New Reminders But the Same Call

Since returning from my Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat in July, I have been making time for 10 minutes of centering prayer every morning. Because I don’t want to be tempted to glance at my watch,  I have been setting the alarm on my phone to go off after ten minutes. This past Sunday, when I got out of bed later than usual, I was surprised to receive a suggestion from “Siri” on my phone: “Would you like me to set the timer for ten minutes?”

It is ironic that a device that sucks up so much of my time is now encouraging me to set aside time to practice self-control and mindfulness! Of course, any suggestions that “Siri” makes are based on my patterns, which I establish myself—a reminder to be aware of how I am using my time. As Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.”

I have heard of devices such as a “MindWatch” or a mindfulness bracelet such as “MeaningToPause” that vibrate intermittently throughout the day to remind one to be present to God or to one’s breath. Of course, for centuries Benedictines have been using a much simpler technology — the tolling of bells — to call us to set aside whatever is at hand and engage in prayer.

Once we get to chapel or our interior prayer space, we still have the challenge of quieting our mind so we can “just be” with God who loves us regardless of what we accomplish or think about. However, creating a pattern of stopping to turn our attention to God is an essential first step. We can choose to use technology as a tool to help us create that pattern — or we can relinquish “custody of our eyes” to our devices when we remain transfixed by the games, apps, or websites on our screens.

How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.

Channeling God's Enthusiasm

In an interview with journalist Jonathan Cott, composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein informed him that “the word ‘enthusiasm’ was derived from the Greek adjective entheos, meaning ‘having the god within,’ with its attendant sense of ‘living without aging,’ as did the gods on Mount Olympus” (reported in Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/03/dinner-with-lenny-leonard-bernstein-jonathan-cott/?mc_cid=44a4e92543&mc_eid=d3043f712b).

Could it be that enthusiasm is the fountain of youth? More importantly, could it be that we are channeling God within us when we are enthusiastic about something?

Our various enthusiasms for the color purple or a particular sports team or the songs of Johnny Cash or quotations from Monty Python movies can seem silly compared to the “real stuff” of our lives — you know, our work, raising a family, our faith, and what we will leave for the next generation. The funny thing is, often what people remember about us and remark on at our funerals are our enthusiasms—our fondness for gooseberry pie, our devotion to growing dahlias, our inability to pass by a garage sale, our love of motorcycles. They remember these things because this is where we are deeply connected with God who is enthusiastic about EVERYTHING, who has an infinite well of love for the things we love as well as the things we disdain.

Don’t feel guilty about taking time for the things that spark your enthusiasm; as the poet ee cummings said, “you shall above all things be glad and young / for if you’re young, whatever life you wear / it will become you; and if you are glad / whatever’s living will yourself become.” Henry David Thoreau said, “None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm,” so stay young by engaging in what makes you glad and you’ll find that you are closer to God, the infinite lover of life, as well.

Surrendering to a God of Mystery

Scripture and our own experiences give us some insight into the heart of God, but for the most part, we have a very limited understanding of our Creator. How are we to enter into a relationship with a Being who is so mysterious?

Artists can point us in the right direction. As Richard Rohr says, “Artists do not insist on full understanding before they write a piece of music of start painting. They trust the unconscious….” Just so, we cannot wait until we have a full understanding of God before deciding whether we will invest in this relationship, for God will never be fully knowable. However, we can trust other sources of knowing beyond our mind—the tugging of our heart, the feeling in our gut, the intuition that arises from our unconscious. God speaks to us in those ways, too.

For the most part, we humans prefer predictability to surprises. However, one insight I gained at my BSWR conference is that the vow of fidelity to the monastic way of life (openness to conversion) is a recognition of God’s unpredictability — God always surprises us, shatters our expectations, and surpasses our imaginations. That is one reason humility is required to be in relationship with God; we need to admit that we don’t always know best, that our human limitations restrict fullness of life, and that we need God to lead us beyond our understanding.

One benefit of aging is hindsight, which leads to the prayer, “Thank you, God, for not giving me what I asked for!” Our disappointments, losses, and even times of suffering teach us who we are, what we value, and how to make the best use of our time. Although we may not always be able to sense it, God is with us in our times of both light and darkness, and our surrender through prayer will help us trust in our God of mystery.

A Wonder-full Way to Offer Praise

It is intriguing to hear what people imagine heaven is like. A member of a Scripture study group I once belonged to said he wasn’t looking forward to going to heaven if it meant standing around praising God for all eternity!

Perhaps he would change his mind if he heard this verse from the song Jesus Christ, our Abba’s Joyous Light by Aelred-Seton Stanley and Cyprian Consiglio, OSB:

Abba, Word and Spirit, in your rest
Wonder is the only praise we know

Spending eternity in a perpetual state of wonder doesn’t sound boring at all! Imagine being constantly amazed by God’s endless expressions of beauty, ingenuity, imagination, surprise, and variety. If we look at it that way, we can choose to enter a heavenly state now instead of waiting until we die. We can marvel at the intense color of zinnias, the way a chameleon changes color to blend in with its background, the artwork created on the ocean floor by male puffer fish, and the fact that the human nose can detect at least one trillion distinct scents.

God doesn’t need our praise. However, like any artist, God delights in our delight at the wonders of creation. Therefore, the best way to praise God is to notice and enjoy the fascinating world around us. Not only will we be honoring God, but we will find rest and nourishment for our soul.

The Spaciousness of God

Scripture includes several references to the ways God frees us from constrictions and gives us the space we need for fullness of life. For example, Psalm 18:20 says, “God brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” Whatever we need rescuing from these days—discouragement, self-criticism, or fear, for example—it is reassuring to be reminded that God delights in us and gives us space for healing and nourishment.

Recently, a letter from a friend who has been struggling with health issues and the death of her mother helped me understand that by seeking God, we can gain space not just for ourselves but for others. She said, “Knowing you are growing in your relationship with God somehow creates a space for me to be where I am and gives me hope that more is possible.” It hadn’t occurred to me that I myself can bring others into a spacious place where they can find peace with who and where they are simply through being engaged in my own loving relationship with God. It must be part of the mysterious Trinitarian process in which love begets love and peace begets peace.

In his book Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ, J. Todd Billings says, “Ultimately, to be and to dwell in Christ is to dwell in the most ‘spacious place’ imaginable. In our culture, to focus one’s trust and affection on one hope—Jesus Christ—strikes many as narrow or risky. But because of who Jesus Christ is [the Alpha and Omega, and the One in whom all things hold together], to dwell in him is to occupy a wide, expansive place.” When we take our seat at the table of the Body of Christ, space suddenly appears for everyone else we carry with us in our hearts.

A Lesson in Grumbling and Gratitude

The laces on my current pair of tennis shoes have a propensity to become untied, and I often grumble at the nuisance of having to find a place out of the flow of traffic in the monastery hallway to stop and retie them. A note from an oblate, Jim Gordon, who is volunteering at a Catholic Charities refugee respite center near San Diego, gave me a different perspective on my situation. Here is what he said that gave me pause:

“I never would have guessed that what they really need is shoelaces. They all come in with no shoelaces, because it is ICE policy to confiscate them. ICE is afraid of the laces being used for suicide. Why anyone would risk their lives coming from God knows where to kill themselves in a US border detention center is beyond me.” Sister Molly Brockwell, who volunteered this summer at a refugee respite center in Laredo, Tx., said the people she was assisting also had this problem, and she made numerous trips to the Dollar Store to buy all the shoelaces they had.

In all the times I have had to stop to tie my shoes, it never occurred to me to be grateful that I had shoelaces to tie (let alone shoes themselves). I will tie my shoes with a thankful spirit from now on, and I’ll say a prayer for our brothers and sisters who are hobbled not just by lack of shoelaces but by poverty, violence, and discrimination.

Saint Benedict warned against grumbling in his Rule: “First and foremost, there must be no word or sign on the evil of grumbling, no manifestation of it for any reason at all” (RB 34:6). He identified grumbling as evil because he knew that it feeds envy, judgment, and discontent; it also leads us to disregard our blessings and blinds us to the needs of others who have so much less than we do. Thus one way to cultivate a grateful spirit and to practice love of neighbor is to resist the urge to grumble and focus instead on the ways we are blessed. We might even be moved to buy shoelaces and donate them to a Catholic Charities refugee respite center.

The Wisdom in Being Out Of Our Mind

Usually, the phrase “Are you out of your mind?” is meant as a criticism, but I’m beginning to wonder if it might actually describe a spiritually mature person!

In the documentary A Human Search: The Life of Father Bede Griffiths, Fr. Bede mentioned that in his monastery in England, although the community prayed the liturgy of the hours, there was no “training of the mind.” The human mind is a great gift, but like a toddler, it demands our constant attention. In disciplining the mind, we learn that we don’t have to pay attention to every thought we have; in fact, it is often helpful to get out of our mind so we can pay attention to the wisdom of our body and soul.

The primary way of disciplining our mind so it doesn’t demand all our energy and cut us off from other sources of wisdom is through centering prayer or meditation. This simple practice entails sitting in silence and releasing our thoughts as they arise as if letting go of a balloon, while turning our attention again and again to our breath and a sacred word. This practice trains us to be present to God at all times.

St. Jane de Chantal described contemplation in this way: “Sometimes put yourself very simply before God, certain of his presence everywhere, and without any effort, whisper very softly to his sacred heart whatever your own heart prompts you to say.”

Note that she says to whisper what your heart prompts you to say, not what your mind prompts you to say. We can choose to set aside our constant stream of thoughts and listen to a different type of wisdom conveyed to us through our body and our soul. God speaks the language of the heart and the gut as well as of the mind. If we follow St. Benedict’s advice and incline the ear of our heart, we will learn the value of surrendering our thoughts and relying on God’s guidance instead. Then, when someone asks “Are you out of your mind?” we can joyfully reply, “Yes—you should try it sometime!”

Marketers of God's Kingdom

Recently I watched a movie called The Dreamseller, in which a successful businessman experiences a tragedy and upends his life, becoming an itinerant street preacher and healer. He stops selling people the dream of being rich, famous, and physically beautiful and instead encourages them to pursue happiness by practicing forgiveness, living simply, and building healthy relationships with family and friends.

Although he is an unkempt beggar, people are drawn to him and listen to him. Why? Because he eases their burdens. Chasing wealth, fame, and beauty is exhausting. Judging others and holding grudges weighs us down. Being in conflict with the people in our lives produces a constant state of anxiety. By inviting people to dream of a different life, he sets them free to lay down society’s expectations and focus on what is really important: walking the way of love instead of pursuing the empty promises of consumerism, entitlement, and false appearances.

Ultimately, what this man was selling was the kingdom of God. People bought the dream he was selling because they sensed his integrity; like Jesus, he was free from the lure of possessions and had a burning desire to help others find meaning by choosing love—by dying to self-interest. 

Those of us who follow Jesus also are called to sell the dream of God’s kingdom. We don’t need any marketing skills for this task—all we need to do is live the dream ourselves by loving God and loving others. As Walter Stanley Mooneyham said, “Love talked about is easily turned aside, but love demonstrated is irresistible.” 

How Things Really Are

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus—our remembrance of the time when, as poet Malcolm Guite says in his poem, Transfiguration:

The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face

It is also the day we remember the bombing at Hiroshima in 1945, when the violent destruction of a nuclear bomb was first unleashed as a weapon of war. Yet Guite reminds us that the light of Christ will overcome the darkness that can inhabit our world as he concludes his poem with these lines:

Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are

When we are worn down from the darknesses of our age—the COVID pandemic, the epidemic of mass shootings and opioid addiction, the scourge of racism and sexism—it is difficult to trust that Love dances at the heart of things. Yet we do receive glimpses of how things really are if we expect to see them, if we recognize Love dancing in the patience of those who care for elderly persons, in the open hearts of families who adopt children with disabilities, in the tenderness of gardeners who nurture their plants. We get to choose whether we will succumb to the dark impulses that are within us and surround us or whether we will seek out the light that is at the heart of all things and reflect it.

It is good that we are here. Let there be light.

Day By Day

While I was on retreat at Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Bristow, Va., Fr. Lee Roos said something that intrigued me when he presided at mass: he had encountered a passage from the Rule of St. Benedict, and it had provided him with his “daily conversion opportunity.”

Benedictines are called to conversion of life through the vows of stability, obedience, and fidelity to the monastic way of life. However, I had never thought about conversion as a daily practice. What would our lives be like if we anticipated having an opportunity every day to turn our hearts toward God and neighbor? If we are attentive, we will notice that these opportunities abound. For example:

• We can choose not to engage in gossip

• We can excise violent language from our speech (e.g., “I was just killing time”; “I could have murdered him”; “Take your best shot”)

• We can refrain from watching movies and TV shows that denigrate women, those who are handicapped, or people from non-white cultures

• We can focus on being thankful for our blessings instead of complaining about things we lack

St. Benedict talks about setting up a “school for the Lord’s service,” and when it comes to conversion of heart, class is always in session. What was your daily conversion opportunity today?