contemplative way
The contemplative way of spirituality is the way of stepping aside from anything and everything we think or feel that would distract us from what is present right here and now–the conscious awareness of God’s presence.
Risking Small
Dave Brisbin 12.11.22
Woke up out of a dream in which a couple agreed to adopt triplets, but as soon as the adoption was final, found out all three infants were blind. Doctors told of a procedure that could repair the optic nerves, but no guarantee. Husband was furious, accused the bio-father of fraud, wanted to annul the adoption or add contingency for successful surgery. His wife turned to him—said when you have a baby, you don’t know what’s coming and whatever arrives is yours and you can’t give it back. She reminds him that he’s built businesses from the ground up, that he should know that a life being lived without risk is not being lived at all. Then I woke up.
How do our minds come up with this stuff? My wife wanted to know the end of the story, but I suppose that wasn’t the point. The non-ending leaves the choice midair. What would we do? What place does risk hold in our lives?
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We may be willing to risk big, hoping to acquire enough to become risk-free. But there is no such thing. Human control always fails. Jesus was willing to risk small, a child who never grew out of childlikeness. If we want to find something hidden by a child, we must get on our knees to see the world from a child’s height. If we want to find a big truth hidden by a childlike God, we must get on our knees, let humility empty our illusions of control. The story of Jesus’ birth is the story of our rebirth. Jesus, born into the vulnerability of a child, risked the smallness of never growing out of it. The story of our rebirth is to risk growing back in.
Patience of Job
Dave Brisbin 12.4.22
We’ve all heard of the patience of Job. Book of James called it to our attention in the West when King James translated it that way in 1611. But the word that James originally used primarily means endurance that is at least a bit stoic if not cheerful; when he means patience, he uses a different word. Question is, how cheerful or patient was Job?
To refresh, Job was a righteous, blameless, and incredibly wealthy man with a large family who, for no reason known to him, is stripped of everything he owns and loves including his children and his health. His wife tells him to curse God and die, but though his heart is broken, his integrity is not. He curses his birth, but not God. Three friends come to comfort him, but end up only debating, maintaining that Job must have done something secretly wrong to have earned such punishment. As their arguments escalate, Job grows increasingly angry, sarcastic, biting as he verbally attacks them, shifting his focus to God, complaining, criticizing, even berating God for targeting him and letting the wicked continue to prosper. He feels and says everything we’d imagine he would, everything we ourselves would and have at times of our own greatest loss.
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When Job replies, it is in full submission. But more than that, it’s in full release of his illusion of control—being righteous, pledging allegiance to God, assuming he knows how life works. Accepting what the moment brings is his first step toward trusting what he may never understand. Job had to travel kicking and screaming through pain and loss, through his own impatience to anything that would look like patience to James. Or King James. Or us.
That Simple
Dave Brisbin 11.27.22
The older I get, the simpler things look. I used to love complexity. All the words, diagrams, contingencies, choices. Now I love that my wardrobe has come down to one basic uniform—black shirt, jeans, alternating pairs of shoes. And I love that I’m caring less what anyone thinks about my fashion choices. I’m convinced that the things in life that remain complicated are less important than things that don’t. And becoming aware of the complexity to which I remain attached is one way of knowing where my stone is not yet smooth.
Jesus was a master of simplicity. Pared everything down to the fewest possible words. An image or metaphor. We imagine God’s kingdom to be filled with laws, rules, doctrine, rituals, good works. Those are all parts but not the point. Jesus boils it down to one thing. Love. Of God and each other—which in turn become one thing in the act of loving. Seek that and all else will be added. Live that and all else is commentary. And when we do, what does that feel like? Just one thing.
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The one thing to which Jesus is pointing feels like gratitude. Gratitude is what love feels like. We can’t be grateful and angry at the same time. Or insecure, envious, victimized. Gratitude embraces the humility of receivership, acknowledges a gift we could not give ourselves. We can’t manufacture gratitude. We become it when we let go of the complexity of entitlement. It’s that simple. And that difficult at the same time.
In the Garden
Dave Brisbin 11.20.22
Do you know how many creation stories there are in the bible? Two… Surprised? How many flood stories? Two. There are many “doublets” or repetitions of stories in the bible that scholars attribute to a near literary certainty that, apart from the epistles of the New Testament, the books of the bible weren’t written as an author would write a novel, but compiled as a film documentary would compile sources to weave a story.
These ancient Hebrews books as we’ve come to know them, comprise various sources that scholars have reconstructed using internal clues: the specific name of God being used, language dating from different periods, discrepancies in details. In the Genesis creation story, the two traditions are simply laid side by side with no attempt to harmonize; the differing details weren’t meant to be harmonized. Six days or one day, God hovering over chaos or starting with land and mist, man created last and all at once as a race or first with just one man and woman. We want to resolve these differences into one true story, but the differences themselves tell the truth of the story.
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We think only one thing can be true at a time. The ancients knew better. That life is a paradox of seeming contradiction that tells a whole truth. Until we can embrace the mystery at the heart of life, we can’t follow the Way of Jesus, the vulnerable relinquishing in the second half of life that leads us back to the Source. Our first home. In the garden.
Fishermen and Businessmen
Dave Brisbin 11.13.22
A businessman watches a fisherman come in with a great catch. Asks how long it took to catch so much. Only a short while. Why not stay out longer and catch more? It’s enough to feed his family for the day: he gets up early to fish, plays with his children, takes a nap with his wife, then plays guitar at night with friends. The businessman schools the fisherman to stay out longer, catch more, sell, save, buy more boats, build distribution companies, invest in stocks, and after twenty or twenty five years, retire to do exactly what he is doing each day right now.
Why doesn’t the businessman see the obvious? Why isn’t the fisherman tempted by the businessman’s plan? The businessman represents the first half of life with its focus on deriving meaning from acquisition. The fisherman represents the second half of life with its realization that lasting meaning only comes from within, not from circumstance. The fisherman takes what is needed each day from an inexhaustible sea, feels no need to own storehouses, trusts the sea and doesn’t fear the future. For the businessman, each day’s work is calculated to create a specific outcome. Against all contingencies, he must carve out and protect assets he hopes will avert the possible futures he fears.
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How many of us really admire the fisherman? Isn’t he a poster boy for lost potential? First half mentality can never see the wisdom of the second half, yet second half mentality includes the first half…as a tool for living physical life, not an identity. The difference between the businessman and fisherman is a vanquished ego. We can’t acquire that. It can only be relinquished.
The Way of the Heart
Dave Brisbin 10.23.22
From third century Christian tradition…young hermit tells an elder: I know the objective of life, what God asks of us, and the best way of serving him—I’m just not capable of doing all that I should. The elder is quiet for while then says: You know about a city on the far side of the ocean, but you haven’t found a ship, loaded your bags, or crossed the sea. Why spend time imagining what it’s like to walk its streets? Knowing the objective of life and how to serve the Lord is not enough. Put into practice that which you think, and the way will be revealed all by itself.
Two hundred years earlier, the first Jewish followers of Jesus agreed. Calling themselves talmidey orha—Followers of the Way in Aramaic, they were making an emphatic statement. If their primary focus was on the Way Jesus lived and loved rather than the historical person himself, then their primary focus was on action rather than thought. A very Jewish trait. They were saying with their lives that they understood Jesus’ message to be a way of living, not just thinking or believing.
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The way of the mind—our thoughts and beliefs—can take us right to the door of the connected life Jesus calls Kingdom. But only Jesus’ Way—the way of the heart, contemplative practice—brings us through. It’s been seventeen hundred years since the Way of the heart identified Western Christians as followers of Jesus. It’s time.
Tragic Gap
Dave Brisbin 10.16.22
A wealthy man asks a Zen master to write a text that will inspire and remind him of his love and devotion for his family. The master returns with a beautiful calligraphy that reads: The father dies. The son dies. The grandson dies. The man is furious, but the master calmly tells him that this is his blessing. If his son died first, it would be devastating. If his grandson died, unbearable. But if his family disappears in this order, he will be blessed and his family will continue for generations.
There is a natural order that we see written in life or just in our own minds, and we are very attached to it as the way things should be. Any losses we suffer hurt, but when they violate the natural order, as the death of a child, we are devastated by both the loss itself and the offense against the natural order. We anguish and rage in a tragic gap between the way things are and the way we think they should be, a limit situation where we run headlong into the limit of our ability to control an outcome or even the narrative in our head.
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Jesus shows the way through the tragic gaps of life without losing identity or faith in the process. It’s the way of descent, becoming unattached, unidentified with the narratives in our minds that judge what should be. Those who were marginalized by life, the poor, those least invested in the status quo always followed Jesus first, were the most open to accept life just as it was with hope and gratitude. Because working for change without first accepting the limits of this day is just another tragic gap.
Choicelessness
Dave Brisbin 10.9.22
Thirty years ago, living alone, I was trying to be a monk in the city. Maintaining silence in apartment and car, reading all I could find on spiritual life, up at 5AM, prayerfully running through dark streets, meditation cool down by the community pool, back up to my apartment to journal, getting ready for work. Day in and out. Put that way, sounds like I knew what I was doing, had a sense of confidence in direction and growth.
A 1993 journal entry written after run and prayer asks, Where are you, Lord? Where do I go to listen? What do I listen for? How do I listen? Do I strain? Do I relax? Is it obvious? Subtle? Does it frustrate you that I am so deaf? A snapshot of the condition my condition was in: that despite all I was doing, I was not experiencing what I expected, feared I was doing it all wrong, anxious even despondent over ever getting it right. Yet the same entry also contained the seeds of answers breaking conscious ground—that God was not somewhere else to be found, but right in front of my face, trying to get my attention. That it wasn’t a matter of where to find God’s voice, but of thinning out eardrums too thick to hear the still, small voice already present.
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To choose not to be distracted or dissuaded. To cultivate the daily experience of choiceless awareness was the shape of an inner journey that eventually convinced me I was already hearing God’s voice, but in a way I never expected, imagined, or even desired. Until I did.
Task Within the Task
Dave Brisbin 10.2.22
Remember the Karate Kid movie? Has to be the original from 1984. Kid asks the master to teach him karate, and the master tells him to wax his cars. But with this exact movement—wax on, wax off. When that’s done, sand the floor, paint the fence, all with very specific movements. After weeks, the kid is fed up with slave labor, screams at the master, and turns to leave. Then there’s this great moment where the master puts all those movements into context with the punches he throws, the kid deftly blocking each one with muscles hardened by the memory of each defensive motion.
Why didn’t the master tell the kid what he was really doing while he was doing all that work? Because the kid would have brought all he thought he knew about karate into the process and messed it all up. Only way to learn a pure motion is to separate the motion from the desired outcome, and only way to a desired outcome is to learn the pure motion. What a metaphor for life. What are we really doing when we do the things we do all day long? What really matters? What lasts?
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Like the kid, if we focus too soon on the outcome we think really matters, we won’t practice pure movements long enough to build character and container for real meaning. But if we don’t eventually question the meaning of our movements, we’ll never learn that they are just containers for a deeper task—the one that shows us who we really are.
First Four Steps
Dave Brisbin 9.25.22
From the desert monastic communities of Egypt and Judea in the 4th century: a young monk asks his elder how he can come closer to God. Elder tells him to go to the cemetery and insult the dead. Dutifully he goes, and upon return the elder asks: did you go to the cemetery? Yes. Did you insult the dead? Yes. Did they respond to you? No. Now go back and praise the dead. Upon return: did they respond to you? No. When you can respond to the insults and praises of men the way the dead do, you will be closer to God.
The early church understood the value of unoffendability and unflatterability. Of learning that contentment, meaning, purpose, identity don’t depend on external opinion or circumstance, but a deep interior connection. Today, such values are not only lost, but our culture, both secular and religious, is built on noise, social approval, compulsive activity, and complexity. Re-establishing the deep interior connection Jesus calls being one with the Father means living salmon-like, swimming against the stream of our culture and our own minds
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Bringing these four states of being into our daily routine changes our fundamental relationship with life and each other in ways we can’t fully anticipate—only experience. Stepping away from internal and external noise, the need for activity, accomplishment, and possessions to show us who we are, builds a quiet confidence and humility, the ability to hear the utter silence of God’s voice.
