During the final three days of October 2010, New Mexico Contemplative Outreach coordinator and retreat leader Susan Rush invited the forty-four of us gathered at Prince of Peace Abbey to step more deeply into a level of awareness that could be described as “embodied spaciousness.” As Susan explained, there is a way in which the combination of contemplative silence and responsive wakefulness can “morph into presence,” an open-hearted condition in which we "put on the mind of Christ" and welcome our bodies into the "homeland of God." While Centering Prayer is primarily a practice of letting go and consenting to God’s presence and action within, Susan maintains that outside of the periods of prayer we can also “partner with God” -- that is, actively cooperate with the Divine -- to bring about a "fuller yes and a deeper surrendering" to Presence. As co-creators with God, our greatest call is to “be who we are,” to embrace our own particular, unique way of living the contemplative presence. Teachers of spiritual and meditative disciplines are rightly criticized when they encourage the cultivation of disembodied or dissociated states of consciousness that split Spirit off from body and/or mind. But for today's contemplative Christianity, Susan pointed out, spirituality is neither body-denying nor body-indulging, but incarnational: fully human and fully divine. Spirit, body, and mind, interwoven and fully present in this homeland of God, on earth as it is in heaven.
The retreat offered many opportunities to rest, awaken, commune, and “pray with God.” In between our periods of Centering Prayer, Susan gave a few contemplative pointers – brief quotes and accessible teachings from the likes of John Cassian, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, among others. She also taught us some wonderful chants. Chants – brief repeated prayers set to simple melodies – bring in the resonance of tones and voices, and the hum in the heart is delightfully grounding and liberating. (I have heard it said that chanting is like praying twice.) The meals in silence, along with the option to attend the Abbey’s daily Mass and the monastic prayers of the hours, helped to create a rhythm of prayer, silence, song, and movement that was both restful and invigorating.
One level of reflection that I especially appreciated was the contemplative awareness walk that Susan invited us to do mid-way through the retreat on our own. I – and many of you as well, I'm sure – enjoy walks in nature during silent retreats, and there is a kind of relaxed alertness and clarity that can emerge after repeated periods of contemplative prayer that allows one to slow down, sink in, and savor the simple beauty of each moment. Here is where I recognize the truth in Fr, Keating’s assertion that “God is giving himself to you in every cup of water, in every sorrow and in every joy.” As a preface to our contemplative awareness walk, Susan noted the three levels of contemplation as described in Keating’s book The Word Made Flesh: 1) The ability to see God in all things, 2) The ability to see all things as God’s gift, and 3) The ability to see God giving God’s self in all things. With this in mind, Susan encouraged us to walk with a deeply receptive attitude, not actively looking for any particular thing, but rather allowing ourselves to be drawn to something along our path. To let God find us through all things.
This had already begun for me at the silent breakfast earlier that morning, when I noticed small tasty details of the moment – Evie M's “Be Present” T-shirt, Kathy A's drinking coffee out of a mug that said “Best Dad” (these are the monks’ mugs? I chuckled to myself), the cranberries in the cookies, the giggles induced by the loudness of me scootching my chair, and Marlene R's salting and peppering of her cantaloupe. God’s spicy sweetness.
Later that afternoon, on my walk, divinity beckons to me through the rich abundance of the living and dying things that populate autumn in southern California. A trail carpeted with dead leaves and chips of bark, with new grasses poking through. Spiderwebs glinting in the sun. Flies and gnats hovering near my ears, as if I am a flower full of the nectar they crave. Sand -- frisky dirt? -- sparkling beside the plain wooden crosses that mark the graves of past Benedictine monks. Life and death all tangled up together, birth and loss and resurrection singing out a wild and holy harmony.
The day has been warm, but a hint of crispness arises as the shadows deepen in the crevices of the hills. I think of the trajectory of my life, of various energies and agendas that have been dying away even as new yearnings sprout and flower. A brisk breeze is blowing, causing the trees to bow and bend, making the leaves tremble and shimmer. There is that wonderful line from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem: Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind. I linger in the crackling of wind-blown leaves and the shining radiance of the ocean in the distance. Cosmic applause, I say to myself. And divine ovation. God beholding God in all things.
Then I sit for a time inside the little gazebo along the Abbey path known as the Way of the Cross. An editor and writer by profession, I cannot help but be drawn to the various graffiti carvings in the wooden beams. Wow: retreat graffiti? I wonder. God in all things? But it is true: next to “Terry was here” and “Tim loves Debbie forever” is etched the divine anthem: I AM.
--Written for an upcoming edition of CONSD News, the newsletter of Contemplative Outreach of North San Diego
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