Just like this image to the left, we also have many layers and textures that make up who we are.  Some of what stands out before others is blue, some cloudy and there are some, but not often seen, dark. Society too, puts us in situations that can and do push us into intersections with the expectations of others.  These expectations shape and segment us in ways that both we and those around us no longer see the whole.  We can become so divided by our roles and responsibilities that we are no longer able to remember who and whose we are.

Jurgen Moltmann writes, “Men are compelled to declare faith in and to do things which they do not want to do. Modern society is called a pluralistic society because in it a multitude of views and interests, groups and associations are competing with one another.  In it man experiences himself too as a pluralistic being, who must live at the point of intersection of often very different claims, standards and expectations, which can no longer be brought under the common denominator of a single personality which is at peace with itself, and of a consistent picture of life.  The compulsion to constant new adaptation can lead to the dissolution of the continuity of life as lived”.

      We can be pushed, pulled, and twisted, as we try to meet these claims and demands that contribute to the constant adaptation that we find ourselves in.  But we don’t have to lose sight of who we are or of whose we are.  In fact, the Spirit of God and the Word, regularly remind us of both who we are and whose we are if we would listen and yield ourselves.  I believe that God desires for us to live lives of wholeness and abundance. We are called to become more like Christ and His is the only expectaion that truly needs to be met.  Listening  and yielding do not come easily to us. It takes time in solitude, the Word and in prayer. It is also most helpful if we have someone to walk with us as we yield ourselves to the Spirit of God.  This could be perhaps a Spiritual director, a trusted soul friend, or a  loved one who will listen without judging, who will pray for you and who will hold you accountable if needed.

     We will continue to have this fragmentation as the world continues to push its way into our lives with it’s expectations,  and we certainly do have God given roles and responsibilities.  But we are to be more than these individual pieces and parts, we are to be the sum of them all, by and in Jesus.

Quote: Jurgen Moltmann, On Human Being, pg. 89

If you have never had any distractions you don’t know how to pray.  For the secret of prayer is a hunger for God and for the vision of God, a hunger that lies far deeper than the level of language or affection.  And a man whose memory and imagination are persecuting him with a crowd of useless or even evil thoughts and images may be forced to pray far better, in the depths of his murdered heart, than one whose mind is swimming with clear concepts and brilliant purposes and easy acts of love. 

     That is why it is useless to get upset when you cannot shake off distractions.  In the first place, you must realize that they are often unavoidable in the life of prayer.  The necessity of kneeling and suffering submersion under a tidal wave of wild and inane images is one of the standard trials of the contemplative life.  If you think that you are obliged to stave these things off by using a book and clutching at its sentences the way a drowning man clutches at straws, you have the privilege of doing so, but if you allow your prayer to degenerate into a period of spiritual reading you are losing a great deal of fruit.  You would profit much more by patiently resisting distractions and learning something of your own helplessness and incapacity.  And if your book merely becomes an anesthetic, far from helping your meditation it has probably ruined it”.

     Certainly there is an ebb and flow in our prayer life. There are times when we are so intent upon our time spent with God, that we are able to truly and openly converse with Him. Both in  expressing our innermost needs and being able to listen to Him.  Most often though we can be distracted.  We come into that time in prayer so loaded with our own agenda that we don’t or are unable to hear what we most need. Or we have so much of going on with work, family, life, etc., that those things crowd into our time of prayer. How often have you been praying and different random thoughts begin to float in and out during your time in prayer?  It can be distracting for sure, and even disheartening as we really want to pay attention and be focused.  Many times it is when we are tired, or there is an over abundance of stuff going on that we are dealing with, but sometimes none of that may be the case.  These distractions are seemingly ever present during our times with God.  They are most intense when we have stopped talking and are trying to listen to God’s side of the conversation.

     As Merton shares with us, struggling with this is  an ongoing endeavor.  But struggling with it in fact intensifies the chatter and is a major distraction in itself.  I find that I need to bring myself gently back into focus. Sometimes is is by quoting a verse of scripture, often times it is by saying the Jesus Prayer. I find that the Spirit of God uses these things to bring me back into my shared time with God.

How have you struggled with this reality of prayer?  When you are distracted what is it that brings you back into the conversation?

Quote:  Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 224-225

     I don’t know about you, but with the convergence of the new year and the economy I’m at a place of needing to make some decisions.  These choices can be right or wrong.  They can be what I want or what God wants, or they may be somewhere in between.  At some level I need to know which way is up.

     When life seems to be swirling around it can be tough to discern which way is the “right” way to go.  As I work through this process of discernment, there is much  for me to consider.  I need to take in my story.  What I mean by that is, my experiences, my inclinations as a person, my passions, the gifts and skills given to me, and the lens by which I make new choices based upon these things.  In addition, I need to take all that is my authentic self and my wants and see where they fit with God’s desire for me.

     As I journey with Christ, I know that I have not “arrived” yet.  I still have my baggage and limitations that I carry with me.  I am still sucked into the culture of my western world view, with its emphasis on riches, honor and pride. This world view or what we think as “upward mobility” is not the way that God would have us go.  In fact, it is totally the opposite.  It is poverty, it is rejection and dishonor, it is humility.  The scripture tells us to be transformed to the likeness of Christ and His example to us is “downward mobility’. So when I am looking at making a choice I need to recognize in myself this perceived need of upward mobility and ask God for the wisdom to follow what He wants for me.  I need to become more and more aware of these things, just as we all do.

     For me to gain this awareness of myself and of God, requires that I spend time in solitude and silence.  I need to lay out the situation before God and take the time to listen to Him and to evaluate these things.  But when in crisis or when there much external pressure, often times this is the hardest thing to do.  It is by God’s grace many times that I am able to get this time and space, which allows me to reflect and decide.

     These are but a couple pieces of my discernment process, but extremely important.  Each one of us has a process of some sort, what does yours look like?  How is that you determine “which way is up?”

     Learn to be alone

     Physical solitude, exterior silence and real recollection are all morally necessary for anyone who wants to lead a contemplative life, But like everything else in creation they are nothing more than a means to an end, and if we do not understand the end we will make a wrong use of the means.

     We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.  But this is only a secondary end.

     The one end that includes all others is the love of God.

     How can people act and speak as if solitude were a matter of no importance in the interior life?  Only those who hae never experienced real solitude can glibly declare that it “makes no difference” and that only solitude of the heart really matters!  One solitude must lead to the other!

     However, the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.

     An this abyss of interior solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if he had been emptied by death.

     He has advanced beyond all horizons.  There are no directions in which he can travel.  This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.  You do not find it by traveling but by standing still.

     Yet is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin.  It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is in profound repose, vision in obscurity, and beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Quote: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 82-83

     “To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason fo my existence, for God is love.

Love is my true identity.  Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character.  Love is my name.

If therefore, I do anything or think anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.  And to enter into His sanctuary I must become holy as He is holy, perfect as he is perfect.

How can I even dare to entertain such a thought?  Is it not madness?  It is certainly madness if I think I know what the holiness and perfection of God really are in themselves and if I think that there is some way in which I can apply myself to imitating them.  I must begin, then, by realizing that the holiness of God is something that is to me, and to all men, utterly mysterious, inscrutable, beyond the highest notion of any kind of perfection, beyond any relevant human statement whatever.

If I am to be “holy” I must therefore be something that I do not understand, something mysterious and hidden, something apparently self-contradictory; for God, in Christ, “emptied Himself”.  He became a man, and dwelt among sinners.  He was considered a sinner.  He was put to death as a blasphemer, as one who at least implicitly denied God, as one who revolted against the holiness of God.  Indeed, the great question in the trial and condemnation of Christ was precisely the denial of God and the denial of His holiness.  So God himself was put to death on the cross because He did not measure up to man’s conception of His holiness…. He was not holy enough, He was not holy in the right way, He was not holy in the way they  had been led to expect.  Therefore he was not God at all.  And, indeed, He was abandoned and forsaken even by Himself.  It was as if the Father had denied the Son, as if the Divine Power and mercy had utterly failed.

In dying on the Cross, Christ manifested the holiness of God in apparent contradiction with itself.  But in reality this manifestation was the complete denial and rejection of all human ideas of holiness and perfection.  The wisdom of God became folly to men, His power manifested itself as weakness, and His holiness was, in their eyes, unholy.  But Scripture says that “what is great in the eyes of men is an abomination in the sight of God,” amd again, “my thoughts are not your thoughts,” says God to men.

If, then, we want to seek some ways of being holy, we must first of all renounce our own way and our own wisdom.  We must “empty ourselves” as He did.  We must “deny ourselves” and in some sense make ourselves “nothing” in order that we may live not so much in ourselves as in Him.  We must live by a power and a light that seem not to be there.  We must live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is always truly empty and yet never fails to support us at every moment.

This is holiness.

None of this can be achieved by any effort of my own, by any striving of my own, by any competiton with other men.  It means leaving all the ways that men can follow or understand.

I who am without love cannot become love unless Love identifies me with Himself.  But if He sends His own Love, Himself, to act and love in me and in all that I do, then I shall be transformed, I shall discover who I am and shall possess my true identity by losing myself in Him.

And this is what I call sanctity”.

  I thought that this was a great way to begin the New Year.  I enjoy spending time with Merton and I hope that this will be useful to you as well.  Though the quotes are generally shorter, but I wanted to capture all of what he was saying.  As you read this what resonates most within you?  How might it cause you to live differently this year?

Quote: Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, pgs. 63-65