In the Chapter Reading before Compline, we are listening to the the book by David Torkington, 'Inner Life' A Fellow Traveller's Guide to Prayer.
The Monastic Lectio Divina, sometimes, can surf the heavy waves.
David said, "I gave up trying to become an existential philosopher ... [In] 'A way of Life',... Martin Buber had chosen to detail the essence of his existential philosophy in stories so that even I was able to understand what I had been unable to understand before."
This evening, David's writing was ringing on all peals of bells to my ear:
"For the first time in my life I began to set aside daily quality space and time for prayer because I knew that I needed to turn within and to learn to savour in silence this mysterious presence. It was here that I came to realise as never before that we are all called not just to share in the life of Christ but also to share in his sacred and sacrificial action. In other words we are drawn up into the infinite vortex of life and love that endlessly reaches out from the Son and into the Father and from the Father into the Son. It is into this Trinity of everlasting life and love that Jesus came to invite us. This is the home for which we were created and for which we yearn the more we come to experience 'the love that surpasses all understanding' reaching out to embrace us."
Inner Life – David Torkington
9. Converging streams
The climbing of the great Ingleborough set the scene for a week of
solitude in our little cottage where I was led within myself as never before. It was the first time I'd ever reflected on my own inner life.
It seemed to have been composed of two parallel
worlds - the world of religious experience and the world of mystical
experience, that had developed side by side without ever meeting in any real
way that enabled the one to make sense of the other. The world of religious experience was
specifically Catholic, it was the world of Sunday Mass and weekly confession, of days of fasting and abstinence, of special feasts and holidays. It was the world of Catholic schools, of
catechism to teach me my faith and to show me how to live it, of apologetics to show me how to reason round it
and explain it to others, of annual retreats to set me alive in the Church
with what bored me to death in the classroom.
The world of what I called my mystical experience wasn't specifically Catholic at all. It was an experience I had in common with others,
other Christians of different traditions from my own, with Muslims and
Jews, with Buddhists and Hindus, with Gnostics
and agnostics and atheists too. They all seemed to have access to the same experience that I had at first
thought was personal to me alone, though
they all interpreted it according to
their own religious or non-religious
points of view. After all, why shouldn't everyone feel the touch
of the One who loved them into being in the first place, and who loves them still no matter where or when they happen to be born, or what
particular tradition they happen to be born into. Even dreary old apologetics
had taught me that God calls everyone to what everyone wants more than anything
else.
I reflected on my
life I thought it strange that I'd never experienced through the practice of my Catholic faith what I'd
experienced on my beloved moors, through my
favourite music, or on those
mysterious nights when I'd gaze for hours at the milky way and much more,
experiences that had made me mourn for days without knowing what had moved me.
There had been occasional 'feelings'
that had filled me with a certain peace of mind after 'a good confession', or a sense of goodness as I walked home after
early-morning Mass, or was it
merely smugness? My emotions had
been moved from time to time too during parish missions, or at the singing of the Credo at Lourdes, or at
the Easter blessing in St Peter's Square, but never anything to compare with those profound and personal experiences that
did not depend on the rites and rituals of the Church I'd been brought up in.
These two streams of experience seemed to have
trickled through my life side by side without ever meeting, at least not in a way that I could understand. Then I was introduced to St
Augustine at the beginning of the school retreat only two weeks after that
unforgettable holiday.
Augustine had been a pagan when he'd experienced the Creator peering out at him through
creation, and penetrating him with his presence, but it didn't satisfy him, just as it hadn't satisfied me. It simply made his heart more and more restless, as it
had made mine. But Augustine had a
perceptive mind that enabled him
to see so simply and so swiftly what lesser minds always seemed to complicate.
If the Creator could make himself present through his work how much more could
he make himself present through his Masterwork.
Suddenly I could see through Augustine's eyes that the One I'd never fully encountered in either my religious or my mystical
experience could be encountered in Christ, in whom and for whom everything had
been created from the beginning. In him my two separate streams would converge, my two separate
worlds would become as one.
When the retreat master said that prayer was the only
way to come to know him deeply and
personally, I knew what I had to do. I joined the Monday meditation group,
'Handley's half hour' as it was called. However, despite seeing what I ought to do with my mind, I needed
something, or someone, to move my heart. I received the inspiration I needed from two of the teaching staff; one was a layman, the
other a priest
 |
| David Torkington |
10. Reflection on St Martin Buber
Saturday, 28 April 2012
A Reflection on Martin Buber
I don't think Mr. Hogg would have
been employed in the first place had his predecessor not suddenly dropped dead
on his way to school. Mr. Hogg was what was called in those days a 'beatnik'
and would not, in the normal way of things, have been accepted as a suitable
candidate to teach English to the sixth form. He always wore a pair of filthy
denim trousers, a multi-coloured shirt, a grubby old duffel coat and sandals
even when it was snowing. When he wasn't delivering brilliant lectures on
English literature, he was to be found in the library reading existential
philosophy. We idolised him. I even took to reading Martin Buber, the man he
continually quoted in class. He leant me his book, entitled 'I and Thou', which
I wrestled with for weeks before throwing in the towel. I gave up trying to
become an existential philosopher and decided to look like one instead, like
the other boys in the class who fell under the spell of the remarkable Mr.
Hogg. Unfortunately for all of us the board of governors failed to fall
under the same spell and he was dismissed at the end of term.
Several years later I came across a
little book by Martin Buber in a second hand bookshop called 'A way of Life'. I
read it from cover to cover on the bus home. As an Orthodox Jew steeped in the
rabbinical tradition, Martin Buber had chosen to detail the essence of his
existential philosophy in stories so that even I was able to understand what I
had been unable to understand before. One of his stories told of a carpenter
from Lubin, who had a dream in which he saw a vast treasure of immense value
that he was given to understand was meant for him if he could only find it. Immediately
he gathered the tools of his trade together in an old carpetbag and set out in
search of what he had seen in that dream. After searching in vain through five
continents he returned home tired and exhausted and flung his tools down on the
ground before the hearth he had left forty years before. The floorboards gave
way under their weight to reveal the treasure he had seen in that dream a
generation
before.
The Kingdom of God is within, and we
search in vain if we search for His Presence anywhere other than where we are
now, and search in any other place than deep down within us. It is here that
the One who is the 'Infinitely Distant' has chosen to become the ‘Infinitely
Near'.
After God had revealed Himself to
Moses in the Burning Bush, and given him the law on Sinai, He told him to pitch
another tent for He would now dwell among the people and travel with them. In
this tent or tabernacle, as it was called, there was placed a large ornate
oblong box called the Ark of the Covenant in which the Ten Commandments
were kept written on stone tablets. At either end of the Ark there were the two
golden Cherubim facing each other. God’s mystical presence on earth was
believed to dwell at an indivisible point in space equidistant between the two
Cherubim. This mystical presence was called ‘the Shekinah’ from the Hebrew word
meaning to pitch a tent. The Ark had handles on it so that God could travel
with His people and even accompany them into battle, for with God on their side
who could defeat them? After they had arrived at the Promised Land and the
temple was built, the Ark was placed at the far end inside the 'Holy of
Holies'. This now became the holiest place on earth where God's Presence dwelt
behind a huge veil that separated it from the rest of the Sanctuary. When in
the prologue to his Gospel St John writes –“The Word was made flesh and dwelt
amongst us.” He originally used the word ‘Shekinah’ so the most accurate
translation of these words would be –“The word was made flesh and he pitched
his tent amongst
us.”
When Jesus was finally glorified upon
the Cross the temple veil was rent in two. The message was simple:- The
Presence of God on earth was no longer to be found in the Holy of Holies in a
man-made temple, but in the temple of Christ's own body and the bodies of every
man and woman who freely choose to receive him. This is why Jesus Himself said
that the Kingdom of God is within you, as it is within Him, and why St. Paul
said that our very bodies are now the temples of the Holy Spirit.
Funnily enough it took a Jewish
philosopher who rejected Jesus to help me realise one of the most profound
truths that He ever taught. It made me realise too that this sublime truth was
not just a great mystery for me to marvel at but also a mystery that I must
enter into. For the first time in my life I began to set aside daily quality
space and time for prayer because I knew that I needed to turn within and to
learn to savour in silence this mysterious presence. It was here that I came to
realise as never before that we are all called not just to share in the life of
Christ but also to share in his sacred and sacrificial action. In other
words we are drawn up into the infinite vortex of life and love that endlessly
reaches out from the Son and into the Father and from the Father into the Son.
It is into this Trinity of everlasting life and love that Jesus came to invite
us. This is the home for which we were created and for which we yearn the more
we come to experience 'the love that surpasses all understanding' reaching out
to embrace us.
I've stopped going on the pilgrimages
that meant so much to me in the past, time is short so why should I waste any
more time looking without for what I can only find within. I'm not trying to
suggest that we shouldn't seek out special places to help us come closer to
God, but they are only special places because they create the best possible
environment for us to savour the One who has ‘pitched His tent’ within us and
who travels with us wherever we go. I found such a place for myself ten years
ago in a remote Benedictine monastery in Spain. The Abbot was an Englishman who
explained to me how the vow of stability taken by the monks helped them to
search for the Presence within that so often eludes spiritual butterflies who
find it difficult to settle anywhere for long. He didn't recognise me, why
should he, but I recognised him. I couldn't see what he was wearing
beneath his habit but I wouldn't mind betting it was the same old denim
trousers, and the multi-coloured shirt. He was certainly wearing the same
sandals. When I asked him if he was called after St. Martin of Tour, he said
no, he had called himself after another Martin whose memory wasn’t celebrated
in the Christian calendar!
