A Matter Of Degree

True or false? The contemplative life involves a certain amount of recollection.

True or false? Contemplation requires some commitment to silence.

True or false? Without solitude contemplation loses its meaning.

True or false? A degree of openness to and interaction with the world is essential to the contemplative life.

True or false?

Well.

Each is true.

And all are true.

But how much each is true, and the degree to which they are true, this varies.

There is of course a regulated form of contemplative living...several forms to be precise..innumerable forms...sanctioned forms...unsanctioned forms. But if there was only one form, or if there was one form that was best, then that would have been settled long, long ago. But it was not, it has not, and it is not.

There are of course those who would advocate for such. And it is not a matter that they are deluded.

In reality there is a certain amount of each that is in fact essential. Let’s admit it.

Without being caught up to a very real degree in these then it really cannot be called a contemplative life.

But it takes very little to tip the scale in favour of rigidity and regularity and uniformity. When this happens then personal development may not simply be stifled, it may take on little or no significance at all. And really if the contemplative life is real at all, then it is first and foremost real for each person.

The uniformity of contemplative experience is of course consistent over time...millennia in fact. That is what validates the biblical witness; repeatable, observable, and measurable patterns that emerge over a vast length of time and across immense physical spaces. But as consistent as these experiences may be, they are also unique to each person. Where and how much and when and why. If the former (repeatable, observable, and measurable) are recognizable in consistency, then these later elements are made of inconsistency and experimentalism. And no person can or should judge another person’s contemplative validity. Why? Because at the root of it all lies a relational call by God that is living, and plastic.

That some could live in an apartment in a high rise in the midst of millions of others in a major metropolitan city and another dwell in absolute isolation in a trackless wilderness and yet again someone live in a closed cloister (in solitude or community), and each yet have the contemplative experience of God, well, that is actually not up to anyone to validate. In fact, it is not even up to the person who is so called to validate. It just is.

The only thing that is true for all is this is that when people become so preoccupied in trying to figure out what is or is not true when it comes to validating the degrees of contemplative living to which they or others are called, you can be sure that the expiration date of their own calling is long past and that their reason for living as such no longer exists.

And that is most definitely true.