Anamchara — an online resource for the exploration of Christian and interfaith mysticism, contemplative living, and silent prayer — includes a blog, a knowledge base, and audio/video content. It’s a labor of love and requires several hours each workday to keep going. This website is made possible by the generous support of readers like you.
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This website is a forum devoted to Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality. I write about the wisdom of the great Christian mystics of the past, the practices that can help you foster a meaningful contemplative practice in your life, and related topics (such as interfaith dialogue). I also regularly publish reviews of books related to contemplation and mysticism.
I began this blog very much as a hobby, because this is a topic dear to my heart. By the grace of God, I’ve had the opportunity to write several books and out of that I’ve been blessed with many opportunities to lead retreats and give talks at churches, monasteries and even seminaries. Contemplation and mysticism are important topics, and both practicing Christians and people who identify as spiritual-but-not-religious want to learn more about the rich heritage of Christian mysticism and contemplation.
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If you are new to this blog, here are a few links to some posts that will give you a taste of what this blog is all about:
Ken offers thirteen points that he considers essential for the ongoing renewal of Christian spirituality. Here are his points with a my reflection on them. Ken’s words are in bold type, my commentary in regular type.
The back cover of the first American edition of “True God” (renamed “Experiencing God”)
A renewed Christian spirituality will be concerned with the recovery of the vision of God in the contemporary world. The key phrase here is “vision of God.” It’s not an abstract, cerebral, disincarnate spirituality, but a visionary, relational, practical embodiment of God’s life, ways, and values here and now. It is a spirituality of beholding the Divine Mystery, not as a set of ideas to discuss, but as a way of living.
It will be a spirituality which is rooted in the experience of God in the life of the Jewish people. Out of the Jewish matrix of western spirituality we discern God’s holiness, God’s passion for justice, God’s desire for mercy and for a covenant relationship with God’s people. It is a spirituality of poetry and praise, of prayer and prophecy, of Sabbath rest and silent reflection, and of community and celebration.
It will be a spirituality which finds its centre in Jesus Christ, seeing in him the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily. Jesus of Nazareth put the “Christ” in Christian spirituality, and in Him we find salvation (wholeness), forgiveness, and reconciliation. Our devotion to Christ keeps our spirituality embodied, humanist (in the best sense of the word) and grounded in a spirit of repentance (renewed consciousness), service, and healing.
It will be a spirituality which looks to the faith of the Apostolic Church as exhibited in the New Testament. In the New Testament we learn that we are the Body of Christ, we have the mind of Christ. Our community of faith is meant to be the means by which God’s lavish love and mercy is spread freely and fully to a world that is suffering.
It will be a spirituality of the desert. Moses, Elijah, Jesus, and the Desert Mothers and Fathers all turned to the desert for inspiration and formation. The desert teaches us to rely on God, rather than our own ambitions and plans. It teaches us humility, patience, and simplicity. It also teaches us to listen, to trust silence, and to drink deeply from the wells of both solitude and fellowship.
It will be a contemplative spirituality. In the spiritual life we are called to listen, to be silent, to wait, and to trust, even in the face of mystery, of doubt and darkness, of the cloud of unknowing. We surrender all of our images of God before the silence of the Divine Mystery, trusting in the primacy of embodied love over abstract knowledge.
It will be a charismatic spirituality. We are called to celebrate, to rejoice, to dance with ecstatic abandon in glad delight over the God who loves us unconditionally. We seek to be healed and then to be agents of healing for others. We offer our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit so that we may be living tabernacles, bringing God to all who hunger for God.
It will be a spirituality rooted in Word made flesh… a materialistic spirituality. I probably would have said “earthy spirituality” here, but Ken is revealing his political roots. A materialistic spirituality is an earthy spirituality, that loves matter and the body and sexuality and seeks healthy relationships to all of these, received gratefully as gifts from God. To love God means not rejecting the world, but working for its redemption.
It will be a eucharistic spirituality. This means both a spirituality of sacrament and communion, of God really present in our midst; but also a spirituality of thanksgiving and gratitude. We bow down before the Real Presence in the consecrated host and precious blood, so that we may also bow down before the image and likeness of God in all people (especially the poor, the needy, the forgotten).
It will be a spirituality of pain, seeing in the passion and death of Jesus the heart of the gospel. Ours is a spirituality of joy and love, but it is not a spirituality which denies the real suffering and tribulation that so many people must endure in our sinful and broken world. When we encounter those who suffer, who are poor, who are handicapped, who are the victims of racism or injustice, we encounter Christ crucified, and our task is to love and minister to Christ whenever and however we meet Him.
It will learn from the mystical writers to see God as the ground of all reality and of our own beings. It will seek to recover and promote a true Christian mysticism as an integral element in Christian theology. Can I have an “Amen” here? Christian spirituality is mystical at its core. The mystics are our teachers — and they teach us to see what is “hidden in plain sight” — how God, the Divine Mystery, is truly present and we are truly called into Union with God, given to us when we were created in God’s image and likeness.
It will be a spirituality which will take seriously the experience of God in women’s history; the feminine namings of God in Scripture and tradition; and the forgotten or neglected insights of writers who have experienced and described God in a feminine way. Julian of Norwich said it best, “As truly as God is our father, so truly is God our mother.” There is no room for sexism or gender privilege in authentic spirituality. When we listen to the marginalized traditions of our spirituality that embraced the feminine and affirms equality between the sexes — and work to make gender equality a reality in our time — then we are faithful to Saint Paul’s declaration that in Christ there is “neither male nor female.”
It will seek to know and follow God in the pursuit of justice for all people, in the struggle against racism and other forms of domination, in the movement for world peace and for nuclear disarmament, and in the campaign against poverty and inequality. This is simply restating a theme that shines throughout this manifesto, and indeed throughout all of Ken Leech’s writing: spirituality isn’t really spirituality unless it anchors its contemplative, charismatic, eucharistic, mystical dimensions in a practical, down-to-earth commitment to creating and sustaining a world where freedom, justice, fairness, and equality exist for everybody, not just the privileged few. The heavenly banquet only happens when everyone is invited.
The first American edition (now out of print)
May all of us who seek to embody an authentic Christian spirituality learn to seek and foster each of these characteristics in our own faith, life, practice, and relationships.
Incidentally, True God was published in America under a different (and in my opinion, far inferior) title: Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality. I think the American title reveals much of what is wrong with American (mis)understanding of spirituality and spiritual theology.
The current American edition.
When we talk about spirituality in terms of “experience” rather than “truth,” I worry that we may be abandoning objective truth in favor of subjective experience. Which is not to say that spirituality has no place for the embodied encounter with the Living Mystery, but that it is always something much bigger, deeper, vaster, and truer that mere personal “experience.” Let’s go back to the British title of this important book, please.
What do you think of Ken Leech’s manifesto? Is there any other elements of a renewed spirituality that you think needs to be addressed? Please share your thoughts — in a comment below, or on social media. Thank you!
“There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness”
— Henry Vaughan
“Truly, you are a God who hides himself,
O God of Israel, the Savior.”
— Isaiah 45:15
“Your brightness is my darkness. I know nothing of You and, by myself, I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. If I imagine You, I am mistaken. If I understand You, I am deluded. If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy. The darkness is enough.”
— Thomas Merton, Prayer Before Midnight Mass,
Christmas 1941
God is always present, yet hidden. When the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan described God’s “dazzling darkness,” or Thomas Merton declared that God’s brightness is his darkness, they were participating in a mystical tradition that can be traced back through Saint John of the Cross (“the dark night of the soul”) to the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing (who equated darkness with God’s mystery) all the way back to the great mystical theologian of the sixth century, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who eloquently spoke of God’s mystery as “hidden in the darkness beyond light, of the hidden mystical silence.”
When we enter into silent prayer, we make ourselves available to God’s hidden presence. Because God is “a God who hides himself,” all we typically experience in contemplation is silence — or the buzz of our own distracted thoughts and feelings, although the silence is always just beneath our mental chatter. Indeed, the heart of contemplative prayer consists of continually returning to the silence as our thoughts and emotions keep distracting us.
But when we let go of our distracting inner chatter, what do we find? Silence… darkness… unknowing.
By faith, we know God is present in the silence. Yet our faith may be weak, and often it seems to us that the silence is boring, or uncomfortable, or pointless. Sometimes in silence we may feel restless or anxious. Sometimes we can feel deep peace. But other times the silence just seems to highlight how unruly our inner lives really are.
Yet even in the most boring moments of restless, fidgety prayer, our souls remain — at a level deeper than our awareness —immersed in the brilliant light of God’s unseen, unfelt presence. Praying into the silence beneath the normal chatter of our thinking minds is like walking outside on a bright sunny day after being inside in a dimly lit room.
When we enter bright sunlight after being in the dark, our eyes blink in order to adjust to the light. Distracting thoughts during silent prayer function in a similar way. These thoughts are the mind’s “blinking” in order to shield itself from the dazzling darkness of God’s silent presence.
Photo by Fran McColman
On a physical level, human eyes simply do not function well in darkness. So there is almost a primal fear of the dark, which can terrorize little children trying to sleep, or compound the suffering of those who struggle with depression, anxiety, or loneliness. On a mythic level we associate darkness with evil, and a recent study of Daylight Savings Time changes and crime rates affirm that perception: an extra hour of daylight can reduce serious crimes by 40{b583bb596bb2c84984aee1f32e70a80b80285001a0226212b58cbda01f2115e7} or more — at least, for that hour.
Even the Bible gets into the “darkness is bad” theme: consider this verse from the Gospel of John: “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). But other verses suggest that there is more to darkness than meets the eye, such is Psalm 139:12, addressing God: “even the darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
How do we sort all this out? God is a God of Light, so darkness can be a metaphor for all the ways we human beings resist and reject God’s love and goodness. But that metaphor hardly makes darkness itself evil. Isaiah 45:7 reminds us that God created darkness as well as light, and we know that human beings and other living creatures need the rhythm of daylight and night for times of rest and rejuvenation. Just as the earth needs winter as a time of rest before the new life of spring and summer, so too does all of God’s creation need the “dark” time of rest to prepare for the hope of a new day.
Perhaps to understand the spirituality of darkness, we need to consider the Genesis creation story, which begins with God creating light to shine in the darkness. This is echoed in Micah 7:8: “When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” God is Light, and darkness is the container into which light is poured.
As Arlo Guthrie once folksily proclaimed, “You can’t have light without a dark to stick it in.” So the darkness of God’s mystery and seeming absence — the darkness of unknowing, of uncertainty and ambiguity, of feeling like God is far away — the darkness of the silence that resides deep inside each of us — is not an evil darkness but a receptive darkness, a place of hope and waiting.
And when the light comes, it dazzles us. And our eyes blink. Just like when we encounter silence, our mind “blinks” with distracting thoughts.
The key to contemplative practice is perseverance. Take time to sit in the silence each and every day. However you respond to the silence — with feelings of peace, or boredom; restfulness, or fidgetiness — simply notice it, and let go of any impulse to judge or criticize. Let your relationship with the silence be what it is. God is present, whether you feel it or not. God loves you, whether your feel it or not. God’s dazzling light is bathing over you, whether you feel it or not. The invitation of contemplation is to simply bask in the darkness that is dazzled by inaccessible light.
In his 1981 book Concern for the Church, Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner made his famous prediction, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.”
A third of a century later, has Rahner’s prediction come to pass? The “not exist at all” part seems ominously real, as more and more congregations face declining membership, a shortage of priests, nuns, monks and volunteers, and difficulty raising enough money to pay for clergy salaries or building maintenance. But I think Rahner was trying to challenge followers of Jesus Christ to think outside the ecclesiastical box and envision new ways of spiritual living and faithful discipleship to re-shape our identity as Christians, both as individuals and as a Church.
With this in mind, I’d like to offer seven hopes that I have for the Christian — and Church — of the future. (more…)
If you have never taken time to simply “be still and know God” (Psalm 46:1), then I invite you to do so. Not some day — today. Find some time today to turn off the smartphone, unplug the television and the laptop, silence the iPod and iPad — and simply rest, gently, quietly, in silence before the mystery of God. (more…)
“Love for Jesus is fed by constant meditation on the Gospels.”
— Michael Casey, OCSO
A prominent pastor who hosts an Internet podcast once interviewed me for his show, and at the close of our conversation asked me, “What is the one book you would recommend to readers as the most essential title to read, for the purpose of understanding Christian mysticism?”
Without batting an eye I said, “The Bible, of course.” I don’t think that was the answer he was expecting!
But it’s true. If you had to limit your reading to just one book, then forget Meister Eckhart, forget Julian of Norwich, forget Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, forget The Cloud of Unknowing, forget John Ruusbroec. As wonderful as all those authors are (and, yes, I commend these books to anyone who seeks to learn about, or engage in, mystical spirituality), they are all, fundamentally, simply commentaries on sacred scripture, which is the true essential textbook for the contemplative way.
Here’s the thing to keep in mind. Christian contemplation, unlike other forms of mystical philosophy, is ultimately about a relationship: or, perhaps better said, a web of relationships. God is love. Jesus gave us four essential challenges: to love that God who is love, and to love our neighbors, as we love ourselves, and if we really take him seriously, to love even our enemies. Love God, love neighbors, love self, love enemies. Since love is the glue that holds relationships together, Christian spirituality is a spirituality of relationships. And contemplation (or mysticism) is ultimately about fostering the relationship with God, the love we seek to give back to the Source of All Love, through silence, through meditation, through prayer, through contemplation.
And this is where the Bible comes in. The words of Sacred Scripture frame and support the silence of contemplation the way that a solid foundation provides the base for a beautiful building to stand. But that’s a two way street: the nurturing silence of mindfulness gives us the freedom and non-attachment necessary to read the Bible with contemplative eyes. Silence and the Word go together like the yin and the yang comprise the Tao.
Christian spirituality rests on the relationship we forge with Christ, in response to the Love of God. And we meet Christ in many ways — in the hearts of loved ones, in the Eucharist, in those in need. Scripture, likewise, is a solid and foundational way in which we encounter Christ. Through the words of the Bible, we are invited into the living heart of Christ, and we are called to invite Him into our hearts, as well.
Many Christians approach the Bible as if it were a textbook, or worse yet, a code of law, rather than a love letter. But the mystics and contemplatives have always understoood that the Bible is first and foremost about love, which is why their favorite book in the Bible has always been The Song of Songs, the juicy love poem at the heart of the Hebrew Wisdom Literature. Yes, we can read the Bible to learn about God (textbook), or to discover and apply God’s commandments in our lives (code of law) — but both of those approaches to scripture are meant to be subordinate to the invitation into love. For God is Love.
So put aside all ideas you might have about “studying” the Bible-as-textbook or Bible-as-code-of-law. Let me invite you into an ancient way of reading the Bible, a prayerful and meditative way, that emphasizes love and relationship, and helps us to foster that intimacy with God that we crave (even if we aren’t conscious of it). This method of Bible reading is called Lectio Divina (Latin for “sacred reading”).
Lectio Divina has been a part of Christian spirituality since at least the sixth century, and perhaps long before that. It is a beautiful way to integrate four essential practices: engaging with the Word of God as encountered in sacred scripture, meditating on the graces and mysteries of faith, prayer as a way of opening the thoughts of our mind and feelings of our heart to God, and resting in the vast open presence of contemplative silence. Lectio is an integral spiritual method which effortlessly weaves these four dimensions of devotion into one meaningful daily exercise.
A short treatise called The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life, written by the Carthusian Guigo II in the twelfth century, spells out a basic process for engaging in Lectio Divina, which still is eminently useful today. The heart of the practice is not so much what we do (or even the order in which we do it), but the way we approach the text we are reading.
Lectio — Read — the key is to read slowly, prayerfully, meditatively. Linger over the words, savoring their message for you. Do not encumber yourself with Bible commentaries or other supplemental books — save those for study time. Rather, simply find a passage, a short passage, maybe even just one or a few verses, and read them slowly, attentively, mindfully. This is not a race. Read a passage, and reread it. You can keep reading until it seems that a particular word or phrase is speaking to you, but stop then. Allow a sacred pause. Take a few relaxing breaths. Now you are ready to move to the next step:
Meditatio — Reflect — traditionally, meditation in a Christian sense involved the process of reflecting on a word or teaching or one of the mysteries of the faith. Allow yourself to sit with the word or phrase that has spoken to you. Feel whatever feeling it elicits in you. Ponder what questions it asks of you. Perhaps you feel blessed or inspired, or confused or challenged or convicted. Simply let the Word of God speak to you. At this point, it’s less about you reading the Bible, and more about the Word of God “reading” you. Sooner or later, every conversation involves give-and-take, so at some point you’l be ready for the next step:
Oratio — Respond — God reveals Divine Love to us through sacred scripture, and now we are asked to reveal the hidden depths of our hearts and minds to God through prayer. Of course, God already knows the hidden places in our hearts and minds, but it is a blessing to us to consciously seek to hold those secret dimensions into the Light of Love. Pray to God, in response to the words you have read and the reflections you have pondered. You don’t have to be eloquent or fancy in your prayer. It could be as simple as “God, I love you” or “Lord, today’s reading really confused me/upset me.” Be honest with God. Express your doubts, your longings, your desires, your fears, your dreams. Express adoration and devotion, of course; confess sins when that is necessary as well. Take however long you need to share your mind and heart with the God Who is Love. This doesn’t need to last forever (it might only take a minute or two). You’ll sense when you have prayed all you need to pray, at least in terms of thoughts and feelings. Then it is time for the final step:
Contemplatio — Rest — “Be still and know that I am God,” speaks the Lord in Psalm 46; in other verses in the Psalms we are invited to let our souls rest for God in silence and even to recognize that silence itself is praise. We begin the process of Lectio Divina by seeking the Word of God through the Bible, and we end by seeking the silence of God through contemplative prayer, the prayer of restful, attentive silence. Here we “do” nothing more than breathe gently, allowing our thoughts and feelings to come and go without commentary or attachment. We can use a prayer word or verse (my favorite, again from the Psalms, is “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me”) as a way of focussing our mind/heart so that we are less likely to be distracted by distractions during this period of rest. This is like a “Sabbath” prayer: we seek to grow in love of God simply by resting in God’s heart, the way a small child rests on her mother’s lap. We let go, and let God. We praise God simply by resting in silence, trusting in God’s love to hold us.
So that is the process of Lectio Divina. Monks and nuns and other Christians with a lively thirst for God have engaged in this simple prayer practice for centuries, giving some time every day to the adventure of falling ever more deeply in love with God through reading the Bible, reflecting on the Word, responding to God in prayer, and then resting in Divine Love and silence.
Sacred Reading
I encourage you to give it a try. Today is a good day to start. If you would like to learn more about Lectio Divina, here are a few books for further reading:
For a Bible, I recommend staying away from Study Bibles or Bibles filled with notes that will encourage you to approach it like a textbook rather than a love letter. My favorite Bible for Lectio is the Saints Devotional Edition, available in the New Jerusalem Bible translation or the New American Bible Revised Edition. And since I’m at the age where my eyes prefer larger type Bibles, I also enjoy using the New Revised Standard Version with Extra-Large Type (!).
Enjoy Lectio. It’s meant to be a joy, not a chore. Remember the reason for doing it: to discover the love of God, and to let that love transfigure your heart.
I get asked that question a lot, especially when I’m at the monastery where I work and pray and lead retreats. Perhaps it’s because of my greying hair and scruffy beard. Whatever the reason, I always see it as a compliment, but of course, I’m not a monk. So I say, “No, I’m not; I’m what is called a Lay Cistercian.”
“What’s that?” is the inevitable follow-up question.
“I’m a layperson, like any other — I have a wife and a daughter and a monthly mortgage to pay. But I do have a formal, spiritual relationship with the monastery. Lay Cistercians are people who feel called to express their Christian faith under the guidance not only of the Gospel, but also of the Rule of St. Benedict, and the charisms — the gifts — of the Cistercian monastic tradition.”
For most people, that’s enough of an explanation, and the conversation meanders on to other topics. What those people don’t realize is that, for me and my brother and sister Lay Cistercians, this explanation barely scratches the surface. Being a Lay Cistercian means something far more than just joining a club or taking up a hobby. For us, it is, indeed, a calling; a sense that God has invited us into this way of life, and blessed us with its many gifts. And while being a Lay Cistercian does not carry the same degree of sacramental/consecrated commitment that goes into becoming a monk — monks take vows, whereas Lay Cistercians make promises — those of us who do discern this calling, and make this promise, take it very seriously indeed.
Monasteries have been part of the Christian world since at least the fourth century CE. St. Benedict wrote his rule for monasteries in the early sixth century, and the Cistercian reform began in the late 11th century. Ironically, though, Lay Cistercians — communities of laypersons who affiliate with Cistercian monasteries for education, formation, and spiritual guidance — only emerged in the late twentieth century. We seem to be a postmodern phenomenon, an outgrowth of the second Vatican Council and the increasing recognition among Christians that holiness is not just for saints, but for everyone. And while most Christians recognize their path to holiness through the ordinary commitments to family, church, and work, some discern a yearning to embrace the wisdom, culture, and teachings of the monastic tradition — not to become monks or “monk-wannabes” and certainly not to engage in an ego-trip or an occasion for puffed up pride. Rather, those who sense a call to become Lay Cistercians recognize that this is a way to cultivate a committed, mature, life of faith — not “the” way, and by no means “the right” way, but simply “a” way. And for those who sense such a call, it is the best way — for us.
Making my promises to the monks, with my wife, Fran, at my side.
So what is involved in becoming a Lay Cistercian? First of all, it’s not something you do on your own. There will never be a “Lay Cistercians for Dummies” book with instructions on how to do-it-yourself. Just as monasteries are built on the foundation of community, so is the Lay Cistercian family. To be a Lay Cistercian means to join a community of Lay Cistercians, and by definition, a Lay Cistercian community exists in relationship with a Cistercian monastery or convent. Not all monasteries or convents have Lay Cistercian associates: some monasteries don’t want them, and that’s their prerogative. But for the ones that do, the relationship between the monastics and the Lay Cistercians is a rich and mutually rewarding connection. The monastics (from now on I’ll use this term since it encompasses both monks and nuns) teach, inspire, and guide the lay people who come to them for direction. In return, the lay associates pray with and for the monks, support the monastery through volunteer work and financial gifts, and express our appreciation by being good friends to the monastics and by seeking to share the Cistercian charism with society at large. For monastics, living within a cloister (monastic enclosure) is an experience of creating a rich and lifelong spiritual family. Lay Cistercians, therefore, function as the “extended family” — we do not live with the monks, but we love to visit.
So what is unique about the “Cistercian charism” — the gifts of the Cistercian way of life? And how do those gifts apply to laypeople, who are not now, and probably never will be, monastics themselves? Different Lay Cistercians will undoubtedly answer this question in different ways. For me, what is rich about the Cistercian charism is the fact that monastics live a life “wholly ordered to contemplation” (that’s a phrase found in their constitution). Contemplation — resting quietly, silently, in the mystery of the divine presence of God — is not just about having a meditation or centering prayer practice for twenty minutes once or twice a day (although such a discipline certainly can be important). Contemplation is a way of life. It involves simplicity, and a willingness to let go of our societal addiction to mindless consumerism and excessive busy-ness. It cherishes times of solitude and retreat, even when balanced with the overall demands of family and professional life. It recognizes that daily devotion to prayer, to the sacred reading of scripture or other holy writings, and to the unglamorous work of seeking to become truly humble and loving toward our neighbors — this is what contemplation is all about. And this is what monastics have “wholly ordered” their lives around. And so we Lay Cistercians seek to do the same, obviously adapted to the realities of life outside of the monastery cloister.
Receiving a medal from the monks after making my Lay Cistercian Life Promises, May 2012.
Of course, contemplation is not the only charism, or quality, associated with the Lay Cistercian path of spirituality. In 2008, an international gathering of Lay Cistercians identified a number of characteristics associated with Lay Cistercian identity. These characteristics include prayer, humility, abandonment to God, simplicity of life, hospitality, service, stability, silence, and joy. Yes, joy — Cistercian spirituality is not gloomy! For me, all of these characteristics ultimately point back to contemplation. Cistercian monastics represent a living heritage of contemplatives in western society, and so as a Lay Cistercian, I find it an honor and a privilege to pray with and learn from them.
I first began discerning whether I had a call to become a Lay Cistercian in the fall of 2006. On May 6, 2012 — almost six years later — I stood before five monks, including the abbot, of the monastery where I study, and pray, and work, and retreat, and made my prayerfully considered promise to follow the Cistercian path for life. Being a life-professed Lay Cistercian, of course, does not mean that I’m “done” with the experience of exploring Cistercian spirituality. On the contrary, the journey appears to have just begun.
Lay Cistercians know how to have fun. This video shows us celebrating the birthdays of Fr. Luke (100 years old!) and Fr. Anthony (a mere 83) in August 2011.
If you would like to learn more about Lay Cistercian spirituality, explore these links:
Karl Rahner, one of the most renowned Christian theologians of the twentieth century, once famously remarked that “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.”
For people whose experience of Christianity is, often, little more than a religion invested in obedience and in patriarchal morality, this seems to be a bold statement. After all, mysticism implies not legalistic religion, but living spirituality — heart-felt intimacy with God, centered on a miraculous and joyful appreciation of the Spirit’s ability to heal and transform lives. Can Christianity and mysticism really co-exist?
Mysticism on the Margins
Not only can Christianity be a mystical faith, but in fact a mystical element of Christianity has existed since the time of Jesus. But for a variety of historical, social and political reasons, Christian mysticism has always existed on the margins of the church. In the fourth and fifth centuries, as Christianity gradually moved into its position as the dominant religion in the Roman empire, the mystics, contemplatives, and others who sought profound intimate communion with God retreated from the cities into the deserts and the wilderness. These “Desert Fathers and Mothers” were the founders of the first monasteries — intentional communities of people who came together to live in perpetual prayer and meditation. By the middle ages, Christian mystics were, for the most part, found only in the monasteries and convents; then in the sixteenth century, when the Protestant Reformation led to religious strife (and, often, bloodshed), mystical spirituality fell under suspicion by both Catholics and Protestants. Although there have been mystics in every century of the Christian era, the sad reality is that, because of the political nature of the institutional church, many mystics have been persecuted, some even killed, and others learned to camouflage their wisdom teachings in carefully worded books and poems that appeared non-threatening to the religious authorities.
So the mystics (and their teachings) are, in a very real way, Christianity’s best-kept secret. And even though some Christians of the third millennium remain suspicious of mysticism, many others have begun to embrace the transfiguring beauty of such core spiritual practices as meditation, lectio divina (“sacred reading,” a meditative approach to the Bible and other wisdom texts), and contemplative prayer — the profound form of prayer in which meditative silence is offered directly to God for the purpose of seeking and fostering deeper spiritual intimacy and communion. Meanwhile, even familiar Christian practices such as the Catholic Rosary are being rediscovered as tools for entering into contemplative silence; while other, lesser known exercises (such as deeply meditative “prayer of the heart” from Eastern Orthodox Christianity) have gained newfound popularity as means for Christians to embrace unitive (nondual) states of consciousness, where — in the words of one great mystic, Meister Eckhart — “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”
Biblical Roots
The roots of Christian mystical wisdom are found in the Bible itself. Unfortunately, centuries of reading and interpreting the Bible according to perspectives that have often been subtly (or explicitly) anti-mystical has made the visionary power of the New Testament’s wisdom teachings far too easy to miss. For example, the first verse of Psalm 65 makes the bluntly contemplative statement “To you, God, silence is praise” in the original Hebrew — but this verse has often been mistranslated when rendered into English or other languages; presumably many scholars who translate the Bible could not wrap their minds around the idea that silence could actually be a means for worship.
Julian of Norwich
But for those who have “eyes to see,” the mystical message of such writings as the Gospel of John or the Letters to the Ephesians can become obvious —just like the 3-D image in a “Magic Eye” poster is hidden at first, but becomes impossible to miss when we learn to look for it in just the right way. From a mystical perspective, “just the right way” means approaching the Bible as a document encoded with messages about what the ancient Greeks called theosis — participation in the very nature of the Divine.
Christianity is built on two controversial—but thoroughly mystical—teachings: first, that Jesus of Nazareth is both fully human and fully divine, and furthermore, that this same Jesus is, literally, one with God, one person in a trinity of persons who share the Divine Unity. For many Christians, these teachings have been interpreted to stress humanity’s separation from Divinity: Christ may be one with God, but no one else is. This, however, is not supported by the mystical wisdom found in the New Testament. Indeed, Jesus proclaims that he is one with God in the Gospel of John (see verse 10:30). But Biblical writings also stress the oneness between Jesus and those who follow his wisdom teachings. “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another,” proclaims Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans. Christ is one with God, and we are one with Christ. Saint Peter is even more blunt, proclaiming that by the promises of Christ, his followers become “partakers of the divine nature.” Mystically speaking, Christianity points toward Divine communion as the ultimate destiny of being human.
Granted, Christian mystical theology is not the same as other wisdom teachings from around the world. Some wisdom paths point toward union with the Divine as the ultimate truth, suggesting that the experience of being a separate human person is, ultimately, simply an illusion that will fall away when we finally, fully, recognize our oneness with the Sacred. Christianity offers a different approach: in which the distinction between God and humanity is taken at face value, understood not as an illusion but rather as a simple point of fact in how the cosmos is structured. Such a distinction exists, according to Christian mystical teaching, not because humanity is inferior, but rather because it is only in the distinction between Divinity and humanity that we are able to fully, truly and ecstatically love each other. Thus, Christian mysticism celebrates communion with God as the ultimate destiny of humankind: eternal life is a never-ending cosmic dance, in which humanity and Divinity interpenetrate one another, joyfully sharing love and communion like a flower that is forever opening wider and deeper, evolving into ever new dimensions of blissful celebration.
Ignatius of Loyola
Christian Mysticism and World Mysticism
While Christianity has its own distinctive mystical teachings that in some ways mark it as different from other spiritual paths, those who drink deeply from the wells of Christian contemplation tend, like mystics from all paths, to be far more interested in what unites people of different traditions, rather than what separates us. In the history of the Christian mystics, again and again the contemplatives have been the ones who reach out beyond the boundaries of institutional religion to embrace the teachings of other faiths. Clement and Origen, early mystics from the second and third centuries, embraced the wisdom of the pagan Greek philosophers in their teachings. Later, in Ireland and other Celtic lands, the saints of the Christian monasteries integrated druidic teachings and practices into their spiritual observance. In renaissance Spain, a number of Christians incorporated elements of the Kabbalah into their teaching; and the twentieth century was full of visionary Christians who reached out to the spiritual treasures of other cultures and paths: the Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths embraced Vedanta while the Trappist monk Thomas Merton explored Buddhism; Valentin Tomberg integrated Catholicism and Anthroposophy; and Mary Margaret Funk continues the work of deep interfaith encounter as she, a Benedictine nun, engages in constructive dialogue with members of the Muslim faith community. For Christians such as these, devotion to the wisdom teachings of Jesus and his followers is not about religious exclusivity or a belief that Christianity is superior to other faiths; rather it is about a joyful celebration of the beauty, splendor and diversity of all positive paths.
What difference can the mystical element of Christianity make in our world today? Sadly, most Christians remain unfamiliar with the spiritual wisdom hidden in their own tradition. But more and more people, both inside and beyond the institutional church, are turning to classic spiritual disciplines such as meditation, contemplation, lectio divina, regular chanting or recitation of the Psalms and other prayers (known as the Divine Office), devotion to Christ, Mary, and the saints, and turning to monasteries and convents for retreats grounded in silence and under the guidance of monks and nuns who have devoted their entire lives to prayer. The result, of course, is that more and more people are opening themselves up to joyful, visionary, and transfiguring encounters with Christ and the Holy Spirit. More and more Christians are finding in their faith not just the legalistic religion of old, but exciting possibilities of unitive consciousness found through silent communion with God. Such encounters may be thought of as “supernatural” but the case could be made that mystical spirituality is utterly natural: it is something that can reach us in the ordinary moments of life. At the same time, the encounter with God could also be so subtle that it is easily missed. No matter how glorious or humble, extraordinary or ordinary, such moments of communion with God often are marked by a profound sense of Divinely-given love, joy, and peace. They also can lead to a deeper sense of trust in God, love for other human beings, and — most crucial of all for our time — a profound respect for people of other cultures and faiths.
In other words, mystical wisdom and practice is not only the best hope for the future of Christianity, but it can also contribute to something that we all yearn for: a world shaped by peace and harmony among the people of all positive paths.
This article, in a slightly different form, originally appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Evolve! (volume 9, number 3).
