Rev. Thomas Keating

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A Sleep of Prisoners, Bartimaeus, breathing, centering prayer, Christopher Fry, Father Thomas Keating, Jesus, letting go, Mark, prayer, presence of God, rest in peace, see, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I just read the gospel story of the blind man, Bartimaeus. (MK 10: 46-52). My favorite line has Bartimaeus answering the question Jesus had put to him when he called out for attention. Actually both lines of the exchange are crucial. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” to which Bartimaeus answers, “Master, I want to see.” Upon reflection one might ask why Jesus needed to pose that question as it must have been obvious that the man was blind. It certainly wasn’t a trivial request. The fact that Jesus asked it, however, might move us to consider some deeper content in our own prayer.

Does our prayer sound like a Christmas list sometimes, asking God to fix things in our lives so that we will be more comfortable than we are? Surely we are called to ask for help to live good lives and have compassion for others but in these troubled times when events and world conditions are now “soul size” (see A Sleep of Prisoners by Christopher Fry) we must be called to new ways of participating in life.

Father Thomas Keating died on Thursday (10/25) at the age of 95 years. Fr. Thomas is known to many as the father of the Centering Prayer movement and a spiritual giant who personified the best of a life of contemplative prayer. I was privileged to encounter Father Thomas twice in person and found him to be delightfully down-to-earth while also shining like the sun from the inside. His deep practice of prayer was evident in the joy with which he lived and in the deeply wise, carefully chosen words he used to speak of spiritual things. It was clear that his way of prayer was deeper than words, however, and leaned in, always listening, to the heartbeat of God.

Centering prayer is like that, Fr. Thomas would say. It consists of sitting down and “consenting to the presence of God,” returning, when we recognize that we are thinking, to just being in the Presence, letting go of everything else. Just like breathing, this kind of prayer gets patterned into us and becomes an anchor for life. Hundreds of thousands of people the world over practice this form of prayer each day and are united now in feelings of happiness and sadness at the same time: sadness to have lost the physical presence of Father Thomas in this realm but, oh so happy to think of his joyful passage into the next! May he truly rest in peace!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even Now…

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A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry, divine heart, fasting, holy season, Joel, Lent, love, renewal, repentance, soul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Valentine's Day

As the curtain opens on another season of Lent and we gear up for repentance and renewal, the prophet Joel is way out ahead of us announcing God’s invitation. “Even now,” God says…”Even now,” the poet Christopher Fry writes in the play, A Sleep of Prisoners, “when wrong comes up to face us till we take the longest stride of soul we ever took…”

I am so captivated by those two words that seem to offer so much hope in a dark time. Even now…I begin reflecting on the world situation to find what needs to be redeemed by the poet’s words but I’m quickly thrown back to the personal as Joel continues. “Rend your hearts,” he says, “not your garments.” It’s a necessary course correction that has been needing attention for some time. Winter can be such a lazy season if we are not careful. We can slip into a listless, sluggish round of tasks that lulls us into the mediocre land of February, the “after-the-holidays” let-down that is not our best moment.

Then Joel comes along calling for a fast. “Blow the trumpet in Zion!” he commands. In other words: “Wake up! Get busy! There’s a lot to do before the flowers bloom.” It’s up to us to hear the word of God and act on it. Oh, and coincidentally, today is Valentine’s Day – just another reminder of the kind of God we have who longs for our love even as a greater love is pouring from the divine heart into our own!

So let us be about this holy season – starting now…yes, even now.

 

 

 

 

 

Our Choice Now

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A Sleep of Prisoners, action, Christopher Fry, exploration, God, peril, response, soul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wake, Word

This morning I woke with a line from Christopher Fry’s poem, A Sleep of Prisoners, in my head. It comes to me in moments of significance – often as the whole poem but sometimes just the part. I always look it up to make sure I’m not misquoting and in the version I clicked on today, the line was set off in bold. It says: Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God.

The past two days (if not the entire past year) have brought me to that conclusion and it is clear that our country is in peril. Our choice of response (not reaction) as we go forward will be crucial to our long-term future. Initial messages – in word and action – to the national elections run the gamut from violent and divisive to peaceful/prayerful and unitive. It is my hope that the populace will come to answer Fry’s final question in the poem for the good of the nation. He says: It takes so many thousand years to wake. But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

Hometown Boy

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A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry, Jesus, Joseph, Jr., justice, Luke, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Nazareth, prophet, speaking the truth, upstart Spring

In today’s gospel, Luke lets us know that telling the truth is sometimes dangerous. (LK 4:16-30). Jesus comes to Nazareth, where he grew up, and all is well – even amazing – as he stands up in the synagogue and reads (eloquently, it seems) from the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming that the message he read was being fulfilled as he spoke. The local folks wonder how he became so erudite – or so wise – since his father was Joseph (the inference being: a local guy, simple like themselves.) All was fine until Jesus started talking about past failures of Israel to be attentive to the prophets, such that God’s favor fell on foreigners instead. He had predicted their reaction by saying, “A prophet is never accepted in his own native place,” and was proven true as they ran him out of town and were ready to kill him in their fury – but it was not his time and he escaped.

There have been many people in our lifetime who have been vilified for speaking the truth, calling attention to societal conditions that are unjust or immoral. It’s easy to point to famous examples like Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, however, I’m thinking of local people of conscience who work tirelessly for justice and are often ignored or disparaged for upsetting the status quo. It seems now that there is so much that needs fixing in our world that we can no longer turn a blind eye but must all be willing to speak up for change. And I believe there is hope in this era of mass communication where we have access to so many resources and so many spiritual people calling for transformation. I’m reminded of the epilogue from A Sleep of Prisoners, a play by Christopher Fry, that speaks of this urgency today and I write it as a spoken message to be read aloud because I think it is in the speaking that the urgency can best be felt.

The human heart can go to the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move. The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the upstart Spring. Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up, to face us everywhere, never to leave us until we take the longest stride of soul [men] ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. What are you making for? It takes so many thousand years to wake. But will you wake for pity’s sake?