Being present – 26 June 2015

Being there with all the others, showing up, having attendance marked on the roll, taking a selfie and sending it to everyone with the caption, “Guess where I am right now”…  None of this is what we mean by being present.  Arriving as a tourist at St Paul’s Cathedral or the Grand Canyon is exactly as many people say, having “done” these things – but only sometimes were we truly present.  You are not present, in contemplative terms, if you are there provisionally, merely to try it out and see if you like it, or visiting on your way somewhere else.   To be present requires commitment, trust and faith.  And therefore it can be a risky business.  You are not present in any contemplative sense if you are, as we say these days, keeping your options open.

Being present is precisely what we are doing in Christian Meditation, and in all contemplative prayer and life.  It is a discipline.  It is learned and practised.  We are paying attention in silence and stillness, and those who use a mantra find that helps.  This quality of sustained attention, this kind of stillness, is really a matter of complete simplicity, because for the present, at the time of prayer, we are setting aside all our usual games…  We are in a space where they are now unnecessary and inappropriate.

God is completely present to us.  Perhaps God finds that easier than we do – it sounds flippant, but it is important to point out.   In us he is completely at home, said (I think) Mother Julian of Norwich.  I am with you always, said Jesus.  The Psalmist asks rhetorically, Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence?   A shallow or infantile spirituality typically asks, Where was God?  when things went wrong – as though God is there simply to make everything go right for us and make us happy.  Contemplative spirituality has learned that there are times of darkness and pain in which God is seeking us in other ways and bearing our sorrows.  Abide in me, and I in you, says Jesus in John’s Gospel.

Everything we do in prayer – which isn’t much – is intended to help us be fully present.  Moreover this discipline helps us along the way to be fully present to others when that is asked of us.  As we know only too well, our presence is normally less than perfect.  We are always going to be distracted.  Our minds fly around.  As soon as we are still and silent it is heartily disliked by our busy egos, which sense danger and change, and our consciousness starts to fill up with both big matters and trivialities.  The mantra is always there to bring us back.  I am sure, also, that God’s presence sees our best intentions, our need to be still, and the love which has brought us to this point.  As we keep saying, it is always gentle.  God reads our hearts, not our brave accomplishments or our abject failures. 

Being present matters because I am the one God sees, and knows, and loves – here, where I am, in the world in which God has placed me, capable of being loving.  Nothing matters more than that.  That presence is deeply healing and strengthening.  And to that extent I am made a reconciler in God’s broken world.