This
book is about reclaiming essential values that can guide us into the future.
As we come to the end of the millennium more and more people are questioning
if the marvels of the Age of Technology that seem so scintillating and
fascinating are merely offering us a virtual reality rather than a genuine
world. The author, Karin Johne, invites us to explore a world created not
only by external stimulation's and increased consumption but by quietly
evoked resources from within through meditation and prayer. Rather than
fabricating an artificial system Johne suggests meditation as a way to
see the ordinary as extraordinary. For a culture powerfully shaped by the
industrial and scientific revolution meditation may appear more as an avoidance
of the real world than as an engagement with it. Johne, however, contends
that the way of meditation and prayer leads us to a more significant engagement
with the actual world of real people and real events, to human needs and
agonies as well as to joys and discoveries beyond imagination.
We found ourselves drawn to this interior
journey in the midst of dealing with the consequences of socialinjustices
(racism, sexism, religious bigotry, greed, apathy, etc.). Like many in
the activist generation of the 1960's and early 1970s we too eventually
faced an "energy" crisis of burn out and drop out. These are not healthy
symptoms for those who claim to be agents of hope transforming people and
institutions. Social action focuses more on giving then receiving, expending
than expanding, curing than nurturing. It became clear to us and many others
that the resolute journey outward requires an equally resolute journey
inward.
While living in Geneva, Switzerland, at the
height of our involvement in justice and human rights work, we had the
good fortune of coming into contact with a contemplative community, the
Sisters of Grandcamp in Switzerland. After a three day retreat at Grandchamp
Ruth realized that here was the path that she had been longing for. From
that quiet and powerful experience of solitude came the decision to make
a radical change in our lives and begin a contemplative retreat center
in 1977 (the ARC Retreat Community near Cambridge, Minnesota).
During these same years in the Germany
Democratic Republic (East Germany) where direct social action was not possible,
Karin Johne was pursuing the way of meditation. Through retreats and correspondence
courses she sought to help others find their authentic worlds in a society
where truth was a managed affair and reality interpreted according to an
imposed ideology. With few options for public action she turned to the
inner life and she turned to the past to ancient spiritual practices. We
first met Karin during a visit to East Germany in 1982 and had the good
fortune of participating in an ecumenical retreat for young people led
by her and Fr. Helmut Geiger. Later during a sabbatical in Holland in l990-91
we translated her book, Spiritual Practices for the Everyday.
Karin Johne understands meditation as the
way to discover the essentials. Meditation helps us find connections to
God, others and self: most intimate of relationships. The authentic self,
the deeper, inner being has been so ignored in the hectic pursuits of modern
life that we are a stranger to our most authentic self. That self, however,
is no stranger to God. The Holy One meets us there in the self as the Other
Self to empower and redirect us on a journey into the everyday world with
new perspective and purpose. Through the rediscovered self the everyday
world is transformed through divine power. Meditation and prayer free us
from the frenzied efforts to make things happen by us and teaches us the
quiet way of letting things happen graciously and non violently through
us. Spiritual maturity begins as we discover the deeperself and
are opened to a wider world.
"Superficiality is the curse of our age"
writes Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline. By contrast spirituality
is the essential response to life. It is as necessary for life as the air
we breathe. Like oxygen the spirit permeates every cell of our body and
touches every aspect of daily living. And just as it is important to have
clean air to sustain a healthy life, so it is important to provide environments
that deepen and nourish our awareness of God in the everyday. In contemporary
society, however, such environments for nurturing the spirit are hard to
find. The assault on our senses has become so pervasive that we no longer
are able to recognize that we do not have any quiet space around us. We
have bought into the notion that constant information and stimulation are
essential for personal development and for keeping up with the times. Nothing
could be further from the truth or more in opposition with how God nurtures
the spirit. Here a paradoxical truth presents itself that was recognized
long ago by Meister Eckehart. Spiritual nurture is not a matter of adding
more, but of subtracting more: We need to be emptied in order to be filled.
It is easier to flee from reality through
busyness than through solitude. Perhaps that explains why taking times
alone and apart for meditation and attentive listening are difficult for
many and why there is great resistance and fear associated with it. It
is a time we may feel exposed and vulnerable. However without intentional
times for meditation and prayer it becomes very easy to become so involved,
so busy so over extended that as Evelyn Underhill described it, "We reach
the point where we can't hear our own soul speak"
Johne offers us simple exercises for these
intentional times to "hear our soul speak" again. The practices she proposes
draw us to the center prompting longings that are universal. It is a need
which we cannot ignore if we want to grow spiritually. The journey inward
opens us more to the winds of God's Spirit. Times of solitude also gives
us a new vantage points from which to view reality. These experiences help
us see a bigger picture, a larger world beyond our limited personal universe.
Developing an attentiveness, awareness, and
alertness to what lies deeply within us and around us develops only slowly
through much pondering as Johne reminds us repeatedly And the slower this
happens the better. It is not in knowing much that satisfies our soul but
rather the attending to and the savoring of a few things well. This cannot
be left up to chance. Staying with and drinking deeply from what lies within
and around us is necessary in order to receive what is there, what is essential.
The more time we take to establish firmly the practices of receptivity,
pausing, pondering and lingering, the more we will be able to experience
the presence of God in the mystery of the everyday. Johne shows us that
there are unlimited resources hidden all around us to instruct us, transform
us, heal us and renew us like a beautiful garden. The resources and potential
for growth and learning are there, close at hand, but unavailable if we
do not begin with the first step of entering it and examining closely what
is contained deep within and close at hand.
A great deal of religious language follows
the sequence of "up and beyond" often ending in pious abstractions of some
idealized heaven. Johne, however, shows us the classic way of meditation
that goes in a different direction, penetrating the depths: down, inward
and out (i.e., outward). Meditation is a "down and out" process from suffering
alone to suffering with, from passion to compassion, from crucifixion to
resurrection, from prayer to action. Johne teaches us that meditation is
not abstract "day dreaming" but a discipline of the heart which reveals
through ordinary everyday affairs concrete actions toward those nearest
us. Meditation moves from mystery to politics: the missing step for so
many of us who are confused about the connection between the work we do
and the faith we proclaim. We are, therefore, especially grateful to Karin
Johne for reminding us that meditation is the way to the essentials.