IDEAS, QUOTATIONS, ETC.
Topics Used
Angel Assurance Baptism of Jesus Christmas Child Communion Contemplation Cross Danger Darkness Darkness of God Doubt Eucharist Faith Fire-judgment by -forgiveness by Glory God, Hidden God’s Kingdom Heaven Heritage Hidden God-Knowledge of Hidden Life Holiness Hope Intention--Prayer Isaiah 6 1 John John of the Cross Judgment--sin Justice-mercy Julian of Norwich Law (torah) Life of Holiness Listening Living with ourselves Love Ministry Muto Pacificism Praise, Sacrifice of Prayer Prayer, Teresian Presence, Holy Psalm Quest for the Holy Remembrance Respectfulness Retreat Saints Scripture Sermon Silence Simplicity St. Francis Suffering Teresa of Avila Tombstone Epitath Wesley Writing
Quotations
Ordered by Date
November 24, 1989
CROSS : "It is when our silence is filled with the vision of the Crucified that we really know what we are. Then we see our sin as His cross, His crown of thorns, His dark dereliction. We see our meanness and cowardice in His eyes of love, our disloyalty in His smile of welcome, our selfishness in His ministering hands, our reluctance in His hastening feet." E. E. Herman, The Findinq of the Cross: An Introduction to the Practice of Mysticism . New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926, p. 42.
November 24, 1989
SAINTS 11/24/89: "Our hearts are not made of different stuff from the hearts of the saints; the difference between us and the saints is that they held their hearts still and gave them to be broken." E. E. Herman, The Findinq of the Cross, p. 50
December 1, 1989
LAW - SCRIPTURE: "One reason why the Law was given to Moses on Sinai was that the Chosen People were afraid to speak directly with God or have Him speak to them.
Quoted Ex. 20:19-20
Meditation on the Law of the Lord was now a valid substitute for the intimate familiarity with God which had been the joy and light of the patriarchs. How could this be so if meditation on the Law did not lead to a union of minds and wills with God, if meditation did not bear fruit in a holy and supernatural conversation with God, sanctifed by filial fear, and consecrated by reverence, obedience and self-sacrificing love? The reward of this meditation was the light of supernatural prudence, a wisdom which penetrated the meaning of the Law. This meditation on the Law meant that men not only externally fulfilled its prescriptions but understood their import, saw them in relation to God's purposes for man. This understanding brought man face to face with the power and mercy of God, reflected in His promises to the holy nation and in His designs for them. The fruit of understanding was indefectible moral strength, supernatural courage" (cf. v. 20). Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, The Liturgical press, 1960pp. 49-50.
February 5, 1991
JUDGMENT - SIN: "H. Richard Niebuhr lamented in our time a Christianity so anemic that it imagined 'a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kinqdom of God in America. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, 1937, p. 193.
March 3, 1991
JUSTICE-MERCY 3/6/91: "I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing; without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice. Such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the brethren--rush inside the center of the lifegiving Fire whose outer circles burn." George MacDonald, Discoverinq the Character of God. Found in CT 2/22/91, p. 42.
March 21, 1991
DARKNESS OF GOD: "O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, . . . I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinquished, for the scene to be changed . . . T. S. Eliot, "East Coker," The Four Quartets. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1943, p. 27.
March 26, 1991
FIRE--JUDGEMENT BY--FORGIVENESS-CLEANSING BY--BAPTISM OF JESUS T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," Four Quartets (San Diego: Harcout Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1943), p. 57.
The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.
March 26, 1991
HIDDEN GOD-KNOWLEDGE OF: For Exodus 20:18-21. "The knowledge of God is not, and cannot be, a conceptual grasp of a reality perceived through the mind. God is not known in the head. God is the hidden God who is known in the process of inner purification and transformation of consciousness. To believe otherwise is to be an idolater, and idolatry is mo mere moral lapse but a heresy, a mistaken view of how things are." Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend: The Practice of Christian Spirituality. Harper and Row, 1977, p. 155. Used in course lectures on the Holy
Summer, 1996
HERITAGE friendly church: Scripture holiness, Anglican worship tradition, campmeeting spirit. So Bible, theology and experience!
JOHN OF THE CROSS: A spiritual guide for Wesleyans! "a total single commitment to the whole journey of FAITH and LOVE." Doohan, Contemporary Challenqe , 84. Herald article?
JOHN OF THE CROSS: Creation--Isaiah 6. See Spiritual Life 28, 15-25, & 29, 97-105. Doohan, Contemporary Challenge , 125.
ISAIAH 6: Much may a wise man make plain to me, But when a God appears, A different clarity reigns.
Flora Wuellner, “Were not our our hearts burning within us?” Weavings, X, 6 (November/December 1995), 34. She quoted from J. C. F. Hoelderlin (1770-1843), “Celcebration of Peace.” Unpublished Manuscript.
TERESA OF AVILA: Castle VI:11, 1 (421): Matthew 5:6. Wounded by love. Poetry of John of the Cross.
TERESA OF AVILA: Nada te turbe, Nade te espante, Todo se pasa, Dios no se muda, La Paciencia Totdo lo alcanza Quien a Dios tiene Nada le falta, Solo Dios basta.
Let nothing trouble you, Let nothing scare you, All is fleeting, God alone is unchanging, Patience everything obtains, Who possesses God Nothing wants. God alone suffices.
Works, 3, 386. These lines were kept by Saint Teresa in the breviary she was using at the time of her death in 1582. See E. Hamilton, The Life of Saint Teresa , 7.
MINISTRY: Luke 10:16; John 13:20; 20:21-23; Matthew 16; 2 Corinthians 3.
TOMBSTONE EPITATH at Thornhill, Scotland, Church of Scotland: "My dear beloved lives--He is not dead, He has but walked a few short steps ahead." James Hughes, died at age of 40 after serving there 1796-1800.
August 19, 1996
Develop messages like "Counselor" on "Comforter"--"Advocate" --Helper
August 21, 1996
Susan Muto & Adrian van Kaam. Divine Guidance: Learn to Listen and Discern the Will of God . Servant Publications, P. O. Box 8617, An Arbor, MI 48107, 1994. Pp. 206. $8.99. ISBN 0-89283-857-4 800-458-8505.
THE HIDDEN LIFE: The Christian’s Identity, Colossians 3:1-4
Introduction: Seek things above. Why? We have been raised with Christ.
Where is Christ? V. 1 Where are we? V. 3 Who are we? V. 4
Therefore seek, set your minds on . . .
August 23, 1996
REMEMBRANCE: For devotional lecture--"The mystery of redemption lies in remembrance." Words inscribed at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem in memory of the six million slaughtered Jews. Waltraud Hebrstrith, Edith Stein: A Bioqraphy. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985, p. 14. See German title and date.
August 31, 1996
PRAISE, SACRIFICE OF: Psalm 50:23; 51:16-17; Hebrews 13:15
September 2, 1996
PRESENCE, HOLY: Edith Stein's impact on her Jewish mother, p. 94, in biography. For Lev. 9-10 message.
September 17, 1996
PRAYER, TERESIAN (for MY THREE JOHNS): "No human eye can see what God does in the soul during hours of inner prayer. It is grace upon grace. And all of life's other hours are our thanks for them" (Edith Stein, The Hidden Life, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, IV. Edited by L. Gelber and Michael Linssen. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1992], 6.
October 15, 1996
1 JOHN 1:7, 9: Stein, Life, 154, also its my concern about the contribution of St. John.
HOLINESS: "Holiness is a form of the soul that has to emerge from the inmost core, from a level inaccessible both to external influences and to the efforts of the will" (Stein, Life, 159).
WESLEY, ST. JOHN: "Infused Contemplation is a powerful means of sanctification and is intimately connected with the pure and perfect love of God which is God's greatest gift to the soul" (Thomas Merton, quoted in Tuoti, 21).
October 21, 1996
WESLEY-ST. JOHN: "Without contemplation we shall never make much progress in virtue, and shall never be fitted to make others advance therein. We shall never entirely rid ourselves of our weaknesses and imperfections. We shall remain always bound to earth and shall never rise much above mere natural feelings. We shall never be able to render to God perfect service. But with contemplation, we shall effect more both for ourselves and for others in a month than we should accomplish in ten years without it" (quoted in Tuoti, Why Not Be A Mystic? , 40. By Louis Lallemant, S.J. Spiritual Doctrine prin. VII, chap. 4, art. 4, as cited by Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange in The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life vol. 2 [New York: Herder and Herder, 1948], chap. 1. Lallemant was a mystical theologian and spiritual writer of the seventeenth century).
November 12, 1996
EUCHARISTIC MESSAGE: “they ate and were all satisfied” (Luke 9:17).
November 30, 1996
INTENTION--PRAYER: "It is our sincere intention to be in God's presence at the time of our prayer that is important and at the heart of all contemplative prayer practices" (Tuoti, Why Not Be a Mystic , 74-76). See quotations and comments. See also Nouwen, Gracias, 69-70, with #551, and notes from Life of Holiness on prayer, Laudilos Boros.
December 1, 1996
SIMPLICITY: To the fifteen year old nun by an older sister. "The nearer one gets to God, the simpler one becomes" ( The Autobiography of Terese of Lisieux . Tran. John Beaver. Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1957, 92).
BERYL PAGAN: Die zwoelf Grade des Schweiqens ["The Twelve Levels of Silence"], by Sister M. Amata of Jesus, Discalced Carmelite (Duelmen i.W: Verlag Laumann, 1937), & Thomas Merton, "The Inner Experience." Published as an edited offprint serialized over eight issues of Cistercian Studies, 1983-85.
Patrick Hart, ed., The Monastic Journey . Kansas City, MO.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1977. Contains article by Thomas Merton, "Messasge of the Contemplative to the World," which Pope Paul IV in 1964 asked him to compose to be read at the World Synod of Bishops gather in Rome towards the close of Vatican II.
April 24, 1997
QUEST FOR THE HOLY: THE DARKNESS OF GOD--"Abraham closed his eyes and hid himself in the darkness of faith--and found eternal light in its midst" (Martin Luther), quoted from Alister E. McGrath, Spirituality in an Aqe of Chanqe , 1994, 81.
Summer 1997
ANGEL--Luke 22:43
ISAIAH 6--"Well, Senator, we're not always called to be successful but we"re always called to be faithful" Mother Teresa, p. 153.
"FAITH" in the Pastorals
THE CHRISTMAS CHILD--
"Little one, who straight has come Down the heavenly stair, Tell us all about your home, And the father there."
"He is such a one as I, Like as like can be. Do his will, and, by and by, Home and him you'll see."
George MacDonald in Discovering the Character of God
PSALM 119:165--
''Those who love Thy law have great peace."
Torah fulfilled in Jesus. Study Torah in 119, etc. See John 14, 20.
SILENCE--"The most formidable enemy of the spiritural life and the last to be conquered, is self-deception; and if there is a better cure for self-deception than silence, it has yet to be discovered. What pose, however unconscious, can co-exist with habitual silent waiting before God? . Spiritual silence is the turning of the soul to a Power beyond itself." E. Herman, Creative Prayer. New York & London: Harper and Brothers
SERMON: Young and the Church--The Church "constantly goes out to meet new generations And new generations clearly seem to be accepting with enthusiasm what their elders seem to have rejected." This "means that Christ is forever young. It means that the Holy Spirit is incessantly at work." John 5:17 The question: Luke 10:25. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope , 113, 125.
CROSS: "the great Polish poet . . expressed the ultimate meaning of the Christian life": "'Not with the Cross of the Savior behind you, but with your own cross behind the Savior.'" John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope , 224.
1/8/98
On "wait" in the Psalms see marked passages in English NT & Psalms. See also Norris, Cloister, 142.
1/17/98
GOD'S KINGDOM GLORY: "Higher than my highest, He is yet nearer than my inmost part." Evelyn Underhill, Abba: Meditations Based on the Lord's Prayer London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1940, 83.
JULIAN OF NORWICH: "Ail shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Julian of Norwich Showinqs. Trans. Edmund College and James Walsh. New York: Paulist Press, 1978, 153.
1/31/98
ST. FRANCIS: "My God and all things." Deus meus et omnia He is reported to have spent an entire night in prayer repeating this words. Found in John of the Cross, Works, 526.
9/16/98 Long term catch up notes
RESPECTFULNESS: In essentials, unity; In non-essentials, liberty; In all things, charity. Meldenius, 16th century Lutheran
Douglas V. Steere, Prayer and Worship. 248H2828 & 248 S814p PLNYU?
“Paradigm of Spiritual Leadership” Book on Moses, “The Man God Tried to Kill”
1 John 1:9” Hannah Whitall Smith in Benson, Discipline, 62ff.
ASSSURANCE in 1 John #203 “Spirit of Faith Come Down,” Hymns of Faith and Life, Free Methodist
LIFE OF HOLINESS: Add to Introduction Wesley on Christian Perfection the prayers of confession in the Anglican liturgy
August 9, 1999
PSALM 139, Sermon on: Stanza viii, “the deer’s cry”--P. 18 for historical setting.
Be Christ this day my strong protector: against poison and burning against drowning and wounding, through reward wide and plenty . . . Christ beside me, Christ before me; Christ behind me, Christ within me; Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ to right of me, Christ to left of me; Christ in my lying, my sitting, my rising; Christ in heart of all who know me, Christ on tongue of all who meet me, Christ in eye of all who see me, Christ in ear of all who hear me.
(Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer. Doubleday, 1997, 21).
LIVING WITH OURSELVES, testimony of Esther De Waal: writing on the desert fathers: “The essential concern was to stay in one’s cell, to enter into the cave of the heart, ‘A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete, and asked him for a good word. And then the elder said to him, “Go, sit in your cell, and you cell will teach you everything.”’ Here is something essential, inescapable for any of us. Unless we learn to live with ourselves, how can we live with others? Unless we know ourselves, accept ourselves with honesty and forgiveness, how can we possibly know or accept other people? I know that maturity comes only from staying still, from facing what has to be faced, perhaps from engaging in a battle with the forces that threaten me from within and without. Yet in all my years of growing up, no one, neither my own family, my school, or college, helped me to think about what was involved in living with myself. In my more adult years that I have begun to find books and retreats that have given me some practical helps and experience and wisdom (The Celtic Way of Prayer, 95).
November 18, 1999 From” Emily Herman, The Meaning and Value of Mysticis. London: James Clarke & Co.,Limited, 3rd ed. 1922, 1st ed. 1915.
CONTEMPLATION, Definition: “In its essence contemplation is nothing else than a humble, steadfast, brooding attentiveness to the things of eternity in the solitude of our own souls. It means a/concentration of attention, an absorption such as that of the true artist in his subject, which can only be learnt by slow degrees, but is, nevertheless, the natural attitude of a spiritual being. It involves the extrusion of all alien interests, the gathering of scattered thoughts, the folding-in of vagrant imaginings—in short, that attitude of soul which finds its appropriate symbol in the story of the disciples assembling in the upper room and ‘closing the door for fear of the Jews.’ It is not a mood, or a state of feeling, but a discipline, an askesis (107-108).
LOVE as discipline: “That love is not only an inspiration but also a discipline holds nowhere more true than in the soul’s communion with God; and the fundamental reason why we know God so little is that we are too volatile and impressionist to submit to the long, searching process of practising the presence of God. To attend to God is a lost art” (110).
CONTEMPLATION, Introversion in contrast to introspection: Introversion “is a turning inwards, from the circumference to the centre, in order to hold converse, not with oneself, but with the Word, the Spirit, the indwelling Christ, call it what we will, speaking in/the deep places of the soul, purging it from its stains and unreality and guiding it into paths of wisdom, peace and love. . . . /”to the true mystic, the Christ that is found in the heart is not merely a genial and indulgent Friend, but first and foremost a holy Critic/ and a Discerner of secrets, a wise and severe Pedagogue guiding His pupils through the valley of contrition and humble penitence into the happy ways of wisdom, peace and love. . . . In the classic words of William Law, ‘He is in the heart as a Bruiser of thy serpent, as a Light ujnto thy feet . . . as an Holy Oil, to ksoften and overcome the fiery properties of thy nature and change them into the humble meekness of light and love’ (The Spirit of Prayer [Works, vol. vii], p. 33). This is not the language of theology, but the tongue of love, and all who know what it is to be smitten with shame and pierced with self-abhorrence in the pure presence of the one they love will understand. And where the Beloved of the soul is God, His intimate presence is a progressive initiation into the fiery ordeal of a self-knowledge which would surely issue in despair, were not the eyes which expose and condemn the eyes of love. Yet, even so, the ordeal is terrible. Motives and considerations which we imagined to be supremely influential in our inner life are seen to be the merest conventions, while other we imagined to have no power over us are seen to dominate our very life. As we turn in upon ourselves, veil after veil of unreality is stripped from our quivering eyes and life gradually becomes a profounder, greater thing, more heavily fraught with awe and travail./ We know ourselves and walk with a deeper humility, a truer understanding, among our fellows. Censoriousness is slain, and in its stead there comes a love that longs to cover the multitude of sins. This, the mystics teach, is the beginning of the contemplative life. Without it, contemplation is an intellectual pastime, an emotional dissipation” (110, 111, 114-116).
LISTENING: “If we really believe that eternity is ever murmuring upon the horizon, that the still, small voice never ceases to whisper in all the myriad ways of life, that the spiritual world knocks every moment upon the gates of sense, then our ouly wisdom is to be still and listen. . . .
Once in a silent night a Child was born, Who brought again what once was lost and torn. Could but thy soul, O man, become a silent night, Christ would be born in thee and set all things aright (122).
SILENCE: Four stages in the fellowship of silence:
A brief space for preliminary recollection The “stilling of the mind and soul” Listening The active outpouring of the soul’s devotion before the throne of God (124-126)
DANGER of Vision: “The soul instinctively knows that God cannot be loved with impunity. Vision is an extortionate trafficker. . . . A moment of insight has to be paid for by months—years, maybe—of spiritual aridity” (134).
PRESENCE: St. Bernard: “God can never be sought in vain, not even when He cannot be found” [De Consideratione, V., p. xi] (188).
September 4, 2000
From Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, ed. Robert H. Ross (New York; W.W. Norton & Company, 1973), 62. “In Memoriam,” 96.
You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinai’s peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
January 1, 2001
HOLINESS, Life Style: “Three things that please God most are true faith in God with a pure heart, a simple life with a grateful spirit, and generosity inspired by charity. The three things that most displease God are a mouth that hates people, a heart harboring resentments, and confidence in wealth” (Ita, a sixth century Irish/Celtic saint, to St. Brendan. From Edward C. Sellner, Wisdom of the Celtic Saints [Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1993], 154).
March 18, 2001
DARKNESS: Martin j. Barnum, “Jessica Powers’s Poetry: A Guide for Spiritual Growth,” Spiritual Life, Volume 47 Number 1 (Spring 2001), 17. (1905-1988) Writer who became a Carmelite nun in 1941.
“The Garments of God”
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul. He is God alone, supreme in majesty. I sit as his feet, a child in the dark beside Him; my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me. He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments— not velvet or silk and affable to the touch, but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch, and I hold to it fast with fingers of my will. Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal to the Divinity that I am dust. Here is the loud profession of my trust. I will not go abroad to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still. I have this potent prayer through good or ill: here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
Written in 1945, the year of her profession as a Carmelite, “she learned that she was rugged enough for the life of Carmel, but everything was harder than she ever imagined. Even prayer. The Carmelite habit with its coarse wool became the metaphor for God in those early years.” [Lecky, Winter Music: A Life of Jessica Powers (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1992), 120] While devoted to religious life, in this poem she admits her doubts about her decision.
April 18, 2001
PRAYER & LOVE: From Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and to Love: Conversations on Prayer in the Early Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1991.
ONE: The early monastics “did not conceive of their lives in the desert as easy because they had left the things that diverted them from love, nor did they think of themselves as better than those still living under the constraints of ordinary life. They saw themselves instead as stripping off a lot of external hindrances to love in order to get to the real struggle that was with themselves. As the great Anthony, the founder and hero of this movement said,
The [one] who abides in solitude and is quiet, is delivered from fighting three battles—those of hearing, speech, and sight. Then [that person] will have but one battle to fight—the battle of the heart.”[Part 2, “Of Quiet” 2, from “The Sayings of the Fathers” in Western Asceticism, ed. And trans. Owen Chadwick (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), p. 40.] (11)
TWO: “These ancient teachers of prayer have been profoundly transforming of my own life over the years. . . . From them . . . I have discovered that (11) prayer is broader, more inclusive, more painful, and more transforming than I had thought.” I have learned from them that prayer is the fundamental reality of our lives as Christians. We are formed by our prayer as we find our center in God because it is how we are made. . . . It shapes our actions, our decisions, our emotions, our habits, and our hearts as we move toward the love of God and the love of God’s images, other people. I have learned from the monastic teachers that prayer is a back and forth movement between us and God in the whole of our lives, between God’s continual grace and our continual response. It is also a movement between our receptivity and friendly silence in God’s presence and our continual reflection on the meaning of what we learn about God, ourselves, and others from the experience of our prayer as we grow in love. I have learned that prayer is also a movement between us and the whole Christian community, ancient and modern, as we learn from it, critique it, find our fee in it, and are sustained by it. . . . I have learned that prayer also connects with ourselves; it is the link between our new selves that are always being transformed into God’s loving image and our old selves with which we must come to terms if we are to be transformed. By it we are able to discover who we are and move toward who we are to become. Perhaps most significantly the ancient teachers have taught me not to be discouraged with my own prayer but to persist in it, for prayer, like love, as a way of life is not something that comes to us read-made simply by deciding we want it. We learn it with the (12) help of the Holy Spirit over a lifetime by practicing it, pondering it, and using the resources, including Scripture, that other Christians have passed on to us (13)
THREE: Dortheos of Gaza, sixth century in a famous monastery in Palestine, reminding his monastic brothers what they were about:
Suppose we wear to take a compass and insert the point and draw the outline of a circle. The center point is the same distance from any point on the circumference. . . . Let us suppose that this circle is the world and that God is the center; the straight lines drawn from the circumference to the center are the lives of [human beings]. . . .
Let us assume for the sake of the analogy that to move toward God, then, human beings move from the circumference along the various radii of the circle to the center (14).
But at the same time, the closer they are to God, the closer they become to one another; and the closer they are to one another, the closer they become to God” (15). {Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings, trans. Eric P. Wheeler (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 138-139.]
FOUR: For a detailed discussion of what can be known of early Christian prayer, see Paul Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 1-71. (140, fn. 13).
FIVE: Indirect teaching, an answer the disciple must unravel—Evagrius
“A brother asked Abbs Sisoes: ‘I long to guard my heart.’ The old man said to him: ‘And how can we guard the heart if our tongue leaves the door of the fortress open?’” (27). [Part 9, “That It Is Right to Live Soberly” Western Asceticism, p. 136.]
SIX: “As I said at the beginning of this chapter, prayer is a shared life with God. For the Abbas and Ammas prayer is so important that one of them simply equates it with the kingdom of heaven” (27) [Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 17, p. 58.]
SEVEN: Praying in temptation:
“Abba Macarius was asked, ‘How should one pray?’ The old man said, ‘There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one’s hands and say, “Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy.” And if the conflict grows fiercer say “Lord, help!” [God] knows very well what we need and [God] shews us [God’s] mercy.’’” (45) [Macarius the Greast 19, from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, S.L.G.,rev. ed. (London and Oxford: Mowbray, 1981), 131.]
EIGHT: “In the very body of Christ, although our unity in a single humanity is far from complete, we have truly begun to be as closely bound to one another as we were meant to be. It is because of this (45) very real unity with each other in Christ that we never pray alone” (46).
NINE: “We must begin our discussion of early monastic teaching on prayer by saying absolutely emphatically: There is no one right way to pray. Nobody’s way of prayer is like anyone else’s” (47). An Abba story follows.
TEN: On wandering thoughts in prayer:
A brother asked an old man, and said: “My thoughts wander, and I am troubled.” He answered: “Go on sitting in your cell, and your thoughts will come back from their wanderings. If a she-ass is tethered, her foal skips and gambols all round her but always comes back to the mother. So it will be with the [person] who for God’s sake sits patiently in his [or her] cell. Though [the] thoughts wander for a time, they will come again.” (59). [Part 7, “Of Patience or Fortitude” 30, Western Asceticism, 91].
ELEVEN: Discussion on Scripture and quotations from the Abbas (61-67). Quotes Athanasius on Psalms (62): [“Letter to Marcellinus” 12, in Life of Anthony, 111.] See also 86-89.
TWELVE: “On the other hand, centering prayer is rather formal. For some people it is the basic stuff of their prayer, while many others find it impossible. There is a related but much more informal way of being in God’s presence, however, that almost everyone finds deeply nourishing as part of their daily prayer. Although it is not a monastic term at all, I like to think of it as kitchen table prayer. It is good to spend time with our friends or spouse talking. A vital part of the truly intimate relationships we have with the people we love best does not involve talking at all. Kitchen table prayer is time we spend with God that is like time we spend at the kitchen table with a spouse or a good friend with whom we share our lives in other ways already. When we pray like this we simply sit in silence. Sometimes it is peaceful; sometime it is distracted; some times we even fall asleep, but it is always shared. This time spent with God is not listening; it does not need attentiveness; it is sitting in each other’s loving presence, glad to be together, whatever else is going on. However else we pray, I believe that this daily period of silence in which we expect nothing of God and ask for nothing brings life to the prayer of every Christian” (69).
THIRTEEN: “If a life of prayer is also a life of moving toward God and each other in love, the ancient monastics knew that there cannot be love where there is no self to do the loving. The desert Abbas and Ammas were convinced that love of God and the neighbor is the goal as well as the starting point of the Christian life of prayer. As Christians kour very lives depend upon our understanding of this truth:
[Abba Anthony] said, “Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother [or sister], we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother [or sister], we have sinned against Christ.” [Anthony 9, Sayings, 3]
“Paradoxically, precisely because this love of others and God is the whole of the Christian life, we find this statement at the heart of early monastic teaching.
Abba Alonius said, “If a [person] does not say in his [or her] heart, in the world there is only myself and God, [that person] will not gain peace.” [Alonius 1, Sayings, 35]
In this statement Alonius tells us that we cannot even begin to learn to love others without entering first into the Christian task of learning to claim for ourselves a self to do that loving. In this chapter we will see why and how the Abbas and Ammas know this is true.” (75).
FOURTEEN: “That our life and prayer must be all of a piece was a basic principle of early monastic life. . . . Moses, the great black Abba from Sudan expressed this very simply.
If a [person’s] deeds are not in harmony with his [or her] prayer, [that person] labors in vain. The brother said, “What is this harmony between practice and prayer?” The old man said, “We should no longer do those things against which we pray.” (92) [Instructions Moses sent, Poemen 4, Sayings, 141].
December 24. 2001
PRAYER, CONTEMPLATION: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse mist think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
“Despite its deceptive simplicity, “’Stopping by Woods,’ was written by a man in his fifties, facing questions that no high school student every confronted. Indeed, Frost once commented that the poem ‘contained all I ever knew.’ Although the inspiration and composition for ‘Stopping by Woods’ came to him rather effortlessly after a late night ramble in a New Hampshire snowstorm, Frost always felt that those sixteen sim[le lines were, in his words, ‘loaded with ulteriority.’” Used as an analogy of the prayer journey by Ken Giovanelli, “Lovely, Dark and Deep,” Spiritual Life: A Journal of Contemporary Spirituality, Volume 47 Number 4 Winter 2001, 232-240.
February 1-March 31, 2002
SPIRITUALITY—PRAYER, Quotes from Charles Williams, ed., The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943. See Theology 6.4.4.2 for complete Manuscript.
May, 2002
ON BARON FRIEDRICH VON HUEGEL: Douglas V. Steere, Spiritual Counsel and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Huegel. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
EVELYN UNDERHILL’S friendship with Baron Friedrich von Huegel in 1911, was under his spiritual direction 1921-25 (his death). Heritage was Anglican but was a practicing Catholic until she finally committed herself as a member of the Church of England in 1921.
“In 1921, after a good deal of reflection, Evelyn Underhill (Mrs. Stuart Moore) asked Friedrich von Huegel to act as a spiritual guide for her. She was in her middle forties and von Huegel was approaching seventy. She was an Anglican and von Huegel a Roman Catholic. Both were acknowledged intellectual leaders in the British religious cirlce of their day. She had known von Huegel for over ten years and during a part of this time had had a number of personal visits with him. She senses that with all of his great gifts for friendship, he was not easy at the immanentist foundations of her faith nor at her interpretation of Christian spiritual life in her Mysticism (1911) and subsequently in the row of volumes that followed it” (Steere, 14).
“Out of her years of direction [1921-1925] that closed with von Huegel’s death in 1925, there emerged a new orientation in Evelyn’s life and writing. As with so many of his friends, she did not become a Roman Catholic but was drawn more deeply into the life of her own Anglican communion. She wrote to Dom John Chapman ‘I owe him (v. H.) my whole spiritual life, and there would have been more of it than there is, if I had been more courageous and stern with myself, and followed his directions more thoroughly.’” (Steere, 21, cf. Cropper, 68).
Writings by Baron Friedrich von Huegel Life of Prayer. Selected Letters of Friedrich von Huegel, ed. Bernard holland. London: Dent, 1927. Letters to a Niece, Gwendolyn Greene. London: Dent, 1928.
DEBT TO SPIRITUAL GUIDES: From a letter to his niece, Gwendolyn Greene, “When at eighteen, I made up my mind to go into moral and religious training, the great soul and mind who took me in hand—a noble Dominican—warned me—‘you want to grow in virtue, to serve God, to love Christ? Well, you will grow in and attain these things if you will make them a slow and sure, an utterly real, mountain-step plod and ascent, willing to have to camp for weeks in spiritual desolation, darkness and emptiness at different stages in your march and growth. All demand for constant light, all attempt at eliminating or minimizing the cross and trial, is so much soft folly and puerile trifling.’ Wand what Father Hocking taught me as to spirituality is of course, also true, in its way, of all study worthy of the name” (Steere, 4, from Selected Letters, 266).
ADORATION: “For von Huegel, the highest dimension in prayer was that of adoration. For here there is no self-concern, no ‘flea hunting’ for sins, no business to transact; only an overwhelming thankfulness that God is what he is and has done what he has done, only the fulfilled ‘longing aye to dwell within the beauty of His countenance’, to know that ‘we are not He—but He made us’, to know that the abyss of his mysterious love is never plumbed, and yet that he gives himself to us forever. It is to be noted that on von Huegel’s tombstone in Stratton-on-the-Fosse there is chiseled the psalmist’s cry of adoration, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee?’’ (Steere, 23).
READING—DEVOTIONAL: Bible, Imitation of Christ, Confessions. Letter to his niece: “Of course such ‘reading’ is hardly reading in the ordinary sense at all. As well could you call the letting a very slowly dissolving lozenge melt imperceptibly in your mouth, eating. Such reading is, of course, meant as directly as possible to feed the heart, to fortify the will,--to put these into contact with God—thus, by the book, to get away from the book, to the realities it suggests. . . . And, above all, perhaps it excludes, by its very object, all criticism, all going off on one’s own thoughts as in any way antagonistic to the book’s thoughts. . . . I need not say that I would not restrict you to only one quarter of an hour a day. You might find two such helpful. But I would not exceed fifteen minutes at any one time; you would sink to ordinary reading if you did” (Steere, 24-25, Selected Letters, 229).
RULE: “Evelyn Underhill promptly turned von Huegel’s spiritual counsel ilnto a rule of life for herself, and it is true that the practice of preparing such a simple rule of life, of submitting it to the spiritual director, and, after securing his approval, of living by it and then, after a time, revising it in order to make it a more suitable regimen, is a customary formula in spiritual guidance. But von Huegel knew in advance that rough times would come and that even the commitment to a simple rule would tend to be shaken y these inevitable spells of spiritual dryness, these times of inward consolidation, of testing, of what Evelyn Underhill tellingly calls being put on ‘the night shift’” (Steere, 29-30).
CHRISTIANITY: In a letter to his niece: “Our great hope is in Christianity—our only hope. Christ recreates. Christianity has taught us to care. Caring is the greatest thing—caring matters most. My faith is not enough—it comes and goes. I have it about some things and not about others. So we make up and supplement each other. We give and others give to us. Keep your life, a life of prayer, dearie. . . . Keep it like that: it’s the only thing, and remember, no joy without suffering—no patience without trial—no humility without humiliation—no live without death” Steere, 34, Letters to a Niece, xlii).
June 12, 2002
PRESENCE, CONSENT TO: “Christ is our bread. We can only ask to have him now. . . . If we agree to his entry, he enters; directly we cease to want him, he is gone. We cannot bind our will to day for tomorrow; we cannot make a pact with him that tomorrow he will be within us, even in spite of ourselves. Our consent to his presence is the same as his presence. Consent is an act; it can only be actual, that is to say in the present” (George A. Panichas, ed., The Simone Weil Reader (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1977), 495.
October 23, 2002
GOD, HIDDEN: Blaise Pascal (1623-1650), Pense’es. Notes on Religion and Other Subjects. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Louis LaFuma, Translated by John Warrington. New York: Dutton, Everyman’s Library, 1960.
That God has willed to hide Himself. If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest. So also if there were no martyrs except in our religion. God being thus hidden, every religion that fails to declare that God is hidden is not true; and every religion that fails to explain why is not instructive. Our religion does all this: Vere tu es Deus absconditus. (p. 122) or (449 [143-585])
SOLITUDE: Pascal, 70 (269 [335-139])
I have often said that all men’s unhappiness is due to the single fact that they cannot stay quietly in a room. If a man who has enough upon which to live knew how to live pleasantly at home, he would never journey abroad, either on the sea or to besiege fortress..
October 24, 2002
WRITING: Annie Dillard, The Writing Life. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989.
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? (68);.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later,/something better. These fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. (78-79).
August 21--31, 2003
The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman O.S. B. Fourth Abbot of Downside. Edited with an Introductory Memoir by Dom Roger Hudleston O.S.B. Second Edition Enlarged. London: Sheed and Ward, 1946. First published 1935.
READING: The spiritual life is nourished—to speak of natural means only—chiefly by prayer and by reading, and on these Abbot Chapman had clear views. With regard to books, he insisted on two definite principles; first, that one should read only what appealed to one, and secondly, that different books were necessary at different times in the soul’s progress (24, cf. 57).
The Imitation of Christ “that most wonderful of all human books.” Favorite was Book II, Chapter 8 St. Frances de Sales, On the Love of God. Scupoli, Spiritual Combat with Of inward peace at the end of this. St. Teresa, John of the Cross, Caussade. Grou, Maximes Spirituelles (24).
PRAYER: His two favorite maxims were these:--
First, “Pray as you can, and don’t try to pray as you can’t!” and secondly, “The less you pray, the worse it goes” (25, cf. 109).
“I hold to my view that we ought to try to do what we can, and not what we can’t. Also that we should stick to the spiritual books which suit us, not to those which give us no help”(57).
JOHN OF THE CROSS: “I know that it is not generally held that St. John of the Cross wrote for beginners, most people nowadays would say just the contrary. So I was delighted to read in an old Italian book—written by a Carmelite and almost contemporary with St Teresa and St John of the Cross [Joseph de Jesus-Maria, letter xc, 165]—that ‘Our Mother Teresa wrote for the advanced, and our Father Fra John of the Cross for beginners.’ This is part of the early Carmelite tradition.
As a part of this process, he held, souls must expect to go into and through what St. John of the Cross calls the ‘Night of the Senses’ and the ‘Night of the Spirit’, each of these having an active and a passive side. ‘The Active Night is what we do; our acts of mortification, etc. The Passive Night is what God does to us; taking away all that keeps us from Him.’ Thus the Night of the Senses is the purgation of the lower part of the soul—the bodily senses, imagination and emotions. The Night of the Spirit is the purgation of the higher part of the soul—the intellect and the will. When the soul has passed through both these Nights, it is ready for the completest union with God which is possible in this world.” (26).
HOPE “Hope has two parts:--(1) Courage, or high aims, and (2) Perseverance” (28).
CAUSSADE: “De Caussade’s doctrine and method—at once so simple and so complete—became therefore Abbot Chapman’s ruling principle in the last years of his life. He never tired of inculcating it upon others, holding that this ‘abandon’ to God’s will was essentially active, since by it the soul did not merely resign itself to and accept whatever came to it, but willed this, and so participated actively in what God was doing in its regard at every moment.” (30) These first quotations are from Dom Roger Hudeston’s “A Memoir of Abbot Chapman.”
PRAYER: “On the other hand, the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes” (53)
INTENTION: “What you mean is that you can’t think when you pray. Have the right intention, and then it is prayer” (54)..
RESOLUTION/PRAYER: “Never carry out any resolution made in prayer, without first testing it in a dry light outside of prayer; to see whether it is reasonable or really the best. You much have plenty of time for prayer” (97). FACE/DARKNESS” “I can only repeat what you say I said before (. . .): that if you are carried in our Lord’s arms, you will seldom see His face!” (99). PRAYER: “The rule is simply:--Pray as you can, and do not try to pray as you can’t.” Take yourself as you find your4selfl, and start from that” (109). (cf. 25). JOHN OF THE CROSS: “I used always to abuse St. John of the Cross. Now I find him the one author who knows his mind. He is so clear and accurate” (116). PRAYER: “The whole value of prayer is seen in its results on the rest of our day. It ought to produce very definite effects— A desire for the Will of God. . . The cessation of multiple resolutions. . . Hence we have arrives at simplicity; all our spiritual life is unifed into the one desire of union with God and His Will” (120-121). PRAYER: “As to prayer; don’t wish for any prayer except what God makes possible to you” (148). MATTHEW: “As to Holy Scripture; again, take whatever you like best. I find nothing to equal St. Matthew!” (149). PRESENCE, GOD’S: “When we realize that God is not only in very external event, but in every internal event,--I mean in every involuntary feeling we have—we realize that, at every moment of our life, we are in touch with God, and His hand is on us; we have only toi be carried in His arms. Our one care must be not to jump out of them, and try to walk alone” (176). SELF, LIVING FOR: “There is a danger of ‘devout people’ living for themselves instead of living for others. In prayer, of course, your own soul (the point of it) and God are enough; but outside payer, charity to our neighbour is the whole of virtue, and includes everything. Give the supreme point of your soul to God, and all the lower part to your neighbour” (177). PRAYER: Commends Mystical Prayer by Francis de Sales and Mystical Prayer by Jane de Chantel. Both by Auguste Saudreau, London: Sheed and Ward, 1929 (fn. 185). ABBOT: (4/20/29) “I have a heap of letters to answer. People are very kind. It is really a great blow to become Abbot. There are so many useful things I wanted to do. I shall value your prayers, if you will bestow them on so unworthy (and therefore suitable) an object, that I may not do much harm” (187). CATHOLIC/PROTESTANT: “To the ordinary Protestant, religion is a detail, though an important detail; a part of life, but an interesting and consoling part. To the least practicing Catholic, it is quite well known (even when the knowledge is thrust aside) that religion is the whole of life, embraces everything,--that God’s demands are paramount—that eternity is everything, this life nothing” (200). ETHICAL BEAUTY: WHAT GOD WANTS in this world is what is BEST. Not physical beauty, of person or landscape, Not beauty of poetry or music, Not happiness of men (that is afterwards), Not beauty of intellect, But beauty of action, ethical beauty. (222)
READING, SPIRITUAL: “Only don’t read any books you don’t like; it is always bad for the soul to read uninteresting spirituality” (235).
PRESENCE OF GOD: “The conviction of God becomes a presence of God, then a very definite (but entirely inexpressible and incommunicable) knowledge of God” (256).
DON FRANCISCO DE QUIROGA, “in religion fra Joseph de Jesus-Maria (1562-1629), was the first official ‘Historian General’ of the Spanish Congregation of Reformed Carmelites, and won a great reputation by his writings both historical and mystical, especially by his Defense of the teaching of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross” (fn. 265).
TERESA AND JOHN OF THE CROSS: See pages 265-276 for his interesting reactions and evaluations of the two.
ST. GERTRUDE: Who was she? (274).
???
November 9, 2003
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, tran. Emma Craufurd, Introduction by Leslie A. Fiedler (San Francisco: Harper Coilophon Books, 1951).
CHRISTIAN, SIMONE WEIL AS: “The particular note of conviction in Simone Weil’s testimony arises from the feeling that her role as a mystic was so unintended, one for which she had not in any sense prepared. An undertone of incredulity persists beneath her astonishing honesty: quite suddenly God had taken her,/radical, agnostic, contemptuous of religious life and practice as she had observed it! She clung always to her sense of being an Outsider among the religious, to a feeling that her improbable approach had given here a special vocation, as an ‘apostle to the Gentiles,’ planted at ‘the intersection of Christianity and everything that is not Christianity.’ She refused to become, in the typical compensatory excess of the convert, more of the Church than those born into it; she would not even be baptized, and it is her unique position, at once in and out of institutionalized Catholicism, that determines her special role and meaning. To those who consider themselves on the safe side of belief, she teaches the uncomfortable truth that the unbelief of many atheists is closer to a true love of God and a true sense of his nature, than the kind of easy faith which, never having experienced God, hands a label bearing his name on some childish fantasy or projection of the ego. Like Kierkegaard, she preached the paradox of its being easier for a non-Christian to become a Christian, than for a ‘Christian’ to become one. To those who believe in a single Revelation, and enjoy the warm sensation of being saved in a cozy circle of friends, she expounded the doctrine of a gospel spread in many ‘languages,’ of a divine Word shared among rival myths, in each of which important truths, implicit elsewhere, are made explicit. For those to whom religion means comfort and peace of mind, she brings the terrible reminder that Christ promised not peace but the sword, and that his own last words were a cry of absolute despair, the ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ which is the true glory of Christianity.’/ But she always considered that her chief mission was to those still ‘submerged in materialism,’ that is, to most of us in a chaotic and disenchanted world. To the unbeliever who has rather smugly despised the churchgoer for seeking an easy consolation, she reveals the secret of his own cowardice, suggesting that his agnosticism may itself be only an opiate, a dodge to avoid facing the terror of God’s reality and the awful burden of his love” (Introduction, 4-6).
HERBERT, GEORGE: On his “Love,” see her “Spiritual Biography.”
LORDS PRAYER: See her “Concerning the Our Father” and “Spiritual Autobiography,” 70-72.
GOD, EXISTENCE OF: “A case of contradictories, both of them true. There is a God. There is no God. Where is the problem? I am quite sure there is a God in the sense that I am sure my love is no illusion. I am quite sure there is no God, in the sense that I am sure there is nothing which resembles what I can conceive when I say that word. . . .” (Introduction 32, but a quote from her).
GRACE: “And finally, we discover from ‘all the great images of folklore and mythology’ what Simone Weil considers to be the truth most necessary to our salvation, namely, ‘it is God who seeks man’” (Introduction, 33). LOOKING/SALVATION: “’It should also be publicly and officially recognized that religion is nothing else but a looking.’ Looking, the mere turning of the head toward God, is equated by Simone Weil with desire and passive effort of ‘waiting for God’ which gives the present book its name. . . . Man’s ‘free will’ consists in nothing but the ability to turn, or to refuse to turn, his eyes toward what God holds up before him. ‘One of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today, is that looking is what saves us’” (Introduction, 36. Quotes within quote are from Simone). CHURCH: “What frightens me is the Church as a social structure. Not only on account of its blemishes, but from the very fact that it is something social (52). . . . I am well aware that the Church must inevitably be a social structure, otherwise it would not exist. But in so far that it is a social structure, it belongs to the Prince of this world” (54). GOD, WRESTLING WITH, JOB: “Yet I still half refused, not my love but my intelligence. For it seemed to be certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does no out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms” (“Spiritual Autobiography,” 69).
FRIENDSHIP: “For nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely on God, than friendshi8p for the friends of God” (74). PRAYER/ATTENTION: “The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. The highest part of attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God” (105, “Reflections on the right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”). September 9, 2004 SCRIPTURE/WORD OF GOD: John Newton (1725-1807) as he began his preaching ministry at Olney: If he rarely seemed at loss for words, it was not so at first. After giving only six sermons at Olney, Newton “felt he had run through his whole stock,” notes biographer Brian Edwards in Through Many Dangers. He wandered out of the churchyard and down to the Ouse; there he watched the river on its long journey to the sea. ‘How long has this river run?’ he thought. ‘Many hundreds of years, and so it will continue. Is not the fund for my sermons equally inexhaustible—the Word of God’” (Quoted from Deborah and David Douglas, Pilgrims in the Kingdom: Travels in Christian Britain [Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2004], 124). December 10, 2004 PRAYER, GEORGE HERBERT ON: “Herbert, it could be said, brought this place to its knees with disciplines and pleasures which few of his people would have previously associated with praying, and his elevation of prayer to the peaks of human activity makes uncomfortable reading for the average worshipper now. It needs much more time than we can spare for it. ‘Hurry is the death of prayer,’ says Francis de Sales, but it isn’t hurry which that is our weakness but our ignorance of how to direct time towards timelessness. This is what Herbert taught his little community to do, even if its time was not much more than seasonally varied dawns and dusk. “I value prayer so,’ he said, That were I to leave all but one, Wealth, fame, endowments, vertues all should go; I and dear prayer would together dwell, And quickly gain, for each inch lost an ell [An ell is 45 in]/ Ronald Blythe, Divine Landscape, 168. January 15, 2005 ADVERSITY – SUFFERING: Not forever in green pastures Do we ask our way to be; But the steep and rugged pathway May we tread rejoicingly. Not forever by still waters Would we idly rest and stay; But would smite the living fountains From the rocks along our way. Mrs. L. M. Willis (1864) Ronald Blythe, Divine Landscape, 232.
Isa. Xlv.15: Verily Thou art a hidden God. Dom Roger Hudleston O.S.B., ed., The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman, O.S.B. (London: Sheed and Ward, 2nd ed., 1946 [1935]), 222. Brian H. Edwards, Through Many Dangers: The Story of John Newton (Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England: Eurobooks, 1980), 95.
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