If I’m being honest, I don’t have a natural desire to pray. I’d rather space out on social media or binge-watch Gilmore Girls for the 4th time. I am a naturally lazy person, adept at procrastination; efficient enough to keep up appearances but not so much that I keep up with my own natural abilities. I often sell myself short through bad habits and easily attainable comforts. Then again, I am also a spiritual person, drawn to the depths of the Divine in the world and others. My home is filled with hundreds of spiritual books and I have pursued degrees in divinity to satiate this endless hunger. I exist in a world of tension, containing more contradictions beyond what I believe any individual could encompass. During prayer, I spend more time wrestling in my spirit than I do being still. The push and pull of my carnal desires are inextricably woven with the desire to discard them all and live as a hermit on a mountain somewhere. To spend hours upon hours in prayer and earthen labor seems too marvelous for this average soul and yet I know it would be torturous allthemore.
The other day, I set out to spend an hour at The Grotto here in Portland. The feeling of resistance was strong. It was cold outside, I needed to renew my $50 membership, and I hadn’t the slightest clue what I would do when I got there. I didn’t bring a Bible or my journal. I just bundled up and left the house. Upon arrival, the scenery felt colorless and heavy. The grey seemed to enveil everything, even me. I walked the familiar path resisting the urge to turn around and rush back to my warm home. I found a cold, dryish bench to sit on, closed my eyes, and listened to the pond. Nothing magical happened. The resistance in my heart remained. My mind felt as grey as the clouds above me. It wasn’t until I got home and began to write about my time that the connections began to happen.
Here is part of my journal entry from that day.
My time at the Grotto was hard with some consolation mixed in. It was so grey... I just wanted to run back to my cozy house, pour myself a warm cocktail and not deal with the gloom. But I walked the loop anyway - I felt like I was walking against the current of my own desires. I sat for a bit at the egde of a wet bench and listened to the flowing pond. It was nice and it was uncomfortable. I felt like a stranger in a place I've been to a hundred times. But it wasn't because time had passed between us but the grey gloom seem to tell me I didn't belong - I belonged inside with my comforts. Why the hell was I out here? Maybe it was to remind myself of the path I've chosen to take, even if I have taken it with great resistance. The path to detach from my habits and comforts - the path to embrace the Grey God, shrouded in mystery... I noticed paths and puddles, rain drops collected on leaves. There were bare branches and thriving Ivy. A few chirps from the birds and a cranky man in the gift shop. These experiences belong just as much as the moments containing great visions and consolations I've received from the Lord. But The Grotto is not some magic portal into Divine Oneness with God but a blank canvas in which my soul paints whatever comes from within. Perhaps the grey was so bothersome because it mirrored my own greyness, a luke warm heart towards this path I've chosen. Perhaps this is what the creatures feel like in winter...The need to survive draws them out from their dens into the grey cold in hopes to find nourishment... Maybe this is what I feel - the risk to leave the warmth of my comforts to find some morsel of God but even more than that, to find a morsel of God within me. We enter sacred places to ultimately enter our own sacredness. Perhaps what I resist is my own sacred heart, it feels foolish to believe such things. Any yet, I hear no other voice but the One within.
I’ve been reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton with my early morning coffee. While it’s still dark, I sit and read, resisting the urge to check my email which I often succumb to. Learning about contemplation is not the same as practicing contemplation but it certainly helps with the desire to expand this new practice. Merton explains contemplation in contemporary language which is far easier to understand than older mystical writings. Merton says “Contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, beyond our own self.”1 It is an “awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid awareness of the infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being.” With this understanding of contemplation, it is plain to see where my resistance comes from: I like myself way too much, and even the parts I don’t like I am still attached to, making it seemingly impossible to move beyond myself. I am afraid that if I move beyond all that I am and all that I have come to know, I will no longer matter. I sometimes long for the days of reading simple devotions focused on me and my relationship with God. I fear I have deconstructed so much that everything is a loss compared to this grand Divine Mystery, including myself. Richard Rohr poignantly tells us that “The ego hates losing - even to God.”
What I am so afraid of losing if I keep following this path? Even Jesus promised that whoever would lose their life would ultimately find it. But it would not be the same life. It couldn’t be. It would be a changed life, a transformed one. Unrecognizable? Perhaps. These are things we do not get to know. We become part of the mystery and perhaps, that is the fear that keeps us from losing ourselves in God. We become unknown while being known fully. The ego doesn’t like either option. We want our well-built and chiseled identities but we want them to ourselves.
The resistance I felt that day and still do is my ego practicing its well-honed survival skills. And yet, like a creature coming out from its winter den, my instincts tell me I cannot survive without the One who provides true nourishment. This tension is a battle of wills to survive and honestly, it depends on the day which one will win. But God’s call to me remains steady, even when my response is consistent.
Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depts of our own being: for we ourselves are words of His.
Thomas Merton
May we not fear losing ourselves in God and find that we have indeed found our truest self in him.
Peace and all good,
New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton. Pg. 2
Thank you! It is comforting to know the struggles are not unique to me