"these are the things God has
revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep
things of God" — 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.
The first session in the series was back on September 28th. It touched on
the background and history of Contemplative prayer
(To save you the trouble of googling click here!) along with the basic
precepts of it. We also talked about some of the key players in its history and
its current state.
I myself was first introduced to the idea of contemplative prayer as a
structured part of a daily devotional practice sometime in 1996, and in the
spring of that year I attended my first silent retreat led by Cynthia
Bourgeault.
(Check her out here) I encourage you to search for her presentations on Youtube
(This is a fairly recent video)
and/or read any of her books on the subject. She is delightful and wise.
I was able to attend several of her weekend retreats in the years that
she spent in this area, as well as two led by her own mentor, Father Bruno
Barnhart. Bruno is a Camaldolese-Benedictine monk of New Camaldoli Hermitage in
Big Sur, California. He is the author of many books including
The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center.
(for a full list go here) It was from listening to him that I saw a very concrete fruit from time spent
in silence with God; he speaks in the most articulate fashion I have ever
heard. It is something to do with the time he spends not thinking and then
using the time he is with people to just be a conduit of the words that are
given to him, without all of his stuff in the way. Would that I could.
What Cynthia, and the movement she is central to, (as the founder of the
Contemplative Society -
( this is their website)) talk about is "Centering Prayer." It is what
was first called Contemplative Prayer or Silent prayer, and I am of the opinion
that it does not matter what you call it, it is that you make the attempt
to do it. My favourite poetic name for it is Practising the Presence of God.
Another book I will recommend is called just that, and the author's name
is Brother Lawrence.
(Awesome book!) It is a collection of letters he wrote to a young
monk who wondered at this man's ability to find peace and satisfaction in the
most tedious of tasks.
There were two primary factors that led to the desire to do this series at
this time. About two years ago, I started watching the growing epidemic
of addiction to electronic devices with ever-increasing unease. Even in my own
life and the lives of my nearest and dearest they fill every waking hour until
the ability to hear your own thoughts, never mind what God has to say to you,
is almost impossible.
As I dwelt in thought on this growing phenomenon, I wondered what the
antidote would be. At the same time I was also curious about the ever
increasing western fascination with Eastern traditions such as Buddhism, Zen philosophy, and yogic practices. Every magazine you open, even the health portion of
the nightly news, is full of articles proclaiming the many benefits to be found
meditating and doing yoga. It is extremely hip to be a Buddhist.
Not so much to be a contemplative Christian. Why that might be is for
another time, suffice it to say that the concept of Western Christianity seems
very out of touch with our current modern culture, and in the marketplace of
self-help, ready-made peace and inner wellness, Eastern traditions are easily
trumping anything that can be found in the mainstream Christian church.
I was fairly young when I was first drawn to the idea of silence as it
relates to prayer. It might be a very ancient path in the church, but in
my late 20s I found it to be very intriguing. Here was this time-honoured
tradition that was accessible to me. Like being told you could go back in time
and then bring something home with you and make it fit into your modern world.
It is a true reflection for me of the expression, "God - the same
yesterday, today and tomorrow."
It
was comforting to me to know that I was entering a stream of Christian
tradition that has remained essentially unchanged yet flexible from approximately
the 6th century.
It may seem a
contradiction in terms to look back at the past in order to embrace something
that I am saying can be fresh and new, but as a dear friend said, “Sometimes
reflecting on the past makes the future more clear and less frightening.
You don’t feel as alone.”
I feel that way when I know that the pioneers
of this tradition were real people just living real lives and that what they
taught wasn’t just a passing trend.
It was St. Benedict of Nursia (480 to 543)
(more about him here) that first established the
practice of Lectio Devina,
(more fully explained here) which is important to know something about because it
is this practice that contains the tradition of Contemplative Prayer as we know
it today. St. Benedict is considered the founder of western monasticism,
but it was Guigo II,
(info on him here) a Carthusian monk,who died late in the 12th century that
formalised the four-step process of Lectio Devina in a book called
The Ladder of Monks.
In Guigo's four stages one first
reads, which leads to
think about
(i.e. meditate on) the significance of the text; that process in turn leads the
person to
respond in prayer as the third stage. The fourth stage is when
the prayer, in turn, points to the gift of quiet stillness in the presence of
God, called
contemplation.
Guigo named the four steps of this "ladder" of prayer with the
Latin terms
lectio,
meditatio,
oratio, and
contemplatio.
Nowadays in most monastic houses you won't find that any one monk does these
steps in a linear fashion, but they are there for a reason. They are all
aids to getting to the heart of time with God, time in his centre with nothing
in the way. I find it helpful to go through each one of them as a way to
quiet both the body and the mind to reach a time of silence gently and not be
too overwhelmed by it. Put much more eloquently by John of the Cross:
"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and
it will be opened to you in contemplation" — The four stages of Lectio
divina as taught by John of the Cross (1542 –1591).
(click this!)
So for many centuries all of this wisdom and this very rich knowledge just
stays put in monasteries and cloisters. It is out of reach of the laity and the
everyday Christian. But around 1975, three Trappist monks begin a movement that
brings this tradition out of the monastic houses and into the church proper.
The most well known of the three is Thomas Keating (born 7th March 1923)
(Brother Keating info), known
as one of architects of Centering Prayer,
(more about that here, in particular scroll down to the heading called "Practice" and you will see 4 point set of guidlines by Basil Pennington on the physical practice of it) a contemporary method of
contemplative prayer, that emerged from St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer,
Massachusetts.
It is this new emergence and accessibility that brought people like Bruno
Barnhart and Cynthia Bourgeault into prominence in this area, and into 2013
there are new authors appearing in the New Monastic movement which looks to
cement even further this idea that we all have inherited this wisdom and it is
not for keeping in stale, old monasteries, but in our churches (no matter what
the denomination), in our homes, driving in a car, or wherever you find
yourself in need of plugging in with God rather than your cell phone. I think
that if you have found yourself drawn to some part of this, God probably
has something specific to say to you about the relationship He wants to have
with you and a devotional practice that can bear unexpected fruit for you.
It is apparent that each new generation finds something fresh and relevant
in this ancient tradition, although the language might seem intimidating at
first. We invite you to explore it with us next Saturday, October 26th when we
will talk a little bit about how to get at some of the emotional, social, or
cultural issues that keep us from being comfortable with silence, as well as
exploring how the Psalms can act as a foundation on which to place what is
sometimes an ethereal experience.
