Being in the world differently - 4 November 2011

One of the important contemplative teachers of our day is the American Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister. A lot of the art of teaching, it seems to me, is being able to say the simplest truths in a fresh and simple way. So it is that Sr Joan Chittister writes: The contemplative life is about becoming more contemplative all the time. It is about being in the world differently.

And so, if what we want or expect from faith in God, from loyal and busy attendance at church -- and I have to say, for many people, from simply being good -- is stability, a reduction of change in our lives, protection from adversity and pain, then as contemplatives we are seriously out of luck.

Paying attention to God does mean change. It is a life of being in the world differently. It becomes increasingly difficult to live superficially. We start seeing things we may not have seen before. We find we can pay attention more to aspects of things we hitherto didn’t want to know about. But basically, we ourselves are changing, even at our great age. Sr Joan puts it this way: What needs to be changed in us? Anything that deludes us into thinking that we are not simply a work in progress, all of whose degrees, status, achievements, and power are no substitute for the wisdom that a world full of God everywhere, in everyone, has to teach us.

This is a kind of freedom, you see. Personal change, whether it is merely in the ways we do things or react, or whether it is much deeper, in the thoughts and fears we may reveal to no one, is always the result of discovering we are free to change. We may have thought we weren't. We are not locked into any determination of our background, or upbringing, or past sorrows, or beliefs we were taught. God’s spirit is working in us at the level of our fears, including our fears of mortality and not being here any more.

And so, to be contemplative is to be a work in progress, as Sr Joan puts it. As our fears about that reduce, our surprise quotient reduces also -- there may be things we intensely dislike, but we are no longer so surprised, horrified, aghast, threatened, because we are free to be still and because we are understanding better. It is a kind of wisdom, as Sr Joan says. I tend to be amused when people quote St Teresa’s most famous statement, that all will be well and every manner of thing will be well. It demands the Tui Beer response: Yeah, right. But St Teresa was speaking from her personal inner freedom. She wasn’t afraid any more.