Contemplify NonRequired Reading List for August 31, 2019
The August NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative Friends,
Last week I was away on silent retreat. This was not a quotidian retreat bounded by unbroken silence and solitude. For when the clock struck five each evening I hightailed it out of the hermitage, hopped in my '99 Honda, and hustled home to be with my family. I was breaking silence with a mother-loving purpose. During this current season of parenting, I am in no position to kiss my wife and kids goodbye for five days only to fall into the arms of blessed silence. Our nights are rough. Our baby boy has trouble keeping his eyes shut for more than 2 hours at a stretch. To leave this sleepless work to my wife alone so I could be on retreat seemed akin to poking the third eye with the middle finger. I know the day will come when sleep is not so elusive in our household and an extended retreat is possible for either one of us, but this was not that day. Nevertheless, this hybrid retreat was a gift of contemplative regrounding that I had unknowingly been longing after.
While strolling on a trail in the desert heat last week, drenched in silent sweat, a jack rabbit blocked my path. Long ears perked, throwing side eyes at me. Just inches away from my dusty feet. In my rabbit experience, usually once a rabbit gets a whiff of my humanity she scrambles for cover. Not this one. We held one gaze. I recalled one of my teachers, James Finley, saying, “If you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do - bow.” So I bowed at my fellow creature. She stared at me, then bowed her head. We agreed we couldn’t stay like this forever, so she went her way and I mine. She darted off and my eyes followed. The grace of this rabbit’s run reminded me of my daughter’s sprint to the swing set across the park lawn.
I fell into a deeper reflective consciousness on the sacred exchange between creatures that just occurred. With the symphony of silence escorting me onward, I began to wonder, what would my life have looked like if I had chosen a path of deeper external solitude and silence? My imagination took flight to a simpler life. To a life that appears more ‘spiritual’.
I looked down at my forearm and saw a temporary tattoo of a pirate with a hook for a hand and a peg for a leg. My daughter had plastered it on me the night before. I recognized it for what it was, a sacred exchange between two temporarily tattooed creatures. That path would have been an escape for me.
Like many of you, I am a contemplative hidden in the world. Embodying the contemplative spirit in the shape of a chaotic life amidst preschooler birthday parties, the rush of fear at the recent neighborhood shooting, running to the grocery store after everyone is tucked in and the occasional dedicated stretches of silence and solitude to fall ever deeper into this Mystery.
This month’s NonRequired Reading List will cover Contemplative Prayer, Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking and Living Without a Why: Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism.
August's NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
There was a song that I shared a few months ago via the NonRequired Reading email, the chorus echoes ‘I can hear crying’ over and over again. That song played on repeat in my mind’s jukebox as I read Contemplative Prayer.
I have not been quiet about Thomas Merton being a hero of mine, though I’m sure he’d shrug his shoulders and smirk, before mumbling some quip about me walking a directionless circle around my False Self. In Contemplative Prayer Merton does just that. He lances the roots of piety to dig below the bogus interiority that impresses the falsely spiritual. He wants to deliver you from yourself. Merton wants you to feel the ‘dread’.
Without dread, the Christian cannot be delivered from the smug self-assurance of the devout ones who know all the answers in advance, who possess all the cliches of the inner life and can defend themselves with infallible ritual forms against every risk and every demand of dialogue with human need and human desperation. (p. 108-9).
Why take the contemplative path if ‘dread’ is the study buddy who nags along the way? Contemplatives hold the dread because Love compels them to do so. Feasting on the humble stew of Love and dread, they sing - ‘I can hear crying’. They sing because they must respond to the unbridled cries of the Amazon on fire, the children in cages at the border, and the anguish of your authentic heart. Contemplative prayer calls us into full personhood in the service of Love. Divine Love burns like a fire and is a painful relief when all that is not Love is burned away.
Thomas Merton says that Contemplative Prayer was written for monks and people of prayer. I think it is also for those of you who feel the ‘dread’ and seek to have a seamless seam between your inner and outer life.
Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking by Bonnie Smith Whitehouse (Get it at the Better World Books or Barnes & Noble)
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” The ghost of ol’ Ralph Waldo Emerson sometimes whispers these lines in my ear while I’m out on a walk. That same spirit describes Bonnie Smith Whitehouse’s meditative walking journal, Afoot and Lighthearted.
The art of walking is a contemplative delight that Whitehouse offers through numerous invitations in Afoot and Lighthearted. The journal offers a reprieve from techno-filled distractions so you can don your laces and stroll in your neighborhood, city, or woods. Here is just a taste of one exercise, ‘The Flaneur and the Urban Landscape’,
The French concept of the flaneur, which comes from nineteenth-century literature, has no correlation in English. The flaneur takes a step back from hustling and bustling through the city and decides simply to stroll or saunter in the midst of the crowd, idly exploring the urban landscape.There is no specific destination the flaneur has in mind; his only goal is to practice the art of idle observation in the midst of busyness. (p. 130).
There are prompts that follow each exercise to give shape to cultivating the practice of mindful walking. Thoreau would be jubilant about this journal, and he makes an appearance among other inspired guides and notable walkers (T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Rachel Carson, Rep. John Lewis, and William Wordsworth to name just a few).
This journal is for anyone seeking to begin an embodied contemplative practice (or for those who need an artistic kick in the ass to drop their phones and walk out the door).
Living Without a Why: Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism by Prof Charlotte Radler, PhD (Get it at the Public Library or NowYouKnowMedia)
This is a concise and vibrating audio introduction to the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. It clocks in at just under four hours but...buckle up and strap down (or whatever seatbelt metaphor you prefer). Dr. Radler invites you into the radical mystical teachings of Meister Eckhart. Late at night I would listen to Living Without a Why while my son slept in my arms. Ruminating on Eckhart’s teaching of the ‘birth of the Son in the Soul’ while holding my son in my own place of emptiness was the holy ground I needed to understand this teaching anew.
There is one phrase from Dr. Radler’s succinct teaching--as much as that is possible with Meister Eckhart--that I will hold onto forever. "For Eckhart, detachment was archaeological rather than architectural" (my paraphrased takeaway of Radler’s unpacking of Eckhart’s teaching on detachment). It has become a mantra animating my internal dialogue. Am I trying to create more space or am I letting go of something so that more space can be freed? It has become my practice to ask this question and attend to the sensations that arise in my body. I wait for Mystery to cue me on where I need to loosen my grip next on this path of emptiness.
As I pull a couple of books on Eckhart’s sermons from shelves, I begin a second listen of Living Without a Why. I recommend Living Without a Why for all those interested in the apophatic vein of the Christian tradition or for those drawn to a somewhat Zen-like approach to Christianity.
Arts and Articles
‘The Black Art of Escape: 400 years have passed. Where do we go from here?’ by Casey Gerald (NY Mag): Casey Gerald is a prophetic and poetic voice. A profound reading (hat tip to Cliff).
Bonus: Watch Casey Gerald’s conversation with Don Lemon on CNN. Gerald’s description on his YouTube channel summarizes the piece as - what it means to be a free black person in America today. (hat tip to Yvette)
‘92Y/The Paris Review Interview Series: Gary Snyder with Eliot Weinberger’ by 92Y (YouTube): I love the way Gary Snyder approaches work from around minute 38.
‘The Art of Being Still’ by Silas House (NYT): Advice not just writers, but all those practicing attention (hat tip to Chris)
Contemplify Update
(many more recorded are coming down the pike soon!)
The last 3 episodes are a part of a series titled ‘Of the Invisible’, conversations with poets on their craft and contemplation.
Maurice Manning on the Symbolic and Actual (Of the Invisible #4)
Chris Dombrowski: Part Two (Of the Invisible #2) (and here's Part One too in case you missed it)
(Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, Overcast, or Contemplify.com)
May you bow to each creature who crosses your path.
You bless their journey by taking your own.
Walk slow with intention.
Don’t avoid the dread, that’s for architects.
My dear archaeologist, dread is a part of the deal.
Best,
Paul
P.S. If you are enjoying the golden glow around the Contemplify fire, please consider tossing another log in by passing a favorite episode or this email onto a kindred spirit. If this message finds you walking down a path unknown, disregard this ask and watch the movements of the shadows. And if you are the rare breed who likes to leave reviews, please do so on Apple Podcasts, it strangely helps get the word out.