The Contemplative Cottage

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” Matthew 6:25-29

At some point in my past, I learned a strange lesson:  if I worry, I can prevent something bad from happening.

Worry keeps me focused on what could happen so that I am prepared, so that I’ve thought through and scripted every eventuality.

But life just doesn’t work that way.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, all the contingency plans are unnecessary, and the 1% of the time a prediction comes true, the moment itself provides many more surprising and often grace-full resources I could never have anticipated.

A friend of mine once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.”   Worrying doesn’t make my life any safer or happier, yet I have kept at it, convinced it will.

And I am convinced, more and more, that worry and joy don’t play well together.

Joy lives in the moment, in the sudden smile, the laugh, a loving touch, the sung harmony, the quiet evening, the sparkly snow.  Relationships thrive in the present, watered and nurtured by the unfettered and unexpected joy of simply being together.

One cannot plan or force joy, only be attentive when it happens.  When I am lost in future plans, it’s hard to see what’s right in front of me.

I’ve been told a few times that life begins at 40.  I’m coming to understand this better.  As I get older, I’m less willing to waste precious time on behaviors or patterns which don’t make sense.  As I leave my thirties, I’d like to leave worry behind.

Silent All These Years by Susan Forshey

The irony of my life-long interest in prayer is my constant wrestling with prayerlessness.

At times it has been simply the result of not making time or taking time–which really means just being focused elsewhere without bringing the “elsewhere” into prayer.

Other times it has been due to the loss of a name for God, feeling that the three-letter word was too small, too human, too burdened by centuries of baggage.  Prayer at these times began will an abyss of absence, where God’s name should be, which I couldn’t cross, so I didn’t pray.

For the longest time, prayer has been weighed down by a reaction against personal petitionary privilege–why should I pour out to God my fears and desires for such and such, when three billion people have trouble finding food and clean water?  Why ask for healing when others ask and are not healed? What then do I do with scripture which encourages me to bring my whole self and requests to God?

And then the harder times when prayer has simply not made sense, beyond a sort of self-therapy, because it suggests that there is a loving Someone who is not only listening, but who also cares to listen and act in response.

This past summer, I realized that these reasons not to pray would never go away, and the only way through the difficulty was either to decide that prayer was unimportant or to live as if…live as if prayer and life are better when integrated, as if the abyss of who God is can be crossed by prayer, as if God does care about my fears and hopes (and also the other six billion people on the planet, and all life forms everywhere), and as if there is a God, and not only one who listens with love, but can act and does act through my prayer in daily life.

In trying to live as if, I have realized how theology-laden prayer is.  Practices of prayer bear an internal theology, answering certain questions–who God is, how God acts, how prayer works, why pray in the first place.  Living at the intersection of  worldviews and theologies in contemporary theological education, I am seeing how prayer practices cannot function divorced from the theological worldviews which nurture them, and may not be able to be practiced at all if their practice-specific worldview is lost.  In the Christian tradition, this is not a new insight by any means.  The early theologians talked about lex orandi, lex credendi, a Latin phrase meaning as you pray, so you believe.  It can also mean the reverse: as you believe, so you pray (or don’t pray).

So I now am asking these questions:  In what theological worldview did my prayer practices once function?  How has my worldview changed and how have these changes affected my prayer practice? What images of God and humanity (and their relationship) affirms prayer? How can practices of prayer function (and be nurtured) in academic theological education, at the intersection of multiple worldviews and theologies?

Sun Leaf

The image of perfection and the perfect life captivates:  a vision of beauty, a compelling illusion, promising wonders in return for abandoning and disowning the self.

Rather than running toward an illusory perfection,  practicing maturity means standing faithful to the wonderful-hard-painful-amazing-challenging-puzzling life that is only being lived by one person in 6 billion. It helps me learn from mistakes, and move on, not live in instant replay over and over.

Perfectionism shames and lives fearfully.

Maturity loves and lives generously.

Ripples

As I walked yesterday, thoughts about my prospectus swirled in my mind, as they have for months.  Fifteen pages seems so small compared to papers and projects I have previously written.  It also seems a tiny number in comparison to the stack of pages that will ultimately comprise my dissertation.  I have been learning from these chaotic thoughts and fears the difference between simply writing to fulfill course expectations and writing that flows from a much deeper place: from what compels me, from what wakes me up at night and begs to be expressed–not for myself alone, or for a grade.

As I wrestle with writing, a phrase keeps coming to mind: commit to your life.  There is no other life than the one I am living right now, so one option is to write. Now.  Not when I no longer feel panic. Not when I have a cottage by a lake or peaceful mountain view.  Not when I have memorized everything about my topic. Nothing will magically make expressing ideas from my visual brain into words any less difficult or writing from my passion (from the Latin passio, suffering) any less painful.  Certainly, there is also joy, but not all the time. The ideal time, setting, mood or  Susan will not suddenly appear.

If I wait, I will never write.

Or I could choose not to write. A perfectly fine choice.

But I can’t imagine that.  Oh, I can vow I’m done with it all, but something keeps bringing me back to the page.  Something keeps nudging me to commit to my life,  “put it in writing,” risk making some ripples, and trust that something good and beautiful can come of it.

Vermont Autumn by Susan Forshey

“How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”

Last December,  I began this blog as an exploration of contemplative living, but over time, writing entries fell by the wayside. Humbly, I realized I did not have a clear understanding of what I meant by the contemplative life, nor what living it entailed.  My interest in contemplative spirituality is decades old and my fact-based knowledge was just enough to get me into trouble!

This summer I spent time pondering what daily ingredients make up a contemplative life.  Rather than formulas, techniques, or check-lists of practices (meditate for 15 minutes, read scripture, lectio divina, etc.), vivid and emotion-filled images came to mind: relationships of intimacy; committed community; a life marked by a spacious daily rhythm;  life partnership; restful sleep; meals that are a celebration of life, rather than a means of injury to my body or the bodies of other creatures; times of silence; work in balance with the rest of life; noticing beauty; attention to the earth; meaningful conversation; and lots of grace.  I found Maria Lichtmann’s understanding of  contemplative living helpful: a “non-consumptive” way of life.  Rather than driven by an insatiable appetite to consume life experiences and people, contemplation is a  patient and loving attention to whatever and whoever is in the present moment.

For me, attending to the present moment often takes courage.  I shy away anxiously, procrastinate, and distract myself through the vast array of technological or media options.  Practiced daily, this shying away can become a habit.  Living is full of small practices, day in and day out, like piano scales.  These embodied life scales are challenging in the beginning and then become more and more effortless, more habitual.   Not all scales are life-giving.  As I enter the next decade, I am asking : what small practices, what scales, will form in me the life I desire to look back on at 70?  What practices will craft a life of intimacy, courage, follow-through, rhythm, attentiveness, love, and grace?  As I live this day, how am I living my life?

Practice for today:   Attend deeply to the task that is causing anxiety.  Simone Weil writes that sustained attention to a difficult geometry problem also cultivates the practice of attention necessary for both prayer and relationship.  As I consider my prospectus, attending to its completion is a life-giving practice that will spill into other areas of my life.

Shimmer by Susan Forshey

Lord, dear lover of my heart,
I see you in the dance of Light
The play of leaves
The healing lines of heart sacrifice
Be to me my all
Be to me my hope
In this called distance
Hold me for your life alone
Proclaim your favor
Nothing can I offer but the fears, the shadows,
The spaces aching.
Be to me the morning silence
Be to me the hugging comfort
Of the sliding sun.
And in these dark-lit days,
My path lost to mortal sight,
Mother my late-night tears
Quench my sleepy thirst.
Love me to your side,
Redemption crowned,
Song-full–my cup, laughter-brimmed–
A dancing child before you.