Empty Heads, Empty Hearts?

Almost 13 years ago now I had the incredible privilege of working in a Catholic book store. It was there that my intense curiosity of all things spiritual was first nurtured. Over the years I've done a whole lot of reading on a wide variety of spiritual thought--not because I was looking for answers per se, but because (aside from one major backslide which I'll tell you about some other time) I've always been very much a Catholic. It's just that every time I read something new, or discover something different, my curiosity gets the best of me and I go digging around the topic until my curiosity is satisfied--for the time being.

My curiosity has had me reading not just Catholic books--the predominant category in my personal library--but books & documents about all kinds of religions, practices and disciplines. Some are very similar to Catholicism, some are very different, but all have a few things in common. One of these commonalities that I've never really questioned until very recently was this notion of "clearing the mind", or trying not to "think", but to instead focus our attention on a single thought or sensation, like our hearts beating, our breathing, the wind rustling outside, and to tune everything else out.

In some religions this practice is said to allow the person to enter another state of consciousness. As Christians we do not seek an altered state, but a number of Christians also suggest this practice as a good preparation for prayer. Clearing our minds and focusing intently on a single thought is supposed to bring about a mental state that facilitates clear, unobstructed meditation, as well as the posture to engage in contemplation. The idea is that we'll be able to hear the voice of God better without the noise of our own thoughts getting in the way.  It's by no means a new idea.

I thought until very recently that this was how it worked, but I couldn't ever attain it. I have one of those minds that just won't turn off. I start off not thinking and lets say listening to my heartbeat, then after two, maybe three beats I'm wondering whether or not my compost has the right ratio of brown and green matter and whether the local convenience store restocked their nightcrawlers (for the compost...yes, my mind is a scary place). It's a headache waiting to happen. I even have trouble praying rosaries because my mind wanders too much, particularly when I intently zero in on the mystery. Then about two weeks ago I read something in St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle:

"Some books," she wrote, "advise that as a preparation for hearing what our Lord may say to us we should keep our minds at rest, waiting to see what He will work in our souls. But unless His Majesty has begun to suspend our faculties, I cannot understand how we are to stop thinking, without doing ourselves more harm than good. (4th Mansion, Chapter III #4)" Talk about a relief. She continued on, comparing the suspension of thought with "forcible restraint", and discussing how thought and imagination are a sign of our creation in His image and likeness:

When His Majesty wishes the mind to rest from working He employs it in another manner, giving it a light and knowledge far above any obtainable by its own efforts and absorbing it entirely into Himself. Then, though it knows not how, it is filled with wisdom such as it could never gain for itself by striving to suspend the thoughts. God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.  (4th Mansion, Ch III #4)

Charm them to sleep. How good is a dialogue with one person constantly asleep?

As I continued reading, I began to think of an element of my Christian life called Formation: the progressive use of our intellect to better know God and grow in love for Him. Our formation should roll into prayer, allowing us to dialogue with God on ever increasing levels. Metanoia is a change of the mind to know and to live God's will for us.  How can our minds change at all when they're forced into a state of inaction?  The more we allow our minds to stretch (so long as we avoid sin), the better equipped we are to develop our understanding of God, who is infinitely beyond anything we can comprehend.

Maybe the reason to not empty the head is as simple as this:  When God is ready to "employ" my mind according to His will, I want Him to have plenty of material to work with.

Into The Mystic

I'm not talking about the Van Morrison tune, either (though it is a fabulous song).

For the last few weeks I've been working my way through Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Avila's treatise on prayer.  It's a book written conversationally and is to a great degree accessible; yet there does not exist an adjective available to express the depth of this work.

She describes the soul as a gemstone castle within us. The Lord Himself dwells in the very center of this castle, and through prayer we travel toward the center through the many rooms, or mansions as she calls them.  At the same time, the Lord reaches through the mansions toward us, calling to us and giving us the grace to continue on, until we are finally able to reach Him.  Sometimes we are aware of what's happening, sometimes we're not; but closer to the Lord we draw, the more extraordinary and intense our prayer becomes.  Like my other mystical friend St. Catherine of Siena had written, knowing yourself is vital to our spiritual life.

St. Teresa writes, "our thoughts, or it is clearer to call it our imagination, are not the same thing as the understanding. (4th Mansion, Ch. 1, #8)"

It's true.

About 12 years ago, I took on this book, and got only to the halfway mark, and couldn't understand any of it.  I could imagine much of what she described, but I couldn't even begin to grasp what she was talking about. I didn't know myself at all.  It wasn't until six years later, when I was really examining my life for my annulment, that I began to really understand what St. Teresa was talking about, even in the first mansion, and it was a far cry from what I imagined.  I'm learning--sometimes by leaps and bounds, other times in itty bitty baby steps--that prayer is far more than a "conversation with God".

To explain it would take volumes.

A Very Brief and More-Than-Slightly Confused Introduction to Mystical Theology

There are thousands of people throughout history who have experienced a taste of a world outside of what we think we understand to be reality. Some have simply blown off that taste as a figment of their imagination; many others took it seriously and sought another taste. A few along the way were able to get their experiences and their thoughts regarding these experiences down on paper.

Over the past several years, I've spent a lot of time studying the Christian Mystics--Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Anne Catherine Emmerich, Catherine of Siena, to name but a few. The mystics come from all walks of life. Some were from rich families, some from poor. Some could read four or five languages, some couldn't even read one. Some were avowed religious, some were not. Some of the mystics have founded orders; others have been declared doctors of the Church; still others have offered insight upon which dogma has been further understood and defined. Some have simply provided inspiration for those who have stumbled upon their work.

I guess I'm one of those "stumblers", having fallen into mystical theology while working at a Catholic book store. Interior Castle both fascinated and confused me. It's taken years for me to even begin to grasp what St. Teresa of Avila so clearly saw, and still light years lie between me and my full comprehension of those Castles she described.

In trying to understand what I first encountered in St. Teresa's masterpiece, I do a lot of stumbling along into various theologians, and more recently found this guy. I hope he gives you as much food for thought as he's given me.

Crossing The Bridge

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, hoping to achieve a different result.

I think I was coming home from shopping when I first moved in with my husband. I pulled into the driveway, heading for what would become my "usual spot", right in front of the garage. Now, our driveway needs some work, to say the least. Between the remnants of blacktop and a few odd patch jobs here and there, I thought my tire was caught in a low spot when my car stopped suddenly. I didn't appear to be close enough to the garage, so I backed up and went forward again. I stopped suddenly again. Determined to get over that hole or hump or chunk of driveway that I just assumed was in my way, I backed up and went forward once again.

The whole time, my husband, who was cutting the grass, began shouting from the yard, "HEY! HEY! HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP!! STO-O-O-O-O-P!!!!" It wasn't a hole in the driveway preventing me from moving forward. It was the garage door.

Eddie Ray must've thought he married a total nut job. Talk about misjudging! I not only misjudged what was preventing me from moving forward, I also misjudged the front end of my car (a car I've been driving for several years) and where I was supposed to be in our driveway. What makes this episode my husband's favorite among my many "DUH" moments is that I appeared to be so determined to drive that car right through our garage door. "You just kept backing up and going for it!"

Don't we do this sort of thing all the time? We hit a roadblock. We stop. We back up. We we try again, hitting what we think is another roadblock over and over---never considering that we just might be misjudging the situation.

My father gave me some words of wisdom many years ago: "Whenever you think you understand what you're looking at, take a giant step back and look at the bigger picture. It sure don't look the same on a larger scale, does it?" In other words, don't just assume that you're looking at something in its proper perspective. Had I gotten out of the car and taken a look at what I was doing from just one step away, instead of continuing to do the same dumb thing over and over, I would have seen what I was doing wrong.

As I reflect on this incident, I am reminded of a document I came across a few months ago titled "The Second Bridge", written by James H. Dobbins back in 1996 (click here to read the entire article). Dobbins presents our spiritual life in three stages, beginning with what he describes as climbing a ladder to the first level of our understanding of God. The ladder leads from what he calls a great plain of souls to a first plateau, where we experience all of the initial fruits of that relationship with God. Upon reaching that first of three plateaus in our spiritual walk, "we have passed from indifference toward God, lukewarmness towards Him, to a growing fervor and desire to possess Him as fully as possible. We are tending to go beyond ourselves, and to make God the center of our lives instead of ourselves."

As we reach that second gate to the next level, or the first bridge as Dobbins calls it, some of us can't figure out how to cross the bridge, let alone make it through the gate (just like I couldn't figure out how to park my car in my own driveway). We just can't see that we're going about it all wrong. This is what Dobbins refers to as the second conversion. He tells us, "the need for this second conversion often comes as a surprise for us, usually because we do not know ourselves as well as we think."

Here's where stepping back and getting a better look at the bigger picture comes into play. When we do finally take a good look at ourselves from a distance, we can see exactly what it is that's preventing us from crossing that first bridge. Sometimes, though, we can't do it ourselves. There are times that the Lord blesses us with a person on that next plateau who can see where we're going wrong--kind of like my husband yelling at me from his much better view to stop before I took out the garage door.

Those on that next plateau after having crossed the second bridge can see those struggling on the first plateau so clearly: "[they] see their lay brethren still enamored with the latest car, or fashion, or vacation spot, or technology, or any of the hundred other things that seem so very important...devoting enormous amounts of time and money to all sorts of things having no spiritual value whatever." But if we aren't willing to stop and get a good look at ourselves, we'll be destined to wander around that first plateau, utterly stuck: "These people of God never seem to understand why they are still beginners in spirituality."

If only they would get out of the car and look at what they're doing.

The Heart of Jesus

I think of [the Holy Spirit] as the love that dissipates all darkness and gives perfect light, that supplants all ignorance with perfect knowledge. -St. Catherine of Siena

About a year ago someone asked me how "we Catholics" could spend so much time focusing on the cross.

My answer to this question at the time was simply, "how can you live the resurrection had there not been death?" I have grown so much since then.

Today I began my day with week two's morning meditation of a five-Wednesdays Devotion to St. Catherine of Siena. I found it last month while researching a post for her feast day. Today's meditation, titled "St. Catherine's Love for the Heart of Jesus", actually draws us into His wounds, particularly His pierced side: "The Passion of our Lord being ended...could not suffice to manifest to us His Infinite Love; therefore He desired that His side should be opened to us, as if to reveal to us how much His Will and desire even surpassed the sufferings endured...All that Christ did for us was done through the love of His Heart." It's no wonder this Doctor of The Church bore the stigmata.

His Wounds. His Will. His Love.

This is definitely the kind of love worthy of my full attention; the kind of love worthy of remembrence in the form of a crucifix on my wall. As we prepare for Pentecost, may we never forget the infinite love which gives us the Holy Spirit that dwells within us.

Know Yourself

A statement like this is what draws me to the Mystics: “Those who see themselves not selfishly but for God, and who see God for God (as he is supreme eternal Goodness and is deserving of our love), when they contemplate God in blazing, consumed love discover the image of the human person in God. And they discover themselves, God’s image, in God.” This extraordinary expression was written by St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th Century 3rd Order Dominican.

Catherine’s letters, and later her Dialogue based on a letter to Friar Raymond of Capua of the Order of Preachers, describe the continuous link between a person knowing him/herself and knowing God, and how this knowledge is the basis of an ever-growing love between us and our Lord: the better we know ourselves in the Light of our Lord, the more clearly we see the sins that stand in the way of Him, and desire more and more to rid ourselves of them. The prize is union with God, who is constant, and IS, alive within us.

My Nature is Fire
(Prayer XXII)

In your nature,
eternal Godhead,
I shall come to know my nature.
And what is my nature, boundless love?
It is fire,
because you are nothing but a fire of love.
And you have given humankind
a share in this nature,
for by the fire of love
you created us.
And so with all other people
and every created thing;
you made them out of love.
O ungrateful people!
What nature has your God given you?
His very own nature!
Are you not ashamed to cut yourself off from such a noble thing
through the guilt of deadly sin?
O eternal Trinity,
my sweet love!
You, light,
give us light.
You, wisdom,
give us wisdom.
You, supreme strength,
strengthen us.
Today, eternal God,
let our cloud be dissipated
so that we may perfectly know and follow your Truth
in truth,
with a free and simple heart.
God, come to our assistance!
Lord, make haste to help us!

Amen.

(source: www.drawnbylove.com)