Sister Wendy, Contemplative

 

Sister Wendy Becket, Icon by William Hart McNichols

I knew her as the art nun, but I also knew that she lived alone as a hermit. When I caught wind that a book was coming out about her (“Dearest Sister Wendy”, Robert Ellsberg) I was intrigued. 

The book was not what I expected. I was expecting to enhance my appreciation of art, at least a little. Wasn't art the love of her life? But there is very little art commentary in this book, or spiritual insight into the art world. 

Instead, there is personal honesty: a deep look at the inner world of an odd and holy woman who is called to a solitary life of prayer. And her miraculous opening out and sharing of herself in an almost daily correspondence with Robert Ellsberg during the last 2 years of her life. 

It turns out that God is the love of Sister Wendy's life. 

Sister Wendy is delightfully funny. And odd. And very smart. And humble. I'd almost say that she had no ego. Those 7 hours of daily praying must have been at a high order of meditation. And yet, in so many words, without words, she lets you know about this simple prayer of hers.

I’ve been intrigued with solitary monastic life for awhile, most of my life. When I was a child it was the Carmelite monastery in Louisville that most caught my attention. What did the nuns do in that walled and silent place? I’m odd, too - introverted - so I sort of can identify with and understand Sister Wendy.

Sister Wendy knew her way early in life. She joined an order of teaching nuns when she was just 16 years old. She never doubted this move or looked back. She followed the rules; she obeyed. Her life was totally in the hands of God and she trusted that the circumstances of life would guide her to where God wanted her to be. And they did. 

After about 20 years in a teaching role Sister Wendy had a physical breakdown of sorts. Seizures that were diagnosed as epilepsy. She was given permission to live as a consecrated virgin and hermit. Secluded in a trailer on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery in Quidenham, England, Sister Wendy lived her life alone and in prayer. She went to the monastery for Mass every day, but otherwise she was in her little trailer, praying for at least 7 hours a day. She read - about art, about religion, about Thomas Merton, Pope Francis, and others. 

Sister Wendy took the rules of monasticism seriously, which is probably one of the reasons she had such a hard time with Merton. Merton talked a lot about the monastic life, but he broke most of the rules. His engagement with “the world” was relentless. She wondered why his writing did not convey much joy in his life. 

Reading Sister Wendy’s takes on Merton is revealing. Even at 88 years old and in failing health, her mind is still sharp and penetrating. Her insights in to what is happening in the world are compassionate and wise. Most of her life has been spent in silent prayer, away from the world. Not talking to people. When her correspondence with Mr. Ellsberg begins, Sister Wendy is hesitant. How does one speak of a life of silent prayer? There are no words. Nothing, as she would say. 

And yet, over the course of 2 years and possibly for the first time in her life, Sister Wendy relates from a deep and authentic place in herself who she is and who God is for her.

Obituary for Sister Wendy in the New York Times, December 26. 2018

The Time of No Room

 

"The Time of the End is the Time of No Room"

from Raids on the Unspeakable

~Thomas Merton 

We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end.  The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quality, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration...

As the end approaches, there is no room for nature.  The cities crowd it off the face of the Earth.

As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet.  There is no room for solitude.  There is no room for thought.  There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state.

In the time of the ultimate end, there is no room for man.

Into this world, this demented inn,

in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all,

Christ has come uninvited.

But because He cannot be at home in it,

because He is out of place in it,

His place is with those others for whom there is no room,

His place is with those who do not belong,

who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak,

those who are discredited,

who are denied the status of persons,

who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,

Christ is present in the world.

He is mysteriously present

in those for whom there seems to be nothing

but the world at its worst. . . .

It is in these that He hides Himself,

for whom there is no room.

The Mark of the True Revolutionary - The Young Gandhi

 

One of my Facebook friends posted this photo and story about the young Gandhi. Look at the clarity of his eyes, and his keen insight into the nature of human delusion and roots of racism. He had already found the path and courage of Nonviolence.

When Mahatma Gandhi was studying law in London, a professor named Peters had a bad attitude … but student Gandhi never lowered his head and they met very often.

One day Peters was having lunch at the university canteen, Gandhi came with his tray and sat down next to him.

The very arrogant professor said to him, “Student Gandhi, you don’t understand!” “Pig” and “bird” don’t sit down to eat together. “

Gandhi replies, “Be calm, Professor, I will fly!”

And the situation has changed. Professor Peters, filled with rage, because he understood that the student had called him “Pig”, decided to take revenge on the next exam …

But the student answers all the questions brilliantly.

Then the teacher asks him the following question: “Gandhi, if you walk down the street and find two bags, one with wisdom and the other with money, which of the two will you take?”

Gandhi replied without hesitation, “Probably the money, Professor.” ‘’

The smiling teacher tells him, “I would grab wisdom in your place, don’t you think?”

Gandhi replies, “Everyone takes what they don’t have, Professor.”

The already hysterical professor writes “IDIOT” on the exam sheet and returns it to the young man. Gandhi takes the sheet and sits down … after a few minutes he turns to the teacher and says, “Professor Peters, you signed the sheet, but you didn’t write my grade …”

~ If you let something hurt you … It will hurt you. But if you do not allow it, the thing will return to where it came from. ~

___ 

The following is from an essay by Lawrence S. Cunningham, a professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and a frequent writer about Merton. The entire essay, "Alone Among Many", is HERE.

"Nearly a half century ago, Thomas Merton wrote "Notes on a Philosophy of Solitude," an extended essay in which he pointed out that a person who enjoys solitude, by which he meant the quiet possession of the self, is the one less likely to be beguiled by mass movements, collective passions, the false siren of advertising and the lust for the ephemerally fashionable. True solitude (as opposed to individualism or "going it alone") is the cultivation of the sense of the self that permits us to adjudicate the cry of the mob and resist the lure of the moment.

 

Such self-possession is both a gift and a risk. It is most often a risk when acting against the consensus; such acts can earn scorn or, at worst, actual physical harm. Decades ago Ignazio Silone, the Italian political novelist, said that the first lethal blow against fascism came when the first brave person in a village chalked a large NO on the wall of the town square. Interior solitude has always been the mark of the true revolutionary. It was the inner force of Gandhi's resistance; it was the inner strength of a Solzhenitsyn whose inner life could not be broken by the horrors of the Gulag.

At a deeper spiritual level the cultivation of solitude is a necessary matrix out of which comes authentic prayer. By that is not meant that one must seek a solitary place (even though that may be a good thing to do on occasion) or go to a monastery for a retreat (also a good thing) or give up one's ordinary pattern of living. What it does mean is that if we are to pray, as opposed to saying prayers, we need the capacity to slow down, get in focus and become re-collected, albeit for a short period of time. The Bible describes that capacity as watchfulness, the alertness that brings our interior attention toward a single One. God says, through the psalmist, that we are "to be still and know that I am God" (Psalms 46:11). That stillness is the defining element of solitude."

Hagar's Prayer

Clear Vision
Inspired by Genesis 21:8-21
By Lauren Wright Pittman

 

Hagar's Prayer*

    by Trisha Arlin  

      Blessed One-ness, Breathing Existence,

I once was Sarah:Rich,Loved,Able to laugh at everything,Even God,Especially God.I had a place, a home, a mission.

But now I'm Hagar:Broke,Alone,About to cry at everything,Even God.Especially God.Wandering, in the desert, hungry. 

This is my fault.I should have seen this comingI should have protected myself,I refused to accurately assess my situation.Oh, the fantasies I had of love and success.

No! This is Sarah's fault,She, with her connectionsAnd her covenantAnd no room for anyone else.Oh, the promises she made when she needed me.

No, this is Abraham's fault!He pretends to have no agencyBut he's the one with the money and the power,He's the one who talks to God (or so he says).Oh, the bullshit he slings about destiny.

All I have now is a cat named IshmaelAnd he expects to be fedAnd watered.Meow Meow, he's starving.I can't look at him,Oh, I can't watch him die.All I can do is pray.

Blessed One-nessBreathing Existence,Send me a social workerOr food stampsOr a lotto ticketOr friendsOr a magical flowing spring of plenty that pours out from the rocks.

Or something.Amen. 
*Originally Printed in Journal of Feminist Studies In Religion: #35, 1

The Essence of all Spirituality is Presence

The essence of all spirituality is presence,
a state of consciousness that transcends thinking.
There is a space behind and in between your thoughts and emotions.
When you become aware of that space,
you are present,
and you realize that your personal history,
which consists of thought,
is not your true identity and is not the essence of who you are.
What is that space, that inner spaciousness?
It is pure consciousness,
the transcendent "I AM" that becomes aware of itself.
The Buddha calls it sunyata,
emptiness.
It is the "kingdom of heaven" that Jesus pointed to,
which is within you
here and now.

-- Eckhart Tolle

Teilhard prayer

“Now that I have found the joy of utilizing all forms of growth to make you, or to let you grow in me, grant that I may willingly consent to this last phase of communion in the course of which I shall possess you by diminishing in you…

            When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind): when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me, when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me: in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.”

- Teilhard de Chardin

the way you walk, the way you stand ...

(Photo by Paul Davis)

“It is not by preaching or expounding the sutras (scriptures) that you fulfill the task of awakening others to self-realization; it is rather by the way you walk, the way you stand, the way you sit and the way you see things.” 
—Thich Nhat Hanh

(Photo by Paul Davis)

Feast of the Epiphany

“Today the Magi find, crying in the manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky. 

Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars. 

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. 

As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.”

- St. Peter Chrysologus

The Wisdom of Tenderness

“In this communion, we discover the deepest part of our being: the need to be loved and to have someone who trusts and appreciates us and who cares least of all about our capacity to work or to be clever and interesting.”

The Ringshout & Birth of African-American Religion

nameless & no where: the paradise tree

Photo by Thomas Merton

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place
and there
You do not enter except without a story
To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door
and no identity
with which to go out and to come in.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist
except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

Bue he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are
securely established!

They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at
once and
all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and number
for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes
for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn
flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words
end and arguments are silent.

- Merton, "The Fall", In the Dark before the Dawn, pp. 184-185

the darkness is enough

Photograph: During Christmas services in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine, by the American Colony Jerusalem Photo Department, between 1934 and 1939.

“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 at Christmas, 1941.

A Life Surrendered to Love - Thomas Keating

"Nothingness is who God is".

"Nothing is one of the greatest activities there is."

Fr. Thomas Keating O.S.C.O, RIP

Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating: "He taught me the value of friendship with members of different religions. He taught me the value of silence and careful thinking." (NCR file photo)

 Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating, a global figure in both interreligious dialogue and Christian contemplative prayer, has died at the age of 95.

NCR has a very good write up of his life HERE.

Largely in response to the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council's call to religious orders for renewal, Keating and fellow Cistercian monks Fr. William Meninger and the late Fr. Basil Pennington (1931-2005), worked together in the 1970s to develop a contemplative prayer method that drew on ancient traditions but would be readily accessible to the modern world.
...
"The gift of God is absolutely gratuitous," he said. "It's not something you earn. It's something that's there. It's something you just have to accept. This is the gift that has been given. There's no place to go to get it. There's no place you can go to avoid it. It just is. It's part of our very existence. And so the purpose of all the great religions is to bring us into this relationship with reality that is so intimate that no words can possibly describe it."

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. 

 Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, Diary entry (September 29, 1942)

a hole in a flute

I am
a hole in a flute
that the Christ’s breath moves through—
listen to this
music.

- Daniel Ladinsky, inspired by Hafiz, “The Christ’s Breath,” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (Penguin Compass: 2002), 153. Used with permission

the moan is the birthing sound

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery Alabama

The air must have been thick with fear and prayer as the slaving ships pulled out of Gorée and other West African ports laden with human cargo. Devotees of Vodun, the river gods, [YHWH], Allah, Oludumare—to name just a few—lay together (tightly or loosely packed) in an involuntary rebirthing cocoon. It was a community of sorts, yet each person lay in their own chrysalis of human waste and anxiety. More often than not, these Africans were strangers to each other by virtue of language, culture, and tribe. Although the names of their deities differed, they shared a common belief in the seen and unseen. The journey was a rite of passage of sorts that stripped captives of their personal control over the situation and forced them to turn to the spirit realm for relief and guidance.

. . . The word contemplation must press beyond the constraints of religious expectations to reach the potential for spiritual centering in the midst of danger. Centering moments accessed in safety are an expected luxury in our era. During slavery, however, crisis contemplation became a refuge, a wellspring of discernment in a suddenly disordered life space, and a geo-spiritual anvil for forging a new identity. This definition of contemplation is dynamic and situational. . . .

As unlikely as it may seem, the contemplative moment can be found at the very center of such ontological crises . . . during the Middle Passage in the holds of slave ships . . . auction blocks . . . and the . . . hush arbors [where slaves worshipped in secret]. Each event is experienced by individuals stunned into multiple realities by shock, journey, and displacement. . . . In the words of Howard Thurman, “when all hope for release in the world seems unrealistic and groundless, the heart turns to a way of escape beyond the present order.” [1] For captured Africans, there was no safety except in common cause and the development of internal and spiritual fortitude. . . .

The only sound that would carry Africans over the bitter waters was the moan. Moans flowed through each wracked body and drew each soul toward the center of contemplation. . . . One imagines the Spirit moaning as it hovered over the deep during the Genesis account of creation [Genesis 1:2]. Here, the moan stitches horror and survival instincts into a creation narrative. . . . On the slave ships, the moan became the language of stolen strangers, the sound of unspeakable fears, the precursor to joy yet unknown. The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis.

- Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, second edition (Fortress Press: 2017), 45-46, 50, 52.

HT: from today's meditation from Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation

Jean Vanier: How to LOSE Power

the silent call of the earth

 Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh

The philosopher Martin Heidegger saw the painting on exhibition in Amsterdam in 1930 and later wrote about it:

"From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrate the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field." - Martin Heidegger

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." - Vincent Van Gogh

living your love

The Guatamalan-Maya Center

Writing with George …

Welcome Annaise, how can I help? We’re here to serve you. Bienvenida Eulalia, what a beautiful name you have. Welcome Rosa Mayra, thank you for bringing your gentle children. Oneida! Good to see you again. I hope everything is going well. Hello Juana, does your family live near to the volcano? Are they all right? Carmen! Is your family in Cali still dancing, still doing the samba? Nohemy! A surprise to see you. Dare I ask about your family in Guerrero? I remember the murders. How are your sisters surviving? Odelina from Honduras… Is your brother surviving the violence at school? Can he study? Alma, when I hear your name I think of the beauty of your soul. Welcome Mariela, welcome again. It’s always a joy to see you. Nicolasa, every time we meet I feel like your brother with my Nicholas name. Amany from Egypt, you frightened me at first with your stern presence, but you always soften. Your children must love your softness dearly. Bienvenida Viviana. You strike me as living vitally. You capture the bright life of your name. Gudelia, good woman, good mother, marked by goodness. Delmi, Karina, Francisca, Kellyn, Mariela, your names, once so foreign to me I couldn’t imagine you, now open a world not only for me, but for my neighbors as well. I can harvest your names for them. I can harvest your truth for them. Most of you bring the heart of Maya joining the heart of the earth to the heart of the sky, teaching the urgency of love. We live in these perilous times when the government deports or threatens to deport your husbands, but you go on caring for the place of your heart, the place of your children, the place of their hearts. You have seen all around you murder and the threat of murder. You know the precariousness of life. But no matter you go on living your trust, living your love, teaching us the profound depths of your poverty.

I will not compare you with anyone. But I must say you have found a place, a heart place which others, if they would only open themselves to discover, would cherish. They would follow with all their heart. And this is what you have taught me if I could only learn: lead with my heart, lead with my heart, lead with my heart.

- from an email by Fr. Frank O'Laughlin

The Guatamalan Maya Center