The "Cloud of Forgetting"

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

I wanted to meditate last night, so I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing, but my mind was so filled with people and plans and thoughts about things that have been happening, that instead of reaching a meditative state I found myself becoming more and more frustrated and anxious. And so I offered this frustration and anxiety to God, saying to Him, “I’m sorry, Lord, but this is all I have tonight.” And a verse from the psalms came to mind: “O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.”

And I kept repeating this prayer and found my spirit moving towards a greater peace. As I continued to pray these lines in harmony with my breathing, the prayer was eventually whittled down to two words: “God” on the inhalation, “help” on the exhalation. And as I continued to breath and to limit my thinking to just these two words, the thoughts and cares and plans and people and issues faded away.

Finally, in my thoughts I found myself in a concrete cell---only big enough to hold me as I was seated in my chair. The cell was completely bare and there was no entrance nor exit, and I found that I was completely alone with God. I continued praying my prayer words and found that my prayer was heard. It was not frightening to be in this cell; no, I felt safe and protected and free to direct my loving thoughts only to God while nothing else could get into the cell to distract me. This state continued for the rest of my meditation time, until at last the bell I use sounded to end the period of meditation. And I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord.

This morning during my lectio period, I discovered these words of Dame Julian of Norwich. It is almost as if she were speaking directly to my experience last evening:

It is God’s will to be known, and it pleases him that we rest in him; for all that is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul can rest till it is naughted of all things that are made. When it is willingly naughted, for love, so as to have him who is all, then it is able to receive spiritual rest.

Finally, the anonymous writer of The Cloud of Unknowing calls us to put everything made underneath a cloud of forgetting when we go to meditate.

. . . you must put a clout of forgetting beneath you, between you and all the creatures that were ever made. . . . . I mean not only the creatures themselves, but also their works and conditions. I exclude no creatures, whether they be bodily creatures or spiritual; nor any condition or work of any creature, whether they be good or evil. But, to speak briefly, all should be hidden under the cloud of forgetting.

Use what helps, and leave the rest aside for now.

God bless you!

The trials of Saint Joseph

Monday, March 20, 2017

The Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary

Today we honor Saint Joseph, the silent, humble and upright man whose role in salvation is both crucial and privileged. Twice he was visited by an angel in his dreams, and three times the angel’s word to him uprooted and changed the trajectory of his life.

He was planning to set Mary aside and not go through his marriage to her when it was discovered that she was pregnant. That culture would have called for a public and cruel punishment for her since she “apparently” was a great sinner. The angel explained the true circumstances of her pregnancy to Joseph, and he changed his plans for her and took her under his care. We hear the story so often we may gloss over the humanity of Joseph and overlook the terrible trials he bore both when he discovered that his betrothed was with child, and again when he realized that his destiny was to become the chaste husband and guardian of both woman and Child for the rest of his life.

We can and should go to Joseph at those particular moments when our world is turned upside down and the “rug is pulled out from under us,” or when we become aware that our destiny is going to be so much different than what we thought had been plotted out to us.

Joseph is the strong and silent figure who withstood the twistings and turnings of his own life.

His second visit by an angel summoned him to take his fledgling family and flee to Egypt, to leave everything he had known and go to a land which, as a Jew, he must have feared and resented, since the connotations of this voyage could very well have seemed to be a “return to the land of slavery.” The third visit by the angel told him to leave Egypt but not to return to his original home, but rather to go to an insignificant town known as Nazareth so that he might avoid the danger which awaited him in Judea.

How many times in our own lives has an angel protected us from harm which awaited us and sent us in an unexpected and perhaps alien direction for our own good? We might never know that this happened to us, but I would offer you a suggestion, if I may: Look at the disappointments in your life; look deeply enough that you can see the hand of God in what was so difficult to accept or make sense of.

There is one event in Joseph’s life that we learn about and it happened when Jesus was 12 years old and the family was in Jerusalem for worship. They couldn’t find Him, and what fear and anguish that must have caused His parents; finally they found him teaching in the temple—another unexpected occurrence—and when Mary asked him why he “had done this to us,” his response seemed almost rude, but yet a typical response from a 12-year-old: “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’ house?” I wonder what that might have felt like to Joseph, or whether he was struck with an arrow of humiliation.

Joseph the silent one. Joseph the patient one. Joseph the guardian, no matter what. Joseph who helped the boy Jesus grow in wisdom and grace, and who taught him the carpenter’s trade.

Honor him, and pray that he may guard you until the day of your death.

God bless you!

Please note that there will be no reflection tomorrow, Tuesday, March 21.

Longing for God, part 4: "Oh my God, what have I done?"

Friday, March 17, 2017

Longing for God, part 4: “Oh my God, what have I done?”

We begin where we left off yesterday, with the humble prayer of Saint Augustine:

“My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.”  (This prayer can also be found online in its original translation: “Too narrow my mansion.”)

As we make our way back to God (see part 3: coming home), like Saint Augustine, we invariably pass through a time when we become more aware than ever before of our own wretchedness, of the depth and extent of our sinfulness and of the sheer insanity of how we have lived. At this point we might be tempted to despair, to give up the journey, or to doubt that God would ever want to look on us with patience, loving-kindness and forgiveness. In this I recall the first two of the 12 Steps for addicts: (1) We admitted that we were powerless over ______ and that our lives had become unmanageable, and (2) We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The enemy of our souls tries to lure us into a trap. Be on guard not to begin dwelling not on your own sinfulness but rather on the sins, imperfections and shortcoming of others around you. This is useless work and nothing other than a distraction. As such times we are prone to judge others far more harshly than we would want the Lord to judge in us. Once we recognize this happening, we need to redirect our thoughts to considering our own sinful condition.

As for the despair, it, too, is a temptation of the devil. Don’t  give into it. Take comfort in these words from The Cloud of Unknowing:  “Be not humbled by the unimaginable greatness and incomparable perfection of God in light of your own wretchedness and imperfection. In other words, look more to God’s worthiness than to your own worthlessness.” (24) In addition, the Cloud concludes with these words of encouragement: “For it is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you would be.” (75: last paragraph)

The author of the Cloud encourages the reader (namely, us) to take the whole body of our misery together and call it a lump, and that when we go to meditate, lay a “cloud of forgetting” over the lump and direct our hearts and our thoughts to what lies above. I have taken this advice myself and have found it to be particularly helpful.

At other times, we may be inspired to pray the Jesus Prayer as we go about our day: It is consoling in its humility and its compunction: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

And so as best I could, I have laid before you a very brief and inadequate outline of a type of spiritual journey which many of us have been called to follow in our own lives:

                First, we become aware that we are indeed longing for a closer relationship with God.

                Second, we become aware that this yearning is itself a gift that God has implanted in our souls.

                Third, we decide to reorient our lives towards this God of our yearning and away from the paths we have taken when we have gone astray, and of the trivialness or the constant distractions that get in our way.

                Finally, we take a courageously close and honest look at the extent of our past failings and lament them, at all times trusting that God’s love and mercy will transcend the “lump” of our own darkness.

You can find more eloquent descriptions of these stages than in many places in the spiritual tradition. As always, take what resonates with you and put the rest aside for now.

God bless you! Have a blessed weekend.

Longing for God, part 3: Coming home

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Longing for God: coming home

Let’s begin where we left off yesterday, with this passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. (¶ 27)

The sad truth of human existence is that all too often we search for truth and peace and happiness in all the wrong places.

Alan Watts (Behold the Spirit) speaks eloquently of the frustration of looking in the wrong places, which can also serve as a sad commentary of our modern consumerist society:

Man is characterized by a hunger for the infinite, for an eternity of life, love and joy which, whether he knows it or not, can be nothing other than God. . . . . his real appetite continues to be God, for which these lesser goals are always unsatisfactory substitutes. Those who set their hearts on finite goals are always discontented; they must always have more and more of what they desire, and failing this are frustrated and miserable. Profound contentment is only enjoyed . . . by the saints and mystics who have realized union with God.

But God isn’t done with us yet. When God initiates within us this longing for him, and invites us to follow it where it will lead us, there is always a sense of return, of coming home, of rediscovering where we are meant to be. And never forget that when we experience such a longing, it is God Himself who has put this yearning within us. God is always searching for us, long before we respond and begin seeking Him. Consider the story of the Fall itself, when Adam and Eve hid themselves because they realized they were naked (which is proof that they had sinned) and God comes to the garden and calls out “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9) Now, why would God have to ask such a thing when it is obvious that he already knew where they were? I suggest that it was because he needed them (or us) to realize that despite the fact that they had sinned, he would still seek them out. There would be consequences of their sin not only for them but also for all of us, but the important message here is that God was not giving up on them. And no matter what we may have done, He does not give up on us either.

Perhaps the most beautiful and consoling of all the parables of Jesus is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The son departed from the father and gave himself over to a life of sin and debauchery. Finally, he came to his senses and began the journey back home, not expecting a great welcome. Yet, what do we discover? That the father had been at the door looking for him and yearning for him, and even bestowed great blessings upon him without ever uttering a word of reproach.

As a Benedictine, I also think of this line from the Rule of Saint Benedict: The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. (Prol. 3)

Saint Augustine (354-430) confesses what happened to him at the time of his awakening, as he traveled on his own journey home:

“All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth . . . My God, how I burned with longing to have wings to carry me back to you, away from all earthly things, although I had no idea what you would do with me.” (Confessions III, 4).

I conclude today with a prayer uttered by St. Augustine. Perhaps you might make it your own.

“My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.”  (Confessions. I was unable to find the exact location.)

Tomorrow: our awareness of our own sinfulness.

God bless you!

Longing for God part 2: God's longing for us

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The Longing for God, part 2: God’s longing for us

As I write this I assume that you are reading it because you have found within yourself a longing that cannot be satisfied by the things of this world, a longing which calls to you and gently, as the Lord says through the prophet Hosea:

I led them with cords of human kindness

with bands of love. (11:4)

We left off with this idea yesterday: “If you do this [spend time before God], you will discover that it was He who was seeking you all along.” And that is what I would like to take up today through the study of various texts from the Christian and other traditions.

This love of God which we experience within us

is not a product of our own imagination or creativity,

but is rather a reaction to what God has done in us:

1 John 4:19 “We love because God first loved us.”

And so, the longing itself establishes a connection between us:

Longing is a direct connection from the heart of the seeker to the heart of the Beloved.

(Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: Sufism: the Transformation of the Heart, p. 13)

Note: Sufism is a movement within Islam that is particularly interested in the mystical journey of man (“the seeker”) to God (“the Beloved.)

So anyway, God put this longing into our own hearts and beckons to us through it to a more profound way of living:

The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 1: “In that most gracious way of his, he kindled your desire for himself, and bound you to him by the chain of such longing, and thus led you to that more Special life, a servant among his own special servants. He did this that you might learn to be more especially his and to live more spiritually than ever you could have done in the common state of life.”

Again, like grace, it is God’s doing. Consider what the Sufi poet Rumi has written:

“Not a single lover would seek union if the Beloved were not seeking it.”

Or perhaps this poem of his will inspire you:

                The thirsty man is moaning, “O delicious water!”

                The water is calling, “Where is the one who will drink me?”

                The thirst in our souls is the magnetism of the Water:

                We are Its, and It is ours.   (quoted in Helminski, Kabir (2000): The Rumi Collection, p. 108)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us that this call from the Beloved is at the heart of human existence, and we can never be happy until we recognize and heed this call:

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. (¶ 27)

. . . to be continued . . .

God bless you!

The Longing for God (part one)

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

The Longing for God, part one

Deep within us

there is a longing for God.

It is buried beneath many lesser things,

beneath cares and anxieties and worries,

beneath hopes and dreams and plans and projects,

beneath joy and sorrow, happiness and misery,

beneath all that happens to us and all that we cause to happen.

It remains within. It is eternal. It seeks to be satisfied,

but cannot be satisfied

with what isn’t eternal,

with what is merely ephemeral,

or with what is trivial or distracting.

Psalm 42: “Like the deer that yeans

for running streams,

so my soul is yearning

for you, my God.

My soul is thirsting for God,

the living god;

when can I enter and appear

before the face of God?”

Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God: at dawn I seek you;

for you my soul is thirsting.

For you my flesh is pining,

like a dry, weary land without water.”

No matter what may delight, excite or thrill us,

we will never be satisfied

until we are in touch with this longing.

(Not that we find God as much as we seek after Him.)

Rule of Saint Benedict 58.7:

The concern must be whether the novice truly seeks God.

The Song of Songs

Upon my bed at night

I sought him whom my soul loves:

I sought him, but found him not.

. . .

Spend quiet time before God.

Seek Him; long for Him, desire Him

as one desires the arrival of the Beloved.

And if you do this, you will discover

that it was He Who was seeking you all along.

to be continued . . .

God bless you!

PAX

Monday, March 13, 2017

I finished reading my collection of spiritual poetry, “The Enlightened Heart,” edited by Stephen Mitchell. One of the last poems in the collection, entitled “Pax” (peace) by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) evokes so beautiful the experience of contemplative prayer that I have decided to share the entire poem with you today. Perhaps you can use it as a reading before you begin a session of meditation or quiet prayer.

“All that matters is to be at one with the living God

to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair

at peace, in peace

and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,

at home, at home in the house of the living,

sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleep on the hearth of the living world

yawning at home before the fire of life

feeling the presence of the living God

like a great reassurance

a deep calm in the heart

a presence

as of the master sitting at the board

in his own and greater being,

in the house of life.

God bless you!