I
return once again to the prophetic words of Sister Joan Chittister who calls us
to make an unflinching commitment to act with integrity—out of the fullness of
our being—not simply our pragmatic, comfortable, or fearful selves.
As
a people, we are at a crossover moment. It is a call to all of us to be our
best, our least superficial, our most serious about what it means to be a
Christian as well as a citizen. . . .
Where
in the midst of such polarization and national disunity is even the hope of oneing, of integrating the social with what we say are our
spiritual selves? . . .
Even
the ghost of an answer makes serious spiritual demands on us all: To heal such
division means that we are obliged to search out and identify our own personal
value system. It requires us to admit to ourselves what it is that really
drives our individual social decisions, our votes, our political alliances. Is
it the need to look powerful? The desire for personal control? . . . Do we have
the courage to confront the debased with the ideal—even in the face of ridicule
and recrimination—or is cowardice our secret spiritual sickness? In that case,
our national health can only get worse.
A
national cure also surely demands that we begin to see tradition as a call to
return to the best of the past, not a burden to be overcome in order to secure
the best of the present. It is the sense of a commonly held tradition of the
common good—once a strong part of the American past—that we clearly lack in the
present. . . .
[We
must] make “Love one another as I have loved you” (see John 13:34) the
foundation of national respect, the standard of our national discernment, the
bedrock of both our personal relationships and a civilized society. . . .
To
be one, we don’t need one party, one
program, one set of policies. What could be duller, more stagnant, more
destructive of the soulfulness it takes to create and preserve the best of the
human enterprise than such a narrow-minded view of planetary life? What
we need is one heart for the world at large, a single-minded commitment to this
“more perfect union,” and one national soul, large enough to listen to one
another for the sake of the planet—for the sake of us all.
So
where can we look for oneing in the political arena? Only
within the confines of our own hearts. Politics—government—does not exist for
itself and, if it does, that is precisely when it becomes at least
death-dealing if not entirely evil. . . .
In the end,
politics is nothing more than an instrument of social good and human
development. It is meant to be the right arm of those whose souls have melted
into God.
The Heart of Democracy Tuesday, November 3, 2020 Election Day in the U.S.A.
Renewed contact with the Gospel of faith, of hope and of love invites us to assume a creative and renewed spirit. In this way, we will be able to transform the roots of our physical, spiritual and social infirmities and the destructive practices that separate us from each other, threatening the human family and our planet. —Pope Francis
I consider Quaker author and activist Parker Palmer a true elder. He has clearly “fallen upward”—humbly learning and growing over the years while also generously giving of himself to build a better future with the next generation. From that vantage point, Palmer writes:
For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive—and we are legion—the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation. . . .
Of all the tensions we must hold in personal and political life, perhaps the most fundamental and most challenging is standing and acting with hope in the “tragic gap.” On one side of that gap, we see the hard realities of the world, realities that can crush our spirits and defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it that way. . . .
If we are to stand and act with hope in the tragic gap and do it for the long haul, we cannot settle for mere “effectiveness” as the ultimate measure of our failure or success. Yes, we want to be effective in pursuit of important goals. . . . [But] we must judge ourselves by a higher standard than effectiveness, the standard called faithfulness. Are we faithful to the community on which we depend, to doing what we can in response to its pressing needs? Are we faithful to the better angels of our nature and to what they call forth from us? Are we faithful to the eternal conversation of the human race, to speaking and listening in a way that takes us closer to truth? Are we faithful to the call of courage that summons us to witness to the common good, even against great odds? When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being.
Parker Palmer’s understanding of the “tragic gap” recognizes that no matter what we do, we can never completely solve the problem. In all our actions, there is always a space left incomplete, imperfect, which God alone can fill. The search for “the perfect” often keeps us from “the good.” The demand for one single issue about which we can be totally right actually keeps us from reading the whole picture—often this is true in regard to voting.
Story from Our Community: I’m pretty ordinary and try to be compassionate, calm, and balanced. However, . . . [given the crises in our country and world], it has been hard for me to not despair. When I get down, I return to one of Richard Rohr’s daily writings. And I return to a place of balance and perspective . . . rather than bitterness or gloom. When my two twenty-something sons are down about the state of the world, I repeat to us all – Fierce Resolve, Rest, Repeat. We will only change the world one heart at a time. —Shannon M.
Obedience
to God’s Will of Love
Monday, November 2, 2020
Benedictine
Sister Joan Chittister is a theologian, author, and speaker, whose wisdom and
approach to social justice I take very seriously. I offer you these encouraging
words from her about what it means to work for the common good. Joan writes:
In
all my years of traveling around the world, one thing has been present in every
region, everywhere. One thing has stood out and convinced me of the certain
triumph of the great human gamble on equality and justice.
Everywhere there are people who, despite finding themselves mired in periods of national or personal marginalization refuse to give up the thought of a better future or give in to the allurements of a deteriorating present. They never lose hope that the values they learned in the best of times or the courage it takes to reclaim their world from the worst of times are worth the commitment of their lives. These people, the best of ourselves, are legion and they are everywhere.
It
is the unwavering faith, the open hearts, and the piercing courage of people
from every level of every society that carries us through every major social
breakdown to the emergence again of the humanization of humanity. In every
region, everywhere, they are the unsung but mighty voices of community,
high-mindedness, and deep resolve. They are the prophets of each era who prod
the rest of the world into seeing newly what it means to be fully alive,
personally, nationally, and spiritually. . . .
It
is that steadfast, unyielding, courageous commitment to the eternal Will of God
for Creation—whatever the cost to themselves—that is the prophetic tradition.
It sustains the eternal Word of God while the world spins around it, making
God’s Word—Love—the center, the axle, the standard of everything the faithful
do in the midst of the storm of change that engulfs us as we go. . . .
Our
task is to be obedient all our lives to the Will of God [which is Love] for the
world. And therein lies the difference between being good for nothing and good
for something. Between religion for show and religion for real. Between
personal spirituality that dedicates itself to achieving private sanctification
and prophetic spirituality, the other half of the Christian dispensation.
Yes,
the Christian ideal is personal goodness, of course, but personal goodness
requires that we be more than pious, more than faithful to the system, more
than mere card-carrying members of the Christian community. Christianity
requires, as well, that we each be so much a prophetic presence that our corner
of the world becomes a better place because we have been there. . . .
The quality of
life we create around us as “followers of Jesus” is meant to seed new life, new
hope, new dynamism, the very essence of a new world community.
Solidarity:
A Public Virtue
Sunday, November 1, 2020
Citizens of the United States will finish voting this
week. Many of us are feeling demoralized, and many others carry serious
distrust of American political institutions. The most vulnerable in a society
have already experienced the discouragement from which so many are suffering
today. They know firsthand that the system has not worked, at least not for
them, for a long time.
Two
years ago, I wrote in Sojourners magazine that for me, personally, voting is a
deeply moral act—a decisive statement of Christian faith that I matter, that
justice matters, and that other people matter.
Sadly,
for many religious people, the public forum has historically remained the most
disconnected from our faith. Unlike its Jewish forebears, Christianity, in its
first two thousand years, has kept its morality mostly private, interior, and
heaven-bound, but with very few direct implications for what is now called our
collective economic, social, or political life. I am not talking about partisan politics here, but simply
the connecting of the inner world with the outer world.
This
week our meditations will be focusing on what I call “public virtue.” The
virtue in which I was trained in the seminary, I’m sorry to say, was “private”
virtue that taught me how I could be virtuous in my interior life. As my novice
master put it in a good 1961 fashion, “Try to make it as easy as possible for
all others to love you.”
Perhaps
I, myself, was good and could go to heaven. But such personal salvation does
not come close to the mystery of the Body of Christ, which turns focus outward,
to ask: how can I be good for the sake of my neighborhood, my city, my church,
my community, and the world? It really is a different starting place. It’s not
seeking my own ego enhancement, but the spiritual and physical well-being of
others, as Jesus did.
There
really is no such thing as being non-political. Everything we say or do either
affirms or critiques the status quo. Even to say nothing is to say something. If we say nothing, we
communicate that the status quo—even if it is massively unjust and deceitful—is
apparently okay. This common “non-political” stance is an illusion, and the
powerful have always been able to use it to manipulate people.
We
must use the power of the Gospel to critique and affirm both the Left and the Right
on most public positions, even while knowing that political or programmatic
changes—of themselves—will never fully bring about the goodness, charity, or
transformation that the Gospel offers the world.
What I mean by
public virtue is primarily about solidarity
with others, as opposed to an exclusive concern with “my inner life.” As different parts of the Body of Christ, we
each have strengths and gifts that are needed by the entire body. We are called
by the Spirit to use these gifts in service and love for our hurting world and
not just for our private sense of “holiness.”
Over the past two weeks Cynthia Bourgeault has generously
shared her thoughts on the poems and spiritual legacy of Thomas Keating. Today,
I (Richard) want to emphasize Thomas Keating’s final message, the subject of
Cynthia’s commentary in yesterday’s meditation. I have edited the text very
slightly for greater clarity.
Perhaps
it was his many decades of “consenting to God’s presence and action within”
that allowed him to glimpse a new world. Thomas’ final message was the
following:
Dear friends: In the universe, an
extraordinary moment of civilization seems to be overtaking us. . . . It’s a
time of enormous expectancy and possibility.
We are called to start—not with the
old world contracts, now that we know that they are all lies—but [with] what we
know as the truth. . . . So I call upon the nations to consider this as a
possibility: that we should begin a new world with one that actually exists.
This is the moment to manifest this world, by showing loving concern for
poverty, loving appreciation for the needs of the world, and opportunities for
accelerated development. We need to find ways to make these really happen. I
make this humble suggestion, that now arms-making is of no significance in the
world. It hinders its progress.
This will allow and offer the world
the marvelous gift of beginning, [of] creating, of trusting each other, of
forgiving each other, and of showing compassion, care for the poor, and putting
all our trust in the God of heaven and earth. I leave this hope in your hands
and hearts, coming as a real inspiration from the heart of God. What does [God]
care about who has this or other lands, when the power to begin with the truest
history is coming from religion as expression of the Source that has been
realized for centuries? Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, Indigenous, and
Christianity—all religions—oneness is their nature. Amen. [1]
Richard
again: In this injunction to the world, Father Thomas Keating says what he has
been given to know. The only path forward for the survival of our species and
perhaps even our planet is a path of nonviolence, of contemplation and action
prioritizing justice and solidarity, an affirmation of Oneness and the
interconnectedness of all things, which science confirms, and spirituality has
always known on its deepest level.
I think the real purpose of the spiritual journey is to expand
people’s ability to do good by liberating them. This is what Jesus did,
after all—free people from their pain, their sin, their “uncleanness,” and even
their deaths. Then he sent them back to their families and to society to live
in relationship and live lives of freedom and wholeness. As a devoted student
of Jesus and lover of God, Thomas Keating did the same through the gift of
Centering Prayer; he helped people connect to an inner stillness and experience
of God that liberated them from egoic strongholds—so they could become free and
whole. His final words help us imagine the possibilities for ourselves and our
world.
Only the Divine matters,
And because the Divine matters,
Everything matters.
—Thomas Keating, “What Matters”
The simplicity
of the final poem in The Secret Embrace speaks eloquently
of what I (Richard) know more deeply to be true with every passing year. It’s
the incarnational message at the heart of the Gospel: everything belongs! It is
a Christ-soaked universe. As we near the end of this series, Cynthia Bourgeault
shares her understanding of Thomas Keating’s final legacy to us.
In
October 2018, two weeks before he died, Thomas Keating emerged briefly from
four days in what appeared to be a coma to deliver an extraordinary final
message beamed straight to the heart of the world. [1] Acknowledging that “an
extraordinary moment of civilization seems to be overtaking us,” he urged the
human family to scrap old approaches based on religious or political dogma and
“begin a new world with one that actually exists,” a world whose truth is
guided by “silence and science” and whose heart is revealed in a universal
resurgence of human compassion and creativity. “We need to find ways to make
these really happen,” he said. “I leave this hope in your hands and hearts
coming as a real inspiration from the heart of God.”
Two
momentous years later, his words seem more prophetic than ever.
Of
the many insights Thomas Keating has given us in these poems, two gifts stand
out in particular. The first is that he has completely reframed the traditional
Christian notion of God, offering us a powerful new roadmap with which to make
spiritual sense of our contemporary world. In this short poem of eleven
laser-like words, Thomas smashes through centuries of theological barricades
separating God from the world and contemplation from action, offering instead a
flowing vision of oneness within a profoundly interwoven and responsive
relational field.
To
have this universal wisdom affirmed so forcefully by one of Christianity’s most
revered elders creates a powerful new incentive for a compassionate
re-engagement with our times. Practically speaking, the map affirms that our actions, our choices, our
connections bear more weight than we dare to believe. We are neither isolated nor
helpless but immersed in a great web of belonging in which divine intelligence
and compassion are always at our disposal if our courage does not fail us.
The second gift
awaiting us in these poems is their powerful reaffirmation that the access
route to all new beginning comes by leaning into the diminishment, stripping,
and emptiness. Not by trying to distract ourselves, anesthetize ourselves, or
use our spiritual tool kit to re-establish the status quo. New beginning is
intrinsically disorienting and anguishing; it builds on the wreckage of what
has been outgrown but not yet relinquished. As the veils are lifted and our
familiar reference points dissolve, it is only on the timeless path of
surrender (a.k.a. “letting go,” “consenting to the presence and action of God”)
that we find our way through the darkness and into the new beginning. Godspeed
and know that we travel the path together!
An
Interspiritual Guide
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.
. . . .
The deep listening of pure
contemplation
Is the path to stillness.
All words disappear into It,
And all creation awakens to the
delight of
Just Being.
—Thomas Keating, “Stillness”
From Richard: In
the title of my book Dancing Standing Still, I was trying to capture the harmonious balance between
action and contemplation. If we try to move without being attuned to the music
of God and our True Self, what we do will not be beautiful, helpful, or
possibly even worth doing. And, of course, we cannot follow the “tune” of
either of those sources without aligning ourselves with them through committed
practice. Cynthia Bourgeault interprets this poem by Thomas Keating in that light,
though she says it much more eloquently than I.
This
poem seems to meet people wherever they are, from beginning meditators to folks
who’ve been on the path for decades. Thomas returns once again to his earlier
assertion that silence is not simply an absence. On the contrary, it is
personal, intimate, filled with aliveness and subtle relationality. Most of us,
I imagine, still use the words “silence” and “stillness” pretty much
interchangeably, both designating an absence of external noise and a state of
inner emptiness. For Thomas, the two are subtly different from one another—and
distinctly different from our usual perception of emptiness.
For
Thomas, stillness is not even remotely a void. We tend to think of it as
motionlessness, but in a quantum universe whose nature is to be in constant
motion it really comes closer to dynamic equilibrium. It is T. S. Eliot’s
“still point in a turning world,” [1] the Sufi dervish’s fierce inner repose as
the outer world goes flying by, the Buddhist’s “effortless action.” It does not
imply lack of motion, but the harmonious balance of opposites. You are neither
imposing nor resisting, but simply present, flowing in oneness with whatever
is. You are the dancer at one with the dance. You are still.
We
have been trained to think that the purpose of stillness is to lead us to “pure
contemplation,” long regarded in mystical theology as a highly exalted state.
But here Thomas turns the table on traditional theology; in a dynamically
interactive universe the purpose of contemplation is to lead us beyond all
stages, states, and roadmaps—beyond empty silence and stillness—into that
great, flowing oneness which is our own true nature and the true nature of all
that is.
Thomas
himself specifically comments on this point:
The
contemplative state is established when contemplative prayer moves from being
an experience or series of experiences to an abiding state of consciousness.
The contemplative state enables one to rest and act at the same time because
one is rooted in the source of both rest and action. [2]
Flowing oneness again. Flowing out from the Sacred Embrace, “The Source from which we come.”
To be nothing Is to consent to being a simple creature. This is the place of encounter with “I AM that I Am.”
When there is no more “me, myself, or mine,” Only “I AM” remains.
Then the “I” may fall away, Leaving just the AM. . . .
—Thomas Keating, “Out of Nothing”
In her latest book, Cynthia Bourgeault talks about the significant position Thomas Keating held in her life as a teacher and spiritual father [1]. Their relationship makes her reflections on his poetry a poignant example of how to be a compassionate witness to the suffering and transformation of someone we love. Here Cynthia describes Thomas’ journey through all the dark nights a human can experience:
In this poem, one of the last in the collection, there can be no doubt that Thomas Keating is indeed talking about an elusive third dark night, what Bernadette Roberts called “the experience of no-self.” [2] Its radical stripping is far deeper than the dismantling of our “emotional programs for happiness” that occurs in the Dark Night of Sense. It is even deeper than the fruit of the Dark Night of Spirit, which is the dissolution of the separate self into unitive consciousness. Thomas is here alluding to a third and yet more fundamental dissolution: the collapse of the self-reflective mechanism itself, that unique property of human consciousness which makes me realize “It is I who am experiencing this.” Oneness is attained not through an even more intense experience of union, but through a simple suspension of the subject/object polarity that created the perception of twoness in the first place. There is a whole new operating system at work now.
As Thomas writes, “When there is no more ‘me, myself, or mine,’ / Only I AM remains.”
When there is no fixed point of reference to “take it home to,” to make it about “my experience of I AM,” then there is only the bare “I AM.” Then even that may shed its skin. “Then the ‘I’ may fall away, / Leaving just the AM.” . . .
Those who have reflected on the biblical account will quickly catch the double meaning of the repeated use of “I AM” in this poem. It describes not only our own self-reflexive awareness; it is also the name by which God reveals Godself to Moses in the wilderness. “Who shall I tell them has sent me?” asks Moses. To which God replies, “I Am that I Am” [Exodus 3:14]. (In Hebrew, YHWH is the sacred, unutterable name of God.)
Thomas Merton said something quite like this shortly before his own death. He stated,
You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it’s not there. . . . Don’t consider dualistic prayer on a lower level. The lower is higher. There are no levels. Any moment you can break through to the underlying unity which is God’s gift in Christ. In the end, Praise praises. Thanksgiving gives thanks. Jesus prays. Openness is all. [3]
That, I believe, is the real teaching awaiting us in this poem and manifest in Thomas Keating’s own life.
Nowhere is my destination.
And no one is my identity.
My daily bread is powerlessness.
Temptations can be
overwhelming.
Gone is every hope of help.
An abyss opens up within me.
I am falling, falling,
Plunging into non-existence.
Is this annihilation?
Or, is it the path to the
Silent Love
That we are?. . .
—Thomas Keating, “The Last
Laugh”
Cynthia
Bourgeault continues to lead us through The Secret Embrace, a book of poems composed by Father Thomas Keating at
the end of his life. Today she engages with what I (Richard) believe is one of
the most challenging poems in the collection. Cynthia writes:
In
both its poetic and spiritual subtlety, this poem, excerpted above, marks a
later stage in Thomas Keating’s journey. Though he clearly attained to “unity
consciousness” by the final decade of his life, I believe this poem is a living
confirmation that, in the words of Christian contemplative mystic Bernadette Roberts
(1931–2017), the unitive stage of the journey is itself a passage. [1]
Contrary
to what most of the saints and mystics seem to imply, the stage of “union with
God” is not a permanent state or a spiritual rank acquired. It has a beginning
and an end. In “The Last Laugh” we are witnessing the end of a journey, as the
final veil of separate selfhood—“self” consciousness itself—is drawn back to
reveal at last the riddle of the true self.
As
the poem opens, Thomas is clearly in liminal space, midway between tedium and
transfiguration. Dark night and unitive dawn are no longer all that different;
reality simply is as it is. All emotional drama has dropped out, since there is
no longer a fixed point of selfhood to be “happy” or “unhappy” about a
situation. “Nowhere is my destination and no one is my identity,” he remarks
simply, and while this may sound awful to our egoic minds, still fixed on
defining ourselves by “who we are” or what lies ahead, there is also a solemn
freedom here: no longer any buttons to be pushed, no dog in the fight. Time no
longer rushes on into the future, but rests comfortably in a more spacious now.
Final
union or ultimate annihilation, he wonders. What if they turn out to be the
same? The line is pretty startling. “Annihilation” is a very strong word in the
Christian spiritual vocabulary. You don’t find it used often, even in classic
descriptions of the Dark Night of the Spirit. It is more frequently mentioned
within the Sufi tradition, where fana—total annihilation—means
something way beyond simply the death of the ego self. It is more like the
extinguishing of our most primordial sense of selfhood or “I-ness.” Toward that
abyss Thomas finds himself now rapidly plunging.
And
then, out of nowhere, the turn . . .
It
all begins with that tiny word “or.” Linger over it. It is as sacred and subtle
as that moment when outbreath turns back into inbreath and the cycle
miraculously begins again.
Or, is it the path to the Silent Love
/ That we are?
And you realize that the final veil of selfhood is actually a bridal veil, but now you are standing in the nuptial chamber. With a joyful laugh, you let it go.
Thomas Keating: The Secret
Embrace
Part Two
Spiritual
Development
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Before we continue exploring Thomas Keating’s poems from The Secret Embrace under the helpful
guidance of Cynthia Bourgeault, I want to offer a basic overview of the stages
of spiritual development that I have used for years with spiritual directees
and in teaching settings. I believe Thomas modeled all these stages, which are
not as easy to see in most of our lives.
1. My body and
self-image are who I am.
At
the most basic level, this is what Thomas Keating called our “programs for
happiness.” These are the needs for security and survival, esteem and
affection, and power and control. Though we may “transcend” to other levels,
our egoic selves will always “include” these impulses, particularly under
stress.
2. My external
behavior is who I am.
We
need to look good from the outside and to hide any “contrary evidence” from
others, and eventually from ourselves. The ego’s “shadow” begins to emerge at
this time.
3. My thoughts
and feelings are who I am.
We
begin to take pride in our “better” thoughts and feelings and learn to control
them, so much so that we do not even see their self-serving nature. For nearly all of us, a major defeat, shock, or
humiliation must be suffered and passed through to go beyond this stage.
4. My deeper
intuitions and felt knowledge in my body are who I am.
This
is such a breakthrough and so helpful that many of us are content to stay here,
but to remain at this level may lead to inner work or body work as a substitute
for any real encounter with, or sacrifice for, the “other.”
5. My shadow
self is who I am.
This
is the first “dark night of the senses”—when our weakness overwhelms us, and we
finally face ourselves in our unvarnished and uncivilized state. The false self
has failed to bring us all the way to God or the Oneness we seek. Without
guidance, grace, and prayer, most of us go running back to previous identities.
6. I am empty
and powerless.
Some
call this sitting in “God’s Waiting Room,” but is more often known as “the dark
night of the soul.” Almost any attempt at this point to save ourselves by any
superior behavior, morality, or prayer technique will fail us. All we can do is
to ask, wait, and trust. God is about to become real. The ego, or separate
self, is dying in a major way.
7. I am much
more than who I thought I was.
We
experience the permanent waning of the false self and the ascent of the True
Self as the center of our being. It feels like an absence or void, even if a wonderful
void. John of the Cross calls this “Luminous Darkness.” We grow not by knowing
or understanding, but only by loving and trusting.
8. “The Father
and I are one” (John 10:30).
Here,
there is only God. There is nothing we need to protect, promote, or prove to
anyone, especially
ourselves. Our false self no longer guides the ship. We
have learned to let Grace and Mystery guide us—still without full (if any)
comprehension.
9. I am who I
am.
I’m “just me,”
warts and all. It is enough to be human without any window dressing. We are now
fully detached from our own self-image and living in God’s image of us—which
includes and loves both the good and the bad. We experience true serenity and
freedom, but it is quite ordinary and also quite sufficient. This is the peace
the world cannot give (see John 14:27) and full resting in God. “To know
oneself in God and to know God in oneself,” as both Julian of Norwich and
Teresa of Ávila put it.
Today I pause Cynthia Bourgeault’s reflections and offer
a few words about the essential role of contemplation in the lives of honest
spiritual seekers like Thomas Keating and Cynthia herself.
To
many people, contemplation is an old-fashioned word, but it simply means the deliberate seeking of God by an inner dialogue. The soul grows closer to
God through our willingness to detach from the passing self, the tyranny of
feelings, the addiction to self-image, and the false promises of culture. It is
a journey into the nothingness of true faith, where the ordinary rules of
thinking, managing, explaining, and fixing up the smaller self do not apply.
Contemplation shouldn’t be used to spiritually bypass what is real, harmful, or
unjust in our lives or the world around us. However, with steady practice it
will eventually give us the ability to
stay present to what is, and meet it with wisdom, compassion, and courage. All the major world
religions at their more mature stages recognize the necessity of contemplative
practice in some form and under different names.
I’m
not sure that most people in the Western world have ever really met the person
who they themselves really are. Most of us have lived our lives with a steady
stream of ideas, images, and feelings that we cling to—thinking they are our
very essence. But in reality, at that level, I don’t have the idea; the idea has me. I don’t have the
feeling; the feeling has me. We have to
discover who this “I” really is. Who are we at the deepest level—behind our
thoughts and feelings or others’ thoughts and feelings about us?
At
every moment, all our life long, we identify ourselves either with our
thoughts, our self-image, or our feelings. We have to find a way to get beyond
those things to discover our “original face,” the one we already had before we
were born. Even with great practice, most of us will only glimpse or abide in
our True Self for moments at a time while we are alive. Mystics seem to finally
and fully abide there, which I hope encourages us to keep going.
We yearn for
“breach menders” who can “restore our ruined houses,” as Isaiah says (58:12).
We long for great-souled people who can hold the chaos together within
themselves—and give us the courage to do the same. I pray all of us know such
people in our lives and that we be granted such people on the world stage. And
I am confident such people have gone before and paved the way for us—the
mystics and saints of all genders, cultures, and faith traditions, those both
known and unknown.
But now he is fading, fading. And I am alone . . .
—Thomas Keating, “Loneliness in the Night”
I don’t think anyone can get to my (Richard’s) age without deeply empathizing with the sense of loss and grief—personal and spiritual—that Thomas Keating articulates in this poem. Cynthia Bourgeault does an excellent job of describing the spiritual dark nights that both Thomas and John of the Cross (1542–1591) put so beautifully into poetry. Cynthia writes:
The sense of joyful, flowing oneness that so marks the final years of Thomas Keating’s life didn’t “just happen.” For most of us—including for Thomas himself—it comes at the end of a painful season of stripping and purification that has classically been called “the Dark Night of the Spirit.”
The name itself comes from the 16th-century Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross, who up until this point has been the unquestioned authority on this excruciating passage. In this series of poems, Thomas Keating presses boldly into this forbidding terrain.
John’s classic spiritual roadmap actually specifies two dark nights. The first, called “the Dark Night of Sense,” typically comes fairly early in the journey. John saw its purpose chiefly as strengthening our capacity to endure temptation and weaning us from our dependency on spiritual consolations (the sweetness and even sensuous pleasure that often accompanies those early days of conversion). In Thomas’ contemporary psychological rendition, this first dark night relentlessly exposes our “emotional programs for happiness,” the hidden agendas and compensatory needs that drive our “false self system.” It thus accomplishes the first stage in the dismantling of the false self.
The second dark night comes much later in the journey and entails a much more radical and painful stripping that cuts to the very roots of the “false self system,” overturning the fundamental psychological and neurological hardwiring that drives the illusion of a separate selfhood. Its painful cost is that everything goes dark—“for the duration”—as we become increasingly unable to steer by the old binary operating system in our brains that always wound up turning God into an object (albeit a holy object) and in fact prioritized our experience of God over direct, unmediated union. Until the new operating system fills in, we are rather helpless, like chickens in molt, unable either to fly or lay eggs.
Believe it or not, this poem comes from a time far earlier in Thomas’ life. He once joked to me that he hadn’t written a poem since grade school. This is the poem! Even then, he was able to name the experience of the loss of tangible presence and withstand his solitude.
Something at first so concretely, robustly present is suddenly “fading, fading.” The substantial becomes insubstantial, presence fades to absence, and loneliness and longing dominate the emotional color palette. He is already intuiting, even as a young teenager, that the release from the loneliness and longing will not come from fulfillment of the original desire, but rather, through a mysterious inner alchemy that draws apparent opposites into an inner symbiotic unity. These are indeed the classic dark night waypoints, which Thomas returns to again and again—fundamental insights first glimpsed when he was still hardly more than a child.
Story from Our Community: As I read today’s message [on Celtic Spirituality], I was transported back in time and distance to the cliffs of Tintagel [England], where I stood many years ago, looking westward. . . Reading today’s offering, I wept—it was so familiar and I haven’t heard it in so long! Reclaiming my role as a mystic, at 82, after a lifetime of “being in the world” with what that involves, I’ve always been drawn to the spiritual dimension of life. Now thanks to the most recent CAC meditations, I am closer to Home than I’ve ever been before in this lifetime. —Sarah K.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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