spontaneous prayer

Another patient died yesterday morning. I’d grown fond of her (and of her husband who sat and slept at her bedside for days: such dedication). While two nurses straightened her bed, disconnected medical instruments, combed her hair and arranged a favourite shawl, the family waited outside, half comforting each other, half staring forlorn into the distance. Death had been expected and yet . . .

 

I entered the room, assisted the nurses, tidied crumpled-up tissue papers and wilted flowers … then stood alone over the still-warm body. Silence … Deep bow … Having known her a devoted catholic, I placed my right hand on her forehead and asked God to receive her, to place her at his side, to send blessings and relief to her husband, her grown children, her many friends. From a collection of blessings, I prayed:

Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world;
In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you;
In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you;
In the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you.
May your rest be this day in peace,
and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.* 

And then a Hail Mary, repeated twice more, just as she and I had done a few days earlier. Whether I understood or believed the specifics didn’t matter at that moment. I knew with certainty that it was the right thing to do, that it would give her comfort. And that it would comfort her husband who knew what I was doing in there.

 

Afterwards I thought about what I’d done, wondered whether I might have trespassed on religious territory. I was, after all, neither a priest nor a practicing catholic. But my intention was pure and spontaneous: to say words that would give peace to her soul. A few days earlier she’d invited me to sit at the edge of her bed and, with a chuckle, had called me “Father,” knowing very well that I wasn’t one.  

Henri Nouwen says of prayer that it “has meaning only if it necessary and indispensable. Prayer is prayer only when we can say that without it, we cannot live” [or die, I’d add in this instance]. “When we pray we come out of our shelters and see not only our own nakedness but also see that there is no enemy who haunts us, only a friend who would love nothing better than to clothe us with a new coat.”

source: Nouwen, H.J.M. (1972). With open hands. New York: Ballentine, pp. 50, 53;  *prayer retrieved from www.humble-access.org.  

keep death before your eyes

Over the years I’ve been welcomed in many monasteries and retreat centres: by Franciscans in Bavaria, Benedictines in the Mohave desert, Redemptorists in Arizona, and Camaldolese near Big Sur. And by Buddhists, of course: in upstate New York, Los Angeles, Oregon, and Thailand. Having been raised a Roman Catholic, I naturally turned to Christian orders when I sensed a call towards a contemplative life. Although I was welcomed warmly and admired their dedication (especially Franciscans with their down-to-earth and in-the-world practice), I soon realized that I didn’t share their religion to the extent necessary. I became interested, however, in the Rule of St. Benedict, a 1450-year old set of instructions which guide monastics’ conduct to this day.

Esther de Waal, a lay teacher in the Anglican tradition, makes connections between Christian scriptures, St. Benedict’s Rule, and a contemplative lay life. Reflecting on time spent with Trappist monks (Thomas Merton’s order), she writes:

“Present  … in their daily celebration of the Eucharist and at the saying of their daily offices is this reminder that death is part of life. It is of course a vivid visual statement of what St. Benedict is saying in the Rule. “Keep death daily before your eyes” (4.47) and, simultaneously, “Look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing” (49.7). …

“He expects us to hold two things in tension. Death and life are inseparable. Dying and behold we live. Here is the ultimate in contradiction. Here is utter foolishness to the point of absurdity. We lose our life to gain it. But how right St. Benedict is in insisting that we remind ourselves of this every day.”

source: De Waal, E. (1997). Living with contradictions: an introduction to Benedectine spirituality. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publ., p. 113-114. 

we have what we seek

On this Sunday morning I turn to Thomas Merton (1915-1968), one of my spiritual guides, to explore the practice of praying across faith traditions. Sounding as much a Zen student as a devout Roman Catholic monk, Merton writes:

“If we really want prayer, we’ll have to give it time. We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen. As as soon as we listen to what’s going on, things will begin to take shape by themselves. But for this we have to experience time in a new way …. The reason why we don’t take time is a feeling that we have to keep moving. This is a real sickness. Today time is a commodity, and for each one of us time is mortgaged. … we must approach the whole idea of time in a new way.

“… The whole things boils down to giving ourselves in prayer a chance to realise that we have what we seek. We don’t have to rush after it. It is there all the time, and if we give it time it will makes itself known to us.”

source: In: de Waal, E. (1992). A seven-day journey with Thomas Merton (self-retreat). Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publ., p.40.

Merton’s prayer

In his book Thoughts in solitude, Thomas Merton (late Trappist monk, Catholic priest, poet, and social activist) explores the meaning of interior solitude and its role in bringing every life to joyous fruition. “What is said here about solitude is not just a recipe for hermits,” he writes in the preface, “it has a bearing on the whole future of [us all].” In the following prayer, Merton expresses faith in that which is unknown. He also speaks to the fear of being abondoned by God which Rabbi Kushner referred to in yesterday’s post.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

source: www.mertoninstitute.org/merton_prayer.php.

practicing humility

One of the people who interviewed me for the job (see footnote to yesterday’s post) said that she’d been impressed by my humour and humility. Here’s what my mind made of that: on the ego level it said, Thanks for the compliment. I’m glad you liked what you saw; for seeing something in me to recommend that I’d be hired. On the spiritual level it said, Yes, that’s how I’d like to be perceived (some day). I’m surprised and grateful that those qualities are apparent to strangers (albeit a sophisticated one in this instance).

Humility is a virtue that can be difficult to describe because of its paradoxical nature: claiming authority about humility and claiming that one is humble each suggest a lack of humility. Google reveals that humility is seen as an essential virtue in many faith traditions:

 

·  According to Chinese Zen master Li Yuansong, enlightenment can come only after humility, the wisdom of realizing one’s own ignorance, insignificance and lowliness, without which one cannot see the truth.

·  Guru Granth Sahib, the great book of Sikhism (p. 152), holds that “modesty, humility and intuitive understanding are my mother-in-law and father-in-law.” See also my post of March 28.

·  Bernard of Clairvaux (1099-1143) defines humility as “a virtue by which a man knows himself as he truly is.”

·  The Bible depicts humility as making us fit recipients of grace: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

·  Moses’ greatest virtue was humility (Num. xii. 3). At first he resists the mission to free his people because he mistrusts his ability. But once he accepts it, he does so with courage and energy.

 

As with Moses, so it is with me. Awed by the complexity of hospice work, I rise to the challenge without fear. It feels right for me to be here … to humbly serve all who entrust us with the last moments of their lives.

 

sources: BibleGateway.com; www.jewishencyclopedia.com; www.newadvent.org;

image: members/fortunecity.com.

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homeward

 

“Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.”  –Henri Nouwen

 

This morning I posted these lines, simply because I liked them. No apparent reason. Ha! Once posted, they began to speak … asking that I look a little deeper: What is it you yearn for? How do you differentiate everyday touching (such as with family and friends, by men and women, strangers and acquaintances) from intimate and sexual touch? Do you receive them differently, give one more weight than the other? How much touch gets past the censor, sinks to your core? What are you afraid of?

 

Henri Nouwen (1932 – 1996), Dutch-born catholic priest and writer, taught at Yale and Harvard divinity schools, and spent his last ten years living with intellectually disabled people at L’Arche community in Toronto.

 

really old news

I’m making my way into a book by religious scholar Karen Armstrong on the beginnings of our religious traditions. She traces events in the Axial Age (ninth century), when great teachings arose in different parts of the world: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. She writes:

“But how can the sages of [that age], who lived in such different circumstances, speak to our current condition? Why should we look to Confucius or the Buddha for help? Surely a study of distant periods can only be an exercise in spiritual archaeology, when what we need is to create a more innovative faith that reflects the realities of our own world. Yet, in fact, we have never surpassed the insights of the Axial Age.

“In time of spiritual and social crisis, men and women have constantly turned back to this period for guidance. They may have interpreted the … discoveries differently, but they have never succeeded in going beyond them. [...]

“The prophets, mystics, philosophers, and poets of the Axial Age were so advanced and their vision was so radical that later generations tended to dilute them. … [They] have an important  message for our times, but their insights will be surprising–even shocking–to many who consider themselves religious today.

“It is frequently assumed, for example, that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions. … But most Axial philosophers had no interest whatever in doctrine or metaphysics. A person’s theological beliefs were a matter of total indifference to someone like the Buddha. … Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic, and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many people expect religion to provide.”

source: Armstrong, K. (2006). The great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions. Toronto: Vintage, p.xvi-xvii.

grace inside

My inside, listen to me, the great spirit,
the Teacher, is near,
wake up, wake up!

Run to his feet–
he is standing close to your head right now.

You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?

Poem by Kabir, fifteenth-century, son of a Moslem weaver in Benares, influenced by Sufi poets and Hindu ideas. source: The Kabir book. Version by Robert Bly. (1971). Boston: Beacon Press, p.13.

naked and vulnerable

Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and author of 30 books. After an academic career at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard divinity schools and time as a missionary in poverty-torn areas of Latin America, he lived his last ten years with developmentally disabled people at L’Arche Daybreak Community in Toronto.

Following the breakdown of a personal relationship, he suddenly lost his self-esteem, his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, even his hope in God. Here’s an excerpt from a journal he kept during that prolonged crisis. Each time I read his words, I feel geborgen, a German word meaning ‘ understood, protected, cared-for.’ As this dear man writes to himself, he speaks to us all. 

“You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways pf the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there.  …

“Now you have come to realise that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. …

“Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.”

source: Nouwen, H.J.M. (1996/1997). The inner voice of love: a journey through anguish to freedom. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, p.18.

Καλό Πάσχα

Last week was Megali Evdomada, Great or Easter Week for Greek Orthodox people. This year Good Friday fell on April 25 and Easter Sunday on the 27th. (Orthodox Christians everywhere are celebrating at this time.)

I’ve just now returned from offering meditation instructions at a yoga retreat.  As our hosts have strong Greek connections it was natural that they’d invite us to an Easter food tradition. Gathered around the breakfast table, we were each given a dyed-shiny-red boiled egg. Eggs are symbolic of fertility and new life.

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They showed us to hold the egg with one hand and tap it against the end of omeone else’s egg, trying to crack theirs but not ours. The last one standing with an uncracked egg can now count on good luck in the coming year. We all tried to say “Christos Anesti“ (Christ has risen) to which the poper reply is “Alithos Anesti” (truly, He is risen) and exchanged expressions of well-wishing amidst the tapping and cracking.

an ancient call

We are here to do.
And through doing to learn;
and through learning to know;
and through knowing to experience wonder;
and through wonder to attain wisdom;
and through wisdom to find simplicity;
and through simplicity to give attention;
and through attention
to see what needs to be done. …
–Pirke Avot 5:27

Pirke Avotis a collection of rabbinic sayings compiled somewhere between 250 and 275, although most of the sages quoted lived far earlier. “Very little is known about them individually, but, taken together, they speak in one great, sane voice of the necessity of … letting go of the illusion of fragmentation and [of] bringing things into harmony with each other.”

source: Andrew Harvey. (ed.). (1996). The essential mystics: the soul’s journey into truth. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, p.102, 223.

dying to self

I’m again struck by the parallels in intention between Buddhist and Christian meditation. Below a take on the Christian practice of Centering Prayer by one of its best-known teachers, the Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault.

See also ‘learning from monks’ on April 11th and ‘centering prayer’ on the 12th.

“The obvious place where meditation–any form of meditation–plugs into the Christian theological mainstream is through the additional light it sheds on the gospel instructions: “Whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will find it” (Matthew 16:25). This is of course a foundational teaching, modeled in Jesus’ life even more than in his word, and as Christians we are bound to emulate it. Our life is to be a continuous “dying to self”: a voluntary relinquishing of a small and more relative life in order to actualize a larger and more permanent one.”

source: C. Bourgeault. (2004). Centering prayer and inner awakening. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publ., p.80.

learning from monks (and dogs)

The word practice shows up frequently when we talk about the spiritual path. It harkens back to monastic life which has as its central purpose a letting go of “self” through meditation and communal activities such as chanting, working, sharing of meals, and learning to be obedient and humble.

Have you heard of the monks of New Skete in Cambridge, upstate New York? They raise dogs and have published popular books on such topics as “raising your puppy” and “being your dog’s best friend.” In one book they describe their ongoing practice toward “achieving happiness” within themselves and with each other. Note how their words echo what Daido Loori (previous post) and Ken Wilber (yesterday) say about the self/ego in the context of spiritual practice.

“Dying to self is spiritual shorthand for rooting out all manner of exaggerated self-interest, characteristics of ourselves that constrict us in narcissism and blind self-centeredness. This is the self within us that, while all too real, is what nonetheless must die, the ‘false self’ which must give way to the new life we are called to attain. … Were we to look at ourselves honestly, we would see how petty, thoughtless, and loveless we can be at any given moment. We might have an occasional, fleeting insight that we will never attain any real happiness unless we come to terms with what really counts in life. […]

“We storm the walls of our own imprisonment when we struggle to overcome self-centeredness, when we stretch to build avenues of communion of reality beyond our own self, whatever it happens to be. One moment it might be helping a friend, the next it might be attending to our job, running an errand,  … expressing gratitude by writing a thank-you note, breaking out of our little world enough to notice a sunset—anything.

“With each step of life comes the background question ‘What is reality asking of us right now?’ challenging us to respond wholeheartedly, willingly. “

source: The Monks of New Skete. (1999). In the spirit of happiness. New York: Little, Brown, p.86-87.

centering prayer

There’s a long tradition of contemplation, meditation, and silent prayer in Christianity. Each term has a distinct origin in language and practice; I apologize for interchanging them so lightly. One source distinguishes between two kinds of meditation: continued, intent, focused thought; and a state of quiet, intentionally unfocused, “contentless” awareness. We’re interested in the latter.

A form of modern-day Christian meditation called Centering Prayer was made popular by the American monk Fr. Thomas Keating in the 1960’s and 70’s. Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, a student of Keating’s for many years, is an Episcopal priest and enthusiastic workshop presenter. I participated in one of her retreats a few years back. She spoke of the near impossibility of shutting out noises from our busy lives. Yes, there may be quiet walks in the woods, camping trips perhaps, silent reading when the kids are asleep, a weekend retreat at a monastery if that works for us.

“But stopping the inner noise is another matter,” she writes. “Even when the outer world has been wrestled into silence, we still go right on talking, worrying, arguing with ourselves, daydreaming, fantasizing. To encounter those deeper reaches of our being, where our own life is constantly flowing out of and back into the divine life, what first seems to be needed is some sort of an interior on/off switch to tone down the inner taking as well.”

primary source:  Cynthia Bourgeault. (2004). Centering prayer and inner awakening. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publ., p.5-6.; also: Thomas Keating. (1994). Intimacy with God: an introduction to centering prayer. New York: Crossroad Publ. Co.

just be there

I once asked Zen Teacher Hogen Bays about the weekly meditation group at my house. Some people come for ‘beginning instructions,’ I complained, and then I never see them again. Is there something I should be doing? Offer tea, use finger puppets, give away toasters? Should I continue straightening the cushions, lighting a candle, and waiting for someone to show? Yes, came the reply without hesitation, “some people you’ll never see again, others will return once they’re conscious of their suffering.” (For an explanation of suffering in Buddhist language, kindly scroll down to my March 29 post “what’s with suffering?”.)

More than four years later, Hogen’s reference to suffering continues to make me show up as advertised, ready to welcome anyone and to sit regardless of numbers. It’s never a chore. I bow to the empty zendo (meditation room) as I set out a flower, light incense, and sweep the entrance way. Each time I make this simple offering, my heart opens in gratitude … for the opportunity to be of service.

Father Henri Nouwen—catholic priest, prolific author, and professor of theology—speaks to this in a collection of personal prayers: “Fear and anxiety never totally leave us. But slowly they lose their domination as a deeper and more central experience begins to present itself. It is the experience of gratitude. Gratitude is the awareness that life in all its manifestations is a gift for which we wish to give thanks. … We may discover the presence of [God’s] gifts in the midst if our pains and sorrows. … What seemed a hindrance proves to be a gift. Thus gratitude becomes a quality of our heart that allows us to live joyfully and peacefully even though our struggles continue.”

source: Henri J.M. Nouwen. (2002). A cry for mercy: prayers from the Genesee. New York: Doubleday, p.123.