A few years a good friend of mine decided that he no longer considered himself to be a Christian.  After decades of church involvement he felt that, since he didn’t believe the creeds or find the liturgy meaningful, the time had come to resign his membership and spend his Sundays in ways that seemed more relevant to his life and interests. I asked him if there was anything he would miss. He said that his one worry about finally giving up on church was that he might stop growing.

Despite the many things that made my friend feel alienated from church the one thing it had dependably given him over the years was, he said, an opportunity to reflect on his life. Reflection came naturally to him, both by personal disposition and professional training and work as a philosopher.  But although he didn’t usually agree with the answers given by the church to the important questions it addressed, his involvement kept him honest because it confronted his natural tendency to associate only with people who shared his opinions and values.

I think my friend makes an important point.  For whatever else growing together within a community means it certainly includes the fact that real involvement with real people – particularly with the assorted ages, ethnicities, personalities, and political and sexual orientations that one encounters in a healthy church – will always give us opportunities to grow in ways that we never would if we succumb to the individualism of our culture.

I realize, of course, that one can find these opportunities for growth in other relational contexts.  And spiritual communities can take many forms other than that of a church. But, commitment to journey with others within a community offers important advantages over merely hanging out with friends in that we don’t get to choose the other people in a community.  Of course, this isn’t entirely true because we typically choose a church or other community based in part on the sort of people we expect to encounter there.  Instinctively, we then tend to avoid those who fall outside our natural comfort zone.  But, once we commit ourselves to journey and grow together, those people that we might never choose as friends but who we encounter in community offer us a chance to deal with the precise issues we need to confront if we are to become whole, not merely holy.  And let us never forget that wholeness is one of the best measures of anything worthy of being called authentic spiritual development.

God comes to us disguised as our life.  If we are open to it, life will present us with the experiences we need to engage with if we are to become whole. Many of those experiences come bundled with people, and some of those people we will encounter in our families, some in our places of work and some in our spiritual community – whatever form that takes.  So, the next time I or someone else does something to irritate you, consider whether this might be God in disguise as your life-in-community, offering you an opportunity to deal with something in yourself that you need to deal with if you are to become more whole.  And I will try and do the same!

Growing together – truly more than the sum of us each growing individually!

In his controversial new book, Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton argues that while as an atheist he believes that religion is wrong in its dogma he also believes it has survived because it is right in much of its praxis.  In fact, he has angered most of his fellow atheists by going so far as to suggest that it has been so right and has done many things so well that atheists have a lot to learn from the world’s great religions.

While both atheists and religionists tend to think of religion primarily in terms of beliefs, de Botton argues, correctly I think, that it is so much more than this.  At the top of his personal list of the “so much more” are such things as the art, architecture and music it has inspired, and the spirit of both community and humility that are part of most religious systems.  It is his perspective on community that I find most interesting.

At the core of de Botton’s argument is his suggestion that humans invented religion to serve two central needs: “the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply-rooted selfish and violent impulses, and the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise.”  Religion understands this profound vulnerability that is at the core of the human condition and it offers community in response to it.  But it still encourages people to know their smallness in relation to self-transcendent realities that are large, powerful and beyond control. This awareness is, he argues, profoundly important because it is the soil out of which humility can develop.  Without it, all we are left with is empty arrogance.

I think de Botton is right as far as he goes.  And I count it a gift of the God he doesn’t believe in that he can see what he sees and have the personal humility to proclaim it to his congregation of atheists.  There is, however, one important part of the picture that he doesn’t see.

Christianity offers something more than community as a response to human powerlessness.  It also reminds us that we are not as alone, vulnerable, small or insignificant as we perceive ourselves to be when we operate within the optical illusion that comes with our normal state of consciousness.  We think we are alone because we believe we are separate.  That is the illusion.  In reality, we are in Christ and in him we are part of the whole of creation that is held together in him.  Quite in contrast to the powerlessness that we may feel in our isolated self, we are in the service of the Creator and Sustainer of the cosmos – the one in whom everything that exists is held in existence and by whom we are commissioned to play a part in the cherishing, healing and restoration of all that is, as it is made new in Christ.  And rather than being alone, we are one with everything that is.  Our vulnerability comes from failing to know this as our most fundamental reality.  This is the great truth that the Christian mystics – from Jesus onward – have always known and proclaimed.

Despite their differences in emphasis and style, it’s interesting to note the close relationship that exists between contemplatives and charismatics.  Those within these traditions are, however, not usually the ones to note the similarities. Focusing more on the differences, contemplatives sometimes think charismatics are too emotional and theologically conservative while charismatics view contemplatives as too theologically liberal and too New Age.  It is often others, therefore, who notice the great similarity – the fact that people in both these traditions pay particular attention to the Spirit of God.

I would have to say that I never took the Spirit of God seriously until I started on a contemplative journey.  I knew about the Spirit as the third member of the Trinity, but I didn’t know the Spirit.  But as I began to dare to open myself in stillness and faith as an act of prayer I encountered the indwelling Spirit of God.  I began to know this mysterious presence of the divine that is part of the reality of every creature made in the image of God, and began to learn how our spirits can interact with the Spirit.  And consequently I began to become attentive to the critical role that the Spirit plays not just in such seemingly “spiritual” things as the knowing of the presence of God but in all of life.

Anything worthy of being called Christian spirituality must be grounded in the Spirit of God because God’s Spirit is the reference point for all Christian spiritual experience and life.  But God’s Spirit is not a private possession and Christian spirituality is not merely an experience of Spirit.  It’s a response to Spirit – a response of openness and trust that moves from encounter to knowing and from knowing to flowing – the flowing of the Spirit in and through my being and out into the world.

In their book, The Faith of the Church, James A. Pike and W. Norman Pittenger argue that the Church has always insisted that the Holy Spirit is not concerned with Church and religion alone.  The Spirit is the Giver and Sustainer of Life – of all life.  The Holy Spirit was active in the creation of the world, and is now active in the natural order.  Pike and Pittenger go on: “What the biologist, for instance, regards as the drive of nature to conform to some pattern, the Christian theologian regards as the working of the Holy Spirit.  It is He who makes the acorn grow up to an oak, the child to manhood, the man to fulfill his potentialities and possibilities . . . He is the Spirit in and behind life, the Spirit who makes things grow.”

This understanding echoes St. Ambrose who taught that all truth, by whoever spoken, is spoken by the Holy Spirit.  It is the Spirit of God that is present when scientists unlock the secrets of the genome.  It is the same Spirit that is present when legislators enact just laws, a soldier gives his life for his comrades, the artist expresses beauty, or a business woman find creative ways to not only earn a living but to advance the welfare of her employees and the community.  Equally, it is the Spirit that is at work when teachers are inspired to not just communicate information to the young people in their classrooms but to help them become good citizens and whole, responsible members of society.  Similarly, it is the Spirit of God that is behind every act of healing and every step of human growth or development.

Scriptures teach that God is in Christ, making all things new in the world.  The Spirit is the agent of that transformational work.  And when our spirit is attentive to God’s Spirit, we can be aligned with God’s transformational work – in us, in others and in the world.  This is the great and ultimate purpose behind spiritual awakening.  It is not simply for our own enlightenment.  It’s so we can notice and then participate in God’s great reconstructive agenda in and for the world.

Christians who are attentive to the Christian calendar that structures the year around the great mysteries of our faith are aware that we are now in the season of Lent. This season of preparation for Holy Week and Easter began, as it always does, on Ash Wednesday. The liturgy of this day is one of my favourites. Perhaps you, like me, received the imposition of ashes, smudged onto our foreheads in the sign of the cross. In my tradition, this is accompanied by the priest saying ten simple but powerful words: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Each year these words haunt me, not in a morbid or negative way but in a strange but powerfully comforting way. I think the reason they are so comforting has to do with the big story of Lent and Holy Week and that is what I have been thinking about this season.

The most basic statement of that big story is found in the ritual words: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” This isn’t intended to explain what is called the Paschal mystery – the mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – merely to present its essential elements in a form that will hold us. I was raised in a tradition that offered a theory that was supposed to explain this mystery. Substitutionary atonement was the name of the theory and it suggests that by his death, Jesus rescues sinners from the anger of God. This particular theory hasn’t made sense to me for a long time. My own thinking leans more to understanding the death of Jesus as the perfect and fullest possible illustration of self-emptying love. But regardless of what understanding of these profound mysteries we might hold it will never be big enough to hold us. Only the mystery that lies behind our imperfect understandings is big enough to hold us. The understandings are, therefore, quite unimportant and are certainly not worth arguing about.

The Paschal mystery that lies at the core of the Christian faith is a big enough story to make life meaningful, regardless of what comes our way. It is, therefore, big enough to hold us. The Paschal mystery connects our past (Christ has died), present (Christ is risen), and future (Christ will come again). It connects suffering, death and hope – the most basic elements of human existence (suffering and death) and the one thing we need (hope) to respond to them with openness and trust. This is religion at its best – connecting us to the realities of our life while offering a framework of mystical hope.

The Spirit of God is the engine behind all human becoming.  We might think that we are that engine, but this is far from true. This is why it is more accurate to describe the journey of awakening and unfolding as involving steps of response rather than steps of initiative – response to the initiatives of the Spirit who continuously invites, woos, supports, sustains, and enables our becoming.  Or, if I can change the metaphor, the whole thing is a dance.  Your partner is the Spirit who has already entered the dance floor and is calling for you to come.  The Spirit will lead the dance.  You only need to follow.  Don’t hold back trying to first learn the dance steps.  Just get out onto the floor and trust your partner to teach you everything you need to know and to give you everything you need to receive.

One of the great paradoxes of the transformational journey is that effort and initiative are both counterproductive.  All that is required of you is consent that is offered in openness and faith.  Effort may sometimes be enough to change behaviour but it is never enough to awaken a self.  But do not read this limitation of effort in awakening as suggesting that our role is simply to passively await awakening.  The offering of consent involves an active response.  Awakening is always an active response to the Spirit and if what we offer is not a response to Spirit, it is not a spiritual response.

Contemporary understandings of Christian spirituality miss this truth much more often than they recognize it.  So often the spiritual journey is presented in terms of what we must do. And what we are told we must do is to be faithful in our effort and discipline.  This is a recipe for spiritual disaster because what it does is strengthen the false self.  When the spiritual journey is my own self-improvement project the major product will be an ego that is in even more control than before the journey began.

Even the notion of seeking God seems misguided.  Describing her own spiritual journey, Simone Weil stated that she had never understood all the talk about seeking God because never once in her life had she sought after God.  God found her even without her seeking. Like the fish in the Sufi tale that was swimming around madly seeking for the sea only to be confronted by the wise old fish who told it that it could now relax because it was already in the sea, we too do not need to seek the God in whom we exist.  Instead, we need to awaken to the truth and reality of our existence.  Awakening is not an achievement. It is a grace – a gift that we can receive if we are willing to receive it in openness and faith.

Anthony de Mello reminds us that we do not need to engineer our own awakening by means of a story of the river and one sitting by it seeking enlightenment.  Noticing this person striving to attain something that he could not produce, the river said: “Does one really have to fret about enlightenment?  No matter which way I turn, I’m homeward bound.”  We too are homeward bound when we notice and then respond to the invitations of Spirit to become all we were meant to be.

From Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, February 2012).

Many things keep us content with our small selves and block us from becoming all we can be. None, however, is more important than the fact that most of us go through life as sleepwalkers and, even after a moment of awakening, tend to quickly drift off once again into a sleep of self-preoccupied oblivion and of a mindless robot shuffling through a somnambulistic fog. This is the reason spiritual teachers have always taught the importance of awareness. Hasidic Jews tell a story of a young man who approached Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael one afternoon. “Rebbe,” the young man asked with great seriousness, “what is the way to God?” The rebbe looked up from his work and answered: “There is no way to God, for God is not other than here and now. The truth you seek is not hidden from you; you simply do not notice it. It is here for you if you will only awake.”

This is the truth that has been proclaimed by all the great Christian mystics across Christian history. And it is the truth taught from cover to cover of the Bible. In his Areopagus sermon, Paul declares that God “is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:27–28). God is closer than our next breath. Job even reminds us that not only is God the source of each breath, but each breath also is God’s breath (Job 27:3). How much more intimate could our relationship with God be? God is not absent. It is we who fail to notice divine presence. It’s all a matter of awareness.

A great variety of experiences can serve as the messenger that brings us an invitation to awareness and offers us the potential of an awakening. Unfortunately, however, we usually evaluate these events negatively and, instead of welcoming them, do everything we can to ignore, minimize, or avoid them. In general, anything that produces significant internal conflict, a disruption of meaning and self-coherence, or a sense that our way of being in the world needs to change—any such thing has this potential to awaken us. Some of these emerge from the circumstances of our life. A divorce, major financial reversal, death of a spouse or child, natural catastrophe, or a business failure can all contain a hidden gift of a potential awakening. Many people speak of a significant and valued change to the course of their life following such unwelcome events. Sometimes these changes are limited to behavior or lifestyle, but deeper transformations of self are also possible when one moves beyond simply trying to get back to how things were before the crisis.

One of the most powerful invitations to awakening comes from journeying with other people in relationships of intentional love. Rather than regarding love as a feeling, we need to start thinking of love as an action. Intentionally committing to journey with others in love is a commitment to consciously choose to express love. This commitment opens us to the possibility of awakening because living in such a way calls forth who we really are. The more intimate the relationship, the more it will inevitably present us with opportunities to awaken. The most important of these invitations to awaken are associated with the tensions that necessarily form a part of any relationship. Our default response to these tensions is annoyance (fight) or defensiveness (flight). Awakening demands quite a different posture. It demands hospitality to the tension or conflict and presence to your self and the other.

Conscious or intentional love also involves an expectation. Instead of looking to the relationship primarily for either gratification or shelter, we can learn to welcome its power to wake us up in the areas of life where we are asleep. This approach puts us on a path. It commits us to movement and change by showing us where we most need to grow. Embracing relationship as a path also gives us practice in learning to use each difficulty along the way as an opportunity to connect more deeply, not just with a partner, but with our own aliveness.

A commitment to live in these sorts of loving relationships is probably the most accessible of all means of awakening. It is available to anyone who is in any form of relationship. Such relationships do not need to be romantic or even ongoing—although the more ongoing and the more intense, the more opportunities the relationship will present for awakening. The bottom line is not the ‘who’ but the ‘how’: the direction of the energy flow. On a path of conscious love the energy is always radiating outward; it is never self-defended or congealed. The how is a path of love. It is love that allows one to move from defensiveness to openness, and it is love that allows people in a relationship to stay present and open to each other when they otherwise would want to either attack or run and hide. It is love that allows partners to work their way through inner logjams that would otherwise normally take much longer to resolve.

Awakening isn’t transformation.  But it is the doorway to transformation. The approach to this doorway is noticing that we need to awaken and how quickly we drift back off into a somnambulistic fog even after we do so.  This is why Jesus so often urged his followers to awaken from their stupor and be attentive.  He gives us the same invitation.

From Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, 2012).

Dr. Donald Woodside is a recently retired psychiatrist with whom I worked closely in a children’s mental health center in Canada for many years. But more than that, he has been a valued friend and spiritual companion. His spiritual journey draws together Christian faith with Buddhist meditation practice lived out within a Quaker fellowship.  If you feel some tension emerging within you at the thought of holding these things together you are not alone. Don has lived these tensions for many years, struggling to understand how his Christian faith fits with drawing insights and practices from another religion.

Christians are sometimes nervous about learning from other religious traditions.  Vatican II urged Roman Catholics to appreciate the value of the teachings of other religions but Protestants sometimes seem to feel that God’s honour depends on other religious traditions containing absolutely no truth or value.  This is surprising given the Biblical assertion that Jesus is the light that enlightens all humans (John 1:9) and that God has left evidence of the Divine Self in all cultures and religions (Acts 14: 17).  Scriptures also confirm that knowledge of God exists outside the Judeo-Christian tradition (think, for example, of Melchizedek, the Canaanite Priest-king who is described as knowing the true God).  And, on several occasions Jesus himself urged his fellow Jews to learn from the faith of those outside Judaism.  We see the same openness to other religions in much of Christian history.  By his own admission, the Neo-Platonists helped Saint Augustine understand the gospel; Aristotle helped Thomas Aquinas understand Scriptures; and even John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism.  Is it not conceivable, therefore, that Christians might learn from the Buddha – and other great religious thinkers and traditions – things that can help them more clearly understand God’s revelation in Christ?  That has certainly been my experience, and it is the reason I wanted to share this conversation with my friend for whom this has also been deeply true.

But what I wanted to talk with him about was not these more abstract possibilities of interfaith learning but rather his own journey as a Quaker who loves Jesus and whose spirit has been shaped by decades of practice of both meditation and contemplative prayer.  What follows is longer than my usual blog entries but I think you will find our conversation interesting.

David:   To get us started, tell me a bit about your early religious background.

Don:      I grew up in a liberal Christian church, attended regularly, and was influenced both by my mother’s more emotive faith and my father’s rational and critical views. As a teenager I struggled with the idea of the physical resurrection of Christ, eventually decided I couldn’t believe in it, and abandoned any religious faith. I did, however, have a vague interest in Eastern religions stemming mostly from literature, especially such writers as A. J. Cronin, Joseph Conrad, and E. M. Forster.

David:   Can you get back in touch with the appeal of Eastern religions at that age?  What parts of you were not satisfied by liberal Protestantism that seemed to be called to life by Eastern religions?

Don:      Eastern religions touched me in ways that are hard to describe. Perhaps it was the possibility of being changed personally – a transforming experience that would give a different relationship with everyday life. It seemed like the Eastern religions held the promise of wisdom and a connection to the divine. A highly moral life was about as close as we Westerners seemed to get.

David:   At some point I know these interests led you to the East.  When was that, and how did those experiences influence your spiritual journey?

Don:      Those interests were part of what drew me to two years of medical work in Malaysia. While I was there I wasn’t attracted to the religious practices I witnessed. Chinese Buddhism seemed to me to be largely devotional and superstitious, with no mention of meditation.  I was impressed when I saw Hindus walk on hot coals and go into trances but it seemed far removed from anything I might want to or be able to do. From a spiritual point of view I was a confirmed, if curious, skeptic. After my work in Malaysia, I felt disconnected and alienated, especially by the Vietnam war.

David:   Aha, so I hear the emergence of political sensitivities that I know have formed an important part of your spiritual journey.

Don:      Malaysian medicine was definitely two tiered! The rich were very rich, the poor very poor. Not only did I see the Vietnam war as the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place, but I came to see that development aid was propping up corrupt regimes in many countries. My presence in a remote hospital in Malaysia facilitated the movement of Malaysian doctors to urban areas. The work was rewarding, even inspiring at times, but the overall impact seemed questionable.

David:   Tell me about your first exposure to Buddhist meditation.

Don:      In Sri Lanka I searched out a Buddhist retreat centre and was immediately impressed by the Buddha’s analysis of the human predicament – the world as burning with the fire of greed, the fire of hatred, and the fire of delusion. That resonated deeply in me and I was drawn by his advice not to believe him, but try meditation for myself.  By a connection made there, I then went to study meditation with Anagarika Munindra in Bodh Gaya. On first meeting him I asked him to tell me about meditation but he declined, inviting me to a 10 day silent retreat starting the next day! With trepidation I agreed. It was the hardest work I had ever done. But after it was over I shaved my head to help my commitment to stay and practice, and I stayed for four months. I was tempted to ordain as a monk, and work in a local medical clinic with nearby forest people. But my questing spirit drove me on.  There is however, no question that this was a life-changing experience that opened my spiritual eye.

David:   When did you first begin the serious practice of meditation, and how do you actually meditate?

Don:      I began to meditate on a regular basis, several times a week, in 1978 when I joined a local meditation group which I still attend. I also began attending 9 day retreats at a Buddhist meditation centre in Massachusetts.  My basic practice is often called ‘mindfulness’. I start by watching the breath. When my mind settles, I let go of the breath and relax into choice-less awareness. Mindfulness is the basic tool.  It’s a kind of unattached awareness of each object of consciousness – such as a thought, sensation, or judgment – as it arises and passes, without identifying with it as ‘I’ or ‘mine’. Beyond this I also use the practices of lovingkindness and compassion to open my heart. If I am feeling distressed or angry, I may spend the whole time on lovingkindness.  Whatever practice I use, thinking frequently intrudes! On a longer retreat I reach a point where thinking is less and less of a distraction, and there are longer periods when the mind settles and becomes quiet and transparent.  I find this really quite similar to the Quaker practice of stilling the mind. The main difference is that in a Quaker meeting we are always available to be a vehicle for spoken ministry if we are sufficiently moved by the Holy Spirit, and we are listening to each other – either literally or in spirit – whereas meditation is more do-it-yourself, even in a group setting.

David:   How does your practice of meditation relate to more explicitly Christian approaches to meditation?

Don:      I think meditation is very similar to centering prayer.  It is allowing the mind to rest in God’s peace, and gently returning each time one is distracted. In both we aim to see ourselves as part of the whole of God’s world, not separate.  In meditation I don’t use a sacred word, although there are forms of meditation that do. One important difference, however, is that in prayer I don’t have a sense of effort to become something different. Prayer is about silence, waiting and listening in a relationship with the divine.

David:   I want to come back to this, but I see that I suddenly got you talking about Christianity.  Let’s back up a bit so you can tell me how this once again became part of your journey.

Don:      In the spring of 1980 I suffered a lengthy and disabling laryngitis, and needing complete silence went to an Easter retreat at Loyola House in Guelph (Canada). I was stunned by the realization that the passion of Christ was ongoing – that somehow it was going on through me, and it was calling on me to respond. It touched my heart very deeply. I returned for most Easter retreats for the next 20 years, each year a different aspect of the passion becoming prominent.  In 1980 my wife and I also started attending a Quaker meeting. We were looking for a spiritual home for ourselves and our children and were drawn by the spiritual seeking and companionship.  We felt we had come home. We gradually became involved in the life of the meeting, the prayerful manner of doing business, and in the peace witness. Being mentored by more seasoned Friends inspired me to become a conscientious objector to military taxation, and the meeting supported me in this.  But the real connection with Christianity occurred when I did the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in 1986. I had the sense of God knowing my innermost thoughts; no secrets, no difference between inside and out. And I experienced the presence of the indwelling Christ as my companion.

David:   Say a bit more about that.

Don:      As you know, the Ignatian Exercises involve a lot of imaginative dialogue with Christ, much of it stimulated by passages from the gospels. The language of the Exercises was from 16th century Spanish Catholicism.  This was pretty foreign to me.  But I did understand the focus on feelings, especially the consolation of a connection with God.  After engaging in these dialogues daily for several months, I had the sense of talking to a presence who was both historical and past, inhabiting some sacred space, as well as timelessly present and indwelling.  Christ was God’s human face – God’s presence. I felt identified with Christ in some mysterious way, and was touched deeply by his teaching that “I am the vine, and you are the branches”.  When I prayed, I sensed that God was listening in on my thoughts even as I formulated a prayer, so there was no room for hiding.

David:   How do you decide when to pray and when to meditate?

Don:      On one level I experience them as the same. Both are responses to the divine in ourselves and in others. Both are movements of reconciliation with all of life as God’s world. Both embody surrender of the self.  But there is a choice to be made. Most of my daily practice is meditation. I have a range of techniques that I use to focus my mind and settle into a mode of receptivity. Sometimes this turns into prayer, this involving waiting and listening. When I awaken at night and just want to get back to sleep, I meditate. But when I feel distressed, overwhelmed, and anxious, I pray. I express my need, and I recall Isaiah, where God says, ‘I have carved you in the palms of my hands’. I then feel held in love.

David:   You say that prayer involves waiting and listening. Does this make prayer more relational than meditation?  Waiting on someone.  Listening to someone?  Is that a meaningful way of distinguishing between the two?

Don:      I have always experienced prayer as relational. I recall being on a 2 month meditation retreat some years ago, and spending an hour a day in prayer rather than meditation. It was the first time I had  felt a clear difference. There was a sense of movement in prayer, out of myself into something unknown and vast but loving. This felt different from the unfolding stillness of meditation. Now, if I am feeling fear or despair, I drift towards a more relational, verbal “someone-out-there” kind of prayer. Sometimes I use the Jesus prayer. However, over the years my sense of God has become less of a person or power, and more a divine presence, an embracing mystery, in which I and all creation have a home. One effect of both the Ignatian exercises and Buddhist meditation has been to soften the boundaries of self, so that God, as I said earlier, is experienced as both inside and outside me.  A Korean Christian I once read described Buddhism as emptying and Christianity as filling.  For some years I practiced that way; first I would empty, then I would fill. These two things are no longer different for me. When I am empty, it means self is in abeyance, and I am filled by all things which are present. These things exist for themselves, not for me, and are sacred. So emptying of self is the same as filling with the divine.  But still I feel a difference, and yes, prayer is more relational.

David:   Your definition of prayer as waiting and listening reminds me of Cynthia Bourgeault’s wonderful recent book,Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening – a book you recommended that I read.  She describes contemplative prayer as “wordless, trusting openness of self to the divine presence”, going on to argue such a trusting openness is something that is known to children and needs to be recovered by adults. Viewed from this perspective, contemplative prayer is not, as commonly thought and asserted, advanced prayer but rather the most basic, most natural form of prayer that exists.  What do you think of this?  And, if it is so natural, why do we have to work so hard to recover it as a way of experiencing God?

Don:      Becoming children is a natural part of our development, and includes a deep capacity for unstinting trust. But becoming as children is not so easy. We all suffer from what Bourgeault calls “a case of mistaken identity”, by which she means our identification with the self of thought and action, of doing and having, which is a necessary part of our development as functioning adult human beings. To have a contemplative relationship with God, we have to clear the chatter and the selfish wishes, and even surrender the self feeling and images of God we have.  Reading Bourgault’s description of centering prayer as a surrender method of meditation was an aha experience for me. I recognized it as a fine description of what I have done in Quaker meeting for years; sitting in silent expectation, open to others and to myself, constantly returning to the stillness; sifting through arising thoughts without being averse to them but also without being attached. There is no question that it is often hard work. But sometimes, when self has calmed down, it is entirely natural and effortless to rest in the Spirit.

David:   I sometimes think of contemplative prayer as simply being with God.  This places the emphasis on being rather than doing, and reminds us that, in essence, contemplative prayer is nothing more than openness to God.  How does this relate to your own understanding and practice?

Don:      I too understand contemplative prayer as being with God, surrounded and infused by the energy of the Holy Spirit. My part in entering this relationship is to let go. One of the things I let go of is any notion of who or what God is. I surrender, I rest, I am held in a gentle embrace. I sometimes have the feeling that the Holy Spirit transports me outside of time and space, into an eternal time in which Jesus is as present now as historically. This sounds dramatic, but it isn’t.  It is subtle.  My mind certainly can run on about God. When it does, I simply allow such thoughts to pass through, content with not knowing.

David:   I know that you are very active in the peace movement and are a conscientious objector to the use of your taxes for military purposes.  How do contemplative prayer and social action relate to each other?

Don:      When I was in India, a Gandhian teacher told me a story about the Mahatma.  Gandhi was asked, “if you are so interested in the holy life, why  are you not in the Himalayas meditating?” He answered, “My Himalayas are in your feet; if your feet are in Delhi, I must be in Delhi also.” I was taken by that statement.  Contemplative prayer brings the eternal inside. It moves from a prayer of supplication or adoration of an external God, to a relationship with a divine presence which does not respect boundaries. If God is everywhere (or, as described by Basil Pennington, “a sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere”),  then everything we do, everyone we interact with is in some sense a home to what is holy.  As a result, I have a responsibility and a desire to respect what Quakers would describe as “that of God in all persons”. If your eyes have  been opened, you can’t be complacent; if your eyes are truly open, you have to act on what you see.

David:    Beyond these already diverse spiritual traditions, I know that you have also been involved in other spiritual practices associated with workshops that you regularly attend in Arizona.  What can you tell me about these?

Don:       For a number of years I have been working with two women in Arizona who start from the other end of the tension between the self and the divine and work up. They have developed imaginative techniques based on the methods of Stanislavsky, the Russian drama teacher. When I work with them we are on our feet responding to emotionally authentic situations and learning to let spontaneity flow.  The challenge is to get oneself out of the way and connect with others on a level of energy where there are no boundaries.  I trust their sure footed guidance, their spiritual groundedness, and the powerful experiences and insights which have resulted.

David:   OK, but let’s now go back to the question I am sure many of those listening in on our conversation have been wanting me to ask for some time now.  How does Buddhist meditation fit with Christian prayer?  Aren’t Christianity and Buddhism incompatible?

Don:      It was painful for a long time to feel divided loyalties. The scripture which posed the most direct challenge to me was, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me”. But when I looked deeply at this teaching of Jesus, I saw that it could be interpreted as “faith in me is a gateway to the kingdom of God”, that we don’t get to God except by love and surrender. Allegiance to Christ is allegiance to the force of love penetrating him and ourselves. That teaching isn’t in conflict with teachings of the Buddha. We can get to selflessness by different routes. But there is only one God. Buddhists talk of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the truth and the teachings), and the Sangha (the community). I take refuge in God. Who or what is God?  My understanding of this is best reflected by Christians theologians such as Marcus Borg and John Spong.  For me, God is not a person, but neither is God impersonal. We are like fish in the sea, which cannot know the sea they are immersed in. We humans are immersed in God and at least from our vantage point this makes God indescribable.  Buddhism has given me a framework for understanding how human beings fall into error or sin, greed, hatred, and the “illusion  of self” based on basic phenomena of consciousness. It has given me a method for investigating  this consciousness, for validating the teachings for myself – a way of waking up and opening my heart. This path has been a blessing to me. On the other hand, in Christianity God meets me where I am, says I am acceptable, and comes to me as the risen Christ. I don’t have to achieve anything. I don’t have to believe that I will ever escape my limitations. This unconditional acceptance has been a great relief and a great sense of coming home, turning daily life into an opportunity for devotion.  It would be easier to have allegiance to only one, but I can’t turn my back on either. I don’t know exactly where all this is going, but I trust it is for the good and I no longer struggle. I am reassured by a quotation from the early Quaker, William Penn, who said, “The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here make them strangers”.

David:   What a blessing that you can now rest in God’s unconditional acceptance of you and no longer struggle with the need to understand how your life and its streams of influence fit together.  Everything belongs, doesn’t it?  It all comes together in God. Thank you for sharing your journey. You raise a number of important issues I’ll be thinking about until our next conversation.  So, thanks, friend – or perhaps I should say Friend!

I recently heard a speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in which he told a story that might help us understand today’s Gospel reading (Luke 21:1-4). When the missionaries came to Africa the whites had the bible and the blacks had the land.  The missionaries told the blacks to shut their eyes and they would teach them to pray.  But when they opened their eyes, the whites had the land and the blacks had the Bible.

At least part of the point Jesus was making in the familiar story often known as “The Widow’s Mite” was warning against just this sort of religious injustice.  The story comes in the immediate context of Jesus’ condemnation of the religious leaders who supported the unfair system that behind the poverty of widows.  He speaks of them as “swallowing the property of widows while they make a show of their lengthy prayers.” This should get our attention – particularly those of us with any responsibility for church leadership!  It is a warning that we guard against taking care of our own institutional interests while ignoring, or even supporting, injustice that feeds our coffers. This context helps us make sense of a story that is otherwise baffling, even disturbing. Why would Jesus praise a poor woman who gives away absolutely everything she has to the church?  Isn’t such an action foolish, rather than commendable?

But this short story makes two points. First, it warns us of the dangers of passively or actively supporting injustice, and then it points us toward the heart of a poor woman whose attachment to her possessions was not as strong as her gratitude to God.

Jesus’ focus was always on the heart. This is why I think Jesus would have liked the way a similar story is told in Hinduism.

One evening a sannyasi was just getting ready to sleep under a tree when he was approached by a villager who came running up to him asking that he give him a precious stone. “What stone” the sannyasi asked?  “Lord Shiva appeared to me in a dream last night and told me that if I came to this place at dusk tonight a sannyasi would give me a precious stone that would make me unbelievably rich.  The sannyasi rummaged in his bag for a moment and, smiling, said, Lord Shiva probably meant this one. I found it in the forest today and you certainly can have it.  The villager gazed at the stone in wonder.  It was as large as his fist and, even in the fading light, filled with luminosity.  He took it and walked away.  But, that night he couldn’t sleep.  He was deeply troubled.  Next morning at dawn he rushed back to the sannyasi, and thrust the diamond back into his hands. “I don’t want it,” he said.  “What I want is whatever you have that makes it possible for you to give it away so easily.”

This story, like the one recorded in the Gospel this morning, brings us to the heart of stewardship.  Christian stewardship is not primarily about money.  It’s about 2 things: gratitude, and the difference between a possession and a trust.

Gratitude

Gratitude is right at the heart of Christian spirituality.  G. K. Chesterton said that “the best kind of giving is thanksgiving.”  Garrison Keillor describes guilt as the gift that keeps giving but this is even more true of gratitude.  Gratitude is the link between receiving and giving.  It sets up an endless waterfall of receiving and giving.  Our culture teaches entitlement, not gratitude. Recall the words of Bart Simpson when asked to say grace at the dinner table:  “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” In one sense, of course, this is true.  But the deeper truth is everything we have comes to us as a gift of God – every breath, every ability, every opportunity, every moment of life.

Becoming conscious of that reality changes us from the inside out.  Research demonstrates that gratitude contributes powerfully to human health, happiness, and social connection.  People who keep regular “gratitude journals” report a decrease in physical symptoms and more alertness, energy, enthusiasm, improved attention, better sleep, higher levels of happiness and sense of well being.  Initiating even a single contact with someone towards whom you feel grateful has an effect on mood that can last for up to a month

Want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude?  Take a moment and think of 2 or 3 things that you have received as blessings or gifts and notice the gratitude that you do not have to create but which suddenly arises in your spirit. Thank God for these blessings.  Do the same each night before you go to sleep.  And then watch as your awareness of your gifts increases and as your response to them begins to change.

Possessions and trusts

A second thing that sits right at the heart of a Christian understanding of stewardship is the difference between a possession and a trust.  When we view something as a possession we think of it as “mine”; when we view it as a trust, we recognize that rather that it being mine, it is simply “mine to take care of.”  A steward is a person who takes care of precious property which is not his or her own.  But as Jesus taught in the parable of the talents, stewards don’t just protect holdings, they are also expected to develop them – to put them to use so they produce a yield. Time, talents, and treasures that are recognized as mine in trust, and which are then put to the use of the owner, not the steward, produce yields for God’s work of love and justice on earth.  Sharing what we have been given in trust with others is putting them into the service of God so they can bless others. The recipients, in turn, can then also be grateful for the infinite variety of gifts they receive. And so gratitude works as the gift that keeps on giving.

Christian stewardship grows out of gratitude.  Daily ask “For what gifts am I grateful today?” Say “Thank you” often – to God and others.  And then respond to that gratitude by putting the things God has given you in trust to use for God’s work in the world.  Consider how those things that have been given to you have been given as trusts and should be returned to God in trust by putting them into the service of others.   The results if you do? I can guarantee that you will feel more fulfilled in your life of Christian discipleship and you will grow in your relationship with the Lord.

Christian Stewardship

Stewardship not primarily about money or giving but about being good managers of the gifts we have been given by God in trust.  It’s about putting those gifts of time, talent and treasure to God’s works of love and justice in the world – not holding and hoarding but passing on with gratitude

But I haven’t yet told you the punch line of that story told by Archbishop Tutu about the switch of land and Bibles when the blanks closed their eyes in prayer.  With a mischievous smile Desmond Tutu ended his story by saying, “Actually, it was us blacks who got the better deal!”

How could he possibly say this after all the suffering of his people?  The reason he could say that it was the blacks who got the better of the deal was because forgiveness flows from the same source as gratitude – openness to God.  Opening our self to God allows God’s life and love to flow through us, into the world – and everything that God’s life and love touches is brought to life.  This is the good news of the gospel as we hear it today.  Thanks be to God!

A homily delivered by David G. Benner at Christ Church Cathedral (Victoria) on November 10, 2010.

Being human is a journey of becoming.  Humans are not yet at birth what we have the capacity to be fully become.  Newborns may contain the possibilities for mature personhood but they do not show any of the characteristics that psychologists have identified as markers of fully actualized humanity.  Such things, for example, as the capacity for non-possessive love, a spirituality that makes life meaningful and suffering sufferable, and an identification with all humans, not simply those of one’s own tribe are never present in childhood.

But while the journey of human becoming is life-long, it is not simply a result of the passage of time.  Time is necessary, but not sufficient.  Maturation may make human actualization possible, but full personhood comes only from a life-long journey of becoming that, as we shall see, must be lived in a posture of openness, trust, willingness and surrender.

Glimpses of the Evolving Self

Watch as the young child learns to trust that her mother is still there even though she may be out of sight.  Piaget called this developmental accomplishment the achievement of object constancy.  It is a moment to celebrate, and parents usually do.  But then watch as the cognitive skills of this same little girl continue to develop and notice now how she suddenly seems secure within a first-person perspective on her world.  She speaks as an “I” and organizes her experience around this “I”.  The result is something that we could call an egocentric perspective on the world, this being a tremendously important moment of human becoming.

But the journey is far from over – even if we continue to follow just this single line of cognitive development and the way in which it provides a perspective from which the person views and relates to the world.  Notice how a few years later she has hopefully added a second-person perspective to this egocentric way of relating to that which is beyond her self.  What we might call a sociocentric worldview now allows her to see things from the perspectives of others.  A developing capacity for empathy allows her to adopt an alternate perspective and no longer be limited to the first-person point of view that earlier was such a developmental triumph.

The subsequent development of the capacity for reason ushers in another stage as, in adolescence, she now adds third-person perspectives and is capable of adopting a more truly worldcentric orientation to that which is beyond her.  And because we can only identify with what we can see in relationship to self, she is now able to feel herself to be integrally connected to the world, not just to her social or religious group or to her family or herself. Through this process her self is unfolding.  The same is true for all of us.  By a sequence of ever-expanding identifications we become what we identify with, and, if we trust the flow of this process, our small self becomes a larger and truer self.

There are other important steps in this line of cognition and perspective-taking, and many other important lines of development that also shape the journey of the developing self. But let us look at just one more image from later in the journey of this hypothetical young woman.  Just suppose that she remains open to life and that this openness includes openness toward God.  It may well be that when we next look into her life we recognize something that others around her may not see, or at least not understand.  They may notice her equanimity and non-judgmental openness, and they may even describe her as a very spiritual woman.  But if we take the time to get to know her we may begin to notice how deeply her identity and consciousness are grounded in her relationship to God.  But relationship may not be exactly the right word, because she might talk more of an abiding sense of being in God and God being in her.  She might also talk about this leading to a sense of being at one within herself and within God.  Although we may not understand exactly what she means, we might begin to suspect that she is something of a mystic.  Commenting on this to her she may laugh and say that she is no mystic. But when asked more about her life she might tell you, as the woman I am thinking about recently told me, “It’s true, I do want nothing more than to know God more deeply. But it’s also true that I am less and less clear about where the boundaries between God and me – or God and anyone – begin or end.  Increasingly I see God in all people and all things – not contained in any of these people or things but expressed in and through them all. And increasingly I feel one with God and one with life – really, one with all that is.”

This journey into a deeper consciousness of our being in God will be our focus in this book.  We can describe it as a journey of the evolving or unfolding self because the self that begins this journey is never the self that ends it.  But we could also call it a journey of an awakening self because awakening is the central dynamic of the unfolding and evolving. The self that emerges during this journey is larger, more enlightened and more whole. This journey is one that all humans are invited to make.  It is, in fact, the journey that defines our humanity for it is a journey toward our source and toward our fulfilment.  It is a journey into what has traditionally been described in Christian theology as union with God.

A Theology of Becoming

The source and ground of all existence lies in the constantly out-pouring life of God.  Moment by moment, all creation is sustained by God.  Creation is not just something that happened in the past.  While there may have been a beginning point, it was the beginning of an active relationship that never stops – a relationship that exists between God and every person and thing that exists.  If this relationship were suddenly to stop, we and everything else that is would instantly cease to exist.

But it is not just all being that is grounded in God.  So too is all becoming.  The universe is a place of creativity, becoming and transformation because these are fundamental properties of the God who sustains it.  All things are not only sustained by God, all things are also being made new in Christ. All things are being liberated and restored – becoming more than they are, becoming all they were intended to be in their fullness in Christ.

The Spirit of God – the source of all generativity, all creativity, and all life – invites us to participate in the grand adventure of human becoming.  Openness to becoming is openness to God.  This is why the Christian mystics have so much to teach us.  They show us that longing for the fullness of God demands openness to a radical form of transformation that we cannot control.  It is something we can neither engineer nor accomplish. But it is something we can experience.

From Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, 2012).

A quick glance at the cover of Cynthia Bourgeault’s latest book may lead one to pick it up looking for information about Mary Magdalene – perhaps expecting the same sort of prurient focus on the question of whether she and Jesus were secret lovers that one finds in much of what has issued from the fascination with this woman since The Da Vinci Code. But this is far from the focus of Cynthia Bourgeault. Her aim is to explore the meaning and significance of Mary, not simply provide us details about the life of the woman who, she argues, is at the very heart of Christianity and who can uniquely help us understand that heart.

The book begins by laying the groundwork for a revisioning of her popular portrait as the penitent prostitute and setting out her credentials as the Apostle to the Apostles. This apostolic claim is based on the accounts in the canonical gospels of her private encounter with Jesus as the first witness to the post-resurrection Jesus and her commission by Jesus to go and tell the disciples what she had seen and what he had said to her.  This picture is enhanced, although never contradicted, in the extra-canonical gospels she examines (particularly the gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Philip).  These indicate that Mary Magdalene had a special relationship with Jesus as soul mate, and that she was recognized and honoured by the disciples as the one who most fully understood and reproduced in her life the teachings of Jesus related to inner transformation.  Bourgeault focuses on this relationship, arguing that the real legacy of the love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is not that it allows us to meet her but that through her we meet and better understand Jesus.

The author’s approach in this book is once again from the perspective of Wisdom Christianity with its emphasis on those perennial spiritual practices of transformation and inner awakening.  Much of her focus is on love and the way in which a faithful walking of this path has the potential to be profoundly transformational. This, she suggests, is the deepest message of the life and teachings of Jesus and it is this that she feels lies at the heart of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  Her unpacking of the spiritual theology of love as transformational practice is, in my mind, itself worth the price of the book. As is her discussion of the way in which Mary Magdalene offers us a way to engage what she calls “the feminine dimensions” of Christianity without some of the complications that come from placing this entire task on the Blessed Virgin.  But overall, the value of this book is, as the title correctly anticipates, the meaning of Mary Magdalene.  Through the witness of the deeply beloved disciple of Jesus, Mary invites us to commit ourselves more deeply to the path of love – not as sentimentality, attachment or self-fulfilment, but as a letting go of the egoic self that results in a transformation of eros into agape and flows into a life that is characterized by servanthood.

This is an important book.  Read it with your heart, not just your head, because the path it describes is the way of the heart.  This, the author reminds us, was the way of Jesus and should be the center of any spirituality that seeks authentic transformation.

Taken from a book review by David G. Benner appearing in The Discoesan Post (a section of The Anglican Journal), February 2011, and on the website of The Contemplative Society (http://www.contemplative.org/).