Alone Together: On Contemplation in Community

We have forgotten how to be quiet, how to sit still, and how to simply be alone. Contemplation is the practice that brings us back to ourselves as it brings us into the Godhead, whence we find ourselves dwelling upon, within and roundabout the Infinite. Study, prayer, service, giving, confession and the rest are all worthy and necessary disciplines in order to live life to the fullest. However, the most neglected way of being human in our Americanized Christianity is that of the contemplative life – learning to rest in His Presence, delighting in His beauty, enjoying our togetherness together.

Let’s run some thought experiments to prove the point. Imagine yourself in a circle of your closest Christian cohorts. Insert a need here: someone has a monetary or emotional life crisis; a shared misunderstanding of Scripture; a communal endeavor that feels impossible. In any of these instances, it’s likely that the group would know how to respond and would do so right away. Money, prayer, a study group… these things would flow out of that gathering as a reflex, without delay.

Now – ask that same group to sit together in the Presence of God. Would anyone even know how to behave? How long do you think that would last? Would one whole minute go by before someone tried to offer up a deep thought for consideration? Elizabeth Elliot redacted many of the masters when she said, “The devil has made it his business to monopolize three elements: noise, hurry, crowds. He will not allow quietness.” Incidentally, we as a culture have become entirely addicted to noise, hurry, crowds and entirely averse to any kind of quiet. Tell me true, do you think that the devil is among us?

Check your phone. Flip through the channels. Skate past the so-called awkward silence in conversation. Check your phone again… you missed a few apps last time. Now the phone is out while the TV is on. Noise amidst noise within noise. Our entire lives are designed around the stuff. We have become conditioned to see quiet as a torment, so we only ever encounter it as an accident and a dreadful one at that. Silence must be forced upon us like children in time out, and when we have the means to do so, we thrash out just as violently and thoughtlessly as the little brats. Needless aside: I love my children… maybe a necessary aside… don’t judge me…

If we want to become fully formed people growing up into the fulness of Christ, we must not only recapture silence, stillness and solitude – we must become intimate with this contemplative life. We are sundered from ourselves and each other even as we are fractured in our efforts toward Him. Only in silence, that womb of the worlds, will we hear His native language. Only in stillness, that rest of eternities, will we feel His nearness. Only in solitude, that solidarity of souls, will we see ourselves, each other, God. Because He whispers, caresses and woos; He does not impose Himself upon us. So, He will not intrude upon our noise. We are permitted to shut Him out. Yet He continues to wait for us to allow Him in, to create a vacancy suitable for His lifting down, to invite Him into our space and time and matters.

Enter contemplation. This is an essential lifestyle that we have abandoned to our own demise. Services dedicated to this silent stillness should be practiced with as much devotion and regularity as any other worship assembly. Solitude will come more easily after we have practiced the other things together.

Make no mistake, contemplative meditation is neither mere passivity nor thinking really hard. Contemplative prayer is, rather, what happens when the unstoppable force encounters the immovable object. We present ourselves to Him waiting, immovable, and He responds as the God-Who-Answers-By-Fire, unstoppable. We engage our intentionality toward Him with intensity, unstoppable, and we discover Him waiting for us everywhere, immovable. Until that ultimate consummation of all things in Him, “that God may be all in all,” we practice most eagerly even here and now. The great poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, teaches us that “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes…”

At this point, maybe you’re on the hook for the discipline but think something like this: why waste the time of gathering together to do a thing we could more easily do alone? Well, by that logic, I could ask the same of any of the disciplines. Why pray, study, worship, give or serve together? Also, to retort, I just don’t trust you… or myself. Have you seen us lately? Who among us has cultivated that posture of deep and abiding inner quietude, the likes of which envelops oceans and breathes between the galaxies? This is our inheritance. We have simply neglected it.

The community of saints is the best possible environment for the 3S lifestyle. Anything that’s difficult we have always learned to do better together. We maintain exercise regiments with greater discipline whenever a buddy is committed with us. The same is true in education. Autodidacts are not common. Neither are hermits in the Way.

What’s more, when we gather together in a sacred place with holy intention, we are presenting our bodies to each other as we present them to God, as well. Every such act is an accrual of intimacy in our ongoing community-building, another penetration into the depths of the mysterious communion between us. Furthermore, we might find ourselves knowingly in the presence of saints and angels, because, surely, they hasten to meet wherever He means to dwell, and He is likely to settle in those places that we set apart for His Presence. We are keener to the pervading reality of the Great Cloud of Witnesses when we come alongside of one another.

What I propose is simple. To set aside 30 minutes with a bit of drive time on either end. Everyone attending should know beforehand what they are getting into, which means that they would enter and exit the setting as quietly as possible. A sanctuary of some sort would be best, due to the sacrosanct nature of the space and what that architecture does to us by design. An isolated natural setting is equally good, as Creation works these things in us whenever we allow it. Very few words should be spoken at the beginning and the end, both to ceremoniously begin the time and formally bring it to a close. In the space in between, well, that’s where the magic happens. And the Church has offered up a host of saints to steward us through this practice. Seek and ye shall find.

Just as we do not restrict ourselves to reading our Bibles during the Sunday service, neither would contemplation leave off at this time together. We would begin it together so that we could better continue alone. Also, we should expect some resistance within and without as we commit to it. Every single one of the spiritual disciplines is most difficult to establish right at the onset, at the implementation of the habit. Tithing is a good case in point. We should expect no less here in the posture most counter-intuitive to our cultural makeup.

That makes it fun too, though. To learn these things is to engage in rebellion, but our people have forgotten how to dwell in the substance of the heavens. Herein we will become the watchers, the listeners, the waiters, the lovers, the physicians of hearts and the gardeners of stars, the heedful in quiet and the dreadful in riot, the few attuned to the whispers of the Ghost even as they hear the rumble of the Hosts. This is our lot even on this very side of glory. We have only to set out like we mean it and remain there like we need it.

“Silence is God’s first language.” Like St. John of the Cross, I desperately want to hear the sound of His breathing, to feel the rhythm of His heartbeat, to see the place where He rests. He’s waiting for us right now.

Shouldn’t we be going already?

-Wailer