A Response to Too Deep for Words

TOO DEEP FOR WORDS by Thelma Hall is a book about reclaiming a spiritual tradition that was alive and well for 15 centuries. Contemplation as a valid and normal mode of prayer was gradually rejected in the last 400 years as discursive prayer gained in popularity. Before that it was taught and practiced as integral to an overall prayer movement. Thelma Hall evocatively describes the four steps of this spiritual tradition and how Christians are finally reclaiming this heritage. The lack of a deeper experiential connection with God has caused Christians to grow spiritually thirsty. Many seekers are discovering the old tradition of Lectio Divina that has much in common with the spiritual practices of the East and meets their needs for an authentic spiritual path.

Death to the False Self

An important component of contemplative prayer is the process of "dying to live." Hall and others talk about this in terms of dying to the false self so that we can embrace the true self. As infants we assume that the world was created for us and accommodates itself to our needs and wants. It is a divine consciousness or rather unconsciousness. We assume we are at the center of the universe because we are not really aware of anything else having a separate existence apart from us. As we grow up we find it difficult to relinquish this royal status. In fact we create defense systems in order to avoid letting go of this identity. Unfortunately these defense systems have a fatal flaw: they are based on pure illusion, a lie. And more than that, our defense systems are not only attempts to keep out reality, they are fundamentally resistance to love and to God. We don’t realize that in embracing our limitedness, our failure, we are missing out on being embraced by love. We are missing out on wholeness and an undiscovered goodness which waits for us on the other side of self-centeredness. That is the tragedy of existence and it can only be transformed through embracing the death of the false self. "What prompts this surrender and makes it possible is the realistic recognition that my very life and being is a gift of love. ‘He who seeks himself brings himself to ruin whereas he who brings himself to naught for me discovers who he is’ (Matthew 10:38-39)."

Love Transforms

Hall likens the process of prayer and the evolving relationship to God to a person "in love". We are capable of all kinds of self-sacrifice when we are in love. Prayer is about developing a relationship with God. It is about accepting the grace of God’s love. Hall breaks with the past and says that the "union with God is not attained through laboriously ascending a ladder of virtues." Rather it is about love being awakened in us through God’s acceptance of us despite our total unacceptability.

Prerequisites

Hall lays out some prerequisites to the process of Lectio Divina. She suggests that we must understand that prayer is not a rote or programmed event. Prayer is about receiving not performing. It is not about accomplishing either. She asserts that God is more concerned with the sincerity of our desire than our ability to succeed or accomplish our spiritual goals. "Our experience of weakness can often teach us much more about our radical dependency upon God than our apparent and frequent successes." Secondly, she suggests that we should read scripture daily because it is imbued with the word of God. Thirdly, we ought to dare to pray because we are totally dependent upon God for our existence, though normally we may not be aware of this. Finally, the "human person as the mystery of infinite emptiness and God as the mystery of infinite fullness – these two concepts brought together constitute the underlying mystery of all genuine prayer."

Process of Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina (literally "reading the Word of God") is really four steps of which reading is the first. Lectio is more about listening than it is about reading a text. To read the Word of God we must be open to it and be listening for a living word spoken to us personally. Hall notes that in the past the writers of scriptures were thought to have received a kind of divine dictation. They were not really involved in the forming of the text but it came from wholly outside of human history and culture. Now we see how important active faith is in both the original writing of the words as well as in the hearing of it today. The Spirit vivifies the scripture and makes it a living word to us, speaking through the words more than by them.

Therefore it is best if we prepare ourselves by quieting our bodies and mind so that we are as focused and ready to hear a word. Also Hall says that in all traditions, both East and West, it is important that the spine is erect but not tense thus facilitating an alertness of our mind. She instructs us to read a short section of text slowly, listening to it to hear what God has for us. The heart and mind are both important in this process.

Meditatio is reflection on the meaning of the word. How is the word speaking to us in our own language? In what way is God communicating his life to us in the present text? Meditatio is largely the activity of the intellect and the imagination but it is these faculties in the service of a surrender to Spirit moving within us. Mediatio can be exercised differently for each person. Some people will enter the story being told imaginatively. Others might receive more of an intuitive sense. Another option is through the senses. In any case as the word begins to touch the heart we begin our movement into Oratio.

Oratio is a further step into allowing God to pray through us. Oratio literally means prayer. But this is not the discursive prayer we know from our experience in the exoteric traditions of the Church. This is the prayer of the heart. Thomas Merton is quoted as saying: "The goal of prayer is not thought but God himself – God is my me." Entering into prayer not as words but as God praying through us often takes the form of a simple pouring of love and desire, sometimes through an intimate interior dialogue. In opening ourselves to this prayer we "learn to receive God’s action in our heart which dispells the unconscious claims of the false self, our illusory world." This is sometimes painful because it is a process of disillusionment but it is God’s grace in action because he does not want us to live in illusions. Through this process we are "drawn by a magnetic force in our own depths, towards God as our center of gravity."

So far our own activity has been dominant in the process of deepening our prayer life. Hall spends some time in the transition to the next stage, contemplation, because she sees it is important to discern this change properly. It is easy to mistake the transition into contemplation as a regression because we are no longer satisfied by our old methods of prayer. We find nothing in our concepts of God because we are aware of the divide that separates a concept of God and God himself. The key factor in knowing whether we are entering Contemplio is that despite our inability to pray discursively we are satisfied "to remain alone in a simple loving awareness of God in interior peace."

Contemplio is the silence "too deep for words." This is an odd state to accustom ourselves to, for the absence of God has now become his presence. Everything is turned upside down. There is a radical letting go of all that we have clung to for security. In this surrender "to know ourselves is to know we are loved by God beyond measure…Letting go of the self which wants to know what cannot be known except in the unknowing of intuitive love." In letting prayer pray through us we let our deep identity finally unfold, for by grace we are Christ and we pray to God as Christ has done and is doing even now.

It has been revealing to read Too Deep for Words. I have found it offers much to the praying novice (that would be me) not least of which is the foundation in grace on which Lectio Divina relies. It is remarkable how much I rely on my own actions and thoughts in prayer. An ex-Mennonite like myself easily finds himself mired in attempts to pull himself out of his own illusion. It just can’t be done. I have to be willing to let God do the heavy lifting. My struggling only serves to pull my center of gravity towards the false self – exactly where I am trying to move away from. Trust is paramount. God is at work in the world and in my soul. See and hear it, God is saying to me. All I have to do is get out of the way of the Spirit’s movement. Love allows me to do that as difficult and painful as that may be. I have to let go of my ideas of success which takes a lot of dying. The sooner I let go of my infantile expectations of perfection the closer I am to real unity and beauty which surrounds me and is in me. Too Deep for Words is a good guide in that direction.