Justluckie

The Cross - A Void That Fills All Things

I've been trying to think of an image that speaks to me of the radical and ultimate self-emptying of Jesus that sits at the heart of this week's spiritual focus. It is too easy for us to slide into 'interesting' narrative, 'logical' atonement theories or simple sentimentality when we are faced with the enormity of the events of Holy Week. The challenge is to enter into the awful silence of it all, the complete self-giving and utter poverty of Jesus without dressing it up.

Most traditional paintings or images of the events of Holy Week fall into one of the traps I've suggested. And even if there are very compelling examples of depictions of the extremity of Jesus' suffering, like Grunewald's Isenheim altarpiece, they still don't quite enter into the void. It may not be possible for art to do that very successfully since it relies precisely on the presentation of form, not nothingness, but I think there are some ways to get closer to that inexpressible emptying. One way is to go in the opposite direction from the intensity of Grunewald and look to an image that is more stylised. The very well-known San Damiano crucifix, before which St Francis heard his call, is a good example of earlier iconography that emphasises still simplicity over intense agony:

Other examples of this more stylised image might come from Easter iconography or from modern art. I am always particularly moved by the many depictions of the crucifixion by Craigie Aitchison. Here are a couple of examples.

It is the sense of emptiness and space in these paintings that comes closest to hinting at the kind of void I was looking for and the image of Jesus is shown with little overt emotion and little narrative context. In truth, of course, we probably need as many kinds of depiction of this indescribable moment as possible so that we can see just how partial every view is, and I would never want to lose the density of a painting like van der Weyden's deposition which places the crucified Jesus right at the heart of suffering humanity. But what Craigie Aitchison offers us is a hint at that loving Void that fills all things, that complete self-offering and radical nothingness that stands not exactly as judgement, not as assumed punishment, not as 'statement' but as simple, naked love; a space so generous that we find ourselves lost in it, that we see clearly for the first time, that our wounds are healed in the peace and stillness that transcend all attempts to eradicate them.

There are no words to describe this wonder. There are no images. But we must use all the words we can and all the images we can until they run out. And then...

How should we deal with our troubling thoughts?

The desert Mothers and Fathers, those earliest Christian ascetics, were well aware of the disturbing things that assault us when we seek stillness and solitude. We are often unaware of these troubling thoughts because we are simply too busy to notice them - we push them aside because we have other demands that claim our attention. However, we do notice them when we spend time in silence, when we find oruselves alone or perhaps when we dream. I'm sure we can all identify with this phenomenon and know the kind of things that assault us - a sense of guilt or anger, an irritation with others, a low self-esteem, out-of-control desires, deep-seated resentments, fearful images. What can we do with them?

Our post-Freud culture might see these things as deserving close scrutiny and analysis. These thoughts are the product of troubled early experiences and need to be addressed directly and therapeutically. I don't deny the usefulness of this approach, but it is interesting that these ancient sages of our Christian tradition had quite another understanding of these troubling thoughts. Traditionally, Christian ascetical practice has seen these assaults as coming from outside us, often describing them as demons. I would urge the modern listener to bear with this language for a little while rather than simply reject it as primitive nonsense because I think it carries deep wisdom. In describing these assaults in this way, the desert ascetics were saying that they are not us - these troubled and troubling thoughts do not constitute who I truly am. They are a common part of our experience of life and we should expect them, especially when we seek stillness, but they are not essential to us. This is an important insight because it then dictates how we might respond to our troubling thoughts.

First of all, we need not entertain them. They have no part in us and do not need to take up our attention and energy. To focus on these thoughts too closely might simply intensify them so, instead, we are best simply to let go of them.

Secondly, we address them by turning our attention to what is our true self. When we find our thoughts troubled in times of silence, we do not engage in combat with the troublesome thoughts, we simply turn to the centre - turn to our hearts in attentive stillness, calling on the name of the living God and receiving the peace which is his gift. This, in itself, requires the gift of patience, so we should ask for it!

Finally, we should not let ourseslves be downhearted about these troublesome distractions. They are not a sign of our worthlessness but of our humanity. In fact, experience suggests that we are more likely to encounter them if we are serious about following the spiritual path. The remedies are simple, but demand attention and commitment. They are humility - a recognition of our frail humanity - patience - a willingness to bear with incompleteness and recognise that we are on a life's journey - and prayer - the unceasing turning of our hearts towards God. Peaceful stillness is our natural state and we can receive it again and again as a gift.

Listening for Lent

There is a tradition of choosing, or having chosen for us, a book for Lent. In Benedictine practice, this would traditionally be a book of the Bible given by the superior but in more recent practice, there are any number of spiritual books written for the purpose of being read through the period of Lent as a focus for devotion and reflection. Partly because I have a (barely concealed) stubborn streak and don't like being told what to do or read, and partly because I'm not short of books to read, I have occasionally decided on a piece of music as my Lenten 'reading' rather than a book. The last time I did this, I chose Bach's St Matthew Passion and it worked very well for me, so this year I'm listening to his St John Passion. I might the odd reflection on this piece as I listen to it over the next few weeks, but for now I thought I'd say in more general terms why I find this to be such a rewarding spiritual exercise.

The first and most obvious reason is that it's about Jesus. There is both an intensity and a warmth about the way the Lutheran texts of the chorales and arias intersperse the Gospel narratives to fix our attention on Jesus in his Passion. But the focus has many facets and we hear words of love, joy, trust, commitment, mourning and hope. There is a deep awareness of the suffering of Jesus, but this is always accompanied by a profund sense of the healing, forgiveness and triumph that are accomplished through his self-offering. This tone is set by the very first chorus:

Lord, our Redeemer, whose glory
fills the whole world,
show us in this thy Passion
that Thou, the true Son of God,
through all ages
hast over the deepest humiliation
supremely triumphed.

The grounding notes of the low strings accompanying this chorus give the sense that this is indeed a theme that will abide with us through the whole Passion. We listen not to be entertained, but to be shown something that can only be seen with the eyes of faith, with a looking that sees through the terror to the truth of how things really are. There is not, in the Bach Passions, an unhealthy fixation on the details of Jesus' fleshly sufferings. Instead, there is an invitation to learn how faith sees. In this sense, these are profoundly theological works, by no means lacking in emotion and human engagement, but they are fundamentally about looking to Jesus and seeing God.

The second reason I find these works to be spiritually profound is that they encourage a different way of reading scripture. The invite a lingering, reflective reading that is, again, theological. By that I mean that the way the texts are read is not about narrative style but a vision of God. This is not just good storytelling but is, above all, a reading that evokes the response of faith. This is not about putting on a good show but about changing lives.

Reticence About Prayer

Some readers of Thomas Merton find it frustrating that he was so unspecific about methods or practicalities in prayer. Unlike other spiritual writers like his younger contemporary William Johnston, he gave no teaching about the 'how to' aspects of contemplative prayer. This was for a very good reason. He recognised the danger of focussing on technique when prayer is primarily a matter of faith and love. Technique might become an end in itself or become dissociated from the fundamental theological insights with which prayer belongs. Merton would have been aware of the risk of offering a 'Merton technique' that others might copy slavishly without recognising that prayer is one soul's response to the One who calls us in love. There is a further reason for his reticence, and it is to do with the insight that prayer is something precious and hidden, not for public parading or for peddling as a feel-good commodity.

He did, however, once give a picture of the character of his contemplative prayer, not exactly a practical guide, but more of an insight into his practice than he gave in his many books on the spiritual life. This insight comes in a letter to one of his many correspondents, Abdul Aziz. Merton never met Aziz, but conducted a long correspondence with him over a number of years from 1960-68, the year of Merton's untimely death. Aziz was a Pakistani government official with a keen interest in Sufism and he had been given Merton's contact details by a mutual friend, the orientalist Louis Massignon. In one of his later letters, Merton described his typical day, including this lovely description of his meditative practice, written with Sufi sensibilities in mind. It is worth quoting at length:

Now you ask me about my method of meditation. Strictly speaking I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centred entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and His love. That is to say that it is centred on faith by which alone we can know the presence of God. One might say this gives my meditation the character described by the Prophet as "being before God as if you saw Him." Yet it does not mean imagining anything or conceiving a precise image of God, for to my mind this would be a kind of idolatry. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring Him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing Him as all. My prayer tends very much towards what you call fana. There is in my heart this great thirst to recognise totally the nothigness of all that is not God. My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence. If I am present "myself" this I recognise as an obstacle about which I can do nothing unless He Himself removes the obstacle. If He wills then He can make the Nothingness into a total clarity. If He does not will, then the nothingess seems to itself to be an object and remains an obstacle. Such is my ordinary way of prayer, or meditation. It is not "thinking about" anything but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible, which cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is Invisible. I do not ordinarily write about such things and I ask you therefore to be discreet about it. But I write this as a testimony of confidence and friendship. [Letter of January 2 1966, The Hidden Ground of Love p.62]

Making such hidden things public is done only in the hope that it inspires others to make their own loving adventure into that Silence and Nothingness.

The City as Wilderness

I'm doing a bit of research for an article on the Russian hermit tradition in which the forest is seen as the wilderness in the same terms as the earliest Christian ascetics described the deserts of the Middle East. The theme of desert or wilderness in Christian spiritual traditions is well researched from its biblical roots onwards. One of the essential keys to understanding its role is to see this theme as existing alongside another biblical image, that of the garden or paradise. The Christian ascetic enters the wilderness and finds it to be the place where the first shoots of the renewed creation grow. This draws on a fine prophetic tradition (eg Is. 35) as well as a later Christian insight about the renewal of all living things through the resurrection.

My interest is much more in the spiritual imagination of the those ascetics who chose their wildernesses quite carefully, or at least they reflected quite carefully on the wilderness at hand, whether it was moutain, desert, island or forest. My article is about the nature of forest as wilderness-paradise and how its physical characteristics shape a particular approach to mystical theology. I'll say more about this some other time, but I wanted to mention a book I would never have come across had it not been for Thomas Merton's own reflections on his natural environment as a hermit in the woods around his abbey in Kentucky. He wrote a review of George Huntston Williams' outstanding book on this theme, Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Thought and I was pleased to find a copy in New College Library. Williams wrote beautifully (often with a preacher's rhetoric!) and his range of interest in this theme was breathtaking. As well as surveying the biblical and patristic origins of the theme, he looked at how it developed in early American Protestant thought, with the early settlers pushing deeper into the wilderness of their own land. He also understood the modern need to see the wilderness in ecological terms and, for someone writing in the early 1960s, his level of awareness of the issues is impressive. Part of this awareness was a consideration of how modern secular thinkers have seen wilderness in a contemplative mode, and he cites Henry Bugbee in this regard. In our own day, I see Robert Macfarlane as carrying on this tradition in a deeply reflective and insightful way.

But the insight that impressed me most in Williams' book was that of a Russian emigre bishop in Paris in the 1920s, who saw that the spirituality of the desert was as relevant in the wilderness of the modern city as it was in the rocky wastes of Sinai. This shows how much Christian thinking about the wilderness is really about the place of the human person in a challenging environment which urges a kind of interiority and seeks transformation from the inside out, an environment that speaks both of desolation and potential, of loneliness and of rich solitude. Andrew Louth's excellent study, The Wilderness of God, makes the same connections. It is important to understand that this wilderness is not merely symbolic, it is about the real interactions of people with their environment, and about the real possibilities of transformation of them and of that environment.

Spiritual Direction For All

When I took part in the excellent course run in the Diocese of Southwark (Anglican) to train people to offer spiritual direction, I was surprised to be one of only three priests out of a group of fifteen. It is, of course, a very good thing that this ministry is being exercised so extensively and so skillfully by lay people but I did wonder why there were so few clergy signed up to the course. One explanation is that it may be that most priests think they have all the skills and knowledge necessary for this role. Another is that it is not sufficiently valued by them to invest the significant amount of time demanded by the course.

Whatever the reason, it seems to me to be vital that clergy recongise the distinctive and vital place of spiritual direction in the life of the church. At many times in the history of the church and in many different traditions, the role of spiritual direction has been to offer accompaniment by one person to another as they grow in their faith. To offer encouragement and counsel to a fellow Christian as they explore the depths of prayer and the challenge of faith is a great privilege and should be a central characteristic of any ministry offered in the church's name. Of course, this kind of accompaniment is offered in many informal ways that do not claim the name of 'spiritual direction', but I fear that if there is insufficient attention and profile given to this ministry, it may simply not happen. It is not something for a spiritual elite but should be available to any Christian who wants to deepen their faith.

I am delighted that the Diocese of Edinburgh also has a significant resource for spiritual direction through the ministry of Emmaus House and many others access this ministry through their belonging to the Franciscan Third Order, as a Benedictine Oblate or another similar community. However, this probably still leaves a large section of the Church without direct access to information about spiritual direction and with little expectation that it could become a significant part of the spiritual journey of any Christian.

So I have a very practical question. What can we do to make this life-changing ministry more widely known and used? Here are some initial thoughts, but I would appreciate your feedback:

• It strikes me that clergy are key to this. Is there anythying we can do to enhance awareness and training for new and (perhaps more importantly) existing clergy? They are the ones who can give spiritual direction a greater profile in parishes. Why don't we all take the opportunity to preach about it during Lent?
• Is there a way of encouraging people, ordained and lay, to consider training as a spiritual director?
• And what are the ways of encouraging more people to consider seeking a spiritual director?
• The Southwark training and referral model is excellent. Would anyone else be interested in exploring how it could be imported to this part of Scotland?
• The Southwark experience is that this is an area where ecumenical cooperation works extremely well. What are the ways in to the ecumenical networks locally?

I think that Christian faith will only flourish amidst the challenges of our contemporary society if it takes spiritual growth seriously. A serious investment in spiritual direction can help this happen.

A New Mysticism

For a while, I've been promoting the writings of the late William Johnston S.J. who had a wonderfully lucid, simple and insightful approach to the spiritual life. He had a deep knowledge of the ancient traditions of Christian mysticism and presented them in a practical and accessible way. Quite simply, he was keen to help people to pray, and I think that's a pretty laudable aim! One of his books was a series of 'Letters to Contemplatives' which he wrote to eight individuals over the course of year of sabbatical in 1989-90. This was the time I was preparing for ordination and Johnston's writings have been a constant companion since then.

In one of his letters, he talks of a 'new mysticism' which was coming to Christianity. It was born, in part, from a dialogue with Eastern religions and is marked by a direct appeal to contemporary life. Although I spend a lot of time reminding people of the deep roots of Christian mysticism (biblical, patristic, medieval), I think Johnston makes an important point about the new approaches to that mysticism in the contemporary world. Here are the characteristics of these new approaches:

• It appeals to all Christians, not just to 'religious professionals'
• It uses the language of human consciousness and is holistic. This language is preferred over the more philosophical background of earlier approaches.
• The new appraoches are attentive to the body: posture, breathing and mindfulness are seen as vital.
• Related to this last point, the new mysticism depends more on faith, letting go of the control of reason as the only guiding mode of knowing.
• There is an emphasis on enlightenment - the mystical way has a goal, and that goal is a transformed person.

I think Johnston is right to point to a new approach to mysticism in our contemporary setting and his brief outline of that approach is a useful way of identifying some of the changes that make the Christian spiritual life more directly appealing to the modern world. I think I would add a further characteristic and I know from his writings that Johnston would have wholeheartedly agreed. The new mysticism is never alienated from a commitment to justice and peace. A transformed person seeks also the transformation of an unjust world.

Johnston was keenly aware of the ancient Christian traditions of spiritual life. Indeed, his first works included an exploration of the mysticism of The Cloud of Unknowing and an attractively accessible translation of that text for modern readers. However, I think he is right to say that some of the characteristics of contemporary Christian spirituality are new ways of relating to a world that has seen extraodinary change. His writings deserve to be better known and I hope that there will be a new appreciation of his contribution before too long.

Spiritual, Not Religious - another thought

I have been thinking about this now common distinction between 'spirituality' and religion for some time. I warmly welcome the move towards a willingness to talk about spirituality in our culture but I remain puzzled and uneasy about the readiness with which many assume that religion is something separate from, or even antithetical to spirituality. This commonplace distinction occurs frequently in Simon Reeve's current BBC series on pilgrimage. I am enjoying the series and I've always been a fan of Reeve's travel programmes. He presents the experience of pilgrimage with sensitivity, respect and enthusiasm. Along the way to Compostela, he meets a few travellers who insist that their motivation is spiritual and not religious. I wonder what people mean by that. One of those interviewed seemed to be saying that the 'spiritual' motivation meant that it was 'personal' rather than focussed on any 'external' religious faith and Reeve himself often makes the point that he is not a 'believer' and therefore cannot accept things like the legend of St James' body getting to Compostela (find me a religious person who can, or who is that bothered about it...!).

I wonder why those who refuse to accept a 'religious' motivation then feel the attraction to a religious pilgrimage site rather than a non-religious destination. And I wonder if they realise that many of their motivations - self-discovery, adventure, time for reflection, a sense of shared journey - are exactly those that have often been present for 'religious' pilgrims. Religion is de facto about spirituality. I can fully understand why people may want to reject institutional religion which, like any institutional expression is liable to corruption, but I would be surprised if the identification with an 'institution' came high up any religious person's list of reasons for remaining faithful to their religious path.

So I want to say that we're all on the same journey, we are all concerned with the spiritual life. However, the value of a religious tradition is that it keeps that exploration broad and well-grounded. A wise and lovely ex-Buddhist I know (he's now a Quaker) feels strongly that much of what is described as 'spirituality' in the contemporary sense runs the risk of being rather narrow and self-focussed. In particular, he is concerned that those who practice mindfulness based on Buddhist insights omit the essential companion of mindfulness meditation, which is loving-kindness meditation. Religion's purpose is to teach us how to love. God knows, we get that wrong more often than not, but that's why we need the strength of the tradition - to keep calling us back to this primary purpose.

So I am delighted that there are so many fellow-travellers on the spiritual path. I want to say to them that religion is not something smaller than spirituality, but bigger. It is the deep spring of wisdom and truth that nourishes us in the ways of self-knowledge and calls us always to what is even greater - a love of the other that is self-giving and self-forgetting.

Why Merton Still Matters

45 years ago today, Thomas Merton died in an accident in the room where he was staying in Bangkok. He had just delivered a paper to an interfaith conference of monks entitled 'Marxism and Monastic Perspectives'. He was on a journey to Far East in fulfillment of a long-standing dream to encounter first hand the Eastern religions with which he had a lifelong dialogue. He had met with monks from Buddhist traditions, including the Dalai Lama, and many other religious figures from India, Thailand and Sri Lanka. As was his custom, he kept a journal during the visit and he chronicled the many significant encounters and insights of his travels. Here are some of the words he wrote in the earlier part of that journal, in the entry for November 7 1968, the day after his second meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala:

The contemplative life must provide an area, a space of liberty, of silence, in which possibilities are allowed to surface and new choices - beyond routine choice - become manifest. It should create a new experience of time, not as stopgap, stillness, but as "temps vierge" - not a blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentialities and hopes - and its own presence to itself. One's own time. But not dominated by one's own ego and its demands. Hence open to others - compassionate time, rooted in the sense of common illusion and in criticism of it.

This brief paragraph and its context give three of the reasons why I think Thomas Merton still matters as a religious thinker in our contemporary world. First, this is a reflection that is offered in the context of an interfaith encounter and founded on the mature reflection by a Christian monk on his own tradition. Merton knew the Christian way of contemplative prayer from a theoretical and historical perspective, but above all from an experiential one. His dialogue with other faiths was focussed on inner experience and conducted with a deep understanding and respect that are only possible when one is secure in one's own tradition.

Second, it encapsulates Merton's experience of contemplation. This experience was forged in inner struggle and constant exploration of the depths of solitude. It speaks of the dangers of an illusory sense of identity and of the place where our true identity is found through grace. Merton brought the possibility of a contemplative way to 'ordinary' people of faith and not just to those called to a monastic life.

Third, it links contemplation with compassion. True meditation is not a flight from reality or a narcissistic self-absorption, but a discovery of one's true place in the universe, a place among all creatures as one of them. Merton's writing was directed both to the inner life and to the world of violence. His was a prophetic voice, longing for peace and humanity in the face of inhuman violence.

Merton was a poet, an artist, a constant letter-writer, a thinker, teacher and contemplative. Anyone who reads his journals will see his flawed humanity in its full colour and it is this candid, and often humourous humility that makes his writing so engaging. His message is as urgent today as it was then. Diaolgue; Contemplation; Peace - these are the marks of his life and teaching and they must be the marks of the church today.

 

Is Passion All You Need?

I am sometimes bemused by skilled performers, artists or craftspeople who, despite their obvious excellence in their chosen field, insist that all that counts is their passion for what they do. I sometimes feel that I would like to let them know that I am rather more impressed by their skill than their passion, but that would be churlish! I do know what they are getting at - the single-minded devotion to doing their thing and doing it well could very well be described as 'passion', but I think the word is now so overused as to be almost useless, other than as an obligatory way to describe just how deeply invested they are in their art.

Curiously, the word 'passion' has a rather less positive resonance in the traditional vocabulary of Christian spirituality. I am not talking about the Passion of the Lord, his suffering and self-offering, but the passions that draw our attention away from what is most true, most lovely and most expressive of the good. These passions are our unruly, misdirected or unexamined emotions and much of the teaching of Christian spirituality has been concerned with dealing with these passions in such a way as to lead us to a different state. The state of 'dispassion', detachment or apatheia is not a dulled, emotionless state, but one of quiet, simple focus, true awareness and purity of heart. It is, above all, a state of complete freedom, freedom from simply responding unthinkingly to our most basic impulses. Some uncritical and simplisitic assessments of Christian spirituality have accused it of seeking to deny what is most truly human about ourselves - our emotions, desires and energies, including and perhaps especially, our sexual energies. But this is very far from the truth. The goal is very much a refinement of our desires and a deep self-understanding, a state of peace and balance from which we are better able to respond truthfully to these desires.

 

 

The path to this state of inner peace, in which we are free from the tyranny of unexamined and untrained appetites, is a path that is walked in a spirit of faith, hope and love, the latter of which 'unites the soul with the excellence of God' (St Diadochos of Photiki). It is a path that also requires the kind of training that those 'passionate' individuals have undertaken to achieve their desire. This training involves an understanding of our appetites and a freedom from their demands and is probably only achieved through the repeated practices of prayer, self-discipline and acts of love. This is not an easy path, though it is simple. And though it may not need 'passion' in the sense that I have described it, it does need something similar - the conviction that this is a pearl of great price, a hidden treasure in a field, worth giving all to find it.