Encounter

Some have questioned if contemplation is an “Eastern” practice disguised, fearing it opens the door to devilry. But this concern arises from unfamiliarity with our own rich Christian inheritance – the blazing path forged by Desert mystics centuries ago.

It began with the holy hermits like Antony, who in 270 CE led an exodus into Egypt’s wildernesses. Thousands followed, to become Christ’s likeness through disciplined life and prayer. An alternative community ablaze with love for the Incarnate One.

More than beliefs or dogmas, the Desert way focused on the how – the journey of surrendering through silence into the always-too-muchness of God. Their embodied wisdom cannot be grasped by rational mind alone, which is perhaps why it faded during the Enlightenment’s rise.

For the primary quest of abbas and ammas was for Love itself. All else was at best means to this end, mere practices devoid of content without love’s enlivening fire. As Merton wrote, in their sayings we find “repeated insistence on the primacy of love over everything else.”

To seek this deepest intimacy, the Desert way prescribed: leaving systems of the world, some degree of external solitude, intervals of interior stillness to quiet the mind’s madness, and “technologies” to rein in unruly thoughts and passions. All undertaken not for escapism but for the sake of becoming capable of authentic love and communion.

Contemplation formed the bedrock for building a new civilization – a way of seeing that does not grasp at singular meanings but respects all creation’s inherent dignity as God’s image. A consciousness that transcends us/them labeling in order to encounter the Beloved’s vast Presence suffusing the whole.

In our world’s urgencies, we need this rich treasury more than ever. The inward path of silence which paradoxically opens our eyes to the primacy of love over all else. The radical way that divests of false selfing in order to be remade as bearers of Divine Friendship across all boundaries.