A Bridge: Crossing Over into Contemplative Christian Territory, by Peter T. Haas
The following is an exerpt from the forthcoming book The God Who Is Here by Peter T. Haas © 2009, and also posted at my website www.contemplativechristians.com.
To contemplate is to see. The contemplative life is one in which God is seen. In this present life, absorbed with its trials and temptations, we cannot clearly see God. Yet, there is a way in this life to see God, and the one who sees God is the one through whom God is seen. Thus, God is here with us through those who live the contemplative, seeing life. To see God is to experience supreme happiness, which the Lord taught us long ago during his sea-side mountain sermon: Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God (Matthew 5.8). The nature of this seeing life is the mystery I am chasing. The knowledge revealed in the chase can transform one’s life and the life of the Christian church. I am eager for the journey, and to join with you on yours.
So, we begin with God, and our faith in God. Contrary to what some have recently suggested, the problems we face as a civilization will not be solved by ridding ourselves of faith or theism.[i] All of the world’s great faith traditions are struggling to find their place in our postmodern world. With religious fundamentalism on one side, and secularism on the other, a gaping chasm has opened creating dissonance and difficulty for those seeking a place to stand in and for faith. What the world needs is not the end of religious faith altogether, but the re-discovery of the contemplative way within our religious traditions. I am hopeful that the contemplative bridge will provide means of passport for bewildered pilgrims looking for a way forward in faith, not just an end to it. There is a safe passage. It is a well worn path. It is the contemplative dimension of the Gospel, the hidden way of the heart. The pearl of great price. The treasure of Christ’s presence within.[ii]
Christians restless for and with God are beginning to realize that Christianity can transform and develop from within, not by throwing Christianity away altogether, but by transcending its dogmatic, modern expressions, moving into something higher and fuller, yet inextricably interrelated with the ancient foundations of the Christian faith. This is why we need a bridge. [iii] Contemplative Christianity is both a journey backwards and a path forward. In a sense, it is both the means and the ends.
Christianity is uniquely equipped to experience such inner transformation. The popularized form of Christianity most know today is in fact the result of centuries of evolution as the Gospel adapted and responded to each unique cultural context. Even in the development of the written text of the Bible, we can see this inner seed of transformation. It was Jesus Christ who, from within the very depths of Judaism, both included and transcended the Jewish faith of his heritage. Jesus and the Gospel tradition stand as a luminous developmental move in the history of God. The teaching of Jesus is rooted within, but also rises beyond its Abrahamic origins.[iv] The development of faith is a part of God’s unfolding, emerging Spirit. Remember, it was Jesus who promised a new way of relating to God after his departure. This new way would be the way of the Spirit; a promise both fulfilling the ancient prophecies, and also transcending them, inaugurating the expanding divine manifestation and mission at Pentecost to a wider community that surprised all involved. The ensuing apostolic mission indelibly impacted not only the first century world post-Jesus, but the entire flow of human civilization to date, including you and me.
Out of the depths
In my case, I was born into a Christian family and was ensconced by Christian concepts and its loving, community ethos. Then, when I was seventeen years old, I experienced a God-directed conversion that touched my emotions and psychology in a transformative way. I responded to an “invitation” to “come forward and receive Christ” following a sermon preached at Camp of the Woods, an Evangelical Christian retreat center in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. While I had spent all my life absorbed in a Christian context and family, this experience was a transforming moment in which I consciously dedicated my life to the love and service of God, and where, I felt God drenched me with a waterfall of light and love. I emerged from this experience with a hunger for scripture and a holy longing for more of God, especially in prayer.
As profound and significant as that spiritual experience was, I endured friction and frustration trying to integrate this new level of being with all my other knowledge and experiences in life. I increasingly felt fragmented: on the one side, Christian faith, on the other the multiple dimensions of myself and the world that did not seem to fit with the kind of Christianity I was striving to experience.[v] And so several years after my “conversion,” I began to question God’s existence. I longed to experience God’s presence more in every dimension of my life – not just compartmentalized in my worship or “devotional time.” I experienced melancholy, doubt and anxiety. I felt spiritually empty. My mind and my heart were strangers, aching for reunion.
In this way, a decade passed during which time I studied theology as an undergraduate and prepared for the pastorate at Princeton Seminary. During these years, I continued to long to know and experience more of God – not just through what I heard or read from others, but personally. I learned that this kind of longing is called mysticism, and that Saint Augustine famously summarized this human longing in the opening lines of his spiritual autobiography, musing that “our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee.”[vi] I began to see this kind of spiritual, integrated longing all over the place. I began reading the Bible with new eyes and saw the spiritual depth of such phrases as “abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15.4). Nature also became vibrantly alive to me as an icon of God’s infused presence and I retreated into the solitude and silence of forest, field and mountain more and more. I began to understand the very essence of Jesus’ teachings and the Christian tradition itself was mystical. That is, Christianity is an invitation into relationality with God, through Jesus in prayer and sacrament, bearing us into an experiential spiritual union with Christ who fills us with his Spirit.
Yet, this longing for God’s presence was further thwarted, ironically, in college and seminary, where despite the best intentions of professor and student alike, I encountered compelling arguments against the Christian faith. I wrestled with these ideas and hungered all the more for relevancy of faith in the modern, scientific and technological world. I believed that there must be a way to remain a Christian with intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality, without collapsing into either the unexamined life or the brash certainty of religious fundamentalism. When I would walk from Princeton Seminary and cross the street to Princeton University I often found myself feeling oddly out of place and small compared to what I thought was the real and rational learning of the University. And then I felt the dread of this question: how are you going to make a living in this real world?
Surely, I sensed, there must be another way? Surely, there must be a bridge to span the chasm widening in my heart between faith and unbelief; myth and truth; longing and fulfillment; irrelevancy and fecundity? I lived with this tension well into my first years as a pastor. Like many young ministers I struggled to know what it meant to be a pastor in the first place, but then, also, more than ever in the post-modern context what it meant to be a pastor in this confusing world where the Christian story and presuppositions were increasingly relegated to the realm of irrelevancy.
It was not until I was thirty-three years old, that I discovered a bridge for my own crossing. The discovery occurred five years into my first pastorate. It was a transforming moment in my spiritual development that helped reunite my head and my heart. I was introduced to the inner dimension of the Christian tradition, broadly termed: the contemplative way. The contemplative tradition is at the heart of Christianity. But regrettably, for American Protestants, the abundant blessings of the Contemplative tradition have long been forgotten, if not nearly thrown away. But, thankfully, the treasure endures. In this confusing and epochal changing time for the Christian church, the contemplative tradition is being re-discovered. For example, Protestants are increasingly attending contemplative retreats and discovering writers like Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen, Eugene Peterson, Dallas Willard, Bernadette Roberts and Jim Marion.
With these and others, it is my intention to help articulate how contemplative Christianity, and more specifically a spirituality of God’s presence, can span the space between the head and heart. What follows in this book is a contribution to further unfold this intention and destiny and remind us that for every chasm we see there is always a providential bridge we don’t.
