‘The stairs of a staircase have naught to do with the top of it and the abode to which it leads, yet are means to the reaching of both;’ (St John of The Cross. Ascent of Mount Carmel.)
We so readily immerse ourselves in the experience of sensation generated by spiritual and religious routines, habits and convictions, that we risk failing to recognize the part this plays in weakening, or even completely negating, our desire for union with God.
The damage is so easily done because our immersion - both emotional and intellectual - does not result from a conscious decision, but from an all-pervading failure to understand the extent to which we are apart from Him. St John was writing of ‘meditations, forms and ideas’ which must be utilized as steps or stages to be passed through and discarded on the road to contemplative prayer and ultimately to the unitive state, ‘since they have no resemblance and bear no proportion to the goal to which they lead, which is God.”
Our journey must not be allowed to become the object of our journeying, Our desire must not be for the continuance of desire but for its complete fulfilment. But how do we recognize such fulfilment?
There are no preset stages to be attained along the way: no equivalent to the gaining of credits toward the attainment of a degree or professional qualification: no measurable sequence of steps from start to finish – from the foot of the staircase to the top step, and to the destination which from the beginning has drawn us onward.
There is no shortage of guidance, advice and teaching available from writers and speakers who range from the most experienced and professional to the most unaware and amateur; and here nothing is clear-cut either, with professionalism having no reliable link with experience and awareness, and the absence of them not necessarily producing a perceived amateur status.
Even the most advanced and respected of mystics such as St John of The Cross and St Teresa of Avila have found it necessary in their attempts to describe the indescribable, to portray progress and advancement in a series of stages. In this way they have extended our understanding and awareness of our journey but nothing about it can be handed to another as a step by step guide, a road map or sequential check-list. We can be encouraged or discouraged by such things, depending on our own enthusiasm, desire, past experiences, hopes and fears, and ultimately on our own deeply buried level of faith in the validity of the journey, but to take these expressions of other people’s experience as a hard and fast rule, or as a ‘how to’ guide for our own advance, is to lose sight of where we are meant to be going. It is to lose sight of the unchanging fact that we cannot see our destination. It is also to make the erroneous assumption that we are actually where we imagine ourselves to be in our journey towards God. Wherever that may be is almost certainly where we are not; we are somewhere on the staircase and it matters not where so long as we are there, striving and longing to move forward.
Our journey must not be allowed to become the object of our journeying, Our desire must not be for the continuance of desire but for its complete fulfilment. But how do we recognize such fulfilment?
There are no preset stages to be attained along the way: no equivalent to the gaining of credits toward the attainment of a degree or professional qualification: no measurable sequence of steps from start to finish – from the foot of the staircase to the top step, and to the destination which from the beginning has drawn us onward.
There is no shortage of guidance, advice and teaching available from writers and speakers who range from the most experienced and professional to the most unaware and amateur; and here nothing is clear-cut either, with professionalism having no reliable link with experience and awareness, and the absence of them not necessarily producing a perceived amateur status.
Even the most advanced and respected of mystics such as St John of The Cross and St Teresa of Avila have found it necessary in their attempts to describe the indescribable, to portray progress and advancement in a series of stages. In this way they have extended our understanding and awareness of our journey but nothing about it can be handed to another as a step by step guide, a road map or sequential check-list. We can be encouraged or discouraged by such things, depending on our own enthusiasm, desire, past experiences, hopes and fears, and ultimately on our own deeply buried level of faith in the validity of the journey, but to take these expressions of other people’s experience as a hard and fast rule, or as a ‘how to’ guide for our own advance, is to lose sight of where we are meant to be going. It is to lose sight of the unchanging fact that we cannot see our destination. It is also to make the erroneous assumption that we are actually where we imagine ourselves to be in our journey towards God. Wherever that may be is almost certainly where we are not; we are somewhere on the staircase and it matters not where so long as we are there, striving and longing to move forward.
Let us thank God for it, and, with every new day, ‘let us go forward from the point we have each attained.’ (Philippians 3:16)
No point along the way must be allowed to become other than a temporary dwelling place, and while we gain shelter, warmth, safety and encouragement from each place of rest, and from the help and guidance found there, we must inhabit it as we would a bothy when day is done, when cloud obscures the peaks and mists begin to fill the glens.
Just as foolhardy as striding out along a corrie-lip at such a time in a bid to reach a distant and unseen home, is venturing nearer to our spiritual and emotional edge when our journey is already swirling mists within us. The bothy is there for us; at the moment of our need it offers its open door and becomes our own haven. It is God’s provision for us. We light a fire with wood gathered by others, perhaps even needing that first spark of life from the dry matches carefully left for those in need. We make a meal from food left by others who have passed this way, and settling down for the night, we begin to read from among the books they have provided ... and perhaps we have been joined by another wanderer of the hills. Now is the time to read and to listen, to ponder and to wonder, to allow the mists within to become still and then to clear.
Morning brings safety to our steps, but in moving on we take nothing substantial with us; what we have heard and learned and gained will not fit neatly into whatever lies beyond the next ridge. We take the shape and the memory of the experience for blending into the inner soil that nurtures our tender shoots of wisdom, and we replace what we have used before we leave '... in the hope that there is some truth here worth the telling; or, if not that, tinder at least to catch the sparks of another man's fire.' (R. A. Knox. Enthusiasm.)
One day another traveller will lean on what we have left, just as we have leant and rested on the forethought of one who went before.
Morning brings safety to our steps, but in moving on we take nothing substantial with us; what we have heard and learned and gained will not fit neatly into whatever lies beyond the next ridge. We take the shape and the memory of the experience for blending into the inner soil that nurtures our tender shoots of wisdom, and we replace what we have used before we leave '... in the hope that there is some truth here worth the telling; or, if not that, tinder at least to catch the sparks of another man's fire.' (R. A. Knox. Enthusiasm.)
One day another traveller will lean on what we have left, just as we have leant and rested on the forethought of one who went before.
‘... a message from the dawn,
That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.’
(Robert Frost. The Tuft of Flowers.)
