The Spirit of Truth – 17 May 2013

... the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. [John 14: 17]

It is important to understand that contemplative life and prayer is not some cosy escape route from difficult truth and the often harsh realities of life.  Just the opposite.  These days, when I don’t inhabit a pulpit any more, there is sometimes a distant urge to get back up there and say some of the things I might have said more clearly long ago.  For instance, that there is only one truth in the universe.  There is not one truth of mathematics and another truth of God.  There is not the truth of science and the truth of religion.  There is not one truth of nuclear physics and another truth of the Bible.  It is not a question of what you or I believe, or what we call our faith, but of what is, whether we believe it or not.  But, as St Paul said, we see what is, dimly – darkly, says the KJV – the Greek word is actually enigma.  The contemplative person, through prayer, silence, stillness, is learning to live with this inescapable mystery – and it actually comes to many as a very great freedom. 

Jesus, according to John’s Gospel, said that his followers would come to know the Spirit of Truth.  Well, I think we do, once we discover how to hold our tongues, be still and listen to God’s silence.  One of our important contemplative writers, Kathleen Norris, went to a church in Chicago where the minister was actually a highly qualified scientist.  He told her of what he called a wonderful irony – he said the science that many Christians had felt over the centuries to be our greatest threat... is now teaching us the ancient truth about mystery, a truth that once long ago was ours – that when it comes to ultimate truth, the most appropriate posture is modesty, silence, reverence, not propounding, shouting, condemning, excommunicating.

... the Spirit of truth, says Jesus, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.  There is that word abide again.  To the writer of John’s Gospel this is a very special word.  Jesus speaks to his disciples of a mutual abiding, he in them and they in him.  It is more and deeper than simply belonging or believing, or doing lots of good works.  It is a relationship not negotiable, and it certainly has nothing to do with the contemporary wisdom of keeping your options open, never burning your bridges.  This abiding embraces doubt and mystery.   Jesus’s disciples do not understand everything.  Typically, we understand very little.  But we are learning to set ego to one side – and it is that which admits the Spirit of Truth, the humility and attention to see and understand, and to embrace the mystery.  We find we are no longer afraid of truth – if it is true, then it is of God. 

Completely one – 10 May 2013

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 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 that you have sent me. [John 17: 20-21]

But the world looks at us and sees hopeless disunity.  Historians can see that back in the days when the church was more or less one, that unity was enforced, often brutally, by both church and state.  You can have the appearance of unity if you are powerful enough to enforce it.  I am always amused to see parishes and schools named after St Thomas More, Henry’s pious Lord Chancellor.  But Thomas More unblinkingly executed numerous protestants who would not return to Rome – and he himself got executed by Henry, as we know, because Henry required unity around Henry’s agenda.  However Jesus expected his disciples to behave, I feel it was not like that. 

But if I may speak as a survivor of the now almost forgotten Church Union negotiations in this country back in the 1960s and 1970s...  What we mainly discovered was what we should have known, that unity does not come by negotiation, by conference.  There was much good will around at that time, but in the end nothing much changed. 

Jesus points to something much more basic.  Jesus’s disciple shares in the unity Jesus knows with his Father – May they be in us, Jesus says.  The disciple enters into another way of living.  It is not possible that Jesus’s disciple now has enemies, or hierarchies exercising control.  When Jesus touches on matters of power and precedence, in the Sermon on the Mount, he states categorically, It will not be so among you. 

Unity begins not by treaty or agreement, but in a changed heart.  Our prayer constantly invites us to live deeper and better than our inner dividedness, our fears, our memories.  In silence and stillness, God’s Spirit is able to begin and continue a work of re-creation in us, helping us to set aside what we are afraid of, and all that poisons life and hinders our inner unity and our relationship with God’s world.   I suppose we are always tempted to assume we would be naked and vulnerable without our inner demons and accumulated memories, handicaps, whatever they are.   But in the silence we are able to get past the fear of letting go these things.  Unity within very soon leads us to become agents of unity around us, where we are and live. 

Peace I leave with you – 3 May 2013

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  [John 14: 27]

Last week we touched on how, in Jesus’s teachings, the opposite of love seems to be not hate, but fear.  Why are you afraid, Jesus frequently asked people.  Last week the gospel lesson included Jesus’s new commandment, that you love one another – and we could see that a major barrier to love is fear of all sorts of things.  In the gospel this week Jesus says he leaves them peace, and he adds, Do not let your hearts be troubled... do not let them be afraid.  In the First Letter of John we learn, There is no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear [I John 4: 18].

Peace, in the language Jesus knew, is the Hebrew shalom.  There is no one English  word for this.  Health, wellness, justice, inner joy, absence of hostilities, belonging within one’s community – all these come into it.  But perhaps the thing to note in this statement from Jesus is that peace is a gift.  We receive it, rather than generate it around a conference table.  Peace is what God gives and we receive.  And then peace may start to happen around men and women of peace.

Christian Meditation is very much a matter of confronting our fears.  The invitation to love often seems impossible, or far too remote for us, because we know our fears.  Much of the time we are preceded in life by our defences, in case we get hurt.  With some it is defence against difference – people feel safe with familiarity... “the tried, trusted and true”, my Scottish grandmother would say.   Racism is a direct product of fear, for many.  Fear of change is manifestly a problem for many.  And these days, the fear of ageing, the loss of youth and strength, the onset of wrinkles, the loss of control, fear of becoming dependent, fear of dementia – and fear of death.   

The silence and stillness of our prayer is the context in which love can overcome, steadily, as time goes by, our deepest fears.  A work goes on which we would be powerless to do ourselves.  Our stillness is our consent to God doing this work in us, enabling us to let go of even the fear of mortality. 

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  

This is how Lady Julian of Norwich was able to say that all would be well.  It was never, as it is often quoted today, some pious defiance hurled against reality.  It is simply that Lady Julian is at peace within herself.  She is not afraid, and she has become a teacher of peace. 

The new commandment – 26 April 2013

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. [John 13: 34-35]

It comes right at the end of the long, complicated, somewhat agitated Gospel reading for next Sunday.  In the midst of fear and betrayal, Jesus gives them, simply, lucidly, his new commandment.  They knew about commandments – Jews live by commandments.  This one is new because he decrees it, at this time.  And he adds...as I have loved you.  Jesus fulfils the commandment – so will his disciples.  Moreover it takes priority over every other commandment or obligation.  In the synoptic gospels Jesus is reported as adding... there is no other commandment greater, on this one hangs all the law and the prophets.  I  give you a new commandment, that you love one another.   

Love is a word which now needs constantly to be rescued.  At times I seriously doubt that this is possible.  What Jesus says here is that his followers will be distinctive, recognisable, not by their churches, nor by their beliefs or their statements, not by their virtue or their many good works, not by the wonder of their liturgies or the strength of their prayers – they will be distinctive by the fact that they love one another.  And if that is not happening, or seems to the world not to be happening, then we are failing at the first post. 

This love has to be a pretty hard-headed thing, because we are all different from each other, and we drive each other nuts quite often.   It is very realistic.  It is not expecting perfection in anyone.  It sees the church for what it is, as Jesus saw his disciples, inevitably, frail and fallible.  As the gospel says in another place, Having loved his own... he loved them to the end.  This love is always open to new understanding and to forgiveness.  It has little or nothing to do with what Hollywood calls love.  

Love, in Jesus’s commandment, resides primarily in the will – it is something we consent to receive from God.  It is a sharing in Jesus’s love for his disciples and for his Father.   In silence and stillness, we become able to set aside the other agendas which militate against seeing, understanding and accepting other people in their sinfulness and decrepitude.  When the woman comes in and washes Jesus’s feet, and the Pharisees are horrified, Jesus says to them, Do you see this woman...?  They didn’t, and that is the point.  They saw a scandal, a degenerate.   Love pulls down these barriers and, as St Paul says, there is no fear in love. 

In our prayer we are setting self aside, reducing our defences.   When people ask what can they expect to get out of Christian Meditation – what’s in it for me? – we reply, ask yourself, are you becoming more loving, less fearful?

In the Father’s hand – 19 April 2013

[ For a while, I would like, each week, to pay some attention to the lectionary gospel reading for the next Sunday.  And so... ]

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”  [John 10: 22-30]

It is important, with John’s Gospel, to remember that these words come to us through the experiences of second or even third-generation Christians.  The church had grown and spread, by then through numerous cultures.  And already the whole spectrum of human sinfulness and wilfulness had begun to show up in the church.  It now had its own internal politics and strife.  It was under persecution from Jews and Romans and others.  There were numerous parties and opinions and much confusion at times, schisms and divisions and people falling away.  We can see all this in the Letters of St Paul.  And it is from somewhere out of all that, that we have this report of an encounter with Jesus in the temple.

It is the Feast of the Dedication – that is, Hannukah, the joyous celebration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in the 2^nd century BC after it had been desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes.  But then, says John, it was winter – why would he add that?  The young church was now experiencing its winter.

Jesus says that the bond of his people to him, and of him to them, is one of mutual recognition.  My sheep hear my voice.  I know them.  They follow me...  It is not a matter of whose doctrine you accept, whose denomination you belong to, how you conduct worship.  It is at another level altogether.  We know his voice.  We come to know what is Christ and what is something else.  He says, I know them... 

Mutual recognition, mutual love, mutual abiding, to use another of the 4^th Gospel’s favourite words.  It is heart speaking to heart.  It is not accessible to rational defence or argument.  In times of strife and all kinds of distress, we know whose voice is his.  It is the same as Jesus’s own relationship with his Father.  We have, in our prayer, come to stillness and silence, and quietened other voices – and we are then in the space Jesus occupies in his prayer.

Then he says, they will never perish, no one will snatch them out of my hand...  Whatever the confusion, whatever the persecution, this inner mutual recognition remains.  It is what Jesus teaches later in the Gospel, Abide in me, and I in you... 

Growing up – 12 April 2013

Fr John Main, the first leader of the Christian Meditation Community, wrote (slightly amended by me):  The call to prayer, the call to meditation is precisely a call to grow up, to leave the ego-centered (person) behind and to become (more truly) ourselves.  In contemplation, reason, memory and will, all start coming to rest.  We are not taking leave of our reason, memory, will, mental images, opinions, intentions and plans and agendas.  They all remain important parts of our lives, of course.  But not in prayer.  In prayer the issues are simplicity, stillness, silence, paying attention, consent to God. 

If we have a personal discipline of contemplative prayer, then a process has begun in which our life is becoming more unified, simplified, clarified --quieter, more purposeful, less fearful.  Something begins to happen to the person at prayer, once images, religious visions and dreams, inner speeches, and pious thoughts, and our assumptions about what we control, are set aside.  The point of the mantra is that it assists us to set aside what we don’t need right now. 

Perhaps what impresses me most about this process is that while it sounds like some violent inner revolution, in practice it is gentle.  It initiates changes which happen unobtrusively and which we typically see in retrospect.  Other people may notice such changes before we do.  I mention this because most of us at our time of life are not really looking for drama or abrupt changes.  Most of us are not running around unhappy with ourselves to any great extent, nor are we desperately seeking solutions and answers.  We are not trying to make an impression or pioneer great reforms.  But it does matter to us that we are true and steady, and that our deepest inner Christian allegiance is authentic and not some sad thin charade after all these years. 

The church makes a condescending nod to contemplative life and prayer, usually – except for that section of the church which is really quite afraid of silence and stillness, and regards it as suspect or even dangerous.  Most priests, pastors, preachers, however, although they may intellectually understand something of the place of contemplative life and prayer in Christian history, still opt more for activism.  People understand being busy.  Much of the church’s worship tends to be quite busy and occupational.  It can be loud, innovative, involving.

So even in the church, contemplatives and seekers need to find our own sources of teaching and inspiration.  It’s helpful to know that we are not alone.  I think it is why groups such as this matter.

Not baffled, not employed – 5 April 2013

The mischievous in me has decided to start with two perhaps puzzling quotes.  The first is from Wendell Berry, an important American writer and thinker, who says, The mind that is not baffled, is not employed.  He thinks being baffled is OK and is part of wisdom.  The writer of the Cloud of Unknowing would certainly agree with that.  I know that my own spiritual journey changed very much for the better once I stopped expecting solutions and certainties, formulae and statements, which I could add to my spiritual recipe book.  The Bible insists that we do not see God, and we should stop making idols in our minds or any other way.

The other quote is from Richard Rohr, another of our contemporary teachers, a Franciscan friar, and leader of the Centre for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He wrote:   The problem… is teaching Western wordy and over-thinking people how not to talk and not to think so much; it is usually not thinking anyway, but reactive commentary, and often narcissistic commentary, on some recent or upcoming situation. Oh, how long it took me to see that! Now it is obvious. This, of course, is very humiliating for people to admit, especially educated people and "proper" clergy persons. We really do like our thinking and our talking. It gives our mind and our mouth a job to do.

God is not found at the end of the thought process.  It is not like the hunt for the Higgs Boson.  Neither is God to be found as the solver of my problems.  And yet:

If I climb the heavens, you are there.

If I lie in the grave, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn

and dwell at the sea’s furthest end,

even there your hand will lead me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, Let the darkness hide me

and the light around me be night –

even darkness is not dark for you,

and the night is as clear as the day.

We have to teach people to be still, and to be lovers of silence.  I don’t know how we do that – but I do know it’s not really a matter of different personalities, Myers Briggs profiles or any such thing.  Some of the finest contemplatives I know are also extroverts and party-lovers.  Like all pilgrimage, I think, it is a matter of discovery.  We discover that it is possible to be still and listen – and also, that it is very important, and we don’t need to be afraid.  We discover that prayer is not about me, but about God and God’s world.  We discover that it is OK to relinquish control.  And we discover that there is a very central part of us we scarcely know, which is always open to love, and actually consents to change.