This isn’t the kind of post that I like to write. It is going to sound a bit negative. It’s also very long.
But there are certain kinds of errors and confusions that just don’t pass. And I can happily set out to combat those errors at length. You don’t get away with misleading my friends and get away with it. Your intentions may be good. But my mouth still can open… And my mouth, however childlike and weak, is still big. ^^
A friend of mine has been approached to consider “Christian meditation” as taught by John Main OSB and Laurence Freeman OSB. So, not wanting to be out of the loop, I’ve read up on CM (“Christian meditation” is henceforth abbreviated CM to distinguish it from what the tradition of the Church calls meditation) and, by extension, a slightly similar but different movement called “centering prayer” (henceforth CP, to be fair).
I don’t like either of them.
This isn’t because I think that they explicitly teach many wrong things. I don’t think that. I think the values that they place on silence, private prayer, and so on are real values.
But it’s just that these people set themselves up to teach a method of prayer, recommend it to everyone drawn to practise it – and not actually understand the typical structure of the spiritual life.
This is what they teach…
What are the teachings of “Christian Meditation”?
According to the World Community of Christian Meditation founded by John Main and headed by Laurence Freeman,
Meditation is a universal spiritual wisdom and a practice that we find at the core of all the great religious traditions… In Christianity this tradition became marginalised and even forgotten or suspect…
Open to all ways of wisdom but drawing directly from the early Christian teaching John Main summarised the practice in this simple way:
Sit down. Sit still with your back straight. Close your eyes lightly. Then interiorly, silently begin to recite a single word – a prayer word or mantra. We recommend the ancient Christian prayer-word “Maranatha”. Say it as four equal syllables. Breathe normally and give your full attention to the word as you say it, silently, gently, faithfully and above all – simply. The essence of meditation is simplicity. Stay with the same word during the whole meditation and from day to day. Don’t visualise but listen to the word as you say it. Let go of all thoughts (even good thoughts), images and other words. Don’t fight your distractions but let them go by saying your word faithfully, gently and attentively and returning to it immediately that you realise you have stopped saying or it or when your attention is wandering…
Meditate twice a day every day.
Yes, that’s what the website recommends, and the books and videos that I’ve seen seem to be in general agreement.
Pardon me. I’ve been fed by the strong food of the Doctors of the Church. I can recognize baloney and hotdogs when I see them. Some worthwhile critical reflections on CM, made by others, can be found here and here (with reference to criticisms one could draw from the robust teaching of Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange). More on my own thoughts in a minute. First, what is CP?
What is “Centering Prayer”?
Thomas Keating OSCO started the “Centering Prayer” movement. Contemplative Outreach explains,
Centering Prayer is a method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God’s presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship…
In the beginning, it is recommended that you practice Centering Prayer for 20 minutes, twice a day. Early in the morning is best, before the activities of the day begin and then again in late afternoon or in the evening. As your practice stabilizes and your relationship with God deepens, you may feel called to longer periods of prayer.
- Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, relax, and quiet yourself. Be in love and faith to God.
- Choose a sacred word that best supports your sincere intention to be in the Lord’s presence and open to His divine action within you (i.e. “Jesus”, “Lord,” “God,” “Savior,” “Abba,” “Divine,” “Shalom,” “Spirit,” “Love,” etc.).
- Let that word be gently present as your symbol of your sincere intention to be in the Lord’s presence and open to His divine action within you. (Thomas Keating advises that the word remain unspoken.)
- Whenever you become aware of anything (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, associations, etc.), simply return to your sacred word, your anchor.
A method that disposes us to receive a gift. This could describe all meditation. And God gives when he wants. But… God gives. What’s odd to me is that anyone would want to spend 40 minutes a day asking for a gift, just because that’s “recommended” in general. This isn’t the same as when someone meditates on the Scriptures or the Rosary or the Office or Creation, and then is led, without knowing how, into a deeper simplicity or looking at Jesus. In CP, we’re basically suppressing everything and just begging for 40 minutes. This prayer technique avoids mention of, and devotes seemingly too-little time to, the typical step of discursively meditating on the Scriptures and on the mysteries of salvation to build our ability to become simple and rest in Jesus. Why? Why would anyone avoid talking about the fact that we meditate and then God gives the gift of greater simplicity in contemplation when it is appropriate? Why sit and beg for contemplation with an “empty” mind? To me, this seems like rather a waste of time, if God knows what he’s doing… But perhaps I’ve misunderstood. (At any rate, the links to the tradition of the Church are very poorly elaborated. Is that really to be recommended? More on this in a minute.)
Some worthwhile critical reflections on CP can be found here.
On the other hand, what do I think? What about children?
Having presented this basic information about CM and CP, I have to say that I agree with them about as much as I agree with Buddhist teachings and tenets: I agree with what they affirm. I question why they bother to deny what they deny. I wonder why a prayer technique – which is the privilege of the few and which has never been treated as paramount within the religion of the Incarnation – should get so much emphasis, to the point of creating groups and movements around it. Such a way of thinking is completely foreign to me.
Also, Laurence Freeman claims that a “six-year-old” can learn CM. I wonder how they actually teach this technique to children. In Christianity, children are blessed and the special favourites of Jesus. Jesus was a baby; Jesus was a toddler; Jesus was a boy. Does anyone actually think that sitting with one’s spine straight for twenty minutes is at all boyish? For me, my love of contemplation is totally linked to my love of children. So, that in itself is enough to make me question whether something is wrong with CM and also CP.
And what, oh what, about us all being spiritual Semites?
Oh dear, oh dear. Meditation is a “universal spiritual wisdom” often marginalized in “Christianity”. Wow, wow. Please tell this to the Judaism of Saint Abraham and Saint Moses. I would love to hear what they think of this claim! My anti-anti-Semitism is really starting to kick in. Better shut up before I say something offensive.
Disconnect prayer from the Israel of the Old Covenant and you are taking a path away from our Jewish roots as Christians. It’s as simple-as.
In reality, for Christians, contemplative prayer begins in meditation, which is rooted in the tradition of the Church, which is nothing else than the remnant of Israel and us Gentiles who have been grafted on. How in the world could a Christian deliberately empty his mind of these wonders of God without taking a real step, however feeble, towards negating the history of the Church and thus a towards an implicit anti-Semitism?
Oh bother, I didn’t shut up. Well, my anti-anti-Semitism is pretty strong. I do, you know, have a rough intention to love my neighbours. Oh bother.
And what about what meditation actually means to Christians?
Related to the previous consideration, about the Jewish root of Christianity, is the question, “Has God spoken or not?” If so, how can there be any universal wisdom outside of listening to and actively reflecting on (and then, getting so far as to have to break down and passively listen to, in a deeper, simpler way) that Word?
Hans Urs von Balthasar, in a book about what Christianity actually calls meditation (as opposed to what CM calls “meditation”), writes forcefully and clearly,
The decisive question is whether God has spoken to the human race – about himself, of course, and likewise about his reason for creating man and the world – or whether the Absolute remains the Silence beyond all the words of the world.
If the latter is the case, then all the ways are open, and must be pursued…
If, however, the first possibility is valid, namely, that God has spoken, we thereby enter into the biblical sphere, that of the three monotheistic religions, for Islam too is very strongly permeated by Old and New Testament themes. In that case, meditation can only meaningfully be reflection on and assimilation of God’s Word about himself and the world…
It is not we who force a knowledge of the Absolute for ourselves by means of techniques under our control. Of his own accord God freely reveals himself, explains himself in his Son and gives us a Word that satisfies our hungering soul… Hence, basically, Christian meditation [in the sense of the Catholic Church, not in the sense of CM] can be nothing but loving, reflective, obiedient contemplation of him who is God’s self-expression.
Ignoring the choice of words where the differences between meditation and contemplation are a bit obscured (but this is understandable given Father von Balthasar’s goal), this is spot on, in my opinion: God spoke. Why would I deliberately and repeatedly shut my ears? Indeed,
that positive readiness to listen that distinguishes Christian meditation from other kinds… Accordingly, preparation for meditation does not first necessitate lengthy psychological adjustments but only a brief realization in faith of where our true centre and emphasis permanently are.
I already have within me the speaking Word. He dwells there, with his Father and his Spirit. I need only say, and, to the depth that I am able so far to understand, intend, “You are here.” The lengthy psychological adjustments and preparations of CM and CP are simply bewildering. Has God spoken or not? What is the purpose to mind-emptying? Do I really think that more can be gained from it than by what Catholics traditionally understand to be meditation and, as results from it, contemplation?
Can the charge of Quietism be made justly?
In CM and CP we have two methods of recollected prayer, entered into by our own will first, which are apparently prescribed to everyone. This is, on the whole, the same error which the Quietists made and to which the contemporary writings of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross are deliberately and at length opposed (the former calling the Quietists’ attempts at prayer “dolts sitting still”).
And what do the Doctors of the Church teach?
All of these considerations are various. More to the point, I think either have to choose the Doctors of the Church or CM; I either have to choose the Doctors of the Church or CP. The Doctors, the great Catholic teachers, just don’t square with CM or CP. This, for me, is decisive. I do not live my life isolated from the great Catholic teachers, nor would I recommend it to anyone!
The Doctors just don’t square with CM or CP.
Why?
I’ve blogged extensively on the teaching of the Doctors as regards meditation and contemplation, the spiritual journey, and the links between them. None of what I’m going to say should come as a surprise to regular readers.
According to Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard, Saint Thomas, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Alphonsus, and Saint Thérèse – and on this, all are in remarkable agreement, usually explicit, but on some points, implicit – there are three typical stages to the spiritual journey. Beginners have certain problems that God will clean up as regards the senses (John of the Cross calls this, for those on a more cloistered-contemplative path, the “dark night of the senses”). Then intermediates have certain spiritual deficiencies that must be cleaned up as regards the deeper spiritual roots of the human person (John of the Cross calls this the “dark night of the spirit” – again described by him for those on a more cloistered-contemplative path).
When, for the most part (though perhaps not entirely), our will and intelligence and heart emerge from the particular way that God led us to conquer the grave deficiencies of the spirit – attachment to certain techniques and forms of prayer, desires to control or stick our noses into the spiritual lives of others, deep temptations against faith, needy spiritual friendships, and so on – at that time, it is no longer possible to recommend particular meditation techniques to someone, except their state of life demands it (e.g., a priest saying the Office, a parent teaching children their vocal prayers).
Yet, CM and CP ignore this.
These Doctors all teach that contemplation begins with the onset of God working in us to clean up spiritual faults, typical moral-spiritual errors.
Yet, CM and CP focus on a technique whose relationship to the moral life is, at best, obscure.
These Doctors all teach that the spiritual life is a journey.
Yet, CM and CP suggest a particular technique for… well, God only knows, because the link between “contemplation” and “doing God’s will” is obscure. Not for the Doctors. For them, they assert over and over again that contemplation is to do God’s will.
And, finally and perhaps most outrageously, we can glimpse a shocking attitude on the jacket of a John Main book, where we can find the claim: “John Main reintroduced the lost practice of contemplative prayer to the church in the West.” The only reason I’ve stopped laughing at such a ridiculous claim is that I’m afraid they’re actually trying to get people to believe the falsehood that the Church ever dropped the ball on contemplation. Clearly, based on this claim, we know they don’t read the Doctors of the Church much and have no idea what the Ecclesial sources really say. Why would anyone want to take a journey with someone who actually thinks the Church dropped the ball on contemplative prayer? It’s so out of touch with reality as to be definitely detrimental.
In short, my mind boggles as to why anyone would go to CM and CP for guidance on a journey. I’m not saying that they assert an abundance of wrong things. I’m not saying that at all. But if their perspective is expanded to the spiritual journey as a whole, it’s a detrimental to the good things and good values they are trying to encourage. The problem is, they’ve missed the forest for the trees. Yes, there does exist a good value associated with CM and CP (or several good values!). But the forest is real. The overall journey is real. And reliance on one technique, to the point of building one’s life and communal relationships around it, is not ultimately and generally recommendable.
In fact, it should almost go without saying that both CM and CP, which form groups and communities, sometimes but not always defensively, around particular prayer techniques, are especially susceptible to trapping people as “intermediates” on the spiritual journey (if they can somehow get that far). They ignore any definite structure to contemplative progress, describing the spiritual life without a “beginner” stage and without a “past-intermediate” stage. For practitioners not knowing that they have passed, for the most part or partly, through a “dark night of the senses” as a genuine, real transition from one way of relating to God, as regards our senses, it’s not obvious that they are asked to lose attachments to spiritual things, too. The map of the forest is unknown. The focus is too much on one or two important trees. And what spiritual attachments must be lost? Those spiritual attachments include CM or CP or any other preferred spiritual method. Yes, those attachments that must be lost include CM or CP or any other preferred spiritual method. By keeping a group together for the express purpose of supporting and encouraging CM or CP at all times, one does exactly the kind of thing that keeps people from letting go of spiritual attachments in the first place… In other words, one is a dangerously imperfect guide for the journey.
One could do far worse.
One could also do far better.
Some related posts:
- The Fulfilment of All Desire
- Jesus and Children
- The Necessary Logic of Dark Nights According to Saint Alphonsus
- The Ascension and Pentecost for Catherine of Siena
- How Far Along the Spiritual Journey Can Non-Christians Go?
- The Three Conversions in the Spiritual Life
- Edith Stein Summarizing the Teaching on the Beginning of the Dark Night
Contemplative in the Mud 