Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office:90 Stewart Street , Devonport 7310
Parish Office:
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass Times: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Magazine: mlcathparishnewsletter.blogspot.com.au
Year of Mercy Blogspot: mlcpyom.blogspot.com.au
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Penguin - Saturday (5:15pm - 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is in need of assistance and has given permission to be contacted by Care and Concern, please phone the Parish Office.
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Weekday Masses 6th - 9th September, 2016
Tuesday: 9:30am
Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Mass Times Next Weekend 10th & 11th September,
2016
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am
Devonport
11:00am
Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Every
Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of
each month.
Legion of Mary: Sacred Heart Church Community Room,
Ulverstone, Wednesdays, 11am
Christian Meditation:
Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Prayer Group:
Charismatic Renewal
Devonport, Emmaus House - Thursdays 7.00pm
Meetings, with Adoration and Benediction are held each
Second Thursday of the Month in OLOL Church, commencing at 7.00 pm
Ministry Rosters 10th & 11th September, 2016
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Gaffney, M Gerrand, H Lim
10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth
T Bird, J Kelly, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton,
M O’Brien-Evans, D
& M Barrientos
Cleaners 9th September: K Hull, F Stevens, M Chan
16th Sept: P & T Douglas
Piety Shop 10th Sept: L Murfet
11th Sept: D French Flowers: A O’Connor
Ulverstone:
Reader: B O’Rourke, J Pisarskis
Ministers of
Communion:
M Murray, J
Pisarskis, C Harvey, P Grech
Cleaners: M Swain, M
Bryan Flowers: M Webb Hospitality:
M McLaren
Penguin:
Greeters: G & N Pearce Commentator: Readers: T Clayton, J Barker
Ministers of
Communion: E
Nickols, M Murray Liturgy: Penguin Setting Up: E Nickols
Care of Church: G Hills-Eade, T Clayton
Latrobe:
Reader: M Eden Ministers of Communion: P Marlow, I Campbell Procession: J Hyte Music:
Jenny
Port Sorell:
Readers: L Post, T Jeffries Ministers of
Communion: P
Anderson, B Lee Clean/Flow/Prepare: B Lee, A Holloway
Readings this Week: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Wisdom 9:13-18
Second Reading: Philemon 9-10.12-17
Gospel: Luke 14:25-33
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I begin my prayer, I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me and
teach me.
Lord, what do you want to say to me through your Word today?
I come slowly to stillness in the presence of God.
After a time, I read the gospel passage, perhaps several times, mulling gently over its words and their meaning for me.
I know that Jesus loves me and longs for me to follow him as his disciple.
I share with him all the people, places and things that are part of my life at the moment.
I may want to thank him for those ways in which I am able to use my gifts in his service.
Perhaps I ask the Lord if there is any area of my life where I need greater freedom, where I need to let go, so as to follow him more closely.
I allow the Lord to show me and to help me.
What does “carrying the cross” mean for me?
Perhaps there are burdens that I carry willingly or difficulties that I find hard to bear?
I ask the Lord to help me in whatever ways I need.
I may like to end by praying these words slowly...
Lord Jesus, my Friend and Brother, may I see you more clearly, love you more dearly and follow you more nearly, day by day.
Lord, what do you want to say to me through your Word today?
I come slowly to stillness in the presence of God.
After a time, I read the gospel passage, perhaps several times, mulling gently over its words and their meaning for me.
I know that Jesus loves me and longs for me to follow him as his disciple.
I share with him all the people, places and things that are part of my life at the moment.
I may want to thank him for those ways in which I am able to use my gifts in his service.
Perhaps I ask the Lord if there is any area of my life where I need greater freedom, where I need to let go, so as to follow him more closely.
I allow the Lord to show me and to help me.
What does “carrying the cross” mean for me?
Perhaps there are burdens that I carry willingly or difficulties that I find hard to bear?
I ask the Lord to help me in whatever ways I need.
I may like to end by praying these words slowly...
Lord Jesus, my Friend and Brother, may I see you more clearly, love you more dearly and follow you more nearly, day by day.
Readings Next Week: 24th Sunday in
Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Exodus 32:7-11. 13-14
Second Reading: 1 Timothy 1:12-17
Gospel: Luke 15:1-32
Elaine Milic, Joan Singline, Connie
Fulton, Andrew Bartlett, Jack McLaren, Warren Milfull & ...
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Fred Westerway, Mary Adkins, Rob Marsh, Peter Reid, Margaret
Sheehan, Nicolle Gillam-Barber, Ernest Pilcher, Tod Brett, Kevin Wells, Jean
Bowden, David Rossiter, Henk de Kroon.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 31st
August – 6th September
Ruth Healey, Margaret Newell,
Laurance Kelcey, Terry McKenna, Margaret Hayes, Theodore Clarke, Maxine Milton,
Ronald Finch, Geoffrey Matthews, Jean Mochrie,
Brian Astell, Gwendoline Jessup,
Robert Adkins, Len Bramich, Frank Duggan,
Audrey Enniss &
Terence Doody and all our fathers in Heaven; also Lance Cox.
May they Rest in Peace
God took
the strength of a mountain, the majesty of a tree,
The
warmth of a summer sun, the calm of a quiet sea,
The
generous soul of nature, the comforting arm of night,
The
wisdom of the ages, the power of the eagle’s flight,
The joy
of a morning in spring, the faith of a mustard seed,
The
patience of eternity, the depth of a family need,
Then God
combined these qualities, when there was nothing more to add,
He knew
His masterpiece was complete,
And so,
he called it … Dad.
May God
bless all our Dads on earth and in Heaven!
WEEKLY RAMBLINGS:
It’s 4.30am on Thursday morning and I’ve just listened to a Webinar featuring Patrick Lencioni from the Amazing Parish Organisation - www.amazingparish.org. He was speaking about a Book he has just written – The Better Pastor – and commenting on the reasons for writing the book – supporting Pastors in our work. As the discussion progressed he also provided some comments on the 3 Building Blocks that are needed to build a better Parish. If anyone wants a link to the webinar please contact the Parish Office.
First on his list is A Reliance on Prayer and the Sacraments. You will find that I have included a prayer for the Parish in the newsletter this weekend – I would encourage everyone to pray this prayer daily for our parish and our needs. Secondly he says that we need to be Committed to a Healthy Organisation. This might seems strange but in his writings he suggests that the reason Parishes can stagnate (not grow) is because we are afraid to tackle difficult problems (people) or even acknowledge that these things/people even exist. Thirdly he says that we need A Passion for Evangelisation and Discipleship – and that means it needs to be more than just me talking about it.
Two
weeks ago a group of people gathered at Ulverstone to listen to Lorraine
McCarthy talk about Parish Renewal and the Alpha Program as a possible process
on this journey. I would like to offer another opportunity to gather on Friday
night, 16th, at the Parish House from 6.30pm for a bite to eat and
chat about where we go to next (Soup, sandwiches and Pizza). I know that the
Charismatic Retreat is on that weekend but the following weekend is the
Ordination weekend and then it is the end of September!!
Still
no more news about the numbers needed for billets for the Ordination weekend –
we will be in touch as soon as we know. The list for Food for the weekend is
still available for people to add their names please.
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION: Next weekend in Devonport,
Ulverstone, Port Sorell, Latrobe and Penguin to assist the work of the St
Vincent de Paul Society.
HEALING MASS: Catholic Charismatic Renewal, are
sponsoring a HEALING MASS with Fr Alexander Obiorah at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin Thursday
15th September, commencing at 7.00pm (please note earlier
start at 7.00 pm). After Mass, teams will be available for individual prayer. Please
bring a friend and a plate for supper and fellowship in the hall. If you wish
to know more or require local transport, please contact Celestine Whiteley 6424:2043,
Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068, Zoe Smith
6426:3073 or Tom Knaap 6425:2442.
ST MARY’S
CHURCH PENGUIN: All parishioners and friends are
welcome to attend a fun and informal celebration for Elizabeth Nickols' 70th
birthday Saturday 24th September after 6pm Vigil Mass, Penguin. If you are able to assist with a plate of
food could you please contact Jen Nickols on 6273:8494/0418 425 676 or email
jnpenguin@westnet.com.au
FOOTY POINTS MARGIN TICKETS:
Round 23 West Coast Eagles won by 29 Points Winners: Mary Bryan,
Charlie’s Angels.
Just a reminder that the footy margin ticket is only on the Friday
night game!!
GRAND
FINAL FOOTY MARGIN TICKETS:
$10.00 tickets are
now selling – hurry and get yours today! The winner of the $10 tickets will receive $500.00 and the holder of the ticket
with the number either side of the winning number $100.00. The $10.00 tickets
are only
available from Devonport and Ulverstone Mass Centres or by phoning the Parish Office
6424:2783 or Mary Webb 6425:2781. The weekly $2.00 footy margin tickets will be
sold (as normal) during the finals.
BINGO
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 8th
September – Tony Ryan & Terry Bird
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
JOURNALING PRAYER RETREAT – FR RAY SANCHEZ: will be running a two day live in retreat at Maryknoll House of Prayer on October 15th and 16th 2016. This is the most precious gift you can give yourself. Journaling prayer is a process and resource to help you reach a psychologically and spiritually healthy you. If you wish to enquire about attending please phone Anne on 0407704539 or email: journallingretreat@iinet.net.au
CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL STATE CONFERENCE 2016: is being conducted at the Emmanuel Retreat Centre, 123 Abbott St, Launceston from 7:30pm Friday 16 September till 1:00pm Sunday 18th September 2016, The theme being “Be merciful as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).
Guest presenters include: Fr Graeme Howard, Fr Mark Freeman VG, and Fr Alexander Obiorah.
Application forms with further details including accommodation and daily attendance costs are included on Church notice boards.
Please contact Celestine Whiteley on 6424 2043, if you wish to attend so that payments and transport can be organized locally.
UTOPIA, WITH LIMITS
When I was a child there was a popular song whose chorus repeated this line: Everyone is searching for Utopia. And we all are. Every one of us longs for a world without limits, for a life where nothing goes wrong, for a place where there’s no tension or frustration. But it never happens. There’s no such place.
Anahid Nersessian recently wrote a book entitled, Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment, within which she criticizes various ideologies for, naively, giving the impression that we can have a world without limits. She particularly blames liberal ideology which, she submits, privileges limitlessness by setting “itself, almost by default, against the governing and guiding of desire.” But, as she argues in the book, limitation is what’s life-giving. We will find happiness only when we accommodate ourselves to the world by minimizing the demands we place on it. For Nersessian, if Utopia is to be had, it will be had only by finding the realistic limits of our lives and adjusting ourselves to them. Over-expectation makes for disappointment.
She’s right. Believing there’s a world without limits makes for unrealistic expectations and a lot of frustration. By thinking we can find Utopia, we invariably set up the perfect as the enemy of the good; thus habitually denigrating our actual relationships, marriages, careers, and lives because they, unlike our fantasies, perpetually have limits and therefore always seem second-best.
Nersessian tends to blame liberal ideology for giving us this impression, but the unrealistic dream and expectation of Utopia is most everywhere in our world. In effect, we no longer have, either in our churches or in our world, the symbolic tools to properly explain or handle frustration. How so?
When I was a child, my head didn’t just reverberate with the tune, Everyone is Looking for Utopia, it was also reverberated with a number of other tunes I’d learned in church and in the culture at large. Our churches then were teaching us about something it called, “original sin”, the belief that a primordial fall at the origins of human life has, until the end of time, flawed both human nature and nature itself in such a way that what we will meet and experience in this life will always be imperfect, limited, somewhat painful, and somewhat frustrating.
Sometimes this was understood in an overly simplistic way and sometimes it left us wondering about the nature of God, but nonetheless it gave us a vision within which to understand life and handle frustration. At the end of the day, it taught us that, this side of eternity, there’s no such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy. Everything has a shadow. Happiness lies in accepting these limits, not in stoic resignation, but in a practical, buoyant vision that, because it has already incorporated limit and has no false expectations, lets you properly receive, honor, and enjoy the good things in life. Since the perfect cannot be had in this life, you then give yourself permission to appreciate the imperfect.
This religious vision was re-enforced by a culture which also told us that there was no Utopia to be had here. It told us instead that, while you may dream high and you may expect to live better than your parents did, don’t expect that you can have it all. Life cannot deliver that to you. Like its religious counterpart in its explanation of original sin, this secular wisdom too had its over-simplistic and flawed expressions. But it helped imprint in us some tools with which to more realistically understand life. It told us, in its own flawed way, a truth that I have often quoted from Karl Rahner: In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we ultimately learn that, here in this life, there is no finished symphony. How succinct and how accurate!
It’s interesting to note how this religious view is paralleled in the atheistic view of Rahner’s contemporary, the Nobel-Prize winning writer, Albert Camus. Camus, who did not believe in God, famously proposed an image within which to understand human life and its frustrations: He compared this world to a medieval prison. Some medieval prisons were deliberately built to be too small for the prisoner, with a ceiling so low that the prisoner could never stand fully upright and the room itself too small for the prisoner to ever stretch out fully. The idea was that the frustration of not being able to stand up or stretch out fully would eventually break the prisoner’s spirit, like a trainer breaking a horse. For Camus, this is our experience of the world. We can never stand fully upright and or stretch out fully. The world is too small for us. While this may seem severe, stoic, and atheistic; in the end, it teaches the same truth as Christianity, there’s no Utopia this side of eternity.
And we need, in healthy ways, to be integrating this truth into lives so as to better equip ourselves to handle frustration and appreciate the lives that we are actually living.
7 KEYS TO INSPIRING VISION CASTING
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. The original blog an be found here
Casting an inspiring and faithful vision is an essential part of living out your church’s mission. Every church leader has a vision planted in them by God for their ministry, but fewer stick around to see their vision become a reality. That doesn’t have to be. Here are some common pitfalls to be avoided as you seek out God’s vision for your ministry.
Your vision is not “God-sized”
The first mistake is settling for too little. A God sized vision is one that keeps you energized throughout the day and up at night. It’s that big.
You’re not thinking strategically
The vision is about the destination; strategy is how we get there. Allow your strategies to continue to change and evolve as the horizon of your vision increases. A poorly conceived strategy will produce a lack of results and endless frustration. Don’t let lack of results question your vision, rather question your strategies.
You’ve got a passionless presentation
A great vision can be hurt by passionless presentation. Vision statements on the wall don’t automatically make people want to sacrifice their time, talent and treasure but people will sacrifice a lot for a God sized vision and passion to match. Even if you’re not a charismatic personality, you can find other ways (and people) to express your vision passionately.
Your church has competing visions
When conflict arises on a church staff, it is probably not because they lack vision, but rather because they lack shared vision. Contradicting visions is a pretty good indication that neither is really God-centered. God’s vision is not contradictory but unifying. If you’re stuck with competing visions, take a big step back and return to prayer and discernment before any more vision casting.
You’ve got too much information
A common mistake when communicating your vision to a large group is over sharing on the details. It’s not about hiding, but focus on what’s relevant and what people really need to know. On the flip side, it is also a mistake for leaders to try to figure it all out before doing anything. Start leading based on the dreams that a God put inside of you.
Your “why” is unclear
At Nativity, it’s a common refrain that “when you lose your why you lose your way.” Often the “why” is clear at first, but as months and years go by, people tend to forget, and that’s when things get off track. Be vigilant about keeping your why front and center.
You’re not taking risks
A risk free environment is designed for maintenance, not mission. Risk in essential for growth. The growth of your leadership is directly connected to your willingness to take risks. Don’t allow fear of losing what you have keep you from gaining what God has for you. Develop a capacity for pain. You can’t take risks inside of your comfort zone. Your leadership capacity is in direct proportion to your pain threshold.
Action and
Contemplation: Week 1
The Contemplative Mind
(Feast of
Lady Julian of Norwich)
What is the
relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and
do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding,
freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give
others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own
obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about
ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more
tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action.
--Thomas
Merton [1]
I founded
the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because I saw a deep need for
the integration of both action and contemplation. Over the years I met many
social activists who were doing excellent social analysis and advocating for
crucial justice issues, but they were not working from an energy of love except
in their own minds. They were still living out of their false self with the
need to win, the need to look good, the attachment to a superior, politically
correct self-image.
They might
have the answer, but they are not themselves the answer. In fact, they are
often part of the problem. That's one reason that most revolutions fail. Too
many reformers self-destruct from within. For that very reason, I believe,
Jesus and great spiritual teachers first emphasize transformation of
consciousness and soul. Unless that happens, there is no lasting or grounded
reform or revolution. When a subjugated people rise to power, they often become
as controlling and dominating as their oppressors because the same demon of
power has never been exorcised in them. We need less reformation and more
transformation.
The lie
always comes in a new form that looks like enlightenment. We are easily allured
by the next new thing, the new politically correct agenda. And then we discover
it's run by unenlightened people who in fact do not love God but love
themselves. They do not love the truth, but love control. The need to be in
power, to have control, and to say someone else is wrong is not enlightenment.
Such unenlightened leaders do not love true freedom for everybody but freedom
for their new ideas. That's been my great disappointment with many liberals.
Untransformed liberals often lack the ability to sacrifice the self or create
foundations that last. They can't let go of their own need for change and
control and cannot stand still in a patient, humble way as people of deep faith
often can. It is no surprise that Jesus prayed not just for fruit, but
"fruit that will last" (John 15:16). Conservatives, on the other
hand, idolize anything that lasts, but then stop asking the question, "Is
it actually bearing any fruit?" It is the perennial battle between
ideologues and pragmatism.
If we are
going to have truly prophetic people who go beyond the categories of liberal
and conservative, we have to teach them some way to integrate their needed
activism with a truly contemplative mind and heart. In CAC's early years, I
think our first internships were about 50% social critique and 50%
contemplation. As time has gone on, we've more and more emphasized
contemplation. I'm convinced that once you learn how to look out at life from
the contemplative eyes of the True Self, your politics and economics are going
to change on their own. I don't need to teach you what your politics should or
shouldn't be. Once you see things contemplatively, you'll begin to seek the
bias from the bottom, you'll be free to embrace your shadow, and you can live
at peace with those who are "different." From a contemplative stance,
you'll know what action is yours to do almost naturally.
References:
[1] Thomas
Merton, ed. Lawrence Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: Essential
Writings (Paulist Press: 1992), 375.
Alternative Consciousness
I often use
this line, a paraphrase of Albert Einstein: "No problem can be solved by
the same consciousness that caused it." Unfortunately, we have been trying
to solve almost all our problems with the very same mind that caused them,
which is the calculating or dualistic mind. This egocentric mind usually reads
everything in terms of short-term effect, in terms of what's in it for me and
how I can look good. As long as you read reality from that small self, you're
not going to see things in any new way. All the great religions taught a
different way of seeing, a different perspective. This alternative vantage
point is the contemplative or non-dual mind. It is what we usually mean by
wisdom.
The word
contemplation has ancient roots, but for a long time it was not taught much in
the Western church. Contemplation was finally rediscovered again through Thomas
Merton's writings in the 1950s and 60s. What is contemplation? Simply put,
contemplation is entering a deeper silence and letting go of our habitual
thoughts, sensations, and feelings. You may know contemplation by another name.
Many religions use the word meditation. Christians often use the word prayer.
But for many in the West, prayer has come to mean something functional,
something you do to achieve a desired effect, which puts you back in charge.
Prayers of petition aren't all bad, but they don't really lead to a new state
of being or consciousness. The same old consciousness is self-centered: How can
I get God to do what I want God to do? This kind of prayer allows you to remain
an untransformed, egocentric person who is just trying to manipulate God.
That's one
reason why religion is in such desperate straits today: it isn't really
transforming people. It's merely giving people some pious and religious ways to
again be in charge and in control. It's still the same small self or what
Merton called the false self. Mature, authentic spirituality calls us into experiences
and teachings that open us to an actual transformation of consciousness (Romans
12:2). I think some form of contemplative practice is necessary to be able to
detach from your own agenda, your own anger, your own ego, and your own fear.
We need some practice that touches our unconscious conditioning where all our
wounds and defense mechanisms lie. That's the only way we can be changed at any
significant or lasting level.
For a full
lifestyle change, I believe we need both action and contemplation. The state of
the communal soul is the state of the social order. As Jack Jezreel, founder of
JustFaith puts it, "The world cannot be changed by love to become just
unless we are changed by love to become whole, but we cannot be made whole
without engaging in the work of making the world whole. Personal transformation
and social transformation are one piece." [1]
References:
[1] Jack
Jezreel, "To Love Without Exception," "Perfection," Oneing,
Vol. 4 No. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 52.
Watching the River
To live in
the present moment requires a change in our inner posture. Instead of expanding
or shoring up our fortress of "I"--the ego--which culture and often
therapy try to help us do, contemplation waits to discover what this
"I" consists of. What is this "I" that I take so seriously?
To discover
the answer, we have to calmly observe our own stream of consciousness and see
its compulsive patterns. That's what happens in the early stages of
contemplation, which does not yet feel like prayer. We wait in silence. In
silence all our usual patterns assault us. Our patterns of control, addiction,
negativity, tension, anger, and fear assert themselves. When Jesus is
"driven" by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things that
show up are "wild beasts" (Mark 1:13). Contemplation is not first of
all consoling, which is why so many give up. Yes, the truth will set you free,
but first it will make you miserable.
Most
teachers insist on at least twenty minutes for a full contemplative "sit,"
because you can assume that the first half (or more) of any contemplative
prayer time is just letting go of those thoughts, judgments, fears, negations,
and emotions that want to impose themselves on you. You have to become the
watcher, where you step back from those things and observe them without
judgment. You separate from them and you watch them "over there"
until you realize that feeling is not me. I'm over here watching that over
there, which means it isn't me.
Thomas
Keating teaches a beautifully simple exercise to use in contemplation. Imagine
yourself sitting on the bank of a river. Observe each of your thoughts coming
along as if they're saying, "Think me, think me." Watch your feelings
come by saying, "Feel me, feel me." Acknowledge that you're having
the feeling; acknowledge that you're having the thought. Don't hate it, don't
judge it, don't critique it, don't, in any way, move against it. Simply name
it: "resentment toward so and so," "a thought about such and
such." Admit that you're having it, then place it on a boat and let it go
down the river. The river is your stream of consciousness.
In the early
stages of beginning a contemplative practice (and for the first few minutes of
each new contemplative experience), you're simply observing your repetitive
thoughts. The small, ego self can't do this because it's rather totally
identified with its own thoughts and illusions, which are all the ego has. In
fact, the ego is a passing game. That's why it's called the false self. It's
finally not real. Most people live out of their false self, so "they think
they are their thinking." They don't have a clue who they are apart from
their thoughts. What you are doing in contemplation is moving to a level
beneath your thoughts: the level of pure and naked being. This is the level of
pure consciousness. This is not consciousness of anything in particular; it's
simply naked awareness.
You may be
wondering what's the point of such contemplation. The point is that if God
wants to get at you--and my assumption is that God always does--if God wants to
get through your barriers and blockages, God has the best chance of doing so
through contemplative practice, quite simply because you and your limited mind
are finally out of the way!
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999), 75; and
Contemplative
Prayer (CAC: 2007), CD, MP3 download.
Becoming Pure in Heart
True
religion is radical; it cuts to the root (radix is Latin for root). It moves us
beyond our "private I" and into full reality. Jesus seems to be
saying in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) that our inner attitudes and
states are the real sources of our problems. We need to root out the problems at
that level. Jesus says not only that you must not kill, but that you must not
even harbor hateful anger. He clearly begins with the necessity of a "pure
heart" (Matthew 5:8) and knows that the outer behavior will follow. Too
often we force the outer and the inner remains like a cancer.
If you walk
around with hatred all day, morally you're just as much a killer as the one who
pulls out the gun. We can't live that way and not be destroyed. Yet, for some
reason, many Christians have thought they could think and feel hatred,
negativity, and fear. The evil and genocide of World War II was the final
result of decades of negative and paranoid thinking among good German
Christians.
Jesus tells
us to not harbor hateful anger or call people names in our hearts like
"fool" or "worthless person" (Matthew 5:22). If we're
walking around all day thinking, "What an idiot he is," we're living
out of death, not life. If that's what we think and feel, that's what we will
be--death energy instead of life force. Apparently we cannot afford even inner
disconnection from love. How we live in our hearts is our real truth.
In Matthew
5:44, Jesus insists that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute
us. For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love, returning to love,
trusting that love is the unceasing stream of reality. Prayer isn't primarily
words; it's a place, an attitude, a stance. That's why Paul could say,
"Pray unceasingly" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). If we think of prayer as
requiring words, it is surely impossible to pray always. Once we recognize that
whatever we do in conscious, loving union with Reality is prayer, we can better
understand what Paul means.
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad
Publishing Company: 1999), 80-82.
Radical Transformation
Mature
religion teaches contemplation as a path to true transformation. But before we
are ready to be shaken and changed at our roots, we need religion at its lower
levels to help us develop a healthy ego. Ken Wilber describes religion's
different roles along the spiritual and developmental journey:
[Religion]
itself has always performed two very important, but very different, functions.
One, it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers
myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals, that,
taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and endure, the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune.
This is good
and needed. That's how you get started. As psychology would say, you have to
have an ego to let go of an ego. You have to have a self to move beyond the
self. But most religion stops at this first function, simply giving you a
positive self-image and identity--that I'm religious, moral, dedicated, or
whatever my sense of worth and belonging might be. Wilber continues:
This
function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of
consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation. Nor does
it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self altogether. Rather,
it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends the self, promotes the self.
As long as the separate self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths
the prayers, or embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed,
will be "saved"--either now in the glory of being God-saved or
Goddess-favored, or in an afterlife that ensures eternal wonderment.
We're never
totally sure what "saved" is supposed to mean, but everybody uses the
word rather glibly. I suppose in most Western Christians' minds it means going
to heaven, that I'm going to get some reward later for behaving or believing in
a certain way. It sounds like a very bad reward/punishment novel. It's
preposterous that anybody believes this could be the Great God's simplistic
agenda, but if you haven't really worked with it (and I'm fortunate that I have
had time to work with it), you believe it because everybody else does. You
figure this many people can't be wrong. They must be right that life is a giant
reward/punishment system, and if you jump through the hoops properly, you'll
get the reward. It's not really about becoming "a new creation"
(Galatians 6:15). You don't have to be transformed; you just have to play the
game right. This is first half of life religion. It deals with the small self,
the false self, and is all about requirements.
Wilber goes
on to explain the second function of religion:
But two,
religion has also served--in a usually very, very small minority--the function
of radical transformation and liberation. This function does not fortify the
separate self, but utterly shatters it--not consolation but devastation, not
entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but
revolution--in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a
radical transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness
itself. [1]
This is true
religious conversion. This is second half of life religion, although it can
happen at any age. The experience occurs when God or life destabilizes your
private ego, usually through some form of suffering. It will feel like dying
because it is the death of the false self. The small, separate self is
shattered, and your True Self is revealed. The True Self is all about right
relationship, not requirements. It's not about being correct; it's about being
connected, which you always were--you just didn't realize it. This is the self
that is capable of contemplation because it no longer reads reality from an
egocentric position.
Contemplation
is indeed radical because it's a way of being in the world, walking in the
world, and seeing the world that is absolutely different than the daily grind
of ideas and contests.
References:
[1] Ken
Wilber, One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality (Shambhala:
2000), 25-26.
Contemplation AND Action
I used to
think that most of us must begin with contemplation or a unitive encounter with
God and are then led through that experience to awareness of the suffering of
the world and to solidarity with that suffering in some form of action. I do
think that's true for many people, but as I read the biblical prophets and
observe Jesus' life, I think it also happens in reverse: first action, and then
needed contemplation.
No life is
immune from suffering. When we are in solidarity with pain, injustice, war,
oppression, colonization--the list goes on and on--we face immense pressure to
despair, to become angry or dismissive. When reality is split dualistically
between good and bad, right and wrong, we too are torn apart. Yet when we are
broken, we are most open to contemplation, or non-dual thinking. We are
desperate to resolve our own terror, anger, and disillusionment, and so we
allow ourselves to be led into the silence that holds everything together in
wholeness.
The
contemplative, non-dual mind is not saying, "Everything is
beautiful," even when it's not. However, you do come to "Everything
is still beautiful" by facing the conflicts between how reality is and how
you wish it could be. In other words, you have to begin--and most people do in
their adult years--with dualistic problems. You've got to name good and evil
and differentiate between right and wrong. You can't be naive about evil. But
if you stay focused on this duality, you'll go crazy! You'll become an
unlovable, judgmental, dismissive person. I've witnessed this pattern in
myself. You must eventually find a bigger field, a wider frame, which we call
non-dual thinking.
Jesus does
not hesitate to name good and evil and to show that evil is a serious matter.
Jesus often speaks in dualistic images, for example, "You cannot serve God
and mammon" (Matthew 6:24). He draws a stark line between the sheep and
the goats, the good and the wicked (Matthew 25:31-46). Yet Jesus goes on to
overcome these dualisms by what we would call the contemplative mind. You are
honest about what the goats are doing, maybe too honest for most people, but
you do not become hateful nor do you need to punish the goats in your life. You
keep going deeper until you can also love them.
Beginning
with dualistic action and moving toward contemplation seems to be the more
common path in the modern era. We see this pattern in Dorothy Day, Thomas
Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Jean Vanier. These people
entered into the pain of society and had to go to God to find rest for their
soul, because their soul was so torn by the broken, split nature of almost
everything, including themselves.
The most
important word in our Center's name is not Action nor is it Contemplation, but
the word and. We need both action and contemplation to have a whole spiritual
journey. It doesn't matter which comes first; action may lead you to
contemplation and contemplation may lead you to action. But finally, they need
and feed each other.
Daniel Berrigan SJ: Going back to the poetry
American Jesuit Daniel Berrigan died on 30 April 2016. As well as being an influential anti-war activist, he was a celebrated poet, and Emily Holman has relished having the opportunity to ponder Berrigan’s words in recent months and reflect on ‘the closeness of poetry and life’ that he communicated so creatively. In his poems we journey into and through darkness, are challenged by encounters and, above all, are guided by the hand of God.
The original article can be found on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
Death can be serendipitous. I hadn’t heard of Daniel Berrigan until he died and Christian and secular media exploded with articles about his life and activism. Not having grown up with the frames of reference that surround the Roman Catholic tradition, even the most renowned of Jesuit heroes like Ignatius of Loyola or Francis Xavier weren’t figures I had heard of. I knew of Jesuits in a very childlike and immediate sense: because they ran the best secondary school in Lebanon, five minutes away from the village I lived in as a child. I knew that a Jesuit priest had married my parents, and that the Canadian and French Jesuits who had made the Society of Jesus famous in Lebanon were close family friends, and used to wind down with wine and cigars in my grandmother’s garden before she died. As I grew older I learnt a tiny bit more about Jesuits, mainly because Gerard Manley Hopkins was one. But it’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to encounter Jesuits in a realer sense, and that I’ve learnt about the tradition of the vocation and its meaning. My experience is still very nascent. Coming across the poetry of Daniel Berrigan, thanks to the publicity surrounding his death, has been one of the delights of new encounter.
There’s a beauty in freshness. The first poem I read was ‘A Dark Word’ (read it here), which was one of three Berrigan poems published in the April 1964 issue of Poetry magazine. The other two are good, too, complex, they call for more attention, and yet I kept – I keep – coming back to this one. It grapples so beautifully with the interplay between poetry and life: with the point of poetry, with what poetry is. Its first line reads: ‘As I walk patiently through life’. It’s such a slow, contemplative opening to a poem. It might be Wordsworth. And then a slight disruption: ‘poems follow close’. They have to, is the implication; there’s no other way. Poems are the deciphering of life, it seems: a way of coming to know, a mode of encountering one’s own experience. Yet the third line turns and twists again: poems are blind and dumb, silent and unseeing, stoppered somehow. Is it that they express, without perceiving? Are poems unspeaking symbols? ‘Blind’ and ‘dumb’ are words that threaten a narrowing of sense-experience; so what is it that enables poetry’s ‘agility’? Because these poems follow, don’t forget, wherever the poet walks: they’re his shadow, the mind’s dark overflow. There is an inevitability to them, and to the writing of them, which implies that, despite their imperfection and darkness, the poems are doing important work. It’s the poems that allow the walking to be patient. Were it not for these close-by poems, these alert markers and makers of experience, that opening line would be very different.
And Berrigan goes on: ‘The poem called death / is unwritten yet.’ It’s as if once an event comes, so too does a poem. Life will end, and there will be wisps left, shadows and ghosts, the abrupt end of a last line followed by a blank page. Does anyone ever know that the last thing written will be the last? Berrigan supposes it here, knowing that that will one day be the reality, and that someone, browsing his book, will come to the end, and close it shut. Reading this poem reminded me of a strange sense I’ve had recently reading Hopkins’s journals. He’s writing about Oxford, often, where I study; at other times he writes about St Beuno’s in North Wales, now a Jesuit spirituality centre. Reading him I feel the close echo of another life intimately. It’s a life full of what fills mine, what fills everyone’s: passionate care for the responsibility of being alive, passionate fear about that responsibility. Hopkins watches time passing and comments on it, marking it, and tries to live well. Writing helps. His entries are about trees and flowers, daily patterns, a strong wind, a visitor to a quiet place. Many days are unmarked. But what is the marking for? Why do we do it, this recapping of the day’s weather or the minutiae of moods? Why do ‘poems follow close’? When I close Hopkins’s diaries I wonder if he ever thought of other people reading about his daily thoughts 150 years after they occurred and feeling settled and calmed, and ready to go on, because, however briefly, they’ve been steadied.
Berrigan thought about it. He thought about his poems being read. Behind everything else in his continuingly resonant poem is the purpose of God. It is troubled, not easy; it feels complex; and the poet isn’t complacent. It’s significant that the hands that are purposeful like God’s are closing a book: it isn’t a metaphor that opens; it isn’t pacifying. But the hand is there.
After I read ‘A Dark Word’, I did what, as an Oxford student, I am lucky enough to be able to do. I called up all the Bodleian Library’s holdings of Berrigan’s work. So each afternoon in the library, working on my thesis, I have a break with some of Daniel’s poetry. I haven’t been struck by all of it – whether through inadequate focus and attention or tiredness or just a non-fit of poem to person. But I’ve loved a lot of it almost instantaneously. My favourite volume, of those I’ve read, is Encounters. The book is in two parts. The first is a series of meetings with figures from the bible and Christian tradition, including Eve, Abel, Isaac, Christ, Mary, Lazarus, Apostles, Saints Stephen and John of the Cross. In one, the Mary poem, is a line pertaining to what I’m beginning to think of as a Berrigan-theme: ‘Poems, like life, come to a dark mood’. There’s the word again, ‘dark’, and again the closeness of poetry and life. And it’s the poems that are dark, just as they are blind and agile.
The second part of Encounters offers meetings of another kind. Some are grounded in place, in Florence or Chartres. Some are meetings of thought, or image, or challenge, or task. ‘Heart grows wakeful for responsibility’. This is an experience at the centre of what it is to be human. God’s purpose, and ours – those are what we seek. Reading these poems has been a process of knowing the experience of that seeking.
I still know very little about Daniel Berrigan. But I’ve felt vividly the gift of knowing that comes with poetry. My stomach has twisted as I open a page at random in the Selected and New Poemsedition of 1973, to see the opening stanza of a poem entitled ‘Abraham’, which comes fromEncounters:
To see my small son
running ahead: pausing above a flower,
bringing to me some trifle of hedgerow
wearying, sighing, seeking my hand
The scene and the mood are instantly present. The child’s enthusiasm and eagerness are felt, and then his childlike tiring, his need for the parent he trusts above all else, quiet and assumed; and behind those moods is that of the watching father, wretched, being torn with pain. Heart painful with blame, as Ted Hughes has it in his Oresteia. Later in that poem God’s hand features again. ‘I am sift of dust / in that Hand unmercifully blown / through mountain passes, a consummation // no nightmare of mine had groaned’.
The final poem in Encounters, not included in the Selected and New, is ‘This Book Bears’. It reminds you that poems are written to be read: that they provide encounters of their own. They’re a way of meeting – a very different kind of meeting to that which might take place face to face, though, if one is lucky, the face to face meeting might be as meaningful as the meeting in poetry. The book, Berrigan tells us, bears, ‘like a good voyager, marks of passage: / to proclaim, being loved / and led by hand through time, a life between the lines’. There’s the connection of writing and living again, and of writing and being loved. It’s Berrigan’s own life between the lines in this poem, from 1960, and he gives the sense in that stanza of having reached a conclusion, of having found rest. There’s the remainder of the poem to unsettle that rest, of course, not to mention ‘A Dark Word’ of four years later – let alone the life itself. Yet rest found, for however fine and fleeting a moment, is rest. I’ve found rest in this man’s poems. And I’ve been glad to have come to learn a sense of the man through his poetry before anything else. It’s rare, with contemporary figures, and quite a gift.
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