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Great Thinkers in the History of the Church (no. 5)
Most of what I know about the spiritual life I have learned in relationships with other people, but there are some lessons that only aloneness can teach. I discovered this two summers ago when I found a place I could go for absolute solitude. It is on a mountain in a State Forest where almost no one goes when it's not hunting season. At the times I have camped there, I have never seen another human being. There I have learned that for me, at least in that setting, the essential value of solitude is freedom. When no one else is around, I am freed from my habitual social reflexes. There is no need for decorum, propriety, or tact, no fear of rejection or disapproval, no drive to compete or compare, no cause to endear, secure, protect, or define myself.
Freed from such interpersonal reactions, I find a different self emerging. It is young, exuberant, spontaneous, playful beyond restraint, courageous beyond my dreams. I do not act out fantasies or strive to fit images, because the reality of being free in nature's arms and God's love is more amazing than anything I could imagine. Along with freedom from self-images, I find liberation from my images of God. It is not a matter of replacing one image with another-instead it seems all the images disappear. God is not this or that, not me, not other, not within, not without; God just simply is. Similarly, prayer just is: no separation, no compartmentalization, no definition. At one point during my last visit to the mountain, I tried to pray the way I usually do at home. Immediately it felt wrong. It was, I recognized, an image of myself praying to an image of God. It seemed to put God at a distance and it made me feel separate from the trees and earth around me. When I stopped "praying," I relaxed into the deeper, truer prayer that had been given all along, a prayer without doing, almost without intent. In that letting-be of prayer I can sense the all-embracing intimacy of God: no need to reach out or even to seek.
—Gerald G. May (1940-2005), “The Freedom of Solitude,” Fall 1992; see www.shalem.org/publication/newsletter/archives/2005/2005_summer/article_12.
Comments
In Contemplative Prayer sessions, we have an etiquette, or protocol, for everything. Among these have been, for example, shoes off at the door, no talking after entering the room and waiting for the sound of the singing bowl, bow before the altar before you sit, bow to the members after the singing bowl rings, say the word "Peace" to each other in greetings, do not tell another person she is wrong, do not interrupt another member of the group, bow again to each other when leaving, do what the teacher says unless you can demonstrate he is wrong in what he expects, accept all feelings as legitimate, …
The Scottish biblical expositor William Barclay wrote, "The way in which a man comes to anything demonstrates the spirit in which he comes." We can change the way we experience the world by changing our approach.
What if we treated the world with the respect that is due sacredness? What if our whole life was one holy gesture of reverence to everything?
Maybe bowing once in a while in respect to a natural object, a friend, … and other like gestures of inward or outward reverence might facilitate experiencing the world more and more as a wonderful, sacred pilgrimage of faith, hope, and love. Christian mystics through the ages have spoken of this process of reverence as the disposition of the heart. Outward gestures manifest and nurture this attitude of sacredness.
Reflection
How do you nurture a sense of the sacred in your life?
What gestures in prayer or worship do you use? How do they affect your felt sense of reverence?
In what sense is the whole world the temple of the Divine Presence?
Spiritual Exercise
Keep spending at least twenty to thirty minutes daily in Silence, resting in the Lord of Love.
Make sure you have a sacred space in your home for time alone in prayer and spiritual reading.
Participate in a covenant group. For more information on covenant groups, write me at the address below.
Consider, if you are not already, sponsoring a child through Compassion International. You can find out more about Compassion International by going to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
To contact Brian, write briankwilcox@comcast.net .
*Source for Barclay quote is unknown.
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