wrap-up

            Here we are at the end of 12 weeks of exploring meditation and contemplation. Time to look back at what you wrote in Lesson 3 in answer to the question: “Why have you decided to learn to meditate?” At that point, you were told to let go of those goals because meditation and contemplation are about being and not achieving. While we acknowledged that many things are gained through these practices, we also noted that those gains don’t come to us because we practise - they come to us through our practice by grace alone. Our practice makes room for God’s grace, but every good and perfect gift that we have received as a result of our practice is from above (James 1:17).[1]

            In looking at the effects of your meditation/contemplation practice over these 12 weeks, consider these questions:

(1)        How many of my original goals have been fully or partially realized?

(2)        How has my practice changed my goals, if at all?

(3)        What else in my life has changed for the better as a result of my practice?

(4)        What has become more challenging in my life as a direct result of my practice?

(5)        It is worth it to me to continue down this path?           

            Bear in mind, as you answer these questions, that you are only 12 weeks down the road. This is a relatively short time. Some people at this point report amazing gains, but many discover that they’re really just beginning to notice some change. However, follow-up studies of meditation practice in chronic pain patients and patients referred for stress and stress-related issues demonstrate that those who continue a daily practice continue to make gains in physical well-being at six months, 12 months, one year, two years, and three years. Contemplatives, while noting that the restructuring of consciousness eventually reaches a point of completion, further note that spiritual growth is unlimited and continues through to the end of one’s life.

            So, remember the virtue of patience? If your gains at this point are small, are they at least important and encouraging to you? Encouraging enough to continue to invest the time and effort? Asked another way, is the pursuit of intimacy with God worth your while? Worth all the effort, and the wrestling with schedules to make time, and weathering the difficulties of the restructuring of consciousness and the dark nights that God sometimes allows, and navigating the difficulties of there being little to no guidance on this journey within the church? Jesus, speaking of the costs of discipleship in general, said this (Luke 14):

28  “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?
29  For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him,
30  saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
31  “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32  If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.

So it’s time to count the cost and choose whether or not to continue down the road of a contemplative life.

            Should you choose to continue, what do you do about guidance along the way? Simply trust that if you need it, God will guide you to a person or a book or some other resource that will help. Or He may ask you to wrestle with your question or problem alone with Him. This is one of those situations where the promise of James 1:5 becomes so important: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

            It has been a pleasure to take you on the beginning of this journey. I leave you now at a crossroads. God bless you as you choose your life’s direction.

exercises

Days 84 to …

Choose whether or not to continue. If you decide to continue, then choose your contemplative practice and practise it. James Finley, in his book The Contemplative Heart,[2] says it this way:

                A contemplative practice is any act, habitually entered into with your whole heart, as a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment. Your practice might be some form of meditation, such as sitting motionless in silence, attentive and awake to the abyss-like nature of each breath. Your practice might be simple, heartfelt prayer, slowly reading the scriptures, gardening, baking bread, writing or reading poetry, drawing or painting, or perhaps running or taking long, slow walks to no place in particular. Your practice may be to be alone, really alone, without any addictive props and diversions. Or your practice may be that of being with that person in whose presence you are called to a deeper place. The critical factor is not so much what the practice is in its externals as the extent to which the practice incarnates an utterly sincere stance of awakening and surrendering to the Godly nature of the present moment.

                At any given time we are likely to have not a single practice but rather a constellation of practices, often with one of them as our primary practice. Others may surround it, each carrying its own special place in our life. Thus, we might have as our primary practice some form of meditation while also experiencing the importance of spiritual reading, liturgical prayer, and preparing meals with a mindful, reverential stance of awareness of the eucharistic nature of every meal. As the months and years go by the constellation changes. New practices emerge. Practices that have been present for years fall out of the picture. And the ones that stay on undergo a series of subtle but far-reaching transformations.

                There is an oblique and diffused quality to contemplative practices as I am speaking of them here. We may, in fact, engage in these activities for quite some time without consciously thinking of them as contemplative practices. But upon reflection we are able to see how these simple acts serve to ground us in a simple, child-like awareness of that which is truly real and precious in the life we are living. We discover by experience that if we are faithful to our contemplative practices our practices faithfully lead us in the direction of a more daily, abiding awareness of the divinity of the life we are living.

                If we are not careful, however, the demands of each day’s events easily drown out the unassuming importance of fidelity to those simple acts that intimately awaken us to the ultimate meaning and value of those same daily events. Remaining faithful to our contemplative practices calls for the integrity of remaining faithful to a commitment that nobody sees; it consists of giving ourselves over with all our heart to simple acts which, on the surface, seem to be but the incidental passage of time. But if we are faithful to this unassuming path of fidelity to our daily contemplative practices, the subtle awareness of the depths to which they grant access begins to permeate the very texture of our daily experience of living. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, fidelity to our contemplative practices evolves into an habitual awareness that does not miss the surprise appearance of God showing up in something as immediate and simple as the sunlight that suddenly fills a room on a cloudy day.

                Finding your contemplative practice is then an event that occurs in each and every granting of contemplative experience in which the divinity of the present moment is realized. Flowing out from each finding is the possibility of then learning to practice your contemplative practice by learning to “hang out in the neighborhood” where the granting of spontaneous contemplative experience of the moment occurred.

In other words, in addition to your half hour of formal practice, whatever that might be - meditation, lectio divina, prayer of examen, contemplation - do a little more of whatever it is that touches you in a way that says to you “There is way more here than meets the eye”. The runner Richard Bannister said that when he ran he felt God’s pleasure. So he ran a lot, and he ran competitively. I connect deeply with God through reading the writings of saints who have traveled the spiritual path ahead of me. I therefore make a point of taking time to read. For some, the stars fill them with awe and wonder. Those people are encouraged to see to it that they make some time to sit out on starry nights.

            So now it’s time, if you choose to continue down this road, to find your way, the way or ways in which God chooses to communicate His heart with you and you with Him. All that this requires is for you to lay aside your preconceived ideas about how a walk with God should look and to follow your heart. Your heart is where God is. It is the home and temple of God and the seat of God’s kingdom.[3] So it knows your way with Him. While the contemplative life is a journey of discovering intimacy with God, it is, at the same time, a journey of discovering your own heart since those two journeys are one and the same. To find your true heart is to find God, and to find God is to find your true heart. So trust your heart, and follow the call every contemplative hears and longs to realize - “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18b-19).