Serving Christ in the Way of the Heart
Contemplative Life-Active
life
I grew up in a time when
religious educators made a false distinction between the "active
life" and the "contemplative life." A person seeking to live the contemplative life had to enter
a cloister and never be heard from again. The active life was one of outward
humanitarian service, a domestic married life, a life of involvement in the
world, whereas, the contemplative life was seen as outside of the "world." Nothing could be further from the
truth.
To live the contemplative
life is to enter into the depths of the world through a growing and expanding
communion with Christ in all things. This communion with Christ leads us to
love and serve Christ in the world, and not to try to leave the world. A
beautiful picture, was given to my spiritual friend and partner in ministry,
Sr. Antoinette Traeger. The picture presents three images of an expanding
heart, and is based on a phrase from the Benedictine Rule, "With Hearts Expanded." This image speaks directly to the life
and practice of Breathing Yeshua and is placed in prominence in the prayer room
at Shalom Prayer Center. This is a life where the Heart expands in communion
with Christ to encompass all of life. There is no place, no time, no condition
where we do not breathe Yeshua, and serve Yeshua in our consecrated love. The mystics and teachers of the great
spiritual traditions teach an important truth. The end of the spiritual
journey in this life is not the mountain-top, but it is the return and service
to the world.
My father, who recently died
two days after Easter at the age of 79, was a recovering alcoholic. In the last
twenty years of life in grace he and I had a healed relationship. My father had
been deeply wounded and broken by both the disease of alcoholism and the
violence of combat in World War II. As he grew and healed in recovery he found
his calling was to be a healer, especially to veterans who had suffered like
him from the violence of war and addiction to alcohol and other drugs. In the latter years of his life he was
an alcohol counselor and community leader.
My father's name was Bill,
like mine. Dad told me that a turning point for him in his ministry to the
alcohol addicted happened early in his career as an alcohol counselor. On a visit to Portland, Oregon he
stopped for a conference at the Hooper Detox Center. On this occasion he was
ascending the stairs to enter the building. Leaving the building at the same
moment was an older man on whose face was etched the ravages of many years of
alcohol dependence. For a just a brief moment Dad said there was radiance that
shown from the man's face and he could see the glorified face of Christ in this
man. The Gospel words of Christ came to Dad: "I was hungry and you fed me,
I was homeless and you sheltered me, I was drunk and sick and abandoned and you
took care of me."
From that moment on there was
never any doubt in my father that this was that path of service for him. The
love of Christ became the prime motivation of my father's life, and he knew
that same love took him into the middle of life, into the depths of serving his
Beloved in other human beings."
Compassionate Service- the
Fruit of Resurrection
We, who venerate the liturgy
and sacrament of the Eucharist, as we mature in the spiritual life, come to a
deeper understanding of Eucharist.
We are the human elements of
bread and wine, lifted up and consecrated in adoration and self-offering to
God. We are consecrated and transformed into the living incarnate Christ in
human form and community. We become the broken Bread of Christ's Life given to
the world, in this human life. We become the consecrated wine of Christ's Love
offered to the world. Like St. Paul we are "… poured out as a libation." (Phil. 2:1)
Our practice takes us to a
living out of the Eucharist of the Risen Christ of Easter. And if we give
ourselves to this Mercy then we become accessible to the grace that transforms
our human wounds and brokenness into consecrated humanity, the vessel of
Christ's Self- Giving to the world. For
Bill, my father, his wounds became his sacred wounds, and the means of his
serving Christ in the world through what he called his “apostolate" of healing with the
alcohol and drug afflicted.
In my own life my parents
divorced early in my childhood. My earliest years brought great instability,
episodic poverty, and constant change and upheaval. This life inflicted wounds of insecurity and emotional
turmoil. Grace led me as a young child to turn inward to find the source of
inner stability and safety, to find my refuge in the Presence in my own Heart
within. My sacred wounds through
grace had led me to find a path to resurrection. Early in my life's journey my inclination
was to try to avoid life's vulnerabilities. In the course of time and the transformative love of Christ
I began to move from a life of avoidance and escape from the world to growing
engagement, service, and communion with the world. One of my choices in my
early twenties was to seek a career in mental health counseling, a sure avenue
of immersion in human suffering. In the life of Breathing Yeshua we find, each
of us, a way to actualize our own Prayer of the Heart apostolate. Our growing experience of personal
communion with Yeshua bears fruit as we find a way to have a life of service
and belonging in the Universal Christ in humanity and all Creation. Thus our
practice brings a life long development of expanding the Heart, moving from our
rigid and tightly circumscribed circle of the egoic self to the universal
circle of Christ that encompasses all. In this way we become His broken bread
given to feed the world.
The mystics teach the inner
and outer journey are one. To discover the truth of one's being is to discover
the Inner Christ, but this is just the beginning. Thomas Kelley, the Quaker
mystic of the 20th century says:
" Deep within us all there is an amazing inner
sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to
which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our
time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling
us home unto Itself.
In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are
Christ's and Christ is God's. We are owned beings, ready to run and not be
weary and to walk and not faint. The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere
doctrine, belonging peculiarly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted
or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all
Christian souls and Christian groups - yes, and of non-Christian groups as well
- who seriously mean to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. He is the
center and source of action, not the endpoint of thought. He is the locus of
commitment, not a problem for debate. Practice comes first in religion, not
theory or dogma. And Christian practice is not exhausted in outward deeds.
These are the fruits, not the roots. A practicing Christian must above all be
one who practices the perpetual return of the soul into the inner sanctuary,
who brings the world into its Light and who brings the Light (of Christ) into
the world with all its turmoil and its fitfulness and re-creates it after the
pattern seen on the Mount." ( Kelly, "The Light Within," A
Testament of Devotion, p.8)
With my own inclinations of
the introvert, afraid to be fully in the world, my spiritual journey in many
ways started as a retreat from the world. I wanted to find a way to be safe and
invulnerable in the world. So what
did I do? Paradoxically in grace I
chose to be a parent and to be immersed in the suffering of the human condition
as a mental health counselor. When I threw myself into the thick of life, and
chose to have children, a little voice said, "You are going to be hurt
more than you ever thought possible." And the voice was right. So where my
inward journey of contemplation took me was a vocation of compassionate service
as a mental health counselor and the relational life of husband and father. It
became like the Zen koan, the Christian paradox, the Christian cross of love
and responsibility. In my own way,
I was trying to answer Yeshua's invitation, "If you want to follow me,
pick up your cross daily." For me the curse of a painful fear of the world
and desire to escape it led to a gift of sensitivity and empathy, and a
vocation to the healing of others. What had been deficit over the past 30 years
has become strength, and hopefully a gift poured out to others.
Breathing Yeshua in the
healing process of counseling has been my daily practice, my daily service. To
be with others in distress means full attention, a quality of presence, and a
reverence for boundaries that recognizes the sacred Christ in another. It means
the capacity to empty self of self, to release from any and every agenda, and
to take full responsibility to release from the projections and defense
mechanisms of the ego-mind.
This practice involves the
kenosis of the humility of Christ, to learn from failure and mistakes, to learn
from the stories and experience of others, to learn from the suffering of
others, and above all, to learn to be with my own helplessness.
To Breath Yeshua in this
service of Christ means confronting the evil of self-absorption both in oneself
and in those who are being helped as it presents in the helping relationship.
Many who came to me in my earlier professional years had committed crimes and
compassion meant shining a light on their narcissism. To work in the field of
mental health is to learn from life and death, suicide and tragic sudden death,
disease and aging. Breathing Yeshua becomes the ground of our security, the
sanctuary of our earthly consolation, the font of our service of
loving-kindness.
The Cross of
Responsibility
The life of following Yeshua
is one of accepting responsibility, of acknowledging we are here with work to
do. For what are we responsible? Just this, to offer the best of
ourselves in love. To do this we
must relinquish every presumption of control, and do the best we can in love,
and know it is enough. We offer it daily on the altar of our consecration to
Christ, and it is enough. In truth
we are responsible also for the consecration of attention which grows
into presence and adoration to Christ in all things. We are responsible for the depth and
consecration of our intention, which grows into self-offering love. So that
Christ can serve others in us, we get ourselves out of the way. We ceaselessly
offer and release all outcomes to the Mercy of God.
In this process an important
question to keep asking is this: "Who is helping? Who is serving? Who is
being helped?" In this way we remind ourselves we participate in a flow of
Divine love and mercy that encompasses all and is vaster and deeper than any
personal agenda or compulsion for achievement that may intrude. Subject and
object, actor and action, disappear into the Oneness of God's Love and Mercy.
We are participants in the Circle of Christ's Mercy.
Breathing Yeshua in the
Praxis of Helping-
The same essential practice
of Breathing Yeshua in Prayer of the Heart applies to every form of helping,
every form of service. We breathe Yeshua in service to our loved ones at home,
to the most vulnerable and marginalized, or to the larger community in the form
of work-livelihood we have taken. In this integration of Prayer of the Heart
into activity and service we uncover utter simplicity:
-The first movement: Be there, fully with the gift of Presence and
Adoration to Christ who is there.
-The second movement: Be there in the most loving, the most kind way we
can be, releasing from every agenda and attachment to any outcome, offering our
best effort to Christ who is there.
-Trust that whatever skills we possess or require will be
accessible to us in the middle of our service.
Prayer of the Heart practice
in the middle of life leads us to a continual process of inward bowing and
inward offering of self to the Christ we encounter every day. It is enough to
recognize, be present, and be given in love, to the Christ in another and to
offer without expectation. Outcomes are not ours to decide. We can
participate in the flow of Divine Compassion in the most loving way, just doing
the very best we can to bring forth Agape, Christ' s Self-Offering to the
world. This is the goal of all life.
Transformation happens in the
middle of service, in the middle of relationships, with every choice we make to
bring our thoughts, our emotions, and our behavior into harmony with a growing
interior union with Christ. Through ceaseless practice we align our humanity,
our life, and consciousness into this greater communion, into the Great Circle
of the Divine where we find our belonging. We do this inner work of
transformation in the middle of Life, in ceaseless bowing in adoration to the
Christ before us, in ceaseless offering in love to the Christ among us.
Climbing the Mountain to
Live and Serve in the World-
In my own journey I spent a
year and a half in an extended personal retreat. I took a sabbatical from the
"normal pattern" to be a hermit devoted to contemplation, while still
in familial life, to rest and heal in the depths of communion in God. (I did
domestic work and child-care for my wife and daughter.) My rest from the outer
responsibilities of life helped me unravel into the Mercy of God and unitive
experience. My mistaken
desire at the end of this time was to try to build a fence around the heaven I
had found.
God's Providence brought me
from the mountaintop back into daily human life, where my first job was at
Dammasch State Hospital in Oregon. I found myself immersed in the world of
chronic and acute mental illness, of profound human suffering. My second
professional position made me a geriatric mental health specialist where I was,
and still am, immersed in the world of disease, old age, disability and death.
I found that fences around the Mercy of God don’t work.
Bringing the Practice into
Every Aspect of Life
I learned Brother Lawrence's
simple wisdom applies to every circumstance.
No form of service is
unworthy, every form of service is service to Christ, and can become prayer when
done with the full attention of presence and adoration, and the full intention
of self-giving love. Washing the dishes, chopping the onions, sweeping the
floors, cleaning the toilets, treating the mental and emotional distress of
others, are all worthy service.
Thus service to Christ is a
manifestation of praying without ceasing, expanding the Heart of Breathing
Yeshua. When we live the compassionate life of service, it is the Spirit of
Christ who brings compassionate help, healing and presence through us.
Thomas Kelly says this of our
ceaseless prayer, "We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a
Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but
never lost. All we can say is, Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in
the
orbit. In holy hush we bow
in Eternity, and know the Divine Concern tenderly
enwrapping us and all
things within His persuading love. Here all human
initiative has passed into
acquiescence, and He works and prays and seeks
His own through us, in exquisite,
energizing life. Here the autonomy of the
inner life becomes
complete and we are joyfully prayed through, by a Seeking
Life that flows through us
into the world of human beings."
** This "Seeking
Life" is Christ's Life, serving all beings.**
Serving Christ in Peace
and Justice
As our hearts expand in the
life of Breathing Yeshua we find they expand to include also a prophetic voice
for peace and justice. This can be the most frightening development of all.
When Yeshua says, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted and reviled for
my sake," it hardly makes us feel at ease. Yet the most needed expressions
of service to Christ are for the most poor and the most afflicted.
I previously spoke about
Thomas Merton's koan of being a monk while being of compassionate service in
the world. What Merton discovered was that in his writing he was called to hold
accountable to the Gospel of Christ the American society around him and its
abandonment of the poor, its refusal to change the injustice of racism, and its
obsession with military and violent solutions in the world of foreign affairs.
(Are we called to any less in our time?) At the corner of 4th and Walnut Merton
discovered there is no difference between the life of inner communion with
Christ and serving and opening in compassion to Christ suffering in the
world. He proclaimed that the gate
of Heaven is everywhere and there is no such thing as an isolated life alone
with God. For Merton contemplative life and prayer, and service in peace and
justice are a seamless garment.
Merton understood the whole
purpose why we seek solitude as monk or layperson is so that we might leap into
and live eternally in the unitive Circle of Christ. In describing Christian Meditation John Main says that we
meditate in order to enter the gateway to the Center of All. So our movement in
the practice of Breathing Yeshua is to break free from the constricted isolated
circle of self absorption and live into the circle that encompasses all
humanity, all Creation, God's circle of Eternal Love. In this way we live truly
a life of the prayer of St. Patrick’s breastplate-"Christ before us,
Christ behind us, Christ under our feet, Christ beneath us, Christ within us,
Christ all around us."
Confronting the Evil of
Selfishness
Helder Camara was a Roman
Catholic Cardinal in Brazil in the latter part of the 20th century. He believed
that the Christian life must of necessity involve confronting the source of
evil, which is selfishness, both in oneself and in the society in which we
live. "The true root of evil is selfishness. Mankind can only get out of
its present explosive situation when it realizes that selfishness is
international. It dominates the relationships between individuals, groups, and
countries." (Camara, The Desert is Fertile, p. 34)
Fr. Camara said that in
global affairs evil is asserting national self-interest over the concern for
the well being of all. In the case of our consumer culture, the frenetic drive
to consume and buy over every other concern is an injury to Christ. Wholesale
abandonment of the poor, and the vulnerable, for the sake of consumption beyond
need is wrong and sinful. A consuming country where 2% of the population
consumes 2/3 of the world's vital resources, while many within its own borders
go without basic needs, is unjust and sinful. Violent war as a first choice
rather than a last choice seems too often policy of the United States and is a
sin against life and peace. For Fr. Camara the root of all of this evil is the
false center, and salvation is to find ourselves in God's center. And for Christians the way to
liberation from the little center into the Center of All is the Heart of Christ
and service to Christ in the world.
"Lord save me from the false center.
In particular defend me
from self-centeredness." (Camara, P. 7)
We are called, each of us, to
a consecrated life, a life of risk and giveneness. In his book No Greater
Love Brother Roger of Christ's call, "You open for me the way of
risk. You are expecting from me not just a few crumbs, but the whole of my
existence. You are praying within me, day and night…simply calling you by the
name of Jesus fills the empty places in my heart.' "(Brother Roger, P. 37 ) We are
called without exception to break
out of the isolated life of self-centeredness to lead lives of service in peace
and justice. In Breathing Yeshua we call on His name and take refuge in His
Heart.
The Pain of Unitive Love
Societal culture exists in
the world of separateness, a world of illusory small circles. A well-known Sufi story speaks of a
master who offers the student who has reached some attainment of enlightenment
the option of drinking the potion of forgetfulness. In the story the student
finds that the unitive life is one that is hard and brings him continual pain
and conflict with the human condition. He complains that living in the world in
the unitive state is too painful. In the story he elects to drink the potion of
separateness and forgetfulness again rather than face the pain and risk of the
unitive life. Too many of us drink the potion. And the world of television offers us a drink of that potion
each day.
To live fully alive is to be
open to the pain of cruelty and the suffering of all living beings and to
accept that suffering as Christ's suffering. The life of Breathing Yeshua is a life of the expanded
heart. The expanded heart is the open heart and a heart that sees and hears and
receives a suffering humanity.
Living the Life of union with Christ is a difficult life, and it is the
only Real Life. The paradox we discover is this: the expanded heart opens us to
pain and opens us to joy. They are inseparable.
Unitive Life in Christ is a
life devoted to peace and justice.
The monotheistic traditions all use terms for God with a common root,
Allaha- (Christian- the word Jesus used for God), Allah (Moslem), Ela (Jewish).
They all mean the essential unity from which all things arise. This Unity is
the realization of communion with Christ. The invitation of the Gospel is to
enter the Realm or Essential Unity of God and live it fully.
In my father's story he saw
the face of Christ in the drunk. Through grace my Dad came to see Christ in
himself and he saw his life was about being Christ and serving Christ in the
world. In his life he served
Christ as an alcohol counselor, and in his later years as the prophetic voice
of conscience and the moral authority of a spiritual elder and community
leader, advocating for the drug and alcohol afflicted in his community. In that
capacity he was often a "thorn" in the side of the city fathers and
mothers. Yet he knew to live the fullness of the Christian spiritual journey is
to live a life of the 12 step commitment to compassionate service. This service
springs from the 11th step, that is, seeking conscious communion with God through
prayer and meditation and all the healing and conversion that has come from the
steps that precede.
Speaking the Prophetic
Voice of Christ
We are all invited to come to
the mountain to experience oneness with the Transfigured Christ, and to live
the return or full expression of that union in the Risen Life of Christ in the
world. The mountaintop and the world are inseparable. The developmental journey
of life leads us in the latter phase to become a spiritual elder. In that phase
of our development we come to express the prophetic voice of Christ in the
larger community. Our spiritual journey does not stop at the mountaintop. The
lesson of the transfiguration story in the Gospel is "Don’t try to stay on
the mountaintop. Don't build stagnant tents. Rather bring the mountaintop of
union with Christ into all of life." The lesson of the resurrection story
in the encounter with Mary of Magdala is the same. She is one who experienced a
profound and transforming communion with Christ. Instead Yeshua says to her and
to us, "Don't cling to me." (your idea or image of me) He commands
that we live and express the Risen Christ beyond image and form, His Essence as
Universal Christ in the world. He invites us instead to see Him and serve Him
in the "least of these."
"As I have done to you, so you must do for one another. "
" Love one another as I have loved you." John 13:16,15:9
We are called to stand with
the powerless in the paradoxical invitation of Yeshua, "Blessed (Happy)
are you when you are reviled for my sake." To stand with Christ in those
who are injured by violence and by the injustice of poverty and want is to live
the fullness of union with Christ.
These are the crosses, the paradoxes of the Gospel of Christ. By being
in conflict with the culture in which we live we find happiness and live in
Truth. Being in conflict, fighting the adversaries of selfishness, cruelty and
abandonment, for the sake of the love of Christ is our path to happiness. Again
the inner work is to lay down the self-absorbed life, for the sake of the
consecrated life in Christ. And
this becomes the true measure of our life.
Like my father we may
alienate some of the “principalities and powers" of the communities in
which we find ourselves, especially those who pride themselves on being good
Christians. And like my father,
Bill, we will seek to live the truth that "What you have done to the least
of these, you have done to me." These are the words he spoke in public
when the city and county government were making the decision to abandon the
drug and alcohol afflicted and close down a detox treatment center in his city.
Fighting this fight, while still **being** peace, justice, and compassion, is
difficult practice.
Brother Roger of Taize speaks
to us of this vital way to live life in Christ:
"But God is not an indifferent witness to human affliction; God
suffers with the innocent victim of incomprehensible trials; God suffers with
each person. That is a pain that God experiences, a suffering felt by Christ. Are you afraid of your fear? A
communion with Christ gives you the courage you needed for a commitment to make
the earth a place fit to live in, so that the most destitute, those most
overwhelmed by injustice, are not forgotten. " (Brother
Roger - p.15)
