|
How ironic that Thomas Merton could write in July 27-28, 1965, after having lived on this earth since 1915 and having been a monastic for decades, “I have never before really seen what it means to live in the new creation and in the Kingdom.” And he writes, “Impossible to explain it. If I tried, I would be unfaithful to the grace of it—for I would be setting limits to it. It is limitless, without determination, without definition.” Merton refers to the practicality of this Unknowable Reality, as Merton always seems to show that mysticism, or contemplation, is everything but “otherworldly”: “It is what you make of it each day, in response to the Holy Spirit!”
Merton, on the same date, refers to the freedom of this mystical Life. He writes, “How men fear freedom! And how I have learned to fear it myself!”
The morning of July 19, 2006, after reading in silence from St. Basil and St. Augustine, the Psalms, and Micah, I laid my body onto the floor. Amidst many changes going on in the external life, I rested in contemplation. I witnessed fatigue with words. What a blessed fatigue! What a gift when even religious words make the soul nauseous with their banality and triteness. I enjoyed the “grace of it.” This oft resting has become to me a witness to what Buddhists call One Taste. This is freedom, freedom I have learned to relish as release from the need to make religion and spirituality another thing to do, to make happen, to prove myself by! In this, I know what St. Paul says: I, Brian, am already accepted in the Beloved, the Word! (Ephesians 1.6) How I am thankful that Buddhism helped me learn what the early Fathers of the Church taught, also, about this fecund and clear Silence!
|
|
In the Spirit, experiencing the kenosis, or self-emptying of Christ, in Prayer, it is not so much anymore that I choose to empty myself. I rest and witness being emptied: kenosis happening.
Out of respect and the ineptness of words, the early contemplatives employed negative theology: that is, denying that anything positive can be truly said of the Mystery of Divinity. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the true knowledge of God is “seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility.” (The Life of Moses, Trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson). This reflects the entire history of the negative theology
Consequently, this experience of Mystery is not a failure to see. Rather, contemplation is seeing with clarity that affirmation can never offer. Affirmative theology and prayer says what God is, according to human experience. Negative theology and prayer says, “But God is not human. To say, then, that God is good means to say that God is good as we know goodness. However, God is not 'us' and, therefore, not good as we know goodness.” We see, then, in contemplation more clearly.
But even saying this is insufficient. To say what God is not is still implying an affirmative. We are brought back to Merton. Initially, the contemplative becomes attached to negative theology and prayer. In time, the Holy Spirit weans her off even this. The contemplative has to adjust to being detached from apophasis: the negative theology.
Continued... |
