Humility…5 – 4 August 2017

In our pursuit of humility we come to numbers 7 and 8 of Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility.  Summarised by Joan Chittister they are:

Let go of the false self.

Preserve tradition and learn from the community.

Perhaps “false self” is a somewhat unfortunate term.  A woman who assiduously attended a meditation group I once led flatly refused to entertain any notion of a false self.  Herself, as she experienced herself, no more, no less, was the only self she consented to recognise.  “False self” is nonsense, she said.  Well, we go over this ground fairly frequently, do we not.  St Paul writes about what he calls in Greek sarx (σαρξ, σαρκος), translated “flesh”.  He says we can live either according to the flesh, or according to pneuma (πνευμα), Spirit.[1]  They are not the same thing, and Spirit, in this sense, is not simply some improved version of the false self.  They are different.  The False Self, Thomas Keating for one teaches, is the self we normally assume is the authentic me, which I maintain as presentable and which I hope other people see.  Keating calls it the accumulation of all our personal strategies for daily management, happiness and security – while the True Self is the person God sees, created and knows, the person open to God’s spiritual gift in Christ, humbly and gratefully.  I think the term “false self” gives the wrong impression, and along with others I prefer to talk about the ego, the persona we wear and adjust from time to time, if we can.  Fr Laurence Freeman points out that Jesus had an ego.  The ego is not necessarily bad – indeed it’s essential – but the ego may not usurp the place that belongs to God.  In contemplative life and prayer we are ready and willing to see the ego peeled back in favour of the True Self which is always there, always was, abiding in Christ as Christ abides in us.  Humility, teaches Benedict, requires that we consent to the diminishing of the ego.  He must increase, said John the Baptist, referring to Jesus, but I must decrease.[2]  Humility requires kindly understanding of the difficulties and pain of this, in ourselves as also in others.

Number 8 counsels us:  Preserve tradition and learn from the community.  This counsels the humility to observe and learn, even from what we might find outmoded, past its use-by date.  Learn history…!  Wisdom counsels the humility therefore to learn how to listen, sometimes especially to what we believe we disagree with.  Wisdom can emerge in strange old-fashioned clothes.  Now I can imagine one or two of my colleagues and friends from years ago, people who suffered my bright ideas and new strategies, saying today, “Well, listen to you…!”  But age and reflection are useful.  Tradition endures for a reason.  Do not remove an ancient landmark, counsels the Book of Proverbs.[3]  Humility then entails the inner discipline by which we listen to the past, and to the different voices in the community, before starting to reform everything in sight.  Such humility is learned in silence and stillness, the disciplines of waiting and the readiness to watch the ego attenuating in the light of Christ.

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[1] See for instance Romans 8:1-17.

[2] John 3:30.

[3] Proverbs 22:28; 23:10.

Humility…4 – 28 July 2017

Now we will see what we can make of numbers 5 and 6 of St Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility.  Sister Joan Chittister’s helpful headings are:

Acknowledge faults and strip away the masks.

Be content with less than the best.

The first is something we come back to constantly in any case, in contemplative life and prayer.  It is the grace to be honest with ourselves, about ourselves; learning to smile, often ruefully, at ourselves.  This is a clear requirement of humility.  For some it is a discovery that, with considerable relief, they can cease taking themselves so seriously without their world collapsing – the discovery that their emotions, reactions, opinions, are not the pillars of the universe.  The processes of contemplative prayer draw us back not only to the present moment, but also out of our fantasies and dream-worlds and the ways we retreat from reality, or bother what other people are thinking of us… and into what St Paul calls a sober estimate of ourselves, spiced if possible with a sense of humour and kindly perspective about what we did badly and got wrong, and gratitude for all we got right.  It is a kind and honest humility, gentle, wise and understanding about ourselves, and about other people we know.  It walks hand in hand with our relinquishing of fear.

Then comes the one you’ve been waiting for, Step 6: Be content with less than the best.  Of course it runs counter to all we are told these days – never settle for less than the best… I gave it my best… all you can do is your best… no prizes for coming second… only excellence will do…  the constant theme on my school reports:  Could have done better.  Now we hear Benedict counselling: Be content with less than the best.    What Benedict actually says is that we make peace with inevitabilities.  As we know well, life is often unfair, people suffer undeservedly, or go through their lives having always to make the best of a bad deal.  I think Benedict does lean towards the obsequious here, rather too much for my taste.  One of Isaac Watts’s less successful evangelical hymns, which never failed to rattle my mother and ruin her Sunday, extolled what the Saviour had done “for such a worm as I”.  This is Uriah Heep type humility, which Dickens excoriates in David Copperfield. 

However, I believe there is an important point here.  The “Serenity Prayer” captures it in part: …accept those things I cannot change… change those things I can.  The aim of spiritual growth and depth is not to achieve a perfect life in perfect surroundings among perfect people.  It is to be free to love and serve God, and God’s world, here and now and as things are.  This humility is a gift, it is a kind of freedom – it is never put on like clothes or a mask, it is either growing there, inwardly and heartfelt, or it is not.  In the prayer of silence and stillness we are open to grace.  The hard work in our prayer is the humble work of returning to the rhythm of the mantra, loving the necessity to be still and wait, finding the willingness to let go of what we think we need to hang on to.  This level of consent requires courage, no doubt… but I prefer to talk about faith.  Each step beyond what we think we know and can control is a step of faith.  And it is what humility asks of us… not heroics, not miracles, not revelations… simply one step at a time.

Humility…3 – 21 July 2017

Numbers 3 and 4 of Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility:

Seek direction from wisdom figures.

Endure the pains of development and do not give up.

This time, in our pursuit of humility, we can perhaps start with the second one… about the pains of development, and about not giving up.  What we used to call growing pains was part of my adolescence, although I am given to understand that growing pains is not a respectable diagnosis.  But we did recognise that the changes of adolescence, for instance, or for that matter of any time of growth and change, are rarely without pain.  Pain typically accompanies change.  The pain may be physical, it may be emotional, or both, and it may be significant.

If you have ever in your life sought counsel from someone who proved to be exactly right at that time, and you found wisdom at the time, some enlightenment that stayed with you, changed things and set you on a fresh course… then you will understand easier what we say here.  Remember, we are talking about humility – and you may have found the humility to seek wise counsel, to learn it and to follow it.  Wise counsel is not thick on the ground.  There are plenty of counsellors, and counselling is routinely wheeled in whenever there has been sudden trauma or tragedy – and it may indeed be helpful.  But what Benedict advises is wisdom, which is not the same thing.  Wisdom in the biblical sense is a gift from God.  We know when we meet wisdom because we sense that we now need to be still and listen.  It evokes and requires humility.  Wisdom will very likely indicate the need for change, and change will likely entail pain.

For some, the encounter with wisdom may not be necessarily from talking with a wise person, so much as reading a book.  I am in no doubt that, in a life of contemplative prayer, writings which may otherwise have been merely interesting somehow become seminal – new seeds get planted, new ways open up… old ways and patterns may come to be questioned, perhaps with pain.

John Main, a young recruit in the British diplomatic service in what was then Malaya, trained in the law and very bright, encountered a Hindu swami.  It was for John Main an encounter with wisdom.  Swami Satyananda taught this young, talented Irish Catholic lawyer how… the aim of meditation is coming to awareness of the Spirit of the Universe who dwells in our hearts in silence.  God is already abiding in us.  Wisdom taught that all we have to “do” is be still and silent.  If we come from a heritage of busy prayer, with much to do and say, disciplines to accomplish, then this wisdom may seem altogether too simplistic.  Indeed, it does require humility, and for John Main there was first the humility to learn from someone of another faith and another culture altogether.  Out of that wisdom has flowed, in a real sense, the whole international movement of the World Community for Christian Meditation.

So humility entails seeking wisdom, and enduring the likely pain of change.  It sounds to me like the continuing task of a lifetime, and for that we need a simple discipline of stillness and silence – our inner consent to the Spirit of God who dwells in our hearts in silence.

Humility…2 – 14 July 2017

We embark on St Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility…and the first two are:

Recognise that God is God.

Know that God’s will is best for you.

Benedict’s way of saying it is: That we keep the reverence of God always before our eyes.   It is what Brother Lawrence the 17^th century French Carmelite called the practice of the presence of God.  This way of life depends on stillness – busy and preoccupied as we may be, we know at another level an inner stillness – in the words of the Psalm[1], Be still, and know that I am God.

So we don’t struggle to achieve humility.  It is much more a matter of relinquishing, letting-go, learning to sit light to possessions and status, reputation, our need to manage life, or control other people – all of which, and much more, may end up occupying the place in our lives that belongs to God.  We relinquish idols.  Idolatry in its myriad forms may include the kind of God we perceived in childhood, or the God who exists to make us happy and make everything go as we want… for us.  The very popular God of Prosperity is an idol, as is the God who punishes the wicked, or who takes our side against others, or who ensures a sunny day for the church fair.  It has often been said that our idols usually turn out to be in some way a mirror image of ourselves. 

When we find that humility demands first that we recognise that God is God, it reminds us that Jesus is, as St Paul put it, the icon of the invisible God.  It is basic to Christian understanding that God is invisible, incomprehensible, beyond description or definition… but that in Jesus we have a glimpse, a window, an icon... through a glass, darkly, wrote St Paul.[2] 

Perhaps this approach is easier with ageing.  We may become with the years more inclined to relinquish.  One classical pathway in the church down the centuries has been called the Via Negativa, a way of understanding God (were that possible) by saying what God is not.  This approach appeals to me more and more, partly because it is necessarily a pathway of humility.  It leads straight to the prayer in which we have to become still and silent, with receptive, consenting and trusting hearts.  Be still and know, writes the Psalmist.  The eyes of your heart being open, writes St Paul.[3] 

The second Step of Humility, then, in Sr Joan’s words, is:  Know that God’s will is best for you.  It entails what the Psalmist so often taught, the humble discipline of waiting.  I waited for the Lord…[4]  Answers may appear… or they may not.  Either way, my ego has taken a step back, and I am learning the essential sub-skills of humility, such as the ability to live with, and perhaps even love and understand, a seriously imperfect world with all its unanswered questions – and the present moment in all its menace and unresolved issues.

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[1] Psalm 46:10.

[2] I Cor 13:12.

[3] Ephesians 1:18.

[4] Psalm 40:1

Humility…1 – 7 July 2017

In our wanderings around the issues of Christian contemplative life and prayer, we have visited “Humility” before.   Paul advises the church at Rome: I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think… [Rom 12:3].  The court of Donald J Trump, we might assume, is not a shining example to the world of humility.

Perhaps the longest chapter in the Rule of St Benedict is Chapter 7 on Humility.   Its overall effect, as Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister points out, is that it topples the entire spiritual merit system.  It teaches what the pharisee Saul of Tarsus had to learn, as did Martin Luther… and many others of us through the centuries.  Fullness of life, salvation, whatever we are seeking, is not to be found down the road of dos and don’ts, pious exercises, devotion and self-denial, shining righteousness, charitable donations.  In this chapter Benedict lists his Twelve Steps of Humility.  They are formidable, certainly, at first sight – even more perhaps at second sight – but Sister Joan gives us a précis which I find helpful and encouraging.  So I would like to go down this list of 12 steps over the next few weeks, and see how we get on.

I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that the word Humility comes from the Latin humus, which means the earth, the soil.  The essential quality of humility is truth, honest like the soil.  I cannot really decide to be humble – either I am or I am not -- either grace has taught me humility or I have not been paying attention.  And so, yet again we point out that the process of all contemplative life and prayer is seeing the generally unhumble ego brought into line, into humility – Benedictines would say, into obedience -- reducing its demands, dropping its masks and pretensions.  This is not something we can achieve – that would be just another triumph of the ego, anyway – rather it is a result God creates in us… a triumph of grace. 

Here then is Sr Joan’s summary of Benedict’s 12 Steps of Humility – and we’ll look at them over the next maybe six weeks:

1.            Recognise that God is God.

2.            Know that God’s will is best.

3.            Seek direction from people of wisdom.

4.            Endure the pains of development and do not give up.

5.            Acknowledge faults and put aside the masks.

6.            Be content with less than the best.

7.            Let go of the false self.

8.            Preserve tradition and learn from the community.

9.            Listen.

10.          Never ridicule anyone.

11.          Speak kindly.

12.          Be serene, stay calm.

Now, too easily that can read or be heard like some slick commercial prescription for happiness.  My task will be to describe, if I can, the humility of Christian discipleship and faith which lies down this path. 

Hospitality – 30 June 2017

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me… (Matthew 10:40)

I think it comes as something of a surprise to some life-long church goers that hospitality is actually central in Christian scriptures and in Christian faith.  Israel was never allowed to forget that they were once homeless and wandering.  It’s a salutary memory.  It became an article of faith and life that they were to welcome the widow, the stranger and the orphan.  The prototype was Abraham who welcomed angels unawares.  Failure in hospitality was an affront never to be forgotten.  The Rule of St Benedict states that the monastery will never be without guests… each guest is to be welcomed as Christ (RB 53:1). 

But the word gets devalued in our culture.  The “hospitality industry” runs hotels and cruise ships, pubs and bars from the salubrious to the Aussie boozer, and massage parlours.  More often on our lips the word means having friends to stay or in to dinner, with nice food and ambience.  The church has what it technically calls eucharistic hospitality, which refers to who is welcome (and therefore who is not) at Holy Communion. 

You can think of contemplative prayer, our silence and stillness, as a form of hospitality.  God is present to us, we are present to God… as (I think it was) Thomas Merton put it quaintly:  In us God is completely at home.  Hospitality is recognising that God is the unseen guest at the barbecue.  It may be as a needy person, someone who is not coping, someone frail or dying…  It may indeed be simply in the delight of our friends, old friends, and all our shared memories…  It may be in children, and parenthood, or grandparenthood, in good times and bad – indeed, what we call family life may be seen as a deep and committed form of hospitality. 

Hospitality goes inevitably with freedom.  There can be no hospitality where there is any agenda of possession or control, lies or manipulation.  Jesus, in hosting us at his Table, we may assume, is not deceived by our dressing-up or the masks we wear – in his hospitality it is not only that we are free to be as we are, but essential.  It is the way we are seen, and welcomed.

So hospitality is a meeting of hearts.  It depends on being unafraid of truth.  It is an aspect of love, which as St Paul wrote, bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all (I Cor 13:7). 

So, as ancient Israel understood, it is indeed difficult to refuse hospitality… so long as we ourselves are the beneficiaries of God’s limitless hospitality, rather than God’s exclusion or condemnation.  We are part of the generosity of creation, made and sustained in love.  We are in no position to shut the door on anyone, let alone someone needing rest and peace, if they come in good faith.  Of course it has dangers.  In our discipline of prayer, as we become less defensive of ourselves, we become also less afraid and more hospitable.

Love trumps all – 23 June 2017

The gospel lesson for next Sunday (Matthew 10:24-39) seems unpleasant and uncompromising to me, and I decided a week ago that I’m simply not up to it…  The more so, having just read a newly published account of the life of Héloïse,[1] who was briefly mentioned in our discussions last Friday.  Héloïse of Argenteuil was the wife of Peter Abélard.  They lived in France in the high Middle Ages.  Both of them had brilliant minds as philosophers and theologians.   Abélard was a young and popular teacher at the great cathedral school of Paris.  Héloïse was one of his many rapt students.  She could attend his lectures only by disguising herself as a man. 

Predictably they fell in love.  A love affair between teacher and student is a fraught enough situation in our day… but in the medieval world ruled by a church hierarchy of powerful men for whom the role of women was devout subordination and submission, such a thing was perilous indeed.  The glories of gothic architecture and the plainsong liturgy, the great monasteries with their storehouses of learning, all existed alongside a culture of poverty, brutality, disease and superstition, seasoned with arrogant hypocrisy from those who possessed the wealth and the power.  There isn’t time to tell the story of Héloïse and Abélard, except to say that it was a life of tragic enforced separation and much suffering.  Héloïse had a son, Astrolabe, who was taken from her and whom she met again only in his adult life.  She found some security and peace eventually as abbess of a small community of nuns.  Héloïse and Abélard died far apart from each other, separated by a church of terrifying authority and cruelty – all deemed to be to the glory of God.

It is worth noting, I think, that the kind of prayer we are pursuing – Christian Meditation, a form of contemplative life and prayer, in which our only issues are simplicity, silence and stillness, waiting and attending – has never been cordially encouraged, or for that matter understood, by any church emphasizing order and conformity, and control of the ways people believe and behave.  So it is no accident that it is in our day, when the fallibility of the church, its actual frailty and sinfulness, become plain for the world to see, that there is a resurgence of this ancient mode of prayer. 

Yes, the lovers Héloïse and Abélard were way out of order.  Yet they reflected God’s love and the compassion of Christ more surely than their accusers ever managed.  When she was dying, Héloïse wrote what she called her Confession of Faith, and it says: 

I, despite life’s trials, have found faith in a God who embodies Love; a God who also aspires for us to love and to apply that love with truthfulness and good intent… 

That love is what forms and sustains our prayer, and for many of us is the only way our hearts can believe and belong to God.

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[1] Mandy Hager: Heloise (Penguin 2017)