A Benign Presence: Meditations

(From Charles Brandt’s Archives – C Brandt, date unknown)

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

T. S. Eliot

Introduction

Through Christian Meditation we assist in the great transformation of human hearts and minds. This transformation leads the human community and the earth community into being a single sacred community. The most important thing in this life is to enter into communion with God, Brother and Sister, and the natural world. Thomas Berry has helped us understand that all human activities must be judged primarily by the extent to which they foster a mutually enhancing human-earth relationship. Through Christian Meditation we assist in the great transformation of human hearts and minds. This leads us into sacred community.

In the words of John Main, “We find Christ in our hearts and then we find ourselves in him and, in him, in all creation.” Science today tells us that all things are interrelated. Thomas Berry describes it as “a complicated web of interdependent relationships”. Meditation can help us realize our unity with all beings – which is perhaps the most important step we can take towards halting the environmental destruction that is taking place in the universe. As we meditate we enter into silence and stillness and expose our human consciousness to the glorified, human, consciousness of Christ and through Him are carried to the Father. We need to be open to the Spirit. It is the spirit of compassion and love. We don’t know how to pray, but the Spirit prays within us.

How can we put ourselves into a frame of mind that will lead us to live life in its fullness?  Out of that question every path springs. One path is the Benedictine path. It was in response to that question that Saint Benedict wrote a Rule of life.  “Rule” is not used here in this sense of rules and regulations.  The word rule comes from the Greek term canon, which originally meant “trellis.”  The Rule of Saint Benedict is a trellis that supports a life of mindfulness; that is, a life lived in fullness. In a Benedictine monastery, the Rule is what shapes time and place.  Everything is designed and arranged in order to help you be present, to be where you are. In this it emulates the natural world.

In a Benedictine monastery, time and place are ordered in a way that help one to be alert, mindful, and always present. Present to that word which comes out of the silence.  In order to bring this somewhat abstract-sounding statement into our own experience, we have to learn to listen. That is one of the great tasks of the monastic life in general, and in particular, in the mindfulness discipline of Benedictine spirituality.  We have to learn to listen.  And that means, of course not only to listen to scriptures or what our abbot tells us, but also to listen unconditionally, always, in every situation, with our hearts. All the bells, gongs, and drums in a monastery are there to remind us:  This is the moment. This is the moment.  St. Benedict says that at the very first sound of a bell a monk should drop everything and go toward whatever it is the time to be doing.  He shouldn’t even stop to dot his “i’s” if he is in the middle of writing a letter. But he should just get up and go. In the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot calls this “Time, not our time.” To act when it is time is different from doing something when we feel like it. A task for our time is to attune oneself to a time that is not our time. Time is not something that we can hang on to – it is a gift we receive moment by moment. In India the times for prayer are at sunrise and sunset. These are unrepeatable, unique moments. The sun is not going to set twice; you cannot bring it back. The show won’t be repeated because you weren’t ready for it.

In Christian Mediation we invite silence and solitude. We are present – to attend, to wonder, to have patience and persevere and to be thankful. Now, in this moment, be with your breath. Be with God. Be.

Attention

• Only a sense of the sacred will save us:  for humans and non-humans alike. Thomas Berry speaks of Benign Presence. When we are a benign presence to the natural world we cease being a disruptive force. Being appreciative, being a life-giving force leads to “a moment of peace.”

• The heart of poverty can be material privation and cultural disparagement. By this, I mean one human group saying to another human group, “You have no worth, you have no dignity.” This idea can be applied to race, sex, or sexual orientation. It can be the status of the laity in the church as it has traditionally existed and our interactions with First Nations people. We say to these groups, “You have no value. You have no dignity.” This is cultural disparagement. This denial of dignity constitutes the heart of poverty.

• Reaffirming the dignity of the poor and the dignity of the disparaged is God’s option. It is not just that we are called to be compassionate towards the poor.  There is also the recognition that, in a very mysterious way, the power for the redemption of humanity has been placed within the poor and the disparaged.

• Our actions have also caused the non-human creatures of the earth to be devalued. As a benign presence we reaffirm their dignity. Together we promote the common good. This call is to expand our perspective. For example, when we allow oil drilling in the far north on prime caribou habitat we are disparaging the caribou, saying you have no worth.  When we allow the Tsolum River to be poisoned by copper destroying life in the river, we are saying to the Tsolum River, to the steelhead, and salmon in the river, you have no worth, no dignity.  When we allow global warming, we say to our atmosphere, you have no worth, no dignity.  We say that to our forests, when we allow them to be clear-cut out along Comox Lake or the Oyster River. Our Society has to change from having a disruptive influence on the earth to one of having a BENIGN PRESENCE.

• Today we are concerned more than ever before about pure, clean water, air and soil and with the life forms that inhabit this environment.  We see more clearly our mutual interdependence and relationship. As life forms such as the wild salmon are lost, we suffer soul-loss. We must change. We must transform. We must reaffirm their dignity. There is a special power in the poor of the earth to promote the common good. This is Christianity.

• Transformation results from experiencing creation with a sense of wonder and delight instead of a commodity for our own personal benefit.

• We experience creation with a sense of wonder and delight when we fall in love with the natural world. It is only when we love someone or something that we will save them. And we can only love when we consider that someone or something sacred.

• Only the sense of the sacred will save us.

• We have an immediate presence to every being in the universe individually and to the universe itself in its unity.  Every atom is immediately present to every other atom in the universe. When we are present to all and everything in our world we act differently. We seek to be a benign presence – one that causes not a ripple. We seek to breathe in unison with the earth and all life on it.
• Every being needs to listen to every other being.  As humans, we need especially to listen to the voices of Earth and of the entire universe. As we listen we come to understand that each being has the capacity to articulate its inner structure and to declare itself to the entire universe. Being present to the universe changes the way we are. We become who we are.
• Thomas Berry has helped us to see that the comprehensive bonding of each reality with every other reality is the final expression of the curvature of space. The curvature of space holds all things together in a compassionate embrace that is the universe itself.

Wonder

• Wonder. Human beings begin their existence in Wonder. We awaken into a vast universe of power and delight. Wonder is at the very core of our being. It is the source of all religions, all philosophies, all the arts and all the sciences. How we respond to wonder and how we cultivate it determines the sort of people we are.

• Wonder invites silence. I think of entering Silence as entering into the fourth dimension of consciousness – it is a place where we see things holistically. Silence gives us an experience of reality that is free of the bounds of space and time.  In silence we achieve freedom over clock time. In the communion with the natural world we find silence. Silence invites us.

• Our main goal in life is to be oneself – to discover our deep true self. We can’t be ourselves without all other beings.  When we come to realize that, we discover ourselves in communion with all creatures. When we find ourselves in all creation, we enter into communion with the whole community of subjects of the natural world. When we see ourselves in communion with others. we understand the need to stop exploiting the natural world.

• To realize our unity with all beings we enter into silence and stillness. This transformation begins with the human heart, the core of our spirit. The silence and stillness enables us to realize the unity of all beings. This unity – this oneness – causes us to reach out with love to every creature in the universe.

• What is our fullest destiny? To become love in human form. The journey out of emptiness is the creation of love.

• The deepest mystery about God is not God’s existence but the depth of God’s love.

• Taking up our cross often calls us to “crucify our own interests for the sake of others.” We have to make “the return”.  The three R’s – Recycle, Reduce, Reuse – are important, and a fourth R is vital. Refuse. Refuse that which is environmentally unfriendly.  Make the sacrifice. We have many selves: our small personal self, our family self, community self, earth self and universe self.  And it is always the smaller self that must make the sacrifice for the greater self.  That is the way we make the Return.

• Why should we bring Earth and People together? So we can be drawn forth from a culture of pessimism and consumerism to the wonder and creativity of the natural world. Our own well being can only be achieved through the well being of the natural world.

•  Nature is revelatory and instructive. It can teach us to live. The universe mirrors God. When we understand more fully our own sense of the sacred, we enter fourth dimensional consciousness and learn wisdom from nature.

• To discover within us what Thomas Berry has coined “the creative spontaneities” – that which is uncontrolled by human dominance –we need to struggle with our almost completely encapsulated lives. We must experience nature. We need to awaken to awareness of nature as REVELATORY rather than RESOURCE OR CURIOSITY. We need a positive attitude towards science. Nature is not merely a collection of phenomena, but it is a teacher. It is a manifestation of wisdom.

Patience and Perseverance

• We belong here. The earth is more than just a home, it is a living system and we are part of it. It is Gaia. Thomas Berry reminds us that we are called upon to create a new type of civilization that includes within its embrace the ever-renewing transformation of the natural world and of every human being. Then Gaia will be a planet shining with life in all of its plenitude and shot through with the divine presence.

• Each person is unique.  We did not choose to be here and to live in this time and these circumstances. We were chosen. Everything is chosen for a very special task.  In us the destinies of the universe are articulated.

• All of us on Gaia do not have separate futures; there is only a shared future. Our common destiny includes the entire company of nations as well as for the larger Earth community itself. The human community and the natural world must go into the future as a sacred community or we will perish in the desert.

• The Earth is primary and humans are derivative. The first obligation of medicine is not take care of humans but to see we have an integral, healthy Earth. You cannot have well people on a sick Earth no matter how much technology you have.  It doesn’t work that way.

• In our fear it can seem as though God has abandoned us.  We who are the broken-hearted need healing. Silence heals. Time with the natural world heals. In the natural world we find God. Walking in peace in companionship with Gaia heals. As we breathe peace we come to understand the breath that breathes us – God’s breathe in all of us.

• Walk in peace when daily life is burdened with anxieties and fears. Walking meditation brings joy and peace. Sorrows and worries can drop away. To have peace of mind and to attain to self-liberation, learn to walk in this way.  No hurry, no goal, no direction in space or time. Going is important, not arriving. 

• You breathe in and you breathe out. The breath is all. You experience the rhythm of the universe. This is walking to healing. This is walking meditation. This is living in the sacred space.

• Be present. Be witness. If you wish to truly know someone, ask that person not where he or she lives, or what the person might eat or how the person combs his hair but ask the person what she or he is living for – in detail. And then ask, “What keeps you from living fully?”

• Be present. In the present is the gift – the grace of the moment. Grace gives us patience and helps us preservere.

• In meditation we seek to dissemble the barriers that we have set up around ourselves, cutting us off from OUR CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PRESENCE OF JESUS in our own hearts. In meditating we start the process of dismantling the ego that attempts to place ourselves at the centre. We begin to understand that God is at the centre and so our perspective changes.  We reach the Father through the human consciousness of Jesus.

• Patience and perseverance. Patience leading to perseverance. NOTHING HAPPENS in the life of prayer, in the life of meditation. One continues to spend periods of time PAYING ATTENTION.  One continues to plunge into the sea of nothingness, knowing that in this sea of darkness He is present. Merton writes, “Leave nothingness as it is. In it He Is.” Hope encourages patience and perseverance.  

Thankfulness

• There are many good mantras. The Cloud of Unknowing says it should be a brief word, battering the cloud of unknowing with the cloud of forgetfulness below you. I use Ma-ra-na-tha because that is the one I learned in the beginning. It fits well with breathing, inhaling and exhaling, two syllables with each. It is good to use the same mantra, not to change. There is a Benedictine nun – insert reference – who just uses the breath, no word.  I think the breath is very important.  We breathe all of the time; ergo pray all of the time.

• The material universe is essentially a field of energies in which the parts can only be understood in relation to the whole. As Fritjof Capra describes it, it is a complicated web of interdependent relationships. The universe is a great dance of energies of which we are a part. When we breathe with mindfulness we hear the rhythm of the dance. ( ???Or… When we breathe with mindfulness we become the dance.)

• YOU ARE PART OF THE EARTH, AND THE EARTH IS PART OF YOU.  In that moment of breath we come to understand that we are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. When we love the earth, we love ourselves. We are thankful. It is good to love ourselves.  We have to come to see this unity of ourselves and the earth.

• We had nothing to do with the infinite number of flowers and insects and gorgeous world amongst which we live. This earth was given to us.  We were simply asked to be present to it in some gracious, honouring way. 

• Each being has the capacity to articulate its own inner structure, to declare itself to the entire universe, and to be present to the universe in a comprehensive manner. 

• Every being needs to listen to every other being.  As humans, we need especially to listen to the manifold voices of Earth and of the entire universe.

• The law of intimacy of things with one another is of immense importance.  It is the final expression of the curvature of space that holds all things together in a compassionate embrace that is the universe itself.

• Many of us are afraid of emptiness – in our lives, in ourselves – and we rush to fill this seeming void with the noise and glitter of non-essentials. We need to embrace our emptiness, not in self-pity, but in an honest admission of our human condition because, paradoxically, emptiness can lead to great richness.  If we allow it to happen, our inability to see can lead to faith; our inner death can lead us to the fullness of life. It is in darkness that light is most clearly recognized and most deeply valued.  It is out of death that new life rises.

• The Lord continues to give us his gifts to be used for others and we are expected to go running, to exercise them. But the Lord also gives us gifts precisely for ourselves, to help us be more in union with him in loving him and we are encouraged to pray without ceasing for these gifts. The temptation, for some is lose themselves in good works without enough of the nourishment of prayers.  For others, it is to be immersed in prayer without enough care for the less fortunate.  The ideal might be to become, as far as we can, contemplatives in action.

• There is really only one prayer. We have to create a space within ourselves that will allow the consciousness of the prayer of Jesus to envelop us in this powerful mystery.

• Most of us are aware of the destruction of our planet at the deepest level.  But we do not face it. We do not integrate it for fear of experiencing the despair that such information provokes.  We fear it may overwhelm us.  Yet despair can be channelled. Experience shows that this despair, grief and anger can be confronted, experienced and creatively channelled.  Far from being crushed by it, new energy, creativity and empowerment can be released. We experience our fundamental interconnectedness with all life. We discover the interconnectedness:  we hear the thrush singing in our own heart; the cool winds of the forest unlock our ears; stars of a tropical sky spread across the ceiling of our minds, and the rivers find their source.

• We need an earth answer to an earth problem.  The earth will solve its problems, and possibly our own, if we will let the earth function in its own ways.  We need only listen to what the earth is telling us. So let us enter into the great dance of energies, let us listen to the earth, and discover that unity of all beings.

Closing

Thomas Berry has reminded us that we have been functioning out of human-human, human-divine set of relationship to the exclusion of a human-earth relationship.  That is why we are dysfunctional society. We have to discover the dream of the earth and then work with this dream, rather than control the earth. The values of the universe can help us in our journey: diversity, interiority and communion of all.

We need to listen. Because we don’t see what is there, we don’t hear. The volume of each atom is the volume of the universe.  Everything participates. Everything has its voice and speaks. Everything is receiving from every particle of the universe. We are closing down our life support systems. We exploit. We don’t commune. Every thing is articulating itself. We need only to listen.

Change can happen. It is up to us. Know the Story. Dream. Dreams drive action. Welcome transformation. Meditate. Be with nature. Be with the silence. Be with God.