practicing presence

What we think of prayer and speaking with God and how we practice such things may have little to do with how God speaks or communicates with us. Learning more of the nature of God’s communication and native language from the ancient Christian tradition can tremendously help point us in the best direction when it comes to unceasing prayer.

Practicing Presence

Dave Brisbin 10.4.20
Have you ever been with someone who was so fully present and focused on you that you’ll never forget the moment? Someone who made you feel at that moment that you were the only person in the world? Or the room at least? Presence is an amazing thing. We can’t easily define it; it’s even harder to practice. But we know it instantly when it is trained upon us. Maybe because it is so rare these days that we instantly know it when we experience the difference. Years ago I had an elderly friend whose presence made me feel completely seen and accepted, and from that example, I can only image what it must have been to stand in Jesus’ presence and have those eyes trained on me. What a gift we give when we give our presence to another person. Why is it so hard for us? And how do become more present?

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If we look at the ways we can immerse ourselves in the day-to-day areas of our lives, maybe we can find the common thread between immersing ourselves in God, each other, in nature, and in our culture. In the stories preserved for us in the gospels, we see Jesus immersing himself in each of these areas, and through him, we can begin to find our own way to practice presence and become the person who can give it all away again, leaving each person we meet better than found.
 

Einstein’s Blackboard

Dave Brisbin 9.20.20
Still talking about presence as the foundation of Jesus’ Way and the contemplative prayer that will take us there. When Moses came down off the mountain with God, his face was shining, and when contemplatives and mystics come back from their experience of presence, they say strange things to try to express themselves: “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.” (Rumi) What are we to make of such words? When Jesus says unless we hate our fathers and mothers, children and even our own lives, we can’t follow him, what are we to make of that? Truth is, trying to understand the words of those who come back from the experience of presence is like trying to understand the equations on Einstein’s blackboard—a dense wall of numbers and symbols that stops you in your tracks with its sheer incomprehensibility.

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It’s not until there’s enough of a change in our minds to allow the beginning of a change of habit, habitual action in the direction of the practice of presence, that we’ll get our first inklings of what Jesus, the contemplatives and mystics, and perhaps even Einstein are trying to express.
 

Present Service

Dave Brisbin 9.13.20
We’ve been talking about presence. Presence as the foundation of Jesus’ Way. Though Jesus doesn’t use the word presence in the gospels, he’s always talking about love, and love isn’t possible without presence. Love is the effect of being present—what it feels like to be present. To be fully present is to be in love. And what is the effect of being in love? Love understood as complete identification with another is a great definition of humility, fully realizing our position as equals in relationship. And what is the effect of humility? Service, of course. Jesus is always talking about service. For him, it’s the proof of a heart inclined toward his Way, kingdom. Service can be done for all sorts of reasons: duty, honor, obligation, reward. But service done for any reason not present in the moment of connection never reflects love or humility.

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When service is as automatic as breathing, as essential as good food, it becomes less what we do and more who we are. We won’t need to go looking for ways to serve as much as we’ll see opportunities for service in each moment. And though no one will pin a medal on us for these every-moment acts of service that simply leave people better than we found them…when service has become who we are and how we’re present, no one will need to.
 

Divine Dissatisfaction

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Dave Brisbin 3.8.20
If we are to be persuaded to try to make this Lent a transforming process, the creation of a new habitual way of living in greater presence, it’s important for us to have realistic expectation of the result. Most of us would say that we expect peace in some form, and by that we mean we want any and all hurting to stop, an absence of the pain and longing that characterize so many of our lives. But Jesus never promised this. He said that he gives us his peace in one passage, then says that he didn’t come to bring peace, but the sword in another. It’s not until we translate his sayings back into Aramaic that his meaning comes clear.

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When I was just starting my spiritual formation decades ago, a mentoring pastor said he saw in me a “divine dissatisfaction,” a spiritual unrest and longing for something I couldn’t quite define. When we look at the clues left us in scripture, it becomes more and more apparent that this divine dissatisfaction is there for a reason, and we should pray it never leaves us.

A Sacrament a Day

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Dave Brisbin 3.1.20
I often say that I’m a teacher, not preacher, by which I mean that a preacher’s main purpose is to persuade, and a teacher’s is to encourage students to engage. Both impart information, but the agenda is different. That said, there are things I do want to persuade my listeners: to be intimately part of a faith community and to passionately engage their own spiritual journeys. How this is done is entirely up to them, but this Lent I have been trying to persuade everyone to use this time to try to establish a new habitual way of making themselves more present to whoever and whatever occupies their moments—and therefore to God in the moment. How is it that we are persuaded to do anything?

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A marketer says we are persuadable when someone encourages our dreams, justifies our failures, allays our fears, confirms our suspicions, and helps throw rocks at our enemies. When you think of it, these five are all included in the promises of Gospel, if in a slightly altered form than probably first intended. But by whatever method of persuasion, if we can commit to creating one personal sacrament—a simple concrete action signifying an inner transforming intent—and performing it every day of this Lent: if we were to commit to making just one person smile each day, we may be amazed at what can change.

Blessed Assurance

Dave Brisbin 12.29.19
Anticipating a new year and new decade, how best to prepare and direct ourselves? How best to find the hope, peace, and assurance we need to remain undeterred and undistracted amid the noise and chaos of another year? Coming from an unexpected direction, I get a phone call from a licensed clinical psychologist, a PhD who had a near death experience that was so profound that he had to write about it, asking if I would be willing to read his manuscript. His story stood out among other such experiences I’ve read in its sincere attempt at objectively describing what is inherently a radically subjective and ultimately inexpressible experience—an experience of pure presence, of God’s presence—yet completely devoid of religious imagery. And most interestingly, his description matched in some cases almost word for word the experiences of the mystics and contemplatives who have written for millennia.

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Whether external circumstances like illness or accident bring us to the point where ego is completely stripped, or whether we live our contemplative practice to point we can voluntarily go to the same place, there is a common experience of the peace and assurance that all is well when we get beneath our conscious thought stream that is constantly telling us otherwise and maintaining the illusion of aloneness. That is the hope and blessed assurance we need to approach this new year, the conviction of knowing that ultimately everything is always and will always be well.

The Gifts of the Magi

Dave Brisbin 12.01.19
Why is there so much depression and anxiety at Christmas? One psychologist writes that there are three reasons: the demands of time, preparation, activities, and finances; family dysfunctional issues that are highlighted during the season; and inability to meet expectations placed on us both physically and emotionally. When you think about it, we first experience Christmas as children—learn what our culture says it’s supposed to be through a child’s eyes. And it’s a perfect storm for children: from three feet off the ground, the lights, decorations, candy, treats, magical beliefs, gifts, suspense, and anticipation create a breathless wonder. How do we expect to recreate all that through our adult eyes, looking at a different world from six feet off the ground? To recreate Christmas as our hearts remember it, is to recreate the world in our hearts as the child sees it.

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This is Jesus’ message to us—that the Kingdom he’s leading us toward is only experienced from three feet off the ground, from the standing height of a child or the kneeling height of a servant. And the genius of the Magi is that for all their learning and power, they retained enough of the attitude of a child to recognize in a poverty stricken infant the king for whom they traveled so far. For us, as in the O. Henry story, The Gifts of the Magi, we see how our full presence to each other in love recreates the abandon of the child that recreates the Christmas our hearts remember.

Stars Beneath Our Feet

Dave Brisbin 9.22.19
Years ago, I drove all the way to Death Valley deep in the Mojave desert, arriving late at night so I could walk out into a dune field under a really dark sky to see the stars. I wasn’t disappointed. The vast canopy turned overhead with the band of the galaxy angling across, and from my dunetop perch, I felt close to the stars. But was I any closer there than here in the city where I can count the stars on a couple of hands, or during the day when no stars pierce the blue curtain at all? Truth is, the stars are just where they are all the time, whether we can see them or not. And more mind bendingly, there are stars beneath our feet as well. It’s just that the ball we’re standing on always obscures. God’s presence is like the stars—always there whether we see/feel it or not.

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To realize that God’s presence overhead can be obscured by the rising of our nearest star—our own consciousness, and God’s presence beneath our feet is hidden by our focus on the needs of our physical lives and our very worldview. To conceive of a presence that is everywhere at once, equal density and distribution like the stars in every direction, is a first step. But meditatively practicing the setting of our conscious thought stream to create a dark sky for God’s presence overhead, and mindfully practicing the sensing of God’s presence beneath our feet during the whirlwind of our daily lives is the experience of a presence that will remain real whether we feel it or not.

Maundy Thursday

Dave Brisbin 4.7.19
Fifth Sunday of Lent: And so we come to Maundy Thursday as we work through the liturgical days of Holy Week.  The traditional scripture passages associated with Maundy Thursday are all the events and preparations for the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, and Jesus’ arrest. It’s a busy day as Jesus gives a new commandment to his friends at supper—to love each other as he has loved them, institutes the Eucharist/communion, washes his friends’ feet, and prays a long prayer before going to the garden of Gethsemane.  But as we look at the deeper significance of each of these events, the principle at the core of all of them is the unity for which Jesus prays at the end of supper. 

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The new commandment, the washing of feet, communion, the return to the Father’s will in the garden all point toward the need to be one in identity, meaning, and purpose. And as we add Thursday to the four preceding days of Holy Week, we can see an overlay with the four stages of spiritual growth that trace our progression from self to group to interior work to unity in the broadest sense. It is a beautiful and essential representation of both the final week of Jesus’ journey and the totality of our own.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Dave Brisbin 3.31.19
Fourth Sunday of Lent: Each liturgical day of Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday has a name and scripture passages designated that tell the story of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. But each day and its passages also tell another story when we look beneath the literal meaning. They show us the internal experience of the Way of Jesus…the path he takes all the way to the cross. 

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Focusing on Holy Tuesday and Spy Wednesday that tell of the wise and foolish bridesmaids and about Judas and Mary, we find stories about balance. Jesus tells us that the parable of the bridesmaids is about watchfulness and readiness, and the context of the Jewish wedding tradition balances the anticipation of new life to come with the immersion in the life that is now. Judas, whether conspiring to have Jesus arrested or sparring with Mary over whether the perfume she pours over Jesus should have been sold for the poor, is wholly focused on macro political and social issues. Mary is only focused on her relationship with Jesus—intimate and vulnerable. Jesus is quick to point out the disconnect, and we are left to see how the balance between anticipation of new life to come and presence to daily details, the balance between the big issues over which we have no control and the intimacy of our closest relationships is part of this week of keys to Kingdom life.

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