Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: on St Teresa's Eremitism

[[Dear Sister, I am still surprised at how you write about solitude. Your accent on the communal nature of it just seems different from what I understand hermits to be. It's hard to get it into my head. Do all hermits see eremitical solitude as a communal thing? How does a person know when they are living what you call eremitical solitude and when they are just wrecking that with contact with others? Do you measure your time in percentages or something like that, 90% solitude and 10% community, or something to be sure you are mainly living solitude?]] 

Great questions! I can't answer about all hermits but more and more the truth that becomes clearer to me is that hermits of all traditions see the integral link between solitude and community. Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, stresses this in his excellent general approach to hermit life in the book The Eremitic Life. This week, partly because of today's Feast of OL of Mount Carmel, I was going back to Ruth Burrow's work, Essentials of Prayer. There is a chapter near the end of the book on Carmelite eremitism which draws not only from Burrow's experience but from the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. What was striking in this chapter (which I had completely forgotten!) was Teresa's demand that her Sisters become not only nuns but also hermits. 

The basic point was that these Sisters entered Carmel in order to know truth and love -- both the truth of themselves and of God as they come to love themselves, their Sisters, and their God, more truly and deeply. This requires both solitude and community. (Here she seems using the term solitude somewhat differently than I do because it does not seem she is describing solitude as communal, but I suspect that I am mistaken in that conclusion. It is clear that though Burrows contrasts community and solitude, she also knows well that even the Sister's solitude in Carmel is a profoundly communal reality; not only is it lived for the sake of the larger community/charism, but it is lived because the community supports, ensures, and nurtures it. In all of this, the Cistercian and Carmelite approaches (and also that of the Camaldolese) to both solitude and community seem very close indeed.)

Below is some of what she says; I think you will also find real similarities to what I have said about solitude throughout the years here, along with what the Cistercians, the Camaldolese, the Franciscans, and even what the Carthusians say regarding the relationship of solitude and community. In all of these spiritualities there is a tension between solitude and community and each group works out this tension (or, maybe better said, negotiates and lives this tension creatively) in somewhat different ways. The tension is never simply ignored or obviated; it is lived faithfully, and the result is either a healthy and authentic coenobitism or a healthy and authentic eremitism.  Again, St. Teresa, for example, wanted nuns who would also be hermits and therefore, she created a coenobitical "eremitism" which at once cut Carmel off from the world around them with a strict enclosure -- stricter than occurred with the origin of the Order, perhaps; but at the same time, the desert she created was meant to allow for an exposure to reality (to God and one's deep self as well as to one's Sisters); it was a "solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand"! Ruth Burrows, OCD, writes:

[[To be alone with Him Alone is, at bottom, to be detached from self, with mind and heart directed to pleasing God only --- something that is impossible without generous effort, searching purification, and --- let us not overlook it --- personal maturity. It is possible for someone to live in physical solitude, to follow a strict Rule of life, pray, experience great devotion or desolation, yet remain basically egotistical, undeveloped, and emotionally stunted: alone, not with God, but with the self and its projections of God. John of the Cross insists that we simply cannot, of ourselves, divest ourselves of our egotism. God has to act both directly and indirectly. Other people are his chosen instruments, and we have an absolute need of them in order to mature emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually and to learn how to love --- our life's greatest task.]] Later Burrows writes:

[[All human maturation and growth towards union with God demands a creative tension between solitude and community. Understood in a truly spiritual/Christian sense, we cannot have the one without the other, and each thrives in mutual proportion. Each of us must stand absolutely alone before God, assuming full responsibility for our attitudes and choices. At the same time, none of us can come to self-knowledge and maturity without others. The more truly solitary and personal the individual member, the more authentic the community --- a genuine communion of mind and heart. . .. Understanding the meaning of solitude and being faithful to it, and at the same time forgetting self in the service of community, enables divine Love to bring to being our true personhood. When that is so then, most truly, we are alone with God alone.]]

Regarding your question on percentages, I never measure anything regarding solitude and community in that way. It is not helpful at this point. Instead, I recognize I am called to live with and for God alone and I do what is necessary to ensure that. That will mean meeting with my Director regularly, joining with my faith community at the parish when I can, doing the personal work I have committed to as part of my ongoing personal formation, and being accessible if someone needs to meet with me, including spiritual direction clients. But it will also mean living most, if not all of every day, with God for the sake of God and others --- alone in my hermitage. So long as prayer continues to support these activities and these activities continue to call me back to prayer in solitude, and so long as I continue to experience God calling me to all of this and find myself growing as a person in Christ, I think I am living exactly the kind of solitude God calls me to. And, though I am not a cenobite, I think it is the same kind of solitude St. Teresa wanted for her Sisters, specifically, "a solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand," and do so in and with God. 

Personal growth in God (that is, in Love) will always be the key, I think. Because of the way I understand the two things, I live community with an accent on solitude and solitude with an accent on its communal nature. I hope this makes sense to you because it requires giving up the kind of calculus you (and most others, by the way), understandably propose and ask about. Meanwhile, all good wishes and prayers for my Carmelite brothers and Sisters. I am thinking especially of Ruth Burrow's Carmel and also the Carmel in Reno where friends are celebrating with the community today! May this Feast be a gift in every way it possibly could!!

All quotations taken from Essence of Prayer, "Alone with Him Alone: St Teresa's creative understanding of eremiticism", by Ruth Burrows, OCD, Hidden Spring Press, 2006.

Abba Motius: Humility is to See Ourselves to Be the Same as the Rest

[[Dear Sister, you once wrote: [[What I am trying to say is there is a vast difference between fitting in because in one's basic Christianity one knows on a deep level how very like every other person one is, and therefore, truly belonging in any circumstance or set of circumstances, and trying to "blend in." The first is motivated by humility and carried along by one's genuine love of others. The second is too self-conscious and seems to me to not be motivated by humility or an honest love of others. Abba Motius of the Desert Fathers says it this way, "For this is humility: to see yourself to be the same as the rest." ]] If a person has certain gifts which make her stand apart from others is it really possible for her to affirm that "she is the same as all the rest"? If humility is a form of loving honesty as you have also written here, then is it honest or humble to deny the gifts which make one different from others? How does a person come to this kind of humility without denying their gifts? Is this another one of those Christian paradoxes you are so fond of?? Is it important to the kind of hermit you are?]]

Your question is amazingly timely because I have been thinking a lot this entire week about the gift of God which this conviction of how profoundly like others I really am truly is. In my own prayer life and in those experiences I might call "mystical," two gifts in particular have made all the difference in my ability to love and to be a person of genuine hope. The first has to do with a sense that the human heart is that place within us where God always bears witness to Godself, where God reveals Godself moment by moment as ever new and the source of a dynamic newness (and eternity) in us in a way which always transcends and is deeper than any woundedness or personal deficiency by which we might also be marked or marred. When there have been times I felt I could not face another day, when I had the sense that my own brokenness was too profound to be reached by the love of others or to allow me to love them, this sense that God was there within me 1) constituting a part of my very  existence which is deeper than any woundedess and 2) calling my name in an unceasing way that created genuine hope for a future both including and transcending all this, was really salvific for me.

The second gift which is related to this same prayer experience and which has been similarly transformative and lifegiving has been this sense that essentially I am "the same as all the rest of us." There was no striking direct revelation, no "locution" saying, "You are the same as everyone else!" or anything like that which convinced me of this. Instead it was the result of my reflection on the prayer experience I have spoken of here several times now where God was completely delighted to be able to "finally be here with [me] like this" and where I had the sense of having his entire attention.

What was pivotal here was the clear sense I had that 1) my own woundedness was no obstacle to God's delight, 2) that everyone delighted God in precisely this same way and 3) that everyone and everything else had God's entire attention just as I did. For me this became tremendously healing because it meant I was no longer burdened with the mistaken and personally crippling notion that my personal differences set me apart or isolated me from others in ways none of us could really ever overcome. It was this too that, at another point, allowed me to turn the corner on a solitary life rooted in isolation and unhealthy withdrawal and instead embrace one of authentic eremitical solitude and freedom.

For several significant reasons I came into early adulthood feeling that there were differences between myself and others which could never be bridged, much less healed or otherwise obviated. It was not merely that I was gifted in ways others might not have been (though there was some of that too) but instead that I came to realize that on some deep level I had the sense that my very humanity was wounded and changed in a way which could never allow me to truly love or be loved by others. It was as though I had been made different from others on a level that could never be healed or transfigured. While I actually got on well with others, was well-liked (even loved!), did well in studies and ministry, was (rightly) convinced I was called to serve God as a religious, etc, this profound sense of woundedness and "differentness" was a burden which sometimes made every step feel weighted with real sadness and despair --- even when most times that took the form of a kind of resignation and quiet grief or desperation. Whether due to personal giftedness, or deficiencies and woundedness, deep down I had the sense I could never truly embrace the Desert Father Motius' notion that I was the same as everyone else; thus, I also had the sense that authentic humanity, as well as loving and being loved was really forever beyond me.

And then, along with several other ongoing and supportive experiences of love and care by others, came the prayer experience I have briefly related here several times. It is because of that experience and my own reflection on that and similar but less seminal experiences over the next years that I am able to answer your questions with an assurance even a good theological background specializing in the theology of the cross (which is also VERY important here) might never have have allowed. Here then are those answers (so thanks for your patience). First of all you ask: [[If a person has certain gifts which make her stand apart from others is it really possible for her to affirm that "she is the same as all the rest"? If humility is a form of loving honesty as you have also written here, then is it honest or humble to deny the gifts which make one different from others?]]

In the first instance my answer is, yes, provided such a person knows who she is in God, and who others are in God as well. One must come to know oneself on this ultimately deep level, and she must come to know that all other persons --- no matter how different in talents, physical and intellectual abilities, family and psychosocial background, genetic makeup, health, etc, ---  are similarly grounded, similarly constituted, similarly called and loved in and by God. The word existence means to stand up out of (ex-istere); we stand up out of God who is the ground of being and meaning. That means that to some extent we are separate from one another in the very fact of our historical existence. However, it also means at a deeper (ultimate) level we are united with one another and all else that is.

In a way all I am saying here is we each share the very same humanity and all the gifts or deficiencies in the world cannot, will not, ever change that. To see reality in this way, to see creation as monastics tell us is the way of REALLY seeing, to see, that is, as GOD SEES is the basis of all of our security, our hope, and our ability to hold and carry both gifts and deficiencies lightly; this means we hold them in ways which do not isolate us from our brothers and sisters. My answer to your second question is that nothing need be denied in us or in others when we see ourselves and others this way. Yes, there will be differences, some of them pretty profound, but none so profound as the similarity and unity we share in God.

You also asked:  [[How does a person come to this kind of humility without denying their gifts? Is this another one of those Christian paradoxes you are so fond of?? Is it important to the kind of hermit you are?]] LOL! Yes, I guess this absolutely is one of those Christian paradoxes I am so delighted by and so very fond of. In fact, it is the very definition of paradox where apparent conflicts are allowed to stand because of a deeper unity in which resolution and even reconciliation is truly found.

I am not sure I can say much more about how a person comes to this humility. Certainly it is a grace. However, the things in my own life which allowed it include: 1) prayer in which I am loved (and allowed to love) beyond those things which make me either gifted or wounded and deficient in historico-temporal ways, 2) the Gospel of Christ which proclaims in fact that nothing can separate us from the love of God and so, reminds us that there is a deeper sustaining dynamism that is a constantly renewing source of life for us, 3) a faith which allows me to risk changing my mind and heart to embrace these realities and live from them, and 4) all of those people who mentored, taught, directed, pastored, treated, formed, supervised, or were friends to me out of their own faith in this transcendent reality and a belief in the person I most truly was and could be in light of it.

And regarding your final question, in one way and another everything I have written about eremitical life or the spiritual life here on this blog, every article I have published in Review for Religious, and so on, reflects the importance of all of these things for being the kind of hermit I am (not to mention the kinds of hermits I expect others to be as well)! I know first hand what it means to try and use canon 603 or eremitical life more generally to try to merely validate brokenness and isolation, but I also know what it means to live an authentic eremitical life in which these are redeemed and transformed into the silence of solitude and in which canon 603 is allowed to function as the Church really desired and needs it to function.

The same is true of contem-plative and/or mystical prayer. Certainly there are those who use pseudo mystical experiences to exacerbate their isolation and underscore their differentness from others. This is one of the problems which occurs when we focus on the "sensible furnishings" of the experience and fail to transcend these so that the real Wisdom of these experiences can take hold of us, shake us at our very foundations (Tillich), and remake us in mind, heart, and will.

Here is one of the places the work of Ruth Burrows I cited recently is so very important. (cf., On Pentecost, Ruth Burrows, OCD and the Real Experience in Mystical Prayer.) The same is also true of our true and false selves, where the true self is the "spontaneity" (Merton) or Event which is realized whenever the Spirit is allowed to grasp, shake, and transform (make true or verify) us entirely. Again, there is probably very little I have written about here and nothing of real significance that does not in some way owe its very existence to this "paradox" which is the key to understanding my experience in prayer and stands at the heart of all (but especially Christian) existence.  Certainly  there is nothing authentic in the kind of hermit I am which is not similarly indebted. Even something like the essential hiddenness of this vocation is illuminated by this paradox: cf  A Vocation to Extraordinary Ordinariness.

I am very grateful for your question. I don't know what made you look up that old post citing Abba Motius, Should Christians Try to Blend In? but that you did so this week and actually wrote me about it is a terrific gift. Thank you.

Followup Questions on the Intimacy of Prayer and the Responsibility to Share the Fruit of One's Contemplative Experience



[[Dear Sister Laurel, are you saying that one must share the most intimate details of one's prayer with others? I think of prayer as very intimate. I don't think I must go into the details with the entire Church.]]

Thanks! Good question. No, I don't mean this. However, I do expect a lot of the details to be shared with one's spiritual director so the entire experience and all its implications can be discussed and submitted to a mutual process of discernment in which the emotional and sensible content (to whatever extent this exists) can be transformed into deeper personal understanding and genuinely ecclesial wisdom.

Even here the director's work is mainly to allow and assist the directee to reflect on the experience, to open her to letting it continue to live in her, and therefore to help her to live from it and draw conclusions about it to the extent it is authentic; it is not the job of the director necessarily to simply pronounce of the authenticity of the experience. Instead she works to enable the kind of patience, openness, and generosity that will allow such experiences to become sources of real wisdom. With you I completely agree that what happens in prayer is one of the most intimate experiences a person may have --- more intimate I would argue than sexual intercourse even (potentially the most intimate experience human beings usually know apart from prayer). I believe that sharing the details with people is something that will happen rarely and carefully. Here is one of the places where casting pearls before swine is a real concern, not because people are swine of course, but because they really may have no true sense just how holy and precious this piece of one's life actually is which can lead to "trampling it underfoot". Besides, there are simply some things we "hold close" and only share with those we know will understand from "inside" the experience.

Still, some degree of sharing is important, not because one wants folks to believe their prayer experiences are "special" or "beyond what others experience" (at best one is naive if one believes this), but because they can become a true source of wisdom when one reflects on them in this way. In my own posts on this blog, and in fact, in a reflection I did for my parish several years ago, I have referred to one really significant prayer experience several times. I have done that for several reasons: 1) because it is a living reality, not a static memory, which I touch back into regularly so that I may hear more profoundly that which I heard less so earlier; 2) so that new dimensions of revelation and understanding may be opened to me since God has not stopped speaking to me via this 30 year old prayer experience; 3) so that I can illustrate for others how it is we fulfill the definition of "experience" which Ruth Burrows rightly insists on --- especially the patience and generosity she refers to, and 4) so that it becomes clear that as private and intimate as an experience is, extraordinary (and those we mistakenly think are not so extraordinary) experiences of prayer are a gift to the whole community.

To open such an experience to others is also to help short circuit any tendency to elitism or mere eccentricity while making sure the real prayer experience is the ecclesial reality it is meant to be. Everyone in the Church should be encouraged to reflect in a general way on the prayer experiences not only of their own lives, but those of others that may differ. This encourages an openness to allowing God to work in one's own life in ways one may never have entertained before, not least because one thought it was only open to "specialists" or religious, for instance. It is also helpful and perhaps natural to any life in which prayer is truly central -- whether that be the life of a mom with children, of a businessman negotiating the complexities of a contemplative approach to his difficult professional environment, a hermit in her hermitage, or the Church as a whole. While the immediate experience I spoke of earlier was my own, beginning with my work with my director, that can --- and, I believe, ought to --- become a source of communal reflection and discernment which eventually leads to real wisdom for the whole Church but certainly for the contemplative's local Church. After all it is a witness to the way the Holy Spirit is working in the midst of the community --- and the way She DESIRES to work in every life therein even if the sensible "furnishings" of the experiences involved differ from person to person.

Let me reiterate a bit and clarify what I am saying here. I do not mean to say that the larger church will ever know of the details of my own prayer experience(s) themselves; those may be known only to my director or to a small and select group of friends. To the degree communicating the ineffable is even possible this could even occur in a group spiritual direction or parish prayer-group setting, for instance. At the same time, as I write this, I am clearer than ever that even these yet-unshared details could eventually be shared more largely to the extent they reveal the ineffable more than they obscure it, and to the extent it is truly reverent and prudent to do so. What remains true is that in any case the more general dynamics of my experience and the way these call me to grow in holiness --- the way this experience shapes an eremitical spirituality, the way I grow in understanding as I continue to tap into it, the wisdom it has for the faith community at large, what it teaches about the nature and place of (contemplative) prayer in every person's life and the life of the Church herself, what it says about the love and mercy of God and the way God truly delights in each of us, how it changed and continues to change me as a person, etc., --- are all matters that should be grist for greater ecclesial sharing and reflection.

For me personally this is another dimension of the silence of solitude being a communal or dialogical reality. It is part of being a representative of a living eremitical tradition. While the hermitage allows me an essentially hidden life geared to meeting God alone, and while my prayer is deeply intimate and private, the hermitage is also a quasi public as well as a formally and essentially ecclesial reality. It exists in the name of the Church and the life within it (in particular the prayer, penance, lectio, and study that so informs it) is a gift to that same Church especially to the extent she is a praying Church!

I suspect that this is another of those reasons we find hermits negotiating the tensions between their hidden lives and their public (ecclesial) roles through writing more often than not. Of course it is also true that contemplative prayer needs the checks and balances of a praying community with a long history of saints and genuine contemplatives and mystics if we are to avoid the problems associated with false and merely narcissistic "mystical" experiences, but generally the reason the contemplative takes part in the Church's own conversation in these matters is because she prays as part of the praying church and contributes to its life and wisdom in doing so. While sharing and reflecting together on experiences may lead to the discernment that some of these are inauthentic and disedifying, the more important reason for doing so is to allow those that are authentic to truly BE edifying to the whole faith community. This, I believe, is part of the responsibility of sharing in God's gift of contemplation.

On Discernment with Regard to Prayer Experiences and "the Spiritual": Making Sure these are Truly Edifying

[[But in the spiritual life, we do not need temporal justification or documentation by or of others. Consider Jesus. He did not reference or cite what temple priests, scribes or experts on Judaic law said or wrote. He referenced God the Father and the Pentateuch (the Scrolls). Consider any of the prophets. They cite God. Moses relayed what God said and did not justify his words or His Words by any other means. All this makes me ponder the more, the writings of great and holy souls in Christendom, in the Church, who have passed on to us much wisdom and guidance for the spiritual life. They do not justify themselves or their words by any other persons than The Three Persons: God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit.]] This was posted by a woman claiming to be a Catholic hermit in an apparent response to one or two posts you had put up clarifying mistakes people make in approaching mystical experiences and eremitical life:  (On Justifying Oneself ). She claims that documentation is necessary in secular matters but not spiritual ones. She also seems to believe that providing the kinds of support you did is done in an attempt to elevate oneself. Could you please comment on this?

Well, assuming as you do that this post was actually directed at me and either my recent article on eremitical life citing the Camaldolese founders and reformers or the one on contemplative prayer citing Ruth Burrows, Thomas Merton, et al, I could begin by pointing out that I am neither a great nor a holy soul, but in this case I think that is beside the point. You see this comment refers to people trying to justify or even elevate themselves and what they write in the area of spirituality by the similar positions and words of others --- except of course, God alone. The post insists that neither Jesus nor the prophets quoted anyone except God the Father and the Pentateuch. While I contend that is not actually true it is also beside the point. After all Jesus spoke with a unique authority, "You have heard it said . . . but I say. : ." while the Prophets were charged with speaking the very Word of God into their present situation. We simply don't know what else they said, nor how they supported what they had to say. The Scriptures focus our attention and accent the Prophets' authority differently than this.

But what actually is this blogger's point? As far as I can tell, she seems to believe that in the spiritual life (unlike what is acceptable in any other sphere of human endeavor) we can say anything at all about prayer, mystical experiences, eremitical life, etc., and justify it with the assertion that its source and ground is (an experience of) God: "I experienced this, it is of God because I say it is of God; nothing more needs be said. Believe me!" Do I really need to point out how specious and often destructive such a position actually is and has been in human religious history?

In any case to say that the great Saints and spiritual writers in the history of the Church do not support what they write or say by references to other great Saints, scholars, or experts is simply untrue. It would be easy to cite a paragraph or a dozen and more where the Saint or religious scholar in question cites others to support or clarify his/her position. John of the Cross, for instance cited both Latin and Greek Fathers to support and further illuminate his own positions throughout his work. It was hardly an attempt at personal justification nor was it done to elevate himself. Instead it was part of a broader conversation with the whole Church and is paradigmatic of the importance of such an undertaking. (More about this in a bit.)

Still (and meanwhile), even the assertion that great saints don't cite others is somewhat beside the point. What is more pertinent is the fact that the assertion that one does not need to cite others in support of personal spiritual experiences is nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that. In the area of religious experience it is actually more important than in most any other area of human endeavor I can think of to support what one says with the experimental findings of others in prayer. Beyond this it is critically important to justify what one says theologically and by the fruits of one's life --- not least because the sinful human heart knows many gods and the human imagination and intellect have shown time and time again their propensity to mistake the merely subjective and illusory stuff of the "false self" for objective reality and the stuff of the "true self" (which, to the extent it exists, really does know and reflect God). In other words, in the realm of religious experience human history is fraught with the mistaken, the mentally ill, the deluded, the merely sinful, the dishonest and hypocrites, as well as opportunists and flimflam artists of every kind and shade. Even when the person is acting in completely good faith we may be dealing with a bit of errant neurochemistry or neuroelectrical activity, psychological projection, or simple misinterpretation more than we are dealing with an experience of God. Does this blogger really not know this?

Prayer is our experimental means to knowledge of God and just as in other forms of human knowing which depend on the duplication of experimental results and the careful elaboration of the implications of the findings, so too do prayer experiences require something similar though, of course, not identical. (Since prayer is the activity of a transcendent and sovereign God within us, not something we alone achieve, duplication of the conditions and experience is not possible.) We have criteria for discerning the genuineness of a prayer experience (or series of experiences) and we turn to theologians and experts in prayer to explore the ramifications and implications of our conclusions. Could this have been of God? In what way is this so and in what way not (because both aspects are always present in such an experience!)? What allows me to say so? Who has known God in similar ways and what does this mean? And of course, what are the fruits of this experience? Does it result in greater life and truth, compassion and love, or does it not? These are a few of the questions personal experiences in prayer, despite the subjective certitude associated with them, necessarily call for in order that they may be edifying not only to the individual but to the entire faith community.

Again (and here we return to the reason St John of the Cross's citations of others are so important and a model for us) we are looking at a reason prayer, though profoundly and unquestionably personal, is also an essentially ecclesial reality and not merely a private one. Genuine discernment requires the wisdom of a praying community --- which, on the most immediate or individual level is what working with a spiritual director is about. Our individual prayer experiences must become the source of real wisdom and this requires reflection and conversation. Remember the citation I gave from Ruth Burrows: [[When all is said and done, the long line of saints and spiritual writers who insist on "experience", who speak of sanctity in terms of ever deepening "experience", who maintain that to have none is to be spiritually dead, are absolutely right provided we understand "experience" in the proper sense, not as a transient emotional impact but as living wisdom, living involvement. . . .So often, however, what the less instructed seek is mere emotion. They are not concerned with the slow demanding generosity of genuine experience.]] GMP, "A Look at Experiences," p 55, emphasis added.

For this to happen testing (sometimes called testing of the spirits) must also occur and this happens within the community of faith, not least including the communion of saints. As far as I can see, to be responsible for what one experiences in prayer requires one to submit her own conclusions to the "corroboration" (so to speak) --- or, perhaps better put, to the reverent attention and consideration of other faithful, especially those experienced in the ways of prayer. One does this so that one's own experience may become a source of genuine wisdom in a way which builds up the whole community. One does so in order that others may truly benefit from God's interaction with humanity in Christ as mediated in one's own prayer. This is precisely the way we believe and truly honor our very personal prayer experiences. Merely privatistic experiences, especially when they are eccentric or mainly rooted in the false self are not only not edifying, they are disedifying or downright destructive both of the individual and of the believing community as well.

Merton, TS Elliot, The Apophatic Way and My Own Contemplative Life

Dear Sister, I like the posts you have put up with the picture of the monk and the quotes from Merton and T.S. Elliot. I hope you continue these. Is Merton a favorite writer and spiritual teacher for you? I ask because some people have written that he went kind of awry or was "off" in his later years and was discredited as a Catholic monk. I don't mean you shouldn't read him but I wondered why you liked him and if you thought that was true.]]

Hi there. Thanks for your comments on the posts. I do plan to continue these. Not only do I love the picture -- which for me sums up so much of the eremitical life -- but I think these posts provide a way of giving a small but significant taste of various authors on the contemplative journey from time to time. When I first thought of combining the picture with a single quote I was thinking that visually and otherwise it would present as a kind of contemplative moment within the blog itself; I thought that might be really attractive to folks who come here. I haven't decided how often I want to put these up -- not TOO frequently of course --- and I think I also need to title them similarly so they stand out as a regular feature of the blog, but those logistical matters aside, yes I will continue to put them up.

As for Thomas Merton, yes, he is a favorite writer and spiritual teacher (or mentor) for me though until very recently it had been some time since I had actually read him. I was saying to a friend earlier today that I have just recently come back to Merton and am beginning to reread him with new eyes. I first picked up his stuff in the late 1960's or early 1970's. Later, in the 1980's I read some of his work on eremitical life. Along with Merton's own stuff I am looking again at the work of William Shannon. The latter's revision of The Dark Path (his new book is called Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey) is really exciting because in it I am reading again about something I once felt called to and with which I resonated to some limited degree, but now recognize as profoundly descriptive of my own spiritual journey and contemplative experience. You see, Merton's approach to contemplation and my own are the same (which is hardly surprising!); we both were called to the "apophatic" (a-poh-FAT-ic) tradition or way --- the way of darkness and denial. (It comes from the Greek word apophasis (uh-POF-uh-sis) which means negation or denial, ("God is not. . ."). It's opposite is the kataphatic or affirmative way (kataphasis [keh-TAF-uh-sis] means affirmation); it is a way of doing theology which proceeds by way of analogy and makes affirmations about God both in terms of similarity ("God is like. . .") and even greater dissimilarity ("but God is even more unlike . . ."). It does not, by definition, penetrate to the deepest essence or heart of God)

Apophatic Tradition in Contemplation

Apophatic contemplation, which is a way built on "experiencing" God directly, thrives on paradox and I have been turned on by paradox and especially by the paradoxes of Christianity from the moment my first major professor explained the difference between the way Greek thought tends to proceed and the way Biblical thought works. (The first moves from thesis to antithesis and then comes to rest in a synthesis which often is a kind of golden mean. Biblical thought, on the other hand, is at home with paradox --- a kind of both/and approach to thought and reality which often says things like "Dive into the emptiness and there you will find real fullness," "In losing yourself you will find yourself,"  "God's mercy IS his justice", and so forth.) For the contemplative knows that even though many of us are driven to write many words about prayer, spirituality, or theology, none of them even comes close to describing God or the experience (or non-experience!) of prayer. At the same time we know that the tensions of paradox come closest to conveying the truth about God and God's dealings with us --- though many would call them senseless babblings. Thus God is a light we only perceive as darkness or a darkness which illuminates, an emptiness which is fullness, the nothing which is all, so that faith and prayer involve a vulnerable leap (which we both must make and actually cannot make ourselves!) into a void in which we find (or rather are found by) total security. You get the idea I think.

Ruth Burrows (Sister Rachel), the Carmelite nun and specialist in Teresa of Avila whom I have also cited recently and like very much is a contemplative in the apophatic way and this is one of the reasons she so rejects the sense experience so many mistakenly associate with an experience of God in so-called "mystical states". Meister Eckhart, also a proponent of the apophatic way, agrees with Ruth Burrows in this and writes in typical paradoxical form: "Seek God so as never to find him". Both agree with Merton that when, through some experience in prayer, one "seems to have found God," they have NOT found God -- or that "once one seems to have grasped God, God has eluded one". As William Shannon (writing in a way which echoes what I have said here any number of times) explains, "God is not an object or a thing alongside of other objects and things: God is the All whom we can discover only in the experience of not discovering." The Apostle Paul described the same experience when he spoke of "coming to know/grasp God, or rather, being known/grasped by God." Paul Tillich's theology, which I focused on in both my senior year of college and later in doctoral work reminds me very much of this because he defines faith as, "the state of being grasped by an unconditional concern" and is emphatic that God is not A being, but instead the ground of being and meaning out of which all that is exists (ex-istere, out of - to stand up).

Of course the really big name in the apophatic way is John of the Cross (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Living Flame of Love, ). Meanwhile, T.S. Elliot may also have been "schooled" in the apophatic tradition because in true apophatic style he speaks of coming again to the place where he began and knowing that place for the first time. In Little Gidding V Elliot piles paradox upon paradox but he begins with the following one: [[We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.]] This really is the experience of contemplative prayer, the experience of seeking and exploring that which in some sense we know and desire profoundly as our source and starting place only to come to "know the place for the first time." Merton comes at it from the other way around and says it this way, [[[Contemplation] strikes us at once as utterly new and strangely familiar. . .Although we had an entirely different notion of what it would be like, it turns out to be just what we seem to have known all along that it ought to be. . .We enter a region which we had never even suspected, and yet, it is this new world which seems familiar and obvious.]] Seeds of Contemplation pp 144-145

Thomas Merton, A Brief Evaluation:

All of which brings me back to Thomas Merton and your questions. (Really!!) You see, this is the nature of my own contemplative experience and for that reason I know Thomas Merton to have been the real deal. So much of what he writes resonates with me and my own experience in prayer, but also with the "greats" like John of the Cross, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, many of the Greek Fathers, et al. But besides that, I think I largely owe him for my eremitical vocation. You see when I read canon 603 for the first time it was intriguing to me personally and suggested a way all the dimensions of my life could be rendered coherent (that is, made to hold together in meaningful whole). However, I also doubted such a vocation could be anything but selfish. (Contemplative life struck me that way; eremitical life was far worse --- it seemed a kind of epitome or summit of selfishness!) I then read Dom Jean LeClercq's Alone With God which intrigued me; I liked it very much though I had no idea the Camaldolese existed. Still, I had doubts about the value of the life. Then I read Merton's Contemplation in a World of Action. As I have written here before, it electrified me because it showed eremitical life as valid and more, as a significant gift of God to the Church and world. Later I read his "Notes on a Philosophy of Solitude" in Disputed Questions and that became a new favorite -- but by that time I was already a  hermit and had been for more than twenty years.

Some suggest he was not a true monk or that he had confessed upon walking into a library with shelves of his books that much of it was crap (I think he said B.S.). I have already written about those things in this blog and will link you to it here: Defending Thomas Merton . Bear in mind that for the apophatic contemplative words ALWAYS not only fall short of but also betray God. We are nonetheless compelled to write about God and prayer but with an awareness that when what we write is compared to the God who grasps us in prayer, the judgment must always be what it was for Thomas Merton, Thomas Aquinas and so many others: this is as straw, it is a load of refuse, BS, etc. Further our work is always also our very own and reflects not just our virtue, our knowledge, and our union with God but our limitations and even our sinfulness or estrangement from that same God and our truest selves. Thus when Merton looked upon the newly published Seeds of Contemplation, for instance, he remarked, "Every book I write is a mirror of my own character and conscience. I always open the final printed job with the faint hope of finding myself agreeable and I never do" He goes on to say both sincerely and perhaps with more than a little contemplative irony (or all-too-human hyperbole), "There is nothing to be proud of in this one either. : ."

Meanwhile, as someone associated with the Camaldolese as an oblate, I know that many Christian Contemplatives read, study, and regularly meet and discuss with contemplatives of other religious traditions. Some of my Camaldolese brothers and sisters in particular are specialists in other contemplative traditions and the New Camaldoli hermitage hosts inter-religious meetings of such contemplatives regularly though not frequently. We (contemplatives from various religious traditions) have a lot in common precisely because the God we meet transcends words and descriptions --- and also the limits of our own religious traditions. (Sometimes our own clinging to these limits represents what Mary Magdalene did with the Risen Christ and we need to remember that while we are to honor these traditions appropriately for all they truly reveal/mediate to us, they must not cause us to cling to a yet-unascended Jesus nor to limit the reach of the Holy Spirit.)

Though aware of all this (and paradoxically too, because of it) Merton never ceased to be a Christian and a Cistercian Monk.  Because his own life reflected the paradoxes and tensions of the contemplative who is drawn beyond more usual borders and boundaries I understand why what he wrote was uncomfortable for some of his confreres and others. Of course, I also know he was a flawed human being; his unacceptable behavior with the nurse he met during his stay in hospital was unjustifiable -- though he tried pretty hard (and pitifully) to do this in what I read of his last journal. Still, my own judgment on Merton is favorable. He was and remained a Catholic Christian, Trappist Monk, and true contemplative who was also a contemporary hermit and a fine writer. I am grateful to God for his life and more than a little sorry for his premature death because I would have liked to have known him.

Pentecost!!! Come Holy Spirit!!!

I have written in the past about a significant prayer experience I had where I had the sense I had God's entire attention, where God was absolutely delighted that I was "finally" there, and where I was completely assured in some indefinable way that, paradoxically, the rest of God's creation enjoyed his entire attention as well. I have also written that from time to time I return to this prayer experience to tap into it again, to drink from its living waters, and to breathe in the strength of its Spirit. I do this because it still lives inside me; it is part of my living, daily memory and has not yet and (I strongly suspect) will never be exhausted of its riches. It serves still as a gateway to a "place" where God is waiting with much to show me and thus, as a gateway to real wisdom. More, it serves as a gateway to that "place" where God is allowed to be completely attentive to me, the place created when he loves me as he wills to do and I am truly myself. And yet, for all of our clamoring and self-centeredness, our love of being at the center of attention and acclaim, it is hard to let ourselves be the center of God's attention because it is hard to let God himself be the center of our own attention.

Over the past weeks I have been thinking about the part played by Jesus' Ascension in our faith. It has been enriched by a focus on the Bridegroom's return to his Father's home to prepare a place for all of humanity in his Father's own life. Especially I have come to see more clearly how it is that through the mediation of his Christ God not only comes to dwell among us exhaustively but that he also opens his own life to us; Divine descent is balanced or matched by Human ascent.

This means that in Christ humanity and all of the experience of humanity including death itself is taken up into the life of God and yet does not destroy God. It also means that the Spirit which hovered over the waters in creation, while not a different Spirit, is also not precisely the same Spirit that exists after the Christ Event and the Ascension of Jesus. The Risen Christ and the Eternal Son are now entirely one. The Spirit (as was always true) is the single eternal Spirit of love that courses between Son and Father; still, because of the Christ Event, including the Ascension of Christ, the Spirit whose coming we celebrate today is not only the Spirit of Divinity, but also the Spirit of authentic humanity. The courage, wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, reverence for God, etc, which come to us today and everyday are also the courage, wisdom, understanding, etc of Jesus' himself --- the one who has suffered our pain, borne the burden of our sinfulness, felt the frustration of our weakness, celebrated the same joys and loves which we do, and persevered in prayer and his acceptance of his Father's commission as he grew to the fullness of "grace and stature" in the power of the Spirit.

But it really is hard sometimes, I think, to be wholly and exhaustively loved by God. It calls for our whole selves to be illuminated by that attention and healed by that love so that we may truly be human beings who center our lives on God's own life.  And yet, this is one piece of today's Feast. Today God showers us with gifts and they are the gifts of God's very self but also the gifts of Jesus and our own truest humanity. God in Christ gives us his full attention and pours out upon us all the riches that attention implies so that we ourselves might likewise give God and his Reign in our midst our full attention.

Today God empowers us with the gifts which make us truly human and commissions us individually and communally to be his People in a world which hungers for this desperately. As a part of this feast it is personally important for me to tap into that prayer experience again as I must do from time to time so that it may continue to renew me. In doing so I am not merely indulging a past memory of something that took place 30 (or so!) years ago nor do I either need nor try to feel what I once felt there; those things are mere shadows of the reality itself. Instead it involves opening myself to a continuing reality which enlivens, nourishes, inspires, challenges, and commissions right here and now. It is to open myself to an experience of God where there is a genuine forgetfulness of self and what delight there is is living delight in God's own delight.

I am reminded in all of this that Sister Rachel, OCD (Ruth Burrows) strongly affirms that the real experience of mystical prayer is always far broader and deeper than the mere (and often misleading) things we feel, hear, see, etc in such prayer; the real "experience" of prayer, the true mystical grace, is the wisdom that grows in us as a result of God's work within us,** the authentic humanity and capacity for all those gifts of the Spirit that not only allow us to grow in grace and stature as Jesus did, but to grow more and more into the image of Jesus who gave himself completely to and for others and thus discovered and embraced his truest home in the very heart of God. We ask that God open us to this fire that burns beneath and beyond all the transitory and illusory things we feel or see in prayer so that one day that same God might, in the power of His Holy Spirit, be all in all. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us all the fire of your love!
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** In Guidelines for Mystical Prayer Ruth Burrows writes:  [[When all is said and done, the long line of saints and spiritual writers who insist on "experience", who speak of sanctity in terms of ever deepening "experience", who maintain that to have none is to be spiritually dead, are absolutely right provided we understand "experience" in the proper sense, not as a transient emotional impact but as living wisdom, living involvement. . . .So often, however, what the less instructed seek is mere emotion. They are not concerned with the slow demanding generosity of genuine experience.]] GMP, "A Look at Experiences," p 55, emphasis added.

Advent Reading

 I wanted to recommend a book for Advent this year, especially since we are using Matthew's Gospel. It is Pagola's The Way Opened Up by Jesus, a Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

While the book does function as a commentary it is also very fine for lectio and could be used profitably during this season by anyone desiring to learn to know Jesus a little better while preparing to hear the daily Gospel passages proclaimed at Mass. Pagola writes in a way which opens our hearts to the truth of God revealed in the Son.

For each of us Christmas is a time when we commonly decry the fact that Jesus and the Way he proclaimed and made possible is not at the center of our holidays; instead we get crass commercialism, greed, selfishness, the exacerbation of social isolation and family difficulties, etc, etc. The problem  of course is that what Christmas does do is lay bare the fact that too few of us truly allow Jesus Christ and his "Way" to occupy the center of our own hearts. Pagola's book can help in this. (Get it soon, there are few copies left on Amazon!)

For those who would like to focus instead on the Sunday readings Pagola also has three slender volumes for each of years A, B, and C. Each is entitled Following in the Footsteps of Jesus with the appropriate year completing the title. Each is a selection of meditations on the Sunday Gospels. I would also recommend Pagola's Jesus, a Historical Approximation, but I think it is even harder to find than his commentary on Matthew. (Amazon was selling a used copy for more than $4,000! I have never seen anything like it, especially since it was originally published in only 2007! If you can find a library copy though, please do give this a read.)

Next, I recommend Pope Francis's Open Mind, Faithful Heart.  Another collection of meditations on Scripture Francis invites us to do lectio with him and to enter into significant prayer and discipleship more generally. Each meditation is profoundly Scriptural and shows both an extensive and intensive familiarity with these. Prayers accompany the meditations, some of which are really beautifully written and all of which invite us to personally claim as our own the way of Jesus Christ. I have found it a book one best works through slowly and reflectively.

And finally, for both Advent and Christmas reading I suggest two books. The first is Illia Delio's Humilty of God.  Sister Delio is a Franciscan Sister, well-known for her work on the way the new cosmology challenges and informs contemporary spirituality. Building on the work of Bonaventure and Francis, Sister Illia gives us an amazingly contemporary understanding of the humility of God which illuminates the mystery of the Trinity, the sacramentality of our world and selves, and of course, the essence of what we prepare to celebrate during Advent and Christmas, namely a God whose ineffable greatness is exhaustively embodied and revealed (that is, glorified) in the life of a human being. Sister Delio is completely comfortable with the paradoxes at the heart of our faith and is able to illuminate them so they are seen clearly and have a chance of taking hold of us.

While the writing is accessible and often beautiful, one line in the first chapter struck me especially when I first read it: [[If we could only see that God is there in the cracks of our splintered human lives we would already be healed. The humility of God means acceptance --- God accepts ordinary, fragile human flesh to reveal his glory so that we in turn may accept others as the revelation of God. Christ discloses the beauty of the world as the radiance of God. . . . The humility of God is not an abstract concept. It is how God expresses himself in concrete reality.]] This is a very rewarding book both theologically and spiritually.

The second book is Ruth Burrows', To Believe in Jesus. There are many fine book on Jesus out there and I could easily list half a dozen I have found excellent over the years, but this slender but rich volume is packed with material one can consider, pray over, grapple with and generally be delighted and nourished by. Sister Rachel puts knowing Jesus Christ (or, rather, being known by him) at the center of her spirituality, her theology of prayer, her notions of holiness, and so forth. This book is a profound meditation on many passages of Scripture (though they are usually left implicit). Her first chapter begins compellingly: [[ Do you believe in the Son of Man? To this question addressed by Jesus to the man he had cured of blindness, I am sure each of us would reply with a hearty 'yes'. We would be sincere, but we would not be speaking the truth.]]

During Advent it seems to me that one of the questions we must surely ask ourselves is this one --- and one of the answers we must also hear is Sister Rachel's. I have written before that each of us are always beginners in the arena of prayer, not least because God is eternal and therefore ever-new even while he continues to remake us into something new as well. The Humility of God spoken of by Sister Illia Delio is best matched by our own humility; Sister Rachel's book can help us with that! I highly recommend it!!