A Contemplative Moment: on Contemplation and Detachment

True contemplation is the work of a love that transcends all satisfaction and all experience to rest in the night of pure and naked faith. This faith brings us close to God that it may be said to touch and grasp Him as He is, though in darkness. And the effect of that contact is often a deep peace that overflows into the lower faculties of the soul and thus constitutes an "experience." Yet that experience or feeling of peace always remains an accident of contemplation, so that the absence of this "sense" does not mean that our contact with God has ceased.

To become attached to the "experience" of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with God above sense and experience in the darkness of a pure and perfect love.

And so, although this sense of peace may be a sign that we are united to God it is still only a sign --- an accident. The substance of the union may be had without any such sense, and sometimes when we have no feeling of peace or of God's presence He is more truly present to us than he has ever been before. If we attach too much importance to these acccidentals we will run the risk of losing what is essential, which is the perfect acceptance of God's will, whatever our feelings happen to be.

But if I think the most important thing in life is a feeling of interior peace I will be all the more disturbed when I notice I do not have it. And sense I cannot directly produce the feeling in myself whenever I want to, the disturbance will increase with the failure of my efforts. Finally I will lose my patience by refusing to accept this situation which I cannot control and so I will lose the one important reality, union with the will of God, without which true peace is completely impossible.

Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

On detachment, and finding the pearl of great price!

My pastor tends to give really good Sunday homilies! (His daily homilies are usually fine too, but his Sunday homilies tend to be sterling.) Last evening at the vigil Mass, Fr John had some great stuff on the gospel reading, but three things stood out for me. (I'll share two here, and save the third for another post.) The first was one of the best definitions of detachment I have ever heard. He defined it terms of, "having found a love so great that everything else falls into place." What I found so excellent about this was the way it moves right to the heart of the matter and short-circuits any attempt to define detachment in the more usual negative terms of stripping things away (not that stripping away does not have a place, mind you, but it is secondary, not primary). Detachment is seen first of all in terms of appropriate ATTACHMENT, that is, a defining or foundational relatedness. We are truly detached from "worldly things" when we have discovered and embraced this great love, when we have allowed it to embrace and ground us, and when everything we see, or have, or know, is seen, had, or known, in light of this.

The second thing was a poem Fr John finished with. Once upon a time it was found in the pocket of a confederate soldier, and was something John had read for the first time years ago. There is no doubt at all that this soldier, despite everything, had found the love which allowed all else to fall into place, and for all things to work together for good:


[[I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health, that I might do great things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for
- but everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among men, most richly blessed.]]

I sat there listening to this while slowly fingering my profession ring whose visible engraved motto reads, "My power is made perfect in weakness," and considering what the past years have been for me, but especially the one just coming to a close. They have come to fruition in amazing ways. As today's readings also affirmed and John Kasper (osfs) reiterated, All things do indeed work together for good for those who love (that is, by those who let themselves be loved by) God. It was a very powerful homily and I felt a special bond not only with this confederate soldier, but with all those I know who have or once embraced this as their own story as well, especially those in my parish, but also around this ever and ever-smaller world! For this and other reasons (not least the gift of a reunion that morning with two old college friends which initiates a new phase of friendship for each of us), it was an occasion of singular wonder, joy, and gratitude. Our God is indeed very good and gracious!

Self-centered vs God-centered Prayer and Spirituality: Some Questions

Not surprisingly, my posts over the last few days have raised several questions. The first ones are requests for where I got the information I used for the reflection on Matthew's text in "To turn the other cheek."

For those interested, I always use commentaries when preparing for lectio and doing reflections and there are three which I use regularly and like very much. The first is the Sacra Pagina series for the NT (Berit Olam for books of the OT). While this is a standard commentary series it is less technical than some and is readable even for those who have no Greek. The second series is the Interpretation Series which is meant for preachers and general teachers of Scripture (not exegetes or Scripture scholars per se). Finally, I ordinarily look at Tom Wright's,[Matthew](or whomever) for Everyone. Now, I have talked about this text in Matthew before so I am not sure which of the three has the most information right off the top of my head, but Wright's work is excellent for capturing the realities of the world Jesus lived in (not least Jesus' Jewishness and relation to Judaism and Rome) and the Interpretation series is good too. For those interested, I would start with Wright's books (they are more readable, cheaper, and can be used for lectio as well), move to Interpretation (a bit higher priced, available in hardcover --- the softcovers by the same name are a DIFFERENT SERIES), and finally, to Sacra Pagina (which is especially helpful if you are asked to do reflections for your community or are a preacher/homilist). SP is more expensive (though available in paper now, and used (but usually available in "as new" condition!) on Amazon); it is the more comprehensive commentary series of the three.

The next questions I received were not at all surprising and had to do with the post on the Lord's Prayer: [[ Aren't we supposed to bring our sins, concerns, etc to God in prayer? How can this be called problematical and self-centered? What do you mean when you say there are ways to pour out our hearts to God without being self-centered? Also, in spiritual direction, how can we talk about our prayer without being self-centered?]]

Let me try to explain some about this because I knew my comments would raise these kinds of questions. The only one I anticipated that was not included was, What can we say about, "What kind of experience" our prayer was for God?? We can't read God's mind!! First, as I noted, we will and SHOULD pour out our hearts to God. We should certainly bring our sinfulness, brokenness, weaknesses, foibles and failings before him. However, sometimes we are so focused on these things we forget WHY we are doing this, why we are opening our hearts to God -- not to mention WHO is empowering us to do so if we are at all successful (and even when we are NOT)! We are looking for forgiveness and healing, for comfort and strength, for nourishment and challenge as well, but WHY are we doing these things? Quite often we stop at the answer that "WE need these things" if WE are to become holy, or make it to heaven, or however we understand or state the matter. Sometimes we are so focused on "becoming detached" or "losing self" or "becoming humble" that we think that that is the whole purpose of our spirituality. When we fail, a session of spiritual direction can become a recital of our own projects, our own goals, our own purposes, inadequacies, and the like, and when the director asks about our prayer, this is all she will hear --- a litany of complaints which is a paean to self.

Now, it is important, of course, to be in touch with these things and be able to recount them to one's director; the director needs to hear them, but it makes all the difference in the world if we are considering them because of the way they affected God's plans for us, God's purposes in our world, God's needs for himself and his determination to love us with an everlasting love, or simply because we have in view OUR OWN goals, plans, aspirations, failures, incapacities, and the like. That is why I will sometimes ask a directee who seems to have lost sight of God in her prayer, "What kind of experience was this for God?" She will NOT usually be able to tell me what God felt (that kind of awareness, though possible to some limited extent, is a gift and occurs rarely).

Instead she will tell me again about her own lack of openness, her own resistances, her own fears, anxiety, boredom, exhaustion, or whatever, but this time she will do so because she is concerned about God and his purposes and love first of all --- or at the very least because she is now considering these first!! Instead of an egocentric soliloquy about self, her account will cover all the necessary matter for direction, but from a much more other-centered perspective! Further, when she returns to prayer once again, she is more apt to be able to get out of her own way so that the Spirit can really work in and on her! She will pour out her heart, but she will do so in order that God might enter it more completely and transform the world with his love. She will do it because God wills to dwell there exhaustively and the completion of Christ's mission with regard to creation requires it. She will do it because God himself URGES and empowers her to do so, and because she cares and is attentive enough to respond to HIS needs and desires.

It is the difference between recounting one's own failings (and, sometimes, successes) in listening to a friend because one is primarily aware of the friend's desires and needs and the way they were met or disappointed , and recounting those same failings and successes because one is simply aware of and concerned with oneself and one's own performance. It is the difference between seeing with our hearts and navel gazing. Sometimes in our spirituality we become so focused on an abstract goal (becoming humble, losing self, becoming detached, becoming holy, being healed or reconciled, etc) that we really don't consider God in the picture except to the extent that he is the one we must turn to who is supposed to "make us" these things. Unfortunately, from this perspective it is all-too easy to treat prayer as our own accomplishment, God as OUR SERVANT and our project as HIS OWN WILL, rather than understanding we are to be HIS SERVANTS and our goals are meant to allow HIS PURPOSES to be realized in our world. Of course humility, selflessness, detachment, reconciliation, and healing are important goals but WHY is it we are intent on their achievement????

There is a vast difference between seeking these things because we are self-centered, and seeking them because God wills them if he is to accomplish his own purposes in our world. (And of course, a self-centered way of seeking them will actually lead to our greater entrenchment in their opposite and thus be self-defeating in the profoundest and truest sense!) Matthew's Gospel touched on this question of motives this week as well in the Gospel lection prior to the Lord's prayer, (Matt 6:1-5f). It is not surprising he follows up his discourse on hypocrisy and distorted or inadequate motives with the Lord's Prayer.

Unfortunately, it is all-too easy to kid ourselves in this matter: for instance, we read a book on spirituality and it tells us we should be humble so we begin a self-improvement regimen to become humble. We read a Saint's life that recounts this Saint as a paradigm of detachment, or holiness, or whatever, and we institute a self-improvement regimen designed to make us these things thinking they will please God and get us to heaven (or whatever!). But really, WHERE IS GOD IN ALL THIS? When we meet with our director we recount how miserably we failed in all our goals, how we failed at prayer, how we were bored, how we failed to be anything but self-centered, etc, but again, WHERE IS GOD IN ALL THIS? And when the director tells us, "It is NOT all about you" we acknowledge this and proceed once again to speak about our SELVES and how miserable, sinful, and inadequate we are! And again, WHERE IS GOD IN ALL THIS? Has he really been absent this whole time? Has he really made no overtures, done nothing for which we should be grateful, called us in no significant ways we can note with awe and appreciation? Are his own plans, purposes, and self really unaffected by our failures, and can we legitimately remain unaware of this?

Thus, I suggest there are ways to pour out our hearts to God which are self-centered in an especially problematical way (this qualification is important!!!), and those which are not. Yes, we should pray for humility or selflessness, but not PRIMARILY as a project of self-improvement. Instead it should be a piece of our enthusiastic engagement on behalf of God and his reign. Again, it makes a huge difference if I point to my own lack of humility and my goal to be more humble because my failure has served to hurt God and his plans for the world, or another person --- or instead, because I am on a private and self-centered quest for personal "holiness". While the shift required is a small one in some ways (humility, etc, remains the goal), it is also as vast as eternity since the way to achieving the goal and the reason for adopting it are vastly different, as is the overall focus of our attention and concerns.

Talking about these things in direction without being self-centered depends upon how aware of and concerned with God one really is. One can focus on self without being self-centered in a problematical way. Actually, to make progress spiritually one MUST focus on self without being self-centered, but rather because one is truly God-centered. One's director should be able to help one find their way in this. My question about God's experience in our prayer is not meant to have directees reading the mind of God, but instead to stop them with the realization that God was THERE in their prayer but that they only had eyes and ears for themselves. Further, it is meant to indicate that in telling me about their prayer they have completely missed talking about God's presence, purposes, will, gifts, comfort, etc, etc. It is a rhetorical question in some senses meant to shock and wake a directee (or myself) up.

I hope this answers your questions to some extent and clarifies what I meant in the earlier post! Thanks for emailing.

Detachment as the matrix for Christian (and eremitical!) Love

We have all heard the Christian term, "detachment," or at least, that is, we know the word and its common meaning. What does it actually mean in the context of monastic or eremitical life? What relation does it have to other values, to other demands of this or any Xtn life? Does it limit our ability to love others, for instance, or does it serve as the means to love more generously, more purely, more whole-heartedly? Does it demand an end to treasured relationships, or does it clarify and transform the way we participate in these? Does it somehow cause a lack of desire to participate in or nurture these relationships, or does it sharpen the delight we take in them and serve to allow the deepening of our commitment to the other? Is it marked by apathy (which is not the same as monastic apatheia!!) and a lack of feeling or energy for life, or does it help cultivate and condition a deeper sense of being alive and in love with life? And finally, does detachment entail a loss of self so complete that one can be said to be "nothing" or have no self (a la Bernadette Roberts, for instance), or is it a new way of possessing a self, a truer and fuller self which is more abundantly alive, and more profoundly related to reality?

As is probably obvious from the way I have phrased the questions, I believe genuine detachment does the latter in each case. It is possible to believe, using the common definition of the term, that detachment means an end to involvement, an end to relationships and to love, and even the loss of selfhood. It is possible, using this sense of the word, to set it in opposition to love and the involvement with others love demands, but in reality --- at least as I understand the term, and as the tradition of the desert Fathers and Mothers and other monastics and hermits I know understand it --- detachment is the means by which we are freed for authentic love; it is the matrix of Christian --- and so, eremitical --- love, not their antithesis. It is a mark and (partially) the means by which we claim TRUE selfhood, not the end or renunciation of it.

At the center of our understanding of the nature of detachment are a couple of truths: 1) we are called above all to love --- to love God and to love ourselves and others in, through and with God; this is the very nature of authentic selfhood, whether Divine or human selfhood, and 2) we cannot love God or others unless we have a self which is capable of this. Detachment, if it is a real value we pursue and cultivate must, like any other Christian value, contribute to these goals or it is worthless. More than worthless, it is destructive and even demonic --- that is, capable of distorting the persons we are and blocking the process of becoming God summons forth and grounds in us. But of course genuine detachment in the eremitical life, and in the Christian life more generally, is actually the basis for the freedom to be the selves we are called to be.

Detachment is the liberation exerienced by one who truly loves and is truly human. It is, like so many other things in Christian life and spirituality, a paradoxical reality. If it is not marked by a rich and full loving, an abundant life of love and liberated selfhood, then it is not Christian detachment. And yet, how easily it is to fail to understand this! How common the misunderstanding of the term, even in those who are focused on spirituality in some way!

Detachment and the Creation of the Self capable of Love:

I wrote recently that real love requires distance as well as closeness, and that enmeshment was destructive of authentic human love. It is that insight that is at the root of understanding the nature of Christian detachment. There is a second and related insight which is also at the root of things here, namely, that real love requires freedom from counterfeits and a liberation from the concerns of an ego self which measures selfhood in terms of what we do, what we have, or what others think of us. This latter liberation is important not only to see and accept (i.e., love!) ourselves for who we really are, but to see and accept or affirm others (i.e., love them!) similarly. The choice before us is really to see and accept ourselves as God sees us, or to see and accept ourselves as the world (and our ego-self) sees us. There is no other option really. Detachment describes the state (and process) of moving from the latter to the former. It is a matter of freeing ourselves (or rather, allowing ourselves to be freed) from the claims and enmeshments (i.e., attachments) of the false self and embracing the true self and all that constitutes that.

But this goal is not an end in itself. Detachment is not something to be pursued for its own sake. Detachment is at the service of something greater in the Christian life. It is at the service of the true self, yes, but above all that means it is at the service of the call to that self to love as Christ loves. Our own truest selves are hampered from becoming or being embodied in many ways, but one of the most destructive is by the attachments we make and have to all those values, structures, and realities which support the "ego-self, " that is, the self which is constantly judging and composing a portrait of "Me" which, again, is defined in terms of what I do, what I have, and what others think of me. Not only is the ego-self noisy and constantly rehearsing this portrait of self in order to maintain it so that it blocks our ability to hear the call of our own hearts, but, because it is constituted by attachments to these things, it detracts and distracts from the complete dependence upon God and God's summons (vocation) which is the necessary response to it and the One who grounds and authors it.

Detachment is therefore the loosening and breaking of these bonds of attachment which are neither from nor of God, these definitions and images of self and others that hold us in their grip along with all that sustains and empowers them. It is a process and goal which again is at the service of a larger one, namely the making of authentic, obedient selves capable of loving others IN CHRIST. Communion is the fruit of detachment, and any supposedly "spiritual" process which does not lead to genuine communion should not be mistaken for detachment. The paradox involved here should be underscored: when we are truly detached we are capable of loving concrete human beings AS THEY ARE in our day-to-day dealings with them. Detachment does not issue in a merely abstract and superficial love of "the poor," "the homeless," "the unloved," or the like (Bondi, To Pray and to Love). It results instead in the capacity to see others --- real flesh-and-blood people with warts, body odor, lousy dispositions, contrary opinions, and the like --- and love them for who they REALLY are, namely, the images of God who confront us with his presence everyday and who need to love and be loved in all the ways that we ourselves do.

On Detachment and Apathy:

And this has implications for those who see detachment as a kind of apathy. As I noted in the beginning of this post, apathy is not the same thing the desert Fathers and Mothers called apatheia. Apatheia was understood to mean a kind of imperturbability or holy stillness which resulted when one was rooted in and lived from and for the love and mercy of God and was no longer enmeshed in the world. It was not only not incompatible with profound love for others, it called and prepared for it. Neither then is true detachment marked by apathy. Detachment and apatheia were intimately linked because both involved the freeing of the self from passions, that is from those distorting lenses formed by woundedness, neediness, insecurity, ambition, greed, etc, which caused one to relate to reality in ways which were less than authentically human. But detachment and apathy on the other hand are actually antithetical to one another because apathy is a form of self-centeredness and bondage resulting in psychological death, whereas detachment is a form of freedom from self which opens to life and love.

[By the way, please note well: the passions, in the sense this term is used by the desert Fathers and Mothers and those who have followed them, are not simply strong feelings; they may involve strong feelings but they are really distorting lenses through which we come to relate inappropriately or inadequately to God, ourselves, and others. For a very good treatment of the reality of the passions as understood by the early Church fathers and Mothers see Roberta Bondi's, To Pray and to Love. There she defines them as, "habits of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting that characteristically blind us to who we ourselves, our neighbors, and God really are so that we are not able to respond appropriately, rationally, and lovingly." A longer treatment is found in her book, To Love as God Loves, also highly recommended.] Given this view of things what sometimes passes for detachment and is rightly described as apathy is actually what the desert Fathers and Mothers called a passion.

All of this leads back to the questions with which I opened the post. Detachment is a freeing process and state which allows us to love others more honestly and generously. It does not close us off from others --- even if we are hermits --- but instead allows us to see and cherish them with the eyes and heart of God. It allows us to delight in reality in a way which our ego-selves would censure and shut down, because the detached self, the true self, is unconcerned with what this reality can do for us, how it can be owned or possessed by us, or how it affirms us. Detachment makes us capable of delight in the thing itself simply because it is what it is. And, it allows us to hear and respond to the vocational call which sounds instant by instant deep in the core of our being. In other words, it serves authentic humanity; it serves the growth of the true self which loves God and claims as its own to cherish all that is cherished by Him. Further, while the eremitical life poses unique challenges in embodying this love, the FACT of it is no less real for the hermit than it is for any other Christian. For every Christian, including the hermit, detachment is the matrix out of which authentic love is birthed.