i've always liked it slow...

The snow is starting to fall in the Berkshires - again - and soon these hills will become still and seemingly tranquil for a spell. This is when the woods become desert-like to me: serene and quiet. Every morning I prayerfully read the affairs of the world in both the NY Times and Guardian before sitting in silent reflection. As Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault and Thomas Keating have taught: without nourishing the practice of quieting our inner voices, it is impossible to hear the still, small voice of God's grace. In fact, without cultivating a contemplative discipline, most of us are unable to consistently live as peace-makers in a world wrapped in brokenness. There is beauty to be discerned, to be sure, but without a way of taming our anxieties, we will be anything but a non-anxious presence thrashing about in a sea of tumult. Cynthia Bourgeault, wisdom keeper in the mystical Christian tradition, recently put it like this in a daily mailing from the Center for Contemplation and Action: 

For the better part of the past sixteen hundred years Christianity has put a lot more emphasis on the things we know about Jesus. The word “orthodox” has come to mean having the correct beliefs. Along with the overt requirement to learn what these beliefs are and agree with them comes a subliminal message: that the appropriate way to relate to Jesus is through a series of beliefs. In fundamentalist Christianity, this message tends to get even more accentuated, to the point where faith appears to be a matter of signing on the dotted lines to a set of creedal statements. Belief in Jesus is indistinguishable from belief about him. This certainly wasn’t how it was done in the early church—nor can it be if we are really seeking to come into a living relationship with this wisdom master. Jim Marion’s book returns us to the central challenge Christianity ought to be handing us. Indeed, how do we put on the mind of Christ? How do we see through his eyes? How do we feel through his heart? How do we learn to respond to the world with that same wholeness and healing love? That’s what Christian orthodoxy really is all about. It’s not about right belief; it’s about right practice.

"Putting on the mind of Christ" is one way to describe making a spiritual practice part of our life's journey. Tending to the soul, what Elizabeth O'Connor called our "inward journey," is how non-dual thinking ripens within us. It is how we move towards serenity and gravitas, spiritual maturity as well as a measure of quiet humility and humor in our everyday experiences. In my world, Bourgeault et al are right on the money when they remind us that Western Christianity in all its variations has forsaken the "mind of Jesus" and the value of "right practice" (orthopraxis) for "right belief" (orthodoxy.) Small wonder so many of us flounder within our various addictions, obsessions and anxieties. One of my favorite spiritual guides, the late Fr. Henri Nouwen, articulated his own failings in the spiritual life like this - and his words ring true for me, too.

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair. Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

Most of us have never been taught this upside-down way of opening our hearts

to the God who seeks us out by name. We have been given rules and abstract theological constructs; we have been shown how to attend worship, receive Holy Communion, and recite the proscribed payers; and we have been offered a spirituality of observation rather than participation. A way of doing church where the congregation congregates and the minister ministers. It is like professional football: we enter, we pay, we watch and then we leave. Perhaps we've been entertained in the process, but nothing really changes. There is no discipline, reflection, intimacy or contemplation involved. There are no practices to train our hearts and minds in the way of God's grace. There is no guidance in how to "enter the kingdom of God" that was at the core of Christ's ministry. And there certainly is no silence where we might learn how to distinguish our inner cacophony from God's quiet songs. Sr. Joan Chittister of the Benedictine tradition got it right when she wrote: "It is the clamor of the self that needs to be brought to quiet so that the quiet of God can be brought to consciousness."

Bourgeault goes on to quote scholar Jim Marion's insights re: the metaphorical wisdom of Jesus when he teaches: "the kingdom of Heaven is within you... and at hand." She writes:

Many Christians, particularly those of a more evangelical persuasion, assume that the Kingdom of Heaven means the place you go when you die—if you’ve been “saved.” But the problem with this interpretation is that Jesus himself specifically contradicts it when he says, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” (that is, here) and “at hand” (that is, now)... (Suggesting that) you don’t die into it; you awaken into it. Others have equated the Kingdom of Heaven with an earthly utopia. The Kingdom of Heaven would be a realm of peace and justice, where human beings lived together in harmony and fair distribution of economic assets... (but) Jesus specifically rejected this meaning. When his followers wanted to proclaim him the Messiah, the divinely anointed king of Israel who would inaugurate the reign of God’s justice upon the earth, Jesus shrank from all that and said, strongly and unequivocally, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

Jim Marion’s wonderfully insightful and contemporary suggestion is that the Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place. Marion suggests specifically that the Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus’ way of describing a state we would nowadays call “nondual consciousness” or “unitive consciousness.” The hallmark of this awareness is that it sees no separation—not between God and humans, not between humans and other humans. These are indeed Jesus’ two core teachings, underlying everything he says and does.

No separation between humans - of any race, religion, gender or experience - and no separation between the holy and our humanity. All of life, death, faith, religion, politics, prayer, culture, friendship, love, hate, war, peace, and sexuality are connected. "To everything there is a season," sings the wise elder of Ecclesiastes, "and a time for every purpose under heaven." Or to use the contemporary language of the recovery movement that celebrates a way of living through our wounds and into God's peace: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Bourgeault adds:

When Jesus talks about Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. Rather, what he has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other... There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. And as we give ourselves into one another in this fashion... The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love. 

Not long ago an acquaintance asked out loud: "What can I do to find meaning, passion and zest in my life? I am dried up. I've tried everything from education and yoga to sex, alcohol, politics and busyness. And still I wind up empty. and exhausted. Sad, afraid and hopeless. Help!" I know a lot of people hitting their 40s who are saying the same things. I believe that their words and the feelings below them are part of the way God's calls out to us in love. I believe the songs, movies, poems and TV shows of culture that are saturated in alienation are part of the way the holy is searching to bring us home, too. Like Nouwen said, "I wonder (now) whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by (God)?” Our personal stories hold the clues. Our experiences and wounds have something profound and healing to teach us. For what we know and say is not disconnected from what God is trying to tell us. But first we need to share our story - in an honest, audible and vulnerable way - with those grounded in God's love. Who have experienced similar deserts of despair - and know from the inside out that the wilderness is not the end of the journey. Sue Pickering, Anglican priest and spiritual director in New Zealand, offers a quiet and sober word of hope:

So many of us are stuck on the present day (reality) of materialism and busyness, cut off from a sanctuary of the spirit where we can be truly nurtured and grow strong. Some people may have a distant awareness of (sacred) things... Young or old, they may have heard stories of people touched by God and wondered how they might feel that same sense of connection, or whether there could be an credibility in such accounts; they may - or may not - be aware of a longing in their deepest being for something more, something other,which we might name the fullness of life in relationship with God. Others may have had some encounter with that something other but, lacking an appropriate vocabulary or a listener who could help them hold and deepen the experience and engage with the questions it raises, have let that instant of deep connection sink into the background of their minds. The more real than real becomes overlaid with the sediment of the clamoring voices and daily routines around them. (Pickering, Spiritual Direction)

Part of what I heard for myself in the silence of the Sonoran desert this past week is similar to what I sense St. Paul discovered about himself while wandering through his own wilderness. It is what I experience every time I make the effort to quietly walk through our local Wal-Mart and just listen and/or assist those bewildered folk who seem all alone and overwhelmed. It has something to do with just listening to and praying for others. St. Paul put it like this: When I was a child I acted like a child and did childish things. But now that I have moved beyond childhood, its time to listen, speak and act like an adult... who knows that three things remain: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. Simple acts of love. Tender acts of love. With time, patience and space to listen rather than judge. To keep putting on the mind of Christ and accepting his open heart rather than just my own clenched and anxious fists. St. Leonard Cohen is singing this inside my head these days...