What does contemplative mean?

The other day someone said to me, "I hear this word, 'contemplative' often these days; it's associated with spiritual practices. And it seems like I'm supposed to know what it means. But I don't, and since everyone else seems to know, I'm often embarrassed to ask. So, I'm asking you, What does contemplative really mean anyway?"

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Contemplation . . . not just for animals.

Contemplative spiritual practices have a rich history across religious traditions.  They are not something esoteric or woo-woo, but in the best sense of the word are immensely practical for daily life.

Here's my little definition:

"Contemplative" comes from two Latin words, con and tempore.  Con can mean "with".  And tempore is the word from which we get "temporary", "temporal", "temperature", and so on.  It means "time" or "moment".  So con-tempore means "with the moment".  Living contemplatively means learning how to live with ourselves right here, right now--fully present to who we are in this time and place, and to the world right around us.  Doing so is an art that transforms the way we live, love, and experience the gift of our "one, wild, and precious life" (Mary Oliver).

Honestly, most of us spend most of our time everywhere else but where we are.  What I mean is that, we live much of our lives north of the neck, that is, in our heads; 98% of the time we're thinking about the past, wondering about the future, or preoccupied in some other way. 

It's really unusual to be focused here and now.  But here and now is all we've got, really.  Being here, present now doesn't mean we forget the past or ignore the future.  But it means that we don't neglect the present.  And so, when we get to the future, we'll be there, not somewhere else. 

What this means, for example, is that we look the other person in the eye when we're talking with them.  And that changes the whole encounter.  We smell our coffee.  We taste our food.  And revel in these simple gifts.

Think about the last time you felt someone was really present to you and how you experienced their presence.  Think about the time you felt really focused--like your energy was fully concentrated on what you were doing.  Such moments are rare, but when we're there we feel really, really alive.

Contemplative practices (like meditation, Centering Prayer, or yoga for example), teach us how to be more fully present so that we live life more fully.  

Contemplative practices root us in daily life.  

Long ago, I read this telling saying in Thomas Merton's anthology called The Wisdom of the Desert (I don't have the little book here where I'm writing, so this comes from memory): 

If you see a monk trying to climb into heaven, grab him by the heel and pull him back to earth. 

Contemplative practices are proven ways to keep us connected to the earth and therefore to keep us more fully human and, therefore, more fully alive to the Divine.

Summer reading to help keep you anchored in these tumultuous times

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Last Sunday, in full view of the unrelenting violence, the escalating polarization, and in light of the vision offered by the church's lectionary readings of the day (Amos 8.1-12 and Luke 10.38-43), I reflected publicly on our need to remain anchored, rather than agitated in a world awash with worry and fear.  

There is a "soul to politics" (Jim Wallis), an "inner life" to our civil involvement (Rebecca Solnit).  And when we are tossed about in the flotsam of a swiftly moving current of negativity, fear, and anger, we become part of the problem rather that part of the solution--the work of healing and wholeness that's so necessary (and which, I believe, is the primary vocation of religious people today--our ancient traditions all point to this, despite the pervasion of these traditions by fundamentalism).  

Anchored, we can help anchor others.  Agitated, we amplify the agitation around us that's fueling the expanding fire of chaos and crisis.

Many have asked me for a bibliography of the two books I mentioned in my sermon on Sunday.  And so I've put together a list, not only of those two books, but also of a few others that are a grounding force for me and, I hope, for others.  May they help us find ways to live hopefully and healingly in the midst of the daunting challenges before us all.

1. Rebecca Solnit.  Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.  A short and brilliant field guide for activists.  The introduction and afterward are new to this most recent edition of the book, first published in 2003.

2. Krista Tippett.  Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.  Krista hosts a weekly audio journal.  She interviews the most interesting persons on the planet and it probably the most curious and engaging interviewer around.  This book is her gleanings for a decade or more of interviews.  

3. Thomas Merton.  The Wisdom of the Desert, introductory essay.  This short essay is one of the most important visions for how religious people can find practices that sustain the kind of life needed in tumultuous times.  I've returned to the final paragraphs of this essay over and over since I read it years ago.  He says, "We must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging to disaster." In case you think this is more of the kind of handwringing we hear in fundamentalist circles (both religious and political), it's not.  Nor is it another example of religious escapism.  Rather, it's a clarity around which he envisions and world-embracing ethic of redemptive involvement.

4. Thich Nhat Hanh.  True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart.  This trim little book from the Buddhist tradition can keep us grounded, merciful, compassion, and utterly present to what matters most in human relationships.  

5. The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel.  A new translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher.  This is my go-to book for anchoring me in Christian contemplative practice and union with Christ.  A fourteenth century invitation to the spiritual life.  Butcher's new transitional is crisp, engaging, and conversational.  One of the few books I'd want with me if I were stranded on a desert island.  

The kind of new stories (of the universe) we need and why

So, I've been reading Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, John Muir.  They give shape to my deep sense that our story of our planet must be updated, as well as our theological reflection, to match what we now know about the universe.  We are terribly behind (especially in religious circles) and still read our sacred texts from inside an outdated cosmology--as if heaven is up, hell (whatever that is) is down, and this flat earth is merely a staging ground for what matters in the afterlife.  This means that earth is incidental and can be used and abused because, in the end, matter doesn't matter.  

Berry has said that "when religion lost contact with the presence of the divine throughout the natural world, the deepest sources of religious experience was lost.  Human control over the functioning of the life systems of the planet became the ideal to be sought.  Nothing was to escape human dominance."  He goes on to say about Matthew Fox that "Matt Fox is one of those persons in more recent times who seeks to bring back this sense of the Great Cosmic Liturgy that has been sustained over the centuries by the indigenous peoples, while the 'civilized' persons of the world have abstracted themselves into staid liturgies that have lost their primordial vitality."  

Matt Fox surely does this, but so did Muir a century ago.  Muir's break with the rigid Calvinism of his Scottish Presbyterian heritage, and his plunge into the natural world as alive with Spirit is a window into the kind of recovery we need.  Brian Swimme also points this way with his marvelous tale of the origins of the universe.  All this needs a more robust theological integration into more mainstream religious thought and practice.  (And this is exactly the kind of work that John Philip Newell is up to today)

Here's a story audio/visual story that invites us toward this newness.  

I wonder how religious people, particularly Christians (because they're my tribe) can find ways of creating new liturgies that involve people today in ways that orienting them to the universe so that we can be more present to the sacredness of the earth and our place in it.     

God and suicide: a personal encounter

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Sunday, June 19th, at Davis Community Church, I offered a public meditation on discouragement, depression, and our journey into wholeness. It was based on the narrative of Elijah the prophet's deep dive into depression in 1 Kings 19.

In the sermon I mention my own encounter with deep depression and the suicide of my dear friend, the Rev. Jamie Evans in 2010.  I also mentioned the raw sermon I preached the Sunday after his death. A number of people have asked about that sermon, "God and Suicide: A Personal Encounter," based on Luke 13.31-35.

You can read more about it here on this blog with links to the audio sermon (preached at University Presbyterian Church, Fresno, California where I was pastor). Later, I edited the audio sermon (strictly oral sermons don't make for very good written ones, so it needed some work).

I post this again for all who seek some spiritual perspective on the trauma and tragedy of suicide, and strategies for helping others (and themselves) through an honest and open encounter with emotional trauma, dark emotion, and depression.  In this violent world, such awareness and advocacy is more important than ever.  

The comments attached to this post are from the original post in 2010.  

Download the written sermon here: God and Suicide: A Personal Encounter

On this Father’s Day: give your child something worth living for

Reposted from a popular post I published two years ago:

“I’m twenty-two," a young adult told me this week, "and I have nothing to live for”.  It’s the kind of thing pastors, as stand-in fathers, sometimes hear from kids who don’t dare utter such things to their own dads.  It wasn’t the voice of resignation; it was the voice of despair.  It was the voice of one “should” piled up on top of another, burying this young person in shame and paralyzing fear.     

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Image by Paul Benns

It’s Father’s Day, and around the country kids are supposed to tell their dads how grateful they are for what their dads have done for them.

For many, that’s a tough sell.  Their dads simply haven’t done for them what they really needed.  For others, dads have done to them what they really didn’t need or want.  There are, of course, those who can recognize in their flawed and fallible fathers the good that’s come into their lives through what those fathers intended, and sometimes what they never intended at all—the good that came despite the struggle those dads had trying to be dads.  

Frankly, there’s at least as much pain on this day of national sentimentalism as there is pleasure.  But mostly there’s just a lot of confusion:  dads feeling pressure to live up to some vision of fatherhood that simply evades them.  Kids of every age feeling pressure to say things that just aren’t fully true.  Both dads and kids feeling that there’s something missing in all this.  Or maybe, there’s something, some goodness, that’s not missing at all . . . something that lies hidden, buried, yet available beneath all the layers of expectation and yearning.  

I’m a father to five adult kids, their partners, and two grandchildren.  Two of those five kids are my flesh and blood.  Three share DNA with another father.  It’s a great privilege to “father” all of them and to share three of them with another man who’s doing his best to “father” too.

It’s not easy work.  We’ve both dragged our respective kids through failed marriages and all the pain and bewilderment that a broken family thrusts upon our kids.  None of us—dads and kids—signed up for the pain.  But pain is what we’ve lived through.  Healing too, of course.  

Maybe to some people my history disqualifies me from giving advice about fathering.  But honestly it’s those who’ve failed and gotten back up again who are most able to articulate the kind of wisdom I’ve needed.  Those who know only success live in a world that’s unfamiliar to most of the rest of us.  

So, as a father who’s made plenty of mistakes, I’ll offer some unsolicited advice to fathers on this Father’s Day.  Maybe, hopefully, there’s a little hard won wisdom in it.

Here it is: 

Dads, stop trying so hard.

Stop crafting grand visions.

Stop shaming and scolding.

Stop being the expert.

Stop lecturing.

Of course, kids will need boundaries.  They’ll need guidance.  They’ll need words.  But before you set those boundaries, give that guidance, or speak your advice, establish the firm, unshakeable ground beneath their feet from which they can rise into the beauty and power of their own originality.  Ground yourself to a goodness that’s always available to you (and your kids), but that’s hidden and obscured when you’re pushing, prodding . . . talking.

Instead:

Dads, love your children.  

Unconditionally.

Without judgment.

Without imposition of your own agendas for their lives.

This is so freakin' hard.  I get that.  

But without this ground beneath them (and you), all your boundaries and visions and words ring hollow, tinny, even ridiculously unwelcome.  But if that sense of unconditional, nonjudgmental love is firmly in place you’ll be able to do the other things—this time because your kids have asked for all that.  And when they actually ask, what you have to offer can make all the difference in the world.

Your unconditional love gives your kids something worth living for because it helps your children find what they are made for, and to find it on their own.  They will need your love to hold them in that empty and scary space of self-discovery.  Your love will help them know they don’t have to hurry; they don’t have to be perfect; they can make mistakes—even colossal ones.  

To lots of dads, all this may sound terribly “soft”.  But in my experience, it is my embrace, my deep look into their frightened and often insecure eyes, my availability at the end of the phone (or via text or instant messenger, even at 2:00am), my lifetime of experience and a sense of humor that helps them not take things too seriously, my listening ear (and the swallowing of my words). . . all of these, offered with a deep sense of my unconditional love, establishes the firm ground from which my children can find a way to create a life that is fully and authentically theirs, and not some projection of my own needs and wants, my fears and neuroses upon them.

The truth is, some fathers don’t have a lot to give to their children materially.  But every father can love.  And that love, even offered by a father who has nothing else, is a wealth, unimaginable.  

Love gives us all something worth living for.  

And this is a truth religious people—we Christians, in particular—are supposed to know, and live, by heart.