The Contemplative Crisis

A divorced friend of mine sent an email to me following a recent conversation. She had one additional thing which she forgot to mention at the time. It was: “. . . don’t you ever try anything so stupid .. or I will lose faith in men completely. (Her emphasis, not mine.) The ‘anything so stupid’ would be for me to leave my wife. Although it has been 3 years since her husband left her, the disappointment is still raw and the ongoing issues with her former spouse continue.

She raises a point however, which I take seriously: how my own lifestyle and values help or hinder others in their own walk with God. For me, and I think for many other Christians, the culture of this society and its values are ones which erode our commitments and tempt us with materialism, hedonism and self-centeredness. We are called to live as a disciple of Christ and this will mean our lifestyles will by necessity, have a prophetic edge to them; they will be out of sync with the ‘world’, our society’s values. Daily we are bombarded with images on billboards, magazines and in newspapers which attempt to lure us to purchase a particular product. Many are made more eye catching by the addition of a beautiful female to gain our attention. Advertisements on the television, ‘girlie’ magazines at the petrol station and magazine racks at the newsagent offer a tantalizing alternative to either celibacy or fidelity to our spouse. The sexualisation of our culture may appear ‘cute’ and fairly innocuous when its Kyle (Minogue) dancing, but its abusive and one which steals the innocence 12 and 13 year old girls when they are dressed in skimpy and provocative clothing.

For those in the USA I have never understood why it is appropriate to have lithe women in brief and tight fitting clothing parading their natural attributes while dancing. I speak of the basketball or gridiron cheer squad. It appears to this distant outsider of American culture that it is never questioned by Christians there. Perhaps American culture has become so sexualized and ingrained that the Church is now oblivious to its ongoing impact. The excuse that the dancing cheer leaders are only ‘eye candy’ is at its best, disingenuous, and at its worst, avoiding the fact that it feeds the male fantasy for sex without relationship and responsibility. The general sexual permissiveness in our (Western) society is such that to voice an opinion which is critical of these prevailing values and lifestyles is looked upon as being prudish or politically incorrect and insensitive.

But returning to my original concern: what can I do so that I will not become like my friend’s husband and many other men who have left their wives and more often than not, the church as well? This is where the tradition of contemplation has something worthwhile listening to. Paul writing to his protégé Timothy said: ‘Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16, NIV) Our private decisions influence the general public, often far more than we realize until it’s too late. Who we are, our lifestyle, counts as much and more than what we say as a church leader. So watching our life and doctrine (what we hold to) on a daily basis is the daily imperative. We cannot relax for one moment because we are engaged in a war: the flesh, the devil and the world. Older seasoned saints know this and that’s why they are still pressing on, but those who treat this view with scorn are no longer with us. They have been taken prisoner when they succumbed to the propaganda spread by the enemy that its ok to compromise in this area.

It’s not easy living in this culture driven by images, messages and moral permissiveness. It should not surprise us that many do fall and it’s easy to become discouraged. After a few days in a silent retreat with sustained periods to pray, think and ruminate on life, I am often struck as I drive back into the city by the crass materialism of the large lifestyle shops on the main highway. I am tempted to turn around and head to the hills. But this will not in itself be the solution. Being a monk will not necessarily solve the problem. The following illustration will highlight this.

A Benedictine monk was asked by a curious outsider what monks do all day.

He replied: ‘We fall down and then we get up again.’

And what do you do the next day?”, the enquirer asked.

‘Oh, the next day, we fall down and we get up again.’

Being a monk does not remove you from temptation, crazy thoughts or the human condition to be imperfect or to sin. They are realists in a refreshing way about what goes on in our heads. But they are also practical. They know the value of living together in community so that each can support the other. The individual is not left alone to try and transform themselves or figure it out themselves. The community itself provides the means that God uses to help transform the individual monk. That is why they are called to be ‘in stability’ with the community and not to move on to greener pastures (as so many in our churches do).

For me, here’s what I do so that my life doesn’t fall apart and so I don’t succumb to the temptation to give it all away. First, I try and consciously live day by day, re committing myself to the task of engaging in meaningful communication with those who are nearest and dearest. This is to fulfill the second commandment of loving my neighbour. This is dependent on being open with my communication with God – fulfilling the first commandment.

Second, a degree of self awareness of the stuff which works its way around in my head is required and this takes some time of each day. So I spend some time each day reflecting on it (prayer of exam for example), meditating on Scripture, drawing near to God. But it is this stuff, which the Desert Fathers called: the thoughts of one’s heart, that I am trying to pay attention to. They are the temptations which quickly lodge in our hearts and sprout as thorns and thistles. Benedict gives guidance here by saying: “As soon as thoughts spring up in your heart, dash them against Christ.’ (Rule, ch 4) Occasionally I need to air them with my spiritual director and this has the element of confession. When I am seeing my spiritual director I try to remain open to him so that I hide nothing. Fortunately his love for me is greater than my shame. This commitment to remain open and not hiding my thoughts is also expressed in my relationship with my wife and children. The opposite is deceit. (See John Cassian, Conferences, Section 18-20 for example on dealing with thoughts and temptations.) The key word is transparency – before God, before my director, to my wife, to myself. By ventilating these thoughts, temptations and little fantasies, their power over me when they are brought out into the open. This was called the ‘manifestation of thoughts’ in the early period of monastic development when the disciple would share his inner thought life with his master in the desert.

Third, the only way I can stay on track is by regularly making a conscious commitment to hang out with healthy men (mostly Christian) who are not sucked into the deceit of materialism. They are not competitive or bragging about their achievements but simply humble people getting on with life and trying their best to be a disciple of our Lord. They are on the other side of youthful excess and passion. They are no longer following some dream which is powered by their selfishness. To some extent, this is the role a healthy Christian community has in reinforcing and shaping our commitments. It is similar to the role the monastic community has in keeping an eye on the individual and being the collective conscience to the individual.

Fourth, the church’s culture can itself become one which is influenced by our wider sexualised culture. The culture of power also has a way of being smuggled in too and for this reason, we need to be vigilant to its penetration and then collaboration with the sexualized culture to create a potent mixture of excitement. Signs of its work are when pastors present themselves like presidents of a new kingdom or confuse God’s authority with their own. Some of the women who attend church dressed provocatively with plunging necklines, bare shoulders. Some even come in short shorts. The music team and song leaders are dressed in cool clothing in order to look hip. This is not too bad, but the worship time is orgasmic. The cd covers of young Christian woman dressed in revealing clothing meet my eyes with seductive looks. A heady mix of music, lighting, suggestion by the pastor, power dressing and unbeknown to us, we are being massaged into a place where we are open to the suggestion of many things, one of which is that feelings, with a sense of empowerment and intimate contact with God are combined to provide a powerful experience. This emphasis on experience helps promote the culture that my feelings are more important than my responsibilities or my covenants, or even the need for an accurate understanding of Scripture. I try to keep away from such places and the experiences they conjure up. This is one of the reasons why I’m in a cooler (emotionally) church called Anglicanism which has a tradition and liturgy that acts as a buffer to the sexualisation and power worship of the independent churches. The prayer book and liturgy help to keep ministers confined from projecting their own psychological and sexualized power, but even this dike can be breached when determination takes place to indulge in Baal worship.

I think I’m right in saying, that men when they hit mid life, they often suffer a malaise of disaffection with themselves, their spouse and life itself. The causes are many, but they then begin secretly entertaining thoughts about how much better it would be if . . . They are unaware of their passions, their desires and their deepest needs which have led them into this place. The problem is not in what we see, but what the heart does with what we see. The solution is to ‘guard your heart’ as the Desert Fathers taught.

What men are aware of in mid-life are their accumulated hurts, their disappoints in life and the thirst for something else. There is often an identifiable desperation within to alleviate the malaise that has become their constant companion. A new career, a new marriage or a change in their location are seen as short cut solutions to relieve this malaise, especially when they have experienced travel overseas. Overseas travel is a narcotic which provides immediate relief from the internal pain and malaise. One thing in common amongst several friends who have left their wives has been the considerable amount of time they spent away from their spouses overseas. While travelling, they live in a bubble cocooned from the grittiness of daily life, staying in five star hotels, dining on fine food and the people they rub shoulder with are always dressed immaculately. There are no whinging children with runny noses and no wife asking for help in the kitchen or to take a child to their sporting commitment. The daily chores which breed irritability are being relieved by hotel staff while they are away. Here again, the Benedictine distinctive emphasis on stability speaks into my life to keep time away from wife and family to a minimum. (It is their distinctive emphasis because the monk does not make a threefold vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, but conversion of life, obedience and stability – to remain where God called you.)

The hard work of conversion is not entertained by men who are in this place of discontent because the solution to the problem is seen to be ‘out there’, with the existing wife, work or situation. But we know that the problem really resides within our hearts. It is at this point that our focus must shift to the God who has called us not only to faith in Christ, but calls us daily to allow him to transform us by his Spirit (2 Cor 3:18). But this is also our hope: things need not remain as they are, we can each day start over again, in Christ’s love and freedom. At the point where we recognise that we need to turn away from this growing temptation or malaise within, and seek Christ is real conversion. It’s not something we did in the past, it’s something we are called to do daily.

Where do you experience  God’s salvation? Normally the question would be: “Do you know how God’s salvation is offered to you in Christ?”  Or another question might be: “Where were you when you were saved?” Both these questions focus on knowing and experiencing salvation at some point in the past. However, we live in the present and experience God in the present, including salvation. Salvation and healing/wholeness are sometimes used interchangeably in Luke’s gospel and this is how I would like to use this term although I understand that in certain situations, ‘being saved’ is what the word salvation is reduced to. My question today is, “Where do you experience God’s salvation in daily life, now?”

Let me give you an example of experiencing God’s salvation. Ben, a boy of about 3 yrs of age, invites Sarah, his godmother, to dance with him to a Wiggles song on the DVD on the television. He does not know that Sarah  suffers from depression. He invites her to dance however. Sarah gets up and begins to dance and as she does so, she experiences a moment of knowing that an inner healing has taken place by giving herself to the music and the situation. She has moved from a place of woundedness and sadness, and being held by depression due to recent tragic events, to a place where she has experienced wholeness and joy. Sarah could see this situation as a gift of God and a moment when she experienced salvation.

In John’s gospel, ch 5 vss 1-9, Jesus invites an unnamed crippled man who sits beside the pool of  Bethesda to be healed. Of course he would want healing we think. He has been crippled for 38 years (Jn 5:5). That’s why he has had his relatives bring him each day to sit beside the pool. But if he accepts the invitation by Jesus to get up and walk, it will mean a total change in his lifestyle. It will mean no longer saying to people: “I am the man beside the pool crippled.” How he views himself and his identity will change by accepting the healing. An uncertain future is opening up before him. The same invitation was offered to Blind Bartimaeus when Jesus said to him: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10: 46) The rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking what must he do for eternal life was offered the invitation to leave finding his security in his wealth and to trust God in everyday life (Mk 10:17ff). Attached to the invitation by Jesus to be healed or set free is the disturbing thought that one’s life will not be the same again. Salvation will bring transformation – and change. Although willing  to acknowledge their crippled  and  blind states, the man beside the pool of Bethesda and Bartimeaus were totally unprepared for Jesus turning up and bring with him, salvation into their particular situation. (See also Zacchaeus, Lk 19:1-10)

Sometimes people we meet are so wounded and hurt that they are crippled. They  constantly retell their story as, “I was injured by this event or person and I no longer feel as if I have control over my life. I have lost everything, even my sense of identity. I am so defined and scared by this event or person that I cannot move back to a place of health again.” How do we encourage these people to move to a place where they experience freedom from their crippling story? The key lies in them experiencing  Jesus coming into their life and bringing his salvation/healing.  In a particular situation of their everyday life, when they experience his presence, they are able to experience his salvation. So what we could do is ask them to learn and notice when God invites them to experience his salvation in their everyday life, just as the cripple beside the pool was invited to experience God’s salvation unexpectedly in an unexpected way. The crippled man expected the waters to be stirred  forming little waves indicating it was now possible to be healed -  if he got into the water in time. Instead he got Jesus helping him to his feet;  healing him and setting him free from his past. This was his moment of salvation/healing.

Often though, we use inappropriate substitutes to fill the hole and to banish the pain which cripples us. A common one is to seek long and deep intimate conversations with a few friends to temporally numb the pain and daub the soothing balm on our wounds. They provide much needed support. But if we stop and look at what’s happening,  we’re avoiding the issue (of our crippled and hurt life), and using our intimate friendships to put a band aid on our wounds. If it is pointed out that we are relying on our friends too much or simply using them to avoid facing the pain within which cripples us, we reply in anger that we need these friendships, they are what keep us going.  However, they are really bringing us each day to the pool where we sit waiting for a miracle to happen.  In effect, they are colluding with us in allowing us to maintain our status as a victim. But we must be willing to surrender this false identify and allow God to approach us and invite us to be healed.

Another inappropriate solution to our pain and the feeling of being divorced  from God is to do what Elijah did. Following his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and their slaughter on Mt Carmel (1 Kings ch’s 18-19), he became exhausted and afraid for his life due to threats made by the queen of Israel,  Jezebel. He embarked on a search for salvation but used an inappropriate means to grasp it. He went down to Mt Horeb (also known as Mt Sinai), where God had appeared to Moses and given him the ten commandments. Did Elijah find what he sought by going to Mt Sinai? No he didn’t. He expected to be re-commissioned like Moses or given some new gift to bring back to his fellow countrymen, but God wasn’t in the fire, the roaring wind which split the rocks, or the cloud. It was the small still voice that God’s voice could be heard. This became a moment when Elijah experienced God’s salvation in the small still voice of God. God was alive and present to him and his needs.

On particular practice I’ve found useful is to read Scripture with our imagination. Using our imagination, we place ourselves in the scene and enter into a dialogue with Jesus. (This is commonly called the Ignatian method.) The following meditation and exercise is designed to train your eyes and heart to become more aware of when and where you experience God’s salvation in your daily life.

Read the story of the crippled man in John 5:1-9 several times until it becomes quite familiar.

Imagine that you are the crippled man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda.

What does the surrounding area look like? What are the sounds you can hear? Is it hot or cool? What  can you smell or touch? Are there any other people with you? Who are they and what are they doing?

You see Jesus coming in and approaching. What does he look like? He turns and sees you. How do you feel?

Then Jesus says to you, “Do you want to be healed.” What do you want to say to him as a result of this question? Spend a bit of time talking to him about his question. Then Jesus invites you to take his hand and to get to your feet and take your mat home. You accept his offer and get up. How do you feel now? How does it feel to be walking with your mat home? What thoughts are going through your head? Do you like being healed? What are you expecting tomorrow will be like when you wake up in bed and realize that you won’t be going to the pool to sit beside it for the rest of the day?

It’s winter here and almost the shortest day of the year.  This season is associated with a mixtures of responses. I asked a group today on a ‘quiet day’ retreat what feelings and thoughts they associated with winter. Some said it reminded them of being rugged up in bed with a doona wrapped around them. (A doona is a feather quilt bearing this eponymous proprietary name.) Others thought of woollen jumpers, the open fires, the shorter days and longer nights; of cosy food. Yesterday I asked the secretary at the church where I am a minister what she associated with winter as a test run to the questions for the group today. Her response was quite different and unexpected. She spoke of the cold, of miserable weather, colds, of being shut inside. Her tone of voice reinforced the sadness she associated with this time of year.

I wrote the following poem in July 2007. I think it includes both the sadness and the joy which can be experienced at this time of year. It also suggests that winter can be a time of transformation, from a place of death, to life.

Winter has us in its icy grip;
It’s frozen fingers clasped firmly around our day.
The earth sleeps silently dreaming of the coming spring
when this globe will round the corner
on its way
toward the warming sun.

It is a time,
of colds which cause cancellations and inconvenience,
with scratchy children and their snuffly sleepless nights,
the smell of Vicks Vapor Rub and the sound of coughs.
But we are grateful for wintertime,
its fresh cold wind, woollen jumpers, swollen rivers - even floods;
the golden gift of low slung setting sun
so great our hearts almost burst with joy.

The earth sleeps silently,
in wintertime,
and your work O Lord is quietly going on
hidden from our eye.
But we are waiting, longing for our Springtime,
when like a gardener you will come to repair your ground.
Send forth your Spirit to renew our tired earth,
our worn down farmers, our anxious towns looking at the sky.
Bring forth the daffodils, the wattle’s yellow and the blossom;
signs of your resurrection work
and of a life to come when this living death will die.
© Rob Culhane 21 July 07

The winters in Tasmania are much colder than here in Melbourne where I now live. When I lived in Tasmania, I was working as a carpenter and I’d often go out into the countryside to work on a farmer’s house. I noticed that during winter time, there is not much for them to do. The days are shortened; frequently it is too cold to get motivated to be outside and not much is otherwise happening around the farm.  Often it’s too boggy to be heading out into the paddocks. Once they have fed their cattle or sheep in the morning with hay cut from the summer, that was pretty much it for the day. In late winter, lambing season starts, but until then, it’s pretty quiet. Just the sound of the wind in the windbreaks of pine trees and the mournful sound of the crows or currawongs crying in the distance. In between not having much to do, I noticed they would repair their fences, especially when a storm had sent a tree branch crashing down on them. The wire fences were re-strained taunt again and fences made of the stones piled up so they look regular and not bedraggled with stones strewn around the fence’s base like a child’s Lego in the lounge room. Farm gates were rehung and welded and the farm machinery fixed or serviced. It was a time to tend to the overlooked jobs which have been deferred in the busier, warmer months.

Winter is like our mid-life. Not much is happening; we feel lost, dead almost. We are frequently mourning the loss of summer’s power and are aware of the silence and death detected in the winter’s approaching footsteps. It is an in between time, as we wait for spring. It is a place where there seems to be little going on, of darkened days. It’s silent, but it can also be a time for quiet transformation, of preparation for the spring. It is a good time to tend to the little disciplines and re-build the prayerful practices we have overlooked or deferred in the busier summer months. And winter provides us with a quiet time to listen again for the voice of God’s invitation to be converted and to accept his invitation to come, and move into a place of new life, the life of spring.

We have all been given two ears to listen with.
In one ear, we have heard the voice of those who criticise us and say,
‘You’ll never be any good’,
or that, ‘You messed that up’,
or ‘You’ll never learn’,
or ‘You’re not able to be a leader’.
It might have been our family which has told us this,
with sometimes just a look,
sometimes at the top of their voice,
the message we hear is loud and clear.
It might have been a boss,
a leader who is stressed and frustrated and tired
and has taken their anger out on you.
But we must turn down the volume of that voice in our ear
and listen with our other ear to God’s voice which
we hear in Scripture
we hear in the voice of encouragement by friends
we hear from those who walk beside us at our pace
we hear from strangers who comment on our abilities which we shyly deny
although God has impressed them into us from our birth.
We must listen to the voice of God in our other ear which says
‘You are deeply loved by me.’
‘You have been chosen by me and are precious in my sight.’  (Is 43:4)
‘You are the apple of my eye.’  (Ps 17:8)
‘Your days are written by me before anyone of them has come to pass.’  (139:16)
and
‘I have appointed you to go and bear fruit which will last.’ (Jn 15:16)
We must do this everyday
in the morning
before we turn on the radio
before we read the newspaper
before we use the internet
before we watch the television
before we forget to listen to God’s voice
in the silence, in solitude and in our prayer
because it is in this place that we find our renewal.

Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday. It’s my turn to preach and so I have been mulling over the sermon throughout the week which will be about the trinity. This morning I was ruminating on the wooden box (on which I sit to pray and meditate most mornings in my bedroom), how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are often described in Scripture as doing the same work, such as in the creation of the world and sustaining it.  We notice that the attributes of one member of the trinity and also their work can also be seen in another member (of the trinity), which leads us to confess that God is one substance in three Persons. So for example, the Father (1 Cor 8:6),  the Son (Jn 1:2; Col 1:16-17), and Holy Spirit (Ps 104:30; Gen 1:2; Job 26:13, 33:4) are all involved in the work by God of his creation.  I then turned my mind to how we pray. The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer by interceding for us (Rom 8:26-27; Eph 6:18, Jude 20), as does the Son (Rom 8:34) and that we direct our prayers to the Father (Matt 6:6, 26:42, Eph 3:15-16). Prayer is a trinitarian act of grace.

Thinking about the inter-related way in which the trinity helps us pray, reminded me of the time when Moses was interceding for the Israelites as they fought against the Amalekites in Exodus 17:8-16. As it was the custom to raise the hands when praying, Moses stood with his hands raised, interceding for the Israelites. While he held them up, the Israelites would be winning the battle.  But when he became tired and lowered them, the Amalekites then began to prevail.  Aaron and Hur saw what was happening and came alongside him, sat him down on a rock and held his hands up, so eventually the battle was won.  For me this was a great picture of how the Holy Spirit comes alongside of us on one side, encouraging us and strengthening us by holding up one of our hands in prayer and the Son comes alongside us on the other side, holding up the other hand by interceding for us.  In all, with the Spirit on one side and the Son on the other  as we face the Father, I felt enveloped in the trinity.  Prayer is our movement into the life of the trinity and the life of the trinity working deep within us praying.

Ps  141:2 highlights that the Psalmist would pray with their hands raised high:

“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

This is a good prayer to use sometimes as we settle into the presence of God and with a picture in our mind of the Spirit one side and the Son on the other, holding up our hands as we bring our prayers to God, I hope you will be encouraged to pray a little bit more and a little bit more often.

My friend has recently arrived back in Australia from his studies in Bologna, Italy. This is his post.

One of the joys of undertaking doctoral studies in Bologna was the discovery of the university city’s many ‘gems’, in this case, the Olivetan Benedictine community of Santo Stefano in the heart of Bologna. The Olivetans are part of the Benedictine family having been founded by Blessed Bernard Tolomei in 1344. The complex of Santo Stefano in Bologna is known as the ‘sette chiese’ or seven churches, an enchanting collection of buildings and places of worship that date back to the second century. The first church is a replica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Tradition has it that the whole complex of Santo Stefano is built over an ancient pagan temple.

During my eight month stay in Bologna, I would join the monks for morning prayer every day at 7.45am. Even before opening the Liturgy of the Hours, I was always struck by the awesome sense of history that surrounded me and in which I was immersed. Often I would try to imagine the diverse range of personalities and characters that had shaped the monastic complex, that had come to pray there, those who had lived there and had shaped its life, liturgy and history. I often felt a powerful sense of wonder at the many people who had gone before me over the centuries long before my arrival in that ancient city. Joining the monks for the sung office always seemed to take me to ‘another place’, especially a strong and tangible connection to a venerable tradition of monastic spirituality in Christian history.  Whenever I visit and pray with a monastic community, I always have this feeling of wading in a deep pool of history, tradition and spirituality.

The psalms in the scriptures are ancient songs that touch the reality and rhythms of our daily lives.  They have been sung and prayed by members of the various monastic traditions over the centuries. As the psalms of the day are intoned and chanted, the ‘today’ of our lives is joined to this ancient tradition and our hearts are lifted in praise to God. The great strength and timelessness of the psalms is that they speak to our reality and touch the rhythm and cycles of daily life – our moods and feelings, our joys and sorrows, our fears and uncertainties, our supplications, dreams and desires. This daily reality and cycle of prayer comes before the God who hears the cry of his people and who never abandons his people to darkness and death. He is the God who fills his people with hope and gives them courage for their journey of faith.

I find that the psalms often echo the reality of our lives and speak words when at times words are beyond us – in moments of emptiness and pain, in the daily grind of life, in the midst of suffering and death, in our desire for courage, in our search for justice and in our struggle to be faithful to God’s call in our lives. For me, the daily grind of doctoral research was only possible, and was made somewhat bearable, only after having started the morning with the monks and uniting my prayer with the needs of the Church and the world. The chanted psalms of the day were ancient and timeless voices of the past that spoke to the reality of my life and the world around me.

Having a spiritual director has  become a little like having your own therapist or your own personal trainer at the gym. “It gives one spiritual status”, notes Alan Jones in his forward to Margaret Guenther’s book, Holy Listening, p. viii.  Not all would share this benign view of the spiritual director. Some when they hear the word, ‘spiritual director’, think of a guru figure who tells them what they must do. This view is entirely the opposite of their role.  Other misperceptions abound, not just within the Evangelical churches, but also Roman Catholic and Orthodox as well. Spiritual directors are perceived to be either too clinical or authoritarian and possibly for good reason.  Many ministers within these traditions have been overbearing, moralistic and focused on peccadilloes and it is easy to assume spiritual directors will be the same. In the recent history within the Roman Catholic Church, their role was frequently fixated on issues of morality. Thankfully, things have moved on and the traditional role of the spiritual director of guiding someone in their journey with God has been recovered.

Others think the whole idea of seeing a spiritual director tantamount to entering  ‘therapy’, meaning  they are weak and in need of someone to put their life back together for you.  In this view, the role of the therapist and the spiritual director are both being misunderstood. A spiritual director simply guides you to pay attention to where God is at work in your life. This often this involves helping you identify what happening in your prayer life and helping you discern between the good and the better. And the discussion doesn’t have to be anything particularly ‘spiritual’ either. Anything which is happening in your life, even if nothing is happening, can be brought for discussion and reflection because God is at work in all the different aspects of our daily life. They are there for you, particularly if you are going through a rough patch and nothing in your spiritual life is working. If a mother with a baby comes and says that she has no time to pray, the spiritual director’s role can simply be to support you, hold you and assure you that this is will be only for a season. Your prayer life need not be compared with a saint living in the cloistered life; it will be by necessity different now and practiced at different times and in different ways from when you were child free and had hours to journal and reflect.  Their presence is a stabilising influence in our lives at such a time.

Spiritual directors come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and I am often surprised at how ‘ordinary’ they are. Most are not (if men), ‘monkish’, or  (if a woman), grey haired and with wizened face, although for many of women spiritual directors, the need for excessive makeup and other artificiality has long been discarded as a façade.  But most spiritual directors I have met are in the older age bracket and it is for good reason. They have spent years trying to sort out this thing of living with Christ in daily life. Time has had its effect with good result: they are weathered like the drift wood on the beach, once rough, now smooth, at least on the inside.  Their wrinkles and whitened hair have accorded them the depth which has been hard won from years of struggle with God and the struggle in understanding themselves and others. Often they have seen the gamut of life – its  joys, its  pain and its disappointments and somehow, in spite of things which would have crushed me, they have risen above them and continued holding onto God.  Some have even abandoned God or lost him, but come back again. They have reached the cross roads in life where they considered that there was either no other option but to return, or everything and anything else had been tried but found wanting and was empty, so they came home again to discover how much they had really missed being away.

What are the qualifications for being a spiritual director? The obvious one would be that they have listening skills, but not in the modern therapeutic sense of Rogerian listening as if this is all that is required of a spiritual director. They must have the gift of being able to listen for the voice of your true self that masks itself in the narrative we share and behind the busy life we pursue.  Good directors also ask good questions, which help us clarify what we are struggling to articulate. They must be men and women who know the paths we take with the best of intentions toward God, but then get sidetracked. And they must be studied in the classical mystical literature of St Theresa of Avila, St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Ignatius of Loyola and so on.  Kenneth Leech in his book, Soul Friend lists the different qualifications from pages 37-45. One quality he lists which has stuck me is that the ‘spiritual father’ didn’t teach a spiritual technique, but was a father who helped shape the inner life of his children through prayer, concern and pastoral care.  The spiritual director is a mother or father who gives their life to the directee and gives them the freedom to become the person they are meant to be in Christ. They don’t ‘impose’ themselves on their directee but love them.  Somehow they create in the relationship with the directee the space for the directee to be there with God, while remaining unobtrusively on the sidelines.  Leech also notes that a director should speak out the depths of his or her own prayer and lifestyle experience. (Leech, p. 39) This ability to speak about their prayer experience is important as much of direction is about our prayer life and what’s affecting it. As a consequence, they must be able to teach us to pray in the appropriate way when a different method is required and the old ways (of prayer), no longer work.

Some of the qualifications I like are that they are someone who has sinned much and now lives a life of continual repentance.  They are someone in touch with their own brokenness, faults and weaknesses to sin, but without being morbid. This provides them with a freedom from the need to enter into the relationship with a judgmental spirit. They are able to welcome the directee, as Christ would himself, because they are have learnt to apply the grace of God to themselves first, and now offer that grace to others. The grace and peace of God have so worked within them that they have become the embodiment of grace.  Perhaps they are someone who has been prepared by withdrawal from the world and even  the affairs of the church - a common method of preparation in the past. They have left for the far country, and on returning, have something which is lacking in much of the church leadership. Church leadership is often priestly, preoccupied with maintaining the institution; spiritual directors are sometimes awkward prophets, saying things to us we need to hear and know we need to hear, but it’s a voice the institution would often like to silence because its  values, the ones we often live by, often lead to a place of death, burnout or idolatry.  On this point, good spiritual directors are not concerned about making you feel good, but helping you find yourself in God and sorting out why you may have drifted away or lost your bearings.  They are not about rescuing you (from the situation you find yourself in), but sitting with you in the situation and helping you to find God there too. They challenge our assumptions and our ego driven need to be ‘doing stuff’ asking us to consider where we are experiencing God’s grace and freedom.

Despite their awkward relationship within the church community, one value I nevertheless would require of a spiritual director is that they are rooted in a church tradition and a church community. This will mean they are not operating as a lone ranger or unaware of the roots and traditions of the church and in the rich heritage of mystical theology. Undoubtedly they are not indifferent or unaware of the problems of the institutional church, but have a judicious eye of distance by which they offer a vision that is refreshing. Entering into spiritual direction is to enter into a very long conversation in the Church of how do we grow more into Christ; how do we move though phases in our life of prayer; how do we become more holy. The director is well versed in the nuances of this conversation and is sensitive to only recommend what is appropriate for you in your situation, and not a particular ideological line.

The ability to be a spiritual director is dependent on having a calling by God. This calling often only emerges late in life as a consequence of getting some way along the path and realising that you have something which others come seeking. Sometimes it is the in depth conversations which begin  to alert you to the idea that perhaps these conversations are not accidental and are resting on a certain kind of depth often lacking in others. However, the plethora of spiritual direction courses would imply that all who wish to be a spiritual director can be. Training, although important in itself, is not enough. The charism of the Holy Spirit is needed.  Spiritual direction is an art and acquired skill like that of a qualified tradesman or surgeon who has practiced under the direction of an experienced practitioner. It has been noted that the directee will draw the gift out of the spiritual director, as when the friends of St Anthony broke into the fort where he had prayed and meditated for twenty years to draw out his gift because they were in need of his counsel.

Spiritual direction is not for the spiritually elite but the average person. How then do I find one? The first place to start is with yourself, by praying that God will open the way for you to find one. This will help prepare you. Next, you might know someone who is already seeing a director. Ask them about it.  Ask your minister for a referral. This might scare them a bit, but it will be good for them. There might be churches or centres offering retreats which you see advertised, such as through a monastery or convent. These often have spiritual directors attached to them. You could approach Ignatian centres or other contemplative centres which offer spiritual direction. The Spiritual Directors International offer a locality map for most countries that show where directors live and their religious and denominational background.

Extreme ascetic practices have thankfully moved to the margins of church life. Some continue to exist, such as the re-enactment of the crucifixion in the Philippines and self flaguation. There are some who do not eat meat during Lent within even my own congregation. I am impressed by their commitment but prefer to offer prayer and praise to God from a full heart rather than an empty stomach. (Michael Casey, Toward God, p. 107) Others postpone breakfast on Sunday morning until they have come to church to receive holy communion. The relationship the disciple of Christ has with their body has been a complex one as Church history highlights. My interest is in how our bodies relate to our life of prayer because our bodies are intimately connected with our prayer life, helping or hindering it.

For much of my life I didn’t pay much attention to my body, or how it was employed in prayer and worship. I was typical of many men, focused on the outward world, the world of action, who saw their body as an instrument which did the bidding of the mind. What we thought we had to do, the body would obligingly carry it out. It was our obedient servant to our will. The body was distanced from the ‘real us’, the head and mind. This is a dualism which has a very long history in Western culture, one which we have inherited from the Greeks and baptised into the Church.

This separation came to an abrupt end about 10 years ago. In midlife my body began to make little protests and noises to get my attention. At first I ignored its bleating. Then I developed a trifecta of Coeliac Disease, high blood pressure and Fructose intolerance. I could no longer ignore my body or treat it with disdain; a machine which would obey my plans, my will and faithfully carry out my wishes. My daily liturgy has become to holdout my hand to receive two tablets to control my blood pressure and a third to help protect my esophagus damaged by the undiagnosed Coeliac Disease.

My ‘labora’, the daily work of the Benedictine monk, is to swim twice a week to control my weight and to help my cardio-vascular system remain at least at a functional level. Walking regularly is required to keep my back from developing painful muscle spasm. I have had to wean myself from the Western diet of high fat and sugar, or else I will undoubtedly develop Type 2 diabetes and my doctor has whispered that my cholesterol level is dangerously high and I risk needing another tablet a day to control it.

Now the temptations I battle with are not found in the desert where Anthony wrested with the demons, but in the suburbs, where the daily temptation is offered by the innocent coffee or the sugary soft drink, especially those with caffeine added. I find them addictive and when the sugar and caffeine are combined together, they produce a high as tangible as the effect of a good glass of wine on my brain – or any other mind altering pharmacology. Chemicals I would have formerly ignored, I now see are seeping into my body and poisoning it. I have finally had to come to grips with this thing, my body. There is no other I can trade this one in for. It is like our earth, sustaining our human race, yet we are destroying it. There is no other planet we can get to replace it; there is no other body available to replace this one, the one I have, so I had better care for it as God has given it to me as a gift. I need to be a steward of God’s grace, extending this ‘grace’ toward even my body.

We, the majority who comprise our local churches, are paralysised from doing anything which will deliver us from the vicious grip of over eating, our slothfulness, our self indulgence and the excessive consumption of food. Our apathy about the starving poor mirrors our short sightedness of our own over consumption, We seem indifferent to the powerful cultural messages which keep us trapped; that it is no accident that there are advertisements for fast food on our television at tea time; or that the shopping mall would be incomplete without luxurious coffee shops, cake shops and other food providers. Our churches are not havens from our bodily passions, but subtly continue to support them with many of our events and meetings centered around – food.  Often its not good food either. It’s like inviting a recovering alcoholic to a meeting at the local pub.

No, we cannot separate our bodies from our prayer lives. If they are sick, overweight or tired, our prayer life suffers. If we are suffering sleep apnoea, we will be incapable of praying without falling asleep. The common cold affects both our bodies, our minds and our emotional lives, so how can we be so blind not to see that the condition of our bodies will affect our prayer lives? A new askesis (Gk for discipline), which seems to be lacking in the ‘New Monasticism’ movement, must include the discipline of our bodies and weaning it from our Western culture’s unhealthy food habits.

The intimate link between our bodies and our worship and prayer is seen in our worship services where we kneel for prayer and at the communion rail to receive the sacrament of holy communion. It is the posture of humility and dependence upon God. We stand in the liturgical traditions of the Church, to listen to the gospel reading and for the holy communion thanksgiving prayer, a sign of our respect. In some churches and during the daily office, we bow in respect to the altar in the church and to each other because we all bear the image of God. We prostrate our bodies, as a sign of reverence, abasement and plea for mercy.  We lift our hands to express our praise. We shake hands to express our welcome of the other, the stranger and our neighbour who is forgiven and reconciled on the same basis as me at the greeting of the peace. We lay hands on children to bless them and to pray for people, a sign of our identification with them and their setting apart (consecration). We make the sign of the cross at the invocation of the Holy Trinity and prior to receiving the body and blood of Christ. Pilgrimages unite heart, body and spirit in the action of walking. Our bodies are intimately tied to our worship, our life of prayer. Church worship is kinesthetic. To have a healthy prayer life will require some attention to our body, especially a healthy body.

However, when the Reformation was underway, this union of body and prayer began to separate. The emphasis shifted away from a focus on the eucharist to a focus on the sermon and the receptacle for the sermon was the mind. Worship became more static and the amount of area allocated to allow physical movement in a church decreased. The sensory elements were purified from the churches; just white and black would do, mirroring the doctrinal precision of its churches leaders. Either you were right (white) in your doctrine or wrong (black). In the Presbyterian, Baptist and later Church of Christ congregations, the people were now served communion, and this too resulted in less bodily movement around the church. The body was confined to tight pews; it was in the mind where the worship now took place. (In the Georgian Churches here in Australia (which were constructed in New South Wales and Tasmania), the pews even have doors on them, preventing movement.) Thank God for the Charismatic Renewal which helped get the Church in touch with their bodies again and helped get them moving.

My body is the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) It was this truth that Paul appealed to as one of several arguments to stop the Corinthian Christians from indulging in promiscuous sex or intercourse with the temple prostitute. The sins committed by the human body could not be separated from realm of the spirit or soul because we are a psycho-sexual pneumatic being, clothed in flesh; just like the Incarnation of Christ, but we forget this too often. Irresponsible sexual expression will pollute our spirituality, sever our relationship with God and lead to a divided self. I am accustomed to thinking that my body belongs to me; but it’s not my own, it belongs to God; it is in this body that Christ now dwells, and in which the Father has come to live. Our sexuality is not just a bodily desire, but interconnects with our need for intimacy, touch and love. To treat it negatively is to fall again, into dualism with catastrophic results. A lack of awareness of how our sexuality interacts with who we are and our behaviour has led to tragic consequences for sexual abuse victims. But flirting, the dress by men and women in provocative clothing and the ‘projection’ by men of a persona of confidence and strength are more subtle ways our sexuality might be displayed, even within our local congregation.  The common reaction to the awareness that we are sexually endowed people with desires is repression, if not denial. This is simple legalism, usually imposed by those who are least comfortable with who they are. A better way than repression or denial of our sexuality is to call our desire the ‘sacred flame’, which needs protection from burning others when expressed inappropriately or by exploitation. This sacred flame needs tending when our bodies and relationships are tired and frayed and is a gift too, with all the other things which make us who we are in God’s image.

The church history record of the treatment of the body has been by and large, negative.  The monastic movement has certainly contributed to this portrayal. However, what we need is integration, not separation, if our contemplation is to grow and deepen. The following example taken from the Desert Fathers (200-450 AD) highlights this integration and the need to pay attention to the body and to treat it with respect, or else our life of prayer will be effected. And its taken from the very body of work which has traditionally eschewed our sexuality.

“They said of one monk that he had lived in the world and had turned to God, but was still goaded by desire for his wife; and he told this to the monks. When they saw him to be a man of prayer and one who did more than his duty, they laid on him a course of discipline which so weakened his body that he could not even stand up. By God’s providence another monk came to visit Scetis. When he came to this man’s cell he saw it open, and he passed on, surprised that no one came to meet him. But then he thought that perhaps the brother inside was ill, and returned, and knocked on the door. After knocking, he went in, and found the monk gravely ill. He said, ‘What’s the matter, abba?’ He explained, ‘I used to live in the world, and the enemy still troubles me because of my wife. I told the monks, and they laid on me various burdens to discipline my life. In trying to carry them out obediently, I have fallen ill and yet the temptation is worse.‘  When the visiting hermit heard this, he was vexed, and said, ‘These monks are powerful men, and meant well in laying these burdens upon you. But if you will listen to me who am but a child in these matters, stop all this discipline, take a little food at the proper times, recover your strength, join in the worship of God for a little, and turn your mind to the Lord. This desire is something you can’t conquer by your own efforts. The human body is like a coat. If you treat it carefully, it will last a long time. If you neglect it, it will fall to pieces.’ The sick man did as he was told, and in a few days the incitement to lust vanished. “ (The Desert Fathers (Translated by Benedicta Ward, Penguin Books, London: 2003; p. 49.)

Contemplative prayer by its very nature, is to bring a unity between God and ourselves through an unmediated experience. To lapse into some expression of dualism is to impose a separation and division between what is an integrated whole (body, mind and spirit) which is against the very expression or theology of contemplation. Contemplative prayer I’ve noticed, has helped me to locate myself in God (‘Your life is hidden in Christ’ as Paul writes in Col 3:3) and can help us to become reconciled to our bodies, to listen to them and treat them with respect. As I grow older, I am increasingly reconciled to the fact, that my body will in the end, determine much of what I am able to do and where I am able to go. (The prophecy by Jesus to Peter about his lack of freedom in his old age is one which can take note for our own old age. [Jn 21:18-19])

Eventually this body will be like all of the things I struggle with to relinquish to God, be overcome by death but also resurrection. The offering (oblation) of my body earlier in my life to God (Rom 12:1-3), to remain chaste until married, and even now to remain chaste from all other things which will pollute my body, will one day be fully realised. In between its nourished by the oblation of Christ’s body through our participation in the body and blood of our communion with Christ. (Here I am remembering the words from the Prayer Book for Australia, the Words of Consecration, p. 112.)  That God regards our bodies as something important is seen by the way he will resurrect them. This fact  and its power casts its shadow back from beyond the end of time, into this age where death and destruction reign.  Together with all the creation, our bodies, a microcosm of the greater creation, will with it be transformed by the resurrection power of Christ, because our bodies are not independent of this creation. For God to transform one will by necessity of its intimate connection to the other require both to be transformed; and that as both are injured by sin, both will be redeemed by Christ (Rom 8:18-25). The gift of the Spirit by God himself, is his promise and confirmation to strengthen our hope that what we hope for will be given, if not in this age, then certainly in the age to come.

Our prayer to God, involves our body. Our life in God and participation in the life of the trinity incorporates (in corporal – Latin to embody) the totality of ‘us’. If our bodies are neglected, afflicted or poisoned with modern food additives,  we will be affected and this will also affect our prayer life too. Christianity is not a disembodied religion as the incarnation of Christ attests, but a religion which should be able to integrate body, soul, spirit and mind into a unified whole in God, who gives us life. Contemplative prayer then, should not be seen to be against the body, ignoring the body, or disparaging the body but helping us intregrate our body into our union with Christ himself.

A friend of mine has been finishing his Ph.D in Italy. In response to my request he has supplied the following reflection on Ps 88. This is by coincidence, the same Psalm which I referred to in my earlier post. But it doesn’t matter. It highlights just how well God uses the same Psalm in different contexts to speak into our lives to comfort or challenge us. He writes:

“In 1993/94, there had been a tragic series of murders of young women in the Frankston area. A friend of mine, a newly ordained priest at the time, became involved with the family of one of the young victims, a year 12 student at the local secondary school. He was asked to conduct the funeral and rang me asking me to help him because it was going to be a ‘big’ funeral in the school hall with lots of media attention. The funeral was certainly big, the circumstances tragic and the feeling overwhelmingly heart-wrenching for all those concerned. That Friday evening, I was due to go away for a weekend recollection with my seminary colleagues. Sitting alone in the chapel and reflecting on the tragedy of the moment, I opened my breviary to Compline and the words of Ps. 88 had a poignancy that has remained with me to this day:

Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;
My life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength.

Like one alone among the dead;
Like the slain lying in their graves;
Like those you remember no more
Cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
In places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me;
I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends
And made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned I cannot escape;
My eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you Lord all the day long;
To you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work your wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave
Or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
Or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me Lord, I call to you for help;
In the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?

The book of Psalms, I’ve recently discovered, are often ignored by those who should know better. Two recent experiences have highlighted that some Christians either don’t know their content, or don’t appreciate their richness in our daily life and their contribution to helping us pray. The first was a reasonably biblically literate woman who hadn’t read Ps 137 before. I had read it to a bible study group which meets each week and they were amazed and shocked with its content. On reading it this woman had been confronted with its  raw emotion and the theological issue of how can this material be included in the Bible.  (Ps 137 records the vengeance upon the Edomites which the Israelites looked forward to. It is brutally honest in recording the hatred the Israelites had for the Edomites and the Babylonians for their destruction of Jerusalem.  It does not conform to our expectations (often polite and sanitised), of how God’s people should pray.  It concludes with the shocking words: ‘. . . blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little one and dashes them against the rock! (137:8-9) (ESV)

The second experience was at the side of a hospital bed when the person I was reading a Psalm to, ‘heard’ it speaking right into their heart and situation. It brought great comfort and deep assurance that God could be trusted through this period in which they found themselves in a difficult place, confined to a hospital bed with uncertainty about their medical condition. Across the years, many of the Psalms have become very special and significant due to the way they have spoken to my condition at the time. I would like to give you a brief history, one which is unashamedly personal, of the ones which have been significant.

I remember the first time I heard Psalm 88 read, but I can’t remember the details exactly of the person who opened my eyes to its meaning. I am sure I’d read this Psalm on many occasions before, but this time, the context was different. I was in a Bible college, it was the beginning of the term and we had been put into a fellowship group for mutual support and prayer for the remainder of the year. Various people had shared to introduce themselves to the group. Nothing too deep had been revealed. Then an overweight woman in her mid twenties, who was not particularly attractive, said that she would like to read Ps 88 to us. Sure go ahead we all thought.

But no one had read this Psalm the way she read it to us, deliberately, at a slow pace in which we heard her pain, abandonment and desolation. I sat there wondering why I’d never noticed this Psalm before. (We had studied the next Psalm, Ps 89, extensively when doing the Davidic kingdom and covenant in Old Testament studies.) When she finished she briefly explained why she had chosen this Psalm. She was in her early twenties and had suffered depression intolerably since her mid-teens. On several occasions she had attempted suicide seeking relief from the interminable emotional pain. This Psalm was her story, her journey, her life. It was not only describing her experience of depression but her experience of God – who was often felt to be absent. We were silent. We hadn’t known her background until now. We felt privileged to have heard her heart cry to God and the only way I can describe it was that we had a sense of standing on holy ground. Psalm 88 is the only Psalm out of the one hundred and fifty which comprise the book in which there is no hope, no ultimate turning to God, no deliverance or redemption. There is no interior shift toward God which results in hope. Only desolation. God is silent and he is accused of being the agent who has caused her imprisonment in this depression (vs 6, ‘You have put me in the depths of the Pit . . .’ and vs 8, ‘You have caused my companions to shun me . . . ‘)