Keller, Tillich, Lamott: Faith, Doubts

   Keller, Tillich, Lamott: Faith, Doubts

“Observers in the full enjoyment of their bodily senses pity me, but it is because they do not see the golden chamber in my life where I dwell delighted; for, dark as my path may seem to them, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord.”    Helen Keller,  Midstream: My Later Life

lots of light

How beautifully Helen Keller describes faith. Someone who is blind describes faith as light, a light in her heart. She also does not negate doubt. The words of Paul Tillich which Ann Lamott has popularized ring in my ears, “The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.”  Faith implies believing in something or being in relationship with something that is a mystery, that is not defined by our human understanding.  

Our rational minds can just take us so far in understanding faith.

When a person has difficulty with mystery, doubts move in. Our doubts can be stepping stones to a deeper faith as we read and share our doubts with others and learn and experience the mystery together.

 I so often speak with spiritual friends about doubt and reassure them that this is not unnatural or the enemy or unhealthy. I tell friends, “Let ‘s talk about the doubts. If you come to a place of unbelief, let me carry your faith, until you are ready to take it back. I am counting on you to do the same for me, when doubts overcome me.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com    

Nouwen, Merton: Meditative Prayer

Henri Nouwen, Merton: Meditative Prayer

“Many voices ask for our attention. "Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful." But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you." To hear that voice requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen. That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us "my Beloved."  Henri Nouwen, “January 13, The Still, Small Voice of Love,” Bread for the Journey. Henry Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation

I have tried to read Thomas Merton’s work in the past, but could not connect with it, so when I spied his very short treatise, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, I decided it was time to give him another try, especially when so many of the contemporary spiritual writers like Henri Nouwen keep quoting him. Merton’s book was put together in 1960 and therefore we must forgive his constant use of the masculine. He also writes to people with a Catholic religious background and Catholic clergy in particular as he addresses many issues that might be especially helpful to a young male novice.

The book, however, is filled with pearls in almost every sentence. Merton constantly reminds us that the ultimate end of meditation is communion with God directly in the present, the awakening of our inner, true self and positioning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to God’s Grace. We hope to see the mysteries of the life of Christ as a part of our own spiritual existence.

Merton outlines the simple essentials of meditative prayer:

1. We first must be sincere about praying.

 2. We are to attempt to focus on meditating.

3. We sincerely hope for a divine union with God.

 4. We then rest contently in God’s presence.

The precise way we make our meditation depends on our temperament and natural gifts. For the intellectual, the thinking person, the mind must ascend by reasoning to the threshold of intuition. All thinking processes must end in love.

Those with more feeling and intuitive minds may approach the truth almost immediately apprehending the wholeness as beauty rather than truth. Those with an intuitive temperament may more easily be able to use all their senses to place themselves into the life of Jesus and more easily connect spiritually to Christ.

Contemplative meditation, spiritual direction,  liturgical prayer, the Eucharist, all seek the same end, a deeper union with Christ.

Joanna joannseibert.com

Keating, Bourgeault: Centering Prayer

Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: Centering Prayer

“God can be held fast and loved by means of love, but by thought never.” The Cloud of Unknowing, introductory commentary and translation by Ira Progoff (New York: Delta Books, 1957), 72.

Thomas Keating

In Centering Prayer, we select a sacred word as the symbol of our willingness to surrender to the presence of God.

We sit comfortably with closed eyes in silence and then introduce the sacred word.

Whenever thoughts return, we silently speak the sacred word.

At the end of the prayer period, we remain silent with eyes closed for a few minutes.

Thomas Keating suggests practicing Centering Prayer for twenty minutes twice a day.

Is Centering Prayer a simply letting go of one thought after another? That can certainly be our subjective experience of the practice, and this is exactly the frustration we sometimes encounter during Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina.

Keating tells the story of a nun who tries out her first twenty-minute experience of Centering Prayer and then laments, “Father Thomas, I’m such a failure at this prayer. In twenty minutes, I’ve had ten thousand thoughts!”

“How lovely,” responds Keating. “Ten thousand opportunities to return to God.”

Keating emphasizes that Centering Prayer is indeed a pathway of return to God, and this may be what the writer of Cloud of the Unknowing was trying to tell us.1

We also need to remember that the benefit of Centering Prayer is usually not during the prayer time, but later in the day or week when we feel God’s presence where or when we need it or never knew it before. It is expressed best in several of the 12 step Promises, “We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.”2

1Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice (Shambhala: 2016), 14, 28-29, 120, 123. From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, February 11, 2017 with Cynthia Bourgeault as guest writer.

2Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous, pp. 83-84.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com