Finding the right balance between being and doing is never easy. We live in a culture where people’s value is tied to the work they do. As humans and as Christians, we are called to delve deeper to discover our lives’ inner rooms, the rooms of our feelings and motivations, which become the soil of our human existence and spiritual quest.
When we make peace with our inner world we start to become compassionate- Fr Martin Cilia
We normally associate contemplation with silence, monasteries, beautiful surroundings, a world we admire but which is far from our daily reality to which we might escape for a few days. Contemplation is understood as something for specialists, not for ordinary people.
Having a contemplative stance implies being ready for change. Yet when we speak of change, we normally think of action plans and methods. Little time is given to enter the rooms of our feelings and explore our inner world. We fail to balance our being with our doing and miss out on becoming aware of who we really are.
Author William McNamara defines contemplation as “a pure intuition of being, born of love. It is experiential awareness and a way of entering into immediate communion with reality.” To have this contemplative attitude is a belief that our lives are the fruit of love rather than of work, and that all that happens in us is the result of a gift that transcends thought.
Contemplation is falling in love. We are born out of love and our existence and spirituality should focus on recognising this love, and to love ourselves and others. In love we find the reason not only to exist but also to live fully, and only those who have a reason to live find a reason to die. Our hearts are restless and the things we desire most are only found in love. Spirituality becomes an existential adventure rather than a duty.
Our restless hearts and our workaholism are a desperate search for something that no work, no matter how remarkable, may substitute. Restlessness cannot be quenched by a method of prayer. It is not a technique one masters at a seminar; it is peace of heart, and a contemplative heart is only acquired after a long internal journey.
Contemplation is not a romantic idea – it is a way of being present to the movements within us. Scripture and all the Christian mystical tradition speak about contemplation as a desert experience or a dark night of the soul. We seem to associate contemplation with blissful moments rather than dark ones but it does not always result in delight and we tend to be discouraged when results do not come quickly.
The desert in biblical tradition is the place where we have to face our inner demons, where we have to face our own selves. It is the place where we come to know our real selves, not the false images that we create. As theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer says, “the sooner God destroys our wrong self images the better it is for us”.
We too need to find a ‘desert’, a place of our own where we can reconcile and accept our stories and our inner world, as this is the only key to find this inner peace we so anxiously desire and to find the right balance between being and doing.
Contemplation is the inner conviction that in life all symphonies remain unfinished, and when we make peace with our inner world and deeply experience that we are loved, we may then start to become compassionate with the incompleteness of others.
If we taste such an experience, we can transform our work into prayer and our whole being into a sanctuary where God can find a place to dwell. It is the breaking of a new dawn. We see life as it truly is, we are able to change the priorities that may hold us imprisoned.
Coming to this awareness is what contemplation is all about… and the sooner we wake up, the better it is for us and for those we love.
ciliamartin@hotmail.com
Fr Cilia is a member of the Missionary Society of St Paul.