Into the Silent Land--the Human Heart

Here's an outstanding introduction to the richness of Christian spirituality, interior prayer, stillness, and inner transformation.  A handy little book by Martin Laird: Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

"This book is different. There are plenty of books on contemplation that feel rather tired--either wordy and labored or unhelpfully smooth and idealistic. But this is sharp, deep, with no cliches, no psychobabble and no short cuts. Its honesty is bracing, its vision utterly clear; it is a rare treasure."

--Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury

"Often they say 'you learn how to swim by swimming' but a good coach or swimming manual is essential. Equally, we could say 'you learn how to be contemplative by contemplating' and a good guide or mentor is necessary. Into the Silent Land is just that. I tried it and it works. Try it."

--Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Fostering the spiritual awakening

People all around us are waking up to the pursuit of a life marked by interior integrity and intention, expressing itself in authentic happiness and compassion toward others.  If you're reading this, I count you among them. Unfortunately, many who wake up to a long-dormant and neglected spirituality often turn to the church only to find many churches either caught up in turmoil or given over to materialism.  Christians fight among themselves, with other congregations or denominations, and with the world. One awakened soul recently told me about her visits to local congregations: "The churches I visited seem angry, even hateful toward those who don't agree with them."

Those that aren't fighting seem caught up in peddling their goods and services like sophisticated religious Wall Marts or like a proliferating retail franchise. I man told me that visiting one such congregation he felt more like a resource to be exploited for the sake of the cause or institution rather than a human being simply seeking God and needing direction in the life of prayer and interior transformation.

Too often those awakening to the spiritual life turn elsewhere.  Christianity seems largely irrelevant, and its practices and doctrines feel more like barriers to their pursuit of God than aids for the journey.

And yet the Christian tradition is rich with resources to guide the awakening. Too long hidden, these resources are making a comeback.  Kept for centuries by faithful monks and mystics, they are now entering the mainstream, supporting urban people with the grace needed to cultivate a holiness and humanness on this ragged edge of the modern world.

My goal on this site is to help mainstream the hidden gifts of the saints who've found in Jesus and Christian spirituality a door into their hearts and guide to the vast, uncharted eternal realm within.

To do this, I need your help.

1. What is stirring within you?

2. What questions rumble around in your head?

3. What do you long for, hunger for?

4. What are you afraid of?

How to greet the day

The words you mutter to yourself matter, especially upon waking. After staggering in and out of the bathroom, you may have one word on your mind—coffee.  If not coffee, then you’ve got a shower on your mind, or letting the dog out, finding the newspaper or getting yourself out the door and off to the gym.  As your brain gets your body moving, it begins to churn with the obligations of the day, tugging you out of this moment, lurching you anxiously down the road, or fretting over something that happened yesterday that you’ve got to live with today.  These thoughts are nearly automatic. The ego, your internal self-manager, is already doing its job in the way it’s done it since you were little.

In some sense, from the moment you awaken (and also in your dreams), you’ve been praying without ceasing—not to God, but to the roles and responsibility, fears and ambitions that drive you.  The din of this unceasing, interior muttering, the pressure of all that’s coming at you, distracts you from the stunning wonder of the dawn, the light that’s coming to you as a new day begins, and the God who’s running toward you now, even before you’re ready for God’s embrace.

But the unconscious muttering of your mind hides all this, just as morning fog or city smog hides the dancing sun.  Your muttering matters.  So, take charge of those first few words.  You can’t shut out completely the words that tumble through your brain, but you can, over time, swap them out for other, better words.

Try these instead—

Look!  My Beloved comes, leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills.  My Beloved comes and says to me, “Come away, my love, come away. Let me see your face; let me hear your voice.  For your face is lovely and your voice is sweet.” from Song of Solomon 2.8-14

Each day, look to the sun (or wherever it’s supposed to be if you can't see it for one reason or another), and utter these words with a lusty, throaty and audible voice.  They’re better than a double shot of Espresso.

And you’ll gain eyes to see God coming toward you even if you’re stuck in gridlock during your morning commute.

The door is too easily ignored

After a brief pause to address a few reader comments, this post follows up on God meets us in the most surprising places: Those monks and mystics worth their salt in any age also faced the daily, ordinary life of cleaning bathrooms, preparing food, working in the field, facing people they’d rather not face, and falling asleep in prayer.  I’ve often wished we had more from them about living alert to God in the midst of it all.  But I’ve come to appreciate their reserve.

“If you’re going to watch me,” they seem to say, “then watch me at prayer.  Follow me in prayer and you’ll have light to guide you in your daily life.  Your path will be made known to you.  But you must not hurry.”

Start then wherever you are.  Wake up to this moment, this place.  Beware of the impulse to find a teacher, a guru, a conference, or some sacred place that will launch you into the ecstasy you seek.  If you don’t find it here, where you are, you’ll likely not find it at all.  Follow those impulses and you’ll spend your life always looking elsewhere when the door you’re looking for is as obvious as the nose on your face . . . and just as easily ignored.

The early desert fathers and mothers cherished a little saying that kept them centered in the only place God comes to meet us.  Here.  Now.

“An elder said: If you see a young monk by his own will climbing up into heaven, take him by the foot and throw him to the ground, because what he is doing is not good for him.” (Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, 96)

If you’re going to be found by God, you’ll be found on the particular ground where you spend your time each day.

God meets us in the most surprising places

Much of the spiritual writing we’ve inherited comes from monks and mystics.  Their vision for the spiritual life may inspire you, but it can also leave you with the nagging impression that you’ll probably never find your way into enough open, quiet space to let God find you. You have a hard enough time finding yourself in the midst of the busy, demanding, active life that is yours.  You’re lucky if you can squeeze out a handful of minutes each day to return to the center through prayer and meditation.  Because you cannot withdraw and live a life of prayer, much monastic teaching and most mystic intimacy with God seems beyond your reach, written for someone who doesn’t share your kind of life.

None of those who write anything worthwhile about the spiritual life intend this.  They know that the most humbling and ordinary tasks of daily life matter.  They do not intend to leave any of us with the impression that the real spiritual life is lived in some airy-fairy place of bliss.  No, God meets us in the most surprising of places . . . where we live and work and play each day.

In Jesus, God came among us bodily.  God made matter holy.  God blessed and celebrated ordinary life.  God hidden, incognito, tucked away in the most surprising of places.  God growing in the womb of a teenager.  God born in a peasant’s stable.  God crying, nursing, needing someone to change his shorts.

Those who were looking elsewhere for God’s grand entrance missed God’s humble coming.