Posted on by Kurt Bodling

what is the contemplative life?

Here’s one more-or-less traditional view: "“Contemplative life, a life characterized by solitude and prayer, which dispose one toward contemplation. Ancient and especially medieval monasticism perceived its way of life as contemplative; nuns and monks were called contemplatives. Medieval interest in the mystical life perceived the contemplative life as mystical in orientation. For some men and usually women the enclosure was seen as a necessary safeguard of the contemplative life. Post-Vatican II developments have shown an interest in a broader conception of the contemplative life for laity and religious yet one that retains the solitude necessary for living in the presence of God.”

McBrien, Richard P., ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, page 364.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

freedom in prayer and contemplation

“The great obstacle to contemplation is rigidity and prejudice. He who thinks he know what it is beforehand prevents himself from finding out the true nature of contemplation, since he is not able to ‘change his mind’ and accept something completely new. … And since most of us are rigid, attached to our own ideas, convinced of our own wisdom, proud of our own capacities, and committed to personal ambition, contemplation is a dangerous desire for any one of us. But if we really want to get free from these sins, the desire for contemplative freedom and for the experience of transcendent reality is likely to arise in us all by itself, unobserved. And it is likely to be satisfied almost before we know we have it. That is the way a genuine contemplative vocation is realized.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, p. 117.

Comment: These lines are worth repeating: “…if we really want to get free from these sins, the desire for contemplative freedom and for the experience of transcendent reality is likely to arise in us all by itself, unobserved. And it is likely to be satisfied almost before we know we have it. That is the way a genuine contemplative vocation is realized.”

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the non-walking world

“In a world so full of not-walking, it feels almost subversive to set out on foot. But the mind seems most keen and able to think its realest thoughts while walking, as though the two acts were tied up in some ancient, well-worn, unspoken routine. And even then it is possible to notice a difference in the texture of one’s thoughts depending on whether you are walking with our against the flow of nearby water, a phenomenon that can likely be replicated in crowded streets of people.”

Sanders, Ella Frances. “Vázzit” in her column ‘Root Catalog’ in Orion, vol 42, no. 1 (Spring 2023), p. 96.

Comment: some people think best while walking. Some people pray best while walking. And in our world, few people walk voluntarily, it seems.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

humble contemplation

“The contemplative’s only safeguard is humility and self-forgetfulness and the renunciation of all desire to exploit the experience for any purpose whatever. What happens, happens. One accepts it, in humility, and sees it, without inferring anything or instituting any comparison with other experiences. And one walks on in the presence of God.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, p. 60.

Comment: this is probably part of the reason it seems that contemplative Christians are few and far between … most don’t talk about it, don’t write books about, don’t mount podcasts or fund-raising campaigns around it.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

priestly unity with Christ

“A contemplative priest will have a deep and absorbing sense of union with Christ as priest and as offering in the Eucharistic sacrifice–so much so that his Mass will be going on within him not only when he is at the altar but when he is away from it, and at many different moments during the day.”

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 161.

This strikes me as quite congruent with the way we (some of us, anyway) say that contemplation is carried through one’s day, or that we can “pray without ceasing” by inhabiting the Jesus Prayer.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

relating to noise

“The measure of our ability to live in silence is our reaction to noise (whether external or internal) and not in the length of time we go without hearing anything or hearing only what we like to hear. As contemplative practice matures, we begin to relate to disruptive noise differently. We learn to meet sound that displeases with the same stillness with which we meet the sounds that please us.”

Laird, Martin. A Sunlit Absence : Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 49.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

contemplation and action

“No man who ignores the rights and needs of others can hope to walk in the light of contemplation, because his way has turned aside from truth, from compassion and therefore from God. … To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work.” (p. 18-19)

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

persistance

"Once a man has set foot on this way, there is no excuse for abandoning it, for to be actually on the way is to recognize without doubt or hesitation that only the way is fully real and that everything else is deception, except insofar as it may in some secret and hidden manner be connected with ‘the way.’

“Thus, far from wishing to abandon this way, the contemplative seeks only to travel farther and farther along it. This journey without maps leads him into rugged mountainous country where there are often mists and storms and where he is more and more alone. Yet at the same time, ascending the slopes in darkness, feeling more and more keenly his own emptiness, and with the winter wind blowing cruelly through his now tattered garments, he meets at times other travelers on the way, poor pilgrims as he is, and as solitary as he, belonging perhaps to other lands and other traditions. There are of course great differences between them, and yet they have much in common. Indeed, the Western contemplative can say that he feels himself much closer to the Zen monks of ancient Japan than to the busy and impatient men of the West, of his own country, who think in terms of money, power, publicity, machines, business, political advantage, military strategy–who seek, in a word, the triumphant affirmation of their own will, their own power, considered as the end for which they exist. Is not this perhaps the most foolish of all dreams, the most tenacious and damaging of illusions?”

Merton, Thomas. “The Contemplative Life in the Modern World.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 228.

This is just SO good! And I think that the person who seeks only to travel farther and farther along the way of contemplation may just be the person tending toward the suite of attributes listed by a friend of mine when he wrote (and I’m mashing together bits from two different letters of his) that the fruit of the Spirit is love – which, itself is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, nor rude – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Vaya con Dios!

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

a crucial point in the life of prayer

"Infused contemplation, then, sooner or later brings with it a terrible interior revolution. Gone is the sweetness of prayer. Meditation becomes impossible, even hateful. Liturgical functions seem to be an insupportable burden. The mind cannot think. The will seems unable to love. The interior life is filled with darkness and dryness and pain. The soul is tempted to think that all is over and that, in punishment for its infidelities, all spiritual life has come to an end.

"This is a crucial point in the life of prayer. It is very often here that souls, called by God to contemplation, are repelled by this ‘hard saying,’ turn back, and ‘walk no more with Him’ (John 6:61-67). …

“Generally they remain faithful to God: they try to serve Him. But they turn away from interior things and express their service in externals. They externalize themselves in pious practices, or they immerse themselves in work in order to escape the pain and sense of defeat they have experienced in what seems, to them, to be the collapse of all contemplation. ‘The light shineth in darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it’ (John 1).”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, pp. 75-76. (NOTE: Merton wrote this back in 1959!)

It seems like all the tried-and-true recommendations for deepening a spiritual life, recommendations adopted (with more or less benefit) by most people, don’t always cut it any more for those called to the contemplative life. Then there follows the need for balancing the internal and the external, balancing service with growth, balancing action with contemplation. Sometimes, it seems, one serves others best by turning inward.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Zen experience

“The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.”

Merton, Thomas. “A Christian Looks at Zen.” (1967) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 346.

‘I don’t understand Zen; and neither do you’ is about as foolproof a statement as I can make.