Martin Laird's NEW book!

Tonight I received this book from the big brown UPS truck. I am very excited to get Martin Laird's second book A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation. I already have a labeled category for Martin Laird on this blog, because his first book Into the Silent Land was so profound and beautiful. I remember that other bloggers liked this book, too--Robin has 14 posts about Into the Silent Land!

Decisions, decisions, decisions. . . .

CB and I are starting to make decisions about what we want to do in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau. Which tour, which path, which way to go?

As we ready for our big trip, other thoughts flutter around:

• I've met for a Monday lunch with three friends since 1995. Last week DHT was telling us how her elderly father is so much fun that his grandchildren love to do things with him. Then everyone decided that we need to be "FUN" people; but I am not that type of extroverted person. Today when I voiced that doubt, the others told me I was a good listener and was interested in all sorts of things, so I'd be okay. (whew!)

• The Wisdom Class finishes Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird tomorrow. We will not meet again until after Labor Day. For the first time in years, we will take a long break. In this time, I need to decide upon our next book; I am seriously considering The Case for God by Karen Armstrong, which comes out in a paperback edition in September.

• I signed Maisie up for a training class that will meet for eight weeks starting on August 18. That will be good for both of us!

• Even with the Kindle, I'll be taking too many books on our trip to Alaska. There are a few I want to finish and then leave with AE and KA. My friend PD gave me some interesting books about Alaska that will be good to read. It is always my tendency to bring along an excess of books, as if there are no bookstores anywhere I am going. . . .

• CB's 60th birthday will occur while we are on the ferry from Juneau to Bellingham. It will not be a big celebration, and he doesn't seem to care, which is good. It is odd to me not to be baking him his usual chocolate cake.

• I typed up the short section about pain from chapter 6 in Into the Silent Land. I emailed it as an attachment to several people I know who are suffering. If anyone is interested in receiving that, please email me and I will send it to you.
  

Fear

When I suffered from clinical depression for years in the 1990s, I also was afflicted with anxiety, sometimes even panic attacks. At the time I thought all this was caused by me not having enough faith and maybe because I did not pray "right." How much I needed to learn!

Only in hindsight do I see how God worked through all this time to grow my faith, my marriage and my family relationships. As Martin Laird writes in his book Into the Silent Land:

"Certainly there is deep conversion, healing, and unspeakable wholeness to be discovered along the contemplative path. The paradox, however, is that this healing is revealed when we discover that our wound and the wound of God are one wound." (118)

This is true, even though I did not venture on the "contemplative path" until this new century. Since 1995, I keep encountering "deep conversion, healing, and unspeakable wholeness" continuing to reveal themselves in me. All this confirms my favorite quote (which loosely is) "The closer you come to God, the closer you come to your true self" by Thomas Merton.

"From Victim to Witness: Practicing with Affliction," the sixth chapter in Laird's book gives three different stories of people who journeyed through fear, pain and addiction to discover each (person) was not the drama but had been caught into the morass of feelings and thoughts surrounding the object of emotion, pain or addiction. It is like the mountain not identifying with its weather conditions, as described in this post.

Here is Laird's example about fear:

"Laura's transforming encounter with fear reveals not the disappearance of fear but the disappearance of struggling with fear. Fear remains present, but she is not afraid of fear. The struggle with any afflictive thought or feeling is the result of the noisy chatter of the mind. This chattering, commenting mind turns the simple experience of any thought or feeling into an experience of grasping or fleeing. When this mental chatter is brought to stillness, the struggle relaxes and the nature of fear is seen to be different from what we previously thought. As (Meister) Eckhart put it, 'what was previously an obstacle to you is now a great help.' Fear as affliction is transformed into fear as vehicle of Presence." (102-103)

(Remember that the word "fear" can be substituted with "any afflictive thought or feeling" such as anger, jealousy, addiction, inadequacy, etc.)

Meditation or contemplative prayer consistently practiced will help us greatly.

Laird, Martin. Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Oxford: University Press, 2006.

Together

Can you see the cataracts in Baillie's eyes? She also is mostly deaf. I guess this comes with old age, as she is almost 14 years old.

Baillie is in the crate we originally bought for Maisie, not realizing how big she would grow. This crate fit into the space in the laundry room near the larger crate that we long ago bought for son BJ's lab Licorice, who has since died. This crate has a door on two sides--the one where Baillie's head hangs out and the other on the end on the left.

Now Baillie likes to sleep in this crate. But in the mornings when she wakes up, CB says that she cannot find the way out. She seems to be confused and sleepy. CB has to guide her out and also in the direction of the backdoor so she will go outside.

Baillie circling around the crate, unable to find her way out, reminds me of a story that Martin Laird relates in his book Into the Silent Land. This is the story I posted here--about the dog who ran around in circles on his long walks, only because he had been kept in a cage when he was young and did not realize his present reality--freedom.

CB helping Baillie find the way out of the crate is an example of how friends (or community) offer an alternative view or path to go--in companionship. Of course, this is the ideal of community, which was beautifully discussed by RevGalBlogPals envisioning the future church today (if you click on the links in the comments section).

We help each other. . . . together.

Running in Circles

"And so we run in tight, little circles. . . ." (20)

"When pummeled by too many thoughts a long walk would cure me of the punch-drunk feeling of lifelessness. The normal route led along open fields, and not infrequently I would see a man walking his four Kerry blue terriers. These were amazing dogs. Bounding energy, elastic grace, and electric speed, they coursed and leapt through open fields. It was invigorating just to watch thee muscular stretches of freedom race along. Three of the four dogs did this, I should say. The fourth stayed behind and, off to the side of its owner, ran in tight circles. I could never understand why it did this; it had all the room in the world to leap and bound. One day I was bold enough to ask the owner, 'Why does your dog do that? Why does it run in little circles instead of running with the others?' He explained that before he acquired the dog, it had lived practically all its life in a cage and could only exercise by running in circles. For this dog, to run meant to run in tight circles. So instead of bounding through the open fields that surrounded it, it ran in circles.

"This event has always stayed with me as a powerful metaphor of the human condition. For indeed we are free. . . . But the memory of the cage remains. And so we run in tight, little circles, even while immersed in open fields of grace and freedom.

"The mind's obsessive running in tight circles generates and sustains the anguish that forms the mental cage in which we live much of our lives--or what we take to be our lives. This cage can be comfortable enough; that dog wagged its tail all day long. But the long-term effects on humans can still be pretty damaging. It makes us believe we are separate from God. . . ." (19-20)

Laird, Martin. Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Oxford: University Press, 2006.

What thoughts keep your mind going around and around? "I'm not enough." "I'm always late." "I'm better than him/her." "They don't like me." Around and around we go again and again.

Into the Silent Land

I am trying to remember where I first heard about this book. I've thought that it might have been at Carl McColman's blog but could not find it; I found that Robin was reading it in April, but I first read it before then. Maybe I read about it at The Mercy Blog.

Despite when I first read it, I am reading it again along with the Wisdom Class, a book study that meets weekly at All Saints. Since I facilitate the group, I am the one who gets to choose the books to read! Fortuitously, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird has seven chapters, which was the number of weeks until I left on our Alaska trip. We have read and discussed the first two chapters thus far.

The stories and images the Laird describes stick with me. In the first chapter he wrote about each of us being like a mountain peak. We're the mountain but NOT the weather that surrounds it: clouds, sunshine, fog, rain, snow. These are like our emotions, which we so identify with that we do not realize they are not WHO we are, but a passing state.

"The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation, emotions, and inspiration, the spectacular world of creation around us, are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God. But we are not the weather. We are the mountain. Weather is happening--delightful sunshine, dull sky, or destructive storm--this is undeniable. But if we think we are the weather happening on Mount Zion (and most of us do precisely this with our attention riveted to the video), then the fundamental truth of our union with God remains obscured and our sense of painful alienation heightened. When the mind is brought to stillness we see that we are the mountain and not the changing patterns of weather appearing on the mountain. We are the awareness in which thoughts and feelings (what we take to be ourselves) appear like so much weather on Mount Zion.

"For a lifetime we have taken this weather--our thoughts and feelings--to be ourselves, taken ourselves to be this video to which the attention is riveted. Stillness reveals that we are the silent, vast awareness in which the video is playing." (16)

Laird, Martin. Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Oxford: University Press, 2006.