Lenten Reflection #3 – The Restless Spirit and Cultivating Loneliness

These two reflections are for the Thursday and Friday of the First Week of Lent, and while they seem to go together each one struck me in a different way.

In The Restless Spirit, these few phrases are what I zeroed in on:

“Our culture invites excitement, not silence; activity, not stillness. Thus we find ourselves constantly titillated and over-stimulated in our restlessness.”

Oh, how this is true! Right now in my office (and I’m here alone for the moment) I can hear half a dozen sounds of activity… the A/C, the small fan on my desk, my computer, ambient noise outside the door, just to name a few. There are times when I leave work and don’t even turn on the radio in the car because I’m just so glad for the silence!

What is the need for all the noise and stimulation? I know many, many people who feel the need to have the radio or television on “for company” even when they aren’t listening or watching. I understand why they do it, but I rarely do it myself. I relish those moments of quiet when I’m not bombarded by advertising or stimulating sounds/images vying for my attention.

With all the new devices out there – mobile phones, PDAs, iPhones and the like, we are constantly on alert and ready to react; and I fully admit that I can be a slave to that (as I just noticed my email has three more messages it didn’t have 30 seconds ago!). I need to shut my computer down once in awhile and walk away…

Finding my spiritual center is something I strive for constantly, but find it very difficult to do when there is so much light and noise – I have a difficult time enough quieting my over-active imagination without all that rebounding around me as well.

This quote by N Gordon Cosby (from the preface to O’Connor’s book, Search for Silence) that Rolheiser shares says a lot to me:

“The one journey that ultimately matters is that 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.”

I definitely know that restlessness…

So Rolheiser and I are in accord with the Restless Spirit, but I’m not sure we see eye to eye on Cultivating Loneliness…

In this reflection we are reminded of the life of the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his self-imposed loneliness after breaking off an engagement to the woman he loved deeply:

“His reasoning was simple. He felt that what he had to give to the world came more from his own loneliness. He could share deeply because, first of all, he felt deeply. Loneliness gave him depth. Rightly or wrongly, he judged that marriage might in some way deflect or distract him from that depth, painful as it was.”

Rolheiser goes on to say himself: “In loneliness and longing, empathy is born.”

I can see where he’s going with that train of thought… and it’s all well and good for saints, ascetics and philosophers to cultivate such loneliness, but I don’t know that I would suggest the every day person to court loneliness to any extent.

Learning to be by yourself, to rely on yourself, to enjoy your own company are all important aspects to a healthy self-awareness, but for me to cultivate loneliness is to shut oneself off from others. I have met far too many people who do this with sad, sometimes tragic results.

I’m guessing that Rolheiser would say something to the effect that if we can find this loneliness within ourselves, if we can turn away others to turn inward then we would find God there to keep us “company.” If we have Him that is all we need.

Perhaps that is true, but it’s not necessarily a reality. It’s been my experience that if a person is deeply lonely they not only are shut off from other people, they are shut off from themselves as well. If the door to the soul is shut, no one can get in – and while I firmly believe that nothing is impossible with God, I’m guessing that His knocking on that door isn’t going to get a ready answer either? With such a disconnect of feelings, how can a deeply lonely person possibly be empathetic?

So I welcome the reminder to look inward, to find the serenity that is within me that is “home” and a place to be closer to God, but loneliness I will keep at bay and look for other ways to be empathetic…

Lenten Reflection #2 – Listening to Christ’s Heartbeat

Alas… I’d really hoped to be able to blog daily, but I can see this just isn’t going to be practical. So I’ll try to reflect as least once a week on these readings – more if there’s time and inspiration.

So. On to Rolheiser…

I’m meditating on two readings – the one for the First Sunday of Lent and also the Monday of the First Week of Lent. In it Rolheiser describes a passage in John’s gospel where the disciple Jesus loved reclines on his the breast. (John 13:23) Rolheiser says:

“This is an image, a mystical one. Among other things, it is a picture of gentleness. What it shows, however, is not a saccharine piety, a sweetness hard to swallow, but a softness that comes from being at peace, from being so rooted and centered in a love that one can look out at the world without bitterness, anger, jealousy, the sense of being cheated, and the need to blame or compete with others.”

I would add that it is an intimacy not easily found even among people who know each other well. As children we do this, of course. We find comfort in the heartbeat of our mothers and fathers and loved ones, but soon we are taught to put up boundaries. We reject the touch of another – we are repulsed by the “cooties” of our schoolmates; and then as we age and begin to form attachments we are unsettled by our physical reactions to another’s touch and once we gain a certain intimacy we resent and are threatened by our mates touching someone else; eventually perhaps we are even indifferent to their touch – having felt it before we assume there is nothing new to experience in it.

Do we become indifferent to Christ’s touch that way too? What would we hear if we were to remain still and centered and lean on His chest? What mysteries are contained in the regular rhythm of the Son’s heartbeat and the even in-and-out of His breath?

My own inner workings are relaxing as I’m thinking about it, imagining my own head upon His breast… my breath rising and falling with His and my heart adjusting its beat to play in concert with Him.

Even in the midst of a wilderness of humming technology and office conversation, peace is at hand.