1. Always Beginning!

For all of us there is a first step, beginning if you will, in our walk toward contemplation. Many of us make a diligent effort to move forward in our prayer, but for others of us, contemplation comes as a spontaneous experience and persists with very little effort. Wherever we find ourselves on this journey, we had a starting point, a beginning. Most persons who are on the way experience a strangeness in their early days on the path. Each day it is the same; we are beginning again. Merton has a strong word for us all. He says that “we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life.” So if we feel rather odd in our efforts, if it seems that we are getting nowhere and making no progress on our journey, maybe it is because we are beginners and always will be.

The word, beginner, floods my mind with numerous images – the first time to ride a bike, the first day at school, the first solo drive in a car -- to name a few. The things that I recall as “beginner experiences” in the spiritual life include: saying “yes” to Christ, offering a prayer in the hearing of others, and speaking of my faith to a friend. Most of us have memories of these firsts. These first acts form a pattern to which we have added new insights and practices.

We are painfully aware of our inexperience and ineptness as a beginner in the practice of faith; yet we realize it is the only way it could be. But in contemplation it bothers us that we can never advance beyond being a beginner. Each day we are beginning again, nothing stored up from the day before, everything is fresh and new. To be a beginner in riding a bike or giving a Christian witness does not attack our self-esteem because we can develop a degree of excellence in riding or sharing our faith. Not so with contemplation. Contemplation does not lend itself to techniques, formal plans, or well-marked paths.

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Excellence must not even be a goal for us, so faithfully we begin again each day. There is no way to take charge of our contemplation. If we could master contemplation, it would not be contemplation of the God revealed in Jesus, nor the God of infinite mystery. Any so-called competence in contemplation would be a god of our own creation and a prayer directed by our own efforts. The very idea of maturity or perfection violates the practice of contemplative prayer. True contemplation follows the path of submission and surrender, the way of unknowing and of trust. If we ever become contemplatives, it will be by “beginning again,” each day a different step, each day a surprise and each day an adventure along an unmarked path.

Let us then content ourselves with being beginners in the art of contemplation, for that is truly what we are and what we will be for the rest of our lives. I find an innocent joy in being a beginner. I’m not expected to be perfect. I do not know the way because there is no way. What freedom comes with beginning the practice of silence and stillness with no goals, no agenda, and no expectations! Because I am a beginner I do not know where the first step will lead me. As a beginner, I am curious about what lies ahead; but it remains hidden. I anticipate the marvelous adventure before me, but I neither design it or control my steps. I enter a world of wonder and enchantment where everything is upside down.

As I start in earnest my contemplation of God, I accept my status as a beginner – I do not know where I am going or how to get there. I am free to begin again and again. I am on a road that leads to its own destination. I am a beginner, always beginning again! Will you join me on this journey? I invite you also to become a beginner on this journey to nowhere.

2. Hearing without Listening

Most of all the contemplative “listens in silence.” In my efforts to walk the contemplative path I find that I listen at different levels. I usually begin by listening to my body – aware of tensions, pain and tightness. Awareness often dissolves the stress. Then, I listen to the buzz in my mind – the stirring of ideas and clamoring of distracting thoughts. I try hard to get still deep down inside and surrender myself. I know that trying too hard does not help me on the way to stillness. As I cease my

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efforts, I am often taken to a deeper silence – mind alert, heart open and spirit receptive to GodSpeech. Most often this attentive listening is rewarded with a greater silence. Silence itself becomes a language. The silence is wordless speech that enlarges my spirit and deepens my conviction of being clothed in the mystery that I cannot define or direct. Most of the time I hear nothing from God in this deep silence. I have no complaint; I have listened with ‘unhearing’ ears -- no sounds, words or discernable intuitions.

Yet, when I emerge from the deep silence, something comes with me. Merton suggests that “we most truly begin to hear God when we have ceased to listen.” Often I return to the landscape of daily life with a stronger sense of peace; I have a conviction that I belong in this world and that I am part of a purpose larger than myself. Are these transformations indicative of God’s work of recreation?

Also, after an encounter with the deep silence, when I am least expecting it, a clear communication forms in my mind. This revelation in my heart assures me that I am not alone or inspires me to take the next step or provides a directive for my life. Yesterday these words flowed gently into my mind after an engagement with the silence: “Trust in my unfailing presence!” Sometimes I hear when I’m not particularly listening. It seems that small changes are occurring in me as I daily “begin again” to follow this ancient way of being before God: a deeper awareness of God’s presence, a gentle silencing of unbecoming speech, and a kinder, more generous spirit.

3. No Logic in Prayer

Contemplation does not follow the laws of logic; it is not a practice or a position or a relationship that we can blueprint and reproduce. The deeper experiences of prayer occur in the sphere of unknowing and in the arena of impotency. The merciful God does what we cannot do and the changes gently emerge in our consciousness. Who can explain how God touches the human spirit and transforms our desires and reactions? For a good many years, I had no power to cope with death. Since my childhood, the awareness of finitude, combined with a shattering sense of eternity, plagued me with a joy-shattering torment. When I was about sixty-five years of age, I awakened to a freedom from this angst. This transformation came as a gift without my consciously asking for it

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or recognizing exactly when it arrived. Suddenly, I realized I no longer feared death or the boundlessness of eternity, and I had a growing anticipation of the next phase of being.

With this freedom came a deep consciousness of peace. Inside the boundaries of that peace, I confronted a puzzle. For some reason living forever did not matter, it was no longer a goal! This freedom sharply contrasted with my early motivation for being a Christian – to go to heaven, to have eternal life and to be delivered from hell. If God has a place for me in the Eternal Scheme of Things, I will be grateful, but the anxiety of not being has left me, and I experience a freedom previously unknown. I found or was given (I’m not sure which) a peace with not being.

As I have continued on this path, it has begun to appear to me that the lines that separate good and bad, true and false, right and wrong have blurred. I seem to intuit life as a whole rather than splitting it into pieces. Distinctions that I once made clearly and decisively changed into varying degrees of good or evil or opposites held together by a dialectical tension. My spirit tends more toward inclusion than toward exclusion, toward one rather than the many.

The lines between Christ and other faiths seem to be fading. I have no inclination to discount Jesus Christ. I am a Christian and will die a believer in him as the Son of God, but I do not condemn all other religions. God is present and at work among all people and people groups. I believe Christ is present incognito inviting all persons into wholeness and fulfillment whether or not they know his name.

Observing these once clear demarcations beginning to crumble brings with it a feeling of risk and subtle disease; this experience nearly always accompanies profound transformations. The life energy flowing through all of us and within all of us creates changes, and changes bring new ways of seeing our world and participating in it. Without growth and change, life petrifies. I can only believe Christ leads me down this pathway into this transition.

4. Scriptural Foundation

In my wondering about the validity of waiting in silence before God, this statement came to me: “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (I Cor. 2:10) It is not my spirit that searches out the

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depths of God, but God’s Spirit seeks out the depths in me. The Spirit searches both human depths and Divine depths. Paul wrote about the wisdom of God, which earthly rulers do not perceive, and we recognize this wisdom because the searching Spirit gives it to us. Paul speaks of wisdom as he speaks of mystery, the unfathomable mystery of God. Mystery blends with wisdom in Paul’s understanding of the Spirit’s revelation of this incomprehensible God.

On one occasion the divine appears in the mighty acts of creation and the beauty of nature. Doubtless the Spirit selects multiple ways to unveil the divine mystery, and one of those would be through the contemplation of God. When we enter into the realm of the sacred, it is the Spirit that invites us. As our host, the Spirit shows us what we have not seen, nor thought, nor felt or even imagined. The One who knows my depths as well as the depths of God brings us into a relationship with this unimaginable God that is beyond understanding. Through the agency of the Spirit we are ushered into a communion with God that we do not achieve because it is unachievable, yet it is given freely.

This communion with God occurs in the silent depth beyond the reach of awareness. The human spirit may even feel asleep while the Spirit operates with absolute precision. Generally, we cannot name the Spirit’s action nor can we see immediate changes. We do have a growing confidence that the Spirit is transforming our consciousness, which is manifest in our choices and responses.

The weakness of our humanity keeps seeking for evidence that we are actually meeting God. We are driven to look for signs of the divine presence in the feeling of peace and tranquility. We hope that little impulses to change indicate the work of the Spirit. These signs may actually provide exactly what we long for, but the time comes when we are stripped of signs and thrust into the land of “unknowing,” and it is here we learn the way of love that leans on naked faith. Naked faith means that we believe God in the absence of signs, wonders, miracles, and consolations. The searching Spirit seems to be thoroughly familiar with this landscape.

5. Christ the Way

Anyone can meditate on signs, light or beauty, but Christians enter into the Sacred Realm through the agency of Jesus Christ. Though it is a stumbling block to many, Jesus did say: “I am the way, the truth

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and the life.” Without pronouncing judgment upon those who walk other pathways, Jesus Christ stands before the Christian as the way into God’s presence – Way, Truth, Life, Door, Light, Resurrection. Even when making this claim, I do not imply that Christ is not standing before those who walk a different path or that he is not present to those who use different words and symbols to speak of their journeys.

Christians experience him as WAY when in Bethany he raises Lazarus. To those standing by he says, “I am the resurrection…” Through his spiritual presence he raises us who are unconscious of God into a living awareness of the divine in our midst and in our hearts. So our imagination shifts from thinking of him as resurrection to experiencing him as resurrection -- being raised into the presence of God. When we enter into the Father’s presence, the son accompanies us. He escorts us into the presence of God.

Under the metaphor of Light, Christ illuminates our pathway, directs us into contemplation: “I am the light of the world; those who follow me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12) Or, in another place John says, “God is light…” (I John 1:5) In our meditation we follow Christ into the light of God, whose very being is Light. And, the psalmist presses the metaphor when he utters the prayer, “With you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” (Ps. 36:9) In contemplation we abide in the luminous presence as it bathes and cleanses our whole being.

In contemplation Christians see God through the lenses of Christ, and this seeing becomes “unseeing” in the presence of God’s blazing light. Because he is our guide we do not get lost in the darkness or fall into the abyss. In him we are secure as we seek the depths of the mystery through the guidance of Jesus Christ who is our principle of discernment in the midst of our shifting experience.

6. The Guide

Contemplation is not discovering a way to God; it is being taken by the hand and guided to a place that lies outside our sphere of knowledge. For the beginner no insight holds greater significance than the recognition that we do not know the way into God’s immediate presence. God takes us by the hand and leads us in the darkness by a way that we do not know and, therefore, could never hope to travel

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apart from this experienced guide. Without the assistance of this guide we would find ourselves hopelessly in the darkness. We cannot ‘learn’ the way of contemplation through our accumulated experience or even a discerning memory. God wills each entry into the Sacred to be a unique experience and we cannot make our own rules, lay out the proper disciplines or find a human director to show us the way. God alone leads to God!

The God of Mystery does guide us. When we are least expecting it, a hand reaches out of the darkness to gently guide us; the breath of holy desire breathes upon us; and, though we cannot see the path, we believe that our feet are traveling on the right road as the Way keeps opening before us and through the beckoning of our Guide we make the right turns.

This hand that guides us to the place of sublime intimacy with God unites our “soul image” and our “God-hunger.” If we knew the way, we would likely run past our Guide or dismiss him. We would seek our heart’s desire without regard for our dependence on the Guide and would end up following our way instead of God’s way. Even though we may have walked a long way in the same direction, we have accumulated no wisdom that will take us to the place to which we long to go.

Every day marks a new beginning and even the knowledge of yesterday, like the manna in the desert, has begun to grow mold. We have no good choice but to follow our guide and to eat the bread of endurance, which is received on each day’s leg of the journey. Surely our Guide will steady us when we stumble and pick us up when we fall.

When we are guided by God, we have no way of knowing if we are arriving at our destination because we do not know the destination, nor do we know the landscape along the way. Because we are traversing new territory, we implicitly trust the hand of the Guide.

7. A Contemplative Orientation

There is a difference between being a contemplative and having a contemplative outlook. Merton says that not everyone can be a contemplative but everyone can have a contemplative outlook. Some people, like monks, who have been called to the life of prayer spend much of their day in the silence. Daily they are drawn deeper and deeper into the mystic way until they find a unity with God that enables them to live

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constantly in a profound awareness of the divine. Being a contemplative is not a vocation that we can take upon ourselves. According to Merton the real contemplatives will always be rare.

Though pure contemplatives may be few, many, if not all, can have a contemplative outlook and learn to be receptive to contemplative experience. All of us can enter into a new way of “seeing” that changes our perspective. This way of “seeing” the world and one’s life in it originates at the same source -- the Divine Presence. We make the journey into silence and find ourselves in ‘the cloud of unknowing,’ but we inevitably return to the world of sound and things and people with an altered consciousness. The personal awareness, previously dominated by images, rituals and logic, no longer possesses the old certitude. This potent way of ‘unknowing’ subverts the old way of knowing and opens the soul to new dimensions of the divine mystery – the pervasive infinite manifestation of the invisible God in each moment, plus the manifestation of the unmanifest mystery of God.

Two strong influences shape the contemplative outlook: the mystery of God manifest in the present moment and the unmanifest God, which is hidden in the same moment. The contemplative outlook embraces the present moment as God’s gift and seeks to realize the presence of God in everything; this outlook also wonders at the divine mystery. The contemplative outlook on occasion delves beneath the surface to engage the unmanifest mystery, only to return with greater sensitivity to the manifest mystery seen and heard and felt in the moment.

By contrast the true contemplative relentlessly casts off all attachments as he or she travels the way of unknowing into the silence where words are seldom heard and images fade into the unmanifest mystery, into the Void of the Holy. The contemplative possesses the vision, follows the intuitions of the Spirit and engages the Self beyond the self in ways that resist conceptualization but are, nevertheless, real.

8. Prayer of the Heart

Contemplation is praying from the heart; it is giving expression to the deepest within us to that which is ultimately beyond us. The prayer of the heart consists in that ever-present yearning for God – to be present to God, to realize God, to be known by God.

In my earlier days I took seriously Paul’s admonition to pray without

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ceasing. My efforts consisted of thinking about God at least every quarter hour or recalling God when I felt the tiny, aluminum cross that I carried in my pocket. Then I learned the Jesus Prayer and I repeated it: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” This type of disciplined prayer was a way of seeking to be with God through the medium of words and images. I invested quite a bit of effort in praying without ceasing.

I could never say that these simple disciplines held no value for my spiritual growth and my learning to pray. They were my best efforts to be faithful to God, to place God always before my face, but my prayer was with too much effort. I sought to be near to God and my vigorous attempts resembled panting more than slow, measured, natural breathing.

Finley’s depiction of the manifestation of God in the present moment opens me to an awareness of the Presence in a simpler, less effortful way. To come to the present moment, to be present to this moment with a sharpened awareness, enables me to realize that God is happening to me now.

In this present moment I turn toward the desire of my heart, I listen for the prayer that Christ is forming within me or I simply become inwardly still, recollected. The consciousness of God and my desire for God become my prayer. In this prayer of the heart I find a wonderful, gentle freedom like a bird flying from an open hand or a stream of water cascading down a hillside. I am not seeking to pray beyond myself nor above myself but from within myself. (Psalm 131) I am letting the prayer that I already am happen. In this prayer I am neither seeking to get favors or gifts; nor do I seek to change my circumstances. I am praying myself, praying my true identity by acknowledging the Spirit’s prayer within me. When I pray in this fashion my spiritual life is not separated from my natural life; they are one.

Is this not the prayer of the heart expressing our identity with God?

Is not it “the deepest ground of our identity with God”?

9. A Gift of the Prayer

The prayer of the heart lies on the border of contemplation; it draws on the simplicity and sincerity of the heart’s deepest longing. This prayer is nothing more than spontaneous desire directed toward God.

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But in a richer, fuller sense, the prayer of the heart, which we notice as a God-inspired yearning, eventually draws us beyond feelings, words and human understanding; it is a special gift. Like all gifts this one, too, “should never be taken for granted.”

My earliest efforts at prayer focused on holding an image of God in my mind. I felt the need for a picture of the One I addressed in prayer. The images arose like seed from the soil and rotated in my mind cultivated by a gentle hand – Father, King, Lord, Mother. The character of Christ, as concretely manifest in his life and teaching, personified “God with us.” Christ was transparent to the divine presence and permitted it to shine through him without distortion. Eventually, I discovered that the images, which had become the furniture filling my conceptual living room, did not evoke the prayer of the heart. To pray with the heart does not even require images; it is face-to-face without an image or a representation of any kind. Prayer dissolves into a profound communion with the Invisible.

The prayer that flows spontaneously from the heart surpasses all images. Though images may serve us well for a large part of the journey, there comes a time to relinquish our favorite concepts and pictures. These mental emblems should not be discounted to others or withheld from them, but like crutches, there will come a time to discard them. The prayer of the heart arises through spontaneous acts of Grace. Gifts cannot be demanded or they cease to be gifts. Gifts are chosen by the Giver and are distributed at the Giver’s discretion. The prayer of the heart is such a gift from God; the prayer of the heart is to be received as a gift from the Giver without taking either for granted. Eventually the prayer of the heart does not feel like prayer at all because the Other has become part of us; God has given Godself to us.

10. Simplicity and Sincerity

Though the pathway of contemplation may be obscure to the casual observer and indescribable to all but poets, simplicity and sincerity mark its boundaries. The contemplative attitude begins with sincerity; it has been stripped of all sham and pretense because it has seen how masks, calculated acts, and shortcuts only deceive the pretender, no one else, and surely not God. The dark night of faith also has stripped the heart of illusions so that it no longer seeks or wishes false fulfillment. Without

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a charade the heart expresses its deep longing for God like a child pleading with her mother. If the response to our longing tarries, the contemplative, like a mature adult seasoned by suffering, does not worry or become discontented. Rather, the longing heart patiently awaits an answer and if none is forthcoming, it contentedly waits. Having asked before and sought its own answer, it has learned in the dark to trust the answer given, even if it is sheer silence. Knowing its desires and God’s loving care, the sincere heart does not fear delay, which may, in fact, be God’s answer.

Most of us who have any sincerity at all have wondered about the meaning of simplicity. What is it? Perhaps it is a combination of simple words like “I love you” or “Your will be done.” Even simpler, perhaps it is a profound inner ache for God, a pain deeper than words, arising from the place where words originate. But could simplicity also be like a cat stretched out in the sunshine, simply sitting or lying in the light of the divine presence? Is not sitting or lying or waiting less complex than longing or speaking? Make me like the relaxed, contented cat that soaks up the sun, the one that “is” in the light without much bother about it. The psalmist surely knew this experience when he wrote, “like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” (Ps. 131:2)

Sincerity and simplicity are not virtues that we possess; they are what we are. We cannot possess sincerity; if we possessed it, quite quickly it would become an instrument for manipulation. Rather, we are sincere; it is woven into the fabric of our being; it is not a detachable trait used at will. These twin virtues become a part of us; they can never become strategies or techniques. Being sincere and simple is just the way we are and it is just the way that contemplation is done.

11. Unconditional Surrender

At some point on the pathway to contemplation, each voyager confronts a narrow gate with a low overhang; he or she must bend low and turn sidewise to squeeze through or turn back. Bending low and turning sidewise point to unconditional and total surrender to God; it implies an acceptance of our life and everything in it. These images reveal a deep truth, yet in our struggle to hear this truth, it is with great difficulty that we learn to open ourselves to it. In other situations

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people might ask, “Does embracing one’s situation as the will of God mean that our circumstances are always God’s will?” For example, does this mean that God has placed the poor in their helplessness? Does it mean that God creates deformed babies? Does God will persons who are alienated from power to accept their plight without question? This demand cut most deeply into me at the time of my divorce. Did God intend me to stay in an unworkable marriage? When I was struggling over the decision to ask her to marry me, I turned to the scripture for guidance. One morning I read, “You shall not take a wife in this place.” These words went unheeded. Did I disobey God in taking a wife? Or, would I have honored God more fully by having spent my life in a hell of conflict? If the answer is “Yes,” I have come too far to go back. That bridge has been crossed. Can I even now embrace my life as given and willed by God? Or, can I believe that God rescued me from the pain of a bad marriage and set me in a new place?

For today to become the day of New Beginning, I must begin with who I am and where I am in the unfolding of my life. This means that today I accept the role in my church as given by you. It also means that I accept all my relationships with generous and committed friends as your gifts. My wife also is your gift along with our children, resources, and opportunities. If I am to enter a life of contemplation I must realize that my state of soul, with its “unknowing” and my life with its joy and pain, is willed by you in this moment.

I am where I belong. My life is what it is. I can only pray, “God, I humbly surrender to you in the varied aspects of my life.” It is this person and this life you have willed, even though my doubts war against the simple trust. Yet, as I live in this present moment of joy I have no knowledge of what the next moment will bring. I believe that it can bring nothing that is not willed for me.

12. Who Am I?

I am a word spoken by God, but I am not the first word. Of the first word there is no recorded history; it was even spoken before the utterance of “Let there be…” The first word, this primal word spoken before the beginning of the ages, was the WORD of God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was face to face with God and the Word was God.” (John 1: 1-1)

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I am not a primal word because the logos was from the beginning. He was of the very essence of God and indeed was the first Word. All things came into being through him and apart from him nothing had being at all. In him was life and the life in him sparked light in all persons he made.

God spoke this primal Word and it has echoed from eternity to the present and this Word reverberates in me and expresses itself through me. I am not the primal WORD but only an echo.

Words name things, they express actions, and they also describe and define. I am noun-like in that I am a thought of the Creator. Following hard upon this claim, it must be said that every other person is likewise a tangible word. If I want to know God, to contemplate God, I must listen to the unique revelation in these words both in myself and in others.

Verbs are words, too. Verbs express action. The action words of God do not remain statically locked in cages, they move. These acting words fill the universe with motion, energy and change. The verbs of God’s vocabulary include hands-on production, the imaginative construal of meanings and expressions of creativity. I am a verb of God when I become part of God’s action in the world. (All of us are actions; we simply do not recognize it.)

In this world of incarnate words every utterance modifies all other living words. Is this a reason why we are admonished to love one another? So bonded together all these sounds express the cacophony of God resounding throughout the universe.

And, what does this mean for our contemplation? Could it possibly mean that eventually we will live in awareness of being expressions of God?

13. Hidden in Nothingness

All contemplation aims for the glory of God. The glory of God flows from the true Self into the whole person affecting our whole demeanor. Embracing this Self demands more than knowing about it or viewing reflections of it in the eyes of others or sorting out its misdirected dreams and wishes. These illusions will deter us from the recovery of our true Self and the pure worship of God and becoming embodiments of the Divine Spirit.

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The search for this elusive identity faces the persistent challenge of forging a way through the darkness to find the Self that lies in obscurity in the depth of the soul! Our search is hampered by both our ignorance of this Self and our fear of discovering it. Our various false selves in their substitute roles effectively conceal who we truly are. The popular culture also obscures the knowledge of this Self; it continuously broadcasts false images of the Self as the seeker for safety, security, recognition or godlike autonomy. These distorted images confuse the true seeker and divert the quest for authenticity to a surface fulfillment.

In addition to the lure of false images, the constant fear of what lurks in the shadows sorely tempts us to turn back. How can we make the journey through the darkness where we cannot see our way? How do we battle our ignorance and fear that keep us in confusion? Do we not often fear that snakes and lizards and creeping things hide in the darkness of our submerged self? If we encounter them or if they break our long established resistance, we only find the courage to go on when led by Another. God will surely lead us through the darkness surrounding the true Self!

To get us through this darkness, the Light of him who is the Light of the World will take us by the hand and lead us through the darkness; he will expose the illusions that distract us; and he will slay the dragons of fear and doubt that paralyze our movement. Repeatedly, if we turn to him in openness, he will come into us and make his home in us. Never grasping him or even imaging him, but allowing him to guide us to the Center wherein lies our true Self. Merton tells us that our true self is hidden in obscurity and ‘nothingness’ at the center where we are in direct dependence on God.

The light of the world enlightens every person who comes into the world. And, in this Light we see light.

14. Called Into Freedom

God calls us to freedom, a liberation for which all of us humans seek as surely as water seeks its level. Why must I be called to this liberation? Am I not seeking it? Do I not long for it? What is the call? Only the call of God truly liberates; it is freedom that appears in response to God’s move toward me. God calls us into freedom because we find so many ways to become enslaved – blinded by our own egos, bound by alien

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desires, which make us insensitive to our true identity. In this frozen estate the Spirit calls us to our true home, a place where we can freely be ourselves, the Selves we were created to be. Our identity and liberation lie hidden in this beckoning of God, this drawing to Godself that does not occur only once or all at once. We have been called in Christ and this call to be a disciple had a beginning, but it will have no ending. The call comes constantly, without interruption so that our identity never fully crystallizes or gets completed. Like the call itself each of us is constantly emerging from the shadow land of self-absorption into the light of our destiny through the freedom we receive in our response to God’s call.

God’s call is like a key that opens our cells, unshackles us and invites us to move freely. God calls us to be who we already are, and to be that person gives us the greatest freedom we can imagine. How simple, how natural to choose our deepest desires for authenticity! In this freedom there is no need to be especially religious, to seek out a particular piety or to even have an image of the Self we are. We do not seek to be religious but to be responsive to God.

God’s call is like the wind caught by the sails, it provides power to move the ship toward its destination. God’s call is like the quacking of a duck hen that anxiously seeks to call together her ducklings. It beckons in the direction we are to go.

When I was younger I heard this call in the text of scripture, through the urging of the Spirit, and also from the mouths of mentors and role models. Now that I am old I hear the call in the silence – the “wordless” call. In the deep silence I hear the call to live into my freedom as a child of God! I respond to this call by setting out on the way of “unknowing.” I advance as I choose to be the Self that I am. Marching on “Freedom’s Road” I gladly become what I was destined to be. On this way I am in this present moment, I am who I am destined to become.

15. Freedom To Love

Freedom in the Spirit means liberation to love. This love-seasoned freedom runs counter to the popular notion that freedom unshackles us from all restraints to follow random impulses. Such a profligate use of freedom leads into greater bondage of all kinds. But freedom expressed in love opens more deeply the channels of spontaneity and expressive living.

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Merton describes this freedom as embracing “God’s will in its naked, often impenetrable mystery.” The words “naked and impenetrable” have a magnetic attraction for me. The “naked” will of God suggests a divine intention that has not yet been clothed in flesh, an intention looking for embodiment. It is an invisible power. Embracing God’s will in its nakedness evokes the kind of trustfulness that knows not where the path of obedience will lead or how it will appear in a living, acting person. This naked embrace leads the trusting soul into an exhilarating expectancy of what lies ahead; it is a super-charged hope.

When the naked intent for God arrives at the doorway of consciousness as an irresistible thought, it often makes no sense; it seems disconnected from our present circumstance. When it appears as a yearning for love or a yearning for union, this, too, is hidden as deeply in mystery as the irresistible thought. The awareness of God’s intent for us to abandon ourselves and allow the center of our world to shift from self to God always takes us to the edge of the unknown. Stepping across the line into darkness demands greater and greater abandonment of self and a deeper and deeper trust. Even when the intent of God comes as a direct command, the direction may be clear, but the outcome remains unknown. Mystery!

The naked intent of God arrives at our doorway wrapped in an impenetrable mystery; it is the mystery of God’s own person and purpose. We can never penetrate the mystery of the divine mind even when it discloses itself. No matter how this mystery arrives, whether as yearning for the unnamed or a persistent thought or an opportunity to give unselfishly or a direct command to choose or act, it arrives as a mystery. It arrives as mystery because we do not know from whence it comes and whither it leads. Even a faithful response to the call leaves us with unanswered questions. We perceive this gracious call in the concreteness of the present moment and blindly take only one step at a time into the darkness that hides the path.

Contemplation opens our awareness and permits this impenetrable disclosure to come and to grasp us with conviction strong enough to spark our action in a wild freedom. In freedom we embrace the call, clothe it with a loving response, and express it as love for our brothers or sisters in obedience to God. The freedom that the Spirit creates retains its unrestrained nature when expressed in love. Can we not see

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how this freedom liberates us to experience directly the mystery of our lives?

Contemplation provides the environment for freedom to be manifest and love to be exercised and meaning to be created.

16. Ground of the Self

Contemplation leads us into the ground of the self, the true Self. Contemplation in all its forms contains ambiguous fundamentals. It seeks a contemplative depth that leads to union with God, but it remains unwilling for that depth to be vague, formless feelings. This persistent reflection enters into the divine mystery of our being to seek an understanding of God’s gracious will and mercy as well as our utter dependence upon God. Merton says, “I penetrate the inmost ground of my life, seek the full understanding of God’s will for me, of God’s mercy to me, of my absolute dependence on him.”

I, too, desire this pathway into the innermost ground of my life and I want to walk this path no matter where it leads or what it requires. Yet, to press forward, to surrender all rationalizing and to learn unflinching openness to God’s will requires a gigantic step: I must be willing to be led by God.

Even when we choose this God-directed life, do we dare believe that God’s will is being done in us now in the concreteness of this present moment? Instead of praying for a mysterious revelation of the divine will, we learn to pray that our eyes will be opened to see the manifestation of God’s intention that presents itself in the circumstances, occurrences and challenges of our daily existence. Perhaps the time has now come to cease our seeking for what we already possess and recognize that the intent of God is already embodied in the concreteness of our ordinary lives.

As we journey into the ground of our lives and the scales fall from our eyes, we must courageously look in the face of God’s long given mercy. Mercy has been shown us in ways we have not yet realized. How many times has our life been spared and we knew nothing of it? How deeply have we been forgiven without sufficiently expressed gratitude? From whence came courage to make risky decisions and live through them? Do not all of us long to penetrate the inmost ground of our lives deeply enough to get hints of this hidden mercy?

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Intellectually, we know that everything depends upon the Divine intention and gracious mercy -- our life, our relations and our dreams and hopes. What would it mean to penetrate this inmost ground and discover where our contingent being connects with the “infinity of the mystery”? Enduring answers to the questions that meditation brings up cannot be discovered stated and preserved like algebraic equations. The answers that we seek are “lived” realizations that appear as we persist on our journey to the center.

17. Always Present In Us

The designation of God as the Ground of Being tends to blur the personal aspects of the Divine, but it does offer a holistic vision of God and Creation in which created human beings retain a relationship with the Creator. God as the Ground of Being points to the fact that all Creation has its origin, subsistence and purpose in God. Ground is that out of which everything comes into being and grows. And further, God as the Ground of our being implies that life and meaning and creativity all come from God, everything comes from the source.

To further elaborate this vision, picture the unconscious mind as the depth of the soul that opens out into the Ground of being, the infinity of the mystery of God. As our Ground, God is continuously present to the unconscious dimension of the psyche, and through it indirectly influences consciousness with thoughts, images, and longings. This presence, though always present and active, is, nevertheless, invisible to the eyes of the soul. Into this invisible ground contemplation takes us, not by imagining or reasoning or willing, but by being completely open to this mysterious ground.

The contemplative seeks to descend through the layers of differentiated consciousness and to rest on the base line of this personal depth. Most of the daily journey may be spent in quieting the turbulent waves of consciousness so that the soul may wait confidently and expectantly for the Spirit to do the work of God within it. On this borderline of primal consciousness God draws the soul into momentary union with Godself – God in the Soul and the soul in God. Though we do not fully understand God’s intention, and certainly we do not control God’s actions, genuine transformation takes place in the depth, in the silence. The transformation is a cleansing and purifying act of God that

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simultaneously affects our relationship with God and with people. The Ground of our being is also the Ground of every person’s being and the ground of all things. As our ground God appears in the urges that move us in certain directions like caring for a street person or visiting a neighbor. When we follow these urges, we experience the actions of providence that caused us to meet people and respond to them. The One who grounds our being also directs the flow of energy and we become aware of marvelous things occurring.

Scant evidence of transformation begins to appear: the budding of Christian virtues, an increase of inner strength, consciousness of ethical behavior and the love of a community of fellow journeyers. A deeper concern for the world begins to shape our existence: respect for human dignity, energy for creativity, the search for peace and justice, and a deep sense of belonging in the universe. The realization of these manifestations of the Spirit gives just a bit of confidence that we are moving along the right pathway. We begin to have more hope that our contemplation will indeed bring us into the realm of the Sacred and shape within us a sense of ultimate belonging.

18. Deepened Consciousness

Contemplation is the deliberate act of thinking about God, and its source may be sacred writings, our lives or nature. With an awareness sharpened by reading or reflecting, we more often notice our connectedness to God. In each instance we must take care not to make the media ends but always retain their status as means – means that foster our awareness of God.

The lines between meditation and contemplation often become blurred. Thoughts on the beauty or symmetry of nature meld with the beautiful, and our once specific hard-edged thoughts merge with the Ground of the Beautiful, and the distinct lines disappear in the encounter with God.

The expanded awareness comes as a gift, not as a reward. The discipline of attentiveness clears the clutter of our hearts so that God may act. The intensified love and the sharpened faith are gifts of God. Our preparation simply enables us to recognize them. The closer we draw to God, the more fully we are convinced that acts of love and lives of faithfulness derive from God’s gracious gift of presence.

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Sometimes our consciousness is sharpened to the point that the presence is almost palpable but even when it is not so obvious, it remains as a second thought, the one always standing in the background of other interests.

There will never be a time when we cease to place ourselves at the Center to hear God. God does delight in the souls that wait and wait!

19. Humility Before God

Humility abides in the heart of Christ. He who was in the image of God emptied himself, assumed the form of a servant and became a human. As a man he never claimed the power available to him, and even permitted his enemies to kill him. Self-emptying produces beauty of character but to many of us, it seems so distant. Yet, daily we have numerous occasions when we could embrace the lowly way.

Daily the opportunity for humility presents itself to us – an unreasonable demand from a friend or a receptionist asks to put us on hold, a request for money from a street person, and the annoying reactions from a friend, a spouse or a boring acquaintance. Each of these invitations to humility could grind away some of our self-assertiveness, the false attitude that we have a right to be respected and honored. We say that we wish to be humble, but in turn reject the opportunities daily presented to us.

The humility that does not demand its own way, that does not feel superior to the receptionist, stranger or street person, that wills God’s will time and again; this humility provides the heartbeat of prayer and life with God. When God sees this humility there must be a rush to join his child at the bottom of the ladder, the child who with undemanding trust looks up and waits.

Humility is something that we can feel. We feel it most in the attitudes and responses of others. How easy to be with the person who seldom thinks of himself. What a delight when another person hears what you say and responds with genuine interest and love. Grace flows through the humble when they place us at the center of the conversation. Do these demonstrations of humility reveal a transformed character, and not merely pious practices?

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20. The Realization of Nothingness

What does it mean to become nothing when you have made me in your image? How can I eradicate the self that you have made? Yet, Merton says, “Our meditation should begin with the realization of our nothingness and helplessness in the presence of God.”

The “nothing” of which the contemplative speaks does not mean nonbeing; how can we cease being part of God’s eternal intention? Making us “nothing” in the sense of making us disappear would reverse the divine intention for all who seek the face of God. When we come before God, we recognize the “nothingness” of our power to create our self or to sustain our self. If God does not breathe in us, we have no breath at all.

Suppose that we heard these words from God: “Begin your contemplation with a sense of the ‘nothingness’ of your efforts and good works and noble intentions. These are most noble and pleasing to me but when you begin your prayer with your own accomplishments, you are attending to you rather than me. When you lay these aside, you come to me with ‘nothing’ and ‘nothing’ creates no separation between us.

“Your prayer begins with your nothingness because as a creature you have no power to ascend into my presence; you have no basis to make demands. Besides, when you approach me with prayer and worship techniques, these become ‘something’ and actually create barriers. All the words my lovers have written about their contemplation of me eventually become useless because you are not on their journey, but yours. Learn, therefore, to be on your own journey.

“To have no images or expectations in your prayer is another form of ‘nothingness’ that aids your prayer. If you impose your image upon your intercourse with me, your prayer becomes an idol, that is, the image and the anticipation become idols. Come to me with no expectations and you will never be disappointed. Your prayer will be what it is. I will fill the nothingness of your spiritual power. Your prayer will be the ‘something’ that I make it: the nothingness of your efforts, the nothingness of methods and models, and the nothingness of expectations. Only in this state of nothingness can I unite with you.”

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21. Return to the Center

Sometimes Merton baffles me with his radical claims: “One reason why our meditation never gets started is perhaps that we never make this real serious return to the center of our own nothingness before God.”

I asked God, “What is the center of nothingness?” The center of nothingness, my child, exists in you. It is that center point where the silence directs you; it is the anteroom to both the abyss and the holy; it is that spiritual arena where you meet me and find your deepest relation with me. This Center of your own being is not the center of nothingness but it contains your nothingness.

To begin your meditation, embrace the silence and permit it to draw you to the Center. At the Center recognize the nothingness of all that would commend you—every form, every method and every technique of prayer—and turn toward me with no expectations. Artificial expectations will on the one hand cause you to claim experiences that are not true and on the other they will blind you to the actual presence at work in you.

Another form of resistance that keeps you from the Center of nothingness lurks in the image of the Self. Your mind will go to great lengths to resist the dissolution of the false ego. This form of self has been shaped by your efforts to create an identity that wards off the chaos of your creative depth. You must also recognize this false ego as a shield against the abyss. Let go piece by piece of this false self and as it dissolves you will feel yourself sinking into the Center of your own nothingness.

You will discover that standing naked in the center of your nothingness permits the Light to shine in you. In this Light you will see light. It will lead you fearlessly through the darkness of the abyss and bring you into the Kingdom of Light. This intimacy with me can only occur when you pray from the Center of your nothingness.

22. Moment by Moment Renewal

God makes each successive, unfolding moment a Grace event. In each moment the manifestation of the Infinite Mystery appears before us and within us through God’s all embracing love. In this moment, this very instant, the Grace of God inhabits the center of what is happening

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to you. Grace engages the moment and whatever else appears in this moment, whether regret or guilt or fear. Everything in the moment engages this unconquerable Grace. The grace that comes as the center of every moment also pervasively saturates all things with mercy. Guilt met me in a confrontational moment when I felt accused. Old guilty feelings began to flood my mind. For once instead of taking the downhill road always filled with grief and low self-esteem, Grace came to me and I embraced it. In that moment when my self-image received a slash, I looked hard at my sin and Grace prevailed. It will always be this way, whatever the moment brings; Grace resides at the center of that moment.

God’s love, which is so great, if apprehended in large doses, chokes and paralyzes us. So it comes in small pieces, little flakes that offer sufficient strength or courage or healing for that one moment. “Moment by moment I’m kept by his love, moment by moment I’ve life from above,” so says the old hymn.

This bite-sized energy and mercy never run out. The Eternal One keeps coming and this divine initiative constantly renews Grace. As eager journeyers we must seek always to remember that God’s presence as Grace comes wrapped in every moment, and from time to time we can recognize the very instant as a God-infused moment.

All this is true because God, personally and directly, renews and continuously distributes divine Grace in the moment. And this everpresent Grace invites contemplation.

23. Unitive Knowledge

At first the idea of unitive knowledge of God is so astounding that the soul can only shiver in awe. It suggests a relationship that staggers reason. What does unitive mean? Is it the unity of fresh water flowing into the sea and eventually becoming salty? Or, is it the flowing of a backwater tributary into the Amazon without the distinction completely blurring where the rivers meet? Even in the deepest unity with the divine do not human elements remain? Does not the incarnation of the Word inversely suggest that the divine does not lose its divinity in becoming human? In a similar fashion the human retains the attributes of humanness in a unitive knowledge of the divine.

For persons shaped in the Reformed tradition, unitive knowledge

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suggests too much intimacy with the holy. Yet according to Merton and others on the contemplative path, this knowledge of God is not only possible, but also the divine intention. Merton says, “The unitive knowledge of God in love is not knowledge of an object by a subject… but a transcendent kind of knowledge in which the created self … seems to disappear in God and to know him alone.”

Marriage offers another image of unitive knowledge that does not destroy individuality. The ecstasy of sexual intercourse climaxes in the momentary loss of individuality and it lingers with a transforming effect on both partners. To know in marriage means that two become one, even become one flesh. Yet in the metaphorical use of “becoming one flesh,” both men and women retain their own bodies. Paradoxically, unitive knowledge makes two one and yet they remain two; God and humans become one, but they remain divine and human simultaneously.

So unitive knowledge in these instances does not mean the loss of personhood or individual identity. For this reason in a marriage ceremony when two candles light the third, the original two are not extinguished.

Merton seems to suggest the created Self, the Original Self of God’s intention, does momentarily, but only momentarily, lose all awareness of its distinctiveness. But like the sexual climax in marital union, when the ecstasy fades, the individual remains, yet changed.

24. As Real As I

Merton asks, “What is this other level (of knowing)? It is a level of immediate intuition in an experience that impresses itself upon us directly without ambiguity – a level on which we experience reality as we experience our own being. One does not have to prove he exists, he knows it.”

Each moment offers the amazing possibility of knowing God experientially, and with the certitude that I know I exist. Unitive knowledge is as real as I am; it is not an illusion. Such a possibility offers the chance of a lifetime, an invitation that no sane person could resist despite the testing and trial and darkness. No price is too great or test too severe to detract the serious person from this path.

Descartes’ certitude has dominated western thought for generations: “I think, therefore I am.” Experiential knowing reverses Descartes’

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principle by leading us to cease thinking and directs us to intuit Reality directly. We intuit Reality with the same certainty that we intuit our own existence. Indeed this Reality is part of me; it is my eternal ground and the ground of all things.

For years we may have felt the attraction of this inner way. Perhaps we have prayed our way through various stages of spiritual awareness. Something seems to lie ahead of us. Increasingly we are drawn into the contemplative way. As we walk this way, one day the Reality bursts upon us with transforming energy. Or, the awareness of this profound Reality may gradually engulf us. To each person God comes in exactly the manner that one needs and is capable of receiving the Presence.

25. Doubting God

The way to intuitive knowing passes through darkness, the desert, and the way of “unknowing.” The darkness of contemplation erases all the images of God, all feeling of the divine presence, and neutralizes our ability to think God. In the sightless darkness of the abyss no hand reaches out to touch us, no Voice speaks, and no vision comes before our eyes. All that has been familiar disappears; we are left with God whom we cannot name.

In the darkness of the abyss doubts about God eat away at the soul. The gnawing pain of doubt occurs in contemplative darkness where we not only question God’s existence, but we question the value of resting in stillness among the shadows. After decades of trusting God, all that we have previously depended upon for direction and certitude has vanished.

No wonder that so few walk the road into the center of this darkness. What sacrifice it requires! All our lives we have worked feverishly to acquire an understanding of God inspired by scripture and tradition, one that makes sense in the light of our experience of life. Though this derived image of God may have served us well, now it also must fall into the abyss and be consumed. Without images we are like naked people standing in darkness groping our way in faith.

In the Center of the abyss of nothingness our helplessness appears in its most desperate form. Not only does the soul lose its known modes of contact with God, but it also gives up all efforts to grasp the Infinite. In our total impotency the perceived reality of God recedes and we feel

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alone. But in our aloneness and emptiness a presence apprehends us with a certitude of which we cannot speak. The dividing line between absolute faith and total unfaith is fine indeed.

26. Without Images

In the adolescence of faith I endeavored to read The Dark Night of the Soul but the words made no sense to me, so I never finished reading it. I also read The Cloud of Unknowing with no greater appreciation. These two books were mapping a region over which I was not traveling; the authors indicated tunnels and dangerous territory that I had never passed through. Two decades ago I again read The Cloud, one page each day or at the most two. The words on the page began to evoke images in my mind and touched my shallow experiences of contemplation. As I read The Cloud and The Ascent to Mount Carmel, I distinctly heard the writers stating that the existential pathway to God leads through deep darkness. It became lucidly clear to me that in the cloud of darkness I would lose all feelings, all reason, and all images of the Holy, Sacred Mystery. After years of collecting dust on the shelf, these books were now describing clearly the spiritual landscape over which I was passing and the territory which yet lay before me.

At that moment I did not desire “the Darkness” or “the Cloud.” I resisted thinking about the darkness of faith, even fearing the thought when it seeped into my consciousness. For two decades the pathway of contemplation has stretched out before me as the way not chosen. I was like a driver circling a city regularly passing up thoroughfares that would lead to the city’s center.

Today I have a choice of taking the contemplative pathway to the center, but in a sense the choice seems to have been made for me. All other ways are closing for me except this one way. This path leads into the night where there are no images, no visions, and few consolations. In this setting the Divine Mystery engulfs me but in ways that the invisible presence cannot be named, nurtured or owned. Perhaps I am “entering the night in which God is present without any image, invisible, inscrutable, and beyond any satisfactory representation.”

I feel that I am on a path that I did not choose to walk but if I am to be apprehended by the God beyond all names and images, I must

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follow one step at a time. I am afraid. I am lost. I cannot go through this night in my strength alone. I must be taken like a blind child in an unfamiliar house and led from room to room. Mingled with my fear I find a tiny bit of confidence that for “the joy set before me,” I will enter the darkness. I will be led by a soundless Voice, held by an invisible Hand and understood by inscrutable Wisdom.

27. Incommunicado Contemplative

The way of unknowing is often the way of unspeaking. When we ‘see’ without seeing, ‘hear’ without sounds, ‘smell’ without a scent, and ‘taste’ without chewing, little wonder words fail us. How can a language born of sense describe the experience born of spirit, especially the Infinite Spirit?

With searching spirits we reflect on the ‘manifest mystery’ in Jesus. His life, teaching and ministry open the door to meditation, but the ‘unmanifest mystery,’ which the contemplative explores, has no such referent. Thus, our exposure to this unmanifest holiness leaves us without a means either to reflect on the experience or to describe with words because the event resists all the attempts of human language. All imaginative efforts also fail because that for which we search lies outside the range of our capacities.

So when we walk through the looking glass and the ‘Infinite Mystery’ engages us, what can we say about it? On this pathway of unknowing we are met by One we cannot name, experience what we cannot explain, and are transformed without being able to recount it.

No wonder this way borders on a-theism. We cannot even conceive this reality, so how can we speak of it to another. No logic can persuade us of the Divine Mystery. Yet, though we do not know God in a conventional manner, our souls rest in an unshakable certainty. It is a certitude expressed in a passion for God and a peace that emanates from the Mystery; this conviction gives us the courage to stay the course when we have no idea where it is leading.

Is it strange that I write so much about what cannot be put into words?

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28. Enlightened Eyes

When our prayer leads us to the Palace of Nowhere, we see “everywhere” in a very different light. In this palace all the lines of sight converge, and the tall, clear windows give a God-hue to everything. The windows provide a reflection into which we look and see everything in the Light of God -- the image of the world, the reality of all persons and the story of the human race.

A life lived in darkness bursts into the Light and in God’s Light we see Light. The way of unknowing and the imageless unseeing lead to a place of pure knowing and clear vision. Without the hand that guides us, and the light that gives us vision, we would be void of direction. Mystery, O Mystery; Paradox, O Paradox!

Amazingly, when we see the world in the light of God, a dim pattern begins to emerge, and through a glass darkly we see the themes of the human story that have been and still are being played out on the planetary landscape. And bits and pieces of that pattern now and then begin to appear in our own unfolding story. When we notice this pattern forming, our suspicion that Someone is directing our lives receives validation.

From this Palace of Nowhere in which all things converge and the Light lights all in the world and will light all coming into the world, both the direction of our lives and the importance of the things that we are to do draw us into the world. In order to return to our senses, we must be led by the Light into the world with seeing eyes and yearning hearts.

29. Without Understanding

I realize that my journey is now leading me into a mystery that I do not understand. Perhaps in the concreteness of the present moment I am experiencing a manifestation of the unmanifest mystery of God. In the darkness through which I am passing I have none of the familiar signposts that previously gave me my bearings. In the deep silences of rest stops along the way the Voice does not speak often.

In this incomprehensibly dark mystery I am aware of being wrapped in a Presence that enables me to move forward. Often when I am not anticipating a word of any kind, the Voice speaks. Today it was a short phrase from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of a passage in I Peter: “God takes delight in just plain people.”

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Throughout my life I have claimed to be ordinary and plain. And I think God picked out this phrase to assure me that not only am I being led, but also I am a delight.

The journey into contemplation promises a Presence that on occasion becomes manifest to me. And, the Presence bears a meaning but I cannot express it, yet it is with me and in me.

All these events that I am struggling to describe confirm my new Venue. Without my asking for it consciously or even desiring it, the God of Mystery guides me into a dimension of life I have not known or even imagined. I hesitate to admit it to myself, but this seems to be the place that I am to explore in this era of life. In my final months of teaching why did I wonder if my spirituality was simply for the sake of my work? I see so clearly now that nothing can ever satisfy my soul but God, whether I am pursuing a Christian vocation or simply living from day to day. I cannot help yearning for and submitting myself to the darkness and the silence. At last, I think I am beginning to understand the “darkness of faith” that brother Carlo wrote about. For many years I had no idea what he meant by those words.

30. God Alone

I wonder what hour it is in my life. Is it the 7th hour, each representing a decade? Or, is it much later. Does the garden await us all at the end of our days?

For a moment I had a brief flash of insight. This is the garden era; the darkness has fallen; support from all else has disappeared – work, place, role, old identity and support from all false hopes. I am left with silence; in the silence of the garden I can only offer myself to God. God! The freedom of nothingness! Nothing to achieve, nothing to cling to, nothing to offer but a self, well worn and stripped of window dressing!

There is a spot in the garden with a homelike feeling. As I pray in this garden I want to find hope. This garden lies near the end of my journey as it did for my Savior. He knew the despair of rejection, the abusive anger of those in authority and the human flinching at the edge of the abyss. Yet, in the darkness of the hour he could relinquish his will to the Larger Will at work. Hope empowered Him to face into the mystery. And, there is something else in the garden – the raw encounter with

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the Mystery. “The hour of hope: God alone.” I cannot speak here of knowing God but of meeting, being embraced and being taken into the Divine Mystery of Love – the Trinitarian community of Love. Perhaps washed, bathed, embraced, filled and transformed provide metaphors for apprehending the dark side of the mystery. When all images dissolve, when all metaphors fade, I experience God as faceless, unknown, unfelt, but undeniably God.

Indubitably God – Yes!

31. Old Helps In Prayer

Contemplation may or may not be a higher form of prayer. It seems presumptuous to label one spiritual passion or pathway as higher or greater than another. A discussion of the darkness of the mystery and the prayer of unknowing and the certitude of the heart and not of the mind seems so out of reach for the ordinary Christian. Too long these descriptions and terms seemed to place the contemplative life beyond the reach of ordinary believers.

By noting these difficulties we are not arguing against contemplation as a way into a more passionate relationship with God, but we should not forget that many saints have had nothing to say of contemplation as we have described it. In utter sincerity and simplicity they offered praise, spoke thanksgiving, made confession and prayed for family and friends and the needs of the world. They knew God! Who is to deny that they knew God in ways untouched by contemplation as we have discussed it? Like all obedient disciples of Jesus, they followed the path on which their feet had been placed. Perhaps in their faithful, loving practice, they were united with God by seamless stitching that the mystics and contemplatives have longed for.

Other followers of Jesus became contemplatives because wordprayers dried up and ceased to express their hearts’ desires. Mental prayers also lost their grip on their hearts, and the imagination ceased to draw life from the scriptures or from nature or mysterious providence they experienced in daily living. All these proven ways seem to fade in their usefulness to mediate God.

At some point a doorway opened and the Spirit drew them into silence, brushed them with the mystery and kept them on a path that led into and through the thick darkness. In moments of revelation they

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knew what it meant to be grasped by God – apprehended by that which they had not comprehended.

Still from time to time these veterans of the ‘dark night’ again uttered God’s praise and with their lips gave thanks and confessed their sin. So the contemplative often steps out of the world of abstraction, vagueness and the mysterious realm of incommunicable experience into the world where “Thank you, Father” is also deep and genuine prayer.

32. Core of Religious Life

The fervor and vitality of the life of God in us and in the Church dries up unless it is replenished through contemplation. This simple statement seems axiomatic, so obvious that it appears redundant. Yet, many of the Church’s leaders are completely unaware of this inner way of knowing. This assessment may border on judgment and show a lack of compassionate understanding. Nevertheless, if spiritual and ecclesiastical leaders do not talk about a personal knowledge of God, practice the art of self-giving love, and give evidence of having passed through their own darkness into the Light of God, how can they become commentators on this pathway? Consequently, their words stick to their tongues or tumble lifelessly into the air because they lack the lifegiving spirit.

Christian faith today, as always, depends upon a personal relationship with God. Those who have set aside this personal dimension by submission to the rationalism of the age seem never to consider that the experience of God is essential to faith and faithfulness. Not only the skeptic loses out but persons frozen in a rigid belief structure also pay little attention to conscious contact with God. Everything is already settled for them and they need only to repeat the old words and phrases to reassure themselves. How long can persons live by the perceptions of others who looked through eyes conditioned by a very different environment? To the skeptics and fundamentalists we add the persons who once had dealings with God but have ceased seeking and seemingly have lost their sensitivity to the Spirit. For these reasons, the deep truth of God in Christ and Christ in us withers away. The “form of religion” remains but the power has drained out.

The consistency of life and the supernatural power of the Spirit, I am convinced, can be created in all of us; it can be renewed in us if it has

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faded; and the fervor born in the contemplation of God would be lifegiving to millions today. For every ‘would be’ spiritual person a path to contemplation lies just beneath the next step.

What enormous value would be derived from an honest assessment of life! Who are you? What is going on in your life? What are your needs, hungers and desires?

The “way” that lies immediately before you leads straight from your heart. Out of the stillness comes a hunger, a desire for ‘Something’ and the something is a “Someone,” God. When given attention and heeded seriously, the desire will find the pathway and a hand you do not see, on a way you do not know will lead you to an end you do not choose.

33. The Transformation of Life

Contemplation leads to the transformation of life. We cannot enter deeply into God’s presence and maintain an unfeeling heart. The love of God crushes our hardness and renders it dust so that it may be mingled with love and molded into a soft resilient compassion. Physically exercising the muscles like the biceps and triceps makes a fit and strong body, but overworking the heart causes it to harden into inefficiency. The emptiness of contemplation leads to clarity of thought and simplicity of focus. These twin gifts engage the mind as deeply as the heart. With this clarity of thought, the grossness of lust and prejudice and retribution find no place. The old habits of the heart do not fade rapidly or easily, but they cannot endure the light of Love.

Humility, the fruit of long and studied contemplation, exposes arrogance as a false self. The arrogance at the core of the soul consists of the refusal to be our true Self, and it reveals an ambiguous and empty effort to create an idealized but illusory self.

If our contemplation matures, it will be because our wills have ceased to resist God’s will and we have begun to embrace the simple reality of who we are and the importance of our place in the world. So contemplation, far from causing us to turn from the world in a cowardly escapism or the subtle denial of material reality, leads us straight into life with eyes wide-open to God. And we begin to see God, even if momentarily, in the concreteness of the present moment. We think it fair to say that the person who meditates participates in the sacred reality of each moment in a manner that the detached observer cannot.

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Epilogue

Could God be speaking these words to you today?

“My friend, I do love you and I will keep saying my love to you until you believe that it is I and not you, my voice and not your unconscious longing. Now is the time for you to relinquish your fear and doubt. Plunge into me, into my love for you and live in my freedom.

“True, it is this moment in which I come to you and this fresh moment is a new creation, a new beginning for you. It is always NEW moment after moment. In every new moment I am present – not in things but in time. I am there to awaken you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your life and my purpose, which are one.

“What is the Moment? I am in the moment, the world inside you and outside you is all in the moment, all the possibilities for the future reside in this moment. All is well in this moment! It is as it is – and this is where you need a healthy eye to see this moment as it is. It is a moment of light – it will illuminate your life – it radiates the light that overcomes the darkness. It eliminates the competition of other gods.”