St Mary's

St Mary’s – Doing Spirituality

I was fortunate enough through the enthusiasm of my wife, Angela, to discover this community a long time ago – 1988 I think, and I have been a fairly regular attendee ever since.  Certainly I have been a constant attendee since, to borrow a term from the Irish, “since the troubles”, the troubles of exile.

Peter in a homily towards the end of 2010 when restating his vision of this community, emphasised that we are a faith community not a belief community. A faith community is one developing a spiritually of Justice Compassion and Love. More recently he restated the value of the mystical contemplative tradition in Christianity traditionally suppressed throughout history. This implies  a letting go of, a freeing up from,  much if not all of our classical conditioning of religious tradition,( Recently at a friends wedding-a nuptial mass, I was sitting next to a women , who at the end of the ceremony commented “ that was scary- I have not been inside a catholic church for 25 years, yet I just knew how to do everything), or there could be a shifting of the core of our traditional stories and belief systems; if this is so what do we have left, what do we replace it with? What do we develop as the core of our own practice. According to Fr Richard Rohr OSM the oppositional mindset that was set in place after the reformation of the 16^th century, and after the enlightment of the 17^th and 18^th centuries meant that the ancient tradition of gaining spiritually through meditation was lost. We lost the older tradition of praying beyond words. I want to propose that this is what we can develop, praying beyond words, meditation-a vehicle for our spiritual pathway.

For a long time I have thought that the Book of James was the most useful, social and practical of the gospel writings; James warned against taking the Pauline view of Christianity to an extreme where Paul urged his followers to put their faith in Christ (i.e. what to believe, one who would deliver them).  James called his listeners to action, “Faith without works is dead, be doers of the word and not hearers only.  Religion that is pure and undefiled is this – to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep ones-self unstained from the world” – to keep ones-self unstained from the world – what is this? Christians are very good at relieving the struggling and suffering of others-there are helping missions in every part of the world, just look at the community support provided during our natural disasters, out of this faith community Micha arose, and I am sure that nearly all of us are caring for family, relatives or friends; visiting the widow in her affliction, and as well there does seem in our community a growing interest in the spiritual/contemplative tradition, through the transformative experience of meditation, a way of remaining unstained from the world, our pastors refer to it in various ways, the Eckhart Tolle CD’s are taken home each week, and many books referring to the subject are sold, at  the drop in shop, the existing meditation groups are regularly attended.

Jesus, it now seems, was primarily a teacher, a sage who bequeathed to his followers principles by which to live, not a body of eternally fixed doctrine that he expected people to believe.

The teachings that Jesus bequeathed to us focused not on believing but on doing.  Even before the term ‘Christian’ (originally with a derogatory meaning)  came into use, the first Jesus-followers were attempting to practise the kind of life he taught.  They called it ‘The Way’.

An ancient book called ‘The Didache’ (a Greek word meaning ‘teaching’) throws considerable light on this.

It is interesting to find that the Didache has preserved the primitive label, ‘The Way’.  This is how it starts off: ‘There are two ways , one of life and one of death, but there is a great difference between the two ways’.  In its short description of the Way of Death we find listed all the commonly acknowledged human crimes and misdemeanours that are condemned in almost every culture.  But the emphasis of the Didache is on the Way of Life.  Listen to how it continues:

The way of life is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbour as yourself, and not do to another what you would not want done to you.

So what is this commandment of love – if we are going to be into orthopraxy, a doing faith community, how do we do it – this ‘love’, how do we make it happen – the modern Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh stresses that “ the greatest present that you can give someone is your presence,” ie to pay attention to the other, to listen to the other, to encounter the other; Fr Lawrence Freeman Benedictine and leader of the World Community of Christian Meditation states that attention is the basis of love. This sentiment is echoed by Anthony De Mello, the Jesuit and late  influential spiritual teacher, when he asks what does it mean to love? – it means to pay attention with a clear mind and to see a person, a situation, a thing as it really is ; what prevents us from really seeing, really hearing/listening, really being in touch with?  According to De Mello our conditioning prevents us from being unstained by the world  – our concepts our categories, our prejudices, our prejections, the labels that we have drawn from our culture and our past experiences. Modern neuroscience informs us that meditation through brain plasticity developes the brain circuts of attention empathy and compassion. In a recent second anniversary commentary on the recovery of those from the black Saturday bushfires a community worker stated “ the best thing that helps these people is human warmth” Perhaps meditation is the method for further developing our orthopraxy  remaining unstained from the world.

My purpose in engaging with such a presentation as this is to encourage you to give some consideration to meditation as part of the spiritually of this faith community.  St Mary’s already has two long standing meditation groups – 1) based on the teachings of Thich Naht Hahn, a mindfulness meditation group which meets every Monday evening at the Uniting Church in West End – Laurel is available after our celebration to give you more information; 2) every second Thursday the Eckhart Tolle Meditation group meets at Caroline Vincent’s residence Woolloongabba – Caroline is here to provide more information; and in the spirit of orthopraxy I thought I had better do something – so I will be starting up a third meditation group – this  group will offer something a little different – there will be an emphasis on movement meditation based on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais with experiences in serenity meditations, mindfulness and self knowledge – remember the greatest gift is your presence, the core of your presence is attention, William James the famous American Philosopher and Psychologist  of the late 19^th century said “the education of attention would be an education par excellence” – there will be an emphasis on paying attention. This meditation group will meet at my residence at Coorparoo. The initial meeting will be on the first Thursday in———. I also, at the end of our celebration, will be at the back with more information. I hope I encouraged you.