Spiritwalk
Teachers
Brother David Steindhl-Rast
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- Brother
David Steindl-Rast was born in Vienna. He holds degrees from the Vienna
Academy of Fine Arts, the Psychological Institute at the University of
Vienna, and was a Post- Doctoral Fellow at Cornell University.
- Since 1953
Brother David has been a monk of Mount Saviour Monastery in New York state.
He periodically goes on retreat Immaculate Heart Hermitage in Big Sur. After
four years of formal training in philosophy, theology, and the 1500-year-old
Benedictine monastic tradition, he received permission to practice Zen with
Buddhist masters.
- Brother
David has lectured extensively on five continents and contributed to many
books and periodicals, including The
New Catholic Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia
Americana, and New Age Journal.
His current books are Gratefulness,
The Heart of Prayer and A
listening Heart.
Encounter
with God Through the Senses
- Brother
David Steindl-Rast
When someone asks me about my personal relationship with God, my
spontaneous reply is a question: What do you mean by God? For decades I have
spoken about religion with people all over the world, and I have learned that
the word “God” must be used with utmost caution if we want to avoid
misunderstandings. I also find far-reaching agreement among human beings when we
reach that mystical core from which all religious traditions spring. Even those
who cannot identify with organized religion are often rooted in mystical
experience. This is where I find my reference point for the meaning of the term
“God.” The term must be anchored in that mystical awareness in which all
humans agree before they start talking about it.
In my best, most alive moments- in my mystical moments- I have a strong
sense of belonging. At those moments I am aware of being truly at home in this
universe. There is no longer any doubt in my mind that I belong to this Earth
Household, in which each member belongs to all others- bugs to beavers, black
eyed Susans to black holes, quarks to quails, lightning to fireflies, humans to
hyenas. To say yes to this limits mutual belonging is love. When I speak of God,
I mean this kind of love, this great yes to belonging. I experience this love at
one and the same thing as God’s Yes to all that exists. In saying yes, I
realize God’s very life and love within me.
But there is more of this yes of love than a sense of belonging. There is
also a deep longing. Who has not experienced in love both the longing and the
belonging? Paradoxically, these two heighten each others intensity. The more
intimately we belong, the more we long to belong ever more fully. Longing adds a
dynamic aspect to our yes of love. The fervor of our longing becomes the
expression and the very measure of our belonging. Nothing is static: everything
is in motion with a dynamic that is, moreover, deeply personal.
When love is genuine, belonging is always mutual. The beloved belongs to
the lover, as the lover belongs to the beloved. I belong to this universe and to
the divine Yes that is its source, and this belonging is also mutual. That is
why I can say “my God”- not in a possessive sense, but in a sense of loving
relatedness. Now, if my deepest belonging is mutual, could my most fervent
longing be mutual, too? It must be so. Staggering though it is, what I
experience as my longing for God and God’s longing for me. One cannot have a
personal relationship with an impersonal force. True, I must not project on God
the limitations of a person; yet, the Divine Source must have all the
perfection’s of personhood. Where else would I have gotten them from?
It makes sense, then, to speak of a personal relationship with God. We
are aware of this-dimly at least- in moments in which we are most wakeful, most
alive, most truly human. And we can cultivate this relationship by cultivating
wakefulness, by living our lives to the fullest.
The Bible expresses these insights in the words “God Speaks.” “God
Speaks” is one way of pointing toward my personal relationship with the Divine
Source. This relationship can be understood as a dialogue.
God speaks, and I am able to answer.
But how does God speak? Through everything there is. Every thing, every
person, every situation, is ultimately. The Word tells me something and
challenges me to respond. Each moment with all that it contains spells out the
great yes in a new and unique way. By making my response, moment by moment, word
by word, I am becoming the Word that God speaks in me and to me and through me.
That is why wakefulness is so preeminent a task. How can I gave a full
response to this present moment unless I am alert to its message? And how can I
be alert unless all my senses are wide awake? God’s inexhaustible poetry comes
to me in five languages: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. All the rest is
interpretation- literary criticism, as it were, not the poetry itself, because
poetry resists translation. It can
be fully experienced only in its original language, all the more true of
the divine poetry of sensuousness. How, then, can I make sense of life if not
through my senses?
When and to what do our senses respond most readily? If I ask myself this
question, I think immediately of working in my small garden. For fragrance, I
grow jasmine, pineapple mint, sage, thyme, and eight kinds of lavender. What and
abundance of delightful smells on so small a patch of ground! And what a variety
of sounds: spring rain, autumn wind, year-round birds- mourning dove, bluejay,
and wren; the hawks sharp cry at noon and the owls hooting at nightfall- the
sound the broom makes on gravel, wind chimes, and the creaking garden gate. Who
could translate the taste of strawberry or fig into words? What an infinite
array of things to touch, from wet grass under my bare feet in the morning to
the sun warmed boulders against where I lean when the evening turns cool. My
eyes go back and fourth between the near and the far: the golden green metallic
beetle lost among rose petals, the immense expanse of the Pacific, rising from
below the cliff to the far-off horizon where sea and sky meet in mist.
Yes, I admit it. To have a place in solitude like this in an inestimable
gift. It lets the heart expand, lets the senses wake up, one by one, to come
alive with fresh vitality. Whatever our circumstances, we need somehow to set
aside a time and a place for this kind of experience. It is a necessity in
everyone’s life, not a luxury. What comes alive in those moments is more that
eyes or ears; our hearts listen and respond. Until I attune my senses, my heart
remains dull, sleepy, half dead. In the measure in which my heart wakes up, I
hear the challenge to rise to my responsibility.
We tend to overlook the close connection between responsiveness and
responsibility, between sensuousness and social challenge. Outside and inside
are of one piece. As we learn to really look with our eyes, we begin to look
with our hearts also. We begin to face what we may prefer to overlook, begin to
see what is going on in this world of ours. As we learn to listen with our ears,
our hearts begin to learn the cry of the oppressed. To be in touch with ones
body is to be in touch with the world- that includes the Third World and all the
areas in which our dull hearts are conveniently
out of touch.
IN my travels I notice
how easy it is to lose attentiveness. Oversatuation of our senses tends
to dim our alertness. A deluge of sense impressions tends to distract the heart
from a single- minded attention. But the hermit in each of us does not run away
from the world; it seeks that Stillpoint within, where the heartbeat of the
world can be heard. All of us- each in a different measure- need solitude,
because we need to cultivate mindfulness.
How shall we do this in practice? Is there a method for cultivating
mindfulness? There are many methods. The one I have chosen is gratefulness,
which can be practiced, cultivated, learned. And as we grow in gratefulness, we
grow in mindfulness. Before I open my eyes in the morning, I remind myself that
I have eyes to see while millions of my brothers and sisters are blind- most
because of conditions that can be improved if our human family would come to its
senses and spend its recourses reasonably, equitably. If I open my eyes with
this thought, chances are that I will be more grateful for the gift of sight and
be more alert to the needs of those who lack that gift. Before I turn out the
light in the evening, I jot down one thing for which I have never been grateful.
I have done this for years, and the supply still seems inexhaustible.
Gratefulness brings joy to my life. How can I find joy in what I take for
granted? So I stop “ taking for granted,” and there is no end to the
surprises I find. A grateful attitude is a creative one, because, in the final
analysis, opportunity is the gift within the gift of every moment- the
opportunity to see and hear and smell and touch and taste with pleasure.
There is no longer bond than the one that gratefulness celebrates, the
bond between giver and thanksgiver. Everything is a gift. Grateful living is a
celebration of the universal give-and-take of life, a limitless yes to
belonging.
Can our world survive without gratefulness? Whatever the answer, one
thing is certain: to say and unconditional yes to the mutual belonging of all
beings will make this a more joyful world. This is the reason why yes is my
favorite synonym for God.
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