an earthy contemplation...

I am not want to rise early. Beyond a doubt, I have reveled in the majesty of a sunrise. And tasted the sweetness of awe in the solitary stillness of a new day. But I rarely get myself out of bed early. I value sleeping-in more than the solitude of dawn. And, after years of ripening, have come to accept and love the fact that I am a guy who resonates more with Compline than Lauds.

For decades, this was not the case. I did not fit into the mold of those who made prayer a priority. I was soft. Lazy. Undisciplined. In one of the hundreds of books on prayer and contemplation I once owned, a story told by a Presbyterian minister stuck with me as judgment. Many cherished Mother Teresa in his church, he said, without ever emulating her. They celebrated her compassion, their hearts were moved by her selfless devotion to the wounded and outcast, most admired her spirituality, and all exalted her simple humility. "My flock loved who Mother Teresa was," he lamented, "without doing what Mother Teresa did." Whether through ignorance or sloth, he concluded, she was revered, but never copied. The late Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms used to say much the same thing about Jesus, too: we put him on a pedestal. And the reason we put things on a pedestal is that are pretty - and delicate - and irrelevant to the way we live. We like to look upon them for a spell but then put them away so we can get on with real life.

I understand the heart of these stories. I've said something similar at various times myself, too. The goal is to underscore the importance of nourishing a contemplative practice in a rich and mature manner. Fr. Richard Rohr writes:

Contemplation is an entirely different way of knowing reality that has the power to move us beyond mere ideology and dualistic thinking. Mature religion will always lead us to some form of prayer, meditation, or contemplation to balance out our usual calculating mind. Believe me, it is major surgery, and we must practice it for years to begin to rewire our egocentric responses. Contemplation is work, so much so that most people give up after their first futile attempts. But the goal of contemplation is not success, only the continuing practice itself. The only people who pray well are those who keep praying! In fact, continued re-connecting is what I mean by prayer, not occasional consolations that we may experience.

I agree. What got in my way, however, was the narrow and rigid ways that spiritual practices were often described. When prayer and the life of faith are defined primarily with athletic or military terms - running the race set before us or putting on spiritual armor for warfare - the inward/outward journey became an endurance contest. Then the way of the heart is no longer about incarnating the gift of life with joy, but a battle to subdue our bodies. When asceticism is the primary practice advocated for going deeper, these stories in combination with the commitments made by monastics of all types convinced me that I was a poser. Yes I prayed, but mostly after noon. Of course I could sit for 30 minutes of silent contemplation in Centering Prayer, but I needed a pot of tea first. And while I regularly practiced lectio divina with Scripture, poetry and texts on the inward/outward journey, more often than not it was after midnight. Or after an evening taking in jazz and talking to strangers about the communion born of music. Like Fr. Keating said about himself as a young monk: when harshness shapes the story of spirituality, it is only natural to conclude that scrupulosity is the only real way to the sacred.

Thank God I stumbled upon Rumi: he was every bit as dedicated to the sacred as St. Benedict - or Thomas Merton or Kathleen Norris - but much more earthy, funny, sensual, and incarnational. It was brother Rumi who showed me how to value the road less traveled in the contemplative world of music, feasting, solitude in the garden as well as chanted Evening Prayer, baking, friendship, dancing, poetry, presence, and laughter. These, too were honorable practices in an earthy spirituality. Stillness and solitude were still foundational, but now there was more than one path to follow. One poem puts it like this:

Where is a foot worthy to walk a garden,

or an eye that deserves to look at trees?
Show me a man willing to be thrown in the fire.

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In the shambles of love, they kill only the best,

none of the weak or deformed.

Don't run away from this dying.

Whosoever's not killed for love is dead meat.

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Tonight with wine being poured

and instruments singing among themselves,

one this is forbidden,

one thing: Sleep.

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Two strong impulses: One

to drink long and deep,

the other,

not to sober up too soon.

Wild. Bold. Sensuality in service of the Spirit's calling. Like the mature Leonard Cohen, Rumi writes:

Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?

Round-faced trouble-maker, quick to find a joke,

slow to be serious, red shirt,

perfect coordination, sly, strong muscled,

with tings always in his pocket: reed flute, 

worn pick, polished and ready for his Talent

you know the one?

Have you heard stories about him?

Pharaoh and the whole Egyptian world

collapsed for such a Joseph.

I'd gladly spend years getting word

of him - even third or fourth hand.

It is said that John Coltrane played himself clean from heroin and into a life of sobriety by immersing himself in his saxophone. In fact, his mystical quest for improvisation had something to do with the sacred sound that once brought him healing. This was contemplation by another name. St. Leonard, St. Joni, St. George Harrison, St. Lou Reed, St. Laura Nyro, St. Aretha Franklin, St. Marvin Gaye, St. Curtis Mayfield and many more all journeyed on this less traveled road of contemplation. For at it's heart, the inward journey involves practices that reconnect us to our deepest loves and wounds. Rohr writes:

Contemplation allows us to see the truth of things in their wholeness. It is a mental discipline and gift that detaches us, even neurologically, from our addiction to our habitual ways of thinking and from our left brain, which likes to think it is in control. We stop believing our little binary mind—which strips things down to two choices and then usually identifies with one of them—and begin to recognize the inadequacy of that limited way of knowing reality. Relying solely on the binary mind is a recipe for superficiality. Only the contemplative, or the deeply intuitive, can start venturing out into much broader and more open-ended horizons... Contemplation is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice.

As I have continued to explore an earthy spirituality, listening to the wisdom of

the seasons has become vital. In this morning's Brain Picking, Maria Popova tells of Pico Iyer's sublime reflection on autumn. If winter is for "tending the inner garden," offering a stark contrast to "the electricity of spring... What, then, of autumn — that liminal space between beauty and bleakness, foreboding and bittersweet, yet lovely in its own way?"

Perhaps, between its falling leaves and fading light, it is not a movement toward gain or loss but an invitation to attentive stillness and absolute presence, reminding us to cherish the beauty of life not despite its perishability but precisely because of it; because the impermanence of things — of seasons and lifetimes and galaxies and loves — is what confers preciousness and sweetness upon them. (Iyer writes: "We cherish things, Japan has always known, precisely because they cannot last; it’s their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty. Beauty, the foremost Jungian in Japan has observed, “is completed only if we accept the fact of death.” Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth." (Brain Pickings @ https://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/ pico-iyer-autumn-light-gordon-hempton-harry-clarke-poe?e=d53a9 10493 )

I am struck by the way sensing the air of autumn on my face becomes an act of contemplation. The sun feels different in October than March. So does the wind. The air smells different, too. As I was raking leaves to add to our compost this afternoon I was keenly aware that I was standing in-between the season of vibrant life and jarring death. An extended meditation on the cold darkness that is coming, but has not yet arrived. The hills are mostly bar now. The ground is muddy and covered in pine needles, too. When we sense these realities in stillness, it becomes as Popova writes where, "all eternity is in that moment." More than many others, this tune by Leonard Cohen, "Slow," speaks to being still as well as sensual in the heart of the Spirit. As he did so often, St. Leonard

cuts to the chase and gets it right.