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Everything That Is, Is Holy - Chapter 4

3/28/2015

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It's only our second night and already our community of open Contemplative Living and Sharing is beginning to take form. As folks reflected on their last two weeks comments were shared regarding how folks were focused on becoming more conscious of being more present to themselves and to life in general. A new member of the group shared how, as part of her job, she works with folks who have done some horrible things in their past but continues to be amazed at how she is able to see the core of goodness come out of these people in spite of their backgrounds. This was a testament to God's presence at the heart of all of us.

As we continued to open up Chapter 1, What is Contemplation, we settled in on the "I AM" experience. Several people shared how being immersed in nature allowed folks to "just be" in the moment. It was also mentioned how Silence was a wonderful way to experience the simplicity of being.

One focus of our Chapter reflections were on the notion of saints "not judging sin because they do not know sin, they know the mercy of God."  We discussed that saints are fully human and as such they "sin" (or miss the mark). So, although these folks experience "sin", they open themselves to experience God's merciful forgiveness. As such they focus on expressing that forgiveness to themselves and therefore to others.

We spent time on the discussion of the false self which is the first time this concept has been introduced in this program. Both the false self and the True Self will reoccur in future chapters and we will surely revisit it in future discussions.  In tonight's session we discussed the false self, also called our private or separate self, as the thing that causes us to excessively focus on ourselves as the center of the universe and that aspect of ourselves which "alienates ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is a god of our own making.

One member of our group spoke about Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the founders of the modern Christian Contemplation method of Centering Prayer. Fr. Keating relates the false self to unmet psychological needs in this way:  "The False Self system is deeply ingrained in our unconscious. Our emotional programs for happiness formed in early childhood and fossilized into energy centers as a source of motivation for our thoughts, feelings, reactions and behavior, manifest themselves at every level of our human functioning. They manifest themselves in desires for the symbols of whatever our particular emotional program is, as crystallized  in  our culture".  

The following video provides a brief overview of Fr. Keatings ideas of the false self as a result of the Human Condition:


I have recently become aware of Michael Brown, who similarly relates our behaviors to the effects of what underlies the false self. I think this is an interesting view of how he believes our experience of Love (i.e. God) is impacted by the emotional constructs of the false self: 


Folks shared the following chapter excerpts as those that touched them most deeply regarding the distortions caused by the false self:

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison for our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.

In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell... The fulfillment we find in creatures belong to the reality of the created being, a reality that is from God and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is actually there; a greater fulfillment than any created thing is capable of giving.

People were also touched by Merton's insight that "the marriage of body and soul in one person is one of the things that makes man the image of God."
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Seeds of Contemplation - Chapter 3

3/13/2015

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We started our 3-month Exploring Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton journey last night. We had a mix of both new and old faces. In the midst of the diversity of this group, it's wonderful to see a community of insight and sharing beginning to form.

As we discussed, Contemplation is not something that can be intellectually understood, it must be experienced with an open heart and by being fully present to the reality of the moment. Only when are able to take a long, loving look at what's real, do we become open to the grace of Contemplation. The primary intention of these 3 month's together is for each of us to grow to become more aware, open and present to this grace.

In our first look at Chapter 1 of New Seeds, we began to explore "What is Contemplation." For Merton: Contemplation is beyond understanding, it is the depth of sacredness found in the experience of being fully alive in this very moment and connected to the Source of all life!   By reflecting on our lives, each of us will find moments of Contemplative experience. Last night, some of us shared a time when we felt fully awake, alive and connected to the present moment. The experiences we shared were very different from each other but each one completely absorbed us with a sense of wholeness and connectedness. These experiences opened us to the sacredness of the ordinary situation we were in, and in some ways helped us to transcend our cares or concerns in that moment. The experiences were powerful enough that they stuck with us for the rest of our lives.

As we explored Chapter 3, the ideas that seemed to strike folks most were:
  • Every expression of the will of God is in some sense a “word” of God and therefore a “seed” of new life. This gives me access to an uninterrupted dialogue with God.
  • My willingness to open to God’s will depends upon my image of God. I must realize that the love of God seeks me in every situation, and seeks my good.
  • The contemplative must be detached, but he can never allow himself to become insensible (cultivated indifference) to true human values.


Though God may seem silent, if we open to the will of God in our lives (the moments of our lives that touch us deeply) we open to a dialogue with Him. Many of us shared moments from our lives that touched us deeply, from the impact of an aunt who was a nun on a young boy, the joy and connectedness to Jesus at first Communion or at the end of a drive-in movie,connection to the lives of others and all of creation or the deep love and joy at the birth of a child. These all planted seeds of truth, joy and love that has impacted our lives. 

Many of us were able to relate to a struggle to get beyond a God seen as domineering and insensible to a good and gracious God. As Merton wrote, we will only open ourselves to the intimate encounter of God in Contemplation if we come to know God to be Love. Perhaps that is why so many struggle with opening themselves to be present in this way in the first place.

Finally, many people seeking "holiness" seem to go through a period in which they seek to detach themselves from the world and being fully human so they can focus on what they believe are God's ways. Merton fully realized at the time he wrote New Seeds that a cultivated indifference to being fully human vitiates (invalidates) the true path to knowing God. We will see more of this in upcoming chapters.

I'd like to share the quote from Chapter 3 that most touched me:

If I were looking for God, every event and every moment would sow, in my will, grains of God’s life, that would spring up one day in a tremendous harvest. For it is God’s love that warms me in the sun and God’s love that sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that feeds me in the bread I eat and God that feeds me also by hunger and fasting. It is the love of God that sends the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the hot summer when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat: but it is God who breathes on me with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood.’

‘God’s love spreads the shade by the sycamore over my head and sends the water-boy along the edge of the wheat field with a bucket from the spring, while the laborers are resting and the mules stand under the tree. It is God’s love that speaks to me in the birds and streams but also behind the clamor of the city God speaks to me in God’s judgments, and all these things are seeds sent to me from God’s will. If they would take root in my liberty, and if God’s will would grow from my freedom, I would become the love that God is, and my harvest would be God’s glory and my own joy. And I would grow together with thousands and millions of other freedoms into the gold of one huge field praising God, loaded with increase, loaded with increase, loaded with corn.’


This reminds me that God's love (His will) is found in every moment of each day, even in the midst of the day's difficulties. When I'm able to detach from my own expectations and judgement, I'm able to see this.

Finally, I'd like to share the following piece that I received from Fr. Bill Barry SJ which is an account of a Contemplative experience that has touched me deeply.
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    Paul Uccello and I have been facilitating the Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton program at the  Spiritual Life Center in West Hartford CT since the Spring of 2013. I've begun posting reflections from these workshops here starting in Fall 2014.

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