Seeking God and Learning to See with New Eyes

[[Hi Sister Laurel, it wasn't until I read your comment on Benedictines entering a community "to seek God" that I realized I had always thought of God as missing somehow, or maybe just remote -- maybe too far away to really be concerned with me. I didn't think of him as absent exactly, but so much of prayer seemed to be calling on God to come and act, so that there was a sense that God was absent and had to be coaxed to come near and do what I prayed for. If God wasn't remote like that then why hadn't he already done whatever we prayed we needed?!  

It was frustrating, and I think that sometimes I failed to pray at all or even to believe in God's caring for me or those I love, because I had learned to pray as though God was distant. It is really different to think of God as right there, dwelling with and in us. But what do I do with the idea of asking God to take care of this or that situation, or to rescue me from whatever I need rescuing from? Does that also have to change? As I thought about everything you wrote, what most hit me was the way the idea of "seeking God" had changed and changes everything else. It is almost like the childhood game, "hide and seek," except that I began to see that God does not hide himself. We just need to find him.]]

Many thanks for your comments and sharing. I love your image of the childhood game; I think it works particularly well for us human beings who would like to believe sometimes that we can hide from God. Let me suggest a different and similar game that works especially well in helping us understand the idea of seeking God in the ways I spoke of in my last post, namely, "find the hidden objects". I am sure you know the game. A room or other setting is filled with all kinds of ordinary and extraordinary stuff, and one has to find the objects being named. They are present in plain sight, but they are also often difficult to spot. We have to learn to see them, learn to stop looking past them, for instance, and recognize them when they show up in the unexpected place,  as an unusual variation, or in a surprising orientation. I think seeking God is a lot like that game. Remember that the Gospels call us to see with new eyes. When our eyes are opened in the ways that occur when we are loved and love as God creates us to be and do, we can begin to see as the Gospels affirm is necessary and appropriate to human beings truly made in the image of God.

At the same time, seeing in this way takes practice, and often the hard work of learning to be attentive to the signs of truth, beauty, goodness, integrity, potential, holiness, and so forth, even or especially in the most ordinary aspects of reality. We learn to let go of and heal older ways of seeing (for instance, ways that are unduly biased, rigid in our expectations, lacking in generosity, or ways that are judgmental and otherwise lacking in love and humanness). We do the same with ourselves as we meet ourselves again and again in our confrontations with others, in prayer, in lectio and the inner work and conversations associated with spiritual direction, etc. The reading of Scripture as we pay attention to the ways Jesus sees and treats others can help us learn to be attentive in the ways we need to be, and these examples encourage us to see others and the whole of God's creation differently than our contemporary consumerist and deeply transactional world often encourages us to do.

You ask specifically about what you should do with a notion of God rescuing us from particular situations, because you have a sense that that, too, has to change. I agree that it does, but some of what you already do will remain the same. The fundamental thing to change is your sense that God is remote from you or may not even care about you. In part, this will mean embracing a God who protects your freedom and God's own, even while He offers to be your God and to embrace you as God's very own.** I can assure you (yes, this is my experience as well as that of Saint Augustine and many many others!) that God is closer to you than you are to yourself, and also that God delights in you, loves you with an everlasting love, wants the very best for you (better than you can ever imagine for yourself), and accompanies you wherever life's journeys take you. As Romans 8 reminds us, nothing whatsoever can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

So, by all means, pour out your heart to him; pour it all out to God, no matter how joyous or despairing, how apparently faithful or lacking in trust it is. Be open to becoming aware of God's presence and the fact that you are ultimately not alone in this or in anything at all! Ultimately, the darkness cannot win out; the oppressive silence that seems to mark absurdity and emptiness will become the backdrop for everything that sings God's praises, while tears of pain and the anguish of hopelessness will be transfigured into tears of joy and the consoling solidity of meaningfulness and hope. It is God's presence that changes everything.  If you can be assured of God's presence and practice attentiveness, not living in an idealistic or unrealistic way, but in light of what we are promised because of the fact and truth of Jesus' Resurrection, Ascension, and sending of the Spirit as well, and if you can begin to find God both in the world around you, and in yourself, you will gain greater and greater ability to see clearly with the new (and very generous) eyes God gives and the Gospels call for from us. 

By the way, when I have played the "Find the hidden objects" game, I find that I get really tired and, after a time of intense focus, am unable to see what is right in front of my eyes. I would encourage you to be patient with yourself in this journey of learning to seek God, rest as necessary, take breaks, and turn your mind and heart to something else for a while (recreation is a critical spiritual practice), and then come back to it all again when you are fresh. Just remember to remind yourself that God is there with you in your recreation as well! Welcome him and let him be Emmanuel in this, too! God has waited an eternity for this opportunity to celebrate life with you!! Glorify him! Practice allowing it!!

** Please see other articles here on the nature of authentic human freedom. The Christian sense of this reality is countercultural and thus vastly different from common notions of freedom. 

The Two Main Pathways to Seeking God

[[Hi Sister Laurel,  if one cannot make the journey into existential solitude hermits are committed to making, does this mean they cannot seek God? This sounds elitist to me. I am not able to live as a hermit or to make the kind of inner journey you do. I have other responsibilities, including a full-time job and a family to raise.]]

Important questions. Thanks for these! While recently I have written mainly about this journey into the depths of existential solitude, I have not meant to exclude the other ways we are called to seek God. Whether we are Benedictines or others who make this the focus of our lives or not, we are each called to seek God. It seems to me that there are two main (and interrelated) pathways to doing this. The first is to seek God outside of ourselves; the second is to seek God within ourselves. I think all of us are called to undertake both of these ways of seeking God, though not in the same way monastics or eremites might do this. This is not a problem since every human journey towards fullness of meaningful life is also a life in search of God.

The first way or route to seeking God, it seems to me, is about being open and attentive to the world around us. We seek God in the ordinary events, places, activities, and people of our lives. We may also, therefore, seek God under other rubrics or names: truth, beauty, integrity, order, spontaneity, life, love, faithfulness, courage, and so many others. This extraordinary or "sacred ordinariness" is something I have written about many times here, and it is something my friend, Rachel Denton, Er Dio, wrote about when she said, [[The heartbeat of my hermitage is its sacred ordinariness. It is an experience, in silence and solitude, of total immersion in the humdrum of daily life. A hermit is one who has, perhaps, become so overwhelmed by the immensity of the privilege of sharing Jesus’ humanity that she chooses to spend her whole life contemplating the mystery and manifestation of that gift in the most simple and ordinary form of living. A hermit lives out the mystery of the Incarnation in her own body, her own blood. A hermit says, “Christ, from the beginning of time, and in the fullness of time, chose being Jesus, being human, as the best way of expressing the love of the Trinity.]] Waiting in the Tabernacle of the Hermitage 

I think Sister Rachel Denton, Er Dio, expresses a mature, exemplary, and accessible approach to this first dimension of the eremitic journey. It is a dimension that every person, and certainly every Christian, should recognize as central to the human task of "seeking God" and the Divine task God sets us of becoming more fully and authentically human. In this way, Rachel's life is an exemplar of what each and all of our lives can and should reflect.

The second route or dimension of the search for God is the inner one, the path of existential solitude (for only we can make this journey into the depths of our own being, though again, we tend not to be able to do this alone). At the same time, I want to reiterate that even hermits, who undertake this journey in a more focused and exclusive way, do not do this by themselves. They have a spiritual director, a delegate or superior, and sometimes other hermits to assist them in assuring they do not lose their way or stray from their ordained path to fullness of life. At the same time, neither do hermits undertake this journey only for themselves. We do it because God, through the ministry of the Church, calls us to do it, yes, and we do it for the sake of the Church's proclamation of the Gospel and the salvation of the whole of God's creation.  I want to repeat what I wrote recently because it affirms the universality of this need to engage with and explore existential solitude.

Redwoods Abbey Altar during Tenebrae

[[. . .for some, the hunger for fullness of being and meaning, the yearning to be whole or holy and to allow God to be Emmanuel as fully and exhaustively as he wills, both for one's own sake and for the sake of others, will demand a different kind of commitment, a deeper and more exhaustive engagement with and in existential solitude. Some of these persons are called to be hermits.  Consecrated eremitical life is an ecclesial vocation undertaken for the sake of God's call to fullness of life. [The call to an engagement with existential solitude] belongs to each of us and to the Church itself. The hermit embraces the call and journey she does to witness to the God who is the ground and source of abundant life, meaningful life, eternal life, LIFE in relationship!! She explores the depths of herself and discovers that God is truly present, reaching out with love and mercy at every moment and mood of her journey -- even in the shadow of death and despair or near-despair. ]]

Every person is called to seek God and their truest self in existential solitude. Some become aware of this call during periods of illness or bereavement. Some will do so when they are thrown back on their own resources in some other way and experience their own weakness and incompleteness. Others will come to a moment of conversion occasioned by some special experience of transcendence and the Transcendent and begin to seek God and their own truest self in a more explicit way. (This could be an experience in Church, a visit to someplace stunningly beautiful, an experience of accomplishment or self-discovery that surprises and puts one in touch with themselves in a new way, etc. The possibilities are almost infinite.) Each of these persons and the events that mediated this need and desire to engage with and explore their own inner solitude, can look to the hermit (and often to other religious and monastics) and be reassured that their journey is not an empty one, no matter how difficult the circumstances that lead them here or how dark and treacherous the inner depths they will traverse. This is part of the "for others" character of the eremitic life. 

If we really understand this (and if those seeking to be hermits today truly understand it), I think it will make clear the eremitical journey is not an elitist one, but one made on behalf of others so they may have faith and hope rooted in the fact that, whether we discover God in the sacred ordinariness of our everyday lives, or in the challenging depths of even sin and death, the One Jesus called Abba comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place.

On Advent and Allowing our Lives to be Those of Constant Vigil (Reprise)

 Perhaps it is the focus of Advent with its emphasis on preparation and waiting, but I came today to see my life specifically and eremitical life more generally as one of vigil --- and continuous vigil. Whether the time in our hermitages is obviously fruitful, or marked by darkness and seeming emptiness, whether one turns to prayer with joy and enthusiasm or with resistance and depression, one waits on the Lord. One spends one's time in vigil.

Now this is ironic in some ways because despite loving prayer at night the Office of Readings which is also called "Vigils" has never been my favorite hour and in these last years, I have substituted another way of spending the time before dawn which has been very fruitful for me. The time from 4:00am to 8:00am has been one of vigil but it consists of quiet prayer, Lauds, some lectio, and writing. A Camaldolese nun mentioned her own monastery (and the one I am affiliated with as an Oblate) treating these same hours as a time of vigil and I very much liked the idea. I did not know that it would define both my day and my life, however.

There is something amazing about living in a way that is not "just" obedient (open and responsive) to the Lord, but that actively awaits him at every moment. (Yes, these are intimately related, but not always practiced that way.) The heart of Benedictine spirituality is the search for God. When candidates for Benedictine monastic life arrive at the monastery, the goal they are expected to affirm is the search for God. This is the defining characteristic of the authentic monastic life and a significant point of discerning a vocation. We can hear that phrase as emphasizing an active, even desperate attempt to find something that is missing from our lives, or we can hear it as a process of preparing ourselves to find the God who is immanent in our lives and world at every point. In the latter case, our lives become a vigil to the extent that they are transformed into something capable of perceiving and welcoming this immanent God.

Another central Benedictine value is hospitality, and there is no doubt it plays a very significant part in this perspective. While we ordinarily think of hospitality as offering a place for guests who come to the monastery or hermitage in search of something, we should extend the notion to God. All of our prayer is a way of offering hospitality to God; it is a way, that is, of giving him a personal place to stand in our lives and world. While God is omnipresent and the ground of the truly personal, he does NOT automatically have a personal place in our lives. Like someone whose name we do not know, he may impinge on our space, but until we call upon him by name and give him a place he cannot assume on his own, he will remain only impersonally there. And so, in prayer, we call upon him by name ("Abba, Father"), we carve out space and time for him, we give him permission to enter our lives and hearts and to take up more and more extensive residence there. We offer him friendship and hospitality, and we structure our lives around his presence. We continually ready ourselves and look for him just as we look for a best friend we expect at any time, and thus our lives become a vigil.

For hermits, whose whole lives are given over to God in a focused and solitary way, vigil is simply another description of the environment, goal, and gift (charism) of eremitical life we refer to as "the silence of solitude." It is also a description of who we are and the attitude with which we approach life. Those four hours before Mass or Communion in my daily horarium define the characteristic dynamic of the whole of my life --- at least when it is lived well! It is a vigil that requires the silence of solitude (i.e., external and internal silence and solitude), leads to the silence of solitude (i.e., communion with God), and gifts the world with it and all it implies. During Advent especially, the call to make something similar of our own lives is extended to every one of us in a special way.

Seeking God: What does this Mean?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I wondered what it means in monasticism to say one is "seeking God", I mean it's not like God is actually lost or something! Also one is entering a monastery where one is pretty sure God is present. Why do Benedictines define their lives or, I guess, the purpose of their lives as "seeking God"?]]

LOL! It's a serious question and yes, the phrase is a bit enigmatic isn't it? But you have actually implicitly answered the question in your own lightly poking fun at it. We can imagine someone wandering all over the place in search of God, and of course, we can imagine such a person eventually coming to the monastery to focus and deepen their search precisely because there is good reason to believe God may be found in a privileged way there. But once a search for God is narrowed in this way why would Benedictines define their lives in terms of "seeking God"?

As you say, it is true that God is not lost, but in some ways we and our world certainly are. The person we described earlier is looking for God and is thus simultaneously engaged in seeking her own truest self. She and we are each in search of a life which is meaningful; we are looking for a life that fulfills all the potential we carry (by the grace of God) deep within ourselves, a life that is purposeful and coherent; this is inherently wrapped up with the search for God. We find and embrace our truest selves only to the extent we find and are "found" and embraced by God. To commit to seeking God is to commit to finding, claiming, and thus becoming our truest selves in God; it is to commit to finding our way home to, with, and in God and it is to commit to living this "at-home-ness" wherever we are or go so that our lives are transparent to God's in the same way.

Another way of saying we are seeking God is to say we are seeking the best way possible for us to learn to love, to actually love, and to be loved into wholeness. These goals overlap and are dependent upon one another. Especially we cannot learn to love nor love without being loved; we cannot learn or be empowered to love as exhaustively as we are called to love without allowing ourselves to be loved in an analogous way. For this reason we are called first of all to be those who allow God to be God. Moreover, since God is Love-in-Act, this means allowing God to love us. Cistercian houses are known as "Schools of Love; their Benedictine nature "seeking God" and being a "School of Love" coincide. These two aims are the same.

There are more ways of saying this and other ways of thinking about "seeking God". While, as you say, it is true God is not lost, God is also not obvious to most of us nor can we find God in the way we find the keys we inadvertently left on the table earlier or someone in a game of "hide and seek". We have to understand that this commitment to seeking God is a commitment to allow God to be personally present to us; this in turn means making our very own those ways God is found by and finds us! We will travel all those pathways ordinarily supporting and guiding such a journey and make our own such things as lectio, Scripture study, prayer, journaling, community life, intellectual and physical work, liturgy, silence, solitude, ministry, time outdoors and with nature, etc --- all the privileged ways God speaks Godself to and is heard by human beings. We make these regular, familiar, and beloved parts of our everyday lives and (perhaps too) others which are special to us: music, art, writing, etc.

Gradually we learn to open ourselves to the extraordinary God of the ordinary so that we might walk through our days with the eyes and ears of our minds, hearts, and bodies wide open to the presence of God. We do all we can to cultivate this kind of openness and attentiveness, this kind of obedience to God and to our deepest selves. Remember that the very first line of the Rule is the imperative that we "hearken" or "listen" ("Ausculta!"); this focus on obedience is the key to any search for God; it is also the source and ground of the monastic value of stability, and so, to the Benedictine way of life. After all, obedience is also the way we will allow God to claim us as God's own while stability affirms our trust in the presence of God in all of what we consider "ordinary" reality, but certainly that God exists right here and right now. With each choice we make to hearken and embrace God in this way we also allow God to create the persons we are called to be.

Thanks for the good questions. I hope this is helpful.