In the TV drama Downton Abbey, the execrable aunt who has caused a lot of damage by her plain speaking says to the wonderful Dowager Countess of Grantham, “My dear, I always say what I think...” “Why,” asks the countess, “no one else does.” There are people who have never experienced what it is like to think it perhaps, but choose not to say it.
One of the most famous of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd and 4th centuries was Abba Moses the Black. He was probably an Ethiopian, and tradition says he had been a robber, a highwayman. One of the many stories tells how a council was being held in Scetis, and some of the fathers there treated Moses with contempt, saying “Why does this black man come among us?” But Moses kept silence. Later, some asked him, “Abba, did that not grieve you at all?” He said to them, “I was grieved, but I kept silence.” On another occasion, when one of the brothers had committed a fault, Abba Moses was asked to come and help with the judgement. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others said, “What is this, Father?” Moses replied, “My sins run out behind me, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
One of the consequences of a contemplative discipline in which, so far as we can, we are paying attention to the real world rather than day dreaming or fantasising, and to human brokenness including our own rather than blaming, judging, labelling, is that we seem to have less and less to say. If God teaches us in the silence to make peace with ourselves, as Jesus taught, then it becomes less difficult to understand what C S Lewis called this bent world. At any rate we pause now on any threshold of passing judgement, and often as not we say nothing at all.
It doesn’t mean at all that we lose our sense of justice and our indignation when people and our precious environment are maltreated by the misuse of power. But it is not possible to come from the silence and resume the old strategies of label and divide, name, blame and shame. The silence extends out far beyond the time of meditation, the mantra follows us off down the road, and there is something in our hearts put there by God which tells us that speaking up judgmentally and hurtfully will not improve anything. And if we are compelled to speak up, it is likely to become a rare event, and it will always somehow reflect what we have come from in the silence and stillness.
Isidore of Pelusium, one of the later Desert Fathers, put it this way: Living without speaking is better than speaking without living. For a person who lives rightly helps us by silence, while one who talks too much annoys us. If, however, words and life go hand in hand, it is the perfection of all philosophy.
28 October 2011
21 October 2011
Inner peace - 21 October 2011
Why are we meditating? Of course there is a variety of reasons, motivations. What we frequently hear when we ask is a desire for inner peace. People are meditating because it is so different from the other aspects of their lives, which may be busy, noisy, demanding -- and for some, full of anxiety or fear, or regret. For a while they can be still and rest, with permission as it were to set down the load. And that’s fine. If that’s what it is, “not a problem” as everyone seems to say these days.
Christian Meditation however invites us to rather more than that. If our motive is personal inner peace, there are perhaps two things to say. The first is that there are many offers of peace of mind around, such as Transcendental Meditation, TM, and much of it is simply part of the consumer culture. Secondly, it may not work. In half an hour’s time we are back where we came from, amid all that is not peaceful. What we have had is a rest. In the classical Christian teaching, that “rest” was known very well. They called it the pax perniciosa, day-dreaming, a kind of alpha consciousness, an escape from reality.
In Christian Meditation it is important that we are awake and alert, and not hiding from reality. I think the word rest is not appropriate because there is in fact a lot going on. We are the ones who are still and silent, but we are consenting to the work of the spirit over the days, weeks and years, eroding the false self and calling the true self, which was always there, and which God always saw. The much-used hospital cliché has some relevance here -- informed consent. We are consenting, and sometimes that is quite hard work, because it means facing our reality and the present moment.
One frequent question is about results -- what do I get out of this, if not an amazing and instant inner tranquillity...? You see the consumerism again... there has to be some reward, some benefit. If we must look for a result, we should look for it in the area of our relationships. Are we more loving... of ourselves in the first place? Less judgemental and inclined to labels which are exclusive of some and inclusive of others. Are we acquiring more understanding or sympathy with human difference, including our own human frailty and fallibility?
It is a long process of being brought closer to the Way of Christ, to some of those sublime requirements such as the Beatitudes which may have always seemed far above us. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard said that most Christians typically treat the Sermon on the Mount rather as they set their watches deliberately ahead of time, so that they will at least possibly approximate. The work that is going on in our stillness is something we learn to trust, and it becomes apparent in our hearts and in our relationships.
Christian Meditation however invites us to rather more than that. If our motive is personal inner peace, there are perhaps two things to say. The first is that there are many offers of peace of mind around, such as Transcendental Meditation, TM, and much of it is simply part of the consumer culture. Secondly, it may not work. In half an hour’s time we are back where we came from, amid all that is not peaceful. What we have had is a rest. In the classical Christian teaching, that “rest” was known very well. They called it the pax perniciosa, day-dreaming, a kind of alpha consciousness, an escape from reality.
In Christian Meditation it is important that we are awake and alert, and not hiding from reality. I think the word rest is not appropriate because there is in fact a lot going on. We are the ones who are still and silent, but we are consenting to the work of the spirit over the days, weeks and years, eroding the false self and calling the true self, which was always there, and which God always saw. The much-used hospital cliché has some relevance here -- informed consent. We are consenting, and sometimes that is quite hard work, because it means facing our reality and the present moment.
One frequent question is about results -- what do I get out of this, if not an amazing and instant inner tranquillity...? You see the consumerism again... there has to be some reward, some benefit. If we must look for a result, we should look for it in the area of our relationships. Are we more loving... of ourselves in the first place? Less judgemental and inclined to labels which are exclusive of some and inclusive of others. Are we acquiring more understanding or sympathy with human difference, including our own human frailty and fallibility?
It is a long process of being brought closer to the Way of Christ, to some of those sublime requirements such as the Beatitudes which may have always seemed far above us. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard said that most Christians typically treat the Sermon on the Mount rather as they set their watches deliberately ahead of time, so that they will at least possibly approximate. The work that is going on in our stillness is something we learn to trust, and it becomes apparent in our hearts and in our relationships.
14 October 2011
Paying attention - 14 October 2011
Sitting still and paying attention, according to our experts, is a very complex human problem. While tens of thousands of our compatriots have no difficulty paying close, focussed attention (if not sitting still) for over an hour to a rugby game they want to watch, and can recall every detail of it later, I for one am bored rigid in the first five minutes. I think that is because, wildly exciting as it may be, it seems to me not to matter.
And indeed, those who compile our TV programs are assuming at present, I think, that our attention is successfully captured for serious lengths of time only by relentless sport, or by the preparation of food to the accompaniment of much drama and tears, or by TV and pop icons locked in battle with their hormones. One bloke on a food program cooks what he himself has hunted and killed, so that combines two criteria, as it were, if indeed hunting and killing is a sport.
Paying attention is a large subject, I do realise. Our attention span depends on many things. When the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book was published in 1989 it was such an excellent thing it seemed to me, except for what they did with the Psalms. The old 1662 Prayer Book had instructed in the Preface: The Psalter shall be read through once every month... Obviously not everyone paid attention when it was, but some did, and expected it, and it tended to result in a red-blooded church in which, as one Benedictine Abbot pointed out, God was not expected to behave in ways prescribed in the manuals of doctrine. But now in 1989 the Psalms got selected for our tender sensibilities, and abbreviated for our attention span, the language was cleaned up, and they have become in our worship like little approved sound bites as it were. Some Psalms we never hear now because they might upset someone.
Well, when we come to pray as contemplatives, we are taking whatever attention span we might have -- and of course it will differ from day to day, depending on a lot of things -- and we are making it completely available in the present moment, whether it encounters difficulties or not, as it will. I had a lovely teacher in Standard 3, Mrs Stephens -- I think her husband was killed in the war, in that year, because suddenly we felt very sad for her without knowing why -- nobody told us. One day Mrs Stephens said, I would really like it if Ross Miller would pay attention and stop staring dreamily out the window. Well, Mrs Stephens, I have got better at it now. I have learned to sit still for 20 to 30 minutes and pay attention as completely as I know how to the present moment. I hear everything that happens in that time within my auditory range -- but I now know to decide not to start thinking about all that. I am content to be where I am at this moment, and to be still, and to be aware that I am in the presence of God, as is always the case, except that now I am paying attention. I am not expecting emotions or revelations or any such thing, and I would be very surprised to start levitating -- that would wreck my attention.
And that is all. My loving presence here is my very best response to God’s loving presence here, since God is always paying attention to me. And that in the end is the whole of prayer.
And indeed, those who compile our TV programs are assuming at present, I think, that our attention is successfully captured for serious lengths of time only by relentless sport, or by the preparation of food to the accompaniment of much drama and tears, or by TV and pop icons locked in battle with their hormones. One bloke on a food program cooks what he himself has hunted and killed, so that combines two criteria, as it were, if indeed hunting and killing is a sport.
Paying attention is a large subject, I do realise. Our attention span depends on many things. When the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book was published in 1989 it was such an excellent thing it seemed to me, except for what they did with the Psalms. The old 1662 Prayer Book had instructed in the Preface: The Psalter shall be read through once every month... Obviously not everyone paid attention when it was, but some did, and expected it, and it tended to result in a red-blooded church in which, as one Benedictine Abbot pointed out, God was not expected to behave in ways prescribed in the manuals of doctrine. But now in 1989 the Psalms got selected for our tender sensibilities, and abbreviated for our attention span, the language was cleaned up, and they have become in our worship like little approved sound bites as it were. Some Psalms we never hear now because they might upset someone.
Well, when we come to pray as contemplatives, we are taking whatever attention span we might have -- and of course it will differ from day to day, depending on a lot of things -- and we are making it completely available in the present moment, whether it encounters difficulties or not, as it will. I had a lovely teacher in Standard 3, Mrs Stephens -- I think her husband was killed in the war, in that year, because suddenly we felt very sad for her without knowing why -- nobody told us. One day Mrs Stephens said, I would really like it if Ross Miller would pay attention and stop staring dreamily out the window. Well, Mrs Stephens, I have got better at it now. I have learned to sit still for 20 to 30 minutes and pay attention as completely as I know how to the present moment. I hear everything that happens in that time within my auditory range -- but I now know to decide not to start thinking about all that. I am content to be where I am at this moment, and to be still, and to be aware that I am in the presence of God, as is always the case, except that now I am paying attention. I am not expecting emotions or revelations or any such thing, and I would be very surprised to start levitating -- that would wreck my attention.
And that is all. My loving presence here is my very best response to God’s loving presence here, since God is always paying attention to me. And that in the end is the whole of prayer.
09 October 2011
Spiritual or religious - 7 October 2011
It seems trendy these days to claim to be spiritual but not religious. Religious apparently means going to church and doing religious things, so that’s a no-no. But spiritual is such a handy word in the contemporary climate because it can mean anything, like whatever I want it to mean. And also spiritual, whatever it is, can be done without messing up all the other things we might want to do.
Well, it might be quite important to be neither of these things. Labelling, in any case, usually isn’t helpful or specially informative, and in a mature faith we require less and less of labelling of ourselves or others, because it always obscures the truth.
Jesus didn’t invite his followers to become spiritual or religious. He invited his followers to leave self behind, and that is another pathway altogether. When he did employ any labelling it was in a negative sense -- don’t be like the pharisees. And what was the matter with the pharisees...? They were deeply aware of self, ego, image, reputation. They had official selves. They were role-models, visible, important. The pharisee Jesus pictured in the temple actually thanked God that he was not like other people. He was very spiritual and religious, and quite exemplary. I am sure he was also sincere. Jesus invites us to say goodbye to whatever vestiges of the pharisee are in us, large or small.
So, what we experience in contemplative life and prayer, as time goes by and the life of stillness builds, is the steady enfeebling of the ego. Our official self, what we hope is our visible self, even if it is widely admired, is not the same as the self God made and sees, knows and loves. Love, in the disciplines of stillness and silence, but actually wherever we find it, somehow attenuates the ego in ourselves and even in others, as we begin to see the truth more clearly.
Love and truth are always intimately related, and it is the true self which God made and which Jesus brings to birth, always, as we are still and consenting. This is never something we strive for. The best we can do is be still. God’s breath of creation does it in us.
Well, it might be quite important to be neither of these things. Labelling, in any case, usually isn’t helpful or specially informative, and in a mature faith we require less and less of labelling of ourselves or others, because it always obscures the truth.
Jesus didn’t invite his followers to become spiritual or religious. He invited his followers to leave self behind, and that is another pathway altogether. When he did employ any labelling it was in a negative sense -- don’t be like the pharisees. And what was the matter with the pharisees...? They were deeply aware of self, ego, image, reputation. They had official selves. They were role-models, visible, important. The pharisee Jesus pictured in the temple actually thanked God that he was not like other people. He was very spiritual and religious, and quite exemplary. I am sure he was also sincere. Jesus invites us to say goodbye to whatever vestiges of the pharisee are in us, large or small.
So, what we experience in contemplative life and prayer, as time goes by and the life of stillness builds, is the steady enfeebling of the ego. Our official self, what we hope is our visible self, even if it is widely admired, is not the same as the self God made and sees, knows and loves. Love, in the disciplines of stillness and silence, but actually wherever we find it, somehow attenuates the ego in ourselves and even in others, as we begin to see the truth more clearly.
Love and truth are always intimately related, and it is the true self which God made and which Jesus brings to birth, always, as we are still and consenting. This is never something we strive for. The best we can do is be still. God’s breath of creation does it in us.
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