Lights shining in darkness

Friends showing the way

The Episcopal monastery I visit regularly, the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE), is located next to Harvard University, and their daily services are attended by all sorts of people, including students and faculty from Harvard and other surrounding schools. The brothers have an interesting custom at their Wednesday Eucharist — after the Gospel reading, in place of a sermon, they sit in silence.

I imagine that last Wednesday, the day after the presidential election, the monastery chapel was overflowing with people seeking the balm of sacred, communal silence – not wanting to be alone, but also not wanting many words.

Before beginning the period of silence, the new, young superior, Brother Keith Nelson, alluded to this. “In the United States,” he said, “this is a day of many words: words of information to absorb, analysis, interpretation, and prediction.”  But in the monastery, he continued, it was the custom at the Wednesday Eucharist to omit the sermon and enter into communal silence instead. 

They would be faithful to that custom, Brother Keith said, but first he wanted to remind the gathering that what we take with us into the silence matters. 

I’m sure many at last Wednesday’s service were about to take anger, depression, or righteous upset into the silence.  But Brother Keith noted, “The seed of our intention that we take into silence can blossom into the prayer that we need most,” and he suggested three possible intentions.

• We might enter the silence with the intention of noticing the feelings that arise from our depths, realizing the unshakeable love and presence of Christ and his loving acceptance in the midst of it all.

• We might enter the silence mindful of people who do not have the inner resources to handle their feelings of overwhelm and dejection. Hold these people in the light of God’s loving strength, trusting that God uses our intercessions to bring healing.

• Or, we might enter the silence with the intention of simply abiding in our own, still center, that inviolable place of God’s indwelling presence, trusting that, beyond our awareness, God is “opening a door at the heart of every moment.”

I loved his suggestions.

Noticing our thoughts and feelings in silence, we might ponder, “Who is doing the noticing?” Which can lead us to remember — that which notices these thoughts and feelings is actually free of them.  We are not our thoughts and feelings, and silence helps us return to our deeper life.

Entering silence with compassion for those who are overwhelmed likewise delivers us from the tyranny of our own upset to a deeper place of love, kindness, and healing.

And simply surrendering ourselves in wordless poverty to the presence and activity of God might be the most effective way for “the lenses of our perception to be cleansed,” as William Blake said, so that we might see openings beyond our narrow fears and anxieties.

Keith Nelson and the rest of the brothers at SSJE are engaged with the surrounding community of Cambridge and Boston, bringing hope, healing, and renewal every day like this.

Another young clergyman whom I have admired for some time now, Hendree Harrison, wrote to his fabulously diverse congregation in Lexington, KY two days after the election. Hendree’s church has Republicans and Democrats who are devoted to their parties. But for years, Hendree has immersed his parishioners in contemplative practice and in deep reading of mystics like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart.

So, although many have seriously divergent political views, they are devoted to something much deeper, something they know about that is beyond words, opinions, and the reaches of our discursive minds.  And on Sundays, Hendree’s church is packed. Literally, standing room only.

Last year, I co-led an all-day silent retreat with Hendree at his church, Good Shepherd Episcopal. It was on a Saturday, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Except for very brief reflections by Hendree and me, the day was completely silent. I figured maybe 10-15 people might come to such a thing.  There were seventy.  Yes, 70.  And get this: the University of Kentucky was playing basketball that afternoon. Against Tennessee. I’m not kidding – seventy people choosing a day of sitting in silent, Centering Prayer over UK basketball. Something’s going on.

So, two days after the election, probably only Hendree Harrison could get away with writing to his congregation this way:

“Whether you are devastated or delighted by the results of the election, there is a strange relief in being a Christian, because our call remains the same. We are to ‘sell all our possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Jesus.’

“’Sell all our possessions’ means to let go of all attachments and any allegiances that are less than or other than Love. ‘Give the proceeds to the poor’ means really let go; that is, cut the ties that bind us to all idols that are decidedly not God. And ‘follow Jesus’ means love whatever and whoever is right in front of you as God does, which is unconditionally, gently, and without end.

“That’s a tall order! You may not be ready to dive into those waters today. That’s okay. Go easy on yourself. No matter how you’re feeling or what your next move is, this truth remains: the only place you ever are is in the arms of God. Isn’t that something?”

Hendree never fails to challenge and inspire me.  Yes, Hendree, that’s something.

Hendree and Belle

Keith Nelson at SSJE in Cambridge, MA and Hendree Harrison at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Lexington, KY are pointing to something much deeper and more powerful than what Thomas Merton once called “the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.”  

On March 18, 1958, the monks of Gethsemane Abbey sent Merton on an errand outside the enclosure of the monastery.  And at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, he experienced an epiphany that dispelled the illusion of his separateness from others and changed the trajectory of his life.  He wrote of his experience:

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. ... It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”

Tomorrow’s Gospel lesson in most liturgical churches depicts Jesus praising a poor widow who “out of her poverty, gave everything she had.”

Maybe leaving the enclosures of our anxious minds, entering silence, and embracing our own poverty is a way to open ourselves to the presence of One “whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20)