Faith Venture

I wrote earlier this week about God’s logic of cause and effect. What we do causes certain effects upon us. Good or bad.

It’s inevitable. If we continue to pursue an unhealthy lifestyle, we will become ill. If we meditate and pray daily, our outlook on life will improve.

But, let’s admit it, we humans also turn this cause and effect thinking around. We think, if we pray to God, we expect an effect. I want this, and I want it now. OK, God, I’m waiting not-so-patiently for your granting of my wish.

I call this “vending-machine God”. Put in your payment (prayer) and receive your little bag or cup of goodies.

But, when God created the universe and everything in it, he also created some laws to keep it going. Cause and effect is one.

Humans have been trying to buy God’s favor forever. Sacrifices, magic, religions. None worked.

We might as well turn our attention to living with God. We know the disciplines and the attitudes. We just have to practice them. And as Merton said in the passage I quoted yesterday, patience will come. We will see into our motivations. And we will find ourselves part of God and letting God do for us what he will.

When I began meditating for this brief post, I began with how frustrated we all are waiting for this SARS-CoV-2 virus to run its course and go away. We can’t see it; we can’t hear it; we don’t always see the effects. Now, more than ever, we need to live with cause-and-effect and reside in God’s kingdom. That’s the place where we serve others instead of demanding to be served.

Psychologists are all over mindfulness meditation right now. Dozens of apps have sprung up like spring mushrooms on our smart phones.

Indeed, an intentional practice of once or twice daily meditation will (not just can) change your outlook and personality.

Thomas Merton says, “If well made, my meditation will bear fruit in an increase of fortitude in patience. My patience will help me to endure trials in such a way that my soul will be purified of many imperfections and obstacles to grace. I will learn to know better the sources of anger in myself. I will then grow in charity, and since charity is the source of supernatural merit, I will merit a higher degree of union with God in heaven. Also, of course, I will be a more charitable and virtuous person here on earth.”

I can testify to the accuracy of Merton’s observation. This is all true about the intentional practice of meditation. You, too, can change your life. And grow in charity, also known as love.

If you continue to behave this way, then certain punishment will come to you, otherwise you can walk with God.

Not only the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, but many other stories there reveal this inevitable logic of God. And also the Christian Bible.

Not only these texts. Much of ancient literature and thinking discusses cause and effect.

Even today that essential logic is unrelenting. If you continue eating highly processed food and load up on sugar, then you will surely suffer health consequences.

If you do not exercise your muscles, your body will become weak, flabby, and prone to illness.

If you do not exercise your brain muscle, you will not grow and mature in knowledge.

If you do not exercise your spiritual muscles, then you will not grow closer to God.

I’m fascinated by the Desert Fathers. These are people who felt the need for deeper communion and understanding of God and Jesus. This drove them into the wilds of the deserts of Egypt and Syria.

The undertaking was dangerous. They ate what they could beg for in a nearby village or whatever they could forage. Bandits would happen by and cause physical harm. Sometimes Roman soldiers would come around and beat them depending upon the political winds.

But by and large they were a dedicated and hardy lot leaving behind some excellent writings.

And think of the other Christ-followers from the first three centuries. Maybe like me you read the apostles and early leaders to discover a list of rules. I follow them (or say I do) and I’m “in”; while there are many who don’t and they are “out”.

Then you discover that combining all the writings maybe up through Augustine of Hippo and discover it’s really a story–a story of how these communities struggled to figure out the the path that Jesus set them all out on.

This fits, because just as Paul wrote in Romans and Galatians we are all on that path. We start out ignorant like a child and then we grow in knowledge and maturity. And we find the path.

It’s not a list. It’s a direction.

• Practice being curious

• Forgive themselves

• Hold their emotions lightly

• Practice compassion

• Make peace with imperfection

• Embrace vulnerability

• Understand all things come and go

Peace.

Some things must be believed to be seen.

I’ve seen this thought attributed to several people. Although it seems counter-intuitive, it is true. Think about people you’ve known who have missed witnessing experiences due to lack of faith that they could happen.

Thomas Merton teaches the power of meditation is generated not by reasoning but by faith.

When I sit in the morning, I am not reasoning out some hypothetical proposition. No, I have a faith that there exists the creative force that “spoke the word” which generated this universe and all that populates it. The English word we use to call that is God. Other languages have their own words for the same being.

In meditation, my hope is to get a glimpse of this force and perhaps experience a unity with God.

Before meditation, or maybe even through the physical practices we engage to prepare, we try to find peace, tranquility, and balance. Regulating breathing helps. Perhaps a few Yoga poses designed for balance and inward peace.

Often to get ourselves into this state, we must work through our “psychological” problems as all ancient masters have taught. Setting aside or overcoming our fear, anger, pride, jealousy, and the like in order that we will have a clear path to God.

We do it because we have faith we can experience God and be transformed.

Thomas Merton (Spiritual Direction & Meditation) talks of those who expect a deep emotional experience each time they sit to meditate. If that fails to happen, they feel dry.

Meditation, like its cousin prayer, requires the persistence to sit day after day in the practice. There are actually great benefits to that practice even if there are no peak emotional experiences. Both the meditator’s physical health and mental health are enhanced by slowing, pausing, and mindfully breathing.

I’ve seen many people searching for those peak emotional experiences. They show up at a church; then they quietly disappear. You see them later. “We just weren’t being fed,” they say.

There is a certain persistence required. Showing up. Doing the work. Being prepared ready to contribute.

Thomas Merton (Spiritual Direction & Meditation) speaks of meditating on Scripture–particularly the Psalms of the Hebrew Scriptures–and savoring and absorbing them.

This takes time. Even more time than the scholar or student picking up a commentary and dictionary and parsing through the words and grammar.

It involves reading a text many times. Then pausing. And reflecting. And reflecting upon your reflections.

One must not hurry through this process. This attitude is unlike that attitude of the young person recently graduated from university landing that first position who asks, “Will I be able to interview for CEO next year?”

To savor something means taking the time to enjoy each nuance of flavor as it turns over in the mouth.

To absorb means allowing time for the molecules to break down such that they can pass through the membrane and enter into the body.

Today is a holiday in the US. Traditionally this holiday is the transition day from the leisure of summer to the new working or school period of autumn. That makes it an excellent day to pause, savor and absorb the good things gleaned from this unusual year and look forward to a new season.

Critical listeners dry you up. — Toru Sato

Becoming silent or quiet forms the beginning of listening. As the mind draws still and actions pause, a space forms allowing the other person to speak and be heard.

Those who are thinking during conversation in order to achieve the perfect critical response statement destroy the moment. It is lost. And the other, fearing another critical shot, dries up.

But creative listening, the sort of thing that springs from quiet, allows and even encourages the other to be themselves. With all the good and bad, the nice them and the angry them, the happy them and the discouraged them.

That listening opens the fountain within the other.

Thoughts prodded by reading from Two, One, None by Toru Sato.