Finding the balance between a monastic heart and life as it is

Inspiration often comes from outside of ourselves. Recently, reading another blog (Called Monks and Mermaids) I came across an interesting article that examines the Orthodox Church and the lessons it can teach us. In part, the article said: 

Orthodoxy is a monastic Church, a Church with a monastic heart where the monasteries provide the spiritual fathers and mothers...A Church without a flourishing monasticism, without the lived 'martyrdom' of an asceticism inspired by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord's Cross and Resurrection, could hardly be a Church according to the mind of the Christ of the Gospels, for monasticism, of all Christian life ways, is the one which most clearly and publicly leaves all things behind for the sake of the Kingdom...

As I read this, I thought of my own past monastic experience, one where the intense training I received brought me into a very different way of life, one so different that re-integrating into life outside the monastery has never ceased to be challenging. I thought of my constant struggle to identify with my fellow travelers along the way, my inability to communicate on deeper levels even with those of my own family, and how I have to constantly work to understand why certain things seem so important to those around me (such as name brands and name dropping and styles and all that stuff).

Monastic life does change a person. The question I have is, how does one change back? How far should one cling to the monastic persona, the monastic mindset, or the monastic heart?

For if I am really living out the challenge of Christ, I should be able to identify with all the people of God, and able to understand concerns and issues not my own. At least, that is my hope.

Learning to live life to the full

Do you ever wonder why Jesus never wrote anything to hand down to us? He spoke volumes to his disciples. But he never wrote something for them to treasure, something for them to keep in their pocket and refer back to time and time again. Why?


I think it is because of our tendency to become attached to such things. Even today, Christians profess to follow the teachings of Jesus. But get them talking about the Bible, and often differences become vast and moods are anything but Christ-like.

Part of this comes from our human tendency to take life so very seriously. We forget the spirit behind the words and often take the words literally. We do this with faith, with church, with our politics. And yet, Jesus says "I came that you may have life, and have it to the full." What is full of life in literal translations and interpretation?

The bible tells us Jesus roamed about without a place to lay his head. I love to think of our Christian life as one where we never allow ourselves the luxury of settling, but continue to dig into the Word and find continued life in it.

When you are climbing a mountain, you often come upon the same vistas. yet, the higher you climb, the more vast your view.

The same goes for the Word of God and things of God. Every day we should be looking at life, at faith, at the Divine Word in a different light. Different, because we are at a different place then we were a day ago.

This is what it means to have life, and have it to the full. To never stop seeking.

Anselm Moynihan writes of contemplation The contemplative dimension belongs in varying degrees to all believers, even if many, or even most, fail to live it in a way that is at all perceptible. But all are called to seek the face of God...

Contemplation. I tried to find a precise definition for the word, to distinguish it from meditation or simple prayer. But all explanations are complicated, extensive, and to some extent, confusing! So I will give my own explanation: contemplation is simply the intimate communication between God and yourself when you have become familiar with God, when it is second nature for you to think of God and to gaze upon him.

The journey toward contemplation isn't as difficult as it would seem. If you are given to daily meditation, if you frequently seek the inspiration of the Spirit, if you ponder life, values, journey and place, you are already a contemplative. It is the mindfulness of God that makes one a contemplative.

Somewhere I recently read that Christians are the least like the Christ of the gospels. I don't know if I agree with this totally, but it certainly deserves some thought. Contemplation is the solution to that problem, because a contemplative person takes on the values she believes in and become these very truths. In other words, a contemplative lives by what she says she believes, because she has made herself keenly aware of them by keeping in the presence of God.

All of us are called to contemplation. We don't think of it in those monastic terms, but we are all called to mindfulness, and to a remembrance of God within our soul.

Contemplative prayer

We want to know. Even in the spiritual life, we search because we want to understand more and better. Yet, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing would have us take a different stance. He says Become blind during contemplative prayer and cut yourself off from needing to know things.

Is this statement not confusing? Isn't contemplation supposed to open up knowledge through meditation? Are we not seeking to understand so we can see better? How is it that the author of the Cloud of Unknowing advises us to become blind?

We only need to read on to get the sense of his statement: Be content feeling moved in a delightful, loving way by something mysterious and unknown, leaving you focused entirely on God, with no other thought than of him alone. How often is our journey hampered because we want to plot our course intelligently, leaving little room for error. Instead, we should abandon our hearts to the feelings of delight found in contemplative prayer. For there are times when knowing does not enlighten.

The above statements draw us to give our desires to the Divine, so that we can rest and be refreshed. For it is the Divine that gives delight, that consoles, and that strengthens us on our journey.

Power in the Spirit

Jn 7: 37-38 says If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me; whoever believes in me, let him drink. Streams of living water shall flow out from within...

We can see that our spirituality is not for us alone. If properly attended to, it will flow out from within where it has been nurtured and fed, to spill out for others around us.

It is this concept that gave early monastics their confidence that their lives of prayer were powerful and fruitful for the world. Living in silence and solitude, they offered little to the world of activity. Yet, their lives were considered active because their prayer included the whole world.

Today, it is harder to convince others of the power of a life of prayer. Today, action and works dominate our culture, so much so that monastic life is seen as introspective and selfish. The attitude is, if we are not DOING something, than what use is our lives?

Yet, from Jesus words, we see that power does not come from works, but from willing abandonment to his will and his words.

I was told a long time ago that the only person I had control over, the only person I could change, was myself.  What we forget is how changing ourselves doesn't affect just us. It spreads out and touches others, it inspires and encourages, it becomes a living stream that refreshes. To see someone change reminds me that I too can change.

Remember too that becoming deeply spiritual, and communicating with God through a real relationship has a power for your own life. You travel into that special place with Someone neither tangible or containable. In effect, even as you change, you find the presence of God, or better put, the more acute awareness of the presence of God transforms your whole being.

Never underestimate the good you have the power to do just by living your life of prayer and meditation. And though monastics have the medium for such a life of prayer, they do not hold exclusive rights to contemplation. If you take the time to pursue a spiritual life, you have the power to let living waters flow from you into the world around you.

Letting Silence Lead

Silence is Golden

During Lent we often hear the need to "die to self". It's an ancient concept, one I hold is misleading. It gives the impression that all that is human is tainted, and that the only way to a spiritual life is to kill the human tendencies. Nothing could be more wrong.

Jesus never said we must "choose death". He said we must live in the light of truth. Moses says in Deuteronomy, I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.(30:19).

How do we heed the voice of God? Where is that voice heard? In contemplative prayer. Through contemplative prayer, we will discern which choice leads to life, and which leads to death.

Elizabeth of the Trinity writes The contemplative is a being who lives in the radiance of the Face of Christ, who enters into the mystery of God, not in the light that flows from human thought, but in that created by the word of the Incarnate Word.

Let us retreat into a period of silence and learn contemplative prayer. For contemplative prayer takes us beyond mere human enlightenment. It brings us into the light of the Divine. If we position ourselves daily before the Face of Christ, our choices will reflect life.

Making a Quiet Corner

Reading through the gospel for Ash Wednesday, I was struck by a recurring theme. It was not repentance, though that is what we usually think of at the start of Lent. It was the repeated sentence: "And your Father who sees in secret will repay you." (Mt 6:4)

The sentence reminds us of what is important, the inside. This is an interesting twist, as Ash Wednesday usually draws large numbers who are eager and intent on receiving those coveted ashes. I sometimes wonder, what do people expect from those ashes? Salvation? Or perhaps they are trying to remember that life has another side, a spiritual side. But remembering is not enough.

Externals can give only so much comfort and grace.  Ashes, like all sacramental, are merely outward signs. The intention of outward signs is to remind us of eternal truths. To profit from those truths, we must make them real for ourselves.

I suggest that this lent, let us take the externals like fasting, sacrifices, and extra prayers, and turn them inside by concentrating on our being, on our intentions. Let us not be content with ashes. Let us step into more silence and meditation. Let us make for ourselves a quiet corner this Lent, one where we can sit in secret and think about God. One where we transform eternal truths into our very being. Then, we can discover just what the God who sees in secret will give us as reward. I suspect it is probably the Divine Being himself.

Learning to Taste and See

Knowing God comes not from reading about him, but by experiencing him in prayer. Not just any kind of prayer, but the kind that sits in silence before God and lets God permeate the soul. Christians call this kind of prayerful experience contemplation. It is a time when, as Richard Rohr writes, we stop judging, controlling and analyzing life and everything in it and turn instead to seeing, tasting and loving what we have, what has happened to us, where we find ourselves. None of this happens naturally. We must practice it a long time before we begin to experience its fruits.

Taste and see that the Lord is good says Ps. 34:8. We are invited to enjoy God as we would a banquet. To do so we must change our image of God. We must know how concerned he is about our daily lives. We must see him as in our midst. Contemplation allows us to become aware of this mystery, to push past the veil and begin to tangible know the goodness of God.

Contemplation begins with listening. Often people tell me, "I can't be still. A thousand thoughts come rushing through my head when I try." So the need for practice. It takes time to learn how to wait upon the Lord, who indeed is waiting upon us.

If we would taste and see that the Lord is good, we need to learn how to be still. Not a sterile stillness, but one of readiness, openness and hope.

The measure to guide us.

Lake Ontario in winter

To be or not to be quipped Shakespeare's Hamlet. Would that the quote was To be alone, or not to be alone. For that is our real dilemma. How to balance the two, the companionship we need and the space for our own personal time. Our debt to society and our obligations to ourselves. Our need for contemplation and our duty toward our sisters and brothers. When to enrich and charge our own souls, and when to reach a hand out to encourage the souls of others. There really is a fine line between the two.

Recent years has seen the push for activism. I remember when I entered the monastery years ago. An aunt and uncle sent me a card, underlining the words: When we serve others we serve God!. The message was clear. Burying myself in a monastery was selfish. Get out and do something for the world. And yet, all our rush to DO something has not much lessened the problems of the poor in society, or brought greater peace, or solved the dilemma of warring nations. There are times when a little reflection goes a lot farther than all the words and promises we make.

So how do we balance the two? That, my friend, is the rub. Balance.

No man is an island, says John Donne. Yes, our needs are complex, and in our effort to simplify, we must never forget that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (ps 139:14). We must work toward the two fields of activity and contemplation, we must find what works best for us, like a good diet. Because in the end, we cannot give to others what we do have ourselves. And to give of ourselves, we must first know ourselves.

Gazing with the Eye of the Soul

Perception. It's how we live our lives. And it can be so faulty. Richard Rohr speaks of the need to see like the mystics see. He explains: In the West, religion became preoccupied with telling people what to know more than how to know, telling people what to see more than how to see (The Naked Now 33) The results? We have fewer and fewer contemplatives, real contemplatives, whose vision is formed by silence, reflection, and wisdom.

So often we make our faith a matter of believing in mysteries, and tell ourselves that it is impossible to understand, that we must just accept. Such an attitude robs us of knowing our God. Because when we believe we can't know, we don't search.

Or we make it a matter of deep theology, something academic, agonizing, only open to intellectuals. As though God were some kind of snob that only an elite few can know.

To see like the mystics sees implies stepping back, not stepping up. It requires not so much a willingness to dig into the mysteries in search of knowledge as it does a watching that discoveries a personality. And just as we form friendships over time, so too, the mystic gaze allows us to "know" God over time, and understand him with the eye of the soul rather than with the mind. For if it is true of anyone, it is true of God, to know him is to love him.

Time to Nuture the Seed

Multitasking is considered a great trait in our society. We love to spread ourselves broad and give ourselves to many things all at once. Though such a concept seems inviting, it really depletes us as persons. Because the only way you can give yourself to so many tasks at the same time is to skim over all of them with a watchful eye. Which, in effect, means you cannot really give yourself to any. You must always be on the run. And while it works well when production is the only thing at stake, such a trait destroys production in our spiritual lives.

The spiritual life needs just the opposite; it needs your whole hearted attention if you hope to acquire contemplation. Concentration isn't the key here; but watchfulness is. A person used to the busyness of multitasking will find watching and waiting almost impossible. The gears of production propel when the seed of prayer needs time to grow.

Advent is all about watching and waiting. It is about planting seeds and nurturing fragile hopes and dreams. It is about awareness and consciousness and desires. It needs us to sit with our thoughts so that we understand better not only who we are, but the great who that is within.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Self-reflection. A way to look into the soul. No personal growth, no hidden treasure can be found without it. It requires more than stillness and silence. Nor is it a habit of comparison. Rather, it is a communication of mind and soul, a quiet dialogue with the self and God, a pause that ponders more than judges.

Self-reflection makes us wiser, calmer, more assured of who we are. It makes us less judgmental because we look at both sides of a story, and know that no one is totally innocent, so no one should bear all the blame.

Self-reflection requires courage, because what we find isn't always what we want to see. But that is the glory of it; we learn the truth about ourselves, which helps us shed the oblivious "me" of our dreams.  Such shedding reveals a very organic honesty, one that  refreshes simple because it is authentic. And isn't that what we all want?