Our existence is an incredible bustle and brouhaha. In the course of time, it develops its own set of laws. With time, we can no longer stop; the bustle prevents us from living. Even a vacation can be subject to the same insistent demands of speed, movement, and noise.
Fortunately, moments come when many people get to the bottom of this empty busyness; to some it gets quite boring; to others it becomes ridiculous. Death, serious illness, the loss of a job, retirement – these and many other such life transitions also prompt the question: “Why are we actually on this earth?”
Nothing is constant; nothing lasts. Yet we have a hard time coming to terms with this important truth. Sooner or later, however, everything dwindles away. When we enter upon a contemplative path, we suddenly sense the transitoriness of everything and in a flash, we realize how much we cling to things, chase after ideas, and are plagues by fears.
Life invites us to use things appropriately, to enjoy them, but also to let them go. Transitoriness is just another word for evolution and hence the perfection of creation. We are not perfect creatures until we experience happiness in the transitoriness of life. For the uninitiated, that sound masochistic, but it’s the truth. We will develop as human beings to the extent that death no longer terrifies us, to the extent that we rejoice at our next existence in the eternity of God, to the extent that we can recognize and great death as the great transformer.
Although we have this fact of transformation constantly before our eyes, we don’t want to accept it. Trees blossom and leaves fall; seasons come and go; life blooms from garbage. Without death and destruction there is no new life. Continuous change is the real miracle of life. Heaven is not a static existence at some point in the distant future. Rather, heaven is to experience for ourselves and accept the perfection of being born and dying as life itself.
All religions are focused on an ultimate reality. For some thousands of years, we Westerners have been calling our ultimate reality “God”; others call it “Tao”, “Nirvana”, or “Brahma.” Prayer is communion with this ultimate reality. It is the attempt to establish a continuous connection with this reality which is always flowing through us.
Prayer presupposes a certain polarity, the polarity between human beings and God, between the finite and the infinite, between the imperfect and the perfect. Prayer arises out of a state of inner tension. Prayer tries to unite something that is badly split, to link our everyday consciousness with our true essence, the presence of the Divine within us. Prayer unifies two aspects of reality that have fallen apart in us humans.
People should pray to open themselves to the Divine within so that it can, so to speak, pray in them. That’s what St. Paul thinks at any rate: “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:6).
Real prayer asks for nothing. Real prayer is pure self-surrender. In the contemplative tradition, petitionary pray – asking for things – is the lowest way of approaching God. Meister Eckhart, the great 14th century German theologian and mystic, speaks of people who hinder themselves in prayer by paying too much attention to externals.
But the prayer of the mouth is something that holy Christendom instituted so that the soul could be recollected from the external senses into which it had scattered itself….When it has been concentrated into the higher powers (reason, will, and memory), it becomes spirit. And now if the spirit fastens upon God with its will completely agreed, then it becomes godlike. Then for the very first time the spirit stands in true adoration, when it has come to the goal for which it was created. But we have been created solely for God and accordingly are modeled after God. ~ Meister Eckhart
Summer holiday can provide us with a sufficient break from our usual routine that we may be able to give time daily simply to being with God in wordless adoration. Encountering God is not actually dependent on time, place, or our religious creed, but solely on the strength of our devotion and our determination to let nothing get in the way of attending to God.
St. Benedict (+457) established a Rule of life that has informed and transformed countless lives in the centuries since he lived. He describes three important aspects of the way to God.
Vacare Deo: being free for God; having time for God. What we do in the exercise of contemplation is to take time to come to ourselves and thus to God: having time for God.
Habitare secum: living with oneself, staying home. But this is precisely what we find very hard – staying home, not tearing off.
Ora et labora: pray and work. There is no dividing line between religion and the everyday routine. Benedict explains further: “Handle all things like holy altar implements.” This means the making holy of every aspect of our lives.
Whether this summer includes vacation for you or not, may you find in it opportunities to be free for God, to be at home with yourself, and to discover how everything is an expression of the Divine.
Kevin+
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