Reviewed by William E. Thiele, Ph.D., spiritual director, The School for Contemplative Living
This is an excellent resource for contemplatives to reflect on the challenge and commitment of daily living into The Mercy of God. Several of my favorite challenging quotes follow:
p. 56 “Centering prayer, with its emphasis not on clarity of the mind but on surrender of the heart, leads straight down into the heart’s depths, straight toward the point vierge [virgin point where our life issues forth from God]. It becomes a direct encounter with the Mercy.” What an invitation to stay with daily practices of entering the sanctuary of the soul!
p. 70 Thomas Merton notes “The real freedom is the freedom to come and go from that center, and to be able to do without anything that is not immediately connected to that center.” Modern contemplative authors like Thomas Merton, Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr, and Thomas Keating call us toward the practice of surrender as a sign of deep inner freedom and a means of finding that freedom. The next phrase does the same.
p. 87 “Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet, when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life — a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.”
p. 95 Here is a calling straight out of our unfolding primary mission for The School for Contemplative Living: Frere Roger Schutz, founder of The Taize’ Community in southeastern France, says every year the brothers “spend some time away from the monastery living among the world’s radically poor. They do not go to engage in work projects or even to teach, but simply to be among the poor ‘as a sign of hope.’ The gift they bring is merely the gift of presence.” This brings an image of the emerging church as a body of followers of the Way of Christ who bring Presence with them wherever they go because they have lived deep into that Presence in daily life. When Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you,” he was not belittling the importance of ministry with the poor but highlighting the preeminence of Presence over any specific act of “doing good.”