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Brother David Steindhl-Rast

 

Contents

Biography

Quotations

Writing

Notes

Bibliography

Links

 

Biography

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.    

 

Quotations



Writing

Encounter with God Through the Senses 

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.

 

 

Notes

 

Bibliography

 

Links

 

 

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