The Sound of Silence (Reprise)

I asked an old monk, "How long have you been here?"
"Forever," he answered. " I smiled.
"Fifty years, Father?"
"Forever."
Did you know St. Benedict?"
"We are novices together."
"Did you know Jesus?"
"He and I converse every day."
I threw away my silly smile, fell to my knees, and clutched his hand.
"Father, " I whispered, "Did you hear the original sound?"
" I am listening to the original sound."

Those who pray contemplatively know this experience. It is the experience of being at the center, of having everything make a new kind of sense and having it feel alive with a new kind of life and light; colors are more vibrant, and flowers and plants seem lit from within with a unique iridescence; the gentle movement of the breeze through the branches occasions awe and even a sudden intake of breath as the everpresent movement of the Holy Spirit becomes symbolically "visible" for a moment. It is the experience of being part of the same story with our Sisters, Mary and Claire, and our Brothers, Paul, Francis, and Benedict, alive in the God who grounds us and resides deep in the core of our being, but who silently and as insistently summons us from without as well.

It is the experience of resting, really resting -- of being where one is meant to be, where one has ALWAYS been meant to be --- the experience of stepping out of time and taking up a place in the eternal heart of the Holy Trinity. God in us, we in Him, a communion of saints learning to love as God loves, to listen as God listens, to sing our lives and celebrate the singing of others' lives, to be the inestimable gifts to one another in Him we were always called to be --- and yet, always beginners, and always with everything ahead of us. It is the experience of being comprehended in every sense of that word: being profoundly heard, understood, known, held securely in God's hands, and completely encircled by his presence. It is the sound of silence and the compassionate space of contemplative solitude.

Time travel is an interesting subject for speculation, but for contemplatives, it is something known from regular experience. Every day eternity breaks in upon us. Every day we slip the bonds of mere temporality and participate in time's transfiguration. Chronos becomes Kairos; linear time dissolves into an eternal now, and our citizenship in this world is shown for the pale reflection it is of our truest citizenship in the Kingdom of God. But we do not do this to reject the created realm for some "supernatural" one, much less to leave it behind in a misguided anti-world asceticism. We do it so this world may BE transfigured, and God may come to be ALL in ALL.

Contemplation, after all, is not escape, but a quiet confrontation, a gentle capitulation to being, and the silent mediation of life; it is not flight, but the still celebration of an all-accepting and transforming presence. The hermitage or cell is separate from the world only so the world may be truly loved into its own in genuine intimacy, for real intimacy requires distance as well as closeness. An anchorite has a window into the church and peeks out onto eternity as it breaks in on the world in the liturgy. But really, every true hermitage (and every true hermit!) is a window through which the love of the living God radiates to transform the world of space and time into heaven itself.

First published 1/20/2008. I thought it was timely given recent posts. Tweaks to include Claire and Francis as I should have done originally!!! (Apologies to them!)

On Prayer: Visions and Locutions?

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered if it is unusual to have visions and locutions during prayer. Do these happen to you or to people you direct? Some people believe these kinds of experiences mean the one experiencing them is a mystic and exceptionally loved by God. Do only contemplatives have these kinds of experiences? I wondered if maybe I might have such experiences and I am not a contemplative.]]

Thanks for your questions. I need to parse the meaning of words like "unusual", vision, and locution to answer you. Visions ordinarily mean that God comes to one in a visual way, within one's own mind and often using the contents of one's own mind to "furnish" the vision. They are not ordinarily external to us as though we are looking at a scene standing entirely outside ourselves; at the same time they transcend us and do not find their source in us but in God. Locutions ordinarily mean that God comes to us in an audible way, though again within our minds. Such locutions tend to be fairly brief, a single sentence, couplet, or a couple/few words only. I have not had nor have I heard from people I know who have experienced long soliloquies or speeches, and personally, I tend to distrust accounts of such long-winded experiences as being truly of God.

Not everyone has such experiences and that makes them relatively unusual. They also tend to be vivid and memorable -- although I tend to write mine down (journal) immediately so I may return to them and pay greater attention to aspects I missed or may forget when recounting them -- say, for my director, for instance. This makes them stand out from the rest of my prayer so in that sense they are also unusual. Finally, they are occasional, not frequent because they are so rich and require time to be processed and appreciated; in this sense too they are unusual. `If, however, you mean do they indicate something unusual (aberrant) in the person's prayer life, that the person's prayer life is extraordinary or exceptional except in the ways I have already indicated, I would say no; they are a significant part of a serious prayer life, but one doesn't need to be some sort of spiritual savant to have such occasional or fairly infrequent experiences.

It once was thought that contemplative prayer itself was only open to a privileged few and that experiences like those you ask about were open to only a very few among those. Today we know that anyone with sufficient leisure and commitment can learn to pray and live contemplatively, and we encourage folks to learn to do so. Spiritual direction can be helpful here and is a ministry open to anyone desiring to take advantage of it. Similarly, visions and locutions as I have described them can be accessible to anyone who prays regularly, reads Scripture, and takes time to do lectio daily, or at least regularly. (These practices shape our minds and hearts  and prepare us for the kinds of experiences we are talking about. Such experiences, when they are genuine, are manifestations of God but ordinarily the ground needs to be prepared for this. I do not believe God loves those who have such experiences more than God loves any other person; we are all exceptionally even infinitely loved by God and thus, we all have the potential for such experiences of God's love.)

As noted regarding my own experiences, yes I have such. They are not necessarily frequent but they do tend to be pivotal and serve as moments of profound healing/reconciliation, sources of understanding and strength, and always they convey a sense of promise regarding my own life with God in Christ and often the life of others and our world more generally. I don't think they are more important than the rest of my prayer (in some ways they are less!) but they tend to function as significant markers along the way of that prayer. And regarding the possibility that you might have such experiences, please know that in prayer we ordinarily don't focus on or look for experiences. I know it is easy to desire such experiences; it can be problematical to expect such experiences and is certainly healthier spiritually if we approach prayer as God's work/active presence within us which we ordinarily do not immediately sense at all. God transcends what we can experience so we need to be cautious in regard to such things. I can only encourage you to pray regularly and give God time and space in your life to do whatever God wills to do. If you can do this and gradually become a contemplative, you might well occasionally experience God in these less usual ways. Paradoxically, because they are associated with humility and love (both our own and God's), they may happen when you are least concerned with them. I hope this is helpful.

Discerning Eremitical Life: A Matter of NOT Getting the Cart Before the Horse

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I liked your post on the stages of development in a hermit's prayer. What happens if a person is not a contemplative? Would becoming a contemplative add a lot of time to a process of discernment or formation?]]

Thanks for your questions and comments! The way you are picturing things suggests to me that you have things backwards, a kind of "cart before the horse" way of thinking of the way one becomes a hermit. You see, there is or can be no discernment or formation process in eremitical life unless one is already a contemplative who feels called to greater silence and solitude, and perhaps, to eremitical solitude. Eremitical life is always a contemplative life; it is the radicalization --- the deepening and extension of contemplative life to its furthest roots or limits in terms of silence, solitude, and assiduous prayer. Because prayer is first and last a matter of opening ourselves to the presence and love of God alive and at work in and around us, it always finds its fullest expression in contemplative listening, contemplative responsiveness.

Moreover, as important as contemplative prayer is, it is not enough to pray contemplatively if one is seriously discerning a vocation to eremitical solitude. One must have moved from contemplative prayer to contemplative living where the whole of one's life is marked by silence, solitude, attentiveness to the Mystery and presence of God in all of life's everydayness, and the cultivation of a love which embraces the whole of creation. When one has "achieved" this kind of life one may find one is called to even greater silence and solitude and, in fact, to "the silence of solitude" which characterizes eremitical life as both its goal and charism. In this form of solitude God becomes the sole source of meaning and validation of one's life and one embraces the commission to witness to the fact that for every person only God is sufficient to complete us and constitute us in wholeness and holiness. One witnesses to the sacrifices required to say with one's life: solitude is the redemption of isolation and life in and of God is worth every renunciation.

Thus, becoming a contemplative does not add time to one's discernment and formation as a hermit. It precedes these things and is their prerequisite. In practical terms a congregation or diocese will not even entertain a person's supposed desire to live an eremitical life until they have developed and persevered in contemplative prayer/life for some years. You see, given the various reasons one may desire to live life alone -- most of them invalid and incompatible with an eremitical vocation --- this is the foundation of eremitical life and so, it is part of the foundation of any credible process of discernment or formation for such a vocation.

Contemplative Life and Vulnerability to Pain

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you feel pain differently because you are a contemplative. I read that one hermit is unaware of most pain unless it becomes really intense and then she comes back to a more physical level of consciousness. The post I read gave the impression that most of the time she is in touch with God but not with the temporal. She said, [[The pain has to be enough, or coupled with such as red-pink streak going up foot from pinkish-red toe, to be enough to bring me back to more physical awareness. And, perhaps this is true, also, for bringing my mind to more conscious awareness of spiritual readings. I'm finding my mind is away, possibly close in with God, but I don't know for sure, of course. It flies from my willed awareness or forced consciousness; the thoughts become whatever God weaves within.]] Do persons of prayer feel pain less? Do you?]]

LOL! Interesting question. I'm pretty sure I experience pain the same as anyone else. I deal with chronic pain, but I do that the way most people do --- medically. I try to pray through this specific kind of pain, but generally it is too distracting so I medicate as necessary and meditate as possible. Other kinds of pain (psychic, emotional), of course, are something that can only be lived through with prayer --- no medication is possible or desirable. I think it is possible that contemplatives are actually more sensitive to these kinds of pain --- after all, they are not numb to them but vulnerable.  But what you cite raises serious questions regarding self-care and attentiveness; I wonder how appropriate it is to be so wrapped up in what one describes as some sort of non-temporal "God-consciousness" that one is generally unaware of infections, injuries, etc. Beyond this I wonder at the phrases "willed awareness" and "forced consciousness". It sounds like the writer is setting up some sort of human will versus will of God calculus or something where being in touch with God means being unaware of oneself and the needs of one's body. These ideas seem to me to be antithetical to a healthy contemplative life.

It may well be that someone's prayer life allows them to move more easily through pain and to function more freely in spite of it, but what is being described here is the presence of recognizable and, one assumes, preventable infection in one's foot for instance. No contemplative I know would EVER suggest their awareness of God or the presence of God's life and love within them detracts from the critical or essential attentiveness to reality which is part of the very definition of contemplative life. Just the opposite in fact. Contemplatives honor God and the life God has given to and entrusted them with. They, especially when they are Christian, approach reality from an incarnational perspective. They know that we are "temples of the Holy Spirit" and members of the very Body of Christ. They see the everyday, supposedly mundane as sacramental and thus, essentially sacred, and they take what care they can and must do to honor this foundational truth of creation.

It is pretty well known that throughout its history Christianity has sometimes fallen prey to an unhealthy dualism rooted in misreadings of texts that speak of detachment or despising the "things of the world" or the Pauline contrast between a body of flesh and one of Spirit. The passage you cite reminds me of some of these misreadings. Especially it reminds me that when Paul speaks of being "in the flesh" or refers to the "flesh body," he is speaking of the whole person under the sway of sin; when he speaks of being in the Spirit or refers to the "spiritual body," he is speaking of the whole person under the power of the Spirit of God. Similarly it reminds me of the piece I wrote a while back looking at the spiritual life as the life we each live under the power of the Holy Spirit. (cf., What Spirituality really Means) More specifically, it is the embodied human life we live in and through the dynamism of the Spirit of God whenever we focus on the vulnerability to Love-in-Act this involves.

In my own experience there have been times when contemplative prayer has involved occasional periods of "raptness" where I am not aware of sensations in my body and where I may even have ceased to breath for periods of time. BUT apart from these very rare "experiences" this same prayer has made me more capable of genuinely incarnational life. Many of us may have reasons which detract from this ability to live a healthy incarnation or embodiment of the Spirit of God, but the life of prayer is not one of these. Instead a healthy contemplative prayer life counters and helps heal those things which may prevent healthy embodiedness.

 One final comment on the passage you have cited. As I noted above, I am concerned with the reference to "willed awareness" and "forced consciousness" which supposedly gives way to "whatever God 'weaves within"'. Attentiveness is a central characteristic of contemplative life, but so are awareness and consciousness. These are "the way we are in the world"; they are part of what contemplative life witnesses to. In contemplative life we attend to reality; we are aware of and consciously honor reality. We are empowered by God for this. While prayer is certainly the work of God within us it is the work/dynamism which illuminates and sharpens, makes whole, empathetic, and compassionate. It is the Spirit of life and love, truth and beauty, the flame of light and comfort which thus becomes the source and ground of genuine rest (Sabbath) and "at-home-ness" (eternal life). The Divine life is the Spirit within us which does not supplant our intellects or consciousness and awareness but instead perfects them.

To float through life in some sort of dissociative state is simply incompatible with contemplative and especially with eremitical life. (Such states may actually represent part of what the NT refers to as "hardness of heart" --- something I am hoping to write further about soon.) Times of genuine prayer which take us up or carry us away from more "everyday" consciousness and awareness are wonderful and are to be honored, but generally speaking these also serve to transform the way we see things so that all reality is transfigured through it. This may mean an increased experience of pain because it will ALWAYS mean an increased vulnerability to reality --- just as it did with Jesus and his own life, passion, and death. Contemplative life is vulnerable life and vulnerable life is obedient life which is responsive to the whole of creation, including the dimensions of sin and death still at work in reality. We must be wary of labeling forms of dissociation (which need not be pathological) "ecstasy", "rapture," or Christian detachment.