True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.
—Thomas Merton, He Is Risen
Father Richard teaches that the essence of contemplative prayer is presence and love:
Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It’s an encounter and a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, with awareness of the Presence, and even enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it.
The contemplative secret is learning to live in the now, which is not as empty as it might appear to be or that we fear it may be. Try to realize that everything is right here, right now and God is in this moment in a non-blaming way. When we’re able to experience that, taste and enjoy it, we don’t need to hold on to it.
Because most of our moments are not tasted or in the Presence, we are never full. We create artificial fullness and want to hang on to that. But there’s nothing to hold on to when we begin to taste the fullness of now. God is either in this now or God isn’t at all. If the now has never been sufficient, we’ll always be grasping. Here is a litmus test: if we’re pushing ourselves and others around, we haven’t yet found the secret of happiness. This moment is as full of the Divine Presence as it can be.
The present moment has no competition; it’s not judged in comparison to any other. It has never happened before and will not happen again. But when I’m in competition, I’m not in love. I can’t get to love because I’m looking for a new way to dominate. The way we know this mind is not the truth is that God does not deal with us like this. Mystics, those who really pray, know this. Those who enter deeply into the great mystery do not experience a God who compares, differentiates, and judges. They experience an all-embracing receptor, a receiver who recognizes the divine image in each and every individual.
For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love. Returning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That’s why prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s primarily an attitude, a stance. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray always; pray unceasingly” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). If we read that as requiring words, it’s surely impossible. We’ve got lots of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us; all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.
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5 For Friday: John Chaffee
1.
“I have renounced spirituality to find God.”
- Thomas Merton, Catholic Monk and Activist
Thomas Merton frequents these Friday newsletters, I know, I know.
You can’t deny it, though, this one is still just golden. It is almost a Christian version of a Koan…
It is not that someone “gives up faith” to find God, it is more that God is larger than our concepts, frameworks, rites, and rituals. God is willing to be experienced within them, but at some point, we butt up against the limitations of those things.
For me, there is a season in which it makes sense to “learn” religion, and then to “unlearn” it, to then “relearn” it in a larger, more mysterious sense. (This might be similar to Brueggemann’s idea of “orientation, disorientation, reorientation”, which Rohr then calls “order, disorder, reorder.”)
It may be the wisdom of the Dark Night of the Soul that first formulated it, but there is a point at which we may need to “repent” of our own limiting understandings of God!
2.
“Individuation is the process of becoming a ‘person,’ a fully integrated and relational being… That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of one’s inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”
- Sr. Ilia Delio, Franciscan Theologian
This quote stopped me in my tracks. This week I finished reading The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole. It was not exactly an easy read, but it certainly connected some dots for me.
The possibility that all of our external conflict is the result of externalization of internal conflict is striking. That which we cannot handle within ourselves, we seek to eliminate outside of ourselves.
Every division, every separation, every conflict, and every war is the result of an internal division, separation, conflict, or war we are dealing with. This means that for there to be world peace that lasts, there must be the teaching of internal peace/shalom.
The book leans heavily into the idea of the Whole and how to be properly “catholic” means to be concerned (kata) with the whole (holos) of everything.
3.
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:22
Not a few.
Not some.
Not most.
ALL.
4.
“I take my cue from Jesus Christ who told me and told all of us to love each other, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit those in prison. If you can’t do that, you’re not a believer—I don’t care what church you go to.”
- James Baldwin, Civil Right Activist
Any “Christianity” that does not lead toward loving one’s neighbor enough that one can’t help but do acts of compassionate justice while respecting the inherent dignity of the other… is not Christianity.
5.
“You’ve made a holy fool of me and I’ve thanked You ever since.”
- In a Sweater, Poorly Knit by mewithoutYou
I think that this singular line from mewithoutYou completely encapsulates my personal spirituality.
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