In this homily, Father Richard Rohr reflects on how contemplation is much more than a set of practices:
When we emphasize specific practices too much, contemplation can become a matter of technique and performance. We fall back into self-analysis: Am I doing the practice correctly? The revelation of God, who always wants to enter the material world as our image, cannot possibly depend upon people sitting silently on a prayer cushion twice a day. That would mean that 99.9% of people who have ever lived on this earth have not known God. The definition of Christian contemplation up until recent times has come from the early monastic and desert traditions, but the field is far bigger than that.
Parker Palmer writes, “The function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us to touch reality.” [1] I think he’s right and I would add that great love and great suffering are the normal paths of transformation. There’s an important place for practices of contemplation. I’m not throwing them out, but any practice of contemplation is for the sake of helping us sustain what we temporarily learn through great love or great suffering, whether it’s on a honeymoon or the day after a parent dies. When we’re in the middle of great grief or great love, we become a nondual thinker for a few days, weeks, or months, but we all know it doesn’t last. It doesn’t last—unless we put it into practice.
Father Richard names why contemplative practices are essential to deepening our experience of God’s wisdom:
When we insert religion inside of culture, culture wins every time. Most of us are Americans or our nationalities first, and then maybe, once in a while, we are Christians. That’s just obvious—it’s our cultures that form us. We want to believe, we keep pretending we believe, but we really don’t. Until our faith moves to the elemental, cellular level, until we digest it like we do great love and great suffering, it will not change our minds or our actions. Even after a beautiful Mass, ritual, or retreat, we go right back to either/or, dualistic thinking. We go right back to being angry Republicans or Democrats, Protestants or Catholics, Black people or white people. It just never stops. But as we practice, contemplation becomes a way to touch upon reality, a way of penetrating illusion.
The ego loves to take sides; it gives us a false sense of solidity, importance, and intelligence. Contemplation is any way we can find to help us penetrate illusion and touch reality—and reality will always be bigger than us. It will always leave us a bit uncomfortable, a bit off center stage. If we’re still on center stage, it isn’t Reality. When we can take our place as the little side show we all are, and from that humble perspective allow Reality to do its work with us, I think we will know what we need to know.
The New Monk
The monastic heart thrives wherever love is found.
—Beverly Lanzetta, A New Silence
Spiritual teacher Beverly Lanzetta considers what constitutes a “new monk”:
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a hermit, who remarked, “Monasticism is ancient. It hasn’t changed. What’s new about it? It’s the same—you empty yourself; you sit in your cell [small monastic room].” This is the issue, isn’t it? Is there really such a thing as the “new” monk?
Let me first say that the aspiration to monkhood is intrinsic to human life—a universal quality of being that continually draws us into silence. The concept of the “new monk” includes … monks in religious orders to participants without religious affiliation, … the person who chooses to live out a monastic vocation of one religion or a hybrid … or has no formal desire to be a monk, but lives by the universal call to contemplation. In each case, the deep self seeks something more radical and intense from life, and longs to be united with its Source. This is the monk within.
Monasticism is not new. Through generations of life on Earth, humans have sought solitude and silence. The monk’s journey is the Spirit’s fire born with and into us that ignites the pulse of the untamed heart. It is the insistent call to go deeper, to reach higher, and to search more ardently for our original home. And so, while perhaps we have not been trained to name or recognize the monk within, it has been awake in the center of being all along. We, then, can speak of the new monk as a person who consciously cultivates the interior monkhood, and who lives out an experimental and daily-renewed vocation.
Lanzetta describes how “new monks” practice their spirituality outside monastic enclosure:
New expressions of monasticism are not only authentic, but also offer a vital and necessary counterpoint to secular society. This is especially true because the monk in the world is bound by his or her vocation to be a self-reflective person—one who seeks higher meaning and dedicates his or her life on Earth to its pursuit. It is arduous work to dig deep into one’s soul, bringing forth hidden or unconscious motives contrary to a spiritual life. I find that the younger generations are especially drawn to the movement of new monasticism, as many were born with awareness of a new religious sensibility and a global Earth community.
For all of these reasons, this monastic orientation is “new” because it is taking place in the daily routine of a person’s life, and not in a monastic setting apart from the world.… He or she recognizes that monkhood is not the special preserve of the traditional vowed religious, but the universal heritage of humanity.…
The challenge of being “new” monks consists in the attempt to expand monastic wisdom into the wider personal and social circle of our lives, while also fiercely protecting the centering point of silence and solitude in our souls.
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| Psalm 125: The Problem with Distinguishing Prayers from Promises |
 Click Here for AudioMany Christians, and especially those from traditions that highly value the Bible, have been taught to read Scripture one-dimensionally. “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” is a very common sentiment in these communities. While meant to honor the Bible, this cliche actually does the opposite by cavalierly erasing the Bible’s great depth and diversity. It ignores the many different genres it contains, and the need to engage and interpret each genre by its own rules.“The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” is especially unhelpful when reading the Psalms for a few reasons. First, the psalms are poems that employ metaphors, similes, hyperbole, and many other non-literal figures of speech. For example, the Psalms say God is a rock (see Psalms 18, 62, 89, and 95). Are we to believe the Almighty is literally made of stone? Of course not. It’s clearly a metaphor. Second, the Psalms pose interpretive challenges because they are also prayers through which God’s people express a wide spectrum of emotions, and not all of those feelings accurately reflect reality. For example, numerous psalms accuse God of being distant, deaf, or inattentive. Does the Bible intend for us to believe that the Lord doesn’t hear us see our suffering? Again, of course not. These are examples of writers truthfully expressing their feelings about God, even when they are not true of God. Turning to Psalms 125 and 126, we encounter another kind of interpretive challenge. Psalm 125 begins by speaking of God’s unwavering and everlasting protection of his people. The writer says those who trust in the Lord will be protected by him, just as the mountains surround and protect Jerusalem. Just as Mount Zion (another name for Jerusalem) cannot be shaken, neither will God’s people. The writer appears to be saying that Jerusalem enjoys YHWH’s permanent protection.That sounds wonderful, and such a comforting promise may lead someone to declare, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it!” But that becomes a bit more difficult if we read the very next chapter. Psalm 126 is a prayer asking YHWH to restore the fortunes of Zion. Wait, didn’t Psalm 125 just say Zion couldn’t be shaken? So, then why does it need to be restored? We’ll look at that more tomorrow, but for now it’s helpful to remember that first and foremost the Psalms are prayers offered by God’s people, not promises given to God’s people.Of course, the Psalms do contain true statements about God and even some promises, but identifying those promises requires us to read the Psalms alongside the rest of Scripture. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 125:1-5 PSALM 126:1-6 WEEKLY PRAYERMother Janet Stuart (1857 – 1914) Dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I hold up all my weakness to your strength, my failure to your faithfulness, my sinfulness to your perfection, my loneliness to your compassion, my little pains to your great agony on the Cross. I pray that you will cleanse me, strengthen me, and hide me, so that, in all ways, my life may be lived as you would have it lived, without cowardice and for you alone. Amen. |
