Living Spirituality
I’m something of a fan of Thomas Merton: I read him widely and quote him often. A favourite quote comes from his small tome Spiritual Direction & Meditation (1968):
A contemplative is not one
who takes his/her prayer seriously
but one who takes God seriously ...
one who is famished for truth,
who seeks to live in generous simplicity,
in the spirit.
I reckon I would rest very peacefully if you were able to write on my headstone “this fellow took God seriously”. I know, we all do take God seriously, but Merton’s very wording (and my re-reading many times and pondering even more times) seems to have captured much of my own experience and crystallised many of my convictions in spirituality.
I would have said that my tradition, my experience – doubtless influenced by my family, by my MSC religious formation, and by subsequent reading and practice – is contemplative. I don’t mean in the monastic sense, or any sense of mystical remoteness, but rather in this sense that I’ve grown up with the habit of listening to and constantly reflecting on what I believe is God’s revelation. My basic belief is that God does reveal Godself to me/us – through people, events, my ministry, indeed through my whole life with its many varied and busy involvements.
The way I would say that now is that to “take God seriously” means first and foremost to bow before God and to focus on God’s presence, God’s activity in my life. This is why I often talk of a contemplative attitude to life, as much as contemplative prayer. “take God seriously” Life becomes an attitude of openness to God, of listening to and waiting on God in our everyday. The “Sacrament of the Present Moment” suggests that every moment of our day has the potential to meet God; every person we meet every day becomes a meeting with God; for God is there in every moment, in every experience, every day.
The spirituality that flows from “taking God seriously”, being “famished for truth” and “living in generous simplicity…” will doubtless find expression in our ministry, our relationships with people, and our commitment to personal prayer. I would like to reflect on these inter-connected aspects of a lived spirituality.
I don’t for a moment question anyone’s commitment and generosity in ministry. But the delicate truth is that few of us come to any relationship utterly freely, whether our relationship with God, with Jesus, with our loved ones, or with those to whom we minister. Invariably, we come with some level of possessiveness or self-interest, though we rarely know this in our awareness. John of the Cross says that the normal development of any relationship is a process of purification of our desires, of our love for another. A tough word, purification. We may call it something different, but most of us know well enough that it needs to happen, and does happen in all relationships, often quite painfully – a time of crisis in a friendship, a time of frustration in our helping or being helped by another, a time of apparent loss in our lives, or a time when God seems remote and uncaring. At these times, when life seems just too hard, when we reckon we just can’t pray, when we risk losing heart, and when we find ourselves helpless to change what seems to be happening to us, we are being purified. As you know, John calls this experience a dark night. Though it may be dark and joyless, he says it’s the way our desire is purified and freed."a dark night..a time of inner growth" It doesn’t feel like it, but he says it’s a time of grace, a time of inner growth, personally and relationally. And, he says, it’s normal growth – in life, as much as in what we might call our spiritual life, and in all our relationships, as much as in our relationship with God.
For God wants us to be free. The call to be free is the basic Christian call. Traditional spirituality talks of our inner attachments or our unfreedoms; more contemporary spirituality and psychology will more likely talk of our addictions or sometimes, our compulsions. Whatever the terminology, common wisdom is that we all carry some vulnerability; we all have a weak spot in our make-up; all of us, unconsciously, imagine that we have to be someone or other, or we have to have something or other. That is, we become attached. Whether I’m attached to my reputation (being well thought-of) or to my ordered life-style (everything always in its proper place) or to my poor self-image (noone cares about me) – it will show itself in the ways I relate to others.
Some of us, sometimes, may need professional therapy to get to the bottom of some deep-rooted, unconscious unfreedom. But most of us, most of the time, find that the give-and-take, the ups-and-downs of everyday life – especially being true in our relationships -- give us ample opportunity to be purified or freed. Honest reflection on our everyday experience, listening to God’s Word and God’s invitation in our experience, is a sure way to inner freedom, to being able to let go of whatever in ourselves we’ve been hanging onto, without realising it. Moreover, precisely because growth towards inner freedom is God’s work in us, the place of honest, contemplative prayer – waiting on, open to,"the practice of centering prayer is the surest way to inner freedom" longing for, the gift of God – is central, vital, in our lives. Thomas Keating, another Trappist, teaches that the practice of centering prayer is the surest way to inner freedom.I suspect this is true of any practice of contemplative prayer. Keating talks of the process of purification as a “divine therapy”. (The Human Condition, 1999)
Of course, as we are purified, we come to know the other, the one we love, the one to whom we are ministering, more truly, in herself / himself, not judged by our likes and dislikes. And we come to know God more truly, not as we’ve imagined God. To say it another way: in this process of purification, we are constantly invited to move from loving, ministering, being with others because of the satisfaction it gives us or the affirmation we receive, rather to loving and ministering to others for their sake, regardless of the cost. Then we are free.
To quote Merton again: “anyone who attempts to act and do things for others … without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions and his delusions…” (from Contemplation in a World of Action, 1971) Putting it bluntly!
Understanding that this way of being “purified” is the normal process of growth in relationship with God, in itself is freeing. And there are some very practical implications. I suspect that lots of the demands we put on ourselves come from misunderstanding God’s working. For example, when prayer becomes boring and uninteresting, many people presume that something has gone wrong – that they need to try harder, find a better book, give more time. Whereas, in truth, the invitation may well be to slow down, to sit still, to make less demands on oneself – and to allow God to work in us.
The tension between saying prayers and being prayerful highlights this for me. We say prayers every day; we use many words. Yet the normal development of relationship (with God and with loved ones) seems to require fewer words. Words don’t always capture where we are in a relationship: we’re more likely to sit together in silence, listening, waiting, being together. Merton said that one of the implications of “taking God seriously” is that prayer is more important than prayers! He actually wrote that saying our prayers can easily become an obstacle to prayer ! Minimally, we know that our words need to be balanced by some quiet time, some time of just being in God’s presence.
Having said that, we have already said that we are in God’s presence all the time! Which is the ground of the Buddhist / Christian practice of mindfulness, living in the present, being aware of what we’re doing when we’re doing it, fully attentive to who we are with when we’re with someone. Mindfulness keeps us in the present, in the presence. Abraham Heschel defined the prophet as “one who sees the world with the eyes of God”. “one who sees the world with the eyes of God”Interestingly, not one who sees God, but one who sees the world with the eyes of God, who sees other people with the eyes of God, who see oneself with the eyes of God. To be mindful is not to see God, but to see as God sees. (Thich Nhat Hanh: The Miracle of Mindfulness, 1975) In other contexts, I imagine we would call this a “contemplative” prayer; Merton calls it simply “prayer” or being prayerful
This prayerfulness, fruit of our free, faithful relationship with God, will clearly overflow into our ministry. Indeed, it will permeate our lives – it will become a way of living, a way of relating to others, a way of ministering. Indeed, my experience suggests that gradually we become more inclusive, less selective about whom we relate to. I don’t mean that we become all things to all people – and we certainly don’t relate to all people in the same way – but we grow in respect for all, we move beyond our personal likes and dislikes, we bring people together more, we build community. Which is the surest sign of God’s Spirit active in us.
Most would be familiar with the Awareness Prayer, sometimes called the Awareness Examen. (George Aschenbrenner : Review for Religious, Jan 1972. A simplified version of the prayer can be found in my small book, Pray as you are, 1999) This is the prayer, ideally prayed at the end of the day, that looks back on the day in a contemplative way, listening for where and how God has been active in my life that day. "Awareness Examen..looks back on the day in a contemplative way"Wanting to see as God sees, we don’t actually review the day, in the sense that we ourselves go over all that has happened that day, but rather we ask God to bring into our awareness whatever of the day God wants us to look at and listen to, right now. As memories of the day come back, we may need to re-live some of the day’s experience, in order to hear God’s word, God’s invitation to us. I find that, sometimes I’m quite surprised, even confused, by something I find myself thinking about. I just try to sit with the memory and ask God what’s the message here. And, in prayer, I simply respond to the word of God that I hear. This, of course, is to take God seriously.
Here’s the surprise: such a prayer has immense value and consolation in the very time given, but the added bonus is that, when prayed consistently, it sharpens our sensitivity to the way God works in us. Gradually we begin to notice the very personal signs in ourselves of God’s working – which, of course, keeps us more alert and ready to respond to God’s invitation. Unquestionably, this overflows into the way we live and the way we relate to the people to whom we minister – freely, generously, as Merton wanted, and “in the spirit”. It hardly needs to be said that I know the value of this prayer and I recommend it strongly.
I send good wishes to all readers and offer every encouragement in your own desire to “take God seriously”.
Brian Gallagher is a Missionary of the Sacred Heart from the Heart of Life Centre in Melbourne and The Cliffs Retreat in Shoreham, Vic. The text is adapted from a talk given to priests in Adelaide in September 2009 and initially published in The Swag, the journal of the National Council of Priests in Australia.
