You know, there is a vast fund of more or less ancient spiritual stories, some of which seem to me only marginally intelligible (some might think, a bit like the paintings of Colin McCahon). Some of the best of them come from the Desert Fathers and Mothers of long ago. A more recent one concerns a man (or a woman) who aspired to higher things, and started to climb a very high ladder. No one knew where the top of this ladder was. It went out of sight, far above the clouds. And so he climbed, ever upward, fighting fatigue and weather, doubt, fear and despair, onward and upward. He left the admiring plaudits of the people far behind. Of course, his view of the world and all it meant became panoramic, all-encompassing. But eventually even that was left far behind, as doggedly he climbed. And one day, or it may have been night, suddenly it was as though he had broken through all the pain and cloud and mystery, eternal light was shining upon him and he had arrived. All the angels of God welcomed him with sustained applause, to say nothing of the cherubim and seraphim, and promised to acquaint him now with the unveiling of all mysteries and the healing of all his wounds. Then, there was a silence, and out of the silence came a voice. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now jump.
Terrifying and unlikely as that may seem in the story, it is I think an experience people have. The person who realises that the faith and understanding they acquired in earlier years is no longer satisfying or credible, for one reason or another. We watch as one generation’s faith is set aside by the next generation. Someone learns that they have a serious illness which, they assumed, always happened to other people. It may be that old age seems to have become mainly a matter of watching old land marks disappear. I could continue the list for a long time. And it may all seem quite dismal -- except that letting go of the ladder is another form of faith, of being whole and alive. Clinging on to the ladder may not always be a good idea.
Our contemplative prayer is an experience of letting go the ladder. During these minutes all we have is silence and stillness and the faithful repetition of our mantra. Of course there remains part of our brain which knows that the ladder is actually still within arm’s reach if we want it. But to a real contemplative it would eventually be alright to have pushed the ladder away. It is to have consented deeply and inwardly to God in both life and in death. Of course it will always be scary. Our climber assumed that it was the ladder that was the act of faith. It was necessary, and having scaled it he would have arrived. Well, we are having small and brief space walks, as it were. You never know what might happen.
17 February 2012
10 February 2012
Worries and stuff -- 10 February 2012
What can we say about worries? The question matters because Jesus tells us not to do it. Worry, that is. Let not your hearts be troubled, he says.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear... And he goes on, sentence after sentence, filling every pew sitter in every age with guilt and failure (if indeed they are listening). Why do you worry about clothing...? And then all the stuff about the lilies of the field and Solomon in his glory -- and I think, it’s all very well for him -- he didn’t get frog-marched down to Auckland for a fitting of a new suit... Jesus says it’s only the gentiles who worry about such things. How could they be so shallow?
Well, the issue is a little worse than that. We can think of reasons for worry which make food, drink and clothes recede into triviality. People we know suddenly get frightening diagnoses. We know people around here increasingly worried about paying their bills. There are worries about sons and daughters and grandchildren. People have worries about their memories and regrets. And some are caught in a net of anxiety they simply can’t shake off.
Another anxiety generator in the church is just this... The confident and dogmatic believer who has got all questions answered and all mysteries laid plain, who is telling us what to do in order to be saved and safe like him or her. It is all, he says, so simple. Well no, you see, it is not. Reality is confusing, complex and worrying. The rain is falling on good and bad alike.
Jesus is not telling us to walk away from reality. Losing touch with reality is not a healthy sign anyway. Health means a healthy awareness of reality, not dimmed or distorted by drugs or by alcohol or by mental illness, or by dogmatic religion. Contemplative prayer, then, is a decision about where we are going to place our attention. We choose to set our anxieties to one side, along with all other preoccupations, filed under “Distractions”, because for the moment we are attending to the mantra. Of course this is not easy. It requires discipline and time. The worries and whatever else we have on our minds will still be there later, no doubt. Perhaps then they may have become subtly changed -- who knows? But we have been free to place our attention elsewhere, towards love and stillness, the silence which God’s word in our hearts requires.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear... And he goes on, sentence after sentence, filling every pew sitter in every age with guilt and failure (if indeed they are listening). Why do you worry about clothing...? And then all the stuff about the lilies of the field and Solomon in his glory -- and I think, it’s all very well for him -- he didn’t get frog-marched down to Auckland for a fitting of a new suit... Jesus says it’s only the gentiles who worry about such things. How could they be so shallow?
Well, the issue is a little worse than that. We can think of reasons for worry which make food, drink and clothes recede into triviality. People we know suddenly get frightening diagnoses. We know people around here increasingly worried about paying their bills. There are worries about sons and daughters and grandchildren. People have worries about their memories and regrets. And some are caught in a net of anxiety they simply can’t shake off.
Another anxiety generator in the church is just this... The confident and dogmatic believer who has got all questions answered and all mysteries laid plain, who is telling us what to do in order to be saved and safe like him or her. It is all, he says, so simple. Well no, you see, it is not. Reality is confusing, complex and worrying. The rain is falling on good and bad alike.
Jesus is not telling us to walk away from reality. Losing touch with reality is not a healthy sign anyway. Health means a healthy awareness of reality, not dimmed or distorted by drugs or by alcohol or by mental illness, or by dogmatic religion. Contemplative prayer, then, is a decision about where we are going to place our attention. We choose to set our anxieties to one side, along with all other preoccupations, filed under “Distractions”, because for the moment we are attending to the mantra. Of course this is not easy. It requires discipline and time. The worries and whatever else we have on our minds will still be there later, no doubt. Perhaps then they may have become subtly changed -- who knows? But we have been free to place our attention elsewhere, towards love and stillness, the silence which God’s word in our hearts requires.
03 February 2012
In war and in peace - 3 February 2012
Our Christian Meditation group at Warkworth resumed this morning for 2012. We meet at the old hall beside the Anglican church each Friday morning. We begin precisely at 8.30 am and are away by 9.15 am. The meetings are very simple. Each one begins with a very brief talk about some aspect of contemplative life and prayer, and then we meditate in silence for 25 minutes. There is a space for any questions or comments -- and then we go about our Friday tasks and commitments. Anyone is welcome.
John Cassian in the early 5th century taught that we are to recite our mantra “in times of prosperity and adversity”. The writer of the Cloud of Unknowing, in the Middle Ages, said we are to say it “in times of war and in times of peace” -- in those days he or she would have known all about that. Fr John Main in our day always taught the mantra is to be said “whether we feel like it or not”, from the beginning to the end of meditation.
Of course, everyone knows that we may have restless, even stormy days, dry periods, low and sullen moods, some have times when their moods are on the edge of panic, and we know times when we are plain weary. That is the point about moods. We always have them in one form or another. They alter, they may be justified or there may be no reason we know of, it may be events that affect us, or our body chemistry, it may be something that was said, it may be anxiety, real or unreal. It may be nothing we can pin down, as we say. Moods are real but unreliable. Some people seem to know nothing much else but their current mood. A person remarked to me recently that he was “in a very good space at the moment” -- as though it might unaccountably change quite soon.
Christian Meditation is an offer of grace, and a steadiness, at another level than our current emotions. Therefore part of the discipline is that we return to it regularly, whether we feel like it or not. And those who have been around contemplative life and prayer for a while will tell you, one of the aspects they value is just that -- the meditation and the mantra are a still point. It opens to a reality, which is there within us anyway, which is not overwhelmed by moods. The world may be falling to bits -- it usually is -- but this isn’t. It is like the seed in the parable, which grows in the dark and unseen, below the visible and the tangible and all the weather, and bears fruit.
This is all somewhat amazing in an age in which, culturally, emotions are paramount. How I feel or felt is actually considered news - I feel gutted, I am in shock, I was like O my God, I am freaking out... to say nothing of multiple variations on anger. It is probably pointless to suggest to people who are committed to spending vast amounts on entertainment, ensuring they are not going to be bored -- or that if they are terminally bored or frightened or depressed some drug or other will be a solution -- that there is a freedom and satisfaction beyond how we feel.
The truth will make you free, says Jesus. Bondage to emotions, however justified, is not freedom. In meditation we come closer to where what we are hearing is steady and true. It may be the sound of nothingness. For the moment it is enough that we are still and silent, accepting, consenting to truth and love. And for this purpose we learn to set aside however we might be feeling.
John Cassian in the early 5th century taught that we are to recite our mantra “in times of prosperity and adversity”. The writer of the Cloud of Unknowing, in the Middle Ages, said we are to say it “in times of war and in times of peace” -- in those days he or she would have known all about that. Fr John Main in our day always taught the mantra is to be said “whether we feel like it or not”, from the beginning to the end of meditation.
Of course, everyone knows that we may have restless, even stormy days, dry periods, low and sullen moods, some have times when their moods are on the edge of panic, and we know times when we are plain weary. That is the point about moods. We always have them in one form or another. They alter, they may be justified or there may be no reason we know of, it may be events that affect us, or our body chemistry, it may be something that was said, it may be anxiety, real or unreal. It may be nothing we can pin down, as we say. Moods are real but unreliable. Some people seem to know nothing much else but their current mood. A person remarked to me recently that he was “in a very good space at the moment” -- as though it might unaccountably change quite soon.
Christian Meditation is an offer of grace, and a steadiness, at another level than our current emotions. Therefore part of the discipline is that we return to it regularly, whether we feel like it or not. And those who have been around contemplative life and prayer for a while will tell you, one of the aspects they value is just that -- the meditation and the mantra are a still point. It opens to a reality, which is there within us anyway, which is not overwhelmed by moods. The world may be falling to bits -- it usually is -- but this isn’t. It is like the seed in the parable, which grows in the dark and unseen, below the visible and the tangible and all the weather, and bears fruit.
This is all somewhat amazing in an age in which, culturally, emotions are paramount. How I feel or felt is actually considered news - I feel gutted, I am in shock, I was like O my God, I am freaking out... to say nothing of multiple variations on anger. It is probably pointless to suggest to people who are committed to spending vast amounts on entertainment, ensuring they are not going to be bored -- or that if they are terminally bored or frightened or depressed some drug or other will be a solution -- that there is a freedom and satisfaction beyond how we feel.
The truth will make you free, says Jesus. Bondage to emotions, however justified, is not freedom. In meditation we come closer to where what we are hearing is steady and true. It may be the sound of nothingness. For the moment it is enough that we are still and silent, accepting, consenting to truth and love. And for this purpose we learn to set aside however we might be feeling.
23 December 2011
Advent IV - 23 December 2011
... I feel
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come, see the oxen kneel
In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Thomas Hardy’s wistful words. And I wonder how much of the adult enjoyment of Christmas is actually vicariously through the children. We enjoy their enjoyment, and their wonder and excitement can remind us of our own childhood Christmasses. Hardy mentions what our childhood used to know. But he himself is in gloom -- I should go with him in the gloom. He wrote this in 1915, in the middle of the First World War’s deepening abyss of grief. Hardy himself had been bruised and wounded by life and by the pain of his own relationships.
I don’t think he wants to recapture childhood simplicities and credulities. That could never happen. Becoming as little children doesn’t mean that. But he has a longing for something real, a word from God perhaps, some meeting of his bruised life with the truth and the light. Generally, as we know, what happens in practice is that the truth of Christmas gets submerged under much food and drink, almost compulsory sentimentalism, perhaps spending money we can’t afford, polishing up or renegotiating our family or tribal myths and legends... I was happy not to have to buy, on easy terms, a $2000 state of the art barbecue that put me in mind of the main flight console of the Starship Enterprise.
I should go with him in the gloom, hoping it might be so. This appeals to me far more than all the proclamations and certainties, or the silly ploys trendy clerics get up to. It is the opportunity to be still and silent, receptive and undistracted, open to wonder, to mystery and of course to the ever-present host of unanswered questions. God’s word is received in the heart, once we have ceased the noise and clamour. And this is God’s word. Nothing trumps the fact of a new baby surrounded by the total love of simple folk. God’s word is not placarded, however cleverly, loudly or provocatively. The Word made flesh, St John writes, full of grace and truth. Let’s hope it might be so. For plenty of mature people of faith and prayer, honest and humble hope is all that they can manage. I suspect that it is quite sufficient.
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come, see the oxen kneel
In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Thomas Hardy’s wistful words. And I wonder how much of the adult enjoyment of Christmas is actually vicariously through the children. We enjoy their enjoyment, and their wonder and excitement can remind us of our own childhood Christmasses. Hardy mentions what our childhood used to know. But he himself is in gloom -- I should go with him in the gloom. He wrote this in 1915, in the middle of the First World War’s deepening abyss of grief. Hardy himself had been bruised and wounded by life and by the pain of his own relationships.
I don’t think he wants to recapture childhood simplicities and credulities. That could never happen. Becoming as little children doesn’t mean that. But he has a longing for something real, a word from God perhaps, some meeting of his bruised life with the truth and the light. Generally, as we know, what happens in practice is that the truth of Christmas gets submerged under much food and drink, almost compulsory sentimentalism, perhaps spending money we can’t afford, polishing up or renegotiating our family or tribal myths and legends... I was happy not to have to buy, on easy terms, a $2000 state of the art barbecue that put me in mind of the main flight console of the Starship Enterprise.
I should go with him in the gloom, hoping it might be so. This appeals to me far more than all the proclamations and certainties, or the silly ploys trendy clerics get up to. It is the opportunity to be still and silent, receptive and undistracted, open to wonder, to mystery and of course to the ever-present host of unanswered questions. God’s word is received in the heart, once we have ceased the noise and clamour. And this is God’s word. Nothing trumps the fact of a new baby surrounded by the total love of simple folk. God’s word is not placarded, however cleverly, loudly or provocatively. The Word made flesh, St John writes, full of grace and truth. Let’s hope it might be so. For plenty of mature people of faith and prayer, honest and humble hope is all that they can manage. I suspect that it is quite sufficient.
16 December 2011
Stability - 16 December 2011
One of the promises a Benedictine Oblate makes is the one we call the vow of Stability. I think it originally meant mainly that a monk or a nun did not go flitting around from one monastery to another in order to get a better abbot or a better bed, or a better cook. Whatever else stability meant, it certainly meant that the monk or the nun was committed to one monastery for better or for worse, and the Holy Rule was the structure within which they lived there peaceably and without grumbling. Benedict was very much against grumbling.
But we don’t live in monasteries. Stability, whether we live in a monastery or not, comes to have a very much richer meaning. We tend not to live in one place, even in our senior years, and life is a journey. Everything is mobile now. Even the elderly and the dependent may have to move. So the analogy of the pilgrim very much applies. It becomes important to life and faith that we know when and how to change -- whether it is our way of doing something, our opinions, our attitudes. We move along the road and the scenery here and the challenges and the truth we apprehend are not the same as they were last week.
So Stability is deeper. There is a part of us which, somewhere along the way, has made some choices. My Scottish grandmother, who must have been quite a girl in her day but now was old and feeble, told her son, “I didn’t leave it until now to get my roof properly thatched.”
I can’t say strongly enough that this place of stability is not any hidden form of dogmatism or bigotry. But unless there is a centre which has become still, settled, and I would say deeply loving and grateful, then no matter what our expressed opinion and actions are, out in the world and on the road, we may be what St Paul calls sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
Stability is a function of Christian maturity -- not so much a function of age, as of the factors and experiences along the way and down the years that made us more humble and more loving, and most important of all, less afraid. In the discipline and stillness of Christian Meditation we simply come closer to that place where God’s Spirit can make these changes in us. Wisdom turns out to be not the sum of everything we know, but the stillness and simplicity that opens our hearts to wonder and goodness, enables us to bear pain including the pain of others, and always helps us to be unafraid of the truth.
But we don’t live in monasteries. Stability, whether we live in a monastery or not, comes to have a very much richer meaning. We tend not to live in one place, even in our senior years, and life is a journey. Everything is mobile now. Even the elderly and the dependent may have to move. So the analogy of the pilgrim very much applies. It becomes important to life and faith that we know when and how to change -- whether it is our way of doing something, our opinions, our attitudes. We move along the road and the scenery here and the challenges and the truth we apprehend are not the same as they were last week.
So Stability is deeper. There is a part of us which, somewhere along the way, has made some choices. My Scottish grandmother, who must have been quite a girl in her day but now was old and feeble, told her son, “I didn’t leave it until now to get my roof properly thatched.”
I can’t say strongly enough that this place of stability is not any hidden form of dogmatism or bigotry. But unless there is a centre which has become still, settled, and I would say deeply loving and grateful, then no matter what our expressed opinion and actions are, out in the world and on the road, we may be what St Paul calls sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
Stability is a function of Christian maturity -- not so much a function of age, as of the factors and experiences along the way and down the years that made us more humble and more loving, and most important of all, less afraid. In the discipline and stillness of Christian Meditation we simply come closer to that place where God’s Spirit can make these changes in us. Wisdom turns out to be not the sum of everything we know, but the stillness and simplicity that opens our hearts to wonder and goodness, enables us to bear pain including the pain of others, and always helps us to be unafraid of the truth.
09 December 2011
How come Advent is turning me into a grumpy old man? - 9 December 2011
How come Advent is turning me into a grumpy old man? Advent is one of the two great so-called penitential seasons of the Christian Year. Advent is not Christmas, a point which is either not believed or widely ignored. But its proximity to Christmas, at any rate in our culture, destroys its special meaning and beauty, and its importance. And so now this time of the year gets to be all about food. We have multiple eating events. We prematurely sing Christmas carols all over the place. But never mind... I turn on the secular Radio NZ Concert Programme last Sunday morning and get the most sublime true Advent music, including the mighty Bach Advent chorale Wachet Auf... So I felt better.
Penitential does not mean we become grim and put on sackcloth and ashes. Penitential may be actually the wrong word. Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests there are two things we can do in Advent. The first is to pay attention to the enormous hunger for God, for meaning, for some word of assurance, that utterly pervades our secular culture. This hunger emerges in a thousand ways, some of them perverse, in our literature, our entertainment, our uses of leisure, our art, in our illnesses and mental health, in our social pathology... In Advent our discipline can be to recognise this hunger, in ourselves and all around us, these longings, the appalling moral anxiousness of our age -- just as the Jews long ago waited and yearned for what they called salvation, a messiah, a meaning for all their pain.
Secondly, says Rowan Williams, Advent may be when we take inventory of our idols. We will be surprised at what they actually are. One of the colourful ancient prophesies says: In that day we shall cast our idols of silver and our idols of gold, which we made each one for ourselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah 2:20). Advent is when contemplatives make sure that we know how easily we domesticate God to some idol reflecting ourselves and what we want. So Advent is when in a way we become Jews again, in obedience to the First and Second Commandments.
The God who comes may not be the God we expect -- and yet, in our stillness and silence we dare to hope for what one theologian calls a God of total and presuppositionless love. “Watch and pray”, signed off one pious friend in his Christmas email to me. Well, he is right. And we emerge from Advent with a clearer sense of what can be consigned to the moles and the bats.
Penitential does not mean we become grim and put on sackcloth and ashes. Penitential may be actually the wrong word. Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests there are two things we can do in Advent. The first is to pay attention to the enormous hunger for God, for meaning, for some word of assurance, that utterly pervades our secular culture. This hunger emerges in a thousand ways, some of them perverse, in our literature, our entertainment, our uses of leisure, our art, in our illnesses and mental health, in our social pathology... In Advent our discipline can be to recognise this hunger, in ourselves and all around us, these longings, the appalling moral anxiousness of our age -- just as the Jews long ago waited and yearned for what they called salvation, a messiah, a meaning for all their pain.
Secondly, says Rowan Williams, Advent may be when we take inventory of our idols. We will be surprised at what they actually are. One of the colourful ancient prophesies says: In that day we shall cast our idols of silver and our idols of gold, which we made each one for ourselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats (Isaiah 2:20). Advent is when contemplatives make sure that we know how easily we domesticate God to some idol reflecting ourselves and what we want. So Advent is when in a way we become Jews again, in obedience to the First and Second Commandments.
The God who comes may not be the God we expect -- and yet, in our stillness and silence we dare to hope for what one theologian calls a God of total and presuppositionless love. “Watch and pray”, signed off one pious friend in his Christmas email to me. Well, he is right. And we emerge from Advent with a clearer sense of what can be consigned to the moles and the bats.
02 December 2011
It’s not about me - 2 December 2011
St Paul has these tantalising sayings about life and death -- sayings we probably know about from hearing them in church, but have never quite come to terms with: ...as dying, and see, we are alive! It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And I can certainly remember as a youth being puzzled about some of these things -- Paul actually says in one letter that he would prefer to die, but for the present he seems expected to continue living.
The journey a contemplative person is on is very much a matter of confronting the personal issues which may make us afraid of death, afraid of any signals of losing personal control of things or events. In meditation, to relinquish our illusion of ordering of our universe, even just for 20 or 25 minutes, is immediately to confront some of our fears. Mercifully, the hidden secret which we eventually discover is that what we can scarcely do ourselves starts to get done in us anyway, as we find the grace to be still and consent. This is why stillness matters -- our only tasks right now are to be still, physically and mentally, and say our word.
It makes the time of silence both easy (because all we have to do is say our mantra), and hard (because the door now opens a chink to the distant protest of our inner demons). And the best teaching I know remains the same -- just say your word. Be still, be silent, consent to the presence of God.
We have 25 minutes without our defences actually up there in front of us. In a group this is good because we are all doing much the same. Each time of meditation is an announcement to ourselves that one day, and we really don’t know when, this is going to happen anyway.
You may remember Jesus’s story about the man who had too many possessions, and so he went away sorrowful. We are not going away sorrowful because we are refusing in this time to be defined by our image, or our lifestyle, or our possessions, our achievements, our reputation. These things are not bad. But we are preferring to be named and defined by God and by the truth. The truth requires humility and consent, and the best we can do about that is to be still and silent.
The journey a contemplative person is on is very much a matter of confronting the personal issues which may make us afraid of death, afraid of any signals of losing personal control of things or events. In meditation, to relinquish our illusion of ordering of our universe, even just for 20 or 25 minutes, is immediately to confront some of our fears. Mercifully, the hidden secret which we eventually discover is that what we can scarcely do ourselves starts to get done in us anyway, as we find the grace to be still and consent. This is why stillness matters -- our only tasks right now are to be still, physically and mentally, and say our word.
It makes the time of silence both easy (because all we have to do is say our mantra), and hard (because the door now opens a chink to the distant protest of our inner demons). And the best teaching I know remains the same -- just say your word. Be still, be silent, consent to the presence of God.
We have 25 minutes without our defences actually up there in front of us. In a group this is good because we are all doing much the same. Each time of meditation is an announcement to ourselves that one day, and we really don’t know when, this is going to happen anyway.
You may remember Jesus’s story about the man who had too many possessions, and so he went away sorrowful. We are not going away sorrowful because we are refusing in this time to be defined by our image, or our lifestyle, or our possessions, our achievements, our reputation. These things are not bad. But we are preferring to be named and defined by God and by the truth. The truth requires humility and consent, and the best we can do about that is to be still and silent.
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