Our consciousness is like a great river.

On the surface of our consciousness, superficial thoughts and experiences pass by like boats, debris, water skiers, or other things.

The river itself is the participation God has given us in God’s Being.

Our consciousness is that part of us on which all the other faculties rest, but of which we are ordinarily unaware because we are absorbed with what is passing by along the surface.

In Centering Prayer, we begin to shift our awareness from the boats and objects on the surface to the river itself and to that which sustains all our faculties and is their source.

The river in this analogy has no qualities or characteristics. It is spiritual and limitless because it is a participation in God’s being.

Keep turning your awareness from what is on the surface of the river to the river itself, from the particular to the general, from forms to the formless, from images to the imageless.

Return to the sacred word and renew you intention to consent to God’s inward presence in pure faith. (Keating, OMOH, 2005, p.47)

I would like to reflect on this reading:

This reading provides insight into the mystery of who God is and how God dwells within us while exceeding our ability to articulate God as God is. We grasp for metaphors such as “A great river” to capture this mystery.

Keating describes ordinary consciousness as the thoughts and feelings on the surface of the flow of our mind that absorb us. We are depth deprived. We identify ourselves as those thoughts and perspectives. We are attached to them and may even overidentify with them. We may be addicted to them. (Consider your political affiliation for example.)

We can drop into the spiritual level of consciousness through the practice of centering prayer as we detach from thoughts and let them go and let them flow. We do not seek to make our mind a blank. We have a bit of separation or distance from the thoughts. The hardpan of our identity and connection with the thoughts will be increasingly loosen and softened over time.

We become present to the Loving Presence of the Divine within as we pause from skipping along the surface of life. We connect with our Source within Who is also the Transcendent Loving One beyond us at the same time.

We make an act of faith whether or not we experience this Presence within and without. It is up to God. We wait in hope and longing.

When you experience the undifferentiated, general, and loving Presence of God beyond any thought, don’t go back to the sacred word. You are already at your destination.
Accept the fact that thoughts will come. Don’t try to make the mind a blank. That is not interior silence.
Our best response is to ignore them; not with a feeling of annoyance but with one of acceptance and peace.
Every response to God must begin with the full acceptance of reality as it actually is at the moment.
The constant starting over with the sacred word with patience, calm and acceptance trains us for the acceptance of the whole of life.
It prepares us for action.
There should be a basic acceptance of what is actually happening before we decide what to do with it.
Our first reflex is to want to change reality or at least control it. (Thomas Keating, OMOH 2005, p. 40,46)
Receiving the inflow of God’s love is all about receptivity. That is the key! We become more aware of our relationship with God. (Bill Sheehan)

I would like to reflect on how we can expand the walls of our inner room to the embrace the day. Fr. Keating states that we should not fight our thoughts or evaluate our prayer time. Simply accept the presence of our thoughts. Constantly return to the sacred word to cultivate detachment from them as they flow through us. So too we can accept and not resist what happens to us over the course of the day.

The beauty of this acceptance is that we can then decide what the current situation is calling out of us. How would God have us respond in this particular situation? Instead of being reactive with our emotions in charge of our response, we can pause. In the pause, we experience the purity of our God-given emotions as we accept what is happening and discern the appropriate response. Instead of an instinctual first movement of our wills, we catch ourselves and make a godly second movement as we act out of who it is God has made us to be.

We may even recognize that a particular situation that triggered us in the past, does so no longer. God’s purifying perhaps even emotionally painful touch that arises from the circumstances gives us an opportunity to open ourselves to God’s help. Using the daily events that arise as our practice becomes a means for God’s healing touch. Let us see that God is constantly working moment to moment in our lives. We are in relationship to God always.

MOVING FROM INTENTION TO CONSENT TO UNION
WITH GOD AND SOLIDARITY WITH ALL THINGS

The Sacred Word expresses your intention to consent to God,
The Ultimate Mystery who dwells within us.

The Sacred Word is a way of renewing our intention
To open ourselves to God and to accept God as God is.

While we can pray in other forms at other times, the time of Centering Prayer is not the time to pray specifically for others.
By consenting to God, we are implicitly praying for everyone past, present, and future.
You are embracing the whole of creation.
You are accepting all reality beginning with God and
With that part of your own reality of which you may not be generally aware, namely, the spiritual level of your being.

The Sacred Word enables you to unite with your Source.
Fr. Thomas Keating, OMOH (2005) p.32



I would like to reflect on the following phrases:

“Your intention to consent to God.”

We are full of good intentions. As I walk to my room dedicated to my time of prayer, I am already expressing my intention to say “Yes” to whatever God has in store for me during my quiet time. Even if God has nothing for me that day, my intention is to accept and surrender to that. Of course, Mother Mary is the paradigmatic example of saying “Let It Be Done to me According to Your Will.” Her consent led her to bear forth the Christ for the world. May our consent to the Presence and Action of God within us also bring forth Christ into the world Who along with the Daddy and the Holy Spirit is

“The Ultimate Mystery who dwells within us.”

We do not embody a mystery to be solved like a “Whodunit” such as an Agatha Christie novel. Rather, we are acknowledging that our finite minds and human faculties cannot grasp God. Our infinite God is so much more than our finite imaginations can express. Whatever our images of God, God is so much more than those. Our images of God do not do justice to God as God is and are inadequate or false images in that sense.

“Poor God!” our Father Vinny used to say because of all the damaging images we humans impose on God. This approach does not deny that we can come to a rational understanding of God’s truth, beauty, goodness, benevolence and love. However, it emphasizes as William Johnston states in the introduction to the Cloud of Unknowing that “God is unlike anything we know: we must keep in mind that the ideas of God are totally inadequate to contain God.”

It is beyond our grasp to understand that this infinitely loving God dwells within us. This indwelling causes us to become a mystery to ourselves in the same way that God is a mystery to us. (Genesis 1:26-27, John 17, Acts 17:18, Romans 5:5, 8:9, Galatians 2:20).

“To open ourselves to God and accept God as God Is.”

Let us loosen our grips on our image of God so that we may embrace God as God Is! Let go of your customary image of God. Perhaps we are accustomed to thinking of God as someone who responds to our every need. We expect God to deliver the perfect answer. We rely on our past experience of God and assume that our future experience should be the same. We think that we have figured out God and God will faithfully deliver in accordance with our expectations.

Have we captured God? Have we gained control of God? If I do this, God will do that? Is it possible that God has been rearing us much as we raise and respond to our babies and little children? Maybe it is time to grow up? Maybe we have confused God with our local parish that we love and suddenly have lost through consolidation or other reasons? Maybe we have other false gods such as material comfort or a successful profession which have suddenly and inexplicably shifted? Has the ground under our feet moved? Maybe a rug has been pulled out from under us? Maybe I am confused and all is suddenly chaotic? Maybe we need to learn to walk in the darkness of faith?

John of the Cross says that faith is the proximate means to union with God. In other words, walking in the dark by faith is the path of coming to a deeper understanding of the embrace of God’s intimacy. An intimacy that fosters the transformation into who it is God calls us to be. It is the way to intuitively grasp by love God as God is and that we are one with God. It is the path to a contemplative state whereby we once again experience God’s Presence and see God as God Is in every direction.

“You are embracing all reality.”

When we are present to God as God Is, we are present to all that God holds. God contains the past, present, and future. God is present to all things and sustains all things including our loved ones wherever they are and whatever their needs. Whether we know it or not, God is present to our concerns, worries, or joys about our loved ones in as much as we bring them as part of ourselves to our prayer before God. As we are present to God, we are in solidarity with all humanity, past, present, and future as well as all things. We are a part of everything and everything is a part of us.

“We unite with our Source.”

Experientially, we understand and intuit that the ground of our being is the Being of God that has overflowed into and sustains all being. We are one with God and all things. While God is our being, we are not God. We participate in God. Even though we experience ourselves as separate beings, we find our true selves in God. We are not isolated but exist in solidarity and oneness with all that is. Apart from God, we are literally nothing and nonexistent.

“In Centering Prayer, by participating intentionally in the Paschal mystery,
our prayer periods become a liturgy without words,
a celebration of one’s own union with Christ,
and of participation in the inner life of the Trinity.
Every little drop of experience is of almost inconceivable value
and vastly transcends ourselves.
In other words, the Divine energy that is accessed by each one’s participation
in Christ’s passion, death and resurrection
becomes a kind of universal prayer for the needs of the whole human family.
It has a radiation that is truly apostolic,
apostolic in the sense of transmitting the grace of Christ into this world.”
–Fr. Thomas Keating OCSO, Intimacy with God

I would like to reflect on parts and pieces of this excerpt.

What does it mean to “participate intentionally?”

An intention is an interior choice to cultivate a certain posture. It is a desire or a choice to be present, open and surrender or offer ourselves with Jesus. We set aside our preoccupations for a moment. In this case, we are “participating intentionally

In the Paschal Mystery.

The Paschal Mystery is the death and resurrection of Jesus. How do we “intentionally participate” in Jesus’s death and resurrection? The process is similar to what we do when we celebrate the Eucharistic. We join Jesus on the cross as we die to ourselves. We die to our personal agenda and projects. We die to having the last word about anything. We die to having power and control over every or any situation. We become one with Jesus on the Cross in the gift of his life to the Daddy and to us. “Not my will but Your Will be done.” We join Jesus in our offering ourselves and our lives to God to dispose of as God wishes.

We all think that we have more control over life than we actually have. For example, in the end or as we age, we will have to say “Yes!” to the process of aging, diminishment and death. But whatever our age, we need to align our spirits with the Holy Spirit and find the path of Life as opposed to expecting God to bless our agendas and projects that may provide us our sense of self-worth and inflate our egos. We lose our life to gain Life.

After dying to ourselves, there may be a liminal period of darkness. We may have to wait for the new life in the Spirit to express itself. It may be so subtle that we miss it initially. We will learn through patient prayer and the action of the Holy Spirit upon us how to calibrate our hearts to the sensitivity of the Spirit and the realization of new life in God. If we patiently wait, listen, hope, we will find and

Celebrate one’s own union with Christ and of participation in the inner life of the Trinity.

We discover what we have. We discover who we already are. We live and move and have our being in God. This experience is tasting or glimpsing the Life of the Resurrection that God is ready and willing to share with us as we die to ourselves having the last word. We are not God, but we do participate in God and God can express God’s self through us. We can be God for others. They (especially our spouses) will be God for us. We become divine instruments of transformation for one another as we show grace and compassion to one another.

Our participation in God is the Ground of our Being or the source of our Life and Being. It is our breath. It is our heart beating. It is our consciousness. Rather than having a relationship with God we are already in relationship to God. We are already one with God and in union with God or we would be nothing. We are nothing apart from God who sustains our life. Thomas Keating says elsewhere (Open Mind, Open Heart (2005), p.33) that “The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from Him. If we get rid of that thought, our troubles will be greatly reduced…The present moment, every object we see, our inmost nature are all rooted in God.”

Our participation in the “Divine energy” becomes a “universal prayer for the needs of the whole human family.”

We start by saying “Yes!” and participate in the Paschal Mystery as we consent to our death to ourselves and begin to experience the Life of the Resurrection. We begin to let go of our self-made worlds, having to have the last word or power or control over every situation that arises. As we sit in this posture of Centering Prayer only present to God as God is, we are present to the needs of the whole human family since that is where God already is present. We bring all our needs, our whole life experience and history, all our loved ones to God. First, our world is present and held before God. At the same time, we then are present to God. In Whom, the world or cosmos is held in being and which apart from God would be nothingness. Our loved ones are loved by us as we carry them within us to God. Our loved ones are loved by God as God sustains them and treats them as God’s beloved. As Fr. Vinny like to say, “they are twice loved.”

Our prayer becomes apostolic as it “transmits the grace of Christ into this world.” Our time of prayer is of “inconceivable value and vastly transcends ourselves.”

How may we deepen our friendship and intimacy with God? Let me suggest reading and savoring the quote from Fr. Thomas Keating. Before you read the following quote from Fr. Thomas Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart, allow me to explain what he means by the Sacred Word. The use of a one or two syllable word that you choose is a means of detaching from distractions during prayer. This approach for handling distracting thoughts is based on the spiritual classic, The Cloud of Unknowing. Commonly referenced as The Cloud, the anonymous author lived in Great Britain during the 1300s. The book is addressed to a young contemplative who is looking for spiritual guidance on how to get to know God better.

Here is the Keating quote:

The sacred word is not a means of going where you want to go.
It simply affirms and directs your intention
to consent To God’s Presence and Action.
The Sacred Word fosters a favorable atmosphere
For the development of the more general awareness
To which our spiritual nature is attracted.

Our purpose is not to suppress all thoughts which is impossible.
You will normally have a thought after a half a minute or less of inner silence unless the action of God is so powerful that you are absorbed in God.

Centering prayer is not a way of turning on the presence of God.
Rather it is a way of saying, “Here I am.”
The next step is up to God.
It is a way of putting yourself completely at God’s disposal;
It is to submit to God’s intentionality
Which is to give God’s self completely to you.
Keating, OMOH (2005) p.22

I would like to reflect on pieces and parts of this reading:
The sacred word affirms our intention to come to our time of prayer and simply be open and present to God with no agenda. We do not come bearing a laundry list of items for God to handle for us as our butler. We do not come with our projects for God to bless. Rather we come hoping to get to know God better much as we long to develop friendship with someone that we like. We are coming on God’s terms open to where God wants to take us. That is our intention.

We consent to God’s Presence and Action as Mother Mary consented to the angel who announced to her great surprise that the Holy Spirit would bless her with a child. She responded “Let it be done according to God’s will.” So too, we open ourselves to God’s Presence and say “Yes!” to whatever God has in store for us which of course is in our interest and will deepen our relationship. God desires good for us. God desires to heal our wounds and transform us.
The sacred word fosters a favorable atmosphere for a general awareness of the God to which our spiritual nature is attracted. We are made for God. We all have a capacity for God and our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The sacred word and the daily practice of prayer will cultivate a stance of openness. This stance will enable us to open the door and welcome God’s loving, healing therapy so that we may find rest in wordless communion and union with God.

We will still have thoughts. The heart beats and the mind thinks. Thoughts are always present. We want to detach from thoughts. Let them flow though us on the stream of consciousness much like boats float past us on a river. Let them come and go. It is thinking about the thoughts that is a problem. Thoughts can fall to the background much like Muzak in a grocery store.

As we place ourselves at God’s disposal, our spiritual nature is permitted to draw near to God and we may experience a sense of coming home. The Holy Spirit heals our separation and alienation from God.
Or perhaps we may not experience this sensation. God knows what we need. We each receive what is best. Be patient. Wait hopefully. Let yourself be loved. Being loved is God’s will for us. God is giving God’s self to us whether we are aware of it or not.

Why is it that I cannot throw away anniversary cards from Kathleen or cards from my kids?  The sentiments that my loved ones express are so touching, so profound, so affirming that I cannot toss them into the garbage.  Instead, I place them in one of my dresser drawers. I may never read them again, but that is ok.  They are too precious to throw away.  A preciousness so deep that there is no bottom to it.  Infinitely deep.

God is found in what we experience as precious.  As we sing “Ubi Caritas, Deus ibi est.”  Where Love is, there God is.  God communicates Her Love to us through these words that are companions in life share with us.  That very flow of love back and forth between us and our loved ones is God.  That flow of joy and laughter among friends and family is a precious experience of God. I often experience it in the camaraderie of my golf mates.

May we find what is precious in each moment as we choose to do the loving thing in the moment.

I remember cleaning out my brother Roger’s room in San Francisco with my dad when Roger suddenly died on Memorial Day in 1995.   We found a dresser drawer full of all the letters that my mom had been sending lovingly from Chicago over the years.  So precious. 

In the 6^th century, St Benedict composed this simple but profound prayer that helps us deepen our relationship with Our Father. May we see what the Lord wants us to see and hear what She wants us to hear:

O gracious and holy Father,

Give us wisdom to perceive you,

Intelligence to understand you,

Diligence to seek you,

Patience to wait for you,

Eyes to behold you,

A heart to meditate on you,

And a life to proclaim you

Through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

In life, one has experiences that open us up. Our senses are more alive and expansive.  We are more attuned.  We are in the moment grateful and appreciative.  We are awakened and aware as we savor the present and the Presence.  We experience oneness and union with God   We may even “See The Light.”    These experiences may come upon us suddenly as we contemplate the beauty and majesty of nature or they may occur more gradually as we take time apart from the busyness of our schedule for a pilgrimage or retreat.   

We may exclaim as my wife Kathleen did:   “Who knew!”   “Who knew this serenity was at our fingertips!”  The Kingdom of God is at hand or at our fingertips. 

To paraphrase the Cure d’Ars, it was a gift of God to sit quietly watching God as God watched us.  No thoughts.  Just peace.  Content to sit and sit and enjoy the reverie.  A sense of what Paul calls a ” peace passing all understanding.”  A soft light that transforms all and comes through all. 

I am not sure when and where God’s light embrace initially occurred.  Perhaps in the chapel of San Damiano or the place of Clare’s transitum.  But after a while, I came to count on such blessings  and look forward to them at all of Clare and Francis’ special places.  Most memorably they occurred at the caves where Francis slept, Clare and Francis’ tombs, Saints Paul and Bartholomew’s tombs and the chapel of the Cross of San Damiano in Clare’s Basilica.  These are places of awe.  Places that excite one’s spirit.  Holy Ground.   Why do experience this powerful presence now? Why is not available to all?  Or is it?  Why is not available to us at other times?  Or is it?  Or should it be? 

A special grace indeed. 

After  we returned home,  Kathleen yearned to continue this experience.  She said as she headed out the door, ” I will be back.  I want to go sit in a church.”  Similarly, in as much as we recently moved to a new home, I was thinking it would be great to dedicate some space in our place for meditation and prayer as our Hindu brothers and sisters do.  Kathleen reinforced this thought when she independently suggested that we turn one of our spare bedrooms into a chapel.  That is one way to continue to nurture and improve this conscious contact with God.  It is an attempt to overcome the inclination to return to the same old same old mindset as we are anesthetized by our comfortable cocoons of materialism, inactivity, or busyness which cause us to forget, ignore or suppress the challenge of Jesus and how Francis and Clare followed him.  

Our souls and consciousness were stretched to their limits.  But so often like a rubber band, after being stretched, they return back to their normal ordinary states.  Changed, but capable of more. 

Lord, You have given us much.  May we be faithful servants who do not disappoint but understand our duty and act upon it.  Thank you for your all embracing love.

 

 

My Carmelite friends would describe the grace-filled experience of our pilgrimage as one of God’s lollypops.  Within the Carmelite spirituality, there are times when the embrace of our heart by God from within and without, from above and below, surrounds and fills us and overflows into our senses.  We experience serenity.   

I wonder in these unique moments if there is a special message for me:  ” Is it a confirmation?  If so, of what?”   Rather than just accepting the embrace of God’s love, I overanalyze and wonder if this experience validates what to do, think or practice. 

My Carmelite friends say such experiences are for immature souls who require that form of affirmation.  There is likely something to that.   John of the Cross and other mystics describe a purifying of their faith in a Dark Night of the Soul in which they experience God as Absence.  Such a dark night may be accompanied by events in life that are similar to earthquakes and test one’s faith and trust.  For example, we could experience loss of control and powerlessness as there is upheaval in our lives.  Loss of a job, inability to find work, or our prized identity may be tainted somehow. 

I am sure that my friends are right. I am immature, but this experience was more like a flourless chocolate cake with a hot molten center of oozing chocolate than a lollypop and I loved it.  I want to enjoy that treat as often as possible.  I look for ways to replicate the experience and assume that spiritual growth will accompany it.  I wonder if reading spiritual books, daily scripture, thoughts for the day or practicing intercessory prayer, yoga, meditation, attending Mass would help.  The list can go on and believe me I have tried a variety of formulas to hopefully cultivate spiritual growth.  Ultimately, however, I am afraid that perhaps I have crossed the line.   Perhaps I am trying to control God or becoming more akin to a spiritual junkie looking for a fix.  Am I becoming someone who just wants the experience?   Am I just plain selfish?  More interested in myself and feeling good than I am in loving my neighbor and understanding the requirements of discipleship? 

After experiencing God, Francis was propelled to the margins as he worked with the lepers.  Rather than looking for more “experiences” of God, I should be God’s love for others as I serve Him in others.  The principles of the 12 Step program emphasize that after one has awakened to the spiritual reality of a Higher Power and seek to do the will of that Higher Power each day, one must do service to continue to grow personally and spiritually and to stay free of addiction.  So the question then becomes as part of ever deepening search “What service am I to render?”  Or to paraphrase Francis:  as Francis did what his to do, may Christ teach us what is ours to do.  (Pilgrim’s Companion p. 414) 

May we see and hear what God wants us to see and hear so that we can faithfully and obediently respond  and thereby worship in spirit and truth. “Brothers and sisters, let us begin to serve the Lord for up till now, we have done very little. “  (Pilgrim’s Companion p.409)

 

 

Fr Packiaraj SJ recommended that I go to Assisi.  He is the pastor of a Jesuit parish in South India.  It was 2013-14 and I was on the verge of retiring.  A new chapter in my life was approaching and I want to be a disciple of Jesus who is open to his guidance :”Speak Lord, your servant listens.”  Perhaps I should add “hopefully.”  Given my outsized ego that hopes to do great things for God, I should add ” Give me ears to hear or I may miss what I am called to do because it appears small and ordinary.”  While I make an effort to be attentive daily by listening for God’s voice in others and can often see God’s hand in the events of life, I agreed that a pilgrimage to Assisi could help the process of discernment. 

Like so many of our saints, Francis had a clear vision and an auditory experience of God’s direction.  While my faith or perhaps it would be better described as my unbelief would not provide the Lord such an opportunity to speak so distinctly, I still was filled with great anticipation as we went to visit San Damiano and later the Cross of San Damiano in the Clare’s Basilica.  It was while meditating and praying in front of this cross that Francis heard his call to “Rebuild My Church.”    Francis then literally started to restore and rebuild the San Damiano chapel.  He took the message literally.  Later he understood the message more fully.  Soon thousands of brothers joined him in the Umbrian Valley below Assisi.

Still I was highly skeptical  that Jesus, suspended in majesty on the cross of San Damiano,  would actually speak to me in the same way.  In other words, I would not see his lips move as he tells me to “Rebuild My Church” or “Minister to those in prison” or “Sit at the bedside of those who are dying” or “Write” or ” Be a confidant” or ” Lighten Up! Don’t take yourself so seriously!” Or “ Enough already.  Get out of your lazy boy and get busy.  The laborers are few. “  

I agree that for most of us, finding our way in the Lord is a process rather than an experience such as Francis’ or getting knocked off a horse and blinded like Paul.  I believe that we have a lot of freedom.  We sit at a banquet with a variety of delicious choices in front of us.  All are blessed.  All are signs of God’s love and caring which is greater than we can even imagine.  The choice is ours.  Our hands will be in Her hands.   

Yet, I sit and wait for clarity and direction.  After all, I am as one friend said, a procrastinating perfectionist. I sit and wait for clear sense of what to do while realizing He would likely tell me to act on a desire that is already in my heart.  I should pay attention to my yearnings. 

After visiting San Damiano twice and the Cross of San Damiano at Clare’s Basilica twice, I asked my wife Kathleen:  “Did you see Jesus’ lips move?  Did Jesus talk to you as He did to Francis?”  Kathleen was a bit taken aback and an expression mixing concern and disbelief crossed her face as she answered “No!”  Then after pausing a moment, she asked  ” Did you?”  I smiled and said “Yes.  Jesus told me,   ‘Love Your Wife.'”