Jesus bids us shine – 5 August 2016

An email last week expressed concern that most of us, living in New Zealand, in adequate surroundings, may really be simply protecting our own degree of comfort and security – doing religious things instead of really making a difference.  Then in another email, one of my fellow Oblates, Janet, reported that on an impulse she went to a seminar in Sydney organised by the Australian Christian Meditation community, and she writes:

(The seminar was entitled) ECOLOGY. ENVIRONMENT, and MEDITATION.  I questioned how they could all weave together…  (It) was held over a weekend, and all the speakers were Australians except for Father Laurence Freeman…  His question was: How can a contemplative spirituality make a difference in responding to the environmental challenges we face?  All the speakers spoke with energy, with urgency about the crisis in our world today…, social justice… and the need for a new consciousness… how a contemplative consciousness might heal our growing disconnectedness with the earth, and our increasing identification as consumers.  What I came away with was the knowledge that in all the turmoil of the world, the pain, the frustration, the often helplessness, what is needed is a joyful heart, a warm heart, a supple heart sustained by daily meditation which is the work of transformation and can indeed bring about a new consciousness and heal the world.

Well, the feeling of helplessness in the face of the world’s pain is an old friend.  Whatever service we render, whatever money we give, we know is the proverbial drop in the bucket.  Our fragile environment continues to degrade, mindless greed and violence abound, and children suffer and die.  G K Chesterton wrote, in 1911, as the skies were indeed darkening (Ballad of the White Horse):

    …you and all the kind of Christ
               Are ignorant and brave,
               And you have wars you hardly win
               And souls you hardly save.

               I tell you naught for your comfort,
              Yea, naught for your desire,
              Save that the sky grows darker yet
              And the sea rises higher.

The contemplative wisdom is that it is precisely there, where we are helpless and hopeless, that Jesus is present, knowing that territory well and saying Peace be with you.  The only faith any good any more is faith that sees light in these circumstances, and can testify to the light that we see.  Our contemplative prayer, our quiet consent to God, our love of silence and stillness… all of them, as Janet said, are facilitating a healing heart, what the Dalai Lama calls a Good Heart.  We can bear the burdens of others, as St Paul put it, and he added: and so fulfil the law of Christ.

It is true that there is very little we can do.  Occasionally, there may be something we can do that is important and makes a difference.  Meanwhile, each day, we are present, not running away from the world’s pain, and not obsessed with protecting our own safe hiding places.  Reality, not dreamtime, always accompanies us in the silence and stillness.