The way of Jesus is not something that can easily be
made intelligible or attractive to others, at least not if we are honest. We worship a Messiah who spent his ministry
homeless, offending both church and state and made his crucifixion the primary practice
for his followers (Matt 16:24). So realistically
if televangelists (and the like) moved from saying things like “how would you
like God to bless your status, health and wealth beyond your wildest dreams, or
how would you like clarity and certainty for all that God has planned for you?”
to “would you like to learn how to let go of success, become self-emptying,
vulnerable, trusting without seeing and humbly die to yourself every day?” people
might not be so quickly drawn to it.
Yet, the letting go of
old patterns, desires and attitudes is very much a central theme in our discipleship.
So when there is a Christianity that asks very little of you; promises you the
world and is completely marketable, run away!
It is noise that teaches impatience for how things are now and it
focuses your present attention in a false future (of power and monetary hope)
instead of in, well, the present where we and God live. There is much to be learned right here right
now and our attention to that becomes God’s primary way of teaching and forming
us.
We are in need a contemplative
stance which Richard Rohr defines as: “a standing in the middle, neither taking
the world on from power position nor denying for fear of the pain it will
bring. We hold the realization, seeing the dark side of reality and the pain of
the world, but we hold it until it transforms us knowing that we are complicit
in evil and also complicit in the holiness [we embody sinner and saint Matt.
13:24-30]. Once we can stand
in that third spacious way, neither fighting nor fleeing, we are in the place
of grace out of which newness comes.”[1]
So,
I suggest a good deal of transformation will begin in our prayer life. We spend
time petitioning to God for needs, which is fine, but we need to spend more
time learning the language of presence, interior silence and stillness (aka
contemplative prayer: the biggest waste of time for most ambitious minds).[2] Learning to let our obsessive and compulsive feelings
and thoughts go is central to turning our attention (or gaze) to God’s active
presence which is intrinsically present everywhere. This is to say that Heaven
and the universe are interwoven (which I have written more about here). Those who have learned to trust the Holy
Spirit in silence have learned this well and it forms a new vision of how to be
in the world. As Wendell Berry mentions,
“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated
places.”[3] We tend to only reserve small spaces for God like church buildings
and burning bushes, but everywhere you stomp around is hallowed so be careful
how you tread.
As we tune in to God’s
presence the inner work of the Holy Spirit helps us to dwell with God
everywhere and we can “un-pantheistically” allow dignity, voice and
subjectivity to all of creation (as appose to objectifying it). We can resist being hurried and taking all
for granted because it all suddenly has importance to us. We can defy being chief
consumers, disposers and protectors of our entitlements because all is an
appreciated gift. We can stop living in reaction to our anxieties and to others
no longer fighting to stand over them, but with them. We can bear the fruit of
the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal.
5:22-23). The contemplative journey takes
us from individuals climbing above creation and reconnects us as jointly vital
participants in it. This interweaving
process may sound odd in juxtaposition to all the detachment talk, but it is
really coming to the resolve that “we are not a religion of pure detachment or
pure attachment, but a dance between the two.”[4]
Nevertheless, this should
change how we talk about being followers of Christ and what salvation is really
all about, which I cannot sum up better than Rohr:
The following of Jesus
is not a ‘salvation scheme’ or a means of creating social order (which appears
to be what most folks want religion for), as much as it is a vocation to share
the fate of God for the life of the world.
Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary system
for people who ‘like’ religion, but he invited people to ‘follow’ him in
bearing the mystery of human death and resurrection (an almost nonreligious
task but one that can be done only through, with and in God).[5]
Thus back to my main point; I do not know many on this
journey who feel it is an initially attractive or sellable one (though it
becomes a fully loved one). It does, however, form a person who, without really
knowing it, exemplifies the Gospel and becomes oddly attractive to others because
it is oddly genuine and wonderfully different in world that is parched in
places we did not know we were dry.
[1] Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs: The Gift of
Contemplative Prayer (New, York: Crossroad Publishing, 2003), 171.
[2] For contemplative prayer resources (short of
finding a church in your area that meets to learn and practice it) Fr. Thomas
Keating (a Trappist Monk) has an audio book called “Contemplative Prayer” which
is very helpful. Also Richard Rohr touches on it a lot in his works “Everything
Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer” and The Naked Now: Learning to see
as Mystics See”. Keating and Rohr pair wonderfully together!
[3] Wendell Berry. Given: Poems (Berkley, CA:
Counterpoint 2006), 18.
[4] Richard, Rohr, 170.
[5] Ibid, 179.
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