chris erdman

Here’s an excellent essay by one of my favorite authors.  Muslims in the Middle.  New York Times, August 16, 2010

William Dalrymple’s book, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, helped inspire my own pilgrimage in 2007.  That tale is told in my little e-book, Returning to the Center: Living Prayer in a Distracting Word/The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First Century Pilgrim (available for free download here).

In this essay, Dalrymple explores why the mystic arm of Islam, Sufism, makes a perfect bridge between East and West, moving beyond Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and secular extremism.  It’s an apt corrective to so much of the mis-information being bandied about today, especially as September 11 draws near once again.

I commend not only Dalrymple’s essay (reprinted from the New York Times), but also the website diversejourneys.com, and more, the Rand Corporation’s 2007 Report, Building Moderate Muslim Networks.

Can living life in community help us draw closer to God? “Come and see,” says Karen Sloan, Presbyterian pastor and author of “Flirting with Monasticism,” a book in which she takes readers through her personal journey with ancient Christian traditions.

Active people often have serious criticisms of the word “contemplative.” It sounds monkish, escapist, elitist. A friend recently said, “Aren’t contemplatives so heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good. Mine is an active life. Jesus would never have entered a monastery.”

If that’s what the contemplative life is then she’s right, let’s have nothing to do with it. But it’s not. That’s a caricature, not the real thing.

The contemplative life is the path of true compassion, and therefore the way of real, redemptive action in the world (Dag Hammarskjold is among the best, modern and public examples; I’ve written of him here).

“Contemplation” and “contemporary” come from the same Latin roots: “con” meaning “with,” and “tempus,” or “time.”

So, “contemplative” simply means being truly “contemporary”–that is, fully here, now, immersed in the present. That can’t, by definite or practice, be escapist. Contemplatives, then make the best engineers and airline pilots, surgeons and chefs, mothers and teachers. Contemplative living is noble living.

Jesus did not cloister himself away in a monastery. But that that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have gone there periodically. Was not his forty days in the wilderness a monastic retreat? And St. Paul’s years also, when he was hidden away in Arabia (Galatians 1.17)?

The monastery’s prepared many of those who’s worldly actions have matter most in our world.

Contemplation is an art. Learn it and you’ll do some “earthly good.”

Here’s a simple practice that will change the way you interact with others, and how you treat yourself.

“Be gentle with each person you meet, for each of them is actually fighting a great battle.”  Philo of Alexandria, 20 BCE—50 CE

It is a deeply spiritual practice, and contemplative—that is, it rises from the unceasing, interior prayer you are practicing.

Gentleness arises from the compassion God is birthing in you as you pray.  Gentleness arises from your deep awareness of your own interior battle to be human and holy.  Practice this and you will not only change the little part of the world you inhabit, but you will change yourself, for you too are fighting a great battle.

The most important people today are probably not those we think of first.

Kallistos Ware tells of St. Barsansuphios of Gaza (sixth century) who says that in his time there were three persons whose prayers likely held everything together. Because of their spiritual intention, the sun rises each day, evil is held in check, and life goes on. He even mentions their names. John, he says, is one of them. And Elias too. The third, he says, lives in the province of Jerusalem. It could be anyone—a priest, a farmer in the fields, a mother tending her hearth and her children. But it may well be Barsansuphios himself, who was trying to keep himself clear about his spiritual vocation, but humility kept him from saying so.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Ware says, “the world is upheld by the prayer of hidden saints—Christian and, I believe, also non-Christian.”

Awakening to the spiritual life and the vocation of prayer in the midst of daily life is not, as I’ve said before, a cul de sac or private party. Just as a butterfly fanning its wings in Tokyo affects weather patterns in New York, our spiritual intention, our life of prayer, has enormous social and political consequences no matter how hidden our life may be.

Thomas Merton once said:

“I wonder if there are twenty people alive in the world now who see things as they really are. That would mean that there were twenty people who were free, who were not dominated or even influenced by any attachment to any created thing or to their own selves or to any gift of God, even to the highest, the most supernaturally pure of His graces. I don’t believe that there are twenty such people alive in the world. But there must be one or two. They are the ones who are holding everything together and keeping the universe from falling apart.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, page 203)

Who can say what good is happening in this world because of your hidden life of simple, and sometimes bumbling, prayer?

When you awaken to a vibrant spiritual life you’re entering the fullness of life. You’re not hiding yourself away in some interior cul de sac, avoiding the demands of daily obligations and roles. Spiritual transformation is not a dead-end street nor is it a private party.

The heart is the abode of God . . . not exclusively, of course. The whole earth is full of the glory of God. But our bodies, our beings, our lives are a shrine. And when the light of God shines from within us, all things around us are affected.

The Butterfly Effect, or the ripple effect a single butterfly’s wing movements on the whole cosmos, is now common science.  It shouldn’t surprise us then to hear St. Seraphim of Sarov say, “Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation.” It’s one thing to hear such words coming from a monk. It’s quite another to hear them coming from someone like Dag Hammarskjold, General Secretary of the United Nations (1953-1961), and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1961).

Hammarskjold said, “Understand through the stillness. Act out of the stillness. Conquer in the stillness.”

This was spoken by someone deeply involved in global politics and who lived a very busy and demanding life.

“Acquire inner peace.” St. Seraphim of Sarov

“Act out of the stillness.” Dag Hammarskjold

“The kingdom of God is within you.” Jesus

There is no action more powerful than the action arising from a single spiritually awakened life.