St. Mark's

(I found this buried in the depths of my blog drafts. I wrote it last year, after going to listen to a compline choir while on a mobile trip in Seattle.)


 
I recently got a chance to sit in on the compline choir at St. Mark's episcopal church in Seattle. 

It moved me so much I wrote a poem about it.  Revel in my cheesiness.

Tiptoe swiftly past
the doorman with the smiling eyes
raise my head to see
hundreds of figures.
Some intently focused
eyes closed and lips silently moving,
Others lightheartedly receiving,
eyes open and wandering.
Prostrate, kneeling, cross-legged
in pews, on ledges, on concrete floor
filling nearly every open space
in the colossal chapel of St. Mark's.
 
Find my seat on the cold ground
amidst people of every kind
cross my legs
and breathe.
The sea of sihouettes
allows me to absorb
into the atmosphere,
morph
into the hundreds
gathering for a half an hour
to simply listen.

Silence.
The church is void of
talking, moving, rustling.
The stillness is thick
but the anticipation is loud
each person waiting
in silent expectation
to hear sounds that allow them
to escape from the present
and enter into the unknown.

Finally a note is heard
Rising slowly from a undefined place
Growing greater as the seconds tick by
A note
in perfect pitch
Clear and crisp
echoing of the walls of the chapel
Then
another note
wraps its arms around the first
in perfect harmony
Then
another
and another
notes linking arms with one another
sung from the mouths of monks
hidden from sight.

Notes turn into words
words into prayers.
Verses from the holy scriptures
developed into chants 
the chants of the Gregorian monks at st. Marks.

Their voices unite the crowd
all gathering, wonderstruck
by the beauty
of what is tickling their ears
melody, harmony, praise
striking in our hearts
that familiar feeling
of being enveloped in something
our heads deny
but our hearts can't help
but give into.

The Contemplative Balance

I am growing tired of extremes.
I've been asking myself when I will reach a point where I realize that contemplation is a necessity. I tend to treat it like a bad habit that needs to be repressed. But when I ignore contemplation, I notice characteristic consequences pop up. First, my utilization of mind numbing entertainment sky rockets. After that, it's social binges. And after those, after realizing how unfulfilling both of those are, it's sitting in my room eating spoonfuls of chocolate and feeling sorry for myself.
That sounds dramatic, but it's true. When I choose to not nurture the spirituality that I tend towards, I spiral downward faster than an crashing jet. Not to mention, when weeks or even months go by of ignoring it, I notice key aspects of my personality getting dumbed down as well--my intellect, my sense of humor, my social skills. Because by rejecting contemplation, I'm rejecting the way God created me and therefore rejecting myself. How can I thrive when I'm repressing the very thing that gives me life?

But then there's the other extreme. The contemplative life is a fairly new concept for me, I've only known about it less than a year. But as I've been exploring it, I began noticing that, just like everything else, contemplation has the ability to get distorted and skewed, very slowly and subtly, with us hardly noticing. In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton talks about how great heights can be reached by 'metaphysical speculation', and that it can introduce someone into great and pure pleasures, that only get deeper as you speculate more on things you're learning. But sometimes, even if someone is learning great things about the Christian faith, those speculations won't transcend the 'natural realm' (the tangible world, visible to the eye) into the 'spiritual realm' (the world invisible to the eye, or, union with God, which is the purpose of contemplation).

He goes on to say, "In such an event, you get, not contemplation, but a kind of intellectual and esthetic gluttony--a high and refined and even virtuous form of selfishness. And when it leads to no movement of the will towards God, no efficacious love of Him, it is sterile and dead, this meditation, and could even accidentally become, under certain circumstances, a kind of a sin--at least an imperfection."
At first, that was hard for me to read. It made my stomach turn thinking that this new spiritual discipline I had discovered had the potential to turn really ugly. But on the other hand, I was slightly comforted because I figured out why I would sometimes come out of time spent in reflection and solitude (times that were supposed to be rich with inner peace and satisfaction of communion with a Being completely outside of myself) feeling weighted by selfishness, my sight darkened by self indulgence.
And I'm still working on finding the balance. Judging by my track record with life, you can probably guess that it will take me a long time to figure it out. Although I'm finding that all things concerning God are never about arriving at the end, but being patient in the upwards spiral of growth and learning. I do still pray, though, that the times of bobbing back and forth between ignoring contemplation all together and diving in so much that I'm drowning in my own pride and pleasure at having 'arrived' at such spiritual heights, will grow fewer and farther between, and I can dwell in God's presence, not dependent on emotion or feeling, but with a still and quiet soul as Psalm 131:2 states. "Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me."

The Monastery--After The Fact

It's been a couple of weeks since I returned from my weekend at Mt. Angel. I don't want to turn the experience in to some spiritual high that I'm trying to clutch and grab onto for as long as possible, but as I read over my journal entries from that weekend, I have to say that a chord strikes in my heart and I feel the pull towards contemplation tugging yet again. I feel a slight lift in my spirit and flutter in my soul thinking about the raw beauty of solitude with God. Obviously, I haven't been able to get time like that with God back here at the YWAM campus. But I've noticed that some revelations from that weekend have definitely translated into my day-to-day here, which I think is really important, and tells that the experience wasn't just hype.
For one, I don't find myself resenting corporate prayer and worship anymore. Before the weekend at the monastery, I could pinpoint numerous times when simply being in worship or intercession with other Christians made me so furious I would run out of the event and go to my house, slam the door and scream cry into my pillow for an hour. I could never figure out why praying and worshiping, things that are supposed to be deep times of communion with God, would make me so damned pissed. But in the silence at the monastery I noticed that in corporate worship times, I wasn't seeking God for God's sake. I was seeking a vision, a picture, a word, anything to share with everyone else in the room to prove that I "hear God". Not only that, but I was definitely testing my own ability to twist his arm--to see how much I would whine and strive until I got him to do what I wanted. Of course you never realize these things until you are able to step outside of things and take a good hard look at yourself. God definitely helped me do that. Now when I'm in worship or prayer I take comfort in the fact that it has nothing to do with me. All worship and prayer is about is bowing my head and honoring a God a thousand times bigger than myself. It's about sitting in the wonder of the fact that I'll never be able to control any part of who He is. I'm helpless in taming him. And just to clarify, this isn't sappy sentiment I'm talking about--I'm not sitting wide-eyed, with warm fuzzies about God (although there's a place for that). I'm talking about a deep peace and sense of humility, knowing that I am tiny and God is HUGE. That simple fact of knowing that it's useless for me to manipulate God or back him into a corner, melts my rage. Thank God.
Secondly, my bible has also shifted from being a source of resentment to a source of life and refuge. I want to read my bible. Because it's not about me. It's not about what I can get from it. Yeah, that's a perk. But it's just a perk. The Bible is about learning about the biggest most beautiful most complicated neverending never able to understand thing in the whole universe--God. And something about picking up this Bible freakishly gives me life in a way nothing else does. It honestly freaks me out sometimes, because I can't explain what it does in my soul. It shifts things. It hasn't been like that for a while and I think the shift is this--lifting my gaze from my navel, to God himself. He's so much cooler than me.
Again, thank God.