If you have ever watched a honeybee tussle and tumble about in the silky recesses of a peony blossom you will appreciate an image Rilke uses for our task of translating sense experience into experience that goes beyond the senses. Watch that bee reveling in the fragrance of innumerable purple and white and pink petals until, dusted with golden pollen, it finds the source of nectar hidden at the heart of the flower. Watch how with total absorption of all its senses in this peony world the bee performs what is both vital task and ecstatic play. And then read how the poet understands our own task in this human world:
Our task is to impress on our whole being this passing, impermanent earth so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that it will rise again—now “invisible”—within us. We are the bees of the invisible. With total absorption, we gather the nectar of the visible into the great golden honeycomb of the invisible.
…From hive to blooming meadow and back home our hearts keep winging their way; from the invisible through the visible and then—heavy with harvest like bees with baggy pants of pollen and bellies bulging with nectar—back home to “the great golden honey-comb of the invisible.” This is the pattern of our heart’s repeated journeys throughout life and of life’s quest as a whole….
Most people’s glorious gates of perception creak on rusty hinges. How much of the splendor of life is wasted on us because we plod along half-blind, half-deaf, with all our senses throttled, and numbed by habituation. How much joy is lost on us. How many surprises we miss. It is as if Easter eggs had been hidden under every bush and we were too lazy to look for them. But it need not be so. We are able to stop the advance of dullness like the spread of a disease. We can even reverse the process and initiate healing. We can deliberately pay attention each day to one smell, one sound which we never appreciated before, to one color or shape, one texture, one taste to which we never before paid attention. Try for just one week to dedicate each day to cultivating a different one of your senses. Monday: smell day; Tuesday: taste day; and so on. Since there are two more days in a week than the acknowledged five senses, I suggest you give three days to the much neglected sense of touch.
We long to be in touch with life, to touch and to be touched. Yet, we are also afraid of letting anything “get at us.” Afraid of letting life come too close, we keep it at arm’s length and don’t even realize what fools we are making of ourselves. We are going through life like someone stepping into the shower, carefully keeping the umbrella up. We are holding on to our hats, our tokens of social identity and respectability. Far be it from us to make fools of ourselves! It takes a bit of life experience to realize that our choice is merely between making fools of ourselves either intentionally or unintentionally. By refusing to dare and make fools of ourselves willingly and wisely, we make fools of ourselves foolishly….
Joy goes beyond happiness. Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It springs from gratefulness. When we begin to take things for granted, we get sucked into boredom. Boredom is deadly. Yet, everything within us longs for “life, life in fullness” (John 10:10). The key to life in fullness is gratefulness.
Try this: Before you open your eyes in the morning, stop and think. Remember that there are millions of blind people in this world. Surely, you will open your eyes more gratefully, even if you’d rather keep them closed a little longer and snooze on. As soon as we stop taking our eyesight for granted, gifts spring into our eyes which we did not even recognize as gifts before. To recognize a gift as gift is the first step towards gratefulness. Since gratefulness is the key to joy, we hold the key to joy, the key to what we most desire, in our own hands….
What we have established here, I hope, is that in a spirituality faithful to Jesus Christ sensuousness is not suspect but sacred. A listening heart recognizes in the throbbing of reality pulsating against all our senses the heartbeat of divine life at the core of all that is real.
Chapter Seven: Attuned to the Dynamic Order of Love
There is the ecstatic instant, but there is no instant ecstasy. Monastic training is unhurried and down to earth: sweeping, cooking, washing; serving at table or at the altar; reading books or filing library cards; digging, typing, haying, plumbing—but all of this with that affectionate detachment which makes the place where you are the navel of the universe.
—From A Listening Heart
In [the Christian] tradition the notion of contemplation hinges on the Latin word contemplari. The image and, originally, the reality that stands behind this notion, is that of the Roman augurs, who marked off a particular area in the sky, the templum. Originally, templum was not a building on the ground but an area in the skies on which the augurs, professional seers, fixed their eyes in order to find the immutable order according to which matters here below should be arranged. The sacred order of the temple is merely the reflection of the sacred order above. Contemplation consists in the bringing together of the two temples, as the con in contemplari suggests.
Along with this Roman notion there is the biblical pattern: Moses built the sanctuary exactly according to the vision shown him by God on the mountain. Again and again the Bible stresses the faithful correspondence between the temple on earth and its heavenly exemplar. In this sense, Moses truly fulfills the role of the contemplative. And not by chance: What he attempted and what the augurs attempted spring from the same root. The contemplative gesture is deeply rooted in our heart and in our longing for universal harmony. Through the ages humans have longingly looked up to the harmony and order of the starry universe, attuning their heartbeat to its measured movement.
Measure seems to be the basic meaning of the linguistic root from which stem not only cognates like temperature, temperament, template, and temporality, but, of course, temple and contemplation. To measure one’s step by a universal rhythm and thus to bring one’s life into harmony with a universal order—this is contemplatio in our tradition.
To move in step, one needs to listen; to sight one’s course, one needs to look. The monastery is, therefore, conceived as a place where one learns to keep one’s eyes and ears open. “Listen!” is the first word of St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries, and another keyword is “consider!”—literally meaning to lay your course by the stars. St. Benedict, the patriarch of Western monks, wants them to live apertis oculis and attonitis auribus, with open eyes, and with ears so alert that the silence of God’s presence sounds like thunder. This is why a Benedictine monastery is to be a schola Dominici servitii, a school in which one learns to attune oneself to ultimate order.
But such an order means nothing rigid. That would be the great danger, that would be the trap into which one could fall, to conceive of ultimate order as static. On the contrary, it is profoundly dynamic; the only image that we can ultimately find for this order is the dance of the spheres. What we are invited to do, what we are to learn in the monastery, professionally, is to listen to that tune, to attune ourselves to that harmony to which the whole universe dances.
St. Augustine expresses the dynamism of order when he says, “Ordo est amoris,” which means that order is simply the expression of the love that moves the universe. Dante says this, too, in those beautiful lines from Paradiso: “L’amor che muove il sole è l’altre stelle,” [which translates roughly as, “The love that moves the sun and the other stars”]. But the fact is that while the rest of the universe moves freely and gracefully in cosmic harmony, we humans don’t. It costs us an effort to attune ourselves to the dynamic order of love. At some point it even costs the supreme effort of, yes, making no effort. The obstacle which we must overcome is attachment, even the attachment to our own effort. Asceticism is the professional approach to overcoming attachment in all its forms. Our image of the dance should help us understand it. Detachment, which is merely its negative aspect, frees our movements, helps make us nimble. The positive aspect of asceticism is alertness, wakefulness, aliveness. As we become free to move, we begin to learn the steps; to listen to the music, listen, and respond.
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br /> Asceticism (in its negative aspect) may thus be understood as training in detachment for the sake of being in tune with universal harmony (the positive goal). But if this harmony is to be truly universal, it must encompass all of reality. If contemplation aims at “bringing the two temples together,” all of reality must become transparent to its innermost luminous structure, and ultimate order must find its expression in space and in time. Asceticism must, therefore, cultivate its own environment, as well as its awareness of space and time, as a form of obedience to the environment as guru.
If I understand it correctly, the word guru means “dispeller of darkness.” Not in the sense that there is something light and good, and something bad and dark. No, reality is not split in two. Let us understand dispelling of darkness in its symbolic sense as the dispelling of confusion. If it is the guru’s function to dispel confusion—beginning with the confusion that there are two parts to reality—the result will be order. Only let us keep in mind that it is the dynamic order of life and love, the mysterious order of the great dance. The various traditions have developed a great variety of forms for learning to put one’s life in order—into such order. Prominent among these forms is what we might call an environmental asceticism of space and time.
Both in [my Christian] tradition and in others, asceticism of space, the training in detachment as it relates to any given place, centers on learning to be present where we are. This is the first step: and how often do we fail in it! We are ahead of ourselves or are hanging behind. Part of us is stretching out to a future that is not yet, part is hanging on to a past that is no more. What is left of us is not truly present either. We are here and not here, because we are not awake. To be present where we are means to wake up to this place….
Time is something entirely different in the monastic context from that which a chronometer could measure. Time is not ours…. We claim to have time, gain time, save time; in reality time does not belong to us. It is measured not by the clock, but by when it is time. That is why bells are so important in a monastery. Bells are a great help in getting monks out of bed early. No one [who has ever lived in a monastery] will deny the importance of that. But the really important thing is that in a monastery we do things not when we feel like it, but when it is time. When the bell rings, St. Benedict wants the monk to put down his pen without crossing his t or dotting his i. Such is the asceticism of time.
There are occasions when it is time for something, whether you like it or not. And if you come only five minutes late, the sun is not going to re-rise for you; it is not going to re-set for you; and noon is not going to come a little later because you turned the clock back. Those are decisive moments, around which the whole monastic day revolves—moments that the bell indicates, not just the arbitrary time of some timetable someone has made up. Let all these bells which you will hear ringing remind you that it is time, not our time.
The moment we let go of our time, all time is ours. We are beyond time, because we are in the present moment, in the now which transcends time. The now is not in the time. If any of us know what now means we know something that goes beyond time. For certainly the future is not, it has not yet come; and certainly the past is not, it is no more. So we say, “Well, but now is.” But, when is the now? Is it in time? How long does this now last? Assign the shortest span of time to the now—you can still divide it in half: one half for the future, one half for the past. Is the dividing line then the now? As long as it remains a span of time, you can divide it again and again, ad infinitum. And so we find that in time there is only the seam between a past that is no more and a future that is not yet; and the now is not in time at all. Now is beyond time. And we humans are the only ones who know what now means, because we exist, we “stick out” of time. That’s what it means to exist. And all those monastic bells are simply reminders for us: now!—and that’s all.
To get through this asceticism of space and time from confusion to order, to harmony of darkness and light—that’s what we try to do at the monastery. Of course, we cannot claim to have accomplished it…. We are trying to enter into that asceticism of space and time, to open ourselves to the environment as the dispeller of darkness—that is, confusion—thereby finding peace.
Our Latin tradition defines peace as tranquillitas ordinis, the stillness of order. Order is inseparable from silence, but this is a dynamic silence. The tranquility of order is a dynamic tranquility, the stillness of a flame burning in perfect calm, of a wheel spinning so fast that it seems to stand still. Silence in this sense is not only a quality of the environment, but primarily an attitude, an attitude of listening. This is a gift that each of us is invited to give all others: the gift of silence. Let us, then, give one another silence. And let us begin right now.
Chapter Eight: Standing on Holy Ground
Surprise is the starting point. Through surprise our inner eyes are opened to the amazing fact that everything is gratuitous. Nothing at all can be taken for granted.... When our intellect learns to recognize the gift aspect of the world, when our will learns to acknowledge it, our feelings to appreciate it, ever wider circles of mindfulness make our world come alive.
—From Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
Some insights of our human heart are so deep that only a story can help us bring them home to ourselves and share them with others. The basic sense of what we call, in abstract terms, “sacramental life” is one of those deep insights. The story I have chosen comes out of the biblical tradition. Yet, the basic insight expressed in it belongs to the common treasure of all religions and will be found in stories from many different traditions in the East as well as in the West.
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3:1–6)
Has this story become too familiar to make us still awestruck? Or can we recover the power of this vision? A bush ablaze, yet unharmed! It is one of the images that left a lasting impression on the religious mind throughout the ages, lasting because reinforced by daily fresh experience. In its immediate context, the blazing flame amidst the desert bramble stands for the divine Presence among God’s people; it stands for “the Holy One of Israel.” But in a more general sense the thornbush burning, yet unburnt, is a daily sight—daily, yet ever amazing—for a heart that sees all things aflame with divine fire.
How staggering is the paradox that shines from the Burning Bush becomes clear only when later prophets translate that image into the formula, “the Holy One in the midst of you.” We must remember that holiness here does not mean moral perfection so much as God’s unimaginable otherness. The paradox bursts upon us when we encounter that unimaginably other One in the midst of what is most familiar to us.
Two attitudes are apt to blind us to that encounter: worldliness and otherworldliness. Worldliness sees merely the bramble; otherworldliness sees merely the fire. But to see, with the eyes of the heart, one in the midst of the other, that is the secret of sacramentality. We shall never understand that secret as long as we look for it in someone else’s report, no matter how exalted the experience reported. That is why I must appeal to your own unique personal encounter with the “Burning Bush.” We all have had these experiences, though some people are more alert to them than others, or more ready to admit them.
Let me prime the pu
mp by quoting an account by a friend of mine, Don Johnson, in his book The Protean Body:
I walked out onto a dock in the Gulf of Mexico, I ceased to exist. I experienced being a part of the sea breeze, the movement of the water and the fish, the light rays cast by the sun, the colors of the palms and tropical flowers. I had no sense of past or future. It was not a particularly blissful experience: it was terrifying. It was the kind of ecstatic experience I’d invested a lot of energy in avoiding.
I did not experience myself as the same as the water, the wind, and the light, but as participating with them in the same system of movement. We were all dancing together!3
“Together” is the key word here. All those rifts and cracks of separation, polarity, alienation, which we ordinarily experience are healed in one glance. “Like a saint’s vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see…. For a second there is meaning,” as Eugene O’Neill described it in A Long Day’s Journey into Night.
This is the secret of which you catch sight: everything has meaning. And one glimpse of that secret makes everything whole. The secret is the secret of sacramentality, the mystery that God’s life is communicated through all things, just as meaning is communicated through words. The two belong together, meaning and word, God and the world. The two belong together, without confusion, and inseparable: meaning and word, God and the world. As C.S. Lewis writes in the novel Perelandra, “He dwells (all of Him dwells) within the seed of the smallest flower and is not cramped: Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed and does not distend Him. Blessed be He!”4
Eugene O’Neill continues: “For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret!”5 You are the secret because you are seeing it with the eyes of your heart. No other eyes can see it. But being centered in our heart means being together—with ourselves; together with God, who is always closer to me than I am to myself, together in community with all.
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