So, I've been trying this blog out for several months now. It was an experiment originally, in reaction to the death of a long-running message board and to the rapid-fire bullet thoughts from the sites that took its place.
I find it very helpful to process my thoughts in writing. To discover my own ideas. The blog has been extremely effective for this. But the second part of the process is the sharing of those thoughts. I also find it very valuable to read others' reactions to my own, and to move forward in conversation, dialectic. That is where the blog has not been so great.
The reason for this is not surprising. I figured it would be the case. People have to actually take the time and interest to read a blog. And this one is far from interesting to most people. I recently bit the bullet and posted a link and an invitation to read on Facebook. The responses confirmed this.
But that's ok. I don't expect many people to like it. Still, in case anyone else does happen to find this, I wanted to talk a little about what Contemplation is to me...not the blog, but the practice. It is a way of life. It's more than simply musing like many modern people, including many bloggers, use the term. Contemplation is a term that to me describes a life of circumspection. A constant attempt to live simply and in unity. Ideally, there should be no real distinction in my personality at work, home, church or any part of my life. My faith and intellect and emotions and physicality should also all be unified. Body, soul, spirit. Contemplation is the way of life that helps accomplish that.
Since all good things proceed from God and we are unable to fix ourselves, it only makes since that the primary goal of Contemplation is to know God better. This is the dry explanation. The actual experience of it is much harder to explain. It truly is a very romantic sort of thing, better described through metaphor than empiricism. I'm sure many people have actually experienced something like it at one time or another, or maybe just echoed it in a movie or book once. It is a world of emotions, overwhelming, confusing, magical, concrete, all rolled together. Truly the best metaphor is that of a lover and his beloved. Like Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose, Edward and Bella. Contemplatives have written love songs and stories about it for centuries. It is not the kind of thing to really be understood, but experienced.
If you are on that path, if you have had that kind of experience and perhaps not understood it, or if it simply intrigues you, then this blog might be interesting for you. And I would love to hear from you. If you don't want to comment, at least use the one-click reaction buttons at the bottom to let me know what you think.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Fasting
What a topic. I'm beginning to understand that this may have been way over-spiritualized. In the basic sense it means simply going without food. From there, it has branched and diverged into a thousand types of fasts and purposes.
I admittedly do not understand this discipline well at all. What I do understand is that it can be used for health, to save money or resources so they can be shared with those who don't have them, or to humble oneself before God when facing a particularly troubling problem.
Once on Richard Foster's advice, I tried to incorporate it into my weekly routine by skipping two meals in a row, one day a week, but ended up passing out one afternoon. I also tried it once as a sort of purification before what we expected to be a particularly difficult prayer of liberation for someone, but it turned out that the initiator of the whole business decided not to do it at the last minute and only I ended up meeting with the person to have a what turned out to be a very normal conversation.
Just recently, my church asked us to join a 21 day fast that is being promoted all over. I'm totally unclear about why we are doing this. I looked it up and found nothing helpful. So I looked up some general stuff on fasting and found instructions, but nothing particularly helpful about the ins and outs, whys and wherefores. So I committed to drink only water, to cut out some entertainment, and to closely monitor my speech to avoid frivolous talk. The talk is extremely difficult to accomplish since I communicate for business...much of communication occurs in the "small talk", so it can't be avoided in my context. Then my cousin of 17 died in a car wreck and I couldn't possibly avoid small talk and jovial speech around the family...this is not frivolous in my mind. Not to mention, I tend to be pretty witty by nature and find myself expressing affection and mood through speech. So that went out the window.
That leaves the entertainment, which I have had no trouble with at all, so what is the sacrifice? And the water, which is driving me crazy, simply because I can't have a glass of juice or tea once or so a day. I already drink mostly water! I've been trying to pray about it, and basically I feel like I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I even resolved to give it up and had a glass of juice following the funeral, but then felt that I should stick to my commitment, so went back on it. I have a week to go. I can't see the point. I don't appear to be getting anything valuable from this.
So, unless this next week brings some grand revelation, I think I have learned this: Fasting should involve food, that is the simple meaning of it. It isn't required of those with dietary or health issues, so I may be exempt on those grounds (remember the passing out thing). Fasting is of no value unless you know why you are doing it. It should only be done when I feel the personal urging of God to do so...in the case of a spiritual fast.
Lastly, I am one of the least luxuriant people I know. The attitude fasting is of little benefit, since I have already stripped away many vanities and unnecessary lifestyle aspects. The only place to go from here is into plain asceticism, which has almost killed me in the past. I am prone to venture too far onto the plain of the tough-minded. To the contrary, I think this should be a very personal walk, not the same prescription for everyone. For me, I feel that I am being shown how to allow myself some pleasure and enjoy the bounty that I have been given, instead of feeling guilty for it.
At risk of sounding haughty, though you can see that is not my intent if you come at it from my point of view, I feel like a monk being led out of the abbey. It is tough to have such severe mental attitudes in a culture that barely engages the ideas let alone understands them. I know that I must relax and that I am allowed to be.
Brother Lawrence, pray for me, I am inflicting myself and need to know grace more. Or am I so self-deceived...no, the yoke should be easy, the burden light. Perhaps it is not more discipline that I need after all.
I admittedly do not understand this discipline well at all. What I do understand is that it can be used for health, to save money or resources so they can be shared with those who don't have them, or to humble oneself before God when facing a particularly troubling problem.
Once on Richard Foster's advice, I tried to incorporate it into my weekly routine by skipping two meals in a row, one day a week, but ended up passing out one afternoon. I also tried it once as a sort of purification before what we expected to be a particularly difficult prayer of liberation for someone, but it turned out that the initiator of the whole business decided not to do it at the last minute and only I ended up meeting with the person to have a what turned out to be a very normal conversation.
Just recently, my church asked us to join a 21 day fast that is being promoted all over. I'm totally unclear about why we are doing this. I looked it up and found nothing helpful. So I looked up some general stuff on fasting and found instructions, but nothing particularly helpful about the ins and outs, whys and wherefores. So I committed to drink only water, to cut out some entertainment, and to closely monitor my speech to avoid frivolous talk. The talk is extremely difficult to accomplish since I communicate for business...much of communication occurs in the "small talk", so it can't be avoided in my context. Then my cousin of 17 died in a car wreck and I couldn't possibly avoid small talk and jovial speech around the family...this is not frivolous in my mind. Not to mention, I tend to be pretty witty by nature and find myself expressing affection and mood through speech. So that went out the window.
That leaves the entertainment, which I have had no trouble with at all, so what is the sacrifice? And the water, which is driving me crazy, simply because I can't have a glass of juice or tea once or so a day. I already drink mostly water! I've been trying to pray about it, and basically I feel like I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I even resolved to give it up and had a glass of juice following the funeral, but then felt that I should stick to my commitment, so went back on it. I have a week to go. I can't see the point. I don't appear to be getting anything valuable from this.
So, unless this next week brings some grand revelation, I think I have learned this: Fasting should involve food, that is the simple meaning of it. It isn't required of those with dietary or health issues, so I may be exempt on those grounds (remember the passing out thing). Fasting is of no value unless you know why you are doing it. It should only be done when I feel the personal urging of God to do so...in the case of a spiritual fast.
Lastly, I am one of the least luxuriant people I know. The attitude fasting is of little benefit, since I have already stripped away many vanities and unnecessary lifestyle aspects. The only place to go from here is into plain asceticism, which has almost killed me in the past. I am prone to venture too far onto the plain of the tough-minded. To the contrary, I think this should be a very personal walk, not the same prescription for everyone. For me, I feel that I am being shown how to allow myself some pleasure and enjoy the bounty that I have been given, instead of feeling guilty for it.
At risk of sounding haughty, though you can see that is not my intent if you come at it from my point of view, I feel like a monk being led out of the abbey. It is tough to have such severe mental attitudes in a culture that barely engages the ideas let alone understands them. I know that I must relax and that I am allowed to be.
Brother Lawrence, pray for me, I am inflicting myself and need to know grace more. Or am I so self-deceived...no, the yoke should be easy, the burden light. Perhaps it is not more discipline that I need after all.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Charismania
This title is no doubt going to provoke some people...that is if anyone actually reads this. But if you're offended, keep reading.
I just saw one of those videos that someone made splicing a song over some other video footage. This one was of a famous televangelist that like to knock people over set to an awesome agrorock song about Columbinesque feelings. It was extremely well done. It almost seems like the song could have been the original sound track for the video.
But it got me thinking about the nature of such events. I am not knocking spiritual gifts. I've had enough weird experiences in my life to keep me from condemning anyone else's. But I've got to be honest that most of the "charismatic" events I've been at were highly influenced by textbook mass hysteria, worked up through music, a charismatic speaker (to use the term correctly, not in the denominational sense), and a willing audience...or they were just plain faked, even if the faker actually had deceived herself into believing it was real. More likely, she had seen it in others and wanted something authentic bad enough that she self-fulfilled. How do I know it's fake? Because no communicative language uses the word, "shamshala" to mean no less that 5 different unrelated words in translation...I counted. That word would have to have at least related meanings, or tenses, or something, there couldn't possibly be a language with that few sounds and that many meanings. No one would know what anyone was saying!
Nevertheless, what struck me most about the video was that I was more disturbed by the evangelist and his convulsing victims?proselytes? than the song. It was like some orgiastic pagan ritual...just add some blood-letting and we've gone full circle!
But the song, I get. The way people can be marginalized and made to feel hopeless and freakish. I've seen this firsthand. It breeds anger and if left to itself this anger can fester into rage until it twists all sense from a poor soul's grasp and heinous evils occur. The song, by speaking to it, draws attention to it, helps prevent it by letting many know they are not alone and by giving an outlet in the music, in the thrashing dance. I've seen the therapeutic nature of this kind of music firsthand as well. It has saved many.
Don't get me wrong, I have had more than my share of the weird and creepy. The crazy spiritual experience. There are truly dark forces that seek to corrupt and devour what they can. there are also awesome, terrifying holy forces (again in the true senses of the words) that can rip us from our perceived reality and torque our three dimensional bodies and minds in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, either side abounds in places that wouldn't seem likely. Honestly, if you pinned me down and forced me to choose between the evangelist and the rockers, I'd say the rockers in their honest examination of human conditions are far closer to the holy, while the god-like evangelist with his cultic orgies more likely a feeding ground for the dark eldila.
God correct me if I'm wrong...after all, what do I know.
I just saw one of those videos that someone made splicing a song over some other video footage. This one was of a famous televangelist that like to knock people over set to an awesome agrorock song about Columbinesque feelings. It was extremely well done. It almost seems like the song could have been the original sound track for the video.
But it got me thinking about the nature of such events. I am not knocking spiritual gifts. I've had enough weird experiences in my life to keep me from condemning anyone else's. But I've got to be honest that most of the "charismatic" events I've been at were highly influenced by textbook mass hysteria, worked up through music, a charismatic speaker (to use the term correctly, not in the denominational sense), and a willing audience...or they were just plain faked, even if the faker actually had deceived herself into believing it was real. More likely, she had seen it in others and wanted something authentic bad enough that she self-fulfilled. How do I know it's fake? Because no communicative language uses the word, "shamshala" to mean no less that 5 different unrelated words in translation...I counted. That word would have to have at least related meanings, or tenses, or something, there couldn't possibly be a language with that few sounds and that many meanings. No one would know what anyone was saying!
Nevertheless, what struck me most about the video was that I was more disturbed by the evangelist and his convulsing victims?proselytes? than the song. It was like some orgiastic pagan ritual...just add some blood-letting and we've gone full circle!
But the song, I get. The way people can be marginalized and made to feel hopeless and freakish. I've seen this firsthand. It breeds anger and if left to itself this anger can fester into rage until it twists all sense from a poor soul's grasp and heinous evils occur. The song, by speaking to it, draws attention to it, helps prevent it by letting many know they are not alone and by giving an outlet in the music, in the thrashing dance. I've seen the therapeutic nature of this kind of music firsthand as well. It has saved many.
Don't get me wrong, I have had more than my share of the weird and creepy. The crazy spiritual experience. There are truly dark forces that seek to corrupt and devour what they can. there are also awesome, terrifying holy forces (again in the true senses of the words) that can rip us from our perceived reality and torque our three dimensional bodies and minds in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, either side abounds in places that wouldn't seem likely. Honestly, if you pinned me down and forced me to choose between the evangelist and the rockers, I'd say the rockers in their honest examination of human conditions are far closer to the holy, while the god-like evangelist with his cultic orgies more likely a feeding ground for the dark eldila.
God correct me if I'm wrong...after all, what do I know.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Light of Mind
I recently had the opportunity to watch an old Japanese animated series that I haven't seen in awhile. It's one of those deep, classic ones from the 'golden age' when there was money and creative freedom enough to produce some very artistic and sometimes controversial works. Every time I see this one, I learn something more and like rereading a good book, am retouched by the whole thing.
I once wrote a lengthy treatise in college about this series, so I am not going to rehash all of that work here. If you want to read that, let me know and I'll post it on worthyofpublishing.com or something. Rather, I want to explore an aspect of the series that grabbed me again.
We so often let our circumstances dictate our personality. We become what we perceive others think we are, or a reaction to it. While we need boundaries to help define us in a real sense, we must remember that our entire reality is mediated by our perception. If the lens is cloudy or flawed, the image will be as well. And we so often only see "as through a glass darkly". It is a common condition of humanity.
But perhaps it is only in pain, suffering, and difficulty that these illusions are thrown into sharp relief. Perhaps that is their main purpose...to wake us up and drive us on. In difficult circumstances we cannot stay where we are, but must move, must change. In the moment of that metanoia, we can see clearly if only for a moment. We can reset our path, go another way, repent, to use the archaic word without its religiously skewed connotation.
Here's the trick, though. If our world is a construct of our perceptions, we can truly change it simply by changing our mind. We can turn the process around and drive it within our own being so that our self is not made as a result of the world, but our world is made as a result of our self. In this set-up, the light of mind-- the seat of our soul, that space within each of us where no others should enter, is sacred and uninvaded. It exudes from the soul and fills the space around it, keeping those that would harm our being at bay.
Alas, we don't have the power to do this, even in the best strength of our own will. It will always come to some perversion. I think this is one of the messages of the series that I had missed before. "The tragedy of the project is its people. And I am one of them." Misato says.
Enter here that which is not of our world. That which is alien to us and beyond us. It can challenge us, invade us, understand us and remake us...not in a coddling, cushy process, but in blood and fire. How else could a whole world be brought down? Only in the razing of those constructs can the heart of the matter, our perceptions, be laid bare and be remade. Thus that which is evil can be used for our good. Thus in the kernel of our being, at the root, we find that we are not what we perceive, nor what others perceive, but something other that is not defined by ourselves or our circumstances. Something original. This is the source of the Light of the Soul and Mind. This is who we are.
I once wrote a lengthy treatise in college about this series, so I am not going to rehash all of that work here. If you want to read that, let me know and I'll post it on worthyofpublishing.com or something. Rather, I want to explore an aspect of the series that grabbed me again.
We so often let our circumstances dictate our personality. We become what we perceive others think we are, or a reaction to it. While we need boundaries to help define us in a real sense, we must remember that our entire reality is mediated by our perception. If the lens is cloudy or flawed, the image will be as well. And we so often only see "as through a glass darkly". It is a common condition of humanity.
But perhaps it is only in pain, suffering, and difficulty that these illusions are thrown into sharp relief. Perhaps that is their main purpose...to wake us up and drive us on. In difficult circumstances we cannot stay where we are, but must move, must change. In the moment of that metanoia, we can see clearly if only for a moment. We can reset our path, go another way, repent, to use the archaic word without its religiously skewed connotation.
Here's the trick, though. If our world is a construct of our perceptions, we can truly change it simply by changing our mind. We can turn the process around and drive it within our own being so that our self is not made as a result of the world, but our world is made as a result of our self. In this set-up, the light of mind-- the seat of our soul, that space within each of us where no others should enter, is sacred and uninvaded. It exudes from the soul and fills the space around it, keeping those that would harm our being at bay.
Alas, we don't have the power to do this, even in the best strength of our own will. It will always come to some perversion. I think this is one of the messages of the series that I had missed before. "The tragedy of the project is its people. And I am one of them." Misato says.
Enter here that which is not of our world. That which is alien to us and beyond us. It can challenge us, invade us, understand us and remake us...not in a coddling, cushy process, but in blood and fire. How else could a whole world be brought down? Only in the razing of those constructs can the heart of the matter, our perceptions, be laid bare and be remade. Thus that which is evil can be used for our good. Thus in the kernel of our being, at the root, we find that we are not what we perceive, nor what others perceive, but something other that is not defined by ourselves or our circumstances. Something original. This is the source of the Light of the Soul and Mind. This is who we are.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Lion
Prior to Christmas this year and following Avatar, I was lying in bed one morning, as I often do. It was too early to get up, but I am such a poor sleeper that I spend a lot of time awake in bed. I often try to fill this time in the morning and evenings with prayer and contemplation, which are not two separate things, but very much intertwined.
Anyway, I was lying in that state between fully awake and fully asleep and rolling over the ideas expressed in Avatar, what was beautiful about it, what was True amongst the commercial stuff...see the former post for more on that. I was wondering how much of a metaphor it could be for our time and what kind of metaphor that would be. This led to thoughts about metaphors in general and how they are powerful tools. How I've spent a lot of my life looking for metaphors to express Truth precisely as I understand it. How I had never been able to find one that I could really bite into. Some have come close...but like Bono says, I still hadn't found what I was looking for. And as Jack says, it's hard to beat the rich fertile metaphors we find in the Bible. At that moment, I had a vision...or a dream...or both, call it what you will. Jesus appeared to me as a lion...as Aslan from the Narnia books. Nothing was spoken, but something was communicated. It lasted only a moment, but in that dream-time, so much transpired.
I don't know that I could fully explain what I learned and gained from the experience, but I'm not sure that I should. These things are often meant only for the one who receives them and I only chronicle it here as a reminder, a remembrance to myself more than anything, that it did occur.
Just like the Galadriel experience posted in the early entries of this blog, I was profoundly humbled, overjoyed, and ashamed of all that I am not. One thing I can communicate is known to those who have these kind of experiences. There is a profound sense of unworthiness, like being embarrassed to be flesh, acutely aware of all my flaws, every time I've failed to be what I am created to be, of the true depth of my rebellion and helplessness. Like being totally inappropriate in so many ways. Going to a state dinner directly after mowing the grass in August only approximates an aspect of what I mean. But in that very moment is a deep unbounded love. And at the very moment that I think, "I'm so unworthy."
The reply comes, "I know; I'm choosing you."
Why Aslan? Why a fictional character? It has to do with metaphors and the role the extended metaphors of Narnia and Aslan have played in me. I am convinced that Aslan is far more than a fictional character. Jack must have known this image, this face, had seen it and felt it, and then wrote about it. Truly, it is cited this way in the biographies. Good God, the power of these moments falls so flat in writing. Imagine stepping into a story and finding with every step you take that it is far truer than you ever could have imagined. This is my life. It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
Anyway, I was lying in that state between fully awake and fully asleep and rolling over the ideas expressed in Avatar, what was beautiful about it, what was True amongst the commercial stuff...see the former post for more on that. I was wondering how much of a metaphor it could be for our time and what kind of metaphor that would be. This led to thoughts about metaphors in general and how they are powerful tools. How I've spent a lot of my life looking for metaphors to express Truth precisely as I understand it. How I had never been able to find one that I could really bite into. Some have come close...but like Bono says, I still hadn't found what I was looking for. And as Jack says, it's hard to beat the rich fertile metaphors we find in the Bible. At that moment, I had a vision...or a dream...or both, call it what you will. Jesus appeared to me as a lion...as Aslan from the Narnia books. Nothing was spoken, but something was communicated. It lasted only a moment, but in that dream-time, so much transpired.
I don't know that I could fully explain what I learned and gained from the experience, but I'm not sure that I should. These things are often meant only for the one who receives them and I only chronicle it here as a reminder, a remembrance to myself more than anything, that it did occur.
Just like the Galadriel experience posted in the early entries of this blog, I was profoundly humbled, overjoyed, and ashamed of all that I am not. One thing I can communicate is known to those who have these kind of experiences. There is a profound sense of unworthiness, like being embarrassed to be flesh, acutely aware of all my flaws, every time I've failed to be what I am created to be, of the true depth of my rebellion and helplessness. Like being totally inappropriate in so many ways. Going to a state dinner directly after mowing the grass in August only approximates an aspect of what I mean. But in that very moment is a deep unbounded love. And at the very moment that I think, "I'm so unworthy."
The reply comes, "I know; I'm choosing you."
Why Aslan? Why a fictional character? It has to do with metaphors and the role the extended metaphors of Narnia and Aslan have played in me. I am convinced that Aslan is far more than a fictional character. Jack must have known this image, this face, had seen it and felt it, and then wrote about it. Truly, it is cited this way in the biographies. Good God, the power of these moments falls so flat in writing. Imagine stepping into a story and finding with every step you take that it is far truer than you ever could have imagined. This is my life. It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
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