A Testament of Devotion, by Thomas Kelly order it Below are excerpts from 2 chapters of this
book.
The Light Within II
There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one
level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing,
calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within,
behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and
adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.
The secular world of today values and cultivates only the
first level, assured that there is where the real business of humankind
is done, and scorns, or smiles in tolerant amusement , at the cultivation of
the second level – a luxury enterprise, a vestige of superstition, an
occupation for special temperaments. But in a deeply religious culture people
know that the deep level of prayer and of divine attendance is the most
important thing in the world. It is at this deep level that the real business
of life is determined. The secular mind is an abbreviated, fragmentary mind,
building only upon a part of a person’s nature and neglecting a part – the most
glorious part – of a human’s nature, power and resources. The religious mind
involves the whole of a person, embraces his relations with time within their
true ground and setting in the Eternal Lover. It ever keeps close to the
fountains of divine peace and assurances, that are utterly incomprehensible to
the secular mind. It lives in resources and powers that make individuals
radiant and triumphant, groups tolerant and bonded together in mutual concern,
and is bestirred to an outward life of unremitting labor.
Between the two levels is fruitful interplay, but ever the
accent must be upon the deeper level, where the soul ever dwells in the
presence of the Holy One. For the religious person is forever bringing all
affairs of the first level down into the Light, holding them there in the
Presence, reseeing them and the whole of the world of humans and things in a
new and overturning way, responding to them in spontaneous, incisive and simple
ways of love and faith. Facts remain facts, when brought into the Presence in
the deeper level, but their value, their significance, is wholly realigned.
Much apparent wheat becomes utter chaff, and some chaff becomes wheat. Imposing
powers? They are out of the Life, and must crumble. Lost causes? If God be for
them, who can be against them? Rationally plausible futures? They are weakened
or certified in the dynamic Life and Light. Tragic suffering? Already He is
there, and we actively move, in His tenderness, toward the sufferers. Hopeless
debauchees? These are children of God, His concern and ours. Inexorable laws of
nature? The dependable framework for divine reconstruction. The fall of a
sparrow? The Father’s love. For faith and hope and love for all things are
engendered in the soul, as we practice their submission and our own to the
Light Within, as we humbly see all things, even darkly and as through a glass,
yet through the eye of God.
But the upper level of our mind plays upon the deeper level
of divine immediacy of internal communion and of prayer. It furnishes us with
the objects of divine concern, “the sensualized material of our duty,” as
Fichte called it. It furnishes us with those culture-patterns of our group
which are at one and the same time the medium and the material for their
regeneration, our language, our symbols, our traditions, and our history. It
provides for the mystic the suggestions for his metaphors, even the metaphor of
the Light, the Seed, the Sanctuary, whereby he would suggest and communicate
the wonder of God’s immediacy and power. It supplies the present-day tools of
reflection whereby the experience of Eternity is knit into the fabric of time
and thought. But theologies and symbols and creeds, though inevitable, are
transient and become obsolescent, while the Life of God sweeps on through the
souls of men in continued revelation and creative newness. To that divine Live
we must cling. In that Current we must bathe. In that abiding yet energizing
Center we are all made one, behind and despite the surface differences of our
forms and cultures. For the heart of the religious life is in commitment and
worship, not in reflection and theory.
How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning of all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, toward Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. It is as simple an art as Brother Lawrence found it, but it may be long before we achieve any steadiness in the process. Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within. In secret ejaculations of praise, turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be. Keep contact with the outer world of sense and meanings. Here is no discipline in absent-mindedness. Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes, keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship. Keep it up throughout the day. Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake. And in time you will find as did Brother Lawrence, that “those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep.”
...under the silent, watchful eye of the Holy One we all are
standing, whether we know it or not. And in that Center, in that holy Abyss
where the Eternal dwells at the base of our being, our programs, our gifts to
Him, our offerings of duties performed are again and again revised in their
values. Many of the things we are doing seem so important to us. We haven't
been able to say No to them, because they seemed so important.
But if we center down, as the old
phrase goes, and live in that holy Silence which is dearer than life, and take
our life program into the silent places of the heart,
with complete openness, ready to do, ready to renounce according to His
leading, then many of the things we are doing lose their vitality for us. I
should like to testify to this, as a personal experience, graciously given.
There is a reevaluation of much that we do or try to do, which is done
for us, and we know what to do and what to let alone.
Let me talk very intimately and very earnestly with you
about Him who is dearer than life. Do you really want to live your lives, every
moment of your lives, in His Presence? Do you long for Him, crave Him? Do you
love His Presence? Does every drop of blood in your body love Him? Does every
breath you draw breathe a prayer, a praise to Him? Do you sing and dance within
yourselves, as you glory in His love? Have you set yourselves to be His, and only
His, walking every moment in holy obedience?
I know I'm talking like an old-time evangelist. But I can't
help that, nor dare I restrain myself and get prim and conventional. We have
too long been prim and restrained. The fires of the love of God, of our love
toward God, and of His love toward us, are very hot. "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength." (a commandment!)
Do we really do it? Is love steadfastly directed toward God,
in our minds, all day long? Do we intersperse our work with gentle prayers and
praises to Him? Do we live in the steady peace of God, a peace down at the very
depths of our souls, where all strain is gone and God is already victor over
the world, already victor over our weaknesses?
This life, this abiding, enduring peace that never fails,
this serene power and unhurried conquest, inward conquest over ourselves,
outward conquest over the world, is meant to be ours. It is a life that is
freed from strain and anxiety and hurry, for something of the Cosmic Patience
of God becomes ours. Are our lives unshakable, because we
are clear down on bed rock, rooted and grounded in the love of God? This is the
first and the great commandment.
Do you want to live in such an amazing
divine Presence that life is transformed and transfigured and transmuted into
peace and power and glory and miracle? If you do, then you can. But if you say
you haven't the time to go down into the recreating silences, I can only say to
you, "Then you don't really want to, you don't yet
love God above all else in the world, with all your heart
and soul and mind and strength." For, except for spells of sickness in the
family and when the children are small, when terrific pressure comes upon us,
we find time for what we really want to do.
I should like to be mercilessly drastic in uncovering any
sham pretense of being wholly devoted to the inner holy Presence, in singleness
of love to God. But I must confess that it doesn't take time, or complicate
your program. I find that a life of little whispered words of adoration, of
praise, of prayer, of worship can be breathed all through the day.
One can have a very busy day, outwardly speaking, and yet be
steadily in the holy Presence. We do need a half-hour or an hour of quiet
reading and relaxation. But I find that one can carry the recreating silences
within oneself, well-nigh all the time. With delight I
read Brother Lawrence, in his Practice of the Presence of God.
At the close of the
Fourth Conversation it is reported of him, "He was never hasty nor
loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted
composure and tranquility of spirit. 'The time of business,' he said, 'does not
with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my
kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different
things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the
blessed sacrament.' "
Our real problem, in falling to center down, is not a lack
of time; it is, I fear, in too many of us, lack of joyful, enthusiastic delight
in Him, lack of deep, deep-drawing love directed toward Him at every hour of
the day and night.
I think it is clear that I am talking about a revolutionary
way of living. Religion isn't something to be added to our other duties, and
thus make our lives yet more complex. The life with God is the center of life,
and all else is remodelled and integrated by it. It gives the singleness of
eye. The most important thing is not to be perpetually passing out cups of cold
water to a thirsty world. We can get so fearfully busy trying to carry out the
second great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself," that we are under-developed in our devoted
love to God. But we must love God as well as neighbor. These things ye ought to
have done and not to have left the other only partially done.
There is a way of life so hid with Christ in God that in the
midst of the day's business one is inwardly lifting brief prayers, short
ejaculations of praise, subdued whispers of adoration and of tender love to the
Beyond that is within. No one need know about it. I only speak to you because
it is a sacred trust, not mine but to be given to others.
One can live in a well-nigh continuous of unworded prayer
directed toward God, directed toward people and enterprises we have on our heart. There is no hurry about it all; it is a life
unspeakable and full of glory, an inner world of splendor within which we,
unworthy, may live. Some of you know it and live in it; others of you may
wistfully long for it; it can be yours.
Now out from such a holy Center come the commissions of
life. Our fellowship with God issues in world-concern. We cannot keep the love
of God to ourselves. It spills over. It quickens us. It makes us see the
world's needs anew. We love people and we grieve to see them blind when they
might be seeing, asleep with all the world's comforts when they ought to be
awake and living sacrificially, accepting the world's goods as their right when
they really hold them only in temporary trust.
It is because from this holy Center we re-love people,
re-love our neighbors as ourselves, that we are bestirred to be means of their
awakening. The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter,
important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought
it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's
recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting
down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are
important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world
reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the
glory of God.
This love of people is well-nigh as amazing as the love of
God. Do we want to help people because we feel sorry for them, or because we
genuinely love them? The world needs something deeper than pity; it needs love.
(How trite that sounds, how real it is!) But in our love of people are we to be
excitedly hurried, sweeping all men and tasks into our loving concern? No, that
is God's function. But He, working within us, portions out His vast concern
into bundles. and lays on each of us our portion. These become our tasks. Life
from the Center is a heaven-directed life.
Much of our acceptance of multitudes of obligations is due
to our inability to say No. We calculated that that task had to be done, and we
saw no one ready to undertake it. We calculated the need, and then calculated
our time, and decided maybe we could squeeze it in somewhere. But the decision
was a heady decision, not made within the sanctuary of the soul.
When we say Yes or No to calls for service on the basis of
heady decisions, we have to give reasons, to ourselves and to others. But when
we say Yes or No to calls, on the basis of inner guidance and whispered
promptings of encouragement from the Center of our life, or on the basis of a
lack of any inward "rising" of that Life to encourage us in the call,
we have no reason to give, except one--the will of God as we discern it.
Then we have begun to live in guidance. And I find He never
guides as into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic
Patience becomes, in part, our patience, for after all God is at work in the
world. It is not we alone who are at work in the world, frantically finishing a
work to be offered to God.
Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.
It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It
takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new
and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little
day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.