Sunday, October 26: 'Tis a Gift

It would be so much easier—and, God knows, more pleasant and comfortable—to close my notebook and move over to the couch to read books that take me away from myself. Journaling when I'm in this frame of mind is rarely uplifting and often smacks of self-pity or self-absorption. But I wonder if there aren't bubblings beneath the surface, thoughts and fears I use reading to suppress, that might effervesce into the light if I take a moment, pay attention, and give them a chance.

My old friend darkness is edging in. Again. It always does as winter approaches, dragging both pain and sadness behind it. The other day I asked God, "How many times in my life am I supposed to go through this?" 

Does writing about it make it worse?

Of course, the dark times are when I experience a greater need for God and cry out to Them most desperately and sincerely. So there's that.

Still, the child of God I want to be and the child I God I am are so very far apart. (Or is it the child of God I think I'm supposed to be and the child of God I am? I honestly don't know.)

I can't forget contemplation. By that I mean, I can't entirely shrug off the idea that contemplative is a very good way to live and a good way to be. But my interest seems distant, my desire a degree or two below lukewarm. I think it was Merton who said contemplation is a gift. Yeah. (I just looked it up.) He said contemplation is a gift, a theological grace, not a psychological trick that can be achieved through techniques. Well, I don't think I've been given this particular gift, at least not yet. The only thing I've experienced so far during my nightly (that would be 200 nights and counting) 10-minute sit is hope that the bell will ring soon.

Am I trying to put the blame for my own spiritual poverty on God? Or am I simply acknowledging the fact that these virtues—sincere delight in God and contemplation—are gifts only God can give? Again, I honestly don't know, but I always suspect my own heart.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for fish, will give him a snake? If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

Do I have faith enough to believe this? And if I do, will my asking, seeking, and knocking be sincere enough or my motives pure enough? (Merton's assertion that with God a little sincerity goes a long, long way gives me hope.) As it stands, I can only ask as who I am, right now, with whatever faith I have right now—not as who I might wish I could be. I'll have to leave heart changes up to God. 

The Path

 

"Do I want this, or do I only want to want this?" In other words, am I a seeker, or do I just want to be able to call myself a seeker? Am I on a journey or an ego trip?

Those are the questions I'm asking myself when I ... you should pardon the pun ... contemplate contemplation.

Merton:

Tepitidy, in which the soul is neither 'hot or cold'—is a state in which one rejects God and rejects the will of God while maintaining an exterior pretense of loving Him in order to keep out of trouble and save one's supposed self-respect. It is the condition that is soon arrived at by those who are habitually ungrateful for the graces of God.

I love contemplation in the abstract, but I'm very afraid I'm tepid in practice. ("The spirit is willing, but ....") I suspect (fear!) I'm just plain tepid at heart. Tepid love for God. Tepid desire to personally experience Them. (Habitually feeling virtually no gratitude for Their graces.)

Worse, I'm crippled by an almost nonexistent belief that my heart will ever warm.

Contemplating the path leaves me—I was going to say cold, but it's worse than that. It leaves me unmoved (or ... you guessed it ... tepid). Sometimes it leaves me skeptical, sardonic, and/or resistant. 

And yet ....

My tepid heart paradoxically, stubbornly, persistently insists there must be More. More than dogma. More than theology. More than the Bible. Just More.

So while I resist stepping fully onto the path—or edge onto it halfheartedly—I can't completely turn my back on it.

James Finley likes to say that if you're reading the mystics, you're already on the path. But how can I be, when my heart feels so dry? When I'm only halfway committed to the possibility of mystical communion with the Divine? 

Who am I resisting? Why am I resisting? And why, in a real sense, can't I resist?

Ay, there's the rub.

Thinking too much again, no doubt. Trying to apply egoic logic to that which the ego can never figure out.

Bottom line, I can't do anything but what I'm doing, halfhearted though it may be, for now. The More I sense, the More I can't help but believe in, will, I hope, warm my tepid heart.

The he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones [or in my case, dry heart], hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.'

Create in me a clean heart, O God ....