What I Desire

Psalm 27:4
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
4 I have asked one thing from the Lord;
it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking Him in His temple.

The sound, and sometimes the fury, generated by 'muscular Christianity' and its activists can sometimes conceal the fact that the Christian faith has at its heart a contemplative dimension. This psalm points us towards that dimension and reminds us that the Temple cult in Jerusalem, which also has a reputation for activism often involving swords, had a gentler aspect also.

 The word 'desire' has various connotations, not all of them good. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says 'Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul.' The Buddha suggested that desire was the cause of all suffering. Christianity tends to look upon emotions or feelings in relation to their objects rather than in isolation. Anger, for example, is a cardinal sin unless it is directed against a legitimate object where it becomes a source of strength for a succeeding action. Desire, then, when it is directed towards the possession and enjoyment of a temporal and material object as an end in itself is bad or at best neutral. When directed towards a transcendent and spiritual object or Person then it is not only an unqualified good but it is a strengthening factor in helping us to secure that object or Person and therefore to be secured by it or by Him.

This kind of desire is spoken of elsewhere by the psalmist 'As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. I thirst for God, the living God.' (Psalm 42) 'God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.' (Psalm 63) This is desire expressed as urgent necessity, as dehydration prompts a person to seek water so a realisation of our spiritual barrenness should prompt us to seek Him who can 'turn a desert into a pool of water, dry land into springs of water.' (Psalm 107)

To achieve his object the psalmist has one powerful instrument- 'I have asked.'  He prays. To ask is to receive. To want to ask is to have the assurance of success when we do ask. The desire for God comes from God and it is inconceivable that He would thwart His own wishes. Only we have the power to do that. Once we recognise His presence in our hearts urging us towards Him in an ever more intimate union and exchange of love then we can choose to accept His gift and respond to it or we can reject it. The desire to preserve this life and its passing glories is, indeed, a powerful enemy of the soul. 'whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will save it' (Luke 9)

The 'house of the Lord' referred to in the psalm is the Jerusalem Temple. In the most sacred part of that building, the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant was situated. And the One God of the Universe abode within the Ark in a special way. That is, although He was everywhere and upheld everything His awesome glory and power was manifested in a singular, concentrated fashion in this one place. When the psalmist spoke about dwelling within that house all the days of his life whatever literal meaning he had in mind his spiritual intention was perfectly clear. He wished to be, heart and mind, body and soul in the most intimate possible contact with the beloved object of his most powerful of desires all of the time. And when his energies flowed into that relationship the beloved's energies would flow back in return. These would bear a powerful fruit as the psalmist wrote elsewhere 'Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me
all the days of my life.' (Psalm 23)

The form this relationship, which I have described in active (not to say sensual) terms, takes is quite literally contemplative 'gazing on the beauty of the Lord.' The God of the Israelites was invisible, the Ark of the Covenant was concealed from all but the High Priest and that only once a year. So the psalmist was describing a spiritual reality in the form of a material metaphor. It is difficult for us to describe such realities in any other way. Later in the psalm he invoked another such image which the King James Version renders as 'When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.' (Psalm 27:8) The what of the relationship is thus made clear. The how of the relationship the same version subsequently describes in these terms 'Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.' (Psalm 27:14)

The Jerusalem Temple has long been destroyed yet the call for Christians to seek Him in the Temple is not an historic curiosity but a current vocation. And this in two ways 'Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.' (John 2) Contemplating Jesus in the Gospels, in prayer, in meditation, in His Saints is one way that we can seek Him. 'Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.' (1 Corinthians 6) Looking inwardly to 'that of God in everyone,' as the Quakers put it, communing silently with the grace of God at work within our souls is another way of seeking Him in His Temple.

There is no real conflict between the notion of an activist 'muscular Christianity' and that of a contemplative one. Some individual are drawn more towards one path than another yet it is always the case that we only drink at the fountain of His grace in order to give us the strength to do that which we must do, and we can only know what that doing is to be if we have drunk at that fountain. The body of Christ is always in balance, although often enough that balance gives the appearance of tension. It is however not the tenseness of a conflict, a Pope Benedict versus a Pope Francis, it is the tension of a creative process forever giving birth to Jesus in the world and in the hearts of believers.


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Pearls of Wisdom- Who Needs #Buddha 2

The spiritual seeker is often also a great reader. The ancient tradition of seeking out a spiritual teacher or guide and placing oneself under their authority has, in large part, been replaced by an omnivorous consumption of books or a visiting of websites (I don't knock this, it might be the reason why you are reading this blog after all.) The Western seekers frequently find their way to classic texts like the Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. More often though people find pleasure in reading collections of pithy wisdom sayings or wisdom stories. Here Sufi Islam, through writers like Rumi, joins the field along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Christianity does not, are at least should not though some fundamentalists might disagree, deny that wisdom and truth can be indeed perceived if only in glimpses and flashes in these texts. What practically all Christian traditions do assert, though, is that the Bible is the spiritual text above all other spiritual texts and that every other spiritual writing is at best an auxiliary to it. St Benedict put it this way-
For what page or what utterance 
of the divinely inspired books of the Old and New Testaments 
is not a most unerring rule for human life? 
Rule of Benedict, Chapter 73

And here we have a problem. Many may indeed pick up the Sacred Scriptures seeking insight but will, like I once did, soon put them down again as being way too full of Angry God and not full enough of Hippy Jesus. Not only this but the jumble of formats- Histories, Laws, Prophecies, Poetry, Gospels, Letters and so on is confusing and daunting. The legacy too of the "Reformation" is that many of us start from the assumption that all the equipment we need to understand the text is the ability to read since every man or woman is qualified to be their own Pope. The fallacy in that argument should be apparent as soon as it is stated. Unless we are historians and lawyers and poets and textual critics how could we expect to grasp the complexity of this interwoven fabric composed and compiled over centuries? Catholics at least are urged to read the Scriptures "with the mind of the Church" which is to say that there have been 2000 years of reflection and commentary on these texts and we should be aware of the fruits of that while we read. This is less daunting than it sounds, study Bibles, like the Navarre Bible series or the little Christian Community Bible (Downloadable), contain brief (-ish) notes alongside the text summarising the content of these commentaries.

Seekers might wonder why it is necessary to take such trouble when all these pearls of wisdom from the East are so straightforward and readily to hand. But appearances are deceptive. What is presented is pre-digested, broken down into McNugget sized chunks and taken out of its context. Those who do read full Eastern works like the Gita discover that they have their own problems which have the same dimensions as our Angry God issues. Arjuna, for example, being urged by Krishna to kill people rather than abstain from violence. We can skate over this because, as I said in the first part, we view Eastern Religion from a distance and can carry the baggage of their history more lightly than that of our own. Nonetheless the problems are there and they are real. If our spiritual hunger is content to be fed with de-contextualised feelgood quotes then we can mine the Bible for them just as easily as any other text so wherein lies the superiority of the East apart from our ability to ignore its 'hard sayings' and difficult texts?

 As I mentioned in the first part one major draw of the Eastern approach is the practice of meditation. There are two methods of using Scripture which, with the help of God's grace, can bring about the kind of states or spiritual experiences which will confer that limpid peaceful clarity and insight that the seeker is thirsting for. One is the use of the Psalms which is too large a subject for now, I hope to address it in a future blog, the other is Lectio Divina a contemplative reading of Scripture. There is a certain amount of confusion when considering this subject because although the word meditation is used frequently in Catholic discourse in this area it traditionally means a different thing from that ascribed to it by the East. Here it has referred to thinking deeply there it has referred to an emptying of the mind. Lectio is a method which is open to being used in either way or in both. Meditation, meaning thought, can lead to Contemplation which means reflecting in the sense that a mirror or still waters reflect.

Guigo the Carthusian wrote what may be the classic exposition of the technique in his The Ladder of Four Rungs  It contains this handy summary-

Understand now what the four staves of this ladder are, each in turn. Reading, Lesson, is busily looking on Holy Scripture with all one's will and wit. Meditation is a studious insearching with the mind to know what was before concealed through desiring proper skill. Prayer is a devout desiring of the heart to get what is good and avoid what is evil. Contemplation is the lifting up of the heart to God tasting somewhat of the heavenly sweetness and savour. Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation feels.

Here, indeed, we might feel the lack of a personal Spiritual Director since some passages are more apt to Lectio than others. People trying the technique for the first time would be well advised to seek advice either from a trusted guide or from a good book or website dealing with the subject. And, too, they should bear in mind the advice to read the Scriptures 'with the mind of the Church.' Having said which some of the less obvious passages can lead into the deepest meditation (in either sense) precisely because their meaning makes less immediate impact on the discursive part of our minds. The gentle little Book of Ruth, for example, might fit into this category.

Again I would make the point that with Christianity we should not allow our familiarity with what we suppose it to be to breed contempt and to counter-pose against it a less contaminated Eastern Wisdom. The East is not so pure and the West not so massively flawed as we might at first assume. And finally I will leave you with the words of Guerric of Igny

Search the Scriptures. For you are not mistaken in thinking that you find life in them.....From these gardens the Bridegroom will lead you, if I be not mistaken, into others where rest is more hidden and enjoyment more blessed and beauty more wonderful. When you are absorbed in his praises with accents of exultation and thanksgiving, he will take you into his wonderful tenting place, into the very house of God, into the unapproachable light in which he dwells, where he feeds, where he lies down at midday. 


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Who needs #Buddha?

How the Mystic Heart of Christianity has been hiding in plain sight

At one time or another many Westerners, myself included, have rejected Christianity and looked for answers to our spiritual needs in the wisdom of the East. The clear market leader here is Buddhism in many and various forms. The Hindu tradition around the Bhagavad Gita also has its Western niche audience. There is too a thriving trend for mix-and-match a la carte Eastern spirituality where consumers buy into the ideas that stroke their spiritual erogenous zones while ignoring any inconvenient ballast that accompanies them. The then Cardinal Ratzinger once suggested that European Catholics who converted to Buddhism were guilty of a kind of spiritual auto-eroticism a statement which sounds harsh but, like Buddhism itself, has a distinct portion of truth contained within itself.

My purpose here is not to criticise these major world faiths. The Catholic Church, in the document Nostra Aetate , recognises that these ways of seeking God are not without glimpses and flashes of Him who cannot be hid. No, my business here is to suggest that we are often too eager to discard a Christian faith which contains within itself precisely those elements which we most like about the Eastern faiths and moreover does so in a far more incarnated ie fully human sense. In part also this easy abandonment of our own historic faith is assisted by Christianity itself hiding its mystical light under a bushel. An added attraction about the Eastern faiths is that by looking at them from a distance we are not bothered by the vulgarisation of them in actual Eastern societies or by the abundant failings of their practitioners and these perhaps are the very things that distance us from Christianity. We in the West get the refined essence of Buddhism and the dirty washing of Christianity.

One of the biggest selling points of the Eastern traditions is the habit of meditation. The clearing of the mind from cluttering thoughts, feelings and distractions so that an inner light, a tranquil crystal clear lake, a pure lotus blossom or whatever other metaphor of choice springs to mind can manifest itself and we can enter into a personal zone of peace. In this state we can encounter the Reality which underlies the bewildering, deceiving surface aspects of our lives and our selves and so become Real in all that we are and do. This is a worthy project but few who embark upon it consider for even a nano-second that by far and away the most popular form of meditation in the West is the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It is, perhaps, in this meditative format that we come up most clearly against the incarnate and disincarnate contrast between the two modes of spirituality. In the Rosary the mind is indeed emptied of clutter. This is done to focus upon Jesus and Mary and the God who intervenes directly in human history thereby strengthening our relationship with Him. Other historic Christian meditative approaches have a similar sort of focus. The Orthodox Jesus Prayer or Prayer of the Heart, popularised in the wonderful little book The Way of a Pilgrim, the single word focussed upon in the Cloud of Unknowing, the dry, barren desert St John of the Cross writes about in The Dark Night of the Soul. Each of these, all of these, in some way or another encourages us to leave behind the distractions and delusions of the everyday world to centre ourselves on that which, or rather whom, is the very centre and cause of our own being and all being.

The aim of Eastern meditation, be it self, Self, Overself, Atman, Nirvana, is ultimately impersonal or even a simple nothingness. That of the Christian is profoundly personal, it is all about relationship. For the Western seeker after inner peace who picks up a smattering of Buddhism or Vedanta this is all hypothetical. What they want is what works, what offers the sand for the white dove to sleep in. Often they turn to the East because it offers a series of techniques which promise to deliver the goods and which they have never found to be on offer in Christianity. Yet when it comes to the simple mechanics of it all the techniques that the West uses are in many respects more or less identical to those of the East. But the West holds them as a well kept secret and the East proclaims them from the housetops. In part this is a necessary consequence of the fundamentally different approach between a faith which is missionary and active and sees its raison d'etre precisely to be incarnated in the hurly burly of daily life and ones which see withdrawal and a passive fatalism as more suited to their genius. In this sense Christian meditation is viewed as a process by which one recharges ones batteries before returning to the fray rather than as an end in itself. Which is more or less exactly what Westerners who turn East want it for too and did they but know that it was there they might turn to it instead.

Its not all about technique though. Whilst both Eastern and Western approaches promise an inner calm, a rest for the restless heart, a way of renewal, a discovery of meaning the Christians does so not on on the basis of an ever increasing spiritual athleticism leading to the winning of a spiritual gold medal. Rather the basis for success is a surrendering, a clearing the way to enable the Grace of God, the still small voice, to speak clearly to us. It is not a technique which transforms us it is a gift. The Christian way claims to be superior, I personally believe that it is so having experienced something of both, but the proof is purely experimental. My only suggestion are these, the Church should make more widely available the treasures of mystic spirituality she possesses and people from a Christian background should not be quite so eager to throw out the baptised baby with the admittedly grubby bathwater.

End of Part One

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Desire, the powerful enemy of the soul

Reflection on The Letter of James 1:13-16

¹³No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 
¹⁴But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 
¹⁵then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. 
¹⁶Do not be deceived, my beloved.

There is a popular school of thought which suggests that the major world religions are basically moral codes, guides about how you should live your life, with supernatural bits more or less artificially tagged on in order to reinforce the point. Certainly history can show us examples of rulers of states or heads of families who, irreligious themselves, encourage religion in lesser mortals as a way to ensure their obedience and compliance with the rules. No doubt too there are many practitioners of religion, including religious leaders, who embrace their faith first and foremost out of a love of order, hierarchy, obedience. I think these all miss the point.

Virtue and morality are not burdens that we take upon ourselves to please a demanding and vengeful God. Vice and immorality are burdens that we shed in order to travel more easily towards a realm of perfect love and pure light. The desire for self satisfaction through possessing for oneself material objects or intense sensual experiences or other persons produce more fetters for our bodies and souls than any number of self sacrificing or self denying acts. Jealous anger, frustrated desire, contemptuous disregard for the needs of others these are the things that make of our days a torment and of our desires a prison. It is only when we leave them to one side that we can truly begin to experience a sense of freedom.

Religion, in the Christian sense, is primarily about a relationship of self giving love and the more freely and fully we can give it then the more fully, and fulfillingly, can we receive it. Each desire for selfish goods is narrow and circular, beginning and ending with ourselves, and so limits our potential to receive what is wide. It is not by taking on a moral code that we can come to know God, it is by knowing God that we can take on a moral code which aids us to know Him better and love Him more, a love primarily expressed through serving and loving our neighbours whom He also loves with a perfect love.

The mystical Theologia Germanica has this interesting passage  

If there were no self-will, there would be no proprietorship. There is no proprietorship in heaven; and this is why contentment, peace, and blessedness are there. If anyone in heaven were so bold as to call anything his own, he would immediately be cast out into hell, and become an evil spirit. But in hell everyone will have self-will, and therefore in hell is every kind of wretchedness and misery. And so it is also on earth. But if anyone in hell could rid himself of his self-will and call nothing his own, he would pass out of hell into heaven. And if a man, while here on earth, could be entirely rid of self-will and proprietorship, and stand up free and at liberty in the true light of God, and continue therein, he would be sure to inherit the kingdom of heaven. For he who has anything, or who desires to have anything of his own, is a slave; and he who has nothing of his own, nor desires to have anything, is free and at liberty, and is in bondage to no man.

This, I think, clearly makes the point that the primary cause of our spiritual sufferings is not that an unjust God forbids us to be gluttons or serial adulterers or possessors of unjustly acquired wealth. The primary cause is that we desire to possess when happiness, in truth, consists of letting go. This is the clear example that Jesus sets us, as laid out in Philippians 2 by St Paul-

 ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 
⁷ but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, 
⁸   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross. 

The image of God the Son leaving behind the glory of heaven to become not only a human but a human born into poverty is a sign that we too need to leave all to obtain all. A similar image is also, perhaps, contained in the story of  Prince Siddhartha leaving his palace and kingdom in order, eventually, to become the Buddha. The one desire that brings us happiness is the desire to love perfectly and to be perfectly loved. All other desires are lesser and will lead us not to lesser happinesses but to greater unhappinesses.



Note. The title of this piece is from a line spoken by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 3:43 "Know Him therefore who is above reason; and let his peace give thee peace. Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul."
All scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version.