Weekly Inspirations

Clarity on Contemplation Print PDF

Contemplation is an act; it is gazing upon God whom we cannot see. Contemplation is a posture, one of quietly waiting. Contemplation is a practice, a constant return to the present moment, to see God in just what is. As I write these words, they sound like contemplation creates a very busy approach to God, and this would be an erroneous impression. Contemplation is letting go; it is ceasing from my own busy activity in prayer; it is recognizing what already exists – God and I are one. This oneness is realized in letting go, in noticing, in gazing in the direction of the Holy, and in waiting, always waiting.

I value the days when I do not put much effort in contemplation. In those times of prayer, I seem to realize in a moment a sense of the divine. In those natural moments, I do not spend time seeking to control my thoughts, or suppressing my feelings, or neutralizing my imagination. In a strange and inexplicable way, I am "there, " wherever "there" is. The simple awareness of the divine may not last long, sometimes only a moment, but that moment verifies the longed for reality of being in God. Contemplation contains many states from an awakened desire for God to the consciousness of God in everything. Sometimes on this journey, the soul receives an infusion of the Holy in which it effortlessly swims in the presence of God in a sacred stillness. I seem to experience contemplation in many different forms, and this variety of realizations surely is part of God's infinite design. Especially in my later years the experience of God has become richer and more mature.

Contemplation may or may not lead to an infused union with God in which one is constantly aware of being embraced by the Presence. If this ever occurs in me, it will be because God has reached out to me, embraced me, and filled me with Godself. Such intimacy cannot be earned, and it is not under my control to gain or hold it. My discernment leads me along the pathway of contemplation until God chooses to draw me into Godself, into union of spirit with Spirit in the abyss of Love. Considering these insights and possibilities gives me great peace and delight.

I Come Knocking Print PDF

Over a number of decades, I have many times come to a door during meditation and prayer, searching for a handle that would open into contemplation.

I have come to this door by meditation on the scripture. At other times, the pathway has been silence and solitude. A few times the door has opened, and I have entered into fellowship with God. From that interaction with Holiness, I have felt fulfilled and empowered.

After all these years, I am still a novice in the deeper aspects of prayer. At times it appears to me that I am trying too hard. At other times it seems that I make more of contemplation than it deserves. In this moment I feel so ignorant of the way of God – the way of contemplation. I wonder if how far along we are with God really matters. Is it not enough that we are seriously on our way?

In my meditation, at an early hour of the day, I stood outside the door and knocked. I do not know if the Lord opened the door and invited me in or if his Spirit transported me to another place. I found myself on the cusp of time.

Contemplation meant standing there on the cusp of time as moments were being born, and realizing that God appeared in each successive moment. As the moments were born, God happened. Every moment manifested God as infinite mystery. And I, awed by the mystery, was invited to be present at the birthing of each moment, the manifestation of God in history.

As I am being called into God, I do not understand the Voice, and I do not know the way. So I remain there on the cusp of time waiting for God, looking for God, but I too seldom recognize the divine presence. Yet, as I stand looking, I wonder if I get too close to see. While I am waiting for God contemplatively, the Presence enfolds me, and the intimacy is too close to distinguish.

Learning to be Still Print PDF

Stillness, which sinks in after a long struggle, is a gift. Though we may work hard to get still and resolve repeatedly to keep our minds focused, this discipline cannot bring us to stillness. Stillness inexplicably comes to us as a present in the midst of our persistent efforts. After many fitful efforts, I am beginning to enter into a great stillness as a gracious gift. There must be many varied forms of stillness; my experience is like a great calm that wipes away fear.

The images of stillness that come to my mind include: a still cove at the lake, sometimes filled with waves and ripples from the boats or wind, but at the moment it lies quietly with a calm, still surface, mirrorlike, perfectly reflecting white fluffy clouds floating in a rich blue sky. I see another image of stillness in a blue spruce standing tall in the monastery's garden of silence. In that same garden a brown thrasher shows me a picture of calmness as she sits motionless on a rail fence with her head cocked as though listening for a word from the wind. A Memory floats into my mind of a leopard committed to long hours of stillness as she perches on a limb awaiting her prey.

T. S. Eliot knew about "the still point of the turning world." Even though the universe is constantly spinning, there is a still point at its center. The center of our center is by nature linked to the Center of All Things.

When I shed my tension like a snake sheds its skin, I feel my center slowing down from its busy turning and turning. And the Still Point of the turning world keeps attracting me like a magnet.

To find the stillness I must come to my center and feel its stillness, and then to be drawn into the stillness of the Center of All Things. Without effort or fear or struggle we can all let ourselves be drawn into this Center.

On Doubt Print PDF

The choice to walk the path of contemplation exposed my soul both to radical doubt and unshakable trust. In contemplation doubt occurred when I lost confidence in old certitudes with their images and structures. Eventually those guarantees of certitude collapsed. As I began to experience God more directly, I realized that many of the structures of faith had become idols. In the absence of structure, doubt arises and chaos invades the soul. And doubt floats on the surface of chaos. In the face of doubt my soul was over wrought with fear – fear that my life had been lived on a false premise, fear that God, after all, may not be there, and fear that my spiritual journey has taken me nowhere. In the face of paralyzing fear born of doubt, running back to rational thought held nothing. My old certitudes had been eroded and I was walking the way of 'unknowing.'

What then shall I do? Make friends with doubt and the fear it unleashes? Why did I not realize beforehand that the collapse of old structures of certitude would leave me extremely vulnerable to doubt?But at the same time, this loss made possible a new relationship with God based on trust alone. The old certitude depended on clinging to concepts and propositions that had now disappeared as a basis of knowledge. On this contemplative path, trust and trust alone unites the soul with God. This trust does not hinge on doctrine or dogma or on past experience, but upon God and God alone.

On the contemplative path, doubt becomes a friend and ally by teaching me that I must learn to trust God. And thus I find myself on a path that I have not chosen, led by a hand I cannot see, into a relationship with God over which I have no control.

Testimony Print PDF

The notion of Christian Contemplation entered my mind long before I heard the quote about the present moment; I feared contemplation. My fears fed on the perceived losses -- loss of words, loss of feelings, and loss of images. These losses, or the fear of such, caused me to hope that God would not lead me into contemplation. If contemplation did not include the familiar furniture of the House of Prayer, I had no pressing desire to go there.

God seemed to pay no attention to my anxieties. God has an agenda with each of us and nothing seems to shake it, not even our strong resistance. When the fullness of time came, God began moving in my life in an unexpected way. I experienced this movement as a call. Through the things that happened to me, God issued a call to contemplation.

This call did not come to me in a flash with life-defining clarity, but it appeared in the confused state of my disheveled existence brought on by retirement. It came when I was passing from my established vocation into confusion about my identity and my future. This confusion was exacerbated by my sense of God's distance; God seemed absent from my struggle. What kind of call could this be in such messy circumstances?

I sought to ignore this transition by filling my calendar with engagements, as I had for two decades. But my effort to avoid facing my change in circumstance did not deter God's intention. My body spoke: persistent high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, shingles, and diabetes struck sequentially with little time between. God spoke in these events: "You are not to continue your life as usual." I was forced to make new decisions, which were preparatory for God's call.

A year later the Mentor's Retreat came. God spoke again. This tryst with the Spirit came like a stiff wind that filled the sail of my soul and set me in motion. I believe the freedom and joy that I began to experience confirmed God's call.

Picking up Merton's book, Contemplative Prayer, before leaving the monastery was not mere chance. God's call focused my attention on it and when I picked it up, I was drawn to its contents. I had no way of knowing at the moment that it would inform and explain to me the deepest hunger in my life. I read it like a famished worker; it nourished me, shaped me, and challenged me.

Within just a few days I received the tapes on Merton by James Finley and those words about the present moment containing both the manifest and the unmanifest mystery of God. God spoke to me through that metaphor and drew me more deeply into contemplative prayer. The pathway into contemplation seemed irresistible; it held a fascination from which I could not turn away; it completely seduced me and I willingly surrendered to its advances.