A Quarterly Reflection on the Contemplative Life

Holy Ground

Vol. 26, No. 3 • Winter 2016

Be TransparentIt puffs through the lips like swirls of snow drifting around the trunks of trees. One need not know what it means to like the word. Say it.

Epiphany (ɪˈpɪf.ə.ni) – a movement in a symphony when all the instruments sigh softlyEpiphany – the wind-blown murmur of yellow reeds on a frozen lake Epiphany – the startled way the moon looks, caught in the maple’s branches Epiphany – the sound a rabbit makes when he sneezes

For Christians Epiphany is the action of divinity incarnating, dressing in creation, robing in fire, light, and fragile flesh. This is the celebration, twelve days after Christmas, of the visit of the Wise Ones to Mary’s baby and showing forth to the world the gift of Jesus Christ. Epiphany is briefly observed in most churches. Presbyterians declare it is not even properly a season, but

only a day in the liturgical calendar like Pentecost. Anglicans and Catholics generally conclude Epiphany a week later at the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. Methodists and some Lutherans hang onto it until the Transfiguration of the Lord right before Ash Wednesday.

“What kind of drama would you write about Epiphany?” my graduate fellowship advisor, Dan Wessler, asked me once. I had just finished a grant-funded project of writing a series of readers’ dramas for the seasons of the church year. In the project I had covered all the special Sundays except Epiphany. I thought for a moment and said, “I am not sure, but I think it would have a lot of light and mirrors, images reflecting back on each other, shining, glittering like bright sunshine on new fallen snow.”

Beyond its specific Christian significance epiphany carries the general meaning of manifestation, a revealing, or showing of something previously

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hidden or unknown. One suddenly perceives a deeper meaning or wakes up to a new realization. Epiphanies are those intuitive leaps and bright ideas which illumine, challenge, surprise, and reorient our understanding, and, sometimes, our entire lives.

I am not surprised that I thought of a snow covered landscape when I told Dr. Wessler what I would include in a script about Epiphany. Midwinter invites me to see anew and look beyond the obvious surface of things. The winter-stripped woods and barren fields mirror an internal landscape within us that offers more clarity. Nature slows down, rests. Wind, ice, flood, and snow assault the land. Instead of dazzling us

with blossom, leaf and fruit, the ground lies fallow and lifeless.

I suspect that it is winter’s apophatic quality that stirs epiphanies. Here is another word to trip across your tongue, apophatic (apəˈfadik). Apophatic and Kataphatic are both Greek words used to describe two contrasting ways of knowing and speaking about God. Apophatic is also called the negative way. Kataphatic is the positive way. Neither one or the other is necessarily the better way, though one way may be more dominant than the other in various stages of spiritual growth.

Apophatic and kataphatic describe the

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way we connect with and find meaning in God.

Kataphatic refers to meeting God through form as the shepherds and the three Kings did in Bethlehem. This positive way of knowing God includes language, metaphor, stories, thoughts, art, image, music, movement, and scriptures. Experiencing God through rituals, sacraments, nature, and other people are all kataphatic. This way is the path we are likely to be most comfortable with. We all need to see and touch with our own hands the reality of Holiness in our midst.

The apophatic or negative way is the “less-is-more” path. This way includes the wintry, bare-bones moments of knowing God beyond words, images, and forms. Apophatic spirituality says God is not this and not this, and not this, because the One beyond our naming will never be fully contained in a name or word or form that we could devise.

Apophatic spirituality may seem scary and disturbingly empty. Yet we all have experienced Holiness in this way. You may stumble for words to describe such an experience, and say, “It wasn’t this and it wasn’t quite that. I just can’t

really explain in words how I felt and what I saw or learned, but I know it was God.”

This negative way of meeting God may occur on the margins, the ugly, forgotten, God forsaken places of our hearts and the world. Sometimes we meet God in loneliness, desolation, absence, and limitation. The apophatic is the experience of the cross. We see no angels in the sky, no gilt edged Bibles, or welcoming community. Yet in the stark confrontation with our own nothingness and our deep need, we glimpse a Presence beyond our egos, outside our categories and biases, past our own imagination, memory, or thoughts. And somehow we discover comfort, support, assurance, or courage from beyond our own resources.

There where I end is where God begins to be.

Meister Eckhart

Some faith traditions toss out rituals, liturgies and formal prayers. They take off the robes, step away from the raised pulpits, and clear out the fancy furniture and stained glass. They may pare away the words as well, as

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the Quakers, for example. They seek intimacy and simplicity and divest themselves of objects and practices, which can become distractions and idols, as well as require time and costly maintenance.

Father William Meninger, Trappist monk and author, says the church stopped growing at the kataphatic. “Our churches do not teach, allow, or make space for the apophatic. They stay in the illuminative stage of spiritual growth which focuses on form. The problem is that form is necessarily temporal and finite – words, buildings, politics, ecclesiastical structures. Churches do not deepen and develop the eternal aspect of God and openness to the Holy Spirit in the present moment and each continually renewed moment.”

A desire for the mysterious otherness of God, ever beyond our reach, may call some people beyond the church’s kataphatic emphasis. Such people do not reject the church as much as move on toward approaches the church may not offer in any consistent way. The church may not have the time to cultivate the apophatic, because it is mired in the kataphatic. The attraction for the less-is-more path tends to come

later in the journey and may be an indication of deeper maturity in Christ. One relies less on the trappings, the forms that lead us to Christ and more on the sheer presence and immediacy of God. This does not mean we neglect mission, justice, caring for our world and one another in concrete ways. Our service to God and others will only be enhanced by a deeper sense of Christ’s presence.

When you are drawn to the apophatic you may notice a shift in yourself from seeking God and striving to grow in faith through reading, practices, and activities to relaxing into simple awareness of Christ. A person might say, “Why read a book about God or sit around talking about God, when the Holy One is right here?”

Apophatic spirituality may involve suffering as we encounter our idols and attachments to self-images, attitudes, and opinions which no longer serve us. The negative way reveals what needs to die or be released. Any significant loss may put us on the apophatic way for a while. This is the way of purification and inner and outer cleansing. We easily become attached to the objects of this world, which comfort and give us pleasure. Over time people, places,

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and activities which open our hearts to God may also become idols, which compromise our freedom in God. To confront our attachments and endure losses can be a harrowing journey through fear, confusion, and isolation. Ideally we find space and appreciation for both paths in congregations. As our sense of God’s immediacy and sufficiency deepens, our awareness of God’s presence moves into all our forms and activities. Then, wherever our eye falls we behold epiphanies, as we, ourselves, become epiphanies for others.

I have been watching this desire for the apophatic path emerge in our churches and our culture for the past 30 years. The increased interest in

meditation, contemplation, silence, and solitude has resulted in hundreds of training programs and other resources. The religious and the “spiritual-but-not-religious,” as well as leaders in the fields of education, business, neuropsychology, and medicine recognize the need for silence and stillness in our lives.

Likewise, the popularity of books, articles, websites, products, and courses which promise to clear and simplify our minds, psyches, bodies, and homes are a reflection of our culture’s recognition of the oppression of too much form. We are anxious, clogged up, and weighed down with our responsibilities, our relationships, and information overload.

Decluttering, clearing, cleansing, downsizing, simple living are buzz words for being fed up and exhausted by too much form in our lives. We are discovering that many things in our lives “do not spark joy,” as declutter expert Marie Kondo (The Magic Art of Tidying Up) puts it.

We all hunger for some winter spirituality. We perceive the clutter, the dead limbs, broken branches, and trash in our lives. The grace and beauty

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn

a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things

this is the best season of your life. Wu-Men

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of bare branches inspire simplicity. Winter says, “Go ahead, strip down, prune away the pretense, trim off the deceit. Cut out that attitude, this dead grudge that no longer serves you.” Winter summons us to become more transparent and genuine. Winter makes Nathanaels of us.

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.”

Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”

Philip said, “Come and see.”

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?”

Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.”

Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these!

John 1: 45-50 CEB

Take a look at how many times and in what ways the concept or word for

seeing is used in this text. Nathanael comes to see Jesus. Jesus sees Nathanael before he even arrives and sees into Nathanael’s character. When Nathaniel sees Jesus, he sees deeply into Jesus’s identity and that Jesus is God’s Son. Jesus, holding out more epiphanies for the man without guile, says, “You aint seen nothin’ yet.”

People without deceit or pretense are those who reveal God, because they have become transparent, there is little within to obscure the presence of Christ. Nathanael was a fellow who had spent some time on the less is more path. He had shed some of his illusions and assumptions. He was completely sincere and dedicated to God. Yes, he still carried his judgment about the sort of people who come from backwater towns like Nazareth. Jesus would continue to turn Nathaniel’s world upside down in the days ahead.

The longing for clarity, authenticity, and simplicity in many people today may not only be a sign of world weary of the heavy burden of materialism, but also the blossoming of Wisdom.

What are you going to let go of today? Loretta F. Ross

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The river of the water of life…flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…Oneither side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit… and the leavesof the tree are for the healing of the nations. Revelation 22: 2-3

The Praying LifeHearsay and Rumors about the Beloved

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We are pleased to include a photograph on page 2 by Sheila Creighton. See more of her work here: www.imageryoflight.wordpress.com

William Meninger quote is from his comments during a retreat, held at Christ the King Church, Topeka, Kansas on June 13, 2015.

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Copyright © 2006, 2007 Loretta F. Ross. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher.

I t is a delusion to think that we can obtain more of God by contemplation, or by pious devotions or by religious retreats, than by being at the fireplace or by working in the stable. For the person who has learned letting go and letting be, no creature can any longer hinder. Rather, each

creature points you toward God and toward new birth and toward seeing the world as God sees it:

transparently! -M Eckhart