For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. —Matthew 6:21

Author Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook connects pilgrimage to the universal longings of our hearts:

The first thing all human beings hear in the womb is their mother’s heartbeat. The metaphor of a journey to the center of the heart offers many insights into the nature of pilgrimage in general and the inward journey of the pilgrim in particular. One pilgrimage site that speaks to the journey to the center of the heart is found in the small village of Chimayó, located in the mountains of northern New Mexico. “If you are a stranger, if you are weary from the struggles of life … whether you have a broken heart, follow the long mountain road, find a home in Chimayó.” [1] …

Many of the pilgrims who travel there are not necessarily of the same religious tradition, and they are often not totally committed to the pilgrimage tradition or necessarily believe in miraculous healing. But they go on pilgrimage because they feel a longing in their hearts, and they are searching for something—perhaps divine love or inner peace, relief from a broken heart, or a more meaningful life—and they gain solace from belonging to a group of pilgrims along the way….

Pilgrimage, then, involves … the heart. The Talmud says, “God wants the heart.” It is the heart that holds the body together…. Augustine of Hippo [354–430] wrote that the heart is a metaphor for our deepest and truest selves, and he frequently uses the image as a way to explain his own journey to God: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” [2]

Kujawa-Holbrook writes of the interwoven journeys that pilgrimage takes us through:

The sacred art of pilgrimage involves both an inward and outward journey. … The pilgrim strives to hold both the inward and outward journey together, sometimes in tension, but always focused on the search for meaning, for the Divine…. What most distinguishes the sacred art of pilgrimage from a tourist trip or hiking expedition, as beneficial as these are, is the characteristic inward journey, a turning of one’s heart to the Divine, with the expectation of transformation on every level of being along the way. Benedict of Nursia [c. 480–547], the founder of Western monasticism and author of the Benedictine Rule, used to advise his monks and nuns to “listen with the ear of their heart.” [3] In other words, the pilgrim’s first yearning is in the heart, deeply and inwardly, sometimes for years before the outward journey begins.

____________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

My ever-present Lord, I’ve been looking ahead at uncertainties, letting them unnerve me. I see fear and discouragement waiting alongside my pathway into the future—ready to accompany me if I let them. Please keep reminding me that You go before me and will be with me. You hold me by my right hand. Because You live beyond time, You’re able to be with me where I am and simultaneously be on the path up ahead. Through eyes of faith, I can see You shining brightly—beckoning me on, encouraging me to fix my gaze on You. So I will cling tightly to Your hand as I walk past those dark presences of dread and discouragement. Help me keep looking toward Your radiant Presence that beams out unfailing Love and endless encouragement. My confidence comes from knowing You are continually with me and You are already in my future, preparing the way before me. If I listen carefully, I can hear You calling back to me from the trail up ahead—words of warning and wisdom, courage and hope: “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you.” In Your powerful Name, Jesus, Amen

DEUTERONOMY 31:8; The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.

PSALM 73:23 NKJV; Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand. 24 You will guide me with Your counsel, 

PSALM 119:76; May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. 77 Let your compassion come to me 

ISAIAH 41:10 NASB Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will also help you,

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 72). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Father Richard shares some “disciplines” or practices that he believes are essential for making a pilgrimage a Spirit-filled journey instead of merely a trip:   

Today, what I’d like to speak about are disciplines or what we call spiritual practices. If we want to prepare and open our spirits to receive everything we can and to perceive the fullness of the moment, I would like to at least suggest a few interior disciplines.

Primarily, a pilgrimage is an individual matter between the person and God. It’s not horizontal as much as vertical. The primary concern is that we make an interior journey and hopefully find a bigger God. Therefore, I want to encourage each of us to take time alone each day.

First of all, let us practice the discipline of silence. Secondly, let us take some solitude. Thirdly, we practice the discipline of speech. Our patterns of many years are that whenever there is a moment of silence, we fill it up by talking. Let’s see if God can teach us a way to say only what’s necessary and what’s important.

We live in front of the TV, or whatever it might be. Now on pilgrimage, we’re away from that. [DM Team: Today, our smart phones make this discipline more difficult and even more essential!] We don’t need to just fill the silence up with more sounds. There are things that don’t need to be talked about, things that are just time fillers. They’re just there to fill up our nervousness. How can we deepen the quality of our communication while we’re on this retreat and this pilgrimage?

If you keep a journal on pilgrimage, I encourage you to take some silent time and write about your experience. Don’t just journal about where we went and what we visited. Write about what’s happening inside of you. As regrets and mistakes come forward in our consciousness—and they’re inside all of us—just keep handing them over to God: “God, I’m being judgmental again. I’m being angry again. I’m being impatient again.” Then when you go to your journal, try as best you can to write down your interior experiences: “How am I feeling? What’s God saying to me in prayer? What am I hearing?” These are all disciplines to deepen the quality of our listening.

Finally, I ask all of us to pray for the freedom to be released from cynicism and judgment. We’re going to encounter people who do and say things differently. If we move into “sophistication,” we will lose the childlike spirit that Jesus talks about. A pilgrim must be like a child who can approach everything with an attitude of wonder and awe and faith. Let’s pray for wonder. Let’s pray for awe. Let’s pray for desire, or better “the desire to desire,” and ask God to take away our cynicism.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 

“As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. 

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.

5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. 6 On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. 7 Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

For ecumenical leader and author Wes Granberg-Michaelson, pilgrimage invites passionate spirituality:

Pilgrims move in two directions at the same time—an outward direction toward a holy destination and an inward journey seeking an encounter with the sacred. Two of the best academic scholars of pilgrimages, Victor and Edith Turner, explain it in this one sentence: “Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage.” [1] Pilgrimages, they suggest, were, and are, no walk in the park, or plain, or mountain. Embarking on such a journey, we become untethered not just from our physical normalcy. These uncertain, trusting steps also move us out of our spiritual familiarity. The pilgrim is invited not only to walk out of boxes of dogmatic beliefs, but also to walk away from practices of comfortable spirituality.

Consider historically the life of peasants or serfs in medieval Europe who were tied to specific places—a manor, and a particular piece of land. Religious life was likewise confined to a local parish, with its repeated, routine practices. As pilgrimage opportunities began to be possible for a wide range of people, their journeys liberated them toward places unknown, with spiritual intensity. Pilgrimage sites were places where miracles had occurred. The bones of saints were living; the apparition of Mary created a rarified space. Healings occurred, continuing the miraculous nature of these sites.

As journeys to Jerusalem became insurmountable or impossible, numerous pilgrimage sites sprang forth throughout Europe. Yet those embarking on pilgrimages faced clear and present dangers. They were walking into liminal space, with a familiar past of place and spirit left behind and a future promise of spiritual power, wedded to tangible, material things, in the distance.

In their own context, this was a reckless spirituality, a form of extroverted mysticism…. For most, this was a once-in-a-lifetime embodied quest of spiritual abandonment. In the words of the Turners, “pilgrimage was the great liminal experience of the religious life.” [2]

For today’s pilgrim it can be the same. A pilgrimage is a rejection of modernity’s expectations and assumptions about time, place, perception, satisfaction, speed, predictability, and the material world. As in ancient times, motives for contemporary pilgrimages are mixed. Lines between pilgrimage and tourism become blurred for some while breaks in employment prompt others to a pilgrimage more than a thirst for embodied forms of holiness. Yet pathways that move simultaneously in inward and outward directions prove irresistible to throngs roaming pilgrimage paths today.

The embodied movement of pilgrimage is an opportunity to step outside our habitual rhythms with God: 

The Spirit yearns to break out and to break open our old practices, our protective shells of comfortable spirituality, connecting our inner selves more deeply to God’s love and to God’s world. Your soul no longer stays still. It’s moving with God in the world, and moving toward God, revealed in signs or shrines or saints or surroundings. The pilgrim’s walking body holds incarnate this inner journey of the soul.

Always a Perfect Moment

This week we explore the contemplative tradition of pilgrimage. In 1983, Father Richard Rohr went on a teaching pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Lourdes, Assisi, Rome, and several locations in the Holy Land. Richard’s first talk took place in the great Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Lourdes, France. This basilica stands above the Grotto of Massabielle, the place where Mary is said to have appeared in 1858 to a teenaged girl named Bernadette Soubirous (who was named a saint in 1933). Here is how Richard introduced the topic: 

Through the centuries, pilgrimage of some type is found in many religions. Pilgrimage took the form of the Jewish exodus, Islam’s Hajj to Mecca, vision quests, walkabouts, and classic heroic journeys about leaving home. In the fourth century, many Christians began to travel to Jerusalem. Each century took on a new form; the interesting thing is the spirituality that went behind it. It was an exercise in letting go, a search for wonder, a constant discovery of the new. It kept older religions from becoming staid and expecting God only in the familiar and customary. Pilgrimage accustomed people to change and growth.

So, major Christian pilgrimages would go to Jerusalem (later travelers would visit saints’ shrine or relics) and oftentimes they’d go for a whole year or more. They traveled at great expense and with great difficulty, and their goal would be to reach the River Jordan. Then, at the River Jordan, they would dive in the water and swim across. This was of course a way of re-experiencing the baptism that Jesus experienced.

To help us to understand pilgrimage in its ideal sense, it has to do with the sanctification of both time and place. Let me give you a mantra that the New Jerusalem community [Father Richard’s spiritual community before he founded the Center for Action and Contemplation] have come to know. The mantra is “This moment or this place is as perfect as it can be.” Our temptation is to always look to the next moment to be more perfect, the next place, and then the next moment or place.

You see, we are always disappointed in what we actually have. We are always rushing into the future. The reason we’re rushing into the future is because we’re not experiencing a wholeness in the present. And when we haven’t grasped the present, we always live under an illusion. It is an illusion that the next moment or place is going to be better. When I get around this corner, when I see this church, when I get to Jerusalem, when I get to the hotel—whatever it might be. But pilgrimage helps us see that attitude is essentially wrong. As long as we think happiness is around the corner, it means that we have not grasped happiness yet. Because happiness is given in this moment and this place, and this moment and place are as perfect as they can be.

Pilgrims, Not Tourists

We continue sharing excerpts from Father Richard’s 1983 talks on pilgrimage. In this presentation in Lourdes, France, Richard offers some historical background on the practical actions that pilgrims had to take before they underwent a spiritual pilgrimage. 

By the high Middle Ages, there were all kind of books written for pilgrims. These were spiritual books guiding pilgrims as to how to prepare themselves. Preparation was required before they went on pilgrimage.

First of all, you had to make amends with everyone you had ever wronged. Also, if you went on pilgrimage holding any kind of unforgiveness, it could not be a good pilgrimage. You couldn’t leave your town until you’d forgiven everyone who’d ever wronged you. Certainly, this is an attitude that we can pray for at the beginning of any pilgrimage: that God would keep our hearts open and loving, because a pilgrimage can’t just be a tourist trip. The meaning of a pilgrimage is an interior journey. Primarily, it’s an interior journey enacted exteriorly.

Richard shares his hope that his fellow pilgrims embark upon such an interior journey: 

When we return home in three weeks or less, if no interior journey has happened, we really haven’t made a pilgrimage. Understand? We’ve just been tourists. We’ve traveled around and said, “I saw this, and I saw that, and I bought this,” and so forth. But that’s what a tourist does, not a pilgrim. And God has called us on pilgrimage.

Secondly, and a practical, interesting thing, is that if they were going to go on pilgrimage, pilgrims had first to ask permission of their wife, husband, and family. The idea was that they had to leave everything in right relationship at home. If they had any material debts, they also had to pay those before they left. They couldn’t go on pilgrimage until their spiritual and physical debts were paid, and they had permission from all the right people.

Next, they had to go to confession before leaving. Sometime in the course of a pilgrimage, celebrating some kind of reconciliation was deemed very appropriate. Again, there’s that cleansing, that letting go. Perhaps those of us who’ve already been down to the Grotto [1] have seen the basin of water on the far end with the words that Mary spoke to Bernadette. It states, “Go wash your face and cleanse your soul.” What a symbol of reconciliation! It’s a prayer. Above all else, pilgrimage is praying with your body, and it’s praying with your feet. It’s an exterior prayer, and the exterior prayer keeps calling you into the interior prayer.

If you find yourself in a monastery do not go to another place, for that will harm you a great deal. Just as the bird who abandons the eggs she was sitting on prevents them from hatching, so the monk or the nun grows cold and their faith dies, when they go from one place to another.
—Amma Syncletica, Life of Blessed Syncletica

Episcopal priest and writer Mary Earle finds inspiration for spiritual practice in the sayings of a Desert Mother known as Syncletica of Alexandria:

Amma Syncletica is counseling us to not run from ourselves. She is encouraging us to stay faithfully with whatever new life is being hatched within us….

She is addressing a universal human temptation—to miss our lives by living completely on the surface. After all, our culture encourages competition and ambition, and we are highly mobile. If we are not careful, that mobility can create a kind of rootlessness that will injure us and those with whom we live and move and have our being. This is the kind of rootlessness that is internal, that is caused by our not staying with anything long enough to grow deep roots….

In the desert, men and women were counseled, “Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” [1] … The cell was a sacred space, a place in which a woman could be with herself and the divine Presence and listen. The cell was a place of divine encounter and of ongoing, daily experience of being immersed in God’s presence.

The wisdom of the desert tempers our instinct to avoid boredom and discomfort:

Amma Syncletica’s [bird] metaphor speaks directly to one of the dilemmas of the spiritual life—that of coming to terms with the plain old ordinariness of spiritual practice and the life of prayer, of the whole of life becoming prayer…. We are enticed by a variety of means to leave our “eggs” and simply move continually from one interest to another. The result is that we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to bring forth new life. The “eggs” die because they are not tended. We miss the deeper life of the Spirit because we are constantly moving from one interest to another rather than focusing on one thing.

Our ancient mothers knew that when boredom threatened, it could very well be the outward and visible sign of God’s secret, hidden, inner work within the human heart and soul. Consequently, they emphasized staying in the cell, in the little room of daily living, and letting that cell be their teacher….

Staying in the cell, or “sitting on the eggs,” means noticing our appetite for overstimulation. The cell teaches us to slow down, … to notice what is right in front of us. The wisdom the desert mothers offer us is that by staying with ourselves, with our inner ups and downs, with our hurts and our fears, we will bring forth the new life that God is creating within us.

_________________________________________

Sarah Young

Faithful God, Morning by morning You awaken me and open my understanding to Your will. Thank You for always being mindful of me. It’s comforting to know that You never sleep, so You’re able to watch over me while I am sleeping. Then, when I wake up, You are still with me. As I become increasingly aware of Your Presence, You help me become more alert—combing out the tangles in my sleepy thoughts. I respond to Your Love-call by drawing near to You. I love to spend time enjoying Your Presence and nourishing my soul with Your Word. I’ve found that time devoted to You blesses and strengthens me immensely. You open my understanding to Your Word—enabling me to comprehend Scripture better and apply it to my life. Please help me discern Your will clearly as I make plans for this day. When I walk alongside You, seeking to do Your will, You empower me to handle whatever comes my way. Lord, teach me how to trust in You at all times—in all circumstances. In Your trustworthy Name, Jesus, Amen

ISAIAH 50:4 TLB; The Lord God has given me his words of wisdom so that I may know what I should say to all these weary ones. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.

PSALM 139:17–18 NLT; How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! 

JAMES 4:8 NKJV; Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

PSALM 62:8 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 65). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Experiencing Our Own Deserts

Orthodox author John Chryssavgis considers the desert as a symbol of both “deserted-ness” and God’s presence:

Anyone who has experienced some aspect of deserted-ness, that is to say some form of loneliness, or else some form of brokenness, breakdown or break-up—whether emotionally, physically, or socially—will be able to make the necessary connections. Each of us has known times of drought; dry and arid moments when we await refreshment and rain, when we wait for hope and life.…

The desert, while accursed [in the Scriptures], was never seen as an empty region. It was a place that was full of action.… It was a space that provided an opportunity, and even a calling, for divine vision. In the desert, you were invited to shake off all forms of idolatry, all kinds of earthly limitations, in order to behold—or, rather, to be held before—an image of the heavenly God. There, you were confronted with another reality, with the presence of a boundless God, whose grace was without any limits at all. You could never avoid that perspective of revelation. After all, you cannot hide in the desert; there is no room for lying or deceit there. Your very self is reflected in the dry desert, and you are obliged to face up to this self. Anything else would constitute a dangerous illusion, not a divine icon….

The desert is a place of spiritual revolution, not of personal retreat. It is a place of inner protest, not outward peace. It is a place of deep encounter, not of superficial escape. It is a place of repentance, not recuperation. Living in the desert does not mean living without people; it means living for God.

Chryssavgis encourages us to face desert experiences instead of running away:  

One does not have to move to the geographical location of the wilderness in order to find God. Yet, if you do not have to go to the desert, you do have to go through the desert…. The desert is a necessary stage on the spiritual journey. To avoid it would be harmful. To dress it up or conceal it may be tempting; but it also proves destructive in the spiritual path.

Ironically, you do not have to find the desert in your life; it normally catches up with you. Everyone does go through the desert…. It may be in the form of some suffering, or emptiness, or breakdown, or breakup, or divorce, or any kind of trauma that occurs in our life. Dressing this desert up through our addictions or attachments—to material goods, or money, or food, or drink, or success, or obsessions, or anything else we may care to turn toward or may find available to depend upon—will delay the utter loneliness and the inner fearfulness of the desert experience. If we go through this experience involuntarily, then it can be both overwhelming and crushing. If, however, we accept to undergo this experience voluntarily, then it can prove both constructive and liberating.

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.