Posted on by Kurt Bodling

shabbat to shalom

“The Genesis account provides a glimpse of God’s view of biblical shalom, in which the world will be made right as God intended it to be. Observation of the sabbath is one of the mechanisms God uses as a part of the process of restoring shalom.”

Cannon, Mae Elise. Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2013, p. 129.

Comment: This can be tricky for Christians. Is it, as Cannon has, “observation of the sabbath”? or is it “observation of sabbath”? By restricting our observation with the definite article, we run the risk of becoming legalists who confine our holiness to that period of corporate worship we have on Sunday mornings. In the New Testament age, we may be called to observe sabbath all week long and every day. If we are to pray without ceasing, we should set aside the hustle-bustle of the world. We should cultivate sabbath and shalom throughout our minutes and hours. We find the sacrament of the present moment.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

chatty beginners

"The prayer of the beginner is often chatty, filled with intellectual words and images. We night have long monologues with God. We might ‘chew’ on a Scripture passage, mining its depths and challenges. We might have a long list of petitions for which we pray. We might think over the past twenty-four hours and see how God sent grace and angels into our lives. These kinds of prayer, in which we do all the work, are traditionally known as discursive meditation.

"Teresa of Avila makes clear that if we commit to such prayer on a daily basis, within three months, we will find it hard to maintain. Indeed, it will become more and more dissatisfying. We will experience boredom and dryness. …

"Our continual response to any form of dryness, aridity or boredom in prayer is fidelity, fidelity, fidelity. We are challenged to stay faithful to the daily practice. …

“The beginner’s dryness in prayer is actually God’s grace and invitation to simpler prayer.”

Haase, Albert. Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions. Foreword by M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008, p. 158.

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the word most people are afraid of

"We increase and deepen our participation in the life of the Body by the activity of our minds and wills, illuminated and guided by the Holy Ghost. We must therefore keep growing in our knowledge and love of God and in our love for other men. The power of good operative habits must take ever greater and greater hold upon us. The Truth we believe in must work itself more and more fully into the very substance of our lives until our whole existence is nothing but vision and love.

“What this means in practice is summed up by one word that most men are afraid of: asceticism.”

Merton, Thomas. “The White Pebble.” (1950) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, pp. 9-10.

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the contemplative life

“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.

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middle way for prayer

“To sum up, in prayer there is the danger of falling into one of two opposite extremes. The first is ‘mythologizing’ (or making into an idol) the external forms, when prayer is reduced to the mechanical following of a rule or a method of praying. The second is the rejection of and allergic reaction toward all forms of prayer and asceticism. Those fall into this sad situation who do not know how to combine the external forms with sincerity of heart.”

Okumura, Augustine Ichiro. Awakening to Prayer. Translated by Theresa Kazue Hiraki and Albert Masaru Yamato. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1994, p. 52.

Comment: As in so very much, the middle way is the way of wisdom. In prayer it is best neither to reject formalized liturgical prayer, nor to avoid all extemporaneous and personalized prayer. Those are the head and heart respectively of prayer life. The golden mean brings together the tried and true traditional forms of prayer with the simple and sincere sighs of the heart. (Okay, so maybe not at the same moment. And the balance that works for you may well not work for others, but you’ll figure that out.)

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true self and one’s vocation

“Body and soul contain thousands of possibilities out of which you can build many identities. But in only one of these will you find your true self that has been hidden in Christ from all eternity. Only in one will you discover your unique vocation and deepest fulfillment. … We all live searching for that one possible way of being that carries with it the gift of authenticity. We are most conscious of this search for identity during adolescence, when it takes front stage.”

Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself. Expanded ed. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2015, p. 16.

Comment: Benner unites the true self with one’s vocation. He also says here that there is only one single possible identity where a person can find his or her unique vocation. Out of the “thousands of possibilities” you’re born with.

This sounds narrow and exclusionary to me. Unless the true self is simply the saved self and the true vocation is simply the vocation of being in love with God. Then the true self and vocation can blossom and be freely expressed in myriads of ways, different from anyone else and even different from myself in the past or future. They are at the same time quite specific to the individual and not at all specific.

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what silence is for

“Silence is the privilege of courageous persons. They may fall and lose hope; silence will unceasingly be able to lift them up again because it bears within it a divine presence and a divine origin. Silence is a conversion that is never accomplished easily.” Thought 129.

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 74.

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“Contemplation is not a kind of magic and easy shortcut to happiness and perfection. And yet since it does bring one in touch with God in an I-Thou relationship of mysteriously experienced friendship, it necessarily brings that peace which Christ promised and which ‘the world cannot give.’ There may be much desolation and suffering in the spirit of the contemplative, but there is always more joy than sorrow, more security than doubt, more peace than desolation. The contemplative is one who has found what every man seeks in one way or another.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, pages 116-117 (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)

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contemplation and virtue

“Contemplation should not be exaggerated, distorted, and made to seem great. It is essentially simple and humble. No one can enter into it except by the path of obscurity and self-forgetfulness. It implies also much discipline, but above all the normal discipline of everyday virtue. It implies justice to other people, truthfulness, hard work, unselfishness, devotion to the duties of one’s state in life, obedience, charity, self-sacrifice. No one should delude himself with contemplative aspirations if he is not willing to undertake, first of all, the ordinary labors and obligations of the moral life.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, page 116. (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)

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being citizens of the universe

“It is almost a commonplace today to find men and women who, quite naturally and unaffectedly, live in the explicit consciousness of being an atom or a citizen of the universe.”

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, p. 1. [Teilhard had finished this manuscript back in 1927!]