Friendship and intimacy
I urge you … to open your heart to friendship and intimacy, remembering that your friendships are an extension of your contemplative prayer. They are indeed contemplative friendships. As mystical contemplation necessarily brings suffering and emptiness, dark nights and enlightenment, so too will intimate friendship bring suffering and emptiness, dark nights and enlightenment. As mystical contemplation leads to human authenticity so does mystical friendship; as mystical contemplation leads to self-transcendence so also does mystical friendship. You will find that deep purification takes place, and that you become transparent to another person and she to you …
I came across this statement from William Johnston’s Being in Love: The Practice of Christian Prayer at a quiet day at Tabor Carmelite Retreat House, Preston, on Saturday. I simply couldn’t believe it when these words were read out by the retreat leader. I was just stunned, utterly stunned …
The challenge
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
This is one of the statements that I most associate with Richard Rohr; and it is one that he must have said dozens of times. And so it also appears in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, where he adds:
If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. Indeed, there are bitter people everywhere, inside and outside of the church. As they go through life, the hurts, disappointments, betrayals, abandonments, the burden of their own sinfulness and brokenness all pile up, and they do not know where to put it.
If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down. The natural movement of the ego is to protect itself so as not to be hurt again.
Biblical revelation is about transforming history and individuals so that we don’t just keep handing the pain onto the next generation. … Exporting our unresolved hurt is almost the underlying story line of human history, so you see why people still need healthy spirituality and healthy religion.
I think Rohr is right. How we deal with our hurts, disappointments, betrayals etc. makes all the difference, not only in how we experience and treat others, but also in how we experience life itself. Bitterness, cynicism and distrust are so dangerous because they are so destructive. They can seriously hurt and even destroy others, but that’s not all: in the end, they can destroy us, too.
The challenge, then, is not to close down but to accept and integrate our hurts, disappointments and betrayals, which of course hurt the more the less expected they are. The challenge is to transform our pain and not transmit it, to let ourselves be hurt without hitting back. A true challenge indeed, but the realisation that this is the only healthy way forward is perhaps the first step. Compassion for those who hurt us and a commitment to non-violence in all walks of life make all the difference, for ourselves in the first place but also, in the long run, for those we encounter.
The freedom not to know
As a footnote on my previous post, I should say that Kennedy’s statement appeals to me because it connects with the Christian apophatic tradition, which is precisely a tradition of not knowing. Richard Rohr (in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality) defines this as ‘the very concept of faith, the freedom not to know’, and notes that
it is amazing how religion has turned this biblical idea of faith around to mean its exact opposite: into a tradition of certain knowing, presumed predictability and complete assurance about whom God likes and whom God does not like.
Secret places inside this violent world
Time for some more of Rumi’s poetry, again in the translation of Coleman Barks, from Bridge to the Soul: Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart.
I am sure I have said this before, but Rumi has been an amazing discovery for me. There is profound spiritual insight in the words of this Sufi master, and there is so much here that speaks to me at such a deep level. Some of it puts into words my own recent journey in ways that I could never have managed myself. Other parts express some of my deepest hopes and longings. And then there are many wonderful insights about God, love, friendship etc.
If only more people would read Rumi’s poetry. It would open their eyes to quite a different side of Islam. But then, he apparently is the most widely read poet in America today. There is still hope then …
We must die to become true human beings.
From gardens to the gardener,
from grieving to a wedding feast.We tremble like leaves about to let go.
There is no avoiding pain,
or feeling exiled, or the taste of dust.
I can truly relate to those reflections on dying, grieving, letting go, experiencing pain and the taste of dust.
When someone feels jealous,
I am inside the hurt and the need to possess.When anyone is sick,
I feel feverish and dizzy.
This I find comforting: that God is inside the hurt of those who need to possess others. And that he is inside our sickness.
For the grace of the presence, be grateful.
…
Imagination cannot contain the absolute.
These poems are elusive
because the presence is.
‘Imagination cannot contain the absolute’. Quite. No point to even try!
No more holding back. Be reckless.
Tell your love to everybody.…
Stand up. The prostrating
part of prayer is over.…
the beloved is absence
as well as this fullness.
I love that attitude to praying and loving God.
Be a helpful friend,
and you will become a green tree
with always new fruit,
always deeper journeys into love.
Worth aspiring to …
Learned theologians do not teach love.
Love is nothing but gladness and kindness.…
When you see a scowling face,
it is not a lover’s.
Rumi really does understand true love.
Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.Love says, There are.
…
Lovers feel a truth inside themselves
that rational people keep denying.
This is just brilliant stuff, so true and so well expressed. Secret places in a violent world where you make transactions with beauty – that’s truly wonderful and how I wish to live.
Alles ist anders
Alles ist anders. Alles ist neu. Alles ist schön.
(Everything is different. Everything is new. Everything is beautiful.)
This quote is ascribed to Le Corbusier in Peter Stamm, Sieben Jahre. I have no idea in what kind of context Le Corbusier might have said this, but it is a pretty good description of the effects of spiritual transformation.
Karl Möller 