1. Abortion

This week has been another anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. about 1972.  It is also a time when many anti-abortion forces get together to march, to demonstrate and to proclaim the wrongness of that decision.  These people are mostly very conservative, both church-wise and politically.  If you look for any liberals/progressives on that side of the issue, you will not find many, if any at all, and that is really sad.  The issue has polarized the body politic and the faith community in such a strange way that it is difficult to talk about.

Since 1972 something like 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S.  This includes everything–from the disposal of zygotes, the fertilized ovum-sperm cell, to an almost fully formed baby who is killed by having its head crushed or its spinal cord cut.  Not many could actually stomach seeing the actual medical procedures if they had to, and you wonder if their advocacy of abortion would be so strong.  However, even abortion-rights defenders often say that they are not so much “pro abortion” as they are defenders of a woman’s freedom of choice, to decide for herself if she wants an abortion.  Thus their banner reads: “Pro Choice.”  These are very often very well-meaning and well-intentioned people—they are not really “killers” as some anti-abortion people would have it.  However, once the situation is analyzed in terms of “rights” it becomes a lost cause—meaning we can never resolve it in those terms.  Once we put it in these terms: the rights of the mother to choose what to do with her own body vs the rights of the unborn one to life—well, that is an impossible dilemma to resolve.  But “rights language” is practically all that our ethical and political ethos knows.

Just to scratch the surface of the multi-faceted complexity in this issue, consider this.  The so-called “right” to an abortion is built on a so-called right to privacy for the mother–legally and constitutionally speaking. Choice is the fundamental value. What is here avoided is the status of the fetus.  Do we have personhood or human-beingness here, or do we not?  And who decides that and on what basis?  And what gives the right to anyone to choose to take the life of another person?  At one point in our history the Supreme Court had ruled against the personhood of Black People, thus justifying slavery and later segregation.  In 16^th Century Spain there was a vigorous debate whether Native Americans were really human beings.  This seems outrageous today, yet we as a society seem to have no trouble in denying personhood and human-beingness to the fetus.  On what basis?  Even if we take an “agnostic position”–we are not sure when the fetus “becomes” a human person–we should be much more circumspect about supporting abortion or choice.  Naomi Wolf, a vocal feminist, has said that abortion is an evil, but at times a necessary evil.  Perhaps a problematic way of putting it, but at least an honest way.

Now on the other side of this issue are all the conservative church people and political people who have championed the “pro-life” cause.  What is tragically sad is that to the extent they are on the good side of this issue, they are terribly wrong when they latch this issue to a whole mindset that allows for an authoritarian church life and a political and economic order that leads to the destruction of  truly human well-beingness.  Very often these people seem not to be bothered by the death penalty, by our proclivity for wars, by a selfish, self-centered, greed-driven economy.  Very often these people ally themselves with the Republican Party, but as one commentator put it, each election cycle the Republicans speak out against abortion; what they deliver is tax cuts for the wealthy.  But these people keep coming back to that.  One begins to suspect that a lot of conservative Catholics and evangelicals have their anti-abortion views mixed up with a whole bunch of reactionary, anti-liberal views.  It is part of a culture war that is taking place in our country.  What is truly ironic is that statistically the number of abortions went down in this country during the Clinton years, while it went up during the Reagan and Bush years.

1. Holiness and Sanctity

What a complex subject—just a few thoughts and questions.  Recently there was the announcement that Pope John Paul II will be beatified—a step on the way to being declared a saint in the Catholic Church.  I am sympathetic to anyone who has problems with all this.

First of all a clarification: holiness and sanctity are not exactly the same thing.  Holiness is a state of heart and mind which are more and more attuned to the reality of God; it is not a static thing, but a dynamic growth in the life of God.  In another tradition one might want to call it “an enlightened life,” etc.  Sanctity is the public display of that life, a public acknowledgment that one gives witness to that life.  The community begins to see someone as being a “bearer of the Spirit” and so begins to call that person a “saint.”   Now none of this means that the person is perfect in any sense, even a spiritual or religious sense.  They may in fact have a lot of real flaws in their personality.  However, there are flaws and then there are FLAWS!   Mother Teresa took money from and associated with some very nasty people–kind of giving them a “cover” for their nasty deeds.  And her spiritual director for many years turns out to have been a major child molester.  Strange stuff indeed!  But then go back in time and what about someone like St. Bernard calling for the killing of Moslems and being recognized as a saint.  And there are so many others that you have to wonder about this church mechanism of “proclaiming  saints,” and claiming to be “infallible” in doing so.

Now about this JPII stuff.  I am sure he was a decent person and a sincere follower of Christ.  However, there are many indications that he was preminently concerned with the institution of the Church–to an unhealthy degree.  There has been evidence, some of it just came out recently, that during his pontificate there was a definite policy of keeping child-molesting priests hidden from civil authorities.  This was done to protect the image of the Church.  It’s not that he didn’t know–that is not possible given the evidence that has come out–he just chose the reputation of the Church over the well-being of the victims of all these priests—and all over the world.  Proclaiming such a person a “saint” is a bit of a problem.

I think we should just ignore all this “saint” stuff and leave holiness in the Mystery of God.  There definitely are many holy people around, some hidden, some not so hidden, but what’s most important is our own seeking and thirsting for holiness.  Be wary of adulation and a kind of religious “fandom.”  Recall the Gospel, Luke 18: 18:  “And a ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”

1. State of the Union

This country is in deep, deep trouble–politically, economically, socially, and, yes, even religiously.  Just a few comments.  Listening  to the President’s State of the Union message and the commentators afterwards made me think how bad off we really are.  This President sounds good, especially in contrast with the absolute craziness, the absolute irresponsibility, the absolute awfulness of the “other side”–the present-day Republicans.  He seems like the “most reasonable” man in Washington wanting to work with everyone.  He has positioned himself in a kind of political center in order to win the 2012 election.  However, “left,” “center,” and “right” are not static, fixed positions.  The fact is that this country is moving toward the right whether it realizes it or not.  What is considered the “center” now would have been considered “right” some years ago.  The center itself is now fairly far right in terms of the political map of some years ago. This started with the “Reagan Revolution” –the beginnings of the dismantling of the New Deal and a tremendous redistribution of wealth toward the top 5% or so of the population.  President Obama is more like Eisenhower or Nixon(except for Nixon’s paranoia and lack of ethics) than he is a traditional Democrat–yet in the national media and in the popular image he seems like a “liberal” or a little to the left of center.  What you have to do is look beyond his rhetoric and at what he actually does and look closely at his language.  Let us take some examples:

1. Language:

1. President Obama had adopted the Republican narrative about the Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is no questioning of the war.  The Bush justification of the war has been accepted.  The fact that we were “lied” into Iraq seems to have no consequences, opening up the possibility of this happening again and again.  The two wars have cost us trillions of dollars—there would be no budget deficit otherwise and we could provide health care for all the American people.
2. The Republican narrative about the economy has also been very quietly imbibed.    Please note this comment from George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at UC Berkeley:

“Conservatives are trained not to use the language of liberals. Liberals are not so trained. Liberals have to learn  to stick to their own language, and not move rightward in language use. Never use the word “entitlement” – social security and medicare are earned. Taking money from them is stealing. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. They are part of contracted pay for work. Not paying pensions is taking wages from those who have earned them. Nature isn’t free for the taking. Nature is what nurtures us, and is of ultimate value – human value as well as economic value. Pollution and deforestation are destroying nature. Privatization is not eliminating government – it is introducing government of our lives by corporations, for their profit, not ours. The mission of government is to protect and empower all citizens, because no one makes it on their own. And the more you get from government, the more you owe morally. Government is about “necessities” – health, education, housing, protection, jobs with living wages, and so on – not about “programs.” Economic success lies in human well-being, not in stock prices, or corporate and bank profits.”

Note what President Obama said about social security.  He said he does not want to “endanger” the benefits of current retirees.  But that leaves open the question– what about future retirees?  He said he will not allow the “slashing” of benefits.  But that leaves open the possibility of a compromise with the Republicans and “reducing” benefits.  “Reducing” is not “slashing.”  See how tricky that language is.  A true, old-fashioned Democrat would have said that social security is completely “off the table”, end of story.  It is NOT the problem with the budget or the deficit.  It does need some help because both sides have raided the social security fund to pay for other things.  And if people who make over $100,000 a year had to pay into social security–now they don’t!!!–there would not be ANY problem with social security.  But Obama did not say that.  And his “sliding” language is just one little indication of a problem.

2. Actions:  Note President Obama’s most recent appointments:  Immelt has become one of his chief economic advisors–he comes from GE and was one of the chief architects of their outsourcing of jobs from the US to China and elsewhere.  This man is not the friend of American workers or the middle class.  Then for his chief of staff  he chose a former lobbyist for financial companies like Goldman Sachs.  Very troubling.  The corporate oligarchy is slowly getting a stranglehold on the American economy, and we are in big trouble.  Another example: Obama proposes the availability of high-speed internet for all Americans.  Good, but his Justice Dept and his Administration allow the merger of Comcast and NBC, which many media experts say allow for an increased monopoly control over what we will have access to in all media.  So we will get it “fast” but that “it” will be under the control of a few “corporate interests.”

1. Finally….

An amazing science story.   We have a tiny fuzzy image of a galaxy that may be something like 14 billion light years away.  Amazing.  Just think….light travels at 186,000 miles a SECOND, and the light from that galaxy that reaches us now, started out something like 14 BILLION years ago.  Mind boggling!  How awesome, how amazing, how large the universe is!  And who is this God who has made such an amazing reality!!   No need to sweat the small stuff!!!!

There is something odd about commenting on silence, but it is also something that is needed at times.  Understandably not much has been written on this subject.  Yes, there is the traditional monastic literature which contains various commendations and urgings of the reality of silence, but there is very little there to illumine the deeper meaning and role of silence in our spiritual journey.  If you are in a formal monastic setting in a contemplative community, you will find silence is almost natural, a good that is taken for granted, but again its deeper significance not much understood.  Among modern writings there is the old classic by Max Picard, The World of Silence.  It opens the door to a much deeper reflection on silence, but in some aspects it is a bit dated in its references to modern life.  There are, of course, the beautiful writings of Thomas Merton in which he often points us in a direction of a more profound appreciation of silence, but all in all he does not give silence the intense scrutiny that he gives to solitude.  There are also various other modern authors who have written with some appreciation of silence in the spiritual life.  Let us throw out some scattered thoughts about silence in order to encourage a deeper reflection on this reality.

What is silence?  An absence of noise?  Yes, but even “noise” that is meaningful, like speech and words is often held as not being silence.  Sometimes, in contemplative literature, even thoughts in one’s own mind that are not articulated are considered as somehow not real silence.  But what if silence is not a negative thing, an absence of something…..    What if silence is rather a Presence of something…..

Consider the following Taoist poem from Lao Tzu:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

Communion comes from communication AND silence.  Communication is the Taoist’s “profit”—silence is what makes it all “useful.”  Needless to say these words are not being used in the usual way.

Silence is the foundation of all communication.  Without it communication is just gibberish and propaganda and noise.  We have an awful lot of that today.  Technology makes silence a lot harder to find and appreciate and understand.  Yet we are starving for the reality that silence brings.

Silence does not begin with the end of speech; silence does not end with the first word.  Silence is always THERE, wherever “there” is.  We only need to turn towards it and “tap” into it.  But that might not be so easy.  From the Desert Fathers:  “It was said of Abba Agatho that for 3 years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.”

There is a silence which we find when we turn off all our gadgets and stop talking.  Then there is a silence within that silence or rather beyond that silence.  It is this toward which we need to turn and in which we need to live if we want a deeper life.

In the Gospels, in the Passion account, Jesus is portrayed as mostly silent.  He speaks only a handful of words throughout the whole ordeal.  “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me, ” is one such utterance.  Nobody really wants to discover THAT silence—the Silence of No-God, or the silence of the place where God is NOT.  But Jesus is the Word of God, and so he enters into that silence in a way we cannot comprehend, and so there is no longer any such place that is without God, and it is this which we celebrate at the Easter Vigil.

The Gospel of John begins: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God….   “Logos” is usually translated as “word”–quite correctly but inevitably drained of so much meaning.  For the  ancient Greeks “logos” had a very rich sense: word, discourse, story, account, meaning, language, explanation, logic, reason, rationality, etc.  In the modern West, this “logos” got bifurcated and lost its content of “reason” and “rationality” which got isolated within the sciences and mathematics and logic  So an explanation for something was either “scientific” or else for all practical purposes a “story.”  Well, never mind that problem, but for our purposes here we should note that Jesus is thus much more than the “word” of God in our narrow sense.  He is the discourse of God, the meaning of God, the language of God, etc.  And furthermore what is most astonishing from the perspective of world spiritualities, there is discourse within God—this is where we get the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and it is here where many people get lost simply because they do not appreciate the Mystery they are dealing with and oversimplify it and drag it down to something they can understand and/or imagine.  Suffice it to say that from the standpoint of Christian faith the Ultimate Reality is not one of Absolute Silence but rather one that is an unimagineable communion of eternal, infinte and absolute love in which both word and silence participate in.

In the Hebrew Bible there are a couple of classic places where the reality of silence is pointed to in a significant way.  One place has to do with the prophet Elijah (1Kings 19 11-13).  Elijah is “invited” to an encounter with the Mystery of God and not just his own imagination of God.  Note the text

“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in theearthquake; and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.  When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”

The implication is that Elijah(and we) expect God’s Presence (Power) to be manifest in such and such a way–pick whatever you want, and the Bible itself suggests a whole host of them–but this text then undermines all of them with that most remarkable phrase, “a sound of sheer silence.”  (In some translations, this is called a “whisper,” but that is not a good translation for the meaning there.)  This is a silence much, much more than just a lack of noise or speech.

Another classic text can be found in Psalm 46.  Note the text:

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear,

he burns the chariots with fire!

‘Be still, and know that I am God.

I am exalted among the nations.

I am exalted in the earth’

The Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

That central line, “Be still……..” , is often quoted in spiritual, monastic literature–but out of context.  Note that this “stillness” is also not merely just another quiet period, an end of noise or speech.   It has to do with an end to war, an end to institutionalized violence—the bow, the spear, the chariot are signs of the military-industrial complex of that day.  But of course just as our Desert Fathers knew quite well, this violence needs to be tracked down to our innermost heart and our innermost thoughts and rooted out from there.  Why?  Because note that knowledge of God depends on that.  Again, that call to “stillness” is not in the abstract–it is somehow connected with the knowledge of God.  That little word “and” is very rich and very important.  It may mean that knowledge of God follows upon that “stillness.”  It may mean that knowledge of God is “caused” through that “stillness.”  Or it may mean that that “stillness” IS what the knowledge of God is.  Indeed there are probably even more implications in that one little line.  But whatever be the case, we are invited to a knowledge of God through a silence that begins (and ONLY begins) when we turn off the “noise” of our self-centered existence.

It is time to become a Refusenik–if you are not one already.

It is spiritually necessary for a healthy mysticism in our own time.

Let me be clear about what I am going to say.  In the grand scheme of things it is not something to get worked up over.  In the grand scheme of things it is a small matter, a very small matter.  I have wandered out in the desert, among canyons and boulders that are hundreds of millions of years in age.  I have gazed at the night sky toward the center of just our own galaxy, and there I have seen clouds of stars each star at least as large as our sun, millions of stars.  And then when I have gazed away from the Milky Way, I was staring into deep space where there are millions of such galaxies, some billions of light years away.  Imagine the size of all this.  Unimagineable.  So let us not get too overwrought either about our own aches and pains, successes or failures, good choices or bad choices, good luck or bad luck, etc.  Nor should we exaggerate the “badness” of our social, historical situation.  It is in a very real sense “trivial” in the grand scheme of things.  There is a much, much larger picture that we need to be aware of and place ourselves within in order to have a true and real perspective on things–both good and bad.  This is part of the message of God’s speech to Job in the Book of Job and also in some of the Wisdom literature in the Bible.

And yet….and yet, we do live in a given social, historical moment here in the U.S. where we are called to make choices and decisions and proclaim where we stand one way or another.  To say we stand “apart” or “outside” such things is to already have made a choice  of whose consequences and full meaning perhaps we are not fully cognizant.   We are living with the Beast, whether we realize it or not.  And if we aquiesce to the Beast, we will carry the Mark of the Beast and become It’s child, rather than a child of God.  So we are called to be Refuseniks, to refuse the Mark of the Beast, to claim our true identity as free, loving children of God.

Rest assured the Beast has not just recently arrived on the scene.  It was there among the ancients with their bloodlust sacrifices.  It was there with the Church at the Crusades and the Inquisition and with the bishops hiding the priest child-predators. The Beast has actually found the church quite useful in order to hide itself and its activities.  The Beast was there encouraging the Industrial Revolution as we became enamoured by technology and the machine and lost our sense of a common human destiny.  The Beast wants everyone to be for him/herself alone.  The Beast was also there on the scaffold with the guilloitine and with the KGB as they executed any supposed threats to the State as an incarnation of the Beast.  And there are so many other manifestations of the Beast, but in each one of these historical moments there were human beings who refused the Mark of the Beast and who said “No”–they became Refuseniks and paid for it dearly.

Today the Beast has become much more clever–speaks a very different language, comes in very different clothes.  (Don’t worry so much about the drugged, dazed, smelly street person; worry rather about the financial expert in a nice suit.)  Today the Beast speaks of prosperity and profits, of creating wealth, of networking, of entertainment and games, etc.  The Beast is “into” self-promotion, self-realization, self-expression, self-manipulation, etc.  The Beast wants you glutted with information, entertained into a daze, captive to a host of alien desires swimming in your brain.  The Beast will show us “all the kingdoms of the world” and invite us to “take possession” because they really belong to the Beast and now It offers them to us.  Jesus said No.  Jesus may have been the first real Refusenik.  Jesus knew who he was; that was the basis, the foundation of his No to the Beast.  That tells us almost all you need to know.  Because the ultimate thing the Beast wants is for you to forget who you are and take on It’s identity.  The Mark of the Beast will then be on us.  But we too must become Refuseniks.  And we do this, first of all, by acts of silence, acts of truth(recall Gandhi), acts of wisdom, acts of compassion, acts of selflessness.  Nothing will unmask better or counterattack more effectively the activity of the Beast than this.  This must be the mindset with which we begin and end our own choices and our own activity.

But there is also the larger stage of social, political, economic activity where we are also actors regardless of our other roles.  Here especially the notion of being a Refusenik may become very clear–because we will have to say No very visibly to the State, to corporate America, to our consumer culture,  to that mindset that rationalizes greed and power and lies in the name of some supposed higher good, like a higher standard of living, etc.  The writer and social critic Chris Hedges has written much and well on this subject.   Recently he did an essay on the people of Eastern Europe who resisted their totalitarian governments–this is where the term “refusenik” really comes from–and their resistance took the form of numerous little acts of courage in resisting the Beast.  The essay title: “No Act of Rebellion Is Wasted” and the online link is:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_act_of_rebellion_is_wasted_20101213/

What Hedges does not get quite right is that all these societies, once they were free of their totalitarian regimes, merely succumbed to the Beast that now comes in new clothes.  This shows that the “rebellion” has to go deeper than any social or political or economic action.  It must go all the way to the heart level.  And a marvellous example of such a life can be found in Gandhi.

Since it is Christmastime, let us end by considering that first and greatest Refusenik, Jesus.  Recall Merton’s essay on the Christmas Gospel, “There Was No Room In the Inn.”  When Jesus is born in a cave because there was no room in the inn for him, this shows that God does not participate in the machinations of the Beast in marshalling and numbering all the people(it was a time of census taking by the Romans), giving them an identity that was from the State, from their society, and not their real identity.  Like everyone else, like all other human beings, the Holy Family is forced to move with all the other masses of people, but in taking refuge in that cave and among the lowly shepherds(also some other Refuseniks), they say a quiet No to the dynamism of the Beast and show what it means to belong to another Reality.

It is time to become a Refusenik.

Happy New Year to all.

Let us consider Van Gogh’s painting, “The Potato Eaters.”  It is one of his very early works, perhaps not as famous as some of the later work, but a truly remarkable and religious work of art.  Usually people refer to a work of art as being “religious” if what is being depicted is somehow a theme from the Bible or a religious source.  However, every true work of art points us in the direction of a transcendent reality, connects us with what is truly religious, and opens our hearts to a truth that is beyond our surface lives.  (Incidentally, that is why postmodern art like with Andy Warhol is so deeply and seriously a distortion—it proclaims “the surface” as the total reality and celebrates that fact.)

To make this reflection a bit easier for anyone who has not seen this painting, here is a link to view it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van-willem-vincent-gogh-die-kartoffelesser-03850.jpg

What a remarkable scene!  So many would find this sad, even depressing.  There is a sense of darkness–it is night.  Five people are seated around a square table.  Perhaps they are a family; perhaps not. But it is a community of sorts.  Four women and one man.  Potatoes are visible, and perhaps tea is being poured.  The faces and hands reveal life’s toll on these people–it has been hard, very hard.  You will see such faces and such hands in any large city if you take the bus at 6am in the morning with people going to work, or at 6 in the evening with people coming home.  They are all there.

It is a meal of sorts.  It hints of a ritual–as any meal does.  One of course begins to discern a kind of “Eucharistic gathering” here.  A community has gathered around a shared meal, meager as it is.  However, there is no bread and wine here.  That kind of fare would seem to elevate the gathering to a higher social/economic class.  These people cannot afford even bread and wine.

The four faces we see are all different in their expressions.  Two of them look sad or very tired and seem to have given up on life.  Two others show a kind of reaching out in hope.  They are reaching out to the two others.

Note again the darkness.  You can see the windows in the background, and it is night outside.  And the darkness has penetrated and filled the little cottage.  However,….however, there is something else here also….and very prominent, in the center of things.  There is an oil lamp right in the center of the painting, a source of light,  but above the heads of the gathered group.  Note its centrality in the painting–a position of great importance and emphasis.  This light does not overwhelm the darkness; it does not drive it out.  It is simply there, silent, simply present, and although the eaters participate within its glow, they seem to be unaware of the light—it is not something they focus on, but in its glow their life unfolds.  It is always there, above them, almost unnoticed, yet essential for all they do within this darkness of their human condition.  It is also by this light that we are able to see them, their condition, their need.

What is this light?  It is the light of the Resurrection.  It is the light of the Transfiguration.  It is the light seen on the face of St. Seraphim.  It is the light within the darkness of our own situation–it is always there, gentle, soft, not overwhelming in our history, but absolutely essential for our “going on.”    We walk in this light so unaware of its presence.  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.  The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (John 1: 5-9).

But there is more.  So far we have ignored the one figure whose face we cannot see but who sits right in the center of the gathering.    She is facing away from us and toward the group; we can only see her back.  The reason we cannot see her face is that this is our face—it is you and me there, whoever we are.  No matter who we are socially, we are “among these poor ones.”The observer of this scene is also at this gathering and also practically unaware of this light, though living in it and by it.  And what is our response?  What is the expression on our face?

Have I missed anything in this title?  Oh yes, taxes and the proverbial kitchen sink!  Only kidding.  But seriously, this chapter (Chapter III) of The Art of Prayer is very long, very difficult for proper interpretation, and very important.  So let us begin with a few preliminary remarks.

One cannot overstate the importance of the Mystery of God in our apprehension of what this work says about prayer.  This blog has previously made a big point about the role of a notion of God in our spiritual life in general.  The deeper the sense of the Mystery of God the deeper will be our spiritual life. In fact, without a truly mature sense of the Mystery of God our piety will tend toward a shallowness that is just plain sad–I mean we are called to so much more.  That is just one reason why I am a bit sceptical about people who promote a “personal relationship with the Lord” as the center of their piety.  There is a profound truth in that kind of language but it also can lead to a kind of spiritual Facebook where you “friend” Jesus and share things with him and he helps you, etc.   Even if this is a starting point in the spiritual journey, there is so, so much more than that.  Sadly too many stay right there.

Now not many spiritual writers or theologians have written well on the subject of the Mystery of God–needless to say.  From the early Church with Pseudo-Dionysius to a modern western theologian like Karl Rahner, there are very few who have taught with some depth on God as Ultimate Mystery.  The great problem with general piety and popular piety is to fix on outward images, like paintings and statues of Jesus and holy figures, and then even more importantly to fix on inner images we have of Christ and God.  If you walk into a Catholic or Orthodox church you will find it filled with such images.  Now all this is very good and proper theologically.  It all forms a fitting ambience for worship with all our senses being focused on a transcendent reality.  However, for too many, and this includes monks, they get fixed on the images and make them into a kind of inner reality that becomes the focus of their prayer.  This is not meant to demean any simple person’s prayer, but they are invited to “go up higher, friend.”  In the Orthodox church and in Eastern Christian monasticism the role of icons is enormous and very important, but St. Nil Sorski, the great hesychast, tells us:  “…while practicing inner prayer, do not permit yourself any concepts, images, or visions.”  And St. Theophan the Recluse:  “You ask about prayer.  I find in the writings of the Holy Fathers, that when you pray you must dispel all images from your mind….”  Many other spiritual guides, both East and West, tell us the same thing.  The icons serve as a kind of focusing lens for our heart, the center of our being.  But it is the Mystery of God into which we plunge as we enter true prayer–and with that there are no images, only a profound and unfathomable Presence.

Now something about death.  Why?  Most modern westerners consider this a morbid topic.  That in itself is telling–most spiritual traditions in one way or another consider it as a fact of life needing our attention if we are to make progress on the spiritual journey.  The stereotype of the monk meditating on a human skull is exactly that–a stereotype.  Nevertheless that picture points to a deep truth.  Some Christians will cry foul at this and say that we are to focus on the Resurrection, not death.  They miss the point entirely–first of all, the Resurrection is part of the Mystery of God, so you better be careful in appealing to the Resurrection as if it were something you understood or knew; secondly, it is only when we really know the reality of death that we can begin to grasp the significance and meaning of the Resurrection.  To put it another way–the Resurrection is not a “lifeboat” for our ego self as it starts going down in death.

Well, we will not truly know what death means until we actually experience it, and then it won’t really matter!  But we can at least begin to get some sense of it, and this will make a big difference in our spiritual journey.  It will help if we engage in a kind of imaginative acting out of our own death in our own mind–a kind of mental exercise of our imagination.  So what happens?  Let us imagine a slow death, not through some traumatic sudden event, but one that slowly unfolds within us.  We will certainly feel those last moments as life ebbs from our bodies and our organs begin to shut down and just before we pass into an unconscious state.  All that we have done, all our accomplishments, all our victories and all our gains, all this will seem like nothing at that moment.  The consumer self, the person with all these credentials, the one who lived for recognition, the one who had so many friends, that self will be melting away as a snowman on a warm winter day.   If we are a believer and regret our “sinfulness”,  it may be that we might cry out-silently-to God—like a drowning man’s last cry for help.  It also may be that we have built up a very strong religious ego that seems to rest secure in its confidence in its relationship to God until the very last moment when a great darkness meets it, and there is a moment when that religious ego is shattered and a great doubt arises.  In any case, as our external world vanishes, there is precisely this ego self, this self-constructed world of meaning and various identities and self-constructed narratives about who and what one is that suddenly begins to dissolve.  There is nothing to hold on to.  And who is this who wants to hold on?  Just let go of trying to hold on and let the Darkness and the Nothingness come.    Does this sound scary, morbid, etc.?   Perhaps.   Not really.  First of all, our very ego identity is a kind of nothingness.  It’s “substantiality” is one of the fictions of our life–like Plato’s “noble lie”–something that seems necessary for the moment but the wise person knows otherwise.  But even more importantly, the most initimate encounter with God is at first as if it were an encounter with Nothingness.  Jesus’s words, “Fear not,” are applicable here.  But returning to that fixed identity we have, there is something terrifying in us about being reduced to a common humanity with no credentials.  Various spiritual traditions teach this in various and different ways.  Consider this word from a modern Sufi master:

“When people die, they lose all identities.  They are no

longer Black or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, since they

go back to their origin carrying in them the whole

adamic inheritance.  One day while the Prophet, peace

be with him, was sitting with a group of companions, a

funeral procession passed by, and the Prophet, peace

be with him, stood up.  One of the comrades said,

‘Those are the remains of a Jew!’  The Prophet, peace

be with him, answered, ‘Stand up to honor the son of

Adam when you see a funeral procession.'”

There is nothing the modern world fears most than the thought of death; there is nothing the modern world works at most to conceal and distract us from than this.  Because it puts into question our whole present social matrix.  But more importantly, for our purposes, this kind of realization opens up the door for a deep and fundamentally different sense of inner prayer than popularly understood.  To truly understand what Chapter III in The Art of Prayer is saying, what it’s getting at,  one needs at least all of the above as a kind of primer for benefitting from what is said there.  As we said once before, we are all beginners in the reality of inner prayer, and this is merely a “kindergarten” for a great learning process.

To fully comment on Chapter III alone would require writing a whole book.  So here we will give scattered comments about certain statements.  The chapter itself is divided into 4 parts, and part 1 is called “Secret Meditation.”

What is this “secret meditation”?  Not much is directly said about it, but it’s merits and benefits are listed lavishly by all included authors.  In a sense both words in the term are unfortunate because they can lead to great misunderstandings.

The segment from the Life of Abba Philemon is helpful.  It comes in the form of an archetypal story of disciple and teacher.  The new monk is struggling with his attention being all over the place.  Philemon gives him the Jesus Prayer as a practice, but more importantly he points the monk to be aware of what might be called the “intentionality of the heart”—-what is the heart turned towards.  He is iniating the monk into an inner practice of keeping his intentionality always turned towards the reality of God.  This “secret meditation,” whatever form it takes is merely a tool towards that end.

The next section from the works of St. Theophan the Recluse is interesting in a new way.  Theophan makes the emphatic point that the new monk (or the person beginning the spiritual journey) should begin this inner focus, this inner turning immediately—not after some time doing some preparatory stuff.  The title of the section: “Inner work must begin as soon as possible.  This is extremely important.”  Then: “We may leave all else and turn only to this work, and all will be well.”  The whole point of being a monk or being on the spiritual journey is this, but many forget that and substitute other elements for their concern.  Theophan will return to this point again and again—as you go through the day, doing whatever you need to do, what is your heart turned towards, what is it attentive to, and how do you discern the mystery of God in all this?

Now we come to Part 2, entitled “Unceasing Prayer.”  Indeed, a big topic–but once our attention is fixed within the mystery of God in all we do, this “unceasing prayer” unfolds by itself.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, unceasing prayer does not mean a kind of continual work or striving or “producing” prayer.  Rather:  “You regret that the Jesus Prayer is not unceasing, that you do not recite it constantly.  But constant repetition is not required.  What is required is a constant aliveness to God–an aliveness present when you talk, read, watch, or examine something….”  Furthermore, Theophan makes the point that this unceasing prayer is not some “extra” thing about being a Christian but rather it is the “essential characteristic” of being precisely that.  Wonder what would happen if you started talking about unceasing prayer from the modern pulpit in a modern suburban parish!

Throughout this section Theophan gives all kinds of practical advice about “setting the stage” for this unceasing prayer.  Here you have to remember that the writings are taken from concrete advice given to concrete people who approached him with their own difficulties.  In other words, do not follow his words like in a cookbook.  Get the gist, the spirit, the essence—you may have to leave other things behind that don’t apply to your own particular circumstances.  But always he comes back to the essential points:  “Standing always before God with reverence is unceasing prayer.”  This is quite a loaded sentence even in its brevity.  Some considerations:  standing before the Living God and not just some idea of God means standing in the presence of Mystery, means losing your life in that Mystery, means your own identity is in question–forget who you think you are–drop the credentials—who are you anyway?  Or as a zen master might put it:  Who is it that is standing before God?  (In a Rinzai monastery then you would get whacked with a stick for giving some “smart” answer!!)  Anyway, get the idea…..?

Now we arrive at Part 3, which is all about the Jesus Prayer per se.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, the Jesus Prayer is “the easiest way to acquire unceasing prayer.”  Of course when they use the word “easy” it is not quite in our sense! Certainly it is not some mechanical procedure that “gets one there.” Nor is it really a technique for them though to someone on the outside it may look like that, and to take it that way may mislead one very seriously.  It is certainly not any kind of shortcut in the spiritual life.

One very important point made in this section is the injunction to avoid all visualizations, images, conceptualizations.  So again to stand in the Presence is not to stand in our idea of the Presence.  In the beginning there is the temptation  on the part of some to imagine the reality of God or Jesus as standing there.  Forget it.  Allow yourself to get lost in the Mystery of God that surrounds you and dwells within you.  Yes, you can have your body turned toward an icon or a crucifix, just as a Moslem turns toward Mecca in prayer, but your heart must dwell in the mystery which is then manifest in every real thing around you, like the boiling water, like the smile on someone’s face, like the hawk circling above, etc.  Let your heart abide in the Mystery.

Theophan also tells us: “No progress without suffering.”  A difficult topic.  This is not meant as a call to masochism; rather it is a sober appraisal of the spiritual journey–that it will be marked by suffering.  There are several levels to this suffering.  It ranges from physical pain to the depths of the heart.  At the deepest level it is said in this tradition (and in the Sufi tradition and perhaps in the Hasidic) that real prayer only begins with a breaking of the heart.  A sobering thought, but it is also an anticipation of the death of an ego identity.

Finally we get to Part 4, the last part, “The Remembrance of God.”  Perhaps not the best choice of words for our purposes because “remembering” is an act that implies a kind of distance.  You remember a dead parent, an absent friend, a past relationship, a forgotten occurrence, etc.  Keep in mind Theophan’s earlier term:  “aliveness to God.”  That is what he is really talking about.  Just another way of talking about unceasing prayer.

Can’t help but comment on the recent elections and our situation today.  It may seem incongruous for a blog on spirituality and monastic values to discuss this, but there is also a good reason for it.  For one thing, politics, for all its nastiness and grubiness, is not not-religious.  It touches on profound religious values and themes.  But even with that, consider as an analogy some great work of art, like Raphael’s “School of Athens,” or Van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters,” or Degas’ ballerinas, etc.   On the one hand each is situated in some historical moment and concrete place and all the nitty-gritty of that situation can be found on the canvas; on the other hand that work of art also transcends its historical situation and opens up on a vast horizon with timeless values.  So it is with our current political/economic/social/cultural situation.  Those of us on the monastic path prefer to fix our gaze on a transcendent horizon, but we are also at the same time inserted into a particular historical situation with its own nitty-gritty stuff that may call for some choices.  If we look at all of this with the right eyes, we too may find that which transcends the nitty-gritty of our history–but we do have to explore that with care.

So taking the plunge, let us recall Dickens’ great novel A Tale of Two Cities.  In the beginning the narrator tells us, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  Indeed, so it is with us at the moment.  But you might say ours is a tale of two classes:  the top 1% and the “bottom” 99%–some perhaps might want to cut that differently, say, the top 5% and the bottom 95%—however you cut it, a huge percentage of the population is being squeezed, the middle class is being eliminated, jobs have been outsourced, the almighty profit is god of all–this is the “golden calf” which we have shaped and around which we are dancing and which we are worshipping whether we realize it or not.  The disparity between the rich and the poor in this country is now the worst it has been in over 80 years–the statistics are there.

Now you would think that there would be some political voices that would address this kind of problem and provide some real solutions, and incidentally take advantage of the situation to be in power for a long time.  Nope.  Not really.  Here also we have “two cities” but it is the “worst of times” in both of them in this case.  First of all, the Republicans(aka “conservatives”) have been the party of American business for over a century.  That’s ok–in the past they were also for protecting American products and industries from cheap competition from foreigners.  Now they are for tax breaks for investors who ship jobs overseas.  In the past Republicans were against “foreign entanglements” and against almost all foreign wars.  No longer.  This Republican Party is NOT the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt(who wanted to conserve the wilderness), Robert Taft, or Dwight Eisenhower.  With genuine conservatives one could have a decent debate/discussion about our values and the direction of the country–they have some real good points to bring to the table.  Not this present bunch!

By the way, here are some words from Eisenhower in 1953 during the height of the Cold War when there seemed to be so little choice in our situation:

“The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.”

Also, take a look at these words from Eisenhower, from his very last speech as president:

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

The “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that Eisenhower calls for seems to no longer exist.  Well-to-do Republicans seem to be driven purely by the profit motive–getting rich at whatever expense to the common good, whether it be their fellow citizens or the environment, etc.  Middle-class Republicans seem to be totally unaware how they are being brainwashed into voting against their own self-interest.  They are frozen in a kind of irrational fear and anxiety that is very difficult to penetrate or dialogue with.  Then there is a huge “middle America” that pretty much calls itself “independent” or swings one way or another from one election to another.  These folks are also filled with social/economic fear and anxiety, dumb-downed by the entertainment and infotainment media and very susceptible to voting irrationally.  Then, alas, there are the Democrats.  While present Republican leadership seems hellaciously greedy, sinister, almost crazy, what really bothers me and a lot of progressive bloggers is the incredible inability of Democrat leadership to confront, challenge, and CLEARLY present an alternative vision of things.  In this the Dems and President Obama have failed utterly and they paid for it in this election.

Many years ago Ralph Nader said that the two parties were really one party, that they were simply two branches of the Oligarchy Party–the real rulers of this country, the top 1% and their banks and corporations.  I’m beginning to be a believer of that picture.  There are, however, some really good progressives within the Dem Party, but mostly they are pushed into ineffectuality(Kucinch), or marginalized, or killed(like Robert Kennedy or Paul Wellstone), or simply voted out like Russ Feingold from Wisconsin or Grayson from Florida.   The liberal class within the Dem Party has really failed in the last 40 years or so.  Chris Hedges’ book, The Death of the Liberal Class details this historical period very painfully.  Note also how the few real radical voices in this country get marginalized in a very deliberate way by the corporate media:  Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Staughton Lynd, Howard Zinn, etc.  Please read the essay by Chris Hedges’ on truthdig.com about Staughton Lynd: “Heroes for the Beaten.”

The Dems have presented a very incoherent picture.  In a sense, the Dems provide an anesthetic while the corporations operate on us.  We don’t feel the pain right away until it’s too late. Then we discover an “amputation” has taken place!!   Examples and points to be made:

1. The Dems were all for unemployment benefits.  Nice.  But the Dems(during the Clinton era) were also all for NAFTA and outsourcing which allowed the shipping of jobs abroad, the moving of corporate headquarters offshore so corporate taxes cannot be collected, etc.  The Dems seem to want to have it both ways.
2. When Obama took over in January of ’09, the economy felt like the Titanic.  What does he do–he surrounds himself with the banksters, many of the same people who steered the financial world into this mess, and takes THEIR advice to concentrate on the bailing out of Wall Street.  And by the way, the Dems were ALL FOR the deregulation of the financial industry when that was proposed in the 90s.  For a number of analysts what the Dems did was merely rearrange the furniture on the Titanic.  Krugman, Stiglitz and a number of other financial analysts are saying that we are tottering on the edge of a deeper recession than the one of the last years.  People are talking about 10% unemployment as the “new normal.”
3. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, an ex-military guy and a real centrist Dem if there ever was one, proposed a wind-fall tax on the big bonuses the Wall Street boys were getting, the ones that got bailed out by the government.

“I couldn’t even get a vote,” Webb says. “And it wasn’t because      of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren’t going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.

“People look up and say, what’s the difference between these two parties? Neither of them is really going to take on Wall Street. If they don’t have the guts to take them on, and they’ve got all these other programs that exclude me, well to hell with them. I’m going to vote for the other people who can at least satisfy me on other issues, like abortion. Screw you guys. I understand that mindset.”  The key words here are: take on Wall Street.  For some reason the Dems don’t have what it takes to do that. Obama and the Dems did get a LOT of money from the financial industry in 2008.  But when Obama took over in Jan. ’09 he had a golden opportunity to challenge the whole establishment because it was totterting and a solid majority of the people were with him.  He could have been another FDR–instead we got another Clinton.  Either he is politically naïve and weak and a tool of the Oligarchy OR he is part of that Oligarchy.  In any case, many years ago Truman said that when people have a choice between a real Republican and a false Republican they will always choose the real Republican.  That’s why the Dems got a beating this November–the Democrat message smelled and felt and looked like a kind of Republicanism.

1. The health care bill was touted as historic.  A friend tells me his health insurance has gone up 10% this year, and will go up another 10% next year.  He says what does it matter if they can’t drop him because of a pre-existing condition(new law)–he won’t be able to afford the damn premiums!  A couple of good things in the bill, but it was written by the insurance industry to make them happy.  We are the only industrial country with a purely for-profit health insurance monopoly.  Obama never even tried challenging that.  In fact, he cut backroom deals with Big Pharma so that they wouldn’t contest his bill, and in return Medicare cannot negotiate with them on cost of medicine and we can’t get prescriptions filled in Canada–not in any systematic way.   So they can charge whatever they want.
2. Hope and Change.  That was the motto in the Fall of 2008.  Look at the “Change” part.  What happens when Obama comes in—-a lot more of the same old, same old:  backroom deals with corporations, surrounds himself with Washington insiders, “the fox” is guarding the chicken coop in many cases, etc.  A lot of liberal Dems are deeply disappointed at the substantial lack of Change.
3. Obama is rightly concerned about the deficit.  It is horrendous.  So he appoints a Deficit Commission to help him figure out how to manage it and cut it down.  But then he appoints several key people to this commission who are staunch enemies of Social Security.  What the bleep!!!!  Among progressive bloggers this commission becomes known as the “Catfood Commission” because right away its members start talking about having to cut Social Security in order to control the deficit.  In other words, poor old people being reduced to eating cheap cat food.  Their report is due out in about a month.  If it comes out in favor of cuts in Social Security, that would be a travesty.  The deficit has nothing to do with SS—hey, whatever happened to that trillion dollars spent in Iraq??  Fortunately, there are many Dem voices in Congress that are already speaking out about not cutting SS.  This one has to be watched.  The Republicans have a longstanding agenda of trying to dismantle the great programs of the New Deal and SS is one of their chief targets.  They want to privatize it so that would pump tons of money into Wall Street and put us all in the control of the Wall Street boys.  If Obama compromises with the Republicans on this issue, it will be a bloodbath for the Dems in 2012.
4. When FDR came into office, he declared very forcefully about the Republicans: “I welcome their hatred!”  When Obama comes in, he talks of working together with the Republicans–even when they say their chief goal is to knock him off!!  I mean he IS a community organizer but not a leader of a country in great crisis.

And there are so many more points that could be made.  The bottom line is that we ARE in a huge crisis, politically, economically, socially.  There are a few  interesting historical precedents and my favorite one is actually not often mentioned–the 1850s.  The social, economic and political reality of slavery was tearing this country apart.  The Dems of that period failed miserably in meeting this crisis and tried to have it both ways.  They said, let slavery exist in the South, let it not exist in the North, and let the new states vote on whether they want it or not.  This kind of profound incoherence enabled a new party to emerge–ironically enough it was the Republican Party which was formed to meet this crisis and which clearly stood against slavery and against allowing each state to go its own way.  The Republicans won the day and saved the Union.  It may be that a whole new party will emerge from this mess if the Dems continue to fail.  Or maybe the Greens can infiltrate the Dems and take over!!  Just like the crazy Republicans did with the Republican Party!

What this present bunch of Dems don’t seem to realize is that what is needed is a totally new vision of our country, a profound and deep rearticulation of our values and direction.  The “greed is good” era is coming to an end, one way or another.  Dem leadership simply cannot be for making us into “kinder, gentler consumers.”  Sure they can prop up the numbers for a while; make it look like we have turned things around, etc.  Sure they have a number of decent programs, like extending veterans’ benefits, unemployment benefits, student loan interest being reduced, etc., etc.    We will get a few crumbs from the corporate table.  But we are in need of something profoundly new if we are really to survive AND thrive as a people. Not just bits and pieces of legislation to prop up this or that segment of the country, but a wholistic vision of the common good in which we all share. (Incidentally, in several of the European countries like Germany and Sweden I believe, students can go to university for free–they even get a living stipend from the government–the nation considers this an investment in its future–what a different vision and approach to our “make it on your own attitude.”)

At this point we should add that given this kind of social crisis, it is actually a good time to be on the monastic path.  Monks seem to thrive in all bad historic moments!!  One could say that given the deep nature of the crisis the solution is not going to be found in politics–and with this I would readily agree.  But the solution does not exclude politics either(nor economics either) and we have to start making some choices.   It is good not to get lost in the arguments, but it is also important to see the religious consequences of our political choices.  And this brings us to the last point.  How many Catholics are turning to vote Republican is distressing.  Never mind all the Dem problems alluded to above.  The real focus here is abortion.  Catholic bishops and pastors are making all elections this one issue.  Granted it is a very serious issue and one I fully share with my Catholic tradition–I think abortion is a tragic mistake.  But to vote as if that were the ONLY issue is simply wrong, and it leads to bad consequences.  Republicans are taking advantage of this and fooling Catholic voters.  No Republican ever did anything to reduce abortions–not Reagan, not Bush, none of them.  As one commentator put it, they promise Catholics to be against abortion, and what comes out in the end is a tax break for the rich.  It is an awful mistake and an outrage that Catholic bishops, pastors and laypeople are aligning themselves with the Republican vision of things–this is leading to so much pain and suffering and misery in our country for so many people, and this is only the beginning.

There is a Taoist hermit living in the Colorado Rockies, somewhere between Durango and Silverton.  I wonder what he thinks of our situation.  He is lost in a great silence.  Afterall, those who know do not speak.   The others write blogs!

In the Gospel of Luke (16: 19-31) Jesus tells a remarkable parable.  It begins:  “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.  And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table….”  This is a timeless story and also a very timely one today.  This is a story with very sharply contrasting images, and every detail is significant.  There is the rich man who is obviously living in great comfort, and there is also the poor man who is not only poor but afflicted.  What is important is that the wretched person is right outside the gate of the rich man, and the rich man’s “salvation” somehow is tied up with this person.  What the “rich man” needs to do for his own spiritual well-being, what any person needs to do, is never far away or concealed from their sight.  It is always “right outside their gate.”

This situation maps out a three-level unconcealment of what is required in our relationship to God.  First of all there is the simple economic situation–and the economic question is never not-religious.  Afterall it pertains to the well-being of all God’s children.  In any case, this disparity between the rich and the poor is a matter of conern in this story.  In fact, the whole Bible frowns upon people piling up wealth and ignoring their fellow human beings.  It is a critical question in our own country today because the disparity between the rich and the poor is growing incredibly.  The actual numbers are staggering, but why are the churches, including the Catholic Church so quiet about this very “unBiblical” situation?  Catholics and their bishops seem to be only concerned about abortion–a worthy topic of concern but certainly NOT the only one.  The rich man has this wretched person right outside his gate, but his disregard creates in effect a vast gap between himself and that poor one.  That gap, which can be crossed, or better yet eliminated, in this life, will become impossible to cross when he is dead and when he will badly want to cross that gap because his true condition will be unconcealed from his own eyes.  It is a gap that the rich man chooses to create, and his choice is merely affirmed in his death.  One more thought along this line:  our whole society and economy is amazing this way–we are directed toward “getting rich,” accumulating wealth, people living in mansions and gated communities and protected from mixing with the poor and everyone is on his own.  This is a very unBiblical way of living for those of you who regard the Bible as your guide.  But even without that, there is the example of the Indian billionaire who just built what may be the first “billion-dollar home.”   He will never have to mix with any of India’s poor–a helicopter from his roof will wisk him away whenever he wants to go anywhere.  What strikes one is how “unGandhian” this person is.  Gandhi is actually the perfect example of someone who “kept the Gospel” without the words.  First of all he made a point of becoming aware of his “wretched neighbor”–the millions of poor in India.  Secondly, he did not create any gap between himself and them(by the way, all his personal belongings could be put in one small bag).  And thirdly, most importantly, he did not leave that wretched one sitting “outside his gate,” but brought him in to his own dwelling.  He crossed that gap while it was still possible to do so.

And this brings us to the second level of this parable.  The Gospel implies that the rich man should have brought Lazarus in to his own home.  He and Lazarus are both children of one God, but the way he chose to live denied that reality.  Consider that other great parable, the Good Samaritan.  There the Samaritan comes upon a man beaten and robbed–here is someone “right outside HIS gate”–and he does not leave him there–he is not one locked inside his own so-called rich reality.  He pulls this poor one “into his home,” into his care and concern, into an effective action for his well-being, into a kind of oneness with him.  Strikingly enough, in that parable, the “rich man” is the religious figure of the priest and the Levite, a temple official.  The religious figures are too rich as it were, and they are “feasting sumptously” on their religiosity and so their religiosity is only another chasm they put between themselves and the “wretched one.”  And this brings us now to the third level.

“Lazarus,” the poor afflicted one, is always “right outside our gate.”  He/she may not even be a poor one in any sense.  He/she may be a stranger, a close one, a someone indeed.  No matter, this person is sitting outside the gate of our ego identity–perhaps even unawares of their own affliction.  What is our response?  And how do we open that gate and cross that gap?  And what if it is the very self of God that sits outside our gate in the person of the afflicted one?

Chapter 2 of the book is a collection of excerpts from the writings of St. Theophan the Recluse.  In fact the bulk of this book is from Theophan, one of the most remarkable figures in Russian monasticism.  He lived during the peak of the Hesychast renewal in 19^th century Russia, and also he was one of the most educated men in Russian monasticism.  For something like 20 years he lived as a recluse, but he guided hundreds if not thousands of people through correspondence.  He also had an enormous library which included not only the Fathers of the Church but also western philosophy.

The chapter begins with a continuing theme: what is prayer?  This may seem like a simple question, but in actuality it is a very complex and deep question.  But St. Theophan has a difficult but practical objective to lead us into the depths of inner prayer:  “What is prayer?  What is its essence?  How can we learn to pray?”  The importance of the question is emphasized: “Prayer is the test of everything; prayer is also the source of everything; prayer is the driving force of everything; prayer is also the director of everything.”  The spiritual life is the ground and foundation of all we do and all we are, and prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life.

Next St. Theophan points to “different degrees” of prayer.  In a sense he starts with the outer layers and moves inward.  The 1^st degree has to do with our bodies–this involves reading, bodily posture, and movements like prostrations and kneeling, etc.  This is not superficial stuff because we want to bring our bodies into this flow as it were.  St. Theophan makes a point that this may be hard, especially when we “feel nothing” and don’t feel like praying.  He tells us to have a “moderate rule” of prayer–meaning we should not pile up a lot of physical practices and put large demands on ourselves in terms of getting a lot of vocal prayer done.  But to do something is important, and to keep at it is important because it will lead to a kind of focus on prayer.  And that leads us to St. Theophan’s second degree of prayer.  We are still here in the realm of active, maybe even vocal, prayer, but the important thing is that our attention and our focus is consistently on the reality of God as it unfolds through the words we say or sing.  Then we come to the heart of prayer, the third degree.  Now our focus and attention is continuous.  This is the beginning of inner prayer.  St. Theophan then alludes to an even deeper realm of prayer:  “But there is, they say, [note he does not speak from his own authority–whether this be from humility or because he had not reached that state himself, we do not know], yet another kind of prayer which cannot be comprehended by our mind, and which goes beyond the limits of consciousness: on this read St. Isaac the Syrian.”

Again and again St. Theophan returns to discuss the “essence of prayer.”  Some may find this repetitive, but you have to realize that the editors are simply taking snippets from his extensive writings and lumping it all together in this anthology.  But you can see even from this that St. Theophan returned to this topic all the time.  The essence of prayer is not easy to put into words, but for him and this hesychast tradition it has to do with a kind of turning of the heart toward God and abiding in his Presence.  Let us recall that one of the chief characteristics of being human is “intentionality.”  Intentionality is a kind of turning toward something, a reaching for something, etc.  When we are hungry or tired we turn toward sleep or food–we have an intention to meet that felt need.  When we are in the presence of a friend, we turn toward the person in our attention and relationality.  Our intention is toward fostering that friendship.  Intentions can also be misdirected.  In any case, ultimately intentionality has to do with the core of our being, called “the heart” in this tradition.  What is it turned towards?  That is the key question.  If we understand this, we will understand the real role of asceticism, liturgical prayer, solitude, silence, etc.  We experience a phenominal world, sometime pleasureable, sometime painful; we have a myriad collection of fears, anxieties, desires roaming through our consciousness, we have an ego self, and all kinds of identity markers, both social and inner.  Whatever be the nature of their reality, St. Theophan exhorts us to turn that core of our being toward the Presence of God.  This is going to be real hard work! Precisely because of that whole phenomenal world that percolates in and around us.  Modern life especially wants to capture our intentionality toward consumption and superficial surfaces–it denies the very existence of that “inner room” or it pleads a kind of agnosticism about it.  Ok, so whether it be in St. Theophan’s time or our time, perhaps we will need hymns, vocal prayers, bodily gestures, meditative reading,  etc at the start. The role of the Jesus Prayer comes into play here.  Also, our Islamic brethren can teach us a lot here.  They are called to turn toward Mecca 5 times a day in prayer.  This physical gesture is a physical icon of what they(and we) are called to do at the heart level as we turn toward the Holy Presence.  Once this intentionality of the heart toward that Holy Presence has been firmly established, it will begin to fill all else that we do during the day.  It will also keep us from getting diverted into the superficial realm of modern consumerism.

While at first that turning may have been toward what felt like “nothing” and silence and emptiness, that “nothingness” eventually will become unveiled as a Presence beyond and without words, images, or thoughts.   Then, and this is the big thing, that “turning,” that which we have called prayer, will live in us by a dynamic that is no longer of our own making or effort.  At that point there is only One Prayer and only One who is Praying.

There is one more teaching that St. Theophan alludes to in this chapter, and this is extremely difficult to put into words precisely because it is so easy to misunderstand and misapply.  If we reach that highest level of prayer, we will see that everything in our life is a gift from God.  Everything, and we will accept everything precisely as that.  Thus our sickness, our loss, that “slap in the face,” etc. etc. it is all from God.  Now looking at that “from the outside,” this looks like the worst kind of determinism, a loss of common sense, an abandonment to a sick kind of passivity.  And indeed to teach someone that message without that reality of prayer would be gravely irresponsible.  Here also we touch base with our Sufi friends.  But once we are in that realm of continuous prayer, we see all reality differently.

St. Theophan is also quick to point out to all of us what we have previously termed as “Hesychast’s heart, Beginner’s heart”:

“You must never regard any spiritual work as firmly established, and this is especially true of prayer but always pray as if beginning for the first time.  When we do a thing for the first time, we come to it fresh and with a new-born enthusiasm.  If, when starting to pray, you always approach it as though you had never yet prayed properly, and only now for the first time wished to do so, you will always pray with a fresh and lively zeal.  And all will go well.”

That combination of words sounds jarring–we are not accustomed to seeing any kind of violence attributed to that tradition.  However, there is a new book out that discusses the presence of violence within the Buddhist tradition.  The title:  Buddhist Warfare , a collection of essays by various Buddhist scholars, edited by Mark Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, two scholars of comparative religions.  There is also an intriguing review of this book that first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement(UK) by another Buddhist scholar, Katherine Wharton.  The review was also available through truthdig.com and here is the link:

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/buddhists_at_war_20101008/

It seems to be an uneven book, and the review even more uneven.  There are a number of problems and questions of interpretation.  But first of all one must acknowledge the sad but undeniable historical record of actual violence by proponents of Buddhism.  To those of us in the “Abrahamic religions”: Judaism, Christianity and Islam–well, we are accustomed to the presence of violence in our various traditions, but most Westerners had looked on Buddhism as not being tainted by that kind of thing.  This book does show that is not quite the case.  On another website, in a personal account, Mark Jerryson, one of the editors, tells us why he took up this research.  Here is that website:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/2158/monks_with_guns%3A_discovering_buddhist_violence

Mark spent a year in Thailand studying Buddhism and was jarred to discover monks with guns.  He knew he had to look into this.

In any case, the book details both ancient and modern instances where people who identified themselves as Buddhists carry out or condone or somehow support violent activity.  Japanese Zen seems to come out very badly in this regard.  In Japan Zen seems to have been associated with the warrior class(the samurai, etc.) quite a bit–it made them better warriors.  In this regard there is at least some ambiguity in some of the things that even the great D.T. Suzuki wrote.  And here we come to some questionable things in the book and even more so in the review–apart from the historical record, there is the problem of how to interpret certain words and expressions in Buddhism.  It seems that what some of these scholars are saying–and especially the reviewer–is at the very least very questionable if not outright wrong.  It may be arrogant on my part to say so, but there is also the historical record of many Westerners, scholars and religious folk, who have definitely “missed the boat” in evaluating Asian religions–either idealizing them and projecting their own constructs, their own needs into them or else painting them in such a negative way as if there was nothing of value there.  So it is not, alas, impossible.

First of all, what these authors say about the Buddhist notions of “no-self,” and “emptiness” seems very wrongheaded.  To attribute  these as a cause of the presence of violence in Buddhism is a misreading.  Yes, one can see how a shallow or distorted understanding of these profound notions can lead one seriously astray. But in their essence these are very deep teachings that actually lead one in the opposite direction when correctly grasped.  Thus the importance of a true teacher because Buddhism is primarily learned from a teacher and not from texts.  There are several comments after the book review by various kinds of people and most of them are superficial, but there are at least two comments by informed Buddhists who make this very point.

Another terrible misreading is blaming Taoism for the justification of violence in Buddhism.  Here Taoism is seen as “identification with the raw forces of nature.”  Wrong!  Absolutely wrong.  Sometime soon we will have to discuss Taoism at length.  Needless to say both Zen and Taoism have been used to justify various hedonistic and antinomian ways of life that may include violence–also including a superficial spontaneity.  To name names: Alan Watts came close to this in his books in the 1950s and 60s, and he was very popular in his time.

Another problem both in the book and in the review is the lack of sensitivity to the many-layered nuances of the language in this tradition(and actually in all religious traditions).  Even in American “pop Buddhism” to say “kill the Buddha” is clearly not seen as an invocation to violence.  It refers to a ceasing of objectification, of trying to find a Buddha outside one’s self.  There is a certain amount of this kind of language in Buddhist literature, and we must grant that this kind of language is problematic today.  It can also be found in the other great traditions.  Afterall, the Bhagavad-Gita takes place in the middle of a battlefield, the Jewish Psalms used in Christian worship are filled with language about “smiting the enemy,” etc., etc.  One has to find a way around this language and get to the meaning behind it.  But like the good commentators on the review point out, one also has to look at some very fundamental Buddhist teachings that call one to compassion, to doing no harm to anyone, etc.  And as for D.T. Suzuki, well, he once did say that the essence of enlightenment was to feel the pain of another as one’s own.  Whatever else he might have said, that’s pretty good!

Whatever the failings of this book may be, whatever the problems with the review of the book, they both do remind us that there is a “dark side” in every religious tradition.  Whether this be a misinterpretation of a teaching, or a misappliction, or a cultural distortion of a perfectly good doctrine, whatever be the case, one has to be alert.  Just because something is labeled as “religion” or “spiritual” does not mean we set aside our critical faculties and deny what’s right in front of our noses.  Christians have been doing this for centuries!  Buddhists, welcome to the club!

Now we plunge into the bulk of the text, and the first chapter is an excerpt from a  late medieval Russian hesychast, St. Dimitri of Rostov.  He is a figure almost unknown in the West.  His spiritual writings bridge that span when Russia crosses over from the medieval into its own early modern period.  It is a time before the great hesychast renewal inaugurated by the translations of Paisius Velichkovsky of the Greek compilation known as the Philokalia.  The hesychast tradition was alive and well in the small sketes and hermitages in the Russian wilderness and in certain of the large monasteries, but the general populace and most monks and priests were not much “into it” as we would say today.  Thus St.Dimitri tells us of the paucity of knowledge about inner prayer among people in his time (and this may surprise some or they may consider it an exaggeration).  We might want to say to St. Dimitri that you don’t know how really bad it can get!  And Merton in his The Inner Experience echoes such sentiments.

There is a lovely book on Zen called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  There is the sense that what St. Dimitri is talking about is not only a description of a certain situation in his own time, but more like a state of mind that one should have at any time in approaching the reality of inner prayer.  In a sense, he is saying that we all need to have this attitude of being beginners as far as inner prayer goes.  A clumsy adoption and adaptation of the Zen title would be: Hesychast’s Heart, Beginner’s Heart.  Andre Louf, a Trappist monk and a hesychast teacher of prayer, also points to this as an essential attitude and state of heart as we approach the reality of inner prayer.  St. Dimitri: “Therefore some idea of inner training and spiritual prayer is given here for the instruction of beginners….”  Make no mistake about it, we are all beginners as far as this awesome reality of inner prayer and communion with God goes.  And if we want to make progresss, we will always be beginners–that is the great spiritual paradox.

The title of the chapter is “The Inner Closet of the Heart,” and the word “closet” is a poor translation of the word from the Gospel of Matthew that is often translated simply as “room.”  Nevertheless the idea is the important thing, and St. Dimitri and the whole hesychast tradition relies heavily on this text about prayer.  There we find this call to go into a secret room, an inner room, in order to pray.  Obviously this is not a physical space as such but a whole understanding of the human makeup.  For St. Dimitri and many others, there is this anthropology of “dual spaces” as it were:  the “inner man,” and the “outer man.”  This is found all over in classic Christian spirituality and it has its roots in the Gospel and St. Paul.  If one does not misunderstand it, if one does not take it too literally but sees the metaphorical nature of such language, if it doesn’t become a rigid structure of fixed ideas about the human, it will prove to be helpful and clarifying.  For there is such a thing as outer prayer, for example, and inner prayer–as St. Dimitri points out.  In outer prayer we say a lot of words, we use books, we use gestures, we sing hymns, etc.  The world of inner prayer is quite different.  However, this kind of breakdown of the human world into two parts can also be very misleading.  In a sense there is no outer or inner with regard to prayer.  In fact the hesychasts themselves, as we shall see later, want to lead us to a place where prayer suffuses everything, penetrates everything, fills up everything that we are and we do.

In the hesychast tradition the world of inner prayer has to do with the heart, and this word “heart” is actually a very rich and complex term.  It does not have a simple reference to that physical organ by which our bodies function.  The “heart” here of course refers to the very depths and center of a human person.  It is the place where you and God are one in love and freedom.  We say “in love” because you and God are not physically one, but one in terms of love.  God’s love for you is absolute and infinite and always there–otherwise you would cease to exist. That stranger over there who is a stranger to you is also loved infinitely by God and walks in His Light–unawares though he may be.  So by the mere fact of your existence you are totally one with God in His Love.  What of course is called for is that you respond to this love with your whole being.  That’s the point of the First Commandment.  We also say “in freedom” because tragically enough we can say “no” to this Love.  Nevertheless our freedom (and this we shall have to discuss at length at some point because of its pop misuse), our freedom is already a sign of God’s Presence to us–it is that Divine Life flowing in us of which we are normally so oblivious.

In a sense the very meaning of inner prayer is to abide in that Love and that Freedom, and to abide in it constantly with awareness.  To live by it.  This is the “true bread” “in the desert.”  Our existence itself is a kind of desert.  Because we are scattered creatures filled with varying and diverse desires, fears, anxieties, an outer structure of prayer is very much needed to help us focus.  Furthermore, as St. Dimitri points, a brief, oft-repeated prayer, like the Jesus Prayer helps one focus on that Presence in the heart.  There will be much more about this in later chapters by other authors.  Suffice it to say that St. Dimitri points us in the direction of “continual prayer,” or “unceasing prayer,” which is really a conscious, gentle abiding in the Love and Freedom that brings one existence from moment to moment and every gift moment to moment.  There is nothing that is without that Love, whether it be a trillion stars in the thousands upon thousands of galaxies spread over unimaginable space where light takes billions of years to travel through, or it be a blade of grass, an ant, a little flower, a drop of rain rolling down your window, etc.  In the end you will discover that there is ONLY the Presence of Love, and inner and outer are just temporary terms.

But in the meanwhile let us turn to that inner place and place our attention there and hear our name being called as we are called into existence from moment to moment out of pure emptiness and into the Fullness of Love and Freedom.  As St. Dimitri puts it:  “Man needs to enclose himself in the inner closet of his heart more often than he needs to go to church….”