All Christians are to live as saints---all are to live their lives in continuity with that long line of women and men whose witness shows us the infinite variety of paths holiness must take if we together are to enlarge the harvest of love. It is the "communion of saints," so neglected among Protestants, who not only bid us to follow, but also show us the way until we make that way our own.
The spiritual intelligence we need
Some readers have expressed interest in the line of thought in my previous post, and especially my reference to Aristotle.
I’d suggest a longer treatment of the argument in Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Slim book by a strong Catholic philosopher. About it the New York Times Book Review says, “Pieper’s message for us is plain…. The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind-all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society…. Pieper’s profound insights are impressive and even formidable.”
On the first page Pieper writes: “It is essential to begin by reckoning with the fact that one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure. That much, at least, can be learnt from the first chapter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. And even the history of the word attests the fact: for leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English ’school.’ The word used to designate the palce where we educate and teach is derived from a word which means ‘leisure’. ‘School’ does not, properly speaking, mean school, but leisure.”
This is an important philosophical critique of Modern culture and our captivity to endless doing. It plumbs the classic tradition inviting us into the spiritual intelligence necessary not just to survive but to thrive.
The best things come to those who dare
Without leisure, contemplation, reflection, and worship, society is impoverished. Aristotle commended those who dared to shift the practice of their vocation so they had space to step back and reflect; he named them vital for society. Leisure alone can sustain the wisdom we need. Hence the necessity of contemplation, rapt attentiveness, living in the present. It's a path too few really try; they assume it's too difficult. It is difficult, but the best things come only to those who dare. There is an inner geography of utter freedom. Find it.
There's a glorious desolation of your falsehoods and attachments that comes with this abandonment.
Here, in this sheer nothingness and the absolute vulnerability of prayer, God comes and fills the yielded vessel with divine love and wisdom.
The way beyond the rising hatred around us
Hatred's making a come-back. Across the board. So easy to fall in behind this new bigotry and take part. I ran across this today in my early reading--from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation:
"Those who cannot love feel unworthy, and at the same time feel that somehow no one is worthy. Perhaps they cannot feel love because they think they are unworthy of love, and because of that they also think no one is worthy. The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian response to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy--or, rather, irrespective of one's worth!"
Prayer's not a contest but a doorway
Mary Oliver's meditation on the simplicity of true prayer: Praying
It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.