The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn. That was said, among many other things she said, by the American feminist and activist, Gloria Steinem. Whatever she meant by it, I think she is right. Contemplative prayer and life is very much about unlearning.
One of our greatest spiritual classics -- and we don’t know who the author was -- is entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. In that title are two deliberate images -- the image of a cloud, rather than any image of clarity and certainty; and the strange word unknowing, divesting, dispossessing ourselves of perhaps cherished assumptions and props. To a lot of people this seems not at all what they thought religion was about.
If you consult what Jesus teaches about prayer, you find that prayer is to happen in an inner room with the door shut. The Jews of his day, the people to whom he spoke, did not have inner rooms or doors. This, rather, is how Jesus refers to inwardness. He describes the importance of being still and silent. He also says we are to shed anxiety. Anxiety is pandemic. I can think of people who seem anxious that if they shed their anxieties there would be nothing much left. Worry is their default response to life. Prayer is the way we set it aside, says Jesus.
Prayer is the relinquishing of possession and of our illusion of control of our lives, or of events, of other people, of doctrine and belief… and, we must add, our control of God. A most basic part of that is that we come to terms with our own mortality.
In the stillness we consent to God’s process rather than our own. We unlearn, unknow much that we habitually assume, our reliance on some god who is our personal domestic idol, or the protector of our belief system, perhaps even fashioned in our own image, we start to unlearn our self-protection mechanisms, dismantling our propensities for looking for happiness in the wrong places. We choose to pay attention to the God Jesus called Father, and that is all. Like Mary of Bethany, simply be present and pay attention.
29 July 2011
22 July 2011
About silence - 22 July 2011
Silence is a key component of contemplative prayer. But as we rapidly find, silence is exceedingly difficult. The best we can manage is a relative silence, perhaps a little quieter round about than is usually the case. It is a noisy world. People who come to visit us at Algies Bay typically remark how quiet it is. So it seems to them. But the vehicles still roar up and down the road at intervals -- and that’s just the upright local citizenry carting their kids to school, or the blokes cruising around on their tractors or quad bikes or starting up chain saws in case there might be something to hew down. Thomas Merton in his hermitage far out in the woods of Kentucky complained about hammering he could hear distantly down the hill, or some farmer’s far off machinery.
Well, the lesson about this is that our prayer is never about escaping from the real world. We needn’t try. The noisy world is real and it’s there and we inhabit it, it is part of us and we are part of its clamour.
The real challenge with silence is interior silence. As soon as we become still and start to pay attention to the present moment we are reminded of the degree of noise and indiscipline in what has been called our monkey minds. St Teresa compared it to a ship whose crew has mutinied, tied up the captain and is chaotically taking turns to steer the ship. Jesus teaches: Therefore I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes.
We aim to be in the present moment, which is the only moment of reality, of encounter with the God who is “I Am.” Yet within seconds we are thinking thoughts of yesterday, making plans for tomorrow or weaving daydreams and wish-fulfillment in the realm of fantasy. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, tomorrow will look after itself, says Jesus.
So, we only approximate to interior silence as well. But Christian Meditation is the discipline in which we come back to our approximation each day, and with the help of the mantra bring our monkey minds back to the centre again and again. A silence and stillness begins to settle into our lives at the other times. Simply discovering that we are, however poorly, free to place our attention elsewhere than on ourselves is the first great awakening. It is the beginning of the deepening of consciousness, which allows us to leave the distractions on the surface, like waves on the surface of the ocean.
Well, the lesson about this is that our prayer is never about escaping from the real world. We needn’t try. The noisy world is real and it’s there and we inhabit it, it is part of us and we are part of its clamour.
The real challenge with silence is interior silence. As soon as we become still and start to pay attention to the present moment we are reminded of the degree of noise and indiscipline in what has been called our monkey minds. St Teresa compared it to a ship whose crew has mutinied, tied up the captain and is chaotically taking turns to steer the ship. Jesus teaches: Therefore I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes.
We aim to be in the present moment, which is the only moment of reality, of encounter with the God who is “I Am.” Yet within seconds we are thinking thoughts of yesterday, making plans for tomorrow or weaving daydreams and wish-fulfillment in the realm of fantasy. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, tomorrow will look after itself, says Jesus.
So, we only approximate to interior silence as well. But Christian Meditation is the discipline in which we come back to our approximation each day, and with the help of the mantra bring our monkey minds back to the centre again and again. A silence and stillness begins to settle into our lives at the other times. Simply discovering that we are, however poorly, free to place our attention elsewhere than on ourselves is the first great awakening. It is the beginning of the deepening of consciousness, which allows us to leave the distractions on the surface, like waves on the surface of the ocean.
15 July 2011
The future contemplative church - 15 July 2011
Whatever the church of the future is like, it will need to better understand the many people who are sitting on its margins, or just outside the camp or perhaps further away. Some of these people had years of activity in the church, but not now -- for whatever reason that changed. Others are absent because they think they can’t meet the church’s expectations, whether it’s in doctrine and belief, or in the manner of their lives, or because of something from their past.
A writer I admire is a woman named Doris Grumbach. One day she told her vicar, I have been afflicted with a kind of spiritual inanition... And her letter to him ends with these words: I find the business of the church keeps me from the real enterprise of prayer. While there is still time I must be about the journey I have started on.
What interests me is, first, that what she calls spiritual inanition is a very common thing indeed among mature Christian believers; inanition in the OED denotes “exhaustion resulting from lack of nourishment”; the spirituality term for it is acedia. In Doris Grumbach’s case it flowed from what she calls the business of the church. Acedia, inanition, usually leaves good and involved people feeling weary of it all and bewildered. Secondly, she now sees her way forward in the prayer of silence and stillness and in developing those contemplative disciplines.
More and more teachers of Christian spirituality seem to be saying, one way or another, that the church of the future will need to be contemplative. Its people will need to know how to be still. And that means doing it. It means finding out for ourselves what is personally possible each day for being still, being silent, paying attention to God who is always present. All of this is directly counter to our secular world of consumerism, activism and rampant egoism.
This is deeply inward Christian allegiance. It places at risk a lot that we may have assumed until now. It realigns our priorities. It deepens and clarifies our love for our friends and also our enemies. However, it’s not a very smart idea to start making resolutions about being more contemplative from now on... What we can do is simply to be still and silent now, with the utter simplicity -- what some call the poverty -- of the mantra, yet alive and alert, fully present in the present moment, not asking for anything, in the presence of God who knows us utterly and all our needs.
A writer I admire is a woman named Doris Grumbach. One day she told her vicar, I have been afflicted with a kind of spiritual inanition... And her letter to him ends with these words: I find the business of the church keeps me from the real enterprise of prayer. While there is still time I must be about the journey I have started on.
What interests me is, first, that what she calls spiritual inanition is a very common thing indeed among mature Christian believers; inanition in the OED denotes “exhaustion resulting from lack of nourishment”; the spirituality term for it is acedia. In Doris Grumbach’s case it flowed from what she calls the business of the church. Acedia, inanition, usually leaves good and involved people feeling weary of it all and bewildered. Secondly, she now sees her way forward in the prayer of silence and stillness and in developing those contemplative disciplines.
More and more teachers of Christian spirituality seem to be saying, one way or another, that the church of the future will need to be contemplative. Its people will need to know how to be still. And that means doing it. It means finding out for ourselves what is personally possible each day for being still, being silent, paying attention to God who is always present. All of this is directly counter to our secular world of consumerism, activism and rampant egoism.
This is deeply inward Christian allegiance. It places at risk a lot that we may have assumed until now. It realigns our priorities. It deepens and clarifies our love for our friends and also our enemies. However, it’s not a very smart idea to start making resolutions about being more contemplative from now on... What we can do is simply to be still and silent now, with the utter simplicity -- what some call the poverty -- of the mantra, yet alive and alert, fully present in the present moment, not asking for anything, in the presence of God who knows us utterly and all our needs.
08 July 2011
A daily discipline - 8 July 2011
Part of the general teaching about Christian Meditation encourages us to adopt some daily discipline of meditation. No one should be frightened about this. The discipline will vary a lot from person to person. If you consult someone like Father Laurence Freeman, he will say simply that we should meditate for between 20 to 30 minutes, twice a day. It is what he does, and he believes it is the basic discipline for a contemplative person. And of course it represents a considerable rearrangement of our personal lives and schedules and priorities. Plenty of people do that.
But it depends on a lot of things. For some it depends on their many other at present unavoidable tasks and responsibilities. I do not see how a mother at home with preschoolers can meditate twice a day in stillness and silence. It also depends on our state of health, on the understanding of other people in the house, and so on... numerous things. I come back to the basic principles, that whatever we do, it is always to be a gentle discipline -- we do what we can, not what we can’t. In our maturity we may have discovered that times and seasons change, and that what was impossible at one time of life may be able to blossom some other time.
But there is a deeper point underlying this. The teaching says that if and when the moment arrives for meditation, we do it whether we feel like it or not. We discern the moment, and choose to respond, whether we feel like it or not. Feelings are put to one side. This is a decision about priorities. And it always strikes me as being profoundly counter-cultural. It may be that for those of us who have seen a thing or two, getting on with something we don’t feel like doing is not a strange experience at all. We can manage that perfectly well if we choose to. I was once invited to “explain”, as they put it, Christian Meditation to a church youth group. And that bit of it was incomprehensible to them. Doing something they didn’t feel like doing, or thought they didn’t like... Why would anyone do that if they didn’t have to?
Meditation, contemplative life and prayer, teaches us to set aside emotions, feelings if we have to or if we choose. In the welter and pressure of emotions, which we always have anyway, we choose something else, to become still and wait. That is a very rich decision. It is a decision, in the stillness, to be directed elsewhere than ourselves. In the normal course of our lives it may be something that happens nowhere else. Even if we see our lives as outgoing and caring of others, which may well be true, this is different. It is paying attention to God, with empty hands and with all the love and stillness, silence and simplicity, that are God’s gift.
But it depends on a lot of things. For some it depends on their many other at present unavoidable tasks and responsibilities. I do not see how a mother at home with preschoolers can meditate twice a day in stillness and silence. It also depends on our state of health, on the understanding of other people in the house, and so on... numerous things. I come back to the basic principles, that whatever we do, it is always to be a gentle discipline -- we do what we can, not what we can’t. In our maturity we may have discovered that times and seasons change, and that what was impossible at one time of life may be able to blossom some other time.
But there is a deeper point underlying this. The teaching says that if and when the moment arrives for meditation, we do it whether we feel like it or not. We discern the moment, and choose to respond, whether we feel like it or not. Feelings are put to one side. This is a decision about priorities. And it always strikes me as being profoundly counter-cultural. It may be that for those of us who have seen a thing or two, getting on with something we don’t feel like doing is not a strange experience at all. We can manage that perfectly well if we choose to. I was once invited to “explain”, as they put it, Christian Meditation to a church youth group. And that bit of it was incomprehensible to them. Doing something they didn’t feel like doing, or thought they didn’t like... Why would anyone do that if they didn’t have to?
Meditation, contemplative life and prayer, teaches us to set aside emotions, feelings if we have to or if we choose. In the welter and pressure of emotions, which we always have anyway, we choose something else, to become still and wait. That is a very rich decision. It is a decision, in the stillness, to be directed elsewhere than ourselves. In the normal course of our lives it may be something that happens nowhere else. Even if we see our lives as outgoing and caring of others, which may well be true, this is different. It is paying attention to God, with empty hands and with all the love and stillness, silence and simplicity, that are God’s gift.
01 July 2011
Returning and rest - 1 July 2011
In returning and rest will you be saved,
In quietness and trust will be your strength. [Isaiah 30:15]
This word “returning” cropped up last week when there was a comment about the simplicity of returning to the mantra when we realise we have become distracted. In fact “return” is the little Hebrew word “shub”, which turns out to be of very serious importance in the Bible. This little Hebrew verb means simply to go back to where you belong. It’s not a religious word -- it was simply part of the language. And it is exactly the meaning in Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son, when the son, destitute in the far country decides, “I will go back to my father...” In the Hebrew scriptures, not only persons but cities and nations can choose to return to where they should be.
It is the Hebrew verb to repent. Amazingly there are passages where we find even God can “repent” -- the same Hebrew word -- even God chooses to return to the relationship of love and mercy. Repentance is not primarily feeling sorry, ashamed, guilt-laden, gutted, or any such thing -- and we should not judge anyone’s repentance by those criteria. Repentance is going back, however you feel. So it is a little awesome to consider that, with all the activism and anxiety of the church, the meetings, the planning, the work that goes on, the kernel of it all may actually be not in that, but in returning and rest, quietness and trust.
I remember once talking with a Benedictine nun who had come to a retreat to recover from her many tasks including studying for a doctorate. She said, “You know, we really don’t have anything, do we. The mantra is all we have.” Not only do we return, but we return empty-handed. This is what the mantra signifies. We return with considerable relief. Contemplative people typically refer to what they call the poverty of the mantra. Blessed are you poor, said Jesus, yours is the kingdom of God.
Well, it is a lovely list of four words: returning and rest, quietness and trust. And all of it is counter to the normal rhythms of our lives. The mantra we say is a kind of song of return. And at other times, when we have to be far away from meditation, the mantra may come back into our consciousness as a steadying resonance, a reminder that all our busyness, however worthy, may not be our true self. The self God sees and knows and loves is better than that -- just as Jesus, while grateful of course for Martha’s care and work, said nevertheless that Mary had chosen the better way.
In quietness and trust will be your strength. [Isaiah 30:15]
This word “returning” cropped up last week when there was a comment about the simplicity of returning to the mantra when we realise we have become distracted. In fact “return” is the little Hebrew word “shub”, which turns out to be of very serious importance in the Bible. This little Hebrew verb means simply to go back to where you belong. It’s not a religious word -- it was simply part of the language. And it is exactly the meaning in Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son, when the son, destitute in the far country decides, “I will go back to my father...” In the Hebrew scriptures, not only persons but cities and nations can choose to return to where they should be.
It is the Hebrew verb to repent. Amazingly there are passages where we find even God can “repent” -- the same Hebrew word -- even God chooses to return to the relationship of love and mercy. Repentance is not primarily feeling sorry, ashamed, guilt-laden, gutted, or any such thing -- and we should not judge anyone’s repentance by those criteria. Repentance is going back, however you feel. So it is a little awesome to consider that, with all the activism and anxiety of the church, the meetings, the planning, the work that goes on, the kernel of it all may actually be not in that, but in returning and rest, quietness and trust.
I remember once talking with a Benedictine nun who had come to a retreat to recover from her many tasks including studying for a doctorate. She said, “You know, we really don’t have anything, do we. The mantra is all we have.” Not only do we return, but we return empty-handed. This is what the mantra signifies. We return with considerable relief. Contemplative people typically refer to what they call the poverty of the mantra. Blessed are you poor, said Jesus, yours is the kingdom of God.
Well, it is a lovely list of four words: returning and rest, quietness and trust. And all of it is counter to the normal rhythms of our lives. The mantra we say is a kind of song of return. And at other times, when we have to be far away from meditation, the mantra may come back into our consciousness as a steadying resonance, a reminder that all our busyness, however worthy, may not be our true self. The self God sees and knows and loves is better than that -- just as Jesus, while grateful of course for Martha’s care and work, said nevertheless that Mary had chosen the better way.
23 June 2011
Taking the next step - 24 June 2011
Here is a classic story from the Desert Fathers of the 4th century.
A brother asked one of the elders, “What shall I do? I’m obsessed by this nagging thought -- ‘You can’t fast and you can’t work, so at least go and visit the sick because that’s a loving thing to do.’” The elder said to him, “Go. Eat, drink, sleep, just don’t leave your cell.” For three days the brother did just this, and then he was overcome with acedia (spiritual lassitude and apathy). But he found some palm leaves and started trimming them. Next day he started plaiting them; when he felt hungry he said, “Here are some more palm leaves; I’ll prepare them and then have something to eat.” He finished them and said, “Perhaps I’ll read for a little before eating.” When he had done some reading he said, “Now let’s sing a few psalms and then I can eat with a good conscience.” And so by God’s help he went on little by little.
Did you ever hear such a prosaic, undramatic story. But it is exactly what faith is like. The church and things we read may be exhorting us to all manner of radical change and heroism. But faith is mainly a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and taking the next step. And for a lot of the greatest humble heroes in the church, that is all they can do for the most part.
What God asks of us is the next step. And this is mirrored in our prayer, where all that we do is silently, interiorly, repeat our word, our mantra. The mantra in itself is utterly insignificant. It has no spiritual or magical qualities. Whatever it means of itself, we are not meditating on its meaning. We simply repeat it, lovingly, particularly, so that it is still there when we have become distracted and have to return to it. That returning is the act of faith, the next step.
Perhaps our ego would like to do more than this, to change the world, to make a difference, to leave a mark. Recently I was at a funeral where as usual we had heard all about the triumphs and achievements of the deceased -- and afterwards a woman said to us, “I’d better hurry up and do something so that they have something to say at my funeral.” It was a joke, of course -- she has done plenty.
Contemplative prayer is about surrendering the ego and its need for recognition and satisfaction. Whatever we might want to pray about is gently put aside, and replaced by the simple repetition of the word, the mantra -- thus making space for whatever God seeks to achieve.
A brother asked one of the elders, “What shall I do? I’m obsessed by this nagging thought -- ‘You can’t fast and you can’t work, so at least go and visit the sick because that’s a loving thing to do.’” The elder said to him, “Go. Eat, drink, sleep, just don’t leave your cell.” For three days the brother did just this, and then he was overcome with acedia (spiritual lassitude and apathy). But he found some palm leaves and started trimming them. Next day he started plaiting them; when he felt hungry he said, “Here are some more palm leaves; I’ll prepare them and then have something to eat.” He finished them and said, “Perhaps I’ll read for a little before eating.” When he had done some reading he said, “Now let’s sing a few psalms and then I can eat with a good conscience.” And so by God’s help he went on little by little.
Did you ever hear such a prosaic, undramatic story. But it is exactly what faith is like. The church and things we read may be exhorting us to all manner of radical change and heroism. But faith is mainly a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and taking the next step. And for a lot of the greatest humble heroes in the church, that is all they can do for the most part.
What God asks of us is the next step. And this is mirrored in our prayer, where all that we do is silently, interiorly, repeat our word, our mantra. The mantra in itself is utterly insignificant. It has no spiritual or magical qualities. Whatever it means of itself, we are not meditating on its meaning. We simply repeat it, lovingly, particularly, so that it is still there when we have become distracted and have to return to it. That returning is the act of faith, the next step.
Perhaps our ego would like to do more than this, to change the world, to make a difference, to leave a mark. Recently I was at a funeral where as usual we had heard all about the triumphs and achievements of the deceased -- and afterwards a woman said to us, “I’d better hurry up and do something so that they have something to say at my funeral.” It was a joke, of course -- she has done plenty.
Contemplative prayer is about surrendering the ego and its need for recognition and satisfaction. Whatever we might want to pray about is gently put aside, and replaced by the simple repetition of the word, the mantra -- thus making space for whatever God seeks to achieve.
31 May 2011
About Christian Meditation
Christian Meditation is a way of praying.
There are many ways of praying. If you attend the liturgy at church -- that is a way of praying. Lectio Divina is best seen as a way of praying. Journalling and Examen may be seen as forms of praying. Children’s prayers, intercession groups, prayer chains... all sorts of things are ways of praying, because one way or another people are opening their consciousness to God.
Christian Meditation belongs to the so-called contemplative school of praying. That is because it is silent, still and inward, wordless except for the use of a mantra, and imageless. So it is in those respects very different from other ways of prayer.
Two things at the outset:
• No one learns to pray by talking about it, reading about it, or hearing about it and discussing it. We learn it by doing it. And all my experience is that people learn contemplative prayer and life by embarking on it in a disciplined way, and usually by joining with others in a Christian Meditation group.
• We need to have a little clarity about this word contemplative, since it gets hijacked by all sorts of people. Contemplative does not mean thoughtful. Plenty of people are thoughtful, and it’s no doubt a good thing to be. But that is not what we mean. We do not mean insightful, or quiet and gentle, or that we have an affinity with the trees and the distant vistas and the sunsets. It would be good if we were all these things -- but contemplative means receptive. It means that we know how to be silent and still in the presence of God, and that our lives have come to include this discipline of silence and stillness; that we know how to set aside our own thoughts and wishes, however noble, even the good and holy thoughts -- how to set aside the noise of our lives, including our religious lives, and certainly our frightened, clamorous and voracious egos, and be still, simple and receptive in the presence of God. I think we’ll come back to this word contemplative as we go along -- it is often seen by what it is not.
There are two initial and very basic questions people have when they hear about Christian Meditation and the contemplative life:
1. How do you do it?
2. What is it for? What benefits does it carry?
How do you do it is best answered by quoting from the website of the World Community for Christian Meditation.
Sit down. Sit still with your back straight. Close your eyes lightly. Then interiorly, silently begin to recite a single word – a prayer word or mantra. We recommend the ancient Christian prayer-word "Maranatha". Say it as four equal syllables. Breathe normally and give your full attention to the word as you say it, silently, gently, faithfully and above all - simply. The essence of meditation is simplicity. Stay with the same word during the whole meditation and from day to day. Don't visualise but listen to the word as you say it. Let go of all thoughts (even good thoughts), images and other words. Don’t fight your distractions but let them go by saying your word faithfully, gently and attentively and returning to it immediately that you realise you have stopped saying or it or when your attention is wandering.
Now, the fact is, every meditator develops personal variations on this. Contemplative prayer and life is certainly not about rigidity, rules and procedures. We experience these disciplines as freedom.
Posture matters -- the point is to be able to be still for 20 - 30 minutes, and different people do that in different ways. Real silence and stillness come with practice. We use a posture which enables us to be still, but absolutely awake and alert. Part of the discipline is managing our environment so that we can be uninterrupted.
The mantra is an issue for some. Not all meditators use the word Maranatha, but lots do. Generally, we don’t discuss our individual mantras. And we have a saying, that you change your mantra only once. So the mantra may require a bit of thought at the outset, but after that any worrying about it is simply another distraction. The point of the mantra is that it is always there, it is what we return to as soon as we realise we have become distracted, and in meditation we prefer the mantra even to good and worthy thoughts or pictures. We are not meditating on its meaning. Eventually we begin to listen to it rather than recite it. In one sense the mantra is simply a device to help us. But meditators find that, in another sense, their mantra becomes very important in life, always there, always reminding them, echoing in their consciousness at all sorts of times, functioning as a point of stability, a resonance which they hear even in times of stress.
Let go of all thoughts, says the website. Of course that’s easier said than done. It is counter to just about everything else in our lives. Letting go of thoughts means letting go of control, or more likely of our illusions of control. I have an abiding memory of an old parishioner who knew she was dying. Perhaps the most powerless and contemplative moment of her whole life. All her life she had been active among the church women and had done many things. And with her dying breaths she told us to make sure someone had remembered to get milk for the tea and coffee after the funeral. Christian Meditation is the opposite of control. It is with empty hands. It is the relinquishing of power, and (we hope) of anxiety. It is leaving it to God.
However, as Jesus knew, most of our distracting thoughts are more to do with utter trivialities. “What shall I eat, what shall I drink, what shall I wear…?” says the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25). Every meditator knows that as soon as we create a silent and still space, there is something that hates this vacuum and wants to fill it up. We immediately receive a flood of usually trivial distractions to do with food, drink, clothes, agendas, tomorrow, yesterday, whatever… Or our distractions are about important things -- someone’s sick, someone’s sad, all that. We have long ago learned to recognize the distraction, honour it if it is honourable, note it, and set it aside, gently replace it with the mantra. Eventually it dawns on us that it is this returning that matters, because it is the setting aside of the ego, making vacant the place where God belongs, so God can occupy it again.
But remember, our second question was: What is it for? What benefits does it bring? It is easy to see what intercessory prayer is for, or the prayer of the liturgy. For years now, people have been attracted to Buddhist practices, Transcendental Meditation, some forms of Yoga, Tai Chi, Zen meditation -- generally to achieve some goal of peace or serenity. And these are indeed benefits of any process of being still and silent. You may also lower your blood pressure for a while, and avoid rows at home. One woman told me her psoriasis had cleared up.
Christian Meditation is about none of that. It is a way of responding deeply to God in Christ, and I can’t help noticing that it appeals more and more to people who may have been in the church all their lives, or even left it, but have never actually wanted to take farewell of God. There are lots of these people. Christian Meditation is deeply Christian because it relies totally on the heart’s openness and the heart’s hospitality to the risen Christ.
The idea that something is simply good in itself is profoundly counter-cultural these days. This pragmatic, ego-obsessed culture needs to know what I will get out of it, what’s in it for me? Will it calm my fears and solve my problems? We think we need value-added religion. If it is not “delivering”, then is it not a waste of time? Moreover, the discovery that Christian Meditation is very much about relinquishing control, or the illusion of control we like to have, is deeply threatening to some.
There is nothing new about Christian Meditation in Christian history. Contemplative prayer was well known in the monasteries. Its roots go back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th and 5th centuries -- it was from them that John Cassian http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflearned to pray, and brought what he knew to Europe where he taught Benedict and others. Largely since the Second Vatican Council the monasteries have been commissioned to open their teachings “beyond the walls”, and that is a major route by which Christian Meditation and Centering Prayer have come into the practice of so many around the world. The Benedictines Fr John Main and Fr Laurence Freeman, the Cistercian Fr Thomas Keating and numerous others, have been the principal teachers. The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) is now in many countries of east and west. Its website is: www.wccm.org The NZCCM is at http://www.christianmeditationnz.org.nz
-- Ross Miller rossmill@orcon.net.nz
There are many ways of praying. If you attend the liturgy at church -- that is a way of praying. Lectio Divina is best seen as a way of praying. Journalling and Examen may be seen as forms of praying. Children’s prayers, intercession groups, prayer chains... all sorts of things are ways of praying, because one way or another people are opening their consciousness to God.
Christian Meditation belongs to the so-called contemplative school of praying. That is because it is silent, still and inward, wordless except for the use of a mantra, and imageless. So it is in those respects very different from other ways of prayer.
Two things at the outset:
• No one learns to pray by talking about it, reading about it, or hearing about it and discussing it. We learn it by doing it. And all my experience is that people learn contemplative prayer and life by embarking on it in a disciplined way, and usually by joining with others in a Christian Meditation group.
• We need to have a little clarity about this word contemplative, since it gets hijacked by all sorts of people. Contemplative does not mean thoughtful. Plenty of people are thoughtful, and it’s no doubt a good thing to be. But that is not what we mean. We do not mean insightful, or quiet and gentle, or that we have an affinity with the trees and the distant vistas and the sunsets. It would be good if we were all these things -- but contemplative means receptive. It means that we know how to be silent and still in the presence of God, and that our lives have come to include this discipline of silence and stillness; that we know how to set aside our own thoughts and wishes, however noble, even the good and holy thoughts -- how to set aside the noise of our lives, including our religious lives, and certainly our frightened, clamorous and voracious egos, and be still, simple and receptive in the presence of God. I think we’ll come back to this word contemplative as we go along -- it is often seen by what it is not.
There are two initial and very basic questions people have when they hear about Christian Meditation and the contemplative life:
1. How do you do it?
2. What is it for? What benefits does it carry?
How do you do it is best answered by quoting from the website of the World Community for Christian Meditation.
Sit down. Sit still with your back straight. Close your eyes lightly. Then interiorly, silently begin to recite a single word – a prayer word or mantra. We recommend the ancient Christian prayer-word "Maranatha". Say it as four equal syllables. Breathe normally and give your full attention to the word as you say it, silently, gently, faithfully and above all - simply. The essence of meditation is simplicity. Stay with the same word during the whole meditation and from day to day. Don't visualise but listen to the word as you say it. Let go of all thoughts (even good thoughts), images and other words. Don’t fight your distractions but let them go by saying your word faithfully, gently and attentively and returning to it immediately that you realise you have stopped saying or it or when your attention is wandering.
Now, the fact is, every meditator develops personal variations on this. Contemplative prayer and life is certainly not about rigidity, rules and procedures. We experience these disciplines as freedom.
Posture matters -- the point is to be able to be still for 20 - 30 minutes, and different people do that in different ways. Real silence and stillness come with practice. We use a posture which enables us to be still, but absolutely awake and alert. Part of the discipline is managing our environment so that we can be uninterrupted.
The mantra is an issue for some. Not all meditators use the word Maranatha, but lots do. Generally, we don’t discuss our individual mantras. And we have a saying, that you change your mantra only once. So the mantra may require a bit of thought at the outset, but after that any worrying about it is simply another distraction. The point of the mantra is that it is always there, it is what we return to as soon as we realise we have become distracted, and in meditation we prefer the mantra even to good and worthy thoughts or pictures. We are not meditating on its meaning. Eventually we begin to listen to it rather than recite it. In one sense the mantra is simply a device to help us. But meditators find that, in another sense, their mantra becomes very important in life, always there, always reminding them, echoing in their consciousness at all sorts of times, functioning as a point of stability, a resonance which they hear even in times of stress.
Let go of all thoughts, says the website. Of course that’s easier said than done. It is counter to just about everything else in our lives. Letting go of thoughts means letting go of control, or more likely of our illusions of control. I have an abiding memory of an old parishioner who knew she was dying. Perhaps the most powerless and contemplative moment of her whole life. All her life she had been active among the church women and had done many things. And with her dying breaths she told us to make sure someone had remembered to get milk for the tea and coffee after the funeral. Christian Meditation is the opposite of control. It is with empty hands. It is the relinquishing of power, and (we hope) of anxiety. It is leaving it to God.
However, as Jesus knew, most of our distracting thoughts are more to do with utter trivialities. “What shall I eat, what shall I drink, what shall I wear…?” says the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25). Every meditator knows that as soon as we create a silent and still space, there is something that hates this vacuum and wants to fill it up. We immediately receive a flood of usually trivial distractions to do with food, drink, clothes, agendas, tomorrow, yesterday, whatever… Or our distractions are about important things -- someone’s sick, someone’s sad, all that. We have long ago learned to recognize the distraction, honour it if it is honourable, note it, and set it aside, gently replace it with the mantra. Eventually it dawns on us that it is this returning that matters, because it is the setting aside of the ego, making vacant the place where God belongs, so God can occupy it again.
But remember, our second question was: What is it for? What benefits does it bring? It is easy to see what intercessory prayer is for, or the prayer of the liturgy. For years now, people have been attracted to Buddhist practices, Transcendental Meditation, some forms of Yoga, Tai Chi, Zen meditation -- generally to achieve some goal of peace or serenity. And these are indeed benefits of any process of being still and silent. You may also lower your blood pressure for a while, and avoid rows at home. One woman told me her psoriasis had cleared up.
Christian Meditation is about none of that. It is a way of responding deeply to God in Christ, and I can’t help noticing that it appeals more and more to people who may have been in the church all their lives, or even left it, but have never actually wanted to take farewell of God. There are lots of these people. Christian Meditation is deeply Christian because it relies totally on the heart’s openness and the heart’s hospitality to the risen Christ.
The idea that something is simply good in itself is profoundly counter-cultural these days. This pragmatic, ego-obsessed culture needs to know what I will get out of it, what’s in it for me? Will it calm my fears and solve my problems? We think we need value-added religion. If it is not “delivering”, then is it not a waste of time? Moreover, the discovery that Christian Meditation is very much about relinquishing control, or the illusion of control we like to have, is deeply threatening to some.
There is nothing new about Christian Meditation in Christian history. Contemplative prayer was well known in the monasteries. Its roots go back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th and 5th centuries -- it was from them that John Cassian http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflearned to pray, and brought what he knew to Europe where he taught Benedict and others. Largely since the Second Vatican Council the monasteries have been commissioned to open their teachings “beyond the walls”, and that is a major route by which Christian Meditation and Centering Prayer have come into the practice of so many around the world. The Benedictines Fr John Main and Fr Laurence Freeman, the Cistercian Fr Thomas Keating and numerous others, have been the principal teachers. The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) is now in many countries of east and west. Its website is: www.wccm.org The NZCCM is at http://www.christianmeditationnz.org.nz
-- Ross Miller rossmill@orcon.net.nz
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