Getting It Right

At our weekly Bible study group this week, our leader was absent because she had to attend a PTA meeting for her child. We had as a substitute an expert, Jack, who had taught the course before (in fact, his wife wrote the course) but lives at a great distance. Apparently, our leader will be absent next week as well. As we were finishing up the session, Jack looked at me and said, "You're an experienced leader at work; you could lead this group next week because it really is too far for me to come again."

Oh, my! I am still learning. After all, I converted to Catholicism rather recently. This will be the blind leading the blind, I am afraid, but Jack was confident and handed me his notes for next week (those will help). Well, I do know a lot about shared governance, servant leadership, mentoring, coaching, and facilitated teaching, so I guess/assume/hope that I will be able to count on the aggregate knowledge of those present to create a mathemagenic session next week. (I am also counting on Sr. M, who was absent this week, to be present next week and help. She is a faithful presence at our Bible Study meetings and our prayer group meetings, and I have learned much from her.)

After the Bible Study meeting, one of the members of the group who also attends the weekly prayer group meeting, which I lead (long story of how the most unlikely person -- me -- got involved in doing that), started asking me a number of questions about contemplative prayer. She had been reading my book, A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God, and what she read made her yearn for deeper contemplation. While I have had wonderful experiences with contemplative prayer, there is only one person -- a priest -- within driving distance who teaches the Jesus prayer or any other kind contemplation. So, what I know has mostly from from God. Following some urging from my friend, I agreed that we could use our next movie night -- once a month we watch a movie as part of our prayer group activities -- to watch a video on contemplative prayer. I don't know what I will be able to say myself on the topic. I can do little more than share experience, and that makes me a little concerned/nervous.

So, when I arrived home, I sent up a prayer: "I need a lot of guidance here, Lord. You've put some precious people in my hands."

Immediately came a correction: "In My hands."

Of course, I am at best only the conduit. How easy it is to forget! I am sure now that both sessions will go precisely the way God wants.

Contemplation VIII

An odd thing happened on a recent Saturday morning at a retreat I was attending. Following breakfast, I set off on a short multi-tasking walk, during which I caught up on incoming email and voice mail, there being no connectivity at the retreat center. (I like to think of this as less an addiction and more a life-sensitive triage -- after all, I answered only one urgent email and returned two phone calls -- but an honest self-examination might reveal a different reality.)

Then I returned to my room for a period of lectio divina and silent prayer. Opening the Bible haphazardly, I began to read the psalm I had opened to when I felt the Bible being gently pulled from my hands. I laid it on the floor beside me and immediately found myself enveloped within and without by the Presence in an all-consuming embrace that I believe is what the old mystics called union.

It was a brief encounter but, as always, powerful. It left me out of breath. I have overcome the urge to push away God's advance, and so I relaxed into it that morning, noticing only some difficulty in breathing, not an atypical reaction for me in cases of contemplative prayer and union, where I experience a re-awaking of the sense of a divine invasion that accompanied the hierophany that caused my conversion. I suppose it is still a bit of a fear reaction although of what there is to be afraid I have not the slightest idea.

From the pushaway to passive panicky breathing lies a significant distance trod in a relationship with God. Fortunately, God is also persistent in love. In sha allah, as the Arabs say, with time and more distance traveled together, I will develop the instinct to return the embrace. That is, after all, what I yearn to do.

Contemplation VII

Dark night or self-imposed dry spell? Sometimes it has been difficult to tell. I know there are times I throw up barriers because I sense a pending tasking that I do not want to do, am impatient for a fix that I think I can bring about rather than waiting upon God, worrying about something rather than letting go, or arrogantly thinking I may be important for some reason other than as a creation by God for God.

There has been one definite dark night that I passed through. Fortunately, I was able to recognize it for God prepared me for it by allowing me to support a friend through his dark night. I did not like my dark night on iota, but it was definitely a metanoic experience in which I learned the value of volition and belief.

Most recently, when I began again to experience a dry spell, I was once again emplacing barriers or experiencing the descent of another dark night. Either way, having arrived in Washington, DC after a short 5-hour red-eye trip and spending all day at the Pentagon in difficult meetings that ended in triumph for all present, followed by dinner with a colleague I had first met in Afghanistan, I was exhausted -- too exhausted for contemplative prayer (at least, for the lectio and meditation part). So, I flopped into bed with a cry into the desert, into which my prayers seemed to have been going as of late, asking God not to leave me in the desert but just to be with me for the night even if, perverse me, I felt too tired to communicate in any coherent -- or even nonverbal -- fashion. Suddenly, I felt encased in a warm, loving cocoon that I recognized as the Presence of God, snuggled in for the night, and opened my eyes, fully rested as the new morning light washed over me the next day.

The gift of that cocoon left me with gratitude enough to cover weeks (or more) of metaphysically sleeping on the desert if that is how it must be. Just as the setting sun is still in the heavens during the night, I know that God is with me in those (thankfully, few) moments when I do not feel His presence.

Perhaps I should not say "thankfully few" because those are the moments when God is trying to get me -- yes, perverse me -- to grow in faith. One day, perhaps, I will have gratitude even for the Absence, but I fear that is going to require considerably more maturation.

Contemplation VI

I marvel at how contemplation, practiced faithfully, can become routine. It used to be that each morning I would try to remain is a state of quiet prayer for 20-30 minutes before going to work. The hardest part was leaving that perfect moment to go busily about preparing to depart for work.

Not that God wasn't with me in the preparation. Of course, God was, and I felt God’s presence. It was just somehow different and somewhat less satisfying than spending lazy minutes together with God. Being lazy with God is my favorite activity, yet one that I found myself doing less often than I would like.
So, every morning for a while I would try to allow enough time between waking and leaving to begin my day being lazy with God, and every evening before returning I would do the same. Day after day, even when traveling, although I have to admit that, especially when in travel status, there were days I would miss. ("Miss" I mean in all senses of that word.)

Then something extraordinary happened. I don't know when the change came. I just noticed that it had. I no longer had to plan this time or to remind myself to take the time. It just happened. It had become habit. At least, that's what my detail-oblivious mind first thought. Then I paid closer attention to what was happening.
The contemplative periods had moved away from my control. They were more than habitualized, autonomous responses to the ticking of a clock or the perception of a biorhythm. They were—and are—out of my control and under the control of God. I began waking up a half-hour or more before the alarm in a contemplative state, in the presence of God, and I had no real idea how long we had been being lazy together as morning took over what might have been an all-night joint adventure for I do not remember my dreams.

I know the common wisdom is to practice contemplation sitting in a chair so as not to fall asleep, but since I can fall asleep in any position, even standing, if tired, that advice helps me little. So, I go to bed while not tired so that I can spend time in contemplation and then fall asleep in the arms of God. I like to think those arms hold me all night and gently rock me awake in the morning to the joy of being in the presence of God. What remarkable patience, what incredible love!
Whatever the explanation—I don't need to know why things happen anymore—such a marvelous beginning to the day brings light and happiness to the rest of my day. That continues until some highly stressful, distressing event over which I have no control sends me to the nearest prayer place, i.e. any place I can be alone again with God.

This condition I find myself in, this walking with God, relaxing with God, and desperately looking for God when I stray, became clear to me during a recent retreat. We were given specific instructions and time for contemplation, early morning and late evening not being among them, but God maintained the routine, greeting me in the morning and tucking me into bed at night. How much more blessed can anyone be, I wonder with gratitude so deep I don't know how to express it. The thing that makes the gratitude even sweeter and deeper is that I don't have to know how to express it. I don't have to be able to find all the right words and actions. God knows fully that which I can express only in part. Ah, yes, that is how much more one can be blessed. God's blessings are depthless, boundless, and, oh, so fortunately, endless. And they do not even have to be deserved.

----
Excerpted from my forthcoming book, A Believer in Waiting's First Encounters with God.

Contemplation V

Long before I knew anything about God, during my prime days of atheism, I learned how to empty myself in ways that would one day open me up for being filled by God through infused contemplation. What caused this learning to happen? Migraines! Seriously!


In 1980, I broke my back. How that occurred was far from exotic, in fact, about as mundane a happening as it could possibly be: while hurrying to get a pair of socks for my three-year-old son Shane in order to get him dressed and to day care on time, I fell down a flight of stairs. The drama of getting to the hospital instead of going to work that day would take an entire post or maybe even more than one installment so I shall leave that information for another day and another venue. Instead, I will explain what happened afterward.

Once I was out of the body brace and back to work, I found myself plagued my migraines. Debilitating headaches, usually preceded by an aura of approaching illness that I could not avoid, they forced me into bed sometimes for more than a day. With four children, a job, and graduate school, not to mention my volunteer activities as an outdoors counselor for the Girl Scouts, I simply could not afford this much time away from life. Yet, the more I forced myself to move beyond them, the more they pulled me back.

I sought help from a doctor who was surprised, given my history of motion sickness stemming from infancy, that I had not experienced migraines much earlier. The onset of the migraines at this time he considered to be post-traumatic; they were intensified, I found through monitoring my daily behavior, by one of my favorite self-rewards, a chocolate bar. I gave up chocolate, which would nearly immediately produce a migraine and still does, but the migraines continued to plague me. Chocolate simply made them appear for certain. The doctor came up with some medicine that was supposed to be effective post-aura. However, I suddenly did not need it.
Before taking in the prescription, I had a few more mirgraines and noticed something peculiar about them. The more I tried to ignore them, the stronger they became. The more I thought about them, the stronger they became. The more I tried to work through and past them, the stronger they became. On the other hand, the more I gave in to them, embraced them, accepted them, and stopped thinking about anything at all, just relaxing into the migraine, the weaker they became. Perhaps “relaxing” is not the precise word any more than it is the most appropriate word to describe “relaxing” into labor pains or the pain that accompanies root canals without anesthesia. But you get the picture – one goes with the pain in these cases, not against it.

As one migraine came after another, the time I needed to give in to each became shorter. I noticed that as I was giving into the pain, I was not thinking about much of anything. I was simply in a state of being; the pain was around me, I was in it and part of it but not doing much about it. Eventually, quickly actually, I learned how to put myself into that being, not-doing, not-thinking state instantly upon the first threat of an aura; I did not have to wait for the migraine to appear. Within seconds, the aura would disappear and the migraine would not come. The doctor called it biofeedback. I called it emptying my mind. Shutting down my thinking and just being in the moment has given me 30 migraine-free years. The momentary shutdown is never noticed by anyone I am with at the time because it literally requires less than two seconds to rebalance my system – I am no doctor but I have studied the research available on migraines and believe that what is happening is that normal blood flow is restored by my autonomous system during those couple seconds.
Similarly, I stumbled upon a wonderful application of this ability to empty my mind to contemplation. When my mind is empty, there is room for God to enter completely, fully, infusively. I cannot meditate; I have tried. Meditation fills my mind, and no sooner than I start trying to fill it than I feel removed from God. So, my soul, which seems at times to operate independently of my brain, takes over and shuts down my mind, allowing me to enter that non-thinking, non-acting, just-being state where I can simply “relax” into God and God can “relax” into me. There is no pain in this kind of relaxing into another state, just peace and comfort. I think this is what the mystics have labeled contemplation. At least, it is what happens when I take time out for contemplation.

Contemplation is a special kind of mind emptying for me. I suppose it is nigh onto sacrilegious to compare contemplation with migraine-reduction, but the experience of one did give me an understanding of the experience of the other. For that reason, I hope God will forgive me my dollop of sacrilege. With the migraine-related mind emptying, I experience only emptiness and after a few seconds re-emerge into a state of action, i.e. my daily life, which is more attractive than the empty state. In periods of contemplation, I experience fullness and even after many minutes, and, where I have the luxury of time, an hour or more, I avoid re-emergence into a state of action, which is less attractive than the empty-but-filled-and-fulfilled state. The first kind of emptying brings me relief, and every experience is reliably the same; the second kind of emptying brings bliss and its nature (and even sometimes its occurrence) is dependent on God and not upon me and differs each time.

I feel the insufficiency of my words to concretize the attributes of an extraordinary state that defies ordinary description. The mystics have tried and have certainly done a better job than I, but still when one talks with friends ab out contemplation, those who set aside daily time for contemplation, there is something so unique about each incident that the telling of it is different.

Jesus told his disciples not to tell of some of the out-of-the-ordinary things they experienced. I think the agreement by Biblical scholars is that if they told, they would not be understood and moreover they might misinterpret the experience. I worry about that whenever I write down the word, contemplation, whenever I consider preparing a post on that topic. I am past the point of concern that others might consider me insane, but I doubt that I will ever be past the point of concern that writing down my experience somehow vulgarizes and trivializes it. I write for my own sanity and recall and because, like David, I simply must sing God's praises in the only way I know how, using the gift He has given me: the written word.

Love

My mind boggles over the ways in which God can grow a loving relationship. I think I will never know or be able to understand the depths of God's love or anticipate new directions in which God will sometimes lead, sometimes push me tomorrow or the next day, whether those be directions of action or directions of emotion. Waking up this morning in God's embrace, I realized just how paltry are the understandings and set of emotions which I have developed over a lifetime, just how limited I am in the Presence of a limitless God, and just how wonderful it is to be loved by God. Well, maybe I don't yet know just wonderful that is because every waking with Him is more wonderful than the one before.

Every time that I fall sleep in contemplative union (or near union), always have asked for Presence during any dreams I might have (a petition that has recently replaced my earlier petition for Him to protect me from attacks of Evil, which in my early post-conversion days twice attacked me and from which I fled to God's protection), I do experience God's Presence in my dreams (at least, those I can remember in part when I wake up -- those I cannot remember, I assume have not been filled with Evil attacks, i.e. were not nightmares, because I did not wake up during the night and did not wake up disturbed but refreshed, which only the Presence of God could bring about). Something more happens on the mornings that follow the nights when I fall asleep still in contemplative union, which I have mentioned briefly in an earlier post: I wake up still embraced, as I did this morning, in an indescribably unbearable love.

That love is indescribable for it has no counterpart in my experience. It is the love for my children, spouse, parents, spouse, pets, friends, even self, all of which are different kinds of love, rolled up into one. And more. It is deeper, sweeter, and gentler than any love I have known or am able to give. It is a kind of special love for which human language (at least, the 17 human languages I know) have no words.

That love is unbearable because it is undeserved. I can think of dozens of ways in which I don't deserve that love, yet I deeply, deeply want this intimacy that goes beyond anything I have experienced on a human level, an intimacy that unnerves me for we react to human situations and feel greater or lesser comfort with them in accordance with cumulative experiences; those experiences prepare us for new variations on old themes. This intimacy, this level of love, this kind of love, though, is a new theme, not a variation on an old theme, and so I feel as confused as would a child encountering alone a new experience for the first time. Even though the occurrence of waking up wrapped in God's love has been becoming more frequent, each experience is still as the first time, so special is that love.

As a result, I strive to remain in that love; I will do anything for that love (perhaps that is why I get tasked sometimes, that and the fact that I often, perhaps because of my travels, am in the right place at the right time to provide the right help to the right person/people and just happen to be wiling to do that).

I am occasionally late to work (just by a few minutes) because it is so difficult to break away from such extraordinary. I do know that if I lock my office door and spend some time sitting with God at work, the love will be there again; really, it is with me constantly but all too often I am too preocuppied with being busy to notice it. So, knowing what lies ahead for the day, I sometimes selfishly take a few extra moments to stay embraced by God in the early morning before stepping out of bed and risk the consequences of arriving at work five or ten minutes late. Fortunately, no one has ever asked me why I am late. I am not sure how my explanation would be received!

Presence II

I had planned to write this post right before Doah ran smack into his current tribulation, so it got shelved in the wake of that trauma. We are now coming back to life, and so I thought it was time to share this rather unique experience, unique for me, anyway. The experience is a couple of weeks old now, had never happened to me before, and is still as fresh in my memory as if it happened only last night. As for the meaning, reason, or purpose of what happened, I have absolutely no idea. I will let you judge that. Personally, I think it was just a gift. At least, I accepted it as a gift because it was such an especially pleasant experience.

A couple of weeks ago, Donnie and I decided to go to the theater -- a very infrequent activity for us -- to watch the raved-about Inception, which did turn out to be an interesting and entertaining movie. Donnie bought the typical snack foods; I picked up a hot dog because I had not had a chance to eat earlier that day. I added to that order an icee. That was my nourishment for the day -- perhaps not the best, but at least not the worst that I could have chosen.

We settled into our seats, which were the best in the house. That was not a surprise since there were only a handful of people there, an unfortunate sign of our difficult economic times. The trailers of upcoming movies played through, and Inception started. By then, I had already finished my meal. I had been hungry enough to gulp down the icee and finish the hot dogs in three bites. I put down the empty containers and prepared to watch the movie.

As the movie progressed, I realized that I was only half-watching. For some reason, the longer I sat there, the stronger the presence of God became until, in spite of all the ambient noise around me, the movie by that time fuzzing out and turning into semi-ambient noise although I was following the plot. It seemed like we had a third person in the theater with us, and it remained that way throughout. It was the loveliest, most comforting feeling.

Although movies of this type usually get my adrenaline rushing, as they are meant to do, I felt nothing of the sort with this one. The longer I sat there together with God, the calmer I became even as the suspense and action in the movie was reaching a crescendo.

When we left the theater, I was very relaxed and calm, almost in a stupor. Like in the case of contemplative prayer, with which this experience had much in common, I did not want to leave, but, of course, I had to. The emotion of the experience remains with me, though. It was as if I was in two places at the same time, doing two things at the same time. It was contemplation (this sitting together with God) and action (the thrills of the movie) at the same time.

For me, the experience underscored that God is always with me; just sometimes I can sense God's presence more than other times. Perhaps it was meant to be a lesson to always have that in mind and now that even in the busiest moment I can communicate with God if I want to. Or perhaps it was simply a gift. I like to think that God just wants to give me a present of Himself upon occasion.

What do you think? Have you had similar experiences?

Sabbath

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

I have been observing the Sabbath on all my blogs, but I have not actually posted that information and and old post anywhere else except on 100th Lamb. However, it seems like perhaps a good idea to share that thought -- of taking the Sabbath off for God -- on all my blogs. Herewith, I am attaching an older post, in fact my very first past, on Modern Mysticism: Contemplation. Reading it, the sense of how hesitant I was to address a centuries old theme, along with aspects of theophanies and hierophanies, is clear. The readers of this blog, in sharing their own thoughts and experiences, have made me a bit braver in the sharing of these special experiences. In several cases, they have also helped me to understand them better and even to accept them with less trepidation and greater gratitude.

Have a restful and peaceful Sabbath!

Contemplation IV

I marvel at how contemplation, practiced faithfully, can, like nearly anything that is practiced faithfully, become routine. It used to be that each morning I would try to remain is a state of quiet prayer for 20-30 minutes before going to work. The hardest part was leaving that perfect moment to go busily about preparing to depart for work.

Not that God wasn't with me in the preparation. Of course, He was, and I felt His presence. It was just somehow different and somewhat less satisfying than spending lazy minutes together with Him. Being lazy with God is my favorite activity, yet one that find myself doing less often than more active activities. I do believe that God likes just as well those active activities that minister to His children and their needs as well as those moments of intense companionship for they glorify Him as well.

So, every morning I would try to allow enough time between waking and leaving to begin my day being lazy with God, and every evening before returning I would do the same. Day after day, even when traveling, although I have to admit that, especially when in travel status, there were days I would miss. ("Miss" I mean in all senses of that word.)

Then something extraordinary happened. I don't know when the change came, I just noticed it rather recently. I no longer had to plan this time or to remind myself to take the time. It just happened. It had become habit. At least, that's what my detail-oblivious mind first thought. Then I paid closer attention to what was happening.

The contemplative periods had moved away from my control. They were more than habitualized, autonomous responses to the ticking of a clock or the perception of a biorhythm. They were -- and are -- out of my control and under the control of God. For weeks now, I have been waking up a half-hour or more before the alarm is set to ring in a contemplative state, in the presence of God, and I have no real idea how long we have been being lazy together as morning takes over what might have been an all-night joint adventure for I do not remember my dreams or even the sense of having any since the night several years ago after being attacked by evil nightmares I begged God to stay with me as I slept and drive away all evil and protect me from these nightmares.

I still spend time in contemplation before retiring, but I have moved from chair to bed. I know the common wisdom is to stay in the chair so as not to fall asleep, but since I can fall asleep in any position, even standing, if tired, that advice helps me little. So, I go to bed while not tired so that I can spend time in contemplation and then fall asleep in the arms of God. I like to think those arms hold me all night, protecting me from the nightmares that have never returned and gently rock me awake in the morning to the joy of being in the presence of God. If so, to spend the entire night with a fraidy cat -- what remarkable patience, what incredible love!

Whatever the explanation -- I don't need to know why things happen anymore -- such a marvelous beginning to the day brings light and happiness to the rest of my day -- well, until some highly stressful, distressing event over which I have no control sends me to the nearest prayer place, i.e. any place I can be alone again with God, not to be lazy (I wish!) but to turn over matters I cannot manage to his control.

This condition I find myself in -- this walking with God, relaxing with God, and desperately looking for God when I stray -- became clear to me during a recent retreat. We were given specific instructions and time for contemplation, early morning and late evening not being among them, but God maintained the routine that He has established of greeting me in the morning and tucking me into bed at night. How much more blessed can anyone be, I wonder with gratitude so deep I don't know how to express it. The thing that makes the gratitude even sweeter and deeper is that I don't have to know how to express it. I don't have to be able to find all the right words and actions. God knows fully that which I can express only in part. Ah, yes, that is how much more one can be blessed. God's blessings are depthless, boundless, and, oh, so fortunately, endless. And they do not even have to be deserved.

Selfishness

I did something on Sunday which shames me to share, but since I did it, there must an admitting of it. At the end of our contemplative retreat, each person took turns sharing what was uppermost in his or her mind, particularly in connection with experiences, thoughts, and emotions emanating from the retreat itself. Personally, I felt quite blessed that I was able to be there. There was some doubt about that initially. (See post, Spoiled.) I needed that extra time with God to reach quietude about a pending work assignment.

During the retreat, I thought a lot about that assignment. It is considered dangerous, more than just moderately so, and considerably higher than simply risky. (We actually have a rating scale for our more unusual assignments if you can believe that!) I am having to acquire a new skill, which will be the only protection I have; it is coming far more rapidly than it should. That leads me to believe that God either wants me to follow through on this assignment or is giving me an unusual ability to acquire this skill in order to protect me. (In my better moments, I am fully confident that He will indeed protect me and I have no fear; in my weaker moments, I do have fear. I know that this does not come from God, but I have it anyway.)

It is troubling that the assignment comes from my higher ups (beyond my immediate supervisor) and that I, in essence, volunteered for it but don't know what God's will might be in the matter. I usually have a good sense of that. God spoils me that way. This time I do not, and I do not know how to handle it, except to keep going in the direction and I am going, assuming that God will steer me where He wants me to go. I have asked Him to close the door if He does not want me to do this. I have also asked Him to close all others and open wide this door if it is the one He wants me to walk through. God is good with using those doors to push me in the right direction. (See post, The Jobs God Would Not Let Me Have, And The One He Made Me Take And Keep.)

At the end of the retreat, then, as we were sharing with each other, I told the group something about my new, hopefully one-time, assignment (which I am reluctant to describe here because the Internet is a very open place -- I will give details when done), described my worry that God just might want me to do the most dangerous part of it and how I just might not want to follow His will in this (but, of course, I will). I asked for their prayers.

How selfish! There are four other groups involved in this assignment, not just me. There will be one colleague at each juncture (a different one), another group of colleagues, a group of uninvolved people who could be innocently hurt but probably won't be, and a group opposed known for their violence. We will all be together in one location. I will be involved only for three weeks; my colleagues will be involved for a year. I, however, am the only one who will have no protection except for the grace of God. (Oh, wait a minute; there is no better protection!) The shameful part of my sharing on Sunday is that I did not ask for prayers for all those others, including the "enemies." I, who have lived in the lands of enemies literally off and on for 25 years, forgot to ask for prayers for my enemies! And for my colleagues/friends/acquaintances!

How small and mean is man, even that man who loves and tries to serve the Lord! No matter how we try, in a crisis those of us who are merely ordinary people still put our own needs first. May God have mercy on us -- and on our enemies!

I have since reconciled this weakness of mine with God, at least for now, for surely I will sin again. I have asked God to convert every prayer He receives on my behalf to two prayers each for my colleagues and enemies. Would you pray for them? As for me, God will take care of me even without the asking. God always does.

Touch II

At a contemplative retreat on Franciscan spirituality that I attended this weekend, during a period of contemplative prayer I felt a touch, strong and affectionate. (This occurs from time to time -- see post Touch. I tried to describe it, unsuccessfully, to a fellow retreatant, so I am not sure I will do a good job in describing it in this post; hopefully, others who are reading this blog have had some experience with this phenomenon.)

This brought me immediately out of my contemplative state. Although it probably was not particularly what God wanted, I am sure He knows me well enough to know what would happen. It always does when I feel a touch from Him other than a pat on the head. The pats come frequently enough that I am used to them although the first few times they as well startled me.

Over time, I will likely get used to the touches. While I accept them philosophically and emotionally, the reaction is exclusively and most likely a result of years of childhood sexual molestation. I have been told that I am an emotional fortress, and that is likely true as I have never as an adult received unwanted sexual advances -- and I do think I am so ugly as to terrify all men. On the other hand, I am simply not interested in extramarital sex. I have plenty of other things with which to occupy my time and plenty of other ways to complicate my life. That attitude probably exudes in ways of which I am unaware.

Still, it is sad (or so it seems to me) to think that my grandfather (if you really want the gory details, see my post, Pop, on Mahlou Musings) could taint my relationship with God. Any way in which he tainted my worldly life represents but a bump in the road, and I have long ago forgiven him that bump. Worldly things matter little to me. A spiritual taint, on the other hand, means everything to me.

Fortunately, God understands. Even more fortunately, I do not have to overcome my unwarranted reaction by myself. God will help. I know that, and so when it happens that God's touch startles me from a contemplative state, I note that it has happened again -- sigh! -- and return to prayer, turning myself over to God as absolutely as possible. I know that God is patient and with time will bring me into a more perfect union with Him. SO, too, can I be patient, looking forward to that end with joy in the waiting.

Spoiled

(Note: This post follows on from the previous post, Arrogance.)
Looking back on that awful day and what I had done and felt, I should have been punished. Instead, a loving God brought me home to San Ignatio, back to Him in every meaning of that phrase, back to where I belong, where nothing of the material world matters. Now, too, I could look forward to being on time two days later for the retreat being led by Fr. Kevin, who also leads a contemplative-prayer-for-busy-people group in San Jose that I have participated in for nearly two years now. I would have had to arrive late because of returning from out of state.

I took the next day off from work -- I was owed comp time -- to be with God now that I was back in a spiritual environment. What a marvelous day that turned out to be!

The first thing after I arose (later than normal, yes!) I checked my email. Astonished, I read one note twice. It was the cancellation of a mandatory meeting on Friday, the second day of the retreat. I had worked it out with Fr. Kevin that it would be okay to miss Friday because of that meeting. Now I would have no distractions during the retreat!

A short while later, I attended noon Mass in the little chapel, celebrated by Fr. Paul on his last day in our community before returning home to Nigeria. Still reeling perhaps from my out-of-control behavior on Monday, I felt so very unworthy to be there and at the same time so loved. As I stood in line for communion, I could not keep the tears from pooling in my eyes, and I did not care if anyone saw them; we are all friends and all God's children.

Following Mass, two friends (one of them the person who assisted the priest in my RCIA class) asked me to join them for the rosary, after which we went out for cookies and milk. (I admit it; milk has always been my favorite drink.)

During our milk-and-cookie fest, I told my friends about my plaintive prayer, in which I bemoaned my separation from San Ignatio and loss of a sense of God's presence in the past few day's tumult, and how everything had suddenly worked out for me to spend the entire rest of the week with Him. One of my friends reiterated what a Sufi friend told me several years ago, word for word: "God spoils you."

Indeed, He does! And I am so very grateful!

Humility III

God comes to me most frequently in the humble moments of my life. In the early morning and late evening when I take some moments (far too few) for contemplation. In the early evening, when I take a walk around my beloved San Ignatio or on Old Mission grounds (those times are too few, too). Sometimes, more often than not, actually, when I am driving, especially when I am thinking about Him but just as often when I am not, when I am simply trying to drive within the lines, a skill I extrapolated from learning to color within the lines when I was in kindergarten and not one that comes naturally to someone who learned first to drive a tractor in the wide open farm fields.

He comes to me even at meetings when I let my mind focus on Him. I have been blessed with the ability to multi-task although once when I was called upon by my boss's boss to explain something at very important high-level meeting, I had to admit to not being present in his, the boss's moment. I probably could have admitted that I was present, instead, in His moment because that individual had strong faith, but, a coward at the moment, I simply said that I had been "distant" for a moment. The "big boss" could have become angry but instead he laughed and said, "clearly, very distant." Another time I drove this same boss to prayer when he misunderstand something that had happened and truly was angry with me but did not want to show it; he entered the meeting room, sat down, and while everyone waited, prayed himself into calmness. Would that more do the same! Oh, yes, I love it when God attends meetings with me, when I can feel His presence in the room with me, whether I am leading them or attending them. There was even a time that a prayer resulted in intercession in what could have been a very awkward and uncomfortable meeting.

At the proud moments, though, I find God missing. Actually, I don't find God at all in them because I am not looking for Him. I am looking at myself. Those are empty moments. The fulfilling ones are when I look for -- and find -- God right there with me.

Relationship

Sometimes contemplation can be so intimate that I instantly pull away. Often, when I get a sense of impeding extreme closeness, I instinctively start chattering. It is at that point that I often feel a subtle pressure on my lips, sealing them against the chatter. Then, I put up all manner of personal boundaries, in lieu of the chatter, to avoid intimacy beyond my comfort zone. On one level, I want the intimacy and am drawn to it; on the other hand, I find myself instinctively backing off from what I want. I wonder how others are able simply to accept.

For the most part, I understand where these boundaries come from although that understanding does not necessarily help me to avoid putting them up at the very next opportunity.

- We teach our kids to set and respect boundaries. Boundaries are very important to Americans. So, is it any surprise that I would instinctively set up boundaries with God? (I don't want to, but habit is so strong...);

- Then there is touch. We are taught not to touch. Managers, especially, are taught not only to be careful about touch (oh, do I violate that restriction often) but also to know in depth all the EEO regulations (the ones I violate on a regular basis);

- Personal violations that I have experienced -- physical and sexual abuse -- make it difficult to remove the boundaries and certainly difficult not set them up in the first place.

When I am conscious of my own thought, I pull back the most strongly and/or establish the thickest boundaries. Perhaps that is why meditation is nigh onto impossible for me. I am conscious of what is going on in my mind as well as, to a lesser extent, in my environment. Likewise, perhaps that is why contemplation, over which I have little control (no thinking involved at all), is easier for me and more meaningful to me. Communication with God and relationship building happens for me only when I am unaware and unsuspecting, when I have no conscious thought, when everything depends on God and nothing on me.

Recently, in a moment of feeling guilty about my self-established barriers, I asked God, “What kind of relationship do you want me to have with you?” In response, I felt a touch on my hand, then felt myself being drawn very tenderly, very closely into a figure without limits that I can only describe as pure love transparently embodied. I was instantly enveloped in a depthless embrace that moved me to tears.

What an offering! What a promise! I am highly grateful for it, so why can I not simply accept it? Why, at the last minute, do I often pull away? I wish it weren't so, but God had a lot of work yet to do on me so that I can simply accept in full (rather than in part) the depthless, boundless love that He offers.

Voice VII

In the early days after my conversion, I received what seemed to me to be a very strange locution, one I do not understand to this day. Perhaps someone reading this will have some insight into the meaning of it, or, for that matter, the authenticity of it.

To understand any part of it, though, I will need to go back to more than a year before my conversion. At that point, I had spent nearly two years living and working in Jordan as the chief academic officer of an American university there. I had, in fact, no counterpart chief administrative officer, and so I took on that set of roles, too, until one arrived 18 months later. Although I enjoyed the job—especially the faculty, staff, and students, there were complications in carrying out my instructions from the home office because it was difficult to determine what constituted the “home office” on any particular occasion. It could be the local umbrella university to which we were attached; that president was my local supervisor. It could be the Middle East administrator; that person was my supervisor when it came to admin decisions. It could be the New York main campus vice president; that person was my supervisor when it came to academic decisions. Unfortunately, some decisions overlapped in nature, and all three supervisors rarely agreed. In fact, there was a good deal of jockeying for position among them, and I would often be left to commonsense in implementing whatever decision seemed to be best for the faculty, staff, and students. Always that decision met accreditation standards and so typically met with the approval of the academic vice president. Often, however, that decision was not particularly palatable to Dr. Abdullah, the Middle East administrator, who, by the way, held only an honorary doctorate and whose primary goal was to make money for the institute and for himself, regardless of whom might suffer. So, while he and I enjoyed an unusually cordial relationship, given the acerbic relationship he has had with my predecessors and successors, there were times that I needed to use all my wiles—female, younger, American, cross-cultural-chameleon, whatever ones I could muster—to placate him, hold him back from ripping into staff who were trying their best to do their job, and sweet-talk or logic him, as the case may have been, into retaining a deserved soul whom he intended to fire for a fleeting and unintended offense. More than holding him back, many times I had to push him forward—to pay people what they had earned or reimburse what they had spent. The tugs-of-war over these issues never ended, from the day arrived until the day I left.

This attitude of self-love and profit at the sake of any other person permeated everything he decided, did, and did not do eleven months of the year. During Ramadan, however, he splashed money onto the community, feeding the poor in large numbers (quite a manageable act for a multibillionaire as he was), and making a tremendously public show of charity in the name of the university. He himself spent Ramadan on omra (pilgrimage), in addition to making hajj before every Eid al-Adha.

Hajj is the at-least-once-in-a lifetime pilgrimage to Mekkah required of all Muslims who can afford it. Dr. Abdullah made hajj every year, seeming to understand this act in a way similar to which some young Catholic children understand confession: confession sets you free to sin again, enjoying a clean record against which to work until the next confession comes along to clean up your new dirtiness. In this way, it seemed, Dr. Abdullah believed that he could “buy” salvation by spending money once a year on the poor that he took from them during the rest of the year and making a pilgrimage to clean up his "dirt" before doing so.

When Eid al-Fitr (known as “little Eid” because it is only three days long) approached at the end of Ramadan, he would appear in Amman to celebrate in great joy. There were smiles all around, parties the likes that none of us working souls would likely see in any other context, and gifts for many. The same was true for Eid al-Adha (the week-long “big Eid”). My first Eid corresponded with my birthday, and Dr. Abdullah handed over the keys to a car, his birthday/Eid gift to me and arranged for a celebration with 75 leading university staff and townfolk in one of the most lavish restaurants in town.

That was the dual nature of Dr. Abdullah, and one never knew which side he would show. I fared well. I always had his smiles, and when he was about to mutilate one or another employee, I would be able to draw him away long enough on some trumped-up emergency to elicit his smiles again, not just for me but, more important, for those he intended to harm.

And so it went, more or less on an even keel, thanks to my ability to elicit his smiles that usually, although not always, prevented little worse from happening than the failure to pay people for their work. I constantly fought with him over that, including a $30K debt he owed me. I advanced a hefty portion of my salary one semester, based on Dr. Abdullah’s promise to reimburse me, to buy all the student textbooks because the bookstore would not order books until Dr. Abdullah had paid them the $75K debt he owed them. (He had sold the books and retained the money.) I should have been wise enough to know that he might do the same thing to me. He did. The rest of the year I scrimped and scraped to get by on the little that was left of my salary. (Fortunately, at that time in Jordan, before the Iraqi financial invasion, one could live on very little.)

When I left the university, Dr. Abdullah still owed me the $30K. He still does. At one point after I left, I wrote to him, suggesting that if he had any conscience at all, that if the purification of his soul that was supposed to take place during omra and hajj really did occur and he felt both guilty for not reimbursing the $30K yet awkward for any reason about returning the money directly to me, he could donate the amount, in his own name if he preferred, to the Middle East Institute of Special Education, which, as a new, unusual-for-Jordan-at-that-time, and struggling institute, could really use the money. Returning the money to me would indeed have been awkward for him since he was angry with me for considering taking a job in California. In a purely Arab way, he understood any discussion with a potential employer to be an indication of disloyalty. His negative reaction to the potential other-job situation propelled itself to heights higher than normal because I was a woman, in fact, the only woman he had ever trusted, and he had told this to anyone and everyone, saying that his level of trust in me surprised even him because, as everyone knows, women really are not capable of competing successfully with men, a rampant belief in the Middle East.

And so, one evening, a year later, with all of this in the background, I found myself walking around Old Mission, as I did so frequently in the early days after my conversion and thinking about Dr. Abdullah for no particular reason other than that he came to mind. He had been a significant figure in my life in the most recent two-year period, so, not surprisingly, I thought about him on more than one occasion. I prayed for him, as well. After all, it seemed to me that he needed prayer in order to move from the rules and regulations of religion and an impersonal God to a love-based spirituality and an immanent God. I wanted him to be able to feel the kinds of love, acceptance, and forgiveness I had felt and to be able to pass them along as I had been trying to let them flow through me and splash out onto others. How different his life could be!

That particular evening was probably the third or fourth occasion that I had prayed for Dr. Abdullah. I was getting ready to wax eloquent about the matter when I was startled by that Voice that always catches me by surprise and often completely confuses me. This time the confusion has outlasted and outranked other confusions, and to this day I do not know how to interpret what I was told. “Do not pray for him,” I heard.

This made no sense to me, and I am still unsure which “side” the instruction came from. I felt like I could not continue to pray for someone for whom I had been commanded not to pray. But was it God’s voice? Even while I accept that it is okay if God chooses not to provide greater clarity to me, I have a difficult-to-repress, almost seething, desire to determine authenticity. I just don’t always know for sure what is real and what is not. In this case, as in similar cases where I just do not know, I balanced benefit against harm, good against evil, and scripture against non-scripture and could not find a good reason not to follow these instructions. So, I ceased that particular prayer though I did not and do not understand why I should.

I told the story to a friend who is a Protestant minister. She told me not to worry about authenticity and simply stop praying for him. She would do that for me. I hope that is okay. I assume if it is not, she will find out in time.

Contemplation III

Nighttime is the sweetest part of the day for me. I fall into a delicious bed after a supercharged day and let the battery totally drain. Time for prayer! That is the reason for the sweetness. Not that I haven't prayed throughout the day. Indeed, I have. Some days I pray very consciously. Other days I "pray" more frequently simply by taking notice of God's presence and sharing my life and experiences of the moment with Him as one would with Someone who is one's best friend, parent, and lover all rolled into one Entity.

At night, as in the early morning, though, my attention is undivided. Also, unlike during the day when I alternate please for guidance with exclamations of gratitude, I have little to say at night.

In fact, I usually feel like I am cheating in some way. Instead of a litany of formal prayers that I have yet to learn well enough to pronounce all by myself, I simply enunciate words of gratitude, ask for grace and mercy for those for whom I have promised (or feel prompted) to pray, beg briefly for my dreams to center only on good and on God, and then fall silent, relaxing in God's pervasive presence, sinking into His soft love, like a long-married couple gently swinging together on the porch as the night settles around them.

From that quick-to-arrive point of profound comfort, I turn all communication and its direction over to God. I become a listener.

As much as I would like to stay awake forever, held in that merciful and loving embrace, I inexorably drift into sleep like a gently rocked baby immersed in a lullaby.

Yes, I do feel like I am cheating. I don't intone any mantra to induce a state of meditation but slip easily into a contemplative state by letting God do all the work. I don't sit in the "right" position that I have been taught; typically, I don't sit at all. I don't spend specific amounts of time doing specific things or saying specific prayers. Proper or not, the end of my day has arrived, and with my battery (and duties) discharged, I don't want to be in control of anything, even myself. So whether or not I am cheating, not following "the system" or "breaking the rules," on some level I don't care. If God wants me to follow the rules, I assume He will let me know what those rules are. Until He does, I intend selfishly to let God do all the work and just rest/sleep at His feet.

Is that really cheating? Am I too presumptious of the love and mercy that God gives regardless of my deserving it? (I guess that is what grace is all about.) Should I, though, be doing more? Oh, the unanswered questions!

(In a moment of contemplation, I felt led to write this post. I wonder if I will find out why -- or if I have written well enough to find out why. Or if it was an exercise to get me to consider these thoughts. Oh, the unanswered questions!)

Contemplation II

For the past year or more, I have been attending a contemplative prayer group in San Jose, directed by Fr. Kevin Joyce. It is a considerable drive (nearly an hour one way) but well worth the time and effort. I take a friend with me from our local Old Mission prayer group, so the to-and-fro time is pleasantly passed.

Last year, when Fr. Kevin was at Santa Clara University, there were only a handful of us. This year, though, he has become parish priest at St. Lucy's in Campbell, and that has yielded an attendance at times of 60-100 people. Once, there were so many of us, we had to use the church instead of one of the religious education rooms. What amazes me is Fr. Kevin's ability to create silence and reverence in such a large group of people. He combines prayer itself with study. (Yes, it is possible to be contemplative in a very large group; after all, God, who is stranger than we can possibly imagine and whom we are not required, fortunately, to understand fully, is quite able to interact with individuals individually throughout the whole world simultaneously. Now, there's something that is very difficult to get a human mind wrapped around!) What we study with Fr. Kevin are the mystics and the history of mysticism. All of this has been very educational for me, yet there is much I still do not understand, seemingly really important things that, in my personal experience, stray from the historical path as we know it.

Perhaps it might help to understand my mindset if I were to share that the very first spiritual book I read (even before getting involved in Bible reading and study) was a one-volume combined set of The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling. I loved those two books, the second even more than the first. I carried the volume with me. I read and re-read it. It explained so much of what had been happening to me. It also let me know that it was okay not to understand everything; in fact, that there was no need to seek to understand everything. For someone with a Ph.D., not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. For someone with a flair for foreign languages -- I have studied 17, but I can communicate in (or at least understand) a far larger number than that, my life's focus having been on understanding foreign cultures, foreign words, foreign behaviors -- not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. As a former teacher, where my goal was to teach others to understand, not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. Having been raised in the West, where the emphasis is on reason (maybe even I should write that with a capital R, since we seem to worship Reason), not needing to understand everything was counterintuitive. So, it was very difficult for me to push aside my attachment to logic and accept the idea that it is okay not to understand. I carried around The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling as a security blanket for more than a year after my conversion. They are still my favorite spiritual books, especially the latter, although I have now read many more and realize that I probably chose those among the most difficult as my entré to spiritual reading. (The volume just fell under my hand, as the Russians say, so it could be that the books chose me and not the other way around.)

In any event, the experiences that led me to conversion and those that followed me during the immediate weeks and months after conversion reflected in the most minute detail those experiences described in The Book of Privy Counseling. Over time, I have come to realize that my experiences are not common among my peers (at least, the local ones) in the 21st century, and I have begun seeking out others who do have them. (Actually, that search prompted this blog site.) With time, I have been rewarded in that search, finding others who share those experiences and a priest, my beloved Fr. Barry (unfortunately, recently transferred to an assignment 100 miles away), who can help me interpret what I consider unusual experiences but which he, at the age of 82, has seen more than once. (There is no question in my mind that God plunked me down at Old Mission Church in part precisely because I would need Fr. Barry.)

Now, back to Fr. Kevin. As a mechanism for initiating a contemplative state, Fr. Keving taught us the Jesus prayer. Up until that time, I had not used (or needed) any "mantra" for connecting to God. It just happened. God made it happen. In The Cloud of Unknowing and especially in The Book of Privy Counseling, the unknown author (I love the fact that the author is also "unknown") tells that the old mystics, the Egyptian desert fathers, would sometimes repeat "God," "Lord," or a similar word to initiate contemplation, so I understood why Fr. Kevin taught us the Jesus prayer. However, for me it felt odd because I had never needed to call. (My friend, Omar, poet of spiritual and philosophical verse in Arabic and English, professor of political science, and Sufi mystic, has repeatedly told me, "God spoils you." Usually, he is referring to some problem that God has whisked away, but in the case of contemplation, I think God also spoils me. In any moment of quiet, there I have nearly always found God in an overwhelmingly present way.)

However "odd" it might have been for me personally, I dutifully followed Fr. Kevin's instructions the next morning, which I began with some time in contemplation as I begin every morning. Contemplation is less a choice for me than something that just happens seemingly often without deliberate volition. So, I began the Jesus prayer and was immediately startled (locutions never fail to startle me) by the words, "Why do you call me? I am here."

Oh, my, yes, I know that God is with me. I feel it throughout the day from morning to night -- more deeply when I take time for prayer or contemplation, but always at least peripherally in my senses as a comfortable companion and guide, except for those times that I focus intently on some activity that excludes God. (Sometimes, admittedly, I exclude God deliberately, at least subconsciously so, because I want to do what I am doing and don't want to think that maybe God would want me to do something else or do it differently -- that kind of behavior keeps me going to confession!)

So, following the locution that morning, I am back to being confused. If I know that God is with me, if I can feel His presence in every fiber of my being and the expansive atmosphere around me, why, indeed, do I need to call Him? Well, there's a question for Fr. Kevin after our next meeting, with whom I have not before sought personal contact because he lives too far away for me to "drop by." I could bring up the question during our sessions but cannot bring myself to share publicly with a group of 60 people, most of whom I do not know or barely know. I hope that Fr. Kevin will not be mobbed by people (my country girl origins make me instinctively shy away from crowds) or have to serve Mass after our next meeting since the last four months have been that way, and the last four months I have remained in a state of confusion. On the other hand, confusion is becoming a comfortable state for me -- I don't know whether that is good or bad; it just is.

So, folks, what do you think? Any answers or thoughts for me before May 2, which is the next time I will see Fr. Kevin?

Stupor

On a recent afternoon, I spent time praying with friends for common concerns and people in need of God's intercession, as well as for kind mercies. As I looked up from what turned out to be only our first round of petitions, I met the eyes of the woman across from me. They looked like I felt: drunk.

I can begin to understand (or at least feel) what my alcoholic friends and relatives (now sober or not) appear to have experienced -- an overpowering pull toward the bottle. For me, it is the power of the bottle of prayer.

There is something about the sweetness of prayer that induces in me a kind of stupor. For some reason, I have not spoken of it to others (yet perhaps I should). I wonder if they, too, have felt it. If I were to judge by the eyes of some of my prayer partners, I would hazard a positive answer to that question. With one friend who is a frequent dinner partner, for example, we often cannot speak for a few minutes after saying a heartfelt grace. It is indeed akin to being under the influence, but in this case it is the influence of the all-consuming presence of God.

Similarly, I find more and more often now that I simply do not want to step away from contemplation, from that sense of union, from being part of something far greater than anything of this earth, from sifting into the presence of a loving God. I belong to a contemplative prayer group, and when Fr. Kevin pulls us out of contemplation back into a social environment, I increasingly feel immense resistance. I don't want Fr. Kevin, as good as he is and has much as I love and admire him. I want God. I want to stay in contemplation without any regard for the world around me.

When I am home, it is possible to remain in contemplation for longer than I plan although it has happened that I have ended up late at work as a result. How then does one balance an earthly life and job (a job, in fact, which God insisted I take and keep) and the desire to spend ever more time with God? How do you, dear blog readers, do it? At times, I envy those who have been called to a contemplative life or who do not have to work or have intervening responsibilities that would would pull them away from contemplation at length. Then, I remember that God put me in my job and that in it I have already had many opportunities to help Him help others -- and it is an interesting, rewarding job. He chose well for me. I love what I do, and I love that He is there with me all the time and makes a difference for many people.

So, I am back to my original question. How does one balance the spiritual life against the secular life. Spiritualize earthly experiences? My workplace does seem to be becoming very spiritual. God is not only present with me but also with many of my employees, especially the senior managers who work directly for me. God is there not just in our personal beliefs, but in our conversations, in our decisions -- I am extremely pleased from time to time when a senior manager decides to break a rule for the benefit of an employee. I am extremely pleased that I can use spiritual leadership guidance, in particular servant leadership, in developing new and junior leaders. I am extraordinarily pleased to see my once secularly oriented boss now occasionally do the same. Perhaps that is why God wanted me in that job, so that He could make these kinds of changes there. Perhaps there is a different reason that I will come to know or never know. Why God wanted where I am does not matter. He wanted it, and I am here. That matters. And so, again, I am left with the question of balance.

But perhaps I am not seeing clearly. Perhaps I do have it without seeing it for even if I have to end a session of contemplation before I feel ready and even if there is no time for anything except a snatch of prayer here and there during the day, perhaps as short as one word, "Help!", I can feel God with me all the time. So can the senior managers. I think we are all, using Brother Lawrence's term, practicing the presence of God, and that should be sufficient.

But again, and finally, I will raise the question to you. What are your experiences? Successes? Frustrations? Solutions?

Intimacy

I post here on Modern Mysticism far less frequently than on my other blogs, especially Blest Atheist, which I try to keep up with near daily. Here, unless I feel an external compulsion, I hesitate to add a post because I often feel that I am in over my head. I don't completely understand the mystic phenomena that I experience or live within, nearly always being surrounded by a diaphanous cloud that is, to me, the Presence of God. I feel like I need to reflect upon what happens, but reflection does not take me very far. The more I try to understand, the more I simply get pulled into the diaphanous ether without explanation but with such a warm feeling of love, of being "home"," of safety, and of mutual desire, that I instinctively stop thinking and just start "being." I try to learn more through reading, but it appears that God reacts with each author and each person differently so I have not, to date, found a complete match. I talk to the people in my spiritual circles -- God has blessed me with many -- but most think I need to be medicated (and these are spiritual people; if I were to mention these experiences to the rank-and-file on the street, I probably would be hauled off and medicated). I occasionally come across individuals who have had similar experiences (but not identical; as with the authors I read, it appears that God more often prefers unique, rather than common, experiences, at least with me and the people I know). I do thank God for putting these folks (whom I had not known earlier) in my life. It is enough, then, for me not to pronounce myself definitively crazy.

Just to make sure, I suppose, because I am such a hard-headed person, God gave me a couple of very special priests, with whom I can discuss mystic events and be taken seriously, even helped, in some cases, to determine authenticity, which is a very important thing to me. I also read and re-read and re-read both St. Theresa of Avila's works on authenticity and Fr. Thomas Dubay's wonderful book by the same title, Authenticity. Fr. Thomas Dubay's book helped me understand that I was not rejecting God by seeking to determine whether what I experience is real or not real. In fact, he suggests that all mystic happenings be treated as questionable until they can be examined together with a priest. Thank God, I have two who will do that with me, one of whom, Fr. Barry, is local and ready to listen and reflect at any time, the other of whom, Fr. Kevin, is a bit of a drive away but conducts the contemplative prayer sessions that I find so mathemagenic and formative.

I was in the midst of contemplative prayer, albeit more distracted than usual, this morning when I felt compelled to write this post. I thought (moment of distraction during the prayer) that I would write it after the 20 minutes that I had set aside for contemplation had passed. (Whoa! Note the arrogance! I had decided how much time I would spend in contemplation with God. Should it not have been the other way around? I mean, I do have to plan around a busy life, don't I? Ah, there is that arrogance again -- I should not be too busy for God; I should be grateful that God is never too busy for me. This is the second time this week this lesson has been dropped into my head, and I probably should heed it.)

Anyway, the more I tried to stay within a contemplative frame, the more I felt compelled to write this post. Finally, I decided that perhaps God was sending a message to his hard-headed lover and that I should just get up and obey. (If it was not a message, then no harm done, either.)

The topic I felt compelled to discuss is "intimacy" -- not intimacy with other people, but intimacy with God, a concept I would have laughed at a few years ago before my conversion. I have since met many people who would laugh at it now. I do not laugh at it now because I have experienced it. Describing it, though, is something for which I fear I do not have adequate words. Simply put, I experience it as the Presence Without joining the Presence Within. It is as if I am surrounded by a Diaphanous Cloud that all of a sudden I realize is no longer outside me but within and throughout and all around me, sort of like walking into a big, penetrating bubble, but I did not do the moving. At the risk of raising some eyebrows at my choice of comparative metaphor, I would say that this experience for me approximates the intimacy of sex without the involvement of the sexual organs but rather reflects those aspects that for one brief moment in time allow two people to become one. I wish I could describe this gift of intimacy in a purer fashion because it is a purer experience than I am describing here, perhaps than I am capable of describing.

Since I cannot do better at description than the above, I am going to retire from this post to read more and to research more. Oh, and to give God access to me whenever He wants it!

And you?

Contemplation

I am not qualified to write about anything theological. I am neither a theologian nor a religious. Nor am I learned in the ways of God. (I wish!) I am writing only in obedience to a perceived prompting. If I am wrong, then I will be writing nonsense. If I am right, then perhaps I will write something of value to someone.

My knowledge of prayer has grown in the few years since I became a believer and converted to Catholicism. I now understand that most theologians consider that facility in "ordinary" prayer said aloud or silently (repentance, petition, thanksgiving, and praise) precedes the development of meditation which precedes the development of contemplation. In other words, over a long period of time we work toward ever greater intimacy with God in our prayer life. Weird (and perhaps unbelievable) as it may be, my prayer life began with contemplation – two full weeks of nearly nonstop contemplation, actually, thrust upon me. That was all I knew about prayer until I joined the Catholic Church and learned that most other people’s experiences with prayer significantly differed from mine. Well, that’s God for you. He does not necessarily feel bound to follow any particular rules or to interact with two different people in the same way.

Perhaps because I began with contemplation, I am most comfortable with that form of prayer. I have never been able to learn how to meditate, and perhaps that really is not necessary, given that it is considered a step toward contemplation. I have learned the more ordinary forms of prayer, but even now, given the passage of more than three years (yeah, I know, not much in the grander scheme of things), I prefer to “be still” with God and let God direct the communication (that communication is much wiser and more satisfying). When I don’t, when I start chattering away, I sometimes feel a divine finger against my lips, and of course I immediately hush so that a communication of greater value can transpire.

Recently, I joined a contemplative prayer group that meets once a month. It is directed by a priest (yes, another priest in my priest-panoplied life – they each seem to bring something different and important, and I would not give up a relationship with any of them). At one meeting, however, the contemplative prayer priest was not present, but someone quite special was: a homeless-looking lady whom we all initially thought had wandered into our meeting by mistake, who later revealed to me in a paired discussion that she was dying of cancer, took on the features of Christ during our contemplative prayer (I suppose she was simply reflecting that God-seed that is in all of us), and then walked out (whispering to me to pray for her).

As I said in the beginning, I am the last person who should be writing about prayer. I am not wise. I am not a long-time believer. I am not a theologian or otherwise educated in religious matters. I know little more than what I learn through direct experience, reading (e.g., Authenticity by Fr. Dubay, the works of St. Theresa of Avila, and the Book of Privy Counseling), research, interactions with other believers, formation for my upcoming profession in the Secular Franciscan Order, and preparatory study as a catechist teaching questioning teenagers. Taken all together, it is only a minute fraction of what I would like to know, of what I thirst to learn. So, being in such a great state of unknowing, is it any wonder that contemplative prayer would appeal to me more than any other kind of prayer? It is through contemplative prayer that God can teach me the most, through union (even when it is only partial -- whatever God deigns at a given moment to gift me with) that I can develop a more perfect trust, through an accompanying directiveness that I can sense what I am supposed to understand and feel, through a washing in love that I can accept who I am with all my imperfections, through implanted thought that I can learn lessons and receive taskings, and through the Divine Presence wrapped around me that I can release all my stress and worries into Him and gather into myself a reservoir of love that I can splash onto others as needed later. Contemplative prayer starts my day and ends my day. If only I could spend the entire day in it! During the day, I resort to ordinary prayer, and that tides me over until the evening surf throws me on the shore at God’s feet and I can once again rest in His being.

What has been your experience? What is your understanding of such matters? Let's learn from each other.