditioned on believing that God would respond to whatever he/she asked for. God responds to a certain kind of person, this prayer believes, or to a certain form of prayer.
In all, the entire God-human relationship is one of conditionality, from pray-er to God . . . and from God to pray-er. Following this method for prayer, if we are the "right" kind of person or pray the right kind of prayer, we can count on God to give us good things, to rescue us from difficulties, and to love us. All this if only we call on God the right way.
This is not, however, my experience of God . . . or of prayer. I don't have a magic formula that can make God do whatever I want God to do.
There are times when I cry out, but then experience God's silence.
There are times God does not respond to my prayers.
There are times when God leaves me in my tears.
There are times God leaves my in my pain.
There are times God leaves me standing in all the shattered pieces of my life.
God does not always come to me bringing relief or freedom. God does not always rescue me from difficulty or hardship. God does not always respond to my darkness with light. God does not always deliver me as I would like. I don't get simple and quick answers to complex life-questions. I've had no success manipulating God with my prayers, nor have I had success manipulating God with my life-situation -- by being either good enough or bad enough to get God to respond as I'd like.
I'm grateful that the psalms express the human heart honestly. The person who prayed Psalm 86 had an understanding of prayer very consistent with a contemporary understanding of God and prayer. Simply stated, it believes that God is here for our comfort and well-being, and that we can access that comfort and well-being from God by living certain kinds of lives and praying certain kinds of prayers.
But God is not the God of our comfort, not the God of our wishes and desires. God's primary aim is not to make you and me successful, happy, or at-ease. God's goal is not to shield you from the difficulties of life. God's goal is not your comfort and success in life.
As best I can understand and articulate it, God seems to be most highly given to wholeness, union, and the coming-together of persons, communities, the entire human family, and the whole created world. God spends God's Self on healing the world, that is, making the world whole and holy.
So in my prayer today, there were two questions that came to me by the end of my time. The first was a question for me: "Can I still come to You, trust in You, give myself wholly to You, even if I get none of the things I want from You? In other words, can I be faithful to You even if I get nothing in return?"
The second question was for God: "Can You still claim me as Your son, give Yourself for me, spend what it means to be 'You' on me, even if I have no faith, no trust, no goodness to commend myself to You? In other words, will You be faithful to me even if I give You nothing in return?"
So much hinges on those two questions.
These days, though, I frequently have the experience of praying the psalms and then finding myself listening more deeply to the words I'm praying . . . listening to the assumptions about God and the world that are implicit in the psalms . . .and noticing the assumptions about who and where I am that are suggested in the prayers.
While I love the psalms and continue to learn language for raw and honest prayer from them, I also concede that they present stereotypes for prayer that can be very misleading.
Today I spent a lot of time with Psalm 86. In the Book of Common Prayer, it's the lead psalm for the 17th day of the month. So I prayed things like this:
"Save the servant who puts trust in you." (86:2)
"Be merciful to me, O God, for you are my God." (86:3)
"Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul." (86:4)
"Great is your love toward all who call upon you." (86:5)
"In the time of my trouble I will call upon you,
for you will answer me." (86:7)
I prayed those few verses, then mentally stepped back to notice what I had prayed. I saw that God was depicted as the One who responds conditionally to those who trust, to those who make God their God, to those who lift up their soul to God, to those who call out to God. In this pray-er's mind, God's response toward humans is conditioned upon these kinds of things. God only responds to those who are faithful. God only intervenes in the lives of those who call upon God. (Notice the use of the word "for" in the verses above.)
Not only that, but the pray-er -- bless his or her little heart! -- only prays because he/she believes that God will answer (v. 7). We are left to assume that if the person praying were not convinced God would respond to the prayer, he/she would never offer the prayer.
So not only is God depicted as a God of conditional care and response, but the devotion of the psalmist is conditioned on believing that God would respond to whatever he/she asked for. God responds to a certain kind of person, this prayer believes, or to a certain form of prayer.
In all, the entire God-human relationship is one of conditionality, from pray-er to God . . . and from God to pray-er. Following this method for prayer, if we are the "right" kind of person or pray the right kind of prayer, we can count on God to give us good things, to rescue us from difficulties, and to love us. All this if only we call on God the right way.
This is not, however, my experience of God . . . or of prayer. I don't have a magic formula that can make God do whatever I want God to do.
There are times when I cry out, but then experience God's silence.
There are times God does not respond to my prayers.
There are times when God leaves me in my tears.
There are times God leaves my in my pain.
There are times God leaves me standing in all the shattered pieces of my life.
God does not always come to me bringing relief or freedom. God does not always rescue me from difficulty or hardship. God does not always respond to my darkness with light. God does not always deliver me as I would like. I don't get simple and quick answers to complex life-questions. I've had no success manipulating God with my prayers, nor have I had success manipulating God with my life-situation -- by being either good enough or bad enough to get God to respond as I'd like.
I'm grateful that the psalms express the human heart honestly. The person who prayed Psalm 86 had an understanding of prayer very consistent with a contemporary understanding of God and prayer. Simply stated, it believes that God is here for our comfort and well-being, and that we can access that comfort and well-being from God by living certain kinds of lives and praying certain kinds of prayers.
But God is not the God of our comfort, not the God of our wishes and desires. God's primary aim is not to make you and me successful, happy, or at-ease. God's goal is not to shield you from the difficulties of life. God's goal is not your comfort and success in life.
As best I can understand and articulate it, God seems to be most highly given to wholeness, union, and the coming-together of persons, communities, the entire human family, and the whole created world. God spends God's Self on healing the world, that is, making the world whole and holy.
So in my prayer today, there were two questions that came to me by the end of my time. The first was a question for me: "Can I still come to You, trust in You, give myself wholly to You, even if I get none of the things I want from You? In other words, can I be faithful to You even if I get nothing in return?"
The second question was for God: "Can You still claim me as Your son, give Yourself for me, spend what it means to be 'You' on me, even if I have no faith, no trust, no goodness to commend myself to You? In other words, will You be faithful to me even if I give You nothing in return?"
So much hinges on those two questions.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Don't Do a Thing
The time has come to be quiet
to let the stillness wash over you
cover the noise
and unsettledness
in thunderous silence.
Don't do a thing;
Just sit there
out of the way
Spacious presence
to what cannot be seen
in the turmoil
and
the flap of lips
waving of arms
pace of feet.
Can you not go away,
wait and watch
for a span of time
to bring yourself
more fully real
to pure presence?
But you're talking
mad-talk now,
the kind of thing that happens
to the disengaged.
to let the stillness wash over you
cover the noise
and unsettledness
in thunderous silence.
Don't do a thing;
Just sit there
out of the way
Spacious presence
to what cannot be seen
in the turmoil
and
the flap of lips
waving of arms
pace of feet.
Can you not go away,
wait and watch
for a span of time
to bring yourself
more fully real
to pure presence?
But you're talking
mad-talk now,
the kind of thing that happens
to the disengaged.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Standing Still, Walking with Humanity
Catherine de Hueck Doherty was a Russian immigrant who fled Communist Russia in 1920. She arrived penniless in Canada, but within ten years through hard and industrious work had grown to have great wealth. A Russian Orthodox Christian, in 1930 she heard the words of Christ: "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me."
In 1930 she sold her possessions and went to live with the poor in the slums of Toronto. With a deep and intense faith in God, and a sincere love and concern for the poor, she made a difference in that very difficult setting. Soon many others, drawn to her faith and her mission, were led to join her. She was invited to New York where she did interracial work in Harlem. She spoke around North America on issues of faith and prayer, racial discrimination and social injustice. Often she was speaking to hostile audiences of Christians who did not want to hear her radical message. She founded Madonna House as a training center for those who would integrate a deep spirituality with significant social work in the world.
In reading some of her memoirs over the last couple of weeks, I was particularly struck by one phrase she consistently used with others who worked alongside her in the ministry to the "little and least." Often she reminded her co-laborers that "we must stand still in order to walk alongside humanity."
"Stand still in order to walk with humanity"? That doesn't make sense at first glance. How does one stand still in order to walk?
For Catherine Doherty it meant that the most crucial preparation for the work of tending the soul of humanity was the work of prayer and listening to God. And for her, prayer and listening could not happen in its most life-shaping form without stillness. "Stand still" is a call to prayer, to silence, to listening.
To many, Catherine Doherty is most well known for bringing to the Christian West the Russian Orthodox notion of the poustinia. In Russian Orthodox Christianity, a poustinia is a room or space that is set aside entirely for prayer. In Russia it would typically include icons, prayer ropes, and candles. But in its simplicity, it would by its very presence be a call to prayer. In a sense, the poustinia would be the womb from which any action or social justice in the world emerges. The poustinia would be the "standing still" place, so that when one emerged from prayer she/he would "walk with humanity," that is, to engage the world in a way that is transforming and right-making.
So Catherine Doherty, a deeply prayerful and spiritually connected woman, made a difference in her world. Today we might speak of how she held together prayer and social justice as "contemplation and action." Her contemplation, her "standing still" became the source or the reservoir from which she "walked with humanity," she acted for God in the world.
She held the tension when many of us want to choose one or the other . . . the people of prayer who want nothing to do with the brokenness of humanity . . . the people of mission who see prayer and listening as a mindless waste of time.
In 1930 she sold her possessions and went to live with the poor in the slums of Toronto. With a deep and intense faith in God, and a sincere love and concern for the poor, she made a difference in that very difficult setting. Soon many others, drawn to her faith and her mission, were led to join her. She was invited to New York where she did interracial work in Harlem. She spoke around North America on issues of faith and prayer, racial discrimination and social injustice. Often she was speaking to hostile audiences of Christians who did not want to hear her radical message. She founded Madonna House as a training center for those who would integrate a deep spirituality with significant social work in the world.
In reading some of her memoirs over the last couple of weeks, I was particularly struck by one phrase she consistently used with others who worked alongside her in the ministry to the "little and least." Often she reminded her co-laborers that "we must stand still in order to walk alongside humanity."
"Stand still in order to walk with humanity"? That doesn't make sense at first glance. How does one stand still in order to walk?
For Catherine Doherty it meant that the most crucial preparation for the work of tending the soul of humanity was the work of prayer and listening to God. And for her, prayer and listening could not happen in its most life-shaping form without stillness. "Stand still" is a call to prayer, to silence, to listening.
To many, Catherine Doherty is most well known for bringing to the Christian West the Russian Orthodox notion of the poustinia. In Russian Orthodox Christianity, a poustinia is a room or space that is set aside entirely for prayer. In Russia it would typically include icons, prayer ropes, and candles. But in its simplicity, it would by its very presence be a call to prayer. In a sense, the poustinia would be the womb from which any action or social justice in the world emerges. The poustinia would be the "standing still" place, so that when one emerged from prayer she/he would "walk with humanity," that is, to engage the world in a way that is transforming and right-making.
So Catherine Doherty, a deeply prayerful and spiritually connected woman, made a difference in her world. Today we might speak of how she held together prayer and social justice as "contemplation and action." Her contemplation, her "standing still" became the source or the reservoir from which she "walked with humanity," she acted for God in the world.
She held the tension when many of us want to choose one or the other . . . the people of prayer who want nothing to do with the brokenness of humanity . . . the people of mission who see prayer and listening as a mindless waste of time.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Praying When Life Cracks Open
This current round of chemotherapy treatments reminds me again that I really don't know that much about prayer. Other things play with my body and emotions. My mind gets crazy.
When I get in this place where my body lives in such an altered state, jacked around by chemicals that are so powerfully present in my system, I'm not sure what is real, what is authentic. Bodily sensations tell me lies. Emotions get stacked to one side or the other. Incidents that ordinarily would have little meaning suddenly suggest a huge impact, to which I either over-react or non-react. Sleep deprivation leaves me tired but unable to rest. I'm reminded constantly of how fragile life is, how little control I have over my moment-by-moment existence.
So my "normal" patterns of prayer get thrown out the window. I used to feel guilty for that, as if I was locked into certain ways of relating to God. Then when I felt lost temporarily to those ways, I'd be lost to God.
Years ago, during a particularly devastating life-crisis, I first experienced the drying up of prayer, the days when all the normal patterns and usual "tricks" didn't work any longer. Prayer during those days became an act of faithfully sitting in the chair where I had grown accustomed to praying. Just sitting. Often sitting and weeping. After weeks of guilt over that, I finally heard my own (and God's) release, that my simple act of showing up, weeping, giving my little attentiveness . . . all of that was the only prayer I could offer during those days. And so my little world of prayer was cracked open just a bit.
I carried that framework for prayer into those early days of chemotherapy and cancer treatments after the original diagnosis, finding that the chemicals in my body and the absense of sleep so altered my consciousness that I could not longer pray as I thought I should. Slowly I dropped the "should" and took my own long-given advice: "Pray as you can, not as you cannot!" Dropping the "should" was not easy, mostly because it meant that I had to be as graceful and generous with myself as God is with me. That is an ongoing challenge for me.
Yet, here I am again. During these days of treatments I have less anxiety about getting this right. I have more resolve to stay in it faithfully, not having to conjure up some holy feeling or religious impulse to draw meaning out of the experience. I can still get scared that I'm doing this "all wrong," but I learn day by day the generosity of simply sitting, being loved, and offering my love in the only ways I know how.
Years ago, during one of those particularly difficult times, when I was frustrated with my lot in life, when I wanted to resist the pain and the difficulty of the dark valley I was invited to walk through, I wrote a simple, three-line poem that contained some wisdom not native to me. It is a poem I continue to hold onto, especially in days like this. It is simple, and it reminds me that life is not somewhere else, that running from where I am does not solve anything.
My life cracks open.
I stand in it,
careful not to run.
To stand and not run, to be where I am as faithfully as possible without having to escape the pain, to be with the incongruity of my life, to hold the tensions of my fragile existence . . . these are the invitations I sense as I move through this season and into the next season of soul.
When I get in this place where my body lives in such an altered state, jacked around by chemicals that are so powerfully present in my system, I'm not sure what is real, what is authentic. Bodily sensations tell me lies. Emotions get stacked to one side or the other. Incidents that ordinarily would have little meaning suddenly suggest a huge impact, to which I either over-react or non-react. Sleep deprivation leaves me tired but unable to rest. I'm reminded constantly of how fragile life is, how little control I have over my moment-by-moment existence.
So my "normal" patterns of prayer get thrown out the window. I used to feel guilty for that, as if I was locked into certain ways of relating to God. Then when I felt lost temporarily to those ways, I'd be lost to God.
Years ago, during a particularly devastating life-crisis, I first experienced the drying up of prayer, the days when all the normal patterns and usual "tricks" didn't work any longer. Prayer during those days became an act of faithfully sitting in the chair where I had grown accustomed to praying. Just sitting. Often sitting and weeping. After weeks of guilt over that, I finally heard my own (and God's) release, that my simple act of showing up, weeping, giving my little attentiveness . . . all of that was the only prayer I could offer during those days. And so my little world of prayer was cracked open just a bit.
I carried that framework for prayer into those early days of chemotherapy and cancer treatments after the original diagnosis, finding that the chemicals in my body and the absense of sleep so altered my consciousness that I could not longer pray as I thought I should. Slowly I dropped the "should" and took my own long-given advice: "Pray as you can, not as you cannot!" Dropping the "should" was not easy, mostly because it meant that I had to be as graceful and generous with myself as God is with me. That is an ongoing challenge for me.
Yet, here I am again. During these days of treatments I have less anxiety about getting this right. I have more resolve to stay in it faithfully, not having to conjure up some holy feeling or religious impulse to draw meaning out of the experience. I can still get scared that I'm doing this "all wrong," but I learn day by day the generosity of simply sitting, being loved, and offering my love in the only ways I know how.
Years ago, during one of those particularly difficult times, when I was frustrated with my lot in life, when I wanted to resist the pain and the difficulty of the dark valley I was invited to walk through, I wrote a simple, three-line poem that contained some wisdom not native to me. It is a poem I continue to hold onto, especially in days like this. It is simple, and it reminds me that life is not somewhere else, that running from where I am does not solve anything.
My life cracks open.
I stand in it,
careful not to run.
To stand and not run, to be where I am as faithfully as possible without having to escape the pain, to be with the incongruity of my life, to hold the tensions of my fragile existence . . . these are the invitations I sense as I move through this season and into the next season of soul.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Silence at the Crossroads
In ancient Greek culture, temples often would be built near the intersection of two roads. Men or women who were travelling and came upon the intersection might not know which road to take in order to get to their destination. So at those crossroads they could go into the temple, meditate in silence until the way forward became clear to them, then continue on the journey.
I find that to be a remarkably helpful symbol for life.
I find that to be a remarkably helpful symbol for life.
Monday, September 21, 2009
On Yearnings and Sieges
This poem/prayer from Rilke's Book of Prayer caught my attention today. It accurately describes my own inner resistance to what I need most in life, to that which if it overcame me, would be the life of me.
You many unassaulted cities:
Have you never yearned for the enemy,
that he might besiege you
for long irresolute years, until
in hopelessness and hunger you receive him?
He extends like the land beyond your walls,
and he knows he can hold out longer.
Look from your balconies:
there he camps. He does not tire
or diminish in size or strength.
He sends no messengers to threaten
or to promise or persuade.
He who will overcome you
is working in silence.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, I,49, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)
You many unassaulted cities:
Have you never yearned for the enemy,
that he might besiege you
for long irresolute years, until
in hopelessness and hunger you receive him?
He extends like the land beyond your walls,
and he knows he can hold out longer.
Look from your balconies:
there he camps. He does not tire
or diminish in size or strength.
He sends no messengers to threaten
or to promise or persuade.
He who will overcome you
is working in silence.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, I,49, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)