Looking in the right place

A colleague of mine and I were recently chatting about fostering an active spirituality in our congregations. He said, "We're so busy living the life we believe we're suppose to live, we don't have (or take time) to discover the life God has already created in us." Yes, we too often live the shoulds and oughts that keep us always looking elsewhere than where the life we seek is really taking place--right here, now . . . within us.   The Holy Spirit offers an inner witness, if we know where to look.

If this is what you're looking for, I recommend a remarkable series called: Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton. It's an 8 booklet set of 8 sessions each for private or group reflection. I'm using it in my spiritual formation course at the university now and plan to use it in the congregation in the future.

The second in the series is called "Becoming Who You Already Are"--a journey into the revelation of God in us.

For those seeking to go deeper still, the author of the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing (an English spiritual director), writes a little book called, "The Book of Privy Counsel." Here's a link to a lovely new translation of both Privy and the Cloud. In the second chapter he summons us to focus not on what we are, but that we are. That is a spiritual practice with revolutionary consequences.

Here's what I've said and written recently about the merit of the 14th century for an active spirituality today.

Seek the answer here

The life of prayer carries us into the way of the Cross. It's a stripping, a nakedness, and a dying.  But who wants that?   Nobody . . . unless letting go of all this also involves a receiving.  You'll only detach yourself from what you hold dear if there's a compensating attachment to Something greater. On this Good Friday (good, because the way of death leads to Something greater, the fulness of Life itself) here's is a meditation from St. Bonaventure that invites you onto this path.  This way of "darkness, not daylight," dying, silencing, and nothingness "carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love."

If the conventional ways aren't working for you, if you know suffering and darkness, if death's come near, and what's dear to you has been pulled from your hands, if you've got more questions than answers . . . you're closer to God than you think.

Seek the answer in God's grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom, not the teacher; darkness, not daylight; and look not ot the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love. Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions, and all the fantasies of our imagination.

Do one thing

Your thoughts distract you. They lure you out of yourself and render you spiritually passive. If you don't stand at the center---your core or heart---and choose which thought to follow and why, you'll find yourself pulled in many directions at once. You'll continue to live a life that's driven by unceasing multitasking, unable to live the focused, meaningful, happy life you seek. It's the same with tasks. Do you scan your email inbox while you're talking on the phone---giving neither task the attention each deserves or requires? Do you jot notes on your to-do list while you're talking with a colleague or friend---your mind flitting to and fro, largely unconscious of what's going on right before you?

Do one thing. Choose to give full attention to a thought, task, or person. Practice watchfulness. Move toward monotasking. Ask yourself, "Am I here, now, present to what is before me?"

When you find you're not, when you become aware that you're multitasking again, simply breathe. Then follow your breath down into your heart.

When you breath---and are aware of your breathing---you come back to the present. And if you join a little prayer to your breath, you become conscious of God again. God is always near you. In fact, God is within you waiting to meet you and guide you.

Breathe and pray, and you're on your way from unceasing multitasking to the unceasing prayer which is the flame of the life you're made for (1 Thessalonians 5.17).

Prayer as Choice

Enter the stillness of interior prayer--in a crowded room or in the silence of your prayer place. Be present here and now. Present to each breath, the name and mercy of Jesus attached to each inhalation, each exhalation. To each thought that passes through the mind; present and poised so that you follow your breath and prayer rather than each maverick thought.

This practice may be new for you. A steady stream of thoughts pass through your mind. They urge you to follow wherever they, undisciplined and self-centered, want to take you. They don't care that you want to go somewhere else, do something else. They don't care that you're trying to pray and meet with God.

You might never before have realized that you have a choice when presented with this stream of thoughts. You have a choice to follow them or not. In fact, it is imperative that you choose, for choosing means that you are living from the center, your true heart, where Christ reigns within you.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Mass-Market Spirituality

In a recent New York Times editorial, Ross Douthat says:

"By making mysticism more democratic, we’ve also made it more bourgeois, more comfortable, and more dilettantish. It’s become something we pursue as a complement to an upwardly mobile existence, rather than a radical alternative to the ladder of success. Going to yoga classes isn’t the same thing as becoming a yogi; spending a week in a retreat center doesn’t make me Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux. Our kind of mysticism is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.

"What’s more, it’s possible that our horizons have become too broad, and that real spiritual breakthroughs require a kind of narrowing — the decision to pick a path and stick with it, rather than hopscotching around in search of a synthesis that “works for me.”

Douthat addresses two of the chief themes of this blog and website:

1. There's a real need to make spiritual practice accessible to ordinary people

2. These practices are best resourced from deep within a tradition

But he also issues a warning:

• Spiritual awakening and transformation takes work; in out-dated language---"discipline," even "renunciation"---or language more current, "muscle," "perseverance," or "guts."

Without such work, whatever spiritual awakening we think we're pursuing just might turn out to be little more than a fad.