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The Spiritual Discipline Of Solitude - 11/13/2014

11/21/2014

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I was wonderful to hear the reflections at our last group meeting regarding how members of the group could sense a spirit of the group as welcoming, open and supportive where those participating felt invited to share without any pressure to do so. I was touched by folks describing this experience as having shifted the spiritual context in their lives. Truly a testament to this group's members and it's spirit.

As we discussed the Introduction to the evening's texts, we focused on the term "tribes". For us, the tribes we associate with are our families, our communities, our nation, our society. These shape us deeply into who we are; "we learn to love whatever our tribe loves."  As we enter into solitude we make ourselves strangers to our "tribes" which allows us to discover our own voice; the true self outside of the forces that have shaped us. This very much seemed to capture the flavor of Matthew 10:29-30: “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel  30 who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age"  It takes courage to let go of the certainty of our tribal knowledge and immerse our the unknown quest for our own voice and trust it even if it differs from that of our tribe.

In looking closely at Merton we discussed how Solitude is an act, a conscious choice that has substance to those who undertake it with purpose. The work of Solitude is the active work of  "destroying all fences and throwing away all the disguises, getting down to the naked core of one's inmost desire, which is the desire of liberty-reality". In other words, Solitude opens us up to our desire to be our true selves, and to do this requires that we explore, question and strip away all those identities we inherited or were imposed upon us by our tribes that we find do not resonate with who we are. Once we find out true self in solitude, through discipline we engage in an active life which "keeps body and soul together, harmonizes their powers, brings them into deep resonance, orients the whole being toward the root of being."  Without such a discipline, "the active life can be that which is most passive: one is simply driven, carried, batted around, moved. The most desperate illusion and the most common one is to fling oneself into the mass that is in movement and be carried along with it: to be part of the stream of traffic going nowhere but with a great sense of phony purpose."

As we looked at Another Voice, an excerpt from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, we were struck by what it means to be fully alive to the messiness (and excitement) of life's experience: "Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death... We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we're going to have an experience we can't control...The essence of life is that it's challenging.... From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life." Living this way takes courage, but provides us true freedom in our willingness to accept what comes and trust that it is for our own benefit.  Rumi's Poem - The Guest House speaks to living this attitude:
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A book recommended by one of our group members for dealing with the difficult realities of life was: The Other Side of Chaos by Margret Silf.  I would also recommend Pema Chodron's books, they provide wonderful insights on how to develop the courage to live life and fully experience it.
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Inner Work and The Struggle to Live Contemplatively - 10/30/2014

10/31/2014

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Holy Listening was again wonderful at this Thursday's session. It was amazing how the single common thread of "Oneness with another" came out of the different encounters we shared. It seems that in what we shared, we lived an aspect of last session's Merton's Voice from New Seeds of Contemplation: "one cannot enter into the deepest center of oneself and pass through that center into God unless one is able to pass entirely out of oneself and empty oneself and give oneself to other people in the purity of selfless love" and "we shall love one another and God with the same Love with which He loves us and Himself. This love is God Himself..."  It seems to that each of us experienced the very thing we read about. I am grateful for the gifts of insight each of you shared with me and will reflect on them in the upcoming days.

In reflecting on our lived experience of the past week, there was a beautiful "sharing of the season" which spoke to becoming "doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house." The sharing was inspired by a story which likens us to Pumpkins who God turns into Jack O Lanterns. God washes us, cleans us out from the inside, carves windows (eyes, ears, mouth) into us and then places in us his light for all to see. We also talked about forgiveness as grounded in our ability to have compassion for others and ourselves. When we are able to forgive ourselves and have compassion for our "ugliness", then we will be better able to do this for others. The scriptural notion of forgiving 70 x 7 times came up and was related to the small opportunities for forgiving we have in the everyday, ordinary events of our daily lives. By opening ourselves to forgive others in small annoyances, we prepare to forgive others for larger things. As I reflect on this, I would also add that we need to include ourselves as well, so that we don't hang onto our own failings to tightly.

Because of the richness and depth of this week's readings we focused mainly on Merton's Voice. Although it seemed like there was much more to be shared, we were drawn to a few specific parts of the Introduction to the Text and the Merton's Voice passage:

We started by commenting on the lines from the Introduction that dealt with our state of being fractured: "We often regard our spirituality or religious observances as just another room we enter from time to time, a socially required pause as we rush between the rooms of our private and individual selves. We need to integrate the walled-off, non-communicating dimensions of our daily living. Becoming an integrated person is the inner work or contemplative living."  As we discussed and related to this text we reached a consensus that the work of integration of the walled-off areas of our daily life consists of a gentle, healing process which is the spirit of the Contemplative way. This process is akin to gradual assimilation, pulling back a curtain, or transformation rather than a violent process of breaking down walls.

We talked about the traditional definition of Wisdom as seeking Truth (for its own sake), Goodness (intuition of the very ground of all being) and Beauty (fullness of being).  We discussed how living the Way of Wisdom (living contemplatively) "does not withdraw from the fire (living in the world). It is in the very heart of the fire, yet remains cool, because it has the gentleness and humility that come from self-abandonment and hence does not seek to assert the illusion of the exterior self." This was related to living an integrated life, in which we are able to balance action and contemplation. We affirmed that a balance of both activity and stillness, community and solitude, are required for a healthy human life. It is when we are out of balance that we live out of a state of being fractured.

Our discussion proceeded to how modern society over-values activity and what is achieved as a result of that activity: "we believe that for us there can be no peace except in a life filled up with movement and activity, with speech, news, communication, recreation, distraction. We seek the meaning of our life in activity for its own sake, activity without objective, efficacy without fruit,... The life of frantic activity is invested with the noblest of qualities as if it were the whole end and happiness of man or rather as if the life of man has no inherent meaning whatever and that it had to be given a meaning from some external source,from a society engaged in a gigantic communal effort to raise us above ourselves."  This led us into discussing how society seems to make us obsessed with proving or establishing our worthiness. That, unless we achieve something of external significance, we are somehow less worthy or valuable. A significant point was made that we can even get caught up in excess study or activity associated with our spiritual lives, in which we seek to become more worthy for God. This business of and our involvement in efforts of excessive study (trying to find God in words or ideas) and activity (looking to find God in our action) actually closes us to being in God's presence.


We ended our evening talking about the Inner Work/Struggle to live contemplatively and remain free from getting caught up in endless distraction. We shared how distractions result from society's expectation that we be busy but also from our own hesitancy to be present to and alone with ourselves. Facing ourselves, it can be difficult to admit who we are; not only our failings and shortcomings, but also our own goodness which is sometimes more easily recognized by others around us. It seems to me that the result of inner work may be to accept ourselves just as we truly are; a complex mixture of feelings, motivations, actions and thoughts and for us to realize that God loves us anyway. It seem that the degree to which we accept ourselves and God's love for us, is the degree with which we can return that love to God and to others.

I'll end by sharing the short quote from Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault's Wisdom Jesus which I read at our 10/23 session and which I believe remains applicable to all we have been discussing:

There is nothing to be renounced or resisted.
Everything can be embraced, but the catch is to cling to nothing.
You let it go. You go through life like a knife goes through a done cake, picking up nothing, clinging to nothing, sticking to nothing.
And grounded in that fundamental chastity of your being, you can then throw yourself out, pour yourself out, being able to give it all back, even giving back life itself.
Very, very simple. It only costs everything.
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Contemplative Living And Community - 10/23/2014

10/26/2014

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It was wonderful to have a full Holy Listening group prior to our formal Contemplative Living and Community session. The opening prayer one of our members shared was wonderful in spontaneity, depth and in the way it captured the spirit of Holy Listening. The prayer deeply moved me. I find myself enriched by Holy Listening in 3 ways, in sharing the ordinary life event that touched me, being inspired by what I heard in other's sharing their events and by receiving the gifts of everyone else's inspirations.  As I reflect and ponder on the messages I received from others, it amazed me how well they echo the things that need further focus and attention in my own journey. There is no mistake the Spirit was present among us.

Throughout this past session I felt the group more deeply moving at a contemplative pace. The group embraced a natural pace (what Merton has called a "human pace") with which we shared, absorbed each other's reflections, and responded. As a group and as individuals we are becoming at peace with "the silence between thoughts".

An idea we spent some time exploring was of being open and present to God in the ordinary events of life and to His continual, gentle offer of love to us. With attention, presence and openness we transcend the superficial concerns that we tend to get caught up in and allow ourselves to experience oneness with all that is around us. By deeply experiencing that oneness in nature or the oneness in community we become aware of our oneness with all in God. This was the notion that a number of us were able to relate back to Merton's words: "So we all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house."

Some of us were captured by the phrase "birth canals to more compassionate living." We related how discomforts of life experience lead us to new spiritual birth. In particular, many shared how situations of extraordinary vulnerability (age, personal experiences, health issues) lead us to abandon or forget ourselves and find God. We could relate to the grace of aging and how the dependence on others allows us to progressively acknowledge and surrender to dependence on God.

Finally we spent time on a line from Another Voice: "All holiness on earth is the fragrance of God present in and with all of us." We talked about how fragrances elicit whole body reactions and how they can bring us back to precious moments or memories in our life. In this vein, "justice, goodness, mercy, understanding, compassion" impact us deeply and bring us back to the truth that lies at our center, our True Self, which is God. 

I conclude this reflection with two items. The first is a reference to the book by Sr. Miriam Therese Winter, Eucharist With a Small e, which several people felt spoke about the experience of finding God in community and in life. The second item is both the introduction to and the prayer by Thomas Merton that we shared at the end of our session. Merton offered the following words and spontaneous prayer at the conclusion of the first spiritual summit in Calcutta, a gathering of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, and Muslims which occurred in October 1968, a few months before his death:

I will ask you to stand and all join hands in a little while.  But first, we realize that we are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of real differences, real emotional friction ...

The things that are on the surface are nothing, what is deep is the Real.  We are creatures of love.  Let us therefore join hands as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts.  I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all.  I have no idea what I am going to say.  I am going to be silent a minute, and then I will say something . . .

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. 
Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. 
Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. 
Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.
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Contemplative Prayer and Prayer of the Heart - 10/9/2014

10/13/2014

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Nature resonated throughout the evening's discussions. It started in Holy Listening with my expressing the experience of peace and joy I got from having my attention captured by a dog in a car that was stopped at a red light next to me. I was captured by how the dog was completely present to and delighted by the sights, sounds and smells of nature around him. The attention to nature continued in the reflections of how some folks had been working in their gardens to pull out old tomato plants, which, when composted, would become the fertilizer for subsequent generations. This became an analogy for the love and lessons we pass down to others to help them grow. We talked about the beauty and simplicity found in God's creation. How in the midst of their just being, God appears to sustain the things of nature. Humanity and society has created a tremendous amount of complexity which requires a good bit of doing on our part which tends to distract us from simply being. As we talked about prayer, many reflected on their deepest experience of (Contemplative) prayer as being in nature and connected to God through it or to working in a garden and aware of the presence of God. This evening's sentiments were reminiscent of Session 4 from the Spring 2014 Merton Contemplative Living Series entitled 'Living in Solitude and In Silence."  One participant in that session was particularly moved by the following lines from Another Voice written by David Steindl-Rast - Thomas Merton/Monk: A Monastic Tribute: 

When I remember my last visit with Thomas Merton I see him standing in the forest, listening to the rain.  Much later, when he began to talk, he was not breaking the silence, he was letting it come to word.  And he continued to listen.  “Talking is not the principal thing” he said.


This participant used the phrase the liturgy of nature to describe the image invoked by these words. It was as if the way Merton observed and spoke was in harmony (letting silence come to word) with the great mystery of nature which he had become a part of and which was in full and natural reverence to God's presence.

We also spent time talking about the real difficulty in simplifying our lives is letting go of our attachments (to fears, to memories/sentiments, to other things that define us). We made the comparison to Contemplative prayer which requires us to let go of our attachments to doing (actively praying) and simply allowing ourselves to be in God's presence. We discussed that the grace God gives us as we age is that we are forced to simplify more and more as we ultimately come to the state of just being. At the end of our lives our attachments to the things of our lives and to the activity of our prayers are let go and we are left in a state of just being before God.
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Contemplative Living As Continuous Inner Renewal - 9/25/2014

9/29/2014

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It never ceases to amaze me by how blessed groups like ours are that allow folks to deeply and openly share in the trust that they will be heard openly and compassionately by all those listening. It is a genuine witnesses to true depth of spirit that exists in the world and our genuine need for community.

I commend those who participated in Holy Listening, you did a wonderful job of understanding and using this method of opening yourselves to the Spirit and I sensed movements of the Spirit in what we all shared. 

It was wonderful to hear so many folks comment about their experiences and reflections on last session's theme. I found this video of "Give Me Your Eyes" about which one of our members spoke. The song came into her mind while reflecting on her way home from out last evening session and then proceeded to come on the radio as she drove. God does some amazingly surprising things.
We spent a good deal of time reflecting on Pilgrimage as not just a trip from A to B but as a journey of transformation on the way to a sacred destination. We discussed Pilgrimage as a series of sacred steps. When we look at life as a Pilgrimage we find the sacred by being fully open and present to life's ordinary events. I've attached Tolstoy's pilgrimage story of Two Old Men here that speaks simply of the Pilgrimage experience.
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The term difficult consolation was used to describe how transformative and healing a difficult family encounter was that triggered vulnerability in one party and unexpected tenderness in others.

The topic of the evening's readings was transcending the limited understanding we all have of what it means to be human beings in community. The readings talk about the spiritual awakening of mind and heart. In New Seeds of Contemplation Merton wrote: "Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name."  


In decades of work spent building on the foundations of Thomas Merton, the Christian Contemplative tradition and modern psychology, Fr. Thomas Keating has developed an understanding of the Human Condition. His work explains how humans build to the false self system through early life experiences and socially constructed realities associated with their families, communities and the societies they grow up in. An over-reliance on satisfying false self system needs (safety/security, affection/esteem, power/control) in order to achieve happiness is enforced by ego. The Human Condition gets in the way of our True self which knows joy through Selflessness and True Love. The Spiritual Journey is the process of our false self dying and continual rebirth to our True self. This inner renewal is the an ongoing discarding the layers of false self just like "old snake skin". 

Many people were touched by how Marcus J. Borg's reading demonstrated the universally the theme of "daily dying and rising with Christ" was across different faith traditions. The following examples come from the Another Voice reading:
  • Christianity: "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, renounce yourself, and take up your cross every day and follow me." (Luke 9:23)
  • Judaism: Following "the way" involves a new heart, a new self-centered in God.
  • Islam: Surrender one's life to God by radically centering in God. Muhammad is reported to have said, "Die (spiritually) before you die (physically)."
  • The heart of the Buddhist path is "letting go". According to the Tao te Ching, "If you want to become full, let yourself become empty; if you want to be reborn, let yourself die."

Finally, we had a discussion about Saint Benedict's Rule for Monks which instructed monks to remember every day that they would die. As we discussed this, there was unanimous agreement that reflecting on our death was a very positive reminder to live life to the fullest, to remember Psalm 118: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.". We were reminded that we can be so deadly serious with ourselves and our sacred journey through life that we lose site of joy and gentleness that is the fullness of life and the purpose to which God created us. 

As we shared, I was reminded of a similar, end of day quote used in Buddhism which served to remind practitioners that they had 24 hours less to live but I could not find the exact quote. Instead, I found a quote by Thích Nhat Hanh  which is reminded me of the Psalm:
  • “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 
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FINDING OUR IDENTITY IN GOD - 9/11/2014

9/15/2014

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It was wonderful to start a new Merton Contemplative Living workshop with so many new as well as known faces!  I am grateful to finally have time to post my reflections from our first night together.

As we introduced ourselves and talked about the different reasons we're in this workshop a common theme seemed to emerge and tie back to the evening's Opening Reflection. As I see it many of our the reasons we stated related directly to these lines from Psalm 119:  "...Open my eyes that I may see the wonders of your law, I am a pilgrim on the earth..." 

As pilgrims we are on a journey to an important sacred destination, but of equal importance to the destination is the transformation that occurs as we travel there. During a pilgrimage it is the process that takes us to our true destination and prepares us for being there.  

As with any pilgrimage, we must have the courage to face the uncertainty of the journey, but we take solace from sharing the journey with others, knowing that we are not traveling alone. 

For the next 10 weeks, God's Spirit has brought us together on the pilgrimage of this workshop as we cooperate with the Divine in the mysterious work of our own transformation through presence, deep, open sharing and our own personal reflection.

As I look more closely at  "Merton's Voice", the inspirations that touched many seemed to be related to the following:

  • Merton writes that our true vocation is to "work out our own salvation by close attention to the reality of every moment and great fidelity to God as He reveals himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation."  Christian inner work is cooperating with our neighbors and therefore with God, to create the truth of our identity, our True Self. In my own life I find that the awareness necessary to experience True Self requires me to suspend judgement and personal perspectives on life situations. Instead of desiring things to be as I would want them, if I strive to accept, see and hold things as they are, I become open to obtain a deeper meaning in myself, others and the overall situation or a call to action that God may be revealing.
  • We have the choice of evading this responsibility by "playing with masks" which is a creative and easy way to seem to please everyone but the long-term personal consequences are high. Alternatively, we can choose to work out our true identity in God which requires great attentiveness and letting go to a process to which "we do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be."
  • Only with genuine desire and faith, which I have come to call living intentionally, will we be willing to find our true identity. Merton writes that this is a labor requiring sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. This dedication leads us to follow a path that often seems obscure to us, it relies upon a trust that God is making me "who I will be when at last I fully begin to be." There is no way to attain this secret without faith. But contemplation is the gift that enables me to see and understand the work that He wants done.
  • According to Merton, "Not to accept and love and do God's will is to refuse the fullness of my existence."

Hafiz's "Another Voice" poem translated by David Ladinsky caught the attention of some of us as who were able to relate to being the hopeful Prisoner, who through faith, would "Find all wounds, debts, stamped, cancelled, Paid."  Others saw the enabling power of love which lifted the bird in flight:


I once asked a bird,
"How is it that you fly in this gravity
Of darkness?"
She responded,
"Love lifts
 Me"

I end this reflection with a final item that I was touched by from our evening's discussion:


As you become aware and accept that God accepts and loves you fully in your humanness, you naturally are able to accept and love others fully in their humanness. In doing so, you complete the cycle.

I look forward to your reflections and thoughts on the things that touched you from this session.
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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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