Thomas Merton made many contributions to the evolving spirituality in our day. He brought contemplation as a goal for all Christians out of the dark ages that had made it the specialty of a privileged few. Likewise, he presented contemplative spirituality as a desirable option for every serious Christian. Using a traditional theological fact that God is everywhere, he pointed out that God is the ground of our being. We cannot exist outside of God.
Merton showed how this truth invites us into a contemplative spirituality that starts with the reality that God is not only within us but our most authentic self is rooted in that reality. Contemplation gives us clarity in awareness of what already is. We are united to God. This is the starting point in our spiritual journey.
We all suffer from a distorted sense of spirituality. In this distortion we set up special places for God. The Sunday mass, the sacraments, retreats and many other “special” times of prayer are perceived as scared moments. When we enter a church we often say it is beautiful. Most often we mean it fits our sense of a scared and special place.
Merton’s insight into God as the ground of being was expressed in one of his many books, The Hidden Ground of Love. All of life happens in this hidden ground of love. All of our being is embedded in this presence of God to us. Therefore all of life is sacred. The problem is we divide and isolate our understanding how God is present to us. There is a Zen saying that can help us here. It states that if we understand, things are as they are. If we do not understand, things are as they are.
Life is where God is. This is why we can say that life is the greatest grace. The special moments of prayer and sacred space, the times set aside for the sacraments, retreat and reflection are truly important. They bring us to an awareness of what already is. Most often, however, we fail to realize we are in the presence of God at all times.
We all have singular moments when God seems to be playing peek-a-boo with us. In these isolated events we have our breath taken away with the grandeur and beauty of an event that bursts into our consciousness: falling in love, the birth of a child, a sunset, an awesome experience of the power the oceans or celestial reality. Then there are much less frequent times when we have what are called unitive moments. Here the cover is removed and at the deepest part of our being we experience our oneness with all and with God. Contemplation produces an awareness of the presence of God that is a simple growth of our normal consciousness.
Much of our spirituality is rooted in a distorted view that God is more here and less there and not at all in another place. The fact is that the foundation of any authentic and integrated spirituality has to flow from Merton’s insight that God is the ground of our being and all creatures exist because of this presence. The distortion is when we separate God from his creatures in our divided and isolated spirituality.
God’s is no less present at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoon than at the Mass on Sunday morning. God is just as present to the garbage collector serving the community or the struggling drug addict or a nun in her contemplative convent.
The primary issue is our awareness of God’s presence. An integrated spirituality will lead us to contemplative prayer in order to expand our awareness of the loving and saving presence of God in all of life. We use the sacred moments of prayer, retreats, sacraments and just openness to life to grow in that awareness.
While God is everywhere, we have only one option to experience that presence and that is in our life. Our task is to seek the faithfulness and honesty to live with a growing awareness and commitment to God’s presence which is always a call to deeper life in the mystery of love. This happens first of all within us. Then we move outward to our brothers and sisters. We are drawn away from separateness and division to the inclusiveness of Christ’s message. Eventually we open up to our responsibility to transform this world in accord with God’s plan for the kingdom of justice and peace.
In speaking about any encounter with true love in life we are speaking about an experience that ultimately originates from God. This is where it gets its power to be real for us. Love remains the deepest of all human mysteries because it flows from the mystery of God. However, because we are sinful, all human encounters with love are partial and incomplete. The Gospel journey with Jesus is our invitation to the purifying and transforming process to make this love continually more selfless.
The journey to the center is growing in awareness that lets us grasp the disparity of the false self and the true self. This is the gift of self-knowledge. It is the repeated Gospel call to choose the true self over the false self: to lose our life to save it, to be the servant and not the one served, to be the last not first. This journey of transformation of consciousness is the goal of contemplative prayer which simply clears the way for us to see what already is. Thus, the goal of prayer is to grow in awareness of God’s presence and to constantly deepen and clarify that awareness. We are invited to embrace God within, in our mind and heart. We are called to get real. The pathways of love beckon us to transform our life.
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