the reach

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[the setting is El Convent del Carme de Toledo (Spain), summer 1578.]



waking

We were novices together,
ordained and sent forth shoulder to shoulder.
For the new voyage, we named ourselves;
I chose to be known by the Cross.
So many years and discalced miles since.
So many celebrations and trials since.
When last I saw open skies and clear light of day,
our foundations increased with sisters and brothers.
We did not mitigate.
We lived the apostolate.

Yet this moment as I wake,
my back against the stone floor
of a cell barely longer than I am tall- even me,
the humble Fray Juan from Fontiveros.
Somehow my refusal to compromise
was a threat to the unreforming religious.
Somehow they’re afraid enough to torture
and incarcerate.
Walls and shackles surround me,
in these dim and foul confines.
Even though it is night,
I know the way and will yet find it.


the reaching

I last knew freedom a year ago,
before these times of degradation and crumbs.
But faith says there are good reports afar,
beyond this fortified tower.
These barriers must be penetrable somewhere, loosened somehow.
The small breach giving light to my psalm book says so,
with the lamplit battlement I see across the hall which also says to me:
Keep picking at the lock, oh so silently;
there is an outside, there is a way.
Love, I am learning, far exceeds forsakenness;
Seek and expect to find, no matter the dense darkness.
Even though it is night,
I know the way and will yet find it.


substance

From this cell, I can remember
teaching the others of belief in the unseen.
And now the teaching must be turned onto me;
the reaching must persevere, with nothing in sight.
In the nothing of damp and crepuscular constriction,
the substance of aspiration and vocation
must be kept to heart,
as though solid.

Sometimes the guard leaves an oil lamp.
He knows, through the taunting and torturing,
that I can absolve and bless, just as I did in Ávila.
Today there is no light, save for what reaches in
through cracked walls and the grate.
But the soul is enkindled from within,
human flesh as this stone keep,
ignited by the Holy Spirit uncontained,
secretly illuminating,
as canticles formulate
for me to remember and write
in a future unseen.
Even though it is night,
I know the way and will yet find it.


night of the soul

The lashes and bread scraps now past,
they returned me to this cell,
and full darkness returns.
Like Moses, I ask how long shall I bear with this evil assembly?
Like David, I ask how long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart,
and how long shall my enemies be exalted over me?
It is undetermined and indefinite;
they cowardly want me to die in here,
without committing the deed themselves.
They don’t want a friar’s blood on their hands,
they don’t see their injustice;
they know not what they do.

But in this darkest night,
there remain embers hidden
yet still bright
deep within.
Saints and angels reach to me in this Castilian cell,
as I reach and imagine and plot,
prying quietly at the iron lock,
on strength of hope,
climbing Mount Carmel.
More walls and a river await below this putrid tower;
but I will embrace them when I can reach them.
Oh, to reach the outside air, the full daylight,
and sanctuary again to write!
Even though it is night,
I know the way and will yet find it.




_____________________________________________
15 August 1578 is the date San Juan de la Cruz
managed to escape from his captors.

for a future

“Because my heart was enkindled, my reins also were changed.”

~ Psalm 73:21


tenuous to temerity

There is a strange selectivity to perceiving the interminable, and it’s likely our use of the former to identify the latter. Indeed, the desire to preserve what is cherished seems eclipsed by the persistence of the odious. Or so it appears. While time is mercilessly indiscriminate, matters as solid to us as tastes, affections, and value are not. Reckoning with what really looks like a disparity demands detached perspective. But mortals like me are not formed that way, and I’m increasingly reminded of this. I want the good things to permanently prosper, and I want the bad things to quickly dissolve. As with a misaligned game of exquisite corpse, the components cannot be coaxed into lining up as they should. Apparently, it is an indicator of maturity to cease expecting the puzzle-like sections to smoothly dovetail. Yet still, despite decades of disappointment and that supposed sense of better judgment, I continue to anticipate.

And thus I wake very early every morning, energetically taking on complex and long workdays. Those dusky hours before the slippery slope of servitude and sold time are guarded for journal writing and reflective reading. My everyday habit of many years in an old building has been to begin filling the bath immediately after waking, brew coffee and round up necessary clothing- all at once. With my coffee cup on the bath ledge, I ready myself to be a clean slate for another day. Perhaps it bespeaks a penchant for punishment, but I tend to listen to the radio, while readying in the bath with the day’s first cup of coffee. Sometimes it’s news- just enough; sometimes classical music. I try to find some inspiration via preachy broadcast programs, almost all of which are banally sophomoric. Though admittedly there are some worthy nuggets- any of which will outdo a typical staff meeting- I’ll often reflexively turn off the radio. In recent months, as I quickly shut down whatever has invaded the peacefulness of the morning, my thoughts instantly turn to prayers for a future. Through the soft salt-lamp light and bath vapor, I look from the silenced radio to the clothing stand. How I wish for a future. Prayers are staked on faith, on my persevering anticipation and hope for a future that exceeds past and present. Like the news and seasons, trendy words, employment, and running water, my time is temporal and tenuous. I need to know I’m heading in the right direction, that goodness really is in store.


gaze fixed, yet unknowing

Diligence, industriousness, and carefulness are all pointed toward the future. By this, I mean a good future; an arrival upon shores of stability, better employment, and some form of compensation for all I’ve been enduring all these years. I believe many starve for something like this, and work very hard toward such goals. Though in a less material sense, belief in a good future is essentially faith. Spiritually speaking, a good future refers to union with God, clearly beyond and above the routine- yet through it. Speaking as a worker and a Christian, my contention is that a good future is both goal and means. Ideals are rarely attained. For me, however, the choice is to risk the full commitment of applied life in a forward direction- reaching forth for the prize. Doing so does mean believing in the effort as much as believing in the goal. That’s an enormous amount of full-tilt striving.

Paradoxically, with forces fixed upon skills and sustenance, I am intensely enjoined to live in a spirit of detachment. It is a paradox among the many that oscillate between momentary and eternity. We invest that which is ephemeral and visible toward what will be abiding and yet unseen. Regardless of level of material wealth, there are intentions to invest- or to squander. I like to emphasize civility toward neighbors whenever possible; you never know who may be pushing your car out of a snow drift. Uphold a sense of decency, amidst prevailing meanness.

The path of detachment and depletion is a very steep, narrow, and rugged climb. This was experientially known to San Juan de la Cruz, whose Ascent of Mount Carmel meant unfettered focus on the Divine- even as the voyage leads into densest, darkest tunnels.

“In this detachment, the spiritual soul finds its quiet and repose; for since it covets nothing, nothing wearies it when it is lifted up, and nothing oppresses it when it is cast down, because it is in the center of its humility; but when it covets anything, at that very moment it becomes wearied and tormented.”
(The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 1, ch.13)

He added, in Book 2, that “the less the soul works with its own ability, the more securely it journeys, because it journeys in faith.” To say the least, this is an interesting mindset with which to pursue a career; the dozens of approaches I’ve tried have not caught the proverbial brass ring. San Juan’s night of sense teaches simultaneous passivity and forward motion. He urges his readers to hold fast to the practice and pursuit of agapé, while releasing one’s grasp of “objects of understanding.” Threaded within this wisdom is an instruction to hold fast to trust, while purging away self-aggrandizing notions. Even as desolation extends to the horizon, believe in the journey’s purpose, dare to visualize resolve, and take stock in the solidity of the interior road. During drives on unlit highways at night, as well as through snowstorms with whiteout conditions, foregrounds and distances are undifferentiated. These conditions force me to keep very close watch at what is immediately in front. Sometimes the sole points of steering reference I’ve got are hints of a guard rail and bits of painted lines. Thirsting to advance means attention to the immediate. Such scenarios are parables of prayers for a future, looking ahead without losing what is proximate, leaving past to historic citation.

Writing with such frequency about patience and waiting continues to be true to the moment, providing plenty of documentation for future retrospective. That, itself, is a bold statement of faith. Though I practice patience with individuals, groups, and my diverse work procedures, I’m terribly impatient for better days. Life is very short, none of us get younger, and I intensely dislike time-wasting, treadmill-running, and misapplied talent. I’ve endured too much of that. We are designed to face forward and to move ahead. Treading water spends too much valuable physical and mental energies. Striving and waiting make for a painful grind.

There have been increasing reasons for me to revisit these persistent and convicting thoughts. Struggles that unfortunately lend to self-centeredness have been recently punctuated by the passing-away of three friends whom I knew from three different spheres of my life. Two were close colleagues; I gave the eulogy for a co-worker and friend of more than a decade. All three were wonderful, brilliant, and cultivated. In their collective wake, people like me can only wave from the shore, keeping memories to talk about and write down. Speaking for myself, I am very much in the land of the living. As long as I continue, there is a future. My years have been very much centered around readying for the future. Academic life is steeped in the concept of preparation. The amassing of knowledge, along with being equipped to compete, and readiness to provide. Always a next thing, looking to a future that exceeds the present. Built into this are strenuous self-improvement efforts. Good outcomes would justify what I’ve survived; it’s a motivating factor.

Recently returned from some tiring holiday travels, I dutifully went back to work. There’s nothing like a hiatus to accentuate all that glaringly needs to be improved- along with appreciated. The longer the absence, the more clearly this is evident. My workspaces have but one window through which I can occasionally glimpse the outside world. When I pass through the hallway with the window, I glance down to the intersection below, and up to the skies above nearby rooftops. Looking at scurrying pedestrians, I’m reminded that a great many people struggle. My earnings are less than my state’s per capita median, and I’ve just been hit hard by a rent increase in a woefully gentrified city. But there are surely the less-fortunate. Looking from the window provides some reminders. I also picture those passed on, that I used to regularly meet along the streets beneath the window.

I go to this same window during my occasional breaks. The glances have time to become gazes, and then- quite naturally- prayers. For a future. For the health of loved ones. For better days of better work, better conditions, and better housing. For fulfillment. For justification of all this hard work and forbearance, balancing out the chain of substandard situations. Indeed, there is an element of justice in my hopes. Striving and ambition are paralleled with the passive paring-down of San Juan’s night of the soul. Liminal space isn’t much of a place for residency, and certainly not for comfort. Similar to being a tenant-at-will, studying with library books, and provisional employment, I can say I have nothing while also everything. By writing I may be no-one as much as someone. By reading I may be depleted while also filled. Still, true to the ephemeral, tomorrow morning’s prayers will rise through the steam and the grainy salt-lamp light. Within the darkening night, embers of intention burn for a good future.

l'oraison

“Blessedness is no superficial joy or indolent repose,
but the opening vision of the Divine glory, the growing
insight into the mysteries of the fulfillment
of the Divine counsels.”

~ Origen, On First Principles ii:10.


paths and definitions

In this recent narrative exploration of the interior way, I’ve acknowledged the contemplative path as the avenue in my midst that is not barricaded from my reach. The first essay addresses the sustenance of the spirit, beginning with the contemplative path, as taught and lived by monastic communities. The second essay celebrates reading and the study of the written word as inspiring strength. Now we come to the most essential of ingredients...

Setting words to subjects as elusive and dauntingly personal as contemplation and prayer has challenged thinkers and practitioners through untold centuries. In my own ways, I suppose I have also been contributing to the ocean of words. As words go, I’ve long appreciated the French expression l’oraison, which covers the essential ground for those responding with their lives to a spiritual vocation. The Latin root, oratio, meaning “prayer,” does not suffice to define what l’oraison encompasses. In the simplest terms, this means a life-perspective that is immersed in reverent conscientiousness.

The Carmelite tradition, often looking to its own historic contemplatives St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, frequently uses the term l’oraison. Soeur Marie-Laetitia refers to the personal call to live with one’s whole heart, “giving way to the Presence of the One who lives and prays within you.” To speak of mystery in what might appear to be arcane terms is surely not the intention; monastic teachers tend toward an assuring, plain-spoken style. In her book, Découvrir l’Oraison, Sr. Marie-Laetitia uses terms such as vivre pleinement, vraiment, intensément (living fully, truly, intensely), and that (translated) “too often we are living at the superficial surface of our being,” and “contemplation is an attentiveness to the Spirit, which is a matter of willingness and determination.” That seems pedestrian enough. But then she says contemplative life is “essentially situated in the domain of the unseen... in the face of the incomprehensible, we want to understand.” Contemplation is “not an intellectual work,” wrote another contemporary Carmelite, Pierre-Marie Salingardes; in the same essay he referred to l’orasion as a “schooling of affection and compassion.”

As every discipline has a practice, the applied life of l’oraison begins and lives in the current of silent reflection. In uninterrupted quiet times, thoughts can be reigned in, and the mind cleared. Being a clean (or clean enough) slate, it becomes possible to listen beneath and within the “surface” referred to by Sr. Marie-Laetitia. Quakers describe this regathering as “centering down.” Contemplation is more than something one “does” when an occasion arises. An anonymous monastic once wrote, “we make the time to be there for God.” In that recollective quiet, a soul can “enter” the interior environment of l’oraison. We express our longings and ask, perhaps, for greater understanding, or a more forgiving attitude. Another aspect is to slowly absorb a few words- or a text- and taste its meaning. The spirit of this practice is really that of dialogue. Not a desolate experience, but one of union.


personal

My own oraison comprises journal writing- even if the entries are fragments of sentences. The journal provides a place, as well, for reflections about readings. Lengths of time for quiet meditations vary with my scattered work schedule- but I manage to devote parts of early-mornings and lunch hours to contemplate and commune. This is merely a portion within the general context of l’oraison and journeying through life. Interior prayer is astonishingly accessible. Contemplation is transcendent of place, and does not require special words or intermediaries. It is as direct and proximate as a person’s own thoughts. Thinking and writing curve and dovetail easily into intentions and gratitude. The contemplative spirit does not separate prayer as an “activity” differentiated from ordinary thought processes. Prayer is an appeal, as much as a recognition (of things, of my limitations, of God’s magnitude). It isn’t even really an isolated “action,” as though I were to say, “at 2:30, I am going make sure to breathe, so that I’ll have a dose of oxygen.” All means of inspiration are integrated. After some time, distance, and experience, contemplation becomes quite involuntary and extemporaneous.

Once embarked upon the interior way, the commitment must be whole-hearted. Without a sustained, all-in attitude, contemplation too easily becomes extraneous and stagnant, instead of being as life-giving as its definition. It would be like cutting off the water supply from its wellspring. As the gospel passage declares, we would be unfit for the realm of the Divine if we continue looking backwards while setting our shoulders to plow forward. Simplest ways seem to demand the most discipline. Being committed to contemplation is much like my commitment to learning. The latter requires study, as faith requires the lifeline of prayer. Despite much of the cultural formalism that tends to moor prayer down, it’s really not a “religious” matter. The less fettered, the better, and the more dynamic. Having a sense of direction is far more consequential. Religiosity may be viewed as a scaffold, but it is not the building- neither are formulae. All if this is transcended by longing and perseverance. But in the context of l’oraison, this is not a one-way communication. Reaching up for a rope turns out to be the rope lowered within reach. A person’s seeking is not possible without help. Life in the Spirit invites a direct rapport with the forces of creation. In God: Creator, Word, and Spirit of New Life- the Logos is Christ who speaks directly to the human condition, and is the compelling Mentor to all that would be disciples. The frisson of taking up the yoke and beginning the pursuit invariably leads through wilderness temptations of unknown depths and durations. Along the trial roads are places of respite and validation. But it’s all very unpredictable, and thus l’oraison throughout these paces becomes even more vital. We cannot perceive vastness from inside hiding places.


experience and the invisible

Describing the boundless with the limitations of written language has challenged practitioners since the advent of narrative writing. But we do continue, somehow undaunted, knowing we are not alone. The important thing is to know the topic by first-hand experience. Dirt roads, sidewalks, and expressways dissolve into mystery, considering the Searcher of hearts. “Contemplation is essentially situated in the domain of the invisible,” wrote Sr. Marie-Laetitia, adding “l’oraison is the ground beyond our senses, and we more easily sense that which we can see. We face the incomprehensible, and we desire to understand.” Paradoxically, the unknowing can be less discouraging than the seen, and the absence of answers must not derail the prayers. Contemplation is surely not entirely of the individual’s will. We experience, as the Carmelite sister observed, “the Presence of the One living in us and praying in us.” For my very humble part, I’ve come to notice more recently, alongside how reflexively I’ll take notes while reading, how I also need no provocation to pray. Of course, in times of duress, prayer is at the front of my thoughts. It’s the first thing in my consciousness when I wake, bringing to mind the Mosaic meditate upon these words at home, on the road, wearing them in your thinking and doing.

Abstract as it may sound, the going forth into spiritual realms is much more solid than it sounds. All those petitioning words and emotions go somewhere. That is indeed blind faith, and a surrendering of holding on to the known and seen as the sum of all that is. It is a major stride to ascent to the acceptance that what we see is not all that is. In the context of contemplation, it means a loosened grip, giving over the struggles and even what appear to be their solutions. A wise friend made the daring suggestion of “offering one’s oppression” as a gift to God. This brings to mind the words of Marthe Robin, foundress of the Foyers de Charité, who was known to say, “Your life will be worth the sum of your prayer [ton oraison].”


the visible and the active

Lived experience may blend into contemplative reflection, turning toward the invisible. Conversely, the formless unseen may prompt the visibly tangible. The written word represents this, as we compose our insights and observations. From the long history of autobiographical writing is St. Augustine’s Confessions, written at the end of the 4th century. He even wrote about the action of writing poetry, within which he observed: “These things I then knew not, nor did I mark them; and they on every side beat about mine eyes, yet I did not see them.” Confessions is a large and kaleidoscopic work, by a complex and brilliant author. His philosophical analysis of life manifests as a work of prayer and thanksgiving.

Some sixteen-hundred twenty years after St. Augustine’s words, I inadvertently overheard an extraordinary conversation. I was in a crowded bookstore in Boston, and from the next aisle came the voice of an older man teaching a younger man to read. They were in the Judaica aisle; the younger man was learning to pronounce the words of the Kaddish prayer in Hebrew. The prayer is one of remembrance and praise, and it is also said when remembering the departed. Kaddish (which means holiness) is the ancient basis for the Lord’s Prayer taught to the disciples in the gospel. Since these two men were not speaking in hushed tones, it was easy to listen from where I was. Evidently, they had been complete strangers to each other. The younger man introduced himself as a military veteran to the older man, and called himself “damaged goods,” and that he was mourning someone who had been close to him. The older man helped the young veteran pronounce some more words. They repeated each other. By this time, I could see them both- the elder finally handing the book to the younger, wishing him “health and healing.” This was the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed in a shop. Such lived experiences are part of l’oraison.

As the interior way is unconfined, contemplation physically manifests in the exterior. L’oraison is not removed from practical living; indeed, the one needs the other. In his book, Contemplation in a World of Action, Thomas Merton wrote, “the contemplative experience is in touch with what is most basic in human existence.” We become able to “join things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them.” From my vantage point, still very much in the weeds of the temporal, there remains the effort to direct myself to encouragement and being creative. Along the way, I’m able to encourage others toward creativity and inspiration. While there are hardly any successes to claim, and so many unfulfilled projects, perhaps in the context of contemplation these are not things to dwell upon. Perhaps the greater strides are in the unseen and hopeful motions exemplified as l’oraison. In his journal, Struggle and Contemplation, Brother Roger of Taizé remarked about the day he submitted his manuscript for his book Festival to be published. “Have I managed to say what I intended? No. Then why write? Because a boundary always remains, beyond which we are left alone with ourselves, whether we be writing or speaking.” A truly hopeful motion, whether visible or not, is what can transcend that boundary.




* Note: The black & white images in this essay were made and printed by me, when I was 19 years old.