BIRDSONG

I always caution beginners in the serious spiritual life to avoid any attempt to measure or gauge their own spiritual growth— since such growth is always imperceptible to the self and any such measurement will always be deceptive and distorted. But when one has practiced contemplative prayer for several decades, as have I, it is sometimes possible to look back and retroactively notice a personal evolution.

Perhaps the first thing one begins to notice in undertaking a serious effort at contemplative prayer is the haunting recollection of sins. It is amazing that soon after one has begun serious meditation or contemplation, the mind begins to fill with memories of sins—sins one didn’t consider very serious “back then,” those minor sins one had always intended to make right and never got around to it, even sins for which one has already been absolved in auricular Confession but still regrets. This is usually accompanied with a kind of shame—certainly not at all what I would call a “guilt” nor any sense of culpability per se, but more a sense of dishonor, of disappointment, a stripping from the ego of all those contrived pretenses at propriety and sanctity—actually, a recognition of the true self. It is not that one feels “unforgiven”—only inept, inadequate, and crippled. And this awareness serves to remove the last shreds of the idea that ascetic practices will somehow produce sanctity—a pitiful reminder of the utterly fallible nature of the self.

And then eventually those memories fade into the unconscious background, and one begins to be aware of remarkable bonds of mystical commonality—with other people, with sensate animals, and even with flora and inanimate objects. The absolute primal unity of existence begins to pervade one’s awareness. It could be said that one “discovers creation”—one discovers the common origin of all that exists and one’s mystical links to it. One begins to re-connect with old friends, turns to mend broken relationships, experiences personally the distress of abused animals and a mistreated world. One even begins to feel at one with the inanimate and inorganic domain—a personal consciousness of the devastation of waste, destruction, and extinction. And one becomes newly-aware of the sheer unspeakable beauty of a tree, of a rock formation, of a wide prairie, or of a flight of geese. And the universal commonality seems increasingly self-evident and ultimately almost overwhelming. One becomes brother to a tree. sister to a star, and cousin to a deer.

And then a very long time passes! One is faithful and trusting even, as is usually the case, when one’s contemplative praying seems futile, vain, and pointless. [Note: Such lack of “success” is the very best sign that one is on the right track!] One continues staunchly. And then it begins—small and humbling new insights begin to rise. And, however much it may have become a cliché, the mystic William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” tells of it:

                   To see a World in a Grain of Sand

                   And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

                   Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

                   And Eternity in an hour.

And the ordinary surface of everything that one has normally perceived in the past begins to tremble and to crumble. Gradually what was once factual and dogmatic, creedal and objective, begins to become transparent, evanescent, and evocative. One is increasingly dissatisfied with the sheer dogmatic, affronted by mediocrity, and increasingly repelled by certitude. One feels like calling out, “Stop this baby-talk! The truth is not there on the surface! Can’t you see that what is deeply real shows itself only in a hint or a whisper at the surface—only a tiny ripple on the ocean’s expanse?” And then one is driven to seek what lies beneath that ripple, to discover the dimensions of truth that are hidden under metaphors and symbols.

            An example: What if the presence of 
            Christ in the gathered community of          
            Christians for Eucharist were more 
             important and more fundamental than
             the sacramental presence of Christ in the 
             bread and wine of Holy Communion? 
            What if this regular re-forming of that 
             assembly as the Body of Christ— 
            of Christians-coming-together-apart-
            from-the-world that itself actually brings 
            Christ back to earth in a kind of mystical 
            “second coming? What if we ought 
            to be paying more attention to the way 
             in which we congregate than to who 
            says or does what at the altar?

That is what this blog—this twittering of a “lonely sparrow on the housetop”—is about. It will be a collection of some of these tentative and personal insights of a long-time contemplative. Above all, I want to eschew infallibility in anything that I post here. Although I need constantly to resist my inclination to pontificate, my intention here is merely to suggest the possibility of deeper reflections on matters we may heretofore have considered settled, resolved, closed, and neatly packed away. I expect it will be an adventure—an unusual one, surely—but an adventure nonetheless, and sometimes it may wander from familiar paths and even (all unintentionally) drift into foolishness or error—for which I ask your forbearance in advance.