Grand Illusions

Contemplation calls people to a desert frontier. Beyond this frontier there are no police.

The historical fate of organized attempts at this remains precisely that these have become increasingly organized over the centuries and better policed than that of non-religious societies themselves; it all happens while promising greater liberty.

There have been two churchly attempts at contemplative renewal since the Counter-Reformation. Other than encouraging individual's to access original sources (biblical and early monastic (which was simply Luther's original intent) ) these only obscured the real needs of contemplative life.

It is simply ridiculous to think you can recover some sort of genuine access to contemplation by trying to adapt enclosure, silence, worship, and fasting to postmodern expectations. Any notion that a person can recover their charismatic liberty by joining forces with secular society is equally as ridiculous.

There is in fact no such thing as contemplative renewal in the church. There is only the contemplative experience of God. What the church has done over the millennia is never cumulative in its effect. Direct access to God leaves nothing to talent. There are no ecclesiastical bureaucrats, monastic businessmen, or secular social machine that can grant this.

Contemplation calls people to a frontier, and beyond this frontier there are no police.