On Contemplation, a Word from Gerald May, and the Gift of Longing

A Note from Me

Sometimes I look at the flame of a candle and marvel at its energetic stillness. How can something be so full of energy and yet so still? That’s the mystery of the flame.

To live like that—to be a bright and shining light, to burn wildly with love, while at the same time being still—is a mystery worth longing for. I don’t mean being still in body, though that matters, but still in mind, in attention, in desire. A kind of stillness that comes from an inner ordering, where love for what is good steadies my every movement.

That’s how I imagine the experience of contemplation.

I’ve read the old descriptions—of souls stilled in God, of hearts lifted into a quiet fire—and it sounds almost too good to be true. I don’t know if I’ve experienced it. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. But I can dream...

The dream looks something like my attention resting on God with ease as I water my hanging baskets on the porch. I’m not straining to attend, I just am. There’s no tug-of-war. No restless shifting of thoughts. Just a steady interior gaze, as reliable as my breath.

I guess that’s why the mystics spoke of contemplation as gift more than achievement.

I can’t muscle my way into it. I wait, I long, and sometimes—if grace permits—I’m given the gift of contemplation.

A Voice from the Tradition

“This love divine in its nature and glimpsed only through the gift of divine light, is the greatest of all mysteries. It is the source, means, and end of all life, yet no one can explain or define it ... It is the one sheer gift of contemplation, completely unattainable by autonomous human effort. The realization of this love always remains mysterious. We may fall into it, wake up within it, discover that it pervades us, but no matter how we might try, we can never reduce it to an object for study or definition.”

—Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul

A Question to Carry

What image best captures your dream of being united with God?

Until next week,

—Jon