An Invitation: A new year of spiritual exploration

Overall, church membership in the United States has been declining steadily for decades, with precipitous decline in the last twenty years. And unfortunately, The Episcopal Church is no exception.

However, over this same period, meditation practices have soared in popularity around the globe. Mindfulness Meditation, Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong, for example, have attracted more people than rapidly declining churches have lost. The healing power of these meditation practices has caught the attention of the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, but it’s the spiritual dimension of these practices that has led many to declare that they are “spiritual but not religious.”

The Holy Spirit might be trying to tell us something.

The good news is that Christians have a rich contemplative tradition. In fact, meditation practices were an essential part of Christianity for the first 1600 years. Jesus’ habit of regularly withdrawing to “a lonely place apart” and entering the wilderness for prayer suggest that meditative prayer was central to his own life and ministry. And meditative reading of the Bible (“Lectio Divina”), rather than analytical reading, was revered for centuries as a way of opening oneself more fully to a life-changing encounter with God.

But with the rise of rationalism (“I think, therefore I am”) and the “demystification” of Holy Scripture (“What does it really mean?”), ancient Christian meditation practices began to wane.

Fortunately, the contemplative dimension of Christianity persisted, particularly in monasteries and convents, and ancient contemplative practices began to experience a renaissance in the twentieth century in luminaries like Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, and John Main (all of whom were monks: Benedictine, Trappist, and Cistercian).

Today, “Centering Prayer” (a legacy of Thomas Keating) and “Christian Meditation” (a legacy of John Main) are built on ancient Christian tradition, and they are steadily growing in popularity throughout the world, with vast, global networks of practitioners. Some of these practitioners have remained in churches; but some have left, having discovered little in the institutional church to support the contemplative dimension of the Gospel.

The Jesuit priest, Anthony DeMello, tells a simple parable that illustrates both the challenge and the opportunity before us:

“The Explorer”

The explorer returned to his people, who were eager to know about the Amazon.
But how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded his heart when he saw exotic flowers and heard the night-sounds of the forests; when he sensed the danger of wild beasts or paddled his canoe over treacherous rapids?
He said, "Go and find out for yourselves." To guide them he drew a map of the river.
They pounced upon the map. They framed it in their townhall. They made copies of it for themselves. And all who had a copy considered themselves experts on the river; for, did they not know its every turn and bend, how broad it was and how deep, where the rapids were and where the falls?
It is said that Buddha stubbornly refused to be drawn into talking about God. He was probably familiar with the dangers of drawing maps for armchair explorers.

(Anthony De Mello, in The Song of the Bird)
It is possible to know all about the Bible, theology, and the religions of the world, and therefore believe that we know much about God. But these are maps, not the journey itself. Our invitation is to make the journey into God ourselves, perhaps by learning ancient Christian practices that can open us more fully to the reality and experience God’s transforming presence and activity.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” Galatians 2:20