Week 2: The Paradox of Contemplation
This past week, I sat down to do some homework with my middle child, Benson. As a new kindergartener, his homework consisted of writing out his address and phone number, a relatively simple task for those of us who have been writing letters and numbers for decades. However, for a six year old, this was incredibly intricate and challenging. How to hold the pencil, shape each symbol, keep the writing between the lines, proper spacing– all of it so new, so critical to the practice, so exhilarating and yet also so overwhelming!
With every well-shaped word there was intense delight.
For every wobbly letter or backwards number, there was heaving disappointment.
At one point Benson simply dropped his pencil and lamented, “I am just so bad at this!”
The initial frustration of craft, connection, communication, and creativity is an unavoidable part of the journey to flourishing.
Over and over again, I am surprised at how the very skills necessary to make us a “fully alive” human are actually quite difficult to cultivate![1]
In my own homework this week, I was confronted by a similar paradoxical nature of contemplation and prayer in our spiritual lives. Living in constant prayer and friendship with God is not terribly radical considering the reality that God is already all around us, inviting us, whispering and speaking. Like writing, the “with God life” is full of creativity, connection, and communication, deeply fulfilling relationship that brings us greatest joy.[2] We read about the stories and lives of the contemplative saints and desire for that deep knowing and solace in/with the Lord.
And yet, like learning to write or walk or play piano, living into our fullest calling as human beings is also a discipline.
We get to the lightness, ease, and peace of friendship with God through the steady and oftentimes rigorous work of returning to a posture of prayer, awareness, and togetherness.
The contemplative stream in particular showcases the paradox of Christian spirituality. While there are endless examples of how our faith confounds our logic and expectations, I would like to focus on three curiosities or mysteries of contemplation and constant prayer.
1 // A life of delight and friendship with God begins with rigor and discipline.
As described above, a life of contemplation is a priceless gift that is very rarely given quickly or without much effort, and instead granted to those who are postured in such a way as to receive it. This is the nature of the disciplines– that we do not earn our spiritual enlightenment, but rather we come to the table time and time again with open hands to receive them as God wills. Thus, as Henri Nouwen says, “[a] spiritual life without discipline is impossible.” [3] For Nouwen, it was the submission of will, identity, and ego by leaving Harvard and committing to L’Arche that brought about a contemplative spirit. The intentional–and perhaps even painful– obedience to God makes space for the togetherness our soul ultimately desires.
When I first started seeking the contemplative way for the first time about six years ago, I was seeking to validate my charismatic experiences within a more ancient, historic faith. Reading some of Sue Monk Kidd’s work led me to her written introduction of Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, a book I’ve read and pondered many times since. There was something about living in Kentucky, only a short drive from his hermitage at Gethsemane that gave his words charge and validity for me. Merton’s New Seeds repeated over and over again that the contemplation was the deepest level of prayer, and yet it could not be coerced out of God’s hand. It is always a gift. In “Ways of Meditation,” Merton continues to argue for “effort and sacrifice… there are no tricks and no shortcuts.”[4] And lest we grow too confident that we will somehow arrive, Merton shackles us to the humility of an honest novice: “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”[5]
As my son struggled through his writing assignment, I quoted this Merton’s passage to him, trying to encourage that even those of us who have written for years and years are only just beginning to know how to craft words– both in writing them and in using them well. But, as Merton said, we do not want to be beginners.
“So are you saying that I am going to be bad at this forever?!” Benson cried.
It is easy to see how Benson could feel that being trapped in an eternal “rookie” status can feel disheartening. However, I am reminded of Benson’s patron saint, Saint Benedict, who supposedly once said, “always we begin again.”
Perhaps instead of hopeless failure, we perceive this lifelong labor as a deep work of spiritual resiliency. We are forever beginners not because we never make headway, but because we keep beginning–
because we are defined by our new beginnings rather than our endings.
I sat with a dear friend this week who has recently experienced a gift of deep sanctification. It was long awaited as addiction and sin had proved heavy to the point of despair. The freedom of holiness experienced this past summer was woven with deeper knowing, a contemplative gift. However, over the past several weeks, this friend has confessed that temptation has increased again– both in frequency and severity. Was he truly free from the slavemaster? Was everything going to return to how it was before?
In addition to popular teachers of holiness, I found the contemplative guides to be gracious companions in this struggle of the discipline of beginning again. I am reminded of the honest journals of Frank Laubach who records moments where, after beginning to delve into deeper union with God, there is “a deep sense of cooperation with God in the little things.”[6] There is incredible oneness and joy. However, four months later, Laubach admits that he must also share confessions of failure: “If this record of a soul [sic] struggle to find God is to be complete, it must not omit the story of difficulty and failure.”[7] Does this struggle imply that the earlier work was false or the power one receives through prayer has left?
I would think not.
Instead, I would picture friendship with God like any other deep relationships. As we grow together, our intimacy increases but so do the depths of our dissonance. Spouses and spiritual friends draw into deeper knowing of one another as they meet tender places of the soul. This can lead to struggle, shame, and if we are willing to continue on together, eventually even deeper friendship. Like a screw rotates around and around to gain greater depth into the wood it is joining to, so we too return to our struggles yet in deeper ways, gripping and holding fast to our God in whom we find life.
2 // A life of transcendence in God begins with the particular.
For many of us, when we read the contemplatives, we are drawn into the mystical experiences: the totality of peace and rest, the vivid revelations, the writings that bring us to our knees. However, as begin the contemplative journey ourselves alongside these great saints, we find a far more gritty reality than we first thought: the “with God life” begins right where we are.
Thomas Merton befriended God in the midst of international racism and the Vietnam War.
Henri Nouwen discovered Divine intimacy as he took care of Adam and served Eucharist to those with various physical and mental abilities.
Julian of Norwich saw the Lord in her actual body, on her deathbed, at what she assumed to be the end of her life.
We do not escape our present realities to find God. However, as we embrace our given lives, we discover a mysterious glimpse into the great expanse of the Divine. The paradox of particularity is one of the most overlooked aspects of contemplation as well as corporate worship, spiritual discernment, and social justice.
When George Buttrick writes about prayer, he argues that one meets with God when he/she is honest about where they are and specific in their longings. In gratitude, thanksgiving should be specific. In confession, one should also be specific: “it should set hooks into the facts.”[8] When we pray intercession, Buttrick calls us to be more than specific, but instead to “see faces, not a mass” and also ponder those we cry out for. This even includes the names of our enemies. [9]
This past week, I received an advanced copy of Lacy Finn Borgo’s book All Will Be Well about Julian of Norwich. As I prepare to review the book and add it to our library for our church, I’ve been ruminating about the deep faith and Julian as well as her audacious requests. In “The Highest Form of Prayer,” Julian recounts her three central desires for which she prayed: a deep understanding of his passion and suffering, a sickness unto the brink of death as a means of seeing God, and finally three wounds of the soul to spur true devotion.[10] Inspired by her deep trust that “all will be well” and also her earnest desire to be with God, I begin the exercise of writing our my own three requests of God.
Such a practice is incredibly bold and provocative. Writing out only three requisitions, however, was an exercise in particularly that made it all the more challenging. I have to admit that I had a far longer list, and most of the requests were quite petty and prideful. Suffering and contrition did not make my list, and even now I have not completed the task all the way. Specificity is actually quite haunting, and being forced to limit our words and requests can feel unnatural .
However, it was through these specific requests that Julian’s prayers were answered. In asking for only three things, Julian eventually realizes that “we may ask from our Lover to have all of him that we desire.”[11] After the particularity comes the immeasurable expanse of God, a magnitude that we can at best glimpse when we are settled in the specific.
Foster writes that “we need to be absolutely firm in our insistence that smack in the middle of everyday life is precisely where prayer and intimacy with God need to be developed…the vast majority of us build a history with God right in the midst of our families and our places of living and working and among our neighbors and friends. These places comprise the ‘holy ground where we find God.”[12] Martin Luther tends to agree, dismantling our false ideologies of self-importance when he says “no one is heavily burdened with his labor, but that if he will he can, while working, speak to God in his heart.”[13]
It is here that we lean into contemplation and life with God– in this body, at this time, alongside these people, amidst this community, and with this actual life.
Out of this submission to our particularity will God transform us into vibrant new lives with Him.
3// A life of seeing God in all things begins alone.
The final paradox of the contemplative stream hinges on one’s inner and outer life with God. While there is certainly nor formula or rigid order for a prayer-filled life, the saints allude to a general tendency for awareness to begin alone and in solitude.
Nouwen argues that since God’s voice is small and gentle, one must get quiet and alone to attune one’s spiritual ear to it. With this posture, however, we are confronted with our need for distraction and noise that not only stifles the whisper of God, but hides our “inner chaos.”[14] At times our internal whirlwind of thoughts, demands, and shame can feel overpowering. To attempt to mute them in order to listen to God may feel altogether threatening. Nouwen states that for most of us, we can only start with five or ten minutes a day. We may even be tempted to run away. And yet, it is here, even in this uncomfortable “period of uselessness,” that we begin to build intimacy with God.[15]
The struggle of time alone can often be such a deterrent to contemplative life, Merton argues that a spiritual director may be necessary. We can be so undone, so confronted by an honest time and space before the Lord, that only another soul who has always journeyed in this way can pull us back to the path of grace. In fact, Merton says that a spiritual guide may be a “moral necessity for anyone who is trying to deepen his or her life of prayer.” [16] Mentors can help us discern the Lord’s whisper, direct us from unhealthy impulses, and offer witness to the deep work of contemplative life.
And so here lies the paradox: as we begin to deepen our awareness of God in times of solitude, we will find God in all of our moments. Evelyn Underhill refers to this movement in (solitude) and out (reengagement) as a pendulum where
our consciousness moves perpetually– or should move it is healthy– between God and our neighbor, between this world and that. The wholeness, sanity, and balance of our existence depend entirely upon the perfection of our adjustment to thus double situation; on the steady alternating beat of our outward adoration, and our homeward-turning swing of charity.[17]
Similarly, Frank Laubach’s journal reveals his attempt to be consciously “with God” throughout his entire day, his mind oscillating back and forth between the Lord and his present demands.
Almost humorously, Laubach does not encourage others to join him on this “arduous path.” I imagine that he does not advise this practice to others because it first must take place in solitude, and only after this meditation is strengthened can one truly like in “constant touch with God.” Laubach’s strong desire to be with God in every place and at every time is best described as this question from one of his letters: “Can I bring God back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind as an afterimage, shall always be one of the elements in every concept and precept? I choose to make the rest of my life an experiment in answering this question.” [18]
Laubach does indeed spend his life learning to practice the presence of God constantly. We see through his life that the contemplative work that begins alone should in fact propel us back into the world. St Antony, one of the great church fathers and contemplatives, was called back into healing, teaching, and leading after finding God in the desert. While history is full of examples of those who never return, we find far more saints retreating for particular seasons only to return to the masses healing, teaching, and even sparking social renewal. As my chaplain from undergraduate constantly reminded us, “You don’t think your quiet times are for you, do you? No, they’re for others. It's for you to give to others.”
This past week, I chose to spend some time alone in contemplation, taking a walk to the Sycamore tree down the road from my house. While I was listening and praying, I found myself asking God about what to do with this blog and how to temper desire for platform and influence. I find my soul divided between desire for a quiet, faithful life at our country church, rooted and humble and steady but also a longing to write and teach, to publish and study. What should “life with God” look like in my own particular story?
There, along the road, I sensed a prompting in my spirit: Those who find water in the desert are obliged to tell others where to find the well.
While I was pierced through by the Spirit’s leading, I found this answer especially pertinent for those of us who desire retreat only to abandon our social responsibility, to neglect the essential spiritual practice of return. We are called to be alone so that we then come back full of grace, power, truth, and life for the world.
Bibliography
[1] This phrase, “fully alive,” is coming from Saint Ignatius: “The glory of God is a man fully alive.”
[2] I am borrowing Richard Foster’s terminology that he uses often, particularly through the Renovare Institute and its publishing. To me, it is the true “end” of all of our Christian and spiritual “means.” In short, the “with God life” is the whole point of existence and it is what we are being saved for.
[3] Henri Nouwen, “Bringing Solitude into Our Lives,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 80.
[4] Thomas Merton, “Ways of Meditation,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 67.
[5] Thomas Merton, “Ways of Medication,” 68.
[6] Frank Laubach, “Opening Windows to God,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 101.
[7] Frank Laubach, “Opening Windows to God,”104.
[8] George A. Buttick, “A Simple Regimen of Private Prayer,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 88.
[9] George A. Buttrick, “A Simple Regimen of Private Prayer,” 89.
[10] Julian of Norwich, “The Highest Form of Prayer,” 73-74.
[11] Julian of Norwich, “The Highest Form of Prayer,” 77.
[12] Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 53.
[13] Henri Nouwen, “Bringing Solitude into Our Lives,” 82.
[14] Henri Nouwen, “Bringing Solitude into Our Lives,” 83.
[15] Henri Nouwen, “Bringing Solitude into Our Lives,” 82.
[16] Thomas Merton, “Ways of Medication,” 67.
[17] Evelyn Underhill, “What Do We Mean By Prayer,” from Foster, Richard J., and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups ( San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 95.
[18] Frank Laubach, “Opening Windows to God,”104.