Being Righteous – 1 March 2013

Righteous is a word which may tend to set our teeth on edge, perhaps because we associate it with self-righteous – and righteousness with self-righteousness.  But Jesus says in the Beatitudes, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…

Well, the first thing to say is that it is nothing to do with the aberration common among both religious and non-religious people, which we label self-righteousness.  Self-righteousness is simply an unfortunate and unpleasant mistake.  No doubt any of us can be guilty of it at times.  Jesus could get very angry with the self-righteous of Israel, some of the scribes and pharisees and saducees.  They were, he said, in not exactly career-enhancing words, whited sepulchers and a brood of vipers.

In Hebrew and in the Aramaic which Jesus spoke, the word is tsaddiq, and it is not so much a word as a concept.  Justice and right relationships, just dealing and just decisions, are all part of it, but so are the obligations to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.  The word expresses the nature of God, and it expresses what God requires.  It also goes with a healthy appreciation of our own history and frailty – You were slaves in the land of Egypt…  But it is not some lofty ideal.  It is an obligation and a discipline.  And Jesus teaches his disciples:  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…  One modern translation puts it:  Happy are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail.

In the silence and stillness of contemplative prayer, what is being dealt with and changed is our hearts, and our stillness is our consent to this.  The hunger and thirst of our hearts comes to be more about righteousness.  This does not mean our own moral performance, however much that might need to be spruced up.  It means our sharing of God’s righteousness, God’s indignation at injustice, God’s care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.  Jesus proclaims beatitudes, and the meaning emerges if we look at the scriptures Jesus knew well, for instance in Deuteronomy -- Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.  All the people shall say, ‘Amen!’

We all hunger and thirst for something – indeed, what we actually hunger and thirst for defines us as persons.  Some people hunger and thirst for lifestyle, or for wealth, or for personal happiness – some for sport, or for fame – some people hunger and thirst for vengeance, retribution…  Other people hunger and thirst simply for sobriety – but not yet.  There are millions who hunger and thirst merely to be able to make a living and live with dignity.  All this is what Jesus meant when he said, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  What if, as Meister Eckhart taught, what we long for is actually what God longs for in us?  Think about it.  Eckhart actually said, The eye with which you see God is the eye with which God sees you.  God reciprocates our yearning, we reciprocate God’s yearning.  This is the process of righteousness, and of our hunger and thirsting.  

Those who mourn – 22 February 2013

Second in the ranks of the blessed, says Jesus, are those who mourn.  The first are the poor in spirit.  To mourn is to express a loss which is irrecoverable.  It may also be a loss which was unthinkable, unbearable, or unexpected.  I think that is what it is important to see -- that mourning is about the loss, as we know, even when the loss was perhaps merciful, expected, even hoped for.  Mourning is not the same as feeling sorry for myself, or feeling unjustly dealt with and complaining about life.  I may be doing all those things – but mourning is about the loss, the empty chair, the loss of the time in which things might have been said that should have been said, or been different.  True mourning is bearing the load and pain of the irremedial loss.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The secular culture has many alternative strategies for managing loss and grief.  One approach is to see grief as a “process”, at the end of which presumably is something called “closure”, after which you may be more your old self again.  Funerals are now getting turned into “celebrations”, or even are not held at all lest someone get too upset.  Other well-worn paths include alcohol and other drugs, and resort to medications and therapies which may or may not be needed.  The chemical solution.  Pain is seen as the enemy when it’s not. 

A useful exercise in the real nature of mourning, grief and loss, is to read Anne Perry’s little series of novels on the First World War.  Horrifying loss and all its attendant meaningless pain swept over Britain and Europe and far beyond.  A generation of young men was as good as wiped out.  It was a reversion to the barbarism that Jesus knew, the violence and injustice, the collapse of civil rights, the pain and blood, disease and torture, for which we scarcely have words, the ruthless power of the tyrant, the indiscriminate slaughter of which high explosive is capable.  Mourning and loss were old friends, and much of the loss was not so much about death as about the loss entailed in permanent wounding of body and mind, and in the demolition of ideals and faith itself.

And yet Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn.  Is that not extraordinary...?  It is as though, in that emptiness, even (as some will report) the absence of God, even there appears a light.  The darkness is not dark to you... And it is seen eventually by those with the courage to mourn. 

Poor in spirit – 15 February 2013

We are into Lent now.  I thought we might look in a contemplative way at the Beatitudes.  There are rather more Beatitudes than we have weeks in Lent, so I might be a little selective.  However, there is no doubt about the first Beatitude:  Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

A classic Zen story illustrates the opposite, not being poor in spirit:  A young seeker was keen to become the student of a certain Zen master.  The master invited him to his house for an interview.  The student described his spiritual experiences thus far, his past teachers, all he had learned until now, his pet philosophies and his goals in life.  The master listened silently and started to pour a cup of tea. He poured and poured, and when the cup was overflowing he kept on pouring.  Eventually the student said, Stop pouring, the cup is full!  The teacher said, Yes, and so are you.  How can I possibly teach you?

In Christian Meditation we are poor in spirit.  We are deliberately setting aside for now whatever it is we have going for us, which in some cases including myself isn’t much anyway.  But this is not Uriah Heep  ’umbleness.  It is a simple realism which understands, among much else, that on this holy ground our achievements, our thoughts and philosophies, our plans and intentions, our worthiest qualities, are inappropriate. 

There is a nice story about a valiant pilgrim who finally came to Rome.  His bicycle and his tracksuit were covered with emblems of where he had been.  He was told about a Christian recluse, a hermit, who lived in a room nearby, so he went to visit her.  “Why do you just sit here all the time,” he asked, “why are you not up and about and doing things?  “I am not sitting,” she said, “I am on a journey.”  Contemplatives know that on this journey it’s good to travel light.

Sometimes we may wonder whether our times of meditation are just a sort of tokenism.  If we were serious and consistent, our whole life would be that of a recluse, surely.  But that is to miss the point.  By grace, by the Spirit of God, simply to choose to be still and silent, realizing that everywhere is the presence of God, to focus our minds and hearts by the help of the mantra, to be in a consenting attitude through storms of distraction and doubt – consenting to grace and to love and to mercy – simply that, we find, begins to pervade life and the ways we think and believe, our attitudes and our fears.  Far from tokenism, this discipline is an effective freedom.  Far from any kind of anaesthetic, it puts us back in the world rooted, belonging and believing – and poor in spirit. 

 

Being nice like Jesus…? 8 February 2013

One prominent Southern Baptist reported that the sum total of his Sunday School training could be summed up in one sentence:  Jesus is nice, and he wants us to be nice too.  Well, I was a disaster as a Sunday School teacher – and indeed, when I think about it, I am even now unsure what it is we are supposed to tell little children except to love them and keep them safe. 

Perhaps it’s interesting to ponder just how nice Jesus actually was, by modern politically correct standards and what would pass muster in the local Play Centre.  But what we do know is that our faith is not a matter of admiring Jesus – atheists can do that much -- but rather becoming conformed to his way.  St Paul writes to the Philippians:  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus [Phil. 2:5].  In another place he writes:  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ – the somewhat blunter King James Version says, have put on Christ [Gal. 3:27] – and indeed the Greek verb does mean putting on a garment.  Paul loves that metaphor; it occurs several times in his letters.   Clothed with Christ is a very powerful image indeed. 

It is about becoming a new person.  It is not about being nice.  It is not about believing the right things.  It is not about criteria by which we may decide who belongs and who doesn’t, who qualifies and who fails.  The very next verse in Galatians is a shattering rebuke to much that parades as Christianity in our day…

As many of you as have been baptized into Christ

            have put on Christ.
            There is neither Jew nor Greek,
            there is neither slave nor free,
            there is neither male nor female.
            All are one in Christ Jesus.

Our stillness and our silence, our innermost disciplines, our quiet, gentle choosing of the mantra above all else for the moment, our determination to return to it over all the distractions, all of this is our steady, peaceful consent to being clothed with Christ.  The consent is not always easy.  It is likely to be an inner battle at times, as we confront the memories and the knowledge of people and events that have formed us up till now. 

And the experience of contemplatives tells us that the struggle is never over and resolved. It is not as though one day we enter some quiet space where all is serene and undisturbed.  St Teresa, St John of the Cross, St Francis, may have had their ecstasy.  St Paul did too, he mentions, but then he seems simply to discount it.  The struggle is the point.  We are part of a bent, cruel and unjust world, and we are not seeking escape.  We are consenting to conform to Christ, day by day, hour by hour.   

Joining Jesus’ prayer – 1 February 2013

One of the more tantalizing contemplative sayings goes something like this:  There is only one prayer in the universe, the prayer of the Risen Jesus.  What we do is join that prayer in silence and stillness.  It is a statement which causes some wrinkled brows among the faithful.  What about all our intercessions, and prayer chains?  The Prayer Book is full of beautiful prayers which we use.  “I have been saying my prayers all my life,” said one person at a seminar.  Although I didn’t say so to him of course, he had mentioned himself three times in just that very brief sentence – and that is the point.  It’s not about me, what I want, what I think, how I feel, my concern for others, even. 

Contemplative life and prayer is a long process in which self is being displaced – and we become steadily freer and more willing to hear the one true prayer, Jesus’s prayer, which starts to become our own prayer, sublimely set out for us in John 17.  It is an eternal prayer of unity, that ultimately the world will reflect the unity and diversity, in love, of the divine Trinity (to say it theologically).   It is a prayer we can learn to hear as a kind of hopeful miracle even in the depths of human confusion and depravity, pessimism and despair.  Jesus prays to the Father, in the Spirit:  …that they may all be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe…   And so on… if you read this chapter attentively you find that Jesus also prays about joy, about glory, about love, about knowing. 

This is his prayer, for his disciples and for God’s world in every age.  It is the prayer which ultimately leads to the very best that the Christian faith has to offer.  The Benedictines would say that all of life, work and play, becomes part of that prayer – there is no separation between work and prayer.   For St Paul it leads inevitably to a theology of unity in difference, between Jew and Greek, male and female, rich and poor, slave and free.  To hear Jesus’s prayer and to join it is to be no longer able to live by violence, discrimination, bigotry.  Those who have heard Jesus’s prayer and made it their own are already changing the world, because their own hearts are being changed. 

The rabbis had a saying that if only all Israel would observe the law perfectly for one day, the Messiah would come.  I think we could wistfully say that if only all Christendom could be still and listen for one day, then just perhaps, as the tumult and shouting dies, and the public moralists and the charismatic leaders and the keynote speakers all depart, there could be heard the faint sound of the song of the Trinity.  There is already love in the universe, there is already all that God finds very good.  Our task is to stop, and be silent, and to join what is already there.  The kingdom is within you, said Jesus, in your midst.  Christian Meditation is a way of making sure we are not so busy and noisy that we fail to see it.

Nothing to give – 21 December 2012

One level of Christmas awareness, the most prevalent one, understood by most, tells us that it is a time for giving gifts.  And so I watched a young mother at the supermarket, with a toddler and various items of food in her trolley, thoughtfully taking down from the high shelves two large parcels of exciting things for a child – hair brushes and mirrors, tea sets, dolls and other playthings – all pink, shiny and plastic under their clear plastic lids.  Gifts are compulsory, somehow, even if they can scarcely be afforded – and O O Henry wrote that classic short story, The Gift of the Magi, about a destitute young couple in New York.  He somehow managed to buy her a hair brush for her exquisite long hair, but she had sold her hair to pay for a gift for him. 

The Wise Men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, not quite what you need for a young baby, but an absolute gift for Bible interpreters of symbolism, ever after.  I hardly imagine most people are thinking of gifts for the Baby Jesus.  It is more a matter of computations about how much to spend, what is appropriate, what is affordable, what would be welcomed, what the other person has given me.  Some give reckless gifts, knowing there will be a reckoning later.  What matters is the giving of gifts, and the response of appropriate gratitude.  Almost the entire commercial world is depending on people making generous decisions about gifts.

But Christmas is actually a Christian season for Christian believers.  It is a time of light and love because of God’s gift.  It is a time for treading softly in the awareness of mystery.  Something has happened we didn’t deserve, don’t understand, something we need to receive before it drowns in sentimentalism and activism – something which has no affinity whatever with the Santa Parade.  It is our season and our high feast.  It is above all a time for being still and receptive. 

And the extraordinary discovery is that we have no gifts.  C S Lewis coined the amazing phrase, Surprised by Joy.  He received a gift.  He felt that nothing in him was sufficient or appropriate for a gift in return.  We receive the gift, and we respond by quieted, softened and joyous hearts.  That is the point.  I think also it is a time in which, in stillness, we can bear part of the pain of the world, lift a bit of the load, in our hearts.  I can’t imagine what it is like at Christmas in those American homes with a child missing because of hate and violence.  The gift is a gift of peace and love.  Receive the gift.  

 

 

 

Our Warkworth Christian Meditation group is now in recess over Christmas and January.  We expect to resume on Friday 1 February, and the next blog entry will be then.  Good wishes...  Ross Miller

Protecting Advent from Christmas – 14 December 2012

Advent, it seems to me, brings to the fore those aspects of Christian faith people find unsettling, the problems many don’t want to think about.  Why doesn’t God make everything right?  Why do good people suffer?  Where was God at Auschwitz?  How come Christ’s church is so sinful, hypocritical and embarrassing?  Why doesn’t simple faith protect me from anxiety, at least, if it’s not going to protect me from disaster?  Well, at least in Advent we are encouraged to look up and say honestly, No, the questions are not answered for us.  Faith then becomes faith again – that is to say, the faith of Abraham who went out at the call of an invisible God, not knowing where he was going.  Abraham was at God’s beck and call, not the other way around.  You have not chosen me, I have chosen you, said Jesus.  Faith, says the writer to the Hebrews, is the conviction of things not seen. On Whitsunday 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote in his diary:  I don’t know Who – or what – put the question, I don’t know when it was put.  I don’t even remember answering.  But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

In December almost everyone is tearing around in a complex activity called Getting Ready For Christmas.  I think it illustrates how energetically we respond to familiar things that comfort and reassure us.  Family, for instance, and children.  Money, if we’ve got it and can spend it.  The sentimental carols and candlelight.  The memories of the past.  The comforting assurance of food and drink.  The prospect of sunshine and warmth.  Doing something for others in need.  The Christmas tree and all the lights, the nativity scene, the presents.  For some, the wonderful familiar gospel nativity stories.  So it’s a good time, and I have to be careful that I do not even seem to be critical of good things.  I keep my cool, even at the solemn recital in the supermarket of I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus.

Advent, after all, is hard to describe or sell, particularly to children.  It’s for grown-up people anyway.  Advent is when, with the Jews, we face our yearnings and hopes, and realize yet again what it is like to see through a glass, darkly.  For many there is actually nothing much they can see clearly.  Advent is when we reach out for a word spoken to us which tells us we are known, named, and loved.  It is when, if we don’t actually tear down our idols, we at any rate see them for what they are – and laugh a little bit.  Idols don’t like that very much. 

In the stillness and silence of our prayer Advent may enter, even if Christmas is clamouring all around us everywhere else.  So perhaps that is Advent at its best, in silence, mindfulness and attention.