Search For Silence

SCORCH
pO n o l o e e
SEARCH
FOR
SILENCE
Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
—T. 8S. Exrot, “Ash Wednesday”
a Nad
Mpa ie hs
.
SEARCH
03! ROR
SV
02
SILENCE
NAST AAS
A lizabeth O’Connor
t}
NZEASIASS
WORD BOOKS Waco, Texas

AT CLAREMONT
Cal iforn ia
SEARCH FOR SILENCE
First Printing—April 1972

Second Printing—July 1972
Third Printing—January 1974
First Paperback Printing—March 1977
Copyright © 1972 by Elizabeth O'Connor.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form,
except for brief quotations in reviews, without the written permission of
the publisher. For permission to quote previously copyrighted material,
write to the original copyright owners.
ISBN 0-87680-808-9
Library of Congress catalog card number: 74-188067
Printed in the United States of America
Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible

(Rsv), copyrighted 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
USA, are used by permission,
Scripture quotations from The New English Bible (NEB), copyright ©

The Delegates of The Oxford University Press and The Syndics of The
Cambridge University Press, 1961 and 1970, are used by permission.
The Scripture quotation marked Moffatt is from A New Translation of

the Bible by James Moffatt, copyright 1922, 1924, 1926, 1935, 1950, 1952,
1953, 1954, by Harper & Brothers.
Contents
PREKNOW IECSINENES AUS esau Sarepvcals Baers 2's gies

Foreword, by (Gordon Cosby = 200s. gauedsc sa sew eee
Fo Contessing Our tumanity- 2s. sissy he va a earn

EXERCISE 1. ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING OUR
DARK SIDE. i=. <2 sc): Nay ans aece ea
EXERCISE 2. ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING OUR
LIGHT SIDE .5 2... Mites ERPS ar eh
Hi ‘Prayer and = Coffee House oct. Se Vuk Some eared

EXERCISE 3. THE PRACTICE OF SILENCE ..........
EXERCISE 4. THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION ........
EXERCISE 5. CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER AND THE
GREATED ORDERS Os soon sa Kosa Sele
EXERCISE 6. CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER AND THE
INDWELLING GOB) 6-0). D 65. Wa bwin -+ eels
NOLESWA ae bc) 25s Pe Ge ae le de Mebe tees cS aa Aes Venere

PDMOPPADNY Ute or cle vic wy ee poe ime le be ca Sethi eee e wien
‘To
Dorotuy Ham
friend of hidden ministries
whose name has always
been written on this book
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following copyright holders for

permission to use their copyrighted material:
ABELARD-SCHUMAN L1p., for the quotation from Hugh L’Anson Fausset,

Fruits of Silence, copyright 1963.
ABINGDON Press, for the quotation from Lynn J. Radcliffe, Making Prayer
Real.
ASSOCIATION Press, for the quotation from Wayne Oates, The Holy Spirit
in Five Worlds. |
CurisTIAN Pus.ications, Inc., for the quotation from A. W. Tozer, The
Pursuit of God, used by permission of the publisher, Harrisburg, Pa.
17101.
CrrapeL Press Inc., for the quotation from Martin Buber, The Way of
Man.
Wm. Coxturns Sons & Co. Lrp., for quotations from the following:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Way to Freedom; Petru Dumitriu, /ncognito,
copyright © Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1964.
CoMMONWEAL, for the quotation from Henry Nouwen, “Generation with-
out Fathers.”
De.acortEe Press, for quotations from Robert S. de Ropp, The Master
Game (a Seymour Lawrence book).
Dopp, Meap & Company, for the quotation from Edwin Way Teale,
North with the Spring.
E. P. Dutron & Co., INc., for quotations from Evelyn Underhill, Mys-
ticism; and Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism, copyright, 1915 by
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.; renewal, 1943, by Evelyn Underhill, Dutton
paperback edition.
ANN Evmo AceEncy, Inc., for the quotation from Earl A. Loomis, Jr.,
Self in Pilgrimage.
FABER AND FABER Ltp., for two lines from T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,”
Collected Poems 1909-1962.
Fines Pus iisHers, for the quotation from Peter-Thomas Rohrbach,
O.C.D., Conversation with Christ.
7
8 €& ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Fortress Press, for the quotation from Helmut Thielicke, How the
World Began.
Harcourt Brace JovanovicuH, INc., for quotations from the following:
Jolande Jacobi, The Way of Individuation, copyright © 1965 by Rascher
& Cie.AG, Zurich, English translation copyright © 1967 by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., reprinted by permission; Loren Eiseley, “A
Ghost Continent,” copyright © 1969 by Loren Eiseley, and “The Hid-
den Teacher,” © 1964, 1969, by Loren Eiseley, both reprinted from
his volume, The Unexpected Universe by permission of Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc.; T. S. Eliot, 2 lines from “Ash Wednesday” in Col-
lected Poems 1909-1962, by T. S. Eliot, copyright, 1936, by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1963, 1964, by T. S. Eliot and
reprinted by permission of the publishers; T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail
Party, copyright © 1950, by T. S. Eliot.
Harrer & Row, for quotations from the following: St. Francis de Sales,
Introduction to the Devout Life, translated by John K. Ryan, 1950;
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, translated by John W. Doberstein;
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Way to Freedom, from the Collected Works
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Edwin H. Robinson, copyright ©
1966 in the English translation by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.,
London, and Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.; Erich Fromm, “The
Creative Attitude,” in Creativity and Its Cultivation, edited by Harold
H. Anderson; John Gardner, Self-Renewal; James Hillman, Suicide
and the Soul; Sgren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing,
translated by Douglas V. Steere; J. Krishnamurti, Think on These
Things, edited by D. Rajagopal; Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Mystictsm:
Christian and Buddhist.
THe Harvitt Press Lrp., for the quotation from Blaise Pascal, Pensées,
translated by Martin Turnell.
HERDER AND HeErper, for quotations from the following: Alfred Delp, The
Prison Meditations of Father Delp; Thomas Merton, Contemplative
Prayer.
Rassr A. J. Hescuer, for the quotation from “Hope Through Renewal
of the Self,” published in Tempo.
THe Juan Press, Inc., for the quotation from Ira Progoff, Ph.D., The
Symbolic and the Real, The Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1963.
THE MacmiLitan Company, for quotations from the following: Nicolas
Berdyaev, Dream and Reality; Petru Dumitriu, Incognito, © by Wm.
Collins Sons, & Co., Ltd., 1964; Olive Wyon, The School of Prayer,
© 1943.
Main Currents IN Mopern Txoucut, for quotations from M. Lietaert
Peerbolte, “Meditation for School Children,” and Richard O. Whipple,
“The View from Zorna.”
NationaL Councit OF THE CHuRCHES oF Curist in the U.S.A., Division
of Christian Education, for the quotations from Rabbi A. J. Heschel,
“Hope Through Renewal of the Self,” from Tempo.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS >> 9
Tue New York Times, for the quotation from Frederick Buechner,
“Summons to Pilgrimage” (book review), The New York Times Book
Review, March 16, 1969, copyright © 1969 by The New York Times
Company, reprinted by permission.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., for the quotation from Rollo May,
Love and Will, copyright 1969 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
reprinted by permission.
Pautist/NEwMAN Press, for the quotation from Karl Rahner, On
Prayer, copyright © 1958 with permission of Paulist Press.
Pencuin Booxs Lrtp., for quotations from the following: The Cloud of
Unknowing, translated by Clifton Wolters, copyright, Clifton Wolters,
1961; R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, copyright © R. D.
Laing, 1967.
PrincETON University Press, for quotations from the following: M.
Esther Harding, The ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’, Bollingen Series LXXIX
(copyright © 1965 by Princeton University Press); Carl G. Jung, The
Collected Works of C. G. Jung, edited by G. Adler, M. Fordham, H.
Read, translated by R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX—vol. 7, Two
Essays on Analytical Psychology (copyright © 1953 & 1966 by Princeton
University Press); vol. 9i, The Archetypes and the Collective Uncon-
scious (copyright © 1959 & 1969 by Princeton University Press); vol.
11, Psychology and Religion: West and East (copyright © 1958 & 1969
by Princeton University Press); vol. 17, The Development of Person-
ality (copyright © 1954 by Princeton University Press).
G. P. Putnam’s Sons for the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psy-
chology, for the quotation from M. Esther Harding, The Way of All
Women.
Ranvom Housg, Inc., for the quotation from Andre Gide, /f It Die,
translated by Dorothy Bussy; for the quotations from Romano Guardini,
Prayer in Practice, translated by Prince Leopold, copyright © 1957 by
Pantheon Books, Inc., a Division of Random House, Inc., reprinted by
permission of the publisher.
ScHockEN Books Inc., for quotations from the following: Martin Buber,
Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, copyright © 1947 by Schocken
Books Inc.; Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters,
copyright © 1948 by Schocken Books Inc.; Martin Buber, Ten Rungs:
Hasidic Sayings, copyright © 1947 by Shocken Books Inc.; all re-
printed by permission of Schocken Books Inc.
. SCM Press Ltop., for the quotation from Olive Wyon, The School of
Prayer.
CHARLES ScrIBNER’s Sons for quotations from the following: James
Hillman, Insearch, copyright © 1967 by James Hillman; Fritz Kunkel, —
In Search of Maturity, copyright 1943 Charles Scribner’s Sons; David
E. Roberts, Psychotherapy and a Christian View of Man, copyright
1950 Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Tue Seasury Press, for the quotation from Martin Bell, The Way of the
10 && ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Wolf, copyright 1968, 1969, 1970 by Martin Bell.
SHeepD & Warp Inc., for quotations from The Complete Works of St.
Teresa, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers from the critical
edition of P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, C.D., published in three vol-
umes by Sheed & Ward Inc., New York.
THE Soctrety FoR ProMotTinG CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE (S.P.C.K.), for
the quotation from Geoffrey Hoyland, The Use of Silence.
Sprinc Pusuications, for the quotation from Marie-Louise von Franz,
Interpretation of Fairytales, copyright 1970 Marie-Louise von Franz.
Unirep Cuurcu Press, for the quotation from Malcolm France, The
Paradox of Guilt, copyright © 1967 by Malcolm France.
Van Nostranp REINHOLD Company, for quotations from the following:
Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, copyright © 1968
by Litton Educational Publishing Inc., reprinted by permission of Van
Nostrand Reinhold Company; Clark Moustakas, Creativity and Con-
formity, copyright © Clark Moustakas 1967.
THE WESTMINSTER Press, for quotations from Charles B. Hanna, The
Face of the Deep, copyright © 1967, The Westminster Press.
NIZA
IKoREWORD
The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the
place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place
is to be home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless. At the
place of “central silence,’ one’s own life and spirit are united
with the life and Spirit of God. ‘There the fire of God’s presence
is experienced. The soul is immersed in love. The divine birth
happens. We hear at last the living Word. Meister Eckhart
reminds us that a wise man said, “When all things lay in the
midst of silence then leapt there down into me from on high,
from the royal throne, a secret word.’”* The secret Word is heard
in silence. Out of a profound perception of the urgent need to
hear and heed that Word, Search for Silence was written.
11
12 & SEARCH FOR SILENCE
Part One deals with confession because confession is essential

to the quieting of our minds and the silence of prayer in which
we come to know the self that is made in the image of God.
Many persons have difficulty with silence because their lives are
filled with unfaced suffering—suffering that has to be worked
through in order to hear within the address of God. Confession
has to do with the facing and naming before God the darkness
within us; it is also concerned with facing and naming before
God the light within as it breaks forth with ever-increasing
brilliance. Without a preparatory time of confession no real
silence is possible.
Search for Silence completes a trilogy which began with Our
Many Selves and Eighth Day of Creation. The books may be
used in any sequence. Our Many Selves has as its theme a rec-
ognition of the division within and the importance of self-
observation—milestones on the way to becoming a pilgrim people
moving toward wholeness and unity. Eighth Day of Creation
stresses Christ as the life and light within, urging us toward full
realization of our gifts so that we may be in the world as co-
creators. Commitment to Christ as the Lord who calls us fully
into being is essential if we are to reach the quiet center that this
present volume encourages us to seek. If we are not in some
degree exercising our gifts, we lack the passion and the peace
needed for the work required of us in Search for Silence. For
this reason, after completing the section on confession, some
readers may find it rewarding to work through Our Many Selves
and Eighth Day of Creation before beginning the concluding
section on the prayer of silence in the present volume.
Others who have been earnestly striving to exercise their gifts
may need, after confession, to enter immediately into the effort
to find within themselves that silent center of creative love
with which Part Two of Search for Silence deals, A time will
come when the two emphases—contemplation and action—
intersect and become one, for the true contemplative is a man
of action.
There are two ways to read this book. One is to read it
FOREWORD >> 13
simply for the enrichment and inspiration of being in touch with

writers who confirm one’s own intimations of a Kingdom within.
For some this will be the better way, especially for the first
reading. The other choice is to read the book slowly, meditatively,
and to follow the suggested exercises.
If you choose the second way, you will be beginning or con-
tinuing an arduous journey. Time should be allotted each day
for meditation on several of the passages that follow the exercise
you are doing. This will give you the help and encouragement
needed to reach your own quiet center. You will be tempted
a thousand times to forget that Christ called you to make the
pilgrimage. But one day you will touch the Silence and under-
stand and exclaim with an unknown preacher,
See for yourselves how little were my labours

compared with the great peace I have found.’
N. Gorpon Cossy
The Church of The Saviour
Washington, D.C.
area ena
os wd tA et :
do
e oe ne Paar eT?) >
a sf m7: See 4
Snel
= : St
whee i +4
Pee .’
. 7 rr
ote ae
i Cate 7
, " eee »!
As oo) a fo” fee
= i ae Ah’ Se Z Ast
Conr ESSING
Our Iluatanrry
NEA
(CONFESSING
Our HumMANITY
A few years ago I took a class entitled, “How to Keep One’s

Own Journal.” In the first session we were asked to list our fears,
and to indicate the one that filled us with the most dread. On
my long list I put a circle around the “fear that one day I will
be left alone.” This was my own most private fear. I had no
intention of admitting it to anyone. Connected with it was a
shame that was not easily put in words. I had the feeling that if
I said it aloud the world would label me an unsuccessful human
being, and in the corridors and on the streets people would
whisper, “There goes a lonely person.” Some might say, “How
sad,” and ask me to dinner; and I would go, knowing that when
all the dinners were over my fear would still be there, for it was
Az
18 && SEARCH FOR SILENCE
projected upon an unknown future when I would, indeed, be

alone.
At the next session of the class it was suggested that anyone
who cared to might say what he had named as his pet fear.
“Being alone,” said one man simply. “Being old and alone.”
“T have that fear, too,” said another. “It is the fear of being
abandoned.”
‘My fear is almost like that,” said a third person. “I’m afraid
of committing myself to anything, because I’m afraid that some-
where along the way everyone will fall out, and I'll be left
holding the bag.”
During those few minutes my outcast fear had grown respect-
able. It had been described by strong men living not only in the
midst of plenty, but in the safety of families. I could say, “Mine,
too, is the fear that I shall be left alone.”
Only one other fear was named that night—the fear of
failure. When we considered this, it also turned out to be the
fear of being alone. In failure was the terrible possibility of being
cut off from friends.
The evening ended with a period of structured meditation.
We were to imagine that we had been following Jesus for
several days. Even though we had heard him say, “Do not be
anxious about tomorrow,” “The hairs of your head are all
numbered,” and “I am with you always,” each of us had kept
his own persistent fear. Having edged our way through the
crowd, we were to think of ourselves as having made a bold
petition for a few minutes of his time so that we might say, “I
believe, help my unbelief.” He had nodded “yes” to the request,
and had motioned us tO, fallaur him ta a nlace anart We were
CONFESSING OUR HUMANITY >> 19
life of a Christian. It had been acts of confession that bound us

together in a community of caring and released a healing power
that must be experienced again and again in the process of being
made whole. We had shared not only the casual things that we
were used to sharing when we met, but a few of those thoughts
that are born in the solitary places of our lives when no one else
is looking. We had dared to say for our own hearing, as well as
for the hearing of others, ““This is my fear.”’ The illusion of being
alone in “fear and trembling” was dispelled. The sense of oneness
that we moved into was based on the awareness of our common
plight.
For me, that night was the beginning of a long journey in
the understanding of a fear. Others by their confession had not
alienated me, but had tapped strains of caring that made me
want to reach out and say to each in turn, “Have no fear.”
Moreover, I caught a glimpse of the sin of my own pride. It
had wrought an unreal image of a self-contained person and
would not let that image go.
This is what happens with false imaginings about ourselves.
We come to believe more and more in them. We fashion an
unreal self and become enmeshed in the nets of our own labor.
It does not take long to begin to think that this self—this idol
that we have constructed—is all there is to us. We invent our
own legend and come to believe that our salvation lies in per-
petuating it. This cuts us off from our real self and gives rise to
uneasy, tremulous feelings. The fear that hangs suspended like
a knife over the future is not so foolish or unexplainable as we
think. It turns. out to be the prophet of our own soul warning us
that the path we are following leads to destruction. It is Jeremiah
come back again:
every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols;

for his images are false,
and there is no breath in them.
They are worthless, a work of delusion . . .
they shall perish.
—Jeremiah 10:14-15, Rsv
Our inner prophets are often bold to say that a Kingdom is

coming before which all false images will topple and crash; but
we must do more than tremble before signs and prophecies.
Something more is required. We must give up our illusions
about the kind of people we are. No one is going to do this,
however, unless he has come to believe that beneath the unreal
facade there exists another self that can indeed breathe and live.
We do not give up false concepts without at least the beginnings
of faith in an unseen, imperishable Kingdom within. Confession
starts us on the journey towards that lost Kingdom.
But we did more that night than place our fears in an arena
where we might more fully confront them. In the end we put
them down at the feet of Him who had the power to say not
only, ‘““Have no fear,” but also, “I am with you always, even to
the end of the world.” This time I heard those words from
another level of being. Perhaps it was because I had begun to
believe a little more in the availability of my own love. In spite
of all my human frailty, those same words had been so formed
in me that I might have spoken them to others—‘‘Have no fear
... If I being human knew how to give good gifts, how
much more so the one I call Lord and God.
To find loneliness under the heading of confession is probably
unusual, but this is where it belongs. My fears and longings
begin to tell you who I am, and how I hope and suffer. Always
it is hard to confess this part of me, for each new time involves
new risk. In my clumsiness or in my reserve I may fail to
choose the words that let you know that I suffer; or perhaps
there may be something in you that keeps you from hearing, or
makes you turn away. More than a few experiences of acceptance
are needed to cancel out the dread of rejection. In the one who
is not living out of his own center springs up a driving urge to
be attached to someone else’s life. In that anxiety all kinds of
thoughts are tended. What if I dare to speak and am not heard?
I begin to picture myself lonelier than if I had kept my silence.
In my mind’s eye I see ancient wailing walls and envy those who,
CONFESSING OUR HUMANITY 33> 21
beating their fists upon them, find fellowship with other wailers.
How familiar are some of these fantasies, but they are none-
theless full of deceit. He who gives them much attention will be
dragged into the mire of self-pity. We do not make our confes-
sion for the sake of others and in order to be received into their
worlds. We make our confessions for our own sakes and in order
to enter into our own worlds. When we begin to hear through
our opaque and clumsy words what our own beings utter, then
perhaps we will begin to hear what someone else is struggling to
say. That is how communion begins.
In confession we learn something of the intensity of our feel-
ings and discover things about ourselves we had not guessed. We
are never diminished by our confession. Quite the opposite. We
have the feeling of having expanded a little bit, and actually
this is what happens. We come into possession of more of our-
selves, and so have more of ourselves to bring to a relationship.
The shallow places of our lives begin to fill in. We see not
only that we are sinned against, but that we sin. We are
lifted into a wider world where we become aware of the wounds
of others. We may even see a few places where our own knives
cut. As we emerge from self-absorption the process of belonging
is begun.
Our fear ceases to be what it was. In tapping the resources of
that inner Kingdom we have moved closer to believing in love.
It becomes clear that it is love that casts out fear. That is what
Christianity is all about—becoming lovers. The mission of the
WON ee ee ed
29 &€ SEARCH FOR SILENCE
longing for a companion may reflect the inability to be one. We

can pass through the world strangers to those for whom we were
intended, failing to comprehend the gulf between us, much less
desiring to bridge it. Or it may be that we are incapable of
revealing ourselves in our humanness so that we can have the
kind of conversation that fills up hollowness.
In The New York Times Book Review, Edward Dahlberg
wrote poignantly of lost opportunities for relationship when he
reflected on his encounters with Theodore Dreiser. He had
longed to know Dreiser, but when he thought of getting in touch
with the man, he pictured him engaged in the creation of
another Titan. How could he interrupt him? Besides, he imaged
himself as a “raw prentice” with nothing of value to offer the
great man. “Should I telephone him, he would surely hang up
the receiver, and I would be mortally wounded.” Finally Dahl-
berg took the “penultimate hazard.” Dreiser asked him to come
right to his apartment. Then follow Dahlberg’s piercing lines in
the story of a relationship that he is uncertain he can call a
friendship.
My meetings with Dreiser continued, but I always was of the

mind that I was ravaging his precious hours. Long after his death
I read that, at the time we became acquainted, his closest friend
had died and he hoped that Edward Dahlberg might take the lost
friend’s place. What a glut of mulligrubs I had when I perused
that single line in a biographical study of Dreiser. Time and
again since then I have been bitten by the ever-hungry tooth of
remorse. Good God, Theodore Dreiser needed me; and I, who
have always been the beggar in any relationship, did not realize
how desperately I required him!?
We read these lines and are somehow not the same. Dahlberg
does what all artists do who are in touch with their feelings. He
puts us in touch with our feelings. Because the pain of his outcry
is our own, we begin to see we can live in a gentler world where
love is given and received. It is for this discovery that we make
confession. When remorse is real and not a whip, it has the
CONFESSING OUR HUMANITY >>> 23
possibility of giving us a whole new attitude. Actually confession
is made for the revealing of our light—gifts of love, faith, and
creativity. Understanding this, however, will not always make
the resistance to confession less. If we exercise love, we become
vulnerable. If we confess our gifts, we are apt to be asked to use
them. In the end, the sin we must all come to look at is the sin
of withholding ourselves. This is the sin that keeps us beggars
in life. But how do we fully look at any sin without the help of
confession? And in the world today confession is almost impos-
sible.
The situation is not much different in the churches. There
have grown up in Christendom strange myths about what it
means to be a Christian. When we are baptized, we are stamped
Christian, and henceforth we are in the mold of what a Christian
should be. There is no place for us to go. We are supposed to be
there already. Sermons, books, classes keep outlining the marks
of a Christian. He is joyful, loving, fearless, the embodiment of
the Sermon on the Mount and every other positive attribute.
We either come to believe in our own perfection, or fall into
despair over the contradictions in our lives and the life of the
community.
Meanwhile we keep debating the perplexing question as to
why there is more joy outside the church than in the church, and
why many non-Christians are more loving and innovative than
Christians. We all know some disturbing people who disown the
saving love of Christ and yet are more adventuresome and en-
gaging than members of the church. So we continue the dreary
discussions of how they got that way, until someone concludes
that the Spirit of Christ is not limited to the church, but is also
operative in those who are not Christian. This explanation,
which would hardly be acceptable to the nonbeli _
once more the huge dilemma of why non-Christians are more

Christian than Christians, we can afford to let the question of the
sleeping church go until it is raised again. And it will be raised
again. Spurious answers that evade the real issue leave us only
temporarily convinced. Before long, in another context, with
other people, we find ourselves embroiled in discussion of the
same old questions.
The fact that we assume that all the “good” and “loving”
people should be in the church is indicative of our misunder-
standing of the nature of the church. We have even equated
membership in the church with having arrived at a certain state
of respectability. We have no room for the maimed and outcast,
thieves, adulterers, the wretched and tormented. No wonder we
so often have an oppressive organization on our hands “full of
dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt. 23:27, rsv).
Confession cannot come into a congregation that has taken the
saint or the description of the Kingdom man as the Christian
ideal that “must’’ or “ought” to be lived out in the lives of its
people. Our teachers and church leaders have done this more
often than any of us who love the church would like to admit.
In our own way we all do it. Bonhoeffer gave solemn warning
to “the man who fashions a visionary ideal of community” and
“demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself.”
When an ideal becomes the dominant norm of what must be
achieved by the members of a community, there are a variety of
responses, all of which are destructive of “life together.” Some
people recognize that they cannot meet the expectations and,
because they are not able to pretend, they despair of their belong-
ing. Others who are perfectionists increase their strivings, become
themselves “‘keepers of the rules,” and issue pronouncements of
judgment.
A more common response is to conform to the ideal by repress-
ing all the negative qualities in one’s self. Many of us are lost in
this way. We develop an unreal personality or what Jung has
called a persona. We put on masks for others and finally come to
believe in them ourselves, even to take pride in our false images.

Another way that hundreds are choosing today is to withdraw
from the church altogether and to go in search of a community
that will allow them to be fallible human beings on the pilgrim-
age of becoming whole. It is apt to be a futile search.
The whole spirit of confession is absent today in all segments
of our society. The young, the old, the blacks, the whites, the
party in power, the reformers are never heard to make confes-
sion. The dominant note everywhere is self-righteousness. Hu-
mility is a quality peculiarly absent from today’s life. No one
confesses that his program might be less than adequate. Each is
intent upon advancing his own ideas and opinions. When this
happens, there can be only violence. No unifying action goes on.
But it is not our concern that this happens in the world, which
never claimed confession or knew it as a sacrament. ‘The concern
is that confession has gone out of the church. Perhaps the
answer is for the church to reject its glowing definitions of the
“man in Christ.”
Perhaps we should all agree that the Sermon on the Mount
is not a text to take seriously. We could consider it simply as the
ancient manual of a revolution that got off to a promising begin-
ning, but was too extravagant and unrealistic in its claims. The
“‘bhlessed”’ state of the Kingdom man is probably reached only in
eternity, and has nothing to do with the here and now of our
lives. If we who are the church could arrive at this conclusion,
we might be able to give up claiming to be what we are not.
And this is our real need—an end to pretense. There is no
salvation any other way. We must be ourselves.
For a fleeting moment it seems that we have found the
solution. It may be drastic, but it frees us from having to live
in the tension between what we are and what we “should”’ be.
We can settle down and be our ordinary selves. Strange, though,
how quickly the music goes out of what seems like such a releas-
ing and contemporary answer. Strange that it should give us a
hollowness inside, as if, perhaps, it might not be good news at all.
Could it be that our real self is not so ordinary as we thought,

and that it takes a lot of struggle to discover that self? We might
have been deceived when we were led to think that “to do one’s
own thing” was easy. Being true to one’s self might even be what
the whole gospel message is about.
When we recover an inner stillness and go back to read again
the Sermon, nothing in us protests that it describes a level of
being beyond our reach. In the silence of the soul where God
declares his Word, we know the vision of the blessed Kingdom
man to be authentic. The text comes down to us across the
centuries precisely because it calls us to what is high in ourselves.
And the text is not without witnesses. In every age they form a
cloud around us. Every now and then there appears in our
company a person whose life awakens in us imagination, hope,
mercy, qualities of courage and joy we did not know we
possessed. We are given access to our own possibilities.
A Bonhoeffer stripped of his clothing kneels naked to pray
beneath the hangman’s noose, and there stirs in us the thought
that we, too, might have a relationship with the eternal that
nothing can destroy. A man’s private act of prayer restores and
sustains us.
Father Delp, awaiting his executioners, lifts his fettered hand
to bless his church and land, and mercy and forgiveness are
nurtured in us.
Cesar Chavez goes to jail saying, “Although I think the judge
is wrong, I’m not angry,”* and it becomes important to move
beyond the place of our own anger. We are told the farm
workers see in Cesar more than a leader. They want to be like
him. They want to relate to other people as he does. In the
presence of this man, migrant folk deprived of most of the
benefits of our system discover that they have a larger goal than
better wages and medical funds. As important as these are,
there is something more important. The life style of this man is
the life style they want to make their own.
When we get right down to it, no one wants to remain where
CONFESSING OUR HUMANITY >>> 27
he is. A person is not awake until there stirs in him the possibility
of what he can become. It is the only way to be on a journey
_and belong to the migrant people of God. The absence of
models in all the areas of our life has impoverished us. I have a
friend who was afraid of old age because all the old people she
knew were making life hard for themselves and hard for others.
Unconsciously she had drawn up a blueprint of what old age
is and thought that she was destined to live it out in her own
life. That torment vanished when a 79-year-old woman who
communicated excitement and joy in life became her friend.
Whether we are very young or middle-aged or old, we need
those whose life styles speak to the yearning for pilgrimage that
is written into our very nature. Herein lies the power of the
Sermon on the Mount. It is a call to pilgrimage. No one is left
without an example. This call to pilgrimage is made by One
who embodies the life he describes. Our grievous error has been
in taking the goals of the journey and using them as standards
for everyone to “live up to.’ We have even used the Sermon as
a description of the church, rather than as the call to which the
church responds and the call that it issues. The text is not in
error. The fault lies in our interpretation and use of it.
The text of the Sermon addresses us where we are. It tells us
about a quality of life that is possible, but it is not deceived
about our true condition. If we read past the beatitudes, we dis-
cover that it is addressed to us in our lostness. In line after line
the Sermon concerns itself with our disbelief and our fear. It
knows how much we will do for approval and acceptance of
others. It knows all about the dark ledgers in which we record
the ways people misuse us or fail to appreciate us. The text
assumes that we know very little about the importance of doing
a thing simply for the joy of it. As for money, the Sermon re-
veals to us that this is where our security lies. The Speaker of
the Sermon does not claim that things will change very fast. He
is even careful to say that the way that leads to life is hard.
It is not the Sermon, after all, that we need to give up, but
our understanding of the church as a people who have arrived

at a certain place of joy or fearlessness or any other pinnacle.
The church is simply a people who have glimpsed that Christ
is Lord and are in the process of getting their houses off sand
and onto rock. It is a liberation movement. The people in it
are the oppressed of the land who have awakened to the fact
that they are not free. If a Christian has any distinguishing
mark, it is that he has felt the trembling of his own foundations
and raised the question of what he must do to be saved. Some
have not even seen the sand on which they have built; others
are in the anguish of that discovery; and others, while aware of
it, have their houses full of ““money changers’ who are trying to
drive some very reasonable bargains. It takes a long time to
sweep the temple clean. There is a rather sweet sound to the
drone of those familiar voices bickering over what the terms are,
and blaming others for not living up to them. In everyone's
journey is a stage when his attention is absorbed by the wicked-
ness of the world. To come to the matter of one’s own demon
possession takes time. Without confession it would be utterly
impossible.
Central to the teaching of the early church was “confess your
sins to one another” (James 5:16, rsv). The fact that we no
longer take this instruction seriously may account for the lack
of fire or religious experience in the churches today. Even Roman
Catholics are questioning the requirement that they go to con-
fession. Some who decide against it describe the decision as part
of the new freedom they are finding and celebrating. When
disciplines become disassociated from our goals and we keep them
without understanding why, but simply because someone in
authority has told us to do them, it is only a matter of time
before we are weighed down by what was intended to help us
move toward freedom. If we keep on after that, the oppression
grows and grows until one day all of our dammed up feelings
break loose and we throw out the intolerable obligation to which
we had so obediently submitted. After that, no one can mention
authority or discipline or confession without triggering in us a
composite of volatile emotions.
Our rebellion may be an important step in the discovery of our
autonomy, but it does not assure our arriving at a mature
detachment that will enable us to reexamine confession and dis-
cover what was real in this ancient sacrament of the church.
Protestants have not practiced confession with any seriousness
since the Reformation. The ironical fact is that the church
described by Jesus was the confessing community, the community
of sinners, the community where everyone could be himself.
Jesus was very much aware of how dangerous it is to become
identified with ideal images.
He was speaking about our unconscious life when he told us in
decisive terms that we were frauds to be concerned with the
speck in our brother’s eye. This was instruction in self-observation
which is essential if we are to make real confession. As long as
we attribute our discontent to circumstances or to the failure of
others to respond as they “should,” we are in trouble, and there
is little possibility of our finding the community we long for. The
pilgrimage Christianity talks about begins with looking to one’s
own life, and finding there what blocks growth in ourselves and
blocks growth in others.
A person engaged in self-examination will begin to make
startling discoveries about himself which, in confession, are
brought into fuller consciousness. We do not confess our faults
in order that God may be better acquainted with them, but in
order that the concreteness of words will increase our own under-
standing. The psalmist said:
Even before a word is on my tongue,

lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
—Psalm 139:4, rsv
Sometimes the situation is even more disturbing than the

Scripture indicates. Not only does God know, but so does our
brother—a fact more difficult to bear. We all have short-
comings which, though completely hidden from us, are very

obvious to our neighbors. This is an unsettling kind of infor-
mation, if it is fully understood. We manage to avoid confronta-
tion with it because the opposite is also true: no one can possibly
know us as we are known to ourselves. This eclipses the fact that
we can be ignorant of what others see in us. A person can be a
long time in reaching the discovery that he has been following a
self-defeating pattern all his life. At the same time it can be
information well known to his friends who have always been
perplexed by it. Or a person will say, “I can see how self-centered
I have been.” Those who know him sigh in relief because his
discovery promises some change. But each of us is blind to his
own failings. We can even be ignorant of serious personality
handicaps which give us pervasive feelings of unease. It may
take long practice in self-observation to obtain any glimmering
of understanding that our painful feelings are related to our
choice of what Alfred Adler called a “mistaken life style.”
We are aware of how the hardened structures of society resist
change, but those hardened structures that we externalize and
call the enemy are really in ourselves. ‘There is something in each
of us that wants to keep things as they are. Our whole self-
identity is tied in with the present order. Is this not what Jesus
was trying to tell us in the conversation with the man at the pool
of Bethesda?
Later on Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish fes-

tivals. Now at the Sheep-Pool in Jerusalem there is a place with
five colonnades. Its name in the language of the Jews is Bethesda.
In these colonnades there lay a crowd of sick people, blind, lame,
and paralysed. Among them was a man who had been crippled
for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and was
aware that he had been ill a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you
want to recover?’ ‘Sir,’ he replied, ‘I have no one to put me in
the pool when the water is disturbed, but while I am moving,
someone else is in the pool before me.’ Jesus answered, ‘Rise to
your feet, take up your bed and walk.’ The man recovered in-
stantly, took up his stretcher, and began to walk.
—John 5:1-9, NEB
You remember that later Jesus finds him in the temple and
says to him, “Now that you are well again, leave your sinful
ways, or you may suffer something worse.” Here he makes a
direct connection between the man’s sufferings and his problems.
At some time it would be profitable to reflect on this connection,
but now it is the startling question, “Do you want to recover?”
that we need to consider as we make our confession. Do we really
want to give up our illusions about life, our deceits about the
kind of people we are, all those false images about the past and
fantasies concerning the future? They may be our sins in that
they have kept us from living our lives fully, but they are com-
fortable and familiar, and in our internal establishment they
hold together our concept of who we are. Take out even one
little piece and there is a trembling in the whole structure—such
is the interconnectedness of all our inward workings. We cannot
change in one little corner of our lives without feeling the rever-
berations in other corners. The question—‘‘Do you want to
recover?’’—might even go to the root of things where the
foundations would shake and the whole of us be in danger of
collapse.
The man of our pool story made reply to the question by say-
ing that he never had a chance. The cards were just stacked
against him. “Poor me. I do not even have a friend. In the
competition, I can’t make it. I have not the advantages of oth-
ers. But . . .”’ There was surely a “but” to shore up self-esteem.
“But I am patient. I am persevering. In adversity I wear a
brave smile and am warmed by the thought that others see my
plight and know me to be longsuffering.”
Then, did there come in that conversation with Jesus a time
_when the man gained enough detachment to take a penetrating
look at himself? Was he able to make a few tentative move-
ments toward responsibility, to ask himself some questions? “Why
have I no friend to watch with me by this pool? What in me
alienates people? Why do I erect walls between myself and oth-
ers?’ Or were his questions along another line: ‘What in me is
satisfied with things as they are? Are there demands in life that
my disability protects me from? How does my life style help me

to manipulate others?”
Our chance to be healed comes when the waters of our own
life are disturbed. We can plunge into them and emerge new,
or we can sit there by the churning depths of our inner world,
justifying our existence as it is. We know that the man by the
pool could not by himself save himself. He needed someone to
ask the question that would enable him to confess his secret
griefs. Can members of the body of Christ enter into relation-
ship with each other in a way that offers the gift of confession?
Never think that change is easy or that it comes suddenly or
without pain. That is a storybook world. We are each the one
to whom the question is addressed, “Do you want to recover?”
We are each the man by the well. We are each “The Prisoner
of Chillon’’:
It was at length the same to me

Fettered or fetterless to be,
I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
—GEorGE Gorpon, Lorp Byron
It is a strange and frightening discovery to find that the sac-

rificial life that Christianity is talking about is the giving up of
our chains—to discover that what binds us is also what gives us
comfort and a measure of feeling safe. Change, while it has
promise, will take from us something we have found sweet. The
image we have of ourselves may keep us from wholeness, but
it has some very satisfying compensations. There are dividends
in being known as the one for whom nothing ever works out. It
is never easy to lose the paradise of one’s innocence and to have
to struggle with growing up and being held accountable for
one’s own life. There are all kinds of anxiety in having to leave
the land one knows and to be on one’s way toward a strange
land. No wonder Jesus comments so often on the people who
look and look, but see nothing; and hear and hear, but do not
understand. If we really saw and really heard, we might turn to
him and become involved with a migrant people who may have
no place to lay their heads when night comes.
Not only does change threaten something deep in us and call
into being all kinds of resistance, it will also threaten our friends.
They, too, prefer the status quo. They may find us difficult to
put up with at times, but something in them is also threatened
at the prospect of any real change in us. They would be glad to
have us give up a few irritating habits, provided we stay essen-
tially as we are. But what we have been doing is to focus on the
problem in others. Let us bring our attention back where it be-
longs, and say that not only do we resist change in ourselves, we
resist change in others. We wonder whether the changing person
will belong to us in the same way. Will he exercise a power that
will evoke envy and jealousy in us? Will he support our little
plans and projects in the same way? Only when we ourselves
are changing persons does some of the threat go out of these
questions.
Does it seem to you that I have wandered from confession to
change? This could not be avoided. Confession leads to change
just as self-observation leads to confession. In fact, if we were to
work in depth with any aspect of our lives, we would discern its
close connection with everything else in us. We would be able
to see the interrelatedness of all the facets of our being, and to
understand how change in one part of us is communicated to all
the other parts.
One of the hidden reasons why we avoid the practice of con-

fession may be so that we do not have to change. The paradox,
however, is that the change we fear is also the change that we
want. We would like to keep our story secret, but we also yearn
to share it. An attraction of the encounter group movement is
the encouragement it gives to:the part of us that wants to con-
fess. The leaders of a number of groups begin their sessions with
some simple statement that says in essence: “I see you. I recog-
nize that you have needs as a person and that you are entitled
to what you think and feel. If you tell me your feelings, thoughts
and needs, I will listen and will not run away.” Those words are
especially beautiful if one is troubled by feelings and thoughts
and needs that do not seem very acceptable. They are words
that invite a person to struggle with the obstacles that stand in
the way of his saying who he is.
The general confessions in the litanies of worship were never
intended to take the place of individual confession. They do not
directly reflect the disturbing issues of our private lives. No one
comes forward out of the congregation to address to us the ques-
tion that enables us to confront ourselves as we are. Unrecog-
nized guilt piles on guilt until we begin responding in destructive
ways. It cannot be otherwise. Everyone needs someone who will
ask him to give an account of himself, so that he can face into
his life and can confess who he really is. Surely John felt con-
firmation at another level of being and a heightened sense of des-
tiny when he made reply to the questions addressed to him:
This is the testimony which John gave when the Jews of Jerusa-
lem sent a deputation of priests and Levites to ask him who he
was. He confessed without reserve and avowed, ‘I am not the
Messiah.’ ‘What then? Are you Elijah”? ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Are you
the prophet we await?’ He answered ‘No.’ “Then who are you?’
they asked. ‘We must give an answer to those who sent us. What
account do you give of yourself?’ He answered in the words of
the prophet Isaiah: ‘I am a voice crying aloud in the wilderness,
“Make the Lord’s highway straight.” ’
—John 1:19-23, NEB
CONFESSING OUR HUMANITY s> 35
Perhaps, in the small group movement of the churches where

persons feel enough acceptance to share their real feelings, the
church will recover again the grace of confession. The danger
here is that in an effort to avoid a moralistic kind of judgment
we might go to the opposite pole and give to each other an easy
kind of comfort. When we begin to be in earnest about the
Christian faith, we can see how some of the practices of the
church which have been discarded because of misuse were origi-
nally introduced to give encouragement and support. Penance
was such a practice. A person making confession was given a
penance appropriate to the transgression so that he would be
halted long enough to consider the seriousness of any action or
attitude that disrupted his relationship with self and God and
others, and would have in his consciousness something to draw
on if the temptation should arise at the same place again.
In groups that have the dimension of work as part of their
life, the truly confessing community is apt to emerge. The mem-
bers of a community that has a task or mission as part of its
covenant have enough shared life to violate one another and
thereby to gain some understanding of their true condition. So
often our confession has no healing effect because we are una-
ware of what our real problems are. In today’s world, there are
probably as many who will identify with darkness in themselves
as with any idealized image. A person can experience himself as
“not all right” and willingly confess to any sin that is mentioned.
It is understandable that the neurotic use of confession has had
a part in the rejection of the practice. In a community that has
a life in depth, the misuse of confession is greatly reduced, simply
because the on-going life of the group offers opportunity for real
engagement with others and with self. Members are together at
times of fatigue and anxiety. This is when weaknesses become
apparent.
One of the paradoxes of life is that our very strengths, under
conditions of stress, often become our weaknesses. When we
share the common life of a group, we are polished by the friction
of our rough edges rubbing together. Jealousy, envy, and rivalry

are all part of the picture. The seven deadly sins are not old-
fashioned to communities trying to forge a style of life that will
make a corporate witness. Any life lived with others in depth
will bring to the surface negative responses. This is one of the
painful realities of life in community.
If a community is to exist in any way that matters, its mem-
bers must deal with those feelings which prevent their moving
toward unity. Every member must mediate acceptance to every
other member despite any transgression, or the group will find
itself limping along without any real power. When even one
member of a group rejects one other member, the corporate
strength of the group is diminished. This may be why our groups
so often lack inner vitality. And yet acceptance of another some-
times comes only through a painful kind of confrontation when,
with inner trembling, we dare to confess what we are feeling.
This is different from “telling another off’ or withdrawing into
silence, both of which are violent acts and, like all violence, call
forth outrage in the other. Authentic confession is never easy. It
requires courage and is seldom accomplished unless all the mem-
bers of the group are committed to growing in consciousness, and
unless the dialogue has as its end the deepening of relationships.
We seek not to change others by our confession, but to change
the disturbing feelings in ourselves.
Without confession we will find it difficult, if not impossible, to
be a people together on a journey. We cannot be in community
with others without the emergence of our shadow selves. This
development is not to be deplored, but is one of the very reasons
why we must have community. We do not know what we have
to overcome in ourselves until we are up against those whose
needs, opinions, and life styles clash with our own needs, opin-
ions, and life styles. As long as a person is sheltered from the
give-and-take of a wide variety of relationships, he can maintain
illusions of how “nice” he is. He is never confronted with that
in himself which he must overcome to take the next step in his
pilgrimage. In a sense he has no inner goal. Without his even
being aware of it, the meaning goes out of life. Whenever a per-
son considers his inner work done, he goes into retirement. A
gloom settles over him. Imperceptible as the decay in him has
been, it begins to show now in the rigidity of his bearing. The
hardening of life forces are reflected in attitudes and reactions
to events on the outer scene. The death that Scripture so often
talks about describes an inner state.
In his book, Shantung Compound, Langdon Gilkey‘ tells the
story of two years that he spent in a Japanese internment camp
during World War II. The camp was an enforced community,
but it nonetheless illustrates how difficult it is to work out a
Satisfactory covenant even when our very survival is dependent
on it. Compared with other internment camps, this one was not
too bad. There was no cruelty, but there was a lack of space,
never enough food, and always the threat that the meager pro-
visions might cease altogether. Under these extraordinary pres-
sures the most pious missionaries proved selfish. They acted in
ways that in ordinary circumstances they probably would have
thought impossible. Gilkey does not tell whether they looked
back on the experience and came to a better understanding of
their own frailty. In a truly confessing community there would
have been opportunity to reflect on their responses and learn
from them, and thus to be people on the journey of becoming
whole.
We talk a lot today about the mission of the church, which
is essential if the church is to take its servant role in society and
position itself with the wretched of the earth. But we also need
that mission for our own growth. If we are to know ourselves,
we must be up against each other at places of stress when things
are not going well. We can all say how we think we would be-
have under certain circumstances, but few of us know ourselves
well enough to be sure. We cry with Peter that we will be loyal
to the end—loyal to our convictions, loyal to our friends, loyal
to our God. Unless we make a concentrated effort, however, or
vo
unless life jolts us out of our complacency with a Shantung Com-

pound kind of experience, we are in grave danger of not know-
ing what our confession should be.
In the give-and-take of life in community there will be times
when we feel crowded and stepped on. We will feel that we lack
space in our lives, just as they lacked space in the Shantung
Compound. For this reason, in the small group confession is
being rediscovered as an authentic agent of God’s healing, with-
out which the group cannot deal with its problems and move
on. Despite our thinking that confession must be made in a
familiar “church” context if we are to be in touch with the super-
natural, it is confession in the liturgical form that has lost mean-
ing. Perhaps that meaning can be restored in conversation that
is carried on in awareness that he who speaks confesses, and that
those who listen are priests.
It is, of course, possible for us to share ourselves in such a
way that the confessional nature of our conversation is not evi-
dent. This can be a way of unburdening without having to come
to grips with judgment. Ordinary conversations like this go on
all the time. Even though the sacramental dimension of confes-
sion is absent from most therapy groups, it is still interesting to
note that the members of these groups agree not to reveal to
others what is talked about by members—an agreement com-
parable to the charge of secrecy given to the priest who hears
confession. The difference is that in these situations no absolution
is pronounced, and there is oftentimes no conscious seeking of a
relationship with Jesus Christ as well as with the members of
one’s community.
The Christian community, if it is to experiment with new
forms of confession, must be more self-conscious in its quest and
state again that to sin means to “miss the mark,” and that the
mark is the Kingdom of God. After that, all the other current
definitions of sin—as the failure to use one’s gifts, or to realize
one’s potential, or to live one’s own life fully—can be added as
clarifying statements of what keeps us from the ultimate goal of
the high call of God in Christ. By themselves, these definitions
are quite satisfactory for those outside the church, but the church
is a people who claim citizenship in two cities—the city of man
and the city of God. It is a people who believe that there is a
power available to those who gather in the name of Christ and
who listen and serve in his name. It is to this supernatural power
that we want to open ourselves as we confess to one another who
we are.
At first the account that we give of ourselves may be faltering
_ and superficial, but it is movement toward seeing ourselves as
we are, and taking the next step in the awakening process. We
do not have to be where we are not, or force ourselves, or let
others push us into giving accounts that we are not ready to give.
There will be no, community unless we can learn to share our
lives, but neither will there be any community where there does
not exist a deep respect for privacy. One of the brighter dis-
_coveries of growing up is that one does not have to lie to keep his
secret. [here are questions addressed to us that we do not have
to answer. Each one has parts of his soul that need bear the
prints of only his own footsteps. But if there are secrets that we
can safely keep from others, there are no secrets that can be hid-
den irom ourselves. Scripture says, “Take no part in the un-
fruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them... . for any-
thing that becomes visible is light” (Eph. 5:11, 13, rsv). Very
few of us will be able to see our own secret faults unless we strug-
gle to put into words for another that of which we are aware. As
we struggle to put our feeling into words, new understanding
breaks.
Again, this does not mean that to have a flashing insight about
one’s self and to be able to say to another, “This is me,” is to be
assured of change. Change is always precious, comes slowly, and
has a high cost. It can give the appearance of having occurred
at one breathless juncture, but on the way to every peak mo-
ment are plateau stretches where it will seem to us that we work
without any return for our labor. Those stretches make possible
40 «&& SEARCH FOR SILENCE
the specific occasions we can pinpoint as places of change. Our

“instant-demanding” age has discovered no “instant” way to be
reborn, though it runs after and indiscriminately embraces any-
thing that promises such a way. The foundations of the change
that seem sudden have been well laid and carefully built upon.
An insight is a glimpse of truth and therefore of utmost im-
portance; but if it is to introduce change in us, we must stay
awake and guard it from being choked out by lies. Christ says
in one of his parables about the Kingdom of Heaven that “while
men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the
wheat, and went away” (Matt. 13:25, rsv). It is easy to lose in
unconscious states one’s tenuous hold on truth, to let the patterns
of a lifetime that kept truth from view crowd in again. If I say
to my brother in Christ, “This is who I am,” the truth has been
externalized and made easier to grasp at another level of under-
standing; but it still has to be tended, lest it be like the corn
that has no root and withers under the heat of the sun. For truth
to be deep in us, we need to meditate upon it.
I heard a story about this which stays with me and continues
to instruct. The central figure was an educated and cultured
gentleman. One evening he stayed with two colleagues at his
laboratory to work on a project they were all anxious to com-
plete. When they had finished late that night, he invited them
to his home for coffee. The conversation moved from their work
at the lab to art, and he fell to sharing with them his interest in
Greek architecture. Remembering a new volume that he had on
the subject, he took it down from the shelf and handed it to his
more advantaged co-worker, who quickly glanced at the pages
and returned it to him. He was already putting the book back on
the shelf when he glimpsed from the corner of his eye the hand
of the other man extended to receive the book. The picture
hardly registered. He did not come to terms with what had hap-
pened until he was in bed, and then he saw again the hand of
the other man reaching to receive the book he had never of-
fered. All unconsciously he had made the judgment that this
man, being self-tutored, would not be interested in art. In an
automatic way he had excluded him.
The scientist had not thought himself capable of treating
another fellow human like this, but he had enough understand-
ing to know that this was not an isolated incident in his life. It
was a glimpse of something in himself of which he was only
dimly aware. He left his bed and spent the rest of the night
sitting in his study reflecting on what had happened. He wanted
the picture of it burned in his mind and heart so that it would
keep him alert and help him avoid the possibility of his going
through life ignoring the outstretched hands of his friends. Mar-
tin Buber defines sin as our failure to grant to another his plea
for community. This was certainly the sin that was dealt with
that long night.
The story is a poignant one in itself, but it also contains im-
portant help on how to hang on to, and protect, those scraps of
self-knowledge that come to us all. So often the resolve to do
better meets with consistent failure. The outcome is discourage-
ment. We despair that we can ever be different, and grow in dis-
like of ourselves. Actually our broken resolves offer material
germane to meditation. When we are consistent in observing
ourselves, what we very early discover is that, given the same
stimuli, we can be counted on to respond over and over in the
same way. At least, in this one respect, no one is very complex.
Instead of deploring our reactions, we need to reflect deeply on
them and on those situations that evoke them. It is also well to
remember that they do not represent the whole of us.
The result of this pondering will be a gaining of distance from
the part of us that acts in such an unsatisfactory manner. Being
less identified with negative behavior, we can be more accept-
ing of it. Acceptance leads to understanding, and understanding
leads to change. Meditation on our responses to persons and
events can be a powerful tool in our striving to be free persons.
When combined with confession, it adds greatly to the possi-
bility of our growing in consciousness. We might begin the prac-
7a
«
tice of meditation by learning to hold before us each night a
fragment of our day, looking at it without judgment, turning it
this way and that way, until our understanding of it deepens,
and we can see and hear and turn to be healed.
A good book to have on one’s shelf, if only to read from time
to time its confirming title, is ’m OK—Yowre OK by Thomas
A. Harris.” The book itself has an equally helpful message. In the
early pages Dr. Harris cites the work of Dr. Wilder Penfield,
neurosurgeon from McGill University in Montreal.° During
brain surgery on patients with focal epilepsy, Penfield conducted
experiments in which he “touched the temporal cortex of the
brain of the patient with a weak electric current transmitted
through a galvanic probe.” The patient was always conscious
and able to talk to the doctor. When the brain’s memory cortex
was touched by the electric probe, past experiences and feelings
were relived by the patient and reported to the neurosurgeon as
though they were indeed taking place all over again. Harris re-
ports that Penfield’s long research on many patients gives evi-
dence that the brain, which has recorded in detail and stored up
everything that has been in our conscious awareness, is capable
of playing it back in the present. “The brain functions as a high
fidelity tape recorder.”
One of the important conclusions Harris draws from Pen-
field’s work is that “recollections are evoked by the stimuli of
day-to-day experience in much the same way that they are
evoked artificially by Penfield’s probe.’’ Something occurs in the
present and touches off an old event and the feeling that ac-
companied it, so that we respond to the present out of the past.
If we have enough experience of “space,’’ we will be able to
stand off and observe ourselves and note when our behavior is
inappropriate, or when the situation does not warrant the in-
tensity of our response. Penfield’s experiments give us an idea of
what we are up against in trying to effect change in ourselves
even when we see what needs to be changed. The problem is not
all psychological or spiritual, as we may have thought. These

studies indicate that our responses have a biological structure.
Meditation and confession are ways of firmly establishing in
consciousness, and thus in the storehouse of the brain, other facts
that will help the new in us do battle with the old. Often we try
to change something in ourselves by violent combat with it. Even
when we are successful, keeping vigil over the vanquished enemy
requires all kinds of energy. We dare not expose ourselves to any-
thing which might threaten the position we have obtained by
much sacrifice. Our attitude toward life becomes unyielding and
defensive, so uneasy is the peace that we have made within, and
so uncertain are we as to when we might have to make war
again. The change which comes through understanding, how-
ever, is of a different nature. he practice of meditation can give
us a feeling of separation from what we are observing in our-
selves. The gate is then opened for the comprehending that
transforms feelings, or that takes them and returns them to us
as manageable forces. Even the “evil urge” in us that we ac-
knowledge and call by name is deprived by that act of its power
to control our life and destiny.
While all things are subjects for our pondering, there are
times when our confession is best made after meditation on
Scripture. Here is the life style that judges our own life style.
Here is articulated over and over again the vocation to which
our deeper selves make response. Without meditation on Scrip-
ture we will not know the change which reaches to the center of
our being. There will be no real discovery of self. Any change we
do experience will be on a very ordinary level of existence and
will tend to become self-serving. Meditation will then lose the
possibility of putting us in touch with what is higher in ourselves.
When we meditate on Scripture, we move into the presence
of the One who said, “I am that I am.” We grow aware that
man, made in the image of God, has these words also hidden
some place in him, and that in confession he draws closer to his
own I am-ness. We still see the suffering that we cannot explain, —

but now we are aware of how little it is compared with the suf-
fering that is in the world because of fear. It is given to us to
know that life can be lived on an entirely different level, and
we wonder if we can attain to it.
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost;

for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people
of unclean lips... .”
—lIsaiah 6:5, RSV
But there is more than this insight of how things are with us.
There comes in its time the assurance that our life situation can
be utterly different. We begin to understand the meaning of
transformation because it is happening to us. A friend said it
this way: “I despaired because my life was in pieces, but I read
that Book, and I read it, and read it, and I felt all together again,
only I thought of myself as a cracked pot that had been pasted
together. I thought I would always be like that, but then one
day that image changed, too. I knew I wasn’t an old cracked
pot any longer. I was a beautiful Ming vase.”
That describes transformation better than the poets do. We
read Scripture and make our confession, and read Scripture and
make our confession, and then one day something happens. We
begin to see that we hold in our hands a Book that is a manual
for change. No ordinary Book is this. It is concerned with a
“revolution of consciousness.” It is not only talking of the new
being. It is giving instructions for becoming the new being. Any
earnest following of those instructions makes it abundantly clear
that while everything is asked of us and we must do everything,
the very change that we see and yearn for and cannot live with-
out is not in our power to effect. While we must do everything,
there is nothing that we can do. Something has to come from
beyond us. There now remains but one thing to do: to take our
confession on our lips and throw ourselves upon the mercy of
our Lord. Perhaps then waters will flow around us and we will
hear a voice saying, “With thee I am well pleased.”
John proclaimed a baptism in token of repentance, for the
forgiveness of sins, and Jesus came to be baptized. Afterwards
Jesus said to someone who listened and wrote it down, “I heard
a voice from heaven say, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee
I am well pleased.’’’ Only then did Jesus begin his ministry of
preaching the good news.
When we, too, hear that voice, we shall kneel to make the
confession toward which all confessions lead: Jesus is Lord. We
shall no longer need a book that has a confirming title. That
title will be written upon our hearts and there will be nothing
that can keep us from preaching in towns and cities, “You're
OK, I’m OK.”
If one of us should then be asked, “Who gave you authority
to tell me that my sins are forgiven?” he can answer, “I AM
sent me.”’
Exercise |
ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING OUR DARK SIDE
This week the exercise is to help you become nuore conscious of

those qualities in yourself that you would not like another to dis-
cover. List them in your journal as you become aware of them.
Try to become acquainted with your own response to those
negative parts of yourself. Do you treat them with contempt? Do
you speak disparagingly of yourself—‘“That was a stupid thing
to do,” or “How can you be so clumsy?” After confessing your
faults, do you go on to condemn yourself for them?
The task this week is not only to become aware of your “dark
side,” but also in the name of Jesus Christ to accept the unac-
ceptable in yourself—to love the enemy of your peace, even
when that enemy is a member of your own household. Listen to
what this dark side of you has to say. ‘Try to understand its com-
plaints and ill behavior—why it carries on the way it does, caus-
ing you all kinds of unease. Even though deceived, this negative
self feels it is serving a good purpose. Find out what that purpose
is. If you feel guilty when things are going well for you, live into
that feeling. When did you first have it? If the feeling is not
related to anything in the present, it has its origins in past experi-
ences. Use the readings that follow to help you in your self-
examination.
Remember that you are a co-creator with God and, whereas
you must struggle for your own salvation, you do not do it alone.
You cannot by yourself save yourself from that which keeps you
from realizing your potential to love. In Christ we find that the
human and the divine complete each other. It is in our confes-
47
sion that he draws close, for he did not come for the righteous,
but for sinners. Each night in your time of prayer look back over
your day and confess your sins to the One who can help you out
of the webs in which you are entangled and trapped. If you feel
safe enough, confess your problems to another person who you
know will listen in the name of Christ. The final word is never
sin. It is always redemption.
WIZ
EXERCISE | > 49
Jesus said,
If those trying to entice you say to you “Look, the king-
dom is in heaven,” then the birds will have an ad-
vantage over you.
If they say to you, “Look, it is in the sea,” then the fish
will have an advantage over you.
But the kingdom is inside you and outside of you. When
you really understand yourselves then you will be under-
stood and you will know that you are the sons of the
Living Father.
But if you do not understand yourselves, you will be in
poverty and you will be poverty.
—The Gospel According to Thomas, Logion 3.
99
I once knew a very old married couple who radiated a

tremendous happiness. The wife especially, who was almost
unable to move because of old age and illness and in whose
kind old face the joys and sufferings of many years had
etched a hundred runes, was filled with such gratitude for
life that I was touched to the quick. Involuntarily I asked
myself what could possibly be the source of this kindly old
person’s radiance. Otherwise they were very common peo-
ple and their room indicated only the most modest comfort.
But suddenly I knew where it all came from, for I saw
these two speaking to each other and their eyes hanging
upon each other. All at once it became clear to me that
this woman was dearly loved. And it was as if she were
like a stone that has been lying in the sun for years and
years, absorbing all its radiant warmth, and now was
reflecting back cheerfulness and warmth and serenity.
Let me express it this way. It was not because she was
this kind of cheerful and pleasant person that she was
loved by her husband all those years. It was probably
the other way around. Because she was so loved, she be-
came the person I now saw before me.
This thought continued to pursue me and the more
it pursued me the more it lost all its merely edifying and
sentimental features, until finally they were gone alto-
gether. For if this is true, then I surely must come to
the following conclusion. If my life partner or my friend
or just people generally often seem to be so strange and
I ask myself: “Have I made the right marriage, the right
friendship; is this particular person really the one who is
suited to me?”—then I cannot answer this question in the
style of a neutral diagnosis which would list the reasons
for and against. For what happens then is that the question
turns back upon myself, and then it reads: “Have I per-
haps bestowed too little love upon this other person, that
he has become so cold and empty? Have I perhaps caused
him to become what perhaps he really has become? The
other person, whom God has joined to me, is never what
he is apart from me. He is not only bone of my bone; he is
also boredom of my boredom and lovelessness of my love-
lessness.”
And it is exactly the same with our relation to God.
If a person is steeped in emptiness and boredom and is
tired of life, the reason for it is that he has not allowed
himself to be loved by God and has not put himself in his
hands. One who does not love makes the other person
wither and dry up. And one who does not allow himself
to be loved dries up too. For love is a creative thing.
—HeEtLMvuT THIELICKE, How the World Began,
pp. 99-100.
Ke
In the process of reaching maturity and autonomy most

of us do strive for security by trying to organize the uni-
verse around ourselves. And most of us learn only through
the suffering and estrangement which attend egocentricity
that this way leads not to security, but to an endlessly pre-
carious and ultimately fruitless attempt to twist reality into
meeting our private specifications. .. .
We reach our highest freedom not by asserting our own
interests against the world, but by devoting ourselves in
EXERCISE 1 >» 51
fellowship to a way of life which reaches personal ful-
fillment along with, and partly through, the fulfillment of
others. We reach security only by a trustful acceptance of
the full truth about ourselves and others, not by evasion
of it. Healing power is latent in men because it is latent “‘in
the nature of things.” Hence it is not surprising that men
and women have found in Christ the supreme disclosure of
what coincidence between human beatitude and divine love
means. Christ is Saviour as He opens, for each man, the
way whereby that individual can move toward such coin-
cidence. This involves moving forward into a deepened
recognition of failure, impotence and need at many points.
But the divine forgiveness which He discloses always has
been and always will be accessible to men. We experience
divine forgiveness as that “making right” of our lives
which occurs when we turn away from fighting ourselves,
and others, and-the truth itself, and turn trustfully toward
the divine power which surrounds us and can work through
us. This experience of reconciliation, despite past failures
and unsolved problems in the present, makes men actually
more lovable, more discerning, more capable of devoting
themselves to goods which enrich all humanity.
—Davip E. Roserts, Psychotherapy and a
Christian View of Man, pp. 134-135.
37?
If we claim to be sinless, we are self-deceived and strangers

to the truth. If we confess our sins, he is just, and may be
trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every kind
of wrong; but if we say we have committed no sin, we
make him out to be a liar, and then his word has no place
in us.
—1 John 1:8-10, NEB.
37?
The all-knowing One does not get to know something

about the maker of the confession, rather the maker of con-
fession gets to know about himself. ‘Therefore, do not raise
the objection against the confession that there is no point
in confiding to the all-knowing One that which He al-
ready knows. Reply first to the question whether it is not
conferring a benefit when a man gets to know something
about himself which he did not know before. A hasty ex-
planation could assert that to pray is a useless act, because
a man’s prayer does not alter the unalterable. But would
this be desirable in the long run? Could not fickle man
easily come to regret that he had gotten God changed?
The true explanation is therefore at the same time the one
most to be desired. The prayer does not change God, but
it changes the one who offers it, It is the same with the
substance of what is spoken. Not God, but you, the maker
of the confession, get to know something by your act of
confession.
—SrREN KiERKEGAARD, Purity of Heart, pp. 50-51.
3?
If guilt is to be healed, the victim must be reconciled

to himself. Were his feelings mainly outgoing, there would
be little problem: if he felt nothing but grief at the damage
which he had caused to others, reconciliation with them
would follow easily. He would have no hesitation in saying
“I am sorry.” But because his feelings are usually compli-
cated by inner remorse and self-rejection, reconciliation
becomes difficult, sometimes even impossible, to achieve.
The forgiveness which others would give him is blocked by
his inability to forgive himself. Therefore the problem of
guilt is nothing other than one facet of the problem of self-
hatred.
—Mat.coum France, The Paradox of Guilt,
pp. 19-20.
37?
Rag-Tag Army
I think God must be very old and very tired. Maybe he

EXERCISE 1 3 53
used to look splendid and fine in his general’s uniform, but
no more. He’s been on the march a long time, you know.
And look at his rag-tag little army! All he has for soldiers
are you and me. Dumb little army. Listen! The drum beat
isn’t even regular. Everyone is out of step. And there! You
see? God keeps stopping along the way to pick up one of
his tinier soldiers who decided to wander off and play with
a frog, or run in a field, or whose foot got tangled in the
underbrush. He’ll never get anywhere that way. And yet,
the march goes on.
Do you see how the marchers have broken up into little
groups? Look at that group up near the front. Now, there’s
a snappy outfit. They all look pretty much alike—at least
they’re in step with each other. That’s something! Only
they’re not wearing their shoes. They’re carrying them in
their hands. Silly little band. They won’t get far before
God will have to stop again.
Or how about that other group over there? They’re all
holding hands as they march. The only trouble with this is
the men on each end of the line. Pretty soon they realize
that one of their hands isn’t holding onto anything—one
hand is reaching, empty, alone. And so they hold hands
with each other, and everybody marches around in circles.
The more people holding hands, the bigger the circle. And,
of course, a bigger circle is deceptive because as we march
along it looks like we’re going someplace, but we’re not.
And so God must stop again. You see what I mean? He'll
never get anywhere that way!
If God were more sensible he’d take his little army and
shape them up. Why, whoever heard of a soldier stopping
to romp in a field? It’s ridiculous. But even more absurd
is a general who will stop the march of eternity to go and
bring him back. But that’s God for you. His is no endless,
empty marching. He is going somewhere. His steps are
deliberate and purposive. He may be old, and he may be
tired. But he knows where he’s going. And he means to
take every last one of his tiny soldiers with him. Only
there aren’t going to be any forced marches. And, after
54 <& SEARCH FOR SILENCE
all, there are frogs and flowers, and thorns and underbrush
along the way. And even though our foreheads have been
signed with the sign of the cross, we are only human. And
most of us are afraid and lonely and would like to hold
hands or cry or run away. And we don’t know where we
are going, and we can’t seem to trust God—especially when
it’s dark out and we can’t see him! And he won’t go on
without us. And that’s why it’s taking so long.
Listen! The drum beat isn’t even regular. Everyone is
out of step. And there! You see? God keeps stopping along
the way to pick up one of his tinier soldiers who decided
to wander off and play with a frog, or run in a field, or
whose foot got ere es in the underbrush. He’ll never get
anywhere that way!
And yet, the march goes on...
—MartTIn BeEtx, The Way of the Wolf, pp. 91-93.
Ke
My children, mark me, I pray you. Know! God loves my

soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his
loving me whether he would or not. To stop God loving
me would be to rob him of his Godhood.
—MeErster Eckxuart, Meister Eckhart, p. 26.
3?
The primary purpose of confession is to keep people aware
of their true condition, of the tension between the good and
evil in themselves. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (I John 1:8). “There-
fore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one
another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). The
most dangerous thing that can happen to us is that we
become unaware of, or unconscious of, our sin and guilt.
If there is to be growth of soul, such conflicts must not
be pushed under so far that we lose track of them. If the
church would make the individual man aware of evil, the
evil that is lurking behind every good, and bring him to a:
recognition of the sin and guilt within his own soul and
EXERCISE 1 >> 55
of the tremendous part which confession and forgiveness
play in achieving wholeness, confession, both formal and
informal, must necessarily find a primary place in her life.
Such conflicts, trials, and sins, by being held consciously
before us, can ultimately be resolved and bring healing
to the soul. But, on the other hand, the tension of holding
this in consciousness is often more than the soul can endure,
so it must commit itself and its sin to God to whom the
ultimate solution is known, and from whom the forgiveness
and healing come.
—Cnar tes B, Hanna, Face of the Deep, pp. 95-96.
37?
The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately corrupt;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the mind
and try the heart,
to give to every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his doings.”
—Jeremiah 17:9-10, rsv.
379
Wrong secrets and those kept wrongly cut one off and
act like poison from within, so that confession is cathartic
and communication therapeutic. The paranoid demand for
absolute loyalty, that fear of betrayal and exposure, shows
that one is no longer able to love and be hurt. Loving
goes where betrayal is possible, otherwise there is no risk. »
Loving in safety is the smaller part of loving. Secrecy of
this sort is a defence leading to paranoid loneliness: alone
with one’s secrets and no one to trust. Another secret kept
wrongly is that of the small child who clutches his secret
in powerful exercise of omnipotence. For him it is neces-
sary, but the grown-up child goes on in this pattern, domi-
nating by holding back. Both paranoid and childish secrecy
keep one wrongly apart.
56 <e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
To keep a secret means etymologically to keep something

apart, separate. Secrecy is basic for individuality. In a fam-
ily, for instance, no individual personalities can develop
unless the members keep some secrets with one another and
other secrets from one another. What you keep secret keeps
you apart, and in your secret life you begin to discover your
individual soul. (One reason why it is so difficult to keep
secrets is just because it is so hard to maintain one’s
individuality. )
By telling a secret one lets another into the sacred pre-
serve of one’s individuality. One keeps one’s secrets until
one feels that the other person with whom one is about
to share a secret also views it as sacred. For this, trust must
be built up between two people.
—James Hitiman, Suicide and the Soul, p..173.
Confession, as we know, can also be used for self-deception.

The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more
subtly he can humbug himself. No moderately intelligent
person should believe himself either a saint or a sinner.
Both would be a conscious lie. Rather he should keep
shamefacedly silent about his moral qualities, ever mindful
of his abysmal sinfulness on the one hand, and of his
meritoriously humble insight into this desolate state of
affairs on the other. All that the younger Blumhardt
remarked to an acquaintance of mine, on his making an
agonizingly contrite confession of sin, was: “Do you think
God is interested in your miserable muck?” Blumhardt had
evidently noted the trick that makes drawing-room con-
fession so attractive.
—C. G. Junc, The Development of Personality,
vol. 17, Collected Works, p. 79.
37?
We cannot stand the sight of our dark side, so we re-

EXERCISE 1 s35 57
press it, push it under, thinking we have thereby disposed
of it. But we have not. We have simply pushed it into a
place where it both has us in its grip and automatically
projects itself on the person or the nation we do not like;
so the tension we will not stand in ourselves is carelessly
and irresponsibly cast out to increase the tension and strife
and anguish of our world. . . . Jung saw it as a psychologi-
cal law that what we will not suffer inwardly through
conscious recognition of our shadow, we will suffer out-
wardly as the result of our unconscious projections into
the world around us. He thereby gives Christians the most
awesome charge that they can possibly receive throughout
their lives: the withdrawal of their projections upon others,
and dealing with their shadow themselves. Here one almost
senses the dimension of the “hellfire and brimstone” preach-
ing, once so characteristic of the church’s message. Has it
faded out of church evangelism only to rise anew in the
awesome heights and depths of the new psychology?
—CwHartes B. Hanna, The Face of the Deep,
pp. 100-101.
379
By speaking about articulation as a form of leadership

we have already suggested the place where the future lead-
er will stand. Not up-there, out-there, far-away or secretly
hidden, but in the midst of his people with an utmost
visibility.
If we now realize that the future generation is not only
an inward generation asking for articulation but also a fa-
therless generation looking for a new kind of authority, we
have them to ask what the nature of this authority will be. I
cannot find a better word than compassion. It is compas-
sion that has to become the core and even the nature of
authority. When the Christian leader wants to consider
himself a man of God for the future generation, he can
be so only insofar as he is able to make the compassion
of God with man—which has become visible in Jesus
Christ—credible in his own world.
The compassionate man stands in the midst of his peo-

ple but does not get caught in the conformistic forces of
the peer-group, because through his compassion he is able
to avoid the distance of pity as well as the exclusiveness of
sympathy. Compassion is born when we discover in the
center of our own existence not only that God is God and
man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow-
man.
Through compassion it is possible to recognize man’s
craving for love in our own heart and his cruelty in our
own impulses, to see our hope for forgiveness in our
friend’s eyes and our refusal in their bitter mouths. When
they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they
give life, we know that we can do the same. For a com-
passionate man nothing human is alien: no joy and no
sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.
This compassion is authority because it does not tolerate
the pressures of the in-group, but breaks through the
boundaries between languages and countries, rich and poor,
educated and primitives and pulls man away from the fear-
ful clique into the large world where he can see that
every human face is the face of a fellowman. This means
that the authority of compassion is the possibility of man
to forgive his brother. Because forgiveness is only real for
him who has discovered the weakness of his friends and
the sins of his enemy in his own heart and is willing to
call every human being his brother. A fatherless generation
looks for brothers who are able to take away their fear
and anxiety, who can open the doors of their narrow-
mindedness and show them that forgiveness is a possibility
which dawns on the horizon of humanity.
The compassionate man who points to the possibility of
forgiveness, helps man to free himself from the chains
of his restrictive shame, allows him to experience his own
guilt and restores his hope for a future in which the lamb
and the lion can sleep together.
—Henry Nouwen, “Generation without Fathers,”
pp. 49-50.
EXERCISE | >39 59
Expression of what we find within ourselves, honest and
reckless expression before the face of the Eternal, assum-
ing responsibility for what we are, even if we are unaware
of it, and asking God to help us to master the wild horses,
or to revive the skeletons of horses which we dig out dur-
ing the long hours of our confessions—this is the psycho-
logical method of religious self-education. It is a way of
bringing to consciousness our unconscious contents, and of
establishing control over our hidden powers. It is the way
to mature responsibility. It is the old way of the Psalmist:
“Yet who can detect his lapses? Absolve me from my
faults unknown! And hold thy servant back from wilful
sins, from giving way to them” (Psalm 19:12, 13, Moffatt).
Not in the presence of a minister or a psychologist, but
in the presence of God, things change completely. If you
hate your brother, and you pour out all your hatred,
remembering at the same time, as much as you can, the
presence of God—and your hatred does not change, then
you are not sufficiently aware either of the presence of
God or of your hatred, and probably of neither. Be more
honest, give vent to your emotions. You hate your brother:
imagine his presence, before God tell him how you feel,
kick him, scratch him. You are ten years old now—get up
from your chair, don’t pretend to be a wise old Buddha,
pace the floor, yell, scream, punch the furniture, express
yourself. Rant and rage until you are exhausted, or until
you laugh at yourself.
—Fritz KunKEL, In Search of Maturity,
pp. 253-254.
>>
In the naming of the daimonic, there is an obvious and

interesting parallel to the power of naming in contemporary
medical and psychological therapy. At some time, everyone
must have been aware of how relieved he was when he
went to the doctor with a troublesome illness and the
doctor pronounced a name for it. A name for the virus
or germ, a name for the disease process, and the doctor
could then make a statement or two about the disease on
the basis of this name.
Now something deeper is going on in this phenomenon
than our relief at whether or not the doctor can predict
a quick cure. Or any cure, for that matter. Some years
ago, after weeks of undetermined illness, I heard from a
specialist that my sickness was tuberculosis. I was, I re-
call, distinctly relieved, even though I was fully aware that
this meant, in those days, that medicine could do nothing
to cure the disease. A number of explanations will leap to
the reader’s mind. He will accuse me of being glad to be
relieved from responsibility; that any patient is reassured
when he has the authority of the doctor to which he can
give himself up; and the naming of the disorder takes
away the mystery of it. But these explanations are surely
too simple. Even the last one—that the naming reduces
the mystery—will be seen, on further thought, as an illu-
sion: to me the bacillus or the virus or the germ is still
as much a mystery as ever, and the tubular bacillus was
then still a mystery to the doctor.
The relief, rather, comes from the act of confronting the
daimonic world of illness by means of the names. The
doctor and I stand together, he knowing more names in
this purgatory than I and therefore technically my guide
into hell. Diagnosis (from dia-gignoskein, literally “know-
ing through’’) may be thought of, on one side, as our
modern form of calling the name of the offending demon.
Not that the rational information about the disease is un-
important; but the rational data given to me add up to
something more significant than the information itself.
It becomes, for me, a symbol of a change to a new way of
life. The names are symbols of a certain attitude I must
take toward this daimonic situation of illness; the disorder
expresses a myth (a total pattern of life) which communi-
cates to me a way in which I must now orient and order
my life. This is so whether it is for two weeks with a cold
or twelve years with tuberculosis; the quantity of time is not
the point. It is a quality of life. In short, the image by
EXERCISE | >> 61
which I identify myself changes by its contact with the
myth portraying the daimonic in the natural processes of
disease. If I overcome the disease, I shall partly be a
new being, and I could rightly be initiated into a new
community and be given a new name.
—Ro.io May, Love and Will, pp. 172-173.
37?
There is a sentimentalism in the air which has told us

that our identity is really to be found in what we should
call the “true self.” The implication is that this might bet-
ter be called the “beautiful self.” . .. According to this way
of looking at things, we have only found ourselves, and
established contact with ourselves and our identities, when
we are in touch with our healthy and beautiful wishes and
thoughts. On the surface this is an attractive doctrine with
which I am tempted to agree. But I do not. For contact
with the self means contact, in increasing directness, with
whatever is there. Of course self-knowledge is difficult and
painful. But I think that all the talk in our culture about
self-knowledge and especially the knowledge of the non-
romantic elements in our humanity, moves too far in the
direction of the pain of it all, and not nearly enough in
the direction of the happiness that can come from it.
Compared to this knowing, the not knowing, the loss of
contact—even the loss of contact with the destructive ele-
ments in us—is like an agony compared to a pleasure. This
true, sweet self is a dream that forbids membership in our
humanity to anything else but itself. It makes contact with
more and more of the human self impossible. It constantly
proclaims that a good person would never have this thought
or that feeling. It assures us that a good man or a good
woman would never feel anger or despair, or think of
suicide. It makes impossible that recognition which is the
prelude to acceptance and mastery of these things. This is
the ideal self, out of contact with the self, which excludes
every sick element from its holy membership. It knows
-62 <e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
neither Jew nor gentile, nor black, nor any strong feeling
about anything. It is simply beautiful.
—WiuiaM F. Lyncu, S.J., Images of Hope, p. 184.
>?
. when he had failed in his duty, he simply confessed

his fault, saying to God, I shall never do otherwise if Thou
leavest me to myself; it is Thou who must hinder my fall-
ing, and mend what is amiss. That after this he gave him-
self no further uneasiness about it.
. as for the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the

world, he was so far from wondering at them that, on the
contrary, he was surprised that there were not more, con-
sidering the malice sinners were capable of; that, for his
part, he prayed for them; but knowing that God could
remedy the mischiefs they did, when He pleased, he gave
himself no further trouble.
. . . he expected, after the pleasant days God had given

him, he should have his turn of pain and suffering; but that
he was not uneasy about it, knowing very well that as he
could do nothing of himself, God would not fail to give him
the strength to bear it.
. . . he was very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged

by them; that he confessed them to God, but did not plead
against Him to-excuse them. When he had so done, he
peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration.
. . . the worst that could happen to him would be to lose

that sense of God which he had enjoyed so long; but that
the goodness of God assured him that He would not for-
sake him utterly, and that He would give him strength
to bear whatever evil He permitted to happen to him; and
EXERCISE 1 > 63
therefore that he feared nothing... .
—BrotHER LAWRENCE, His Letters and Conversa-
tions on the Practice of the Presence of God.
>?
Advent is the time for rousing. Man is shaken to the

very depths, so that he may wake up to the truth of him-
self. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding
Advent is renunciation, surrender. Man must let go of all
his mistaken dreams, his conceited poses and arrogant ges-
tures, all the pretences with which he hopes to deceive
himself and others. If he fails to do this stark reality may
take hold of him and rouse him forcibly in a way that will
entail both anxiety and suffering. |
The kind of awakening that literally shocks man’s whole
being is part and parcel of the Advent idea. A deep emo-
tional experience like this is necessary to kindle the inner
light which confirms the blessing and the promise of the
Lord. A shattering awakening; that is the necessary pre-
liminary. Life only begins when the whole framework is
shaken. There can be no proper preparation without this.
It is precisely in the shock of rousing while he is still deep
in the helpless, semiconscious state, in the pitiable weakness
of that borderland between sleep and waking, that man
finds the golden thread which binds earth to heaven and
gives the benighted soul some inkling of the fullness it is
capable of realizing and is called upon to realize.
—AtuFrep De -p, S8.J., The Prison Meditations of
Father Delp, p. 17.
>>>
Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him,

but for:fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest
they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved
the praise of men more than the praise of God.
—John 12:42-43, rsv.
37?
True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will
see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks
a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter,
it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face
we never show to the world because we cover it with the
persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind
the mask and shows the true face.
This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner
way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the
meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant
things that can be avoided so long as we can project every-
thing negative into the environment. But if we are able to
see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a
small part of the problem has already been solved: we have
at least brought up the personal unconscious.
—C. G. Junc, The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious, vol. 9, Collected Works, p. 20.
>?
And indeed it is a frightening thought that man also has

a shadow-side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses
and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The
individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an
individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any cir-
cumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless crea-
tures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster;
and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s
body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on
its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Hav-
ing a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns
a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly
he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which
is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit
the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
—C. G. Junc, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,
>>
EXERCISE | >> 65
It is, indeed, very necessary to be aware of our shadow

for we cannot get rid of a part of the psyche by repressing
it any more than we can get rid of a part of the body by
ignoring its existence. If we could really see our own
shadow, it would be clear to us that in the depths of our
own hearts we are not entirely the exemplary citizens we
have always liked to believe ourselves. This is a very dis-
turbing realization, and for the sake of the solidarity of
society many people consider it necessary not to allow
themselves to indulge in such subversive thoughts. And as
it takes a great deal of moral courage to confront the
shadow, it is far better, or so society itself believes, for us
to throw a little dust in our own eyes in order to maintain
our self-respect and good form. The dissenting voice of con-
science can usually be silenced by some general form of
self-depreciation such as by saying, “Well, of course I am
not perfect. Who is?” And the Church provides the Gen-
eral Confession, but it is so very general that particular sins
can slip by unnoticed. We are reminded of the man at the
weekly prayer meeting whose prayer went something like
this: “O Lord, I confess my sins. I have greatly sinned. I
am the greatest of sinners, O Lord. I have been mean in
my business dealings, for I am a great sinner; I have been
angry without cause, for I am a great sinner,’ and much
more to the same effect. Of course, everyone was greatly
edified, and the man himself could not conceal his smug
expression. But when his neighbor began to pray, saying
“Yes, O Lord, what Brother X has just said is quite true;
he is mean and cussed,” Brother X sprang to his feet, shout-
ing, “How dare you say such a thing about me? There isn’t
a word of truth in it! You—slanderer!”
It is relatively easy to confess a sin compatible, as it were,

with one’s dignity or ego self-respect, while the real sin
lurks unrecognized underneath.
It is by no means always easy to discover where the real
guilt lies. For it may not be a particular disobedience
against the divine or the social ordinance, nor a particular
injury to the neighbor, nor indeed a particular blunder of
forgetfulness that is the real sin. It may be rather the power
attitude underlying the overt act, the inveterate egotism
that denies the very existence of others as persons. It is this
that makes up the blackness of the shadow. In other words,
when one is enclosed in one’s own Umwelt, one is con-
stantly sinning against the neighbor. One feels and acts as
if one were the only real person, the others being merely
wraiths. The darkness of the shadow falls on everyone else;
the others seem to be the ones at fault. But when one ac-
cepts one’s shadow, instead of feeling an absolute assur-
ance that the other person is in the wrong, one may be
able to recognize that the difficulty can have come from
one’s Own unconsciousness.
In any human situation where one is really concerned
to make a working relationship, it is most important to rec-
ognize the shadow. The evil that emanates from one’s own
psyche is in some measure under one’s own control; at least
one can do something about it; but the darkness that comes
from the other person’s unconscious is not accessible even
to one’s best intentioned efforts. However, since it takes two
to make a quarrel, it is possible that if one clears up one’s
own end of the difficulty, the other person may be able to
accept his shadow, too.
—M. EstuHer Harpine, The ‘I and the ‘Not-I’,
pp: 84, 95,97.
37>
I may love to the uttermost outwardly, but should the ver-
tical connection to the ground of being within myself, to
my love of myself, toward myself, by myself, not yet be
formed, I will have stirred up a love that cannot please
. the human encounter depends on an inner connec-
tion. To be in touch with you I need to be in touch within.
EXERCISE | > 67
Forced intimacy, in groups for instance, usually drives into
deeper concealment those parts of the soul which can be
shared only where two or three come together, not a mul-
titude.
Loving oneself is no easy matter just because it means

loving all of oneself, including the shadow where one is
inferior and socially so unacceptable. The care one gives
this humiliating part is also the cure. More: as the cure
depends on care, so does caring sometimes mean nothing
more than carrying. The first essential in redemption of the
shadow is the ability to carry it along with you, as did the
old Puritans, or the Jews in endless exile, daily aware of
their sins, watching for the Devil, on guard lest they slip,
a long existential trek with a pack of rocks on the back,
with no one on whom to unload it and no sure goal at the
end. Yet this carrying and caring cannot be program-
matic, in order to develop, in order that the inferiority
comply with the ego’s goals, for this is hardly love.
Loving the shadow may begin with carrying it, but even
that is not enough. At one moment something else must
break through, that laughing insight at the paradox of
one’s own folly which is also everyman’s. Then may come
the joyful acceptance of the rejected and inferior, a going
with it and even a partial living of it. This love may even
lead to an identification with and acting-out of the shadow,
falling into its fascination. Therefore the moral dimension
can never be abandoned. Thus is cure a paradox requiring
two incommensurables: the moral recognition that these
parts of me are burdensome and intolerable and must
change, and the loving laughing acceptance which takes
them just as they are, joyfully, forever. One both tries hard
and lets go, both judges harshly and joins gladly. Western
moralism and Eastern abandon: each holds only one side
of the truth.
—James HititmAn, Insearch: Psychology and
Religion, pp. 36-37, 39, 76-77.
“Come now, let us reason together,

says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.”
—Isaiah 1:18, rsv.
37?
It is the nature of self-esteem and of the human self to

love only oneself and to consider oneself alone. But what
can a man do? He will not be able to prevent the object
of his affection from being full of faults and wretchedness;
he wants to be great and finds that he is small; he wants
to be happy and finds that he is unhappy; he wants to be
perfect and finds that he is riddled with imperfections; he
wants to be the object of man’s affection and esteem and
sees that his faults deserve only their dislike and contempt.
The embarrassing position in which he finds himself pro-
duces in him the most unjust and criminal passion that can
possibly be imagined; he conceives a mortal hatred of the
truth which brings him down to earth and convinces him
of his faults. He would like to be able to annihilate it and
not being able to destroy it in itself, he destroys it, in so far
as he can, in his own mind and in the minds of other
people; that is to say, he concentrates all his efforts on con-
cealing his faults both from others and from himself, and
cannot stand being made to see them or their being seen
by other people.
There are different degrees in this dislike of the truth;

but it can be said that it exists to some extent in all of us
because it is inseparable from self-esteem. It is this bad
kind of delicacy which forces those who feel bound to re-
prove other people to choose so many devious ways and
compromises to avoid shocking them. They are obliged to
EXERCISE | >> 69
make light of our faults, to appear to condone them, to
throw in praise, protestations of affection and regard. Yet
in spite of everything, it remains a bitter pill to our self-
esteem. It takes as little of the medicine as it can; it always
does so with disgust and often even with a secret ill feeling
towards those who administer it.
It thus happens that if anyone wants to make himself
popular with us, he avoids rendering a service that he
knows we should find disagreeable; he treats us as we wish
to be treated; we hate the truth and people hide it from
us; we want to be flattered, and people flatter us; we want
to be deceived, and people deceive us.
—BLAIsE Pasca., Pensées, No. 100.
Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and

the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with our-
selves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty
through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-
deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of
a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself;
he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the
other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession
of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the pres-
ence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the
heht.-...:.
Our brother has been given me that even here and now
I may be made certain through him of the reality of God
in His judgment and His grace. As the open confession of
my sins to a brother insures me against self-deception, so,
too, the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to
me only when it is spoken by a brother in the name of God.
Mutual, brotherly confession is given to us by God in order
that we may be sure of divine forgiveness.
But it is precisely for the sake of this certainty that con-
fession should deal with concrete sins. People usually are
satisfied when they make a general confession. But one ex-
periences the utter perdition and corruption of human na-
ture, in so far as this ever enters into experience at all,
when one sees his own specific sins. . .
Does all this mean that confession to a brother is a di-
vine law? No, confession is not a law, it is an offer of divine
help for the sinner. It is possible that a person may by
God’s grace break through to certainty, new life, the Cross,
and fellowship without benefit of confession to-a brother.
It is possible that a person may never know what it is to
doubt his own forgiveness and despair of his own confes-
sion of sin, that he may be given everything in his own
private confession to God. We have spoken here for those
who cannot make this assertion.
—DretricH BonHoeEFFER, Life Together,
pp. 116-117.
Exercise 2
ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING OUR LIGHT SIDE
This week the exercise 1s to help you become more conscious of

those qualities in yourself that you would want others to know
about. List them in your journal as you become aware of them.
Try to hecome acquainted with your own response to these
positive parts of your self. Do you have difficulty accepting or
acknowledging them? Does it make you feel self-conscious to
speak of them? Do you belittle your accomplishments, lest you
appear to lack modesty? Do you feel awkward when compli-
mented and disclaim any success? Do you fear that if you confess
your strengths new demands will be made of you?
Consider what may be keeping you from expressing with
abandonment warmth, tenderness, concern, interest, generosity,
praise, and those other qualities you admire. Perhaps you may
even feel a total lack of these qualities. Recall those negative
aspects you listed in Exercise One, and know that each has its
opposite in you. Did you list greed? Then be alert for the
generous impulse. Did you list envy? Then look for that self
in you which makes the response of praise. Consider the circum-
stances or feelings which block your expression of the admirable
qualities. )
Be so bold as to write your own “Song of Myself” with Walt
-Whitman’s words for inspiration:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume, you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
71
This week we are to be celebrators of self. We are to confess

the person that we are becoming in Christ. It is confession of our
light side. Many people in our age find it easier to dig and probe
the dark dimension of life than to come to grips with the re-
sources that are theirs. When we do not recognize our gifts and
strengths, our lives fail to sound notes of gratitude. The whole
growth process is blocked. We are responsible and free only when
we acknowledge our resources and the fact that light has actually
penetrated our darkness and made us children of light. Where
sin did abound, grace does much more abound.
A person’s fundamental confession is who he is in Christ. The
deepest confession any of us will ever make is: I am a person in
Christ Jesus. He has confronted me. His power has begun to flow
into my life. I am a changed and changing creation. I am his,
and I can witness to his grace and power, and to the strength
and possibilities that are mine because of him.
WZ
EXERCISE 2 > 73
It is absurd to charge me with an attempt to defy God.
Creativity for me is implied in the fundamental Christian
truth of God-manhood, and its justification is the theandric
theme of Christianity. God’s idea of man is infinitely loftier
than traditional orthodox conceptions of man, which are
as often as not an expression of a frustrated and stunted
mind. The idea of God is the greatest human idea, and
the idea of man is the greatest divine idea. Man awaits the
birth of God in himself, and God awaits the birth of man
in himself. It is at this level that the question of creativity
arises, and it is from this point of view that it should be
approached. The notion that God has need of man and
of man’s response to him is, admittedly, an extraordinarily
daring notion; yet in its absence the Christian revelation
of God-manhood loses all meaning. The drama of God and
his Other One, Man, is present and operative in the very
depths of divine life. This is revealed not in theological doc-
trines but in spiritual experience, where the divine drama
passes into a human drama and that which is above is
converted into that which is below. But this is in no way
inconsistent with redemption: rather it is another moment
on the same spiritual path and another act in the mystical
drama of God and man.
As I have noted, I passed through a phase of the crush-

ing experience of sin, and in the wake of this experience
darkness gathered around me. Had I followed this path
to the end, unable to dispel its evil charm, I should have
_grown accustomed to a perpetual contemplation of sin, to
a brooding over darkness, rather than to a vision of light.
It is, in fact, the aim of religious life to put an end to
this oppressive attitude. The sense of dejection and lowness
of spirit gave way in me to a sense of exultation. I can
remember how one summer day just before dawn I was
suddenly seized by a tumultuous force which seemed to
wrench me away from the oppressive spell of my despondent
condition, and a light invaded my whole being. I knew
then that this was the exalting call to creativity: hence-
forth I would create out of the freedom of my soul like
the great artificer whose image I bear.
—Nicouas BerpyaeEv, Dream and Reality,
pp. 204-205, 205-206.
397
Why? Why are we afraid to embrace our virtues? Why

do we mask them behind inaccurate estimates and un-
reasonable fears? Sometimes we may unconsciously reject
our hidden powers because they are linked with impulses
that are unacceptable either to ourselves or to the society
in which we set our lives. But the more common answer
is a much simpler one. Basically, we resist recognition
of our assets because, once recognized, they must be used.
For goodness makes claims. It must be expressed. It
must be used. Otherwise, it becomes evil in our hands.
Badness is goodness dammed up, just as hell is heaven
dammed up. The man who knows he could help others
but helps only himself will ultimately not be able to live
with himself. He will be his own worst tormentor. The
man who knows he could heal people but is afraid to risk
the sacrifice, responsibility, and hardship—as well as the
humbling knowledge that sometimes he will not be able to
heal—is ultimately victimized by his own unfulfillment.
The man who will not accept the risk of loving and re-
ceiving love will live and die in emptiness.
Literature is full of stories of people who knew they
had talent, yet failed to use it. The untold stories are those
of the millions of individuals who unconsciously disguised
their virtues lest they be obliged to use them—and lost
the riches of true living in the process. In this one sense,
we human beings are akin to the battery in a flashlight;
unused, it corrodes. What we do not use is wasted; what
we do not share we cannot keep.
—Earu A. Loomis, Jr., The Self in Pilgrimage,
pp. 6-7.
27
EXERCISE 2339 75
The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly
and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling
away from species-virtue, every crime against one’s own
nature, every evil act, every one without exception records
itself in our unconscious and makes us despise ourselves.
Karen Horney had a good word to describe this unconscious
perceiving and remembering; she said it “registers.” If we
do something we are ashamed of, it “registers” to our dis-
credit, and if we do something honest or fine or good, it
“registers” to our credit. The net results ultimately are
either one or the other—either we respect and accept
ourselves or we despise ourselves and feel contemptible,
worthless, and unlovable. Theologians used to use the word
“accidie”’ to describe the sin of failing to do with one’s life
.all that one knows one could do.
But there is also another element in conscience, or, if you

like, another kind of conscience, which we all have either
weakly or strongly. And this is the “intrinsic conscience.”
This is based upon the unconscious and preconscious per-
ception of our own nature, of our own destiny, or our own
capacities, of our own “call” in life. It insists that we be
true to our inner nature and that we do not deny it out
of weakness or for advantage or for any other reason. He
who belies his talent, the born painter who sells stockings
instead, the intelligent man who lives a stupid life, the man
who sees the truth and keeps his mouth shut, the coward
who gives up his manliness, all these people perceive in a
deep way that they have done wrong to themselves and
despise themselves for it. Out of this self-punishment may
come only neurosis, but there may equally well come re-
newed courage, righteous indignation, increased self-respect,
because of thereafter doing the right thing; in a word,
growth and improvement can come through pain and
conflict.
We can no longer think of the person as “fully determined”

where this phrase implies “determined only by forces ex-
ternal to the person.” The person, insofar as he zs a real
person, is his own main determinant. Every person is, in
part, “his own project” and makes himself.
Intrinsic guilt is the consequence of betrayal of one’s

own inner nature or self, a turning off the path to self-
actualization, and is essentially justified self-disapproval.
It is therefore not as culturally relative as is Freudian
guilt. It is “true” or “deserved” or “right and just” or
“correct” because it is a discrepancy from something pro-
foundly real within the person rather than from accidental,
arbitrary or purely relative localisms. Seen in this way it
is good, even necessary, for a person’s development to have
intrinsic guilt when he deserves to. It is not just a symptom
to be avoided at any cost but is rather an inner guide
for growth toward actualization of the real self, and of its
potentialities.
—ABRAHAM H. Mastow, Toward a Psychology of
Being, pp. 5, 7, 193, 194-195.
27?
The primary atmosphere in which the human being lives

and moves and has his being is inward. It is contained in
the way a person thinks about himself, perceives and expe-
riences his fundamental nature. It involves his conception
of himself, his potentialities, and the resources upon which
he can draw. These comprise the atmosphere of his life,
and they are within him. But they are not only internal
individually; they are within the depths of persons in a
way that reaches across the community. The inward at-
mosphere of a civilization is a social fact that is expressed
psychologically in the individuals who comprise the culture.
The task of improving the quality of a civilization must
therefore be approached in terms of the individual in the
culture and his personal experience of meaning, or lack of
meaning in life.
EXERCISE 2 39> 77
In the seed there is the latent potentiality of development
that carries all the possibilities of what the full grown spe-
cies can become. Following this metaphor, the fullness of
the oak trees is latent in the acorn. It is implicit there, and
correspondingly, the depths of man, his unconscious, is the
carrier of human potentialities. It contains the possibilities
of human development that are present in the individual
but are not visible because they have not yet become mani-
fest in life. We cannot see them until they begin to unfold
and fulfill themselves in the world. For this, it is necessary
that the individual develop the capacity of perceiving the
inward process of his growth while it is still in motion and
before it is fulfilled. As he becomes sensitive to it and
attunes himself to the process of his growth inwardly, he
is able to draw his potentialities forward. To provide the
methodology for this is a primary task of depth psychology.
While this sensitivity to the inward process is being

developed, a particular attitude is called for on the part
of the depth psychologist himself. This is an attitude of
connection to the seed of the other person, an acceptance
of it without defining it (so as not to limit its potentiality
by his own preconceptions), and a sensitive openness to the
process by which it is unfolding. In a profound sense this
is an attitude of love, for it involves an affirmation of the
seed of potentiality in the other person even while that seed
has not disclosed its specific form.
—Ira Procorr, The Symbolic and the Real,
pp. 12, 21-22, 61-62.
279
In a word, man need neither capitulate to nature nor

defy it in order to be himself. The tragic struggle whereby
he seeks to come to terms with life and destiny is not a
lonely, transitory one, wherein for a brief period he creates
ex nihilo whatever humane meaning existence can possess;
for this struggle is an integral part of a cosmic creativity.
The buried resources are “there,” so that they can be
drawn upon, only because of a divine strategy which
reaches back beyond the appearance of man upon this
planet. Man is in his own body and mind a compendium
of every preceding “level”? of evolution—physical, chemi-
cal, biological and psychological. The resources he draws
upon, in seeking to become at one with himself, are not
merely “his”; they are rooted in the whole creation, which
is grounded in God. Therefore man can become at one
with himself only by finding his place in a harmony much
wider than himself; but this harmony is not “preestab-
lished”; he has a share in winning, in actualizing, it. He
cannot fulfill his own nature unless his capacities gain free
expression; but neither can he fulfill his own nature unless
his freedom is brought into right relationship with God.
—Davin E. Roserts, Psychotherapy and a Christian
View of Man, p. 93.
»
There are, besides the gifts of the head, also those of
the heart, which are no whit less important, although they
may easily be overlooked because in such cases the head
is often the weaker organ. And yet people of this kind
sometimes contribute more to the well-being of society, and
are more valuable, than those with other talents.
—C. G. Junc, The Development of Personality,
7?
Man is always torn between the wish to regress to the womb

and the wish to be fully born. Every act of birth requires
the courage to let go of something, to let go of the womb,
to let go of the breast, to let go of the lap, to let go of the
hand, to let go eventually of all certainties, and to rely only
upon one thing: one’s own powers to be aware and to
respond; that is, one’s own creativity. To be creative means
to consider the whole process of life as a process of birth,
EXERCISE 2 >> 79
and not to take any stage of life as a final stage. Most peo-
ple die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be
born before one dies.
The willingness to be born—and this means the willing-
ness to let go of all “certainties” and illusions—requires
courage and faith. Courage to let go of certainties, courage
to be different and to stand isolation; courage, as the Bible
puts it in the story of Abraham, to leave one’s own land
and family and to go to a land yet unknown. Courage to
be concerned with nothing but the truth, the truth not only
in thought but in one’s feeling as well. This courage is
possible only on the basis of faith. Faith not in the sense
in which the word is often used today, as a belief in some
idea which cannot be proved scientifically or rationally,
but faith in the meaning which it has in the Old Testa-
ment, where the word for faith (Emuna) means certainty;
to be certain of the reality of one’s own experience in
thought and in feeling, to be able to trust it, to rely on it,
‘this is faith. Without courage and faith, creativity is im-
possible, and hence the understanding and cultivation of
courage and faith are indispensable conditions for the
development of the creative attitude.
Let me say again that creativity in this sense does not
refer to a quality which particularly gifted persons or artists
could achieve, but to an attitude which every human
being should and can achieve. Education for creativity is
nothing short of education for living.
—EricH Fromm, “The Creative Attitude,” Creativ-
ity and Its Cultivation, pp. 53-54.
37?
For the self-renewing man the development of his own

potentialities and the process of self-discovery never end.
It is a sad but unarguable fact that most human beings go
through their lives only partially aware of the full range
of their abilities. As a boy in California I spent a good
deal of time in the Mother Lode country, and like every
boy of my age I listened raptly to the tales told by the old-
80 «e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
time prospectors in that area, some of them veterans of
the Klondike gold rush. Every one of them had at least one
good campfire story of a lost gold mine. The details varied:
the original discoverer had died in the mine, or had gone
crazy, or had been killed in the shooting scrape, or had just
walked off thinking the mine worthless. But the central
theme was constant: riches left untapped. I have come to
believe that those tales offer a paradigm of education as
most of us experience it. The mine is worked for a little
while and then abandoned.
Exploration of the full range of his own potentialities

is not something that the self-renewing man leaves to the
chances of life. It is something he pursues systematically,
or at least avidly, to the end of his days. He looks forward
to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between his poten-
tialities and the claims of life—not only the claims he
encounters but the claims he invents. And by potentialities
I mean not just skills but the full range of his capacities
for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding, loving and
aspiring.
—Joun W. Garpner, Self-Renewal, pp. 10, 12.
>?
The words in the Scriptures: “But ye that did cleave unto

the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day,” are
expounded as follows:
“Cleave to his qualities.’ But this must be properly un-
derstood. Emanating from God are ten qualities and these
come in twos which oppose each other like two colors,
one of which is apparently in direct contrast to the other.
But, seen with the true inner eye, they all form one simple
unity. It is the task of man to make them appear a unity
to the true outer eye, as well. Perhaps one man finds it
difficult to be merciful, because his way is to be rigorous,
and another finds it difficult to be rigorous, because his
EXERCISE 2 >» 81
way is merciful. But he who binds the rigor within him to
its root, to the rigor of God, and the mercy which is in
him to its root, to the mercy of God, and so on in all things
—such a man will unite the ten qualities within himself,
and he himself will become the unity they represent, for
he cleaves to the Lord of the world. Such a man has be-
come wax on which both judgment and mercy can set their
seal.
—Manrtin Buser, Ten Rungs: Hasidic Sayings,
pp. 70-71.
399
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honor-

able, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is
anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What
you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,
do; and the God of peace will be with you.
—Philippians 4:8-9, rsv.
37?
Not following one’s destiny, or trying to avoid one’s fate,

is a frequent cause of numerous psychic difficulties. It may
even be that the steady increase in the number of neurotics
today is due to the fact that more and more individuals
are called upon by fate to work for their psychic wholeness,
but that fewer and fewer of them are ready to do so. Any
obstruction of the natural process of development, any
avoidance of the law of life, or getting stuck on a level
unsuited to one’s age, takes its revenge, if not immediately,
then later at the onset of the second half of life, in the
form of serious crises, nervous breakdowns, and all manner
of physical and psychic sufferings. Mostly they are ac-
companied by vague feelings of guilt, by tormenting pangs
of conscience, often not understood, in the face of which
the individual is helpless. He knows he is not guilty of any
bad deed, he has not given way to any illicit impulse, and
yet he is plagued by uncertainty, discontent, despair, and
above all by anxiety—a constant, indefinable anxiety. And
in truth he must usually be pronounced “guilty.” His guilt
does not lie in the fact that he has a neurosis, but in the
fact that, knowing he has one, he does nothing to set about
curing it.
This also explains why many practising Catholics do not
feel freed by confession and absolution, but go on being
oppressed and persecuted by fears. And indeed they cannot
confess anything except what lies consciously on their con-
science, while they are not conscious of their real guilt
at all; it is not anything they have done or thought, essen-
tially it is ungraspable and can hardly be put into words.
For it relates to their whole previous life, to which they did
not pay its due tribute; it relates to the “destiny” that was
laid upon them but was not lived, to the psychic develop-
ment they missed, which their nature would yet have made
possible. The fact that they remained infantile, their one-
sidedness and the neglect of their other qualities, their fear
of taking the plunge into life, their constant prevarication
and criticism—all this and a lot more besides are the cause
of guilt feelings and pangs of conscience which never let
them go.
—JOLANDE JaAcosi, The Way of Individuation,
pp. 115-116.
37?
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him

' the name which is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth
and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
—Philippians 2:9-11, Rsv.
99>
Paver AND
A (CorFEE IHlousr
WIAA
PRAYER AND
A CorFEE House
When a house is a house of prayer, the atmosphere of it is

different. Many of us first learned this by working in The Potter’s
House, which is the coffee house that The Church of The Saviour
has in the inner city of Washington, D.C. The people who come
through the doors tell us in many ways that they sense this is not
an ordinary coffee house. Some fall silent when they enter the
room, and walk softly to their tables. Others are more casual, but
go to great lengths to account for the tone of the coffee house.
One customer will say that it is the old barn boards nailed to
the walls that create the stillness of forests, while another will
insist that the worn carpeting or the current art exhibit is what
“really makes this place.’’ Almost everything in the large room
85
86 &@ SEARCH FOR SILENCE
has been pointed out at one time or another to explain the feeling
that people have about the coffee house. Young persons are
usually more direct and say, “The vibes in here are OK.”
Those of us who work at The Potter’s House respond in
different ways at different times. Our reactions are determined
by what is going on in the corporate life of the group that staffs
The Potter’s House on that night, as well as by what is happen-
ing in our private worlds. If there is dissension in the group and
unresolved conflict between members, the Spirit of the coffee
house leaves, and in the place of it is a covering of darkness.
Fortunately, on those nights when there is a lack of unity in us
and among us, not many people seem to come to the coffee
house. It is as though a protective wall were thrown up around
The Potter’s House and only certain ones were allowed to go
through it.
Some of us first noted this when the mission group which staffs
The Potter’s House on Friday nights set aside a “community
table” for those who came alone and wanted to meet people.
When all was well with us as a group, the table would fill up
quickly and there would be the exhilarating experience of excit-
ing conversation and real meeting between persons. But when in
our time together—before the coffee house opened—we had
quarreled among ourselves and moved perfunctorily through
forms of worship and prayer, the mere thought of the “com-
munity table’ loomed as burden. No one wanted to be assigned
there, either to take coffee orders or to act as host for part of the
evening. It was a fruitless obligation to try to relate to strangers
when we were relating so poorly to our own group members.
Consistently, however, few people came on those nights, and the
ones who did preferred to sit alone. Under these circumstances
we began to save ourselves the pain of even thinking about a
community table, since there would not be community anyway.
We learned then, if we had not learned it before, that com-
munity is not programmed into an evening, but becomes possible
only when there are those who have done the essential, prelim-
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE 33> 87
inary, inward work of prayer. On the nights we labored to still
our thoughts and to place ourselves, and each other, and the
whole evening in the presence of God, there was a communicat-
ing Spirit in the coffee house. We understood what others were
Saying, and they understood what we were saying. Times like
these have made the coffee house an oasis in the city—a place
of cool water, and peace. When the work of prayer has been
done, we can see and hear in each other what otherwise comes to
us distorted or is entirely blotted out. We do not have the same
need to be confirmed by others or to find a place for ourselves
in the scheme of things. Prayer frees us to be for the other
person. It is preparation for the event of community.
Of course, very few believe this. We think community is
dependent on the structures we create rather than on the at-
mosphere we create. In the secular context we think our com-
munity programs are dependent on funds and trained personnel
and facilities. We do not question these assumptions even when
well-staffed and funded programs never get off the ground, when
money intended for the accomplishment of specific goals is used
in wasteful ways, when the community organization is destroyed
by internal bickering, or its energies drained in needless com-
petition with other organizations committed to the same goals.
The critics of the church’s involvement in social programs may
be right, if her involvement is on the same basis as that of non-
religious organizations. Unless the church’s efforts are coupled
with a spiritual movement, nothing new is created. Renewal
takes place in institutions when there is renewal in souls. The
outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a new epoch of freedom and
creativity will come when the church follows the instructions of
the Risen Christ and keeps her house a house of prayer whether
that house is a day care building, a factory, or a housing project.
Only then will our centers be radiating structures of light. Only
then can there exist the climate for miracle, or, in everyday
speech, the climate for change.
These past months as I have pondered the place of contempla-
88 «& SEARCH FOR SILENCE
tive prayer in the life of the church, my thoughts have turned to

The Potter’s House, which has been for some of us the kinder-
garten of our instruction. If we learned here that prayer was not
easy, we also learned that it was not abstract, but directly re-
lated to our perception of ourselves and each other and the
world. We had read a pamphlet by Thomas Kelly, The Gathered
Meeting, in which he describes the Quaker practice of silent
worship and the depth of power that steals over the worshipers:
A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, and a quick-

ening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the
special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and blend-
ing our spirits within a super-individual Life and Power—an ob-
jective, dynamic Presence which enfolds us all, nourishes our
souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort within us, and quickens in
us depths that had before been slumbering.*
One of the conditions cited by Kelly as necessary for such a

group experience is that some individuals upon entering the
meeting be already “gathered deep in the spirit of worship.”
This guidance makes interesting reading but is hard to follow
until one has inside a lot of caring or a lot of despair.
There is a saying that a person’s belief in praying for rain
depends on how many days it has been since it last rained. The
Potter’s House Saturday night group can tell you about a long
dry stretch when it lost half of its members. Too few remained
to man the evening; not only that, those few lacked commitment.
Even the moderator of the group—or the Prior as we call him—
was dubious that he should fill the role. With so much un-
certainty in the group, it was questionable whether The Potter’s
House should be kept open on Saturday night, though this is the
night when it is the most crowded and when there are the most
out-of-town visitors.
The moderator probably felt more weighed down than the
others, since one of his tasks is to articulate the vision and re-
sound the call when group members are under pressure or have
grown fainthearted. In any case, he was the one who spent four
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE >» 89
hours one Saturday afternoon interceding for his group and

asking for wisdom. It was not until he was driving to the meet-
ing that night that he felt a resolution of the division he had been
experiencing, and a unifying of his own life around the call to
The Potter’s House. He knew within the “unutterable comfort”’
that Thomas Kelly had described, and was able to tell the group
he felt called to this mission and was excited about its possibili-
ties. At the same time his words freed each person to make his
own decision.
Listening to the responses of the members, one would not have
suspected that anyone had been entertaining the slightest doubt
concerning his call. Even the pregnant girl, who had asked for
a three-month absence to have her baby, said that two weeks was
all that was necessary. Since then the group has not only manned
The Potter's House on Saturday with zest and abandonment,
but has worked with other businesses on the street to bring re-
newal to the whole area. The very members who at one point
were too pressed for time to spend every Saturday evening at
The Potter’s House began to meet extra hours during the week to
work with the details of buying property that would provide
low-cost housing for the elderly. What they once viewed as
ridiculous burden, they now view as unlimited opportunity. As
you may guess, “the Lord added to their number day by day.”
Now it is another group that is in a valley. It takes seven
mission groups to staff The Potter’s House each week, and
always at least one of them is somewhat down, if not completely
buried in a pit of darkness. In time, even when seemingly going
downhill, we learn to believe in the reality of God and to suspect
that this may be when he is working out the new in our lives.
More than. the corporate life of the various groups comes to
- mind, however, when I think of prayer and the mission of the
church. There is the interaction of life with life that goes on day
in and day out. Two recent stories will serve to illustrate, though
neither has the drama cf much that goes on at The Potter’s
House in the course of a week.
The first is the story of a man who has lived across the street
from The Potter’s House since it opened in 1959. In all those

years he had been inside it only a dozen times, but it was to The
Potter’s House he turned for help when the doctors told him
that he could die any day. He sent his wife to request that
someone come over to talk to him about philosophy. When she
returned with the message that we would, he had her telephone
and change the request to “someone who would talk about
religion.” He was wise enough to know that a person who can
talk about philosophy is not necessarily someone who can talk
about God. His message was passed on to the Sunday night
mission group. Don McClanen, who had been on retreat all
weekend and was alive with the Spirit in his own life, said that
he would like to go. Seventeen-year-old Mary Anne Cresswell
said she would like to go with him. The group sent them both
across the street to make the call.
They were greeted by a man who began, “I am religious by
nature. I believe in Christ, but I do not go to church. I do not
know how to pray. I want help in understanding the spirit that
is in The Potter’s House.” Then he added, “But I am a realist,
too. I believe in looking at things as they are. I have cancer of
the most virulent kind. ’'m going to die, and I want to know
whether your religion has any hope and guidance to give.”
Don told him that he was grateful to him for speaking so
directly. “We, too, are realists,’ he said. “Our faith deals
realistically with death.”
In the next ten minutes Don talked of his understanding of
1 Corinthians 15, which was the Scripture he had worked with
on retreat. It was Scripture that also had acted upon his own
life. He was able to speak of the power of Christ over death
because as he told the man, “My wife and I experienced it at
the time of the death of our child. There was more than sorrow,
pain, disappointment, anger. There was growth, expansion of
faith, a new conviction that this life is but a one-foot ruler
alongside God’s unending yardstick of eternity.”
They talked a long time that evening. From all that we
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE ss 91
understand, the eager and expectant girl, the dying man, and
the confident proclaimer of the Word had their own revival
service. When Don and Mary Anne left, G. K. was obviously
feeling better; he also knew something about prayer, and held
in his hands a Book that had become more understandable, and
in the days to come was to be pored over and underlined.
Moreover, a man had been born into a community of hope.
The Sunday night group became his family. They prayed for
him, visited him almost daily, took books to him, and told him
what Jesus Christ meant to them. They also appointed Pat
Davis, the Shepherd of their group, as a special guide to help
him grow in his understanding of prayer and Scripture.
Instead of dying, Mr. K. began to gain strength. During this
time his doctors were trying to complete arrangements for him
to go to a famous New York hospital where research was being
done on his type of disease. Sometimes he was impatient await-
ing word that he could be admitted; at other times he was not
sure that he should go at all. If he was to die soon, he wanted
to be at home with his new friends.
When the hospital finally sent word that they had a bed for
him, he left somewhat reluctantly for New York. When he was
examined at the hospital, the doctors found that the disease had
been arrested. After several weeks they sent him home to re-
sume his “normal’’ activities. He thinks he is doing this, but
no one who had known him before would consider his activities
normal. He prays and worships and hangs out with the odd
assortment of people who staff The Potter’s House on Sunday
night and who give as much attention to the miracle of changing
life as to the miracle of physical healing.
They are realists in that group and are not sure how many
days their new friend has; but then they are not sure about how
many days you, or I, or anyone else has, and they think what
matters in God’s economy is how we live those days. More than
this, they think the Sermon on the Mount is about a new life
that can come to us all. They think the Sermon is about an
enabling Presence that makes that new life possible in the here
and now.
The other story is also about an event that took place one
Sunday evening. Jane Adams, the hostess for the evening, ap-
proached Bill Mason, the group’s Prior, whose job that night
was to wait on tables. Bill is twenty-eight, but he seems ageless.
He could be fifty or a hundred. The hostess told him that she
had just seated two young men at his table. “But before that,”
she said, “they were in the gift area, and I think the big one
took something.”
“Are you sure?” asked Bill.
“It appeared that way,” she said, “and he chuckled and said
to his friend, ‘Look what I have.’ ”
Confronting a customer with an accusation of theft had
absolutely no appeal for Bill.
‘“‘Are you one-hundred percent sure?” he asked Jane.
“Only ninety-nine percent,” she replied.
Bill shook his head, and Jane said what those of us who
know Jane would expect her to say in circumstances like these
—‘Maybe the Spirit will lead me to sit down and talk to him.”
Bill felt great about this. He was glad for the Spirit to give
her any sort of guidance as long as he was left out of it. He
observed his customers, however, with more than ordinary in-
terest as he asked them for their order. He had written it down,
turned around, and walked a few steps from the table when,
without any intention of doing so, he turned around, walked
back to the table, and addressed the tall young man.
“One of the ladies,” he said, “thinks she saw you take some-
thing from the gift area.”
“Nope,” was the reply.
“Were you just in the gift area?”
“No.”
“Then,” said Bill, astounded at the words coming out of his
mouth, “you wouldn’t mind my looking in your pockets?”
Unexpectedly, the young man reached into his pocket and
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE >> 93
placed on the table a small art object. “You have me,” he said.
With that Bill pulled a chair over to the table and sat down,
not having the vaguest idea what he was going to say next.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“Just for kicks,” was the reply. “Don’t try to understand me.
Do what you have to do.”
It turned out that he was a college graduate doing small
theater work in a nearby state. Somewhere in the conversation
Bill asked the young man’s companion, “What do you think
about all this?”
“I wouldn’t get so upset about it, if I were you,” he said.
“The kid’s never grown up.”
“What did you say to him when he took it?”
“Nothing,” was the answer. “No reason for me to get in-
volved. It’s his life.”
‘*That’s just it,” said Bill. “It zs his life. If you saw him hold-
ing his hand over this candle flame and the flesh falling away,
would you still do nothing? Both of you tick me off.”
He then told them about the coffee house and its mission to
the city and how every month it showed a deficit, which the
people of The Potter’s House had to make up. “Shoplifting,”
said Bill, “is making it almost impossible for us to exist here.”
The young man kept injecting, “This is a big learning ex-
perience for me.”
Finally Bill said, “Yes, but you'll walk out of here and five
minutes from now you will have forgotten it. I don’t want it
to be that way. I want you to have time to think about it. You
have a choice: either I call the police and we go down to the
station where I will sign the papers for your arrest, or you
can wash dishes tonight.”
“Me wash dishes? Man,” he said, ‘“‘you have to be kidding!”
His indignation, however, waned quickly. The alternative to
washing dishes was too grim.
He settled nervously into his new job, but grew more at
home with it as the night wore on. When closing time came
and Bill went to release him, he was deeply engrossed in a book

he had found in the stock room.
“You sure have some neat books here,” he said very quietly.
After that he left, and curiously enough Bill felt lonely.
More could be said about these two encounters in a coffee
house, but enough has been told to illustrate the constant in-
terplay of life with life that goes on when a group is making
an effort to live out of a quiet center. The experience of cen-
tered lives can be one of creativity, of a pervading Presence,
of joy, of quiet contagious excitement, differing from time to
time, but always issuing in community. One has the feeling of
being in on what is important and wanting others to be in on
it also. Most of us subscribe to the Christian message that every
life is infinitely precious and unique, but this is different from
looking out on a room full of people and knowing in one’s
inmost self that that message is true. Someone in a coffee house
group once put it this way, “I looked at all those people in the
coffee house and I wanted to go up to every person and say,
‘It does not matter what your opinion is. It is utterly important
simply because it is your opinion.’ ”
In contemplative prayer lies the possibility that we will hear
in our depths the tidings, “Unto you is born this day... a
Saviour,” and be commissioned to find ways to take that message
to the distraught, hungry, imprisoned masses of a city. “Here
am I, O Lord, send me.” Contemplative prayer is communion
with a sphere that is beyond the world we know, but that com-
munion makes possible an authentic, healing community in the
here and now into which people can come and be renewed
and find out what it is they are supposed to be doing. This is
what contemplative prayer is about.
Contemplative prayer is about community, and it is about
being commissioned. It is going some place because one is sent,
and then it is being a contemplative person in that place until
one knows or is told what to do next. Much of our unease comes
from not knowing where we are supposed to be. We choose one
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE 33> 95
activity, think we probably made a mistake, and change to
another—or we try to do everything. Sometimes we go to the
other extreme and, afraid to make the wrong commitment, we
make none at all. Whatever our path, we do not feel right
inside. The same dilemma is evident in the church’s corporate
life. The difficulty is not that the church is engaged in social
programs, but that she is engaged without having been sent.
After we become thoroughly involved in community action or
political protest, we begin to wonder whether that is what the
church should be doing after all. We are activists for a few
years before we question what all the activity is accomplishing
and what it has to do with the preaching of the gospel. Gradually
the church pulls out of involvement altogether and returns to
prayer and worship. Several more years will go by before unease
begins to surface again—and this time prayer and worship will
be questioned. The ambivalence that we know in our individual
lives is extended to our corporate life.
In the mission groups of The Church of The Saviour, we
are discovering that it is not an either/or style of life. In fact,
we can be more emphatic and say that the contemplative life
must be the foundation of all the church’s missions or task
forces, as well as the foundation of our individual vocations. We
think that we are twentieth- and twenty-first-century people;
nonetheless, we have hints that one can receive directions as
clear as those given Ananias, who answered as Isaiah had
answered centuries before him, “‘ ‘Here I am, Lord.’ And the
Lord said to him, ‘Rise and go to the street called Straight, and
inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul;
for behold, he is praying. . .’” (Acts 9:10-11, Rsv).
When a community has listened to instructions like these and
' moved in obedience to them, then any arguments as to whether
or not the church should be where it is are groundless. The only
sensible inquiry is whether the church heard its directions cor-
rectly. We carry the treasure in earthenware vessels. The Word
we say we heard is always subject to questioning, always to be
tested within the fellowship and confirmed or denied by those

among us who have the gift of distinguishing true spirits from
false. When we become serious about prayer, we learn how
important this gift is, for the contemplative man will be ad-
dressed, he will be given dreams and will see visions.
PRAYER AND FASTING
After the riots of the spring of 1968, the groups of The

Potter’s House were given the vision of the City of Washington
made new and habitable for all its people. With that vision
came the summons to share it and to find the ways to labor
for the building of the city. We renewed pur commitment to
struggle for the deepening of our prayer life, knowing that if
direction and strategy were not determined by the Holy Spirit,
we might as well save our energy—‘Unless the Lord watches
over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Ps. 127:1,
Rsv). We also increased our tithes; and—after the appearance
in our midst of a visitor from another church who said, “Tf
you will fast one day a week for two years, I promise you will
not be sorry’—we added the discipline of fasting one day a
week. We had asked our visitor none of the hard questions that
we were accustomed to asking when faced with the extraordi-
nary. In the presence of a person who radiated a peace from
within, we believed that the promise she made was the promise
of gospel, and we began to look again at Jesus’ response to the
disciples when they questioned him about their inability to
cure, and he told them that there is a kind of disease that can
be conquered only through prayer and fasting.
When our Potter’s House mission groups met to consider
adding this new discipline, we found that everyone had his own
opinion on fasting or readily expounded someone else’s opinion.
But not one person was able to speak out of his own experience.
We decided to adopt the discipline of fasting one day a week
for one year, feeling that at the end of that time each person
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE >>> 97
could speak experientially and decide whether it was a dis-
cipline he wanted to continue. The few who requested an ex-
ception for reasons of health, or because very early the effort
proved too strenuous, were asked to substitute another fast
discipline. An acceptable substitute was the practice, on one day
a week, of speaking only when it was essential, and then to use
the minimum of words necessary for communication. Most of
us, however, kept the food fast. Someone had the idea of giving
the money we were saving on food to programs to feed the
poor; many did this, although the suggestion was never adopted
as a group discipline. The hunger fund grew quickly to $7,000,
and The Potter’s House began to serve a hot morning meal to
forty school children.
That same year we became familiar with the inadequacies
of the food stamp program in the District of Columbia. One
of its main deficiencies was the long process necessary to become
eligible for certification. The certification centers closed at the
end of each day without having taken care of many people
who had stood in line for hours. Contrary to what we may
imagine, hunger, poverty, and age do not motivate a person
to seek help, but any one of these conditions drastically lowers
his capacity to endure the frustrations that seem to be built into
so many unwieldy public assistance programs. Consequently,
those who are most in need of food find the process of certifica-
tion intolerable and in the early stages drop out. Another major
deterrent is the requirement that the entire month’s supply of
food stamps for a family be purchased at one time; the only
exceptions made are for oversized families, to whom two books
are issued. Many of the poor are unable to put out in one large
sum the money required to purchase a stamp book. Even when
they have enough money to purchase stamps, they must still
endure the agony of long waiting lines because there are too few
issuing centers.
As we became awake to the fact that the nation’s capital was
full of hungry people, we began to discover the hungry in our
own neighborhood. One Sunday morning, news of the fasting

and hunger programs of The Potter’s House was shared with
the larger worshiping congregation of The Church of The
Saviour. I remember that day especially because ten-year-old
Michael Barnet, who puts immense value on a dollar, was in
the congregation. He was so moved by what was said about the
plight of the poor that he dug into his pocket for his own com-
forting wad of two one-dollar bills and, as the collection plate
went by, dropped his entire wealth into it. Later that day when
his family met to discuss whether they would as a family unit
adopt the fasting program and give the money to feed the poor,
Michael, who is also a lover of good food, cast his vote for the
fast. This family agreed on a modified plan—one day each week
they would go without breakfast and lunch, and have soup and
crackers for supper. |
The spiritual world is full of mystery, and few of us have
entered very deeply into that mystery. The relationship between
money and the spiritual, however, is not so shrouded in the
unknown as we would like to think. Religious literature has
many stories of dedicated persons who prayed for money for
worthy projects and received that money. One of the best
known examples is that of George Mueller who, without any
funds of his own, petitioned God day by day for the means to
establish homes that would take orphaned children off the
streets of London. He wrote of the establishment of his first
orphanage: “All the various arguments which I have often
brought before God, I brought also again this morning before
him. Never, during all these 14 months and 3 weeks, have I
had the least doubt that I should have all that which is requisite.
—And now, dear believing reader, rejoice and praise with me.
About an hour after I had prayed thus, there was given to me
the sum of Two Thousand Pounds for the Building Fund.’”*
There are not many stories like this in the current literature
of the church because we have become too knowledgeable to
think that, when we bow our heads and tell God about our
little plans, he is going to dispatch the resources to carry
them out. The sad fact is that, despite our sophistication, we
are sO naive as to suppose that George Mueller and all those
who still intercede are saying the childhood prayers that we
have outgrown. If childish petitions are honored only in our
childhood, it is because adulthood calls each of us to an ever-
deepening perception of what prayer is, and to an understand-
ing of the difference between a childish prayer and childlike
praying. Certainly the mature person who prays for money must
be as free from its tyranny as George Mueller was. When we
cling to what we have, and spend most of our lives trying to
achieve security for ourselves, it is useless as well as immoral to
go out and ask others to part with what they cling to—that
which, for them, means security.
It is easy to be in the fight for justice as long as justice is
what someone else ought to do, while our role is to pound home
the message. If one ponders the claims justice makes on one’s
self, the answers are not so clearly perceived. Before becoming
angry about the violence that is done to the poor in our cities,
in the institutions for children, the aged, and the mentally ill,
and the terrible violence done to two-thirds of the world’s
people who go to bed hungry, one would do well to look first
at the violence in his own life. For me the enemies were the
rich and the indifferent, none of whom I knew. Then one day
I woke up with a clearer understanding of reality—I was the
rich, and Michael Barnet with two dollars in his pocket was
the rich. Up until then I had thought of us as the ordinary
people who should not be asked to give up their chance for the
“good life.”
“And what difference would our small sacrifices make any-
way? If we are not asking that question ourselves, someone
else is. Every day people tell us how foolish is our vision of a
city made new. They are willing to concede that pockets of
abscess are being cleared up, and that in isolated places the
impossible is happening, but they point to the disease that is
erupting in ten other places while this work goes on, and they
ask one of those questions that all sound alike: “Why try?”
“What’s the use?” “What difference will it make?” Out of our —
intercessory prayer came a few glimmerings of understanding:
1. The first concerns the difference our giving makes in the
life of each of us. Even if we had no responsibility for the
creation of the city and the creation of the world, everyone still
has the responsibility of continuing the creation of his own life.
Every single act determines a man’s being and shapes the
person he becomes.
A young friend told me this week that a bank cashier had
given him ten dollars more than she should have. “I guess,”
he said, “I was foolish to return it . . . most people wouldn't
have.” What we do not understand is that our small private
acts are supremely important in the creation of our own lives.
They determine how we feel about ourselves and how we feel
about others. The act of returning money that does not belong
to one creates one kind of person—the act of keeping it, another.
They are different acts and produce different people. This is
what Kierkegaard is telling us when he warns that in eternity
there is no crowd—only the “single one.”
2. We have swallowed a myth when we believe in our
powerlessness. In yesterday’s paper a columnist was criticizing
a church for selling 10,000 shares of stock in a company to
protest its hiring practices. He contended that the church was
advertising her powerlessness. “What are 10,000 shares of
stock,” he asked, “in a company that has two million outstand-
ing?” In the financial section of that same newspaper, article
after article commented on the failure of the United States
Government to strengthen the national economy, despite its
aggressive and prodding efforts. Cautious consumer buying was
cited as a primary reason. Not only were ‘“‘apathetic consumers’”’
purchasing very few appliances, they were even resisting the
allure of spring fashions. According to a spokesman for Madison
Avenue, advertising had to change if it was to reach the new
consumer who was showing more interest in corporate integrity

when selecting’ a product. “The winds that are stirring our
society are strong ones,” he wrote, “and the consumer we face
is a new creature—smarter, more skeptical, sophisticated,
serious, sensitive to social problems. And much more thoughtful
about his purchases and their real value.”
For our own sakes, we must sell our two shares of stock in
structures of oppression, even if ours is a solitary gesture; but the
fact is that it just might make a difference in the direction a
nation takes. Eugene McCarthy goes out and does his lonely
thing—and the whole peace movement enters a new phase.
Up and down the breadth of this land men come forward to be
named among the protesters when to protest is to jeopardize a
person’s acceptance in his home or business community. Robert
Kennedy watches, and is addressed and moves into history
because he moves into the hearts of the young who are maimed
by the lack of leaders who live among them a life of Spirit.
3. Change takes place when those who are earth-bound
have communion with lives that are rooted and grounded in a
transcendent order, and they themselves begin to glimpse what
they had not seen before. In the company of persons of vision
the Michael Barnets and the J. P. Morgans do not have the
same need to clutch what is theirs; they have a greater need to
do justice and love mercy. Someone makes promises about
fasting—and we do not argue the theology of it. ‘Tomorrow
there will be time to pore over Scripture, listen to our spiritual
fathers, read the health books, and write our own dissertations
on fasting, but right now a woman is telling us things of the
Spirit and we want to be in on what she is in on. A man from
a pulpit speaks of a people who are undertaking the discipline
of fasting, and moving out to say to the oppressed of the world,
“We would like to be with you in your struggle, on whatever
terms you name,” and a few more of us awake from our
slumbering and ask to be included.
The Taizé Community in France announces a Council of
Youth, and in 1970 alone 20,000 young people from 65 coun-

tries journey to Taizé to prepare themselves. They want to
learn how to pray and they want to be close to the community
of brothers who are, in the words of their Prior, trying “to
combine in themselves a life of prayer and the search for
justice, love for the Church and a commitment in favour of
man, trust in Christ and movement towards poverty.” Out of
their meetings that year, the young formulate this statement
and announce it as the joyful news of Easter 1970:
The Risen Christ comes to quicken a festival in the innermost

heart of man. He is preparing a springtime of the Church: a
Church devoid of means of power, ready to share with all, a
place of visible communion for all humanity. He is going to
give us enough imagination and courage to open up a path of
reconciliation. He is going to prepare us to give our life so that
man is no longer victim of man.
This is the promise of prayer—the coming of the springtime

of the church, when every man shall know that what he does
matters, when every man shall take up the task of making a
new life and a new world, when every man shall know that he
does not struggle alone.
The experience of fasting that year was different for each of
us. Along the way we encountered obstacles, not the least of
which was pride camouflaged in a variety of disguises. In the
early months those. who experienced no difficulty with the dis-
cipline sounded a note of self-satisfaction because they were able
to fast with such ease. Others who suffered pangs of hunger and
actual weakness every fast day resisted admitting the necessity of
having to modify the discipline of total abstinence that most of
their fellows were maintaining. Fortunately someone put into
our hands the teaching of St. Francis:
Each of you should have regard for his own nature. Though
this or that one may be able to sustain himself on less food
than someone else, still I will not have one who needs more
food try to imitate the former in that. Taking his own nature
into consideration, let him bestow on his body what it needs
in order to be able to serve the spirit. Just as we are bound to
avoid superfluity in eating, for it harms body and soul, so must
we beware of excessive abstaining, yes even more so, because
the Lord wants mercy and not sacrifice.
Equally helpful was the story of the brother who, overzealous

in fasting, one night roused the community with loud cries that
he was starving. Lest embarrassment be added to his anguish,
St. Francis had all the brothers get up and eat a meal with him.
Many of us discovered how very social is the act of eating,
which is probably why the short Gospel accounts give so much
space to food—outdoor picnics, a supper behind closed doors, a
fish fry at dawn beside the Sea of Tiberias. We did not miss the
food as much as we missed the communion of breaking bread
with another person. Slowly, ever so slowly, we began to know
the mysterious collaboration between body and spirit, and to
learn that the appetite for food and the desire for the company
of a friend could be transmuted into communion with Jesus
Christ and the breaking of bread with him in the communion
supper. We learned in our fasting the meaning of the Scripture
that had been familiar to some of us from childhood, “Here I
stand knocking at the door; if anyone hears my voice and opens
the door, I will come in and sit down to supper with him and
he with me” (Rev. 3:20, NEB).
We have two anonymous reports from these days. One is en-
titled:
Steps on a Journey
1. I felt it'a great accomplishment to go a whole day with-
out food. Congratulated myself on the fact that I found it so
easy. Also, enjoyed the fact that I lost weight and could in-
dulge more freely in sweets.
2. Began to see that the above was hardly the goal of fasting.
Was helped in this by beginning to feel hunger. Also, hated
to forego the social aspects of food.
3. Still could put food out of my mind with a large degree
of grace. Began to relate the food fast to other areas of my
life where I was more compulsive. Always thought I had to

have eight hours sleep each night. I could see this was not
essential. My world was not going to fall apart if I did not
have my usual quota of sleep anymore than it would if I did
not have my usual quota of meals. Began to move out of the
grip of necessity in other areas. I did not have to have a seat
on the bus to be contented, or to be cool in the summer and
warm when it was cold. .
4. Continued to feel less at the mercy of my own desires—
more detached. I was still picking the easiest day on which to
fast—the one on which I would experience the least denial
—would have the least reminders of food. Despite this, began
to be hungrier. No day seemed like a good day for fasting. Re-
flected more on Christ’s suffering and the suffering of those
who are hungry and have hungry babies. Discovered with my
friends that I could suffer a little hunger in order that others
could suffer a little less hunger.
5. Six months after beginning the fast discipline, I began
to see why a two-year period had been suggested. The expe-
rience changes along the way. Hunger on fast days became
acute, and the temptation to eat stronger. For the first time
I was using the day to find God’s will for my life. Began to
think about what it meant to surrender one’s life.
6. I now know that prayer and fasting must be intricately
bound together. There is no other way, and yet that way is not
yet combined in me. This is where I am at this writing.
The other report is entitled:
Personal Reflections on Fasting
My initial effort of fasting this particular year has had spe-

cial meaning and provided new insight for me. It has pointed
up for me with new clarity just how strong I am—but I really
mean how weak my strength is—when dependent on my own
resources. I learned how quickly I had to resort to God’s
strength—how soon my own energy, my own joyfulness, my
own high spirits were depleted. All too soon I felt physically
weak, emotionally depressed, an angry man! I learned again to
be thankful to God for his gifts to me and my family, and I
gained new insight into the angry mood of the hungry!! I felt
vicarious suffering as I prolonged the fast, tried to live into
the skin of the ghetto poor—just tried being hungry with the
poor. But I learned too in my most suffering moments, when
I turned to God and prayed for others, His strength flowed
to me and I quickly forgot my own physical feelings—and I
knew God’s strength and resources were available not only to
me but to all who asked.
These were not easy lessons, it took three weeks of false
starts for me to get with it—-three weeks of guilt and remorse,
too quickly rationalizing my sinfulness and weakness and giving
excuses—because food was there for the eating. And I was not
deprived as those who had no food within arm’s reach or a
human friend to provide. I felt again humility and my weak
humanness. I felt that sackcloth and ashes would have been
proper dress in my weakness. But the lesson was there and
the insight comes inspired by my communion with God.
As we had agreed, at the end of a year fasting was dropped

as a discipline of The Potter’s House groups. The only group
that kept it as a corporate discipline was the one that had ar-
gued against it in the second month and had wanted all the
groups to call off the whole idea. In the other mission groups
we were once again on our own. No one held us accountable
for the discipline; nor did anyone offer encouragement. Unless
we asked, we did not know whether a person was fasting.
On those few occasions when we identified ourselves and
compared notes, we found that our experience was the same in
a number of respects. The fasting discipline became extraor-
dinarily difficult to keep after it was dropped as a group disci-
pline. Even those who had had no doubts about continuing
went through a period of not being able to stay with it. Those
who gave it up light-heartedly discovered months later that it
was a discipline they wanted in their lives. A few would fast
one week and not the next, depending on how socially conveni-
ent it was. The half dozen people I knew who, at that time at
least, continued with the discipline found it necessary to inte-
grate their lives once again around the decision. ‘This time the
struggle was an interior one—all the arguments we had to over-
come were arguments in ourselves.
Whatever our private decision, we were each more aware that
there was only one important movement required of us as a
fast. Isaiah had penned it long ago:
Is not this what I require of you as a fast:

to loose the fetters of injustice
to untie the knots of the yoke,
to snap every yoke
and set free those who have been crushed?
Then, if you call, the Lord will answer;

if you cry to him, he will say, ‘Here I am.’
—Isaiah 58:6, 9, NEB
Each of the mission groups that staff The Potter’s House has
had to struggle to find its own way to be involved in the crea-
tion of a new city. No group moves easily into the next phase
of its life. Anyone who takes seriously a vision has battles to do
with opposing forces in the world, but the only battles of any
significance are those he fights within his own life. To be in
earnest about a vision is to think about strategy—how to take
what is out in the distance and bring it into the here and now
where it can be perceived by ordinary sight. Whenever a person
struggles with that question, his understanding of the cost grows
until a far more exacting question confronts him: “Am I willing
to pay that cost?” And once again another man is led by the
Spirit into the wilderness where there are dangled before him
all the satisfactions and rewards that will come to him simply
by keeping on with his life as it is. All that belongs to one level
of understanding in him makes war on the light which has
broken through from a higher level.
In the temptation story is the vivid account of that conflict
in Christ. It is a conflict between two orders—heaven and
earth—which must rage within every man, if there is to be a
new age of the Spirit. The choice he makes—how that conflict
is resolved in him—determines whether or not ministering an-
gels come, and he walks under the sign of the Cross. What is
true for the individual is true for the group.
PRAYER AND POLITICS
While other groups worked in the areas of housing, programs

for the elderly, and schools for tutoring the young, the Thurs-
day night mission began to wrestle with the problem of how to
confront and change those structures and systems in the city
that were destroying the very people they were set up to serve.
How does the church become a servant people in the area of
politics? How does it combine in its own life politics and prayer?
The mission group’s initial strategy is to form relationships
with the twenty-five members of the House District Com-
mittee, who are influential in determining policy and legisla-
tion for the voteless District of Columbia. Each member of the
Thursday night mission has also chosen two or three Congress-
men with whom he will establish a special and unique relation-
ship. He will pray for those men and try to attain some
understanding in depth of the issues before them. Eventually, it
is hoped, contacts will be made with individuals and organiza-
tions in the home constituency of the Congressmen.
Often the stand of a public representative is the opposite of
the one that we ourselves so fervently take. When this is the
situation, we must deal in prayer with our own feelings until we
can respond by caring for the person regardless of how damag-
ing to the mind and soul of a nation we appraise his course of
action to be. We have struggled with our hostile responses by
trying to live into his world, appreciating the pressures and in-
fluences that play on the life of a public figure, seeing him not
as a power symbol who is the enemy of our hope, but as a per-
son striving, however mistakenly, for what we all want and
need—love and acceptance and belonging.
When the mission group has a more informed heart and
mind, it will seek to bring into being fifty or sixty groups each
having not fewer than five persons nor more than twelve. Each
of these groups will relate to one of the significant committees
of the Senate or the House; will learn its areas of responsibility,
its agenda, and how it functions; and will take on about ten
Congressmen or Senators in the intimate way already described.

Every member of the House and Senate and every important
committee will be covered by some group. We will learn what
it means to hold our statesmen continually in prayer. When to
do so is appropriate, we will write letters, send telegrams, and
lobby in any way that might be effective. If ever we are so bold
as to believe that we have a prophetic word, which is to say a
word that can heal, we trust that our perseverance and strength
of limb will carry us to the place where it is to be spoken.
PRAYER AND CONTEMPLATION
In The Potter’s House we struggled to balance our study of

the problems of the city with our study of the teachings of the
masters of prayer. In many ways the coffee house was an ideal
laboratory for different kinds of prayer. When we were reading
Kelly’s The Gathered Meeting, the assignment was to come to
grips with the meaning of serious preparation preceding wor-
ship. The months we studied Brother Lawrence’s Practice of
the Presence of God, we endeavored in a new way to do the
work of the evening in awareness of God and by a conscious
turning to him. We might have guests waiting for their orders
to be taken, tables to clear, and questions being thrown at us,
but Brother Lawrence had assured us his situation was not much
different. ““The time of business,” he said, “does not with me
differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of
my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling
for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I
were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.””*
One of our members was appointed to walk on the half hour
among the tables lightly ringing a small bell to remind us of
our exercise of the Presence of God. I wish that I could report
that we, like Brother Lawrence, reached that state of which he
wrote: “It would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it
was at first to accustom myself to it.” Then the world could

come and have conversations with us on the practice of the
Presence of God. As it is, the world will do better to read
Brother Lawrence.
After Brother Lawrence, we went through a period of strug-
gling anew with the meaning of silence. Our special guide was
Geoffrey Hoyland, whose little pamphlet, The Use of Silence,*
we return to again and again in our journeying. For a time we
held many of our meetings in silence. Some of The Potter’s
House groups worked in quiet the whole night, speaking only
with customers. Others set aside an hour in the evening to keep
a wordless communion.
All these efforts were preparation for our reading of the
mystics—or contemplatives as I prefer to call them because the
word has a more earthy sound. In looking back it seems to me
that the time we were seriously considering the meaning of
contemplation for our lives coincided with the time when we
all unawares took a special fall from grace. Subtly, almost
stealthily, when we were absorbed in the adventure of prayer,
the lapse occurred.
We had practiced recollection and the use of silence and felt
prepared to develop the art of meditation. We had firmly in
mind the instructions of the books we had read on this subject.
When we came together for our evening meeting, we meditated
corporately for half an hour on the Scriptures we had pondered
during the week. Then we shared the Word that came alive in
us, and sometimes as we spoke the Holy Spirit came, and light
broke, and we saw what we had not seen—a whole new throb-
bing universe swung into view—and in us were little movements
toward love and freedom. We were excited about Scripture and
excited about our times together. For several weeks it seemed
as though we moved in a new realm of creativity and joy—and
then it all came to an abrupt end, as if a signal had been given
and we had obediently returned to a former state.
Shortly thereafter many of us went out and bought good
110 « SEARCH FOR SILENCE
commentaries on Matthew, the Gospel we were currently read-
ing. The unusual thing about this was that we had previously
agreed not to use commentaries, but to write our own. Soon
less and less of our time together was spent in meditation. The
insights on Scripture that we shared came from books. They
were good insights, but they were the fruits of someone else’s
meditation, and no fire burned in us, no new order of existence
came into view, no luminous moments of discovery lifted us out
of the ordinary.
Reflection on those days reveals a number of factors that
might account for our stumbling “at noonday as if it were twi-
light.”* To begin with, those who were eager to move into
serious meditation had persuaded those who were not so eager
to come along. This procedure didn’t work out. It never works
out. The contemplative way is not a way that can be traveled
to please one’s friends or to keep them company. St. John of
the Cross wrote that “God raises every soul by different paths.”
All of our experience affirms his word, but we are slow to ab-
sorb what we do not want to learn. Perhaps our own unsure-
ness makes us eager to have companions on the way, or we may
fear that our relationships with significant people in our lives
will not be as strong if they do not share experiences that are
important to us. In one sense, preparation for contemplative
prayer grows out of an awareness of one’s aloneness—a feeling
of solitude, a knowing that the treasure one is seeking will not
be found on any well-trod streets, a willingness to go in search
of it alone. Once there, one begins to recognize those who are
on the same path, or, in the words of Petru Dumitriu, those
whose souls are “‘filled with intimations of the secret.’’ Dumitriu
used the vehicle of a novel to say that we need not even be in
a hurry to pass the secret on. “The person aflame with aware-
ness and desire who is already on the edge of the secret will
know how to find us, and he will not need any lengthy exposi-
tion. A single word will be enough to enlighten him, a single
action, a gesture, a look, a smile, a silence... .’”®
Another reason for our stumbling was that we had moved too
fast and, goaded by the impatient ones, had gone on to new
lessons without having mastered old ones. Some felt they were
making no progress in their meditation and were bound to de-
rive more benefits from a commentary; others, flushed with suc-
cess and enthusiastic by nature, kept extending their private
times of meditation until something in them rebelled against
the whole idea, and they abandoned the pursuit altogether.
Still another factor playing on us was a growing understand-
ing of the implications of the way of prayer that we were fol-
lowing. It is one thing to set aside an hour each day for prayer.
It is another to begin to see that what happens in that hour is
determined by what we do in the other twenty-three hours. We
began to receive hints that prayer was a way of life, and that
the claim on “our time” was greater than we had thought. Per-
haps he had meant that each was to keep his own life a house
of prayer.
In The Cocktail Party, the psychiatrist—or guardian angel—
says to Celia:
If that is what you wish,

I can reconcile you to the human condition,
The condition to which some who have gone as far as you
Have succeeded in returning. They may remember
The vision they have had, but they cease to regret it... .7
The writer of Hebrews said the same choice was given to

those who had a vision of another land—“TIf their hearts had
been in the country they had left, they could have found op-
portunity to return” (Heb. 11:15, Nes). The tenderness, mercy,
comfort of God is in that Scripture. He does not uproot, or per-
suade, or insist, or threaten, nor does he leave us in our anxiety.
Instead he gives opportunity for us to return, to reconsider the
whole adventure and decide whether or not where we are is
where we want to be.
My reading of Scripture and the contemplatives, however,
makes me believe that this going back is possible only for begin-
ners. ‘The mystics are all careful to say that there is a place of
no safe return. Once there, we will see what we cannot forget;
we will be given knowledge that will cause us suffering if it is not
used; a change will happen in us that will be irreversible. If we
fall away then, we fall into despair. Christmas Humphreys said
it this way, “When once the inner eye is opened it can never
again be closed. As a poet wrote on reaching this experience:
“The future lies unmoulded in my hands.

A Path winds out before.
There is no backward way. Behind me stands
a closed door.’ ’*
No one issued more solemn warning than the fourteenth-cen-

tury author of The Cloud of Unknowing whose prologue to his
book on contemplation begins:
I charge and beg you, with all the strength and power that love
can bring to bear, that whoever you may be who possess this
book (perhaps you own it, or are keeping it, carrying it, or
borrowing it) you should, quite freely and of set purpose,
neither read, write, or mention it to anyone, nor allow it to be
read, written, or mentioned by anyone unless that person is in
your judgment really and wholly determined to follow Christ
perfectly. And to follow him not only in the active life, but to
the utmost height of the contemplative life that is possible for
a perfect soul in a mortal body to attain by the grace of God.®
The author of The Cloud thought it was useless to tell people

about contemplative prayer who were not ready for it. He was
convinced that his book would have no meaning for them. De-
spite the plea in its prologue, The Cloud is one of the most read
and loved of all devotional classics. Rather than the curious, into
whose hands the author was afraid the book might fall, it is
much more likely that its readers have been men and women
who dared to think that their urgings to share in the deep things
of the spirit qualified them to read on.
PRAYER AND A COFFEE HOUSE >>) 113
Despite our wavering and stumbling, despite the division

within us and the differences in understanding that we had and
still have, the mission groups of The Potter’s House began to
define themselves as people in the process of becoming contem-
platives. Our journeying with Meister Eckhart, Brother Law-
rence, E. Herman, Romano Guardini, Dag Hammarskjéld, and
others, had fanned the smoldering urgings in us and created a
hunger for God deeper than we had known before. We had
traveled in the company of the saints long enough to be aware
of the possibilities for life and freedom that come to those who
are willing to cultivate an inner solitude, which is the large task
of the contemplative way. We had approached the place of
conflict, or decision, or death. In the Old Testament whenever
a person reached a critical crossroad in his life or had an en-
counter with the Living God, he gave a name to that place, thus
securing the memory of a numinous event. I would like to name
this juncture in our lives “The Place of Death,” for it was here
we had to decide between going on or going back, and each
choice involves a dying to something.
To go on toward the light that we see is to die to the old.
This dying is a real death—a dead, dead death. When it is over,
there is no going back. To try is to walk through a ghost town
where nothing lives. Where we look for meaning, we find none.
We ourselves fall into meaninglessness, which is the message of
Scripture—‘‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks
_ back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62, Rsv).
And yet to choose to return to the old while there is still
time—before we have looked fully on the new—is to die to all
the possibilities that belong to the life which is rooted and
grounded in the Eternal—“from him who has not, even what
he has will be taken away” (Matt. 25:29, rsv). To make this
choice, however, is to be disturbed no longer by intimations that
something is out of joint with one’s life.
In either way there is a death, but in each way there is also
a peace. To have one’s total being unified around a decision
is to put an end to conflict. The man with the undivided heart

walks his path with gladness, leaving others free to find theirs.
We are most defensive and threatened when we are uncertain
about our choice. Some ridicule the “good” life because it at-
tracts them more than they want to admit; others, for the same
reason, brush aside the contemplative life as the way of a few
mystical church types whose feet are not on the ground. Some-
where in most of us is a small voice that cannot say “no”’ to the
contemplative way, and in us deep away stirs the uneasy feeling
that we are missing out on what really is important.
Any reading of the contemplatives will confirm our fears.
These travelers warn us not to begin on this inward adventure
without the strong promptings of the Spirit, but they believe
that an inner quickening of life happens as one wills to take
time to tend the small seed in one’s self which harbors the faith
that there is infinitely more than we can now see or under-
stand. That seed can die, or it can grow and shoot forth
branches. When the mystics speak of prayer, they are talking
about that which will create in us a new structure of conscious-
ness. From this there is no turning back. Prayer brings about a
fundamental change in the quality of a man’s being, so that life
is lived on an entirely different level of existence. Mysterious as
this may sound, it actually has to do with changes in very ordi-
nary aspects of living, such as increased awareness of what we
see and hear, a heightened degree of receptivity, a growing
capacity to respond—to be engaged in the moment as one who
is fully present. Because the way to the place of quiet in one’s
self has been learned, one is able to live out of that center, and
to penetrate the mystery that lies everywhere around.
In his book, The Master Game, Robert S. de Ropp cites the
myth of the king who went mad and moved to the cellar of his
palace. There he sat in the midst of rags and bones and worth-
less things, which he clung to as treasures. His ministers would
urge him to leave, reminding him of all the rooms in the palace
above crowded with real treasures, but the king was never im-
pressed by the splendors they recounted. He insisted that he

lived in those rooms. “His illusion,” declares de Ropp, “was
such that he saw the wretched cellar as a palace and the rags
and bones that he had collected as precious jewels.”*°
This same theme is found in the writings of the mystics. Like
the king’s ministers, these adventurers are striving to awaken
us to the fact that there are glorious unknown rooms in our own
individual houses, and that the key to unlocking the doors of
those rooms and coming upon the treasure to be found there
is contemplative prayer.
The mystics never report that they are traveling a spiral way
meant for the privileged few. They write extensively of their
journeying to encourage others because they feel that it is pos-
sible for any man to experience the reality of God. More than
this they declare that a deepening life of prayer is essential for
wholeness and an expanding consciousness of God and self.
They insist that contemplative prayer is a natural human ac-
tivity that requires not special gifts or powers, but rather the
training of those latent faculties that every person has, which
when developed will open new doors in every area of life.
In the mission groups of The Potter’s House the “yes” we
have said, however falteringly, to the contemplative life is what
makes sense of our covenant—a covenant which is perplexing
to so many. We have agreed with one another to set aside an
hour each day for recollection, meditative reading, prayer, and
the keeping of a journal in which we reflect on the inner and
outer events of our lives. As alien as it may sound to modern
ears, we are not ashamed to say that we are striving to be ap-
prentices in the art of contemplative prayer. Those who seek
membership in the mission groups of ‘The Potter’s House must be
eager to embrace this way. They must earnestly want to be part
of a community whose covenant will sustain and support them
by holding them accountable not only for the disciplines of the
inward journey, but also for those of the outward journey—the
disciplines which help us to see our crucified Lord in the insti-
tutions and streets and “holy places” of a nation, and enable

us to be a part of the Resurrection story in our land.
Contrary to the commonly held image of the mystics, they
were men and women of action. Meister Eckhart, true to what
is central in their teaching, says that “even if a man were in
rapture like St. Paul and knew of a man who was in need of
food he would do better by feeding him than by remaining in
ecstasy.” Out of the literature of prayer, Christmas Humphreys
passes on to us this counsel: “Unless each step in inner growth
finds corresponding expression in service to mankind the stu-
dent treads a dangerous path, and works in vain.”
In the coffee house we respond to this counsel. If we had to
choose in any given moment between prayer and joining in the
struggle of the hungry poor, we would turn from our praying.
This is why I write of prayer within a community of persons
who search to find their part in the movement for liberation by
the oppressed of the world. Also, I feel more comfortable writ-
ing about the life of prayer in a coffee house than I would
writing about it in the abstract. Too often we treat prayer as
removed from the context of our lives, an activity that ordinary
people raising families and following professions must be content
to leave to monastic orders or women’s prayer groups. That at-
titude belongs to an outmoded society. Though it is true that
few church leaders today give serious consideration to prayer
or silence, to conclude that the currents of the age are moving
against the contemplative life could well be a misreading of the
signs. We may be on the verge of an era in which there will
develop a whole new sensitivity to the realm of the Spirit.
According to Freud, when new factors are being raised into
our consciousness, the first reaction is resistance—sometimes
open denial. In all the segments of society today we find resis-
tance, manifested not only in rejection of the old, but in strong
opposition to the new which is impinging on us and threatening
the life style we have known. This makes for some of the fire in
the world today—fire that can rage out of control and destroy
us, or purify and transform. Marie-Louise von Franz says that

“the fire is really the great judge and determines the difference
between the corruptible and the incorruptible, between what is
relevant and what is irrelevant.’** Without fire nothing hap-
pens. “But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I
will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16-17, NEB).
No calm is on the scene today. No tepid waters flow within
or around us. The anguish we know and the tensions that tear
at our lives and tear at the fabric of the church and every other
existing institution have the potential of readying us for a new
epoch when there will be fresh manifestations of the Spirit. Per-
haps we shall be able to take our fire—our passion—and beat
with it upon the Cloud of Unknowing which is between us and
God. That dark cloud, say the saints, can be penetrated by
love. He who breaks through it knows unutterable joy—a new
tomorrow. |
If we believe this—believe that God can be known—that we
do not have to base our belief on someone else’s experience, then
we can have some confidence that we are ready for the work of
contemplation. The urge to this kind of prayer is fueled by the
knowledge that God can be “‘caught and held,” and that we can
know a unity and power within as well as an “at-oneness” with
the whole created order. Without some small spark of that con-
viction we lack the energy and motivation essential for the inner
work of prayer. In his introduction to The Cloud, Clifton Wol-
ters notes that, in the seventy-five short chapters of the book,
the word “grace” and its cognates are found over ninety times,
and that there are, in addition, many other references to the
providential, prevenient work of God.** Nonetheless, The Cloud
stresses, as does every other great writing on prayer, the diffi-
culty of the way. Toil, work, labor, and striving are important
words in the vocabulary of the saints and punctuate the guides
they have given to us. “Waiting upon God is not idleness,” said
St. Bernard, “but work which beats all other work to one un-
skilled in it.”’*°
|
118 «€@ SEARCH FOR SILENCE
Perhaps the hardness of the way helps us to discern that an-

other sign of a person’s readiness to embark on the work of
prayer is a certain discontent, coupled with an abandonment of
the search for answers outside his own life. It may be a part
of the law of compensation that the person with dis-ease forces
open the locked doors of his inner palace in a way the man of
placid temperament and stable emotions is rarely impelled to.
He seems equipped by his unrest for the exacting road of the
saints. He may struggle as much with the disciplines as the next
one, fail as often, but the imperative to keep trying burns deep
in him and sustains his efforts.
Another mark of the contemplative is a passionate interest in
his own liberation. If we are serious about deepening our prayer
life, we must have some understanding of what binds us—have
wrestled with the darkness within us—and then with the angel
for his blessing. No one can with safety by-pass his sufferings.
Until we have struggled to acknowledge and understand our
fears or those vague uneasy feelings, we have not done the pre-
liminary work that is essential for prayer at the level described
by the contemplatives.
If we have yet to do that work, if we do not know in our
beings any holy discontent, if there is no longing in us toward
God, we need not draw the conclusion either that we are not
meant to be contemplatives, or that we lack the temperament
or capacity for apprenticeship. A safer assumption is that we
have not yet had experiences which have awakened us and
stirred our longing. As fundamental a step as we can take in this
direction is learning to meditate on Scripture—learning first to
hear God’s word, to let it inform and take root in us. This may
be extremely difficult, for the churches have no courses on medi-
tation, despite the fact that it is an art that must be learned
from those who have mastered it, and despite the fact that the
supreme task of the church is to listen to the Word of God. No
other group has that assignment. Other groups are engaged in
various forms of mission, but only the church is committed to
hearing the Word of God and proclaiming it to our age.
For the Christian the channel which is at the heart of listen-
ing is Scripture. To take a book of the Bible, to immerse one’s
self in it and to be grasped by it, is to have one’s life literally
revolutionized. This requires study and the training of atten-
tion. The student stays with it through barren day after barren
day, until at last the meaning is clear, and transformation hap-
pens in his life.
In his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge
quotes this passage from a letter that Bonhoeffer wrote to his
brother, Karl-Friedrich:
I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true

inward clarity and sincerity by really starting work on the
Sermon on the Mount. Here alone lies the force that can blow
all this stuff and nonsense sky-high, in a fireworks display
that will leave nothing behind but one or two charred remains.
The restoration of the Church must surely depend on a new
kind of monasticism, having nothing in common with the old
but a life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the
Mount in imitation of Christ. I believe the time has come to rally
men together for this.*®
When Bonhoeffer began the seminary at Finkenwalde, out of

which community came Life Together, he included in the morn-
ing schedule of the seminarians half an hour’s silent meditation
on the Scripture which they had corporately agreed on. Bethge
reports that the assignment was perplexing to the young men,
none of whom understood it. Resentment and rebellion smol-
dered in the community. “But not at once,” wrote Bethge, “for
on the one hand the ordinands felt entitled to spend the half-
hour as they themselves saw fit, and on the other they were put
to shame by their director’s evident ability to concentrate upon
this exercise.”’7 On one occasion when Bonhoeffer had to be
away for two weeks, the exercise was abandoned altogether.
He had left the House in charge of his assistant, W. Rott, who
had understood Bonhoeffer’s conception of meditation no bet-
ter than the students, and was therefore unable to enforce the
exercise.
When Bonhoeffer returned and learned that the morning ex-
ercise had been abandoned, he set aside an evening for the stu-
dents to ventilate their feelings, but he had no intention of
submitting the matter of meditation to a majority decision. It
was understood from the beginning that the exercises were to be
continued. As time went by, few of the ordinands tried to evade
keeping the discipline and many continued the practice in those
crucial years after the seminary was dissolved. Until his arrest
Bonhoeffer remained a faithful director of souls, and in a cir-
cular letter to former students gave them weekly selections from
Scripture for meditation, sometimes with the exhortation not to
abandon the practice. These exercises were later to be of im-
measurable help not only to the young men, many of whom
were drafted into Hitler's army, but to Bonhoeffer himself. “In
1943 and 1944,” wrote Bethge, “when he was compelled to lead
a cruelly lonely existence, the exercises he had practiced at
Finkenwalde proved an invaluable solace.”**
Another preparation for the contemplative life is simply to
be in the company of contemplatives—even if it be only through
living with their writings. In actuality, however, the church can
be a community of contemplatives, if we can give a fresh im-
petus to the interpretation of that word. Its meaning may be
contained in that short Scripture, “Jesus called twelve to be
with him” (Mark 3:14, rsv). Is not the call to contemplation
simply the call to be with him?
There is a story about a man who went each day to sit in the
dark of a church. One day as he came out, a perplexed friend
inquired what he did during the long time he spent inside the
church. “I just look at Him,” he answered, “and He looks at
me.” That is the call to contemplation—a call to looking. Out
of that looking flows an amazing activity which is different from
normal activity. It is action that flows out of the Resurrection
power. With it comes a peculiar effectiveness—a strange kind
PRAYER AND. A COFFEE HOUSE >> 121
of congruence, a flowing together. Events happen and events fit
together, and are accepted and understood at another level be-
cause the action comes out of a relationship.
Clifton Wolters sums it all up in a few lines:
Contemplation is not the pleasant reaction to a celestial sunset,

nor is it the perpetual twitter of heavenly birdsong. It is not
even an emotion. It is the awareness of God, known and loved
at the core of one’s being.?®
The exercises in the following section are ones that we use in

the mission groups of The Potter’s House. We struggle with
them, rebel against them, lapse away from, and return to them.
They were adapted from exercises given by Evelyn Underhill in
her small volume entitled Practical Mysticism.*® They will not
make a contemplative of any one in a few weeks, but used in con-
junction with the readings they will help us learn to meditate
and to understand better the way of the contemplative. If the
exercises are practiced consistently over a long time, they will
intensify one’s experience of both his inner and outer world. Not
all at once, but eventually we will find doors opening that lead
us deep into the ground of our own being—that central place
of stillness where God speaks his Word and we understand for
ourselves the meaning of the divine-human birth.
The exercises are arduous because they conflict with the style
of life we have known and the demand for instant results which
our culture fosters in us. ‘They require us to do violence to other
drives and habitual ways of responding. Jesus said that the vio-
lent take the kingdom (Matt. 11:12). Revolutionary acts are
necessary to effect a real revolution in the outer order; for the
church, revolution means a change in consciousness—a whole
new way of hearing and perceiving, an unleashing of the winds
of revival, a flowing of living water.
If no doors open for you, your efforts will not have been
wasted. You will have gained a mastery over your attention that
will serve you well whatever is the way of your climbing. Others
122 ee SEARCH FOR SILENCE
are traveling toward the same goal along different paths. Each
must find the way that is uniquely his. One word of caution: if
we seek our own liberation—if the high call of God in Christ
is to be free persons—though there are different ways to move
toward that goal, not one of them is easy.
We can choose a different way. We cannot find an easy way.
All roads that lead to becoming our real selves will require
us to sell all that we have. The Kingdom is always at hand,
always available to us, but we must be totally surrendered to
the adventure. Nothing may have a place of more importance
than the search—not wife, or husband, or children, or property.
In The Potter’s House we struggle with the rules, struggle
with our own indifference, procrastination, our inclination to
leave praise of God to spring days and music festivals—struggle
with the temptations of unbelief, discouragement, upsurge of old
desires. We fall, and get up, and start out again.
We continue to struggle for our own liberation and the lib-
eration of the city around us. In that city small bands of chil-
dren roam the streets until midnight. For diversion they pound
on the doors of The Potter’s House and shove through its mail
box odd pieces of junk, part of their day’s loot. Above those
same streets the old are hidden away in bare and dirty rooms.
“The bad thing about being old,” said one aged person, “‘is that
no one ever touches you.”
From the young and old of our city we have learned that
America does not treat well her poor and helpless. ‘The poverty
of experience that we see in our ghettos is compounded in the
public institutions of our land where young and old, the men-
tally ill, the retarded, and physically handicapped clamor for
normal stimulation and human touching, and where still others
have moved beyond yearning to apathy, despair, mindless
shrieks and moans.
We believe that this can change and that we can have a part
in the coming of a new age for us all. We believe with Bon-
hoeffer that the restoration of the church depends on a new
kind of monasticism—the putting of the Sermon on the Mount

into our own lives and living out our vision of what the Sermon
means in spheres of politics, education, medicine, housing, and
all those concrete situations where we find ourselves. We want
to be in the company of those who rally men together for this.
Exercise 3
THE PRACTICE OF SILENCE
Practice for five minutes each day, preferably on arising, the

withdrawing of your attention from all outward and inward
consideration, and, by will, concentrate it within yourself. When
scattered thoughts or words intrude, with deliberation cut them
off, and push steadfastly toward the silence, or your own center.
This is called in the literature of prayer “a gathering in,” or
being present to one’s deeper self. Learn what this means.
When you are able consistently to practice the five minutes
of recollection in the morning, add another five-minute period
at night, and then finally add still another in the middle of the
day. If you will persevere with this exercise, you will learn to
walk the path to the quiet place in yourself even in the midst of
activities, or when you note that your feelings run too strong, or
when you are up against the tumultuous feelings of others. ‘Too
often our point of gravity is outside ourselves in events or other
people, or at the circumference of our lives. This is a state of
lostness. The exercise is to help us find our own center, and
then to act and speak out of that place of quiet.
Another helpful exercise in training attention, which can be
used with the above one, is to practice being present during the
day to whatever one undertakes. A way to do this is to ask for
the Holy Spirit, and to say something like, “This half-hour I
commit myself to the task of letter writing,” or “This hour I
commit myself to being present to the person who has come to
see me,” or “Until their bedtime I commit myself to playing
with my children and to listening to them.”
Distractions and demands have a way of scattering us, so
125
that it is not uncommon to be doing one thing and thinking

of another. We are not wholly present to what is at hand, and
if we live most of the hours of the day like this, the pattern will
follow us into the time of prayer. If we practice being present
to each task during the day, then we will be more able to be
present at the time of prayer and not be distracted by thoughts
that would otherwise claim our attention.
In the same way, if we can learn to quiet our thoughts at the
time of prayer, and to be, as it were, present to ourselves, such
training of our attention will enable us to be fully present to
the claims upon us in other hours. This is one of the reasons
why persons who pray will tell you that prayer saves time and
enables them to accomplish more than they would ordinarily be
able to do. More than this, prayer allows us to live in the “now-
moment,” which means that we are fully involved—seeing,
hearing and experiencing life as it is given. The content of the
moment, therefore, gives content to our lives. We are changed
by it. Meister Eckhart says that “God is a simple presence, a
stay-at-home in himself. With any creature, as regards her noble
nature, the more she sits at home the more of herself she gives
out.””*
In the beginning it will be very difficult for us to stay at home
in our innermost self. We will fly out to all kinds of thoughts—
the dishes in the sink, the unanswered mail, a neglected person,
the money we have invested—there will be no end to the
thoughts that we have. One way of settling down is to say be-
fore we ever begin, “I know many worthy things will claim my
attention, but I have reserved this time to root my life in an-
other order of Reality so that I can move into a whole new con-
sciousness and be open in a new way to the whole of life.” If
this does not help you to quiet your thoughts, then search for a
way that does. What is helpful to one person may not be helpful
to another. At first—regardless of the method you use—it will
be difficult to stay at home in yourself even during time you
have set aside for prayer. In time, however, you will find it pos-
sible to “‘center-in” even in the midst of activity.
EXERCISE 3 «¢ 127
Each day read meditatively one or two of the excerpts given
~ in the following section. They have been selected to help with
the exercises—to give encouragement and instruction. If you
find one especially helpful, read it often. But do not read in
place of practicing.
NOTES ON POSTURE
All the masters of prayer put great emphasis on posture.

Body, mind and spirit cannot be separated. The outward at-
titude of the body will determine. in part the inner attitude of
prayer. This is why the East with its emphasis on meditation
puts a corresponding emphasis on the disciplines of the body.
Our body is not unrelated to our prayer life. A man prays with
the whole of him. Prayer is concerned with unifying the con-
flicting elements within us, but essential to this unification is the
practicing of disciplines which attend to the union between
spirit and body, so that the outward form of prayer is related
to the inward form. This togetherness of all our parts is essential
to moving toward union with God—an at-oneness with life.
Msgr. Romano Guardini, in emphasizing that the proper out-
ward manner helps to nurture the inner attitude of prayer,
points out that the simple Christian act of kneeling is intended
as a “discipline of posture, not of comfort.”
The Hatha Yoga exercises described in so many paperback
editions available at newsstands can be helpful preparation for
recollection and the other exercises in prayer which follow.
A simpler means of preparing for recollection is to sit in a
straight chair, feet on the floor, hands on the knees, the back
_ straight and slightly bent forward, so that the spine comfortably
supports itself. Holding this position, one gives attention to the
sensing and relaxing of one’s whole body, beginning with the
toes and ending with the different parts of the face—eyes,
mouth, ears, eyebrows.
A recent issue of Main Currents in Modern Thought (vol.
24, no. 1) contains an article entitled “Meditation for School
Children,” in which the author, Dr. M. Lietaert Peerbolte, rec-
ommended that some form of meditation be made a part of
the educational curriculum, “even if it be only quiet self-recol-
lection.”” Dr. Peerbolte, who has been a practicing psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst in The Hague, Holland, since 1935, stressed
the importance of bodily relaxation in achieving an inner si-
lence. He suggested the following simple exercises. These take
only a few minutes and can easily be practiced during the day
as help in attaining a meditative attitude toward life—a height-
ened sense of “‘at-one-ness with daily life experiences, with one’s
work, and one’s milieu.”
1. Sit in a comfortable chair, if possible an armchair.
2. Place both feet on the ground, with arms extended along
armrests.
3. Sit easily and quietly.
4. After doing this very simple and agreeable exercise for a
few minutes, e.g., twice a day for two days, start concen-
trating on the right arm during the exercise (left-handed
people should concentrate on the left arm). Ask yourself
whether this arm is quite at rest. Generally it will be
observed that there are some muscle-tensions and contrac-
tions in the arm, even when one tries to deepen the feel-
ings of rest.
5. After practicing this exercise for a fortnight or so, twice
a day for from one to five minutes, you will observe a feel-
ing of lassitude and heaviness in the arm. This is the indi-
cator of the arm’s relaxation. During this fortnight of
exercise, however, one must avoid every willful effort to
provoke the feeling of heaviness.
The aim of these simple exercises is bodily relaxation as
preparation for the development of a relaxed mental attitude.
EXERCISE 3 >» 129
The mysterious place into which you must step if you
want to get hold of yourself does exist. Take the step and
you will know it. It is not merely a place, it is a centre of
power; it is something quite distinct from that realm of
your being which is constantly changing, fleeting, and
dissolving. It is substantial and everlasting. It is you; your
“self”, your proper being. From “there” and through it you
can still your unrest. There you can take root and be pres-
ent; from there you can gather in all that is dispersed; lift
the weight off your mind and lighten your darkness.
Prayer must begin with this collectedness. As said before,
it is not easy. How little of it we normally possess becomes
painfully clear as soon as we make the first attempt. When
we try to compose ourselves, unrest redoubles in intensity,
not unlike the manner in which at night, when we try to
sleep, cares or desires assail us with a force they do not
possess during the day. When we want to be truly “present”’
we feel how powerful are the voices trying to call us away.
As soon as we try to be unified and to obtain mastery over
ourselves, we experience the full impact and meaning of
distraction. And when we try to be awake and receptive to
the holy object, we are seized by an inertness which lowers
our spirit. All this is inevitable; we must endure it and
persevere; otherwise we shall never learn to pray.
Everything depends on this state of collectedness. No
effort to obtain it is ever wasted. And even if the whole
duration of our prayer should be applied to this end only,
the time thus used would have been well employed. For
collectedness itself is prayer. In times of distress, illness
or great exhaustion, it can be most beneficial to content
oneself with such a “prayer of collectedness.” It will calm,
fortify and help. Finally, if at first we achieve no more
than the understanding of how much we lack in inner
unity, something will have been gained, for in some way
we would have made contact with that centre which knows
no distraction.
—RoMANO GuarbDINI, Prayer in Practice,
pp. 20-21.
130 «Ke SEARCH FOR SILENCE
Words in a poem, sounds in movement, rhythm in space,
attempt to recapture personal meaning in personal time
and space from out of the sights and sounds of a deperson-
alized, dehumanized world. They are bridgeheads into alien
territory. They are acts of insurrection. Their source is from
the Silence at the center of each of us. Wherever and
whenever such a whorl! of patterned sound or space is estab-
lished in the external world, the power that it contains
generates new lines of force whose effects are felt for
centuries.
—R. D. Larne, The Politics of Experience, p. 24.
37?
But you, practical man, have lived all your days amongst
the illusions of multiplicity. . . . Ambitions and affections,
tastes and prejudices, are fighting for your attention. Your
poor, worried consciousness flies to and fro amongst them;
it has become a restless and a complicated thing. At this
very moment your thoughts are buzzing like a swarm of
bees. The reduction of this fevered complex to a unity
appears to be a task beyond all human power. Yet the
situation is not as hopeless for you as it seems. All this is
only happening upon the periphery of the mind, where it
touches and reacts to the world of appearance. At the centre
there is a stillness which even you are not able to break.
There, the rhythm of your duration is one with the rhythm
of the Universal Life. There, your essential self exists:
the permanent being which persists through and behind the
flow and change of your conscious states. You have been
snatched to that centre once or twice. Turn your con-
sciousness inward to it deliberately. Retreat to that point
whence all the various lines of your activities flow, and to
which at last they must return. Since this alone of all that
you call your “selfhood” is possessed of eternal reality, it is
surely a counsel of prudence to acquaint yourself with its
peculiarities and its powers. “Take your seat within the
heart of the thousand-petaled lotus,” cries the Eastern vi-
sionary. “Hold thou to thy Centre,” says his Christian broth-
EXERCISE 3 >> 131
er, “and all things shall be thine.” This is a practical recipe,
not a pious exhortation. The thing may sound absurd to
you, but you can do it if you will: standing back, as it
were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which
most men fritter their vital energies.
—EveLYN UNDERHILL, Practical Mysticism,
pp. 37-39.
>>>
There is only one miracle in the world, that of being

reborn from division into wholeness. And whether the
technique by which this is made possible is called psy-
chological or religious or neither, its object is to remove the
obstacles which prevent this perennial miracle from occur-
ring, moment by moment, on every level of our being.
—Huecu L’Anson Faussst, Fruits of Silence, p. 107.
29?
The first time Rabbi Mendel, the son of the zaddik of

Vorki, met Rabbi Eleazar, the grandson of the maggid of
Koznitz, the two retired to a room. They seated themselves
opposite each other and sat in silence for a whole hour.
Then they admitted the others. “Now we are ready,” said
Rabbi Mendel.
When Mendel was in Kotzk, the rabbi of that town asked

him: “Where did you learn the art of silence?’ He was
on the verge of answering the question, but he then changed
his mind, and practiced his art.
—ManrtTIn Buser, Tales of the Hasidim:
The Later Masters, p. 301.
37?
In the face of wide publicity and much misuse of psy-

chedelic drugs for the expansion of consciousness and the
realization of a mystical experience, the Christian pastor
and theologian today is given cause for thought and
prompted to ask, “What is it today that narrows the
consciousness of people to such a great degree that they
would go to such desperate means to ‘deepen and widen’
their spiritual lives?” Only passing attention is given to
this in the literature on these drugs. Primary attention is
needed. Most of the people who have received these ex-
periences have come from a “non-mystical background” of
conventional church life and have moved through the na-
ture and nurture approaches to Christian life and education
with little or no widening of their consciousness, traumatic
or dramatic self-encounter, or discovery of the inner world.
Middle class conformity to religion as the expected thing
to do has inoculated them against “being fanatical about
religion” or “reporting intimations of immortality” which
they experience.
Furthermore, the classical means of inducing deeper
religious experience are not a part of the Western Protestant
tradition. For example, fasting is largely a secular activity
motivated by the need to wear last year’s clothes com-
fortably and by vanity to retain one’s youth: we diet; we
do not fast and meditate on a rooftop someplace in com-
munion with the Holy Spirit. Neither do we have dreams
and visions of “the heaven opened and something descend-
ing, like a great sheet, let down by four corners upon the
earth.” This was the experience the Apostle Peter had
when he saw all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of
the air, and was invited to kill and eat. When he refused
he was told that God had cleansed this, and what God had
cleansed he must not make common. Nor do we have time
to stop when we have such an experience and ponder it as
did Simon Peter. Therefore, the Spirit does not speak to
us and give us guidance as it did the Apostle Peter.
—WayneE E., Oates, The Holy Spirit in Five Worlds,
pp. 20-21.
>?
Where shall the world be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
T. S. Exiot, “Ash Wednesday”
EXERCISE 3 3» 133
Another item in the price to be paid is that of sustained
effort; the Presence of God, as Thomas a Kempis well
knew, cannot be realized without practice. The cult of the
Living Silence entails hard work, perseverance, and self-
discipline. It is not easy for us to withdraw from the world
of sense and thought into the deep quiet where alone we
can accept the Divine Gift. We have to train ourselves
in the practice and endure courageously long periods of
apparent barrenness and failure. Above all we must avoid
measuring the success of our communion by the emotional
“kick” we get out of it. Communion with God is not pri-
marily a matter of emotion any more than of sense; it is
a matter of fact. Sometimes, indeed often, His touch upon
our spirit is so light that only afterwards do we realize
that He has been with us. Even if we do not realize it at
all it does not matter; we are not dependent upon feelings.
We belong to God and He belongs to us; we give ourselves
to Him and He gives Himself to us, there are no “ifs’’ or
“buts” about it.
Communion with God in the Living Silence is not a sub-
stitute for “active” prayer and meditation, rather it is their
crown. All three, and a deal of hard, clear thinking in ad-
dition, are necessary if the Christian is to achieve a bal-
anced spiritual life. But as, through long discipline, the
way into the Silence becomes easier and more habitual the
Christian finds that these other activities are constantly lead-
ing him up to the inner gateway through which he may
plunge, in an instant, into the arms of God. It becomes the
natural thing as opportunity occurs during the day to re-
treat for a few moments into the unseen world of eternity
where moments are neither few nor many. Outward noise
soon ceases to be a hindrance to the Living Silence; it is
not the clatter of a tram-car or the swaying of a crowded
bus that interferes so much as the clatter of our thoughts
and the swaying of our insatiable desires. But at the be-
ginning the way must be sought with patience and ample
time set aside for its practice.
—GEoFFREY Hoyianp, The Use of Silence,
pp. 16-18.
134 <e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
But there is no compulsion to pray: we can freely decide

to pray or to neglect prayer. When we say that prayer is
necessary, we mean necessary for the highest part of man’s
nature; and just as the highest part of man—his soul—is
often ignored, so too is prayer. For prayer is not easy. It is
not the speaking of many words, or the hypnotic spell of
the recited formula; it is the raising of the heart and mind
to God in constantly renewed acts of love. We must go for-
ward to grapple with prayer, as Jacob wrestled with the
angel. We must lift high our lamp of Faith that it may
show us what prayer is, and what are its power and dignity.
Into the darkness we must whisper our prayer: Lord, teach
us how to pray. .
The idea is sometimes entertained that we know what
prayer is, that we know how to pray, and that therefore
we have simply to put our knowledge into practice. How-
ever, like so many other ideas which we regard as ordinary
currency of knowledge—ideas about the nature of kindness,
generosity, charity, silence, understanding, and so forth—
our ideas of what prayer is and how we should pray are far
from clear. We must question those ideas and thereby come
to realize that, so far from the idea of prayer being some-
thing which leaps to us spontaneously from the front line
of obvious ideas, it is a concept which it will take us our
whole life to fathom, and a practice which our whole life
will be too short to perfect.
—Karu RAHNER, On Prayer, pp. 7-8.
399
All things have a home, the bird has a nest, the fox has a
hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul
without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul after roving,
roaming through a world pestered with aimlessness, false-
hoods, absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up
its scattered trivialized life, in which to divest itself of en-
forced pretensions and camouflage, in which to simplify
complexities, in which to call for help without being a
coward—such a home is prayer. Continuity, permanence,
EXERCISE 3 >> 135
intimacy, authenticity, earnestness are its attributes. For
the soul, home is where prayer is.
Everybody must build his own home; everybody must
guard the independence and the privacy of his prayers. It
is the source of security for the integrity of conscience, for
whatever inkling we attain of eternity.
At home I have a father who judges and cares, who has
regard for me, and when I fail and go astray, misses me.
I will never give up my home.
What is a soul without prayer? A soul runaway or a
soul evicted from its own home.
How marvellous is my home. I enter as a suppliant and
emerge as a witness; I enter as a stranger and emerge as
next of kin. I may enter spiritually shapeless, inwardly
disfigured, and emerge wholly changed. It is in moments of
prayer that my image is forged, that my striving is fashioned.
To understand the world you must love your home. It is
difficult to perceive luminosity anywhere, if there is not
light in my own home. It is in the light of prayer’s radi-
ance that I find my way even in the dark. It is prayer
that illumines. my way.
—ABRAHAM J. HEescHEL, “Hope Through Renewal
of the Self.”
27?
A hasid told the rabbi of Kotzk about his poverty and

troubles. “Don’t worry,” advised the rabbi. “Pray to God
with all your heart, and the merciful Lord will have mercy
upon you.” “But I don’t know how to pray,” said the other.
Pity surged up in the rabbi of Kotzk as he looked at him.
“Then,” he said, “you have indeed a great deal to worry
about.”
—Manrtin Buser, Tales of the Hasidim:
The Later Masters, p. 280.
3)
The man with the divided, complicated, contradictory soul

is not helpless: the core of his soul, the divine force in its
_ depths, is capable of acting upon it, changing it, binding
the conflicting forces together, amalgamating the diverging
elements—is capable of unifying it. This unification must
be accomplished before a man undertakes some unusual
work. Only with a united soul will he be able so to do it
that it becomes not patchwork but work all of a piece.
—MartIn Buser, The Way of Man, p. 23.
39?
Exercise 4
THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION
1. Continue the exercise of silence.

2. Add to your period of silent recollection a minimum of 15
minutes of meditation upon Scripture. Choose a passage of not
more than a few verses, or one event in the life of Christ, or
one parable. You may find it rewarding to meditate on the same
passage for a week. Volumes have been written on the Lord’s
Prayer—the fruits of the meditations of others—but of much
more value to you will be the fruit of your own meditation,
though it might comprise but a few short lines. The Word of
God becomes in this way a living Word addressed to you—its
meaning internalized in your own life.
Select your passage for meditation before settling in to your
silent recollection, having asked for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Do not become discouraged if, in the early weeks, the time
seems to have no meaning for you. You are practicing a difficult
art for which few of us have had training. If we remind our-
selves that meditation on Scripture is the primary way of deep-
ening our relationship with God and of learning from him what
we are to do, we find encouragement to persevere. Meditation
is not having great thoughts, but loving the words you hear and
letting them shape you.
In Old Testament days children leaving for school were given
a little scroll of Scripture to tie around their wrists to refer to
throughout the day. From your morning meditation choose a
Scripture to bind around you for the day.
NPA
137
The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in

your ears and working in you all day long, just like the
words of someone you love. And just as you do not analyze
the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are
said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in
your heart, as Mary did. That is all. That is meditation.
Do not look for new thoughts and connections in the text,
as you would if you were preaching! Do not ask “How shall
I pass this on?’ but, ‘What does it say to me?’ Then ponder
this Word long in your heart until it has gone right into you
and taken possession of you.
We begin meditation with a prayer for the Holy Spirit.

Then we ask for composure of mind for ourselves an@ for
all those whom we know to be meditating as well. Then
we turn to the text. At the end of the meditation we will
be in a position to say a prayer of thanksgiving with a full
heart.
What about the text, and how long should it be? It
has proved useful to meditate for a whole week on a text
of approximately 10 to 15 verses. It is not good to meditate
on a different text each day, as our receptiveness is not
always the same and the texts are usually far too long.
Whatever happens, do not take the text on which you are
to preach next Sunday. That belongs to sermon preparation.
It is a great help for a brotherhood to know that it is
gathered round the same text all week long.
The time for meditation is in the morning, before work
begins. Half an hour is the minimum time demanded by
a proper meditation. Obvious prerequisites are complete ex-
ternal quietness and the intention of allowing oneself to be
distracted by nothing, however important.
One activity of Christian brotherhood, unfortunately
practiced very rarely, but quite possible, is occasional medi-
tation in twos or more. There is a narrow path here between
false pious loquacity and speculative theological discussion.
Anyone who takes on the daily practice of meditation at
all seriously will soon find hirnself in considerable difficulty.
EXERCISE 4 >> 139
Meditation and prayer must be practiced long and seri-
ously. The first thing to remember is not to get impatient
with yourself. Do not cramp yourself in despair at the
wandering of your thoughts. Just sit down each day and
wait patiently. If your thoughts keep running away, do not
attempt to restrict them. It is no bother to let them run
on to their destination; then, however, take up the place
or the person to whom they have strayed into your prayers.
In this way you will find yourself back at the text, and the
minutes of such digressions will not be wasted and will not
trouble you.
There are a great many helps which each will seek for
his own special difficulties: Read the same saying again
and again, write down your thoughts, from time to time
learn the verse off by heart (in fact one will be able to
have any text that has really been meditated upon off by
heart anyway). We will also soon learn the danger of
escaping from meditation to biblical scholarship or some-
thing else. Behind all the needs and difficulties there really
lies our great need of prayer; many of us have remained
all too long without any help and instruction.
In the face of this, there is nothing for it but to begin
again, faithfully and patiently, the very first practices of
prayer and meditation. We will be helped on further by
the fact that others are also meditating, that all the time
the holy church everywhere, in heaven and on earth, is
praying together. This is a comfort in the weakness of
prayer. If at any time we really do not know what we are
to pray, and are in utter despair about it, we still know
that the Holy Spirit is taking our part with signs that can-
not be expressed.
We may never give up this daily concern with Scripture,
and must begin it straightaway, if we have not already done
so. For it is there that we have eternal life.
—Dr1etTricH BoNHOEFFER, The Way To Freedom,
pp. 59-61.
It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it

is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread
before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and
begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts. I think for
the average person the progression will be something like
this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden.
Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear.
Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illum-
inate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a
sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word,
warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend.
Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see
and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord
and All.
The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are
convinced that God is articulate in His universe. To jump
from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too
much for most people. They may admit that they should
accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try
to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe
that the words there on the page are actually for them. A |
man may say, ““These words are addressed to me,” and yet
in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim
_of a divided psychology. He tries to think of God as mute
everywhere else and vocal only in a book.
I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a
wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures
of Truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book
and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence
again forever... .
I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists
when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only
a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now
speaking. The prophets habitually said, “Thus saith the
Lord.” They meant their hearers to understand that God’s
speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past
tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain
word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken
EXERCISE 4 >» 141
continues to be spoken, as a child once born continues to
be alive, or a world once created continues to exist. And
those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die and
worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever.
—A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, pp. 80-82.
2?
The best over-all preparation for successful meditation

is a personal conviction of its importance and a staunch
determination to persevere in its practice. If one has ac-
quired. this attitude of mind, he has made a splendid prep-
aration for his meditation.
St. Teresa gives us this important admonition:
It is essential, I maintain, to begin the practice of
prayer with a firm resolution to persevere in it. (St.
Teresa, Way of Perfection, xxi.)
If one be not convinced of the necessity of meditation in
his own life, nor resolved never to omit its daily exercise,
he will soon give it up on one pretext or another. Therefore,
one should not adopt the practice of meditation with the
intention of “giving it a try”; but rather, one must under-
take the exercise with a firm belief that it is of the utmost
importance that he begin and persevere in it. Our mental
attitude towards any enterprise will determine, to a large
extent, our success in it; meditation is no exception.
The modern, twentieth-century man is completely unac-

customed to the rarefied air of the interior life, and will
certainly wander and stumble if he does not possess an
outline to follow. If one begins prayer with this methodical
procedure, he can be sure to make progress. St. Teresa
is insistent that we attack this problem with a grim deter-
mination. And one of the best evidences of good faith in the
matter is to proceed systematically to one’s conversation
with Christ.
Outline of Meditation
General purpose: to hold loving conversation with Christ.
1. Preparation:
Place oneself in the presence of Christ.
2. Selection of the material:
Read; or study a picture of Christ.
wv’ 3. Consideration:
sr Reflect upon the material. Ask oneself the questions:
_? who, what, why, for what reason?
ae 4. Conversation: (Core of Meditation)
" Converse with Our Lord about the material. Employ
the affections of love, adoration, thanksgiving, sorrow,
petition.
5. Conclusion:
Gratitude to Christ for favors received. Examination
of faults during meditation, and resolution of further
efforts in succeeding meditations.
—Prtrer-THOMAS RourBacH, O.C.D., Conversation
; be jn Nt app liz iy
with Christ, pp. 31-32, 26-27.
>>?
I will explain myself further, for these matters concern-

ing prayer are difficult, and, if no director is available,
very hard to understand. It is for this reason that, though
I should like to write more briefly, and though merely to
touch upon these matters concerning prayer would suffice
for the keen intellect.of him who commanded me to write
of them, my own stupidity prevents me from describing and
explaining in a few words a matter which it is so important
to expound thoroughly. Having gone through so much
myself, I am sorry for those who begin with books alone,
for it is extraordinary what a difference there is between
understanding a thing and knowing it by experience. Re-
turning, then to what I was saying, we begin to meditate
upon a scene of the Passion—let us say upon the binding
of the Lord to the Column. The mind sets to work to seek
out the reasons which are to be found for the great
afflictions and distress which His Majesty must have suf-
fered when He was alone there. It also meditates on the
EXERCISE 4 >» 143
many other lessons which, if it is industrious, or well stored
with earning, this mystery can teach it. This method
should be the beginning, the middle and the end of prayer
for all of us: it is a most excellent and safe road until
the Lord leads us to other methods, which are super-
natural.
I say “for all of us,’ but there will be many souls who
derive greater benefits from other meditations than from
that of the Sacred Passion. For, just as there are many
mansions in Heaven, so there are many roads to them.
Some people derive benefit from imagining themselves in
hell; others, whom it distresses to think of hell, from imagin-
ing themselves in Heaven. Others meditate upon death.
Some, who are tender-hearted, get exhausted if they keep
thinking about the Passion, but they derive great comfort
and benefit from considering the power and greatness of
God in the creatures, and the love that He showed us,
which is pictured in all things. This is an admirable pro-
cedure, provided one does not fail to meditate often upon
the Passion and the life of Christ, which are, and have
always been, the source of everything that is good.
—SainT TERESA OF Avixa, Life, p. 79.
37?
The story of Christ’s passion should be read with brood-

ing insight. We should seek the stimulus of choice devotional
books on this subject. Then at certain times—perhaps on
seven consecutive days—we should center our attention upon
the last words that He uttered. What unplumbed depth of
meaning we might discover in each phrase! A symbol of the
Cross can constantly recall our thoughts to His passion.
We should meditate long upon the great prophetic chapter,
Isaiah 53, which, whatever its original setting may have
been, was appropriated by Jesus as the spiritual picture
of His Life. Its words should get into our memories and
into our hearts. There are hymns which pulse with the
meaning of the Cross. Whatever our rule and practice of
prayer may be, there is need for a deeper apprehension of
144 «&@ SEARCH FOR SILENCE
the Cross. Let us set apart some sacred prayer period on
every Friday to center our gaze on Calvary and thus keep
it as a Day of the Cross.
It would be a deepening experience for every one of us
to lay out a course of meditation that would enable us to
pray our way into the great mysteries of Christ’s life.
Teresa said concerning her meditations:
This was my method of prayer; as I could not make
reflections with my understanding, I contrived to picture
Christ within me; and I used to find myself the better
for thinking of those mysteries of His life during which
He was most lonely . . . I did many simple things of
this kind; and in particular I used to find myself most
at home in the prayer of the Garden, whither I went
in His company. I wished, if it had been possible, to
wipe away that painful sweat from His face... . I
believe my soul gained very much in this way, because
I began to practice prayer without knowing what it was.
(Life, 1X. 4; cf. TV. 10.)
To picture vividly and appreciate vitally the experiences

of The Upper Room, the Garden, the Trial, and the Cross
surely would draw us nearer to an understanding of His
passion.
—Lynn JAMES RapcurFFrE, Making Prayer Real,
pp. 213-214.
3?
But, the choice made, it must be held and defended

during the time of meditation against all invasions from
without, however insidious their encroachments, however
“spiritual” their disguise. It must be brooded upon, gazed
at, seized again and again, as distractions seem to snatch
it from your grasp. A restless boredom, a dreary conviction
of your own incapacity, will presently attack you. This, too,
must be resisted at swordpoint. The first quarter of an
hour thus spent in attempted meditation will be, indeed,
a time of warfare; which should at least convince you how
EXERCISE 4 3 145
unruly, how ill-educated is your attention, how miserably
ineffective your will, how far away you are from the
captaincy of your own soul.
—Eve_yn UNDERHILL, Practical Mysticism,
pp. 51-52.
37?
This device is as a rule the practice of meditation, in

which the state of Recollection usually begins: that is to
say, the deliberate consideration of and dwelling upon
some one aspect of Reality—an aspect most usually chosen
from amongst the religious beliefs of the self. Thus Hindu
mystics will brood upon a sacred word, whilst Christian
contemplatives set before their minds one of the names or
attributes of God, a fragment of Scripture, an incident of
the life of Christ; and allow—indeed encourage—this con-:
sideration, and the ideas and feelings which flow from it, to
occupy the whole mental field. This powerful suggestion,
kept before the consciousness by an act of will, overpowers
the stream of small suggestions which the outer world pours
incessantly upon the mind. The self, concentrated upon this
image or idea, dwelling on it more than thinking about it
—as one may gaze upon a picture that one loves—falls
gradually and insensibly into the condition of reverie; and,
protected by this holy day-dream from the more distract-
ing dream of life, sinks into itself, and becomes in the
language of asceticism ‘recollected’ or gathered together.
—EveLyn UNDERHILL, Mysticism, p. 314.
>
The masters of the spiritual life advise that we should,
when contemplating, make use of our imagination. For
example, we should visualize an incident such as the miracle
of the draught of fishes as vividly as we can. We should
be present in mind as though we had just stopped on our
way and were witnessing the event. This is most useful
because it brings the event to life and makes it part of our
inner experience. Of course, not everybody is able to do

that. Many people completely lack the power of imagina-
tion and might not even be able to visualize the scene. Oth-
ers lack the power to hold it, so that it quickly dissolves.
They should not force themselves, but should rely more
on thinking without visualization.
Thinking is also important for the person with a vivid
imagination. The term “contemplate” means to reflect on
and carefully work through a subject. This is what we
should do with the chosen text. In this manner should we
endeavor to acquaint ourselves with it and to penetrate
into its deeper meaning.
However—we have mentioned this before—we should
not approach this text as though it were a scientific problem,
with our intellect only: our heart must take part in it.
Thinking must change into pondering, reflecting, entering
and contacting; thinking must go beyond thinking, for the
truth which we are trying to apprehend is wisdom which
we might define as knowledge of the heart and instructed-
ness of the whole of our being.
—RomMaANno GuarpInNl, Prayer in Practice,
pp. 102-103.
KS
Another simple way of meditation is to take a Psalm: try

to think out the situation from which the psalmist wrote;
you can be as simple and natural about this as possible;
you will find how very “modern” are the situations from
which these great prayers or hymns sprang. Apply what you
find to your own life and its present circumstances. Then
turn the Psalm into a prayer, repeating it slowly and
thoughtfully.
Whatever method of meditation is chosen there are three
special considerations to bear in mind:
(a) Always begin with prayer; remember the Presence
of God, and ask for the guidance and teaching of
the Holy Spirit.
EXERCISE 4 >>> 147
(b) If your thoughts wander, bring them back gently to
God. Do not get discouraged by difficulties.
(c) Always end a meditation with a short prayer and a
practical resolution; the latter should be something
possible to do on that actual day.
—O.u ive Wyon, The School of Prayer, p. 81.
Ld
. . represent to your imagination the whole of the mystery

on which you desire to meditate as if it really passed in
your presence. For example, if you wish to meditate on
our Lord on the Cross, imagine that you are on Mount
Calvary, and that you there behold and hear all that was
done or said on the day of the Passion. Or, if you prefer
it, for it is all one, imagine that in the very place where
you are they are crucifying our Lord in the manner de-
scribed by the holy evangelists. I say the same thing when
you meditate on death, as I have noted in the meditation
upon it, and so also on hell, or on any like mystery in
which visible and sensible objects form a part of the subject.
As to other mysteries, such as relate to the greatness of
God, the excellency of the virtues, or the end for which
we were created, which are invisible things, there is no
question of using this kind of imagination. It is true that
we may use some similitude or comparison to assist us in
the consideration of these subjects, but this is attended
with some difficulty. My intention is to instruct you in so
plain and easy a manner that your mind may not be
burdened too much with making such devices.
By means of the imagination we confine our mind within
the mystery on which we meditate, that it may not ramble
to and fro, just as we shut up a bird in a cage or tie a
hawk by his leash so that he may rest on the hand. Some
may perhaps tell you that it is better to use the simple
thought of faith and to conceive the subject in a manner
entirely mental and spiritual in the representation of the
mysteries, or else to imagine that the things take place
148 «&e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
in your own soul. This method is too subtle for beginners.

Therefore, until God raises you higher, Philothea, I advise
you to remain in the low valley which I have shown you.
. . . Do like the bees, who never quit a flower so long as

they can extract any honey from it. If, after a little hesita-
tion and trial, you do not succeed with one consideration
according to your wishes, proceed to another. But go calm-
ly and tranquilly in this matter without hurrying yourself.
—StT. FRANCIS DE SALES, Introduction to the Devout
Life, pp. 83-84.
39
I did not send these prophets, yet they went in haste;

I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
If they have stood in my council,
let them proclaim my words to my people
and turn them from their evil course and their evil doings.
—Jeremiah 23: 21-22, NEB.
>
Many people are prepared to have faith in the sense of

scientifically indefensible belief in an untested hypothesis.
Few have trust enough to test it. Many people make-believe
what they experience. Few are made to believe by their
experience. Paul of Tarsus was picked up by the scruff of
the neck, thrown to the ground and blinded for three days.
This direct experience was self-validating.
We live in a secular world. To adapt to this world the
child abdicates its ecstasy. (“L’enfant abdique son extase”:
Mallarmé.) Having lost our experience of the spirit, we
are expected to have faith. But this faith comes to be a
belief in a reality which is not evident. There is a prophecy
in Amos that a time will come when there will be a famine
in the land, “not a famine for bread, nor a thirst for water,
EXERCISE 4 >>> 149
but of hearing the words of the Lord.” That time has now
come to pass. It is the present age.
—R. D. Laine, The Politics of Experience,
pp. 100-101.
Happy is the man

who does not take the wicked for his guide
nor walk the road that sinners tread
nor take his seat among the scornful;
the law of the Lord is his delight,
the law his meditation night and day.
He is like a tree
planted beside a watercourse,
which yields its fruit in season
and its leaf never withers:
in all that he does he prospers.
—Psalm 1:1-3, NEB.
Exercise 50
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER AND THE CREATED ORDER
1. Practice your exercise of silent recollection.

2. Meditate on Scripture for not less than 15 minutes each
day. If you are tempted to shorten the time, lengthen it, even
if only by one minute. Remember that in the beginning these
exercises are toil.
3. Choose something in the created order and for 10 minutes
each day practice the outpouring of yourself toward it. It does
not matter what you choose—a cup of water, a slice of bread,
a leaf, a tree, a building, a piece of machinery. Then, using your
will, energy and powers of concentration defend the object
chosen against all other claims for your attention. Employ your
senses—sight, hearing, touch, and smell.
This may seem like an odd assignment, but to become a
contemplative person one must know how to look. Although in
this sense, everyone has had the contemplative experience at
some time in his life, for the person whose powers of attention
have been sharpened in a given area the experience is probably
better known. The artist seeing a segment of his world with
heightened perception is in those moments a contemplative
person. His painting is not only what he has seen, but what he
has experienced, and thus, when we really look at his work,
our own experience is widened. The fact is, however, that we
seldom look intently. Even visitors to art galleries seem to have
nothing in themselves which equips them to see. They just
walk through. ‘““They don’t see what is in front of them—if it
doesn’t grab them, they go away,” says Mrs. Ruth Bowman, a
151
152 &@ SEARCH FOR SILENCE
lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “People

who come to museums don’t really enjoy anything,” says John
Walker, former director of the National Art Gallery in Washing-
ton. “They don’t look at works of art long enough.” The child
whose gaze has fastened in awe upon an insect and the scientist
who looks through a microscope with his whole being are what.
we mean by contemplatives. We find a few in every area of
activity.
WEA
EXERCISE 5 >» 153
To elude nature, to refuse her friendship, and attempt to
leap the river of life in the hope of finding God on the
other side, is the common error of a perverted mysticality.
It is as fatal in result as the opposite error of deliberately
arrested development, which, being attuned to the wonder-
ful rhythms of natural life, is content with this increase of
sensibility; and, becoming a “nature-mystic,”’ asks no more.
So you are to begin with that first form of contemplation
which the old mystics sometimes called the “discovery of
God in His creatures.”
Begin therefore at once. Gather yourself up, as the exer-

cises of recollection have taught you to do. Then—with
attention no longer frittered amongst the petty accidents
and interests of your personal life, but poised, tense, ready
for the work you shall demand of it—stretch out by a
distinct act of loving will towards one of the myriad mani-
festations of life that surround you: and which, in an
ordinary way, you hardly notice unless you happen to need
them. Pour yourself out towards it, do not draw its image
towards you. Deliberate—more, impassioned—attentiveness,
an attentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of
yourself, as separate from and attending to the thing seen;
this is the condition of success. As to the object of contem-
plation, it matters little. From Alp to insect, anything will
do, provided that your attitude be right: for all things in
this world towards which you are stretching out are linked
together, and one truly apprehended will be the gateway
to the rest.
Such a simple exercise, if entered upon with singleness

of heart, will soon repay you. By this quiet yet tense act of
communion, this loving gaze, you will presently discover a
relationship—far more intimate than anything you imagined
—hbetween yourseif and the surrounding “objects of sense” ;
and in those objects of sense a profound significance, a per-
sonal quality, and actual power of response, which you
might in cooler moments think absurd.
Further, you will observe that this act, and the attitude
which is proper to it, differs in a very important way even
from that special attentiveness which characterized the stage
of meditation, and which seems at first sight to resemble it
in many respects. Then, it was an idea or image from
amongst the common stock—one of those conceptual labels
with which the human paste-brush has decorated the sur-
face of the universe—which you were encouraged to hold
before your mind. Now, turning away from the label, you
shall surrender yourself to the direct message poured out
towards you by the thing. Then, you considered: now, you
are to absorb. This experience will be, in the very highest
sense, the experience of sensation without thought. . . .
—EveLyn UNDERHILL, Practical Mysticism,
pp. 90-91, 93-94, 95, 98-99.
ad
A real artist is a creator and not a copyist. He has visited

God’s workshop and has learned the secrets of creation—
creating something out of nothing.
With such a painter every stroke of his brush is the work
of creation, and it cannot be retraced because it never
permits a repetition. God cannot cancel his fiat; it is final,
irrevocable, it is an ultimatum. The painter cannot repro-
duce his own work. When even a single stroke of his brush
is absolute, how can the whole structure or composition be
reproduced, since this is the synthesis of all his strokes,
every one of which has been directed towards the whole?
In the same way every minute of human life as long as it
is an expression of its inner self is original, divine, creative,
and cannot be retrieved. Each individual life thus is a
great work of art. Whether or not one makes it a fine
inimitable masterpiece depends upon one’s consciousness
of the working of Sdnyatd within oneself.
EXERCISE 5 s3 155
How does the painter get into the spirit of the plant, for
instance, if he wants to paint a hibiscus as Mokkei (Mu-
chi) of the thirteenth century did in his famous picture,
which is now preserved as a national treasure at Daitokuji
temple in Kyoto? The secret is to become the plant itself.
But how can a human being turn himself into a plant?
Inasmuch as he aspires to paint a plant or an animal, there
must be in him something which corresponds to it in one
way or another. If so, he ought to be able to become the
object he desires to paint.
The discipline consists in studying the plant inwardly with
his mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centered
contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the
“Emptiness” or Suchness, whereby one who stands against
the object ceases to be the one outside that object but
transforms himself into the object itself. This identification
enables the painter to feel the pulsation of one and the
same life animating both him and the object. This is what
is meant when it is said that the subject is lost in the object,
and that when the painter begins his work it is not he but
the object itself that is working and it is then that his
brush, as well as his arm and his fingers, become obedient
servants to the spirit of the objects. The object makes its
own picture. The spirit sees itself as reflected in itself.
This is also a case of self-identity.
It is said that Henri Matisse looked at an object which
he intended to paint for weeks, even for months, until its
spirit began to move him, to urge him, even to threaten him,
to give it an expression.
—D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist,
pp. 34-35.
37?
I have had the experience of living in a false world. One

day I. was deeply depressed by the severe criticisms a col-
league had received—a person who was living his life in
an honest and truthful sense, attempting to express his
unique interests in his work. I felt especially saddened when
156 «ee SEARCH FOR SILENCE
I realized how he had suffered, when all he wanted to do

was maintain a personal and creative identity, a genuine
existence and relatedness. I felt especially sensitive to pre-
tense and surface behavior, as though nothing were real.
A numbness settled in, right at the center of my thought
and feeling. That night even the children were unable to
shake my grief and sadness. In their own spontaneous, un-
knowing ways, they tugged and pulled at me to draw me
into life but for me there remained only suffering in the
world.
After the children had gone to bed, I decided to go for a
walk. The night was dark, filled with black clouds. Large
white flakes of snow fell on and around me. The night
was silent and serene. Suddenly, without understanding in
any way, I experienced a transcendental beauty in the
white darkness. It was difficult to walk on the glazed sur-
face but as I walked I felt drawn to the black, inky streaks
embedded in the ice. Dark, wavy lines, partly covered by
snow, spread out in grotesque forms. I knelt down, touch-
ing the black, irregular patterns. Immediately I felt a chill
but at the same time the ice began melting as my fingers
touched it.
My inward heaviness lifted, and I was restored to a new
capacity for exertion and endurance. I realized how, out
of broken roots and fibers, in a genuine encounter with
natural resources, it is possible to discover a new level
of individual identity and to develop new strength and con-
viction. I realized how the self can be shattered in surface
and false meetings when surrounded by intensive pressures
to conform, and how in communion with nature the self
can reach a new dimension of optimism and a new recog-
nition of the creative way of life. Possibilities for unique
and unusual meetings exist everywhere. We need only
reach out in natural covering to come face to face with
creation.
—C.ark Moustakas, Creativity and Conformity,
pp. 41-42.
EXERCISE 5 >» 157
Monsieur Tabourel’s teaching was far from exciting. It was
during one of his lessons that a privet hawk-moth chose
the time for coming out of its chrysalis. I had reared the
caterpillar and was keeping the chrysalis carefully in a
small narrow uncovered box, in which it lay, looking like a
mummy in its sarcophagus. I used to examine it every day,
but never perceived the smallest change, and I should per-
haps have despaired if it had not been for the little con-
vulsive movements this semblance of a creature made when
I tickled its abdomen with the nib of my pen. It was really
alive then! Now on that day, as Monsieur Tabourel was
correcting my sums, my eyes fell on the box. O Proteus!
What did I see? Wings! Great green and pink wings begin-
ning to stir and quiver!
Overwhelmed with admiration, with joy, dancing with
enthusiasm, I could not help seizing, for want of a better
divinity, old Tabourel’s fat paw.
“Oh, Monsieur Tabourel! Look! Oh, if I had only
known...”
I stopped short just in time, for what I had been mean-
ing to say was: “If I had only known that while you were
explaining those deadly sums, one of the mysteries of life,
so great a one, so long expected, was going on at my very
elbow! ...” A resurrection like Lazarus’s! A metamorphosis,
a miracle I had never yet beheld...
Monsieur Tabourel was a man of education; calmly, but
with a shade of astonishment or blame or something dis-
approving in his voice:
“What!” said he; “didn’t you know that a chrysalis is the
envelope of a butterfly? Every butterfly you see has come
out of a chrysalis. It’s perfectly natural.”
At that I dropped Monsieur Tabourel’s hand. Yes indeed,
I knew my natural history as well, perhaps better than
he... . . But because it was natural, could he not see that
it was marvellous? Poor creature! From that day, I took
a dislike to him and a loathing to his lessons.
—ANpbRE GuwE, If Jt Die, p. 83.
158 «&e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
To the silent awareness, the skinny cat is all cat, the very
essence of cat. Its sneaky feline motions are all of a piece,
speaking directly to the consciousness in soundless tones of
all that cat means, of cat in past, present, future. The
eternal cat.
And even buildings...
They have less to say than cats but they communicate.
They almost turn themselves inside out in their eagerness
to share their secrets. They tell of the men that made them,
the beings that dwell in them; indeed, they portray a whole
history of architecture but again without words, without
discourse, all in an instant, for time itself, in this silent
world, attains a new dimension—the eternal Now—in which
millennia can be experienced as instants.
—Robsert S. pE Ropp, The Master Game, p. 72.
KS
A pair of wings, a different mode of breathing, which

would enable us to traverse infinite space, would in no way
help us, for, if we visited Mars or Venus keeping the same
senses, they would clothe in the same aspect as the things
of the earth everything that we should be capable of seeing.
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of
Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to
possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes
of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred
universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.
—MarceEt Proust, Remembrance of Things Past,
p. 559.
KS
But each for the joy of the working,

And each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It
For the God of Things as They are!
—RupyarpD KIPLING,
‘When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted.”
EXERCISE 5 > 159
Odysseus’ great dog Argos, abused and cast out on a dung
heap, wagged his tail and was the first to recognize his old
master after nineteen years of absence. In a like way Dar-
win’s favorite dog recognized him after his five-year absence
on the Beagle.
It is not necessary to cavil over the great age of Odysseus’
dog. The surprising thing about the story’s descent through
the millennia is that it comes from a fierce and violent
era, yet it bespeaks some recognized bond between man and
beast. The tie runs beyond the cities into some remote
glade in a far forest where man willingly accepted the
help of his animal kin. Though men in the mass forget the
origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city
apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful
discomfort.
The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and

Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need
for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature’s cry
to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: “Do not forget
your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang.
To do so is to invite disaster.”
. .. Plotinus wrote of the soul’s journey, “It shall come, not

to another, but to itself.” It is possible to add that for the
soul to come to its true self it needs the help and recog-
nition of the dog Argos. It craves that empathy clinging
between man and beast, that nagging shadow of remem-
brance which, try as we may to deny it, asserts our unity
with life and does more. Paradoxically, it establishes, in the
end, our own humanity. One does not meet oneself until
one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
—Loren EIsetey, The Unexpected Universe,
pp:'29; 24.
3
Yet toward what do most of our citizens work? What

160 «e SEARCH FOR SILENCE
beacons do they follow? One has only to ask the question

“What is provided for us?” to realize that our advanced
nations are made up of pleasure-seekers. Manufactures and
services are designed for our pleasure, and advertising is
designed to remind us continually of the pleasures we are
(rightly) thought to desire. Our habitual response to this
constant pressure is to work with extreme diligence to
achieve the financial success required to buy these “goods.”
So far there seems to be no problem: I have described
a commercial system which thoroughly “satisfies” the cus-
tomer. In point of fact, however, the customer is not satis-
fied. After radio he must have television, inevitably to be
followed by color. After Michigan wine, he must have Cali-
fornian, and then French; after Chevrolet and Dodge, then
Cadillac. Still, these things do not well satisfy, for the
simple reason that they are not crucial needs. Since many
things are too easily achieved, there is no great relaxation
of tension when they are obtained. The pleasure gained is
only shallow and brief, and the flood of advertising soon
convinces us of new needs to replace the old.
Due to the awareness of striving to be happy, to have a
pleasure which we have not achieved, we quickly notice its
early disappearance. For. the first few times the pain is
simple, but later on it becomes far deeper and more com-
plex: at first frustrated, then resentful, to become, perhaps,
even anxious or neurotic. Why, for instance, do the richest
countries in the world have the highest rates of mental
disease? The answer is clear: under the scream of adver-
tising there is a steady whine of frustration: “I’m not
happy; make me happy!” Yet even when this can be done,
happiness is not success. Happiness is only a sign of success,
and without a preceding obstacle or need which has been
overcome in struggle, it is hollow indeed.
And yet the avoidance of discomfort seems so natural and
beneficial to us that it would sound foolish indeed to ad-
vise otherwise. What direction should we take, then? What
goal shall we seek?
—RicHarp O. Wuipep.e, “The View from Zorna.”
EXERCISE 5 >> 161
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours.
—WILLIAM WorpswortH, “The World Is Too
Much With Us.”
7?
For a long time I stood close to the brink, clinging to a

stunted Fraser fir. Hardly a dozen feet high, it had been
twisted and distorted by the wind. All its branches streamed
in one direction, back from the edge of the escarpment.
Like some green Winged Victory it clung there, bearing
the brunt of the storm. I could feel the tremors running
down its toughened wood as the great gusts struck. This
was an old story for it. Its world was a harsher, windier
world than that of the lowland trees. It was blighted, but
still alive; it had endured, altered but unbroken by ad-
versity. I have often thought of that steadfast tree. A
fragment of one of its twigs lies before me as I write. On
that day with fog streaming past us, with the wind howling
over us, feeling the tremors run through the fibers of its
trunk and down my arm, facing the gale as it had faced
so many gales, I felt an overpowering oneness with this
storm-racked tree. And never have I felt myself in better
or more noble company.
—Epwin Way TEALE, North with the Spring, p. 205.
979
But, you see, you are not educated to be alone. Do you

ever go out for a walk by yourself? It is very important to
go out alone, to sit under a tree—not with a book, not with
a companion, but by yourself—and observe the falling of a
leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fisherman’s song,
watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as
they chase each other across the space of your mind. If
you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you
will discover extraordinary riches which no government
can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can
never be destroyed.
—J. Krisunamurti, Think on These Things, p. 89.
There is an intimate link between creativity and con-

templation, although the current tendency is to oppose
them. Contemplation must not be understood as a state of
sheer passivity or receptiveness: it comprises a distinctly
active and creative element. Thus the aesthetic contempla-
tion of natural beauty is more than a state: it is an act, a
breaking through to another world. Beauty is indeed that
other world revealing itself in our own. And in contemplat-
ing beauty man goes out to meet its call. A poet who is
possessed by his vision of beauty is not engaged in passive
observation but in an activity whereby he creates for him-
self and re-creates in his imagination the image of beauty.
Contemplation does, admittedly, preclude the experience of
struggle, conflict and opposition. But it supplies that back-
ground against which struggle, conflict and opposition ac-
quire significance. Man ought to be able from time to time
to fall back on contemplation in order to obtain relief from
the activism of existence which, as we know too well today,
can tear him to pieces.
—Nicouas BEerpyaEv, Dream and Reality,
pp. 215-216.
9?
After the maggid’s death, his disciples came together and

talked about the things he had done. When it was Rabbi
Schneur Zalman’s turn, he asked them: “Do you know why
our master went to the pond every day at dawn and stayed
there for a little while before coming home again?” They
did not know why. Rabbi Zalman continued: “He was
learning the song with which the frogs praise God. It takes
a very long time to learn that song.”
—Martin Buser, Tales of the Hasidim:
The Early Masters, p. 111.
EXERCISE 5 >> 163
Before you mountains and hills shall break into cries of joy,
and all the trees of the wild shall clap their hands. . . .
—Isaiah 55:12, NEB.
37?
I saw, had many times seen, both mentally and in the seams
of exposed strata, the long backward stretch of time whose
recovery is one of the great feats of modern science. I saw
the drifting cells of the early seas from which all life,
including our own, has arisen. The salt of those ancient seas
is in our blood, its lime is in our bones. Every time we walk
along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we
find ourselves shedding shoes and garments, or scavenging
among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick
refugees of a long war.
We are too content with our sensory extensions, with the

fulfillment of that ice age mind that began its journey
amidst the cold of vast tundras and that pauses only briefly
before its leap into space. It is no longer enough to see as
a man sees—even to the ends of the universe. It is not
enough to hold nuclear energy in one’s hand like a spear,
as a man would hold it, or to see the lightning, or times
past, or time to come, as a man would see it. If we con-
tinue to do this, the great brain—the human brain—will
be only a new version of the old trap, and nature is full
of traps for the beast that cannot learn.
It is not sufficient any longer to listen at the end of a
wire to the rustlings of galaxies; it is not enough even to
examine the great coil of DNA in which is coded the very
alphabet of life. These are our extended perceptions. But
beyond lies the great darkness of the ultimate Dreamer, who
dreamed the light and the galaxies. Before act was, or sub-
stance existed, imagination grew in the dark. Man partakes
of that ultimate wonder and creativeness. As we turn from
the galaxies to the swarming cells of our own being, which
toil for something, some entity beyond their grasp, let us
164 «<& SEARCH FOR SILENCE
remember man, the self-fabricator who came across an ice
age to look into the mirrors and the magic of science. Surely
he did not come to see himself or his wild visage only. He
came because he is at heart a listener and a searcher for
some transcendent realm beyond himself. This he has wor-
shipped by many names, even in the dismal caves of his
beginning. Man, the self-fabricator, is so by reason of gifts
he had no part in devising—and so he searches as the single
living cell in the beginning must have sought the ghostly
creature it was to serve.
—LoreN Ersevey, The Unexpected Universe,
pp. 51, 54-55.
Exercise 6
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER AND THE INDWELLING GOD
1. Continue the exercise of silence.

2. Meditate on Scripture for 15 minutes.
3. Practice contemplation for a minimum of 15 minutes: take
the attention which you have directed toward a truer apprehen-
sion of something in the created order, and turn it toward the
Silence deep within you. Do not use words, or pictures, or your
senses, but only your “naked intent unto God.”
The writings that follow will give you incentive and help.
You will have to overcome strong resistances in your effort to
put everything else out of your mind and concentrate your at-
tention on God and him only. One of the intruding questions
that will cross your mind is, “Have I put in the required time?”
—so eager will you be to finish with the exercise. That question
is an indication that you have not reached your silent Self,
because when you are there you will be taken hold of and find
it hard to leave. In time you will not have to struggle to reach
that place where you look at him and he looks at you.
Remember that the following selections are like small sectors
of large maps. If you have others that are more helpful to you,
by all means use them. If you have not already done so, I would
recommend that at some time you read the whole of The Cloud
of Unknowing in a modern translation, provided, of course, that
you heed the author’s plea in his prologue. Another compre-
hensive and important volume is Evelyn Underhill’s large work
entitled Mysticism. But do not read as a substitute for practic-
ing the exercise. Read when you are in need of something that
will pull your heart into prayer.
NASI
165
Now, in the second stage, the disciplined and recollected

attention seems to take an opposite course. It is directed
towards a plane of existence with which your bodily senses
have no attachments: which is not merely misrepresented
by your ordinary concepts, but cannot be represented by
them at all. It must therefore sink inwards towards its
own centre, “away from all that can be thought or felt,”
as the mystics say, “away from every image, every notion,
every thing,’ towards that strange condition of obscurity
which St. John of the Cross calls the “Night of Sense.” Do
this steadily, checking each vagrant instinct, each insistent
thought, however “spiritual” it may seem; pressing ever
more deeply inwards toward that ground, that simple and
undifferentiated Being from which your diverse faculties
emerge. Presently you will find yourself, emptied and freed,
in a place stripped bare of all the machinery of thought;
and achieve the condition of simplicity which those same
specialists call nakedness of spirit or “Wayless Love,” and
which they declare to be above all human images and
ideas—a state of consciousness in which “all the workings
of the reason fail.”” Then you will observe that you have
entered into an intense and vivid silence: a silence which
exists in itself, through and in spite of the ceaseless noises
of your normal world.
—EvELYN UNDERHILL, Practical Mysticism,
pp. 119-120.
37?
“Be still, and know that I am God... .”

—Psalm 46:10, rsv.
... Jung writes: ...

“When the libido is withdrawn from the outer object and
sinks into the unconscious, the ‘soul is born in God.’”’ Here
is an interesting combination of psychological and religious
language. Has analytical psychology something to say to us
EXERCISE 6 >» 167
regarding such an elemental aspect of religion as this? The
soul is our meeting place with God. And the soul is born
in God when we become aware that our psyche is insepa-
rable from God whose image is its center. So when we with-
draw from the world—introvert, in other words—the libido
that once flowed from us, outward, to the world and things
now flows inward and activates the soul. God responds to
this inner activation by drawing near and ultimately being
born in us, that is, his presence is consciously recognized
and acknowledged.
Here, in a capsule, is the psychology of religious ex-
perience. It no longer need be seen as a haphazard matter;
it follows quite definite laws of our psychic nature. Here
then is the meaning of religious retreats, of silence, of
monastic withdrawal. They are the means by which, through
a turning away from externals, the interior life is activated.
This is the treasure hid in a field, the pearl of great price.
. . . These are symbolic expressions for something that is
hidden deep within us. They are not make-believe; they
belong to the equipment of our souls, and require only an
earnest, inward quest on our part for us to find them.
But to do so requires the recognition that our soul, our
“inwardness” is such that God can indwell, and that even
the squalor of the manger of our instincts and passions he
can organize and use for his glory. In his holiness he does
not abhor the lowliness of our instinctual life. It is because
we tend to think of God as so high above us that he is
altogether removed from these aspects of our living—too
holy to look upon them other than as sin—that we have
lost the sense of his nearness and intimacy. This is why
both Jung and Eckhart stress the importance of having
God in us, as contrasted to our simply being in God. “That
God is in the soul is an higher estate than that the soul is
in God,” writes Eckhart. “When the soul is in God, it is
not blessed therein, but blessed indeed is the soul which God
inhabits. Of this be ye certain: God is Himself blessed in
the soul.” The difference is the difference between the Old
Testament and the New. The Old Testament men and
women were, for the most part, aware of God, overawed

by his power and majesty, but there was no blessing in it
compared with the blessing that comes when God is in-
carnate, i.e., born in man—first, in Christ; and then, be-
cause there, potentially at least, in the soul of every man.
God wants to be known by man, he is not happy in this
state of being an unknown power, moving us from without,
we know not how or why. He wants to become known in
us, and to become so he must be born in us, that is, he must
be in us in such a way that we become aware of him in us.
This is the meaning of the transition from Job to Jesus
Christ, and that further incarnation in ordinary life of
which Jung writes in Answer to Job.
—Cnar es B. Hanna, The Face of the Deep,
pp. 144-146.
>?
Why do we pray or why do we fast or do our work withal,

I say, so that God may be born in our souls. What were
the scriptures written for and why did God create the
world and the angelic nature? Simply that God might be
born in the soul.
The birth is not over till thy heart is free from care.
Verily I say, the soul will bring forth Person if God laughs
into her and she laughs back to him.
—MeEIsTER Eckuart, Meister Eckhart,
pp. 80, 34, 59.
37?
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from

whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that
according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to
be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner
EXERCISE 6 >> 169
man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may
have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to know
the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may
be filled with all the fullness of God.
—Ephesians 3:14-19, rsv.
>)
“T am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away,
and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may
bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word
which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As
the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in
the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am
the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and
I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from
me you can do nothing.”
—John 15:1-5, rsv.
>»?
So be very careful how you spend time. There is nothing

more precious. In the twinkling of an eye heaven may be
won or lost. God shows that time is precious, for he never
gives two moments of time side by side, but always in
succession.
But now you will ask me, “How am I to think of God

himself, and what is he?” and I cannot answer you except
to say “T do not know!” For with this question you have
brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of
unknowing where I want you to be! For though we through
the grace of God can know fully about all other matters,
and think about them—yes, even the very works of God
himself—yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I
will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose
for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? Because
he may well be loved, but not thought. By love he can
be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore,
though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about
God’s kindness and worth, and though it may be enlight-
ening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work
now before us it must be put down and covered with a
cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely
and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to
penetrate that darkness above you. Strike that thick cloud
of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on
no account whatever think of giving up.
So when you feel by the grace of God that he is calling

you to this work, and you intend to respond, lift your
heart to God with humble love. And really mean God
himself who created you, and bought you, and graciously
called you to this state of life. And think no other thought
of him. It all depends on your desire. A naked intention
directed to God, and himself alone, is wholly sufficient.
If you want this intention summed up in a word, to
retain it more easily, take a short word, preferably of one
syllable, to do so. The shorter the word the better, being
more like the working of the Spirit. A word like ‘GOD’ or
‘LOVE’. Choose which you like, or perhaps some other,
so long as it is of one syllable. And fix this word fast to
your heart, so that it is always there come what may. It
will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike. With
this word you will hammer the cloud and the darkness
above you. With this word you will suppress all thought
under the cloud of forgetting. So much so that if ever you
are tempted to think what it is that you are seeking, this
one word will be sufficient answer. And if you would go on
to think learnedly about the significance and analysis of
that same word, tell yourself that you will have it whole,
and not in bits and pieces. If you hold fast, that thought
EXERCISE 6 >» 171
will surely go. And the reason? Because you refuse to let it
feed on the helpful meditations we spoke of earlier.
—The Cloud of Unknowing, pp. 55-56, 59-60, 61-62.
97?
But in this inner world, as in the outer, the adventurer who

travels without knowledge or experience or true seriousness
of purpose goes forward only to his own undoing. For na-
ture knows no pity. If one goes to the polar regions without
due preparation, merely to escape from some difficulty in
life, he will inevitably meet with a most unpleasant awaken-
ing. In just the same way, if one seeks the inner world in
order to escape from life’s tasks he will without doubt be
overwhelmed and will perish. A similar fate will overtake
anyone who chooses a religious life of contemplation as a
means of escape from life’s tasks. It is the purpose that
counts. For instance, to take up the religious life of con-
templation as a means of escape from life’s burdens is not
to experience God, but rather to fall into the unconscious
and gradually be swallowed up. The visions or fantasies
that come to such a man will be of a very different char-
acter from those of the true mystic and will not stand the
test of analysis. The Church has always been careful to
differentiate between the two and to warn against false
religious experiences.
—M. EstHerR Haropine, The Way of All Women,
pp. 42-43.
779
The action of creative faith, if it is sustained in the face

of all that would deny and thwart it, will cleanse us in
the process of changing and transforming us. But to be
cleansed of what is unreal or perverse in thought, feeling
and will is inevitably a testing experience and generally the
trial is prolonged and often marked by unexpected and what
may seem undeserved set-backs. That, however, is true of
every vital and authentic commitment.
And what sustains the soul, dedicated to discovering and
living its own truth, and helps us to bear the aches and
toils and hazards of the way, is the inward sense, slight
and variable as it may often be at first, of being in intimate
touch with Something infinitely more-real than our harassed
personality. There are still the stresses on the surface. In-
deed they may well seem to have been intensified. But now,
by this act of unwilful faith, we are aware of being related
to a mysterious Power which comprehends and can recon-
cile in Itself all the diverse forces which still dispute for
sovereignty over our outer nature. In other words we
have acknowledged the basic ground of our being in which
our divided faculties can find their common root and enter
into concord. And through doing this we begin to see and
love the inward truth of things, which does not depend
on what the outer senses tell us but illuminates them.
—Hucu L’Anson Fausskst, Fruits of Silence,
pp. 108-109.
37?
By “inner” I mean our way of seeing the external world

and all those realities that have no “external,” “objective”
presence—imagination, dreams, fantasies, trances, the reali-
ties of contemplative and meditative states, realities of which
modern man, for the most part, has not the slightest direct
awareness.
For example, nowhere in the Bible is there any argument
about the existence of gods, demons, angels. People did not
first “believe in” God: they experienced His presence, as
was true of other spiritual agencies. The question was not
whether God existed, but whether this particular God was
the greatest god of all, or the only God; and what was the
relation of the various spiritual agencies to each other. To-
day, there is a public debate, not as to the trustworthiness
of God, the particular place in spiritual hierarchy of differ-
ent spirits, etc., but whether God or such spirits even exist
or ever have existed.
. > > > .
EXERCISE 6 39 173
There is no doubt, it seems to me, that there have been
profound changes in the experience of man in the last
thousand years. In some ways this is more evident than
changes in the patterns of his behavior. There is everything
to suggest that man experienced God. Faith was never a
matter of believing He existed, but of trusting in the
presence that was experienced and known to exist as a
self-validating datum. It seems likely that far more people
in our time experience neither the presence of God, nor
the presence of his absence, but the absence of his presence.
—R. D. Laine, The Politics of Experience,
pp. 98, 100.
39?
Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an ex-

pectancy. And yet in a certain sense, we must truly begin
to hear God when we have ceased to listen. What is the
explanation of this paradox? Perhaps only that there is
a higher kind of listening, which is not an attentiveness to
some special wave length, a receptivity to a certain kind
of message, but a general emptiness that waits to realize
the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent
void. In other words, the true contemplative is not the
one who prepares his mind for a particular message that
he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty
because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate
the word that will transform his darkness into light. He
does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation.
He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits
on the Word of God in silence, and when he is “‘answered,”’
it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It
is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself
to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.
Real contemplatives will always be rare and few. But

that is not a matter of importance, as long as the whole
Church is predominantly contemplative in all her teaching,
all her activity and all her prayer. There is no contradic-
tion between action and contemplation when Christian
apostolic activity is raised to the level of pure charity. On
that level, action and contemplation are fused into one
entity by the love of God and of our brother in Christ. But
the trouble is that if prayer is not itself deep, powerful and
pure and filled at all times with the spirit of contemplation,
Christian action can never really reach this high level.
Without the spirit of contemplation in all our worship
—that is to say without the adoration and love of God
above all, for his own sake, because he is God—the liturgy
will not nourish a really Christian apostolate based on
Christ’s love and carried out in the power of the Pneuma.
The most important need in the Christian world today
is this inner truth nourished by this Spirit of contemplation:
the praise and love of God, the longing for the coming
of Christ, the thirst for the manifestation of God’s glory,
his truth, his justice, his Kingdom in the world. These are
all characteristically “contemplative” and eschatological as-
pirations of the Christian heart, and they are the very es-
sence of monastic prayer. Without them our apostolate is
more for our own glory than for the glory of God.
Without this contemplative orientation we are building
churches not to praise him but to establish more firmly the
social structures, values and benefits that we presently enjoy.
Without this contemplative basis to our preaching, our apos-
tolate is no apostolate at all, but more proselytizing to insure
universal conformity with our own national way of life.
Without contemplation and interior prayer the Church
cannot fulfill her mission to transform and save mankind.
Without contemplation, she will be reduced to being the
servant of cynical and worldly powers, no matter how hard
her faithful may protest that they are fighting for the King-
dom of God.
Without true, deep contemplative aspirations, without a
total love for God and an uncompromising thirst for his
truth, religion tends in the end to become an opiate.
—Tuomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer,
pp. 112-113, 143-144.
EXERCISE 6 3» 175
Jesus said,
The one who is near me is near the fire and he who is far
from me is far from the kingdom.
—The Gospel According to Thomas, Logion 82.
27)
We walked towards the Piatza Romana. My teeth were

gritty with dust. I spat and said:
“It'll be a pity if they kill or injure him. He’s a saint.
That’s what I think.”
Christian laughed, with his hands in the pockets of his
overcoat.
“T’d never use that word of anyone,” he said.
“All the same, it’s what you think, isn’t it, when you
think of him?”
“We should all be able to believe that someone of our
acquaintance is a saint,” said Christian, evading my ques-
tion. “We should be able to believe it seriously, with all the
necessary critical detachment. But we should never say it.
In speaking the word we debase and endanger the saints, we
lead them into the temptation of pride and vanity. You may
believe Sebastian to be a saint, if you can see sufficient rea-
sons for doing so. But a saint who is publicly declared to
be a saint, and does not instantly go into hiding, may very
rapidly become a devil. We must await his death, to see
him in the moment of supreme trial, and only then pro-
claim him a saint when we can no longer harm him.”
He looked quizzically at me, as he had looked at Mr.
Martin.
“Tt’s right that it should be like that. The highest level
of the human condition should be attained only at the
highest price. Otherwise saints would be forced to make
pilgrimages: they would be surrounded by press and tele-
vision reporters, and politicians anxious to make use of
them. In this country an accredited saint would be made a
member of the National Committee, the National Assem-
bly and the Partisans of Peace, and decorated with the
Order of Labour. In the West he would do commercials for
a brand of toothpaste or one of the established religions, and
he’d embrace film-stars, both looking into the camera. Well,
I ask you! It’s better to let him pay the price. Ecstasy has
to be paid for by humiliation, prison, ill-usage, public repu-
diation and contempt, and denial by the disciples. It is right
that it should be so: it is a part of the mechanism of des-
tiny. The greater the victory the higher the price. And there
can be no cheating, because the false saint knows that he
is not a saint. He knows that from the moment when he
thinks of himself as a saint, instead of being concentrated
upon his objective, always outside himself, he falls—and he
falls lower than other men. Sainthood is the most harsh
and difficult career in the world.”
“The existence of a man like that is very important for
the rest of us,”’ I murmured.
“Of course,” said Christian in an irritated tone. “Of
course. And he’s not the only one. They’re more numerous
than one would believe—if one had any ideas on the sub-
ject, which one hasn’t, and so much the better. It is
through them that mankind as a whole, you and I, are
justified and redeemed. For we are animals of the same
species. Certainly a mutation has taken place in them, but
they’re still human beings. We can’t all be like them.
Or we don’t want to be. But the very fact of their exist-
ence, and our ability to recognize them for what they are,
is the basic compensation. Thanks to them we know that
the thing can be done, and because of this the whole struc-
ture of the world is changed. Or rather, the world is given
a structure, instead of being just a cybernetical brothel or a
physio-chemical, biological, socio-historical mish-mash. It is
given a meaning, a top and a bottom, and a middle layer,
which is where we are. This represents an enormous conso-
lation and hope for all of us. Sebastian is not the son of
God or miraculously born; he’s not an aristocrat or a philos-
opher or a scientist; he’s just a man who was expelled from
the Party, a former militant and Security officer, a bad
husband, a bad father and a bad son—even worse than I
am, because our parents weren't sent to prison through my
doing!” Christian uttered a forced laugh. “Anyone may say,
‘If he was capable of succeeding, so am I.’ When there are
EXERCISE 6 >» 177
others like him, these mutants appearing everywhere among
mankind, the world will change very considerably. Even
as things are, we need not be ashamed of living in the
world. We can at least say, ‘Even though I personally
failed, even though I did not try, mankind as a whole has
succeeded in him and those like him.’ ”
—Petru Dumirtriu, Incognito, pp. 470-472.
27?
At its heart, religion is mysticism. Moses with his flocks
in Midian, Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus up to his knees
in the water of Jordan: each of them responds to Something
for which words like shalom, oneness, God even, are only
pallid souvenirs. “I have seen things,” Aquinas told a friend,
“that make all my writings seem like straw.” Religion as
institution, ethics, dogma, ritual, scripture, social action—
all of this comes later and in the long run maybe counts for
less. Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump
in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in
flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of
the sky.
As for the man in the street, wherever his own religion
is a matter of more than custom it is apt to be because,
however dimly, a doorway opened in the air once to him
too, a word was spoken, and however shakily, he too re-
sponded. The debris of his life continues to accumulate, the
Vesuvius of the years scatters its ashes deep and much gets
buried alive, but even under many layers the tell-tale heart
can go on beating still.
Where it beats strong, there starts pulsing out from it a
kind of life that is marked by, above all things perhaps,
compassion—that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what
it is like to live inside another’s skin, knowing that there
can never really be peace and joy for any until there is
peace and joy finally for all. Where it stops beating alto-
gether, little is left religiously speaking but a good man not
perhaps in Mark Twain’s “worse sense of the word” but
surely in the grayest and saddest: the good man whose
goodness has become cheerless and finicky, a technique for
working off his own guilts, a gift with no love in it which
neither deceives nor benefits any for long.
Religion as a word points to that area of human expe-
rience where in one way or another man comes upon mys-
tery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings
no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in
myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he
can never know fully until he reaches it.
We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose
to believe—life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We
have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through
some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our
lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are
blinded by, only then, unlike the saints we tend to go on
as though nothing has happened. To go on as though some-
thing has happened, even though we are not sure what it
was or just where we are supposed to go with it, is to enter
the dimension of life that religion is a word for.
—Freperick BuECHNER, “Summons to Pilgrimage.”
279
Great Leveler of men

In whom
we all
have like stature
In whom
we become
of one race
In whom
we become
of one time
In whom
we
become
—ALMA LOFTNESS.
Here in time we make holiday
because the eternal birth which
God the Father bore and bears
unceasingly in eternity is now
born in time, in human nature.
St. Augustine says this birth is
always happening. But if it
happen not in me what does it
profit me? What matters is that
it shall happen in me.
—Metster Ecxuart, Meister Eckhart, p. 3.
97?
Notes
FOREWORD
1. Wisdom 18:14, 15.
2. Ecclesiasticus 51:27, NEB.
I. Conressinc Our HuMANITYy

1. Edward Dahlberg, “Dahlberg on Dreiser, Anderson and Dahlberg,”
New York Times Book Review, January 31, 1971, p. 3.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper & Bros.,
1954), p. 27.
3. Glen Gersmehl, “The Vision of Cesar Chavez,” Christianity &
Crisis, January 11, 1971.
4, Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound (New York: Harper & Row,
1966).
5. Thomas A. Harris, J’m OK: You’re OK (New York: Harper &
Row, 1969).
6. Ibid., see pp. 4-12.
EXERCISE 2
1. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” lines 1-3.
II, PRAyER AND A CorFEE House

1, Thomas Kelly, The Gathered Meeting (Philadelphia: The Friends
Tract Association, 1957), p. 1.
2. George Mueller, Answers to Prayer from George Miiller’s Narra-
tives, compiled by A. E. C. Brooks (Chicago: Moody Press), p. 46.
3. Brother Lawrence, His Letters and Conversations on the Practice
_ of the Presence of God (Ohio: Forward Movement Publications), p, 20.
4. Geoffrey Hoyland, The Use of Silence (London: SPCK, 1955).
5, Isaiah 59:10, NEB.
6. Petru Dumitriu, Jncognito (London: Sphere Books Ltd.), p. 70.
7. T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (Har-
court, Brace & World, Inc., 1952), p. 363.
181
182 «&€SEARCH FOR SILENCE
8. Christmas Humphreys, Concentration and Meditation (London &
Baltimore: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1970), p. 150.
9. The Cloud of Unknowing, trans. Clifton‘ Wolters (London &
Baltimore: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1961), p. 43.
10. Robert S. de Ropp, The Master Game (New York: Delacorte
Press, 1968), pp. 49-50.
11. C. E. Bignall, Flame in the Heart (London: Vincent Stuart Ltd.,
1965), p. 10.
12. Christmas Humphreys, Concentration and Meditation, p. 42.
13. Marie-Louise von Franz, Interpretation of Fairytales (New York:
Spring Publications, 1970), p. 11.
14. The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 27.
15. Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, vol. 1, trans. C. de B. Evans
(London: John M. Watkins, 1956), p. 44.
16. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision (New York:
Harper & Row, 1970), p. 380.
17. Ibid., p. 381.
18. Ibid., p. 390.
19. The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 36.
20. Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism (New York: E. P. Dutton
& Co., 1915).
EXERCISE 3
1. Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, p. 74.
Bibliography
Beti, Martin. The Way of the Wolf. New York: The Seabury Press, 1968.
BerpyaEv, Nicoras. Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography.
Translated by Katharine Lampert. New York: The Macmillan Co.,
Collier Books, 1962.
BeTHGE, EBERHARD. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision. New York:
Harper & Row, 1970.
BIGNALL, C. E. Flame in the Heart. London: Vincent Stuart Ltd., 1965.
BoNnHOEFFER, Dretricu. Life Together. Translated by John W. Dober-
stein. New York: Harper & Row, 1954.
. The Way to Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Buser, Martin. Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters. New York:
Schocken Books, Inc., 1947.
. Tales of the Hasidim: Later Masters. New York: Schocken Books,
Inc., 1948.
. Ten Rungs: Hasidic Sayings. New York: Schocken Books, Inc.,
1947.
. The Way of Man. New York: Citadel Press, 1966.
BUECHNER, FREDERICK. “Summons to Pilgrimage” (book review). New
York Times Book Review, March 16, 1969.
Cloud of Unknowing, The. Translated by Clifton Wolters. London &
Baltimore: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1961.
DAHLBERG, Epwarp. “Dahlberg on Dreiser, Anderson and Dahlberg.”
New York Times Book Review, January 31, 1971.
Dep, Atrrep, S.J. The Prison Meditations of Father Delp. New York:
Herder & Herder, 1963.
De Ropp, Rospert:S. The Master Game. New York: Delacorte Press (Sey-
- mour Lawrence), 1968.
De Sates, St. Francis. Introduction to the Devout Life. Translated by
John K. Ryan. New York: Doubleday & Company, Image Books, 1955.
(Published originally by Harper & Bros., 1950).
Dumirriu, Petru. /ncognito. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1969. (First
published by Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., 1964.)
183
Ecxnart, Meister. Meister Eckhart. Volume 1. Translated by C. de

B. Evans. London: John M. Watkins, 1956.
E1setey, Loren. The Unexpected Universe. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, Inc., 1964.
Eutor, T. S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, Inc., 1963.
. Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, Inc., 1952.
Fausset, Hucu L’Anson. Fruits of Silence. London: Abelard-Schuman
Limited, 1963.
France, Matcotm. The Paradox of Guilt. Philadelphia: United Church
Press, 1967.
Fromm, Ericu. “The Creative Attitude.” In Creativity and Its Cultiva-
tion. Edited by Harold H. Anderson. New York: Harper & Row, Inc.,
1959.
GARDNER, JOHN W. Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative
Society. New York: Harper & Row, Inc., 1963.
GERSMEHL, GLEN. “The Vision of Cesar Chavez.” Christianity & Crisis,
January 11, 1971.
Gwe, AnprE. Jf It Die. Translated by Dorothy Bussy. New York: Random
House, Modern Library, 1935.
Girxey, Lancpon. Shantung Compound. New York: Harper & Row,
1966.
Gospel According to Thomas, The. In Ray Summers, Secret Sayings of
the Living Jesus. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1968.
Guarpini, Romano. Prayer in Practice. Translated by Prince Leopold.
New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., Image Books, 1963. (Originally
published by Random House, Pantheon Books, Inc., 1957).
Hanna, CuHartes B. The Face of the Deep. Philadelphia: The Westmin-
ster Press, 1967.
Harpinc, M. EstHer. The ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’. Bollingen Series LXXIX.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.
. The Way of All Women. Rev. ed. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, Jung Foundation Books, 1970.
Harris, THomas A. I’m OK, You’re OK. New York: Harper & Row,
1969,
HEscHEL, ABRAHAM, J. “Hope Through Renewal of the Self.” Tempo,
October 15, 1969.
HittMan, JAMEs. Insearch: Psychology and Religion. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1967.
. Suictde and the Soul. New York: Harper & Row, Inc., 1964.
Hoy anp, Grorrrey. The Use of Silence. Inner Life Series no. 5. London:
S.P.C.K., 1955.
HuMpuHrREYS, CHRISTMAS. Concentration and Meditation. London and
Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970,
BIBLIOGRAPHY >> 185
Jacost, Joranve. The Way of Individuation, New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, Inc., 1967.
June, Cart G. Collected Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959-1968.
Ketty, THomas. The Gathered Meeting. Philadelphia: The Friends Tract
Association, 1957.
KIERKEGAARD, S@REN. Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. Translated
by Douglas V. Steere. New York: Harper & Bros., Torchbook, 1938.
KrISHNAMURTI, Jippu. Think on These Things. Edited by D. Rajagopal.
New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
KunkeEL, Frirz. In Search of Maturity. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1943.
Laine, R. D. The Politics of Experience. New York: Random House,
Pantheon Books, 1967.
LAWRENCE, BrotrHer. His Letters and Conversations on the Practice of
the Presence of God. Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications.
Loomis, Eart A., Jr. The Self in Pilgrimage. New York: Harper & Bros.,
1960.
Lyncu, Wituiam F., S.J. Images of Hope. New York: New American
Library, Mentor-Omega Books, 1965.
Mastow, ABRAHAM H. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1962.
May, Rotto. Love and Will. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1969.
Merton, Tuomas. Contemplative Prayer. New York: Herder and Herder,
1969,
Moustakas, Cxiark. Creativity and Conformity. New York: Van Nos-
trand Reinhold Company, 1967.
MUELLER, Georce. Answers to Prayer from George Miiller’s Narratives.
Compiled by A. E. C. Brooks. Chicago: Moody Press.
NouweEn, Henry. “Generation without Fathers.”” Commonweal, June 12,
1970.
Oates, Wayne, E. The Holy Spirit in Five Worlds. New York: Asso-
ciation Press, 1968.
PascaL, Briatse. Pensées. Translation and Introduction by Martin Turnell.
London: Harvill Press Limited, 1962.
PrEERBOLTE, M. Lierarert. “Meditation for School Children.” Main Cur-
rents in Modern Thought 24, no. 1 (Sept.-Oct. 1967).
_ Procorr, Ira. The Symbolic and the Real. New York: Julian Press, Inc.,
1963.
Proust, Marcer. Remembrance of Things Past. New York: Random
House, Inc., 1927.
Rapcuirre, Lynn J. Making Prayer Real. New York and Nashville:
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952.
RAHNER, Kari. On Prayer. New York: Paulist/Newman Press, Deus
Book, 1965.
186 «& BIBLIOGRAPHY
Roserts, Davip E. Psychotherapy and a Christian View of Man. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950.
RoHRBACH, PetTer-THomas, O.C.D. Conversation with Christ, Chicago:
Fides Publishers, Inc., 1956.
Teresa oF Avita, Saint. The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus.
Translated by E. Allison Peer. Vol. I, Life. New York: Sheed & Ward,
1949,
Suzuki, Datsetz Terraro. Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, the Eastern
and the Western Way. New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library
Edition, 1971.
TrEaLeE, Epwin Way. North with the Spring. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Company, 1951.
THIELICKE, HetMut. How the World Began. Translation and Introduction
by John W. Doberstein. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961.
Tozer, A. W. The Pursuit of God. Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publica-
tions Inc., 1948.
UNDERHILL, EveLyNn. Mysticism. New York: World Publishing Company,
Meridian Books, 1955. (Originally published by E. P. Dutton.)
. Practical Mysticism. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc.,
1943.
Von Franz, Marte-Louise. Interpretations of Fairytales. New York:
Spring Publications, 1970,
Wuipp.e, Ricuarp O. “The View from Zorna.” Main Currents in Mod-
ern Thought 24, no. 1 (Sept.-Oct. 1967).
Wyon, Otive. The School of Prayer. London: SCM Press, 1943.
For Further Reading and Meditation
Eighth Day of Creation by Elizabeth O’Connor. After we have

accepted ourselves, and have found that place where we can hear
God speak to us, then we are called upon to act. God himself
calls us to join the creative forces in the world by discovering our
own creativity and gifts. Knowing who we are means that we
acknowledge what it is our gift to do. Excerpts from other authors
provide material for meditation. 4480260 (hardback)
Handbook for Mission Groups by Gordon Cosby. The Pastor of

Washington D. C.’s Church of The Saviour shares the power of
the servant group in the life of the church and the world. Here
are insights on: discovering one’s own gifts and calling forth the
gifts of others; the four dimensions of the church; specific roles
essential to the nurturing of a small group; the commitments of
“a new member.” 480346 (hardback)
The Naked I (Seeking God and Finding Identity) by Eileen

Guder. “We discover ourselves best as we learn to know Him.”
The author shares the story of her passionate struggle for reality
and identity. Through her sharing, readers will come face to face
with the order and beauty and meaning: God has given life.
4+¢98072 (quality paperback)
Creation Continues by Fritz Kunkel. Shows that through “dy-

namic reading” of Matthew’s Gospel alone can today’s Christians
come to understand the impact of Jesus’ personality upon his
disciples—and, through Matthew, the impact of that personality
on man in the twentieth century. Especially appropriate for
group work and creative dialogue. +-98012 (quality paperback)
Locked in a Room with Open Doors by Ernest T. Campbell. A
dynamic book that offers insights into the self-imposed captivity
of inner weakness—hatred, worry, fear of change (people, ex-
periences, ideas). Solidly based on Scripture, Campbell’s astute
commentary covers: the tragedy of rejection; the specter of
scarcity; polarization and social progress; law, order, and re-
habilitation, coping with change; the mystery and understanding
of the Holy Spirit. 4498082 (quality paperback)
The Greening of the Church by Findley B. Edge. A practical

how-to book for every local church. Beginning with personal
spiritual renewal, Findley Edge branches out to include every
aspect of life. New, stimulating techniques for dialogue, preach-
ing, book reading, small groups, and Bible study are discussed in
detail. +:98083 (quality paperback)
Bread for the Wilderness—Wine for the Journey (The Miracle

of Prayer and Meditation) by John Killinger. “We do not see
miracles because we do not expect any. That’s why life seems
more like a wilderness than paradise.” This faith-building book
will help you be more attuned to the things of the Spirit . . . to
experience the dynamic power of letting the presence of God in
Christ become real in prayer. +-80443 (hardback)
To Kiss the Joy by Robert Raines. This book reveals the author's —
deep awareness of the painfulness of growth; the yearning for the
comfort of yesterday; the sense of fear when faith is threatened.
The reader is urged to live boldly, immediately, to live in unison
with his dreams, daring to risk much. +-80324 (hardback)
Love Speaks Its Voice by Martha Whitmore Hickman. A glimpse

inside the heart of one woman who knows what the upheavals
of middle life are all about. She bares her soul to let us share
the happiness and fulfillment, the frustration and agony, of the
years when Change reigns supreme. +-80412 (hardback)
A 32530
THEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT, CALIF.
_ 4
BV
509}
€.2°7 THEOLOGY LIBRARY
| SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
| AT CLAREMONT
| CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
23-262-002
A325 30
OGORCH FOR SOILONG
The reviews speak for themselves!
“In a time when ancient values are eroding and external authorities
are in question, the ‘journey into the place of stillness deep within
ourself’ beckons. If you are in search of inner integrity, quietness
and confidence, Elizabeth O’Connor’s book may help you as it ha
helped me.”—Robert Raines, The Christian Century
“Search for Silence is both a textbook and a workbook for the seriou
seeker who is aware that the goal is not attained simply by knowin
what it is, or even where it is... . It opens up to the habitual pray-e
new depths to explore by means of rigid discipline and expectant
faith. . . . Elizabeth O’Connor’s insight and directions, all biblically
based, will enable the earnest follower to experience this. This is a
book to buy, not borrow. It needs to be marked in and handled.”—
Dimension
Search for Silence promotes [a] kind of back-to-your-own-soul ex-

perience. But author O’Connor isn’t urging anyone to join the
nearest monastery or rush off to the country to escape the noisy
clamor of our world. She’s asking simply that we find time enough
to listen for the one voice worth hearing—God’s. . . . Gordon Cosby
says in his foreword, “The one journey that ultimately matters is
the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To
reach that place is to be home, to fail to reach it is to be forever
restless.’ ’"’—Campus Life )
Elizabeth O’Connor is on the staff of The Church of the Saviour in

Washington, D.C., where she ‘coordinates administrative details and
serves the various communities of the church in a support role. She
teaches in the church’s School of Christian Living and has actively par-
ticipated in the missions of the church. Prior to coming to The Church
of the Saviour in 1953, she worked in the field of publicity and public
relations. Miss O’Connor is author of four previous books: Call to Com-
mitmentment; Journey Inward, Journey Outward; Our Many Selves;
Eighth Day of Creation.
WORD BOOKS, Publisher 98109

Waco, Texas AQ
OR bia)
PICD RIVERA, CA 90660

Search For Silence - Elizabeth O'Connor

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Search For Silence - Elizabeth O'Connor

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Search For Silence - Elizabeth O'Connor

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SCORCH

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

WORD BOOKS Waco, Texas

First Printing—April 1972

Copyright © 1972 by Elizabeth O'Connor.

Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible

Scripture quotations from The New English Bible (NEB), copyright ©

The Scripture quotation marked Moffatt is from A New Translation of

PREKNOW IECSINENES AUS esau Sarepvcals Baers 2's gies

Fo Contessing Our tumanity- 2s. sissy he va a earn

Hi ‘Prayer and = Coffee House oct. Se Vuk Some eared

NOLESWA ae bc) 25s Pe Ge ae le de Mebe tees cS aa Aes Venere

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following copyright holders for

ABELARD-SCHUMAN L1p., for the quotation from Hugh L’Anson Fausset,

Part One deals with confession because confession is essential

simply for the enrichment and inspiration of being in touch with

See for yourselves how little were my labours

A few years ago I took a class entitled, “How to Keep One’s

projected upon an unknown future when I would, indeed, be

life of a Christian. It had been acts of confession that bound us

every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols;

Our inner prophets are often bold to say that a Kingdom is

longing for a companion may reflect the inability to be one. We

My meetings with Dreiser continued, but I always was of the

once more the huge dilemma of why non-Christians are more

believe in them ourselves, even to take pride in our false images.

Could it be that our real self is not so ordinary as we thought,

our understanding of the church as a people who have arrived

Even before a word is on my tongue,

Sometimes the situation is even more disturbing than the

comings which, though completely hidden from us, are very

Later on Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish fes-

my disability protects me from? How does my life style help me

It was at length the same to me

My very chains and I grew friends,

It is a strange and frightening discovery to find that the sac-

One of the hidden reasons why we avoid the practice of con-

Perhaps, in the small group movement of the churches where

of our rough edges rubbing together. Jealousy, envy, and rivalry

unless life jolts us out of our complacency with a Shantung Com-

the specific occasions we can pinpoint as places of change. Our

all psychological or spiritual, as we may have thought. These

own I am-ness. We still see the suffering that we cannot explain, —

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost;

ACKNOWLEDGING AND ACCEPTING OUR DARK SIDE

This week the exercise is to help you become nuore conscious of

I once knew a very old married couple who radiated a

In the process of reaching maturity and autonomy most

If we claim to be sinless, we are self-deceived and strangers

The all-knowing One does not get to know something

If guilt is to be healed, the victim must be reconciled

I think God must be very old and very tired. Maybe he

My children, mark me, I pray you. Know! God loves my

The heart is deceitful above all things,

To keep a secret means etymologically to keep something

Confession, as we know, can also be used for self-deception.

We cannot stand the sight of our dark side, so we re-

By speaking about articulation as a form of leadership