savour

“Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world,
answering that of God in every one;
whereby in them ye may be a blessing,
and make the witness of God in them to bless you;
then to the Lord God you shall be a sweet savour,
and a blessing.”

~ George Fox, letter from Launceston Gaol, 1656.

In my previous essay, I wrote about the assuring properties of a “split-second.” By this, I refer to spontaneous, uncontrived personal resuscitative moments that have reassuring properties. A distant memory returned to me from childhood, of a hockey coach’s quirky two-syllable caring gestures. Then I found that in the face of daily life increasingly hinging on the tentative, on all fronts, I’d occasionally whisper to myself, “just for now.” A reinforcing breath, held to memory, serves as a hurricane’s eye at the center of turmoil. I’ve even taken to reminding myself not to embellish any impressions of duress as endless and inescapable. Sufficient unto the day are the ends of my shoes.

As a recollective moment serves as a rock perch in swirling river rapids, a retreat is an island amidst swarms of indistinguishable months of hard labor. Earning the time and making the plans, I carved out a seven-day sojourn on Beacon Hill. As is customary, the week prior to my time off was replete with the usual barrage of ineptitude and overtime- but I got through my obligations. Cathartically reclining in my train seat, stretching out and enjoying a rolling view of the Saco River, I made note of the railroad journey as a resuscitative moment. While looking forward to my destination, I found the way there pronouncedly reassuring. I heard myself say, savour this. This thought remained with me, across the snowy salt marshes, through the backlots of Dover and Haverhill, and across the Charles River.

Alighting onto Causeway Street and seeing no frozen precipitation descending, I decided to trundle across the West End and up Beacon Hill. I’m no stranger to this traversal. Brisk paces inclining up to Cambridge Street, followed by measured half-strides up the sharply graded Hill- and this with a backpack and 3 heavy bags, one filled with baked goods I’d made for my kind hosts. “I’ll go home lighter,” I always rationalize to myself. As expected, the huffing and puffing began halfway up Hancock Street. But I said to myself, savour this. And it’s up, and up, and up, pulling all that cargo, amusingly turning at Joy Street. “Are you savouring this?”- I asked myself, still ascending, in a purgative froth. “Sure, why not?”- following my own words and looking up at the pale housepaint sky. In my grateful relief at being away from employment tribulations, everything around me looked comforting. Straining and sweating on a winter day, pulling belongings, gifts, and my typewriter up the steepest neighborhood in Boston, I exhaled “savouring this, savouring this,” with my strides.

Indeed, I wanted to be there, through every part of the journey. Inevitably my upward passage crested at Mount Vernon Street, bending left at Walnut Street, finally experiencing the benefits of favorable gravity, looking right to Beacon Hill Friends House nestled along Chestnut Street. In a neighborhood of posted gaslights, the Friends House has a large lamp on an outward arm, as though extended to greet passers-by. It’s a votive of confidence, held out for pilgrims seeking refuge. Finally, I hoisted all trailing freight up the curving stone steps to the front door at Number Eight. The basis of a retreat is essentially a savouring of what is. The idea is to break the routine, borrow some time, and rekindle alertness to savour what is good. The residence manager and I recognized each other with joyful greetings. He spoke the most perfect words I could have imagined hearing: Welcome Home. I immediately savoured this, proceeding to settle in- not a single one of my dozens upon dozens of well-packed home-baked cookies broken- greeting more residents en route to my usual room.

From the very start of my seven-day sojourn, I savoured a profound awareness of being welcome, and this set the tone throughout. There was a snowstorm immediately after my arrival, prompting me to savour my timing. I found myself waiting outside the Church of the Advent during the heaviest snowfall; the rector was late for the morning office. But the ensuing welcome made the wait worthwhile. I didn’t even mind my drafty room, named after the pioneer Quaker George Fox, at the Friends House; it’s always drafty in there. Why not savour the reminder that this was my 12th sojourn with the community? At the heart of each of these retreats are my studies at the Boston Athenaeum, through which I find words and ideas to savour. I always plan a personal study theme for these extended stays, selecting material from the library’s archival collections. This time, it was what I called Assurance and Divine Guidance. Each of my readings had these ideas in common. An example is from Nathaniel Appleton’s Discourse, published in 1742, in Boston:

“Faith is a Grace that inspires a divine life into the Soul; and the good Man may make a comfortable Subsistence on it, even in the worst of Times. Habakkuk: 2.4. 'The just shall live by his Faith.' ‘Tis by this that he fetches constant Supplies from Heaven... By this he looks up to the Recompence of Reward, reserved in Heaven for him, and is animated and quickened in a Life of Piety, by the glad Assurances of it. And by this he maintains a Life of Communion with his dear Redeemer: and let temporal Things go how they will with him, while he can do this he is easy, he is happy, he is joyful. Thus beholding as in a Glass the Glory of the Lord, he is changed into the same Image, from Glory to Glory. Thus for this Life he has a glorious Provision made for him.”

Alongside lifegiving words I heard and studied, were savoury sights, sounds, and tastes. With the occasion of residency on Beacon Hill, I have round-the-clock possibilities for unfettered walks along mazes of intricate streets, as well as through parks and bustling thoroughfares. Urban creature that I’ve always been, a good, large city is as relaxing as it is inspiring. Merchants use their wares as decorative elements. The supply of photo motifs is endless, and the juxtaposition of sidewalk musicians woven among pedestrians provides contrasts with the quiet residential lanes. Yet another contrast is the interior of a cavernous sanctuary, deep in the city, an island of contemplative quiet with soothing and occasional echoes.

Church of the Advent, Boston.

Perhaps the most obvious connotation for savoury is taste. It is a joy to bring baked treats to my hosts at the House, the Athenaeum, the Advent, and to shopkeepers I know as friends. The motivation is not that of any kind of “exchange,” but simply one of gratitude. For me, it is a gift in itself to see others happy. On these retreats, I am surely recipient of savoury abundance- from House dinners, to high tea at the Athenaeum, to convivial evenings out. One fine midday, I accompanied members of the Athenaeum staff to a memorably lavish lunch at the Somerset Club. On this recent sojourn, amidst the week of aromas and cheers of the Friends House dining room, I was treated to a dinner on the house by a colleague who is also a restaurant manager. The latter, a small bistro on a side street, provides an environment as savoury as the meal. My friend sat me near the latticed front windows, which I found to be ideal for writing. From a perch within a perch, my appreciation extended from the seasonings and substance, to the textures and sounds of the busy- yet calmly intimate space, by the subdued warmth of incandescent light. Even the return walk to the House, through icy air, was something to savour.

Returning to words as enduring reminders, in that usual serendipitous way, mixtures of readings I select in advance turn out to perfectly intertwine. Somehow this always happens, even as my selections span centuries and varieties of authors. Perhaps it’s a result of ingenious library cataloguing. Perhaps it also has to do with a reader being an active factor in joining works of literature together in the moment. Among anticipated connecting themes, I repeatedly noticed my savour observation in much of what I studied. Across eight literary works, by as many different writers, a noticeable amount of glimmers emerged about savouring one’s living faith. Don’t take your heartfelt belief for granted. Appleton observed, “we are the possessors of so inestimable a treasure.” Writing about spiritual confidence, Samuel Worcester (19th C) wrote that our faith is the most precious of treasures. In an anonymous work called Path to Happiness (18th C), the writer describes how, “those principles which are really received into our hearts, have an inseparable effect on the actions and conduct of our lives,” and that we must maintain the “safety of that invaluable treasure within us, our immortal souls.” Richard Lucas (17th C), encouraging his readers to persevere, used the exhortation that we “make our progress into assurance.”

Indeed, the reader does play an active role in thematically joining works of literature together. Study is as much analysis as synthesis. The seekers are those who find. And a string of days filled with intense study produces a momentum of perception and awareness. During my leisurely morning coffees, between the Advent and the Athenaeum, words that celebrate the savoury appeared in no less than the sports pages. My muses, once again, were hockey players; this time in gratitude for the Bruins’ unexpected successes. Their specialty is a game that is made of split seconds. “How lucky we are to be here,” offered Brad Marchand to the Boston Herald, “You want it to last forever, but that’s not how it is.” They look as far as the next game. “I appreciate every moment,” philosophized team captain Zdeno Chara, “It goes by fast. It’s very humbling and I’m very grateful I’ve been able to play for this long in the game I love and enjoy so much.” Of course the ideas in my studies and thoughts stayed with me, as I read the morning recaps! Philosophy and competitive sports are not so far from each other. Savour the good words. Store them where you can find them, in the soul’s archives.

Bruins and Brew, at Café Tatte, Boston.

Just as scholarly learning is an ongoing process, so is the ability to savour. The authors and athletes alike knew to treasure their confidence and their participatory moments. Thomas Merton was one to say that spiritual life is as much struggle as it is contemplation. As vigilance is active, savouring is passive. During my studies in the rare books room, I looked up through the tall windows facing Beacon Street, and wrote in the margin of my notes, “we can never know the stability of our times, places, and loved ones.” Intermissions from the struggle provide time to better appreciate what is meaningful. I do as I am able to afford. By very intentionally savouring a situation or an experience, there’s an ingredient of trying to make time stand still- trying to permanently preserve the moment. But like the hockey player said, that’s not how it is. I know this empirically, as I hold moments in writing and photography, while ferociously pointing toward hopes for better days.

At my little windowside table in the bistro, delicately tasting my dessert, I wrote in my journal: “Savour dares me to sense some contentment, even through so much difficulty and instability. 'Savour this' means to really taste all this wonderful food and ale, this place, and commit all of it to memory.” An improved perception must transcend the retreat, and be with me in the work trenches. In ways that are similar to how I connect the words I read, it is vital to be able to find what is worthy to savour. These weeks on Beacon Hill always conclude with the Sunday’s Quaker Meeting for Worship. Indeed, I savoured the company of friends, as well as the wise contemplative silence of the gathering. Settling into the communal silence, I certainly had to ride out distracting thoughts about the frustrations and insufficiencies awaiting me. Then I chased them out of the present, recalling what I had been studying about holding inestimable treasure in an earthen vessel. Glancing around the large room, filled with kindred spirits, I noticed sunlight coming in from the Chestnut Street side. It was as though the authors I sought out were passing messages to me, to trust that my faith is something real- to savour this very simple thought, and to continue to stay able to savour.

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.