Contemplative Prayer Is Nothing New

Today’s meditation is adapted from a morning meditation sit at the CAC, during which Richard introduced a selection of quotations from the desert tradition. Richard shows how the teachings of the desert mystics align with the practice of centering prayer:

I’ve continued to be influenced by the desert mystics and the Eastern Church Fathers, even to the point where I say, “My gosh, this is a different Christianity.” It’s completely different from the issues we’re dealing with today. The main thing I’m struck by is how some of their teaching is almost Buddhist. It totally affirms what we’re taught in centering prayer. Here are several of their teachings to show that what we’re saying in contemplation and centering prayer was clearly understood for centuries in Eastern Christianity.

Until the mind is freed from the multitudes of thoughts, and has achieved the single simplicity of purity, it cannot experience spiritual knowledge.
—Isaac of Syria

We see that the desert traditions are very strong on self-knowledge. What they see as self-knowledge is not knowing our personality types, whether we’re a Six or a Two on the Enneagram; it’s seeing our patterns. This becomes clear:

Attention is the beginning of contemplation, or rather its necessary condition: for, through attention, God comes close and reveals Himself to the mind. Attention is serenity of the mind, or rather it’s standing firmly planted and not wandering, through the gift of God’s mercy.
—Nicephorus the Solitary

St. Simeon described attention this way:

Some of the fathers called this doing, silence of the heart; others called it attention; yet others—sobriety and opposition (to thoughts), while others called it examining thoughts and guarding the mind.

The monks Callistus and Ignatius taught:

Collect your mind from its customary circling and wandering outside, and quietly lead it into the heart by way of breathing.

Philotheus of Sinai lists how we get “caught” in our thoughts. He speaks of the initial impact coupling with the thought or emotion, merging with it, being held captive by it, and finally becoming what the desert mystics called a “passion.” The more I read them, the more it becomes clear that what they mean is “obsession.” Obsession is passion for the desert mystics. It is anything we cannot stop doing with our minds or emotions. At that moment, we’re in the grip of a “passion.” It makes total sense. We are no longer free. We have lost our freedom.

Passionlessness means not only not feeling passions but not accepting them from within.
—Callistus and Ignatius

Without this attentive discipline, our mind is in a “disorganized and dispersed state.” [1] That’s what we’re saying centuries later! So, when people say that contemplation or centering prayer is something new, just point them back to the desert traditions.

Recognizing Our Lost History

For too long, little or no honor has been paid to those who have laid the foundations in Africa for the preservation of Christianity throughout the world…. The roots and headwaters for this monastic flourishing had their source in African soil. 
—Paisius Altschul, An Unbroken Circle

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes reminds us of the forgotten gifts of early Christianity, particularly from its African legacies:

African participants in the early church remained in the shadows of the main theological discourse despite the scholarship of Tertullian, Augustine, Cyprian, and others of African descent who were instrumental in the expansion and theological grounding of the early church. Although initially the spread of Islam limited the expansion of North African Christian practices to sub-Saharan Africa, the trajectories of today’s Christian contemplative practices can be traced to early Christian communities in the Middle East and Africa.

Some of these communities were led by women…. After Christianity became a state religion, the freedom that women found in Spirit-led Christian sects was foreclosed by an increasingly hierarchical religious structure. In response, many retreated to remote desert areas to continue their spiritual quests.

This desert may initially seem barren, dull, and colorless, but eventually our perceptions start to change…. Here we empty ourselves of our own obstacles to God. In the space of this emptiness, we encounter the enormity of God’s presence…. The ammas [Desert Mothers] teach us that the desert becomes the place of a mature repentance and conversion toward transformation into true radical freedom. [1]

If the desert is a place of renewal, transformation, and freedom, and if the heat and isolation served as a nurturing incubator for nascent monastic movements, one wonders if a desert experience is necessary to reclaim this legacy.

One need not wonder long when there are so many deserts within reach. Today’s wilderness can be found in bustling suburban and urban centers, on death row, in homeless shelters in the middle of the night, in the eyes of a hospice patient, and in the desperation of AIDS orphans in Africa and around the world. Perhaps these are the postmodern desert mothers and fathers. Perhaps contemplative spaces can be found wherever people skirt the margins of inclusion. Perhaps those whom we value least have the most to teach.

We are in need of those values central to African monasticism and early Christian hospitality; they include communal relationships, humility, and compassion. Laura Swan sums up these virtues in the word apatheia, defined as “a mature mindfulness, a grounded sensitivity, and a keen attention to one’s inner world as well as to the world in which one has journeyed.” [2] Inevitably, the journey takes each of us in different directions; however, by virtue of circumstances or choice, each of us will at some point in our lives find ourselves on the outskirts of society listening to the silence coming from within. During these times, we realize that contemplation is a destination as well as a practice.

The Wise Storytellers

There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of personal thoughts. —Amma Syncletica, Life of Blessed Syncletica

Father Richard considers the Desert Mystics foundational contributors to his lineage of faith: 

The period of early Christianity, one of the key building blocks in my lineage of faith, is largely unknown to many Western Christians. It is an overlooked area for much of the Roman Church and its child, Protestantism. With the self-sufficiency and arrogance that has often characterized the West, we have proceeded as if the first centuries of Christianity were unimportant, or not part of the essential Christ Mystery. The very things the early Christians emphasized—such as the prayer of quiet, the Trinity, divinization, universal restoration, and the importance of practice—are some of the most neglected parts of the Western Church.

After the legitimation and, some would say, the co-opting of Christianity by Constantine in 313, many Christians fled to the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Cappadocia (Eastern Turkey). We call these men and women the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and most of their names would be unknown to Western Christians. The desert Christians emphasized lifestyle practice, an alternative to empires and their economies, psychologically astute methods of prayer, and a very simple spirituality of transformation into Christ. The desert communities grew out of informal gatherings of monastics and functioned much like families. This tradition preceded the emergence of systematic theology and the later Church Councils. Since the desert monks were often formally uneducated, they told stories, much as Jesus did, to teach about ego, love, virtue, surrender, peace, divine union, and inner freedom.

Early Christianity set the foundation for what we would now call contemplation. Both Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen recognized the importance of this early, desert form of Christianity. It is a unique window into how Jesus was first understood, before the church became an imperial, highly organized, competitive religion.

Eastern Orthodox theologian John Chryssavgis writes of the powerful stories shared by desert Christians in their spiritual teaching:

The Fathers and Mothers who lived in the desert of Egypt remind us of the importance of story-telling, which we have for the most part forgotten in our age. Listening to their stories and sayings, meditating on them in silence and subsequently telling them to others, helped our ancestors to live humanely, to be more human, to remain truly alive.… The stories from the Egyptian desert are more than just a part of the Christian past. They are a part of our human heritage: they communicate eternal values, spiritual truths. Theirs is a silence of the deep heart and of intense prayer, a silence that cuts through centuries and cultures. We should stop to hear that heartbeat. [1]

Contemplative Prayer Is Nothing New

Today’s meditation is adapted from a morning meditation sit at the CAC, during which Richard introduced a selection of quotations from the desert tradition. Richard shows how the teachings of the desert mystics align with the practice of centering prayer:

I’ve continued to be influenced by the desert mystics and the Eastern Church Fathers, even to the point where I say, “My gosh, this is a different Christianity.” It’s completely different from the issues we’re dealing with today. The main thing I’m struck by is how some of their teaching is almost Buddhist. It totally affirms what we’re taught in centering prayer. Here are several of their teachings to show that what we’re saying in contemplation and centering prayer was clearly understood for centuries in Eastern Christianity.

Until the mind is freed from the multitudes of thoughts, and has achieved the single simplicity of purity, it cannot experience spiritual knowledge.
—Isaac of Syria

We see that the desert traditions are very strong on self-knowledge. What they see as self-knowledge is not knowing our personality types, whether we’re a Six or a Two on the Enneagram; it’s seeing our patterns. This becomes clear:

Attention is the beginning of contemplation, or rather its necessary condition: for, through attention, God comes close and reveals Himself to the mind. Attention is serenity of the mind, or rather it’s standing firmly planted and not wandering, through the gift of God’s mercy.
—Nicephorus the Solitary

St. Simeon described attention this way:

Some of the fathers called this doing, silence of the heart; others called it attention; yet others—sobriety and opposition (to thoughts), while others called it examining thoughts and guarding the mind.

The monks Callistus and Ignatius taught:

Collect your mind from its customary circling and wandering outside, and quietly lead it into the heart by way of breathing.

Philotheus of Sinai lists how we get “caught” in our thoughts. He speaks of the initial impact coupling with the thought or emotion, merging with it, being held captive by it, and finally becoming what the desert mystics called a “passion.” The more I read them, the more it becomes clear that what they mean is “obsession.” Obsession is passion for the desert mystics. It is anything we cannot stop doing with our minds or emotions. At that moment, we’re in the grip of a “passion.” It makes total sense. We are no longer free. We have lost our freedom.

Passionlessness means not only not feeling passions but not accepting them from within.
—Callistus and Ignatius

Without this attentive discipline, our mind is in a “disorganized and dispersed state.” [1] That’s what we’re saying centuries later! So, when people say that contemplation or centering prayer is something new, just point them back to the desert traditions.

Author and scholar Diana Butler Bass writes of Jesus as “the way,” a title Jesus used for himself:

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus invites people to follow him, to walk with him, to go on a journey. There is nothing particularly new in this, as the Hebrew scriptures are full of stories of wanderers, pilgrims, exiles, and immigrants…. However, in the gospel of John, Jesus upped the theological ante. He not only taught a way inviting the curious to follow him, but he said he was the way: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6).

That is a beautiful verse, a poetic and parabolic image of the way and the Way, a beckoning for all who know Jesus to willingly embrace the journey. That is the path, the road of liberation. And it would be freeing but for the next sentence: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Wait, what? The welcome is pulled back, boundaries are put up, and suddenly the picture shifts, as the call to dance and sing and run through the fields fades into a rather grim image of judgment and exclusion.….

Many Christians cling ferociously to the exclusionary interpretation of this verse…. [Yet] “way,” “truth,” and “life” are relational words, all things that Jesus says he is. “Way” is not a technique or map, “truth” is not about philosophy or dogma, and “life” is not about going to heaven. In the mystical poetry of John, Jesus uses these terms to explain how he embodies a way of being in this world [that is] so close to the heart of God that God can be known in and through Jesus.

Butler Bass describes being drawn to the inner and outer journeys of contemplation and action:

Author Elizabeth O’Connor told the story of a Christian community organized around two spiritual journeys—the interior one toward knowing our true self and knowing God, and the one directed outward into the world to enact God’s justice and love. [1] These two movements comprise the way of Jesus, a continual flow of breath: in, out; in, out; in, out.…

This quest is a mapless journey—there is no single road—the only guides to it are nature, saints, poetry, song, and Spirit. When you dare leave the map behind, Jesus emerges as the road itself and the Light that guides. The Quakers refer to this as the “inner light”; medieval mystics speak of Jesus likewise. Of it Meister Eckhart wrote: “There is a journey you must take. It is a journey without destination. There is no map. Your soul will lead you. And you can take nothing with you.” [2] Conventional Christianity (of many different denominations) prefers to see Jesus as a directive or destination rather than this path; for them “way” is a noun, not a verb. On the mapless journey, however, all is movement. There is no destination, only the enveloping presence of love.

_______________________________________________

Sarah Young

My guiding God, Help me to willingly follow Your lead—opening myself more fully to You and Your way for me. I don’t want to be so focused on getting my own way that I miss the things You have prepared for me. Instead, I choose to relax with You while You transform me by the renewing of my mind—working Your newness into me. I need to be still in Your Presence, trusting You enough to let go of my expectations and demands. Sometimes I obstruct the very things I desire by trying too hard to make them happen in my timing. Yet You know not only the desires of my heart but also the best way and time to reach those goals. So I’m learning to yield to Your will and timing. Rather than striving to be in control, I need to spend more time seeking Your Face—talking with You openly and resting in Your Presence. Once I’m feeling more refreshed, I can ask You to show me the way forward. I’m encouraged by Your words of promise: “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.” In Your transforming Name, Jesus, Amen

ROMANS 12:2; Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

PSALM 46:10 NKJV; Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations,

1 CHRONICLES 16:11 NASB; Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually. 12 Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done

PSALM 32:8 NLT The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 56). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

A Deeper Way of Love

CAC faculty member Brian McLaren describes how Jesus centers love as the path for us to f0llow:  

Of the many radical things said and done by Jesus, his unflinching emphasis on love was most radical of all. Love was the greatest commandment, … his prime directive—love for God, for self, for neighbor, for stranger, for alien, for outsider, for outcast, and even for enemy, as he himself modeled. The new commandment of love [John 13:34] meant that neither beliefs nor words, neither taboos, systems, structures nor the labels that enshrined them mattered most. Love decentered everything else; love relativized everything else; love took priority over everything else—everything. [1]

Theologian Norman Wirzba finds inspiration in the story of Óscar Romero’s conversion to deeper love:  

What love requires from us and how our hearts need to be transformed are movingly illustrated in the life of Oscar Romero [1917–1980], the former archbishop of San Salvador. Romero came to this realization about the personally transforming nature of love in a profound but costly way…. In his role as priest and then bishop, he assumed that the ways of God were in fairly close alignment with the priorities of the Roman [Catholic] magisterium and the Salvadoran government. For him, at this time, Jesus was not a revolutionary figure. Romero saw in Jesus someone who could be used to defend his country’s status quo…. 

It was by opening himself to the love of God expressed by the common people that Romero found the courage to change and align himself with love. He decided to live in solidarity with the poor and learn from them the ways of love and the ways of God. Poor people, rather than professors, would now be his teachers….  

In the sermon just preached [minutes before his assassination], Romero had said that Christ’s gospel teaches that: 

One must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest [see John 12:24]. [2] 

As Romero had come to see, love does not allow people to flee or shield themselves from the pain or the troubles of this life. Genuine lovers move deeply into the life-and-death dramas of this world, like a plant that sinks roots deep into fertile soil, and there give themselves wholly to the flourishing of life. To withhold oneself from love is to withhold oneself from participating in a complete life.…

Love is the outbound movement that trains people to heal injustice and kindly embrace the world. [3]

Self-Emptying Love

Though his state was that of God, yet he did not deem equality with God something he should cling to. Rather, he emptied himself.… And being made in human likeness, he humbled himself, by becoming obedient unto death—even death on a cross.
—Philippians 2:6–8 

 CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault identifies discipleship with following Jesus’ “path of self-emptying love”:  

In this beautiful hymn [from Philippians], Paul recognizes that Jesus had only one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further (“even unto death on the cross”) and fell through the bottom to return to the realms of dominion and glory. In whatever life circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way, of the same motion of descent: going lower, taking the lower place, not the higher.…

He certainly called us to dying to self, but his idea of dying to self was not through inner renunciation or guarding the purity of his being but through radically squandering everything he had and was. John the Baptist’s disciples were horrified because [Jesus] banqueted, drank, and danced. The Pharisees were horrified because he healed on the Sabbath and kept company with women and disreputables, people known to be impure. Boundaries meant nothing to him; he walked right through them.

What seemed disconcerting to nearly everybody was the messy, freewheeling largeness of his spirit. Abundance and a generosity bordering on extravagant seemed to be the signatures of both his teaching and his personal style.… As we look further, that extravagance is everywhere. When he feeds the multitudes at the Sea of Galilee, there is not merely enough to go around; the leftovers fill twelve baskets…. He seems not to count the cost; in fact, he specifically forbids counting the cost. “Do not store up treasures on earth,” he teaches; do not strive or be afraid—“for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). All will come of its own accord in good time and with abundant fullness, so long as one does not attempt to hoard or cling.  

It is a path he himself walked to the very end. In the garden of Gethsemane, with his betrayers and accusers massing at the gates, he struggled and anguished but remained true to his course. Do not hoard, do not cling—not even to life itself. Let it go, let it be— “Not my will but yours be done, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my spirit” [Luke 22:42; 23:46].

Thus he came and thus he went, giving himself fully into life and death, losing himself, squandering himself, “gambling away every gift God bestows.” [1] It was not love stored up but love utterly poured out that opened the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Following Jesus’ Way

Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” —Mark 8:34–35

Richard Rohr shares how Jesus’ message and way is intended to change our lives with its counter-intuitive wisdom and call: 

A blatant contradiction between message and action is holding us back in every part of the world. Christians too often preach a self-absorbed gospel of piety and religiosity, rather than a “lifestyle gospel.” The gospel is so radical that if we truly believed its message, it would call into question all the assumptions we currently hold about the way we live, how we use our time, whom we relate to, how we marry, and how much money we have. Everything we think and do would be called into question and viewed in a new way. [1]

I believe that we rather totally missed Jesus’ major point when we made a religion out of him instead of realizing he was giving us a message of simple humanity, vulnerability, and nonviolence that was necessary for the reform of all religions—and for the survival of humanity. We need to dedicate our lives to building bridges and paying the price in our bodies for this ministry of reconciliation (Ephesians 2:13–18). The price is that we will always, like all bridges, be walked on from both sides. Reconcilers are normally “crucified,” and the “whole world hates them,” because they are neither on one side nor the other. They build the vulnerable bridge in between, which always looks like an abdication of ground to the supposedly “true believer.”

Jesus is a person and, at the same time, a process. Jesus is the Son of God, but at the same time he is “the Way.” Jesus is the goal, but he’s also the means, and the means is always the way of the cross.

For all authentic spiritual teachers, their message is the same as their life; their life is their message. For some reason, we want the “person” of Jesus as our “God totem,” but we really do not want his path and message of “descent” except as a functional theology of atonement: this is what Jesus needed to do to “save us.” We do not want to see the cross as the pattern of life and a path for our own liberation. We prefer heavenly transactions to our own transformation.

The way of the cross looks like failure. In fact, we could say that Christianity is about how to win by losing, how to let go creatively, how the only real ascent is descent. We need to be more concerned with following Jesus, which he told us to do numerous times, and less with worshipping Jesus—which he never once told us to do. [2]

Keep Changing

In this excerpt from his 1980s talk The Four Gospels, Father Richard reflects on what it means to follow Jesus: 

Immediately after the temptation in the desert, Jesus goes out to Galilee and there he begins to preach. His initial preaching is summed up in the verse, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 3:2; Mark 1:15). 

It is a theologically packed statement. What does the word “repent” mean? First of all, it doesn’t mean to beat ourselves up or to feel bad about ourselves. “Repent” (or metanoia in Greek) means to turn around, to change. The first word that comes out of Jesus’ mouth is change—be willing to change. 

People who are not willing to change are not willing to turn away from themselves. What we’re in love with usually is not God. We’re in love with our way of thinking, our way of explaining, our way of doing. One of the greatest ways to protect ourselves from God, and to protect ourselves from truth and grace, is simply to buy into some kind of cheap conventionalism and call it tradition. 

But the great traditions always call people on a journey of faith to keep changing. There’s no other way this human personality can open up to all that God is asking of us.  There’s no way we can open up to all we have to learn, all we have to experience, unless we’re willing to let go of the idols of yesterday and the idols of today. The best protection from the next word of God is the last word of God. We take what we heard from God last year and we build a whole system around it, and then we sit there for the rest of our lives.

Immediately after he begins his preaching, Jesus calls his first four disciples. The way I see people transformed today sure doesn’t happen this quickly. Jesus just says, “Follow me” and immediately they left their nets and followed him (Matthew 4:20). Now, maybe it happened that way; I don’t want to say it didn’t. But what I do want to say is that a true disciple will have that kind of readiness. I’d be more likely to think that this was maybe a process of some conversations over a few weeks. And Jesus said, “Hey, I’m into something. Do you want to be a part of it? Let’s go.”

I hope we realize that we’re all called to discipleship the same way. We hope that the point comes when we’re ready to let go of our nets. What are our nets? Our security systems. Fishing is Simon and Andrew’s economic livelihood, and Jesus says to let go of it. He says, “I’m going to teach you how to fish in a new way, to fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). What he means is that he’s going to give them a new vocation. What is God asking us to do? Where is God asking us to go? 

We continue sharing from Richard’s 1980 series on the Hebrew prophets. In this talk, Richard focuses on the prophet Isaiah and the meaning of biblical faith:

Isaiah [the author of Isaiah 1–39] is above all else the prophet of faith. He begins to define the quality of faith and what it means to trust in God. It’s a whole new capacity for God and life…. Biblical faith, especially for Isaiah, is a quality of being, a quality of perception.

We might try to describe it as a type of internal authority that comes from listening to everything, a going beyond fear so that one becomes intimate with everything. Such people know the truth out of which they speak. They have somehow heard Divine Love speak their name. I don’t know how to describe such mysteries. It’s like there’s a place within us where those names have become one, God’s name and our name. That’s the source of the authority out of which we speak, that we know God has called us by name and we know God has been revealed to us. We know God and we know God knows us. We begin to draw our authority from that point.

That’s the only way that we can stand firmly in this world. Otherwise, we’re always searching outside of ourselves for the approval of others, the applause of others, or some group to find our identity. And so we don’t have to have a personal identity. Faith is obeying your deepest heart. It’s being true to your deepest self.

God offers Isaiah a loving and surprising response to the people’s stuck faith:

In the middle of Isaiah, the prophet seems to be repeating his basic belief and testimony. He calls it the precious cornerstone of his teaching, which is “whoever has faith shall not be shaken” (Isaiah 28:16). Now we’re beginning to see why Isaiah is called the prophet of faith. God says, “I will make justice the measure, integrity the plumb line” for those who live this radical faith (Isaiah 28:17).

“Yahweh has said: Because this people approaches me only in words, honors me only with lip service while its heart is far from me, and my religion, as far as it is concerned, is nothing but human commandment, a lesson memorized” (Isaiah 29:13). And here’s God’s response right after: I’m going to go on acting in surprising and wondrous fashion, “being prodigal of prodigious prodigies with this people,” as The Jerusalem Bible translates it (29:14). God is saying, as it were, “You don’t know my love. You’re satisfied with verbal religion, with lip service. The only way I know how to get you out of it is to love you more.”

How beautiful! That’s always the way of God. God shakes a finger at the people and yet says, “The way I’ll call you out of it is by loving you even more than I love you now.”

___________________________

Gentle Jesus,

You’ve been teaching me that there is no randomness about my life: Here and Now comprise the coordinates of my daily life. The present moment is not only the point at which time intersects eternity, it is the place where I encounter You—my eternal Savior. Every moment of every day is alive with Your glorious Presence! Help me to keep my thoughts focused on You—enjoying Your Presence here and now. I confess that I let many moments slip through my fingers, half-lived. I neglect the present by worrying about the future or longing for a better time and place. Please open my eyes and awaken my heart so I can see all that this day contains! I want You to be involved in everything I do—equipping me to do my work heartily. Working collaboratively with You lightens my load and enables me to enjoy what I’m doing. I find that the more time I spend communicating with You, the less I worry. This frees me to let Your Spirit direct my steps—guiding my feet into the way of Peace. In Your guiding Name, Amen

LUKE 12:25–26; Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life[ a]? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry 

COLOSSIANS 3:23 NASB; Whatever you do, do your work [ a]heartily, as for the Lord and not for people, 24 knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward [ b]of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

JOHN 10:10 AMPC; The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).

LUKE 1:79 NKJV; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 49). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Huldah: A Trustworthy Prophet

Author and podcaster Kat Armas writes of truth telling as a valued part of her upbringing and finds support for this way of being in the Scriptures: 

I learned very young that when there’s a problem, you confront it. It’s how you get by…. For me, confrontation has always been equated with intimacy…. It wasn’t until I left my context, my culture, that I realized how rare it is to value confrontation and truth telling, and what length many people will go to in order to silence the prophets in our midst.

I imagine Huldah the prophet held to similar values.

Her story is found in 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34. It’s not surprising that we don’t know much about her or hear of her often. I wonder if her story goes untold because it’s hard to reconcile a truth-telling woman, a prophet who instructs a man—the king—in the way of God, with the narratives that are forced on women by much of the church. Some in the church tell women that they can’t lead men, that the Bible says so, but what about Huldah? She was called by God to tell the truth….

I wish we knew more about Huldah’s calling…. What was it like for a woman to be called to such a powerful position of spiritual leadership and authority? Did she have a vision that empowered her like Isaiah did, or was she terrified and trying to get out of it like Jonah? I wonder if she was young like Josiah, who became king as a child and eventually went to Huldah for spiritual counsel. Were there women in her life, abuelitas [grandmothers] who discipled her, told her about her antepasados [ancestors] and everything they went through in Egypt, in the desert? Did she have role models like Miriam, a woman without husband or children, the first woman to ever be called a prophet? Did Huldah look up to the way Miriam led Israel in song and dance and to how they were committed to her—refusing to march in the wilderness until she was healed from her disease (Numbers 12:15)?

Armas describes how Josiah the king sought out the prophet Huldah “to receive direction from God through the prophet”: 

And Huldah did just that—boldly. She warned of the coming destruction, declaring that the written word they found was indeed God’s true word. She also delivered good news, validating Josiah’s repentance on first reading the book. She let the messengers know that Josiah’s actions would bring forth peace. After Huldah’s word got back to him, Josiah responded by continuing his reform. [See 2 Kings 22:12–20; 2 Chronicles 34:19–33].

Huldah’s prophetic words shifted national policy. Her commitment to telling God’s truth—even and especially the hard truth—specifically to men in power, changed the course of history.

The Feelings of God

In his 1980 talks on the Hebrew prophets, Father Richard identified the passion of the prophets, which is also the passion of God: 

The prophets provide a journey into the heart of God. Their images and words and dramas oftentimes seem exaggerated and absolutist. These are somehow an attempt to draw humankind into the pathos, the feeling, the intensity, the pain, even, that characterize the heart of God.

If we look at it too logically, we may say, “Well, that’s a misuse of words.” We might say that God doesn’t have pain, feeling, desire, or anger. Yet prophets dare to use those words and images because the prophets are speaking to us. The prophet knows that these are words we can understand, that we can enter into, and that will somehow assimilate us into the heart of God….

Let’s come at it the other way around. We know and we feel; if we are children of God, then somehow what characterizes our heart and humanity must be reflected in who God is. Maybe the only way to get a handle on who God is, is to speak of desire, to speak of anger, to speak of longing, to speak of love. And so we dare to do it, and the prophet dares to do it.

Scholar and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) describes the shared experience of feeling between God and a prophet:

The fundamental experience of the prophet is a fellowship with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the divine pathos, a communion with the divine consciousness…. The typical prophetic state of mind is one of being taken up into the heart of the divine pathos. [1]

Richard continues: 

Prophets don’t try to be logical. Perhaps this is why prophets get closer to the Divine Reality than many of the more rational and prudent, logical and theological approaches to God. If we’re looking for prudence and balance, we don’t read the prophets. That’s not their vocation. They’re not called to be that. In a world that is so one-sided, always looking for the self-preserving, careful, cautious, and protective way, the prophet feels they must stand way over at a distance and pull humanity to the other side. They must help humanity experience the pathos of God, the pain, the feeling, the longing, the desire of God….

If teachers give us the ideas of God, then prophets give us the feelings of God. This helps us see Jesus as both prophet and teacher. Jesus speaks the word of God, the ideas of God, but combines with them the feelings of God. That’s what it means to have a whole understanding of reality. We know so much more than we understand, at least if we’re listening. If we’re learning how to listen, we know so much more than we understand. What the prophets do is help us to know what we know.

A Life of Relationship

Richard Rohr speaks in his 1980 recorded series on the Hebrew prophets about the communal and social emphasis of their message: 

What the prophet does is lead the Jewish religion into being a social experience….  The prophets keep Judaism social.

Much of modern religion is individualistic, spiritualized instead of social. Prophetic words only speak out of the context of peoplehood, out of the context of community. It’s a call to the covenant people to live the covenant and be the people of the covenant. To be faithful to the pledge that God has made to God’s people. For the most part, the prophets’ teaching is not individualistic; it’s social. Their understanding isn’t, “This is right for me; I must do this. My conscience tells me this.” Much more, they speak of our conscience. There’s a social conscience, what is right for the people. The prophets are convinced that what is right and good for the people as a whole will be right for the individual.

Ironically—and this will seem like a paradox—out of that sense of peoplehood, out of that sense of community comes a strong tradition of the importance of the individual. I know that sounds contradictory, but that’s exactly what happens. A true sense of community creates a strong sense of individual personhood…. True individuals create true community. And true community creates true individuals. They are not conflicting. Because we’ve so often experienced bad community and individualism instead of true personhood, we see them as somehow in conflict. The prophet does not. So the prophet’s sense of Judaism is of a social religion that calls hearers to peoplehood, to togetherness, to relatedness. Only in relatedness can we understand relatedness to God.

The life of the Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures is largely a life of relationship. Those who can be in relationship can learn how to appropriately relate to the other, not just to the self. We’re caught right now in a very psychological age where we’re coming very close to defining salvation as self-realization, as therapeutic experience, as self-knowledge. It’s all an internal dialogue.

In fact, the life of the Spirit is a life of relatedness and relationship. The prophet leads us into that life of relationship to be in union with nature, the moment, the person, the prayer, the community. As soon as those moments of relationship are cut off, we cut off the possibility of community, and we cut off the possibility of being a people of any real depth. Certainly, we cut ourselves off from what I think the Jewish and Christian traditions offer us, which is a call to relatedness. God leads us further and further into that relatedness, into an experience of intimacy with that with which we are in relationship. Because of that experience of intimacy with the center, with God, with the Creator, with Life, gradually the scaffolding of fear and self-protection falls away. We’re hopefully finally able to be intimate with everything.

Mercy, Justice, and Walking Humbly

“You have been told, O mortal, what is good and what YHWH requires of you: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” —Micah 6:8

Scholar and retreat leader Megan McKenna deepens our understanding of God’s desire for us through the prophet Micah. For McKenna, Micah’s simple and challenging verse reveals the essence of what the prophets are about: 

According to God, this is life. This is the call of the prophets in a nutshell, the meat at the heart of their very existence. The words used are significant: “Do justice”—the Hebrew word mishpat means more than specific acts of justice. It defines God’s order in the world; it is the covenant guide for living in community; and it is the memory of God’s words and deeds past and present and the people’s response in gratitude toward one another. In a word it says, Be the Torah; do God’s justice; imitate God in your life.…

“Do justice” means to be faithful as God is faithful, holy as God is holy, to set those in bondage free, to hear compassionately the cries of those in slavery, to do for one’s neighbor what God has so graciously done for you. It is the teaching of the Torah, the source of abundant life. These two words—Do justice—point to the way of God and simply say: walk in it! Whatever the concept of justice might be, it is only by doing acts of justice, by solidly standing with those in need of justice, and by resisting injustice that justice can become a reality.

The second demand is “Love mercy” (or “Love tenderly”). The Hebrew word hesed, compassion, means coming to the rescue of the poor, the outcast, the alien, the slave, the powerless, hearing the cries of those in misery, giving love that is faithful, sustaining, enduring. It is the way God loves [God’s] people, and God’s people are to return that love by loving one another. This urgent command shoots right to the heart of every individual and to the community. [1]

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) asks what it means to walk humbly with God, the third of God’s requirements to Micah: 

How do you walk humbly with God? How do you? How do you walk humbly with anybody?… [By] coming to grips with who I am, what I am as accurately and as fully as possible: a clear-eyed appraisal of myself. And in the light of the dignity of my own sense of being I walk with God step by step as [God] walks with me. This is I, with my weaknesses and my strength, with my abilities and my liabilities; this is I, a human being myself! And it is that that God salutes. So that the more I walk with God and God walks with me, the more I come into the full-orbed significance of who I am and what I am. That is to walk humbly with God. [2]

Father Richard considers how a balance of unconditional and conditional love serves growth in the first half of life:  

The only happy people I’ve met are those who have found some way to serve. Such folks are not preoccupied with self-image, success, and power. Many of us began with traditional rules, discipline, and structure that created a kind of compression chamber, often based on exclusion. As we grow, the chamber becomes tight and oppressive, so we begin to practice what we call “the sacred no” against self-serving laws, traditions, and cultural practices that pose as the will of God. We’re no longer willing to prop up the status quo and believe that is all there is to life. 

It seems many people raised in our culture in the last few decades grew up backwards by beginning “liberal.” This leaves the unconverted ego in the position of decider. I don’t think we do our children any favors by raising them without boundaries or rules and largely letting them decide for themselves what is right for them. Basically, we’re asking them to start from zero. In an overreaction to the generation before them, parents and the church have been trying hard to love unconditionally. I know this from doing it myself with the young people in the New Jerusalem Community in my early years as a priest. I endlessly preached about God’s unconditional love. To be honest, although we drew thousands of young people, most did not take this very far in terms of deep and lasting transformation or service to the world.  

To borrow an idea from Erich Fromm’s classic book The Art of Loving, I believe that the healthiest people are those who received from their two parents and early authority figures a combination of unconditional love and conditional love. This seems to be true of so many effective and influential people, like St. Francis, John Muir, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mother Teresa. I know my siblings and I received conditional love from our mother and unconditional love from our father. We all admit now that Mom’s demanding love served us very well later in life, although we sure fought her when we were young. And we were glad Daddy was there to balance her out. 

It appears we need a goad, a wall to butt up against to create a proper ego structure and a strong identity. Such a foil is the way we internalize our own deeper values, educate our feeling function, and dethrone our own narcissism. We all need to internalize the sacred no to our natural egocentricity. It seems we need a certain level of frustration, a certain amount of not having our needs met. Then we realize there are other people who also have needs and desires and feelings. As my mother told me, “Dickie, your rights end at the end of your nose; that’s where somebody else’s nose begins.”  

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Sarah Young; Jesus Listens

My living Lord, By day You direct Your Love; at night Your song is with me—for You are the God of my life. Knowing that You are in charge of everything is such a great comfort! During the day, You command Your Love to bless me in countless ways. So I’ll be on the lookout for the many good things You place along my path—searching for Your blessings and thanking You for each one I find. Help me not to be discouraged by the hard things I encounter but to accept them as part of living in a deeply fallen world. I rejoice that Your song is with me throughout the night as You lovingly watch over me. If I am wakeful, I can use this time to seek Your Face and enjoy Your peaceful Presence. A tender intimacy with You develops when I remember You on my bed—meditating on You in the night watches. Whether I am waking or sleeping, You are always present with me. For You are indeed the God of my life! In Your blessed Name, Jesus, Amen

PSALM 42:8; By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—

2 CORINTHIANS 4:16–17; Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

PSALM 27:8 NKJV; When You said, “Seek My face,” My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.” 9 Do not hide Your face from me; Do not turn Your servant away in anger; You have been my help; Do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation.

PSALM 63:6–7 NKJV When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches. Because You have been my help, Therefore, in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 35). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.