Fidelity - 26 August 2011

The teachers of contemplative prayer and life often come back to the word Fidelity. Fidelity, faithfulness, is a concept to know about and to appreciate. It manifests in Christian Meditation most simply of all as fidelity to the mantra. Whatever our mantra is, we are faithful to it. The mantra signifies a great deal for us, after all -- it signifies attention, paying attention, to stillness and to silence in prayer. It signifies to us where we may have wandered from in our lives generally. It signifies our poverty in prayer and life, the poverty of empty hands and a receptive heart, because the mantra, when we come to pray, is all we have to say.

Now, this is rather different from much that we normally experience. Much of life is necessarily coping with change. Faithfulness has to be therefore negotiable, fidelity to the old way may become inappropriate or silly. One of the earliest Greek philosophers said everything changes, παντα ρει, all is in flux. We have to change, and the ability to manage change is important. We change our minds. We change our abode, our lifestyle, our dietary patterns, sometimes our friends. We are constantly invited to change our body lotions, dog food and deodorants. Consumer wisely advises people to shop around, there may be a better deal. Some people move from church to church in the hope of a better experience. The first chapter of the Rule of St Benedict is a very funny dissertation on restless monks who shop around different monasteries in the hope that they might find something more congenial.

And of course we are not opposed to something new or better. Fidelity however is referring to a central part of each of us where we have actually made a decision or two. We may not have done this consciously and deliberately -- it may be more that God has brought us to this point of faith and faithfulness. Amid all the change around us there is a place in us that is still. It is not that we now know exactly what we believe -- it may be a place of mystery in many senses. It is certainly a place where love is possible, because God is there.

But in any case we don’t describe it by words. We know it by being there, by becoming still and silent, by our choice of fidelity to the simplest things, the mantra, the stillness, and the silence.

I have set my soul in silence and peace. A weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul. [Psalm 131]