Answering the Contemplative Call: First Steps on the Mystical Path

Praise for Answering the Contemplative Call

It is not often that a book is both very practical and very inspiring at the same time. Carl McColman gives you much wise direction and broad understanding of the field of contemplative theory and practice. The need is too great today to waste time relearning what has already been learned—so well. Here is your teacher!

—Fr.Richard Rohr, O.F.M.

Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

. . . a magnificent primer on contemplative spirituality . . . a first rate contribution to the conversation about the vital relevance of ancient spiritual practices for contemporary people thirsting for communion with God.

—Ian Morgan Cron, author of Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir of Sorts and Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale

. . . Carl McColman creates a safe and beautiful space where each of us can come—human as we are—and learn how possible it is to befriend silence and to live in the certain joy of daily intimacy with God.

—Carmen Acevedo Butcher, translator of The Cloud of Unknowing and author of Man of Blessing: A Life of St. Benedict

. . . invites us on a journey of love where everyone is welcome and worthy, and it is impossible to get lost. It is a journey that necessarily begins within, and leads ever-deeper inward, to a place of resonant silence. Bountiful quotes from mystics who have walked the path before us provide a series of luminous stepping-stones for own adventure.

—Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Carl McColman masterfully maps out for the serious spiritual seeker the nature of the mystical experience and outlines a clear and accessible pathway on how to get there.

—Kyriacos C. Markides, author of The Mountain of Silence and Inner River

A contemplative seeker will find a mature, sane, reliable guide to that path in these pages. I found it full of the experiential spiritual wisdom found on that path, leading us into ever deeper intimacy with God . . .

—The Rev. Tilden Edwards, PhD, founder and Senior Fellow, Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation

"What Frommers, Rick Steves, and Lonely Planet are to travel guides for physical locales, Carl McColman is fast becoming for the spiritual journey. There is so much that recommends this delightful guide—Carl's own depth of experience, his wonderful ability to bring in apt quotations from the great contemplative saints of history, his ability to be both simple and deep without ever becoming simplistic or murky. As I read, I kept thinking of friends with whom I want to share this treasure—a travel guide to ‘an adventurous journey that will last forever.

What Richard Foster and Dallas Willard were to my generation— prime tour guides to the spiritual life—I hope and believe Carl McColman will be for the next generation. If you don't know about him and his work, you should.

—Brian McLaren, author/speaker/networker

There is a sweetness—a candor—a gentleness to McColman's work that makes him the most desirable of guides into the holy places of the soul . . . This is a book to savor and then to treasure.

—Phyllis Tickle, compiler of The Divine Hours

This well-written book presents the classic precepts and practices of the Christian contemplative path in a clear and helpful way.

—The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D., author of Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, The Wisdom Jesus, and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene

Copyright © 2013

by Carl McColman

First Broadleaf Books Edition 2021.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover design by www.levanfisherdesign.com/Barbara Fisher

Cover art by Mel Curtis/photodisc/getty images

Text design by Dutton & Sherman Design

Unless noted otherwise, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8525-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8580-5

Printed in the United States of America

For Fran, my lovely wife, my dearest friend, my partner in contemplation, and my companion on the journey of kenosis.

To You, silence is praise, O God in Zion; and unto You shall the vow be fulfilled.

—PSALM 65:2, STONE EDITION TANACH¹

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One

Recognizing the Call

The Call of the Mysteries

Discerning the Caller

Wake Up

Three Tales of Awakening

So Many Different Ways to Do It

The Space Between

Part Two

Preparing for the Journey

The Pathless Path

Do Your Research

Provisions for the Journey

Protect Yourself

Find Your Companions

Learn the Language

Part Three

Embarking on the Adventure

The Mystical Path Begins with Christ

The Mystical Path Ends in Mystery

Befriend Silence

Behold!

Worship

The Other Side of Worship

Of Word and Image—Christian Meditation

Praying the Silence

Into the Emptiness

Kenosis Makes a Difference

Where Does the Path Lead?

Bibliography

Notes

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is, in many ways, like other elements of Christian spirituality: it entails a dynamic balance between solitude and community. Along with the many hours spent toiling away by myself with only my trusty computer (and a few cats) for companionship, I have relied on friends, colleagues, and brothers and sisters in the faith for support, nurture, challenge, and insight.

Greg Brandenburgh and Linda Roghaar, thank you both so much for your support, guidance, and honesty. Everyone at Hampton Roads and Red Wheel/Weiser has been most helpful. The monks, Lay Cistercians, employees, and friends of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit continue to be a blessing in so many ways. While listing just a few people is problematic because so many of you deserve my thanks, I feel I must particularly mention Fr. Anthony Delisi, Fr. Tom Francis Smith, Br. Elias Marechal, Br. Cassian Russell, Linda Mitchell, Paco and Malika Ambrosetti, Rocky Thomas, and Michael Thompson for your friendship, guidance, and encouragement.

Other friends and colleagues whose support has been invaluable include Rick Branaman, Andy Fitz-Gibbon, Phil Foster, Dana Greene, Darrell Grizzle, Gareth Higgins, Ben Campbell Johnson, Brian D. McLaren, Michael Morrell, Edd Salazar SJ, Ann Temkin, and Karen Davis Young.

I am haunted by the thought that I have forgotten someone. If I have, I can only trust that you know who you are and you know my heart knows gratitude beyond the frailties of my imperfect memory. Finally, my deepest gratitude continues to flow toward my wife, Fran, and daughter, Rhiannon, who remain my closest friends, dearest companions, and living sacraments, through their love, of God's grace in my life. Words simply cannot express how much I cherish you and am grateful for you.

Introduction

All the world's a stage, said William Shakespeare, and all the men and women merely players. This metaphor—seeing the human experience in terms of the stories we tell and the masks we wear—is a natural one for a playwright to use. A few centuries later, the game inventor Milton Bradley offered a different way of thinking about the world: as a game. His Game of Life was one of the most popular parlor games of the nineteenth century, and a revised version of it remains on the market today.

Long before the days when actors thrilled audiences in the Globe Theatre, however, or families laughed as they playfully competed to move their tokens across a board, writers and mystics and other spiritual seekers used another metaphor to describe the adventure of life— a journey. Consider two of the great works of literature of the Middle Ages—Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Dante's Divine Comedy. Chaucer compares the human experience to a religious pilgrimage, while Dante offers a multilayered look at the cosmology of his day, as his literary self travels from hell to purgatory to heaven. Life is a journey, declared the eighteenth century writer Oliver Goldsmith, adding this little bit of Irish humor: a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations. Almost as a response to Goldsmith's sarcasm, Ralph Waldo Emerson linked the journey motif to the spiritual quest when he said: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Among the mystics of the Christian tradition, this journey metaphor crops up again and again, in a variety of ways—not only in the idea of traveling long distances, but in even more humble imagery like running a race, climbing a ladder, or exploring a castle. Early contemplatives loved the story of Moses and the Hebrew people wandering for years in the desert before finding their home in the Promised Land. In the fourth century, Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote The Life of Moses, using elements from the Exodus story to explain the beauty and mystery of Christian spirituality. A century and a half later, Saint Benedict compared the monastic life to running a race. Guigo II, in the twelfth century, used the image of climbing a ladder to explain the spirituality of sacred reading. Walter Hilton (fourteenth century) revisited the ladder (or stairway) motif, while in the sixteenth century, Saint John of the Cross likened the mystical path to The Ascent of Mount Carmel and his comrade Teresa of Avila wrote about exploring The Interior Castle. Even in the twentieth century, the Trappist contemplative Thomas Merton borrowed a page from Dante and called his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, while the Irish poet and spiritual author John O'Donohue played the contrarian and insisted: If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long! He went on to tip his hat to Emerson, noting that the eternal is at home—within you.²

So if life is a journey, then spirituality is an essential part of the passage. Mysticism is not some sort of static experience, a moment in time in which a person feels especially united with God. Rather, it is a process, an unfolding dimension of movement and change that takes place over the course of many seasons. Emerson and O'Donohue are right, of course: this journey is in large measure an inner trek, a quest to find the mysteries at the heart of the universe, paradoxically nestled within the heart of your own soul. I don't think I'll be giving away too much too soon to mention that this journey is, in fact, riddled with paradox. The destination that mystics seek is precisely where they begin their quest. The goal of the journey is, at least in part, to have no goal; the purpose is not so much to find God as to find ourselves in God. We can devote years to the quest only to find that, after all that time, we are still at the beginning of the route. These are just a few of the twists and switchbacks that we may encounter along the way. But those who have embarked on this pilgrimage soon realize that each paradox is part of the beauty of the journey.

It is my distinct honor and privilege to invite you on this excursion. Of course, it is not really my place to do so—for I am merely another traveler, like you. My invitation is that of a friend calling out to a friend: Hey, come along; this promises to be a fascinating adventure!

Every journey begins at the beginning, and often that is months or even years before the first step is taken. Before my first trip overseas, I had already daydreamed about going for years, and then spent three months planning my itinerary prior to that fateful day I showed up at the Atlanta airport, quivering with excitement. Sometimes we may travel on the spur of the moment, or even under emergency circumstances, as when we rush home to attend to a dying relative. But there is always a beginning—a point at which the decision is made to embark on the voyage. These are the questions around which I have organized this book: What can we say about that decisive moment when a person makes a commitment to the spirituality of contemplation and the Christian mysteries? And once we have entered into that moment of decision, then what? What is involved in preparing for and launching our adventure, which promises to take us to the very heart of God?

Right away, I know words like mysticism or mystical or contemplative may be a challenge for some. These are not simple words that describe easy concepts; rather, they point to a rich and many-layered dimension of spirituality. Furthermore, they mean different things to different people. One person may speak of mysticism as a shorthand word for intimacy with God, while another may use the same word to refer to supernatural experiences, with no reference to God at all. At the risk of being overly simplistic, I'm using this word very much in the intimacy with God sense. As the Catholic social activist and writer Catherine De Hueck Doherty noted: A mystic is simply a man or woman in love with God, and the Church is hungry for such people.³

What does she mean by the second part of that statement? Simply this: that the mystical life is a blessing not only for the person who enters it, but for the entire community of believers and spiritual seekers. Mystics are not only in love with God; they are also beacons of Divine love for everyone they meet (which includes not only other followers of Christ, but indeed all people).

Likewise, contemplation (as in contemplative prayer or the contemplative life) points to the love of God—at least in my understanding of the word. If a mystic is a lover of God, then contemplation is the means by which Divine love is given, received, and shared. Contemplative prayer, for example, is a term used in a variety of ways; it can refer to silent prayer, centering prayer, meditative prayer, and the prayer of the heart, etc. But what all these different shades of contemplation have in common is that they are all immersed in and infused with the love of God.

Like mysticism, contemplation is a universal word that can be used in a variety of contexts. I am writing as a member of the Christian tradition; so when I speak of mysticism and contemplation, I refer specifically to the Christian journey into the love of God. My way of explaining and interpreting the contemplative life, and the language I use to do so, are all shaped by Christianity's unique understanding of mystical wisdom. But I am trying to remember, humbly, that not everyone who reads this book will be Christian, and that many people who have had dealings with Christianity-the-institution have been wounded by the imperfect, human side of the religion. There is no way that I, as a writer, can effectively address so many different people with so many different spiritual needs, other than to share my own perspective on things, which is what I have tried to do. Beyond that, I must trust in the grace of God—and the forgiveness of my readers—if my way of explaining things is sometimes incomplete or less than artful.

For my readers who are engaged with the religious expression of Christianity, I hope this book represents an invitation to take your faith to a new and deeper level of intimacy with God. For those who have no connection with Christianity, or who have been wounded by the many imperfections found within the Church, I ask only that you keep an open mind as you read along. Perhaps the love of God will call out to you in a way that's right for you as well.

While I do not assume that my readers are necessarily Christian, or necessarily have a preexisting interest in mystical or contemplative spirituality, I do make one assumption about people who are likely to read a book like this. I assume that you have noticed a longing or yearning in your heart and soul—a desire for something more. It's not really something you can put into words, and you may never have shared this with anyone else. Even if your life is fairly rich with friends and loved ones and material abundance, you know that these treasures, precious as they are, do nothing to assuage this nameless yearning.

If you are a religious or spiritually minded person, you may identify that something more as God. Or perhaps you don't name it all, respecting how mysterious it is. That's fine. You may even have a sense that, if you explore this longing, the deeper you go, the more mysterious it gets. I'll take a closer look at this longing in the pages to come. For now, let's just