Lectio
“Thoughts will come. If you find yourself obsessed with one pressing down on you from above, trespassing between you and that darkness, and asking, ‘What are you looking for? What do you want?’ tell it that you want only God — ‘I crave God. I seek him and nothing else.’ If the thought persists, asking you who God is, say that God is the One whose grace made you and redeemed you and gave you this work, which is love. Then add, ‘And you’re in no position to understand him. So sit back down. Be still.’ For the love of God, dismiss these thoughts even though they sound holy and helpful.”
— The Cloud of Unknowing
Meditatio
For those who are called to receive the gift of contemplation, there is no promise of an easier path. There is no guarantee that the graced moments of peace and oneness with God received in contemplative prayer will not be met with attacks from without and within, for the devil does not cease his assaults on our souls merely because God has called us nearer to Him. In fact, for every bit of perceived progress on the salvific path, there will be as many setbacks. There will be as many tests and as many trials. And many of these will center in our mind.
Our thoughts are not our friends. They deceive us and deter us from the ways of the Spirit. They are the home of envy, jealousy, greed, and lust. They convince us to hold onto our hurt and to shape our identities around resentment, self-pity, or a thousand other forms of self-centeredness. Not all of these thoughts are ugly. Some come dressed in devotion, asking us to explain or grasp or finally comprehend God — and it is precisely these we are called to set down too, trusting that unknowing is not distance from Him but a deeper way of love. They lead us to seek and to covet all manner of things that are not God, and to expect from that which is not God only that which God alone can give. And they do all of this while telling us that they, alone, are the truth, and that we should fear anything and everything that would separate us from their hold over us.
Many of us spend our whole lives shallowly believing that we are what we think, or that our thoughts are the voice of our true identity, our deepest, most essential nature. The gift of contemplation, however, challenges this belief. Slowly or suddenly, it shakes us loose of this belief and teaches us that there is more to us than the endless stream of words and images that runs through our minds. Contemplation plunges us into the depths of our being and beyond, into the being of God, and leaves us forever changed, forever aware that there is something more, something greater, and something truer than the noise of our fears and desires. It awakens us to the reality of God’s constancy, His eternal presence within us or us within His eternal presence, and, if we allow it, contemplation introduces us to the divine presence in which our truest self is found, beneath all of the false selves we put on or the world attaches to us.
The personal and intimate revelation of Christ that is contemplation does not stop the inner battle with our thoughts and the devil’s quiet sway over them, however. If anything, it highlights them and makes us more aware of them. But they persist. There is a sense that they quiet over time, or that they have less power to dictate who we are or how we act, but they never truly go away. God did not give us thinking minds to not use them, after all. However, He did not give us thinking minds to be ruled by them either. And so, by grace, through prayerful practice and by making ourselves available to the gift of contemplation, we begin over time to gain freedom over the chatter. We begin to see that our thoughts are like leaves on a river, but they are not the river itself. And when we grow distracted by the leaves, or tempted to follow them downstream, we are left to pray, to call out the name of God to come to our aid — not to escape the water, but to release what only floats upon it, so that we may rest more fully in Him, in the very stream of living water that is His loving presence in our hearts.
Oratio
I See You
glimpses of
Your hidden face
glimmering
through the trees
a twinkling of light
branches
swaying in the breeze
and then You speak to me
dancing
dancing
dancing
I see You
You are in everything
that breathes
dancing
dancing
dancing
showing Your face to me
Contemplatio
Somewhere beneath everything you’ve been telling yourself today, there is a self He has already found and already loves — untouched by the noise, however persistent it becomes. You don’t have to reach for it. It is already yours in Him. Hold this in stillness, withholding nothing, and let Him move as He will.
Related Scripture
“and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like To Lose All, To Be Filled: James Finley and the Love That Empties Itself Out For Others (Lectio Divina), which turns to the same self hidden beneath everything we perform or protect, showing what it costs to stop grasping so that a truer fullness can be received.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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