In The Absence of God.

Three of the Survivors of The Sandakan-Ranau Death March.

Writing a Good Friday sermon is difficult. The violence, injustice and incredible cruelty of the incident is overpowering. The machinations of those involved to maintain power and control, to manipulate those in charge to do their bidding and the fear-full failure of those who followed Jesus is almost impossible to accept. We struggle with the pain of this event and, perhaps most of all, the sense of abandonment experienced by Jesus – by both God and those whom he had lived amongst.

 

John presents Jesus as assured and confident throughout both his Gospel and this event. He is the symbol of one who has unbreakable faith in God. Jesus is depicted by John as an icon to be grasped as the standard of faith for all within the Johnannine community in their battle with tradition and society. On the cross there is none of the brokenness of Gethsemane and the cry of despair we find in Mark.

Even the words ‘It is finished’ (19:30) signify Jesus has confidently completed the task given to him, to make the Father known[1]. While it is often linked to the atoning for sins as if Jesus is saying: I have made the sacrifice of my body which I came to make on behalf of creation, this is not John’s point. This would certainly be the way the author of Hebrews would read it[2], but it is not John’s emphasis, nor is it mine. Instead the focus is Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s commission revealed even in the face of suffering which despite the confidence is real[3]. The effect is to reveal love and expose hate and so offer a new beginning. [4]

What a challenging mission this was and is. It cost Jesus his life. It cost the one who was there at the beginning of creation his being in this world, and revealed that being as the Christ of the Cosmos.  It cost beyond measure, the cruelty was beyond pain and was achieved in great silence and deep stillness.

It was the silence of being laid bare without the comfort of the felt presence of God or those who were close to him. Even if people were there, there is a deep silence in suffering separating the one suffering from all who attempt to be present. It is deep, private, harrowing and uncommunicable. There is no way anyone else can understand the depth of our personal suffering, what ever it is and how ever it manifests itself.

 

The danger is we may try and emulate the response of John’s Jesus and find ourselves unable to be as iconic, stoic or faithful as John portrays it. I doubt that that was the reality.

In 2010 I walked the Ranau to Sandakan death march for the first time. This was the march at the very end of the Second World War the Japanese army forced 2,434 prisoners of war to undertake. Only 6 survived and they men who escaped. When we walked the track we did so for a soldier who died. Mine was Padre Harold Wardle-Greenwood. He was a brave and compassionate man who cared for the dying in his group of 50 on the March. Yet, Lynette Silver writes “Harold Wardle-Greenwood had comforted the dying and disconsolate for so long that he was now broken physically and spiritually. He had lost his faith in a God who, he believed had forsaken them. Indeed,” Silver continues, “it would have taken a man of superhuman faith to have believed such death and suffering was God’s will”.

In 2012 I walked for Padre Thompson. As I sat on the top of the hill where Thompson died, I had little doubt that if it had been me that I too would have felt completely abandoned by God. The hill, even for a well fed well rested reasonably fit person was a challenge, coming after several days of walking through the intense heat, the suffocating humidity, the rain and the unceasing red gluggy mud sticking to your boots. For men who had had no nourishment, were sick with a range of debilitating illnesses and lugging twice their body weight in equipment, it must have been hell only punctuated by the sounds of shots as the guards shot another soldier and rolled them over the edge.

This was suffering that could have been avoided if appropriate action had been taken when it was planned. It was suffering that was covered up and forgotten about for over 40 years. This was suffering that was real and needless. This was suffering of the deep silence only Jesus could share for only the suffering of Jesus on the cross is able to replicate the abandonment these men felt. Keith Botterill, a survivor, comments they kept going in the hope that someone would survive to tell their story. 6 men fulfilled that hope.

John portrays Jesus as confident in God to glorify him for his faithfulness unto death, yet I wonder if that is exactly how Jesus felt? Would Jesus have been disappointed if the situation had been resolved and he had continued to live and be in the world? Would it have been a failure if the Jews and the Romans had recognised the mission of Jesus and changed their way of being?

For us who may find ourselves in the midst of the silence of an absent God, are we expected to be as iconic as Jesus and plough on with unbruised hope? Is this a realistic ask of people facing a diagnosis of cancer for themselves or someone they love; for someone who has lost their livelihood and home; for someone who despite all their efforts are unable to work or get work; for those who are burying families due to the insanity of war; or those unable to be with their family because of incarceration?

Yes, John, you can hold Jesus up as a model but remember Jesus was human as well as divine and felt every abandonment by his friends, every lash of tongue and whip, and every hammer blow, just like those others who were crucified at the same time. He too would have felt submerged in the abyss of a silent God. 

Where does that leave us? Do we join with John and see Jesus the icon of suffering we are to emulate or do we to look beneath the story and see the struggle of a human being deeply broken by a death he would rather have avoided? How do we make sense of his and our suffering? How do we hang on when we are dying, in whatever form that particular death takes, and hope in hope itself.

We can appeal to the resurrection as the evidence of hope but is that always possible, or do we lose sight of Sunday while we are alone in Friday?

There are no quick answers. Yes, John’s Jesus shows how to grasp the hope but be not disappointed if you find yourself incapable of doing so. Jesus has already done it on your behalf for he is the only one who knows the depth of God’s silence you feel. Hang onto him.

And Jesus Stood Still

(Mark 10:46-52) How difficult it is for modern humans to be still! When was the last time you were really still? I don’t mean physically still but still at the centre of your being, deep down at ease with nothingness; a little while ago, a long time ago or never?

 

Riding the train into Melbourne I watched as people sat still, most not talking, most seemingly at rest. Yet this was not the case. Most had the white cords of distraction in their ears, were fiddling with the mobile communication device in their hands and sitting looking down in what appeared to be a permanent hunch, rarely were they in conversation, looking out the window or just sitting without doing anything.

 

When I got to Synod, Cheryl commented on the number of people whose heads were down, a soft blue glow lighting their faces as they stared at their mobile communication devices, reading messages, posting to their Facebook page or, heaven forbid, playing games. The gentleman across the aisle from me sent and received emails all the way through the Eucharist service, automatically responding on cue to the responses in the service!

 

I have written a small book on the experience of leading the students from Lindisfarne on 3-day silent retreats. I spoke to the publisher to see what they thought. The publishers representative said she had read it and it was excellent, but it won’t sell. I asked why? She said the idea of taking middle school students on 3-day retreats is to challenging and frightens people (adults, teachers, clergy).

 

It is sad that that seems to be so.

 

Brett Esaki in his article, ‘Desperately Seeking Silence” suggests that silence is the youth cultures unmet need.  And I would add, society at larges unmet need. He would say that those who wear the white cords in their ears do so to blanket out the noise of the world and to be alone with themselves. The music that they hear becomes a wall protecting them from the sounds of a world which is challenging, frightening and just a little bit foreign. My discussions with teenagers confirms this as the practice of young people in particular, all people in general.

 

Esaki suggests that ‘silence is the space and time to listen, where to listen is to learn, to allow one’s consciousness to transform, or to absorb.’ Silence responds to sound, it is not the absence of sound. Sound creates the environment in which silence can grow and become. Being still in the midst of noise gives permission for us to unshackle ourselves from the noise and note the learning, the message, the insight or reflections present in us and in the world.

 "The day Jesus came to Jericho Bartimaeus was sitting and waiting. All the longing in his heart cried out, and though the disciples couldn’t see past his blind eyes and his beggar’s cup, Jesus heard what was in his heart, stood still and responded.” (With apologies to Nancy Rockwell)

Jesus encounters Bartimeaus in the midst of noise. If we close our eyes and imagine the scene on the road we may imagine Jesus is moving along in the company of some or all of his disciples. They are walking along a busy road on the outskirts of town, a place where you would typically encounter beggars who were seeking support. Not much good sitting on a back road. No traffic. There would have been  any number of beggars on the road into town – the blind, the crippled, lepers, the sick and more.

 

Jesus would have attracted those who were seeking miracles, others watching out for anything sensational and newsworthy, and others wanting to catch him out. It would have been place full of the hustle and bustle of celebrity and the chaos of ordinary folk seeking extraordinary treatment. In the midst of this we encounter the power of stillness.

 

Bartimeaus is sitting still on the side of the road. His blindness makes it almost impossible for him to move without help. To move anywhere requires another to make it possible. After being escorted to his place by the side of the road, he sits. He hears the noise and attempts to sift out the message, the story the sounds tell him about what is happening on the road. Only then does he call out and not before. He calls out of his stillness and silence. It is this place of repose that informs and allows him to encounter with what is going on. He is not distracted by the noise, but is able to discern what is occurring in the noise and make contact with Jesus.

 

Jesus is surrounded by the noise. It is everywhere, people clamouring for his attention and response. But Jesus is so practised in silence and stillness, he takes this with him into every encounter. The Gospels are replete with stories of Jesus retreating into silence, stillness and isolation. He encourages his disciples again and again to follow his example. Silence and stillness are the central spiritual practices of Jesus, and because they are, they define his life in engagement with others.

 

Here he discerns the authentic voice amongst many and ‘stands still’. He does not move toward action, he doesn’t rush to see how he can solve this persons problem, he stands still. In the stillness he calls to the authentic voice who responds and makes his way to Jesus. Jesus avoids the tendency to rush in where angels fear to tread. He stands still, waits, affirms, calls and is responded to. Bartimeaus has so honed his awareness through the many years of sitting and listen that he too can hear the authentic response. They meet and Bartimeaus finds his need met.

 

This afternoon we have Shush Church and on November 7^th we have a silent retreat. I would suppose that these can be seen as challenging activities for those who have not had previous experience of such and wonder what is expected of me if I come along and take part?

 

Silence and stillness are to be practiced with out expectation. Mostly nothing happens. Sometimes something happens. And then nothing happens. It is a place of training where we simply sit with ourselves, being aware of what is or is not happening within us without trying to make something happen with in us. It is about coming into peace with ourselves, recognising the noise that is there and sitting with it so as to hear the authentic voice and response.

 

Silence and stillness is scary because we are in fact letting go of distractions and excuses and becoming open to what is really happening within us. Distractions like loneliness, anger, busyness, gossip, others and their opinions, children and grandchildren disappear as we begin to be comfortable to be with ourselves.

 

It is and does take practice before it becomes our practice. Jesus knew the power of the Psalmist’s plea, “Be still and know I am God” and the Zen koan of  “Be still, be very, very still, and above all else do not wobble”

 

I would encourage each of you to attend this afternoon or to join us at the next silent retreat. They are good places to start. Amen. 

Educating Boys II

What are some of the keys to educating teenage boys? How do we activate their sense of adventure, risk-taking and questioning in such a way that it leads to wisdom?

I use the word wisdom, not learning, for a specific reason. All education is about the gaining of wisdom and, as Thomas Merton suggests, more happens outside the classroom than in it. Wisdom is the capacity to engage, evaluate and assimilate events, experiences and knowledge so that one lives a life that values and is valued by others.

Teenage boys behave chaotically, dangerously and impulsively yet can be thoughtfully, compassionate and engaged. Yet the capacity to do so requires a different pedagogy than is generally employed in schools. What does that look like?

When I was in Gethsemane Monastery, the home for 27 years forThomas Merton, I pondered how this educational institution took men, barely out of their teens, often with little education and life experience and produced writers, academics, astronomers, civil rights activists and leaders. How did that happen? How did a self-possessed young man such as Merton, who ran away from the world, became the leading Catholic author, activist and interfaith communicator of the 20th century?

As I sat in the chapel and watched the monks say the daily offices beginning at 3.15am, I began to discover the key to their success. The rule of St Benedict sets out the parameters, the monastery practices mirror this ancient rule. What happened in the chapel had not substantially changed since 1848 when the monastery began. What happened in the silence, work, learning and rhythm of Gethsemane hadn't changed substantially over that time either.

The key to working with young teenagers I believe can be found in a daily routine giving energetic young men space and boundaries to discover self and others:

• Silence & Solitude 
• Education
• Repetition
• Work
• Community - Prayer

In subsequent posts I will look at each of these separately and suggest how they may be incorporated in the modern educational offering.

What A Waste of Time

"It was a waste of time, but I will do it again." Eden had just spent three days on a silent retreat. No technology. No needless talking.  Early to bed, early to rise. Spiritual direction. Group sesions three times a day. And more.

"It was a waste of time, but I will do it again." Eden is a typical 14 year old, bright, intelligent and very, very active. Always doing something. The biggest challenge for her was to stop doing. To stop being in a hurry. To let go of the expectation to achieve, get a result, to have something to show for her weekend out. 

It took two days of reading her book and writing in her diary, feverishly, before she arrived at the place of 'no thing doing'. Sort of. It wasn't easy to put down her book or pen and do nothing. Writing a diary is good. So is reading. But if they are a distraction from the inner journey, from the the silence and solitude of stillness, then some time apart from them is appropriate. It was in this time Eden came to appreciate the value of wasting time.

It is not easy. She almost went a little stir crazy. The preconditioned desire to be active, the implanted should of a consumerist technological society, refused to go without a fight. She became agitated and a little stressed as she remained firm in her efforts to do no thing. It did become easier. And it was good.

"It was a waste of time, but I will do it again." We live in a technological world, not so much in a mechanical sense, but in the reduction of all of life to one of endless outcomes, usefulness and instrumentality. We are in a hurry to do something useful, to achieve a result and to get the best out of everything and everyone. Life has been objectified and if it isn't useful it is deemed to be useless.

We have reduced education to the busyness of learning skills to cope with a fast changing world and to ensure we get a good paying job so we can travel, buy houses and cars and be comfortable. There is little time for reflective learning, touching the inner journey or just sitting with ourselves. What a waste of time.

We have reduced spirituality to a private practice that helps us be calm, relaxed, successful and stress free. It has been seperated from the transcendent and reduced to another pragmatic tool for sale in a consumerist society. Forget about any sense of soulful community. What a waste of time. This is all about me.

Work is about the bottom line, for both self and the employer. How to pay the bills, maintain the life style and make more. Profits, shateholders and the minimisation of responsibility to state and its citizens through the avoidance of taxes, and more, appear to rule. People lose out to the God of money. Why put people first? What a waste of time.

We have reduced the human being to a biomechanical entity which can be adjusted, improved, reinvented, supercharged and reduced to a little more than sum of its mechanical parts. Brains can be changed, mindsets reset, intelligence expanded, where does it stop? When will we cease to be human and what does it mean to be human anyway? Does being human mean living with limitations and borders? What happens when we fiddle with humanness to such an extent that we become a new creature, something other than human? Is being a human enough? What a waste of time.

Eden has begun to see that wasting time is good, neccessary and appropriate. You discover yourself, or at least make a start on the inner journey. You begin to discover unity with others and creation. You begin to discover the transcendent and your proper place in the world. You discover your centre, without which you can not engage with, or resist, the technological world in which we live.

Busyness prevents us from wasting time. Our busyness is manufactured by a technological consumer society which needs us to consume both goods and time in pursuit of being more than human. Having more, being more, doing more in some way helps us to go beyond our limitations and borders. We seek to become more than we already are. Somehow we need to leave behind ourselves in search for more, more what, we are not sure, for we have not made the time to discover who we are.

And that's the learning for Eden and the new contemplatives. We are human. We need no more. We need to become what we already are, not seek to become something else. Only through the inner journey of letting go of the shoulds found in our over hyped world and staying connected to our true self do we become fully human. It is a movement of the soul, of depth, and not of spirit which is a movement of flight. It is a slow, rythmical journey of sufering and joy, not of safety and happiness as promised by the television ads, personal well-being gurus and technological breakthroughs.

Less is more. And it is a waste of time. But I, too, will do it again. Now.

Silent Retreat Opportunity

Theme: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
Date: 29th June - 2nd July

Where: Santa Teresa Retreat Centre, Ormiston, Brisbane

Cost: $375 all inclusive (private room and facilities)

Rule: No technology (mobile phones, ipods, ipads or laptops)

Opportunity for spiritual direction over the 3 days (included).

Program includes daily eucharist, 3 short input sessions and lots of silence.

If interested, email Fr Glenn Loughrey on redshoeswalking@bigpond.com

Silence, Solitude and Simplicity

Over the school holidays a number of students and teachers joined me for a 3 day silent retreat. The impact on both them and myself was amazing. I never fail to be surprised by the mystery of silence, solitude and simplicity.

Since then I found myself staying home from an event I had been invited to because of Gaye's (my wife) health. Over that weekend I challenged myself to refocus my life, to embrace the 3S's as a philosophy for daily living.

The first question to be answered was: what is essential, or conversely, what is not? What is the one thing I need to do to day that is essential to my life and my hopes? Doing this every day and staying with that one thing until it is completed has been powerful. Exciting things are happening and I will say more about that in another post.

Last weekend because another plan broke down I decided to take Gaye away for 4 days for her birthday. I booked a room at the Bundaleer Retreat at Broken Head, and discovered a place that was the epitome of silence, solitude and simplicity. It is set in a rainforest space and only has 4 cabins and a maximum of 12 people present. Quiet and secluded it allowed us to enjoy the time, place and each other in a way that was special for us both.

We discovered Lennox Head and the beautiful people there. We turned off the TV, actually, didn't turn it on, read a number of books, went for works, had afternoon naps and ate very well.

As members of a consumer society we fall for the art of distraction - more, bigger, popular, loud is always better. It maybe for the economy, but it rarely is for our souls. Our souls crave silence, solitude and simplicity.

A favorite Zen saying of mine is: "Be still, be very, very still; and above all else, don't wobble!"

Or as the Psalmist says in Psalm 46: "Be still and know that I am God."

Silence

"In silence we face and admit the gap between the depth of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface which is untrue to our own reality. We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others, not just with a mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic love.

That is the reason for choosing silence."

Merton, Thomas. Love & Living. Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Hart, Editors. New York: Harcourt. 1979, p. 41.

Slow Food Week

On Monday I took part in a seminar on silence and solitude. As i turned onto the highway near my house I was immediately confronted by two signs put up by council road workers. The first was, "Slow down", followed closely by "Prepare to stop." I recognised the irony of these signs on two accounts, firstly as they were right at the entry of a freeway on which people showed no desire to slow down or stop! The second was that I was going to a seminar on silence an hour or so away and I had to be home to catch a connecting flight to Sydney later that day. So while I sought silence and solitude, I was caught up in the busyness of ordinary life.

One of the sessions at the seminar involved us partaking in a 'slow food" experience. A plate of fruit was passed around and we were invited to notice the colours, textures, aromas and finally the sensation of taste and eating. It was all to be done slowly and with great attention and focus. Comments ranged from how much more pleasurable the experience was, how eating slowly would mean we would eat less, to simply, I enjoyed the time I took to eat the food.

It took me back to the days of my youth when we used to sit around a dining room table as a family and partake in a meal. It wasn't rushed. People didn't have to be any where. We ate slowly and talked a lot. We listened and remembered, spoke and were heard, saw how to respond to others and how they would respond to us, and much more.

In an age of fast food, and even faster lives, there is a need to recover slow food and the intensity of attention it brings into our lives.

It also reminded me, as we begin another Holy Week leading up to Easter, that this week is a slow food week. A time when we stop and digest Jesus the Christ, his life, his death and his resurrection; his intensity of attention to being fully engaged in ordinary life and in his relationship with God.

May we not only "slow down" and not only 'prepare to stop' but actually stop and pay full attention to this pivotal festival of our Christian year.

Off to the USA

Just a short note to let those who do not know yet that I am going Stateside June the 8th for a Conference in Rochester, New York.

The conference is the '11th International Thomas Merton Society' conference and will involve, pigs permitting, people from all around the world who share a passion for Thomas Merton, like I do.  Often we spend much time with figures of a bygone era in the form of saints from another age, but Thomas Merton was a man of the 2oth century who influenced his contemporaries via his teachings on solitude and meditation, peace, non-violence, human rights and dialogue with thinkers of all the major religions. 

His understanding of man and his world and the relationship with God and Jesus Christ is as relevant today as it was when he was alive (born 1915, died 1968).

While away I will update this blog and provide information on the conference for those interested.

For more information visit this website:  www.merton.org