Embodied Spaciousness: Autumn Retreat at Prince of Peace Abbey

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

The Dreaded Visitation of the Blessed Blob

            Early on, you developed this fear of miracles. You grew afraid, for example, of the first fifteen minutes of the movie The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. . .

It all begins with those three Portuguese children, who have been sent out after Sunday Mass to take their family’s sheep to the Cova de Iria, a pasture just west of the village of Fatima. It is a cool spring morning early in the twentieth century. The boy, Francesco, plays a fife while the two girls jump rope. Hundreds of miles away a great war rages, but here at the Cova, new mountain grasses are drenched in sunlight. Before eating lunch, the children decide to recite the rosary. Lucia, the oldest girl, begins: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father Almighty—

             

            No, let’s do it the short way, says Francesco.

            And wait for the echoes! adds Jacinta, his younger sister.

            And in unison, the children shout across the valley: Hail Mary!

            Hail Mary! the hills answer.

            The children smile at each other, then shout again: Hail Mary!

            This time, a thunderous boom responds.

            What’s that? asks Francesco.

            There must be a storm coming, says Lucia, who looks questioningly up at the sky.

            How could it be, with the sky so bright?

            I don’t know, says Lucia, but we better head for home.

            Arcs of light flash over the near hills as the children hurry down the trail, egging the sheep on with small sticks. The two girls, however, slow down when they find themselves surrounded by a luminous mist. Francesco is right behind them, but sees no mist. What are you looking at? he asks.

            Inside the fog, next to a small oak, the vague outline of a robed woman appears. Lucia and Jacinta turn sharply away, all raw fear, burying their faces in their hands.

            What’s the matter? blurts Francesco. What was it? What did you see?

            Look! says Lucia, pointing blindly toward the oak. Over there!

            I don’t see anything, Francesco protests.

            But in a rich and honeyed voice, accompanied by enraptured flutes and harps, the robed figure speaks: Don’t be afraid; I won’t hurt you. Come here to me, won’t you?

            The two girls slowly uncover their eyes and turn around to face the vision. Come closer, the female voice requests. There, that’s better. You’re not frightened now, are you?

            Perhaps Lucia and Jacinta can lose their fear as they fall under this radiant woman’s otherworldly spell. Perhaps these girls’ faces can light up from within as Lucia quietly asks where does Your Excellency come from? But for you, a modern girl of eight, the whole scenario of an arc of lightning wrapping you in luminous mist and speaking to you in your very own language gave you the bone-deep heebee-jeebees. Watching The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima convinced you to never be caught out in the pastoral wilderness with a rosary in your pocket. For who knew what could happen if an Ethereal Excellency chose you as Her confidante?

           

The movie's answer to that question is not reassuring. For one thing -- once you get past the initial apparitional freak-out-- Francesco is still flabbergasted. Who are you talking to, Lucia? he asks.

            A Lady.

            I don’t see her. Where is she?

            Here, on the little tree. Don’t you hear Her?

            The youngest girl, Jacinta, has the solution to her brother’s dilemma. She says to say the rosary, Francesco. He quickly kneels down, kisses his rosary, and prays.

            What is Her Radiance’s beef? you wonder. Is She peeved at Francesco because earlier he had wanted to recited an abbreviated rosary? Is She playing some strange cosmic peek-a-boo? Does She dislike little Iberian boys? Or is Francesco really the lucky one, the one who will not have to endure the fate of actually seeing Her?

            As it turns out, he is not to be so lucky. Lucia, I can see Her now! he exclaims. I can see Her plain!

            All of them kneeling now, the faces of the children silently ask the question from which there is no turning back: What is it that You want of us?

            Do you wish to offer yourself to God, to endure all the suffering He may please to send you, and to ask for the conversion of sinners? Leave it to an apparition to read your mind and to answer your question with a series of questions. Yet perhaps Her Luminescence is actually being gracious, and polite. Now, the children, if they so desire, have a choice, an exit, a way out of the wild history looming ahead of them. But—youthful mystics that they are—tall Lucia, brave Jacinta, and semi-pious Francesco answer in the affirmative.

            Then you will have much to suffer, the Lady warns. May the grace of God be your comfort. . .

           

            Much to suffer! Be your comfort! A rosary became a dangerous possession in your eight-year-old world—material that could give you away, like a bleeding wound in shark-filled waters. For who knows that some Mother of God isn’t out there right now, scanning the horizon, looking in meadows and valleys and backyards for unattended children with rosaries on their persons? 

            You decided to take no chances. You usually kept your rosary inside its little plastic snap-shut case, the one that said My First Rosary, next to the small radio in your bedroom. After your exposure to the first fifteen minutes of The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, you put the whole package inside a small cedar-lined box from a curio store in Yellowstone National Park. You locked the box and stowed the key away underneath the largest stone in the far reaches of your back yard—a safe but relatively unapproachable place. For some time, you avoided the tree-filled paradise of the back yard. You learned to keep your curtains closed during thunderstorms, lest an aberrant stroke of lightning morph into the Mother of God. But suppressing miracles, you came to see, would require the utmost vigilance and practice.

            One major obstacle was your next-door neighbor-friend Pearl. With her family, she often attended the storefront Baptist church four blocks north of the street you both lived on. A Bible story devotee, her favorite thing to talk about on a drowsy afternoon when you both would sit in your room and get yourselves into a morbidly philosophical mood was the Beast of the Revelation. “He’s gonna be horrible,” she would remind you. “He’s gonna have six heads and eighteen feet with goat’s hooves, and he’s gonna have big black oily wings, and fangs, and claws, and he’s gonna have antennas and antlers and thousands of eyes.”

            “Whoa,” you would say with awe. “That’s gonna be scary.”

            This one autumn afternoon, though, after you and Pearl had gone through the above routine, she looked around your room questioningly and asked, “Where’d you put your rosary?”

            You felt the hair on the back of your neck.

            “Don’t you keep it here, right next to the radio?”

            “Oh, yeah. I guess I put it away somewhere else.”

            “I want to see it.”

            “What for?” 

            “I just want to look at it for a second.”

            “I’m not sure where I put it,” you lied. It was actually right in front of your noses, inside that locked Yellowstone cedar chest on top of your windowsill.

            “I saw one on TV yesterday,” she told you. “I was wondering if it was like yours.”

            If you had had your wits about you, you would not have let her continue with this line of discussion. But you had been caught somewhat off-guard. “So what were they saying about rosaries on TV?”

            “Somebody’s rosary turned into gold, somewhere in Egypt. The Virgin Mary is appearing right before these people’s eyes, on the roof of this church. And people are praying with their rosaries and their rosaries are turning into gold.”

            “Oh, sure,” you said, rolling your eyes. You tried to be nonchalant, waving her information away with a favorite saying of your brother’s: “You’re just messing with my mind.”

            “No, I’m not! Really. It was on the news. Maybe it’s in the paper, too! Ask your mom.”

            This was the autumn of 1969, and it had been at least a year since you had seen the first fifteen minutes of The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. Now your fear of Her Radiance returned full force, and you stared dumbfoundedly at Pearl. Is my friend also some strange and sneaky minion of God? you wondered.

            “Why don’t we get your rosary and pray with it and see if it turns to gold?” Pearl’s theory, it turned out, was that certain alchemical vibrations had enveloped the planet—because of the Mother of God’s appearance—and that all rosaries all over the world could potentially turn into gold. But you knew better than to let her trick you into getting that rosary out. It was bad enough that people were actually seeing Her, right at those very moments, a bubble of holy light on a rooftop of a Coptic Church in Zeitoun, Egypt. It was bad enough that this wasn’t just some movie about some century-old vision. Alleged vision. No, this was actually on the news, along with the moon landing and the Vietnam War, so, of course, it was actually real. The Mother of God had come light-years closer to appearing before your very eyes! And who was to say that She wouldn’t grow weary of Egypt? America was full of meadows and pasturelands and vales. . .

           

Although you made a full-blown project out of avoiding all news for several days—no television, no scanning the evening paper for Peanuts or Marmaduke cartoons—you still managed to run smack into an actual photo of the Mother of God on top of that Coptic Church. Madeleine Tolbert, the nine-year-old nun-in-training whose gym locker was next to yours, had a laminated newspaper photo of the Mother of God taped to the front of her three-ring binder. Walking next to Madeleine after physical education class one day, your eyes wandered and landed on the cover of that binder. An amorphous blob of light floated right above the bell tower of a church. You couldn’t tell what it was at first and squinted your eyes at it, puzzled. Madeleine saw you looking and chirped, “It’s the Blessed Virgin! She’s been appearing at a church in the Holy Land!” Just like the people who rubberneck as they pass horrible accidents on the highway, you could not tear your eyes away. 

That giant glowing amoeba of light etched itself solidly into your memory and began making appearances in your dreams. . . Are you ready to suffer? asked the Blessed Blob as She floated above your bathtub filled to the brim with golden rosaries. Will you convert my sinners? the Virgin Marshmallow whispered as She oozed from underneath your bed . . . 

            You were bad off! You even grew afraid of closing your eyes after looking at a bright light because the afterglow images on the insides of your eyelids too closely resembled the Mother of God. You wondered if you should simply pray for all the information, all the strangeness, and all the fear to just stop, but then recalled that it was praying that had brought it all on for the children of Fatima—praying too much or even praying too little, like poor little Francesco who had wanted to recite the short version of the rosary. Existence was certainly too odd, too marvelous, and too unpredictable for scaredy-cat Catholic girls like you. You took to sleeping with your family’s blind German Shepherd, Sargeant, as a way to ground yourself, to ward off all the lurking Mothers of God. With Sargeant’s help, you wove yourself an earthly refuge before drifting into dreamland. And how well you learned to concentrate on the muddy, smelly, and most unheavenly things in the world: roly-poly bugs, belly-button lint, pork rinds seasoned with hot pepper sauce, and the way your older brother could make farting noises with his hand cupped up inside his underarm.

 [This is part of my yet-to-be-completed work tentatively titled All the Lurking Mothers of God. Which has been writing itself seemingly forever. And ever.]

           

           

           

           

With that Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,

       "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;

       Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull to connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying

With that sweet moon 

      Language

What every other eye in this world

      Is dying to

      Hear.

     --Hafez

Equally Blessed

EQUALLY BLESSED UNITES
CATHOLIC VOICES FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY, JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, DC., Four longstanding Catholic organizations announced today that they have formed Equally Blessed, a coalition of faithful Catholics who support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people both in the church and in civil society.

"As Catholics, we believe that all human beings are beloved children of God," said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an Equally Blessed member. "We are called to do our part in bringing about justice in the church and the world, and Equally Blessed will allow us to do that together."

The coalition also includes Call To Action, DignityUSA and Fortunate Families. Together the four groups have spent a combined 112 years working on behalf of LGBT people and their families.

"Equally Blessed proclaims what most U.S. Catholics already believe," said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA. "The laws of our land and the policies of our church should mandate fairness, justice and equality for all."

Leaders of Equally Blessed said they decided to work together in the wake of several recent civil and church situations that demonstrate the need for a faithful pro-equality Catholic voice:

·      The Knights of Columbus have mounted an expensive campaign to oppose gay marriage in Minnesota, where it has become a gubernatorial campaign issue.
·      Catholic dioceses spent extensively to overturn legalized same-sex marriage in Maine last year.
·      In the Archdiocese of Denver last spring, Archbishop Charles Chaput sanctioned the expulsion of a lesbian couple's daughter from a Catholic school.
·      In Washington DC, Archbishop Donald Wuerl has recently withheld health benefits from the spouses of newly-hired heterosexual employees so that he could legally withhold such benefits from the spouses of gay or lesbian employees.

"A growing community of faithful Catholics believes that everyone, including LGBT people, are affirmed and welcomed in our church, and these unjust actions do not speak for us," said Nicole Sotelo, coordinator of Call To Action's JustChurch program. "We are called to follow the teachings of Jesus who welcomed everyone and challenged religious leaders when they fell short of that ideal."

"In the wake of these injustices, we particularly urge straight Catholic allies to raise their voices against discrimination that targets our children, our friends, and our communities," said Mary Ellen Lopata, co-founder of Fortunate Families, a ministry for Catholic parents with LGBT children. "The Gospel compels us to spread its message of love for all the children of God."


Equally Blessed is a coalition of faithful Catholics who support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people both in the church and in civil society. Equally Blessed includes four organizations that have spent a combined 112 years working on behalf of LGBT people and their families:  Call To Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry.

Cat-emplation

I Know Your Address

(This is something I wrote in the early 1990s, while at the Squaw Valley writer's conference near Lake Tahoe. I planned on revising it but never did.)

I was a dog in my last life. I'm sure of it. These days dogs sense I've known that world of secret smells, spoken their native language, pissed on priceless rugs. I was a big and noisy dog, a wild-haired mongrel. I will never live it down.

One day I am walking home alone. A big-eyed dog, some kind of shepherd-lab youth, comes bounding out of the meadow. Oh no, I think. It's happening again. Dogs catch my scent and want me to join them in some semi-domesticated version of a pack. Of course I pet him. I can't help it. He licks my hand and I resist my canine urge to lick him back. No, sweetheart. I look into his sad face. I'm a woman now, not your mate in heat. He won't listen. Instead, he trots along the busy thoroughfare, revelling in our meeting, forgetting his street smarts, darting onto the road. Damn you, dog! I call to him, Get out of the street! He leaps back to safety, a spasm of brute ecstasy: he has found the key to my attention! Don't get all excited, I snap. Just keep your ass out of traffic. His tongue drips sweat onto my shoes. I resent this responsibility.

Okay, fool, what's your name? I look at the tag on his collar: BUBBA, it says, #96104. Well, Bubba–his ears perk up–you have to go home. I point across the meadow to our original meeting place. Go home. Bubba hangs his head, but doesn't budge. I turn my back on him, continue my walk. Heedless, Bubba follows.

Human suitors might pick flowers. Bubba proudly pees on them, choosing my favorites: tall daisies, asters, forget-me-nots. This is the world we can share together, he says with the tilt of his tail. Then he smells a nearby creek, rushes to dive in. Yo, Bubba, I say. I didn't know you were a water sign. He's happy in the water and I use his intoxication to attempt an escape. If I just run fast enough, I tell myself, Bubba will forget I ever existed. I pound the road's shoulder with my two human feet, raising dust, and when Bubba catches up with me–as of course he would–at even higher levels of dog-gasm he bounces and leaps and shakes the creek sludge onto my skin. But Bubba, I'm tired, I want to take a nap. Bubba just pounces and flaps. Please, Bubba, the mosquitoes are eating me alive …

Eventually I win this argument. Bubba is unable to tempt me back to the meadow and follows me home instead. I feed him half of my beef burrito, then sit out on the porch with him dozing under my feet–such loyalty, trust, and charm. I'm in a mongrel reverie, relishing how late the sun sets during these dog days of August. I feel the slow rhythm of Bubba's breathing, relax into the softness of his fur at my feet …

Suddenly, police car sirens disrupt our canine communion. Bubba's up in a snap, haunches ready for the chase, snout eager for long-toothed retaliation against cop-car interruptions. At last I'm free, I say to myself. Go on, sweetheart, I look into his eyes, you got yourself some cops to chase. But Bubba's last green glance shoots me a warning: You're mine, baby. I know your address.

Small Moves

Another "greatest hit" from my previous Gaia blog -- written for the May 2007 Integral Blogopalooza.

I love that scene near the end of the movie Contact, after astronomer Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) has been tesseracted through several wormholes to meet with an alien intelligence. This intelligence has "uploaded" her memories, appearing as her beloved father on a starlit beach - a wisely hospitable gesture that, the alien explains, makes such momentous meetings easier on the newbie, the one who is having her first close encounter. Ellie has many, many questions she wants to ask: who are you, what is the history of your species, how did you create this traveling machine, to which the alien answers -- using a well-worn phrase of her father's: "small moves, Ellie. Small moves." In other words: this is only the initial meeting, a first step of many. Let us take our time on this journey, foot by foot, bit by bit. There is no need to know everything, say everything, solve everything, at this particular moment. Answers and actions unfold in the by and by ... Even then, don't they usually lead to more questions, more uncertainties, more wild and woolly paradoxes...?  And though evolution and transformation does have its grand cataclysmic moments, much of it seems to occur through seemingly small, even hidden, moves tucked deep within the folds of time. Imagine the countless adaptations and mutations it took for humans to become what they are now. Or how a drop of water, which, joined with millions of other drops over the eons, carves great canyons into rock.

A few years ago the French Carmelite mystic Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) paid me a visit in one of my dreams. Therese, often referred to as the "Little Flower," is a kind of saint of "small moves." Fresh from an Air France flight, camouflaged in a wool cap and Nirvana T-shirt, Therese a la grunge, she wanted to take a tour of my life - touch all its tiny little details, the textures of my day to day existence. I was a little ashamed to let her see my messy home office, our sink full of gummy dishes, our backyard overgrown with half-dead weeds. What must this young nun, accustomed to a neat and orderly convent life, think of all this mess? But Therese seemed to enjoy the external disorder of my life. With a grin, she peered at one of my disheveled bookshelves as if it were a field of exotic wildflowers.

Therese's "mission" in her short life was to teach the "little way," that is: the way of spiritual childhood, the path of trust and surrender - a way that we find right where we are, day by day, in the messy sacredness of the small, the momentary, and the ordinary. Although there are New Testament references, in the gospels, about the necessity of "becoming as little children," Therese usually referred to texts from the Hebrew scriptures when explicitly teaching her little way: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Proverbs 9:4). "For to him that is little, mercy will be shown" (Wisdom 6:7). There is nothing cloyingly sentimental about spiritual childhood. It is a situating of oneself, with awe, reverence, and curiosity, before this wild Mystery that births us and surrounds us, with a trust that the Kosmos is quietly unfolding as it should, in us, through us, and with us. It is the delighted recognition that we arrived here through a Mother and Father, through forces beyond our grasp. From this perspective, then (referred to by integralistas as "the second face of God") humility is never a demeaning of oneself. It is an embracing of what is.

These days my life is characterized by small moves rather than grand cataclysmic shifts. (Though of course, that could change at any moment!) Living with dysthymia - an on-and-off mild depression that I currently manage with supplements, frequent walks in sunlight, talks with a spiritual director, laughter, and prayer - is teaching me to focus my limited energy into small projects and tiny disciplines: toothbrushing as a spiritual practice, writing as prayer, editing as cognitive workout and income, the yoga of napping with cats, small-group contemplative volunteer work, and - when ambition has got the better of me - dishwashing and pulling weeds.

And bathing. I really dig bathing: soaking in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lectio Divina

She would never have defined it as such, but back in the day my mom practiced Lectio Divina ("divine reading") in the bathtub - often with the bathroom door open, so that a passerby might catch a glimpse of her relaxing in the hot water, reading her leatherbound King James Bible and smoking Kent cigarettes. What long, luxurious, holy baths! She usually kept her bathing Bible on the shelf underneath the medicine cabinet. I'd open it sometimes while using the toilet. Its water-wrinkled pages were full of tiny little pencil marks - apparently she kept track of where she started and ended her readings. I saw that she would read just little bits at a time - from a few verses to a few paragraphs.

Long after she'd lost patience with churchrules, until the day she died, my mother maintained a downhome devotional life by sitting and smoking and soaking in the Word.

Lectio Divina is an ancient art - apparently practiced at one time by all Christians and kept alive in the monastic tradition - involving a slow, contemplative praying of the scriptures. Monastics divide Lectio in to four "movements": lectio (reading/listening), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).

Lectio - the first movement in the prayer, requires us to quiet down and read slowly - usually just a few lines, perhaps a couple of paragraphs. Since the voice of Spirit often speaks very softly and intimately, one reads with an attitude of silence and reverence. In this receptive mode, we listen for one word or short phrase that attracts us, that speaks to us in a personal way. During meditatio - the second movement in the prayer, we take that chosen word or phrase and ruminate on it, ponder it. We turn it over in our minds, and allow it to mingle and simmer with our inner world of memories, concerns, and ideas. Thirdly, during oratio, we inwardly speak to God, interacting honestly with the Spirit as you would with a deeply loving other. Depending on the selected word or the phrase, one might express yearning, gratitude, anger, desolation, love, sadness, joy, peace, etc. Finally, with contemplatio, one rests in silence with the chosen word, simply being present to Presence.

Lectio Divina has alternative forms, and can be adapted in a variety of ways for practice with small groups. Today practitioners see it as a way to open up and "pray with" a sacred book. "Sacred book" can be broadly defined -- the New Testament, a collection of Rumi's poetry, a non-scriptural text, the realms of nature, a painting, events in history, one's own life experience. . .

Most often I practice Lectio with the written word - and once in a while with song lyrics. On occasion I'll keep a book or journal of the phrases I've chosen for pondering. I may spend several days or a week or more with a particular phrase, listening to various nuances, inquiring into its meaning, hearing its truths, responding or reacting to it, observing with interest when it synchronistically resonates with some event in my life, perhaps encouraging me to take some action, offering me a long-awaited answer to an inner dilemma, or even kicking me in the ass.

A few of my past lectio phrases include:

"Seek, and you will miss." (Anthony de Mello)

"Love one another as I have loved you" One-word version: "Love." (gospel of John)

"There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." (Rumi)

"How long must I climb?" (Coldplay)

"You came out of nothing, isn't that something?" (Fr. Thomas Keating)

"Faith is the bird that sings in the night" (Tagore)

"Persevere" (Hebrews 12:1)

"All I need is your extra time and your kiss." (Prince)

"Jesus wept." (John 11:35)

The practice of Lectio can allow a single word or phrase to bloom and release its hidden fragrances into our lives. It can also liberate myth. As Beatrice Bruteau writes in Radical Optimism: "The [biblical] stories are about us. It is to us that the angel of the Anunciation proclaims that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will bring forth from our emptiness divine life...

 
"It is to us that the baptismal voice is addressed, saying, ‘You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.' And if we really hear that, we will be driven into a wilderness wherein we will struggle with the question of what that means and what its implications are. And eventually we will find, as was foreshadowed at our birth, that we are lying in the manger as food for the world."

I most often use the Bible for both solo and group Lectio. Over the years, its wisdom has washed through me and through my Lectio comrades like a cool subterranean stream. Or perhaps we're... luxuriously soaking in it. I guess I really am my mother's daughter.

Centering in the Hood

For several years, I facilitated a centering prayer group at a Catholic church in a poor neighborhood near downtown San Diego. We would meet once a week to do a 20-30 minute centering sit together, followed up with group Lectio Divina, informal sharing, or one of Thomas Keating's Spiritual Journey videotapes. (An excellent series of videos, by the way, which elucidates the Christian journey in light of recent understandings about development, spiritual stages, psychology, etc. These videos are where I first heard about Ken Wilber).

It was a lively little group of diverse folks leading busy lives. And the church, situated just a few yards away from a busy trolley stop, was never a quiet place. We'd sometimes use electric fans to create white noise while we meditated, but usually the sounds of the city would come through - the trolley horn, police sirens, young men yelling and breaking out in fights. The Ballet Folklorico used the church's rec room to practice, so there would usually be Latin beats coming through the walls. Kids ran up and down the hall outside of the room where we met. So we often joked that we were getting in some very good centering practice - learning to sit still and let all those wild distractions come and go as we inhaled and exhaled ...

Centering prayer involves consistently consenting to the presence and action of the Spirit within. Consent is anchored through the use of a short "sacred word," (not the same as a mantra) which is silently repeated only when meditator becomes actively engaged with thoughts - including sense perceptions, feelings, images, memories, reflections, etc. The idea is to gently let the thoughts come and go while maintaining the intention. With practice, one eventually "falls into" contemplation, a state which, in Keating's words, involves "the opening of mind and heart - our whole being - to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions." It can be a deeply restful time; it also helps folks become more present to the present moment during their lives outside of the sit. As one practices nonattachment by letting the thoughts come and go (sometimes simply letting go of one's ability to let go) one can more readily offer her mind and her heart to whatever the moment requires.

Anyway, I just have to share this other little story. I know this is long already.

We had been listening to taped discussions on the relationship between contemplation and action. I think we had also recently done a group lectio on Matthew 25: 31-46: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you ... a stranger and make you welcome ... sick or in prison and go to see you?" ... "In so far as you did this to one of the least ... you did it to me." 

Dennis, the attorney-saxophonist in our group, and our most steadfast contemplative, suggested that we needed to do something active together as a group. Our church was surrounded by the sick and the hungry: homeless people who slept on nearby sidewalks, not too far from the trolley tracks. Why not gather some items to hand out to them, and have this gesture become the "active" part of our group contemplative prayer?

I resisted. I already had my neat, tidy, and safe ways of serving the destitute - by donating to charities and giving old clothes to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. And since I was the facilitator of this group and all, I took it upon myself to explain that activity per se was not really the purpose of a centering prayer group. Although our contemplative practices should naturally weave themselves into our actions - into our lives outside of the two 20-minute sits a day - that "weaving" need not take form as a group activity in any explicit way. And I did my spiel of: "Ultimately contemplation is not personal and private, even though we usually practice the prayer solo. True contemplation is never ‘kept to one's self,' but instead charges all our interactions and becomes a part of everything we do, whether we are eating, changing a diaper, teaching, nursing a dying friend, playing, suffering through an illness, managing a business, fighting injustice ...." Etcetera., etcetera.  In other words: Um, let's not get that close to the homeless people.

But Dennis gently persisted. And when Rosie, everyone's favorite Mexican tia, felt persuaded toward this group action, I figured: well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving it a try, as long as we still do the centering prayer. Group members can choose whether or not they want to participate in these giveaways. We might solicit donations from friends and congregants, and pass out goods every other month or so.

Dennis had a very simple plan. It turned out that this was kind of his thing, giving odds and ends to homeless people. He often kept extra blankets in his car, and on a cold night, if he was driving around and happened to see a street person who looked like he needed a blanket, he'd offer it to him. "They also like bottled water and new white socks," he told us.

So we began gathering bottled water, crew socks, nutrition bars, and plastic grocery bags. On the day of the handout, we'd place two waters, two pairs of socks, and two food bars in each bag, pile them into the back of Dennis' van, and drive around to the variety of "street camps" nearby. (San Diego has a lot of them, comprised largely of the mentally ill, alcoholics and addicts - and the occasional family with children.)

As a group -- generally it was just three of us who did the handouts -- we would slowly approach people, and simply ask, "would you like some water and some new socks?"

Almost always, folks really, really wanted the water and the socks. (And only one time did a man ask for more. Reeking of alcohol, he slurred, "baby, what I want iz a hug!" Dennis and I simply grinned, but sweet aunt Rosie took him into her arms. She told us later that he licked her ear.) Especially, heartbreakingly, the street peeps rejoiced over the socks. I was completely undone during that first handout trek, to see the looks of sincere gratitude for a pair of new cotton socks. You would have thought we were giving away gold. I actually felt an odd, sad, shame - oh dear people, can these socks, these small things, make such a difference in your day? Oh please do not thank me so much for these few paltry items - I'm giving you nothing, really ...

I had not expected their gratitude to bring tears to my eyes. Socks! Such ordinary things. Such small moves.