Contemplative Christianity

© By Peter T. Haas

In solemn remembrance of moments seared with shock, we wish to connect more deeply with the meaning of life. We wish for personal knowledge and direct experience with purpose and meaning. It is in pain where we feel most vulnerable to despair and yet it is in despair where we may feel most surrendered to your presence. In this world of power and wealth, we grasp for more. When we feel the rope running out, we keep grasping at what we have and expect more to be given. But in moments of despair and shock, there is no more rope. That is when we must let go. We let go in utter surrender of self and total trust in you. It is a frightening prospect. Life exists to demonstrate this lesson. Over and over again, the human condition, full as it is with all its delights and terrors, can become our teacher. It can show us that meaning and purpose are available not in ourselves but in awakening to higher influences from above, from you.

 Life on planet earth sometimes supports meaning and sometimes does not. War. Terror. Disease. Disaster. These are realities that demonstrate to us that the human condition is quite vulnerable and still in development.  They are realities that test our confidence that there is any meaning at all to our human existence. When Jesus encountered the shock of his imminent death, he gave us a model: “forgive them for they know not what they do.” He also taught us the deepest truth of human existence: pain is rooted in resistance, and freedom is found in surrender and forgiveness, coupling “forgive them” with “not my will be done, but Thine.”  Hidden in the heart of the human experience is Silence, and in the Silence we feel the living presence we tend to normally mute and mutate in much of our human endeavors. In the Silence, we find Presence, and in the Presence, we find Purpose. Silence is not emptiness. Nor is it impersonal. Silence, God’s first word, is the state of rest wherein love and wisdom rise. This is not learned. It is experienced.

Thus, in solemn remembrance of moments seared with shock, and in anticipation of moments to come that inevitably will dramatically teach us again that the human condition is still in serious development, and not to be trusted naively, we join with Christ in the silence of forgiveness and surrender, assured that we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another and that in Christ nothing can separate us from the loving presence of God – neither suffering, death or things to come.  We are carriers of presence into the future being of humanity, carrying forth into a future that can be different if we would so awaken to the meaning of silence, forgiveness and surrender.

In holy awe for all saints and souls whose journey is now complete.

In and through Christ we pray. Amen.

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