CONTEMPLATION AND WHAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND OUT OF IT
By. Don. J.B. Nyamunga
Contemplation for many may be a recitation of formulated prayers, mysteries of the Rosary and common traditional prayer patterns instead of the awareness of God’s presence at its deepest value. Most of us have been trained to pray, instead of being trained in prayer. Many find themselves in phenomenal amounts of formulas which have become aid to prayer, which have become ends in themselves. It eventually turns into a product-oriented method.
Being trained in prayer has to lead to contemplation. We have to realize that contemplation is not for few people set apart but it’s a call open to everyone to delve into contemplation. This is something beyond prayer but someone, God. Contemplatives are people whose consciousness of God permeates their entire lives. Their awareness of God’s presence magnetizes them and directs them beyond everything else, beyond all other values. They are aware that God creates them, sustains them and challenges them. As a result all other agendas, values fall away. Of course it doesn’t mean that contemplatives don’t find values in other things, e.g. in career, money or achievement, but these things do not become their great value. The awareness of God becomes their greatest value, living steeped in God, surrounded by God, of being directed by God, of being in the presence of God, of learning to see life through the eyes of God, of being aware of God’s love, action and challenge.
The desert fathers and mothers felt that contemplation can be accomplished through labor (work). These works could be basket weaving for example, which was often mentioned, for the contemplation was not idleness but who is better for the contemplative life if not a person who is working, but not totally caught up in things he or she is working with. With this approach work or being busy can become a contemplative act, can be an occasion for fostering the awareness of God’s presence Giving yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, a chance to relate your own story to the Jesus story, being renewed and revived by that presence. But you remember that all these you have to make time for it. Once you make it a practice in life, there is a way it overflows even into moments that are consciously are spent in reading, working through problems, organizing, administering.
The interesting thing is that one can’t live contemplative life without discipline. This will include regular lectio, or spiritual reading, to undergird it and to challenge the way one lives. There should be time for work, time for family and community, time for Christian community, time for private scripture reading and reflection. Out of this will come a whole new rhythm of life, a whole new way of seeing the relative importance of various parts of one’s life, it provides the discipline, the structure, to help one to make the awareness of the presence of God as the greatest value in life. A married woman for example who works out of her home may not do her lectio, spiritual reading, with a book. Instead, she might get the spiritual nourishment provided by lectio through listening a tape while commuting to work or working around the house. This will mean cutting out listening to hard rock or watching “soap operas” But becoming a contemplative does involve discipline as well as desire.
Work shouldn’t be an impediment to contemplation, we all have to work. In the rule of St. Benedict there is a marvelous chapter in the rule that says in effect, when you have to get the harvest in, you have to get the harvest in, so pray in the fields. You don’t have to have the harvest in the rain because you have to get back home a certain time to pray, to contemplate. The harvest is what needs to be attended to now. Do it. This is your contemplation. A women living in the suburb can do the same with her good works. This presence of God in one’s life and the world. It wouldn’t be a burden, it won’t be an exercise. It is. This awareness of God’s presence that will always be the filter through which one has to think and act and pray. This presence will always stand between one and those around him or her and what they are doing.
© Don J.B Nyamunga’20
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