Fire Within: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer (Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.) https://ignatius.com/fire-within-fwp/
(If you are catching up: chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4)
Chapter 5: “What is Contemplation?”
[Sunday readings of the day https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020925.cfm ]
Lord, I am frustrated because I have watched 3 episodes of Super Why this evening instead of taking any quiet time to write about this chapter and I think my brain is going to melt out my ears. I just want to spend time with You and in fact I want to spend time with You not even writing, or discussing this chapter, but doing nothing (this will not result in a newsletter but it is what I feel I need.) Maybe I can just hide for 10 minutes and do that. [14 minutes later] do I feel any better now? Slightly: less desperate. I'll eat something... [some time later] I have washed the dishes; what would You have me do now? The kid who talks to himself is still talking to himself.
In this chapter... the author wants to explain what contemplation is (or what it is not) and that it was not made up five minutes ago (figuratively; or 5 centuries ago) but is threaded throughout the Old Testament onward (the kid in the background is still muttering “Winnie the Poop” b/c he never gets tired of a bathroom joke punchline in search of a joke.) Is there anything to add to this really? What is my role here? “I will make you a washer of dishes,” I thought to myself earlier — What You want is for my will to be like glove leather [flexible, buttery] which (while still being separate from the hand) is “like a second skin” and this feels like death to the “natural man” who would just as soon let the dishes pile up until we run out (I own only eleven plates in a household of 3 1/2 expressly as a check to this fault) — my will ought to mold itself precisely to Your will... (the kid in the background tells a Tom Swifty...) Anyhow at least while I was washing them I felt tolerably confident in the idea that “I am doing Your will at this moment” [this is consoling if a person wants to do that] and then the will is encouraged to wash the dishes placidly + w/o haste + w/o wanting to get through it to do something else. When I was five I wanted to wash dishes (who does not? the soap is enticing)...
And therefore it is possible to enjoy it if one has the common sense to remain in the present moment w/o thoughts of the future (what I will do next) or the past (how I have spent the day w/o doing things that I remember are due soon)... It is also necessary to practice this in prayer [at the times] when the will is seized but the rest of the abilities (or faculties) of the soul are not, and, Lord, it took me only one million years (figuratively; let us say 7) to accept this idea + put it in practice w/ some consistency — AND WHY? because I did not trust the people who wrote, where I could read it, that this seeming[ly] “doing nothing” is okay to do, that I am not defective or lazy, that no one will notice or mind — or if they do notice, that I ought to trust You to bring good out of it.
Most of all I failed to do very basic reasoning:
if there is something ONLY GOD CAN DO,
and if He DOES IT,
then while it is ongoing IT IS HIS WILL and therefore just embrace it and cooperate with it.
Instead I struggled like a toddler refusing a nap.
This struggle seemed necessary to me b/c Your invasion is gentle and how am I to be sure that I cannot do thus-and-such unless I try and fail to? [i.e. because it is gentle it is possible to imagine “maybe I am not doing thus-and-such through my own fault” although an intelligent person would instead recognize “ordinarily, I certainly do do thus-and-such with no noticeable effort whereas right now I seem to have forgotten how (ordinarily inconceivable; how could anyone forget how to do that)” and make at most a single brief attempt.]
Lord, You have been very patient w/ me in my stupidity — more than that — in my distrust of You. A person fears “not doing what You want” as though You would permit someone earnest to mistake it w/o providing an opportunity to make a course correction [and You know how thick my skull is and how obvious You would need to make it.]... Anyway, “here I am”, Lord, send me to wash dishes I guess.
It does run counter to all expectations (the greatest thing we can do is “seemingly nothing”?) like a pro fisherman being told “yeah, the way you NORMALLY catch fish has totally failed you, but, hear me out, what if I tell you to do practically the opposite? Not a rhetorical question — I'm telling you, already.” And then You, Lord, to illustrate that all of this is in Your hand: failure and success: he protests but does it anyway and there is an impossibly successful result: THIS is how we ought to understand the efficacy of contemplative prayer in relation to any normal thing we could do instead; it is “TWO boats almost sink taking in the haul” effective.
And in it we are fishing for men: first of all for one's own soul (mine had gone astray.)
All right, what else does he [the author] say? Variability — yes — in quality, in intensity or depth, in whether it is accompanied by one sort of feeling or another (the feeling is not You; we cannot sense You at all.) That it produces effects in the person who prays — Yes. A person looking back several years would observe some significant changes even though a lot of it is hidden from one's own eyes.
It is not necessary to understand what “dark knowing” or “unknowing” is or how to do it, it is more a matter of being willing to endure it (at first) when it shows up [it would help to have heard of it at this point, in order to recognize what is going on] and then (having understood that it does produce desirable things in one's own experience) cooperating w/ it, which is to say, make an act of the will: You want this so I want it too. (Notice this is different than “offering it up” as one does when enduring something necessary but unwanted.) Lord, I am tired (10:52pm) have I said enough?
I really want everyone to take seriously the universal call to holiness — contemplative prayer is the express lane to get there and therefore we can desire it as an efficient means to an end that we are commanded to desire (Be perfect...) It is in no way a matter of being an extraordinary person; it is a matter of being a very ordinary pig with a very good friend (cf. Charlotte's Web.) Part of the equation is being willing to be helped. The other part is knowing enough about what it is to cooperate.
Next chapter: https://withoutcost.substack.com/p/fire-within-chapter-06
[There are no footnotes because, as they say, “the struggle is real”… it is already tomorrow here. If you would like to know the Super Story Answers from these three episodes they were SEARCH (The Banana Mystery), FIX THE ORDER (A Day with Farmer Fred in which the sentences were all mixed up) [it seems to me that this was St Teresa of Avila’s job], and COOPERATE (The Silly Word Play).]
Sorry it took me so long to respond. I was reading Happy Are the Poor. The point that grabbed my attention was that the early experiences of contemplation only involve the will so they are full of distraction which is nice to know when one can't go 5 minutes without being distracted. Also that not feeling God's presence is normal and one doesn't have to scream and yell at God and have a hissy fit over it like I did when this happened before. And I am trying to do God's will all the time but I still pray dear Lord please open the doors You want me to go through and close the rest. Because that makes figuring things out unnecessary. And I am still getting regularly in prayer. Trust Me which He probably wouldn't be hitting me over the head with if I did trust Him.
Except. Forgive me, please.
It seems that not just any child, before being corrupted by self-centered reasoning, is to be our model child. There is also this thing called Innocence. When we are finally ready to become One in God, it will be as though we are finally prepared to become, once again, as Innocent children. Having completed the transformations of Contemplation, Union in Love in God becomes the Final State of all Saints.
And what constitutes an Innocent Child? A child who has not been injured, thereby having truly learned that not all is good in their experience. To be (precisely the first) to take the innocence of a particular child, still a forgivable sin, if repented, but perhaps not often repented, elicits the gravest of warnings. "Better to be cast into the sea with a millstone around one's neck."
And it may well be that an innocent child, by forgiving, say, a parent who has just had a bad moment... Well, perhaps innate forgiveness will preserve this child's innocence. We need not terrify ourselves by imagining that First Innocence must be especially fragile. The less fragile that Innocence, the graver the sin of breaking it.
And how do you or I, innocence long lost, return to that State? My poor understanding is that this State is what is to be entered after Contemplations are complete. Contemplation and forgiveness of every offence set the stage.