Cultivating a Contemplative Culture Within
James Finley shares how in the midst of a challenging time in his life as a father, husband, and teacher, he felt drawn to renew the relationship with God he had experienced in the monastery:
I began to realize that what I wanted more than anything else was to be grounded once again in the experience of the communal presence with God that had so transformed my life since I was a small child, and which had deepened all the more in the monastery….
I could not at first see how it was possible for me to fulfill these reawakened longings. For, whereas every aspect of monastic life was carefully crafted to nurture the contemplative way of life in which the communal presence of God is realized, every aspect of the fast-moving ways of the world seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. Then it dawned on me that the contemplative way of life is not dependent on the monastic life that nurtures and protects it. My capacity to live a contemplative way of life was inscribed in my very being as a person created in the image and likeness of God. And so I came to the graced realization that I could, in the midst of my life in the world, cultivate a contemplative culture in my heart by renewing my fidelity to a daily quiet time in which I could once again learn from God how to love and be loved by God.
And so I began to get up early each morning as my wife and young daughter were still asleep. I would light a candle and sit out on the floor in the living room in an interior stance of silence and openness to God.
Impacted by the spirituality of Thomas Merton, Finley discovered an openness to the rich contemplative traditions of world religions:
I began to reflect on how graced I was in the monastery by the non-Christian spiritual masters who came to Gethsemani to visit Merton: the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh; the Jewish mystic and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel; the Muslim Sufis; the Hindu yogi who had come from India to found an ashram; Bede Griffiths, the Benedictine monk who was living as a Christian yogi in his ashram in India; and John Wu, a Chinese Catholic….
With Merton’s help I came to realize that God’s presence is fanned out into these contemplative traditions of the world’s great religions as so many languages or paths to contemplative communion with the divine mystery that he and I were seeking in our own Christian tradition….
When I got up each morning to meditate … I began to renew my prayerful study of the classical texts of these non-Christian sources of contemplative wisdom. I renewed my practice of yoga, which I had discovered through Thomas Merton, along with what I learned from him about the Buddhist traditions of meditation as a path to ultimate liberation
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| Psalm 126: Did God Break His Promise? |
 Click Here for AudioAs I mentioned in the previous devotion, Psalms 125 and 126 appear to be in tension. Psalm 125 says that Mount Zion (which is another name for Jerusalem) “cannot be shaken” and “endures forever.” The Psalm is a statement of confidence in Israel’s covenant with YHWH. Because the Lord is on its side, Jerusalem has nothing to fear. But this assurance is quickly questioned in the very next Psalm.Psalm 126 speaks of a time when YHWH “restored the fortunes of Zion” (verse 1), and asks him to continue restoring his people (verse 4). If Mount Zion is unshakable, as Psalm 125 said, why must it be restored? And why does Psalm 126 speak about a time of tears and weeping for God’s people?Most scholars believe Psalm 126 is post-exilic; meaning it was written after 598 B.C.E. when Babylon invaded and destroyed Jerusalem and many Jews were carted away to live in exile. Without question, this event was the most devastating in the history of ancient Israel. Not only was Mount Zion shaken, but the temple built upon it was destroyed, and the line of Davidic kings was broken.The trauma of the exile led many to wonder if YHWH had abandoned his covenant with Israel. Were they still his chosen people? How could Israel’s faith in God and his goodness be reconciled with the evil they had just experienced? The working out of this dilemma reverberates through many parts of the Old Testament—including numerous Psalms. But where the question is most directly asked and answered is in the writings of the prophets. There we discover the “shaking of Zion” was not YHWH breaking his covenant with Israel, but fulfilling it.When the Lord outlined the contours of his covenant with Israel through Moses, he promised blessing to the people if they followed his way and calamity if they did not. The chief calamity he warned about was exile. “If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you” (Leviticus 18:28). For generations before the Babylonian invasion, God warned his people that his judgment for their sin was coming. He called them to repent; to turn away from idolatry, to practice justice toward the poor and vulnerable, and to stop mistreating foreigners. But these warnings went unheeded. Finally, after showing incredible patience and giving his people every opportunity to change course, YHWH’s discipline came.The restoration of Zion that Psalm 126 celebrates alludes to the remnant of God’s people returning to the land after 70 years of exile. It’s evidence that the Lord had not abandoned Israel and that the covenant was still in effect. The exile was not an angry deity’s uncontrollable wrath, but a loving father’s reluctant discipline. As Proverbs says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son” (Proverbs 3:11-12; Hebrews 12:5-6). 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. |
