Contemplation and Concentration

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.  No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for.  You are made in the image of what you desire.

Thomas Merton

The quotation above by Thomas Merton, is one of my favourites and stares at me as a screen saver whenever I switch on my computer.  It is very powerful: we are shaped by the end we live for – that we, in essence, become what we most desire.  But it is a totally orthodox statement.  Our desires are a kind of food.  Just as receiving Christ makes us more like Christ so both the good and the bad things we desire will, over time, change us into that thing or that person.  Lately, I found myself wondering what I truly do desire.  I would love to say my life is all spiritual.  I would love to say that loving God and allowing him to love me is the end for which I am living and which I desire with all my heart.  The problem is that when I come to God in contemplative prayer, I realise that I am driven by all sorts of voices inside me, many of which are so buried that it is hard for me to be aware of them.  Labels, masks, false selves: how am I to know who I am or what I really want?

The great eye opening to my lack of real desire for God shows most when I try to settle into contemplative prayer.  Not only is my mind busy with all the many things I have to do today,  but there is a constant running commentary as if everything I think and do becomes a vehicle for performance, for conversation, is turned into a project, a piece of writing or teaching; is, in a way, offered to others.  And then there is the constant, “What will people think?”  “Is it okay?”  “It costs too much and I am exhausted.”  “I don’t want to take the chance.”  Perhaps these show more than other things what my real desires are – for an easy life, in which I will get things right and no one will tell me off!

The great gift of all of this is that it shows how little I can do of myself to help myself: how much I need God and the help that only he can give.  So as I sit down yet again to try to concentrate; perhaps the hardest thing in learning how to contemplate, I am comforted by this wonderful poem by Denise Levertov.

Flickering Mind

Lord, not you,

it is I who am absent.

At first

belief was a joy I kept in secret,

stealing alone

into sacred places:

a quick glance, and away—and back,

circling.

I have long since uttered your name

but now

I elude your presence.

I stop

to think about you, and my mind

at once

like a minnow darts away,

darts

into the shadows, into gleams that fret

unceasing over

the river’s purling and passing.

Not for one second

will my self hold still, but wanders

anywhere,

everywhere it can turn. Not you,

it is I who am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,

the pulsing shadow,

you the unchanging presence, in whom

all moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering, perceive

at the fountain’s heart

the sapphire I know is there?

Perhaps in the end all any of us can say is, “I want to want to be spiritual.  I want to want my deepest desire to be a longing for God.”

(Launde Abbey has its own Thomas Merton retreat, “Attention to Paradise: A Guided Retreat with Thomas Merton,” starting on July 14^th.)

Preparing for this Sunday’s sermon I came across the phrase, “Original Insecurity”, when reading one of my favourite bible commentators, David Lose. One of the readings this Sunday was about Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden of Eden from God, after they have taken the apple. As most people know the action of taking that fruit was the first so-called Original Sin and since then, according to the theory, every human being has been born sinful. I don’t happen to believe that, but that every single human being has a propensity to sin and with the best will in the world, cannot seem to manage not to, I do agree.

I was made to think again when David Lose said he preferred to speak of “Original Insecurity” rather than “Original Sin.” In the changing of that one word he opened up the Adam and Eve story to speak even more relevantly into our modern world.

David’s theory, as I understood it, is that the story is as much about identity as it is about anything else. Not the identity we have but the identity we want to have. We know that Eve is tempted to take the apple because then she will be “like God, (knowing good and evil).” God has created her and placed her in a beautiful situation. But it is not enough. She wants to have the knowledge that God has because with it she thinks she will be “like him.” Although she has everything she could possibly need she does not appear to have a mature sense of self. So she tries to manipulate her environment. She seeks the recognition she wants, to establish her value, to get a sense of worth from herself and her own actions. She finds she cannot do it. She looks to herself and what she can make of herself, all by herself, to give herself significance and meaning. When things begin to go pear-shaped (apple-shaped?) she pulls Adam in to give her back-up and collude in her quest for self-significance. Together they leave God entirely out of the picture and they soon realise that they do not trust the false, selfish and self-serving personas they have created; moreover, they no longer trust each other or God. They experience themselves for the first time as separated, “naked” (vulnerable, fragile) and alone.
If we could point to one thing in our present age that seems to wound people and fails always to bring lasting contentment, it is that search for an identity which is not our own. We cannot establish ourselves, our value or our own worth on our own. We need a significant other to do that, and that very significant Other is God, who made us, knows us through and through and loves us with a passion we can’t begin to comprehend.

We may often find ourselves reverting to the original sin of pretending to be someone other than we are but perhaps this Collect from the Fourth Sunday in Lent will help us, when reminded of our frailty, to turn again to the One who gives us life, identity, significance and security.

O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

If you go back a couple of centuries in time, before we began to believe that Fact and Truth are the same thing (which they are not) the Church used to approach scripture in various ways. One of these ways was as allegory, another as metaphor. These ways of approaching scripture did not begin with Christians. They are to be found in the Jewish tradition as well, which is, of course, far older. For example, if the Psalmist says that God is a Rock or a Shield, he does not mean that God is literally these things, but metaphorically. The psalmist experiences God as a strong basis for his life and feels protected by him. When Jesus speaks in parables, he is being allegorical. The Sower who goes out to sow does in reality sprinkle his seed all over the place – that is literally true, but the seed, the birds who eat it, the weeds that choke it and the hard ground that prevents the seeds from taking root stand for something else, human reception of God’s word. What is important is to realise that in allegory you have two meanings: the literary meaning and the hidden meaning. They exist side by side and neither undermines the other. On the contrary, the different ways of reading and meditating on the word enrich each other.

Hidden meaning sometimes comes as a personal message. One of the things I am constantly impressed by is how I can know a bible story very well, and then one day, out of the blue, I see something entirely new in it. Usually this happens when I am simply sitting quietly, waiting on God. I had this experience this last week when, to be honest, I was emotionally quite distracted. Suddenly one of my favourite passages in the Old Testament came to me: the story of Elijah after the battle with the prophets of Baal, fleeing to the desert because he knows Queen Jezebel is seeking his life. He is exhausted and demoralised and just wants to lie down and die. Eventually, after some sustaining food and rest he goes to Mount Horeb where he finds God does not speak through fire, wind or earthquake but in a still small voice that comes out of sheer silence (I Kings 19: 12, 13). The NRSV says,

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

The first thing that struck me was that earlier in the story Elijah is raging, full of resentment, bitterness and despair. These moods are internal mirrors of the external storm on Horeb illustrated in the fire, wind and earthquake. Elijah cannot hear God whilst he is so caught up in the voices of dismay inside him. Elijah is in a cave. Literally he might be there for protection from the storm. Allegorically, the cave may be the shut in place of Elijah’s darkness and bitterness. The mysterious “sheer” silence of God’s response brings Elijah out of himself, and then, as Matthew Henry’s commentary says,

The wind, and earthquake, and fire, did not make him cover his face, but the still voice did. Gracious souls are more affected by the tender mercies of the Lord, than by his terrors.

The Elijah story can be read simply as history. But on this occasion, as I thought about it, I saw my own disturbed emotions reflected in those of Elijah; the loud voices that got in the way of God’s still small voice as being the clamour of my own disquiet; the cave as my being turned in on myself and the silence out of which came God’s voice, as the quiet I eventually heard. The passage spoke to me. The passage turned me around – and I remembered and realised afresh something very important. God speaks in a quiet voice or as the New International Version of the Bible has it, a whisper. We have to be quiet to hear him.

My husband and I have just returned from ten days’ holiday, which is, incidentally, why I did not write a blog last week – many apologies. We travelled with one of those low cost, no frills air lines and were on the whole, very content with the service. One of the things, however, which is in the small print of the contract, is that if there is too much hand luggage coming on board, the airline is at liberty to put some of it in the hold. Going out to our holiday destination there was no problem. Returning, however, probably with all the extra shopping people do as part of their holiday, there was, and as we waited in the queue to board the plane, the air hostesses came along the row and asked us to allow our hand luggage to go in the hold. For some people this was very frustrating as they had purposefully only got hand luggage so that they could avoid the long wait to retrieve their luggage at the other end. For us it was no problem because we already had luggage in the hold – that was until we realised that we had no label on the one piece of hand luggage going into the hold and that this particular suitcase is so common as to be impossible to identify alongside others on a baggage claim carousel. What to do?
We had been talking, as one so often does, to a very nice young woman in front of us in the queue, sharing the highlights of our holiday and getting on very well. Hearing me say to my husband,
“How will we identify our suitcase? It looks identical to many others.”
She answered, “Tie something round the handle. Have you got a ribbon or an elastic band or something?”
I had nothing. Without a moment hesitation she bent down and took a rather smart wired hair band from her bag and offered it to me. It was just the ticket, white with brown polka dots, easy to tie round, it soon adorned my luggage and created a unique piece. I thanked her profusely for her generosity and the queue moved forward.
But here is the point. A few minutes later, just before we gave up our hand luggage, I saw the same lady struggling to tie a screwed up, old plastic carrier bag round the handle of her carry on suitcase, which was also now going in the hold. The hostesses had asked her at the same time as me to allow them to put her hand luggage in the hold but hearing my anxiety she had given me the very item that would have made her life so much easier, and probably made her feel that her bag was safer.
It is a small thing: a little traveller’s tale. But for me the action was one of selfless kindness and generosity, which happens more frequently perhaps than we notice. It made me think of other occasions when complete strangers have gone out of their way to help me, sometimes at great cost to themselves.
I have left that polka dot hairband attached to my suitcase as a reminder. Every time I get that case out in future I will be reminded of my Good Samaritan and the oft surprising generosity of strangers.

I was challenged the other day to consider the word “hospitality” in a much deeper sense. As the Warden of a retreat house you would think that I comprehend what hospitality is all about and strive to produce it here at Launde Abbey. But the conversation invited me to look again and I realised in the looking how narrow my understanding of the word is.
Hospitality should be a Christian virtue, we are told, particularly towards the stranger. One is invited to give hospitality, a meal, a bed for the night. But the other side of hospitality is receiving. Are we taught that it is a Christian virtue to receive hospitality?
The Church Army has come up with the idea of “Reverse Hospitality” (Can Reverse Hospitality be Effective in Christian Ministry Today? By Jeremy M Sorsie). The basic idea being that instead of inviting someone into your home you receive hospitality from them by being a guest in their home, and thereby provide a situation of meeting where mission might take place. We certainly see Jesus using this technique with the Woman at the Well in John 4, staying with Zacchaeus in Luke 19 and in the many meals he has in peoples’ houses, from Pharisees to sinners and tax gatherers.
But thinking about the phrase, “Giving and Receiving Hospitality,” made me consider that this is even bigger: an attitude for all of life, not just about entertaining or being entertained. When we give someone hospitality at Launde Abbey do we also expect to receive from them? After all here is a unique opportunity to meet someone, not in order to convert them or do anything to them, but simply to enjoy the privilege of encountering another human being. What might I receive from the people coming today? How often have I felt as a parish priest on a pastoral visit that I have received much more from a visit to a parishioner than I have given?
Is hospitality in the end one of the most profound attitudes we can offer life? Is it not about trying to have an open heart and mind to everything that comes towards us, from the bird in the air to the tired, short-tempered person on the phone; how do I practice hospitality with the gifts of others; how do I engage with aging; how do I face failure; how do I handle the fact that one day I will die? What do I receive from this new experience and what do I give. And how do I realise in the end that everything is gift?
If our life and our death is in the hands of God, a gift from God, then perhaps we really should be able to look at even the worst things that befall us and say, “How can I be hospitable to this? What can I receive even from this? And what can I give, even within this?” Christ on the cross is a symbol of profound hospitality, opening his arms to the world as if to say, “I give you all God’s love and forgiveness and I receive all your sin and pain. I do it willingly, because my whole life is about God’s hospitality.”

I remember the moment when I realised that most of the ‘noise’ that bothers me, is on the inside, not outside. The occasion was the first time I ever went on an eight day silent retreat. Obedient to the instructions I was given in advance, I had left all that could distract me at home, no novels, no radio. It was hard. Alone with myself and with endless time between meals I realised two things: how dependent I was on a whole scaffold of diversions, which protected me from spending any real time with myself and shielded me from the boredom I experienced when thrown on my own company; and, secondly, how noisy my head was.
It is only when we try to remain quiet, still and centred that we realise just how unquiet we are. Like a video for ever playing in our heads or a radio left on all night, our minds chatter and chatter, pulled swiftly from one thing to the next. We have imaginary conversations with ourselves and others. We go over old scenarios or future fantasies. We are pulled every which way by our emotions as we follow these dramas played out within us. There are even times of deep desolation as our memory takes us to past hurts which we thought we had dealt with long ago, or present grievances. The darkest of emotions are found here – envy, pride, anger, grief, loneliness and resentment. It engages all our attention and energy. It is noisy and exhausting. No wonder we do everything we can to avoid ourselves! BUT ALL THIS STUFF IS NOT REAL and that is the most important lesson we can learn. What is real is what is here and now, the present moment.
That is why so much prayer is about “practicing” being in the present moment. Trying over and over again when the mind wanders and the legion of voices inside our heads start calling to us, to come back and to attend to what is in front of us; what is in this moment. It is here, in the present, when we still the voices for an instant, when we are hushed and quiet, that we feel a presence deeper than the silence; that we know ourselves as part of something much bigger, much deeper, much more profound. This is a place without walls. We cannot define who we are in this place and we do not need to. We are simply here, now, still, at peace and awake to God.
However much we practice we cannot stay in that place. We always have to come down from the Mount of Transfiguration to the chaotic world below – and that is just as it should be. In my experience distraction in prayer is much more common than these times of wakefulness to the present moment. The conversations inside my head are very persistent. But I am learning that with a little bit of discipline I can chose, on occasions, not to engage with them, however tempting they may be. I can turn from them and just listen to the bird singing outside my window or sense my breathing, or know that I am typing at this moment, and I am back in the present. This is where I am alive and despite all distractions, I would rather spend a little more of my time here…now.

Faith…comes only when the outward fact penetrates to the inner heart of man and takes possession of him there — and this is the work of the Spirit. (George Hendry)

Since Easter we have been listening to stories of doubt in our gospels. On Easter Day we had the ending of Mark’s gospel which finishes at 16: 8. The three women are so afraid that they flee from the empty tomb and tell no one the message they have been given. On the Second Sunday of Easter, we went to John’s gospel and read of Thomas’ doubts. On the Third Sunday of Easter we were in a third gospel: that of Luke. We read of Jesus’ appearance to the apostles in the Upper Room on the same day he met the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. Again, it is a story of doubt – and a lot of other emotions. In a few verses we see terror, fear, disbelief, hesitation and distrust. But we also see joy and wonder (Luke 24: 41). It is hardly surprising that seeing a dead man walking, the disciples react as they do. But this theme of doubt continues to run through the Resurrection stories. If we were to read the end of Matthew’s gospel next week (and we are not – it is back to John) when Jesus gives his disciples what is called “the Great Commission,” we would find that whilst the disciples worshipped Jesus, some of them doubted (Matt 28: 17). Doubt continues. But it is to these mixed up and confused disciples that Jesus hands over his mission. He does not seem to be anxious about their doubts.
Personally, I find these stories of confused emotions very refreshing. I think we sometimes teach and preach the resurrection as though everyone was in a very dark place and then they saw Jesus and then everything was fine. Rather it appears that the fact of the resurrection and its meaning had slowly to penetrate into the hearts of the disciples. In Luke’s gospel Jesus twice “opens the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures,” as having always been about him, i.e. about the true nature of God. Although for one or two like Mary Magdalene and Thomas the revelation is sudden and absolute – “My Lord and my God,” says Thomas, when he sees the resurrected Jesus for himself; for others there is a slower growth into understanding. And why would we think it could be other? Now the disciples have to comprehend all that God is in Jesus backwards through the resurrection and the crucifixion. Everything they thought they understood about Jesus; his teaching and actions; everything they thought about themselves and life; all has to be revisited in the light of these world changing events. They are at the beginning of a learning curve that will continue through their lives as they seek to understand and apply all Jesus has taught them.
What is demanded of the disciples (and of each generation of believers) is what Paul calls the renewal of the mind, or in Greek metanoia, a complete change of mind. But this change of mind is not purely intellectual but a deep, life-shifting change of heart and being. The disciples themselves have to undergo a kind of death and resurrection, and it takes time. Nothing will ever be the same again and they recognise it. No wonder alongside the joy there is confusion and doubt. That is real and very, very normal.

I was brought up short and rightly reprimanded by a lady the other day, when I said I had to leave a Lent lunch early “to go back to work.”
“But,” she said, “This is your work. These are your congregation.”
I floundered around making excuses about another appointment, but the comment stuck with me. I saw that I had thought of the Lent lunch as something unimportant, that I had to squeeze into my day between the ever present mountains of administration. Being alongside the nice people who are my congregation wasn’t work: listening, sharing, laughing. It was a hiccup in my day but something I had to do, and I did it as meanly, so I saw after my telling off, as possible. I was unjust in my attitude and in the use of my time and person.
If Christ’s life, death and resurrection are about anything, it is justice. Jesus chose to live and preach his message of God’s love, faithfulness and forgiveness, mainly to the rural peasant class of his time. These were the poorest people for whom life was full of injustice and threat. Into their hard lives, Jesus spoke about the Kingdom values of God: peace, forgiveness, mercy and justice. He had time for them. He was for them. He spoke of a God who was familiar to them through the words of the prophets.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amos 5: 24
Jesus’ fundamental message does not change though the world goes through various epoch and cultural changes. At the moment the Western world is overwhelmed with the idea of 24 / 7, the notion that not only must everything be open and available 24 hours a day, but that we have to work harder and play harder and longer than we have ever done before. There is real anxiety in our culture and most markedly amongst our children. We are charging around working for something, but what? A house in the sun? An escape to the country? A time when we won’t have to live like this? And all the time, as the UNICEF advertisement on television tells us, there are children as young as 3yrs old living parentless on the streets of some of our major world cities. There are young people so disenfranchised and so disillusioned by what our culture offers, that they find the message of IS attractive and at the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly receive the impression through the media that they are a burden to society.
We all need, to speak in American slang, to wake up and smell the coffee, meaning we need to be realistic or aware; to abandon the naïve and foolish notion we have that an over busy life is somehow a moral life, or a more fulfilled life. It is our busyness that makes us blind to what is happening in our world and to us. You need time to see with your heart and your mind as well as your eyes. When we race from one thing to the next in a fluster of anxiety to get things right, we do not see how the opposite happens: we shortcut our loved ones and ourselves as well as the needy people of this world.
Jesus, we read, took time out. I don’t know about you, but I certainly need to do more of the same.

“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” (Sol. 2:13)

One of the first things that I learnt when I studied Christian Spirituality was that the idea that there is a spiritual and a secular world, God’s world and the rest of life, is entirely false. If God exists then all that is created is of God and loved and cherished by God. If we do not see this we are blind or asleep or haven’t made the connection. If all that is created is of God then everything that delights us physically is also of God and is given to us to bring us more deeply into the joy of our Creator Lord.
As we enter Easter Week, the daily readings designated by the Church at Morning Prayer include, “The Song of Solomon,” a book that has been highly misunderstood in modern times because it celebrates love, Eros, in all its fullness – which of course means physical love, too. Until the Reformation, “The Song of Solomon,” was considered one of the most important and profound books in the Bible. Such writers as the Venerable Bede, Gregory, and most famously, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote commentaries on it. Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross were hugely influenced by it. Why: because for the medieval person creation was an expression of the being of God – all is from God. God pours himself out in it. For these writers and thinkers the description of the love God had for his universe was most closely defined by the word “Eros” or erotic love. Eros is a force, the force or drive that animates all things and which comes from God. But in the Post-Reformation world we have cleaned up God and Christian society. We don’t talk about Eros, we don’t mention sex and so we miss the point the medieval commentators understood, that the “Song of Solomon” was thought to contain the central message of all scripture as the ultimate parable of God’s love for the Soul.
Perhaps part of our inherited fear about this book (inherited, I might say from the extreme prudishness of our Victorian forebears) is that it smacks of free love, but that is not to understand the story behind it. The story, put simply, comes from another Old Testament book, “Ecclesiastes”, and tells of the young king Solomon of Israel, who dressed up as a shepherd boy so that he might go about his kingdom incognito. He meets and falls in love with a simply country girl and she with him, not knowing who he is. They promise themselves to each other. He has to return to his responsibilities and she weeps for him, but one day he visits her part of the country and calls for her attendance on him. She, still not knowing who he is, goes to meet him and finds her beloved. They are married and it is in the profundity of their committed relationship to each other that they realise the full beauty of their love on all levels. It is this that is described in “The Song of Solomon.”
But of course we have not heard the deepest message of this song until we pass behind the description of this purely physical human love, perfect as it is, to read it as an expression of communion between a human being and God, between Christ and his church. And that is why it is given to us to meditate on in this Easter Week. Like the couple in the story in “Ecclesiastes” we have wandered throughout this world to find something, someone, bigger than ourselves to trust and fall in love with. We have seen it in God’s love for us expressed through the Cross and Resurrection and now we long to respond.
Someone has well said, “If you love Jesus Christ, you will love this song because here are words that fully express the rapture of the heart that has fallen in love with Christ.”

Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails: 

Blunt, thick, hammered through 

The medial nerves of One 

Who, having made us, knew 

The thing He had done,
Seeing (what all that is)
Our cross, and His. 
 (C S Lewis)

St Mark’s Jesus is silent on the cross. All the way through the long and appalling hours he says nothing. That is, until the terrible cry of dereliction near the end,
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
All my life I have found this portrayal of Jesus hugely comforting because Jesus dies, as many people do die, feeling forsaken by God and yet, at the same time, crying out to God. It is comforting because it is real and true within human experience and the author of the Gospel does not evade it. But most of all it is because God in Jesus on the cross has not shirked the final terror and horror of human life; the feeling that finally one has been abandoned by God. How many people over the centuries must have felt that?
There is a famous story that rabbis in Auschwitz once decided to put God on trial – and found him guilty. The Nobel Laureate writer, Elie Wiesel was there. He said, “It happened at night; there were just three people. At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty’. It means ‘He owes us something’.”
Then they went to pray.
These rabbis, living in a manmade hell, having found God guilty did not turn away from Him; did not say, “I can no longer believe in God.” Just like Jesus on the cross they kept communication open even though what they were going through was inexplicable in terms of what they had understood God to be.
What was it for Jesus to lose his sense of connection with God? We cannot know fully but part of it must have been to lose his sense of identity. For someone who was “One with the Father” there was no Jesus without the Father, and for Christians there is no me without the relationship with God. I am only a person in relationship with others and I never knew who I was until I knew myself in relationship with Jesus. Losing a sense of identity happens to all human beings at one time or another in their life, usually after a big change, and it can be a terrible experience. Who am I now? What has my life been about? Has it all been wasted?
On the cross everything Jesus had was stripped away, and that of course was the point of this horrific form of execution. You are nothing, no one, it was intended to say. Crucified here on a rubbish dump, naked physically, your stress and emotions, your distraught mental state revealed to the world. You are nothing. No wonder Jesus identified himself with Psalm 22.
But I am a worm and not human:
Scorned by others and despised by the people.

This week, every week in the news, we hear of people living through terrible ordeals, their own crucifixions. Where is God, we cry, in all this? The answer is, he is there on the cross, in the midst of the chaos, despair and dereliction, a God who cannot escape, who does not want to escape, the cry of his people. The God, Who, having made us, knew the thing he had done – the God who owes us something, and who has never shirked paying the price.