Contemplation Has Endured

And by Divine Grace, It Will Continue To Do So

Let me make a confession: I sometimes wonder if contemplative and mystical spirituality have a future. We all know that institutional (religious) Christianity is in decline, and where the Christian faith is thriving, it seems the growth is occurring among charismatic Christians who tend to prefer raucous worship to introspective quiet. Monasteries, like churches in general, are dwindling, and even lay-led contemplative resources like Centering Prayer groups often reach only a small fragment of the Christian population (let alone the population at large).

Society is getting louder, more materialistic, more oriented toward vulgar humor than ennobling spirituality (hoo boy, I’m beginning to sound like my father! But I’m just calling it like I see it). All of this can lead me, on my worst days, to despair for the future of silent spirituality.

And then I remember the wisdom of people like my friend Carmen Acevedo Butcher, best known as a translator of mystical classics like The Cloud of Unknowing and Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence. Carmen reminds me (and all of us) that contemplative spirituality has always existed on the margins — and on the margins it has endured, for centuries now.

In her introduction to The Cloud, she offers us this jewel of insight: “perhaps contemplation has endured because we need its profound peace to battle the isolation that selfishness and plain old stupidity bring.”

Isolation, selfishness, even stupidity — we seem to have plenty of these unhappy qualities in our common life, and it’s helpful to remember the contemplation offers us a peaceful alternative to all three. It helps us to reframe the sting of isolation into the grace of solitude. It offers a silent antidote to selfishness and narcissism, inviting us into the depth of a life centered on love rather than just “me.” And what better antidote to stupidity than a gentle silence where we can pause the inane prattle within, listening instead for the still small voice?

Contemplation endures, and as long as human beings are wounded and vulnerable, it will continue to endure. We do not need to protect it or promote it. Instead, we need to practice contemplation — and consent to the ways the Spirit moves in the silence to heal and transform us.

Quotation source: Carmen Acevedo Butcher, The Cloud of Unknowing: A New Translation (Kindle Edition), Introduction.