Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the second dark night of the soul

"This second dark night–which can continue for months or years–constitutes an invitation to live by radical trust in the absence of spiritual comforts.

“In the active night of the spirit we clear our minds and spirits of false ideas and limited means of knowing God. John of the Cross insisted that the intellect must be purged of its tendency to fixate on facts about God rather than to know God himself intimately. Furthermore, during this time God breaks the stubborn self-will that blocks the flow of the Spirit.” (p. 89)

“The passive night of the spirit represents the most severe yet significant phase of the soul’s purification. Like the sun being obscured by a dark cloud, so the light of God is extinguished in this phase. The perceived absence of God leaves saints feeling woefully abandoned.” (p. 90)

Demarest, Bruce. Seasons of the Soul: Stages of Spiritual Development. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

experience

"Now the great obstacle to mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism lies in the Western tendency to focus not on the Buddhist experience, which is essential, but on the explanation, which is accidental and which indeed Zen often regards as completely trivial and even misleading.

“Buddhist meditation, but above all that of Zen, seeks not to explain but to pay attention, to become aware, to be mindful, in other words to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above and beyond deception by verbal formulas–or by emotional excitement.”

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.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

shallow curious, deep studious

“Curiosity is concerned with novelty: curious people want to know what they do not yet know, ideally, what no one yet knows. Studious people seek knowledge with the awareness that novelty is not what counts, and is indeed finally impossible because anything that can be known by any one of us is already known to God and has been given to us as unmerited gift. … But the deepest contrast between curiosity and studiousness has to do with the kind of world that the seeker for and professor of each inhabits. The curious inhabit a world of objects, which can be sequestered and possessed; the studious inhabit a world of gifts, given things, which can be known by participation, but which, because of their very natures can never be possessed.”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 22.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

knowledge and wonder

“Appetite is rooted in wonder and has intimacy with some creature or ensemble of creatures as its end. Knowledge, in turn, on its Christian construal, is a particular kind of intimacy between one creature and another.”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 125.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

contemplative knowing

“I would like to call contemplation ‘full-access knowing’–not irrational, but prerational, nonrational, rational, and transrational all at once. Contemplation refuses to be reductionistic. Contemplation is an exercise in keeping your heart and mind spaces open long enough for the mind to see other hidden material. It is content with the naked now and waits for futures given by God and grace.”

Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009, p. 34.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

knowing creation

“But, it is important to note, close attention to creatures, as also to oneself, will bring with it an understanding of the damage to which they have all been subjected, and so it will provoke lament as well as delight. Lament is the knower’s response to damage just as admiring delight is the knower’s response to creatures being as they should be. Both are instances of knowing’s participation in the known.”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 137.

Comment: “Creatures” in this commonplace refers really to any other created being – animal, vegetable, or mineral – coming across your field of notice.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

depression and a deeper life

“The deeper meaning of these experiences [in context he’s writing about ‘depressive experiences’ and acedia] must be explored and the issues worked through. This means going through these experiences, not trying to get around them. The life of increasing interiority has as its hallmark what I call contemplative knowing. This knowing comes about only by sitting with, and working through, the various experiences of our lives. Both the sitting with and working through are essential to the process, allowing for the development of resilient, open vulnerability, so necessary for our way of life.” (p. 121)

Healey, Bede. “Psychological Investigations and Implications for Living Together Alone.” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002.